Obama to Return 5% of Salary
Posted by Stephen Cook on April 4, 2013 / Comments OffCategory: President Obama Tags: Salary SacrificeBy Josh Lederman, The Associated Press- April 4, 2013
http://www.montrealgazette.com/business/ Obama+return+salary/8194139/story.html
WASHINGTON — Sharing a bit of budget pain, President Barack Obama will return 5 per cent of his salary to the Treasury in a show of solidarity with federal workers smarting from government-wide spending cuts.
Obama’s decision grew out of a desire to share in the sacrifice that government employees are making, a White House official said Wednesday. Hundreds of thousands of workers could be forced to take unpaid leave — known as furloughs — if Congress does not reach an agreement soon to undo the cuts.
The president is demonstrating that he will be paying a price, too, as the White House warns of dire economic consequences from the $85 billion in cuts — called a sequester — that started to hit federal programs last month after Congress failed to stop them. In the weeks since, the administration has faced repeated questions about how the White House itself will be affected. The cancellation of White House tours in particular has drawn mixed reactions. A 5 per cent cut from the president’s salary of $400,000 per year amounts to $20,000.
Obama will return a full $20,000 to the Treasury even though only a few months remain in the fiscal year, which ends in September. He will cut his first check this month, said the White House official, who was not authorized to discuss the decision publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.
The president and first lady Michelle Obama reported almost $790,000 in adjusted gross income in 2011, the most recent year for which their tax returns have been made public. That figure was down from the $1.7 million they brought in the year before and the $5.5 million they reported in 2009. About half of the family’s income in 2011 came from Obama’s salary, with the rest coming from book sales. The Obamas reported more than $172,000 in charitable donations.
“The salary for the president, as with members of Congress, is set by law and cannot be changed,” Obama spokesman Jay Carney said late Wednesday. “However, the president has decided that to share in the sacrifice being made by public servants across the federal government that are affected by the sequester, he will contribute a portion of his salary back to the Treasury.”
Wednesday’s notice followed a similar move a day earlier by Defence Secretary Chuck Hagel, who committed to taking a salary cut equal to 14 days’ pay — the same level of cut that other Defence Department civilians are being forced to take. As many as 700,000 civilians will have to take one unpaid day off each week for up to 14 weeks in the coming months.
Obama isn’t the first president to give up part of his paycheque. Herbert Hoover put his salary in a separate account, then divvied it up, giving part to charity and part to employees he felt were underpaid, according to an interview he gave in 1937. John F. Kennedy donated his presidential salary to various charities, according to Stacey Chandler, an archivist at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library.
George Washington refused pay during the latter part of his military career, according to researchers at Mount Vernon. He tried to refuse a presidential salary, but Congress required that the position pay $25,000.
Among lawmakers, Sen. Mark Begich, an Alaska Democrat, said Wednesday that he, too, would return part of his income to the Treasury, although he did not specify how much of his $174,000 salary he would give up. Begich said his office started furloughing staffers in mid-March and more than half of his staff will have their pay cut this year.
“This won’t solve our spending problem on its own, but I hope it is a reminder to Alaskans that I am willing to make the tough cuts, wherever they may be, to get our spending under control,” Begich said.
A number of lawmakers have from time to time taken steps to show they’re not immune as the federal government looks to tighten its belt. An aide to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said McConnell returns a substantial part of his salary to the Treasury every year. The Senate this month adopted by voice vote a symbolic amendment permitting — but not requiring — senators to give 20 per cent of their salaries to the Treasury as part of the Democrats’ budget resolution. Also in March, as the spending cuts started bearing down, the GOP-controlled House imposed an 8.2 per cent reduction on lawmakers’ personal office budgets.
The White House, after declining for weeks to provide specifics for how the president’s own staff had been affected, said Monday that 480 workers on the budget staff had been notified they may have to take days off without pay.
Carney wouldn’t say whether notices have gone out to Obama aides outside the Office of Management and Budget, including senior staff in the West Wing. But he said pay cuts remained a possibility for additional White House employees if a budget deal to undo the cuts isn’t reached.
