A Post-Racial President?
Many people hoped that the election of a black President of the United States would mark our entering a "post-racial" era, when we could finally put some ugly aspects of our history behind us.
That is quite understandable. But it takes two to tango. Those of us who want to see racism on its way out need to realize that others benefit greatly from crying racism. They benefit politically, financially, and socially.
Barack Obama has been allied with such people for decades. He found it expedient to appeal to a wider electorate as a post-racial candidate, just as he has found it expedient to say a lot of other popular things-- about campaign finance, about transparency in government, about not rushing legislation through Congress without having it first posted on the Internet long enough to be studied-- all of which turned to be the direct opposite of what he actually did after getting elected.
Those who were shocked at President Obama's cheap shot at the Cambridge police for being "stupid" in arresting Henry Louis Gates must have been among those who let their wishes prevail over the obvious implications of Obama's 20 years of association with the Reverend Jeremiah Wright. Anyone who can believe that Obama did not understand what the racist rants of Jeremiah Wright meant can believe anything.
With race-- as with campaign finance, transparency and the rest-- Barack Obama knows what the public wants to hear and that is what he has said. But his policies as president have been the opposite of his rhetoric, with race as with other issues.
As a state senator in Illinois, Obama pushed the "racial profiling" issue, so it is hardly surprising that he jumped to the conclusion that a policeman was racial profiling when in fact the cop was investigating a report received from a neighbor that someone seemed to be breaking into the house that Professor Gates was renting in Cambridge.
For those who are interested in facts-- and these obviously do not include President Obama-- there has been a serious study of racial profiling in a book titled "Are Cops Racist?" by Heather Mac Donald. Her analysis of the data shows how this issue has long been distorted beyond recognition by politics.
The racial profiling issue is a great vote-getter. And if it polarizes the society, that is a price that politicians are willing to pay in order to get votes. Academics who run black studies departments, as Professor Henry Louis Gates does, likewise have a vested interest in racial paranoia.
For "community organizers" as well, racial resentments are a stock in trade. President Obama's background as a community organizer has received far too little attention, though it should have been a high-alert warning that this was no post-racial figure.
What does a community organizer do? What he does not do is organize a community. What he organizes are the resentments and paranoia within a community, directing those feelings against other communities, from whom either benefits or revenge are to be gotten, using whatever rhetoric or tactics will accomplish that purpose.
To think that someone who has spent years promoting grievance and polarization was going to bring us all together as president is a triumph of wishful thinking over reality.
Not only Barack Obama's past, but his present, tell the same story. His appointment of an attorney general who called America "a nation of cowards" for not dialoguing about race was a foretaste of what to expect from Eric Holder.
The way Attorney General Holder has refused to prosecute young black thugs who gathered at a voting site with menacing clubs, in blatant violation of federal laws against intimidating voters, speaks louder than any words from him or his president.
President Obama's first nominee to the Supreme Court is, like Obama himself, someone with a background of years of affiliation with an organization dedicated to promoting racial resentments and a sense of racial entitlement.
An 18th century philosopher said, "When I speak I put on a mask. When I act I am forced to take it off." Barack Obama's mask slipped for a moment last week but he quickly recovered, with the help of the media. But we should never forget what we saw.
Thomas Sowell has published a large volume of writing. His dozen books, as well as numerous articles and essays, cover a wide range of topics, from classic economic theory to judicial activism, from civil rights to choosing the right college.
Exploiting Public Ignorance
How can political commentators, politicians and academics get away with statements like "Reagan budget deficits," "Clinton budget surplus," "Bush budget deficits" or "Obama's tax increases"? The only answer is that they, or the people who believe such statements, are ignorant, conniving or just plain stupid.
Article I, Section 7 of the U.S. Constitution reads: "All bills for raising revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives; but the Senate may propose or concur with amendments as on other Bills." A president has no power to raise or lower taxes. He can propose tax measures or veto them but since Congress can ignore presidential proposals and override a presidential veto, it has the ultimate taxing power. The same principle applies to spending. A president cannot spend a dime that Congress does not first appropriate. As such, presidents cannot be held responsible for budget deficits or surpluses. That means that credit for a budget surplus or blame for budget deficits rests on the congressional majority at the time.
