Bio-Chemist Dr. Lino Gonzalez

Bio-Chemist Dr. Lino Gonzalez talked about his education, background and current work at Genentech labs. This event, which took place at Ohlone College, was sponsored by SACNAS Ohlone College Chapter. Videos part 1-5 are located here >>>

Bio-Chemist Dr. Lino Gonzalez

Bio-Chemist Dr. Lino Gonzalez talked about his education, background and current work at Genentech labs. This event, which took place at Ohlone College, was sponsored by SACNAS Ohlone College Chapter. Videos part 2-5 are located at
http://www.youtube.com/user/profricka/videos


Part 1 (14:34)

What is the fiscal cliff?

By JACKIE CALMES, New York Times

Published: November 15, 2012

Many Americans must be wondering: What is all this about a “fiscal cliff”? And why did it receive so little attention during the presidential campaign?

Well, it’s complicated — the so-called cliff, that is. And most solutions are politically painful. In a rare show of bipartisanship, or mutual protection, both parties ducked the debate until after the election. What follows is an attempt to demystify the issue, which President Obama and the lame-duck Congress now are struggling over, and which may occupy them right through the holidays.

Q. What is the fiscal cliff?

A. The term refers to more than $500 billion in tax increases and across-the-board spending cuts scheduled to take effect after Jan. 1 — for fiscal year 2013 alone — unless Mr. Obama and Republicans reach an alternative deficit-reduction deal. Ben Bernanke, the chairman of the Federal Reserve, who is not known for catchy phrases, coined the metaphor “fiscal cliff” last winter to warn of the dangerous yet avoidable drop-off ahead in the nation’s fiscal path. It stuck.

Q. If we go over this so-called cliff, what happens?

A. Taxes would rise for nearly every taxpayer and many businesses. Financing for most federal programs, military and domestic, would be cut. Many economists say that while annual budget deficits are too high, these new taxes and spending cuts would be too much deficit reduction, too suddenly, for a weak economy. More than $500 billion equals roughly 3 percent to 4 percent of gross domestic product. The Congressional Budget Office has said the result would be a short recession, though some analysts say the measures could be managed so they do less damage. “Slope,” they argue, is a better metaphor than cliff.

Q. Exactly what tax increases are in store?

A. When a tax cut expires, the practical effect is a tax increase. And a slew of tax cuts — $400 billion for 2013 — expire on Dec. 31: All of the Bush-era rate reductions; smaller tax cuts that periodically expire for businesses and individuals; and the 2-percentage-point cut in payroll taxes that Mr. Obama pushed in 2010, which increased an average worker’s take-home pay by about $1,000 a year.

Also, 28 million taxpayers — about one in five, all middle- to upper-income — would have to pay the alternative minimum tax in 2012, raising their taxes more. That is because Congress has failed to pass an inflation adjustment, as it usually does, to restrict the number of taxpayers subject to the alternative minimum largely to the affluent.

Q. What spending would be cut?

A. An emergency unemployment-compensation program is expiring, which would save $26 billion but end payments to millions of Americans who remain jobless and have exhausted state benefits. Medicare payments to doctors would be reduced 27 percent, or $11 billion, because this year Congress has not passed the usual so-called “doc fix” to block the cuts, which otherwise are required by a 1990s cost-control law.

The biggest cut would be $65 billion, enacted across the board for most federal programs over the last nine months of fiscal year 2013, from January through September. This cut, known as the sequester, was mandated by an August 2011 budget deal between Mr. Obama and Congress that ended their standoff over raising the nation’s debt limit. In that deal, they agreed to reduce spending by $1 trillion over 10 years and to identify an additional $1.2 trillion in savings by January 2013. If they fail to agree on the second installment — as is the case so far — the automatic cuts will kick in.

Q. Why did the parties create such a fiscal and economic threat?

A. It was part intentional, part coincidental.

The intentional: Since Ronald Reagan’s administration, with mixed results, presidents and Congresses have occasionally mandated a self-imposed future crisis to force themselves to agree on unpopular tax and spending actions. In that spirit, the idea behind the August 2011 deal was that Republicans would so greatly fear the military cuts, and Democrats the domestic spending cuts, that they would negotiate a deficit-reduction alternative by the Jan. 1 deadline.

The coincidental: The measures from the 2011 deal are set to take effect at the same time as the changes to jobless benefits, the alternative minimum tax adjustment and the Medicare “doc fix,” and the expiration of the Bush tax cuts — a confluence that the two parties did not fully expect back in August 2011. The nation will also reach its debt ceiling in January, creating additional uncertainty. Accounting maneuvers by the Treasury Department could push that deadline to March, but Mr. Obama wants a debt-limit increase as part of any deal, adding another item to the agenda.

Q. Can’t Democrats and Republicans agree on anything here?

A. They actually agree on a lot. Neither side favors the sequester, an expanded alternative minimum tax or Medicare cuts for doctors; the issue in preventing those outcomes is where to find offsetting savings to avoid adding to annual deficits. And both parties want to extend all of the Bush tax cuts for 98 percent of taxpayers — on income below $250,000 for couples and on income below $200,000 for individuals.

Their main disagreement is a familiar one: the Bush rates on income above that, for the top 2 percent of taxpayers. Mr. Obama campaigned against the rates in 2008 and in 2012. In December 2010, when the Bush tax cuts originally were to expire, Mr. Obama reluctantly agreed to extend all of them for two years in exchange for Republicans’ support for the temporary payroll tax cut and extended jobless aid. This time, he swears, is different.

