China's Trickle Down Economy

A critique of capitalism in China from the voice of Capitalism; The Wall Street Journal. The irony being is that they denounce their favorite argument for unbridled capitalism, the trickle down theory of economics. Their argument could equally apply to America.

In China, Growth at Whose Cost?
Nation's Poorest Seem to Be Getting Left Behind,
Raising Sticky Questions for Communist Party

As long as the country's newfound wealth eventually trickled down to everyone, the reasoning went, the benefits outweighed the problems.

But now, as the Chinese government worries about social stability and amid questions about the social costs of China's rapid growth, new figures suggest the poorest of the country's 1.3 billion people are getting even poorer.

From 2001 to 2003, as China's economy expanded nearly 10% a year, average income for the poorest 10% of the country's households fell 2.5%, according to an analysis by the World Bank that has been presented to the Chinese government. Those roughly 130 million Chinese earn $1 a day or less, the World Bank's global benchmark for poverty.

Meanwhile, the nation's total income rose sharply, and other income groups saw gains, suggesting that the rich are getting richer at the expense of the poorest.

Latest Data on Poverty in America

In this period of 'great economic growth', according to the delusional Bush administration, these recently released facts by the Census Bureau are quite telling of the real America:

-In 2003, 2004, and 2005, the percentage of the poor living in deep poverty stood at 42-43 percent, higher than in any prior years on record.

-The percentage of the poor who are below half the poverty line has risen steadily over the last two and half decades: from 34 percent in 1980 to 39 percent in 1990 to 43 percent this year.

-The actual percent of the population who lived in deep poverty in 2005 rose to 5.4 percent!

-The poverty rate is higher in the fourth year of an economic recovery (2005) at 12.6 percent, than it was in the previous height of recession (2001), when it stood at 11.7 percent.

-The median income for non-elderly households was $2,000 lower in 2005 than in the 2001 recession year.

These developments in a so-called 'economic recovery' are unprecedented in economic recoveries (with data going back to the 1960s). They are bad news for the poor, indeed.

It is the shame of the republic!

On Congress’ responsibility for poor Americans:

What does it mean to be poor in America?

For many of the 37 million Americans trapped in economic bondage, it means work, often backbreaking work, for little pay. Illness, car trouble, a rent increase — any of these can spell disaster, sending a family into economic meltdown.

For seniors struggling to live on a fixed income, an increase in a power bill or at the gas pump can send a monthly budget crashing. More seniors are now relying on their adult children for financial help. And for the 13 million children living in families with incomes below the poverty level, it sometimes can come down to challenges as basic as having enough food.

Recently, Congress has done less and less to help Americans hanging onto the ledge of the nation’s prosperity. That should change.

... Congress could fix the broken reform effort by doing more to give families a way up and out of poverty. Congress cut $55 billion from programs that help the most vulnerable, including food stamps, employment training and child care. Putting this money back would ensure the best chance of success. An increase in the Earned Income Tax Credit also would help families climb out of poverty. ...

— Daytona (Fla.) Beach News-Journal

See:

China

Poverty

Capitalism




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Our Republican Finance Minister

When Finance Minister Jim Flaherty talked about paying down Canada's net debt he included using the budget surplus from the Canada Pension Plan. Shades of the USA. Thats excatly what the US Congress does and look at the mess it has gotten them into. This is a net gain zero idea. One that would in the long run lay the basis for the privatization of Social Security in Canada. Now what kind of government would do such a thing? Why the Republican Lite Reform/Alliance/Conservatives of course. The old Reform party raised the idea years ago.

Flaherty's promise raises eyebrows

Bill Robson, president of the C.D. Howe Institute, said the net debt figure isn't really a true indication of public debt because the Canada and Quebec pension plans also have major liabilities in the future when Canadians retire. "You can't start adding the Canadian Pension Plan money into the overall debt figure," Robson said. "There is a big liability out there for the Canadian Pension Plan to pay those pensions. That's what that money is for. It's not available for other uses."

See:

Harmonizing the GST

Social Insecurity The Phony Pension Crisis

Retirement Reverse Discrimination

CPP


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Harmonizing the GST

Minister of Finance Jim Flaherty has said one of the ways of lowering the net government debt in Canada (that is the total debt of ALL levels of government, federal, provincial, municipal and the CPP) would be to have provinces harmonize their Provincial Sales Tax with the GST.