“Everybody at the White House and the broader (executive office) is dealing with the consequences — both, in many cases, in their own personal lives, but in how we work here at the White House,” Carney said. He added that the White House also has been trying to cut costs by slowing down hiring, scaling back supply purchases, curtailing staff travel, reducing the use of air cards for mobile Internet access and reviewing contracts to look for savings.
Like lawmakers’ pay, Obama’s salary is set by law, so he must accept the funds and then write a check to the Treasury each month for the portion he plans to relinquish. Obama’s decision, first reported by The New York Times, won’t affect the other perquisites afforded the president, from a mansion staffed with servants to the limousines, helicopters and Boeing 747 jumbo jet at every U.S. president’s beck and call. The White House did not say whether Vice-President Joe Biden would make a similar gesture.
The 5 per cent that Obama will hand back mirrors the 5 per cent cut that domestic agencies took when the reductions went into effect. The Pentagon’s budget took an 8 per cent hit. Every federal agency is grappling with spending cuts, which the White House has warned could affect everything from commercial airline flights to classrooms and meat inspections.
The cuts were written into a 2011 deficit-reduction measure as a trigger to force future action. The idea was that lawmakers, eager to avert the consequences of bluntly slashing $1 trillion over a decade, would have no choice but to come together to find smarter ways to reduce federal spending.
But the two parties were at odds over whether more tax revenues were needed as part of the solution, and an intense campaign by Obama and his Cabinet to illustrate how the cuts could affect critical programs failed to spur an agreement by the March 1 deadline. As the cuts started taking effect, lawmakers turned to other issues, including an increase in the national debt ceiling, and there are no signs that a deal to undo the cuts retroactively will come anytime soon.
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4/05/2013
Obama to Return 5% of Salary
Jean Haines – Neil Keenan, What He Can Do – And How Humanity Can Help Him: A Response To BeWise – 5 April 2013
* BeWise’s response to Neil and Michael appears at the end of this post. . . ~J
BeWise, Neil and I have discussed your heartfelt response to both him and Michael, and since he is very busy, he has asked me to respond to you. He has cautioned me that the ideas I suggest here are going to take time to develop. For instance, before anything else can happen, he has already shared that an audit of the Global Accounts must first take place. There are certain countries that are in dire need of help, and at the moment as he sees it, this must come first. Please also understand that my thoughts here are mine alone, that things on the ground could change – and do, often on a daily basis, and yet these thoughts also have his approval:
BeWise, if you will permit me, I would like to suggest that your pain as a result of your life as an indigenous person got the better of you, and you expressed it (as anger) at Neil and his work. Please let me offer you some further information and insights to consider that might enlarge your views with which I believe we are largely in agreement. While it may seem I am speaking largely for the United States, I am also speaking for the rest of the planet, if they find it necessary and to choose to adopt these ideas, as well.
Neil Keenan at work
I’ve gotten to know Neil rather well over these last months, and he knows not only about the plight of the North American indigenous peoples, but also about the attempted annihilation of those in South America, as well. He lived there for many years, did business there and has many good friends there, and as the person who managed ‘The 500th Anniversary of the Western World’, he got to know the ‘real’ history of what has been transpiring over the centuries. Hopefully, you will find you can believe me, or at least trust me, when I say I know on a personal basis how deeply he is committed to fighting not only for the freedom of the indigenous peoples, but for the freedom of everyone on this planet.
Neil is not, however, a talker; he is a doer (remember: those who talk don’t know; those who know, don’t talk), and while the doing of this has been very difficult and complex, he hasn’t given up, and he will not give up until he wins. I am in total belief that he will succeed, because unlike many others who have attempted to stop his efforts, he comes from a place of complete integrity and honesty, and the flow of the times, the science of the times – the end of more than one cosmic cycle – is in his favor. The Elders, the Indigenous people of Indonesia, who have been guarding and protecting the Global Accounts for over sixty years, have done Ceremony and have chosen him. They have watched him personally for over thirty years, waiting for his arrival. As an indigenous Elder, I am sure you are aware of the power of Ceremony, as are they. St. Germaine also has been in personal contact with him. In both instances, I had to explain to Neil, who is largely without ego, the deeper meaning of these events.
