Friday, December13, 2013
CONTACT ME AT: manessmorrison2@yahoo.com


News Clips For The Day


The most loved, and hated, gun in America – NBC
By Andrew Blankstein, NBC News

It has become one of the most popular -- and one of the most infamous -- weapons in American history.
The Colt AR-15, often known as the assault rifle, has captured the imagination of gun enthusiasts who are drawn to its sleek form, portability and ease of use, as well as a mystique born of its connection to the M-16, its combat cousin from the Vietnam War.
Part of the appeal of the firearm stems, as one gun aficionado told NBC News, from the ability to “accessorize it like a Barbie doll," given extras like interchangeable optics systems and gun barrels. Its military pedigree and appeal to hobbyists has helped spur sales of 5 million AR-15s in the last two decades, with most of those buys coming in just the past six years. According to industry figures, nearly one of five guns sold in the U.S. is now a semi-automatic AR-15-style rifle

Yet the AR-15-style rifle has also been used in many of the mass shootings that have stunned the nation.
Adam Lanza used a variant of the gun to kill 26 people -- 20 of them children – at an elementary school in Newtown, Conn. last Dec. 14.

An AR-15 style rifle sits on the counter by Craig Marshall as he assists a customer at Freddie Bear Sports sporting goods store on December 17, 2012, in Tinley Park, Ill.
Months earlier, James Holmes allegedly opened fire with the weapon in a movie theater in Aurora, Colo., killing 12 people.

And suspected L.A. airport gunman Paul Ciancia, accused of killing a TSA agent and wounding three others, allegedly fired dozens of rounds inside LAX with yet another iteration of the gun, a Smith & Wesson 223 M&P-15 assault rifle.

The shootings have sparked calls to revive a lapsed federal ban that outlawed military-style semi-automatic weapons and their features, notably high-capacity, detachable magazines.

But even with the renewed drive to ban them, AR-15-style rifles appear to have attained a level of cultural currency rivaling the six-shooter that “Won the West” and Dirty Harry’s .44 Magnum.



My father owned a 22 rifle for squirrels, a shot gun for rabbits and a Colt 45 for self protection. None of them would have been accessible for protecting the house if the burglar surprised him, because they were all kept unloaded and locked up in a gun cabinet. There were no burglars where we lived, anyway. It was a quiet street in a quiet neighborhood with working class families who all knew each other at least enough to greet on the street, and often went to church together. Shooting ranges had yet to be created, at least in Thomasville, NC. Men used to go out into the country and practice shooting at targets, of course. I had never heard of anyone owning an assault rifle, as such things were strictly military rather than hunting guns.

One thing I would like to point out about this news article is that Adam Lanza used his mother's guns to commit the assault at Sandy Hook Elementary School. A good article about that family was on the Internet at this web site: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/newtown-families-blame-adam-lanza-mom-raising-murderer-article-1.1531903. With a son who had obvious symptoms of psychiatric problems, this woman owned a small arsenal of guns and knives. He would only communicate with her by email, though they lived in the same house, and kept black plastic bags over the windows of his room to keep out the sunlight. Preferring darkness is one symptom of depressed individuals. He first shot her as she lay in bed, before going to the school, which was his own elementary school. Maybe he had problems as a child with other students or teachers there.

I have noticed that some people I have talked to about mental illness in criminals will say that they don't believe insanity should be used as a defense – that the people who commit crimes are evil and “chose” to do it. I agree that the mentally ill who kill, especially spree shooters and serial killers, should be locked up permanently with no chance of getting out to roam the streets again. However, I think that should be in a mental hospital, assuming such hospitals are available to house them. Lack of hospital space has become a problem now, I understand. In those cases, prison is the only solution.

