Hasta La Gadget!

As summer heats up, we just want to chill out — and what better way than with a deliciously sweet treat? Scoop up some sorbet, go for the gelato or get into all sorts of ice cream to find that perfect summer dessert for you.

With so many cool options, you can beat the heat with frozen treats all summer long. Here are 9 sweets worth saving room for.

1. GELATI E SORBETTI – Osteria Morini (New York)

C. M. Rubin’s Global Education Report

What would you do if you were US Education Secretary? What Curriculum makes education relevant in a 21st Century world? What do Millennials around the world think about Immigration? What do our Top Global Teachers do to promote integration in their increasingly diverse classrooms? Those are the questions we were most curious about this month.

Some time early next year a new President may appoint a new Secretary of Education. With that in mind, our popular Education Debate series returns this US Election year, featuring Diane Ravitch, Howard Gardner, Randi Weingarten, Julia Freeland Fisher, Charles Fadel and Andy Hargreaves. This month, author and director of education research at the Clayton Christensen Institute, Julia Freeland Fisher, is in our hot seat. On the fiercely debated issue of college access and affordability, Julia believes “the question of employer needs should sit at the core of higher education conversations. Without answering it, we risk pumping more and more students through a costly system that is not aligned in reliable ways to the job market.”

The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development calls on countries to begin efforts to achieve the 17 SDGs over the next 15 years. The goals address the needs of people in both developed and developing countries, emphasizing that no one should be left behind. We believe the voices of youth are critical to the global conversation on issues facing our world, and proudly launched the Millennial Bloggers this month. Our talented group of 15 Millennials are innovators in entrepreneurship, journalism, education, entertainment, and academic scholarship. This month we asked the team to share their perspectives on the challenges faced in Migration. “We are not addressing the millions who do not, cannot, and will not have the skills set needed to be competitive in a global market,” writes Jacob Deleon Navarrete; “It seems we have either underestimated the number of individuals who will be displaced by globalization, or we don’t care…” Alusine Barrie reflects on his most talented African countrymen who “flee their homes” to live in the developed world, and notes that migration trends will only be contained when “the world takes proactive steps to reduce the concentration of disadvantages in countries like ours…” “Europe has to change,” writes Reetta Heiskanen, but that “change will not be driven by fear and racism. The change should be driven by a unity for a better tomorrow for all Europeans.” 

Traditional professions disappear while new ones are created. WHAT should we teach young people in the age Dr. Google, increasing human longevity, international mobility, terrorism, environmental threats, robots and coming soon – gene editing. According to Center for Curriculum Redesign (CCR) founder Charles Fadel, education is “falling behind its mission to prepare students for the future: a world that’s increasingly volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous.” Curriculum was significantly redesigned in the late 1800’s when societal and human capital needs demanded it. But the 21st century bears little resemblance to the past. In a new 5-part series, Fadel presents a first of its kind framework of the competencies needed as well as a plan of action for redesigning and implementing a relevant 21st century curriculum. In Part 1 of our series – What is 4 Dimensional Education? – we look at CCR’s framework holistically. In Part 2, we focus on WHAT Knowledge is relevant in a 21st century curriculum. “Across both traditional and modern subjects, we are working to both simplify and connect the content: simplify by boiling down subjects to their essential questions; and connect by highlighting themes across subjects, adding the myriad connections that exist between a subject and all other relevant subjects, and the connections to its application in the world,” explains Fadel.

Our Global Teacher Bloggers are pioneers and innovators in fields such as technology integration, mathematics coaching, special needs education, science instruction, and gender equity. They have founded schools, written curricula, and led classrooms in 13 different countries that stretch across every populated continent on earth. These teachers empower and enrich the lives of young people from nearly every background imaginable. They shared their answers to our question: How do you help students accept and work well with people of different beliefs, cultures, languages, socio-economic statuses, education backgrounds, and learning styles?  “If tolerance is to be sustainable and cooperation meaningful,” writes Miriam Mason-Sesay, “it has to be based on how much we have in common as members of the human family, rather than emphasizing our differences.” “In a society that believes in the validity of its own opinions,” Pauline Hawkins notes regarding the importance of teaching children the difference between opinions and facts, “It is only through patience and informed discussions that we can help our children/students open their eyes to the biases that have formed those weightless, negative opinions.”

