SharedThought

I reported in an earlier post that I’d been having web hosting problems. Well, they’re finally resolved. I’ve spent much of the last three weeks trying to sort out a supposed “upgrade” to my account. I finally got everything working yesterday, but only after I gave up on my old web host. I’ve added in a few posts that were made on the old site that you may have missed while the new site was resolving. I’ve moved on and hopefully won’t have to worry about the technical stuff for awhile.

Why the confusion? The article accompanying the poll numbers points out:

[I]n declaring the end of major combat in Iraq on May 1, Bush linked Iraq and the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks: “The battle of Iraq is one victory in a war on terror that began on September the 11, 2001 — and still goes on. That terrible morning, 19 evil men — the shock troops of a hateful ideology — gave America and the civilized world a glimpse of their ambitions.”

Moments later, Bush added: “The liberation of Iraq is a crucial advance in the campaign against terror. We’ve removed an ally of al Qaeda, and cut off a source of terrorist funding. And this much is certain: No terrorist network will gain weapons of mass destruction from the Iraqi regime, because the regime is no more. In these 19 months that changed the world, our actions have been focused and deliberate and proportionate to the offense. We have not forgotten the victims of September the 11th — the last phone calls, the cold murder of children, the searches in the rubble. With those attacks, the terrorists and their supporters declared war on the United States. And war is what they got.”

Perhaps this will prove to be effective, expedient politics. However, it is an unacceptable remembrance.

The Washington Post has a sobering article discussing some of the latest economic numbers. Here’s a sample:

In 2002 and 2003, the economy has grown each quarter at annualized rates between 1.3 and 5 percent, but the number of payroll jobs has fallen an average of 0.4 percent every three months. Moreover, nationally, the number of hours worked per employee has remained steady, the Fed study said, pointing to “the emergence of a new kind of recovery, one driven by productivity increases rather than payroll gains.”

Basically, the economic “recovery” that we are in the midst of is a jobless one. There appear to be two sources for the stagnation in job creation. One is that increased worker productivity is allowing companies to produce more with the same workforce. Another is that jobs are being sent overseas.

Increased worker productivity is great, but so far the workers haven’t shared much of the wealth created by their production. Worker productivity in 2002 increased at the highest rate since the 1950s. In the last quarter worker productivity increased 6.8 percent. Yet, wages have increased less than 2 percent annually from 2001 to 2003.

As for sending jobs overseas, that’s supposed to be one of the early costs of globalization. But don’t anyone get worried about it because those jobs that are being sent overseas benefit us all in the long run. The stuff we buy at Wal-Mart is cheaper as result, and workers who lose their jobs will eventually find better ones in dynamic new industries.

That’s a nice story, but for now that’s all it is. In reality this exposes globalization for what it is: a race for the bottom.

NPR scores again! Last week NPR reviewed Erin McKeown’s new album Grand. The segment included an interview with the artist interspersed with cuts from the album. Here’s a real audio sample of a cut titled born to hum. I went out on Saturday and bought the album. It’s a great record. McKeown’s got a great voice and is a truly talented song writer. Here is how she describes her latest work:

“i love all kinds of music, and i think most people are like that. i love to move to music, i love to be surprised by music, so i wanted GRAND to be all these things NOW. . . . GRAND is my dream of what a record could sound like, of what i am interested in as a writer, what i want to be my contribution as an artist. you cant ask much more of your latest project.”

You can check out other samples of the album here. If you like it, you can buy it here.