Thinking about today's massive deficits, we might ask: Where in the U.S. Constitution is Congress given the authority to do anything about the economy? Between 1787 and 1930, we have had both mild and severe economic downturns that have ranged from one to seven years. During that time there was no thought that Congress should enact New Deal legislation or stimulus packages along with massive corporate handouts. It took the Herbert Hoover and Franklin Roosevelt administrations to massively intervene in the economy. As a result, they turned what might have been a two or three-year sharp downturn into a 16-year depression that ended in 1946. How they accomplished that is covered very well in a book authored by Jim Powell titled "FDR's Folly." Here's my question: Were the presidents in office and congresses assembled from 1787 to 1930 ignorant of their constitutional authority to manage and save the economy?
If you asked President Obama or a congressman to cite the specific constitutional authority for the bailouts, handouts and corporate takeover, I'd bet the rent money that they would say that their authority lies in Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution that reads: "The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Impost, Excises to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defense and general Welfare of the United States." They'd tell you that their authority comes from the Constitution's "general welfare" clause. James Madison, the father of our constitution, explained, "If Congress can do whatever in their discretion can be done by money, and will promote the general welfare, the government is no longer a limited one possessing enumerated powers, but an indefinite one subject to particular exceptions." He later added, "With respect to the two words 'general welfare,' I have always regarded them as qualified by the detail of powers connected with them. To take them in a literal and unlimited sense would be a metamorphosis of the Constitution into a character which there is a host of proofs was not contemplated by its creators." Thomas Jefferson said, "Congress has not unlimited powers to provide for the general welfare, but only those specifically enumerated."
That means only those powers listed.
The Constitution provides, through Article V, a means by which the Constitution can be altered. My question to my fellow Americans whether they are liberal or conservative: Has the Constitution been amended to permit Congress to manage the economy? I'd also ask that question to members of the U.S. Supreme Court. I personally know of no such amendment. What we're witnessing today is nothing less than a massive escalation in White House and congressional thuggery. Secure in the knowledge that the American people are compliant and willing to cast off the limitations imposed on Washington by the nation's founders, future administrations are probably going to be even more emboldened than Obama and the current Congress.
Say It Ain't So -- Government R&D Funding Slows Economic Growth!
Terence Kealey, who is a bochemist and the vice-chancellor of Buckingham University in Britain, writes a remarkably interesting column in the current issue of the New Scientist. Here is the nub of Kealey's argument that government R&D slows economic growth:
In 2003, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development published The Sources of Economic Growth in OECD Countries, reporting on a comprehensive regression analysis of the factors that might explain the different growth rates of the world's 21 leading economies between 1971 and 1998. This indicated that only privately funded R&D led to economic growth, and that publicly funded R&D did not. Worse, the public funding of R&D crowded out private funding, and thus slowed economic growth.
This is because, as scholars such as the late Edwin Mansfield of the University of Pennsylvania tried to show, the assumptions of the "perfect market" are false when it comes to the spread of knowledge about innovations. The copying of innovations is actually very expensive because it requires the acquisition of the relevant tacit knowledge - the sort of knowledge that cannot be transferred as a neat unit. The direct costs of copying an innovation are, on average, some two-thirds of the cost of creating it from scratch. Add to that the cost to the copying companies of employing their own scientists and their own infrastructure, and the average costs of copying a new product match those creating it originally.
In research, new knowledge spreads. Researchers read papers and patents, talk at conferences, and analyse their competitors' products. But this spreading of knowledge is actually a sharing of knowledge, and on average the amount of knowledge a company or scientist disseminates freely is balanced by the knowledge it or they import freely. Indeed, scientists - even from competing companies - meet at conferences and other venues to exchange ideas for mutual advantage. This is why sociologists say science is organised in "invisible colleges". The idea of market failure in knowledge and science is therefore wrong - though it persists universally in research-based enterprises.
