2012年5月23日星期三

The MacLarens didn't watch as their cows were led one

The MacLaren brothers are third-generation dairy Christian Louboutin Shoes Sale farmers, but they will likely be the last in their family. After working all their lives on the hillside farm in Vermont that their grandfather bought in 1939, rising to milk cows at 3 a.m. even in blizzards and sub-zero temperatures, they decided to call it quits, auctioning off their roughly 200 cows and equipment ranging from stalls and hoof trimmers to tractors and steel pails. The sale marked the end of the last dairy farm in Plainfield, a small town that once had several dozen, and the loss of the 14th dairy farm to go out of business in Vermont this year. A few small dairies have opened, but overall, the number of farms continues to drop in a state long known for its milk and cheese. Farmers say they can't make ends meet when milk prices are low and feed and fuel costs keep going up. "The day of the small farms I think is gone," said Steve MacLaren, 54. "A lot of people are going to hold on as long as they can, but we decided not to. Why struggle on it any longer?" Economic issues aside, the MacLarens are tired of being tied to the farm seven days a week. They plan to keep the land and grow feed — corn and grass for hay and silage — on more than 500 acres. "No matter what, you've got a sick cow or a cow having a calf, you've gotta be around whether it's 1:00 in the morning, or it's whatever time you've got to take care of them," said Michael MacLaren, 48. "But if you've got a tractor break down, you can walk away from it. It's just a long hard grind, and I decided I'd like a change." While the number of dairy cows in the U.S. hasn't changed much, the number of dairy farms has been dropping as small farms either go out of business or consolidate to become more competitive and cost effective. The number of dairy farms nationally has dropped from nearly 92,000 in 2002 to less than 70,000 in 2007, according to the last agricultural census, which is being updated this year. That's not the whole picture though. The number of small farms, with 100 to 199 cows, fell from about 11,000 to about 9,000 during that time, while those with more than 1,000 cows grew from about 1,300 to almost 1,600. The shift has affected states like Vermont and Wisconsin, which have strong dairying histories, but tend to have smaller farms than other major Christian Louboutin Wedges milk-producing states like California and Texas. Wisconsin has lost nearly 200 herds so far this year and now has about 11,600. The farm closures are likely to continue with milk prices expected to keep falling this summer. "It's a dying business," said Ron Wright, owner of Wrights Auction Service in Derby. He expects to do twice as many auctions this spring as last — eight to 10 auctions in Vermont and one in New York. The U.S. had been gradually losing dairy farms for decades, but then milk prices plummeted during the recession and fuel costs soared in 2009. Vermont lost 52 dairies that year, while Wisconsin lost 519. Prices have rebounded since, although they are expected to sink again to as low as $16.50 per hundred pounds this summer, said Diane Bothfeld, Vermont's deputy agriculture secretary. "It will be a very difficult year," said Bothfeld, who expects the auctions to continue. The loss of small farms hurts local economies and the many businesses that rely on them, such as feed and tractor dealers and veterinarians, she said. It also could be a problem for Vermont tourism, which is closely tied to bucolic images of the state's mountains and dairies, although Bothfeld said she thinks much of the land will stay in farming. Vermont watched the number of its dairies drop in the past 20 years from 2,272 to 977 this May. At the same time, its milk output has stayed relatively the same as surviving farms grow. In the past five years, the average dairy size has grown from 125 to 135 cows in Vermont. "To succeed in farming it seems like you really have got to diversify or go big," said Jennifer Lambert, 26, of Washington, one of the few new dairy farmers in Vermont. She and her husband have leased his uncle's farm, where they produce organic milk, which commands a higher and more stable price than conventional. They also grow livestock feed and picked up a $7,500 seeder at the MacLaren's auction on May 16. "It's very difficult to get started in this," said Jesse Lambert, 30, of the investment. They can't afford to buy the farm — or borrow the more than a half million dollars to do it — so were lucky to lease it, he said. The MacLarens didn't watch as their cows were led one by one into the auction ring, where bidders sat on bales of hay. Michael MacLaren said he and Christian Louboutin Miss Fortune 120 Lace-Up Ankle Boots Tan his brother will miss the animals some. "But you make the decision and have the courage to go through with it and you do it," he said. "That's the way it's gotta be."

