Monthly Archives: September 2013

US Federal Government and Wal-Mart

Wal MartWalmart is evil, right?  Low paying jobs that keep the masses poor.  They brow beat their suppliers into selling at such low prices that no one can make a living.

They are the worst of the worst.  Right?

Maybe not:

The federal government is better at creating low-paying jobs than Wal-Mart and McDonald’s combined, according to a new report.

A study released earlier this month from the public policy group Demos states that through various forms of government funding in the private sector, nearly two million people are making $12 an hour or less. The number of workers at Wal-Mart and McDonald’s together at $12 an hour or less is currently around 1.5 million, according to the report.

Personally, the quality of government help is such that earning more than 12 bucks is surprising, so…..I’m mostly okay with the data.

But it sure is interesting that Obama has more “slave wage” jobs than Wal-Mart and Micky Dee’s combined.

 

Making More Food

GMO

There is a ton, I mean a TON, of opinion on the concept of genetically modified foods.  Frankly, much of it I don’t understand.  From the beginning time, we have tried to accent the positive aspects of plants and animals while minimizing the undesirable ones.

When we mate high milk producers with other high milk producers, we are “modifying” our cows.  Same when we pollinate high yield corn with more high yield corn.

So why the concern when we accelerate natural selection?  Well, more and more, people are saying:

There is no concern, none

A few weeks ago, Amy Harmon, a respected science journalist at the New York Times, turned her attention to the GMO debate, writing a masterfully textured story about the plight of the Florida orange and the role biotechnology might play in rescuing it from a potentially deadly disease. It was widely praised by independent journalists for its even-handed analysis of the costs and benefits associated with adopting new technologies, like genetic modification, to food.

As influential as the Times may be among the chattering classes, don’t expect this story to alter the trajectory of the debate over GMO foods. While every major scientific regulatory oversight body in the world, including the National Academies of Science and the Food and Drug Administration in the United States, has concluded that genetically modified foods pose no harm not also found in conventional or organic foods, the public remains deeply suspicious of them. A survey published in the same newspaper the day before Harmon’s piece ran found that 37 percent of those interviewed worried about GMOs, saying they feared that such foods cause cancer or allergies.

This one transcends political affiliation – liberals and conservatives are coming out against GMO’s.  But there is no real reason for it.

Read the whole thing.

Governor McCrory – Tests and Pay

Pat McCrory

Pat McCrory and the republican legislature have taken significant heat for their budget and how it impacts education in North Carolina.  However, missed have been two important policies:

Chapel Hill, N.C. — Days after a crowd of angry educators marched on the State Capitol to protest changes to public school spending in the state budget, Gov. Pat McCrory on Thursday proposed a fund to reward “master teachers” and cutting the number of standardized tests required in North Carolina classrooms.

Speaking at the North Carolina Chamber’s annual education conference in Chapel Hill, McCrory said business owners repeatedly tell him that they cannot find qualified employees for their job openings. The state needs to do more to prepare students for the workforce, he said.

“When employers are begging for qualified applicants in a state with the fifth-highest unemployment rate in the nation … that tells me we have a disconnect between commerce and education,” he said. “All of us need to come together and eliminate this gap.”

McCrory said he wants to create a $30 million Education Innovation Fund with federal Race to the Top grant money to pay for digital classroom initiatives and trailblazing schools and to reward teachers. Under the program, at least 1,000 teachers selected by their peers statewide would receive $10,000 stipends to implement career- and college-ready standards.

“These master teachers will be working and taking input from their colleagues and will serve as a direct conduit to North Carolina’s educational leaders as to what’s working in our classrooms and what isn’t working and what should be tossed aside,” he said. “(These) teachers will not only be teaching students, they will be schooling us in the most important subject in education – what works actually in the classroom.”

Calling the state’s pay scale for teachers “archaic,” he said the stipends would begin the shift toward rewarding classroom expertise and provide recognition for North Carolina’s top teachers.

The governor also called for cutting “ineffective and burdensome testing” in North Carolina classrooms. The number of mandatory exams in Mecklenburg County, for example, is approaching 200 per year in grades 4-12, he said.

I think it’s irresponsible to take a position that republicans don’t value education in the same way that democrats do, or the left do.  Rather it’s important that reasonable people can be expected to have different methods to the same problem.

Environments For Sale

Rain Forest

Scanning NPR the other day when I came across an article on Ecuador and their rain forests:

The government of Ecuador has abandoned a plan that would have kept part of the Amazonian rainforest off limits to oil drilling. The initiative was an unusual one: Ecuador was promising to keep the oil in the ground, but it wanted to be paid for doing so.