As a successful and respected buinessman, he understands your concept of money, and his efforts to stop the stealing from the Global Accounts and to use them wisely to benefit humanity through humanitarian projects that will put people back to work are based on this understanding. There will be no free-money-rides from him, but he intends to see that good, positive work with fair pay is provided for all sorts of people, pay that will take the pressure off and fear out of our personal and family lives. I am sure there are those who will want to clean up the ocean, sky, and soil and crop degradation. (I, personally, am already using an inexpensive scalar tool that within seconds returns my food energetically to its original, healthy state. What I am saying very clearly here is that we need not be in fear of Monsanto and its minions.) When we are finally free and can begin using free, clean energy, our entire planetary energy system will need to be changed. Those who choose to heal the emotional trauma and damage inflicted by the cabal likely will need support and help. Our children and their education will need to be freed from the cabal’s control. (Hopefully, education will no longer attempt to make our children into automaton cogs in the wheel of corporate slavery, but instead will become more inner-directed than outer-imposed, so early on our children learn exactly what their gifts are, why they are here, and discover quite naturally what their passion is and experience the joy of living it.) Basic human needs like housing and food will need to be provided quickly for everyone on the planet, and most particularly for our children, old people, and those utterly without a place to call home. Our health systems should be changed, and I believe they should begin to reflect a more holstic view of our health issues.
At the present time as a result of Duality and the cabal’s control, so many of our problems are seen as ‘isolated’ from one another, when in reality, they are all very much connected, as surely as we as a species are all interconnected. I also hope that as a species we will also begin to enthusiastically assume our rightful cosmic role as the supporters and caretakers of our planet and begin to use our incredible and newly-freed-up creative skills and energies to return our beautiful planet, our Mother, who sustains us, to balance as we support her efforts to move into a higher dimension. Neil has asked me to work with him in all of this, and I have agreed and fully intend to work towards all of these goals. I hope there will be many who choose to join us.
Somewhere a long time ago I read that the United Nations had done a study and felt it would take a bit more than six months to clean up the planet. If this timeline is at all valid, it is not such a frightening one; it is very do-able! When we are permitted to used the new technologies that the cabal is keeping from us and if we all pitch in, organize ourselves, and get to work, the process could go rather quickly. We have had free, clean energy available for over 100 years, but it has been kept from us – in order to enslave us. Of course, it is the cabal, whose only goal seems to be to endlessly make money at our expense, that has been doing just that. This will all end.
When Neil is successful, he will completely stop the use of fiat money and usury, which is the basis of the Ponzi scheme and the stealing. (It is, if you are not already aware, the single event of which I know that caused Jesus’ rage as he threw the moneychanges out of the temple.) Our work will have ‘real’ value, and the gold, etc. will simply be a reflection of our ‘real’ work efforts. I don’t think the planet is ready to leave ‘money’ behind as a means of exchange and as a ‘real’ representation of our work – not yet, anyway. Neil’s intention is to create an honest, transparent system, one that the crooks/cabal will be unable to access ever again. I believe he now has the complete means to do all of this, and it is only a matter of the stars lining up properly in order for him to succeed. While he is not naturally a patient man, over the years of his life, he certainly has learned patience, and more importantly, he doesn’t give up. Not many would give several million dollars of their own money and three years out of their lives to do what he is doing. He could easily have won his lawsuit, retrieved his stolen bonds, and walked away, but he saw the possibitlity of using his lawsuit to bring down the criminal banking system in a court of law, and he chose to do that – for all of us.
There is not a doubt in my mind, BeWise, that he will succeed – and that all your dreams for humanity will then become possible. All it will take to fulfill these dreams is humanity’s willingness to pitch in and help do the work to change how we live here. I hope you and many like you, all over the planet, will decide to join in and work with us in our efforts.
Love and hugs to you,
~Jean
Thanks for both your responses. I am a young man who wants to see true freedom and liberation restored not just for us humans but for our mother earth aswell. I first started on the path of truth in 2002, well truth according to the western mindset. I am just a young man, and have read the link you have provided from the newtommorrow website before. I do not mean to anger anyone or provide any malice intentions. I am merely stating my opinion as i see fit with the information I have come to know since 2002. But before 2002 I had my own knowledge which has been passed down from generation to generation by my family. This knowledge I have obtained is what is sacred to me and is the reason why I say the only true value is the human being.
