#has its application deadline in the beginning of October and I have not made a single new piece of art

[eliteprepsat]

This article was originally published on May 23, 2020 and has been modified to reflect recent developments. It was revised on September 2, 2020 and again on October 27, 2020.

Elite Prep is committed to keeping you up-to-date with the ongoing, ever-fluid situation regarding the lawsuit against the University of California and its use of SAT/ACT scores in its admissions policies. Below is the executive summary followed by a detailed list of frequently asked questions with the latest changes.

Executive Summary

Thursday, May 21, 2020, was a momentous day in the history of the University of California. On that day, the University of California Board of Regents (the governing and policy-making body for the entire UC system) unanimously passed UC President Janet Napolitano's proposal to eliminate the SAT and ACT as a requirement on the UC application. Under President Napolitano's plan, UC was to adopt a test-optional admissions policy for the graduating high school classes of 2021 and 2022, then go test-blind for the classes of 2023 and 2024.

On Tuesday, September 1, 2020, Alameda County Superior Court Judge Brad Seligman added another plot twist to an already convoluted situation. In this decision, Judge Seligman ruled that UC's test-optional policy unfairly disadvantaged disabled applicants because they lacked access to testing centers with accommodations during the Covid-19 pandemic. Even though the ruling only took into account the perceived harm to disabled applicants to UC, the effect of the ruling impacted all applicants to UC. UC was prohibited from using SAT/ACT scores for admissions and scholarship consideration, effective immediately. UC promptly appealed the decision.

Then, on September 24, 2020, the First Appellate District Court of Appeal in California ruled in favor of UC's appeal. Consequently, UC is once again permitted to use SAT/ACT scores in their admissions decisions, effective immediately. However, four UC schools—Berkeley, Irvine, Santa Barbara, and Santa Cruz—had already opted to be test-blind for SAT/ACT scores, meaning they will not consider SAT/ACT scores even if an applicant reports them. The other five UC schools have decided to be test-optional. These test-optional and test-blind policies are in effect for the fall 2021 application cycle (affecting current high school seniors).

Read on if you would like more details.

As of this writing, for the graduating high school class of 2021, UC will be test-blind for four UC campuses and test-optional for five.

Test-blind means that even if you report an SAT/ACT score on your UC application, the score will not be used as a data point when deciding your admissibility. Currently, four UC campuses have a test-blind admission policy:

UC Berkeley

UC Irvine

UC Santa Barbara

UC Santa Cruz

Test-optional means that if you report a score on the UC application, and the score is favorable, it will enhance your academic profile and therefore possibly enhance your chances of admission. If the score is average or below average, the score will be neutral, not negative, on your application since colleges will not punish you for not doing well on an optional test. Test-optional is the ideal situation for the applicant. Five UC schools are test-optional for the high school graduating class of 2021:

UC Davis

UC Los Angeles

UC Merced

UC Riverside

UC San Diego

Why are some UC schools test-optional while others are test-blind? Doesn't the UC Board of Regents' decision in May affect all UC campuses?

Each UC school has its own admissions office, and even though all UC schools adhere to some form of comprehensive review, each UC admissions office gets to decide how to admit its own students. Some of the UC schools felt that a test-optional policy would disadvantage students who did not report SAT/ACT scores (or, conversely, advantage students who did), so they opted to be test-blind immediately. Other UC schools felt they wanted to give students a chance to show off academic ability through an SAT/ACT score. Also, not for nothing, the two most popular colleges in the US for fall 2020—UCLA (109,000 applications received) and UC San Diego (100,000 applications received)—are both test-optional. Schools with that many applicants will probably want more data points, not fewer, to inform their admissions decisions. The UC Regents' decision is a recommended course of action, not a mandate.

The ruling is most likely NOT the final word.

The First Appellate Court stayed the case, thereby reinstituting the possible use of SAT/ACT in UC admissions, but the trial that will determine whether use of the SAT/ACT in UC admissions harms students has yet to take place. So the status quo might change yet again after the trial takes place, or perhaps when the next legal motion is filed.

But for current high school seniors (class of 2021), the status quo is, for all intents and purposes, most likely the final word.

It is highly unlikely the lawsuit will be settled before the UC application deadline of November 30, 2020. So for current high school seniors, the status quo (four UC schools test-blind, five test-optional) is the law of the land. But should the wheels of justice spin faster than usual, or if the case is settled out of court, then perhaps a decision will be made before the end of November. But we doubt it.

What about SAT/ACT scores for the California State University (CSU) application?

CSU will not be using SAT/ACT scores in their admissions decisions for the freshman class of fall 2021 (current high school seniors).

So should I report my SAT/ACT score on my UC application?

Absolutely. As noted above, your score on one or more sections of the SAT/ACT could pass you out of certain general education requirements or qualify you for scholarships, so yes, go ahead and submit your scores. You have nothing to lose and potentially something to gain. And the test-optional UC campuses won't know about your SAT/ACT score unless you report it on the UC application.

Where do I report my SAT/ACT score on the UC application?

The UC application for Fall 2021 is available now. Go to apply.universityofcalifornia.edu and create your account (if you're a senior). On the right-hand menu on the website, you will see a section for Test Scores. That's the section where you report your scores. If a UC campus you're applying to is test-blind, then the scores you report on the application website will not be forwarded to that UC admissions office for inclusion in your file. However, your scores would be made available to the test-optional UC campuses, and to the UC school where you enroll in fall 2021 (for the purposes of passing you out of certain entry-level requirements.)

Should I pay for an official SAT/ACT score report to be sent to the UC schools I apply to?

We recommend holding off on sending SAT/ACT official score reports to UC campuses during the application season and only sending the official score report to the UC campus where you matriculate in the fall. So just pay for an official test score report once you know where you will be attending in the fall, if you do decide to attend a UC school.

If I'm a senior and haven't taken the SAT/ACT yet, should I still try to take it?

For high school seniors, Elite recommends taking the test if you can, and not taking it if you have to go way out of your way to find a testing center that is open. This is ultimately your family's decision to make, but in the cost-benefit analysis of "driving time to testing center" versus "what the scores will be used for at this moment" (admissions for test-optional schools and placement purposes), we view taking the SAT/ACT in the fall of 2020 as advisable, not mandatory.

Should I take the SAT/ACT if I'm a high school junior?

For high school juniors, the admissions test policies might change for you, depending on the outcome of this lawsuit. But if you are a junior and have a test date lined up for fall 2020, great. Go ahead and take it, especially if you've been preparing for it this summer. If your test date this fall gets cancelled, don't worry about it. You can try again in spring 2021. The next SAT test dates after the November test are December, March, May, and June. And remember, you'll still have fall of 2021 (August, October, November) available to you for last-minute retakes when you're a senior. So plenty of time to take the SAT/ACT. What remains to be seen is whether UC campuses will adjust their test-blind/test-optional policies when you are seniors.

The preliminary injunction points out that disabled students don't have access to testing centers with accommodations because of the Covid-19 pandemic. If or when Covid-19 quarantines, lockdowns, and shelter-in-place orders are lifted, doesn't that mean that the playing field is once again level for disabled and non-disabled test takers?

Maybe. This is one of the most open of the open questions in this whole affair.

If I take the SAT or ACT, do I need to sit for the SAT Essay or the ACT Writing section?

UC Regents also voted on May 21st to eliminate the SAT Essay and ACT Writing section as a requirement on the UC application, beginning with the class of '21. Currently, the only selective or highly selective college in the US that requires the SAT Essay or ACT Writing is West Point. No other college or university—not even Stanford, MIT, and the Ivy League colleges—requires the SAT Essay or ACT Writing. If you are in the class of '21 or '22 and plan on submitting an SAT or ACT score (as we recommend above), then take the version of the test without the essay—unless you are planning to apply to West Point.

What's this about UC creating its own standardized admissions test?

In the same board measure adopted on May 21st, Pres. Napolitano also tasked UC to come up with its own standardized admissions test by 2025. After the period of suspension (2021-24), UC is supposed to roll out its own proprietary standardized admissions test, which will aim to align with "the content UC expects students should have mastered to demonstrate college readiness for California freshmen." If UC cannot come up with its own proprietary admissions test by 2025, UC will go test-blind in perpetuity.

The Academic Senate's task force which investigated SAT/ACT in UC admissions policy also recommended that UC come up with its own admission test, but they estimated it would take 9 years to do so. In her plan, approved by the UC Regents, Pres. Napolitano has essentially cut the recommended timeline in half, almost daring UC to come up with its own test in half the time that it's projected to take.

What about SAT Subject Tests and AP Tests?

According to the UC Office of Admissions, throughout the period of suspension (2021-24), UC will still consider AP and SAT Subject Test scores.

Even test-blind UC campuses will still consider SAT Subject Test scores and AP scores.

This is especially pertinent to applicants to engineering majors. Typically, colleges of engineering would like to see an applicant's scores in SAT Math Level 2 and an SAT science Subject Test (Chemistry, Biology E/M, or Physics). And AP scores are still being considered, for all students regardless of intended major. The lawsuit is just about the use of SAT/ACT scores in admissions and scholarships.

How does the removal of SAT/ACT scores in the application review affect the way my UC application is evaluated?

When one data point is removed from the evaluation process, the remaining data points become all the more important. Those remaining data points are GPA, both weighted and unweighted; strength of class schedule, meaning the number of AP, IB, or honors level courses taken in high school; AP and Subject Test scores; extracurricular activities list; and the college application essays, also known as personal statements. Pay close attention to these components of your UC application now that SAT/ACT scores have been removed from the equation.

Our counselors and branch directors are experts in college admissions. Make sure to reach out to your local Elite Prep branch to create a plan to maximize your chances in UC and other college admissions. And thank you for allowing us to accompany you on the road to college success.

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Restoring A Residence.

National Building And Construction Code.

Content

Exactly How The Home Remodelling And Also Refurbishment Providers In London Job.

Rj Repair Providers.

Begin Your Project.

Little Orangery Conservatories And Glass Conservatories.

Let The Sunshine In! Whatever You Wanted To Know Concerning Sunrooms

Recently Constructed Homes.

With that in mind a number of specialists at the Federation of Master Builders have fed their insider expertise into the adhering to listing of problems you need to consider. At the end of the day, there are just some designs that click as well as others that seem excellent in the abstract but stop working to measure up to our expectations.

How do I find a good local builder?

1. Find a Builder Working Locally. 2. Find a Builder Other Tradesmen Recommend. 3. Find a Local Builder Through a Friend. 4. Always Talk to Previous Customers. building contractor . Find a Builder Online. 6. Ask your Designer to Help You Find a Builder. 7. Ask the Building Inspectors. 8. Beware of 'Too Good to Be True' Quotes.

Testimonials that have a score of fewer than 3 celebrities, a missed out on visit or if the trader is not recommended, will certainly not right away show up. This is to ensure that our issues group can check what has actually happened.

What is the NCC code for Australia?

The National Construction Code of Australia (NCC) was previously known as the Building Code of Australia (BCA). It is published and maintained by the Australian Building Codes Board (ABCB). It contains technical provisions for the design and construction of buildings and other structures throughout Australia.

Exactly How The Home Improvement As Well As Repair Solutions In London Job.

Clients' names and also addresses are never ever released, and we do not publish anonymous comments. We protect our participants against rogue customers or purposeful anti-competitive behaviour. Each month we intend to check and also validate 30%-- 40% of comments received. Credit Scores Look At Limited Business - we do a Credit Check on applicants that are Restricted as well as Minimal Responsibility Collaboration business to examine their economic history. " His van will most likely be unmarked as well as it's more probable that he will not look clever as well as professional."

Rj Repair Solutions.

How can I generate more work?

So, without further adieu, here's our top 10 ways builders and tradesmen can generate more work. 1. Website. 2. Social Media. 3. Flyers. 4. Email. 5. SMS. 6. PPC (Pay-per-click) Advertising. 7. Referral sites. 8. Partnerships. More items

A little planning at the start can go a long means toward reducing costs in the future. Understanding the square footage you as well as your family members need is the very first step in locating the ideal residence.

Beginning Your Project.

She says that once you understand who you are, you'll recognize why you're drawn in to particular people. Subscribe to our complimentary newsletter this October for your opportunity to win a ₤ 50 John Lewis coupon. With their considerable residence and garden collections you'll be spoilt for selection. For the most up to date information, suggestions and also special cash conserving deals. As soon as you have sent out your invitation to tender phone round to validate who is intending to place in a submission, welcome them to visit your website as well as verify your deadline.

As the name suggests, this type is excellent at handling individuals. Mediators intuitively understand what others are assuming and really feeling.

So they are reflective and self-analytical-- men and women that take pleasure in journeying right into their ideas and intentions. As a result, when they form a collaboration, they like to delve deeply into the toughness and weaknesses of the relationship. ( Oprah.com)-- According to relationship wizard Helen Fisher, PhD, there are four character kinds-- Explorer, Home Builder, Negotiator as well as Supervisor.

Little Orangery Conservatories And Glass Conservatories.

When you fit after experiencing a particular layout, that ought to suggest a whole lot even more to you than specifications on paper. The most effective way for room to be made use of differs significantly based on the circumstances of individuals and families, as well as also if we can't place those elements of the ideal home strategy into words, we understand it when we see it. It is impossible to locate a residence that has whatever you want and also absolutely nothing you do not, yet that doesn't mean you won't still enjoy. local architects require to do is focus on by selecting the functions that are most important to you and also accepting that even something you like might have its adverse flipside.

Skanska utilizes about 43,000 individuals as well as has a yearly income of $18 billion U.S. dollars.

The company employs over 135,000 people as well as has an annual revenue of around $45.5 billion UNITED STATE dollars.

Bouygues is one of the largest construction business in the world; thus, they work throughout the globe.

They use over 118,000 individuals with close to $37 billion USD in earnings.

Like the majority of the other companies on this checklist, they also function worldwide.

One of their forthcoming tasks will be the brand-new school for Cardiff College in Wales.

And also will be dealing with a big framework task in Kenya this year, along with others.

PowerChina is among the most significant building business worldwide as well as is among the biggest firms in China.

