Walmart's and the Gap's deadly penny-pinching

The second part of Wal-Mart's "Save money. Live better." motto has always been a bit dodgy. But now the giant retailer might have to scrap it altogether.

Bloomberg reports that Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. and Gap, Inc. each made a calculated decision to risk the lives of workers in Bangladesh in order to save a few bucks.

At a meeting convened in 2011 to boost safety at Bangladesh garment factories, Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (WMT) made a call: paying suppliers more to help them upgrade their manufacturing facilities was too costly.

The comments from a Wal-Mart sourcing director appear in minutes of the meeting, which was attended by more than a dozen retailers including Gap Inc. (GPS), Target Corp. and JC Penney Co.

Details of the meeting have emerged after a fire at a Bangladesh factory that made clothes for Wal-Mart and Sears Holdings Corp. killed more than 100 people last month. The blaze has renewed pressure on companies to improve working conditions in Bangladesh, where more than 700 garment workers have died since 2005, according to the International Labor Rights Forum, a Washington-based advocacy group.

At the meeting in Dhaka, the Bangladesh capital, in April 2011, retailers discussed a contractually enforceable memorandum that would require them to pay Bangladesh factories prices high enough to cover costs of safety improvements. Sridevi Kalavakolanu, a Wal-Mart director of ethical sourcing, told attendees the company wouldn’t share the cost, according to Ineke Zeldenrust, international coordinator for the Clean Clothes Campaign, who attended the gathering. Kalavakolanu and her counterpart at Gap reiterated their position in a report folded into the meeting minutes, obtained by Bloomberg News.

“Specifically to the issue of any corrections on electrical and fire safety, we are talking about 4,500 factories, and in most cases very extensive and costly modifications would need to be undertaken to some factories,” they said in the document. “It is not financially feasible for the brands to make such investments.”

But Bloomberg goes on to report that other retailers, including PVH Corp., which sells Tommy Hilfiger clothing, did find these protections "financially feasible."

Those pennies do add up, however. Wal-Mart found it financially feasible to pay its CEO nearly $3 million in "cash incentives" and $18 million in total compensation in 2012. Gap paid its CEO $9.7 million in 2011.

Apparently, some lives are worth a whole lot more than others.

Risks of gun ownership outweigh the rewards

Think that owning a gun will make you or your family safer? You may want to think again.

A peer-reviewed article by David Hemenway, published last year in the American Journal of Lifestyle Medicine summarized scientific evidence regarding the health risks and benefits of gun ownership. On the risk side, Hemenway reviewed studies of how guns contributed to accidental deaths and injuries, suicides, homicides, and violent intimidation. On the benefit side, Hemenway examined studies of the effects of guns on crime deterrence, self-defense, and to stop crimes in progress. His conclusions were crystal clear.

...for most contemporary Americans, the scientific studies suggest that the health risk of a gun in the home is greater than the benefit. There are no credible studies that indicate otherwise. The evidence is overwhelming that a gun in the home is a risk factor for completed suicide and that gun accidents are most likely to occur in homes with guns. There is compelling evidence that a gun in the home is a risk factor for intimidation and for killing women in their homes, and it appears that a gun in the home may more likely be used to threaten intimates than to protect against intruders. On the potential benefit side, there is no good evidence of a deterrent effect of firearms or that a gun in the home reduces the likelihood or severity of injury during an altercation or break-in.

Hemenway cites some astounding statistics. For instance, with respect to accidents.

According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) data, between 2003 and 2007, the typical resident from the 15 states with the most guns (WY, MT, AK, SD, AR, WV, AL, ID, MS, ND, KY, TN, LA, MO, and VT) was 6 times more likely to die in a gun accident than a typical resident from the 6 states with the fewest guns (HI, NJ, MA, RI, CT, and NY). For example, although there were virtually the same number of children aged 5 to 14 years in both groups of states, 82 had died from accidental gunshot wounds in these high gun states, compared with 8 in the low gun states.

Hemenway is careful to note, correctly, that the absolute risks of either suffering harm or deriving a safety benefit from gun ownership are low. Nevertheless, the risks of harm outweigh the possibilities of benefit.

