Case Study; The progress of the Clinton Administration 1993-2000

• Longest economic expansion in American history
  The President’s strategy of fiscal discipline, open foreign markets and investments in the American people helped create the conditions for a record 115 months of economic expansion. Our economy has grown at an average of 4 percent per year since 1993.

• More than 22 million new jobs
  More than 22 million jobs were created in less than eight years -- the most ever under a single administration, and more than were created in the previous twelve years.

• Highest homeownership in American history
  A strong economy and fiscal discipline kept interest rates low, making it possible for more families to buy homes. The homeownership rate increased from 64.2 percent in 1992 to 67. 7 percent, the highest rate ever.

• Lowest unemployment in 30 years
  Unemployment dropped from more than 7 percent in 1993 to just 4.0 percent in November 2000. Unemployment for African Americans and Hispanics fell to the lowest rates on record, and the rate for women is the lowest in more than 40 years.

• Raised education standards, increased school choice, and doubled education and training investment
  Since 1992, reading and math scores have increased for 4th, 8th, and 12th graders, math SAT scores are at a 30-year high, the number of charter schools has grown from 1 to more than 2,000, forty-nine states have put in place standards in core subjects and federal investment in education and training has doubled.

• Largest expansion of college opportunity since the GI Bill
  President Clinton and Vice President Gore have nearly doubled financial aid for students by increasing Pell Grants to the largest award ever, expanding Federal Work-Study to allow 1 million students to work their way through college, and by creating new tax credits and scholarships such as Lifetime Learning tax credits and the HOPE scholarship. At the same time, taxpayers have saved $18 billion due to the decline in student loan defaults, increased collections and savings from the direct student loan program.

• Connected 95 percent of schools to the Internet
  President Clinton and Vice President Gore’s new commitment to education technology, including the E-Rate and a 3,000 percent increase in educational technology funding, increased the percentage of schools connected to the Internet from 35 percent in 1994 to 95 percent in 1999.

• Lowest crime rate in 26 years
  Because of President Clinton’s comprehensive anti-crime strategy of tough penalties, more police, and smart prevention, as well as common sense gun safety laws, the overall crime rate declined for 8 consecutive years, the longest continuous drop on record, and is at the lowest level since 1973.

• 100,000 more police for our streets
  As part of the 1994 Crime Bill, President Clinton enacted a new initiative to fund 100,000 community police officers. To date more than 11,000 law enforcement agencies have received COPS funding.

• Enacted most sweeping gun safety legislation in a generation
  Since the President signed the Brady bill in 1993, more than 600,000 felons, fugitives, and other prohibited persons have been stopped from buying guns. Gun crime has declined 40 percent since 1992.

• Family and Medical Leave Act for 20 million Americans
  To help parents succeed at work and at home, President Clinton signed the Family and Medical Leave Act in 1993. Over 20 million Americans have taken unpaid leave to care for a newborn child or sick family member.

• Smallest welfare rolls in 32 years
  The President pledged to end welfare as we know it and signed landmark bipartisan welfare reform legislation in 1996. Since then, caseloads have been cut in half, to the lowest level since 1968, and millions of parents have joined the workforce. People on welfare today are five times more likely to be working than in 1992.

• Higher incomes at all levels
  After falling by nearly $2,000 between 1988 and 1992, the median family’s income rose by $6,338, after adjusting for inflation, since 1993. African American family income increased even more, rising by nearly $7,000 since 1993. After years of stagnant income growth among average and lower income families, all income brackets experienced double-digit growth since 1993. The bottom 20 percent saw the largest income growth at 16.3 percent.

• Lowest poverty rate in 20 years
  Since Congress passed President Clinton’s Economic Plan in 1993, the poverty rate declined from 15.1 percent to 11.8 percent last year — the largest six-year drop in poverty in nearly 30 years. There are now 7 million fewer people in poverty than in 1993. The child poverty rate declined more than 25 percent, the poverty rates for single mothers, African Americans and the elderly have dropped to their lowest levels on record, and Hispanic poverty dropped to its lowest level since 1979.

