Healthcare shouldn?t be managed under a system that attempts to maximize profits for insurance companies and their CEOs and stock holders. The U.S. healthcare system is becoming impossible under the current fee for service system, which is due to insurance companies managing our healthcare decisions with profit as their bottom line.
Dylan Ratigan:
[W]e don?t have a health care system, we have a treatment sales system. The more tests and treatments a doctor can sell, the more money he or she can make in fees ? that means there?s a financial incentive to order an extra MRI or perform a surgery that may or may not be completely necessary.
This system is commonly called the ?fee for service? model for medical practice. That, in turn, is married to an employer-based health insurance monopoly ? the combination drives up costs for all of us. (Perhaps that?s why we spend more money than any other country worldwide on health care, but come in at #37 in quality of care.)
To discuss the issues with our model ?fee for service? healthcare, Dylan was joined by former DNC chair Dr. Howard Dean ? he has called ?fee for service? the single biggest barrier to controlling health care costs in America. Also in this segment is Charlie Kolb, president of the Committee for Economic Development, which represents a wide variety of major corporations in this country.
Watch:
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via: leftish?(from the video above):
In the United States, an MRI scan is $1009.00
In Britain it?s $187.00.
In the?United States, bypass surgery costs over $59,000, in Britain just shy of $14,000.
Why do we pay so much, more than any other country in the world, and have relatively so little to show for it?
We outspend the rest of the world but in a country like France, which spends half as much as we do, the people live longer, they have lower infant mortality rates and they don?t have the obesity problems that we have.
~ Charlie Kolb, President of the Committee for Economic Development
NASA released dramatic new findings from the planet-scouting Kepler spacecraft project Thursday. Looks like the universe is way, way more crowded than we had realized. More »
HARASTA, Syria (Reuters) ? The U.N. Security Council meets on Friday to discuss the next move on Syria and council envoys said members will be given a new Western-Arab draft resolution, as fighting between troops and rebels edged closer to Syria's capital Damascus.
Morocco was expected to distribute at the meeting the new draft resolution that supports the Arab League's call for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to transfer his powers to his deputy to set up a unity government and prepare for elections after a ten-month crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrators.
"The UN Security Council will meet in closed consultations this Friday (at) 3:00 p.m. in New York to discuss steps to take on the situation in Syria," France's U.N. mission said on its Twitter page (@FranceONU).
The Security Council could vote as early as next week on the resolution, which diplomats from Britain and France are crafting in consultation with Qatar, Morocco, the United States, Germany and Portugal, envoys said. It replaces a Russian text that Western diplomats say is too weak.
The Moroccan delegation met on Thursday with Russian and Chinese diplomats to present them with the latest version of the draft, council diplomats told Reuters. It was not immediately clear what their initial response was.
The draft, obtained by Reuters, calls for a "political transition" but not for U.N. sanctions against Damascus, something Moscow has said it would not support.
Russia, together with China, vetoed a European-drafted resolution in October that condemned Syria and threatened it with sanctions. It is unclear whether Russia is ready to wield its veto again to block council action on Syria.
Several Western envoys told Reuters that Russia might find it difficult to veto a resolution that is simply intended to provide support for the Arab League.
FIGHTING NEARS DAMASCUS
Clashes between rebels and security forces in the Damascus suburb of Douma, a hotbed of protests and armed rebellion against Assad, raged throughout the day on Thursday, and gunfire was heard from central Damascus during the night.
Activists said army deployment and clashes in townships around Damascus were a response to insurgents' growing strength.
"The Free Syrian Army (FSA) has almost complete control of some areas of the Damascus countryside and some control in Douma and Harasta," an activist said by telephone from Harasta.
Other activists in Douma, Harasta and Irbin said security forces had gathered in their towns after rebels retreated because they could not fight pitched battles with the army.
Arab League monitors, now without 55 Gulf Arab colleagues withdrawn by their governments this week in protest at continued bloodshed, were resuming work after a one-week gap during which the Arab League prolonged their mission by another month.
A group of Arab observers stopped at an entrance to the Damascus suburb of Irbin, where a dozen soldiers stood guard. Beyond them a crowd of about 100 anti-Assad protesters shouted slogans. The troops showed the monitors the bodies of a soldier and another person they said had been killed in the morning.
The observers drove away without going into the township.
Elsewhere, three people were killed in Homs, a sniper killed a 58-year-old woman in Hama and a 14-year-old boy was killed in the southern city of Deraa, the British-based opposition Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
State news agency SANA said "terrorists" had assassinated a colonel in Homs and detonated a bomb in Deraa province, killing an army lieutenant as he tried to defuse it.
Also in Homs, militiamen loyal to Assad killed 14 members of a Sunni family on Thursday in one of the grizzliest sectarian attacks of the uprising, activists and residents said.
Eight children, aged eight months to nine years old were among 14 Bahader family members shot or hacked to death in a building in the mixed Karm al-Zeitoun neighborhood, they said.
The militiamen, known as 'shabbiha', entered the district after loyalist forces fired heavy mortar rounds on the area, killing another 16 people, residents and activists in the city told Reuters by phone.
Tit-for-tat sectarian killings began in Homs, 140 km (88 miles north of Damascus, four months ago, following armored military assaults on Sunni areas of the city by forces led by members of Assad's minority Alawite sect.
The killings have raised the prospect of the pro-democracy protest movement against Assad turning into a civil war, as his opponents take up arms and fight back against loyalist forces.
The Alawite community, an offshoot of Shi'ite Islam, has dominated politics and the security apparatus in Syria, a mostly Sunni country of 20 million people, for the last five decades.
(Additional reporting by Erika Solomon in Beirut, Khaled Yacoub Oweis in Amman, John Irish in Paris, Tom Perry in Cairo and Louis Charbonneau at the United Nations; Writing by Alistair Lyon; Editing by Louise Ireland, Mark Heinrich and Sanjeev Miglani)
NASHVILLE (Reuters) ? Country singer Keith Urban says that during the three weeks he was ordered not to speak late last year after vocal surgery, he learned a few valuable lessons about communication including this: sometimes people talk too much.
"I was amazed at how much noise there is on television and in conversations," Urban told Reuters on Wednesday. "It's rubbish. We could strip away so much ... be more succinct ... and still make our point.
"I realized I'm as guilty as anybody. I learned that when you have to write stuff down you get real particular as to how and what you want to say."
The singer underwent surgery in November to remove polyps from a vocal chord, causing his doctor put him on vocal rest for three weeks and bar him from singing until February.
Urban, who has nothched a No. 1 single "Long Hot Summer" with co-writer Richard Marx, said that while he was unable to talk, his other senses improved, especially hearing.
He thought ahead, too, and prepared for how he would communicate with his three-year-old daughter, Sunday Rose. He recorded several of her favorite books onto a tape, and after his surgery, he would take the recorder to her room at night, press play and turn the pages of the book so he could "read."
Sunday Rose would let the tape play for a little while and then she'd hit the stop button. She would look at her dad and say, "I want you to read it," Urban said.
