Published on Oct 9, 2013
October 08, 2013 C-SPAN
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Wednesday, October 9, 2013
The 7 habits of highly ineffective political parties
When it comes to major policy battles, since 2009 the
GOP is 0-3. Before it fails again, David Frum offers up seven ways the
party is shooting itself in the foot.
The three previous losses (in case you’re feeling forgetful) were, in order:
(1) The fight over Obamacare. Result: the most ambitious new social insurance program since Medicare, financed—unlike Medicare—by redistributive new taxes on investment and high incomes.
(2) The 2012 election. Result: Despite the worst economy since the Great Depression, the reelection of President Obama, Democratic retention of the Senate, and 1.4 million more votes cast for House Democrats than for House Republicans.
(3) The fight over the “fiscal cliff” at the end of 2012. Result: In order to preserve some of the Bush tax cuts, Republicans for the first time since 1991 left their finger prints on a tax increase for upper income groups.
Now comes fight (4), the fight over the government shutdown and the debt ceiling. This one isn’t lost yet. But unless Republicans are prepared to push the country into the catastrophe of national bankruptcy sometime around October 17, it’s hard to see how this one does not end in a Republican retreat, clutching whatever forlorn fig leaf they can negotiate from President Obama.
Behind all four defeats can be seen the same seven mistakes: what you might call the seven habits of highly ineffective political parties. Let’s call the roll:
Habit 1: Maximalist goals.
There’s a lot about Obamacare for a Republican not to like. But to demand Obamacare’s outright repeal (which is what “defunding” amounts to) barely 10 months after decisively losing an election in which Obamacare occupied a central place—well, that’s shooting for the moon. we’ve seen equivalent moon shots again and again since 2009. During the original Obamacare legislation, Republicans took the position: no, no, not one inch. During the election of 2012, Republicans were not content merely to replace one president with another. They also campaigned on the most radical platform the party since 1964. They wanted the biggest possible mandate. Instead they got whomped.
Habit 2: Apocalyptic visions.
Republicans have insisted on maximal goals because they fear they face a truly apocalyptic moment: an irrevocable fork in the road, with one path leading to socialist tyranny, the other to the restoration of the constitutional republic. There sometimes are such moments in history of nations. This is not one. If the United States has remained a constitutional republic despite a government guarantee of health care for people over 65, it will remain a constitutional republic with a government guarantee of health care for people under 65. Obamacare will cost money the country doesn’t have, and that poses a serious fiscal problem. But it’s not as serious a fiscal problem as is posed by the existing programs, Medicare and Medicaid, which cover the people it costs most to cover. It’s not a problem so serious as to justify panic.
Yet panic has gripped the Republican rank-and-file since 2009—and instead of allaying panic, Republican leaders have aggravated and exploited it, to the point where the leaders are compelled to behave in ways they know to be irrational. In his speech to the “Bull Moose” convention of 1912, Teddy Roosevelt declared, “We stand at Armageddon and we battle for the Lord!” It’s a great line, but it’s not a mindset that leads to successful legislative outcomes.
Habit 3: Irrational animus.
Republicans have lost three major fights since 2009. They seem likely soon to lose a fourth—and all in the same way.
The three previous losses (in case you’re feeling forgetful) were, in order:
(1) The fight over Obamacare. Result: the most ambitious new social insurance program since Medicare, financed—unlike Medicare—by redistributive new taxes on investment and high incomes.
(2) The 2012 election. Result: Despite the worst economy since the Great Depression, the reelection of President Obama, Democratic retention of the Senate, and 1.4 million more votes cast for House Democrats than for House Republicans.
(3) The fight over the “fiscal cliff” at the end of 2012. Result: In order to preserve some of the Bush tax cuts, Republicans for the first time since 1991 left their finger prints on a tax increase for upper income groups.
Now comes fight (4), the fight over the government shutdown and the debt ceiling. This one isn’t lost yet. But unless Republicans are prepared to push the country into the catastrophe of national bankruptcy sometime around October 17, it’s hard to see how this one does not end in a Republican retreat, clutching whatever forlorn fig leaf they can negotiate from President Obama.
Behind all four defeats can be seen the same seven mistakes: what you might call the seven habits of highly ineffective political parties. Let’s call the roll:
Habit 1: Maximalist goals.
There’s a lot about Obamacare for a Republican not to like. But to demand Obamacare’s outright repeal (which is what “defunding” amounts to) barely 10 months after decisively losing an election in which Obamacare occupied a central place—well, that’s shooting for the moon. we’ve seen equivalent moon shots again and again since 2009. During the original Obamacare legislation, Republicans took the position: no, no, not one inch. During the election of 2012, Republicans were not content merely to replace one president with another. They also campaigned on the most radical platform the party since 1964. They wanted the biggest possible mandate. Instead they got whomped.
Habit 2: Apocalyptic visions.
