Thursday, 7 June 2012
Wednesday, 6 June 2012
Chinese student murdered by Canadian, suspect held, safety in the West?
In China, the case seems set to deepen perceptions of foreign study as a risky prospect, following another murder in Canada last year and two widely publicised incidents in April: the shootings of two Chinese students in Los Angeles, and an overtly racist attack on two others on a Sydney train. It remains unclear whether Lin’s killing was racially motivated or simply part of a sustained campaign of increasingly extreme attention seeking. Montreal police would not speculate on the matter, but suspicions have taken root among the local Chinese community. From The Globe and Mail:
The murder of Mr. Lin has provoked widespread shock and anger in China, where many believe the crime was racially motivated. The Chinese embassy in Ottawa has warned citizens living or travelling in Canada to “strengthen their personal security” in the wake of the deadly attack.
Mr. Lin’s death is the second killing of a Chinese student in Canada in just over a year, following last April’s murder of York University student Liu Qian, part of which was watched on Skype by her boyfriend back in China.
[…] A makeshift memorial to Mr. Lin sprang up in downtown Montreal in front of the statue of Norman Bethune, the Canadian surgeon regarded as a hero in China. The foot of the statue was covered with bouquets along with a note in English, French and Chinese that summed up the sense of relief over Mr. Magnotta’s arrest: “We got that beast.”An earlier Globe and Mail report quoted the embassy’s warning, and outlined the case’s possible impact on Canadian universities’ ability to attract Chinese students.
“The Chinese Embassy in Canada reminds Chinese citizens traveling in Canada, as well as students and the staff of Chinese organizations in Canada, to improve their self-protection [and] awareness, and to strengthen their personal security,” reads the final paragraph of the Embassy’s Chinese-language statement on Mr. Lin’s murder, which called condemned the “heinous criminal act.” A similar warning was posted on the webpage of the Chinese consulate in Montreal.
[…] “The impact of the case will be very bad on Canada,” Meng Xiaochao, the boyfriend who witnessed the attack on Ms. Liu, said in an interview. “Last year when Liu Qian’s case happened, many parents said they were no longer willing to send their children to Canada. Now here comes this other case.”
More than 50,000 Chinese students currently live and study in Canada. Like all foreign students, they pay higher tuition than their Canadian-born classmates, making them highly sought-after by cash-strapped universities. Another 242,000 Chinese came to Canada as tourists last year, a number the travel industry had been hoping would increase by as much as one-fifth this year.An infographic at GOOD shows the most favoured destinations for Chinese students abroad, with Canada ranking third behind the US and UK. 85% of Chinese with net worths of more than one million US dollars reportedly plan to send their offspring to study overseas: those who have already done so include Bo Xilai, at least five of the nine members of the Politburo Standing Committee, if one includes grandchildren, and noted crusader against foreign trash Yang Rui. The strong association of study abroad with wealth triggered a storm of resentment around the USC case in April. Some online reactions to Lin Jun’s murder displayed similar sentiments, though many others attacked such unsympathetic responses. Many expressed concern at the apparent dangers of journeys to the West, linking the Magnotta case to other bizarre and gruesome stories of recent weeks. From chinaSMACK
Porn star accused of killing gay ex-lover ate victim's body parts, claim police
Video footage of the suspected Montreal murderer Luka Rocco Magnotta show him eating the body parts of his alleged victim, police said yesterday.
Montreal Police Commander Ian Lafrenière said that while it could not be confirmed, his officers suspected Magnotta of eating parts of the lover he is accused of killing and dismembering.
German prosecutors further revealed yesterday that they intended to extradite Magnotta to Canada following his surprise arrest in Berlin on Monday.
The pornographic-film actor and model, 29, is wanted on suspicion of murdering and dismembering his male Chinese student lover and sending his victim's body parts to political parties in one of Canada's most gruesome killings.
Magnotta fled from Montreal to Berlin via Paris. He was arrested in an internet café in the German capital on Monday morning. Yesterday he appeared before a judge and was remanded in custody until further notice.
