Monday, May 31, 2010

EconomyUSA: Jobless increase: Impacts and impasse on job creation in the new healthcare-driven American economy

To contrast with UK's unemployment crisis (mentioned in yesterday's blog-entry), here's a recent stat from USA's labour crisis (May 13, 2k10). Jeffry Bartash wr+ts in MarketWatch, "Weeklu jobless claims little changed at 444,000" --

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) - The number of people applying for unemployment benefits essentially held steady at 444,000 in the latest week, the Labor Department reported Thursday. Claims actually fell by 4,000 for the week ended May 8, but the data was revised up by 4,000 for the prior week. The net effect: no change from last week's headline number. The four-week average of initial claims - a better gauge of employment trends than the volatile weekly number - dropped by 9,000 to 450,500. Economists surveyed by MarketWatch predicted initial claims would dip to a seasonally adjusted 440,000.
Uncannily, the number echoes with biblical sobriety -- "And I heard the number of them which were sealed: [and there were sealed one hundred forty four thousand -- 444,000!--of all the tribes of the chldren of Israel" (Revelation 7:4 KJV; see also Rev. 4:1). Am I the only person who noticed that parallelism?

In any case, the Bible verses are a distraction here. We have to retain our sobriety in order to guage the significance of a half-million unemployed workers applying for jobless benefits, pogey, the Dole over the course of a week, as averaged from a four week's total figure -- must give any considerate observer some considerable pause.

These jobless figures of a week's average nearly rises to a half-million, yet the portion of the economy signified by small businesses, which are the primo job-creators, are being taxed into immobility and somnolescence. Obamanomics is staggering under the new healthcare entitlement (praise God for that were there elsewhere in the Fed budget an adequate compensatory move toward spending cuts and paying down the national debt) -- instead, out of nowhere we have an unstoppable oil disaster we can't afford, and ... and ... we're in trouble in the USA economy. We need a public policy of encouraging and incentivizing the job creators, not big business so much as small.

Britain and America must both prioritize now the creation of jobs for the unemployed, and thus the creation of incomes spendable by wage-earners returned to work -- and taxable by Federal, state and local govts in significant part to pay for the budget-prioritization of healthcare (including the 32 million many of whom will be out of work and jobless). Economically speaking, everything else is secondary. Except of course, intelligent regulation of the financial and the energy sectors. We are not finished with our oil addiction, as President George W. Bush, termed it; rather our continuing and returned workers in many places need to drive their cars to get to work, public transit being unavailable in many places across the continent.

-- EconoMix

Sunday, May 30, 2010

EconomyUK: Leeds Arena: To boost its economy Metropolitan Leeds, England, will build 55 million pounds worth of arena

ContractJournal.com reports a then-anticipated building venture in the city of Leeds, England in Four contest £55m Leeds arena deal - 18/11/2009 - Contract Journal by Brian Warner, who had said then that the project's launch woud take place November 2010, and it woud be completed in 2012,

I encountered the Warner article May30,2k10. The same webvisit brawt me also to an article that informs us the Contract Journal and its webling ContractJournal.com woud have closed down in Nov2k09. The Contract Journal had been publishing for 130 years.  England has been hit hard by the financial crisis which restricts enterprises of all kinds, and certainly has spilled over to workers (especially in the key industry of large-scale construction), workers who often have nowhere else to go, but onto the Dole.

Sad day for workers, for construction contractors, and the entire large-scale construction industry! Has the UK economic picture unclouded sufficiently to start hiring again? Have many of the newly-unemployed tried to set themselves to working again by way of independent contracting or by finding jobs at smaller construction firms? For those who have had to scale-down their/family income due to these moves to gain work in lower-wage jobs, has competion among the independents and smaller firms in the industry led to an increasingly severe competition at low wages? That's the pattern economically-informed job-hunters and onlookers woud expect, but perhaps not so much in Leeds which hopefully will have at least that monster project going for a new arena, starting this November and on into 2012, if all has gone well / is going well. If not, in the meantime, have construction workers in Leeds had to move out?, I wonder.

Update: Here are some labour stats for Leeds (Yorkshire and the Humber River area): official labour stats for Leeds.

-- EconoMix

Thursday, May 27, 2010

Juridics: Ontario: Canadian court makes important "religious hiring" decision

Stanley Carlson-Thies of the Institutional Religious Freedom Alliance has emailed IRFA's May 27,2k10 newsletter. One of the items in this issue of the newsletter features an important juridical note about a recent development in Ontario regarding indiscriminate hiring by non-church faith-based organizations (many of them are social-service agencies who recruit staff on the basis of commitment to Christian morals and faith).

The court deciding the case, and the rhetoric of discussing the case bandies about the term "discrimination" -- but the Christian defence shoud emphasize the hazards of indiscriminate hiring of people who don't evidence having their heart in the secular realization of the Christian all-of-life concern and mission. Christian organizations have every r+t to discriminate against indiscriminate hiring, and the freedom of association that established the org and operates its financial base, shoud trump individuals who don't have their heart in the Christian basis of the organization's work which may be one of faith and morals.

Of course, most Christian social-service orgs need workers heartfully committed to serving all who come to them for service. In this key sense, being Christian in social service may mean anti-discrimination in regard to those cared for by the org. However, a social-service agency, whether Christian or not, needs to discriminate according to its focal task: for instance, caring for the disabled. Such agencies are not ghettos, and it's precisely the discriminating hiring policy that selects for those who can serve in the task at hand indiscriminately. Clear? Stanley states the case, but I have further questions because of the particulars.  All is not what it seems.

Click the time tag below to read more >

Wednesday, May 26, 2010

PoliticsCanada: Abort: support pregnant woman by father of child, her family and society

The Primate of Canada's Roman Catholic Church, Cardinal Marc Ouellet, Archbishop of Quebec, called fire down on his head by sharply contrasting govt's funding of abortion clinics, while not funding agencies for care of women ambiguous regarding their pregnancies and the prospect of childbirth. The fire descended two weeks ago, when the Primate welcomed the Prime Minister Stephen Harper in regard to a then-recent move. Ouellet praised Harper for cancellation of the govt's "funding abortions in the developing world." But Harper did not acknowledge a symmetry of attitudes (a govt can always claim that a particular cancellation of funding is exclusively a budgetary consideration).