Republicans have insisted on maximal goals because they fear they face a truly apocalyptic moment: an irrevocable fork in the road, with one path leading to socialist tyranny, the other to the restoration of the constitutional republic. There sometimes are such moments in history of nations. This is not one. If the United States has remained a constitutional republic despite a government guarantee of health care for people over 65, it will remain a constitutional republic with a government guarantee of health care for people under 65. Obamacare will cost money the country doesn’t have, and that poses a serious fiscal problem. But it’s not as serious a fiscal problem as is posed by the existing programs, Medicare and Medicaid, which cover the people it costs most to cover. It’s not a problem so serious as to justify panic.
Yet panic has gripped the Republican rank-and-file since 2009—and instead of allaying panic, Republican leaders have aggravated and exploited it, to the point where the leaders are compelled to behave in ways they know to be irrational. In his speech to the “Bull Moose” convention of 1912, Teddy Roosevelt declared, “We stand at Armageddon and we battle for the Lord!” It’s a great line, but it’s not a mindset that leads to successful legislative outcomes.
Habit 3: Irrational animus.
Barack
Obama was never likely to be popular with the Republican base. It's not
just that he's black. He’s the first president in 76 years with a
foreign parent—and unlike Hulda Hoover, Barack Obama Sr. never even
naturalized. While Obama is not the first president to hold two degrees
from elite universities—Bill Clinton and George W. Bush did as well—his
Ivy predecessors at least disguised their education with a down-home
style of speech. Join this cultural inheritance to liberal politics, and
of course you have a formula for conflict. But effective parties make
conflict work for them. Hate leads to rage, and rage makes you stupid.
Republicans have convinced themselves both that President Obama is a
revolutionary radical hell-bent upon destroying America as we know it
and that he's so feckless and weak-willed that he'll always yield to
pressure. It's that contradictory, angry assessment that has brought the
GOP to a place where it must either abjectly surrender or force a
national default. Calmer analysis would have achieved better results.
Recently, GOP lawmakers have been pointing fingers at Democrats for a supposed unwillingness to compromise.
Habit 4: Collapse of leadership.
The Republicans have always been the more disciplined of America’s two political parities, and today they still are. But whereas before, discipline used to flow from elected leadership down, today it flows from factional leadership up. An aide to Sen. Mike Lee told the National Review: “The minority of the minority is going to run things until our leadership gets some backbone.”
The Lee aide was specifically referring to the Republican minority in the Senate, but the language has broader implication. According to Robert Costa, a well-sourced reporter at NRO: “What we’re seeing is the collapse of institutional Republican power ... The outside groups don’t always move votes directly but they create an atmosphere of fear among the members [of Congress].” Large organizations are inherently vulnerable to capture by tightly organized militant tendencies. This is how a great political party was impelled to base a presidential campaign on the Ryan plan—a plan that has now replaced the 1983 manifesto of the British Labour Party as “the longest suicide note in history.” It’s the job of leadership to remember, in the words of Edmund Burke, “Because half-a-dozen grasshoppers under a fern make the field ring with their importunate chink, whilst thousands of great cattle, reposed beneath the shadow of the British oak, chew the cud and are silent, pray do not imagine that those who make the noise are the only inhabitants of the field.” That job is tragically going undone in today’s GOP.
Habit 5: Self-reinforcing media.
The actor Hugh Grant once bitterly characterized his PR team as “the people I pay to lie to me.” Politicians do not always need to tell the truth, but they always need to hear it. Yet hearing the truth has become harder and harder for Republicans. It takes a very unusual spin artist to remember that what he or she is saying isn’t actually true. Non-politicians say what they believe. Politicians sooner or later arrive at the point where they believe what they say. They have become prisoners of their own artificial reality, with no easy access to the larger truths outside.
This entombment in their own artificial reality was revealed to the entire TV-watching world in Karl Rove’s Fox News election night outburst against the Ohio 2012 ballot results. It was the same entombment that blinded Republicans to the most likely outcome of their no-compromise stance on Obamacare—and now again today to the most likely outcome of the government shutdown/debt ceiling fight they started.
Habit 6: Politics as war.
The business of America is business, as Calvin Coolidge said. American politics has been businesslike too. Americans understand that the business of the nation is ultimately settled by a roomful of tired people negotiating their differences in the small hours of the morning: everybody gets something, nobody gets everything. It’s a grubby business, unavoidably, and most of the time, Americans understand that. They build statues to Martin Luther King. They elect Lyndon Johnson.
From time to time in American politics, differences arise that are too wide to negotiate. Slavery versus no slavery. Prohibition versus drink. Pro-life versus pro-choice. Professional politicians usually keep their distance from absolutist movements. As George Washington Plunkitt observed, “The politicians have got to stand together this way or there wouldn’t be any political parties in a short time.”
That line was meant as a joke, but it contains truth. Professional politicians are disagreement managers. Since 2009, however, the GOP has given unprecedented scope to those who for their own ideological, financial, or psychological reasons refuse to allow disagreements to be managed—and instead relentlessly push toward the kind of ultimate crises the country so nearly escaped in 2011 and teeters again on the verge of today.
