International scientists have injected fresh evidence into the debate over global warming, saying that climate change is “undeniable” and shows clear signs of “human fingerprints” in the first major piece of research since the “Climategate” controversy.
The research, headed by the US National Oceans and Atmospheric Administration, is based on new data not available for the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report of 2007, the target of attacks by sceptics in recent years.
The NOAA study drew on up to 11 different indicators of climate, and found that each one pointed to a world that was warming owing to the influence of greenhouse gases, said Peter Stott, head of climate monitoring at the UK’s Met Office, one of the agencies participating.
Seven indicators were rising, he said. These were: air temperature over land, sea-surface temperature, marine air temperature, sea level, ocean heat, humidity, and tropospheric temperature in the “active-weather” layer of the atmosphere closest to the earth’s surface. Four indicators were declining: Arctic sea ice, glaciers, spring snow cover in the northern hemisphere, and stratospheric temperatures.
Mr Stott said: “The whole of the climate system is acting in a way consistent with the effects of greenhouse gases.” “The fingerprints are clear,” he said. “The glaringly obvious explanation for this is warming from greenhouse gases.”
Some scientists hailed the study as a refutation of the claims made by climate sceptics during the “Climategate” saga. Those scandals involved accusations – some since proven correct – of flaws in the IPCC’s landmark 2007 report, and the release of hundreds of emails from climate scientists that appeared to show them distorting certain data.
“This confirms that while all of this [Climategate] was going on, the earth was continuing to warm. It shows that Climategate was a distraction, because it took the focus off what the science actually says,” said Bob Ward, policy director of the Grantham Institute at the London School of Economics.
Saturday, July 31, 2010
FT.com / Global Economy - Research says climate change undeniable
Interview I did at Netroots Nation 2010
Friday, July 30, 2010
Pardue out of State Senate 23 Race
After collecting some 6,752 signatures to run as an independent candidate for Georgia senate District 23, Chuck Pardue announced today he was withdrawing from the race.Independent Candidate Chuck Pardue said he won't seek a state Senate seat
Pardue cited family reasons for his need to leave the race, which leaves Republican qualifier Jesse Stone with no opposition on the Nov. 2 ballot.Pardue spokesman Gunner Hall said the condition of Pardue’s son John, who was recently injured in Afghanistan, had worsened Monday and required the support of his entire family. Working as a combat medic in Afghanistan, John Pardue aggravated a leg injury he’d suffered during air assault school and was forced to return to the United States for surgery earlier this month.After treating his mortally wounded former roommate and others near Kandahar, Afghanistan, the younger Pardue also was diagnosed with moderately severe to severe post-traumatic stress disorder, according to previous reports. Raised in Martinez, John Pardue married his girlfriend in March but said the couple intended to have a church wedding next year in Nashville.A Vietnam veteran, Chuck Pardue worked as a judge advocate general before retiring into the private practice of law. I'll keep the Pardue family in my prayers & I ask for you to do the same. Family comes first in this regard.
U.S. Economy Grew 2.4% in Second Quarter, Below Forecast
Growth in the U.S. slowed to a 2.4 percent annual rate in the second quarter, less than forecast, reflecting a larger trade deficit and an easing in consumer spending.
The increase in gross domestic product compared with a median forecast of 2.6 percent of economists surveyed by Bloomberg News and follows an upwardly revised 3.7 percent pace in the first quarter that showed a jump in inventories, according to figures from the Commerce Department today in Washington. Business investment climbed at the fastest rate since 1997.
“The economy is muddling through,” Ethan Harris, head of North America economics at Bank of America-Merrill Lynch Global Research in New York, said in an interview after the report. “We’re probably not going to see a really strong number for a while. We need to see some pickup in job growth.”
A slower pace of growth means employers may be reluctant to hire workers and more likely to keep a lid on prices in order to boost sales. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke last week said the central bank is prepared to take further policy actions if the world’s largest economy “doesn’t continue to improve.”
Georgia Republican nonsense and leftwing[sic] Obama
The “Had enough of Obama’s change?” billboards placed by Hice in the district, prominently spelling the word “change” with a hammer-and-sickle, were a natural topic.
Bryant asked each candidate if he thought the communist symbolism was over the top. Said Hice on Wednesday:
“I make no bones about it. I respect the office of the president, but I make no bones about it – I do not respect the policies of this president, which are socialistic.
“We are watching this administration take over the health care industry, the banking industry, the student loan industry, the insurance industry, automobile — one part of the private sector after another.”
Hmm, how about that military? Total welfare state for members, generous child care, education allowances – and affirmative action. If that sort of thing is good enough for the folks in uniform, why not the rest of us?
Libertarianism is often thought of as “right-wing” doctrine. This, however, is mistaken for at least two reasons. First, on social—rather than economic—issues, libertarianism tends to be “left-wing”. It opposes laws that restrict consensual and private sexual relationships between adults (e.g., gay sex, extra-marital sex, and deviant sex), laws that restrict drug use, laws that impose religious views or practices on individuals, and compulsory military service. Second, in addition to the better-known version of libertarianism—right-libertarianism—there is also a version known as “left-libertarianism”. Both endorse full self-ownership, but they differ with respect to the powers agents have to appropriate unowned natural resources (land, air, water, minerals, etc.). Right-libertarianism holds that typically such resources may be appropriated by the first person who discovers them, mixes her labor with them, or merely claims them—without the consent of others, and with little or no payment to them. Left-libertarianism, by contrast, holds that unappropriated natural resources belong to everyone in some egalitarian manner. It can, for example, require those who claim rights over natural resources to make a payment to others for the value of those rights. This can provide the basis for a kind of egalitarian redistribution.
