Held each year in late-February, this course concentrates on the President’s new fiscal year defense budget proposal and how Congress responds to it. Experienced faculty members explore and study key documents, charts and graphs, budget allocations and projections provided in this budget.

photo credit: AN HONORABLE GERMAN

The defense budget request is carefully analyzed, focusing on winners and losers, DoD’s budget authority by title, weapons systems, budget by service, military transformation and Congress’ response.

Approved for 0.6 CEUs from George Mason University.

February 23, 2012, 8:30 am to 4:15 pm

Where: Washington, DC


This is an elective course for the Certificate in Congressional Operations.

More information and secure online registration: TheDefenseBudget.com

This course and any combination of its topics can be tailored for custom on-site presentation at your location.

For over 30 years, TheCapitol.Net and its predecessor, Congressional Quarterly Executive Conferences, have been training professionals from government, military, business, and NGOs on the dynamics and operations of the legislative and executive branches and how to work with them.

Our training courses, publications, and audio courses include congressional operations, legislative and budget process, communication and advocacy, media and public relations, testifying before Congress, research skills, legislative drafting, critical thinking and writing, and more.

TheCapitol.Net is on the GSA Schedule, 874-4, for custom on-site training. GSA Contract GS02F0192X

TheCapitol.Net is a non-partisan firm.

• Hide From Google – a how-to from WIRED
• Corporatism Is Not the Free Market – “Young people coming of age in the Internet’s decentralized and wide-open market of ideas and merchandise can’t be expected to show enthusiasm for a system that protects entrenched corporations from the forces of competition. Moreover ‘the legitimacy of corporatism is eroding along with the fiscal health of governments that have relied on it.’”
• Property and Disputes Over Property – “For over a century England’s judicial system decided land disputes by ordering disputants’ legal representatives to bludgeon one another before an arena of spectating citizens. The victor won the property right for his principal. The vanquished lost his cause and, if he were unlucky, his life. People called these combats trials by battle.”
• Non-Citizen Voters in Florida – “The non-citizen voters were discovered because they said to be excused from jury service due to their lack of citizenship. The question now is whether this report is symptomatic of a larger problem in Florida, if not elsewhere, or a relatively isolated problem.”
• I earn my entire living on Craigslist. Ask Me Almost Anything
• Sister Feng Hands Out Flyers to Seek a Husband in New York
• “Frequent-Flier Tax Traps,” by Laura Sanders, WSJ, February 4, 2012 – “‘The issues surrounding frequent-flier miles are a perfect example of how complex the income-tax law can be concerning everyday transactions for virtually every American,’ says Michael Graetz, a professor at Columbia University Law School and a former top Treasury official.” (emphasis on understatement added)

• Free Carlos Miller – “It’s easy enough to claim that he was doing something to “obstruct” the police. Any allegation will do, plus they can always jazz it up with some officer safety references and put on the scared police officer face when they tell the judge about their split second decisions and how they do it for the children. But deleting his images can’t be explained. Seize him. Seize the camera. That’s one thing. Deleting the content of the camera takes the officers allegations into an entirely different arena.”
• Hammer Time Rewind: Depreciation Kills – “In most cases, car buyers get more bang for their buck (power, features, etc.), lower up-front costs, and lower depreciation costs simply by buying a used example of a less well known/accepted car.”
• “Cheap natural gas jumbles energy markets, stirs fears it could inhibit renewables” – “Can an energy source be all that bad if it scares the two most heavily subsidized sectors of the electric power generation industry?”
• Bacon Butter … and Coffee – “It was good! I’ll still stick to Coconut Oil in my coffee on most days… due to the many benefits of Coconut Oil.”
• NYC agent arrested in latest TSA theft allegation – “A Transportation Security Administration agent stole $5,000 in cash from a passenger’s jacket as he was going through security at John F. Kennedy International Airport, authorities said Thursday, the latest in a string of thefts that has embarrassed the agency.”
• “Why French Parents Are Superior,” by Pamela Druckerman, WSJ, February 4, 2012 – “The French, I found, seem to have a whole different framework for raising kids. When I asked French parents how they disciplined their children, it took them a few beats just to understand what I meant. ‘Ah, you mean how do we educate them?’ they asked.” Say what you mean and mean what you say.