But the lack of “belief” in mental illness is something that keeps families from Baker Acting their members when they show bizarre symptoms. Often the families are too ashamed. “Madness” used to be stigmatized, as did cancer. People thought cancer was a judgment from God as late as the 1920s in this country, according to my mother who grew up then. AIDS is also considered in that light by some highly religious people today, and just simply by the “unenlightened.” I hope for the day when public education will produce a population that rejects such “conservative” thinking.

In the Lanza case, his mother ignored his withdrawal from everyone and his fascination with weapons and with spree killings in the past, as well as violent video games and the military. Some people consider that to be a “masculine” turn of mind, and therefore a good thing in a boy. We need for our ideas of masculinity to be well-adjusted and civilized images. Many social problems would go away if that were the case.




'Monster' leashed: Smirking child molester jailed for 145 years – NBC
By Dinesh Ramde, The Associated Press

A Wisconsin man who smirked while being admonished by a judge for recording himself sexually assaulting six young children was sentenced to the maximum 145 years in prison.

Alexander R. Richter, 30, of Racine, had just apologized for molesting a 2-year-old girl and five other young children. He also acknowledged that his words could do nothing to undo the damage he'd caused. But the corner of his mouth turned upward slightly as Judge Timothy Boyle recounted Richter's comments to a pre-sentencing investigator. 

"You said you feel sorry for (the children), that you ruined their whole lives. But you smiled as you said it," Boyle noted. He paused for a moment and then noted with incredulity, "You're smiling now!" 

Richter pleaded no contest in September to four charges related to child sexual assault. In exchange prosecutors agreed to recommend a sentence of 80 years. A no-contest plea is not an admission of guilt but is treated as such for the purposes of sentencing. 

Boyle, who was not bound by the terms of the agreement, noted that Richter would be 110 by the time his sentence ended, adding that crimes as depraved as his deserved an even harsher penalty to ensure he died behind bars. 

The strongest evidence against Richter were his own videos, which he recorded while molesting at least six children ages 2½ to 6. Prosecutors say Richter's pedophilic crimes began when he was a teenager and that there might be other victims who haven't been identified. 

Richter even titled one of the DVDs the videos were found on "Monster Unleashed." It showed multiple scenes of Richter abusing three related girls and separate scenes with a young boy, the complaint said. One video showed a naked girl crying and fighting off Richter, the criminal complaint said. 

Boyle hesitated to even mention the DVD's title, noting that three anguished relatives of the victims were huddled together in the courtroom. The relatives declined to speak before or after the sentencing. One family provided a written statement to the judge, but he did not divulge its contents. 
Before he was sentenced Richter, clad in an orange prison jumpsuit, offered a quiet apology. 

"I'd just like to say I'm sorry," he said. "It doesn't even feel like that should be good enough for the court."  Investigators say Richter, who was studying accounting at a technical college in hopes of joining his father's business, befriended vulnerable families and persuaded them to let him babysit their children. He then groomed the children for sex by buying them gifts and doing favors for them, the complaint said. 

"What kind of person does that other than someone who's deeply disturbed or, as I said, evil," the judge said. "Even though you didn't kill anybody, you killed something inside those children." 

Boyle noted that Richter's youngest victim, a 2½-year-old girl, was still in diapers when he molested her. The comment drew sobs from one woman in the court. 
Neither Richter nor his public defender, Margaret Johnson, objected to the allegations listed by the judge or prosecutor Robert Repischak. 

Investigators said Richter was caught after a 6-year-old boy told his mother that Richter had abused the boy and his 4-year-old sister. 

When detectives served Richter with a search warrant, he told them, "I'll save you time, the things you are looking for are under the coffee table," according to the complaint. 

Officers found DVDs and camera equipment. 
Richter originally was charged with 49 felonies, including first-degree child sexual assault, sexual exploitation of a child and possession of child pornography. The charges carried a maximum penalty of 1,185 years in prison. 


It's interesting that this man didn't try to deny his crimes. His sentence was at a level that I would like to see more often for this crime. Too often judges give the perpetrator just a few years and let them get out before their sentence is even fully served. This particular crime and the rape of adults tend to be repeated if the attacker is allowed to be released. They don't “reform” and they are never “cured.”