Prosecutors said they were awaiting a request from Montreal Police for his extradition. A spokesman said the process could take "several days".
Canadian police have confiscated a film of a man killing his victim with an ice pick. The video is thought to show Magnotta murdering his 33-year-old lover, Jun Lin. His motive is said to have been jealousy.
The killer is suspected of dismembering his victim's body and posting parts of the corpse to Canada's Conservative and Liberal parties.
Magnotta is nicknamed "psycho killer" because the soundtrack to the video allegedly showing the murder carried excerpts from the film American Psycho.
Canadian porn actor who killed man and mailed body parts arrested
Berlin: A Canadian porn actor suspected of murdering and dismembering a Chinese student and mailing his body parts to Canada's top political parties was reading about himself on the internet when he was arrested on Monday at a cafe in Berlin.
Canadian investigators say 29-year-old Luka Magnotta's obsessions led him to post internet videos of his killing kittens, then a man, and finally to his arrest at the cafe where he had spent two hours reading media coverage of himself.
An international manhunt set off by a case of internet gruesomeness that captured global attention ended quietly in the working-class Neukoelln district of the German capital when a cafe employee recognised Magnotta from a newspaper photo and flagged down a police car.
Confronted by seven officers, "He tried at first giving fake names but in the end he just said: 'You got me’," said police spokesman Guido Busch. "He didn't resist."
Magnotta is wanted by Canadian authorities on suspicion of killing Jun Lin, a 33-year-old man he dated, in Canada, and mailing his body parts to two of Canada's top political parties before fleeing to Europe.
They say Magnotta filmed the murder of the Chinese student in his Montreal studio apartment and posted it online. The video shows a man with an ice pick stabbing another naked, bound male. He also dismembers the corpse and performs sexual acts with it in what police called a horrifying video.
The warning signs apparently were already there. For nearly two years animal activists had been looking for a man who tortured and killed cats and posted videos of his cruelty online. Since Lin's murder, Montreal police have released a photo from the video which they say is of Magnotta.
In 2005, Magnotta was accused of sexually assaulting a woman, but the charges were dropped, the lawyer who represented him at the time said.
Magnotta is believed to have fled to France on May 26, based on evidence police found at his apartment and a blog he once posted about disappearing.
In Germany, surveillance camera footage of the internet cafe, obtained by the Associated Press, showed Magnotta casually walking in to the shop at noon local time, wearing jeans, a green hoodie sweater and sunglasses.
He briefly spoke to the internet cafe's desk person, then walked off to his assigned computer with the number 25 where he would later be spotted reading the news about his case.
About two hours later, seven German police officers are seen walking into the shop, without any haste or arms.
On the camera footage, three police officers are seen accompanying the handcuffed Magnotta a couple of minutes after they first entered the cafe. Magnotta calmly walks alongside them, again wearing sunglasses.
In Germany, police spokeswoman Kerstin Ziesmer said Magnotta is being questioned, and will be brought before a judge behind closed doors.
"He says he is the wanted person," she added, while cautioning that his identity must still be independently confirmed by German authorities.
Canada, like Europe, has no death penalty, making extradition more likely. Quebec bureau of prosecutions spokesman Rene Verret said it could still take a long time to get him back to Canada, but he said if Magnotta doesn't contest the order he could be returned within a couple of weeks.
The case's full horror emerged when a package containing a severed foot was opened at the ruling Conservative Party headquarters on May 29. That same day a hand was discovered at a postal facility, addressed to the Liberal Party of Canada. And a torso was found in a suitcase on a garbage dump in Montreal, outside Magnotta's apartment building. Police in masks combed through the blood-soaked Montreal studio apartment last Wednesday.
As they unraveled his background, police discovered that Luka Magnotta changed his name from Eric Clinton Newman in 2006 and that he was born in Scarborough, Ontario. He is also known as Vladimir Romanov.
His mother, Anna Yourkin in Peterbourgh, Ontario, said she had no comment, apologised and hung up the phone.
Toronto lawyer Peter Scully said he represented Magnotta in a fraud case in 2004 and a sexual assault case in 2005.
