Political Polling

Tuesday, March 15, 2011

Women Making Money

As the U.S. Congress launches one of the most vicious attacks against women’s health in recent history, the Supreme Court of Nepal has officially issued a groundbreaking decision on women's reproductive rights that turns on its head patriarchal notions of the government’s right to interfere in women’s decisions about their bodies. The ruling unequivocally recognizes a woman’s right to abortion as a crucial component of her reproductive rights that cannot be denied by the government without violating a broad range of her human rights.

For centuries Nepal banned abortion under any circumstance – and did not explicitly permit it even to save the life of a woman. Women were routinely thrown into prison for having abortions and many more died in the process. Unsafe abortion was widespread with women desperately seeking to end their pregnancies in order to protect their health, families, and livelihoods. The law and the criminal justice system completely ignored the circumstances surrounding a woman’s pregnancy and decision to have abortion. The ban opened the door for law enforcement officials to arbitrarily classify many abortion cases as “infanticide,” or the murder of a child following birth—a crime that carried heavy criminal penalties. And the women typically targeted were poor. It wasn’t until 2002 that the King of Nepal signed into law a bill permitting abortion under broad grounds, marking the beginning of a number of dramatic steps towards guaranteeing women’s access to safe reproductive health services in the country.

Nepal’s experience, and that of other countries with restrictive abortion laws, clearly illustrate that making abortion illegal does not stop women from seeking abortion, it only results in women endangering their lives to end their pregnancies, particularly those with fewer resources. Indeed, prior to the 1973 U.S. Supreme Court decision Roe v. Wade, illegal abortion was common in the U.S. Yet 38 years later, federal lawmakers are engaged in an aggressive campaign designed to severely limit women’s access to abortion by making it less affordable and shutting down abortion providers.

Nepal, on the other hand, has learned its lesson and ironically, is being inspired by Roe. Until just a few years ago, the South Asian country was officially the world’s only Hindu kingdom and today, it is a secular state. It is exemplary that in such a short time, people have come to understand the importance of separating religion from governance. As a result, the highest legal authority in the country has issued a bold decision that explicitly recognizes a woman as the master of her own body and the government’s obligation to guarantee safe and affordable access to abortion services.

Here are highlights from the decision:

It states that just as the law does not force a man to use his body in certain ways, as a matter of equality, a woman cannot be forced to allow her body be used in ways that she does not want.

It affirms the importance of making sure that women are not unjustly denied access to legal abortion services because of the cost and makes it obligatory for the government to provide free services to women who cannot pay. Access to abortion services, it notes, is a matter of women’s rights and social justice.

It establishes that the fetus cannot be prioritized over the protection of a woman’s physical and mental health and well-being as, without the mother, there would be no fetus. Pointing to numerous scenarios that would result from legally recognizing the fetus as a human life, the court says it would not be practical to force women into such risky and dangerous situations.

The decision also briefly mentions Roe noting that the US Supreme Court does not recognize the fetus as a human life.

The court’s ruling revolved around a case involving a mother of five children who decided to have an abortion when she became pregnant for the sixth time. She was extremely poor and did not have the money or resources to even afford contraception. She could barely afford to feed her children with her husband’s meager income. She herself was in very poor health. So, when she became pregnant again, she and her husband went to the nearest hospital to obtain a legal abortion. But she was unable to do so only because she could not pay for it. The doctors asked her for 1130 rupees (approximately $15) which she did not have. As a result, she was forced to carry the pregnancy to term and become a mother for the sixth time.

Hers is not the story of just one woman, but of many women across Nepal and across the world. As such, this is the kind of legal decision that women are in need of everywhere – a decision that wholly recognizes their dignity and human rights.

16 Comments

cheeser

March 6th, 2011 at 1:37 pm

hes aight,… nuthin new tho.. where are the unique new artists that arent following trends..

concept is cool and kinda new… but noone sings anymore

[Reply]

Tawny

March 6th, 2011 at 1:37 pm

He’s the future.

[Reply]

Tony

March 6th, 2011 at 1:37 pm

Best song on the album.

[Reply]

My2Cents

March 6th, 2011 at 4:50 pm

Novacane Is Also A GREAT Track.

Brilliant FRESH New Artist.

