NSRF March 2010 Newsletter

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March, 2010

Assembled By Dana West

Our next meeting is this Saturday morning, March 13th featuring CD-2 US House of Representative candidates Bob Brancato and Stephen Bailey as well as CD-7 candidates Michael Deming, Ryan Frazier, Jimmy Lakey, Mike Sheely and Lang Sias. Each candidate will give a speech and then answer your questions. Remember to bring your checkbook to donate and help these outstanding Republican candidates.
MEETING TIME AND PLACE We will be at Gander Mountain, 9923 Grant Street, Thornton, CO from 9:15-10:45 a.m. on the second Saturday of each month in the employee training room. If you live in Adams County or Denver's northern suburbs, come join us for lively spirited debate and to meet Republican movers and shakers. Any candidate in attendance will always be given speaking time. Directions to Gander Mountain: Gander Mountain is a huge sporting goods store in the old Biggs, now Wal-Mart/Home Depot shopping center just east of I-25 and south of 104th Ave. Just go in the front door, turn left at the first aisle and follow it to the employee meeting room on the far left. Yearly membership dues are $20, while a couple is $30. Make checks payable to NSRF. It’s $3 per person to attend the monthly meeting to pay for the provided continental breakfast. A membership application is located on the last page. Fill it out and bring it with you.

NSRF upcoming calendar: April 10 – Colorado State House and Senate candidates, Colorado’s Tea Party, and R Block Party May 8 – Colorado Governor candidates and U.S. Senate candidates June 12 – All candidates are welcome July 10 – State office candidates August 14 – County office candidates (assessor, commissioner, sheriff, clerk, register of deeds, coroner) September 11th – All candidates are welcome October 9 – All candidates November 13 – Election recap

For more information on politics or The Republican Party, go to the following internet sites:
http://www.northsuburbanrepublicanforum.org http://dmyr.net/ http://coloradopoliticalnews.blogspot.com/ http://www.joncaldara.com/

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/ 1

http://www.denverpost.com/politics http://www.freecolorado.com/ http://stevenmnielson.blogspot.com/ http://www.rockymountainright.com/ http://thebrightonblade.com/

http://www.great8newspapers.com/ http://michellemalkin.com/ http://bendegrow.com/

http://www.peoplespresscollective.org/ http://www.coloradosenatenews.com/ http://www.topix.net/city/commerce-city-co http://coloradopols.com/ http://www.jeffcrank.com/ http://TheMoveRight.com www.ALineOfSight.com/

http://www.warriorlegacyfoundation.org/ www.Examiner.com/Denver www.FaceTheState.com/

www.CompleteColorado.com www.i2i.org/

www.TonysRants.com/ www.ColoGOP.org/

www.AdamsCountyGOP.com/ www.PoliticalLiveWires.com

www.RNC.org/ http://FactCheck.org http://Townhall.com/

www.OpinionJournal.com www.Heritage.org/

www.850koa.com/pages/MikeRosen.html

NSRF Board of Directors
John Lefebvre Jerry Cunningham Jan Hurtt Phil Mocon Wanda Barnes Dana West President Vice President Treasurer Secretary Planning Communications

Email Address
[email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected]

The 2010 Republican caucuses are coming up quickly and will be held on Tuesday, March 16th at 7:00pm. Please set aside this date to take part in this important step in taking back Colorado and the nation! TO PARTICIPATE IN A CAUCUS: To participate in a Republican or Democratic caucus, voters must have been affiliated with their party of choice since Jan. 19, 2010. For information on where you can attend a caucus, head to www.adamscountygop.com. KEY DATES FOR ELECTION YEAR 2010 March 16: Precinct Caucuses April 3: Political parties hold county assembly meetings, where delegates pick partisan standard bearers for local races. May 22: Political parties hold state assembly meetings where delegates pick favorites for statewide offices. May 27: last day for candidates who shunned the caucuses to file petitions to appear on primary election ballots. June 3: Last day for candidates selected at assembly meetings to withdraw from the August primary ballot. July 12: Last day voters can change their party affiliation to vote in the primary and the last day voters can register and still vote in the primary. August 10: Primary election occurs. Nov. 2: General election held. 2

