Studying the predictable things people do as they age is the ultimate tool for understanding trends. For instance, Dent can tell a client exactly when people will spend the most on potato chips. And he can explain why our economy has risen and fallen with the peak spending of generations, and why we now face a growing demographic cliff with the accelerating retirement of the Baby Boomers around the world.Dent predicted the impact of the Boomers hitting their highest growth in spending in the 1990s, when most economists saw the United States declining. And he anticipated the decline of Japan in the 1990s, when economists were proclaiming it would overtake the U.S. economy.But now, Dent argues, the fundamental demographics have turned against the United States and will hit more countries ahead. Inflation rises when a larger than usual block of younger people enter the workforce, and it wanes when large numbers of older people retire, downsize their homes, and cut their spending. The mass retirement of the Boomers won’t just hold back inflation; it and massive debt deleveraging will actually cause deflation—weakening the economy the most from 2014 into 2019.Dent explores the implications of his controversial predictions. He offers advice on retirement planning, health care, real estate, education, investing, and business strategies. For instance . . .BUSINESSES should get lean and mean now. Identify segments that you can clearly dominate and sell off or shut down others. If you don’t, the economy will do it for you, more painfully and less profitably.INVESTORS should sell stocks by mid-January 2014 and look to buy them back in 2015 or later at a Dow as low as 5,800.FAMILIES should wait to buy real estate in areas where home prices have gone back to where the bubble started in early 2000.GOVERNMENTS need to stop the endless stimulus that creates more bubbles and kills the middle class, and should assist in restructuring the unprecedented debt bubble of 1983–2008.Dent shows that if you take the time to understand demographic data, using it to your advantage isn’t all that difficult. By following his suggestions, readers will be able to find the upside to the downturn and learn how to survive and prosper during the most challenging years ahead.

    A decade after 9/11, the war on terror has entered a new phase and, it would seem, a new territory. In early 2010, Al Qaeda operatives were reportedly "streaming" out of central Asia toward Somalia and the surrounding region. Somalia, now home to some of the world's most dangerous terrorists, was already the world's most failed state. Two decades of anarchy have spawned not just Islamic extremism but piracy, famine, and a seemingly endless clan-based civil war that has killed an estimated 500,000, turned millions into refugees, and caused hundreds of thousands more to flee and settle in Europe and North America. What is now happening in Somalia directly threatens the security of the world, possibly more than any other region on earth. James Fergusson's book is the first accessible account of how Somalia became the world's most dangerous place and what we can--and should--do about it.

    It’s both an onboarding guide and a survival manual, and I hope it will be useful to the field. It outlines the types of projects, partnerships, and people that civic technologists encounter, and the methods we can use to make lasting change. I focus on principles and sets of questions to help technologists find the right way to do the most good, starting with finding the people already doing the work. There’s also practical advice on how to build alliances with public-sector partners, what tech (and non-tech) skill sets are most useful, and how to show up in spaces dedicated to stewardship rather than profit. And my best tips from experience on how to introduce new methods and tools, and how to connect with others in the field and work sustainably on hard problems.In collaboration with the Beeck Center for Social Impact + Innovation at Georgetown University and its Digital Service Collaborative supported by The Rockefeller Foundation, I’m self-publishing in paperback and e-book. I’m grateful for their support!

    . . John [Hancock], Paul [Revere], George [Washington], and Ben [Franklin]. Oh yes, there was also Tom [Jefferson], but he was annoyingly independent and hardly ever around. These lads were always getting into trouble for one reason or another. In other words, they took a few . . . liberties. And to be honest, they were not always appreciated. Until one day, they all played a part in securing America's freedom."Deftly drawn, witty, and instantly appealing, the illustrations creatively blend period elements such as wood-grain and crackle-glaze texturing, woodcut lines, and formal compositions typical of the era, with gaping mouths and stylized, spiraling eyes typical of modern cartoons," wrote Booklist, and School Library Journal declared, "Exercise your freedom to scoop up this one."

    In the face of the outlandish American tax burden, talk-radio firebrand Neal Boortz and Congressman John Linder are leading the charge to phase out our current, unfair system and enact the FairTax Plan, replacing the federal income tax and withholding system with a simple 23 percent retail sales tax on new goods and services. This dramatic revision of the current system, which would eliminate the reviled IRS, has already caught fire in the American heartland, with more than six hundred thousand taxpayers signing on in support of the plan.As Boortz and Linder reveal in this first book on the FairTax, this radical but eminently sensible plan would end the annual national nightmare of filing income tax returns, while at the same time enlarging the federal tax base by collecting sales tax from every retail consumer in the country. The FairTax, they argue, would transform the fearsome bureaucracy of the IRS into a more transparent, accountable, and equitable tax collection system. Among other benefits, it will:Make America's tax code truly voluntary, without reducing revenueReplace today's indecipherable tax code with one simple sales taxProtect lower-income Americans by covering the tax on basic necessitiesEliminate billions of dollars in embedded taxes we don't even know we're payingBring offshore corporate dollars back into the U.S. economyEndorsed by scores of leading economists and supported by a huge and growing grassroots movement, the FairTax Plan could revolutionize the way America pays for itself. In this straight-talking book, Neal Boortz and John Linder show you how it would work—and how you can help make it happen.

