South Carolina becomes Republican's immigration reform 'test market'

South Carolina becomes Republican's immigration reform 'test market.  Senators lean toward point-based immigration system, giving workers more of an edge.


By NOELLE PHILLIPS

March 31, 2013


COLUMBIA, S.C. — U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham called South Carolina ground zero in the fight for immigration reform as evangelicals join Republicans in pushing for change.

The Republican Party and evangelical movement are using conservative, religious South Carolina as a test market for their message that immigration is as much a moral issue as an economic one. An Upstate minister and a Columbia businessman stood with Graham as he laid out his four-point reform plan in a Columbia news conference that featured as many national reporters as local ones.

"If you can sell it here, you can sell it anywhere," Graham, R-S.C., said of the message.

Graham is one of the GOP's leading voices on immigration reform, a position that five years ago damaged his political image at home and caused him to back off the issue. This time, the evangelicals have brought Graham key support that he had lacked.

Until now, most religious groups have stayed out of the immigration debate. In a 2010 study by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, only 1 in 4 people surveyed said their clergy talked about immigration and less than 7 percent of the respondents said religion helped form their views on immigration.

Continue at:

http://www.kansascity.com/2013/03/31/4154072/south-carolina-becomes-republicans.html


 

Is Giving the Secret to Getting Ahead?

The Generosity of Key and Peele: To illustrate the work of Adam Grant and his theories on the benefits of helping others, we asked the comedy duo Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele to demonstrate the art of workplace altruism.

By SUSAN DOMINUS

March 27, 2013

Just after noon on a Wednesday in November, Adam Grant wrapped up a lecture at the Wharton School and headed toward his office, a six-minute speed walk away. Several students trailed him, as often happens; at conferences, Grant attracts something more like a swarm. Grant chatted calmly with them but kept up the pace. He knew there would be more students waiting outside his office, and he said, more than once, “I really don’t like to keep students waiting.”

Grant, 31, is the youngest-tenured and highest-rated professor at Wharton. He is also one of the most prolific academics in his field, organizational psychology, the study of workplace dynamics. Grant took three years to get his Ph.D., and in the seven years since, he has published more papers in his field’s top-tier journals than colleagues who have won lifetime-achievement awards. His influence extends beyond academia. He regularly advises companies about how to get the most out of their employees and how to help their employees get the most out of their jobs. It is Grant whom Google calls when “we are thinking about big problems we are trying to solve,” says Prasad Setty, who heads Google’s people analytics group. Plenty of people have made piles of money by promising the secrets to getting things done or working a four-hour week or figuring out what color your parachute is or how to be a brilliant one-minute manager. But in an academic field that is preoccupied with the study of efficiency and productivity, Grant would seem to be the most efficient and productive.

Continue at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/31/magazine/is-giving-the-secret-to-getting-ahead.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

S.C. nullification: Are these guys nuts?

By Phil Noble

March 28, 2013

You can’t make this stuff up. And if you did, no one would believe it. But it’s true – South Carolina legislators are once again talking about nullification.

It’s no wonder, I guess, given how well that worked out for us last time.

When this nullification stuff first happened in 1850s and 1860s, Charleston Unionist James L. Petigru uttered his famous description of the Palmetto state: “Poor South Carolina, too small for a republic, too large for an insane asylum.”

Where is the James L. Petigru of today, a politician who has the simple courage to stand up and say that what these nullification guys are doing is nuts?

Here’s what has happened to date in our most recent “nullification crisis.” The fact that lots of South Carolina Republicans don’t like President Barack Obama is not exactly news to anyone. What is news is that one of their own, Rep. Kris Crawford of Florence, recently committed the unpardonable political sin of telling the truth in public when he said that his fellow Republicans were trying to nullify Obamacare not because they think it would be bad for our state, but because “it is good politics to oppose the black guy in the White House right now, especially for the Republican Party.”

