Monday, November 5, 2012

Republicans and Democrats Are On Board For Shipping Jobs Overseas, NAFTA and TPP Free Trade Agreements


During the presidential debates of 1992, Ross Perot warned America about NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreements), a function at the epicenter of the emerging one world government/economic apparatus in which the Mexican, Canadian, and American globalists have chiefly used to de-industrialize America’s economy and send American jobs overseas, never to be repatriated. Perot symbolically characterized the entire program of shipping jobs overseas as being a great sucking sound.

Ross Perot ran against George Herbert Walker Bush and Bill Clinton in 1992's presidential race. George Herbert Walker Bush was the man who met with Canadian Prime Minister, Brian Mulroney, and Mexican President Carlos Salinas in San Antonio, Texas on December 17, 1992 to ceremonially sign their names to NAFTA papers, spearheading and promoting the agreement before their legislative and parliamentary branches.  George Bush’s presidential tenure ended before he was able to finalize the process of the agreement being enacted into law, so the agreement was passed onto Bill Clinton for the finalization of the enactment process.  


After many symposiums, NAFTA passed the House of Representatives on November 17, 1993 with 132 Republicans and 102 Democrats approving. It afterwards passed the Senate with 34 Republicans and 27 Democrats approving.

The impasse American citizens entrapped themselves in when having to choose between which of the two men would be the nation’s next presidential figurehead and mouthpiece for the globalists to use in hornswoggling the American people into accepting the next step in forging the New World Order in 1992 is the same impasse Americans have entrapped themselves in with Barack Obama and Mitt Romney. Americans still have not learned from their history. They still have not seen through the smoke mirrors of the perpetual tussle between the Republicans and Democrats notoriously in the media’s spotlight. 

American businesses are transporting themselves overseas to places where overtaxing environmental regulations and bureaucratic restrictions exist much less. These are places where labor standards are virtually nonexistent as well, and workers can be legally paid slave labor wages and have health benefits be unprovided to them. In other nations where our parsimonious American corporations are amalgamated with foreign corporations, how are American workers expected to compete with the foreign workers therein who are willing to toil for, say, 6 cents an hour and seven days a week in jobs we Americans toil in here and expect to be paid 8 to 12 dollars an hour for ? Corporations and businesses of all types will take the workers who are much more inexpensive, leaving Americans to slide further into the pit of joblessness and being subjected to more government assistance programs and foreign goods and services. 

Let us take a look at what has economically resulted from the enforcement of NAFTA. America has lost 5.7 million manufacturing jobs between the years 2000 and 2010, calculated at a total 33 percent loss exceeding the calculated losses during the 1930s Great Depression. In that period, manufacturing accounted for 34 percent of all jobs, but now manufacturing only accounts for 11 percent of all jobs. America has lost 42,400 factories since the year 2001, 36 percent of which employed more than 1,000 workers and 38 percent of which employed 500 to 999 workers. Total manufacturing Gross Domestic Product in 2008 (at $1.64 trillion) represented 11.5 percent of the United States economic output, a decrease from 17 percent in 1999, and 28 percent in 1959.  

An article from Yahoo Finance cited data from the Center for Economic and Policy Research saying “the United States economy has lost about one-third of its capacity to generate good jobs.” And that is with 34% of all American workers in 2010 having a four-year college degree, an increase from 19% of all American workers in 1979.


During the scanty employment growth of the past 4 years, 58 percent of the jobs created were low-wage jobs, as indicated by the National Employment Law Project. 22 percent accounted for jobs with mid-wage incomes and 20 percent accounted for jobs with higher-wage incomes. The low-wage jobs pay $13.83 an hour or less. During our economic slump some 60 percent of the lost jobs paid mid-wage incomes while 21 percent paid low-wage incomes and 19 percent paid higher-wage incomes. When looking into 366 different vocations between 2008 and 2012, the National Employment Law Project recorded the median hourly wages for low-wage jobs were $7.69 to $13.83, mid-wage jobs were between $13.84 and $21.13, and high-wage jobs were between $21.14 and $54.44. Only 46 percent of the re-employed full-time workers were earning as much as they did at their former jobs. About one-third reported receiving a cut in their pay of 20 percent or more. 

