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Video: Liberated Iraqi Christians Hope Trump Wins: ‘Obama Abandoned Us’ (article with it too.)
Iraqi Christians – including a Catholic priest, a Kurdish soldier and a young girl – shared their outrage at President Barack Obama and their hope that Donald J. Trump wins the 2016 presidential election in a short video posted on the Emtedaad al-Dawlah Facebook page from Qaraqosh, a town outside of Mosul recently liberated by the Iraqi Army.
The priest opens the video standing in his black shirt and Roman collar with two large rosary beads hanging next to him.
“The suffering of the Iraqi people is a result of the wars and terrible decisions made by our political leaders in Iraq that have resulted in catastrophes for our nation and, in particular, the Christian minority,” he said.
“The US government led by President Obama could have protected us – or at least helped us to protect ourselves,” he said. “But unfortunately Obama abandoned us, and chose not to get involved.”
A young girl wearing a crucifix makes it even more direct: “We hope this new guy called Trump will help us more than Obama did.”
The images in the video are jarring. Children play with a ball in the midst of the rubble that was once a bustling Qaraqosh, Iraq’s largest Christian city with 50,000 inhabitants before it fell to the Army of the Islamic State in the spring of 2014. The Iraqi cities of Fallujah and Ramadi fell to the Islamic State in January 2014.
A man in the village also said he hopes that Trump will bring a different approach to Iraqi Christians: “Obama has never helped the Christians. In fact, he despises them. In the last 26 months, he has shown he despises all of them. But we have hope in the new president, Trump.”
The young Kurdish soldier is seen standing on a ridge with a rubble-scape behind him.
“We are here in this area that includes Qaraqosh and Bartila, where Daesh fighters roamed,” he said. Daesh is the Iraqi name for the Islamic State.
“As you can see, they destroyed these houses behind me,” the soldier said.
“They burned and destroyed the church. Daesh fighters were a bunch of vandals,” he said. “Unfortunately by the time we got here, they had already burned the church, displaced the Christian people, and destroyed their houses – leaving those who remain without shelter. We thank God that we were able help them take back their cities.”
The most harrowing images in the video show the torched-out shell of the massive Church of the Immaculate Conception. The video shows another priest walking through the chambers of the church holding a crucifix in front of him, and then standing in the church’s nave, chanting prayers in Aramaic, an ancient Semitic language believed to be the language spoken by Jesus and his disciples.
Sunday, the first Catholic Mass in more than two years was celebrated in the church.
http://www.breitbart.com/2016-presidential-race/2016/11/04/video-liberated-iraqi-christians-hope-trump-wins-obama-abandoned-us/
And it's all from the Left.
There are masses coming over the border to vote then go back home too. Very little coverage on that.
The Drug Pricing Conundrum Explained
By Lanhee J. Chen
November 04, 2016
The Drug Pricing Conundrum Explained
Of all the health policy issues that have been discussed in recent months, few have triggered as much interest as the pricing of prescription drugs. To complicate the discussion, there are a number of misconceptions surrounding the issue of how cures are priced; and, unfortunately, too little attention paid to the role that a competitive marketplace plays in driving down the cost of these cures over time.
Few Americans are familiar with the process of how prescription drugs are priced, and the role that some lesser-known parts of the health care economy play in lowering costs for consumers. For example, health plans and payers (such as employers) generally work with pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) to negotiate discounts from the manufacturer list price for drugs. Together, they arrive at discounted pricing that is passed onto insured consumers in the form of lower drug costs or moderated premium increases. While the work of these entities happens behind the scenes and may not be well understood, we know from real-world examples that the benefit of their efforts is profound.
Lower costs for beneficiaries in Medicare Part D, the program’s prescription drug benefit, is a prominent example of this dynamic. Part D has held down the cost of drugs to beneficiaries and maintained extraordinarily high satisfaction rates. In fact, it may be the only program overseen by the federal government that has come in substantially under-budget from original cost projections -- current spend is roughly 45 percent lower than the initial 10-year forecast. Market competition has played a pivotal role in producing these savings.
The average daily cost of medications used by Part D beneficiaries in the top ten therapeutic areas is expected to decline to 47 cents per day by next year, a two-thirds decrease since the inception of the program.
It’s important to note that competition in the prescription drug marketplace is different than, in say, the marketplace for microwave ovens or flat-screen televisions. In those worlds, there exists competition between products that do more or less exactly the same thing. Consumers then make an informed choice about what combination of price and functionality best meets their needs.
However, in pharmaceuticals, a new product may be the only product in its class for some period of time. This is a feature in this marketplace, not a glitch. The discovering company has a short period of time in which to make whatever profits it can from the product before it faces competition or, ultimately, its innovation becomes part of the public domain. Take the case of Sovaldi, Gilead Sciences Inc.’s cure for Hepatitis C. When it was first offered, the drug was priced at $84,000 per treatment cycle – but, within a year, thanks to competition and negotiations conducted by PBMs and health plans, prices plunged by 50 percent. This made the drug cheaper in the United States than in some government-run systems around the world.
