Calendar: Labor Day: The need for global reformational action in labor relations and Christian unions

                                                                                         

It's Labour Day today in the USA and Canada.  Not all the world celebrates wage-earmers, whether unionized or not, on this day.  Many celebrate Labor on May 1, the day elevated especially by socialists and Communist-founded unions, as in France, to name but one instance of the contrary practice.  But the day observed by the different r+ts is not so important because not all countries observe either day, or any at all.  Does Saudi Arabia observe Labor Day at all?  Why do I doubt that?, having no info on the matter yet.  Because Saudi Arabia with over a million foreign workers living in special compounds, not permitted for housing to mingle with the Muslim population nor permitted to establish Christian churches or Hindu temples to practice the r+ts of their respective faiths, is a labor- and religion-intolerant society.  All that said for the sake of our calendar, let's turn to a few instances where reformationals and all Christians shoud be supporting a distinctive world project of unionization.  In the mentioned countries below, the need for Christian organization may not seem feasible but remains requisite.

The information in most of the items below, comes from The Global State of Workers' Rights: Free Labor in a Hostile World, a recent report by Freedom House, with text prepared by Arch Puddington, Freedom House's director of research.

China

China tolerates only state-endorsed and CommunistParty-led unions which tilt their representation function to benefit first the interests of the state and the party.  Wildcat strikes (there is no provision for legal strikes, even in matters of health and safety) and other spontaneous actions break out, often for reasons not only related directly to labour conditions, wages and benefits but too often for intertwined reasons of the repression of the workforce segment who are repressed due to China's pro-Han ethnic represssion -- especially in the situation of the Uigher Muslim minority in western China where the Han immigrants have taken over (Tibet is another instance of Han Chinese takeover, but I've heard of no wildcatting labour actions there).

China, at the same time, has a huge Christian minority, where again the state has set up official churches ultimately supervised by party-members under the auspices of the govt's agency to control religions.  The Christian minority is numerically dominated by house churches and unsequelched free churches with their own church buildings.  The state constantly interferes with free religion in China, just as in the case of free labor unions, which like the free churches, must operate clandestinely or semi-clandestinely.

China needs Christian labor organizations outside the control of the state and respective of other free unions with which it must function cooperatively wherever possible, morally and strategically.  A future Christian labour organization in China must work not only for its own freedom of function but also in that project, work for a genuine pluralism in labour representation.  The model for that is not the USA or Canada or England or Australia in their present configuration of labor relations, but is better advised to use the model of the national Christian labor federation in the Netherlands (Christelijke Nationaal Vakverbond -- CNV -- English language webpages) , where law permits and encourages a genuine cooperative pluralism of all unions in the country.  A single shop floor in a large factory, for instance, woud have several unions chosen by the several segments of the workforce there, all of which woud have reprsentation on the greivance and negotiating joint committee (most negotiations, however, take place thru the national labour "centrals" in tandem with business and government).

See also:  China's workers raise stakes (The Call, Jun22,2k10)

Belarus

A new frontier for labour organization with normative labour representation of Christian inspiration.

Burma

Another new frontier for normative labour representation of Christian inspiration.

Cuba

A repressive regime has released from prison some veteran Christian labour activists, who were organizing an independent Christian union clandestinely just a few years back.

Workers are not permitted to organize outside the state-controlled labor federation, and Cuban law does not grant workers the right to strike. Those who do join independent trade unions face beatings, loss of employment, confiscation of property, and imprisonment; a number of the current generation of political prisoners are locked up for workplace dissent. Because the state controls the labor market, it determines pay and working conditions for almost all workers. In the small private sector, foreign investors are required to contract workers through state employment agencies, which pocket up to 95 percent of their salaries. The minimum wage in 2008 was about 225 pesos -- about $9 -- per month. Workers are also required to keep an eye on their colleagues and report any "dissident" activity.

Eritrea

Another new frontier for normative labour representation of Christian inspiration.

The Eritrean regime uses the same tactics common among authoritarian states -- controlling unions, crushing strikes, suppressing collective bargaining -- but goes a step further by imposing forced labor and national service on its citizens. This harsh system effectively renders meaningless the country's legal protections for workers; citizens between ages 18 and 50 can be made to perform compulsory labor in any given year and are required to serve in the military or civilian work programs for an indefinite length of time determined by the government. 

Equitorial Guinea

Another new frontier for normative labour representation of Christian inspiration.

Dictator Teodoro Obiang Nguema makes little effort to conceal his contempt for trade unions. Several years ago, his government told the International Labor Organization that "there were no trade unions in the country because there was no tradition of trade unionism." Obiang -- reelected last November with 96 percent of the vote -- and his cronies have enriched themselves on oil revenues while ordinary citizens subsist on less than $1 a day. The government has refused to recognize several nascent labor organizations and has violently repressed protesting workers.

 Laos 

 Like other unreformed post-communist societies, Laos is a one-party state in which practically all significant institutions, including the Lao Federation of Trade Unions (LFTU), are controlled by the Lao People's Revolutionary Party. The LFTU's quasi-state function gives it a dubious dual role, controlling workers while it is supposedly defending them. The government, meanwhile, unilaterally sets compensation for government workers; for private-sector employees, collective bargaining, while called for under labor law, barely exists in reality.

