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This may be the most important work of the DJT administration by 2027 into 2028 elections.  WSJ calls it the soda wars, when it is the slow destruction of America. As JFK and RFK well knew when they made fitness a goal for America in 1960- health is not built on sodas. Today with such high obesity, sodas and its likes, it is about the slow destruction of America.  MALA make America Live Again starts here. “When a taxpayer is putting money into SNAP, are they OK with us using their tax dollars to feed really bad food and sugary drinks to children, who perhaps need something more nutritious?” Right now it is the biggest item for schools in most states for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Plan. Passed by Congress in 1964 the original bill for SNAP excluded sodas and luxury drinks, but had Sodas added back in by the Senate. By lobbyists even in 1964? SNAP schools program falls under the Agriculture Department. Democrats as well as Republicans appointed Agriculture Secretaries and not one took the action to get sodas excluded, to let states request sodas be excluded and approve it, not the Democrat a Carter, a Clinton, or an Obama, or a Republican a Reagan, a Bush, or a Trump (first term) took the necessary action. In 2025 Brooke Rollins is Agriculture Department Secretary. Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee has seen the damage sodas can cause in her family. Rollins on her first day in office has finally acted- after 61 years when the original intentions of the SNAP bill's creators were confounded in the Senate.  On her first full day in office, urging them to propose pilot programs testing changes to food aid. Rollins sent governors a letter to ask for the removal of sodas from schools food aid program.   ...

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After 13 years of Labor government, the new Liberal-Conservative coalition is seen as good for both the parties and good for Britain A good deal of optimism about the prospects for this government. The optimism rests on the pragmatic sensible nature of Cameron and Clegg, on the fact that the 2 parties combined have 59% of the vote in the elections for making some tough decisions- on spending cuts, a sensible fiscal program to generate $9 billion in savings through spending cuts in 2010, and generally agreement between the two parties on the significant issues of state finances. The Tories holding to their position on immigration but giving in on the idea of proportional representation. The election changes would have Parliament members in office for 5 years and the manner of election changed to remove a growing distortion of the popular vote. Labor and Conservatives share of the vote has dropped from 81% in 1979 to 65% in 2010, and still Tory and Labor MP's have 565 of the 650 seats in Parliament or 87%....

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Farhad Manjoo takes us through the origins of News Feed at Facebook, and its origins with Chris Cox who set up the News Feed operation in 2006 after leaving Stanford's computer science program at the age of 24. Manjoo describes the pain in Silicon Valley and many parts of America at the way the News Feed has acted as mere way of reinforcing people's own biases and creating different echo chambers for different biases. It has fragmented more than brought people together. The very idea of wiring people into the app as connecting people to talk to each other from different parts of the world and share different views is now called into question. Social media founders are also questioning whether wiring and connecting mean positive things in the context of what has happened with Google News, Facebook News Feed and Twitter in 2016-2017. The worst impulses have come to the fore, and it has happened to the point of shocking people who believed only positive things would come from technology and its application in news. Algorithm based news is open to error in many more ways than news discerned by human eyes and intuitive sense, and has the dangerous aspect of spreading misinformation like a wild fire on the internet. As Tim Berners-Lee points out the news is taken to the lowest common denominator because it is based on clicks, the social media sites make money on clicks and how often we click on something. Berners Lee says- “ the net result is that these sites show us content they think we’ll click on - meaning that misinformation, or ‘fake news,’ which is surprising, shocking, or designed to appeal to our biases can spread like wild fire.” Worse bots and people with bad intentions can game the system. The view at Lyrarc is that news was never intended to be taken up by algorithm based computer programs in the driver seat. Google started in 1998 and Google News started in 2006 making it only a decade old today,  Facebook started in 2004, and Facebook News is even more recent- less than a decade old. This is a period when “news” is experimenting with new technologies, and social media or search engines may never have been intended to serve as purveyors of news- that may never be their real role or purpose. For corrective action new developments have to take place taking technology out of the driver seat, and yet harnessing technology in other ways to help human eyes and intuitive sense work more productively, which is the vision at Lyrarc.   ...

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Fletcher cites statistics from the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics showing that between December 2007 and June 2010, private sector employment in Texas went down by 0.6%. During that period public sector jobs increased by 6.4%. Government employees make up about 17% of the workforce in Texas. The Texas economy gets a large amount of federal money because of military installations and NASA- $227 billion in 2009, according to the Census Bureau. By comparison California received $346 billon in 2009. During the recession period after the global financial crisis of 2008, Texas received $25 billion in stimulus money. Richard Fisher of the Dallas Federal Reserve Bank acknowleges the federal money going into Texas, yet he points out the driving force in the economy of Texas is still the private sector. For the private sector there are several advantages to being in Texas. There are lower taxes- no state income tax and lower business taxes. The large supply of land for development and few land-use restrictions make development easier. Corporate efficiency was a key advantage cited by Fluor when it moved from Orange County, California to Texas. A growing energy sector has helped, along with the growing trade with Mexico. The housing regulations in the state have acted as a check on housing prices, and left Texas with less of the detrimental effects of the housing mortgage crisis than the rest of the nation, especially California and Florida. The governor of Texas, Rick Perry, says he is not against all regulation, and the kind of housing regulation in Texas certainly has played a good role for Texas. Perry's tort reforms have reduced the legal burden on business prevalent in the rest of the U.S....

