Editor’s note: The following is adapted from chapter four of Jeff Riggenbach’s new book, Why American History Is Not What They Say: An Introduction to Revisionism (Ludwig von Mises Institute, 2009).
Until very recently, it was generally agreed that the story of the United States was the triumphant tale of a people fervently devoted to peace, prosperity, and individual liberty; a people left utterly untempted by opportunities of the kind that had led so many other nations down the ignoble road of empire; a people who went to war only as a last resort and only when both individual liberty and Western Civilization itself were imperiled and at stake.
Then, a little over a quarter-century ago, the terms of the public discussion of such issues changed – radically. One might say the opening salvo in the new American history wars was fired by Howard Zinn, in the form of a textbook titled A People’s History of the United States. First published in 1980, this volume is still in print, was reissued in a revised, updated, "20th Anniversary Edition" in the year 2000, and has become one of the most widely influential college-level textbooks on American history currently in use in this country. Today, Zinn faces intensified competition, however, not only from peddlers of the traditional, America-as-pure-and-virtuous-beacon-of-liberty-prosperity-and-peace version of our past, but also from a number of other writers who have, in varying degree, adopted the rather different view of American history that Zinn himself promotes.
This alternative vision sees America’s past as a series of betrayals by political leaders of all major parties, in which the liberal ideals on which this country was founded have been gradually abandoned and replaced by precisely the sorts of illiberal ideals that America officially deplores. In effect, say Howard Zinn and a growing chorus of others, we have become the people our founding fathers warned us (and tried to protect us) against. And what may be the most significant fact about this alternative or "revisionist" view of American history is the remarkably hospitable reception it has enjoyed both from the general public and from the selfsame educational establishment that only a few short years ago was assiduously teaching students something else entirely.
Another of the forces involved in making revisionism respectable once again was the brilliant critical and popular success, during the 1970s and early 1980s, of the first three books in Gore Vidal’s six-volume "American Chronicle" series of historical novels about the United States. Burr (1973), 1876 (1976), and Lincoln (1984) were enormous successes. They proved beyond any doubt that the public would not rise up in indignation and smite any author who dared to question the motives and the wisdom of even the most venerated American presidents. They proved that there was, in fact, a substantial market for just such skepticism about the glorious American past.
Vidal himself was strongly influenced by certain of the revisionists mentioned above, particularly Beard, Williams, and Alperovitz. And his presentation of American history in his novels is fully consistent with the version of that history one encounters in their works (and in the works of their libertarian successors). This is perhaps nowhere so evident as in Vidal’s and the revisionist historians’ treatment of America’s major wars.
As Gore Vidal presents it in Lincoln, the U.S. Civil War was caused not by slavery, but by the intransigence of President Lincoln, who insisted adamantly that no state could legitimately secede from the Union and that the Union could never be broken up. In Vidal’s account, Lincoln cared nothing for the plight of the slaves. Nor did he care about the U.S. Constitution’s guarantees of individual liberty: he shut down newspapers that opposed the war, imprisoning their editors; he held prisoners indefinitely, flouting habeas corpus; he imposed the first military draft in the nation’s history, then used troops to crush the riots that resulted; he financed his war by imposing and collecting the nation’s first tax on incomes, despite the lack of any constitutional basis for such a levy.
"Since […] the abolition of slavery never appeared in the platform of any great political party, since the only appeal ever made to the electorate on that issue was scornfully repulsed, since the spokesman of the Republicans emphatically declared that his party never intended to interfere with slavery in the states in any shape or form, it seems reasonable to assume that the institution of slavery was not the fundamental issue during the epoch preceding the bombardment of Fort Sumter."
"Any people anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up, and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better. […] Nor is this right confined to cases in which the whole people of an existing government may choose to exercise it. Any portion of such people that can, may revolutionize, and make their own, of so much of the territory as they inhabit."
Joseph R. Stromberg, the historian who touched off the current wave of serious revisionist investigation of the U.S. Civil War among libertarian scholars, had read both Beard and Williams. And in his influential essay, "The War for Southern Independence: A Radical Libertarian Perspective," published in 1979, while he was still a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Florida, he staked out a position even more radical than anything either Beard or Williams had ever proposed – something very like the vision of the war laid out in Gore Vidal’s Lincoln. Stromberg didn’t go into a lot of detail in presenting his take on the war, but two other libertarian historians have done so. These are Jeffrey Rogers Hummel, in Emancipating Slaves, Enslaving Free Men (1996), and Thomas J. DiLorenzo, in The Real Lincoln: A New Look at Abraham Lincoln, His Agenda, and an Unnecessary War (2002).
Hummel’s view of the Civil War is remarkably like Vidal’s. "Historians and buffs debate the fundamental causes of the American Civil War almost as hotly today as the combatants did then," he writes. "We can simplify our understanding of the Civil War’s causes, however, if we follow the advice of one eminent historian, Eric Foner, and ask two separate questions. Why did the southern states want to leave the Union? And why did the northern states refuse to let them go?" These are two separate questions, Hummel insists, because "[e]ven if slavery explains why the southern states left the Union, it does not necessarily either explain or justify the national government’s refusal to recognize their independence." In fact, he maintains, "[n]ot only does slavery fail to explain why the northern states resorted to coercion, but letting the lower South go in peace was a viable, untried antislavery option. As the most militant abolitionists themselves demonstrated, there was no contradiction between condemning slavery and advocating secession."
In fact, as Hummel points out, one of the most prominent leaders of the abolitionist movement, William Lloyd Garrison, editor of the weekly abolitionist paper The Liberator and one of the organizers of the leading abolitionist organization, the American Anti-Slavery Society, was an enthusiastic proponent of secession – for the North. Garrison and his followers "felt that this best hastened the destruction of slavery by allowing the free states to get out from under the Constitution’s fugitive slave provision." The seceded North, in Garrison’s vision, would have "become a haven for runaway slaves."
"is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help save the Union."
In effect, Lincoln refused to allow, first the lower South, then the entire Confederacy, to go in peace because he was committed to a conception of the United States as a perpetual nation, with whose central government the component states had no right to end their association – he was committed, not to a voluntary Union, but to a compulsory one.
"Lincoln implemented a series of unconstitutional acts, including launching an invasion of the South without consulting Congress, as required by the Constitution; declaring martial law; blockading the Southern ports; suspending the right of habeas corpus for the duration of his administration; imprisoning without trial thousands of Northern citizens; arresting and imprisoning newspaper publishers who were critical of him; censoring all telegraph communication; nationalizing the railroads; creating several new states without the consent of the citizens of those states; ordering Federal troops to interfere with elections in the North by intimidating Democratic voters; deporting a member of Congress, Clement L. Vallandigham of Ohio, for criticizing the administration’s income tax proposal at a Democratic Party rally; confiscating private property; confiscating firearms in violation of the Second Amendment; and effectively gutting the Ninth and Tenth amendments to the Constitution, among other things."
"One victim of Lincoln’s suppression of Northern newspapers," DiLorenzo writes, "was Francis Key Howard of Baltimore, the grandson of Francis Scott Key." Howard spent "nearly two years in a military prison without being charged and without a trial of any kind." "Fort Lafayette in New York Harbor," he notes, "came to be known as the ‘American Bastille’ because it housed so many political prisoners during the Lincoln administration." At one point, "Fort Lafayette was filled with newspaper editors from all over the country who had questioned the wisdom of Lincoln’s military invasion and his war of conquest."
"’justified’ his unconstitutional power grab by ‘discovering’ presidential powers in the Constitution that no previous president, or, indeed, anyone at all, had ever noticed. Specifically, he claimed that the commander-in-chief clause of the Constitution, when combined with the duty of the president to ‘take care that the laws be faithfully executed,’ gave him carte blanche in ignoring any and all laws, and the Constitution itself, in the name of presidential ‘war powers.’"
It will be noted that DiLorenzo indulges a marked taste for the polemical and tends toward more than a bit of hyperbole in his writing. Lincoln does not seem really to have believed that he had "carte blanche in ignoring any and all laws," for example; he does seem, however, to have believed that he had carte blanche to ignore those laws he felt were in conflict with what he saw as his duty – to save the Union, price no object. DiLorenzo has also been accused, by more than one reviewer, of "careless errors of fact, misuse of sources, and faulty documentation." Richard M. Gamble details these technical criticisms of DiLorenzo’s book at some length in the Spring 2003 issue of The Independent Review, and regards them as evidence of a serious problem with DiLorenzo’s scholarship. But even he concedes that "individually these flaws may seem trivial and inconsequential." And so they do: a quotation cited as being on page 60 is in fact on page 61; information attributed to page 316 of a work by a noted Lincoln scholar is instead to be found on the same page of another work by the same scholar; an article cited as having been published in 1988 was in fact published in 1998. Not only are errors of this type (unfortunate though they are) both trivial and inconsequential, but also not a few of them would appear to have resulted from proofreading errors, which can hardly be blamed on the author. In any case, as Peter Novick notes, "when citations […] are illustrative of a synthetic interpretation arrived at through ‘deep immersion,’ even the demonstration that several citations are faulty is far from constituting a refutation of the thesis they underpin." And as Gamble himself acknowledges, DiLorenzo’s book "is essentially correct in every charge it makes against Lincoln," and is, apart from its too numerous technical errors, "a sobering study in power and corruption."
As Gore Vidal presents it in Hollywood, American intervention in World War I was engineered by the United States’ Anglophile president, Woodrow Wilson, who was always eager to help the British out of any pickle they might have got themselves into. Even after creating a special office of wartime propaganda to "sell" the war to the American public, however – and after following the lead of Lincoln and forcibly silencing those publishers who dared disagree with his policies – Wilson still found it necessary to force young American men into the U.S. Army through a revival of the military draft; too few of them were volunteering to come to England’s aid.
"’New Historians’ is a designation generally given to the Columbia group around Robinson and Beard, and one which emphasizes methodology; ‘Progressive Historians’ describes a descent from [Frederick Jackson] Turner and Beard, and emphasizes substantive interpretations of American history. The usage employed in the historiographical literature generally depends on the subject under discussion. Because Turner prefigured many New Historical themes, and Robinson, though a Europeanist, was the ultimate Progressive, all three of these men – plus [Carl] Becker, the student of both Turner and Robinson, and an ‘associate member’ of both groups – are here treated as both New and Progressive historians."
I follow Novick’s lead in this matter, reasoning that, since both Beard and his protégé Barnes were consistent advocates of Progressive reform, as well as advocates of the use of the social sciences to inform historical scholarship, they may be treated as both New and Progressive Historians.
"Germany and Austria, under autocratic war lords, had long been plotting and preparing for the day when they could overwhelm their neighbors and make themselves masters of the world. England, France, and Russia, on the other hand, all unsuspecting, had pursued ways of innocence, had sincerely desired peace, and made no adequate preparations for a great cataclysm. When England and France were trying to preserve equal rights for all in Morocco, Germany had rattled the sword and now, taking advantage of the controversy over the assassination of the Austrian archduke, the Central Powers had leaped like tigers upon their guileless victims."
Earlier, in a 1926 article for Current History, Beard had been even more sardonic: the conventional view of the war’s origins, he wrote, amounted to the claim that "three pure and innocent boys – Russia, France, and England – without military guile in their hearts, were suddenly assailed while on the way to Sunday school by two deep-dyed villains – Germany and Austria – who had long been plotting cruel deeds in the dark." By 1926, Barnes had long since recognized this story as so much twaddle, and by 1930 his old mentor had come entirely over to his side of the question.
"the only direct and immediate responsibility for the World War falls upon France and Russia, with the guilt about equally distributed. Next in order – far below France and Russia – would come Austria, though she never desired a general European war. Finally, we should place Germany and England as tied for last place, both being opposed to war in the 1914 crisis. Probably the German public was somewhat more favorable to military activities than the English people, but […] the Kaiser made much more strenuous efforts to preserve the peace of Europe in 1914 than did Sir Edward Grey."
As for U.S. intervention in the war, the reasons for it, Barnes wrote in 1928 in In Quest of Truth and Justice: De-Bunking the War-Guilt Myth, were "many and complex." One factor was "the pro-British sources of most of our news concerning Germany in the decade prior to 1914." Another was the "enormous sums" lent to Allied governments by American bankers. Another was the simple fact that President "Wilson was […] very pro-British in his cultural sympathies. […] He did not desire to have the United States enter the war if England seemed likely to win without our aid, but as soon as this appeared doubtful he was convinced that we should enter as early as he could persuade Congress and the country to follow him." "Later," Barnes added, "Mr. Wilson added to his pro-British reasons for desiring to enter the War the conception that unless he was at the Peace Conference he could not act decisively in bringing about a peace of justice and permanence." Unfortunately, "[t]here can be little doubt that the entry of the United States into the World War was an unmitigated disaster for all concerned. It made it possible for one set of combatants to win a crushing victory, whereas, as Mr. Wilson once wisely said, the only enduring peace would have to be a peace without victory."
Earlier, in The Genesis of the World War, Barnes had seen another motive, something different from the desire to build a "peace of justice and permanence," behind Wilson’s change of heart on U.S. participation in the war. He saw lust for power. He suggested that "Wilson’s decision was affected by the conviction that he could assume world leadership only if he led the United States into the war." In 1948, looking back, Charles Beard saw a closely related sort of megalomania lurking behind Wilson’s benign, professorial visage – the delusion "that the President of the United States has the constitutional and moral right to proclaim noble sentiments of politics, economics, and peace for the whole world and commit the United States to these sentiments by making speeches and signing pieces of paper on his own motion." In 1939, Beard recalled the violence Wilson had done to the Constitution in the service of his megalomaniacal vision: "I saw the freedom of the press trampled by gangs of spies, public and private." Thirteen years earlier, in 1926, in History and Social Intelligence, Barnes, too, had noted the domestic consequences of Wilson’s commitment of U.S. troops to the European war – the fact that, in prosecuting his war, the president had "sanctioned […] the most serious inroads upon democratic practice and human liberty in the history of our country, wiping out in three years most of the solid gains of a century and a half of struggle against arbitrary power."
In Barnes’s view, the Versailles Treaty that ended the war, based as it was on the very "charge of German war guilt" that had since been exposed as arrant nonsense, was so grossly unfair to Germany as almost to guarantee a resumption of hostilities within a few years at best. And, of course, hostilities did resume in the 1930s. When they did, both Beard and Barnes were wary of any analysis of current events that appeared to see merit in another U.S. intervention. Had nothing been learned from the experience of World War I, they wondered.
"[t]he era of universal American jitters over foreign affairs of no vital interest to the United States was opened in full blast about 1890 by four of the most powerful agitators that ever afflicted any nation: Alfred Thayer Mahan, Theodore Roosevelt, Henry Cabot Lodge, and Albert J. Beveridge. These were the chief manufacturers of the new doctrine correctly characterized as ‘imperialism for America’ […] the policy of running out and telling the whole world just the right thing to do."
"an Act to place all the wealth and all the men and women of the United States at the free disposal of the President, to permit him to transfer or carry goods to any foreign government he may be pleased to designate, anywhere in the world, to authorize him to wage undeclared wars for anybody, anywhere in the world, until the affairs of the world are ordered to suit his policies, and for any other purpose he may have in mind now or at any time in the future, which may be remotely related to the contingencies contemplated in the title of this Act."
Beard proposed "that Congress reject this bill with such force that no President of the United States will ever dare again, in all our history, to ask it to suspend the Constitution and the laws of this land and to confer upon him limitless dictatorial powers over life and death."
It was in the service of this imperialistic conception of the U.S. role in world affairs, Beard thundered in that 1939 Harper‘s article, that "President Roosevelt […] was maneuvering his country into the war." Convinced that FDR had set up the defenders of Pearl Harbor for a Japanese attack he had deliberately provoked, while making sure that no one in Hawaii knew of it in advance as he himself did, Beard "followed the course of the congressional investigation of Pearl Harbor with an almost microscopic scrutiny. To what the investigation brought forth he added more that he gathered himself," publishing his final statement on the matter in President Roosevelt and the Coming of the War, 1941 (1948), only a few months before his death. This book, according to George R. Leighton, Beard’s editor at Harper‘s, "was a ponderous volume in which, with detail and fact piled upon detail and fact until the weight is almost crushing, Beard sought to nail down the proof of Roosevelt’s deception so firmly that it could not be got loose."
Five years later, in 1953, Beard’s longtime protégé Harry Elmer Barnes published Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace: A Critical Examination of the Foreign Policy of Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Its Aftermath, dedicated "to the memory of Charles Austin Beard." In this volume, Barnes wrote that "American policy toward Japan in the decade preceding Pearl Harbor […] was the same hostile policy developed by Stimson during the latter part of the Hoover Administration. It was rejected by President Hoover but was adopted and continued by Roosevelt." According to Barnes, FDR "discussed war with Japan in his earliest cabinet meetings," immediately commenced "an unprecedented peacetime expansion of our naval forces," "laid plans for a naval blockade of Japan in 1937," and relentlessly pursued a "program for the economic strangulation of Japan" that "was generally recognized by Washington authorities" at the time as likely to lead to war. "Roosevelt was personally responsible," Barnes wrote, "for the location of our Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor, in which move he disregarded the advice of Admirals Richardson and Stark. The State Department backed Roosevelt and Richardson was relieved of his command."
"Secretary Hull dispatched an ultimatum to Japan on November 26 which, he fully recognized, decisively closed the door to peace. He himself said that it took the Japanese situation out of diplomacy and handed it over to the Army and Navy. From this time onward it was only a question of when and where the Japanese would attack."
"The decoded Japanese messages between November 26 and December 7 indicated, with relative certainty, when the attack would be made, and they also revealed the strong probability that it would be aimed at Pearl Harbor." Yet "nothing was done to warn General Short or Admiral Kimmel at Pearl Harbor."
"expressed himself as greatly ‘surprised’ at both the time and place of the attack, and his apologists have accepted these words at their face value. Neither the President nor his apologists have ever given any satisfactory explanation of why he could have been surprised. […] If they had any reason at all to be surprised, it was only over the extent of the damage inflicted by the Japanese. But there was little reason even for this, in the light of Roosevelt’s personal order to keep the fleet bottled up like a flock of wooden ducks, of the order that no decoding machine should be sent to Pearl Harbor, and of the fact that Washington had deliberately failed to pass on to Short and Kimmel any of the alarming information intercepted during the three days before the attack. December 7 may have been a ‘day of infamy,’ but the infamy was not all that of Japan."
"the Russia which is now portrayed as about to spring at the world and devour it is the same Russia that Roosevelt, Harry Hopkins, and other administration leaders presented to the American public as our most potent and suitable ally in the global struggle to suppress totalitarianism, assure democracy, promote liberty, and make peace secure throughout the world. There is very little today in Russian policy, domestic or foreign, which any informed person did not know about back in 1941. In fact, nothing which Russia has done since 1945 has been as aggressive and brutal as the invasion of Poland in the autumn of 1939, the later mass murders of Polish officers in the Katyn Forest in 1940, or the mass murders and deportations of Baltic peoples during the war."
Barnes considered the likelihood of the Soviet Union making war against the United States to be extremely remote. "Even leading Russophobes like Eugene Lyons," he wrote, "frankly admit that there is every reason to expect that Russia will not start a war." Moreover, he pointed out, when General Alfred M. Gruenther, General Eisenhower’s chief of staff, testified before the House Foreign Affairs Committee on March 25, 1952, he too "conceded that he did not believe the Russians will start a war, now or at any time."
"the highly significant MacArthur memorandum to F.D.R. of January 20, 1945. This forty-page memorandum explicitly set forth the terms of an authentic Japanese peace offer which were virtually identical with the final surrender terms that we accepted from the Japanese seven months later – at the cost of countless needlessly expended lives, Japanese and American alike."
In the same article, "Barnes also disclosed, for the first time, the personal testimony of Herbert Hoover that President Truman, by early May 1945, informed him that he knew of the extensive Japanese peace offers and admitted then that further fighting with the Japanese was really unnecessary." Barnes concluded "that the major reason for dropping the bomb […] was a saber-rattling gesture to the Russians against whom we were already preparing the Cold War."
"[c]ontradicting the prevailing notion that the Cold War had come about through the actions of an aggressive and expansionist Soviet Union, Williams argued that the United States itself bore the primary responsibility. Even before Pearl Harbor, he wrote, American policymakers had committed themselves to achieving a postwar world dominated by an alliance between Great Britain and the United States. By attempting to force upon Russia this Anglo-American world order without regard to her minimum security needs, American leaders forced an essentially conservative Soviet Union into acting unilaterally in her own defense."
Among the methods Williams claimed American leaders had used in pressuring the Soviets was "brandishing atomic weapons."
"is devoted to showing that from the time Harry S. Truman assumed the presidency he undertook to reverse Franklin D. Roosevelt’s policy of cooperation with the Soviet Union, thereby precipitating the Cold War. In direct violation of wartime agreements, some explicit and some understood, Truman sought to construct an American-dominated world order (particularly in Eastern Europe and the Far East) at the end of World War II. When economic coercion failed to achieve this goal, Alperovitz claimed, Truman bided his time until the United States acquired the atomic bomb, with which he meant to cow the Russians into submission. The use of nuclear weapons against an already defeated Japan, according to this view, amounted to a diplomatic rather than a military act. The evidence ‘strongly suggests,’ he wrote, that the bombs were used primarily to demonstrate to the Russians the enormous power America would have in its possession during subsequent negotiations. As a lesser factor, he cited the wish to end the war quickly before they [the Soviets] could establish a strong position in the Far East."
"One […] would also like to believe that the sole motive of the eminent men he knew was to save lives. It is not pleasant to think that they were so fascinated by their new ‘master card’ of diplomacy that they scarcely considered the moral implications of their act when they used it. That, however, is precisely what the evidence available strongly suggests."
 Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard, The Rise of American Civilization (New York: Macmillan, 1930), Vol. II, pp. 39-40.
 William Appleman Williams, The Contours of American History (Cleveland, OH: World, 1961), p. 299.
 William Appleman Williams, America Confronts a Revolutionary World: 1776-1976 (New York: William Morrow, 1976), pp. 113, 111.
 Jeffrey Rogers Hummel, Emancipating Slaves, Enslaving Free Men: A History of the American Civil War (Chicago, Open Court, 1996), pp. 3, 8.
 Thomas J. DiLorenzo, The Real Lincoln: A New Look at Abraham Lincoln, His Agenda, and an Unnecessary War (New York: Prima, 2002), pp. 131-132.
 Ibid., pp. 133-134, 140, 147.
 Richard M. Gamble, Review of The Real Lincoln: A New Look at Abraham Lincoln, His Agenda, and an Unnecessary War by Thomas J. DiLorenzo. The Independent Review Vol. 7, No. 4: Spring 2003, p. 613.
 Peter Novick, That Noble Dream: The "Objectivity Question" and the American Historical Profession (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1988), p. 220.
 Gamble, op.cit., pp. 614, 612.
 Beard and Beard, The Rise of American Civilization, op.cit., Vol. II, p. 617.
 Harry Elmer Barnes, The Genesis of the World War (New York: Knopf, 1926), pp. 658-659.
 Harry Elmer Barnes, In Quest of Truth and Justice: De-Bunking the War-Guilt Myth (Colorado Springs, CO: Ralph Myles, 1972 ), pp. 98, 101, 102, 105.
 Warren I. Cohen, The American Revisionists: The Lessons of Intervention in World War I (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1967), p. 77.
 Charles A. Beard, President Roosevelt and the Coming of the War, 1941 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1948), p. 593.
 George R. Leighton, "Beard and Foreign Policy" in Charles A. Beard: An Appraisal, ed. Howard K. Beale (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1976 ), p. 168.
 Harry Elmer Barnes, History and Social Intelligence (New York: Revisionist Press, 1972 ), p. 514.
 Novick, op.cit., p. 215. See also Harry Elmer Barnes, "Revisionism and the Historical Blackout" in Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace: A Critical Examination of the Foreign Policy of Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Its Aftermath, ed. Harry Elmer Barnes (Caldwell, ID: Caxton, 1953), p. 10.
 Harry Elmer Barnes, "Summary and Conclusions" in Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace, op.cit., pp. 636, 637.
 Ibid., pp. 642, 643, 645.
 Harry Elmer Barnes, "How Nineteen Eighty-Four Trends Threaten American Peace, Freedom, and Prosperity" in Revisionism: A Key to Peace and Other Essays, ed. James J. Martin (San Francisco: Cato Institute, 1980), pp. 148-149, 154.
 Murray N. Rothbard, "Revisionist of the Cold War" in Harry Elmer Barnes, Learned Crusader: The New History in Action, ed. Arthur Goddard (Colorado Springs, CO: Ralph Myles, 1968), p. 324.
 Robert James Maddox, The New Left and the Origins of the Cold War (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1973), p. 14.
 Gar Alperovitz, Cold War Essays (Cambridge, MA: Schenkman, 1970), pp. 72, 51, 73.


