It may help that the Very Serious NY Times is pointing out that not every Republican thinks refusing to raise taxes is the best plan to help the economy: WASHINGTON — The boasts of Congressional Republicans about their cost-cutting victories are ringing hollow to some well-known economists, financial analysts and corporate leaders, including some Republicans, who are expressing increasing alarm over Washington’s new austerity. Among those calling for a mix of cuts and revenues are onetime standard-bearers of Republican economic philosophy like Martin Feldstein, an adviser to President Ronald Reagan, and Henry M. Paulson Jr., Treasury secretary to President George W. Bush, underscoring the deepening divide between party establishment figures and the Tea Party-inspired Republicans in Congress and running for the White House. “I think the U.S. has every chance of having a good year next year, but the politicians are doing their damnedest to prevent it from happening — the Republicans are — and the Democrats to my eternal bafflement have not stood their ground ,” Ian C. Shepherdson, chief United States economist for High Frequency Economics, a research firm, said in an interview. As for the longer term, Ethan Harris, co-head of global economics research at Bank of America, wrote this week that “Given the scale of the debt problem, a credible plan requires both revenue enhancement measures and entitlement reform. Washington’s recent debt deal did not include either.”
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Supermarket chain aims to enrol 1,000 people in its ‘Futures’ programme within next 18 months Morrisons will fund the degree studies of 1,000 A-level students in a move to recruit its future senior managers straight from school. The Bradford-based supermarket chain said the initiative, to be announced this week, would offer young people with the “right drive and attitude” the chance to get a management education from one of the UK’s top business schools without the attendant student debt. It aims to enrol 1,000 people in its “Futures” programme within the next 18 months, with the first 100 in place by the end of the summer. Norman Pickavance, a Morrisons group director, said: “This is an opportunity for young people who have the right drive and attitude to reach senior management levels in the company. It offers a genuine alternative to self-funded university qualifications.” So-called “corporate” degrees are expected to become increasingly common as companies and students adjust to the new environment and Morrisons said the foundation degree would have “currency” with other employers. The retail sector employs three million people, a third of whom are under 25, and Morrisons is not the only company offering higher education opportunities. Tesco, for example, has an A-level trainee management scheme and also sponsors a pre-degree foundation course in retail with Manchester Metropolitan University and the University of the Arts London. Other industries are also entering the fray with pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline sponsoring a module on University of Nottingham chemistry degrees. Earlier this year the UK boss of McDonald’s urged more businesses to recruit school leavers and end decades of snobbery that favoured graduates. Jill McDonald said it was time to stop belittling their qualifications by calling them “dumbed down”. “We need to remove the snobbery that does down workplace learning. For many put off by high fees, this could be the route they take.” Morrisons, which describes itself as a “practical down-to-earth” business, offers more apprenticeships than any other British company as its trains butchers, bakers and fishmongers for its stores. Pickavance said there were not enough opportunities for young people that offered real social mobility and companies had a “responsibility” to provide them. “Too often retailers and other big corporates are faceless and the events of last week show that is not a good recipe.” Store managers run multimillion-pound businesses putting them in the top 10% of earners in Britain, he said. Successful candidates receive a starting salary of around £12,000 but are expected to progress to store manager within seven years. Targeting 18- to 24-year-olds with two Bs and a C at A-level, trainees are required to “get their hands dirty” in stores for an initial six-month training period before embarking on their foundation degree in retail management at the University of Bradford School of Business, which has been tailored to the company’s requirements. Students are required to study at home for eight hours a week but will also attend intensive study courses at regional centres. The graduates are promised senior management opportunities in stores and beyond. The company’s £4m investment equate to £4,000 in tuition fees per person. Higher education Morrisons Supermarkets Retail industry Zoe Wood guardian.co.uk