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Max Fisher of the NYT points out the unique approach taken by Canada in the U.S.-Canada relationship - to cultivate a grassroots network of Americans in legislatures, business, and at different levels of government. This has enabled the Trudeau government to build a relationship with president Trump, and at the same time have relationships at different levels of government and with business in the U.S. to tackle issues where the Trump administration has acted in ways unfavorable for Canada. Provincial governments in Ontario and Quebec lobbied against a New York state government provision for Buying American on state contracts worth over $100,000. By emphasizing the $10 billion in exports from New York to Ontario this lobbying persuaded the New York legislature to cancel the provision. Premier Trudeau's popularity helps and the proximity to the U.S. means Canadians can visit quickly and understand the U.S. as a close neighbor. Still Premier Kathleen Wynne of Ontario says Canadian businesses are nervous about the uncertainty from the Trump administration.   ...

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Jackson Diehl, deputy editorial page editor of the Washington Post, says its hard not to conclude that Obama is really not engaged with the struggle for democracy and democratic process in the countries of the Middle East and the Arab World. His voice is only heard sporadically, and is missing altogether at crucial times, as the people of Egypt, Libya, and other countries express their democratic aspirations. This has been the case from the beginning of this struggle and continues today. He cites an Arab opinion poll, from Shibley Telhami of the University of Maryland with Zogby International, which shows a positive view of Obama at 34%, compared with 39% in 2009. When asked which countries have played a positive role, France and Turkey are given first place and the U.S. is close to China. This is because France's Sarkozy and Turkey have been actively engaged, and Obama has been silent for most of the time. Diehl says most Egyptians he talked to in Cairo in a recent visit, think that Obama's focus is on going along with the military and Israel. ...

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Special Counsel Mueller's team says in a court filing that Paul Manafort, Mr. Trump's campaign manager should face a prison term of 19 to 24 years for "serious, longstanding, and bold" financial crimes.  Manafort also faces financial penalties totaling about $50 million, according to the filing. Some of the problems date to years before Manafort joined the Trump campaign as campaign chairman.

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Trump campaign manager, Paul Manafort, gets a more lenient sentence of 4 years for tax and bank fraud from a judge doing the sentencing. Prosecutors had asked for 13 to 24 years. Separately another sentencing takes place on a different charge next week.

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The elections in Italy in Feb. 2013 show the centre left coalition headed by Pier Luigi Bersani with 29.6% of the votes in the lower house, the centre right coalition headed by Silvio Berlusconi with 29.2% of the votes, the Five Star Movement headed by Beppe Grillo with 25.6% of the votes, and the Civic Choice headed by Mario Monti with 10.6% of the vote. In the Senate the results show the centre left coalition with 31.6% of the vote, the centre right with 30.7%, the Five Star Movement with 23.8%, and Civic Choice with 9.1%. Election rules in Italy give the party with the highest number of votes for the lower house an automatic majority of 340 of 630 seats. The vote shows voter protest over austerity measures. This benefitted both the centre right and the Five Star Movement and hurt the Civic Choice centrist party of Mario Monti which implemented austerity measures in 2012. The centre left was affected by its role in coming to the aid of Monte de Paschi bank in Siena and failing to mount a strong campaign under Bersani. A majority in both houses is needed to provide a stable coalition government which opens the prospect of new elections. The Five Star Movement emerged as the largest single party. Its support comes from young people, internet based campaigning, and a rejection of the right and left parties from the old order in Italian politics, and offers a new dimension to Italy's political future....

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Israel's prime minister Netayahu and U.S. president Obama move further apart with serious disagreement on when to impose further sanctions on Iran for nuclear weapons development. Netanyahu accepts an invitation from Speaker Boehner to address the U.S. Congress in 2015. Republicans face a serious divide with the U.S. president with serious disagreements in domestic policy, including immigration, taxes, and ways of addressing increasing inequality.

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Hillary Clinton has in many ways been shaped by Bill Clinton and his years as political candidate and president. With a 56% favorability rating in 2014 in a NBC/Wall Street Journal poll- and inspite of personal crises -he has shown remarkable longevity in American presidential politics, matched only by FDR.

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The WSJ's Kimberley Strassel says a Republican winning the White House in 2016 depends on how well the party appeals to white working class voters and the struggling middle class living from paycheck to paycheck. She says Speaker Paul Ryan is taking the right step in coming up with the idea of the Kemp Forum on Expanding Opportunity event in January 2016. Presidential candidates attending the forum are Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio, Chris Christie, John Kasich. Not attending are Ted Cruz and Donald Trump who are getting support from voters who are discouraged by establishment policies. Strassel says upward mobility for the midddle and working class is emerging as the No. 1 issue in the election, especially with Hillary Clinton leading the Democrats.

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Manufacturing in the US is adding jobs for the first time since 1997, according to government data. Job growth in 2010 was 1.2%, or 136,000 jobs. IHS Global Insight expects total manufacturing jobs in the US to increase in 2011 to 12 million. Manufacturing will be a modest contributor to job growth according to economists. Economists projections show a gain of 2.5% or 330,000 manufacturing jobs in 2011. Moody's Analytics estimates job growth of 2% a year through 2015. Government incentives, need to replace aging equipment and rehiring in the automobile industry will help manufacturing. At the same time manufacturers are cautious about hiring and increases in automation reduce the need for workers compared to earlier periods. Overall the loss of about 6 million manufacturing jobs since 1997 will not be made up. Yet the improvement is a positive sign as the US faces high unemployment and companies make investment in new factories overseas to meet growth in emerging markets.

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U.S. Defense Secretary, Leon Panetta, held three way talks with Egypt's president, Mohamed Morsi and the head of the military, Hussein Tantawi. Panetta said of Morsi- " I was convinced that President Morsi is his own man." Panetta said Morsi is committed to democratic reforms and representing all Egyptians. President Morsi sent a letter to Israeli president Shimon Peres expressing deep thanks for a Ramadan greeting and expressing hope for new peace talks with the Palestinians. The U.S. preparations for a potential conflict with Iran and the civil war in Syria to oust the Assad regime have given new urgency to reduce tensions in Egypt between the different factions including the military.