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Eighteen months from now, as members of Congress look back on the events that shaped the 2012 election results, many may find themselves examining the few fateful weeks this Spring when they began the political march off the plank and into the tank with Big Oil.
On April 15th, the House of Representatives voted for a draconian budget that slashed investments in clean energy and other critical national priorities while continuing more than $40 billion in taxpayer handouts for oil companies. This was the third time in three months that the House voted to continue handouts for oil companies. That same day, members of Congress began to unveil their 1st quarter fundraising

In Shreveport, the Third National flag of the Confederacy flies directly in front of the district courthouse. The flag is symbolic of the widespread disenfranchisement of African-American jurors, and the second-class justice afforded African-American defendants throughout the deep South. Worse still, the flag discourages African-American involvement in the justice system and diminishes the actual quality of justice provided.
Recent events have brought the flag’s presence from the day-to-day lives of Caddo Parish residents to the national

When we hear about the deficits you hear a lot of scare stories, which most “serious” media just echo and amplify. The prevailing “serious” narrative we hear is that we must cut entitlements — any “serious” budget proposal cuts Medicare and Social Security. Even though they just extended tax cuts for the rich the deficits are the worst problem in the world, ever, so we are supposed to be really scared and give in. Seriously.
Polls show that the public wants taxes raised on the rich, cuts in military spending and more & bettter-paying

published by Chatto and Windus, 2011
Miranda France is well known for two non fiction books, one about Argentina, Bad Times in Buenos Aires (1999) and Don Quixote’s Delusions (2002). Now she offers us her first attempt at fiction.
Hill Farm is about English country life in modern Britain. Parts of the novel are humorous and ironic. Other parts are a page-turner of suspense that makes it a two-sit

Happy Thursday everyone, here’s my Top 5 for May 12, 2011 from Len Berman at www.ThatsSports.com.
1. Quick Hits
* Miami eliminates Boston in game five, 97-87.
* Oklahoma City easily takes a three games to two lead over Memphis, 99-72.
* Former Michigan basketball star Robert “Tractor” Traylor dies of a heart attack at the age of 34.
* Former Mets clubhouse manager Charlie Samuels was indicted on 21 counts including the theft of $2.3 million of memorabilia owned by the team.
* The Players Championship gets underway today at TPC Sawgrass.
2. Un-Social Media
A couple of weeks ago I wrote about Manchester United’s Darron Gibson. He started a Twitter account and ended it 97 minutes

By guest blogger and leading health-and-wellness expert Jillian Michaels
Here’s a statistic for you: One dollar will buy you 1,200 calories of processed garbage that will likely make you fat or sick, or both. Conversely, that same buck will only nab you 250 calories of healthy food (fruits, vegetables, organic meat, whole grains) that can help maintain a healthy body weight and prevent disease.
Bummer, right? What’s wrong with this picture? How did this happen? While I can preach personal accountability until the cows come home with regards to health and wellness, the bottom line is that for most American families subsisting on 50K a year, 250 calories for a dollar doesn’t cut it. Healthy food simply isn’t accessible or affordable to them. It’s tough to blame people for not living a lifestyle that is simply out of their reach.
Here’s another stat for you: In the 1960s we spent 18 percent of our annual income on

The season of summer flings is nearly upon us, and while we’re food experts, not dating gurus, we do know a thing or two about feeding the stomachs (and, well, hearts) of the opposite gender.
Whether you’re a guy or a girl, inviting a date back to your place, at 7pm (rather than 3am) can be both an exhilarating and intimidating experience. Dining chez toi is clearly more intimate than dining at a restaurant, which can be good if you’re hitting it off, and bad if you’re a bit shy or awkward. At its best, cooking for a potential mate (or mere summer fling) lets you reveal your talents and tastes. It’s offbeat, economical, and

Much has been written about the importance of entrepreneurship — particularly high-growth entrepreneurship — in reviving our national economy. Numerous reports show that young entrepreneurial companies are disproportionately responsible for job creation. In fact, a Kauffman study asserts that, between 1980 and 2005, all net new jobs were generated by businesses less than five years old. And a report by the World Economic Forum says that the top one percent of all young firms create 40 percent of new jobs.
If spurring high-growth entrepreneurship will create more American jobs, as I believe it will, shouldn’t we be placing additional emphasis on this strategy in the African American and Hispanic populations?
After all, these two groups consistently carry unemployment rates higher than the national

I was privileged recently to attend an evening of New Orleans jazz featuring Wynton Marsalis and Eric Clapton playing together in Manhattan’s Jazz at Lincoln Center. Each of the principals noted that in spite of all of their years of experiences, they rehearsed several days together to create an innovative and smooth concert. You might think that jazz is ad hoc and does not require rehearsals. It does, just like business performance benefits from rehearsing and

US retail sales rose for the 10th month in a row in April, but most of the increase was due to higher petrol prices, official data has shown.

