No Oil for Pacifists

Amid the continuous stream of revolution reports from the Middle East and North Africa, one country is noticeably absent. Unlike its neighbors, the tiny, oil-rich Gulf nation of Qatar has shown no signs of tumult, ranking last in the Economist's "shoe-thrower's index" of Arab unrest. Why has Qatar remained completely peaceful?

Money, and a small population. The revolutions in nearby countries, like Egypt, Yemen, and Oman, have been fueled largely by economic grievances like unemployment and rising food prices. Qatar, which has a population of around 1.5 million, approximately 200,000 of whom are Qatari citizens, has an unemployment rate of half a percent. Its GDP per capita of $145,300 is the highest in the world and its 2010 growth rate was 19.4 percent, also ranking it No. 1 in 2010. Qatar's wealth comes from oil and natural gas: The country sits on 14 percent of the world's total natural gas reserves and has 15 billion barrels of proven oil reserves. Qatar should be able to maintain its current export level of oil for 37 years.

Housemaid, driver jailed for illicit relations

A Bangladeshi driver and a Filipina housemaid have been sentenced to a year’s imprisonment following their conviction of maintaining illicit relations.

The affair was revealed in late April 2010 when the sponsor of the maid knocked on her door to take her to his wife in the other house.

The court heard that the maid opened the door partially and the sponsor became suspicious when he saw a shoe that belonged to a man near the bed.

The sponsor caught the lover under the bed and the police was called.

The maid said she eased the access of her lover to her sponsor’s house.

The couple should leave the country after serving the jail penalty, the judges ruled.

But let your communication be, Yea, yea; Nay, nay: for whatsoever is more than these cometh of evil.

There’s a lot of discussion of radiation from the Fukushima plants, along with comparisons to Three Mile Island and Chernobyl. Radiation levels are often described as “ times the normal level” or “% over the legal limit,” which can be pretty confusing.

Ellen, a friend of mine who’s a student at Reed and Senior Reactor Operator at the Reed Research Reactor, has been spending the last few days answering questions about radiation dosage virtually nonstop (I’ve actually seen her interrupt them with “brb, reactor”). She suggested a chart might help put different amounts of radiation into perspective, and so with her help, I put one together. She also made one of her own; it has fewer colors, but contains more information about what radiation exposure consists of and how it affects the body.

?yaw taht ti od yeht dluow yhW

CBO projects that spending for Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and other health care programs will grow from 9.9 percent of GDP in 2010 to 12.0 percent by 2021, driven largely by rapid growth in health care costs.

China’s big manufacturing advantage has been cheap labor, but wages--while still low compared with those in the U.S.--have risen sharply in recent years.



Manufacturing wages more than doubled in China between 2002 and 2008, and the value of the nation’s currency has risen steadily. It’s now under tremendous international pressure to let the yuan appreciate even more, and the country must cope with worrisome inflation at home (food prices rose by nearly 12 percent last year). And though Chinese workers still earn a fraction of what their American counterparts do, the rising costs of labor there are prompting companies to reevaluate their production strategies. . .

Finally, sheer distance remains an intractable problem. Shipping costs nose-dived in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis but have since crept up as oil prices drift back toward $90 a barrel. And then there’s simply the time it takes to get goods from China. With credit hard to come by these days, companies are reluctant to tie up cash in inventory that takes three to six months to manufacture, ship, and clear customs.

When you include all the various drawbacks and costs that don’t appear in a factory’s price quote, manufacturing certain high tech goods in China can end up being surprisingly expensive. In 2008, three McKinsey consultants analyzed the production of midrange servers, taking into account everything from shipping to quality to exchange rates. They concluded that fabricating such devices in China made sense in 2003, when the required labor was 60 percent cheaper there than in the US. At that time, they estimated, the per-unit savings ran about $64. But this advantage, McKinsey concluded, had vanished by 2008: "After factoring in the higher labor and freight costs, we find that the former offshore savings have turned negative--a burden of an extra $16."

Patients are demanding doctors' orders for over-the-counter products because of a provision in the health-care overhaul that slipped past nearly everyone's radar. It says people who want a tax break to buy such items with what's known as flexible-spending accounts need to get a prescription first.