Be that as it may, today the Cardinal made additional comment: "Governments are funding clinics for abortion," said Marc Cardinal Ouellet, according to Canadian News via Evri (May 26,2k10).

"I would like equity for organi[zations] that are defending also life."

On Wednesday, Ouellet urged the federal government to take concrete actions at home, such as supporting women who decide to keep their child.

"If they do not want to fund abortion abroad and they do not bring at home more help to women to keep their child, I think they are incoherent," he said.

Ouellet said the ultimate responsibility for deciding to have an abortion is a matter of personal conscience.

He insisted he is not judging women who have abortions and said he would help them afterward.

"If we have equity in funding those instances to help women I think we would make lots of progress in Canada.
The Quebec govt quickly moved to oppose the French-speaking prelate, not least of all because he advocates for completing pregnancy to birth even in cases of rape. For that single deliberated remark perhaps, the pastoral Ouellet had to pay dearly. Not only Quebec's political establishment (Liberal Party) flamed the Roman Catholic leader, but so did the wide range of Quebec editorialists, pundits, and intellectuals. They put the nonplussed Ouellet in Quebec's political Hot Seat. He wants a renewed debate on abortion and care for stranded women who do not choose to abort, even were they to give the newborn to adoption. That procedure shoud be a civil r+t, with at least equal standing to a woman's freedom to choose death for her unborn baby (oops!, unwanted fetus).

-- Politicarp

PoliticsSyria: Economics: Syria's Bashar Assad advances economy, while clinging to autoritarianism and alliances with Hezbollah, Hamas, and Iran

Under the title "Reforms transform Syrian economy, but not politics," by Associated Press via Yahoo! News, we get an updated bird's-eye view of a country usually seen from an Israeli perspective in much of the English-speaking world. But AP is claiming that the anti-Israeli identity has receded as the raison d'etre of Syria's current regime. Yes, the new entrepreneurs are "licensed" on the basis of polite intrigues and sycophancy by the govt sponsorsponsorship[, one imagines. Neverthless, the evidence of wealth has given Damascus and other urban centers a conspicuous cafe-life. Tho, of course, the gap between the rich (including now the new money), and the poor with the same old, same old, remains.

We need a better look at the universities and education. Are they increasing and receiving more students? What disciplines are growth zones of thawt in Syria? How are hospitals and the medical profession, with its specialists, faring?

While technically the Syrian state is still at war with Israel, one doesn't see Syria as planning and spending for that eventuality, if its putting money into hospitals and universities, and educating a new generation in a wide spectrum of professions.

One wonders how the ancient Christian communities of this country are faring these days.

Tuesday, May 25, 2010

Economy: Food: Big Agriculture designs a new sweet patoto, but what about diabetics like me?



ConAgra is a mega-corporation that dicks around with the genomes of food, and I worry that it's part of obsolescing historic varieties that nature, under God. developed for itself, so to speak. Humans were incidental to the process, except as farmers conducted experimental Mendelian hybriding. Then along came Big Ag in the USA and around the world (the Green Revolution in the Punjab, India). In Louisiana university research is cooperating with ConAgra to develop a new kind of sweet potato. My main question about including sweet potatoes in my diet is precisely their sweetness, their sugar-content. I'm wondering if we're going to have genetically altered sweet potatoes, why do they have to be so sweet? Coudn't a niche product be developed that woud make this variety of "potato" give us more more like a mild tabasco-taste, or a minty taste, or even a licorice taste perhaps? --less sugar, for instance?

-- EconoMix

Sunday, May 23, 2010

PoliticsUSA: Connecticut: Senate candidate Blumenthal lies about being Vietnam veteran

The candidate has rendered himself incompetent to be a Senator on a character issue brawt on by his repeated lie (tho not repeated on his official webs+t), the brazen lie that he was in the US military in Vietnam. Actually, he sawt draft deferment several times (full disclosure: I had "immunity" as a Divinity student, my Draft Board was located in Ansonia, Connecticut). In the end, the liar Blumenthal joined the Marine Reserve, calculating that his status there woud protect him from being shipped out to Nam. That proved true, the Marine Reserve cave him a cover for not going to Nam.

Yet he played the Veterans of Foreign Wars circuit with his song and dance, implying he had served his country abroad. He didn't. But he played the political game well, aspiring to climb the ladder to the Senate. As the disgraced Senator Christopher Dodd felt he coud not win another term in the Senate, he dropped out of the race; and that's when Blumenthal saw his opportunity. He wanted Dodd's seat. But every now and then, apparently, on the campaign trail, he coudn't resist that temptation to puff his resume. Membership in the Senate coud have been gained by simply avoiding Nam talk. But the Senate wannabee fell victim to his own hubris. May his political career rest in peace.

-- Politicarp

Clickup the title article at New York Times, "The Candidate and the War" (May22,2k10) by Clark Hoyt.

May the people of Connecticut elect someone else to that vital membership in the US Senate, someone of h+er character, whether have served in Vietnam or not.

Friday, May 21, 2010

Enviro: Offshore Oil: BP's contracted Transocean Ltd had bad record in safety

Ben Casselman writing in the Business section of Wall Street Journal, "Rig owner had rising tally of accidents" (May10,2k10), tells of a severe downward trend in incidents around unsafe conditions and practices, after the company took over a rival in a deal tagged at $18 billion.

The sinking of the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig, which triggered the spill spewing oil into the Gulf of Mexico, caught the energy world by surprise. The operator, Transocean Ltd., is a giant in the brave new world of drilling for oil in deep waters far offshore. It had been honored by regulators for its safety record. The very day of the blast on the rig, executives were aboard celebrating its seven straight years free of serious accidents.

But a Wall Street Journal examination of Transocean's record paints a more equivocal picture.

Nearly three of every four incidents that triggered federal investigations into safety and other problems on deepwater drilling rigs in the Gulf of Mexico since 2008 have been on rigs operated by Transocean, according to an analysis of federal data. Transocean defended its safety record but didn't dispute the Journal's analysis.

In addition, an industry survey of oil companies that hired Transocean perceived a drop in its quality and performance, including safety by some measures, compared with its peers, though it still scored tops in one safety category.