2012年5月22日星期二

You have to be very strong with the ball

There had been a pattern in the first four games of the series, as Sixers coach Doug Collins saw it noted. The team that won the third quarter in each of the games went on to the victory. He mentioned that fact Monday afternoon, not long before the Celtics and Sixers took the Christian Louboutin Heels court for crucial Game 5. And, as it turned out, that pattern held. Though the Sixers mostly had control of the game through the first half, it was the Celtics who took over after the break. (Or, rather, Brandon Bass.) That was when the Sixers crumbled, when they stopped making the shots that had been falling so easily in the first half. That was when they lost the ball and lost the game. Just as Collins had predicted. Those were the first words out of the coach’s mouth in his postgame news conference, as he reiterated the truism of the series. “You can’t play like that,’’ Collins said. “You can’t play one-handed against this team. You can’t make careless, one-handed passes. They’re too good, they’re quick . . . We did not do a good job of that. I thought we did not meet the tenacity that they played with from the middle of the third quarter on.’’ There was a moment, even more specific than the third quarter, that turned the game in the Celtics’ favor. With the Sixers holding a 4-point lead, Paul Pierce was called for a clear-path foul four minutes into the quarter. That should have given Philadelphia 2 points on free throws and possession of the ball. But Andre Iguodala missed the free throws - he went 1 for 4 from the line in the game - and the Sixers turned the ball over. It set off a stretch in which the Sixers turned the ball over on five of their next six possessions. By the time the Sixers took their second timeout of the period with 4:48 left, the Celtics were up by 6 points, and wouldn’t trail again. “That was the deciding point in the game,’’ Collins said. “They were the aggressors, and it started really, I thought, after that clear-path foul.’’ Elton Brand, who led the Sixers with 19 points, said his team knew what might happen, knew the Celtics would turn it up, especially at home. But as Boston sped up the game, Philadelphia wasn’t able to recover. “We do have to recognize [the aggression] more,’’ said Brand. “We know what we have to do - we watched tape, we went through it in shootaround - but we didn’t do it. Hopefully it can be corrected.’’ Despite shooting 54.8 percent in the first half, the Sixers were up by just 3 points at the break. They had left the door wide open for the Celtics. And, as they turned the ball over, as they played too fast for their game, the Celtics took advantage. Part of it was that the Celtics became more aggressive. Part of it was that the Sixers became careless, gave in to that aggression. Asked which was more crucial, Evan Turner said, “It was 50-50. They played great defense. They amped up the defense. We had to get our connection back together, be on a string with one another, and we didn’t really do that.’’ “You have to be very strong with the ball,’’ Collins said. “I didn’t think we were strong with the ball tonight. They’re too good. Once they get into the passing lane, you can’t take that pass back.’’ And those passes, the bad ones, generally ended with a basket on the other end. “We just had a bad third,’’ Lou Williams said. “We had a bunch of turnovers, and they scored on all of them. It’s hard to compete like that, especially in that building with an experienced team like that. We didn’t help ourselves none in that third.’’ Said Spencer Hawes, “It started off time and time Christian Louboutin Wedges again with our turnovers. That got those guys rolling.’’ The Sixers didn’t respond well. They didn’t pick it up when they needed to. They committed the mistakes that allowed the Celtics to take the lead. They couldn’t stop the turnovers when they started, and a game that they were winning turned into the loss that put them on the brink of season’s end.

