Donald Trump Calls for Barring Muslims From Entering U.S.

Donald J. Trump called on Monday for the United States to bar all
Muslims from entering the country until the nations leaders can
figure out (to think about sb/sth until you understand it) what is
going on after the terrorist attacks in San Bernardino, Calif., an
extraordinary escalation of rhetoric aimed at voters fears about
members of the Islamic faith.
A prohibition of Muslims an unprecedented proposal by a leading
American presidential candidate, and an idea more typically associated
with hate groups reflects a progression of mistrust that is rooted in
ideology as much as politics.
Saying that hatred among many Muslims for Americans is beyond
comprehension, (impossible to understand) Mr. Trump said in a
statement that the United States needed to confront where this hatred
comes from and why.
Until we are able to determine and understand this problem and the
dangerous threat it poses, our country cannot be the victims of
horrendous attacks by people that believe only in jihad, and have no
sense of reason or respect for human life, Mr. Trump said.
Asked what prompted his statement, Mr. Trump said, death, according
to a spokeswoman.
Repudiation (reject, deny, disown)of Mr. Trumps remarks was swift
and severe among religious groups and politicians from both parties. Mr.
Trump is unhinged,(mentally ill) said one Republican rival, former
Gov. Jeb Bush of Florida, while another, Senator Marco Rubio of Florida,
called the ban offensive and outlandish. Hillary Clinton said the idea
was reprehensible, prejudiced and divisive. Organizations representing
Jews, Christians and those of other faiths quickly joined Muslims in
denouncing Mr. Trumps proposal.

Taming Carbon Emissions From the Invisible Shipping

Industry
With its cavernous(like a cave) cargo holds and gleaming(shining )
white superstructure, the 730-foot Perla del Caribe, which is nearing
completion at a shipyard here, looks like any midsize container ship.
The idea of the European Union is under threat as never before, as Marine
Le Pens anti-EU campaign powers on, Hungary challenges first principles
and Britain lurches (stagger, sway, to make sudden uneasy movement
forward or sideways) nearer the exit. What good timing for the Victoria and
Albert Museum this week to open its redesigned European galleries, a
strong reminder of our common history, told in artifacts. See how cultural
influences from Italy and France ricochet (to hit a surface and come off it
fast at a different angle)across the continent; how trade spreads not just
design and technology but ideas, as the Enlightenment breezes across
borders. We have a shared inheritance. Whatever they say, they cant take
that away from us, says Martin Roth, the museums German director.

Querulous (peevish,complaining,showing that you are so annoyed)British

negotiations look tawdry(intended to be bright and attractive but of low
quality,involving low moral standards) against that sweeping*(spreading
quickly) backdrop( the setting or conditions within which
something happens ). As he celebrates 10 years as party leader, David
Cameron is stepping closer to taking Britain out of the EU: will he make
such a momentous(important)move for such trivial reasons? Caught in a
trap of his own devising, he has twisted together two wicked political issues
Brexit and benefits like a pair of snakes.
His recent fruitless talks with EU leaders leave the British question
somewhere between low and nowhere on the agenda for the meeting of the
EUs European council next week. The other 27 members have life-anddeath matters to discuss: an unstoppable flow of migrants, terrorists
crossing borders and Schengen crumbling, while the euro still trembles
unsteadily. Patience with the frivolity (silly behavior)of Britains
pointless (having no purpose)negotiation has worn (became old and
damaged)thin*.
For the first time observers are reporting that Brussels and Berlin regard a
British exit as a serious* possibility. They dont want us to go, but
Camerons cavalier ( not caring about sthg very important) approach
pushes them towards indifference. Some report that he himself seems to
care less about leaving than he once did, as UK polls sway*(influence)
closer to exit and he hits a brick wall (unable to make any progress
because there is a difficulty that stops you) through his own
ineptitude(lack of skill).
Why did he make the emotive but empty issue of abolishing working
benefits for EU migrants the centre-piece (the most imp item) of his
renegotiation? His officials and government lawyers warned this was an
impossible demand. Other leaders will not, and cannot, in law agree: free
movement of labour without discrimination is a founding EU principle.

Besides, leaders in Poland, Hungary and other states must resist

discrimination against their citizens or risk their own political survival.
Why did Cameron ignore legal advice? He seized on a report by Open
Europe, a skeptical think tank, that said denying benefits to EU migrants is
legal. But the law is not so straightforward, and now hes in a fix (difficult
situation, mess).
At first it looked as if a simple residency test might do the trick: people
qualify for in-work benefits only after living here for four years, so our own
18-year-olds would automatically qualify. But EU lawyers say, rightly, that
this would discriminate against new arrivals who couldnt have lived here
from the age of 14. The only legal answer is to deny tax credits and housing
benefit to everyone including Britons who hasnt contributed by
working for four years. When Iain Duncan Smith, the work and pensions
secretary, was asked on yesterdays Andrew Marr Show to rule that out, he
refused and praised the contributory principle that only pays out to those
who have paid in.
How many people would be hit? The usual think tanks cant produce exact
figures yet, but here are their informed calculations: 24,000 people aged
under 20 draw tax credits young parents unlikely to (not probable)have
four-year work histories; more are out of work; and a further 100,000
people aged 20 to 24 have been in work for less than four years. The total
affected would be around 200,000, mostly parents, who draw significant
tax credits.
Heres the irony: thats many more than the number of EU workers who
draw these benefits.
Others who would be harmed this might alarm Tory MPs are stay-athome mothers who have never worked. A third of marriages end in divorce,
and mothers suddenly caring for children alone would be denied tax credits
and housing benefit for four years as they work for the first time.

Wouldnt this cause the same furor (uproar) George Osborne created with
his threatened tax credit cuts? Tory advocates of this solution to the EU
conundrum(a confusing pbm that is difficult to solve, riddle) say a fouryear delay would be more politically acceptable as it would deny benefits to
new claimants rather than taking cash from existing ones. After all, the tax
credit U-turn merely shifted the cuts to new claimants of universal credit:
so long as you dont snatch benefits from any current recipients, it seems no
one notices.
But theres another wicked twist* in all this. After Duncan Smith had
sounded somewhat sanguine(optimistic ,cheerful) on the Marr show
about the possibility of imposing a four-year wait on UK citizens, sources
close to him suggested something very different: no, he would be strongly
opposed as it would be so unfair, depriving too many young people and
families of benefits they need.
Really? This was a surprising softening of the heart from the man who has
overseen (superwise) colossal(very large) benefit cuts and the bedroom
tax with another 12bn of cuts to come. As the Child Poverty Action
Group protests, his welfare reform bill gives up poverty targets and stops
measuring it altogether. So why the sudden attack of empathy?
Here is where the two snakes intertwine (to become very closely
connected with). Remember Duncan Smith is one of John Majors
original anti-EU bastards, and sits on the cabinet sub-committee
overseeing EU negotiations. By refusing to let UK citizens suffer this fouryear benefit delay, might he be ushering the country towards the Brexit gate
hes always favored? If he is sacked or resigns for not accepting the
renegotiated conditions, how principled he can sound.
If you need another reminder of just how crazed the Leave campaign is,
consider its response this week to rumors that Cameron may campaign for
out if he cant win his impossible benefit demand. The Brexits say they
dont want him to lead them: hes toxic, and they prefer Boris Johnson as

their figurehead. Their perversity knows no bounds; the prime ministers

weight behind them would surely swing the referendum their way.
Britains future hangs on the short-term political whim of this prime
minister. Stroll through the V&As gallery and contemplate how deep our
roots lie in this common European culture.

The evening after I returned from Paris, Saturday 14 November, my local

Dominos pizza was having one of the busiest nights of the year so far. Its
the terrorist attacks in Paris, said the man on the phone. Everyone is
staying in and ordering take away.
This did not, at the time, tally with what my colleague Zoe Williams
referred to as the clamorous (to demand sth lodly) bravado(dhairyam
ga unnatlu natinchadam) to show that you were fashionably not afraid
and would carry on as normal. Its all very well for Londoners to imply that
they are channelling the blitz spirit; its another thing entirely to reject the
temptation to hunker down (mokalla danda, squat) with a stuffed crust
(sand witch)and bravely take to the streets.
In fact, London has felt like a very jumpy city since mid-November, and I
have no doubt that the Leytonstone attacks on Friday will add to this
feeling. Friends and colleagues speak of a lurking(nakki unduta)
paranoia(karanam lekunda eduti manishini anumaninchadam), of panic
attacks over abandoned suitcases and horrific nightmares, while the
headlines scream of the possibility of dirty bombs and extra armed police.
Commander Richard Walton, who leads the Mets counter-terrorism
command, said, following the Leytonstone attack: I would continue to urge
the public to remain calm, but alert and vigilant.

Its easier said than done, this keep calm and carry on business. I wonder if
we need to get away (bayata padadam) from this idea that you can
control fear, and that there is a kind of moral superiority to not feeling
frightened. Im not saying that we should all run around like headless
chickens(to be very busy trying to do sthg ,but not very organized ,with
the result that you do not suceed), but lets at least admit that many of us
are feeling anxious, paranoid, suspicious, hyper vigilant and generally
freaked out.
Since the attacks in Paris, I have heard older people speak of the blitz and
the IRA bombings, and how they simply went about their business, got on
*(to manage to do a particular thing)as normal. I wonder how much of this
is a result of the sense of security offered by hindsight, of looking back and
thinking: I was fine. Which makes me grateful for my grandmother, who
told me that being bombed in Hartle pool during the second world war was
terrifying and traumatising, and the friend who got caught up in 7/7 and
who confessed how, a few days later, she hit the floor when she heard a loud
bang. Theres a solidarity that comes from saying Im scared too that I
find absent in the posturing of the stiff upper lip.
At the very best, fear can be somewhat managed, but it is a primitive, fightor-flight impulse that kicks in when you feel your life is in danger (whether
rationally, because of a terrorist with a gun, or irrationally, because of a
rucksack left unclaimed for only a minute). When experiencing such
emotions, human beings can respond differently. Some will see a ranting
man waving a knife on the tube and will grab their children and run,
screaming. Others will film it on their phones or tell him, You aint no
Muslim, bruv. No one reaction is more virtuous than the other. You deal
with a threat to your life in a way that is almost entirely involuntary.

VANCOUVER, British Columbia Qataris who seek greater freedom of

expression and more democracy in their oil-rich nation face
disappointment, and perhaps worse. In what may presage(warning or
sign that sthg bad will happen) a wider crackdown on dissent in Qatar,
Sheikh Fahad bin Abdullah al-Thani a cousin of the ruling emir, Sheikh
Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani was last month sentenced to seven years in
prison.
Gov. Andrew Cuomo laid out an ambitious policy agenda for the coming
year in a State of the State address on Wednesday that blended the personal
and political. He harked back (gatam lo jarigina dani gurinchi matladu
kovadam/gurthuchesukovadam)to a tough 2015, when he lost his father,
Mario, pivoting deftly to a call for 12 weeks of paid family leave. He made
a powerful economic and moral case for a $15 minimum wage, and pledged
multibillion-dollar investments in transportation, infrastructure and
housing, and an aggressive plan to attack homelessness.
Oh, and he mentioned another New York problem.
Recent acts have undermined (to make sthg weaker)the publics trust in
government, Mr. Cuomo said, with exceeding understatement. He was
alluding to the absence of the state Legislatures two former top bosses,
Sheldon Silver and Dean Skelos, who were convicted of multiple
corruption counts last year. Their stunning downfalls, after years in power,
were prime evidence that the government Mr. Cuomo hailed as competent
and effective is also a capital of graft, self-dealing, influence-peddling (to
spread and idea or story in order to get people to accept it )and ethical
torpor(lethargy).
What followed from Mr. Cuomo was a litany(long boring account of a
series of events) of good-governance proposals that, though familiar, are
still sorely(seriously,very much) needed: Publicly financing campaigns.
Ending the rule that allows outside groups to donate campaign cash as
freely as if they were people (the L.L.C. loophole, which has benefited Mr.
Cuomo greatly). Limiting lawmakers outside incomes to 15 percent of their
base pay, which isnt as good as a ban, but would be progress. Making
convicted lawmakers forfeit their pensions, to avoid the galling(making
you angry because it is unfair) prospect*(likely to happen) of
crooks(criminals) like Mr. Silver and Mr. Skelos fattening their bank
accounts with taxpayers money while sitting in prison for public
corruption.
Mr. Cuomos ethics proposals were tucked into the speech, well after he hit
other points, like the news that New York now makes more Greek yogurt
than Greece and, thanks to a new craft-beverage law, is home to flourishing
numbers of wineries, breweries and cideries.

