Patch.com | Heyl: Pennsylvania Fireworks Law A Total Dud Patch.com Unfortunately, all Pennsylvanians find themselves in that position thanks to the type of government oppression that led to the day we're about to celebrate. Don't blow up when you hear this, but folks from neighboring states can buy anything they want ... |
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The issue of restructuring this unfortunate country called Nigeria is once again on the front burner. Restructuring remains one of the promises made by the APC and President Mohammadu Buhari that they have refused to fulfill. In fact, at all levels of the APC as an administration and political party, restructuring is being denied.
Before then, former President Goodluck Jonathan organized a National Conference to discuss this issue. The recommendations of the Conference, even though not perfect, has been thrown into the trash by President Buhari and his goons. This ought to have been the starting point to save Nigeria from perdition.
However, many of us seem not to have an understanding of what to restructure. The itemized issues below are not exhaustive in any way. The suggestions also are not written in stone. The bodywork could still be tampered with in terms of details. But the highlighted issues must be dealt with, honestly, sincerely and genuinely to build trust, sense of belonging and save Nigeria, if we all think we still need the country.
THE POLICE - There is urgent need to give control of the police to the localities. The Political Units (PUs) should have their own police side by side with Local Government, City or Township Police Forces. This would make oppression more difficult and reduce abuse of power and usage. It would democratize law enforcement and facilitate citizen involvement. It would also enhance security, effectiveness, and efficiency. The argument of abuse no longer holds water since we are all witnesses to the constant abuse of the police by the unitary Federal Government.
EDUCATION - The Federal Government has no business in formulating and controlling the educational system. The Elementary Education is absolutely for the control of local people to create a social foundation via curricula for their children. Such curricula shall, as agreed to by the locals, be imbued with their desired philosophical world view. Same goes with secondary, high schools or grammar schools.
"Government", communities and private entities can compete to have universities, colleges, polytechnics and other forms of post-secondary institutions.
I put "government" in quotes because the FEDERAL government should be totally out of business of owing universities, controlling admissions, appointing Chancellors and Vice Chancellors among others. The Federal Government shall not and must not have any scintilla of power or responsibility in determining admission policies or criteria for such in all post-secondary institutions.
It should be made UNLAWFUL and ILLEGAL for FederalGovernment to interfere in the internal affairs of post-secondary institutions of which the most important is admission policies and contents of teaching. The Senate Council of such institutions should be given controls and powers subject to the internal democratic control of members.
HEALTH - All health policies and infrastructure management shall be an exclusive responsibility of the PUs. The Federal Government shall not have any power to interfere in such matters, no matter how remote. Any arm of Federal Government that has Health issues as its concerns, shall be related to the PUs purely on an advisory basis and shall have no power whatsoever to compel any PU against its will.
AGRICULTURE - The Federal Government shall not have any power directly or indirectly to determine agricultural policies in the PUs. This shall be an exclusive responsibility of the locals and their PUs. There shall be no Federal Ministry of Agriculture under any disguise for that matter. It shall be unconstitutional to use the common purse for agricultural development in any PU to the detriment of other PUs.
TRANSPORTATION - There shall no longer be any road within the borders of the PUs designated as FEDERAL ROADS. The PUs shall have the full power to develop it's road infrastructures without let or hindrance. Airlines, Railways, Waterways, and other forms of transportation shall be the exclusive management and administration of the PUs. The international laws guiding transportation of all genre would be adopted to guide transportation relationship between the PUs.
RESOURCE CONTROL - The political units (PUs) should have total control of its resources of all kinds whether on the ground, under the ground or in the sky. Each PU must be free to determine the exploitation or otherwise of such resources. Each PU should and must be free to enter into local and international agreement on how to manage it's resources. Such PUs should determine its taxes and rates of importation to as well as exportation from its territory. All the resources must be deployed to the development and progress of the PUs as determined by its people. All the PUs that are constituent units must agree at a percentage of their resources not lower than 2.5 and not greater than 5.00 percent as contributions to the Federal Government. The percentage, when agreed upon must be uniform and not discriminatory.
ECONOMY - The management of the economy of the PUs would follow the same format as in the management of the resources in relation to the Federal Government. Each PU shall determine its own economic policies and have its own CENTRAL BANK to protect it against hostile action by an antagonistic, vindictive, quarrelous and envious Federal Government. Each PU would decide its economic relationship with other PUs or other Nations of the world as well as international bodies.
TAXES - The Federal Government shall not and must not have the power to tax any citizen or PU. A situation where VAT or Value Added Tax on liquor, for example, is taken from Oyo State to support Kano State that hates such is an injustice. The Federal Government shall and must solely depend on the mandatory 5 maximum contribution from the PUs.
TRADE AND COMMERCE - All regulations and rules that govern ethics, practices of commerce and trade shall be jointly put in place by the Federal Government and the PUs. Where there is a conflict of rules, the PUs shall have the final say or superior authority. Each PU shall not need or require the Federal Government's approval or authority to enter into bi - lateral or multi - lateral trade deals with any country or international bodies in the world. The PU shall have the freedom to determine what is in their best interest and pursue such without let or hindrance.
THE ARMED FORCES - Each PU should and must have as well as total control its armed forces and it's security apparatuses. Each PU would determine the extent and size of its Army, Navy and Airforce as it deems fit. It shall be able to decide how they are trained and how much is expended on them.
Each PU shall have its own security apparatuses and determines the welfare packages, emoluments, promotions, training of its personnel.
At the Federal level, there would be a Military Advisory Council (MAC) which duties shall remain advisory in capacity. It's decisions would not be binding except by persuasion. MAC shall advise whether Nigeria can go to war or not. Such advice shall be unanimously accepted and or agreed to through persuasion alone and not by force.
Each PU shall decide its own contribution to the war effort as it deems fit and according to its capacity and resources. A PU may be able to opt out of a war effort if it's leadership decides so at any point in time.
IMMIGRATION - This shall be a joint responsibility of both the Federal Government and the PUs. Where there is conflict in matters of immigration, the PUs shall have the FINAL SAY as determined by its policies and its leadership. As we have in ECOWAS, free movement within the PUs would be encouraged since it would still be the same country, but with an agreed form of identification to check crimes and protect security concerns.
BORDER CONTROL - This is expected to be under immigration. But I decided to focus on it separately in lieu of our experiences. Each PU shall have the final say on who and how people enter into, move around, work and live within its borders. It shall have the unrestrained power to expel or jail anyone that breaks it's rules, regulations, and laws.
DIPLOMACY - As we had it after Independence in 1960, each PU shall and MUST have the right to engage in international relations and choose which countries it wants to have embassies and ambassadors.
JUDICIARY - The final arbiter of and for justice shall be within the judicial set up of each PU. Each PU shall design and operate it's unique judicial system. At the Federal level, all PUs must agree on the structural set up of the National Court to hear cases of dispute among PUs. The structure shall not have the power to interfere in the internal judicial structure of the PUs. Judges on the Federal Courts shall not be permanent and should be on ad hoc or case by case basis. The judges at Federal level shall not earn any remunerations since they would be representing their PUs at such time. They shall not sit on more than one or two cases at most in a lifetime. In a situation of conflict between two PUs, the Federal Court shall hear such case and determine it. But such case must be subject to appeal to International Court and a clause approving this would be enshrined in the new Constitution.
POLITICAL UNITS (PUs) - It is my view that PUs should be determined based on linguistic demarcations and not on artificial regions. There are 376 languages spoken in Nigeria. Some would complain that this would be too many. But it is my view that the distinct characters of all the units be maintained. Where necessary, referendum, under the principle of SELF DETERMINATION could and should be held by any unit to decide which other units they want to be grouped with for purposes of viability. If a country of just 93,000 (Seychelles) can survive, a constituent unit of the same population or less would survive. No PU, no matter how big or small shall have the right, no matter how infinitesimal, no matter how it is defined, to decide the destiny of others as to how and where they are grouped.
To ensure equality of responsibility and opportunity among all constituent units or PUs, the mono - camera National Assembly would have 376 members which would be far fewer than the present size of 469 members in the bi-Camera Assembly. This would mean a representative each from all the linguistic units constituting Nigeria, regardless of size in population or land mass.
The members shall be totally on a Part-time basis and without remunerations. Their membership of this Assembly shall be purely on a patriotic commitment basis. It shall not sit more than 21 days in a row and more than four times in a year. Its enactments shall be purely advisory and subject to review and acceptability by the Assemblies of the PUs.
The internal political structure of each PU shall be its sole responsibility without any interference whatsoever from any outside influence.
HOW TO RESTRUCTURE - The modality of carrying out the restructuring must be based on equality of all constituent units regardless of population size or land mass. This would mean that a CONSTITUENT ASSEMBLY of 376 members representing each ethnic nationalities would meet to discuss matters of common interest in relation to the continued existence of Nigeria.In the course of focusing on itemized issues above and others that might come up, they would unwittingly but consciously construct the framework for a new Constitution to be approved back home in the PUs.
Any PU that disapproves or disagrees with the new Constitution should be allowed to reconsider and review it's decision or be allowed to form its own country. Regardless, the new Constitution must include a clause that allows a referendum in any ethnic nationality that seeks to leave the Union to do so as long as it is the wish of the majority of its citizens.
The operating principles of and for the RESTRUCTURING are and should be self-determination, freedom from oppression, equity, justice, balance, sense of equal belonging and equality in all ramifications. This piece is without any prejudice to my hope, dream, and aspiration for the Odu Nation. This is because any discussion about a country, Nation - State or a Nation is ultimately about a people. The prime motive of and for my agitation for the coming Great Yoruba Nation is the well being of my Yoruba people.
It must be understood that on the tough and rough path to FREEDOM of the Yoruba people, their survival and well-being must be the constant and consistent denominator. This piece is purposed by that denominator.
"In the long history of the world, only a few generations have been granted the role of defending freedom in its hour of maximum danger. I do not shrink from this responsibility I welcome it. - John F. Kennedy, in his Inaugural Address January 20, 1961
Please follow me on Twitter: @OyeyemiRemi
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Nigeria: What And How To Restructure By Remi Oyeyemi - SaharaReporters.com
"Proposed justice measures in South Sudan including the Hybrid Court can be pursued despite disruptions in the implementation of the peace agreement".