[Reply]

La'Wayne

March 6th, 2011 at 6:35 pm

aka Lonny Breaux…He’s off the fuckin chain

this aint his best tho

[Reply]

DEEPERthanRAP

March 6th, 2011 at 6:57 pm

R&B??? wtf?

[Reply]

Lil' Nello

March 6th, 2011 at 8:54 pm

Song is pretty good except for the couple parts where he sounds to much like Wiz!

[Reply]

The Beast

March 6th, 2011 at 9:00 pm

Yonkers was some scary sh*t. I like this though.

[Reply]

hey

March 6th, 2011 at 11:33 pm

Ciara tweeted about this guy! listen to novacane!

[Reply]

jaa

March 6th, 2011 at 11:39 pm

‘strawberry swing’ is a devastating song.

same goes for ‘there will be tear’

i like the off center subject matter.

[Reply]

Leon

March 7th, 2011 at 4:10 am

The world doesn’t need another Drake; the one we have is devoid of worth and significance.

[Reply]

Douchebag Dude

March 7th, 2011 at 4:16 am

Nobody sings anymore. Even “love songs” arent real love songs. I’d rather these idiots copy Stevie Wonder or other classic artists than the current bs out now.

[Reply]

AAA

March 7th, 2011 at 5:26 am

I love this song I heard it!!!!!!! So good

[Reply]

Yes SIR

March 7th, 2011 at 8:05 am

Novocane is a helluva SONG!.. Frank Ocean is my near favorite artist!

[Reply]

Bernie

March 7th, 2011 at 10:36 am

dam iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit !

[Reply]

HipHopDiva

March 7th, 2011 at 11:58 pm

his ablum is really good. don’t sleep. check out “we all try” its a beautiful song :) here’s the link youtube.com/watch?v=NtZh_zWEcpY

[Reply]

Name

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Monday, March 14, 2011

Wotlk Making Money

Surface Encounters proudly ensures buyer satisfaction and price setting up granite assurance. “I’m generally skeptical heading with new providers, but your employees has manufactured me a believer!” - Steve, Indianapolis

Surface Encounters is definitely a fast-growing surface encounters corporation and, yet they have stored tempo with every one of the current consumer referrals. “This corporation is amongst the most economical, trusted and pleasant providers within the total state. I might recommend them to any one.” - Mike R., South Bend

Many work goes into generating stunning countertops from nature. The method includes laser measurement artistic vein matching, precision diamond and water-jet cutting, edging and experienced set up. A single cannot simply call within their order for the custom countertop and have it in per day or two. Top notch normally requires time.

Surface Encounters encourages folks to go to a showroom to understand even more about normal stone countertops. In addition to the choice and fabrication course of action, an alternative crucial element of consumer treatment is making certain 1 is aware of how to treatment for their granite countertop to maintain it shopping new for a long time to arrive.

Granite is actually a attractive healthy stone product that's a popular substance employed for countertops and floor tiles in kitchens and bathrooms. Granite has surpassed marble in reputation considering is it much more long lasting and easier to treatment for. Granite is unmatched by artificial items for its strength and durability, tolerance to temperature changes and resistance to stains and scratches.

Granite is really a effortlessly shaped stone that could be quarried from deep in the earth, harvested, minimize, polished, sealed and installed in properties to add beauty, elegance and design. Since this is a normal product or service, no two slabs are specifically alike. Granite is accessible in a large number of colours through the varied minerals that are found within the rock. Considering that it comes from throughout the planet, diverse areas and environmental factors make it unique.

Granite is largely manufactured up of quartz crystal, nonetheless it also features different amounts of other metals like feldspar, mica, copper and iron. Some granite may possibly contain bits of gold or silver. The amount of each and every metal depends around the area it arrives from. All granite is formed into a tough stone by warmth and stress. Rain adds other minerals because it is forming. Its out there all over the world, in all country, and each area will make a surface encounters exceptional number of granite.

Surface Encounters state-of-the-art machinery makes certain the greatest top notch finished item as they layout and formulate a number of the best kitchens and bathrooms. Granite Countertops increase the warmth and magnificence of houses whereas raising their price and improving upon lifestyles.

