IT'S HARD TO RECALL a more brazen display of political chutzpah than the Bush campaign's assault on Sen. John F. Kerry as a captive of special interests. ...

Mr. Kerry's fundraising and his relationships with Washington lobbyists are a legitimate topic, ... But -- how can we say this politely? -- let's consider the source.

Mr. Bush's acceptance of special-interest money and his subsequent rewards to the industries doing the giving dwarf anything in Mr. Kerry's record. ... Mr. Bush has raised more than four times as much from lobbyists during the 2004 race as Mr. Kerry has -- $960,000 for Mr. Bush to $235,000 for Mr. Kerry.

My name is Dave Louthan.
I'm the guy who killed that mad cow.

Collins Media Services
Box 100
Mill Valley CA 94942

I just listened to Dave: I got this stuff all over me. I'll probably die from it. I'm OK with that. But maybe I can help some others to live. "It's necessary."

Indeed.

We are talking about people's dinner here. People's lives. I don't care how much money Big Beef loses. I want to enjoy my food not sit there wondering is this meat going to kill me? Is it going to kill my kids? That's a bunch of crap. It's not necessary. All those greedy yahoos have to do is start testing all the beef for BSE. Not some of the beef, all the beef.

So what's wrong with that? Weren't the OSP and the VP's Office effectively a part of the intelligence community that examined pre-war evidence? Well yes, they were (and they are the two parts of that community that are being accused of fraud), but the order goes on to define the "Intelligence Community" by the definition set forth in the National Security Act, and that act references neither the OSP nor the VP's Office. In other words, regardless of what the OSP and the VP's Office played in pre-war intelligence, their actions are beyond the scope of the committee!

Dean sums this up:

Bush's Executive Order only pretends to look at the issue of pre-war Iraqi WMD intelligence. In fact, it does not look at what is really the issue: the use of that intelligence by policy makers. The questions of what the intelligence said, and how it was used -- specifically, was it exploited or distorted? -- are quite separate. Bush's Commission will answer only the first question.

• How the commission has no authority to deliver its findings to anyone but the President.

• Why the commission will not be able to complete even its limited mission by the March, 2005 deadline.

• How Dick Cheney's experience in past administrations suggests his strong hand in the crafting of this executive order.

Bush should be given an honorary membership in the International Brotherhood of Magicians for his latest political handiwork.

Well, that's it then. The show is over. The scales have fallen. The monstrous gears of the dark satanic mills that spewed their poison fog across the land have ground to a halt at last.

George W. Bush's performance in his nationally televised interview this week was so abysmal, so completely divorced from the waking reality of the rest of the world, that even his faithful spear-carriers in the far-right horde -- not mention the power-worshipping poltroons of the mainstream media -- reacted as if they'd been slapped upside the head with a particularly dank and smelly mackerel. They're shocked -- shocked! -- to find incompetence in this establishment!

See also:

• Yahoo! News: Gay Marriage Hopes Kept Alive in Massachusetts
• USA Today: Constitutional amendment on marriage unlikely to pass
• FOX News: When is a marriage not a "marriage"?
• Christian Science Monitor: Gays want the right, but not necessarily the marriage, and America's gay marriage debate enters decisive phase

If there are people out there who still think globalized markets are always a win-win proposition, I invite them to look at the report on worldwide labour rights that was issued this week by Oxfam International.

Titled Trading Away Our Rights: Women working in global supply chains (link [4 MB, PDF] is to the full report, a summary is here [327 KB, PDF]), it depicts the savagely competitive world of global manufacturing and food production, and traces its effect on workers and farmers. It shows that the blessings of unprecedented choice many Canadians currently enjoy in fresh produce and stylish fashions come at a price.

In China, Honduras, Bangladesh, Chile, Kenya, Cambodia or Colombia, the pattern is the same: long hours, pay below minimum wage, increased health risks, intimidation and harassment for the legions who produce these goods. Often they are migrant workers. Increasingly they are women. All of them -- not only workers, but plant owners and middlemen -- are cogs in a system that is largely beyond regulation or control.

