NASA"s Moon Mission Runs Into Glitch After Launch

UFO Update – Featured videos:

Weather forecasting is about to improve with satellite launch

NASA and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency announced the launch of a precipitation satellite that will enhance how we understand the climate.

The Global Precipitation Measurement Core Observatory satellite will be launched on February 27 from Japan’s Tanegashima Space Center and will measure precipitation and energy cycles.

Researchers say that it will improve weather forecasting worldwide.

“Launching this core observatory and establishing the Global Precipitation Measurement mission is vitally important for environmental research and weather forecasting,” said Michael Freilich, director of NASA’s Earth Science Division in Washington.

“Knowing rain and snow amounts accurately over the whole globe is critical to understanding how weather and climate impact agriculture, fresh water availability, and responses to natural disasters.”

More from GlobalPost: Rescue of research vessel trapped in Antarctica ice delayed again (VIDEO)

Apart from giving more accurate weather forecasts, the satellite will be able measure the size and distribution of raindrops, snowflakes and ice, helping agriculture, and averting natural disasters.

“We will use data from the GPM mission not only for Earth science research but to improve weather forecasting and respond to meteorological disasters,” said Shizuo Yamamoto, executive director of JAXA

http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/science/131229/weather-forecasting-about-improve-satellite-launch

GlobalPost

Weather forecasting is about to improve with satellite launch

E-Cig Companies Launch Ad Blitz Before FDA Move

E-Cig Companies Launch Ad Blitz Before FDA Move
http://pixel.quantserve.com/pixel/p-89EKCgBk8MZdE.gif

(Newser) – Get ready to hear a lot more about “vaping.” The Wall Street Journal reports that the makers of electronic cigarettes have embarked on a major TV ad blitz to push their products. Why now? Because the FDA is considering restrictions on how e-cigs are marketed and sold, and those proposals could be out in January. “Rather than retreat, e-cigarette makers are unleashing a flurry of new TV ads to reach as many consumers as quickly as possible and cement their brands nationally,” writes Mike Esterl.

For example, Lorillard has two new TV spots out for its blu product, and it plans to increase marketing in 2014 from the current $ 30 million. Rival NJOY unveiled a new TV ad today and will more than triple next year’s marketing budget to about $ 30 million. Smaller companies such as Fin, Mistic, and 21st Century Smoke are expected to follow suit, on smaller scales. And then there’s the tobacco giants behind Marlboro and Camel hoping to dent the market with e-cigs of their own (MarkTen and Vuse, respectively). The push comes as the debate intensifies over e-cigs. Backers say they’re a healthful alternative to regular cigarettes and a tool to help people quit the habit, while critics worry about unknown risks and the glamorization of smoking. New York City recently banned them from bars and restaurants.

Health from Newser

Read more about E-Cig Companies Launch Ad Blitz Before FDA Move and other interesting subjects concerning Health and Lifestyle at TheDailyNewsReport.com

More Than 1 Mln Xbox One Consoles Sold On Launch

SAN FRANCISCO –  More than one million Xbox One consoles were sold worldwide in less than 24 hours following its launch on Friday, Microsoft’s Xbox said in a statement on its website. It is the biggest launch in Xbox’s history and the consoles are sold out at most retailers, the company said. However, it’s not clear whether this momentum will be sustained as the reviews for Xbox One-exclusive games have received mediocre reviews, Mike Hickey, an analyst at Benchmark, said in a report ahead of the release. Competitor Sony Corp. had earlier this week launched its new generation PlayStation 4 to a strong reception, also selling more than one million consoles in the first 24 hours.

Copyright © 2013 MarketWatch, Inc.

FOX Business

More Than 1 Mln Xbox One Consoles Sold On Launch

MAVEN Ready for Launch

At Alternate Viewpoint, the privacy of our visitors is of extreme importance to us (See this article to learn more about Privacy Policies.). This privacy policy document outlines the types of personal information is received and collected by Alternate Viewpoint and how it is used.

Log Files

Like many other Web sites, Alternate Viewpoint makes use of log files. The information inside the log files includes internet protocol (IP) addresses, type of browser, Internet Service Provider (ISP), date/time stamp, referring/exit pages, and number of clicks to analyze trends, administer the site, track user"s movement around the site, and gather demographic information. IP addresses, and other such information are not linked to any information that is personally identifiable.

Cookies and Web Beacons

Alternate Viewpoint does use cookies to store information about visitors preferences, record user-specific information on which pages the user access or visit, customize Web page content based on visitors browser type or other information that the visitor sends via their browser.

DoubleClick DART Cookie

• Google, as a third party vendor, uses cookies to serve ads on Alternate Viewpoint.


• Google"s use of the DART cookie enables it to serve ads to users based on their visit to Alternate Viewpoint and other sites on the Internet.


• Users may opt out of the use of the DART cookie by visiting the Google ad and content network privacy policy at the following URL - http://www.google.com/privacy_ads.html.

These third-party ad servers or ad networks use technology to the advertisements and links that appear on Alternate Viewpoint send directly to your browsers. They automatically receive your IP address when this occurs. Other technologies ( such as cookies, JavaScript, or Web Beacons ) may also be used by the third-party ad networks to measure the effectiveness of their advertisements and / or to personalize the advertising content that you see.

Alternate Viewpoint has no access to or control over these cookies that are used by third-party advertisers.

You should consult the respective privacy policies of these third-party ad servers for more detailed information on their practices as well as for instructions about how to opt-out of certain practices. Alternate Viewpoint"s privacy policy does not apply to, and we cannot control the activities of, such other advertisers or web sites.

If you wish to disable cookies, you may do so through your individual browser options. More detailed information about cookie management with specific web browsers can be found at the browser"s respective websites.

MAVEN Ready for Launch

Julian Assange to launch talk show on RT

At Alternate Viewpoint, the privacy of our visitors is of extreme importance to us (See this article to learn more about Privacy Policies.). This privacy policy document outlines the types of personal information is received and collected by Alternate Viewpoint and how it is used.

Log Files

Like many other Web sites, Alternate Viewpoint makes use of log files. The information inside the log files includes internet protocol (IP) addresses, type of browser, Internet Service Provider (ISP), date/time stamp, referring/exit pages, and number of clicks to analyze trends, administer the site, track user"s movement around the site, and gather demographic information. IP addresses, and other such information are not linked to any information that is personally identifiable.

Cookies and Web Beacons

Alternate Viewpoint does use cookies to store information about visitors preferences, record user-specific information on which pages the user access or visit, customize Web page content based on visitors browser type or other information that the visitor sends via their browser.

DoubleClick DART Cookie

• Google, as a third party vendor, uses cookies to serve ads on Alternate Viewpoint.


• Google"s use of the DART cookie enables it to serve ads to users based on their visit to Alternate Viewpoint and other sites on the Internet.


• Users may opt out of the use of the DART cookie by visiting the Google ad and content network privacy policy at the following URL - http://www.google.com/privacy_ads.html.

These third-party ad servers or ad networks use technology to the advertisements and links that appear on Alternate Viewpoint send directly to your browsers. They automatically receive your IP address when this occurs. Other technologies ( such as cookies, JavaScript, or Web Beacons ) may also be used by the third-party ad networks to measure the effectiveness of their advertisements and / or to personalize the advertising content that you see.

