Tuesday, April 21, 2009

Y! Alert: The Full Feed from HuffingtonPost.com

Yahoo! Alerts
My Alerts

The latest from The Full Feed from HuffingtonPost.com

Hendrie Weisinger: Does President Obama Use the Genius of His Instincts? Top
Just the other week I was giving a presentation to a group of top executives who were participants in a Wharton Business School Executive Education Program. The subject was Instinctual Leadership (IL), a term I coined based on my knowledge of the evolutionary sciences. In a nutshell, I explained IL is based on the thought that the brain is like a tool box with a collection of instinctual tools that have been designed through evolution and natural selection to help you solve adaptive problems -- problems that every member of every species of every generation must solve if it is to survive and ultimately to thrive. For example, one problem that every member of every species in every generation has to solve if it is to survive is protecting their vulnerabilities. This is why every species is hardwired to care-solicit, to ask for help. A fetus is asking mother for help early on so it can protect its vulnerabilities. Using your instinctual tools to solve adaptive problems is the essence of instinctual leadership, and according to the irrefutable scientific process of natural selection, those individuals who can apply their instinctual tools most broadly are the most effective leaders and thereby increase their organization's ecological niche -- the role it plays in its environment, be it financial services, auto, health care, consumer electronics, retail, or service. The group found the concept fresh, scientifically grounded, and provocative. After some lively discussion, somebody in the class asked if I think President Obama is an Instinctual Leader. Is he? Do you think the President uses the genius of his instincts -- the natural success tools Mother Nature has given to all of us? My answer was a resounding yes. I'll give you several examples that I gave to the class. Already, the President has shown his care, giving instincts by advocating and passing the Children's Health Insurance Program. The function of care -- developing the future by providing health to all children -- becomes one way to apply care-giving instincts. Contrast this to the last President who did not pass this bill -- was he an effective leader? I'd also say that President Obama is using his cooperative instincts, a hardwired gift from Mother Nature to ensure that we work together. One of the mechanisms that evolved cooperation is "fair play." Those of us who have had the tax advantages over the last decade might not like it, but it is hard to refute that the President is trying to level the playing field, make the system a little "fairer." Capping executive compensation for those that received government bailouts is an example of this--failed executives will not be rewarded, they will be treated like everyone else who doesn't get the job done. In his Inauguration speech, President Obama declared that "curiosity" will be one of the core values of his administration, thus support cutting edge scientific research. This tells me he's connected to his curiosity instinct, the function of which is to accelerate our learning, in this case, to keep America ahead of the pack. Again, compare this to the values of the last President -- did he strike you as a curious individual? And let's not forget the President's and First Lady's instinctual connection to their beauty instincts. Their emphasis on making our neighborhoods safe and clean places to live, enhancing the quality of our schools, protecting our environment, and reclaiming our identity as World Leader, will clearly make the World desire America, from our products to our vacation spots. I don't know about you but I'd bet that when all is said and done, President Obama will be evaluated as a great President. My confidence is based on the fact that he is using the genius of his instincts, and that will enhance all of our lives! More on Barack Obama
 
Carol Peasley: Is Aid Really "Dead"? Top
In her new bestselling book, "Dead Aid" , Zambian economist Dambisa Moyo seeks to drive a stake through the heart of foreign aid and its supporters. Arguing that "millions in Africa are poorer today because of aid," Moyo says that the world's assistance has been "an unmitigated political, economic and humanitarian disaster for most parts of the developing world." If we believe her conclusion, international aid is a vampire that leaves dead countries in its wake. It's time to put away the garlic. While her title is seductive, its main conclusion is wrong. The evidence just doesn't support it. Let's take the case of Malawi , a country where I worked from 1988 to 1993. While still among the poorest countries in the world, there has been real progress because of strong cooperation between donor agencies, the government of Malawi, international organizations and local community groups. Over the past decade, investments in improving the lives of women and children in Malawi have paid off enormously. Child deaths have been reduced by nearly 100 percent (from 221 per thousand in 1990 to 120 in 2007). More children are going to school than ever before, and the number who complete primary school has doubled. And, the number of women who now are using lifesaving family planning services has more than tripled, meaning that more women have the means to space pregnancies to healthier intervals and fewer will die in childbirth as a result. These kinds of real results should not be ignored when we look at aid effectiveness. It turns out that Moyo is really looking at only one particular kind of aid: the transfer of financial resources to governments. What she does not in fact talk about is what is at the heart of development assistance . Good aid involves more than money. It responds to locally-driven needs and includes technical assistance, institution building with governments and civil society, and the training of individuals. Ironically, while condemning aid, she also makes the case for its value. Early in her book, Moyo mentions that "a well-functioning civil society and politically involved citizenry are the backbone of longer-term sustainable development." Strengthening civil society is, in fact, one of the cornerstones of most U.S. assistance programs. Certainly, non-profit organizations such as mine (the Centre for Development and Population Activities - CEDPA ) are working hard to help strengthen local communities and organizations, through training of leaders and on-the ground work to build local capacity. As a result, we see women joining together in countries as diverse as Nigeria , India and Nepal to push their governments to increase funding for maternal health. We see AIDS advocates pushing for an end to employment discrimination. These women and others are raising their voices on a growing array of issues. They are making huge differences in their countries - and "aid" has helped to strengthen their voices. In pointing out the failures of aid - and indeed there have been some - Moyo should not generalize. Aid is not only capital transfers. Much of the historic institution-building aid has in fact contributed significantly to economic growth in some of the best performing Asian countries today. That is certainly true of the Indian Institute of Technology, the Indian Institute of Management, the Indian agricultural universities, the Asian Institute of Management, and the Korean Institute of Science and Technology. Aid helped create and develop these groundbreaking institutions. Moyo clearly points out some egregious examples of wasted aid. Is it a coincidence that those countries, such as Zaire, Somalia and Liberia, were proxy battlegrounds for the Cold War? Is it a coincidence that aid was given without considering whether or not it was effective or countries were well governed? There is another, more substantive debate going on right now about reforming U.S. foreign assistance . Many have argued that we must learn from the past and remember some of the best examples of effective aid. What do the examples of "bad" aid from Moyo's book tell us about the best organizational structure for the U.S. Agency for International Development ( USAID )? Is aid more or less effective when controlled by foreign policy priorities and the State Department, as it is today? Calling aid "dead" may sell books, but it does little to further the real debate. Too much is at stake for oversimplification. It's really her premise that should be dead on arrival. More on Foreign Policy
 
Abraham Lowenthal: President Obama and the Americas: Beyond the Trinidad Summit Top
President Barack Obama accomplished his immediate objectives at the Summit of the Americas. He conveyed an attractive approach to Latin America that is consistent with his overall worldview: confident, open, genuinely interested in consultation but also committed to expressing U.S. objectives, and ready to move away from unilateralism and presumption without being defensive. The substance and style of his prepared address, his informal comments and even his banter and body language, as well as his thoughtful remarks at the final press conference, were all very positively received. The improvement in the atmospherics of official U.S.-Latin American relations was stunning. All this is fine, as far as it goes, but that is not necessarily very far. Photo-ops and well-crafted statements cannot substitute for implementing policies that the new Administration needs to pursue in the Americas. The welcome new tone of inter-American relations could be reversed if raised expectations are disappointed, as has often happened in the past. To build on the momentum of the Trinidad Summit, the Administration should follow up expeditiously on the main approaches that resonated in Port of Spain. Few, if any, meaningful policy initiatives can be crafted at the level of generality necessary to include more than 30 diverse countries, ranging from Brazil to Grenada, Argentina to Haiti. The United States should now follow up with clusters of countries with shared concerns to work out initiatives on key issues. The Administration should concentrate attention on the closest neighbors of the United States--Mexico and countries of Central America and the Caribbean--in order to work on the shared concerns posed by their unusual degree of functional integration with the United States, and on strategic cooperation with Brazil, both within the Western Hemisphere and beyond. The most important issues to address soon are economic recovery, investment in energy and especially in renewable energy projects, new approaches to the narcotics trade and the related issues of arms and financial flows going south, and immigration. None of these are easy, but the Administration should tackle them with a sense of urgency. The Administration should promptly harvest low-hanging fruit: gaining Congressional approval of the already-negotiated Free Trade Agreements with Panama and Colombia; expanding the Inter-American Development Bank's capital, needed to fund infrastructure and energy projects; and providing the lending for the microfinance and social development the President announced in Port of Spain. Criticism expressed by Newt Gingrich and others about Mr. Obama's apparent weakness in exchanging friendly smiles with Hugo Chavez, welcoming expressed openness to dialogue from Raúl Castro, and reassuring Bolivia's Evo Morales that the United States will not support the violent overthrow of his government, are frozen in an outmoded and discredited stance, and Mr. Obama is right to dismiss them. The Administration needs to carefully explore the prospects for rapprochement in all three cases, by focusing on mutual confidence-building through limited and reciprocal steps. It makes sense to exchange ambassadors with Venezuela and Bolivia, subject to the usual assurances. Washington should look for opportunities to work on such shared concerns as narcotics and the environment. If Chavez reverts to attack, as he well may, the Administration should use the rope-a-dope technique that Muhammad Ali demonstrated so brilliantly: avoiding being an easy target while Chávez flails away. On Cuba, the Obama Administration has begun well, by not only reversing the hardening of sanctions on travel and remittances the Bush Administration had imposed, but also by doing away even with some prior restrictions, and announcing a willingness to facilitate investment in improvement of communications, including establishing fiber-optic cable and satellite connections between the United States and Cuba. The Administration has taken another symbolically important step by indicting Luis Posada Carriles for his alleged terrorist activities against Cuba, reversing years of previous unwillingness by U.S. authorities to do so. And the President's simple statement that the United States seeks a new relationship with Cuba was important, precisely because it was not accompanied, as statements by the previous administration had been, by calling first for change in the Cuban regime. Navigating the next stages in the U.S.-Cuba relationship will be complex, for both sides have to overcome years of distrust, mutual hostility and propaganda. The guiding principles for the Obama Administration should be to improve the prospects for healthy relations in the medium term, to avoid being trapped into letting Cuba dictate the pace of steps the United States should take in its own interest, and to remain true to the basic tenets of U.S. policy, including a commitment to the protection of individual human rights. Implementing these guidelines will take skillful diplomacy. Abraham F. Lowenthal, professor of international relations at the University of Southern California, is co-editor of The Obama Administration and the Americas: Agenda for Change (Brookings Institution Press, 2009). More on Barack Obama
 