Already the largest deep-water driller, Transocean in November 2007 took over rival GlobalSantaFe in an $18 billion deal. A Journal analysis of records maintained by the U.S. Minerals Management Service found that Transocean's share of incidents in deep water investigated by the regulator has gone up since the merger, even after accounting for its increased size.
The April 20 fire on the rig, the explosion, and the spill, plus the toxic dispersants injected into the Gulf waters to break up the oil agglomeration resulting from the event, has proven catastrophic to the environment, to the way of life and income of workers and owners of small businesses who fished that environment, and to the lives of those killed on the rig Deepwater Horizon, where executives were celebrating that day. Drunk, I woud imagine. Did drunkeness have something to do with the accident?

In any case, drunk, stoned or sober, I think some of those executives and minions shoud go to jail for a long time, and personally pay large fines for their endangerment of others and their negiligent incompetence. Of course, BP shoud continue its efforts at clean-up and also pay large corporate fines to the govt, as well as compensation to those affected for every damned thing BP has ruined.

EconomicsUSA: Financial Regulation: New draft law passes Senate

MarketWatch reports (May21,2k10):

"Senate OKs sweeping restrMaictions on big banks by Ronald D. Orol

WASHINGTON - Senate lawmakers on Friday approved the most significant increase in the regulation of U.S. banks since the Great Depression, placing new restrictions on the nation's biggest banks, reining in the Federal Reserve and crafting a major new consumer protection division for mortgage and credit-card products. The mammoth legislative package -- which passed 59 to 39 -- requires "too-big-to-fail" banks to install new capital restrictions and divest their derivatives units, sets up a government board to assign credit raters for banks' structured finance securities and instructs the government to conduct a one-time unprecedented audit of the Federal Reserve's emergency response programs
134 comments accompany the brief item just recently published.

The source here doesn't mention how the new law doesn't cover the financial malfeasance of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the housing overlords which enriched its bosses so grandly even tho these two corporations are quasi-govt operations, pushed bad business loands and mortgages on woud-be homeowners without a dream of paying their monthly charges, setting the scene for the later foreclosures that put people out on the street all over America. Bad loans / mortgages and insolvancies backed up by the Fed govt, at taxpayers expense, were the origin of the scams that the banks bawt-into and were the main / key cause of the financial crisis from which the Bush-Paulsen and Obama-Geithner excheqeries sawt to save us thru the TARP bailouts. This skyrocketed the national USA debt from which the chickens are coming home to roost.

A very positive provision of the new legislation is the enforced splitting off of derivatives money-games from banking proper. This move is in keeping with the Kuyperian-Dooyeweerdian principle of sphere sovereignty in the subsectoring of finance enterprise-types and the regulation of different institutions / enterprises in the industrial sector of banking and finance, differently.
Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.), chairman of the Senate agriculture committee, proposed dramatic restrictions on trading in derivatives, including a provision that could force big banks to spin off the lucrative business altogether. Her language was added to Dodd's bill and endured, despite efforts by the administration, lobbyists and Dodd himself to temper it.
Hooray! for Blanch! This puts the kiebosh on claims that she is simply an Establishment Democrat. Rather, she is an American treasure for standing up to the Establshment Obamonomix that flaw the new Senate-proposed law (it has to be reconciled with the House version, and then sent up to the White House for the imperial signature.

Two other flaws occur in the Senate's version (and probably are already present in that of the House, as well). First, the bureaucracy was "grown" (groan!) by bloating a present function that has not been properly been addressed by the presently (already) mandated agency, which has indeed broken the law in this failure. -- Regarding consumer protection! Now the overhead expenses of setting up a new agency and the provision of new hires to staff, the costs of this boondoggel will have to be borne by USA taxpayers, sometime down the road short of a grand collapse, but in the meantime of course the Obamanoiods in the Senate and House will just tack the costs onto the Federal deficit. Not preventing a collapse but delaying it.

In the House version, Barney Frank speculates on what will go on in the conference -- not truly a "reconciliation" (which can only reconcile different amounts of money to be allocated) by a joint committee of delegates of the two chambers, msndated to reach compromises to bring forward a single draft text to be voted up by both the Senate and House.
Frank said he expects to abandon a House provision that would require the financial industry to pay into a fund that could be used to liquidate failing firms, an issue that became a political lightning rod in the Senate. And he said he expects the Senate to back off its proposal to house an independent consumer protection agency within the Federal Reserve.

Until, we shall have to wait for much dust to settle.
-- EconoMix

Wednesday, May 19, 2010

Mr First of Utopia

Iran: Mediation: A deal brokered by Brazil and Turkey fails, 'Big Powers' sanction Ayatollahland

Brazil brokers a swap deal between Iran and Turkey regarding enriched uranium (nuclear grade) for use in a key Turkish medical project, but meantime the slow grind of Big-Power diplomacy reaches agreement on draft resolution to be presented for a vote at the UN Security Council. Reuters via Yahoo! News offers this May18,2k10 dispatch, "Big powers agree on Iran sanctions draft":

The United States handed the U.N. Security Council a draft resolution on Tuesday that would expand U.N. sanctions against Iran by hitting its banking and other industries for refusing to halt nuclear enrichment.

The 10-page draft, agreed by the United States, Britain, France, Germany, China and Russia after months of negotiations, also calls for international inspection of vessels suspected of carrying cargo related to Iran's nuclear or missile programs.
The Security Council draft restricts Iran's international expansion of banking for nuclear-war purposes, and it specifically names the Revolutionary Guard's activities, alerting the world to the latter's insidious if clandestine manoeverings.

PoliticsUSA: Primary results: Democrats split to r+t and left of Obama

37% of Democrats now reject the Wall Street bailouts by the USA federal govt, bailouts organized briefly by former President Bush and then soon led by President Obama; but under Obama's Secretary of the Treasury, Timothy Geithner, the Dem regime became operationally pro-active in those bailouts and in hoarding money allocated by the TARP law, to apply those funds to the account of future bailouts of the Wall Street banking, financial, and derivatives industry (to say nothing of the insurance banking hub AIG or the housing whorehouses that unplugged it all, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac).

