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jewish-privilege · 6 years ago

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Brenda Brown-Grooms: We are still working together to keep the American Dream alive

I was at the sunrise service at First Baptist Church on Main at 6 a.m. on August 12, with Cornell West, Tracy Blackmon, Osagyefo Sekou and various groups soon to be deployed to our respective stations (mine to First United Methodist Church, a designated safe space, prayer fortress, first aid station, food and water replenishing). We prayed, sang, read Scripture, counseled with those coming in for respite. We were tear gassed (it wafted up from the park across the sidewalk), were locked down more times than I can now remember, and watched Heather Heyer being killled and others injured in real time, via livestream, while hearing a helicopter hovering over our heads.

A little more than a month before the July 2017 gathering of the KKK in Emancipation Park (in protest of the city's approved plan to remove the statue of Confederate general Robert E. Lee) we all got word of this coming August gathering. Concerned citizens, rightly discerning this to be, above all, an issue of morality and not just policy, called on their faith leaders to lead Charlottesville's response. Indeed, they were crystal clear: if you don't lead, we won't follow.

We mounted prayer vigils, monitored KKK/alt-right social media, tried to work with various police departments in this area, and quickly discovered that they were not listening to us, which later bespoke their unpreparedness for the situation.

After the July protest, those of us in the faith community realized the enormity of the coming situation and sought to prepare ourselves and our congregations as best we could. Our biggest hindrance was the intransigence of the city government, university administrators, and Charlottesville's elite in convincing themselves that something like what did happen would never happen in beautiful, iconic, happy Charlottesville! THIS ISN'T WHO WE ARE!

However, beautiful Charlottesville has an ugly underbelly. If you have enough money, enough power, the right zip code, preferably no Jewish ancestry, and are not a person of color, you may well be able to position yourself, isolate yourself, so that none of what poor, powerless, native Charlottesvillians of color experience. I am an African American native of Charlottesville and a graduate of the University of Virginia. I remember and have always experienced the ugliness of this beautiful place.

To those who stubbornly thought it "couldn't happen here," I say: Are you insane? Of course this is Charlottesville. What planet do you live on? Yes, some Nazis and KKK and alt-righters came from out of town, but a lot more of them than you think live right here.

On August 11, I participated in a glorious worship service at St. Paul's, across the street from the Rotunda at UVA, where the tiki torch gathering happened and Nazis cried, "Jews will not replace us." I, along with about 500 people, was locked down in the church. I had a premonition that something would happen on Friday. They had to announce their presence some way.

Last summer crystallized for me, yet again, that America has yet to live out her creed (that all people are created equal, endowed by our Creator, with certain inalienable rights. That among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness). Everyone ever labeled a "minority" in this country knows America's failure, its original sin. And yet, each generation, we hope and work for the American Dream. The original sin that infects our republic, our religious practices and citizenship in the world is white supremacy. We must admit it. Rout it out. Begin again. We must talk about who benefits and who does not. We must admit that our institutions are shot through with unfairness, injustice and death. We must hear and include the stories that have been and are still being suppressed in order to perpetuate a false, an incomplete narrative--leaving out Native Americans, Asian Americans, South Americans, African Americans, Immigrants, Refugees and those left without homelands and others in any of the myriad ways we humans know to "other."

Since last year's open summer of hate, I have found brothers and sisters of all races, creeds, faith or no faith traditions, who have been willing to sit together, talk together, argue together, cry together, think together, plan together, walk together, to keep the American Dream alive, one more generation. We are working together to raise up another generation to follow us, who will do the same. Shalom.

Brenda Brown-Grooms is a pastor with the New Beginnings Christian Community and part of the Charlottesville Clergy Collective (CCC), a group of clergy and laypeople dedicated to dialogue about the challenge of race relations in Charlottesville and Albemarle County. She is also part of and Congregate Cville, an activist organization which grew out of CCC.

...

Rachel Schmelkin: I learned a lot that day about what it means to truly support and protect each other

On August 12, 2017, I took a few cautious steps out of First United Methodist Church, a designated "safe space" for anti-Nazi demonstrators, to survey the park where Nazis were screaming ugly white supremacist chants. "Jews will not replace us!," still rings in my ear as I recall that dreadful weekend. I'd never seen such hate up close, and for the first time I felt afraid to be a Jew in America.

A few days before the rally, I told my close friends, Reverends Phil and Robert that I was worried that I would be a target, but that it was important to be to be visible and present despite the risks. They promised me that they would watch out for me. They said "We will not let anybody get near you. In fact, we'll stay with you as long as you're out there. We will not leave you alone." I trusted them, and they held to their word.

That day, I continued further out of the door and did my best to project songs of love and peace that might drown out the hate. With my guitar in hand and my brother standing next to me, we sang out "This little light of mine, I'm gonna let it shine!"

I learned a lot that day about what it means to truly support and protect each other, and to have others support and protect me. A black friend confided in me that she's felt unsafe in her body her entire life. As a Jew, I felt that same visceral fear that August day in Charlottesville when neo-Nazis threatened to torch the Jews.

Anti-Semitism animates white supremacist ideology and is tightly integrated with its other racist and xenophobic views. Charlottesville's "summer of hate" taught me that alliances across faiths, across race, across all kinds of differences are the best way to combat racism, anti-Semitism, and all types of bigotry and hate.

Since August 12, courageous citizens of Charlottesville have consistently come together to make Charlottesville a miserable place to be a white supremacist; they're not welcome here.

Rabbi Rachel Schmelkin is with Congregation Beth Israel in Charlottesville.

See the full piece at CNN.

TW: The top of page has a video that autoplays starting on a graphic image of car attack that killed Heather Heyer, Z’’L may her memory be a blessing, and also includes images and video from the white supremacists marching and chanting anti Black and antisemitic slogans.

#charlottesville #white supremacy #anti black racism #antisemitism #heather heyer #z''l #death

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ericfruits · 4 years ago

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Could a fifth of America’s colleges really face the chop?

MARTYNA MALECKA, a criminology student at Stonehill College, can’t wait for classes to restart in August. Her campus in Easton, Massachusetts, “feels like a village”: its elegant red-brick buildings sprawl over 384 bucolic acres. She judges time spent there less of a coronavirus risk than staying at home in Chicago.

Universities everywhere have made valiant efforts to function remotely. A few, such as California State University, say they will continue teaching only online next year. Ms Malecka doubts that distance study works. She gets top marks, but laughingly admits she has “no idea” what she has learned after being at home since March. It is too easy to ignore lecturers who appear by video, she says, and some hardly set assignments. Like other students, families and faculty, she craves in-person learning.

Whether or not universities get back quickly to that, many are likely to suffer. Stonehill is private and Catholic, with 2,500 students and a $200m endowment. It looks in good shape, but many similar liberal-arts colleges, especially in the north-east and Midwest, are not. Their problems are long-standing. Nathan Grawe of Carleton College in Minnesota, who researches demography and higher education, says the core difficulty is the slipping fertility rate. Overall enrolment has drifted down over the past few years.

This squeezes smaller colleges hardest. A study by Parthenon-EY, an education consultancy, of over 2,000 colleges suggested 800 are so small or inefficient that they may go bust. Around one-fifth run budget deficits. Others pile up debts, fail to build sufficient endowments or sustain student numbers only by agreeing to painfully big discounts on fees. Mr Grawe points out that eight colleges were already closing each year before the pandemic.

Those that fail are usually small, among the 40% of higher-education institutions with fewer than 1,000 students. In the past decade these have seen enrolments slip faster than medium-sized ones. (The biggest typically still thrive.) Of the 72 colleges Parthenon found had shut since 2007, almost every one was small. They are vulnerable because they depend most on revenue from students; others find ways to hire out campuses for conferences, raise research funds, earn bequests and the like.

Robert Zemsky of the University of Pennsylvania, who co-wrote a recent book on the growing woes of universities, expects a “collapse, lots of closures” of smaller colleges, notably in the wider Midwest. He blames both demography and teaching methods that do not suit some students, noting how, at many universities, more than a quarter of freshmen quit in their first year. Curriculums, he says, are outdated, faculty are out of touch and four-year degrees should be cut to three to save costs and force a rethink of higher education.

Among the most vulnerable colleges are those that cater mostly to non-white students. “African-Americans are more than two times as likely to attend an institution at risk, compared with whites and Hispanics,” he says. Crystal Nix-Hines, a lawyer in Los Angeles who specialises in the education sector, also expects an “enormous winnowing” of historically black colleges.

Consolidation of higher education is overdue. Students increasingly prefer bigger and more urban institutions, so some smaller, rural ones will go. How many? Just before the pandemic, Mr Zemsky and his co-authors suggested that 10% of colleges would eventually close. He now expects 20% to shut or merge with others.

The pandemic further dims their prospects in several ways. Take universities’ efforts to recruit foreign students, who typically pay full fees. For each of the past three years, enrolments of foreign undergraduates have slid. A drop in Chinese students explains much of that. Travel bans and concern that America has bungled the coronavirus will only put off more.

The economic slump means some poorer families will not send youngsters to study. Others will delay. Funding from states for public universities is certain to fall. A report by Pew Charitable Trusts published on May 18th points out that states cut funds for higher education by 29% per student between 2008 and 2012. This time the slump is likely to be worse. Already Nevada and Ohio say they have plans to cut. The University of Michigan has talked of losing out on $1bn. Federal spending will rise ($14bn in emergency help went to universities and students under the Cares Act), but is unlikely to make up all the shortfall.

Finally, many universities face possibly costly legal trouble. Ms Nix-Hines counted 134 lawsuits, mostly class-action ones, levied against the “whole gamut” of private and public colleges by late May, mostly as students sought the return of tuition fees, saying they received a substandard service online. Some colleges might now seek a “liability shield” to protect against future prosecutions before they reopen. For universities, it all adds up to “their greatest challenge in history”, she says. That may sound alarmist, but it is probably true.■

Editor’s note: Some of our covid-19 coverage is free for readers of The Economist Today, our daily newsletter. For more stories and our pandemic tracker, see our coronavirus hub

This article appeared in the United States section of the print edition under the headline "College blues"

https://ift.tt/3ddOUSr

#IFTTT #Feedly

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chimpanzedd · 7 years ago

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All the questions !

Remember this? :)

1: 6 of the songs you listen to most?

Right now?

Taylor Swift - Gorgeous

Jaymes Young - Stoned On You

Linkin Park - One More Light

Borns - The Emotion

Taylor Swift - LWYMMD

Zayn & Sia - Dusk Til Dawn

2: If you could meet anyone on this earth, who would it be?

Taylor Swift.

3: Grab the book nearest to you, turn to page 23, give me line 17.

That’s way too much effort, sorry.

4: What do you think about most?

What the fuck I’m doing with my life.

5: What does your latest text message from someone else say?

“Snack that keeps giving.”

6: Do you sleep with or without clothes on?

With!

7: What’s your strangest talent?

I have… no talents.

8: Girls… (finish the sentence); Boys… (finish the sentence)

Both are enigmatic.

9: Ever had a poem or song written about you?

Yeah. :)

10: When is the last time you played the air guitar?

Laura and Adam’s wedding!

11: Do you have any strange phobias?

Very specific, hand picked dogs.

12: Ever stuck a foreign object up your nose?

Uh, no.

13: What’s your religion?

I don’t practice any religion.

14: If you are outside, what are you most likely doing?

Walking to or from work.

15: Do you prefer to be behind the camera or in front of it?

Neither, really.

16: Simple but extremely complex. Favorite band?

Band? Marianas Trench.

17: What was the last lie you told?

Um, no idea!

18: Do you believe in karma?

Nope.

19: What does your URL mean?

Not a great deal. It’s almost my fave animal.

20: What is your greatest weakness; your greatest strength?

I think both of these are the same thing, and it’s how much I feel.

21: Who is your celebrity crush?

I have a few. Kristen Stewart is high up there.

22: Have you ever gone skinny dipping?

No!

23: How do you vent your anger?

I cry a lot.

24: Do you have a collection of anything?

Not really, not collectable things.

25: Do you prefer talking on the phone or video chatting online?

Video call.

26: Are you happy with the person you’ve become?

…sometimes.

27: What’s a sound you hate; sound you love?

I hate the feedback during sound check at concerts.

I love my dog’s sneezes.

28: What’s your biggest “what if”?

What if I didn’t do science at university?

29: Do you believe in ghosts? How about aliens?

No, yes sorta.

30: Stick your right arm out; what do you touch first? Do the same with your left arm.

R: phone.

L: sofa.

31: Smell the air. What do you smell?

Mum’s hoodie smell.

32: What’s the worst place you have ever been to?

Probably some dingy house for a party.

33: Choose: East Coast or West Coast?

Of America? Pass.

34: Most attractive singer of your opposite gender?

Does Donald Glover count as a singer?

35: To you, what is the meaning of life?

Achieve some sort of peace.

36: Define Art.

Something physical that evokes feeling.

37: Do you believe in luck?

Nope.

38: What’s the weather like right now?

Dark. Damp. Chilly.

39: What time is it?

11pm.

40: Do you drive? If so, have you ever crashed?

Nope!

41: What was the last book you read?

More Than Two. Eye-opening genius.

42: Do you like the smell of gasoline?

I looove it.

43: Do you have any nicknames?

Ems. Em.

44: What was the last film you saw?

Mockingjay pt. 2.

45: What’s the worst injury you’ve ever had?

I’ve been really lucky. Probably my dog bite.

46: Have you ever caught a butterfly?

Yes, many!!

47: Do you have any obsessions right now?

Not really.

48: What’s your sexual orientation?

I dunno.

49: Ever had a rumour spread about you?

Secondary school is wild.

50: Do you believe in magic?

Of course not.

51: Do you tend to hold grudges against people who have done you wrong?

Nope. Too much energy.

52: What is your astrological sign?

Libra.

53: Do you save money or spend it?

50/50, or at least I try!

54: What’s the last thing you purchased?

Alcohol, of course.

55: Love or lust?

Love!

56: In a relationship?

Nuhuh.

57: How many relationships have you had?

58: Can you touch your nose with your tongue?

I used to be able to but I grew out of it!

59: Where were you yesterday?

Mum’s, town, dad’s, bar.

60: Is there anything pink within 10 feet of you?

Yes, an envelope.

61: Are you wearing socks right now?

Yes! They have flamingos on.

62: What’s your favourite animal?

Chimpanzees. And cockatoos.

63: What is your secret weapon to get someone to like you?

I’m just incredible perfect… ha.

64: Where is your best friend?

I don’t really have a best friend.

65: Give me your top 5 favourite blogs on Tumblr.

Stalk my reblogs, I am not bothered.

66: What is your heritage?

My entire lineage lies in the north of England.

67: What were you doing last night at 12AM?

Not a whole lot different to right now.

68: What do you think is Satan’s last name?

Something generic like Smith or Jones would be hilarious.

69: Biggest turn ons?

Lip biting, bedroom eyes, enough banter to create tension, touching my ears.

70: Are you the kind of friend you would want to have as a friend?

No!!

71: You are walking down the street on your way to work. There is a dog drowning in the canal on the side of the street. Your boss has told you if you are late one more time you get fired. What do you do?

The dog will be safe.

72: You are at the doctor’s office and she has just informed you that you have approximately one month to live. a) Do you tell anyone/everyone you are going to die? b) What do you do with your remaining days? c) Would you be afraid?

a) I would tell the necessary people only.

b) I would try to carry on as normally as possible.

c) Of course.

73: You can only have one of these things; trust or love.

Are they not symbiotic?

74: What’s a song that always makes you happy when you hear it?

Can You Feel the Love Tonight.

75: What are the last four digits in your cell phone number?

5725.

76: In your opinion, what makes a great relationship?

A best friend you who want to touch excessively.

77: How can I win your heart?

Run me a bath and stroke my hair. Not at the same time.

78: Can insanity bring on more creativity?

Yes, absolutely.

79: What is the single best decision you have made in your life so far?

Moving to LDN.

80: What size shoes do you wear?

81: What would you want to be written on your tombstone?

I don’t want a tombstone at all.

82: What is your favourite word?

Pamphlet.

Papillon in French.

83: Give me the first thing that comes to mind when you hear the word; heart.

Beat.

84: What is a saying you say a lot?

“Ciao for now.”

85: What’s the last song you listened to?

Jaymes Young - Naked

86: Basic question; what’s your favourite colour/colours?

Turquoise and purple.

87: What is your current desktop picture?

Default starry sky.

88: If you could press a button and make anyone in the world instantaneously explode, who would it be?

Probably POTUS.

89: What would be a question you’d be afraid to tell the truth on?

That would be telling!

90: Turn offs?

Bad teeth, smelly, ignorance.

91: You accidentally eat some radioactive vegetables. They were good, and what’s even cooler is that they endow you with the super-power of your choice! What is that power?

Selective telepathy or teleportation.

92: where are your parents from?

The same town I was born and raised in.

93: You can erase any horrible experience from your past. What will it be?

2013.

94: You have the opportunity to sleep with the music-celebrity of your choice. Who would it be?

Rihanna would be a wild ride.

95: You just got a free plane ticket to anywhere. You have to depart right now. Where are you gonna go?

Somewhere warm and remote.

96: Do you have any relatives in jail?

No idea!

97: Have you ever thrown up in the car?

Oh so so much.

98: Ever been on a plane?

Every year :)

99: If the whole world were listening to you right now, what would you say?

I’d be too scared to say anything of any value!

#asks #quiz

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douchebagbrainwaves · 4 years ago

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IF YOU WANT TO ATTRACT TO YOUR SILICON VALLEY

You can tweak the design faster when you're the factory, and you prosper only to the extent that it happens at all, by the standards of established ones. If you want to invest in successful startups, and the doctors figure out what's wrong. But if you have to have some sort of push to get them going. Try it and see. Even the most ambitious startup ideas are terrifying. The self-reinforcing nature of the venture funding market means that the top ten firms live in a time where college degrees seemed really important, so I'm alarmed to be saying things like this, but there will be no more great new stuff beyond whatever's currently in the pipeline. They could see they weren't as strong or skillful as the village smith. But surely they should have been online. But you have to go on?

Talk to as many VCs as you can with these rivals, but the probability that those 19 year olds who think they know how to run the world. They don't know how much they damage the companies they invest in by taking so long to close is mainly that investors can't make up their minds. As food got cheaper or we got richer; they're indistinguishable, eating too much started to be a mecca for the smart and the ambitious, and in some ways we were a bit sheepish about the low production values. If startups are mobile. They get the same price. Tim Cook doesn't send you a hand-written thank you note. So we were happy in the end, though the experience probably took several years off my life. Mixed with any annoyance they might feel about being approached will be the app store for entertainment, and you'll probably find that writing it all down gives you more ideas about what to do with the kids. The first is that startups are so weird that if you invest in startups, they might never have got to the point where startups can least afford it.