Habit 7: Despair.
The great British conservative historian Hugh Trevor Roper scoffed at the Marxist claim that history runs in one direction only. “When radicals scream that victory is indubitably theirs, sensible conservatives knock them on the nose. It is only very feeble conservatives who take such words as true and run round crying for the last sacraments.” The great conservative poet T.S. Eliot explained that there are no lost causes, because there are no won causes. How many ways can one express that idea? So long as there is life, there is hope; everything old is new again; etc. etc. etc.
The trouble with these assurances, however, is that they contain an implicit moral that politics is very hard work. Free-market economics—so discredited in the 1940's—returned to favor in the 1970's because of tireless research by brilliant economists. The excesses of the 2000's have undone that success, and now it will take serious thinking, and some necessary reforms, to repair the damage. It’s a tempting shortcut to throw up one’s hands and say, “I’ve seen the best of it.
The future holds only darkness.” It’s especially tempting for a party that disproportionately draws its support from older voters. The fact is that for those of us over 50, the future offers us as individuals only decline leading to extinction. It’s natural to believe that what happens to us must happen to the world around us. Who wants to hear that things will become much, much better for humanity shortly after we ourselves shuffle off the scene? Yet of all mental errors, despair is the most dangerous to a democracy. The “politics of cultural despair” lead to authoritarianism and worse, as the German historian Fritz Stern warned in his history of that same title.
The man who has no hope will make the most irrevocable errors—and unnecessarily plunging the United States into the first national bankruptcy since the 1780's would be about as irrevocable as an error as history contains.
Tuesday, October 8, 2013
Monday, October 7, 2013
SNK demands halt of Neo Geo X sales
By Brendan Sinclair
Original console maker says licensing agreement with Tommo was terminated last week, wants it pulled from stores
Original console maker says licensing agreement with Tommo was terminated last week, wants it pulled from stores
The company behind the original
Neo Geo wants the console's retro revival off store shelves. SNK
Playmore has announced that on October 2, its licensing agreement with
Tommo Inc. for that company's Neo Geo X Gold console was terminated.
"Upon termination of the License and Distribution Agreement, SNK has demanded that Tommo Inc. immediately cease any and all manufacturing, distribution, marketing and promotion and selling of the Licensed Products," the company said.
The products in question include the Neo Geo X Gold, a handheld device that plays old Neo Geo games and can be plugged into a base for playing on a TV with reproduction Neo Geo arcade sticks.
SNK has demanded that the console, as well as the arcade stick accessories and a variety of game bundles, be pulled from store shelves. SNK Playmore said it is protecting its intellectual property, and "decisive measures will be taken" against the continued sale of now-unlicensed Neo Geo X products.
A Tommo representative had not responded to comment as of press time, but the console was still being offered on websites like Amazon and GameStop.
"Upon termination of the License and Distribution Agreement, SNK has demanded that Tommo Inc. immediately cease any and all manufacturing, distribution, marketing and promotion and selling of the Licensed Products," the company said.
The products in question include the Neo Geo X Gold, a handheld device that plays old Neo Geo games and can be plugged into a base for playing on a TV with reproduction Neo Geo arcade sticks.
SNK has demanded that the console, as well as the arcade stick accessories and a variety of game bundles, be pulled from store shelves. SNK Playmore said it is protecting its intellectual property, and "decisive measures will be taken" against the continued sale of now-unlicensed Neo Geo X products.
A Tommo representative had not responded to comment as of press time, but the console was still being offered on websites like Amazon and GameStop.
Friday, October 4, 2013
Thursday, October 3, 2013
Capital Hill Chaos
Woman shot and killed by Capitol police after chaotic chase from White House
Cameras roll as authorities try to take control of the woman who first
tried to breach White House security before heading to the Capitol.
Wednesday, October 2, 2013
30 Or 40 Birthers Are Driving Government Shutdown
By Sarah Rae Fruchtnicht, Wed, October 02, 2013
Republican Rep. Peter King (NY) said Tuesday that the government shutdown is being driven by “probably 30 or 40 Republicans” who believe President Barack Obama is not a natural born citizen of the U.S. and therefore is not in office legitimately.
“There’s absolutely no reason for the government to be shut down,” King told MSNBC’s “Hardball” host Chris Matthews.
Matthews told King that he has heard members of the GOP make statements that they cannot accept the fact the Obama was elected.
“I’ve had members, they know who they are, they say — ‘I really can’t say with my lips that this man, Barack Obama, was legitimately elected president.’ They choke on that,” Matthews said. “How many are there in Congress on your side that represent that rejectionist front?”
“I would say there’s probably 30 or 40 who are like that,” King said. “As there were a number of Democrats who felt that way about George W. Bush, and going back to when you and I first met, Republicans who felt that way about Bill Clinton… This is a very dangerous aspect to our government.”
“What is?” Matthews asked.
“The fact that we have people who are willing to demonize the president of the United States because he’s from a different party," King said. "When I got elected in '92, I had Republicans elected with me who say they would never set foot in the White House for even a social event while Clinton was president … and now, obviously, with President Obama, it’s definitely there."
