Free Links:

• E-mail will cost? — There was an urban-legend e-mail years ago about how the US Postal Service was going to impose a tiny fee on each and every e-mail sent. It wasn’t true, but this plan is: ” America Online and Yahoo, two of the world’s largest providers of e-mail accounts, are about to start using a system that gives preferential treatment to messages from companies that pay from 1/4 of a cent to a penny each to have them delivered. The senders must promise to contact only people who have agreed to receive their messages, or risk being blocked entirely.” Stay tuned, this one will get interesting.
• Up or down? — The Consumer confidence and sentiment surveys disagree. On Tuesday, the Conferece Board said consumer confidence was at a 3-year high. On Friday, the University of Michigan consumer sentiment survey went slightly lower.
• Dinsosaurs congregate — It gives me no pleasure to report this: The United Auto Workers is having a 4-day meeting this week to discuss, according to the AP link, how to “strengthen (the) manufacturing base.” The suggestions (universal health care, restricting trade, and tax gimmicks) have nothing to do with what they’re trying to accomplish. If the labor half of GM’s and Ford’s twin dilemmas doesn’t get serious, the companies and their shareholders are in for agony.
• January Retail Sales were strong — Up 5.1% on the whole vs. 3.8% a year ago, even after a strong Christmas season. Wal-Mart had its best month since May 2004. The article mentions gift-card redemption as a factor; I also think a relatively mild weather month was an influence.
• One-sided African Aid Story — The Free Market Project catches ABC promoting more foreign aid to Africa, while totally ignoring its sorry, corrupt history. This BizzyBlog blast from the past notes that some Africans have wised up to the idea that foreign aid has been counterproductive.
• The David Souter eminent-domain gambit suffered a major setback — At what appears to have been a town meeting, and after some debate and modifications to a petition submitted by residents, “they approved substituting a request that town officials not seize Souter’s home by eminent domain; and urging Gov. John Lynch and the Legislature take action to make sure property can’t be taken through eminent domain and handed over to private developers for economic development purposes.” Proponents of the idea of putting the seizure of Souter’s 8-acre property say the idea isn’t dead, but it looks to be barely breathing.
• Upheld as “not excessive” — A $79.5 million punitive damages award to the family of one smoker who died at age 67. Uh-huh.

Requires subscription:

• Hmm — Per Biz Weak, more than 300,000 Chinese have a net worth of over $1 million, excluding real estate.

That’s Mac, Oregon, where a man has recovered after almost dying in a car wreck, and credits his faith, family, and other’s support:

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Since the Super Bowl is being held in Detroit this evening, it’s only fitting to see what is happening with Mike Utley. If you don’t know who he is, you must read this — it will put the “importance” of tonight’s game in perspective:

DETROIT (AP) – Mike Utley skis and scuba dives without any help from his legs. The former Detroit Lions guard has come a long way since what seemed like an ordinary play ended his career and left him paralyzed on Nov. 17, 1991. But he is not satisfied. “I want out of this chair,” Utley said from his wheelchair Thursday during a Super Bowl news conference. “I desire it every day. I want out.”

“I know I’m a (quadriplegic), but I’m not.”

Utley is best remembered for sticking his thumb up to a roaring Lions crowd as he was strapped to a stretcher and wheeled off the field.

“That’s the one thing I could do,” he recalled.

While Utley has made remarkable improvements, he is motivated to do more than stand up and take the few steps he can now.

“I’m going to walk off Ford Field one day,” he said.

His short-term goal is to get inside the stadium for Sunday’s game between Pittsburgh and Seattle. He’s said he still needs two tickets.

The Lions played at the Pontiac Silverdome in suburban Detroit when he was hurt.

David Rocker of the Los Angeles Rams jumped in an attempt to deflect a pass and came down on Utley. The lineman then lost his balance and fell forward, landing on the top of his head and snapping it back.

Dr. Daniel Birkbeck was a second-year resident at Henry Ford Hospital in downtown Detroit when Utley was brought into the emergency room.

“He was still in his football uniform, helmet included,” Birkbeck recalled. “By the time we had the X-rays and MRIs done, we determined that Mike had sustained a serious neck injury of the lower-cervical spine

“We had to cut the helmet off with a saw.”

A few days after Utley was injured, Lions orthopedic specialist Dr. David Collon said it would take a miracle for him to walk again. Utley lost the use of everything from his elbows down, but has slowly regained the ability to use his arms, hands and torso.

“That was the end of my career, but it didn’t end my life,” he said.

