EnviroUSA/Global: Climate Change: Temperature records with 2% sample say Yes -- iffy or spiffy?

Volokh Conspiracy law-prof blog (Apr4,2k11)

refWrite comment:  The esteemed law scholar, Jonathan Adler, makes a neutral blog-entry on findings by scientists funded by a both/and set that includes both Koch Foundation and a Bill Gates Fund, with many others from both r+t and left, and inbetween (I presume, but I'd like to see the actual list at some point in time).  Purpose of the study is to determine the reliability of previous analyses of earth-surface temperatures as reported in 1.6 billion diverse measurements.  I consider this a most important endeavour, altho at present the sample studied is only 2% of the total known measurements.

Let's face it, science is an ideologically and pisteutically "contaminated" endeavour as there are no facts except what human beings make (the word "fact" itself derives etymologically from verbs in other languages for "to make" ("to manufacture" so to speak).  The term "data," the plural for the Latin "datum" only seems to be different.  They both derive their latterday day meanings from word-origins and concepts dependent on the Greek word "poiesis," from which our word "poem" is rather directly born.  All of this wordplay only goes to underscore the fact (gotcha) that the laity of our scientistic culture simply have to choose which source on many issues -- in this case scientific issues relating to the environment (in Portugese the word very ruffly seems equivalent to our "ambience" which in English steers the intended meaning a little to the r+t or left, Koch or Gates for instance)...each of us laity simply has to choose who of the authoritative voices on this subject we trust).  The idea that science has one voice, has in each discipline an immutable one true voice, and is not subject to paradigm shifts over time -- this has itself been overthrown philosophically by Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, and the debate of the books's successors.  Postmodernism has picked up on this pisteutic anomaly. But Kuhn, Jerome Ravetz, Paul Feyerabend, Imre Lakatos, Peter L Berger, Michael Polanyi and all-importantly for refWrite, Herman Dooyeweerd, the Christian philosopher who anticipated all these developments in his New Critique of Theoretical Thought (English expanded version 1953-57).

Read more ... click the time-stamp below...

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

Elena Kagan, nominee to SCOTUS

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

Economics: Newspapers: The great newspapers have been family-owned, even with outside shareholders, and selling them is dicey for those families

CSM analyzes the hybrid nature of the family-owned great newspapers and why shareholding, owning, buying and selling them is problematic. Ron Scherer can't quite put his finger on it, but he knows he's onto something about the quasi-biz of the (family-owned) newspaper business. Scherer's mind seems to be a theory-free zone, but had he the wherewithal to understand "nature" in this case in terms of philosopher Herman Dooyeweerd's concept of internal structural principles, as these differ from sphere to sphere of society, Mr Scherer may have been able to understand the hybrization of the family and civic -asset enterprise more clearly. Nevertheless to his credit in this day and age, reporter Scherer does have the necessary raw idea well in hand. He explains how the family-side of the hybrid affects the kinds of stocks investors may hold in the New York Times, the kinds being divided between those owned by family members and those bawt and sold on the market more generally. The latter are purchased with full knowledge4 that those shareholders do not have voting r+ts on all issues leading personnel and editorial policy of the newspaper.

One other great newspaper, Chicago-Tribune and its affiliates thru a holding company, which owns the entire ensemble and is a publically-listed enterprise on the stock market, Tribune Company, constitutes the premier case which casts further lite dramatically on America's most influential daily-print news media. The Tribuene chain is the 34d-largest of the newspaper-based empires in the USA. Founded by Colonel Robert R. McCormick, the paper anchored the expansion of the holding company to ownership of several prestigious dailies--Los Angeles Times, Hartford Courant, and Baltimore Sun among them. It also owned 26 radio and television stations, and a baseball team, the Chicago Cubs.

Apr2,2k7: Associated Press via Pantagraph.com, by Ashley M. Heher>, "Tribune accepts $8.2B buyout; company to sell Chicago Cubs."

