Friday, December 23, 2011
Solar Cells Made From a Spreadable Nanoparticle Paste
Obama, Biden welcome home US commander in Iraq (AP)
JOINT BASE ANDREWS, Md. ? Blending solemn tradition with joyous reunion, the top commander of U.S. forces in Iraq returned home to U.S. soil Tuesday, greeted by his wife and his president in an understated ceremony to mark the end of the nine-year conflict.
President Barack Obama met Gen. Lloyd Austin and his top command staff with a smart salute at this military post in suburban Washington. Austin made his homecoming with his staff bearing the U.S. Forces-Iraq flag, the symbolic conclusion to the war.
Obama was accompanied by Vice President Joe Biden. Though neither offered formal remarks, both greeted the troops and their families.
Those families, however, had to await the ritual return of the flag before embracing their loved ones. Under Army custom the flag will be retired and either stored or displayed.
"Today we bring home the colors to United States soil, at the same time we embrace many of our own back into the fold just in time for the holidays," Gen. Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told the returning men and women. "Welcome home."
The last U.S. troops withdrew from Iraq on Sunday. In a visible reminder of the conflict, Dempsey, Austin and the troops who accompanied him wore their combat uniforms.
With Obama, an early opponent of the war, sitting nearby, Austin praised the war's outcome.
"What our troops achieved in Iraq over the course of nearly nine years is truly remarkable," he said. "Together with our coalition partners and core of dedicated civilians, they removed a brutal dictator and gave the Iraqi people their freedom."
Later, at the White House, Obama referred to the ceremony while calling for House Republicans to accept a Senate bipartisan compromise to extend a payroll tax cut for two months.
"These Americans and all Americans who served are the embodiment of courage, and selflessness and patriotism," Obama said during a surprise appearance in the White House briefing room. "They work as a team and they do their job. And they do it for something bigger than themselves."
"The people in this town need to learn something from them."
Dempsey and Austin saluted military families and Dempsey also singled out the USO and its history of entertaining troops during wars. Among those in the audience were former NBA star Robert Horry, a participant in a current USO holiday tour.
As the ceremony concluded, Obama waded into a teary and jubilant scene of reunion as troops and their families hugged and posed for photographs.
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Thursday, December 22, 2011
Easy deficit trim: Ax the dollar bill (Politico)
There?s been a lot of talk recently, on Capitol Hill and elsewhere, about shared sacrifice. Recently, Congress empowered the supercommittee to come up with a 10-year, $1.2 trillion deficit-reduction plan. That would have been no small feat, and the lawmakers did bruit about various ideas to eliminate government waste, streamline the Tax Code and cut discretionary spending.
Well, here?s a modest proposal ? something that could save us billions of dollars without raising taxes or cutting programs. It?s time to eliminate the $1 greenback.
Continue ReadingEach year, the United States produces roughly 4 billion $1 bills; most of these are needed just to replace the 3 billion $1 bills that are pulled from circulation, shredded and sent to landfills annually. At the same time, a $1 coin lasts for 30 years or longer ? check your pockets if you don?t believe me ? and during its lifetime, it could do the job of up to 17 $1 dollar notes.
The government?s own watchdog, the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office, has long advocated the elimination of the dollar bill. Its most recent report in March estimated that switching from a $1 bill to a $1 coin would save at least $5.5 billion over 30 years. Previous studies, dating back to 1990, have put the savings at more than half a billion per year. If we had listened to the GAO the first time, we could already have saved more than $10 billion. I don?t know about you, but where I come from, that?s real money.
Think about it. Everyone would rightly scoff at the notion of using paper for pennies, nickels, dimes and quarters. How does it make any more sense to continue using a dollar bill, which today has the value of a 1970s quarter? The fact is, ?paper? currency ? actually a cotton/linen composite ? is not very durable. It would cost us too much to have to replace those low-value coins over and over again. So, we make low denominations out of alloys.
Similarly, the paper dollar was never intended to be heavily traded when it was initially introduced 150 years ago. In 1860, when Abraham Lincoln was campaigning for president, a dollar bill could buy a quarter acre of land or cover the cost of renting a room for an entire month. A dollar was more than a day?s wage for a laborer.
So most small transactions were made in coin. That?s not true today, and it is costing us money. A lot of money.
This is the primary reason nearly every other major economy retired its low-denomination paper money decades ago. Those countries have proved that significant benefits exist, so this is not just theory. Indeed, when Canada made the transition 25 years ago, the savings realized were more than ten times government estimates.
Average Americans are demanding that Washington find reasonable debt-reduction measures. Abandoning the dollar bill is one simple option that can get us started. A January 2011 poll by the Tarrance Group and Hart Research revealed that the public actually favors a dollar coin transition by a 2-to-1 margin after they understand the cost savings.
Sometimes, it can be hard to see easy solutions because we are simply stuck in our old ways of thinking. The supercommittee?s inability to agree on a deficit-reduction solution and the partisan infighting that accompanied it underscore that we should focus on areas where both Republicans and Democrats can agree ? solutions that help reduce our deficit and save billions without cutting programs or raising taxes. In today?s climate, it will become harder and harder to ignore this simple, common-sense change.
Former Rep. Jim Kolbe, a Republican, served Arizona?s 8th Congressional District from 1985 to 2007. He is currently a senior transatlantic fellow at the German Marshall Fund, senior adviser at McLarty Associates and honorary chairman of the Dollar Coin Alliance.
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