RNC autopsy to reveal...

Last night on Piers Morgan Tonight, Reince Priebus, chairman of the Republican National Committee, commented on his party's recent electoral setback, saying "in order to get back in the game, you've got to look at and do a full autopsy of what happened."

I might be able to save Mr. Priebus some time.

When the patient lacks both a heart and a brain, the outcome is pretty predictable.

A very public thank you

Thank you to the state of North Carolina for providing me with an opportunity to pursue the vocation that I love, for providing my oldest son the opportunity to pursue a high-quality college education, and for funding the school teachers that taught and inspired both of my sons.

Thank you to Guilford County for providing school buildings, school books, teachers, and staff that also helped my children to develop.

Thank you to Greensboro for keeping my house safe and my neighborhood clean.

Thank you to the state of Virginia for providing me with a college education and with mentors who helped set my on the path toward my career. Thank you to the states of Virginia and New Jersey for most of my elementary and secondary education.

Thank you to the United States for employing my father for many, many years and giving my family not only prosperity but also an opportunity to travel throughout the Far East and Pacific. Thank you also for funding the terrific overseas Department of Defense schools that my sisters, brother and I attended. Thank you for your faith and support of many of my research projects. Thank you for making my parents' retirement easier, especially during a time when the economy and their savings were crashing. Finally, thank you for the military cemetery where my parents now rest.

These blessings did not just magically appear but came out of the toil and occasional good fortune of some neighbors I know and many more neighbors I don't. Thank you all.

Gov. Jindal -- "Stop being the stupid party"

Gov. Bobby Jindal yesterday wagged his finger at the rampant anti-intellectualism among his fellow Republicans. Politico reports

Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal on Monday called on Republicans to “stop being the stupid party” and make a concerted effort to reach a broader swath of voters with an inclusive economic message that pre-empts efforts to caricature the GOP as the party of the rich.

...“It is no secret we had a number of Republicans damage our brand this year with offensive, bizarre comments — enough of that,” Jindal said. “It’s not going to be the last time anyone says something stupid within our party, but it can’t be tolerated within our party. We’ve also had enough of this dumbed-down conservatism. We need to stop being simplistic, we need to trust the intelligence of the American people and we need to stop insulting the intelligence of the voters.”

Wow, really? Excuse me while I clean up the coffee that just shot out of my nose and onto my keyboard.

This would be the same Gov. Jindal that signed a law in Louisana supporting the teaching of creationism.

"That law" is the Louisiana Science Education Act, which is named for what it is designed to destroy. Jindal signed it last year, clearing the way for creationism to be taught in biology class.

... the voice of reason cuts no ice with Jindal anyway, at least on this issue. He refused to veto the bill last year, ignoring the pleas not only of Satterlie's group, but the American Association for the Advancement of Science, a slew of other learned bodies and even his old genetics professor from Brown University.

The force behind the bill was the Louisiana Family Forum, a group of Christian soldiers that few politicians would wish to cross, given that polls suggest a startlingly high number of Americans refuse to accept that mountains of scientific evidence prove the truth of evolution.

While some politicians might kowtow to the forum out of expediency, Jindal does not appear to be one of them. He actually appears to believe this stuff. Darwin or Genesis? You pays your money and you takes your choice, so far as the Louisiana Science Education Act is concerned.

This would also be the same Gov. Jindal who used his 2009 Republican response to the State of the Union speech to belittle the federal government for allocating money to the U.S. Geological Survey to monitor volcanoes.

While some of the projects in the bill make sense, their legislation is larded with wasteful spending. It includes $300 million to buy new cars for the government. $8 billion for high speed rail projects such as magnetic levitation line from Las Vegas to Disney Land. And $140 million for something called ‘volcano monitoring.’ Instead of monitoring volcanoes, what Congress should be monitoring is the eruption of spending in Washington, DC.

And he's now criticizing Republicans for "being the stupid party."

Gov. Jindal has made a career of talking down to voters. It's a mark of his contempt for voters that he expects them to forget this now.

Questionable squared--your tax dollars at work

Rep. Darrel Issa used tax dollars to produce the following video, which was released just a few days before the election.


