EXCITE HOT NEWS ARTICLES

No funds for psychological health advocate

2008-12-08T15:18:00.002+07:00

asshole
jerk
bitch
suck
shit
pussy
dick

Two nights afterwards Joel Young was assaulted by addition accommodating at the accompaniment brainy hospital in Atlanta, his ancestor says, Young got a new roommate: his attacker.

Young’s ancestor says that if he aboriginal complained about the allowance assignment, “a assistant laughed at me on the phone.” Philip Young, an columnist who lives in Alpharetta, says if he complained about the advance itself, “I got nowhere.”

Many families have run into similar roadblocks in trying to deal with problems in care at state mental hospitals. Their only outlet for complaints: the hospitals themselves, or the state agency that runs them. The hospitals receive little outside oversight.

Earlier this year, though, the state Legislature decided to create an independent office of mental health ombudsman to investigate and resolve complaints about state hospitals and community mental health services. But the funding for the mini-agency — $250,000 — appears to have evaporated amid the state’s current budget crunch, leaving relatives of hospital patients still with virtually nowhere to turn.

A spokesman for Gov. Sonny Perdue, Bert Brantley, says the financial picture endangers funding for all new programs. The state’s current shortfall is $1.6 billion to $1.8 billion.

“It’s impossible for the governor to commit to fund anything right now with this shortfall, particularly new funding,” Brantley says. “It’s difficult to fully fund existing programs, not to mention new programs.”

It wouldn’t be the first ombudsman position to disappear from a lack of funding. Eight years ago, the General Assembly established an ombudsman office but never approved a budget for it. The position was never filled. The new ombudsman job was expected to start July 1, but Perdue’s office made no appointment to the post.

Besides investigating complaints, the ombudsman also would collect data on problems and would appoint a medical group to review deaths of people under state care.

The bill followed a series of articles in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that described widespread abuse and neglect of patients and poor medical care in the seven state-run mental hospitals. At least 136 hospital patients died under suspicious circumstances from 2002 through late 2007, the newspaper reported.

The newspaper articles triggered an investigation of Georgia’s psychiatric hospitals by the U.S. Department of Justice, which is ongoing. Perdue also established a commission to study possible reforms in the mental health system.

The October attack on Joel Young, 28, was not the first he experienced at Georgia Regional Hospital/Atlanta. In June, Young, who has bipolar disorder, was struck by another patient above the eye and required five stitches to close the wound.

Recent inspection reports have found that violence is commonplace at the hospital. In July, federal regulators declared patients there to be in “immediate jeopardy” of physical harm. An inspection found that overcrowding and inadequate staffing caused a sharp increase in incidents resulting in injuries to patients and staff members.

A few other states have ombudsman programs, including Minnesota. There, the office has an annual budget of $1.6 million for a state whose population is about half that of Georgia.

Roberta Opheim, Minnesota’s ombudsman for mental health and developmental disabilities, says her staff members review deaths and serious injuries and field complaints about services.

The ombudsman program saves money by reducing the number of lawsuits, hospitalizations, injuries and preventable deaths, she says.

The potential demise of the Georgia ombudsman has disappointed supporters of the legislation.

“We all knew this was going to be a possibility when revenues went down,” says Rep. Mark Butler (R-Carrollton), a proponent of the bill. “There is definitely a need” for an ombudsman, he says, adding that he would try to preserve the funding.

Ellyn Jeager, of the Georgia chapter of Mental Health America, says she is not surprised by the state’s inaction. The ombudsman job, she says, “is not something [state officials] were excited about. It was kind of forced on them.”

When state officials fail to act on complaints, Georgia patients and their families often see consumer advocacy groups or the media as their last resort.

John Richards, a leader of the National Alliance on Mental Illness chapter in Savannah, says, “these people are calling me and other NAMI officials because they don’t have anyone to go to.”

“The ombudsman is one of our few priority issues,” Richards says. “Give us $250,000 to get this off the ground.”

Playing the game of politics

2008-12-08T15:12:00.001+07:00

asshole
jerk
bitch
suck
shit
pussy
dick

The accepted arrangement of the avant-garde admiral presents a problem: Can one being represent the assessment of an absolute country? The acknowledgment is, the admiral cannot.

As the president becomes the embodied opinion of America, our political values become skewed. The office of the executive was never designed by the founders to garner public opinion, but has done so since the days of the Roosevelt administration.

Year after year, Congress continues to fail America and the institution of democracy by slowly (and willingly) giving away its most prized possession to the president: the ability to represent the people's opinion on issues affecting everyday America.

It was the opinion of the founders that, "A president appealing to popular support and temporary passions of the people, creates factions and provides no basis for rational arguments." This is a particular problem today as the presidency becomes rhetorical and increasingly influential on decisions made by Congress.

With these factors in mind, can Barack Obama restore Congress as the representative of the people? Because President-elect Obama is so new on the political scene he hasn't been wrapped up in the "Good Ol' Boy" network and should challenge the modern presidency by being what the founders intended, an independent executive.

— Kyle Roarke

Pensacola

Modern politics

The modern American presidency is very different from the way our Founding Fathers intended.

The founders did not want the president of the country to just pander for the popular support of the citizens. They feared this would harm the country because the president would constantly be seeking support from different groups of people, which could cause divisions within the country.

The 2008 presidential race was one of the most heated in recent history. I think that because of the nature of the presidency today, both parties chose candidates they thought would look good on television.

Our country will most likely suffer because of these modern politics. There maybe some great leader out there that will never get elected just because he is not the best looking or most well-spoken guy on the block.

— Jarrod Boerma

Santa Rosa Beach

Braille: harmonizing tradition, technology

2008-12-08T15:08:00.003+07:00

asshole
jerk
bitch
suck
shit
pussy
dick

The aggressive one settles herself with boyish aplomb at the end of the classroom table.

She is, by her own account, a “stubborn” and “ornery” apprentice actuality at the Kansas State School for the Blind.

“A handful,” agents agree.

They’ve accustomed her a cane. She refuses to use it.

They try to advise her Braille.

“I hate that I have to learn it,” said Hannah Nistler, to whom, at age 16, the tools of blindness are uneasy reminders that, one day, in an instant, her already murky vision could go completely black.

“It’s scary,” she said. “That’s not something I’ve wanted to accept.”

What’s equally scary, say advocates for the blind, is just how few visually impaired children outside of places like this school are being instructed in Braille.

Whereas about half of them were taught the reading and writing method in the 1960s (usually at state institutions, a cheerless affair for families often forced to send their children hundreds of miles away), the number now instructed in it, with “mainstreaming” in public schools, has fallen to 12 percent.

The decline in this foundation of literacy in the blind community since the early 1800s parallels an explosion in technologies designed to help the blind access everything from novels to the Internet: “talking” computers, magnifiers, audiobooks.

Perhaps at a price.

“There is technology that can read print to you, but that is not the same as being literate,” said Chris Danielsen, spokesman for the National Federation of the Blind. “If you listen to books, you don’t learn how to spell from that. You don’t learn how to write from that. You don’t learn how to do punctuation from that.”

His organization hopes the bicentennial anniversary of Braille creator Louis Braille’s birth on Jan. 4 will raise awareness of what it’s calling a crisis in Braille literacy.

“Society would never accept a 10 percent literacy rate among sighted children,” he said. “It would be outrageous.”

Some of the outrage may need to be tempered.

Although only 12 percent of visually impaired children are learning Braille, it’s also true that only about 10 percent are completely blind.

Most of the remaining 90 percent are like Hannah and have some limited vision, or enough to use devices that make Braille less vital.

“In a lot of ways, it is better to be blind now, especially in the United States, than it has been in history,” said Reinhard Mabry, president of Alphapointe, an association that supports the blind and visually impaired in the Kansas City region. “Technology is better than it has ever been.”

Others note that one downside to great technology, however, is that it can allow mainstream educators to get off too easily.

Instead of investing in Braille teachers, who are in short supply, or committing themselves to the expense and effort of teaching Braille, too many school districts convince parents that their visually impaired children can get by primarily using talking computers and the like.

A talking computer, Braille proponents say, won’t read your shopping list in the aisle of a grocery store. It won’t select your floor in an elevator. And what happens when the power lines go down?

“I don’t know anyone who thinks the trend away from Braille is a good one,” said Gary Mudd at the Kentucky-based American Printing House for the Blind.

THE INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY ACT AMENDMENT BILL, 2006: THE ROADS AHEAD

2008-12-08T15:05:00.000+07:00

asshole
jerk
bitch
suck
shit
pussy
dick

The Government of India (GOI) is planning to acquaint in Parliament this ages changes to the Information Technology Act, 2000 (IT Act, 2000). The IT Act, 2000 was allowable in the year 2000 and lots of changes accept taken abode from that point of time. The IT Ministry/Department of Information Technology (DIT) appropriate the IT Act Amendment Bill in December 2006. However, the aforementioned was begin bare and amiss by the Parliamentary Standing Committee that submitted its recommendations in September 2007. The recommendations by the Standing Committee abundantly accustomed the suggestions of Mr. Praveen Dalal, Managing Partner of Perry4Law and some added cyber law experts. It seems the GOI and DIT accept aswell assuredly accustomed the majority of suggestions of Mr. Praveen Dalal/Perry4Law apropos Proposed Amendments in the IT Act, 2000. However, still a continued ambit has to be covered back lots of changes accept already taken abode back those suggestions were originally provided.

The IT Act was enacted in the year 2000. It contains provisions regarding e-commerce, e-governance, cyber crimes, etc. It is the exclusive cyber law in India. Since everything is incorporated into a single law, it was not drafted properly. This is the reason why India’s Leading Techno-Legal ICT Specialist, i.e. Mr. Praveen Dalal, Managing Partner of Perry4Law (India First and Exclusive Techno-Legal ICT Law Firm), felt that it is a “weak” and “ineffective” law. He provided his suggestions and recommendations from time to time to the Prime Minister of India (Dr. Manmohan Singh), President of India, Parliament Members, Government of India (GOI), Department of Information Technology (DIT), Department of Science and Technology (DST), CERT-IN, etc. It seems the hard work of Mr. Praveen Dalal has finally borne the fruit and the GOI is planning to bring suitable changes in the IT Act, 2000 on the lines suggested by him. Other cyber law experts have also played a role in giving the present amendments a shape and the collective result may come out in the form of a sound law.