Continue at:

http://thetandd.com/news/opinion/columns/s-c-nullification-are-these-guys-nuts/article_c13fb53e-972b-11e2-855a-0019bb2963f4.html

Child of Human, Neanderthal Found

by Jennifer Viegas

Mar 27, 2013

The skeletal remains of an individual living in northern Italy 40,000-30,000 years ago are believed to be that of a human/Neanderthal hybrid, according to a paper in PLoS ONE.

If further analysis proves the theory correct, the remains belonged to the first known such hybrid, providing direct evidence that humans and Neanderthals interbred. Prior genetic research determined the DNA of people with European and Asian ancestry is 1 to 4 percent Neanderthal.

The present study focuses on the individual’s jaw, which was unearthed at a rock-shelter called Riparo di Mezzena in the Monti Lessini region of Italy. Both Neanderthals and modern humans inhabited Europe at the time.
 
PHOTOS: Faces of Our Ancestors

Continued at:
http://news.discovery.com/human/evolution/neanderthal-skeleton-provides-evidence-of-interbreeding-with-humans-130327.htm

Discovery News

Fewer Hours for Doctors-in-Training Leading To More Mistakes

By Alexandra Sifferlin

March 26, 2013

Giving residents less time on duty and more time to sleep was supposed to lead to fewer medical errors. But the latest research shows that’s not the case. What’s going on?

Since 2011, new regulations restricting the number of continuous hours first-year residents spend on-call cut the time that trainees spend at the hospital during a typical duty session from 24 hours to 16 hours. Excessively long shifts, studies showed, were leading to fatigue and stress that hampered not just the learning process, but the care these doctors provided to patients.

And there were tragic examples of the high cost of this exhausting schedule. In 1984, 18-year old Libby Zion, who was admitted to a New York City hospital with a fever and convulsions, was treated by residents who ordered opiates and restraints when she became agitated and uncooperative. Busy overseeing other patients, the residents didn’t evaluate Zion again until hours later, by which time her fever has soared to 107 degrees and she went into cardiac arrest, and died.

Continue at:

http://healthland.time.com/2013/03/26/fewer-hours-for-doctors-in-training-leading-to-more-mistakes/?xid=gonewsedit&google_editors_picks=true

Murrells Inlet: Economic study finds growth along county border

By Jason Lesley
Coastal Observer

March 21, 2013

Sue Sledz, executive director of Murrells Inlet 2020, was scheduled to make her case today before the Georgetown County Accommodations Tax Advisory Committee for funds to mow grass along 3.6 miles of the median of Highway 17 Bypass bordering the inlet.

“It’s the front door of Georgetown County,” Sledz said, showing slides of what she called the “ratty” median to inlet residents attending the spring Chowder Talk this week.

Estimates of the mowing, trimming and trash pickup are $27,000 the first year with Murrells Inlet 2020 and a local bank picking up $7,000 of that tab and projecting that it will become self-sustaining within six years.

She will eventually ask for $83,000 to cover the $200,000 estimated cost of the project until 2019.

Continue at:

http://www.coastalobserver.com/articles/2013/032113/5.html

Americans Remain Ignorant of Obamacare

Poll: Most Americans Remain Ignorant of Obamacare Impacts
The sweeping health care reform package remains unpopular with the public

By Rebekah Metzler

March 22, 2013

For all the noise politicians make about the sweeping health care reform law passed three years ago, dubbed 'Obamacare,' Americans are largely in the dark about its implementation.

About 48 percent of those recently surveyed said they know "nothing at all" about whether their state is setting up a new insurance marketplace as prescribed by the law or deferring to the federal government versus just 15 percent have heard "some" about this or 7 percent who have heard "a lot," according to a new poll by the Kaiser Family Foundation.

Much ado is also being made in Washington about whether or not Red State governors are taking up the federal government's offer to help fund an expansion of Medicaid, also part of the health care reform overhaul, but the poll shows a majority of public support for the act. About 52 percent say they support expanding Medicaid to cover more low-income people versus 41 percent who oppose the move.