David O. Stewart: Forgetting History, California Style Top
In a few weeks, Thomas Starr King is slated for what Leon Trotsky called the dustbin of history . His statute -- which has stood in the U.S. Capitol since 1931 as one of two allotted to represent California -- will be moved out and replaced with a seven-foot-high likeness of Ronald Reagan. That's a shame. The sponsor of the 2006 legislation that directed the switch, Republican State Sen. Dennis Hollingsworth, told the San Francisco Chronicle at the time : "To be honest with you, I wasn't sure who Thomas Starr King was, and I think a lot of Californians are like me." That, also, is a shame. A Unitarian preacher who emerged from the intellectual ferment of New England in the middle of the 19th century, Starr King took the pulpit of a San Francisco Unitarian church in 1860. Only 36 years old, short and slight, the transplanted New Englander proved to be a powerful orator and quickly became a statewide force. In 1861, with Californians deciding whether to remain in the Union during the Civil War, Starr King leapt into the race for governor of one of his parishioners, future railroad magnate and university founder Leland Stanford. Stumping the state, the preacher was an important part of Stanford's victory and the state's decision to remain in the Union . During the war, Starr King labored tirelessly to raise money for the U.S. Sanitary Commission, which cared for wounded soldiers throughout the war. The Golden State contributed one-fifth the the commission's budget during the war. At only the age of 40, Starr King succumbed in 1864 to diphtheria and pneumonia. Californians have every right to be proud of President Reagan (though he was a native of Illinois, not the Golden State). Paying public tribute to citizens with high achievements is an important part of our communal life. I am still tickled to fly out of Thurgood Marshall Airport in Baltimore. But the removal of Rev. Starr King in favor of Reagan is entirely unnecessary. We have a bounty of Reagan monuments around the country, and in Washington, DC, including: Reagan Washington National Airport, gateway to the Nation's Capital The massive Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center on Pennsylvania Avenue The largest Reagan statue ever raised, which stands 15-feet high in Covington, Louisiana Statutes at Reagan's presidential library in California, and also in public spaces Warsaw, Poland and Budapest, Hungary Indeed, if a Reagan statue is to your taste, you can buy one for your home. Throwing the Unitarian minister over the side in favor of Reagan marks an act of national forgetting, not remembering. Unitarians are accustomed to being overlooked in the nation's history. Few Americans know that four of our presidents were Unitarian (both Adamses, Fillmore, and Taft), while several others (Jefferson, Lincoln) professed views that closely resembled those of Unitarians. We need to remember all of our history, not just a handful of presidential personalities, particularly in the Capitol Building itself. For now, California is not removing its other statue in the Capitol, which portrays Junipero Serra, the Spanish friar who founded missions in California in the 1700s. Devotees of Serra should not rest too easy. Californians may soon want to replace him with someone more relevant, better known today, like Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger or Steve Jobs of Apple. It would be easier than remembering who Father Serra was.
 
Citi's Annual Meeting: Shareholders Get Angry Though All Directors Get Elected Top
NEW YORK — The anger was evident at Citigroup Inc.'s annual meeting, where all nominated directors were elected but shareholders took turns at the microphone to object to how the bank has been operating. The meeting is usually a well-attended affair lasting many hours as shareholders air their grievances, and Tuesday's gathering was as somber and full of ire as ever. When Citi Chairman Richard Parsons recognized the five departing members of the board, who include ex-chairman Win Bischoff and former U.S. Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, one man from the audience yelled out: "Thank God you've gone!" Despite the rancor on the floor, all returning directors and four new ones were elected with at least 70 percent of the vote, according to preliminary results. And while some shareholder proposals came close to passing, preliminary results showed that none did. Citigroup CEO Vikram Pandit tried to bring a more upbeat atmosphere to the ballroom at the New York Hilton hotel, emphasizing to shareholders that Citigroup is not the same company it was just a year ago, when it was became clear the bank was buckling under the weight of billions of dollars in bad debt. In his opening remarks, Pandit said the four new board members will bring "new eyes" to the bank. He also discussed the "new structure" that has split the bank into two parts, and the "new strategy" and "new beginning" that the company is embarking on. "Citi is one of the great business opportunities of our age," Pandit said. He added: "I believe to my core that Citigroup has what it takes to rebound, what it takes to rebuild." The four nominees include former U.S. Bancorp CEO Jerry Grundhofer; former Bank of Hawaii CEO Michael O'Neill, former Philadelphia Federal Reserve President Anthony Santomero; and William S. Thompson Jr., former CEO of bond investment manager Pimco. While many shareholders have been calling for change at the board level for years, some say the new nominations don't go far enough. Kenneth Steiner, who said he owns about 10,000 shares, supported a proposal that would require the company to nominate two candidates for every board position instead of just one. "Right now, it's a non-election, basically," Steiner said. "We know who's going to win." Shareholders _ many in suits, a few in baseball hats and jean jackets, and one in a beadazzled red satin cap _ brought up other issues, too, questioning Citigroup's underwriting standards for credit cards, the government's involvement in the bank, executive compensation and the decision to sponsor the New York Mets ballpark, Citi Field. Evelyn Y. Davis, a long-time shareholder who every year takes several trips to the microphone, called the Citi Field deal the "most stupid thing" and a waste of shareholder money. Other shareholders called the board "Byzantine," "communist" and "socialist." Steiner said it is ridiculous that a board composed of CEOs and former CEOs gets a say in Citigroup executive's compensation while shareholders do not. "It's like having the Yankees determine the salary of the Mets," he said. Through it all, the six-foot-four Parsons remained polite and unflappable as he conducted the meeting from his podium; one shareholder called him a "gentleman." Pandit was similarly calm on the surface, keeping quiet for most of the meeting as he stood at his own podium on the opposite side of the stage. Parsons, known as an adroit manager, broke the tension at times with humor. When a shareholder asked if any U.S. government representatives were in attendance, he said to laughter from the audience: "If they're foolish, they can raise their hand." Citigroup has gotten $45 billion in government funding, and a portion of that will soon be converted into common shares. Citigroup last week posted its best quarter since 2007, but still reported a $966 million loss to common shareholders. Before dividends paid to preferred shareholders, Citigroup posted net income of $1.6 billion. The figure relieved investors to some extent _ the bank benefited from strong bond trading, low borrowing rates and severe cost-cutting. But they remain concerned Citigroup could have sharp losses ahead of it. Loan losses and reserve builds for future loan losses amounted to $10 billion. Furthermore, accounting rules allowed Citigroup in the first quarter to take a $2.7 billion gain in its derivatives, because it, counterintuitively, benefited from the declining value of its debt. Angry shareholders are nothing new to Citigroup. It has been several years since shareholders started calling for the ouster of ex-CEO Chuck Prince as Citi's stock lagged its peers. That finally happened in late 2007, but was then followed by a string of quarterly losses and three government bailouts. So this year's meeting was marked by not only ire, but exhaustion. After about four hours of shareholder commentary on proposals, before the preliminary vote results were even released, the audience of several hundred in the midtown Hilton ballroom had dwindled by about half. "How many more years do you have to sit through a shareholder meeting like this before you get it right? You need a new director core," said Richard Ferlauto, director of pension and benefits policy for the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees. Ferlauto proposed to vote against the board members on Citigroup's audit and risk committee. Chuck Jones, who said he owned about 25,000 Citi shares, asked Parsons and the board whether they were betting on Citigroup's recovery and buying Citigroup shares. "How many of these directors," Jones asked, "bought Citi at a dollar a share?" "I wish I had," Parsons said with a chuckle. Citigroup's shares have tripled since dropping to 97 cents in early March. More on Citibank
 
Monday's Late Night Round-Up: Miss California, Waterboarding, And Sam Donaldson (VIDEO) Top
The late night hosts took on the Miss USA pageant last night with Jimmy Fallon saying the GOP found their VP candidate for 2012 and Jay Leno mocking Miss California for alienating the people who watch pageants. David Letterman took on waterboarding and Stephen Colbert took Sam Donaldson to task for some odd comments made this Sunday. WATCH: More on Late Night Shows
 
Taliban: Bin Laden Welcome In Pakistan's Swat Top
Taliban in Pakistan's Swat says the group will welcome militants from Saudi-Arabia and other Arab countries who intend to settle in the valley. More on Pakistan
 