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Broke! Fixing America's fiscal crisis

Obama's new adversary
By Shawn Tully, senior editor at large March 4, 2010: 11:45 AM ET

(Fortune Magazine) -- On the eve of President Barack Obama's winter health-care summit, Rep. Paul Ryan is dining at Talay Thai, a no-frills restaurant with metal chairs and Formica tables. On this frigid evening, Ryan strolled coatless to Talay -- "I'm from Wisconsin!" he says -- from his cramped Capitol Hill office, where tonight, as on most nights, he'll sleep on a cot. Such frugality is fitting for a politician who, as he sips ice water, frets that America is "sleep-walking toward a debt crisis." Ryan tells me: "Within a few years a sale of government bonds will fail. The capital markets will go crazy, and the Fed and Treasury will run to Capitol Hill demanding a giant bailout. Adding Obamacare would make the crisis go deeper and arrive faster." It isn't unusual to hear such antispending rhetoric from Republicans these days. What makes Ryan a rarity is that he's been preaching cerebral freemarket ideas during his 11 years in Congress, despite getting little attention for his views. Now the 40-year-old Janesville, Wis., native is emerging as the leading GOP voice on economic policy, thanks to his detailed blueprint for solving what both Democrats and Republicans agree is a perilous fiscal future. (How bad is America's financial picture? The President's budget for 2011 forecasts deficits running at more than $1 trillion, or an unsustainable 4.2% of GDP, in 2020 -- and that assumes low unemployment and decent growth of the economy.) Republicans aren't the only ones suddenly taking notice of Ryan's views on deficit reduction and government spending. During his now-famous appearance at the Republican congressional retreat in Baltimore earlier this year, the President singled out Ryan. "It was my 40th birthday, and I'm sitting at lunch with my 6-year-old son on my knee," marvels Ryan. "And the President starts talking about me. I was amazed!" Obama noted that Ryan had "made a serious proposal" to rein in the deficit and then praised him for at least addressing entitlement spending. Following those apparently peaceful words, Democrats launched a withering assault over the next three days as budget director Peter Orszag, Democratic Congressional Campaign chairman Chris Van Hollen, and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi all pummeled Ryan for threatening the safety net for the elderly and providing tax breaks for the rich. Ryan got his chance to confront the President at the health-care summit Feb. 25. Seated across from Obama, Ryan addressed him directly with a sixminute, numbers-laden, wonkish analysis of the Senate bill that contradicted the administration's pledge that the plan wouldn't add to the mountainous deficit. Ryan correctly stated that the bill projects that Medicare will lower reimbursements to doctors by $371 billion over the next 10 years, yet Congress would cancel those cuts in a separate bill, all part of an attempt to mask the true size of future deficits through "gimmicks and smoke and mirrors." Obama steered the discussion away from Ryan's numbers, and the White House hasn't challenged his analysis.

Ryan's deficit roadmap
What is the Ryan plan , and why is the Obama administration seemingly obsessed with it? Ryan calls his proposal, published in January, the Roadmap for America's Future. It's a remarkably comprehensive, daring manifesto that tackles every part of the budget on a presidential scale, from Social Security to tax policy to health-care reform. The goal is to eliminate the deficit, and eventually all federal debt, without any crippling tax increases. Under Ryan's plan, for example, federal spending would reach just 24% of GDP in 2035 and then fall, vs. the CBO's projection of 34% and rising from there. Ryan would make the deficit disappear by mid-century. Ryan, to be sure, voted for President George W. Bush's tax cuts, which added to the U.S. deficit, but he blames the current mess on excessive spending, which he proposes to control. But he's not trying to gut all programs. He wants to maintain promised health-care and retirement benefits for those who require them -- the sick and the poor, and not just for today's needy but for future generations. But he would also lower future benefits for the middle class. He would index future Social Security benefits to wage growth for, say, a family earning $28,000, but limit increases to inflation for households that made over $149,000.