July 1, 2017
The lack of political will by South Sudanese leaders to implement the ARCSS, however, has left the transition process in shambles. Fighting continues and has spread to every region of the country, humanitarian access remains severely obstructed despite an estimated 4 million refugees and displaced South Sudanese since 2013, famine has taken hold, and most of the genuine opposition has had to flee the country due to the governments oppression of civil society, journalists, and any form of dissent. Despite these conditions, the lack of an alternative peacebuilding framework perpetuates the commonly held notion that ARCSS continues to provide the only path for moving forward in South Sudan.
The element of ARCSS that many South Sudanese are most reluctant to lose is Chapter Von transitional justice, accountability, reconciliation, and healingand with it the institution of a hybrid court that offers some hope for justice and an end to impunity in the country. Often overlooked in this supposed tradeoff is that the key accountability measures negotiated into the ARCSS can be retained even outside the Agreement.
The State of the ARCSS
Almost since the moment the ARCSS was adopted in August 2015, the parties have refused to honor ceasefire commitments. South Sudans president, Salva Kiir, famously signed the ARCSS with reservations detailed in a list of complaints and qualifications. While rejected by the ARCSSs international signatories from the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD), the African Union (AU), and the troika (the United States, Norway, and the United Kingdom), the regime nonetheless proceeded to implement many of these reservations, without meaningful international reaction. These and other measures undertaken by the regime have consequently rendered the ARCSS, the term of which was to extend to May 2018, inoperable. Among others, these include:
The failure to demilitarize Juba or pursue any meaningful reform of the security sector
The unilateral replacement of opposition leader and First Vice-President of the TGoNU, Riek Machar
Harassment and obstruction of ceasefire monitors
Interference with the activities of the Joint Monitoring and Evaluation Commission established to monitor the implementation of ARCSS
Despite these and many other violations, the GOSS regularly affirms the ARCSS as the blueprint for finding lasting peace, even as it continues to prosecute and expand the war.
From a political perspective, it is difficult to see how a national dialogue that excludes the main opposition and rebel movement opposed to the government and conducted in an environment of severe insecurity and humanitarian crisis can deliberate and prescribe how the conflict should be resolved.
The Fate of Accountability Institutions
What implications do these actions have for accountability for crimes and human rights violations committed since December 2013 that were to be addressed under ARCSS? In fact, the survival of the hybrid court, the Commission on Truth, Reconciliation, and Healing, and the Reparations Authority are not contingent upon the ARCSS but have a basis of their own outside the peace agreement.
Final Report of the AU Commission of Inquiry (COI) on South Sudan:
Second, while negotiating the ARCSS, IGAD mediators were fully aware of the COIs work on accountability and essentially aligned its recommendations with the COIs findings on the subject. Indeed, the ARCSS process was guided by the understanding that individuals found responsible for human rights violations in the COI would be prohibited from participating in the Transitional Government of National Unity (TGoNU). This guidance was contained in the signed (protocol?) by IGAD heads of state and governments (including Salva Kiir) on August 25, 2014. That part of the protocol was never applied, however, in part because Sudan Peoples Liberation Movement-in-Opposition (SPLM-IO) did not sign the protocol.
However, Article 4(h) also provides a legal anchor for a wider range of interventions, including the creation of a judicial body to prosecute those that commit these crimes.
The legal reasoning applies with equal force to the AUs role under Article 4(h) of the Constitutive Act of the AU. In the case of Hissne Habr, the AU requested that Senegal prosecute the former Chadian dictator for torture and crimes against humanity because the AU lacked the means to do so, although it had the authority. Nonetheless, the AU subsequently played a critical role in staging the trial that culminated in a conviction.
The ARCSS process was guided by the understanding that individuals found responsible for human rights violations in the COI would be prohibited from participating in the Transitional Government of National Unity.
Having delegated the peacebuilding responsibilities to IGAD, the AU is well within its authority to take up the entire process itself, if it deems warranted. This includes elements of accountability, transitional justice, and reconciliation as articulated in the ARCSS.
In sum, while much remains to be done to get the political process in South Sudan back on track, the ARCSSs Chapter V institutions on transitional justice, accountability, and reconciliationincluding the hybrid courthave a firm legal grounding outside the ARCSS should the AU wish to pursue them.
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A few weeks ago, news of the Kerala government providing jobs to 21 transgender people in the Kochi metro made headlines. We all lauded the government's attempt to include the trans community into mainstream society and give them a chance to lead a normal life. Sitting behind our computer desks dreamily looking at the horizon from our windows, we felt sufficiently satisfied India is moving forward, change is happening, the government is taking the right measures towards creating an inclusive society.
(C) BBC
But we somehow never wondered about the happily ever after'. Out of the 21 transgender people hired by Kochi Metro, 9 resigned within the first month. The reason: they couldn't find accommodation as no house-owner was ready to rent them a flat.
One 9 June 2015, the appointment of Manabi Bandopadhyay as India's first transgender college principal made headlines. The progressive move was hailed as a gamechanger. But after a year and a half, Manobi resigned due to non-cooperation from a section of colleagues and students, and tremendous mental pressure due to the harrassment.
(C) ET
"All of my colleagues went against me. Some of the students went against me. I tried to bring back discipline and an atmosphere of education in the college. Most probably, that is why they went against me. I always got co-operation from the local administration, but never got it from my colleagues and students," she had told media.
"I feel tired due to the agitation and gherao by the students and teachers. I faced a lot of legal notices from their end. I had come to this college with new hopes and dreams but I was defeated...," she also said.
(C) Reuters (Image for representational purpose only)
Even after repeated efforts by NGOs and now the government, change is too slow to come. Change has to happen at a grassroot level at the level of ideology, at the level of mindset. We don't live in isolation; we are not just our jobs; we thrive in a society on the basis of an identity an identity that is normalized on a routine basis. It is normalized when we step out of the house and buy vegetables, it is normalized when we sit amongst colleagues and have lunch.
These regular validations of a normalized identity aren't afforded to the transgender community they are perceived as different than what we have created as the normal'. Our heterosexual identities are validated every moment we spend in the public eye while theirs is questioned with every routine action they take.
Of course, the job grants is a great step towards giving them better opportunities, but along with it, there is an equally dire need to see that those very jobs don't become another platform for oppression and discrimination.
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Hired By The Government, Fired By The Society: Being Transgender In India - MensXP.com
Taking part in President Dutertes war on drugs will be the new role for members of Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), like this rebel in an MILF camp in Maguindanao. JEOFFREY MAITEM
DAVAO CITY Members of a Moro rebel group covered by a truce with the government had approved a set of procedures that formalized their role in the Duterte administrations war on drugs, signing an agreement to arrest drug suspects in rebel camps and turn them over to government law enforcers.
Isidro Lapea, chief of the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA), said representatives of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) on Friday signed a protocol of cooperation on antidrug operations that Lapea said was a fulfillment of the MILFs offer to help in the war on drugs.
There was an offer by the MILF to help so we have to involve them, Lapea said.
The signing by MILF and government representatives of the protocol came a year after President Duterte launched his bloody war on drugs.
The protocol, Lapea said, would allow shortcuts to be taken in procedures governing law enforcement cooperation stipulated by the Ad hoc Joint Action Group (Ahjag).
Ahjag is a body that monitors law enforcement operations in rebel areas or involving rebels with the main objective of preventing unnecessary clashes between rebels and soldiers.
The protocol would allow antidrug operations in areas controlled by MILF to proceed more expeditiously, Lapea said.
Whats important here is the cooperation, Lapea said.
Rules stipulated by Ahjag would be used in antidrug operations with MILF help to avoid lapses that could lead to clashes between rebels and soldiers.
Acting Interior Secretary Catalino Cuy said the protocol was the result of a series of meetings between the MILF and the government, and considered necessary because MILF-held areas were also reeling from the drug menace.
In 2015, according to Cuy, the MILF already declared drugs haram or forbidden.
The partnership aims to produce optimum results in the war on drugs, said Cuy, a retired police general.
The protocol followed the signing in July 2016 of a pact on cooperation and coordination on antidrug operations by MILF and government representatives, Cuy said.
The protocol clearly defined the MILF role, he said.
The support of the MILF just shows that we could be one in our common goal, he said.
The protocol would allow the MILF to conduct citizens arrest of drug suspects in rebel territory, according to Lapea. These arrested suspects, he said, would have to be turned over to government authorities.
Lawyer Abdul Dataya, Ahjag representative for MILF, said the rebel role was limited to coordinating with government forces and furnishing lists of drug personalities in rebel areas.
Whether rebels would play a direct role in antidrug operations in MILF areas would be up to the government, Dataya said.
The protocol is key to preventing misencounters, he said.
Retired Brig. Gen. Pierre Bucsit, Ahjag representative for the government, said the protocol would lay out standard operating procedures in antidrug operations in MILF areas.
The MILF maintains camps in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM), Central Mindanao, Western Mindanao and parts of Davao Oriental and Compostela Valley provinces.
In Maguindanao, Lapea said drugs are rampant in 366 of 509 villages, or about 72 percent. In Lanao del Sur, including Marawi City, at least 313 of 1,059 villages are drug-influenced, he said. The two provinces are part of ARMM. Frinston Lim
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MILF formally joins war on drugs | Inquirer News - Inquirer.net
Given its name, it should come as no surprise to learn that Americas War on Drugs is a History Channel mini-series about said event with a particular focus on what has happened as well as how it has shaped the lives of people living throughout the United States. In total, the mini-series consists of eight hours, meaning that it is perfect for people who are interested in a substantial introduction to a serious issue that has persisted to the present.
Here are some of the things that we can expect from Americas War on Drugs:
Disillusionment
The material presented in Americas War on Drugs is neither new nor novel, but when presented in one place in such short succession, it possesses a punch. For example, it is not exactly uncommon knowledge that some US politicians have used drug policies as a means of advancing their own agendas, as shown by those who run tough on crime campaigns based on harsher penalties with no thought for whether that is actually an effective solution to such problems in the long run.
However, it is nonetheless chilling to see the Chief Domestic Advisor of President Nixon, John Ehrlichman, admit on camera that the War on Drugs was used by the Nixon administration as a weapon against its domestic opponents, Black people and the anti-war segments of the Left by associating them with heroin and marijuana so as to make the US population more receptive to harsher measures meant to disrupt their communities. This is no more than the surface of what is covered by Americas War on Drugs, which often makes for unpleasant viewing, but if things are to change for the better, people should watch it to become better-informed about what has been happening.