I am a native american of these great lands called the Americas and the reason why I say that the real value is the human being is becuase no amount of gold, diamonds, precious metals, or fiat currencies will ever solve the problems facing not just the human population but our mother earth.
The reason I remain skeptical is because my people have been robbed and raped from the greatest genocide in human history which seems to never be mentioned and almost forgotton. When the Europeans first came to our lands, known by America, our lands were raped and our people tortured. WIth the invasion of the Europeans came the ideas of wealth accumulation, private property, and the concept of money.
My grandfather and grandmother both taught me that when the Eurpoeans came to our lands, they brought with them a mental disease which ravages the heart and soul of man. The ideas of wealth accumulation, private property, and the concept of money was very foriegn to us because we were taught, from a very early age, that each human beings has the greatest value becuase we have been chosen by mother earth to care and protect her. We were taught that our mother earth provides everything freely, and that the only thing asked in return by mother earth was to care, nuture, and work her lands in order to yeild her fruits.
The ideas of owning private property, the waters and fish in the rivers, the air we breath, and the crops our mother earth yields is the problem. This is the luciferian mindset which tricks the mind into believing that one most own these things in order to make a living but I tell you that our mother earth provides everything freely. It is this idea of value, in the form of money, gold, diamonds, precious metals, or any other raw material which our mother earth provides freely, that has enslaved the entire human race. It is the very idea which the Luciferians or cabal use to keep the slavery system going, and is the reason why I say that provding legal monetary solutions will never solve the problems our humanity faces. It is just not our human race that is facing extinction but every single living thing on this beautiful mother earth, aswell as the planet itself. It is the only home we have and using old paradigms, the concept of value or money, will never solve the problems we now face.
Money, or the percieved value thought of by current western beliefs is the problem. This is why i say that releasing the World Global settlements, or any other hidden alleged wealth will never solve any problems. How can throwing money at real problems solve anything, this is exactly what the Luciferians do, throw money at a problem in order to solve it.
I am grateful that there are people like yourself Mr. Keenan who has the courage to take theses Luciferians head on and it takes great courage which I admire. But we must solve the earths problems with new ways of thinking, and when I say new, it really is not new but the original way of thinking. Which is that the real value is the human life, soul, and spirit that lives on mother earth. The Luciferians know this which is why they created the concept of value through money, currencies, gold, or other raw materials our mother earth provides freely. It is their beliefs which have been inserted into the beliefs of the human population and we are the ones who provide the real value while the Luciferian Cabal suck the life like the parasites they are.
I do no resort to name calling just because someone else has a different opinion than my own. Calling me ignorant is really not necessary when the real truth is that the invasion of the Europeans to this great land known as America, which occured 500 years ago was the start of the genocide against the true elders of the mother earth. The Luciferian cabal feared our way of life which is why the genocide occured, we were free people living off the nuturing of our mother earth, and most viewed our way of life as primitive but we lived as one with our mother earth and now, due to this mindset of money and value, it has lead to the darkest period of our mother earth and the human poppulation.
The one difference between the OPPT and your case Mr. Keenan is that the OPPT, according to those who call themselves trustees are allegedly working to release ABSOLUTE DATA, this is what humanity needs, disclosure of the ultimate truth because in my eyes this will solve more problems than releasing any World Global Settlements or monetary value. If you yourself Mr Keenan are working on releasing this disclosure of truth then I thank you and wish you success in the liberation of our human family.
I will not call you any names, becuase my heritage has also taught me that we are all brothers and sister, even the Luciferian Cabal are our brothers and sisters, yet it is up to humanity to unite in love and those of the old ways, the original ways.
Why do we humans need to put value on what our mother earth provides freely, it is the idea of value and money which has caused all these problems and has infected the hearts and souls of all humans.
We are the only species on this planet that pays to be born and pays to dies, which is the ultimate slavery, why must I pay to be a slave but this is what has occured ever since humans starting putting value on what mother earth provides freely.
