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Baobab

Baobab's Journal
Baobab's Journal
May 24, 2016

'I'm not with her': why women are weary of Hillary Clinton

'I'm not with her': why women are weary of Hillary Clinton

As a whole, women support Clinton over Trump and Sanders, but 49% of women from across the political spectrum give her an unfavorable rating


http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/may/23/women-female-voters-us-election-hillary-clinton

May 24, 2016

Video interview with- Jack Ma, the richest man in China, and an amazing success story.

(Jerry Yang is the interviewer)




Must see.. Lots of interesting information here. I wish US companies were more like this!


About Jack Ma:Jack Ma or Ma Yun (Chinese: 马云; born September 10, 1964) is a Chinese business magnate and philanthropist. Jack Ma is the founder and executive chairman of Alibaba Group, a family of highly successful Internet-based businesses. Jack Ma is the first mainland Chinese entrepreneur to appear on the cover of Forbes. As of November 2014, Jack Ma is the richest man in China (HK not included) and 18th richest person in the world, with an estimated net worth of $22.5 billion according to Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
_Jack Mawas born in Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province, China. Jack Ma's parents were traditional musician-storytellers. At an early age, Jack Ma developed a desire to learn English so Jack Ma rode his bike each morning in order to go to a nearby hotel and converse with foreigners. Jack Ma would guide them around the city for free in order to practice and improve his English.Jack Ma did this for nine years. Jack Ma became pen pals with one of these foreigners and she was the one who gave him the name "Jack", because Jack Ma's real Chinese name was too difficult to pronounce.

Later in Jack Ma's youth, and although Jack Ma failed the university entrance exam three times,Jack Ma attended Hangzhou Teacher's Institute (currently known as Hangzhou Normal University) and graduated in 1988 with a bachelor's degree in English. While at school, Jack Ma was elected student chairman.Jack Ma became a lecturer in English and International Trade at the Hangzhou Dianzi University and went on to further education at Beijing-based Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business (CKGSB), founded in 2002 by Hong Kong billionaire Li Ka-shing, graduating in 2006.[9]

At first Jack Ma started building websites for Chinese companies with the help of friends in the US. Jack Ma has said that "the day we got connected to the Web, I invited friends and TV people over to my house," and on a very slow dial-up connection, "we waited three and a half hours and got half a page.... We drank, watched TV and played cards, waiting. But I was so proud. I proved (to my house guests that) the Internet existed."

At a conference in 2010,Jack Ma revealed that Jack Ma has never actually written a line of code nor made one sale to a customer. Jack Ma encountered a computer for the first time at the age of thirty-three.
In 1994, Jack Ma heard about the Internet. In early 1995, Jack Ma went to the United States and with Jack Ma's friends' help Jack Ma got introduced to the Internet. During Jack Ma's first encounter Jack Ma searched the word "beer". Although Jack Ma found information related to beer from many countries, Jack Ma was surprised to find none from China. Further, Jack Ma tried to search for general information about China and again was surprised to find none. So Jack Ma and his friend created an "ugly" (according to Ma)[citation needed] website related to China. Within five hours of creating the website Jack Ma had received emails from some Chinese wishing to know about Jack Ma. This is when Jack Ma realized that the Internet had something great to offer. In April 1995, Jack Ma, Jack Ma's wife and a friend collected twenty thousand dollars and started an Internet company. Their company was dedicated to creating websites for companies. Jack Ma named their company "China Yellow Pages." Within three years, his company had made 5,000,000 Chinese Yuan which was equivalent to U$800,000.

From 1998 to 1999, Jack Ma headed an information technology company established by the China International Electronic Commerce Center, a department of the Ministry of Foreign Trade and Economic Cooperation. In 1999, Jack Ma decided to quit and went back to Hangzhou with Jack Ma's team in order to found Alibaba in Jack Ma's apartment with a group of 17 friends.Jack Ma started a new round of venture development with 500,000 Yuan. Alibaba is a China-based business-to-business marketplace site which currently serves more than 79 million members from more than 240 countries and territories.