He said Magnotta was charged with a dozen counts of fraud and impersonation for using a woman's credit card to buy about $17,000 worth of goods, including a television, DVD player and several cellphones. He said he pleaded guilty to four fraud-related charges after serving 16 days in pre-trial custody. He received a nine-month conditional sentence and a year of probation.
Scully said Magnotta was charged with sexually assaulting a woman in 2005, but the prosecution decided to withdraw the charges. The woman's father became so irate and threatening that Scully said he wrote a letter to police and the prosecutor, telling them about it.
Scully remembered Magnotta as soft spoken and polite.
"I've had lots of creepy characters and Eric did not stand out as one of them," he said. Scully refers to his client by his previous name, Eric Newman.
But Nina Arsenault, a Toronto transsexual who said she had a relationship with Magnotta over a decade ago, described him as a drug user with a temper, who sometimes turned his anger on himself, hitting himself on the head, and other parts of his body.
While Magnotta described himself in an online video interview with a site called "Naked News" as a stripper and male escort, Lin, who was from Wuhan, China, was registered as an undergraduate in the engineering department and computer science at Concordia University in Montreal. Police have confirmed Magnotta is a porn actor and that he and Jun had a relationship.
Zoya De Frias Lakhany, 21, a fellow Concordia student in some of Lin's classes, said he was an excellent student who was shy and humble. She said she cried all weekend.
"He was happy here, he would take pictures of the snow and post them," she recalled. "He was sweet, never complained and smiled all the time."
Montreal Police Cmdr Ian Lafreniere said investigators are extremely relieved and pleased about the arrest.
"We said from the beginning that the web has been used to glorify himself and we believe the web brought him down," said Lafreniere. "He was recognised because his photo was everywhere."
Related post:
Apr 25, 2012
Tuesday, 5 June 2012
US banks on planned super-stealth destroyer against a rising China, "it really sucks"
A super-stealthy warship that could underpin the US Navy's China strategy will be able to sneak up on coastlines virtually undetected and pound targets with electromagnetic "railguns" right out of a sci-fi movie.
But at more than $US3 billion a pop, critics say the new DDG-1000 destroyer sucks away funds that could be better used to bolster a thinly stretched conventional fleet. One outspoken admiral in China has scoffed that all it would take to sink the high-tech American ship is an armada of explosive-laden fishing boats.
With the first of the new ships set to be delivered in 2014, the stealth destroyer is being heavily promoted by the Pentagon as the most advanced destroyer in history - a silver bullet of stealth. It has been called a perfect fit for what Washington now considers the most strategically important region in the world - Asia and the Pacific.
Though it could come in handy elsewhere, like in the Gulf region, its ability to carry out missions both on the high seas and in shallows closer to shore is especially important in Asia because of the region's many island nations and China's long Pacific coast.
"With its stealth, incredibly capable sonar system, strike capability and lower manning requirements - this is our future," Admiral Jonathan Greenert, chief of naval operations, said in April after visiting the shipyard in Maine where they are being built.
On a visit to a major regional security conference in Singapore that ended on Sunday, US Defence Secretary Leon Panetta said the Navy will be deploying 60 per cent of its fleet worldwide to the Pacific by 2020, and though he didn't cite the stealth destroyers he said new high-tech ships will be a big part of its shift.
The DDG-1000 and other stealth destroyers of the Zumwalt class feature a wave-piercing hull that leaves almost no wake, electric drive propulsion and advanced sonar and missiles. They are longer and heavier than existing destroyers - but will have half the crew because of automated systems and appear to be little more than a small fishing boat on enemy radar.
Down the road, the ship is to be equipped with an electromagnetic railgun, which uses a magnetic field and electric current to fire a projectile at several times the speed of sound.
But cost overruns and technical delays have left many defence experts wondering if the whole endeavour was too focused on futuristic technologies for its own good.
They point to the problem-ridden F-22 stealth jet fighter, which was hailed as the most advanced fighter ever built but was cut short because of prohibitive costs. Its successor, the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, has swelled up into the most expensive procurement program in US Defence Department history.