Economy > USA > Newspapers

Apr3,2k7: Washington Post, by Frank Ahrens, "Chicago Magnate To Control Tribune--Media Firm to Go Private in $13 Billion Deal" (Apr3,2k7)


Apr23,2k: Reuters via Bnet, "Chicago Tribune Aims to Cut 100 Jobs."

Apr24,2k7: Associated Press via Kevin post, Benton Foundation, "Regulators OK 1st step of Tribune buyout."

Apr30.,2k7: Los Angeles Times, by Julie Johnsson and Michael Oneal, "Some Tribune leaders forgo bonuses linked to buyout
However, experts point to other rich incentives for executives to stay."

May9,2k7: Associated Press via Houston Chronicle, "Ahead of the Bell: Tribune Meeting."

---------

In other developments pertaining to Chicago newspapers, Chicago Sun-Times has regained several millions of dollars purloined by a confessed thief, the paper's former publisher.

unsigned Sun-Times story, "Sun-Times cuts its loss" (May9,2k7)

The parent company of the Chicago Sun-Times narrowed its first-quarter loss, thanks to a settlement with former publisher David Radler that recovered $27.6 million in revenue.

Sun-Times Media Group Inc. posted a net loss of $4.8 million, or 6 cents a share, compared with a loss of $7.8 million, or 9 cents a share, in the same period a year ago.

The newspaper chain also reduced its operating loss to $4.8 million from $26.6 million, reflecting Radler's repayment of money that should have been recorded by the Sun-Times in previous years but which he diverted to his own use. Radler is testifying this week for the prosecution in a criminal trial charging his former boss, Conrad Black, and three others with helping to steal about $84 million from the Sun-Times.

First-quarter operating revenue fell 11 percent to $91.3 million, mirroring an 11 percent drop in advertising revenue at the Sun-Times and 100 community newspapers. However, online advertising rose by $1.1 million.

Circulation revenue fell 7 percent to $19.6 million.

"The newspaper environment clearly remains difficult," said CEO Cyrus F. Freidheim Jr. "Nevertheless, we continue to believe in the vitality of the Sun-Times franchise and its employees. Initial response from readers and advertisers to the design and content changes introduced last month at the Chicago Sun-Times has been positive."

One thing for sure, Chicago is in a quite volatile situation as far as print-daily mass communications are concerned. It appears that it's easy for newspapers to lose money all over the place, either to a crook or to the vagaries of holding companies that have lost contact with the civic-asset aspect of publishing which comes to the fore in America's greatest newspapers owned by doting families.

Economics: Buyout: Auto-parts company Lear Corp bawt by Icahn for some 5.3 billion (WSJ) but another source says 2.8 billion (NYT)

A new blog, Securities Law Prof Blog carries a brief unsigned item Lear Shareholders Disappointed with Icahn Bid. Wall Street Journal firt quoted $2.8B, while New York Times cut the figure down to $2,8B. It turns out that an Icahn corporation is assuming a huge debt responsiblity in addition to the lower figure just mentioned.

In any case, some shareholders were furious that the Lear board sold out their investments (saying that $36 a share should have been $60 a share), but it was unclear for what reason that downplay would occur by the Lear board--except possibly the salient fact that there were no other offers. No interest. And why that? Auto-parts companies are losing orders, especially from the Big Three homegrown auto companies, with Daimler-Chrysler the latest to announce huge cuts in its workfroce.

Will someone give Carl Icahn some competition for his bid to acquire Lear, the auto parts supplier? Some major shareholders hope so and express disappointment with the board for agreeing to Icahn's $36 bid. Wall Street, however, is doubtful anyone else will be interested. See WSJ, "Lear Holders Call for New Bids" and NYT, "Lear Agrees to Buyout Offer of $2.8 Billion From Icahn ."

All this billionairism at the h+est American level of coprorate economics points to a whole series of major adjustments that will ripple out fron the crisis in the auto industry, first as it spreads to the auto-parts industry and then to other industries. Layoffs will put more thousands of industrial workers on the streets and at the welfare offices. Families will suffer.