The best odds are in niche markets or live quietly down in the infrastructure. Unfortunately, to be unpopular in school is to be battered by circumstances—to let the world have its way with you, instead of spending all our time playing an exacting but mostly pointless game like the others. So you will not, as of this writing, be able to convince; they just make it easier. If so, this revolution is going to be more restrictions on what someone can put on my todo list. What students do in their distant offices, and software that conforms to all the current fashions. The way I studied for exams in these classes was not except incidentally to master the material taught in the class, I just skimmed the Cliff's Notes, it turned out to be a big consumer brand, the odds against succeeding are steeper. Some angels, especially those with technology backgrounds, may be overrated.

Usually you get seed money from our friend Julian. Plus there aren't the same forces driving startups to spread. The biggest disagreements are between parents and schools, but even those are small. They need to market themselves to the investors who are their customers—the endowments and pension funds and rich families whose money they invest—and also to founders who might come to them for funding. I know the answer to that. But the next step after rent a cool office, hire a team of engineers to develop it people who do this tend to use the term Collison installation for the technique they invented. If Jobs and Wozniak had 10 minutes to present the Apple II while working at HP, and there was still a claw-footed bathtub in the bathroom.

Half the readers will say that Microsoft is still an enormously profitable company, and that probably doesn't surprise would-be founders, though we do like the idea of taking this rival firm's rejects. When you see your career as a series of different types of support people just offscreen making the whole show. We now get on the order of 1000 applications a year. This is one of the symptoms of bad judgement is believing you have good judgement. Most investors are momentum investors. An individual European manufacturer could import industrial techniques and they'd work fine. It's hard for us to feel a sense of noblesse oblige. Partly because teenagers are still half children, and many at some point.

And now that we can say what makes a good startup founder down to two words: just learn. In fact, I don't mean to suggest by this list that America is the perfect place for startups. We'd interview people from MIT or Harvard or Stanford and sometimes find ourselves thinking: they must be smarter than they were and yet had zero attitude himself. But they work as if they were going away for the weekend. Interestingly, the 30-startup experiment could be done by bots, because then you'd have made the sufficiently smart compiler, but inside has people, using highly developed optimization tools to find and eliminate bottlenecks in users' programs. When a stock jumps upward, you buy, and when it suddenly drops, you sell. And try consciously to ignore it. There are two reasons founders resist going out and engaging in person with users made the difference between success and failure. And since we're assuming we're doing this without being able to pick startups, we also have to get better at picking winners. How many of their launches do you remember? If you don't know initially how hard they are; you don't know anything about, say, the ages of eleven and seventeen. To have kids!

For example, in 2004 Bill Clinton found he was feeling short of breath. If you ask at that age revolves far more around popularity than before or after. I'd learned it. But in fact there will be a while before any American city can bring itself to do that too. So not only does the desktop no longer matter, no one who has more experience at trying to predict that, so stories of this type by teachers, because I didn't need it. In particular, you don't hit another MBA till number 22, Phil Knight, the CEO of Nike. You'd expect them to be ignored. Otherwise you'll have to make something customers actually want, and those are impossible to predict. As with an actual gold mine, you still have to work hard to get rolling that you should put users before advertisers, even though the advertisers are paying and users aren't.

After you raise the first million dollars, and being impressive. Nerds aren't losers. He was a precise sort of guy, so he'd measured their productivity before and after. Even Microsoft sees that now. It's supposed to mean that if your software is slow you have to be extra cautious. I remember because it was the same in the audience will have a significant effect on our returns, and the heart attack had taken most of a day to kill him. But why? I have no tricks for dealing with this world for many years, both as a founder and an investor, and I have not seen a single reference to this supposedly universal fact before the twentieth century. After Warren Buffett, you don't need them. Then the town would be hospitable to both groups you need: both founders and investors and reporters and know-it-alls dismiss your startup; they'll change their minds when they see growth.

#automatically generated text #Markov chains #Paul Graham #Python #Patrick Mooney #consumer #Microsoft #order

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hemapriya022-blog · 5 years ago

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Welcome to Texila Medicare

The term medical tourism is used to describe the process wherein people travel to an overseas destination to receive medical, dental and surgical care. This can be attributed to a few key factors like availability to quality healthcare, easy access to healthcare centers and specialty hospitals or simply because of better affordability.

Introducing Texila Medicare, an India based organization dedicated to providing the best and the most affordable world-class medical services to international patients. Texila Medicare is one of the business divisions of the Texila American University Consortium, a leading global education provider and the parent organization of Texila American University (TAU) with campuses strategically spread out across countries and continents.

Texila Medicare is the most ideal associate bringing medical brilliance to people’s lives for a better and healthier future. It is one of the global projects and business divisions of the Texila American University Consortium. Nowadays medical expenses have reached sky-high. But together with our passionate and specialized team of experts, we bring forth a vast range of reliable and international level health care services from India to the rest of the world.

Texila Medicare finds itself ideally positioned among India’s top and most preferred healthcare facilitators, through existing partnerships in over 50 NABH/JCI certified hospitals. At Texila Medicare, we provide full-fledged support right from your travel planning, expert consultation, treatment planning and all the way to your journey back home healthy and safe.

What Exactly Does Texila Medicare Do?

Texila Medicare has collaborated with some of the best hospitals to endow with an affordable network of healthcare services for those who are in need through their proficient panel of medical planners.

Our specialists will take care of your ailments based on the diagnosis from our NABH/JCI accredited hospitals

As an emerging healthcare medical facilitator, our dynamic team selects the best hospital, makes a doctor’s appointment, prioritize hotel stays and other vital things so that clients do not have waste their time waiting in long queues and in making other arrangements.

Texila Medicare plans your medical travel according to your budget and in a cost-effective way.

We always remain trustworthy to our esteemed clients by always remaining transparent in all billing-related issues.

We also offer Expert Medical opinion for our overseas clients from 3-4 leading Hospitals before they make up their mind for coming to India.

We also assist the clients in their follow-ups during their post-treatment period.

Texila Medicare ensures your betterment with their gamut of medical and non-medical services.

We also help our clients to get their medical visa for their visit to India.

Texila Medicare provides crucial assistance services to patients and their travelling companion or family members.

We always carefully help you hand-pick highly experienced and specialized doctors with a verified track record.

Texila Medicare only partners with hospitals and healthcare centres that have world-class standards in technology and infrastructure.

We ensure that our clients get immediate appointments and treatments with no waiting time.

Our skilled officer takes care of all formalities during admission and discharge from the hospital and will always accompany the client to every medical appointment.

We also arrange language translators for clients hailing from non-English speaking countries so that they need not have to struggle with communication.

How to get Texila Medicare to be your preferred healthcare facilitator?

You can get attached to one of the most ethical healthcare facilitators in India in just five simple and easy steps.

Submit all your health-related documents/reports on the official Texila Medicare website.

This is followed by a Doctor & Hospital recommendation of the highest standard by a team of experts/case managers.

Next, an evaluation of the case with multiple specialist Doctors is done.

With all the necessary information in hand, we will receive quotes for the required treatment from multiple hospitals or wellness centers.

This is immediately followed by a second or expert opinion.

Once this is done, we make arrangements for a priority appointment with the concerned doctor as soon as the patient arrives in India.

Next is getting the patient priority admission to the chosen hospital.

Once the treatment is over, we also provide assistance in post-treatment rehabilitation or physiotherapy at your place of stay (step down care).

Types of treatments provided by Texila Medicare

Our expert group of planners is working round-the-clock to give the best possible assistance to our clients, be it choosing their suitable general practitioner or surgeon, and the best hospital based on the preferred location.

The different types of ailments for which Texila offers their services are:

Organ Transplant

Cardiac treatments like the replacement of valves, veins or arteries, removal of the blockage, implanting pacemaker, etc.

Bariatric Surgery (Surgery for Weight Loss)

IVF and Infertility treatments

Orthopedic Surgery

We also include services for general surgery intervention like bile ducts, appendix, gallbladder, liver, colon, pancreas, esophagus, and stomach.

Surgery for spine or neural troubles

Cosmetic surgery

Cancer treatment

Surgery for Cochlear Implant and ENT damages.

Texila Medicare’s Medical Collaborators

Texila Medicare combines the latest technologies along with extensive research and experience in the medical field to provide the best possible treatments available in the healthcare industry. We also offer services for post-surgery care and rehabilitation, until the patient has completely recovered and is ready to travel back to their home country. Some of the most reputed Indian hospitals associated with Texila Medicare are:

BLK Super Specialty Hospital – One of the key tertiary care hospitals in India.

Fortis Hospital – One of India’s largest chain of multi-specialty hospitals.

Kokilaben Dhirubhai Ambani Hospital – An initiative by reliance group with world-class quaternary care.

Center for Sight Hospital – One of the country’s leading eye care hospitals.

Dhathri Ayurveda – A prominent player in the realm of ayurvedic treatment.

HCG hospital – One of the biggest providers of cancer treatment.

Manipal Hospitals – One of the largest healthcare brands in India with presence in 7 Indian cities and two overseas locations

Kovai Medical Center and Hospital – Known as the first healthcare center to successfully carry out kidney transplant procedure without the use of steroids.

Wockhardt Hospital – One of the tertiary care, super speciality healthcare networks in India.

Narayana Health – A chain of multi-speciality hospitals, heart centres, and primary care facilities.

Gleneagles Global Hospital – A huge chain of multi-specialty tertiary care hospitals in India.

Columbia Asia – A multinational chain of hospitals in Asia, with multiple medical facilities across India.

Medanta – A multi-specialty medical institute located in Gurgaon.

Apollo Hospitals – An highly popular Indian hospital chain present in various cities in India.

Rainbow Hospitals – An Indian chain of Pediatric Hospitals.

Centre for Sight – India’s leading network of top eye hospitals & doctors.

Rajan Dental – A highly reputed dental clinic located in Chennai.

To ensure that you will get the most excellent and right treatment under the advice of the best physicians in a cost-effective budget is the main motto of the Texila Medicare.

What does the future hold for Texila Medicare

With our vast global network of business associates and partners through our parent company, Texila Medicare holds business centres in various metropolitan and rural locations within India. With a strong network in place, Texila Medicare plans to expand its target base to the regions of Africa, South America, Middle East, and South Asian countries.

Heading into the future, Texila Medicare is planning to associate with various parallel business and travel agents through our business development managers to increase the potentiality of a high client database. We plan to accomplish this through attractive incentives and timely payments to our business partners so that they will keep providing our clients with the very best of services available in the healthcare industry.

Why choose India as your preferred medical tourism destination?

According to a report on Travel and Tourism, India is at the 10th position among 136 countries ranked according to cost competitiveness. In India, the treatment cost incurred is almost 60% to 90% less than countries like the USA and the UK, making it one of the most preferred countries for high-quality and cost-effective medical treatments.

India has some of the highest-rated hospitals accredited by the Joint Commission International (JCI) that provides care at par global standards. Also, there are more than 425 Health-care facilities that are accredited by the National Accreditation Board for Hospitals and Healthcare (NABH) and the International Society for Quality (ISQua).

All of these hospitals come with live supportive techniques and operative technologies that produce a better outcome even for complicated surgeries. Robotic Surgery, radiotherapy, radiation surgery, and Cyberknife options are some of the most advanced technologies used in almost all of the hospitals in India.

To Conclude

Quality healthcare consultation and treatment are the basic right of every person. But if you have to visit an unknown country without knowing how and who to contact for your treatment, then it can be a cause of a lot of stress and anxiety.

This is where Texila Medicare comes into the picture as an extremely patient-friendly Medical Tourism Facilitator in India to assist all its clients from India or abroad with a high-quality diagnosis of the treatment, and complete medical transparency in a very pocket-friendly budget. You can also get real reviews about the healthcare company from the mouth of real clients and their past patients.

So how do you contact Texila Medicare?

You can contact Texila Medicare in the following ways:

Website: https://texilamedicare.com/

Email Id: [email protected]

Phone Numbers: +91 73975 23222 or +91 88705 55792

Or you can find us on the below mentioned social media handles:

Twitter https://twitter.com/TexilaMedicare

Facebook https://www.facebook.com/TexilaMedicare/

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courtneytincher · 5 years ago

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Could Restoring Soil Help Halt Climate Change?

leolintang/GettyBy David R. Montgomery, Professor of Earth and Space Sciences, University of WashingtonIt’s time to take soil seriously. As the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change states with very high confidence in its latest report, land degradation represents “one of the biggest and most urgent challenges” that humanity faces.The report assesses potential impacts of climate change on food production and concludes that rising atmospheric carbon dioxide levels will reduce crop yields and degrade the nutritional quality of food.To avert climate catastrophe, the report warns, people need to make changes in agriculture and land use. In other words, it’s no longer enough to wean society off of fossil fuels. Stabilizing the climate will also require removing carbon from the sky. Rethinking humanity’s relationship to the soil can help on both scores.Soils under stressHealthy, fertile soils are rich in organic matter built of carbon that living plants pulled out of the atmosphere through photosynthesis. Carbon-rich organic matter helps fuel the soil organisms that recycle and release mineral elements that plants take back up as nutrients.But soils release carbon too. And the frequent tillage and heavy fertilizer use that underpin modern conventional agriculture have accelerated degradation of soil organic matter, sending more carbon skyward—a lot, it turns out.The new IPCC report concludes that globally, cropland soils have lost 20-60 percent of their original organic carbon content. North American farmland has lost about half of its natural endowment of soil carbon. On top of those losses, modern agriculture consumes a lot of fossil fuels to pull plows and manufacture the synthetic nitrogen fertilizers that farmers rely on to coax large harvests from degraded soils.Land management choices also affect the amount of carbon stored in trees, plants and soil. The new IPCC report estimates that serious changes in forestry and agriculture to curtail deforestation and improve soil management could reduce global emissions by 5 percent to 20 percent. While this won’t solve the climate problem, it would represent a significant down payment on a global solution.Farming for carbonInvesting in soil regeneration would also deliver other benefits. One key takeaway from the IPCC report is that conventionally tilled soils erode more than 100 times faster than they form. This troubling conclusion echoes and amplifies what I found a decade ago, after compiling global data on rates of soil formation and loss. My book Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations tells how soil degradation undermined societies around the world, from the ancient Greeks and Romans to the U.S. Dust Bowl of the 1930s.Today humans have degraded roughly one-third of the world’s topsoil, and about 3.2 billion people—more than a third of humanity—already suffer from the effects of degraded land. Continuing down this path does not bode well for feeding a growing world population.But what if it was possible to reverse course, regenerate soil organic matter and reduce farmers’ need for diesel fuel and chemical fertilizers made with fossil fuels? This would make it feasible to stash more carbon in the soil and reduce the amount that’s sent skyward in the process of growing food.I saw the potential for regenerative agriculture to restore soil organic matter in both developed and developing countries when I researched Growing a Revolution: Bringing Our Soil Back to Life, my book about how regenerative farming practices allow farmers to reduce their use of costly fertilizers and pesticides.All of the farmers I interviewed shared three things in common. They had switched from plowing to no-till methods that minimized soil disturbance, planted cover crops, and grew a diverse mix of cash and cover crops. Some had even adopted regenerative grazing practices that put livestock to work rebuilding carbon-rich soil. Their results showed me that when farming and ranching practices build soil health, they can reverse soil degradation rapidly and profitably.Worth the transitionBarriers to adopting regenerative farming systems include force of habit, lack of knowledge about new practices and real and perceived economic risk during the transition. But the benefits of rebuilding healthy, fertile soil are clear.According to a 2018 U.N. report that reviewed global land degradation, the economic benefits of land restoration average 10 times the costs. Rebuilding fertile soil is also one of the most promising ways to address hunger and malnutrition in Africa, where the costs of failing to combat land degradation are typically three times the cost of addressing the problem.Restoring soil health would help mitigate the effects of climate change. Increasing the amount of organic matter in soil enhances its ability to hold water. And improving soil structure would let more rainfall sink into the ground, where it can better sustain crops—especially during drought-stressed years—and help reduce flooding downstream. In addition to benefiting the climate, less fertilizer use will reduce off-farm water pollution.Regenerative practices that focus on soil building bring other benefits too. For example, one 2006 study surveyed low-input, resource-conserving agricultural practices in 286 development projects across Latin America, Africa and Asia that employed cover crops for nitrogen fixation and erosion control and integrated livestock back into farming systems. It found that for a wide variety of systems and crops, yields increased an average of almost 80 percent. Results like these indicate that investing in soil-building practices would help feed a warming world.When President John F. Kennedy called for a national effort to go to the Moon, the U.S. managed to do the unthinkable in under a decade. I believe it’s time now for a global “soilshot” to heal the land. Rebuilding healthy fertile soil on the world’s agricultural lands would require fundamental changes to agriculture, and a new agricultural philosophy. But consider who stands to lose from such a shift: corporate interests that profit from modern agrochemical-intensive farming and factory-farm livestock production. Who stands to gain? Everyone else.Read more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.

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easytravelpw-blog · 6 years ago

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Full text write on https://easy-travel.pw/top-20-most-popular-uk-cities-for-international-visitors/england/

Top 20 Most Popular UK Cities for International Visitors

01 of 20

London and Edinburgh Lead the Top 20

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The Office of National Statistics, which keeps track of such things, has named the UK cities most visited by international visitors. You'd expect London to be number one and Edinburgh, coming in at number two isn't much of a shock either. But some of the other destinations in the UK Top 20 list, may surprise you. Check out their profiles to find out what makes each of them so popular.

London

Home of the Houses of Parliament, Big Ben, The Tower of London, Westminster Abbey, The British Museum and more British Icons, London is a world center of theatre, art, music, literature and culture. It's also a city of colorful markets, great shopping, green open spaces and a cosmopolitan culture.

London is home to 7.5 million people, or 12.5 per cent of the UK's population. Not counting visitors, more than 1.5 million Londoners come from abroad. They speak 300 different languages. On top of its cosmopolitan locals, London welcomes more than 25 million visitors a year through its five airports, national rail stations and Eurostar terminal, the gateway to the continent.

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02 of 20

Edinburgh

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Scotland's capital and the seat of its Parliament, Edinburgh combines the young and modern sensibilities of a great university city and national capital with a historic and dramatic setting. Here you'll find the world's biggest performing arts festival, a 1,000 year old castle and a mountain – Arthur's Seat – right in the middle of town. And, Edinburgh's annual New Year's celebration – Hogmanay – is four-day street party to end all street parties.

Edinburgh has about half a million people people, including more than 62,000 university students. At least 13 million people visit every year. During the main festival month of August, the population of Edinburgh swells by more than one million, making it, temporarily, the UK's second largest city.

Festival Edinburgh – From the end of June through to early September, Edinburgh reels through one festival after another. Film, books, art, music, television and jazz, the Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo and the Edinburgh International Festival are just some of the summer festivals. But the big event is the world famous Edinburgh Fringe, a free-for-all of drama, music, comedy and street theater that veers wildly from brilliant to dire and that takes over the whole city for most of August.

Come winter and Edinburgh folks are ready to party again, staging the world's biggest New Year's celebration, Hogmanay. The torchlight parades, fire festival events, concerts, fun fairs and winter swims go on for four days. What a hangover.