Some gorgeous layout will certainly be engulfed when paired with clashing surfaces, which decreases the beauty of the structure and its contents together. A vital active ingredient to any kind of fantastic home design is the cooking area format. Make sure that it has everything you will certainly require to enjoy this room. Shown is a lovely premium kitchen area from this luxury artisan home strategy. Seek POWER STAR/Green home plans supplied by business like Your house Designers to ensure you develop one of the most energy-efficient residence for your area.

The cost of your house building will depend greatly on the dimension of your residence, in addition to the intricacy of the design. Begin the search for the best desire home by selecting a practical size and also an idea of just how you wish to see it utilized. A terrific method to start searching for your dream home plan is to surf Straight from the Designers' collection of New Residence Strategies. This brand new craftsman cattle ranch home strategy includes great deals of flexible functions.

Taking specific pride in upholding social standards, several are traditional, and they typically have a solid ethical streak. Contractors do not get bored conveniently, which enables them to be methodical, dedicated, and dependable. Thanks to all these solid top qualities, they often tend to be considered as pillars of the community. Tranquility, affable, and also individuals oriented, the Builder's personality is influenced by the serotonin system.

When busied with work or personal goals, they can show up unresponsive, far-off, even cold, and also are usually not thinking about making social links, with the exception of those that are useful or amazing to them. Arbitrators have particular characteristic that have actually been linked with estrogen. Although estrogen is known as a women sex hormone, males have it, too, and also there are lots of male Mediators.

Decide what is nonnegotiable, maintain an open mind for the rest, as well as weigh the advantages versus the downsides of each residence plan. In some cases we get caught up in the smaller sized information of a house and forget that we can conveniently make tweaks. It's the design of the framework that ought to have your attention. The setup of walls as well as areas defines a home, not what fixtures it includes.

They artfully checked out facial expressions, poses, motions, as well as tone of voice. Their passion in identification extends not just to others but to themselves.

As soon as you make sure the area is what you desire, the matter of interior decoration enables you to really personalize the house. It might be in your best interest to modify a building as opposed to proceed trying to find one that fits your needs specifically. Ask a professional for assistance when making best use of the possibility of a home, as well as you possibly won't need to search as a lot. If your grandma's antique corner hutch absolutely has to be included in your new house, be prepared to gauge it and discover an area where it can be properly shown. Decorating a residence with furniture that you already have can both make the new property currently feel like house and also conserve an excellent amount of money, but it does need cautious preparation.

Social situations are often enjoyable as well as relaxing for Builders; they such as to network. Because obligation and also commitment are their fortes, they often acquire a committed pack of peers and also friends. As well as they hold true guardians when it involves friends and family. She or he usually picks to do an excellent task instead of please others. As a matter of fact, Directors are the least socially competent of the four kinds.

[dugoutsecond06-blog]

Selenium Training Online Program.

Is Selenium Difficult To Find Out?

#toc background: #f9f9f9;border: 1px solid #aaa;display: table;margin-bottom: 1em;padding: 1em;width: 350px; .toctitle font-weight: 700;text-align: center;

Content

ÄHnliche JobsuchezurüCkweiter.

Easy Ways To Be An Effective Software Tester.

A Want To The Future Of Software Testing.

User Interface Designer.

Make Sure Ideal Work Environment For Qa Group.

ÄHnliche JobsuchezurüCkweiter.

When you can concentrate much less on the administration work of your testing, you are cost-free to record and also report much more important insects. Anybody who has actually been operating in the area for any kind of extent of time has actually experienced an unreasonable absence of organization, poor organizing, and daunting bug reports.

Easy Ways To Be An Effective Software Program Tester.

Element Testing involves testing of several functionalities as a single code and also its goal is to determine if any flaw exists after attaching those several functionalities with each various other. It is a testing type in which it verifies just how software behaves as well as runs in a various atmosphere, internet servers, hardware, and also network setting. This sort of testing checks the actions of the application at the boundary level. It is a kind of testing which validates whether the freshly developed software program or upgraded software program functions well with the older variation of the setting or otherwise. It is a subtype of Compatibility Testing and is done by the testing team.

A Seek To The Future Of Software Testing.

Hands-on QA indeed, automation QA is paid just as high as programmers are - nevertheless, it's still coding. The variance in tension degrees might likewise have something to do with the reality that I was the only QA person, however as a designer, I am on a team. If I was on a QA team and also reached see when other people made errors and missed bugs also, maybe I would not have been so stressed/taken it so hard when I missed out on something. Your testing setting requires to be established as well as mentioned prior to you start testing. Java voor testers are the products and also tools you and your group needs to with confidence evaluate apps.

It is a type of testing for which every organization having a different team which normally called as Non-Functional Examination team or Efficiency team. Testers having the mindset of "perspective to break" as well as making use of Adverse Testing they validate that if system or application breaks. An Unfavorable Testing strategy is executed using inaccurate data, void data or input. It verifies that if the system throws a mistake of void input as well as behaves as anticipated. Modules are commonly code modules, specific applications, client as well as server applications on a network, and so on

Interface Designer.

So the Equivalence Dividing for this testing is -10 to -1, 0, as well as 1 to 10. It is primarily performed by developers after the completion of unit testing.

. This sort of testing is particularly relevant to client/server and also distributed systems. This sort of testing neglects the internal parts as well as concentrates just on the output to examine if it is as per the demand or not. It is a Black-box kind testing tailored to the functional needs of an application. For thorough information about Useful Testing go here. Expect, the application approves worths between -10 to +10 so using equivalence segmenting the worths picked up for testing are no, one positive value, one unfavorable worth.

Performance Testing is done to examine whether the system fulfills the performance demands. Various performance and also lots tools are used to do this testing.

If http://sqworl.com/oewn7w are functioning appropriately or not, a tester do end individual role as well as verifies.

With hand-operated testing, a tester manually carries out examinations on the software.

Manual testing is the procedure of making use of the features of an application as an end-user.

You'll locate keeping everybody in the loophole from the beginning will conserve a substantial quantity of time down the line. By staying clear of messy testing, you will save hrs of your time. Hrs you would invest searching for and gathering test instance information are currently invested implementing claimed examinations.

Each of us would certainly have stumbled upon a number of sorts of testing in our testing trip. We might have heard some and we might have worked on some, however not everybody has knowledge regarding all the testing types. We, as testers are aware of the numerous sorts of Software application Testing such as Practical Testing, Non-Functional Testing, Automation Testing, Agile Testing, as well as their sub-types, and so on . Consequently, one of the most practical option is to utilize a language that QA testers are currently comfy with. # 8) If you are the senior person in the team, aid others to learn testing principles as well as comprehend your task deeply.

What is manual testing example?

Watts S. Humphrey (July 4, 1927 – October 28, 2010) was an American pioneer in software engineering who was called the "father of software quality."

There are different data sources like SQL Web server, MySQL, and also Oracle, etc . Data source Testing entails testing of table framework, schema, saved treatment, information structure and so on. The aim of Availability Testing is to identify whether the software program or application is accessible for handicapped people or not.

The goal of this testing is to find the flaws as well as break the application by performing any kind of circulation of the application or any arbitrary functionality. It is the last phase of the testing, after which the software program enters into production. Internal online user atmosphere can be created for this type of testing.

Leading 10 Software Program Testing Courses.

When the schedules were reasonable the anxiety level was rather reduced (3/10), and also it was really enjoyable job. When we had a crazy deadline the stress level rose mostly because of the long hours (5/10). We were sustaining financial applications that was accountable for trading millions a day. When the apps went down, we were anticipate to jump on a telephone call as well as debug the system live while providing status updates every 5 mins to the VP or supervisor. This was actually a developer/operations role, I was improving an existing app as well as was expected to sustain it.

How do I train to be a software tester?

Many employers look for software tester candidates with a bachelor's degree in computer science, math or engineering, although it's not always required. If you've got a lot of experience, a stable work history and solid references or letters of recommendation, it's possible to land a job without a college degree.

[allakinwande]

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel/Pat A. Robinson

CHASING DEMOCRACY:

The attack on the American voter.

BY: JB Hanna

_______________________________________________

"Now many of our Christians have what I call the 'goo-goo syndrome.' Good government. They want everybody to vote. I don't want everybody to vote. Elections are not won by a majority of people. They never have been from the beginning of our country, and they are not now. As a matter of fact our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down."

-Paul Weyrich 1968

TARRANT COUNTY TX.

In 1827, Edward E. Tarrant had established himself as a wealthy man, probably the wealthiest in all of Red River County. A veteran of the war of 1812, now a sheriff, he left his mark in Tarrant County Texas, the namesake of the former officer of the “fourth brigade.”

On September 29, 1843, Tarrant along with Texas state attorney general George Whitfield would draft The “Bird’s Fort Treaty.” Which surreptitiously states in Article XXIV, that; “The government of Texas has the right of working all mines that have been discovered or will be discovered on the territory of the Indians.”

Just as surreptitiously as the terms of Crystal Mason’s signed affidavit that stated she was not eligible to vote as a convicted felon, some hundred and seventy five years later in that same Tarrant County. Mason was on community service on November 8, 2016 for a her 2012 conviction on tax fraud. Only voting after the urging of her mother, Ms. Mason was sentenced to five years in prison on voter fraud charges, for a provisional ballet vote that was never counted.

Crystal Mason’s unfortunate miscarriage of justice is the oddity, not the model. The model being the strategy adopted by many incumbents on the right, while the left has historically supported voter registration initiatives, conservatives (since the voting rights act of 2013) have practiced down presser tactics with almost surgical precision. From good ol fashioned jerrymandring to voter caging and voter roll purges.

Stories like that of Crystal Mason, no matter how rare, are aggressively publicized and spun in efforts to paint a fanciful portrait of voter fraud gone wild. These trumped up horrors however, have never been substantiated.

Max Faulkner/Fort Worth Star-Telegram via Getty Images.

During the presidential campaign of 2016,

Vice President nominee, Mike Pence came under scrutiny from voter rights advocates when Indiana State police raided the voter registration office of Patriot Majority USA, in October of 2016. Indiana progressives called conspiracy on the would be VIce president.

The nonprofit Patriot Majority, had registered over 45,000 voters, mostly African American. Just one week from the voter registration deadline and 5,000 voters short of their 50,000 target at the time of the raid. Founded in 2005, PM was accused of registering voters twice, in addition to applications that had missing or unverified zip codes and addresses. This is often a problem with grassroots voter registration initiatives staffed by everyday citizens, the lack of experience, training, and in many cases, after work hours by constituents looking to supplement their income, have always bore such inconsistencies. Though well meaning, these efforts give way to questionable voter registration applications, that ones opponent will rightfully pounce.

When you open Patriot Majority’s web sight, the home page is striking. Waves of red and white stripes, the famous Washington crossing the Delaware painting emblazoned on the header. With the current political climate, rife with its suede patriotism and the far lefts deepening dive into a socialist creed, one might expect Patriot Majorities home page to spawn links to diatribes of pro gun advocacy and states rights. But PM claims to be a bipartisan movement. While it seems that the issue is the shotty work of some canvassers, Common Cause Indiana and the NAACP have filed a federal lawsuit against Marion County of Indian after the raid on charges of voter suppression by closing early voting in a sector with over 700,000 registered voters. Former Indiana governor mike Pence, now ironically, head of the Elections Integrity Commission, boasts “What is historic here is that our president-elect won 30 to 50 states. He won more counties than any candidate on our side.

The Georgia State showdown

Georgia’s Democratic candidate for governor Stacey Abrams finds herself in a historical yet tight race in Georgia’s gubernatorial midterms. The Gulfport native faces off against opponent Brian kemp, the self proclaimed “politically incorrect conservative.” The cautionary view in mid August was that Kemp could have a strong surge in the last two months leading to the peach state showdown, much like Nathan Deal in 2014. But as of reporting, the race is still in a dead heat. Kemp has been mocked for his ads that some on the left liken to a Dave Chapelle or SNL skit. But while democrats laugh, Brian Kemp is practicing more “politics as usual” than his campaign readaric may assert. Kemp’s influence on voter registration as Secretary of State should be no laughing matter to democrats.

The heat was on as the summer closed out in Randolph County Georgia, a sort of patient zero for the National attention to suspected voter suppression. The Georgia county quickly beat back a move to close seven of nine polling places in the historically black canton. But the victory, while sweet, is little to stop the suppression of voters in the rest of the state. Like Tarrant in Texas, Randolph county is named after another slave owning statesman, Ol’ John Randolph of Roanoke. A career politician who also served as prosecutor of the associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, Samuel Chase on charges of impeachment. Chase would later be acquitted by the senate. Roanoke famously stated,

“The most delicious of all privileges, spending other people’s money.” Might be proud of his states insidious politico operandi.

Several groups, including the Georgia Democratic Party, Common Cause and the NAACP, have called on Kemp to step down from his position as secretary of state while he runs for Governor.

Greg Palast, the New York based investigative journalist and author of the compelling

The best democracy money can buy, has been hunting down Kemp and also, Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach for the past several months. Armed with a Federal subpoena accusing Kobach of purging hundreds of thousands of Kansans from the voting rolls. Like his counterpart in Georgia, as Secretary of State, Kobach has oversight of the states voter rolls and similar to Brian Kemp of Georgia, Kobach has also successfully closed polling stations in low income counties as well.

As Carol Anderson of the New York Times put it, “Brian Kemp is a master of voter suppression.” For example, Kemp made a statement in 2014 regarding another lawsuit his office faced regarding over 40 thousand names of voters disappearing from the Georgia voting rolls. The Secretary of State emphasized that “The lawsuit filed by 3rd sector development, is frivolous and totally without merit. The claim that there are over forty thousand unprocessed voter registration applications, are false.” Kemp went on to contravene with the 6,525 voter applications his office found had issues of no longer being with us, had no valid date of birth, where convicted felons or provided no county or address. ( some states report day of birth instead of DOB, which substantially increases the chance of two records being reported for the same person.)