• Lowest teen birth rate in 60 years
  In his 1995 State of the Union Address, President Clinton challenged Americans to join together in a national campaign against teen pregnancy. The birth rate for teens aged 15-19 declined every year of the Clinton Presidency, from 60.7 per 1,000 teens in 1992 to a record low of 49.6 in 1999.

• Lowest infant mortality rate in American history
  The Clinton Administration expanded efforts to provide mothers and newborn children with health care. Today, a record high 82 percent of all mothers receive prenatal care. The infant mortality rate has dropped from 8.5 deaths per 1,000 in 1992 to 7.2 deaths per 1,000 in 1998, the lowest rate ever recorded.

• Deactivated more than 1,700 nuclear warheads from the former Soviet Union
  Efforts of the Clinton-Gore Administration led to the dismantling of more than 1,700 nuclear warheads, 300 launchers and 425 land and submarine based missiles from the former Soviet Union.

• Protected millions of acres of American land
  President Clinton has protected more land in the lower 48 states than any other president. He has protected 5 new national parks, designated 11 new national monuments and expanded two others and proposed protections for 60 million acres of roadless areas in America’s national forests.

• Paid off $360 billion of the national debt
  Between 1998-2000, the national debt was reduced by $363 billion — the largest three-year debt pay-down in American history. We are now on track to pay off the entire debt by 2009.

• Converted the largest budget deficit in American history to the largest surplus
  Thanks in large part to the 1993 Deficit Reduction Act, the 1997 Balanced Budget Act, and President Clinton’s call to save the surplus for debt reduction, Social Security, and Medicare solvency, America has put its fiscal house in order. The deficit was $290 billion in 1993 and expected to grow to $455 billion by this year. Instead, we have a projected surplus of $237 billion.

• Lowest government spending in three decades
  Under President Clinton federal government spending as a share of the economy has decreased from 22.2 percent in 1992 to a projected 18.5 percent in 2000, the lowest since 1966.

• Lowest federal income tax burden in 35 years
  President Clinton enacted targeted tax cuts such as the Earned Income Tax Credit expansion, $500 child tax credit, and the HOPE Scholarship and Lifetime Learning Tax Credits. Federal income taxes as a percentage of income for the typical American family have dropped to their lowest level in 35 years.

• By January 2001, more families owned stock than ever before
  The number of families owning stock in the United States increased by 40 percent since 1992.

• Most diverse cabinet in American history
  President Clinton appointed more African Americans, women and Hispanics to the Cabinet than any other President in history. He appointed the first female Attorney General, the first female Secretary of State and the first Asian American cabinet secretary ever.

Source; http://hubpages.com/hub/Bill-Clinton

Black Ops set for midnight launch

The eagerly anticipated sequel to the biggest selling video game in history goes on sale tonight.

Thousands of gamers are expected to queue at over 400 stores in the UK to get their hands on a copy of Call of Duty: Black Ops.

The title goes on sale at midnight, with special events being held in cities across the globe.

Its predecessor, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, generated more than $1 billion (£618) in sales.

That puts it in an elite club of billion-dollar entertainment giants such as James Cameron's Titanic and Michael Jackson's Thriller.

Call of Duty: Black Ops is the seventh game in the series and the third to be developed by US based developer Treyarch.

Piers Harding-Rolls, an analyst with Screen Digest, told BBC News that he thought Black Ops would do as well, if not better, that Modern Warfare 2.

"We're looking up to 18 million units sold worldwide, putting it in the same league as Modern Warfare 2," he said.

"This edition also has a [Nintendo] Wii version and while the average Wii owner probably won't be that interested, it does mean that the potential market is a bit bigger than before," he added.

Gamers play as a CIA operative or Special Forces agent; members of a clandestine agency tasked with uncovering a Soviet chemical weapon code named Nova-6 during the Cold War.

In addition to standard ground combat, Treyarch have added a mission in which users control a Russian Hind helicopter, as well as flying US spy planes.

There is also a bonus multi player level where users have to defend Washington from waves of flesh-eating zombies.

Stocking fillers

Call of Duty: Black Ops is the last of the big first-person-shooter titles to be released in the run up Christmas.

Halo Reach - the exclusive XBox 360 title released in September - sold more than 300,000 copies on its launch day, according to the games industry magazine MCV.

Medal of Honor, Call of Duty's traditional rival, has also recently had a refresh.