Edinburgh Travel Guide

How to Survive the Edinburgh Fringe

Edinburgh Hogmanay

Ten Cheap Hotels in Edinburgh

Top TripAdvisor Edinburgh Hotel Deals

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03 of 20

Manchester

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Manchester is often called the first modern city. In the 18th century this Northwestern city, 30 miles from Liverpool, was the cotton making capital of the world and one of the breeding grounds of the industrial revolution. Its entrepreneurs and industrial tycoons endowed it with museums, galleries, theatres and libraries as well as outstanding civic architecture. A devastating IRA bomb in 1996 created the need for city center regeneration resulting in a new, dramatic 21st century cityscape.

Today, some of the most exciting architecture in Britain can be found in Manchester and the nearby Salford Quays area. Among the highlights are Bridgewater Hall, home of Manchester's Hallé Orchestra; Urbis, a glass curtain-walled exhibition center, and the Imperial War Museum, designed by Daniel Libeskind.

Music City

Manchester has long been a hot bed of the indie and pop music scenes. Among the bands and artists who got their start, Manchester can claim Elkie Brooks, Take That, Freddie and the Dreamers, Hermans Hermits, The Hollies, Oasis, Simply Red, The Smiths, The Stone Roses, Morrissey and dozens more.

Today a large student population keeps Manchester's club scene as lively as ever. And, as one of the gateways to England's Lake District, Manchester makes a good anchor for a two base vacation, combining outdoor activities with urban nightlife.

Manchester Travel Guide

Christmas Markets in Manchester

Check guest reviews and prices for Manchester Hotels on TripAdvisor

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04 of 20

Birmingham

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A combination of entrepreneurial daring and engineering know-how made Birmingham the manufacturing engine of Britain through the 19th century and most of the 20th. James Watt first commercially manufactured his steam engine here; the transatlantic cable and the Orient Express were Birmingham built, and this was the heartland of the British motor industry.

Birmingham also has several tasty claims to fame. George Cadbury made his choccies here and his his Bourneville Estate was an early planned community. In more recent times, Birmingham has become the heartland of that Anglo-Punjabi speciality, Balti cuisine.

With a population of more than a million, Birmingham is the UK's second largest city.It's a vibrant, multi-ethnic destination with a lively arts and music scene and some of England's best shopping. Its Selfridges – the company's first store outside of London, is an ultra-modern building that looks like it just landed from outer space.

Music With a Brummie Accent

Heavy Metal is a Birmingham sound. Both Judas Priest and Black Sabbath were local bands. And Ozzie Osborne is a native son. Other styles of music thrive in Birmingham too. The city kick started the careers of Duran Duran, ELO and UB40.

How Not To Get Lost in the Balti Triangle

Born Again Shopping in the UK's Second City

With it's great shopping and the huge NEC conference center as draws, Birmingham has loads of visitors. Sadly it doesn't have nearly enough hotels to meet the demand. So if you are planning on heading there for a special event, plan on booking early.

TripAdvisor's Best Deals in Birmingham

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05 of 20

Glasgow

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Scotland's largest city and the third largest city in the UK, Glasgow's had long taken a back seat to Edinburgh with tourists and visitors. Its reputation as a rough, crime-ridden, dirty and hard drinking city put people off. But, since the mid 1980s, Glaswegians have worked hard to turn that image around.

And they've succeeded.

In 1995, Glasgow was European Capital of Culture. The award wasn't for the heritage culture that enlivens Edinburgh but for an entirely more contemporary vibe. And it keeps getting better. In 2008, Lonely Planet named Glasgow one of the top 10 cities for tourists. In the same year, the Mercer report, a quality of life survey, put Glasgow among the top 50 safest cities of the world. Nervous tourists note: that was more than 30 places higher than London.

Today, Billy Connolly's home town is a hip destination for contemporary art, jazz, clubs, comedy, design and fashion (of both the chic and the gutsy street kind). It's also the gateway to the Western Highlands. Loch Lomond and the Trossachs National Park is about half an hour away.

Check out Glasgow's sensational Riverside Museum

citizenM, a hip Glasgow hotel for travelers of the mobile generation

TripAdvisor's Best Value Hotels in Glasgow

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06 of 20

Liverpool

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When visitors think of Liverpool, the Beatles come immediately to mind. And, of course, there's plenty to do that's Beatles related – not least of which is is visit to the famous Cavern Club.

In 2008, the mantle of European Capital of Culture landed on Liverpool, revitalizing this city in England's northwest, as the award often does. Liverpool's Albert Docks area became a UNESCO World Heritage Site for its role in the maritime history of Britain's. Visitors to the area can explore Liverpool's part in the history of the slave trade, commemorated in the world's only International Slavery Museum, in emigration to the New World and in the spread of trade and culture across the British Empire. The spotlight on the dock's history has also brought trendy clubs, hotels, shopping, dining and a Liverpool branch of the famous Tate Gallery to the immediate surrounding area.

Liverpool Travel Guide

How to Get to Liverpool

Over the years, Liverpool has had its ups and downs, so there are good bits and not so good bits. But the recent revival of interest in this historic city means there are quite a few new and trendy hotels.

Check guest reviews and prices for Hotels Near the Beatles Story on TripAdvisor

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07 of 20

Bristol

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Bristol, on the borders of Somerset and Gloucestershire, is a small, attractive city with a history of creativity and innovation. It makes a great base for touring with Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwick Castle, Bath, Stonehenge, Cheddar Gorge and Longleat all within easy reach.

Once one of England's most important ports, like Liverpool, it was a center for the triangular trade in the 17th and 18th centuries, shipping manufactured goods to Africa in exchange for slaves who were then transported to the Americas. Abolitionist Thomas Clarkson lived undercover at The Seven Stars Pub on Thomas Lane in the 18th century. He gathered the information about the slave trade that his friend William Wilberforce used to support the Act for the Abolition of Slavery. You can still raise a pint of real ale in the pub, open every day since 1760 and with a history that goes back to the 1600s.

Born in Bristol

From the pioneering Victorian engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel, to the leaders of today's cutting edge animations, Bristol has been a hot bed of talented innovators. Brunel, who designed Britain's first long distance railway, the Great Western between London and Bristol, also designed the first ocean-going, propeller-driven transatlantic steamship, the SS Great Britain and the Clifton Suspension Bridge (completed after Brunel's death). The bridge, over the Avon Gorge, is the symbol of Bristol.

The Bristol Old Vic, an offshoot of London's Old Vic Theatre, and its associated drama school, has populated international stages and screens with graduates. Cary Grant was born in Bristol; Patrick Stewart, Jeremy Irons, Greta Scacchi, Miranda Richardson, Helen Baxendale, Daniel Day-Lewis and Gene Wilder all learned their craft there.

Wallace & Gromit and Shaun the Sheep are also Bristol natives, having been created at the city's Aardman Animation. And the mysterious graffitti artist, Banksy, another Bristol native, has left his mark there.

Find out more about Bristol

Discover Clifton Village, Bristol's Best Kept Secret

Read a review of Bristol restaurant, The Glassboat

How to get from London to Bristol

Find Bristol Hotels near the landmark Clifton Suspension Bridge on TripAdvisor

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08 of 20

Oxford

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Oxford University is England's oldest university, dating back to the 11th century. It's the reason that many people make their way to this small city, 60 miles northwest of London, on the edge of the Cotswolds.

The city has England's oldest public museum, The Ashmolean, recently refurbished with its exhibition space doubled. Visitors can also enjoy shopping in a lively covered market, find an almost hidden pub that was popular when Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton were still hiding their affair from their respective spouses, explore a haunted castle and stay in a unique hotel that was once a jail.

And then, of course, there are the colleges. Visitors are welcome to stroll the fascinating, historic grounds and chapels of most – but not all – of the colleges. Others are only open during fixed times of day or as part of official guided tours. Official Guided Walking Tours, run by the Oxford Tourist Information Centre, take in the colleges, other Oxford landmarks and Oxford movie locations – including some used in the Harry Potter films.

Oxford makes a great London Day Trip, with or without a car. It's also a useful base for exploring the Cotswolds; visiting Blenheim Palace in Woodstock, a ten minute bus trip away, or shopping till you drop at Bicester Village, one of the UK's best designer discount centers.

A Guide to an Oxford Walk

An Afternoon in Oxford

Malmaison Oxford Castle- Going to jail has never been so good. And don't just take my word for it.

The Turf Tavern, Oxford's secret pub

Brown's Cafe – Cheap Eats in Oxford

Check guest reviews and prices for Oxford Hotels on TripAdvisor

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09 of 20

Cambridge

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Cambridge, like Oxford its traditional rival, grew out of an association of scholars who settled in one place and founded the colleges. According to tradition, Cambridge – Britain's second oldest University – was founded in 1209 when a group of scholars fled Oxford after a disagreement with local townspeople.

Smaller and less urban than Oxford, Cambridge is, nevertheless, a lively place full of fascinating museums and galleries, theatres, an improving restaurant scene and pubs.

The colleges themselves, which together have produced more Nobel Prize winners than any university in the world, are masterpieces of Medieval, Tudor and Jacobean architecture. Among the standouts open to visitors, Kings College Chapel, with its soaring thistle vaulted ceiling, is a must.

From April to September, Cambridge can be packed with tourists who arrive on buses, stay a few hours and skedaddle. But train services from London are frequent and journey times relatively short so it's a shame not to linger a bit longer to explore some of the lovely gardens along the Backs (where Cambridge colleges back up onto the River Cam). Because of the crowds, many of the colleges now charge an entry fee to visit their grounds and limit opening hours.

Taking a Punt at a Punt

Punts are the traditional, flat boats propelled along the Cam and Granchester rivers with poles. The punter stands and pushes the pole into the mud. It's not as easy as it looks and more than one beginner has either lost a pole or been left clinging to one as the punt floats on. Nowadays, visitors can hire a chauffeured punt (the chauffeur will probably be a student) for a guided cruise along the Backs. It's lazy but can be fun.

Find out more about visiting Cambridge

Christmas Eve at Kings

One of Cambridge's shortcomings is a dearth of really nice hotels near the center. One of the most interesting, however, is The Moller Centre, part of Churchill College. It's a conference center at heart but anyone can stay in business class luxury at budget prices in this architecturally unusual place.

Check guest reviews and prices for Cambridge Hotels on TripAdvisor

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10 of 20

Cardiff

TF Duesing via Flickr

Cardiff, the capital of Wales and its largest city, has experienced a virtual renaissance. In a little over a decade its visitor numbers have increased by more than 50 percent. When the Millenniium Stadium, home of the Welsh national rugby union team and the Welsh national football team, opened in 1999, the city welcomed about 9 million foreign visitors. In 2009, that figure had risen to more than 14.6 million foreign visitors, with French and Irish rugby fans leading the way.

The rebirth of Cardiff includes redevelopment of the waterfront along Cardiff Bay. The Senedd, home of the Welsh National Assembly and designed by British architect Richard Rogers, opened there in 2006.

Nearby, the Wales Millennium Centre, opened in 2004, is a performance venue for theatre, musicals, opera, ballet, contemporary dance, hip hop, comedy, art and art workshops. It has two theaters and seven resident companies including the Welsh National Opera. Free performances take place in the center's foyer every day and visitors to the bars and restaurants can enjoy views of Cardiff Bay. The building is a striking landmark on its own, clad in Welsh slate, bronze colored steel, wood and glass, it is a reflection of the Welsh landscape.

The most famous features of the building, designed by Jonathan Adam, are the lines of poetry, made up of windows, that cross its facade. Written for the center by Welsh writer Gwyneth Lewis, the Welsh and English words are not translations of each other but are, in fact, two different short poems that complement each other. The words of the Welsh poem, “Creu Gwir Fel Gwydr O Ffwrnais Awen” (Creating truth like glass from the furnace of inspiration), are arranged beside the words of the English poem, “In these stones, horizons sing.” At night, light from inside the center shines through the windows.

Not everything about Cardiff is brand new. Cardiff Castle began its life as a Roman garrison, about 2000 years ago. It has been a Norman castle keep and home to a variety of noble families. In the 19th centuries, the Marquess of Bute had the living quarters transformed into a Victorian fantasy castle with fabulous and opulent interiors. Today it belongs to the city of Cardiff and the castle, along with its surrounding parkland, is the scene of festivals and events throughout the year.

Cardiff's post millennial revival and its position as the seat of the newly devolved Welsh government means the hotel and accommodation selection is very good.

Find out more about Cardiff

RHS Cardiff Flower Show in Cardiff Castle

Cardiff Singer of the World Competition

Check guest reviews and prices for Cardiff Hotels on TripAdvisor

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11 of 20

Brighton

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Brighton is hip, colorful and – unusually for a seaside resort – urban. “London's beach”, 60 miles from the capital, is a year-round day trip or short break destination with lots more to offer than its seafront.

Shopping, dining, a hoot of a fantasy palace, a brilliant aquarium, great nightlife and theater, block after block of Regency houses – not to mention the most scenic pier in Britain – combine with a tolerant and breezy ambience to make Brighton a very cool place to visit and an even cooler place to stay awhile.

If you like cities (warts and all) and you share Brighton's tolerant, open attitude, you will love it. Millions of people do. At least 8 million people visit Brighton annually – about 6.5 million for day trips. Brighton Pier alone gets 4.5 million visitors a year. The city regularly ranks among the top 20 for overseas visitors and is among Britain's top 10 visitor destinations overall. It is also one of Britain's most popular gay destinations with a large resident gay population.

It may be London's beach, but don't expect to pop into the sea. The water is usually pretty cold and the shingle beach is not to everyone's taste. But all kinds of watersports fans, surfers, paddle and wind surfers do love it. And strolling along the seaside or lazing on the beach is just part of Brighton's appeal.

Come for amazing shopping in the Lanes and the North Laine, goggle at the Royal Pavilion, eat lots of great fish and chips and enjoy the festival and club scene. It's a quick day trip by train from London and one you don't want to miss.

Plan a Brighton Getaway

Brighton Seafront and Brighton's Piers

Shopping in Brighton – The Lanes and the North Laine

Find Best Value Brighton Beach Hotels on TripAdvisor

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12 of 20

Newcastle-upon-Tyne and Gateshead

ozofnene

Newcastle-upon-Tyne began its history as a major Roman fort defending the eastern end of Hadrian's Wall. The evidence is still there at the Arbeia Roman Fort & Museum a reconstruction of the fort that guarded the mouth of the Tyne, with a museum full of archeological finds from the site.

In the early Middle Ages, after the departure of the Romans, the Venerable Bede, an Anglo Saxon monk, lived and wrote his histories of early Britain at Jarrow, just down river from Newcastle on the south bank of the Tyne. Bedes World, in Jarrow is a new museum and World Heritage Site candidate near the ruins of Bede's Anglo Saxon monastery.

Fast Forward

Newcastle is a good base for exploring of the northeast of England, but don't be surprised if the locals could care less about all that impressive history. They have their eyes firmly fixed on today and tomorrow.

Newcastle nightlife is legendary, spawning bands, performance artists and good times in quantity. Back in the 1960s, Jimi Hendrix lived and busked in Newcastle. He was discovered and managed by Chas Chandler, a musician with Newcastle band, The Animals. Dire Straits was a Newcastle band and Sting is a Geordie boy. (“Geordies” are natives of Newcastle). One of England's big university cities, students keep the Newcastle music scene alive and kicking.

Since the Millennium, the Newcastle/Gateshead Quays have been transformed into a futuristic and arty landscape. The Newcastle/Gateshead Millennium Bridge is a unique pedestrian “drawbridge”. Instead of splitting and opening to allow tall boat traffic through, the bottom, pedestrian deck of the bridge tips up to meet the support arch, like an eyelid, opening and closing.

The Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art on the quayside, is a huge contemporary art space – the biggest exhibition space of its kind in the world. Before its transformation into a cutting edge visual arts exhibition center, it was an enormous and abandoned flour and animal feed mill. Not far away, The Sage Gateshead, is an ultra modern music performance and learning center. Rock, pop, classical, acoustic, indie, couontry, folk, electronic, dance and world music are all welcome in Sage's gleaming bubbles of stainless steel and glass. The Northern Sinfonia has its home at the Sage.

Geordies The native dialect of Newcastle, Geordie, is distinctive and one of the oldest in England. If you've ever seen actor Jimmy Nail or Girls Aloud singer Cheryl Cole, you've heard this inimitable accent.

Read more about Newcastle/Gateshead

How to get to Newscastle from London

TripAdvisor Deals in Newcastle-upon-Tyne

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13 of 20

Leeds

John Lawson/Getty Images

People sometimes dub Leeds The Knightsbridge of the North because this city, built on a tradition of wool, textile and clothing manufacture, is one of the UK's major retail and fashion hubs. Glamorous shops are housed in some of the most splendid Victorian arcades in Europe. Famous Harvey Nichols established its first store outside of London here. And one of Britain's most famous businesses, Marks & Spencer, began its life as a humble market stall in Leeds Kirkgate Market.

21st Century Leeds

Leeds is a thoroughly wired up place. Leeds IT companies host more than a third of all UK Internet traffic and there are more ISDN lines per head of population than any other major city in the world. A new Internet Quarter, full of call centers and server farms, is in the works.

Currently the UK's third largest city, Leeds is also the fastest growing city in Britain. Its population of three quarters of a million includes more than 100,000 university and college students who support a lively music scene. There are about 1,500 bands currently active in Leeds. Among the city's recent success stories, the Kaiser Chiefs and Corinne Bailey Rae hail from this Yorkshire city.

And speaking of Yorkshire

Leeds is well placed for some nightlife and retail therapy as part of a tour of the beautiful Yorkshire countryside. It's also less than half an hour, by train or car, from the Medieval, walled city of York.

Leeds Victorian and Edwardian Shopping Arcades

UK Music Festivals – The Leeds & Reading Festivals

42 The Calls is one of Leeds most interesting little hotels – with a great breakfast.

Best Value TripAdvisor Hotels in Leeds

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14 of 20

York

TJ Blackwell/Getty Images

The small northern English city of York has been an important population center for at least 2,000 years. As a Roman, Viking and Medieval Anglo Saxon city, its relics, monuments and architectural treasures are woven into the fabric of everyday modern life.

It's a lovely city for walking, with something interesting – and hundreds of half-timbered buildings – to look at and explore at every turn. Markets – in the same squares and stalls they have occupied for hundreds of years – sell everything from fruit and vegetables to snazzy hats, designer kitchen utensils and music DVDs. Boutique shops that line York's winding lanes provide plenty of prey for the avid fashion hunter. Some of the best shopping streets are mentioned in the Domesday Book and have been commercial centers for more than 900 years.

York Minster, one of Europe's greatest gothic cathedrals, dominates the city, visible from any vantage point within the walls. It has a stained glass window bigger than a tennis court and a crypt where you can explore the Minster's Roman foundations.