Without a doubt, the irony of the questionable use of tax dollars to call attention in a questionable use of tax dollars is lost on the congressman.

Let's hope that the House Ethics Committee brings this irony to his attention.

Republican mandate?

Rep. John Boehner claimed on election night that the reelection of a Republican House majority told him that there is "no mandate for raising taxes."

Sen. Mitch McConnell also claimed that Republican voters delivered a mandate for the President (not Republicans) to change course, remarking "Now it’s time for the President to propose solutions that actually have a chance of passing the Republican-controlled House of Representatives and a closely-divided Senate, step up to the plate on the challenges of the moment, and deliver in a way that he did not in his first four years in office."

ThinkProgress, however, notes an interesting issue regarding the Republican House of Representatives.

Although a small number of ballots remain to be counted, as of this writing, votes for a Democratic candidate for the House of Representatives outweigh votes for Republican candidates. Based on ThinkProgress’ review of all ballots counted so far, 53,952,240 votes were cast for a Democratic candidate for the House and only 53,402,643 were cast for a Republican — meaning that Democratic votes exceed Republican votes by more than half a million.

...The actual partisan breakdown of the 113th Congress will be very different, however. Currently, Republicans enjoy a 233-192 advantage over Democrats, with 10 seats remaining undecided. That means that, in a year when Republicans earned less than half the popular vote, they will control a little under 54 percent of the House even if Democrats run the table on the undecided seats.

Imagine, as looked possible last week, that President Obama had won reelection through an electoral vote victory but a popular vote loss of 590,000. What would Republicans be saying about his "mandate?"

Also, how does the Senate get to be "closely-divided" when Democrats and independents who caucus with the Democrats have 55 percent of the seats while the House is "Republican-controlled" with a similar majority of 55 percent of the seats?

Divided government is a reality, but it's hard to see much of a strong "mandate" for a party that represents a minority of Americans.

An additional lesson here is that non-partisan redistricting reform is sorely needed throughout the country.

The tide has changed for gay marriage

The tide has changed for LGBT civil rights.

In three historic votes, citizens in Maine, Maryland, and Washington approved measures that sanctioned same-sex marriage. In another vote, Minnesotans rejected a Constitutional ban on same-sex marriage.

Same-sex marriage is currently legal in Connecticut, the District of Columbia, Iowa, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, and Vermont. However, in each of those areas, the recognition of same-sex marriages came from either courts or elected officials. Yesterday's vote marks the first time that same-sex marriages were recognized through popular referenda. It also marks only the second time that restrictions on same-sex marriage were rejected by voters.

In another milestone for LGBT acceptance, U.S. Rep. Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin became the first openly gay person to be elected to the U.S. Senate.

The struggle for LGBT civil rights is far from over, but the momentum toward equality is now undeniable.

President Obama -- net job creator

This month's federal jobs report makes it official--President Obama gets to claim the mantle of being a net job creator.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) estimated that the U.S. added 171,000 non-farm payroll jobs on a seasonally-adjusted basis in October. The BLS also revised the payroll jobs growth in August upward by 50,000 and revised job growth in September upward by 34,000, meaning that the October jobs estimate is roughly a quarter of a million jobs higher than last month's estimate. With these additions, the estimated number of payroll jobs stands at 133.8 million compared to 133.6 million when President Obama took office. When the BLS estimates are revised and re-benchmarked early next year, job growth is likely to be higher by another 300,000 to 400,000 positions.

The net addition of 200,000 to 600,000 jobs might seem modest, but it sure beats the 300,000 jobs that the previous Republican administration lost over the same period of its first term and the hundreds of thousands of jobs that were being vaporized at the end of its second term.

The job growth during the Obama administration is even more remarkable given the decline in public sector employment. Over the Obama administration, there has been almost no net growth in federal government jobs (there were 2.79 million federal workers when the President took office, and there are 2.80 million now), and there have been considerable losses in state and local government employment (113,000 fewer state employees and 466,000 fewer local government employees). Over the same period of the previous administration, just over 800,000 public-sector jobs were added.

