The Jolly Green (Energy) Giant?

News and analysis…

In light of President Obama’s remarks concerning clean energy during his 2010 State of the Union address and his meeting with the Republican caucus on Jan. 28th, there has been a flurry of media activity concerned with finding out who leads in producing clean energy technology. The answer? China. While a small fraction of China’s domestic energy production currently comes from alternative energy, the Chinese government is actively encouraging the increase of domestic clean energy use. While the United States should hardly emulate China, it is certainly worth considering what the United State’s largest competitor in the realm of energy consumption is doing in the area of clean technology…

The New York Times | TIANJIN, China — China vaulted past competitors in Denmark, Germany, Spain and the United States last year to become the world’s largest maker of wind turbines, and is poised to expand even further this year.

China has also leapfrogged the West in the last two years to emerge as the world’s largest manufacturer of solar panels. And the country is pushing equally hard to build nuclear reactors and the most efficient types of coal power plants.

These efforts to dominate renewable energy technologies raise the prospect that the West may someday trade its dependence on oil from the Mideast for a reliance on solar panels, wind turbines and other gear manufactured in China.

Tomas Friedman: Dayton Daily News | China’s leaders know their country is in the midst of the biggest migration of people from the countryside to urban centers in history. This is creating a surge in energy demand which China intends to fill with clean, homegrown sources.

In the last year alone, so many new solar panel makers emerged in China that the price of solar power has fallen from roughly 59 cents a kilowatt hour to 16 cents, according to The Times’s bureau chief here, Keith Bradsher.

With so fevered a push for capacity growth, the Chinese government will take it any way they can get it, and if it means creating a new global industry, all the better. Remember, investor certainty is much less an issue in the Chinese context already, where the government makes the rules and the investments. U.S. companies have no certain market for their products – be it energy equipment or green power – and have no incentive to “bet the house” on E.T.

Meanwhile, China last week tested the fastest bullet train in the world — 217 miles per hour. And Bradsher noted that China has nearly finished building a high-speed rail route from Beijing to Shanghai at a cost of $23.5 billion. Trains will cover the 700-mile route in five hours.

By comparison, Amtrak trains require at least 18 hours to travel a similar distance from New York to Chicago.

Clean Techies | Friedman and others may be right that China is doing an exceptional job putting forth a very green face to the world — and, indeed, they are delivering. As Bradsher reports, “China intends for wind, solar and biomass energy to represent 8 percent of its electricity generation capacity by 2020….[t]hat compares with less than 4 percent now in China and the United States.” Bradsher continues, noting correctly, “China’s biggest advantage may be its domestic demand for electricity, rising 15 percent a year.”

In other words, while U.S. lawmakers – and even those in the green movement – continue to jostle over where money should be directed (subsidies for green power purchase, green tech research and development, energy efficiency) and debate whether we can stem the anticipated tide of growth in demand for environmental benefit, the Chinese have one directive: more capacity, now! And, a lot of it, from anywhere. They are not shy (nor ambivalent) about capacity growth. After all, it means economic growth.

Reuters | A new Chinese law requires power grid operators to buy all the electricity produced by renewable energy generators, in a move that will increase the proportion of energy that comes from renewable sources in coal-dependent China.

The amendment to the 2006 renewable energy law was adopted on Saturday by the standing committee of the National People’s Congress, China’s legislature, the Xinhua news agency said.

The amendment also gives authority to the State Council energy department, together with the State Council finance department and the state power authority, to “determine the proportion of renewable energy power generation to the overall generating capacity for a certain period.”

The Washington Post | In the State of the Union Address last Wednesday, President Obama said “the nation that leads the clean energy economy will be the nation that leads the global economy and America must be that nation.” At the same time, on the other coast, 75 clean energy investors, entrepreneurs, and researchers were debating whether the U.S. can gain this leadership position. They agreed that even though Silicon Valley leads the world in technology, it is not clear if it will ever lead in Cleantech. The Valley may develop some breakthrough technologies, but without government help these are unlikely to translate into global leadership. The technology world is rightfully allergic to government assistance and intervention. Cleantech is different, however, and we aren’t dealing with a level global playing field.

The Knowledge Economy Institute Leadership Summit, which I attended, was held at the Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI), in Emeryville, California. The question posed: what will it take for the U.S. to achieve global leadership in the clean-energy economy? The group concluded that the U.S., by far, has the strongest innovation platform in the world. But other countries may well reap the benefits of its research efforts. China, in particular, is making massive investments and has a huge advantage from focused policy and large markets. Even though China is not likely to produce its own innovation, it will continue to appropriate U.S. technology and gain a major advantage by combining this with its manufacturing prowess. American firms which are increasingly choosing to build design and manufacturing operations in China will provide it with additional advantage.

DAVOS Dairy | In China, the government poured an estimated $440 billion into clean energy last year. It is investing heavily in renewable energy and nuclear power. It also is pursuing efforts to make extraction of its vast coal reserves cleaner. Already home to one-third of the globe’s solar-energy manufacturing capacity and 400 solar-energy companies, China is expected to surpass Spain this year as the No. 3 country in terms of wind power installations, behind Germany and the United States.

William Rhodes, senior vice chairman of Citigroup and board vice chairman of the National Committee on U.S.-China relations, predicted that Beijing’s research into storing carbon emissions underground could soon lead to a major breakthrough.

In the United States, meanwhile, President Barack Obama faces an uphill battle in Congress to pass politically-sensitive legislation aimed at capping carbon emissions.

“China has the type of centralized industrial policy that we can’t match and don’t want in the United States or the European Union,” said Fred Krupp, president of Environmental Defense, a U.S. advocacy group. “What we have to compete with China is the power of our marketplace. A clear and declining cap on carbon emissions will send the essential market signal to industry, and that will engage our market directly in this competition.”

Best on the web…

Baptists In Haiti Could Face U.S. Kidnapping Charges | NPR

Haiti’s prime minister said Monday it’s clear to him that the 10 U.S. Baptists who tried to take 33 children out of his quake-ravaged country without permission “knew what they were doing was wrong.”

Prime Minister Max Bellerive said his country is open to having the Americans go before courts in the United States because his own nation’s judicial system was devastated by the Jan. 12 earthquake.