Libya 

Civil society and freedom of association were among the first casualties of the 1969 coup that brought Muammar al-Qaddafi to power. Qaddafi's brand of socialist revolution has meant the elimination of unions that aren't controlled by the regime. The government sets minimum wage rates, work hours, night-shift rules, and other workplace laws. Collective bargaining barely exists, and strikes are illegal. Foreigners, constituting about one-third of the workforce, are victims of systematic discrimination.

North Korea 

 Strict state control of work is, unsurprisingly, a basic fact of life in North Korea; it's written into the country's constitution. Work is obligatory, and failure to meet the state's workplace standards can result in a five-year stint in the gulag -- or, in some cases, a death sentence. The officially sanctioned trade union federation is given the responsibility of mobilizing and regimenting workers to meet production quotas and adhere to work discipline. Collective bargaining, needless to say, is not an option. In some enterprises, workers are paid episodically, receiving nothing for months on end..

Saudi Arabia

Saudi Arabia, which bans all political parties, also offers one of the world's most inhospitable environments for workers' movements. The labor code denies them the right to form unions, bargain with employers, or strike; anyone who does those things risks imprisonment or, if he or she is a foreigner, deportation. Migrant workers, mostly from South Asia, are treated with particular harshness and are paid much lower wages than are Saudi and Western workers. Their workplace conditions are often so deplorable that some actually try to get arrested and deported. Exploitation and mistreatment is rampant among the 1.5 million female domestic workers, many of whom are effectively forced laborers.

Sudan 

Sudan's 1992 Trade Union Act handed the government-controlled Sudan Workers' Trade Union Federation a monopoly over organization, or what passes for it under the regime of President Omar Hassan al-Bashir. Strikes require government approval, which is never granted. There is no collective bargaining. Activists who operate outside government-sanctioned channels face arrest. Workers in Sudan's oil industry are closely monitored by the intelligence service, and their movements are restricted. Forced labor is common, as is the conscription of men and boys into the country's armed forces; women and children are often forced into domestic servitude and sexual slavery.

Syria 

Syrian labor groups are required to belong to the General Federation of Trade Unions (GFTU), a nominally independent organization that is funded by the government and closely linked to the ruling Baath Party (its president is a senior party member). When several Syrian journalists came under threat from the government for reporting on sensitive subjects, the officially sanctioned Journalists' Union refused to support them. Strikes are legal but rare, and can result in jail terms for labor activists; in any case, the GFTU rarely calls them. Collective bargaining hardly exists.

Turkmenistan 

Since gaining independence in 1991, Turkmenistan has an unbroken record of rigged elections, suppression of the press, and marginalization of civil society. Private property has only recently been introduced, and corruption is rampant. Given this background, it is hardly surprising that the country keeps its trade unions safely under the state's thumb: The state-sanctioned Center for Professional Unions is led by a presidential appointee, and individual unions under its umbrella function as government appendages. On the bright side, the government did ban children from working in the cotton harvest in 2009.

Uzbekistan 

Although Uzbekistan's laws theoretically permit independent unions, in practice union activity is controlled by the brutal regime of Islam Karimov, the Soviet-era holdover who has run the country since 1990. The leaders of the state-run Board of the Trade Union Federation of Uzbekistan are Karimov appointees. There are no independent unions, and collective bargaining, though legal, seldom occurs. Although the Uzbek Constitution forbids forced labor, the authorities are said to compel university students, medical workers, schoolchildren, and government workers to assist in bringing in the annual cotton crop.

Vietnam   

In theory, working people enjoy a broad array of rights in Vietnam. The government has adopted a labor code that calls for union recognition and collective bargaining. In reality, however, workers enjoy few of them. To begin with, they cannot form unions of their own choosing, but rather must join a union affiliated with the Vietnam General Conference of Labor: a pliant, state-controlled entity that functions as a pass-through for the Communist Party. The legal hurdles to calling a strike are monumental. Virtually all recent protests were wildcat strikes, reflecting workers' mistrust of their union representatives. The government cynically allows these protests -- most against foreign-owned firms -- because they give workers an opportunity to demand higher wages without forcing the government to raise the minimum wage, which authorities fear would discourage foreign investment.

Obviously, these neo-Communist and Islamic-totalitarian labour regimes are the worst-case scenarios of the world's repression of free and plurally-represenative unions.  But they constitute the greatest challenges to the coming of the Shalom Kingdom of Christ in labour relations, representation, and negotiation.  Except in the case of China, which contains a critical mass of Christian believers, some of whom already are active in clandestine and semi-clandestine free independent labour organizations.

Thanks to Arch Puddington, Freedom House's director of research, for his set of captions to the photo series for Labour Day in Foreign Policy (see the series of pix-gallery captions, "Labor Day in Hell" (14 items on as many webpages) by Arch Puddington, starting here).  The pictures are fantastic!


-- EconoMix, compiler

Economics: Entrepreneurs: A fascinating Corporate Sustainability Program

It sounds like a good business plan to me!        