The result is that Americans are visiting their doctors before making a trip to the drugstore, hoping their physician will help them out by writing the prescription. The new requirements create not only an added burden for doctors, but also new complications for retailers and pharmacies.

"It drives up the cost of health care as opposed to reducing it," says Dr. Chung, who rejected much of a 10-item request from a mother of four that included pain relievers and children's cold medicine.

Though the new rules on over-the-counter drugs amount to a small part of the massive overhaul of the health-care system, the unintended side effects show how difficult it can be to predict how such game-changing legislation will play out in the real world.

Some doctors, irked by the paperwork and worried about lawsuits, are balking at writing the new prescriptions. Pharmacists and retailers say the changes mean they have to apply a personalized label on some 15,000 different everyday products for customers paying with certain debit cards.

I'm not sure what they mean by "slipped past everyone's radar". This (as well as the other provisions aimed at ultimately killing FSAs, HSAs, and high-deductible plans) was widely discussed in the leadup to the vote. The overall policy of discouraging people from buying contingency insurance to cover large unexpected expenses, and paying the little stuff out of pocket (as opposed to the Obamacare approach of requiring prepaid health plans with first-dollar coverage for predictable expenses) was one of the main philosophical problems identified with Obamacare early on, and this was one of the examples that illustrated it.

The single most disliked person on the list? It was Meghan McCain who was disliked by 93.8% of the people polled.

The two people who had the highest number of "Strongly liked" responses? Liberals might be surprised to know that the top two vote getters were Allen West and Thomas Sowell. Along the same lines, Marco Rubio tied for the most popular man on the list. But, I thought conservatives were supposed to hate Hispanic Americans?

There were some surprises on the most unpopular list: Christine O'Donnell came in 9th and Mitt Romney was an honorable mention. Is this the guy who's supposed to be the unstoppable establishment front runner?

The most popular people in the poll? It was a surprising four way tie between Scott Walker, Paul Ryan, Marco Rubio, & John Roberts.

NPR and PBS stations nationwide are rallying their audiences to contact Congress to fight against Republicans’ proposed spending cuts, but some affiliates’ pleas may violate laws preventing nonprofits or government-funded groups from lobbying.

Interrupting popular programs, the stations air warnings that cuts could end beloved children’s television shows such as "Sesame Street." Some stations urge their audience to call and let Congress know their feelings, while others go further, instructing viewers to "stop the Senate" or "defend federal funding" for public broadcasting.

The ad campaigns are a direct response to House Republicans’ push to eliminate all Corporation for Public Broadcasting funds for the rest of the fiscal year. Democrats have fought the cuts and President Obama asked for $451 million for CPB in his 2012 budget request -- a $6 million increase.

But lawmakers and conservative critics argue the stations are breaking two laws, one that prohibits using taxpayer-funded grants to petition Congress for more taxpayer money and the other that bans nonprofits from doing much lobbying of any kind.

With upward of $190,000 riding on the congressional spending fight, KBIA public radio at the University of Missouri has run radio and website ads urging listeners to "tell Congress funding for KBIA and other public broadcast is important to you," and also directed viewers to visit "170 Million Americans for Public Broadcasting," a campaign created by public media executives that is fighting to save CPB’s taxpayer funding, which is distributed to more than 1,300 stations nationwide. . .

KBIA is one of the numerous public radio and television stations that are running ads aimed at getting a lawmaker’s ear while also being organized as nonprofits, which means they function as educational organizations. The payoff is that donations to them are tax-deductible, but they’re limited in what lobbying they can do as federal law says nonprofits cannot have a substantial part of their activities be designed to lobby government officials.

It's time to end NPR's career as a political football. I love NPR, and, as the saying goes, if you love something, set it free.

We are no longer exactly the gem of the ocean. Next in line for gratuitous abdication is our naval position.

