WSJ.com - The Bernanke Reflation

Powered by           For readers under age 30 who are wondering why they are suddenly paying $3.15 for gasoline and $2 for milk, the answer is that this is what an inflation looks like. Those of us of a certain age remember it well, if painfully, and judging by the noises coming from the Federal Reserve of late we had all better get used to it again.             Click the following to access the sent link:       WSJ.com - Opinion: The Bernanke Reflation* This article will be available to non-subscribers of the Online Journal for up to seven days after it is e-mailed.                 Get your EMAIL THIS Browser Button and use it to email content from any Web site. Click here for more information.           *This article can also be accessed if you copy and paste the entire address below into your web browser. http://online.wsj.com/wsjgate?subURI=%2Farticle%2FSB120424639824701397-email.html&nonsubURI=%2Farticle_email%2FSB120424639824701397-lMyQjAxMDI4MDI0OTIyNDk2Wj.html

Cato: Trading Up: How Expanding Trade Has Delivered Better Jobs and Higher Living Standards for American Workers

In "Trading Up: How Expanding Trade Has Delivered Better Jobs and Higher Living Standards for American Workers," Daniel Griswold, director of Cato's Center for Trade Policy Studies, writes: "For political and ideological reasons, opponents of trade liberalization have sought to exploit temporary downturns in the U.S. economy to indict the value of free trade and trade-expanding-agreements. But when we account for the passing phases of the business cycle, current indicators for worker and household well-being have continued to follow a long, upward trend. Trade expansion and growing globalization have helped raise the standard of living for a broad swath of Americans. To promote further progress for American workers and households, Congress and the administration should pursue policies that expand the freedom of Americans to participate in global markets."

 

SUMMARY:

Opponents of trade liberalization have sought to indict free trade and trade agreements by painting a grim picture of the economic state of American workers and households. They claim that real wages have been stagnant or declining as millions of higher-paying middle-class jobs are lost to imports. But the reality for a broad swath of American workers and households is far different and more benign.

Contrary to public perceptions:

• Trade has had no discernible, negative effect on the number of jobs in the U.S. economy. Our economy today is at full employment, with 16.5 million more people working than a decade ago.

• Trade accounts for only about 3 percent of dislocated workers.Technology and other domestic factors displace far more workers than does trade.

• Average real compensation per hour paid to American workers, which includes benefits as well as wages, has increased by 22 percent in the past decade.

• Median household income in the United States is 6 percent higher in real dollars than it was a decade ago at a comparable point in the previous business cycle. Middle-class households have been moving up the income ladder, not down.

• The net loss of 3.3 million manufacturing jobs in the past decade has been overwhelmed by a net gain of 11.6 million jobs in sectors where the average wage is higher than in manufacturing. Two-thirds of the net new jobs created since 1997 are in sectors where workers earn more than in manufacturing.

• The median net worth of U.S. households jumped by almost one-third between 1995 and 2004, from $70,800 to $93,100.

The large majority of Americans, including the typical middle-class family, is measurably better off today after a decade of healthy trade expansion.

WSJ.com - That Other Presidential Campaign

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120407293929595107.html?mod=opinion_main_commentaries

Putin knows his candidate will win. So why is he rigging the election?

Along with political apathy and civic disengagement, Mr. Putin has brought back an old tradition, fear. As in the old days, politics is scary and dangerous. Not many are willing to take the risk when dabbling brings trouble -- say, exile in Siberia (consider the plight of former Yukos boss Mikhail Khodorkovsky), assassination (the crusading journalist Anna Politkovskaya's in 2006 just one among many) or, probably least bad, a few knocks from enthusiastic riot police cracking heads at small opposition protests.

WSJ.com: The Sderot Calculus

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120398961080492299.html?mod=opinion_main_commentaries

The more vexing question, both morally and strategically, is what Israel ought to do about Gaza. The standard answer is that Israel's response to the Kassams ought to be "proportionate." What does that mean? Does the "proportion" apply to the intention of those firing the Kassams -- to wit, indiscriminate terror against civilian populations? In that case, a "proportionate" Israeli response would involve, perhaps, firing 2,500 artillery shells at random against civilian targets in Gaza. Or should proportion apply to the effects of the Kassams -- an exquisitely calibrated, eye-for-eye operation involving the killing of a dozen Palestinians and the deliberate maiming or traumatizing of several hundred more?

 

WSJ.com - Obama

Triple issue for today on Obama. 

 

  
WSJ.com - Obama and Race*  

There is an important story here. It has nothing to do with plagiarism.

***

Race, however, is unavoidable, no matter how little Obama talks about it.

There is nothing complicated about his appeal to black voters. Why should there be? And the mists of "change" aside, are many whites, as some suggest, supporting him as a once-and-for-all exorcism of guilt? Maybe, but I think it has more to do with frustration across the political spectrum over the urban black status quo.

 

WSJ.com - Obama's New Vulnerability*

Until now, Mr. Obama has been making appeals to the center, saying, for example, that we are not red or blue states, but the United States. But in his Houston speech, he used the opportunity...to advocate a distinctly non-centrist, even proudly left-wing, agenda.

The truth is that Mr. Obama is unwilling to challenge special interests if they represent the financial and political muscle of the Democratic left. He says yes to the lobbyists of the AFL-CIO when they demand card-check legislation to take away the right of workers to have a secret ballot in unionization efforts, or when they oppose trade deals. He won't break with trial lawyers, even when they demand the ability to sue telecom companies that make it possible for intelligence agencies to intercept communications between terrorists abroad. And he is now going out of his way to proclaim fidelity to the educational unions. This is a disappointment since he'd earlier indicated an openness to education reform. Mr. Obama backs their agenda down the line, even calling for an end to testing, which is the only way parents can know with confidence whether their children are learning and their schools working.