Overall, support for the law has not changed much since it was signed three years ago – just about 37 percent of people have a favorable view of the measure versus 40 percent who have an unfavorable view. Democrats and independents are also much more supportive of Obamacare than are Republicans. But ignorance persists on the measure, as well. About 57 percent of those polled admit they don't have enough information to understand how it will affect them personally, compared to 41 percent who say they do.

There is a disconnect between the public's perception of whether health care costs are increasingfaster or slower than usual, according to the poll.

Continue at:
http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2013/03/22/poll-most-americans-remain-ignorant-of-obamacare-impacts?google_editors_picks=true

US News

Senate embraces Internet taxes

Taxpayer advocates say Enzi's amendment amounts to a multibillion dollar tax hike on American consumers that shouldn't be tucked into an unrelated budget bill.
 
by Declan McCullagh
March 22, 2013 5:04 PM PDT

The U.S. Senate voted overwhelmingly today to endorse levying Internet sales taxes on American shoppers, despite warnings from a handful of senators that the proposal is antibusiness, harmful to taxpayers, and will be a "bureaucratic nightmare."

By a vote of 75 to 24, senators adopted an amendment to a Democratic budget resolution that, by allowing states to "collect taxes on remote sales," is intended to eventually usher in the first national Internet sales tax.

The vote follows a week of fierce lobbying from the National Retail Federation and the Retail Industry Leaders Association, which represent companies including Walmart, Target, AutoZone, Best Buy, Home Depot, OfficeMax, Macy's, and the Container Store. They argue that online retailers, which in some cases do not collect sales taxes at checkout, enjoy an unfair competitive advantage over big box stores that do.

Continue at:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-57575926-38/senate-embraces-internet-taxes/?google_editors_picks=true

CNET NEWS

 
 

Locals try out for X Factor

By Scott Harper

Friday, March 22, 2013
 

More than 6,000 people converged on the North Charleston Coliseum on Tuesday hoping to show their talent to producers of the Fox television show The X Factor.

Mixed in the crowd were many from Georgetown County, including 18-year-old Ashlie  Mueller and 14-year-old Taeira Floyd.

Because it is still a relatively new show in America, The X Factor has not produced as many stars as American Idol but both Mueller and Floyd knew as they practiced for their individual auditions, the show — created by Simon Cowell — is a hit-maker.

It is credited for the popularity of the pop boy band sensation One Direction.

From teenage girls in tutus to middle-age men in tuxedos and everything in between, the thousands of popstar wannabes were in line by the time the doors opened just before 9:30 a.m.

Continue at:

http://www.gtowntimes.com/local/Locals-try-out-for-X-Factor2013-03-22T04-11-33

New Reason To Change Light Bulbs

LED bulbs are a gigantic improvement over incandescent bulbs and compact fluorescents. David Pogue tries out LED bulbs and kits from six manufacturers.
 


By DAVID POGUE

March 20, 2013

People sometimes have trouble making small sacrifices now that will reward them handsomely later. How often do we ignore the advice to make a few diet and exercise changes to live a longer, healthier life? Or to put some money aside to grow into a nest egg? Intellectually, we get it — but instant gratification is a powerful force.

You’ve probably seen LED flashlights, the LED “flash” on phone cameras and LED indicator lights on electronics. But LED bulbs, for use in the lamps and light sockets of your home, have been slow to arrive, mainly because of their high price: their electronics and heat-management features have made them much, much more expensive than other kinds of bulbs.

That’s a pity, because LED bulbs are a gigantic improvement over incandescent bulbs and even the compact fluorescents, or CFLs, that the world spent several years telling us to buy. LEDs last about 25 times as long as incandescents and three times as long as CFLs; we’re talking maybe 25,000 hours of light. Install one today, and you may not own your house, or even live, long enough to see it burn out. (Actually, LED bulbs generally don’t burn out at all; they just get dimmer.)

Continue at:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/21/technology/personaltech/cheaper-led-bulbs-make-it-easier-to-switch-lights.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

Speak up, believe in yourself, take risks

By Sheryl Sandberg
 
March 18, 2013


Sheryl Sandberg, chief operating officer of Facebook, is the author of "Lean In."

