Note: This post will be carried forward to Friday, when the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) numbers are released.

August 3, 4:40 PM: At Biz Weak, Action Economics is predicting 140,000.

August 3, 2:25 PM: MarketWatch (may require registration) is predicting 143,000.

August 3, 12:15 PM: After last month’s huge difference between ADP’s reported job growth of 368,000 vs. the BLS’s 121,000, Reuters reported on Tuesday that the markets were not planning to give much street cred to the impending ADP report. But on Wednesday, when ADP came in at a pretty mediocre 99,000, Reuters treated it with suddenly newfound respect; it also noted that the median forecast from economists it polled is for an increase of 155,000.

August 3, 12:30 AM: Something that makes you go “Hmmm” — The detailed State and Metro Area Unemployment report for JUNE came out Wednesday. Every state except three (Utah and Oklahoma unchanged, and Wyoming a 0.5% decrease) had a higher unemployment rate in June than it did in May. Even recognizing first, that the State/Metro report is NOT seasonally adjusted while the monthly nationwide unemployment report IS, and second, that June is a time when a lot of people enter the work force and obviously don’t all get immediate employment, June’s pervasive rise would seem to foretell that the Friday’s reported national unemployment rate is going to come in higher than June’s 4.6%.

August 3, 12:15 AM: Here’s some food for thought from human-resource and employee-benefits firm Ceridian (bold is mine) –

Businesses With No Paid Employees Increase to 19.5 Million

The image of a typical “mom and pop” business is getting a makeover, according to new data on these burgeoning enterprises released today by the U.S. Census Bureau. Yesterday’s notion of a family-run corner store is giving way to Internet-based auctions, nail salons and even motorcycle dealerships, according to Nonemployer Statistics: 2004 [PDF].

The nation added nearly a million businesses with no paid employees between 2003 and 2004 to reach 19.5 million, a growth rate of 4.7 percent over a one-year period. Businesses without a payroll make up more than 70 percent of the nation’s 27 million-plus firms, with annual receipts over $887 billion.

The report has data on 17 million individual proprietorships and on more than 1.3 million corporations and 1.2 million partnerships. Nonemployer firms may be run by one or more individuals, can range from home-based businesses to corner stores or construction contractors and are often part-time ventures with owners operating more than one business.

Among the fastest-growing: building finishing contractors (22.5 percent), Internet service providers (18.7 percent), nail salons (14.7 percent), electronic shopping and mail-order houses — including Internet-based consumer trade (12.7 percent), lessors of real estate (9.7 percent), formal wear and costume rental stores (8 percent) and motorcycle dealers (7.4 percent.

This has to be horribly difficult to track in rendering an accurate picture of the employment situation. The Census Bureau is picking them up, apparently 18 months or so after the fact, but especially considering the significant increase in the number of no-employee situations, how well is the BLS doing at tracking it (both in getting them in the first place, and avoiding duplicates)?

August 2, 5 PM — ADP Weighs In: Their July report issued earlier in the day says that “Total nonfarm private employment grew 99,000 from June to July on a seasonally adjusted basis, according to the ADP National Employment Report™. These findings indicate a deceleration of employment in July.

In a subscription-only editorial from Tuesday, The Wall Street Journal throws the decades-old “redlining” charge back in the anti-capitalists’ faces, and shows how it’s hurting residents of Chicago:

Last week the City Council voted 35-14 to impose a hyper-minimum wage on “big-box” retail stores with more than $1 billion of sales. The new law will require the likes of Wal-Mart, Target, Costco, and Home Depot to pay every worker — regardless of experience, education or skill — a minimum wage of $13 an hour by 2010 ($10 in salary and $3 in health benefits). At least another dozen cities, including Washington, D.C., are considering copy-cat laws.

This means major U.S. cities are preparing to require minimum wages more than double the national minimum of $5.15 an hour. Incredible.
….. MIT professor Jerry Hausman has found that, although Wal-Mart does slightly reduce wage rates in nearby areas, its lower prices swamp that effect. The biggest beneficiaries are families with incomes of less than $10,000 for whom “a super center makes a 30 percent difference in what they can buy.”

What we have here is what liberals used to call the “red-lining” of poor neighborhoods, though this time by the left itself. Liberal advocates have long complained that banks, grocery stores and retailers charge higher prices or refuse to do business in inner cities. But now the very superstores that offer lower prices are being treated as unwelcome.

These policies come at a very heavy price to the city. When activists kept Wal-Mart out of Chicago’s South side last year, the company opened the store in nearby Evergreen Park instead. Now that store collects an estimated $530 million a year in sales from Chicago residents without a penny of sales tax going to Chicago. The location where Wal-Mart was going to build remains an empty lot. Partly as a result of such anti-business policies, Chicagoans spend $5 billion a year shopping in the suburbs.