Holiday spending slides as wealthy hold back: CNBC survey – NBC
Steve Liesman CNBC


The CNBC All-America Economic Survey paints a contradictory portrait of consumers and of their finances, and willingness to spend ahead of the critical Christmas shopping season.

On the one hand, the survey shows expectations for home values and wages increasing, inflation concerns falling and optimism about the stock market rising.
On the other hand, the survey of 800 people nationwide (with a margin of error of 3.5 percent) predicts a sharp, 9.4 percent drop in holiday spending this year compared with actual outlays a year ago as measured by the National Retail Federation.

Americans plan to spend just $681 this holiday season, about on par with 2009, when the nation was clawing its way out of a deep financial crisis.

Behind this drop is a sharp falloff in spending by the wealthy. Those with incomes above $100,000 plan to lay out $300 less than they did last year, undoing two years of strong gains. But more broadly, overall sentiment about the economy remains muted and incomes severely challenged. There's even evidence that the imbroglios in Washington had a depressing effect on holiday spending.

Just 15 percent of the public rate the economy as excellent or good, a substantial gain from 4 percent during the recession that began in 2008 but still well below the 26 percent who thought the economy was in good shape in 2007.

Meanwhile, 83 percent rate the economy fair or poor. A quarter of those who will spend less this year say it's because their income is lower; 22 percent report that it's because the economy is in bad shape.

But 13 percent say it's because of concerns about recent battles in Washington over the shutdown and the debt ceiling. A full 26 percent say that their spending plans for the year have been reduced in just the past month, a possible sign of Washington's impact on spending.

(The survey's record: In four of the past six years, the All-America forecast has been within $13 of the actual holiday spending number calculated from government data by the National Retail Federation. But it had big misses of about $100 in 2009 and 2010, the spending seasons following the recession.)

While people plan to spend less this holiday, other AAES indicators are up. For the first time since 2007, the percentage of Americans who expect their homes to decline in value is just 10 percent. The percent of respondents who see housing prices rising, at 34 percent, is double what it was in 2010.

Meanwhile, Americans expect some of the smallest gains in the prices of everyday goods registered in the seven years of the survey. And expected wage gains seem to have fallen into a post-recession range of 3 percent to 4 percent—not as good as the 6 percent to 7 percent before the recession but better than the 1 percent to 2 percent of the past several years. That could all suggest better spending next year.
The financial elite, those with more than $50,000 in the stock market or incomes of at least $100,000, seem to finally believe in the stock market rally. By an overwhelming 7-to-2 margin, this group says it is a good time to invest in stocks.
Those with little in the market remain doubtful, about evenly split on the question.
And those with no money in the stock market by a 5-to-2 margin say this is a bad time to invest, unchanged from a year ago. This could, of course, be a contrarian signal. The last time the elite were this optimistic on stocks was October 2007.

But overall optimism on the economy remains subdued. Just 26 percent say the economy will get better next year. A year ago, attitudes were more buoyant, with 37 percent thinking the economy would improve.

But only 30 percent say it will get worse, down from 35 percent last Christmas. And about the best you can say is 40 percent of Americans expect the economy to stay the same in the next year.


As this article reports rising housing costs and poor stock market gains, it looks as though those whom we call “the rich” are not as rich at $100,000 a year as I would have thought. At any rate, they are cautious about spending. That's fine with me. I think people in general tend to overspend at Christmas, giving laptop computers when they would have given a cashmere sweater or a Bulova watch in my youth. It makes Christmas seem less personal when the dollar value of the gift is so highly valued. That's too much a product of competition.