King is part of a growing contingency of Republicans who are against the shutdown and want an immediate resolution.
GOP congressmen Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa; Rep. Mike Coffman, R-Colo.; and Rep. Markwayne Mullin, R-Okla., have openly questioned the president’s birth certificate, according to ThinkProgress.
House Homeland Security Oversight Subcommittee Chairman Rep. Jeff Duncan, R-S.C., even told a conservative radio host that he believes Congress should “revisit” the president’s “validity.”
King has considered a 2016 presidential run as a “cure” to the Tea Party’s ascendency into the GOP.
Republican Rep. Peter King (NY) said Tuesday that the government shutdown is being driven by “probably 30 or 40 Republicans” who believe President Barack Obama is not a natural born citizen of the U.S. and therefore is not in office legitimately.
“There’s absolutely no reason for the government to be shut down,” King told MSNBC’s “Hardball” host Chris Matthews.
Matthews told King that he has heard members of the GOP make statements that they cannot accept the fact the Obama was elected.
“I’ve had members, they know who they are, they say — ‘I really can’t say with my lips that this man, Barack Obama, was legitimately elected president.’ They choke on that,” Matthews said. “How many are there in Congress on your side that represent that rejectionist front?”
“I would say there’s probably 30 or 40 who are like that,” King said. “As there were a number of Democrats who felt that way about George W. Bush, and going back to when you and I first met, Republicans who felt that way about Bill Clinton… This is a very dangerous aspect to our government.”
“What is?” Matthews asked.
“The fact that we have people who are willing to demonize the president of the United States because he’s from a different party," King said. "When I got elected in '92, I had Republicans elected with me who say they would never set foot in the White House for even a social event while Clinton was president … and now, obviously, with President Obama, it’s definitely there."
King is part of a growing contingency of Republicans who are against the shutdown and want an immediate resolution.
GOP congressmen Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa; Rep. Mike Coffman, R-Colo.; and Rep. Markwayne Mullin, R-Okla., have openly questioned the president’s birth certificate, according to ThinkProgress.
House Homeland Security Oversight Subcommittee Chairman Rep. Jeff Duncan, R-S.C., even told a conservative radio host that he believes Congress should “revisit” the president’s “validity.”
King has considered a 2016 presidential run as a “cure” to the Tea Party’s ascendency into the GOP.
Tuesday, October 1, 2013
Federal Government Shuts Down
Last-minute tactic fails, government shuts down
12:00 AM on 10/01/2013
The federal government is closed.
After months, weeks and then a frantic day of brinksmanship on Capitol Hill, Congress failed to pass a bill to fund the government Monday night, shutting it down for the first time in 17 years.
At the heart of the debate was The Affordable Health Care Act, a law that survived Republicans taking control of the House, a presidential election and a Supreme Court challenge. Attaching it to a deal to fund the government was the Republican Party’s last chance to block its rollout–which begins Tuesday.
But Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid rejected all attempts to touch the law and President Barack Obama threatened a veto.
The law will still roll out on schedule, despite the shutdown, and millions of Americans without health insurance will be able to begin signing up for coverage online.
The question for the rest of the government is: what’s next?
Late Monday night, the Office of Management and Budget ordered heads of executive departments and agencies to “execute plans for an orderly shutdown.”
Here’s where things stand: Boehner tried to force negotiations into a formal committee process Monday night. But Reid balked at the idea. “Republicans are still playing games,” said Reid on the Senate floor. “This is all a subterfuge to satisfy the Tea Party-driven Republicans.”
“We will not go to conference with a gun to our head,” Harry Reid said.
Reid said he would be willing to send senators to conference to work on a solution for funding the government through the rest of the fiscal year, once the immediate threat of a shutdown was removed.
It’s also an abrupt about-face by Republicans who have spent months refusing Democratic offers to hold a conference and work out a budget before October 1.
“The right thing to do was to go to conference any time in that last six months, as we asked 18 times but were told no by the same people who are now sitting on the other side of the aisle saying we want to shut the government down,” Patty Murray said on the floor.
In the House, Boehner wrestled with a conference pressuring him from the right and the left.
House moderates were pressuring their conference to pass the Senate’s “clean” stopgap budget, but Boehner ultimately heeded the calls by the conservative flank to rule out such a measure.
Boehner lost a dozen votes on his final bill, when moderates peeled off.
Other Republicans tried for a last-ditch solution to stop a shutdown, including Sens. Mitch McConnell and Rand Paul who both floated the idea of a one- or two-week delay.
Sen. John McCain predicted Republicans would ultimately need to fold–and should just do it.
After months, weeks and then a frantic day of brinksmanship on Capitol Hill, Congress failed to pass a bill to fund the government Monday night, shutting it down for the first time in 17 years.
At the heart of the debate was The Affordable Health Care Act, a law that survived Republicans taking control of the House, a presidential election and a Supreme Court challenge. Attaching it to a deal to fund the government was the Republican Party’s last chance to block its rollout–which begins Tuesday.
But Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid rejected all attempts to touch the law and President Barack Obama threatened a veto.
The law will still roll out on schedule, despite the shutdown, and millions of Americans without health insurance will be able to begin signing up for coverage online.
The question for the rest of the government is: what’s next?
Late Monday night, the Office of Management and Budget ordered heads of executive departments and agencies to “execute plans for an orderly shutdown.”
Here’s where things stand: Boehner tried to force negotiations into a formal committee process Monday night. But Reid balked at the idea. “Republicans are still playing games,” said Reid on the Senate floor. “This is all a subterfuge to satisfy the Tea Party-driven Republicans.”
“We will not go to conference with a gun to our head,” Harry Reid said.
Reid said he would be willing to send senators to conference to work on a solution for funding the government through the rest of the fiscal year, once the immediate threat of a shutdown was removed.
It’s also an abrupt about-face by Republicans who have spent months refusing Democratic offers to hold a conference and work out a budget before October 1.
“The right thing to do was to go to conference any time in that last six months, as we asked 18 times but were told no by the same people who are now sitting on the other side of the aisle saying we want to shut the government down,” Patty Murray said on the floor.
In the House, Boehner wrestled with a conference pressuring him from the right and the left.
House moderates were pressuring their conference to pass the Senate’s “clean” stopgap budget, but Boehner ultimately heeded the calls by the conservative flank to rule out such a measure.
Boehner lost a dozen votes on his final bill, when moderates peeled off.
Other Republicans tried for a last-ditch solution to stop a shutdown, including Sens. Mitch McConnell and Rand Paul who both floated the idea of a one- or two-week delay.
Sen. John McCain predicted Republicans would ultimately need to fold–and should just do it.
Monday, September 30, 2013
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt - The Beginning
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt "The Beginning" provides exclusive information about the creative process behind the game.
Key developers are inviting you on a journey into Geralt's world, where you'll fall in love with the breathtaking vistas and experience the atmosphere that helped us shape some of the locations in the game.
Key developers are inviting you on a journey into Geralt's world, where you'll fall in love with the breathtaking vistas and experience the atmosphere that helped us shape some of the locations in the game.
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt - Debut Gameplay Trailer
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt - Debut Gameplay gives you an exclusive sneak
peek into the vast and gritty world of Geralt of Rivia, the witcher.
Experience a realm where morality is not a simple choice between good
and evil and where every decision ripples through the one hundred hours
of gameplay CD Projekt RED has hand-crafted to meet the needs of the RPG
fan.
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt features:
- Vast, living, open world full of meticulously created quests and Points of Interest, 35 times bigger than the one in The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings
- Genre-defining story set in a universe created by the acclaimed writer Andrzej Sapkowski
- Redesigned combat mechanic that merges a fluid and highly responsive skirmish system with the precision of a dedicated fighting game
And many, many more...
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt will premiere on Xbox One, Playstation 4 and PC in 2014.
Follow us:
https://www.facebook.com/thewitcher
https://twitter.com/witchergame
http://thewitcher.com/
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt features:
- Vast, living, open world full of meticulously created quests and Points of Interest, 35 times bigger than the one in The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings
- Genre-defining story set in a universe created by the acclaimed writer Andrzej Sapkowski
- Redesigned combat mechanic that merges a fluid and highly responsive skirmish system with the precision of a dedicated fighting game
And many, many more...
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt will premiere on Xbox One, Playstation 4 and PC in 2014.
Follow us:
https://www.facebook.com/thewitcher
https://twitter.com/witchergame
http://thewitcher.com/
'Left Behind' video game creator faces U.S. SEC fraud charges
WASHINGTON
(Reuters) - The creator of a video game based on the popular Christian "Left Behind" novel series and his friend have been charged with scheming to inflate the company's revenue by nearly 1,300 percent, U.S. regulators announced Wednesday.
Left Behind Games Inc Chief Executive and Chief Financial Officer Troy Lyndon issued nearly 2 billion shares to his friend Ronald Zaucha, purportedly as compensation for consulting services, the Securities and Exchange Commission's complaint alleges.
The real reason for issuing the stock was so Zaucha could sell millions of unregistered shares in the marketplace and then kick back the proceeds and use other "sham purchases" to help bolster the struggling company's books, the SEC said.
The SEC's lawsuit was filed late on Tuesday in a federal court in Hawaii, where Lyndon and Zaucha both reside. The SEC suspended the company's stock Wednesday.
The complaint charges both men with fraud, and the SEC said its probe is continuing.
The charges come roughly two weeks after the company announced in an SEC filing that its public accountant Malone Bailey had resigned after previously expressing "substantial doubt" about the company's ability to continue.
Last year, in March 2012, Lyndon filed a voluntary petition for Chapter 7 bankruptcy, the SEC said.
Lyndon, of Honolulu, said he only learned of the charges early Wednesday morning after a press inquiry from Reuters and that he believes the government is discriminating against him.