photo credit: anokarina

• “Sugar May Be Bad, But Is the Alternative Worse?,” by Brandon Keim, WIRED, February 3, 2012 – “Some studies even suggest that fake sugar may cause the same problems as real sugar. … Another study of 6,184 adult Americans linked diet soda consumption with higher rates of metabolic syndrome, the umbrella term for a physiological disruption that leads to heart disease, stroke and type 2 diabetes.” Most people are best served avoiding anything containing wheat or sugar (see next link).
• Myocardial infraction – “people who follow the basic advice of the Track Your Plaque program to do such simple things as eliminate wheat, don’t indulge in junk carbohydrates, normalize vitamin D status, supplement omega-3 fatty acids, supplement iodine and correct any thyroid dysfunction . . . well, they have no heart attacks.”
• “Did Early Humans Ride the Waves to Australia?” by Matt Ridley, WSJ, February 4, 2012 – “Everybody is African in origin. Barring a smattering of genes from Neanderthals and other archaic Asian forms, all our ancestors lived in the continent of Africa until 150,000 years ago.”
• “Let’s tickle the ivories,” by David Dubal – “There is an old proverb that goes ‘Play the piano daily and stay sane.’ … Playing the piano teaches one much, especially humility.”
• Programmer 101: Teach Yourself How to Code
• Seven ideas for learning how to program – Chad Perrin
• Congressman Hurt To Discover Lobbyist Not Really His Friend

For over 30 years, TheCapitol.Net and its predecessor, Congressional Quarterly Executive Conferences, have been training professionals from government, military, business, and NGOs on the dynamics and operations of the legislative and executive branches and how to work with them.

Our training courses, publications, and audio courses include congressional operations, legislative and budget process, communication and advocacy, media and public relations, testifying before Congress, research skills, legislative drafting, critical thinking and writing, and more.

TheCapitol.Net is on the GSA Schedule, 874-4, for custom on-site training. GSA Contract GS02F0192X

TheCapitol.Net is a non-partisan firm.

photo credit: besar bears

The truth is that early Chinese immigrants in California and the rest of the West were no different from white Europeans. They embarked on the transpacific journey with ambition that a contemporary Chinese folk song called “as deep as the ocean and as high as the sky.” They were just as resourceful and just as willing to try anything.
. . .
In the census records of the Western frontier between 1860 and 1880 a number of Chinese are regularly listed as gamblers, alongside their countrymen with the more mundane professions of miners, laundrymen, cooks, restaurant owners, merchants, and domestic servants.

“Chinese America,” by Peter Kwong and Dusanka Miscevic (The New Press 2005), pages 3-4, ISBN 1565849620

Also see:

• Jeremy Lin represents
• Yao Ming – Wikipedia
• 1882 Project: American Civil Rights and the Chinese Exclusion Laws

For over 30 years, TheCapitol.Net and its predecessor, Congressional Quarterly Executive Conferences, have been training professionals from government, military, business, and NGOs on the dynamics and operations of the legislative and executive branches and how to work with them.

Our training courses, publications, and audio courses include congressional operations, legislative and budget process, communication and advocacy, media and public relations, testifying before Congress, research skills, legislative drafting, critical thinking and writing, and more.

TheCapitol.Net is on the GSA Schedule, 874-4, for custom on-site training. GSA Contract GS02F0192X

TheCapitol.Net is a non-partisan firm.

photo credit: anoldent

Pump up the volume by placing your iPhone / iPod in a bowl – the concave shape amplifies the music.