Another form of competition in the pharmaceutical marketplace is between variations of the same product. Unlike microwaves and TVs, previous versions and iterations of a product can still be quite useful. Lipitor, Prozac, and Prilosec – some of the best-selling pharmaceutical products in history – are now available for anyone to make and sell in generic form. Once those drugs lose their patents, insurers and PBMs rapidly move patients from the more expensive brand name drug to the cheaper (but equally effective) generic. This transition is so rapid that most brand name drugs lose 75 percent of their sales within three months of when a generic drug comes to the marketplace. This expeditious migration to generic drugs is one of the key reasons why Part D beneficiaries are seeing the average cost of the most popular therapies and cures come down over time.
A final type of competition that is alive and well in the pharmaceutical marketplace exists between payers and drug makers. Drug manufacturers bring a therapy to market and payers want to ensure that therapy is both affordable and directed toward those who need it.
Take the recent introduction of PCSK9 cholesterol lowering drugs. These are revolutionary products targeted at patients who have not responded to other forms of therapy. Many pundits predicted that these drugs would strain budgets in the same way that Sovaldi did when it first came on the market. The reality has been quite different. In fact, the uptake of these drugs has been quite slow, primarily because payers are insisting that doctors demonstrate patient need for a medicine before they will pay for it.
Finally, overall trends in drug expenditures are good evidence that the marketplace is working to help control costs. While the last few years have seen some short-term spikes in drug expenditures, pharmaceutical cost growth has now come back in line with cost growth in other parts of the health care economy.
Although there continues to be significant discussion of drug pricing (particularly during this season of political campaigns), the reality is that employers, PBMs, and health plans are working to ensure a competitive marketplace and hold down costs for consumers. At the same time, the U.S. continues to be a center for pharmaceutical innovation and a foremost source of new cures that improve human quality of life and longevity. While some are calling for additional regulatory or legislative action to deal with drug costs, this only threatens innovation while interfering with a marketplace that is already holding down costs and ensuring broad access to the therapies and cures that Americans need.
Lanhee J. Chen, Ph.D. is the David and Diane Steffy Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution and the Director of Domestic Policy Studies in the Public Policy Program at Stanford University. He was a senior appointee at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services during the George W. Bush Administration.
http://www.realclearhealth.com/articles/2016/11/04/the_drug_pricing_conundrum_explained_110224.html
You're on the money (no pun intended):
S&P 500 in longest losing streak in 8 years
The Associated Press 4:49 p.m. EDT November 3, 2016
AP FINANCIAL MARKETS WALL STREET F USA NY
Stocks shifted into malaise mode Thursday afternoon with the looming election, sending the S&P 500 down for an eighth straight day.
That's the longest losing streak for the broad market index since 2008, CNBC reported.
All three major indexes fell for the day after holding onto gains for at least much of the morning. The S&P 500's loss was 0.4%, while the Dow Jones industrial average and the Nasdaq composite fell 0.2% and 0.9%, respectively.
Investors remain nervous about the outcome of the presidential election between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump next week as polls tighten.
As expected, the Federal Reserve left interest rate policy unchanged Wednesday but kept the door open for a rate hike at its December meeting.
U.S. benchmark oil futures slipped again, falling 1.5% to $44.65 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
European markets declined. Germany’s DAX lost 0.4% and France’s CAC dipped 0.1%. Britain’s FTSE 100 skidded 0.8%, as the Bank of England left its key interest rate unchanged as expected and raised growth forecasts.
The British pound jumped after a court ruled that parliament must vote before the government can trigger a two-year countdown to Britain’s exit from the European Union.The battered British currency rose a strong 1.5% to $1.24 after a court ruled that Prime Minister Theresa May must hold a vote in parliament over leaving the EU. May had maintained that the government could give the EU notice it is leaving without such a vote, after voters chose the “leave” option in a referendum in June.
A vote in parliament was seen as making it less likely that the government would wind up with a “hard” exit involving loss of access to tariff-free business with the EU, the country’s largest trading partner. The government can appeal the court decision.
In Asia, Australia’s S&P ASX/200 fell 0.1% and Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index dropped 0.6%. Shares also fell in Southeast Asia and Taiwan. The Shanghai Composite bucked the trend to rise 0.8%, and South Korea’s Kospi was up 0.3%. Japan’s market was closed for a holiday.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/markets/2.../93230034/
Good articles on webpage today: National Journal
http://go.nationaljournal.com/index.php/email/emailWebview?mkt_tok=eyJpIjoiTXpVNE0yVTJNREUwWW1RNCIsInQiOiJINTY2WHZOVGJJdlRZUSt6V0toWXNRT0xGbjhheTVWMU5TUEJSQWdhN3RDdkhnOVNsaWtFQk1YNDdmazE3VjYxSkdxalRldmVRaTVjSG53MjFRN1FyaHdSSVZBUTdwZ3JwV01KNmEyVXFobz0ifQ%3D%3D
Somehow, it will be the police's fault. Wonder if the bad guy was legal, if either were. Funny that is a almost automatic question that pops to mind as if it is actually 'normal'. If he's already voted....... do they still count the ballot?....
Lots of companies that thought they could cash in. We'll see how that works out. If it's going to be big money, anticipate it to be regulated and 'somehow' end up with large, already established, corporations. Heck, we even have a Presidential candidate involved trying his hand at it. Why not get the best, bring the Colombians in on it. A little Panama Red?
And then the public and media hassles the police for being too aggressive. War is on upholding the law. Our doper and chief has a soft heart for his former drug dealers that got busted that temporally cut off his stash access. Really, all he had to do was go to some of the local canyons and see growing everywhere.