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Ryan also wants to totally change the way the government aids most Americans. His plan would use vouchers and tax credits to allow families to buy their own Medicare plans, private health insurance, and retirement accounts. His view is that by directly handing middle-class taxpayers part of the money the government now spends on their benefits, they will demand bargains and better service. Ryan predicts that what the middle class will lose in guaranteed benefits they'll more than recoup through robust economic growth and lower prices.

Regarding health care...
His prescription for health care is radical: Ryan would eliminate the exclusion allowing companies to lavish on employees tax-free benefits and give the tax breaks to the workers themselves through a rebate of $5,700 a family, or a check for that amount if they don't pay taxes. "The problem with both Medicare and private plans is the third-party-payer system," says Ryan. "Consumers, spending their own money, will drive down prices." Ryan proposes a classic flat-tax solution: Americans could choose between using today's byzantine rules and a simplified, post-card model with two rates, 10% and 25%. Believe it or not, the simplified system would disallow mortgage and other deductions. In February the Congressional Budget Office analyzed Ryan's road map -- and confirmed that it produced the falling deficits and balanced budgets that Ryan promises. "By proposing cuts in benefits, Paul Ryan is demonstrating the nature of the solution that must occur," former Fed chief Alan Greenspan told Fortune. "You can't close the gap with tax increases alone, and if you try to do it, you slow growth and reduce future tax receipts." Ryan's fan base cuts across party lines. "We both want to inject competition into the marketplace," says Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), who is co-sponsoring another bill that would hand consumers tax breaks for health care they now get only from employers. "We need ideas and policy, not political points, and that's what Paul is all about." Despite some bipartisan support, Ryan's ideas are a hard sell, politically speaking. The idea of indexing Social Security to inflation caused an angry backlash under President George W. Bush. On both Medicare and his health-care tax credit, Ryan would restrain expenditures by raising benefits for high earners and most of the middle class at a pace slower than the rate of medical inflation. As a result, Americans would be forced to spend more and more of their own dollars on insurance. Even though Ryan promises to leave today's Medicare benefits in place for people 55 and older, his proposal is bound to raise the ire of the lobbies for senior citizens. Ryan's proposals contradict the Obama administration's philosophy, which calls for the government to take on more responsibility for citizens' well-being. Budget director Orszag conceded that Ryan "succeeds in addressing our long-term fiscal problem," but takes "a dramatically different approach in which more risk is unloaded onto individuals." Ryan is a free-market adherent of the old school, who believes it is the government's duty to invest maximum economic power in the hands of individuals. His own story is a primer in self-reliance. Ryan's parents put the kids on an incentive system for allowances -- if they got just one B on their report cards, their allowance was cut from $4 to $2, and a C meant no allowance at all. At 16, he discovered his father dead of a heart attack, and had to inform his mother and older siblings. His older brother Tobin, a private equity executive, says that one of Paul's chores was brushing and braiding the hair of their grandmother, who suffered from Alzheimer's. Ryan, who majored in economics and political science at Miami University in Ohio, says his chief influences are still thinkers discovered in the soulsearching that followed his father's death, including Ayn Rand, Milton Friedman, and Friedrich Hayek. In Washington he pursues an almost ascetic work ethic. He studies budgets and spreadsheets until 11:30 p.m., then crashes on his cot or on a mattress at his sister-in-law's home in Bethesda. He seldom travels to campaign for politicians in other states or to burnish his national image. Instead he grabs the first flight to Wisconsin after the last vote on Thursday or Friday to join his wife and three young children at home. Back in Washington on Monday mornings, and during the week, he leads about a dozen congressmen, including former football player Heath Shuler (DN.C.), through a workout called P90X, a punishing bipartisan series of pushups, pull-ups, karate, and yoga. "Paul said I should join the yoga routine, but I can't put my body through those contortions!" jokes Wyden. Ryan is prescribing an equally punishing workout for America's future. It isn't pleasant, it isn't easy, but it may be the regimen on the table.