The Romney campaign is already seizing on the other figure from the jobs report--that the unemployment rate ticked up from 7.8 percent on a seasonally-adjusted basis in September to 7.9 percent in October. But even this figure carries good news, as the increase is due to a jump in people looking for work. From September to October, the proportion of the adult, civilian population that was in the labor force (working or looking for work) increased from 63.6 percent to 63.8 percent, and the proportion of the population that was employed increased from 58.7 percent to 58.8 percent. Another sign of growing confidence in the economy is that the number of people who are unemployed because they voluntarily left their jobs increased in October.

Another positive jobs statistic

In a further sign that the economy is improving, the Department of Labor today reported that first-time Unemployment Insurance claims reached a four-year low on a seasonally-adjusted basis.

An estimated 339,000 initial claims were filed during the week that ended October 6--the lowest seasonally-adjusted figure since February 16, 2008, shortly after the start of the recession.

Weekly unemployment claims estimates bounce around a lot, are subject to revision, and can be hard to seasonally adjust. Still, the low figure is consistent with other positive estimates about the job situation.

Romney etch-a-sketch: "no tax cut that adds to the deficit"

You might recall former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney making this solemn pledge during last Wednesday's debate.

My number-one principle is, there will be no tax cut that adds to the deficit. I want to underline that: no tax cut that adds to the deficit.

Well, barely a week has gone by, and Gov. Romney has summarily dispatched his "number-one principle" (underlined no less) down the memory hole.

Gov. Romney had pledged to reform taxes by lowering tax rates, which reduces revenues, but also by "broadening the base," which raises revenues. Specifically, his tax plan calls for lowering marginal rates on individuals and corporations; eliminating taxes on interest, dividends, and capital gains for households with incomes below $200,000; eliminating the tax on multi-million dollar inheritances, and eliminating the Alternative Minimum Tax. At the same time, he also said during the debate that he would "lower deductions and credits and exemptions, so that we keep taking in the same money."

Lower taxes for some; higher taxes for others. The net effect on the Treasury would be a wash.

Now, in a new ad, Gov. Romney is singing a different tune, saying "I'm not going to raise taxes on anyone."


Simple math tells you that if you lower taxes for some people but don't raise anyone else's taxes, total revenues have to go down.

Tax cuts for some with no tax increases for anyone are a net tax cut, which directly contradicts Gov. Romney's "number-one principle."

That is, it contracts his "principle," until Gov. Romney changes his tune again.

U.S. awash in debt? Hardly

In last Wednesday's debate, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney railed against the level of U.S. debt.

I think it's, frankly, not moral for my generation to keep spending massively more than we take in, knowing those burdens are going to be passed on to the next generation and they're going to be paying the interest and the principal all their lives.

And the amount of debt we're adding, at a trillion a year, is simply not moral.

He went on to propose a "test" for cutting programs, including Obamacare (which actually saves money but nevermind) and the subsidy for PBS.

Is the program so critical it's worth borrowing money from China to pay for it? And if not, I'll get rid of it.

Well, under Gov. Romney's criteria, Big Bird and Obamacare should be safe.

An analysis by Bloomberg shows that total U.S. indebtedness, as a share of the economy, has declined sharply since the start of President Obama's administration.

U.S. debt has shrunk to a six-year low relative to the size of the economy as homeowners, cities and companies cut borrowing, undermining rating companies’ downgrading of the nation’s credit rating.

Total indebtedness including that of federal and state governments and consumers has fallen to 3.29 times gross domestic product, the least since 2006, from a peak of 3.59 four years ago, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Private- sector borrowing is down by $4 trillion to $40.2 trillion.

While it's true that federal government borrowing has increased over the Obama presidency, state, local, and private borrowing have fallen much, much more.

As a practical matter, the next generation seems much more likely to be concerned about its total amount of debt service and not the entity--bank, Wall Street investor, or Chinese sovereign wealth fund--to which that debt is owed. A dollar taken out the next generation's pocket to service federal debts is the same as a dollar taken out to service school bond debts, housing debts, college borrowing, road construction, etc. A dollar of debt is a dollar of debt.