Whole Kealey column can be found here. See Reason's reviews of Kealey's book, The Economic Laws of Scientific Research here, and our review of his latest book, Sex, Science and Profits here. See also my recent article "It's Alive!" on my experience as a young energy regulator overseeing some energy R&D under the Carter administration here.
Liberty and Lippiness
Criticizing the police shouldn't be a crime.
Jacob Sullum |A few minutes into the police encounter that ended with his arrest for disorderly conduct, Henry Louis Gates Jr. reportedly exclaimed, "This is what happens to black men in America!" It would be more accurate to say this is what can happen to anyone who makes the mistake of annoying a cop.
Whether or not race played a role in the incident, Cambridge police Sgt. James Crowley clearly abused his authority, retaliating against the Harvard professor for his disrespect by hauling him away in handcuffs. The highly publicized arrest illustrates the threat posed by vague laws that give too much discretion to police officers who conflate their own personal dignity with public safety.
Crowley, responding to a report of a possible burglary in progress from a woman who saw Gates forcing open a jammed door to his house, quickly realized he was not dealing with a break-in. Gates explained that he lived in the house, which he leases from Harvard, and supplied a university ID confirming that he was a member of the faculty. Gates says he became angry because Crowley nevertheless continued to question him.
Even if we accept Crowley's version of events, the arrest was not justified (a conclusion reinforced by the city's decision to drop the charge). Let's say Gates did initially refuse to show his ID—an understandable response from an innocent man confronted by police in his own home. Let's say he immediately accused Crowley of racism and behaved in a "loud and tumultuous" fashion. So what? By Crowley's own account, he arrested Gates for dissing him. That's not a crime, or at least it shouldn't be.
In Massachusetts, as in many states, the definition of disorderly conduct is drawn from the American Law Institute's Model Penal Code. A person is considered disorderly if he "engages in fighting or threatening, violent or tumultuous behavior...with purpose to cause public inconvenience, annoyance or alarm" or "recklessly creates a risk thereof."
Crowley claims Gates recklessly created public alarm by haranguing him from the porch of his house, attracting a small crowd that included "at least seven unidentified passers-by" as well as several police officers. Yet it was Crowley who suggested that Gates follow him outside, thereby setting him up for the disorderly conduct charge.
It's hard to escape the conclusion that Crowley was angered and embarrassed by Gates' "outburst" and therefore sought to create a pretext for arresting him. "When he has the uniform on," Crowley's wife later told The New York Times, "Jim has an expectation of deference."
As the Massachusetts Appeals Court has noted, "the theory behind criminalizing disorderly conduct rests on the tendency of the actor's conduct to provoke violence in others." Yet police officers often seem to think the purpose of such laws is to punish people for talking back to cops.
"You don't get paid to be publicly abused," Michael J. Palladino, president of New York City's Detectives Endowment Association, told the Times last week. "There are laws that protect against that." A Brooklyn police officer agreed, saying, "I wouldn't back down if there's a crowd gathering. If there's a group and they're throwing out slurs and stuff, you have to handle it."
In this context, the relevance of the gathering crowd is not the potential for a riot but the potential for losing face. A policy of zero tolerance for public slights may be appropriate for a gangster, but it's not appropriate for a peace officer charged with enforcing the law.
Among other things, the law guarantees the right of citizens to criticize public officials. Sometimes the criticism is justified. In fact, the more outrageous police conduct is, the more likely it is to provoke an angry response that can be cited as the basis for a disorderly conduct arrest.
When a police officer faces unfair criticism, the best response may be to walk away. Sometimes swallowing your pride takes more courage than standing your ground.
Jacob Sullum is a senior editor at Reason and a nationally syndicated columnist.
Close Encounters of the Absurd Kind
What the Obama birth certificate conspiracy says about American politics
David HarsanyiScience fiction writer Damon Knight once claimed that the popularity of conspiracy theories could be explained by our "desire to believe that there is some group of folks who know what they're doing."
Wishful thinking. And few "groups of folks" have displayed less aptitude in the art of keeping secrets than government.
Yet no matter who is in power, no matter how incompetent they may be, there always exists this irate minority that believes politicians possess supernatural powers of deception.