Alternate Viewpoint has no access to or control over these cookies that are used by third-party advertisers.

You should consult the respective privacy policies of these third-party ad servers for more detailed information on their practices as well as for instructions about how to opt-out of certain practices. Alternate Viewpoint"s privacy policy does not apply to, and we cannot control the activities of, such other advertisers or web sites.

If you wish to disable cookies, you may do so through your individual browser options. More detailed information about cookie management with specific web browsers can be found at the browser"s respective websites.

Julian Assange to launch talk show on RT

Obamacare launch hits early hitch as online traffic snarls up sites

A member of the U.S. House of Representatives walks down the steps from the House Chamber as he exits the U.S. Capitol after the Republican-led House again voted to link funding for the U.S. government to include a delay of ”Obamacare” in Washington, September 30, 2013.

Credit: Reuters/Jim Bourg

By David Morgan

WASHINGTON | Tue Oct 1, 2013 1:01am EDT

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Millions of Americans will learn on Tuesday what President Barack Obama’s landmark healthcare law actually means for them, as the administration opens new insurance marketplaces in 50 states despite the government shutdown.

The launch marks a milestone for Obama’s signature domestic policy achievement, which aims to provide subsidized healthcare to millions of the uninsured, the most ambitious U.S. social program since Medicare was introduced in the 1960s.

The marketplaces, or exchanges, require health plans to provide a broad range of essential benefits that were not necessarily part of individual policies in the past, including mental health services, birth control and preventive care. The coverage is linked to other insurance market reforms and new consumer safeguards including a ban on discrimination based on gender and health history.

It also mandates that Americans obtain insurance or pay a fine.

“Nothing like this has ever existed before,” said U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius.

Republicans have fought for months to delay or stop Obamacare, most recently triggering a shutdown of the federal government on Monday night by insisting that a routine funding measure include a delay in Obamacare, which the Democratic-controlled Senate rejected.

Officials running the new exchanges braced for technical glitches that could hamper the enrollment effort.

But the president said that whatever the outcome of talks in Congress, the healthcare reform launch would proceed.

“The Affordable Care Act is moving forward. That funding is already in place. You can’t shut it down,” Obama resolutely informed his Republican opponents in a televised statement at the White House on Monday.

As many as 7 million Americans are expected to sign up for insurance in 2014 through the exchanges, which open for enrollment into new insurance plans on Tuesday and will accept applications through March 31. An additional 8 million people are expected to receive health benefits through an expansion of the government’s Medicaid program for the poor.

Republicans have blamed Obamacare’s requirements for pushing up the cost of health insurance for business and individuals, a claim the Democrats deny.

“What I want is to keep the government running and at the same time to deal with the harms, the millions of Americans who are … at risk of losing their healthcare, are facing skyrocketing insurance premiums,” Texas Senator Ted Cruz, who has been leading the charge among Republicans in Congress to defund the law, said in an interview with CNN.

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act has been the object of intensive Republican attack since it was signed into law in 2010. Its foes tried and failed to use the U.S. Supreme Court and a presidential election to get it overturned in 2012.

SLOW START

In the early planning, the administration aimed to create new healthcare markets that would make shopping for insurance as simple as buying an airline ticket online. But repeated delays and technical difficulties mean the new sites in many states won’t have all of their functions ready in the first weeks, at the earliest.

Minnesota officials said on Monday that they were not yet sure what time their state’s exchange would launch, and that the timing would only be determined after further testing on Tuesday morning to see if the system connected properly with federal government’s network for determining subsidies.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which will operate federal marketplaces in 36 states that are not running their own, has also said that technical glitches are likely.

“We will fix them and move on. Is it a sign that the law is flawed and failed? I don’t think so. I think it’s a sign that we’re building a piece of complicated technology,” Sebelius said.

Senior administration officials and organizers working to help reach the uninsured with news of Obamacare benefits believe enrollment will get off to a quiet start on Tuesday and build slowly through the six-month enrollment period.

The first enrollees are likely to be people with pre-existing health conditions and older people who have had a hard time obtaining coverage up to now. But Obamacare’s success will depend on young healthy adults, whose lower risk profile is needed to compensate for higher cost beneficiaries.

However, the law remains unpopular with 46 percent of the public. Anti-Obamacare forces have spent hundreds of millions of dollars in television advertising, outspending Obamacare supporters by more than four-to-one. Meanwhile, millions of potential beneficiaries don’t know the law exists.

Officials said Tuesday would also see a ramp-up in the administration’s multimillion-dollar media campaign to reach prospective beneficiaries through television, Twitter, Facebook and social organizations including churches.

In particular, they are targeting young and healthy Americans whose participation will help offset the cost of covering sicker beneficiaries. The advertising campaign is targeting black and Hispanic men between the ages of 18 and 35 in large cities in Florida, Texas, Illinois and California.

“People are just starting to tune in,” Sebelius said. “As we ramp up our communications and connect it with real facts, for the first time, a lot of Americans will be learning what the law means for them.”

(Additional reporting by Lewis Krauskopf and Sharon Begley in New York; Editing by Michele Gershberg and Lisa Shumaker)

• Link this


• Share this


• Digg this


• Email


• Reprints

Reuters: Politics

Obamacare launch hits early hitch as online traffic snarls up sites

Obamacare D-Day becomes a soft launch

For months all eyes have been on October 1 — the first day people can sign up for Obamacare.

But as that day approaches, many people working on the nuts and bolts of the health law are tamping down any expectations of a sign-up stampede.

Continue Reading

Not everyone will enroll immediately. And that, they say, is the way they want it.

Given all the worries that web sites could crash, call centers could be overwhelmed, and the federal government’s data hub could falter as it checks eligibility and subsidies, they’d rather see a slow buildup during an open enrollment season that runs through March.

(PHOTOS: 25 unforgettable Obamacare quotes)

“October 1 will be an important day to raise awareness, but it is the first day of a six-month public education effort,” said Tara McGuinness, a senior White House communications adviser working on rollout of the health law.

But given the politics of Obamacare, expect a rush to judgment.

Republican opponents are going to want to declare the controversial legislation a failure, and the sooner the better. Either tepid enrollment or technical glitches will advance their argument that the law is doomed to fail. They see the White House as playing a game of lowered expectations rather than ‘fessing up to the failures.

“If I were HHS or CMS or whoever’s calling the shots over there, or the White House, I would think that would be a natural thing to do,” said Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.), one of the skeptics. “Part of me believes this is Thelma and Louise about 10 miles from the Grand Canyon.”

(Also on POLITICO: This week in Congress: A bust)

Democrats -from President Barack Obama on down – say that hiccups are to be expected when the switch is flipped on the new state exchanges. It’s an intricate system that requires several complex government technology systems to successfully talk to each other — and to the consumer. A modest start to enrollment may reduce any start-up strain.

“There are going to be some glitches. No doubt about it,” Obama said at a news conference last month. “There are going to be things where we say, you know what? We should have thought of that earlier, or this would work a little bit better or this needs an adjustment.”

And it could all get even more complicated if Congress doesn’t figure out how to avoid a government shutdown. That wold be because of the ongoing fight about Obamacare – and it could start the same day enrollment does, Oct. 1.