Revenue Up in Smoke
Nov. 2, 2016
After the historic legalization of recreational marijuana use in the states of Colorado and Washington in 2012, five more states have legalization initiatives on their ballots. Many supporters of marijuana legalization have claimed it will cut down on crime and therefore decrease the burden on state budgets. Often glamorizing weed as a mostly harmless substance, proponents contend that legalization of marijuana would create a new revenue source for state governments as licensing fees, taxes and fewer funds spent on enforcement.
The problem is that recent studies suggest the opposite is the case. Among black and Hispanic youth in Colorado, drug offenses rose by 58% and 29% respectively since legalization. In Washington, pot-related traffic deaths have almost doubled. Statics show that nearly one in six youths who try pot will become addicted, which is a higher rate than for alcohol. Calls to poison control for marijuana-related overdoses in Colorado have shot up 108% since 2012. As an increasing number of studies are being conducted on the effects of recreational pot use, some early findings are quite alarming, showing lowered IQ levels and increased risks for psychotic schizophrenic episodes.
What of the supposed marijuana-created revenue for state governments? Well, so far at best it has been a zero sum amount. It seems the negative social impact of the legalization of marijuana continues to outweigh its benefits. States may be wise to hold off on opening Pandora’s box of pot legalization before the fuller impact is better known.
https://patriotpost.us/posts/45700
Good photo of Obama
Revenue Up in Smoke
Nov. 2, 2016
After the historic legalization of recreational marijuana use in the states of Colorado and Washington in 2012, five more states have legalization initiatives on their ballots. Many supporters of marijuana legalization have claimed it will cut down on crime and therefore decrease the burden on state budgets. Often glamorizing weed as a mostly harmless substance, proponents contend that legalization of marijuana would create a new revenue source for state governments as licensing fees, taxes and fewer funds spent on enforcement.
The problem is that recent studies suggest the opposite is the case. Among black and Hispanic youth in Colorado, drug offenses rose by 58% and 29% respectively since legalization. In Washington, pot-related traffic deaths have almost doubled. Statics show that nearly one in six youths who try pot will become addicted, which is a higher rate than for alcohol. Calls to poison control for marijuana-related overdoses in Colorado have shot up 108% since 2012. As an increasing number of studies are being conducted on the effects of recreational pot use, some early findings are quite alarming, showing lowered IQ levels and increased risks for psychotic schizophrenic episodes.
What of the supposed marijuana-created revenue for state governments? Well, so far at best it has been a zero sum amount. It seems the negative social impact of the legalization of marijuana continues to outweigh its benefits. States may be wise to hold off on opening Pandora’s box of pot legalization before the fuller impact is better known.
https://patriotpost.us/posts/45700
Good photo of Obama
Why Do American Companies Leave America?
https://www.prageru.com/courses/economics/why-do-american-companies-leave-america
Hillary funded by same money as ISIS
Why Do American Companies Leave America?
https://www.prageru.com/courses/economics/why-do-american-companies-leave-america
Hillary sold weapons to ISIS:
Hillary funded by same money as ISIS
Differences?
Does it Feel Good or Does it Do Good? Left vs. Right #2
https://www.prageru.com/courses/left-and-right-differences/does-it-feel-good-or-does-it-do-good-left-vs-right-2
Differences?
Does it Feel Good or Does it Do Good? Left vs. Right #2
https://www.prageru.com/courses/left-and-right-differences/does-it-feel-good-or-does-it-do-good-left-vs-right-2
Democratic Socialism is Still Socialism
https://www.prageru.com/courses/political-science/democratic-socialism-still-socialism
Democratic Socialism is Still Socialism
https://www.prageru.com/courses/political-science/democratic-socialism-still-socialism
Desperate Democrats need to stop lashing Comey now. He had no choice. The ONLY people to blame for this email mess are Huma, Bill and most of all Hillary
Imagine, for a moment, that you’re FBI director James Comey?
It’s 11 days before the most contentious, divisive, brutal election in US history.
Your department has been working for weeks on an investigation into criminal allegations surrounding a DailyMail.com scoop about Anthony Weiner sexting a 15-year-old girl.
They report to you that during the investigation, they have discovered a laptop containing over 650,000 emails.
It was a laptop shared between Weiner and his wife Huma Abedin, Hillary Clinton’s right hand woman.
An inspection of the metadata of that laptop suggests ‘thousands’ of those emails were to and from Clinton’s now infamous private email server, some possibly containing classified information.
But you can’t read those emails without a warrant and if you seek that warrant, it will inevitably leak to the media.
What, if you’re Mr Comey, do you do?
After all, he told Congress he would alert them to any development which gave him good cause to reopen the original investigation into Clinton’s emails.
This, by any yardstick, was surely such a development?
Comey therefore had two choices.
He either waited until after the election next Tuesday before saying anything.
Or, he alerted Congress immediately.
Either way, public opprobrium lay.
If he waited, and Hillary won, and then it transpired there was stuff on this laptop which materially changes the findings of the original FBI investigation, all hell would have broken loose.
Donald Trump, already raging at a ‘rigged system’, would have exploded with fury and this time with very good reason.
The media, too, would have crucified both Comey and Clinton.
America’s new President would thus be instantly mired in a massive scandal of potentially impeachable proportions.