The oil sits under the Yasuni national park, one of the most biodiverse places on Earth — orchids, jaguars, monkeys, birds. To get to the corner of the park that holds the oil, you have to take a plane, then a motorboat, then paddle a canoe. “Even the sound of the motor will destroy the fragility of this place,” Ivonne A-Baki, who works for the Ecuadorian government, told me this year.

In 2007, the country’s president, Rafael Correa, told the world that Ecuador would leave the oil in the ground. But the country wanted to be paid half of what the oil was valued at, at the time. Ecuador wanted $3.6 billion.

Riiiight.

All kinds of governments are going to pay another nation to do nothing.  And what if Ecuador decides later, say in 10 years, that they really need that oil and drill anyway.

Anyway, an interesting fact is that the planet is getting greener:

Did you know that the Earth is getting greener, quite literally? Satellites are now confirming that the amount of green vegetation on the planet has been increasing for three decades. This will be news to those accustomed to alarming tales about deforestation, overdevelopment and ecosystem destruction.

And, ironically, it’s because we are burning fossil fuels:

The inescapable if unfashionable conclusion is that the human use of fossil fuels has been causing the greening of the planet in three separate ways: first, by displacing firewood as a fuel; second, by warming the climate; and third, by raising carbon dioxide levels, which raise plant growth rates.

 

 

 

Obama’s Economy – His Legacy

Forclosure

To demonstrate that good intentions don’t guarantee good policy:

Helene Pearson’s belief in homeownership was shattered in Roseland, the mostly black Chicago neighborhood where President Barack Obama got his start as a community organizer.

Pearson, who bought her two-bedroom, red-brick bungalow on South Calumet Avenue in Roseland for $160,000 in 2006 with a high-interest loan, put it on the market a year ago for $55,000 and didn’t attract a single offer. Her bank has agreed to take it back.

Markets come and then markets go.  But the true testament of our intervention?

For most Americans, the real estate crash is finally behind them and personal wealth is back where it was in the boom. For blacks in the U.S., 18 years of economic progress has vanished, with a rebound in housing slipping further out of reach and the unemployment rate almost twice that of whites. The homeownership rate for blacks fell from 50 percent during the housing bubble to 43 percent in the second quarter, the lowest since 1995. The rate for whites stopped falling two years ago, settling at about 73 percent, only 3 percentage points below the 2004 peak, according to the Census Bureau.

I find it tragically ironic that Obama’s legacy is going to be a more racially divided nation in addition to a more economically separated one.

Education – Better With Less

Technology Bad

A new report, and I stress “A”, demonstrates that not ALL money spent on education is good money spent on education:

Laptops may actually hinder students ability to learn, providing a distraction and even affecting students sitting near their owners, according to a stunning new Canadian report.

With laptops and tablet computers pervading the modern classroom, the report suggests that paper and pencil might be less distracting overall.

“We really didn’t think the effects would be this huge,” explained McMaster University researcher Faria Sana, who co-authored the study with fellow doctoral student Tina Weston. “It can change your grade from a B+ to a B-.”

If true, this would be an example where a reduction in an education budget is actually a good thing.

North Carolina Take On Syria

Syria is all the news.  Lot’s of folks don’t know what to do.  And I’m not saying that being from Syria allows greater clarification, but do think that hearing what Triangle residents from Syria have to say is enlightening:

Raleigh, N.C. — While the world weighs a military strike against Syria, the Syrian community in Raleigh is watching, waiting and hoping the world will step in to remove President Bashar Assad.

Khalila Sabra, who works with Syrian refugees, has seen the effects of Syria’s civil war firsthand. She calls Assad a butcher.

“He’s committing genocide, and the world is just standing by and watching it happen,” Sabra said Thursday.

Sabra and the Islamic Association of Raleigh have been gathering medical supplies and donations to send to the refugee camps on Syria’s borders. More than 2 million Syrians have fled to Lebanon and Jordan, and as many as 200,000 people have died in the civil war, she said.

“I would like to see Bashar al Assad removed by any means necessary,” she said. “I know that Americans have grown weary of war because of Afghanistan and Iraq, but our moral compass demands that we do something about Syria.”

Bilal Kanawati, who emigrated to the U.S. from Syria after high school, still has family in Damascus. He said he wasn’t surprised to hear about a chemical attack in his homeland.

“He’s done it before, and I’m sure he will do it again if we don’t stop him,” Kanawati said of Assad.