Weirdness
Reality can be much stranger than fiction. After all, much of fiction is under an onerous obligation to seem plausible, whereas reality has no such constraint placed upon its behavior. As a result, people who prefer to mix their viewing of substantial material with stories of the sheer weirdness that can happen in the proximity of something as broad-ranging and far-reaching as the War on Drugs can expect their fill from Americas War on Drugs.
Examples range from the time when the Bloods and the Crips struck a truce in a failed effort to leave the drug trade to the time when the United States recruited a Nazi war criminal called the Butcher of Lyon for its anti-communist efforts, which saw said individual become a drug trafficker in addition to all of the other crimes committed over the course of decades during which he was free.
Relevance
On a final note, it should be mentioned that the War on Drugs is not over, meaning that the mini-series is a useful introduction for people who want to become informed so that they can support the right policies and politicians. After all, there are still numerous people suffering as a result of the War on Drugs, which has enormous consequences for not just themselves but also all of those around them. Furthermore, Attorney General Jeff Sessions seems determined to pursue the same policies that led to those results, which is all the more problematic when the 2010s has added another drug crisis in the form of the opioid epidemic that is having a particular effect on the rural parts of the United States.
Excerpt from:
What We Can Expect from America's War on Drugs - TVOvermind - TVOvermind
IT APPEARS then, that if the glaring front page headline in todays Echo (June 23) is true that 75 per cent of crimes reported in a year in county remain...unsolved, no wonder crime rates continue to soar.
After all, why wouldnt they, when the odds of getting nabbed by the long arm of the law is diminishing at such an alarming rate. Commit a crime and you have a 75 per cent chance of not being caught and brought to book.
It almost becomes a tantalising idea if of course, you happen to be of the persuasion that robbing and maybe causing some other miscellaneous criminal mayhem is what you do, then why not up your game.
Why even think of changing your lifestyle?
The police are as near as damn it, emasculated.
Now, Im not in possession of all the facts relating to what the police authority prioritise in this area.
Just what sort of crimes are more important etc.
Whether burglary for example, is not a crime that the police take seriously?
Superintendent Caroline Naughton explains that the force had been proactive in tackling drug offences and ran a number of drug related operations across the county. So perhaps this is one of the reasons why other crimes receive far less attention?
And why police numbers are stretched to breaking point?
Far too much police resources are being diverted to tackling and catching those people involved with selling and using illegal drugs.
Just an observation.
Here is another observation.
Would it not be better to decriminalise drugs?
And in doing so, free up countless millions of pounds to spend on recruiting more police officers that would then be available to bring down unsolved crime rates.
Besides, the tax-payer, via the police and other law enforcement agencies worldwide, have been waging a war on drugs for decades without any success.
Billions of pounds have been expended to no meaningful result.
The current war on drugs is unwinnable.
Lastly, is it really appropriate to lock up people (thereby criminalising them) who sometimes through no fault of their own, find it necessary to buy illegal drugs just to survive?
Andrew Martin
Kitchener Road, Weymouth
Continued here:
Under Mr. Putin, Moscow has poured billions of dollars into the area, paying for huge bridges, a new university campus and other costly state-directed projects. But despite ever closer relations between Moscow and Beijing, said Artyom Lukin, an international studies professor at the Far East Federal University, Russia has realized that free Chinese money is not coming.
Chinese gamblers are arriving, however, if only because gambling is illegal in their own country, except in Macau on the southern coast near Hong Kong, and because the forest northeast of Vladivostok offers the only accessible casino for the more than 100 million Chinese who live in provinces just across the border from Russia.
Li Yunhui, a 45-year-old businessman and gambler from Mudanjiang, a Chinese city about 150 miles from Vladivostok, said the Russian casino lacked the amenities and service of established gambling centers like Macau, but added: At least it is close. And the air is clean.
He said he had visited Vladivostok regularly since the early 1990s and could not fathom why Russia had lagged so far behind China in building its economy. It feels like a developing country here. This is how China was decades ago, he said. He added that he had tried to set up a small business in Vladivostok but had despaired at all the red tape: What you can do in a day in China takes weeks here.
The gambling venture is itself a showcase of how slowly things gets done. Government officials began pursuing the idea nearly a decade ago. They enlisted a well-connected local businessman, Oleg Drozdov, to build the hotel and casino complex now housing Tigre de Cristal. But Mr. Drozdov was arrested in 2013 on corruption charges after the ouster of the Primorye regions disgraced former governor, Sergey Darkin.
Summit Ascent, the Hong Kong company that now owns 60 percent of the casino venture, took over the concrete shell left by Mr. Drozdovs builders and, after investing $200 million with other investors, finished the construction and opened the casino at the end of 2015. The company, which reported a modest profit for last year, now plans to invest an additional $500 million to build a second luxury hotel, a golf club, extra gambling rooms and other facilities in the same entertainment zone.
Four other casinos planned by other companies, due to be open by now, are far behind schedule. Empty plots of land with scant signs of construction dot the forest. A Russian court recently canceled the casino project of a Russian developer because it was too slow in getting off the ground.
Eric Landheer, Summit Ascents director for corporate finance and strategy in Hong Kong, said that his company had first mover advantage and a monopoly, but that it did not want to be alone in the forest for long because gamblers preferred a more vibrant cluster of casinos.
Gambling has a long and often troubled history in Russia, where attitudes have been shaped by the Orthodox Church, which opposes casinos as the devils work, and by the writings of Fyodor Dostoyevsky, a gambling addict who explored the allure and perils of addiction in his novel The Gambler.
A champion of traditional Christian values, Mr. Putin banned casinos and slot machines in 2009, complaining that too many Russians lose their last penny and pensions through gambling.
Having Chinese and other foreigners lose their money, however, is apparently not a problem. Indeed, their losses now cover the salaries of around 1,000 Russians working for the Tigre de Cristal casino and provide a badly needed source of income for the Primorsky region around Vladivostok, a city that, aside from corruption-addled, state-funded infrastructure projects, has struggled to attract outside investment. Closed to foreigners during the Soviet era, the city now has regular flights to and from Harbin, Beijing and other Chinese cities, and can also be reached by road and train.
To make the fleecing of foreigners and a restricted number of Russians possible, Moscow gave permission for the establishment of four special gambling zones. The westernmost of these, in Kaliningrad, targets gamblers from neighboring Poland, while the others are in the resort town of Sochi and in the Siberian region of Altai.
Russians are also allowed to gamble at the Tigre de Cristal, so long as they show their passports and register. This has not gone down well with Russian priests and those who see casinos as a poor substitute for healthy economic development.
Anyone who has read Dostoyevsky knows all the problems that gambling brings, complained Andrei Kalachinsky, a veteran journalist in Vladivostok. The spread of prostitution will definitely create jobs, but what kind?
Transportation infrastructure has been another problem. A new highway connecting the casino area to the Vladivostok airport turns into a mud track in the final stretch. A winding road to the center of Vladivostok, around 35 miles away, is so clogged with traffic that Yuri Trutnev, Mr. Putins envoy for the Russian Far East, proposed opening a ferry service to speed up the journey to the casino.
The authorities have also been sluggish in delivering on a promise of visa-free entry for visitors from China and other selected countries. Despite the delay, Chinese can still obtain visas relatively easily if they sign up for a tour, and their numbers visiting Vladivostok and the surrounding Primorsky last year more than doubled to around 300,000.
Yuri Kuchin, an opposition member of the Vladivostok City Council, said local bureaucrats usually hindered rather than helped foreign investments, dragging their feet on most issues unless there is a financial benefit for themselves. While a bitter critic of the government, he said he supported the foreign-led casino project as a source of jobs and a good way to squeeze out illegal gambling dens in the area, which he said were often protected by corrupt officials.
The Primorye Development Corporation, the government agency now responsible for the project, declined to say what was being done to combat illegal clubs or explain how the casino project fit into the regions overall development strategy.
A number of foreign projects in Vladivostok have fizzled, including two five-star Hyatt Hotels that were supposed to have opened for business five years ago but are still under construction. Yet the Tigre de Cristal casino, though delayed by various mishaps like the arrest of a local business partner, is now not only up and running, but is making a profit.
Lawrence Ho, Summit Ascents chairman and son of the Macau gambling tycoon Stanley Ho, acknowledged in a report to investors that the year has not been without its challenges but said, Over all, I am very optimistic about the potential of our investment in the jewel of the Russian Far East.
The most lucrative sources of business at the casino are Chinese high-rollers recruited by so-called junket operators, agents who find gamblers, provide credit, make travel arrangements and manage private V.I.P. rooms at the casino. For these services, the casino pays the junket operators a chunk of what it wins from their clients more, Mr. Landheer said, than the 40 percent to 50 percent paid to them in Macau.
All the same, Tommy Li, a junket manager from northeastern China, complained that Vladivostok offered few of the attractions of Macau and was far too cold in winter. Its only real appeal for Chinese gamblers, he said, is its proximity.
One of his main gripes is that there are not enough prostitutes, who he said were far more readily available, and cheaper, in Macau. Mr. Landheer, the corporate finance director, said his company was not in the business of providing prostitutes and would like to see all illegal activities eliminated.
But, he added, there are many other service providers in Vladivostok ready to satisfy all the gamblers needs.
A version of this article appears in print on July 2, 2017, on Page A12 of the New York edition with the headline: In Russias Far East, a Fledgling Las Vegas for Asias Gamblers.
See the original post here:
In Russia's Far East, a Fledgling Las Vegas for Asia's Gamblers ... - New York Times
Consider this data to grasp the impact of gambling locally: $57.6 million was put into video-gaming terminals last year in Bloomington, which collected $730,795 in gaming tax revenue.
The state's share, minus the winnings paid out, was 25 percent, or about $3.7 million.
That last detail that government gets a cut of the action from every transaction is one of the important things about the explosion of state-licensed video gaming, which Illinois legalized in 2012. It makes gaming an important revenue stream to municipalities at a time of tremendous financial uncertainty in Springfield.
And therein lies the risk. This money cannot be seen as a permanent fix to budget problems.
Yes, people should be able to spend their money however they want. And business owners have every right to make money. However, we cant shake the troublesome feeling that video gaming sites are targeting those who can hardly afford it, and governments are the fiduciary equal of accessories after the fact.
As Bloomington Mayor Tari Renner noted, in response to Bloomington being in the top 10 among video gaming cities, "I want to be in the top 10, but not with that type of distinction."
None of the venues are very big, since Illinois law limits the number of terminals to five at any one site. Bloomington has 241 terminals at 55 licensed locations. Normal had 58 terminals at 12 locations. Wagers are typically small and, according to state data, payouts are frequent.