Separated by the oceans from sources of raw materials in the Middle East, Africa, Australia and South America, and from markets and manufacture in Europe, East Asia and India, we are in effect an island nation. Because 95% and 90% respectively of U.S. and world foreign trade moves by sea, maritime interdiction is the quickest route to both the strangulation of any given nation and chaos in the international system. First Britain and then the U.S. have been the guarantors of the open oceans. The nature of this task demands a large blue-water fleet that simply cannot be abridged.

With the loss of a large number of important bases world-wide, if and when the U.S. projects military power it must do so most of the time from its own territory or the sea. Immune to political cross-currents, economically able to cover multiple areas, hypoallergenic to restive populations, and safe from insurgencies, the fleets are instruments of undeniable utility in support of allies and response to aggression. Forty percent of the world's population lives within range of modern naval gunfire, and more than two-thirds within easy reach of carrier aircraft. Nothing is better or safer than naval power and presence to preserve the often fragile reticence among nations, to protect American interests and those of our allies, and to prevent the wars attendant to imbalances of power and unrestrained adventurism.

And yet the fleet has been made to wither even in time of war. We have the smallest navy in almost a century, declining in the past 50 years to 286 from 1,000 principal combatants. Apologists may cite typical postwar diminutions, but the ongoing 17% reduction from 1998 to the present applies to a navy that unlike its wartime predecessors was not previously built up. These are reductions upon reductions. Nor can there be comfort in the fact that modern ships are more capable, for so are the ships of potential opponents. And even if the capacity of a whole navy could be packed into a small number of super ships, they could be in only a limited number of places at a time, and the loss of just a few of them would be catastrophic.

The mean-spirited bill, H.R. 1 . . . eliminates the National Endowment of the Humanities, National Endowment of the Arts. These programs create jobs. The National Endowment of the Humanities is the reason we have in northern Nevada every January a cowboy poetry festival. Had that program not been around, the tens of thousands of people who come there every year would not exist.

There was an old man from Nevada
Who, 'gainst budget cuts, should'a tried harder.
Than shooting his wad
On tax-funded cowboy bards
Once again swapping sense for bravado.

But what’s more difficult to figure out is why everyone doesn’t mock -- and why Senator Reid (and presumably senior flunkies in the bloated emir-sized retinues that now attend our "citizen-legislators") thought this would be a persuasive line of argument. . . Harry Reid seems to have figured that it’s in America’s interest (or, at any rate, his) to spend like there’s no tomorrow even as the clock chimes quarter-to-midnight. And, when the Complacent Caballero tells you that we cannot contemplate doing anything as "mean-spirited" as a $50,000 cut in a poetry festival, he’s telling you it’s over.

We examine the recovery of Arctic sea ice from prescribed ice-free summer conditions in simulations of 21st century climate in an atmosphere-ocean general circulation model. We find that ice extent recovers typically within two years. The excess oceanic heat that had built up during the ice-free summer is rapidly returned to the atmosphere during the following autumn and winter, and then leaves the Arctic partly through increased longwave emission at the top of the atmosphere and partly through reduced atmospheric heat advection from lower latitudes. Oceanic heat transport does not contribute significantly to the loss of the excess heat. Our results suggest that anomalous loss of Arctic sea ice during a single summer is reversible, as the ice-albedo feedback is alleviated by large-scale recovery mechanisms. Hence, hysteretic threshold behavior (or a "tipping point") is unlikely to occur during the decline of Arctic summer sea-ice cover in the 21st century.

Its amazing to me how many ways supporters of government health care can find to rationalize the bad incentives of third-party payers systems. Take, for example, the prevalence today of numerous, costly tests that appear to be unnecessary. Obamacare supporters would say that this is the profit motive of doctors trying to get extra income, and therefore a free market failure. I would point the finger at other causes (e.g. defensive medicine), but the motivation does not matter. Let’s suppose the volume of tests is truly due to doctors looking for extra revenue, like an expensive restaurant that always is pushing their desserts. In a free economy, most of us just say no to the expensive dessert. But the medical field is like a big prix fixe menu -- the dessert is already paid for, so sure, we will got ahead and take it whether we are hungry or not.

It should be no surprise that while US consumer prices have risen 53% since 1992, health care prices have risen at nearly double that rate, by 98%. Recognize that this is not inevitable. This inflation is not something unique to medical care -- it is something unique to how we pay for medical care.