However, there are some disturbing factors as well. The present amendments are not available for public scrutiny so far. During the year 2006 as well the GOI did the same thing. After a “protest” was shown by Mr. Praveen Dalal/Perry4Law and other stakeholders, they were finally made available. It seems the GOI is afraid of showing the newer amendments to cyber law experts of India. However, if they are not available for scrutiny, the shortcomings of the same cannot be pointed out. It is important to bear in mind that provisions regarding Cyber Terrorism, Phishing, Spam, Child Pornography, etc were included in the proposed amendments only after they were being suggested by cyber law experts like Mr. Praveen Dalal.[1] The GOI must make the proposed amendments public so that they may be analysed and the doubt of “industry lobbying” is ruled out. Otherwise, people are justified in believeing that the GOI is trying to push “vested interests” under the garb of amendments. It was due to the incessant efforts of cyber law experts in India that we are witnessing some good changes in the IT Act, 2000. All the hard work would be wasted if the GOI keeps a mum and maintains the secretive attitude, says Mr. Praveen Dalal.

Some good Cyber Law, Cyber Security, Cyber Forensics and Techno-Legal Web Resources for Governmental and public reference in this regard are:

(a) Legal Enablement of ICT Systems in India-http://reclaiming-india.blogspot.com/

(b) Cyber Security and Cyber Forensics in India- http://computerforensicsinindia.blogspot.com/

(c) Techno-Legal News and Views in India- http://legalnewsandviews.blogspot.com/

(d) Cyber Law Working Group in India- http://perry4lawgroups.blogspot.com/ , etc.

It would be a good idea to seek public opinion and experts’ views for the proposed IT Act, 2000 amendments. The GOI must absolutely seek the expertise and suggestions of Perry4Law in general and Mr. Praveen Dalal in particular.

[1] The first discussion about these issues in India can be traced back to the year 2003-04 when various Cyber Law, Cyber Security and Techno-Legal Articles, including article titled “Cyber Terrorism In India”, were written by Mr. Praveen Dalal, Managing Partner of Perry4Law. However, very few people appreciated the importance of those issues (including noted cyber law experts of India) at that time. Now all of them, including the Government of India, have endorsed the views of Mr. Praveen Dalal.

The week in business

2008-12-08T15:01:00.001+07:00

asshole
jerk
bitch
suck
shit
pussy
dick

TUESDAY

Integra Information Technologies Inc.: Invites you to learn about Record Retention Requirements for Accounts Payable, Human Resources, C Corps, and S Corps at our free webinar luncheon, 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. either from your PC or at Integra in Downtown Boise. Lunch is on us. Call Courtney at 336-2720, Ext. 212, or e-mail croeber@IntegraInfoTech.com.

Idaho Environmental Forum No. 160: Lunch buffet at 11:30 a.m. and program from noon to 1:15 p.m. at The Crystal Ballroom, 802 W. Bannock St., Suite 202, Boise. Fred Grant, John McCarthy and John Hoehne will discuss "The Owyhee Initiative: How Unlikely Allies Came Together on an Idaho Public Lands Bill." Cost is $13. Register at www.idahoenviron mentalforum.org or e-mail ief@givenspursley.com.

Boise Metro Chamber Training: Sales Tools for Success: 11:45 a.m. to 1:15 p.m. at Boise Metro Chamber offices, 250 S. 5th St. Cost is $25 for Chambers members and $35 for nonmembers. Register at www.boisechamber.org or call Erin at 472-5258.

Discover eBay: 1 to 4 p.m. at Boise State University's Technical Services Building. This hands-on class takes you through setting up an account, posting items and accepting payments. Cost is $39. Register at www.idahosbdc.org or call 426-1974.

WEDNESDAY

Beginning and Intermediate QuickBooks: Beginning QuickBooks is from 8:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. and Intermediate from 12:30 to 5:30 p.m. at the TECenter, 5465 E. Terra Linda Way, Nampa. Cost is $60 per class or register for both and save $20. Register at www.idahosbdc.org or call 426-3875.

Just Jump! Jumping Out of Your Comfort Zone and Into Your True Potential: 9 a.m. to noon at Boise State University's Technical Services Building. Cost is $139. Register at www.idahosbdc.org or call 426-1974.

Canon Technology Show and Holiday Open House: 10:30 a.m. to 7 p.m. at Fisher's Document Systems, 575 E. 42nd St., Boise. The show will bring to Boise the latest imaging technologies from Canon, Docuware, Laserfiche and ABBYY. The technology show will be from 10:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. and the open house will follow from 4 to 7 p.m. For more information or to register, visit www.fishers-boise.com/TechShow.

Potato Growers of Idaho (PGI): 11:30 a.m. at the Red Lion Hotel, Pocatello. Keynote lunch speaker John Revier, deputy chief of staff for U.S. Rep. Mike Simpson, will present "Perspective on the New Congress and President." For more information, call Keith Esplin at (208) 243-1824.

Diversified Financial Concepts: The local wealth management and financial advisory firm presents "Christmas is for Kids." The firm will make a cash donation to St. Luke's Children's Hospital School for each signature on "Santa's Scroll." Stop by the office at 661 S. Rivershore Lane, Suite 210, Eagle, from 3 to 7 p.m. Dec. 10 or any time Dec. 11-12 and sign the scroll to ensure a donation in your name. Call 344-6866 for more information.

THURSDAY

Micron Annual Meeting: 9 a.m. at Micron Technology Inc. headquarters, 8000 S. Federal Way. Speakers will be Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Steve Appleton, President and Chief Operating Officer Mark Durcan and Chief Financial Officer Ron Foster. The meeting will be Webcast. For more information, visit www.micron.com/ir.

Treasure Valley Association of Health Underwriters: 7:30 to 9 a.m. at Hillcrest Country Club, 4610 Hillcrest Drive, Boise. Holding their annual holiday auction to benefit City Light. Cost is $15 for members and $20 for nonmembers. RSVP to Jackie Haney at haneydavjak@msn.com.

Business Basics Workshop: 4:30 to 6 p.m. at the Hispanic Cultural Center, 315 Stampede Drive, Nampa. Free workshop on starting and financing your small business. For more information or to reserve a space, call 334-9004, Ext. 336.

Boise Metro Chamber Business After Hours: 5 to 7 p.m. at Touchmark at Meadow Lake Village, 4037 E. Clocktower, Meridian. Free for Chamber members and $10 for nonmembers. No RSVP needed; pay at the door. More information at www.boisechamber.org.

FRIDAY

Sales Made Simple: 4 to 7 p.m. at Boise State University's Technical Services Building. Areas covered will be conversion techniques, rapport building skills and communication strategies, how the sales process should flow, new vs. old selling ways, and asking the right questions. Cost is $60. Register at www.idahosbdc.org or call 426-1974.

SATURDAY

Business Fundamentals Workshop: 8 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. at the U.S. Small Business Administration, 380 E. ParkCenter Blvd., Suite 330, Boise. Topics include: business regulations, taxes, record keeping, legal aspects of business, creating a business plan, financial sources, and marketing and advertising. Cost is $50 and includes lunch and workbook. For more information or to register, call 334-1695, Ext. 338.

TUESDAY, DEC. 16

Boise Metro Chamber of Commerce Boise Young Professionals: 5:30 to 7 p.m. at Lush, 760 Main St., Boise. Lounging Series with Tom Luna, Superintendent, Idaho State Department of Education. Cost in advance is $10 for members and $15 for nonmembers. Day-of pricing is $15 members and $20 nonmembers. Cost includes one free drink ticket and light appetizers. Register at www.boiseyp.org or call 472-5258.

WEDNESDAY, DEC. 17

Boise Metro Chamber Training: Workplace Celebrations: 7:30 to 9 a.m. at Boise Chamber offices, 250 S. 5th St. Cost is $25 for Chamber members and $35 for nonmembers. Register at www.boisechamber.org or call 472-5258.

Downturn creates theater at NBC

2008-12-08T14:28:00.002+07:00

asshole
jerk
bitch
suck
shit
pussy
dick

NBC's across-the-board anarchy of its ball analysis endure anniversary highlights the abysmal problems it and added networks face in continuing to aftermath high-quality shows as advertisers carve spending and admirers acquisition alternating means to watch TV.

The General Electric Co.-owned network, which has seen its ratings plunge 14% this season, plans to announce this week that it will merge its two programming groups -- one at the NBC network and the other at its television production studio -- into one unit.

The restructuring, which could save the company millions of dollars a year in overhead, comes as the TV industry braces for advertisers to dramatically scale back their purchase of commercial time next year, pressuring revenues and eroding profit margins.

"This is the most fragile advertising market that I've ever seen in my 25 years as a media and entertainment analyst," said Larry Gerbrandt, head of Media Valuation Partners in Beverly Hills. "Every major company is looking at how to cut costs, cut staffing and cut advertising. This is not a good time to be the No. 4 network and not have any new hit shows on the air."

NBC's move could signal a shift in how television shows, which underpin the Hollywood economy, are bought and sold. NBC, one of the largest producers of programs for all the networks, could decide to retrench by producing shows only for one of the channels the company already owns -- leading to fewer jobs for actors, writers and scores of people who work "below the line" making TV programs.

It is not unusual in the TV industry for rivals to team up and produce shows, in effect helping a competitor make money. Although a particular show may not fit well on one network's schedule, it can often prosper on another, which generates income for both.