But at least Mr. Cuomo proposed them. And he also made promising news
with a $20 billion plan on housing. It would build 100,000 units of
affordable housing, and a lot of supportive housing with social services to
protect vulnerable people from the streets 6,000 units in five years, and
20,000 units in 15 years. He also wants the state and city comptrollers to
audit homeless shelters in New York, Buffalo and other cities, and failing
shelter systems to be put into state receivership if local officials fail to fix
them.
Its possible to see these proposals as a rebuke to Mayor Bill de Blasio,
whom Mr. Cuomo has accused of ineptitude on homelessness, citing the
citys appallingly unsafe shelter system. Even so, Mr. de Blasio should
overlook the criticisms and take any money the state offers. By plunging
into (to jump into sthg)this problem, the governor said, We can say to the
public of this state, Everything that can be done, we are doing. If political
one-upmanship leads to safer shelters and clears the streets, then the two
men should hold hands and go for it.
Every time we walk by a homeless person we leave a piece of our soul on
that curb, Mr. Cuomo said. In moments like those he was vivid and
eloquent, reminding voters of his ability at times to rise above political
calculation and empty promises. He was at his most persuasive when he
was committing to an unabashedly progressive agenda: farsighted and
compassionate.
We can raise the minimum wage to $15 and we can show this nation what
real economic justice means, he said, claiming ownership of that urgent
issue. He noted that McDonalds and Burger King, by paying wages too low
to live on, were relying on the government to give workers the benefits they
need to survive. He also laid into the cost, the waste, the inefficiency of
New Yorks 10,500 local governments, and promised $100 billion in
infrastructure projects that would make Governor Rockefeller jealous.
Washington just cant get it done, Mr. Cuomo said, wrapping up his pep
talk. In New York, we can and we will. That claim is believable, as long as
it includes ethics reform, the hard part, which remains Mr. Cuomos Job 1.
The fact that Americans start voting in a matter of weeks loomed over(to
appear imp or threatening and likely to happen) President Obamas
final State of the Union address Tuesday. I know some of you are
antsy(not able to keep still,impatient) to get back to Iowa, he cracked, as
he began the speech.

But as president, Mr. Obama gets to take time to crow about(boast) whats
good in the economy, not just focus on fixing whats bad, as nearly all
candidates of both parties are doing. Its a tricky line to walk and a nearly
impossible one on the campaign trail, because, according to recent polls,
voters mostly feel that the economy still has a way to go until they will
personally feel financially secure.
Early in his speech, the president sought to quell(stop) the fears that
the economy is on anything but stable footing*. Anyone claiming that
Americas economy is in decline is peddling (to spread an idea to make
people believe)fiction, Mr. Obama said, adding later that any statement to
the contrary is political hot air. He listed a number of indicators of how
strong the economic recovery he has overseen has been. And hes right.
According to Bureau of Labor Statistics data, the unemployment rate has
been slashed, from 7.8 percent when he took office to 5 percent in the most
recent jobs report. The private sector added more than 9 million jobs over
that time. When it comes to the job market, the Great Recession is a thing
of the past.
But the pain of it isnt. While Americans have by and large gone back to
work, theyre not seeing a whole lot more money in return. Wage growth
has only chugged along below or slightly above 2 percent since about mid2009 as productivity growth how much economic growth Americans are
generating through their work has grown much faster. That has come
after decades of wage stagnation for the majority of American workers.
Things are better for the rich, as income inequality has continued to grow
and income gains have been heaped at the top of the income scale.
According to an analysis by the economist Emmanuel Saez, the bottom 99
percent of Americans recovered just 40 percent of the income they lost in
the recession by 2014. On the other hand, the richest 1 percent captured 58
percent of all income growth in the first five years of the recovery. Income
inequality has in fact gotten worse after the Great Recession and under
President Obamas watch. That dynamic makes people less happy.
In his address, the president acknowledged that people still view the
economy with some malaise. For the past seven years, our goal has been a
growing economy that works better for everybody, he said. Weve made
progress. But we need to make more.

Signs of that progress are largely absent from the campaign trail, which
may reinforce a negative view in the publics mind. During the debates,
nearly every Republican candidate has brandished(kathulu nooradam)
the fact that wages have been stagnant for decades. The Democratic
candidates focus has been on how to increase middle class incomes.
Theres little room for talk about the remarkable turnaround the economy
has experienced over the last seven years. Given that positive change has
yet to filter down into most peoples pockets, its a tough selling point.

Defence is an area where governments are notoriously beholden to

archaism and special interests and where oppositions have a duty of
challenge. The idea that opposition to the renewal of Trident is an extreme
policy confined to the British left is absurd. Anyone reading the recent
literature on the nuclear deterrent can reach only one conclusion. It is
daft(silly).
Even the more articulate defenders of Trident, such as the Tory MP
Julian Lewis, must fall back on unspecific ideals of world influence
and insurance, without ever defining a deter-able threat. Britains bomb
cut no ice (to have no influence or effect on sbd)with Leopoldo Galtieri,
Slobodan Miloevi or Saddam Hussein. We can imagine swarms(to be
full of people things) of terrorists charging ashore off the Dover ferry, but it
would make more sense putting Dads Army back in uniform and issuing
teachers with machine guns.

America is finally waking up to its

inequality problem
To critique Barack Obamas presidency is to be guilty of these cardinal
sins(ghoramaina papalu): blasphemy, ingratitude and a lack of realism.
What was once the nation of Jim Crow produced the first African-American
president, the most liberal commander-in-chief since Richard Nixon (as
Obama himself once put it). Funny, charming, with a coolness that eludes
(teliviga tappinchukovadam) practically every other politician, he is the
ultimate ambassador for US power. Could the United States possibly elect
someone more progressive?
And yet it is difficult not to conclude that, as Obama delivers his final State
of the Union address, the US remains a chronically unjust and
devastatingly unequal society, its proud democracy beholden to
powerful and wealthy interests. It is this potential tinderbox(a
situation that is likely to become dangerous) that makes the implausibly
clown-like, quasi-fascist Donald Trump the Republican frontrunner; and,
more hopefully, a 74-year-old self-described socialist from Vermont
Bernie Sanders a serious challenger to the Clinton machine.
Thats not to diminish Obamas achievements. The lack of universal
healthcare has long made the US a baffling aberration among
developed nations; Obamacares significantly increased coverage should
not be sniffed at. Obamas U-turn on his public stance on equal marriage
yes, made possible by the struggle and sacrifice of US LGBT activists is
another triumph. His recent activism on the great US guns scandal and the
existential threat of climate change is to be applauded, too.
But consider the plight (difficult and bad situation) of the majority of
Americans. We know that, six years into his presidency, poverty was still
higher than before the financial system near-imploded ( to fail suddenly
and completely). While child poverty has been alleviated for many
Americans in the past five years, for African-Americans it has
remained stubbornly constant.

The gains of economic recovery have certainly been beneficial to those of

great wealth including the culprits behind the crash but have meant
little to the average American. Of course, that has everything to do with the
structure of the US economy since Ronald Reagan swept to power. Consider
this: according to the Economic Policy Institute a think tank close to the
embattled (surrounded by problems and difficulties) US labour
movement between 1979 and 2007, the top 1% seized 53.9% of the entire
increase in US income. It is often suggested that male median income has
been stagnant in the US since the 1970s, hidden only by a flood of women
into the workforce: how thats worked out depends on all sorts of
qualifications, such as which price index you choose. Yet even by the most
optimistic calculations, if university-educated American men have enjoyed
a boost in salaries, those with only high school qualifications
endured sliding incomes between 1979 and 2013.
But if Reaganism engineered this model, Obamaism failed to replace it.
According to Emmanuel Saez, a US economics professor, between Obamas
inauguration in 2009 and 2013, pre-tax income among the top 1% has
jumped from $871,100 to $968,000; for everybody else, it practically stood
still.
Yes, the top 1% suffered a bigger hit in the crash (but how they bounced
back), employers healthcare contributions have to be factored in (to
include a particular fact or situation when ur thinking abt or planning sthg),
and Obamas administration introduced a more progressive tax
system than the one Bush bequeathed(leave). Yet here is an economy
structurally geared* to(to make change or prepare) favour the very
wealthiest. A woman in a full-time job takes home the same pay packet as
she did in 2007; a man, slightly less. In 2014, hourly wages after inflation
were falling or flat lining (to be at low level or failed to improve or
increase)for most American workers. US workers might be more
productive, but they will struggle to see the gains in their bank balances.

Thats before we even deal with foreign policy. We all know of Bushs Iraq
folly (stupidity), opposed by Obama himself; but, as Isis marches across
*the coast of chaos-ravaged Libya, we spend too little time addressing the
presidents own foreign calamity. Drones that former US service personnel
have described as recruiting sergeants for Isis; the failure to redeem his
promise to shut Guantnamo; the failure to secure a just peace in Palestine.
Across the western world, popular discontent is either being funnelled
into (to make or move sthg through a narrow space)the ranks of the
xenophobic populist right, or new progressive movements of the left. For all
too many struggling middle-income and poor Americans, it is Trump who
has become the answer, directing their anger at anyone but the powerful.
But whether or not Bernie Sanders secures the nomination, his movement
offers some hope to cure the ills of modern America.
Without the support of Big Money, Sanderss grassroots campaign
raised $73mlast year. With primary elections looming, Hillary Clinton is
now in a dead heat (when two or more people are in same posn in a
competition) with Sanders in Iowa; in New Hampshire, he is ahead. His
movement could transform the Democrat party.
None of this is to scapegoat Obama. Even the most well-intentioned
president will struggle against a system described last year by Princeton
researchers as anoligarchy, where the median net worth of a senator in
2013 was $2.8m. But fewer Americans are self-identifying as conservative;
younger Americans have far more progressive views than their elders. Black
Lives Matter and Occupy have forced long-ignored issues on to the agenda.
Obamas presidency has failed to build the just America its citizens deserve.
But the US has a proud history of bottom-up* movements that have
overcome injustice. Their time may have come again.

Despite the junior doctors strikes,

patients are with us
So it happened. It came to a strike, and today more than 150 protests are
taking place around the UK over the threat to impose a new junior doctor
contract in August, despite our concerns over safety. The strike only nonurgent care, provided by junior doctors. So in fact people will still be seen
today , if it is an emergency.
If negotiations still remain sour *(not cheerful), then further strikes are
planned, one of which involves removing emergency services from 8am to
5pm. Just the thought of it makes me feel ill, a reaction shared by many of
my colleagues.
I am not out on the picket lines today. This is not because I dont believe in
the strike, but because I have a relative in hospital whom Ive been caring
for so Im seeing the impact on both sides of this dispute. I also have a
medical exam tomorrow. And this seems a big part of the problem
underpinning (to support the basis of an argment) the debate: that we
have lives.
Many people have an idealized image of doctors: they work long,
grueling(difficult) hours, nobly accept thanks when another life is
saved, and sacrifice their own lives for the sake of other people. Except that
it isnt true. Were human. We get hungry, sick and tired. We fall in love and
get married. We have children, parents and extended family, who need
looking after.
We work without a break for the whole shift to try to beat* the
workload. Ive always said that if I ever had to have emergency surgery,
Id double check that my surgeon had had a sandwich in the last six hours,
because Ive seen enough starved doctors doing complex procedures.
(When I did have major surgery, I checked hed had breakfast.)

Ive done enough shifts myself when Ive stared enviously at the patients
beige (yellowish-brown color) meals being served as my stomach
grumbled (to complain in a bad tempered way). We get punched, kicked,
and screamed at by patients. We undertake procedures that potentially put
us at risk of hepatitis and HIV.
Yet the debate has been framed around pay, while ignoring the basic
safeguarding issues that are evident in the proposed new contracts: that
9pm, for example, is not classified as night; Saturday is equivalent to a
weekday, and work conducted at 2am does not qualify as part of a night
shift.
If anyone has worked five 13-hour night shifts in a row which the
government finds acceptable, compared with the British Medical
Associations proposed maximum of three Im sure theyd agree that
quality of decision-making by the fifth night can be very hit and miss.
Its a matter of pride that I could work part time and look after my father
after his stroke, and that the time I took out of training allowed me to be
there when he passed away. Its a matter of pride that I took the decision for
a risk-reducing bilateral mastectomy and reconstruction (again out of
training, no pay involved) owing to my genetic risk. So its confusing
that the BMAs proposal to support doctors starting a family, or
undertaking research the kind of life-saving research we see in action
every day without punitively affecting their pay has also been rejected.
It leads to patients being treated by tired, overworked doctors at risk of
poor judgment. It leads to doctors feeling as if theyre not being treated as
real people.