Anna Wainwright: It's Not OK, Seth Rogen Top
In Asher Roth's hit single "I Love College", the 24 year-old rapper warns "Don't leave the house 'til the booze is gone/ And don't have sex if she's too gone ". Let's talk about alcoholism some other time. I found myself listening to this song approvingly the other day, and then felt like Tipper Gore. Forgetting, for just a few seconds, my ardent support for free speech, I thought how great it would be if college men were only allowed to listen to this song, and forbidden to see "Observe and Report", the new movie starring Seth Rogen, until they were fathers of small daughters. I had a massive crush on Seth Rogen until two weeks ago. I'm one of the only girls I know who thought "Superbad" was heartwarming. I urged random people I met at parties to give him my number. (I forgot about the girlfriend.) I envisioned a lifetime of happiness in which he took massive hits from a bong before joining me for long jogs on the beach. But my love evaporated when I read a quote from a promotional interview for his new film, "Observe and Report", in which he defends the most controversial scene in the movie, where his character, an idiot with a bullying problem, has sex with a passed-out woman played by Anna Faris. He told the Washington City Paper "You can literally feel the audience thinking, like, how the (expletive) are they going to make this OK? Like what can possibly be said or done that I'm not going to walk out of the movie theater in the next 30 seconds? And then she says, like the one thing that makes it all OK." The one thing, it seems, that would make this OK, is for the quasi-conscious woman to command "Did I tell you to stop, motherf-----?" Courtney E. Martin got it right over at feministing.com when she wrote that "I think about all the women I know who have been raped, sitting in the theater, thinking they are getting a funny little respite from their serious lives, only to see an experience they've had depicted as a big joke...will be traumatized." Because it's not OK. And I'll tell you why. It's not OK because girls are date raped at frat parties across the country every weekend, and people, from college counselors to Camille Paglia, still tell them they were asking for it. It's not OK because 25-year old women wake up and don't remember how they got home the night before, and they are convinced it's their own fault. It's not OK because according to a 2006 survey, 29 percent of young women who had been in a relationship said they had been pressured to have sex or to engage in sexual activity they did not want. It's not OK because Afghanistan just almost passed a law saying men could rape their wives, and we didn't all immediately take to the streets. It's not OK because as murder-suicides increase by the week, the first victims are always wives. And it's just not OK. So right now Seth Rogen's on my bad side, even though I've loved him since Freaks and Geeks. But I like this Asher Roth guy. Because somehow I think, I hope, that some night soon, late at a frat party, it will run through some dumb drunk kid's head that you can't "have sex when she's too gone."
 
Fed Tests Harder On Regional Banks Top
WASHINGTON — The government's "stress tests" of 19 large banks take a harsher view of loans than of other troubled assets. That approach favors a few Wall Street banks while potentially threatening major regional players. A Federal Reserve document obtained by The Associated Press shows regulators will focus on the risks of bad mortgages and other loans to determine which banks are healthy and which might fail if the recession worsened. The regulators' focus could spell trouble for big regional banks undergoing the tests. Their portfolios have more individual loans and fewer of the big pools of securitized loans that Wall Street giants specialize in. The Fed is scheduled to detail its methodology for the tests on Friday and release the results May 4.
 
Zephyr Teachout: Time for a New Antitrust? Top
This piece was co-written with Shawn Bayern, visiting Assistant Professor of Law at Duke University. Professor Bayern teaches business associations. For political and economic reasons, antitrust law should be used to prevent companies from becoming "too big to fail." We now have an economy that we don't understand and can't seem to control even when we want to. Having created corporations, we have let some of them become "too big to fail"--a dangerous state of affairs, both economically and politically. Perhaps there are some companies that are simply too big to exist. One way to avoid a similar problem in the future could be an antitrust law that limits how big corporations can become. This is not a new idea; at the time the modern antitrust statutes took shape in our country about a century ago, political leaders were concerned directly with corporate size and power. In the last several decades, however, legal economists have sharply narrowed antitrust law, leaning heavily on the assumption that larger companies can be more efficient. This view has some merit; after all, efficient companies can produce cheaper consumer products, and everyone shares in the savings. But the recent crisis should make us consider whether these economists have been leading us astray. There are many reasons a "too big to exist" conception of antitrust law makes good sense for a democracy. Perhaps most importantly, large companies have proven to have disproportionate power over the political process. Concentrated financial power often leads to concentrated political power; if you have a lot of cash, one of the most efficient uses of it to maximize profits is to petition the government to change the rules in your favor. Economies of scale might work all too well when it comes to influencing government. Big-company money spent on sustained lobbying and media campaigns has often led Congress to pass non-responsive legislation--for instance, legislation that gives dangerous environmental licenses to favored industries or tax breaks to those who least need it. Even Milton Friedman, a devout defender of markets, recognized the dangers of corporate power over the political process. "If the rules of the game are that you go to Washington to get a special privilege," Friedman wrote, "I can't blame [a corporate manager] for doing that. Blame the rest of us for being so foolish as to let him get away with it." There are also reasons to think an antitrust policy focused on size and power makes good economic sense. Despite economic theorizing, bigger companies are not always more efficient companies. And even if they were, there are important societal efficiencies that go beyond whether individual companies operate cheaply or produce low-cost products. As Bert Foer of the American Antitrust Institute recently testified before Congress, we can choose to use competition policy to help prevent much of the systemic risk that has crippled our economy. By focusing more on size and concentration, we might be able to avoid collapse, unplanned nationalization, and bailouts. More generally, the world is both harder to predict and richer than an economic worldview usually supposes. Recent economic troubles should have taught us that using narrow economic thinking to make broad policy pronouncements will often get us into trouble. Indeed, in today's economy (and ecology), it may even be worth questioning whether a focus on efficiently producing consumer products remains an effective way to promote economic activity that Americans value. We don't mean to suggest that corporate size is all that matters, and we obviously don't believe that one size fits every industry or circumstance. But focusing on manageable scale can help us achieve both democratic and economic goals. To achieve these goals, we should be debating structural changes rather than getting stuck on conventional and short-term fixes. The artificial quarantine of "economics" into a sphere distinct from politics, separate from collective decisions about fairness and value, does not serve us well. More on Timothy Geithner
 
TIF Sunshine Ordinance Passes Committee Top
A bill that would require the City of Chicago to disclose all the financial details of murky Tax Increment Financing (TIF) deals is a step closer to becoming law. The TIF Sunshine Ordinance , sponsored by Ald. Manny Flores (1st) and Ald. Scott Waguespack (32nd), passed a vote of the City Council Committee on Economic, Capital and Technology Development Tuesday. The bill, which has garnered lots of positive press and the endorsements of the Sun-Times and Tribune , will be voted on by the entire City Council Wednesday.
 
Lynda Resnick: Can't Get No Satisfaction? Join an Online Discussion About Your Brand Top
Don't let the name fool you. Get Satisfaction is not of the type of website that would get you fired if you viewed it in your office cube. In fact, it's quite the opposite: Its focus is on what many companies, especially small businesses, need right now: an inside track on what your consumers are saying about you. I had the pleasure of discussing with Lane Becker , CEO and Founder of Get Satisfaction, the importance of business transparency and how his company helps other businesses achieve that goal. By providing an online forum for companies and customers to communicate, the customer-service website moderates conversations where both parties can discuss their thoughts, both positive and negative. Customers can post both questions and answers, meaning they don't have to wait for the company in question to discover the site's existence. They can also exchange stories on individual experiences, provide informal product reviews, log problems, laud a recent company improvement, or post an idea for an alternative or future use for the product -- all without the company itself ever interacting. But once the company does get involved, it gets really exciting -- for both parties. Customers receive official feedback and the recognition they deserve, while companies can then take the reins of the conversation and perhaps even steer it in a more favorable direction. They can read posted ideas, and either choose to implement them or provide a note thanking the consumer but politely declining. The company also has the option of integrating Get Satisfaction's tools into the company's own website. Any company that's ever operated a call center is already imagining how much this would cut back on calls - and therefore money - to phone representatives who otherwise must deal with repetitive problems. This sort of transparency and corporate community -- one of the three pillars to business success that I outline in my book, Rubies in the Orchard -- is imperative if a company wishes to succeed. Get Satisfaction represents the new face of customer service. While it certainly is not the only tool available, it highlights some of the most important areas for companies to focus on, including providing users with a way to retrieve quick answers and a way to stave off vicious rumors before they grow out of control. Consider the site a training ground for when a company is faced with a true crisis. Take, for example, the recent Domino's fiasco. Had Domino's reacted immediately, perhaps Time wouldn't have felt the need to post the five steps the company should take to salvage what they could of its reputation, including blogging, counteracting negative Google searches, and updating its Wikipedia page, which, as of the printing of this article, still details the incident minus Domino's reaction. While the company's eventual response -- including a company-wide Twitter initiative -- has since gone on to receive praise from marketers, their initial delay means that the Internet has exponentially more negative sites than it might have had they reacted immediately. Because not every business, especially the smaller ones, can afford the time and money involved in countering such an incident, it's imperative that they invest in some form of ongoing customer-service system so that, should the worst-case scenario ever happen, they already have a network in place to launch a counterstrike. Many businesses already use Facebook, Twitter, and a variety of other social media outlets for this very reason. Upon my first perusal of the site, I found a nine-month-old comment attacking FIJI Water and realized that not only had we missed out on an opportunity to better inform one of my prospective consumers, we had also left a potentially detrimental statement lying around uncountered for all the world to see. We take meticulous steps to ensure the reputation of our brands, so it pains me when I find loopholes that could easily be sealed shut. Of course, Get Satisfaction isn't a panacea for customer service, but I have yet to find a better jumping-off solution for small businesses. What I see in the site is the potential, both for itself and in the knowledge companies can acquire by using it. While the company offers professional one-on-one consulting sessions, the free features alone are a training ground for dealing with complaints and questions. By skimming existing conversations between other companies and their customers, a customer-service neophyte could learn enough tactics to fill a textbook. As a site, Get Satisfaction still has some growing pains to endure, including making improvements to its design and login process. But I'm hopeful. Lane Becker and his colleagues not only have a unique selling proposition, they have heart and a purpose. And that will get you further than evasion and denial in any economy. More on Small Business
 