"Whether the Navy can afford to buy many DDG-1000s must be balanced against the need for over 300 surface ships to fulfill the various missions that confront it," said Dean Cheng, a China expert with the Heritage Foundation, a conservative research institute in Washington. "Buying hyperexpensive ships hurts that ability, but buying ships that can't do the job, or worse can't survive in the face of the enemy, is even more irresponsible."
The Navy says it's money well spent. The rise of China has been cited as the best reason for keeping the revolutionary ship afloat, although the specifics of where it will be deployed have yet to be announced. Navy officials also say the technologies developed for the ship will inevitably be used in other vessels in the decades ahead.
But the destroyers' $US3.1 billion price tag, which is about twice the cost of the current destroyers and balloons to $US7 billion each when research and development is added in, nearly sank it in Congress.
Though the Navy originally wanted 32 of them, that was cut to 24, then seven.
Now, just three are in the works.
"Costs spiraled - surprise, surprise - and the program basically fell in on itself," said Richard Bitzinger, a security expert at Singapore's Nanyang Technological University. "The DDG-1000 was a nice idea for a new modernistic surface combatant, but it contained too many unproven, disruptive technologies."
The US Defence Department is concerned that China is modernising its navy with a near-term goal of stopping or delaying US intervention in conflicts over disputed territory in the South China Sea or involving Taiwan, which China considers a renegade province.
China is now working on building up a credible aircraft carrier capability and developing missiles and submarines that could deny American ships access to crucial sea lanes.
The US has a big advantage on the high seas, but improvements in China's navy could make it harder for US ships to fight in shallower waters, called littorals. The stealth destroyers are designed to do both. In the meantime, the Navy will begin deploying smaller Littoral Combat Ships to Singapore later this year.
Officially, China has been quiet on the possible addition of the destroyers to Asian waters.
But Rear Admiral Zhang Zhaozhong, an outspoken commentator affiliated with China's National Defence University, scoffed at the hype surrounding the ship, saying that despite its high-tech design it could be overwhelmed by a swarm of fishing boats laden with explosives. If enough boats were mobilised some could get through to blow a hole in its hull, he said.
AP
The US Navy is readying a $7 billion boat that can launch attacks faster than the speed of sound and is practically invisible to detection. Even with that hefty cost, however, China says it will only take a few fishing boats to blow up the DDG-1000.
The chief of US naval operations says that the DDG-1000 super-stealth destroyer warship is the “future” of America’s on-the-water weaponry, and at that price tag it better be. Right now the ship is costing taxpayers around $3.1 billion but the price of research and development is likely to bring the tally to more than double. The ship is several years in the making and the first of its kind is expected to be ready by 2014, but critics in China — the very place Uncle Sam plans to send his up and coming fleet — are laughing at America’s latest endeavor.
"It would be a goner," Rear Adm. Zhang Zhaozhong of China's National Defense University tells the nation’s CCTV military channel.
The US intends on sending its newest ship towards China’s Pacific Coast where it will be able to monitor activity in the budding region without being easily detected. The boat’s wave-piercing hull will leave almost no wake in the water, reports the Associated Press, and upgrades to the ship will eventually equip it with electromagnetic railguns that can shoot projectiles by using an electric current and magnetic field to fire at enemy targets. Zhaozhong warns, however, that where the US invests in unnecessary weaponry and sleek, stealth technology, it fails to properly outfit the ship with the material to keep it from going kerplunk.
According to the AP, Zhaozhong claims that the DDG-1000’s impressive design could be easily overwhelmed by a mere fleet of fishing boats that are laden with explosives. If enough of those boats could be mobilized around the stealth ship, says Zhaozhong, its high-tech hull could be blown apart sending the boat straight to the bottom of the sea.
That, of course, is not how the Pentagon wants to spend a few billion dollars. "Whether the Navy can afford to buy many DDG-1000s must be balanced against the need for over 300 surface ships to fulfill the various missions that confront it," Dean Cheng, a China expert with the Heritage Foundation, adds to the AP. "Buying hyper-expensive ships hurts that ability, but buying ships that can't do the job, or worse can't survive in the face of the enemy, is even more irresponsible."