I don't warm to the Nanny State dictating all our food choices, I don't think relaxants other than alcoholic drinks shoud be discriminated against to the advantage of the drunkenness industry with its exorbitant death toll!  Etc.

But I do believe a free-marlket business plan like that of Innocent Drinks (yeah, that's the corporate name) meets the criteria of reformational free-market thawt for better-motivated businesses than currently prevail.  The company seems christianly investable to me.   And on this Labor/Labour Day, I note that Innocent Drinks' labour policy is superior to most.  Philosophically, this business approach coud be considered an approach to an integral business, a business structured by its designers for a "simultaneity of norm realization" (as Prof Bernard Zylstra used to say), an integrality appropriate to its sphere and its focal mandate/s.  That's the sense of holistic offered for inspection here.

-- EconoMix

Economics: Entrepreneurs: A fascinating Corporate Sustainability Program

It sounds like a good business plan to me!        

I don't warm to the Nanny State dictating all our food choices, I don't think relaxants other than alcoholic drinks shoud be discriminated against to the advantage of the drunkenness industry with its exorbitant death toll!  Etc.

But I do believe a free-marlket business plan like that of Innocent Drinks (yeah, that's the corporate name) meets the criteria of reformational free-market thawt for better-motivated businesses than currently prevail.  The company seems christianly investable to me.   And on this Labor/Labour Day, I note that Innocent Drinks' labour policy is superior to most.  Philosophically, this business approach coud be considered an approach to an integral business, a business structured by its designers for a "simultaneity of norm realization" (as Prof Bernard Zylstra used to say), an integrality appropriate to its sphere and its focal mandate/s.  That's the sense of holistic offered for inspection here.

-- EconoMix

ISO 9001

Fairfood Blog <     1 2 3 4   ...   Next>   Last>> Fairfood Talks 25.08.2010 15:27 Solution of the month V: Innocent Drinks On the 5th of August 2010, we had the pleasure of having Jessica Sansom, Head of Sustainability of Innocent Drinks, in our midst at the Fairfood Main Office. During a thirty-minute presentation, Jessica explained what Innocent’s Corporate Sustainability Program is all about. About Innocent DrinksIt all started with three Cambridge graduates who wanted to earn some money and wondered: “how can we make something that makes life easier and better?” Suddenly, the idea of fruit smoothies popped up: fruit smoothies with no preservatives, no coloring, just all natural. Soon after, Innocent Drinks was established as a small UK-based company. By now, Innocent’s smoothies are sold in 11 European countries. Sustainability Programme: Innocent’s Own Minimum StandardsOne of Innocent’s values is to “leave things a little better than we find them”. While this sounds really cute and innocent, how does the company actually achieve this? Innocent believes the answer lies in the three P’s of People, Planet, and Profit with at its core a sustainable business. As Innocent wanted to take responsibility for its entire business, the company went all the way down to the farm level. More specifically, Innocent seeks to buy fruit from farms that take care of their workers and the environment. “This means balancing our business needs –buying the best tasting fruit whilst addressing social and environmental issues.” In doing so, the company focuses on five main issues namely: nutrition, ingredients, production, packaging and legacy. However, Jessica acknowledged that sustainability is not easy; “it’s not black and white”. To explain this, she provided an example of a pineapple farm in Costa Rica that set everything in motion to become Faitrade certified. Although the certification sounded great in theory, practice proved otherwise. As demand for Fairtrade pineapples is low, the farmer was only able to sell 5% of its crop and while the fruit was sold at a premium, it was not enough to cover the costs of certification. The point Jessica tried to make, is that there is no Grand Solution that solves everything, as each country and each fruit face different challenges. As a result, Innocent decided to take a step-by-step approach to sustainability by asking the following questions: 1. Which standards and certifications are out there? Which are the best ones? 2. What issues do they cover? And which issues do we want to focus on most?  Based on a review of the existing schemes, Innocent developed its own Minimum Standards for Sustainability. These standards cover issues ranging from child labour to minimum wages, biodiversity and so on. In addition, the company looks at each type of fruit and farm separately to determine which issues need to be covered and essentially customizes its set of standards to address them. For example, after studying the banana sector, Innocent decided that all its bananas should be Rainforest Alliance certified. As bananas are the major component of Innocent’s smoothies –totaling 12.000 tons per year - this amounts to quite a lot of Rainforest Alliance certified bananas! Trust Another interesting aspect of Innocent’s sustainability programme is the element of trust that runs through its supply chain. Jessica explained that it’s impossible to go to 800 separate raspberry farms and check whether they comply with the standards, let alone go to all suppliers of all fruits. In other words, not all farms are externally verified. Farms that Innocent ‘trusts’ based on, for example, former visits can engage in self-assessments. However, other farms which are not fully trusted are regularly checked.  Sustainable ProjectsAccording to Jessica, being successful also means giving something back to society. As a result, Innocent invests in several sustainable agriculture projects which help farmers improve their farming practices. Moreover, Innocent gives 10% of its profits to charity each year. The majority goes to the Innocent Foundation, which supports NGOs in helping underprivileged communities to develop sustainable food production for local consumption. Interesting Discussion: Innocent and Coca Cola At the end of the presentation, an audience member wanted to know whether the recent purchase of 53% of Innocent’s shares by Coca Cola has affected Innocent’s sustainability programme. In response to this concern, Jessica assured us that nothing has changed in the way Innocent works. Furthermore, she stated that Coca Cola has been very supportive and even approached them for advice on their own sustainability programme. Nevertheless, she acknowledged that it’s impossible to state that ‘nothing will ever change’. But for now, I personally think it’s safe to say that Innocent seems to be just as innocent as before. Joëlle Joubert – Project Assistant Customised Solutions Analysis PermalinkComments 0 Tags: innocent drinks, solution of the month, minimum standards, trust, fairfood talks,fruit, coca cola Views: 10

