A programme of nuclear power stations will be delayed by at least three months awaiting report on Japan disaster • Chris Huhne faces legal challenge over nuclear link to cancer in children The government’s plans to build a new programme of nuclear power stations in England will be delayed by at least three months so that lessons can be learned from the accident at Fukushima in Japan. The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) and the Environment Agency (EA) , which are jointly assessing the safety of proposed reactor designs, have said this year’s deadline for completing the assessments will now not be met. The two regulatory agencies said that they would not come to any conclusions in June as had been promised. Instead they will wait for a final report on the implications of Fukushima, by the chief nuclear inspector, Mike Weightman, due in September. Weightman has been asked by the energy and climate change secretary, Chris Huhne, to examine the lessons that could be learned from the Japanese accident, triggered by an earthquake and a tsunami last month. Until now it had not been clear how this would impact on the ” generic design assessment ” of reactors which the HSE and EA have been working on since 2006. In a joint statement, the two agencies said: “Safety and protection of people and the environment will always be our top priority. It is important that we take the necessary time needed to ensure that we learn any relevant lessons emerging from the events in Japan, and implement any improvements that might be required to the new reactor designs.” New reactors cannot be built until the regulators are satisfied they are safe. A spokesman for the Department of Energy and Climate Change said the Weightman’s recommendations should be taken into account. “It’s too early to say exactly what impact this will have on the overall timeline. We’re continuing with our facilitative actions to encourage investment to come forward as soon as possible,” he said. But this was in marked contrast to a statement by the climate change minister, Greg Barker. He was quoted by Bloomberg as saying that Fukushima would cause no “material delay” to Britain’s nuclear power programme. The French company that wants to build its EPR design of power station, EDF Energy, has been previously quoted as saying that any delays due to Fukushima would be “minimal” . The US firm, Westinghouse, is bidding to build differently designed AP1000 reactors. Last October the UK government gave the initial go-ahead for new nuclear stations at eight sites around the coast of England and Wales. Last week, the Guardian revealed that ministers were being taken to court over allegations that cancer risks had not been properly evaluated. The Nuclear Industry Association, which represents UK nuclear companies, said that the regulators’ announcement was “correct”. A spokesman said: “We should take time to review and learn the lessons of the Japanese crisis, while at the same time recognising that new nuclear development is essential for the UK.” Nuclear power Energy Japan disaster Japan Chris Huhne Green politics Rob Edwards guardian.co.uk
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Many military and security personnel join group pushing for peace treaties with Syria, Lebanon and the Palestinians A group of prominent Israelis, including heads of the army and security services, hope to revive the peace initiative by announcing details of possible treaties with the Palestinians, Syria and Lebanon. The Israeli Peace Initiative, a two-page document, states that Israel will withdraw from the land it occupied in 1967 in both the West Bank and the Golan Heights, and pay compensation to refugees. The document has been given to Binyamin Netanyahu, the prime minister, who has said he will read it with interest. The authors of the document, which will be launched at a press conference in Tel Aviv on Wednesday, say that it is partly inspired by the revolutions that have taken place in the Middle East. It presents an opportunity for Israelis to participate in the “winds of change” blowing through the Middle East, they say. “We looked around at what was happening in neighbouring countries and we said to ourselves, ‘It is about time that the Israeli public raised its voice as well.’ We feel this initiative can bring along many members of the public,” Danny Yatom, the former head of the Israeli external security agency, Mossad, told the New York Times. The group aims to generate public support for a peace agreement that will force the Israeli government to re-engage with the Palestinians, who have suspended meetings in protest at continued settlement building in the West Bank. Palestinians see such building as an attempt to create “facts on the ground” that obstruct negotiations. Yaakov Perry, a former head of Shin Bet, the internal security agency, said he hoped that the plan would galvanise the Israeli government in this time of change around the Middle East. “We are isolated internationally and seen to be against peace,” he told the New York Times. “I hope this will make a small contribution to pushing our prime minister forward. It is about time that Israel initiates something on peace.” The Israeli Peace Initiative recognises the Arab Peace Initiative of 2002, which was sponsored by the government of Saudi Arabia, as “a historic effort made by the Arab states to reach a breakthrough and achieve peace on a regional basis”. The Israeli initiative endorses the Arab statement that “a military solution to the conflict will not achieve peace or provide security for the parties”. The initiative lays out the framework for peace agreements between Israel, Syria and the Palestinians. It calls for a sovereign and independent Palestinian state based on the borders between Israel and Jordan in 1967 but modified to ensure territorial contiguity for