The mystery the nation faces isn't President Barack Obama's birth certificate. The mystery is how any American could believe that all the president's former political opponents, both the Republican and Democratic parties, Hawaiian officials and two Honolulu newspapers (nay, the entire press corps) could work in concert to conceal the biggest con of the eon.
Well, OK, not the biggest con.
There was George W. Bush, who, though often accused of possessing the brainpower of a ripe banana, was nevertheless also able to work on the complex North American Union agreement and mastermind an oily conspiracy for the ages.
According to a 2006 Scripps Howard/Ohio University poll, more than a third of the public suspects that Bush officials assisted in the 9/11 terrorist attacks or took no action to stop them so the United States could go to war in the Middle East.
As if we needed an excuse.
President Bill Clinton's long verifiable history of slimy behavior was also never enough to quench the anger of some. So we concocted the Don of Little Rock, who, though he wasn't shrewd enough to cover up a run-of-the-mill affair with a young intern, had the ability to surreptitiously run a cocaine trafficking outfit and knock off Vince Foster.
Those who peddle the Obama birth certificate conspiracy are squandering their chance at making any substantive case against an administration that is waging a completely non-secretive and non-conspiratorial battle against capitalism.
If you want to watch yourself in action, just take the time to find the video floating around on YouTube of Rep. Mike Castle (R-Del).
In a town hall meeting, Castle is accosted by a mob of ginned-up Republicans, clapping and hollering about Obama's non-citizenship and, finally, forcing the cowering congressman to recite the Pledge of Allegiance to display his loyalty.
If conservatives believe this kind of indulgence of lunacy is helpful, they are mistaken.
As former Clinton White House press secretary Jake Siewert explained to Politico early in the Obama presidency, "At some level, they're not that bad to have around because it reminds people that under the mainstream conservative press there's this bubbling up of really irrational hatred for the guy."
In a 378-0 vote Tuesday, the House passed a nonbinding resolution that asserts, in part, that "the 44th President of the United States, Barack Obama, was born in Hawaii."
Which, of course, only adds credence to the "birther" conspiracy.
It was reignited only recently, by populist CNN anchor Lou Dobbs. After taking a call from a listener on his radio show who claimed that Obama is a Kenyan, Dobbs replied, "Certainly your view can't be discounted."
Yes, it sure can be discounted. A "view," if you want to be taken seriously, needs to be buttressed by a fact or two, if at all possible.
Then again, this conspiracy movement, like others before it, should be placed in its proper context, which is to say, it never should be taken seriously.
I always think of the results of a poll conducted not too long ago in which we found out that a surprisingly large number of Americans believe it is "very likely" or "somewhat likely" that the U.S. government is "withholding proof of the existence of intelligent life from other planets."
Let's just say that with the dearth of that particular brand of life-form around here, maybe we should be hopeful that participants are correct.
We could use the help.
David Harsanyi is a columnist at The Denver Post and the author of Nanny State. Visit his Web site at www.DavidHarsanyi.com.
Can’t Blame Liberal Media for Health Bill Stall
Broadcast coverage tilts heavily in favor of Barack Obama’s big government plan.
RICH NOYES JULIA SEYMOUR
Liberal hopes for a quick health care bill are in collapse, as Senate Democrats push any floor action off until the fall, a move House Democrats may match this week. But if the Obama White House is upset that their plans for a huge expansion of government health care have been delayed, they surely cannot complain about the media coverage.
Last week, a new study by the Media Research Center’s Business & Media Institute (BMI) found broadcast coverage during the first six months of 2009 tilted heavily in favor of Barack Obama’s big government plan. BMI’s analysts looked at 224 health care stories on the ABC, CBS and NBC morning and evening news shows from Obama’s January 20 inauguration through his June 24 prime time special on ABC.
Among the key findings:
-Fully 70% of soundbites (243 out of 347 total) supported Obama’s liberal health care ideas. Only nine percent of stories (21) suggested the total price tag for Obama’s “reform” would top $1 trillion.