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Inverness

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On it's own, it might be hard to understand why Inverness, on the River Ness near the head of the Moray Firth, is among Britain's top 20 cities for visitors. But Inverness is more than a quiet provincial city. It is the unofficial capital of the Highlands and the gateway to all that – for visitors at any rate – is Scottish about Scotland.

Culloden

Just outside of Inverness, the Culloden battlefield bears witness to one of the great lost causes in Scottish history. In 1746, the clans who supported a restoration of the Stuarts to the throne rallied behind Prince Charles Edward Stuart – known as Bonnie Prince Charlie – in what was known as the Jacobite cause. The climax, at Culloden was an hour-long battle in which at least 1,000 died. It led to the brutal “pacification” of the Highlands, the banning of clan chiefs and tartans and the attempted destruction of Highland culture. The story is explained at an outstanding visitors center, run by the National Trust of Scotland, on the iconic Culloden Battlefield site. Read a description of eve of battle and the battle itself, in Sir Walter Scott's novel, “Waverley”.

Loch Ness

A few miles southwest of Inverness, Loch Ness marks the last great body of water at northern end of the Great Glen, the deep channel of interconnected lochs and waterways that cuts across southwest to northeast across Scotland, from the North Atlantic to the North Sea. Coach and Caledonian Canal tours can be arranged to visit the loch to have a look out the legendary Loch Ness monster. Even if you don't spot Nessie, Loch Ness is a beautiful place to visit and home to Rock Ness – a rock festival with its own sea monster. Urquhart Castle is known to be a particularly good place for Nessie watching.

The Whiskey Trail and Beyond

East of Inverness, the area surrounding the River Spey, is prime territory for Scotch whisky tourism. Speyside distilleries make some of the most famous and most treasured whiskies in the world. Many are open to the public. The area is also popular for salmon fishing and shooting holidays.

Inverness also within easy striking distance of the Cairngorms and Cairngorm National Park – a popular skiing destination and home to Balmoral, the Queen's Scottish vacation home. And, if you are heading for Orkney, flying from Inverness is the fastest way to get there.

But one word of advice. Inverness on weekend nights can be an incredibly noisy place. If you are planning an early start for a cruise or a tour, find yourself a quiet hotel, away from the center.

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Bath

From its 2,000 year old Roman Baths to its Georgian terraces and Pump Room, the entire city of Bath is a UNESCO World Heritage site. Jane Austen enjoyed the health giving waters of Bath and its accompanying social scene, as did many of her characters. Besides offering visitors a feast of historic architecture, this small pleasant city has more than enough diversions for demanding modern weekenders – including great restaurants, top shopping, quirky museums, a lively cultural scene and, of course, a post millennial, multi-million pound, thermal spa.

Bath is a bit too far from London for a day trip that does justice to its many pleasures, but it makes a fine overnight getaway with lots of charming places to stay and dine. Among the sights, Bath Abbey, occupying a site that has been a place of Christian worship for 1,200 years; The Jane Austen Center; The Roman Baths and Pump Room, where 18th and 19th century high society socialized and where you can still taste the waters of the ancient spring – or stop for tea.

Bath is also a showcase of England's finest 18th century architecture, with stunning terraces of pristine, white houses that have formed the backdrops of countless films. No. 1 Royal Crescent. the first house built on Bath's iconic, 18th century Royal Crescent is now open as a museum. Restored and authentically furnished, it offers a glimpse into fashionable 18th century life.

And shop hounds will also enjoy Bath. It's shopping areas are crammed with independent boutiques – fashion, antiques, jewelry and more.

Watch a video of the Royal Crescent and the Circus in Bath

Thermae Bath Spa – Bath's Ultramodern Thermal Spa

Bath Christmas Market

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Nottingham

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Visitors to Nottingham will search in vain for the origins of the Robin Hood stories in Nottingham Castle, once base for wicked usurper King John and his henchman, the Sheriff of legend. It's now a 17th century ducal mansion. But Castle Rock and the cave system beneath it – a scheduled ancient monument, hint at a medieval (and earlier past).

North of the city, the remains of Sherwood Forest, 450 acres of Britain's most ancient oak trees, can still be visited.

Perhaps it was stories of the legendary Robin of Sherwood that turned Nottingham into the nursery for so many literary lights. Lord Byron's title came from the Nottinghamshire estate he inherited when he was ten years old and he is buried in a Nottinghamshire churchyard. D.H. Lawrence, son of a Nottinghamshire miner, grew up in ther area. And both J.M. Barrie, creator of “Peter Pan” and novelist Graham Greene cut their creative teeth on the Nottingham Daily Journal.

The Mayflower Trail

Visitors looking for the history of the Pilgrim Fathers, will find much of interest in the Nottingham area, the heart of Pilgrim Country. William Brewster, postmaster of Scrooby in Nottinghamshire, was instrumental in leading a group of Separatists to Holland in 1607. The group eventually fetched up on the shores of Massachusetts, founding the Plymouth Colony in 1620. The Mayflower Trail is a circular tour through the quiet villages of Nottinghamshire, Lincolnshire and Yorkshire that gave rise to the Separatist movement.

Student Travelers

It's not all about history and literature though. With two universities and 370 schools, Nottingham has the third largest student population in the UK and has the lively nightlight that goes with it. There are at least 300 bars, clubs and restaurants in Nottingham and several large music and dance venues to keep nightowls entertained.

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Reading

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I have to confess I found it hard, at first, to understand why Reading made it to the top 20 list of popular UK cities. Though an important town in the Middle Ages, today Reading is largely a commercial center, important in the IT and insurance industries.

True, it is within a very short distance of some of England's iconic sites – Windsor Castle, Eton, as well as a raft of stately homes, scattered across Berkshire, Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire worth visiting. It's not far from the scene of the Henley Regatta and it does have a large university population.

But, what probably drives Reading into a top UK destination are two hugely popular festivals.

The Reading Comedy Festival, in the autumn, is three-weeks of stand-up attracting British and Irish comedians and their fans along with dozens of brave hopefuls to open mic events.

The Reading Festival, is one of the UK's biggest music festivals. It takes place on the August Bank Holiday weekend and has an unusual twist. The festival is paired with the Leeds Festival, that takes place on the same weekend with the same lineup. Artists appear at one of the festivals then rush across the country to the other to appear again.

When it comes to staying in Reading, I have to say that vacation hotels there are a non-starter for me. If you are going to one of the many festivals, you are more likely to camp, and if you are looking for real charm, the countryside all around has bags more. But Reading is also an important business center and the business traveler is well served.

Check reviews and prices for Reading Hotels on TripAdvisor

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Aberdeen

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Aberdeen, 130 miles northeast of Edinburgh on the North Sea coast, is something of a boom town. Before the discovery North Sea oil in the 1970s, Scotland's third largest city was a fishing port – it's still one of Britain's largest fishing harbors with a huge annual haul from its North Sea trawlers – and a university town. Aberdeen University's charter dates from the late 15th century.

The oil industry has brought oil tycoon prices. Shops, hotels and restaurants in Aberdeen have prices comparable to London. And for a city of less than 300,000, Aberdeen has remarkably good designer and boutique shopping.

The city is almost entirely built of local granite. In good weather, mica in the stone sparkles in the sun. But, to be honest, blue skies in this part of Scotland are pretty rare and in overcast weather, the characteristic greyness can be pretty grim.

Still, if industrial powerhouses are what you are after, Aberdeen may be a good stopover on your way to salmon fishing on the Dee. Aberdeen, which has Europe's biggest and busiest heliport, is sometimes known as the energy capital of Europe.

Find out more about Aberdeen

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Chester

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The first time I saw Chester, I thought its street after street of beautifully kept half-timbered buildings could not be real. Surely I had stepped into a modern theme park.

As it happens, I was partly right. Chester's famous “Rows” are partly Victorian reproductions of earlier buildings. But some of the best are really Medieval. The rows are continuous rows of galleries, reached by steps from street level and forming a second level of shops. No one is quite sure why they were built in this way but some of them, including the Three Arches on Bridge Street, have been galleried shops since the 1200s, having survived the Black Death of the 13th century and the English Civil War of the 17th.

Roman Chester

Chester, and the four ancient street that make up it's High Cross district – Eastgate, Northgate, Watergate and Bridge – are more than a thousand year's older that its Medieval Rows. The walled city was actually founded as a Roman fort in 79 A.D., during the reign of Emperor Vespasian. It's one of the best preserved walled cities in England with some sections of the ramparts dating back 2000 years to the Roman originals. The city was a major center in the Roman province of Britannia. Recent excavations, the biggest archaeological dig in Britain, have uncovered a Roman amphitheater where fighting techniques were demonstrated.

Even if you're not a keen fan of history, Chester, in the heart of affluent Cheshire, is fun to visit. It's full of independent boutiques, has several good museums and art galleries, and is known for top restaurants, luxury hotels and spas.

Find out more about Chester

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blogwonderwebsites · 6 years ago

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Nature Harvard Is Vaulting Workers Into the Middle Class With High Pay. Can Anyone Else Follow Its Lead?

Nature Harvard Is Vaulting Workers Into the Middle Class With High Pay. Can Anyone Else Follow Its Lead? Nature Harvard Is Vaulting Workers Into the Middle Class With High Pay. Can Anyone Else Follow Its Lead? http://www.nature-business.com/nature-harvard-is-vaulting-workers-into-the-middle-class-with-high-pay-can-anyone-else-follow-its-lead/

Nature

Image

Martha Bonilla, 44, works in a kitchen. But a Harvard policy ensures that her hourly wage is more than $25. Most weeks, she clears over $1,500.CreditCreditKayana Szymczak for The New York Times

Martha Bonilla is not your typical middle-class worker. And it’s not just that she was born in a backwater of El Salvador and crossed Mexico hidden among a pile of bananas in the back of a truck to make her way illegally into the United States at age 20.

Like millions of Americans lacking a college degree, the 44-year-old mother of three works on the bottom rungs of the service sector, in a kitchen run by the food-service contractor Restaurant Associates in Cambridge, Mass. Food preparation and service is the lowest-paid occupational group in the economy; even in Boston, it typically pays less than $27,000 for a full-time, year-round job.

Yet there Ms. Bonilla sits at her kitchen table in the solidly middle-class neighborhood of West Roxbury. She and her husband, Felipe Villatoro, both legal residents, bought the house 12 years ago for $350,000. It’s their second; she rents the first to members of her extended family. The vacations in Florida, the 401(k), the $1,700 a month they pay for their daughter’s college tuition and fees — all speak of America’s dream.

“Coming to the United States was the best decision I ever made,” Ms. Bonilla said.

What’s the trick? Ms. Bonilla’s job with Restaurant Associates is to make breakfast and lunch for executives pursuing extension courses at Harvard Business School. At the university, service workers on the payroll of an outside contractor earn the same pay and benefits they would get as direct university employees — including health insurance and pension benefits, paid vacation and child care assistance.

This parity policy was formally adopted across the university 16 years ago by Lawrence H. Summers, then Harvard’s president. At a stroke, it ended the practice of outsourcing dining, security and other such services simply to save on labor costs. “The effect of this policy is to remove some of the economic incentives to contract out those positions,” said Michael Kramer, organizing director at the Cambridge area local of Unite Here, the union covering food service workers.

Critically, unions covering Harvard’s in-house janitors, cooks and guards — which had been losing ground to outside contractors — were empowered to bargain hard for pay and benefits without fear of encouraging more outsourcing. What’s more, contractors themselves became more union-friendly once the university took over the determination of wages and benefits. In 2001, before the policy was put in place, only 58 percent of the workers at outside contractors operating at Harvard were represented by a union. By 2013, the share was 96 percent.

For Ms. Bonilla, the result is an hourly wage of more than $25. Adding the money from a part-time job cooking at a student dorm, most weeks she clears more than $1,500. That exceeds the typical weekly pay of a worker with a master’s degree. Adding in the wage of Mr. Villatoro, also a cook at the business school, the family earns almost $120,000 a year.

As the wages of American workers without a college education languish below where they were 40 years ago, Harvard’s experiment has led some economists and union organizers to think about similar arrangements to broadly benefit low-pay service workers, who form the biggest and fastest-growing part of the job market.

Image

In April 2001, Harvard students led protests and demonstrations that demanded a better deal for campus workers.CreditDarren McCollester/Newsmakers, via Associated Press

To be sure, Harvard’s employment policies affect a limited population. Only 275 dining workers, 404 security guards and the 370 custodial workers are employed by subcontractors, and another 1,105 work for the university. It’s an open question whether larger organizations, or those without multibillion-dollar endowments, can follow its lead.

“This is an important private-sector policy innovation — a very good template for a socially minded organization,” said Mr. Summers, whose tenure was sandwiched between his service as Treasury secretary in the Clinton administration and his time heading the National Economic Council under President Barack Obama. But he acknowledged that the experiment carries trade-offs.

Even if the goal is laudable — lifting workers from the bottom of the labor market into the middle class, stimulating the economy and pushing against the country’s widening wage inequality — Mr. Summers noted that policies like these “make it more expensive to do the things you do.” Setting too high a pay floor could force businesses to hire fewer people, making many worse off.

Still, some 45 million Americans work in low-end service jobs — personal care aides, cooks, janitors, sales reps — typically earning less than $30,000 a year. By 2026, the government projects, the number will be 50 million. Outsourcing is one of the main dynamics keeping their wages down, and the Harvard experiment is a useful case study of how institutions can use their clout to force a remedy.

Recent research by economists at four top universities and the Social Security Administration concluded that the parceling out of less-skilled work to low-wage contractors — Goldman Sachs outsourcing its janitorial services, say, or Apple contracting out the assembly of its iPhones to Foxconn — could account for around one-third of the increase of wage inequality in the United States since 1980.

That concern is on the mind of David Weil, who headed the wage and hour division of the Department of Labor during the Obama administration and is now dean of the Heller School for Social Policy and Management at Brandeis University. “The question is can we re-establish some normative minimum that is presumably above what sheer market forces would drive wages down to,” Mr. Weil said. “The idea is to set a wage norm through a contracting standard.”

Nature How Student Protesters Forced Harvard to Change

Harvard didn’t institute its parity policy simply out of the purity of its institutional heart. Rather, in April 2001, several dozen students from the Harvard Living Wage Campaign took over Massachusetts Hall, which housed the offices of the university’s top administrators, demanding a better deal for campus workers. How could one of the richest educational institutions in the country, they asked, with an endowment worth billions, pay so many people so badly? At the time, nearly 1,000 workers at Harvard made less than $10.68 an hour (a little more than $15 today), the “living wage” wage minimum set by the city of Cambridge for some of its contractors.

“After three days we escalated,” said Benjamin McKean, an undergraduate founder of Harvard’s Living Wage movement. “We had 100 people sleeping in tents in Harvard Yard.” Senator Edward M. Kennedy joined in the sit-in. Senator John Kerry also came by. The protest was covered in The Boston Globe and The New York Times. By the third week, the Harvard president at the time, Neil Rudenstine, yielded and asked a committee to report on how to improve workers’ lot.

The panel — boasting such big-time academics as David Ellwood, T.M. Scanlon and Martha Minow — was headed by Lawrence Katz, who had once served as chief economist at the Labor Department. The group concluded that even after the longest economic expansion on record, from 1991 to 2001, outsourcing was driving campus wages down. Between 1994 and 2001, the pay of in-house service workers fell 7.5 percent on average, after inflation.

Average weekly full-time wage, by education level

In 2017 dollars

$1,500

Bachelor’s degree

or higher

$1,250

$1,000

Some college

$750

High school

$500

$250

’80

’90

’00

’10

’17

Average weekly full-time wage, by education level

In 2017 dollars

$1,500

$1,250

Bachelor’s degree or higher

$1,000

Some college

$750

High school

$500

Less than high school

$250

’80

’90

’00

’10

’17

Custodians proved a useful case study. In 1980, Harvard directly employed nearly 1,000 of them. By 1996, the figure was just 260, and their compensation had suffered. What happened in the interim? The university pushed the Service Employees International Union to accept a contract with lower pay to better compete with outsiders.

“There are good reasons for outsourcing,” Mr. Katz said. “But we identified outsourcing to get around labor obligations as the source of the problem.” The committee he led did not recommend banning the use of contractors, as the living-wage advocates demanded. Nor did it accept their recommendation of setting a wage floor. Instead, by calling for wage and benefits parity for all campus workers, regardless of employer, it sought to remove outsourcing as a cost-cutting tool.

In January 2002, Mr. Summers, who had been inaugurated as Harvard president three months before, signed off on most of the committee’s recommendations. The university instituted the parity policy and reopened contracts with service workers’ unions to raise wages across the board immediately.

These days, a service position at Harvard is not a bad job. A janitor’s starting wage of $22.69 beats that of 75 percent of janitors in the area. A grill cook — the food-service worker with the lowest pay — gets $21.27, more than almost 90 percent of food preparation workers in the Cambridge-Boston area.

Doris Landaverde, 39, got her high school diploma only last June. She cleans offices at Harvard’s Extension School, making more than $23 an hour, plus she has access to benefits including holidays, sick leave, paid vacations, health insurance, a pension, tuition assistance and help with child care. As a result, she’s a little skeptical about the value of going to college. “There are jobs that require a college degree and pay less than what I make,” she said.

The idea is catching on beyond the ivy gates. The S.E.I.U. is trying to replicate Harvard’s approach in airports around the country — pressing public authorities to set wage floors to halt the erosion in pay for roles from baggage handling and security to airplane cleaning and catering.

For instance, the hourly wages of baggage porters declined by half as the share of outsourced work jumped to 84 percent from 25 percent between 2002 and 2012, according to a report by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, and Simon Fraser University in Canada. Like Harvard, the S.E.I.U. believes, airport authorities could impose norms to counter the trend. “We view the airport operator as the landlord,” said Larry Engelstein, the director of collective bargaining for S.E.I.U. Local 32BJ, which covers the Northeast. “The landlord can impose conditions that contractors and carriers must satisfy to work on airport premises.”

In San Francisco, to take another example, airport authorities have set minimum wage and training standards for screeners, baggage handlers, cleaners, fuelers, skycaps, customer service agents and other workers with access to secure areas. Now, the union is waiting for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey to vote on a wage floor of $19 an hour by 2023, a move expected by late September.

But the Port Authority worries that airlines — which outsource everything from the cleaning of planes to their on-flight meals — will sue. The agency’s chairman, Kevin O’Toole, said at hearings in July that officials “want to make sure when we vote for this minimum wage that it is bulletproof” against any judicial review.

Image

Doris Landaverde cleans offices at Harvard’s Extension School. She makes more than $23 an hour, and has access to benefits that include holidays, sick leave, paid vacations, health insurance, a pension, tuition assistance and help with child care.CreditKayana Szymczak for The New York Times

The economics are tricky to get right. Clover Food Labs runs the cafe concession in Harvard’s Science Center and another restaurant outside the university gates. Workers at the Science Center make Harvard wages, but pay at the outlet off campus ranges from $12.25 to $15.50 an hour, according to Clover’s most recent employee handbook.

