What a remarkable book this is! After starting it to decide how deeply I wanted to read, I shelved 3 books on the top 10 bestsellers list, including James Patterson's #1, Gone (I'll finish it now.). My conclusion: Tigner's Coercion is a welcome and worthy top of the pile successor to Clancy, Flynn, and Ludlum.
Coercion grabbed me and wouldn't let go. Tim Tigner's background knowledge is impressive, and he does what all great writers of fiction must do: cause the reader to suspend disbelief and accept that this all could have really been happening. What is more admirable is Tigner's great balance between action-packed suspense, highly believable settings, a strong story line, and pathos--especially among the key characters. This kind of writing separates the really outstanding books of this genre from the rest of the pack.
Tigner's characters have depth and his primary protagonist, Alex Ferris, captures a reader with his thoughts, reflection, and courageous intensity. I'll stop now because I don't want to spoil the story, and because Coercion is a book that everyone who likes international thrillers, mysteries, and conspiracies will devour like I did.
After reading only part of the book, I sent Tim an email encouraging him to get an option for movie or TV rights. It's that good. I'm going to stop this review now, so you can go buy Coercion and start enjoying it like I did. Believe me, books this good only come along once in a great while!"
"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way – in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only." —CHARLES DICKENS, A Tale of Two Cities opening paragraph.
WASHINGTONOctober 1, 2013 — The Democrats, including Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) and President Barack Obama, are saying that the government shutdown is the fault of the Republicans. The mainstream media is regurgitating this talking point, particularly taking aim at the Tea Party. However, the facts about this government shutdown tell a different story than the claims being made in chorus by the Democrats on Capitol Hill, the leftist pundits and the mainstream media.CLAIM: The Democrats want a budget.In Sept. 2012, Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN) said that the Democrats had not passed a budget in three years. During the 2012 races, especially in the fall, Republican candidates repeated that statement while Democrat candidates said the claim was false. However, the often left-leaning PolitiFact Tennessee said that Corker’s claim was “true,” the highest ranking available on their truth-o-meter.According to PolitiFact Tennessee:“The U.S. House passed seven of the 12 annual appropriations bills this year [2012] and sent them to the Senate for consideration, according to the status report by Republicans on the Senate Budget Committee. The Senate Appropriations Committee also approved 11 of the 12 spending bills and sent them to the full Senate for consideration. An independent search by PolitiFact via the Library of Congress’ Thomas bill-tracking website confirmed the figures cited in the GOP report. But none of the bills approved by the House or the Senate Appropriations Committee were ever brought to the Senate floor for a vote.”The Majority Leader in the Senate, Harry Reid (D-NV) in this case, decides whether to bring bills to the floor for consideration. In March 2013, the Senate voted 50-49 to pass a budget that hikes taxes by nearly $1 trillion. Even The New York Times acknowledged that this was its first budget in four years. As The New York Times explained, the Democrat-created budget in the Senate left the government with a “$566 billion annual deficit in 10 years, and $5.2 trillion in additional debt over that window.” By contrast, the Republican-led budget in the House balanced the budget by 2023. This could have been an opportunity for negotiations.The GOP leadership in the House has passed a budget every year, as required.CLAIM: The Democrats have been trying to negotiate with Republicans for six months, and the GOP leaders in Congress have refused.It is true that the Senate Republicans blocked Leader Reid from setting up a conference committee on the budget back in April of this year, after the Senate passed a budget in March. However, the reason for doing so was not simply because the GOP did not want a conference committee. The real reason is that President Obama refused at the time to take tax increases off the table, saying they were a must. Knowing that the Republicans did not support any type of tax increase, GOP leadership simply said that there was no reason for the conference committee given that a parameter was already