Sitting at a table several feet away from Utley, Birkbeck started to choke up when he spoke about what his former patient can do recreationally.

“It’s just breathtaking,” Birkbeck said.

….. He moved from Colorado to the state of Washington without any nurses or assistance and in 1998 met the woman, Danielle, who would become his wife while working out at a gym. They were married three years later, and live in Wenatchee, Wash.

He established the Mike Utley Foundation to raise money for spinal cord injury research, rehabilitation and education in 1992. The 40-year-old Utley keeps busy as an inspirational speaker when he’s not engaging in a sport, or driving his speed boat at 80-plus mph.

Utley’s rehabilitation includes working with Bernard Brucker, a Miami professor and biofeedback expert.

“He’s a tremendous example to people with physical disability, and without,” Brucker said. “Even when you have a disability like Mike has, it doesn’t have to change the person.”

—

On the Net:
Mike Utley Foundation: http://www.mikeutley.org/

First, John Stossel’s makes two important points — Not only are gas prices in real terms not historically high, the gallon of gas you put in your car is a lot less expensive than a gallon of a lot of other things people never complain about.

This is the last item on the first page of a much longer article on “Myths, Lies, and Nasty Behavior” at the ABC News web site:

MYTH — Gas Prices Are Higher Than Ever

“Record high gas prices,” has been the refrain of many in the media this past year while talking about the price at the pump. Jay Leno even said, “They don’t even put the price on the sign anymore — it just says, ‘If you have to ask, you can’t afford it.’”

Drivers I talked to at a New York gas station agreed. “Too high, it’s scary,” said one man. “It’s going up and up and up and it’s the most expensive it’s ever been,” said another woman.

But the reality is that the “record high gas prices” are a myth. The U.S. Department of Energy records show that when you adjust for inflation the price of gas is now lower than it’s been for most of the twentieth century. Prices are lower now than they were 25 years ago. Yes, they price is up from the 1998 all time low of $1.19, but they are a dollar lower than they were in the early 1980s.

When I told this to people at the gas station they didn’t believe me. And why should they? The media keep telling us about the record high prices — they’re just not adjusting for inflation!

I asked people to compare the price of gas to bottled water or ice cream you can buy inside the gas station. Most people were sure the gas was more expensive. But they’re wrong.

If you took the average price of a bottle of water, a gallon would cost nearly $7. A gallon of Haagen Dazs ice cream would set you back nearly $30 — 15 times the price of gas.

And think about how much harder it is to produce gasoline.

First, oil has to be sucked out of the ground … sometimes from deep beneath an ocean or underneath ice or from the Middle East where workers risk their lives. And just to get to the oil often means the drill may have to bend and dig sideways through as many five miles of earth. What oil companies find then has to be delivered through long pipelines or shipped in monstrously expensive ships, then converted into three different formulas of gasoline, trucked in trucks that cost more than $100,000 and then your local gas station has to spend a fortune on safety devices to make sure you don’t blow yourself up.

Gas is actually a bargain, not that you’ll hear that from most of the media.

And don’t forget this point made near the end of a December BizzyBlog post: If Uncle Sam and the states didn’t have their greedy hands out “siphoning” taxes on every gallon of gasoline, pump prices would be much, much lower. Add Uncle Sam’s take, which is 18.4 cents per gallon, to your state’s gas per-gallon tax noted in the map below, and you’ll see what I mean (map obtained from here; HT ThePeriodical.com):

From an OpinionJournal.com editorial yesterday, on the fallout from Enron:

In all, some 30 people have copped pleas in the Enron debacle, and about half of them will testify against Messrs. Skilling and Lay. This suggests to us that the justice system has been doing its job the right way here. It has taken the government time to build its case against the men at the top, but they are now standing trial. Despite allegations of preferential treatment or leniency, individuals have been indicted and tried, or are being tried.

This is how things are supposed to work–in contrast to the Justice Department’s shoot first, ask later approach to the indictment of Enron’s auditor, Andersen. In that case, Andersen was put out of business by an indictment that went after the entire firm, and so avoided the messy business of identifying the accountants actually responsible for any wrongdoing. In addition to the 30-odd guilty pleas that Justice has already secured, Merrill Lynch, Citibank and JP Morgan Chase have each to some extent faced justice for their role in Enron’s rise and fall. Andersen was wiped out.

