GLOBALIZE THIS!
Friday, July 01, 2005
  HAPPY INDEPENDENCE DAY!



I say it with a sad sense of the disparity between us. I am not included within the pale of this glorious anniversary! Your high independence only reveals the immeasurable distance between us. The blessings in which you, this day, rejoice are not enjoyed in common. The rich inheritance of justice, liberty, prosperity, and independence bequeathed by your fathers is shared by you, not by me. The sunlight that brought light and healing to you has brought stripes and death to me. This Fourth of July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice, I must mourn.

Read more from Frederick Douglass.
  7/01/2005 09:41:00 AM
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Thursday, June 30, 2005
  'TIS THE SEASON FOR GLUTTONY



It's hot dog gorging time again, and just in time for the 4th:

Mr. Kobayashi, 5-foot-7 and 131 pounds, is ferocious because he has defeated rivals many times his weight.

He is an eating machine because he has won Nathan's Famous hot-dog contest four years in a row. Last year, he ate a record 53½ frankfurters, buns and all, in the required 12 minutes, or roughly one every 13 seconds.

Well, to be fair, every season is gluttony season in this country it seems (but who doesn't love a good eating competition?).

That's why I am glad there are people like the Collective Heritage Institute. Please don't confuse them with the individual Heritage Institute.

UPDATE: Just rereading this quote I pulled. Who is this journalist? He/she could really stand a lesson in logic.

Did the fact that Mr. Kobayashi defeated many people cause him to be ferocious, or does his ferocious characteristic cause him to defeat people many times his weight?

Did winning the hot dog eating contest cause him to be an eating machine, or is it the fact that Mr. Kobayashi is an eating machine that caused him to win the contest?

Nonetheless, let's not allow poor writing to stand in the way of our admiration for Mr. Kobayashi's remarkable achievements in the sport of binge eating.
  6/30/2005 03:13:00 PM
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  WHAT I'M READING TODAY: OVERSIMPLE COMPLACENCIES ABOUT GLOBALIZATION



This is how Paul Samuelson--no radical, anarchist, Starbucks-smasher--describes the virulent positions of most economists-cum-pro-globalization cheerleaders. Samuelson's piece in last year's Journal of Economic Perspectives 18(3)--a journal aimed at more "popular" debates (i.e. containing little to no Greek mathematical formulas) is one of the most intellectually honest explorations of the welfare effects predicted by standard international trade theory. (But what do I know about trade theory?)

Samuelson highlights how results from the standard free trade model can show that productivity improvements may actually reduce social welfare with trade.

Whoa.

Is Samuelson totally off the reservation? Well, let's just say he's no Steve McQueen. Samuelson's honesty is rare, and evoked the now standard visceral reaction from the free trade automotons, in this case an intellectual equivocation diametrically equal to Samuelson's honesty from Jagdish Bhagwati, et. al. Samuelson's is not a critique of standard trade theory, though there is much to be critiqued (with this only skimming the surface). Rather, Samuelson's affront is to open for general discussion what intellectual, political, and technocratic elites would prefer to keep swept under the rug.

Inexcusable. Nixon could go to China, but even someone of Samuelson's stature as a pillar of the neoclassical mainstream cannot escape the free-trade pathology (as the History of Economic Thought website describes him, "Perhaps more than anyone else, Paul A. Samuelson has personified mainstream economics in the second half of the twentieth century." After all, one of the two core trade theories does bear his name.). It's a good thing Samuelson is Emeritus, else Xavier Sala-i-Martin might try to get him fired.

A further conclusion from Samuelson, though not following from his theoretical discussion, is that mainstream trade economists have totally missed the boat in regards to the effect of trade on US wage inequality:

"[E]conomists have insufficiently noticed the drastic change in mean US incomes and in inequalities among different US classes [Ed: Gasp, the "C" word!]...Historically, US workers used to have de facto monopoly access to the superlative capitals and know-hows of the United States [Ed: meaning higher productivity]...and that importantly explained the historically high US real wages [for low-employed skills workers]."

But then, after World War II, the US began exporting capital and technology, and other regions endogenously developed their own sources of capital and technology, and then "foreign educable masses could and did genuinely provide the same kind of competitive pressures on US lower middle class wage earnings that mass migration would have threatened to do." His conclusion left unsated (can't stray too far from the farm): trade caused wage inequality.
  6/30/2005 11:52:00 AM
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Tuesday, June 28, 2005
  OUR MISSION IS JUST

The POTUS: The terrorists...are waging a campaign of murder and destruction. And there is no limit to the innocent lives they are willing to take.

The Lancet (a peer-review British medical journal): [W]e think that about 100 000 excess deaths, or more have happened since the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Violence accounted for most of the excess deaths and air strikes from coalition forces accounted for most violent deaths.

Yes, our mission is just. Thank you Preznit Bush for restoring my faith and reminding me what we're doing in Iraq.
  6/28/2005 11:11:00 PM
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  POETIC JUSTICE

Monday, June 27, 2005

Mr. Chip Meany
Code Enforcement Officer
Town of Weare, New Hampshire
Fax 603-529-4554

Dear Mr. Meany,

I am proposing to build a hotel at 34 Cilley Hill Road in the Town of Weare. I would like to know the process your town has for allowing such a development.

Although this property is owned by an individual, David H. Souter, a recent Supreme Court decision, "Kelo vs. City of New London" clears the way for this land to be taken by the Government of Weare through eminent domain and given to my LLC for the purposes of building a hotel. The justification for such an eminent domain action is that our hotel will better serve the public interest as it will bring in economic development and higher tax revenue to Weare.

As I understand it your town has five people serving on the Board of Selectmen. Therefore, since it will require only three people to vote in favor of the use of eminent domain I am quite confident that this hotel development is a viable project. I am currently seeking investors and hotel plans from an architect. Please let me know the proper steps to follow to proceed in accordance with the law in your town.

Thank you.

Sincerely,

Logan Darrow Clements
Freestar Media, LLC

UPDATE: Now you can support the cause of displacing Justice Souter. Pledge online now to stay a night in the proposed Lost Liberty Hotel.
  6/28/2005 03:22:00 PM
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