set in place that the GOP could not accept. In reality, Obama was not allowing for any compromise, making a demand before the negotiations even began.CLAIM: The Senate Democrats will pass a “clean continuing resolution” if the House sends one over.There is a need for a continuing resolution, a bill that extends the current budget for a certain period of time, because the Senate did not pass a budget from 2009-2012 and passed a budget this past spring that Senate Democrats did not even unanimously support. When the House has sent spending bills to the Senate, the Senate does not bring them to the floor.Likewise, according to the House GOP, there are 40 jobs bills that the House has passed in recent years that the Senate does not bring to the floor.Actually, many bills are passed in the House, but when they reach the Senate, the Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) refuses to bring them to the floor. This is a pattern of Senate Leader Reid’s that is now well-documented.The House has passed three continuing resolutions recently, all of which are what would be considered to be “clean,” each containing one or two changes. The first CR defunded Obamacare, but was otherwise “clean.” The second CR funded Obamacare, but delayed the individual mandate and removed the medical device tax. The third CR also funded Obamacare, but called for equal treatment of individuals and members of Congress.The House has voted now three times now in recent days to continue to keep government open. It is the Democrat-led Senate that has voted to table or reject these opportunities.CLAIM: The Democrats do not want a government shutdown.Leader Reid is saying that he will not negotiate with House Republicans unless he receives a continuing resolution (CR) that is “clean,” meaning, it does not make any changes. In particular, the CR must not make any changes to Obamacare.The grade school translation is this: I will not negotiate with you until you pass the bill about which you want to negotiate, and you must first pass it under the terms that I want.After that, the Democrats will negotiate with the Republicans about a bill that was already passed? We see what happens when Republicans want to change aspects of Obamacare, another bill that has already become law. The Democrats say “it is law,” and conversations do not even commence.Just this morning, the Senate rejected a House proposal to go to conference committee where differences could be worked out to pass a CR. Democratic leadership in the Senate is unwilling to negotiate at all with Republicans in the House. And, while President Obama is negotiating with Syria, Russia and Iran, he did not reach out to Republican leadership until yesterday. Unlike his open-ended, “everything is on the table” conversations with leaders of other countries, he began his conversation with Speaker Boehner by saying that he would not negotiate on the debt ceiling.In every case when the Democrats are supposedly attempting to negotiate with the Republicans, they start out by saying they will negotiate, but then they state that they will not negotiate on whatever the key Republican issue is. This is not how a negotiation works, making it clear that this is an intentional ruse so they may claim they are attempting to negotiate, knowing that the mainstream media will regurgitate the talking point.CLAIM: The Democrats have not received anything in the Senate that they can pass, so it is all the fault of the GOP leadership in the House.The GOP-led House has passed three continuing resolutions and sent them to the Senate. The Senate refused earlier today to form a conference committee, a process through which negotiations take place.When the facts are reviewed, it is quite clear whose government shutdown this is. Calling this a Republican shutdown is not only disingenuous, but it is factually inaccurate. The left-leaning mainstream media continues to recycle the talking points sent by the Democratic Party that omit important pieces of information.Republicans have passed multiple bills to keep the government open, and want to listen to the American people. The GOP has demonstrated its willingness to negotiate by sending three different versions of a CR to the Senate, and offering a conference committee. However, negotiations require two willing partners on the other side of the aisle in President Obama and Senate Majority Leader Reid.Obama and Reid will not negotiate [about anything!]and it is that unreasonable position that has caused the government shutdown.===================
Editorial: Washington's reckoning
This deficits-and-debt fight is ugly. It's also overdue and unavoidable.