The aborted Baptist “rescue mission” has become a distraction for a crippled government trying to provide basic life support to millions of earthquake survivors.

But the prime minister said some legal system needs to determine whether the Americans were acting in good faith — as they claim — or are child traffickers in a nation that has struggled to fight exploitation of children.

Al Franken’s Anti-Rape Amendment Makes Defense Budget | The Huffington Post

President Barack Obama’s 2011 defense budget proposal includes language that would prevent the government from working with contractors who deny victims of sexual assault the right to their day in court.

Four husbands under Islam | Salon.com

It’s scandalous for a Saudi woman to publicly voice a sense of entitlement to equal rights — but sexual rights in particular? Now, that — that will bring her a lawsuit, threats, slander and infamy. Such is the case for female journalist Nadine Bedair, who recently penned an article for the Egyptian daily newspaper Al Masry Al Youm titled, “My Four Husbands and I.” Mmhm: “My Four Husbands.” You hardly have to read beyond the headline to forecast the shitstorm ahead — but, of course, you’d be missing out on her delightfully daring indictment of polygamy if you didn’t.

A Call to Action for Justice in Haiti (and beyond)

Now that the metaphorical dust is settling on the disaster that has befallen Haiti, it is the time to begin remembering what we are already forgetting. Distracted by the commentary and wrangling surrounding the State of the Union Address, we’ve lost track of the tragedy of an estimated 150,000 dead (the U.N. confirming 111,481 based on bodies recovered as of January 24). While there is no doubt that we should acknowledge the economic problems here in our country, it would be a failure of nerve and moral courage to shift our focus inward upon ourselves on account of an arbitrary requirement that the President “shall from time to time give to Congress information of the State of the Union.” (Article II, Section 3, U.S. Constitution)

I’ve previously written concerning the real nature of Haiti’s “curse” and Christian responsibility in the wake of this disaster, but it’s time for us to move beyond talk and take action. For everyone who has already become involved, sending recovery kits and making financial contributions, I thank you and commend your actions. However, as Richard Kim points out, our charity simply isn’t good enough:

But it’s also time to stop having a conversation about charity and start having a conversation about justice–about recovery, responsibility and fairness. What the world should be pondering instead is: What is Haiti owed?

Haiti’s vulnerability to natural disasters, its food shortages, poverty, deforestation and lack of infrastructure, are not accidental. To say that it is the poorest nation in the Western hemisphere is to miss the point; Haiti was made poor–by France, the United States, Great Britain, other Western powers and by the IMF and the World Bank.

Our culpability in the repeated failures of the economy and government in Haiti are apparent with only a basic historical knowledge of the country’s two centuries as an independent republic. Oppressive foreign aid programs, including loans that have lined the pockets of corrupt dictators (a fact we conveniently ignored for the sake of “national interest”), continued to keep Haiti politically and economically impoverished. Now it appears that our political leaders and bureaucrats are prepared to repeat the same failed policies in the wake of the earthquake. Kim explains how the International Monetary Fund intends to take a business-as-usual approach to the plight of Haiti:

Now, in its attempts to help Haiti, the IMF is pursuing the same kinds of policies that made Haiti a geography of precariousness even before the quake. To great fanfare, the IMF announced a new $100 million loan to Haiti on Thursday. In one crucial way, the loan is a good thing; Haiti is in dire straits and needs a massive cash infusion. But the new loan was made through the IMF’s extended credit facility, to which Haiti already has $165 million in debt. Debt relief activists tell me that these loans came with conditions, including raising prices for electricity, refusing pay increases to all public employees except those making minimum wage and keeping inflation low. They say that the new loans would impose these same conditions. In other words, in the face of this latest tragedy, the IMF is still using crisis and debt as leverage to compel neoliberal reforms.

Seeing the failure of these policies prior to the full force of nature’s destructive power, it is a sign of poor judgment to think that taking the same direction will have any positive effect on Haiti. Yet, every bit as deplorable is the fact that it’s a sign of complete moral and ethical failure on our part as citizens of the developing world to continue to ignore the real plight of our neighbors as we profit from their misfortune. It is time for each of us become agents of ethics and work to bring about change.

Right now Congresswomen Maxine Waters (D -CA) and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL) are circulating a letter that will be presented to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner urging him to use the full leverage of the U.S. government to bring about debt cancellation on the part of the IMF and other international agencies carrying outstanding loans to Haiti. Currently over 50 members of Congress have agreed to sign this letter, but you can help by urging your own representative to sign as well. With the help of the Jubilee USA Network, an outreach of over 75 religious denominations and communities seeking debt relief the underdeveloped nations, you can send an email to your representative urging her/him to join the petition. While you’re at it, you can also visit here to sign a citizens petition that Jubilee USA will present to Secretary Geithner urging him to support debt cancellation for Haiti. The deadline for this is February 2, so please consider responding to this action quickly.

And regardless of deadlines, you can offer your voice in support of H.R. 4405, the Jubilee Act for Responsible Lending and Expanded Debt Cancellation of 2009. Sponsored by Congresswoman Waters, this bill is an effort to build on the earlier success of H.R. 2634, which was filed in the previous congress, and passed the House of Representatives before becoming bogged down in the Senate. (Avelino Maestas offers a more in depth look at these bills at Huffington Post.) H.R. 4405 has been introduced and currently awaits consideration in the House Committee on Financial Services. You can help spur this bill to the floor by writing letters or sending emails to committee chair Congressman Barney Frank (D-MA) and ranking member Congressman Spencer Bachus (R-AL), as well as other members of the committee.

————

It’s time to change the way we behave as citizens of the wealthier minority within or world, and as a nation with a history that is checkered at best. I’ve made my case for our responsibility to Haiti based on how that checkered past has harmed Haiti over the years. And while I will be the first to admit that we can’t be held individually responsible for the racism and imperialism of our country’s past, we can become responsible from this moment forward for our country’s just, peaceful, and equitable policies toward our neighbors beyond our borders. I can’t encourage you enough to join with me in making a difference for our nation and our world.

What to do about the Nation’s job crisis…

Analysis…

On Thursday, President Obama held a job summit with 130 corporate executives, economists, small-business owners and union leaders in attempt to resolve the current job crisis. However, Obama has limited power to spur job growth, with interest rates already at rock bottom and federal deficits soaring. Several proposed reforms are under debate, with more predicted to pop up in the coming days.