But lets be real: These terminals are not benign. Theyre engineered to get you to risk your money. That thousands and thousands of dollars vanish into them instead of "buying local," supporting local restaurants or paying tuition is disheartening, even if some ends up in municipal coffers.
This puts government officials in a curious Catch-22: With state finances an unmitigated mess, gambling in all forms is a lucrative revenue stream. Last month, a developer announced plans for a Sangamon County casino, although gambling expansion has been a major General Assembly battle. Other legislation would tax fantasy sports betting online. Thats how big a market were talking about.
It all seem a little excessive, doesn't it?
In Champaign, the city council has extended a temporary moratorium on new video-gaming businesses. Decatur also has pumped the brakes on gaming parlors, capping the number citywide at 30, and requiring new ones to be at least 1,500 feet from another one.
The Normal Town Council last fall passed an ordinance requiring gaming to be at least 200 feet from residences. In 2013, the Bloomington City Council amended the city's liquor ordinance to prohibit establishments whose primary focus is video gaming.
Thats the reason municipalities must be careful about oversaturation and where gaming is allowed. Five years after the state legalized video gambling, its tempting to see such cash flow as a way to prop up budgets, but we cant operate on the backs of gamblers.
Its a bet we should not be willing to take.
Excerpt from:
Editorial: Gambling not the way to prop up budgets - Bloomington Pantagraph
Okada said he hasn't seen his son Tomohiro in two years and does not know his daughter Hiromi's current whereabouts. Reuters was unable to reach either of them at addresses in public records. Both are Okada's children from a previous marriage.
Okada said he hoped a lawsuit would prompt a judge to order them to negotiate a settlement that would restore his position at Okada Holdings.
"Unless I sue there will be no opportunity to talk. The reality is I am in a losing position in terms of voting rights," Okada said, referring to his 46.4 percent stake in Okada Holdings, versus Tomohiro and Hiromi's combined 53 percent.
Okada said he did not find out he was dropped as Okada Holdings' director until May 18. He said Universal's board told him on May 23 that he was being investigated for alleged misuse of company funds. That was followed by Universal's announcement on May 31 that he would not be reappointed to its board.
"I was totally blindsided," Okada said.
The interview took place last Thursday in the restaurant of a Tokyo hotel where Universal was holding its annual shareholders' meeting. Okada had been denied entry on the grounds he is not a direct shareholder since the Hong Kong holding firm holds his stake.
Universal declined to respond to Okada's assertions. It said it would make additional disclosures once an internal investigation it recently launched to probe Okada's alleged improper use of company funds had submitted its findings.
CANNOT FORGIVE
Okada said Tomohiro turned against him because his son believed he was not being paid dividends from Universal commensurate with his 43.5 percent stake in Okada Holdings. Okada said he planned to investigate the matter.
Okada said he was confident he could convince Hiromi to support him as long as he could get her brother to work towards a settlement.
As for his wife Takako, Okada said he could not forgive her for agreeing to be reappointed to Universal's board. The company said Thursday that Takako would take on responsibility for Okada's art museum and advise the company on its overseas business.
Takako, 43, did not respond to letters left at her home, an email sent to her company address, or a request to speak relayed through her mother.
Last month, Universal issued a press release accusing Okada and another director of misappropriating some $20 million in company funds in three transactions during 2015. It convened an investigative panel composed of three attorneys that is now looking for other alleged irregularities.
Okada described the companys allegations as "nonsense". For example, he said one of the transactions in question was a loan not due until November that had been used for a legitimate purpose: to expand junket operations aimed at attracting high-rollers to Universal's casino in the Philippines.
"That contract is still active. There is no problem."
Okada said he could not provide a copy of the contract for Reuters to review because it was located at a company office to which he no longer has access.
Okada said he viewed the investigation as an attempt by Universal President Jun Fujimoto to seize control. Okada noted that he had handpicked Fujimoto to help lead the company founded five decades ago.
"I made Fujimoto president. Now he wants to take over."
Fujimoto called Okada "unfit" to be the director of a public company and vowed to prove that with "irrefutable physical evidence" in a private letter to a shareholder on June 21, Reuters reported last week.
Universal declined to make Fujimoto available for comment. Universal said it was not in a position to comment about Okada's allegations against Fujimoto. Two new directors at Okada Holdings did not respond to emails seeking comment.
(Additional reporting by William Ho in Hong Kong; Editing by Martin Howell)
Original post:
Exclusive-Okada Sues Family in Bid to Regain Control of Gambling Empire - New York Times
Like a zombie rising from the dead, infamous con artist Jan Robert Gustafsson appears intent on worming his way back into the online gambling industry.
In mid-May, I began hearing industry buzz around a new Manila-based online casino game distributor, QTech Games. The company is headed up by Jonas Alm, who also serves as CEO of software developer Mahjong Logic.
QTechs promotional material indicated that it was offering a large selection of games from familiar industry names such as NetEnt, QuickSpin, Habanero and others, at prices below the industry average.
But shortly after I began contacting some of these companies to inquire about their QTech connection, their names started vanishing from QTechs website. To understand why, it helps to know a little about Gustafssons shady history in the online gambling world.
GUSTOGRAPHY Gustafsson previously headed up the Manila-based Bodog Asia online gambling business until he was sacked for gross incompetence in 2013. A few months later, Gustafsson filed an affidavit with local police that falsely accused his former employer of violating the terms of its Philippine gambling license by accepting wagers from local residents.
Gustafssons lies led to raids on the Bodog Asia offices that failed to find evidence to support Gustafssons claims. The Philippine Court of Appeals ultimately ruled that the raids were illegal and ordered an investigation into the judge who approved the search warrants despite Gustafssons utter lack of evidence.
Gustafssons lies were part of a futile bid to distract from his own growing list of criminal charges in the Philippines. The charges stemmed from a failed conspiracy hatched by Gustafsson and several co-workers to embezzle large sums of money from their former employer, which they planned to use to launch their own online gambling operation.
THE INCREDIBLE SHRINKING CLIENT LIST NetEnt was the first company I contacted regarding QTech Games, as their logo was featured prominently on QTechs website and on its G2E Asia company profile.
NetEnt didnt respond to my inquiry but the NetEnt logo disappeared from the QTech homepage a couple days later. A source close to NetEnt who spoke under promise of anonymity told me that the company had expressed concerns about Gustafssons possible involvement with QTech.
The first company to reply to my emails was Canadas Amaya Gaming (soon to be known as The Stars Group). An Amaya spokesperson said, and I quote: I literally have no idea what youre talking about. What makes you think we have a relationship with these guys?
The spokesman insisted that no one at Amaya was aware of any current or past relationship with QTech, but I pointed out that Amayas logo was the first company listed on the QTech websites list of partners. Mirroring the NetEnt situation, the Amaya logo also disappeared from the QTech homepage the following day.
THREATS AND DENIALS My communications with QTechs partners (knowing or otherwise) prompted CEO Alm to send me a letter via his Swedish legal team, characterizing my inquiries as intentionally malicious behavior and threatening legal action against myself and CalvinAyre.com.
Alm also stated that Gustafsson was not the owner of QTech. When I followed up by asking if Gustafsson had any ownership stake in QTech or its parent company TechAsia Portal Corp., Alm replied that Gustafsson is not, and will never be, a shareholder in either QTech or TechAsia. Alm also said Gustafsson is not, and never will be, an employee of or consultant to either company.
Despite Alms denial, our sources insist that Gustafsson is directly involved in QTech/TechAsia. And theres ample documented evidence of his indirect involvement, as TechAsias certificate of incorporation lists the companys largest shareholder as Swedish national Kim Andreas Bertil Jonson, who just happens to be Gustafssons stepson. Jonson also chairs TechAsias board of directors.
Whats more, Gustafssons daughter-in-law Xin Zhao was originally listed as TechAsias treasurer. Xin recently ceded that role to Dulce Amor C. Vidamo, the former treasurer of Top Trend Gaming, which shared an office with Gustafsson a few years back when he was trying to get a payment processing business off the ground.
WORD TO THE WISE Make no bones about it: Gustafsson has worn out his welcome in the online gambling industry and CalvinAyre.com considers it a public service to track his dealings to ensure companies are aware with whom theyre dealing.
This is even more important for Asian-facing operators now that Philippine regulators are increasing their oversight of the online gambling industry. More than ever, operators need to know that their business relationships arent going to lead to a regulatory smackdown.
Remember: Gustafsson deliberately lied to the police in an attempt to (a) bring down a gaming industry competitor, and (b) save his own skin. While he was unsuccessful on both counts, theres no telling what future dirty tricks he might pull if he feels threatened or sees an advantage to exploit.
And Gustafsson will most definitely be feeling threatened, as his former employer is preparing to file fresh charges against Gustafsson and the other members of his criminal conspiracy as new information regarding their botched caper continues to come to light.
Read the rest here:
Online gambling conman Robert Gustafsson rises from the dead - CalvinAyre.com
A Humane Society organization in Ohio is working to save 40 dogs from being euthanized, WCMH reported.
The dogs are being sent north from Houstons K-9 Angels Rescue to the Humane Society of Delaware County.The project is being coordinated from Ohio by Natalie Yeager, a former Houston resident, WCMH reported.
Im thinking, I have people asking for puppies to adopt and were having trouble finding enough for all the people who want them here, she told WCMH.
The trip from Houston took 17 hours, and the dogs arrived Thursday night, WSYX reported. Once the puppies are cleared medically they will be available for adoption, WCMH reported. Until then they will reside in foster homes.
We are going to keep adults here. Were going to keep some puppies here also to have them fixed, spayed and neutered, Yeager told WSYX.Some of the younger ones are being sent out into foster until theyve had their shots and theyre ready for adoption.
See the original post here:
40 dogs transported from Texas to Ohio to avoid euthanasia - Atlanta Journal Constitution
3 Jul 2017, 6:47 a.m.
He's a controversial US physician touring Australia to argue the case against voluntary euthanasia.
US physician William Toffler: "Perhaps you should have veterinarians, who have training and skill in giving overdoses to living things, living animals."
RELATED:Central Victorian deaths highlight a desire for voluntary assisted dying to be among options for end of life planning
He's a controversial US physician touring Australia to argue the case against voluntary euthanasia.
But while William Toffler hopes assisted dying is never legalised here, if it is, he wants vets to be responsible for treating terminally ill patients who wish to die not their doctors.
