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Politics : American Presidential Politics and foreign affairs -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Geoff Altman who wrote (35530)	9/28/2009 9:16:22 AM
From: Peter Dierks	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 71588

China to display upgraded missiles in Oct 1 parade (Thanks Bill CLinton for giving China the technology a decade earlier than they could have developed it without US assistance) Sun Sep 27, 2009 12:34pm EDT By Lucy Hornby BEIJING, Sept 27 (Reuters) - Upgraded missiles will feature prominently in China's Oct 1 military parade which celebrates 60 years of Communist Party rule, the Xinhua news agency said, citing a commander of the service that controls nuclear weapons. The parade of goose-stepping soldiers, well-rehearsed school children and flowery floats will illustrate the nation's priorities of modernisation and military strength [ID:nSP373399]. Foreign observers will be watching to see what weapons the People's Liberation Army shows off. The 108 missiles on display will include two types of surface-to-surface conventional missiles, a land-based cruise missile, surface-to-surface intermediate and long-range missiles that can be equipped with either nuclear or conventional warheads, and nuclear-capable intercontinental missiles, said Yu Jixun, deputy Commander of the PLA's Second Artillery Force. "All five types of missiles are solid-fuelled, with smaller bodies... In the past, missiles were mostly liquid-fuelled and their bodies were huge," Yu said. Solid-fuel missiles are easier to transport, providing more strategic flexibility in deployment. The Second Artillery Force, which controls the nuclear arsenal, is expanding its mandate to include conventional missiles under the nation's military blueprint. This year, as part of the emphasis on modernisation, fewer tanks will roll down Beijing's main boulevard in order to give pride of place to the military's advanced equipment, General Gao Jianguo, spokesman for the National Day Military Parade Joint Command, told Reuters. Squadrons of fighter and bomber planes in formation will fly down Beijing's central axis, accompanied by helicopters, while tanks roll along down the street. Xinhua earlier this month hinted that the parade could display the Julang-2, or JL-2, a submarine-mounted missile with a range of 8,000 km that was first tested in 2001, and the CSS-X-10, a solid fuel intercontinental ballistic missile. American naval strategists are concerned that China may have developed an anti-ship ballistic missile, a Dongfeng 21-D, that could force U.S. aircraft carriers to keep their distance in the event of an attack on self-ruled Taiwan, which China wishes to conquer. It will still be a few years before China has the satellites and other systems needed to successfully track and attack a ship at sea, military analysts said. (Editing by Charles Dick) reuters.com HT: Drudge

To: Geoff Altman who wrote (35530)	10/20/2009 12:43:41 PM
From: Peter Dierks	3 Recommendations Respond to of 71588

Immigrant Scientists Create Jobs and Win Nobels It's crazy to drive away talented young scholars. OCTOBER 19, 2009, 7:01 P.M. ET. By SUSAN HOCKFIELD Of the nine people who shared this year's Nobel Prizes in chemistry, physics and medicine, eight are American citizens, a testament to this country's support for pioneering research. But those numbers disguise a more important story. Four of the American winners were born outside of the United States and only came here as graduate or post-doctoral students or as scientists. They came because our system of higher education and advanced research has been a magnet for creative talent. Unfortunately, we cannot count on that magnetism to last. Culturally, we remain a very open society. But that openness stands in sharp contrast to arcane U.S. immigration policies that discourage young scholars from settling in the U.S. Those policies come at a high price. Graduate and postgraduate student immigrants are essential to creating new, well-paid jobs in our economy. Of the 35 young innovators recognized this year by Technology Review magazine for their exceptional new ideas, only six went to high school in the United States. From MIT alone, foreign graduates have founded an estimated 2,340 active U.S. companies that employ over 100,000 people. Amazingly, if as incoming students they had told U.S. immigration authorities that they hoped to stay on as entrepreneurs after graduation, they would have been turned back at the border. Our immigration laws specifically require that students return to their home countries after earning their degrees and then apply for a visa if they want to return and work in the U.S. It would be hard to invent a policy more counterproductive to our national interest. If the U.S. was the only country in the world that offered scholars scientific freedom, a cumbersome immigration process might not be that harmful. But the world today is teeming with well-funded opportunities to do first-class science. To be competitive, the U.S. needs to send the unmistakable message that we want scholars to stay. To do that we need the kind of broad new immigration policy that would allow foreign students who earn advanced degrees in science, technology, engineering and math to easily become legal permanent residents. President Barack Obama and many others are already calling for such a policy. We also need to aggressively develop more homegrown talent. A recent report from the Organization of Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) shows that we have lost our lead in education. In the 1960s, the U.S. had the highest high-school completion rate in the developed world; by 2005, we ranked 21st. In college completion, as recently as 1995 we ranked second. In 2005, we ranked 15th. The OECD's report explains that we slipped in the rankings "not because U.S. college graduation rates declined, but because they rose so much faster" elsewhere. The U.S. now trails more than 16 nations in Europe and Asia in the proportion of 24-year-olds with bachelor's degrees in the natural sciences and engineering. What we need is not just college graduates. We also need Ph.D.s in the sciences. Unfortunately, in the fields that spawn world-changing research and innovation, American graduate output has stagnated. From 1989 to 2003, despite a growing population, the number of American science and engineering Ph.D.s remained constant: an average of 26,600 a year. Over the same period and in the same fields, Ph.D.s awarded in China shot up to 12,000 from just 1,000. In education, the world is accelerating while we are standing still, which is why Mr. Obama is pressing to revive our Sputnik-era commitment to science and math education. Today, discovery and innovation increasingly spring from a creative network of the finest talent everywhere across the globe. From new advances in medicine to scientific breakthroughs that spawn new industries and sustainable jobs, the work of science and engineering is being done by individuals who can live almost anywhere. To be part of that global creative network we must inspire more young Americans to pursue scientific careers, and we must rapidly reform U.S. immigration policies that drive away talented young scholars who would otherwise decide to live, work and innovate here. We should be proud of our Nobel Prize winners. But we should also craft policies that make it more likely that future Nobel laureates will do their work inside the U.S. Ms. Hockfield is president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. online.wsj.com