RealSimple

(Also see “700+ New Uses For Old Things“)

More clever ideas and clever tools

• Cool Tools
• Festival of Frugality
• Home Ec 101
• New Nostalgia
• Squawkfox
• The Dollar Stretcher
• ToolMonger

For over 30 years, TheCapitol.Net and its predecessor, Congressional Quarterly Executive Conferences, have been training professionals from government, military, business, and NGOs on the dynamics and operations of the legislative and executive branches and how to work with them.

Our training courses, publications, and audio courses include congressional operations, legislative and budget process, communication and advocacy, media and public relations, testifying before Congress, research skills, legislative drafting, critical thinking and writing, and more.

TheCapitol.Net is on the GSA Schedule, 874-4, for custom on-site training. GSA Contract GS02F0192X

TheCapitol.Net is a non-partisan firm.

photo credit: winkyintheuk

• It’s a dog eat dog world in Southeast Asia – “Canine cuisine in Vietnam, Korea and parts of China is nothing new”
• Half of Fortune 500s, US Govt. Still Infected with DNSChanger Trojan – Krebs on Security
• Appropriate Office Attire – “When your mantra is to look like you’re going someplace better later, then you have permission to add that signature flourish which sets you apart.”
• In Praise of Kindergarten Style Payback
• Notes on legislative power accumulation: adding and extracting value – “contrary to what your cynical uncle says … if Members [of Congress] did not concern themselves with getting re-elected, both the theoretical and practical underpinnings of republican representation tend to fall apart.”
• Transparency in college admissions – “Schools like Harvard and Princeton brag that each year they reject numerous applicants such as Jian Li (who filed a complaint against Princeton) who score a perfect 2400 on the SAT. How would we feel if it were revealed that almost all of these rejected top scorers, year after year, were Asian-Americans? I challenge Harvard and Princeton to refute this possibility.”
• Obama’s Neocon Moment – “[President Obama] believes, as his predecessor did, in the necessity of the U.S. military to act beyond its constitutionally mandated function, put out any fires that flare across the globe, and underwrite world security.”
• “Reid: This year’s budget is done,” by Vicki Needham, The Hill
• Pedants Are Revolting: Grammar Nitpick Sparks Barnyard Henpeck – “All the usual characters show up for the Hobbesian copyedit of all against all. Even the romantic who sings that we must cast aside these Latinate chains that bind our rough Teutonic tongue and give full Nordic will to the Queen’s English.”
• Social Media and Email Are More Addictive Than Alcohol and Cigarettes
• A Quick and Beautiful Online Course About Bone Biology from Amgen
• Shop is Not a Four-Letter Word – “There is nothing wrong with the hands-on education your father received. Actually, it was alright, but somewhere along the way, we forgot just how lost we’d be as a society without it.”
• High Society: Washington’s Love Affair With Marijuana – “‘This is a town where I could probably kill 200 major careers if I wanted to be a complete prick,’ says Allen St. Pierre, executive director of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML).” Make that 201.

For over 30 years, TheCapitol.Net and its predecessor, Congressional Quarterly Executive Conferences, have been training professionals from government, military, business, and NGOs on the dynamics and operations of the legislative and executive branches and how to work with them.

Our training courses, publications, and audio courses include congressional operations, legislative and budget process, communication and advocacy, media and public relations, testifying before Congress, research skills, legislative drafting, critical thinking and writing, and more.

TheCapitol.Net is on the GSA Schedule, 874-4, for custom on-site training. GSA Contract GS02F0192X

TheCapitol.Net is a non-partisan firm.

photo credit: uzi978

For over 30 years, TheCapitol.Net and its predecessor, Congressional Quarterly Executive Conferences, have been training professionals from government, military, business, and NGOs on the dynamics and operations of the legislative and executive branches and how to work with them.

Our training courses, publications, and audio courses include congressional operations, legislative and budget process, communication and advocacy, media and public relations, testifying before Congress, research skills, legislative drafting, critical thinking and writing, and more.