the Palestinian state. Some settlements would be placed under Israeli control. Compensation would be paid to refugees and their host countries by Israel and the international community, according to the initiative, but the refugees would be able to return only to the Palestinian state, with a few exceptions who would be allowed to return to what is now Israel. The plan also calls for a road link between the West Bank and Gaza, which would cut across Israeli territory but would be under Palestinian control. It also calls for Israeli withdrawal from the Golan Heights over five years in order to achieve peace with Syria and a peace agreement with Lebanon. Dan Meridor, the deputy prime minister, speaking at an event in Jerusalem, said he had not yet studied the document. “The paradigm is clear, that is a two-state solution, but the other elements should be negotiated, not dictated,” he said. Referring to the uprisings elsewhere in the Middle East, he said: “Some people say that we should wait for the aftershocks to happen, for everything to settle down, but I don’t believe we can wait.” Israel Palestinian territories Syria Lebanon Middle East Conal Urquhart guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …WI’s Judge Prosser goes on Fox begging for votes and blames fellow Justice for making him call her a ‘bitch’
April 5, 2011 No Comment
Click here to view this media Greta Van Susteren last night painted the Wisconsin Supreme Court Judge election today as being “twisted” because of the reaction the state has had to Gov. Scott Walker’s outrageous agenda. In her slanted version of the the election she describes the “Big Union bosses” as the ones spending gobs of money against meek little Prosser — but on the flip side, only “special interest” groups are donating to his side. Can Greta please explain to me why she failed to mention that her heartthrob from Alaska and bigwig electioneer, Sarah Palin, has been tweeting up a ton of support for the reelection of Prosser? Well, Republicans are always the victims on Fox. A one-sided slant as usual. Tea Party groups are also spending a ton of money supporting him. Four conservative groups, including the Tea Party Express, have combined to spend $1.2 million so far on pro-Prosser ads, according to a media-tracking group. — One conservative group, the California-based Tea Party Express, is aiming to spend up to $200,000 on an ad that paints Kloppenburg as unqualified for a judgeship and a puppet of union bosses. JoAnne Kloppenburg declined to go on the show, but let’s face it. Greta knew that she would decline to do an interview with a network that is hostile to her and that Prosser would jump at the chance of getting his free ad space from Fox in hopes of ginning up more support for himself from the Tea Party crowd and throw as much dirt at JoAnne as possible. I think it’s inappropriate and unethical for Fox News to have candidates for public office on the night before an election, because it’s a clear attempt to manipulate the election results. Prosser gets to throw bricks at Kloppenburg for free — including defending himself on accusations that he failed to prosecute a child-abusing priest. The judge says that he was very sensitive to the family over the abuse, but thought the evidence was ambiguous and the two young boys didn’t have the credibility to stand up to a well-established priest. What did he do? He got the priest banished from the area and asked to get him treatment because he never suspected him to be a serial abuser because, get this, back then nobody knew about those things? Huh? Two boys… How many boys have to be abused before they would get prosecuted by Prosser? Greta brought up the dirty story of Prosser calling the Chief Justice of the Wisconsin court a “bitch’ and threatening to “destroy her” . Watch how she phrases the events. Calling the Chief Justice a bitch is not as bad as having somebody snitch on you. ya know. It was all a TRAP to ensnare him! Right. VAN SUSTEREN: Justice Ann Walsh Bradley confirming that a fit of temper that you had by calling her a bitch and wanting to destroy her sent it not just to you, but to others and then she later released it to the newspaper. What in the world is going on in the WI Supreme Court that you’re saying that kind of stuff to each other and snitching on each other and giving emails out and disclosing the private conversations of the State Supreme Court? What is going on? PROSSER: Wow, there’s a lot to try and untangle there. We’re talking about an incident that occurred more than a year ago…( See, there’s a statute of limitation on threatening and calling a female judge a bitch. ) We’re talking about multiple controversies that came to a head at the same time. It was an explosive situation. I said something I should not have said and that I regret and I apologize for, on the other hand ( she really was a bitch and I did need to destroy her ) I want people to know that I simply didn’t go into it, a private conversation and suddenly pop out with this ill advised statement without any provocation ….. VAN SUSTEREN: At that point I think they were trying to trap you. I mean I’m not trying to defend you calling a Supreme Court Justice a bitch, but the fact that they memorialized it meant they were setting the trap on you on that one. PROSSER: They were not only setting the trap, they were massaging the record, changing the record. I have to say it wasn’t good behavior on my part, but, [sigh] this was not all my fault. There was some provocation here. Yeah, just like a mouse looking for some cheese. OK, Greta ruled the nasty name-calling a trap in the first place, and he says Justice Abrahamson deserved it. Good job, Fox News. Greta has figured it all out. She never did get to the part where he said he wanted to destroy her. Does that have a statute of limitations too if he said it way back in 2010?