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Surface Encounters does what is right for their clients, workers and then the setting. Surface Encounters uses innovative h2o recycling capabilities to recycle approximately 43,000 gallons of drinking water daily. Moreover, a hundred % of the scrap generated in developing stylish kitchens and amazing baths is re-used as aggregate in road generating, surface preparations and concrete.

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Friday, March 11, 2011

personal financeonline personal finance

Founded in 2009 by Amanda Steinberg, DailyWorth may be a day by day e mail newsletter that includes information and facts on economic literacy and income management skewed in the direction of a female audience. DailyWorth’s subjects array from the right way to organize your finances to tax tricks to saving information. And DailyWorth has an extraordinary editorial staff to produce content material. MP Dunleavey, formerly a private finance columnist with all the New york Instances and currently a contributor with Capital magazine, is primary DailyWorth’s editorial staff.

Irrespective of unions’ long hatred of Scott Walker, the new governor is moving to tackle both equally the symptoms of your illness and therefore the ailment itself-the public-sector union scheme that has molested Wisconsin’s taxpayers and their children by gaming the strategy. Unions like Wisconsin’s teachers’ union [WEAC] (which was Wisconsin’s biggest-spending lobby in 2009) have been extraordinarily adept at fixing the product by way of shelling out hundreds of thousands to elect politicians who, in turn, reward the unions at the expense with the taxpayers.

the Wisconsin battle, when in comparison to private-sector negotiations is about: one) the Scope of Bargaining, two) Union “Income” Security [Right-to-Work vs. Compelled Dues], 3) no matter if Wisconsin should really be the unions’ dues assortment agency [payroll deduction of dues], and 4) if public-sector unions need to be ‘recertified’ by holding elections each yr.

set the photos over the internet to display our jobs team at msnbc.com, and photographer Jim Seida stated, why do not we just publish it as a slide exhibit? I used to be skeptical in the beginning - would that crimp the composing? - but from the end I was advocating performing it by doing this once the photo team was skeptical. I thought much more people today would go through through it this way, and it could be truly worth an experiment.”

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On Monday evening, I watched my very first, The Last Phrase host Lawrence O’Donnell.
Whereas O’Donnell laudably tried using to emphasis the audience’s awareness onand hopefully very last, Charlie Sheen trainwreck interview, courtesy of the tragic undertow that threatens to pull Sheen beneath for excellent, I used to be overtaken, not from the pulling about the thread, as well as the voracious audience he serves. It didn’t make me unfortunate, it created me angry.

Concerning celebrities, we will be considered a heartless country, basking within their misfortunes like nude sunbathers at Schadenfreude Seaside. The impulse is understandable, to some diploma. It could be grating to pay attention to complaints from men and women who love privileges that most of us can’t even contemplate. If you ever can’t muster up some compassion for Charlie Sheen, who tends to make even more moolah for any day’s give good results than most of us will make in the decade’s time, I guess I cannot blame you.

With the rapid speed of occasions on the net and therefore the info revolution sparked by the World-wide-web, it is rather simple for that technology industry to imagine it is different: continuously breaking new ground and undertaking details that no one has ever before executed previous to.

But you'll find other sorts of enterprise that have by now undergone some of the same radical shifts, and have just as superb a stake in the future.

Take healthcare, as an example.

We generally feel of it as a substantial, lumbering beast, but in reality, medicine has undergone a sequence of revolutions in the previous 200 many years that happen to be a minimum of equal to individuals we see in technologies and info.

Less understandable, but even now inside the norms of human nature, could be the impulse to rubberneck, to slow down and take a look at the carnage of Charlie spectacle of Sheen’s unraveling, but from the blithe interviewer Sheen’s everyday living as we pass it in the correct lane of our every day lives. To get sincere, it may be difficult for consumers to discern the variation between a run-of-the-mill focus whore, and an honest-to-goodness, circling the drain tragedy-to-be. On its own merits, a quote like “I Am On the Drug. It’s Referred to as Charlie Sheen” is sheer genius, and we cannot all be expected to consider the total measure of someone’s life just about every time we listen to a little something funny.

Rapid forward to 2011 and I'm attempting to check out indicates of becoming a little more business-like about my hobbies (mostly new music). By the conclude of January I had manned up and started to advertise my weblogs. I had created many totally different blogs, which have been contributed to by good friends and colleagues. I promoted these actions because of Facebook and Twitter.