The NHS will always need more money. This is not because its a
decrepit(very old and not in good condition) leaking ship, as often
depicted, but because every modern healthcare system in the world will
always need more money, more research and more beds, to give patients
the best chance of treatment. That is what an ethical and humane system
does. Healthcare for our ageing and increasing population will require far
more investment to make it remotely *sustainable. Cutting staff pay and
fudging (to avoid giving clear and accurate info) what constitutes
unsociable hours is a strange way to do it.
And my familys experience in hospital on this strike day? Largely positive.
The consultant took on the juniors role without question. My family, and
other patients I spoke to, are grateful emergency care hasnt been
suspended, that it appears their consultant is well briefed on the situation,
and that they are not being forced into a discharge that isnt right for them.
Not once did they feel a loss of sympathy or care.
In return, they understood that the industrial action needs to be taken.
After all, with three generations of family with complex medical needs, they
are not going to begrudge the voice of doctors in the future of the NHS.
The potential suspension of emergency services sits very uneasily with
junior doctors. We know that other health staff and consultants are willing
to provide cover for us, which is reassuring. But not one of us doesnt hope
some way will be found to resolve this dispute before any further action.
Patients and doctors are united on this. The government should listen.

We all remember the bad kids from high school: the pregnant teen, the
kid who was always getting into fights, the truant (school eggotte pillalu)
student, or the one who just couldnt keep *up (to move, make progress at
the same rate) with the rest of us.
We take kids who cant seem to stay on track and write them off (a period
which you did not achieve anything), dismissing them with summary
labels. Its simpler that way if we know what they are, we dont really
have to think about why. So more often than not, the roots of a bad kids
difficulties are left unexplored, as they would most likely force us to look at
histories of abuse, neglect, abandonment, addiction or possibly even that
huge unspoken problem that plagues our public education system:
intractable, generational poverty.
This Op-Doc video profiles one of those kids, a talented art student named
Summer Jordan, who attends Black Rock High School in the Mojave Desert
town of Yucca Valley, Calif. An alternative public school for at-risk students,
Black Rock is cautiously regarded, even in its own community, as the school
where the bad kids go, despite consistently high graduation rates. But at
Black Rock High, the staff does not judge at-risk students as failures;
rather, they see them as fragile youths who are more than likely dealing
with problems outside of school that would daunt most adults. And as youll
see in this Op-Doc, the students and their problems are much more
complicated than they may initially seem.
Luckily for kids like Summer, the schools staff is not afraid of asking what
impediments might be keeping its students from doing their best in school.
The approach seems obvious, but its quite revolutionary: It is the simple
understanding that for a student whos hungry, or not sure where he is
going to sleep that night, or afraid of someone she lives with, learning is
impossible, no matter how innovative the curriculum or teaching methods.

After a long year of too much polling, posturing and propaganda,

American voters are now at last making choices. The run-up to the Iowa
caucuses, which took place on Monday night, shows its time to move
beyond the emotional venting (vent=opening) that has been broadly
common to both parties, but could not have been more different in the
particulars.
Republican candidates, for the most part, showed no real sign of wanting
that to happen. Gov. John Kasich of Ohio kept up his extremely longshot attempt(an attempt or guess that is not likely to successful but
worth trying it)) to inject a tone of decency and hopefulness into the
Republican contest, but trailed well behind in all the pre-caucus polls
and spent his time in New Hampshire.
Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, who scored a significant victory in Iowa over
Donald Trump by staking out* the most extreme right, ran his usual
mean spirited* attacks on just about everybody.
Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, who fared well on Monday night, tried
to put a younger and more charming face on the basic Republican
message of anger, xenophobia, fear and hate, but at a rally on Saturday
night he fairly quickly veered into (to change direction, swerve)
demonizing President Obama, misrepresenting vital issues like Obama
care, and using critical national security issues mostly to stoke (agniki
ajyam poyuta) Americans insecurities.
At least Mr. Rubio has distinct ideas. Mr. Trump, who sucked up most of
the oxygen in the campaign, seems to have none. On Monday, at a rally
in Cedar Rapids, Mr. Trump ran through his repertoire of selfcongratulation, and when the crowd started to dwindle and quiet down,
he resorted to his rabble-rousing sound bites well build a wall on the
Mexican border, repeal Obama care and replace it with something really
good, eliminate the national debt and stop terrorists from using our
Internet.
At one point in the last few days, Mr. Trump promised to buy a farm and
move to Iowa, and said he had not spent more on his campaign
operations in Iowa because he felt sorry for his competition secure,
apparently, in his belief that he can say anything and none of his
supporters will care.
The only thing that made Mr. Trumps performance on Monday seem
less absurd was that he followed Sarah Palin. Mr. Trump would be
Reaganesque, she said, in a way that would tell any enemy, uh-uh,
were America so we win you lose. She said the Republican Congress,

which was implacably opposed to virtually anything proposed by Mr.

Obama, had given him a blank check. And, of course, right-wing
Republicans are the only real Americans.
The Democratic contest, at least, was a competition of ideas. Bernie
Sanders and Hillary Clinton were in a virtual dead heat at the
caucuses. Though they criticized the Republicans, and each other, they
did so with more civility than the Republicans and in service of talking
about what they wanted to do, not what President Obama failed to do.
Still, their contest has been largely framed as a choice between head and
heart.
Mr. Sanders is all about heart. On Sunday, he talked about revolution,
as he always does. He kept asking his audience if they wanted to hear
another radical idea and spoke not about just upending the
Washington power structure, but about tearing it down. His highly
enthusiastic crowd cheered his promises to break up the banks,
regardless of whether that is remotely* possible.
Mrs. Clinton, while exuding* a great deal of fire and energy at a
big rally on Sunday night near Des Moines, frames her candidacy much
more cerebrally and pragmatically. She made rousing calls to protect
womens rights, on wage equality and on health care, but her primary
pitch was that she has detailed ideas and the ability to make them
happen. I dont think we can wait for ideas that sound good on paper
but cant get through the gridlock in Washington, she said, in her most
pointed but still oblique attack on Mr. Sanders.
With a few of the weakest candidates starting to drop out, weary voters
can only hope that the campaign will further clarify itself and become
more substantive in coming weeks as it moves to New Hampshire and
beyond.
Officers and reporters have ferreted out (to discover information or
finding sb sthg thoroughly) his father and paternal family in an
overzealous attempt to roll back the demand that this is a Dalit
issue. The old patriarchal argument that since his father was Vaddera, he
was Vaddera, negates Dalit womens struggles in a caste order. In this
case, it obliterates (to remove all signs of sthg by removing or covering
it completely) the experience of struggle against bondage, violence and
humiliation of two generations, Radhika Vemula and her children
their fortitude (courage, brave) and determination to defeat the
oppressions of caste at all costs. And when they are on the threshold of
an unimaginable victory, we witness, yet again, annihilation by caste.

An injustice compounded and bolstered by the institutional and political

denial of discrimination or atrocity.
Toxic Loans Around the World Weigh on (to make sbd
anxious or worried) Global Growth
Beneath the surface of the global financial system lurks a multitrilliondollar problem that could sap(to make sbd weaker) the strength of large
economies for years to come.
The problem is the giant, stagnant pool of loans that companies and people
around the world are struggling to pay back. Bad debts have been a drag
on (to go for too long)economic activity ever since the financial crisis of
2008, but in recent months, the threat posed by an overhang of bad loans
appears to be rising. China is the biggest source of worry. Some analysts
estimate that Chinas troubled credit could exceed $5 trillion, a
staggering (shock or surprise) number that is equivalent to half the size
of the countrys annual economic output.
Official figures show that Chinese banks pulled back on their lending in
December. If such trends persist(continue to exist), Chinas economy, the
second-largest in the world behind the United States, may then slow even
more than it has, further harming the many countries that have for years
relied on China for their growth.
But its not just China. Wherever governments and central banks
unleashed (suddenly get a strong force or emotion) aggressive stimulus
policies in recent years, a toxic debt hangover has followed. In the United
States, it took many months for mortgage defaults to fall after the most
recent housing bust and energy companies are struggling to pay off
(bribe)the cheap money that they borrowed to pile into the shale boom.

Now India is growing fast its time to update our

tired image of the country
It is an annual ritual for tens of thousands of residents of Delhi: the
sumptuous (very expensive and looking very impressive)sight of floats,
soldiers, tanks, dancers and dromedaries. Overhead roar jets. In the
stands lining the path of the Republic Day parade , thousands cheer and
wave. The visiting dignitaries Frances Franois Hollande this year,
Barack Obama last year nod, smile and try not to let their envy at the
latest set of topline figures about their hosts economic growth show too
obviously
For that growth is as impressive as any of the displays of traditional arts
or freshly painted armoured vehicles. It is certainly more important to
India than either. New figures released by Indian authorities last week
put economic growth in the emerging power at 7.5% in 2015, the highest
in the world, and up from 6.9% the year before. Growth in China is
heading in the opposite direction predicted to be only 6.3% in 2016
while the US will expand by a mere 2.6%. To spare Hollandes blushes
(avamanam to moham errabauta), lets not even mention the predictions
for France.
So, after several disappointing years, the elephant has once again begun
to dance. And, in a world shaken by a series of rolling (done in regular
stages)crises, anything remotely* cheerful gets noticed. Indias economy
is the 10th or 11th biggest in the world and is forecast to reach third, after
the US and China, in less than 15 years.
This leads to two important questions: is Indias rise, which looked to be
slowing, really back on track? And if so, what will Indias eventual
emergence as a major economic power actually mean? The answers to
both challenge many of the easy assumptions often made in the west.

The first is that Indias rise is certainly unlikely to be linear and uniform;
after all, very little else in the chaotic, immensely varied nation of 1.3bn
is. The Indian growth calculations were made according to a new and
generous formula. A year ago, Rushir Sharma, an expert on emerging
economies, banker and best-selling author, dismissed them as a bad
joke. More recently, other commentators have been less scathing.
No one claims the blunt GDP growth statistics describe ground reality,
however. Anyone who has spent any time in India knows that the
country still suffers enormous problems: grossly inadequate
infrastructure and a deep skills deficit that could easily turn the
demographic dividend of a youthful population into soaring inequality,
massive corporate debt, political gridlock , patchy(uneven) rule of law,
poor governance and horrendous environmental degradation.
Still, to dismiss the rise of India would be wrong. Whatever the doubts, it
is difficult to deny the huge wealth generated over the past 30 years, and
the powerful motors of urbanisation and aspiration. It is likely that the
coming years will see more of the same.
So what does this mean for the rest of the world? So far India has not
converted its new-found wealth into commensurate (matching sthg in
size and quality) global clout (power and influence). This vast nation
has always punched below its weight(punch above your weight=to be or
try to be more successful than others in doing sthg which requires more
skill, experience ,money than you have) on the international stage, other
than perhaps during the 1950s, when Jawaharlal Nehru, the
independence leader and prime minister, converted moral prestige into
influence.
One reason has been the absence of a UN Security Council seat, and the
often urgent distractions of a tough neighbourhood. Another is, as
former prime minister Manmohan Singh said as recently as 2013, that,
despite the boom years, India remains a poor country. But others

include an under-resourced diplomatic service, an unwillingness to take

strong positions on international issues, a weak military and a sense of
exceptionalism which means that little that is done overseas such as
driving in lanes, or global norms of insurance of nuclear reactors is
seen as having much relevance to India itself. This latter belief may be
partially justified south Asian problems usually require south Asian
solutions but it doesnt help India engage globally and win arguments.
This lack of power projection also means India is badly misunderstood.
The image of the US overseas incorporates hard elements (a willingness
to use military force or to impose trade agreements favouring US
businesses) with softer elements (film and TV, music, hamburgers).
One of the consequences of Indias profound lack of hard power is that
its image is defined almost entirely by soft elements: Bollywood,
Mahatma Gandhi, curry, films such as the Last Best Marigold
Hotel or Slumdog Millionaire, and the countrys reputation as a global
information technology hub. This distorts the reality.
This distortion is reinforced by the focus on Indias democratic
institutions, the widespread use of English and even the enthusiasm for
cricket. One result is a sense among many western commentators and
politicians that India is a natural ally.
Yet there is no immediately obvious reason why a colony that was
exploited for 200 years before winning its independence, and that has
since maintained an ambivalent relationship with Washington, has been
close to Moscow and, at one point, made considerable efforts to befriend
Beijing, should align itself with western powers.
Obama and Narendra Modi, the Indian prime minister who won a
landslide victory in 2014, have made apparently (obvious)successful
efforts to establish some kind of rapport. And Modis visit to London last
year was largely viewed as a success. But Modi himself represents,
literally and figuratively, a strong conservative, nationalist, Hindu

majoritarian strand in India that has existed for at least 150 years, yet
barely affects the image of the country overseas.
Some have claimed Modi was elected primarily through the support of
industrialists and sections of the media. This is not the case. He won
because his nationalist rhetoric and his promise of development was
attractive to a large number of his compatriots. This link will not weaken
as Indias economy grows and with it, however haphazardly, its
influence. The nation is likely to behave on the international stage much
like any other power: with a strong sense of its own interests and that its
foreign policy goals are legitimate and attainable, with or without
western approval.
This does not mean violent clashes, or active animosity, but it will mean
an awful lot of arguing, and some serious rethinking, in the chancelleries
of Paris, Washington, London and elsewhere.