(Also on POLITICO: Poll: New low in government trust)

The administration hopes to keep the glitches minimal-and to have time to repair them before Obamacare’s public image is further hurt. Alan Weil, executive director of the National Academy for State Health Policy, says “no one gets hurt” if a problem springs up in October and is fixed in November.

“October 1 is an important day but no one actually gets coverage until January 1,” Weil said. “No one’s life changes on October 1.”

Democratic supporters of the law say that 2014 enrollment shouldn’t be measured until open enrollment ends in late March. In fact, they say, it may take two or three years to really evaluate such a dramatic new program. The Congressional Budget Office has forecast gradual growth in coverage over the years.

None of this means that October 1 isn’t important— it is. The administration hopes the start of enrollment will drive a lot of attention to the law from the media and on social networks, which will encourage uninsured people to check out the new exchanges. But people are likely to mull over options, and come back to the websites and marketing materials more than once before they commit. They may not want to pay in October if they can wait until December for coverage in January.

That’s what happened when Massachusetts opened its exchange in late 2006.

Jon Kingsdale, who ran the Massachusetts exchange and is now a director at the Wakely Consulting’s Boston office, said people in that state had an average of 18 interactions – web visits, e-mails or phone calls —before they actually bought coverage.

“It’s not going to be sudden, immediate enrollment,” Kingsdale said of the Affordable Care Act. “I would expect very little enrollment in October for benefits that don’t start until January.”

In Massachusetts, about 10,000 new, subsidized enrollees signed up each month over the first 15 months. The biggest spike came in the last two months before the mandate kicked in, Kingsdale said.

Kevin Counihan, who is leading the Connecticut insurance marketplace, hopes for a similar pattern.

“October is really the first month of testing … because it’s the first month I really believe that all the elements of the federal data hub and state interfaces are going to be ready. That’s not a bad thing,” Counihan said. “It’s going to give the states and the federal government time to really tweak it.”

He expects spurts of enrollment in the first two weeks of December — closer to to the start of coverage on Jan. 1 — and toward the end of open season in March.

That’s what Mila Kofman, the executive director of the DC Health Link, anticipates. Consumer education in October — and a rush of enrollment in December.

“We want to make sure that they’re not pushed into making a quick decision,” she said.

Nevada plans to advertise in staggered phases and won’t start directing people to the exchange website until Oct. 7.

“We want to avoid the possibility of a federal data hub crash or massive use on the federal hub so we’re turning the message over to come and enroll in Nevada health link” later in October, said C.J. Bawden, a communications officer for the state exchange.

The state’s advertising now says that the health exchange is coming. But on Oct. 7, the ad messaging in the northern half of the state will change to say that it’s now time to enroll. A week later, the advertising will change in the southern part of the state – a staggered approach to further ensure that the exchange isn’t overloaded.

David S. Lopez, president and CEO of Harris Health System near Houston, Texas, says he’s hoping to get his uninsured patients matched with insurance as quickly as possible. Today, nearly two-thirds of the system’s patients pay for care themselves. But he’s looking at the long game.

“To expect we’ll be a rousing success in signing people up – no, it’s not going to happen the first month or even the first year,” Lopez said. “We have to acknowledge there is going to be a learning curve. You’ll build the momentum and we’ll eventually get there. This is going to be a work in progress.”

Jason Millman contributed to this report.

POLITICO – TOP Stories

Obamacare D-Day becomes a soft launch

NASA Lunar Orbiter Hits Snag After Successful Launch

The LADEE spacecraft, which began its trip to the moon last night in a launch from Virginia’s coast, has run into some mechanical problems, NASA says. But officials say the robotic orbiter remains on track, and its problems can be resolved before it reaches the moon next month.

“Team members are analyzing a situation with LADEE’s reaction wheels, but say the spacecraft is communicating and working as designed, with plenty of time to resolve the issue before reaching lunar orbit,” NASA says.

Carried by a Minotaur V rocket, the craft burst into the night sky from the Wallops Flight Facility shortly before midnight Friday, leaving a bright trailing flame that was visible for hundreds of miles along the Eastern seaboard.

The launch inspired many amateur photographers to post their images of the craft’s arcing path. NASA has compiled those photos in a Flickr group.

LADEE stands for Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer. The craft “will orbit the moon to gather detailed information about its atmosphere and the role of dust in the lunar sky,” NASA says.

The AP has more on the technical issues facing the mission:

“S. Peter Worden, director of NASA’s Ames Research Center in California, which developed the spacecraft, told reporters he’s confident everything will be working properly in the next few days.

“LADEE’s reaction wheels were turned on to orient and stabilize the spacecraft, which was spinning too fast after it separated from the final rocket stage, Worden said. But the computer automatically shut the wheels down, apparently because of excess current. He speculated the wheels may have been running a little fast.”

Worden also said that the snag doesn’t represent “an unusual event in spacecraft” and that there is no need to rush to fix the problem. LADEE is expected to reach the moon in 30 days.

News

NASA Lunar Orbiter Hits Snag After Successful Launch

Americans Would Rather Get a Root Canal or a Colonoscopy than Launch War Against Syria

Washington’s Blog
August 27, 2013

We noted last month than Congress is less popular than North Korea, cockroaches, lice, root canals, colonoscopies, traffic jams, used car salesmen, Genghis Khan, Communism, BP during the Gulf oil spill, Nixon during Watergate or King George during the American Revolution.

The Washington Post notes today that a Syria intervention is less popular than Congress.  So that means that the American people would much rather get a root canal or a colonoscopy than bomb Syria.

Indeed, while John Kerry announced today that the Syrian government used chemical weapons, Reutersnoted:

The polls suggest that so far, the growing crisis in Syria, and the emotionally wrenching pictures from an alleged chemical attack in a Damascus suburb this week, may actually be hardening many Americans’ resolve not to get involved in another conflict in the Middle East.

The bottom line is that Americans are sick of war.

This article was posted: Tuesday, August 27, 2013 at 5:50 am

Tags: foreign affairs, terrorism, war

---

---

  Print this page.

---

---

Infowars

Americans Would Rather Get a Root Canal or a Colonoscopy than Launch War Against Syria

Israel, Palestinians launch sustained peace talks

WASHINGTON – July 30: U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry (C) watches as Israeli Justice Minister Tzipi Livni and Palestinian chief negotiator Saeb Erekat (L) shake hands following the announcement of a new round of Mideast peace talks. (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)

• NEW: Kerry says he will be the only person authorized to provide information on the talks


• Secretary of State Kerry says the talks seek a final status agreement in nine months


• Israel agrees to release some Palestinian prisoners


• Obstacles include agreeing on the status of Jerusalem

Washington (CNN) — Secretary of State John Kerry got the money shot he wanted on Tuesday — the chief negotiators for Israel and the Palestinians framed by his lanky embrace as they shook hands to launch “sustained, continuous and substantive” talks on a long-sought Middle East peace treaty.

Now the question is whether the negotiations expected to last nine months will bring an even more historic image, with President Barack Obama bringing together Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to sign a final-status agreement that creates a sovereign Palestinian state in what is now part of Israel.