His wife, actress Nicole Kidman, would have to explain to Sunday Rose why daddy couldn't actually read to her.
Urban, whose hits include "You Look Good in My Shirt" "Making Memories of Us" and "Somebody Like You," is fully recovered from his surgery and plans to return to the stage on February 4, when he performs at the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville. He is also planning a huge benefit for the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum in Nashville on April 10.
(Reporting By Vernell Hackett, Editing by Bob Tourtellotte)
BAGHDAD ? Insurgents bombed a house belonging to two policemen and their families in central Iraq early on Thursday, killing 10 people inside in the latest brazen attack since the U.S. troop withdrawal, officials said.
The house where the two policemen brothers lived was located in the Hamia area, about 31 miles (50 kilometers) south of Baghdad, a police officer said. It was leveled when insurgents detonated bombs they had planted around it at 1:00 a.m.
Both policemen, two children under one years of age and four women were among the dead, he added. A doctor at a nearby hospital confirmed the causality figure. Both officials spoke on condition of anonymity as they were not authorized to release information.
Also Thursday, a motorcycle bomb missed a passing police patrol in the northern city of Kirkuk, but killed two civilians and wounded five others, the city's police commander Brig. Gen. Sarhad Qadir said.
Many Iraqis fear Iraqi security forces will not be able to protect the country on their own after the American pullout, and that it risks descending into chaos resembling the years following the 2003 U.S.-led invasion.
Since the U.S. completed its pullout last month, militant groups ? mainly al-Qaida in Iraq ? have stepped up attacks on the country's majority Shiites and American-backed government institutions. More than 170 people have been killed in violence since the beginning of the year.
In an audio message aired on Wednesday, a spokesman for al-Qaida's Islamic State of Iraq who identified himself as Abu Mohammed al-Adnani said that even as the U.S. troops left Iraq, "our army still exists and is increasing day after the other."
Al-Qaida was one of the main U.S. enemies in Iraq. It was behind some of the deadliest attacks on U.S. soldiers, Iraqi security forces and American-backed government institutions.
Al-Adnani claimed the U.S. pulled its troops out of Iraq because its economy is collapsing and it needed to save money. Meanwhile, he said his holy warriors, or the "mujahedeen have the lead " and can "attack and appear whenever we want to."
___
Associated Press writer Yahya Barzanji in Sulaimaniyah contributed to this report.
WASHINGTON/BEIJING (Reuters) ? President Barack Obama will host China's likely next leader, Vice President Xi Jinping, at the White House on February 14, in a visit set to boost Xi's credentials as the man who will steer Beijing's close but quarrelsome ties with Washington.
Obama and Xi will discuss "a broad range of bilateral, regional, and global issues," the White House said in a statement on Monday announcing the visit, when Xi will be hosted by Vice President Joe Biden.
The Chinese Foreign Ministry has yet to confirm the date of the visit; it had no immediate comment on Tuesday, and did not answer faxed questions. This week is the Lunar New Year public holiday in China.
The two sides will have plenty of strains to talk about, especially over trade, human rights, North Korea and Iran. Above all, the Obama administration will keen for clues about Xi's worldview and how he intends to handle these thorny issues.
"The man Biden's hosting, barring something no one forsees at this point, will become the head of China, head of the Communist Party, head of the government and head of the military," said China expert Kenneth Lieberthal of the Brookings Institution in Washington.
"This is really a chance for the Obama administration to look forward to the succession and post-succession period in China and begin to establish critical personal relationships and a personal comfort level back and forth."
For Xi, the visit will be a valuable trophy that helps advertise his readiness for the top job.
His growing prominence indicates that he is virtually certain to replace Hu Jintao as Communist Party chief in late 2012 and then replace him as state president in early 2013.
The two powers have delicate issues to work through, ranging from currency policy to differences over how to halt the nuclear programs of Iran and North Korea, to China's recent crackdown on critics and activists that has drawn U.S. criticism.
Beijing has voiced misgivings about Obama's plans to beef up the U.S. military presence in the Asia-Pacific region and remains unhappy about U.S. arms sales to Taiwan, the self-ruled island that China calls an illegitimate breakaway province.
China, Iran's biggest oil customer, also bristles at U.S. efforts to tighten sanctions on that country in order to halt Tehran's nuclear ambitions. Beijing recently rebuffed a U.S. official's call to cut back oil purchases from Iran.
While the United States is in an election year that has seen Republican candidates fire harsh rhetoric at China, Beijing will this year begin the power transfer that will see Xi and other officials take over as President Hu and his generation retire.
Obama, facing a tough re-election in November, is expected to renew his call for China to allow its yuan currency to appreciate during his State of the Union address on Tuesday, as he highlights U.S. exports among his proposals to boost jobs.
In an interview in Time magazine last week, Obama said U.S.-China friction arose because China "sees itself as a developing or even poor country that should be able to pursue mercantilist policies that are for their benefit and where the rules applying to them shouldn't be the same rules that apply to the United States or Europe or other major powers."
XI SETS UPBEAT TONE
Xi, 58, is the son of the late, reformist vice premier Xi Zhongxun, making him a "princeling": one of the privileged offspring of China's leaders who rose to power under Mao Zedong. He rose through the party ranks in coastal provinces.
Xi's family background and coming of age in the turmoil of Mao's Cultural Revolution (1966-76) have prompted some observers to suggest he could take a harder line against Washington, which would also reflect growing nationalist sentiment in China.
But in a speech last week, Xi stressed Beijing's desire for steady relations and tried to set an upbeat tone for his visit.
"In dealing with major and sensitive issues that concern each side's core interests, we must certainly abide by a spirit of mutual respect and handle them prudently, and by no means can we let relations again suffer major interference and ructions," he told a meeting in Beijing.
Regardless of the international situation, he said, "our commitment to developing the Sino-U.S. cooperative partnership should never waver in the face of passing developments."
Xi will probably be looking to set a "pragmatic but frank" tone for ties with Washington, said Zhang Musheng, a former Chinese central government official who has met Xi and other rising officials and written widely about their challenges.
"I don't feel that they're hardline in their views," Zhang told Reuters of China's emerging leaders, including Xi.
"It will still be the same basic approach of seeking steady, predictable relations (with the U.S.)," added Zhang.
"But as China develops economically, it's attracting more criticism and suspicion, and there's a sense that we need to get used to putting our own views without creating alarm or conflict. That's not hardline; it's practical and realistic."
In August, Xi hosted Biden on a visit that gave Washington policymakers a chance to size up China's president-in-waiting.
Xi is also set to travel to Iowa and California, states keen to boost already fast-growing trade and to court investment. Dates have not formally been announced for those stops.
Xi's first known visit to the United States was to Iowa in 1985 as a junior official in the northern province of Hebei, which has a sister state/province relationship with Iowa.
Iowa governor Terry Branstad said his state would "make the most of our time with Vice President Xi."