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Attention, MetroPCS customers. If you're in the market for a new Android smartphone, we have good news.
The no-contract wireless carrier on Monday added the Samsung Galaxy S 4 to its 4G smartphone lineup. The popular phone is available through MetroPCS in select cities for $549 and can be paired with any of the carrier's no-annual-contract 4G service plans, which start at $40 per month for unlimited data, talk, and text.
At this point it looks like MetroPCS is only offering the phone in its brick-and-mortar stores in Atlanta; Boston; Dallas - Ft. Worth; Hartford, Conn.; Las Vegas; New York; Philadelphia; and San Francisco. Additional markets and online availability will be announced "soon," the company said.
"Providing choice and flexibility for consumers means offering premium smartphones without the costly service and a long-term contract," Tom Keys, MetroPCS COO, said in a statement. "By combining the Galaxy S 4 and affordable nationwide 4G service plans … we are truly enabling our customers to have it all."
Samsung's latest flagship smartphone boasts a 5-inch, 1080p Super AMOLED HD screen with 441 pixels per inch and 1,920-by-1,080 resolution. It runs an enhanced version of Google's Android 4.2.2 Jelly Bean with a 1.9-GHz quad-core processor. Other specs include a 13-megapixel rear camera, 2-megapixel front camera, and HSPA+/LTE connectivity where coverage is available.
Regional carrier C Spire will also begin offering the Galaxy S 4 today for $199.99 with a two-year contract.
In other mobile news, Samsung has struck a deal with Wi-Fi provider Boingo to offer one year of free Wi-Fi access in North America to Galaxy Tab 3 and Galaxy Note 8 Wi-Fi users. Those who purchase one of these tablets can access Boingo's more than 35,000 hotspots in the United States, Canada, and Mexico by registering for Samsung's Galaxy Perks program.
For more, see PCMag's review of the Samsung Galaxy S 4, as well as the slideshow above. Also check out our Galaxy S 4 vs. Apple iPhone 5: Spec Showdown.
Since the launch of the Galaxy S 4, Samsung has introduced a 4.3-inch "mini" version of the phone, as well as the more rugged Galaxy S4 Active, and the Galaxy S4 Zoom, which includes 10x optical zoom.