Liberals who dominate big-city politics talk endlessly about economic justice and fairness, but what is just or fair about a law that punishes the least affluent? Some lucky few workers earn more from super-minimum wage laws, but the price is paid by those with low incomes and skills who are the first to be priced out of the job market. Mayor Richard Daley fumed this week that aldermen voted for the law because political activists threatened to campaign against them. So we guess Chicago’s politicians really were voting to protect high-paying jobs in the city: their own.

And isn’t this special: Unionized retailers, some of whom pay less in wages and benefits than Wal-Mart and other non-union stores will be required to pay, are exempt.

Stephen Moore called the Big Dig “the most expensive federal transportation earmark in history” today at OpinionJournal.com. I would prefer to call it “The Mother of All Earmarks.”

Oh, the naming thing — It seemed like a slap in the face at the time, but now it seems like richly deserved poetic justice (last paragraph at link):

When the Big Dig tunnels were finally completed, Gov. Romney suggested naming one of the arteries the “Liberty Tunnel” to pay tribute to the soldiers fighting for freedom in Afghanistan and Iraq. The Legislature protested and demanded that the project be called the Tip O’Neill Tunnel instead. Thankfully, they prevailed. Some 20 years after the earth began to move on this project, the Boston Big Dig conjures up many images, but, alas, liberty and freedom are assuredly not among them.

August 19 UPDATE (Update is also posted as a separate August 19 entry) It turns out the “presumably good guy” label in the very first sentence of the original post that begins below was VERY incorrect: (HT Techdirt):

Now it seems SecureWorks is backing away from its suggestion that MacBooks are just as vulnerable as other Wi-Fi-capable computers. The company has posted a disclaimer on its site to make it clear that the demonstration at Black Hat used a modified MacBook.

“This video presentation at Black Hat demonstrates vulnerabilities found in wireless device drivers,” the disclaimer says. “Although an Apple MacBook was used as the demo platform, it was exploited through a third-party wireless device driver–not the original wireless device driver that ships with the MacBook. As part of a responsible disclosure policy, we are not disclosing the name of the third-party wireless device driver until a patch is available.”

This is truly sad, especially in light of the snide comments from Dave Maynor and Jon “Johnny Cache” Ellch about Apple’s alleged security arrogance. It’s a trick right out of the same playbook as the rigged Dateline exploding gas tank in 1993, and it’s sickening.

Since I don’t pull posts, what is below will remain, and I’m coining a new term for people like Maynor and Ellch: MDS, or Mac Derangement Syndrome. The advice at the end of the piece (keep your wireless card off when not using it) is still a good idea, just not do-or-die urgently good.
____________________________________________

(original post)

Last week , two (presumably good-guy) hackers have demonstrated how to hack a MacBook in under 60 seconds and entirely hijack it through its wireless card. They are also telling us that it can be done to virtually any computer (bolds are mine):

The video shows Ellch and Maynor targeting a specific security flaw in the Macbook’s wireless “device driver,” the software that allows the internal wireless card to communicate with the underlying OS X operating system. While those device driver flaws are particular to the Macbook — and presently not publicly disclosed — Maynor said the two have found at least two similar flaws in device drivers for wireless cards either designed for or embedded in machines running the Windows OS. Still, the presenters said they ultimately decided to run the demo against a Mac due to what Maynor called the “Mac user base aura of smugness on security.”

….. according to Maynor and Ellch, this attack can be carried out whether or not a vulnerable targeted laptop connects with a local wireless network. It is, they said, enough for a vulnerable machine to have its wireless card active for such an attack to be successful. That’s a trivial demand, given that most wireless devices embedded in laptops these days are switched on by default and are configured to continuously seek out available wireless networks.

Because the software that powers these wireless devices operates at such a fundamentally low level of the operating system, traditional system safeguards like firewalls and anti-virus software most likely will not stop the operating system from accepting a maliciously crafted network probe from an attacker seeking to exploit device driver-specific flaws. The result, said Maynor, is that a system using poorly designed device drivers is vulnerable to compromise just by doing what it was programmed to do.

But that explanation eclipses the larger point that Maynor and Ellch said they are trying to get across: Namely, that wireless device drivers are largely developed and written by an odd mix of hardware and software developers in an environment where time-to-market often trumps any thorough code review for potential security flaws.

(Aside: Okay guys, I get the point about Mac security smugness. To its credit, Apple resisted hyping that advantage for years. To its detriment, it decided to start hyping the advantage just as it converted its product line to Intel chips and started enabling easier use of Windows XP, meaning that successful virus attacks and hacks are more likely with Macs than they have ever been.)