Hmm in Alberta we don't have a sales tax except the GST.

Does that mean we should eliminate the GST payments from Alberta to be in harmony with being sales tax free, or is he suggesting, as some have before, that we introduce a 5% sales tax to match the pending 5% federal GST.

Enquiring minds want to know.

And I thought the Conservatives opposed having the Federal government tell the provinces what to do when it came to their jurisdicitional rights. Must be another broken promise.


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That's How They Got Capone

Taxmen join Mafia probe



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Dion Kennedy Merger

This; Liberal leadership candidates Gerard Kennedy and Stephane Dion have held talks that could lead to an alliance that vaults one of them to first place on the final ballot at the convention next week.

Explains this: Dion says Canada should withdraw its troops from Afghanistan


See:

Liberal Leadership Race

Afghanistan






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Dion Ghost Writer

On Don Newmans Politics (CBC) yesterday Liberal Leadership candidate Stéphane Dion took credit for being consulted by Harper on the four little words that PM Harper added to the BQ motion on Quebec/Quebecois as a nation.

Yet another Liberal leadership candidate, Stéphane Dion, was actually called by Harper's office Tuesday night to sound him out on the proposal. He is also happy, saying it reflects the compromise he'd floated privately with his opponents. "I have no problem with this," said Dion, also a former political scientist and intergovernmental affairs minister who had been viewed as the most staunch opponent of recognizing Quebec as a nation.

Dion got a call from a Harper adviser, seeking his advice as a constitutional expert and as a Liberal contender. Dion told the Star last night that "within Canada" was close enough to his proposal to recognize Quebec's nation status as a "sociological," not legal fact. "It's no big deal," he said.

Despite the plea of Warren Kinsella that Dion oppose this motion in the house, it appears that he took the opportunity to play constitutional consultant.

He told Don Newman he will support the Conservative Government motion.

To bad Warren. No one is listening to you anymore. Except Robert McClelland. And that's the definition of 'irony'.

See:

Liberal Leadership Race

Quebec A Nation Pro and Con

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Colombia Deal Dead

Democrats to throw out Colombia trade deal

And its a good thing too. Colombia has the record for most murders of trade unionists.

Union to appeal court's dismissal of lawsuit against Coca-Cola

A Colombian labor union plans to appeal the dismissal of a U.S. lawsuit against Coca-Cola Co. and local bottlers in an alleged conspiracy with local paramilitary groups to murder, torture and threaten trade unionists at its plants.

Which is why the Democrats in Congress tossed the Bush bilateral trade deal with that country.

The congressman said labour standards were at the “core” of Democrats’ objections - a sign that the influence of the labour movement within the party has been strengthened by the election result, which saw a notable rise in economic populism among voters.

Thea Lee, policy director of the AFL-CIO union, said, “Colombia is a very emotive issue for people in the labour movement”, adding that the country was regarded as the world’s deadliest for union organisers. More than 1,200 deaths of activists and rank-and-file members have been recorded in recent years.

The opposition from Democrats is also a setback for Alvaro Uribe, the president of Colombia, who came to Washington to lobby Democrats for support.

Mr Uribe’s visit to Capitol Hill last week was upstaged by difficulties with his own Congress, where three members of the House and Senate in Bogotá were arrested for links to rightwing para-militaries.

The trio are being charged, along with others close to the government, with financing death squads. Senator Alvaro García is charged with helping to plan a massacre of civilians in 2000.

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2021

Thats how long NATO expects to be in Afghanistan till.

Nato’s difficulties in Afghanistan have forced the alliance to scale down its ambitions for a showpiece summit next week and raised questions about its ability to get to grips with the insurgency in the country.

A classified document obtained by the Financial Times, and due to be endorsed by leaders, maps out new ambitions for the next 15 years, including development of the ability to carry out more than one big operation at once.

A senior Nato official said: “Are we magically going to get big new news against the artificial deadline of the summit? I don’t think so. For a number of those heads at the table, they have not invested as much in Afghanistan as others. This is a wake-up call for everybody that it’s a long term mission.”

See:

Afghanistan






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The N Word

A lot of sturm and drang over the Kramer (Michael Richards) affair. Was he racist, yes. Did he use the N word. Yep. Do I hate the N word because its historic meaning is derived from slavery, yep. But I hate it whenever I hear it. Not because the media decided to focus on this particular incident.