For example, NBC has been producing the comedy "Worst Week" for CBS, and CBS produces the drama "Medium" for NBC. The most profitable show that NBC Universal owns is the medical drama "House," which stars Hugh Laurie and runs on Fox.

Fox retains the advertising revenue, but NBC is paid a license fee by Fox and keeps the revenue from sales to foreign networks.

On Friday, NBC forced out three top programming deputies -- Katherine Pope, Teri Weinberg and Craig Plestis -- after the network's dismal start to the new fall season. The company's biggest prime-time bets, including "Knight Rider," "My Own Worst Enemy" and "Crusoe," flopped and its one new sitcom, "Kath & Kim," has been a ratings laggard.

Pope, who frequently clashed with her bosses, NBC Universal Chief Executive Jeff Zucker and NBC Entertainment co-Chairman Ben Silverman, was until Friday the president of the television studio. Pope had fiercely resisted plans to merge the studio operations with the network, according to people familiar with the situation.

Weinberg, who followed Silverman from his production company to the network in June 2007, served as his deputy in charge of programming even though she had no network experience. Weinberg failed to gain the support of her staff in part because she lobbied for shows produced by her live-in boyfriend.

Plestis was in charge of game and reality shows, although several of his initiatives, such as "Clash of the Choirs" and "America's Got Talent," sputtered in the ratings. He will be replaced by a former BBC America executive, Paul Telegdy, who helped develop ABC's hit show "Dancing With the Stars." Telegdy starts at NBC Jan. 5.

The restructuring is part of $500 million in cutbacks ordered by NBC Universal in response to what the company called "new economic realities." Among the measures, producers of NBC programs have been told to cut their production budgets by 5%.

NBC is not alone in its troubles.

Prime-time ratings are down this season for all the major networks: NBC, CBS, ABC and Fox. Some of the losses can be attributed to technology. Nearly 30% of all homes with televisions now have digital video recorders, so viewers can record and watch shows at different times. Those viewers are not fully counted in the audience measured by Nielsen that networks sell to advertisers.

In addition, broadcasters are still feeling the pain of the writers strike early this year. Although the strike produced a short-term financial gain for the networks because companies did not have to incur large costs producing shows, the strike led to longer-term problems. The networks had less time to prepare for the fall season, and some of the shows rushed onto the air -- including NBC's new series -- have bombed.

Networks have been slower than usual to cancel low-performing programs, in part because they don't have replacement shows ready. There is another, more complicated, reason: Networks don't want to give advertisers the opportunity to cancel the orders for commercial time they placed last summer, during the so-called upfront market.

"There are perhaps a dozen or more other shows that are on the brink of cancellation due to poor ratings yet the networks have held back," Brad Adgate, senior vice president for research at ad-buying firm Horizon Media, wrote in a report last week. "With an uncertain economy in 2009, advertisers will be able to exercise their option to pull out of their upfront advertising commitment on any show that is canceled."

But unlike the other networks, NBC continues to struggle with management turmoil.

The company plans to bring back an experienced programming executive, Angela Bromstad, to manage NBC's studio and network program development. Bromstad, a former head of the company's television studio, probably will take over the role that many expected Silverman to fill when he joined NBC last year, after making a name for himself as an independent producer.

However, once in the job, Silverman showed little interest in the nuts and bolts of programming and delegated much of the responsibility to Weinberg.

NBC's touted plan to largely do away with the pilot-development process might have back-fired too. None of the shows that NBC ordered for series have been ratings winners, including the $4-million-an-episode "My Own Worst Enemy." The show, starring Christian Slater, has already been canceled.

"People say pilots are expensive and a waste of money, but 75% of the pilots that do well in the testing [phase] go on to become solid shows," said Shari Anne Brill, senior vice president and director of programming for ad-buying firm Carat.

"Networks need to make that investment to see what works."

James is a Times staff writer.

Chennai entertainment group defies downturn, plans speculation

2008-12-08T14:26:00.000+07:00

asshole
jerk
bitch
suck
shit
pussy
dick

Despite ascent losses in the after-effects of the all-around meltdown, city-based ball accumulation Pyramid Saimira feels it is the appropriate time to invest. It is planning to authorize at atomic 800 theatres all over the country.

It is to advance amid Rs.6 billion and Rs.8 billion on blur assembly and administration and addition Rs.2 billion for theatre acquisitions over the next two years.

"The plan is to have around 800 theatres under our fold, many in category B and C towns, by the end of this fiscal," group chairman P.S. Saminathan told IANS in an intervieww.

Saminathan conceded his group has been hit by the meltdown, and debunked the theory that entertainment is recession-proof. "Theatre industry is witnessing a fall in ticket sales. Parents are cutting their children's pocket money while corporates have stopped bulk booking for movies," he said.

Nevertheless, Saminathan said, the time was right to invest so as to be ready when the uptrend starts in April 2010.

"It is time for consolidation and redrawing of overseas and domestic business strategies to cut costs in view of the global economic slowdown," he said.

The investments will be funded by institutional debt and internal accruals to the tune of Rs.1.25 billion, he said.

Involved in every sphere of film activity - production (movie and television serials), distribution, exhibition (theatre management), hospitality, food and beverage, gaming animation and cine advertising - Pyramid Saimira operates in domestic and a few overseas markets.

"The economic slowdown has affected our theatre business in America. The business sectors that are hit are the ones where a large number of Indians or people of Indian origin are employed - our main target segment."

Last October, the group's flagship company, the Rs.7.49-billion Pyramid Saimira Theatre Ltd (PSTL), through its US subsidiary Pyramid Saimira Entertainment Inc, had acquired the Texas-based FunAsia that operated an entertainment complex with a movie theatre, banquet halls and radio station, apart from owning a magazine.

"People there have cut down their spending. Our theatre ticket price has halved to $6 and advertisement revenues have gone down," Saminathan said.

In order to cut the cash burn after investing $11 million there, the group is reducing the number of theatre screens it operates to 18 from 25 and mulls screening movies that would interest other sections of the population.

In Malaysia, the group has rationalised the number of screens to 15 from 51 and converted many lease deals into revenue-sharing ones.

On the home turf, PSTL exited the theatre business in western and northern India, closing around 33 screens to focus on the four southern markets. However, the exercise cost it Rs.200 million.

The company exited distribution of Hindi movies in September and after the Rs.400-million loss incurred in the Tamil movie "Kuselan" starring Rajnikanth, PSTL is going slow on movie purchases for distribution.

"With 745 theatres and 460,000 seats under our management bringing in approximately Rs.30 million per day, we can afford cyclical losses," Saminathan said.

TiVo launches Netflix streaming for its Series3 DVRs

2008-12-08T14:24:00.002+07:00

asshole
jerk
bitch
suck
shit
pussy
dick

Netflix alive is now accessible on TiVo Series3 DVRs. The affection was appear a several weeks ago, but the abstraction of a TiVo/Netflix affiliation dates aback to September 2004.

The service is effectively identical to the Netflix feature available on the LG BD300, Samsung BD-P2500, BD-P2550, Roku Player, and the Xbox 360. That means that existing Netflix subscribers can stream more than 12,000 movies and TV shows directly to their TV over a broadband Internet connection on an unlimited basis, with no additional charges beyond the existing Netflix and TiVo service fees. The available catalog is currently dominated by standard-definition fare, but the TiVos can also stream Netflix's still small HD library (about 300 titles).

We'll have a hands-on evaluation of the Netflix-on-TiVo experience later this week.

Texas Tech company talk about Cotton Bowl bid vs. Mississippi

2008-12-08T14:15:00.000+07:00

shit
fuck
asshole
bitch
jerk
pussy

More Texas Tech players talked today about accepting a bid to play Mississippi in the AT&T Cotton Basin Classic on Jan. 2 in Dallas.

Here they are:

Senior assurance Daniel Charbonnet:

"We are aflame to be a allotment of one of the a lot of celebrated and acceptable academy football basin amateur in history. We attending advanced to arena a aggregation from the SEC and that is apparently the best allotment of the basin season. You get to move out of appointment and play anyone new. I accept absolutely been afflicted by Ole Miss all division and attending advanced to the challenge."

Sophomore running back Baron Batch:

"Ole Miss is a very solid football team and they are very well coached. It should be a lot of fun to play against them in such a prestigious bowl game as the Cotton Bowl. We have been able to do a lot of things that no other Tech team has been able to do and to be the first to win a Cotton Bowl would be really special."

Bowl choice Special: Virginia Tech and Cincinnati Land in the Orange Bowl

2008-12-08T14:11:00.001+07:00

shit
fuck
asshole
bitch
jerk
pussy

The Orange Bowl already has one aggregation bound up -- again, the anti-climatic downside of the BCS Selection Show -- because Virginia Tech exhausted Boston College for the ACC Championship and affirmed themselves a atom in the Orange Bowl.

The thing that stinks for fans of this game is that the Orange Bowl gets the last pick of all the BCS games, meaning that they get the "leftovers", which appears to be the Cincinnati Bearcats. That's not to take a shot at Cincy, who did win the Big East ... which, um, is somehow worse than the ACC.

On the bright side, the two worst major conferences do get to play each other, so we'll know by the end of the beginning of 2009 which conference really was the most mediocre this past season.

Cincinnati did lose two games -- albeit one to Oklahoma -- and theoretically took care of business.

However, the Bearcats will likely be in trouble come New Year's Day, when whatever analysts FOX assigns to this game will suffocate their ability to perform by reminding them that they have to go head-to-head with "BEAMER BALL!!!!!" for four quarters. And when people yell that at you for 60-plus minutes of football, even from the booth, it's a total nightmare.

And in addition, Cincy has played some tougher defenses this year (Not sure if I'm going to count Oklahoma though), including a nasty South Florida defense that they hung 24 points on. Brian Kelly

A Hokies-Bearcats matchup could be entertaining, and the Hokies are likely to be favored, simply based on the conference (even though people will ignore the three-loss factor) and the relative inexperience of the Bearcats ... but I'll tell you this much -- as someone who's watched the ACC all season long, don't be surprised at Frank Beamer and crew's ability to mess this one up.
is blatantly going to be a hero in Ohio now, and this BCS berth is the big reason why (in fact, he's turned down other jobs because, as he said tonight, he thinks Cincy is "no longer a stepping stone" and "a great job".)

