Hey Buddy, Can You Spare a Dime?

Moronic Secretary of Labor, Elaine L. Chao, veteran non-profiteer and Republican insider, enthuses this week over the insignificant unemployment rate drop as a sign of economic recovery. As the still-jobless drop off the unemployment roles and just give up looking (about 500,000 this last measurement period) they are not counted as "the unemployed" anymore. Everyone has known about this measurement error (known as a measurement artifact in stat circles) for years.

That hasn't prevented “Chaos” from spinning this in the Administration's favor, “Today's drop in the unemployment rate is positive and surpasses market expectations.”

Shrub, choosing as usual to employ platitudes over specifics, lauds our present economy, “economy is vibrant and strong.” A quick look at the historical trend clearly shows that, even using the statistically bogus (see next graph) BLS unemployment figures, the last time employment was actually this weak was with Poppa Bush was President!

This flies in the face of the excellently straight-faced examination of unemployment on the Online NewsHour (Non-Working Numbers -- July 29, 2003) by Paul Solmon. He concludes his piece as follows: “Back in 1982, the percent of total working age men not employed for whatever reason -- discouraged, disabled, jailed, retired early, or officially out of work -- was 17.3 percent. But as of last month, that total was even higher: 17.8 percent not employed, which make the current job bust, at least for men, look far deeper than the official unemployment rate suggests.”

This corresponds neatly with those who consider themselves unemployed. Finally, there is an interesting tidbit from a Mark J. Penn poll for the Democratic leadership council (OK, OK, maybe not an unbiased source, but this stat is pretty basic). In this poll, 14% of those questioned identified themselves as "unemployed" and another 29% as “the working poor” (this is versus “blue collar”). That makes a total of un- or very poorly employed at 43%.

Maybe I'm too lazy to fully pursue this. Feel free to search out better data on this yourself. But isn't it reasonable to assume that the unemployed and the working poor are living on fumes at best? That they are draining their savings, investments and other equity (like from their homes)? And isn't it also reasonable to assume that many are also doing the same to the resources of family and friends?

Almost half of Americans think they are underemployed, unemployed, or just plain living hand-to-mouth. And it seems likely they are draining their savings, and reducing significantly the odds that even getting a job, or a better job, will dig them out of their hole...the rising personal debt in this country means, simply, that no one will ever “retire,” until they've “retired” their debts, too.

So the economy lost more jobs, even while unemployed rates went down. At best that's because of a small rise in temp jobs (no benefits, more medical bills and debt), and at worst because folks just fell off the measurement charts. Helluva recovery.
¶ 11:21 AM

  Who is Paul Bremer?

Top Five Quotes from his definitive assessment of the New World Order, entitled, “New Risks in International Business. (2001)”

1. “Today there are clear signs that anti-globalization forces are retargeting actions from multilateral financial institutions toward multinational companies. Moreover, there are indications that, like the anti-war movement in the late 1960s, the anti-globalization movement is spawning terrorist groups at its margins.”

I get it. If I get sore that Oracle exports my good-paying programming job to India, I'm part of the vast terrorist conspiracy to undermine Halliburton’s revitalized earnings. What an anti-capitalist swine I am.

Single-handedly, Dick Cheney is masterfully orchestrating a strategy that will let his chums free Iraq and boost the fortune of the U.S. investor. In fact, Iraq could be a goldmine, if only I could see the big picture.

2. “A local reaction to economic modernization in emerging markets could be changing ‘the rules of the game’ for foreign investors – after their investments have been made. Politicians can revoke investment incentives or renege on contracts – for example, power purchase agreements or telecom licenses. Or they might institute discriminatory tax regimes or impose new import or export duties. Even democracies can act this way, as India has recently shown.
“Petroleum and mining projects, with their large fixed costs and heavy debt, have long been susceptible to this kind of risk.”

He cleverly calls this “creeping expropriation.” What it actually means is that after giant companies cook their books and work bum deals with their foreign subsidiaries, they then hold a gun to the head of these foreign countries, their citizens and the workers in their own foreign firms.