Our thanks once again to all our amazing teachers, millennials, contributors and supporters around the world.

For more information.

(Photos are courtesy of CMRubinWorld)

C. M. Rubin

Join me and globally renowned thought leaders including Sir Michael Barber (UK), Dr. Michael Block (U.S.), Dr. Leon Botstein (U.S.), Professor Clay Christensen (U.S.), Dr. Linda Darling-Hammond (U.S.), Dr. MadhavChavan (India), Professor Michael Fullan (Canada), Professor Howard Gardner (U.S.), Professor Andy Hargreaves (U.S.), Professor Yvonne Hellman (The Netherlands), Professor Kristin Helstad (Norway), Jean Hendrickson (U.S.), Professor Rose Hipkins (New Zealand), Professor Cornelia Hoogland (Canada), Honourable Jeff Johnson (Canada), Mme. Chantal Kaufmann (Belgium), Dr. EijaKauppinen (Finland), State Secretary TapioKosunen (Finland), Professor Dominique Lafontaine (Belgium), Professor Hugh Lauder (UK), Lord Ken Macdonald (UK), Professor Geoff Masters (Australia), Professor Barry McGaw (Australia), Shiv Nadar (India), Professor R. Natarajan (India), Dr. Pak Tee Ng (Singapore), Dr. Denise Pope (US), Sridhar Rajagopalan (India), Dr. Diane Ravitch (U.S.), Richard Wilson Riley (U.S.), Sir Ken Robinson (UK), Professor Pasi Sahlberg (Finland), Professor Manabu Sato (Japan), Andreas Schleicher (PISA, OECD), Dr. Anthony Seldon (UK), Dr. David Shaffer (U.S.), Dr. Kirsten Sivesind (Norway), Chancellor Stephen Spahn (U.S.), Yves Theze (LyceeFrancais U.S.), Professor Charles Ungerleider (Canada), Professor Tony Wagner (U.S.), Sir David Watson (UK), Professor Dylan Wiliam (UK), Dr. Mark Wormald (UK), Professor Theo Wubbels (The Netherlands), Professor Michael Young (UK), and Professor Minxuan Zhang (China) as they explore the big picture education questions that all nations face today.
The Global Search for Education Community Page

C. M. Rubin is the author of two widely read online series for which she received a 2011 Upton Sinclair award, “The Global Search for Education” and “How Will We Read?” She is also the author of three bestselling books, including The Real Alice in Wonderland, is the publisher of CMRubinWorld, and is a Disruptor Foundation Fellow.

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By Jason Kulpa

While choosing to forego outside investment can leave your business more susceptible to the ups and downs of the market, it can also be exhilarating to be in complete control of your professional destiny. Your ascent into the upper ranks of your industry may be slower than if you were bolstered by outside funds, but you have the freedom to determine each step in your path.

There were two main reasons my company decided to fund ourselves independently. The first — and most obvious — reason was ownership. Every founder starts with 100 percent undiluted ownership. Outside funding chips away at both ownership and emotional investment as you trade equity for investment; sometimes young entrepreneurs give up too much too fast. I know plenty of CEOs who sold out too early.

The second reason we wanted to support ourselves was the freedom it allows, though it is a double-edged sword. Having the freedom to determine our direction enabled us to exit certain profitable industries when it became apparent consumers were no longer receiving value. Without investors, it was easier to shift directions. In our case, closing one door opened a new one that may have remained closed to us had we been restricted by outside agreements and opinions.

However, there are trade-offs. When it’s all on you, the pressure is enormous. To succeed, you have to get creative about cash flow. Our solution was to work with our bank and leverage our receivables. That way, we could borrow based on a percentage at any time. Depending on the contract, our customers can pay us anytime from net 30 to net 90 days. The ability to borrow against our receivables has helped take the pressure off the day-to-day cash flow.

Getting Creative: The Secret Behind Successful Self-Funding

Constant creativity is necessary to navigate the tight budget of self-funding. I take every company expense — from office space to the coffee we have in the break room — as a challenge to secure amazing deals and promote future growth.