So instead, Comey went public with the information by writing to Congress revealing the existence of the laptop and the potential link to Clinton’s private email server.
He made it clear he didn’t know what was in the emails yet, but that they ‘appear to be pertinent’ to the original investigation.
That is self-evidently true.
If the metadata indicates ‘thousands’ of the new emails flowed to and from Clinton’s private server, and were written or received by her top aide, then of course they are ‘pertinent’ and of course they must be investigated.
This is not partisan politics at play, as the Democrats are screaming, this is perfectly normal and reasonable police work.
Comey knew that by going public, he’d be damned anyway.
The Justice Department, which oversees the FBI, explicitly forbids employees from interfering with elections and urges employees to avoid even the appearance of interfering with elections.
He concluded that the alternative option, supressing this information until after November 8 would be even worse, and I completely agree with him.
Of course, it’s important to note that the emails may NOT materially change the findings of the original investigation.
There might be nothing new in any of them.
Although, on the other hand, they might contain some of the tens of thousands emails that have mysteriously gone missing from the server.
And even if they don't, Huma still must answer whether her discredited and damaged husband - who was not even a lowly Clinton staffer - potentially had access to the private server.
Nobody knows.
But how can anyone in a neutral political position not judge that they must be investigated, nor that they ‘seem pertinent’ to the original investigation?
How can anything be more ‘pertinent’ than the emergence of a new electronic device appearing to contain thousands of emails between Hillary and Huma, using the very private server that caused all the trouble in the first place?
So I don’t blame Comey at all. He had no choice.
When it comes to the blame game, I would suggest there are three people a lot more culpable.
First, Huma Abedin for not informing the FBI about this laptop during the original investigation. She apparently claims she didn’t know any of her emails were on it. Really? Well how the hell did they get there then?
Ms Abedin has very serious questions to answer here and if she has deliberately suppressed materially relevant evidence from the FBI then she could face very serious CRIMINAL questions.
Second, former president Bill Clinton for that ridiculous stunt he pulled on Attorney General Loretta Lynch at a private airstrip in Phoenix days before Comey’s verdict into the original investigation. What on earth was he thinking compromising the integrity of the investigation in that way? People can make their own minds up but it stinks. The result of it, though, was that Lynch effectively recused herself from the investigation, handing full responsibility to Comey. If she hadn’t been forced to do that, then we may not be in this new situation.
She’s the one who deliberately set up a private email server while she was Secretary of State in flagrant breach of the rules of government email usage.
She’s the one who exchanged classified information in those emails. She’s the one who, when the balloon of this scandal went up, then deleted 33,000 of those emails, raising a huge cloud of suspicion over what they contained.
She’s the one who misled everyone repeatedly whenever she talked about this scandal.
Hillary Clinton made her secret email bed and she lied in it.
Now she is paying the consequences and it may cost her the White House.
She’s the one to blame not James Comey.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3889698/PIERS-MORGAN-Desperate-Democrats-need-stop-lashing-Comey-no-choice-people-blame-email-mess-Huma-Bill-Hillary.html#ixzz4OlfDZ0Sx
Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook
Desperate Democrats need to stop lashing Comey now. He had no choice. The ONLY people to blame for this email mess are Huma, Bill and most of all Hillary
Imagine, for a moment, that you’re FBI director James Comey?
It’s 11 days before the most contentious, divisive, brutal election in US history.
Your department has been working for weeks on an investigation into criminal allegations surrounding a DailyMail.com scoop about Anthony Weiner sexting a 15-year-old girl.
They report to you that during the investigation, they have discovered a laptop containing over 650,000 emails.
It was a laptop shared between Weiner and his wife Huma Abedin, Hillary Clinton’s right hand woman.
An inspection of the metadata of that laptop suggests ‘thousands’ of those emails were to and from Clinton’s now infamous private email server, some possibly containing classified information.
But you can’t read those emails without a warrant and if you seek that warrant, it will inevitably leak to the media.
What, if you’re Mr Comey, do you do?
After all, he told Congress he would alert them to any development which gave him good cause to reopen the original investigation into Clinton’s emails.
This, by any yardstick, was surely such a development?
Comey therefore had two choices.
He either waited until after the election next Tuesday before saying anything.
Or, he alerted Congress immediately.
Either way, public opprobrium lay.
If he waited, and Hillary won, and then it transpired there was stuff on this laptop which materially changes the findings of the original FBI investigation, all hell would have broken loose.
Donald Trump, already raging at a ‘rigged system’, would have exploded with fury and this time with very good reason.
The media, too, would have crucified both Comey and Clinton.
America’s new President would thus be instantly mired in a massive scandal of potentially impeachable proportions.
So instead, Comey went public with the information by writing to Congress revealing the existence of the laptop and the potential link to Clinton’s private email server.
He made it clear he didn’t know what was in the emails yet, but that they ‘appear to be pertinent’ to the original investigation.
That is self-evidently true.
If the metadata indicates ‘thousands’ of the new emails flowed to and from Clinton’s private server, and were written or received by her top aide, then of course they are ‘pertinent’ and of course they must be investigated.
This is not partisan politics at play, as the Democrats are screaming, this is perfectly normal and reasonable police work.
Comey knew that by going public, he’d be damned anyway.
