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POPSThe Holiday Gift This Country Needs "We also need to invest in our infrastructure, and not just the obvious physical things like our old bridges and trains but more importantly our human infrastructure. We must continue to push for "Medicare Part E - Everybody" - so we can rebuild the social safety net to encourage entrepreneurialism - and along those lines let's fix the bankruptcy bill, and strengthen social security. Finally, we need to think of work differently. Lincoln once said that labor is superior to capital because it precedes it. Nobody gets rich until somebody makes something. We once had an economy that valued laborers - the true producers of wealth - and the middle class. You know. almost everything on this gift list was, in their day, enthusiastically endorsed by Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower. And Barry Goldwater. And Richard Nixon. Somehow this country went insane in 1981 when Reagan took power and declared that "greed was good" and America was to be reinvented."
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POPSAmerica’s #1 Export This satisfies White House strategists, who seek a way out of a growing political impasse, and also the economic gurus at Obama’s ear, who believe government spending can create new jobs and kick-start the economy. These economic geniuses are the latter-day followers of John Maynard Keynes, an economist who believed we could end unemployment and fight our way out of economic malaise by having the government hire workers to dig ditches and then fill them back up again. They didn’t necessarily have to produce anything of value, as long as they went through the motions. All government has to do is "prime the pump," and this will set in motion a process ending in full employment. You can build hospitals or pyramids, it doesn’t matter; military spending will do. In this scenario, we are back to when James Baker was asked to justify the first Gulf war, and he replied, "Jobs, jobs, jobs." What better (economic) stimulus than a foreign policy of perpetual war?
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POPSBank boss says 'we do God's work' Another example of religion being used to justify a position. I think it belittles religion and the religious. The misuse of religion gives an insight into the way they handle taking someone's last cents, before sending them to jail for not being rich. They would also believe that there is a special place in the afterlife for them and it is all good. They don't believe in suffering now to achieve glory in the next life (Mother Theresa and those types can have all of that - and a small donation - will suffice) The bonuses will be awarded to compensate workers for having to listen to people who seemed to have morals, over the last couple of years; and a reward for adjusting to honesty until the smoke cleared.
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POPSCause & Effect? In theory, the Malaysian royalty is supposed to be apolitical. When they're not, sometimes strange things happen. (Note to non-Malaysians: Kuantan is the capital of Pahang state)
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POPSSouth India: the world's suicide capital The average suicide rate for women is as high as 148 per 100,000, and 58 per 100,000 for men. Worldwide, this rate is 14.5 per 100,000. Also, in the West, men are three times more likely to commit suicide than women. The suicide rate in Kerala was about 32 per 100,000 persons in 2002, thrice the rate in India as a whole.
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POPSThe Road to Economic Demoralization -- Going the Wrong Way
Heavy government controls at home, along with an income-leveling social policy couched in economic-recovery terms, is no way to run a railroad. At the simple stroke of a computer key, world investment flows to its most hospitable destination. That includes a reliable currency. But in President Bush's last year and President Obama's first, the United States has become a less hospitable destination for global capital. That should worry everybody. But let's first look to the China story. We know that China is already our principal banker, to the tune of nearly $1 trillion. As President Obama's record spending and borrowing continues -- he'll be the greatest bond salesman in American history -- our financial reliance on China grows daily. But that's not all. Fortune magazine recently reported that the number of U.S. companies in the world's top 500 fell to the lowest level ever, while more Chinese firms than ever made the list. Thirty-seven Chinese companies now rank in the top 50
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POPSFeminist CJPIP: "Coalition of Women for a Just Peace"!!! Leading where males fear ... The groups that founded the Coalition of Women for a Just Peace are Machsom Watch, Nogoy, Feminist Journal, Women in Black, The Fifth Mother, TANDI, Bat Shalom, New Profile and NELED. Is it odd or normal that it's women who are leading the way in Israel towards a just and peaceful future for all? Why must women lead again? Because they seek "equal rights for women and for all residents of Israel "!!!
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POPSShallow Shouting from The Left "In a society that broke, on behalf of merit, the seemingly eternal chains of station by birth, they cry 'injustice.' In the names of fantasy worlds and mystical perfections, they have closed themselves to the Western, liberal miracle of individual rights, individual responsibility, merit, and human satisfaction. Like Marx, they put words like 'liberty' in quotation marks when these refer to the West…."