The latest edition courted controversy by allowing gamers to take on the role of the Taliban, prompting calls from soldiers and politicians for the game to be banned. Its publisher Electronic Arts eventually renamed the enemy forces "the Opposition".

Recent figures suggest that, despite the publicity, Medal of Honour sold less than 350,000 units in the UK. By comparison, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 sold an 1.23 million units, according to industry body Elspa.

"Medal of Honour didn't review particularly well and its still the case that those who don't have an average score [in the games press] in the 80 and 90s don't sell as well," said Mr Harding-Rolls.

Source; http://blackops.digitalwarfare247.com/

Alcohol 'more harmful than heroin'?

Alcohol is more harmful than heroin or crack, according to a study published in medical journal the Lancet.

The report is co-authored by Professor David Nutt, the former UK chief drugs adviser who was sacked by the government in October 2009.

It ranks 20 drugs on 16 measures of harm to users and to wider society.

Gavin Partington, of the Wine and Spirit Trade Association, said alcohol abuse affected "a minority" who needed "education, treatment and enforcement".

The study also said tobacco and cocaine are judged to be equally harmful, while ecstasy and LSD are among the least damaging.

Harm score

Prof Nutt refused to leave the drugs debate when he was sacked from his official post by the former Labour Home Secretary, Alan Johnson.

He went on to form the Independent Scientific Committee on Drugs, a body which aims to investigate the drug issue without any political interference.

One of its other members is Dr Les King, another former government adviser who quit over Prof Nutt's treatment.

Members of the group, joined by two other experts, scored each drug for harms including mental and physical damage, addiction, crime and costs to the economy and communities.

study involved 16 criteria, including a drug's affects on users' physical and mental health, social harms including crime, "family adversities" and environmental damage, economic costs and "international damage".

The modelling exercise concluded that heroin, crack and methylamphetamine, also known as crystal meth, were the most harmful drugs to individuals, but alcohol, heroin and crack cocaine were the most harmful to society.

When the scores for both types of harm were added together, alcohol emerged as the most harmful drug, followed by heroin and crack.

'Valid and necessary'

The findings run contrary to the government's long-established drug classification system, but the paper's authors argue that their system - based on the consensus of experts - provides an accurate assessment of harm for policy makers.

"Our findings lend support to previous work in the UK and the Netherlands, confirming that the present drug classification systems have little relation to the evidence of harm," the paper says.

"They also accord with the conclusions of previous expert reports that aggressively targeting alcohol harms is a valid and necessary public health strategy."

In 2007, Prof Nutt and colleagues undertook a limited attempt to create a harm ranking system, sparking controversy over the criteria and the findings.

The new more complex system ranked alcohol three times more harmful than cocaine or tobacco. Ecstasy was ranked as causing one-eighth the harm of alcohol.

It also contradicted the Home Office's decision to make so-called legal high mephedrone a Class B drug, saying that alcohol was five times more harmful. The rankings have been published to coincide with a conference on drugs policy, organised by Prof Nutt's committee.

'Extraordinary lengths'

Prof Nutt told the BBC: "Overall, alcohol is the most harmful drug because it's so widely used.

"Crack cocaine is more addictive than alcohol but because alcohol is so widely used there are hundreds of thousands of people who crave alcohol every day, and those people will go to extraordinary lengths to get it."

He said it was important to separate harm to individuals and harm to society.

The Lancet paper written by Prof Nutt, Dr King and Dr Lawrence Phillips, does not examine the harm caused to users by taking more than one drug at a time.

Mr Partington, who is the spokesman for the Wine and Spirit Trade Association, said millions of people enjoyed alcohol "as part of a regular and enjoyable social drink".

"Clearly alcohol misuse is a problem in the country and our real fear is that, by talking in such extreme terms, Professor Nutt and his colleagues risk switching people off from considering the real issues and the real action that is needed to tackle alcohol misuse," he said.

"We are talking about a minority. We need to focus policy around that minority, which is to do with education, treatment and enforcement."

A Home Office spokesman said: "Our priorities are clear - we want to reduce drug use, crack down on drug-related crime and disorder and help addicts come off drugs for good."

Source; http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-11660210