The next thing I would like to see reduced is the price of weddings, which even among people beneath the $100,000 income level, now are running on average $28,000, according to a Slate article on the Internet. Money needs to be kept for retirement, for new babies, for medical expenses or other “needs” as opposed to “wants.” I can see spending money on travel, since a trip to Europe can be worth a college course in educational value, but even that should not cause people to go into debt or fail to save money. We need to prize our simple pleasures more highly. Doing that brings more peace of mind.





Workers unite! (So you can become capitalists) – NBC
Mark Koba CNBC


It's good to be one of the bosses -- but what if the bosses are also the workers?
The number of employee-owned businesses is growing by about 10 percent each year in America -- the spiritual home of capitalism -- but that doesn't mean the country is turning communist.

The National Center for Employee Ownership says there can be big benefits for a business owned by the people who work for it -- so-called ESOP's, or firms with Employee Stock Ownership Plans.

"There are tax benefits for owners to sell to their workers, and workers get good retirement packages from ESOPs as owners," said Loren Rodgers, executive director of the NCEO.

"The numbers are increasing because people are worried about their retirement," she said.

In 1999, there were 9,400 firms with employee stock ownership plans. Currently, there are at least 11,500 such firms with assets totaling $400 billion and employing some 13 million people, according to the NCEO.

And the growth rate for companies setting up ESOPs—for either partial and full employee ownership—is now 10 percent or higher every year.

American workers owning some or all of their company is nothing new. However, a major boost to employee-ownership came from passage in 1974 of federal legislation providing special tax benefits to ESOPs—the legal structure which most firms now use for worker ownership.

Companies are usually bought by workers through the purchase of the owner's private or public stock. A trust in the ESOP will own the stock and the debt that came with it. Funds for the company purchase come predominately from bank loans.

The ESOP trust also works as a defined contribution retirement plan—which has financial contributions from both workers and the company—that gets paid out to workers after a certain length of employment.

Those retirement plans are creating the recent push to ESOPs, said Rodgers.
And easier credit has helped as well, said Howard Levine, a partner and chair of law firm Drinker Biddle & Reath's ESOP team. "Banks are loosening up when it comes to loans for ESOPs," he said. "There's some optimism on the banks' part when it comes to these loans."

Becoming an ESOP can be somewhat complicated and costly.
"We knew nothing about the process and had to learn a lot and make some big changes to get this done," said Ann Iseley, chief financial officer of Boston-based JCJ Architecture, which became fully owned by its 90 employees last January.

Iseley said it took a lot of work to complete what turned out to be a six-year process. That included everything from evaluating the company's worth before workers purchased it, to setting up the administration changes involved with ownership.
"We have to be more transparent about performance and educate our employees on what it means to be worker-owned," Iseley said. "We have to get out financial statements and establish communication with everyone."

It costs JCJ about $20,000 a year to keep the new worker-owned system in place, added Iseley.
Taxes are also a big issue for employee ownership, said Drinker Biddle's Levine.
"They differ depending on what kind of ESOP you set up," he said. "There's a lot of record keeping, getting lawyers involved and keeping the accounting statements up to date. That's why a lot of people are scared to start one."

Central States Manufacturing has been in business since 1988. The maker of metal building components and roofing materials has 550 employees in six locations across the United States.

In 1991, the company became partially employee-owned—35 percent—before workers took complete ownership in 2012.

The long but continuous move to total employee ownership has more than paid off, said John Williams, vice president of sales and marketing for Central States. "Our company has grown dramatically over this time period," he said. "In 2010, we opened our fifth manufacturing facility. In 2008, we did $165 million in sales, and this year we'll do $270 million.

"We have the mindset that as owners of the company, we have a stake in what's happening," he added. "It's been very rewarding to see this."

Being employee-owned also takes the right kind of worker, said Williams.
"Some people don't like to get involved in the business and would just prefer to work and go home," he said. "That includes young people who might not see the advantage of sticking around a firm that's worker-owned."

Williams also said one criticism of worker-owned businesses—namely, that it's tougher to make business decisions with more people involved—has some validity to it. Central States has a board that makes final choices, he said, "but its good workers feel involved."