(Additional reporting by Sabrina Mao in Beijing; Editing by Jonthan Thatcher)
Bret McKenzie's 'Man or Muppet' is up against 'Real in Rio' for Best Original Song. By Kara Warner
Miss Piggy in "The Muppets" Photo: Muppets Studio
There are always plenty of shocks, snubs and surprises when it comes to the unveiling of Oscar nominees each year. Today's announcement was met with all of the above, but overall there were more pleasant surprises than not.
One of our favorite nominees is "Flight Of The Conchords" actor-turned-"Muppets" music supervisor Bret McKenzie, who scored a Best Original Song nod for his "Man or Muppet."
MTV News was lucky enough to get a few minutes on the phone with the still-in-shock McKenzie, who called in from his home in New Zealand.
"We're celebrating with breakfast," McKenzie said. "I woke up to the phone ringing nonstop, so then I picked up my phone and saw the news. I was very excited. I don't sound it, but I am very excited. It's a great day."
The multitalented New Zealander revealed that while "Man or Muppet" is his favorite song in "The Muppets" and that he is very proud of the earnest ballad, he never expected it to be recognized for anything.
"I really wanted it to be hilarious and beautiful, and I feel like we got that combination. It's sincere but ridiculous," he said. "The idea of children singing the song at school cracks me up."
McKenzie said that the nomination surprised almost the entire "Muppets" team, except perhaps writer/star Jason Segel, who made an outlandish prediction during production about the earnest tune's award potential.
"The night we recorded 'Man or Muppet,' we had a few drinks and Jason Segel was predicting we'd get together at the Oscars, but he was joking," McKenzie recalled. "[Maybe] that guy can see the future."
Once the actor/musician gets over the shock of his nomination, he'll have to start preparations for how the song will be performed during the 84th annual awards ceremony.
"I don't know yet [how the song will be performed] but I was thinking we'll definitely need a man and a Muppet," McKenzie joked. "Yeah, that's what we need."
When asked about his chances, McKenzie marveled at the fact that there are only two nominees, "Man or Muppet" and "Real in Rio" from "Rio."
"I was amazed there were only two nominees; I was surprised. It seems unusual, but it's great because the odds are 50-50," he said. "The only thing I guess would be better if there was only one nomination."
What song should win the Oscar for Best Original Song? Sound off in the comments section!
Tom Brady had one of his most memorable post-game moments on the AFC title game podium last night.
?Well, I sucked pretty bad today, but our defense saved us,? Brady said. ?And I?m going to try to go out and do a better job in a couple weeks.?
It was an interesting moment. Brady was obviously thrilled to go to the Super Bowl, but his press conference later showed that ?the night was almost bittersweet. Brady was still bothered by his performance. He missed too many open passes and made two big mistakes on interceptions.
Going home to Giselle apparently didn?t make things any better. Brady said his interception to Matthew Slater bothered him the most.
?That was probably the play that kept me up all night last night,? he said on WEEI this morning via ESPNBoston.com.
After the game, Brady went up to Patriots owner Robert Kraft and promised that he?d play better in the Super Bowl. Kraft didn?t sound too worried about his quarterback.
We wonder if Brady, aware of his own football mortality, was almost too amped up for Sunday?s game. Brady turns 35 this year and he knows these chances don?t come around every year.
?Not that I?ve ever taken for granted being there, because I certainly haven?t, but you really realize how hard it is to get there,? Brady said.
Brady says he still can?t watch highlights from the team?s loss in Super Bowl 42 because it was so painful. Now he will get a chance to make amends for the worst loss of his career in a legacy-altering rematch against the Giants.
Just a guess, but we doubt he sucks pretty bad again.
This post originally appeared on the American Express OPEN Forum, where Mashable regularly contributes articles about leveraging social media and technology in small business.
An entrepreneur?s life can be a real roller coaster. Having started a few businesses in my career, I thought it would be useful to highlight some of the hard-won experience I?ve learned throughout the process ? the kind of advice I wish I?d known when I started my first, or even second, business.
1. Don?t Underestimate a Business Plan
If you?re not seeking outside funding at the start, it?s tempting to forgo writing out a formal business plan. However, taking the time to write out your business plan, forecasts and marketing strategy is a particularly effective way to hone your vision. All planning should center around two essential questions: How is my business serving a particular need or pain point, and does this represent a major market opportunity?
In addition, don?t overlook the exit strategy at the beginning. Do you want your children to take over the company? Do you want to sell it? It?s critical to think about these questions from the start, as the building blocks of your company (such as legal structure) should vary depending on your preferred final outcome.
2. Don?t Get Stuck in the Past
My husband and I launched our first online legal document filing service in 1997, and then re-entered the market with our second company in 2009. While our previous experience certainly gave us a leg up the second time around, we soon realized the market landscape had changed dramatically since our first company. We had to stop dwelling on previous competitors, customer needs and service expectations and write a brand new playbook.
The marketplace and your business plan are living entities; they?re continually in flux. Whether it?s your first company or fifth in a given market, you?ve got to keep asking: What do we need to do today?
3. Don?t Hire Friends
I form bonds quickly and make fast friends with people around me. While I generally consider this a positive trait, it has created some difficult situations when running a business. At times I have been reluctant to let employees go even though I know it?s not a good fit. If things aren?t working out between an employee and startup, it?s time to put feelings aside and trust that the person will find a better situation elsewhere.
Unfortunately, I?ve also learned that people can let you down, ranging from laziness to fraud. I still believe that faith in people is a good thing. However, blind faith can bring trouble.
4. Don?t Dive in Without a Plan
Just like the business plan, it?s critical to think through any initiative you wish to launch. When you?re in the midst of startup fever, it?s easy to get wrapped up with every new idea. However, be careful of losing focus. Moving forward is critical for any startup, and constantly switching directions can impede this forward progress. With each new idea, step back and think how it fits into your company?s overall goal and vision, then create a plan for how to make it happen.
5. Don?t Fall Into a Discount Trap
At the beginning, too many young companies feel the pressure to heavily discount their prices in order to win business. While customer acquisition is important, attracting customers at unsustainable price levels will just result in a race to the bottom. After all, raising your prices on goods and certain services can be a tricky proposition. I?ve learned that you?re better off in the long run focusing on how to bring more value to customers, rather than simply slashing your prices.
6. Don?t Be Afraid to Fail
Soccer coach Sven-Goran Eriksson once said, ?The greatest barrier to success is the fear of failure.? An entrepreneur?s path is uncharted and sometimes a little bumpy. It?s easy to get stressed or downright panicked, but you cannot let fear prevent you from following your dreams. Think of it this way: the sooner you fail, the closer you are to discovering what works.
Conclusion
While you can?t guarantee the outcome of any new venture, you can stack the odds in your favor. These are six lessons I?ve learned over time and countless others are out there. If you?re open, you can gain wisdom from everything you try and gather insight from fellow entrepreneurs. What do you wish you knew when you started your first business?
The Complete Confection will feature tracks that didn't make it on the original album. By Jocelyn Vena
Katy Perry's <i>Teenage Dream</i> Photo: Capitol Records
Katy Perry gave fans their Teenage Dream when she dropped the album back in 2010, and now fans should expect to experience a bit of déjà vu.