In a parliamentary briefing this week, Dr Toffler urged Victorian MPs not to make the same mistake as his home state of Oregon, where physician assisted suicide has been legal for two decades.
However, if enough MPs vote in favour of reform when the matter is debated at Spring Street this year, his view is that doctors should have nothing to do with the law because it goes against their fundamental obligation to heal people.
"Perhaps you should have veterinarians, who have training and skill in giving overdoses to living things, living animals," he told his audience.
"I'm not recommending this, don't misquote me, but at least you'd keep the House of Medicine from an apparent conflict of interest, and you'd have trust in your doctors."
Dr Toffler is a medical physician, a professor at the Oregon Health and Science University, and a member of the Catholic Medical Association in the US, whose mission is to uphold "the principles of the Catholic faith in the science and practice of medicine."
But he's also a controversial figure, whose views on issues such as abortion (which he is against), contraception (which he doesn't prescribe because of his anti-abortion stance), and euthanasia are seen as too extreme by some.
Dr Toffler's speaking tour around Australia sponsored by Right to Life is the latest sign of the deeply divisive debate the Andrews government faces as it seeks to legalise assisted dying in Victoria.
While the government's legislation is still being drafted, the proposed model is expected to limit access to people who have a incurable disease and face intolerable pain at the end of their life, and still have the decision making capacity to ask their doctor to prescribe a lethal pill.
However, Dr Toffler said that even the term assisted "dying" was a euphemism, when boiled down: "It's assisted suicide."
"If it was assisted dying I'd be in favour of it, because choice, dignity in dying, or options at the end of life are good things. But I'm not in favour of empowering doctors to give massive overdoses to people so they can kill themselves," he told Fairfax Media.
Dr Toffler's parliamentary briefing was organised by Liberal upper house MP Inga Peulich, and attendees included the Sex Party's Fiona Patten, Liberal MPs David Southwick, Robert Clark, Neale Burgess, and Labor backbencher Lizzie Blandthorn.
During his speech, he warned that there were several "myths" that proponents of assisted dying would often push including the view that physician-assisted death was about alleviating intolerable suffering and pain for people with terminal illness.
"In my 40 years [in the medical profession] I am yet to see somebody who we can't get on top of the pain," he said.
Asked about his presentation, MPs had conflicting views. Sex Party MP Fiona Patten, who was part of the End-of-Life choices committee that recommended an assisted dying regime, said she was baffled by Dr Toffler's suggestion that vets should be used to treat terminally ill patients.
"For a doctor he made the curious observations that you couldn't trust the evidence nor could you trust the doctors," she said.
"There is no doubt that his religious beliefs have influenced his position on physician assisted dying yet he warned that anyone who said that was a bigot. Somehow stating that fact is demeaning his beliefs!"
However Ms Peulich, who was also part of the End-of-Life Choices committee but did not support its main recommendation for assisted dying, said Dr Toffler's arguments were "based on reason and evidence".
- The Age
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THERE has been an overwhelming response by concerned conservationists via social media in the wake of reports that up to five dingoes have been euthanised on Fraser Island so far this year.
While three of the dingoes were sick or injured, the other two were considered to be of a high risk or threatening.
Michelle Fischer, via Facebook said "every tourist who feeds a Dingo on Fraser (or any wild animal anywhere) is ultimately responsible for the death of that Dingo.
"Those Dingos then look to people for food and are killed because they've become 'aggressive.'
"I don't understand why Dingos cannot be, for want of a better term, 'used' as another attraction on the island.
"Set up feeding stations and feed them twice a day.
"But no, kill them off, that seems a much better option apparently."
Jenny Montaser shared the concern saying it was a "disgrace" to even contemplating killing dingos for any reason.
"It is their territory, humans need to be restricted in their interaction and be responsible when they are there.
"What happens when you imbalance a closed ecosystem by removing its alpha predator?"
A spokeswoman for the Queensland Parks and Wildlife Service said rangers on the island continued to do all they could to ensure visitors and residents were dingo-safe.
During the holidays, rangers increase patrols in and around campgrounds and speak to campers, day tourists, resort management and staff about reducing the risk of negative interactions between dingoes and people.
Visitors can report a negative dingo interaction by calling 4127 9150.
The rest is here:
With the federal deficit growing and economic growth sputtering along in the low single digits, the Republican Party is facing questions from within over what many see as a blind faith in the theory that deep tax cuts are the shot of adrenaline a languid economy needs.
WASHINGTON Something strange has been happening to taxes in Republican-dominated states: They are going up.
Conservative lawmakers in Kansas, South Carolina and Tennessee have agreed to significant tax increases in recent weeks to meet demands for more revenue. They are challenging what has become an almost dogmatic belief for their party, and sharply diverging from President Donald Trump as he pushes for what his administration has billed as the largest tax cut in at least a generation.
And now some Republicans say that what has played out in these states should serve as a cautionary tale in Washington D.C., where their partys leaders are confronting a set of circumstances that looks strikingly similar.
Republicans, with control of Congress and the White House and a base that is growing impatient for tax reform, are trying to solve a difficult math problem: paying for critical programs like infrastructure, health care and education while honoring their promise to deliver lower taxes without exploding the deficit.
The debate promises to test the enduring relevance of one of the most fundamental principles of modern conservatism supply-side economics, the idea that if you cut taxes far enough, the economy will expand to the point that it generates new tax revenue.
With the federal deficit growing and economic growth sputtering along in the low single digits, the Republican Party is facing questions from within over what many see as a blind faith in the theory that deep tax cuts are the shot of adrenaline a languid economy needs.
Tax cuts good. And thats about as much thinking that goes into it, said Chris Buskirk, a radio host and publisher of American Greatness, a conservative online journal. Now, he said, Republicans in Washington seem to be in an arms race to the lowest rates possible.
Everybody is trying to overbid each other, Buskirk said. How much more can we cut?
Outside Washington, Republicans are discovering there are limits.
In South Carolina, Republicans overrode their governors veto and blocked a filibuster to increase the gas tax. They also rejected a series of broader tax cuts on the grounds that they were too expensive and voted instead to create a smaller tax incentive for low-income families.
The Republican governor of Tennessee, Bill Haslam, signed into law the first increase in the states gas tax in almost three decades. He defied conservative groups that said a state with a $1.1 billion budget surplus had no business asking people to hand over more of their money.
And in the most striking rebuke of conservative tax policy in recent memory, Republicans in Kansas have undone much of the tax overhaul that GOP Gov. Sam Brownback held up as a model for other states and the federal government to emulate.
A fantastic way to go, he said this year, urging Trump and Congress to follow suit with deep reductions to corporate and individual rates. But Republican lawmakers in Kansas decided that they could cut only so much without doing irreparable harm to vital services and voted to increase taxes by $1.2 billion last month. Brownback vetoed the plan, but Republicans overrode him.
Much of the devotion to tax cuts as an inviolable Republican principle stems from the success President Ronald Reagan and Congress had in 1981 when they agreed to an economic-recovery package that included a rate cut of about 25 percent for individuals.
But at that time, the highest marginal tax rates approached 70 percent, leaving much more to cut and a much larger chunk of money to be injected back into the economy. At some point, economists said, tax policy that is too aggressive leaves too little money to inject to make a difference.
Bruce Bartlett, who advised Reagan on the 1981 tax cuts, chastised Republicans for what he described as their reflexive desire to drive rates lower.
The essence of what the supply-siders were trying to accomplish was accomplished by the end of the Reagan administration, Bartlett said.
Yet, he added, Republican policy still mimics what was done under Reagan. Theyve got to keep pressing ahead no matter what, he said.
The situation in Kansas was, for at least some conservatives, a jolting realization that tax cuts can be too blunt an economic instrument.
After Brownback took office in 2011, he pursued a plan that included cuts and, in some cases, an outright elimination of taxes for businesses and individuals to help invigorate the states underperforming economy. He described it as an experiment in conservative governance that could demonstrate what Republicans were capable of if they controlled legislative and executive branches across the country. (He is Kansas first Republican governor since 2003.)
The conservative movement got behind him. The plan was approved with the lobbying muscle of billionaire Koch brothers political network, which is overseen from Wichita, where one of the brothers, Charles Koch lives. It had the blessing of prominent conservative economists like Stephen Moore and Arthur Laffer, the Republican Partys foremost supply-side evangelist.
In urging the Kansas Legislature to act, Laffer and Moore said the cuts would have a near immediate positive impact on the economy. Brownback said the plan would pay for itself.
That is where the parallels with Washington start to trouble those who are critical of the plan the Trump administration has laid out. The plan would slash the rate paid by businesses to 15 percent and shrink the number of individual income-tax brackets from seven to three 10, 25 and 35 percent.
Laffer and Moore, a Heritage Foundation economist, have both helped shape the presidents tax policy.
Steven Mnuchin, the Treasury secretary, said the Trump tax cuts would pay for themselves with the economic growth they would inevitably create.
In Kansas, the predicted economic bloom did not materialize. Employment and economic growth have lagged far behind the rest of the nation. The state Treasury had so little money to spread around that the Kansas Supreme Court found that the states spending on public education was unconstitutionally low.
If there were three words I could say to Congress right now, said Stephanie Clayton, a Republican state representative from a district in the Kansas City area, they would be, Dont do it.
She criticized what she said was a desire by her party to be more faithful to the principle than to the people Republicans were elected to help. Brownback and many conservatives, she said, overpromised on the tax cuts as a sort-of Ayn Rand utopia, a red-state model, citing the author whose works have influenced the American libertarian movement.
And I loved Ayn Rand when I was 18 before I had children and figured out how the world really works, Clayton added. Thats not how it works, as it turns out.
Trump and Republicans in Washington are undeterred. Kansas, they argue, is not an economic microcosm for the country, with its unique dependence on energy, agriculture and aircraft manufacturing. And lawmakers there never could reduce spending enough to correspond to the much lower level of tax revenue coming into the state treasury.
Many conservatives who support a tax overhaul said they anticipated considerable growth with a reduction in corporate rates, which are among the highest in the world.
If those are lowered to 15 percent, down from the current 35 percent, businesses will not only reinvest in the United States but relocate here, they said.
At 15 percent, Swiss bankers will move here, said Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform.
But restraining federal spending is still going to be a key part of the equation. What you need is not an explosion of spending, Norquist added. And you need the economy to grow faster than the size of the government.
In a world in which Trumps deconstruction of the administrative state reduces the size and cost of the government, the tax cuts make sense. But if lawmakers do not have the nerve to find savings somewhere, like in the social safety net for retirees, the outcome could end up resembling something close to Kansas failed experiment.