The Middle East dispute, perhaps the world’s most intractable in the past six decades, entered a new phase with Kerry’s announcement that the first direct talks in three years would proceed in earnest in the next two weeks in either Israel or the Palestinian territories.

Could Middle East peace talks succeed?

Fareed’s Take: Mideast peace talks

Amanpour on Mideast and Egypt

A new beginning for Mideast peace talks

Flanked by Israeli Justice Minister Tzipi Livni and Palestinian chief negotiator Saeb Erakat, Kerry said “all core issues” toward achieving a two-state solution would be on the table.

“Our objective will be to achieve a final status agreement over the course of the next nine months,” he said.

Acknowledging the obstacles from years of hostility and mistrust, Kerry said the process would be difficult but that he believed an agreement could be achieved.

“When somebody tells you that Israelis and Palestinians cannot find common ground or address the issues that divide them, don’t believe them,” Kerry said, adding: “While I understand the skepticism, I don’t share it and I don’t think we have time for it.”

Major obstacles that date back decades in the Middle East conflict include established Jewish settlements in territory claimed by the Palestinians, the status of Palestinian refugees seeking to return to the region, and control of Jerusalem, particularly its Muslim holy sites.

Opinion: John Kerry’s bold push for peace

Kerry has pushed to resume negotiations in order to stave off a showdown over the Israel-Palestinian question at the U.N. General Assembly in September.

His efforts, including multiple meetings in the region with each side in recent months, sought to assure the Israelis that their security concerns would be addressed while convincing Palestinians that an agreement was in their best long-term interest.

“I think that everyone involved here believes that we cannot pass along to another generation the responsibility of ending a conflict that is in our power to resolve in our time,” Kerry said. “They should not be expected to bear that burden and we should not leave it to them. They should not be expected to bear the pain of continued conflict or perpetual war.”

On Tuesday, President Barack Obama held a 30-minute meeting with the negotiators in which he “underscored that while the parties have much work to do in the days and months ahead, the United States stands ready to support them in their efforts to achieve peace,” White House spokesman Jay Carney told reporters.

Both sides face opposition to the negotiations from their people, with hardliners calling the concept of negotiations an unacceptable climate of concession.

In comments after Kerry’s announcement, Livni and Erakat expressed gratitude for his efforts to get the talks going.

Erakat cited both Kerry and Obama “for your relentless efforts and unwavering commitment to achieve a just and lasting peace between Palestinians and Israel.”

“Palestinians have suffered enough and no one benefits more from a lasting peace than Palestinians,” he said, expressing delight that all core issues were on the table.

It was time for Palestinians to have a sovereign state, he added.

Livni praised Kerry “for not giving up,” adding that “we are hopeful but we cannot be naïve.”

“We all know that it’s not going to be easy. It’s going to be hard, with ups and downs,” she said, calling for the new talks to be “a spark of hope, even if small, to emerge out of cynicism and pessimism.”

To help set up the revived talks, Netanyahu prodded the Israeli government into approving the release of 104 Palestinian prisoners — a move that flies in the face of popular sentiment in Israel.

Some observers called the prisoner release to be done in stages a possible sign of a new negotiating environment.

Another sign of a different atmosphere was Kerry’s declaration that both sides agreed to negotiate in private.

“The only announcement you will hear about meetings it’s the one that I just made, and I will be the only one by agreement authorized to comment publicly on the talks in consultation obviously with the parties.” he said. “That means that no one should consider any reports, articles or even rumors reliable unless they come directly from me and I guarantee you they won’t.”

Aaron David Miller of the Woodrow Wilson International Center, a Middle East specialist, said such “radio silence” was unprecedented for Middle East negotiations in his memory.

“It’s a mark of real seriousness on one hand and respect for Kerry on the other,” Miller told CNN.

Amanpour: Barriers to Israel peace less now, says President Carter

Opponents of the peace talks insist that divisions remain too deep to overcome. Dating back to the creation of Israel in 1947, the Middle East conflict has spawned a tortuous peace process that yielded iconic images but no satisfactory solution.

One of the most famous photos was the 1993 shot of President Bill Clinton looking on as Israeli Prime Minister Yitzak Rabin and Palestine Liberation Organization leader Yasser Arafat shook hands over an agreement intended to bring a full peace treaty by 1999.

Rabin was assassinated two years later later by a Jewish law student who said he wanted to halt the peace process.

Livni referred to the failure of previous peace efforts in her comments Tuesday, saying “it’s not our intention to argue about the past, but to create solutions and make decisions about the future.”

The newest round of talks began Monday night with an Iftar dinner to break the fast in the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, then continued Tuesday morning with negotiators also meeting with Obama before joining Kerry for the announcement that took place an hour later than scheduled.

Livni and attorney Isaac Molho, an aide to Netanyahu, represented Israel while Erakat and Fatah official Mohammad Shtayyeh spoke for the Palestinians. Former U.S. ambassador to Israel Martin Indyk also took part as the U.S. envoy to the talks.

Opinion: Americans, stay open to both sides in Mideast talks

CNN’s Adam Aigner-Treworgy, Michael Schwartz and Ashley Fantz contributed to this report.

CNN.com – Politics

Israel, Palestinians launch sustained peace talks

With Launch Of 3.0, Adobe Social Supports Instagram, LinkedIn, And More, Plus Predictive Capabilities

Adobe says version 3.0 of Adobe Social, its set of tools for social marketing, is going live right now.

When I met with Bill Ingram, vice president of product management for digital marketing, and Emi Hofmeister, senior manager of product marketing, they said Adobe Social is part of a larger effort to revamp Adobe’s marketing products. Last year, they conducted surveys about how the company was doing, and they discovered, as paraphrased by Ingram, that “we’re kind of hard to do business with.”

One reason: With 26 different products (and that’s just on the marketing side), it was hard to know what to buy. So Adobe consolidated the line down to five core products — Adobe Analytics, Adobe Target, Adobe Experience Manager, Adobe Media Optimizer, and yes, Adobe Social, which launched last fall. (If less than a year doesn’t seem like enough time to reach version 3.0, that’s because the version that came out last fall was technically considered Adobe Social 2.0. Because reasons.)

As for what’s actually new, Adobe Social now includes support for Flickr, Foursquare, Instagram, and LinkedIn. (That’s on top of previous support for Facebook, Google+, Reddit, Tumblr, and Twitter.) The new integrations include full access to Foursquare’s firehouse of data and the ability to both publish to and analyze from LinkedIn Pages and Groups.

In addition, the predictive publishing capabilities that were announced back in April have gone live, giving publishers tips about what kind of social media content they should publish and when so that they can improve their engagement. And it uses the new interface for the Adobe Marketing Cloud, which makes it easy for different teams to collaborate across Adobe’s various marketing products.

To illustrate the new experience, Hofmeister took me through an example. As a hypothetical online publisher, she spotted a trending topic, formulated a post on that topic linking to a relevant article, looked at the full calendar of scheduled posts, scheduled the post for an empty slot, got a recommendation for a better time to publish, then scheduled her post.

Thanks to new “parent-child” authoring capabilities, she was able to just write one post and push it to all social networks, customizing as necessary. And then, of course, she could track whether that post was to driving the results that she was interested in and use that data to do better next time.