The singer will drop a re-release of the album on March 13. Playing up the album's sugary-sweet imagery, it will be called Teenage Dream: The Complete Confection. While little else is known about what will appear on the album, producer Tricky Stewart did shed some light on the project when he spoke to MTV News last fall. He teased that several tracks that didn't make the final cut for Teenage Dream were being reworked for this project.
"Katy and I went into [the studio] just to address some issues with records that we had done in the past that didn't end up going on Teenage Dream," he said in October. "So we are in the process of just listening and freshening up things and getting ready for something special she has going on."
While the track listing for the re-release is still unknown, Tricky did shed light on one particular song. "This song is really special. It's called 'Dressing Up,' so it's going to be a big record, I think," he said. "It definitely fits. It's right there in what her sensibilities are as a musician and a songwriter. She doesn't change much. She has a very keen musical taste. It'll be really good."
"We always knew that the records we created were special [and] at the time it was more contractual obligation [that they didn't make the record]," he added. "I can only have so many songs produced by me on the record. She didn't need to have extra songs at the same time."
In addition to the new album news, Katy tweeted about ending her California Dreams Tour over the weekend in Manila. She dedicated the last show to a fan who had committed suicide. "I hope you're finding peace up there on that pink cotton candy cloud. I dedicate this last show to u, sweet dreams angel #RIPKatyCatAllie," she tweeted.
Perry is expected to next appear at the Grammy Awards, where she is up for two awards.
Are you excited for the re-release of Teenage Dream? Sound off in the comments!
COLUMBIA, S.C. ? Republicans Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich are not ceding one inch of South Carolina as the unpredictable campaign for the South's first presidential primary concludes ? and certainly not Tommy's Ham House.
Romney is fighting a suddenly surging Gingrich, while rivals Rick Santorum and Ron Paul look to surprise in a four-man race that has spun wildly in its last 48 hours.
Seen as Romney's to lose just days ago, South Carolina's primary has become a close contest between Romney, the former Massachusetts governor portraying himself as the best able to beat President Barack Obama, and Gingrich, the confrontational former House speaker and former Georgia congressman.
Both were scheduled to hold dueling campaign events at Tommy's, in Republican-rich Greenville, late Saturday morning. And neither campaign was stepping back from a primary day showdown.
It's "neck and neck," Romney declared Friday, moving to lower expectations for a race he led by double digits as of midweek.
Even as Romney was touting his electability in November, he continued to try to stoke doubt about Gingrich's ethics.
Gingrich, buoyed by the endorsement of Texas Gov. Rick Perry as he left the race Thursday, called Romney's suggestion that his chief rival release documents relating to an ethics investigation from the 1990s a "panic attack" brought on by sinking poll numbers.
Romney's demand was turnabout from Gingrich's that Romney release his income tax returns before the weekend primary. Gingrich argues that GOP voters need to know whether the wealthy former venture capital executive's records contain anything that could hurt the party's chances against Obama.
The stakes were high for Saturday's vote. The primary winner has gone on to win the Republican nomination in every election since 1980. And voters were faced with stamping Romney, who has led in national polls since December, as the party's front-runner, or reshuffle the contest.
Romney won the New Hampshire primary by a wide marign on Jan. 10, and was thought to have edged Santorum in a photo-finish in Iowa's leadoff caucuses. However, the certified count from Iowa on Thursday showed Santorum had received more votes, although a handful of precincts remained uncertain and no winner was declared.
Romney, Gingrich and Santorum, a former Pennsylvania senator vying to be the preferred conservative, all planned to campaign in South Carolina's conservative upstate as the voting got under way. Paul, the Texas congressman who has campaigned lightly here, had no campaign appearances scheduled but was expected to visit campaign volunteers.
Behind the flurry of public events around the state Friday, telephones and televisions crackled with attack messages. Some of South Carolina's notorious 11th-hour devilry ? fake reports in the form of emails targeting Gingrich and his ex-wife Marianne ? emerged in a race known as much for its nastiness as for its late-game twists.
"Unfortunately, we are now living up to our reputation," said South Carolina GOP strategist Chip Felkel.
State Attorney Gen. Alan Wilson ordered a preliminary review of the phony messages to see if any laws had been broken.
Gingrich's ex-wife burst into the campaign this week when she alleged in an ABC News interview that her former husband had asked her for an "open marriage," a potentially damaging claim in a state where the Republican primary electorate includes a potent segment of Christian conservatives. The thrice-married Gingrich, who has admitted to marital infidelities, angrily denied her accusation.
KABUL (Reuters) ? Taliban fighters in Afghanistan have been enraged by a video which shows U.S. marines urinating on three corpses, believed to be insurgents, and some say they do not understand their leadership's relatively measured response to the tape.
News of the clip spread fast across Afghanistan, even though only a minority of people have electricity and the internet is restricted to a tiny urban elite.
Radio can reach remote militants and villagers and mobile phones are used by many Afghans, on both sides of the war, for storing and sharing videos even in remote areas with little communications infrastructure.
"I heard from some friends about this shameful act of the U.S. forces but could not see it at first," said one militant who called himself Qari Babar, explaining that a Pashto-language radio broadcast first alerted him to the tape's existence.
The video, posted on YouTube and other websites, shows four Marines in camouflage combat uniforms urinating on three corpses. One of them jokes: "Have a nice day, buddy." Another makes a lewd joke.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai has condemned the video, describing the men's actions as "inhuman" and calling for an investigation. U.S. and NATO military commanders condemned the actions of the men, and Pentagon has acted quickly to respond to the video, in a bid to limit the fallout.
Although a Taliban spokesman criticized it last week, he said it would not harm nascent efforts to broker peace talks.
For some insurgents, their leadership's muted response to the Marines' actions was unwelcome, particularly after reports the Taliban had agreed to open a political office in Qatar to ease possible negotiation with the United States and allies.
"Our leaders overlooked this degrading and inhumane act of American soldiers because they are interested in peace talks," said Mullah Mohammad Gul, a local Taliban commander in southern Helmand province, where the video is believed to have been made.
"Our duty is to defend our sacred religion and our people and we will keep fighting, no matter what."
Insurgent fighters in other parts of the country said the video could undermine discipline and push foot soldiers to ignore orders from higher ranked fighters.
"Until now, we were following guidelines and principles laid down by our senior commanders for us to follow while fighting," said Babar, active in Afghanistan's eastern Nangarhar province.
Young insurgents might ignore orders in future, he added.
U.S. General John Allen, who commands international troops in Afghanistan, accused the Taliban's one-eyed leader, Mullah Muhammad Omar, this week of having "lost all control" of his frontline fighters after several suicide bombings in the restive south killed almost 20 people, mostly civilians.
Babar said he watched the video with around 70 fighters, and said it shocked them even though previous cases of abuse by foreign soldiers in Afghanistan, including the murder of innocent civilians, had been well publicized.