The question is whether you can put together some kind of revenue-neutral tax reform, said N. Gregory Mankiw, a Harvard economics professor and chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under President George W. Bush. I dont see the political will to do that right now. Certainly not in this environment.
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Republican states raising taxes, not lowering them | The Seattle Times - The Seattle Times
Hopefully, we dont treat people well just so they will treat us kindly in return. We should treat everyone we meet with dignity, respect and kindness because it is the right thing to do. We want to treat others as wed like to be treated.
That is what the Golden Rule tells us to do.
I love this quote from Mother Teresa, Let no one ever come to you without leaving better and happier. Be the living expression of Gods kindness.
But it is sometimes helpful to believe that what goes around comes around. That belief can make doing the hard but right things a little easier.
Today, I want to show how doing the right thing as an organization is the most profitable thing you can do. I also want to show you can measure how well your organization is following the Golden Rule.
How well you and your organization live out the Golden Rule is reflected in your reputation. We all want to be treated with honor and respect. Being treated with honor and respect makes us happy, so happy we want to tell other people about the experience.
Think about the last time you received amazing service. Did it make you happy? Did you tell others about your experience?
When we recommend a company or service were signaling our trust that our friends will be treated the same. Recommendations are also an indicator of how customers feel about their relationship with a company.
When customers feel so well treated they enthusiastically recommend a company to friends, they are promoters. When customers are treated so badly they recommend avoiding a company, they are detractors. The idea of promoters and detractors is the foundation of the Net Promoter Score.
What is the Net Promoter Score? It is a lot of things. First, it is my go-to survey tool for customers and employees. Second, it is the brainchild of Fred Reichheld. Reichheld is a Fellow at Bain & Company and founder of their Loyalty Practice. He has spent most of his professional life quantifying the link between customer loyalty and profits.
The Net Promoter Score focuses the entire organization on generating promoters, who buy more, stay longer, refer friends and are less price sensitive. It also helps minimize the number of costly detractors, who are not afraid to loudly proclaim the organizations deficiencies.
Reichhelds research has found that across multiple industries, the company with the leading Net Promoter Score grew more than twice as fast as their competitors.
Are you ready to grow twice as fast as your competitors? Well explain how to do it in future columns.
Curt Fowler is an organizational growth expert and president of Fowler & Company, a business advisory firm dedicated to helping leaders create and achieve a compelling vision for their organization. He has an MBA in strategy and entrepreneurship from the Kellogg School, is a CPA, and a pretty good guy as defined by his wife and four children.
Have a business growth topic youd like me to cover? Send suggestions to cfowler@valuesdrivenresults.com.
Original post:
Liberalism, political doctrine that takes protecting and enhancing the freedom of the individual to be the central problem of politics. Liberals typically believe that government is necessary to protect individuals from being harmed by others; but they also recognize that government itself can pose a threat to liberty. As the revolutionary American pamphleteer Thomas Paine expressed it in Common Sense (1776), government is at best a necessary evil. Laws, judges, and police are needed to secure the individuals life and liberty, but their coercive power may also be turned against him. The problem, then, is to devise a system that gives government the power necessary to protect individual liberty but also prevents those who govern from abusing that power.
The problem is compounded when one asks whether this is all that government can or should do on behalf of individual freedom. Some liberalsthe so-called neoclassical liberals, or libertariansanswer that it is. Since the late 19th century, however, most liberals have insisted that the powers of government can promote as well as protect the freedom of the individual. According to modern liberalism, the chief task of governmentis to remove obstacles that prevent individuals from living freely or from fully realizing their potential. Such obstacles include poverty, disease, discrimination, and ignorance. The disagreement among liberals over whether government should promote individual freedom rather than merely protect it is reflected to some extent in the different prevailing conceptions of liberalism in the United States and Europe since the late 20th century. In the United States liberalism is associated with the welfare-state policies of the New Deal program of the Democratic administration of Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt, whereas in Europe it is more commonly associated with a commitment to limited government and laissez-faire economic policies (see below Contemporary liberalism).
This article discusses the political foundations and history of liberalism from the 17th century to the present. For coverage of classical and contemporary philosophical liberalism, see political philosophy. For biographies of individual philosophers, see John Locke; John Stuart Mill; John Rawls.
Liberalism is derived from two related features of Western culture. The first is the Wests preoccupation with individuality, as compared to the emphasis in other civilizations on status, caste, and tradition. Throughout much of history, the individual has been submerged in and subordinate to his clan, tribe, ethnic group, or kingdom. Liberalism is the culmination of developments in Western society that produced a sense of the importance of human individuality, a liberation of the individual from complete subservience to the group, and a relaxation of the tight hold of custom, law, and authority. In this respect, liberalism stands for the emancipation of the individual. See also individualism.
Liberalism also derives from the practice of adversariality in European political and economic life, a process in which institutionalized competitionsuch as the competition between different political parties in electoral contests, between prosecution and defense in adversary procedure, or between different producers in a market economy (see monopoly and competition)generates a dynamic social order. Adversarial systems have always been precarious, however, and it took a long time for the belief in adversariality to emerge from the more traditional view, traceable at least to Plato, that the state should be an organic structure, like a beehive, in which the different social classes cooperate by performing distinct yet complementary roles. The belief that competition is an essential part of a political system and that good government requires a vigorous opposition was still considered strange in most European countries in the early 19th century.
Underlying the liberal belief in adversariality is the conviction that human beings are essentially rational creatures capable of settling their political disputes through dialogue and compromise. This aspect of liberalism became particularly prominent in 20th-century projects aimed at eliminating war and resolving disagreements between states through organizations such as the League of Nations, the United Nations, and the International Court of Justice (World Court).
Liberalism has a close but sometimes uneasy relationship with democracy. At the centre of democratic doctrine is the belief that governments derive their authority from popular election; liberalism, on the other hand, is primarily concerned with the scope of governmental activity. Liberals often have been wary of democracy, then, because of fears that it might generate a tyranny by the majority. One might briskly say, therefore, that democracy looks after majorities and liberalism after unpopular minorities.
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Structures of Government: Fact or Fiction?
Like other political doctrines, liberalism is highly sensitive to time and circumstance. Each countrys liberalism is different, and it changes in each generation. The historical development of liberalism over recent centuries has been a movement from mistrust of the states power on the ground that it tends to be misused, to a willingness to use the power of government to correct perceived inequities in the distribution of wealth resulting from economic competitioninequities that purportedly deprive some people of an equal opportunity to live freely. The expansion of governmental power and responsibility sought by liberals in the 20th century was clearly opposed to the contraction of government advocated by liberals a century earlier. In the 19th century liberals generally formed the party of business and the entrepreneurial middle class; for much of the 20th century they were more likely to work to restrict and regulate business in order to provide greater opportunities for labourers and consumers. In each case, however, the liberals inspiration was the same: a hostility to concentrations of power that threaten the freedom of the individual and prevent him from realizing his full potential, along with a willingness to reexamine and reform social institutions in the light of new needs. This willingness is tempered by an aversion to sudden, cataclysmic change, which is what sets off the liberal from the radical. It is this very eagerness to welcome and encourage useful change, however, that distinguishes the liberal from the conservative, who believes that change is at least as likely to result in loss as in gain.
Although liberal ideas were not noticeable in European politics until the early 16th century, liberalism has a considerable prehistory reaching back to the Middle Ages and even earlier. In the Middle Ages the rights and responsibilities of the individual were determined by his place in a hierarchical social system that placed great stress upon acquiescence and conformity. Under the impact of the slow commercialization and urbanization of Europe in the later Middle Ages, the intellectual ferment of the Renaissance, and the spread of Protestantism in the 16th century, the old feudal stratification of society gradually began to dissolve, leading to a fear of instability so powerful that monarchical absolutism was viewed as the only remedy to civil dissension. By the end of the 16th century, the authority of the papacy had been broken in most of northern Europe, and each ruler tried to consolidate the unity of his realm by enforcing conformity either to Roman Catholicism or to the rulers preferred version of Protestantism. These efforts culminated in the Thirty Years War (161848), which did immense damage to much of Europe. Where no creed succeeded in wholly extirpating its enemies, toleration was gradually accepted as the lesser of two evils; in some countries where one creed triumphed, it was accepted that too minute a concern with citizens beliefs was inimical to prosperity and good order.
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The ambitions of national rulers and the requirements of expanding industry and commerce led gradually to the adoption of economic policies based on mercantilism, a school of thought that advocated government intervention in a countrys economy to increase state wealth and power. However, as such intervention increasingly served established interests and inhibited enterprise, it was challenged by members of the newly emerging middle class. This challenge was a significant factor in the great revolutions that rocked England and France in the 17th and 18th centuriesmost notably the English Civil Wars (164251), the Glorious Revolution (1688), the American Revolution (177583), and the French Revolution (1789). Classical liberalism as an articulated creed is a result of those great collisions.
In the English Civil Wars, the absolutist king Charles I was defeated by the forces of Parliament and eventually executed. The Glorious Revolution resulted in the abdication and exile of James II and the establishment of a complex form of balanced government in which power was divided between the king, his ministers, and Parliament. In time this system would become a model for liberal political movements in other countries. The political ideas that helped to inspire these revolts were given formal expression in the work of the English philosophers Thomas Hobbes and John Locke. In Leviathan (1651), Hobbes argued that the absolute power of the sovereign was ultimately justified by the consent of the governed, who agreed, in a hypothetical social contract, to obey the sovereign in all matters in exchange for a guarantee of peace and security. Locke also held a social-contract theory of government, but he maintained that the parties to the contract could not reasonably place themselves under the absolute power of a ruler. Absolute rule, he argued, is at odds with the point and justification of political authority, which is that it is necessary to protect the person and property of individuals and to guarantee their natural rights to freedom of thought, speech, and worship. Significantly, Locke thought that revolution is justified when the sovereign fails to fulfill these obligations. Indeed, it appears that he began writing his major work of political theory, Two Treatises of Government (1690), precisely in order to justify the revolution of two years before.
By the time Locke had published his Treatises, politics in England had become a contest between two loosely related parties, the Whigs and the Tories. These parties were the ancestors of Britains modern Liberal Party and Conservative Party, respectively. Locke was a notable Whig, and it is conventional to view liberalism as derived from the attitudes of Whig aristocrats, who were often linked with commercial interests and who had an entrenched suspicion of the power of the monarchy. The Whigs dominated English politics from the death of Queen Anne in 1714 to the accession of King George III in 1760.
