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Politics : THE VAST RIGHT WING CONSPIRACY -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: calgal who wrote (5157)	12/31/2003 1:38:03 AM
From: calgal	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 6358

Dean's pleadings By Cal Thomas URL:http://www.washingtontimes.com/commentary/20031230-084307-6735r.htm Democrats have been trying hard in recent years to squeeze God into their politics, perceiving that Republicans have an edge on invoking the Creator to bless their policies. Democrats worry they suffer from a "God gap." Bill Clinton and Al Gore, with their Southern Baptist backgrounds, were fluent in the language of religion, though not always in its personal application. Who can forget Easter Sunday 1996, when President Clinton emerged from church flashing a Bible for the cameras and later returning to the White House, where Monica Lewinsky got down on her knees to perform an act that did not resemble prayer? Mr. Clinton and Mr. Gore often quoted what they said were verses of Scripture, which turned out to be incorrect and/or misapplied. And now Howard Dean will rush in where political angels have feared to tread and try to advance the theological ball down the field to see if he can score votes for his candidacy. In an interview with the Boston Globe (Dec. 25), Mr. Dean announced that he is a "committed believer in Jesus Christ." He told writer Sarah Schweitzer that he plans to include references to Jesus and God in his speeches as he campaigns down South. That´s the land of Confederate battle flags and pickup trucks Mr. Dean so recently disparaged. In the Globe interview, he said Southerners understand religious talk better than his fellow New Englanders. Yes, that "vast Unitarian wasteland of the Northeast," as Charles Colson has jokingly called it, is the latest target of Mr. Dean´s regional stereotyping. Mr. Dean is from a Congregationalist background, a liberal denomination that does not believe in ministerial authority or church hierarchy. Each Congregationalist believes he is in direct contact with God and is entitled to sort out truth for himself. Mr. Dean´s wife is Jewish and his two children are being raised Jewish, which is strange at best, considering the two faiths take a distinctly different view of Jesus. What exactly does Mr. Dean believe about Jesus, and how is it relevant to his presidential candidacy? "Christ was someone who sought out people who were disenfranchised," he told the Globe, "people who were left behind." Mr. Dean makes it sound as if He might have been a Democrat. "He fought against self-righteousness of people who had everything," the candidate continued. "He was a person who set an extraordinary example that has lasted 2,000 years, which is pretty inspiring when you think about it." Not really. If that is all Jesus was (or is), then he is just another entry in Bartlett´s "Familiar Quotations," to be read or not, according to one´s inspirational need. C.S. Lewis brilliantly dealt with this watered-down view of Jesus and what He did in the book "Mere Christianity." Said Lewis, who thought about such things at a far deeper level than Howard Dean, "I´m trying here to prevent anyone from saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: 'I´m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I can´t accept His claim to be God.´ That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God or else a madman or something worse." One hopes that the next journalist who gets a chance to ask Mr. Dean about this will inquire as to which Jesus he is talking about, if for no other reason than to gauge whether Mr. Dean is being sincere or a political opportunist who seeks to bamboozle Southern religious Democrats. That reporter might also survey Christians in New England (there are more than Mr. Dean thinks) as to whether they are as offended by his reference to their region as Southerners were to his characterization of their symbols and driving choices. I can´t wait to see how Mr. Dean panders to Californians. Fruits and nuts, anyone? Cal Thomas is a nationally syndicated columnist.

To: calgal who wrote (5157)	12/31/2003 1:40:56 AM
From: calgal	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 6358

Offshore ebb and flow By Bruce Bartlett Just before Christmas, workers at IBM got an early lump of coal in their stockings. The company announced plans to ship some 5,000 software-programming jobs to India. Although the trend toward outsourcing or offshoring has been going on for some time, the IBM announcement got people's attention. New York Times columnist Bob Herbert complained that globalization is now forcing white-collar service workers to follow "the well-trodden path of their factory brethren to lower-wage work, or the unemployment line." Ironically, much of the move toward offshoring is the result of ill-considered efforts to keep software jobs in the United States. Previously, companies had brought Indian programmers to this country to do their work under a program established in 1990. It provided these foreign workers with H-1B visas that allowed them to work here temporarily. But under pressure to save such jobs for the native-born, the number of visas allowed under this program was reduced from 195,000 to 65,000 in October. So now, instead of having Indian workers come here, where they spent much of their earnings, companies are contracting with them to work in India, which is where they now spend their earnings. Rather than admit that they were wrong in the first place, the same people who demanded restrictions on foreign workers are trying to get new limits placed on outsourcing as well. A new report from the National Foundation for American Policy (nfap.net) details this effort and the likely costs. These include higher taxes when laws are passed preventing state and local governments from utilizing cheaper foreign sources for information-technology services. Pressure is being placed on private companies as well. Dell Computer and Lehman Brothers both recently announced that they were closing some of their Indian operations and bringing back jobs that were previously outsourced. Reuters reports that many big companies now resist admitting that they are even looking into outsourcing for fear of a political backlash. As a result, these companies may now be depriving investors of important information on their cost-cutting efforts. The truth is that outsourcing is far less of a threat to American workers than they imagine, and there are significant benefits for the U.S. economy. For starters, there is not a one-for-one relationship between jobs lost here and those gained elsewhere from outsourcing. Boston University researcher Nitin Joglekar has found that outsourcing of IT services typically leads to domestic job losses of less than 20 percent. In other words, for every 100 jobs outsourced to India only 20 are lost here. A study by the McKinsey Global Institute found that workers freed up from routine tasks that have been outsourced are often redeployed within the company in projects generating greater value-added and jobs paying higher wages. It also found that companies engaging in outsourcing often established foreign subsidiaries that generate sales and profits for the home company. Adding it all up, McKinsey concluded that every $1 outsourced led to a gain for the U.S. as a whole of $1.12 to $1.14. The country where the outsourcing takes place captures just 33 cents of the total gain from outsourcing. Even this greatly underestimates the gain to the United States from outsourcing because it doesn't fully account for the ways in which businesses will be able to improve the quality of their products and take advantage of new opportunities presented by outsourcing. A new study by Catherine Mann of the Institute for International Economics (iie.com) looks at some of these dynamic effects. She notes that globalization of computer hardware manufacturing led to a 10 percent to 30 percent decline in prices. This made such equipment more affordable and led to a far greater increase in jobs in the long run than were lost initially when production went abroad. Ms. Mann believes that lower costs resulting from outsourcing of services will lead to comparable dynamic gains in the United States. She says globalization of IT services "will yield even stronger job demand in the United States for workers with IT proficiency and skills." Indeed, she notes that overall employment in job classifications most impacted by IT service outsourcing is in fact rising, not falling. Other studies also find domestic benefits from outsourcing. For example, companies are able to provide round-the-clock service for their customers globally. They have also found that small companies and new startups gain more from outsourcing than large corporations. The latter have managerial structures that make it hard for them to take full advantage of outsourcing's benefits. Smaller companies and those just established can organize themselves more easily to utilize outsourcing and thereby gain sales and better compete in today's global marketplace. I don't expect the protectionists and nativists to stop complaining about outsourcing. Nevertheless, the benefits to U.S. workers and the U.S. economy greatly outweigh the costs. Bruce Bartlett is senior fellow with the National Center for Policy Analysis and a nationally syndicated columnist.