Economics: Entrepreneurs: a fascinating Corporate Sustainability for christianly-directed companies and christian coop businesses

Fairfood Talks

25.08.2010

15:27

Innocent Drinks 

  

  

   ISO 9001

Fairfood Blog

• 1. <234 ... Next> Last>>

Fairfood Talks

25.08.2010

15:27

Innocent Drinks

On the 5th of August 2010, we had the pleasure of having Jessica Sansom, Head of Sustainability of Innocent Drinks, in our midst at the Fairfood Main Office. During a thirty-minute presentation, Jessica explained what Innocent’s Corporate Sustainability Program is all about.

About Innocent Drinks
It all started with three Cambridge graduates who wanted to earn some money and wondered: “how can we make something that makes life easier and better?” Suddenly, the idea of fruit smoothies popped up: fruit smoothies with no preservatives, no coloring, just all natural. Soon after, Innocent Drinks was established as a small UK-based company. By now, Innocent’s smoothies are sold in 11 European countries.

About Innocent Drinks

It all started with three Cambridge graduates who wanted to earn some money and wondered: “how can we make something that makes life easier and better?” Suddenly, the idea of fruit smoothies popped up: fruit smoothies with no preservatives, no coloring, just all natural. Soon after, Innocent Drinks was established as a small UK-based company. By now, Innocent’s smoothies are sold in 11 European countr   read more ...


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refWrI+t's comment:

It sounds like a good business plan to me!


I don't warm to the Nanny State dictating all our food choices, generally speaking -- just as I don't think relaxants other than alcoholic drinks (ROThADs, rothads) shoud be discriminated against in govt-typical broad-brush-fashion.  Biting the bullet, I woud go so far as to say that Marijuana-growers shoud be registered and licensed, and taxed in some manner commensurate with alcohollic drink taxation, but the cost to the end-consumer  of Marijuana today shoud thereby drop, due to the end of security costs to the those now legally-licensed growers (even tho now taxed).  However, the War on Drugs shoud continue double-fold against hard-drug traffickers and importers and also unregistered-unlicensed-untaxed Mariguana-growers.


-------------------------------------------
Principium Consumers Hub
& Principium Investors Club
---------------an inLine ad---------------


In comparison to the complexities of other relaxant industries, FairFood introduces us to a thriving business in some 11 Western European countries, a business which holistically defines its values and structures itself, its work-community, and even its profit structure to achieve a quality product, Innocent Drinks, now in several countries.  If it's listed on a stock exchange, with public sale of its shares, it woud qualify for "ethical investment," it seem's to me.

Read the extensive wr+t-up offered by Fair Trade, an umbrella org for moving 3rd World food, textile, and other commodities produced by small farmers and cottage-industry workers, for retail sales in 1st World countries, all on a 
free-enterprise basis.  Fair Trade seeks to raise the income of farmers unserved by the giant futures-brokers on the stockmarkets, by securing a fair-trade price and helping sort thru the collecting process (trucking the commodity from small farms for instance to the collection point at the shipping docks), the transportation, and the marketting.   Some of the marketters are volunteers like Jim Marshall who set up a Fair Trade coffee sales table evert Sunday after the sermon in the church fellowship hall where the assemblage also had recourse to warm coffee direct from the urn.


The FairTrade materials are presented in the new editorial page (editorial stance #2) so that refWr+t readers can muse on the personal moral policies entailed in coming to agree with the FairTrade standpoint.  I'll be exploring all facets of these orgs and their organizational ties & overlaps, so at this point in time I'm not making any endorsements.  Nor am I advising Principium Investors Club to make any joint share-being (I don't even know whether it's being offered).  But, I think this advisory blog-entry is in order  simply as a Principium Consumers Hub info-item.


-- EconoMix

PoliticsSpain: Basque separatists: Terrorist group ETA makes U-turn

The End of Basque Violence?


Basque separatists are not all terrorists, but the terrorists had always had a major role within the ETA organization in Spain (ETA comes from a phrase in the Basque language -- Euskadi Ta Askatasuna ).  The organization has just made a statement reversing its on-again / off-again terrorist strategy, in order to pursue independence by more peaceful means only and to avoid being classified in the public imagination with the Islamicist terrorists who have become an even greater threat to Spain's national integrity.  It must be galling to the separatists that the Islamicists have thoroly outshone ETA ferocity.