Q. If the president extended all the Bush rates once, why wouldn’t he do so again for the right concessions?

A. The economy was weaker in 2010, and so was Mr. Obama. Republicans had just triumphed in the midterm elections, taking control of the House. Now Mr. Obama is fresh off re-election, and Congressional Democrats have gained seats. He vows that he will not allow the top tax rate to stay at 35 percent; a return to 39.6 percent would raise about $1 trillion over 10 years. Chastened Republicans have suggested they would support higher revenues, but only from limiting tax deductions for high-income taxpayers, not from higher rates. Mr. Obama has not ruled out a compromise that would limit deductions as well as setting the top rate above 35 percent but below 39.6 percent.

Q. What now? Might they really reach an impasse?

A. No one knows. Despite market jitters about that outcome, Democrats suggest that they are willing to let Jan. 1 come and go without resolution unless Republicans relent on the top rate. That could simply be bravado, to make Republicans blink. A Washington Post-Pew Research Center poll this week found that a majority of Americans would blame Republicans for failure.

Q. Is there a best-case outcome here?

A. Many budget experts and economists are hoping for a two-part deal. The first part would extend many of the tax cuts and repeal the automatic spending cuts to avert the changes scheduled after Jan. 1. But it would be contingent on the second part: a framework for reducing projected long-term deficits by overhauling both the tax code — to raise revenues — and entitlement programs — chiefly Medicare and Medicaid, whose rising costs in an aging population are unsustainable. Those overhauls would preoccupy Mr. Obama and Congress through 2013 and perhaps 2014.

Such an agreement would set specific targets for new tax revenue and spending cuts to reduce deficits by about $4 trillion over a decade, giving Congress and the president more time to work out the details. If they failed to do so, presumably other automatic changes might be in store as an enforcement action — setting up yet another looming deadline.

A version of this article appeared in print on November 16, 2012, on page A20 of the New York edition with the headline: Demystifying the Fiscal Impasse That Is Vexing Washington.

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How to manage your flight connections

By Ed Perkins

Tribune Media Services

Posted:   11/08/2012 11:09:01 AM PST

I recently reserved flights on United from my home airport, Medford, Ore., to New York, with a connection at San Francisco. My connection was a bit more than an hour, so I thought I'd be fine. But a week before departure, I started checking the on-time performance of my flight from Medford to San Francisco. I quickly found that, out of the seven days before departure, that flight would have made my connection only once -- the other days it was either delayed an hour or more or canceled outright.

Accordingly, I called United and asked if it could transfer me to an earlier flight, which it did, fortunately without any extra fee.

So instead of leaving Medford at a civilized time of 10:11 a.m., I had to get up at 5 a.m. for an 8:11 a.m. flight, leaving me with a boring 3½-hour wait at SFO rather than the convenient 65 minutes I had originally booked. But when departure day finally arrived, that wait shrunk substantially. Our early flight was held up on the ground for an hour and a half before leaving, so we actually arrived with a bit less than two hours to connect. That cushion was appreciated, given that most United Express flights and code-shared flights on US Airways at SFO now use the US Airways gates in Terminal 1, and connecting travelers have to schlep on shuttle buses to United's primary gates at Terminal 3.

The net result was that I made the connection comfortably. And to cap the story, I checked the arrivals board before getting on the New York flight; sure enough, my original flight from Medford had been canceled.

The purpose of this story isn't to pat myself on the back for being such a smart traveler; it's to illustrate that connections are among the most frustrating elements of air travel -- and given today's air travel, that's quite an accomplishment. My story is by no means unique; many of you face the same challenges.

Here's how to manage your itineraries to avoid the worst problems:

- Avoid connecting entirely. Where possible, get a nonstop flight, even if it costs a bit more. And if you normally use a smaller airport that lacks nonstops to your destination, consider driving to the closest hub that does offer nonstops rather than flying. Medford is a tough case; driving takes five hours to Portland and at least six to San Francisco. But anytime you can drive to a hub airport in three hours or less, drive. As an advantage, you'll probably find lower fares.

-Check your flight's history. If you can't avoid connecting, check on your first flight's on-time record. You have two approaches:

1. Airlines are supposed to post average monthly figures for each flight, showing the percentages of times it was delayed or canceled. When I checked, Alaska, American, Southwest, United and US Airways all provided links to that information for each flight display; I couldn't find it on Delta, but it must be in there somewhere. The problem with this system is that the data are not current: In mid-October, figures show for the month of August.

2. FlightStats (flightstats.com) provides both current (same-day) information and historical compilations for most domestic flights. You can also slice and dice the data almost any way you want. To remove duplication from the display, click the "omit codeshares" button.

- Pad your connecting time. Today's typical published minimum connecting times leave almost no slack for any minor glitch. Official times for domestic-to-domestic flights can be as little as 30 minutes.

Supposedly, any connection your airline books compensates for connecting times. But those can be misleading: In United's case, for example, connections at Boston, Chicago, Houston, Newark, N.J., and San Francisco involve inter-terminal shuttles, some requiring exiting and re-entering security, and many international airports require terminal transfer outside security.

Most airlines' official contracts allow you to pad your schedule up to four hours at connecting airports and, if schedules allow, an extra hour or two can mean the difference between making and missing a connection.

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Ohlone SACNAS Team at Graham Elementary School