I also hate the hypocritical media mania over how it gets used and abused, and the virtual silence over it when it makes money. Lots of money.

Though it has been used in effectively in comedy, both by blacks and whites to confront its real historic social meaning in America This was not the case. It was the result of a breakdown on stage by a comic on his way down.

IT'S ALL ABOUT THAT WORD'

Kenny Robinson, founder of the all-black Nubian Disciples Of Pryor comedy series at Yuk's, also noted Richards' attempt at backtracking. "He was saying 'It's that word, it's all about that word,'" Robinson said. "I'm sorry, this isn't 1964 and you're not Lenny Bruce."

Perhaps he should have rapped out the 'N' word. Hip Hop and rap music using the N word gets lots of airplay on my alternative campus radio station. But of course thats okay for multi-millionaire rap artists, it's an expression of their oppression.

Just like it's ok for some rappers to use sexist put downs of women calling them byeetch and ho's. Or to express their unbridled homophobia. It's an affirmation of Afro-American masculinity that is oppressed in racist white supermacist culture. Except it isn't.

Is it just me or has Rap music gone to the dogs?

I being from NYC living in the inner city, and growing up in the 80's and 90's naturally grew up listening to rap. In those times when rap music wasn't mainstream, the music was about something. Be it an outcry of the horrendous poverty and discrimination minorities grew up around, or just having fun and letting your voice be heard.

With the onset of gansta rap (I once liked but now despise because I matured) is when things started to go downhill.

Hate, violence, degradation of women, selfishness, greed, and all other decadent behaviour associated with most, not all, rap music.

The Oppositional Gaze

The rap music that gets the most news is the music that is pushing misogyny. We think of rap music as a little third world country that white people can take out of it what ever they want. There is extreme violence, misogyny and black hate, young men bought this and this became the top type of rap. If a black guy knows that he can make millions of dollar by singing about fucking women and hoes then they’re going to do it.

Anti-Feminist and slavery driven rap makes the most money. Rap and assault are the defining exchange in black youth this is a fall out because individuals get wealthy off this. They are making strategic choices to do this music and this should set off a red light. This is what the country finds appealing. The white middle class suburban boy wants music about violence, fucking, degradation, blacks as ‘the other’.

Rap videos have reinscribed the female body in pornographic imaginary. Rap music and black music uses the black female body making it fall into overly sexual terms. They are the girls who will do what the nice clean white girls won’t. This is produced in rap videos.

American culture is obsessed with transgression. Commodified blackness is controlled and altered by the culture and consumer to how we’ll accept it. White boys who try and be black are still afraid of the black guys on the street; blackness is still violent and animalistic. White culture, however, is too wonder bread. Let’s get some of the endangered species to be hip, exotic and different so that we can keep our white people conservative and static.

Gangsta Rap, the million dollar pop culture industry is the 'voice' of the violent subculture of the lumpenproletariat, in America, Canada and Europe. It's not just about the N word it's the colour of the person saying it. Which in itelf is a contradiction.

The cultural studies interpetation of the meaning of this is that it is the liberation of the word from its original meaning if it is used by those whom it describes by themselves. In other words the words of oppression take on a different 'meaning' or 'signifier' when used by the oppressed themselves.

The irony is that N word may appear to be about liberating the word for other meanings for those who use it in rap music the fact is that it is also about the colour of the folks listening to the music. Which is why it is popular music for white middle class boys. They get to imagine being bad (black) boys. And thus invert the fear of Afro-Americans or immigrants of colour in Europe, into the other whom they embrace for all the wrong reasons.

Turn it down!: Rap music and the far right: Germany goes gangsta

If it doesn't work out with hip hop," shrugs Bushido, Germany's most notorious rap star, "then I'll just sell drugs." It probably won't come to that. The 26-year-old half Tunisian Berliner is turning the world of German hip hop upside down. The child of a German mother and an immigrant father is attracting, against all normal logic, a massive audience of neo-Nazis who love his hard-edged, racist and nationalistic lyrics.

There has never been any doubting Bushido's bad boy credentials. He is currently, and not for the first time, in an Austrian jail, waiting to see if he must stand trial on GBH charges. Earlier this month, an unfortunate 20-year-old Austrian man made the mistake of wandering too close to Bushido's pimped-up 7 Series BMW. It is alleged the rapper and his two bodyguards suspected the man had punctured the tyres, and beat him senseless. Bushido could face 10 years in jail.