Thursday, July 29, 2010
Political Legitimacy
Political legitimacy is a virtue of political institutions and of the decisions—about laws, policies, and candidates for political office—made within them. This entry will survey the main answers that have been given to the following questions. First, how should legitimacy be defined? Is it primarily a descriptive or a normative concept? If legitimacy is understood normatively, what does it entail? Some associate legitimacy with the justification of coercive power and with the creation of political authority. Others associate it with the justification, or at least the sanctioning, of existing political authority. Authority stands for a right to rule—a right to issue commands and, possibly, to enforce these commands using coercive power. An additional question is whether legitimate political authority is understood to entail political obligations or not. Most people probably think it does. But some think that the moral obligation to obey political authority can be separated from an account of legitimate authority, or at least that such obligations arise only if further conditions hold.Next there are questions about the requirements of legitimacy. When are political institutions and the decisions made within them appropriately called legitimate? Some have argued that this question has to be answered primarily on the basis of procedural features that shape these institutions and underlie the decisions made. Others argue that legitimacy depends—exclusively or at least in part—on the substantive values that are realized. A related question is: does political legitimacy demand democracy or not? This question is intensely debated both in the national and the global context. Insofar as democracy is seen as necessary for political legitimacy, when are democratic decisions legitimate? Can that question be answered with reference to procedural features only, or does democratic legitimacy depend both on procedural values and on the quality of the decisions made? Finally, there is the question which political institutions are subject to the legitimacy requirement. Historically, legitimacy was associated with the state and institutions and decisions within the state. The contemporary literature tends to judge this as too narrow, however. This raises the question how the concept of legitimacy may apply—beyond the nation state and decisions made within it—to the international and global context.
Abuse of Presidential Power? The Becker-Posner Blog
The Bush Administration, especially in the person of Vice President Cheney, had an expansive view of presidential authority. It was articulated as an interpretation of the Constitution, in particular Article II, which is about the presidency. Truman similarly took an expansive view of presidential authority when he seized the steel industry during the Korean War, but the seizure was overturned by the Supreme Court. (The Bush Administration had a mixed record in the Supreme Court in defending its expansive view of presidential authority, which centered on antiterrorist policy.) Clinton used administrative regulation to try to get around the Republican Congress with which he had to deal after the 1994 election. Other Presidents, notably Lincoln, were prepared in emergency circumstances to violate the Constitution, as when Lincoln suspended habeas corpus at the outset of the Civil War; it is reasonably clear that the Constitution authorizes only Congress to suspend habeas corpus.
There is a third type of questionable exercise of presidential power, which consists of publicly demanding that a private firm or industry or other entity conform to the President’s desire, without pretending that the President has the legal authority to require such conformity. (This overlaps with but is distinct from the concept of the presidential “bully pulpit”—the President’s power to appeal directly to the people for support of his policies.) In April 1962, for example, President Kennedy publicly denounced U.S. Steel and the other major steel companies for announcing a stiff price increase to offset the cost of a collective bargaining agreement that it had signed with the United Steelworkers union. He backed up his denunciation by threatening an antitrust investigation and made the threat credible, or at least frightening, by having his brother (the Attorney General) dispatch FBI agents to “interview” the top steel executives. The Administration had encouraged the collective bargaining agreement and was incensed at U.S. Steel’s attempt to offload the cost of it on consumers. A price increase is a normal response to higher labor costs, but the President considered it a slap in the face—his face. His public denunciation of the steel industry worked; the industry backed down and the antitrust investigation was called off.
President Obama has used this device of extra-legal presidential intimidation more frequently, probably, than any President. In the spring of last year he told General Motors to fire its chief executive officer, Rick Waggoner. He had no authority to do that, and didn’t pretend that he did. Waggoner went. Last month the President ordered British Petroleum to put billions of dollars into an escrow account for payment of claims for losses caused by the BP oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico. He did not pretend to have any legal authority to order this, but BP quickly complied—as it did with the President’s insistence that it cut its dividend in order to be sure of having enough money to pay all the claims that might be made against it and the fines that might be imposed on it. And the President’s criticisms of Wall Street bonuses may have been decisive in the decision of Goldman Sachs to scale down the bonuses it was intending to award for the firm’s highly profitable 2009.
Should a President use the prestige (one might even call it the “moral authority”) of the office, and his ability to command public attention, to obtain compliance with demands made by him on the business community that are not backed by law? I think not, apart from any distaste one may have for bullying. It makes business subject to two regulatory regimes. One is a legal regime, created by Congress and by the regulatory agencies to which Congress delegates a portion of its own constitutional regulatory power. The other is a kind of “people’s democracy” regime, in which government stirs up public anger to force businesses to comply with extra-legal government demands. This second regulatory regime operates without rules, and so subjects business to potentially debilitating uncertainty in the sense of a risk that cannot be quantified. We know from Keynes and other students of uncertainty that a common and often the sensible response to uncertainty is to freeze, in the hope that the uncertainty will dissipate over time, or to take active steps to reduce the uncertainty. Both are options for business faced with the threat of presidential wrath. A business can hire less, invest less, and build up its cash balances as a hedge against adversity. It can also redouble its lobbying and other influence activities in an effort to neutralize or deflect threats of extra-legal regulation. Neither is a healthy response; the first is downright pernicious, especially in a depression or recession, or the early stages of economic recovery. Both are responses that the threat of presidential bullying encourages.