Bull Market In Politics

2008-12-08T12:59:00.002+07:00

breast
dick
asshole
shit
fuck
jerk

Frighteningly enough, the humans active the apple are about children. Think about the Supreme Court clerks who, for several decades, accept all but bent the advance of American jurisprudence, or the fresh-faced thirtysomethings who are active the Troubled Asset Relief Program. These kids are absolutely bright, but there is annihilation added alarming than alive your approaching is in the easily of some belled dement you knew from your canicule in the top academy bathe yodeling club.

I’ve been having this vague sense of dread a lot lately. The older I get, the more I sense that no one really knows anything--the supposed experts, however earnest or well-intentioned, are performing an elaborately fraudulent ritual designed to keep us assured. But like it or not, the kids are going to have morepower rather than less, and there is nothing we can do to stop it.

In a short essay published in Swiss Hedge magazine earlier this year, Robertson Morrow of Clarium Capital argued that the U.S. is at the beginning of a “bull market in politics.” Since 1982, government has not been where the action is, so to speak. The most ambitious and capable young people have generally frowned upon politics, sensing that they had more lucrative and intellectually challenging opportunities in the business world. But now, for a wide variety of reasons, that is changing.

Morrow believes that the driver of the new political bull market is the fact that the American economy is squeezed between China and India on one hand and advanced European and East Asian markets on the other. America’s entrepreneurial strengths won’t necessarily generate middle-class jobs quickly enough to prevent policymakers from embracing heavy-handed industrial policy.

This weekend, President-elect Barack Obama announced a sweeping jobs program, one that places infrastructure improvements front and center. Though this is a recession-fighting solution that many conservatives, myself included, embrace, there is no telling where this desire to reshape the economy will stop. My own view is that the political bull market also reflects a structural increase in the appetite for government.

In his brilliant book The Venturesome Economy--which I hope to discuss in a future column--Amar Bhidé briefly argues that major developments in technology, like the automobile or air travel or the Internet, create new coordination problems that government is well placed to solve. Then there is the fact an economy like ours has a lot of high-wage jobs in declining sectors, which is to say a lot of vulnerable workers with much to lose; this is a political fact that can’t be wished away by a million anti-bailout op-eds. I am absolutely against propping up dying industries, not least because pointless and counterproductive interventions waste intellectual capital that can be expended on badly needed interventions.

Given that we’re living in an activist era, it makes sense to think more about how we can make government smarter and more agile, and that means thinking about personnel. Are the people devising the public policies that will determine the future success of our economy ideological imbeciles or humble realists?

U.S. Clean firewood Technology Aids China

2008-12-08T12:58:00.000+07:00

breast
dick
asshole
shit
fuck
jerk

Clean Atramentous Technologies, Inc. is to accumulation Sino-Mongolia International Railroad Systems with technology admired at USD250 actor to enhance low-grade atramentous for a atramentous condensate ability in Inner Mongolia.

Under the terms of the cooperative joint venture, CCTI will build an initial plant with an annual capacity of 1.5 million metric tons to supply clean coal for a newly constructed power station in the same industrial park. Thereafter production will be increased to a capacity of 80 million metric tons annually, the majority of which will be used as feed stock for coal-to-liquid production. Ground breaking on the 550 acre site is scheduled to take place during the first quarter of 2009, with initial clean coal production estimated to commence within 18 months thereafter.

Upon completion, this undertaking will represent one of the world's largest clean coal and liquefaction projects, and provide the foundation for the development of a 1.0 billion metric ton facility. The total capital investment for the clean coal and liquefaction plants is expected to reach USD8 billion over a 10-year period, much of the technology and services being sourced from the U.S. The agreement, which provides for the first CCTI coal plant in Inner Mongolia, is expected to lead to additional sales of this clean coal technology as China strives to meet its energy needs, and improve environmental conditions.

Up until now the options available to remove impurities from coal have been cumbersome and costly — a situation that has significantly undercut the rate of progress. But new technology is available that offers great promise in mitigating the health hazards of coal use. Specifically, a key feature of this CJV will be the patented technology CCTI developed that dramatically reduces the contaminants and pollutants that are produced by burning coal.

Gennum develops in-wire knowledge for 100-foot DisplayPort cables

2008-12-08T12:54:00.001+07:00

breast
dick
asshole
shit
fuck
jerk

Now that DisplayPort is acceptable added of a domiciliary name (like it or not), we're captivated to see anyone authoritative abiding we can run an alien adviser from added than a stone's bandy away. Gennum has stepped in with its ActiveConnect DisplayPort solution, which embeds a baby semiconductor aural a DisplayPort cable to actively advance signals up to 30-meters (around 100-feet) afterwards the charge for a costly, bulky extender box. There's no chat yet on which interconnect companies accept active on to aftermath these adult strands, but we'd apprehend to apprehend added by the time CES 2009 gets underway. Full absolution is afterwards the break.

Gennum Extends DisplayPort Cable Lengths by up to 15x

ActiveConnect™ DisplayPort™ Solution Enables Rapid Adoption of DisplayPort in Digital Signage, PCs, Media Server Devices

BURLINGTON, Ontario – December 8, 2008 – Further broadening the application support for high-speed digital interfaces, Gennum Corporation (TSX: GND) today announced it is expanding its ActiveConnect family with a new connectivity solution for DisplayPort cable products. Rapidly emerging in a variety of electronic devices including laptops, PCs, media servers, DVRs, home theater displays and commercial signage displays, DisplayPort is a digital interface standard that today supports a maximum 10.8 Gb/s data rate over a two meter cable (roughly six feet). By using Gennum's ActiveConnect GV8502 device, a small, cost-effective semiconductor solution, within a standard copper cable assembly, displays can be driven at distances up to 30 meters (roughly 100 feet) – more than 15 times the reach of passive DisplayPort cables. Gennum will showcase this capability at the upcoming Consumer Electronics Show (CES), being held in Las Vegas January 8-11, 2009, in the DisplayPort TechZone.

"We see broad market adoption of DisplayPort, in commercial applications such as digital signage and business projectors found in meeting/conference rooms, auditoriums and training facilities" said Vijay Sharma, Director of Product Marketing, Analog & Mixed-Signal Division, Gennum. "These applications require cables as long as 100 feet, and have therefore been unable to take advantage of the multimedia quality that DisplayPort offers. The Gennum ActiveConnect GV8502 can be seamlessly and cost-effectively embedded into the cable, enabling a variety of new active cable solutions that will allow DisplayPort to become a pervasive technology in these fast-growing markets."

According to Brian O'Rourke, analyst at market research firm In-Stat, "DisplayPort is a next-generation digital interface between PCs and LCD monitors that holds great promise for both the consumer and commercial industries. We are just starting to see products emerge that support DisplayPort, and we believe that DisplayPort-enabled devices will grow at an annual rate of 243 percent from 2008 to 2012, representing tremendous opportunities for product and accessories manufacturers that can quickly develop DisplayPort products to capitalize on this growth."

ActiveConnect Provides the Necessary Link for DisplayPort Devices
The Video Electronics Standards Association (VESA), which introduced DisplayPort in 2006, last year ratified DisplayPort version 1.1a, thus enabling resolutions as high as 4K2K (4x resolution of 1080p displays today), 16-bit color depths and 120Hz refresh rates.

Supporting 21.6 gigabits per second (Gbps), up to twice the 10.8 Gbps/channel required by the DisplayPort HBR specification, the newest ActiveConnect solution can drive multimedia up to 100 feet over standard copper DisplayPort cables. Additionally, manufacturers can leverage a complete ActiveConnect reference design kit (RDK) that enables fast integration for cables, as well as wall plates, dongles and booster products that support DisplayPort. The new ActiveConnect DisplayPort RDK provides a turnkey design capability that shortens design time enabling faster time-to-market.

Last year, Gennum became the first company to deliver support for full-rate HDMI 1.3 with a transmit/receive solution capable of operating at distances of 100 meters over coaxial cable, which has since been adopted by leading cable manufacturers serving the home theater custom install market. The ActiveConnect family also includes HDMI 1.3 support for Category 5/6 and thin HDMI cables, wall plates and boosters for the consumer and custom install market.

ActiveConnect DisplayPort Reference Design Kit to Speed Design
Targeting DisplayPort applications, the GV8502-based solution is an active, receive-only solution that will be sold as part of a reference design kit containing a demonstration cable and design collateral. The kit can be leveraged to design cables, dongles, boosters and extenders capable of supporting the full suite of DisplayPort features and functions. The ActiveConnect reference design kit for DisplayPort will be available in January 2009. Initial volume pricing for the ActiveConnect GV8502 silicon solution for DisplayPort is expected to be $2 per unit.

Gennum will be demonstrating its complete suite of ActiveConnect solutions at the upcoming Consumer Electronics Show being held January 8-11, 2009 in Las Vegas. Gennum will be displaying its DisplayPort solution at the DisplayPort TechZone, located in the Sands Hotel Expo & Convention Center, Booth 73611. Gennum's ActiveConnect solutions for HDMI will be shown at the HDMI TechZone, Las Vegas Convention Center, South Hall 1, Booth 21266.

Obama's latest pick: the inaugural clothes

2008-12-07T16:45:00.002+07:00

asshole
suck
tits
pussy
bitch
jerk

President-elect Barack Obama's latest aces was apparent today: He is accepted to yield the adjuration of appointment on Jan. 20 cutting a clothing and cape from Hart Schaffner Marx. Lisa Wells, a adumbrative of the label's ancestor aggregation Hartmarx Corp., said added data of the ensemble would be forthcoming, "but I apprehend [the coat] is apparently traveling to be atramentous cashmere."

