GLOBALIZE THIS!

Friday, March 19, 2004

JUSTICE SCALIA: IN HIS OWN WORDS (AND SLIGHTLY PARAPHRASED)

(Scalia's words appear in italics):

I never hunted in the same blind with the Vice President. Nor was I alone with him at any time during the trip, except, perhaps, for instances so brief and unintentional that I would not recall them. Excepting of course when we flew down to Louisiana together aboard Air Force 2. The Vice President had invited me and my companions to accompany him on his private jet. Man did that make me feel like a big shot.

Moreover, granting the motion [for recusal] is (insofar as the outcome of the particular case is concerned) effectively the same as casting a vote against the petitioner. You see, there is no way in hell I would ever rule against the Vice President, with whom I am well acquainted from our years serving together in the Ford administration. Therefore, not casting a vote is not an option, as it would surely lead to an unfavorable outcome for the Vice President.

[There is no reason that] my impartiality might reasonably be questioned, excepting of course the fact that we are well acquainted from our years serving together in the Ford administration and we take luxurious hunting vacations together. Many Justices have reached this Court precisely because they were friends of the incumbent President or other senior officials and precisely for the reasons before the Court in this instance.

You see, a case against Vice President Richard Cheney, in his official capacity as Vice President of the United States and Chairman of the National Energy Policy Development Group has little bearing on the personal freedom, fortune or ambition of average citizen Richard Cheney, petro-military-industrial complex insider and cadidate for re-election to the Vice Presidency. Evaluating the ethical and legal conduct of Vice President Richard Cheney, in his official capacity as Vice President of the United States clearly has no bearing on citizen Richard Cheney's personal stake in convincing American voters that he possesses the credibility to be re-elected to the office of the Vice President. Anyone who argues otherwise is unequivocally a political hack, as my lucid reasoning leaves no room to question my impartiality.

The people must have confidence in the integrity of the Justices...my friendship
with persons in the current administration...is not the issue here. Nor is the issue whether personal friendship with the Vice President might cause me to favor the Government in cases in which he is named.

If I could have done so in good conscience, I would have been pleased to demonstrate my integrity by recusing myself from this case. Unfortunately, I have no integrity. I am merely a political hack who reached this Court precisely because [I was] friends of the incumbent President [and] other senior officials.

In conclusion, Al Gore would be president right now if it were not for my "impartiality."

Yours truly,

Justice Antonin Scalia, WWJD

¶ 3/19/2004 04:27:44 PM

WSJ: BLOG CENSORED IN CHINA

Here's the blog that got shut down: http://www.blogbus.com

Anyone have any idea what it says?

¶ 3/19/2004 03:21:31 PM

BUSH-CHENEY '04 SWEAT SHOP GEAR

Oops. Turns out Bush has been outsourcing campaign paraphanalia to a country with one of the worst human and labor rights records in the world.

Burma is so bad that Sen. John Kerry's home state of Massachusetts even enacted a law to ban official state business with the rogue nation.

Fleece pull-overs from Burma are just a drop in the bucket for the Bush-Cheney axis. While at the helm of Halliburton, now Vice President Dick Cheney made deals with Burma's military junta to build two oil pipelines:

From 1992 until the present, thousands of villagers in Burma have been forced to work on these pipelines and their related infrastructure, have lost their homes due to forced relocation, and have been raped, tortured, and killed by Burmese soldiers hired by the companies as security guards for the pipelines.

I guess the Bush administration is right. Outsourcing murder and mayhem is certainly more efficient than getting blood on your own hands.

¶ 3/19/2004 12:51:14 PM

ODE TO SUSTAINABLE TRANSPORTATION

Let's face it, we're driving ourselves to death. Thank g-d for sustainable public transit.

Compare these visionaries from 100 years ago with the quagmire of the world's largest and most costly civil engineering project ever undertaken. Years and years and billions and billions of dollars later, Boston's "Big Dig" project will still leave the city's highways over capactiy, literally choking with traffic.

[Unlike the dynamos who drove New york City's ambitious public transit project, the Big Dig languished under the stewardship of Andrew Natsios, who left in disgrace for the rampant corruption under his watch to spearhead the Bush administration's efforts ar reducing US overseas development assistance to evangelical humanitarian aid.]