December 1982

NASDAQ:ADBE

Adobe Systems Incorporated is a diversified software company. The Company offers a line of business and mobile software and services used by professionals, designers, knowledge workers, high-end consumers, original equipment manufacturer (OEM) partners, developers and enterprises for creating, managing, delivering and engaging with compelling content and experiences across multiple operating systems, devices and media. Adobe distributes its products through a network of distributors and dealers, value-added resellers (VARs), systems integrators, independent software vendors (ISVs) and OEMs, direct to end…

→ Learn more

TechCrunch

With Launch Of 3.0, Adobe Social Supports Instagram, LinkedIn, And More, Plus Predictive Capabilities

EU, US to launch trade talks next month

President Barack Obama and British Prime Minister David Cameron help students paint a mural during a visit to the Enniskillen Integrated Primary School in Enniskillen, Northern Ireland, Monday, June 17, 2013. The visit takes place before leaders from the G-8 nations are to gather to discuss the ongoing conflict in Syria, and free-trade issues. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

President Barack Obama and British Prime Minister David Cameron help students paint a mural during a visit to the Enniskillen Integrated Primary School in Enniskillen, Northern Ireland, Monday, June 17, 2013. The visit takes place before leaders from the G-8 nations are to gather to discuss the ongoing conflict in Syria, and free-trade issues. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

German Chancellor Angela Merkel, right, is greeted by officials as she arrives at Belfast International Airport, in Northern Ireland, on Monday, June 17, 2013. President Hollande is in Northern Ireland to attend the G-8 Summit in Enniskillen. (AP Photo/ Peter Muhly, Pool)

Russian President Vladimir Putin arrives at Belfast International Airport, in Northern Ireland, on Monday, June 17, 2013. President Hollande is in Northern Ireland to attend the G-8 Summit in Enniskillen. (AP Photo/ Peter Muhly, Pool)

Anti-hunger activists, wearing giant head masks depicting the G-8 leaders, sail on a boat past the hotel where the G8 summit media center is located in Enniskillen, Northern Ireland, on Monday, June 17. The protesters, from the Enough Food for Everyone IF campaign, call for leaders to eliminate the causes of hunger. G-8 leaders depicted are from right to left, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, British Prime Minister David Cameron, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, U.S. President Barack Obama, French President Francois Hollande, Italian Prime Minister Enrico Letta, Russian President Vladimir Putin and German Chancellor Angela Merkel. (AP Photo/Lefteris Pitarakis)

President Barack Obama talks with British Prime Minister David Cameron during a visit to the Enniskillen Integrated Primary School in Enniskillen, Northern Ireland, on Monday, June 17, 2013. The visit took place before leaders from the G-8 nations are to gather to discuss the ongoing conflict in Syria, and free-trade issues. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

Buy AP Photo Reprints

ENNISKILLEN, Northern Ireland (AP) — Talks on a sweeping trade deal between the European Union and the United States, the world’s two largest trading partners, are to get underway in Washington next month, President Barack Obama and top European Union officials said Monday.

“The EU-U.S. relationship is the biggest in the world,” Obama said after meeting with European leaders at the G-8 summit in Enniskillen, Northern Ireland, citing roughly the $ 1 trillion in trade in goods and services between the two every year.

“This potentially ground-breaking partnership would deepen those ties.”

The head of the EU’s executive arm, European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso, said a deal could bring “huge economic benefits” to both sides. Summit host British Prime Minister David Cameron said the trade pact could create 2 million jobs and “could be the biggest bilateral trade deal in history.”

The aim of the trans-Atlantic deal would be to promote economic growth by eliminating the import tariffs and changing regulations that keep goods made on one side of the Atlantic from being sold on the other.

When the start of negotiations were first announced by Obama in his State of the Union address in March, it was estimated that a deal could boost each economy by more than a half-percentage point annually and significantly lower the cost of goods and services for consumers.

Officials have said a deal could be reached next year. But securing one will be tricky. The talks will be watched warily by interest groups and would have to be approved by each side’s lawmakers and leaders before the new trade arrangements take effect.

The EU has already yielded to pressure. When it was putting together its mandate for the negotiations last week, France managed to get state assistance of the TV and movie industries taken off the table. Barroso said the issue could be revisited later. Meanwhile, U.S. labor officials have also expressed skepticism.

The statement of support for the trade deal came just ahead of the opening of the Group of Eight Summit among the leaders of leading industrial nations: The U.S., Britain, Germany, France, Italy, Japan, Canada and Russia, plus the European Union.

Host Cameron greeted the arriving leaders against a backdrop of green grass and lake views at the Lough Erne golf resort near the small town of Enniskillen.

Later Monday over a working dinner, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Russia’s support for the Syrian government will be a topic for discussion.

Cameron said he wanted the summit to deliver a firm plan for promoting multi-faction talks in Geneva aimed at ending the country’s bloody civil war. Moscow officially shares that goal but continues to ship military aid to the army of Syrian President Bashar Assad.

Following a frosty Putin-Cameron meeting Sunday in London, the Russian leader remains opposed to plans by the West to start shipping weapons to rebels struggling to topple Assad.

Obama announced Friday that the U.S. would start sending weaponry, while Britain and France remained concerned that the firepower might end up helping anti-democratic extremists linked to Iran and Lebanon’s Hezbollah militia.

“How can you allow Russia to continue to send weapons to the regime of Bashar al-Assad while the opposition gets so few weapons? ” asked French President Francois Hollande. “We will have this discussion … Not to point the finger at Vladimir Putin, but for him to understand that it is in the interest of world peace to have this conference in Geneva.”

The summit is taking place under heavy security, with some 7,000 police lining roads and checking vehicles.

A protest Monday attracted far fewer than the 2,000 expected by police. About 200 people gathered ahead of the march at a library in Enniskillen. Activists waved flags and placards for a range of causes as a heavy metal band played, including gay marriage, anti-capitalist criticism of the G-8 forum itself, and opposition to fracking.

__

Associated Press writers Cassandra Vinograd and Vladimir Isachenkov in Enniskillen contributed to this report.

Associated Press

Copyright 2013 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Top Headlines

EU, US to launch trade talks next month

Apple"s e-Book Market Share On The Rise, Desktop OS X iBooks Launch Should Help

Apple has been quietly growing its share of the U.S. e-book market according to its testimony during the current e-book price-fixing court case against it, and now accounts for 20 percent of e-book sales overall stateside (via MacRumors). That’s about twice as much as has been speculated in the past by market-watchers, and it indicates that Apple, while nowhere near the dominant force that Amazon is, might be slowly winning a sizeable chunk of the digital book space.

The news overall comes in a negative context for Apple, which is defending itself against allegations by the government and had to defend the iBookstore from a characterization as a failure, but it’s still good news for the iBooks business, which looks to have a chance to grow even further as Apple delivers desktop support for its digital books via an iBooks application for Mac, shipping with the next release of OS X, 10.9 Mavericks, sometime this fall.