37% of Democrat reject the regime's Obamanomics -- so says a News Hub videocast online, emanating from MarketWatch and Wall Street Journal. The telltale and rather astounding remark came in the midst of a quick report on ton+t's primary elections, particularly the win of Pennsylvania Democrat Joe Sestak over the incumbent Democrat Senator Arlen Specter (around 11:30 pm, May18,2k10). The Spector defeat was part of a trend in which "Obama and primary candidates kept each other at arms length," says Anne E. Kornblut in Washington Post (May19,2k10). Altho Sestak opposed Obama and the Dem establishment in Pennsylvania, his politics trend decidedly leftward and his early support came from the left. But there resides the glimmering ambiguity in Sestak's campaign, expressed thus:

Having run as an outsider, Sestak told cheering supporters his triumph marked a "win for the people over the establishment, over the status quo, even over Washington, D.C."
What is Nancy Pelosi thinking about this perhaps slip of tongue?

Yet, both elements of the Obama/PA-establishment wingism seem to have been rejected by many Democrat rank-and-file voters -- who suddenly are gaining the courage to vote for profLifers, antiBailouters, and spendingCutters among Democrats. I don't know how much of this foregoing alternative Dem profile fits Sestak, perhaps some small splinters of it. But then there are folks like Mark Critz of Johnstown, who just won both the Democratic primary for the November Congressional elections, and simultaneously Western Pennsylvania's special election to fill immediately the seat of deceased porkbarrel-king John Murtha in Pennsy's 12th Congressional district? PA-12, upon which Obama's staff had glued its attention, forsaking apparently all others (Spector, Lincoln). Obama made a campaign visit or filed a TV endorsement once for each of them, then "threw them under the bus" by ignoring them both in the final days before the vote, according to the pundits.
Critz defeated Republican businessman Tim Burns, who had run on a traditional pro-life, pro-gun, conservative platform and an explicit pledge to repeal President Obama's health care bill.
Interjection: I think I woud have voted for Critz, not Burns -- because I don't countenance "repeal" of the Healthcare Law, rather I advocate a radical reformation of it, so that the 32 million without insurance somehow get basic coverage. But maybe that puts me in an "insoluable dilemma." Nevertheless, to keep inclusive healthcare as an entitlement, other things in the budget will have to be severely cut, the bureaucracy slashed, and the debt paid down. Tax cuts are necessary to encourage the growth of small business and the hiring that comes therefrom, jobs creation. These are the complex consequences that come from not repealing in toto the new Healthcare Law and providing a safety net for the 32 million.
Although Critz was also pro-life and pro-gun, he kept his overall campaign message closer to home, promising to bring better highways and infrastructure, along with jobs, to the blue collar Western Pennsylvania district.
In sort, the Murtha Strategy -- minus some of the predecessor's buffoonery.

The campaign of Dem incumbent Blanche Lincoln in Arkansas, who opposed Obama on some important issues to prevent the growth of the Federal deficit (she has an accounting law background), her campaign has been remarkable for its persistence. All the unions and the leftwing moneyed-interests supporting the Obama-agenda Dem leadership was insufficient to knock her out of the race. She gets to replay her campaign in a runoff contest on June 8, because she did not get an absolute majority of votes -- which were distributed among the field of candidates, she being the incumbent. But, of wider significance perhaps, the unions coud not knock her off her game, even tho she opposed the infamous Card Check plot to de-democratize nationwide the unionization process (whereas Sestak supports the inherent breach of freedom of association in that nefarious plot); the endorsement of Card Check rather than a secret-ballot vote is Obama's payback to the secular unions for their support, where sometimes they have served as enforcers (yes, the Obama machine has enforcers: like the Black Panthers at the polls in Philadelphia, like the SEIU thugs trying to subvert tea-party assemblages in Idaho/Nevada, like the ACORN strong-arm squad). "Chicago-style politics." NYT "Specter defeat signals a wave against incumbents"
On the Democratic side, organized labor, which invested millions into the races in Pennsylvania and Arkansas, did not achieve a victory in either state. On the right, another show of Tea Party strength left the Republican party leadership scrambling to reconnect with the grassroots.
But, in Arkansas, Labor coudn't marshall the laborers to serve the self-interests of organized secularistic unionism (I'm an advocate of Christian Labor Association USA, but that's another news story).

On the Republican side, Rand Paul, the opthamologist son of Congressman Ron Paul (who ran for President on the Libertarian ticket in the last election and is himself a medical doctor), was warmly supported by the Tennessee tea-party movement. If we add Tennessee to the roster that already included the Massachusetts Senate race not so long ago, the New Jersey gubernatorial race, and the Virginia governorship race (all Republican wins) -- add them to the primary wins of a conservative Democrat in PA-12, and Blanche Lincoln's successfully withstanding, at least in the first round (the second vote will be held June 8), in defiance of the Obama onslawt in Arkansas: taken all together, we see a bipartisan trend against Obamanomics.

Tuesday, May 18, 2010

Enviro: EPA legislation USA: Construction industry blasts draft law by Kerry & Lieberman

The US Senate draft legislation sponsored by Sen. John Kerry (D) and Sen. Joseph Lieberman (I) "will make it more difficult to cut pollution and emissions by establishing new regulatory obstacles and robbing transportation funds," according to the intro of "Proposed Senate Climate Bill Undermines Effort to Build Greener" (May12,2k10) on the webs+t AGC of America [Associated General Contractors of America].

By Establishing New Regulatory Obstacles and Robbing Transportation Funds, Bill Will Make it More Difficult to Cut Pollution and Emissions from Built Environment, Contractors’ Group Says

“Improving the efficiency of our built environment – including commercial buildings, transportation infrastructure and water systems – presents one of the greatest opportunities to reduce power consumption and cut greenhouse gas emissions. After all, the nation’s building inventory accounts for 35 percent of the nation’s manmade greenhouse gas emissions and consumes 40 percent of the nation’s energy, while our aging and inefficient transportation network accounts for another 27 percent of energy consumption and 27 percent of greenhouse gas emissions.

“Despite this tremendous opportunity, Senators Kerry and Lieberman have proposed legislation that makes it harder to construct new, more energy efficient buildings and factories, improve aging infrastructure and eliminate the traffic congestion that wastes fuel and pollutes our environment. By allowing the EPA a virtually free hand to approve or deny construction and rehabilitation projects, the bill creates regulatory obstacles that will raise construction costs, delay projects and stifle demand. Worse, by taking funds raised through the proposal’s new transportation fees and committing all but a small percentage to unrelated spending, the legislation leaves our aging and inefficient roads, airways and transit systems vastly underfunded.