The early liberals, then, worked to free individuals from two forms of social constraintreligious conformity and aristocratic privilegethat had been maintained and enforced through the powers of government. The aim of the early liberals was thus to limit the power of government over the individual while holding it accountable to the governed. As Locke and others argued, this required a system of government based on majority rulethat is, one in which government executes the expressed will of a majority of the electorate. The chief institutional device for attaining this goal was the periodic election of legislators by popular vote and of a chief executive by popular vote or the vote of a legislative assembly.
But in answering the crucial question of who is to be the electorate, classical liberalism fell victim to ambivalence, torn between the great emancipating tendencies generated by the revolutions with which it was associated and middle-class fears that a wide or universal franchise would undermine private property. Benjamin Franklin spoke for the Whig liberalism of the Founding Fathers of the United States when he stated:
As to those who have no landed property in a county, the allowing them to vote for legislators is an impropriety. They are transient inhabitants, and not so connected with the welfare of the state, which they may quit when they please, as to qualify them properly for such privilege.
John Adams, in his Defense of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America (1787), was more explicit. If the majority were to control all branches of government, he declared, debts would be abolished first; taxes laid heavy on the rich, and not at all on others; and at last a downright equal division of everything be demanded and voted. French statesmen such as Franois Guizot and Adophe Thiers expressed similar sentiments well into the 19th century.
Most 18th- and 19th-century liberal politicians thus feared popular sovereignty; for a long time, consequently, they limited suffrage to property owners. In Britain even the important Reform Bill of 1867 did not completely abolish property qualifications for the right to vote. In France, despite the ideal of universal male suffrage proclaimed in 1789 and reaffirmed in the Revolutions of 1830, there were no more than 200,000 qualified voters in a population of about 30,000,000 during the reign of Louis-Philippe, the citizen king who had been installed by the ascendant bourgeoisie in 1830. In the United States, the brave language of the Declaration of Independence notwithstanding, it was not until 1860 that universal male suffrage prevailedfor whites. In most of Europe, universal male suffrage remained a remote ideal until late in the 19th century. Racial and sexual prejudice also served to limit the franchiseand, in the case of slavery in the United States, to deprive large numbers of people of virtually any hope of freedom. Efforts to extend the vote to women met with little success until the early years of the 20th century (see woman suffrage). Indeed, Switzerland, which is sometimes called the worlds oldest continuous democracy, did not grant full voting rights to women until 1971.
Despite the misgivings of men of the propertied classes, a slow but steady expansion of the franchise prevailed throughout Europe in the 19th centuryan expansion driven in large part by the liberal insistence that all men are created equal. But liberals also had to reconcile the principle of majority rule with the requirement that the power of the majority be limited. The problem was to accomplish this in a manner consistent with democratic principles. If hereditary elites were discredited, how could the power of the majority be checked without giving disproportionate power to property owners or to some other natural elite?
The liberal solution to the problem of limiting the powers of a democratic majority employed various devices. The first was the separation of powersi.e., the distribution of power between such functionally differentiated agencies of government as the legislature, the executive, and the judiciary. This arrangement, and the system of checks and balances by which it was accomplished, received its classic embodiment in the Constitution of the United States and its political justification in the Federalist papers (178788), by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay. Of course, such a separation of powers also could have been achieved through a mixed constitutionthat is, one in which power is shared by, and governing functions appropriately differentiated between, a monarch, a hereditary chamber, and an elected assembly; this was in fact the system of government in Great Britain at the time of the American Revolution. The U.S. Constitution also contains elements of a mixed constitution, such as the division of the legislature into the popularly elected House of Representatives and the aristocratic Senate, the members of which originally were chosen by the state governments. But it was despotic kings and functionless aristocratsmore functionless in France than in Britainwho thwarted the interests and ambitions of the middle class, which turned, therefore, to the principle of majoritarianism.
The second part of the solution lay in using staggered periodic elections to make the decisions of any given majority subject to the concurrence of other majorities distributed over time. In the United States, for example, presidents are elected every four years and members of the House of Representatives every two years, and one-third of the Senate is elected every two years to terms of six years. Therefore, the majority that elects a president every four years or a House of Representatives every two years is different from the majority that elects one-third of the Senate two years earlier and the majority that elects another one-third of the Senate two years later. These bodies, in turn, are checked by the Constitution, which was approved and amended by earlier majorities. In Britain an act of Parliament immediately becomes part of the uncodified constitution; however, before acting on a highly controversial issue, Parliament must seek a popular mandate, which represents a majority other than the one that elected it. Thus, in a constitutional democracy, the power of a current majority is checked by the verdicts of majorities that precede and follow it.
The third part of the solution followed from liberalisms basic commitment to the freedom and integrity of the individual, which the limitation of power is, after all, meant to preserve. From the liberal perspective, the individual is not only a citizen who shares a social contract with his fellows but also a person with rights upon which the state may not encroach if majoritarianism is to be meaningful. A majority verdict can come about only if individuals are free to some extent to exchange their views. This involves, beyond the right to speak and write freely, the freedom to associate and organize and, above all, freedom from fear of reprisal. But the individual also has rights apart from his role as citizen. These rights secure his personal safety and hence his protection from arbitrary arrest and punishment. Beyond these rights are those that preserve large areas of privacy. In a liberal democracy there are affairs that do not concern the state. Such affairs may range from the practice of religion to the creation of art and the raising of children by their parents. For liberals of the 18th and 19th centuries they also included most of the activities through which individuals engage in production and trade. Eloquent declarations affirming such rights were embodied in the British Bill of Rights (1689), the U.S. Declaration of Independence (1776) and Constitution (ratified 1788), the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen (1789), and the basic documents of countries throughout the world that later used these declarations as their models. These documents and declarations asserted that freedom is more than the right to cast a vote in an occasional election; it is the fundamental right of people to live their own lives.
If the political foundations of liberalism were laid in Great Britain, so too were its economic foundations. By the 18th century parliamentary constraints were making it difficult for British monarchs to pursue the schemes of national aggrandizement favoured by most rulers on the Continent. These rulers fought for military supremacy, which required a strong economic base. Because the prevailing mercantilist theory understood international trade as a zero-sum gamein which gain for one country meant loss for anothernational governments intervened to determine prices, protect their industries from foreign competition, and avoid the sharing of economic information.
These practices soon came under liberal challenge. In France a group of thinkers known as the physiocrats argued that the best way to cultivate wealth is to allow unrestrained economic competition. Their advice to government was laissez faire, laissez passer (let it be, leave it alone). This laissez-faire doctrine found its most thorough and influential exposition in The Wealth of Nations (1776), by the Scottish economist and philosopher Adam Smith. Free trade benefits all parties, according to Smith, because competition leads to the production of more and better goods at lower prices. Leaving individuals free to pursue their self-interest in an exchange economy based upon a division of labour will necessarily enhance the welfare of the group as a whole. The self-seeking individual becomes harnessed to the public good because in an exchange economy he must serve others in order to serve himself. But it is only in a genuinely free market that this positive consequence is possible; any other arrangement, whether state control or monopoly, must lead to regimentation, exploitation, and economic stagnation.
Every economic system must determine not only what goods will be produced but also how those goods are to be apportioned, or distributed (see distribution of wealth and income). In a market economy both of these tasks are accomplished through the price mechanism. The theoretically free choices of individual buyers and sellers determine how the resources of societylabour, goods, and capitalshall be employed. These choices manifest themselves in bids and offers that together determine a commoditys price. Theoretically, when the demand for a commodity is great, prices rise, making it profitable for producers to increase the supply; as supply approximates demand, prices tend to fall until producers divert productive resources to other uses (see supply and demand). In this way the system achieves the closest possible match between what is desired and what is produced. Moreover, in the distribution of the wealth thereby produced, the system is said to assure a reward in proportion to merit. The assumption is that in a freely competitive economy in which no one is barred from engaging in economic activity, the income received from such activity is a fair measure of its value to society.
Presupposed in the foregoing account is a conception of human beings as economic animals rationally and self-interestedly engaged in minimizing costs and maximizing gains. Since each person knows his own interests better than anyone else does, his interests could only be hindered, and never enhanced, by government interference in his economic activities.
In concrete terms, classical liberal economists called for several major changes in the sphere of British and European economic organization. The first was the abolition of numerous feudal and mercantilist restrictions on countries manufacturing and internal commerce. The second was an end to the tariffs and restrictions that governments imposed on foreign imports to protect domestic producers. In rejecting the governments regulation of trade, classical economics was based firmly on a belief in the superiority of a self-regulating market. Quite apart from the cogency of their arguments, the views of Smith and his 19th-century English successors, the economist David Ricardo and the philosopher and economist John Stuart Mill, became increasingly convincing as Britains Industrial Revolution generated enormous new wealth and made that country into the workshop of the world. Free trade, it seemed, would make everyone prosperous.
In economic life as in politics, then, the guiding principle of classical liberalism became an undeviating insistence on limiting the power of government. The English philosopher Jeremy Bentham cogently summarized this view in his sole advice to the state: Be quiet. Others asserted that that government is best that governs least. Classical liberals freely acknowledged that government must provide education, sanitation, law enforcement, a postal system, and other public services that were beyond the capacity of any private agency. But liberals generally believed that, apart from these functions, government must not try to do for the individual what he is able to do for himself.
In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, Bentham, the philosopher James Mill, and Jamess son John Stuart Mill applied classical economic principles to the political sphere. Invoking the doctrine of utilitarianismthe belief that something has value when it is useful or promotes happinessthey argued that the object of all legislation should be the greatest happiness of the greatest number. In evaluating what kind of government could best attain this objective, the utilitarians generally supported representative democracy, asserting that it was the best means by which government could promote the interests of the governed. Taking their cue from the notion of a market economy, the utilitarians called for a political system that would guarantee its citizens the maximum degree of individual freedom of choice and action consistent with efficient government and the preservation of social harmony. They advocated expanded education, enlarged suffrage, and periodic elections to ensure governments accountability to the governed. Although they had no use for the idea of natural rights, their defense of individual libertiesincluding the rights to freedom of religion, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and freedom of assemblylies at the heart of modern democracy. These liberties received their classic advocacy in John Stuart Mills On Liberty (1859), which argues on utilitarian grounds that the state may regulate individual behaviour only in cases where the interests of others would be perceptibly harmed.