Enron was also the first spark that lit a powder keg of corporate reform. It built momentum for Sarbanes-Oxley to rush through Congress, burdening companies for the foreseeable future with untold compliance costs and litigation risks. Enron helped launch the anti-corporate crusade of Eliot Spitzer, which in turn has made him a candidate for Governor of New York. Enron’s culprits ended up putting further burdens on millions of honest businessfolk, beyond the immediate price paid by innocent employees and shareholders.

They thus have a lot to answer for, and in fact they are answering for it under the laws in place before this latest bonfire of regulation. Messrs. Skilling and Lay are on trial for fraud and conspiracy, some of the oldest and most-sweeping crimes on the books. Sometime down the road, there will be another “Enron.” Sarbanes-Oxley did not repeal the laws of human nature, any more than the crimes of a few should be used to malign the ethics of everyone in business.

The editorial should have put the word “reform” in quotes. Sarbanes-Oxley isn’t “reform” — It’s busywork for CPAs, and an open invitation for new forms of class-action litigation.

Never forget that the Andersen conviction was overturned, unanimously, by The Supreme Court. Some consolation.

And of course the editorial’s larger point is true. The large majority of businesspeople are ethical and try to do the right thing. The legacy of Enron and the continuing burdens of SarBox are based on the assumption that they aren’t. That legacy is not the fault of Ken Lay or Jeff Skilling, but of the cynical opportunists who capitalized on one corporate fraud to potentially jeopardize all public companies and their executives.

No British reserve here, and it’s about time:

Democracy has a gun held to its head
(Filed: 05/02/2006)

Last week, Muslims marched in the centre of London chanting “Freedom go to Hell!” There could be no more graphic illustration of the paradox at the heart of the cartoon row. These protesters were exercising – and in many cases abusing – the freedom of protest and freedom of assembly that are foundation stones of British democracy. Yet, even as they exploited these hard-won liberties, they were calling for them to be abolished.

This newspaper would not have published the cartoons of Mohammed at the centre of this controversy, images which we regard as vulgar and fatuously insulting. But – and this is the crucial point – we reserve absolutely our right to make our own decision, free of threat and intimidation. The difficulty is that what started as an issue of editorial judgment has become a question of public order. The protesters in London with their disgraceful slogans – “Behead those who Insult Islam”, “Britain you will pay – 7/7 is on its way” – have made it all but impossible for a genuinely free debate on this issue to take place. All such debate is now being carried out in the shadow of murderous intimidation.

In this wretched affair, no sight has been more wretched than that of Jack Straw last week kowtowing to militant Islam. “There is freedom of speech, we all respect that,” the Foreign Secretary said, “but there is not any obligation to insult or to be gratuitously inflammatory.” How pathetic that Mr Straw did not find time to condemn the outrageous behaviour of protesters at home and abroad. Where, also, was Charles Clarke, the Home Secretary, as Islamic militants called for bloodshed?

The Government’s response is especially feeble when compared to Margaret Thatcher’s behaviour during the Rushdie Affair. Whatever her private feelings about the author, she and her Cabinet colleagues were resolute in their defence of his rights. Even before the fatwah, she declared that “it is an essential part of our democratic system that people who act within the law should be able to express their opinions freely”.

….. the British Government’s craven response has sent a terrible signal: those who wish to see free expression curtailed need only light a flame, issue a threat and wave an angry fist.

The bitter irony of the protests is that Britain proved itself after the July 7 bombings to be a tolerant, multi-cultural society. Quite rightly, the citizens of this country drew a sharp distinction between their law-abiding Muslim compatriots and the extremists responsible for the atrocities.

The problem is that militant Islam is not seeking a level playing field – equality before the law, for instance – but special treatment. Muslims expect, as they should, the benefits and protections of British pluralism but, in too many cases, baulk at the duties that are their corollary. One of those duties is to accept that, in a free society, there are occasions when each of us is bound to be offended…..

The abrasions of a modern, multi-faith society are constant and need to be negotiated calmly and diplomatically. The proper boundaries of speech, art and humour are matters for continuous democratic review and consultation. What is completely unacceptable is that this debate should be carried out in a climate of fear.

For let us not delude ourselves: it is violence, or the threat of violence, that has driven the decisions that have been made in the past week. At a time when reasonable dialogue is most needed, the supposed custodians of our democracy are allowing a gun to be held to its head.

I really haven’t wanted to comment on the Danish-Muslim cartoon controversy, because the points are totally obvious to anyone who loves freedom (Update — I just learned this afternoon that “progressives” are now calling the word “Freedom” the “F-bomb.” So I guess this 1960s anthem has about 18 “F-bombs” in it.).