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POPSThe victory of the emotions "The ghosts of the French Revolution stir on our continent. Youths on the internet receive a hundred "up-votes" on social news sites for suggesting that bankers should be slain in the streets, a thousand for suggesting the same of Republicans. When discussing the morality of this, the voice of modesty that suggests that rich people, Republicans and Mormons have done nothing deserving of capital punishment is down-voted into oblivion. The idea that members of unpopular groups ought to have human rights, too, is met with the contention that they have forfeited their rights by behaving in unpopular ways.
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POPS Cracking ACORN Kingsley wrote in a reference to the tax code provision regulating charities. ACORN and its affiliates are not only reliable cheerleaders for higher taxes, but also longtime tax deadbeats. More than 200 federal, state, and local tax liens adding up to more than $3 million are associated with ACORN’s national headquarters in New Orleans. Capital Research Center discovered that ACORN moves money around its network with a boldness and agility that Pablo Escobar would have admired. Obama’s ties to ACORN go back to at least 1992, when he ran a voter-registration drive for Project Vote. Obama helped train ACORN leaders, and he represented ACORN in a ballot-access case. The socialist “New Party,” which served as ACORN’s electoral arm, endorsed Obama, who was one of its members, when he ran for the Illinois state senate in the mid-1990s. Last year, Obama promised a meeting of community organizers he would meet with ACORN after winning on Election Day.
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POPSWho's Century Will It Be?
Will this shift in the balance of power be a re-centering de-hegemonization of power or will it move the center to a new capital? The Reagan-Bush paradigm had us spend many years of social and ecological “savings”, basic social and environmental investments were tapped into and turned into cash and everyone had a good time. It was sort of like being given an inheritance and throwing a huge party. At the end we’ll remember these days as full of wealth but there will be an empty shell of a social safety net, food that is not safe to eat, drugs that may be dangerous or do nothing. We are massively in debt and beholden to China. Our middle class has shrunk and we now have the largest wealth discrepancy of the developed world. Our ignore-ance of the problems of fossil fuels has given us rising sea levels and acidifying oceans. These are the fruits of the grand party we’ve thrown ourselves for the last 29 years. What is now obvious is that the Reagan-Bush economic doctrine, cou
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POPSA Sampling Of These Fast Growing Tech Companies
# Growth Matters: Dailymotion moves you with video # Growth Matters: Dash Navigation helps you get there faster # Growth Matters: Doodle gets your schedule right # Growth Matters: Evernote makes you smarter # Growth Matters: Evite's an invitation to print money # Growth Matters: Ford SYNCs your car with the world # Growth Matters: Gameloft is French for mobile fun # Growth Matters: GeckoGo takes you places you've never been # Growth Matters: Jagex is Europe's PC fun maker # Growth Matters: Kayak.com travels with $200 million in capital # Growth Matters: King.com dominates games of skill online # Growth Matters: Last.fm learns your music and gives you more # Growth Matters: Mister Wong is Europe's social bookmarker # Growth Matters: MocoSpace makes mobile fun and games # Growth Matters: Netlog is Europe's social networking leader # Growth Matters: Netvibes makes Europe more social # Growth Matters: Otto Group is world's second biggest e-commerce company more @ site:
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POPSWilliam Graham Sumner's Forgotten Classic and that it may be impaired for major considerations." Too often today's leaders are quick to surrender liberties for mere trifles, and the population at large allows it to happen. It may seem odd that a man writing at the tail end of the 19th century should have anything to teach us as we sit here in the opening years of the 21st century. However, timeless insights like Sumner's never grow obsolete. Today our government continues to play judge and jury with the fruits of other men's labors and many people think nothing of it. The Forgotten Men are still forgotten. Capital is still underappreciated or else confused with things that are not capital, such as Greenspan's waterfalls of credit. William Graham Sumner's ideas remain relevant today — painfully so. "The problem with Socialism is the eventually you run out of other peoples money." --Margaret Thatcher "History is only a tiresome repetition of one story." –William Graham Sumner
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POPSObama: It May Be Time To Buy Stocks! Really? ...what has happened in the last two months? ...What is new is the unveiling of Mr. Obama's agenda and his approach to governance. Every new President has a finite stock of capital -- financial and political -- to deploy, and amid recession Mr. Obama has more than most. But one negative revelation has been the way he has chosen to spend his scarce resources on income transfers rather than growth promotion. Most of his "stimulus" spending was devoted to social programs, rather than public works, and nearly all of the tax cuts were devoted to income maintenance rather than to improving incentives to work or invest... ...The market has notably plunged since Mr. Obama introduced his budget last week, and that should be no surprise. The document was a declaration of hostility toward capitalists across the economy. Health-care stocks have dived on fears of new government mandates and price controls.
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