The utilitarians thus succeeded in broadening the philosophical foundations of political liberalism while also providing a program of specific reformist goals for liberals to pursue. Their overall political philosophy was perhaps best stated in James Mills article Government, which was written for the supplement (181524) to the fourth through sixth editions of the Encyclopdia Britannica.
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Look, its Sabo, the conservative guerrilla artist of Los Angeles. A rare sighting. Sort of.
Hewas spotted this weeksmotheringrent-a-bike baskets withMake America Great Again stickers in one of the most liberal cities in the country. On a wall between two movie ads, heslapped upposters of President Trump in the lotus position, serenely raising two middle fingers to whomever.
And stuckto a sidewalk bench, before Sabodisappeared back into semi-anonymity: REPUBLICANS ARE THE NEW PUNK.
The news profiles saySabo, 49,works under darkness adorninga city that overwhelmingly wantedHillary Clinton forpresidentwith posters of her wearingan ill-fitting thong, tattoos and nothing elsebefore the election; andportraying the transgender icon Caitlyn Jenner as a monster clownfrom the movie Itearlier this year.
But Mondays spottingtook place in broad daylight, so afilm crew couldfollow Saboaround.
Peopleused to doubt Sabo even existed, so novel wasstreet art with conservativepolitics,David Weigel wrotefor The Washington Post in 2015.
He rosefrom obscurity on the streets ofLos Angeles to become a minor starin 2015 by encouraging Sen. Ted Cruz to run for president.
The artist had portrayedCruz asa muscled rebel against conventional politics, covered in prison tattoos.
The Texas Republican did run for president, and Sabo a retired Marine who named himself after a round of ammunition lent the candidate his urbanstreet cred, absorbing fame in exchange.
Sabowas then all over Fox News and CNN, and ever since has stoked his celebrity with artwork perfectly synced to the spasms of national politics.
[How Ted Cruzs street artist gets it done]
Sabo hasmanaged this evenafter some of hisracial-slur-filled tweets made newsin early 2016, promptingCruz to stopselling his works.
But the artist would go on to find other muses.
Saboslatest round of attention a short documentary withRuptly and a profile in the Guardianlast month follows him as he plasters Los Angeles in pro-Trump art, his latest guerrilla campaign.
At the beginning of his fame,heopenly despised Trump.
Hes a circus clown, the artist told the Daily Beastin early 2016, when he began selling posters ofTrump as Il Douchin military garb The Reich Choice.
Despite his early disdain for the man who is now president I just didnt think we had the luxury of taking a chance of electing a reality star, he told The Post Sabo used the Republicanslikeness to poster-bomb an L.A. art showsupporting Democratic candidate Bernie Sandersin January of that year.
In Sabos imagination and the walls around the gallery Trump was depicted asa human finger, rising from the center of a disembodied fist.
Trump-as-middle-finger was not an ambiguous statement, Sabo told The Post. It was asymbol of contemptfor the art world.
More than any ephemeral political fury, Sabo is fueled by disdain for his fellow artists. Hesettled in Californiaafter a stint in the Marines in the 1980s, he told The Post, and studied art in Pasadena before moving to Los Angeles, where the liberal culture scene turned his stomach.
For eight years, Obama was dropping missiles on wedding parties, he said. A lot of these artists in L.A. were doing pretty pictures. They werent doing anything.
Prime example: Shepard Fairey, whose art essentially became Obamas campaign poster. AndSabo is more often compared to Banksy a conservative inversion of that world-famous street artist and his progressive causes.
[Banksys striking new mural imagines Steve Jobs as a Syrian refugee]
But Banksy works in true anonymity; the world has never seen his face.
Sabos face wasfully visible graying beard and calm smile in a photo that ran above aCNN story on Election Day, when the artistdeclared he would be voting for theman he once calledIl Douch.
One thing Trump consistently did was attack the media and attack liberals, Sabo explained toThe Post. I fell in love with the guy the minute I realized.
His conversiondidnt seem to hurt his credibility. Sabo appeared on Fox News with Tucker Carlson in February, after plastering Hollywood with posters attacking the Oscar lineup as unwatchable movies from unreadable books.
Carlson called it a pretty coherent critique of Hollywood.
But two months later, Sabo would be poster-bombing the same Fox News host asCarlson prepared to interview Caitlyn Jenner about transgender rights under President Trump.
Sabo put upfake movie posters around the studio:Tonight on Tucker Carlson. IT.
And so it goes: a cycle of bombastic street art, offensive tweets and surprisingly polite interviews with the same media that Sabo says he loves Trump for attacking.
Heis no longer the only conservative street artist in Los Angeles,the Guardian noted when it profiledhim last week,and some on the right consider Sabo a showboater.
For his part, he portrayed himself to the magazine as more introspective than his art suggests.
The blacks, the Jews, the underdogs no one has a bigger heart for them than me, Sabo told the Guardian.
On the phone with The Post, Sabo said he told the same Guardian reporter that he would happily kill liberals along with militant Muslims when the great culture war came.
That line wasnt inthe profile.
Anyway, Sabo is pushing up on 50 now, a little tired of the media rounds, he says, and he no longer stalks the streets of Los Angeles every single night.
Hes thinking of taking a few months off to study up on the latestPhotoshop techniques, he said.
The artistsanonymity has withered a bit under all the media attention, too. His neighborsall pretty much know who he is, he said.
The girls upstairs are probably social justice warriors, Sabosaid. A Mexican-Mexican Latina chick, and a blue-haired writer, both super liberal. They both tolerate me. We just wont talk politics that much.
And looking back onall his artwork, he is not without second thoughts about some pieces.
The posters depicting Jenneras a monster, for instance.
I thought it was a funny idea, but I knew it was hurtful, he said.I dont care if youre gay. I dont look down upon you or anything like that.
Sabohas since designeda sequel to that series. Restroom woman symbols, he explained, with male genitals coming out of the figures dress.
IT, the stickersread.
Sabohasnt put them on display yet; heisnt sure he has the heart. A tweet from last week suggests otherwise. And anyway,youcanbuy them on his Web store.
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Meet the guerrilla artist plastering a liberal metropolis with pro ... - Washington Post
Sir Vince Cable has said he plans to tackle the irrational cult of youthas he attempts to become the leader of the Liberal Democrats.
The 74-year-old described his age and experience as an asset, adding thatBritain's current "sober mood" meansnow is the time for an older leader.
His political opponentsJeremy Corbyn and Theresa May are aged 68 and 60 respectively and the former Business Secretary believes age is no longer important.
I think there was an irrational cult of youth at one point in our political cycle, Sir Vince told The Times.
There are occasions when you get some young and exciting politician that is exactly right. Obama was exactly right and you could argue the same of Tony Blair and there are periods of history where thats the public mood.
There is now a more sober mood and one that values experience, and there is nothing to stop older people being radical in their views. Its the mood of the age, where the age you have is much less important than what you feel and what you can do with it.
Sir Vince has so far suggested he would attempt to rebrand the partys image in an attempt to win back the voters the party lost after going into coalition with the Tories.
We stand for things which millions of people in Britain want who dont currently vote for us, he said.
We are a moderate pro-business, pro-enterprise party but also we are committed to the welfare state... The space which we could occupy is potentially enormous.
The comments come as Sir Vince claimed scrapping university tuition fees would be "very dangerous and stupid" on Sophy Ridge on Sunday on Sky News.
He described the policy as a "cheap populist gesture" and claimed it would create an unfair system.
He said: "If you don't have any form of fees, I mean who pays for universities?
"How do you end this discrimination between the 40 per cent of students who go to university and would be subsided as opposed to the 60 per centwho don't? That would be highly inequitable."
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Former prime minister Tony Abbott has warned the Liberal Party is "haemorrhaging members" and needs to change, calling for the party's membership to be "liberated" from factional powerbrokers.
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There's no sign of the public spat between Malcolm Turnbull and Tony Abbott abating with the former PM continuing his criticism of the party and the PM.
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Former chauffeur, Gordon Wood, is pursuing damages against the state of NSW, claiming he was wrongfully convicted of the murder of model Caroline Byrne.
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A man has been killed and another injured in a shooting on the Central Coast. Vision: Seven News
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In March, NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian announced new financial incentives to encourage more parents to adopt foster children.
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A document obtained by the opposition reveals the WestConnex motorway has attracted over $1 billion in compensation claims.
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A man is left with critical injuries after being shot during an altercation in the foyer of a motel in Coburg. Vision courtesy Seven News Melbourne.
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A man, believed to be in his 60s, is found dead after fire tore through a unit south of Brisbane. Vision courtesy Seven News Melbourne.
There's no sign of the public spat between Malcolm Turnbull and Tony Abbott abating with the former PM continuing his criticism of the party and the PM.
With party tensions on show over the past week thanks in part to the former prime minister's frequent interventions senior frontbencher and close Turnbull ally Arthur Sinodinos conceded the party could notcontrol him.
"If you're the government you can only control what you control. I can't control Tony Abbott," Senator Sinodinos said.
On Monday,Mr Abbott continuedhis campaign of media appearances and speeches with an interview withSydney radio station 2GB.
"It's a simple truth that we are hemorrhaging members," he said.
"We'rehaemorrhagingmembers in every state but it's a particular problem in NSW because we've got this dreadful situation where we have got factionalists and lobbyists who seem to be controlling the party. The best way to liberate our partyfrom factional control, the best way to liberate our part from the lobbyists, is to give every single member a vote.
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He batted away the suggestionhe was helping the Labor Party get elected, saying he wanted the government "to be the best possible government".
"There's a fight by themembership, by the rank and file, totake back what is rightly theirs, control over the lay party.
"And then there's a fight for the kind of policy which a Liberal-National government should be on about. Now,traditionallywhat we've been on about is lower taxes, smaller government, greater freedom."
Asked on Monday if Mr Abbott was deliberately agitating for change to take oxygen from the first anniversary of an elected Turnbull government, Senator Sinodinos demurred.
"You'd have to ask him whether it was deliberate or not," he told ABC radio.
OnSunday, Prime Minister MalcolmTurnbull used the July 2 anniversary to reveal he would walk away from politics if he lost the top job.
"When I cease to be prime minister, I will cease to be a member of parliament," he told News Corp.
"I am not giving anyone else advice but I just think that's what I would do."
But on Monday, Mr Turnbull declared he would remain in the top job for a "very long time" and would emerge victorious from the 2019 election.
"I can assure you I will be prime minister for many, many years to come," he said.
"So that's my commitment."
- with AAP
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