Wells also told us the company received confirmation just Thursday night that Obama would be changing into a custom-made Hart Schaffner Marx tuxedo for the inaugural festivities that follow.
According to Wells, U.S. president No. 44 will make his first formal appearance in a black, 100% wool tuxedo with a one-button, satin notch lapel jacket and single-pleat trousers with a grosgrain accent.
An off-the-rack version of the same tuxedo can be found at Nordstrom or online at the Hart Schaffner Marx website for $895.
It's not a surprise wardrobe choice for the former Illinois senator, who often wore the brand's suits (all union-made in Des Plaines, Ill., not far from Chicago) on the campaign trail, during debates, and most memorably for his acceptance speech last month when, as we reported, he took to the stage in a navy blue cashmere/wool number.
While it's hard to measure the immediate impact of such sartorial choices, remember that President Kennedy's decision to doff his top hat at his 1960 inauguration is almost universally considered the day the hat began to die in the wardrobe of the American male.
Of course, Hartmarx isn't taking any chances; in the lower right-hand corner of its website is a blue box and the words: "Pick your power suit, President-elect Barack Obama found his at Hart Schaffner Marx."
Well played, HSM, well played.

--Adam Tschorn
adam.tschorn@latimes.com
Photo: President-elect Barack Obama is expected to wear a custom-made Hart Schaffner Marx tuxedo similar to the one pictured here, to the assorted inaugural balls on Jan. 20. Photo credit: Hartmarx Corp.

Human sims aid high-tech health check training

2008-12-07T13:38:00.002+07:00

asshole
suck
tits
pussy
bitch
jerk

If you've anytime taken a CPR class, you'll bethink Resuscitation Annie, aswell accepted as Resusci Anne, a mannequin for teaching chest compressions and breath techniques.

Today, Resuscitation Annie still exists but she has some high-tech cousins - state-of-the-art mannequins, or human patient simulators for whom the term "dummy" is not quite appropriate. These closely replicate the experience of operating on or treating patients, simulating not only the physiology (breathing, talking, drooling, and even bleeding), but also the behavior ("Help! I hurt").

Hospitals, including Brigham and Women's STRATUS Center for Medical Simulation, have set up special labs dedicated to training medical personnel using these computerized persons as futuristic arenas that often replace old-fashioned ways of instruction, which included practicing on cadavers or working with real patients.

"Walk into our operating room and it looks like you're walking into a real operating room, with the actual cabinets, beeping monitors, sterilized surgical equipment, even a scrub sink," says STRATUS medical director Dr. Charles Pozner, who is also an emergency room physician. "You forget you are in a simulated world."

Pozner works with a staff of simulation specialists who earn about $40,000 annually, and technicians and physician-instructors. They create scenarios that are so realistic that sometimes clinicians become so immersed they pat the screaming mannequins, trying to console them as they would a real patient. "That's when you know you've done a good job," Pozner says.

You've staged Code Blue alarms in the hospital corridors, using a SimMan. It's a cardiac arrest of a mannequin, but how do the doctors and nurses know if they succeeded or failed at their task?

These mannequins talk either with recorded voices or through a computer interface, so they can say, "Doctor, I'm having terrible chest pain" as the teams rush up. They have blood pressure, heart sounds, and blink, and an arm that's so realistic that you can put in rubber tubing and thread it into the vein and even get a flashback of blood as would happen with a real patient. If the mannequins "die," they lose their pulse and stop breathing, moving, talking, and blinking - even the pupils stop reacting.

The military has been very involved in the development of these mannequins, so because of that, they've been mostly male, right?

Yes, although now we have six different types, from newborn and toddler models to adults, including a pregnant one that can give birth to an infant. That one is a female, thank God. It would be kind of bizarre if it weren't. We've also even purchased wigs to make some of them more female in appearance.

How much do these mannequins cost?

Ten or 15 years ago, they would cost $30,000 to $250,000 depending on the level of sophistication, and now they are up to a half a million dollars each.

What's the most unusual simulation that you've set up?

We created a hostage school shooting simulation here for the special tactics and operation team of the state police. We filled the room with smoke and loud noises and had bodies scattered on the ground. Some were supposed to be dead, and others severely injured. Participants had to quickly access and treat the patients. It was utter chaos.

Are there any limitations to the simulators?

We can't make them look ill in a graded, incremental way. For example, when a patient gets really sick, blue lights light up around the patient's lips. They're bright blue disco lights under the silicon skin, and instead of gradually turning on, they turn on suddenly. So there needs to be a more gradual and realistic physiological reaction to stresses.

And there are other types of simulators as well?

One of our rooms looks like a pinball arcade, but instead of pinball machines, there are various stations with various virtual reality stations. These are virtual reality simulators that allow you to do procedures with real-life instruments, but the actual mechanics are done with computer graphics.

What else is up for simulators?

I'm bringing simulators to the developing world. I'm talking to you from my car, and sitting right next to me now is an anesthesiologist from Kazakhstan who is here to develop the scenarios and curriculum to train physicians in her country on simulators. The same is true for India, United Arab Emirates, and various other places. Simulation is becoming a worldwide technology.

How did you get involved with medical simulation?

Before I went to medical school, I was a paramedic, and I worked with different airway trainers like CPR Annie and tried to make that whole experience as real as possible. When I became a physician, I continued to work on training others with simulation. Our center works with nurses, surgical technicians, physician assistants, administrators, and others, giving them a certain degree of psychomotor and critical thinking skills before they encounter an actual patient.

So you're an emergency room physician as well?

Well, sort of. Emergency rooms don't need physicians - they are just rooms. You don't call it an operating room physician, do you?

Trabant: Dissappearing reminder of a unusual world

2008-12-07T13:34:00.002+07:00

asshole
suck
tits
pussy
bitch
jerk

The bedrock accumulation U2 featured several Trabants in its 1992-93 Zoo TV concert tour. (Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Museum in Cleveland/The New York Times)

How many workers did it take to build a Trabant? Two - one to fold and one to paste.

How do you double the value of a Trabant? Fill its gas tank.

How do you measure a Trabant's acceleration? With a diary.

Trabant jokes can be as lame as the car's acceleration, but with 3,096,099 built, there must have been some people who took the car seriously enough to own one. Still, when the Berlin Wall came down, many Trabants were ditched by their owners faster than an Elizabeth Taylor husband and replaced with Western-built cars. But, since it's been estimated that 800,000 Trabis still survive, it's fair to ask: what happened to the other 2,296,099?

The commonly held view is that most of the cars were abandoned or destroyed. In the 1990s, some Trabant bodies were ground up and used instead of sand or salt for traction on winter roads.

"Trabants were often given away for free because to scrap the car cost more than it was worth," Matt Annen, who runs the Trabant USA website, wrote in an e-mail message. "One of the most famous stories is of people driving them as far to the West as possible before the car broke down, then leaving the signed title on the dash. In the East a lot of people still have their old Trabant sitting in their yard or in their garage." He said that he knew of 75 Trabants in the United States, but that there might be a lot more tucked in garages.

Some Trabants had movie roles. A blue model with an orange pop- up roof tent was featured in "Go Trabi Go," a 1991 German comedy about a family that endures a series of mishaps while driving from Leipzig to Italy. That same year, Billy Dee Williams, Dom DeLuise, and Milton Berle starred in "Driving Me Crazy," about an East German inventor who defects to America and tries to market a turnip-powered Trabant.

In the 1998 film "Black Cat, White Cat," pigs on a Yugoslavian farm are shown eating a Trabant. And in 2001, "Spy Game" had Brad Pitt's CIA character driving one from East to West Berlin.

The rock group U2 featured several Trabants in its 1992-93 Zoo TV concert tour, and those body shells now hang from the ceiling of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland.

Annen wrote that Germany still has more than 50,000 registered Trabants, but they are "much more common in other former Soviet countries like Hungary and the Czech Republic.

"They're still very cheap in Germany, selling on eBay for as little as 50 euros, although the German government's regulations on things like emissions and safety standards make it difficult to keep them on the road."

Indeed, during the next several years those 800,000 still-living Trabants may be doomed because European Union pollution regulations are expected to become even more stringent.

After all, it's been calculated that a Trabant emits 10 times as many hydrocarbons as a modern car. And that's no joke.

State partisan politics won't allow nonpartisan official selections

2008-12-07T13:32:00.001+07:00

asshole
suck
tits
pussy
bitch
jerk

Gov. Joe Manchin's beforehand break that he would ask the 2009 Legislature to accede a adventuresome change in accompaniment government by electing board on a detached base now seems to be asleep in the water. Give acclaim to Sen. Truman Chafin, D-Mingo, who active up the alignment of 55 Democratic canton chairmen in the state.

Chafin prides himself on being a "yellow dog Democrat," leaving absolutely no doubt about his party loyalty at all levels. He sent a letter to the other 54 county Democrat chairpersons, telling them this was another "back door" effort to let Republican candidates for the state's judicial offices disguise their political views.

His call to action apparently worked on the nearly 100 members of the West Virginia Judiciary Association, which includes both active and retired judges. Meeting last week in Morgantown, that group, most of them Democrats, voted to support the current method of electing judges at all levels in this state based on political affiliation.

Manchin will need the full support of the 2-to-1 Democrat voting majority in this state for his likely next campaign in 2012 for the U.S. Senate, so he's now insisting that he has no plans to recommend any changes.

The state judiciary, like the legislative and executive branches, has been mostly run by the Democratic Party for decades. More to the point, it's the branch that has been a source of embarrassment recently, and that's not limited to one political party.

There are about 275 elected judges statewide, ranging from the five members of the State Supreme Court of Appeals down to the 158 county magistrates. In between, there are 69 circuit judges (the last three added this year) and 45 family court judges -- 10 new ones taking office Jan. 1.

Decisions to add new judges or increase their salaries at any level are always a hot political issue in the Legislature. And some circuit judges who have recently taken advantage of a loophole to retire with a lucrative judicial pension and then resume their job as a judge at full pay will cause more political consternation at the 2009 session.