In Love and Gratitude,
BeWise,
Elder of the ancients ways.
www.jhaines6.wordpress.com / link to original article
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John Ward – Breaking – Japan: Land Of The Falling Yen – Yen Hits 100 To The Dollar – 5 April 2013
The Yen went from 92.6 to 98 per US Dollar yesterday. Overnight it moved from 98 to 100.That was the nice round figure as of 08.40 BST today, Friday: and is, I understand, the BOJ’s target.
Clearly, the threat of thermo-nuclear conflict is good for exports.
First thing today, the Swiss Central Bank reacted, and piled in to ensure the SF lost 1.16 centimes against the falling Yen.
It’s a zero sum game, but these blokes are desperate.
Overnight, the Swiss Franc has lost 1.16 centimes against it.
www.hat4uk.wordpress.com / link to original article
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RemovingTheShackles – Heather Has A Point – 5 April 2013
Mish/ Mike Shedlock – 97% Of Spain’s Social Security Pensions Are Invested In Spanish Government Debt – 5 April 2013
Looking for a disaster waiting to blow sky high? I have one right at hand. El Economista reports 97% of pensions are invested in Spanish government debt in 2012.
The Reserve Fund of Social Security in 2012 increased their holdings of Spanish debt to 97% of total assets, up from 90% who had in late 2011.
Over 70% of purchases are recorded in the second half of 2012, according to Bloomberg points, after the critical moment when ECB President Mario Draghi, undertook to do “whatever it takes” to defend the euro. A message that helped ease the constraints and helped drive Spanish debt.
In 2007, the money invested in financial assets were divided fairly (50%) between Spanish debt and foreign debt, but this proportion began to change in 2008.
In September 2012, for the first time in history the government had to dip into the reserve fund to pay the payroll to pensioners. A total of 3,063 million euros were drawn from this instrument, to which were added to the 3,530 million in November Moncloa needed to fund the pension increases.
Comparison to GM
This exactly reminds me of the stupidity of GM investing its assets in GM bonds. Expect similar results in Spain.
Mike “Mish” Shedlock
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ICIJ – Emily Menkes – Highlights Of Offshore Leaks So Far – 5 April 2013
April 4, 2013, 1:00 pm
Today marks the beginning of one of the biggest financial leaks in history.
The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists has just released the first stories from a global collaborative project into the world of offshore money. The Tax Justice Network, an advocacy group claims that a third of the world’s wealth is tied up in the secret area of offshore.
For the past 15 months, journalists from over 40 countries have worked together to shed light on this issue.
And here’s some of what they found.
- One of Mongolia’s most senior politicians says he is considering resigning from office after being confronted with evidence that he has an offshore company and a secret Swiss bank account.
- Newly uncovered documents link Maria Imelda Marcos Manotoc, the eldest child of the late Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos and now a senior political figure in her own right, to two secretive offshore trusts and an offshore company.
- A prominent Canadian lawyer, husband to a Liberal senator, moved CA$1.7 million (US$1.1 million) to secretive financial havens while he was locked in battle with the Canada Revenue Agency over his taxes, according to documents in a massive leak of offshore financial data.
- A corporate mogul whose business empire has won building contracts worth billions of dollars amid Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev’s massive construction spree is tied to the president’s family through secretive offshore companies.
- The prominent Thais listed in secret documents as owners of offshore holdings includes the former wife of ousted Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, a sitting senator, a former high-ranking defense ministry official, Forbes-listed tycoons, and a former government minister whose assets in the United States are frozen because of her alleged links to Zimbabwean dictator Robert Mugabe.
- Greek citizens who own or direct offshore companies in the British Virgin Islands and other tax havens rarely declare them to Greek tax officials, a review of more than 100 companies shows. Just four out of 107 offshore companies investigated by ICIJ are registered with tax authorities as the law usually requires, particularly when the firms hold assets or conduct business in Greece. Officials apparently have no record of the other 103 firms — or whether the owners declared any assets held by these entities or paid taxes on them.
- A list containing examples of some of the most high-profile names uncovered in this investigation, along with records of their offshore companies. Those named come in the form of politicians, businessmen, army generals, tycoons, relatives of dictators, and are scattered across 29 different countries.