"Every one is now desperately trying to find U.S. soldiers to take revenge for the desecration of the bodies," he added.
HATE WILL GROW
Several commanders also thought the Marines' actions would also help bolster the group's standing with the rural Afghans they fight among.
"It helps us to win the support and sympathy of the Afghan people," Abdul Basit, who fights in eastern Khost province where insurgents have a strong presence, told Reuters.
"You see now the entire nation, even so many people in the government and armed forces, have turned against them because of the atrocities," Basit said.
Basit added that they had been advised by their leaders not to kill their prisoners and spies but after seeing the video, many of them might not control themselves in future.
In the southern town of Marjah, a part of Helmand that has seen heavy fighting and was the centre of a U.S.-led campaign to displace the Taliban in early 2010, another commander agreed.
"It is good that such video has emerged which showed Americans' inhumane acts," Mullah Abdullah told Reuters by satellite phone. He disagreed it would sap discipline, and instead saw a groundswell of greater support.
"From now on, hate against the foreign troops will grow in the hearts of every Muslim, especially in Afghanistan."
(Additional reporting by Jibran Ahmad in PESHAWAR, writing by Emma Graham-Harrison)
WASHINGTON (Reuters) ? President Barack Obama stressed U.S. support for Egypt's move to democracy and discussed its International Monetary Fund talks in a telephone conversation on Friday with Egyptian military council chief Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi, the White House said.
"The president reinforced the necessity of upholding universal principles and emphasized the important role that civil society, including non-governmental organizations, have in a democratic society," the White House said in a statement.
"He underscored that non-governmental organizations should be able to operate freely."
Washington was sharply critical earlier this month of raids by Egyptian authorities on pro-democracy groups, but laid the blame on remnants of former President Hosni Mubarak, who was toppled from power last year by massive street protests.
Egyptian authorities swooped in on 17 non-governmental groups, including the U.S.-funded National Democratic Institute and International Republican Institute, which are both loosely affiliated with the leading U.S. political parties.
Obama also discussed Egypt's economic outlook with Tantawi.
Egypt has asked the IMF for $3.2 billion in support and an MF delegation is due to visit in late January.
The country turned down an offer of $3 billion in financial assistance from the IMF last June, but since then Egypt's funding problems have worsened and its currency has come under heavy pressure.
WASHINGTON ? Mitt Romney perpetuated one unsubstantiated claim, about his record at Bain Capital, and more or less corrected himself on another, about President Barack Obama's health care law, in the latest Republican presidential debate.
His rivals flubbed history, Newt Gingrich blaming a Democratic president for a jobless rate he never had, and Ron Paul painting an idyllic picture of life before Medicare that did not reflect deprivations of that time.
A look at some of the claims in the debate Thursday night and how they compare with the facts:
___
ROMNEY: "We started a number of businesses; four in particular created 120,000 jobs, as of today. We started them years ago. They've grown ? grown well beyond the time I was there to 120,000 people that have been employed by those enterprises. ... Those that have been documented to have lost jobs, lost about 10,000 jobs. So (120,000 less 10,000) means that we created something over 100,000 jobs."
THE FACTS: Romney now has acknowledged the negative side of the ledger from his years with Bain Capital, but hardly laid out the full story. His claim to have created more than 100,000 jobs in the private sector as a venture capitalist remains unsupported.
Romney mentioned four successful investments in companies that now employ some 120,000 people, having grown since he was involved in them a decade or ago or longer. From that, he subtracted the number of jobs that he said are known to have been lost at certain other companies.
What's missing is anything close to a complete list of winners and losers ? and the bottom line on jobs. Bain under Romney invested in scores of private companies that don't have the obligation of big publicly traded corporations to disclose finances. Romney acknowledged that he was using current employment figures for the four companies, not the number of jobs they had when he left Bain Capital, yet took credit for them in his analysis.
___
GINGRICH: "Under Jimmy Carter, we had the wrong laws, the wrong regulations, the wrong leadership, and we killed jobs. We had inflation. We went to 10.8 percent unemployment. Under Ronald Reagan, we had the right job ? the right laws, the right regulators, the right leadership. We created 16 million new jobs."
FACT CHECK: Sure, inflation was bad and gas lines long, but under Carter's presidency unemployment never topped 7.8 percent. The unemployment rate did reach 10.8 percent, but not until November 1982, nearly two years into Reagan's first term.
Most economists attribute the jobless increase to a sharp rise in interest rates engineered by then-Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker in an ultimately successful effort to choke off inflation. Unemployment began to fall in 1983 and dropped to 7.2 percent in November 1984, when Reagan easily won re-election.
The economy did add 16 million jobs during Reagan's 1981-1989 presidency. Gingrich's assertion that "we created" them may have left the impression that he was a key figure in that growth. Although Gingrich was first elected to the House in 1978, his first Republican leadership position, as minority whip, began when Reagan left office, in 1989.
___
PAUL: "I had the privilege of practicing medicine in the early `60s, before we had any government (health care). It worked rather well, and there was nobody on the street suffering with no medical care. But Medicare and Medicaid came in and it just expanded."
THE FACTS: Before Medicare was created in the mid-1960s, only about half of the elderly had private insurance for hospital care, and they were facing rising costs for those policies on their fixed incomes. Medicare was hugely contentious at the time, seen by many doctors as a socialist takeover, but few argued that the status quo could be maintained.
A Health, Education and Welfare Department report to Congress in 1959, during the Republican administration of Dwight Eisenhower, took no position on what the federal government should do but stated "a larger proportion of the aged than of other persons must turn to public assistance for payment of their medical bills or rely on `free' care from hospitals and physicians."
Paul advocates a return to an era when doctors would treat the needy for free. But even in the old days, charity came with a cost. Research from the pre-Medicare era shows that the cost of free care was transferred to paying customers and the insurance industry.
___
ROMNEY: "The executive order is a beginning process. It's one thing, but it doesn't completely eliminate Obamacare. ... We have to go after a complete repeal. And that's going to have to have to happen with a House and a Senate, hopefully, that are Republican."
THE FACTS: With that statement, Romney essentially corrected his repeated suggestions in early debates and speeches that he would eliminate President Barack Obama's health care law with a stroke of the pen on his first day in office ? a power no president has.
In one variation of the claim, he had vowed in a Sept. 7 debate that on Day One, he would sign an executive order "granting a waiver from Obamacare to all 50 states." This, despite the fact that the law lays out an onerous process for letting individual states off the hook from its requirements, and that process cannot begin until 2017.
Now he acknowledges the political reality that a Republican president would need Republican control of Congress to have a strong shot at repealing the law.
___
Associated Press writers Jim Drinkard, and Christopher S. Rugaber contributed to this report.
ROME ? Divers resumed the search Thursday for 21 people still missing after a cruise ship capsized off the Tuscan coast, but rough seas forecast for later in the day added an element of uncertainty to the operation and plans to begin pumping fuel from the stranded vessel.