In October 1999 and January 2000, Alibaba twice won a total of a $25 million international venture capital investment. The program was expected to improve the domestic e-commerce market and perfect an e-commerce platform for Chinese enterprises, especially small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), to address WTO challenges. Jack Ma wanted to improve the global e-commerce system and from 2003 Jack Ma founded Taobao Marketplace, Alipay, Ali Mama and Lynx. After the rapid rise of Taobao, eBay offered to purchase the company but Jack Ma rejected their offer, instead garnering support from Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang with a $1 billion investment.
May 24, 2016

Rock the Campus w/Nina Turner, Rosario Dawson, Tulsi Gabbard & Shailene Woodleyne (Video)

Rock the Campus w/Nina Turner, Rosario Dawson, Tulsi Gabbard & Shailene Woodleyne




Streamed live on May 22, 2016
Panel of amazing Progressive leaders and Bernie supporters at UCLA
May 23, 2016

A Cover-up Cover-up? Establishment Dems Fight to Defeat 'Medicare-for-All' in Colorado

http://www.commondreams.org/news/2016/05/20/establishment-dems-fight-defeat-medicare-all-colorado


Establishment Dems Fight to Defeat 'Medicare-for-All' in Colorado


Pro-Clinton Democrats join Big Pharma and state Republicans in fighting to defeat first-in-the-nation ballot measure for statewide single-payer plan
May 22, 2016

If Clinton Is So Sure She Will Win, Why Does She Need To Mislead Us About The Popular Vote?




"Since the story from New York Daily News writer Shaun King came out on Thursday, there has been a big hullabaloo about what a difference adding the caucus results into the popular vote would make. Estimates have been made by the Washington Post and others, and they consistently show that it is indeed true that Clinton's 3 million number is a misrepresentation of the true will of the people.

If Clinton is so sure that she will be the nominee, why then, does she continue to lie to the people? Ring of Fire's Sydney Robinson discusses this."
May 22, 2016

ACA has only reduced the number of uninsured slightly, has not reduced racial disparities

in health as much as needs to be done.

Effect of the Affordable Care Act on Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Health Insurance Coverage

Thomas C. Buchmueller, PhD, Zachary M. Levinson, MPP, Helen G. Levy, PhD, and Barbara L. Wolfe, PhD

http://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/abs/10.2105/AJPH.2016.303155


CONTRIBUTORS

All authors contributed to the analysis and the writing of the article.

ABSTRACT

Objectives. To document how health insurance coverage changed for White, Black, and Hispanic adults after the Affordable Care Act (ACA) went into effect.

Methods. We used data from the American Community Survey from 2008 to 2014 to examine changes in the percentage of nonelderly adults who were uninsured, covered by Medicaid, or covered by private health insurance. In addition to presenting overall trends by race/ethnicity, we stratified the analysis by income group and state Medicaid expansion status.

Results. In 2013, 40.5% of Hispanics and 25.8% of Blacks were uninsured, compared with 14.8% of Whites. We found a larger gap in private insurance, which was partially offset by higher rates of public coverage among Blacks and Hispanics. After the main ACA provisions went into effect in 2014, coverage disparities declined slightly as the percentage of adults who were uninsured decreased by 7.1 percentage points for Hispanics, 5.1 percentage points for Blacks, and 3 percentage points for Whites. Coverage gains were greater in states that expanded Medicaid programs.

Conclusions. The ACA has reduced racial/ethnic disparities in coverage, although substantial disparities remain.
Further increases in coverage will require Medicaid expansion by more states and improved program take-up in states that have already done so. (Am J Public Health. Published online ahead of print May 19, 2016: e1–e6. doi:10.2105/AJPH.2016.303155)

May 22, 2016

Big pressure from globalization to eliminate preferential carve outs in US needs to be countered

by a push to expand them for Historically Disadvantaged Individuals who are not simply women or minorities. For example, Non Marital Children and Generation Y and possibly gay people.

This is so that firms owned by these groups could get work under the government procurement agreement. Otherwise the benefits of any stimulus might go exclusively to foreign firms because of the US's new membership in the WTO Government Procurement Agreement. There need to be carve outs - in the form of preferential pricing.

I think that this whole thing may be about those carve outs. They don't want people arguing for bigger carve outs. Maybe women and minorities may be about to be thrown under the bus- may be about to lose their carve outs, and don't know it?

See https://www.researchgate.net/publication/228121888

The Limited Case for Permitting SME (Small and Medium Sized Enterprises) Procurement Preferences in the WTO Agreement on Government Procurement.

and

http://www.intracen.org/uploadedFiles/intracenorg/Content/Publications/Women%20procurement%20guide-final-web.pdf

Globalization doesn't have to result in mass unemployment for our indigenous workforce!

US Businesses owned by Historically Disadvantaged Individuals should be able to get business and not be squeezed out by low bidding foreign firms with lower costs and wages.

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