-Reporters exaggerated the number of uninsured Americans. Omitting non-citizens, those capable of paying, or those eligible for assistance programs already in place, a reasonable figure would be between 8 million and 14 million uninsured, not the “50 million Americans” statistic BMI’s analysts found touted by the networks.
-The networks also spent virtually no time investigating states that had experimented with big government health schemes — just one story on how Massachusetts’ plan for mandatory health insurance is working out (costs are rising faster than expected), and no stories on Hawaii’s already-cancelled program to insure all children.
BMI’s study period ended in late June, but the networks’ favors for Obama have continued in July, even as public sentiment shifted against both the President and his plan. On July 16, for example, both the NBC Nightly News and CBS Evening News skipped over how, in the words of ABC White House correspondent Jake Tapper on World News, “the President’s case was dealt a blow today” when the Congressional Budget Office chief told Congress the health care plans will require massive additional spending.
The next morning, after the House Ways and Means Committee had formally passed an estimated $554 billion tax increase to help pay for the ambitious health plans, CBS skipped that development, too, as ABC and NBC’s morning news shows offered only a single sentence. NBC’s Natalie Morales, on her network’s four-hour Today, gave it just 12 seconds: “During the night, the House Ways and Means committee voted to increase taxes on higher income earners as part of a health care reform bill.”
If these had been setbacks for a big Bush administration initiative, do you think the network coverage would have been so paltry?
Reporter commentary has also betrayed a lack of objectivity. In a July 22 interview with California’s Arnold Schwarzenegger on Good Morning America, ABC’s Chris Cuomo painted Republicans as endangering Americans’ health: “Do you believe that Republicans are playing politics here, at the risk of people’s health care....Is this getting to be a little bit of a reckless situation?”
That night on MSNBC, after the President’s press conference, NBC medical reporter Nancy Snyderman confessed she was “rooting” for him: “As a physician, you know, I felt like I understood the complexity of the problem. As an American citizen, I was rooting for the President to hit a home run.”
The public’s anxiety seems to have delayed the day of reckoning on health care until at least this fall. The big questions: Will network reporters continue their favors for ObamaCare? And will the tilted media landscape be enough to make liberals’ policy dreams come true?
The Slow, Subsidized Death of Europe’s Carmakers
The better alternative would be to ditch loss makers and restructure.
BY NEIL WINTON
Europe’s governments have a choice as the automotive industry shudders under the impact of the worst recession since the 1930s. They can insist on reforms to make European carmakers leaner and meaner, and able to face down the looming cut-throat competition from India, China, Korea and Japan. This would mean painful job cuts and plant closures, uncomfortable pressure from unions, and, with German elections coming up in two months, risking to be voted out of office.
Or they can take the easy way out, open taxpayer coffers to bail out companies, “save” jobs in the short term, and put off the day of reckoning. No prizes for guessing what is happening. The U.S. government is not alone in propping up ailing auto manufacturers, even if Europe’s help hasn’t come quite close to the massive aid extended to General Motors and Chrysler.
In Germany, the government is prepared to lend €4.5 billion to save perennial loss-maker Opel-Vauxhall from the knacker’s yard. It has already provided the company with a short-term loan of €1.5 billion. Last year Opel-Vauxhall (and Saab, the old GM Europe) lost together €1.1 billion and is expected to lose another €2.1 billion in 2009. Meanwhile, France has lent Renault and PSA Peugeot-Citroen €3 billion each. PSA had planned to cut costs and move production and jobs from France to lower-cost Eastern Europe. It’s reasonable to assume that this plan won’t be on the agenda for some time.
The trouble is that the European industry has at least 20% overcapacity, according to investment bank Credit Suisse. The big six European mass car makers—VW, Renault, Peugeot-Citroen, Fiat, Opel-Vauxhall and Ford Europe—have all suffered from long periods of meager profits. Flooding the market with cars and offering steep price cuts to get consumers to buy them may have allowed them to make a little money in the good times. But the good times are definitely over. For the European manufacturers, the old business model is broken.
Among the mass carmakers, only Volkswagen, Europe’s market leader, and Fiat are likely to be profitable this year despite government incentives for new car purchases across the continent, including in Germany, Italy, France, Britain and Spain. Once the government subsidies expire next year, Fiat is expected to struggle again.