A 2008 report on the ship from US Navy Vice Admiral Barry McCullough revealed that “the DDG-1000 cannot perform area air defense” and that the ship essentially lacked any ability to fire at enemies located above, making it a sitting duck for air attacks. At the time, a naval source with Defense News said that the ship "could carry and launch standard missiles, but the DDG 1000 combat system cant guide those missiles onward to a target."
Off the sea and in the air, the Pentagon is having other problems with costly crafts that aren’t operating up to snuff. After a serviceman was killed on board an F-22 Raptor stealth jet in 2010, the Air Force has repeatedly grounded the fleet over security concerns. Recently, several pilots announced that they would refuse to board the craft until all of its kinks were worked out. The Air Force has spent around $77.4 billion on its F-22 fleet so far — the cost of building and maintaining around 11 of the DDG-1000s — but has been forced to ground them time and time again. Around $400billion worth of high-tech F-35 fighter jets have been grounded no fewer than three times as well.
Although the Navy first ordered 32 of the DDG-1000s, they have slashed that figure three times; once the first boat is finished, only two more are currently slated to join it.
But at more than $US3 billion a pop, critics say the new DDG-1000 destroyer sucks away funds that could be better used to bolster a thinly stretched conventional fleet. One outspoken admiral in China has scoffed that all it would take to sink the high-tech American ship is an armada of explosive-laden fishing boats.
With the first of the new ships set to be delivered in 2014, the stealth destroyer is being heavily promoted by the Pentagon as the most advanced destroyer in history - a silver bullet of stealth. It has been called a perfect fit for what Washington now considers the most strategically important region in the world - Asia and the Pacific.
Though it could come in handy elsewhere, like in the Gulf region, its ability to carry out missions both on the high seas and in shallows closer to shore is especially important in Asia because of the region's many island nations and China's long Pacific coast.
"With its stealth, incredibly capable sonar system, strike capability and lower manning requirements - this is our future," Admiral Jonathan Greenert, chief of naval operations, said in April after visiting the shipyard in Maine where they are being built.
On a visit to a major regional security conference in Singapore that ended on Sunday, US Defence Secretary Leon Panetta said the Navy will be deploying 60 per cent of its fleet worldwide to the Pacific by 2020, and though he didn't cite the stealth destroyers he said new high-tech ships will be a big part of its shift.
The DDG-1000 and other stealth destroyers of the Zumwalt class feature a wave-piercing hull that leaves almost no wake, electric drive propulsion and advanced sonar and missiles. They are longer and heavier than existing destroyers - but will have half the crew because of automated systems and appear to be little more than a small fishing boat on enemy radar.
Down the road, the ship is to be equipped with an electromagnetic railgun, which uses a magnetic field and electric current to fire a projectile at several times the speed of sound.
But cost overruns and technical delays have left many defence experts wondering if the whole endeavour was too focused on futuristic technologies for its own good.
They point to the problem-ridden F-22 stealth jet fighter, which was hailed as the most advanced fighter ever built but was cut short because of prohibitive costs. Its successor, the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, has swelled up into the most expensive procurement program in US Defence Department history.
"Whether the Navy can afford to buy many DDG-1000s must be balanced against the need for over 300 surface ships to fulfill the various missions that confront it," said Dean Cheng, a China expert with the Heritage Foundation, a conservative research institute in Washington. "Buying hyperexpensive ships hurts that ability, but buying ships that can't do the job, or worse can't survive in the face of the enemy, is even more irresponsible."
The Navy says it's money well spent. The rise of China has been cited as the best reason for keeping the revolutionary ship afloat, although the specifics of where it will be deployed have yet to be announced. Navy officials also say the technologies developed for the ship will inevitably be used in other vessels in the decades ahead.
But the destroyers' $US3.1 billion price tag, which is about twice the cost of the current destroyers and balloons to $US7 billion each when research and development is added in, nearly sank it in Congress.