2012年5月18日星期五

It's probably one of the first times there has been an IPO

Facebook priced its IPO at $38 per share on Thursday, at the top of expectations. Now, regular investors will have a chance to buy stock in Facebook for the first time. The stock will begin trading on the Nasdaq Stock Market sometime Friday morning. The ticker symbol will be FB. Facebook's offering is the culmination of a Cheap Christian Louboutin year's worth of Internet IPOs that began last May with LinkedIn Corp. Since then, a steady stream of startups focused on the social side of the Web has gone public, with varying degrees of success. It all led up to Facebook, the company that's come to define social networking by getting 900 million people around the world to share everything from photos of their pets to their deepest thoughts. It has done so while managing to become one of the few profitable Internet companies to go public recently. It had net income of $205 million in the first three months of 2012, on revenue of $1.06 billion. In all of 2011, it earned $1 billion, up from $606 million a year earlier. That's a far cry from 2007, when it posted a net loss of $138 million and revenue of $153 million. "They could have gone public in 2009 at a much lower price," said Nick Einhorn, research analyst at IPO investment advisory firm Renaissance Capital. "They waited as long as they could to go public, so it makes sense that it's a very large offering." Facebook Inc.'s valuation is the third-highest in an IPO, according to Dealogic, a provider of financial data. Only two Chinese banks, Agricultural Bank of China in 2010 and Industrial and Commercial Bank of China in 2006, have been worth more. They were worth $133 billion and $132 billion, respectively. By another measure —the amount raised— Facebook ranks third among U.S. IPOs. The largest was Visa, which raised $17.9 billion in 2008. No. 2 was Enel, a power company, and No. 4 was General Motors, according to Renaissance Capital. The $38 share price is the price at which the investment banks arranging the offering will sell the stock to their clients. In an IPO, the banks buy the stock first from the company and the early investors and then sell to the public. If extra shares reserved to cover additional demand are sold as part of the transaction, Facebook and its early investors stand to reap as much as $18.4 billion. For a company that was born in a Harvard dormitory and went on to reimagine online communication, the stock sale means more money to build on the features and services it offers users. It means an infusion of money to hire the best engineers to work at its sprawling Menlo Park, Calif., headquarters, or in New York City, where it opened an engineering office last year. And it means early investors, who took a chance seeding the young social network with start-up funds six, seven and eight years ago, can reap big rewards. Peter Thiel, the venture capitalist who sits on Facebook's board of directors, invested $500,000 in the company in 2004. He's selling nearly 17 million of his shares in the IPO, which means he'll get some $640 million. He will hold on to about 28 million shares, worth $1.06 billion. The offering values Facebook, whose 2011 revenue was $3.7 billion, at as much as $104 billion. The sky-high valuation has its skeptics, who worry about signs of a slowdown and Facebook's ability to grow in the mobile space when it was created with desktop computers in mind. Rival Google Inc., whose revenue stood at $38 billion last year, has a market capitalization of $207 billion. "There seems to be somewhat of a hype around the stock offering," says Gartner analyst Brian Blau. That may be an understatement. Facebook's IPO dominated media coverage in the weeks and days leading up to the event. CEO Mark Zuckerberg's hoodie made headlines when he wore it to a meeting with investors as did General Motors' decision this week to stop advertising on the site —and rival Ford's affirmation that its Facebook ads have been effective. There are more than a few reasons for the exuberance. First, there's Facebook's sheer size and high profile. The company grew from a college-only social network to an Internet phenomenon embraced by legions of people, from teenagers to grandmothers to pro-democracy activists in the Middle East. Secondly, it's personal. "It's probably one of the first times there has been an IPO where everyone sort of has a stake in the outcome," Blau says. While most Facebook users won't see a penny from the offering, they are all intimately familiar with the company. And then there's Zuckerberg, who turned 28 on Monday. He has emerged as the latest in a lineage of Silicon Valley prodigies who are alternately hailed for pushing the world in new directions and reviled for overstepping their bounds. He counted the late Apple CEO Steve Jobs among his mentors, and he became one of the world's youngest billionaires — at least on paper — well before Facebook went Christian Louboutin High Boots public. A dramatized and less-than-flattering version of Facebook's founding was the subject of a Hollywood movie that won three Academy Awards last year, propelling Zuckerberg even further into the public spotlight. Though Zuckerberg is selling about 30 million shares, he will remain Facebook's largest shareholder. Even after the IPO, he will own 503.6 million shares, or 32 percent of Facebook's total shares. At the $38 share price, his stake in the company is worth $19.1 billion. Zuckerberg will control the company with 56 percent of its voting stock as a result of agreements he has with other shareholders who promise to vote his way. The set-up helps to ensure that he and other executives keep control as the demands of Wall Street for short-term returns exert new pressures on the company. True to form, Zuckerberg and Facebook's engineers are ringing in the IPO on their own terms. The company is holding an overnight "hackathon" Thursday, where engineers stay up writing programming code to come up with new features for the site. On Friday morning, Zuckerberg will ring the Nasdaq opening bell from Facebook's headquarters a continent away.

