Thomas Friedman on Why America is Floundering!

Thomas Friedman comments in his op-ed piece -called "We're No. 1(1)!"- on why he thinks America no longer is the world leader that it once was.  While I think he skirts some of the obvious contributing factors, he does hit the nail on the head in referring to American society as one that has become intellectually incurious, slothful, and where individuals are driven towards instantaneous gratification in both their careers and personal lifestyles.

With regard to why American children consistently score so low internationally, despite the enormous sums of money to reform and improve the education system, he refers to another piece written by the Washington Post's Robert Samuelson in Newsweek.  Samuelson contends that the dearth of progress on the educational frontier emanates not from lousy teachers and administrators, but from lazy, coddled, and unmotivated students, who no longer attempt or even care to achieve academic excellence.

The larger cause of failure is almost unmentionable: shrunken student motivation. Students, after all, have to do the work. If the students aren’t motivated, even capable teachers may fail. Motivation comes from many sources: curiosity and ambition; parental expectations; the desire to get into a “good” college; inspiring or intimidating teachers; peer pressure. The unstated assumption of much school “reform” is that if students aren’t motivated, it’s mainly the fault of schools and teachers...

Motivation has weakened because more students (of all races and economic classes, let it be added) don’t like school, don’t work hard, and don’t do well. The conflict between expanding “access” and raising standards goes against standards. Michael Kirst, an emeritus education professor at Stanford, estimates that 60 percent of incoming community—college students and 30 percent of freshmen at four-year colleges need remedial reading and math courses.

The best part of Friedman's analysis relates to the wretched Baby Boomers, who I call "The Greediest Generation!"  In contrast, as he points out to the World War II generation who sacrificed, struggled, and saved to overcome the Great Depression, defeat both Nazi German and the Japanese Empire, and rebuilt Europe and expanded America's industrial prowess, the baby-boomers:

leaders never dare utter the word “sacrifice.” All solutions must be painless. Which drug would you like? A stimulus from Democrats or a tax cut from Republicans? A national energy policy? Too hard. For a decade we sent our best minds not to make computer chips in Silicon Valley but to make poker chips on Wall Street, while telling ourselves we could have the American dream — a home — without saving and investing, for nothing down and nothing to pay for two years. Our leadership message to the world (except for our brave soldiers): “After you.”

When India, China, and many developing countries are turning out more ambitious, fit, and intellectually competent students, employees, and businessmen, how far does anyone think the fatties and professional victims of America's culture wars are going to get in the great competition of life?  As conservatives like to bemoan, "Culture matters!"

Chillout Session: James Blunt

Quote of the Day: Tom Ricks on 9-11

Tom Ricks is an author and a Pulitzer award winning journalist who has covered the Pentagon and military affairs for the WSJ and the Washington Post.  In his Foreign Policy blog he succinctly summarizes the whole post-9/11 and Iraq debacle in one paragraph:

I've long thought that this country was knocked off balance by 9/11, and that instead of steadying us, as leaders should, President Bush and Vice President Cheney led the panic, and so intensified and lengthened the period of disequilibrium. The Iraq war was one result -- and also a cause -- of the length of this period, because the hundreds of billions of unnecessary spending led to a huge borrowing splurge by the federal government. Essentially China paid for the war, and our children and grandchildren are on the hook to pay it back.

Maybe the sheeple will remember that it was was their own intellectual laziness and dismal understanding of world affairs and economics that led to the election of a president who previously had never left the country, and permitted that same president to pursue two Middle eastern wars while cutting taxes; the latter a first in the history of the republic.  This morasses is as much the fault of the belligerents and corporate toadies in the White House and US congress, as it is the idiotic and feeble minded dolts who consistently failed to ask the right questions and hold those in power in check.  These red-baiting dunces, who decades ago were shrieking of the terror of global communism, have handed the butchers of Tiananmen Square and the communist hierarchy in Beijing the financial and political leverage that forty years of cold-war posturing could not accomplish.

Quote of the Day: Sullivan on Obama

Andrew Sullivan is one of the few persons who has constantly and unequivocally condemned Republicans and Democrats, under the Bush junta and the Obama administration, of condoning and actively participating in the torture and murder of war on terrorism detainees.  In a blog entry that addresses the Machiavellian undercurrent to American politics, he condemns Mr. Obama for his recent cowardliness in preventing those who have been wrongly "extraordinary renditioned" and tortured by American forces to seek redress in court.