Supreme Court Vacancy Has Left and Right Ready to Pounce

President Obamas senior adviser and his top lawyer were blunt with liberal
activists on a strategy call as they jumped into what political professionals
in Washington expect to be one of the hardest-fought Supreme Court
battles in a generation.
In what one participant described as part pep rally and part planning
session, Valerie Jarrett, a senior adviser to Mr. Obama, and Neil Eggleston,
the White House chief counsel, urged dozens of the presidents allies who
were on the phone not to hold back in their condemnation of Republicans
for refusing to hold hearings to replace Justice Antonin Scalia, who died
last week.

The White House hardly needed to prod (to try to make somebd to do sthg
especially when they are not interested) the interest groups during the
Tuesday call. The outcome of this battle could determine the fate of a vast
array of contentious issues for decades to come: immigration, climate
change, gun rights, campaign finance, health care, affirmative action, gay
rights and abortion.
So in record time, the liberal and conservative Washington lobbying and
advocacy machines have roared to life (started noisely) as both sides
prepare for a fight on a battlefield that includes the White House, Congress
and the campaign trail. Advocacy groups are vowing to spend millions of
dollars.
Its going to be the entire progressive movement up against the entire
conservative movement, said Frank Sharry, an immigration activist whose
organization was represented in Tuesdays White House call. I do think its
going to be a battle of a different order.
On Wednesday, White House officials responded to Republican accusations
of hypocrisy by Mr. Obama, who voted to filibuster(a long speech in
parliament to delay voting) President George W. Bushs nomination of
Samuel A. Alito Jr. to the court. Mr. Obama, who is now demanding a quick
hearing and vote for his next nominee, regrets that vote, said Josh Earnest,
the White House press secretary. Mr. Earnest said the president did not
believe Democrats should have been looking for an opportunity to throw
sand in the gears.
That admission is unlikely to satisfy conservatives. Like their liberal
counterparts, the leaders of conservative groups have jumped to reorder
their priorities as they begin dividing up the tasks: raising money, lobbying
senators, firing up constituents, planning radio and television ads, writing
letters to editors and creating talking points for television appearances.

Moments after Justice Scalias death became public, the American Center
for Law and Justice, a conservative organization, organized a team of five
lawyers to scour(to search for a place or a thing to find sbd/sthg) the
backgrounds of potential nominees, and another team to research the
Senates procedural rules. The group has so far sent out a million emails to
its members and is preparing videos to post on its Facebook page early next
week.
The stakes are as high as anything we have dealt with in Washington in a
decade, said Jay Sekulow, the chief counsel for the law center. This is not
even the beginning of what this fight will be. Its full-media, full-legal
research, full-government affairs, full-throttle on this.

Curt Levey, the executive director of the conservative group FreedomWorks

and a veteran of six Supreme Court fights, said the struggle over this
vacancy could be the first to rival the intensity of the fight over President
Ronald Reagans nomination of Robert H. Bork to the Supreme Court in
1987.
Scalia was only dead a couple of hours when the rhetoric was already
heated, Mr. Levey said Wednesday. I dont see how we avoid a Borkian
experience.
In an election year, action often shifts away from Washingtons K Street
lobbying corridor to the campaign headquarters for presidential candidates.
But that changed instantly with the prospect that a sitting Democratic
president could deliver a liberal Supreme Court majority by replacing the
courts leading conservative voice.
Mr. Obamas adversaries (opponent)are determined to stop that from
happening, and the stakes are just as high for his supporters.
The players are familiar: On the left, the court campaign will be run by
groups like the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, the
Alliance for Justice, American Bridge, Americans United for Change,
People for the American Way and labor unions. On the right,
FreedomWorks, the Judicial Crisis Network, the Family Research Council
and the American Center for Law and Justice have begun to take up the
fight.
The law center posted a petition on its website over the weekend calling for
No Scotus Nomination Before Election. By Wednesday morning, more
than 13,000 people had signed it. A competing petition by the Progressive
Change Campaign Committee and other liberal groups claims 500,000
signatures urging senators to confirm a nominee to the court.

The struggle to shape the courts future is also drawing combatants from
groups that have not typically played central roles in Supreme Court fights.
The League of Conservation Voters, for example, which sees the courts
outlook on environmental issues as critical, has begun calling and emailing
its 1.5 million members, asking them to reach out to their senators and urge
them to confirm Mr. Obamas nominee this year.
Its hugely important that the president nominate someone and the Senate
acts, said Gene Karpinski, the president of the league. We will be more
engaged in this effort than we ever have before in a Supreme Court
nomination. Well urge our members to create pressure on the Senate. We
want to make sure that message is heard loudly and clearly.

Both sides agree that the battle will be long, with many advocates using
words like incredible and monumental to describe it. They also say it
will play out in at least three distinct phases, the first of which is underway.
Phase 1 will last for the next several weeks, activists on both sides say, and
will continue until Mr. Obama announces a nominee. During this phase,
the sides will focus on establishing a process that works to their benefit.

India to Change Its Decades-Old Reliance on Female

Sterilization
MAHENDRAGARH, India This is what family planning in India often
looks like: Women in their 20s, mostly farmers wives, gather at dawn on
the stairs of a district hospital. Hours later, a surgeon arrives. His time is
short. He asks the women to sit in a row on the floor of the operating room
and then, in operations lasting a few minutes apiece, uses a laparoscope to
sever their fallopian tubes, ensuring they will never again bear a child.
For decades, India has relied on female sterilization as its primary mode
of contraception, funding about four million tubal ligations every year,
more than any other country. This year, the government of Prime
Minister Narendra Modi will take a major step toward modernizing that
system, introducing injectable contraceptives free of charge in government
facilities. The World Health Organization recommends their use without
restriction for women of childbearing age.
New birth control options have long been advocated by international
organizations, among them the United States Agency for International
Development and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. They say Indian
women often worn out, anemic and at higher risk of death because they
bear children young and often urgently need methods to delay or space
pregnancies.
The number of lives touched by such policies is enormous and growing.
India will soon surpass China as the worlds most populous nation, and by
2050 it is expected to gain 400 million new citizens, more than the
population of the United States.
Paradoxically, here in India, the keenest opposition to these newer methods
of birth control ones seen in the West as empowering women to control
their fertility has come from some womens activist groups that distrust
the safety of these methods and believe that profit-hungry Western
pharmaceutical companies are pushing them. Despite growing evidence of
the safety of the injectables and their increasingly widespread use across
South Asia, these groups have continued to oppose them. And it is Mr.
Modis socially conservative Bharatiya Janata Party that has broken with
decades of resistance to injectables.

The shift in policy has come in part because the government is less
concerned about opposition from civil society groups, most of them more
closely aligned with the previous ruling party, the Indian National
Congress. Officials were also spurred(motivation) by a medical disaster in
the Indian state of Chhattisgarh, where 13 women died in 2014 after
undergoing tubal ligation at a high-volume government sterilization
camp.
I thought it was incumbent on the government to provide it as a choice,
said C. K. Mishra, additional secretary in the Ministry of Health and Family
Welfare, of the contraceptive Depot medroxy progesterone acetate, or
DMPA, which has been used in the private sector since 1993. Still, the
method will be introduced gingerly, limited at first to select district
hospitals and medical colleges and then expanded next year to hospitals
throughout the country. Implanted contraceptives may follow.
We want to be very careful, Mr. Mishra said. We dont want to put a
single step wrong.
In the context of Indias recent history, it is no wonder officials have been
risk-averse and advocates mistrustful. In 1975, the government of Prime
Minister Indira Gandhi led an aggressive campaign, in some cases forcing
young or childless men to undergo vasectomies to meet quotas. More than
six million sterilizations were performed, igniting a widespread protest
movement.
More than a decade later, when India began exploring the public use of
injectable contraceptives, activist groups filed cases with the countrys
Supreme Court seeking to ban the drugs, contending that they had not been
proved safe and could be used coercively.
The court forwarded the matter to Indias Drug Technical Advisory Board,
which in 1995 allowed private use to continue but recommended against
offering them in government clinics. The decision was not revisited for 20
years, even as use of the method became widespread in neighboring
Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Nepal.
Opponents contend that Indias health infrastructure is too weak to
regulate use of the drugs, monitor side effects or ensure that patients have
given informed consent. Indias government spends just over 1 percent of
its gross domestic product on public health, compared with around 3
percent in Russia and China and 8 percent in the United States.

Invariably (without fail , always)these new methods are tried on women

who have no infrastructure to fall* back on(to go to sbd for support), who
have no other resources to go for private health care, said Navsharan
Singh, a senior program specialist at the International Development
Research Center, which is financed by the government of Canada. She said
the current plan, to deliver the drugs through major hospitals, improved
the prospects for follow-up.
Some opposition is tinged with ideology, with critics tracing American
support for population control back to a Cold War era when they say birth
control was seen as a way to combat poverty and to stop the spread of
Communism by curbing chronic poverty. Mohan Rao, a professor of social
sciences at Jawaharlal Nehru University and longtime opponent of
injectables, said the government would have introduced them years ago
were it not for Indias mass-based womens organizations. He added,
They had a clear analysis of what is imperialism and what imperialism
does to populations in third-world countries.
In 2010, K. Sujatha Rao, then the union secretary in the Ministry of Health
and Family Welfare in the Congress-led government, recommended lifting
the ban on injectable contraceptives. But she left her post shortly thereafter,
she said, and because of civil society pressure, when I left, the government
didnt push it at all.
The atmosphere around injectable contraceptives began to shift after Mr.
Modis party took over in May 2014, and it gained momentum after the
Chhattisgarh catastrophe, about six months later. Last year, All the stars
aligned, said Dr. Jyoti Vajpayee, a gynecologist who oversees family
planning programs here for the Gates Foundation.
This government has come back in a majority, so they can afford to take
risks, she said.
She and others had long sought to convince officials that existing options
male and female sterilization, the pill, IUDs and condoms were
insufficient for millions of Indian women who marry in their late teens and
spend years carrying back-to-back pregnancies.
Research has shown that, globally, 30 percent of maternal deaths and 10
percent of child deaths could be prevented if women spaced their
pregnancies two years apart.
At a meeting in August, the Drug Technical Advisory Board recommended
that DMPA be included in the family planning program, saying 20 years of
private use and studies of similar drugs by the Indian Council for Medical
Research had established that they were safe to introduce without a pilot
program.

Dr. C. N. Purandare, past president of the Federation of Obstetric and

Gynecological Societies of India and a proponent (advocate,support an
idea) of the drugs, praised the government for what he called a bold step.
Not that the traditional method is being phased out*. At a recent
sterilization camp about 90 miles west of Delhi, a time-honored system was
chugging along.
The women here, many of whom had traveled from their villages, said that
they were eager to go for the operation, and that the cash incentive of
1,400 rupees, about $20, had not affected their decision. They had been
urged on by outreach workers who had accompanied them to the camp,
older women from their own villages.
These women are paid 1,000 rupees for each patient with two or fewer
children who comes in for sterilization and 240 rupees for each patient with
three or more. They admitted that there were drawbacks to sterilization,
especially for young women who might someday want to have another
child.
We have to tell them a lot of things to convince them, said Sudesh Wati,
50.
Young women often listen to the outreach workers.
After she spoke to me, I made up my mind that in todays times, nobody
wants more than two children, said Krishna Yadav, 35, gesturing at an
amiable gray-haired woman standing nearby. She has been telling me this
for the last two months.
Asked about injectable contraceptives, the women mostly looked blank.
They had never heard of them.
In any case, said Lalit Sharma, a nurse who trains outreach workers, when a
new method comes online, women will almost certainly accept it.
Whatever method it might be, he said, if the government implements it,
they blindly trust it.

The Movement Mentality

It feels like people clumped (to come together or be bought together to
form a tight group)themselves into intellectual movements more 30 years
ago than they do today. There were paleo conservatives and
neoconservatives. There were modernists and postmodernists; liberals,
realists, and neoliberals; communitarians and liberation theologians;
Jungians and Freudians; Straussians and deconstructionists; feminists and
post-feminists; Marxists and democratic socialists. Maybe there were even
some transcendentalists, existentialists, pragmatists, agrarians and
Gnostics floating around.
Now people seem less likely to gather in intellectual clumps. Now public
thinkers seem to be defined more by their academic discipline (economist
or evolutionary biologist) or by their topic (race and gender), than by their
philosophic school or a shared vision for transforming society.
The forces of individualism that are sweeping through so much of society
are also leading to the atomization of intellectual life. Eighty years ago
engaged students at City College in New York sat in the cafeteria hour upon
hour, debating. The Trotskyites sat in one alcove and the Leninists sat in
another, and since the Trostkyites were smarter and won the debates, the
leaders of the Leninist faction eventually forbade(prohibited) their cadres
from ever talking to them.
But today we live in a start-up culture. Theres great prestige in being the
founder of something, the lone entrepreneur who creates something new.
Young people who frequently say they dont want to work in some large
organization are certainly not going to want to subsume (to include or
place within styhg which is more comprehensive)themselves in some preexisting intellectual label.
The Internet has changed things, too. Writers used to cluster around
magazines that were the hubs of movements. On the Internet, individual
posters and tweeters are more distinct, but collectives of thinkers are less
common.
The odd thing is that it was easier to come to maturity when there were
more well-defined philosophical groups. When there was a choice of selfconscious social movements, a young person could try them on like clothing
at the mall: be an existentialist one year and then join a Frankfurt School
clique the next. This was a structured way to find a philosophy of life, a way
of looking at the world, an identity.