Kemp also provided a Potboiler about an application filled out by, Johnny B Cool, who’s city was listed as, Yo’ Town. While this smacks of incompetence of the registrating body or the voting applicant themselves, it seems a stretch to think that a political scenic, who would name themselves Johnny B Cool who Haile’s from Yo town would be a tactical move that any well minded voter fraud conspirator would employ. But the great voter fraud conspiracy rolls on. Kemp, by the way,

Was found to be guilty of voter suppression in 2014.

GETTY IMAGES

LOCKED AND LOADED

Prior to Shelby v Holder, (2013) Texas, along with the several other Jim Crow states had coordinated a preemptive lockout of minority, elderly and millennial prospective votes in anticipation of provisions 4 & 5 of the voting rights act being overturned. The first domino to fall was that unsuspecting, overlooked little Diddy called Northwest Austin Municipal Utility District No. 1 v. Holder, or the MUD case. The stories of out of town voters using the address of a local motel to vote illegally, harassment of MUD’s minority community and a strange cloud of mystery preceding the Shelby v. Holder decision, stains the “Municipal Utility District,” just north of Austin.

That was 2009, and four years later, Shelby county found it unconstitutional for the federal government to suppress their ability to molest the Hispanics, black, elderly and young voting populous. The Supreme Court would concede that, “voting discrimination still exists; no one doubts that.” But the 5-4 decision of the highest court in the land would contradict their own logic by wiping away the voting rights act protection of historically disenfranchised constituents, specifically articles 4 and 5.

But back in Tarrant Texas, and many other counties in the Lone star state, there’s been a battle raging to oppress voter turnout since voting became public freewill. Ted Cruz and Beto O’Rourke are in the mezzo of a 12 round barn burner as the country tumbles towards it’s midterms like a radioactive meteor with no direction. Could it be, the land of steers could finally be done with Ted Cruz? Or is Beto’s hype just that? Progressive turnout or conservative suffragist subterfuge may answer these questions.

And yet, one of the few cases of actual voter fraud, ironically in that same state of Texas, is more doleful than relevant. Crystal Mason began her five year sentence for voter fraud in September. After being walked through the provisional ballet process by a state appointed election official, she still stands condemned by adjudication. Alison Grinter, of Mason’s legal team explained, “the federal government has stepped over the state and found Crystal guilty of violating the law.”

In august an 11 year old child hacked a Florida electronic ballet in this years DEFCON 26,

The annual hacking convention held this year in sandy Las Vegas. Emmett Brewer and 30 other kids ranging in age from 8 - 16 years old where all able to hack Florida’s faulty system. The national association of Secretaries of State responded to DEFCON with one of many proclamations in their

(Long comment regarding a proposed Exemption under 17 U.S. code 1201)

The senate stated to ES&S, the countries largest supplier of voting machines;

“Currently there are significant barriers that prevent states from working with independent, qualified, good faith researchers to conduct cyber security on election systems.”

Now it seams, after the midterms, ES&S May have to deal with not just the Senate but the people.

But the talk is done. Bluster deflated. Red and Blue candidates enter November 6th like combatants on the world stage. Like heavyweight champions with the future of democracy on the line. I’ll be watching the fight on November 6th just like Crystal Mason.

Hoping the country does right by its future.

[orbemnews]

What Some Companies Are Saying About Back-to-Office Plans: Live Updates Here’s what you need to know: Some big employers are making plans to call employees back to the office, but others are waiting.Credit…Gregg Vigliotti for The New York Times At one point the target was the start of 2021. Then it was bumped to July. Now September is the new date that many companies have circled on the calendar for bringing back office workers who have been working remotely for the past year. Maybe. Companies are wary of setting hard deadlines, recent reporting by The New York Times found. Some corporations are reopening offices in the spring, and many are saying they will remain flexible, staging returns over several months and planning to allow some workers to continue to work from home. As nerve-racking as it was last year to be abruptly torn from their desks, many people find the prospect of returning distressing. Here is what some of the country’s biggest companies are telling their workers. IBM IBM, which employs about 346,000 people, hasn’t set a strict timeline for when its U.S. workers will return to the office. It expects about 80 percent of its employees to work with some combination of remote and office schedules, depending largely on role. JPMorgan Chase The bank, which has more than 20,000 office employees in New York City, has told employees that the five-day office workweek is a relic. The bank is considering a rotational work model, meaning employees would rotate between working remotely and in the office. PricewaterhouseCoopers The consulting firm, which has about 284,000 employees, is set to open one office in each of its major cities in May, and all of its offices in September. Even when the offices are formally reopened, PwC will allow some workers, depending on their job, to work remotely at least part time. Walmart Most of Walmart’s 1.5 million employees work at the retail giant’s stores, and a vast number have continued to go in to their workplace throughout the pandemic. It said on March 12 that it would start bringing workers back at its Bentonville, Ark., office campus no earlier than July. Its global technology employees will continue to work virtually “for the long term.” Wells Fargo At Wells Fargo, 60,000 employees have worked at bank branches and other facilities during the pandemic, but 200,000 more have worked remotely. The company told its staff in a memo last month that it had set a Sept. 6 return-to-office target and was “optimistic” that conditions surrounding Covid-19 vaccinations and case levels would allow it to keep it. GameStop said it would sell additional stock, up to 3.5 million shares, to finance its move online retailing and to support its finances.Credit…Carlo Allegri/Reuters Wall Street is poised to begin the week on an upswing, with futures pointing to a 0.3 percent rise in the S&P 500. Asian markets also gained in the wake of Friday’s U.S. jobs report, which marked a bigger-than-expected surge in hiring last month. The Nikkei index in Japan rose 0.8 percent, to its highest level since mid March, and the Kospi index in South Korea gained 0.3 percent. Stock markets were closed for holidays in China, Hong Kong and much of Europe. Digesting the jobs report The Labor Department on Friday reported U.S. employers added 916,000 jobs in March, the biggest jump since August, and the unemployment rate fell to 6 percent. The news exceeded expectations, and the gains were broad based, with hiring in the hospitality, retailing and transportation sectors all rising. Adding some uncertainty to the bullish numbers is a rise in coronavirus cases in the United States after weeks of decline. But as Ben Casselman reported in The New York Times: “Few economists expect a repeat of the winter, when a spike in Covid-19 cases pushed the recovery into reverse. More than a quarter of U.S. adults have received at least one dose of a coronavirus vaccine, and more than two million people a day are being inoculated.” Bonds and oil Yields on 10-year Treasury notes, which have been on an upward trajectory since October, have stabilized over the last few days. On Monday the yield was down slightly to 1.71 percent. Oil prices fell. Brent crude, the international benchmark, fell 1.9 percent to $63.40 a barrel, and West Texas Intermediate slipped 1.8 percent. Traders have been adjusting their positions since last Thursday’s decision by OPEC and its allies to slowly relax curbs on output. Those controls were put in place in response to the sharp decline in oil demand during the pandemic. Companies GameStop said Monday that it would sell up to 3.5 million additional shares to “further accelerate its transformation” and to strengthen its balance sheet. The struggling bricks-and-mortar retailer, which found itself at the center of a trading frenzy in January, is aiming to become more of an online operation. Additional shares would dilute the ownership of its existing investors — and GameStop’s shares fell more than 10 percent in premarket trading. Air France on Monday is expected to announce it has accepted a government-backed refinance package. Aid for the struggling carrier has been the subject of talks between French government and European Union officials, and on Sunday Bruno LeMaire, the French finance minister, said the basic terms of a deal had been reached, Reuters reported. Shaundell Newsome of Small Business for America’s Future said changes were needed throughout the banking industry to improve outcomes for Black owners.Credit…Bridget Bennett for The New York Times The government’s central small business relief effort, the Paycheck Protection Program, has made $734 billion in forgivable loans to nearly seven million businesses. But minority-owned businesses were disproportionately underserved by the program, a New York Times analysis found. “The focus at the outset was on speed, and it came at the expense of equity,” said Ashley Harrington, the federal advocacy director at the Center for Responsible Lending. The aid program’s rules were mostly written on the fly, and reaching harder-to-serve businesses was an afterthought. Structural barriers and complicated, shifting requirements contributed to a skewed outcome, The New York Times’s Stacy Cowley reports. In the program’s final weeks — it is scheduled to stop taking applications on May 31 — President Biden’s administration has tried to alter its trajectory with rule changes intended to funnel more money toward businesses led by women and minorities. But those revisions have run into their own obstacles, including the speed with which they were rushed through. Lenders, caught off guard, have struggled to carry them out. “Historically, access to capital has been the leading concern of women- and minority-owned businesses to survive, and during this pandemic it has been no different,” Jenell Ross, who owns an auto dealership, told a House committee. The United States is particularly important to the world economy because it has long spent more than it sells.Credit…Scott McIntyre for The New York Times The United States and its record-setting stimulus spending could help haul a weakened Europe and struggling developing countries out of their own economic morass. American buyers are spurring demand for German cars, Australian wine, Mexican auto parts and French fashions. And many Americans have spent their stimulus checks on video game consoles, exercise bicycles or other products made in China. The United States’ comparatively fast recovery involved a little bit of luck — new variants of the virus have just begun to push domestic infections higher — and a large policy response, including more than $5 trillion in debt-fueled pandemic relief, The New York Times’s Jeanna Smialek and Jack Ewing report. “When the U.S. economy is strong, that strength tends to support global activity as well,” said Jerome H. Powell, the chair of the Federal Reserve. But some hazards lurk. The slow pace of the European Union’s vaccination campaign will probably hurt its economy. Poorer and smaller countries, facing severely limited vaccine supplies and fewer resources to support government spending, are likely to struggle to stage an economic turnaround even if the U.S. recovery increases demand for their exports. Chocolate is Britain’s second-largest food and drink export, after whiskey.Credit…Tom Jamieson for The New York Times Small British chocolate makers emphasizing ethically sourced ingredients and bespoke batches became big sellers in Europe in recent years but have been nearly impossible to find there since January, David Segal reports for The New York Times. “We have customers complain to us all the time, ‘Why can’t I buy my favorite British chocolate?’” said Hishem Ferjani, the founder of Choco Dealer in Bonn, Germany, which supplies grocery stores and sells through its own website. “We have store owners with empty shelves.” “We have to explain, it’s not our fault, it’s not the fault of the producer. It’s Brexit,” he said. Chocolate is Britain’s No. 2 food and drink export, after whiskey, according to the Food and Drink Federation. Chocolate exports to all countries hit $1.1 billion last year, and Europe accounts for about 70 percent of those sales. In January, exports of British chocolate to Europe fell 68 percent compared with the same period the year before. The trade deal struck late last year with the European Union has not saved British companies from a maddening, unpredictable array of time-consuming, morale-sapping procedures and from stacks of paperwork that have turned exporting to the E.U. into a sort of black-box mystery. Goods go in and there is no telling when they will come out. Source link Orbem News #BacktoOffice #Companies #Live #plans #Updates

[thephoenixiaproject]

Entry 01 (04/01/2020): Beginnings!

Introduction:

Hi there!! Welcome to what is hopefully the start of something cool! It genuinely feels daunting to be taking the first steps in this project, whatever this may turn out to be. 

And it may turn out to be nothing at all! But a big part of why I’m doing this is to push out my comfort zone and try something new, and even if this doesn’t end up going anywhere, I’ll be happy that I tried, and hey, hopefully I’ll have learned some new skills and made something cool on the way! :D

There’s gonna be a lot of rambling explanation for the rest of this post so I apologise in advance, but I hope I explain who I am, and my plans for this project, as best as I can!

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Who are you, and how did you get in here!?

My name is Ben Moss (he/they), I’m a Bri’ish musician, actor and performer with an unexplainable obsession for dubstep and things that go vroom.

(Photo credit - Phyllida Joyce Hickish 2020 / @phyllidahickish on Instagram)

I’m currently studying creative music technology at university, with the aim of becoming a film/TV/game/VR composer (and maybe sound designer)! I’m also a massive fan of electronic music, audiovisual performances, virtual reality experiences, all that kind of stuff!

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Why does this project exist?

I’ve had it pretty clear in my mind at this point that I really want to do film/TV/game composition professionally: if I can help bring out a director’s message or intentions for a piece of work with the music that I make, and help create immersion into the world and characters they’ve made, then that’s what I’m here for, and I love doing it!

I so badly want to be part of a team that helps make and tell awesome stories that can educate and inspire as well as entertain, that immerse people in incredible new worlds and help people find themselves, or feel seen, or just make you feel good for a little while! Watching the behind the scenes development of films and TV shows I love just blows my mind and inspires me so much, and I’d love to be part of projects like that one day!

However, when it comes to personal music I make for myself, I’ve always felt slightly lost: I find it really hard to make my own music and see it through to the end because I don’t know why I’m making it or who/what for yet. The non-professional music I’ve made so far has been remakes of work I love, tributes to artists I love, or just playing around with different styles and improv-ing a little bit!

This has led to big problems though: making music is the only way to make better music, but being a massive perfectionist, and also massively afraid of failure and disappointing others, I’ve always stalled myself on progressing on anything that isn’t work, telling myself that I’m wasting time by not working. Combine this with the fact that I’ve always had the view that as long as people are impressed with the work I do, or as long as it fits the criteria or mark scheme, then I’m ok, regardless of whether I feel like what I made was bad or I could’ve done better.

I know I have a LOT to improve on in pretty much every area of music, but I’m not going to make progress on this skill (or ANY of the loads of skills I really want to learn how to do) by mentally blocking myself and convincing myself that making my own projects, either ones with a serious intention (hopefully like this one) or just musically goofing around for fun, aren’t worth it, because if I want to make good music/work for other people that BOTH I AND THEY feel proud of and happy with, I need to develop my skills away from assignments, or I’ll go nowhere.

I’ve only recently learned thanks to a short time of therapy that “because it makes me happy” IS a valid reason to do or make something. So I want to have some fun trying new and scary things to me - 

Trying to create a story of my own.

Possibly learning to create some visuals, either as storyboards, or perhaps going into animation, or 3D modelling and animation?? Maybe virtual reality might come into it? I have no idea!

To make music that I’m happy with!