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The revamped Archers theme tune for Radio 4 Extra’s Ambridge Extra may annoy the show’s fans. But are there any scores where the tinkering has worked? Not much is sacred when it comes to television. You can replace actors whenever the mood calls, or continue to call your show Taggart even though the bloke who played Taggart died 17 years ago, and people won’t kick up too much of a fuss. But start mucking around with theme tunes and you risk unleashing hell. This is something that Radio 4 Extra would do well to bear in mind. This morning saw the debut of Ambridge Extra, a weird new Xtra Factor-style show created to accompany The Archers. Its theme tune is the same one that The Archers always had – Barwick Green by Arthur Wood – but this version has been arranged and recorded by contemporary folk band Bellowhead. As a result, there’s a very real chance that casual listeners will hear Ambridge Extra and assume it’s a bizarre new version of The Archers that takes place during a French-themed booze-up on Captain Pugwash’s pirate ship. But it could be worse. At least Bellowhead’s version is still identifiably the theme tune to The Archers, and it’s not like they’ve made it go dubstep or anything. Also, don’t forget that this isn’t the main Archers theme tune we’re talking about, merely a 15-minute spin-off programme that airs on one of the BBC’s lesser digital stations. But just in case any other TV or radio producers feel like following Radio 4′s lead by commissioning a replacement to a beloved theme tune, let’s just pray they follow the golden rules. Rule one: Don’t just add a few dancey drum beats This is usually the domain of BBC Sports, a department compelled to destroy all of its classic theme tunes by intermittently jazzing them up with the latest Bontempi drumbeat preset. Snooker fans will be able to remember the anguish they felt when their beloved signature tune – Drag Racer by The Doug Wood Band – was given a Fatboy Slim-style mauling and renamed 147 Lockdown almost a decade ago. Worse still is the treatment doled out to the A Question Of Sport theme tune. In the last 20 years, it’s been abused with synthy handclaps , insipid drum and bass , awful electric guitar lift muzak and faux-profound orchestralisms . Just be thankful Grandstand isn’t still on air. It’d probably sound like N-Dubz by now. Rule two: Don’t introduce a new theme tune for no reason Think Grange Hill and, regardless of how old you are, you immediately think of Chicken Man by Alan Hawkshaw. That’s because it’s a timeless, iconic piece of music; its loping gait and elastic bass manages to perfectly capture the essence of what it’s like to be at school, especially when accompanied by a cartoon of a flying sausage. What you don’t think of, however, is the theme tune that replaced Chicken Man in 1990 , because it sounds like it should be soundtracking an instructional health and safety video for a regional firm of double glazing installers. If you do think of this version of the Grange Hill theme tune, it’s safe to assume that you’re already dead to me. Rule three: Treat the original with respect The first Doctor Who theme tune was a triumph of technology and willpower. Delia Derbyshire of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop managed to ingeniously wrestle it into existence by laboriously manipulating a tape recording of a test tone oscillator until she was finally able to realise Ron Gainer’s score. The theme tune has been updated several times since then, often by allowing the Radiophonic Workshop to play with gigantic analogue synthesizers until it was closed down in 1998. Murray Gold has been in charge of the show’s theme since its resurrection in 2005 and, while he hasn’t come close to replicating the otherworldy hum of the original, at least he’s managed to retain its spirit of adventure. Entertainment Drama Television The Archers Radio Stuart Heritage guardian.co.uk
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James Jones’s novel, bowdlerised for many years, set to appear for the first time as author intended The novel prompted one of the most famous heterosexual sex scenes in film history, with Burt Lancaster and Deborah Kerr clasping each other passionately on a beach amid the foaming waves. But an uncensored text of James Jones’s 1951 novel From Here to Eternity has revealed that the author originally intended to include frank references to homosexuality considered too scandalous to be published at the time. The novel, Jones’s debut, tells of a group of soldiers stationed on a barracks in Hawaii in 1941, and was loosely based on the author’s own army experiences on the island in the run-up to the second world war. Jones served as a soldier from 1939 to 1945 and was present at both the attack on Pearl Harbor and the battle for Guadalcanal, at which he was injured, and also decorated for his service. In later books, The Thin Red Line and Soon Came Running, Jones went on to explore the experience of combat and the aftermath of war. From Here to Eternity is the story of first sergeant Milt Warden, who has an affair with Karen, the wife of his captain. But the original text of the novel included two scenes which never made it to the published edition, let alone the film. In one, private Angelo Maggio – the soldier played by Frank Sinatra in the 1953 film – confesses to having oral sex with a wealthy man for $5 or $10 that “comes in handy the middle of the month”. In the second scene a military investigation