"Pig Brother" Austrian "Reality Show" To Promote Bacon Fair Top
From the not-making-this-up department : Move over Miss Piggy, show business has found its new pink-snouted celebrities -- meet Piggy, Lilly, Pauli and Fredi, the stars of Austria's latest reality show "Pig Brother". Starting Monday and for the next six weeks, the four little piglets will be followed by live cameras and their private lives splashed across the Internet, all part of a marketing ploy by a local food fair. To watch live video of the pigs, check out the Pig Brother site. Weirdly, this is not the first time that something called "Pig Brother" has existed -- previously, it was a livecam on a family of wild German boars. More on Video
 
Barbara Dehn: Horses and Stem Cells Top
If it's a good idea for a racehorse, then you can bet it's probably a great idea for humans. A recent article by Tracy Gantz posted on Bloodhorse.com reported that researchers are now recommending that owners and breeders of thoroughbreds consider banking the umbilical cord stem cells from prize race horses. The new field of regenerative medicine in humans is also creating a new field in veterinary medicine. Regenerative medicine uses the body's own stem cells to help repair and replace damaged tissue, as has been done with people with heart attacks. Likewise, these stem cells may give prize racehorses an opportunity to treat health problems or injuries later in life. In humans, there are clinical trials going on right now where children with cerebral palsy and brain injury are being given their own newborn stem cells from their umbilical cord to treat their brain damage. Early results are promising and have led to many more families seeking this treatment. There's also a trial where children with Type 1 diabetes are using their own newborn stem cells from their umbilical cord to help repair their pancreas and produce insulin. Remember Seabiscuit and Barbaro? These athletes can be crippled or put out to pasture by bowed tendons and torn ligaments. Researchers may now have a way to treat these horses with their own newborn stem cells, without the risk of rejection. Imagine using the horses' own newborn stem cells to help regenerate a new tendon or ligament that is genetically identical to the horse, meaning that there's no risk of rejection. Newborn stem cells are found in a baby's umbilical cord. These stem cells are different from stem cells ones found in older individuals. Adult stem cells, found in bone marrow and circulating in our blood, are older and a bit more "set in their ways"; they don't have the same ability to change into or differentiate into as many cells as newborn stem cells, who are younger and bit more flexible. Researchers in veterinary medicine are now recommending that owners and breeders of racehorses consider collecting the newborn stem cells in the horse's umbilical cord at the time of foaling, much the same way that Ob/Gyn physicians make this recommendation to human moms. That way, if a horse injures itself in training or racing, the cells will be available as research progresses and can be available to treat the problem. "This is a very exciting new area of medicine," said UC Davis's Dr. Ferraro. "It's the first area of medicine in generations that's not based on drugs. We're talking about biological medicine, not pharmacological therapy. That's why the potential is so great." In my practice with pregnant couples, we also talk about the potential that newborn stem cells have for not only treating cancers and leukemias, but also for treating diabetes and brain injury without the risk of rejection.
 
Use Energy, Get Rich And Save The Planet Top
The old wealth-is-bad IPAT theory may have made intuitive sense, but it didn't jibe with the data that has been analyzed since that first Earth Day. By the 1990s, researchers realized that graphs of environmental impact didn't produce a simple upward-sloping line as countries got richer. The line more often rose, flattened out and then reversed so that it sloped downward, forming the shape of a dome or an inverted U -- what's called a Kuznets curve. (See nytimes.com/tierneylab for an example.) In dozens of studies, researchers identified Kuznets curves for a variety of environmental problems. There are exceptions to the trend, especially in countries with inept governments and poor systems of property rights, but in general, richer is eventually greener. As incomes go up, people often focus first on cleaning up their drinking water, and then later on air pollutants like sulfur dioxide. More on Energy
 
Michael Pento: Obama the Grand Illusionist Top
President Obama is smooth. He has an incomparable ability to say the correct thing, then go and do the exact opposite. For instance, he says we in America cannot continue the boom-bust cycle of economic activity, and that we must repent for our past sins of building GDP growth by blowing up asset bubbles. He also contends that George W. Bush was disingenuously hiding the true size of the deficit by keeping certain items off-budget. In those two statements he is completely correct. However, he uses the magician's tactic of deflection to sell his own brand of economic gimmickry. First, Obama directs your attention towards his promise of removing Bush's budget tricks, but then whips out his smoke and mirrors of trillion dollar deficits and accounting games. Taking a closer look at how the President arrives at his rosy projection of cutting the deficit to "just" $530 billion by the end of 2013, you find he accomplishes it not by keeping expenditures off-budget, like his processor, but by utilizing grossly unrealistic economic growth assumptions. Mr. Obama assumes the contraction in GDP for 2009 will be only 1.2%. That's a big improvement from the -6.34% annual rate drop of last quarter and far better than the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office's (CBO) prediction of -2.2% growth for 2009. From there, things get truly surreal. The Obama administration predicts GDP growth for 2010 will rebound to 3.2% and then increase by more than 4% for each of the next three years! How realistic you ask is a 4%+ growth rate in GDP for the years 2011-2013? Well, let's look at the past 11 years for some guidance. Starting from the beginning of 1998 thru Q4 of 2008, the average quarterly GDP growth rate was only 2.17%. And the average yearly growth rate was just 2.7%. What's truly amazing about the sub-par growth rate of the last 11 years (which was well below trend growth of 3%) is that it encompassed two of the biggest manias in the history of the United States-the internet equity bubble of the late 90's and real estate bubble in the middle of this decade. You see, once you know the trick it's easy: if you want to make deficits appear smaller, just pretend growth will be higher than what should be responsibly expected. Then simply bury your growth expectations in the fine print. Perhaps part of Obama's magic act of producing well above-trend GDP growth rely on conjuring up another asset bubble that rivals the previous two. But the sad truth is that whether you use Obama's overly-optimistic projections or those of the CBO, deficits as a percentage of GDP will eclipse 100% of total output by 2019 (a record outside the years just after the end of WWll). But during the immediate post-war era, we controlled the entire world's manufacturing base and were not facing the wave of entitlement spending which looms, which means the consequences of all this debt will be dire. When the veil of illusion is dropped, the truth behind will be revealed. Record debt, lackluster growth and robust inflation will be the byproducts of runaway spending and increased government intrusion into the free market. Barack Obama wants you to believe he is a fiscal conservative and that he is providing honesty and transparency in the government. The Administration's trick is to make opacity appear as transparency and mendacity to appear as truth. This masterful performance will best be viewed through gold-colored glasses. *Tired of paying fees while your account value plummets? Learn about our new performance-based pricing. Michael Pento is the Chief Economist for Delta Global Advisors and a contributor to greenfaucet.com More on Barack Obama
 
Rick Smith: 3 Ways Being Generous Can Bite You in the A$$! Top
Recently, I attended a dinner with a group of very successful business people. The question was thrown to the table, "What are some specific decisions you regret as a manager?" Surprisingly, many at the table spoke of situations when the best of intentions had led to unexpected and undesirable outcomes with employees. Here are three traps that generous managers may wish to avoid. 1) Avoid Perks Employees Wouldn't Pay For. Remember back in the dot-com days: To show unity, the founder would give everyone in the company a trivial amount of stock options. Two years later, the company would have a massively successful IPO, and even the secretaries would become millionaires. Everyone was happy. These rags to riches stories have all but faded from memory. In today's market, trivial distribution of stock options will only result in trivial value to employees later. The problem comes when employees who assign no value to these options when they are originally received, later become upset at management when it later turns out that these options do in fact have little value. For these reasons, most of the managers indicated they have dramatically cut back on providing mid to low level employees any options at all (or other minor perks that do not change attitude or behavior). Those that do offer stock options allow the employees to "opt in" to these programs, giving up an equivalently valued amount of cash compensation in return, so that all expectations are properly aligned. Not surprisingly, few employees take them up on this offer. 2) Do Not Get Overly Creative. Several people told stories about creating generous but complicated bonus mechanisms that backfired. In one example, a CEO created a bonus pool with a fixed amount of money, which was to be divided among the senior management team as it grew over time. But when, more than two years later, the COO had failed in her role to build the management team, she rationalized that her failure entitled her to the entire bonus pool! When the CEO paid her an amount seen by the board as extremely generous given her mixed performance, it was received as low and unfair by the COO. There were no winners. Our dinner group agreed that the simpler the compensation/performance systems, the better. If the individual performs along with the company, they will be rewarded. If not, there will be minimal unwanted discussion. 3) Don't Go Solo. It is critical to share the responsibility for evaluating performance. In certain situations such as with young companies, individual performance can be quite ambiguous. Everyone is pitching in, doing whatever it takes, and the totality of behavior/accomplishment must be taken into account when reviewing someone's performance. But particularly aggressive employees will use the ambiguity argument to claim they have earned 100% of their bonus, even when a vast majority of their objectives were consistently not met. Create a team of people who can help review performance and determine bonus compensation (this may even include outside advisors/directors). This will take some of the ambiguity out of the evaluation, and will reduce the emotional leverage that some employees may try to use with their managers. This post was originally published at RickSmith.me Subscribe to Rick's Blog . Friend Rick Smith on Facebook . Follow Rick Smith on Twitter .
 