ETA  has a history of internal conflict between its doves and hawks.  Now, once again, the doves have come to dominate the org's policy-making, especially in regard to the key strategic policy of violence, in pursuit of its aim to remove a handful of Spanish provinces and a small territory in southwest France from the historic national connections of those places. With the removal, according to ETA'a vsionary ideals, a new political space woud be created for the setting up of a new Basque independent country.

The Eta announcement comes after six months in which the group has not killed anyone.  The last killing carried out by Eta – classed as a terrorist organisation by the EU and the US – was of a French police officer who discovered members stealing cars from a dealership outside Paris in March. 

The last fatal attack in Spain saw two police officers killed on the holiday island of Majorca in July 2009.

It is not the first time Eta has unilaterally declared a ceasefire. The last ceasefire, which it described as "permanent", was announced in March 2006 and saw prime minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero's government enter into talks with the group.

But of course the hardliners in ETA prevailed to have the spirit of negotiation broken; ETA detonated a bomb in the Mdrid international airport.   So,  the terrorists have little credibility, even among many of the Basque people themselves.

The Basque have many wonderful accomplishments to their name, most impressive is the extensive system of co-operative forms of business enterprise; but the related and other stunningly good qualities evoked by the word "Basque" has been obscured, overshadowed by the 829 killings over 42 years.

More info ...

ETA declares ceasefire in Basque independence battle, Agence France Presse (Sept5,2k10)

-- Politicarp

PoliticsSyria: Religious Conservatives: Secular govt represses conservative Islamist movements

A major shift in policy has become belatedly apparent in Syria, under Pres. Bashar al-Assad.  The policy, while not altering Syria's foreign policy of alliance with Hamas in Palestine and Hezbollah in Lebanon (terrorist orgs), the policy nevertheless seeks to stem the rising influence thru-out Syrian society of activist women who wear the face veil, wear it even as teachers in public school classrooms.  Altho the veiled women's movement holds its own secretive assemblies with female leaders preaching and community-building, the emancipatory side of their endeavours for fellow women and the expansion of their roles is countervailed by their subservience to the conservative Sunni Islamist male leadership -- speak of being unequally yoked.

Thus, the movement as a whole may be said to have contradictory features that will perhaps reveal themselves more dramatically in the future among Syria's conservative Islamists. Male and female, they are the vanguard of Sunni revitalization in recent years.  Syria is populated by a Sunni majority, while its governing elite belongs to the minority Alawite sect which has a stake in a secularist political philosophy -- an echo of Turkey appears in this particular dynamic between Sunnis and Alawite-sponsored Syrian secularism.

As the domestic Islamists became comfortable with their rising status, the Assad govt has clearly decided now to clamp down on what it feared coud squeeze secularists out of public life and government.

Kareem Fahim reports in New York Times, "Syria's solidarity with Islamists ends at home" (Sept3,2k10), regarding the significance of the shift.

In summary:  Syria is shifting to a secularist policy in domestic relations with conservative Islamists who are more active in society, with a strong contingent of women, even female teachers in public schools who insist on wearing their face-veils in the classrooms (not the Taliban burqa which veils the entire female body, but the niqba which veils only the face.  The govt has removed 1,000 of the veiled teachers from the classroom to administrative jobs, enforcing a veil-less teaching corps to interact directly with students.

-- Politicarp

PS:  Welcome back to our page editor, Owlb.  He's also refWr+t's General Editor for all 5 of our mainpages.

EconomyUSA: 'Stalling'? : As in coming to a halt, and then imploding?

Economy edges closer to stalling, government says

Dabura Karriem, 60, of Bloomfield, N.J., reacts upon hearing there is a job available for exactly what she's looking for as a file clerk at a bank, while attending a career fair in Newark, N.J., Tuesday, Aug. 24, 2010. Karriem's unemployment benefits have expired after being laid off two years ago, the first time she's been unemployed in 38 years.

The government on Friday Aug. 27, 2010 is about to confirm what many people have felt for some time: The economy barely has a pulse. Many analysts say the uncertainty surrounding the economy is holding back consumers from spending and companies from investing and hiring. (AP Photo/David Goldman) (David Goldman - AP)
Network NewsXPROFILE

By CHRISTOPHER S. RUGABER
The Associated Press
Friday, August 27, 2010; 6:57 PM

-- WASHINGTON - The economy turns out to be weaker than we thought, and the outlook for the rest of the year is now looking dimmer."

That's how Associated Press's Christopher Rugaber begins his bleak report on the state of the American economy. Do click-up the article via Washington Post (WaPo).

-- EconoMix

EconomyUSA: Small Biz: Why not hiring?

An active participant in Volokh Conspiracy of intellectual conservative and libertarian lawyers in a brilliant blogging alliance, attractive to persons in law related professions, mostly, and offers spritely debate partners on other days.

Why Small Business Isn’t Hiring

Posted: 25 Aug 2010 11:06 AM PDT

(Jonathan H. Adler)

My Case Western colleague, Scott Shane, has a brief item linking the lack of hiring by small businesses to the collapse in home prices. Specifically, he identifies five reasons the “residential real-estate mess” is holding back small business job creation:

1.) Declining house prices have softened demand for small businesses’ products and services.

2.) Small businesses are overrepresented in the real estate-related industries that have been decimated by the residential housing market collapse.