To protect yourself while the computer makers play catch-up — If you’re not actively connected to a wireless network, turn the wireless card OFF.

________________________________

UPDATE: Information Week also has a story on the demo here.

Though there is some dispute as to the degree of imminence, there is no doubt that the urban planners of Greater Tulsa’s Vision 2025 would prefer that the Centennial Baptist Church in Sand Springs close up shop and go away. Absent it occurring voluntarily, the city has indicated that taking the church by eminent domain is an option.

As covered previously (here and here in January, and here in May), the church’s pastor has no intention of doing so.

Over the past several months, Reverend Roosevelt Gildon has received some heavy-artillery help, and earlier this week received more:

Chicago, IL–Today, Americans for Limited Government Foundation announced that it was one step closer to helping Centennial Baptist Church—which was threatened with condemnation by the city of Sand Springs, Oklahoma in January—to stay in its home.

….. While the city of Sand Springs has moved forward with their redevelopment plan, and have not made a final announcement regarding Centennial Baptist, they have carved around the church with their construction projects. In the wake of the redevelopment, the church was left without a parking lot, which it needs to function. Americans for Limited Government Foundation has volunteered to raise the necessary funds to pave the parking lot next door to the church in a lot where a congregation member’s house formerly stood.

….. After Americans for Limited Government and The Becket Fund successfully delayed the condemnation of Centennial Baptist in January, the Oklahoma Supreme Court took additional action in May. “The Oklahoma Supreme Court recently held that Oklahoma’s Constitution provides greater protection from eminent domain abuse than does the U.S. Constitution,” said Jared N. Leland, Spokesman and Legal Counsel for The Becket Fund. “Centennial Baptist Church now enjoys an additional layer of protection beyond what federal and state laws already provided. The Becket Fund will remain committed to shielding the church from eminent domain abuse so that its religious mission can be fulfilled.”

Reverend Gildon and a group of local pastors have formed the Protect Our Homes and Churches coalition, which will unify clergy across the country to fight for property rights protection. “I think our group will grow quickly,” said Reverend Gildon. “I feel blessed to have the help that I did, but I know there are other families and pastors across the country fighting similar battles. We’re going to bring pastors together to stand up for the people who can’t fight back.”

The potential impact of the Supreme Court’s egregious Kelo ruling on churches is no idle one, as BP (Baptist Press) News reported in March (bold is mine):

City leaders in Long Beach, Calif., have classified the Filipino Baptist Fellowship’s building as a blighted area and are forcing the congregation out in order to make way for condominiums.

….. John Eastman, director of The Claremont Institute’s Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence who is defending the church, said the case -– the first involving a Baptist church — may play a key role in reversing the high court’s eminent domain decision.

….. Currently, there are eight other active cases of eminent domain abuse against churches across the country, according to the Institute for Justice, a civil liberties law firm in Arlington, Va.

Days after the BP News piece appeared, the Long Beach Redevelopment Agency voted unanimously to demolish the church. After a month of machinations, the Claremont Institute reported on April 25 that “the bulldozers have been stopped, at least for now,” but that “the Church remains in the Redevelopment Zone (and hence subject to future condemnation proceedings if the Redevelopment Agency decides to start the process all over again…).”

Here’s hoping that the Protect Our Homes and Churches coalition will be active aggressive, and effective. Its web site is www.homesandchurches.com.

Free Links:

• The monthly announced layoffs report came in with its lowest number (37,176) in six years, and the total for all of 2006 may come in under 1 million for the first time since 2000. But Challenger, Gray & Christmas, the outplacement firm that compiles the report, added a “yeah, but,” saying that it anticipates heavier job cuts by year-end. At the supposedly objective Globe and Mail out of Canada, the headline was “Holidaying bosses mean jobs are safe . . . for now.” Zheesh.

• “Surprise” #1 — Relatively liberal Maine has a Taxpayer Bill of Rights (TABOR) on the November ballot that restricts state government spending increases to inflation plus population growth. “Surprise” #2 — polling indicates that it’s currently winning by a 54%-25% margin (HT Americans for Prosperity).

• The acronym for initial public offering (IPO) has a “new” meaning this year — Investor Pain Overload. This is not “news” to those who have followed IPOs for decades. Though it’s fun thinking that a particular IPO might be the next Apple or Google, the fact is that most of them have underperformed the markets in their first few years.

• Invisible News — The Compensation Resources annual survey of college graduate job placements shows that “in 2006, the average base salary is 10% higher than it was in 2005.”