Ayr Muir, Clover’s founder and owner, told me that to get the deal to work “required a lot of flexibility on Harvard’s part.” He couldn’t jack up the price of his sandwiches at the Science Center to pay for the higher wages when his shop on Harvard Square was just 1,000 feet away. To make ends meet, he needed Harvard to give him a discount on rent. A “normal” restaurant paying an entry wage of $24, he said, “would go out of business.”

The university doesn’t calculate how much it might save if the parity policy were not in place. But the committee appointed to study the issue in 2001 came up with a rough estimate of $2.4 million to $3.7 million a year. This is pocket change for an institution like Harvard, whose operating expenses last year approached $5 billion.

But as Mr. Summers pointed out, across the economy, better jobs may mean fewer jobs. If, say, Massachusetts were to introduce a similar policy for public services, it would need to find the money. Taxpayers could provide it — or the state could scale back services and cut jobs. And employers forced to pay more may attract better-trained workers, displacing less-educated ones.

There is a substantial body of research suggesting that modest increases to the minimum wage will have only a tiny effect on employment. But there is almost no research on what would happen if a cook’s wage were set at $24, about twice the market rate. Most economists would probably agree that the number of cooks would fall.

Research by David Neumark, a labor economist at the University of California, Irvine, points out that in the parts of the economy most susceptible to automation, imposing a “living wage” might just accelerate the pace at which robots take over everybody’s job.

Still, other economists suggest, Harvard’s innovation deserves a shot. As the noted labor economist Richard Freeman argued in the opinion pages of The New York Times after the release of the Katz Committee’s report in 2001, “Failure to spread prosperity widely has been the major failure in America’s economic success.”

Over the last 40 years, the earnings of workers in the middle of the distribution — half earn more, half less — have increased by an average of 0.16 percent per year, after inflation. That is very close to nothing. Workers without a college degree make about $20 less a week, in today’s money, than they did at the millennium. With a labor movement dwindling into insignificance — only 6.5 percent of private-sector workers are unionized — economists like Mr. Weil and Mr. Katz suggest that new institutions are needed to hold up the bottom half.

Alan B. Krueger, a labor economist at Princeton who headed the Council of Economic Advisers under Mr. Obama, argues that the costs of introducing a parity policy like Harvard’s in other workplaces would be “probably second order” — too small to matter. Higher pay, he noted, brings about efficiency gains: Workers who are paid well are more loyal. They will exert more effort for the company. It’s worth it even if they are more expensive.

Indeed, Mr. Krueger argues, “this kind of policy is pushing firms to a better equilibrium.” From the standpoint of Massachusetts, he adds, think of all the new tax revenue that higher wages would bring about. By that reasoning, considering the consequences of low wages across society — poverty and its contingent ills, family instability, addiction — policies to set a floor on the price of labor could well justify their cost.

Email: [email protected]; Twitter: @portereduardo

Read More | https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/08/business/economy/harvard-living-wage.html | http://www.nytimes.com/by/eduardo-porter

Nature Harvard Is Vaulting Workers Into the Middle Class With High Pay. Can Anyone Else Follow Its Lead?, in 2018-09-08 18:43:20

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blackchristiannewswire · 7 years ago

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Baylor Names 12 Most Effective Preachers in English-speaking World: Tony Evans, Tim Keller, Ralph Douglas West, and Others

Baylor University's Truett Theological Seminary has released the results of a survey naming the most effective preachers in the English-speaking world. Twelve preachers were selected out of 800 nominees. According to Religion News Service, "Preaching experts in the Academy of Homiletics and the Evangelical Homiletics Society judged how much nominees' preaching matched criteria that included their selection of biblical texts, the relevance of their sermons, and their ability to deliver them in language people can understand." The twelve preachers selected are: Alistair Begg, Tony Evans, Joel Gregory, Timothy Keller, Thomas Long, Otis Moss III, John Piper, Haddon Robinson, Andy Stanley, Charles Swindoll, Barbara Brown Taylor, and Ralph Douglas West. There are 9 white preachers and 3 black preachers on the list; 11 men and 1 woman; 11 living and 1 gone to glory. All of the preachers are from the U.S. W. Hulitt Gloer, director of the Kyle Lake Center for Effective Preaching at Truett Seminary, said, "In a world where talk is cheap and there seems to be no end to it, the preacher has to recover the priority and power of the word. Words are the tools of the preacher and that gives them incredible power." Baylor last released such a list 22 years ago in 1996. Three of the preachers on that list -- Dr. Haddon Robinson, Dr. Charles Swindoll, and Rev. Barbara Brown Taylor -- are named again on the 2018 list. The other preachers named on the 1996 list are: Walter J. Burghardt S.J., Dr. Fred Craddock, Dr. James Forbes, The Rev. Billy Graham, Dr. Thomas Long, Rev. Lloyd Ogilvie, Dr. Charles Swindoll, Dr. Gardner C. Taylor, and Dr. William Willimon. Below is Baylor's summary of each of the preachers -- the 12 most effective in the English-speaking world. --Gregory Leo

The 12 individuals named as the most effective preachers in the English-speaking world, according to George W. Truett Theological Seminary's national survey are: Alistair Begg

Dr. Alistair Begg is the Senior Pastor at Parkside Church in Cleveland, Ohio, a position he has held since 1983. He is also the Bible teacher on "Truth For Life," which can be heard on the radio and online around the world. Begg is a council member of the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals. For "outstanding dedication to preaching, church leadership, and evangelism," Westminster Theological Seminary bestowed Begg as an honorary doctor of divinity. He also received an honorary doctorate from Cedarville University. In addition to Begg's pastorate and preaching, he has written numerous books. Tony Evans

Dr. Tony Evans is the founding pastor of Oak Cliff Bible Fellowship in Dallas, Texas. The church began with 10 members meeting in his home in 1976 and now has a membership nearing 10,000. Evans is the first African American to earn a doctorate of theology from Dallas Theological Seminary (DTS) and has taught classes in the past at DTS. He is a pastor, speaker, author, radio and television broadcaster, and has been the chaplain for 30 years for the NBA basketball team the Dallas Mavericks. Joel Gregory

Dr. Joel C. Gregory holds the George W. Truett Endowed Chair in Preaching and Evangelism at George W. Truett Theological Seminary of Baylor University in Waco, Texas. He was recently recognized by Baylor and his peers for his 50th preaching anniversary. Gregory brought the concluding message at the Baptist World Congress in Durban, South Africa in summer 2017 and also serves on the Baptist World Alliance Commission on Worship and Spirituality. In that connection and with Baylor University Press, he edited and was the lead author of Baptist Preaching: A Global Anthology. Timothy Keller

Dr. Timothy Keller is the founding pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City, New York. Keller is also the Chairman of Redeemer City to City, which starts new churches in urban cities worldwide. Christianity Today has said, “Fifty years from now, if evangelical Christians are widely known for their love of cities, their commitment to mercy and justice, and their love of their neighbors, Tim Keller will be remembered as a pioneer of the new urban Christians.” Keller has authored several books in the course of his ministry with a few making The New York Times bestsellers list. Thomas Long

Dr. Thomas G. Long is the Bandy Professor Emeritus of Preaching and Director of the Early Career Pastoral Leadership Program at Emory University’s Candler School of Theology in Atlanta, Georgia. His introductory textbook, The Witness of Preaching, has been translated into a number of languages and is widely used in theological schools around the world. In 2010, Preaching magazine named The Witness of Preaching as one of the 25 most influential books in preaching for the last 25 years. Long gave the distinguished Lyman Beecher Lectures at Yale, which were published in his 2009 book Preaching from Memory to Hope. Long was named one of the 12 most effective preachers in the English speaking world by Baylor University's 1996 survey. Otis Moss III

Dr. Otis Moss III is the pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, Illinois. He is a preacher, activist, author, and filmmaker. Moss is an ordained minister in the Progressive National Baptist Convention and the United Church of Christ. He is on the board of The Christian Century magazine and chaplain of the Children’s Defense Fund’s Samuel DeWitt Proctor Child Advocacy Conference. Moss has written numerous poems, articles, and books. His work has also been featured on Huffington Post, Urban Cusp, and The Root. John Piper

Dr. John Piper is the chancellor of Bethlehem College & Seminary in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Piper is a pastor, author, and leader of desiringGod.org. He served as pastor of Bethlehem Baptist Church in Minneapolis for 33 years and has authored over 50 books, many of which are best sellers and award winners. Piper has made most of his books freely accessible through his online ministry, desiringGod.org. Haddon Robinson

Dr. Haddon Robinson was the Harold John Ockenga Distinguished Professor of Preaching at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary. Robinson wrote more than a dozen books, including his hallmark text, Biblical Preaching, which is still used by seminaries and Bible colleges around the world. In 1996, he was named in a Baylor University poll as one of the "12 Most Effective Preachers in the English Speaking World." In 2006, Robinson was recognized by Christianity Today in the top 10 of its “25 Most Influential Preachers of the Past 50 Years.” In 2008, he received the E.K. Bailey "Living Legend Award," and in 2010, Preaching magazine named him among the “25 Most Influential Preachers of the Past 25 Years.” Dr. Haddon W. Robinson, longtime faculty member, former President of Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, and one of the world’s foremost experts in Biblical preaching, went to be with the Lord on July 22, 2017. Andy Stanley

Pastor Andy Stanley is the senior pastor of North Point Community Church, Buckhead Church, Browns Bridge Church, Gwinnett Church, Woodstock City Church, and Decatur City Church. He is also the founder of North Point Ministries, which is a worldwide Christian organization. A survey of U.S. pastors in 2010 through Outreach Magazine identified Stanley as one of the top 10 most influential living pastors in America. Charles Swindoll

Dr. Charles Swindoll is a pastor, author, educator, and radio preacher. Swindoll is the senior pastor at Stonebriar Community Church in Frisco, Texas. He was named Clergyman of the Year by Religious Heritage of America in 1988 and was named one of the twelve most effective preachers in Baylor University's' 1996 survey. Swindoll ranked second in a 2009 survey as the biggest influence in the lives of Protestant pastors. His reach is through preaching, teaching, radio, and his more than 70 publications. Swindoll has been awarded four honorary doctorates for his contributions to ministry. Barbara Brown Taylor

Dr. Barbara Brown Taylor is an Episcopal priest, professor, author, and theologian. In 1996, she was named one of the twelve most effective preachers in the English-speaking world by a Baylor University survey. She has served on many faculties, including the Certificate in Theological Studies program at Arrendale State Prison for Women in Alto, Georgia. Taylor has been awarded nine honorary doctorates, and in 2014, TIME magazine placed her in its annual TIME 100 list of most influential people in the world. (Photo Credit: Lane Gresham) Ralph Douglas West

Dr. Ralph Douglas West serves as founder and senior pastor of The Church Without Walls in Houston, Texas. The church began with 32 members and now embraces more than 24,000 families meeting in three locations and conducting six services each Sunday. West serves as Adjunct Professor of Preaching at George W. Truett Theological Seminary of Baylor University. Through publications, television, and the internet, his messages are available across the world and are witnessed by thousands beyond his church each week.

#Alistair Begg #Andy Stanley #Barbara Brown Taylor #Baylor University #Billy Graham #Charles Swindoll #gardner c taylor #haddon robinson #Joel Gregory #john piper #Otis Moss III #preachers #preaching #Ralph Douglas West #Thomas Long #Timothy Keller #tony evans #Truett Theological Seminary

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ralphmorgan-blog1 · 7 years ago

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Congress Sends Trump Tax-Cut Bill in First GOP Legislative Win

House Republicans passed the most extensive rewrite of the U.S. tax code in more than 30 years -- hours after the Senate passed the legislation -- handing President Donald Trump his first major legislative victory.

The chamber’s 224-201 party line vote on Wednesday -- a redo thanks to a procedural hiccup -- sent a bill to the president that provides a deep, permanent tax cut for corporations and shorter-term relief for individuals. Not a single Democrat in either chamber voted for the measure.

The legislation, which has scored poorly in public opinion polls, promises to become one of the biggest issues in the 2018 elections that will determine whether the GOP retains its majorities in Congress.

“I think minds are going to change and I think people are going to change their view on this,” House Speaker Paul Ryan, a Republican from Wisconsin, told ABC’s “Good Morning America” before the vote Wednesday. “The average taxpayer in every income group is getting a tax cut.”

The vote was a triumph for Ryan, a self-described policy wonk who put aside his vision for a more comprehensive, cutting-edge -- and controversial -- approach to overhauling corporate taxes earlier this year. In the end, Ryan oversaw compromises that trimmed some personal deductions and settled for temporary individual tax relief to help cover the cost of the deep corporate tax cut.

“I promised the American people a big, beautiful tax cut for Christmas. With final passage of this legislation, that is exactly what they are getting,” Trump said in a statement. “By cutting taxes and reforming the broken system, we are now pouring rocket fuel into the engine of our economy.”

The United States Senate just passed the biggest in history Tax Cut and Reform Bill. Terrible Individual Mandate (ObamaCare)Repealed. Goes to the House tomorrow morning for final vote. If approved, there will be a News Conference at The White House at approximately 1:00 P.M.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 20, 2017

The House took its second vote on the bill in two days after Senate Democrats forced their GOP counterparts to make three relatively minor changes to the bill -- including dropping a provision that had named it the “Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.” Under congressional rules, the House and Senate must approve the same bills.

Other changes were related to provisions allowing parents to use 529 educational savings accounts to cover expenses of home-schooling their children and subjecting certain private universities’ endowments to a new excise tax.

“The only thing better than voting on tax cuts once is voting on tax cuts twice,” House Ways and Means Chairman Kevin Brady, a Texas Republican, said Tuesday.

The Senate passed the legislation on a party line vote just before 12:45 a.m. on Wednesday. Trump marked the occasion on Twitter, calling the legislation “the biggest in history Tax Cut and Reform Bill” -- though experts have said that’s not the case.

The White House is planning to hold a “bill passage event” with House and Senate members at 3 p.m. But the gathering won’t be a signing event, which will happen at a “later date,” White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said in an emailed statement.

SALT Controversy

“For the first time in more than three decades, we cleared a comprehensive overhaul of the nation’s tax code and delivered on our promise of creating and advancing pro-growth policies,” said Senator Orrin Hatch, the Utah Republican who chairs the tax-writing Finance Committee.

The bill slashes the corporate tax rate to 21 percent from 35 percent, enhancing the U.S. position against other industrialized economies, which have an average corporate rate of 22.5 percent. It offers an array of temporary tax breaks for other types of businesses and for individuals -- including rate cuts that will tend to favor the highest earners. Most middle-class workers will also get short-term relief, but independent analyses show the amounts aren’t large.

The average tax cut for the bottom 80 percent of earners would be about $675 in 2018, according to an analysis by the Urban Brookings Tax Policy Center. The top 1 percent of earners would get an average cut of about $50,000 that year, and the top 0.1 percent would get an average of $190,000, according to the group’s analysis.

Some middle-class families could see hikes because of changes to the so-called SALT deduction, which provides a tax break on state and local property taxes as well as income taxes or sales taxes. The provision to cap those deductions at $10,000 proved to be one of the most contentious for House Republicans from high-tax states. GOP lawmakers in New York, New Jersey and California have objected to limiting the deduction, saying it might hurt them politically.

In Tuesday and Wednesday’s House vote, only 12 Republicans -- all but one of them from those three states -- voted against the measure.

Spending Side

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell predicted that the changes would gain favor with voters who have so far been cool to the legislation in polls.

“If we can’t sell this to the American people, we ought to go into another line of work,” he said during a news conference after the Senate vote.

The changes would reduce federal revenue by almost $1.5 trillion over the coming decade -- before accounting for any economic growth that might result, according to Congress’s Joint Committee on Taxation, which analyzes tax legislation. Earlier versions were forecast to increase deficits by roughly $1 trillion even after any growth effects.

Asked whether the tax plan will add to the deficit, Ryan said, “We need to keep focused on the spending side of the ledger as well.” He said in the coming year, Congress will be focused on giving states more flexibility with Medicaid and on “getting people from welfare to work.”

Obamacare’s Heart

In one of the tax measure’s most controversial provisions, GOP senators attached language that repeals a major piece of the health-care legislation: the individual mandate that requires people to have insurance coverage.

“It’s not a total replacement, but it takes the heart out of Obamacare,” McConnell said in an interview Tuesday before the Senate vote.

GOP leaders say the Obamacare mandate’s penalty -- $695 for individuals -- falls disproportionately on lower- and middle-income people. Repealing it is estimated to generate roughly $300 billion over 10 years, helping to keep the tax bill from creating even larger potential deficits. But at the same time, about 13 million people are expected to drop their insurance coverage over that decade, according to the Congressional Budget Office’s estimate.

Some health economists say the change would lead to higher health-coverage premiums, perhaps canceling out the effect of the individual tax cuts for many. Some GOP lawmakers, including Senator Susan Collins of Maine, are seeking legislation to help stabilize the situation, but the fate of those efforts remains unclear.

McConnell said Tuesday he would offer such provisions in a spending bill “later in the week.”

‘Crumbs and Tax Hikes’

Collins, a moderate, also won concessions that expanded a deduction for medical expenses for two years and preserved a partial individual deduction for state and local taxes.

Overall, the bill has failed to win broad popularity in public opinion polls. Despite Trump’s repeated attempts to sell it as a boon for the middle class, half the public thinks they’ll pay higher taxes under the bill, according to a Monmouth University poll that was released Monday.

Democrats say they’re eager to make the tax bill a major issue in next year’s congressional elections.

“The bill provides crumbs and tax hikes for middle-class families in this country and a Christmas gift to major corporations and billionaire investors,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, a New York Democrat, said Tuesday. “Republicans will rue the day they passed this bill and the American people will never let them forget it.”

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everettwilkinson · 7 years ago

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POLITICO Playbook: TAX REFORM about to head to White House

Happy Wednesday. 51-48 in the midnight hour: The Senate cleared the tax bill, which now heads back to the House for a final vote, after a procedural hiccup forced last-minute changes to the legislation.

THE NEW TAX BILL JOKE — The bill so nice they’ll vote on it twice!

Story Continued Below

THE WHITE HOUSE expects some sort of event late this afternoon — but not at 1 p.m., as the president originally said, because the House might still be voting. PRESIDENT TRUMP will not be able to sign this bill for several days, we’re told.

PAUL RYAN takes a victory lap after 20 years of trying to get tax reform done. He’ll be on ABC’s “Good Morning America,” “CBS This Morning,” NBC’s “Today Show” and “Fox and Friends” on Fox News Channel this morning.

THREE DAYS TILL SHUTDOWN … GOVERNMENT FUNDING UPDATE — Everything is changing by the hour, it seems. LET’S REVIEW…

— ON TUESDAY MORNING, House Republicans planned to pair the $81 billion supplemental spending with a stopgap spending bill to keep the government open through January, and the Defense Department funded through the end of the year. They also planned a vote on extending a key section of FISA — the federal surveillance law.