3.) Small business owners use their homes to obtain business credit.

4.) Banks have tightened lending standards in response to a rising share of non-performing real estate loans.

Small business owners were major customers of residential real estate loans during the boom, making them among the consumers hardest hit from the collapse in home prices.

He concludes:

Waiting for small business owners to begin hiring in this economic recovery has become like waiting for Godot. Rather than continuing to wait (while chanting the mantra that “small businesses are the major job creators in economic recoveries”), we should acknowledge why small businesses aren’t leading job creation this time around and come up with solutions to the residential real estate problems that are holding them back.

Doing this is imperative. Slightly more than half (50.2 percent) the private sector works in small companies. If the residential real estate mess keeps the small business sector from hiring, it will be awfully difficult to reduce our unemployment rate to a reasonable level.

If the signs we've tea-leaved regarding downward trends in the economy (energy sector as in oil and gas industries, housing sector, and jobs sector for starters) can be reversed, perhaps unclogging the bottlenecks the entrepreneur experiences in coping with residential real estate problems and ease of access to bank credit.

EconomicsUSA: Stimulus: Had great positive impact, benefit crested and now is waning

The AGC email newsletter, SmartBrief for Aug25,2k10, is of course published by the Associated General Contractors of America; today it alerted us in this compact item, a tabbed segment "Market Update" (notice tab to the left as you scroll down):

Stimulus package pricier than previously thought

The federal economic-stimulus package is turning out to be costlier than originally estimated. The cost of the package, pegged at $787 billion in January 2009, has risen to $814 billion, according to a new congressional analysis. The analysis said that the stimulus has saved or created between 1.4 million and 3.3 million jobs and increased gross domestic product by as much as 4.5%. NYT (free registration)/The Associated Press (8/25)

NYT, you'll notice, attributes authorship only to the Associated Press, so it woud seem that a certain anonymity obtains in this instance. But the article is fascinating:

Stimulus to Cost $27B More Than Original Pricetag (Aug24,2K10). Filed at 6:06 p.m. ET.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Barack Obama's massive stimulus measure has created or saved as many as 3.3 million jobs and continues to boost economic growth in the second half of 2010, but it's come at a higher pricetag than originally billed.

Congressional analysts released new figures Tuesday estimating that the law enacted in January of 2009 -- then projected to cost $787 billion over a decade -- would cost $814 billion. That's still lower than the Congressional Budget Office estimated in January, when it said the measure would cost $862 billion.

The report comes 10 weeks before midterm congressional elections in which Republicans are hammering Democrats and Obama on the economy, charging they've pushed runaway spending without creating promised jobs.

The analysis credits the stimulus measure with increasing the number of people employed somewhere between 1.4 million and 3.3 million jobs between April and June -- and boosting the gross domestic product by as much as 4.5 percent. The figures are slightly less rosy than the picture Obama's economic advisers painted last month, when they said the stimulus law had ''raised employment by 2.5-to-3.6 million relative to what it otherwise would have been'' during that period.

So we've now got an upward trend up in many economic sectors, and in diverse industries, the vaunted "Recovery," and the whole picture immersed in the color of joblessness. And the grinding ongoing creation of "discouraged workers" who stop even looking for jobs.

Not good enuff!, President Obama.

--EconoMix

See recent post on key indicator/s of economic health.

EconomicsUSA: Key indicator: Oil slopes to 3-mnth low points, gas 8-mnths gas, housing dwnwrd, jobs down

MarketWatch's latest report on a key indicator for the overall health of the USA economy (Claudia Assis; posted 3:04, Aug 24, 2k10, MW), gave the most recent info on gas and oil in the commodites futures market. Again, for the purpose of mapping, all within the energy sector.

Crude oil (unrefined) dropped its price at the pump by 2% -- "with prices sent deeper into the red after a gauge of housing activity showed its biggest drop ever. Crude oil for October delivery was off $1.47 to settle at $71.63, an eleven-week low for oil."

Then MW's reporter adds:

Gasoline for September delivery settled at $1.85 a gallon, gasoline's lowest price since December 2009.

Energy Sector

* Oil futures -- down in Aug24,2k10 snapshot of this market specialty in energy sector.

* Gas futures -- down in Aug24,2k10 snapshot of this market speciality in energy sector.

Housing Sector -- down in Aug24,2k10 snapshot of this second major sector.

Jobs Sector -- down again in Aug24,2k10 snapshot of this third major market sector, individual jobs upon hire for agreed-upon pay, of course benefits amounts to be deducted from the pay (many unions insert such clauses, especially in closed shops).

Three sectors and four diverse markets afford us also with a zoom-in to conveniently cross compare the energy sector > petroleum industry > oil subindustry, preprocessing functions like drilling, extracting, pumping, transport (pipeline, vehicular or other). And its cousin subindustry within the petroleum products industry/ies of the energy sector -- gas or, as Canadians say, petrol, and which commodity in Canada is measured in metrics, not the USA's customary English naming practice over the centuries such as our American folks have adopted as their own.

It's scary to try to monitor possible indicators of a downward trend in the economy, but unsavory indications must be pursued as events unfold (I hate to say what I think, especially written writtled down) down.