“It’s not political right now. It’s just to stop the massacres,” he said. “(Assad) is killing several hundreds everyday in Syria and the silence of the world is killing them more because nobody is acting because Syria is not an oil-producing country.”

No surprise that Assad is a butcher.  But no mention of a reasonable replacement either.

Syria – To Bomb Or Not

Syrian Flag

Our “Red Line.”

Obama created such a line when he warned Assad:

“We cannot have a situation where chemical or biological weapons are falling into the hands of the wrong people,” Obama told reporters at the White House. “We have been very clear to the Assad regime — but also to other players on the ground — that a red line for us is we start seeing a whole bunch of chemical weapons moving around or being utilized.

“We have communicated in no uncertain terms with every player in the region that that’s a red line for us and that there would be enormous consequences if we start seeing movement on the chemical weapons front or the use of chemical weapons.”

Obama’s remarks appeared to ratchet up his stance on the matter. Last month, talking about Syrian forces, he told a VFW convention, “They will be held accountable by the international community and the United States should they make the tragic mistake of using those weapons.”

I’ve long been more hawkish than dovish, and using force has been an easier proposition for me than for many of my friends.  However, I  like to think that there is a clear reason for such force and that the use of force actually accomplishes that reason.

What has changed for me, however, is the role that I see the United States playing in the world.  In the past, that role was one more sympathetic to seeing the US as the world’s police.  I’ve evolved in that view these past years and am more likely to reserve US military intervention for the direct defense of Americas.

That’s not to say that the “crimes against humanity” argument doesn’t resonate with me, it does – just not as loudly.  The world has been relatively clear that it wants a more balanced approach in the use of force; the United States doesn’t need to stand alone.  We are not living in that place where it was good vs. evil, the USSR vs. The USA.  Then it WAS us and only us.  Now, with the larger existential threat no longer looming, the conditions are such that we are too play a part – not the WHOLE part.

And more and more I’m okay with that.  In fact, as the world is becoming an ever growing economy tied together by trade and prosperity, I am feeling more and more confident in common goals.

So, where does that leave us?  Well, the more I think on it the more I am coming to see actions taken by nations that fall into two categories:

  1. Humanitarian Crisis
  2. War Crime

Those lines may blur some because it’s hard to imagine a humanitarian crisis existing that is technically “legal”.  However, for now, I’ll stay with those definitions.

In this context, Syria, as a whole, has been a glaring example of a Humanitarian Crisis long before chemical weapons were deployed.  The people of Syria have been subjected to suffering orders of magnitude more severe than the recent events surrounding the use of chemical weapons.

Additionally, the use of chemical weapons clearly violates international law.

Obama erred in his Red Line.  He erred in two aspects:

  1. The line he drew is a line best handled by international law bodies.  In this case, the UN.
  2. He failed to consider that should he take action, who would most benefit.

No one denies that gassing your own, or some one else’s, now that I mention it, citizens is horrible.  But it is no less horrible than walking up to them and simply shooting them.  If we wanna keep the days of the United States acting as world police, make that case and position your statements with such tone and tenor.  But enforcing international law?

No way.

 

Honeybee Update

Honeybee.pollen

I can’t remember the last update I’ve provided so I’ll just kinda give a summer recap.

What started as one hive has now morphed into 4.  And those 4 are soon going to dwindle down to 2.

As I mentioned in one of my first posts on these bees, I started off with 4 hives – 2 at my place and 2 at a friend’s house about 3-4 miles down the road.  It’s been a fun ride  full of ups and downs, but fun.

The 2nd hive here at the house failed to take and the bees eventually left.  I went to check on the hive and the whole thing was empty.  The beekeeper I was with at the time suggested that I take 3-4 frames from my very successful and established hive and split it.  In essence, place those 4 frames in the new hive and let them go to work.  Very quickly they would recognize that they were away from their queen and begin work on making a new one.  Within about 16 days, she would emerge, take a few days to stabilize herself, go on her mating flights and then begin to grow the hive.

However, before all of that could take place, the hive was infested with hive beetles and the whole thing had to be destroyed.

We had to start over.

This time, rather than wait for the colony to take the time to re-queen, I purchased a mated queen and inserted her into the new hive – freshly seeded with three more frames from the strong hive.

The beetles again overpowered the hive and I lost it for the third time.  Right now I think that I’ll take the hint and pause until spring when I’ll try again.