Dominated by a few giants -- Wal-Mart is a name that comes up repeatedly -- the global manufacturing industry aims to turn on a dime to find the cheapest possible way of filling orders. Elementary rights such as the freedom to associate, reasonable hours and safe working conditions often go by the board. Even companies that have ethical production standards violate them, sometimes unwittingly, as suppliers cut under-the-table deals with subcontractors to lower costs or satisfy just-in-time demand.

And you women? You're the ones they want first as their slaves. They think you are more controllable. They're probably right.

While I sat at his computer, March helped me open a file containing actual results from a March 2002 primary election held in San Luis Obispo County, Calif. -- a file that March says would be accessible to anyone who worked in the county elections office on Election Day. Following March's direction, I changed the vote count with a few clicks. Then, he explained how to alter the "audit log," erasing all evidence that we'd tampered with the results. I saved the file. If it had been a real election, I would have been carrying out an electronic coup. It was a chilling realization.

[Original Salon link.]

Yet employment as measured by the payroll survey rose by only 112,000 — well short of the increase needed just to keep up with a growing population. If employment were rising as rapidly as it did when the economy was emerging from the 1990-1991 recession, we'd be seeing monthly numbers more like 275,000.

Taking a longer view, the payroll numbers tell a dismal story. Since the recovery officially began in November 2001, employment has actually fallen by half a percent, while the working-age population has increased about 2.4 percent. By this measure, jobs are becoming ever scarcer.

The household survey, on which the official unemployment rate is based, tells a less dismal but far from happy story. (Why the discrepancy? We don't know.) The number of people who say they have jobs has risen since the recovery began — but has still lagged behind population growth.

The only seemingly favorable statistic is the unemployment rate, which has recently fallen to 5.6 percent, the same as in November 2001. But how is that possible, when employment has grown more slowly than the population, or even declined? The answer is that people aren't counted as unemployed unless they're looking for work, and a growing fraction of the population isn't even looking. It's hard to see how this is good news.

Other indicators continue to suggest a grim job picture. ...

In the light of these dreary statistics, President Bush's recent cheerfulness seems almost surreal. ... We expect politicians to place a positive spin on economic news, but to insist that things are going great when many people have personal experience to the contrary seems foolish. ... Why is Mr. Bush — whose poll numbers are a bit worse than his father's were at this point in 1992 — running the risk of repeating his experience?

The answer, I think, is that the younger Mr. Bush has no choice. He has literally gone for broke, with repeated tax cuts that have fed a $500 billion deficit. To justify policies that more and more people call irresponsible, he must claim that wonderful things are happening as a result.

The movement of American factory jobs and white-collar work to other countries is part of a positive transformation that will enrich the U.S. economy over time, even if it causes short-term pain and dislocation, the Bush administration said Monday.

The embrace of foreign outsourcing, an accelerating trend that has contributed to U.S. job losses in recent years and has become an issue in the 2004 elections, is contained in the president's annual report to Congress on the health of the economy.

"Outsourcing is just a new way of doing international trade," said N. Gregory Mankiw, chairman of Bush's Council of Economic Advisors, which prepared the report. "More things are tradable than were tradable in the past. And that's a good thing."

"I've got a feeling this report was prepared by the same people who brought us the intelligence on Iraq. I don't think we need a new report about jobs in America. I think we need a new president who's going to create jobs in America and put Americans back to work."

"These people, what planet do they live on?"

"Maybe we will outsource a few radiologists," (Bush Council of Economic Advisors chairman N. Gregory) Mankiw told reporters. "What does that mean? Well, maybe the next generation of doctors will train fewer radiologists and will train more general practitioners or surgeons... Maybe we've learned that we don't have a comparative advantage in radiologists."

"The market is the best determinant
of where the jobs should be."

[Note: Both the NYTimes and the LATimes move articles to paid ($) archives.
  Permanent links: Jobs, Jobs, Jobs, Bush Supports Shift of Jobs Overseas.]