JCJ took steps to make sure the decision-making process from before the firm was employee-owned remained intact. Like Central States, the firm depends on a board structure.

"Our governance hasn't really changed," said JCJ's Iseley. "We kept agreements so that we could retain management with a board which has a president and officers to make decisions."

If there's one big advantage to working for an employee-owned firm, it may be job security.

According to data from the General Social Survey, some 12.1 percent of all working adult respondents in the private sector reported getting laid off in 2010. But just 2.6 percent of the people surveyed who said they were part of an ESOP were let go in the same same year.

Central States has never laid off an employee in its 25-year history, Williams said. "We have contingency plans if things go bad, but out of our list of 10 things to do, layoffs are last," he said.

More ESOPs could be on the way. Several states, including Iowa and New Jersey, have recently passed laws or are considering legislation to make it easier to set them up, according to the NCEO. Some proposals include providing state loans for ESOPs, something Indiana already does.

Experts say that employee ownership is not a good fit for every company or worker, but many who work at such firms are glad for their situation.
"It's hardly socialism, as many people think," said Central States' Williams. "It's working together to make the company better. I couldn't think of working for a firm that wasn't employee-owned."



This sounds like a win win situation to me. I worked at a union shop once and at a company that had many employee benefits including company contributions to our retirement plans and college tuition, even for course subjects of personal interest rather than merely job development. Both companies were slow to lay people off and there was a more open and trusting atmosphere in the workplace. It was a pleasure to be there in both cases, and the employees got along better together than in places where the management is highly restrictive.





Scientist sees fracking as the way to dispose of nuclear waste – NBC
Tia Ghose LiveScience

SAN FRANCISCO — Nuclear waste could one day be disposed of by injecting it into fracking boreholes in the Earth, at least if one scientist's idea takes hold. The method, presented here Monday at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union, would mix nuclear waste with other heavy materials, and inject it a few miles below the Earth's surface into drilled holes. The key is that, unlike fluids used in most hydraulic fracturing, or "fracking," the nuclear slurry would be heavier than the rock in which it is injected.

"It's basic physics here — if it's heavier than rock, the fracture will propagate down," said study co-author Leonid Germanovich, a physicist and civil and environmental engineer at the Georgia Institute of Technology. In theory, then, the nuclear waste would inch downward, going deeper into the Earth over time. [5 Everyday Things That Are Radioactive]

But the idea is still theoretical, and at least one expert thinks there are too many practical and safety concerns for the scheme to work.
"I can't see it being a feasible concept, for many reasons," said Jens Birkholzer, head of the Nuclear Energy and Waste Program at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in Berkeley, Calif.

Contentious issues
Hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, involves drilling a deep well more than a mile (1.6 kilometers) below the surface, and injecting fluids into the hole at high pressure. This creates cracks or fissures through which the fluid can propagate. Environmentalists fear that fracking can contaminate the water supply. Other studies have found that the process of injecting the wastewater from fracking into the Earth can trigger small-scale earthquakes. Advocates of the process in the oil and gas industry, meanwhile, contend that fracking is safe and that fears about the process have been overblown.

Nuclear waste disposal causes controversy of its own. The government initially planned to bury its long-term nuclear waste — which can be radioactive for 100,000 years — deep in mines underneath Yucca Mountain in Nevada, but after almost 40 years of opposition from environmentalists, the plan was put on hold indefinitely.

Theoretical work
Germanovich had wondered whether fracking could safely dispose of nuclear waste, as long as the fluid went downward into the rock and not back up into surface water.
The team used a theoretical model to describe the nuclear slurry's trajectory through the rock, then looked through past research and found that the physics of the problem had been well studied in the lab. As long as fluids are pumped at the proper rate, the heavy slurry of radioactive waste would fall straight down in a long, fingerlike projection toward the Earth's core, and it wouldn't spread outward, Germanovich said.
The team is now partnering with an outside company to do small-scale field experiments (with non-radioactive materials).