Fortunately, Michelle Malkin has done a two-minute video that makes the points better than any post could.

You can view the video or download it at her site. Go there first.

In case the traffic at Michelle’s site goes bonkers, which could very well happen, I have copied the vid (WMV format) so you can view or download it HERE.

(Update: Thanks to Michelle for the mirror link to this post).

And here’s my token contribution to freedom of expression (HT Courageous Conservatism):

_______________________

UPDATE: My dream Presidential ticket: Malkin for President, Anchoress as VP, with Atlas Shrugs as Secretary of State.

Atlas points out, thanks to e-mailer Tom (not me), that three of the cartoons used to incite the Muslim outrage were never published anywhere. Two media items relating to the extra cartoons are here and here (HT Mark in Mexico). Also (added Feb. 5), The Counterterrorism Blog exposes a double-talking Danish imam, and the UK Telegraph’s Charles Moore wonders how so many Danish flags can be at the ready for burning.

UPDATE 2: Right Wing Nut House has a great post on the difference between what the State Department really said, how the WORMs (Worn-Out Reactionary Media, known to most as The Mainstream Media) are (mis)reporting it, and the tactics used to create the misreportage.

UPDATE 3, Feb. 5: Mark Steyn, of course, totally gets it:

Jyllands-Posten (the Danish newspapers that printed the cartoons) wasn’t being offensive for the sake of it. They had a serious point ….. The cartoons accompanied a piece about the dangers of “self-censorship” — i.e., a climate in which there’s no explicit law forbidding you from addressing the more, er, lively aspects of Islam but nonetheless everyone feels it’s better not to.

That’s the question the Danish newspaper was testing: the weakness of free societies in the face of intimidation by militant Islam.

One day, years from now, as archaeologists sift through the ruins of an ancient civilization for clues to its downfall, they’ll marvel at how easy it all was. You don’t need to fly jets into skyscrapers and kill thousands of people. As a matter of fact, that’s a bad strategy, because even the wimpiest state will feel obliged to respond. But if you frame the issue in terms of multicultural “sensitivity,” the wimp state will bend over backward to give you everything you want — including, eventually, the keys to those skyscrapers. Thus, Jack Straw, the British foreign secretary, hailed the “sensitivity” of Fleet Street in not reprinting the offending cartoons.

No doubt he’s similarly impressed by the “sensitivity” of Anne Owers, Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Prisons, for prohibiting the flying of the English national flag in English prisons on the grounds that it shows the cross of St. George, which was used by the Crusaders and thus is offensive to Muslims. And no doubt he’s impressed by the “sensitivity” of Burger King, which withdrew its ice cream cones from its British menus because Rashad Akhtar of High Wycombe complained that the creamy swirl shown on the lid looked like the word “Allah” in Arabic script. I don’t know which sura in the Koran says don’t forget, folks, it’s not just physical representations of God or the Prophet but also chocolate ice cream squiggly representations of the name, but ixnay on both just to be “sensitive.”

And doubtless the British foreign secretary also appreciates the “sensitivity” of the owner of France-Soir, who fired his editor for republishing the Danish cartoons. And the “sensitivity” of the Dutch film director Albert Ter Heerdt, who canceled the sequel to his hit multicultural comedy ”Shouf Shouf Habibi!” on the grounds that “I don’t want a knife in my chest” — which is what happened to the last Dutch film director to make a movie about Islam: Theo van Gogh, on whose ”right to dissent” all those Hollywood blowhards are strangely silent. Perhaps they’re just being “sensitive,” too.

And perhaps the British foreign secretary also admires the “sensitivity” of those Dutch public figures who once spoke out against the intimidatory aspects of Islam and have now opted for diplomatic silence and life under 24-hour armed guard. And maybe he even admires the “sensitivity” of the increasing numbers of Dutch people who dislike the pervasive fear and tension in certain parts of the Netherlands and so have emigrated to Canada and New Zealand.

Very few societies are genuinely multicultural. Most are bicultural: On the one hand, there are folks who are black, white, gay, straight, pre-op transsexual, Catholic, Protestant, Buddhist, worshippers of global-warming doom-mongers, and they rub along as best they can. And on the other hand are folks who do not accept the give-and-take, the rough-and-tumble of a “diverse” “tolerant” society, and, when one gently raises the matter of their intolerance, they threaten to kill you, which makes the question somewhat moot.