The Justice Department, which oversees the FBI, explicitly forbids employees from interfering with elections and urges employees to avoid even the appearance of interfering with elections.
He concluded that the alternative option, supressing this information until after November 8 would be even worse, and I completely agree with him.
Of course, it’s important to note that the emails may NOT materially change the findings of the original investigation.
There might be nothing new in any of them.
Although, on the other hand, they might contain some of the tens of thousands emails that have mysteriously gone missing from the server.
And even if they don't, Huma still must answer whether her discredited and damaged husband - who was not even a lowly Clinton staffer - potentially had access to the private server.
Nobody knows.
But how can anyone in a neutral political position not judge that they must be investigated, nor that they ‘seem pertinent’ to the original investigation?
How can anything be more ‘pertinent’ than the emergence of a new electronic device appearing to contain thousands of emails between Hillary and Huma, using the very private server that caused all the trouble in the first place?
So I don’t blame Comey at all. He had no choice.
When it comes to the blame game, I would suggest there are three people a lot more culpable.
First, Huma Abedin for not informing the FBI about this laptop during the original investigation. She apparently claims she didn’t know any of her emails were on it. Really? Well how the hell did they get there then?
Ms Abedin has very serious questions to answer here and if she has deliberately suppressed materially relevant evidence from the FBI then she could face very serious CRIMINAL questions.
Second, former president Bill Clinton for that ridiculous stunt he pulled on Attorney General Loretta Lynch at a private airstrip in Phoenix days before Comey’s verdict into the original investigation. What on earth was he thinking compromising the integrity of the investigation in that way? People can make their own minds up but it stinks. The result of it, though, was that Lynch effectively recused herself from the investigation, handing full responsibility to Comey. If she hadn’t been forced to do that, then we may not be in this new situation.
She’s the one who deliberately set up a private email server while she was Secretary of State in flagrant breach of the rules of government email usage.
She’s the one who exchanged classified information in those emails. She’s the one who, when the balloon of this scandal went up, then deleted 33,000 of those emails, raising a huge cloud of suspicion over what they contained.
She’s the one who misled everyone repeatedly whenever she talked about this scandal.
Hillary Clinton made her secret email bed and she lied in it.
Now she is paying the consequences and it may cost her the White House.
She’s the one to blame not James Comey.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3889698/PIERS-MORGAN-Desperate-Democrats-need-stop-lashing-Comey-no-choice-people-blame-email-mess-Huma-Bill-Hillary.html#ixzz4OlfDZ0Sx
Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook
Louisiana Dims in full campaign season push:
***Democrat Mayor..Encourages..Voter Fraud.. :+(
Get out the vote:
Wait for the get out the vote reports to surface.
Knock, knock.....
Knock, knock....
Agree and we'll both watch at those that can't handle the choppy waters wish they had the nerve.
This building, if it falls, could hit the Bay Bridge.
San Francisco's 58-story Millennium Tower is upscale, but literally sinking fast
SAN FRANCISCO — Looking back, Pamela Buttery can recall an early clue that something could be amiss at the luxury high-rise where she's lived for the past six years.
A golfer, she sometimes practiced her putting indoors, tapping the ball toward a portable cup on the hardwood floor in her living room.
If Buttery missed, the ball would carom off the wall and strangely change course, swerving right and gaining momentum as it rolled toward the northwest corner of her condo. At which point, she said, her cat Maximus would "go racing after the ball."
It became a game between them, but it also presaged what in the past several months has become a sobering reality for the retired real estate developer and other residents of the 58-story Millennium Tower:
The tower is sinking — 16 inches so far, with projections that the amount could double over time.
And as it sinks, the building also has begun to list ever so slightly — an estimated 2 to 4 inches at the structure's base and 14 inches at the top, where Buttery's unit sits at the northwest corner of the next-to-highest floor.
"The more it sinks unevenly, the more it is going to tilt," Buttery has been told.
Is she nervous?
"I am not so much nervous as I am distressed," the 76-year-old London native said. "This is not going to be fixed in my lifetime, and it is distressing to not know where I am going to live, and die, basically."
———
The story of the sinking tower broke in early August, with a front-page report in the San Francisco Chronicle. Since then, it has been a news staple, playing out along a number of narrative plot lines — an engineering whodunit, a slow-motion real estate calamity, and also a civic cautionary tale.
Fueled by a high tech boom and a resultant runaway real estate market — and following the removal of a double-deck highway that ran along the waterfront but was badly damaged by the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake — a forest of towers has been rising up in San Francisco, especially in the downtown district known as South of Market.
"As you know," Democratic U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, a former mayor of the city, wrote in August to current Mayor Ed Lee, "I have had great concern, generally, with the recent residential and commercial density increase in San Francisco, as well as concern about the City's preparedness for a large scale seismic event.
"Now, to add to that mix of concern, I am left wondering if the City's building code played any role in allowing this sinking and tilting to happen, and whether or not other approved buildings are suffering the same fate."
While a paper trail of concern about potential settling leads back to early 2009, even before the Millennium Tower was ready for occupancy, most residents of the building knew nothing about any issue with the foundation until they were summoned in early May to a private meeting in a lounge on the tower's club level.
Identification was checked at the door. Residents were told that what they were to hear must be kept a secret. A lawyer introduced a structural engineer who delivered, as Buttery and others recall, a simple statement that startled the packed room:
"The Millennium building is too heavy for its foundation."