(CNN) -- My hope in writing "Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead" was to change the conversation from what women can't do to what we can.

We need a national conversation that examines the barriers that hold women back and prevent us from achieving true equality. Additionally and just as importantly, we need personal conversations among us all -- managers and employees, friends, colleagues, partners, parents and children -- where issues about gender are discussed openly.

The blunt truth is that men still run the world. Of today's 195 independent countries, only 17 are led by women. In the United States, where our founding creed promises liberty and justice for all, women constitute just 18% of our elected congressional officials.

Continue at:
http://www.cnn.com/2013/03/18/opinion/sandberg-take-risks/index.html

SC man among leaders arrested in FL gambling probe

This undated photo provided by the Spartanburg County Sheriff's Office shows Johnny Duncan. South Carolina authorities say Duncan is among the leaders of a veterans charity accused of operating a $300 million illegal gambling ring. (AP Photo/Spartanburg County Sheriff's Office)

By MITCH WEISS

BOILING SPRINGS, S.C. (AP) — Johnny Duncan knew how to work a room. Outgoing with a wide smile and a Southern drawl, he'd drape his arm around a stranger and ask for their backstory.

So it was no surprise that during a visit to Florida two decades ago, the former pool hustler from South Carolina walked into a bingo hall and started chatting with the owner.

Although the owner was nearly 25 years older, they quickly discovered they had a lot in common. Both served in the military and wanted to help veterans. Eventually, they became part of Allied Veterans of the World, a Florida-based charity investigators said was a front for a $300 million gambling operation.

Duncan was among 50 people arrested in a handful of states last week, and authorities said he was a leader in the organization accused of running nearly 50 gambling parlors offering computer slot machine-style games.

Continued at:

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/2013/03/17/man-among-leaders-arrested-gambling-probe/dIxcHAuAubifAUy5CnMfnN/story.html

 

Capturing the Stories of a Hurricane’s Survivors

By VIVIAN YEE

March 14, 2013

For survivors of Hurricane Sandy in Long Beach, N.Y., the stories have become familiar by now, riveting in spite of — or perhaps because of — their similarities. Deciding not to evacuate, because Tropical Storm Irene was not so bad. Watching the water rise and rise and rise. Losing cars, basements, then more. Spending weeks at a relative’s home.

They are all variations on a theme of fear and suffering, of water and darkness, and Mary Anne Trasciatti wants to hear every one of them.

“In the aftermath, we were all walking around like zombies, and the moments when people seemed most connected and able to process what had happened was when we were telling each other about it,” said Dr. Trasciatti, a professor of rhetoric at Hofstra University who has lived in Long Beach since 2000. She has begun to collect oral histories of Hurricane Sandy’s impact on Long Beach, a project that may take as long as it will take some people in the barrier island city to rebuild their washed-out homes.

Continue at:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/15/nyregion/in-long-beach-recording-tales-of-hurricane-survival.html

How a 'Start-Stop-Start' Strategy Can Maximize Your Social Security Benefits

By Larry Kotlikoff


Start-Stop-Start is a term I've coined for starting your benefits prior to full retirement age, stopping them at full retirement age (this is done by filing a request with Social Security to suspend your benefits) and starting them up again at age 70 when they will be 32 percent larger due to the delayed retirement credit.

Following this strategy may make sense for married couples in which one spouse has reached full retirement age without having applied for his/her retirement benefit.

Let's call the younger spouse Sue and the older spouse Alex. And let's assume that Alex has just turned 66, which is his full retirement age. If Sue is 62 or older, she can let Alex collect "free" spousal benefits on her work history. But to do this, she has to apply for her retirement benefit early.

Continue at:

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/businessdesk/2013/03/a-key-social-security-strategy-1.html

Living With Less. A Lot Less.

By GRAHAM HILL
 
Published: March 9, 2013

I have come a long way from the life I had in the late ’90s, when, flush with cash from an Internet start-up sale, I had a giant house crammed with stuff — electronics and cars and appliances and gadgets.