Robot combat season is right around the corner and it makes me think of the smell of burning oil and sodomized electrons. Ah, the sound of a 200-pound killer bot smashing into a transparent barrier after being ripped apart and destroyed by fire. Yes, the Robogames have just opened for entries in preparation for their actuator-annihilating killfest in early June. Here's a picture of one deathmatch from last year, and a few more below.
Here's a closeup shot of combat between a spinner and a wedge-style robot. Looks like the spinner might be about to flip that wedge right over. Robogames are perfectly safe, and fun for the whole family. Really! I had a 200-pounder on fire smash right next to my head against the thick, plastic barrier and it was scary but totally non-dangerous.
There are also artbots and other kinds of robot projects on display at Robogames. Here's Zou Renti last year with his android clone.
The photographer titled this picture, "You're creeping me out, dude." Seriously. Image of firey fight up top by Sam Coniglio, via Robogames. Close combat image by Scott Beale, via Robogames. Image of android by Brunkfordbraun.
Sign up now to enter your killer bot in Robogames.


Eisen and Lafleur: What would Canada’s finances look like without Alberta?
During a speech on Canada Day, Prime Minister Trudeau accidentally caused a stir by forgetting to mention Alberta when listing all of Canada’s provinces and territories.
It was surely an oversight rather than an intentional slight, and the prime minister immediately apologized. Nevertheless, his slip provokes an interesting thought experiment: what would Canada’s economy and public finances look like without Alberta? The answer is not a pretty picture.
Up until the recent downturn in energy prices and subsequent recession in the province, Alberta contributed disproportionately to economic growth in Canada. Between 2004 and 2014, inflation-adjusted annual economic growth in Alberta averaged 3.4 per cent — more than twice the rate of growth in the rest of the country (1.6 per cent) during the same period. Without Alberta’s strong performance, Canada’s overall economic growth rate would have been much weaker than it was.
To look at another economic metric, consider that Alberta’s provincial economy created more jobs than any other jurisdiction in Canada between 2004 and 2014, despite the fact that Ontario and Quebec have vastly larger populations.
The job-creation machine in Alberta benefited people from all different parts of the country, many of whom moved to Alberta to seize economic opportunities and make a better life for themselves. In fact, approximately 270,000 more people moved to Alberta from the rest of the country than moved from Alberta to somewhere else in Canada over this 10-year period. Providing a destination where people could go and improve their families’ economic circumstances is another way Alberta’s strong economy benefited the rest of Canada in recent years.
As important as any of these factors, however, is Alberta’s outsized contribution to the health of Canada’s public finances. Thanks to high incomes, a youthful population, and the fact the province does not receive equalization payments, Albertans send much more money to the federal government in taxes and other forms of revenue than they receive back in transfer payments and services.
Even during the recent recession, this gap remained large. In 2015, Albertans sent, on average, approximately $5,000 more to Ottawa then they received back in federal transfers and services. Over the years, this large positive net contribution has added up to truly staggering sums. Between 2007 and 2015, Albertans sent $221.4 billion more to Ottawa than the province received back.
It’s therefore difficult to overstate how important Alberta’s contribution has been to federal finances in recent years. If Alberta’s net contribution per person were aligned with the Canadian average, the federal government would never have come close to balancing its budget at any point since the 2008-09 recession, and the deficit today would be more than $20 billion larger than it actually is.
Given the importance of a strong Alberta for a strong Canada, Canadians coast to coast should be concerned that the provincial government is undermining many of the policies that helped make Alberta an economic powerhouse. Debt-free public finances and strongly competitive taxes helped fuel economic growth in Alberta for many years. Unfortunately, provincial policy choices are quickly undermining those advantages.
Clearly, it’s in the best interest of all Canadians for Alberta to get back on its proverbial economic feet. Although energy prices certainly matter, Alberta can help its own cause by restoring a fiscally sound, pro-growth policy framework. Given the importance of a strong Alberta to the economic health of our country, that’s a goal all Canadians should support.