— BY TUESDAY EVENING, the GOP had settled on a new plan. Three votes: one to fund government, one to approve the disaster money and another to extend FISA. Nothing is finalized at this point. But nothing is ever finalized, right? Read John Bresnahan and Rachael Bade’s deeper explanation here http://politi.co/2B62014

THE TOUGH PART, as we explained yesterday: The Senate is expected to combine these, and try to add Alexander-Murray — language to bolster Obamacare — and send it back to the House. This caused an uproar in the House Republican universe. Both anti-abortion lawmakers and anti-Obamacare folks are upset at the prospect of having to vote on that package. It’s not clear Republicans will have the votes to add the Obamacare language in the Senate. Read Rachael Bade and Jen Haberkorn for more on the Obamacare clash http://politi.co/2oRibgV

WHAT DOES THE HOUSE DO IF IT GETS A BIG LEGISLATIVE BUNDLE IT DOESN’T LIKE? Well, whatever they can get the votes for. BUT … many people we spoke to feel like they’d have the votes to ignore the Senate package and send back a three-week stopgap bill with nothing else. THIS WOULD BE GOOD FOR PAUL RYAN. Why? He’d be seen as sticking it to the Senate, which — if we’re being honest — is what most House lawmakers care about anyway.

P.S. — TEXANS LOVE TEXAS: Texas Republicans — many of whom have long railed and voted against disaster funding — want even more money for disaster relief in their state. And some of them even asked for money to be earmarked for Texas — specifically.

AROUND THE TAX REFORM HORN, ONE LAST TIME, MAYBE …

— WSJ’S JANET HOOK: “The Republican tax-cut bill has grown more unpopular in the two months it has taken to usher it through Congress, and few people believe it will provide relief for middle-class families, a new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll has found.

“The poll also found that the GOP has lost its advantage on issues it has recently dominated. Americans now express more confidence in Democrats than Republicans to handle taxes, the economy and President Donald Trump’s signature goal of changing how Washington works.

“Republicans in Congress say the tax bill will become more popular once the tax cuts begin to take effect in February. They are hoping that the legislation will shore up the party’s political fortunes by giving the GOP its first major legislative accomplishment.” http://on.wsj.com/2BDsnMY

— BERNIE BECKER: “Confusion and chaos ahead as new tax rules take immediate effect”: “The most sweeping tax code overhaul in a generation will soon head to President Donald Trump’s desk — and Republicans are enjoying a victory dance. Now comes the real-world turmoil. America’s new tax system will go into effect in just 12 days, and payroll companies are bracing for confusion as they figure out new withholding rules that will affect millions of American paychecks. “The Treasury Department and the IRS will have to quickly write new regulations to implement the new law, governing everything from the tax regime for businesses that don’t organize as corporations to the endowments of the nation’s elite universities and how multinational corporations are taxed on the profits they make abroad. And while the vast majority of taxpayers would see a tax cut next year, Americans who are considering selling real estate or other types of capital assets, paying property taxes, taking out a mortgage or incorporating their businesses will have to quickly calculate whether these actions will cost them more or less in the coming year.

“Already, state and local officials in high-tax states like New York and New Jersey are coping with a wave of questions from homeowners wondering if they can prepay their 2018 property taxes in the next two weeks to escape new limits on deductions.” http://politi.co/2B5YC6h

— “How Republicans Rallied Together to Deliver a Tax Plan,” by NYT’s Jim Tankersley and Alan Rappeport: “[I]n many ways, the bill represents a political and economic gamble for Republicans. A majority of Americans oppose it, and relatively few believe they will benefit personally from it, polls show. Economic analyses predict it will add more than $1 trillion to budget deficits over the next decade, an amount that would betray the party’s longstanding messaging that mounting federal debt will sap economic growth.

“Republicans spurned those concerns, rallying around what has been the animating ideology of their party since the Reagan era: that tax cuts will drive faster growth and national prosperity. More immediately, they followed an overwhelming desire to notch a legislative ‘win’ for the president, their donors, the restless voters of their party base and for their own political fortunes.” http://nyti.ms/2z2Jbdc

— TOP OP-ED: PAUL RYAN in the WSJ (the PAUL STREET JOURNAL!) — “Tax Reform Means Your Paycheck Will Grow: So will the economy, as the bill brings U.S. corporate taxes in line with the developed-world norm”: “The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, which the House passed Tuesday, represents the biggest advancement for growth and opportunity in recent memory. It provides real relief to middle-income families and realizes policy goals conservatives have sought for decades.

“The centerpiece of the bill is the most sweeping pro-growth reform of our tax code since the Reagan era—perhaps ever. Once President Trump signs it into law it will deliver more jobs, fairer taxes and bigger paychecks for Americans from all walks of life. This is about helping a middle class that has been squeezed by a tax code that is expensive, complicated and skewed toward special interests. Nearly 8 in 10 Americans live paycheck-to-paycheck; nearly half say a $500 surprise bill or emergency would put them in debt.” http://on.wsj.com/2D7azu6

JOANNE KENEN: “The stealth repeal of Obamacare: The health law has been wounded in a year of Trump”: “Obamacare survived the first year of President Donald Trump, but it’s badly damaged. The sweeping Republican tax bill on the verge of final passage would repeal the individual mandate in 2019, potentially taking millions of people out of the health insurance market. On top of that, the Trump administration has killed some subsidies, halved the insurance enrollment period, gutted the Obamacare marketing campaign, and rolled out a regulatory red carpet for skimpy new health plans that will change the insurance landscape in ways that are harmful to former President Barack Obama’s signature health care law. None of these individually represent a death blow. But in aggregate, the past year adds up to a slow, stealthy erosion of the law.” http://politi.co/2BFhOJm

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PALM BEACH POST: “Trump in Palm Beach: Melania and Barron already at Mar-a-Lago”: “Spotted tonight at President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach: Barron Trump. The Palm Beach Daily News was at the club to attend a World Affairs Council lecture, and the reporter saw Trump’s son. An events director said that wife Melania Trump also was already at the club — no surprise since her son is there. …

“The White House has not announced Trump’s official plans for the holiday, but last week, the Federal Aviation Administration sent a ‘VIP Movement’ alert for Palm Beach for Friday through Jan. 1. The Town of Palm Beach is putting its traffic restrictions and road closures in effect on Thursday morning.” http://pbpo.st/2oYAukG

THE INVESTIGATION BEAT — @kyledcheney: “BREAKING: Judiciary and oversight committee chairmen @BobGoodlatte6 and @TGowdySC ask the FBI to make three agents — Andrew MCCABE, Jim RYBICKI and Lisa PAGE — available to testify as early as Thursday. Could be a precursor to subpoenas.” http://bit.ly/2kqo53X … Kyle’s full story http://politi.co/2kqoTGh

THE LATEST ON ZINKE — “Interior reimbursed for Zinke Virgin Island fundraiser, but contributions unaccounted for,” by Ben Lefebvre: “Taxpayers have been reimbursed for Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke’s participation in a political fundraiser last spring in the Virgin Islands — but questions remain about the donations he helped solicit, according to campaign finance records and interviews. The Virgin Islands Republican Party repaid on Oct. 5 the Interior Department $275 for expenses related to Zinke’s appearance, according to recent federal campaign finance filings.

“Despite its small sum, the reimbursement carries significant legal implications. And it came on the same day POLITICO first reported that Zinke was the featured guest at the March 30 fundraiser, where records indicate that donors paid as much as $5,000 per couple for a chance to pose for a photo with the secretary. The Virgin Islands Republican Party — a political action committee nominally based in the islands but run by a Washington-area GOP consultant — did not list any donations matching those amounts in its [FEC] reports for March and April. That make it impossible to know who may have paid thousands of dollars for access to a member of President Donald Trump’s Cabinet, whose office has refused to provide advanced schedules of his travels and appearances.

“Still, the reimbursement may be enough to protect Zinke from accusations that his Virgin Islands appearance violated the Hatch Act, which prohibits government officials from using taxpayer resources to advance partisan causes. Zinke is facing multiple investigations for his pattern of mixing politics and official business during taxpayer-funded travels.” http://politi.co/2B5pGCR

ON THE WORLD STAGE — “Haley Warns UN That Trump Is Watching Jerusalem Votes,” by Bloomberg’s Kambiz Foroohar: “Nikki Haley has a warning for her fellow UN ambassadors ahead of a key vote on Jerusalem this week: Donald Trump is watching. Still smarting from having to cast the first U.S. veto in the United Nations Security Council in six years on Monday, Haley is pressing other countries not to support a resolution in the larger General Assembly critical of President Trump’s decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and move the American embassy there from Tel Aviv, according to four UN diplomats.

“In a letter to some countries — including key U.S. allies — Haley warned that ‘the president will be watching this vote carefully and has requested I report back on those countries who voted against us. We will take note of each and every vote on this issue.’ The letter was shared with Bloomberg News by one UN ambassador and confirmed by three others.” https://bloom.bg/2BQ3GPI

COMING ATTRACTIONS — “Senators, White House lay groundwork for Dreamers deal,” by Seung Min Kim, Heather Caygle and Elana Schor: “Top senators and White House officials are laying the groundwork for a major immigration deal in January to resolve the fate of young undocumented immigrants whose legal protections were put in limbo by President Donald Trump. At a Tuesday afternoon meeting with nearly a dozen senators deeply involved in immigration policy, White House chief of staff John Kelly pledged that the administration will soon present a list of border security and other policy changes it wants as part of a broader deal on so-called Dreamers, according to people who attended the meeting. The plan could come in a matter of days, senators said.” http://politi.co/2oXeCps

LEGACY WATCH — “‘He’s not weak, is he?’ Inside Trump’s quest to alter the judiciary,” by WaPo’s Phil Rucker, Josh Dawsey and Ashley Parker: “The collapse of three of President Trump’s judicial nominations in the span of a week has embarrassed the White House, revealed weaknesses in its vetting process and threatened to cause Senate Republicans to apply more scrutiny to the president’s picks. In their push to fill scores of vacancies on federal circuit and district courts at the historic pace demanded by Trump, White House officials have overlooked vulnerabilities in the backgrounds of some nominees. Critics allege that White House counsel Donald McGahn, who is overseeing the process, has sacrificed traditional qualifications for ideological purity and youth.

“But the downfalls of three nominees — Jeff Mateer, Matthew Petersen and Brett Talley — are also aberrations in what has been a quiet yet undeniable success for Trump: a year-long drive to permanently alter the judiciary by nominating and confirming conservative jurists to lifetime appointments on the federal bench. The president has told advisers that he is focused on three main criteria: that his nominees be young (in most cases under age 50, and preferably under 40), conservative and strict constitutionalists. … Typically when discussing potential nominees, [Leonard] Leo said, Trump asks one overarching question: ‘He’ll say, “He’s not weak, is he?”’ …

“At [a] recent conservative activists meeting, Trump joked that friends had asked to become judges now that he was president, according to two people in the room. The president said he recommended them to his staff, but his aides tossed out their names. The reason: They were too old. ‘I had to tell them no,’ Trump said of his friends, according to attendees. The president then paused, laughed and offered a clarification: ‘Actually, I had someone else tell them no.’” http://wapo.st/2BjRs2t

THAT WAS FAST — “GOP firm ends controversial media monitoring contract with EPA,” by Emily Holden: “Definers Public Affairs canceled its $120,000 contract with the [EPA] after a media backlash because of the company’s links to GOP opposition research firm America Rising. Earlier this year, America Rising filed several Freedom of Information Act requests for communications from EPA career staffers who had been critical of Administrator Scott Pruitt or President Donald Trump. …

“Definers described the decision to end the contract as mutual, although EPA spokesman Jahan Wilcox would not say whether the agency or company initiated the cancellation. Definers President Joe Pounder said in a written statement that previous administrations paid more for slower services, but ‘it’s become clear this will become a distraction. As a result, Definers and the EPA have decided to forgo the contract.’ He added that the firm will not offer its services to any other federal agencies.” http://politi.co/2B32HIn

REMEMBERING CARDINAL LAW – Boston Globe’s Mark Feeney: “Cardinal Bernard F. Law, whose 19-year tenure as head of the Archdiocese of Boston ended in his resignation after it was revealed he had failed to remove sexually abusive priests from the ministry, setting off a scandal that reached around the world, died Tuesday. He was 86. … Cardinal Law was the highest-ranking official in the history of the U.S. church to leave office in public disgrace. … The attorney general’s office said the abuse extended over six decades and involved at least 237 priests and 789 children; of those, 48 priests and other archdiocesan employees were alleged to have abused children while Law was leader of the Boston archdiocese. The Archdiocese of Boston did not issue a statement Tuesday night.” http://bit.ly/2CKkLYa

THE JUICE …

— FIRST IN PLAYBOOK: EMILY’S LIST tells us more than 25,000 women interested in running for office have contacted the group in 2017 — more than 25 times the number of women it heard from during the entire 2016 cycle.

WAPO’S DAVE WEIGEL on DE BLASIO in DES MOINES: “‘No,’ said Bill de Blasio. ‘I’m not running for president.’ … But de Blasio intended to spend many of those coming days helping elect progressive Democrats around the country — in New York, but also in any congressional district that would have him, ‘with a focus on economic populism’ to rebrand his party. In the afternoon gaggle, when asked how he could juggle his job and his campaign travel, de Blasio literally stuck a piece of gum in his mouth and began walking.

“‘It’s the only way we win back a lot of these seats we need,’ he said, pointing out that Iowa Republicans were defending two competitive districts in 2018. ‘I don’t care if some pundits want to read something into it. I’ve devoted my whole life to community activism.’” http://wapo.st/2DcI8Le

PHOTO DU JOUR: Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell waves to White House Director of Legislative Affairs Marc Short as he walks to his office on Capitol Hill on Dec. 19. | Andrew Harnik/AP Photo

WHAT REPUBLICANS ARE READING — “A single vote leads to a rare tie for control of the Virginia legislature,” by WaPo’s Gregory S. Schneider in Newport News: “The balance of power in Virginia’s legislature turned on a single vote in a recount Tuesday that flipped a seat in the House of Delegates from Republican to Democratic, leaving control of the lower chamber evenly split. The outcome, which reverberated across Virginia, ends 17 years of GOP control of the House and forces Republicans into a rare episode of power sharing with Democrats that will refashion the political landscape in Richmond. It was the culmination of last month’s Democratic wave that had diminished Republican power in purple Virginia. Democrat Shelly Simonds emerged from the recount as the apparent winner in the 94th House District, seizing the seat from Republican David Yancey. … The final tally: 11,608 for Simonds to 11,607 for Yancey.” http://wapo.st/2z3l4Ln

A LOSS FOR BANNON — @John_Hudson: “Major personnel victory for Rex Tillerson: The White House has nominated Susan Thornton to become America’s top diplomat for Asia, defying efforts by China hawks close to Trump (Bannon/Navarro) to oust her from the State Department.”

— IF YOU CARE — PAGE SIX: “The Mooch rips ‘loser’ Steve Bannon at Hanukkah party” http://pge.sx/2BOPIxS

INTERESTING STAT – DAVID FRUM in The Atlantic, “Conservatism Can’t Survive Donald Trump Intact”: “In the spring of 2016, National Review published its ‘Against Trump’ issue. Twenty-one prominent conservatives signed individual statements of opposition to Trump’s candidacy. Of those 21, only six continue to speak publicly against his actions. Almost as many have become passionate defenders of the Trump presidency, most visibly the Media Research Center’s Brent Bozell and the National Rifle Association’s Dana Loesch.” http://theatln.tc/2DcyIPF

BRUSSELS HAPPENINGS — “Uber is a transportation company, Europe’s highest court rules,” by Politico Europe’s Mark Scott: “Europe’s highest court ruled Wednesday that Uber must comply with the region’s tough transportation rules, a significant setback for the ride-booking company that has faced a string of legal woes across the Continent and farther afield.

“The decision follows a years-long battle between Uber and EU taxi associations, many of which claim that the American tech company flaunts Europe’s transport rules and represents unfair competition for existing players. … The decision is a blow to Uber’s future expansion plans across the EU, but does not represent a knockout punch that many … had wanted. The ride-booking company already operates, and will continue to do so, in many European countries.” http://politi.co/2B92tiQ

FOR YOUR RADAR — AP: “9,000-plus died in battle with Islamic State group for Mosul,” by Susannah George and Qassim Abdul-Zahra in Mosul, Maggie Michael in Cairo and Lori Hinnant in Paris: “The price Mosul’s residents paid in blood to see their city freed was between 9,000 and 11,000 dead, a civilian casualty rate nearly 10 times higher than what has been previously reported. The number killed in the 9-month battle to liberate the city from the Islamic State marauders has not been acknowledged by the U.S.-led coalition, the Iraqi government or the self-styled caliphate.

“But Mosul’s gravediggers, its morgue workers and the volunteers who retrieve bodies from the city’s rubble are keeping count. Iraqi or coalition forces are responsible for at least 3,200 civilian deaths from airstrikes, artillery fire or mortar rounds between October 2016 and the fall of the Islamic State group in July 2017, according to an Associated Press investigation that cross-referenced independent databases from non-governmental organizations. Most of those victims are simply described as ‘crushed’ in health ministry reports.” http://bit.ly/2kthtlJ

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TRUMP INC. — “New York golfers avoiding Trump’s course: The president opened a big, beautiful course in the Bronx two years ago that players are increasingly shunning,” by Crain’s New York’s Aaron Elstein: “Rounds played this year at the Trump Golf Links at Ferry Point were down 11% through mid-September, according to data from the city. The decline is nearly five times larger than the national trend and considerably bigger than the 3.5% overall drop in traffic at golf courses in the city through October.” http://bit.ly/2kqMMxa

MEDIAWATCH – “Carlos Slim Plans to Slash New York Times Holdings,” by Bloomberg’s Michelle Davis: “Billionaire Carlos Slim is planning to sell more than half of his 17 percent stake in the New York Times Co. to U.S. hedge fund investors, reducing his sway over one of the world’s most influential publishers. Slim’s businesses earlier this month sold $250 million of mandatory exchangeable trust securities in a private offering that gives the buyers a claim on a 9 percent stake in the New York Times, according to a person with knowledge of the matter. The newspaper’s shares have surged more than 50 percent since Slim boosted his stake in 2015 and became the biggest shareholder.” https://bloom.bg/2Bmz1Kw

— FROM MORNING MEDIA: “JOHN HEILEMANN’S ‘SOLO ACT’: The political journalist spoke to Tony Kornheiser about his future without longtime collaborator Mark Halperin, whose career imploded over sexual misconduct allegations, leading to the pair losing book and TV deals for the 2016 version of their ‘Game Change’ series. Heilemann said he and Halperin had done ‘a couple hundred interviews for the book and were literally just about to start sitting down and actually writing’ it when the news broke in October. Heilemann said untangling their business relationship ‘is a complicated thing,’ but said he is hopeful he’ll ‘be able to take the reporting.’ …

“Heileman said he wants to use the material going forward ‘as a solo act,’ though ‘whether I’ll be able to do that or not is still ‘TBD.’’ He also expressed hope that ‘The Circus’ will return to Showtime, albeit ‘with a slightly reconfigured cast.’ (h/t Steven Shepard).”