Though the Navy originally wanted 32 of them, that was cut to 24, then seven.
Now, just three are in the works.
"Costs spiraled - surprise, surprise - and the program basically fell in on itself," said Richard Bitzinger, a security expert at Singapore's Nanyang Technological University. "The DDG-1000 was a nice idea for a new modernistic surface combatant, but it contained too many unproven, disruptive technologies."
The US Defence Department is concerned that China is modernising its navy with a near-term goal of stopping or delaying US intervention in conflicts over disputed territory in the South China Sea or involving Taiwan, which China considers a renegade province.
China is now working on building up a credible aircraft carrier capability and developing missiles and submarines that could deny American ships access to crucial sea lanes.
The US has a big advantage on the high seas, but improvements in China's navy could make it harder for US ships to fight in shallower waters, called littorals. The stealth destroyers are designed to do both. In the meantime, the Navy will begin deploying smaller Littoral Combat Ships to Singapore later this year.
Officially, China has been quiet on the possible addition of the destroyers to Asian waters.
But Rear Admiral Zhang Zhaozhong, an outspoken commentator affiliated with China's National Defence University, scoffed at the hype surrounding the ship, saying that despite its high-tech design it could be overwhelmed by a swarm of fishing boats laden with explosives. If enough boats were mobilised some could get through to blow a hole in its hull, he said.
AP
China laughs at Planned American Stealth destroyer "It really sucks"
The US Navy is readying a $7 billion boat that can launch attacks faster than the speed of sound and is practically invisible to detection. Even with that hefty cost, however, China says it will only take a few fishing boats to blow up the DDG-1000.
The chief of US naval operations says that the DDG-1000 super-stealth destroyer warship is the “future” of America’s on-the-water weaponry, and at that price tag it better be. Right now the ship is costing taxpayers around $3.1 billion but the price of research and development is likely to bring the tally to more than double. The ship is several years in the making and the first of its kind is expected to be ready by 2014, but critics in China — the very place Uncle Sam plans to send his up and coming fleet — are laughing at America’s latest endeavor.
"It would be a goner," Rear Adm. Zhang Zhaozhong of China's National Defense University tells the nation’s CCTV military channel.
The US intends on sending its newest ship towards China’s Pacific Coast where it will be able to monitor activity in the budding region without being easily detected. The boat’s wave-piercing hull will leave almost no wake in the water, reports the Associated Press, and upgrades to the ship will eventually equip it with electromagnetic railguns that can shoot projectiles by using an electric current and magnetic field to fire at enemy targets. Zhaozhong warns, however, that where the US invests in unnecessary weaponry and sleek, stealth technology, it fails to properly outfit the ship with the material to keep it from going kerplunk.
According to the AP, Zhaozhong claims that the DDG-1000’s impressive design could be easily overwhelmed by a mere fleet of fishing boats that are laden with explosives. If enough of those boats could be mobilized around the stealth ship, says Zhaozhong, its high-tech hull could be blown apart sending the boat straight to the bottom of the sea.
That, of course, is not how the Pentagon wants to spend a few billion dollars. "Whether the Navy can afford to buy many DDG-1000s must be balanced against the need for over 300 surface ships to fulfill the various missions that confront it," Dean Cheng, a China expert with the Heritage Foundation, adds to the AP. "Buying hyper-expensive ships hurts that ability, but buying ships that can't do the job, or worse can't survive in the face of the enemy, is even more irresponsible."
A 2008 report on the ship from US Navy Vice Admiral Barry McCullough revealed that “the DDG-1000 cannot perform area air defense” and that the ship essentially lacked any ability to fire at enemies located above, making it a sitting duck for air attacks. At the time, a naval source with Defense News said that the ship "could carry and launch standard missiles, but the DDG 1000 combat system cant guide those missiles onward to a target."
Off the sea and in the air, the Pentagon is having other problems with costly crafts that aren’t operating up to snuff. After a serviceman was killed on board an F-22 Raptor stealth jet in 2010, the Air Force has repeatedly grounded the fleet over security concerns. Recently, several pilots announced that they would refuse to board the craft until all of its kinks were worked out. The Air Force has spent around $77.4 billion on its F-22 fleet so far — the cost of building and maintaining around 11 of the DDG-1000s — but has been forced to ground them time and time again. Around $400billion worth of high-tech F-35 fighter jets have been grounded no fewer than three times as well.