Here are three ways to creatively and effectively grow your startup without relying on money from outside investors:

1. Don’t ask friends and family.

Betting your own money and losing it to strangers is difficult, but losing your friends’ or family’s money is an even bigger pressure you don’t need. Instead, be relentless about making only deals that make economic sense. When using your own money, you simply don’t have the luxury of taking deals that aren’t profitable to some degree.

When our building owner wanted a percentage each month that we couldn’t afford, I applied a little creativity to the negotiation. We came away with a lease that enables us to pay less in the early years and make increased payments toward the end. It frees up money today based on the projection that we’ll be making more money in five years.

2. Get inventive to get what you need.

Operate under the principle that it never hurts to ask. When funding your future is all up to you, the need for habitual frugality makes you come up with creative questions to get what you need.

We’ve asked for different things — all of which enabled us to free up money. For example, I went to our customers early on and asked them to pay sooner in exchange for discounts. We also asked our media sources for larger credit lines so we could do more in the short term. We even vet our partners and credit the same way a bank does. If it weren’t my own money on the line, I’m not sure I would have done the same.

3. Be a good neighbor.

Lift your head up and think beyond the day-to-day. It’s not always easy to find the time, but getting engaged in your community not only helps you network, it also pays dividends.

Our company is a member of the Downtown San Diego Partnership, and our involvement is about the bigger picture, not our own company. Being part of the organization, which is working to revitalize downtown San Diego, is a long-term investment for us. As the organization succeeds, our business benefits from the greater community building a favorable environment for startups.

Electing to go without outside investors isn’t right for every startup, but I recommend giving it some serious thought. It keeps you focused on the bottom line around the clock — and that’s never a bad thing.

Jason Kulpa is the CEO of Underground Elephant based in San Diego, a performance-based provider of internet marketing technology and customer acquisition solutions.

— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

A common myth among opponents of single-payer national health insurance (NHI) is that it would cost too much and break the bank. This belief is based in part upon an assumption that patients would overuse health care if they gained access to it without any cost-sharing when they seek care. Cost-sharing has been a lynchpin of consumer-directed health care (CDHC) since the early 1990s, which assumes that patients who have more “skin in the game”– through deductibles, co-payments, and other out-of-pocket costs–will make more prudent decisions about their own health care. But that policy and assumption have been discredited by actual experience over the last 25 years. In fact, the more cost-sharing is imposed on patients with higher deductibles, co-payments and out-of-pocket costs, the more they underuse care by delaying or avoiding necessary care. (1) Moreover, when Canada shifted over to its single-payer financing system in the 1970s, there was only about a 5 percent increase in their use of health care, mostly for necessary care that had been delayed or forgone. (2)
We have to face some inconvenient facts about what we are already spending–and wasting–in our current health care system, six years after enactment of the Affordable Care Act (ACA)–a misnomer given the following facts:

• The ACA continues high cost-sharing in many of its plans and has failed to control costs or prices to the point that one in three Americans cannot afford necessary health care. (3)
• There is rampant profiteering and waste in the ACA, as illustrated by these two examples: the administrative overhead in the growing market of private Medicare plans is six times that of traditional Medicare (4), and private insurers have been gaming the ACA’s risk-coding program, under which they are paid more by overstating the health risks of older and sicker enrollees. (5)
• We pay2.1 trillion in taxes to fund health care in this country,6,560 per person, more per capita than in Canada or any other nation. The costs to our government in paying for private health coverage (28 percent of all health spending) and tax subsidies for private employer-sponsored plans and other privately paid care (326 billion in 2015), indicate that we are already paying, as taxpayers, almost two-thirds of total health care costs in the country. That would be enough to provide universal access to health care for all Americans if it were to be re-directed from the inefficiencies and waste of private insurers to patient care in a simplified national single-payer financing system coupled with a private delivery system. (6)
• The landmark 2013 study by Gerald Friedman, professor of economics at the University of Massachusetts, finds that NHI, when enacted, will save592 billion a year by cutting administrative waste of private insurers (476 billion) and reducing pharmaceutical prices to European levels (116 billion). (7)
• Professor Friedman’s ten-year projection for funding H. R. 676, the single-payer Medicare for All bill in the House, estimates that9.6 trillion will be saved from administrative economies, lower pharmaceutical prices, and lowered rate of medical inflation, that19.7 trillion will be saved on private insurance premiums, reduced out-of-pocket spending, and other private health spending, that17.5 trillion will be raised from the financial transactions tax, the high-income surtax, and the payroll taxes, and that the deficit will be cut by2.8 trillion. (8)
• With the ACA, the government is paying more than1 trillion in subsidies to private insurers between 2015 and 2024 (9), even though 29 million people are still uninsured and tens of millions underinsured, and there is still no cost containment is in sight.