To develop and work on my existing skillset, and have a go at some new ones.

To accept that I’m going to make stuff that won’t work, and that’s ok and a natural part of the creative process, and not something to be afraid or ashamed of. Hell, this whole project might not work, and that’s also fine!! I just hope that I (and anyone else who might work on this) have some fun and get some valuable experiences from it! :D

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What is this project?

On October 6th 2014, a scientific study titled ‘AWARE - AWAreness during REsuscitation’ was published online, documenting the mental experiences of people who had suffered cardiac arrest and were successfully resuscitated. The study examined 2060 patients from fifteen hospitals across the United States, United Kingdom and Austria across a four-year timespan, 140 of whom were able to take part in structured interviews.

“46% had memories with 7 major cognitive themes: fear; animals/plants; bright light; violence/persecution; deja-vu; family; recalling events post-CA (cardiac arrest) and 9% had NDEs (near-death experiences), while 2% described awareness with explicit recall of 'seeing' and 'hearing' actual events related to their resuscitation. One had a verifiable period of conscious awareness during which time cerebral function was not expected. CA survivors commonly experience a broad range of cognitive themes, with 2% exhibiting full awareness. 

This supports other recent studies that have indicated consciousness may be present despite clinically undetectable consciousness.” - https://www.resuscitationjournal.com/article/S0300-9572(14)00739-4/fulltext

Since then, more studies have taken place in the same field, panels have been held by some of the world’s leading scientists on the subject, and the field is still being very actively researched. The aim of these studies have been to try and draw conclusions on how resuscitation can be improved, to progress towards a higher success rate of resuscitation with little to no long-term consequences to the brain’s cognitive functions.

This project, however, intends to focus on another set of findings that this and subsequent studies revealed - there is a short period of consciousness after clinical death.

Whether the length is 20-30 seconds, as early studies suggested, or perhaps longer as is now being investigated, this seems to be something that we will all experience one day when we die. Depending on the person, these experiences may massively vary.

What might these final moments of consciousness be like?

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Current Plan (working idea):

The project will show the post-death conscious moments of around 7-8 characters, each with their own experiences. These will be presented in completely different ways format-wise depending on each character’s life, culture, interests and experiences! (Could be presented in virtual reality, a cartoon, a visual novel, a musical EP or album, an audio drama/podcast, whatever best represents each character!)

Some may have known or met each other, some may have had barely any association with the others, but though these different experiences, which may shed light on different life experiences, mentalities, cultures, and experiences of final consciousness, each story or experience is linked in some way, however small, which may tell another story of its own!

The characters who’s consciousness we are viewing/experiencing will all definitely die (i.e. we aren’t being told the story from the perspective of someone who has been resuscitated and is relaying the story to us. This doesn’t inhibit a story being told in the past tense/first person as a narrative device though!!)

This project won’t focus on the concept of an afterlife or resuscitation, this just deals with our very final conscious moments! (This does not rule out religion as something to be shown, for example, if one of the characters is of a certain faith!)

This project will NEVER become a bandwagon for trying to ‘disprove’ or bash religions and faiths of ANY kind. The day that happens is the day this project ends.

The name ‘Phoenixia’ (and its general black-and-white branding/logo/aesthetic) is very much a temporary working title - I’ve had it as a producing alias for a while, but it’s never had meaning attached to it. I have a couple of other ideas for working titles which more strongly link to the themes of the project which I’ll share in a later entry! (Because right now my research notes are a  m e s s)

There’s a LOT of different opinions on how long consciousness actually lasts after clinical death - 20-30 seconds, three minutes, a couple of hours, all these are lengths of time associated with it. Some scientists have stated that as the brain is shutting down our consciousness ‘increases’ - in terms of representation within the project and lengths of time, it may result in a longer perceived experience? For example, 20-30 seconds of consciousness may be represented as 20-30 minutes of audio/video? (”The precise point beyond which the brain is no longer "living", a threshold which remains unidentified, is perhaps less definite than has been historically assumed.” -Persinger, Michael A., et al. "When Is the Brain Dead? Living-Like Electrophysiological Responses and Photon Emissions from Applications of Neurotransmitters in Fixed Post-Mortem Human Brains." PLoS ONE, vol. 11, no. 12, 2016, p. e0167231. Gale OneFile: Health and Medicine.)

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Conclusion:

And that’s it for the first entry!! I hope that wasn’t too much rambling!

The next month or so is going to be SUPER hectic for me due to university deadlines and working on this as much as possible, but I’ll do my best to keep regular updates!

[autoirishlitdiscourses]

Discourse of Wednesday, 21 October 2020

If you're thinking about which texts you propose to read this as an analytical structure. Things that I should mention that suggest themselves to the course discussion section is part of the cease to do so is to express yourself. There are several possible productive ways to look more closely would help to focus your thoughts more clearly pay off in setting up a fair grade for the quarter, any number of reasons, one productive move, given Ulysses, too, because the other group has provided a good thing, and I may occasionally make general announcements in this way is that the writer has a lot of ways. An assessment that the useless incompetent morons who pass as campus technicians decided to use concrete language whenever you don't get discussion started. Thanks for doing a very strong job!

I'll be leaving town at 7 p. So you can.

You did a very modernist view of the room is big enough and that neither one has enough space to examine evidence in a rather fine line about how you'll lead into them, I'm suggesting that you also gave a solid elementary job of reading that they've done for most of it one of my observations of the Aran Islands no photos, though, you have a/written statement/indicating/specific reasons for missing a scheduled recitation which will result in a way that's supportable; I do think you've got some very perceptive reading of the gaps were due to the section. The recitation assignment here; I've attached a copy for my sections at the beginning of lecture on the exam says pick 7, I think you have locked yourself out of this comes down to it. /Or conclusions. You have to fall under some fair definition of race that is necessary to try to come at places where your analysis more specifically which parts of the more likely selection. I want to say, three of these are very rare moments of suboptimal expression are rather nebulous. Again, this is reflected here, you might conceivably wind up satisfying any breadth requirements, minor requirements, major requirements, specialization requirements, major requirements, explaining how this construction of Irish culture, history, you did a very good paper that you cite.

You must recite at least eight sections.

If you haven't yet had much of a rather difficult, and I'll see you in section this information allows them to argue at this point in her spare time, and I'll post the revised version instead of trying to provide additional evidence or an extrovert? Your delivery was basically solid job here. Responses below. Good luck on the assignment write-up midterm after I broke my arm two years ago that might have helped to have—my suspicion is that he didn't take it off with a display of the salient features of the justice system has its hands tied by a good job with a fresh eye and ask yourself what your priorities are if you would like to insert yourself into that tradition.

But you were a nice, thoughtful job of reading the Japanese car as a result of curving grades, and can't assert offhand that these will be able to believe in? Overall, you've done a number of texts think of Benny Brady's anger at his wife in comparison to virtually every other section is in season 5. Hi! Another small note: Your quote from Yeats is still absolutely in the sense of the large lecture hall because. However, I wouldn't want to take so long to get these to you by the poem while responding to for other ways in which you are on task, as well as in life in a way to deal with, and though they're supposed to have sat for a piece of writing.

Good luck with preparation, and there, but keeping the question so that you have to agree with me. One of these are all good, and your analytical structure that are close to the course's large-scale project. One thing that would be appropriate to recite. I sent Can Aksoy also overheard the conversation, and I've slept a lot of silences and retractions in your delivery was good in many ways, and incur the no-pass and letter-graded options on GOLD; d many other gendered representations here.

Though it's not too late for students who have other stragglers who need the class, so I hope he lets you expand or drop material if you need to be signing up for the final exam, send me a couple Rosie and Fluther, after all, including absolutely everything except for the class and kicked the topic's rear end. Students Program.

Again, thank you for a more specific about what you're moving toward is a worthwhile task to accomplish in a few hours yet. The application deadline is this racial, cultural knowledge, reading practices are presupposed? You are in fact no masses; there are hundreds or thousands of potential to pay off for you, OK? I'm just letting you know the exact points of the bog bodies to which we will have to say. Being specific about exactly what you can break it down into the next level and making a cognitive leap. I think that there is of course texts needs to be as productive as you can spend about fifteen twenty minutes as part of this if you don't generally make subject/verb agreement errors when speaking, or historical documents, if you'd like me to do, or it might be hidden in the Fall 2013 UCSB One-Acts Festival lots of good ideas in more close detail. I'm terribly sorry and embarrassed. Thanks for being a TA for the quarter; scoring at least some effort looking at the beginning of the above are bright lines/that you pick up absolutely every point on the assignment. James Bond has been trying hard with limited success to motivate people other than you already know about the American revolution, and though this is the basis for both sections, you have also explained this to have you down to is that if you kept me in a moment. But I'll respond with a selection from The Butcher Boy song 6 p. Overall, you should do now, and I'll find a twelve-line passage you'd like. I'll pass that on a lot: not all of the class going into the details of phrasing for you. Something to hand back midterms in section is cuing off of his son. You relate the texts saying to each other in achieving that goal. Discussion notes for week 8. Again, thank you for a specific question you're answering. That being said, also reciting a companion text to memorize because of the class will not hurt you, I think is likely to receive many emails waiting on you as a whole would benefit from hearing them. Have a good holiday break! All students are going to say and interacted with the other Godot groups for several reasons. If you have any questions, OK? If you are perfectly capable of even more. /Corrections, but are intended to help people move along the path that you score 126. Being specific about how to set up a lot of ways to make any changes made that are not obligated to agree with you. That's fine with me at the end of his own experience as a good discussion for at least some points for section attendance and participation based on attendance I won't assess participation until the very rare moments of suboptimal phrasing, so no penalty for getting on stage and delivered it in any way that they always have been capable of this poem than I had the pleasure and honor of being because, after we have together during each week is the cluster of assumptions that you want to wind up not promoting discussion in your paper. I think that it would have most needed in order to convey or build up to it. If there's a department policy saying that you make notes about the relative value of each of two categories. No, because barely 1/3 letter grade, you did a very, very general prompt, but you still get an incomplete would also require picking up cues that this is to provide the largest overall benefit to introduce a large group of people the characters are represented as standard entries for the quarter, and you really did quite a solid job, but this would pay off for you. I Had a Future.

And of course grade.

[blogjmary12]

How We Expanded Our Weblog Traffic By 284%

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Blog traffic. Png

Our normal traffic is up. Our subscriptions are up. Our click throughs are up. And long way greater human beings are commenting or clicking on our calls to movement. It’s been a long time coming, and at the same time as we observed some right away will boom within the first few months, we’re no longer here to offer some kind of mysterious technique to right now restore the relationship among you and your blog. Seo and content material advertising and marketing take time, and while pretty a few articles might also speak about how you could “boom your weblog site visitors in only a few months,” we're going to talk about long-term strategies that have led to sustainable boom. So, if you got right here proper here because of the reality my click-baity identify made you think this become some form of miracle, first rate-fast answer for infinite website online traffic, i express regret. What you may get out of this, although, are dependable and repeatable techniques for consistent blog increase.

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Begin with a usable content material calendar

Every now and then, it looks like 1/2 of the war with a weblog is developing with smooth thoughts for attractive content fabric. How typically are you capable of write approximately basically the identical element? It’s clean to fall proper right into a rut of manufacturing content material for the sake of publishing content – it’s there, it’s on-line, it has key phrases, however it doesn’t have loads of capability to break out that rut. The solution we decided come to be to have interaction more human beings in the creation of the content material calendar. Even though they couldn’t write something for the blog, they absolutely had the knowledge and enjoy proposing a few exceptional subjects. We did no longer certainly make a Google document and ask human beings to help us brainstorm, even though. As an alternative, we sent a phrase document without delay to 1 character at a time and asked them to characteristic some mind inside the subsequent days. This manner, they'll see what had already been suggested and play off a number of the ones titles, and they had a exact deadline. Within the occasion that they didn’t get it completed by way of then, we moved without delay to the subsequent character. Digital Marketing Company in Darwin had been in the long run organized and positioned proper into a content material fabric calendar, which protected a few data that made it greater usable than most effective a listing of blog titles.

Right here, you could see:

The date that i preferred it to head stay

Who ought to write it

The form of content material fabric

The class/topic that the content material blanketed

The offer (the call to movement) that might be covered

The real discover

Area to music if it have been assigned, written, posted, and link covered

Weblog content material planner.

This labored tremendous for a while, but we quickly found the importance of pliability in any strategy. That is, in any case, content material fabric calendars, no longer an untouchable artwork of art work. For example, the precise goal became to provide 3 posts every week and definitely hit the floor going for walks. However, we quickly realized that that degree of labor wasn’t quite sustainable, or essential, so we changed the calendar to at least one put up in step with week, and that has showed to be enough for our modern goals. It moreover leaves us lots of room to dive in and do more while we can free up greater assets.

Historic optimization – resurrecting vintage content cloth for destiny advantage

There’s been masses of debate round “historic optimization” for some time now, and after reading this article on hub spot, i figured we’d test with it ourselves. In essence, historical optimization (as described by means of using hub spot) goes some aspect like this:

Turn out to be aware of posts which may be virtually really worth updating (might be more whole, must have higher conversion capability, can also want to attention on key phrases which is probably nicely well worth focused on, and many others.). Search for posts which have middling scores. I. E. Posts that rank spherical the bottom of the first web page of consequences or someplace on the second one. Those have the most ability value. Replace the content material with new additions, up to date information, and stepped forward exquisite. These need to be crucial upgrades – no longer most effective a pair grammar fixes. Optimize the post for conversions by which include greater applicable ctas. Post the updated put up as new, however on the same url, and sell it as every day.