The salary for Supreme Court justices was $95,000 until 2005, when legislators gave them a raise to $121,000 a year. Rest assured, politics was involved. And the 69 circuit judges -- three more were added by the Legislature earlier this year in a political bloodbath where several other proposed new judges didn't make the cut -- saw their salaries boosted from $90,000 to $116,000 as well.

At the lowest level, there are county magistrates (158 in all) and a relatively new family court system. Originally 35 family court judges were created, but now that number has jumped to 45 in a highly charged political atmosphere. The salary was boosted from $62,500 to $82,500 three years ago as well.

Family court judges can hire both a secretary-clerk and a family case coordinator who can be paid up to $35,000 and $46,060 respectively -- which means more political patronage. The precise figure is left up to the Supreme Court administrator in Charleston.

So party designations on the ballot for candidates seeking the office of judge at any level in West Virginia is only the tip of the iceberg in partisan political activity.

n n

The notoriety of the state's highest court got more national exposure last week when the U. S. Supreme Court unanimously refused to consider the appeal by Massey Energy Co. of a $260 million jury verdict upheld at the state level. The appeal was filed on the grounds that Justice Larry Starcher was biased against Massey and its colorful chief executive, Don Blankenship.

But even though the nation's highest court only accepts a very limited number of cases each year, those nine justices have agreed to hear a separate matter involving Justice Brent Benjamin, the first Republican elected to the state Supreme Court in 32 years after Blankenship spent more than $3 million to help Benjamin win his seat in 2004.

Blankenship's influence on the court has repeatedly made national headlines, including photos of him and Justice Elliott (Spike) Maynard together during a vacation on the French Riviera. This publicity is credited with helping defeat Maynard in his bid for re-election to another 12-year term in last spring's Democrat primary.

These scandals involving both political parties seem to be more of a reason to advocate consideration of the best method to select our judges than the elimination of partisan politics.

n n

One of the most compelling statistics to illustrate West Virginia's plight on the national stage is the fact that we have the smallest percentage of our population that "participates in the labor force," according to findings in a report released last week by the West Virginia Center on Budget and Policy. With only 56.3 percent of our 1.9 million men and women either employed or looking for work, it follows that the other 43.7 percent are not.

The average nationwide is 67 percent, or two-thirds of the population, and some states have almost three-fourths of their residents in the labor force. And even though West Virginia has recently enjoyed a record low unemployment rate of less than 4 percent, it nevertheless means state government must help provide for the needs of nearly half the people living here.

Tom Miller is a retired state government reporter for The Herald-Dispatch. He is a regular contributor to The Herald-Dispatch editorial page.

Tennessee Slips In physical condition Rank

2008-12-07T13:29:00.000+07:00

asshole
suck
tits
pussy
bitch
jerk

OK, Tennessee, the doctor called. And the account is appealing grim.

You anticipate we don’t apprehension you cheating out for a smoke and a cheeseburger. We do. The doctor notices, too.

In fact, Tennessee, you smoke so vigorously, exercise so little and eat so abundant that you’ve alone from amount 46 endure year to 47 now on the 2008 account of America’s Health Rankings. Only three states are fatter and sicker than you – South Carolina, Mississippi and Louisiana.

There’s no prize for being near the bottom, Tennessee, so put down the chicken wing and pick up your reading glasses. Your weight is ballooning. Even more of you are smoking. And you haven’t aimed to do much about it.

For 19 years, America’s Health Rankings has provided an annual analysis of national health on a state-by-state basis. The longest-running report of its kind, America’s Health Rankings evaluates a historical and comprehensive set of health, environmental and socio-economic data to determine national health benchmarks and provide an annual ranking of the healthiest and least-healthy states.

Tennessee, you’re a stroke or a heart attack waiting to happen.

Now, Tennessee, maybe you could look to make some excuses. Nationwide, health is stagnating for the fourth year in a row.

During the 1990s, Americans started making healthier changes and health improved at an average rate of 1.5 percent a year. But improvements have remained flat for the past four years. Smoking, obesity and the uninsured are the nation’s three most-critical challenges, according to America’s Health Rankings out this week.

Among the most-troubling facts:

* Significant reductions in the prevalence of smoking have not occurred since the early 1990s and have virtually stalled in the past four years. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the adverse health effects from smoking account for an estimated one out of every five deaths each year in the United States.

* The prevalence of obesity has more than doubled in the past 19 years. One in four Americans is considered obese, which puts them at increased risk for such health problems as heart disease, stroke, high blood pressure, diabetes and cancer.

* Nearly 46 million Americans are currently uninsured, leaving them without adequate medical care for chronic conditions or preventive treatment that would help reduce future illnesses.

Tennessee’s biggest challenges are high tobacco use, with 24.3 percent of the population smoking; a high prevalence of obesity at 30.7 percent; and high levels of air pollution, with an average of 14.7 micrograms of fine particulate per cubic meter. Add to that a high violent crime rate at 753 offenses per 100,000 people and a high infant mortality rate at 9.5 deaths per 1,000 live births and you see why Tennessee is sliding down in the national rankings.

So what to do? Obviously, Tennessee, your two biggies are smoking, which grew 8 percent last year, and obesity, which is growing everywhere.

You must find ways to reduce the numbers of smokers in your state – by medical intervention, suggestion, pleading or program. One in five deaths is smoking-related and a quarter of Tennesseans are still lighting up. Those numbers must come down – for the health of your state and for the eventual associated medical costs of taking care of those sick smokers.

And as waistlines expand, so does the number of cases of Type 2 diabetes. Changes in diet and increasing exercise are the only ways to help save more lives in Tennessee and, again, reduce associated medical costs for people who have diabetes or other obesity-related illnesses.

Your report was pretty bad this year, Tennessee, but you are doing a better job of paying for health needs. Public health funding increased to $81 a person, from $72 last year. That’s a good step, albeit a small one.

So how to improve, Tennessee? You already know: Drop the smokes. Ditto on the cheeseburgers. Walk a bit more. Add a few vegetables. Skip the fried stuff.

Make small changes you can live with.

You don’t have to accept that “heart disease runs in your family.” Maybe that’s only because biscuits and gravy do, too

Bill to alter policy pits PSE and G vs. business, consumer groups

2008-12-07T13:26:00.000+07:00

asshole
suck
tits
pussy
bitch
jerk

A aldermanic bid to acquiesce utilities to balance their investments added bound is abstraction up as a huge action pitting New Jersey's better ability aggregation adjoin an absurd affiliation of customer advocates, business groups and environmentalists.

Public Service Electric & Gas, an operating unit of Pubic Service Enterprise Group., is backing a draft bill that critics say would radically overhaul the existing regulatory system, leaving consumers vulnerable to higher bills at a time when utility costs have skyrocketed.

The changes would allow PSE&G and other power companies to recover costs more quickly. This, PSE&G contends, would permit the utilities to access capital more cheaply and make the needed investments to modernize its electric and gas system, while creating new jobs by investing in energy conservation and cleaner sources of energy, such as solar and wind power.

While the bill has united a formidable array of business and consumer groups against it, the measure is attracting keen interest from lawmakers who view it as a way to jump start an economy that is shedding jobs by the thousands each week.

"Maybe it's a time to roll back regulations if it is stifling economic growth in New Jersey," said Sen. Raymond Lesniak, the powerful Union County Democrat who is planning on holding a hearing on the yet-to-be-introduced bill this Thursday in the Senate. "It may be a tradeoff that is worth making."

The prospect of a rollback of the current regulatory system, however, is alarming to opponents, which include the New Jersey Ratepayer Advocate, New Jersey Citizen Action, a coalition of large energy users, the Chemistry Council of New Jersey and Environment New Jersey.

The Board of Public Utilities is reportedly lobbying against the measure, too, but calls to the agency asking for a comment were not returned.

"This bill -- which wraps itself conveniently in the flag of green jobs and energy efficiency -- constitutes a blatant end-run around the BPU and normal stakeholder review, and offers nothing tangible in return to consumers who will be hurt by higher rates this bill will produce," wrote Steve Goldenberg, an attorney representing large energy users in a letter urging Assembly Speaker Joseph Roberts to hold off action on the measure.

The proposed regulatory scheme is modeled in part after a system used on the federal level which allows electric companies to recover costs for investments in high-voltage transmission lines. Called formula-based rates, it would allow utilities to recover certain expenses, such as labor and equipment, more quickly than under the current rate scheme, which can lag up to two years.

Based on the experience in other jurisdictions, AARP New Jersey argued, formula rates would lead to higher costs for consumers. Under a new and similar ratemaking formula adopted by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission earlier this year, it noted PSE&G won a 35 percent increase in its transmission rates, or saw revenue jump by $60 million, it argued.

With borrowing costs skyrocketing, a quicker accretion of costs would advice accompany adherence to basic markets, blurred the amount of those investments for the account and ultimately ratepayers, according to PSE&G. They altercation the angle it eliminates authoritative analysis of those costs.

"The absorbed is to acquiesce the BPU to set up whatever rules they want," said Ralph LaRossa, admiral of PSE&G. "If policymakers wish to actualize jobs by rebuilding the activity basement and to admission the basic markets at lower cost, we anticipate this a abeyant solution. We're absolutely accessible to added approaches."

But Stefanie Brand, New Jersey's ratepayer advocate, argued the utility does not need formula-based rates to invest in renewable energy or conservation, noting a global climate bill passed last year at PSE&G's urging gives utilities the ability to quickly recoup their investments there.

"What this is about is traditional utility investments," she said, referring to the poles, wires, substations and pipelines that deliver gas and electricity to customers. "What this does is remove any review of the prudency of their investments. It takes away any ability to decide whether they need to go ahead with any project."

Under a formula-based system, that could lead to utilities spending as much money as they could afford, knowing they would get a return on any investment they make, critics said.