By the yardstick of what the next generation will owe, the Obama administration has been far more moral than the profligate Bush administration, which not only increased the total amount of indebtedness but did so in the context of a calamitous bubble that brought the economy to its knees (i.e., reduced our ability to pay).

And in terms of Gov. Romney's China syndrome, Americans are in a far better position to pay off their own debts and less reliant on the Chinese than they were four years ago.

Indeed, no less an authority than Fox News reported in September, "China has actually decreased its holdings of U.S. debt over the past year, dropping from $1.31 trillion in June 2011 to $1.16 trillion a year later."

You would think that someone with Gov. Romney's business experience would know how to add things. Maybe he should ask Big Bird.

Gov. Romney joins the "unemployment truthers"

Former Mass. Governor, Mitt Romney, has cast his lot with the tin-foil-hat Republican crowd that sees a conspiracy in the positive jobs figures that were released on Friday.

Speaking at a rally in Florida, Gov. Romney said, "If we calculated, by the way, our unemployment rate in a way that was consistent with the way it was calculated when he came into office, it would be a different number."

Gov. Romney's allegation that the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) has altered the definition of unemployment is ludicrous. As a key economic adviser to President George W. Bush said, "The numbers are put together by trained professionals and in a process that keeps politicians from interfering...Any sort of suggestion to the contrary is wrong."

The allegation is also insulting, as it questions the integrity of the career staff at the BLS.

The allegation's absurdity notwithstanding, it is the sort of wild, baseless smear that Gov. Romney has made repeatedly. Gov. Romney's detachment from the truth seems grow greater by the day.

Besides being wrong, Gov. Romney's stance is hypocritical. He had no criticisms of the statistic when he cited the unemployment rate over and over in stump speeches and in Wednesday's debate ("We've had 43 straight months with unemployment above 8 percent")."Straight months" does seem to imply a certain consistency to the statistic. Now that he can't use the 8-percent line, the statistic is called into question--not the underlying economic message.

As Greg Sargent has written, unemployment trutherism ultimately hurts the Romney campaign. The campaign's argument is built around an underperforming economy--any good economic news is bad news for the Romney candidacy. By harping on the figures, Gov. Romney and the truthers simply keep Friday's strong economic report in the news cycle and show the panic that has set in.

More from the House Science? Committee

Apparently, it takes a special kind of crazy to earn a Republican seat on the House Science Committee.

Previously, we were treated to Rep. Todd Akin's (R-MO and indefatigable Senate candidate) ruminations on women's magical abilities to ward off pregnancy when "legitimately" raped--"The female body has ways to try and shut that whole thing down."

Now we hear from Rep. Paul Broun (R-GA and a doctor no less), who sees the hand of Satan in the theory of evolution. TPM reports Rep. Broun sermonizing

All that stuff I was taught about evolution and embryology and Big Bang theory, all that is lies straight from the pit of hell. And it's lies to try to keep me and all the folks who are taught that from understanding that they need a savior.

You see, there are a lot of scientific data that I’ve found out as a scientist that actually show that this is really a young Earth. I don’t believe that the Earth’s but about 9,000 years old. I believe it was created in six days as we know them. That’s what the Bible says.

Another colleague, Rep. Sandy Allen (R-FL), also discounts evolution in favor of "biblical terms of how we came about," while another, Rep. Dana Rohrabacker (R-CA) has mused about "clearing the rainforests in order for some countries to eliminate that production of greenhouse gases."

It's hard to imagine a stronger refutation of the notion of intelligent design than these four.

September jobs report unequivocally good

The headline news from the September jobs report is that the national unemployment rate fell to 7.8 percent on a seasonally-adjusted basis, the lowest that it's been since January 2009.

Unlike some previous months in which unemployment fell because of people leaving the labor force, this month's figure was the result of a huge increase in the number of people who reported that they were working. The figure was also accompanied by a strong increase in the number of people in the labor force. Another unambiguous sign of labor market improvement is the the percentage of people who are working is the highest that it has been in two years.

Estimates from the employer survey indicate that 114,000 non-farm jobs were added on a seasonally-adjusted basis last month. Taken by itself, that would be a so-so figure, but the report also revised employment growth from July and August upwards by an additional 86,000 jobs. The Department of Labor also reported last week that the year's employment figures will likely by revised upward by another 300,000 to 400,000 jobs beyond that.