-- EconoMix

Publisher's announcement: Owlb out, Politicarp in

Our usual frontpage editor, whose brandname is Owlb, is on furlow for rest and relaxation. Politicarp, our politics editor / columnist, will take up Owlb's duties as well as maintaining his own column. Politicarp will have responsiblity for the actual final posting. Until further notice, Albert Gedraitis, publisher

PoliticsUSA: NYC mosk: Religious discrimination vs Insensitivity to the bereaved of 9/11

Islamic mosk planned for near Ground Zero, provokes protests, provokes counter protests. Obama provokes reaction to his laying down the law, changing or supplementing his position the very next day.

Just as he did in labeling the police in the Harvard neiborhoods as "stupid" and corrected himself the next day.

One of my friends regards my use of the word "glib" to describe a public position he the Prez took. He again had to revise himself the next day.

Not so good.

Protests against Mosk near Ground Zero, protests for it

Israel: Iran: Israel must juggle negotiations with Palestinians, threat of nukes from Iran, massing Hezbollah in Lebanon, and Gaza under Hamas

New York Times (July 6, 2010), report by Sheryl Gay Stolberg and Mark Landler:

President Obama said Tuesday that he expected direct negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians to begin “well before” a moratorium on settlement construction expired at the end of September, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel pledged to take “concrete steps” in the coming weeks to get the talks moving.

Don't miss the following detail:

--><. Saudi Arabia: We will not give Israel air corridor for Iran strike - Haaretz Daily Newspaper | Israel News> (Monday, August 23, 2010)

EconomicsCanada: Housing: Slow growth

Canada, the world's tenth largest national economy, has slid into the "no-growth" category. In the thinking of most economists, entrepeneurs, and business leaders regards growth as the criterion of success in economic relations. Retired prof Dr Bob Goudzwaard, the outstanding reformational economist over recent decades, has long argued to disestablish "growth" as the preceived norm for any business (?) and certainly any national economy. A market situation where the goal of growth has been abandoned comes in conflict the orthodox economic mainstream, of course; but market, growth, and the economists geared to such considerations call the Goudzwaard approach into question, as we see from the inevitable joblessness that arises from no-growth.

Growth is a necessity for the country's economic well-being. The following data leaves us wondering which choice to make in these unsettled days.

The Canadian leading index of 10 economic components has averaged 0.9% growth per month over the past 12 months. Growth rarely exceeds 1%.

The slowdown was caused largely by a 4.1% drop in the housing index, which is composed of new housing starts and house sales.

The mid-summer slowdown in house building and house sales is said to be at least a warning sign in regard to the presumed health of the Canadian economy's maintenance and development.

I'm trying to assimilate the green-movtivated research by Goudzwaard (his disseration written for his doctorate was an early exploration of "unpriced scarcity" -- clean water, breathable air, etc).

-- EconoMix

Technics: Google: Blogger / Blogspot blindspot blocks access to owner of blog

Whew! I just broke thru a veil of inaccessibility to my Google connection. Too much!, and I hope I can hold onto the irregular connection I've been able to contrive from scraps of orphaned databits.

-- Technowlb, columnist rW4

A little innovation tried on our refWr+t / refWrite backpage

Yup, yep, yawnp:  trying to revive a short-lived blog created or last blog-entried on Jun4,2K07, and from that date back to the first blog-entry in the same year Marfirst to last blog constitutes Series 1 in :

sportsdiverseblog by Sportikos

sportsdiverse
a blog by Sportikos

Christian journaletics, sports wr+ting with nu orthographics, digital display of sports journaletics (which latter word is in one regard  like athletics) -- also dialectix and dialects, dialogue, and diamonds.
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she loves me, she loves me not,
and so do I
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while we warm up, click-up sportsdiverse by Sportikos
refWr+t columnist and a blogger in my own r+t !

Politics: Rwanda: Great leader succumbs to tyrannical self-advancement

August 9, 2k10,  New York Times reporters Jeffrey Gettleman and Josh Kron, surveyed the situation in Rwanda which had undergone the horrors of genocide of the formerly leading tribe's population by the underdog majority Hutus.  Under the title, "Doubts rise in Rwanda as election is held," the reporters did so on the eve of a most predicatable re-election of the President of Rwanda, Paul Kagame,  a great leader who had led the country toward justice for the prominent perpetrators and their victimes, and towards a larger social reconciliation between the two main people-groups -- Tutsis and Hutus.  But something has gone terribly amiss, the reporters say.

There is no question that Mr. Kagame, 52, will be re-elected as Rwandans vote on Monday. The real question is how broad — and genuine — the support is for Mr. Kagame, one of Africa’s more incongruous strongmen.

He has packed recent rallies with 100,000 people screaming, “It’s you! It’s you!” And Rwandans have a lot to shout about: new roads and health clinics; millions of dollars of foreign investment; broadband Internet; even national health insurance, a small miracle in this poor, tiny, overcrowded country where the top natural resource may be the few hundred gorillas left in its misty mountains. Mr. Kagame’s spectacled face dominates Kigali, the capital, through countless posters and billboards. “Choose Peace” is his slogan.