Eventually you found what fit, made a wager, joined a team and assented to
a belief system that was already latent within you. When I joined National
Review at age 24 I joined a very self-conscious tradition. I was connected to
a history of insight and belief; to Edmund Burke and Whittaker Chambers
and James Burnham. I wanted to learn everything I could about that
tradition what I accepted and what I rejected as a way to figure out
what I believed.
When you join a movement whether it is deconstructionist, feminist or
Jungian you join a community, which can sometimes feel like family in
ways good and bad. You have a common way of seeing the world, which you
want to share with everyone. When you join, people are always pressing
books into your hands.
Believing becomes an activity. People in movements take stands, mobilize
for common causes, hold conferences, fight and factionalize and build
solidarity. (I remember late night at one conference dancing near four
generations of anti-communists.)
There are opportunity structures for young people to rise and contribute.
First you set out the chairs for the meetings; later you get to lead the
meetings. Young people find that none of the mentors is perfect, so they
cant be completely loyal to any particular leader, but they can be loyal to
the enterprise as a whole, because it embodies some real truth and is
stumbling* toward some real good.
The whole process arouses the passions. Today universities teach critical
thinking to be detached, skeptical and analytic. Movements are marked
by emotion division and solidarity, victory and defeat.
There are fervent (ardent)new converts, and traitors who break ranks.
There are furious debates over strategy; the future design of society is at
stake. There are inevitably love affairs and breakups. People learn ardently,
with their hearts.
As in any love, theres an idealistic early phase, then a period of
disillusionment, and then, hopefully, a period of longer and more stable
commitment to the ideas. The movement shapes ones inner landscape. It
offers a way to clarify the world; a bunch of books to consult if you need to
think through some problem.
Of course there is often rigidity and groupthink, but people can also be
smarter when thinking in groups. For example, movements pool
imagination. Its very hard to come up with a vision so compelling that it
can provide a unifying purpose to your life. But such visions emerge in a
movement collectively, and then get crystallized by a leader like Martin
Luther King.

It all depends on taking steps that are less in fashion today: committing
to a collective, accepting a label, keeping faith, surrendering self to a
tradition that stretches beyond you in time.
Forbes' 2016 richest list: Zuckerberg zooms up(informal:to increase
a lot quickly and suddenly)
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is the biggest gainer in Forbes' 2016
billionaires list of the world's richest people, moving up 10 spots from last
year to claim the ranking as the world's sixth richest person, the business
magazine said Tuesday.

Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump notch key wins

To read his suicide note and to learn the details of his
predicament(difficult or unpleasant situation,quandry) is to get a vivid
inkling (a slight knowledge of sthg )of the actual cost of bias to our
civilization. If we could somehow quantify the totality of lost contributions
and innovations as a result of prejudice, I believe we would find it
staggering(shock or surprise).
Oscars not so white after all?
Has the Academy finally learned a thing* or two about diversity? Let's
hope so.
Even though the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (hosts of the
Oscars) certainly missed the mark*(fail in acheiveing or guessing sthg)
this year in terms of movie and actor nominations, the producers of this
year's Oscars presentation were definitely trying to make up for
it. Sunday's 88th awards show included a black host, black
presenters, black actors in the audience and a black orchestra conductor.
So who still, apparently(obvious), didn't get it? Try the folks who run
the Twitter account for the website Total Beauty. See what late-night
comic Larry Wilmore had to say about a mistake that even folks
at allblackpeoplelookalike.com wouldn't have made.

Chris Christie must resign

Were disgusted with his endorsement of Donald Trump after he spent
months on the campaign trail trashing him, calling him unqualified by
temperament and experience to be president.
And were fed up with his continuing travel out of state on New Jerseys
dime, stumping ()for Trump, after finally abandoning his own
presidential campaign.
For the good of the state, its time for Christie to do his long-neglected
constituents a favor and resign as governor. If he refuses, citizens should
initiate a recall effort.
At a rare news conference on Monday, Christie was at his arrogant worst,
refusing to take any questions from reporters that didnt relate directly to
his nomination of Superior Court Judge David Bauman as a state Supreme
Court justice. Some Statehouse veteran reporters said this the first time
they could remember a governor restricting questions at a news conference
in Trenton.
After Christie repeatedly told reporters he wouldnt answer any questions
that were off topic, one of the reporters asked why: Because I dont
want to, he said. Can you imagine any other governor saying that?
Or President Barack Obama? Is that what Christie would have told the
national press corps if he became president?
Press conferences in which reporters have had an opportunity to question
Christie on any subject have been a rarity since the George Washington
Bridge fiasco more than two years ago. Christie fails to acknowledge the
role the Fourth Estate plays in a healthy democracy. Reporters have an
obligation to ask questions on behalf of the public; government officials
have an obligation to answer them.
Whether Christie likes journalists or not and he decidedly does not like
those who refuse to genuflect(to show too much respect to sb sth) before
him he should treat them with professionalism, not contempt. More
importantly, he should treat his constituents with respect by answering
questions that bear on his policies and his performance as governor. In

refusing to be accountable to the press, he is refusing accountability to New

Jerseys citizens.
Christie has not given reporters an opportunity to question him since his
announcement on Feb. 10 that he was abandoning his presidential run. He
didnt meet with the media after his Feb. 16 budget address, and he
dodged(a clever and dishonest trick to avoid sthg) the press after a brief
appearance at a Newark school event Feb. 24. What questions didnt he
want to answer?
For starters: Now that he has abandoned his presidential campaign, will he
work full time on New Jersey business? How could he endorse someone for
president who disagrees with him on virtually every important issue? Was
his trip to Texas to endorse Trump and his campaigning on his behalf the
following day in Arkansas and Tennessee a harbinger of more out-of-state
stumping for him in the future? (A question answered by his subsequent
trips to Ohio and Kentucky on Trumps behalf.) Will New Jersey continue
to be billed for his security and other expenses on these trips? If so, how
does he justify that? Last year, he spent 261 full or partial days out of New
Jersey. Now that he is no longer running for president, what percentage of
his time does he expect to spend in New Jersey on New Jersey business this
year?
It has been obvious for at least two years that Christie has put personal
ambition ahead of the interests of New Jersey citizens. Sadly, members of
his own party have displayed no backbone in trying to rein him in. When he
has said jump, they have responded, in unison, how high? And
the Democratic Partys weak leadership has failed to fill the power vacuum.
Christie has taken his hands off the rudder, and no one has rushed
forward to help steer the boat.
New Jersey needs someone whose full attention is devoted to making life
better for New Jerseys citizens. That wont happen until Christie steps
down or is forced out

Reproductive rights under siege: Our view

When the Supreme Court guaranteed the right to abortion 43 years ago in
the landmark Roe v. Waderuling, the court meant it to be a right for all
women. But as abortion foes have piled on one onerous restriction after
another, this constitutional right increasingly depends on where a woman
lives or on her financial resources.
Whether that unjust trend continues will be the issue Wednesday when the
Supreme Court hears arguments on a 2013 Texas law, which imposed
restrictions that have already forced more than half of the states abortion
clinics to shut down. If the Supreme Court upholds the law Justice
Anthony Kennedy is expected to be the deciding vote the nations second
largest state would be left with 10 clinics. California, with the largest
population, had 160 clinics and about 350 other providers at last count.
The Texas case is the most far-reaching (likely to have a lot of
influence)abortion rights case to reach the court since 1992. More than a
dozen states have enacted similar restrictions. If the Texas law is upheld,
women across the South and in other states will have little ability to
exercise this constitutional right. A raft of earlier restrictions from
waiting periods to forced sonograms and counseling has already made
abortions harder to obtain in other states. Mississippi, Missouri, North and
South Dakotas and Wyoming are each down to only one clinic.
In 1992s Planned Parenthood v. Casey decision, the court affirmed a
womans right to choose abortion while giving states more
latitude(liberty) to regulate abortions for health reasons but with
important limits. Legislatures are not supposed to use protecting health as
an excuse for laws actually designed to prevent abortions. Nor can the rules
place an undue burden on a womans rights. Texas and other states have
flouted (defy) both limits.
The Texas law which requires all providers to have admitting privileges
at a nearby hospital and to maintain the hospital-like standards of
ambulatory surgery centers might sound like it promotes health. But
medical experts and facts on the ground in Texas show just how misleading
that is.

 We fought hard but not hard enough .Batting has to improve big
time.
I feel like the batting plan was all over the place .Well done
Bangladesh

New Economic Plan, China Bets That Hard Choices Can Be

Avoided
As economic growth has fallen while debts and excess industrial output
have risen, Chinese leaders have faced growing questions about whether
they will carry out the painful policy surgery many experts say is needed to
cut away the financial dead weight on the economy.
But the answer that Prime Minister Li Keqiang gave on Saturday was to
wager that China could enjoy a relatively painless cure that avoids hard
choices between spurring(motivation) growth and restructuring. Chinese
leaders usual two-sided rhetoric about their options peril is close at
hand, but so is a sure cure was especially striking in Mr. Lis latest annual
report to the legislature, the National Peoples Congress.
Domestically, problems and risks that have been building up over the
years are becoming more evident, Mr. Li told the roughly 3,000 delegates
to the congress, a Communist Party-controlled body. But there is no
difficulty we cannot get beyond, he said in the speech, which was
broadcast live nationwide.
Continued economic growth of at least 6.5 percent can be achieved in 2016,
and a similar rate is foreseeable until 2020, he said. That, Mr. Li suggested,
would help dull the pain from cuts to wheezing state-supported industries
that must shed millions of workers, as part of a program that Chinas
powerful president, Xi Jinping, has promoted as supply-side structural
reform.
The Chinese economy, Mr. Li said, is hugely resilient and has enormous
potential and ample room for growth.
Those may have been reassuring words for workers worried about losing
their jobs at failing mines, steel mills and industrial plants. Mr. Li said the
governments policies could help create more than 10 million jobs in towns
and cities this year, and more than 50 million by the end of 2020.
But many economists and investors have become much less confident that
China can manage such rates of unstinted growth without piling up more
bad lending and misused capital.

I think the 6.5 percent growth target is very challenging, Shen Jianguang,
the Hong Kong-based chief Asia economist at Mizuho Securities Asia, said
after hearing Mr. Lis plans. They want to choose a path that maintains
real growth now and defers tough times for later.
A growth rate of 6.5 percent a year is the minimum needed to achieve
President Xis often-declared goal of doubling the size of the Chinese
economy by 2020, relative to its size in 2010.
As the government report said, setting this target is also aimed at
anchoring expectations and confidence, Tao Wang, the chief China
economist for UBS in Hong Kong, said in emailed comments. We think
this ambitious growth target signals more policy easing.
But such financial easing implies more debt, at a time when many Western
economists and policy makers are already worried that total leverage in the
Chinese economy has far outstripped (surpass)economic output. The
increased debt may help the government achieve its target of 6.5 percent to
7 percent economic growth this year, but at the price of burdening banks
with even more loans to struggling businesses, or even effectively insolvent
ones. That policy may also water down leaders promises to shut companies
that are producing unwanted industrial goods.
Some economists said the Chinese government had little choice but to
shore up demand through such policies until the benefits of restructuring
accumulated. But several also warned that the gains from such spending
were tapering off and that the efforts to revamp the economy had lagged,
despite bold promises made by Mr. Xi at a Communist Party meeting in
2013.
In China we have a new saying: Reform running idle, said Yao Yang, an
economics professor at Peking University.
We talk of the reforms, but the reforms are never being implemented.
Thats the problem, Mr. Yao said. We know that monetary expansion is
not going to have a huge effect.
In his speech, Mr. Li appeared guarded about saying how any cuts would be
administered. He did not specify how many workers could lose their jobs as
part of the governments plan to close, merge or restructure mines and
factories weighed down by excess capacity.
The government will set aside $15.3 billion to support laid-off workers and
hard-hit areas, he said. On Monday, a labor official estimated that 1.8
million workers in the steel and coal sectors would be laid off, around 15
percent of the work force in those industries.