The iBooks arrival on the desktop should be good for consumers, as it provides one more place to read. Cross-platform reach has been the big advantage of competing stores like the Amazon, Nook and Kobo stores so far, and while Apple’s expansion to the Mac still leaves anyone not on Apple devices out of the loop, so it’s unclear how much adoption will spike. But it’s fair to speculate that iBooks has done well on the back of Apple’s increasingly far-reaching presence in education, since texts feature prominently in its promotional efforts around iBooks (and were again on display at the OS X iBooks unveiling at WWDC).

iBooks on the Mac isn’t going to be revolutionary because it lets you pick up where you left off in the latest Game Of Thrones installment on your iPad, since I think a very small portion of people would prefer reading books on their computer vs. on a mobile device. But it will be huge for the education market; in many ways an interactive textbook makes more sense on OS X than it does on iOS, if only because of the greater ability to take extensive notes, view multiple books at once as windowed separate selections, and just generally take better advantage of multiple streams of information.

iBooks is a fine hedge as a consumer-focused e-books platform (it lets Apple claim a more complete ecosystem), but its real lasting value will probably be in education, where it gives Apple a definite leg up on other competing platforms. Others are doing e-textbooks, but Apple has the education pedigree to do it right and spread it fast, and that’s likely what’s behind its iBookstore growth.

April 1, 1976

NASDAQ:AAPL

Started by Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and Ronald Wayne, Apple has expanded from computers to consumer electronics over the last 30 years, officially changing their name from Apple Computer, Inc. to Apple, Inc. in January 2007. Among the key offerings from Apple’s product line are: Pro line laptops (MacBook Pro) and desktops (Mac Pro), consumer line laptops (MacBook Air) and desktops (iMac), servers (Xserve), Apple TV, the Mac OS X and Mac OS X Server operating systems, the iPod, the…

→ Learn more

TechCrunch

Apple"s e-Book Market Share On The Rise, Desktop OS X iBooks Launch Should Help

US Braces for North Korean Missile Launch

April 04, 2013

by VOA News

The United States expects North Korea will launch one of its missiles in the coming days.

Defense Department officials tell VOA intelligence gathered over the past few weeks suggests Pyongyang is serious about making good on some of its threats against Seoul and Washington.

North Korea said Thursday that its military has been given final approval for a nuclear attack against the United States – a threat that most anlysts think Pyongyang would be unable to carry out.

South Korea said it has confirmed the North has moved one of its missiles to the country’s east coast, and Defense Minister Kim Kwan-Jin said while the missile appears to have “considerable range,” it is unlikely it could reach the U.S. mainland.

“Looking at the missile’s range, it doesn’t look like it will be able to reach the American continent,” said Kim.

South Korea’s semi-official news agency quoted officials in Seoul as saying the missile is likely the Musudan, also known as the BM-25, a ground-launched rocket 12 to 19 meters long that can carry a conventional 1,200-kilogram bomb. It could potentially carry a nuclear warhead, but analysts think that, too, is beyond North Korea’s current capabilities.

The Musudan has a range of about 3,000 kilometers – far enough to hit South Korea or Japan.

U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel says the Pentagon is treating the threats seriously. He said Wednesday the United States will soon deploy an advanced missile defense system to the Pacific island of Guam as a precautionary move.

Pyongyang, which is angry about recent United Nations sanctions against its nuclear program, has issued near-daily threats against Seoul and Washington.

Renewed threats

North Korean state-run television Thursday showed more mass rallies against the U.S. But several countries in the region fear they could be more likely targets for Pyongyang. North Korea has vowed to attack U.S. bases in Japan, South Korea, Guam and Hawaii.

Japan’s chief Cabinet secretary, Yoshihide Suga, said Japan is in close cooperation with Washington and Seoul.

“Japan will not be pushed around by North Korea’s provocations and will continue to work together with relating countries to comply with U.N. Security Council resolutions. We strongly urge North Korea that it’s not in their interests to take further provocative actions,” said Suga.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexander Lukashevich urged North Korea to tone down the rhetoric and return to diplomacy.

“This radically complicates, if it doesn’t in practice shut off, the prospects for resuming six-party talks to resolve the nuclear issue on the Korean peninsula,” he said.

Kaesong industrial complex

Meanwhile, the future of a joint industrial complex between North and South Korea remained in question, as Pyongyang blocked South Korean workers from entering the center for a second day.

In Seoul, VOA’s Steve Herman said more than 600 South Koreans spent the night at the Kaesong industrial complex, after about 200 returned home Thursday. Six Chinese nationals are also stranded there.

The Kaesong industrial zone, about 10 kilometers inside North Korea, and is an important source of income for cash-strapped Pyongyang.

North Korea has responded furiously to tough U.N. sanctions meant to punish Pyongyang for its third nuclear test in February and its latest satellite launch. It is also upset at ongoing annual U.S.-South Korea military drills.

NEWSLETTER

Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list

GlobalSecurity.org

US Braces for North Korean Missile Launch

How Obama and Valerie Jarrett Helped Launch Their Political Careers in an Outrageous "Urban Renewal" Scheme

Tweet

As President Obama"s second term begins, and inequality, especially for black Americans, is worse than it was when Obama first took office, it"s worth revisiting progressives" and Obama supporters" impression of the president as somebody who might actually care about equality and helping the most unfortunate in society. And a big centerpiece of that impression, which endures despite evidence that he"s at best ambivalent, is his early days in Chicago. The narrative that Obama is a salt-of-the-earth community organizer has been spoon-fed to the American populace since Obama first began campaigning. In reality, there"s a big piece of the president"s past that has gone under-reported that will help us to understand Obama and his closest adviser Valerie Jarrett a bit better: Obama and Jarrett built the nexus of political support that took him to the presidency by participating in one of the most appalling examples of neoliberal-corrupted City Hall-”urban renewal projects” in recent history that enriched developers and investors and destroyed the lives of thousands of Chicago"s poorest black residents, in some cases using his community organizer job as camouflage.

We have the opportunity to revisit our impression of Obama thanks to a speech by Robert Fitch, a radical journalist and activist who chronicled the destruction of public housing in his 1996 book, The Assassination of New York, in which he detailed the changing landscape of the city at the hands of bankers and developers. New York"s poorest were left to the mercy of the extremely rich, who used their power and money to gentrify, gut and obliterate public housing. Fitch"s accounts of the plunder of New York and Obama"s efforts in Chicago offer a different narrative than we"re often accustomed to hearing — they weren"t the “fault of Republicans,” but rather examples of the most frequent attack on democracy and the general welfare: how politicians “of all stripes” served the interests of the richest and most powerful in the society. In the case of NY and Chicago, the powerful took the form of a collection of interests that Fitch called FIRE: finance, insurance and real estate.

During a speech delivered at the Harlem Tenants Associations in November 2008, directly after Obama"s presidential win, Fitch explained how the new president and other middle-class blacks, including Valerie Jarrett and Obama"s wife Michelle, climbed the power ladder in Chicago at the expense of poor African Americans by aligning themselves with “friendly FIRE”:

…[A]s Obama knows very well, for most of the last two decades in Chicago there’s been in place a very specific economic development plan. The plan was to make the South Side like the North Side. Which is the same kind of project as making the land north of Central Park like the land south of Central Park. The North Side is the area north of the Loop—Chicago’s midtown central business district—where rich white people live; they root for the Cubs. They’re neighborhood is called the Gold Coast.