Somehow this stuff ended up running my life, or a lot of it; the things I consumed ended up consuming me. My circumstances are unusual (not everyone gets an Internet windfall before turning 30), but my relationship with material things isn’t.

We live in a world of surfeit stuff, of big-box stores and 24-hour online shopping opportunities. Members of every socioeconomic bracket can and do deluge themselves with products.

There isn’t any indication that any of these things makes anyone any happier; in fact it seems the reverse may be true.

Continue at:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/10/opinion/sunday/living-with-less-a-lot-less.html?src=me&ref=general

Green Cars Have a Dirty Little Secret

Producing and charging electric cars means heavy carbon-dioxide emissions.

By Bjorn Lomborg

 March 11, 2013

Electric cars are promoted as the chic harbinger of an environmentally benign future. Ads assure us of "zero emissions," and President Obama has promised a million on the road by 2015. With sales for 2012 coming in at about 50,000, that million-car figure is a pipe dream. Consumers remain wary of the cars' limited range, higher price and the logistics of battery-charging. But for those who do own an electric car, at least there is the consolation that it's truly green, right? Not really.

For proponents such as the actor and activist Leonardo DiCaprio, the main argument is that their electric cars—whether it's a $100,000 Fisker Karma (Mr. DiCaprio's ride) or a $28,000 Nissan Leaf—don't contribute to global warming. And, sure, electric cars don't emit carbon-dioxide on the road. But the energy used for their manufacture and continual battery charges certainly does—far more than most people realize.

Continue at:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324128504578346913994914472.html?mod=WSJ_hp_mostpop_read

 

Atlanta couple missing 5 years remains a mystery

By SEAN HORGAN, Savannah Morning News

March 10, 2013

SAVANNAH, Ga. (AP) — On the night of March 3, 2008, John and Elizabeth Calvert vanished in other-worldly fashion from Hilton Head Island, never to be seen again.

If there had been a soundtrack to the moment of their disappearance, it might have been the soft sound of an air lock closing, followed immediately by the cold silence of empty space once occupied.

They were here, and then they weren't. It was if someone had airbrushed them off the landscape of their lives.

And they were, by all accounts, good lives.

John, 47 at the time of his disappearance, and Elizabeth, then 45, split time between their Atlanta home and Harbour Town, S.C., where they lived on their 40-foot Hatteras yacht, the "Yellow Jacket."

John, a Georgia Tech graduate who spent most of his career in the field of energy, managed the couple's businesses, which included Harbour Town Yacht Basin and Harbour Town Resorts.

Continue at:

http://www.chron.com/news/crime/article/Atlanta-couple-missing-5-years-remains-a-mystery-4343380.php

Crowdfunding Clean Energy

By DAVID BORNSTEIN

March 6, 2013

Alternative and Renewable Energy, Buffett, Warren E, Rabobank, solar energy, United States

If you wanted to get large numbers of people actively engaged in helping to solve global warming, how might you go about it? For years, the main approach in the environmental movement has been to sound the alarm bell and implore people to consume less, switch to green products, recycle, and speak up to companies and politicians. It hasn’t always been an easy sell. However, if the approach of a promising Oakland-based start-up takes hold, there may be another line of action that could become available to ordinary people: directly financing renewable energy.

In January, a company called Mosaic, made a splash in the renewable energy world when it introduced a crowd-funding platform that makes it possible for small, non-accredited investors to earn interest financing clean energy projects.

Continue at: 

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/03/06/crowd-funding-clean-energy/

'By the grace of god'

 How workers survive on $7.25 per hour

Slideshow: Life at minimum wage
 Mar 6, 2013 


Crystal Dupont knows what it’s like to try to live on the federal minimum wage.

Dupont has no health insurance, so she hasn’t seen a doctor in two years. She’s behind on her car payments and has taken out pawn shop and payday loans to cover other monthly expenses. She eats beans and oatmeal when her food budget gets low.

When she got her tax refund recently, she used the money to get ahead on her light bill.