 The RT reported this past October that only 4 of every 10 adults in the United States are employed. The unemployment reports released earlier in October saying unemployment decreased to 7.8 percent are only in view of those who are not only jobless but have withdrawn from seeking for any work. If you are seeking for a paycheck, have submitted in job applications within the past 4 weeks, and are working part-time, you are still considered as being a part of the labor force.  When looking at the employment to population ratio, 58.7 percent of Americans are working, leaving in total 82 million or 41 percent of people unemployed.


All of the those referenced numbers above signifying a moribund economy are what Obama’s supporters will say has been “inherited” from the spoils Bush caused, much of those spoils linking to NAFTA, and that it takes more than one presidential term to stabilize an economy. Accordingly, in the eyes of his supporters, Obama is assoiled for any noteworthy progress not being made that he promised to have be made during his tenure. Contrarily, if Obama truly has been heroically and untiringly working to salvage this economy from the pernicious policies of Bush, any reasonable human being would rationalize that Obama’s administration would listen to the admonishments being given by their Democratic associates in this video and the many other American citizens and political leaders who have censured NAFTA over the years.


Many politicians have no intentions for terminating our participation in these unfair trade agreements with every manufacturing market of the world so we can consume every good we can manufacture domestically, have our Gross Domestic Product grow exponentially and create millions of jobs here in America. Obama is trotting on the way of the globalists despite the fact he proclaimed many times that “I don't think NAFTA has been good for America and I never have” as well as saying that he “opposed NAFTA and voted against CAFTA”. 

Much like how Mitt Romney has "flip-flopped" and repeatedly changed his stances on many issues, Obama has done so with this issue. Before being instated in the Oval Office, he promised multitudinously to “renegotiate” our terms and standings with NAFTA and said we “should use the hammer as a potential opt out and as leverage to ensure that we actually get labor and environmental standards that are enforced.” 


In this video the CTV network queried as to whether or not Obama lied to Ohio about NAFTA and reported that Obama had confessed about his false promises of renegotiation on NAFTA saying “Don’t worry. It’s campaign rhetoric. Don’t take it seriously.” 


Remember when we were promised not free trade, but “fair trade?" 

Where is Obama now on these terms and agreements concerning NAFTA?

Obama’s administration has been focusing on implementing new measures in the free trade zone with the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Totalitarian redefinitions of intellectual property will be foisted onto the public with this agreement. In rewriting copyright laws, internet user’s freedoms of expression along with their rights and claims to internet privacy and acquisition of crucial information via the internet will be eviscerated. In conjunction with stripping innovators of their rights and claims to copyrights, trademarks, patents, and perhaps geographical indications, this is designed to have innovators of varying types be accused of copyright infringement in situations where copyright infringement was not committed. The internet’s global infrastructure will be transformed with this. 


The Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement--- “NAFTA on steroids”--- is merging Australia, Brunei, Chile, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, Malaysia, and Vietnam with the United States in negotiating a treaty and restructuring social contracts and the standards of worldwide trade, wage, and regulatory policies without the mainstream press giving any detailed coverage on it, all at the behest of the aristocrats systematizing the New World Order. As the United States hectors economically fraught countries into joining under the auspices of an unusual provision in the Trans-Pacific Partnership, Canada and Mexico have joined the Trans-Pacific Partnership this October in the meantime having Japan and China scheduling to join later. While NAFTA has provided ways for transnational corporations to base themselves on conditions and territories where they can pay their worker’s slave labor wages and avoid paying for their healthcare and pensions, The Trans-Pacific Partnership takes everything a few steps further in giving transnational corporations the legality to lower their worker’s wages even more, evade or self-exempt from paying penalties for environmental damage, be non-compliant with laws intended to protect the environment, consumers, and workers, and can sue governments to receive compensatory funds for any laws that have impinged the transnational corporations. Precedents being established by the Trans-Pacific Partnership will endow transnational corporations with the prerogative of litigating against countries’ laws, regulations, and court decisions in international tribunal courts whose pronouncements in all ways trump that of any countries’ domestic judicial courts.  Conflicts of interest have no hindering legal impact on the consciences or aggrandizements and careers of those who masterminded and support the Trans-Pacific Partnership. 