Contrast this inflation rate for health care with price increases in cosmetic surgery, which unlike other care is typically paid out of pocket and is not covered by third party payer systems. Over the same period, prices for cosmetic surgery rose just 21%, half the general rate of inflation and just over one fifth the overall health care rate of inflation.

This is why I call free market health care the road not traveled. There are many ways we could have helped the poor secure basic health coverage (e.g. through vouchers) without destroying the entire industry with third-party payer systems.

And so they assembled some top-notch lawyers from across the executive branch and held a conference call Monday afternoon with reporters. The ground rules required that the officials not be identified, which was appropriate given their Orwellian assignment. They were to argue that Obama's new detention policy is perfectly consistent with his old detention policy.

Not only had he revoked his pledge to close Gitmo within a year, but he also had contradicted his claim that a detention policy "can't be based simply on what I or the executive branch decide alone." His executive order did exactly what he said must not be done, in a style favored by his predecessor in the Oval Office.

"This detention without trial - what's different from the Bush administration?" a French reporter from Le Monde asked on the call.

Good question. The answer, from the Anonymous Lawyers, was technical: "We have a much more thorough process here of representation. . . . There's an opportunity for an oral presentation to the board."

CBS's Jan Crawford was not impressed with this answer. "What specifically is different in this than what we were living under that was so bad in the Bush administration?" she asked.

Anonymous Lawyers replied that cases would be reviewed every six months instead of every year. They also spoke about their "intent to comply with Article 75 of Additional Protocol One."

This still wasn't working for Yochi Dreazen of National Journal. "It seems like what is happening now with this executive order is effectively ratifying the status quo," he said. "Is that a fair read?"

The Anonymous Lawyers did not think this was a fair read. Over and over again, they repeated their theme: "The basic message is the National Archives speech remains the framework under which Guantanamo closure is being done." . . .

In a sense, Monday's announcement was an acknowledgment that Obama had set expectations unrealistically high during the campaign and early in his term. "The president has now institutionalized a process that a lot of his political base imagined he was going to get rid of," said my former Post colleague Benjamin Wittes, now a Brookings authority on detention policy. . .

And how about working with Congress? An Anonymous Lawyer said that this was a "discretionary executive act" that is "well within the authority . . . of the president."

Funny, that's just what Bush's lawyers used to say.

President Obama announced today that the Federal Government will reduce greenhouse gas pollution from indirect sources, such as employee travel and commuting, by 13% by 2020. This commitment expands beyond the Administration’s greenhouse gas reduction target from direct sources set in January, 2010, such as Federal fleets and buildings, by 2020. Cumulatively, greenhouse gas pollution reductions from Federal government operations will total 101 million metric tons of carbon dioxide, equivalent to the emissions from 235 million barrels of oil.

Mr. McClellan grew up practicing martial arts, eventually earning a black belt, and as a college student realized that he had a knack for working with people. He owns Naturally Fit, a personal training and wellness center in Chicago, and now spends part of his week in Washington at Mr. Obama’s request.

"It was an easy sell for me, because I thought of it as kind of a duty, to serve the president," said Mr. McClellan, who works out with the first couple, often in the early morning, at the gym in the White House residence. Mr. and Mrs. Obama both try to exercise for at least an hour every day, and Mr. McClellan says he usually sees them two to four times a week, depending on their schedules.

1. Overall, public school teachers make a 34.11% premium compared to their private school counterparts.

2. Controlling for experience, public school teachers make a premium that generally increases with the number of years teaching, reaching a maximum premium of 49% for public school teachers with 25-29 years of experience.

3. Public school teachers with one year of experience make about the same ($42,210) as private school teachers with 25-29 years of experience ($42,910).

4. Comparing teachers with equal education, public school teachers earn large premiums over their private school counterparts, especially for public school teachers with less than a bachelor's degree, who earn more than twice the amount on average ($53,880) as private school teachers with the same level of education ($26,670).

Libyan warplanes were bombing indiscriminately across Tripoli on Monday, a resident of the Libyan capital told al Jazeera television in a live broadcast.

