Income Inequality: Income Gap Widens as Middle Class Jobs Are Lost According to the WP:

The ranks of the uninsured, the bankrupt and the long-term unemployed have all crept up the income scale, proving those problems aren't limited to the poor. Meanwhile, income inequality has grown. In 2001, the top 20 percent of households for the first time raked in more than half of all income, while the share earned by those in the middle was the lowest in nearly 50 years.

Within the middle class, there has been a widening divide between those in its upper reaches whose jobs provide the trappings of the good life, and those in the lower rungs whose economic fortunes are less secure.

The growing income gap corresponds to a long-term restructuring of the workforce that has carved out jobs from the center. In 1969, two categories of jobs -- blue-collar and administrative support -- together accounted for 56 percent of U.S. workers, according to an analysis by economists Frank Levy of MIT and Richard J. Murnane of Harvard. Thirty years later the share was just 39 percent.

Jobs at the low and high ends have replaced those in the middle -- the ranks of janitors and fast-food workers have expanded, but so have those of lawyers and doctors. The problem is, jobs at the low end don't support a middle-class life. And many at the high end require special skills and advanced degrees. "However you define the middle class, it's a lot harder now for high school graduates to be in it," Levy said.
full article

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  Iraq: New Criticisms of the Failed Policy in Iraq In an article in the WP, John McCain, Lindsey O. Graham, and Chuck Hagel have leveled strong criticisms of the deteriorating situation in Iraq.

McCain: "We made serious mistakes right after the initial successes by not having enough troops there on the ground, by allowing the looting, by not securing the borders. There was a number of things that we did. Most of it can be traced back to not having sufficient numbers of troops there."

Graham: "The administration has been stubborn about troops." "We do not need to paint a rosy scenario for the American people. We need to let the American people know this is just like World War II; we're in it for the duration."

Hagel: "The fact is, we're in trouble. We're in deep trouble in Iraq." "And I think we're going to have to look at some recalibration of policy."

A recalibration of leadership is needed as well.

John Kerry, speaking at New York University, offered a renewed criticism of Bush's failed leadership .

Kerry: The President has said that he “miscalculated” in Iraq and that it was a “catastrophic success.” In fact, the President has made a series of catastrophic decisions … from the beginning … in Iraq. At every fork in the road, he has taken the wrong turn and led us in the wrong direction.
full text of speech

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  Economy: The Price of Another 4 Years - 3 Trillion From the Washington Post:

The expansive agenda President Bush laid out at the Republican National Convention was missing a price tag, but administration figures show the total is likely to be well in excess of $3 trillion over a decade.

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  Environment: Global Warming and Hurricanes Two recent articles note that there is a debate among scientists on the effect of global warming on the increase in the number and strength of the hurricanes that recently battered Florida and other gulf states.

The Guardian: Scientists are claiming that the unprecedented ferocity and frequency of the hurricanes that have battered the Caribbean this year can be blamed on one factor: the unexpectedly warm water that has been building up in the Atlantic over the past year.

But some leading US meteorologists reject the idea that this heating is in turn directly linked to global warming. The real villain is the great ocean conveyor belt that ferries warm water from the Equator to the poles, they say. Man-made climate change is a peripheral issue.

Reuters: As Hurricane Ivan and its powerful winds churned through the Gulf of Mexico, scientists told Congress on Wednesday that global warming could produce stronger and more destructive hurricanes in the future.

Global warming will increase the temperature of ocean water that fuels hurricanes, leading to stronger winds, heavier rains and larger storm surges, the researchers told the Senate Commerce Committee.

A brief by NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies from April 1997 found that:

The expected buildup of atmospheric "greenhouse" gases, such as carbon dioxide and methane, will likely increase ocean temperatures as well as the area of ocean surface water warmer than 26°C. It is therefore possible that hurricanes will become more frequent and/or more intense in future decades. However, there are other environmental factors that influence hurricane development, and these must also be taken into consideration in any assessment of future trends. Fortunately, climate simulation models can be used to evaluate how all of the relevant environmental conditions will change as the warming from greenhouse gas buildup is realized.

Gray (1979) found that a mathematical combination of selected seasonally averaged climate indicators, combined into one index, realistically reproduces the historical pattern of hurricane frequency over each ocean basin. Druyan and Lonergan (1997) have adapted Gray's index so that it can be computed from simulations by the NASA/Goddard Institute for Space Studies climate model. Based on simulation experiments, they found that an atmosphere with double the present concentrations of carbon dioxide could lead to an increase of about 50% in the number of tropical storms (winds exceeding 40 mph) and hurricanes that form over the Gulf of Mexico, and an increase of more than 100% over the tropical North Pacific Ocean. Other experiments with the climate model, however, suggest that the natural variability of ocean surface temperatures is a much more important cause of recent year-to-year fluctuations in number of storms than are climate effects from injections of ash and aerosol particles during the volcanic eruptions of El Chichon in 1982 and Mt. Pinatubo in 1991.

Some of the largest climate fluctuations that affect ocean temperatures are related to El Niño cycles of warming and cooling of the tropical Pacific Ocean. During those years when the eastern tropical Pacific is warmest at the peak of the El Niño cycle, hurricane activity in the North Atlantic tends to be at a minimum, apparently because of the effect of warm ocean water on world-wide wind patterns. We plan to use the GISS climate model to examine how this impact of El Niño-caused ocean warming will enhance or diminish hurricane formation in the future, once significant greenhouse warming has occurred.

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  Labor: Congress Blocks White House Overtime Rules From the Washington Post:

The Senate Appropriations Committee voted yesterday to block the Bush administration's controversial new overtime pay rules, but only after the Senate's most senior Republican warned that a slew of such legislative riders could complicate final deals on bills needed to fund the federal government in fiscal 2005.

The provision, approved 16 to 13, was attached to a $142 billion bill funding the Labor, Education, and Health and Human Services departments next year. The House attached a similar provision to its version of the bill last week, defying a threat by the White House to veto the entire bill unless Congress gives way on the issue.
full article

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  Economy: Shifting Profits Overseas A new report by Tax Analysts

The profits of foreign subsidiaries of U.S. corporations in 18 tax havens soared from $88 billion in 1999 to $149 billion in 2002. Total profits of U.S. multinationals’ foreign subsidiaries around the world stood at $255 billion in 2002. That means those 18 tax havens were home to 58 percent of the foreign profits of those multinationals — a figure that far exceeds the share of economic activity that multinationals conduct in those low-tax countries.
Full report (pdf)

NYT Editorial about report


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  Healthcare: Canada vs America Rising healthcare costs is a global problem. However, having 45 million uninsured citizens is strictly an American phenomena.

Canada: OTTAWA, Sept 14 (Reuters) - Canada often boasts its universal health care program shows it is more caring than the United States, but the system is creaking alarmingly, with long wait lists for treatment, and shortages of cash and doctors.

America: WASHINGTON - America's health care system is suffering from two chronic ailments, soaring costs and poor organization.

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  Education: In California Children in Public Schools Out Perform Children in Charter Schools. An article in the San Francisco Chronicle notes that children in public schools scored higher on the California Standards Test then children in charter schools. This holds true even when controlling for low-income children. This is important because, as the article notes, part of the No Child Left Behind Act requires that low performing schools hand over control and/or become charter schools. In addition, the Department of Education is "handing out millions of dollars to build more charters -- California just got $50 million." Perhaps that money would be better spent in public school improvement. The article does state that charter schools are improving at a faster rate then public schools. This is most likely due to the fact that charter schools have more room for improvement. Finally, the best predictor of school performance is family income.
full article

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