Many of the President’s legislative initiatives, in particular the health reform law, the just-enacted financial regulatory reform law, and the credit card law of last year, have increased the uncertainty of the economic environment for business. These laws really haven’t settled anything; it will take years of regulatory implementation before their full impact can be determined. But in addition business has to deal with the unpredictable exercise by the President of an uncanalized extra-legal authority to bend business to his wishes.
It is no wonder that the economic recovery appears to be progressing so slowly.
Whatever the degree of carelessness by BP, they will be fined billions of dollars as various cases brought by injured parties make their way through the courts. Such tort-based liability is justified, but there was no good economic reason for President Obama to interfere by requiring BP to create a $20 billion escrow account, and to defer its dividend payments. These were simply politically motivated acts to offset the public impression (not obviously correct) that he was too slow to act once the spill was discovered. The British have been claiming that his acts reflect a protectionist attitude of the US that is anti-foreign business. In any case BP is strong enough to repay sizable damages without any presidential interference since its shares still have a market value of over $100 billion, even after a large decline in their value following the spill and the president’s threats."Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely”. This famous dictum of Lord Acton is as relevant today as it was when stated in 1887. It applies to the private sector, such as private monopolies, as well as the public sector, but this insight has become much more important in the public sector since he wrote because of the large expansion of governmental powers during the past 70 years.
I would only add to Acton’s dictum that discretionary power is even more corrupting than the power embodied in regulations. The most dangerous trend in presidential power has been the growth in presidential willingness to take many discretionary actions that not only have little basis in law, but also frequently cause great harm to the economy and the society at large. The harm consists of both the direct damages from the actions, and the often large but indirect cost from the increased uncertainty and fear about the political environment faced by business, unions, and other groups.
Consider two examples mentioned by Posner. In 1962 President Kennedy used various threats to pressure steel companies to rescind a price increase in response to a very generous wage settlement that the industry made with the United Steelworkers union. Even many economists then believed that steel prices and steel output had a huge effect on the economy because it was claimed that steel was an important raw material in automobile production and many other goods. Yet the value added by the steel industry-the most important measure of its importance-was less than a few percent of US GDP.
Moreover, forcing the steel industry to suppress the price increase slowed down the substitution of aluminum and plastics for steel in the production of cars and other products. Prices provide important signals to an economy of the relative costs of producing different goods, which lead businesses and consumers to respond by substituting away from inputs and goods rising in price relative to other inputs and goods. The replacement of steel by other materials would have been faster if President Kennedy had stayed out of the negotiations, so that the disciplining of the United Steelworkers union and the companies could have occurred earlier.
As it was, it took only another decade for the steel industry to be turning to Washington for help through higher tariffs on steel imports, and direct subsidies. If the steel workers union and steel companies had been allowed to bargain without government interference and help, the adjustment by the industry to growing competition from other materials and steel from other countries would have been faster and more efficient. Probably too, the survival of the industry without a government lifeline would have become easier.
A more recent example is the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico that is still not fully contained.
It is still too early to evaluate the long-term harm from the president’s use of excessive authority against BP. However, the general anti-business tone of the current Congress and presidency that is reflected not only in various discretionary acts by the president, but also in proposed and actual legislation, such as the health care law, controls over executive pay, and the Dodd-Frank bill, are already slowing down the recovery from the financial crisis and recession. I have argued elsewhere (see, for example, the article by Steven Davis, Kevin Murphy, and myself in the January 4th issue of the Wall Street Journal) that the anti-business legislation, and the uncertainty about subsequent legislation, has contributed to the slowness of this recovery compared to recoveries from prior severe recessions. Unemployment has remained sluggishly high in part because both small and large companies have been reluctant to take on additional employees in an uncertain and threatening environment. Perhaps that is good politics, but the use of presidential and congressional powers against business is surely not good economics.
Leaked US files burnish bin Laden mystique
US intelligence files published by WikiLeaks feature a series linking Osama bin Laden to suicide bombings in Afghanistan, a plot to assassinate President Hamid Karzai and financial dealings with North Korea.
Sensational as the claims may be, a lack of corroboration and opaque sourcing suggest the raw reports will do more to burnish the al-Qaeda leader’s mystique than help reveal his whereabouts.
If true, the insights would challenge a widely held view that the Saudi dissident has been forced to relinquish operational command and serve more as an icon for aspiring jihadis since masterminding 9/11.
What can be said with more certainty is that Mr bin Laden’s flight from a hailstorm of US bombs in Afghanistan in 2001 was among the catalysts that turned Pakistan’s tribal areas into one of the deadliest cauldrons of Islamist violence.
While the US grapples with the war in Afghanistan, the emergence of an al-Qaeda-inspired militant federation spanning from Pakistan’s borderlands to its cities may pose a greater threat to the west.
“The new situation transcends Osama bin Laden,” said Imtiaz Gul, a Pakistani journalist and author of The Most Dangerous Place, a new book on the tribal agencies. “We don’t know whether Osama is still alive, but his legacy is very much there and it’s multiplying, and so are the militant leaders.”
Documents from among the cache of 75,000 Afghan war files posted earlier this week by WikiLeaks, a website that publishes classified information, detail operations involving Mr bin Laden since 2004, although the accounts cannot be verified.