This journaletic item deserves to be read, before you turn to the results from yesterday's results from that genocide-devestated country.   The results are expected tomorrow, Wednesday, but "reports from several regions indicated that President Kagame had won between 98 and 100 per cent of the vote" (Irish Times).


-- Politicarp

EconomicsUSA: Labour: Construction industry loses jobs nationwide

News today from construction industry email, AGC Smart Brief:

U.S. market loses 11,000 construction jobs in July The U.S. construction job market hit a 14-year low in July, as contractors eliminated 11,000 jobs nationwide. The Labor Department reported that the private sector grew its employment base by 71,000 jobs -- but that growth didn't extend to the construction industry. Some 1.5 million construction workers are out of work, pushing the unemployment rate in construction to 17.3%, well above the 9.5% rate overall. 

Reed/ACPConstruction Data (8/6), ConstructionDigital.com (8/8) 

Construction industry jobs are a key indicator for the overall economy.
It shoud be noted that the Christian Labor Assocation (USA), tho it be a quite small union (proportionate to USA total statistics for USA unions), is active in the construction industry of several states.

-- EconoMix

JuridicsUSA: Gay Reparations: Left TV commentator advocates

Jeff Poor writes online (NewsBusters, Aug8,2k10) in response to the YouTube video snipped from a recent telecast of Thom Hartmann, leftoid TV commentator regarding openly-gay Judge Vaughn Walker's Aug4,2k10 ruling in San Fransisco. Poor's article is entitled, "Liberal talk show host Thom Hartmann says it's time for Gay 'reparations.' "

Walker, a conservataive jurist, after listening to arguments based on gay-motivated social-science discourses,  has foddered Hartmann's enflamed imagination to suppose that some kind of "reparations" are in order for his precious "gays."   The latter term is a political-ideology term, whereas to be homo or lesbian is another thing.  Disclosure:  I'm homo, and celibate, not a participant in the skewered equality-fetish with which the gay ideology is recondite.  

Please note  that marriage is not reducible to other intimate unions, whether of 2 women or of 2 men.  Nor are 2-women intimate-unions reducible to 2-men intimate-unions -- so ,much for the neologism "same-sex," as in "same-sex marriage."   Gay ideologists want to erase differences of structuration in the 3 kinds of intimate-unions.  These 3 kinds of intimate unions are all qualified normatively by by the same ethical modal norm, by the same creational moral character under God (Bible verses and Sharia quotes to the contrary notwithstanding) thus constitutes their internal structural principle., but only in one respect, the qualifying functional aspect.  

However, the sameness of the three kinds of intimate unions that bond each kind of  couple (even thru occasions of strife in the ongoing development of each couple's mutuality, reciprocity, and responsiblity) in regard to the the qualifying function of their self-constitution as a moral entity with a vowed relationship to undergird  the couple's mutual life,  excluding all others from the depth of their intimacy, with an intention of permanence.  However, the 3 kinds are typified also by difference.  The different foundational functions (following philosopher Herman Dooyeweerd) obtain to differentiate 1woman-1man intimate unions from 2women intimate unions and from 2men intimate unions.  A three-term differentiation, without reducing any of these three kinds to one another.  Along these lines, Dooyeweerd's  juridical-scientific approach is largely confirmed by two professional philosophical ethicists, Andre Troost and James Olthuis.

That's the proffered paradigm by which to distinguish kinds of intimate unions, only one of which is marriage.m  Whether it shoud be prioritized by the state, as I think it shoud be, is yet another question.

Besides intimate unions, there are two other chief sorts of relationships that are also qualified by the creational ethical mode (again qualifying function of a multifunctional, multi-aspectual human being in his/her/inbetween integral existence).  The two further are friendship, and family (parents, their kids,. and the sibling relationship among the children of these parents).

The philosophically-shallow decision of Judge Walker seems, on the basis of newsreports, to have confused family with couples (vowed, exclusive, intention of permanence).  The issue of lesbian reproduction (kids) and adoption of kids (male homos too)  is juridically not at issue in the question of the intimate union of any of the three kinds.  Judge Walker is probably guilty of a category mistake in this regard, based on his lack of an adequate philosophy of law, inadequate to the juridical problems at hand.

I have not tried to provide answers to all questions that m+t surge into mind for various readers, where their own sexuality can powerfully function when trying to absorb the set of distinctions I have so far made.  For instance,  bisexuality can be discussed in the terms and concepts already supplied.   So also can transgender concerns.   Suffice it to say that this juridical view, ethical theorizing for moral behaviours, and all else,  is not moralistic, not legalistic, not biblistic. (Arnolod DeGraaqaff).

-- Albert Gedraitis,  refWr+t publisher

China: Persecution: Christians are being subjected to a new wave of terror

Bill Schiller chief of the Asia bureau of Toronto's Daily Star,(Aug7,2k10) presents a video report on how the government of China "is grapplying to respond" to a virulent campaign against China's huge Christian demographic where Christians constitute a larger membership than the Communist Party (tho the Christians remain very much  a minority for sure, given China's gteneral population).  So, the persecution is not the work of state, which is trying to stymie the anti-Christian persecutors?  H+ly unlikely in China.

-- Politicarp