Not only had the tower settled by far more than the 4 to 6 inches originally forecast for the life of the building but, "most importantly," recalled Jerry Dodson, a retired patent lawyer and a vocal critic of the tower's builders, the engineer said "it wasn't stopping."
Dodson has since heard estimates that the building could sink anywhere from 30 to 48 inches, "but nobody really knows."
Condo owner Paula Pretlow, a retired financial adviser, was at the meeting. She had watched for years from a nearby office as the tower rose, floor by floor, from a pit in the ground to become a gleaming edifice of concrete and glass — said to be the heaviest high-rise west of the Mississippi.
The tower was being erected on landfill that previously was part of the bay — like much of the eastern flank of the San Francisco Peninsula, and as a prospective buyer, Pretlow took hardhat tours of the building in progress, asking what she thought were all the right questions about the construction quality and safety.
In September, 2010, Pretlow moved in, one of the first occupants on her floor. She leased at first, and then sold her suburban home and purchased the unit outright.
"Never, ever would I have plunked down money in that building had I been given any hint something was wrong," she said. "I was not told the whole truth, and to me that is the same as being lied to."
The timing of the May disclosure was particularly harsh in Pretlow's case. The chaos of constant, industrial-scale construction in the surrounding neighborhood had convinced her the time had come to sell her unit and move somewhere more serene. She had lined up a real estate agent with the intent of listing her condo in June.
Then came the May meeting.
"I felt anger. I felt that I had been duped," Pretlow said. "And I also had a feeling that I should have got out a year ago. I felt, I am stuck, how many years longer am I going to be stuck in this building?"
Dodson and several other condo owners in the tower blame Millennium Partners, the tower builders, for not driving foundational piles 200 feet to bedrock, as was done with a 61-story skyscraper going up across the street. Instead, the builders relied on a concrete foundation attached to piles that were sunk into firmly compacted sand and mud about 60 to 90 feet below.
Such foundations are not uncommon in San Francisco, even on land fill — although many of the buildings so anchored are constructed with lighter, steel frames.
Millennium Partners, in turn, blames a massive construction project underway adjacent to the tower.
In preparing to build a multi-agency transit center for rail and bus, the tower builders maintain, the Transbay Joint Powers Authority has lowered the underground water table beneath the tower, causing settlement.
Millennium Partners and the Transbay authority disagree with equal vigor.
High-rise construction projects also create piles of paper work, and since the disclosure no shortage of conflicting engineer studies and internal documents have come to light. And even more geological surveys are in the works.
Needless to say, the lawyers are circling.
———
The initial headlines described Millennium Tower as a building for the "rich and famous." And, yes, professional sports stars and high tech heavy hitters — former 49ers quarterback Joe Montana, the late venture capitalist Thomas Perkins — have called it home. And, yes, the cars brought forward by the building valets trend toward Range Rovers and Teslas and Audis.
But there are also longtime suburban homeowners, like Pretlow, who sold in an infamously inflated market and invested in tower living.
"You hear about the rich and famous," said Helena Geng, an immigrant from China who moved into the tower with her husband in 2011, "but to us, this was a large chunk of our money."
Geng's connection to the building is bittersweet. Her 4-year-old twins have lived there since birth. Her husband died there while working out in the tower gym, which is one of the building's much-touted amenities.
"That is why I would have a hard time leaving," she said at a patio table outside the second floor. "There's a lot of history for me here, good and bad."
Like several other residents interviewed, Geng spoke glowingly of life in the tower. She described it as a "vertical neighborhood," where neighbors get to know one another well, gather for special events in the lounge, and at Halloween hand out candy to youngsters who live in the tower.
The sinking, though, has taken its toll. Geng and others speak of sleep interrupted by worry, panicky thoughts about earthquakes, red tags from building inspectors and the prospect of remaining stuck in a real estate abyss.
They circulate photos of the many cracks visible in the basement's concrete walls, and wonder what they might portend. Some feel themselves tense up after they return to the tower after a few days away.
And while safe for occupancy now, there are concerns among some residents about potential threats to the tower's high-speed elevators and sewer connections should the sinking continue — or should a significant seismic event occur.
"The building could go from safe to unsafe in a day," said Dodson, who lives with his wife, Pat, on the 47th floor.
The situation has created factions within the vertical neighborhood. There are those who would have preferred quiet negotiations with Millennium Partners, rather than endless media coverage. And there are those who want to take on the big players — Millennium Partners, the Transbay authority, both — legal guns ablaze.
"Friendships we had have been broken by this," Dodson said, "and other friendships we didn't have before have been born."
While one unit has sold since the sinking went public, the buyer was someone who already owned in the building. And most condo owners fear their units would fetch prices far below what they paid.
Buttery, who bought her high-ceilinged condo for $3.5 million, was one of scores of tower residents who have made their way to the tax assessor's office, seeking to re-adjust the appraised worth of their units.
Filling out the assessment form, she put down that her unit should now be valued at zero.
"The clerk said, 'You can't put down just zero."
"I said, 'OK.'
"And I put down one dollar."
Tower residents worry about being abandoned by the city, left to fend for themselves when it comes to paying for a fix — if there is one. The possible solutions in play so far seem to border on fantasy.