2012年5月16日星期三

Some analysts see evidence that Facebook is already successfully

With Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg has created a seemingly perfect home on the Web, one where people feel comfortable chatting with friends, playing games, sharing photos and videos, listening to music and revealing the most intimate details of their lives. The $100 billion question is whether Facebook Cheap Christian Louboutin will be a perfect home for advertisers, as well. Facebook, the social networking giant, is on the cusp of an initial public offering that is shaping up to be a success. There has been such an investor frenzy that the company supersized its offering on Wednesday. It now plans to sell nearly 18 percent of the company to the public — up from around 14 percent — in an I.P.O. that could value the company at more than $100 billion. Despite the overwhelming level of interest, Facebook is facing fresh concerns over its ability to attract enough advertising revenue to justify that stratospheric valuation. On Tuesday, General Motors, the third-largest advertiser in the country, shut down its Facebook budget, about $10 million, saying that those ads were simply not doing enough to sell automobiles. For Facebook, the loss of $10 million is not a big deal. The company generated $3.7 billion of revenue last year, 85 percent from advertising. But the loss underlines the company’s need to convince a skeptical Madison Avenue that Facebook pages are the perfect vehicle for marketers and to convince eager investors that it can increase its advertising revenue, and quickly. “It’s one of the most powerful branding mechanisms in the world, but it’s not an advertising mechanism,” said Martin Sorrell, chief executive of WPP, the giant advertising agency. G.M. aside, many companies remain committed to the social media platform as a way to engage and connect with consumers. Advertising executives, industry analysts and institutional investors just aren’t convinced that activity will translate into huge and growing profits for Facebook. It is a concern shared by some of the company’s bankers, according to people with knowledge of the matter. Companies like Home Depot,Wells Fargo and Merck have a presence on Facebook with their own pages. But they are mainly focused on fashioning content to build brand loyalty, rather than creating targeted advertising. Even G.M. has said it plans to keep dedicated Facebook pages, stressing that it is an important avenue for reaching car buyers. The automaker just doesn’t want to pay Facebook — a decision that analysts worry other companies could make. “My colleagues and I have spoken with several other advertisers who were already thinking of putting their dollars elsewhere,” said Melissa Parrish, an analyst at Forrester. “Now that G.M. has done so in such a large and public way, many of the fence-sitters will know that they’re not alone.” As with all advertising, companies want to know what they’re getting for their money, and with Facebook, the answer isn’t clear. While the social network collects large amounts of data on its users, Facebook is much more reluctant than Google and other online sites to share that information with advertisers. Facebook currently allows marketers to buy audiences, say women between the ages of 18 and 35 who live in a specific neighborhood. But Facebook is essentially a walledgarden, so what users may do on the Web beyond Facebook — where they shop, what they read — isn’t available for advertisers who want to home in on people’s behavior. Instead, Facebook provides basic information on just how many users “like,” or follow, a particular ad or page “Facebook’s a silo,” said Darren Herman, the chief digital media officer at the Media Kitchen, an agency that helps clients on Facebook. “It is very hard to understand the efficacy of what a Facebook like, or fan or follow is worth.” Already, investors are putting a price on those Facebook users. At a market value of $100 billion, investors are estimating that each person with a Facebook page is worth roughly $110. But that’s based on the potential profits — not what Facebook is making off them now. Last year, each Facebook user generated $4 worth of sales for the company. If the company doesn’t live up to those promises, the stock may suffer. While new investors are betting that Facebook will be the next Google, current owners of the social network are taking some of their money off the table, including DST Global, Accel Partners and Goldman Sachs. “Over time, Facebook will be able to increase its revenue,” said Mr. Sorrell of WPP. “But whether it will be able to justify its valuation, well, time will tell.” Facebook has spent years trying to court Madison Avenue. In 2005, the advertising group was largely run out of the company’s satellite New York “office,” the modest Upper East Side apartment of Kevin Colleran, one of Facebook’s first sales employees. “We told advertisers it was $5,000 minimum,” Mr. Colleran said in an interview earlier this year. “But, really, we would take what we could get.” As Facebook expanded beyond the college network, finding advertisers became easier. Companies were wowed by the growing number of users and the minutes people spent on the site. But Facebook’s young chief was hesitant to clutter the site with ads. Its biggest competitor, Myspace, was clogging users’ profiles with loud advertisements, creating a jarring aesthetic. Mr. Zuckerberg, who has often said that Facebook was not designed to be a business, firmly told his team he would not sacrifice product for the sake of revenue. “Mark made it clear: he said get me ads that make the experience better,” Mr. Colleran, who has left the company, said. That philosophy has helped shape its current pitch. Rather than simply providing traditional ads, the social network encourages companies to engage with users by telling them stories. Facebook believes that such interaction is less intrusive than other online ads that take over a user’s screen or push down content. Some companies are aggressively jumping onto the platform. Last year,Wal-Mart started a Facebook app that customized offers for more than 3,800 of its American stores. “A national message is often not as relevant as being able to say, we’ve got sunscreen in the South and we’ve got rubber boots in the North,” Stephen Quinn, chief marketing officer for the Wal-Mart U.S. division, said at the time of the October introduction. But not all companies are persuaded. For one, Facebook has been relatively protective of its user data, citing privacy concerns. But data is critical to creating tailored ads. Facebook also doesn’t have the full palette of advertising options. For example, companies can buy space only directly through Facebook, rather than through a network, where advertisers have more control. And Facebook limits the types of ads. While it allows companies to use video or social features, Facebook doesn’t let advertisers take over its home page or dress up their ads with a lot of bells and whistles. “Facebook doesn’t have a clear enough story to tell marketers,” said Ms. Parrish of Forrester. Investors piling into Facebook will be doing so on faith. To buy the shares, they have to believe that the company will be able to milk an ever-increasing amount of revenue from all the Web site’s social interactions, without alienating users with intrusive advertising or breaches of privacy. Some analysts see evidence that Facebook is already successfully weaving ads into users’ interactions, without excessive intrusion. If this approach works, the returns on such Facebook ads could be five times higher for advertisers than regular ads, said Ken Sena, an analyst at Evercore Partners. Mr. Sena said he thought that Facebook’s advertising revenue could reach $14.9 billion in 2017, up from $3.2 billion last year. Still, there are warning signs. Facebook’s advertising revenue actually fell in the first quarter of this year, from the fourth quarter. And some analysts think ad revenue will grow quite a bit more slowly this year than last. This is where comparisons with Google, which went public in 2004, become apt. On its first day of trading, Google closed at $100.34 a share, which was 69 times the Christian Louboutin Bags company’s earnings. Back then, Google’s revenue and earnings were growing faster than Facebook’s today. If Facebook goes public with a $100 billion market value, it would trade at 103 times the profits it made in the 12 months through the end of March. In that case, investors aren’t just saying Facebook is the next Google, they are betting it is better than the I.P.O. of Google — a lofty goal by any measure.