- Finally, for those interested in how ICIJ managed to tackle records cache, the data manager of the project, Duncan Campbell, writes an in-depth explanation of how our journalists were able make sense of the 260 gigabytes of information obtained. Four large databases, half a million text, PDF, spreadsheet, image and web files were dissected to reveal over 130,000 records on the people and agents who run, own, benefit from or hide behind offshore companies.
We hope you enjoy these stories; there will be more to follow daily for the next couple of weeks.
If you have story tips, documents or other information about this issue, contact us at investigations@icij.org.
Subscribe to The ICIJ Global Muckraker by email or get the RSS feed
www.icij.org / link to original article
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John Ward – Analysis : Why We Should Ignore The HBOS Three: They’re Simple Plonkers, Not Bankers – 5 April 2013
The main thing nobody seems to have picked up about the HBOS Three today is that none of them are bankers.
James Crosbie’s background is mathematics and insurance. He only joined Halifax Building Society (as it then was) in 1994, and even then he was part of the Life Assurance division. I worked with Crosbie and others for six years, so I do know that of which I speak.
Dennis (Lord) Stevenson comes from a background in Parliamentary lobbying and market research, where his partner was Peter York of Sloane Ranger fame. Together they founded SRU, with whom I also worked on and off for many years.
Andy Hornby was first with BCG consulting, and then – having specialised in retail marketing – he joined Asda. He was only briefly and disastrously at HBOS, and then left to go to Coral…which, like HBOS, was also in the betting business – albeit taking them rather than making them.
This trio, literally, did not know what they were doing. Crosbie – a prime mover in the demutualisation of Halifax – asked me just before the public launch why I was against the idea. I told him graphically and at length. He sat and smirked at me for twenty minutes. I’ve only met Dennis a few times, but everything he knows about the dangers of investment banking could be written on the backside of a 1 euro coin. And Andy had never worked in finance at all until he arrived at HBOS as Chief Executive.
These blokes are plausible chancers, nothing more. Arrogant and ignorant. The Independent this morning calls them ‘worse than Fred Goodwin’. I disagree. Goodwin – like Bob Diamond – was part of the industry. The nicest thing you can say about these latter two terrifyingly empty guys is that they should’ve known better.
Goodwin is a chartered accountant by training: a number juggler whose talent for making things look good met an obsession with leverage. He is an archtetype of the bright banking idiot. His purchase of ABNAmro prompted me in 2007 to call him ”….a vain and silly man who has – in purchasing ABN Amro – paid far too much to buy something of no commercial use. In the City last week, not a single person whose opinion I rate could find one sound business reason for the deal; and thus we are drawn inexorably to the conclusion that Sir Badloss must have a very small penis indeed.’
Bob Diamond is a classic Ivy League product who went almost immediately into banking with Morgan Stanley, and then rose within Barclays investment division Barcap. Described by a New York judge five years ago as “a man dealing in dubious evidence who needs to be kept on a short leash”, The Slog hounded Black Bob for many years: he was, quite obviously, a serious risk-taker and a gentleman whose behaviour suggests he recognised few limits.
This duo (and myriad others like them from Lloyd Blankfein to Jamie Dimon) are the soi-disant professionals who cost the world £27trillion and counting through their frontal lobe behaviour syndrome. Another one is the UK Treasury’s favourite person, Stephen Hester of RBS.
Hester began his career in 1982 with Credit Suisse, and in 1996 was appointed to the executive board. Hester held the position of Chief Financial Officer and Head of Support Division, until May 2000. From May 2000 to September 2001, he was Head of the Fixed Income Division. In May 2002 he joined Abbey National as Finance Director. Later he was brought in by Alistair Darling to mop up after Northern Rock (run by another untrained idiot-chancer, Adam Applegarth). Now Stevie is busy running RBS, whose product staff on his watch defrauded over 1500 SME customers in various guises, and whose technical staff seem to keep on suffering highly profitable glitches. I’ve also been on Hester’s case for some time now.
I say, “Ignore the HBOS three, they were just clowns”. They are – like Jimmy Savile in the paedophile sector of our increasingly depraved culture – handy distractions from the serial villains. All of them are still free, and very few of them deserve to be.
Earlier at The Slog: The Land of the Falling Yen
www.hat4uk.wordpress.com / link to original article
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