Although the Navy first ordered 32 of the DDG-1000s, they have slashed that figure three times; once the first boat is finished, only two more are currently slated to join it.
US Growing Unemployed: A Case of Benign Neglect
Photo: REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton
The high unemployment rate ought to be a national emergency. There are millions of people in need of jobs. The lost income as a result of the recession totals hundreds of billions of dollars annually, and the longer the problem persists, the more permanent the damage becomes. Why doesn’t the unemployment problem get more attention? Why have other worries such as inflation and debt reduction dominated the conversation instead? As I noted at the end of my last column, the increased concentration of political power at the top of the income distribution provides much of the explanation.
Consider the Federal Reserve. Again and again we hear Federal Reserve officials say that an outbreak of inflation could undermine the Fed’s hard-earned credibility and threaten its independence from Congress. But why is the Fed only worried about inflation? Why aren’t officials at the Fed just as worried about Congress reducing the Fed’s independence because of high and persistent unemployment?
Similar questions can be asked about fiscal policy. Why is most of the discussion in Congress focused on the national debt rather than the unemployed? Is it because the wealthy fear that they will be the ones asked to pay for monetary and fiscal policies that mostly benefit others, and since they have the most political power their interests – keeping inflation low, cutting spending, and lowering tax burdens – dominate policy discussions?
There was, of course, a stimulus program at the beginning of Obama’s presidency, but it was much too small and relied far more on tax cuts than most people realize. The need to shape the package in a way that satisfied the politically powerful, especially the interests that have captured the Republican Party, made it far less effective than it might have been. In the end, it had no chance of fully meeting the challenge posed by such a severe recession, and when it became clear that additional help was needed, those same interests stood in the way of doing more.
Republican policymakers give us all sorts of excuses for blocking further action to help the unemployed. We are told the problem is structural – there is a geographical or talent mismatch between labor availability and labor needs – and nothing can be done to help. But something can be done. We can help workers move to where the jobs are, encourage firms to locate in areas where workers are readily available, and help with job retraining. If mismatches are really the problem, why aren’t Republicans leading the charge on these policies? If they care about the unemployed rather than the tax burden of the wealthy, then why are they allowing community colleges – one of the best ways we have of providing job training for new and displaced workers – to be gutted with budget cuts?
We are also told that the deficit is too large already, but there’s still plenty of room to do more for the unemployed, as long as we have a plan to address the long-run debt problem. But even if the deficit is a problem, why won’t Republicans support one of the many balanced budget approaches to stimulating the economy? Could it be that these policies invariably require higher income households to give something up so that we can help the less fortunate? Tax cuts for the wealthy are always welcome among Republicans no matter how it impacts the debt, but creating job opportunities through, say, investing in infrastructure?
Forget it. Even though the costs of many highly beneficial infrastructure projects are as low as they get, and even though investing in infrastructure now would save us from much larger costs down the road – it’s a budget saver, not a budget buster – Republicans leaders in the House are balking at even modest attempts to provide needed job opportunities for the unemployed.
The imbalance in political power, obstructionism from Republicans designed to improve their election chances, and attempts by Republicans to implement a small government ideology are a large part of the explanation for why the unemployed aren’t getting the help they deserve.
But Democrats aren’t completely off the hook either. Centrist Democrats beholden to big money interests are definitely a problem, and Democrats in general have utterly failed to bring enough attention to the unemployment problem. Would these things happen if workers had more political power?
When we talk about leveling the playing field, it is generally in terms of economic opportunity. However, leveling the political playing field is just as important, and in the past unions provided workers with a powerful voice in the political arena. But unions have largely faded from the scene, leaving workers with very little organized power. Correcting the political imbalance this has created through the renewed political empowerment of the working class must be part of any attempt to improve our response to serious recessions.