into gay activity is mooted. Jones’s editor at Scribner refused to allow the scenes to be included, and also excised various swear words originally intended to be included in the dialogue. In America at the time the US postal service would not carry material it considered obscene, making it impossible for books the organisation thought offensive to be distributed. Disapproval from the influential Book-of-the-Month Club, a mail order club, also meant the end of a novel’s chances of commercial success. Many authors, including Ernest Hemingway , were therefore forced to tone down their novels’ language and content, on pragmatic rather than moral grounds. Jones’s daughter, novelist Kaylie Jones, said her father fought “bitterly” to keep the novel’s language the way he’d originally intended it , but eventually acceded to his editor’s insistence. Now, 60 years after it was first published, and more than 30 since Jones’s death in 1977, the original version will be produced as an ebook through digital publisher Open Road . Sarah Churchwell, senior lecturer in American literature and culture at the University of East Anglia, welcomed the publication as a reversal of censorship. “Jones was aspiring to realism and verisimilitude and objected to the sanitisation of his novel,” she said. “He was trying to tell the truth about war. In the 1950s the US was telling itself a mythic, grandiose, heroic story about the second world war and GI Joe saving the world. Jones was saying, ‘That wasn’t the war I saw, I want to write something more honest and realistic. Whatever the mid-America myth, one of the things men were doing was giving blow jobs for money.’” Churchill added that it was also important to acknowledge that a story celebrated for inspiring the classic Hollywood beach scene between Lancaster and Kerr was actually envisioned as a novel that acknowledged homosexuality. “It’s an important historical correction, to allow James Jones his rightful place as one of the earliest mainstream US novelists to try to treat homosexuality sympathetically, without judging or pathologising it,” she said. “People don’t think of Jones as an avant-garde writer, but in his way he was. We know about Hemingway and Allen Ginsberg , but we don’t put James Jones into that story and he deserves to be there.” Fiction Censorship Publishing Ebooks Benedicte Page guardian.co.uk
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A year after her grandson’s wedding, Queen to lead river pageant of 1,000 boats in celebration of 60 years on the throne You wait ages for one royal celebration and then two turn up in quick succession. Plans for a pageant of 1,000 boats down the Thames in June next year to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the Queen’s accession have been announced at London’s City Hall. The river centrepiece of the diamond jubilee celebrations will be the largest for at least 350 years – by comparison a similar procession upstream from Greenwich during the Queen’s silver jubilee year of 1977 attracted 140 vessels. It will also result in a long weekend of public holidays for the second year running, after this month’s royal wedding and the May Day bank holiday resulted in a four-day weekend. The Thames procession will take place on Sunday 3 June 2012 and will inevitably be used as an opportunity to extend the summer’s anticipated tourist influx before the Olympic Games, which start eight weeks later. The Queen, who by then will be 86, will ride down the river from Putney to Tower Bridge in a Thames sailing barge temporarily converted to look like an ornate 18th-century royal galley of the sort that used to convey her Hanoverian ancestors. It was aptly described by Boris Johnson, London’s mayor, as a royal quinquereme, “probably rowed by oiled and manacled MPs”. In its wake will follow craft of all shapes and sizes, from rowing boats to gondolas, tugs, steamers, dhows and wherries: everything, in Johnson’s words, “with the possible exception of the Ark Royal”. The fleet, more than seven miles long and taking an hour and a half to pass, will be accompanied by bands and hooters, water jets and bells from a floating belfry and from the churches sited along the river banks. There will be fireworks and music characteristic of every decade of the Queen’s reign will add to the cacophony. There will be 30,000 people afloat and a million more are expected to line the route. “It is going,” said the mayor, “to be a joyful, successful version of – err – Dunkirk. I hope. We have liquid history flowing through our city and next year we are going to make the most of it.” The organisers have written to every lord lieutenant in the country and to Commonwealth high commissioners to summon craft of all sorts. Boat owners whose vessels are seaworthy and capable of progressing downstream on the ebbing tide that day at four knots an hour (4.6mph) will be invited to apply to take part. Adrian Evans, whose previous experience as an events organiser encompasses the Archaos chainsaw juggling circus group and – possibly less happily – the capital’s millennium celebrations, said: “We are looking for the quirky and unusual. They are all going to be decked out with union jacks and an abundance of red, white and blue … It is going to be a monumental logistical challenge.” The Conservative peer Lord Salisbury, chairman of the Thames jubilee foundation, whose Cecil family ancestors have organised royal pageants since Tudor times, tried a touch of the demotic: “Charles II’s pageant in 1662 claimed