They definitely are relatively cautious in those areas like how boldly we
tackle excess capacity, because they still want to grow, said Louis Kuijs, the
chief Asia economist for Oxford Economics, an independent research firm.
What I am particularly worried about is the overcapacity is probably going
to get worse before it gets better, given the timidity of the approach.
To a surprising extent, the economic vision unveiled by Mr. Li echoed
policies in the United States, the European Union and Japan, all of which
have depended heavily on their central banks to expand money supply and
keep growth aloft(high in air). The International Monetary Fund and
many independent economists have strongly called for the world to shift
from this reliance on monetary policy.
Of the Chinese governments plan, Mr. Kuijs said: The wording is that we
will have proactive fiscal policy and prudent monetary policy, but if you
look at the numbers, its actually the other way around.
The governments plan said the target for this years fiscal deficit at the
national level would rise to 3 percent, from a target of 2.3 percent last year.
But by most estimates, the actual deficit last year was already over 3
percent.
Chinas central bank, like the Federal Reserve and the European Central
Bank, has been wary of carrying almost the entire burden for sustaining
economic growth through monetary policy, and one of its officials even
publicly suggested recently that the fiscal deficit could be safely pegged as
high as 4 percent.
Chinas central government has a fairly low debt by international
standards; what are deeply indebted are the countrys corporate sector and
local governments. But the Ministry of Finance has nonetheless been
reluctant to allow a large, persistent deficit to form, particularly as China
may yet face very heavy costs to help banks with the costs of large loans to
nearly insolvent state-owned enterprises.
To be sure, the plan announced Saturday did call for some structural
changes. One of the most surprising was a proposal to expand Chinas
value-added tax to financial services. Banks would face a 6 percent tax on
the interest that they collect on loans.
Since the global financial crisis, there have been many calls in the West for
broadening value-added taxes to encompass financial services, which could
encourage more orderly and systematic accounting for many transactions.
But Lachlan Wolfers, the head of indirect taxes in China for KPMG, a global
accounting and professional services firm, said he was not aware of any
countries other than Argentina and Israel that had taken steps as specific as
Chinas to tax financial services.

China's Li Outlines Dual Growth-Reform Plan as Challenges

Mount

Premier Li Keqiang argued that China can cut back bloated industries
without mass layoffs or derailing the nations growth trajectory.
Policy makers will employ "innovative measures" to keep the economy
on track as economic performance diverges across provinces and
"sluggish" global growth weighs on prospects. "There are both difficulties
and hopes," Li told reporters at a news conference in Beijing Wednesday
that marks the conclusion of the 12-day National Peoples Congress.
China is still at an early stage of industrialization and urbanization, and
retains room to grow on those fronts, while new drivers will also help
fuel the nations expansion. Acknowledging there will be "ups and
downs," Li said policy makers will remain focused on structural reforms.
"We believe that as long we stay on the course of reform and opening up,
Chinas economy will not suffer a hard landing," Li said. "Reform and
development are not in conflict. By pursuing structural reforms, we can
release market vitality and drive economic development."
Lis comments come amid waning international confidence in Chinas
economic stewardship after surprise currency moves and a $5 trillion
equities rout last year rattled markets around the world. Li is striving to
restructure Chinas economy away from an over-reliance on investment

and cheap exports after growth slumped to a 25-year low last year,
balancing the need for cyclical support with structural reform.
Li got 98.4 percent support for his annual economic work report from
the largely rubber-stamp parliament. While that was actually the
highest disapproval rate he has received, its the kind of backing a U.S.
president could only dream of in Congress.
China Headwinds
China faces headwinds from slumping(to fall in price,value ,number)
exports and stocks, to slowing industrial production and retail sales.
Currency volatility and surging capital outflows following a shock
devaluation last year have prompted plans to draft a Tobin tax on
currency trading.
The government is committed to delivering at least 6.5 percent average
expansion over the next five years, a target that risks fueling debt and
adding to depreciation pressure on the yuan. Gavekal Dragonomics calls
the target incredible. JPMorgan Chase & Co. says a sustainable pace is
much lower than the 6.5 percent to 7 percent range officials are
targeting for this year.
Central bank Governor Zhou Xiaochuan said Saturday that excessive
monetary policy stimulus wasnt needed to meet the target and that,
barring big economic or financial turmoil, the central bank would keep
prudent monetary policy. Zhou has already stepped up efforts to cushion
the economic slowdown, announcing on Feb. 29 a 0.5 percentage point
cut to the amount of deposits banks must hold as reserves.

An income-tax overhaul is planned to boost consumption and Finance

Minister Lou Jiwei has said its necessary to increase government
borrowing to help other parts of the economy reduce debt.
Asked about the U.S. presidential primaries, which have featured attacks
on China by billionaire Republican Donald Trump and others, Li
acknowledged the elections had been eye-catching. He said that ties
between the worlds two largest economies had always been based on
mutual benefit and wouldnt change no matter who was elected.
"Business cooperation between our two counties has always been of
mutual benefit, something U.S. business people know the best," Li said.
"As for the election in the U.S., it has been lively and has caught the eye
of many."

Lost in Boelter: Finding a purpose

What career do you want to pursue?
Ive had my fair share of being on the receiving end of that question. But
of all my countless encounters with it, one incident in particular stands
out in mind.
Two years back, I was speaking to my friends dad when he asked me
about my career plans. I gave him my usual response that I wanted to
pursue a career in computer science and that I was interested in
computer security, to which he responded, Thats a good area. Theres a
lot of demand for people in security and there are a lot of well-paying
jobs.
His statement was not unordinary, but it nonetheless struck me as odd: I
want to pursue a career in computer security because Im passionate
about the field so why was his first response to bring up the pay?
I later realized that his response was not so much indicative of his career
preferences than of the computer science community as a whole and how
it is enamored with the ideas of handsome pay and job stability. These
are definitely important considerations for computer scientists seeking
jobs, but what should be considered above all else is whether your role in
the company is addressing problems in society. This idea, however, isnt
emphasized enough in the computer science community.
Big-name appeal
Computer science has the most potential out of any other field to change
society rapidly. And that is by no means an overstatement.
Of all other fields of study, computer science has brought about the most
profound changes in society in the shortest amount of time. The
developments in computer science have shaped the trajectory of
technological advancements, which continue to change our lives and the
ways in which we interact with the world around us. Just take a look at
mobile applications like Uber and Snapchat. In little over seven years
since it was created, Uber has revolutionized the transportation industry;
in only five years, Snapchat has redefined the bounds of personal
expression.

Thus, computer scientists, situated at the forefront of technological

advancement, are uniquely positioned to affect positive social change.
Taking a glance at any successful social movement or grassroots effort
will show you that technology is a cornerstone(something of great
importance which everything else depends on ) in successful campaigning
and organization, and the fact that computer scientists develop and
innovate these socially-empowering technologies adds credence to the
idea that they can elicit(to get or produce something, especially
information or a reaction ) notable social change.
But, despite this great potential to do social good, most computer
scientists in search of jobs tend to place greater emphasis on the
employers brand and the employee benefits provided rather than on
whether the job is making a positive difference in society. In other words,
everybody wants to work for Microsoft, even if the specific job thats
available appears to have no apparent social utility.
For example, a software engineering position at Accenture, a major
consulting services company, may seem appealing, but if all you do is
move internal legacy code to newer applications, its hard to see how
what you are doing is helping anyone besides the company itself. Yet, the
Accenture brand still entices(to persuade someone to do something by
offering them something pleasant ) people to take on those jobs.
We dont need to venture too far to see this truth. Just look at the lines at
the UCLA Engineering & Technical Fair. I can tell you right off the bat
which companies will have at least 60 students waiting in line to speak to
them: Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, Amazon and Facebook. On the other
hand, the lines to speak with other companies representatives are much
smaller.
Of course, its easy to discount this lopsided(with one side bigger,
higher, etc. than the other; not equally balanced ) result as the byproduct
of top companies being well-known, but the fact that students wait in
line to speak to those companies even if their interests lie outside the
jobs or internships scopes demonstrates that the brand-appeal plays an
overbearing(too confident and too determined to tell other people
what to do, in a way that is unpleasant ) role in the career hunt I can
speak to this from my own experience.

Coding with a conscience

Instead of simply eagle-eying big-name companies, computer science
students should have the presence of mind to understand the social
impacts of the jobs they are pursuing. That isnt to say that high-paying
jobs at the most successful tech companies are bad, but what job-seeking
students need to do, above all else, is to ask themselves whether they
think the career will make a difference in society.
For example, someone coding in a cubicle for 15 hours a day
something quite common in the computer science industry may
conclude that he is in fact helping the broader society by working for his
employer. But if that isnt the case and it would require a critical,
introspective eye for the employee to come up with an honest answer
then he should pursue an avenue that does allow for him to solve a
problem in society he feels strongly about.
That avenue can pursued in a multitude of ways, be that by founding
a startup that makes it easier for activists to run online campaigns or
teaching computer science at an inner-city school to children who may
not have access to such a curriculum.
Ill acknowledge that it may seem too demanding to ask people to be
socially conscious when they are searching for jobs or trying to support
their livelihood. Having interned at a company myself, I know how
gratifying and enticing it is to be compensated well for your coding skills
and not have to consider the societal impact of your work. However,
having had to spend nearly 10 hours a day coding in a cubicle for that
internship, I also know that unless I had found how my work was helping
people, I wouldnt have been able to accomplish what I did.
Ultimately, it is unbecoming of a computer science student to only be in
it for the pay or job stability, considering the extensive training in a field
that deals exclusively with solving problems. If youre not applying your
problem-solving skills some place where there is a worthwhile
application, or you cant see the social utility in the problem you are
solving, then you are doing something fundamentally wrong. Theres no
nicer way of putting it.

Escape to victory
Nerves were shredded, nails got chewed and throats turned hoarse
(sounding rough and unpleasant) as a rousing Wednesday night
witnessed India effect a remarkable turnaround and snatch a one-run
victory over Bangladesh in the ICC World Twenty20 Super 10 Group 2
match at the M. Chinnaswamy Stadium here.
Pursuing Indias 146 for seven, Bangladesh needed 11 from the last over
with four wickets in hand. Hardik Pandya conceded a single to
Mahmudullah, suffered two fours at the hands of Mushfiqur Rahim and
when it boiled down to two from three deliveries, M.S. Dhonis men set a
miracle in motion, helped largely by the visitors desire to go for glory
instead of a humble single or two.
Rahim and Mahmudullah perished to wild hoicks(to raise or pull
something, usually with a quick movement and with effort ) and a
nervous Mustafizur Rahman was no match for a sprinting Dhoni, who
knocked down the stumps to leave the batsman and Bangladesh
stranded(unable to leave somewhere because of a problem such as not
having any transport or money ). The visitor finished with 145 for nine
and crashed out of the tournament.
Riding on Tamim Iqbals (35, 32b, 5x4) impetus and Shakib Al Hasans
brief but bludgeoning (to hit someone hard and repeatedly with a
heavy weapon ,force someone to do something )blade, Bangladesh
threatened at different points before committing hara-kiri. Tamim
helped Bangladesh tide over Mohammad Mithuns dismissal in the third
over after R. Ashwin tempted the batsman to clear the ropes where a
leaping Pandya caught well.
Southpaw Tamim, who was a doubtful starter on match-eve, was
evidently in his element. He pummeled(to hit someone or something
repeatedly, especially with your fists ) a few, edged some and made it
worse for Jasprit Bumrah, who had dropped him off Ashwin. Tamim
pinched four fours off a Bumrah over and threatened to do more before
he danced down and missed one from Ravindra Jadeja for Dhoni to
whip off the bails with glee(happiness, excitement or pleasure ).

The Indian captains lightning hands were on show again as Sabbir

Rahmans cameo was curtailed. But, Bangladesh was never restrained as
Shakib hit through the line. Skipper Mashrafe Mortaza, who promoted
himself up the order, went without adding much but the required rate
stayed within grasp until Ashwin, who had dropped Shakib (on eight) off
Pandya, made amends and lured a snick.
At 95 for five, the contest was at its tipping-point(the time at which a
change or an effect cannot be stopped ) but Soumya Sarkar and
Mahmudullah kept alive Bangladeshs flame. When a diving Dhoni
grassed Sarkar off Bumrah, India was seemingly down for the count
but it battled till the last, and the triumph was a just reward for its
resilience.
Earlier, after Mortaza elected to field, Rohit Sharma and Shikhar
Dhawan added 42 for the first wicket, the best for India in recent times.
Initially, the runs and dot-balls stayed even. The shackles were shed in
the last over of the Power Play as Rohit hoisted left-arm seamer
Mustafizur for six and Dhawan did an encore before both fell in quick
succession.
Virat Kohli and Suresh Raina (30, 23b, 1x4, 2x6) then stitched together a
50-run third-wicket partnership across 40 deliveries.
Amidst turgid (too serious about its subject matter; boring )overs,
Raina offered some hope. He nonchalantly flicked and smote sixes off
Al-Amin and when Kohli carted Shuvagata over mid-wicket, it seemed
Indias moderate run-rate graph may finally sprout some skyscrapers.
But, like it happened through the innings, a slump was around the
corner.
Kohli, Raina, Pandya and Yuvraj Singh fell in succession and even with
Dhoni and Ravindra Jadeja trying their best, India missed the par-score
of 160.