“The inevitable consequences of this bill are higher taxes, fewer jobs, and continued reliance on wasteful buildings, inefficient infrastructure and leaky water systems. Stifling economic growth and neglecting our primary environmental challenges is not an effective way to address climate change. Instead, Congress and the Administration should focus on the measures we identify in our “Building a Green Future” plan.

“Our green construction plan identifies steps public officials, developers, and the construction community must take to lessen the impact of our built environment. Measures in the plan include doubling existing energy efficiency tax credits for commercial buildings; passing the Building Star program that invests $6 billion in improving the efficiency of commercial buildings; and speeding reviews and boosting tax credits for green building projects.

“The plan also calls for public building projects to incorporate state-of-the-art environmental solutions and for the federal government to make pragmatic investments in research and technology. It makes it easier to launch new transit projects, shifts cargo traffic to energy efficient barges and accelerates federal approval for new transportation projects in congested corridors. And it calls for making the level of transportation investments virtually every expert agrees are needed to improve capacity and reduce traffic.

“What the Senators appear to have forgotten is you can’t simply regulate a greener future, you have to build it,” said Stephen E. Sandherr, chief executive officer of the Associated General Contractors of America.
A more general analysis of the nearly-thousand pages draft American Power Act is reported at the AGC s+t "Senators Unveil Climate Change Bill" (May13,2k10). Among several other ins+tful observations, they display as food for thawt regarding the context of the Kerry-Lieberman proposed law, this display of statistical relations:



Read both articles, dear readers, to guage what is transpiring at present in the woud be greening of America, from the construction industry's point of view.

-- EconoMix

Sunday, May 16, 2010

Enviroment: Gulf oil spill: Vacuuming Gulf's bottom successfully begins

National Public Radio (NPR) website is carrying a goodnews story after all the heart-rending twists and turns of the Gulf oil spill by a British Petroleum (BP) rig. The seabed is now being vacuumed successfully to remove a huge enviro-negative oil aggregation into "a 21-inch pipe nearly a mile below" the sea surface, remove that oil into a tanker.

The details are found in an article by NPR's staff and newswire sources, entitled "BP: Tube is sucking oil from Gulf well." This development by no means solves all elements of the problem of oil in Gulf waters, and does nothing to remedy the coastal disaster to beaches, marshlands, and wildlife -- nor to the loss of fisheries and other mostly small-business income-sources to people of the coastal areas, such as those that cater to tourists and vacationers.

-- EconoMix

Saturday, May 15, 2010

Political Media: Review: 3 editorials Washington Times under review

On my MondoTimes media list, I placed three Washington DC newspapers -- well, actually I use the list to quicklink to the websites of said newspapers. They are: Washington Examiner, Washington Post, and Washington Times.

Here's how MondoTimes currently rates Washington Times:

Content: Average (37 votes)
Political Bias: Conservative (37 votes)
Credibility: Low (35 votes)

My small sample of reading items is focussed on the newspaper's editorials on current concerns:

First I shoud mention "Bailing out foreign banks." It helped my clarify my stance toward that issue from an American viewpoint. Two countries were specified, as well as the International Monetary Fund, and the loss last week of the Christian Democratic control of the German parliament's upper house, due to Germany's banking industry which had to bailout the Greek govt, that irresposible socialist extremely h+-spending basketcase that has endangered Europe's economy overall. Of course, Merkel's govt has to take steps to protect the German banks themselves, while passing on costs to the German public to keep the national banking system liquid in face of all its stupid loans to the spendthrift over-staffed govt and tax-evading population of Greece.

Besides acquiring further info in regard to Greece, and the Obamian threat to bailout that country, I was stunned to learn from the editorial that the USA has already bailed out Canadian banks to the tune of 30 billion US dollars. How did the country where I live, and which I love, allow our banking system to get into such dire straits. We've got a Conservative Party govt in Canada, we've had a thriving banking sector where leading banks make huge profits, a sector of the economy; while paying me only low interest rates on my savings account, CIBC VISA soaks me with h+ interest charges on my credit cards and provides really stingy service thru the CIBC (Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce) credit card they control (VISA). A plague on them all: on the govt financial laws, the banks, and the credit-card extorters! and on the failure to control these h+ profit, consumer-soaking, financial institutions that somehow got USA billions. It smells of fraud and deep doodoo.

The second recent editorial at Washington Times is entitled "Obama's invisible Islam." Subtitle: "Democrats refuse to admit who the jihadist enemy is." It's now become obvious how inadequate the responsibles in the govt on this matter have beome and how they've cut corners in meeting their tasks so that matters have gotten considerably worse, -- to the extent that Attorney General, Eric H. Holder, may have to resign. I also throw in here that Holder and his boss have both been loose at the mouth in recent days, pronouncing potbvaliantly that the new Arizona law to curb illegal immigration-criminals is "unconstitutional" (because it is putatively racist according to the subtext). Unfortunately, in the last 48 hours Holder admitted to a Congressional committee that he hadn't read the Arizona legislation. Then why didn't he just keep his mouth shut until such a time as he had done his homework?

The third editorial in my set of samples is entitled "Obama's Spanish lesson. Spain's govt is headed by Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriquez Zapatero, to whom USA President Obama recently addressed accolades for "Spain's effort to strengthen its economy and build market confidence." Washington Times editorial: "For once, Mr. Obama is exactly r+t." Says WT

Mr. Zapatero is taking action to address the root cause of his nation's fiscal dilemma: excess spending. For years, Spain had doled money out of the public purse with such abandon that its deficit reached 11.2 percent of gross domestic product in 2009. Mr. Zapatero will now impose a 5-percent across-the-board reduction in government salaries. Ministers will take a more substantial, but mostly symbolic, 15-percent cut. More importantly, the government will freeze pension benefits and eliminate a number of non-essential benefits. A total of 13,000 unnecessary government employees will be cut loose.

I can't say that MondoTimes's classification of WT is correct, or not. I just don't read this Washington news purveyor all that much. So I was pleasantly surprised by the informative and well-written editorials in my sample today. If the stance involved, of which I generally approve in the three cases sampled, are characterized as "conservative," I woud have no problem with that congruence, tho shy about conceiving myself as "conservative" in the current political sense.