Pay us the debts we amassed when we ran your companies in cahoots with some corrupt government we did business with. (How did Iraq wind up owing all that money to a bunch of multinationals, French banks, etc.—as well as our new best friends the Ruskies?) Otherwise, we call you expropriators and send in the troops to trash your country.

3. “Given the opaque and politicized nature of business practices in many countries, it is essential that foreign investors use rigorous due diligence on local partners. To serve its clients better, Marsh recently announced an agreement with the British firm Control Risks Group LLC. This partnership will provide clients with a full range of political risk services and due diligence expertise when they contemplate doing business in emerging markets.”

For example, actual elected officials in these governments take bribes. This is not to be confused with campaign financing. It is savage and unforgivable to think that a politician might take money from an interested party and stick it into his own pocket. What political savagery! How undemocratic!

Everyone knows that in a free country, like ours, you don't give money directly to politicians. Above reproach and all that. You give the dough to the party, a campaign war chest or a PAC. And you do this willingly, as a true son of our democratic founding fathers. Without giving more than a passing thought to the benefits you might reap.

4. “For some time, insurance underwriters have understood the evolution of political risk away from straight-out expropriation and developed new products to mitigate these risks. Firms can now insure against “creeping expropriation” and against the breach of contract by governmental or quasi-governmental organizations. They can also insure against currency inconvertibility, civil wars, or political violence and terrorism.”

Nice to know there's money to be made encouraging private sector firms to risk investing abroad. First you provide insurance, so it doesn’t cost them anything if the deal goes bad. When it does, you call in the Marines. Then you hire multinationals with taxpayer money to rebuild the place.

Bremer estimates is will take nearly $40 billion to rebuild power and water systems in Iraq. That's in addition to the $50 billion a year it costs to keep boots on the ground there, by the Administration's current estimates.

Sure there were other reasons for going to Iraq—to depose a tyrant we helped prop up for years, among others. I just wish they were putting that kind of money into my neighborhood.

5. “Ambassador L. Paul Bremer III is chairman of Marsh’s Crisis Consulting Practice, which provides integrated and comprehensive crisis solutions covering all aspects of a business’s operations.”

His calming influence, and extensive experience in diplomacy is welcome to all. Certainly, I send all my hopes and best wishes for success to him as stabilizes Iraq, rebuilds it for the benefit of its suffering people and gets our brave troops home, and out of harm’s way, as soon as possible.

The soldiers, after all, make little from this noble effort to bring freedom and prosperity to the Middle East. In fact, they recently had their hazardous duty pay slashed in half by the Administration.

But that is another matter entirely. Bremer’s old colleagues at Marsh, too, must welcome his Iraq involvement. His success should greatly encourage U.S. companies to do business in Iraq, all the while anteing up for the type of risk insurance sold by firms like theirs.

¶ 1:04 PM

  Waffling on Belgium

“Dr. Livingstone, I presume,” Henry Stanley so famously said. Less famously, he helped depraved atrocity-monger, King Leopold of Belgium, take over the Congo. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle - Conan Doyle and the Belgian Congo The horrors committed by this now beatifically presumptuous and geopolitically irrelevant country stand out in the highlight reel of history's evils.

That Belgium would dare to lecture American leaders about war crimes—and without even a mention of their own past affronts to human decency! Thankfully, this pathetic and hypocritical farce now comes to an end, as the new leadership of Belgium has finally had the good sense to kill its “law” that allowed such crimes to be prosecuted in Belgium courts against non citizens, such as Bush, Blair and Sharon. Yahoo! News - Belgium Shuts Book on Controversial War Crimes Law What can the Belgians be thinking of, to interfere with the sovereign right of a country, especially the world’s undisputed leader, to determine it’s foreign policy? In short, to send troops to combat threats to its security?

Belgium can only take such a grandstanding high road because NATO protects it, which is to say we do. And because its time as a world power has passed, it can now conveniently ignore its own bad behavior, ascribing it, one supposes, to earlier, unenlightened times.

Sic semper gloria mundi, I suppose. Look at the flowing and ebbing of all empires and spheres of influence on the world stage and you will see nothing more clearly than that. With the passing into history comes forgetfulness. And with forgetfulness the delusion of moral and ethical progress.