Growth has to feed through to the people

Leaders of Germany and France Tuesday held talks on boosting economic growth amid the ongoing European debt crisis and keeping Greece within the eurozone. "We share the responsibility for a good Cheap Christian Louboutin development in Europe and I think we will find solutions for individual problems in this spirit," German Chancellor Angela Merkel said at a joint press conference with French President Francois Hollande, who just took office hours before his first diplomatic trip. The newly sworn-in French president said he is willing to build a "balanced" and "respectful" relationship with Germany. "Carried by this spirit, I believe we will of course find solutions for the different problems," Merkel said. For his part, Hollande said, "Everything should be put on the table" at the forthcoming informal summit of EU leaders in Brussels on May 23. "It will be very important that Germany and France present their ideas together at this summit and work closely together to prepare it," Merkel said. In addition, Hollande affirmed his wish for a renegotiation of the EU fiscal pact, saying that "I said it during my election campaign and I say it again now as president that I want to renegotiate what has been agreed to include a growth dimension." Referring to this, Merkel said, "Growth has to feed through to the people. And that's why I'm happy that we'll discuss different ideas on how to achieve growth." Despite their policy differences, both Hollande and Merkel have joined forces to build a workable relationship in order to continue the Franco-German cooperation to fight the eurozone debt crisis. At the conference, the leaders of the eurozone's two largest economies also expressed their wish for Greece to stay in the single currency bloc. "We want Greece to stay in the euro," Merkel said. She also said Germany and France were prepared "to study the possibility of additional growth measures in Greece" if Athens said they needed them. Hollande agreed with Merkel, saying promoting a growth-driven strategy was at the core of his presidential campaign. "I hope that we can say to the Greeks that Europe is ready to add measures to help growth and support economic activity so that there is a return to growth in Greece," Hollande said. Earlier in the day, the final critical talks among Greek party leaders failed to form a coalition government after the May 6 parliamentary elections, with the debt-ridden country heading to fresh polls in June. "Efforts to form a coalition administration ended Christian Louboutin Peep Toe with no result. On Wednesday a new party leaders meeting will discuss the appointment of a caretaker government to lead the country to repeat elections," the presidency said in a statement. Greece is suffering from political instability and a financial crisis, fueling fears that the country could face the risk of a chaotic default and an exit from the eurozone. Greece's leaving the single-currency club could send shockwaves across Europe and the international financial system.