"What we are witnessing today is unimaginable. Warplanes and helicopters are indiscriminately bombing one area after another. There are many, many dead," Adel Mohamed Saleh said.

With reports that the Gaddafi regime -- or what’s left of it -- has effected the indiscriminate massacre of Libyan civilians, up to and including air strikes in Tripoli and the planned carpet-bombing of Benghazi, the suggestion that President Obama establish a "no-fly zone" above Libya has begun popping up on social media.

I don’t say this lightly, but I think POTUS must so act. . . Gaddafi’s bombers must be grounded.

Going forward, we will continue to send a clear message: the violence must stop; Muammar Gaddafi has lost the legitimacy to lead and he must leave; those who perpetrate violence against the Libyan people will be held accountable; and the aspirations of the Libyan people for freedom, democracy and dignity must be met.

Note the implicit statement that the dictator once had legitimacy. Why would Obama think that?

The fact that the president has waited so long to make any public gesture in this direction, and the forum in which he addressed Qaddafi--a joint press conference with the president of Mexico--surely detracts from any power his words might have carried. So, too, does his reasoning: Qaddafi, says Obama, "has lost the legitimacy to lead"--a phrase which combines turgid language with the implication that Qaddafi, who staged a coup d’état and has exercised dictatorial power since 1969, was ever Libya's "legitimate" leader. Informing Qaddafi that he has lost the "legitimacy to lead" lacks the unambiguous impact of Cromwell's famous rebuke to the Long Parliament--"Depart, I say, and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go!" . . .

Observers of the Obama administration's tentative behavior--leasing a private ferry to transport American nationals from Tripoli, emphasizing the necessity of "coordinated" diplomatic gestures against Qaddafi, describing in detail the military obstacles to action--have wondered if the White House might be wary of the exercise of American power. This is no longer a rhetorical question: The Obama administration is not only reluctant to advance (or, for that matter, defend) the national interest in Libya, but seems to regard the national interest as suspect in itself.

Opposition activists called for a no-fly zone, echoing a demand by Libya’s deputy U.N. envoy, who now opposes Gaddafi.

"Bring Bush! Make a no fly zone, bomb the planes," shouted soldier-turned-rebel Nasr Ali, referring to a no-fly zone imposed on Iraq in 1991 by then U.S. President George Bush. (Also quoted here, here.)

Reuters scrubs story of Libyan rebel Nasr Ali crying for help from George H.W. Bush

Reuters pulls a quote from a story of Libyan rebel Nasr Ali crying for Bush, wow, I wonder why.

America believes that all people are entitled to hope and human rights, to the non-negotiable demands of human dignity. People everywhere prefer freedom to slavery; prosperity to squalor; self-government to the rule of terror and torture.

During a hearing on Capitol Hill Thursday, the secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) admitted to double-counting in the Obamacare budget.

In her first appearance before the House Energy and Commerce Health Subcommittee since the health-care law passed, Kathleen Sebelius responded to a line of questioning by Republican Rep. John Shimkus of Illinois about whether $500 billion in Medicare cuts were used to sustain the program or pay for the law.

"There is an issue here on the budget because your own actuary has said you can’t double-count," said Shimkus. "You can’t count -- they’re attacking Medicare on the CR when their bill, your law, cut $500 billion from Medicare."

He continued: "Then you’re also using the same $500 billion to what? Say your funding health care. Your own actuary says you can’t do both. . . What’s the $500 billion in cuts for? Preserving Medicare or funding the health-care law?"

Sebelius’ reply? "Both."

The showdown in Wisconsin over fringe benefits for public employees boils down to one number: 74.2. That's how many cents the public pays Milwaukee public-school teachers and other employees for retirement and health benefits for every dollar they receive in salary. The corresponding rate for employees of private firms is 24.3 cents... The average Milwaukee public-school teacher salary is $56,500, but with benefits the total package is $100,005, according to the manager of financial planning for Milwaukee public schools.

