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IN BRITAIN THE QUEEN MADE A SPEECH BUT SHE DIDN’T SAY MUCH.
(UK Independent)
The Queen appears in Parliament to give her regular “speech” that articulates whatever is the policy agenda of the elected Prime Minister and cabinet. The speech given this week marks a signficant slow-down from drastic efforts at reform in the country’s welfare and health care systems. Nor does it offer much more than “talking and tweaking” when it comes to any measures designed to address the country’s bleak economic situation.”
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REVERSING THE DIRECTION OF THAT “SUCKING SOUND.”
(Counterpunch)
Years ago Ross Perot popularized this term to describe the effects of NAFTA in creating a flow of jobs from the United States to Mexico. Ralph Nader now notes that—where employment in high tech work is concerned—the “brain drain” is being reversed as efforts are made to attract foreign workers to Silicon Valley-type jobs and to keep them in the U.S. after the completion of their education in this country. This movement—demonstrated by the push for more “high tech” immigration exemptions—threatens to deprive countries elsewhere of some desperately needed highly educated workers and exaggerates as well the growing problem of home-grown “brains” in finding work to match their educational qualifications.
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TELL ME NO MORE LIES—I’LL GIVE YOU NO MORE PRISON TIME.
(St. Louis Post-Dispatch)
A St. Louis woman learns this lesson the hard way. Faced with a relatively minor charge for a falsification on a mortgage application she compounds her legal problems by stuffing her abdomen with pillows to fake a pregnancy—hoping thereby to avoid jail time from a sympathetic judge. The judge only increases her jail sentence as a result leading a prosecutor to say that this is a case of “the cover up being worse than the crime.” (John Edwards take note).
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THERAPY CLINICS IN RIO GRANDE VALLEY SECTION OF TEXAS RAKING IN MUCH TAXPAYER CASH FOR SERVICES OFFERED TO AREA CHILDREN.
(Houston Chronicle)
Hidalgo County far outpaces any other county in the state in payouts for transportation of unaccompanied children (illegal under state law) to the clincs as well as Medicaid payments for fees for provision of different medical therapies. The Texas department of health and human services tries to curtail the practices; they are being resisted in local court cases.
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WHATEVER HAPPENED TO JOBS-JOBS-JOBS? PALM BEACH COUNTY FL PAYS $49.5k TO AN ACCOUNTING FIRM TO TELL THEM HOW TO CUT EXPENSES BY $32 MILLION
(Palm Beach Post)
The firm’s recommendation is for the elimination or “out-sourcing” of about 1000 public services jobs most of which pay wages of less than $15 per hour. Their recommendation does not include any clear indication of just how out-sourcing of jobs is going to eliminate the expenses for jobs like those of park maintenance workers.
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Krugman three months ago around the time numbers came out for negative growth in the UK for the last quarter of 2011, and many were predicting recession, had this column http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/30/opinion/krugman-the-austerity-debacle.html?_r=2&ref=opinion on the stunning failure of policy behind this result.
And he pointed to this column http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/10/22/AR2010102204205.html by David Broder from October 2010 which cheered the British government on as they made this stunning blunder”
“This country has wandered far — not quite as far as Britain has — toward the pending fiasco that threatens leftist regimes worldwide, and the reaction here in the Nov. 2 midterm elections is likely to be as painful for President Obama and the Democrats as the May 6 election was for Labor’s Gordon Brown.
While the Obama administration and the Federal Reserve have chosen to stimulate economic growth by tax cuts and spending in hopes of reducing debt service, Britain has opted for the swifter, more painful gamble of increasing taxes and slashing public spending.
As important as the policy shift from Keynesian economics is the political calculus that led the British government to these actions……
Cameron and his partners in the coalition have pushed ahead boldly, brushing aside the warnings of economists that the sudden, severe medicine could cut short Britain’s economic recovery and throw the nation back into recession.”
Uh, no David. It wasn’t the “leftist regimes worldwide” who were headed for a pending fiasco, it was the rightist regimes, and the stupid moderates who formed coalitions with them, who boldly ignored economics and instead made policy by pandering to elitist fantasies.