to have 10,000 boats, but I am sure that was journalistic licence. My direct ancestor at that time was Nell Gwynne, the king’s Protestant whore, so that’s who I am descended from.” He insisted that the funding of the event will be met by private sponsorship, but his coyness about the projected cost was ruthlessly subverted by the mayor, who is, after all, a former journalist. “It’s an £8m budget, that’s the capital amount, isn’t it?” said Johnson. “It is going to be quite a lot of millions, whatever the final sum turns out to be … it will be … I am sure it will bring tourists here in droves,” said a spluttering Salisbury before conceding that the mayor’s suggestion was correct. Public funding will meet security and crowd control costs. Mindful that he has a mayoral election before then, Johnson added: “It is quite possible that on 3 June I will be in a coracle … but I hope to be somewhere in the flotilla.” He obviously has no intention of missing the summer of fun. The Queen Monarchy London Boris Johnson Stephen Bates guardian.co.uk
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US withdrawal of attack planes puts pressure on European countries, especially France, to offer more strike capability Nato is running short of attack aircraft for its bombing campaign against Muammar Gaddafi only days after taking command of the Libyan mission from a coalition led by the US, France, and Britain. David Cameron has pledged four more British Tornado jets on top of eight already being used for the air strikes. But pressure is growing for other European countries, especially France, to offer more after the Americans withdrew their attack aircraft from the campaign on Monday. “We will need more strike capability,” a Nato official said. Since the French launched the first raids on Libya 16 days ago, the coalition and Nato have destroyed around 30% of Gaddafi’s military capacity, Lieutenant-General Charles Bouchard, the Canadian officer leading the air campaign, told Nato ambassadors. But attempts to “degrade” the Libyan leader’s firepower further were being complicated by a shift in tactics by Gaddafi, said Brigadier-General Marc van Uhm, a senior Nato military planner. “They are using light vehicles and trucks to transport,” while hiding tanks and heavy weapons, he said. “We try to identify where those heavy assets are, because we have seen they have chosen to hide themselves into urban areas to prevent being targeted, even using human shields.” Nato officials insisted the pace of the air operations was being maintained. But it has emerged that the US and the French, who have been the two biggest military players until now, are retaining national control over substantial military forces in the Mediterranean and refusing to submit them to Nato authority. The French have the Charles de Gaulle aircraft carrier, two escorting frigates and 16 fighter aircraft, none of which are under the Nato command and control which was announced last Thursday. Until last week, President Nicolas Sarkozy was the loudest opponent of handing over the operations to Nato control. Nonetheless, the French are not only taking part in the Nato campaign, but are the biggest non-US contributors, with 33 aircraft, double Britain’s 17. Not all of these are strike aircraft. Until Monday, the Americans had performed most of the attacks on ground targets, with the French executing around a quarter and the British around a 10th. Given the US retreat, Nato is seeking to fill the gap, but only the British have pledged more. “We’re very happy that one country decided to bring in more assets,” said Van Uhm. When Nato took over from the coalition it was stressed that it had assumed “sole command and control” of all air operations. However, countries are dipping in and out of Nato command, withdrawing “air assets” for national operations before returning them to alliance control. “It’s pretty clear that Nato is in command. Nato is in the lead,” said Van Uhm. “There are assets under national control in the area. But General Bouchard is commanding what Nato does … You could say nothing is happening without Nato knowing.” The general stressed that no air strikes on ground targets in Libya had taken place outside Nato’s command. Six countries are believed to be engaged in the bombing campaign — France, Britain, Canada, Denmark, Belgium, and Norway — with many others involved in policing an arms embargo and enforcing a no-fly zone. Gaddafi’s air force had been grounded, Van Uhm said. In London, the Ministry of Defence said RAF aircraft had struck targets in Libya on each of the past three days. Tornado GR4 ground attack planes, flying from the Italian air base of Gioia del Colle, hit a battle tank and two surface-to-air missile launchers near Sirte on Monday when they launched three anti-armour Brimstone missiles. The previous day, they fired Paveway IV bombs and Brimstone missiles to target a group of 10 armoured vehicles south of Sirte. On Saturday, they fired Paveway IV missiles at two tanks in Sirte and also hit “several small ground attack aircraft” on an airfield near Misrata, the MoD said. Two of the 10 Eurofighter/Typhoons based in Italy have returned to the UK. The Typhoons are not equipped to conduct ground attack operations. Libya Nato Arab and Middle East unrest Military France Middle East Europe Ian Traynor Richard Norton-Taylor guardian.co.uk