¶ 3/19/2004 10:48:04 AM

Thursday, March 18, 2004

WHAT HIGH-TECH MANUFACTURING IS ALL ABOUT

Manufacturing ain't all sweat shops.

Philips, the Dutch electronics giant, is making a $21 billion green investment in Korea to produce next generation TFT-LCD screens--the ones used in computers, PDAs, flat panel TVs, cell phones, and a growing number of other electronic devices.

Dow Jones wire: The plant and the research-and-development facility in the Paju area is expected to create about 25,000 new jobs.

Korea, you'll recall, ain't exactly a low-wage country.

The firm-specific knowledge embodied in the manufacturing equipment and production processes are incredibly high-tech, producing huge positive spill-over effects that drive employment multipliers and dissemanate new technologies throughout the rest of the economy.

An LCD screen is comprised of hundreds of thousands of tiny little dots, each controlled by a tiny little transistor. The trick is to get every single dot on a screen functioning properly, otherwise the LCD screen becomes junk. Even the slightest contamination, a microscopic speck of dust, can render these transistors dysfunctional. In short, the real technological value is in the design og manufacturing process and the ability to deliver such quality control.

Market leaders in LCD displays, such as Philips, typically enjoy yields in the range of 90 percent. That is, for every 10 screens they manufacture, only 1 is faulty. In contrast, were we to try developing similar industries in the United States, the successful yield would be more like 10 percent. America will never be able to enter into this industry because we lack the technological sophistication to compete.

Manufacturing is high technology. When we lose it, we lose innovation and we lose the benefits and externalities for the rest of the economy that cannot be replaced by other sectors, even knowledge-intensive services.

¶ 3/18/2004 11:18:53 AM

Wednesday, March 17, 2004

PROTESTOR TO WORLD BANK: HERE'S MUD IN YOUR EYE

Yesterday in Slovenia.

Or at least some paint.

This just goes with the territory for minions of the global capitalist class:

Wolfensohn in Helsinki, 2001.

IMF Managing Director Michael Camdessus pied in Bangkok, 2000.

¶ 3/17/2004 05:17:26 PM

MORE WEIRD NEWS FROM THE JOBS FRONT

You don't see this too often: the number of unemployed college graduates now surpasses the number of unemployed high school dropouts.

Just another perverse indicator of the economic miasma spawned by Bush's shameless economic policies. Economist extraordinaire Jared Bernstein explains it all.

¶ 3/17/2004 12:41:20 PM

US LABOR STANDS UP FOR CHINESE WORKERS

...because if the leader of the free world won't do it, someone has to. Yesterday, the AFL-CIO filed an unfair restraint of trade petition with the USTR against China for its egregious human and labor rights violations.

The economic relationship between China and the United States--and the repression on which it rests--has come to define the global economy. Just these two countries accounted for some 40 percent of the growth in world economic output in the past 5 years (according to the IMF World Economic Outlook). As Rich Trumka put it, "China has emerged as a chief violator of workers’ rights, and its workforce is so large and its labor repression so comprehensive, that it is dragging down standards for the entire world."

The petition is a truly momentous occassion; the first time ever that anyone has tried to invoke US trade laws in defense of human rights. In 1988, Congress amended US trade laws to specify that persistent violations of internationally recognized workers’ rights – including freedom of association, the right to organize and bargain collectively, prohibitions on forced and child labor, and standards for minimum wages, hours and occupational safety and health – constitute an “unreasonable” practice that is actionable under Section 301.

The Financial Times reports on the petition this morning while Harold Meyerson hones the message:

Critics will doubtless call the AFL-CIO "protectionist" for filing this petition. And if it's protectionist to demand that millions of Chinese women have the right to leave their jobs and apply for better ones, or to unionize their workplace or be allowed at least one day off a year, if it's protectionist to demand that U.S. workers not lose their jobs because they cannot work as cheaply as these repressed Chinese workers, then the AFL-CIO should absolutely plead guilty. What I'd like to hear from the critics -- and from George W. Bush -- is why they're protecting the deal between U.S. corporations and China's neo-Stalinist state to extract profits for them both at the expense of tens of millions of desperate young women.