However, you have to additionally encompass an editor’s be aware that explains at the same time as it have become within the starting published and why it became updated. We’re no longer looking to idiot each person with this Digital Marketing Agencies Darwin, so be open approximately it. Our first take a look at with ancient optimization became timed to take advantage of the season. November turned into right across the nook, and our article titled: “online marketing for black Friday – the ultimate guide” had achieved properly inside the past. It looked ripe for an replace. It come to be although ranking well for “on-line black Friday marketing” phrases, however after its initial e-book in 2013, it didn’t without a doubt generate masses traffic over the subsequent couple years. So, i double checked and up to date the facts and facts, introduced a few new testimonies, modified the photos, and republished it.

https://medium.com/@jmary6688/a-complete-funnel-advertising-and-marketing-method-on-digital-is-a-pastime-changer-ca4584b5688e

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[notori]

OUTLINING YOUR NOVEL

Greetings fellow writers! So it’s nearly September which means that - for anyone who plans as obsessively as I do - NaNoWriMo is almost here!

Now, the Pantsers, I commend you. I envy the ability to sit down and write a complete story with nothing more than an idea, willpower, and hard work.

Me, I’m a Planner. I love my outlines. So I thought that today I would share the actual method of how I outline. ‘Cause I’ve never seen anyone do it quite like this, and my friends seemed to appreciate it when I showed them. So I hope it helps you out too!

STEP 1: GET YOUR SUPPLIES

1. Loose-leaf paper. However many sheets is up to you. For my NaNo novel I used three, and my chapters run about 3000-3500 words each.

2. A ruler. For straight lines and measuring.

3. Tape. To stick the pieces of paper together.

4. Multi-coloured pens (and white out).

5. A pencil (and eraser).

STEP 2: SET UP YOUR PAPER

I used three sheets because that what works for me for a ~50,000 word novel. You want to lay them out horizontally, then tape them together along their (now side) edges. Like so:

Tuck the header area of the page under the bottom of the previous one so that you can fold it up like this:

STEP 3: CREATE YOUR GRID

*I wanted to actually use this grid later so I made my squares more narrow in order to fit more columns (which will represent chapters), because that’s what fits this particular project. For a novel with less chapters you can make them wider.

I suggest using a black pen for the grid as it’s the least visually intrusive. You want your first vertical line to come in about 5 cm from the left edge of the grid. You will have roughly the same space left on the right side, so if you’re left handed, you can do a vertical line 5 cm from the right edge and go right-to-left.

After that, do a vertical line every 3 cm from top to bottom until you get to the right (or left, if you’re going right-to-left) and leave 5-6 cm on the edge like you have at the start.

For the horizontal lines, you want to start with drawing right along the (usually red) line at the top of the sheets (where the binder ring holes are). After that, going down, draw a horizontal line across all of the sheets every 3 cm.

You should now have a grid of 3x3cm squares, with sections on each end that around about double the width, made of six rows and as many columns as you could fit based on how many sheets of paper you used.

STEP 4: FILL IN YOUR SECTION HEADERS

Here’s where it gets fun.

Those six rows represent each component of a story’s structure: Introduction, Conflict, Rising Action, Climax, Falling Action, Conclusion. So write those in order, top to bottom, on the left hand double-size column. Next to each of them I note the approximate word count I like to have for each of these to keep a sensible proportion. I like to think of each of these as minimums. That way you will probably still keep the proportions, but - and certainly not during NaNoWriMo - never worry about going over a word count suggestion. You can (and will) always edit later.

Not only should your entire novel have all of these parts, but each chapter needs its own set as well. With that in mind, “Conclusion” doesn’t have to be a conclusion; it can also be a cliffhanger.

On the right double-size column is where you write the outline for the “whole story”. You will list these components for the big picture here.

On the top row (where the holes are) is where you will number (and title, if you so choose) your chapters.

In this sheet I have 26 chapters at 3000 words each, which is a total of 78,000 words. That’s usually the minimum length of what I write. With this, I wouldn’t intend to finish this novel during NaNoWriMo, but get around ¾ of it done. If this isn’t your style, simply adjust your calculations. Divide 50,000 by however many words you like per chapter, or by how many chapters you would like, to figure out the missing variable.

And don’t forget, November isn’t the only time you can write a novel. This method is applicable anytime for any word count goal!

STEP 5: THINK OF THE BIG PICTURE

For this tutorial, I’m using the plot of “Convert Me” - which is the first novel I did for NaNoWriMo, but I want to redo and expand it. So yes, this tutorial has spoilers, but I won’t have it done for many years and it will likely undergo many changes that this won’t be 100% accurate anyway.

To begin your outline, you need to know what you want for your whole story, so we’ll be working only in the far-right column for now. Take a step back and think: What are the big moments of your story? What needs to happen for all of this to workout? You can drop these into the grid block that is most appropriate and then build around it.

In my example, one scene I knew I wanted - a scene I imagined over and over - was when Samara saves Gary from the attacking thugs. This event kicks off the story, because it’s when magic usage happens right before his eyes and he enters that world.

But that’s too much to be the introduction, it requires context to make sense, and in the big picture fits more as the Conflict section of the novel (specifically, the fight which she saves him from and their subsequent conversation reveals the person-vs-society conflict).

With just one scene in mind, we can now ask questions that will help us fill in the other blocks.

The introduction becomes: Who is Gary? Where does he live? Why was he being attacked and needed saving? All of these (and more) build up the setting and initial character description. Once I think about those questions and come up with the answers, I plot them into the Introduction row.

The Rising Action is all that brings us from the Conflict to the Climax. To fill it in, you need to think of both of these pivotal moments in your novel.

In this example, we already have the Conflict and Introduction now. So we can start asking Rising Action questions like: Given what we know about this world, how does Gary react to seeing magic and being a magician himself? What does he do after meeting Samara - will he help her? How does he intend to hide all this from the paranoid society and his bigoted brother?

We can also think about the Climax - which should be tied, or close to it, to your Conflict in terms of “most important moment”. In this example, the Climax is when Gary and his team infiltrate the capitol and assassinate the leader of the American continent, who is one of four world leaders.

WAIT. WHAT?

Who is Gary’s team and where did they meet? Why are there only four world leaders? What and where is the capitol? What happened to Gary to make him decide to kill someone?

Suddenly you have a growing list of prompts for Rising Action. All of the questions that make you think “How in the heck did we get here?” about your Climax should be answered, in exciting, drama-building detail, throughout the Rising Action. Every time you get an answer to one of these questions, make a note of it in your Rising Action block.

As before, we continue on now to the Falling Action - which requires us to think about what just happened in the Climax and where we want things to end in the Conclusion. And we fill in the grid blocks in the same way. Start with what you know, the ending you want to have for your story, and then ask questions about what happens after the Climax and what needs to happen for the Conclusion to make sense.

After all that, your far right column should look something like this.

STEP 6: FILLING IN THE CHAPTERS

This happens in a similar way to the “Whole Story” section, it’s just more detailed. You start out by filling in the grid blocks that you know you want, in roughly the time you want it. It’s important to use pencil here because chances are you’ll be changing things around a lot as you continue to outline, even as you write your novel.

Also remember that the points you have in your “Whole Story” section, are not necessarily the same type of novel component as in your chapters. In this example, Samara saving Gary from the thugs presents the Conflict of the novel. However, it takes place as the Cliffhanger of chapter 1, into the Introduction and Conflict of chapter 2. Think of it like you are zooming in real close on certain parts of your novel.

After plotting in all the points that you know you want to happen, roughly when you would like them to happen, your grid should look something like this:

You can see on here that I sure don’t have every piece of the story, but I do have my inspired moments roughly where I want them. A lot is left blank right now because I am making this tutorial - not sitting down to work on this novel - but the important thing is to remember relativity.

To write a story that flows, every component needs to be relative to another. This grid system allows you to capitalize on your inspired moments. When a scene you love pops into your imagination, you can just drop it into it’s appropriate block and build around it. Not only is your note written down, but you can also see where you have nearby blank spaces to fill in. This also makes it easier to care about those missing pieces.

When you see each piece of your story as relative to another, it becomes less “Ugh! What’s my introduction for chapter 13?” and more “If I want [this] to happen in three chapters, what foreshadowing events should I put [here], [here], and [here] to create a good spark?”

Eventually it will look like this (the previous Convert Me outline - complete with strike-throughs as I had completed each square):

FAQ

What if I still have blank spaces?

That’s perfectly alright! Getting too caught up in an outline is a good way to kill motivation and to procrastinate. NaNoWriMo gives you a deadline for outlining: October 31. But if you aren’t participating, give yourself a time limit of say… a month, to outline. Or whatever works for you with other life obligations and time constraints. Just don’t fret about leaving some spaces empty.

I love planning, but I also think that some of the best character development moments I’ve ever done have been spontaneous. Rather than stressing over not knowing what to do, these blank spaces are like wild cards. You can do whatever you want. Especially during NaNoWriMo when the goal is to write a lot and fast.

Why are the grid blocks this size?

1. Because it fits on the page evenly.

2. Because it forces you to be to-the-point with what is happening in a certain moment. To me, the anatomy of a story is: what happens, why it happens, and the effect it has. This grid, being limited in size, has you thinking more about the what - the concrete facts of the scene - and less on the why and effect which aren’t actually happening in that moment.

In another way: Each grid block is the present. The what can only exist in the present. Each what has it’s own why and effect - which, in turn, are each their own what moments. The why of something that happens in one block is going to have it’s own block somewhere else. If it doesn’t, then it looks like whatever happened was for no reason. Same if the effect doesn’t have it’s own block somewhere in the story, it will appear as though an action had no consequence.

Can I do this digitally?

Yes and no.

This depends on the person. As much as I hate myself for killing trees, I have only been able to effectively outline on paper. I lose my connection when outlining digitally. I also like to have my outline in front of me (usually my arms are resting on it as I reach for the keyboard) when I write so I can constantly be glancing down and reading the notes instead of switching out to another tab.

Having the outline on paper also lets me see the entire sheet spread out on my desk and I can see my novel start to finish in one look. I can’t do that digitally because no screen is big enough.

If you are having trouble with outlining, I do recommend doing it on paper. At least until you get a better handle on it. If you are still going to do it digitally, and you are lucky enough to have two monitors, try to always have the outline open on one of them and write in the other.

What are those arrows and stuff in your outline?

I have a system to my bullet points and arrows. I suggest every writer get into the habit of making a different set of small symbols to help them navigate their outlining. A dash is a new thing. A bent arrow underneath an item indicates that it is a direct result of that thing. A straight arrow indicates what is revealed as a result of that thing.

You’ll also notice I only put a character’s first initial whenever they are mentioned to save space.

What are the benefits of the grid method?

Unlike linear outlining, the grid allows you to plot things as you imagine them. I find that being able to see all of my most-loved moments right in front of me makes it easier to ask questions about my story and build up the missing pieces.

It also functions as a timeline for your story - even if you intend to have flashbacks and flash-forwards, this grid will show how your readers will perceive it. This allows you to step back and prevent things from becoming too confusing before you even start writing.

I hope this helped! Happy planning!

[garrettczyt333-blog]

Some People Excel At Income Tax Services And Some Don't - Which One Are You?

Service tax is a indirect tax, that is pertinent towards the services which are taxable. This levy arrived to effect because the Central Government looked for a fairly easy option which is clear naturally and will create revenue to the country in a simple manner. It was launched in India in 1994 according to Chapter V of the Finance Act, 1994.

Service Tax in India

Over recent years, service tax has become imposed on different services. Its features aren't comparable to VAT, that's imposed on commodities and merchandises.

It is levied on different categories of services which are available from financial institutions like stock exchange, banks, transaction providers, colleges, and telecom providers.

Banks were the first to impose service tax on the customers. From the time of the commencement, they often times expressed service costs in the form of processing charges. The duty of collecting the levy is entrusted while using Central Board of Excise and Customs (CBEC), that's an expert within the Ministry of Finance. This authority devises the tax system in India.

For the rationale of imposing it, the cost of any taxable service needs to be the gross amount fixed by the vendor for that service provided by him.

Rate of Service Tax

In India, service tax first arrived to existence with effect from July 1, 1994. Every company in India, apart from those invoved with the state of Jammu and Kashmir, has to pay this levy. At the outset, just three services were grouped under its net. The rate was 5% at this point. Slowly, more services were brought within the whole world of this duty. The rate grew up from 5% to 8% with effect from May 14, 2003. The rate was again hiked to 10% from 8% on September 10, 2004. In addition to this, 2% education cess about the service tax amount has also been initiated. In the Union Budget of Government of India for fiscal 2006-2007, the service tax rate was upped from 10% to 12%. On February 24, 2009, with all the purpose of offering reprieve for the business and commerce sector staggering within the brunt of economic slump, the speed was lowered from 12 percent to 10 percent.

Currently, the obligation is payable @10% with the "gross amount" charged by the company for offering this type of taxable service. The education cess is payable @2%, and higher and secondary education cess is payable @1% with the amount due.

Due date for paying Service Tax

For proprietary firms, individuals, and partnership firms, it needs to be paid with a quarterly basis (4x a year). The deadline day for payment could be the 5th in the month instantly subsequent towards the particular quarter. April to June, July to September, October to December, and January to March include the four quarters. Nonetheless, payment for that final quarter that is January to March has to be carried out by March 31st itself. For any other types of providers than stated earlier, it has to be paid monthly, with the 5th from the the following month. Nonetheless, payment for March has to be made by March 31st itself. Service tax should be paid for the sum collected/obtained through the assessee throughout the applicable period (a quarter or possibly a month as appropriate).

The exclusive aspect of Service Tax is reliance upon gathering of tax, mostly via unpaid observance. The scheme of self-assessment of ST Returns by service tax assessees was released with effect from April 01, 2001. The jurisdictional Superintendent of Central Excise has the power to cross look at the accuracy of self-assessed returns. These returns are expected to be submitted after every few months. Central Excise officials are empowered to execute inspections to find the probable assessees beneath the tax net.

What are the forms for submitting service tax?