To: Geoff Altman who wrote (35530)	10/25/2009 9:05:23 PM
From: Peter Dierks	3 Recommendations Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 71588

The Spending Rolls On The fiscal 2010 bills grow domestic programs by 12.1%. OCTOBER 25, 2009, 7:19 P.M. ET. The White House disclosed the other day that the fiscal 2009 budget deficit clocked in at $1.4 trillion, amid the usual promises to do something about it. Yet even as budget director Peter Orszag was speaking, House Democrats were moving on a dozen spending bills for fiscal 2010 that total 12.1% in more domestic discretionary increases. Yes, 12.1%. Remember, inflation is running close to zero, or 0.8%. The good news, if we can call it that, is that Senate Democrats only want to increase nondefense appropriations by 8% for 2010. Because these funding increases become part of the permanent baseline for future appropriations, the 2010 House budget bills would permanently raise annual outlays for discretionary programs by about $75 billion a year from now until, well, forever. These spending hikes do not include the so-called mandatory spending programs like Medicare and Medicaid, which exploded by 9.8% and 24.7%, respectively, in the just-ended 2009 fiscal year. All of this largesse is also on top of the stimulus funding that agencies received in 2009. The budget for the Environmental Protection Agency rose 126%, the Department of Education budget 209% and energy programs 146%. House Republicans on the Budget Committee added up the 2009 appropriations, the stimulus funding and 2010 budgets and found that federal agencies will, on average, receive a 57% increase in appropriated funds from 2008-2010. By contrast, real family incomes fell by 3.6% last year. There's no recession in Washington. More broadly, the White House and the 111th Congress have already enacted or proposed $3.4 trillion of new spending through 2019 for things like the health-care plan, cap and tax, and the children's health bill passed earlier this year. Very little of this has been financed with offsetting spending cuts elsewhere in the budget. Throughout the era of Republican rule in Washington, we scored GOP lawmakers for their overspending and earmarks—and so did Nancy Pelosi and other Congressional Democrats. So how do their records compare? From 2001-2008 the average annual increase in appropriations bills came in at 6.4%—or about double the rate of inflation. In this Congress spending is now growing six times faster than inflation. And here is the kicker. Mr. Obama's 10-year budget forecast predicts that the budget deficit will fall in future years in part because federal spending on discretionary programs will grow at less than the rate of inflation. But spending is already up nearly 8% (including defense) in the first year alone. For a laugh-out-loud moment on all of this, we recommend yesterday's performance by New York Senator Chuck Schumer on NBC's "Meet the Press." Mr. Schumer declared that "Barack Obama and we Democrats—this is counterintuitive but true—are really trying to get a handle on balancing the budget and we're making real efforts to do it." Counterintiutive? He said this four days after Senate Democrats lost a vote to add $250 billion to the deficit for doctor payments without any compensating spending cuts. Democrats must figure that they can get away with this sort of rap because no one will call them on the reality of what they're spending. And they're probably right about a press corps that has ignored the spending boom since Democrats took over Congress in 2006. Meanwhile, the spending machine rolls on, all but guaranteeing monumental future tax increases.

To: Geoff Altman who wrote (35530)	11/13/2009 8:58:00 AM
From: Peter Dierks	1 Recommendation Respond to of 71588

Gordon Brown's Global Tax Trap Tim Geithner stands up for global competition. NOVEMBER 13, 2009. In the department of bad ideas that won't go away, Exhibit A is a global tax on financial transactions. British Prime Minister Gordon Brown mooted the tax last weekend before the G-20 finance ministers in St. Andrews, Scotland, where he was promptly rebuffed by Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner. "That's not something we're prepared to support," Mr. Geithner said. But it's easy to see why high-tax countries such as France and Germany relish the idea. Tax competition is a bête noire for the Western European countries whose governments eat up close to half of their economies. The U.K. is back in that club after the post-financial-panic recession lopped 6% off its GDP. Scrambling for revenue—and unwilling to hamstring London markets alone—Mr. Brown is suddenly promoting global tax coordination. Sometimes called a Tobin Tax after the late Yale economist James Tobin, the financial transaction tax has been floated in the name of many causes over the years. Backers have called on the tax to raise money to aid the world's poor, fund the United Nations, dampen volatility in foreign exchange markets, and now, in Mr. Brown's version, pay for financial bailouts past and future. But the notion that such a tax could be earmarked to bail out banks deemed too-big-to-fail vanishes in the presence of thought. Even if every country that matters in global finance would agree, the tax money would be spent as fast as it came in, on whatever those governments chose to spend it on. Like the Social Security trust fund, the money might accrue as a bookkeeping entry on some government ledger, but there would be no "fund." If and when another panic strikes, the money would have to be borrowed or taken from other uses, just as it has been in the last year. The very idea that such a fund existed could be harmful to financial stability by creating the illusion that government is better prepared to deal with a financial panic than it actually is. It would also reinforce the notion that financial bailouts have become a normal, and even expected, fact of economic life. Like all tax-harmonization schemes, the Tobin levy is designed to raise taxes above a level that is hard to sustain in a competitive world. This is why its backers have always insisted on a global imposition of the tax. Kudos to Secretary Geithner for offering Mr. Brown a reality check. online.wsj.com