At the same time, I note that the at-least-sometimes-conservative editorial stances at WT occur under the financial support and sponsorship of the Unification Church (popularly known as "the Moonies"). As MondoTimes points out: "the Rev. Sun Myung Moon's family cut off most of the annual subsidy of about $35 million that has kept the Unification Church-backed paper afloat, company officials said." In the wr+t-ups at MondTimes, there are contrary reports on whether the paper has been / is presently up for sale.

The sponsorship of the Moonies, the huge annual subsidy, and the question of sale-or-not all enter into WT credibility rating as "low."

-- Politicarp

Thursday, May 13, 2010

Juridics USA: Supreme Court's sociology: Catholics 6, Jews 3, Protestants 0

Will Herberg enshrined the concept "Protestant Catholic Jew" in his 1955 book of that title (Protestant--Catholic--Jew: An Essay in American Religious Sociology).

Recalling to my mind his sociology of American religion, Christianity Today recently published an article by Elesha Coffman, "6 Catholics, 3 Jews" which resonates and updates the Herbergian observation of yesteryear. Coffman's piece is food for serious thawt, especially at this moment of USA President Obama's nomination of Elena Kagan to the Supreme Court of the day. Because the Senate has to confirm his nomination of her, she is, of course, being raked thru the coals by some sectors of the newsmedia, where her presumed sociological profile is being juxtaposed by many to illuminate her stands on specific issues in which in times past she interjected herself politically. This current feeding frenzy on Kagan biography is fueled, it is claimed, by the thin gruel of her "paper trail," her lack of a thick stack of juridical judgments and books. Apparently, media responsibles can't do their job critically, because there are so few texts to examine, texts from Kagan's juridical mind and hand.

But the lack of court decisions and books written by her has been challenged as a reason for claiming she is a virtual unknown. There are other sources, a huge stack of them has been supplied recently by the White House to the appropriate Senate investigators (Senate Judiciary Committee and its staff).

Again, I update with a fifth citation from the Volokh Conspiracy blog. I quote Jonathan Adler (May 15):
Elena Kagan’s Paper Trail
Posted: 15 May 2010 03:09 PM PDT
(Jonathan H. Adler)

Some commentators have suggested that Elena Kagan is a nominee without much of a paper trail. I think this is overstated on two counts. First, her academic writing is more substantive than some have given her credit for (see here and here). Second, there appears to be a substantial amount of material from her time in the Clinton Adminsitration for the Senate Judiciary Committee to review. Documents from her tenure at the Domestic Policy Council have already been released. As Byron York reports, this is only the tip of the iceberg. There are many more documents from her time in the White House Counsel’s office — documents Senators are certain to demand, citing the release of papers from John Roberts tenure in the Reagan Administration as precedent. These records will shed more light on Kagan’s approach to legal and policy questions, even if they don’t reveal how she is likely to approach (let alone vote upon) specific issues.
In the meantime, a picture of her in Wall Street Journal at bat on some baseball diamond suddenly is squeezed to yield up an ostensibly damning meaning, a semiotic significance that she be a Lesbian (she opposed "Don't ask, don't tell," the rubric of the American military established under President Clinton, in whose administration she served). Kagan whatever her sexual identity used her position to back this abolitonary demand upon military sexual morality and policy, as ferociously attacked by the Gay-agenda activists. She also opposed USA military recruitment on the Harvard University campus while she was Dean of the Law School there, while on other matters she has been respectful and supportive of the American military. The precise views mentioned were foolish and injudicious stances, in my view.


I saw a pix from WSJ on TV of Elena Kagan up to bat, but coudn't get to it to grab; so I had to settle for this one of her at some basebal diamond for a pickup game in Chicago when she was a prof there. I'm now unsure of the source of this one. Sorry!


But that some of her inquistors and naysayers extrapolate to a sociological designation of "Lesbian" is beyond belief and common decency. To hell with that vile nonsense. Indeed, were she a Lesbian, shoud she become a SCOTUS Judge, she coud participate in the bench's dialogue with contestants were the Court to hear a case, for instance, on so-called "gay marriage." At the same time, she coud recuse herself from the actual SCOTUS vote deciding the case, because of a self-acknowledged bias aforehand and perhaps a personal stake in the actual decision. Were her fellow justices curious, she coud explain herself confidentially to them. Her choice.

The issue of her potentially deciding a "gay marriage" case has been raised by some learnèd honchos who I presume to be afflicted with extreme r+twing blinkers on this matter. Full disclosure: I'm homo and celibate and principially opposed to deflationary views of marriage, so that other creationally-differentiated kinds of intimate unions are not treated as unique and distinct from marriage. And unique from one another (an erroneous conflation that happens around the rubric and pseudoconcept of "same-sex marriage," a self-contradictory neologism to be sure). But, what a confusion is spread by Elena Kagan and her bipolarized opponents alike in their reductionist either/or binomial logic, held in common.

Having said all that, on the Internet I've found some posts -- "I Should Note for the Record" (May12,2k10) and "Bisexual Erasure" (also May 12) by lawyer Eugene Volokh and another by Orin Kerr ("Why Catholics and Jews?" May 14) and, updating this blog-entry, yet another by David Bernstein, "Why Jews and Catholics on the Supreme Court?" (May 14) -- all four posted on that most lawyerly blog, The Volokh Conspiracy -- again, with these blog-entries well in mind, the sexual-identity sociological factor and the religious-sociological factor are both addressed principially and with r+t good humour by the lawyers / bloggers mentioned. Thank God for this particular blog Conspiracy!

Even so seasoned, nevertheless, philosophy of law itself cannot solve the problems of political and juridical practice by any direct route. There woud have to be a Dooyeweerd-aware Justice on the Supreme Court for me to make an argument today that at least my hypothetical SCOTUS justice coud understand. Neither Catholics nor Jews -- in the present lack of inter-religious depth-dialogue in law, its philosophy, and its American sociology -- shoud be expected to understand an essentially Protestant approach of Dooyeweerd's kind where there is today in America no cultural context for such an understanding.

In all these considerations, pertaining to the case at hand, the amusing irony is that nominee Elena Kagan, contrary to her own previous politics and activist stance (but she was not an activist judge!), regarding her sexual orientation, whatever that may be, shoud be governed by the rubric she earlier rejected as a Harvard law-school dean: Don't ask, don't tell. It's none of our business as to whether or not she's a Lesbian, a Bisexual (as Volokh discusses ... there are already 123 comments regarding his post), or a 100% Hetero.