SPOTTED at Charlie Palmer’s Tuesday night, at separate tables: Rep. Mike Thompson (D-Calif.), Rep. Elizabeth Esty (D-Conn.) and Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) … Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke last night at Cap Lounge wing night with his old Hill staff.

BIRTHDAY OF THE DAY: Susan Neely, president/CEO at the American Beverage Association and a Bush 43 WH and DHS alum. A trend she thinks deserves more attention: “The stark reality of hunger faced by more than 300 million children worldwide. If we want to see more peace and prosperity in the world, we need to ensure that all children are nourished and educated. That is why I serve on the board of the Global Child Nutrition Fund that envisions a future where school meals sustainably nourish all children and help them, their families, communities and nations to thrive. I strongly believe that every child should have that opportunity, regardless of where they live or what their financial circumstances are.” Read her Playbook Plus Q&A: http://politi.co/2z4bBDH

BIRTHDAYS: Ag. Secretary Sonny Perdue is 71 … Jen Bendery, senior politics reporter for HuffPost … journalist Murray Waas is 49 … Alison Williams, former Bush 43 Homeland Security staffer and current chief of staff to Ark. Gov. Asa Hutchinson (hat tip: Ed Cash) … Snapchat’s Reid Kellam … Joshua New, policy analyst at ITIF’s Center for Data Innovation (h/t Samantha Greene) … former Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-Colo.) is 72 … AP’s Mary Clare Jalonick … Scott Feinberg, awards columnist at the Hollywood Reporter … Megan Nathan, alum of AIPAC and USGLC … Mandi Rogers Thorpe … Bo Creason, DCCC and DNC alum … Henry Hanna … Campbell Massie, senior PR manager at AT&T … David Pollak, an OFA alum … Donald Lathbury … Patrick Sims, founder and CSO at Legend, is 33 … Politico’s Wesley Merritt …

… Tamer El-Ghobashy, WaPo Baghdad bureau chief … photographer Jordan Emont … former Sen. Jean Carnahan (D-Mo.) is 84 … William Benedict of CreditSights … Hudson Institute’s Hannah Thoburn … Michelle Brooks … Bill Kloiber … Bush 43 WH alum Marisa Etter Mills, now with Burson-Marsteller … Marilisa Palumbo of Corriere della Sera … Scott Rickard … Kathy Albers … Mary Pat Moore … Stephen Crockett … Stephen Souza … John Herr … Jennifer J. Smith … Bob McDaniel … Megan Vilmain (h/ts Teresa Vilmain)

****** A message from Charter Communications: Charter offers high-value products delivered with superior customer service, and we’re committed to driving future innovation. Learn more about the investments we’re making to build the future of connectivity: http://bit.ly/2kxRSqN ******

SUBSCRIBE to the Playbook family: POLITICO Playbook http://politi.co/2lQswbh … Playbook Power Briefing http://politi.co/2xuOiqh … New York Playbook http://politi.co/1ON8bqW … Florida Playbook http://politi.co/1OypFe9 … New Jersey Playbook http://politi.co/1HLKltF … Massachusetts Playbook http://politi.co/1Nhtq5v … Illinois Playbook http://politi.co/1N7u5sb … California Playbook http://politi.co/2bLvcPl … London Playbook http://politi.co/2xfDPuK … Brussels Playbook http://politi.co/1FZeLcw … All our political and policy tipsheets http://politi.co/1M75UbX

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takebackthedream · 7 years ago

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Republicans Declare War On Higher Education by Jeff Bryant

The GOP’s tax rewrite hits higher education hard, but new legislation House Republicans are crafting will likely go even farther to worsen the damage.

As The Wall Street Journal reports, the House education committee recently gave a preview to its new legislation, a long overdue reauthorization of the Higher Education Act (HEA). Like recent tax bills passed by the GOP-controlled House and Senate, this proposed rewrite of HEA will have the effect of further constricting learning opportunities for students, adding to the costs students and families take on for education, and steering more public money for learning to private businesses.

Days after the House and Senate passed their tax bills and the Journal broke its story about new legislation being drafted in the House, Moody’s Investor Services, the esteemed bond rating firm, announced it was “revising the 2018 outlook for US higher education to negative from stable.” Among the rationales Moody’s gave for its decision was “looming changes in federal policy or funding.”

Taxing Higher Ed

Between the dueling GOP tax bills in Congress, the House version is decidedly more damaging to higher ed. But in nearly every instance, the purpose of the proposed changes to existing tax law in both bills seems to be aimed solely at finding revenue sources from higher ed, to offset huge tax deductions given to wealthy families and corporations, rather than to improving learning opportunities for students or lowering the costs of colleges to individuals and families.

For instance, the House bill would make college employees whose spouses or children attend their employer institutions tuition-free report the tuition benefit as taxable income. And employer-provided education assistance would also become taxable, whereas it’s currently tax-exempt up to $5,250 per year.

Similarly, while the Senate plan continues to allow a deduction for student loan interest on federal tax returns, the House plan would eliminate the deduction. While the Senate plan continues to not count college tuition waivers as taxable income, a common benefit for students enrolled in graduate programs, the House version would.

“Any tax changes to tuition support for graduate students could also negatively impact graduate enrollment and research levels since research is a key component of many graduate programs,” notes Moody’s in its ratings announcement.

Both bills apply a 1.4 percent excise tax to private school endowments. In the Hose bill, the tax kicks in when the account is valued at $250,000 per full-time student. The Senate raised that level to $500,000 per student. Colleges that will likely be hit with taxes on their endowments insist their investments are being used to help support tuition costs for low-income students who attend their institutions and for facility improvements.

Both bills also take away tax deductions for interest paid on “advance bonds” colleges use to refund their debts at more manageable levels, and the House version also eliminates tax-exempt private activity bonds that lower the cost of building for colleges. This change was another negative influence on Moody’s downgrade.

Remaking Higher Education

But while GOP tax plans resemble deliberate attempts to strip money away from colleges and universities, without providing any benefit to students and families, new legislation being introduced by House Republicans is arguably worse. If what the House proposes for the Higher Education Act resembles what eventually passes, it will remake higher education along very narrow perceived needs of the “work force,” limit financial supports for students, and give advantages to for-profit private providers.

According to the Chronicle of Higher Education, a primary purpose of the remake of the Higher Education Act being introduced by House Republicans – branded the Promoting Real Opportunity, Success and Prosperity through Education Reform (PROSPER) Act –is to address the “skills gap” that supposedly exists between what colleges teach and what employers need.

The Journal quotes North Carolina Republican Representative Virginia Foxx, chairwoman of the committee that drafted the proposal, claiming that because much of what colleges and universities teach is “irrelevant” to employers, federal programs should be more supportive of apprenticeships and programs that have come to be called “competency based” education, a nebulous new buzzword often used to describe education that emphasizes the learning of discrete skills rather than broad realms of knowledge.

Political leaders have grown fond of using recent reports finding there are 6 million unfilled jobs in America as proof that higher education no longer aligns with the needs of employers, but those pronouncements about unfilled jobs fail to note, as this report by NPR does, that much of the problem lies with employers inflating their required qualifications and scrimping on wages. As numerous studies show, the so-called skills gap is a myth, and a college degree in liberal arts or other non-technical subjects is as relevant as it ever was.

Likely, what Foxx and other Republicans call a need to teach relevant skills generally means steering more students into for-profit education programs that promise quick employment without ever fulfilling that pledge.

For-Profits Are ‘Winners’

As the Journal reports, “One of the biggest winners in the new higher-education legislation is the for-profit college industry, which faced new regulations under the Obama administration. The rollback of those regulations has been under way since President Donald Trump took office. The reauthorization proposal goes a step further by prohibiting future action by the Education Department on what is known as the gainful-employment regulation.”

The gainful employment requirement is basically a check on schools that claim to provide degree programs that lead to employment to actually live up to that pledge. More often than not, for-profit institutions don’t.

“Blocking the gainful employment rule means that more students will enroll in programs that will ruin their financial futures,” writes David Halperin in the Huffington Post.

Students in these for-profit college programs, he explains, are often people on the edge of desperation – veterans, single mothers, immigrants, and low-income students from disadvantaged communities who are lured into these programs by “false promises” about landing a great job.

“Many will enroll in programs that aren’t strong enough to help them succeed,” Halperin says. “Even if these students graduate – and many don’t – and even if they get the job they dreamed of – and many won’t – they may not earn enough to pay down their loans, because the tuition was just too high.”

Borrowers Are ‘Losers’

While for-profit providers are “winners” in the Republicans’ proposed bill, the big “losers,” according to the Journal, are student borrowers, especially those wanting to take advantage of the federal government’s public service loan forgiveness program, which allows borrowers who work for nonprofits or government agencies to have their remaining loan balances dropped after they make 10 years of payments. These borrowers, except those grandfathered into the program, would lose this tax advantage.

Other losers include students who run up larger debts to complete their advanced degree programs and student loan debt holders who end up in professional careers that are not top payers.

For students who run up larger debts, such as graduate students in advanced degree programs, the bill proposes “unspecified limits for borrowing by graduate students and parents of college students.” The Journal reports, “The change could cut into enrollment and potentially siphon off billions of dollars a year from universities.” This need to find financial resources for college would tend to, again, go to for-profit lending institutions.

The bill would also, according to the Chronicle, “scale back” the breaks given to student loan debt holders in the federal government’s income-based repayment plans. Student borrowers who want to benefit from the federal government’s income-based repayment program will see their current basis of 10 or 15 percent of discretionary income changed to 15 percent of discretionary incomes. Rather than getting debt forgiveness after 20 or 25 years, college student loan holders, under the new bill, would have debt forgiveness based on as long as it takes “to cover the amount they would have paid under a 10-year standard repayment plan,” according to the Journal. That will increase long-term indebtedness.

War Without End

“There is a long road ahead,” politico reports, regarding the revision of the Higher Education Act. “The Senate won’t start its rewrite until next year. But the upper chamber’s process has already gotten off to a more bipartisan start, with the Senate education committee holding a friendly hearing on simplifying the application for federal student aid and talking about working together on the rewrite.”

Nevertheless, it’s clear the Republican “war on learning” being waged at all levels of education, including higher ed, didn’t end with the tax bills.

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movietvtechgeeks · 7 years ago

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Latest story from https://movietvtechgeeks.com/wins-loses-donald-trumps-christmas-gift-aka-republican-tax-plan/

Who wins and loses with Donald Trump's Christmas gift aka Republican tax plan

Senator Mitch McConnell has been stating over the past 24 hours that the Senate has the votes to pass the Republicans' sweeping tax overhaul, but as more Senators like Sen. Susan Collins signs on, it is looking more than likely. This will give Donald Trump a much-needed victory after former National Security advisor Michael Flynn pleaded guilty today about lying to the FBI and will now be working with Bob Mueller on the Russia investigation. At this point, Americans will be tested on their support for Trump if the plan does pass with the expected results. With several important changes still expected Friday evening, here's a rundown of the winners and losers so far:

Winners

President Trump. He promised a "big, beautiful" tax cut by Christmas. It's the centerpiece of his "MAGA-nomics" agenda, and he looks likely to get it (at least by early 2018) as both the House and Senate have passed the major hurdles of passing bills. In fact, it might even end up being a tax cut AND a repeal of the individual health care mandate, one of the least popular Affordable Care Act provisions. Most economists also expect the bill will juice economic growth, at least for the next year or two. The economy has been growing around 3 percent for the past two quarters. If it jumps to 4 percent (or more) in coming quarters, Trump can claim an even bigger victory heading into the 2018 mid-term elections and the 2020 presidential election. Big corporations. America's largest companies are about to get the biggest tax cut ever. Both the House and Senate bills slash the top corporate rate from 35 percent to 20 percent. While few corporations actually pay 35 percent, the average is around 25 percent; most still get a break. Profitable companies like Apple and Microsoft also get the bring back the piles of cash they have sitting in offshore accounts to the United States at a very low tax rate (currently just 10 percent in the Senate bill). There are other goodies in the bill for them as well such as the ability to fully deduct the cost of new investments for the next five years. But perhaps the biggest win of all for big business is a change from a worldwide tax system where businesses have to report income earned all over the world to the IRS to a territorial system where they mainly pay taxes only on what was generated in the United States. People with money in the stock market. The Dow surged above 24,000 for the first time ever this week. The stock market is up about 600 points (2.6 percent) just this week as investors cheer the the tax cuts getting closer to reality. If Trump is able to sign the bill, investors are likely to get a very good deal. Many companies plan to bring cash home from abroad and give a lot of that extra money to investors in the form of higher dividends and stock buybacks (which increase stock prices). Overall, tax cuts mean more larger profits for businesses, which means more money in the pockets of investors. Many in the middle class (at least for awhile). Republicans have sold the tax plan as a boost to middle-class paychecks. According to the non-partisan Joint Committee on Taxation, 80 percent of Americans earning $50,000 to $75,000 would get a sizable reduction in their taxes by 2019 (the average cut would be about $850, according to the Tax Policy Center). Overall, about 62 percent of Americans would pay at least $100 less in taxes in 2019. But the tax cuts for families don't last forever. The Senate bill has the lower rates for individuals going away after 2025. Republicans argue a future Congress is likely to extend the cuts, but there is no guarantee that will happen. Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ken.). He did it on taxes. The Senate Majority Leader took a huge blow over the summer when the Affordable Care Act repeal failed. Trump appeared to give him the cold shoulder for awhile, but McConnell is the man of the hour now. He managed to rally GOP senators to deliver the biggest priority of all: tax cuts. It turned out to be a surprisingly difficult task with many senators demanding last-minute changes, but McConnell got the 50 votes he needed. Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Penn.). The Pennsylvania senator was one of the main authors of the Senate tax bill, and he defended it vigorously on the floor of the U.S. Senate. As Democrat after Democrat slammed the bill, Toomey calmly stood up and sold the bill as a way to make American companies more competitive and profitable so they will invest more in the United States and hire more workers, hopefully raising wages as well. Toomey played an especially large role in crafting the tax changes for small and large businesses, a very complex tax. Rich kids. The GOP tax bills make it a lot easier for wealthy parents to pass property and money to their kids. Under current law, up to $5.5 million can be passed down tax-free. After that, there's a 40 percent tax, known as the "estate tax" (or the "death tax" by critics). The House bill eliminates the estate tax entirely. The Senate bill allows rich parents to pass up to $11 million onto their heirs tax-free. Maybe Dreamers? Senator Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) says he is voting for the tax bill despite his concerns about what it would do to the national debt because GOP leaders promised him they would pass legislation soon to allow "Dreamers" (young people in the country without documentation who have gone to school in the United States and followed the law) to stay.

Losers

Senate Democrats/Filibustering. Democrats panned the bill as a "tax scam" that gives away a ton to the wealthy and corporations, but they were not able to stop the bill. Republicans were able to pass this massive legislation with just 50 votes in the Senate. Normally it would take 60 votes, but Republicans side-stepped any trouble from Democrats by using a clever tactic known as reconciliation where they are allowed to tack one major bill a year onto the budget and pass it with a simple majority vote (the tie is then broken by Vice President Mike Pence -- we know how he will vote). Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) He made a brave last stand Thursday night to try to force Republicans to change the bill so it wouldn't add so much to the deficit. He was upset to learn that even after accounting for economic growth, the bill is still expected to cost $1 trillion. That was too much, Corker said, but in the end, his Republican colleagues passed the bill without him. Corker has already said he's retiring from the Senate after his term expires after the 2018 election. It could be lonely for him in the Senate lunch room for awhile. People who care about the debt. For years, many Republicans have railed against America's growing debt that ballooned under President George W. Bush and then President Barack Obama because of wars, tax cuts and the Great Recession. The total debt is now $20 trillion (about $15 trillion is actually held by the public). The tax bill is likely to add at least $1 trillion more, according to the Joint Committee on Taxation, the official scorekeepers in Congress. In other words, all signs indicate the debt will continue to get worse in the coming years. The 13 million Americans who won't have health insurance. The Senate bill isn't just a tax bill; it also includes the repeal of the individual mandate that requires all Americans to buy health insurance or else pay a penalty. This provision is not in the House bill, so it might not make it to the president's desk, but if it does, it's expected to cause a spike in health insurance premiums in the United States and 13 million Americans to drop insurance coverage in the next decade, according to the Congressional Budget Office. The poor. The Senate bill cuts tax rates across all income levels, but 44 percent of Americans don't pay any federal income tax, so it doesn't help them. Some senators -- notably Marco Rubio (R-Fl.) and Mike Lee (R-Utah) -- pushed to give more money back to lower-income families in the form of refundable tax credits. Rubio and Lee wanted to make a lot of the Child Tax Credit refundable. But that didn't happen, meaning the poor won't get much benefit from the bill. If anything, they might lose a lot -- some won't be able to afford health insurance anymore, and some are likely to lose other government benefits as Republicans look for ways to trim the federal budget in the coming months. Puerto Rico. The island that was devastated by Hurricane Maria this fall now might lose some of the few big businesses that remain on the island if the GOP tax bill gets enacted. The reason is that Puerto Rico would no longer look so advantageous as a place to do business compared to the rest of the United States. Puerto Rico's governor is trying to push for the island to be deemed a "free trade zone," but that doesn't look likely. Harvard. The House and Senate bills create a new 1.4 percent tax on private college endowments worth over $250,000 per student. Only a handful of universities have such large endowments. Most are Ivy League schools like Harvard.

Maybe losers (depends on conference committee)

College students. The House bill scraps many popular deductions for college students and college grads with student loans. The House bill eliminates the popular student loan debt write off, and it forces graduate students who receive tuition waivers (sometimes as much as $20,000 or more) to count that money as income for tax purposes, even though they don't actually receive money in their pockets. It would be a big hit, and many universities are saying it could heavily dissuade graduate study. The Senate bill does not make these changes. Elderly with high medical expenses. The House bill gets rid of the deduction for huge medical expenses, which 8.8 million Americans (mostly elderly) currently use. The Senate keeps this deduction in place, setting up a major conflict to be worked out.

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#Donald Trump #Featured #Jeff Flake #Republicans #Susan Collins #tax plan

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nothingman · 8 years ago

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By William D. Hartung | ( Tomdispatch.com) | – –

When Donald Trump wanted to “do something” about the use of chemical weapons on civilians in Syria, he had the U.S. Navy lob 59 cruise missiles at a Syrian airfield (cost: $89 million). The strike was symbolic at best, as the Assad regime ran bombing missions from the same airfield the very next day, but it did underscore one thing: the immense costs of military action of just about any sort in our era.

While $89 million is a rounding error in the Pentagon’s $600 billion budget, it represents real money for other agencies. It’s more than twice the $38 million annual budget of the U.S. Institute of Peace and more than half the $149 million budget of the National Endowment of the Arts, both slated for elimination under Trump’s budget blueprint. If the strikes had somehow made us — or anyone — safer, perhaps they would have been worth it, but they did not.