What a sorry spectacle: obstinacy and all-night speechifying from one side, name-calling and refusal to rescue entitlement programs from the other. As the righteous bray on and blame, President Barack Obama's approval rating flops. Much more of this and he'll score as miserably as Congress does. No wonder that, in RealClearPolitics' average of polls, 27 percent of Americans say their country is headed in the right direction — and 64 percent say it's on the wrong track.So off-putting. We can think of only one debacle as obnoxious: the decades leading to this moment, under Republican and Democratic presidents and Congresses, when pretty much everyone joined as one in festive orgies of overspending, over-borrowing. As their reward for the clubbiness and decorum we don't see in today's fractious Washington, we're paying fat federal pensions to retired presidents, senators and representatives who nurtured today's lethal culture of debt.That this culture of debt isn't the overriding issue of the moment — all of us and our yet unborn descendants owe nearly $17 trillion to buyers of U.S. securities — is another failure of spine that afflicts majorities in both parties. Instead they have us focused on the shiny object right over there: the partial halt to federal spending that will commence if they don't reach a budget deal for the fiscal year that starts Tuesday.Both sides want to frighten those "fellow Americans" they're always invoking. Many Republicans talk in scary terms of what harms Obamacare will wreak on the body politic as its insurance provisions lurch to life. Many Democrats talk in scary terms of the consequences if some federal spending is suspended.Much of this, you know, has precious little to do with Obamacare or federal operations. The U.S. is barely 13 months from a midterm election that could reconfigure official Washington to the triumphal advantage of one party or the other. As groups, neither Republicans nor Democrats look like winners right now. Each side is angling for advantage. And for campaign contributions. Did we mention campaign contributions?to strip out all the scarifying and go Big Picture, focusing on where this nation's finances truly stand:Here's an easy wayIn your mind, convert the federal budget to a simple calendar year. Under that protocol, Wednesday was Deficit Day. Writing in The Wall Street Journal, economists James R. Harrigan and Antony Davies explained that Washington by about 3 p.m. that day had spent all of the $2.7 trillion that the government collects every year from Americans via income, payroll, corporate, estate and excise taxes, as well as tariffs, fees and other income. After that moment: the deficit. The more than $10 billion that the federal government will spend every day from Sept. 26 through Dec. 31? You, little taxpayer, will borrow every penny. Those 97 days alone will add roughly another $1 trillion in debt to the pile. That is, to your pile.Complete the exercise by asking yourself: If my household already owed the equivalent of six years' income, how long could I last if, each year, I spent all of my earnings by Sept. 25, then borrowed what I would spend until the end of the year?But nobody is talking about that predicament. Instead, Democrats want to use the shiny object — the squabble over a partial government shutdown — as cover to gut the sequestration that has succeeded in finally slowing the government's growth. And Republicans? They're trying to exploit this moment to extract approval of the Keystone XL pipeline project that the Obama administration thus far has thwarted.We like sequestration and we like the pipeline project. But we don't like either of them as much as we loathe seeing either one as fodder for a "Gotcha!"If only the people we've elected to deliver solutions would parlay this moment into something, well, momentous: What a splendid chance for both parties to plead duress and rapidly lay the foundation for a deal to preserve Social Security, Medicare and other entitlement programs now headed for insolvency.If the president would provoke such a fledgling deal, terrific. Five years ago, as a candidate for president, he lambasted George W. Bush for eight years of funding the government with "a credit card from the Bank of China in the name of our children." Under Bush, the debt had leaped from $5 trillion to $9 trillion. "That's irresponsible," Obama said. "It's unpatriotic."We quote this president not to chide him, but because he ... was ... correct. The debt that Republicans and Democrats together have created is irresponsible. And to the extent that patriotism is loyalty to and love for one's country, where's the loyalty and love in sticking our children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren with debts that they really will have to pay? When future recessions destroy jobs and family incomes yet interest costs keep draining federal resources, what will our progeny say of us then? That we were great?So spare us these manufactured moments of enlightened indignation from Republicans and Democrats alike. The financial fiasco our politicians have created is vast. Yet many of our leaders — today's just as yesterday's — are small. Their loyalty and love for their careers and party ideologies is now on display.======================
Cal Thomas commentary: Kutcher has words of wisdom for today's young people (EXCERPTED)
Ashton Kutcher, the 35-year-old actor and ex-husband of actress Demi Moore, has never been considered a poster child for the family values crowd, but at the Teen Choice Awards two weeks ago, he easily could have passed for one.
Following screams from young female fans in the audience, Kutcher silenced them with a motivational message that bordered on inspiration. He told them: “I believe that opportunity looks a lot like hard work. … I’ve never had a job in my life that I was better than. I was always just lucky to have a job. And every job I had was a steppingstone to my next job, and I never quit my job until I had my next job.”
Kutcher wasn’t through: “The sexiest thing in the entire world is being really smart and being thoughtful and being generous. Everything else is crap … that people try to sell to you to make you feel like less. So don’t buy it. Be smart, be thoughtful and be generous.”