"One prominent architect suggested that you might have to lop 20 stories off the top of the 58-story building to make it light enough so that it will stop descending into the landfill," former Mayor Willie Brown wrote in his weekly Chronicle column. "Another suggested to me that they might have to take the whole building apart and put it back together with a new foundation.
"And they were both serious."
Even worse than a drastic solution would be no solution at all: "Yes," a Millennium Partners spokesperson replied in an email, citing a recent seismic study, "it is quite possible that no major fixes will be required."
Geng recoiled at the suggestion: "No, I do not accept that. With a sinking and leaning building, and without doing anything to the foundation ... ? No, that is unacceptable."
An MIT-educated engineer by training, and a real estate broker by trade, Geng believes a solution can be found that would both shore up the building and also remove its marketplace stigma.
"This is a physics problem," she said. "It can be solved."
She also expressed a belief that eventually both Millennium Partners and the city will do right by the tower residents.
"I'm an eternal optimist," she said finally, as she rose to leave and pick up her twins from school.
Later, Geng sent along a clarifying email to her interviewer: "I know I said I was an eternal optimist. ... However, I don't want this statement to lighten the blame in any way, shape or form on what MP has done so far, and how the city has contributed to our predicament."
The email arrived at 2:53 a.m.
One more sleepless night in the sinking tower.
http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/san-franciscos-58-story-millennium-tower-is-upscale-but-literally-sinking-fast/ar-AAjppY7?li=BBnb7Kz
Probably looking at conspiracy to obstruct justice in the eyes of the public. She may not prosecute but she can't stop them from looking. Shrill, if elected, could be impeached but:
A simple majority of the U.S. House of Representatives (at least 218 votes) is required to impeach a U.S. President, followed by a two-thirds majority vote in the Senate (at least 67 votes). The number of votes required make impeachment difficult
https://www.google.com/#q=how+many+votes+in+congress+are+needed+to+impeach+a+president
Think of how minor Christie's accusation is compared to what the Clintons get away with every day. He would have been the man. Guiliani is a good choice but he has a tendency to get rattled these days. Would think both will get a spot in the Administration. Would love to see Christie go after the Shrill as their people went after him.
Just 5.7 Percent Of Clinton Foundation Budget Actually Went To Charitable Grants (why aren't they audited so the country knows the real answer?)
Posted By Peter Hasson On 6:36 PM 09/16/2016 In | No Comments
Just 5.7 percent of the Clinton Foundation’s massive 2014 budget actually went to charitable grants, according to the tax-exempt organization’s IRS filings. The rest went to salaries and employee benefits, fundraising and “other expenses.”
The Clinton Foundation spent a hair under $91.3 million in 2014, the organization’s IRS filings show. But less than $5.2 million of that went to charitable grants.
That number pales in comparison to the $34.8 million the foundation spent on salaries, compensation and employee benefits.
Another $50.4 million was marked as “other expenses,” while the remaining almost $851K was marked as “professional fundraising expenses.”
Despite taking in an additional $30 million in 2014, the Clinton Foundation spent 40 percent less on charitable grants in 2014 than in 2013. Even as it slashed charitable spending, the foundation increased the amount spent on salaries, employee benefits and compensation by $5 million in 2014. The foundation also spent $5 million more “other expenses” in 2014.
Sean Davis at The Federalist notes, “the bulk of the charitable work lauded by the Clinton Foundation’s boosters — the distribution of drugs to impoverished people in developing countries — is no longer even performed by the Clinton Foundation. Those activities were spun off in 2010 and are now managed by the Clinton Health Access Initiative, a completely separate non-profit organization.” (RELATED: Clinton Foundation Deceived IRS On Tax Exemption From The Start)
As first reported by The Daily Caller, the IRS launched an investigation into the Clinton Foundation this past July after 64 House Republicans called the foundation a “lawless ‘pay-to-play’ enterprise that has been operating under a cloak of philanthropy for years and should be investigated” in a letter to the IRS, FBI and Federal Trade Commission (FTC).
Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2016/09/16/just-5-7-percent-of-clinton-foundation-budget-actually-went-to-charity/#ixzz4Oc8Gwd8i
One has to assume that BO will do exactly what the Clintoons did with their Foundation. He'd move into the lead position if the Shrill moved into the WH. Of course, he would then donate a portion to the Clinton Foundation so it a continuing, self feeding, 'Fundamentally Changing America' big government building surge. It's their vision for America.
Huma Abedin Swore Under Oath She Gave Up ‘All the Devices’ With State Dept. Emails
In a normal election year, a normal candidate’s close aide who caused even minor embarrassment to a campaign so near to Election Day would be whisked away as quickly as possible to avoid becoming a distraction.
But Huma Abedin is not simply a close aide, she’s a critical member of Hillary Clinton’s tiny inner circle that protects and — at times — enables the deeply flawed and secretive Democratic nominee.
So despite FBI Director James Comey’s announcement that the bureau is reviewing emails from Abedin’s time at the State Department reportedly found on a laptop she shared with her soon-to-be ex-husband Anthony Weiner (confiscated as a part of the FBI’s investigation into allegations he sexted with a 15-year-old North Carolina girl), the campaign made clear on Saturday that she’s not going anywhere.
John Podesta, the chairman of the Clinton campaign, told reporters on a conference call that Abedin had been nothing but cooperative with investigators and sat for hours of depositions last summer as part of the civil lawsuit filed by Judicial Watch.