The Trans-Pacific Partnership aims to terminate Buy American laws. Only 69 members of the House of Representatives seem to be aggressively opposing this, and it can be read in a letter they wrote in “strong support of Buy American procurement policies” articulating their concerns about how everything being proffered will “adversely impact American jobs, workers, and manufacturers.” Furthermore, they said, “This could result in large sums of U.S. tax dollars being invested to strengthen other countries’ manufacturing sectors, rather than our own. At a time when U.S. manufacturing only employs 11.71 million people, a 40% decline from its peak in 1979 and the lowest since 1941, we simply cannot allow this to happen.” 

Unfortunately, while members of both the Democrat and Republican parties signed their names to this letter, the many Democrats and Republicans in support of the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement outnumber them. This comes as a new staggering eye-opener showing how majorly dubious most politicians are, regardless of how much one politician exclusively and ornately declares himself/herself as having genuine intentions of good will (in reality no good will) for the American people.




Thursday, October 25, 2012

Taxes Set to Increase in January 2013 and the Reasons Why



Now is the time, better than ever, for the American people to awaken to the inauspicious reality their country holds, despite the great trepidation it may cause for many people. Now is the time, better than ever, to repudiate the two-party system, because both have evidently allowed the American people to fall through the cracks. Why should the American people continue hanging onto every word coming from the mouths of both Romney and Obama when neither of them on their campaign trails, in their public advertisements, or during their debates this year have uttered a word about the onerous tax increases that will be imposed upon 160 million American workers in January 2013? Many reports say these tax burdens are set to increase indubitably with no potential way of avoidance available regardless of who wins the presidency in November. Any American with an annual salary of $50,000 will see their monthly paychecks be reduced by $80. According to the Tax Policy Center most Americans will experience a tax increase of up to $3,500. The report can be read from the Huffingtonpost here. > http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/01/payroll-tax-cut-2013_n_1929638.html

 Other reports say that middle-income earners making $40,000 to $60,000 annually will see a tax increase of about $2,000, having the average federal tax rate, including all taxes, increase 5 percentage points up to 24.3% total. In a lame-duck session scheduled to take place after the November presidential election, Congressmen will debate about automatic spending cuts and tax increases. According to Bloomberg.com, if Congressmen do not reach a consensus by the end of the year, the top rate on capital gains taxes will increase from 15% to 23.8%. Also, the top statutory tax rate on ordinary income will increase from 35% to 39.6% and taxes on dividends and estates will increase with the alternative minimum tax diffusing to 21.7 million households, up from 4 million this year. 

Nearly 88% of the nation’s households will experience tax increases. Those who will be unaffected are the people without wage income subject to the payroll tax and an income too exiguous to pay taxes in general. This group is the low-income senior citizens depending on Social Security. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-10-01/u-s-households-face-tax-increase-from-2013-fiscal-cliff.html

The payroll tax cut was putting an extra $1,000 in the pockets of Americans. In the beginning the public was told that extending the Bush-era tax cuts would help to galvanize the economy, but American citizens have not seen enough robust activity nor does any research agency on economics and finance have any data to account for there being any veritable and reliable economic restoration to support us in weathering the storm that is about to come. Americans have been and are still suffering despite the Congressional Budget Office’s report earlier this month saying the unemployment rate has decreased from 8.1% to 7.8% and Gross Domestic Product has grown by 1.9%. Obama on February 14th 2010 said, “Allowing this tax cut to expire would make people’s lives harder right now. It would make their choices more difficult.” During 2010 Obama bestirred public support and pressured Congress to lengthen the payroll tax cut through 2012. While Democrats and Republicans wrangled about the tax cuts through 2011 and 2012, Obama accredited himself for supporting the tax cut, making it appear as though he won quite a feat for the American people to amass support from his audiences. Since the end of the beginning of 2012, Obama has not at all expostulated with the Congressmen who are leaning towards voting for the expiration of the payroll tax cuts nor has he given any explanations as to what should be done with the provision at the end of 2012. 