Historical hubris aside, the implications of Belgian judicial activity on international law and order would have been grave and threatening. Imagine a country telling leaders of other countries how to treat their own citizens! Or using its own ideas of justice as a pretext for trying and convicting non-nationals!

Oh wait. We're doing that right now with citizens of France, England, Afghanistan and most famously Iraq. Don’t we have them in Cuba? No bail? No trials? No nothing?

Didn’t we just knock off the governments of a pair of countries (and are tapping on the door of a handful more), because we decided that they were guilty of threatening us? And please, do NOT say that we got the OK from the UN to oust these now departed former allies and miscreants (who well deserved their present rewards). In twin disappointments, they proved incapable of sufficient moral clarity and we of sufficient patience.

So is it sauce for the goose, not fit for the gander? Correct. Does Belgium, the goose, have the mightiest military the world has ever seen? Does the leadership in Brussels have one finger on the nuclear button, a twitch away from raining down massive destruction on us, should we dare to ignore its will?

No. That, of course, is the crux of the argument. So let's leave aside all the pious hypocrisy. Our overwhelming might makes us the ganders. We make the rules. We try in our courts anyone we think atrocious and neither ask for nor accept counsel from the rest of the world.

So it has always been. You think our behavior better than Leopold's in the Congo? Ask the Cheyenne; ask the Hopi. Ask the heirs of our slavery. And if you ask them in the former Belgian Congo about the Belgian war crime law, they would probably ask that the now tiny, once fearful imperialist nation go check into its own jail.

History remembered helps put some of this in perspective. Sure, that was ages ago. About a century, or three or four generations. When your grandma’s parents were young. A decade before Leo's efforts in the Congo we ended slavery in this country.

Does America do business differently today? I would hope so.

I think America stands for freedom and justice. I think the USA is a great country where even the most modest incomes still cover a nice TV or a few new shirts.

So I am not going to visit any factories in China where they make TVs and clothes anytime soon, just in case. How China Hides Its Slave Labor From the Free World

I wouldn't want to have to change my mind about America, or those uppity Belgians and their insulting efforts to hold us to standards they didn’t meet, back when it was their turn to run the world.
¶ 7:47 AM

  Hey Jayson, Can You I Use You as a Reference?

I'm looking to break into big-time journalism so I thought I'd reach out to my oldest friend. He's hot now, getting all the big assignments from the mainstream publications. So I figure my hookup with him will let all you editors out there know I'm a real pro.

Yeah, that's right. What I'm saying I've got his back. Homies. Tight. Word: Me and Ja Blair like that.

Backstory: Jay and me hungizzled together in DC back when he was here for the Times on that sniper duo thing. In fact, I did most of his writing for him.

Word: I give him major props for his sound news judgement. After all, he was the one that picked me out of the crowd to use--and that's the way. Sampling is all. Folks getting so down on him for that.

Yeah, everything he didn't borrow from someone else is mine. You like his turns of phrase? Mine. You like his color? Mine. That view of the mountains from the porch in Palestine? Mine.

And he was a great manager. Like Rick Bragg, shaping material that a stringer would have just let lay there.

Don't know why everyone is so upset with these guys. They're just bringing to the dailies what they've done at the newsweeklies, and have for decades.

Writer sits in a big building in Manhattan and combines the writing and reporting of others into seamless prose. You would never know the dude had been nowhere near the place the story's at. And hadn't thought a second about the subject until he got the assignment after the big editor's meeting on Tuesday.

Where did I learn all this about the newsweeklies. Why in the years I spent writing at Time Inc. That's right. All that stuff you liked so much was mine, anything with the byline Walter Isaacson.

Newsday.com - Writing After Wrongs Fuels Debate ¶ 6:53 AM

  Unholy Matrimony

Gay marriages now encroach on the matrimonial legitimacy once bestowed only on unions between members of the opposite sex. Canada is the latest to follow this Europhillic tendency to permissiveness. Many brave religious leaders have spoken up against this trend.

Now, thankfully, an important stalwart of conservative values has risen up to defend the sanctity of heterosexual marriage against the latest liberal onslaught: Pope John Paul. On Thursday the Church will release it’s message concerning this timely and terrible trend sweeping from foreign lands right to our own northern border.