The $450 million Costa Concordia was carrying more than 4,200 passengers and crew when it slammed into a reef and capsized Friday after the captain made an unauthorized diversion from his programmed route and strayed into the perilous waters.
Eleven people have been confirmed dead, their bodies removed from the ship and frigid waters.
Divers were focusing on an evacuation route on the fourth level, now about 18 meters (60 feet) below the surface, where five bodies were found earlier this week, Navy spokesman Alessandro Busonero told Sky TG 24.
Officials restarted the search after determining the ship had stabilized after shifting on the rocks 24 hours earlier.
The ship's sudden movement also postponed the start of the weekslong operation to extract the half-million gallons of fuel on board the vessel, as Italy's environment minister warned Parliament of the ecological implications if the ship sinks.
"Today is an important day, the weather forecasts are negative, rough sea, we'll have to see how the ship reacts to that," firefighter spokesman Luca Cari said Thursday.
Authorities on Wednesday identified the first victim: Sandor Feher, a 38-year-old Hungarian musician working aboard, who a fellow musician said helped crying children into lifejackets, then disappeared while trying to retrieve his beloved violin from his cabin. His body was found inside the wreck and identified by his mother who traveled to Italy, according to the Hungarian Foreign Ministry.
Of the 11 dead and 21 missing, Italian officials have only released 27 names so far. They are two Americans, 12 Germans, six Italians, four French, and one person each from Hungary, India and Peru.
Among the missing are an Italian father and 5-year-old daughter. The girl's mother issued a fresh appeal to speed the search and for passengers who saw the pair to come forward to help determine where they were last seen.
"Don't stop, bring home my daughter. Get her out," Susy Albertini, 28, said on Italian television Wednesday evening after meeting with government and port officials in Tuscany.
Albertini last saw her daughter, Dayana Arlotti, on Thursday when she dropped her off at nursery school in Rimini on Italy's Adriadic coast, according to La Voce di Romagna newspaper. Her estranged husband picked up the girl afterward to prepare for the cruise.
William Arlotti, 36, had taken his daughter on on the cruise with his girlfriend, Michela Marconcelli, who survived. She reported seeing Dayana, who was wearing a lifejacket, slide into the water when the boat shifted, but said someone helped retrieve her, the newspaper reported.
Marconcelli said she was pushed forward onto the life raft, and lost track of her companion and his daughter.
Other missing include retirees Jerry and Barbara Heil of White Bear Lake, Minnesota. The couple were treating themselves after putting four children through college.
The Heil children said in a blog post Wednesday that their parents were not among the passengers whose bodies were recently recovered, and they were praying that weather conditions would improve so authorities could resume search operations.
Capt. Francesco Schettino, who was jailed after he left the ship before everyone was safely evacuated, was placed under house arrest Tuesday, facing possible charges of manslaughter, causing a shipwreck and abandoning his ship.
The ship's operator, Crociere Costa SpA, has accused Schettino of causing the wreck by making the unapproved detour, and the captain has acknowledged carrying out what he called a "tourist navigation" that brought the ship closer to Giglio. Costa has said such a navigational "fly by" was done last Aug. 9-10, after being approved by the company and Giglio port authorities.
However, Lloyd's List Intelligence, a leading maritime publication, said Wednesday its tracking of the ship's August route showed it actually took the Concordia slightly closer to Giglio than the course that caused Friday's disaster.
"This is not a black-and-white case," Richard Meade, editor of Lloyd's List, said in a statement.
"Our data suggests that both routes took the vessel within 200 meters (yards) of the impact point and that the authorized route was actually closer to shore."
New audio of Schettino's communications with the coast guard during the crisis emerged Wednesday, with the captain claiming he ended up in a life raft after he tripped and fell into the water.
"I did not abandon a ship with 100 people on board, the ship suddenly listed and we were thrown into the water," Schettino said, according to a transcript published Wednesday in the Corriere della Sera paper.
Initial audio of Schettino's conversations made headlines on Tuesday, showing an increasingly exasperated coast guard officer ordering Schettino back on board to direct the evacuation, and the captain resisting, saying it was too dark and the ship was tipping.
The officer's order, "Get back on board, (expletive!)" has entered the Italian lexicon, becoming a Twitter hashtag and adorning T-shirts.
THE ROAD TO MECCA ** 1/2 out of **** ROUNDABOUT THEATRE COMPANY
It's so difficult not to lose your shirt when producing theater that one feels churlish wishing a revival of Athol Fugard's drama The Road To Mecca were in a tinier, Off Broadway house. The American Airlines Theatre is hardly sprawling -- it's the fourth smallest house on the Great White Way. And yet even it feels too large for this intimate, modest, three person drama.
Fugard's tale is a simple one. Miss Helen (the great Rosemary Harris) is an elderly widow who lives on her own in an isolated town in South Africa in 1974. Since her husband died 15 years earlier, she's been creating what we would call folk art, fantastical (or monstrous) cement figures that fill her yard and home until there's not enough room for even a radish to grow. We take this on faith since unlike the original New York production, none of those giant, disturbing sculptures are visible to us. Al we see is a warm, expansive home with lots of candles, small hand-crafted works throughout, a glittering ceiling (created with ground-up beer bottles) and walls painted with streaks of orange and blue. To us it seems warm and inviting; to her fellow Afrikaners at the time, the word they would use would be closer to unhinged.
Miss Helen receives an unexpected visitor -- the English South African schoolteacher Elsa (a fine Carla Gugino), an English woman of South Africa being considered inherently freer, more modern, less "traditional" than an Afrikaner like Miss Helen. They are also, of course, from different generations. (This is not a play that focuses on race and prejudice, though of course every play of Fugard has such reality woven throughout it.) Miss Helen needs Elsa's support because the local man of the cloth Marius (an excellent Jim Dale) is coming to get her signature on a consent form so Miss Helen can be moved into an old folk's home.
Essentially, we spend the first half of the play hearing hints about a mysterious letter from Miss Helen, tragic events of 15 years ago, problems for Elsa and the looming, threatening appearance of Marius. In the second half, we discover exactly what happened 15 years ago, the contents of that letter, the unhappy state of Elsa's life and a showdown where the three of them sort out their complicated feelings for one another.
It's quiet, sometimes affecting and directed smoothly if not piercingly by Gordon Edelstein. The set by Michael Yeargan perhaps could have been more of a presence to give us a better sense of Miss Helen's significance as an artist. The lighting by Peter Kaczorowski felt a little abrupt. Suddenly the stage would seem far dimmer than a moment earlier and then a character would comment that the sun was setting. Snuffing out one candle at one or two points had a similarly dramatic effect, rather than the subtle one called for.
The three actors prove themselves capable of a great deal, even if this production doesn't make the most of Fugard's play. Gugino really impressed me at first, but my confidence wavered as the show went on. Perhaps it's just a modern, savvier attitude towards the elderly, but Elsa seemed rather clueless and mean to Miss Helen at times. And her character's big moment felt tacked on after it seemed to me the business of the show was over. I felt alternately a bit annoyed and a bit confused by this woman. When a show is three quarters of the way over and you're still trying to puzzle out the dynamics between these two characters, something is wrong. (How long have they known each other? Is Elsa like a daughter? A friend? A crutch? And why exactly does Elsa travel so far to visit this woman? And if the friendship of Miss Helen means so much, why does Elsa complain about coming on short notice for what is clearly a crisis?)