If Europe’s automakers have few prospects for success and steady profitability now, think how bad the situation will be once India and China join Korea and Japan in producing reliable and attractive cars at prices Europeans can’t match using their current business models.
The threat from South Korean manufacturers is about to ratchet up even higher, pushed by a combination of a new free trade agreement with the European Union and Korea’s depreciating currency. These two factors will give Korean cars a price advantage of about €2,000 per car, according to Credit Suisse. Korean brands like Hyundai and Kia have already been the major winners from the recent government incentive schemes around Europe to encourage consumers to buy new cars. These subsidies have increased the Korean share of the Western European car market to about 4% from 3% within only a few months.
This means that government handouts to national car champions will likely have to increase and become permanent if policymakers want to protect the domestic auto industry from restructuring. Despite the fact that left-wing parties are on the decline across Europe, it seems that populists of all political colors, including conservatives in Germany and France, want to save their car industry.
“We are far from a world where the post-Thatcherite British model represents the future of Europe,” says Karel Williams, who teaches political economy and accounting at Manchester University. “We are in a world where politics beats economics.”
Government help to avoid a short-term crisis may appeal to voters, but it will also impede plans to rationalize and cut overcapacity. When Europe’s car industry is tottering under the next Asian assault and is ill prepared to cope, how many of the current chancellors, presidents and prime ministers will still be in power to apologize?
Europe’s car industry can choose to ditch the hopeless value destroyers and prepare for a successful future facing down the new competition or it can evade the truth, take government handouts, and prepare for a slow, subsidized death.
Mr. Winton writes the European Perspective column for Detroit News Online’s Automotive Insider.
What’s Chinese for .limitedgovernment?
One of the marvels of the Internet is that it is self-governing, with private groups of engineers and technology companies doing their best to keep it up and running without political interference. Many countries around the world censor how their citizens access the Web, but governance of the Internet itself has been left to technologists and their largely libertarian instincts.
This happy state of affairs could be close to an end. There are now more Internet users in China than in any other country, and the fastest growing group of new users online is from non-English- speaking developing countries. This has led to a well-meaning plan to reorient the Web toward these users. But it could result in authoritarian governments insisting on more influence.
At issue is a key shift in the approach of Icann, the California-based nonprofit that maintains the directory of Internet addresses. Icann, which stands for Internet Corp. for Assigned Names and Numbers, ultimately reports to the U.S. Commerce Department, though it has numerous advisory groups from other countries and from free-speech and other advocacy groups. It plans to open the door to many new Web addresses and to give better access to non-English-language users.
Next spring, Icann is set to expand Web addresses beyond the familiar .com, .org and .edu to domains that would include the names of industries, companies and political movements. Under its proposed rules, anyone who could afford the almost $200,000 registration fee should be able to start a domain. Icann would also permit top-level domains in non-Latin alphabets. This means Internet addresses in languages such as Chinese, Arabic and Farsi.
This will make the Web more accessible to non-English-speakers but also will lead to tricky issues, such as whether dissidents in China or Iran will be permitted to have their own dot-addresses. How would Beijing respond to a Chinese-language domain that translates into .democracy or .limitedgovernment, perhaps hosted by computers in Taipei or Vancouver?
This prospect could explain why Beijing recently had a top bureaucrat engage with Icann for the first time since 2001. Governments tend to be less concerned when only their better-educated, more English-fluent citizens have access to information. When I ran the English-language Far Eastern Economic Review magazine in the 1990s, it was rarely blacklisted in China for its reporting, but issues were routinely banned when they included political cartoons featuring Chinese government officials.
The combination of more domains in more languages could put unprecedented pressures on a system under which Web addresses are interoperable only because all governments agree that Icann controls the directory.
Rebecca MacKinnon, a Web researcher writing a book about lessons from China on Internet freedom, praises Icann for being influenced by nongovernmental groups, not just governments. “The U.N. model of Internet governance is highly unsatisfactory from a human-rights and free-expression point of view for obvious reasons,” she told me. “The Chinese and the Iranians and various other authoritarian countries will insist on standards and rules that make dissent more difficult, destroy the possibility of anonymity, and facilitate surveillance.”
