Ny Gardener Harris, New York Times, January 22/23, 2011

The Obama administration has become so concerned about the slowing pace of new drugs coming out of the pharmaceutical industry that officials have decided to start a billion-dollar government drug development center to help create medicines.

The White House sees competitiveness as a framework Republicans could support. GOP lawmakers traditionally have backed the types of trade deals and research-and-development efforts that Obama is promoting. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., appeared to give the president an opening when he said last week in a speech that "my advice to my colleagues is if the president is willing to do what we would do anyway, then we should say yes."

The Chamber of Commerce could find no greater advocate for their style of "competitiveness" than Jeff Immelt, the new Chair of Obama's Council of Economic Advisors. As head of GE, Immelt oversaw that closing of 29 plants in the U.S. in just the last two years with an attendant loss of 3,000 jobs. Many of these jobs have been exported, with a threatened elimination of many more to follow unless the American GE workers get more "competitive."

Expect to hear a lot about "jobs creation" as Obama speaks about reviving the Dow Jones Industrials Average as his solution to our economic recovery. Just don't expect anything to be said about a "family-supporting wage" or even the country within which such jobs will be created. It really doesn't matter.

"If Wall Street's happy, we're all happy!"

It's a message that even Mitch McConnell can love. Bi-partisanship has arrived, and it looks a whole lot like a win-win for "the economy." I guess the rest of us will just have to fend for ourselves.

Ironies of ironies...

ARLINGTON (CBS) – A blog threatening members of Congress in the wake of the Tucson, Arizona shooting has prompted Arlington police to temporarily suspend the firearms license of an Arlington man.

[...]

In his blog Corcoran writes, “It is absolutely, absolutely unacceptable to shoot indiscriminately. Target only politicians and their staff and leave regular citizens alone.”
.
Police visited Corcoran’s home and found a “large amount” of weapons and ammunition. Sources told WBZ-TV that 11 guns were removed.

For more than twenty years, microcredit has been widely heralded as the remedy for world poverty. Recent news stories, however, have sullied microcredit’s glowing reputation with reports on scandals, exorbitant compensation to managers, skyrocketing interest rates, and aggressive marketing schemes.

Once praised as a universal panacea, microlenders are now being widely attacked as predatory loan sharks. In December 2010, Sheik Hasina Wazed, the prime minister of Bangladesh and former microcredit advocate, accused microcredit programs of “sucking blood from the poor in the name of poverty alleviation.”

What happened?

By Julian Borger, The Guardian, January 20, 2011

Tehran has 'technical ability' to make highly enriched uranium, say experts, as efforts turn to disrupting supply of other materials

It’s time for the Federal Reserve to start emphasizing its own alternative measures of inflation trends.

To gauge where prices are heading, since the 1970s the Fed’s been focusing the public’s attention on a core inflation measure that strips out volatile food and energy prices, making the central bank sometimes look arbitrary and out of touch with reality.

Two little-known measures compiled by economists at the Federal Reserve Banks of Dallas and Cleveland since the 1990s may provide the solution. They both use a more scientific approach to forecast where inflation will be in two years — the time it can take for Fed decisions to impact the economy.

The Dallas Fed’s trimmed mean personal consumption expenditure rate and the Cleveland Fed’s median consumer price index have both proven to be better predictors of inflation.

By Nicholas K. Geronios, Associated Press, January 19, 2011

SPOKANE, Wash. -- A bomb left along the route of a Martin Luther King Jr. Day parade was sophisticated, with a remote detonator and the ability to cause many casualties, an official familiar with the case said Wednesday.

The bomb, which was defused without incident on Monday, was the most potentially destructive he had ever seen, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to release information about the investigation.

"They haven't seen anything like this in this country," the official said. "This was the worst device, and most intentional device, I've ever seen."....

It didn't matter if it was pitch black or cold - or if she were juggling calls she had missed while on the plane from Washington, D.C., or preparing to meet with constituents the next day. She would do all that, and then go for that bike ride. For the past two Tuesdays, cyclists have shown up en masse outside the hospital where she remained in serious condition, along with hundreds of other supporters. The 2-mile vigil ride from the University of Arizona campus takes less than 15 minutes, but organizer Damion Alexander said there's a lot to think about in that short time. The word 'community' is what it's all about. We are a bike community," Alexander said.

This is in direct opposition to the official stance of the White House and the US government which has been vocal in condemning the whistle-blowing organisation and seeking to bring its founder, Julian Assange, to trial in the US.

A congressional official briefed on the reviews told Reuters news agency that the administration felt compelled to say publicly that the revelations had seriously damaged American interests in order to bolster legal efforts to shut down the WikiLeaks website and bring charges against the leakers. "I think they want to present the toughest front they can muster," the official said.

By Mark Mazetti, New York Times, January 18/19, 2011

WASHINGTON — Government lawyers told a federal judge in Virginia on Tuesday that they were trying to expedite the return of an American teenager detained in Kuwait, and that they expected him back in the United States by the end of the week.....American officials have refused to comment on why Mr. Mohamed has been barred entry to the United States...Dean Boyd, a Justice Department spokesman, declined to comment on the accusations in the lawsuit, but said a Justice lawyer had told Judge Trenga on Tuesday that “the U.S. government is working to bring Mr. Mohamed to the United States"....A State Department spokesman has said that Mr. Mohamed was not detained at the behest of the United States.....

By Dahlia Lithwick, Slate, January 18, 2011

..the Obama Administration has generally continued to invoke the privilege to dismiss lawsuits in which government actors are on the hook for the Bush-era secret rendition program and warrantless eavesdropping. When the Supreme Court agreed to hear General Dynamics v. United States (consolidated with Boeing v. United States), the first major state secrets case since the Court established the privilege in United States v. Reynolds in 1953, court-watchers hoped the justices would seize this opportunity to clarify the scope of the privilege and the consequences to the government of invoking it.

....the court today seized the opportunity to conduct a rollicking roller-derby smash-up on American contract law. The justices seem to begin and end with the proposition that the state secrets doctrine is uncontroversial. The only question left to them is what to do with the still-squabbling parties to a 20-year old contract dispute over some fancy aircraft.....