The Wonk Room |  Today [Thursday], the White House is hosting a jobs forum, “to sound out ideas for accelerating job growth during the worst labor market in a generation,” as Democrats in both houses of Congress are attempting to craft jobs legislation. Yesterday, the administration for the first time expressed support for new legislation, so long as it has a “relatively small deficit impact.”
This effort comes in the wake of a Congressional Budget Office (CBO) report showing that the economic stimulus package is having its intended effect — creating or saving 600,000 to 1.6 million jobs — albeit in a weaker than anticipated economy.
Republicans, though, have said that additional jobs legislation “would meet resistance.” They’re justifying this position — aided by the conservative media — by claiming that the “failed economic stimulus” has not created jobs, despite the CBO reporting otherwise.

Politico |  The White House Thursday is having a job summit with leaders of American corporations to discuss how to lessen unemployment numbers. But the burden for creating jobs falls partially on Congress, who can fund major projects as part of spending legislation.
The rising unemployment rate despite the stimulus spending so far has been a major talking point for Republicans as Democrats have worked toward passing a sweeping health-care overhaul.

Top of the Ticket |   [Thursday]: It’s a day of dueling summits.
This afternoon President Obama hosts a jobs summit at the White House, where executives from business giants like Google, Xerox, Boeing and General Electric will meet with union leaders, economists, small-business owners and policy wonks to talk about how to stimulate creation of new jobs. With 17 million Americans out of work, with unemployment in Michigan topping 15% and in California above 12%, the White House wants to show sensitivity to the pain many families are enduring.
Not to be outdone, House Republicans led by Minority Leader John Boehner held their own jobs round-table this morning. Predictably, it blamed lagging jobs creation on the Obama administration’s climate change legislation, financial regulation and healthcare reform.
“The single best jobs action that President Obama could take would be to reverse course on a dangerous agenda of debt-financed spending, crippling regulation, expensive mandates and intrusive government expansion,” said Douglas Holtz-Eakin, a former Congressional Budget Office aide.
Republicans also criticized the White House for failing to invite two mega-business groups that have opposed much of the administration’s agenda: the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Federation of Independent Businesses.

The Hill |  Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) members on Wednesday criticized the Obama administration for not doing enough to help African-Americans through the bleak economy.
Soon after withholding their votes on a wide-ranging financial services bill, 10 CBC members said they are pressuring the White House to do more.
The Black Caucus is also working on a proposal to create jobs that it hopes will become part of an effort under discussion among House leaders to bolster the economy.
The CBC efforts underscore the deep anxiety lawmakers have as they face an economy witnessing the highest national unemployment rate in a generation. The unemployment rate for African-Americans is 15.7 percent, compared to the national rate of 10.2 percent.

Capitol Briefing |  Labor unions and liberal think tanks like the Economic Policy Institute have released ambitious proposals to spend hundreds of billions of dollars on job creation programs. The Congressional Black Caucus, increasingly vocal with its own concerns about the administration’s priorities, has promised to release legislative proposals of its own. But the details of a consensus plan, and the timing of its passage, remain elusive.

News…

The Recession Is Taking a Bite Out of Meat Consumption  |  AlterNet

The recession is having one positive effect. The national cholesterol is going down.
More than half of Americans have cut back on meat, many becoming “recession-bred flexitarians,” says Gourmet magazine–people who use meat as a condiment not as a meal anchor.
Even the doyenne of taste and nutrition, Martha Stewart, broadcast a vegetarian Thanksgiving show last week.
A small drop in meat exerts big consequences on your health says Katherine Tallmadge of the American Dietetic Association because red meat is the “primary source of saturated fat, which can boost levels of bad LDL cholesterol and inflammation.”

US approves 13 embryonic stem cell lines for research  |  BBC

US regulators have approved 13 new lines of human embryonic stem cells for use in scientific research.
They are the first batches of embryonic stem cells – the building blocks of the body – that have been made available to US researchers in almost a decade.
The move comes after President Barack Obama eased restrictions on federally funded embryonic stem cell research.

New Mooned

News & Analysis …

Vampire romance phenomenon The Twilight Saga: New Moon this weekend broke the U.S. single-day box office record previously held by Batman: The Dark Knight. The movie earned more than $70 million on its opening day. New Moon is based on the second novel in the bestselling Twilight series by Stephanie Meyers, and although it is targeted at a female, teenage audience, the books have also captured adults as well. They’ve drawn some debate over their depictions of both abstinence and women’s desire. Bloggers examined the phenomenon over the weekend.

Womanist Musings |  “I have actually read all four books in the series.  I was so caught up, that I went out in the rain and the cold (note: extremely bad for someone with fibro)  to get the last two books in the series.  Yes, yes, I suffered pain to get the last two books in the series. I went as far as to take time away from the blog, so that I could finish the stories and even stopped talking to friends on the phone.  Even a short conversation would have cut into my reading time.  For a solid week I immersed myself in the world of Twilight…Here comes the confession:  I LOVED IT. Yes, it is filled with all kinds of problematic messages but I simply could not resist the lure of the shiny vampire.”

The Jewish Journal |  “Bloodlust, vampirism and ambiguous morality could be seen as decidedly un-Jewish. After all, vampire mythology, as Rabbi David Wolpe notes (see accompanying article), is philosophically at odds with Jewish values. And if you ask Rosenberg, “The Twilight Saga” in particular is a departure from religion-based vampire lore and instead is an exercise in secular storytelling. … And yet, the protagonist vampires of “Twilight” are different in another way from other vampires. “They’re kosher vampires,” Rosenberg says, laughing.”

The American Prospect |  “Twilight isn’t a literary masterpiece and doesn’t need to be. There is, I would argue, a place for fantasies like these — specifically, a place in the lives of adolescent girls, who often find actual teenage boys more intimidating than the fictional vampire variety, and for whom imaginary worlds (where no one has to grow up, where danger is the prelude to a rescue, where boys have no hidden agendas aside from loving you forever) can be a shelter from the terrors of puberty. The books are silly — and have been roundly critiqued by feminists — but they speak to a legitimate need.”