Economists have argued in favor of extending the payroll tax cuts indicating that the expiration of these tax cuts would bring Americans closer to the edge of the fiscal cliff. With all tax breaks, the money must come from somewhere, and when it comes to the payroll tax cut it comes from Social Security. To compensate for the loss in tax revenue flowing into the Social Security’s trust fund this year, the government has borrowed from the general fund. This is where the central problem exists. In their divergent opinions on the issue, Republicans and Democrats both equally express reluctance for supporting further payroll tax cut extensions, articulating that such a thing could jeopardize the Social Security trust fund. In the words of Democratic Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky, some Democrats are uneasy about extending the payroll tax cut because of it being dedicated to the Social Security trust fund as a “kind of ATM machine”.  The politicians are not so much worried about Social Security beneficiaries continuing to receive their benefits, but in fact are instead more worried about being able to further raid the trust fund as they have historically done. 

The Real Issue is the Raid on the Social Security Trust Fund

Why are the politicians so concerned about Social Security being jeopardized when the trust fund already is not successfully surviving with the number of retirees and senior citizens in America increasing while the number of people in the work force contributing to the trust fund is decreasing? Social Security cannot be successfully surviving when the surplus money going into the trust fund, made from Social Security receipts exceeding the amount needed to pay out benefits, is prodigally expended by the federal government in the miscellaneous ways the government so un-conscientiously chooses, usually on things utterly unrelated to the Social Security program. Some of the money transfers from the contributors’ pockets directly to Social Security recipients while other money immediately is used for federal government expenditures. The money is not earmarked for individuals or even for general retirement payments and is not productively invested and accumulating interest, ergo it is not truly sitting there waiting to be reimbursed to the Social Security contributors upon their retirement. 

To conceal its foray on the trust fund, the government deposits  special-issue nonmarketable Treasury bonds labeling them as assets and having them counterfeit as the precise amount of money the government took. 

These assets are dubious since they are special-issue bonds unable to be sold on the open market. To see the bigger picture and the ulterior graveness of this fraudulence, it must be seen this way: If the trust fund ever becomes emptied, devoid of any bonds, and the Social Security administration has a deficit with tax receipts coming up, say hypothetically, $63 billion short of the amount needed to disburse the benefits to the beneficiaries. The federal government must fill in the holes by either raising taxes by $63 billion, cutting federal spending by $63 billion, or borrowing $63 billion and deepening the national debt. The American taxpayers, either way, suffer in having to pay for the shortfall, and this scenario (excluding the hypothetical number) is what we are experiencing now. In another scenario, when Social Security falls short, say hypothetically again, $63 billion, but the trust fund has $63 billion in bonds the federal government deposited, the bonds would suffice to compensate for the deficiency. But this time, after the Social Security Administration cashes in the bonds and the government must pay them, the government will pay them through either raising taxes by $63 billion, cutting spending by $63 billion, or borrowing $63 billion and, again, deepening the national debt again. The bonds, the trust fund, or the "big pot" all Americans have been told to envisage the Social Security trust fund as, are, as far as the American people should be concerned, a fictitious invention. Neither the bonds or the trust fund should even nominally exist. 

The bonds will need to be redeemed in the trust fund when the receipts are inadequate to compensate for the benefits owed to recipients. General Hugh Johnson, who had once headed Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s National Recovery Administration, deprecatorily characterized it as “a paper IOU” saying, “When the time comes to pay, there won’t be any more value there than if the workers had paid nothing in taxes all over these years.”  Instead of a trust fund containing money waiting to be taken once the beneficiary reaches retirement, the people are receiving something other than what they are told: A system of taxation feigned as an insurance program with people precariously entitled to premiums and benefits wherein its true underlying cause and inner workings are deliberately made abstruse in every aspect so no one will ever be able to figure out how the American people are being defrauded.

Source of information: 33 Questions About American History You’re Not Supposed to Ask-Question #13 pg. 111-112

Friday, October 19, 2012

Let's Talk about Income Inequality and Our National Debt and Deficits



During Barack Obama's tenure, the United States government has spent 11 dollars for every 7 dollars of revenue it raked in. Throughout the fiscal year that just ended, the United States government spent $3.538 trillion while raking in $2.449 trillion. With the exclusion of Social Security and Medicare, in 2011, over $1 trillion was spent on 83 new welfare programs with 100 million Americans registered in at least 1 program, thus topping welfare spending at a 32 percent total increase for the past four years and a 378 percent total increase for the past 30 years. As of now, 47 million Americans are dependent on food stamps whereas upon Obama's entrance into the White House 32 million Americans were dependent on food stamps. 