2012年5月14日星期一

Brown said he would negotiate with unions to make the changes

Gov. Jerry Brown proposed significant cuts to state courts and state worker pay - including reducing state employees' work week to four days - to help close a $15.7 billion gap between revenues and expenses for California's fiscal year that begins July 1. In announcing his revised budget proposal, which he called both "difficult" and "real, increased austerity," the governor also pressed his case for voters to approve Cheap Christian Louboutin a tax initiative that he is pushing in the November election. The governor's plan already counts the revenue the tax initiative would bring in - and if voters reject the taxes, then even deeper cuts would be required, Brown said. Those would include mid-year cuts to public schools, community colleges and the University of California and California State University systems. Brown spoke at the Capitol and immediately flew to Los Angeles, where he also made his case for his $91 billion general fund spending plan. The general fund pays for most state services."I said at the beginning when I ran for this job that it's taken a long time, more than a decade, to get into this mess. We're not going to get out of it in a year, or even two years. But we're getting there. We're making progress," Brown said. Overall, the budget plan relies on $8.3 billion in spending reductions and other cuts, nearly $6 billion from the taxes that would be collected if the November ballot measure passes, and $2.5 billion in "other" solutions including putting off the repayment of some loans. But even while counting on the increase in taxes, which are far from certain to pass, the governor projects the state will have a $7.7 billion deficit in two years. Still, Brown said the state's chronic deficits will remain a top issue for him. "I think you can be confident that before I leave here we will be in solid fiscal balance and we can look forward to a very stable future," he said. The bulk of the cuts, nearly $2.5 billion, come from health services and welfare, which Democrats in the Legislature have opposed. The federal government and courts also have already blocked similar reductions in services, but it appears the governor is going to try again to get approval on those, including In-Home Supportive Services and co-payments for Medi-Cal. The proposal seeks to make reductions in what the state pays to hospitals and nursing homes for treating the poor, along with adding limits on who qualifies for welfare. The $879 million proposed cut to CalWORKS, the state's welfare to work program, is actually smaller than what the governor first proposed in January, but Democrats have said the reduction would lead to homelessness and that they oppose it. "There is of course a balance between making necessary cuts, which we will do, and maintaining and preserving essential servicers for people, especially people most in need," said Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, D-Sacramento. Brown said he expects the budget negotiations, which must conclude by the June 15 deadline, will be "difficult," and Steinberg agreed. The largest and newest pieces of the revised plan include taking $1.4 billion that was left from the dismantling of the state's redevelopment agencies and using it for the general fund. Steinberg and others had initially wanted that money to help create affordable housing. Brown also has proposed a $544 million cut to the courts, which have been reduced significantly in recent years. That money would come from the reserves of local courts, along with delaying construction of new courthouses. Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye criticized the plan, Christian Louboutin Peep Toe saying, "The proposed cuts to the judicial branch are both devastating and disheartening. They will seriously compromise the public's access to their courts and our ability to provide equal access to justice throughout the state." She said she would hold an emergency meeting with leaders in the court system this week to address the plan. Another new element of the budget would take $292 million in proceeds from the state's mortgage settlement - funds that were slated to pay for existing programs that assist homeowners. Attorney General Kamala Harris objected to that proposal. Brown would use that money to plug the deficit. "While the state is undeniably facing a difficult budget gap, these funds should be used to help Californians stay in their homes," Harris said. The final major new piece is a $400 million reduction in state worker pay, which Brown proposed achieving by shortening the work week for state workers from five to four days. He said state employees would work longer hours on those four days for a total of 38 hours per week. State offices would stay open longer on those days as well. Union officials representing state workers actually proposed the plan to the governor and said it is the best of the bad options. "Nobody is OK with less pay, but what they're also not OK with is the constant uncertainty of 'Do I have a job or not? Is this going to mean layoffs or not?'" said Yvonne Walker, president of SEIU Local 1000, the California's largest state employee union. Brown said he would negotiate with unions to make the changes, which he said would apply to all state workers including those in public safety agencies such as Cal Fire and the California Highway Patrol. Looming in the budget negotiations are so-called "trigger cuts," or automatic spending reductions that would take place if the governor's tax measure is rejected by voters. His measure would raise the income tax on the state's top earners and the sales tax for everyone. Brown has called for just over $6 billion in those type of cuts, with nearly all of it - $5.5 billion - coming from K-12 education and community colleges. The UC and CSU systems would each take a mid-year cut of $250 million cut. California Community Colleges Chancellor Jack Scott www.cheapclsneakers.com said the impact, roughly $300 million, on the schools he oversees would be a "breaking point" for some community colleges.

