Impeachment in Conyer's Court!

This is absolutely amazing parliamentary play-by-play!!

Cheney Impeachment Resolution Sent to House Committee at the Washington Post

Public Education: 2nd Graders

In my kid's 2nd grade class, this really gives me pause:

1) There is a Capitalists Club (literally) for the kids. And to join, you have to sell a certain amount of Entertainment Books.

2) This week in writing they are focusing on, not poetry, but Brochures. As in, what makes a Good Brochure?

Free Trade and Exchange Rates

In some screeds I've written about free trade, I've deliberately ignored the complicating factor of exchange rate policy, in an effort to give mainstream Economics some benefit of the doubt. I'm willing to assume, for the sake of focusing the argument, that Ricardian concepts hold at some level.

But a scenario occurred to me this morning that made the exchange rate policy all the more significant. It is this. What if, after just about 100% of manufacturing (including pharmaceutical) is offshored, which might make bottom-line economic sense with the current exchange rate, the exchange rate starts to shift? What if, as is pretty well documented and understood, the Chinese have held their exchange rate artificially low, encouraging foreign capital investment, for a long enough time to dry up all remnants of capital investment in the United States? This is complicated by the fact that the US Dollar doesn't necessarily naturally float (although supposedly it does so much more freely than the Chinese Yuan).

But then, the Chinese stop artificially keeping the Yuan low. Prices skyrocket, and US Companies are paying much higher rates for the goods that are manufactured in China. In Ricardian Economics, US Companies should now start investing in capital back at home. But will they? How long will that take? Will instead the US, in order to protect all those companies that are getting screwed by the flux in exchange rate, modify its own exchange rate policy because it is politically popular to the wealthy interests (owners of Chinese capital)?

In China, Punishment Would Be Capital: CPSC

Two Heads of Product Safety Agency Accepted Trips From Manufacturer Groups

The agency's travel patterns during the Bush administration, detailed in internal agency documents, differ from those of the Clinton era. Ann Brown, who served as chairman from 1994 to 2001, traveled only at the expense of the agency or of media organizations that sponsored appearances where she announced product recalls, according to the documents provided.

For background:
Republicans Kill the Consumer Safety Product Commission

Also, previously on this blog:
Thoughts on the FDA

Is This Where School Vouchers Will Lead?

In South's public school children are now mainly low income, the story focuses on the rise of poverty, but is it possible that there was a flight from public schools to private schools in the South?

Many Southerners say the erosion of wealth in the public schools also reveals deeply ingrained attitudes in the South, where strong legislatures, weak governors, fiscal conservatism, and racial stereotypes stymie school progress. "I don't know how many times I've heard that public schools are really for the black kids," says Neal Thigpen, a political scientist at Francis Marion University in Florence, S.C.

My Posts At Angry Bear

Recent posts of mine over at Angry Bear:

• Role of Education in the Economy
  


• Adoption and Abortion
  


• Evolution, and Too Fast Dynamic Change
  


• Free Trade
  

Bush Stops Going to Church

Oooh, another gem from Froomkin today, of note to me because, of the Bush supporters I have met, some of the most sentient have actually been those that voted for him out of appreciation for his religiosity:

Julie Mason blogs for the Houston Chronicle that Bush has apparently stopped going to church: "Another Sunday and President Bush skipped church. We can't remember the last time he went. He never used to miss church -- and we know, because we get Sunday pool duty all the time and have to get up in the dark and go with him."

Mason checks her files: "9/23 pool report: The president of America eschewed church on this fine Sunday and instead went for a bike ride in Virginia. . . . 9/30 pool report: The evangelical president did not go to church today, but he did go on a bike ride. . . . 10/7 pool report: (Bush gave a speech at the National Fire Academy) . . . . 10/14 pool report: (Bush was on his Crawford ranch) 10/21 pool report: Pool reported this morning and headed straight for biking, no church. . . . 10/28 pool report: No church, and uneventful bike ride at Fort Belvoir, Va."