USA > Economy & Clean Air,

But these trends could be avoided by a shift to a command-economy by govt in close consultation and scheduling of change in conjunction with a tripartite forum of govt, business, and labour in the affected industries--whereby the homegrowns are forced to shift over to electyrically-rechargeable plugin hybrids and thus reduce pollution by shifting to a new kind of car (trucks, plaines, skidoos, lawnmowers, etc) that like the new fuelcell in General Motors' concept car the Chevrolet Volt could keep workers employed in non-polluting manufacture, deliverty to distributors, salespeople, etc. This would mean that Prez Bush's call for alternative fuels and teaching-point "America is addicted to oil," could be given teeth. Does this violate some sancrosant absolute principle of "the limits of government"? I think not, despite a text of Dutch Christian philosopher Herman Dooyeweerd that on first read seems in one 1946 essay, according to Gregory Baus on Thinknet seems to imply so.

Dooyeweerd writes in his 1946 essay The relation of the individual and community from a legal philosophical perspective: "...the State is characterized as a public legal community of government and subjects... the State cannot assume an absolute sovereignty over the other societal spheres that differ in principle from the State. Every form of legal power, that of the State also, is structurally delimited by the inner nature of the sphere of life within which it is exercised... As soon as one ascribes an absolute sovereignty to the State, one has abandoned the boundaries of law and collapses into State absolutism, based upon a deification of the State. Then also the idea of the "public interest" [or, common good] degenerates into a lever for an unhampered Sate absolutism... The ius publicum, constitutive of the internal law of the State as a public legal institution does not permit service to group interests external to the (public) jural qualifying function of the State. Therefore, the nature of the State is irreconcilable with the allocation of privileges to specific persons or groups [eg, economically impoverished persons--is this bracketed material Dooyeweerd or Baus's reading / interpretation / distoration ? of the phllosophere] ... It is only the State, on the basis of its public legal power, that can... guarantee against an overexertion of the public legal power itself, as long as the public office bearers keep alive an awareness of the inner limits of their competence. The State, in view of the inner nature of the ius publicum, does not have the competence to bind the exercise of civil private rights to a specific social-economic destination, simply because the ius publicum intrinsically lacks any specific economic qualification... [There is an] undermining influence that the idea of "social rights," in its overextension, exerts on civil private law."

But our problem is not covered here: how far can the state go in calling to account companies who destroy the Clean Air that the entire soceital membership needs to breathe properly? Does the power of the state's sword extend to correcting the excesses of runaway corporations, while the state makes these corprorations continue (altered) production, maintain employment of workers, and provide new products (healthier cars), while making illegal gradually the use of the older polluting product which is damaging the ablity to breathe of many people in the society and exaggerating the health and medical expenses to boot.

Economics: USA: Prez Bush addresses income gap, free trade (Doha round),

Washington Times report Stephen Dinan, "Bush assails 'income inequality'" (Feb1,2k7)

"President Bush yesterday said there is a growing "income inequality" gap between rich and poor Americans, and told companies they should rethink the giant compensation packages they offer top executives.

While the Prez's stance on this particular issue is important, its greater importance is its symbolism, not because symbols are gestures only, but because they stand as metaphors for a whole range of related issues, here in regard to the economy world and American. Why do I say "symbolism"? Because CEO compensation packages in themselves do require reform, they symbolize a much wider range of desperately required business reforms that relate to an overall incomes policy that should be established in a tripartite way: govt, biz, labour. In Canada, the recent reversal of the position of Conservative minosrity govt, in which it rejected its own previous stance on what up here is called "Income Trusts," a form of assuring no immediate taxes for investors in corporations setting up a tax-shelter system. It was put out as a way of helping seniors invest, but corporations flocked to cut costs to investors so attracted to their stocks, that the annual tax revenues were compromised drastically. It was instituted by the previous Liberal regimes. Previously backed by the Conservs now come to power (minority govt), the consequences required the Conservs themselves to reverse their stance. But in the immedisate context, the seniors who had invested in this Income Trusts arrangement feel stung. Nevertheless the Conservs under Prime Minister Stephen Harper have proved themselves to be courageous in making an adjustment by way of new legistlation, ending the boondoggle that had also proved h+ly advantageous to greedy corporations and nonsenior greedy investors. An excessive captialist twist needed to be reformed, but in the process seniors in the Incomes-Trust benefits lost a benefit. There's a ver long list of income-gap producing specifics, besides CEO compensation packages which need to be reformed in the USA. Some of this reformed needs to be achieved by American business itself, as companies consult and think together of what their practices are doing to enlarge the gap. Companies need to change practices; govt needs to make some new gap-reducing laws; both are necessary.