Critics of single-payer NHI fail to recognize that it would actually save money, even while providing universal coverage for our entire population for comprehensive health benefits, including inpatient and outpatient care, prescription drugs, dental care, mental health services, and long-term care. NHI will be funded by a progressive tax system based in large part on payroll taxes, whereby 95 percent of Americans will pay less than they do now for their insurance premiums, deductibles, co-payments, actual care, and out-of-pocket payments. People with annual incomes of $50,000 would pay $1,500 in payroll taxes, $6,000 for those with incomes of $100,000, and $12,000 for those with incomes of $200,000. (10)

Opponents of NHI use disinformation and distortion of its costs in the everyday debate over health care, especially during this election season. Reports of other studies ignore the savings that Friedman has projected, such as that by Kenneth Thorpe, economist at Emory University, who underestimates administrative savings with single-payer and ignores other savings, such as elimination of subsidies and savings on drugs and medical equipment. (11) Seemingly unaware of these savings, Hillary Clinton, as the Democratic presidential candidate, without apparent concern for the growing costs and unaffordability of care, restricted access, and flight of large insurers from the exchanges, contends that it would put a heavy tax burden on the middle class and still does not support NHI (although in 1994, in the absence of health care reform, she called it inevitable by 2000!) (12)

The costs of health insurance and health care are now exceeding $25,000 for a family of four with employer-sponsored PPO coverage, making the costs of care less affordable all the time. Continuing the ACA or repealing/replacing it with a Republican “plan” will only make matters worse. We have to recognize that private insurers are gaming the system to their advantage and holding us up for more generous bailouts as they exit the ACA’s exchanges in droves. We can no longer afford their greed and wasteful bureaucracy. As access to care is further restricted by their higher premiums and narrower networks, we can only expect growing political backlash across the political spectrum.

John Geyman, M.D. is the author of The Human Face of ObamaCare: Promises vs. Reality and What Comes Next and How Obamacare is Unsustainable: Why We Need a Single-Payer Solution For All Americans

visit: http://www.johngeymanmd.org

References:

1. Davis, K, Schoen, C, Stremikis, MPP. Mirror, Mirror on the Wall: How the Performance of the U. S. Health System Compares Internationally. New York. The Commonwealth Fund, 2010 update.
http://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/fund-reports/2014/jun/mirror-mirror

2. Armstrong, P, Armstrong, H, Fegan, C. Universal Health Care: What the United States Can Learn from the Canadian Experience. New York. The New Press, 1998, 131-132.
https://www.amazon.com/Universal-Health-Care-Canadian-Experience/dp/1565845153

3. Pollitz, K, Cox. C, Lucia, L et al. Medical debt among people with health insurance. Kaiser Family Foundation, January 2014.
http://kff.org/report-section/the-burden-of-medical-debt-section-1-who-has-medical-bill-problems-and-what-are-the-contributing-factors/

4. Woolhandler, S, Himmelstein, DU. Single-payer health plan wouldn’t cost U. S. more. Philadelphia Inquirer, February 5, 2016.
http://articles.philly.com/2016-02-06/news/70376862_1_health-spending-health-care-single-payer

5. Potter, W. Health insurers working the system to pad their profits. Center for Public Integrity. August 15, 2015.
https://www.publicintegrity.org/2015/08/17/17863/health-insurers-working-system-pad-their-profits

6. Ibid # 4.

7. Friedman, G. Funding H. R. 676: The Expanded and Improved Medicare for All Act. How We Can Afford a National Single-Payer Health Plan. Physicians for a National Health Program. Chicago, IL. July 31, 2013. Available at: htpp:.//www.pnhp.org/sites/default/files/Funding%20HR%/20676_Friedman_final_7.31.13.pdf