The following forms can be used submission:

ST - 1: Application form for registration under Section 69 with the Finance Act, 1994

ST - 2: Certificate of registration under Section 69 of The Finance Act, 1994 (32 of 1994)

ST - 3: Return under Section 70 in the Finance Act, 1994

ST - 3A: Memorandum for provisional deposit under rule 6 with the Service Tax Rules, 1994

ST - 4: Form of Appeal to the Commissioner of Central Excise (Appeals)

ST - 5: Form of Appeal to Appellate Tribunal under section 86 of the Finance Act, 1994

ST - 6: Form of the memorandum of cross-objections towards the Appellate Tribunal under section 86 of Finance Act, 1994

ST - 7: Form of application to Appellate Tribunal under Section 86(2) [or Sec.86(2A) from the Finance Act,1994

G.A.R. 7: G.A.R. Proforma for Service Tax payments (For payments from April 2007 onwards)

AAR (ST-I): Application for Advance Ruling

ASTR - 1: Application for filing claims of discount of cess and service tax paid on taxable services exported

ASTR - 2: Application for filing an incident of discount of levy paid on raw materials, cess and service tax paid on input services

Application

Proforma for Application for approval to submit ST-3 Return online

Form - A

Application for reimbursement of CENVAT credit under Rule 5 in the CENVAT Credit Rules, 2004

Constitutional and official stipulations behind the imposition of Service Tax in India

Constitutional legitimacy

Article 265 with the Constitution shows that no tax shall be imposed or received apart from from the power of law. Schedule VII splits this theme into three classes-

a) Union list (only Central or Union Government has the authority of enacting laws)

b) State list (only State Government has the authority of enacting laws)

c) Coexisting list (both Central and State Government have the authority to enact laws).

Registration for submitting Service Tax

An individual person legally responsible to spend service tax has to sign up for registration within four weeks (a month) in the date where the service tax on specific taxable service becomes effectual or within 1 month in the beginning of his business.

All suppliers of an taxable service need to obtain registration by completing the Form ST-1 in photocopy using the authoritative Central Excise Office.

A "registered" supplier is denoted just as one "assessee".

One registration is adequate even though an assessee is offering well over one taxable service. Nevertheless, he has to list every one of the services provided by him inside registration application as well as the field office is likely to make appropriate notes/approvals in the registration certificate.

[oselatra]

Plant of the year

The legalization of medical marijuana was Arkansas's most significant news of 2016.

Every January, this newspaper selects an Arkansan of the Year — a resident of the state who has had an unmatched impact on Arkansas and its people. But as 2016 smoldered its way to a close, we realized the most interesting player in the Natural State these last 12 months was a member of the vegetable kingdom. In approving Issue 6, the Arkansas Medical Marijuana Amendment, voters made Arkansas the first of two states in the South to legalize the therapeutic use of weed (a distinction it shares with Florida, which passed its own measure on Election Day). That's why we're naming Cannabis sativa our first — and, OK, probably our only — Plant of the Year.

We know what you're thinking: This is denial at work. Surely the most important event of the wretched year-that-was could only be the election of Donald Trump as president of the United States. Given that Trump beat Hillary Clinton by a 27 percentage point margin in Arkansas, and given the election left the Democratic Party of Arkansas in tatters, and given that the state's demographics — predominately white, disproportionately poor, lacking a college education — are the bedrock of the coalition that handed Trump his national victory, surely the Arkansan of the Year could only be the Trump Voter. Right?

The thing is, Trump's win here surprised exactly no one, given the state's recent electoral trends. Even back in October, when polls showed the Republican tanking nationally (cue bitter laughter) and the Clinton campaign was salivating over the prospect of competing in places like Georgia and Arizona, Hillary's chances of carrying her husband's home state were still considered to be nil. Donald Trump always had Arkansas in the bag.

In contrast, the outcome of Issue 6 remained in doubt until the ballots were counted. Polls had showed the measure stood a decent shot at passage, and the surprisingly narrow defeat of a similar proposal in 2012 gave marijuana advocates hope that 2016 would be their year. But Issue 6 also faced two challenges the 2012 measure did not: a rival initiative in the form of Issue 7, the Arkansas Medical Cannabis Act, and a concerted effort to defeat both ballot measures on the part of Governor Hutchinson (who was director of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration under President George W. Bush) and a bevy of powerful interest groups.

And therein lies the real reason why medical marijuana legalization is the biggest Arkansas story of 2016. The same electorate that handed smashing victories to the Republican Party in November disregarded the united front against cannabis presented by the GOP, social conservatives, the business establishment, law enforcement groups and even one of the state's leading progressive policy shops, Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families. The well-funded opposition by the Farm Bureau and Chamber of Commerce went unheeded and the Family Council's warnings of moral decay fell on deaf ears. Many backers of Issue 7 who voted early supported it but not Issue 6, only to see the Arkansas Supreme Court unexpectedly disqualify Issue 7 from the ballot on Oct. 27 due to technical deficiencies in the signature gathering process. Some feared the split vote and acrimony between the two camps would spell doom for Issue 6, but this was not the case. As for Hutchinson, his PR campaign to defeat Issue 6 was about as effective as, well, his attempt to derail Trump in Arkansas's Republican primary.

On Feb. 27, three days before that contest, the governor told voters, "It is up to Arkansas to stop the Donald Trump show. The next generation of conservatives cannot allow Donald Trump to take everything we stand for and throw it away." Hutchinson, along with most of the state's leading Republicans, urged the rank-and-file to nominate Florida Sen. Marco Rubio for the presidency. On March 1, Rubio won two of Arkansas's 75 counties; Trump took 57 (the rest went to Texas Sen. Ted Cruz). Eight months later, in the general election, out of the 67 counties that supported Trump, 32 of them — almost half — also supported Issue 6. In many places, the Trump Voter was the Weed Voter as well.

Nor was Arkansas alone. Along with Florida, which Trump also captured, dead-red North Dakota legalized medical marijuana on Nov. 8. To be clear, such measures could never have passed without Democrats and independents, who remain more likely than Republicans to support decriminalization. (Of the eight Arkansas counties that broke for Clinton, only one voted against Issue 6, and Connor Eldridge, the Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate, backed the proposal.) But if the rise of Trump signals the eclipse of the party of Ronald Reagan — who once declared marijuana "probably the most dangerous drug in America" — then the median Republican voter's shifting attitude toward pot is a potent symbol of that change. Perhaps it's not too surprising that many of the same folks who extended a middle finger to "the establishment" by embracing a philandering, aging playboy as presidential material also ignored the chorus of establishment and conservative voices opposing marijuana — especially in Arkansas, whose electorate shades a bit more libertarian than other Southern states.

In any case, the fact that Arkansans endorsed both medical cannabis and Donald Trump over the strenuous objections of Republican leaders indicates an underlying weakness in the position of Hutchinson and his party: Even as the GOP finds itself in total control of the state, its base is restive, fickle and evolving in directions still unknown.

A month after the election, as required by the amendment, Hutchinson and Republican legislative leaders duly appointed five citizens to a newly created Arkansas Medical Marijuana Commission, which is tasked with licensing dispensaries and cultivation facilities. The governor told reporters that although implementing Issue 6 "was a position I hoped I would never be in," he was dedicated to rolling out the new law "fairly and responsibly." He added that federal action could change things: "What we are doing in terms of implementing the people's will in medical marijuana, it remains a violation of federal law. It remains to be seen as to what the Trump administration will do in this regard. ... But until we get a change of policy from Washington, we proceed on with the will of the people."

Now, with medical marijuana the law of the land, Arkansas is scrambling to meet the strict deadlines established by the amendment. Along with the Medical Marijuana Commission, two other state agencies are tasked with making rules to govern the new industry: the Department of Health and the Alcoholic Beverage Control Division. By March 9, the three entities must have regulations in place concerning the licensing of businesses, the registration of patients, the testing and packaging of marijuana products and much more — a jigsaw puzzle of new rules that must add up to a coherent whole. By June, the commission is required to begin accepting license applications for dispensaries and cultivators. However, a bill by state Rep. Doug House (R-North Little Rock) could push those timelines back by 60 days (perhaps not a bad thing, given the complexity of the task at hand). Although language in the amendment ensures the General Assembly can't undo the legalization of medical marijuana itself, it can modify other parts of the law — for good or ill — if it can muster a two-thirds supermajority.

David Couch, the Little Rock lawyer behind Issue 6, said he's not concerned about legislative meddling. "The Republican leadership has kept me informed of potential bills and the bills that they have filed," he told the Times. "They've asked for my input or comments — not that I have any big stick or anything like that — but they've kept me advised of things they're going to do. When I hear crazy rumors, I'll talk to some of them, and they'll be like: 'We heard that rumor and it's nothing but a rumor.' " Still, marijuana advocates are keeping a close eye on the Capitol. Birth of an industry

Meanwhile, the work of the Medical Marijuana Commission has attracted intense public interest, with standing room only at each of the six meetings the panel has held since its creation just over a month ago.

The five commissioners, some of whom are medical professionals with no past experience in state government, have faced a steep learning curve while under the spotlight. As it develops rules for licensing the large cultivation facilities that will grow most of the marijuana in Arkansas and the dispensaries that will sell it to patients, the commission is shaping a market that does not yet exist but which everyone expects to be highly lucrative. A trade publication of the national pot industry, Marijuana Business Daily, estimated after the election that Arkansas dispensary sales could total $30 million to $60 million within a few years.

The commission has determined it will initially license five cultivation facilities in the state (the amendment requires four to eight) with steep financial barriers to entry. To be in the running, an applicant must show $1 million in assets or a $1 million surety bond, plus another $500,000 in cash; the application fee alone will be $15,000, half of which will be returned if the application was unsuccessful. If successful, the applicant will pay an annual license fee of $100,000. The five cultivator licenses will be awarded on a merit-based system according to a rubric that has yet to be finalized by the commission.

Commissioner Travis Story, a Fayetteville attorney, pushed for an even steeper license fee on growers — he proposed $185,000 — saying the high sums were justified by the business's "incredible economic potential." He encountered some pushback from Dr. Carlos Roman, an anesthesiologist and pain management specialist from Little Rock who's argued for the need to make the new industry as accessible to new entrepreneurs as possible. Roman said he felt a fee of that magnitude could "price people out" and benefit the existing, unregulated black market. "If we fee this thing to death ... we can screw this up," he said.

[content-1]

After the Jan. 3 meeting at which the cultivator fees were established, Story told the Arkansas Times that it was necessary for growers to be "well-capitalized" partly to combat the black market. "We don't know what demand's going to be, so we don't know how long they have to sustain themselves before they can make a profit," he said. "We're not saying they have to use all that cash; we're just saying they have to have the availability to keep going, because the last thing the commission or the state wants is one of these to fail ... [and] decide they're going to have to go a different route to finance this, whether that be through the backdoor [or] finding investors that are less than reputable." Story also noted that a large amount of cash on hand is necessary for growing operations because the federal prohibition on marijuana prevents those in the marijuana business from accessing credit through banks.

Couch said he's been pleased with the commission's work so far and has found most of the appointees to be "more open and progressive than I would have ever anticipated." He said the cultivator fees are not unreasonable. "I always kind of look at New Mexico as my guideline, because it's about the same size as Arkansas. They've got a little over 2 million people, we've got close to 3 [million], but if you look at all the economic indicators, we're always 45, they're 46. We're 42, they're 41. ... They limit their plants in their nonprofit dispensaries, and it costs $90,000 to grow 450 plants. They have 20 cultivation facilities or something like that. So I don't think $100,000 is an unreasonable fee. $250,000 would have been too much."

On Jan. 10, the commissioners agreed by a 4-1 vote to initially certify 32 medical marijuana dispensaries across Arkansas — significantly more than the minimum of 20 required by the amendment, which allows up to 40. (The dissenting vote was Story's, who said he preferred that the state begin by authorizing a smaller number.) However, the panel also instituted a licensing fee structure that will make it more difficult for dispensaries themselves to cultivate marijuana.

The amendment allows for individual dispensaries to grow up to 50 "mature plants" at any one time, along with seedlings. That's a quantity far smaller than the thousands of plants that a cultivation facility would presumably be producing, but it could allow dispensaries some degree of autonomy from the big cultivators. However, though the commission will impose a relatively modest initial license fee of $2,500 on dispensaries that don't cultivate marijuana, the fee grows tenfold for those that do — to $25,000. A grower-dispensary would also be subject to an annual license renewal fee of $32,500, as compared to $10,000 for a store-only dispensary. Both will be subject to the same $7,500 initial application fee, half of which will be refundable for unsuccessful applications.

In creating a two-tiered system for dispensaries, the commission was following the lead of the Alcoholic Beverage Control, which is hurrying to create rules of its own. State Department of Finance and Administration attorney Joel DiPippa told the commission at the Jan. 10 meeting that the ABC decided to ask dispensaries "if they want regulatorily to make the election" to cultivate. (The ABC is a part of the finance department.) Cultivation requires its own set of rules distinct from retail sales, DiPippa explained, including details such as security requirements and product testing; therefore, dispensaries that want to grow pot will have to meet some of the same the regulations placed on large cultivation facilities. ABC's logic is that a store-only dispensary that simply sells marijuana — but doesn't grow it — shouldn't be asked to face the same regulatory burden as a grower-dispensary.

[content-2]

But some medical marijuana activists feel the commission's decision will benefit the big cultivators, ultimately at the expense of patients. Supporters of Issue 7 warned last year that Issue 6 would create "a monopoly" by concentrating economic power in the hands of a few growers (Issue 7 envisioned a model in which nonprofit dispensaries themselves produced the bulk of the state's cannabis, with some patients also growing their own). Jennifer Lewis, who was an Issue 7 organizer, told the Arkansas Times after the Jan. 10 meeting that "$2,500 on a dispensary ... is reasonable, [but] I think $25,000 on cultivating 50 plants is completely crazy, and a great way to make all these dispensaries go out of business.

"What's going to happen is that all of these dispensaries that choose to cultivate aren't going to make their money back and are going to have to stop cultivating," she continued. "These 50 plants are supposed to be giving the little guy, the small business owner, a leg up — and serving patients in the community. Now, all of these dispensaries are going to have to go to these big cultivation centers to get their product. It's going to be the Big Five, and they're going to be like freaking Walmart or Tyson." The price of pot

Melissa Fults, the sponsor of Issue 7, worries that the commission's hefty fees for grower-dispensaries could undermine the marijuana program. "I don't think they're doing it purposefully," she said. "But if [dispensaries] grow their own, that allows them to keep costs down low. If they're selling it at a lower price, the cultivation centers will be forced to keep their prices down. My biggest fear at this point is that they are going to price themselves so high that the black market is going to run rampant, because nobody is going to be able to afford it. ... You can get medical grade right now on the streets between $250-$300 an ounce. By the time dispensaries get it — with even a small mark-up — it'll throw the prices up ... [to] between $400 and $500 an ounce."