Rethink Impact is investing in a host of companies with women in senior leadership positions. The fund has raised tens of millions of dollars from UBS Group (UBS) . TheStreet's Scott Gamm speaks with Jenny Abramson, founder & managing partner at Rethink Impact and Sharon Sager, a managing director at UBS Wealth Management.


Lawmakers are looking to free customers to post negative reviews about businesses online without fear of retaliation.
A bipartisan group of senators is pushing legislation to bar businesses from using a common online contract clause that effectively prohibits customers from posting negative reviews about them. The legislation could be approved soon by the Senate Commerce Committee, following a hearing on Wednesday that spotlighted the issue.


It’s always amazed me how fans decide that teams should just spend money, commenting, “The owner’s a billionaire!” The team is raking it in so why not spend more on players? Or, the owner is making X with his other company, so who cares what he spends?
I made a comment on twitter a few days ago about LeBron James asking for a max contract. As a free agent, that is his right, and I have no problems with it if that is what he wants. There are many different people in this world brought up many different ways, so there really is no right or wrong answer. The point I was getting at on Twitter was, why? Why, in an industry where you have a limited amount of time to be great—and in this specific instance speaking about a player who makes considerable more off the court in endorsements than what he will make on it—why care about a max contract?
Brady has repeatedly given up more money for a better chance of winning the Super Bowl.
My point is this: If LeBron takes $17 million this year instead of his max (close to $20.7 million), yes, he is giving up almost $4 million (a considerable amount). However, as James’ endorsements are estimated at roughly $40 million per year, if you assume he decided to make a total of $57 million this year instead of $60 million, it’s a five percent pay reduction off of what would be his total compensation. Is five percent really that big of a deal compared to giving yourself a better chance of achieving other goals and your overall happiness?
If, as has been stated, LeBron is more interested in making sure the roster is better around him, then the best way to do that is to take a little bit less with the assurance that the money not taken will be spent on other talent in an attempt to make the roster better. Patriots quarterback Tom Brady has been doing this for years and he makes considerable less total money than LeBron does. But then again, it’s a question of what’s most important to that specific person. I’m not here to tell you what LeBron should or should not do, that’s for him to decide for himself. I can only tell you what I would do in a similar situation, and what I have seen other players do, that placed importance on giving themselves the best opportunity to win consistently.
I have had this conversation with multiple agents over the years and although they wouldn’t want to be quoted saying it, most agree that at a certain point, the money becomes secondary, whether the player gets $14 million in one place or $16 million in the other. Agents will typically tell the player that they should go to the place they are more comfortable with because the extra money really isn’t worth what is lost in terms of happiness.
Think of it in your own life: You like your job and are happy you make a salary of X (let’s say $57,000 for this purpose). Is it worth going to a place that you know nothing about, that you don’t have the same sense or knowledge of if they are a good organization, for an extra $3,000? Because that would be roughly five percent. For me, it’s not worth it. I’ve made this decision multiple times in my life and my personal belief is that if you are happy, the money will come. But chasing every last dollar isn’t the best way to happiness. I’m not saying that if you can’t feed your family and that an extra $3,000 will make a huge difference (which for some it does) that you shouldn’t do what’s in the best interest of your family, because your family should always come first. But if you aren’t in that situation, the question is why do something that contradicts your quoted goals for a few more bucks?
Ari Nissim worked with the New York Jets from 2006 through 2013, six as Director of Football Administration; In addition he interned at the NFL League office and worked at Athletic Resource Management Sports Agency, and currently teaches in the NYU Sports Management Program.


Designer Denis Gagnon and Peter Nasri of Bedo have embarked on a quest to build a new collection – Odasi Denis Gagnon – to be sold at retailers across Canada, and eventually the U.S. and Europe.
The name is a play on the French word “audace” or audacious in English, for the designer’s signature daring. The word Odasi also sounds a lot like odyssey, for the adventure they have undertaken in nurturing a contemporary mid-priced collection.
Pieces of the collection have trickled into Montreal Bedo stores for a test run, with the bulk arriving this week. The store at Ste. Catherine St. W. and Mountain St. had a good selection recently.
Read the full feature in Thursday’s Arts & Life section.
Here is a sneak peek of a campaign image, shot by Sylvain Blais.


The Government's handling of the economy has been given a broadly positive review by the Fiscal Advisory Council.
The watchdog's latest report says the Finance Minister took a prudent approach in Budget 2018.
But it says the Government should make more ambitious plans for a so-called "rainy day fund", in case there's a downturn.
The watchdog says the urgent need to build more housing risks overheating the economy.
The latest report from the Irish Fiscal Advisory Council praises the cautious approach taken in the budget and gives a positive outlook.
But it says major investment in housing needs to be offset with balancing measures to cool down the economy.
"I suppose the report reflects the changed environment we find ourselves in compared to a few years ago where we had quite a large government deficit and budgets were all about," said Seamus Coffey, chair of the Fiscal Advisory Council.
"In this year's budget we see that the deficit is almost closed, and debt is beginning to decline."


