Salisbury News

Monday, January 07, 2013

Joe Albero To Make Announcement Tomorrow

SBYNews publisher and Salisbury businessman Joe Albero will announce his intention to run for mayor of Salisbury on Tuesday.

WHEN: 1PM
Tuesday, January 8th

WHERE: DW Burt Concrete Construction Co.
1802 Northwoods Drive
Salisbury, MD

The public is invited.

Directions

Funny Money: Pundits Float $1 Trillion Coin As Answer To Debt-Ceiling Standoff

Imagine sitting around the kitchen table, trying to figure out how you're going to pay off that next-generation HDTV you just bought.

Then someone has an idea. Brush off one of the old checker pieces in the attic, assign it a value of, say, $2,000 -- and use that newly minted "coin" to pay the credit card.

Such an absurd idea is, pun intended, gaining currency as a technically legal way for Washington to avert a looming fight over the debt ceiling. A Democratic congressman, a Nobel-winning economist and several prominent writers are now floating the idea that the Treasury Department should use obscure powers to mint a $1 trillion coin if Congress does not permit an increase in the debt ceiling.
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'GUN MAP' NEWSPAPER IN CIRCULATION FREE FALL

Buried at the bottom of a New York Times piece might be the real reason to explain why New York's Journal News did something as sensationally stupid as publishing the names and addresses of over 30,000 legal gun owners living in two New York counties. In just five years, the Journal News' Monday through Friday circulation rate has plummeted almost 40%, "from 111,536 in September 2007 to 68,850 in September 2012."
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Robbery Sting Nets Alleged Black Guerilla Family Members in West Baltimore

In Baltimore, authorities are finding that if they can't solve a robbery, the next best thing may be to set one up.

Six men - at least three who police say are members of the Black Guerilla Family - were indicted last week in federal court on robbery charges. They didn't commit a robbery, but were caught in recorded conversations with a government source planning and preparing to carry one out, according to court records.

It's a tactic that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives has used at least three times here, and which the Federal Bureau of Investigation also used in a case involving a man charged with accepting a murder-for-hire proposal. More

Pentagon Bans Gay Blogs But Not Ann Coulter

The progressive political site AMERICAblog has uncovered a strange and not-so-accidental glitch in the Department of Defense’s computer system, one that’s been around for a while.

The Pentagon reportedly blocks a number of LGBT-related websites from being accessed by DoD computers, while allowing access to right-wing powerhouses like the American Family Association and Ann Coulter.

Louisiana Republican Sen. David Vitter ripped Majority Leader Harry Reid for suggesting the damage from Hurricane Katrina was "nothing" compared with the damage from Superstorm Sandy.

Reid, D-Nev., made the comments last week when Congress was taking up a $9 billion disaster-relief bill for the East Coast, which is still reeling from Sandy.

“The people of New Orleans and that area, they were hurt, but nothing in comparison to what happened to the people in New York and New Jersey,” Reid said.
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Outrage in Delaware (FINAL UPDATE: A HAPPY ENDING)

This picture is from a Milford, Delaware playground. Milford is in Southern Delaware in the very conservative Sussex County. I originally saw this picture on Facebook, from a liberal friend downstate, who was sharing it via an original posting of the very nonliberal Dan Gaffney, a conservative talk show radio host. It is nice to know that the outrage concerning this photo is bipartisan. And what is so outrageous about it, you ask?

Well, you can read what it says in English. In Spanish it says (paraphrasing) "You have to have a permit to play here or you will be arrested." The english version contains no information about needing a permit or else you will be subject to police action. It is an obvious intimidation tactic and a not so subtle "Whites Only" sign.

So if you are a white English speaking "American," you can play here at your own risk so long as you have a parent or guardian watching. If you are brown, if you dare play here without a permit we will arrest your immigrant ass. That is the fucking height of racism, and I will see to it that who ever is responsible for this sign will have their public careers ended immediately.