Tamara Linde, vice president of regulatory affairs for PSE&G, argued otherwise. "The formula isn't a blank check. It (the investments) still have to be prudent. It still has to be reasonable."

Assemblyman Upendra Chivukula, another sponsor of the bill, noted the bill allows both the BPU and Rate Counsel the opportunity to evaluate the formula and establish its parameters. Chivukula criticized the current regulatory scheme, arguing it takes 13 months or more to decide a rate case.

"To be honest, the BPU is out of control," he said. "They haven't done their job. They lack leadership."

Green in the clear

2008-12-07T12:46:00.001+07:00

suck
pussy
dick
breast
asshole
fuck

TORY MP Damian Green and his Home Appointment birthmark will NOT be answerable in the aperture scandal, the News of the World can reveal.

Prosecutors say affidavit bedeviled from Mr Green’s Commons appointment cannot be acclimated as affirmation in a trial.

They add that cops FAILED to conduct a able seek in Westminster.

The conclusions, in a secret early review by the Crown Prosecution Service, coincide with the initial findings of an independent police probe.
That investigation is already concluding the case is “not prosecutable”, and the decision to arrest the Shadow Immigration Minister was “over the top”.
One source said: “This was a sledgehammer to crack a nut by Scotland Yard—totally disproportionate.”
The findings are a humiliation for Met Assistant Commissioner Bob Quick, head of the counter-terrorism unit.
The view is growing that the original arrest decision, made by a chief inspector, was simply rubber-stamped and the implications not properly considered by his ultimate boss, Mr Quick. Acting Commissioner Sir Paul Stephenson told Quick: “You are completely f**king me over, you know. I will get the blame when it all goes wrong.”
Cops had told the Commons’ Serjeant at Arms, Jill Pay, they wanted to search an MP’s office but failed to tell her WHO the MP was.
A top CPS source said: “Police must state clearly who they are investigating and why they wish to carry out a search. This did not happen until after they had obtained permission.
“Therefore the evidence would be subject to a sustained legal challenge.”
Police found that mole Christopher Galley only passed on documents relating to immigration—not terrorism. He faces Home Office disciplinary proceedings and is expected to be dismissed.

Non-politics, non-tech, non-China: Istanbul

2008-12-07T12:40:00.000+07:00

suck
pussy
dick
breast
asshole
fuck

Twice during our accomplished two and a bisected years of active in China, my wife and I accept fabricated vacation trips to Turkey. I had not been afore and now absolutely affliction that fact.

My brief travel article in the new issue of the Atlantic, here, offers a vignette that may convey part of what I found so intriguing about Istanbul. This slide show, with the Atlantic's slickest new video-effect tools by Jennie Rothenberg Gritz, has more of the Ottoman empire look. Go see for yourself -- I mean, not just via the articles but with a trip to Turkey.

How expediency, hard work helped Jan Brewer rise in Arizona politics

2008-12-07T12:33:00.002+07:00

suck
pussy
dick
breast
asshole
fuck

It has become an Arizona tradition.

By cavity of impeachment, abomination conviction, the odd afterlife in appointment - or by cavity of a added absorbing job action advancing forth from a U.S. admiral - Arizona loses a lot of its governors.

And, so, Arizona accidentally gets to apperceive its secretaries of accompaniment a accomplished lot better.

It is how Arizona came to know the ill-fated Wesley Bolin, who died just a year into his governorship. Bolin became governor in 1977 when President Carter named Gov. Raul Castro as ambassador to Argentina.

It is how Secretary of State Rose Mofford became governor in 1988, replacing future acquitted criminal defendant Evan Mecham. And it is how Secretary of State Jane Dee Hull became governor in 1997, replacing future master chef Fife Symington.

Now, it is Jan Brewer's time to rise up two additional floors in Arizona's executive tower . . . replacing Barack Obama's nominee to head the office of Homeland Security, Janet Napolitano.

Brewer, 64, is expected to become Arizona's 26th governor once Napolitano is confirmed as Homeland Security secretary, probably early next year.

Reared by a widowed working mother whose personal ethos dictated that taxes, above all else, must be paid, Brewer will take office facing Arizona's worst budget crisis in a generation . . . or two.

Will she be up to the task? The question is being raised particularly by Democrats, who are wary of Brewer's bedrock Republican conservatism.

The former state representative, former state senator and former county supervisor, however, contends that the convenient caricature her opponents paint of her - that of an ideological political puritan - hardly squares with reality.

Brewer has been witness to some of the most turbulent political events in Arizona history, including the impeachment of the late Gov. Mecham and the humiliating turmoil of the AzScam scandals, as well as through much of the real estate-related debacle that ultimately forced Gov. Symington from office.

Brewer's first race

Brewer won her first race for county supervisor at a time when Governing magazine judged nearly bankrupt Maricopa County one of the worst-run counties in the nation.

And she left it, after serving as chairman, with a sparkling reputation as one of the best.

From her earliest days in the Legislature, Brewer has been a consistent supporter of funding for behavioral-health programs, an issue that was central to her support for one of her proudest achievements in public life, the construction of the campus for the region's homeless and destitute near the state capital.

The fact is, Brewer has enjoyed a remarkably successful political career that often has benefited from the capacity of others to underestimate her.

Nearly every race that Jan Brewer has run - from her first primary for the state House of Representatives in 1982 to the tough, often down-and-dirty contest for secretary of state in 2002 - has been contested, often fiercely. Often, she faced more experienced opponents, including incumbents.

Surprises for neophyte

She started raw. As a political neophyte in 1981, Brewer acknowledges being "dumbfounded" upon learning that politics required approaching total strangers in supermarket parking lots asking for their signatures on her nominating petitions ("And son of a gun! They'd sign it!").

But, along the way to this current moment of truth, Brewer has methodically built a political career the same way her mother built a life for two young children in 1956, when 11-year-old Janice Drinkwine's dad passed away from a lung ailment.

She has learned from all of life's lessons, taken stock of her assets and plowed forward with resolute, good-natured Minnesota-Norwegian bullheadedness.

The woman who likely will become Arizona's next governor early next year was born in - of all places - Hollywood, in September 1944.

At the time, her father was a civilian supervisor at one of the Navy's largest munitions depots, at Hawthorne, Nev. She spent her first 10 years on the inland Navy base between Reno and Las Vegas.

"There wasn't a night we didn't go to sleep singing, God Bless the Soldiers," recalls Brewer.

Concerns for her father

Constant exposure to Navy munitions and their wicked soup of chemicals took its toll on the health of Brewer's father, Perry Drinkwine. The family eventually was forced to move to Tujunga, Calif., where, she recalls, the dry desert air met the ocean breeze. Her dad survived there about a year.

"It was a terrible ordeal," recalls Brewer. "Mom had never worked. And government workers at the time didn't pay into Social Security, so we got minimal help."

The events of those tough years in California would be formative for Brewer.

The experience of watching her father waste away from lung disease ("Do you know they never once told him to stop smoking?") prompted her to study to become a radiology technician in community college.

But it was her mother's determination to raise her two kids in a happy, healthy home that would provide the foundation for Jan Brewer's basic principles in public life.

Edna Drinkwine put every dime she had into a franchise dress shop. And as Edna learned how to fend for herself, so too did 11-year-old daughter Jan, who would get fast lessons in the ways of small business right alongside Mom.

"The biggest fear she instilled in me was that you've . . . got . . . to . . . pay . . . your . . . taxes!" says Brewer, emphatically pounding her desk with each word.

"You don't get any slack from the government."

Learning about business

Brewer would clean dressing rooms, work the cash register and keep track of inventory. After hours, she would total up cash receipts, separate out sales taxes and deposit the day's earnings into three accounts: "the sales taxes, the franchise tax and, what was left, yours."

In the back shop, she learned about shipping and receiving. She learned what "FOB" stood for (hint: not "Friend of Bill"), and what a "bill of lading" was.

Those years of wearing every working hat in her mother's dress shop would work to Jan's advantage later in life, especially when she married husband John Brewer and helped put him through chiropractor school.

The newlywed landed a well-paying job as an office manager in Glendale, Calif., "because I knew what a bill of lading was and what an FOB was - I could do it all: answer phones, sell, and then go into the back shop and ship things out."

The Brewers moved to John's hometown, Phoenix, in 1970, and, later, to Glendale. John Brewer developed a successful chiropractic business and began developing commercial real estate, as well.

And his great interest in conservative, Republican politics eventually proved irresistible to Jan, too.

"I went to a school-board meeting in Deer Valley and, later, I said to my husband, 'Who were all those people?' John said they were school-board members. And I said, 'How do you get to be one of those?' And he told me they were elected.

"I said that I could do a job just as well as those people were doing . . . if not better."

Going to the Legislature

Brewer's first race would be for the state Legislature in the newly formed District 19 in the northwest Valley, not the school board. And she would win that 1982 contest, despite all the rookie naivete about signature-gathering and the rest.

Brewer would enter Arizona politics at the tail end of one era, one dominated by mythic figures like the late House Majority Leader Burton Barr, and at the cusp of a modern era of turmoil, scandal and tumultuous change.

"The (Mecham impeachment) fractured our party something terrible," recalls Brewer, who voted against the controversial governor's impeachment in the state Senate in 1988.

Mecham's trial "appeared improper to me, and I voted accordingly," she said.

County government

After rising to Senate majority whip, Brewer left the legislative cauldron in 1996 to enter the county-government fry pan. She beat incumbent supervisor Ed King handily in the primary and took office on a Maricopa County board widely decried as one of the nation's worst.

"If Phoenix represents the best in local government, Maricopa comes very close to being the worst," Governing magazine concluded in April 1995.

"For years, its management has been as chaotic, hidebound and wasteful as the management of the city is orderly, innovative and efficient."

By the time Brewer left to run for her current office as secretary of state in 2002, Maricopa County had performed one of the most stunning reversals in history of American local governance.