Global Comment |  “Sure, it’s abstinence porn, loaded with those moments that fill pages with purple prose to recreate that throbbing tension that too often whips past on the screen—especially in “New Moon,” which contains a little more action (Werewolves! Motorcycles! Evil vampires!) and a little less heavy breathing. Stewart, when she kisses Robert Pattinson’s Edward Cullen, her vampire love, lets out tiny gasping moans that sound more honestly pleasured than episodes’ worth of huffing and puffing on HBO’s “True Blood.” It’s four thick books about a couple not having sex (and when they do it’s as wild and ridiculous as should be expected), but more importantly to this feminist, anyway, is that it’s four thick books about female desire.”

The Atlantic |  “I don’t imagine that I was alone when I was young in wishing there was something magical about me – or in reading Talking to Dragons until it became dog-eared or keeping The Mists of Avalon perpetually on renewal at the library.  What girl doesn’t wish she could discover some special attribute about herself that would smooth her way through the demons of junior high school and beyond—particularly if that something would get her noticed for the first time by a boy or girl with special attributes of their own?  But earlier this week, when I stumbled over the Twilight finish line, reaching the final page of Breaking Dawn, the series’ last book, it seemed clear to me that even in my younger days, Bella Swann would never have captured my imagination in the same way Cimorene, or Juniper, or Wise Child, or Morgaine had, and still do. Those heroines understand the joy of being loved by someone else.  But their stories make the case that being a witch, or a warrior, or a queen—even without a king—might be better than an eternity as a metaphorical princess in a metaphorical tower, no matter how much the vampire company sparkles.”

Best of the Web …

The Curious Effects of Religion  |  Boston.com

What makes economies grow? It’s a question that has occupied thinkers for centuries. Most of us would tick off things like education levels, openness to trade, natural resources, and political systems.

Here’s one you might not have considered: hell.

A pair of Harvard researchers recently examined 40 years of data from dozens of countries, trying to sort out the economic impact of religious beliefs or practices. They found that religion has a measurable effect on developing economies – and the most powerful influence relates to how strongly people believe in hell.

Into the Uncanny Valley  |  Seed Magazine

A dead body appears in almost every way to be a normal human. But the pallid skin and empty eyes signal that the person-shaped form we are looking at is, in a way we can’t even fully grasp, strange and disturbing.

We feel a similar eeriness when interacting with robots and models that look almost human but fall short of convincing us because of subtle peculiarities in their features. … Disturbing experiences that feel both familiar and strange are instances of the “uncanny,” an intuitive concept, yet one that has defied simple explanation for more than a century.

Oxfam’s Survey of Afghans: Their Wishes are No Mystery  |  Xpostfactoid

An Oxfam poll of 704 randomly selected Afghans reveals untold suffering– 1 in 5 say they’ve been tortured, three quarters have been forced to leave their homes at some point in the endless civil war, 43% have had property destroyed. The survey also has what would seem to be some moderately encouraging findings regarding the counterinsurgency: 70% see unemployment and poverty as a key driver of civil war; 48% blame the government’s weakness and corruption; 36% point to the Taliban; 25% to interference by neighboring countries; just 18% to the presence of international forces; another 18% to d al Qaeda– and another 17% to the lack of support from the international community. After 30 years of civil war, only 3% named the current conflict as the most harmful period (though the report cautions that areas where the current fighting is worst are underrepresented).

Devdutt Pattanaik: East vs. West — the myths that mystify  |  TedTalks

Devdutt Pattanaik takes an eye-opening look at the myths of India and of the West — and shows how these two fundamentally different sets of beliefs about God, death and heaven help us consistently misunderstand one another.

Recession Unofficially Over

Analysis…

The Commerce Department released a report Thursday that stated the nation’s gross domestic product expanded at an annual rate of 3.5 percent in the last three months.  Many are attributing government programs such as Cash for Clunkers for the recent economic growth; yet employers are still reluctant to hire new employees, and steady unemployment rates are leaving critics room to question how long the recovery will last.

Huffington Post |  The long awaited report is out:
“Real personal consumption expenditures increased 3.4 percent in the third quarter, in contrast to a decrease of 0.9 percent in the second. Durable goods increased 22.3 percent, in contrast to a decrease of 5.6 percent. The third-quarter increase largely reflected motor vehicle purchases under the Consumer Assistance to Recycle and Save Act of 2009 (popularly called, “Cash for Clunkers” Program). Nondurable goods increased 2.0 percent in the third quarter, in contrast to a decrease of 1.9 percent in the second. Services increased 1.2 percent, compared with an increase of 0.2 percent”

Yes the cash for clunkers program was a big goose. But notice it wasn’t just durable goods that saw increases: non-durable goods and services also increased. And not by small amounts. Also note the durable goods purchases by consumers only comprise 12% of PCEs. Services are by far the biggest component of PCEs, coming in at 65.7%. And non-durable goods comprise 21.9% of purchases. That makes the 1.2% increase in services and 2% increase in non-durables very important. The increase was broad-based.
Short version: this is a very good report.

Matthew Yglesias |  Growth is back: “Gross domestic product expanded at an annual rate of 3.5 percent in the three months ending in September, a significant spike from a relatively shrunken base. The economy had contracted at annual rates of 0.7 percent and 6.4 percent in the first and second quarters of this year, respectively.”
3.5 percent is solid growth. But given the prolonged period of increasing unemployment, the growth of the population during that period, the ongoing growth of the population, and increases in productivity, you’d have to sustain growth at that level for quite a few quarters before the labor market returns to good health. Another way of looking at it is that given the high unemployment rate and the recent contraction in output we should be able to sustain a period of abnormally high “catch-up” growth without sparking any inflation at all.
The key question going forward is will policymakers continue with growth policies until unemployment falls and wages are growing, or will they give in to demands from coupon-clippers and goldbugs to put the breaks on?

Politics Daily |  The economic growth came without a rise in inflation. It also arrived without major improvements in the job market, suggesting that it will still be months until the growth begins to stimulate new hiring.