In 2016 in California, a class-action lawsuit against Toyota claimed the company should cover — under warranty — damage from rodents chewing through insulation for wiring that is now soy-based rather than petroleum-based. The suit is ongoing.
ROYAL OAK, Mich. — Every evening, Janice Perzigian puts Pine-Sol on the ground around her 2017 Ford Mustang.
Dryer sheets go under the front seat and in the trunk. Spray made with essential oils is applied to the tires, the sides and the back.
Why does she go through this 5-minute routine?
She has a simple answer: to avoid another $600+ repair bill after a rat chewed through wires under the hood of her car, leading to problems last month starting her car.
Aside from gnawed wires, the rodent — literally — left a trail of bread crumbs, rat feces and urine on the engine, which she now sprays weekly with peppermint essential oil.
"I’m gonna do everything possible to eliminate this and make sure this doesn’t happen again," she said.
She's not alone, either here or across the USA.
John Pappas, Main & Hudson Service in Royal Oak, Mich.
In 2016 in California, a class-action lawsuit against Toyota claimed the company should cover — under warranty — damage from rodents chewing through insulation for wiring that is now soy-based rather than petroleum-based.
In the same year on the East Coast, AAA car care center technicians were finding a similar problem of rodents chewing through vehicle wires, particularly in cold weather. As of winter 2017, the problem still exists, a spokeswoman for the organization said last week.
“While advances in car construction can be beneficial to the environment, there may also be unforeseen consequences such as making your car more appetizing to rodents,” Tracy Noble, spokeswoman of AAA Mid-Atlantic, said in a 2016 press release.
Residents might not see the varmints under the hood, but if they've been there, nibbling away, they can cause damage.
John Pappas, owner of Main & Hudson Service in Royal Oak, said he gets a vehicle about every month suffering from rodent-chewed-through-wire-covering syndrome.
Pappas, whose family business has been in this Detroit suburb for 53 years, said he's noticed more of this type of problem in recent years.
"They're going environmental on the wires," he said. "There's good and bad in everything. It is a common issue."
Problems can range from a vehicle not starting, to the check-engine light coming on, to the vehicle running poorly, Pappas said. It might take a couple of months or going over a hard bump to spark a previously-chomped on wire problem to the surface.
"That's the magical question," Pappas said. It depends on the damage done, one spot or many.
He said he hasn't noticed that rodents seem to prefer a specific make or model.
"It doesn't discriminate," he said.
Brian Kabateck is taking on Toyota Motor Sales U.S.A. over the issue.
The Los Angeles lawyer is involved in a class-action lawsuit on behalf of Albert Heber of Delphi, Ind., whose 2012 Tundra had its soy-based insulated wiring chewed through by rodents three times, the first in 2013. The costs of repair totaled about $1,500 — damage that Kabateck said Toyota wouldn't cover under warranty.
"Our contention, why soy is certainly — it's laudable — they're trying to be more green, at the same time, it's becoming a potential food product for rats," Kabateck said. He believes rats find it "delicious."
In research for the lawsuit, Kabateck learned that Toyota and some other vehicle manufacturers started using a soy-based product as an insulation for wiring under the hood about a decade ago, probably in an effort to make vehicles more green and to get rid of older-style, petroleum-based wiring insulation.
In the past, he said he had heard that rats periodically chewed through wires in vehicles for nesting materials and to sharpen their teeth. But "we think the addition of soy in the insulation has taken the episode of rats chewing through the wires through the roof."
While Toyota claims this is not more likely to happen with soy-based than petroleum-based products "we continue to have a hard time believing that" based on the number of people calling the firm and its own investigation, including talking to service employees and others at dealerships, Kabateck said.
He didn't have a specific number of people affected but said it's possibly tens of thousands.
The lawsuit is filed on behalf of Heber and owners and lessees of 2012 to 2016 model year Toyota vehicles. A similar lawsuit was filed against Honda in 2016 and dismissed later that year by the plaintiffs, according to federal court records in California.
Kabateck said he's not looking for billions of dollars from the automaker. He wants the people who have paid out-of-pocket to be reimbursed and a change in the policy and plan so that the warranty would cover this type of damage.
Often, this type of damage isn't covered under warranty. Some insurance companies may cover if owners pay the deductible while others won't, and folks often are left with the bill.
Kabateck said the damaged materials are replaced with the same soy-based products the rodents chewed through. But he contends that an additive could be put in the soy that would make it less attractive to rats.
“Rodent damage to vehicle wiring occurs across the industry, and the issue is not brand- or model-specific," Toyota said in a statement to the Free Press. "We are currently not aware of any scientific evidence that shows rodents are attracted to automotive wiring because of alleged soy-based content."
The Motor & Equipment Manufacturers Association, an automotive supplier trade group, said it was unaware of any issues with soy-based products used as coatings on vehicle wiring.
"Quite honestly, we have never heard of the issue you are describing, so I don’t have any information to share with you," Cindy Sebrell, vice president of communications for the association, said in an email.
► October 2016: Is your city one of the rattiest in the U.S.?
Jim Stevens, a sales representative at Suburban Ford of Ferndale, Mich., said finding rats chewing through wires "is a pretty common thing around here," with two or three vehicles coming in a month.
Though he's been aware of the problem for the past five or six years, Stevens said he doesn't buy the theory of the soy-based coating.
"it's just like your home, it's pretty common (rodents) just chew on stuff," he said, noting that he lives in the country and has a pole barn, where rodents have chewed on wires in his tractor.
Stevens said rodents can burrow through the firewall that separates the engine from the interior of the vehicle. They can damage every type of wire from headlights to fuel sensors.
"It's a very tedious repair," Stevens said, adding debris from nesting materials could even start a fire if exposed wires get hot.
Technicians have found everything from peanuts to bread crumbs to chicken bones to dead rodents under the hood, he said. They've noticed more problems during cold weather, when animals hide to get warm, and if a vehicle has been sitting for a few days.
That falls in line with what AAA Mid-Atlantic region technicians saw in 2016 and continue to see in vehicles, Noble said.
"We were seeing vehicles coming in with mystery ailments, so to speak. People didn't know why the car wasn't starting," she said. "Typically, it came into play during cold weather months when rodents were seeking shelter and they were climbing into vehicle compartments for shelter and were additionally finding food in the way of vehicle wires."
Since the early 2000's requirements to manufacture cars more fuel efficient and environmentally friendly, some wire coverings became soy based because they were "animal friendly and biodegradable materials," Noble said.
In the 2016 news release, Noble said soy-based wire coating is one example along with insulation from natural products such as sisal and flax and seat cushions made from coconut fiber.
She didn't have a specific number of claims but said the problem came to light during conversations with technicians at the group's car-care centers. The problem isn't limited to street-legal vehicles but also off-road vehicles and farm equipment.
Noble encouraged drivers to look under the hood of a vehicle in a garage for a long time or not used much. Look for nests or debris that could indicate damage, such as frayed wires or additional twigs and branches used for a nest or bedding.
Some people advocate using moth balls or pepper spray under the hood, but fumes from these products are unhealthy for humans, Noble said in her 2016 news release.
Alternatives include cotton balls soaked in peppermint oil. Other non-toxic, plant-based rodent repellents and copper screening could be used to seal off air intake openings because rats don't like the taste.
One of the best ways to reduce rodent damage is to reduce the number of rodents in an area in general. That includes keeping garbage in cans with tight lids, picking up pet waste, not putting pet food or water outside, keeping garages and properties clean, securing compost in vessels, cleaning up under bird feeders, not throwing food outside, removing wood piles and ivy from buildings, and sealing off holes or other points of entry.
Dana DeBenham, wildlife director at the Howell Nature Center, advises against using glue traps or fly tape to catch rodents.
If a trap is used, use it only inside a dwelling, such as a house or garage, so other wildlife is not caught, she said. Owls also can become stuck in leg-hold traps because they may be attracted to the bait.
"It has to be a communitywide effort to use non-toxic methods of rodent control," DeBenham said. "If you attract an owl and your neighbor is using poison, that can be bad."
Perzigian also wants to use environmentally conscious, home-remedy approaches to keeping her community — and her car — rodent free.
She steam cleaned the engine where the rat marked its spot. She's willing to spend a little more for the peppermint and other natural products, forking out as much as $20 a week for them.
While some products might work to deter rodents and others may not, she's just trying everything and plans to continue to do so.
Perzigian also wants community leaders to help combat the rat and rodent problem.
"It's costing residents. It's costing insurance companies money," she said. "How do you combat that? I don't want this to happen to me or anybody else again."


Twins DeAndre and Darion Nelson showed talent for anticipating chart-topping tunes, getting kids onto the dance floor with their deejaying skills and pulling in hundreds of patrons to their teen parties. But what they thought was a successful hobby turned out to be a financial drain.
Unable to fit entrepreneur classes into their schedule, the South Gwinnett High students joined Youth Entrepreneurs, an after-school club that condensed those lessons. The national nonprofit has programs in Gwinnett, DeKalb and Cobb counties as well as Atlanta Public Schools — it’s largest footprint.
In a “Karate Kid” kind of way, some of the 26 activities in the year-long curriculum don’t at first appear to have much to do with the lesson. But once one of the core values (responsibility, being principled, seeking knowledge, respecting rights and freedoms of others, finding fulfillment in your work, making your own opportunities, exercising sound judgment or creating a win-win focus) is applied to the exercise, a light bulb goes off.
“It’s learning in reverse,” said Rector.
One exercise is a card game called Pit, designed to simulate open-outcry bidding for commodities. YE uses the game to teach students about trade and simple negotiations, and focus on the economic principle of comparative advantage.
“We use this to explain the concepts of international trade, bidding, teamwork and many other things,” said Rector.
Within a few sessions, the Nelsons realized that they were putting too much money into promotion — eating away at the bottom line.
By November their business, Youngest Doin It, was born. Besides promotions, the duo have a line of T-shirts they sell online and at parties and a sneaker-customization service where they turn footwear into works of art.
By cultivating students’ sense of personal responsibility and confidence in their capabilities, the YE curriculum develops skills to run a business. The program is in 188 schools in 16 states. To date, YE has produced over 30,000 alumni nationwide.
In May, the program hosted its first chance for the top 100 YE high school students across the country to compete for $20,000.
The Nelsons were awarded $2,500 in the Youth Entrepreneurs Summit Big Idea National Competition. Seniors this year, they plan to attend Georgia State majoring in business and marketing.
“We want to keep doing this, but move to the next level with adult concerts and eventually own our own club — a chain of clubs,” said the twins, finishing each other’s thoughts. They plan to train others to take over the youth segment and branch out with franchises.
While their passion and energy seem right in line with others their age, statistics show as a trend youngsters aren’t pursuing self-employment.
Data compiled by the Bureau of Labor Statistics show that self-employment rates are higher for older workers than for younger workers. The self-employment rate among workers age 65 and older was the highest (15.5 percent) of any age group; in contrast, the rate was much lower for their counterparts aged 16 to 24 (1.9 percent).
But the self-employment rate in general has trended down over the past two decades. In 1994, it was 12.1 percent; by 2015, the rate had declined to 10.1 percent.
To help turn those numbers, Partnership Gwinnett launched the student version of its annual entrepreneur contest. Earlier this month it awarded two Gwinnett County Public Schools students top honors in the inaugural Amazing Student Entrepreneur competition.
Mya Swaby, a Brookwood High School junior who owns ContraBand Clothing, earned first place in the competition and was awarded $500. Her apparel company designs and produces “augmented reality” clothing. In augmented reality, real-world objects are “augmented” by computer-generated perceptual information. For example, virtual-reality goggles might make you feel as if you’re flying when you are actually sitting in a chair.
Akeyjah Charles, a senior at South Gwinnett High School and the owner of The Key Images, earned $300 for second place. Her photography service company specializes in portrait, advertising and event photography.
The competition encourages young entrepreneurs in high school and college to introduce a student-only business model.
Cindy Quinlan, a Brookwood High School teacher who serves as the lead for the Entrepreneurship Pathway in Gwinnett County Public Schools, said this opportunity demonstrates what happens with curiosity, passion and drive.
The national nonprofit has after-school club programs in Gwinnett, DeKalb and Cobb counties and Atlanta Public Schools.
In its year-long curriculum, students participate in various activities intended to teach these core values: responsibility, being principled, seeking knowledge, respecting rights and freedoms of others, finding fulfillment in your work, making your own opportunities, exercising sound judgment or creating a win-win focus.
In May, the program hosted the Youth Entrepreneurs Summit Big Idea National Competition, in which the top 100 YE high school students across the country competed for $20,000.