What's more, Protstants in the USA and Canada have a unique stance to contribute eventually some day in regard to the philosophy of law. That future contribution may be found in the importation of translated scholarly work by Herman Dooyeweerd (1894-1977), a professor of jurisprudence at the Free University of Amsterdam (VU Amsterdam) in the immediately preceding generation. His general philosophy is expressed in the 3-volume New Critique of Theoretical Thought, long available in English and now undergoing textual revision at the Dooyeweerd Centre, Redeemer University College, Ancaster, Ontario, Canada. However, his magnun opus in philosophy of law as such, Encyclopedia of the Science of Law, is only slowly being realized in translation, only one of its several volumes having already been published and a second volume in translation currently. Graduate law faculties at Protestant institutions of h+er learning, however, are barely aware of the existence and development of the publication of this vitally important work for the philosophy of law. The existing and forthcoming volumes in English of these works shoud be de rigeur at said institutions (to further such a long-term cultural diffusion, perhaps we shoud compile a list of the Protestant-identified law schools in the USA, altho even there the preconceived notions and biases of the guilds and faculties will be strong in resistance to Dooyeweerd's innovative and demanding conceptualizations).

Yet, for the present, the term "Protestant" has no intrinsic meaning for jurisprudential theoretics in America (to say nothing of any future influence on functioning justices, judges, lawyers, and politics -- except thru the lens of some of us followers of Dooyeweerd's legal-thawt leadership, those of us who have critical affinities for American originist and constitutionalist historical foundations with their massive Protestant Christian element.

Also important from the Dutch are the works of Dooyeweerd's student and succesor at the VU law faculty, Prof Dr H J van Eikema Hommes. Some of the works of Hommes are translated, like his 1979 chapter in Major Trends in the History of Legal Philosophy (Chapter 15). Another of Dooyeweerd's graduate students, Johan Mekkes wrote his "voluminous" 1940 doctoral dissertation on "the development of the humanistic theories of the law-state," theories toward which Dooyeweerd took a somewhat antithetical stance. This work of Mekkes needs to be translated and published and made readily available in the USA (and other English-speaking countries). A later student of this element of the VU law-faculty heritage is R D Henderson (now teach at Dordt College, Iowa), Illuminating Law: The Construction of Herman Dooyeweerd’s Philosophy (Free University: Amsterdam; 1994). Another is David Caudill, Christian Legal Theory: The Example of Dooyeweerd's Critique of Romanist Individualism and Germanic Communitarianism in Property Law , 5 Georgetown Journal of Law & Public Policy 531-560.

The biblios of American law-philosophers Henderson and Caudill I have gleaned from Steve Bishop's bibliography (2007) on reformational wiki.

Two law philosophers born in South Africa and now teaching in the USA shoud also be mentioned here: John Witte, and Johan van der Vyver (both at Emory Law School at some time).

Alan Cameron of New Zealand also belongs to this list; he is recently retired from his longtime post at Victory University of Wellington where he tawt the law of accountancy and contributed internationally to Dooyeweerd studies in law, a principal in translating the Encylopedia.

The UK scholar of Dooyeweerd studies, Jonathan Chaplin, will have his long-awaited book on Dooyeweerd's thawt published by Notre Dame University Pres in early 2011. Dr Chaplin is director of the Kirby Lang Centre for Christian Ethics, Tyndale House, Cambridge, England. He is an expert on the comparison of Dooyeweerd's concept of sphere sovereignty with the Catholic magisterial concept of subsidiarty; Chaplin aims toward a rapprochement, even synthesis perhaps. This is an effort for depth-dialogue between Catholics and Protestants relevant to the philosophy of law.

Returning to the main topic of this blog-entry, may I note at length a recent text from Washington Post via First Amendment Center website, "No Religious Test Means No Religious Test," a blatant begging of the question at hand, a matter which actually turns on diversity and pluralism in the composition of the court (you know, like race, gender, and other considerata of sociological enrichment of the Supreme Court's nomination process). The article was written by Charles C. Haynes who is the Director of the Religious Freedom Education Project.
Q: If Elena Kagan is confirmed to replace retiring Justice John Paul Stevens, the Supreme Court would for the first time in its history be without a justice belonging to America's largest religious affiliations — the Protestant traditions. If Kagan is confirmed, six of the justices will be Roman Catholic and three will be Jewish. Should the Supreme Court be more representative of America's religious traditions? Does religion matter in the mix of experience and expertise that a president seeks in a Supreme Court nominee?

The current makeup of the Supreme Court — and the nomination of Elena Kagan to replace Justice Stevens — may well signal that religious affiliation is no longer a consideration in the process of selecting justices for the high court. If that is true, it would be cause for civic celebration. We may finally be living up to what we say we believe as a nation.

After all, Article VI of the U.S. Constitution requires that "no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States." That means it is unconstitutional for the president or Congress to make religious affiliation a factor in either the nomination or confirmation of Supreme Court justices.

But in the real-world history of American politics, religious affiliation has often mattered. It is no accident that 91 of the 112 nominees to the Court have been Protestants. And students of Court history are aware of past behind-the-scenes maneuvers to fill a "Catholic seat" or to keep a "Jewish seat."

The fact that all of the seats on the Supreme Court may soon be filled by Roman Catholics and Jews is a fitting, if somewhat ironic, end to the religious tokenism of the past.

Given the ugly strains of anti-Catholic nativism and anti-Semitism in American history — strains that persist to the present day — it is heartening that the current religious affiliation of justices stirs so little comment and almost no controversy. As far as I can tell, the fact that Kagan is Jewish has been greeted with a collective shrug by most of the public.

Of course, we still have some distance to go. Jews and Catholics may have arrived at the Court, but Muslims, atheists and others are unlikely to be nominated anytime soon. In judicial nominations as in electoral politics, religious tests often still apply.

As for the departure of the last Protestant on the Court, I think it is fair to say that most evangelical Protestants will be happy to see him go just as many liberal Protestants will mourn his loss. What matters in a Supreme Court nominee for many religious people on the Right and Left is not religious affiliation but core principles and judicial philosophy, especially as applied to such issues as abortion, same-sex marriage and the separation of church and state.

Future Supreme Court nominees will no doubt include Protestants as well as some of the many other faith traditions in what is now the most religiously diverse country on earth. But I believe it would be the mark of a mature and healthy democracy if no one really noticed.