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Two Reasons Why We Could Use More Shawn Mitchells in the State Legislature
Posted on March 6th, 2010 in Colorado Politics, Energy, Fiscal Policy, Health Care, PPC,clean government, liberty | Written by Ben | 1 Comment » Two days, two stories, two reasons why I believe the Colorado General Assembly needs more legislators like Senator Shawn Mitchell fighting for us. First, Colorado Senate News reports a recent floor debate in which Mitchell assumes his usual role as bold and articulate spokesman for common sense and liberty, leading the vote against a heavy-handed, onerous renewable energy mandate: “I don’t want a European society where government will decide what life will look like tomorrow,” said Mitchell. “I want a free American traditional society where my choices, your choices–as consumers, as families, as citizens–will determine what society will look like tomorrow.” Second, a Colorado News Agency story on a committee meeting in which Mitchell pushed the logic behind majority Democrats’ bill to ban health insurance companies from taking gender into account in issuing premiums: “Should auto insurance companies be allowed to charge more for boys than girls?” asked Mitchell, in reference to the much higher rates that are applied to the policies of teen-age male drivers than to teen-age female drivers. Mitchell nevertheless was the lone Republican joining the Democrats on the committee in voting for the bill, saying that he will now consider introducing a bill that prohibits gender discrimination for auto insurance and that he anticipates their support. The other two men on the committee, both Republicans, voted against the bill. Can we get more Shawn Mitchells in the state legislature? There’s a reason why Democrats don’t enjoy debating him. With enough likeminded Colorado legislators, Mitchell and the fiscal conservatives can do more than win debate on technical points. Something to think about going into 2010…

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SATURDAY, MARCH 6, 2010

Races for Governor, U.S. Senate Getting Heated
The following article originally was published March 5 by Grand Junction's Free Press.

by Linn and Ari Armstrong While most of us celebrated Valentine's Day last month, the motto in Colorado's political races seemed to be "make war, not love." With the general election still eight months away, campaign season is already in full swing, complete with bitter attack ads. The big news in the governor's race involves the net tax increases signed by Bill Ritter. Tim Hoover of the Denver Post summarizes the measures at http://tinyurl.com/rittertax. We are particularly concerned about the tax hikes on industrial energy, software, and internet sales. While the economy is showing some signs of recovery, it remains a mess, and this is an especially lousy time to punish businesses. Democrats are all but begging certain businesses and entrepreneurs to fire people, flee the state, or refrain from moving here. While Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper (the Democrat trying to replace Ritter) sat on his hands, Republican Scott McInnis admirably fought against the tax insanity. He said in a media release, "By signing these bills, Governor Ritter is essentially signing the pink slips of thousands of Colorado workers." The Democrats have handed their challengers plenty of ammunition heading into November. Taxes have also become a big issue in the U.S. Senate race. While Jane Norton remains the clear Republican frontrunner, her opponents have stepped up criticism. Challenger Tom Wiens ran aradio ad stating, "Right here in Colorado, some Republican leaders backed Referendum C, the biggest tax increase in our state's history. I opposed it." Norton was among those "Republican leaders." Yet at least Referendum C asked for voter approval, unlike Ritter's hikes, as Norton has countered. (Check outClearTheBenchColorado.com, which is urging non-retention of four Supreme Court justices in part because of their betrayal of the Taxpayer's Bill of Rights. Last month we were also blessed by a visit from His Chosenness Barack Obama. The reason for his visit is apparent: Democratic Senator Michael "The Pretender" Bennet is in deep trouble. (Perhaps Obama will provide the same benefit to Bennet that he gave to Martha Coakley out in Massachusetts. To review, back in 2004 Ken Salazar trounced Pete Coors in the U.S. Senate race. In 2008, Obama asked Salazar to become Secretary of the Interior. It fell to Governor Ritter to fill the vacancy. Ritter stupidly snubbed experienced legislator Andrew Romanoff and instead picked Bennet. So, presumably, Obama feels partly responsible for turning a