The Maryland Live! casino in Hanover brought in $35.9 million in revenue last month, an increase of about 4.6 percent from November, according to revenue figures released today by the Maryland Lottery and Gaming Control Agency.

The state’s largest slot machine destination has generated more than $1 million a day for six of the past seven months. November revenues were $34.3 million.

The December figures indicate continued resurgence in revenue at Maryland Live! Profits increased 12.1 percent in November compared to October. But before that, profits decreased 4 percent in October compared to September; 1.3 percent in September compared to August; and 8.3 percent in August compared to July.
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Company Confirms Plans To Shutter Berlin Operation

BERLIN -- Merial Select confirmed this week it will be closing its Berlin doors effective next year.

Though the majority of Merial’s approximately 45 employees are expected to lose their positions, town officials are optimistic that the facilities closing will not adversely affect Berlin.

Mayor Gee Williams compared Merial’s shutting down to when the Tyson plant likewise left Berlin in 2003. That departure meant the termination of about 600 jobs. However, the town was able to weather the event relatively well, according to Williams, and the expectation is the same with Merial.

“It all depends on where the employees live,” he said. “Years ago, when Tyson closed down, people were really concerned about what impact that would have. And out of all of the employees, and they had a lot of employees, almost all of them lived in southern Delaware and Virginia and other counties other than Worcester.”

Williams expressed sympathy for the roughly 45 current employees who will be out of work next year but was certain that the closing will not be felt much in Berlin.

So, which states have best braved the five-year-old Great Recession — the most severe economic contraction the United States has experienced since the Great Depression?

Maryland was among the states that have been less successful in taming the recessionary conditions, ranked 35th in an analysis by 24/7 Wall Street. Current unemployment is at 6.7%, down 1.3 percentage points from the peak of 8%; and 2011 GDP growth was a mere 0.9%.

“The housing market crash hit Maryland harder than any other state in the Northeast. Between the second quarter of 2007 and the second quarter of this year, the median home price in the state fell by 27.2%,” 24/7 Wall St. pointed out.
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Health Insurers Still Seek Steep Premium Increases

NEW YORK — Health insurance companies across the country are seeking and winning double-digit increases in premiums for some customers, even though one of the biggest objectives of the Obama administration’s health care law was to stem the rapid rise in insurance costs for consumers.

Particularly vulnerable to the high rates are small businesses and people who do not have employer-provided insurance and must buy it on their own.

In California, Aetna is proposing rate increases of as much as 22 percent, Anthem Blue Cross 26 percent and Blue Shield of California 20 percent for some of their policy holders, according to the insurers’ filings with the state for 2013.

It seems like the Octomom has gotten her tentacles back on welfare checks.

Five months after Nadya Suleman weaned herself off welfare, the mother of the world's most famous octuplets (and six other children) has filed again for government aid, sources told TMZ.

Suleman, who filed for bankruptcy last May, signed up for welfare this week and will be getting $2,800 a month in assistance, according to the gossip site.
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The War On Tater Tots: Enlisting Daycare Centers In The Fight Against Childhood Obesity

The childcare centers Debbie Ellis owns in Greenwood, Miss., used to serve instant potatoes, chocolate pudding and fried food. Now she has a caterer prepare meals with whole grains and vegetables. And thanks to subsidies from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, she’s actually saving money by offering her kids healthier fare. They don’t have as much fun eating it, she says, “but we do have good quality.”

There have been a lot of stories this year about the USDA’s new nutrition requirements for school lunches, which started to kick in this fall. But less attention has been paid to places like Mississippi – which has the highest rate of childhood poverty and childhood obesity in the U.S. – where efforts are underway to help kids form better eating habits before they even reach elementary school.

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FED GOV: ANNUAL AUTO-RELATED DEATHS THREE TIMES HIGHER THAN GUN-RELATED DEATHS

According to the federal government, the number of people killed in automobile-related deaths annually is approximately three times higher than the number of people killed by all gun-related deaths combined -- handgun, shotgun, and rifle.