What these numbers ultimately prove is the excessive power of collective bargaining. The teachers' main pension plan is set by the state legislature, but under the pressure of local bargaining, the employees' contribution is often pushed onto the taxpayers. In addition, collective bargaining led the Milwaukee public school district to add a supplemental pension plan—again with no employee contribution. Finally, the employees' contribution (or lack thereof) to the cost of health insurance is also collectively bargained.

As the costs of pensions and insurance escalate, the governor's proposal to restrict collective bargaining to salaries—not benefits—seems entirely reasonable.

5 New Rules for All Teachers

Restrictions on evaluation -- Provisions in teachers contracts limit who can do evaluations, how often, and even specify how much notice a teacher must be given prior to being observed. In most professional workplaces, by contrast, evaluation is ongoing and both formal and informal.

Last in, first out.-- With layoffs looming policies that require "last in, first out" are hotly debated around the country. These rules, which can be found in both state law and union teachers' contracts, require that teachers be laid-off according to seniority only, without attention to classroom effectiveness.... abundant research shows clearly that longevity alone is not a great predictor of effectiveness... Bottom line: In any organization that is serious about effectiveness quality-blind layoffs are nothing short of insane.

Forced transfers and "bumping." --[S]eniority confers a set of powerful rights when it comes to transferring to new schools. In practice this means veterans can bump teachers with less seniority when jobs open up or that principals are limited in who they can choose from when filling positions... When The New Teacher Project analyzed this practice, they found that the policy contributed to newer teachers leaving teaching. But parents don't need a wonky report to get the basic problem here: Shouldn't individual schools get to decide who teaches in them? (See how to fix teacher tenure without the pass-fail grade.)

Tenure and due process rules.-- Earlier this month an arbitrator in Washington, D.C. gave 75 teachers - including chronically absent and demonstrably low-performing ones - their jobs back over a technical due process issue.... [E]ducation policy tenure is now under attack in a number of states where various rules are found as part of both state law and in collective bargaining agreements...even teachers union leaders agree that in many cases the rules are out of hand.

Inflexible Salary Schedules. --Today teachers are overwhelmingly paid based on two factors, length of service and degrees. Salaries are based on master schedules with columns for degrees and rows for years of service so a teacher moves across lanes and up the steps as their career progresses. Most professions pay more for experience but there is little evidence that most additional degrees improve teaching... The rules of economics don't stop at the schoolhouse door and school superintendents privately complain about having to pay physical education teachers and physics teachers the same amount even though it's easier to find coaches than physicists.

In fact, government employees should never, ever be allowed to organize.

The need for a union comes down to this question: Do you have a boss who wants you to work harder for less money? In the private sector, the answer is yes. In the public sector, the answer is a big, fat NO.

Government unions have nothing in common with private sector unions because they don't have hostile management on the other side of the bargaining table. To the contrary, the "bosses" of government employees are co-conspirators with them in bilking the taxpayers.

Far from being careful stewards of the taxpayers' money, politicians are on the same side of the bargaining table as government employees -- against the taxpayers, who aren't allowed to be part of the negotiation. This is why the head of New York's largest public union in the mid-'70s, Victor Gotbaum, gloated, "We have the ability to elect our own boss."

Democratic politicians don't think of themselves as "management." They don't respond to union demands for more money by saying, "Are you kidding me?" They say, "Great -- get me a raise too!"

Democrats buy the votes of government workers with generous pay packages and benefits -- paid for by someone else -- and then expect a kickback from the unions in the form of hefty campaign donations, rent-a-mobs and questionable union political activity when they run for re-election.

But government workers think the job of everyone else in the economy is to protect their high salaries, crazy work rules and obscene pensions. They self-righteously lecture us about public service, the children, a "living wage" -- all in the service of squeezing more money from the taxpayer to fund their breathtakingly selfish job arrangements.

• Public School Teachers get gold-plated benefit package is three times as big as the average taxpayer benefit package.
• Public School Teachers don't compete for their jobs.
• Public School Teachers have jobs for life, they are almost impossible to fire.
• As white collar professionals, they are actually being abused by being treated as unskilled laborers.
• Public School Teachers unionize to elect their own bosses, pay their boss' election and re-election through their salaries, which are... approved by the government that will not govern.