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General secretary of the University and College union warns that stakes are high this year for those in the clearing system The clearing process for teenagers who fail to make their A-level grades this summer will be “the most frantic and stressful in living memory”, the general secretary of the University and College Union (UCU) has warned. Sally Hunt, the leader of the lecturers’ trade union, said: “The stakes have never been higher for university applicants. With tuition fees set to treble from 2012, demand for places this summer is likely to be unprecedented. “I fear that clearing will be the most frantic and stressful in living memory with thousands of young people, encouraged to aspire to university throughout their lives, left disappointed. Those who are unable to get a place this year face the prospect of having to pay the highest public university fees in the world.” However, Mary Curnock Cook, the chief executive of the Universities and Colleges Admissions Service (Ucas), told the Observer there were no signs that the near-trebling of tuition fees would spark a dramatic rise in competition for places. She predicted that the number of students eligible to enter clearing would be similar to last year – just over 209,000 – and they will be competing for roughly the same number of places – just over
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Frontline closer to the capital than at any point since the uprising against Muammar Gaddafi’s regime
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Click here to view this media It’s not everyday you see a would-be Republican nominee for the highest office in the land find inspiration in the music from a children’s cartoon and tell America about it. Ok, well Herman Cain didn’t exactly do that, saying instead he was quoting “a poet”. No Matter. I was so impressed I had to have a little fun with this surreal image. Via NYMag : One of the weirdest moments of last night’s Republican debate probably slipped completely under the radar for most viewers. This moment occurred in Herman Cain’s closing statement, when the former pizza-chain CEO recited a favorite inspirational quote: “A poet once said, ‘life can be a challenge, life can seem impossible, but it’s never easy when there’s so much on the line.’” Nothing strange about that on the surface, until you Google the quote and you realize that these words of wisdom were uttered not by a poet, but by disco queen Donna Summer in her song “The Power of One.” Even more bizarre, this isn’t even one of Summer’s classic hits — she recorded it just over a decade ago as the theme song for Pokémon: The Movie 2000 . enlarge
Continue reading …NYT’s Timothy Egan Hits ‘Biblical Bully,’ Asks: ‘Is God Listening to Rick Perry?’
August 13, 2011 No Comment
On MSNBC Friday afternoon, openly gay Washington Post editorial writer Jonathan Capehart (while substituting for host Martin Bashir) cited his newspaper competition to mock Gov. Rick Perry’s religious-right stances. “Timothy Egan has an interesting column in the New York Times,” he insisted, “that pointed out that when Rick Perry prays to God, they tend to not get answered. For example, he prays for rain, they have an extreme drought. He holds prayer services and the markets tank. Is God listening to Rick Perry?” But that loaded question is nothing compared to Egan’s actual screed on the Opinionator blog on Thursday. Remember before these excerpts that Egan was an “objective” national reporter for the Times for decades. This is your secular-left media elite when it's ready to roar.
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Euan Ferguson travels to Pembrokeshire, where sightings of sea turtles have surged, to find reasons for the marine invasion This is, it hardly needs saying, the story everyone’s been talking about all week. The turtles are coming! Giant leatherback sea turtles. Dermochelys coriacea , to be formal about it. Those who know about these things include them in an elite group known as “charismatic mega-fauna” – lions, elephants etc – not because they (necessarily) light up a room when they join a party, but because, without wishing to anthropomorphise too much, they’re much “nicer” than slugs and jellyfish, and possess a serious wooo! factor. Children are happy to stare and stare; adults get a frisson at the sheer size, the grace in the water. They are big, up to three metres long. This is one big turtle. This is Turtlezilla. And sightings, normally, are extremely rare. This summer is different though. The Marine Conservation Society (MCS) has asked the public to log any sighting of a giant leatherback. There have already been an unusually high number; eight in the last fortnight, mainly from around here, by walkers, yachtsmen, surfers. August is the month to watch for them. “What we do know,” according to Peter Richardson of the MCS, “is that something’s been happening in the Atlantic which is good for the leatherbacks.” They’re still on the list of critically endangered species – a colony in Gabon which was huge in the 1970s is now practically extinct. But, in the Atlantic, the leatherback population appears to be starting to thrive. So here I am in very wet, very Welsh, very west Wales, near the whales. Looking for a turtle, somewhere out at sea, off the coastline near Solva, a coast of such grandeur it would be rejected by film-location scouts as ridiculously overblown unless they were scouting for ridiculously overblown things such as Dr Who or Camelot . My turtle sighting is, frankly, unlikely to happen. There’s a lot of coast to cover for one: there’s 180