Bushido's latest brush with the law was par for the course for a true gangsta rapper. 50 Cent, Ja Rule, Snoop Dogg: all the American rap stars worth their platinum discs and pimped-out Hummers have had run-ins with the law or spent time behind bars. But there is something different about Bushido, a beefy man with five tattoos. He has sparked a huge debate in Germany, a country still new to gangsta rap, about how racist and offensive song lyrics can be before they become outright neo-Nazi propaganda.

Sirius-ly Funny: Now I Remember Why I Miss Howard Stern

Then, as now, Stern's brand of "shock radio" is one where everything and anything from wrestling midget lesbians to Ku Klux Klansmen playing Hollywood Squares is considered fair game. In other words, it is so ridiculously over-the-top, anyone who would for a minute take it seriously needs to pick their brains up off the floor. Or at least, find a sense of humor.

Some of Stern's biggest fans back at my record company office were our rap artists. These guys would often ask us if bits featuring peripheral Stern characters like "The King Of All Blacks" could be legally sampled on their records. That is because stereotypes like that are so ridiculous they become the joke in and of themselves. And the joke is a laugh out loud, falling down funny one — especially to someone who knows what that stereotype means first hand.

It is the same as with the use of the word faggot. Which supposedly becomes liberating when used by gays with each other, when in reality it is the acceptance of an ugly epithat. Just because those who are called N***** or faggot now accept the label with pride, does not make it less derogatory.

It does not matter about the colour or sexual preference of those using the word it reamains a slur. The difference here is the acceptance of the labels of oppression by the oppressed to express pride. Real Pride is about overcoming those words with words like Black Pride, Black Power or Gay and Gay Pride.

Either the word remains a slur or epithat or it is transformed. When the word is transformed, then anyone can use it because the word itself takes on a new transformative meaning. Such is the case with the word Queer. Which itself is now used in Academic setting such as Queer Studies. Such is not nor ever will be the case for the N word.

When Lenny Bruce challenged America with words like the N word or references to fellatio, etc. he was not putting down Afro-Americans or homosexuality, he was challenging the bigots. And he got busted for it. Kramer on the other hand was just a bigot on stage.

And the multi million dollar media busted him. The same media that exploits the N word for profit in producing Gangsta rap. The capitalist media cannot cry holier than thou when in fact they made the N word an issue, not out of moral outrage, but as a commodity. Good or bad they profited from increased sales around the Kramer affair the same way they profit from Gangsta Rap.

Did Kramer flip out of course he did, most stand up comics do after being heckled. But they handle it better.

I don't expect that Richards will get much sympathy. Except, of course, in private from some of his peers, who understand enough about the process of stand-up comedy to understand how this incident could have happened. And enough about the public feeding frenzy to stay out of the limelight while he's beaten like a piñata until everyone moves on. In Defense Of Michael Richards

Was he personally attacking his audience? Yep. Was he an idiot? Yep.
Is he racist. Yep.

But lets not be hypocritical about the 'N' word. Not when I just turned on my campus radio station to hear it loud and clear. I switched the channel.


See:

Da Death of De Hip Hoppy

Hip Hop Gun Culture

Martin Blames Gun Collectors

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Fish Fights

Not dog fighting, not cock fighting, those are illegal. Fish fights though seem to have allowed scientists to discover that yes fish do have personalities. So I wonder when the teacher will impose no fighting rules in the undesea school yard.

Fish certainly have more personality than what meets the human eye, as according to biologists in Britain, not only do different trout have different characters, but these change as the fish experience life's highs and lows.

Winning or losing a fight, or even watching fellow fish negotiate the perils and pitfalls of encountering strange new objects, influenced the future behaviour of rainbow trout studied in the lab.

Researchers led by Lynne Sneddon, of the University of Liverpool, identified different 'personalities' in their fish by observing the boldness or shyness of individuals. Like people, some fish are very confident in the face of novelty or confrontation, whereas others are reticent and fearful.

Predictably, shy fish that won a fight also gained more confidence. But surprisingly, shy fish that lost their bout also grew bolder when investigating strange new food. Sneddon says that this could be due to what she calls a 'desperado effect'. Shy fish that know they're pathetic in a fight must race for food if they want to get any, she suggests, admitting: "This is totally presuming that fish think about winning or losing."


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