Mr bin Laden is linked to a purported plot to use suicide bombers to kill Mr Karzai and is placed at meetings in 2006 with Mullah Mohammed Omar, the leader of Afghanistan’s Taliban. Another report alleges that Amin al-Haq, Mr bin Laden’s money man, travelled to North Korea via Iran in 2005 to buy anti-aircraft rockets.
Western officials say a campaign of drone strikes by the US Central Intelligence Agency has curtailed the ability of al-Qaeda leaders to mount attacks.
However, containing Mr bin Laden may be easier than purging his ideas. Mr Gul argues that the US-led invasion of Afghanistan triggered an influx of al-Qaeda fighters who taught techniques including suicide bombing and internet propaganda to Pakistani militants.
Mr bin Laden’s global ideology provided the glue facilitating closer co-operation between Pakistani Tehrik-e-Taliban guerrillas and Sunni extremists cells from the populous Punjab province. The result is an increasingly fluid network united by a common hatred of US foreign policy whose members can pool resources to conduct more sophisticated attacks.
“The reality is this is a confederation of groups,” said a US military official. “The distinctions are never as clear as we tend to make them on our briefing slides.” Some analysts saw evidence of such collusion in twin assaults on mosques in Lahore in May that killed more than 90 people.
Research says climate change undeniable and climategate controversy...
International scientists have injected fresh evidence into the debate over global warming, saying that climate change is “undeniable” and shows clear signs of “human fingerprints” in the first major piece of research since the “Climategate” controversy.
The research, headed by the US National Oceans and Atmospheric Administration, is based on new data not available for the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report of 2007, the target of attacks by sceptics in recent years.
The NOAA study drew on up to 11 different indicators of climate, and found that each one pointed to a world that was warming owing to the influence of greenhouse gases, said Peter Stott, head of climate monitoring at the UK’s Met Office, one of the agencies participating.
Seven indicators were rising, he said. These were: air temperature over land, sea-surface temperature, marine air temperature, sea level, ocean heat, humidity, and tropospheric temperature in the “active-weather” layer of the atmosphere closest to the earth’s surface. Four indicators were declining: Arctic sea ice, glaciers, spring snow cover in the northern hemisphere, and stratospheric temperatures.
Mr Stott said: “The whole of the climate system is acting in a way consistent with the effects of greenhouse gases.” “The fingerprints are clear,” he said. “The glaringly obvious explanation for this is warming from greenhouse gases.”
Some scientists hailed the study as a refutation of the claims made by climate sceptics during the “Climategate” saga. Those scandals involved accusations – some since proven correct – of flaws in the IPCC’s landmark 2007 report, and the release of hundreds of emails from climate scientists that appeared to show them distorting certain data.
“This confirms that while all of this [Climategate] was going on, the earth was continuing to warm. It shows that Climategate was a distraction, because it took the focus off what the science actually says,” said Bob Ward, policy director of the Grantham Institute at the London School of Economics.
But the report nonetheless remained the target of scorn for sceptics.
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
JimN2010 Wish List...
- Stamps
- printer paper
- Black Printer Ink HP 94
- Color Printer Ink HP 95
- Envelopes
- supplies for house parties to feed volunteers and supporters---soda, chips, cookies...
Georgia still failing its kids, says report...
Georgia once again stands among the 10 worst states for the care of its children, and some worry that the state has become complacent about its poor performance in such areas as infant mortality, child deaths and low birth-weight babies.
The state lags behind the national average on every one of the 10 measures in the 2010 Kids Count data book, a compilation of state and federal information that will be released today.
Georgia ranked 42nd in the nation for infant mortality; 43rd for children living in a single-parent home; and 45th for teens not in school and not working, according to the report, which is compiled by the Annie E. Casey Foundation.
Georgia received an overall ranking of 42nd in the study, the same as the prior year. Georgia has failed to break out of the 10 worst states for seven of the past eight years. New Hampshire ranked in the No. 1 spot; Mississippi brought up the rear.
The state's troubles with poverty and education continue to hurt its children, but worse, the continued difficulties have led some advocates to suspect that many in the state have given up on doing better, said Taifa Butler, spokeswoman for the Atlanta-based Family Connection Partnership, which worked with the foundation to produce the report.
Some people see these issues as pertaining to someone else's children, she said. "Some people just throw up their hands and say, ‘Oh, well,' " she said.
But she believes these concerns could eventually affect the entire state.
"This is about the health of our children and teens, and if they're not healthy now, what does the health of our state look like down the line?" Butler said.
The figures in the report are for 2008 and do not reflect the recession that began late that year. Poor economic conditions likely would exacerbate problems facing Georgia's children.
Some gains from prior years are already slipping, according to the report.
The number of teen deaths has risen every year from 2004 to 2007, the last year of data in the report. The teen death rate had dropped in 2004 to 68 deaths for every 100,000 Georgia teens. But that number increased to 73 per 100,000 in 2007.
The report noted that virtually all of these deaths are preventable. Motor vehicle accidents are the leading cause of violent teen death, the report said.
Georgia also saw an increase in births to teen mothers in 2007, revealing further slippage in an area that had improved during several years.
"Teen childbearing is strongly associated with poverty, low birth weight, infant mortality, poor health and school dropout," said Family Connection executive director Gaye Smith.