For almost a hundred years in Chicago blacks have lived on the South Side close to Chicago’s factories and slaughter houses. And Cellular Field, home of the White Sox. The area where they lived was called the Black Belt or Bronzeville—and it’s the largest concentration of African American people in the U.S.—nearly 600,000 people—about twice the size of Harlem.

In the 1950s, big swaths of urban renewal were ripped through the black belt, demolishing private housing on the south east side. The argument then was that the old low rise private housing was old and unsuitable. Black people needed to be housed in new, high-rise public housing which the city built just east of the Dan Ryan Expressway. The Administration of the Chicago Housing Authority was widely acclaimed as the most corrupt, racist and incompetent in America. Gradually only the poorest of the poor lived there. And in the 1980s, the argument began to be made that the public housing needed to be demolished and the people moved back into private housing. …

If we examine more carefully the interests that Obama represents; if we look at his core financial supporters; as well as his inmost circle of advisors, we’ll see that they represent the primary activists in the demolition movement and the primary real estate beneficiaries of this transformation of public housing projects into condos and townhouses: the profitable creep of the Central Business District and elite residential neighborhoods southward; and the shifting of the pile of human misery about three miles further into the South Side and the south suburbs.

Obama’s political base comes primarily from Chicago FIRE—the finance, insurance and real estate industry. And the wealthiest families—the Pritzkers, the Crowns and the Levins. But it’s more than just Chicago FIRE. Also within Obama’s inner core of support are allies from the non-profit sector: the liberal foundations, the elite universities, the non-profit community developers and the real estate reverends who produce market rate housing with tax breaks from the city and who have been known to shout from the pulpit“ give us this day our Daley, Richard Daley bread.”

Aggregate them and what emerges is a constellation of interests around Obama that I call “Friendly FIRE.” Fire power disguised by the camouflage of community uplift; augmented by the authority of academia; greased by billions in foundation grants; and wired to conventional FIRE by the terms of the Community Reinvestment Act of 1995. And yet friendly FIRE is just as deadly as the conventional FIRE that comes from bankers and developers that we’re used to ducking from. It’s the whole condominium of interests whose advancement depends on the elimination of poor blacks from the community and their replacement by white people and—at least temporarily—by the black middle-class—who’ve gotten subprime mortgages—in a kind of redlining in reverse.

Evidence of the public-private partnerships’ failures emerged almost immediately.

The public housing included in Senator Obama"s transformation plans, such as the 504 apartments in the squat brick buildings of Grove Parc Plaza, quickly fell into disrepair. Reports emerged of uninhabitable units with collapsed roofs, fire damage, mice infestations, and sewage backups. In 2006, federal inspectors graded the condition of the complex an 11 on a 100-point scale, a score so bad the buildings were demolished in 2011. 

A Boston Globe review found that thousands of apartments across Chicago that had been built with local, state and federal subsidies — including several hundred in Obama"s former district — deteriorated so completely they were no longer habitable. Grove Parc, a project that was, along with several other prominent failures, developed and managed by Obama"s close friends and political supporters, became a symbol of the broader failures of handing over public subsidies to FIRE cronies, private companies to build and manage affordable housing, an approach lauded by Obama as the best, sometimes only, replacement for public housing.

At the time, Jarrett was the chief executive of Habitat Co., which managed Grove Parc Plaza from 2001 until the winter of 2008 and co-managed an even larger subsidized complex in Chicago that was seized by the federal government in 2006 after city inspectors found widespread problems. Jarrett had earlier served as Commissioner of the Department of Planning and Development from 1992 through 1995. When questioned by the Globe, Jarrett defended Obama"s position that public-private partnerships are superior to public housing.

“Government is just not as good at owning and managing as the private sector because the incentives are not there,” said Jarrett, whose company manages more than 23,000 apartments. “I would argue that someone living in a poor neighborhood that isn"t 100 percent public housing is by definition better off.”

But as theGlobe pointed out, Daley"s plans to privatize Chicago public housing quickly drew criticism:

[Chicagoans] asked why the government should pay developers to perform a basic public service — one successfully performed by governments in other cities. And they noted that privately managed projects had a history of deteriorating because guaranteed government rent subsidies left companies with little incentive to spend money on maintenance.

Most of all, they alleged that Chicago was interested primarily in redeveloping projects close to the Loop, the downtown area that was seeing a surge of private development activity, shunting poor families to neighborhoods farther from the city center. Only about one in three residents was able to return to the redeveloped projects.

“They are rapidly displacing poor people, and these companies are profiting from this displacement,” said Matt Ginsberg-Jaeckle of Southside Together Organizing for Power, a community group that seeks to help tenants stay in the same neighborhoods.

“The same exact people who ran these places into the ground,” the private companies paid to build and manage the city"s affordable housing, “now are profiting by redeveloping them.”

Obama believes deeply that privatization works. He once told theChicago Tribune that he had briefly considered becoming a developer of affordable housing, but after graduating from Harvard Law School in 1991, he turned down a job with Tony Rezko"s development company, Rezmar, to instead work at the civil rights law firm Davis, Miner, Barnhill & Galland. The firm represented a number of nonprofit companies that were partnering with private developers to build affordable housing with government subsidies.

The Globe reported that shortly after becoming a state senator in 1997, Obama told theChicago Daily Law Bulletinthat his experience working with the development industry had reinforced his belief in subsidizing private developers of affordable housing. “That"s an example of a smart policy,” the paper quoted Obama as saying. “The developers were thinking in market terms and operating under the rules of the marketplace; but at the same time, we had government supporting and subsidizing those efforts.”

What Obama is describing is corporate welfare: the government subsidizes private companies which then lack incentive to provide services to tenants because the government i.e. taxpayers will continue funding them regardless, and then the same private companies win new contracts down the road when they demolish and rebuild apartments as part of a “revitalizing” scheme.

Oftentimes, Obama"s community organizer veneer served to camouflage his FIRE roots. For example, Grove Parc Plaza opened in 1990 as a redevelopment of an older housing complex, and the new owner was a local nonprofit company called Woodlawn Preservation and Investment Corp, led by two of the neighborhoods" most powerful ministers, Arthur Brazier and Leon Finney. All of this sounded like grassroots in action. However, Woodlawn Preservation hired a private management firm, William Moorehead and Associates, to oversee the complex. The company then lost that contract and a contract to manage several public housing projects for allegedly failing to do its job, and was subsequently convicted of embezzling almost $ 1 million in management feeds theGlobe reported.

Woodlawn Preservation then hired a new property manager, Habitat Co., where Valerie Jarrett served as executive vice president. Residents told the Globe that the complex deteriorated under Moorehead"s management and the decline continued after Habitat took over. A maintenance worker at the complex told the Globe that money often wasn"t available for steel wool to plug rat holes, but regardless federal inspectors rated Grove Parc an 82 out of 100 as late as 2003.

In their extensive report on Obama"s private-public partnership failings, theGlobe profiles one of the largest recipients of government subsidies: Rezmar Corp, founded in 1989 by Tony Rezko, who between 1999 and 2008 used more than $ 87 million in government grants, loans, and tax credits to renovate about 1,000 apartments in 30 Chicago buildings. Companies run by the partners also managed many of the buildings, collecting government rent subsidies. Neither Rezko, nor his partner Daniel Mahru, had any development experience:

Rezmar collected millions in development fees but fell behind on mortgage payments almost immediately. On its first project, the city government agreed to reduce the company"s monthly payments from almost $ 3,000 to less than $ 500.