These stands represent not just policy vulnerabilities, but also a real danger to Mr. Obama's credibility and authenticity. He cannot proclaim his goal is the end of influence for lobbies if the only influences he seeks to end are lobbies of the center and the right.

WSJ.com - Try a Little Tenderness *   

So many Americans right now fear they are losing their country, that the old America is slipping away and being replaced by something worse, something formless and hollowed out. They can see we are giving up our sovereignty, that our leaders will not control our borders, that we don't teach the young the old-fashioned love of America, that the government has taken to itself such power, and made things so complex, and at the end of the day when they count up sales tax, property tax, state tax, federal tax they are paying a lot of money to lose the place they loved.

* * *

Michelle Obama seems keenly aware of her struggles, of what it took to rise so high as a black woman in a white country. Fair enough. But I have wondered if it is hard for young African-Americans of her generation, having been drilled in America's sad racial history, having been told about it every day of their lives, to fully apprehend the struggles of others. I wonder if she knows that some people look at her and think "Man, she got it all." Intelligent, strong, tall, beautiful, Princeton, Harvard, black at a time when America was trying to make up for its sins and be helpful, and from a working-class family with two functioning parents who made sure she got to school.

That's the great divide in modern America, whether or not you had a functioning family, and she apparently came from the privileged part of that divide. A lot of white working-class Americans didn't come up with those things. Some of them were raised by a TV and a microwave and love our country anyway, every day.

Does Mrs. Obama know this? I don't know. If she does, love and gratitude for the place that tries to give everyone an equal shot would seem to be in order.

WSJ.com - Why Bill Gates Hates My Book

Powered by           Philanthropy is great. But the poor aren't poor for lack of charity. The number of poor people who can't afford food for their children is a lot smaller than it used to be -- thanks to capitalism. Capitalism didn't create malnutrition, it reduced it. The globalization of capitalism from 1950 to the present has increased annual average income in the world to $7,000 from $2,000. History has shown that profit-motivated capitalism is still the best hope for the poor.             Click the following to access the sent link:       WSJ.com - Commentary: Why Bill Gates Hates My Book* This article will be available to non-subscribers of the Online Journal for up to seven days after it is e-mailed.                 Get your EMAIL THIS Browser Button and use it to email information from any Web site.           *This article can also be accessed if you copy and paste the entire address below into your web browser. http://online.wsj.com/wsjgate?subURI=%2Farticle%2FSB120235183917849631-email.html&nonsubURI=%2Farticle_email%2FSB120235183917849631-lMyQjAxMDI4MDAyNzMwNTcxWj.html

WSJ.com - Health Questions for the Candidates

Powered by           In preparation for the Texas showdown, Sen. Clinton and Sen. Obama will debate this Thursday night in Austin -- and both candidates have called for less oratory and more specifics. With that in mind, here are some of the questions they should be asked:             Click the following to access the sent link:       WSJ.com - Opinion: Health Questions for the Candidates* This article will be available to non-subscribers of the Online Journal for up to seven days after it is e-mailed.                 Get your EMAIL THIS Browser Button and use it to email information from any Web site.           *This article can also be accessed if you copy and paste the entire address below into your web browser. http://online.wsj.com/wsjgate?subURI=%2Farticle%2FSB120346913783878607-email.html&nonsubURI=%2Farticle_email%2FSB120346913783878607-lMyQjAxMDI4MDIzMDQyNjA5Wj.html

FW: Total Lunar Eclipse on Wednesday, 20-Feb-2008

FYI - tonight -

        http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2008/images/lunareclipse/koehn_MST.jpg

________________________________
From:   NASA Science News []
Sent:   Wednesday, February 13, 2008 2:16 PM
Subject:        Total Lunar Eclipse

NASA Science News for February 13, 2008

On Wednesday evening, February 20th, the full Moon over the Americas will turn a delightful shade of red and possibly turquoise, too. It's a total lunar eclipse - the last one until Dec. 2010.

FULL STORY at

        http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2008/13feb_lunareclipse.htm?list166039

 

WSJ.com - That 'Stimulus' Nonsense

Powered by           What are we producing when we rob Peter to pay Paul? Bipartisanship, a notion that stands as anathema to our basic political premise of checks and balances, has resulted in a stimulus package that will do enormous damage to the U.S. economy. The net effect is that the reduction in demand from those who pay the real resources will be exactly the same size as the increase in demand from the rebate recipients. And, as fate will have it, any rebate will reduce output because it reduces incentives to produce output. The larger the rebate, the greater the reduction in the incentives to work and the greater the reduction in output. It's as simple as that. This $170 billion rebate camouflaged as economic stimulus will deal a serious blow to the economic health of the country.             Click the following to access the sent link:       WSJ.com - Opinion: That 'Stimulus' Nonsense* This article will be available to non-subscribers of the Online Journal for up to seven days after it is e-mailed.                 Get your EMAIL THIS Browser Button and use it to email information from any Web site.           *This article can also be accessed if you copy and paste the entire address below into your web browser. http://online.wsj.com/wsjgate?subURI=%2Farticle%2FSB120286935977964221-email.html&nonsubURI=%2Farticle_email%2FSB120286935977964221-lMyQjAxMDI4MDEyMzgxNjM5Wj.html