PoliticsUSA: Oil firm bows to govt: Obama's victory in tactical takeover of oil industry, to futher Prez's radical green agenda

Brilliant cartoon deserves own semiotic-illustrative analysis. See:  refWrite Backpage: Semiotics

Carl-Henric Svanger,
BP's board of directors, chair

Dick Morris is the dean of intellectual conservative strategic analysts, those analysts who engage in professional consultancy in the two-party American political system -- including its third party challenges (think Perot, think Nader, think Republican Ron Paul's candidacy for Prez under the Libertarian Party, etc.) -- mostly on the USA Federal level. But it's the more mainstream challenges that drive the Dean, who operates out of respect for indepth analysis of America's Federal legislative chambers, the two chambers of Congress (which implies the Joint Committees and Conferences and other inter-relationships of the two houses, constitutional bicameralism) -- Morris and co-author McGann mine the info deep enuff to gather the particulars regarding candidates and incumbent members of the House of Representatives and of the Senate, persons running in an oncoming election -- like the every-2-years election of the entire 435 woud-be officeholders of the House of Representatives, and only a third or so of the 100 Senators. Morris has chosen a unique authorial niche of specialized expertise thru which to offer the Morris team's unique service in line with his conservative principles, a political-journalism-and-advocacy niche that had earlier preoccupied another keen observer of the legislative branch and its election, especially midterm elections so important for the sitting president, a niche favoured also in his day by the late Robert Novak. The contrast between the two conservative Republicans is fascinating.

Comparing between countries, I imagine this political-analytic process may be much like the special analyses of candidates and incumbents running for the House of Commons and a few members of the Senate in Canada (most of the Senate had been appointed, but the present Prime Minister had eschewed appointing newbies to the Canadsian Senate, wanting them to be elected by the provinces instead) -- thus, USA and Canada in further comparison to their parent political system, the United Kingdom of Great Britain (England, Scotland, Wales) and Northern Ireland (Ulster with its capital, Belfast, and its unicameral parliament at Stormont) -- UK being the Anglo-Saxon mother country of our once-colonial polities in both the USA and Canada.  In the USA, Morris concentrates on understanding the memberships, constituencies, and funding of both of these major parties' candidates and incumbents at election time. Not just the executive funtion of the Presidency, but the legislative function of the Congress in voting in new law, that latter consideration is crucial to the work of the authors.

Morris and his wife, Eileen McGann, have a new article out entitled Dems turn on Obama. I recommend it to you, for immediate reading and for your personal strategic thinking in regard to the upcoming November elections 2010 USA.

Rookmaker Club files
<br /> Reformational political philosophy has rarely taken up the questions of military strategic concerns, or party-political strategics either. <br /> <br /> The Rookmaker Club files edited by Politicarp allow the community of the Protestant philosophy initiated by Dooyeweerd, Vollenhoven, Mekkes, Rookmaker, and Stafleu (all of whom underwent the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands, two of whom were Dutch military -- Mekkes and Rookmaker -- they ending up in prison camps for the War's duration), allows the present-day Protestant Christian philosophical community in the USA to address one another as Americans not in denial about terrorism, the present wars, and future mass conflict. -- Politicarp<br />

I'll look in the leftwing media for a thawtful companion citation I can recommend along with the Morris/McGann "Dems turn on Obama."  Read more ...

Economics: Enviro USA: American businesses stampede to greener standards

MSNBC carries a report by Senior Writer Allison Linn, "Corporations find business case for going green -- Global giants, from Wal-Mart to HP, see cost savings, other benefits" (Apr18,2k7).

Companies ranging from retailing titan Wal-Mart to investment firm Goldman Sachs are jumping on the green bandwagon and pledging to make tangible changes that go beyond the public relations-oriented “greenwashing” of years past.

In another major shift, some big companies are even asking that they be regulated on greenhouse gas emissions, arguing that it is the only way for them to plan for how to deal with the rising threat of global warming. A coalition of businesses and environmental groups earlier this year formed a partnership called the U.S. Climate Action Partnership aimed at doing just that.

Are corporations experiencing a sudden rash of social consciousness? Not exactly. Instead, companies are increasingly realizing that going green could be a new way for companies to save — or even make — more green, as in money.

“The strategies that are being ... implemented by some of the leading-edge companies are done to maximize profits and to mitigate risk,” said Fred Wellington, senior financial analyst for the environmental group World Resources Institute.

Still, the big surprise isn’t so much that companies are getting involved in environmental issues, but what companies are doing it. People expect companies like Whole Foods, Patagonia and REI to have environmental initiatives; not only is it key to their public relations efforts, it also makes good business sense for them to preserve resources.

But DuPont? BP? Wal-Mart? These are companies that still raise the hackles of environmentalists for some of their practices, yet are also taking serious steps toward promoting things like solar power and reducing greenhouse gas emissions. What exactly do they have to gain?

The answer, as always, resides in the bottom line.

Do click-up Ms Linn's long article to read in its entirety. With the online article comes a message board on which to "Speak Out" on the surround of issues -- Going green: social consciousness or profits? (note how "consciousness" has replaced "conscience"--so the issue is not the fostering of a wide ethos of compassion as in Christianity and Buddhism; here what is functioning is not an ethos of compassion but business strategy based distinctly in corporate purposes. The frontier of litigation here will turn on whether a business corporation can go expensively green to the (temporary) lessened-profitability to shareholders who bawt stocks on the market in order to maximize their own individuals profits based on stock ownership. It will be quite interesting to she what Prof Bainbridge, authority on corporate governance, will have to say on these interesting matters.

Hat Tip: ChristianBusinessDaily.com (Apr19,2k7).