Well, jes put yer dawgs up here on the table and lemme see what yew think about this here problem.
… Academy Award nominee Don Cheadle and CSR leader Timberland …
teamed up to address the genocide in Darfur, Sudan. Cheadle, who earned
his Oscar nomination for “Hotel Rwanda” depicting a similar
humanitarian crisis in Africa, designed a black leather boot with a
picture of Africa as well as the slogan “Stomp Out Genocide” on the
sole of the shoe …
(From csrwire.com, 10/26/05)
He was … In Lawrence of Arabia,
the Anthony Quinn character is Auda Abu Tayi, a real man. In the desert night, he
shouts out to the Arab and English war lords and to his adoring
tribesmen that he has suffered so many wounds, lost so many friends,
gained so many friends, and won so many battles. “And yet I am a poor
man! Why? Because … I AM A RIVER TO MY PEOPLE!” The crowd goes wild.
Click on the title, as usual, to find out more.
Penn Kemble died of brain cancer on Sunday at age 64. He was a hero of American liberalism, even if many American liberals mistook him for something else. In 1972, after George McGovern led the Democratic Party to catastrophe, Kemble, a former activist in the Young People’s Socialist League, launched the Coalition for a Democratic Majority, which fought to repudiate the isolationism of McGovern’s followers. In the 1980s, he organized Democrats who wanted to oppose communism in Central America more forcefully, and, in the ’90s, he helped run the U.S. Information Agency. Kemble’s ideological trajectory paralleled that of many neoconservatives, but he never became one himself, remaining a social democrat to the end. Indeed, while he was already sick, he worked to prepare a conference paying tribute to the legacy of Sidney Hook. His ulterior motive, as all the participants understood, was to revive the social democratic spirit. As news of his illness spread, the event–which drew liberal academics, activists, and leaders–turned into a tribute to Kemble, one he richly deserved. He was a contributor to these pages during some of their most disputatious days, and he was a kind and smart and important man. We will miss him.
(From the Washington Times)
By R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr., October 21, 2005:
What Pat Moynihan once called the Party of Liberty lost one of its most energetic friends last Saturday when Penn Kemble breathed his last after a valiant battle with brain cancer. The Democratic Party, too, lost a friend in Penn.
What kind of man was he? In his college days in 1964, inspired by the causes of civil rights cause and social democracy, he got pictured on Page One of the New York Times, blocking Triborough Bridge traffic in protest of school conditions in Harlem. He and his East River Congress of Racial Equality compatriots were about to be hauled off to the calaboose. His mother, picking up her copy of the Times back home in Lancaster, Pa., was shocked.
She would not be shocked many more times by Penn. Ever the friend of racial equality, labor unions and all elements of democracy, he moved to more peaceful protests, not out of timorousness but commitment to reasoned debate. No one could question his courage, but he was eminently reasonable.
The last time I saw him on his feet was a few months back. He was competing at his favorite sport, handball. To my astonishment, however, he wore a helmet.
Was this one of his jokes? Penn had a puckish sense of humor, but this was not one of his jokes. After an unexpected grand mal seizure, doctors drilled into his skull and removed a tumor. That would not stop him from driving a handball 50 miles an hour on the court against those of us who wanted to beat him. Penn was a very tough guy.
His toughness was behind all the political activities that filled his life, along with his high intelligence. In 1972, he was a founder of the Social Democrats, U.S.A. He became a Scoop Jackson Democrat, campaigning for the pro-defense anticommunist senator’s doomed attempt to wrest the Democratic presidential nomination. Aware the McGovernites were shanghaiing the Democratic Party into a lala land of anti-Americanism and narcissistic utopia, he became executive director of the Coalition for a Democratic Majority (CDM).
Had the CDM taken control of the Democratic Party in the 1970s, it would have remained on the path hewn by Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman. It would have remained a vibrant center of American values and avoided much of the foolishness that has led to its decline.
CDM efforts proved futile and liberal Democrats such as Jeane Kirkpatrick and William Bennett drifted to the Republican Party. Penn remained a Democrat to the displeasure of his old friends, who were now called neoconservatives. Doubtless that hurt Penn, but he was committed to the Democratic Party and the trade union movement.
However, like his friend, the philosopher Sydney Hook, being a Democrat did not prevent him from vigorously fighting communism. He was with the Reagan administration heart and soul in advancing democracy in Central America. That offended many of his fellow Democrats, but Penn was his own man. He made neocons uneasy. He angered the Democratic elite. But he followed his conscience and continued to establish organizations opposing tyranny and intolerance worldwide. When the Clinton administration made him deputy director of the United States Information Agency it made a shrewd choice.
In all the years I knew Penn, he kept everything in perspective. In a city, Washington, and a pursuit, politics, where baseness is often the norm and too often the key to power and fame, Penn has been the soul of honor, intelligence and all the virtues of the timeless liberal. He achieved great things for human rights and the dignity of working people but never drew attention to himself or did anything cheap. There was a “tough guy” quality to his speech, which I always relished; for though he really was a tough guy he was always the perfect gent.