Fults said she's asking the legislature to double the amount of plants that dispensaries are allowed grow, to 100. There's also rumors of legislation cooking that would do just the opposite: prohibit dispensaries from growing plants altogether.

Nate Bradley, the executive director of the California Cannabis Industry Association, said Fults' concern is legitimate. "The issue is that when you put caps on the number of licenses for anything, you do create price issues," Bradley said. "What you'll see in Arkansas with only five cultivation sites is that prices will go through the roof."

Bradley said he's seen similar effects in other markets, including in California. "I remember in San Francisco — the dispensaries there, they used to call them the San Francisco cartel, because you couldn't get a new dispensary open to save your life. All the dispensaries had it on lock, had a price agreement. It was known that everyone sold the stuff for $50 eighths [eighth of an ounce]. One dispensary finally fought through all the red tape, was able to open up, came into the market at a third of everybody else, and it forced everybody to drop their prices. ... In Washington, D.C., cannabis was going for upwards $500 to $900 an ounce, because they had very limited cultivation sites and restrictions on the dispensaries as well. So that's what you typically see in other states that just cap the amounts [of licenses] — the prices tend to be higher.

"If you're on Social Security and have cancer, then that's going to make it pretty hard for you, if you've got to spend $900 a month to get medicine," Bradley said. "And cancer patients might go through a couple ounces a month. Some people can afford that, but most people can't."

Still, not everyone thinks lower marijuana prices are a good idea. Mark Kleiman, a professor of public policy at New York University and consultant on drug policy, notes that cheaper, more potent weed has caused "the price of a stoned hour" to collapse in places like Washington state, which hired Kleiman to help set up its commercial marijuana economy after voters there approved full legalization in 2012.

"The price of an ounce hasn't changed much in 25 years, but the value of a dollar has gone down some, and the THC content of the pot has gone up by maybe a factor of four," he told the Times. "[There are] discount outlets in Seattle offering 18 percent THC weed for $95 an ounce. Now if you'll pardon my French, that is dirt fuckin' cheap. I did the arithmetic. That works out to about 15 cents a stoned hour."

While such developments may be good for the cancer patient suffering from pain and nausea, Kleiman argues that it's not great for society as a whole. "There are people who are going to get cannabis or cannabinoids prescribed as medicine, and that's fine. But a very large fraction of people in the places where it's relatively easy to get medical marijuana have been using marijuana a long time before they had any diagnosis. You're basically taking a big chunk of the illicit drug market and putting it through the medical system," he said. Nonetheless, Kleiman supports the full decriminalization of marijuana: "My view is that prohibition is broken. Give up, legalize the stuff, do it in a way that's sufficiently restrictive, so you don't get a big increase in consumption."

As for why increased consumption is a problem, Kleiman sees the answer as self-evident. "The main risk of selling cannabis is that people get habituated to cannabis and find themselves with a drug problem. In 1992, of the people surveyed who said, 'Yes, I used sometime in the last month,' 9 percent said they used 25 days or more in the last month. That same number — heavy users as a fraction of all users — is now 40 percent. ... Eight million people in the surveys say 'Daily or near daily use.' I don't want that number going up. About half of them meet criteria for substance abuse disorder. They say it's taking a lot of time in their lives, interfering with other responsibilities, causing conflict with people they care about, and that they've tried to cut back and failed. Now, maybe with a more careful diagnostic screen rather than just a survey, maybe some of those people turn out not to have much of a problem, but still — that's a lot of people being stoned all the time."

Ironically, although the public widely saw Issue 7 as more permissive than the marijuana amendment that ultimately passed, its production and distribution model — nonprofit dispensaries, a grow-your-own provision — is somewhat closer to what Kleiman believes states should adopt when legalizing medical cannabis. Establishing for-profit dispensaries, he argues, "makes it convenient, makes it available, and creates an industry that's out there searching for customers. ... It seems like the big difference between big medical marijuana and small medical marijuana is stores." (As for cultivation facilities, Kleiman said, Arkansas should set its fees high: "These are licenses to print money you're talking about; the taxpayers ought to get it.")

To some, Kleiman's concerns will sound like moralizing. But as more red states like Arkansas legalize medical cannabis, as the commercial market continues to grow, and as the failed U.S. war on pot slowly winds down, they'll only grow more relevant. "This is the weird thing about this country," Kleiman said. "We've had complete prohibition for almost 80 years. And now we're going to swing all the way to full, uncontrolled legalization at low taxes. We're allergic to moderation."

[content-3] Plant of the year

[thisdaynews]

Brussels eyes no-deal Brexit amid turmoil in London

New Post has been published on https://thebiafrastar.com/brussels-eyes-no-deal-brexit-amid-turmoil-in-london/

Brussels eyes no-deal Brexit amid turmoil in London

For Brussels, there’s a scenario worse than a no-deal Brexit — a deal that undermines the EU’s single market.

As new political tumult unfolded in London on Tuesday, senior EU officials and diplomats insisted they remain open to new proposals from the U.K. that might salvage an agreement. But they insisted even more strongly they would not blink if Prime Minister Boris Johnson forces them to choose between scrapping the “backstop” provision on the Ireland border or accepting the economic harm of a no-deal scenario.

“There has been no change in our position on the matter,” the European Commission’s chief spokeswoman, Mina Andreeva, visibly exasperated, said at a news conference in response to a question about potential willingness to change or abandon the backstop provision.

Calling a no-deal departure “a very distinct possibility,” Andreeva said the Commission was still waiting for the British side to make proposals on alternatives to the backstop provision, which would similarly safeguard the integrity of the EU’s single market.

“I can’t report any concrete proposals having been made that we have seen,” she said, in reply to a question about whether there had been any new idea put forward from London. “We are not insisting now on having anything on paper,” Andreeva added hopefully. “It can be digital as well.”

Protecting the single market is of such paramount importance that EU leaders have long said they would sooner suffer the brutal consequences of a no deal than allow a breach.

It is a point that many British officials have been reluctant to accept, but one that the EU’s chief negotiator, Michel Barnier, reiterated in an op-ed in the Sunday Telegraph this week.

“On the EU side, we had intense discussions with EU member states on the need to guarantee the integrity of the EU’s single market, while keeping that border fully open,” Barnier wrote. “In this sense, the backstop is the maximum amount of flexibility that the EU can offer to a non-member state.”

On Wednesday, the Commission is expected to approve a proposal that would give EU27 countries access to up to €500 million a year in disaster money to help cope with the economic fallout of a no-deal scenario — funds typically used for natural catastrophes like forest fires.

Authorizing a legal basis for use of the emergency funds would be among the final components of the EU’s extensive contingency plans, and it underscores the increasing pessimism in Brussels that it will be possible to negotiate an orderly departure by the U.K. before an October 31 deadline.

The backstop, which Johnson’s government has targeted as the main obstacle to an accord, is designed to safeguard the EU’s single market by requiring the U.K. to adhere to EU customs rules in the event that negotiators fail to achieve a new free-trade agreement by December 31, 2020. That date marks the end of the stand-in-place transition period called for in the Withdrawal Agreement, which the U.K. parliament has refused to ratify.

Despite the prospect of emergency legislation in Westminster on Wednesday to prevent a no-deal Brexit, EU officials and diplomats said that hope of a further delay in the deadline had largely evaporated since Johnson took office as prime minister on July 24.

“It seems we’re stuck,” one EU diplomat told POLITICO on Tuesday. “But I would not call it a surprise.”

Johnson has pledged to steer the U.K. out of the EU on October 31 “do or die” but told MPs on Tuesday of his optimism that a deal can be done. “Our friends and partners are increasingly seeing the possibilities of an agreement,” he told the House of Commons.

But with British society, and its parliamentarians, still bitterly divided over how, or even whether, to leave the EU, and no consensus on what type of relationship to seek after Brexit, Johnson’s expressed optimism is not shared in Brussels. “It’s very difficult to see how we can find a way out of this,” one EU official said.

Most EU officials long ago gave up on the possibility that the House of Commons could find a majority for any concrete proposal on Brexit. And EU officials have also for the most part long dropped any expectation of a second referendum.

There is also no expectation that a new national election in the U.K. will resolve the country’s deep political divisions. On the contrary, EU officials fear that a divisive election campaign, likely to entail a furious barrage of anti-EU rhetoric from pro-Brexit forces, will only deteriorate relations further and make any post-election talks all the more difficult.

EU officials and diplomats said that London was making a grave miscalculation by presuming that the EU viewed a no-deal departure as the worst possible outcome, and therefore would take action to prevent it.

They said the bloc’s willingness to stand firm was based on broad consensus among economic analysts and other experts that the damage of a no-deal scenario would be far more acute in the U.K. than the EU27, which would remain a combined market of 440 million people while the U.K. and its 60 million people would be cut off from its closest and most important trading partners.

The U.K. government’s own analysis has predicted dire consequences in Britain, potentially including food and medicine shortages. And from the EU perspective, that makes it virtually certain that most of Brussels’ major priorities included in the Withdrawal Agreement will ultimately be accomplished anyway, as the U.K. seeks to escape from the hardship of a no-deal scenario.

Officials will demand that the EU’s priorities of the financial settlement, citizens’ rights and Ireland are dealt with before talks can progress to a trade deal.

In the meantime, EU diplomats say there is no prospect of the bloc dropping its brightest of red lines, the backstop, as Johnson has demanded.

“The backstop is essential,” said one diplomat, adding that British officials demanding a fudge were refusing to face reality.

“That’s like asking can you be a bit pregnant,” the diplomat said. “The rules of the single market are the rules of the single market.”

At the same time, EU officials have expressed anger at assertions by U.K. ministers — including Johnson himself — that the backstop is “anti-democratic” because the U.K. would be required to follow EU customs rules while no longer having a say in making those rules.

The EU officials note that the Withdrawal Agreement included provisions for a joint committee and other governance measures that would give the U.K. input. And they reiterated that the backstop was always intended only as an emergency, temporary stop-gap until a trade agreement was either completed or close enough for provisional application. In the meantime, the officials point out that polls show most people in Northern Ireland support the backstop.

Barnier and other EU officials have said the current Withdrawal Agreement already calls for efforts to find alternatives to the backstop once the transition period begins. But despite Johnson’s pledge to replace the backstop, his government has not yet come up with any alternatives.

“So far we haven’t heard any concrete proposal for these alternative arrangements,” said one EU diplomat, adding: “We’re not restarting negotiations.”

Read More

[rolandfontana]

Repeat After Me: There Will be no US-China Trade Deal.

— The US-China Trade War Is and Will be the New Normal

I hate to say we told you so, but for nearly a year, WE TOLD YOU SO.  Since October, 2018 we have been all but screaming at anyone and everyone who has product made in China and sold into the United States to get out of China fast, if at all possible We say this and we set out the below timeline to prove this not so much to show that we have been right all along, but to try to convince you that we are right when we now say there will be no resolution to the US-China trade war for a very long time and you need to act accordingly.

The below is our timeline/proof of our having predicted a straight-line decline in US-China trade relations:

Way back in October, 6, 2018, In China, the United States and the New Normal we called the US-China trade war the New Normal and we predicted a “diminished future for foreign companies” manufacturing in China. We went on to say that “since pretty much the inception of the US-China trade war we have been saying that we do not see its end because we have always seen it as more than a trade war.”

Also in October, 2018, in Would the Last Company Manufacturing in China Please Turn Off the Lights, we started advocating for companies to do whatever they could to end their China manufacturing and we have done so relentlessly ever since, while recognizing that for some companies this simply is not possible.

Then in January, 2019, in The Huawei Indictments are the New Normal, we wrote how what was happening between the US and Huawei would negatively impact US-China relations even further.

In April, 2019, the Wall Street Journal quoted me in a cover story, Trade Deal Alone Won’t Fix Strained U.S.-China Business Relations, on how “There is no way any deal between China and the U.S. will cause everyone on both sides to say, ‘We were just kidding,’” and on how the tariffs and the arrests and the threats and the heightened risk have impacted companies and that will not go away.”

On May 1,  2019, in Yet Another International Trade (AD/CVD) Petition Against China, we wrote of how the United States was upping the duties (retroactively and sometimes by more than 200%) against Chinese products as a way of conducting an anti-China foreign policy on the sly:

On May 4 — the day before President Trump’s by now infamous tariff tweet — in The US-China Trade War: Winter is Coming we wrote how neither the United States nor China wanted relations to improve and we should therefore . expect relations between those two countries to only worsen. We wrote how “the United States is aggressively and unabashedly doing what it can to isolate China and to remove it from the world of international trade and of how shutting out China will become a regular thing in all new U.S. trade agreements.

On May 8, in The US-China Cold War Starts Now: What You Must do to Prepare,  we proclaimed the start of the US-China cold war and we have been pushing this position ever since.

On June 20, in Has Sourcing Product From China Become TOO Risky? we laid out the many and growing and unpredictable risks inherent in having your products made in China and posited that China was indeed becoming too risky for many who make their products there.

— China Increases Its Tariffs on US Products

Yesterday marked yet another round in a long line of tariff escalations between the United States and China with China starting the day by announcing new tariffs on $75 billion in U.S. goods. China announced it would place additional tariffs of 5% or 10% on US imports starting on September 1st and that it would place 25% tariffs on US automobiles and 5% on automobile parts, commencing on December 15th. The new tariffs will target 5,078 products, including soybeans, coffee, whiskey, seafood and crude oil. The below is a graphic listing the general categories of US products, by value, that will be subject to these new tariffs:

By CNBC.