"I'm just a video game guy. If any violation occurred, it would never have been intentional - and certainly, never fraudulent. My attorney told me that any person that earned shares could use them for any purpose," he said.
"For more than two years, I've asked SEC to explain how and if I have violated any rule, so that I could self-report it. As I see it, the government has systematically and intentionally conspired to dismantle Left Behind Games and the facts are both true and hard to believe - worthy of a Ron Howard film or John Grisham novel."
A more detailed statement from Lyndon can be found at www.troylyndon.com/govt
Efforts to reach Zaucha were unsuccessful.
According to the SEC's allegations, Lyndon and Zaucha made a "last ditch" effort to save the struggling company in 2009.
After issuing 1.7 billion shares in stock, the SEC said Zaucha sold most of it for $4.6 million, roughly $3.3 million of which was later kicked back to the company in a variety of ways.
One such example, the SEC said, was when in December 2010 Zaucha formed a company and used the stock sale proceeds to buy $1.38 million in obsolete Left Behind Games inventory.
Zaucha's company then gave most of the products away to churches and religious groups, while Left Behind went on to recognize the transaction as revenue.
The SEC also said Zaucha never truly performed any real consulting services to the company, and he was also allowed to keep more than $1 million of the stock sale proceeds that he used for personal expenses, including buying property in California and Hawaii.
According to his online biography, Lyndon was the "original team lead developer" of the first 3D versions of the John Madden Football video game, among others.
Reuters could not immediately independently verify those details.
He started working on development of religious video games in 2002, and took Left Behind Games public in 2006, he says.
"Although government regulations have resulted in the loss of nearly 50 percent of America's public companies over the past 15 years, Left Behind Games continues to operate and has products in more than 500 retail locations throughout the USA," he wrote on his website.
(Reporting by Sarah N. Lynch; editing by Andrew Hay)
(Reuters) - The creator of a video game based on the popular Christian "Left Behind" novel series and his friend have been charged with scheming to inflate the company's revenue by nearly 1,300 percent, U.S. regulators announced Wednesday.
Left Behind Games Inc Chief Executive and Chief Financial Officer Troy Lyndon issued nearly 2 billion shares to his friend Ronald Zaucha, purportedly as compensation for consulting services, the Securities and Exchange Commission's complaint alleges.
The real reason for issuing the stock was so Zaucha could sell millions of unregistered shares in the marketplace and then kick back the proceeds and use other "sham purchases" to help bolster the struggling company's books, the SEC said.
The SEC's lawsuit was filed late on Tuesday in a federal court in Hawaii, where Lyndon and Zaucha both reside. The SEC suspended the company's stock Wednesday.
The complaint charges both men with fraud, and the SEC said its probe is continuing.
The charges come roughly two weeks after the company announced in an SEC filing that its public accountant Malone Bailey had resigned after previously expressing "substantial doubt" about the company's ability to continue.
Last year, in March 2012, Lyndon filed a voluntary petition for Chapter 7 bankruptcy, the SEC said.
Lyndon, of Honolulu, said he only learned of the charges early Wednesday morning after a press inquiry from Reuters and that he believes the government is discriminating against him.
"I'm just a video game guy. If any violation occurred, it would never have been intentional - and certainly, never fraudulent. My attorney told me that any person that earned shares could use them for any purpose," he said.
"For more than two years, I've asked SEC to explain how and if I have violated any rule, so that I could self-report it. As I see it, the government has systematically and intentionally conspired to dismantle Left Behind Games and the facts are both true and hard to believe - worthy of a Ron Howard film or John Grisham novel."
A more detailed statement from Lyndon can be found at www.troylyndon.com/govt
Efforts to reach Zaucha were unsuccessful.
According to the SEC's allegations, Lyndon and Zaucha made a "last ditch" effort to save the struggling company in 2009.
After issuing 1.7 billion shares in stock, the SEC said Zaucha sold most of it for $4.6 million, roughly $3.3 million of which was later kicked back to the company in a variety of ways.
One such example, the SEC said, was when in December 2010 Zaucha formed a company and used the stock sale proceeds to buy $1.38 million in obsolete Left Behind Games inventory.
Zaucha's company then gave most of the products away to churches and religious groups, while Left Behind went on to recognize the transaction as revenue.
The SEC also said Zaucha never truly performed any real consulting services to the company, and he was also allowed to keep more than $1 million of the stock sale proceeds that he used for personal expenses, including buying property in California and Hawaii.
According to his online biography, Lyndon was the "original team lead developer" of the first 3D versions of the John Madden Football video game, among others.
Reuters could not immediately independently verify those details.
He started working on development of religious video games in 2002, and took Left Behind Games public in 2006, he says.
"Although government regulations have resulted in the loss of nearly 50 percent of America's public companies over the past 15 years, Left Behind Games continues to operate and has products in more than 500 retail locations throughout the USA," he wrote on his website.