Let's talk about models for a minute. Models are simplified representations of things. Models leave things out, and do so for a good reason. By leaving things out, you can greatly lower the cost and complexity of testing a design or theory, and that's a good thing. The problem facing the model maker lies in selecting what to leave out of the model without compromising the intended use of the model. You can leave the engine out of a jet and still get a quite useful model for a wind tunnel test, for example, but if you leave the wings off, it's another matter entirely.

Modeling is central to economics. Indeed, without modeling, little if anything of value could be accomplished by economists. There are simply too many variables present in economics to achieve useful results if one attempts to include all of the variables in one's study. But as with other types of models, it is imperative that the economic modeler carefully select which variables to exclude based on what he or she is attempting to test. Exclude the wrong variable, and the most beautiful economic theory in the world becomes meaningless.

Which gets us to the free trader's mantra: "The market is the best determinant of where the jobs should be." Obviously, this statement is the based on a model that shows this to be the case. But what is that model, or more specifically, does that model include every significant variable needed to make the free trader's claim true in the real world?

Well first, "the market" is simply the exchange of goods (physical of services) for compensation (money or other goods). The free market model obviously must include more than this to produce results, things like the cost of raw materials, the cost of labor, and the cost of moving goods to their markets. These together are the supplier costs and supplier costs are borne by capital before the exchange of goods can take place.

Now, under this model, capital will aways seek the lowest supplier costs, and one would suspect that this would always drive capital in favor of the lowest labor costs. That is fine as far as it goes, but our Economics 101 model (take the course or trust me) shows that it is not the actual labor costs that determine the flow of capital, but rather the relative efficiency of labor that determines where capital goes. In other words, at some point, higher wage areas win out over lower wage areas because they simply do the job better. This really works in the free trade model, and is the basis of the claims of the free marketeers. So where are they wrong?

They are wrong because capital does not move anything anywhere for lower production costs. They are wrong because they have falsely identified the operating variable; that lower costs of production are the motivation for capital (and jobs) transfer. The only motivation for capital transfer is to increase the return on capital investment. Capital will move to the highest labor costs if that move will increase the return on investment.

So how does that affect the free trade model? The model well recognizes the price of labor, but eliminates the conditions of labor. It assumes that the condition of labor is a constant (an eliminated variable), and produces a false result because of this. It assumes that the "rising tide lifts all boats" benefit of free trade is actually realized in every labor market, and this is simply not the case. An important variable has been left out of the free marketeer's case model. So how does this play out in the real world? How is the free trade model wrong?

It is wrong because capital will always favor the labor market in which labor has the fewest rights. Labor rights cost money, and catering to them diminishes profit. And profit (not production costs) is why capital moves. Take the case of China, for it offers even another variable that the free trade model does not encompass.

The "rising tide lifts all boats" mantra of free marketeers assumes that the benefits of new employment actually go to the labor that creates the traded goods. It assumes that labor will use its increased purchasing power to buy products from the markets that they took their new jobs from. But what if these laborers did not actually recieve a just benefit from their new employment? What if their government stripped off all of the profits before labor ever saw them? Then the "rising tide" predicted by the free trade model would fail. And this is indeed what has happened. What we have here is the "rogue operator"; the variable that the free traders avoid in their model. And we have why their model fails.

Conclusion:
The free trade model fails for the same reasons that Socialism, Marxism, and Communism have failed; because it fails to account for the quite human motivation of greed. It has in effect left out that variable from the calculations of its model. It has produced a false result as a consequence. By eliminating the variable of the conditions of labor, it has advanced a quite beautiful theory in which all will benefit. The theory only has one failing. It is wrong.

Passengers were "shocked," said Karla Austin, who had flown on Friday's Los Angeles to New York Flight 34. Some reached for their mobile phones and others used the on-flight phones, she said.

"Just given the history of what's happened on planes in this country, anything can happen at this point. So we weren't sure if something was going to happen at takeoff, if he was going to wait until JFK (John F. Kennedy) to do something," Austin said. "But there was definitely implication there that we felt that something was going to happen."
. . .