2nd: the little abomination that the Gang of Five about the Supream Court gave us a year or so back (Citizens Inebriated) in fact includes slightly bouncing betty of its personal that could highly effectively go off in the faces of Govs Wanker, Sacitch, Krysty, and J.O. Daniels. As this ruling prolonged the notion of “personhood” to both equally corporations and unions, to try out to deny them any proper to run in the legal framework that they had been organized below deprives these “persons” from the freedoms of speech, association and motion. Which implies (once again, quoting law school skilled friends and family) that possibly the courts really have to uphold these rights for the unions (as particular person “persons” as assured from the Federal (and most state) constitutions, or they've to declare that these attempts at stripping or limiting union rights ought to use to leading firms, also.

By Douglas K. Smith, Member, Board of Directors, SeaChange Capital Partners

Social impact bonds, a useful experiment underway in England, is gaining attention on this side of the pond, including from the Obama administration. We are glad to see this at SeaChange (a non-profit group seeking innovative ways to bring capital to the non-profit sector). What is deeply concerning, though, is how some elites are packaging and promoting social impact bonds as yet one more example of everything the market does is good while everything government does is bad. Moreover, these same elites betray a stunningly superficial grasp about how markets actually work.

This is lamentable. Think for a moment about a common method among athletic coaches. Whether its tennis, golf, baseball, or any other sport, coaches know that athletes might get the right or wrong results by doing things the right or wrong way. You might win a tennis match with a sloppy forehand – and, ultimately, if you’re to improve your game, you need to win matches hitting forehands correctly. My skepticism, then, is less about using and learning from social impact bonds than about the ‘right result, wrong way’ advocacy that links them to ideological ‘givens’ about always good markets and always bad government. Moreover, this same overly simplistic positioning threatens to create ‘wrong result, wrong way’ outcomes by too easily producing misuses of social impact bonds in ways that cause them to fail.

For those who’ve not heard of them, let’s answer the Times’ David Leonhardt’s question, “What are social impact bonds?”

The short answer: a vehicle offering investors bond-like returns for taking equity-like risks on investing in potential solutions to socio-economic challenges. The key to success lies in the performance results achieved by the social service providers. If yes, investors gain bond-like returns sourced from cash linked to that performance. If the providers fall short, however, investors suffer equity-like losses. A group called Social Finance is experimenting with social impact bonds aimed at reducing recidivism among inmates in a UK prison. If they lower the recidivism rate by 10% greater than comparable prisons, investors gain between 7.5% to 13.5% returns. If the social service providers fail to do this, investors lose their money.

Let’s first look at the ‘right result, wrong way’ chorus on how social impact bonds derive from the wonderfulness of markets. Leonhardt does this. So does Harvard Professor Jeffrey Liebman in a Center for American Progress white paper on the subject.

Both are enthusiastic about how social impact bonds can bring much needed to capital to serious social ills. Terrific! Maybe we’ll get the ‘right result’. But why must each slide into the all-too-predictable ‘either/or-ism’ that bedevils our search for creative solutions to real problems. Not only do they premise support for social impact bonds on the monotonously dumb meme of ‘markets good/government bad’; but, they do so in ways that threaten to add the phrase ‘market discipline’ to ‘free markets’ and ‘shareholder value’ as yet one more entry in the mindless lexicon of the status quo.

Discipline is not a phenomenon uniquely linked only to markets – a point ignored by Liebman and Leonhardt. We can and do speak just as much about organizational disciplines, network disciplines and personal disciplines. What ‘market’, e.g., explains the discipline used by weekend tennis players to hit forehands correctly? Organizations, too, choose the disciplines used to achieve their purposes. Yes, sometimes those choices are influenced by markets – but not always and certainly not always in ways so ideologically implied by Liebman and Leonhardt.