(Reporting by Sarah N. Lynch; editing by Andrew Hay)
Lab Tests on French Wines Find Pesticide Residue in Every Bottle
The levels were below the European Union’s maximum residue limits, according to the group, UFC-Que Choisir. However, there are no EU toxicity limits for bottled wine, only for wine grapes before fermentation.
Bloomberg reported on Sept. 25 that the group tested wines from various regions across France, ranging from a $2.20 bottle of generic red to a $20.25 bottle of Chateauneuf-du-Pape. Wine producers only use 3.7 percent of France’s farmland but account for 20 percent of the country’s pesticide use, UFC-Que Choisir noted.
“By drinking a glass of wine, you have every chance of unknowingly swallowing a few micrograms of these pesticide residues,” UFC-Que Choisir wrote. “No wine today escapes the pollution by plant-protection products applied to the vines.”
The lab tests even found residues of an insecticide and a fungicide not allowed in the EU, the group said. Wines produced from grapes from “conventional” agriculture on average contained four pesticides, mainly fungicides, while for wine from organic grapes residues mostly consisted of one to two pesticides.
The highest pesticide count was found in a bottle of 2010 Bordeaux, with 14 chemicals detected, followed by 2012 Bordeaux with traces of 13 products, the group reported.
UFC-Que Choisir indicated that climate has a great effect on whether, and to what degree, French wine grapes suffer from diseases and bug infestations.
“Weather conditions, particularly rainfall, have a direct impact on diseases of vines and attacks by parasites,” they wrote. “The warm and dry weather of Provence and the Rhone valley partly explains why the wines from these regions are significantly less loaded with pesticides than their cousins from Champagne and particularly Bordeaux.”
Sunday, September 29, 2013
George Zimmerman's Mother-in-Law Files Police Report Claiming He Stole Her Furniture, TV
By Selena Hill | First Posted: Sep 27, 2013 04:57 PM EDT
As much as George Zimmerman tries to keep a low profile, he seems to have a knack for garnering negative publicity, to put it lightly. In the latest twist in the ongoing Zimmerman saga, his mother-in-law, Machelle Dean, filed a police report Friday claiming that he stole furniture and a television set from her house when she ordered him to leave.
George and his estranged wife Shellie were staying in Shellie's mother's house in Lake Mary, Florida during his murder trial. However, according to TMZ, Dean claims that Zimmerman left with her belongings when she ordered him to vacate the property by Thursday. When police arrived to the scene, they reportedly characterized it as a landlord-tenant dispute between Zimmerman and his in-laws.
The home is the same place where Lake Mary police were called to earlier in September after an altercation broke out between George and Shellie. In a 911 call, Shellie said that her husband threatened her and her father with a gun and punched her father in the nose. The theft report surfaced shortly after Shellie Zimmerman admitted that she now doubts her husband's innocence in the shooting death of Trayvon Martin after seeing another side of him during a domestic dispute earlier this month.
Shellie Zimmerman, speaking publicly for the first time since she told cops her husband threatened her with a gun on Sept. 9, told NBC's "Today," that the 29-year-old former volunteer neighborhood watch caption has changed dramatically after being acquitted for the murder of the unarmed teen.
"This person that I'm married to that I'm divorcing, I've kind of realized now that I don't know him," she said Thursday morning. "And I really don't know what he's capable of."
Shellie, who filed for divorce within two months of her husband's acquittal, revealed that she has "conflicted" feelings about the night when George fatally shot Martin. "I'm conflicted on that,'' said the 26-year-old nursing student. "I believe the evidence, but this revelation in my life has really helped me take the blinders off and start to see things differently."
In a follow up question, Lauer asked, "So you now doubt his innocence, at least the fact that he was acting in self-defense on the night that Trayvon Martin was killed?" Shellie responded: "I think anyone would doubt that innocence because I don't know the person that I've been married to. I have doubts, but I also believe the evidence."
As much as George Zimmerman tries to keep a low profile, he seems to have a knack for garnering negative publicity, to put it lightly. In the latest twist in the ongoing Zimmerman saga, his mother-in-law, Machelle Dean, filed a police report Friday claiming that he stole furniture and a television set from her house when she ordered him to leave.
George and his estranged wife Shellie were staying in Shellie's mother's house in Lake Mary, Florida during his murder trial. However, according to TMZ, Dean claims that Zimmerman left with her belongings when she ordered him to vacate the property by Thursday. When police arrived to the scene, they reportedly characterized it as a landlord-tenant dispute between Zimmerman and his in-laws.
The home is the same place where Lake Mary police were called to earlier in September after an altercation broke out between George and Shellie. In a 911 call, Shellie said that her husband threatened her and her father with a gun and punched her father in the nose. The theft report surfaced shortly after Shellie Zimmerman admitted that she now doubts her husband's innocence in the shooting death of Trayvon Martin after seeing another side of him during a domestic dispute earlier this month.
Shellie Zimmerman, speaking publicly for the first time since she told cops her husband threatened her with a gun on Sept. 9, told NBC's "Today," that the 29-year-old former volunteer neighborhood watch caption has changed dramatically after being acquitted for the murder of the unarmed teen.