When it comes to healthcare costs, this year the federal government will account for more than 50 percent of all healthcare expenditures in the United States, whereas in 1990 the federal government accounted for 32 percent. The number of Americans dependent on Medicaid was 34 million in the year 2000 and skyrocketed to 54 million in 2011. Economists prefigure Obama’s healthcare policies will add 16 million more Americans to Medicaid. The number of Americans dependent on Medicare will increase from 50.7 million in 2012 to 73.2 million in 2025 while facing unfunded liabilities of more than $38 trillion and a $134 trillion shortfall over the next 75 years.

And Obama says there has been an economic recovery?

Income inequality between federal workers and non-federal workers

The number of workers for the federal government making $100,000 or more in annual salary has increased from 12 percent in 2006 to 22 percent in 2011. People working for the federal government are 13 times more likely to die from natural causes than they are to be laid off from their jobs.


In confuting a statement Harry Reid made earlier this year about the private sector “doing just fine” and “it’s the public sector where we’ve lost huge numbers”, the Congressional Budget Office found earlier this January that federal workers are compensated 16 percent more on average than private sector workers who are of similar or comparable levels of education and expertise in their field. 

For wages in the 2005 to 2010 period, the Congressional Budget Office said: “Federal civilian workers with no more than a high school education earned about 21 percent more, on average, than similar workers in the private sector. Workers whose highest level of education was a bachelor's degree earned roughly the same hourly wages, on average, in both the federal government and the private sector. Federal workers with a professional degree or doctorate earned about 23 percent less, on average, than their private-sector counterparts.”

For health insurance, retirement benefits, and paid vacations, the Congressional Budget Office said: “Average benefits for federal workers with no more than a high school diploma were 72 percent higher than for their private-sector counterparts. Average benefits for federal workers whose education ended in a bachelor's degree were 46 percent higher than for similar workers in the private sector. Workers with a professional degree or doctorate received roughly the same level of average benefits in both sectors.”


Income gap between ordinary American citizens and government officials 

While Social Security plods its way to bankruptcy for the next generation's baby boomers and workers of the middle and lower classes have an austere economical future for being able to continue supporting themselves and their families, more than $70 billion for government pension plans are being dispensed to 1.8 million retired federal workers. 15,000 of these workers are earning more than $100,000 annually and 9.3% of these workers are former employees of the infamous Securities and Exchange Commission. After serving a measly 5 years in office, Congressmen are permitted to begin collecting their pension money at the age of 62. After serving 20 years, they are permitted to begin collecting their pension money at the age of 50.


While Americans all across the country flounder in their finances, former presidents of the United States will receive $3.6 million to support their opulent lifestyles in 2012, and it is scheduled to increase to $3.7 million in 2013. All of this money is covering for things such as office rentals, travel, phone bills, postage, printing, and pension benefits. Secret Service Protection not included. In 2013, George Bush will receive $1,356,000 in taxpayer money, $85,000 of which will go towards phone expenses. Bill Clinton is scheduled to receive $1,019,000 in taxpayer money, $442,000 of which will cover for office space. George Herbert Walker Bush will receive $879,000 in taxpayer money, $64,000 of which will pay for “equipment.” Even Jimmy Carter will receive $518,000 in 2013. But the Obama family, in 2011, was deluged with $1.4 billion; something so reprehensible in comparison to the $57.8 million British taxpayers furnish the royal family with. All of this money being spent on the Obama family covers for their transportation, housing, entertainment, and vacation. American citizens ought to be irate by the fact that Michelle Obama spent 42 days and $10 million on vacation in one 12 month period while Barack has played more than 100 rounds of golf since the beginning of his tenure. Also, this money covers for the salaries of the 469 senior staff members working under Obama, 226 of which receive more than $100,000 annually. At least one projectionist is at the White House 24 hours a day in case if anyone would like to watch a film. The dog handler who cares for the family dog receives $102,000 annually and is often flown with the family to their vacation sites to have constant upkeep on the dog. The Obama administration has the biggest staff in American history with the highest wages yet. 