Sales went up by 0.5% last month, after March's 0.9% rise. Excluding a 2.7% jump in petrol prices, the rise in retail sales in April was only 0.2%.

Petrol prices have risen strongly this year in the US, with some analysts concerned it will mean consumers have less money for other

How much time do you spend dwelling on the past or worrying about the future? These mental and emotional creations are all figments of your imagination – mockups of how reality might be different. Meanwhile, reality is staring you right in the face, and you’re attention is not present to deal with it. When you spend too much of your time and attention creating more “shoulda, woulda, coulda’s,” your disappointments and anticipations just keep piling up while your life passes you by. Let’s take a look at why we do this and how we can get far more satisfaction out of life by staying present in the here and now.
Plain and simple – if your consciousness isn’t in the present moment then you lose the opportunity to participate in the experiences and choices that are present

Last week, 44 Republican Senators signed a letter to President Obama declaring that they will refuse to confirm anyone as a director of the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) “absent structural changes that will make the Bureau accountable to the American people.”
The changes they propose — which match legislation being considered today by the full House Financial Services Committee– would cripple the bureau and slow the reforms necessary to help avoid another financial crisis.
In other words, Senate Republicans have the CFPB, and if we ever want to see it alive, we have to meet their demands.
My good friend and colleague Barney Frank called this “the worst abuse of the confirmation process I’ve ever seen” and I couldn’t agree more.
The CFPB was created to fill a huge gap in federal regulation: there is no entity in the federal government whose sole purpose and function is consumer financial protection — consumers have been an afterthought. Which explains how predatory mortgage lending, abusive credit card practices, and anti-competitive policies came to be so widespread and so destructive in the run-up to the financial

Darell Hammond was born almost 200 years after the man who must have been his past life embodiment: Johnny Appleseed. Appleseed introduced apple trees in large sections of the Midwest as America, in its infancy, entered the 1800s. His legend quickly spread for his role in seeding apple nurseries, lush in symbolism, as well as stories of his remarkable selfless and generous persona. Fast forward to the 1990s, when another man of humble origins and indefatigable spirit, Darell Hammond, was moved to provide children with the generative experience of play that had been evaporating from American cities.
Over the past 15 years, Hammond and his band of modern, secular missionaries have built 2,000 (!) playgrounds in this United States through KaBOOM!, the organization he

I’m an actor. I get paid to do something I love. For the last four years, I’ve had the good fortune of playing the driven, no-nonsense Dr. Charlotte King on ABC’s Private

A recent Time Magazine cover story addressed whether the United States was in serious decline or still had better days ahead. Fareed Zakaria saw decline; David Von Drehle was the optimist. Both authors noted several trade, economic, and education trends to make their points, but both overlooked the way in which American values will determine our future.
Our underlying values actually drive our economy’s performance. These values influence the way in which our political system operates, the integrity of our legal system, the transparency of our capital markets, the trust required for an efficient market economy of producers and consumers, and the effectiveness of our education system — all of which relate to our overall global competitiveness.
What are these values now and why do they matter? When we think of American values, we think of freedom and privacy, openness and transparency, honesty, fair play, generosity, compassion, competition, tolerance, and an individual, entrepreneurial

"Like so many others recently, he let greed and corruption cause his undoing." That was the conclusion of the prosecutor behind the trial of hedge fund billionaire Raj Rajaratnam.

The guilty verdict against Rajaratnam, on sweeping insider trading charges, is a significant victory for the US government. Insider trading is a notoriously difficult white collar crime to prosecute.

But the jury in Manhattan, made up of eight women and four men, upheld all 14 counts of securities fraud and conspiracy against the 53-year-old.

In a statement, US District Attorney Preet Bharara is clear: "There are rules and there are laws, and they apply to everyone, no matter who you are or how much money you have."

But the significance of the guilty verdict also depends on whether this case is seen as an isolated instance of law-breaking or part of a wider culture of greed on Wall Street.

After an eight-week trial, the jury found Rajaratnam guilty of coaxing a circle of corrupt insiders into giving him stock tips. The illegal information helped him make more than $63m (£38m), according to prosecutors.
‘Dangerous game’
The government case relied on wire-taps of Rajaratnam's telephone conversations. It is a method usually reserved for drug gangs and the mafia.