The Kids Count report revealed some improvement in certain areas. The state's dropout rate decreased about 50 percent from 2000 to 2008, to 8 percent. But the report noted that it still exceeds the national average of 6 percent. The authors of the report credited the increased use of graduation coaches in schools and strong efforts to enhance opportunities for technical education and work-ready programs.
New council could make big changes in taxes
Legislators have long complained that the tax code -- which includes hundreds of exemptions for special interests -- was written decades ago for an economy that relied heavily on agriculture and manufacturing. Those remain important sectors of the economy, but Georgia also has seen huge growth in service industries.
Several gubernatorial candidates have called for the state to look at the sales tax exemptions on everything from sod and church bells to crab bait and aircraft parts to figure out which ones should stay in place.
Lawmakers have talked of removing the exemption on all groceries and broadening the sales tax to include more goods and services. Some Republican leaders say the extra money raised would let them cut personal and corporate income taxes, which in turn would help Georgia better compete with states like Florida that don't have a personal income tax.
House Speaker David Ralston (R-Blue Ridge) said he doesn't want to prejudge the council and say specifically what tax changes are needed. But the long-term view, he said, is to create a more modern tax system that helps create more jobs. And whatever is passed, he said, shouldn't increase taxes overall.
"The ultimate goal is to make job creation and job maintenance a priority in this state," he said.
The makeup of the group has raised some concerns. State Rep. Stacey Abrams (D-Atlanta), a member of the committee that approved the creation of the council, said it lacks both racial diversity and consumer interests.
The legislation creating the council named four economists, representatives of two business lobbying organizations, Gov. Sonny Perdue and two appointees each from Ralston and Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle to serve on the council.
Abrams called taxes a "zero sum" game, so that if one group gets a tax break, others have to pay more.
"What we often do in the Legislature is focus singularly on the business climate without focusing on the consumers who make the businesses work," Abrams said. "It doesn't matter if you have a good business climate if you don't have anyone who can afford to buy the products."
Ralston said the council is made up of people who have a track record of knowing how to create jobs. And with unemployment above 10 percent in Atlanta, tax policies that create jobs are vital, he said.
"These are big-picture people. They are going to take a big-picture view of things," Ralston said. "I don't know how anyone can quarrel with the idea that if we create a climate where it is good to do business in Georgia, that's good for everybody."
Sarah Beth Gehl, tax policy expert at the Georgia Budget and Policy Institute think tank, said the effect of the tax system on economic development should be only one of the areas studied by the council.
"Hopefully the council members will consider the tax system from all perspectives, including how it affects low- and moderate-income Georgians and its effect on funding for essential services," she said. "This shouldn't be an exercise in who can protect their special-interest tax break or carve out a new one."
Who gets tax exemptions, and who gets to keep the ones that are already on the books, will be part of the discussion and will guarantee full employment for Statehouse lobbyists.
For some on the council, tax breaks for businesses aren’t a theoretical debate. One of the council members, D.E. "Skeeter" McCorkle, president of McCorkle Nurseries, is in a business that has received tax breaks from lawmakers in the past 20 years.
Agriculture exemptions, which have piled up the past two decades, are among those that will be looked at by the council.
One of the people who will keep a close eye on the council is former longtime state Rep. Richard Royal, the author of many of those exemptions. He is lobbying for many of the top agriculture interests, as well as cities, counties, school boards and the mining industry.
Royal said of the exemptions, "I don't ever remember passing one that wasn't justified at the time."
Robert Reich (The Great Decoupling of Corporate Profits from Jobs)
Second-quarter earnings reports are coming in, and they’re making Wall Street smile. Corporate profits are up. And big American companies are sitting on a gigantic pile of money. The 500 largest non-financial firms held almost a trillion dollars in the second quarter, and that money pile is growing larger this quarter. Profits that plummeted in the recession have bounced back. Big businesses have recovered almost 90 percent of what they lost.
So with all this money and profit, they’ll start hiring again, right? Wrong – for three reasons.
First, lots of their profits are coming from their overseas operations. So that’s where they’re investing and expanding production.
GM now sells more cars in China than it does in the US, but makes most of them there. The company now employs 32,000 hourly workers in China. But only 52,000 GM hourly workers remain in the United States – down from 468,000 in 1970.
GM isn’t just hiring low-tech assembly workers in China. Last week the firm broke ground there on a $250 million advanced technology center to develop batteries and other alternative energy sources.
You and I and other American taxpayers still own over 60 percent of GM. We bought GM to save GM jobs, remember?
GM officials say no American taxpayer money is being used to expand in China. But money is fungible. Because of our generosity, GM can now use the dollars it doesn’t have to spend in the United States meeting its American payrolls and repaying its creditors, for new investments in China.
Second, big U.S. businesses are investing their cash in labor-saving technologies. This boosts their productivity, but not their payrolls.
Last Friday, for example, Ford reported a $2.6 billion second-quarter profit. The firm is already more than two-thirds the way to equaling its record 1999 profits. But due to labor-saving technologies, Ford now has half as many employees as it did a decade ago.
Wall Street analysts are happy with Ford’s “commitment to keeping capacity in check,” according to the Wall Street Journal. Ford shares rose 5.2 percent Friday. “Keeping capacity in check” is the Street’s way of saying “no new hiring.” In fact, the Street is advising investors to sell the stocks of companies that talk openly of expanding capacity.
Finally, corporations are using their pile of money to pay dividends to their shareholders and buy back their own stock – thereby pushing up share prices.