• Invisibility News (seriously) — “…. scientists are making advances in metamaterials — artificial materials with unusual properties that could be used to make invisibility devices.” I suggest that the scientists consult certain spouses who are sure that they have already accomplished this feat, given how little the other spouse is paying attention to them.

• Headline I Thought I’d Never See — “Thirsty Germans drink Beck’s brewery dry”

• Call me “old school,” but this just doesn’t seem right –
  

  Monopoly board game players can now pay for properties with debit cards. Game makers Parker have phased out the standard multi-coloured cash in a new version. Players will instead use a Visa mock debit card to keep track of how much they win or lose. It is inserted into an electronic machine where the banker taps in cardholders’ earnings and payments.

  Next up: Players learn how to hack into the banker’s machine.

The best adjective to describe how amazing Ben Underwood is hasn’t been invented.
It is a remarkable story of a boy overcoming blindness, in part thanks to loving but demanding mother (also catch the video at the link):

The Boy Who Sees with Sound

July 14, 2006

Blind since age 3, Ben Underwood skateboards, shoots hoops and plays video games. How does he do it? Just like bats and dolphins

There was the time a fifth grader thought it would be funny to punch the blind kid and run. So he snuck up on Ben Underwood and hit him in the face. That’s when Ben started his clicking thing. “I chased him, clicking until I got to him, then I socked him a good one,” says Ben, a skinny 14-year-old. “He didn’t reckon on me going after him. But I can hear walls, parked cars, you name it. I’m a master at this game.”
Ask people about Ben Underwood and you’ll hear dozens of stories like this – about the amazing boy who doesn’t seem to know he’s blind. There’s Ben zooming around on his skateboard outside his home in Sacramento; there he is playing kickball with his buddies. To see him speed down hallways and make sharp turns around corners is to observe a typical teen – except, that is, for the clicking. Completely blind since the age of 3, after retinal cancer claimed both his eyes (he now wears two prostheses), Ben has learned to perceive and locate objects by making a steady stream of sounds with his tongue, then listening for the echoes as they bounce off the surfaces around him. About as loud as the snapping of fingers, Ben’s clicks tell him what’s ahead: the echoes they produce can be soft (indicating metals), dense (wood) or sharp (glass). Judging by how loud or faint they are, Ben has learned to gauge distances.

The technique is called echolocation, and many species, most notably bats and dolphins, use it to get around. But a 14-year-old boy from Sacramento? While many blind people listen for echoes to some degree, Ben’s ability to navigate in his sightless world is, say experts, extraordinary. “His skills are rare,” says Dan Kish, a blind psychologist and leading teacher of echomobility among the blind. “Ben pushes the limits of human perception.”

Kish has taught echolocation to scores of blind people as a supplement to more traditional methods, such as walking with a cane or a guide dog, but only a handful of people in the world use echolocation alone to get around, according to the American Foundation for the Blind. A big part of the reason Ben has succeeded is his mother, who made the decision long ago never to coddle her son. “I always told him, ‘Your name is Benjamin Underwood, and you can do anything,’ ” says Aquanetta Gordon, 42, a utilities-company employee. “He can learn to fly an airplane if he wants to.”

….. Ben plays basketball with his pals, rides horses at camp and dances with girls at school events. He excels at PlayStation games by memorizing the sounds that characters and movements make. “People ask me if I’m lonely,” he says. “I’m not, because someone’s always around or I’ve got my cell phone and I’m always talking to friends. Being blind is not that different from not being blind.”

Ben was just 2 years old when doctors discovered his retinal cancer. Ben’s first Braille teacher, Barbara Haase, believes the boy’s ability to see during his first two years helped him develop “a sort of map of the physical world,” she says. Growing up, Ben got help from his brothers Joe, now 23, and Derius, 19, and sister Tiffany, 18. (His father, Stephen, died in 2002.) “They taught him how to find the seams on his clothes so he puts them on right side out, stuff like that,” says Aquanetta. “But they didn’t overdo it.”

….. Ben learned how to read Braille and walk with a cane, but when he was 3, he also began teaching himself echolocation, something he picked up by tossing objects and making clicking sounds to find them. His sense of hearing, teachers noticed, was exceptional. “One time a CD fell off his desk and I was reaching for it when he said, ‘Nah, I got it,’” says Kalli Carvalho, his language arts instructor. “He went right to it. Didn’t feel around. He just knew where it was because he heard where it hit.” Haase took walks with Ben to help him practice locating objects. “I said, ‘Okay, my car is the third car parked down the street. Tell me when we get there,’ ” she says. “As we pass the first vehicle, he says, ‘There’s the first car. Actually, a truck.’ And it was a pickup. He could tell the difference.”