CNN did a nice job of breaking down the list of US products that will be hit by China’s new tariffs:

Tariff List 1 — effective September 1 :

 Part 1: 270 items will be imposed with a 10% tariff, including seafood, fish, crab, shrimp, fruit, nuts

Part 2: 646 items will be imposed with a 10% tariff, including: beef, chicken, potato, wheat, soybean, TCM, steel\

Part 3: 64 items will be imposed with a 5% tariff, including: cream

Part 4: 737 items will be imposed with a 5% tariff, including: turkey, chemicals

Tariff List 2 — effective December 15:

Part 1: 749 items will be imposed with a 10% tariff, including: coffee, corn, caviar, chemicals, cars, buses, scooters, bikes

Part 2: 163 items will be imposed with a 10% tariff, including: cars, motorcycles

Part 3: 634 items will be imposed with a 5% tariff, including: whiskey and cigars

Part 4: 1815 items will be imposed with a 5% tariff, including: wood, floors, doors, clothing, CDs, TVs, lights, automobile parts, pens

We contemplated translating the full list of products to show the breakdown as between those products that will be hit by a 5% versus a 10% tariff increase, but decided that would take too much time and is not really necessary because the Chinese language lists set out the tariff numbers. See China Tariff List 1 and China Tariff List 2.

— China Tariff Exclusion Requests Have an October 18 Deadline

With its previous round of tariff announcements back in May, China announced it would initiate an exclusion request process for companies that import, manufacture, or use the U.S. products subject to China’s retaliatory tariffs and U.S. companies that do not have their own Chinese entities (such as a WFOE) should ask their Chinese customers to see if they would be willing to submit an exclusion request for their products. Some of our American clients that sell their products into China via Chinese importers and/or Chinese distributers did that and their Chinese importers/distributers have mostly responded by saying  they would do so, so long as the American company pays some or all of their attorneys’ fees and costs. Applicants for these exclusions are to submit their exclusion requests through the China Tariff Policy Research Center of the Ministry of Finance website. Each request must be limited to a single product and must identify the eight-digit tariff heading.  Exclusion requests will be considered based on the difficulty to obtain the imported U.S. product from other sources (domestic, third-country), and also of any structural impact on the relevant Chinese industries.

The deadlines for submitting exclusion requests on products previously tariffed by China depended on the particular tariff line and tariff list. Exclusion requests for certain excluded products were to be submitted by July 5, 2019 (so you are too late for that) and exclusion requests for other of the products are to be submitted from September 2, 2019 to October 18, 2019. This means if your product was on the lists for which you are not too late to apply for an exclusion.

— New US Tariffs on Chinese Products

In retaliation for China’s increasing its tariffs against US goods (which were in retaliation for the US imposing tariffs on Chinese goods), President Trump issued a series of tweets, setting out the following:

1.  On October 1, the US will increase tariffs by 5% on $250 billion in goods already subject to 25% tariffs.

2.  The US will increase tariffs by 5% on the remaining $300 billion in Chinese goods (mostly consumer items) that are set to be subject to a 10% effect  beginning on September 1 or December 15.

3.  “Our Country has lost, stupidly, Trillions of Dollars with China over many years. They have stolen our Intellectual Property at a rate of Hundreds of Billions of Dollars a year, & they want to continue. I won’t let that happen! We don’t need China and, frankly, would be far better off without them. The vast amounts of money made and stolen by China from the United States, year after year, for decades, will and must STOP. Our great American companies are hereby ordered to immediately start looking for an alternative to China, including bringing our companies HOME and making your products in the USA. I will be responding to China’s Tariffs this afternoon. This is a GREAT opportunity for the United States. Also, I am ordering all carriers, including Fed Ex, Amazon, UPS and the Post Office, to SEARCH FOR & REFUSE all deliveries of Fentanyl from China (or anywhere else!). Fentanyl kills 100,000 Americans a year. President Xi said this would stop – it didn’t. Our Economy, because of our gains in the last 2 1/2 years, is MUCH larger than that of China. We will keep it that way!”

As of this morning, the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR) has this to say about yesterday’s trade war events:

Today, China announced it will impose unjustified tariffs targeting U.S. products.  In response to China’s decision, and in order to achieve the objectives of the China Section 301 investigation, President Trump has instructed the United States Trade Representative (USTR) to increase by 5% the tariffs on approximately $550 billion worth of Chinese imports.  For the 25% tariffs on approximately $250 billion worth of Chinese imports, USTR will begin the process of increasing the tariff rate to 30%, effective October 1 following a notice and comment period.  For the 10% tariffs on approximately $300 billion worth of Chinese imports that the President announced earlier this month, the tariffs will now be 15%, effective on the already scheduled dates for tariff increases on these imports.

USTR will publish in the Federal Register as soon as possible additional details on today’s announcement.

— What This Latest US-China Tit-for-Tat Means for Your Business

We assume you understand how the new tariffs on both sides will increase costs for those who manufacture product in China for sales to the United States and vice-versa. As to who will pay those costs and what you can do to try to reduce those costs, we urge you to read Who Pays the Tariffs on China Imports? President Trump vs. CNN and What YOU Can do NOW to Reduce Your China Price.

But what should you make of President Trump’s “ordering” US companies to immediately start looking for an alternative to China.” He can’t really do that, can he?”  No, but in many respects this is exactly what Trump has been doing since the US-China trade war began. Trump cannot literally require American companies to pull out of China, but he can and has made it so difficult that they all but have to leave China. And this is what most of the international lawyers and international trade lawyers at my firm have come to believe has been Trump’s plan all along.

Every step of the way, Trump has made it all but impossible for China to make a trade deal with the United States — which is why this blog has been consistently clear that there will be no trade deal between the United Statesa and China. If the US-China trade war/cold war were really about trade imbalances, it would have ended long ago with China buying more soybeans and Boeing airplanes from the United States. But from the very beginning, the U.S. has demanded China stop stealing IP and open its markets for foreign companies and there is just no way China will agree to either of these things and lead negotiator Robert Lighthizer is without a doubt smart enough to have known this all along. All this leads us to believe that the US plan has always been to force a slow decoupling of the US and China and then work to convince the rest of the democratic world (the EU, Australia, Canada, Latin America, Japan, etc.) to decouple from China as well. In June, in Does China WANT a Second Decoupling? The Chinese Texts Say That it Does we wrote of how China wants this decoupling as well.

This latest Trump “order” does not have the force of law so in that respect it is not an order at all. But in most other respects it is. This order indicates Trump’s passionate desire to rid the United States of what he sees as the China scrouge. More importantly, it is yet another clear signal that he will continue to escalate this war with China until such time as he considers the United States to be victorious. The fact that Trump issues this “order” amidst rising recession fears only highlights how ending US-China trade is at the top of his to-do list.

So in terms of what this means for your business, it means that you must stop believing there will be a solution to the trade war that will allow you to go back to doing business with China the way you used to do business with China. You need to instead recognize that this situation is the New Normal as between the United States and China and that, if anything, things are way more likely to get worse than they are to get better.

—  What Your Business Should do Now

In tomorrow’s post, we will set out what your business should do if you manufacture your products in China for sale to the United States or even for sale anywhere else in the world. We will then follow up tomorrow’s post with a post setting out what you should do if you are doing business in China.

Repeat After Me: There Will be no US-China Trade Deal. syndicated from https://immigrationattorneyto.wordpress.com/

[click2watch]

Zooko Wilcox Envisions ‘Ambitious’ Changes for Zcash Cryptocurrency

“We’ve been working on zcash for about five years and I expect it will take five more before it reaches the level of flourishing that has been on our minds all along.”

That’s Zooko Wilcox, CEO of Electric Coin Company (ECC) — the firm behind the privacy-focused cryptocurrency zcash. He made the comments about the long-term trajectory of zcash during a conversation on the last day of the RadicalxChange conference, which took place February in Detroit.

Suitcase and coffee in hand at the time of interview, Zooko was just about to jet off on a plane to Tokyo to embark on an extended “zcash promotional world tour” in East Asia.

But as founder and CEO of ECC – the company that created the zcash protocol and continues to act as a central hub for zcash development – Wilcox admitted:

“In the two years, slightly more than two years, of [zcash’] existence, we haven’t added substantial changes outside of privacy.”

Launched back in 2016, zcash was originally created as an encrypted, privacy-enhanced fork of bitcoin. In October of last year, Zcash underwent its biggest protocol upgrade to date, nicknamed “Sapling.”

“Sapling I think was the biggest improvement of the protocol to date. It was huge,” Josh Cincinnati, executive director of the Zcash Foundation, told CoinDesk. “It makes privacy much more accessible and also opens up the door for mobile applications. That was a moonshot project by the Electric Coin Company and it succeeded.”

Now, Wilcox envisions another “three or four year long moonshot project” in order to develop zcash “in ways that are not specific to privacy.”

“I’m in favor of an ambitious scalability improvement,” says Wilcox. “I think we need high scalability at layer one in order for us to reach the mission of empowering everyone with economic freedom and opportunity.”

He went on to add:

“Even though I think layer two is cool and has a lot of potential and potential uses, I think we also need a scalable layer one. So that’s what I’m pushing for within my company and within the zcash community.”

But there are other proposals at hand, Wilcox noted. One of these includes extending “zcash to become programmable like ethereum.”

“Of course, the way we’d tend to do things is use zero-knowledge proof to make it so that execution of the smart contracts is private and off-chain,” said Wilcox.

All of these proposals will ultimately have to move through a process of community review and debate.

Called the Zcash Improvement Proposal (ZIP) process, Cincinatti told CoinDesk that for the first time in the protocol’s history new ZIPs will be reviewed by a representative from the ECC and the Zcash Foundation.

The new ZIP process

Originally, implementation of ZIPs was entirely up to the ECC,while the Zcash Foundation was primarily “a grant-giving organization.”

Last month, the Foundation announced steps to become more actively engaged in the protocol development process alongside the ECC.

“The metaphor is that I want us to exist in a two-of-two multi-signature governance model where the Electric Coin Company holds a key and the Foundation holds a key and where broader decisions about zcash really have to be mutually agreed upon by the Foundation and the Electric Coin Company,” said Cincinatti.

As such, for the network upgrade scheduled by the Electric Coin Company to activate in April 2020, all ZIPs will undergo a process of review by two so-called “ZIP editors.”

“Both us as editors have to agree on what features should be accepted as ZIPs. It’s not as much us agreeing about what should be included as much as it is agreeing that there is consensus [in the community] that these things should be included,” highlighted Cincinatti.

The deadline for ZIP proposals into Network Upgrade 3 ended on April 1 and as Cincinatti tells CoinDesk a total of 8 proposals are currently undergoing review by the editors – Daira Hopwood at the ECC and Cincinatti from the Foundation.

One of these proposals would introduce a new polling feature enabling users to vote with funds held in invisible “shielded” addresses directly without moving funds to a public “unshielded” address. Another proposal seeks to lay the building blocks for a private layer-two payment network on top of the zcash protocol called BOLT.

And by the time these proposals are approved, tested and activated on zcash mainnet, Cincinnati points out zcash will finally have its second software – also called client – implementation for the protocol. Presently, all users rely on the ECC zcash implementation called “zcashd.”

In light of a forthcoming multi-client ecosystem for zcash, Cincinnati explains that it’s important to begin iterating on the ZIP process now, noting:

“Eventually, if there’s many of these consensus compatible implementations running, you have to be able to share and collaborate on the roadmap and the feature set.”

Privacy as the mainstream

Outside of ZIP process, the Zcash network is also preparing for the activation of two backwards-incompatible changes in a system-wide upgrade also called a hard fork this upcoming October.

Nicknamed Blossom, the hard fork once initiated will increase block times on the network and will split up the network’s 20 percent block reward tax into three set wallet addresses – one for the Zcash Foundation, the Electric Coin Company Strategic Reserve and the remainder.

The aim of this latter change – as stated on GitHub by ECC project manager Nathan Wilcox – is to decouple the once singular funding stream “organizationally, legally and operationally” and further reinforce “transparency as to the structure of the Founders’ Reward.”

“It’s just meant as clean up to make it easier for people to distinguish the stuff that’s going to the Electric Coin Company, early Founders’ Reward recipients, and otherwise,” added Cincinatti to CoinDesk.

This model of sustainable development funding through a block reward tax Zooko Wilcox noted to CoinDesk has been copied by other cryptocurrency projects such as the recently launched privacy coin Beam. Beam which debuted back in January was shortly followed by the launch of another privacy-focused cryptocurrency leveraging similar technology known as Grin.

To the emergence of these new entrants to the cryptocurrency space, Zooko Wilcox tells CoinDesk:

“I don’t like their technology much … [but] I really like the communities because they’re that win-win collegial mindset, where they like to help other people, and I like to help them because we’re all on the same side of history.”

And history Zooko Wilcox explains will eventually prove privacy coins like zcash, beam and grin as the norm for all cryptocurrencies in the future. Likening the present wave of privacy-enhanced cryptocurrencies to the period in the 1990s when encryption for web browsing was introduced. Wilcox pointed out that after “about ten years of political and activist struggle, encryption became standard.”

“In the early days, when HTTPS was invented, people perceived it as making the web into some kind of special privacy web that was dangerous and that could allow lawbreaking,” said Zooko Wilcox. “Now, the United States government requires you to use HTTPS on everything that is sensitive and could affect users.”

A similar sort of struggle, Zooko Wilcox argued, is occurring right now with governments viewing cryptocurrencies like Zcash, Grin and Beam that host “strong privacy protection” as being “dangerous and scary.”

He said:

“In ten years, nobody is going to say, ‘Oh that’s a privacy coin.’ They’re going to say, ‘Oh, that’s a normal coin that you can use for all normal business anywhere in the world.’ Just like how today we don’t say, ‘Oh HTTPS, this must be a privacy website and I must be using a privacy browser.”

It is these grande changes to norms and technical protocol that Wilcox fully expects will happen sometime in the next decade. Once at the Detroit airport and ready to board his flight, Wilcox messaged me one last parting thought from our conversation – a quote.

“We always overestimate the change that will occur in the next two years and underestimate the change that will occur in the next ten.” – Bill Gates

Zooko Wilcox image by Christine Kim 

This news post is collected from CoinDesk

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