Susan Moeller: Media Literacy 101: The Ethics of Photoshopping a Shirtless Obama Top
The web is buzzing about The Washingtonian magazine's choice to put a paparazzi photo of a buff and shirtless President Obama on the cover of its May issue. The frenzy of comments about The Washingtonian's decision are running across the gamut, from a reprise of the drooling appreciation for Obama's taut abs first seen when the paparazzi photos of Obama on the beach hit in December: " Really hot Obama ," " President Beefcake ;" to stinging political rebukes for what some take to be the magazine's pandering to its audience and/or to the administration: " embarrassing ." But I'd like to call your attention to what Washingtonian did with the original Bauer-Griffin photo. Said Leslie Milk, the magazine's lifestyle editor, "I know we changed the color of his suit to red, and dropped out the background." In the original photo the president is wearing a black suit and walking from what appears to be sliding glass doors leading to a living room. What also appears to be altered from the original image is the contrast and the color balance of the president's skin. On The Washingtonian's cover the sun striking Obama's chest makes him appear more golden, almost glistening. In the world of news, that's unethical. The rule of thumb is, if you want to change what's in the photo, choose another photo. Making Obama into a man wearing brilliant red surfer trunks, instead of a more modest black pair, making the image more dramatic by having him walking out of darkness, and changing the exposure so he looks more gilded changes viewers' ideas about who the man is. Way back in 1994, Time magazine famously doctored the mug shot photo of OJ Simpson to make his face darker, more shadowed. The magazine was pilloried for "demonizing" Simpson as a blacker man. "Illustrator Matt Mahurin was the one to alter the image, saying later that he 'wanted to make it more artful, more compelling.'" Eleven years later, in 2005, Newsweek magazine tinkered with its cover of Martha Stewart to illustrate her coming release from prison, running a composite image of Stewart's head on the photo of a body of model. The National Press Photographers Association, the society of professional photojournalism, called that cover "a major ethical breach." Where in the spectrum of ethics does the decision by The Washingtonian come? A key issue is whether we "know about it." said Carl Sessions Stepp , professor of journalism at the University of Maryland. "When a magazine puts a person on its cover, our expectation is that the person we are seeing is the person who was seen through the lens of the photographer." But if we're told or it's obvious that an image has been "fictionalized" then we approach it with different expectations. We don't assume what's depicted is an accurate representation--both visually and psychologically--of who we're looking at. What's the danger of an audience thinking that the president looks model-hot? It's a simplification of who he is--it's the photographic version of presenting Obama as the shining hope for the country. It's ascribing to him more power--even if the power is sexual--than he actually has. What's the possible consequence? When individual players are made to seem larger or are given greater clout than they actually have, that prompts us to expect outcomes that cannot be delivered--and also encourages us to believe that we don't have to help solve the nation's problems, because we certainly do not measure up to the perfection we have been shown.
 
Worm-Grunting: Luring Earthworms Out Of The Ground (VIDEO) Top
Exploitative mimicry is the term for pretending you're something you're not for personal gain. One example of exploitative mimicry is called "worm grunting." Worm farmers drive wooden dowels into soil, then rub grooved metal across them to created a low, grunt-like noise. This noise more or less mimics the noise that a burrowing mole makes -- and that scares worms up to the surface. See it in action in this video from our friends at Assignment Earth : Of course, it More on Animals
 
Diane Dimond: Finding Good News Amongst the Bad Top
Sometimes America seems like an ugly place to live. The Associated Press recently reported that "there were 53 mass shooting deaths in the United States in the past month." Shocking and the details are gruesome. Among the killings was a pair of triple homicides of police officers in California and Pennsylvania; a father near Tacoma, Washington thought his wife was cheating and killed his five children and himself; an angry ex-husband gunned down 8 people at the North Carolina nursing home where his former wife worked; an unemployed Vietnamese immigrant in Binghamton, New York slaughtered 13 innocents at a civic center before committing suicide. But I don't want to dwell on the ugly today. Not today. Let's concentrate on what's good about Americans. The instinctive values and integrity found in the vast majority of us who would never commit a crime, let alone mass murder. Americans who would automatically step up like Captain Richard Phillips did. This career merchant seaman was just doing his job when heavily armed teen aged pirates commandeered his container ship, the Maersk Alabama, off the coast of Somalia and demanded two million dollars ransom. The 53 year old Phillips, a husband and father to two college aged students immediately ordered his 19 man crew to lock themselves in their cabins and he volunteered to be the pirate's prize. Part of Phillips' deal was that he and the pirates disembark into one of the lifeboats and allow the cargo ship to proceed to port. That is a hero. Phillips' calm response reminded me of another hero, another Captain named "Sully" who safely landed a plane full of passengers in the Hudson River, also not losing a single soul in his charge. Phillips is more than the sum of the parts of his captivity and rescue. He personifies the best of who we are. He commands a ship under the American flag and his cargo was United Nations food and humanitarian supplies bound for Kenya. That's also what Phillips was protecting at that split second he surrendered himself. Two weeks before the world's attention focused on this international crime scene Phillips had been home in Underhill, Vermont living a typical American life. Phillips is described as a modest, regular Joe, one of eight children who worked hard for what he wanted, putting himself through college by driving a cab in Boston. On an internet video of a 2008 Christmas gathering Phillips is heard discussing his next voyage in a New England accent reminiscent of one of the gang from the TV show Cheers. It's clear he has a wry sense of humor but he's also described as an intense and "by the book" man, a fierce, competitive athlete who still plays basketball at the local YMCA. He doesn't like to lose. So, it came as no surprise to his pals when Phillips tried to escape his lifeboat prison by jumping overboard one night and trying to swim to a nearby U.S. Navy vessel. It also came as no surprise to his crew when they learned Phillips had survived the ordeal. Perched on the deck of the very vessel Phillips had insured with his life they joyously displayed American flags and pumped their fists in the air at the news that their Captain would soon be reunited with them. Phillips spent 5 days in that cramped, hot boat with the nervous teenage pirates. In the meantime, other Americans converged on the scene, just doing their jobs with the U.S. Navy and the FBI hostage rescue team. It was clear the pirates lacked a plan B. When they ran out of fuel, food and water the pirates agreed to be tethered to the U.S. Navy destroyer Bainbridge. Under cover of darkness one night the Bainbridge crew ingeniously shortened the 200 foot line to just 100 feet. That gave Navy Seal sharpshooters bobbing up and down on the destroyer's fantail a better shot. They are trained to shoot from unstable platforms and that day they didn't miss the three pirates below. Once rescued Phillips' first reported statement was memorable, "The real heroes are the Navy, the Seals, those who have brought me home," he said. I suppose Phillips has a point. He repeated it again at a quick news conference right after e arrived home in Vermont. Just as he had done, those other Americans put their lives in jeopardy to save him. But I maintain it was that first selfless act of surrender that's most impressive. In a day when the title "hero" is misapplied to movie stars and big league athletes it's humbling to be exposed to the real deal. To put it in perspective: When we read about the "53 mass shooting deaths in the past month," perpetrated by unbalanced people, let's remember there are countless millions more perfectly balanced Americans. Many of whom are completely suited for hero status. -30- More on Kenya
 
Stephen Mo Hanan: Where There's a Will There's a Won't Top
In the podiatrist's waiting room the other day I came across a Newsweek column by George F. Will (F for Fuddy-duddy, I've always supposed). An unexpected glimpse of the woe haunting his heart made me understand the ethos of right-wing diehards in a new light. He was blasting the rhetoric of UN ambassador Susan Rice with regard to Iran's place in "the international community": Rice really thinks there is a community out there. To believe that is to believe, as liberals do, that harmony is humanity's natural condition, so discord is a remediable defect in arrangements. If harmony isn't humanity's "natural condition," I wonder what Will the Discordant thinks it is. I wonder what, if anything, he knows of harmony. Between individuals and, more importantly, within himself. Personally, I have long believed that Harmony, and its alliterative twin Happiness, is home plate. When did anybody ever consult a shrink with the complaint, "What's wrong with me, I feel happy all the time?" When did viewing the world with a sense of wonder at its marvels and goodwill toward its occupants ever feel unnatural? It's the most natural state on earth. Not that such blissful harmony is always manifest in ourselves or our encounters. Though available, it can be lost, and for long periods. But to dismiss it as unnatural is to forbid it, drive it even further underground, and enchain the world as the perpetually dangerous place that George F. Will and his "realistic" reactionary cohorts suppose it to be. The world is wounded, no doubt. The evolutionary drive that launched life on this planet has stumbled wildly in its meanderings toward the emergence of a fully conscious living being. It's true that all of recorded history seethes with havoc, cruelty and selfishness, and we are its inheritors. But it's equally true that wise teachers, gifted spirits, and paradigm shifts have time and again pointed our way toward an alternative, freely available to all. At least to all who are willing to confront the discord and violence and fear within themselves and push beyond. The foremost psychological tragedy of our time is that the people most in need of therapy are the least likely to volunteer. Bill O'Reilly on the couch, ouch! Limbaugh squatting on the Zen cushion? Why bother to learn how projection mechanisms work when it's so much easier to demonize this season's target of choice? The cheerleaders of the Right (gloomleaders is more like it) are possibly unaware of the deep, cynical, heartbroken pessimism that informs their fundamental outlook. It predates political affiliation. There's a failure of love in there, somewhere, that has never been acknowledged, except in scorn for the thought that harmony might indeed be our natural condition. Scorn for the very idea of community. Valorizing conflict plays very nicely, of course, into the hands that already hold the weapons. It's strangely ironic that our coercive form of social Darwinism has evolved, as it were, from the Biblical doctrine that "we are all sinners." In either case, received authority takes the place of intuitive spontaneity. The fundamentalist is saved from error by subscribing to a pre-approved belief system: theological for the Religious, ideological for the Right. Praise the Lord and pass the teabag. All else is heresy. There's this problem, though. A belief in the inherent goodness of human beings, and of life itself, keeps breaking through. A need for relatedness, if we are to survive on the planet, keeps being recognized. Methods of securing it keep getting pondered. No matter how much derision is aimed at it -- accusations of being Utopian, naïve, infidel, socialist even, barbs from well-paid ranting bullies -- the vision of transformative possibility is awake enough right now to have changed the face of government. The condescending contempt George F. and his ilk display for the idea that a "defect in arrangements" can be remedied is pure projection. The operative defect lies in the inward mental "arrangements" they accept as inevitable and seek to perpetuate, rather than recognizing them as the tragic consequences of conditioning, reversible through determined effort and mutual assistance. But that calls for humility and self-examination, anathema to the Right in both the personal and political spheres. "A fool who persists in his folly will soon become wise," the saying goes. There's a wakeup call ringing from every corner of the planet. The triumph of folly or wisdom will depend on whether we keep listening to frightened authoritarians who bring out the worst in us and call it realism, or whether we incline to the voice within that reveals the world our fears have obscured. A world where harmony is only natural. More on Bill O'Reilly
 