The Daily Dish |  Only six months ago, we were afraid the entire global economy would be in a continued death spiral by now. It isn’t. One reason is that the Bush and Obama administrations pushed through emergency – and expensive – programs to prevent a second Great Depression. They may not be enough; and the deleveraging of the Bush debt (public and private) may take a while. But this is a real and tangible gain, given the very real likelihood of total meltdown only a few months ago. It is not cheer-leading to note that. Much much more is needed to tell if this recovery is self-sustaining. But a 3.5 percent gain is better than a 6.4 loss.

Gawker |  We’re very happy for the economy and its excellent quarter. How did American human beings do last quarter? Let’s have a look:

• Personal income decreased .5%, or $15.5 billion.
• Personal income taxes withheld increased $4.8 billion.
• Total personal spending increased .7%, or $20.4 billion
• Personal savings dropped 33% from the previous quarter.
• The number of new jobless claims last week was virtually unchanged from the previous week.

To recap: Your income decreased by $15.5 billion while your spending increased by $20.4 billion and your taxes increased by $4.8 billion, resulting in a 33% drop in “savings,” which means the amount of money you have. And you still don’t have a job. This recovery is going to be awesome.

Commentary |  What is unlikely to rebound is employment, which is always a lagging indicator. Worse, as I explained here, the rebound in employment has been taking longer and longer after each recession, as the microprocessor revolution rolls on.

News…

What happens to your Facebook profile when you die?  |  Talking Points Memo

In an Oct. 26 blog post, Max Kelly, Facebook’s head of security, announced the company’s policy of “memorializing” profiles of users who have died, taking them out of the public search results, sealing them from any future log-in attempts and leaving the wall open for family and friends to pay their respects.
Facebook’s attempt to clearly state its policy is prudent, as other social-networking sites have struggled with the question of users’ deaths. MySpace in particular has had a difficult time with digital rubbernecking — during the site’s heyday, a handful of well-trafficked blogs specialized in matching MySpace profiles directly to obituaries and posting the pairings online for all to see. By sealing profiles to family and friends and removing profiles from search results, Facebook assuages users’ fears that they’ll be fodder for online voyeurs in the event of their untimely demise — hopefully putting the issue to rest.

What’s So Scary About Michael Pollan?  |  AlterNet

Agribusiness is trying to combat Pollan’s message of sustainable, healthy eating. Even if agribusiness could shut Michael Pollan up, the outspoken author of Omnivore’s Dilemma and a journalism professor at University of California, Berkeley, it still has the Los Angeles Times to contend with.
Last week, the Times blasted California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo for downgrading a scheduled Pollan lecture because it received pressure from David E. Wood, a university donor who happens to be chairman of the Harris Ranch Beef Co.

What Constitutes Justice For Guantanamo Detainees?  |  NPR

President Obama’s pledge to close the U.S. prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, by the end of his first year in office navigated one roadblock last week, when Congress agreed to allow the transfer of prisoners onto U.S. soil to face trial.
But the struggle over where to try the remaining 221 prisoners — and what to do with them if convicted — is by no means over.
While the Justice Department works to meet a Nov. 16 deadline to present a plan for prosecuting prisoners, the national debate continues over how to administer justice to non-American prisoners whose allegiances may — or may not — lie with a terrorist ideology.

Nicaragua Journal | ‘Dirty Water of Imperialism’

The degree to which Nicaragua in the 1990s was obliged to yield its economic sovereignty to the international lending and donor community was brought home to met he day after the 1996 general election by an observer group, of which I was a member, with an individual heading one of those institutions in Nicaragua. When asked what he thought of the results of that election, he responded that either outcome would have been the same to him, since neither Aléman nor Ortega would have had many options concerning how to run the economy. After elaborating on that point, he then confided that his institution had an economic plan for Nicaragua and that he had arranged President-elect Aléman to come to his — the international bureaucrat’s — office to see it.

Thomas W. Walker, Nicaragua: Living in the Shadow of the Eagle

By Barbara Schwartz
Editorial Director
The Xenia Institute

Leave the United States and order a Coke, and you’ll probably find that it has a different taste. I drank one Coca-Cola during my eight days in Nicaragua, at a small restaurant (actually, it was a table set up on the front porch of a woman’s home in a Managua neighborhood), and enjoyed the taste of Coke made not with high fructose corn syrup but cane sugar.

I’m not much of a soda drinker; under normal circumstances I drink water. But in a place where most of the water is not readily drinkable, when you realize that the 20-oz. bottle of water you bought at the corner store has to last until your next trip to the store, which is three miles away and you’ll have to walk to get there, and it’s got to serve for everything — from quenching your thirst to brushing your teeth — you hunt around for other options. I ended up drinking a lot of Toña, one of two beers made in Nicaragua.

The pulperias — the small locally run corner stores — were stocked with both Coke and Pepsi, but I didn’t have the heart to drink one anyway. If you walk into a cantina and order one of these drinks, I was told, you don’t order them by name; you ask for some “dirty water of imperialism,” a reference to the political and economic hegemony the U.S. holds over the Western hemisphere and a good portion of the world.

In Nicaragua, the economic divide between the U.S. and the two-thirds world is palpable. Nicaragua is a country of stark economic division, with one of the highest degrees of income disparity in the world. It is the second-poorest country in the Western Hemisphere (after Haiti, according to the BBC), with the majority of its people living on less than $1 a day. In rural areas, electric service is spotty; if there’s running water, it’s not necessarily potable. The house we helped build, in the most rural sector of Chacraseca, was built with concrete blocks and included a concrete floor, but when you consider that the family had been living in a tiny shelter cobbled together out of salvaged tin tied to branches taken from the forest, that tiny concrete house seems almost palatial.

Our small group of builders reached that site every day after about a half-mile hike up a dirty path; the road, if you could call it that, was too bad — filled with deep ruts and sharp volcanic stones — for our van to make it all the way. Carts pulled by donkeys or oxen, however, didn’t have too much trouble.

A phrase I heard quite a bit during and after my experience in Nicaragua, especially by people who have made the journey themselves, is, “We may have material wealth, but they are rich in community.” But this division isn’t a natural one that keeps the U.S. on one side and Nicaragua on the other; it didn’t just shake out that way through a Guns, Germs and Steel history. Among other things, it’s national external debt, and it’s global economics.