If you haven’t been following the buzz and think it’s irrelevant to your start-up, think again.
If data is the name of your game, you’ve probably already heard of this 4-letter acronym for new European regulation that’s coming into effect on May 25, 2018. If you haven’t been following the buzz and think it’s irrelevant to your start-up, think again.
The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is a European regulation that will set a new standard for data privacy and consumer rights. It will give EU citizens more control over their personal data, including easier access to it, simpler portability between service providers, the right to erase their personal data and to be notified if it has been hacked.
While businesses will have to apply suitable technological and organisational measures to secure personal data and its privacy, as well as keep detailed records of all their data processing activities, this regulation is meant to make their regulatory life easier too. All the data protection rules will be streamlined under a single set of EU-wide rules and a single supervisory authority (in the company’s EU base country), saving money, increasing effectiveness and creating new business opportunities.
The GDPR won’t just cover businesses that operate in an EU member state and store or process personal data. It will extend to require compliance also by businesses that operate outside of the EU and offer goods and services that collect and process personal data, or that monitor the behaviour of individuals in the EU.
This regulation should be taken seriously because companies that won’t comply will be exposed to serious fines with penalties up to €20 million, or 4% of the company’s total worldwide annual turnover, whichever is higher.
Not just the “where” but “how”?
The GDPR examines the control over personal data, rather than its possession. It creates two different types of roles that affect the extent of responsibilities: data controllers and data processors. Data controllers are companies that determine the purpose or the way in which the personal information is processed. Data processors, like their name, process personal data under the controller's instructions (many service providers are processors). Under the GDPR, the controllers have the primary responsibility for compliance, although the processors also have direct compliance obligations.
Which types of data need to be protected?
The definition of personal data will cover a broad range of personal information, from technical cookies and IP addresses to political affiliation and biometric information.
The “right to be forgotten”: users will have the right to withdraw their consent, which means companies will have to delete any information they hold.
Data portability: customers will be able to ask for a copy to their data, requiring the company to confirm that they process the customer’s personal data and provide a machine-readable copy of it. They might also have to provide extensive supporting material on the type of data and reasons for processing it. And all this must happen within a month of the request.
Privacy by design: since the new regulation also addresses security matters, companies will have to be able to provide a “reasonable” level of data protection in addition to privacy. They will have to be able show that safeguards to privacy and security are built into products (such as mobile apps) and services, from the earliest stage of development. As a means of achieving this design goal and avoiding security risks, the regulation specifically mentions encryption and pseudonymisation to separate personally-identifiable information from other data.
Privacy impact assessment: companies will have to identify any security vulnerabilities to mitigate the risk of data breaches and protect the rights and freedoms of their data subjects.
Data breach notification: if a breach will happen, businesses will have to report it to the supervisory authorities and to the individuals affected within 72 hours of detecting the breach.
Data protection officers: under certain circumstances, companies will have to appoint a point person to direct and oversee the execution of all their data protection policies and procedures, including handling the public requests and informing supervisory authorities about breaches.
How can this affect your start-up?
If you are a data controller or processor offering goods and services (even for free) or monitoring user behaviour of EU data subjects (e.g. when users are tracked by techniques that apply a profile to enable decision making or predict personal preferences), you will need to appoint a representative in the EU.
If you are a services provider, you will need to assess whether you have obligations as a data processor and build them into your policies, procedures and contracts.
Your customers will want to ensure that your services and operations are compliant. Consult with your legal counsel on the regulatory requirements that pertain to your activities. Allocate resources to implement technical and organisational security and privacy measures. Set out or update your policies and procedures, as well as any documentation on the information you process and store. If you have European operations, you should contact a local specialist to perform a Data Protection Impact Assessment.
Being proactive will help you not only be better prepared, but also show leadership with your customers and end-users, retaining your competitive edge.


The series Working paper (Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Economics), no. 95-16 represents a set of related resources, especially of a specified kind, found in Boston University Libraries.


A new study shows that many Americans have slow, expensive Internet that lags behind what's available in other parts of the world.
When it comes to providing fast, affordable broadband Internet access, the U.S. can’t compete with other countries. A new study by the Open Technology Institute found that Americans pay far more than people in Asian and European countries for the same type of broadband Internet service, and U.S. service isn’t as fast.
The report compares the cost and speed of Internet access in 24 cities across the globe, including several U.S. cities.
Why does the U.S. lag behind so many other countries in both speed and affordability of service? It isn’t a technology issue.
“Instead, it is an economic policy problem — the lack of competition in the broadband industry,” the Times said.
Stop and let that sink in: Three-quarters of American homes have no competitive choice for the essential infrastructure for 21st century economics and democracy.
Two U.S. cities – Kansas City, Mo., and Chattanooga, Tenn. – offer both speed and value, similar to what’s available overseas. Both cities have local government-run Internet service.
“Our research shows that these locally owned networks tend to deliver better value to their customers when compared on a price-per-megabit basis to competing cable and telecom providers in their own cities,” the study said.
Slow, expensive Internet service puts the U.S. at a distinct disadvantage. There is a lot of room for improvement.
“More competition, better technologies and increased quality of service on wireline networks help to drive down prices,” Nick Russo, a policy program associate studying broadband pricing at the Open Technology Institute and co-author of the report, told the Times.
Are you surprised to find that Internet in the U.S. is slower and more expensive than elsewhere around the world? Share your comments below or on our Facebook page.


A new study gives reassurance that women who eat nuts or peanut butter during pregnancy are not raising the risk that their children will have nut allergies. Kids whose moms ate nuts most often were actually less likely to have problems consuming them, researchers found.
Peanut allergies are on the rise and affect up to 2 percent of the population in the United States and other Western countries. Women were once advised to avoid nuts in pregnancy to avoid triggering allergies in their offspring, but that advice was later rescinded. Studies went back and forth, and some even suggested that avoiding nuts during pregnancy increased a child's chances of being allergic to them.
The new research supports that theory. It involves more than 8,000 children born to female nurses in a long-running U.S. study that periodically asked questions about diet and health habits.
Doctors and tests confirmed that 140 children had allergies to peanuts or tree nuts such as walnuts, almonds or pecans. Fifty-eight had mothers who were allergic to nuts, and 82 did not. Looking at this second group, researchers found that children whose moms ate nuts at least five times a month were 69 percent less likely to have nut allergies than those whose moms rarely ate nuts.
"Our study adds to the evidence that early exposure to allergens might be a way that you induce tolerance," but is not the kind of research that can prove cause and effect, said Dr. Michael Young, a pediatrician at Harvard Medical School and Children's Hospital Boston.
He led the study, published Monday in JAMA Pediatrics.
A big caveat: Researchers had no information on fathers' nut allergies, which could pass to a child. Allergies can be inherited, "but the maternal component seems to be more relevant" than the father's genes, Young said.
In any case, the results support the advice that women should not restrict their diets in pregnancy unless they are allergic to nuts, Dr. Ruchi Gupta of Northwestern University wrote in a commentary in the journal.
Peanuts are a good source of protein and folic acid, which helps prevent certain birth defects, Gupta noted. "Mothers-to-be should feel free to curb their cravings with a dollop of peanut butter!"
The Food Allergy Research and Education, a New York-based nonprofit group that advocates for people with allergies and gets some funding from industry sources, sponsored the work but had no role in designing or running the study.


MELBOURNE, Australia – Two men were arrested after bewildered diners at a McDonald's spotted them wrestling a 5-foot (1.5 meter) python named Boris in the restaurant parking lot, police said Thursday. Victoria state police said the men stole the 8-year-old black-headed python and a lizard from a pet shop on Wednesday. They then brought the snake to the McDonald's parking lot, where they began wrestling with it in front of puzzled customers, police said.
The men, aged 22 and 24, were arrested and charged with burglary and theft. Police didn't release their names.
"In all honesty, it's just a case of dumb and dumber," Detective Sgt. Andrew Beams told Australian Broadcasting Corp. "Anyone who gets out there with a one-and-a-half meter python in a McDonald's car park — they're pretty dumb."
The snake was returned to a relieved Jodie Graham, owner of the Totally Reptiles pet shop. The lizard is still missing.
"He was a bit cold and stressed so I have him in the tank warming up," she said. "I am just glad to get him back."
Black-headed pythons are native to northern Australia. They are not venomous, and aren't likely to bite unless they're hunting prey.


It truly pays to live and work in Dallas or Fort Worth. A new ranking from BusinessStudent.com puts the two cities — and Houston, too — among the top 10 places in the U.S. for stretching your salary.
To come up with its ranking, BusinessStudent.com examined the average annual salary for 127 white-collar “business” jobs listed on career website Indeed — such as HR director, marketing manager, and IT manager — and subtracted the average rent for a two-bedroom apartment, based on data from apartment search website Rent Jungle. According to that measure, Dallas is No. 4, Houston is No. 7, and Fort Worth is No. 9.
The BusinessStudent.com study calculated an average yearly salary of $82,609 in Dallas and average monthly rent of $1,422 for a two-bedroom apartment. That resulted in a difference of $65,545, behind Palo Alto and San Jose, both in Northern California, and Detroit.
In Big D, at least, all types of workers are benefiting from stable rent growth. According to apartment search website Apartment List, the growth of rent for a two-bedroom apartment in Dallas has been flat of late, while it’s gone up 3.6 percent in Houston over the past year, 0.8 percent in Austin, 0.4 percent in San Antonio, and 1.8 percent statewide.
“Dallas is still more affordable than most other large cities across the country,” Apartment List says.
In Houston, BusinessStudent.com computed an average yearly salary of and an average monthly rent of $79,579 for a two-bedroom apartment. The difference: $62,767.
Aside from Dallas, Fort Worth and Houston, Irving (No. 12) and Plano (No. 19) showed up in BusinessStudent.com’s top 25.


The normal range of TSH levels is 0.4 to 4.0 so your level is higher than normal. This could mean you have hypothyroidism. Hypothyroidism is a disorder where the thyroid gland doesn’t produce enough triiodothyronine (T3) and thyroxine (T4). These hormones are responsible for metabolism (the way your body breaks down food to use it for energy).


The contract was awarded in May after a lengthy bid dispute.
A slate of contracts to provide cloud computing services to the Interior Department could add up to $10 billion and help the department save $100 million in information technology costs annually, officials have said.
The contracts are all indefinite delivery-indefinite quantity -- or IDIQ -- contracts, meaning the 10 vendors will compete with each other to win 10 specific contracts to provide cloud goods and services, Interior said in the statement Wednesday. Each of those contracts has a maximum value of $1 billion for a total possible value of $10 billion for the entire slate of contracts.
Cloud storage is typically cheaper than on-site data center storage because vendors can pack information more tightly and charge for storage space like a utility, with customers only paying for the storage they use.
Other vendors listed on the contract are Lockheed Martin, Smartronix, Unisys, Aquilent, Automonic Resources, CGI and GTRI.
The comptroller general’s office cleared the way for the Interior contract award in March, when it denied a protest from technology vendor Qwest Government Services. Qwest argued the goods and services described in the June 2012 solicitation were too vague and that the terms of the proposed contracts imposed too much risk on vendors.
The comptroller general’s office found Interior had provided adequate information for vendors to compete for the contracts and that the agency was under no obligation to ensure its eventual contracts limited risk for vendors.
A separate $35 million contract to move Interior to a cloud email system was delayed for more than a year by a legal squabble between vendors representing Google and Microsoft systems. The contract for 90,000 email users ultimately went to Onix Networking, which offers the Google Apps for Government system.