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March’s job numbers were greeted rapturously by the business press. Scratch the surface of the data and things are not so rosy When the labour department announced that the US economy had created 216,000 jobs in March , it set off a round of celebrations throughout Washington policy circles. The word in the New York Times , the Washington Post and other major news outlets was that the economy was back on course; we were on the right path. Those who know arithmetic were a bit more sceptical. If the economy sustained March’s rate of job growth, it will be more than seven years before we get back to normal rates of unemployment. Furthermore, some of this growth likely reflected a bounceback from weaker growth the prior two months. The average rate of job growth over the last three months has been just 160,000. At that pace, we won’t get back to normal rates of unemployment until after 2022. That’s a long time to make ordinary workers suffer because the folks who run the economy are not very good at their job. In addition to the job growth numbers, the March data also showed that the unemployment rate slipped down by another 0.1 percentage point. It now stands at 8.8%, almost a full percentage point below its year ago level of 9.7%. This, too, was treated as cause for celebration. While that may sound like progress, a more careful look at the data makes this number less impressive. The percentage of the population that is employed has actually fallen by 0.1 percentage point over the last year. In order to be counted as unemployed, you have to say that you are looking for work. The unemployment rate did not fall because the unemployed had found jobs; rather, the unemployment rate fell because people have given up looking for work. Only in Washington would this be hailed as good news. Remarkably, as the mixed basket of economic news in the March employment report was being celebrated, a major piece of unambiguously bad news was almost completely ignored. The commerce department released data on construction spending for February (pdf) . A decline of 1.4 % in spending in February, coupled with sharp downward revisions to the data for the prior two months, left nominal spending in February 6.2% below its November level. The slump in construction is virtually certain to be a major drag on growth in the first quarter. The big culprit this time is the non-residential sector – as a result of the bursting of the bubble in this sector, coupled with a fading out of stimulus spending on government projects. Other recent economic news also suggests that the economy’s momentum is more likely to slow than accelerate in the months ahead. Nominal wage growth has been virtually flat the last two months. With food and gas prices rising sharply, this means that real wages are falling, leaving workers with less money to spend. House prices are again falling rapidly, having declined at the rate of 1.0% a month for the last three months. If this pace of decline continues, by the end of the year, homeowners will have lost more than $2tn in equity compared with peak hit in the summer of 2010. This loss of housing wealth implies a reduction in annual consumption of $120bn. There was also a big jump in the trade deficit reported for January . While the celebrants of recent trade pacts were excited by the growth in exports, people who know economics recognise that the larger increase in imports will be another drag on economic growth. With most of the country’s major trading partners experiencing weak growth, there is little prospect for an improvement in the trade deficit any time soon. And, investment in equipment and software also appears to be weakening. New orders for capital goods (excluding volatile aircraft orders) in February were down 6.8% from the levels reported in December. In addition, the government cutbacks, threatened at the federal level and going into place at the state and local level, will be a further source of drag on the economy. In short, there is little basis for last Friday’s celebrations about the economy. The February jobs report would have been mediocre if the economy were already at normal rates of unemployment. In the context of a badly depressed economy, it is pathetic. We should be seeing jobs growth at two or three times this rate. But the real bad news is that it is more likely to get worse than better. Yet again, the business press is missing the story. US unemployment and employment data United States Housing market Economics Economic policy Dean Baker guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Oops, They Did It Again! Global Warming Critics Replicate Disputed Climate Change Findings
April 5, 2011 No CommentGee. Imagine that . That’s supposed to be the test of scientific theory: when the same experiments produce the same results. A team of UC Berkeley physicists and statisticians that set out to challenge the scientific consensus on global warming is finding that its data-crunching effort is producing results nearly identical to those underlying the prevailing view. The Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature project was launched by physics professor Richard Muller, a longtime critic of government-led climate studies, to address what he called “the legitimate concerns” of skeptics who believe that global warming is exaggerated. But Muller unexpectedly told a congressional hearing last week that the work of the three principal groups that have analyzed the temperature trends underlying climate science is “excellent…. We see a global warming trend that is very similar to that previously reported by the other groups.”