"There's nothing that she's done that we think calls into question anything that she's done with respect to this investigation… we fully stand behind her," Podesta said.
But the new information that the FBI found State Department-related email on her home laptop also calls into question whether Abedin in fact turned over all of the devices she used to send and receive email while working at State.
On June 28, 2016, Abedin said under oath in a sworn deposition that she looked for all devices that she thought contained government work on them so the records could be given to the State Department. (These records were subsequently reviewed by the FBI.)
“How did you go about searching for what records you may have in your possession to be returned to the State Department?” Attorney Ramona Cotca for Judicial Watch asked her.
“I looked for all the devices that may have any of my State Department work on it and returned — returned — gave them to my attorneys for them to review for all relevant documents. And gave them devices and paper,” Abedin answered.
Cotca then asked Abedin specifically what devices she gave her attorneys.
“If memory serves me correctly, it was two laptops, a BlackBerry, and some files that I found in my apartment,” Abedin said, adding the BlackBerry was associated with her Clintonemail.com account.
Abedin maintained that she was “not involved in the process” of what records on her devices would be given to the State Department.
“I provided them [her attorneys] with the devices and the materials and asked them to find whatever they thought was relevant and appropriate, whatever was their determination as to what was a federal record, and they did. They turned the materials in, and I know they did so….”
Abedin was asked whether she supplied her login, password and other credentials to her “Clintonmail.com” account so that her attorneys could eyeball “all of the emails that were on that account” Abedin said she had.
Pressed how she was sure, Abedin said, “I cannot answer that question.”
Abedin said her practice was to rely on her State Department email through her laptop and BlackBerry for the “vast majority of my work” but acknowledged her personal account was a de facto business account too.
“I used that for the Clinton family matters and, frankly, I used it for my own personal e-mail, as well,” she testified.
Abedin helped set up a private email address for Clinton at the start of her tenure as Secretary of State, according to State Department emails. In one email, Clinton wrote Abedin on Nov. 12, 2010: “...I don’t want any risk of the personal being accessible.”
Asked about this exchange in her deposition, Abedin said she interpreted Clinton’s words to mean the Secretary of State hoped personal matters would “not accessible to anybody.”
“I would imagine anybody who has personal e-mail doesn’t want that personal e-mail to be read by anybody else,” Abedin said.
Asked whether the decision was made to deliberately avoid public disclosure through the Freedom of Information Act, Abedin responded, “I absolutely do not believe that no.”
When told she used her Clintonmail.com address for “State-related matters,” Abedin didn’t deny it.
“Yes. There were occasions when I did do that, correct,” she said.
But Abedin said she rarely deleted emails when it came to her official State Department email account or her personal Huma@Clintonemail.com.
“My practice with my Clinton e-mail was similar to what I had with my State account, which is that I left everything in — in the Inbox, and I transitioned to a new e-mail once the Secretary's office was set up, her personal office post State Department. And I was — and I no longer used Clinton e-mail.”
Abedin added that just before she left the State Department and “ceased” using her Clintonemail.com account, she couldn’t “recall how many [e-mails] were returned … I certainly don’t recally how many was on — was on the account. I just left everything on what — on the system, I guess.”
It appears that Abedin amassed emails on her computers and government-issued BlackBerry that she thought were automatically purged.
“The e-mails on my State Department system existed on my computer, and I didn't have a practice of managing my mailbox other than leaving what was in there sitting in there.
“So for my BlackBerry, if I exceeded the limit, I think it auto deleted. But, no, I didn't ... go into my e-mails and delete State.gov e-mails. They just lived on my computer.”
Abedin said she didn’t keep any paper printouts of any of the correspondence that may have been deleted or otherwise lost.
“Honestly, I wish I thought about it at the time. As I said, I wasn't perfect. I tried to do all of my work on State.gov. And I do believe I did the majority of my work on State.gov.
“And many of the instances where I was on Clinton e-mail, it was because I had forwarded something from a State.gov account into Clinton e-mail, and in other instances from my Clinton e-mail I was communicating with somebody who was on a State.gov account, and it was captured through there. I did the best I could to do everything right. It did not occur to me to print and file.”
Abedin was asked if she had “any concerns” about Clinton’s use of her private email server for State Department business.
“I assumed it was allowed,” Abedin answered. “It didn’t occur to us.”
Judicial Watch followed up, asking why no one inquired with a State Department official in charge of managing records to make sure it was allowed.
“We all wish we could go back and that not be the case,” Abedin, a wish that must only be greater 10 days before voters decide her boss’s fate.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/10/29/huma-abedin-swore-under-oath-she-gave-up-all-the-devices-containing-state-department-emails.html
Obama used a pseudonym in emails with Clinton, FBI documents reveal
By Josh Gerstein and Nolan D. McCaskill
09/23/16 06:27 PM EDT
Updated 09/24/16 03:35 PM EDT
Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2016/09/hillary-clinton-emails-fbi-228607#ixzz4Obpykr4b
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Attorney General Lynch objected to FBI director going public with email review
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2016/10/29/ag-lynch-objected-fbi-director-going-public-email-review/92949970/
The Justice Department told him they would not issue recommend prosecution. He was stuck between a rock and nowhere else to go. Lose, lose.
Wonder which one is going to experience revenge first........ Huma or Jankin'