…Not many Millennials are hearing this message. Maybe some get it from their parents, but many teens and young adults don’t discover such wisdom until they are parents, if then.
For older adults, Kutcher’s remarks are so obvious that when they were teens they would have been unremarkable and nearly universally believed, if not always practiced. They resonate today because of the dire condition of the nation’s economy and because of moral libertarianism — whatever feels good goes; whatever works for the individual is right, even if the good of society suffers. More and more people seem to be looking for a lifeline. Kutcher threw them one. …
…Kutcher has described himself as “a fiscally conservative, socially liberal independent.” He supports gay rights and same-sex marriage. Though raised a Roman Catholic in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, he has dabbled in Kabbalah, a form of Jewish mysticism. No one can typecast him as a soldier for religious conservatism. He is a supporter of President Barack Obama, but doesn’t like his health-care plan.
The road to success remains what it has always been: hard work, believing in yourself, never taking “no” as the final answer and making right moral choices. These have been proved throughout history to better any life and improve even the worst of circumstances. If we know such things to be true, why are they not taught and modeled in today’s culture? For many, it could lead to less reliance on government. Politicians would become less necessary. If such principles were again taught in our public schools, someone might sue for imposing someone’s “ moral values” on others.
Envy, greed and entitlement are the unholy trinity of failure. What Kutcher offers young people is the opposite, leading to success, self-realization and independence.
Here’s one more Kutcherism: “Everything around us that we call life was made up by people that are no smarter than you. And you can build your own things. You can build your own life that other people can live in. So build a life. Don’t live one, build one.”
If only Washington politicians would think and talk this way.
Cal Thomas writes for Tribune Media Services.
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FROM- The Daily Caller - http://dailycaller.com -
Study: Welfare pays more than work in most states
Posted By Michael Bastasch On 4:17 PM 08/20/2013 In Daily Caller News Foundation
Looking for a good paying job? Well, look no further. No, really, stop looking. In 35 states, welfare benefits pay more than a minimum wage job, according to a new study by the libertarian Cato Institute, and in 13 states welfare pays more than $15 per hour.“One of the single best ways to climb out of poverty is taking a job, but as long as welfare provides a better standard of living than an entry-level job, recipients will continue to choose it over work,” said Michael Tanner, senior policy analyst and co-author of the study.
The study is an updated version of one Tanner put out in 1995 that estimated the full value of welfare benefits packages across the states. The 1995 study found that such tax-free welfare benefits greatly exceeded the poverty level and “their dollar value was greater than the amount of take-home income a worker would receive from an entry-level job.” Despite efforts to curb welfare spending, many welfare programs and benefits have continued to outpace the income that many workers can receive for working an entry-level job, which disincentives work, according to the study.
“The current welfare system provides such a high level of benefits that it acts as a disincentive for work,” reads the study. “Welfare currently pays more than a minimum-wage job in 35 states, even after accounting for the Earned Income Tax Credit, and in 13 states it pays more than $15 per hour.”According to the study, the federal government funds 126 separate programs designed to support low-income earners. Seventy-two of these programs provide cash or in-kind benefits to recipients. This is on top of additional welfare programs operated by state and local governments.
Welfare recipients in Hawaii get the most benefits, according to Tanner, at $29.13 per hour — or $60,590 pre-tax income annually. However, the state’s minimum wage is only $7.25 per hour, according to the Labor Department. Hawaiians on welfare also earn 167 percent of the median salary in the state, which is only $36,275.The District of Columbia, Massachusetts and Connecticut have the next more generous welfare benefits. D.C. welfare recipients can earn $24.43 per hour. In Massachusetts they can get $24.30 per hour. In Connecticut welfare recipients can receive $21.33 per hour. “If Congress and state legislatures are serious about reducing welfare dependence and rewarding work, they should consider strengthening welfare work requirements, removing exemptions, and narrowing the definition of work,” says the study.
Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact [email protected]. URL to article: http://dailycaller.com/2013/08/20/study-welfare-pays-more-than-work-in-most-states/
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