Leahy: If Bybee Is "Decent And Honorable" He'll Resign Top
On Monday, Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), rejected calls for the impeachment of federal judge and torture memo author Jay Bybee, saying that he was "one of the most honorable people you'll ever meet." If that's the case, Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), told reporters Tuesday, then Bybee should resign. "The fact is, the Bush administration and Mr. Bybee did not tell the truth. If the Bush administration and Mr. Bybee had told the truth, he never would have been confirmed," said Leahy, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. "The decent and honorable thing for him to do would be to resign. And if he is a decent and honorable person, he will resign," he said deliberately. A reporter followed up, asking what Congress should do if Bybee refused to step down. Leahy smiled and walked toward the Senate chamber, declining to comment further. Bybee is among a team of Bush administration lawyers that drafted legal documents justifying waterboarding, stuffing detainees in small boxes with insects and other forms of torture. Get HuffPost Politics on Facebook , or follow us on Twitter .
 
North Dakota: Delaware Incorporations Coming To State Top
Delaware has long been home to a wide range of corporations, and according to the state's own site, over 60% of the Fortune 500 are incorporated in the state, even though the vast majority are technically based somewhere else. But this year, Delaware is getting some competition from a seemingly unlikely place: North Dakota, which enacted what is widely considered to be a shareholder friendly law in 2007, called the North Dakota Publicly Traded Corporations Act. According to this article in the WSJ back in December, the new law makes it easier for shareholders to nominate their own slate of board members and vote on things like executive pay.
 
Website Get Satisfaction Ushers In New Era Of Customer Service Top
Ruby Tuesday Pick of the Week: Get Satisfaction Why It's a Gem: One website helps both companies and their customers with an improved customer-service experience Many small businesses put customer service on the back burner not because they don't believe in it, but because it's just too darn time consuming. But one website is changing that. Get Satisfaction is using technology to build communities that save both companies and customers time, money, and a whole lot of hair-pulling.
 
Julio Depietro: Letter to a Young Director Top
I was recently in an amateur painter's apartment/studio with a friend and ex-colleague from my previous career in finance. I have always suspected that my friend, like so many people in business and other "non-creative" fields, had long toyed with the idea of doing something "different" at some point in his life (a writer? an actor?) but had to this point taken the much more traditional and "safe" path in the business world. The painter, who was just starting out himself, asked my friend if he wanted to try painting something; there was a small canvas set up, and we weren't in any hurry to be anywhere, but a look of what I can only describe as panic flashed across my friend's face. And he is by no means an outlier. There is something about staring at a completely blank canvas or computer screen--maybe the undefined, infinite nature of the creative process, or the complete lack of objective metrics of what is "good" or "bad', or some deep-rooted fear of what other people might think--that can be completely paralyzing to many people. It didn't occur to me at the time, but I later realized that the source of my friend's panic wasn't just the fear of failing (however he would have defined that) it was even more basic than that--it was actually the fear of trying, or more accurately, of even having tried, as his post-painting self would later view it. It was as if once he had tried to paint something--anything--then that genie could never be put back in the bottle--he would no longer be able to view himself from the unassailable fortress of never having tried. And maybe that's all it is--the willingness to take that first blind baby-step into the shapeless void of creation might be the fundamental, defining characteristic of "creative" people--and therefore the act itself is by definition self-fulfilling. That's not to say that any art is as good as any other--far from it--but the difference between a Shakespearean sonnet and the hopeless poetry of a lovelorn teenager may be analogous to the distinction between human beings and chimpanzees--vastly different on the outside but sharing 99% (actually 95%, my quick Google fact-check corrects me) of the same DNA. Let me be very clear: The Good Guy (starring Alexis Bledel, Scott Porter, Bryan Greenberg and Andrew McCarthy) which premieres this weekend at the Tribeca Film Festival is the product of my having written exactly one screenplay, and directed exactly one feature film, so there is hardly a vast body of work propping up these words. And that same fear, that insecurity, that paralyzing inertia which I saw on my friend's face in the painter's studio is not only fresh in my memory, it is still with me every single day. But the thick, insidious psychological fog began to clear with the first line I actually forced myself to sit down and write, the first time I shot-listed a scene, the first time I called out 'action' on set-- and it has been clearing ever since. I write this in the hope that at least one person might be persuaded to take that first terrifying step that is the start of every artistic endeavor, that at least one person out there will take away from these words this exact sentiment: "I can do that." And you can. You can. There is nothing to lose except your fear of failure, your fear of having tried. And if those old insecurities about what other people might think start to creep back in, maybe you can find strength (as I have) in the great philosophical challenge from a long-dead German writer: "This is my way, where is yours?" Forgive me if I think that bears repeating, but again: "Where is yours?" So take that first step. Write one sentence. One brush stroke. Make one zero-budget short film. You never know where that might lead you--but you can know for certain what will never happen if you don't. And just send me a postcard someday when you're (existentially, at least) rich and famous. The Good Guy, starring Alexis Bledel, Scott Porter and Bryan Greenberg, is Julio DePietro's writing and directing debut. It premieres at the Tribeca Film Festival on Sunday, April 26th at 6:00pm (School of Visual Arts, Theater 1.) It's also playing on Tuesday, April 28th at 10:00pm (AMC Village 7, Theater 2) and on Wednesday, April 29th at 1:45pm (AMC Village 7, Theater 1.)
 