Yes, out-of-work millionaires should collect unemployment benefits

Bloomberg reports on a Congressional Research Service (CRS) study about millionaires who collected unemployment insurance (UI) benefits in 2009.

Almost 2,400 people who received unemployment insurance in 2009 lived in households with annual incomes of $1 million or more, according to the Congressional Research Service.

The report was released after about 1.1 million people exhausted their jobless benefits during the second quarter of 2012, when more than 4.6 million filed initial unemployment claims. Eliminating those payments to high earners is one idea being considered as U.S. lawmakers struggle to curb a projected $1.1 trillion deficit for the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, with the nationwide jobless rate at 8.1 percent.

“Sending millionaires unemployment checks is a case study in out-of-control spending,” U.S. Senator Tom Coburn, an Oklahoma Republican, said in an e-mail. “Providing welfare to the wealthy undermines the program for those who need it most while burdening future generations with senseless debt.”

The Bloomberg article and CRS report note that approximately $20 million could be saved in federal contributions to UI over the next decade if benefits to millionaires were blocked from receiving UI benefits.

$20 million in savings sounds great, but that wouldn't be the bottom impact on the federal budget. In order to recoup that money, the federal or state governments would have to check income sources of UI recipients. That checking would cost money--quite possibly more money than goes out in UI benefits.

The CRS believes that the least costly approach would be to collect the payments through the income tax system. A 100 percent tax could be placed on UI benefits for households with incomes above one million dollars. Although cost-effective, this approach is far from costless. Tax forms would become more complicated making them harder to complete and harder to check.

Any other system to prevent millionaires from getting benefits is likely to be far more costly and less effective. The state agencies that administer the UI system only have access to some income information. Besides having to conduct additional checks against the available information, the agencies would have to make guesses about whether a household's total income worked out to one million dollars. The checks would be especially difficult for married couple households and for households that receive unearned income. Any such system would also likely impose additional reporting burdens on the broader set of unemployed households.

In the end, a policy of trying to keep benefits from going to a handful of millionaire households is likely to cost the treasury more than it saves. If the goal really is to reduce the burden on future generations, we should keep sending out those checks.

BLS adds 386,000 jobs to the economy

The economy may be doing better than we initially thought.

This morning, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released its preliminary revision of the March 2012 jobs tally. The BLS expects that when the revised estimates are released next year, the figures will show that the U.S. had 386,000 more jobs in March 2012 than were initially reported.

Revisions to the jobs figures are necessary because the initial estimates are based on a survey with some sampling noise and with an imperfect sampling frame. Some months after the initial estimates are made, the BLS is able to compare and benchmark them to nearly complete data gathered from payroll tax records. Estimates throughout the year are then readjusted to this benchmark.

When the economy was declining in 2008 and 2009, the BLS initially under-estimated the job losses by 902,000 positions, and we didn't find out how truly awful the employment situation was until a year or so after the actual decline. When the Obama administration famously forecast that its stimulus package would hold unemployment to 8 percent, no one realized that the U.S. was actually nearly a million jobs further in the hole. Everyone knew things were bad--we just didn't know that things were that bad.

Now that the economy is improving, the BLS appears to have under-estimated job gains by roughly a third of a million.

Why does the BLS keep missing the mark? Part of the reason has to do with the entry and exit of businesses during economic swings. Each month the BLS chooses businesses to survey to get its employment numbers. The sampled businesses are selected from a roster of businesses that provided payroll tax records in a recent quarter. Businesses that were created since the last set of payroll tax records were processed aren't on that roster and can't be part of the frame. Similarly, the BLS misses some of the businesses that stopped operating. The BLS makes statistical adjustments for these issues, but these adjustments are based on historical trends, not the sort of huge swings that we saw during the recession and are now seeing during the recovery. The recent pattern has been for the BLS initially to undercount losses during declines and to undercount gains during upswings.

The revision for 2009 was unusually large--a change of 0.7 percent in the employment figures. The current revision, which works out to 0.3 percent, is right at the edge of the historical 0.1 to 0.3 percent average.