-- Charles C. Haynes is director of the Religious Freedom Education Project at the Newseum, 555 Pennsylvania Ave., N.W., Washington, D.C. 20001. Web: firstamendmentcenter.org. E-mail: chaynes@freedomforum.org.
There is an absurdist streak in this insouciance, amounting to literal carelessness. It is impossible that no one really noticed, because it is the task of sociology to notice such difference, diversity, and any particularist evaluations thereof. The logical expansion of Haynes' presumptuous idea here is that diversity does not include religious-cultural difference in the religious and cultural mosaic of America. Indeed, some Catholics appear as different in legal philosophy due to the prioritization in Catholicism of the "consistent ethic of life," a perspective that is tawt at law schools that self-identify as Catholic, also at many of those that self-identify as Evangelical and/or Pentecostal -- that is, at law schools that self-identify as Protestant.

This further relates to the empirical sociological fact that the law school of origin of most SCOTUS nominees does figure into both the nomination and confirmation processes of candidates put forward for elevation to the Supreme Court bench. Perhaps only one graduate of Harvard Law School shoud be elevated to that bench, at a time. And nominees from a wide diversity of law schools shoud be encouraged. If a nominee is chosen from business, unions, or other professions but where there is a paper trail giving evidence of respected law-thinking by a non-lawyer, non law-academic, non-judge, thinking other than that of lawyers and judges, still the rule of thumb shoud be only one at a time from any given law school (the USA has hundreds of them) or from any particular state (the USA has 50 states). Haynes seems rather scatterbrained, in his nostrum that he can beg the primary question posed by a religion-saturated history and culture such as that of the USA. He should go back and read Herberg, as a starter in his re-education. Then maybe he should read Dooyeweerd's Encylopedia of the Science of Law.

-- Lawt

Further Sources:
'Should' and 'supposed to' when it comes to Supremes

UK Politics: Coalition Govt: 1st cabinet meeting of new regime

An important news report by Sarah Lyall appears in New York Times today, under the title "New Hybrid British Cabinet Holds First Meeting" (all those damn caps in a title over a news piece in a print newspaper, ugh!)

Since NYT gives no actual list of the members of the new Cabinet, I turned to the Murdoch-owned newspaper Telegraph where, again no straitforward list, but again disappointingly a text that gives neither a total of the cab's membership nor an indication that those mentioned in the article's text are the sum total thereof ("David Cameron begins first coalition Cabinet since 1945" by Alastair Jamieson and Ben Leach). So, fiting a feeling of this further article's incompletenes, I quote a patch of text from said daily press:

The Prime Minister sat next to William Hague, the new Foreign Secretary, and opposite George Osborne, the Chancellor, and Nick Clegg, the Deputy Prime Minister.

Vince Cable, the Lib Dem Business Secretary, arrived with his Tory [Business] deputy David Willetts and Liam Fox, the new Defence Secretary, pausing briefly at the door of No 10 before going inside.

Ken Clarke, the new Justice Secretary and one of the few to have any previous ministerial experience, arrived with Mr Hague.

Later, Mr Cameron is expected to fill out the middle-ranking and junior roles in the Conservative-Lib Dem administration as well as adding detail to their joint policy proposals.

The new Cabinet features five Liberal Democrats: Mr Clegg and Mr Cable; Chris Huhne the Energy Secretary;David Laws the Chief Treasury Secretary and Danny Alexander, the Scotland Secretary.

Iain Duncan Smith, the former Tory leader, has also been awarded the job of Work and Pensions Secretary in what was being seen as a sop to the right of the party amid concerns about the alliance with the Lib Dems.

The appointments meant some senior Tories were not given full Cabinet positions, including Chris Grayling, Dominic Grieve and Theresa Villiers.

An immediate priority task of the new govt will be to achieve financial stability, both of the govt and of the United Kingdom's economy as a whole. The latter task feeds directly into another: how to manage financially the impact of Europe's nitemare socialist economic breakdown (Greece †, yesterday Spain's belated austerity program, today Portugal's). German banks and the International Monetary Fund (of which UK is a stalwart member and underwriter) are expected to have to pony-up the money for all the spending that has brawt ruin or near-ruin to these countries and others in the European Union. Britain, Canada, and the USA woud each be wise to insulate themselves as much as possible from continental socialist-economic contagion, as the current term pinpoints the matter.

A second priority comes to mind: national security. Already PM David Cameron had held his first meeting of the committee with operational management of security matters. So, he's off to a good start apparentlty on that.

-- Politicarp

Tuesday, May 11, 2010

Politics UK: Coalition govt: Conservs & LibDemocrats form new regime



UK's new Prime Minister makes first address at 10 Downing Street, London, recorded by Russia Today. Rumour has it that the LibDems, third-place party in the vote, will get 6 seats in the Cabinet. Nick Clegg is the LibDem leader. The outgoing Labour Party had been in power for 13 years under former Prime Ministers Tony Blair and Gordon Brown.

I dug up a brief political-orientation piece, by Rudi Hayward, written back in Sept29,2007. "What are elections for?" Rudi makes a probing analysis, appropriate to the United Kingdom's voting procedures for its parliament, a vote that comes after an election is called by the sitting govt (not on a system of fixed dates and terms, as in the USA). In this respect, Canada follows the UK system. Rudi succinctly illuminates how the timing of a new election feedsback into the govt's calculations of its re-electability. Very helpful for those of our readers who are unfamiliar with the UK's and Canada's type of parliamentary voting and its timing.

UPDATE (May18,2k10): I found this tidbit on the Jubilee Centre UK website, where my friend Jeremy has posted the following comment >

Apart from those in Witney or Sheffield, none of us voted for either; and there were many in those constituencies who cast their votes for other candidates. This is not the basis on which we are to obey our government, even if it were an autocracy, as in the Roman Empire when the early Christians were told to pray for their government. You are right, we must pray for our constituency MPs and our new Governement. However, this does not stop us from working for a fairer and better representative electoral system, regardless of whether or not we support this Government, which, by the way, has engaged in principled discussion and co-operation between the parties -- an excellent start to a new politics. -- Jeremy Ive 13 May 2010
Dr Ive is a reformational Anglican, priest of the Anglican Church, and a theological scholar writing on Trinitarian foundations of faith and theology.

-- Politicarp (back from Sabbatical)