But the jury was able to hear Rajaratnam in his own words extracting private information from well-placed individuals about elite US companies including Google, Hilton and Goldman Sachs.
“Start QuoteAnybody who is engaged in this conduct right now is likely turning it right off”
End QuoteBill CurrierFormer government prosecutorProfessor John Coffee of Columbia University says this case will have an impact on Wall

Three top US senators have called for a review of a planned reorganisation of US forces in East Asia, including the Okinawa base relocation project.

The senators described the realignment plans as "unworkable and unaffordable".

Political realities in Okinawa, plus the economic damage suffered by quake-hit Japan, made the base relocation plan "unrealistic" they said.

The US and Japan want to build a new airbase in northern Okinawa but most of the island's residents oppose the plan.

The call came in a joint statement on Wednesday from one Republican and two Democrat senators.

Senators Carl Levin and John McCain are the two highest-ranking members of the Senate Committee on Armed Services, while Senator Jim Webb chairs the Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee for East Asia and the

Like many others, I’ve heard President Obama talk about his mother’s insurance problems during her final months in 1995. The memory of his mother having to devote precious time and energy pleading with her insurer to pay her mounting medical bills fueled Obama’s determination to focus on passing health care reform.
But I didn’t realize until reading a new book about the president’s mother that the insurer she was pleading with was CIGNA, the one I used to work for. I wish I had known at the time. In my role as PR man for the company, I might have been able to help.
One of the reasons I stayed in the insurance industry so long — nearly 20 years — was because occasionally I was able to help people who had been denied coverage.
One of my responsibilities was to advise company executives of the potential public relations consequences of certain decisions, such as refusing to pay for doctor-ordered care if a policyholder had sought help from the media or from an elected official.
I know from experience that when a reporter or politician contacts an insurance company on behalf of a policyholder, firm executives will elevate the case to “high profile” status and handle it

Lying there in the hospital, recovering from my colonoscopy, I didn’t feel how I’d imagine I would after being told that I had cancer. I felt focused and peaceful. I had turned 36 exactly one week before, and until recently didn’t even know where my colon was. Maybe I was so relaxed because of the anesthesia that was quickly wearing

The death of Osama bin Laden eliminated the terrorist who most analysts believe was the most committed to — and capable of — obtaining and using a nuclear weapon.
But there is only one way to truly eliminate the threat of nuclear terrorism. America must be just as relentless in achieving President Obama’s goal of eliminating nuclear weapons from the planet as we were in pursuing bin Laden.
Many “hardnosed” politicians and analysts consider the ideal of eliminating all nuclear weapons from the world to be “naive” or “utopian.”
I recently returned from a seminar on nuclear policy in Vienna, Austria where presenters included some of the leading experts on the spread of nuclear weapons, nuclear power, nuclear disarmament and nuclear terrorism. I came away convinced that the term “nave” could only be used to describe those who believe that we can continue to live in a world still bristling with nuclear weapons without endangering our very

There’s a reason why we say we’re dying of embarrassment. Because while we’re in the midst of an embarrassing episode, dying really does seems like the better option. No human being I know is immune from them; however, I seem to have a knack at collecting a large variety. After a recent incident that made me want to hide in a corner of the world without Wi-Fi, my writing and spiritual mentor gave me great

Short people can be so demanding.
I’m not talking about when you work in Hollywood. I’m talking about Motherhood. And somewhere between the endless diaper changes, hours of driving carpool and constant demands for snacks, you can’t help but wonder, “Where the heck am I?” and “How the hell did I get here?”
You used to be a chic, vibrant, rational woman able to complete a single thought without having to stop and say “I told you to go before we left!” Motherhood has sapped you of your energy, your joie de vive, and – much to your partner’s chagrin – your will to

I was recently in Paris and saw the spectacular Claude Monet Exhibition at the Grand Palais. This Retrospective of Monet’s work filled room after room with light-filled paintings that covered a major part of Monet’s life and evolution.
I was struck by the experience of the richness of his journey. Each room introduced me to another facet of Monet’s glimmering art, his history, his choices, his greatness and his

Philippe Starck might be the closest thing to a household name in the design world. From inexpensive consumer goods to boutique hotels, windmills, high-end bathroom products, and even a “spaceport” – the range of his work is varied to say the least. Whether a suburban Target-shopper or a boutique-hopping jetsetter, you’ve come into contact with his designs in one way or another.
With ICFF just around the corner, Starck’s new work is coming to New York: Kartell’s flagship showroom will be transformed into a “Magic Garden” featuring the