One day the British foreign secretary will wake up and discover that, in practice, there’s very little difference between living under Exquisitely Refined Multicultural Sensitivity and Sharia. As a famously sensitive Dane once put it, “To be or not to be, that is the question.”

The National Association of Manufacturers can’t be accused of being a front for nutty gloom-and-doom economics, so when they raise warnings about eroding US manufacturing innovation and capabilities, it’s worth noticing.

Here their five warning signs that US manufacturing innovation is at risk:

1. The growth in manufacturing output since the last recession is running at half the pace averaged in other recoveries of the past 50 years;
2. Manufacturing capacity is barely growing;
3. The US share of global trade has shrunk from 13 percent to 10 percent (in roughly the past 10 years). Germany has displaced the United States as the world’s largest exporter and we now run a trade deficit even in advanced technology products;
4. New workers are discouraged from entering manufacturing and there is a shortage of skilled workers to replace older employees as they retire;
5. US growth in R&D has been anemic in real terms since the turn of the century.

I have some responses, by no means complete:

• At least it IS growing, and in the world we’re in you’d expect more growth in services. That isn’t to say manufacturing shouldn’t be growing faster than it currently is. Partial solutions: Modify zoning laws to make building plants more feasible. Make it easier for companies to take over abandoned facilities without having to take on environmental baggage left behind by previous and usually bankrupt owners. Reduce the corporate tax burden.
• See Number 1.
• There is much more global trade, so of course our share of it will go down, especially post-NAFTA. I’d like to know if the dollar amount of exports (ignoring imports) is still going up in real terms, and by how much.
• This is a huge problem, because the media and schools have been disrespecting manufacturing in favor of more “glamorous” high tech and professional jobs for as long as I can remember.
• Assuming they are only focusing on manufacturing R&D, they are probably right. It’s an issue of convincing companies to think past next quarter, and bright people to see a future in manufacturing research (see Number 4).

They have a web page summary and a link to the full report (PDF) here.

This is another installment in a nearly-regular series of mysteries and pseudo-mysteries (usually 3-4) this inquiring mind would like to have answers for (some links included may require free registration).

QUESTION 1: How does the current unemployment situation stack up in historical perspective?

You can decide:

Oh, and a quick memo to NAACP Chairman Julian Bond: Polarize this (data obtained by selecting appropriate seasonally adjusted unemployment rate [UR] tables [Black UR; White UR unemployment; Gap]):

Jan. 2005 — 10.5%; 4.5%; 6.0%
Sept. 2005 — 9.5%; 4.5%; 5.0%
Oct. 2005 — 9.1%; 4.4%; 4.7%
Nov. 2005 — 10.6%; 4.2%; 6.4%
Dec. 2005 — 9.3%; 4.3%; 5.0%
Jan. 2006 — 8.9%; 4.1%; 4.8%

Despite a hiccup that can probably be traced to the disproportionate impact of Hurricane Katrina (because of the higher black populations in New Orleans and the rest of the Gulf Coast, NOT because of discrimination) the gap between white and black unemployment has been trending downward — not that it would matter to Mr. Bond.

QUESTION 2: How many times do supply-side tax cuts have to bring in more revenue before people believe that they really do?

Don Luskin’s National Review piece proves that the 2003 capital gains tax cut more than paid for itself (as all the cap-gains cuts have), and defied the predictions of the Congressional Budget Office (as all the cap-gains cuts have):

Yes, instead of costing the government $27 billion in revenues, the tax cuts actually earned the government $26 billion extra.

CBO’s estimate of the “cost” of the tax cut was virtually 180 degrees wrong. The Laffer curve lives!

That’s a $53 billion swing.

Made 4 the Internet notes that George Voinovich doesn’t get it either. Zheesh.

QUESTION 3: How much worse can it get for Detroit’s traditional Big 3?

GM, Ford, and Daimler Chysler all had sales increases in January. Trouble is, the Japanese and others, with one exception, had blockbusters:

So, the market share of the Big Three went down yet again.
________________________________________

UPDATE: This excerpt from a Wall Street Journal editorial today (”Look Who’s Working“; requires subscription) wasn’t directed to Bond in Question 1, but might as well have been. As a bonus, it makes a great point about the effect of lowering the cap-gains tax rate in Question 2:

You also won’t hear much about the fact that the black unemployment rate in America has tumbled in the past three years to 8.9% from 11.5%. Hispanics have seen their jobless rate dip to 5.8% — nearly their lowest rate ever. Many Latino immigrants are filling employment demand at a record pace, suggesting that these newcomers are assimilating into the labor force fluidly and filling vital economic niches.