"We moved forward with (County Manager) David Smith," said Brewer. "We just quit spending. We reined it in. And we made county hospital more accountable."

Brewer has weathered a lot of storms in her time, the worst being the loss of her middle son, John Samuel, to illness in 2007.

"That was really rough," she said, haltingly. "Mothers are supposed to fix things. To heal and protect. And you're helpless."

Pressing on in life

Brewer presses on. In September, she led the Arizona GOP delegation that nominated fellow Arizonan John McCain for president.

And, now, McCain's loss in November has set in motion the changes that have led to Brewer, as Arizona's next in line for the governorship, to the precipice of her greatest political challenge.

"I've learned a lot by the school of hard knocks," said Brewer, with the bright-light smile that comes so easily to her.

"I think I'm ready."

MARTIN: Mother's exploit of government

2008-12-07T12:30:00.002+07:00

suck
pussy
dick
breast
asshole
fuck

In 1962, I covered Congress as a anchorman for a account agency that included the Tampa (Fla.) Tribune, the Columbia (S.C.) State, the Augusta (Ga.) Chronicle, WFLA-(Tampa) TV, 50,000-watt radio stations WDBO (Orlando) and WGBS (Miami) to name a few of the added than two dozen media outlets.

From that perspective, I witnessed one of the most lopsided presidential victories ever. Democrat Lyndon Johnson beat Republican Barry Goldwater, 486 electoral votes to 52 with a popular vote of 43 million to 27 million. LBJ carried 44 states and the District of Columbia. As you might imagine, the Johnson landslide defeated many Republican members of the House and Senate, as well.

I recall one byproduct of that landslide was Republican leaders searching for a grass-roots Republican National Committee chairman, settling on Ohio GOP Chairman Ray Bliss, who helped turn around the stunning Goldwater defeat of 1964 into a dramatic realignment victory in 1968 when Richard Nixon won back the White House by handily defeating both Democrat Hubert Humphrey and Independent George Wallace.

Forty years on, in both the 2006 and 2008 cycles, after mounting losses in the House and Senate and the White House, it appears time for Republicans to find another grass-roots leader who can perform similar magic. There are several able-bodied state chairmen eyeing the Republican National Committee reins.

But wait. The RNC already has a proven first-rate leader in its current chairman from my home state of Kentucky, Mike Duncan. Look at his record. A staggering $400 million-plus dollars raised. For my 50 years on the political scene, his fund-raising prowess brings to mind the words of a prominent Democrat in the 1960s, Jesse Unruh, who famously said "money is the mother's milk of politics." Mike Duncan, in the strong headwind years Republicans have just faced, has surely provided the "mother's milk of politics" for Republican candidates.

Mike's ability to raise money is extraordinary; while he has gracefully credited what he calls his "superb finance team," it is clear to me Mr. Duncan, should he decide to run for another term, may yet be able to turn the current gloom and doom of the GOP around just as his predecessor, Ray Bliss, did in the mid '60s. Indeed, if one of the primary barometers for a chairman's success is the real political capital raised, Mr. Duncan is in good standing. In less than two years, I reiterate, Mr. Duncan has raised a record total of more than $400 million for Republican causes and candidates.

I also note with appreciation that Mr. Duncan is working to be certain these funds raised will not be compromised by campaign finance reform that goes by the increasingly unpopular title of McCain-Feingold. Under Mr. Duncan, the RNC has recently filed lawsuits in the District of Columbia and Louisiana challenging, respectively, the constitutionality of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act's ban on national parties raising and spending nonfederal dollars and the constitutionality of political party coordinated expenditure limits. The chairman has said, "The campaign finance restrictions infringe on the First Amendment's core: political speech and association. The RNC must have the ability to support state candidates, coordinate expenditures with our candidates, and truly engage in political activity on a national level. The RNC has operated under and complied with these provisions of the law since their enactment, and as applied it is unconstitutional." We strongly concur.

Mike Duncan is an exceptional leader with a long and distinguished history of working behind the scenes for his country and his party. The Republican Party will be well-served if the RNC members reward Mike Duncan for an extraordinarily good job in an unusually bad time by electing him chairman for another term.

His amazing fund-raising ability to provide the "mother's milk of politics" is just what the doctor ordered for an ailing GOP.

James L. Martin is president of the 60 Plus Association, now in its 15th year advocating on behalf of senior citizens.

MnSCU revs company offerings

2008-12-07T12:27:00.002+07:00

suck
pussy
dick
breast
asshole
fuck

Top Tool Co.’s sales accept added than angled this year, and CEO Elizabeth Abraham is quick to acclaim the advance abundantly to a Minnesota State Colleges & Universities (MnSCU) worker-training program.

But a lot of baby and mid-sized manufacturers apperceive little to annihilation about MnSCU’s offerings, said Abraham, who aswell is armchair of the Minnesota Manufacturers Coalition.

That’s something Minnesota’s network of state universities and technical colleges aims to change through a marketing campaign and more face time with business leaders.

So far, presidents from MnSCU’s colleges have met with about 150 firms in Minnesota in an effort to bolster awareness about customized training, online professional development and other programs, said Mary Rothchild, MnSCU’s director of business and industry relations. Officials aim to meet with executives at 300 companies as part of the campaign, which also includes a business-focused hotline and resource guide.

FlexxTheme: Professonal Blog Version Released for production Pros

2008-12-07T01:22:00.001+07:00

jerk
stupid
asshole
bitch
jerk
dick

Dear Editor:

President Bharrat Jagdeo’s contempo accommodation to await on the words “concerned in” of Article 188 of the architecture and admission a “free pardon” to crime accused, Mr Phillip Bynoe, is getting accustomed by some Guyanese as a magnanimous gesture, but to me it fits a arrangement of a arch of accompaniment who either has no account for or charge of the amends system. In fact, appropriate now, it seems like even the Joint Services are accomplishing the job of the administrative arrangement ambidextrous with abyss and getting monetarily adored by the government as able-bodied as getting about commended by the President and his cabinet.

Mr Bynoe, along with Mr Mark Benschop, was accused by the PPP government of engaging in treasonous behaviour when they allegedly led a group of protestors on a crashing invasion of the Office of the President’s compound.

Mr Benschop turned himself into the police after being identified as a leader of the protestors and was arrested, charged and tried; but after his trial ended in a hung jury, and being incarcerated for five years, he was finally freed by the President. Mr Bynoe, meanwhile, remained on the lam until we learned that the President also ‘free pardoned’ him.

In the first place, based on news accounts, I never believed that Messrs Bynoe and Benschop were ever guilty of the high crime called treason.

If anything, they stood accused of engaging in disorderly conduct or appearing to mislead the procession towards the off-limits presidential compound.
The President’s security detail and the Guyana Police Force were culpably negligent.

But even though the President appeared to act under growing international pressure to free Mr Benschop, the move was still warmly greeted by all Guyanese who knew the government had no real treason case.

The President’s so-called ‘free pardon’ extended to Mr Bynoe, on the other hand, has taken some of us by surprise, because in most functioning democracies where the rule of law is supreme to even the highest office holder, a pardon is usually extended to someone who is convicted of a crime.

In other words, the justice system that upholds the rule of law is supposed to first go to work in the case of the accused, rendering a guilty or not guilty verdict.

What Mr Bynoe was accused of, was not a crime against President Jagdeo, but against the state and the people of Guyana. His crime demanded that the state and the people of Guyana render him due process in accordance with the justice system. If the state no longer wished to pursue treason charges, based on a letter of contrition from Mr Bynoe, then the Director of Public Prosecutions, acting in concert with the Guyana Police Force, had to make a public statement withdrawing the charges it levelled against Mr Bynoe.

For the President to publicly get involved in this matter after making it quite clear that Mr Bynoe was still wanted for his alleged crime of treason and then supersede the justice system by ‘free pardoning’ the accused, raises serious red flags among many of us who have been observing the President’s eagerness to use those constitutional clauses originally intended for the late Forbes Burnham, whose autocratic style of governance required that he be constitutionally protected whenever he spoke or acted.

After watching how Burnham governed, all Guyanese, including the late Dr Cheddi Jagan and the PPP, determined that at the first chance, the constitution needed to be overhauled to reflect, among other things, a President who does not abuse his authority by hiding behind specifically designed constitutional clauses. Certain clauses just had to go!

Unfortunately, we have now discovered that the deeply flawed Guyana constitution that was supposed to have been overhauled with a series of amendments in the late 1990s, still contains flawed clauses that allow the President to supersede the judicial/legal system as was originally the case under Burnham.

Obviously the constitution is still in need of a genuine overhauling to make the law supreme to the presidency and the people, regardless of political persuasion.

And while the PNC’s parliamentary support will be needed for future amendments, one has to question why during the last amendments it didn’t push for the deletion of those clauses that protect the President’s autocratic behaviour?

Was it hoping to appease the PPP in hope of being granted shared governance status? Will the President eventually acquiesce once he is satisfied he is firmly entrenched in political power?

Editor, if there ever is going to be a shared governance deal between the PPP and PNC in the near or foreseeable future, there is only one question: Will the President grant a ‘free pardon’ to the demonized PNC for all the charges levelled against that party for being associated with dangerous criminals?

As much as a ‘free pardon’ and shared governance agreement may be politically expedient moves, it may again underscore the troubling role of the President in superseding the justice and legal system, which still needs to find official closure for the many innocent Guyanese who were killed or injured (in some cases, for supposedly partisan political reasons) at the hands of demented criminal elements. Ironically, the PNC has been accused but never found guilty!

Finally, for those who believe the President was magnanimous, don’t you think his magnanimity should now extend to all wanted suspects or prisoners on remand awaiting trial on a variety of charges (many less serious than treason)?

Shouldn’t they deluge the President with letters expressing remorse and a desire for a second chance at freedom?

Because of a definitely flawed constitution, President Jagdeo may yet become the Caribbean’s most magnanimous and benevolent head of government who virtually wields unlimited executive power.