Up to now, governments have been largely hands-off. An amusing example is the dispute over the domain www.newzealand.com. The queen of England, “in right of her Government in New Zealand, as Trustee for the Citizens, Organizations and State of New Zealand,” brought an action in 2002 against a Seattle-based company called Virtual Countries Inc. that had registered the Web address. The queen argued that her antipodean country should have control over its own .com name. This may sound reasonable, but she lost. New Zealand had to buy the .com address for $500,000.
Will governments like China’s be as philosophical about Internet domain decisions they don’t like?
Countries such as China, Russia and Iran have long argued that it’s wrong for Icann to report to the U.S. government. Any alternative to the light control exerted by the U.S. government could put the Web on a slippery course toward more control. This is one reason efforts by these countries to politicize Icann have failed in the past.
“I think the question here is not about which governments have the moral right to lead Internet governance over others,” Ms. MacKinnon argues, “but about whether it’s appropriate that Internet governance should be the sole province of governments, many of which do not arguably represent the interests of Internet users in their countries because they were not democratically elected.”
It’s tempting to dismiss Internet idealists, but the Web has been a powerful force for individual expression, especially in parts of the world where free speech had been limited to those who could afford it. Groups like Icann will have their hands full trying to keep controlling governments from restricting freedom of the Internet.
Shaky Earnings, Data Hit Stocks
A WALL STREET JOURNAL ONLINE NEWS ROUNDUP
Stocks declined on Wednesday following more mixed earnings news and economic data and a selloff in China.
Shortly after the opening bell, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was lower by about 65 points. The S&P 500-stock index was down 0.6%, while the Nasdaq Composite Index slipped 0.5%.
![[Markets Data]](http://s.wsj.net/public/resources/images/MDGpromo_D01222009151210.jpg)
Worry about an anemic economy and diminished profits weighed on the shares of metals and mining and oil companies. The basic-materials sector of the S&P 500 was down 2.5%, while the energy sector declined 2.3%.
ArcelorMittal shares fell 7% after the world's largest steelmaker reported a loss that was wider than analysts expected amid a slump in sales. Analysts also said that the company issued a disappointing outlook for the third quarter. Shares of ConocoPhillips were down 3% after it posted a 76% slide in earnings.
A fall in new orders for cars and planes led to a 2.5% drop in overall demand for durable goods last month, the Commerce Department said, though orders outside of transportation rose strongly and a gauge of capital spending climbed. The report helped stir selling in industrial stocks like Caterpillar, which slipped 2.1%, and General Electric, which sank 2.2%.
Some of the selling pressure in heavy-industry stocks was offset by investors nibbling on financial and consumer-staples stocks. Bank of America was the best-performing stock among the 30 in the Dow, rising about 1.3%. The health-care sector was only mildly weaker.
New York Federal Reserve Bank President William Dudley said that the U.S. economy is likely to see moderate growth in the second half of 2009, as signs grow that the recent severe contraction is waning. But he added that the pace of recovery will be muted. The Fed's "beige book" of regional economic reports is expected to be released at 2 p.m.
Overseas, China's Shanghai Composite ended 5% lower after a late afternoon selloff. The Shanghai index plunged as much as 7.7% intraday, erasing most of the gains of the last five sessions. The decline is the biggest percentage drop at market close in Shanghai since Nov. 18, when the index ended down 6.3%.
Concerns are growing that China may start to tighten credit after Chinese banks lent a record $1.08 trillion in the first half of the year. Other markets including Hong Kong and Mumbai also fell. In Europe, most major market indexes were higher in recent trading.
The dollar rose against the yen and the euro, while oil futures slumped about $66 a barrel ahead of weekly energy inventory data. Treasury prices gained.
1 comment:
The time lines, places, actions, motives, when analyzed, support, and are consistent with, what is the answer to the Obama birth puzzle:
Obama’s grandmother is his mother and his mother is his sister.
Think about it. Review all the facts and claims.
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