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solidly Democratic Senate seat into a likely GOP victory. Bennet, while a good fundraiser, is otherwise a terrible candidate. Democratic leaders who want a shot at winning had better hope that Romanoff wins the primary. Not only has Romanoff beatBennet in the polls, but he has picked up major endorsements from state legislators and various unions. (Bennet has also been touting his union support, which is a good indication of why Democrats risk losing the seat.) On the Republican side, Wiens's ad may actually help Norton. We had always thought of Norton's strongest challenger as Ken Buck, but he has not run a very exciting campaign, and he has somebaggage as Weld County's District Attorney for raiding a business on a records fishing expedition and for invoking "hate crime" laws, which remain unpopular with Republicans. By running relatively strong campaigns, Wiens and Cleve Tidwell may split the opposition to Norton, leaving her an even stronger frontrunner. When Obama came to Colorado, Norton made headlines by running a television ad in which she said, "Mr. President, you should pledge to balance the budget, or else decline to seek reelection. That'd be change we can believe in." However, when discussing the ad on Fox, Norton also said the recent Congressional jobs bill "was too small." Norton's spokesperson Nate Strauch said that what Norton meant was that "the impact was too small, not the price-tag was too small," but that leaves us wondering what sort of bill she thinks would have a bigger impact. Strauch mentioned the possibility of "suspending the payroll tax for small businesses," but absent spending cuts we don't see what good that would do. At least Tidwell answered our survey athttp://tinyurl.com/cosurvey10. On the plus side, he opposes so-called "stimulus" spending and corporate welfare. He calls for "dramatically lower" federal spending. He wants to reduce the jobs-killing minimum wage, and he said the anti-business Sarbanes-Oxley law should be repealed. He also wants to repeal campaign censorship laws and rescind FTC blogger controls. We worry about some of Tidwell's views. He wants to restrict legal immigration as a protectionist measure. On matters of abortion, he punted to state control. We worry about that, because we believe the federal government has a legitimate role to play in protecting the individual rights of citizens, such as a woman's right to take the birth control pill even though it may prevent a fertilized egg from implanting in the uterus. We respect Tidwell's efforts to articulate his views, and we hope voters will press every candidate to answer the tough questions in this pivotal election year.

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7th CD: Ryan Frazier in Wall St. Journal; Jimmy Lakey Hits Voting Road Bump
Posted on March 4th, 2010 in Colorado Politics, National Politics, PPC, clean government,liberty | Written by Ben | 1 Comment » A quick update from the Colorado 7th Congressional District GOP primary campaign trail (isn’t that a mouthful!) … First, the very strong fundraising quarter by Ryan Frazier was noted today in the eighth paragraph of a story byWall Street Journal reporters Stephanie Simon and Ana Campoy about anti-Beltway sentiment fueling successful races across the country:

In Colorado, a little-known suburban city councilman, Republican Ryan Frazier, raised more money last quarter for his congressional bid than all but one of the state’s incumbent members of the U.S. House. Meanwhile, already facing an uphill challenge to catch up with Frazier’s money and momentum, Jimmy Lakey bumped across a small obstacle in news from Complete Colorado that he had not been registered to vote for the past 16 months. (Though by all accounts he voted absentee in the 2008 election and has rectified what appears to be a postal error.) He explained the case to Lynn Bartels at the Spot, but it’s probably not what he’d prefer to be talking about so soon after his best week on the campaign trail yet.

Lakey was in attendance at yesterday evening’s Jefferson County Republican Party central committee meeting, along with three other CD 7 contenders: Lang Sias (who got some yard signs posted out front), Mike Sheely and Michael Deming. Frazier and his team were not in attendance but didn’t seem too conspicuous by their absence, since no opportunities were afforded to Congressional candidates to speak

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OPINION: WONDER LAND
MARCH 3, 2010, 9:33 P.M. ET

Bring Back the Robber Barons
There's a big difference between entrepreneurs who make a fortune in the market, and those who do so by gaming the government.


By DANIEL HENNINGER

Faced with high, painful unemployment as far as the eye can see, the government naturally is here to help.