    The government's financewatchdog- the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) - found the government had pickedfavourites and avoided open and competitive bidding which would have generatedfar more revenue for a cash-starved state. The CAG concluded that India hadlost ` 1.861akh crore (over $ 30 billion) in theprocess, all of which went to the private companies. It was the biggestrecorded seam in the history of India. The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI),India's premier investigation agency, then filed an FIR against the top officerin the coal ministry-Secretary PC Parakh and industrialist Kumar MangalamBirla. Parakh had by then earned a fine reputation for ability and integrity inover three decades. as a civil servant. His stint as the top bureaucrat in thecoal ministry was his last posting in a sterling career. The FIR outraged thecivil services and corporate India and was widely condemned by theintelligentsia of the country. The book isn't just about the coal seam. It isalso about working with some of the biggest Indian politicians, starting withchief ministers of Andhra Pradesh. It is about life in the coal ministry withMamata Banerjee, Shibu Soren and Dr. Manmohan Singh, who was also the PrimeMinister. It is about the lessons learnt before Parakh met any of thesedignitaries. It is an account that startles with never-before revealed information. About the Author PC

    This book provides a practical guidebook for those seeking to understand and defeat the Alinsky tactics used by the Obama Administration, Occupy Wall Street, and other far-Left organizations.

    This is bad for patients, bad for doctors, and bad for business.In The Long Fix, physician and health care CEO Vivian S. Lee, MD, cuts to the heart of the health care crisis. The problem with the way medicine is practiced, she explains, is not so much who’s paying, it’s what we are paying for. Insurers, employers, the government, and individuals pay for every procedure, prescription, and lab test, whether or not it makes us better—and that is both backward and dangerous.Dr. Lee proposes turning the way we receive care completely inside out. When doctors, hospitals, and pharmaceutical companies are paid to keep people healthy, care improves and costs decrease. Lee shares inspiring examples of how this has been done, from physicians’ practices that prioritize preventative care, to hospitals that adapt lessons from manufacturing plants to make them safer, to health care organizations that share online how much care costs and how well each physician is caring for patients.Using clear and compelling language, Dr. Lee paints a picture that is both realistic and optimistic. It may not be a quick fix, but her concrete action plan for reform—for employers and other payers, patients, clinicians, and policy makers—can reinvent health care, and create a less costly, more efficient, and healthier system for all.

    "An illuminating guide to the use and abuse of history in affairs of state".--Arthur Schlesinger.

    Or because, increasingly, the profession treats issues as complex as health-care reform and foreign policy as exercises in political gamesmanship. These are just a few of the arguments that have made Breaking the News so controversial and so widely acclaimed. Drawing on his own experience as a National Book Award-winning journalist--and on the gaffes of colleagues from George Will to Cokie Roberts--Fallows shows why the media have not only lost our respect but alienated us from our public life. "Important and lucid...It moves smartly beyond the usual attacks on sensationalism and bias to the more profound problems in modern American journalism...dead-on."--Newsweek

    Look at her qualifications! She loves white houses, she's used to being followed everywhere, she attends lots of meetings, she finds jobs for people, and she believes in peace. Oliver's teacher is depicted during a typical school day contrasted with scenes of his heroine carrying out presidential duties. The apt correlation between these two very important jobs makes the book both useful and amusing.

    Constitution: A Reader was developed for teaching the core course on the U.S. Constitution at Hillsdale College. Divided into eleven sections with introductions by members of Hillsdale's Politics Department faculty, readings cover the principles of the American founding; the framing and structure of the Constitution; the secession crisis and the Civil War; the Progressive rejection of the Constitution; and the building of the administrative state based on Progressive principles.

    It starts with an analysis of the real costs incurred by individuals and families in existing transportation systems and goes on to examine the current civic expenses of these systems. With critiques of modern society’s deep-rooted attachment to car culture, this book tells the stories of people, businesses, organizations, and cities who are investing in two-wheeled transportation. Offering a fresh and compelling perspective on how people get from place to place, this book reveals the multifaceted North American bicycle movement with its contradictions, challenges, successes, and visions for the future.Please note: This paperback book is a different title with different content from the previously published zine, "Bikenomics: How Bicycling Will Save the Economy (If We Let It)." The zine is about 40 pages long, pocket-sized, and the binding is stapled.

    Deibert exposes the disturbing influence and impact of the internet on politics, the economy, the environment, and humanity.Digital technologies have given rise to a new machine-based civilization that is increasingly linked to a growing number of social and political maladies. Accountability is weak and insecurity is endemic, creating disturbing opportunities for exploitation. Drawing from the cutting-edge research of the Citizen Lab, the world-renowned digital security research group which he founded and directs, Ronald J. Deibert exposes the impacts of this communications ecosystem on civil society. He tracks a mostly unregulated surveillance industry, innovations in technologies of remote control, superpower policing practices, dark PR firms, and highly profitable hack-for-hire services feeding off rivers of poorly secured personal data. Deibert also unearths how dependence on social media and its expanding universe of consumer electronics creates immense pressure on the natural environment. In order to combat authoritarian practices, environmental degradation, and rampant electronic consumerism, he urges restraints on tech platforms and governments to reclaim the internet for civil society.

    The authors present a boldly comprehensive, brilliant new theory to explain the comparative underdevelopment of the U.S. welfare state among advanced industrial nations. Their conceptual framework promises to shape the debate within current and future administrations as they attempt to rethink the welfare system and its role in American society."Uncompromising and provocative. . . . By mixing history, political interpretation and sociological analysis, Piven and Cloward provide the best explanation to date of our present situation . . . no future discussion of welfare can afford to ignore them." --Peter Steinfels, The New York Times Book Review