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enlarge So Rep. Paul Ryan, the Wisconsin Republican who best exemplifies the soulless Randroid bean-counting dweeb demographic, has decided to release his plan to “reform” entitlements this week. As you can imagine, it completely sucks : Ryan also said that he would propose changing Medicare, the popular health program for seniors, into what he called a “premium support plan” similar to the Medicare prescription drug program. Seniors would be able to pick from a list of private plans competing for their business, Ryan said. Seniors would pick the plan of their choosing, and Medicare would subsidize that coverage. Children, let’s stop and think about this for a moment. Do you know why Medicare was established in the first place? That’s right — because retirees had difficulty getting affordable health insurance due to their higher medical liabilities. And of course, even those who could afford such insurance would find their policies rescinded if their care got too expensive — in essence, a private-sector death panel. So we created Medicare! And it has been one of the most successful government programs of the past century, helping countless seniors get quality care without putting themselves into bankruptcy paying for private insurance. And now Paul Ryan wants to turn it into another corporate welfare scam. As Ezra Klein notes , this is not going to improve care or really even save money: The current Medicare program would be dissolved and the next generation of seniors would choose from Medicare-certified private plans on an exchange. But that wouldn’t save money. In fact, it would cost money. As the Congressional Budget Office has said (pdf), since Medicare is cheaper than private insurance, beneficiaries will see “higher premiums in the private market for a package of benefits similar to that currently provided by Medicare.” In both cases, what saves money is not the reform. It’s the cut. For Medicare, the cut is that the government wouldn’t cover the full cost of the private Medicare plans, and the portion they would cover is set to shrink as time goes on. Hear that, Granny? Your health care is about to be sacrificed at the altar of Aetna and Cigna! I hope you like it! But hey, not everyone’s doing quite so poorly. Take a look at what Charlie Sheen’s been up to : During the show, Sheen smoked cigarettes and answered questions from a master of ceremonies, talking about his marriages, his career and his life with the women he calls his “goddesses.” “They have not disallowed me everything that makes me happy. Period. The end,” Sheen said of the former porn star and an actress who live with him. Sheen also had some snappy comebacks for the interviewer. Asked how many times he had been married, he said, “Seven-thousand. That’s why I’m broke.” Asked why he’s “paid for sex” in the past, Sheen responded, “Because I had millions to blow. I ran out of things to buy.” Yeesh, what a tool. Oh well, at least our Kenyan Marxist Socialist President allowed the unaffordable Bush tax cuts to expire last year, meaning that Charlie and his ilk will be suffering just like all those elderly people who will soon go bankrupt due to medical expenses. Oh wait. Now I’m remembering what actually happened last year : In a display of compromise rarely seen during his time in office, President Obama has signed into law a $858 billion tax cut bill despite the misgivings of members of both parties. Oh. And, uh, gigantic companies like GE aren’t paying any taxes at all ? And the banks are still getting away with committing massive fraud in the housing market without facing any legal consequences? These sorts of things can’t continue. If you’re the protesting sort (and I hope you are!) I recommend bookmarking the page of US Uncut for dates and times of anti-austerity rallies in your neighborhood. The rich are coming after everything we have and we aren’t letting ‘em have it without a fight, peeps.
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