8. Friedman, G. An open letter to the Wall Street Journal on its Bernie Sanders hit piece. September 15, 2015.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/gerald-friedman/the-wall-street-journal-k_b_8143062.html

9. Congressional Budget Office. Insurance Coverage Provisions of the Affordable Care Act. Washington, D.C., April 2014.
https://www.cbo.gov/publication/43472

10. Ibid # 7.

11. Himmelstein, DU, Woolhandler, S. On Kenneth Thorpe’s analysis of Senator Sanders’ single-payer reform plan. The Huffington Post, January 29, 2016.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-himmelstein/kenneth-thorpe-bernie-sanders-single-payer_b_9113192.html

12. Clinton, H, speaking to a group at Lehman Brothers Health Corporation, June 15, 1994. As reported by Health Care for All-WA Newsletter, Winter, 2015, p. 9.
http://pnhp.org/blog/2016/06/03/hillarys-public-option-proposal-could-it-work/

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Maine Gov. Paul LePage (R) raised the possibility that he will step down before his term is up in two years, as he faces increasing criticism from members of his own party.

“I’m looking at all options,” LePage said Tuesday in an interview on the radio station WVOM, as first reported by the Portland Press Herald. “I think some things I’ve been asked to do are beyond my ability. I’m not going to say that I’m not going to finish it. I’m not saying that I am going to finish it.”

“If I’ve lost my ability to help Maine people, maybe it’s time to move on,” he added. 

LePage has long been known for his controversial comments, but his most recent scandal seems to have inflicted the most damage. Last week, the governor left a voicemail for a Democratic state legislator in which he called him a homophobic slur. 

“Mr. Gattine, this is Governor Paul Richard LePage. I would like to talk to you about your comments about my being a racist, you cocksucker,” LePage said. “I want to talk to you. I want you to prove that I’m a racist. I’ve spent my life helping black people and you little son-of-a-bitch, socialist cocksucker. You, I need you to, just freakin’, I want you to record this and make it public because I am after you. Thank you.”

The controversy started last year, when LePage claimed that drug dealers with names like “Smoothie, D-Money and Shifty” come into Maine and “impregnate a young, white girl before they leave.” Last week, LePage tried to back up his statement ― which had been widely criticized at the time ― by saying he keeps a binder of drug dealers arrested in Maine and “90-plus percent of those pictures” in his book are of black and Hispanic individuals.

LePage was upset by a report that state Rep. Drew Gattine (D) called him a racist in response, which led to the voice message. Gattine denied to the Portland Press Herald that he ever called the governor a racist.

LePage has become a massive headache for his fellow Republicans in the state, and they’re trying to figure out how to rein him in. 

Republican leaders met Monday with LePage discuss how to deal with the fallout from the voicemail incident. Senate President Mike Thibodeau called the voicemail “unacceptable” and said the governor needs to take “corrective action” ― although he wouldn’t go so far as to say LePage should be impeached.

“I don’t think our caucus is talking about impeachment,” Thibodeau told WMTW. “We’re talking about corrective action. I think that speculating on all that sort of stuff would be irresponsible on our part, given the fact that we haven’t even had a face-to-face meeting.”

Thibodeau’s spokesman told the Associated Press that the governor “told the Republican leaders he would talk to his family and advisers about possible corrective action.”

State Sen. Amy Volk (R) on Sunday posted on Facebook that she would even support censuring the governor. 

Democrats in the state, however, have said censure wouldn’t go far enough.

“We’ve all been very clear in what we are looking for,” said state Rep. Sara Gideon (D), the assistant majority leader in the Maine House. “We feel that the governor has really demonstrated behaviors, and it’s not just that it’s not appropriate for a governor, it shows that he is not in control of either his emotions or his actions, and yes, we have called for his resignation. We think it should be nothing short of that.”

In January, a group of legislators tried to impeach LePage, but the effort failed.

LePage said Tuesday that he had apologized to Gattine and his family for the voice message and plans to invite the representative to a face-to-face meeting.

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