And so the American jobs machine rolls on. Will the critics now concede that the 2003 tax cuts were not just “giveaways to the rich?

About a week ago, one of the class acts in sports got even more lasting recognition for his charitable work:

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Apparently the site has been very slow for several hours, which I have just determined is because of the Alliance’s RSS feed. It has been turned off until I know that it won’t be disruptive again, which may be a while. Speed is now back to where it should be.

Apologies to all who have had to endure 30-60 second or longer waits. I just loaded the home page from a cleared out browser in 8 seconds.

The problem with Steyn is that it seems unfair to do an excerpt. So the obvious suggestion is “read the whole thing.” And his alternative, while it won’t be appreciated by One World Government types, is bold and daring, and I wish we’d put it into place.

This is from his speech at a Hillsdale College event in December, published in abridged form in the February 2006 issue of Imprimis (even the excerpt is long, but it’s worth every word):

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There is seemingly no business-news lemonade that The Associated Press won’t try to spin into lemons.

Today’s un-bylined story on new jobs and unemployment was heavily biased, even by the “standards” of The AP, which seems to have totally lost its ability to report a business news story straight. Three of the last five paragraphs excerpted read like a Democratic National Committee (DNC) press release (the Bureau of Labor Statistics [BLS] announcement is here; bolds are mine):

WASHINGTON (AP) — Employers stepped up hiring in January, boosting payrolls by 193,000 and lowering the nation’s unemployment rate to 4.7 percent, the lowest since July 2001.

….. Although the 193,000 gain in payroll jobs in January fell short of the 250,000 new jobs that economists said to anticipate before the release of the report, it still marked a sturdy showing and was the biggest increase in jobs since November.

Moreover, job growth in December turned out to be stronger than previously thought. Revised figures showed payrolls expanded by 140,000 — an improvement over the 108,000 new jobs first estimated a month ago. Employment was revised up for some previous months as well.

The unemployment rate dropped to 4.7 percent in January, from 4.9 percent in December.

…..

(Now to the DNC press release language)
Despite good news on some economic matters, Americans still feel anxious about the economy, polls indicate.

President Bush, coping with relatively low job-approval ratings, is seeking to ease those fears. In his State of the Union address as well as subsequent speeches Bush has been talking about ways to make the country more competitive and is pushing plans to deal with pocketbooks issues, such as high energy prices and rising health care costs.

Bush also is calling on Congress to make his tax cuts permanent. Democrats, however, contend the tax cuts mostly helped the wealthy and are a big reason why the government’s balance sheets are bleeding red ink.

(AP returns to reporting facts.)
Employees’ average hourly earnings climbed to $16.41 in January, up 0.4 percent from December. That increase was slightly larger than the 0.3 percent rise that economists were expecting.

(AP then creates one more reason to worry.)
While wage growth is good for workers, a big pickup if sustained — would be troubling to investors and economists who fret about inflation……

This is all so typical:

• It would have been nice to tell us the effect of all upward revisions, or to have given us some indication of the bigger picture. It wouldn’t have been that difficult, and wasn’t (see the Update below).
• They just won’t let us forget that we’re “anxious,” and that Bush has “relatively low approval ratings,” will they? Of course — You guys are telling us that all the time, even in what was supposed to be a give-it-to-me-straight story on jobs and employment!
• Finally, leave it to AP, which has carried numerous reports about flat wages, etc. over the past few years, to react to rising wages as a inflation-stoker over a 0.1% difference from expectations.

The data was released at 8:30 AM Eastern Time. The AP link is as of 8:37. Who doubts that the job-approval and tax-cut paragraphs were drafted ahead of time and planned for inclusion regardless of what the BLS new release was going to say?

___________________________

UPDATE: For the truth about jobs created in the past three months, go to this link at the BLS. Next, in the very first row (”Total non-farm”), put a checkmark in the “Seasonally Adjusted” column. Then scroll all the way down to the very bottom left of the page, and click on the “Retrieve Data” dialog box. You will see that:

• The January 2006 total employment figure, the basis for reporting the 193,000 increase, is 134,564,000.
• October 2005’s revised figure was 133,877,000.
• The economy added an impressive 687,000 jobs in the past three months (by subtracting October from January). That’s an average of 229,000 per month.

“Somehow,” AP missed that.