Aggressively trying to prevent torture victims from having their day in court merely using unclassified evidence is active complicity in the war crimes of the past. And such complicity is itself a war crime. Either we live under the rule of law and the Geneva Conventions, or we don't. And when Obama says we don't - as he unmistakably is - the precedent he is setting all but ensures that torture will come again, that there will never be consequences for it, and that the national security state can cloak itself in such a way that the citizenry has no way of penetrating its power. Bush and Cheney remain the real culprits here; but watching Obama essentially surrendering to their trap is a betrayal of a core rationale for his candidacy.

You know It's a Depression When...

According to the blog the Big Picture, David Rosenberg, who as of recent has been prominently featured in front of the business news cameras, is talking down the US economy and firmly states that he is in the "we're in a long term Depression" camp.

Despite one of the largest fiscal and monetary stimulus packages in the history of the nation, the US economy remains moribund and appears to be drifting into deflationary territory, with potential increases in unemployment and greater economic upheavals (i.e. known as the double-dip).

The following statistics indicate that the US economy is in very poor health and worst is foreseen.

• Wages & Salaries are still down 3.7% from the prior peak
• Corporate profits are still down 20% from the peak
• Real GDP is still down 1.3% from the peak
• Industrial production is still down 7.2% from the peak
• Employment is still down 5.5% from the peak
• Retail sales are still down 4.5% from the peak
• Manufacturing orders are still down 22.1% from the peak
• Manufacturing shipments are still down 12.5% from the peak
• Exports are still down 9.2% from the peak
• Housing starts are still down 63.5% from the peak
• New home sales are still down 68.9% from the peak
• Existing home sales are still down 41.2% from the peak
• Non-residential construction is still down 35.7% from the peak

Given that autumn is approaching it is only fitting that our fleeting summer fling with conceptions of growth should come to and end and usher in the cold harsh reality that a return to the wonder-years of high growth are gone. The great deleveraging will continue for years. The global economy will continue to limp, stagger, and depending on what happens in China, may even collapse next year.

Fuelling the Clash of the Civilizations Meme!

Despite the fact that few persons on either side of the so-called Clash of the Civilizations divide actually want a "clash", there are those zealots who feel that wholesale planetary warfare is a positive course of action for the species. 

I've already discussed the rationals, why Bin Laden and his Islamist cohorts felt compelled to engage in their terrorist actions in previous posts (here and here).  The nature of the Islamist mind frame, generally speaking, is that of a victim seeking vengeance to mollify either actual or perceived attacks upon him and his metaphysical being.  To further the socio-political aims of its leaders, it requires a population, or at least a subset, to use the process of psychological transference, where their existing angst, anger, and inadequacies can be directly attributed to an externality that can be understood as the "other." In this case, the other is America or more generally Western civilization. For example, in an attempt to create a focus point in which they can blame the nation's inherent failings upon, the Mullahs inveigh against the "Great Satan". By transferring their own failures to America, they draw distinctions for their loyal followers of the high mindedness and virtue of their cause.  As the Green Revolution of 2009 has shown however, the majority of educated Iranians and youth, which form the majority of the population, find this decades old form of propaganda tiresome and repressive.

One has to remember, that across most of the Islamic world, their rulers are little more than quisling satraps whose existence is dictated by their utility to American hegemony. With the end of the cold war and advent of a more multipolar world, these nations offer America either oil reserves or strategic geopolitical use.  Equally, the governments of these nations are intimately aware of their own dependency on America's military, financial, and technical resources to exist. Weak failed states like Iraq -which has now been occupied by American forces for 19-years- and Afghanistan -occupied by NATO and Western forces for nine years- would most certainly degenerate into further civil war or complete disintegration without a firm military presence in the region; American or otherwise. Thus, while the specter of American hegemony may rankle the masses in many Islamic countries, those in control understand that if left to the demented illogic of absolute religious divinity over regional politics as espoused by factional leaders, these nations would combust into fratricidal violence and destabilize whole swaths of world.  For a thousand years, these people have been ruled and governed by others, and for good reason.

On the other hand, America's religious buffoons are hopped up on pushing humanity towards Armageddon and driving a war with the Kings of the East to validate Biblical prophecies.  For example, Pastor Terry Jones of Gainesville, Florida has proposed that on the 9th anniversary of the 9-11 terrorist assault on America, that his flock will burn Qu'rans (aka. the Koran).  The moral equivalence argument has been made that Muslims are attacking American Christianity through the construction of the Cordoba Cultural Center in New York.  The response by this lot, to this perceived slight, is to engage in a classic book burning exercise.  America's Republican party through their coy electoral race-baiting strategies have unleashed the most bigoted and unstable element of its confederacy of dunces.  General Petraeus, the Pentagon, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, President Obama, and numerous religious and national leaders across the world, including even PM Stephen Harper of Canada, have denounced the racism and brutal stupidity of this action, which they insist will further marginalize those who support American objectives in the Middle East and across the world. 