[Courtesy AP]
VATICAN CITY - Alarmed by growing legal acceptance of gay marriages, the Vatican is issuing new instructions to bishops and Catholic politicians in an effort to halt the trend.
The instructions, which call on politicians to oppose extending rights granted to traditional couples, are in a document prepared by the Church's guardian of orthodoxy, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.
The document — "Considerations Regarding Proposals to Give Legal Recognition to Unions Between Homosexual Persons" — will be released Thursday, the Vatican said.
Pope John Paul II and top Vatican officials have been speaking out for months against legislative proposals to legalize same-sex marriages in Europe, North America and elsewhere.

It’s especially important that the Church react strongly to this latest experiment with the social order. And one might well ask, “What took him so long?” But the Pontiff’s fitting reaction now against this trend is still most welcome.

Any acceptance of homosexual unions would have grave societal impacts. It would strain corporations' pension plans, already reeling from their oversupply of company stock. The emptied lockbox of Social Security would be further overwhelmed in an effort to pay back to these "spouses" even a fraction of what had been taken from their paychecks over the years. And privatized healthcare providers, HMOs and their ilk, would have to give benefits to those entitled to them, but whom the law of holy matrimony, and the land, had previously let them ignore. Both corporations and taxpayers would find themselves facing considerable additional expenses should these unions be recognized.

Beyond that, however, are the moral implications of such alleged "tolerance." Acceptance of homosexual marriage would deal a terrible blow against the efforts to criminalize any sexual behavior between consenting adults deemed unacceptable by the Church. It is the “camel’s nose under the tent” to permitting contraception, sex out of wedlock, even the acceptance of abortion!

In fact, even if such perverse behaviors were practiced discretely in private and had no direct effect on the community at large, it is still, according to the majority of America’s leading religions, abhorrent in the eyes of God. And the Church wisely understands this simple fact and supports the general feeling of these leading religions: that God is everywhere and that He sees what happens in private, too.

But, as is so often the case, the real damage from such acceptance of perversity will be felt most strongly in those poor unfortunate children who would be the invevitable fruits of such sexual unions. To accept such “marriages” would be to encourage the raising of these innocents in a decidedly unhealthy environment, where all the adult role models are homosexual.

In support of the Church, one hopes some brave souls in Congress will at least pass a law prohibiting those adults in unholy homosexual matrimony from ever bearing children. Surely, such a compromise could be reached, even in an environment so poisoned by the current crop of liberal ideologues.

It is not the best solution, of course. It would be far better to criminalize homosexuality and all other such deviant behavior. Then send these wrong-thinking sociopaths to prison where they would no longer be able to practice their perversions—and spread their disruptive, anti-mainstream ideas. That said, we live in a “multicultural age,” so such sensible legislation is unlikely at this time.

Despite this unfortunate political situation, it is a proud moment for the Church. It stands tall and flies in the face of all that is “multi-cultural” and secular, to take its appropriately strong stance against homosexual marriage.

But it is also incumbent on the Church’s priesthood to reach out in their ministry to the poor unfortunate children of these homosexual unions. Let them be a safe harbor into whose welcoming arms these youngsters may run. There, nestled in the bosom of their neighborhood priest, may these little children find divinely-inspired wisdom on how best to deal with their blooming interest in “sex.” These men of the cloth, well versed in the Church’s sensible sexual doctrines, can share their knowledge and worldly experiences on these delicate matters—and serve as role models and close companions to these poor unfortunate offspring of sinfully damaging gay alliances. ¶ 2:22 PM

  Talking About the New Traitors

Religious zealots bent on the destruction of U.S. national security and our freedom-loving way of life have once again attacked the very heartland of our country.