“I try to live within my means, but sometimes you just can’t,” said Dupont, 25. The Houston resident works 30 to 40 hours a week taking customer service calls, earning between $7.25 and $8 an hour. That came to about $15,000 last year.

It’s a wage she’s lived on for a while now, but just barely.

Continue at:
http://inplainsight.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/03/05/17195815-by-the-grace-of-god-how-workers-survive-on-725-per-hour?lite

Key component of DNA found in interstellar space

by Kate Taylor

March 1, 2013

Two prebiotic molecules - one related to DNA and the other to an amino acid - have been identified in a gas cloud near the center of the Milky Way.

The discovery indicates that some basic chemicals that are key steps on the way to life may have formed on dusty ice grains floating between the stars.

"Finding these molecules in an interstellar gas cloud means that important building blocks for DNA and amino acids can 'seed' newly-formed planets with the chemical precursors for life," says Anthony Remijan, of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO).

Using the National Science Foundation's Green Bank Telescope (GBT) in West Virginia, the team examined a giant gas cloud some 25,000 light-years from Earth - and discovered a molecule thought to be a precursor to a key component of DNA and another that may be involved in the formation of alanine.

Both molecules are intermediate stages in multi-step chemical processes leading to the final biological molecule. Cyanomethanimine is a step in the process that chemists believe produces adenine, one of the four nucleobases that form the 'rungs' in the ladder-like structure of DNA. Ethanamine, meanwhile, is thought to play a role in forming alanine, one of the twenty amino acids in the genetic code.

Previously, scientists thought such processes took place in the very tenuous gas between the stars. The new discoveries, however, suggest that the chemical formation sequences for these molecules occurred not in gas, but on the surfaces of ice grains in interstellar space.

"We need to do further experiments to better understand how these reactions work, but it could be that some of the first key steps toward biological chemicals occurred on tiny ice grains," says Remijan.

From: 
http://www.tgdaily.com/space-brief/69845-key-component-of-dna-found-in-interstellar-space#fXRKaCBKur6w1epM.99

http://www.tgdaily.com/space-brief/69845-key-component-of-dna-found-in-interstellar-space#fXRKaCBKur6w1epM.99

TG Daily

Swiss Back Plan to Curb Excessive Executive Pay

By NEIL MACLUCAS

March 3, 2013

ZURICH—Swiss voters on Sunday overwhelmingly backed a plan giving shareholders sweeping authority over executive pay, the latest in a series of moves aimed at curbing what is seen as excessive remuneration levels at top companies.

Roughly 68% of voters in Switzerland backed the Minder Initiative, named after the businessman and politician who created it, according to results from all of the Alpine country's 26 cantons, Swiss television reported. The 24-item measure, which received unanimous support from the cantons, enables shareholders of Swiss companies to approve or block proposed compensation for corporate executives and board members.

The plan, dubbed the "rip off" initiative by the country's media, bans so-called golden-handshake and golden-parachute severance agreements. It also requires greater transparency of loans and retirement packages for senior executives and directors.

Continued at:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324678604578338171658493636.html

How a Family of Four Manages to Live Well on Just $14,000 Per Year

By Mandi Woodruff

Feb 26, 2013


In the years since the recession, the median household income in the U.S. has dropped to just over $50,000, while fixed costs like health care, higher education, and housing have only soared. Now imagine trying to support a family of four on a fraction of that income.

It's a reality that stay-at-home wife and mother of two Danielle Wagasky has lived for the last four years. And, perhaps a little surprisingly, she wouldn't have it any other way.

Wagasky, 28, lives with her her husband, Jason, 31, and their two young children in a three-bedroom family home in Las Vegas, Nevada. While Jason, a member of the U.S. Army, completes his undergraduate studies, the family's only source of income is the $14,000 annual cost of living allowance he receives under the G.I. Bill. Despite all odds, the family has barely any credit card debt, no car payment, and no mortgage to speak of.

Wagasky has been sharing her journey to living meaningfully and frugally on her blog, Blissful and Domestic, since 2009.

Continue at:

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/how-a-family-of-four-manages-to-live-well-on-just--14-000-per-year-174803218.html