Nicaragua’s external debt currently stands at about $6 million, reduced in the last few years from about $6 billions dollars after the nation entered the World Bank’s Highly Indebted Poor Countries program that canceled 80% of Nicaragua’s debt. This works out to about $1,000 for every person in Nicaragua. That original debt, though exacerbated by the civil war and environmental disasters like hurricanes and volcanic eruptions and from Nicaragua’s inability to pay the interest on those loans, came from bond payments, bank bankruptcies and structural adjustment programs imposed by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. Witness for Peace says Nicaragua spends about 25% of its annual budget on paying its external debt. Health care and education get 14% and 11%, respectively. So the money that could go to into social programs that might help end the cycle of poverty instead go into debt repayment,

There is plenty of argument about whether global economic programs such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund are helpful or harmful to the economies of countries in the two-thirds world. Structural adjustment programs, for example, provide money for needed national projects such as road and dam projects, but they come with conditions such as deregulation of prices and currency, the privatization of state industries and the elimination of trade barriers. Essentially, the country is required to take part in the neoliberal market system that rewards lending institutions and wealthier governments that lend the money, at the expense of the nation’s poor.

Vincent A. Gallagher, in his book The True Cost of Low Prices: The Violence of Globalization, details the downward economic spirals that indebted countries experience under these programs. For example:

The social impact of IMF-sponsored devaluation is usually brutal and immediate. Overnight the prices of food, drugs, fuel, public services and many other products increase sometimes 30 to 50 percent. In poor countries high school students, taxi drivers and people with no formal education come to realize that prices rise after the visits by IMF representatives are reported in the newspapers. Many people in the United States have no idea how the system works. Poor people know all about it because of the way it impacts their lives. The prices of everything go up. …

Increases in the cost of transportation can be devastating. For example workers living in a poor area may take three buses to get to work. With devaluation, transportation costs can go up five cents for each bus fare. So the cost to get to the job and back can go up thirty cents a day or more. If the workers were already living on less than a dollar a day, as over 1 billion people do, the devaluation can push them over the edge. It may now be better for them to go to the local garbage dump to collect paper, bottles, metal and plastic to sell for recycling. They may be able to find food at the dump.

During my brief visit to Nicaragua this summer, the exchange rate was 20 cordobas for each U.S. dollar. The $50 U.S. that I exchanged in Managua lasted the entire eight days, dribbling out of my pocket usually less than a dollar at a time. A souvenir magnet I would have paid $5 for in the U.S. cost me a quarter (which I paid with a U.S. coin; all my cordobas were in 50s and 100s, and the vendor couldn’t make change). And the Coke, the “dirty water of the imperialism”? About 18 cordobas, or a little less than a buck. As was the bottled (and clean, safe-to-drink) water, as was the beer.

So think about this: If you’re making about $2 a day, are you going to be able to fork over nearly 50% of that for a clean drink? Or will you take your chances with the contaminated well that may end up giving you cancer, diarrhea or a host of other health problems?

I’m not an economist; I can barely balance my own checkbook, and when I was in Nicaragua I never could get the hang of the exchange rate. My heart would jump at seeing the menu price for ice cream at 60 cordobas. I had the same experience in Nogales, México, on a BorderLinks experience, trying to plan a dinner for eight on a maquiladora salary and realizing that a gallon of milk would probably deplete most of what I had. Everyone talks about how cheap it is to go to Latin America; our houses are filled with stuff manufactured by factories or food grown in Latin America that we love because they’re so cheap and help us meet our personal budgets with ease. But that’s only because the dollar goes horrifically further than cordoba, the peso, the sole. But if everything you buy is based on the dollar, and all you get is 20 cordobas a day, how will you feed your family? For the first time in my life, I felt too wealthy. I was able to spend my cordobas like water and came home with just a few coins in my pocket because I wanted to make sure it stayed in the country and benefited someone there. But I didn’t feel blessed, I felt like something was terribly wrong with the world, and I was on the wrong side of that divide.

I can’t discount that the development programs by the IMF and World Bank have provided helped Nicaragua by providing some improvement of infrastructure and creation of new markets, new imports and investment. There is much more to this story that I have recounted and attempted to critique here, and I know that I will probably always lack the background to really understand the intricacies of global economics. So I have to fall back on my experience, and I know what I saw. And I can’t see how a system that takes away funds from health care and education and infrastructure, a system that’s geared toward bringing revenue to the investors at the expense of the people in the country being invested in, is one that I can give my blessing.

It’s colonialism in an economic form, imperialism through investment. And I really have to ask myself if I want to be on the side of the empire. It’s reframed my view of Coke and Pepsi and a number of things I take for granted. It’s not necessarily the products, but what they stand for — the hegemony of the neoliberal market and the toll it takes on two-thirds of the world.

Sexual Politics, the Law and the Roman Polanski Arrest

Analysis …

Director Roman Polanski, best-known in the U.S. as the Oscar award-winning director of The Pianist and the classic horror film Rosemary’s Baby was arrested last weekend in Switzerland on a U.S. arrest warrant. In 1977, Polanski was charged with having unlawful sex with a 13-year-old girl; Polanski jumped bail and fled the country the following year after spending several weeks in a U.S. jail. He has lived outside of the U.S. since then.

Bloggers, world leaders and Hollywood moguls have wondered why authorities have chosen to arrest Polanski, who is 76, at this time. Some observers have noted that Polanski’s case highlights the gray areas of U.S. attitudes both about sex and due process.

Michael Wolff @The Huffington Post |  “Prosecutors are the scariest people in a democracy because they can have you arrested and put in jail. They can do this essentially at will, if arresting you suits their purposes. Alternatively, they can not arrest you if that suits their purposes. One reason prosecutors can function at such a level of virtually no accountability is because, while almost all other public servants have terrible press, law enforcement agencies have always used their muscle to maintain good press (there is even a further point about, specifically, the LA prosecutor’s office and its relationship to the prosecutor’s image in television and movies).”

The League of Ordinary Gentlemen |  “I think Polanski is a brilliant filmmaker and a world-class cretin. I’m disgusted by what he did. But I also have great reservations about how we can try him and maintain a full grasp on due process and rights of the accused. The physical evidence is in bad condition;the police who ran his case are mostly dead; the key witnesses are unlikely to cooperate, including the victim; and most importantly, and most concerning, for a democratic society, is that the judge and the prosecuting attorney conspired during the case. That’s a really, really big deal, and contra this piece from Salon, it’s a big deal no matter whether the prosecutors in LA think it’s a big deal or not. That sort of thing absolutely can’t happen in a nation of laws. Can’t.”