Tuesday, October 9, 2012

Washington's Craft with Big Business--- General Electric



Who said Barack Obama and his administration would never develop any intimate liaisons with certain big businesses and lavish them with benefits so inequitable to small businesses in America? What instantaneously comes to mind when the names General Electric and Jeffery Immelt are mentioned? Jeffery Immelt is the CEO of this ever-expanding gigantic corporation and was appointed to be the head of Barack Obama’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness as remuneration for demonstrating such outstanding public support for Obama’s policies. Publicly, Immelt has mirthfully expressed his vision and goal for generating job growth and being a “sounding board for ideas and a catalyst for action on jobs and competitiveness.” His vision has involved outsourcing jobs and transferring infrastructure to China. Is this not absolutely brilliant? The Obama administration is helping to create jobs after all….in other countries that is, at the expense of the United States being demoted to fifth place in economic competitiveness among every other nation of the world, according to the World Economic Forum. 

The truth of the matter is, even before Obama, America was in a steady decline in manufacturing jobs from 19.5 million in 1979 to 11.6 million in 2010, amounting to a 40 percent decline in total. Notwithstanding, Obama and his minions, in tandem with their predecessors, have been proud cultivators of globalization. 

Unemployed people are lamenting about joblessness and being left with a paucity of job opportunities and current workers are struggling to put food on their tables, because of our ever-expanding big government colluding with big corporations in outsourcing jobs and integrating America’s economy with our world leaders’ scheme of globalization. The story involving the last General Electric factory manufacturing American-made incandescent lightbulbs that was shut down in September of 2010 in Winchester, Virginia and the many  jobs that were lost therein is quintessential of what is happening in America and abroad. Rather than allowing the manufacturing of replacement lightbulbs to create jobs here in America, it is more profitable for the globalists to have the leading replacement lights be the compact fluorescent lights (CFLs) to be made in China where the hand labor in giving the glass tubes their spiral shape is much cheaper.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/09/07/AR2010090706933_2.html?sid=ST2011013003428

Earlier during Obama's tenure in office, General Electric’s lobbying firm, GEPAC, contributed $2.4 million to Democrats in their scheme to have the Congress pass a cap-and-trade piece of legislation. In being America’s principal aircraft engines producer under the new greenhouse gas emissions standards that would be enacted with the bill, General Electric was intended to be the foremost beneficiary amongst everyone else who would be affected by the bill. Since this cap-and-trade bill failed to pass, there was a reduction in demand for Immelt’s jet engines in America. So, Immelt appended his signature to a contract with Chinese Communists to manufacture engines in China thereby having American aviation production and services be chiefly controlled by the hands of our biggest creditor and economic rival.

General Electric is the world’s primary purveyor for medical-imaging machines. With its 115 year old X-ray business headquarters being sent to Beijing where a handful of top managers and thousands of healthcare employees will also be outsourced with it, China will be furnished with more means to continue out-vying the United States and helping to maximize America's codependency in sucking on the bosom of China.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-07-25/ge-healthcare-moves-x-ray-base-to-china-no-job-cuts-planned.html

Let us also keep in mind the $75 million in taxpayer money that General Electric was given and has expended in constructing “smart meters” that will foist hazardous effects on public human health, colossally increase the cost of household electricity and monitor and control how often people can use their utilities on a daily basis. That ought to be of such great consolation to us the taxpayers, should it not?

http://stopsmartmeters.org/why-stop-smart-meters/

Many of our media’s moguls have controverted over the issue of General Electric exploiting loopholes in the tax code and just exactly how many taxes they have evaded and for how long. Many conflicting reports have inundated the internet, and it has been difficult to ascertain the absolute truth. According to the websites I cited below, this monolith of a business in 2010 announced its acquisition of $14.2 billion in profits, a 77 percent increase from the previous year, $9 billion of which were acquired overseas and were not at all touched by the 35 percent United States corporate tax rate. General Electric’s U.S. earnings were not taxed at all. In addition to not paying taxes on $5.1 billion in U.S. earnings in 2010, General Electric received a $3.2 billion corporate tax credit and a 57,000 page-long corporate tax return “for investment in low-income housing, green energy, and research and development, as well as depreciation of property.” In being the greatest corporate tax department the world has ever known, General Electric is craftier in navigating the labyrinth of corporate tax regulations than any other multinational corporation.