In February when the final numbers are released, we will probably discover that the net number of jobs in the U.S. increased over the course of President Obama's first term. For time being, however, the official estimates indicate that there are fewer jobs in the U.S. than there were in January 2009.

Carrying wood pellets to Newcastle?

Well, Selby actually.

Bloomberg reports on an astounding and historic energy development--the U.K.'s largest coal-fired power plant (and largest carbon producers) will shortly be refitted to burn biomass and theoretically be carbon neutral.

The change is astounding and historic because of its location in Northern England, not far from the rich coal fields that fed the U.K.'s (and initially the world's) industrial revolution.

If "King Coal" is threatened by renewable energy projects near its original throne, it's threatened everywhere.

Coal's loss may be the environment's gain. The refitted biomass units will emit significantly less carbon than the existing coal units. Also, the biomass is renewable. Biomass releases carbon when it is burned but takes an equivalent amount of carbon in as it is regrown.

However, the potential benefits come with a giant asterisk, involving a huge and uncertain now versus later proposition. The carbon is released almost instantaneously and takes years to recapture. Also, the units will require an enormous amount of biomass--about 7.5 million tons or 3 million acres of trees each year, according to the article.

Some of the biomass can be supplied through waste materials from other lumbering operations, but much more would still be required.

These requirements might mean an valuable jobs and export opportunity for commercial foresters in North Carolina and throughout North America.

Class warfare -- Romney style

What does former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney really think of Americans?

Mother Jones has some damning video of him speaking to supporters when he thought he was unrecorded. The worst of it is a nasty piece of class crass warfare.

There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. All right, there are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it. That that's an entitlement. And the government should give it to them. And they will vote for this president no matter what…These are people who pay no income tax. 

When he's through belittling the incompetents who support the President, he turns his fire on the half-witted independents that he needs to win over.

We speak with voters across the country about their perceptions. Those people I told you—the 5 to 6 or 7 percent that we have to bring onto our side—they all voted for Barack Obama four years ago. So, and by the way, when you say to them, "Do you think Barack Obama is a failure?" they overwhelmingly say no. They like him. But when you say, "Are you disappointed that his policies haven't worked?" they say yes. And because they voted for him, they don't want to be told that they were wrong, that he's a bad guy, that he did bad things, that he's corrupt. Those people that we have to get, they want to believe they did the right thing, but he just wasn't up to the task. They love the phrase that he's "over his head." But if we're—but we, but you see, you and I, we spend our day with Republicans. We spend our days with people who agree with us. And these people are people who voted for him and don't agree with us. And so the things that animate us are not the things that animate them. And the best success I have at speaking with those people is saying, you know, the president has been a disappointment. He told you he'd keep unemployment below 8 percent. Hasn't been below eight percent since. Fifty percent of kids coming out of school can't get a job. Fifty percent. Fifty percent of the kids in high school in our 50 largest cities won't graduate from high school. What're they gonna do? These are the kinds of things that I can say to that audience that they nod their head and say, "Yeah, I think you're right."

Finally, Gov. Romney offers another way that he could appeal to voters. With respect to his father's background, he says, "Had he been born of Mexican parents, I'd have a better shot of winning this."

We should all take some satisfaction in Gov. Romney shedding his soulless, robot image. Too bad, though, that he's adopted a soulless jerk persona instead.

Weak jobs report

The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported this morning that the U.S. added a piddling 96,000 non-farm payroll jobs on a seasonally-adjusted basis in August. The seasonally-adjusted unemployment rate slipped down from 8.3 to 8.1 percent, but the decline was entirely an artifact of U.S. adults leaving the labor force. Compounding the disappointment, job growth numbers from June and July were also revised downwards. Average hourly and weekly earnings for those who were employed also fell.

A line from the second page of the report tells you most of what you need to know. "Since the beginning of this year, employment growth has averaged 139,000 per month, compared with an average monthly gain of
153,000 in 2011." The U.S. needs to add about 150,000 jobs per month to keep up with the growth of the adult population.

Last year we were treading water; this year we are slowly sinking.