I’ve posted and scheduled everything that will be posted up until late Thursday, and possibly early Friday, as this matter and others will keep me pretty occupied. I expect to be quite slow in moderating comments as well.

Media people interested in learning more about the matter noted in the previous paragraph can go here.

And it’s here!

A small sample of the goings-on in Germany getting almost no attention in the U.S.:

• Arbitrator Sought to End Germany Strike — “German authorities and a labor union said Tuesday they were bringing in arbitrators to help end a five-week strike by public workers protesting plans to make them work longer.”Yeah, 90 minutes a week:
  

  Ver.di launched Germany’s biggest public service stoppage in 14 years on Feb. 6, staging brief strikes in most of the country’s 16 states.

  The dispute has left mounds of garbage piled up in some places, and has forced hospitals to cancel non-urgent operations. Still, not all workers have walked out simultaneously, limiting disruption.

  Local authorities have been pressing some employees to work 40 hours a week, compared with 38.5 hours at present, without extra pay. The union argues that lengthening hours would destroy jobs, but employers say more work and greater flexibility are needed.

  That’s worth a 5-week strike by tens of thousands of workers?

• VW Workers Launch Warning Strikes:
  

  VW wants a two-year wage freeze, saying it is the only way it can guarantee jobs. It is seeking to cut labour costs by EUR two billion, or 30 percent, by 2011 to retain competitiveness.

  The union is pressing for pay increases of 2.2 percent and 2.7 percent in a 26-month deal, along with job guarantees.

  IG Metall began the work stoppages as soon as allowed under law governing wage negotiations in Germany. The warning strikes could soon affect more of the 103,000 VW workers in the company’s six western German plants.

  The talks have come against a backdrop of falling profits at Volkswagen, with the company reporting Thursday a 65 percent drop in third-quarter net profit from the same period a year ago.

• Previous BizzyBlog Post — “Germany: A Sneak Preview of the US Without Social Security Reform and Entitlement Reform”: “A glance at the state’s finances shows how dramatic the situation is: Of 190 billion euros in tax revenues, 80 billion is passed on to the cash-strapped state pension system, 30 billion goes to the unemployed, and another 40 billion belongs to the banks, just to service debt. The rest is not even enough to pay the bureaucracy and to build roads. Ever-new credits are constantly needed so that Germany at least has the appearance of a prosperous country.” (original source: The Wall Street Journal during mid-September 2005)
• Birth rate in Germany at Lowest Level Since 1945 — “Even with continued immigration, the German population is set to start declining in the coming decade and, in a worst case scenario, would fall from the present 82 million to 67 million by 2050, according to the Federal Statistics Office. A middle range scenario says there will be 75 million people in Germany in 2050 - the same population as in 1963. “ There’s not much hope for shoring up the pension system in that news.

One does not envy Angela Merkel her task.

Free links:

• Government Entitlements Are Expanding more than they have in quite some time, especially Medicaid — This is the kind of growth that I want to see called “unsustainable,” because it is.
• Continuing to show that the early fears of a PR and actual fiasco with the prescription drug program known as Medicare Part D were justified — Pharmacists are getting the shaft because of slow payments and bureaucratic snafus.
• Senator John Cornyn of Texas displays a pretty impressive sense of humor (HT Hugh Hewitt) — though appreciation of it may not be bipartisan.
• Another Cincinnati Hospital May Be Voting with Its Feet (HT Cincinnati Black Blog) — I’m a little late on this one. For those not from Cincinnati, the large majority of hospital beds in the city used to be concentrated in an area of about 10 square miles around the University of Cincinnati that came to be known as “Pill Hill.” Two of them, Jewish Hospital and Bethesda, have gradually migrated about 15 miles to the northeastern suburbs over the past 15 years or so. Christ Hospital is now thinking of going out to an area known as West Chester in Butler County, which is about 25 miles north. That will leave, if my count s correct, four hospitals in Pill Hill (Good Samaritan, University, Children’s, and Deaconess). That geographic mix seems about right; the old concentration was a historical anomaly that goes back to the early 1900s, when transportation was nothing like it is today. If Christ Hospital does move, the first thing staff will probably notice is the lack of a 2.1% city income tax; the second will be the relative safety of the area; the third will be the ridiculous traffic congestion in West Chester.
• George A. Pieler has a good piece on the debate over state and local tax abatements for new or growing business at TCS Daily. Among other things, it suggests the idea of “dynamically scoring” a proposal to see if taxes raised will be greater once the deal is in place, and if the hoped-for extra economic activity really justifies the concesssions. I’m personally opposed to the concessions, period, but at least properly done dynamic scoring would add some rigor instead of wishful thinking to the process.

Four local institutions in Brockton, Ontario have a nice problem — what to do with money left to them by Herbert and Eileen Field (HT
Good News Blog):

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