While the military-industrial complex and the mandarins of war need and demand that this segment of idiots ferment a rational for the Pentagon's exorbitant budgets, the rest of the world needs to contain, quarantine, and sterilize these maladroits before we are further dragged into their dystopian and self-destructive fantasies.

A Sign of Things to Come: Rare Minerals & Made in China

China's prominence as the world's second largest economy now poses a substantial threat to the continued growth and development of Western economies.  Over the past two years, the Chinese government has been developing policies that "prohibit or restrict exports of rare earth metals that are produced only in China and play a vital role in cutting edge technology, from hybrid cars and catalytic converters, to superconductors, and precision-guided weapons," according to news reports.

Nearly 95% of the world's rare earth minerals are extracted and processed in China.  A year ago, China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology called for a complete ban on trade to foreign nations of terbium, dysprosium, yttrium, thulium, and lutetium.  A subset of other metals, such as neodymium, europium, cerium, and lanthanum, would be limited to a combined export quota of 35,000 tonnes a year; a value substantially below current global needs.  An article published last week in Chemical and Engineering News elaborates:

China has maneuvered effectively since the mid-1980s to establish a worldwide monopoly on rare-earth resources. Aiding its effort to corner the market is China’s tremendous rare-earth mineral wealth. U.S. Geological Survey reports indicate that China possesses roughly 52% of the world’s known rare-earth reserves. By comparison, the U.S. is believed to have the second-largest share, at about 13%. Russia and Australia each have 5–6% of the known reserves. India, Canada, Greenland, and a few other countries also have appreciable quantities of rare-earth minerals.

A summary of current uses of rare earth metals is listed below:

Each Toyota Prius uses 25 pounds of rare earth elements. Cerium and lanthanum are used in catalytic converters for diesel engines. Europium is used in lasers... Blackberries, iPods, mobile phones, palms TVs, navigation systems, and air defence missiles all use a sprinkling of rare earth metals. They are used to filter viruses and bacteria from water, and cleaning up Sarin gas and VX nerve agents.

A couple of months ago, the Chinese People's Daily reported that the Chinese government had created an internal cartel to prevent the undervaluing of minerals.  Peng Bo, an analyst at Guosen Securities, states, "The pricing mechanism, if put into practice, will effectively buoy rare earths' undervalued prices and give Chinese producers more say on the global market."  The Chinese newspaper bluntly states that prices in rare earth minerals, such as neodymium, have skyrocketed and that Japanese and American markets are completely dependant on China for their needs.

Recently, America's Government Accountability Office (GAO) prepared a report on rare-earth materials as it pertains to America's military preparedness.  The report found:

that rare-earth materials play important roles in numerous defense technologies, including radar, missile-guidance systems, lasers, and night vision equipment. The Department of Defense is now conducting an internal assessment and is expected to devise strategies to protect against rare-earth supply interruptions.

It's not just the minerals per se that China will now limit, but also the development, production, and distribution of the attendant technologies that are dependant on these minerals. The indolent and short-term thinking of America's leaders in government and business, have created a untenable situation, in which a foreign government now has the ability to limit and control the development of not only the West's existing technologies, but future technologies, such as "green-tech," that were supposed to transform America's depressed manufacturing landscape.  If innovation is the source of future prosperity, then that wealth will be exclusively controlled by the communists in Beijing.  Coupled with America's need for the Chinese to continuously purchase Treasury bills and flood their markets with cheap disposable consumables, the future has become substantially more complicated for those in Washington D.C.

Climate Change may be Causative Agent in Bee Decline

Research conducted by scientists at the University of Toronto indicate that declines in bee population may be in part due to incongruencies that have emerged due to climate change.  Temporal mismatches arise between when the flowers are accessible and open to pollinators and when bees emerge from hibernation.  The seventeen year study indicates a "progressive decline in pollination over the years."

The research and article is summerized below from EurekAlert!

TORONTO, ON - Widespread reports of a decline in the population of bees and other flower-visiting animals have aroused fear and speculation that pollination is also likely on the decline. A recent University of Toronto study provides the first long-term evidence of a downward trend in pollination, while also pointing to climate change as a possible contributor.

"Bee numbers may have declined at our research site, but we suspect that a climate-driven mismatch between the times when flowers open and when bees emerge from hibernation is a more important factor," says James Thomson, a scientist with U of T's Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology.