Of course, House Speaker Paul Ryan is correct.

Incivility is making it increasingly difficult for America to resolve its
problems through a peaceful political process.
This has been the case well before Donald Trump even thought about
entering the race for president. Indeed, Trump is just the most notable
symptom of a much more pernicious(having a very harmful effect or
influence ) disease.
Abdeslams arrest may have foiled strikes on Belgian n-plants:
report
As Belgian investigators slowly piece together the elements of a carefully
conceived terror plan to cause maximum damage to a city that is in many
ways the political nerve-centre of Europe, the degree to which Belgian
intelligence and security services missed the signals of a plot that was
snowballing just below the surface is also becoming apparent.
Evidence now emerges that the same terrorist cell that caused
the Brussels blasts was behind the Paris attacks of November last
year. As fresh revelations emerge on how a potentially catastrophic
attack was aborted by the arrest of the Paris attacker Salah Andeslam by
Belgian security services a few days before the blasts, there is increasing
concern at the magnitude of the intelligence void.
According to an exclusive story broken by La Dernier Heure, a French
newspaper published from Brussels, the suicide bombers Khalid and
Ibrahim El Bakraoui were originally planning attacks on Belgian nuclear
power stations. Salah Andeslams arrest put pressure on them to change
targets fast.

Belgium, a Country of Divisions, Patriotism Remains

Subdued
In the United States, the Sept. 11 attacks unleashed(to release suddenly
a strong, uncontrollable and usually destructive force ) an outpouring
(an uncontrollable expression of strong feeling )of patriotism. After the
attacks in and around Paris on Nov. 13, the tricolor of the French flag
was ubiquitous as the country channeled its grief.
Not so in Belgium. In this wounded nation, politically
fragmented and divided between Dutch-speaking Flanders in the
north and French-speaking Wallonia in the south, displays of the
black, yellow and red of the Belgian flag have been relatively
restrained, even as the Eiffel Tower and the Empire State
Building lit up in its colors.
We Belgians do not wrap ourselves in the flag it is not our
way, said Nicolas Gallet, 19, who was among thousands on
Thursday who thronged Place de La Bourse, a square in central
Brussels filled with flowers and candles, and memorial messages
chalked on asphalt. Instead, in a decidedly Belgian gesture,
an image of the beloved cartoon character Tintin and his dog
Snowy crying was widely shared on social media by Belgians and
foreigners alike.
Like their counterparts around the world, Belgians reacted to
the terror attacks that killed 31 people at an airport and subway
station Tuesday morning with the all-too-familiar rituals of
public mourning and with grief, anger, shock and defiance. But
perhaps befitting a country with three Parliaments, which once
went without a government for 541 days, the understated
displays of solidarity were tinged with simmering frustration
as a blame game began.
Some Belgians lashed out at a flailing(to move energetically in an
uncontrolled way ) security apparatus and chronically dysfunctional
government for abetting the tragedy.
How, some critics here and abroad asked, could a a government
and a city that until recently had 19 police forces effectively
hunt for terrorists?

You have local level and you have federal level, and there is no
collaboration, said Franoise Schepmans, the mayor of
Molenbeek, the district where the sole surviving suspect from
the Paris attacks was arrested last week after evading the
authorities for 125 days. They dont have to talk to me about
their investigation, she said in an interview with CNN.
Belgium, a tiny country of 11 million people, has long had an identity
crisis. It lives in the shadow of its larger and more powerful cousin,
France. Brussels, the capital, doubles as the capital of the European
Union and headquarters of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization,
giving it global heft(to lift, hold or carry something heavy using your
hands ) but also subsuming(to include something or someone as part
of a larger group ) its already fragile and fragmented persona to
plodding(to work slowly and continuously, but without imagination,
enthusiasm or interest ) bureaucratic institutions.
The city center has been eerily quiet since Tuesdays attacks,
with the usually bustling streets near the Grand Place, a
handsome square graced by imposing buildings, mainly from the
17th century, largely deserted. Soldiers in military fatigues
patrolled the chic Place du Grand Sablon on Thursday, an
incongruous sight on a square where truffle emporiums, luxury
shops and bourgeois residents walking their dogs are more
common.
Some residents said they were too scared to take the subway.
Reflecting on the attacks, Mr. Gallet, the 19-year-old student, said many
Belgians were resigned and angry. He argued that the countrys
fractious(easily upset or annoyed, and often complaining ) identity
politics were at least partly to blame for distracting successive
governments from improving the integration of immigrants and
preventing terrorism. But his friend Antoine Staru disagreed.
I am sorry, but this is not Belgiums fault, said Mr. Staru, 20.
These are crazy people. These are people born here, and yet
they are attacking this country.

A handwritten note on the makeshift memorial next to him said,

In the end, when you see what can be done in the name of God,
it makes you wonder what is left for the devil.
Since the Brussels attacks, far-right parties, from France to Italy
to the Netherlands, have assailed the European Unions lax
immigration policies and porous borders. In Belgium, the
nationalist Vlaams Belang party, which agitates for an
independent Flanders, urged Prime Minister Charles Michel to
seal the borders.
We cant stop terrorism if they remain open! the
party wrote on Twitter.
There were also calls for unity. Christophe Berti, the editor of Le
Soir, urged readers to undertake a historical reckoning of the last
40 years, including the conditions that had led to lapses of
security and social cohesion.
That is the best homage we can pay to the victims, he wrote.
But Brian Carroll, a communications consultant from
Washington who escaped from the Maelbeek subway station
through a cloud of smoke and rubble on Tuesday, suggested
that given its role in hosting critical international institutions,
Brussels should be policed by a pan-European force.
As calls for accountability gathered force, the human names and
photographs of the dead and missing filling Belgian newspapers.
The victims, including some 300 wounded, came from more
than 40 countries, including the United States, Britain, Morocco,
Spain and Hungary.
Identification of victims has been painfully slow, the police said,
with many bodies mutilated beyond recognition. Among the few
confirmed so far are Lopold Hecht, a 20-year-old Belgian law
student; Olivier Delespesse, a Belgian civil servant; and Adelma
Marina Tapia, a Peruvian mother of young twin girls.
On Thursday, at a large military hospital in Neder-over- victims
were taken, officials said they expected that most of the dead
there would be identified soon. Of the nearly 100 admitted with
injuries, 15 remained.
Amid the gloom, there was also heroism. Alphonse Youla, a
Belgian of African origin who wrapped luggage at the airport,

was credited with spiriting several people to safety, according to

Belgian news agencies, which reported that he carried people
whose legs had been shattered from the ruined terminal, even as
the ceiling was crashing in.
Some Belgians expressed outrage at remarks by the Republican
presidential contender Donald J. Trump, who had called
Brussels a hell hole and, after the attacks Tuesday, reiterated
his criticism of Muslim communities.
They were similarly upset by the comments of ric Zemmour, a
French writer who after the Paris attacks said the French
government should bomb Molenbeek rather than the Islamic
States self-declared capital in Raqqa, Syria.
On Thursday in Molenbeek, as residents bartered in Arabic at a
vegetable and fruit market, Leiven Soete, 73, one of the relatively
few native-born Belgians shopping there, said he had come, as
he did every Thursday, to show that he would not be cowed. He
said his neighbor, an older Moroccan man, had been
inconsolable since the attacks.
There is a shadow over Molenbeek. But we cant solve this by
making our neighbors the enemy, he said. If Donald Trump
calls us a hell hole, I feel proud.
Muslims in Molenbeek said they felt under siege. Samia, 32, who
is of Moroccan origin and has three children but declined to give
her last name for fear of reprisals, said she felt sick about what
had happened, and feared a backlash against Muslims.
I am Belgian, too, I was raised here, and now my 5-year-old son
asks me to close the blinds because he is afraid of being shot by
terrorists, Samia said as two friends wearing Islamic
headscarves nodded somberly.
She said the looks of suspicion in recent days on the streets of
Brussels had been difficult to bear.

Despite Fears, Affordable Care Act Has Not Uprooted

Employer Coverage
The Affordable Care Act was aimed mainly at giving people better
options for buying health insurance on their own. There were
widespread predictions that employers would leap at the chance to
drop coverage and send workers to fend for themselves.
But those predictions were largely wrong. Most companies, and
particularly large employers, that offered coverage before the law
have stayed committed to providing health insurance.
As it turns out, health care remains an important recruitment and
retention tool as the labor market has tightened in recent years.
Desirable employees still expect health benefits, and companies are
responding, new analyses of federal data show.
Were more confident than ever that well offer benefits, said
Robert Ihrie Jr., a senior vice president for Lowes Companies, the
home improvement retailer.
Companies get a sizable federal tax break from providing the
insurance. And if they dropped the coverage, many workers would
expect the money in their paycheck to increase enough to pay for
outside insurance or would look for a new job.
The reversal in thinking about employer benefits is so stark(completely or
extremely ) that even government budget officials are singing an optimistic
tune. They lowered the number of people they think will lose coverage
because of the health law and now predict employers will remain the source
of coverage for a majority of working Americans for the next decade.
The surprise turnaround adds to an emerging consensus about the
contentious health law: It has not upturned (pointing or looking up, or
having the part which is usually at the bottom turned to be at the top )the
core of the countrys health insurance system, even while insuring millions
of low-income people.
The employer-based system is alive and well, said Jeff Alter, the
chief executive of the commercial insurance business for United
Healthcare, one of the nations largest health insurance companies.
Even among critics of the law, including the Republican
presidential candidates, there has been virtually no debate about
employer coverage.

About 155 million Americans have employer-based health

insurance coverage in 2016, according to an analysis released by
the Congressional Budget Office last month. The number will fall to
152 million people in 2019, the C.B.O. estimates, but will remain
stable through 2026. Slightly more than half of people under 65
will be enrolled in employment-based coverage.
Employers seem to be staying the course even more strongly than
they did before the law. The percentage of adults under 65 with
employer-based insurance held firm for the last five years after
steadily declining since 1999, according to an analysis of federal
data released last month by the Kaiser Family Foundation, which
closely tracks the health insurance market.
The health plans employees get to choose from also look much the
same as before the law went into effect. The industry remains
dominated by familiar names, like nonprofit Blue Cross plans or
for-profit companies like United Healthcare and Anthem.
Employer coverage is much more stable than anyone anticipated,
said Larry Levitt, a senior executive at Kaiser.
Companies say they are responding to the realities of the labor market, but
they also say the online marketplaces where individuals can more easily buy
plans, a creation of the health care law, have not been an enticing(to
persuade someone to do something by offering them something
pleasant) alternative for workers.

Employers may feel differently if the economy turns down and the
labor market is less robust or if there is a sudden spike in health care
costs. Because workers can no longer be denied an insurance policy
because of poor health, companies may be willing to drop coverage
under the right circumstances, knowing that insurance is more
available to everyone.
But there are no plans for a mass exodus.
The demise of employer-based coverage was definitely
overstated, said Michael Thompson, the chief executive of the
National Business Coalition on Health, which represents
employers and other buyers of insurance.

The steepest declines in coverage have been in small businesses,

which had been steadily dropping coverage before the law. The
percentage of small employers offering health benefits decreased
from 68 percent in 2010 to 56 percent in 2015, according to the
annual Kaiser Family Foundation survey.
But those companies now seem less likely to exit than just a few
years ago. In 2013, as many as a fifth of employers with fewer
than 500 workers said they were likely to drop coverage in the
next five years, compared with 7 percent today, according to a
survey from Mercer, the benefits consultant.
Tracy Watts, a senior partner at Mercer, said the stabilization at
small businesses was mostly a product of their health care costs
staying the same or rising only modestly.
That will keep you in the game, Ms. Watts said.
The early tumult(state of confusion ) in the insurance marketplaces,
including the troubled introduction of HealthCare.gov, the federally run
insurance marketplace for the Affordable Care Act, also made dropping
coverage less tenable((of an opinion or position) able to be defended
successfully or held for a particular period of time ), analysts said.
The law has resulted in more coverage for low-income people, as
expected. But the unexpected exit by some of the start-up
insurers has limited options on the marketplaces. And the plans
on the exchanges remain less generous than those offered by
many employers, with significantly higher deductibles and a
significantly narrower choice of hospitals and networks.
Lowes, by comparison, said it has tried to keep employee costs
low by contributing about 70 percent of the cost of the annual
premiums. It offers plans with deductibles as low as $1,000,
versus several thousand dollars for many of the exchange plans.
The exchanges have been less of a disrupter than I expected,
said Thomas Buchmueller, a business professor at the University
of Michigan.
Employers say there is less financial advantage to dropping
coverage than first thought. The law penalizes large employers,
about $2,000 per worker, when they do not offer health
insurance. That is far less than the average cost of family

coverage, now $12,600 a year, according to the Kaiser Family

Foundation.
But those calculations do not figure in the sizable tax break that
comes with providing coverage. In addition, if the employers do
not provide insurance, they would almost certainly be pressured
especially in a strong labor market to add enough money to
workers paychecks to cover the cost of buying insurance on the
marketplace.
Some employers, particularly the smallest businesses and those
who employ low-income workers eligible for a subsidy, clearly
favor moving employees to the exchanges. Other employers do
not.
The math really worked in favor of providing coverage, Mr.
Thompson said.
While the C.B.O. predicts the employer market will be stable
until 2026, 10 years is a long time and federal officials could be
wrong .
They are taking their best guess, and I think it is a reasonable
best guess, said Loren Adler, a health policy analyst at the
Brookings Institution in Washington. I wouldnt take it as
gospel.
If the cost of providing coverage spikes, as it did through much
of the late 1990s and early 2000s, employers might start talking
about dropping coverage again, Mr. Adler said. Congress could
also take steps to diminish the tax preference for employerprovided insurance.
But so far, employers like Mr. Ihrie of Lowes say they do not feel
compelled to change.
People have concluded, he said, that its better to stay where
we are.