TheCapitol.Net is on the GSA Schedule, 874-4, for custom on-site training. GSA Contract GS02F0192X

TheCapitol.Net is a non-partisan firm.

photo credit: Northfielder

• 12 More Law Schools Sued Over Reporting of Law Grad Employment and Salary Stats – ABA Journal
• Graffiti artist who took shares instead of cash for painting Facebook’s first HQ seven years ago to make $200MILLION in stock market float – you can make money as an artist!
• Demographics and stock prices – Grumpy Economist
• The Biggest Career Mistakes Millennials Make – more good advice from Susannah Breslin
• For Romney and Paul, a strategic alliance between establishment and outsider – WaPo
• Required Reading – should Members of Congress certify that they had read a bill before they vote? Matt Glassman
• “The Most Important Secret Of A Prosperous Economy,” by Jim Powell, Forbes, January 16, 2012
• “House to live-stream committee proceedings,” by Debbie Siegelbaum, The Hill, February 2, 2012
• “The Accordion Family,” by Katherine S. Newman, The Chronicle, January 29, 2011 – “Though he is a skilled worker, Giovanni knows he could not enjoy himself with his friends as he does if he had to support himself entirely on his own earnings. But because he pays no rent and can eat well at his mother’s table, his living expenses are low, leaving money for recreation.”

For over 30 years, TheCapitol.Net and its predecessor, Congressional Quarterly Executive Conferences, have been training professionals from government, military, business, and NGOs on the dynamics and operations of the legislative and executive branches and how to work with them.

Our training courses, publications, and audio courses include congressional operations, legislative and budget process, communication and advocacy, media and public relations, testifying before Congress, research skills, legislative drafting, critical thinking and writing, and more.

TheCapitol.Net is on the GSA Schedule, 874-4, for custom on-site training. GSA Contract GS02F0192X

TheCapitol.Net is a non-partisan firm.

Died. Moman Pruiett, 73, shaggy-browed Oklahoma criminal lawyer; of pneumonia; in Oklahoma City. Sent to jail for robbery at age 18, he vowed “I’ll open the doors of your damned prisons!” Later he became so expert at bringing tears to backwoods jurors’ eyes (343 murder cases, 303 acquittals, no executions) that he was considered a menace to the community.

photo credit: by and by

But in America we have ever considered this as being the work of savage beasts and we have shrunk from these brutal instruments as we have shrunk from the monarch’s heel; and as a righteous reaction from the ancient code of infamy and savagery, we have placed in our Constitution provisions that have for their purpose the preventing of prosecutors from forcing defendants to bear testimony against themselves. The wise Fathers of this great republic–men of foresight, vision and governmental genius who peered into the future as far as human eyes could see, saw the furies of the morrows, all the hatreds yet to be–knew that such men would walk the earth in the future as they had in the past, who would be willing that the defendants should bear testimony against themselves; wherefore they enacted as the Fifth Amendment to the Federal Constitution the provision that no person shall be compelled in criminal cases to be a witness against himself.
. . .
In the dark ages that have slumbered in the vicious vistas of the days long ago, when the individual had no right for which to fight and for which to contend–when the prerogatives belonged to the Monarch, Governor Johnston’s theories were in vogue. But man has advanced in many ways and we may well assume that if there is anything now settled or ever to be settled in our courts of justice as an act of procedure, it is, let us hope, that the defendant shall ever have that glorious right and sovereign prerogative of a public trial, and then and there in open court to be confronted by his accusers. This law has ever hinged on the principle that these trials are to be public–that these witnesses are to appear in the self-same public court and then and there be subject to cross-examination. Under the ancient savage laws, most trials were conducted when the defendant slumbered in some dark and desolate dungeon while his accuser in royal regalia wrote out the verdict of his destiny.
. . .
Our honorable Governor further recommends that the statute of limitations be so amended that the same shall not commence to run against any public officer for official misconduct until the expiration of the terms of office of said person. Gentlemen, I take the position and maintain that the statute of limitations should never run against any officer for any crime he may perpetrate.