The board’s achievement and graduation committee had recommended raising the English Language Arts score required for 2018-19 third-graders to advance to fourth grade from 672 to 682. That resolution was rejected by the full board by a 9-7 vote, with three members absent.
The board then amended the resolution to set the cut score at 677, matching what the Ohio Department of Education had recommended. That resolution passed by a 16-0 vote. The law requires Ohio to raise the third-grade reading cut score each year so that it eventually matches the “proficiency” score of 700.
On the first vote, board member Nick Owens, who represents Greene and Clark counties, voted in favor of the tougher 682 score. Pat Bruns, who represents Warren County, and Charlotte McGuire, who represents most of the rest of the Greater Dayton area, voted against it.
The full state board will vote on the issue later Tuesday.
State law requires Ohio to gradually raise that promotion score, but the Ohio Department of Education had recommended a smaller increase. ODE wanted the required score to go from last year’s 672 to 677. But the school board committee approved a score of 682.
State board member Kara Morgan of Dublin led the push for the higher cut score. She said that even at 682, the state would be far from the “proficiency” score of 700, and she believes it is time for the state to “push forward on the pace” to reach that standard.
Morgan said the state has had six years to adjust to the third-grade reading guarantee and has offered significant grant resources to help schools improve. She called the promotion score the lever that the state has to push school systems to provide stronger interventions to struggling students, and argued that students and schools would rise to the challenge of a higher standard.
State board member Pat Bruns, who represents Warren County and parts of Cincinnati, voted against the bigger increase. She said schools should get a year to prepare if a bigger change is coming.
Elizabeth Hess, an early literacy specialist for ODE, pointed to Florida data specifically about using an early literacy test cut score and mandatory interventions like Ohio’s system required. She said follow-up study has shown that students who received those interventions, years later, performed better academically than students who tested slightly better in those early years but did not receive interventions.
State data from the spring 2017 test show that about 4,500 third-graders scored at least 677 on the test but not 682. Some of those students likely still would have been promoted to fourth grade via one of the approved alternate assessments.


Tornado warning expires for SE Wayne Co., part of Monroe Co.
In areas south of Detroit, the normal winds could suddenly become a tornado tonight, say weather experts.
The National Weather Service tornado warning has expired for southeast Wayne County. The warning lasted until 9:30 p.m. Tuesday.
The area of the warning was approximately comprising Gibraltar, Rockwood, Flat Rock, Grosse Ile, Trenton, Woodhaven and Brownstown Township.
The warning also applied to northeast Monroe County, said Steve Considine, a staff meteorologist at the Weather Service regional station in White Lake. Conditions seem ripe for heavy thunderstorms in those areas — with mild winds averaging just 10 m.p.h. — to suddenly morph into a tornado touching down, Considine said.
"Flying debris will be dangerous to those caught without shelter," the alert read. "Mobile homes will be damaged or destroyed. Damage to roofs, windows, and vehicles will occur. Tree damage is likely."
So far, there are no reports of a tornado nor of any wind damage, he said, "but reports from rural areas like this usually don't come in right away, especially at night," he said.


NASHVILLE — When the Southeastern Conference stumbled last season and received only three NCAA Tournament bids, the league's coaches cited Kentucky's down year. The perception of SEC basketball depended on its flagship program, they said. UK's normally elevated status lifted all the SEC boats. Conversely, Kentucky in a depressed state shrunk the significance of other programs.
As the league gathers here this week for the SEC Tournament, an event Tennessee Coach Bruce Pearl called a "festival" on Wednesday, last season's prevailing wisdom has been taken to the hoop and dunked on.
Kentucky comes to the SEC Tournament as the No. 2 team in the country. But UK as a likely No. 1 seed in the upcoming NCAA Tournament hasn't done much for the league.
According to collegerpi.com, the SEC has the fourth-best Ratings Percentage Index, behind the Big 12, Big East and Atlantic Coast conferences.
"I don't know if I ever bought into that philosophy," Donovan said.
As Donovan saw it, each SEC team rises and falls on its own merit. If one gains quality victories, its status will rise. And if one stumbles, that NCAA Tournament profile will suffer.
"Talent-wise and as well as they've played, Kentucky has kind of separated themselves," the Florida coach said. "I don't think anybody on the selection committee is saying, 'Wow, Kentucky's really good. The SEC must be great,' "
The premise that the SEC will get only three NCAA Tournament bids rests on results going into the league tournament, Donovan noted. Much can change between now and Selection Sunday.
Florida, Mississippi and Mississippi State are perceived as teams on the metaphorical bubble. For Donovan, it's plausible that one or more could gain an NCAA Tournament bid here this week.
"The league is much better," he said. "At this point in time last year, we really had to do damage in this tournament (to earn a bid). This year, I think we're in the mix. Ole Miss is in the mix. Mississippi State is in the mix."
At No. 53, Florida has the best RPI of the league's three bubble teams. Ole Miss is at No. 56, and Mississippi State is at No. 67.
"I don't know how Florida's considered not solid," Tennessee Coach Bruce Pearl said.
Pearl noted the Gators' strong non-conference schedule, which included a victory over Michigan State.
"I think we've got four (NCAA Tournament bids)," Pearl said, "and we're looking for more."
Alabama Coach Anthony Grant suggested that the SEC might be better overall than when he was an assistant on Florida's national championship teams of 2006 and 2007.
"It's a different look," he said. "I do think the league right now ... has a lot more parity than it had maybe four years ago."
As LSU Coach Trent Johnson noted, there's a limit to the parity.
"I think the league's good and it's up because Kentucky's good, because Vanderbilt's good, because Tennessee's good, because Florida is good," he said. "... I think there's probably one team in the league that's not very good right now, and you happen to be talking to him."


GAYLORD - According to the Michigan Arson Prevention Committee (MAPC), more than 25 percent of fires reported in Michigan in 2001 were arson or suspicious in nature. Otsego County Fire Dept. Chief Dave Duffield said those statistics likely are comparable to the percentage of fires in Otsego County which also are suspicious or the work of arson.
To focus attention on the crime of arson, Gov. Jennifer Granholm has designated May 4-10 as Arson Awareness Week in Michigan.
"The problem with arson or suspicious fires is they are usually easy to detect but proving who did it is the hard part," Duffield said. "Once you eliminate all of the natural causes of a fire it's not too difficult to make a determination the cause of a fire as being suspicious in nature."
One of the problems facing the state in fighting the crime of arson, according to Duffield, is cuts in state funding for fire investigations. "We have a fire marshal in our region who has had seven fires in the past week to investigate and one that is a week-old that he hasn't been able to get out to the scene yet. When you cut back on the number of fire marshals you have it just makes it all the more difficult for them to do their jobs."
According to the MAPC there were 3,530 arson and another 7,422 suspicious fires reported in Michigan for 2001, with a dollar loss of $222 million. The committee reported 85 people died and another 237 were injured in intentionally set blazes in 2001.
Although not all arson fires can be prevented, MAPC officials suggest some precautions property owners can take to deter fire setters.
€ Always keep entry doors and garages locked.
€ Keep yard lights on.
€ Make sure property is free of trash and debris.
€ Report all suspicious activity to local law enforcement officials.
Arson Control pays up to $5,000 for information that leads to the arrest and/or conviction of arsonists. Anyone with information about a suspicious fire can call 800-44-ARSON.


WEST BRANCH (AP) — Democrats say it repeatedly: George W. Bush is the first president since Herbert Hoover to lose jobs on his watch.
When they hear that or related claims about the Depression-era president, the folks in West Branch wince.
“They’ve dug up poor Mr. Hoover again and tried to turn him into the boogeyman of the campaign,” said Tim Walch, director of the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library and Museum. Both are within sight of Hoover’s birthplace and the hill on which the 31st president is buried.
Admirers defend the Hoover administration and point out that the former president became one of the great humanitarians of the 20th century with his efforts to stop world hunger.
Democrats have evoked the image of Hoover off and on since his defeat by Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1932, the political victim of a stock-market crash and the Great Depression. But Mr. Walch said there hasn’t been such a coordinated, partywide effort to link Hoover with a Republican candidate since Harry S. Truman’s desperate campaign in 1948.
The blows may not be effective. Most Americans can’t identify Hoover as the Depression-era president, according to a poll conducted by the University of Pennsylvania’s National Annenberg Election Survey.
To call attention to the number of jobs lost during the Bush administration, 51 unemployed persons are taking a “Show Us Your Jobs” bus tour to battleground states on behalf of the AFL-CIO.
When the bus reached West Branch last week, they scrambled to take pictures at the Hoover museum.
The basic charge is true: Mr. Bush, who has seen 2.2 million jobs disappear during his term, will be the first president since Hoover to end his first four years with fewer jobs than when he took office.
The comparison, however, exaggerates the size of the current hiring downturn. Today’s unemployment rate is 5.6 percent, but at the height of the Depression about 30 percent of the nation’s workers were idle — a contrast that might help Mr. Bush but also shows the depth of the problems Hoover couldn’t solve.
But West Branch residents proudly note that Hoover saved millions of lives as U.S. food administrator, feeding starving people throughout Europe during and after World War I. He performed a similar duty after World War II. Many in his hometown say he was just the president at the wrong time.