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The Senate passed a $15 billion "jobs bill." Its proudest piece is a tax credit for employers who hire a person out of work at least 60 days. The employer won't have to pay the 6.2% Social Security payroll tax for what remains of this year. If the worker stays on the job at least a year, the government will give the employer $1,000. As to the earlier $787 billion stimulus bill, Vice President Joe Biden praised it in Orlando this week as an engine of job creation, while he stood before a pile of broken concrete and asphalt. The subject was highways. Finally, Barack Obama's government now may force companies to raise wages and benefits by squeezing their federal contracts if they don't. Maybe there's a better way. Let's bring back the robber barons. "Robber baron" became a term of derision to generations of American students after many earnest teachers made them read Matthew Josephson's long tome of the same name about the men whose enterprise drove the American industrial age from 1861 to 1901. Josephson's cast of pillaging villains was comprehensive: Rockefeller, Carnegie, Vanderbilt, Morgan, Astor, Jay Gould, James J. Hill. His table of contents alone shaped impressions of those times: "Carnegie as 'business pirate'.'' "Henry Frick, baron of coke." "Terrorism in Oil." "The sack of California." I say, bring 'em back, and the sooner the better. What we need, a lot more than a $1,000 tax credit, are industries no one has thought of before. We need vision, vitality and commercial moxie. This government is draining it away.
Minnesota Historical Society/Corbis James J. Hill (center) built a great railroad
on his own dime.

The antidote to Josephson's book is a small classic by Hillsdale College historian Burton W. Folsom called "The Myth of the Robber Barons: A New Look at the Rise of Big Business in America" (Young America's Foundation). Prof. Folsom's core insight is to divide the men of that age into market entrepreneurs and political entrepreneurs. Market entrepreneurs like Rockefeller, Vanderbilt and Hill built businesses on product and price. Hill was the railroad magnate who finished his transcontinental line without a public land grant. Rockefeller took on and beat the world's dominant oil power at the time, Russia. Rockefeller innovated his way to energy primacy for the U.S. Political entrepreneurs, by contrast, made money back then by gaming the political system. Steamship builder Robert Fulton acquired a 30-year monopoly on Hudson River steamship traffic from, no surprise, the New York legislature. Cornelius Vanderbilt, with the slogan "New Jersey must be free," broke Fulton's government-granted monopoly. If the Obama model takes hold, we will enter the Golden Age of the Political Entrepreneur. The green jobs industry that sits at the center of the Obama master plan for the American future depends on public subsidies for wind and solar technologies plus taxes on carbon to suppress it as a competitor. Politically connected entrepreneurs will spend their energies running a mad labyrinth of bureaucracies, congressional committees and Beltway door openers. Our best market entrepreneurs, instead of exhausting themselves on their new ideas, will run to ground gaming Barack Obama's ideas.

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If the goal is job growth, we need to admit one fact: Political entrepreneurs create fewer jobs than do market entrepreneurs. We need new mass markets, really big markets of the sort Ford, Rockefeller and Carnegie created. Great employment markets are discoverable only by people who create opportunities or see them in the cracks of what already exists—a Federal Express or Wal-Mart. Either you believe that the philosopher kings of the Obama administration can figure out this sort of thing, or you don't. I don't. FDIC chief Sheila Bair whacked bank bonuses Tuesday. People on the East Coast spend too much time around the finance and insurance industries. If the price of rediscovering the American job machine is some people across the land getting really rich, it's a small price. One of the richest now is Larry Ellison, the 1977 founder of Oracle Corp. (49,000 employees), whose tastes run to huge boats, bigger houses and paying Elton John to play for his friends at the Cow Palace. Someone in our politics has to find the courage to say, So what? If the next Ellison and Oracle ripples into American life as many new jobs and family incomes, I'm happy to be grossed out by parties and boats. The alternative is a nation of Pecksniffs, choking on virtue. We live in a world of rising competitors—foreign robber barons—who don't much care about our endless quest for health-care justice. The U.S. on its current path to a stage-managed economy floating in a lake of taxes will keep down the greatest population of intellectual and managerial firepower the world has seen. The rest of the world admits that, with the recent exception of the Chinese, who think we're ready to be taken. We have young people impatient for the chance to do what Carnegie, Rockefeller and Hill did. Let them. Write to [email protected]

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The North Suburban Republican Forum
1149 W 102nd Ave Northglenn, CO 80260

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