Last Friday, GE announced it would raise its dividend by 20 percent and reinstate its share-buyback plan. It’s GE’s first dividend increase since the company cut its dividend in early 2009. As a result, GE shares are up more than 5% in the past few days.
Bottom line: Higher corporate profits no longer lead to higher employment. We’re witnessing a great decoupling of company profits from jobs.
The next supply-side economist who tells you companies need more incentive (i.e. lower taxes) before they’ll hire is living on another planet.
The reality is this: Big American companies may never rehire large numbers of workers. And they won’t even begin to think about hiring until they know American consumers will buy their products. The problem is, American consumers won’t start buying against until they know they have reliable paychecks.
FT.com / Global Economy - World Bank warns on ‘farmland grab’ trend
Investors in farmland are targeting countries with weak laws, buying arable land on the cheap and failing to deliver on promises of jobs and investments, according to the draft of a report by the World Bank.
“Investor interest is focused on countries with weak land governance,” the draft said. Although deals promised jobs and infrastructure, “investors failed to follow through on their investments plans, in some cases after inflicting serious damage on the local resource base”.
In addition, “the level of formal payments required was low”, making speculation a key motive for purchases. “Payments for land are often waived ... and large investors often pay lower taxes than smallholders ... or none at all.”
The report, The Global Land Rush: Can it yield sustainable and equitable benefits?’ is the broadest study yet of the so-called “farmland grab”, in which countries invest in overseas land to boost their food security, or investors – who are mostly locals – buy arable land. The “farmland grab” trend gained notoriety after an attempt in 2008 by South Korea’s Daewoo Logistics to secure a large chunk of land in Madagascar for a very low price and vague promises of investment. The deal contributed to a coup d’état in the African country.
The draft was leaked to the Financial Times by a person who said they wanted to prevent the World Bank releasing the report in the middle of the summer holiday period.
The Washington-based body said the report was a work in progress and revisions were being made. “When it is released in August, we believe it will contribute much-needed data and other information to this complex subject.”
The World Bank advocated in its draft the launch of a Land Transparency Initiative modelled on the Extractive Industry Transparency Initiative, which commits governments, mainly in developing countries, to disclose revenues from oil and mining groups to improve transparency on the deals. Critics noted that eight years after its launch, only Liberia, Timor-Leste and Azerbaijan, were full members of the EITI. But the draft said: “By establishing a consistent format for reporting on land acquisition and monitoring [the] process over time, it could provide access to information sorely missing.”
Doing what works--Efficient effective government.
Public confidence in government is at an all-time low, according to a major new survey commissioned by the Center for American Progress. And yet clear majorities of Americans of all ages want and expect more federal involvement in priority areas such as energy, poverty, and education, the poll found.
The key lesson embedded in these seemingly paradoxical results: Americans want a federal government that is better, not smaller.Learn more and read the full report here.Video (see above): Government Leaders Discuss How to Make Government Work
Georgia's technical colleges set enrollment record
When Madison Morgan graduated in May, she knew she wanted to study medicine in college.
She was accepted to Mercer University and Young Harris College, but didn't want to take out loans to pay for four years of tuition. Instead the 17-year-old enrolled at Gwinnett Technical College where she plans to double major in nursing and surgical technology. She'll graduate with a degree in two years and without any loans to pay back.
"When I was in high school I was hooked on going to a university, but when it came down to it, it just wasn't what I wanted or what I could afford," Morgan said. "I don't know where I want to be in the medical field but they have enough courses that I can explore to see what I like best. It got even better when I saw that I could do all that there and not have any debt when I leave."
Morgan belongs to one of the fastest growing groups of students attending the Technical College System of Georgia. The system's 26 campuses enrolled 190,842 students during the 2010 fiscal year -- an increase of 22 percent over last year's figures and a new record, according to data released Monday.
Much of the increase can be attributed to the recession as thousands of out-of-work and underemployed adults returned to school in search of new careers, Commissioner Ron Jackson said. For example, enrollment among students 40 and older increased by 32 percent to 31,262, according to the figures.
But another sizable increase came from traditional students -- those 25 and under -- showing that the system has become a first-choice for many recent high school graduates. Enrollment among students 21 and under increased by 11 percent to 46,910. The number of students between the ages of 21 and 25 increased by 22 percent to 46,377.
Jackson and others have increased outreach to high schools and guidance counselors in recent years.
"The word is getting out that this is not your daddy's technical school," Jackson said.
A technical college was among the 10 most popular choices for students from 165 of the state's 181 school districts between 2000 and 2007, according to a report released last fall by the Governor's Office of Student Achievement. It was the top choice in 62 districts.
Morgan said she got some push-back from her mother, who wondered if she wouldn't be happier at the University of Georgia.
"I told her that wasn't going to happen unless she gives me $20,000," Morgan joked, using an estimated figure to cover four years of tuition.
Tuition at the technical colleges costs about $2,400 a year, with much paid through state and federal grants. Morgan received money from Georgia's HOPE and the federal Pell grants to pay for all of her schooling.
"I'm excited by this and it is not a bad decision," she said. "When I get out in two years I'll get a job, and then I can save money so I can go back to school. I could go to medical school and become a surgeon."
While more recent high school graduates have enrolled in the technical colleges, adults who were laid off have also returned to school.
Vanessa Lyons was working as a certified nursing assistant when her company went out of business in October 2009. She enrolled in the practical nursing program at Atlanta Technical College and plans to graduate in about 6 months.