Sarah Brown: Build for Mothers and You Build for Everyone Top
The following is the keynote address I delivered to the African First Ladies Health Summit today in Los Angeles, organized by USDFA and African Synergy. Firstly I would like to thank the First Lady of California Maria Shriver -- who i know spoke to you at lunch yesterday -- for inviting me here to Los Angeles. She is a woman who achieves so much for other women, and continues to strive to understand the great and positive impact that women are making with their contribution in this rapidly changing world. I also thank US Doctors for Africa and African Synergy for convening this summit. When I mentioned to people back in the United Kingdom that I was coming all the way to California for an African First Ladies Health Summit, they expressed surprise. Not at the event -- the tremendous work done by so many first ladies is well acknowledged and the value of gathering together self-evident. No, the surprise came at the choice of location. But I am delighted that this choice of location celebrates US Doctors for Africa's work, as we will at the gala event tonight. And also that the high profile nature of this event here in the USA means that word will spread of the issues we are here to discuss an that we have a forum to discuss issues that can transform Africa and know that an international media will listen. Standing here with you today, I speak with certainty when I say I know we all share a common goal. For it goes without saying that we all want to see rising of standards of health and education across the globe. And of course we all want to ensure the good health and well-being of women and children in all our countries. Good healthcare, access to education, an end to children living in poverty without access to many of the basic provisions of life. In this room we have champions in the fight against HIV/AIDS, against malaria, against poor sanitation and for clean water, for better nutrition, for education, for girls, for newborns, for infants -- and for communities, economies, the environment. In short, we want to achieve the targets set by the millennium development goals. I admire enormously the work that you all do and your commitment to the causes you have taken on -- stepping up to the challenges faced in each of your home countries and working tirelessly to create the momentum for change and your dedicated work to create a reality where people in your country not only survive but prosper. I understand that there are many causes that exist side by side and each of us are right to argue for the causes we know to be important: action on HIV/AIDS, on malaria, on nutrition, on infant deaths, action on schools and on building health care systems. All of them great causes. Causes so big that we can devote our lives to them. But as I have learned more and more about these great challenges, I have kept asking myself whether there is one goal that could unlock all these goals? One goal that without action on which we cannot realize any of our objectives. One millennium target which if pursued aggressively could help us reach all our targets. And I have become convinced a mother's survival is the key, for it is the key to her baby's welfare and often that baby's life. A mother's survival can help prevent her family being hit by malaria. A mother's survival can ensure that all her children, including her girls, go to school. A mother's survival can ensure that her children receive the right nutrition, ensure they receive their immunizations that will ensure their health during their first tender years. So much that is important, happens in the very early years of a child's life when a mother is so central to every part of their days and nights. I don't believe that we will make the progress on HIV/AIDS without addressing maternal mortality. We will not make the progress we want on malaria without addressing maternal mortality. We will not make progress on getting more children to school without reducing maternal mortality. But we will make progress on all these things and on nutrition, on empowerment and education, on health care, on immunization, even -- I believe -- on the environment, if we make progress to reduce the number of mothers dying needlessly in childbirth. When one mother survives, a lot survives with her. It has been said a mother's place is in the home. I say a mother's place is everywhere and always has been. And so I have come here as a mother -- a mother who knows that without help and assistance, childbirth can be painful and dangerous, a mother who understands that lacking even the most basic healthcare can put your life at risk, a mother who knows that for far too many mothers, giving birth is a death sentence. What should be the happiest time in your life turning into the saddest time. We have the technology, the medicine, the science. The costs are not great. The solutions simple. We have yet though to really find the moral commitment and the political will. There has been, over the past year or so, a growing momentum. An understanding that we must all work together. No longer in silos on vertical solutions, but to integrate our efforts. Indeed with the current global economic climate that we now face, never has there been such an important time to integrate our efforts, and integrate the resources we have to maximize their reach. You know that if a health system is strong enough to cope with mothers in pregnancy and childbirth, then it will be able to cope with so much else. A health system that works for mother, works also for early infant care, for vaccinations, for infection control, for blood transfusions, for emergency surgery for every member of the community. Build for mothers and you build for everyone. Over a year ago now the maternal mortality campaign was convened. A campaign that brought together governments, the grassroots membership of the White Ribbon Alliance and many of the larger NGOs and campaigning charities, other international organizations and academic institutions, the private sector, and individuals. And I'm delighted to announce two new members -- US Doctors for Africa and African Synergy. The maternal mortality campaign has started to raise awareness for an issue that had remained cloaked in silence, with terrible figures unchanged for 20 years. For every minute a mother dies in childbirth, for every death 30 more are left permanently injured, her baby 10 times more likely to die than if she had lived, her elder children 4 times more likely. The last year has been incredible with this issue taking pace and gathering momentum at every level. I have heard too often of international meetings with an agenda to discuss all the millennium development goals where little or nothing would be said about #5 -- the goal to reduce maternal mortality by 75% by 2015. Now this issue is discussed every time. At every meeting on every table. And we're going to keep it there. The success of the campaign is in part because it is built around a few key objectives, objectives that all organizations can sign up to, and build into the work they do. The messages are simple and clear: To put girls and women at the center of funding for health system strengthening -- including the G8 taskforce's report on new innovative international financing for health systems this July. To identify and work with countries to get financed health plans up and running that meet the targets. To urge the UN secretary general to make reducing maternal mortality a top priority -- the gateway to the success of all the millennium development goals. The maternal mortality campaign also seeks: To appoint national champions like yourselves to mobilize action at country level with all the help that our growing and powerful network can provide. And to continue to work together more effectively to work out exactly what makes a health plan succeed -- the best clinical interventions, the best educational support, the best care of mothers and newborns. Doing better on human rights and working with the experts in HIV/AIDS, malaria, nutrition and early years development to integrate our efforts to achieve together what we all want -- better lives for people in Africa. and -- finally, but very significantly -- we must find a way to get maternal mortality recognized as a key indicator of a functioning health system. Our campaigners believe that all health budgets and funds should measure their success on how well they do for mothers -- no more pregnant mothers dying from malaria, risking MTCT from HIV/AIDS, dying of malnutrition or worse still of ignorance. The international campaign is growing all the time, every day, and there will be key influential points this year: at the African health minister meeting at the African Union next month, at the meeting of the G8 nations, in Italy this July, at the United Nations General Assembly in New York in September, and I know the White Ribbon Alliance is organizing a gathering this November in Tanzania. Bience Gawanas, the social affairs commissioner at the African Union has agreed to be the co-chair with me on the maternal health leadership group. Every step of the way it is important that African Leaders -- including yourselves -- are steering this. While we need our campaign to keep up the pressure on the global stage, what is vital to the long overdue success for reducing maternal mortality will be the work that is done at the national level, where the grassroots at the bottom and the global activity at the top meet to turn policy in to a living reality for families and communities. You as First Ladies are powerful champions for the causes you support. Powerful role models, motivators and catalysts for action. Your work is formidable. If we can also harness the efforts of civil society and clinicians to support you, you will be unstoppable. If we succeed in combining all our efforts -- the results are potentially phenomenal. Building for women will mean building a lasting future for our world. What I ask of you today is that whatever your personal cause may be -- be it education, nutrition, malaria, HIV/AIDS -- that you also take on maternal health and place it at the heart of all your good work. When people die we say of life "it has to go on, life must go on." But when a mother dies it doesn't just go on for her children, nor for her community, the local economy and the environment too. Please let us work together to make sure maternal mortality is a problem of the past and not our children's future. Thank you. More on Africa
 
Sultan Sooud Al-Qassemi: Why Irena Should Find Her Home in Abu Dhabi Top
Over the past few months a quiet effort has been underway in one of the most recognizable buildings in Abu Dhabi. A team has been carefully assembled under specialized leadership and their mission identified. Their target has been established: her name, Irena, born in Bonn in January 2009 and now in need of a home. The team's mandate: to secure Irena -- short for the International Renewable Energy Agency -- a home in Abu Dhabi. I had the fortune of witnessing first-hand how this team, lead by the capable Dr. Sultan Al Jaber, presented its case to host Irena to a visiting president of a foreign country in Dubai. It didn't take too long to win him and his country's precious vote over. But it was just one success in a more arduous journey. This is a tough race but no developing country has put out such a bold but realistic proposal to host the global headquarters of any UN entity. The team has traveled to lobby presidents, prime ministers and senior government officials from the 77 signatory nations and approached these country's allies to lobby them. And they must -- two major European cities are also vying to host Irena. Hosting Irena in the UAE is important because ever since the establishment of the United Nations in the aftermath of the Second World War, almost every single entity that was established under its banner has been headquartered in a first world or developed state. Out of the UN's 192 members only a handful have been honored by hosting a global headquarters of any of its offshoots. The reasoning is that these countries contribute a significant amount of funding for the UN's budget or that their host city has a relevant connection to the entity. For example, the World Tourism Organization is hosted in tourism magnet Spain and the World Bank and International Monetary Fund is hosted in the US, a country that contributes 22 per cent of the UN's budget. If that logic is followed, then Abu Dhabi has the best shot at beating its European competitors in hosting Irena. Here's why: Irena, the first international organization that focuses exclusively on the issue of renewable energy in the developing and developed world, has a natural home already being set up in Abu Dhabi. In 2006, three years before Irena's birth, Abu Dhabi took the giant step of announcing Masdar City, a zero emissions development where cars will run on solar energy and water is recycled. Masdar, arguably the world's most ambitious sustainable development, will host specialized research and technology intensive facilities for up to 90,000 inhabitants to encourage the study and implementation of renewable energy. Those already on-board in helping build Masdar City include BP, General Electric and Royal Dutch Shell. Irena's aim is to work throughout the world to close the gap that exists between the enormous potential of renewable energy and its current relatively small market share in energy consumption. Abu Dhabi, a major Opec oil producer, believes so much in this project that it has committed that by 2020, renewable energy sources will account for at least seven percent of the emirate's total power generation capacity. That nearly all UN headquarters are hosted in either North America or Europe reflects poorly on the UN's record, especially considering that most of the world's inhabitants live outside the five or six countries it consistently favors. Curiously, Switzerland hosts several UN agencies -- including the Universal Postal Union, the International Labor Organization and the World Health Organization -- even though it lacked full membership in the UN as late as 2002. If the UN expects the developing world to take its noble mission seriously, including ensuring social progress and equality, it must start to practice what it preaches and encourage capable emerging countries to take a leading role in development. Capability is a key word for developing countries wishing to host a UN agency. It is incumbent on any country keen on hosting a UN agency to demonstrate competence as well as a willingness to remain neutral with regard to upholding the principles of the UN and of the specific agency it hosts. And no other city in the world has demonstrated such eagerness and suitability to host a renewable energy center as Abu Dhabi. Our duty as nationals and residents of the UAE and the wider region is to provide support for the efforts of this organization. This century belongs to the emerging world of the Middle East, Asia, Africa and the Latin America and no other place better exemplifies resolve towards this project than Abu Dhabi. In Cairo this coming June, the 78 signatory nations of the renewable energy agency statute will vote to find the six-month-old Irena a new home. She couldn't be in safer or more capable hands than in the UAE's capital. This article was first published in the National newspaper in Abu Dhabi, UAE on Sunday April 19th 2009. More on United Nations
 
California GOP Decries Anti-Semitic Tea Party Activism Top
Last week's Tea Parties went forward despite the fact that there was a little bit of dispute over who owned the Tea Party movement -- a battle between followers of Ron Paul and a gaggle of fake grassroots organizations. Well, that conflict continues, even after the Tea Parties, and for good reason : Citing the importance of the taxpayer movement in California, California Republican Party Chairman Ron Nehring today strongly condemned the use of anti-Semitic material used to promote the recent April 15 TEA party in San Mateo County. "The taxpayer movement is incredibly important for California, and we applaud the success of the tea parties that took place across the state on April 15. Because we remain intensely interested in the growth and success of the mainstream taxpayer movement, we strongly condemn the use of anti-Semitic imagery in the promotion of the recent event in San Mateo County. [...] Chairman Nehring issued the statement in response to the use of anti-Semitic graphics used on the "Bay Area Ron Paul Campaign for Liberty" website in conjunction with the April 15 TEA Party in San Mateo. The image pictured a bucket of money being poured into a funnel with a Star of David on it, which in turn drips blood into a bottle where a person holding a Palestinian flag is seen drowning in blood. The text reads "Uncle Sam Reminds You: KEEP PAYING TAXES. The ongoing extermination of Palestinian Children Can't be Done Without Your Help." So there you have it. The California GOP is angry a single piece of signage that expressed a decidedly vile opinion. Surely they are just getting started: [Would you like to follow me on Twitter ? Because why not? Also, please send tips to tv@huffingtonpost.com -- learn more about our media monitoring project here .] More on Tax Day Tea Parties
 
David Duke Banned By Czech University From Giving Speech Top
PRAGUE — Prague's Charles University says it has banned a lecture by former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke. Duke is planning a trip to the Czech Republic at the invitation of neo-Nazis to promote the translation of his book "My Awakening." He was scheduled to give a lecture Friday to students taking a course on extremism but the university said Tuesday it was banning the talk because they had heard neo-Nazis were planing to attend. Duke is expected to give lectures in Prague and the country's second-largest city, Brno, over the weekend.
 