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

The heartiest of welcomes to the following new S.O.B. Alliance members:

• Cleveland’s Courageous Conservatism — Courageous is quite the conservative, and appears to have quite a dislike for Instapundit, which I’m sure I’ll understand, if not agree with, in due course.
• Lincoln Logs — Linc is from Marietta, had some influence on the Joy Padgett-Terry Anderson Ohio House race in that area, and appears to have earned some disdain from the whiny, elitist left as a result (congrats on that).
• Kettering’s Return of the Conservatives — The blog is heavy on pictures, pithy in its commentary, and high in substance. Darth Dilbert’s motto: “Sith Happens.” Yeow.

May the blogforce be with all of you.

Free Links:

• AMD v. Intel Update: This was mentioned here in July, and now there’s a major development in Japan — “Intel got thumped in Japan for violating the nation’s anti-monopoly statutes. The Fair Trade Commission of Japan (JFTC) found that Intel coerced system makers into limiting or eliminating AMD processors in their products.” Point 1: Contrary to the spin in press reports about AMD’s suit in the US, it shows that AMD is not hallucinating. Point 2: Intel tried to stop the Japanese courts from releasing the detailed results of its investigations, and failed. Intel is trying to do the same thing with the lawsuit in the states. As Tom Yager states at the link: “Our need to know trumps Intel’s need for secrecy.” I hope the US courts agree.
• Mark one Senator down in the “totally doesn’t get it” column — That would be our good friend “Waste Ted” Stevens of Alaska, who threatened to resign last October (and unfortunately didn’t) if he didn’t get his infamous $230 million “Bridge to Nowhere.” KTVA in Alaska (HT Club for Growth) reports that “Alaska Senator Ted Stevens says there is no need for earmark reform. What is needed, the senator says, is a better public understanding of how the process works.” I hope “Waste Ted” goes on a barnstorming tour to explain it all to us, because if the public REALLY understands how it works right now, most of the wastrels in Congress won’t get re-elected this November.
• Eye-popping stat: 813 million cell phones were shipped last year, up from 713 million in 2004. Nokia (32%) and Motorola (18%) have half the worldwide market.
• DSL competition heats up — AT&T announces a plan for $13 per month for a year, and $30 per month after that. As noted here in October, high-speed Internet usage in the US lags other countries, but at these prices the catch-up may be just around the corner.
• More evidence that the fourth quarter economy was screwy — Productivity declined 0.6%. Maybe we should start blaming blogs, like this guy did. But new job claims fell (followed by that magic word) “unexpectedly.” The four-week average was the lowest in 5-1/2 years.
• Could telecoms choke the Internet? In a Biz Weak piece, a Google Vice President and leading computer scientist expresses that fear. Of course, he would have a lot more sympathy if his company wasn’t choking Internet access in worse ways in China. Despite that, the argument is a good one: If the telcos like Verizon hoard their bandwidth and leave the crumbs to other ISPs, it could slow access and impede development. It seems to me that the networks themselves should be spun off from the telcos as independent companies. These new entities would allocate their resources based on price, and would have incentives to expand capacity as needed to keep up with demand.
• Internet Censorship news
  – RConversation’s latest multilink post
  – Politicos Attack Tech Firms over China, in hearing the firms wouldn’t attend, and that got much less press coverage than those involving the oil companies. Hmm.
  – Instead, the tech firms struck back by telling the US government it should be doing more to force China to loosen up. Good idea — let’s make a competition out of it. But guess who goes first? Yeah, the people helping China go backwards in human rights, and that’s NOT Uncle Sam.

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UPDATE: On the “Waste Ted” Stevens item above (2nd item), Don Luskin is a bit less diplomatic than I was: “If the public had an ‘understanding of how the process works’ he’d be out on his ass in the snow in about three seconds.”

He had no food. He credits his military training for helping him make it through:

(more…)

Congratulations on your victory.

Now that you’ve been elected Majority Leader by your colleagues, please read this post:

This Weekend’s Unanswered Questions (012806):

• QUESTION 1: Whatever happened to the line-item veto?
• QUESTION 2: Why aren’t we hearing about repealing the 1974 Budget Act?
• QUESTION 3: ….. (go there to read the question) despite the fact that he didn’t win, I think it still needs to be pursued.

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UPDATE: Wizbang calls this an “upset,” and so do many others in the press and the blogs. I don’t get it. First, I totally expected this based not on ESP (I wish), but on readily available info at The Wall Street Journal and other places that Blunt would not get a majority on the first ballot. Second, I’m personally not upset at all. :-)

UPDATE 2: Americans for Prosperity reacts, in part: “(Boehner) was also one of only eight principled House members to vote against last summer’s pork-filled highway bill, and he’s never stuck a pork project into a spending bill during his 15 years in Congress. That’s what we call leadership. Best of luck to Leader Boehner.”