River Radamus of Ski and Snowboard Club Vail collected three firsts and a second last weekend at the J5 finale at Powderhorn. .
March 18, 2009 — The J5 Finale at Powderhorn ski area in far western Colorado last weekend brought more than 130 young athletes ages 8 through 10 from all over the Rocky Mountain division together for a championship event in Giant Slalom and Slalom.
Ski and Snowboard Club Vail's J5 assistant coach Barclay Rabin commented, “The level of competition at this event brought out the best in each of our athletes."
SSCV’s young racers competed against the best J5s in the division, including kids from New Mexico and Minnesota.
“The winning time of 1:05.27 put down by River Radamus made this GS course one of the longest we've seen,” coach Rika Moore said.
The club kids brought home four medals and 15 ribbons, and Ski & Snowboard Club Vail brought home more ribbons and medals than any other club at the event.
River Radamus laid down great runs in the GS and Slalom to grab three 1st places and one 2nd place.
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Tanner Coulter of Eagle stomps his signature "Switch 10" during training in Waterville Valley, N.H., last week. Coulter nailed the trick during the J3 Freeride Junior Olympics to claim the slopestyle competition.
March 16, 2009 — Ski & Snowboard Club Vail's Tanner Coulter and Michael Wilhelm finished 1-2 in slopestyle March 11-12 in Waterville Valley, N.H., leading a strong charge by SSCV's J3 Freeride Team.
When asked how to best describe what the slopestyle competition entails for the freeride athletes, Anderson said that the skiers are hurling themselves off of 50-foot jumps. The goal is for a perfect and balanced takeoff with a solid landing.
“It’s really important to gauge your speed before the takeoff so the landing will be correct,” Anderson said.
In other words, if athletes take off too slow or fast, they run the risk of going too big or not big enough, which could result in a flat landing.
Coulter stomped his Switch 10 (a trick where the skier takes off going backwards and rotates three times -- or three helicopters -- with a mute grab, which is when skiers put their skis in an X and grab the outside edge.
Also in Waterville Valley, SSCV’s Freestyle Team competed in the moguls competition, and in that event Andre Lane placed fourth overall.
In the women’s mogul event, Kristi Waring was first in her J2 age group (15- and 16-year-olds), while Heidi Kloser placed sixth in the same group.
Both SSCV’s Freestyle and Freeride programs have athletes who will be heading to the nationals in Squaw Valley, Calif., next week.
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Ski & Snowboard Club Vail racer Abby Ghent, in action Friday in Aspen, just missed the podium in the J2 National Junior Olympics super G.
March 15, 2009 — In a very tight race on the super G track in which the top three spots for the men were separated by only 26-hundredths of a second, Taylor Shiffrin reached the podium for the second time at the J2 National Junior Olympics in Aspen with a third-place finish Friday.
Ski & Snowboard Club Vail’s Abby Ghent was part of another very tight race for the women’s field. Ghent took fourth Friday, a mere eight-hundredths of a second from a podium result.
Samuelson moved up an impressive 38 spots from her start number of 46 to finish 8th, and Strong climbed from a start position of 38th to finish 12th.
For the combined overall, which tallied points for the downhill, GS, and slalom, the women’s field saw Greta Byrne placing 2nd, Mary Sackbauer 7th, and Strong finishing 8th.
The Rocky/Central Division also walked away with the Regions Cup for the series.
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February 26, 2009 — An incredible 19 of the Ski & Snowboard Club Vail J3 racers have qualified for the 2009 USSA Rocky/Central J3 Junior Olympics to be held at Vail and Beaver Creek March 5 -11.
After a season of Junior Olympic qualifying events, and after some great results at the Winter Park Junior Olympic Qualifiers on Feb. 15 and 16, the following SSCV athletes have earned their spot to represent the Rocky Mountain Division of the United States Ski and Snowboard Association to compete against other Rocky Mountain skiers, as well as skiers from USSA’s Central Division.
SSCV Women going to the J3 JOs: Molly McGrew, Celine Guilmineau, Katharine Irwin, Mallory Slicker, Isabelle Zaik-Hodgkins, Caroline Byrne, Eva Spaeh, Olivia Swift, Kendall VanHee, and Kiersten Weiss.
SSCV Men going to the J3 JOs: Nick Braun, Anthony Romano, Barry Brinton, Thomas Walsh, Alex Leever, Thomas Grant, Connor Reynolds, Greycody Johns, Nick Santaniello, and Nicky Romano.
There is one more opportunity for ski racers to qualify for the J3 JOs in the Council Cup at Ski Cooper Feb. 28 through March 2 where athletes will be racing in a super-G, two giant slaloms, and two slaloms.
As with the Alpine skiers from SSCV, after a season of Junior Olympic qualifying events three freestyle skiers from SSCV have earned their berths for the JOs as of Feb. 20, with a chance for one more to make it. For these skiers, the Junior Olympics are a national event and will be held at Waterville Valley in New Hampshire March 9-15.
SSCV Freestyle skiers qualifying for the Junior Olympics: Heidi Kloser, Kristi Waring, and Andre Lane.
SSCV’s Freeride team has had some outstanding results. “The coaches and athletes have been on a whirlwind of events and are just now taking some time to breath,” said Freeride Program Director Noah Brooks.
This past weekend in Aspen, SSCV’s Kendall Deighan finished in first in half-pipe. Deighan also took home the Rocky Mountain Freestyle Athlete of the year. Deighan has won all of the USSA contests she has been in this year except for one.
Also qualified are seven athletes to the Junior Olympics in Waterville Valley, NH. Adam Crooke, Michael Wilhelm, John Leonard, Tanner Coulter, Christian Revello, Broby Leeds, Christian Pellerito, and Kendall Deighan will all battle it out with the top juniors in the country on March 11-12.
On the pro side of things the accomplishments have also been outstanding. Angeli VanLaanen took first place at the first Park City World Cup for half-pipe. At the Aspen Open Kendall Deighan took seventh place overall in half-pipe and Kristi Leskinen took second place for slopestyle.
On the Big Mountain side of things the Freeride Team just returned from Crested Butte for the US Freesking Championships. There was a big field of participants and all the kids skied well.
After the first day, Lizzie Seibert and Christian Nichols sat in first place. Gunnar Hamina and Max Darsonval both qualified to the finals as well. On the final day Lizzie skied very well and earned a second place overall finish.
Christian Nichols went head to head with some very talented skiers and wasn't able to keep his feet underneath him and fell in his final run. Gunnar Hamina skied great and finished in 12th place and Max Darsonval finished in 24th place.
“Thus far we are all so excited with the results that these kids are putting out. It has been such fun to see everyone excel and improve daily. From my perspective we have a group of champions being formed right now and it is going to be exciting to see where they go in the years to come,” said coach Brooks.
The next stops for the Freeride Team are the US Open, Junior Olympics, European Open, USSA Nationals, and USASA Nationals. There are many more chances for each of these kids to put out extraordinary results and we look forward to it.
2 Comments on "Local racers headed for Junior Olympics"
Nice work Tom! thanks for supporting the kids.
Great job Tanner and best of luck to you!
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“The first time I went to see the fashion press in New York, Christopher, my business partner, and I lugged this suitcase full of shoes, like a wheelbarrow, from block to block visiting all these accessories editors. I wouldn’t do that now. I’d at least get a taxi.” – Nicholas Kirkwood.


The S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies is launching its Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief Programme today. It aims to enhance coordination among civilian government agencies, militaries, non-governmental organisations, faith-based organisations and civil society groups, to better deal with disasters in the Asia Pacific.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is set to face fierce opposition to his labour reform proposals when a new session of Parliament starts today. His plan to merge 44 labour laws into four, which include measures giving factories more leeway to lay off workers, has irked the country's top 11 unions, which have threatened a nationwide strike on Sept 2.
The Monetary Authority of Singapore is releasing its annual report at noon today. Last July, MAS reported a reversal of a $10.6 billion loss to post an overall profit of $15.8 billion for the financial year ended March 31, 2014. This came as it made investment gains and foreign exchange valuation gains on its official foreign reserves, which totalled $343 billion at the end of March 2014 and make up more than 90 per cent of the assets on its balance sheet.


Thumbs down to circumstances surrounded Stop & Shop workers throughout New England who walked off the job after negotiations over a new contract broke down. It’s the first time in more than 30 years Stop & Shop workers have gone on strike, and most stores closed temporarily as a result. The 31,000 workers in Connecticut, Massachusetts and Rhode Island, who are represented by five locals of the United Food and Commercial Workers union, have been working without a contract since late February. All they want is fair pay, and we can’t blame them. Mediated labor contract talks between Stop & Shop and the five New England locals of United Food and Commercial Workers International are expected to resume Tuesday in Providence. Sticking points for a new contract include proposed cuts in health care and retirement benefits, according to the union. The union maintains that the company is "demanding unreasonable wage and benefit cuts" and asking customers to do more of the work themselves. Let’s hope negotiations go well this week.
Thumbs up to speakers at Norwich’s first public hearing on the budget who urged City Council members to add money to the 2019-20 education budget, saying the city’s children deserve it. City Manager John Salomone has presented an overall $128.9 million 2019-20 budget to the council that trims the property tax rate slightly. But the manager’s $80 million proposal for education, a 2 percent increase, is $3.3 million less than the $83.3 million approved by the Board of Education, a 6.16 percent increase. The amount requested by the Board of Education consists of $41.5 million for Norwich Public Schools educating students in pre-kindergarten through eighth grade, $34.1 million in tuition, $7.5 million in transportation costs and nearly $200,000 for adult education. Every dollar cut hampers the district’s priority of providing services to the city’s children.
Thumbs up to state Sen. Cathy Osten (D-Sprague), who toured three bridges in Norwich to make the case for more state transportation revenue in order to pay for repairs and upgrades to roads and bridges in Eastern Connecticut and throughout the state. Although Norwich may soon be added to the list of cities fighting proposed tolls on state highways, Osten is trying to bring awareness that without tolls, needed transportation infrastructure upgrades would take decades to complete.
Thumbs up to a stellar career for David Burnett. The CEO of Reliance Health, a nonprofit mental health agency that employees 250 and services more than 1,000, will retire at the end of the year. Burnett started his career at Reliance Heath in 1978 as its only employee. Jack Malone, president of the Reliance Health board of directors, said: "David Burnett’s devotion to Reliance Health is unrivaled. He was the first employee and the depth of the programs provided today to those with mental wellness issues can be attributed to his vision."


the CBS owned-and-operated station group's mostly ailing late news?
of the 15 stations that aired the new show Monday night.
Chicago, Philadelphia Detroit and Dallas.
for The Late Show with David Letterman and The Late Late Show with Craig Kilborn.