"As a CNA I made enough to keep above water, but it wasn't enough to be successful," Lyons, 48, said. "I wanted a better career and wanted to improve my lifestyle. I want to be able to retire someday."
Jackson said growth among students like Lyons will eventually stabilize. But that won't happen for awhile as unemployment rates continue to increase and experts predict a slow economic recovery, he said.
Tuesday, July 27, 2010
Judicial philosophy and the differences between libertarians and conservatives
JimN2010 Camapign Update 97 days 12 hours 15 min till polls...
97 days 13 hours 32 min till polls...Money raised so far today: $10Call Time to raise money: 0 hrs. [ I know I know... I'm still getting unpacked]Quote for the day: “Don't pray for lighter burdens, but for stronger backs.” -Unknown
Government Annex Community Room116, 98-116 South Zack Hinton Pkwy, McDonough, GA 30253 at 7:30pm.
The Georgia Birth to Five Coalition brown bag lunch and information session on Thursday, July 29th from 12:00 - 2:00 p.m. in the Logan Room at the United Way Building, 100 Edgewood Avenue, NE; Atlanta, GA.Taifa Butler, Katherine Falen, and Diane Bales, representing Better Brains for Babies will lead a discussion on the latest research and recommendations on early brain development process and stages, and other aspects of brain development that are so vital to inform the work of advocates for young children.regards,Jim
Once a Leader, U.S. Lags in College Degrees - NYTimes.com
Adding to a drumbeat of concern about the nation’s dismal college-completion rates, the College Board warned Thursday that the growing gap between the United States and other countries threatens to undermine American economic competitiveness.
The United States used to lead the world in the number of 25- to 34-year-olds with college degrees. Now it ranks 12th among 36 developed nations.
“The growing education deficit is no less a threat to our nation’s long-term well-being than the current fiscal crisis,” Gaston Caperton, the president of the College Board, warned at a meeting on Capitol Hill of education leaders and policy makers, where he released a report detailing the problem and recommending how to fix it. “To improve our college completion rates, we must think ‘P-16’ and improve education from preschool through higher education.”
While access to college has been the major concern in recent decades, over the last year, college completion, too, has become a leading item on the national agenda. Last July, President Obama announced the American Graduation Initiative, calling for five million more college graduates by 2020, to help the United States again lead the world in educational attainment.
This month, on becoming chairman of the National Governors Association, Gov. Joe Manchin III of West Virginia announced that he would lead a college-completion initiative.
In May, Grantmakers for Education, an organization for those who make gifts to educational programs, convened a group of philanthropists and policy experts to talk about how to bolster college-completion rates.
“We spend a fortune recruiting freshmen but forget to recruit sophomores,” Michael McPherson, president of the Spencer Foundation, said at the meeting.
In April, Melinda Gates gave a speech at the American Association of Community Colleges convention, urging community college officials to lead the way on college completion and pledging that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation would contribute up to $110 million to improve remedial programs, in an effort to increase graduation rates.
“The stars are aligning in a way that gives me some hope,” said William Kirwan, chancellor of the University System of Maryland, who hosted the Washington discussion along with Mr. Caperton. “This is a problem that’s been around for too long. But now there’s beginning to emerge a focus of attention and activity that quite frankly we haven’t had till now.”
Mr. Kirwan said that the United States had fallen behind other countries over several decades.
“We led the world in the 1980s, but we didn’t build from there,” he said. “If you look at people 60 and over, about 39-40 percent have college degrees, and if you look at young people, too, about 39-40 percent have college degrees. Meanwhile, other countries have passed us by.”
Canada now leads the world in educational attainment, with about 56 percent of its young adults having earned at least associate’s degrees in 2007, compared with only 40 percent of those in the United States. (The United States’ rate has since risen slightly.)
While almost 70 percent of high school graduates in the United States enroll in college within two years of graduating, only about 57 percent of students who enroll in a bachelor’s degree program graduate within six years, and fewer than 25 percent of students who begin at a community college graduate with an associate’s degree within three years.
The problem is even worse for low-income students and minorities: only 30 percent of African-Americans ages 25-34, and less than 20 percent of Latinos in that age group, have an associate’s degree or higher. And students from the highest income families are almost eight times as likely as those from the lowest income families to earn a bachelor’s degree by age 24.
The problem begins long before college, according to the report released Thursday.
“You can’t address college completion if you don’t do something about K-12 education,” Mr. Kirwan said.
The group’s first five recommendations all concern K-12 education, calling for more state-financed preschool programs, better high school and middle school college counseling, dropout prevention programs, an alignment with international curricular standards and improved teacher quality. College costs were also implicated, with recommendations for more need-based financial aid, and further efforts to keep college affordable.
Georgia FY 2011 Budget Gap Details
FY 2011 Budget Gap Details
1) Enhanced Medicaid Match
The FY 2011 state budget includes $748 million in an enhanced federal Medicaid match (FMAP) originally contained in the Recovery Act. The enhanced Medicaid match is set to expire on December 31, 2010. Georgia’s budget includes $375 million from the enhanced match under the assumption that the U.S. Congress will extend the enhanced Medicaid match for six months until June 30, 2011. The Senate has been unable to muster the 60 votes needed to pass legislation that includes the Medicaid extension. If Congress does not pass an extension, the state budget will face a $375 million shortfall.