Yet there is, to my knowledge, no concerted effort to ban automobiles.

In a post on Jan. 3, I pointed out that FBI crime statistics show more people are consistently killed each year with hammers and clubs than with rifles. This information was pertinent because Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) is planning to push legislation to ban several classes of rifles as we speak. Here is the link to her legislation.
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The Only CIA Officer Scheduled to Go To Jail Over Torture Never Tortured Anybody

Reporter for the New York Times, Scott Shane, wrote a feature story on the case of former CIA agent John Kiriakou, who is the first from the agency to face jail time for a classified leak. He is to be sentenced to 30 months of jail on January 25.

Kiriakou pled guilty to the charge of violating the Intelligence Identities Protection Act (IIPA) by revealing the name of an undercover officer on October 23 in a federal court in Alexandria, Virginia. He faced the potential of going to jail for more than a decade and did not want to be separated from his wife and five children for that long.

The chain of events that led to Kiriakou becoming a target of prosecution is outlined in Shane’s story.

Earlier we reported that the Los Angeles Police Department made a big show of having found "rocket launchers" during it most recent gun buyback program. We pointed out that the so-called launchers were being misreported and the police were likely using them as a scare tactic. But now we find that this same police chief has apparently done this before.

On December 27 L.A. Police Chief Charlie Beck displayed a pair of what he claimed were "weapons of war" turned in during his latest gun buyback program. Chief Beck told the media that a pair of "rocket launchers" turned up and he evidently wanted to scare his city and make waves in the media about his success in getting these "weapons of death" off the streets of L.A.

Of course, the "rocket launchers" Chief Beck showed the Old Media establishment were nothing of the kind. Instead, what Beck waved about during the December press conference were apparently U.S. Army training devices that were dummy devices. They are essentially prop pieces made to show young soldiers what such anti-tank weapons look like and how they feel. These training devices have likely never been able to fire anything nor could they be made to do so.
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BREAKING NEWS

JAKE DAY HAS FILED TO RUN AGAINST COUNCILWOMAN DEBBIE CAMPBELL IN DISTRICT II.

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More Than 30,000 Sign WH Petition Calling for Cut in Congressional Salaries

The Obama administration’s “We the People” petition page on whitehouse.gov collects signatures on petitions posted, with the idea that those that have 25,000 or more signatures will get an official response.

But the future of the petition proposing to cut the pay of members of Congress to $75,000 a year for three years to cut the national deficit is uncertain, even if it has received 31,579 signatures since it was created on Christmas Day and as of the time this story was posted.

Two days after Christmas, President Barack Obama signed an executive order ending the pay freeze on federal workers, including representatives in the House and senators, effective Jan. 1, 2013 – the same day the U.S. government technically fell over the so-called fiscal cliff because Congress could not reach a legislative solution.
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The War On Female Sexuality: Is Globalization To Blame?

Women’s bodies have become a global battlefield. The brutal New Delhi gang rape case, and the fierce protests it sparked, is just one example. From education of Afghan schoolgirls to veiling in France, female sexuality and freedom has come to symbolize a global conflict “over the nature of the self,” argues David Jacobson, a University of South Florida sociologist, in “Of Virgins and Martyrs: Women and Sexuality in Global Conflict,” which comes out later this month. It’s chiefly an ideological divide of “honor” versus “self-possession” — or, as he puts it in the book, “who owns and control’s one’s body, especially when it comes to women: is it the individual herself or the community, through enforced practices of honor, virginity, veiling, and marriage?”

What Jacobson does beautifully in his accessibly academic book is differentiate between politicized Islamist patriarchy and “the broader Muslim community,” the former being “a core expression of a deeper global ﬁssure,” he explains. “In an honor society, patriarchal and tribal traditions dictate that a woman’s body belongs to and serves the community. … An interest-based society privileges self-determination, the sovereignty of the individual over her body, and ownership of one’s own capital, be it economic, cultural, or social.” As globalization improves the status of many women, it also incites a ferocious backlash against them.

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