The people repose extraordinary confidence and trust in their public officers and who pollutes and breaks that faith should suffer the consequences thereof whenever the commission of his offence shall have been ascertained. The statute of limitations should no more run against officers who have violated their public trust than against the man who commits malicious murder; for politics and politicians do so mingle that protection is oftimes given to those who prostitute their offices for personal or political gain; and, further, time does tame the thief in high places.

During the last few years, the forces of fanaticism made great progress in this country, and the “deformer” and his associates, the various snooping syndicates throughout the land, have been trying to deprive the working man of his only day of enjoyment by trying to close on Sundays theatres, ball parks, and other places of enjoyment and amusement.

Nothing breeds vice like an attempt to promote virtue by force, and eternal vigilance is still the price of liberty! Yet, we have such organizations to thank for this age of graft, lawlessness, crime and the reign of the bootlegger. Their triumph has made sneakery, hypocrisy and disrespect for the law popular; it opens the flood gates of vice, drunkenness and crime; it nullifies constitutional provisions for the protection of individual liberty, and is ready, in the administration of government, to replace democracy with absolute despotism.

“The Relationship of Old Black Gold to Law Enforcement,” from a speech by Moman Pruiett to the Oklahoma Electric Club, Oklahoma City, February 21, 1927. (From “Moman Pruiett, Criminal Lawyer,” by Moman Pruiett (1945))

More

• “Moman Pruiett, Criminal Lawyer,” by Moman Pruiett (2008)
• “He made it safe to murder,” by Howard K. Berry (2001)
• “Roy Thompson, Senator Gore, Moman Pruiett, and Gore Vidal,” by Jacob Stein, The Washington Lawyer, March/April 2000
• “Charming, Felonious Moman Pruiett,” by William Bryk, New York Press, March 19, 2002
• “Moman Pruiett: The Oklahoma Lawyer Who Made It Safe to Murder,” by Jerry E. Stephens (14-page PDF )
• PRUIETT, MOORMAN H. (1872-1945), Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture

For over 30 years, TheCapitol.Net and its predecessor, Congressional Quarterly Executive Conferences, have been training professionals from government, military, business, and NGOs on the dynamics and operations of the legislative and executive branches and how to work with them.

Our training courses, publications, and audio courses include congressional operations, legislative and budget process, communication and advocacy, media and public relations, testifying before Congress, research skills, legislative drafting, critical thinking and writing, and more.

TheCapitol.Net is on the GSA Schedule, 874-4, for custom on-site training. GSA Contract GS02F0192X

TheCapitol.Net is a non-partisan firm.

If you don’t have time to attend our live training, see our Capitol Learning Audio Courses.

Federal Agencies: We are on the GSA Schedule for custom training, Contract: GS02F0192X

TheCapitol.Net, Inc. Contract GS02F0192X

2012 Catalog Legislative, Communication, and Media Training and Publications From TheCapitol.Net   Download Download TheCapitol.Net’s 2012 Catalog (64-pages, 5.3 MB PDF )   By Mail To have a free copy of our current catalog of courses and publications mailed to you: Call us: 703-739-3790 Complete our online request form: http://www.thecapitol.net/mm5/merchant.mvc?Store_Code=C&Screen=contactusform

TheCapitol.Net, Inc.
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For over 30 years, TheCapitol.Net and its predecessor, Congressional Quarterly Executive Conferences, have been training professionals from government, military, business, and NGOs on the dynamics and operations of the legislative and executive branches and how to work with them.

Our training courses, publications, and audio courses include congressional operations, legislative and budget process, communication and advocacy, media and public relations, testifying before Congress, research skills, legislative drafting, critical thinking and writing, and more.

TheCapitol.Net is on the GSA Schedule, 874-4, for custom on-site training. GSA Contract GS02F0192X

TheCapitol.Net is a non-partisan firm.