A word about metaphor: the symbolic value of making an issue of CEO compensation packages is a specific kind of metaphor. In the general theory of metaphor, metanomies include a form of metanomy where a subkind (here, CEO comp pkgs) stands for (displaces) all the subkinds of a given kind (here, Income Trusts plus many others in both mentioned countries). Thus, CEO compensation packages stand for a long list of specific business practices that enlarge the income gap within the population (all the income-receiving members of the society, where as in reformational philosophy a given national society -- with its specific national economy [eg, USA, Canada, UK, Kenya, Saudia Arabia, South Korea, etc] can be understood as founded in the general association of the entirety of its population). In short, each society with its internal economy is founded upon the ontological law-mode of its most general society-wide association, all its members ... thus, society is founded in the sociaic mode, in a revised understanding of that mode as introduced in Herman Dooyeweerd's and D H Th Vollenhoven's general cosmonomic theoretics.

The markedly populist message, a divergence from the past, in which Mr. Bush has accused critics of practicing class warfare, was all the more noteworthy given his venue -- a speech at Federal Hall in New York, in the middle of Wall Street, the capital of capitalism.

Bush here shows an understanding of his mentor Abraham Kuyper's speech on Christianity favouring the poor and opposing class-warfare. Bush makes resonates Kuyper in the USA's major stock and corporate center, where he also visited the New York Stock Exchange. Neither Bush or Kuyper oppose capitalism as such; indeed, Bush is an advocate of capitalist activity, with some societally-helpful constraints on corporaitons especially to favour the poor. But this theme has been slow to emerge in his public articulation of his vision because of the enemies of his ideas, not least of all in and supporting financiallly his political party, who hate any constraint on the pit bull, the capitalist corporation and its profiteering elements. But in New York's financial district, just as in his previous rebuke to the greed of the oil industry and its pollution which he made around what he termed "America's addiction to oil," now Bush has made his critique of runaway society-expolitive versions of capitalism, while also wanting to further thru reform American capitalist practice itself.

But the president called for conservative market-based answers, including demanding that Congress renew trade-promotion authority, which allows him to negotiate trade agreements then present them to Congress in a take-it-or-leave-it fashion.

Mr. Bush said he expects a bruising debate before his current trade-promotion authority expires July 1.

"Bashing trade can make for good sound bites on the evening news," Mr. Bush said. "But walling off America from world trade would be a disaster for our economy. Congress needs to reject protectionism."

Yes, but. America's most important problem perhaps of agreements and treaties regarding world trade may well turn on the upcoming effort ont he world level to conclude the the long-lagging Doha Round which would restrain subsidies by Western countries of their agricultural industries. These obstruct competition by underdeveloped countries where agricultural production occurs without subsidy, and the resulting trade with rich countries. However, such a policy revision could hurt the USA ability to have food sources of its own on hand, should the world geostrategic sitution lead a block of agriproducing poor countries to deny the USA the food it needs. Just as the de-industrialization of the USA and of Canada's Ontario has its drawbacks, so the Doha idea could boomerang, leaving the USA unable to feed its population in certain foreseeable international crises of the future.

In what was billed as his update on the state of the U.S. economy, Mr. Bush took credit for the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts, promised to submit a budget next week that eliminates the deficit in 2012, and asked Congress to give him a version of line-item veto authority.

"When people across the world look at America's economy, what they see is low inflation, low unemployment and the fastest growth of any major industrialized nation," he said. "There is one undisputed leader in the world in terms of economy, and that's the United States of America."