"This person that I'm married to that I'm divorcing, I've kind of realized now that I don't know him," she said Thursday morning. "And I really don't know what he's capable of."
Shellie, who filed for divorce within two months of her husband's acquittal, revealed that she has "conflicted" feelings about the night when George fatally shot Martin. "I'm conflicted on that,'' said the 26-year-old nursing student. "I believe the evidence, but this revelation in my life has really helped me take the blinders off and start to see things differently."
In a follow up question, Lauer asked, "So you now doubt his innocence, at least the fact that he was acting in self-defense on the night that Trayvon Martin was killed?" Shellie responded: "I think anyone would doubt that innocence because I don't know the person that I've been married to. I have doubts, but I also believe the evidence."
Roast, grill, and fry this chicken – then toss it out
Posted by Jim Hightower
An old country saying notes: You can't make chicken salad out of chicken manure." However, President Obama's department of agriculture intends for us give it a try.
Chicken contaminated with chicken manure is one likely result to come from the ag department's dangerous and ridiculous determination to privatize poultry inspection in some 200 processing plants across the country. Currently, government inspectors – who're professionally-trained in food safety – are stationed along the processing lines in the factory operations of such giants as Tyson Foods. They examine the birds for diseases and visible defects, including – yes – contamination by feces.
But the Obamacans have a "modernization" plan to remove these skilled, independent inspectors and let corporations police their own lines with untrained company hirelings. In addition, the privatization scheme would allow the poultry plants to speed up their lines to an absurd 175-birds-per-minute! To justify this, USDA notes that it has been running a pilot project on privatization in 20 chicken factories since 1999.
Yes – but the "modernizers" did not mention that salmonella rates in the privatized plants were higher than those having government inspectors. Just as alarming, of the poultry operations that failed the most recent salmonella tests, a disproportionate share were using the spiffy self-policing model. Worse, government inspectors who observed the corporate-controlled system report that when the company inspectors tried to be thorough about safety or even tried to remove diseased birds from the line, they were yelled at, reprimanded, and shunned.
This senseless rush to privatize is literally sickening. For more information and clean food alternatives, go to Food & Water Watch at www.FoodAndWaterWatch.org.
"Changes to Poultry Rules Are Flawed, Report Says," The New York Times, September 5, 2013.
"Justification for Privatized Poultry Inspection Flawed, GAO Study Reveals," www.foodandwaterwatch.org, September 4, 2013.
"Obama Administration Caves to Poultry Industry By Proceeding With Privatized Inspection," www.foodandwaterwatch.org, April 10, 2013.
" USDA Plans to Expand Pilot Program that Leaves Meat Contaminated with Fecal Matter," www.portside.org, September 10, 2013.
Listen to this Commentary
An old country saying notes: You can't make chicken salad out of chicken manure." However, President Obama's department of agriculture intends for us give it a try.
Chicken contaminated with chicken manure is one likely result to come from the ag department's dangerous and ridiculous determination to privatize poultry inspection in some 200 processing plants across the country. Currently, government inspectors – who're professionally-trained in food safety – are stationed along the processing lines in the factory operations of such giants as Tyson Foods. They examine the birds for diseases and visible defects, including – yes – contamination by feces.
But the Obamacans have a "modernization" plan to remove these skilled, independent inspectors and let corporations police their own lines with untrained company hirelings. In addition, the privatization scheme would allow the poultry plants to speed up their lines to an absurd 175-birds-per-minute! To justify this, USDA notes that it has been running a pilot project on privatization in 20 chicken factories since 1999.
Yes – but the "modernizers" did not mention that salmonella rates in the privatized plants were higher than those having government inspectors. Just as alarming, of the poultry operations that failed the most recent salmonella tests, a disproportionate share were using the spiffy self-policing model. Worse, government inspectors who observed the corporate-controlled system report that when the company inspectors tried to be thorough about safety or even tried to remove diseased birds from the line, they were yelled at, reprimanded, and shunned.
This senseless rush to privatize is literally sickening. For more information and clean food alternatives, go to Food & Water Watch at www.FoodAndWaterWatch.org.
"Changes to Poultry Rules Are Flawed, Report Says," The New York Times, September 5, 2013.
"Justification for Privatized Poultry Inspection Flawed, GAO Study Reveals," www.foodandwaterwatch.org, September 4, 2013.
"Obama Administration Caves to Poultry Industry By Proceeding With Privatized Inspection," www.foodandwaterwatch.org, April 10, 2013.
" USDA Plans to Expand Pilot Program that Leaves Meat Contaminated with Fecal Matter," www.portside.org, September 10, 2013.
Saturday, September 28, 2013
Clearing out the message on The Affordable Health Care Act
Ed Schultz changes the conversation from Ted Cruz’s hours-long speech in
opposition to the Affordable Care Act, to focus on the importance of the law and
Congress’ ability to do something great. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., joins Ed
Schultz to discuss the benefits of the law.
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