Suicide Squad looks a lot more fun in its new trailer.

So does Captain America: Civil War.
At Sunday's MTV Movie Awards, the biggest news for superhero fans
didn't have anything to do with the awards themselves. Instead, it was
the release of both a brand new trailer for Warner Bros.' Suicide
Squad(above) and new footage from Marvel's Captain America: Civil
War. Both companies are trying to up the hype for their summer
offerings.
Suicide Squad is in a precarious position. Warner Bros.' most recent
superhero film, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice didn't wow
critics the way executives expected it to, and the common complaint
from critics was that it was too dark and self-serious for its own good.
What's more, it doesn't look like the film is going to hit the $1 billion box
office goal it's aiming for, according to Variety.
There have been reports of reshoots for Suicide Squad to make it lighter
and more humorous a possible reaction to the negative critiques
of Batman v Superman. And those reports have been refuted by its
director, David Ayers, who has said the reason for the reshoots was to
include more action. But this new Suicide Squad trailer is decidedly
lighter and less serious than the film's previous trailers. It contains a lot
more humor and deadpan jokes, and showcases more of Margot Robbie's
Harley Quinn.

donald Trumps Rise Shows Religion Is Losing Its

Political Power
Donald Trump, no doubt, is the most confounding(confusing)
candidate produced by the American political system in decades.
He offers enormous tax cuts, as any bona fide Republican
candidate must. But he also wants to leave Social Security as it
is.
He says he hates Obamacare , but offers concepts of Medicare
to care for people that cant take care of themselves. He has
gutted the standard Republican position that favors freer trade.
The most surprising aspect about Mr. Trumps solid appeal among
Republican primary voters, though, may be what it says about the
waning (to become weaker in strength or influence )place of religion in

American politics and the revival of a populism centered more on

economic nationalism and white working-class discontent.
It is intriguing that we have some notable challenges to the
political establishment that are not coming from a traditional
American religious place but from a surprisingly secular
tradition, said David Voas, head of the social science
department at University College London.
Is this a sign that Americans are finally losing their religious
spirit, following the longtime trend in other advanced nations?
At the very least, it does suggest that Republicans longstanding
strategy of building majorities for their anti-tax platform by
appealing to working-class voters Christian morals has lost a lot
of its power.
Donald Trump is not just the least religious Republican in the
field, he is perceived as less religious than Hillary Clinton
or even Bernie Sanders, who clearly resembles a secular
European social democrat.
Given Mr. Trumps serial marriages, the coarse sexual references
and his multiple positions on abortion, its no surprise that fewer
than half of Republicans view him as religious, according to a
poll by the Pew Research Center this year.
And still, his economic populism, reminiscent of the nationalist stance of
European right-wingers like Silvio Berlusconi of Italy, has so far
overpowered the openly devout(believing strongly in a religion and
obeying all its rules or principles ) message of Ted Cruz, the most deepdyed conservative still in the race. Indeed, Mr. Trump has outflanked the
standard bearers of the traditional religious right even among the most
devout voters.
Americans remain exceptionally religious, compared to people in other
rich nations. American scholars argue this is largely because the sharp
line between church and state in the United States fostered (to
encourage the development or growth of ideas or feelings )vibrant
competition among different religious flavors, which kept the flame
alive.

But religions appeal has been eroding in the United States since
the end of the 1980s, according to research by Michael Hout of
New York University and Claude Fischer of the University of
California, Berkeley. In 1987, only one in 14 American adults
expressed no religious preference. By 2012, the share had
increased to one in five.
Scholars like Professor Voas argue Americans are undergoing a
process similar to what has happened in Europe, where secular
institutions took over many of the jobs once performed by the
church. Professors Hout and Fischer argue, instead, that the
erosion reflects the shocks and aftershocks from the 1960s: like
churches censureship of premarital sex and young peoples
growing acceptance of homosexuality.
Organized religion gained influence by espousing(to become involved
with or support an activity or opinion ) a conservative social agenda that
led liberals and young people who already had weak attachment to
organized religion to drop that identification, they wrote. By 2012, 36
percent of liberals preferred no religion, compared to just 7 percent of
conservatives.
Regardless of the deeper dynamics, Mr. Trumps campaign poses
a critical question: Is the alignment of interests on the right,
entwining religious fervor with free market economics, fraying?
If so, what will take its place?
The notion that evangelical voters are nonresponsive to
anything other than abortion and homosexuality overstates the
power of religion on political choice, said Nolan McCarty,
professor of politics and public affairs at Princeton.
Republicans longstanding strategy has been showing signs of
wear for a while. By 2012, Professor Hout argued, it was clear
that they had pretty much gotten as much as they were going to
get out of religion. They couldnt expand the base any further by
appealing to devout Christians, he said, because they had
rounded them up already.
Still, it took Mr. Trump to identify the real Achilles heel in the
Reagan coalition: an economic policy built around tax cuts for
the wealthy that has failed to deliver the goods to the Republican
base for far too long.

While Mr. Trumps economic proposals may not add up to a

coherent agenda for most voters, it does suggest, said Kenneth
Scheve, a professor of political science at Stanford, that there is
something wrong in the policy bundle Republicans have offered
them over and over again.
Mr. Trump may not be able to ride his coalition to the White
House (he has alienated too many women and Hispanics, among
others). But he has probably changed American politics for good.
And that calls for more policy experimentation to address
directly the traumas of the working class.
I cant see the rhetoric of small government go away, Professor
Scheve said. But some Republicans might try including support
for social insurance as a strategy.
He compared the position of contemporary Republicans to that
of British Conservatives after their devastating political defeat at
the end of World War II, when they accepted the legitimacy of a
social safety net. The Tories at some point said this is the way
democratic capitalism works, Professor Scheve said.
Democrats, of course, have not been able to carry out an
economic agenda that unites working-class whites with minority
constituencies, either.
All that suggests that the 2016 election is emerging as one that
potentially leads to a major realignment of political allegiances,
much as the election of 1968 did. Then, Lyndon Johnsons
desegregation policies pushed Southern whites from the
Democratic Party into the arms of Republicans, who built a longlasting political coalition around resentment over the rise of
racial and ethnic minorities.
Mr. Trumps naked appeal to those resentments is likely to come
up short. So where will the next majority come from?
The new winning coalition is up for grabs, Professor Hout said.
It doesnt seem to have a big place for religion, though.
They cant win without them, Professor Hout added, speaking
of Republicans and their Christian supporters. They just arent
enough.

Election 2016 brings promises on the never-never

Two words that almost guarantee you will stop reading and flick to the next
page: dividend imputation.
Eye-glazing right? In the blizzard of words in the current federal election
contest, this cryptic term is unlikely to fire much passion. What's dividend
impu-thingemy got to do with me you might ask.
But stick it out because the answer is, more than you think.
In fact, because of this barely-understood provision in Australian tax law,
a promised 10-year tax cut trajectory for business, taking it from 30 per
cent down to 25, and set to turbo-charge jobs and economic growth, will
have no perceptible effect.
Indeed, the budget centrepiece around which the Turnbull government's
central case turns, amounts to, well, eight tenths of bugger all.
That is, nothing for most companies because their owners, through
imputation, get back all their company tax, and ditto for economic growth
as well even according to the Treasury's own predictions. An improvement
in economic output or GDP of just 0.1 per cent per year and that's after
year 10, 2015-26.
That is, in reality, only an estimating margin for error. It's that small.
The gains will be barely noticeable unless that is, you're a foreign investor
in an Australian company, in which case a 5 cent company tax cut goes
straight to you bottom line and is a straight-out gift.
And again, that's down to dividend imputation. Here's why.
For Australian owners of Australian companies and lets face it, there are
hundreds of thousands of small businesses registered as companies simply
to limit their owners' personal liabilities dividend imputation means they
effectively pay no company tax.
The system is designed so that the company pays its 30 per cent tax and
then "distributes" its profit to its owner(s) as dividends in many cases
this will be simply an owner-operator. In Australia, some 81 per cent of
company income is distributed in this way.
In order to avoid the double-taxation of those dollars, that dividend
received is fully franked, which means the Australian recipients are able to
claim back the tax already paid (by the company) and offset that against
their own personal income. Net result? No company tax is paid.
This is Turnbull's problem: it's hard to give the benefit of a company tax cut
to a shareholder that never pays company tax.

His claim that four dollars of value springs from every dollar of tax reduced
on business, can be both true, and at the same time, entirely academic if
there is no material reduction in costs.
It is different for foreign investors who, because they don't get franking
credits, are the only ones who currently pay the 30 per cent rate and do not
have it returned to them.
As Fairfax Media's Peter Martin noted on Thursday, referring to the
promised 25 per cent rate a decade from now: "It means most of the $8.2
billion per year tax cut, lands offshore, as a gift."
It stands to reason, if you are not paying the 30 per cent rate at all, a cut to
25 per cent will have zero impact on your investment decisions.
Whether your company pays 30 per cent or 25 per cent makes no
difference you get it back anyway.
So, there you have it. An immeasurably small economic growth
improvement, and a permanent loss of revenue overseas, which may or
may not be ever made up for by a stronger economy.
Labor's alternative is however is hardly more tangible and may be
even less immediate.
It turns on the claimed economic benefits of spending extra billions over
the next decade on education some $37.3 of them.
Of the two plans, this is the more instinctively believable. Voters want
reinvestment in under-funded schools. And the idea that better education
leads to better jobs seems axiomatic(obviously true and therefore not
needing to be proved ).
But is it? What is the economic boost of Labor's schools reinvestment?
Well, that too is the subject of a gap between feeling and fact wide enough
to drive a debt truck through. On Tuesday Labor's Chris Bowen used his
budget reply speech at the National Press Club to claim a 2.8 per cent
dividend in terms of stronger economic growth from Labor's 10-year
school spending.
That's encouraging getting on for three times the benefit of the company
tax cut at 1.0 per cent after 20 years. But wait, it too is intangible over a
shorter time frame. "The OECD has identified it, a 2.8 per cent lift in GDP, if
we can get every school student with the basic skills they need when they
graduate," he told the luncheon, calling it a "real impact" and a "clear and
unmistakeable economic dividend".
But the OECD modelling stops some way short of defining a clear and
unmistakeable dividend over a decade as implied. Rather, as the
government gleefully pointed out, it models that kind of positive outcome
in closer to eight decades or by 2095. It also uses a figure of 11 per cent in

20195 but it seems the latter is the non-inflation adjusted figure for
the growth of the economy.
To be fair to both narratives, there are credible backers for each who
support their respective policies. Labor cites the Reserve Bank as
advocating the economic dividends of "investing in human capital".
The government has the backing of some economists for its company tax
cut-related growth gains.
But after a start that has felt more like the traditional post-budget
week than the first days of a federal election campaign, voter confidence in
either approach is unlikely to be enhanced. The short answer, it turns
out, is a long way off.
In practice, neither side has the capacity to spend up in the way of
campaigns past, leaving them with the harder task of selling policies that
cost a lot up front for only long-term and potentially illusory gains.

Hillary Clinton turns up heat on Donald Trump tax

holdout
Hillary Clinton continued to turn up the heat Saturday on Donald
Trump 's refusal to release his tax returns.
Her campaign released a video online Saturday titled "What's Donald
Trump Hiding?" that includes a series of clips over the years of Trump
being asked whether he plans to release his returns.

Mrs. Clinton, and your speeches?: Our view

Give Hillary Clinton credit for chutzpah(unusual and shocking

behaviour, involving taking risks but not feeling guilty ). Clinton is
demanding that Donald Trump disclose his tax returns, even as she
refuses to release the transcripts of her highly paid speeches to Goldman
Sachs and other Wall Street bankers.