Feministe |  “If you believe arresting people and making them stand trial is worth anything, why the objection? Why the international outcry and circulation of petitions and raging French government officials? Because seriously, the message I’m hearing is, if you have enough money and celebrity friends, if you’re talented enough, if you’re charming enough, everyone thinks that you should just be left alone to rape underage girls and how dare anyone call you on it or even suggest that you have to stand trial like anyone else. And the same news media that pruriently reports the horrible details of similar crimes done by non-famous people will back you up on it. This, my friends, is what a rape culture looks like.”

FP Passport |  “Polanski’s case is perhaps not unique in the world of extradition law, but it is provocative. The notion of the Los Angeles DA’s office for 32 years tracking the director’s busy European travel schedule, waiting for an opportunity, whilst he chose to appear at various film festivals via video-conference rather than in person, is fascinating. But beyond the celebrity factor, it’s hard to pin down exactly what seems so incongruous. Is it simply that in a post-9/11 world we’re now accustomed to thinking of “extradition” in connection with national security interests, and clear-and-present danger?”

Anne Applebaum @The Washington Post |  “I am certain there are many who will harrumph that, following this arrest, justice was done at last. But Polanski is 76. To put him on trial or keep him in jail does not serve society in general or his victim in particular. Nor does it prove the doggedness and earnestness of the American legal system. If he weren’t famous, I bet no one would bother with him at all.”

Alas, a Blog |  “Yes, it’s true, if Polanski wasn’t famous, he wouldn’t be in this mess, because he wouldn’t have had access to Jack Nicholson’s house while Jack was out of town. And he wouldn’t have been able to flee to France. And he wouldn’t have been able to live comfortably for 30 years. But hey, the poor guy had to forgo his Oscar! The horror!”

Also in the news … Associated Press publishes internal memo on Polanski arrest instead of the news story.

News …

• The world’s population of carnivores have tripled in the past 30 years (Read more).
• Study shows how video can alter eyewitness memory (Read more).
• FiveThirtyEight takes a look at the study that says Oklahoma high school students are dumb and gets suspicious (Read more).
• Iraq steps up for Iran (Read more).

Revving Up Economy or Out of Gas?

Analysis …

The Cash for Clunkers program, which offered car buyers hefty rebates to buy automobiles that are more fuel-efficient than the ones they traded in and was meant to give a boost to the U.S. auto industry, ended Monday. NPR reported that the top cars bought through the program were foreign cars (the top two: the Toyota Corolla and the Honda Civic). Was the program a success, or will it be ranked as a big-spending stimulus program that didn’t end up helping the economy?

Slate |  “How effective has it been as economic stimulus? Since the onset of the crisis, top White House economics adviser Larry Summers has argued that stimulus efforts should be “timely, targeted and temporary.” As the crisis deepened, Summers went one letter earlier in the alphabet to alliterate that stimulus should be “speedy, substantial and sustained.” Judging by the results so far, Cash for Clunkers meets five of Summers’ six criteria—all but “sustained.”"

Gary Becker |  “If the goal of the program is to help stimulate the economy by subsidizing consumer spending, why limit it to individuals who own old cars? Why not give vouchers to all consumers that they can spend for a limited time period on many durable goods, such as computers, printers, TV sets, washing machines, and refrigerators? If that seems like too obvious a straight handout, the government could require consumers to turn in old computers or other durable goods in exchange for new ones. Of course, as with the cash-for car clunkers subsidy, many consumers under this more general clunker program would simply alter when they purchased the new durables to take advantage of the subsidy. The net result would again be subsidies that produced little net increase in spending.”

Richard Posner |  “Unlike Becker, I do not conclude from this unhappy episode that the Keynesian approach to fighting depression is misconceived. The problem with the $787 stimulus package that Congress enacted in February, to which the “cash for clunkers” program was a belated addition, was that it was poorly designed and has been lackadaisically executed. Roughly two-thirds of the program consists of transfer payments rather than public works, and because the Administration has failed to push the public-works components (it should have appointed an expediter to try to cut the red tape that smothers public projects), virtually all the stimulus disbursements to date have consisted of transfer payments (including, what are not really transfer payments, tax reductions that don’t put cash in people’s pockets until they are reflected in reductions in withholding or estimated tax payments, or in increased rebates when one files one’s year-end return on April 15).”

ProPublica |  “Not content to put you in a new car, the government wants you to think about a new washing machine and fridge, too. BusinessWeek reports that the Department of Energy will use stimulus cash to offer rebates of up to $200 for the purchase of high-efficiency household appliances [1]. (You don’t need to turn in your old one.) The department has up to $300 million to spend on the program, which only covers appliances with an Energy Star seal. According to BusinessWeek, the industry could use the help: Shipments of washers, dryers, refrigerators and ovens fell by 10 percent in 2008.”

New American Media |  “What about the millions of Americans who never owned a giant SUV to begin with? What about those of us who can’t afford a car or who have simply been doing our part for the environment by not driving everywhere we go? What about those of us who use public transit to get around? The short answer is that we get almost nothing. The Obama administration reports only $8 billion (or approximately 1 percent) of federal stimulus money is going to public transportation.”

Did you get a new car under the Cash for Clunkers program? Do you think this program was helpful or a big waste of money?