[Courtesy AP]
“Saturday, July 26, 2003; 9:32 AM
DENVER - In October, three nuns vandalized a nuclear missile silo to protest the use of weapons of war. For that act, all three will spend the next several years behind bars.
A federal judge on Friday sentenced Jackie Hudson to 2 1/2 years, Ardeth Platte to almost 3 1/2 years and Carol Gilbert to two years and nine months. All three were given three years of supervised probation.
U.S. District Judge Robert Blackburn departed from sentencing guidelines Friday in punishing the women. While the maximum term is 30 years, the guidelines call for a six-year minimum term.
"We're satisfied," prosecutor Robert Brown said.
Hudson, 68, Gilbert, 55, and Platte, 66, were convicted in April of obstructing the nation's defense and damaging government property after cutting a fence and walking onto a Minuteman III silo site, swinging hammers and using their blood to paint a cross on the structure.
Officials said the women caused at least $1,000 in damage.”

These anti-American terrorists should have gotten 30 years. A thousand dollars worth of damage? Maybe that’s what it costs to cover up their slogans of anti-government rebellion and repair the fence. But more is damaged by their actions than that.

Already this weekend, hundreds of misguided men and women have launched similar protests against nuclear missile sites all over Colorado. This wave of collaborationist anti-Americanism may spread through the West and then the entire nation, engulfing us in weakening self-doubt at the very moment when we must stay the course.

Then there is the longer term, more horrific damage to the patriot fabric of our nation. Think of the children. That’s right. The millions of children whose pure minds and hearts have been forever corrupted by the knowledge of the atrocities committed by these three criminals.

Stalwarts of the Republican Party, that bastion of family values and the freedom to bear arms, stand unwaveringly against such corruption of youth.

Take the noted Republican and ex-gambler Bill Bennett, an expert in family values. He’s often proclaimed that kids imitate what they see. His argument has made its way into the courtroom almost every time some youngster has gotten hold of the family’s loaded guns and shot schoolmates, citizens and other innocents. Liberals making the movies are to blame for it. He’s sagely said it many times. Clearly, had the kids not gone to the movies, they would have stolen the weapons and just shot at targets with them.

And what harm would there have been in that? The second amendment guarantees their right to such activities, as long as the weapon has a barrel at least 18 inches long and is not fully automatic. They need the practice, besides, to protect our freedom.

A similar family-values champion is Republican Arnold Schwarzenegger. He represents such positive youth-oriented, life-affirming fare as the “Terminator” movies. Filled with healthy action that appeals to all ages, these films clearly show that you should only turn your weaponry on machines, and if you must shoot people, take extra care not to kill them. What better example to set for youth?

On the other hand, these terrorist-nuns set an insidious and evil example for youth.
Just consider the lurid details of their malicious anti-family, anti-American deeds:
· They were unarmed, a clear affront to the second amendment
· They destroyed government property, a direct attack on our capitalist system and the most cherished beliefs of our leaders who rank property rights above personal rights and who wish to drill for oil and log ancient trees in our protected national wilderness areas
· They exercised their right to assembly and free speech, making a mockery of these inalienable rights when during a war all right-thinking, patriotic Americans know they are duty bound to be 100 percent behind whatever the government does, plans or stands for.
· They questioned, during a time of war, our President, who embodies the very nature of our democratic process, representing as he does the majority of the Justices on the Supreme Court.

Clearly, these nuns are traitors and have been dealt with too leniently. Their actions can only offer comfort and aid to the many enemies we now face both on the battlefield and upon the global diplomatic stage. We are fighting almost single-handedly to free the world from the bloodshed of terrorism. For their sins against our country, these three evildoers should never again see the light of day.

Even the death penalty would not be too harsh in this case. One can only hope that some patriot in jail with them will settle the matter by finishing what the Justice system—still hamstrung its effort to preserve freedom by the need to formally charge and convict people—could not.

These nuns may claim that Jesus is their guide. But Jesus said, “to render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s.” Doesn’t this mean that He would tell us that we owe our country unquestioned loyalty at a time like this?

Nowadays everyone asks, “What would Jesus do?” These nuns naively and treasonously think He would be opposed to our war.

Thankfully our country’s leaders are wiser. They understand He’d know the justice of their crusade—and be on the front lines, helping our brave young troops coordinate “the kill box.” He would be for our avenging warriors a winged guardian on high, like the AWACs that rule over our high-tech battlefields. And they know that He’d be proud to play his part.
¶ 9:29 AM