From Hillsdale College’s January issue of Imprimis, Henthoff reminds us of some important history, which should stop anyone who assumes that politicians instinctively support free speech dead in their tracks:

And as evidence mounted that the Fairness Doctrine lessened, rather than increased, diversity of views, the Supreme Court in 1984, in a case called FCC v. League of Women Voters, concluded that in view of the abounding number of radio and television channels around the country (and, I would add, the growth of one-newspaper towns and cities), the scarcity doctrine (thus the Fairness Doctrine) didn’t hold up. In 1987, the FCC followed the high court and ringingly declared that “the intrusion by government into the content of programming occasioned by the enforcement of the [Fairness Doctrine] unnecessarily restricts the journalistic freedom of broadcasters [and] actually inhibits the presentation of controversial issues of public importance to the detriment of the public and in degradation of the editorial prerogative of broadcast journalists.”

I was by then in radio and television part-time in New York, and I thought at last that this free-speech battle was over. But in that same year, 1987, a bill to revive the Fairness Doctrine passed the House by a 3 to 1 margin and the Senate by nearly 2 to 1. President Reagan, to my great appreciation, though I was not an admirer of his then (I have changed to a considerable extent), vetoed the bill. Mr. Reagan, a former broadcaster (Death Valley Days), called it “antagonistic to the freedom of expression guaranteed by the First Amendment.”

Make no mistake: Too many politicians would like nothing better than to control the discussion, especially during political campaigns.

Then Hentoff discusses the new threats from those on the left (bolds are mine):

On May 9, 2005, in the magazine In These Times, University of Michigan communications professor Susan Douglas made the case for reviving the Fairness Doctrine — and listen carefully to her language: “Ongoing media consolidation, and the censorship and pro-right blather that go with it, are sustained by the silencing of oppositional voices Americans are no longer required to hear. But who should do the requiring? According to Professor Douglas, the government should, of course. Another question is: Which voices are being silenced, and by whom? The professor neglected to say. Not hers, obviously.

Last year, a book widely praised in certain circles, Off Center: The Republican Revolution and the Erosion of American Democracy — at least the title tells you where the authors, Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson, are coming from — argued:

It is precisely the proliferation of new media that has fostered a strongly right-wing journalistic presence in talk radio and on cable…. The Federal Communications Commission surely can justify restoring the simple requirement that news include a fair representation of views on controversial subjects and in important electoral races.

There are still some libertarians on the American left who believe that the First Amendment means what it says, but these others who are calling for this revival of government involvement in broadcast content — and this could well extend to the Internet, as it does today in China. Take sides against Oliver Wendell Holmes, who wrote in 1929 in United States v. Schwimmer: if there is any principle of the Constitution that more imperatively calls for attachment than any other it is the principle of free thought — not free thought for those who agree with us but freedom for the thought that we hate.

Those rallying for the return of the Fairness Doctrine believe that politically incorrect speech must be “balanced” by law — which is to say, by government. Thereby they fondly envision the curbing of the speech of Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Ann Coulter, Matt Drudge, Laura Ingraham, Bill O’Reilly and others who they say are “eroding” American democracy. And arguing this, it is as if they think that the speech of the authors of Off Center, or of Al Franken, Michael Moore, Cindy Sheehan, political scientists Barbra Streisand and Whoopi Goldberg, and the bankrollers of MoveOn.Org are not heard enough today!

Obligingly, a Congressman has come forth with a bill to bring back the Fairness Doctrine in order to protect, he says, “diversity of views.” He is Maurice Hinchey of New York, and his bill is called the Media Ownership Reform Act of 2005. In addition to “preventing excessive concentration of ownership of the nation’s media outlets,” it includes the restoration of “fairness in broadcasting” to foster and promote localism, diversity, and competition in the media. His press secretary tells me that the penalties this time could be as before: broadcasters losing their licenses.

What could be wrong with such noble motives as “fairness” and “diversity of views?” But I see, as William O. Douglas did, that the camel is hungrily and happily back inside the tent of free speech.

If you’re a blogger, would you like to be forced to allow any clown who wants it “equal time?”

The Museum of Broadcast Communications web site has written up a thorough history of the Fairness Doctrine. Hopefully it will stay in the museum where it belongs.