Scott Mendelson: Ten minutes shorter, bub? Final cut of X-Men Origins: Wolverine has same running time as bootleg. Top
Well, tickets for X-Men Origins: Wolverine are now on sale at most major theater chains (they had been on sale at the Arclight chain for awhile now). So, if you watched that bootleg a few weeks ago, and you're feeling guilty about it, now's the chance to appease your conscience. Free tip - the AMC theater chain does super cheap shows on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday for any showing before noon. So, for $6.00(in Los Angeles, likely cheaper elsewhere), you can purchase a ticket for Wolverine and swipe the slate clean. Here's the funny part though. Remember when Tom Rothman swore up and down that the final version of the film would be ten minutes longer? Apparently that was a lie. The bootleg apparently ran 107 minutes with credits. The official running time listed in the AMC and Arclight websites lists the film as running... drum roll... 107 minutes. While Tom Rothman had no choice but to convince moviegoers that the free version would be vastly different from the completed picture, it'll be interesting to see the reaction should that not turn out to be the case. Because, at this point, it would seem to not be the case. Aside from unfinished effects work and several minutes of extra Ryan Reynolds Deadpool footage that apparently comprised the majority of the reshoots (due to an alleged scheduling conflict), it's becoming increasingly likely that the bootleg that went out three weeks ago was in fact a rough version of the final film. And, judging by comments that have been posted at my various outlets and elsewhere, that's may be a problem. Boy, it's a good thing that Fox now has a bullet-proof excuse should the film under perform next month. Scott Mendelson
 
Manuel Rosales, Chavez Critic, Skipped Court, Seeking Asylum, Now In Peru Top
LIMA, Peru — A Venezuelan opposition leader who says he is a victim of political persecution by the government of President Hugo Chavez has arrived in Peru but has not requested political asylum, Peru's foreign minister said Tuesday. Manuel Rosales, a leading opponent of Chavez, faces a corruption charge at home. And a political ally, Omar Barboza, said Monday that Rosales has decided to seek asylum abroad rather than face a corruption charge in a trial he says would be stacked against him. Peruvian Foreign Minister Jose Antonio Garcia Belaunde said Rosales entered Peru as a tourist. "I don't know on what date he entered," Garcia Belaunde told the network CNN en Espanol. "He hasn't asked for asylum." The foreign minister told Colombia's Caracol radio that Rosales, if he intends to seek asylum in Peru, would have to request it and the government would "evaluate if there are reasons to grant asylum." Rosales went into hiding at the end of March, with his party citing harassment and fears he could be in danger, and he temporarily stepped down as mayor of Maracaibo, Venezuela's second-largest city. Rosales has been accused by Venezuelan prosecutors of illegal enrichment between 2000 and 2004 while he was governor of western Zulia state. Prosecutors are seeking his arrest, but a court has yet to approve the charge or decide if he should be detained while awaiting trial. He has denied the accusation against him, calling it a "political lynching" ordered by Chavez. He says the Venezuelan judicial system is doing Chavez's bidding and a trial would not be fair. More on Venezuela
 
Feingold Called For Release Of Bybee's Torture Memo Back In '03 Top
Criticism of Judge Jay Bybee and calls for his impeachment continue to grow, with two leading progressives airing serious concerns about the infamous torture memo author's position on the ninth circuit court of appeals. On Tuesday, Sen. Russ Feingold expressed his firm disagreement with the White House's previous suggestions that prosecution of former Bush administration lawyers should be off the table ( Obama has since left the door open for prosecution ). As for Bybee, the Senator's staff sent out a floor statement Feingold made in March 13, 2003, in which he expressed opposition to the Bush administration lawyer's judicial appointment and questioned why his OLC opinions -- so controversial today -- were being kept secret. "The administration should be able to agree to an acceptable procedure to allow the Judiciary Committee to review Mr. Bybee's OLC opinions. Given the recent history of many OLC opinions being made public, it is hard to believe that there are no opinions authored by Mr. Bybee that could be disclosed without damaging the deliberative process. Indeed, it is very hard to give credence to the idea that OLC's independence would be compromised by the release of some selection of the opinions of interest to members of the Judiciary Committee or the Senate. Without the OLC memos, important questions about the nominee's views on how far the Government can go in the war on terrorism..." Meanwhile, speaking before the Religious Action Committee in Washington D.C., Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse said that Bybee's role in crafting the memos that outlined the legal limits of torture caused "grave concerns" and created a "serious whiff of impropriety and impeachability." As he did on the Rachel Maddow Show Monday night, the Rhode Island Democrat said he would reserve judgment on the correct course of action until the Department of Justice put out its report on the Office of Legal Council activities during the Bush years. "When that report comes out we will look very closely at this office of legal council mess and we will then have a better idea of what went wrong, what went right, where it came from and what we should do about it," said Whitehouse. "So I would defer any firm feelings on that question... until the issuances of that report. Certainly, there is enough in the air to raise a very serious whiff of suspicion." Get HuffPost Politics on Facebook , or follow us on Twitter .
 
Elizabeth Warren To Geithner: "People Are Angry" (VIDEO) Top
In her opening statement at Tuesday's Congressional Oversight Panel hearing on the Trouble Asset Relief Program, COP chairwoman Elizabeth Warren told Treasury secretary Timothy Geithner that the public is not happy. "People are angry that even if they have paid their bills on time consistently and never missed a payment, their TARP-assisted banks are unilaterally raising their interest rates or slashing their credit lines," said Warren, who added that people are upset about foreclosures and a shortage of financing for small businesses. "People are angry because they are paying for programs that haven't been fully explained and that have no apparent benefit for their families or the economy as a whole, but still seem to leave enough cash in the system for lavish bonuses and golf outings," the TARP watchdog said. "None of this seems fair." Panel member Richard Neiman, state superintendent of the New York banks, told Geithner that he had asked Huffington Post readers in a blog post to submit questions for him to ask the Treasury secretary. "Literally within hours of the posting there were hundreds of responses that expressed deep concerns and even skepticism of the program, many accompanied by deeply personal stories," Neiman said. He highlighted one response in particular: "When are those banks going to stop sitting on all that money and start lending again?" "That question is undoubtedly a common question," Neiman said. He noted that he'd seen progress, but said, "Additional information is clearly needed to get to the bottom of this." Watch Neiman's remarks: Neiman said he would provide questions from Huffington Post readers to the panel in hopes they'd be made (more) public. In his prepared remarks ( PDF ), Geithner acknowledged that lending is down. "Reports on bank lending show significant declines in consumer loans, including credit card loans, and commercial and industrial loans," Geithner said. Geithner said the Bush administration's interventions at the end of 2008 -- TARP -- were "successful in achieving the vital, but narrow, objective of preventing a major systemic meltdown." The Treasury secretary said his department is "committed to an open and transparent program with appropriate oversight." To this end, Geithner touted FinancialStability.gov, the department's new website, and said the department would post all investment contracts on its website within ten days of each transaction's closing. Warren, who said at a March 31 congressional hearing that working with her oversight panel did "not seem to be a priority for the Treasury department ," encouraged Geithner to finish his remarks so they could get to questioning, during which she engaged in some testy back-and-forth with the Treasury secretary. "The banks have received 10 times more money than the auto industry and yet they're receiving different treatment," Warren said. "Are the banks better managed than the auto industry?" Geithner didn't take the bait, but noted that letting the financial industry collapse would have created "much more headwinds for businesses across the country." He said that the financial industry had been forced to make changes. "Going forward, where institutions need exceptional assistance, that assistance will come with conditions," Geithner said. Get HuffPost Politics on Facebook , or follow us on Twitter . More on Timothy Geithner
 
Iraqi Child Suicide Bombers In Training Arrested: Iraqi Forces Top
Iraqi forces arrested four children, all under 14, who are allegedly linked to al-Qaida and training to become suicide bombers, an Iraqi general said. More on War Wire
 

CREATE MORE ALERTS:

Auctions - Find out when new auctions are posted

Horoscopes - Receive your daily horoscope

Music - Get the newest Album Releases, Playlists and more

News - Only the news you want, delivered!

Stocks - Stay connected to the market with price quotes and more

Weather - Get today's weather conditions




You received this email because you subscribed to Yahoo! Alerts. Use this link to unsubscribe from this alert. To change your communications preferences for other Yahoo! business lines, please visit your Marketing Preferences. To learn more about Yahoo!'s use of personal information, including the use of web beacons in HTML-based email, please read our Privacy Policy. Yahoo! is located at 701 First Avenue, Sunnyvale, CA 94089.
Posted by at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)