By the time Obama entered the state senate in 1997, the buildings were beginning to deteriorate. In January 1997, the city sued Rezmar for failing to provide adequate heat in a South Side building in the middle of an unusually cold winter. It was one of more than two dozen housing-complaint suits filed by the city against Rezmar for violations at its properties.

People who lived in some of the Rezmar buildings say trash was not picked up and maintenance problems were ignored. Roofs leaked, windows whistled, insects moved in.

“In the winter I can feel the cold air coming through the walls and the sockets,” said Anthony Frizzell, 57, who has lived for almost two decades in a Rezmar building on South Greenwood Avenue. “They didn"t insulate it or nothing.”

“Affordable housing run by private companies just doesn"t work,” Mahru told the Globe. “It"s difficult, if not impossible, for a private company to maintain affordable housing for low-income tenants.”

Most of Rezko and Mahru"s buildings have since been foreclosed upon, forcing the tenants to find new housing.

When Obama opened his campaign for state senate in 1995, Rezko"s companies gave $ 2,000 on the first day of fundraising, and as the Globepoints out, essentially “seeded the start of Obama"s political career.”

While Obama eventually distanced himself from Rezko, he maintained close ties to other developers. Jarrett became a close adviser, and Obama chose Martin Nesbitt, chairman of the Chicago Housing Authority, as his campaign treasurer. Nesbitt was one of the key overseers of the shift toward private management and development. And Obama kept the rich families around him.

From the Globe story:

As a result, some people in Chicago"s poorest neighborhoods are torn between a natural inclination to support Obama and a concern about his relationships with the developers they hold responsible for Chicago"s affordable housing failures. Some housing advocates worry that Obama has not learned from those failures.

“I"m not against Barack Obama,” said Willie J.R. Fleming, an organizer with the Coalition to Protect Public Housing and a former public housing resident. “What I am against is some of the people around him.”

Jamie Kalven, a longtime Chicago housing activist, put it this way: “I hope there is not much predictive value in his history and in his involvement with that community.”

In a 2012 Harpersmagazinearticle, Ben Austen writes that the area around Cabrini-Green no longer resembles the neighborhood he remembered from his years growing up in Chicago in the "70s and "80s.

Down the street from 1230 N. Burling stood a mixed-income development of orange-bricked condos and townhomes called Parkside of Old Town. Its squat buildings were outfitted with balconies and adorned with purple ornamentation and decorative pillars. There was a new school, a new police station, a renovated park, and a shopping center with a Dominick’s supermarket and a Starbucks. A Target was expected on the site the last tower would soon vacate. Later, I would warm up two blocks south in @Spot Café, where employees from Groupon’s nearby corporate headquarters streamed in to pay full price for lattes and panini.

Today, what seems harder to fathom than the erasure of entire high-rise neighborhoods is that they were ever erected in the first place. For years the projects had stood as monuments to a bygone effort to provide affordable housing for the poor and working-class, the reflection of a belief in a deeper social contract.

Shortly before the demolition of 1230 N. Burling in 2012, Austen attended a Chicago Housing Authority meeting during which residents protested the board in response to the city forcing poor people off prime real estate. Activists included residents and supporters of a housing project called Lathrop Homes, a development in a well-off section of the North Side that was next in line to be demolished.

“The residents didn’t want to be forced into the private market or into temporary housing, especially since they doubted they’d be able to return to whatever replaced Lathrop; nor did they agree that market-rate apartments were needed in the redeveloped community, as the surrounding area was already full of market-rate condos,” Austen wrote.

Chicago’s $ 1.6 billion “Plan for Transformation” envisioned a mix of public-housing residents with market-rate condos and subsidized rentals or homes, with one-third of each in these new communities.

In late 2012, NPR detailed how after more than a decade in the works, one of the country’s most closely watched public housing experiments was badly failing, partly due to the flailing economy.

NPR profiled Lathrop resident Mary Thomas:

Thomas has lived here for eight years with her husband and 7-year-old son. Lathrop sits on what many now consider prime land, next to the Chicago River. A busy street splits the development into a north and south section.

The north side is completely shuttered, cordoned off by gates, a ghost town of boarded-up buildings. Thomas lives in the open southern section, where steam from the old heating system wafts into the street. About 170 of the 900-plus units are occupied.

Thomas says all three of the concepts for Lathrop should be dumped and there should be more input from residents. She says there"s little affordable housing in the area and there"s no need for market-rate units at all.

Far from adopting a reflective attitude in the wake of Chicago’s failed experiment in public-private housing partnerships, Obama has now taken his love of public-private codependence to a national level, touting public-private partnerships in everything from creating jobs to education to tackling insurance fraud to collaborations involving foreign nations, which you can bet means the wealthiest multinational conglomerates teaming up to increase their profits at the expense of the 99 percent.

The First Lady played her own part in the Chicago racket of profiting off the poor. Michelle Obama worked at the University of Chicago Medical Center “redirecting” low-income patients to community hospitals in order to use its own beds for rich patients. Nick Jouriles, president of the American College of Emergency Physicians, released a statement saying the practice comes “dangerously close to patient dumping,” a practice made illegal by the Emergency Medical Labor and Treatment Act (EMTALA), and reflected an effort to “cherry pick” wealthy patients over poor.

“This is a dangerous precedent that could have catastrophic effects in poor neighborhoods across the country. Congress needs to hold hearings about the problems facing emergency patients. If other community, non-profit hospitals follow this example and shift the lion’s share of resources to its high-revenue elective patients and procedures, it will leave many emergency patients virtually out in the cold. The University of Chicago Medical Center is located in a poor neighborhood whose residents have few, if any, other options for emergency care.”

 

The media barely paid any attention to Michelle Obama"s role in all of this, though the Chicago Sun-Times reported in 2008 that her $ 317,000-a-year role as Vice-President of the hospital helped create the patient-dumping program. 

Quoted in a related Washington Post article, Quentin Young, a South Side physician, remarks the scheme is nothing more than an “attempt to ensure that the hospital retains only affluent patients with insurance.” 

“If you put enough money into it, you could save a whole bunch of community health centers,” Young said. “But to date, they haven"t.” 

Edward Novak, president of Chicago"s Sacred Heart Hospital, declined to discuss the center"s initiative in particular but dismissed as “bull” attempts to justify such programs as good for patients. “What they"re really saying is, "Don"t use our emergency room because it will cost us money, and we don"t want the public-aid population," ” Novak said.

At the end of January this year, community residents launched a protest outside the University of Chicago Medical Center, angry that the hospital ignored their needs, especially for “victims of gun violence,” according to a news report: “One woman said her son, shot just blocks away from the university, died on the way to a hospital ten miles away.” Four were arrested at the protest.  

Robert Fitch’s words hold true: the poor remain at the mercy of the rich, who are seeking profits on everything possible, including their homes, but also their water, healthcare and education.

 

Fri, 01/25/2013 – 13:21

 
AlterNet.org Main RSS Feed

How Obama and Valerie Jarrett Helped Launch Their Political Careers in an Outrageous "Urban Renewal" Scheme