2) Education Stabilization Recovery Act Funds
Among other recent actions to closeout fiscal year 2010, the governor transferred $37.7 million in federal Education Stabilization Recovery Act funds from FY 2011 to FY 2010.4 This transfer opens up a $37.7 million hole in the FY 2011 budget since these funds are budgeted for this fiscal year.
3) State Health Benefit Plan
The State Health Benefit Plan (SHBP) is operating with a projected shortfall of as much as $200 million. As a result of reduced state contributions to the SHBP, the plan is operating without the funding reserve it has previously enjoyed and current SHBP cash assets are not large enough to cover outstanding claims. As a result, the SHBP is essentially operating with a deficit, as current outstanding claims (including those that have not yet been reported) exceed the cash held by the plan.
The entire deficit does not necessarily have to be addressed in the current fiscal year. Addressing the deficit will likely require additional funding to the plan, although expense-reducing options could also be considered. Currently, the Department of Community Health (DCH), which houses the SHBP, is pursuing potential grant funding available to employers under the new national health reform law, also known as the Affordable Care Act (ACA). If DCH does not win the funds, the state could increase monthly premiums
Deportations double in Whitfield County
The number of deportations through a federal program has more than doubled in Whitfield County in the last two years.
But the entire amount of deportations in Georgia and Tennessee has dropped over the same period.
“At the beginning, we couldn’t process every alien that came in. A lot of them had to be let go because we only had a few people trained,” said Capt. Wes Lynch, one of seven officers with the Whitfield County Sheriff’s Office who were trained in 2008 to enforce immigration law under a program known as 287(g).
So far this fiscal year, which runs from Oct. 1 through Sept. 30, the officers have identified 422 people for deportation compared with 379 in 2008.
Of those, 206 people have been deported or accepted voluntary departure in Whitfield County, according to officials with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency.
Capt. Lynch said the process is complicated, but his staff has learned how to do it and has become more efficient at it.
“This processing is time consuming and it can be very complicated,” Capt. Lynch said. “It can be done but it’s a process that (has) certain steps you have to go through. People have to be specially trained to do this, and we didn’t get any additional personnel,” he said.
“The initial struggle was how do we utilize the personnel that we have to try to get the job done the best that we can, so to begin with we started out slow and carefully,” he added.
Now, he said, his staff can process almost everybody who comes into custody who is an illegal immigrant.
Georgia peaked in deportations in 2008, when the four agencies — the Georgia Department of Public Safety and the Cobb County, Hall County and Whitfield County sheriff’s offices — already had joined the program, but now it has declined.
Close to 2,000 people have been deported or accepted a voluntary departure so far this year in Georgia, compared with 2,571 last year and more than 3,500 in 2008.
WHAT IS 287(g)?
A section under the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 that authorizes the secretary of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to enter into agreements with state and local law enforcement agencies to permit designated officers to perform immigration law enforcement functions.
July '10 Ratings: Fox News Has More Total Viewers Than MSNBC, CNN, HLN Combined
As usual, Fox news channel held a commanding lead over its cable news competition in July. The network had more total viewers than CNN, MSNBC and HLN combined in primetime, averaging 1.85M (CNN+HLN+MSNBC= 1.66M).Total Day (Mon-Sun): 999k total/270k A25-54
Prime (Mon-Sun): 1.85M total/461k A25-54As was the case with CNN and MSNBC, those numbers are down from last July, with the coverage of Michael Jackson's death a possible culprit.
The network was third among all cable channels in total viewers, trailing only Summer stalwarts USA and TNT.
Small Businesses Find Chamber, Lobby Allies Mute on $30 Billion U.S. Aid
Small U.S. businesses pushing for a $30 billion federal lending fund are making their case without the support of some supposed allies: Washington lobbying groups that say they represent small businesses.
Three of the largest groups -- the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, National Federation of Independent Business and National Association of Manufacturers -- were mostly silent during a debate last week over an amendment authorizing the fund, which cleared a legislative hurdle late July 22. A final vote is planned for this week.
The neutrality of these organizations, which together spent more than $47 million lobbying in the first six months of this year, left car-parts makers, franchise owners and community banks on their own to argue for the funding.
“Credit is a terrible problem” for small businesses, said Fred Knapp, president of the South Carolina Small Business Chamber of Commerce, which is based in Columbia. “These groups are tied to big businesses. That’s all this is about.”
Knapp’s group, which is nonpartisan, isn’t a member of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and broke with the manufacturers’ and independent business groups to support health-care and Wall Street legislation this year.
For the past month the Senate has debated a bill meant to help small businesses get the capital they need to expand and hire workers. The measure would ease terms for loans guaranteed by the Small Business Administration, provide $12 billion in tax breaks and issue grants to states to provide business loans.
$30 Billion Amendment
Its passage is crucial to boost employment because small businesses hire most workers, President Barack Obama said.
“I hope we can now finish the job and pass the small- business jobs plan without delay and without additional partisan wrangling,” Obama said at the White House July 23.
The previous night, the Senate voted 60-39 to proceed with an amendment offered by Louisiana Democrat Mary Landrieu that would provide $30 billion to banks with less than $10 billion in assets to encourage them to lend to small businesses. The cost of paying back those capital infusions would decline based on the level of small-business lending by the bank.
A second vote on that amendment is necessary when the bill comes up for a final debate this week. Landrieu, chairman of the Small Business and Entrepreneurship Committee, called it the most important part of the legislation.
“This is really the core of the small-business bill,” Landrieu said on the Senate floor before the vote. “But for some inexplicable reason this was going to be left on the cutting room floor.”