Harris had a better time as Miss Helen, but I was never quite sure what we were supposed to think of this woman either. Was she a talented artist? (The show is based on the life of a real Afrikaner whose home is now a national monument, so presumably that's the intent.) For all we know, her sculpture might indeed just be a hobby, albeit an admirable one. Even the intriguing modernist poster for this production is bolder than anything we see from Miss Helen. At times she appears a confused frail old woman while at other points she's a vibrant figure who knows exactly who she is. Characters can contain contradictions of course, but in this case it seemed the show that was confused, not Miss Helen.
But Dale was a revelation to me, never having had the chance to see him onstage before, I think. His Marius is crystal clear every step of the way. We're told he's a scheming man trying to oust Helen from her home. But when he arrives we find a reasonable, if mannered fellow who might just have her best interests at heart. Dale slowly reveals layers and layers to deepen our understanding of this man, as opposed to our whipsaw emotions about the two women.
Each has strong moments and the three of them make it a show worth seeing. But I can't help preferring it was in a smaller space that would allow these three actors (who never overact, mind you) the intimacy the piece calls for. And I wish this production had developed a clearer idea of these two women so we could see Fugard's play more clearly as well.
The Theater Season 2011-2012 (on a four star scale)
The Agony And The Ecstasy Of Steve Jobs ** 1/2 All-American ** All's Well That Ends Well/Shakespeare in the Park ** The Atmosphere Of Memory 1/2 * Bonnie & Clyde feature profile of Jeremy Jordan Broadway By The Year: 1997 ** 1/2 The Cherry Orchard with Dianne Wiest ** Chinglish * 1/2 Close Up Space * Crane Story ** Cymbeline at Barrow Street Theatre *** Dedalus Lounge * 1/2 An Evening With Patti Lupone and Mandy Patinkin *** Follies *** 1/2 Fragments *** Godspell ** 1/2 Goodbar * 1/2 Hair *** Hand To God *** Hero: The Musical * 1/2 How The World Began * 1/2 Hugh Jackman: Back On Broadway *** Irving Berlin's White Christmas *** It's Always Right Now, Until It's Later *** 1/2 King Lear at Public with Sam Waterston ** Krapp's Last Tape with John Hurt *** Lake Water ** Leo *** Love's Labor's Lost at the PublicLab ** 1/2 Lysistrata Jones * Man And Boy * 1/2 The Man Who Came To Dinner ** Maple And Vine ** Master Class w Tyne Daly ** 1/2 Measure For Measure/Shakespeare in the Park *** Milk Like Sugar *** Mission Drift * 1/2 Misterman ** 1/2 The Mountaintop ** 1/2 Newsies ** Pigpen's The Nightmare Story *** 1/2 Once *** 1/2 Olive and The Bitter Herbs ** 1/2 On A Clear Day You Can See Forever * 1/2 One Arm *** Other Desert Cities on Broadway ** 1/2 Private Lives ** Queen Of The Mist ** 1/2 Radio City Christmas Spectacular ** 1/2 Relatively Speaking * 1/2 The Road To Mecca ** 1/2 Samuel & Alasdair: A Personal History Of The Robot War ** 1/2 The Select (The Sun Also Rises) ** 1/2 Seminar ** Septimus & Clarissa *** 1/2 Shlemiel The First ** 1/2 Silence! The Musical * 1/2 69 Degrees South * 1/2 Sons Of The Prophet *** 1/2 Sontag: Reborn * Spiderman: Turn Off The Dark * 1/2 Standing On Ceremony: The Gay Marriage Plays ** Stick Fly ** The Submission ** Super Night Shot ** 1/2 Sweet and Sad ** The Table ** 1/2 Titus Andronicus at Public with Jay O. Sanders * 1/2 Unnatural Acts *** Venus In Fur *** We Live Here ** Wild Animals You Should Know ** 1/2 Zarkana **
NEW YORK MUSICAL THEATRE FESTIVAL 2011
Blanche: The Bittersweet Life Of A Wild Prairie Dame *** 1/2 Central Avenue Breakdown ** 1/2 Crazy, Just Like Me *** Cyclops: A Rock Opera * Ennio: The Living Paper Cartoon ** 1/2 F---ing Hipsters ** Ghostlight ** Gotta Getta Girl ** 1/2 for staged reading Greenwood * Jack Perry Is Alive (And Dating) * 1/2 Kiki Baby ** 1/2 Kissless * 1/2 Madame X ** The Pigeon Boys *** Time Between Us * 1/2 Tut **
FRINGEFEST NYC 2011
Araby * The Bardy Bunch ** Books On Tape ** 1/2 Civilian ** Hard Travelin' With Woody *** Leonard Cohen Koans *** 1/2 The More Loving One ** The Mountain Song *** 1/2 Paper Cuts *** Parker & Dizzy's Fabulous Journey To The End Of The Rainbow ** 1/2 Pearl's Gone Blue *** Rachel Calof ** 1/2 Romeo & Juliet: Choose Your Own Ending ** 2 Burn * 1/2 Walls and Bridges ** What The Sparrow Said ** 1/2 Yeast Nation ***
Thanks for reading. Michael Giltz is the cohost of Showbiz Sandbox, a weekly pop culture podcast that reveals the industry take on entertainment news of the day and features top journalists and opinion makers as guests. It's available for free on iTunes. Visit Michael Giltz at his website and his daily blog. Download his podcast of celebrity interviews and his radio show, also called Popsurfing and also available for free on iTunes. Link to him on Netflix and gain access to thousands of ratings and reviews.
Note: Michael Giltz is provided with free tickets to shows with the understanding that he will be writing a review.
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Why smart growth frustrates players in the system: UMD researchPublic release date: 18-Jan-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Neil Tickner ntickner@umd.edu 301-405-4622 University of Maryland
In Maryland, success thwarted by state-local disconnect
COLLEGE PARK, Md. - Maryland planners, developers and land-use advocates consider the state's smart growth tools too weak, frustrating their desire for development within existing urban areas, finds a new University of Maryland study based on interviews with a representative group of stakeholders.
"Just about everyone feels squeezed between a rock and a hard place - wanting development where state laws intend to promote growth, but often seeing it thwarted by both local opposition and regulatory barriers," says study co-author Gerrit Knaap, who directs the University of Maryland National Center for Smart Growth.
"All stakeholders express a great deal of frustration, and most urge a more coordinated system," he adds.
The report, "Barriers to Development Inside Priority Funding Areas: Perspectives of Planners, Developers, and Advocates, " is based on in-depth interviews with 47 representatives of three key stake-holder groups active in the Baltimore-Washington corridor.