2012年5月13日星期日

That you suddenly they are not suitable for dating

Always wanted to write something for you to write something for us, but it has not pen to paper. At this point, a person sitting on the wooden bench in front of Christian Louboutin Heels a lot of white butterflies fluttering in a pair, and listening to music, read about our story. Remember to write the article about our class, you told me to write an article about us, in fact, before I write the idea, but every time I lift the pen will know how to write, how to to express our feelings, it seems that no amount of words can not express the heart of the kind of feelings, so they did not write. More often, I would like to write a poem for you, because of the talent and less learning, and indeed could not write a decent, but dear please believe that one day I will write a beautiful poem to you. We first met when he first entered a time, in the class who do not know, then I think you look particularly like Huang Yi, now it looks nothing like, I do not understand when eyes. Just know, only occasionally see the lay a greeting, even acquaintances are out of the question, we later learned that our original junior high school in a school, speech and more gradually up, so did not take long on the familiar, every day at noon class together eating, after going to night classes to go back with the rock in front of the school holidays, eating, shopping boutiques, has been so until the high end. High near the end, we are faced with the Division of Arts, you say they do not like the stuff of science, science grades were not good, is not suitable for reading science, so I chose the text, but I chose the reason, because I really do not want to face do not want to back political history, despite the physical, but still suffer pain selected, then it told me that physics is all my source of pain. In the exam, I always worry about the physical drag my hind legs, let me pass the test one, however, the results of the test 98. Then think if I chose the liberal arts, then we can be together for two years, may want to separate, we still do not care. Placement, my classroom is on the fifth floor, in the second floor, we rarely meet, and sometimes even meet only lay a greeting. Living in different environments, the people around us naturally replaced, there is another dinner with the home, this change is inevitable, so even a trace Christian Louboutin Shoes Sale of bitterness nor regret or regret. Because I have always believed that the distance between people will not change because of the changes in the space, if you want to change but also because heart. Middle School when you buy a book with this communication, we said after we wrote a lot of text, speaking each other's feelings, encourage each other with fast college entrance examination, this book gave me, I have been treasure it. I you send a book to the middle of a paper folding heart, had you sent and asked me to do not lost heart, in fact, you silly, even if you do not say, I do not will it knocked off. Now book on my chest, and sometimes I come up with a look at the mirror I use now is also when you send, the last in bed are not careful, it trampled all sad for a long time, although bad , but I'm still in use. Last night we received the video chat, you are still over there is so cute, smile so bright, like a carefree child, do not know why every time I see your smile, I will be very happy, this is others can not give the feeling. Juaner her dad saying AA system life is the excitement is low, a little happy excited about a long time, but I like you. Have always felt that you are the most innocent girl I've ever seen, cute and simple, frank and sincere. You said Flanagan red rope in your hand, the interface is growing, but not out, I would like fixed as how will not be out with us with a long time, do not know to the day We will take down, it is extremely common, but loaded with our friendship. That you suddenly they are not suitable for dating, blind date after Well, my dear, you really stupid, only experienced know, perhaps now you only freshman, do not understand it, but to be experienced naturally know . In any case, my dear If you encounter your favorite, then I will definitely support you. Must be a good boy to deserve better, one day you get married, looking to find happiness, I will feel very happy, very happy. I have two years, you three years, we face the problem of graduation, after graduation, perhaps we even more difficult to meet, then after the baptism of the community, our friendship will become? I believe not. You said that their future living in Guangzhou, and I want to go to Kunming, but if you can, I hope we can work together in Guangzhou have time to go travel around town to look at, so do a lifetime of friends. At this point, the front of the butterfly flying everywhere, how beautiful all this and more would like to share with you, you were not around, so let me instead of you Cheap Christian Louboutin enjoy it. Sincere friendship does not lie in the Zhaozhaoxixi of companions, but rather a tacit understanding of the heart and the heart, dear, if you well is sunny.