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Texas governor says he will work to make Washington as ‘inconsequential’ to people’s lives as possible if elected Texas governor Rick Perry entered the Republican presidential race on Saturday, jolting the crowded field seeking to unseat Barack Obama. Perry told voters in a conference call from Columbia, South Carolina, that he wants to take on Obama and said that “I full well believe I’m going to win.” About an hour later, he outlined his principles in a speech at a conservative conference in Charleston, South Carolina, declaring that if elected president, he would work to make Washington as “inconsequential” to Americans’ lives as possible. He accused Obama of providing “rudderless” leadership at home and abroad, and declared that he wants to cut taxes and free businesses from the shackles of regulation to spark an economic recovery. Perry spoke only a few hours before the release of results from a straw poll in Iowa, the state which holds the first nominating contest next year. In Iowa, thousands of Republicans mingled with presidential hopefuls on a college campus in Ames where they began voting in the first test to see how the candidates are faring with the party’s base. The poll results are nonbinding, but the outcome will probably provide a road map for the Iowa campaign heading into the caucuses that are scheduled for early February. Mitt Romney leads national polls and many states’ surveys for the chance to challenge Obama, who is considered vulnerable in next year’s election because of lingering high unemployment and the sputtering economic recovery. But there is no shortage of rivals looking to emerge as the top alternative to Romney, who lost the nomination in 2008 to John McCain. Even before he officially entered the race, polls of Republican voters showed Perry running only a few percentage points behind Romney, who has been emphasising his business background to persuade voters he can turn the economy around. But many conservatives have not embraced him because of his past support as Massachusetts governor for abortion and gay rights and a health care reform package used by Obama as a model for legislation that Republicans loathe. Evangelical Christians, a key part of the Republican base, also look askance at Romney’s Mormon faith. Through three terms as Texas governor, Perry has overseen significant job growth in his state while working to keep taxes low. He was an early backer of the small government, anti-tax Tea Party movement. He enjoys the support of social conservatives because of his opposition to abortion and gay rights. He is also an evangelical Christian who organised a well-attended prayer rally in Houston last week. Rick Perry Republicans US politics United States guardian.co.uk
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Senior Liberal Democrats attack ‘hasty’ measures as housing charities condemn the threat of eviction Coalition efforts to present a united front over the riots have come under strain as senior Liberal Democrats call for an end to “kneejerk” reactions by politicians and warn that stripping those involved of their benefits could worsen crime on the streets. In a clear sign of tensions between the governing parties, the Lib Dems’ deputy leader, Simon Hughes, insists that long-term solutions lie in supporting communities by offering opportunities and redistributing wealth, not slashing help from the state and cutting taxes for the
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Click here to view this media Conservative MSNBC host Joe Scarborough Thursday tore into the base of the Republican Party in Iowa for pushing Michele Bachmann, someone who is “never going to get close winning the presidential nomination.” “Michele Bachmann’s first answer was, I wish the federal government had defaulted,” Scarborough recalled Bachmann saying during Thursday night’s Republican debate. “Had defaulted! A week after Americans lost — some of them perhaps lost half of their pensions. Lost half of their 401ks. When trillions of dollars went down the drain with Americans suffering, she said that and got applause.” “If anybody thinks that guys like my dad are going to be voting that way… they are out of their mind and they are too stupid not only to prognosticate, they are too stupid to run Slurpee machines in Des Moines… Michele Bachmann is a joke. She is a joke. Her answer is a joke. Her candidacy is a joke… Iowa, if you let her win, you prove your irrelevance once again.”
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