We never had a cross word in any disagreement. We had many ironic and amusing words. In sum, I rise to say Penn is one of the finest men I have known. He is one of the guys you would want with you in the foxhole during any battle. There he would get to the business at hand, accomplishing it with a few gruff laughs thrown in.
Once the shrieks and whines of their present leadership is abjured, sensible Democrats will realize Penn Kemble’s life is the blueprint for the Democratic Party’s return to relevance.
By Hans F. Sennholz
In their foreign dealings many American businessmen are enjoying the
present situation. Virtually all their international liabilities are
denominated in U.S. dollars while some 70 percent of their foreign
assets are reckoned in foreign currencies. The value of foreign assets
and liabilities obviously changes with every change in the exchange
rates of the currencies. A fall of the U.S. dollar immediately trims
the value of virtually all American liabilities while it raises the
value of American assets owned abroad; a rise of the dollar effects the
opposite. … The Federal government with rapidly rising debt of more
than $8 trillion is by far the biggest beneficiary.
American officials and their academic friends are quick to reject such
analyses and conclusions. They dismiss all thought of responsibility
for the situation and instead point to an acute savings predisposition
on the part of creditor countries…
…
Many countries, rich and poor, now are supporting the richest country
on earth. This odd situation raises serious questions of consequences
if the creditor countries should suddenly tire of their chore and call
a halt to the burden. What would happen if, for instance, the Asian
central banks should suddenly refuse to add to their dollar holdings or
even reduce them and instead decide to invest their surpluses in euros?
Surely, such a reaction would lead to much international turbulence and
severe economic crisis.
The first thing you notice about New Orleans are the burying grounds – the cemeteries – and they’re a cold proposition, one of the best things there are here. Going by, you try to be as quiet as possible, better to let them sleep. Greek, Roman, sepulchres- palatial mausoleums made to order, phantomesque, signs and symbols of hidden decay – ghosts of women and men who have sinned and who’ve died and are now living in tombs. The past doesn’t pass away so quickly here. You could be dead for a long time.
The ghosts race towards the light, you can almost hear the heavy breathing spirits, all determined to get somewhere. New Orleans, unlike a lot of those places you go back to and that don’t have the magic anymore, still has got it. Night can swallow you up, yet none of it touches you. Around any corner, there’s a promise of something daring and ideal and things are just getting going. There’s something obscenely joyful behind every door, either that or somebody crying with their head in their hands. A lazy rhythm looms in the dreamy air and the atmosphere pulsates with bygone duels, past-life romance, comrades requesting comrades to aid them in some way. You can’t see it, but you know it’s here. Somebody is always sinking. Everyone seems to be from some very old Southern families. Either that or a foreigner. I like the way it is.
There are a lot of places I like, but I like New Orleans better.
There’s a thousand different angles at any moment. At any time you could run into a ritual honoring some vaguely known queen. Bluebloods, titled persons like crazy drunks, lean weakly against the walls and drag themselves through the gutter. Even they seem to have insights you might want to listen to. No action seems inappropriate here. The city is one very long poem. Gardens full of pansies, pink petunias, opiates. Flower-bedecked shrines, white myrtles, bougainvillea and purple oleander stimulate your senses, make you feel cool and clear inside.
Everything in New Orleans is a good idea. Bijou temple-type cottages and lyric cathedrals side by side. Houses and mansions, structures of wild grace. Italianate, Gothic, Romanesque, Greek Revival standing in a long line in the rain. Roman Catholic art. Sweeping front porches, turrets, cast-iron balconies, colonnades- 30-foot columns, gloriously beautiful- double pitched roofs, all the architecture of the whole wide world and it doesn’t move. All that and a town square where public executions took place. In New Orleans you could almost see other dimensions. There’s only one day at a time here, then it’s tonight and then tomorrow will be today again. Chronic melancholia hanging from the trees. You never get tired of it. After a while you start to feel like a ghost from one of the tombs, like you’re in a wax museum below crimson clouds. Spirit empire. Wealthy empire. One of Napoleon’s generals, Lallemaud, was said to have come here to check it out, looking for a place for his commander to seek refuge after Waterloo. He scouted around and left, said that here the devil is damned, just like everybody else, only worse. The devil comes here and sighs. New Orleans. Exquisite, old-fashioned. A great place to live vicariously.
Nothing makes any difference and you never feel hurt, a great place to really hit on things. Somebody puts something in front of you here and you might as well drink it. Great place to be intimate or do nothing. A place to come and hope you’ll get smart – to feed pigeons looking for handouts. A great place to record. It has to be – or so I thought.