Liebman notes that too many government programs have disciplines that focus more on defining activities than results. But it does not follow logically or empirically that ‘market discipline’ is the only cure when such an activity-focus has ill effects. (I say “when” because, while there are ill effects to address, Liebman’s ‘either/or-ism’ ignores the good effects of an activity-focus in governmental contexts; namely, the means and ends demanded by notions of fairness and due process inherent in some versions of the rule of law.) Most private sector organizations, by the way, also have various forms of activity-driven disciplines that arise from the operations of their hierarchies, management processes and shared values – patterns that emerge notwithstanding the effects of the disciplines imposed by the markets in which they compete. Consider only the long, sad history of American automakers over much of the last three to four decades. For them, activity-driven organizational disciplines trumped ‘market discipline’.

But the flip side is also in evidence. That is, in addition to observable private sector activity disciplines trumping market discipline, we also see plenty of examples of organizational performance disciplines instead of activity disciplines in the absence of any market. Over the past few years, for example, a range of Georgia state government leaders with whom I’ve worked have shifted their agencies toward performance disciplines for services ranging from driver’s license renewals to job preparedness to prison reform to education to highway maintenance and more. Millions of dollars have been put to more productive use, and dozens of innovations plus much better customer service and new capabilities have been spawned – and all in the absence of any discipline derived from any market.

Both/and. Not either/or. The bottom line: markets might impose performance disciplines on organizations. But, contrary to the ‘markets good/governments bad’ trope, there’s neither any guarantee that the existence of a market equates with a disciplined focus on performance nor the inevitability that the absence of a market prevents as much. Why then is there this deep-felt need by elites to hew their conversations to the ideological line of ‘markets good/governments bad’?

The absence of ‘market discipline’, then, does not prevent any agency at any level of government from a shift to performance: it’s a question of leadership and will. Might social impact bonds help? Yes. But it’s not the kind of sine qua non requirement suggested by Liebman’s and Leonhardt’s all-or-nothing use of a phrase like ‘market discipline’.

Next, the ideological use of ‘market discipline’ clothed in ‘market good/government bad’ rhetoric is, well, unreal. Liebman and Leonhardt are smart and accomplished individuals. They’ve been around. So, why the thundering silence about ‘market discipline’ and, ahem, you know, events of the past decade? How did this ideologically pure ‘market discipline’ work out in financial, residential and commercial real estate, health care, and other markets? Leonhardt points to the wasting of ‘billions of dollars’ in government programs. How about the trillions of dollars of value destruction in these arenas subject to ‘market discipline’?

The concept that market discipline guarantees efficiency and effectiveness is fallacious. Nearly four years ago, for example, it was clear that the performance disciplines used by the best non-profit housing groups far outstripped the performance disciplines used by the private sector in terms of delinquencies and foreclosures. Yet, the private sector got all the capital. So much for ‘market discipline’. What happened there? Was there no market discipline? Was there no link between capital markets and competitive performance?

No. Actually, the reverse. Capital market discipline combined with organizational and managerial disciplines to promote a peculiar kind of performance on private sector players. We all know the nice sounding words that were (and are) used for this: earnings, returns, ‘shareholder value’. It’s just that these melodious sounds became ever more narrowly and loudly linked to unsustainable and even criminal greed through the precincts of the shorter-term, the quicker buck, the larger bonus, and the faster, more untraceable shifting of risk to others. Yes, ‘market discipline’ focused all of the various players on performance – banks, mortgage brokers, real estate brokers, hedge funds, ratings agencies, lawyers, accountants and more. But instead of efficiency and effectiveness that maniacal performance focus gave us control fraud, speculation, looting and managerial–and-casino capitalism.

Does that make ‘market discipline’ evil and bad? No. Remember: both/and, not either/or. Liebman and Leonhardt would recoil at anyone who condemned ‘market discipline’ to be banished from human experience based on these gargantuan failures of the past decade. Why, then, do they crow so loudly in favor of market discipline as a panacea for government and social sector ills? Again, why only a reference to the billions wasted by (some) government efforts and not the trillions destroyed by (some) markets?

Welcome to Wise Bread's Best Money Tips Roundup! Today we found some great articles on how to have a successful yard sale, uses for plastic grocery bags, and making money online doing simple tasks.

Saturday, March 5, 2011

personal financeonline personal finance

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New York Times - Bill Keller - Fox News | Mediaite

The seemingly organic feud between the New York Times and Fox News took the forefront once more this week when the newspaper's Executive Editor Bill Keller called Fox viewers among the most cynical people on planet earth and blamed ...