I should state here that the growth idea is one that some reformational economists, like Dr Bob Goudzwaard, constantly attack, but I think they do so often on the basis of a sweeping un-nuanced critique. The policy recommendations that seem to flow from this stance are often impracticable in a profound sense. In the next decade, we'll see how far an oil-rich Venezuela fares by introducing socialist economic policy that even with its advantage of the oil industry there may prove to be severely impraticable in the long run. Yet, strict Goudzwaardians must realize that Venezuela needs economic growth, as do the agriculture-producing poor countries that would benefit from a concluded Doha Round.

But Democrats said Mr. Bush's rosy picture of the overall economy was out of focus.

"If you really spend time out in middle-class America -- if you descend from the president's economic view at 30,000 feet to the real communities of Main Street America -- you know that all is not well with the middle class," said Sen. Charles E. Schumer, New York Democrat.

Note how little Schumer actually says in this remark. It's a debate technique to advance Schumer's desire to recruit the middle-class to support his party, being promised all sorts of Democratic largesse were that party with new middle-class supports thereby enabled to win the Presidency in November 2008. I have no confidence in a party financed by Hollywood millionaires and trial lawyers (who are among the USA's largest income-endowed sectors). So, add these two income-sectors plus professional athletes, etc, to the problem of the income gap between rich and poor in the USA. The middle-class is n-o-t desperate, once you take into account its excessive consumerism, lack of savings, and often wild indebtedness. It's the American economic culture of the middle-class that is the root cause of that class's problems.

Mr. Bush has spoken of corporate responsibility before, most notably following the accounting scandals that ensnared companies such as Enron early in his administration.

But yesterday marked the first time he has spoken of a problem of income inequality.

World Economy > USA Biz

"The fact is that income inequality is real; it's been rising for more than 25 years," he said, adding that he sees the dividing line as between those with good educations and those without.

He also challenged businesses to "step up to their responsibilities."

"They need to pay attention to the executive-compensation packages that you approve. You need to show the world that America's businesses are a model of transparency and good corporate governance," he said.

But this is another rhetorical device, where the Prez subjunctively pictures "America's businesses" as a possible " model of transparency" which at present it actually is not.

After his speech, the president made an unannounced stop on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, getting a warm reception amid the chaos of the room.

But his reception in the new Democrat-controlled Congress has been chilly so far.

The most contentious of the ideas in yesterday's speech is free trade, an issue that used to enjoy the support of a strong bipartisan coalition, but which has seen Democratic support crumble after President Clinton left office.

Mr. Bush yesterday pressed to complete the Doha round of expanded free-trade talks at the World Trade Organization, saying it can help the U.S. economy and also lift millions of people worldwide out of poverty.

"We are dedicated to making sure we have a successful Doha round," he said.

Labor unions, though, called for a break from new trade agreements.

In part, USA's Big Unions oppose new trade agreements to protect jobs, but in part they simply do not have creative ideas to move the situation forward. The dreamed-of growth of the tiny Christian Labor Association USA and a new statutory arrangement for an authentic labour-union representation of the diversity of outlooks of organized workers could go a long way toward a fundamentally more creative mix basied on diversity of workers' outlooks. But that is a task for the future.

"We need a strategic pause to assess what have been the real and significant costs of our trade policy for working men and women in the U.S. and abroad," said AFL-CIO President John Sweeney.

That statement by the old-timer labour executive should be greeted as a stark admission of Big Labour's intellectual bankruptcy on key conerns of workers.

And Mr. Bush's call for clamping down on lawsuits came under fire from trial lawyers, with the American Association for Justice -- formerly the American Trial Lawyers Association -- accusing him of ignoring the nation's major issues in favor of "corporate bottom lines and a free pass for corporate friends."

--Owlb

More info ... coming soon! Look for updates!:

Washington takes aim at CEO pay
Steven Pinkmer on metaphor (he's a cognitivist)
Elaine Botha on metaphor (she's a reformational philosopher). Google Search results.