–Bob Dylan, Chronicles
Friday, October 07, 2005,
By Alan Tonelson
Presumably,
Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick’s main aim was to reassure
Americans when he delivered a much-hyped speech on U.S. China policy in
New York on September 21. He clearly hoped to reassure the political
and business mandarins assembled by the National Committee on United
States-China relations that recent tensions over currency manipulation
and apparel wouldn’t spin out of control. Zoellick also undoubtedly
hoped to reassure Washington’s China realists and the American people
that the Bush administration understood why China’s growing power and
global influence cannot be permitted to undermine American security and
prosperity.
Only the mandarins can know whether Zoellick
succeeded with them. But anyone with an ounce of China realism could
tell from Zoellick’s remarks that America’s China policy remains asleep
at the wheel on all critical fronts. Ironically, much of the strongest
evidence comes from a recent Chinese statement to which Zoellick was
explicitly responding: an equally hyped article in the journal Foreign
Affairs on “China’s ‘Peaceful Rise’ to Great Power Status” by Zheng
Bijian, a close associate of Chinese President Hu Jintao.
… it would be tempting
to describe the United States and China as two ships in the night. But
there’s a crucial difference. China has set ambitious but concrete
goals and has mapped out a strategy for achieving them that has already
produced great progress. The United States, by contrast, seems content
to drift strategically, and to confuse pipe dreams with policy. …
Washington DC (PR WEB) October 10, 2005 – Action Fund Management LLC
(AFM), investment adviser to the Free Enterprise Action Fund (FEAF)(www.FreeEnterpriseActionFund.com),
asked Calvert Investments and KLD Research & Analytics, Inc. to
withdraw their sponsorship of an upcoming “socially responsible”
investor conference featuring a speaker who advocated violence against
the principals of the FEAF.
….One of the scheduled speakers is Max Keiser, the founder and CEO of
KarmaBanque. In a September 28 podcast originally posted on the web
site KarmaBanque.com, Keiser denounced the FEAF as an “appeaser to
global warming and climate change terrorists” and said, with respect to
the principals of the FEAF, “I think the kids, the children of these
people, should knife them.” (1)
This is a summary of the most recent publication from the Institute for International Economics.
The benefits and costs of immigration into the United States are
distributed unevenly. Immigration makes the US labor force more
abundant in low-skilled labor. One consequence has been lower wages for
low-skilled US workers. Taxpayers in high-immigration US states
shoulder most of the fiscal costs, in the form of higher taxes that pay
for public services used by immigrant households. Capital owners,
landowners, and employers capture most of the benefits associated with
immigration by way of higher factor returns. On net, the economic
impact of immigration on the United States is small. However, small net
changes in national income mask potentially large changes in the
distribution of income. …
By shifting to a system that favors high-skilled immigrants, the United
States would attract individuals with high income potential. [“Potential”
is correct. The danger is that the income of current high-skilled
workers will be depressed. It all depends on the number of immigrants
admitted.] A skills-based immigration policy would help
to narrow the wage gap between high-skilled and low-skilled labor in
the United States [First, reduce the gap between the CEOs and the high-skilled workers, please.] and reduce the fiscal burden on taxpayers. …
An alternative (but not mutually exclusive) strategy would be to expand
temporary immigration programs and to phase in immigrant access to
public benefits more slowly over time. …
Despite massive increases in spending on border enforcement since the
early 1990s, the inflow of illegal immigrants has not slowed.
Enforcement should be focused on the hiring of illegal immigrants.
Mandating information sharing among immigration authorities, the Social
Security Administration, and the Internal Revenue Service (via either a
national identity card or electronic tracking of immigrants’ visa
status) would permit employers to verify instantly whether a potential
employee is a legal immigrant. Such an approach could expand the
capacity of immigration authorities to enforce against illegal
immigration at workplaces in an effective, unobtrusive, and humane
manner.
Some Question Structure of Giving, Which Allows Company More Flexibility
By David A. Vise, Washington Post Staff Writer, Wednesday, October 12, 2005; Page D04
Google Inc. is launching an unusual corporate philanthropy campaign
that will focus on fighting poverty and disease in Africa, addressing
energy and environmental issues, and assisting nonprofit groups by
giving away free online advertising. Rather than doing all of that through a traditional corporate
foundation, which has certain tax advantages, Google is setting aside
the equivalent of 3 million shares of stock, worth more than $900
million, to fund an entity called Google.org. It is separately putting
about $90 million into a newly created Google Foundation, officials
said.
By using Google.org for the bulk of its charitable giving, the company
will have greater flexibility in how it deploys the funds since the
affiliate will not be subject to the restrictions imposed on
foundations by the Internal Revenue Service. For example, Google.org
will be able to invest in projects promoting entrepreneurship in Africa
that are off limits for foundations because the programs turn a profit.
It will also support charitable initiatives that spread the use of
technology and could be viewed as questionable for a foundation since
they are closely related to Google’s business.
Shareholder activists said Google’s charitable commitment raises
questions about whether this is an appropriate use of company cash or
whether company founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page ought to make
donations to their favorite causes personally. …