News & Analysis …

• Why are some seniors who are benefiting from government programs decrying “socialist” government programs? (Read more).
• Some conservatives are turning to their interpretation of the  10th Amendment to rally against government spending programs and regulations (Read more).
• Trans attorney Brittany Novotny is challenging Oklahoma Rep. Sally Kern for her seat in the legislatire (Read more).
• 5 Myths about health care around the world (Read more).
• A U.S. businessman’s personal investigation into the U.S. health care system (Read more).
• Exactly who should save the world’s women? (Read more).
• How much do your electronic gadgets contribute to climate change? (Read more).
• How the much criticized stimulus plan may be Obama’s invisible successs (Read more).
• TEDTAlks: Career analyst Dan Pink explains why traditional rewards may not be the best way to motivate people:

Recent College Grads Suffer in Job Search

On May 10th, 2008 I walked across the stage at the Lloyd Noble Center along with about a thousand or more of my classmates.   I was graduating with a Bachelor of Arts in Religious Studies summa cum laude with minors in Nonprofit Organizational Studies, History and Political Science.  I had worked internships in 1) refugee resettlement in Atlanta, GA, 2) city planning for OKC, 3) a homeless alliance in Norman, and 4) the Oklahoma State Senate.  I had done everything right.  I thought I was poised for success.  But, instead of looking for a job around OK, I wanted to move somewhere so I took an Americorps position in Los Angeles.  I was interested in social service work and enjoyed my job.  But when the year was coming to a close, the job search began…

To date, I have sent in 68 job applications for jobs that I am qualified to do.  I have had 6 interviews and no offers.  Luckily, my Americorps agency offered me to stay on part-time for a month while they transition and I try to find something else.  I still have some leads but the process has been excruciating, worse than I would have ever thought, even in a bad economy. 

It turns out that I am not alone.  As I know anecdotally, others are suffering as well.  A friend with an Master’s in Public Policy from UCLA is applying for the same jobs I am despite having a graduate degree from a top university.  Other friends search desperately for jobs after completing law school.  One student, Trina Thompson is suing her university’s Office of Career Advancement for the sum of her $70,000 tuition plus $2,000 for stress.  Although the suit is being said to be “completely without merit,” the situation does speak to the heart of the matter when it comes to the job search of recent grads.  It begs the question, “In this economy, is a college degree worth anything?” 

A blog title asks another question, “Is This the Worst Year to Graduate College Ever?”   The author writes about the troubles faced by recent grads.

As a recent graduate from a university rated “Most Selective” by US News & World Report, Tyler was understandably disappointed when he landed in a cubicle-drone job that barely pays minimum wage—that is, until he was laid off and ended up substitute teaching for even less.

Witha double-major in Spanish and psychology and a strong GPA, he thought for sure he was on the fast track to a career in event planning, a field he’d secured a summer internship in, palling around withthe stars of CNBC. But withcorporations scaling back their parties and conventions (lest they be associated with seamy AIG-style taxpayer-funded beach junkets), Tyler found himself working in loss-prevention for Brookstone for $10.50 an hour. Then he was laid off. Now he’s substitute teaching for $10 an hour.

“I’m applying for jobs now that I wouldn’t have even considered when I started this thing,” he says.

But, even jobs that may be considered ’settling’ for college grads can be hard to come by.  Employers would rather give a job to a person who is not going to leave when they find a real job.  In addition, college grads may not perform well at jobs they may feel to be beneath them.

I wonder what those of us this same boat are doing to stay alive.  Moving home with family to save costs?  Running up debt while frantically searching for jobs?  Either way, the overqualification of the American work force is taking a toll on its newest members.  What can be done to reverse this trend?  Maybe college seniors should be taking mandatory career counseling classes to better prepare them for the job search in their future.  Some are putting off entering the work force by going to grad school in the hope that when they leave, the economy will have recovered and competition will be less fierce.  But, there are no certainties that will be the case.  Maybe when they leave the shelter of graduate institutions, they will just have another peice of paper and mounds of debt.

As far as my personal story, I am trying my hardest to find something.  But at this point, it seems like it’s all a game of luck.

What Lies Ahead for Sotomayor

Analysis …

Judge Sonia Sotomayor was sworn in last Friday as the U.S.’s third female and first Latina Supreme Court justice. While many columnists and analysts hailed her confirmation as a milestone in U.S. history, they also acknowledged that the nation still has a long way to go in the creating peace between those supporting and opposing Sotomayor’s nomination, as well as settling the issues about judicial objectivity.

The Christian Science Monitor |  “Are the politics of Associate Justice Sotomayor’s appointment now over? Far from it. In the Senate confirmation vote, all but a handful of Republicans voted against her, and many see this as trouble for a party increasingly rejected by Hispanic voters. And it’s not just Democrats making this point. Conservative MSNBC host Joe Scarborough (a former Republican congressman) said this about the GOP’s action on Sotomayor: “What’s wrong with them? … It’s about as short-sighted and stupid as any political move this year. The first test could come in the midterm elections next year.”

Obsidian Wings |  “What concerns me about the Sotomayor debate was its defensiveness.  Progressive jurisprudence didn’t exactly come away a winner.  Just the opposite, in fact.  Sotomayor ran away from it, as did many of the legislators defending her.”

FiveThirtyEight |  “ I don’t think anybody should vote for (or against) Sotomayor because she’s Hispanic, nor do I think they should vote for her because their constitutents are. But given that Sotomayor is reasonably popular with the public — most polls show about 50 percent wanting a vote in favor of confirmation, 30 percent against, and 20 percent indifferent — I was expecting a few more ‘yeas’.”

Center for American Progress |  “While there’s every indication that Sotomayor will be an excellent justice, the sad reality is that at least for the near future her best work will be done in dissent. Indeed, Justice Sotomayor joins a Court dominated by a conservative majority that consistently places the profits of well-heeled interests ahead of the law.”

Tapped |  “As Supreme Court experts rarely fail to point out, Sonia Sotomayor’s accession to the Supreme Court this week will do little to shift future outcomes in hot button cases, because she will likely vote as did her predecessor, center-left Justice David Souter. Nevertheless, the confirmation ritual she has just completed could ultimately turn out to be a substantial plus for progressives. Her performance, and even more, statements by senators, especially Judiciary Committee Chair Patrick Leahy, could reposition progressives on and off the Court with a new vision that spotlights the Roberts Court’s appetite for judicial supremacy and reactionary outcomes — “unabashed law-making,” as Justice John Paul Stevens recently put it.”

News …

• How cities make the struggles that come with poverty a crime (Read more). Also read Caitlin Frazier’s analysis on this issue at her blog.
• More U.S. families are relying on the wages of women — who are still earning less than men — as primary breadwinners as more men lose their jobs during the recession  (Read more).
• Sound and serious arguments about the “Cash for Clunkers” program (Read more).
• Where does empathy reside in the human brain? (Read more).

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