The news isn’t much better at the other two hives either.  While they both grew at a good pace the first few weeks, that growth has stalled.  Inspection of the first hive found that the colony had lost its queen and was in the process of creating a new one.   However, they don’t look to be having a good run of it and may not make it through September.

Frustrating to be sure.

The good news?  I have managed to keep one hive very strong and very vibrant.  One small little package has grown into 20 frames of bees and comb.  And that doesn’t include the 6-7 frames that I robbed to start the failed hive.  I’ve come to the point where I have installed honey frames in the hopes that I am able to harvest honey, even if it’s just a little bit.

The season has been, as I mentioned, fun.  I’ve learned a lot, made several new friends and managed to keep pace with the demands of keeping these things.

I think that timing plays a role.  We had a very very late spring this year pushing all things bees behind several weeks.  The hives that I’ve lost failed to thrive because, in my opinion, they were established far too late into the season.  The flow of pollen and nectar had largely stopped impacting the ability of the hive to physically grow the comb and feed the young bees.

A normal spring combined with a year of knowledge should enable me to have a more successful 2014.

 

Poverty, Africa And The Minimum Wage

African Poverty

There’s a bunch of talk about the minimum wage with the recent fast-food protests.  People are dismayed that there are jobs that only pay $7.25 an hour and claim that there is no way that you can support a family on that amount of money.

Forget for a second that no one believe you should START a family on $7.25.  Forget that a vanishingly small number of people earn the minimum wage and that it is an entry level position where future job skills are learned.

The economics of the thing is what matters.

In a world that has been faced with bone jarring poverty in large swaths of our populations, and with the ever increasing globalization of our economy, it only makes sense that as millions and millions of people enter the “global work force” that competition for jobs increases.  And as that occurs, the cost of labor is going to go down.

I’ve never understood the Leftist who complains about the diminished wages of Americans while at the same time bemoaning the poverty of people in Asia, India and Africa.

But there is good news.  These regions are leaving poverty behind:

AFRICA’s poverty levels are falling by one percentage point per year, with the absolute number of people living below the poverty datum line declining drastically, the World Bank Group has said.

As a result of the impressive economic growth rate, the continent has been posting in the last 10 years, the poverty rate has gone down, while the number of people living below the datum line of US$1.25 per day, has fallen by nine million in three years.

World Bank Group president, Jim Yong Kim said here during the opening session of the fifth Tokyo International Conference on African Development (TICAD V) that, the bank has placed Africa at the core of its effort to end poverty and boost shared prosperity.

He said the growth the continent had recorded in the last 10 years had impacted on the poverty levels.

“The growth has had an impact on poverty – the poverty rate has been falling at one percentage point a year. For the first time, the absolute number of people living below $1.25 a day has fallen – by nine million in three years,” he said.

Soon these places and their people will cease to be “any job at any price” employees and will enter a condition where they will become consumers.  They’ll surpass their needs of food and clothing and begin to want the Nikes, the iPads and the Plantations.

Consider:

(Reuters) – When Wal-Mart Stores the world’s top retailer, bought control of major South African discount chain Massmart Holdings in 2011, American shopping mall developer Irwin Barkan had an epiphany.

An industry veteran of 30 years, Barkan’s U.S. home market was “graying”, while the youthful, underdeveloped African continent offered a sweet spot, with a rapidly expanding middle class and no competition from online retailers.

“When Wal-Mart announced it was buying 51 percent of Massmart, I knew that if I was going to stay in business, Africa was where I had to go,” he said.

He moved last year to Ghana, one of the continent’s brightest economic hopes, and his company, BG International, has broken ground on what will be an 18,400-square-metre (200,000 sq feet) enclosed mall in West Accra. Another mall planned for Ghana’s second city of Kumasi is at a similar stage.

Barkan is not alone. Across Africa, commercial real estate developers are responding to the lure of one of the world’s fastest-growing consumer markets and rushing to build malls for eager retailers.

Consumer spending accounted for more than 60 percent of sub-Saharan Africa’s buoyant economic growth, the World Bank said in its Africa Pulse report in April, adding economic growth would accelerate to more than 5 percent over the next three years, far outpacing the global average.

Africa can be said to be rising.  And with it, the wages and hopes and dreams of an entire continent.  And as THAT occurs, the downward pressure on wages in America will ease.

So, fellow Americans, take solace in your hearts that a very predictable economic truth is unfolding.  As the poorest individuals in the world lurch out of abject poverty, our wages will struggle.  But as those poor become consumers, we will recover.

Take solace and rejoice in the power of the economic engine that is capitalism.