He then suggested non-Christians talk to the Christians about their faith.

He went on to say that "everyone who doesn't have their hand raised is crazy", passenger Amanda Nelligan told CBS news.

"He continued to say, 'Well, you have a choice: you can make this trip worthwhile, or you can sit back, read a book and watch the movie'," she said.
. . .

Ms Nelligan said passengers had thought the pilot's behavior was "bizarre" and wondered whether his comments were a threat.

Flight attendants notified ground control.

Perhaps the strangest thing however is that the pilot was identified and interviewed at the conclusion of the flight by The Advocate ("Exclusive: Interview with American Airlines pilot who told Christian passengers to raise their hands"):

"If you have five minutes, I'll tell you why I did it," American Airlines captain Roger Findiesen told Advocate.com as Flight 34 had all but emptied out after its arrival at New York's JFK Airport, on Friday, February 6. "I felt that God was telling me to say something [to the passengers]."
. . .

In the suddenly hushed coach section of the airplane, a few nervous passengers raised one hand, most no higher than shoulder level, none above tops of the seats.

"I want everyone else on board to look around at how crazy these people are," the pilot continued, with an intonation suggesting he was using the word "crazy" in a positive, even admiring manner.
. . .

(Findiesen) went on to explain that he felt God wanted him to witness to the passengers on his first flight upon returning to work for American Airlines after his mission. Despite this feeling, he said, he had decided not to say anything--but then he got another sign from God.
. . .

While Findiesen repeated to (interviewer) Steele that he was sorry his fellow crew members had taken heat for his comments, he expressed no regret for having made them and no regret for not having apologized to the American Airlines customers he was serving on the flight. But, he added, "I won't do it again, if you want to make a big deal of it."

The blogs are also hopping all over this. Pax Nortana thinks that "passengers dialed relatives, perhaps in fear that they'd booked a ticket on a Christian Identity suicide mission." Body and Soul asks us to "try to imagine the response if this guy had been a Muslim.". corrente suggests that "(i)f American doesn't fire hold this guy accountable—say, by firing his ass—we're in for a long season of aggressive SIC proselytization on the airlines." Discount Blogger wonders about "Flying the Fundie Skies". The Secret Tango Dancer believes, "It's the end of the world, really."

And Fuck everything thinks it's "(j)ust what we need, more religious zealots piloting planes," but asks "Where the fuck is al Qaeda when you need them?"

And something I noticed in it: Numerous times in the transcript, there are long gaps without any CAP hyperlinks. Those are fun to read. They're all the times when Bush was stumbling over his words, essentially saying nothing.

[Via Tom Paine's Common Sense blog.]

[An expanded version of this article with additional commentary appears at Benedict@Large.]

Now come a few other "fun facts" about our nation's largest employer:

• Wal-Mart was the second highest campaign contributor in 2002, sending well over $1 million to incumbents' campaign coffers. This is a fairly new thing for Wal-Mart. When founder Sam Walton was still alive, campaign contributions from Wal-Mart were almost non-existent.

• It would take the combined payroll of every single one of the 504,000 Wal-Mart retail clerks to equal the compensation given to Wal-Mart's top 400 employees. Doing the math, that means Wal-Mart's top 400 employees average 1,260 times the compensation of their average retail clerk. Nice job if you can get it.

• Perhaps for this reason, Wal-Mart is instructing their retail employees in how to apply for welfare using the Internet. Now that's employee relations!

• The president's new budget provides only $40 million of the $800 million promised for election improvements at the state level this year.
• The Election Assistance Commission was given only $2 million for its operating expenses this year, not the $10 million it was due.
• Hundreds of millions of dollars have been allocated for making improvements at the state level, but the commission is too short of cash to distribute it. By law, the money cannot be disbursed until the states' plans appear in The Federal Register, and the commission cannot afford the $800,000 publishing cost.

This article previously appeared on Black Box Notes.