Thomson's 17-year examination of the wild lily in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado is one of the longest-term studies of pollination ever done. It reveals a progressive decline in pollination over the years, with particularly noteworthy pollination deficits early in the season. The study will be published in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences on September 6.

Three times each year, Thomson compared the fruiting rate of unmanipulated flowers to that of flowers that are supplementally pollinated by hand. "Early in the year, when bumble bee queens are still hibernating, the fruiting rates are especially low," he says. "This is sobering because it suggests that pollination is vulnerable even in a relatively pristine environment that is free of pesticides and human disturbance but still subject to climate change."

***

Thomson began his long-term studies in the late 1980s after purchasing a remote plot of land and building a log cabin in the middle of a meadow full of glacier lilies. His work has been supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation and the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada.

Unfunded Liabilities: A Cost Profile of the Iraq War

Joseph E. Stiglitz (Columbia University) and Linda J. Bilmes (Harvard University) wrote in 2008, "The Three Trillion Dollar War."  It was an attempt to examine and describe the full costs of the Iraq war to the general public and contextualize the implications of the American public's decision to allow the Bush junta unfettered war making authority.  Although the original figures were met with usual hostility from cultural managers and propagandists on the right,  additional studies completed by the Joint Economic Committee of Congress and the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office, concluded that the war would cost American taxpayers at least $3.5 trillion or between $1.4 and $2.2 trillion respectively.

Today they update the assumptions and cost profile of the cost of the Iraq war in a Washington Post opinion piece labelled, "The true cost of the Iraq war: $3 trillion and beyond." They briefly expand on four areas that have developed over the past two years: Afghanistan, the Oil market, the Federal debt, and the financial crisis. I've highlighted the most illuminating sections of the article below.

Afghanistan

The Iraq invasion diverted our attention from the Afghan war, now entering its 10th year... It is hard to believe that we would be embroiled in a bloody conflict in Afghanistan today if we had devoted the resources there that we instead deployed in Iraq. A troop surge in 2003 -- before the warlords and the Taliban reestablished control -- would have been much more effective than a surge in 2010.

Oil

We now believe that a more realistic (if still conservative) estimate of the war's impact on prices works out to at least $10 per barrel. That would add at least $250 billion in direct costs to our original assessment of the war's price tag. But the cost of this increase doesn't stop there: Higher oil prices had a devastating effect on the economy.

Federal Debt

There is no question that the Iraq war added substantially to the federal debt. This was the first time in American history that the government cut taxes as it went to war. The result: a war completely funded by borrowing. U.S. debt soared from $6.4 trillion in March 2003 to $10 trillion in 2008 (before the financial crisis); at least a quarter of that increase is directly attributable to the war. And that doesn't include future health care and disability payments for veterans, which will add another half-trillion dollars to the debt.

Financial Crisis

Saying what might have been is always difficult, especially with something as complex as the global financial crisis, which had many contributing factors. Perhaps the crisis would have happened in any case. But almost surely, with more spending at home, and without the need for such low interest rates and such soft regulation to keep the economy going in its absence, the bubble would have been smaller, and the consequences of its breaking therefore less severe. To put it more bluntly: The war contributed indirectly to disastrous monetary policy and regulations.

Employee Health Insurance Changes

Kevin Drum at his blog over at MotherJones.com unloads the statistics related to the unsustainable increases in worker health insurance, for both the employer and employee over the past decade in America.  With individual increases in deductions, co-payments, and other ancillary charges, coupled with the fact that the average person's income has flat-lined or worst decreased during the past decade, America's middle class and low wage earners are seeing more of their income shunted towards paying for health care.

The problem with this arrangement, which I've discussed to some depth in a previous blog entry, is that the system is broken and without meaningful cost controls, strict penalties on those who engage in slothful and/or unhealthy lifestyles, and a shift towards re-aligning the American market to one that which exists in other Western nations, costs will continue to increase, the quality of service and the level of coverage will decrease, and the insurance companies in collusion with big-Pharma will reap the excessive profits.

Like everything in America these days, little attention is made towards reasonable and intelligent discourse.  Instead the dunces prattle on about imaginary enemies, irrelevant conflicts, and absurd realities in their Quixotic journey through life.  Attention to meaningful policies that affect all Americans, is jettisoned to make way for everyone's two-minutes of hate.  The right attacks liberal institutions, environmentalists, and all the secular evils for depriving them of their non-regulated Christian Eden.  The left bickers amongst themselves about gay-politics, token policy gestures made by the Obama White House, and the deceit of Democratic Party, while rarely challenging or stopping the crony-capitalists.