It also suggests a solution — renewed political empowerment of the working class — but that’s easier said than done.
By MARK THOMA, The Fiscal Times
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Facebook comments, ads don't sway most users: poll
(Reuters) - Four out of five Facebook Inc users have never bought a product or service as a result of advertising or comments on the social network site, a Reuters/Ipsos poll shows, in the latest sign that much more needs to be done to turn its 900 million customer base into advertising dollars.
The online poll also found that 34 percent of Facebook users surveyed were spending less time on the website than six months ago, whereas only 20 percent were spending more.
The findings underscore investors' worries about Facebook's money-making abilities that have pushed the stock down 29 percent since its initial public offering last month, reducing its market value by $30 billion to roughly $74 billion.
About 44 percent of respondents said the botched market debut has made them less favorable toward Facebook, according to the survey conducted from May 31 to June 4. The poll included 1,032 Americans, 21 percent of whom had no Facebook account.
Facebook's 900 million users make it among the most popular online destinations, challenging entrenched Internet players such as Google Inc and Yahoo Inc. But not everyone is convinced that the company has figured out how to translate that popularity into a business that can justify its lofty valuation.
Shares of Facebook closed Monday's regular trading session down 3 percent at $26.90. Facebook did not have an immediate comment on the survey.
While the survey did not ask how other forms of advertising affected purchasing behavior, a February study by research firm eMarketer suggests that Facebook fared worse than email or direct-mail marketing in terms of influencing consumers' purchasing decisions.
"It shows that Facebook has work to do in terms of making its advertising more effective and more relevant to people," eMarketer analyst Debra Williamson said.
Those concerns were exacerbated last month when General Motors Co, the third largest advertiser in the United States, said it would stop paid-advertising on Facebook.
Measuring the effectiveness of advertising can be tricky, particularly for brand marketing in which the goal is to influence future purchases rather than generate immediate sales.
And the success of an ad campaign must be considered in relation to the product, said Steve Hasker, president of Global Media Products and Advertiser Solutions at Nielsen.
"If you are advertising Porsche motor cars and you can get 20 percent of people to make a purchase that's an astonishingly high conversion rate," said Hasker.
"If you are selling instant noodles, maybe it's not," he
WANING ENGAGEMENT
About two out of five people polled by Reuters and Ipsos Public Affairs said they used Facebook every day. Nearly half of the Facebook users polled spent about the same amount of time on the social network as six months ago.
The survey provides a look at the trends considered vital to Facebook's future at a time when the company has faced a harsh reception on Wall Street.
Facebook's $16 billion IPO, one the world's largest, made the U.S. company founded by Mark Zuckerberg the first to debut on markets with a capitalization of more than $100 billion.
It's coming out-party, which culminated years of breakneck growth for the social and business phenomenon, was marred by trading glitches on the Nasdaq exchange. A decision to call certain financial analysts ahead of the IPO and caution them about weakness in its business during the second quarter has triggered several lawsuits against Facebook and its underwriters.
Forty-six percent of survey respondents said the Facebook IPO had made them less favorable towards investing in the stock market in general.
While Facebook generated $3.7 billion in revenue last year, mostly from ads on its website, sales growth is slowing.
Consumers' increasing use of smartphones to access Facebook has been a drag on the company's revenue. It offers only limited advertising on the mobile version of its site, and analysts say the company has yet to figure out the ideal way to make money from mobile users.
Facebook competes for online ads with Google, the world's No. 1 Web search engine, which generated roughly $38 billion in revenue last year. Google's search ads, which appear alongside the company's search results, are considered among the most effective means of marketing.
The most frequent Facebook users are aged 18 to 34, according to the Reuters/Ipsos survey, with 60 percent of that group being daily users. Among people aged 55 years and above, 29 percent said they were daily users.
Of the 34 percent spending less time on the social network, their chief reason was that the site was "boring," "not relevant" or "not useful," while privacy concerns ranked third.
The survey has a "credibility interval" of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points.
By Alexei Oreskovic SAN FRANCISCO Newscribe : get free news in real time
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