¶ 3/17/2004 10:47:58 AM

Tuesday, March 16, 2004

"SHARE THE WEALTH"

The WSJ reports this morning:

MGM has been talking about ways to "share the wealth"...

...but not with us.

Billionaire investor Kirk Kerkorian would reap a windfall of between $1 billion and $1.6 billion if the film studio he controls, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Inc., issues a one-time special dividend of $6 to $9 a share that the company is currently considering.

The important thing is that he earned it.

Hey, how about sharing a little of that over here.

¶ 3/16/2004 11:04:50 AM

LIFT YOUR SPIRITS

Here is a great scatter plot of amalgmated presidential polling data.

Props to MaxDProphet for the tip.

**UPDATE**

The Iowa Electronic Market presidential futures shows Bush pulling slightly ahead of Kerry since Super Tuesday. At latest quote, Bush is running 50.2 to Kerry's 47.4:

Given the relative bid-ask spreads on the Kerry and Bush contracts, though, (and without volume data on the market) it seems a lot of speculators have reversed their positions from long Kerry/short Bush to long Bush/short Kerry. The smart money position has to be short Bush at this point. Happy arbitrage!

¶ 3/16/2004 08:51:19 AM

Monday, March 15, 2004

READ MY LIPS, NO NEW TERRORIST FINANCING

On September 24, 2001 George Bush had these strong words to say about the US response to terrorist financing:

"Money is the life-blood of terrorist operations...We will starve terrorists of funding, turn them against each other, rout them out of their safe hiding places, and bring them to justice."

Since then, Globalize This! has reported a number of times about how the Bush administration accomodates global financial corporations, and chemical and weapons manufacturers that launder money, provide armaments and otherwise aid and abet terrorists.

Last Monday, Treasury Secretary John Snow once again boasted of "agressive enforcement" of laws in the financial war on terror.

And, once again, major corporations that are in bed (or at least in business) with the terrorists and terrorist countries are getting slaps on the wrist from President Bush for their role in enabling terrorists to wreak havoc around the world.

This month's release of civil penalties assessed by the Treasury Department shows somewhat lighter activities than previous releases. Whereas in past months, companies assessed fines were largely laundering money through private banking accounts in a number of offending countries, this month companies mostly were involved in trading (or helping others to trade) contraband materials with Iran and Iraq. In the most serious incident, the AT & C Corporation sold Iraq aluminum tubes ostensibly intended for a nuclear weapons program. AT & C contracted to provide some 60,000 of these babies for a total price tag of $900,000.

In keeping with their pledge of agressive enforcement, the Bush administration fined AT & C Corp. a hefty $66,250.

¶ 3/15/2004 06:10:44 PM

RUMSFELD: CAUGHT IN A LIE

Maybe Tom Friedman is good for something after all. Watch here, on CBS's Face the Nation, as Friedman makes Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld eat his words.

Thanks to the Center for American Progress' Daily Progress Report for the tip off. If you haven't done so yet, sign up now to get the daily PR.

¶ 3/15/2004 11:57:14 AM

WaPo: Time May Be Up for Naps in Pre-K Class

If American students can't sleep in school, how can we expect to keep on the cutting edge of math and science education? How will Americans compete for knowledge-intensive white-collar service jobs?

From the Trends in Mathematics and Science Study 2003.
Top 20 Countries, Overall Science Scores*

1 Taiwan 569.08
2 Singapore 567.89
3 Hungary 552.38
4 Japan 549.65
5 Korea 548.64
6 Netherlands 544.75
7 Australia 540.26
8 Czech Repub 539.42
9 England 538.47
10 Finland 535.21
11 Slovak Repub 535.01
12 Belgium 534.86
13 Slovenia 533.25
14 Canada 533.08
15 Hong Kong 529.55
16 Russia 529.22
17 Bulgaria 518.01
18 US 514.91
19 New Zealand 509.63
20 Latvia 502.69

Look out Bulgaria, here comes the American dynamo!

*Neither China nor India were included in the sample for this study.

¶ 3/15/2004 11:05:09 AM