The study was commissioned by NAIOP Maryland, which represents the commercial real estate industry, and the Maryland State Builders Association, which represents the state's residential builders, developers, remodelers, suppliers and contractors.
SPECIFIC FINDINGS: The researchers find that a majority of stakeholders believe it is easier to develop outside areas designated for smart growth - so-called Priority Funding Areas (PFAs). Storm water regulations, citizen opposition, and adequate public facility ordinances were the reasons most frequently cited as hindering development inside PFAs.
Earlier research by Knaap and the National Center for Smart Growth found objective indications that the state's regulatory system is "barely moving the needle on most widely accepted measures of smart growth."
The new study is one of the first systematic investigations of the perceptions of stakeholders, with knowledge based on personal experience, the researchers say.
"The findings of this report confirm what we have been saying for some time: Priority Funding Areas need to be strengthened if Maryland wants to grow smart," Knaap says. "But the unanimity of opinion is striking. The majority want more effective tools and better coordination of policies."
More than three-quarters of respondents say PFAs are only "somewhat effective" or "not effective at all."
Nearly four times as many respondents say it's more difficult to develop land inside than outside PFAs.
High rise apartments and mixed use developments are viewed as the most difficult products to develop within PFAs.
Zoning and the adequacy of infrastructure are viewed as the most influential public policy tools.
PARTICIPANTS: The planners interviewed included representatives from the twelve counties in the study area as well as the eight largest municipalities with zoning and planning authority.
The policy advocates ranged from staff of local community-based groups, to staffers at prominent statewide nonprofit agencies.
The developers interviewed were from a diverse group, including firms specializing in mixed-use urban-infill development; traditional single-family residential development, and commercial development.
While the sample size is too small to support rigorous statistical analysis, the researchers say the study is indicative of widely held perceptions.
RECOMMENDATIONS: The report lists a series of recommendations that it says are needed for state and local governments to balance economic development, population growth and improve the water quality in the Chesapeake Bay.
These include steps designed to integrate PFA targets more fully into a county's overall planning process; make sure that PFAs are drawn to accommodate non-residential development and mixed-use projects; give local governments greater flexibility in defining the PFAs, provided they adequately restrict growth in other locations; give local areas greater flexibility to reduce infrastructure and other regulatory restrictions within the PFAs; among other incentives designed to make development in PFAs more attractive to developers and local governments.
"If the system is to work more smoothly, areas designated for smart growth need to be practical and attractive for all parties, and that entails building a lot more flexibility into the system," Knaap concludes. "State and local governments need to assure there is capacity and political support to grow inside PFAs."
###
COMPLETE REPORT AVAILABLE ONLINE: http://ter.ps/7j
Located at the University of Maryland, College Park, the National Center for Smart Growth is a non-partisan center for research and leadership training on smart growth and related land use issues in Maryland, in metropolitan regions around the nation, and in Asia and Europe.
Maggie Haslam, communicator
UMD School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation
202-258-8946
maggiehaslam6@gmail.com
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Why smart growth frustrates players in the system: UMD researchPublic release date: 18-Jan-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Neil Tickner ntickner@umd.edu 301-405-4622 University of Maryland
In Maryland, success thwarted by state-local disconnect
COLLEGE PARK, Md. - Maryland planners, developers and land-use advocates consider the state's smart growth tools too weak, frustrating their desire for development within existing urban areas, finds a new University of Maryland study based on interviews with a representative group of stakeholders.
"Just about everyone feels squeezed between a rock and a hard place - wanting development where state laws intend to promote growth, but often seeing it thwarted by both local opposition and regulatory barriers," says study co-author Gerrit Knaap, who directs the University of Maryland National Center for Smart Growth.
"All stakeholders express a great deal of frustration, and most urge a more coordinated system," he adds.
The report, "Barriers to Development Inside Priority Funding Areas: Perspectives of Planners, Developers, and Advocates, " is based on in-depth interviews with 47 representatives of three key stake-holder groups active in the Baltimore-Washington corridor.
The study was commissioned by NAIOP Maryland, which represents the commercial real estate industry, and the Maryland State Builders Association, which represents the state's residential builders, developers, remodelers, suppliers and contractors.
SPECIFIC FINDINGS: The researchers find that a majority of stakeholders believe it is easier to develop outside areas designated for smart growth - so-called Priority Funding Areas (PFAs). Storm water regulations, citizen opposition, and adequate public facility ordinances were the reasons most frequently cited as hindering development inside PFAs.
Earlier research by Knaap and the National Center for Smart Growth found objective indications that the state's regulatory system is "barely moving the needle on most widely accepted measures of smart growth."
The new study is one of the first systematic investigations of the perceptions of stakeholders, with knowledge based on personal experience, the researchers say.
"The findings of this report confirm what we have been saying for some time: Priority Funding Areas need to be strengthened if Maryland wants to grow smart," Knaap says. "But the unanimity of opinion is striking. The majority want more effective tools and better coordination of policies."
More than three-quarters of respondents say PFAs are only "somewhat effective" or "not effective at all."
Nearly four times as many respondents say it's more difficult to develop land inside than outside PFAs.
High rise apartments and mixed use developments are viewed as the most difficult products to develop within PFAs.
Zoning and the adequacy of infrastructure are viewed as the most influential public policy tools.
PARTICIPANTS: The planners interviewed included representatives from the twelve counties in the study area as well as the eight largest municipalities with zoning and planning authority.
The policy advocates ranged from staff of local community-based groups, to staffers at prominent statewide nonprofit agencies.
The developers interviewed were from a diverse group, including firms specializing in mixed-use urban-infill development; traditional single-family residential development, and commercial development.
While the sample size is too small to support rigorous statistical analysis, the researchers say the study is indicative of widely held perceptions.
RECOMMENDATIONS: The report lists a series of recommendations that it says are needed for state and local governments to balance economic development, population growth and improve the water quality in the Chesapeake Bay.
These include steps designed to integrate PFA targets more fully into a county's overall planning process; make sure that PFAs are drawn to accommodate non-residential development and mixed-use projects; give local governments greater flexibility in defining the PFAs, provided they adequately restrict growth in other locations; give local areas greater flexibility to reduce infrastructure and other regulatory restrictions within the PFAs; among other incentives designed to make development in PFAs more attractive to developers and local governments.
"If the system is to work more smoothly, areas designated for smart growth need to be practical and attractive for all parties, and that entails building a lot more flexibility into the system," Knaap concludes. "State and local governments need to assure there is capacity and political support to grow inside PFAs."
###
COMPLETE REPORT AVAILABLE ONLINE: http://ter.ps/7j
Located at the University of Maryland, College Park, the National Center for Smart Growth is a non-partisan center for research and leadership training on smart growth and related land use issues in Maryland, in metropolitan regions around the nation, and in Asia and Europe.
Maggie Haslam, communicator
UMD School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation
202-258-8946
maggiehaslam6@gmail.com
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
This post originally appeared on the American Express OPEN Forum, where Mashable regularly contributes articles about leveraging social media and technology in small business.
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Public release date: 18-Jan-2012
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