The basic physics make sense, Birkholzer said. "If it's heavy enough, then it shouldn't come up," he told LiveScience.
Many obstacles

But that is only one of many obstacles.
Researchers would need to make sure the boreholes were placed correctly, so that there was no chance the nuclear waste could somehow contaminate an underground water supply.

And because these materials will be radioactive for more than 100,000 years, it's important to find a solution that won't fail a mere 10,000 or 20,000 years down the line. And with such deep boreholes, there aren't good chances to inspect the subsurface or the geology of the rock, Birkholzer said.

In addition, the work of injecting the radioactive slurry into the borehole could be tricky.
"You really don't want to be close to this material," Birkholzer said. "The whole worker-safety issue is to me a big concern." Even current fracking projects occasionally have accidents, he said.

For some nuclear waste, the government is considering drilling deep, wide boreholes and burying the material miles below the Earth's surface. But those proposals would encase the radioactive material in thick, shielding canisters that could be safely accessed if needed, Birkholzer said.


The whole radioactivity issue is an environmental quagmire. I can just see the lawsuits if they do this. So far, the process of fracking hasn't become foolproof, and that's how I would like it to be if radioactive wastes are involved. Of course, without nuclear materials there would be no miraculous cancer cures or diagnostic tools like Xrays. Most progress is like that – something is damaged or destroyed in the process of producing something good. Maybe if the radioactive material is successfully encased in a canister it could be one way of disposing of it. I hope they don't rush into doing this radioactive fracking, though. So far, it's still unsafe.



­

Was North Korea's No. 2 Killed For Not Clapping Hard Enough? – NPR
by Mark Memmott

­ As outsiders try to figure out why North Korean leader Kim Jong Un had his uncle executed this week, they're focusing on a couple things. According to NPR's Frank Langfitt:
— There seems have been "a lot of genuine personal dislike" between Kim and Jang Song Thaek, the uncle and until this week North Korea's second most powerful man.
Kim may have been "angry that his uncle disrespected him," Frank said on Morning Edition. According to North Korea's official news agency, Jang clapped "half-heartedly" when Kim was elected vice chairman of the country's central military commission.

— Kim also may have wanted to send a message to others in the regime that "no one is safe ... don't mess with me."
Officially, as we reported Thursday, North Korea's news agency says Jang was found guilty of treason. He allegedly "brought together undesirable forces and formed a faction ... and thus committed such hideous crime as attempting to overthrow the state."

In South Korea, the Yonhap News agency reports that "Seoul [is] wary of provocations by North Korea after Jang's execution."

The North might even go so far as to test another nuclear weapon, Yonhap says:
"Unification Minister Ryoo Kihl-jae said the recent purge is likely to be followed by military provocations, including a nuclear bomb test. Touching on the speculation that the North will soon conduct their fourth nuclear test, the minister said in a parliamentary meeting, 'That is probable. We are keeping an eye on such a possibility.' "


I would like to think that Jang at least “formed a faction” to overthrow the state, because if he merely failed to clap hard enough it means Kim is really unbalanced mentally. I can imagine how unnerved the people of South Korea must be to live next door to them.

I wonder how many heads of state are actually megalomaniacs rather than just strong leaders. I've heard that a fully normal person wouldn't want to be a head of state. I doubt that, just looking at our presidents. I think you do have to be confident, to be sure, and self-accepting so that you can move along after your failures, but an ideal head of state would be motivated by a desire to improve the human condition within his country.

Liberals are scornfully called “bleeding heart liberals” by the rightist factions in this country. Obama was made fun of by the right for having been a “community organizer,” but that shows that he has always wanted to help people, and as far as I'm concerned, on the grassroots level is the place to start. So many big government fixes just “throw money at the problem at hand,” and end up making some people richer through graft. Obama's on the side of progress, to my way of thinking.