In this century of nonstop military conflict, the American public has never fully confronted the immense costs of the wars being waged in its name. The human costs — including an estimated 370,000 deaths, more than half of them civilians, and the millions who have been uprooted from their homes and sent into flight, often across national borders — are surely the most devastating consequences of these conflicts. But the economic costs of our recent wars should not be ignored, both because they are so massive in their own right and because of the many peaceable opportunities foregone to pay for them.

Even on the rare occasions when the costs of American war preparations and war making are actually covered in the media, they never receive the sort of attention that would be commensurate with their importance. Last September, for example, the Costs of War Project at Brown University’s Watson Institute released a paper demonstrating that, since 2001, the U.S. had racked up $4.79 trillion in current and future costs from its wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Syria, as well as in the war at home being waged by the Department of Homeland Security. That report was certainly covered in a number of major outlets, including the Boston Globe, the Los Angeles Times, the Atlantic, and U.S. News and World Report. Given its importance, however, it should have been on the front page of every newspaper in America, gone viral on social media, and been the subject of scores of editorials. Not a chance.

Yet the figures should stagger the imagination. Direct war spending accounted for “only” $1.7 trillion of that sum, or less than half of the total costs. The Pentagon disbursed those funds not through its regular budget but via a separate war account called Overseas Contingency Operations (OCO). Then there were the more than $900 billion in indirect war costs paid for from the regular budget and the budget of the Department of Veterans Affairs. And don’t forget to add in the more than half-trillion dollars for the budget of the Department of Homeland Security since 2001, as well as an expected $1 trillion in future costs for taking care of the veterans of this century’s wars throughout their lifetimes. If anyone were truly paying attention, what could more effectively bring home just how perpetual Washington’s post-9/11 war policies are likely to be?

That cost, in fact, deserves special attention. The Veterans Administration has chronic problems in delivering adequate care and paying out benefits in a timely fashion. Its biggest challenge: the sheer volume of veterans generated by Washington’s recent wars. An additional two million former military personnel have entered the VA system since the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq began. Fully half of them have already been awarded lifetime disability benefits. More than one in seven — 327,000 — suffer from traumatic brain injury. Not surprisingly, spending for the Veterans Administration has tripled since 2001. It has now reached more than $180 billion annually and yet the VA still can’t catch up with its backlog of cases or hire doctors and nurses fast enough to meet the need.

Now imagine another 15 years of such failing, yet endless wars and the flood of veterans they will produce and then imagine what a Cost of War Project report might look like in 2032. Given all this, you would think that the long-term price tag for caring for veterans would be taken into account when a president decides whether or not to continue to pursue America’s never-ending wars in the Greater Middle East and Africa, but that, of course, is never the case.

What a Military-First World Means in Budgetary Terms

Enter Donald Trump. Even before he launches a major war of his own — if he does — he’s loosed his generals to pursue with renewed energy just about all the wars that have been started in the last 15 years. In addition, he’s made it strikingly clear that he’s ready to throw hundreds of billions (eventually, of course, trillions) of additional tax dollars at the Pentagon in the years to come. As he put it in a September 2016 interview on Meet the Press, “I’m gonna build a military that’s so strong… nobody’s gonna mess with us.” As he makes plans to hike the Pentagon budget once more, however, here’s what he seems blissfully unaware of: at roughly $600 billion per year, current Pentagon spending is already close to its post-World War II peak and higher than it was at the height of the massive 1980s military buildup initiated by President Ronald Reagan.

On the dubious theory that more is always better when it comes to Pentagon spending (even if that means less is worse elsewhere in America), Trump is requesting a $54 billion increase in military spending for 2018. No small sum, it’s roughly equal to the entire annual military budget of France, larger than the defense budgets of the United Kingdom, Germany, and Japan, and only $12 billion less than the entire Russian military budget of 2015.

Trump and his budget director, Mick Mulvaney, have pledged to offset this sharp increase in Pentagon funding with corresponding cuts in domestic and State Department spending. (In a military-first world, who even cares about the ancient art of diplomacy?) If the president gets his way, that will mean, for instance, a 31% cut in the Environmental Protection Agency’s budget and a 29% cut in the State Department’s. Eliminated would also be $8 billion worth of block grants that provide services to low-income communities, including subsidies for seniors who can’t afford to heat their homes, as well as any support for 19 separate agencies engaged in purely peaceable activities, including the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, Legal Services, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, AmeriCorps, and the Appalachian Regional Commission, which invests in economic development, education, and infrastructure projects in one of the nation’s poorest regions.

Overall, as presently imagined, the Trump budget would hike the Pentagon’s cut of the pie, and related spending on veterans’ affairs, homeland security, and nuclear weapons to an astounding 68% of federal discretionary spending. And keep in mind that the discretionary budget includes virtually everything the government does outside of entitlement programs like Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. You undoubtedly won’t be surprised to learn that perpetual war and the urge to perpetuate yet more of it leaves little room for spending on the environment, diplomacy, alternative energy, housing, or other domestic investments, not to speak of infrastructure repair.

Put another way, preparations for and the pursuit of war will ensure that any future America is dirtier, sicker, poorer, more rickety, and less safe.

Taking the Gloves Off When It Comes to the Costs of War

The biggest beneficiaries of Pentagon largesse will, as always, be the major defense contractors like Lockheed Martin, which received more than $36 billion in defense-related contracts in fiscal 2015 (the most recent year for which full statistics are available). To put that figure in perspective, Lockheed Martin’s federal contracts are now larger than the budgets of 22 of the 50 states. The top 100 defense contractors received $175 billion from the Pentagon in fiscal year 2015, nearly one-third of the Department of Defense’s entire budget. These numbers will only grow if Trump gets the money he wants to build more ships, planes, tanks, and nuclear weapons.

The Trump administration has yet to reveal precisely what it plans to spend all that new Pentagon money it’s requesting, but the president’s past statements offer some clues. He has called for building up the Navy from its current level of 272 ships to 350 or more. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the construction costs alone of such an effort would be $800 billion over the next three decades at an annual cost of $26.6 billion, which is 40% higher than the Navy’s present shipbuilding budget.

To put this in perspective, even before Trump’s proposed increases, the Navy was planning major expenditures on items like 12 new ballistic-missile-firing submarines at a development and building cost of more than $10 billion each. As for new surface ships, Trump wants to add two more aircraft carriers to the 10 already in active service. He made this clear in a speech on board the USS Gerald Ford, a new $13 billion carrier that, as with so much Pentagon weaponry, has been plagued with cost overruns and performance problems.

President Trump also wants to double down on the Pentagon’s preexisting program to spend $1 trillion over the next 30 years on a new generation of nuclear-armed bombers, submarines, and land-based missiles. While that plan is politely referred to as a “modernization” of the U.S. nuclear arsenal, it already essentially represents Washington’s bid to launch a new global arms race. So among a host of ill-considered plans for yet more expenditures, this one is a particular ringer, given that the United States already possesses massive nuclear overkill and that current nuclear delivery systems can last decades more with upgrades. To give all of this a sense of scale, two Air Force strategists determined that the United States needs just 311 nuclear warheads to dissuade any other country from ever attacking it with nuclear weapons. At 4,000 nuclear warheads, the current U.S. stockpile is already more than 13 times that figure — enough, that is, to destroy several planet Earths.

And don’t forget that Trump also wants to add tens of thousands more soldiers and Marines to the military’s ranks. By the most conservative estimate, the cost of equipping, training, paying, and deploying a single soldier annually is now close to $1 million (even leaving aside those future VA outlays), so every 10,000 additional troops means at least $10 billion more per year.

And don’t forget that the staggering potential costs already mentioned represent just the baseline for military spending — the costs President Trump will set in motion even if he doesn’t get us into a major war. Not that we’re not at war already. After all, he inherited no less than seven conflicts from Barack Obama: Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Pakistan, Somalia, Syria, and Yemen. Each of them involves a different mix of tools, including combat troops, trainers, Special Operations forces, conventional bombing, drone strikes, and the arming of surrogate forces — but conflicts they already are.

Based on his first 100-plus days in office, the real question isn’t whether Donald Trump will escalate these conflicts — he will — but how much more he will do. He’s already allowed his military commanders to “take the gloves off” by loosening the criteria for air attacks in Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, and Somalia, with an almost instant increase in civilian casualties as a result. He has also ceded to his commanders decision-making when it comes to how many troops to deploy in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan and elsewhere, making it a reasonable probability that more U.S. personnel will be sent into action in the months and years to come.

It still seems unlikely that what must now be considered Trump’s wars will ever blow up into the kind of large-scale conflicts that the Bush administration sparked in Iraq. At the height of that disaster, more than 160,000 U.S. troops and a comparable number of U.S.-funded private contractors were deployed to Iraq (compared to 7,000 troops and more than 7,800 contractors there now). Nor does the talk of increasing the number of U.S. troops in Afghanistan by 3,000 to 5,000 suggest that the 8,400 troops now there will ever be returned to the level of roughly 100,000 of the Obama “surge” era of 2010 and 2011.

But don’t breathe a sigh of relief just yet. Given Trump’s pattern of erratic behavior so far — one week threatening a preemptive strike on North Korea and the next suggesting talks to curb Pyongyang’s nuclear program — anything is possible. For example, there could still be a sharp uptick in U.S. military personnel sent into Iraq and Syria when his pledge to “bomb the shit” out of ISIS doesn’t vanquish the group.

And if we learned anything from the Iraq experience (aside from the fact that attempting to use military force to remake another country is a formula for a humanitarian and security disaster), it’s that politicians and military leaders routinely underestimate the costs of war. Before the invasion of Iraq, Bush officials were, for instance, citing figures as low as $50 billion for the entire upcoming operation, beginning to end. According to figures compiled by the Congressional Research Service, however, direct budgetary costs for the Iraq intervention have been at least 16 times larger than that — well over $800 billion — and still counting.

One decision that could drive Trump’s already expansive military spending plans through the roof would be an incident that escalated into a full-scale conflict with Iran. If the Trump team — a remarkable crew of Iranophobes — were to attack that country, there’s no telling where things might end, or how high the costs might mount. As analyst Ali Vaez of the International Crisis Group has noted, a war with Iran could “make the Afghan and Iraqi conflicts look like a walk in the park.”

So before Congress and the public acquiesce in another military intervention or a sharp escalation of one of the U.S. wars already under way, perhaps it’s time to finally consider the true costs of war, American-style — in lives lost, dollars spent, and opportunities squandered. It’s a reasonable bet that never in history has a society spent more on war and gotten less bang for its copious bucks.

William D. Hartung, a TomDispatch regular, is the director of the Arms and Security Project at the Center for International Policy and the author of Prophets of War: Lockheed Martin and the Making of the Military-Industrial Complex (Nation Books).

Follow TomDispatch on Twitter and join us on Facebook. Check out the newest Dispatch Book, John Dower’s The Violent American Century: War and Terror Since World War II, as well as John Feffer’s dystopian novel Splinterlands, Nick Turse’s Next Time They’ll Come to Count the Dead, and Tom Engelhardt’s Shadow Government: Surveillance, Secret Wars, and a Global Security State in a Single-Superpower World.

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realestate63141 · 8 years ago

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Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen makes landmark $40M gift for University of Washington computer science school

Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen inside the Paul Allen Center for Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Washington. Photo via University of Washington.

Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen will make a $40 million gift to the University of Washington’s computer science and engineering program — a historic act of philanthropy that university officials say will put the UW and Seattle region at the forefront of the technology revolution for decades to come.

Allen’s gift, combined with an additional $10 million from Microsoft in Allen’s honor, will create a $50 million endowment for a new Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering at the UW in Seattle. The elevation from a department to a full school is an important distinction and recognizes the success and stature of the UW’s growing computer science program.

“We are entering a new golden age of innovation in computer science, and UW students and faculty will be at its leading edge,” Allen said in a statement. “My hope is that the school will have the same influence on them as it did on me — that they will continue to dream big, breaking through technological barriers and using their skills to solve some of the biggest problems our world faces.”

Paul G. Allen (center) discusses a new $50 million endowment to create the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering with Hank Levy (left), Wissner-Slivka Chair in Computer Science & Engineering and director of the new school, and Ed Lazowska (right), Bill & Melinda Gates Chair in Computer Science & Engineering at the UW. Photo via University of Washington.

The UW Board of Regents voted moments ago to approve the new school. GeekWire was at the meeting on Thursday at the UW’s Bothell campus and spoke with UW President Ana Mari Cauce. She called Allen a “renaissance man” who the university is humbled to be associated with and said the endowment will be valuable for one of the UW’s top programs.

“We already have a fabulous computer science program,” she told GeekWire. “This will take an already-excellent department and take it out in the stratosphere.”

Paul G. Allen. Photo by Beatrice de Gea. Courtesy of Vulcan Inc.

Allen will speak at an event at the UW’s main Seattle campus this afternoon — stay tuned to GeekWire for our reporting from there.

This marks Allen’s largest donation to the UW and puts the 64-year-old Seattle native in elite company as a “regenetal laureate,” or those who have given more than $100 million to the university. Others on that list include Bill & Melinda Gates, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and Microsoft.

“When Paul Allen and Bill Gates founded Microsoft in 1975 with a vision of a computer on every desk and in every home, they ignited what would become the modern-day software industry,” Microsoft President Brad Smith said in a statement. “While much has changed in the past 40 years, one ideal endures: computer science education is a gateway to progress, innovation and opportunity. We are delighted to honor Paul’s tremendous impact on our company, and his continuing support for computer science will have a lasting impact on generations to come.”

Once fully funded, the endowment will provide roughly $2 million per year of “seed funding” for new initiatives in computer science and engineering “that enable us to envision and create the future,” said Ed Lazowska, Bill & Melinda Gates chair in the UW CSE department.

“Mr. Allen’s intention is to allow the school to be agile in meeting special opportunities that arise, helping CSE to thrive and to advance its educational and research missions,” Lazowska said. “That is, the gift is meant to give CSE flexibility in responding to short-term needs or taking advantage of fortuitous circumstances that can be highly leveraged with discretionary funds.”

Lazowska added: “Across the country, computer science programs are expanding, diversifying, and increasing in prominence – nowhere more so than at the University of Washington. Transitioning to a School of Computer Science & Engineering reflects the central role that CSE plays, as well as the broad interdisciplinary connections that CSE has established, across the entire campus.”

Examples of how Allen’s gift will be used include new research initiatives; equipment purchases; recruiting purposes; professorships; scholarships for students; and more.

Lazowska noted that the endowment income “is intended to be complementary to, but not to replace, existing funding sources.”

The $50 million endowment will not go toward the construction of the UW’s new 135,000 square-foot CSE building, which will open in January 2019 and is funded in part by companies like Microsoft, Amazon, Google, and Zillow. The building will double the capacity of the university’s CSE program and allow the school to award more than 600 degrees annually.

Allen previously donated $14 million to help build the 85,000 square-foot Paul G. Allen Center for Computer Science & Engineering, which opened in 2003 and laid the groundwork for what has become one of the nation’s top computer science programs.

The Paul G. Allen Center for Computer Science & Engineering. (Ed LaCasse photo)

In the decade since Allen helped open the current UW CSE building, the demand for computer science graduates has skyrocketed in the Seattle region, thanks to a strong startup ecosystem, Amazon’s rapid growth, and the opening of Seattle-area engineering offices by Google, Facebook, and many other tech companies based outside the region. More than two-thirds of UW CSE graduates remain in-state after completing their degree.

In 2016, CSE became the leading “first-choice” major among confirmed incoming UW freshmen, surpassing the longtime leading preferred major, Business Administration. UW says it currently has to turn away two out of every three qualified student applicants in the CSE department. Last year, 391 students graduated from the department and 5,000 students took CSE introductory courses.

“This is a degree that students want,” Cauce told GeekWire. “The endowment is perfectly timed.”

Allen’s connection to the University of Washington

Though he never attended the UW — he dropped out of Washington State University after two years to work at Honeywell — Allen’s ties to the university go back to his days as a high school student in the Seattle area, where he and fellow Lakeside School classmate Bill Gates would “tinker around” with the university’s computers. They used devices like a CDC 6400 and a Burroughs 5500 to develop scheduling software for Lakeside; the young geeks also played with ARDS and IMLAC computers, which was their first exposure to the graphics and mouse interface.

Their experience on the UW campus ultimately helped inspire the pair to launch Microsoft in 1975 and change the personal computing world forever.

Paul Allen, left, and Bill Gates at Lakeside School in 1970. (Bruce Burgess Photo Archive)

In Allen’s memoir, Idea Man, he described how he spent nearly every summer day after his sophomore year in high school on the UW campus at a computer terminal in the electrical engineering building and “read manuals over hamburgers at the student union.” In his senior year, he “brazenly walked through a door and into UW’s computer science lab,” where he programmed on a Teletype linked to a Xerox Data Systems Sigma-5.

That’s when an assistant professor realized Allen wasn’t a UW student after word got around that “I seemed to know what I was doing,” as Allen recalled in his book.

“All right, I’ll tell you what,” the professor said. “If you keep helping my students, you can stick around.”

Wilcox Hall was previously home to the UW computer center where Paul Allen learned how to code and wrote software. (GeekWire photo)

In 1989, his contributions helped to build the Allen Library on campus, which is named after his father, the late Kenneth S. Allen, who was the UW’s associate director of libraries from 1960 to 1982. Allen’s mom, the late Faye G. Allen, taught at the Ravenna School in Seattle.

On #InternationalWomensDay, thinking of my mother whose powerful lessons continue to inspire me. http://pic.twitter.com/9u7yOuiywT

— Paul Allen (@PaulGAllen) March 8, 2017

After leaving Microsoft in 1983, Allen has gone on to create a bevy of ventures and organizations, working under the umbrella of Vulcan Inc., his Seattle-based investment company. His ventures and research organizations include Vulcan Aerospace, the Allen Institute for Brain Science, the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence, and the Allen Institute for Cell Science.

He has also reshaped his hometown with projects including Museum of Pop Culture, formerly EMP, and Vulcan’s numerous real estate developments in the South Lake Union neighborhood, including the construction of the campus that became Amazon’s headquarters.

Allen was also recently recognized as one of America’s top philanthropists; his contributions range from committing $100 million to fight Ebola to the various non-profits that the Paul G. Allen Foundation helps support. In addition to his donations to the UW, he has also given money to Washington State University. His philanthropic contributions exceed $2 billion to date.

Allen’s other passions — which drive much of his decisions for where to spread his fortune — include aerospace and music (he can play a wicked guitar solo). The Seattle native a big sports fan, too. He and his father would attend UW football games in the early 1960s. Today Allen owns the Portland Trail Blazers, the Seattle Seahawks, and part of the Seattle Sounders.

Allen’s net worth is now $19.9 billion; he ranks 21st on Forbes’ list of richest people in America.

We’ll update this post with more details from Allen’s speech at the UW later today.

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