From the Associated Press….
An ice storm knocked out power to more than a million homes and businesses in New England and upstate New York on Friday, and authorities say it could take days for all of them to get service back.
We are feeling lazy today. So you can learn most of what you need to know about today by reading this post from Macro Man and following the links.
Felix Salmon fills in more information on scandal that Marco Man mentions here and here.
Also, this is how the car makers are going to be bailed out now that the bailout has failed. Here is more.
Greece has issued an international appeal for more tear gas after supplies ran low because police fired so much of it during a week of violent protests across the country.
Officers released 4,600 capsules of tear gas during confrontations in Athens and nearly a dozen other cities since riots erupted over the fatal shooting of a 15-year-old schoolboy by a policeman last Saturday.
The Greek government is urgently seeking fresh supplies of tear gas from Israel and Germany, the police said.
From the Investor’s Business Daily….
After posting a surplus of 12.5% of GDP this year, and spending at least 4.5% of GDP on a stimulus package of soup kitchen offerings, Chavez is now down to his last $87 billion in reserves, having created nothing of permanent value. Next year, S&P estimates a wild swing into deficit by Venezuela, forcing devaluation.
Venezuelan oil prices are now $34 a barrel. Producing 2.3 million barrels a day, down 16% from 2005, and now consuming 795,000 barrels of that, as Caracas investment banker Miguel Octavio estimated on his blog, “The Devil’s Excrement,” he doesn’t even have enough earnings to finance imports. He’s given away about 424,000 barrels of oil output, and must make do on sales of about 1 million barrels. With oil down, Chavez has entered the worst phase of the oil cycle.
Its kind of funny that those nations who hoped for a sharp drop in America’s fortunes never took any steps to prepare for the very thing they were hoping for. Chavez’s only hope is that America will have a short recession.
Faced with a sharp decline in revenue, National Public Radio said Wednesday it will pare back its programming and institute its first organization-wide layoffs in 25 years.
Washington-based NPR said it would lay off about 7 percent of its workforce and eliminate two daily programs produced out of its facilities in Culver City, Calif. The shows are “Day to Day,” which was aimed at younger listeners, and the newsmaker-interview program “News & Notes,” which NPR hoped would attract African Americans.
I expect that they will receive a bail out eventually.
Teachers who mark work in red pen could be inflicting psychological damage on their students, according to new guidelines.
Australian educators are being urged to correct homework in less aggressive colours like green and blue, in an attempt to improve mental health in the classroom.
Makes you wonder how the older generation manged to grow up with their mental health intact. At the very least, you would think that the suicide rate for young people would have been higher back in them days wouldn’t you?
But in many cases it is just not known whether what is seen on a scan is the cause of the pain. The problem is that all too often, no one knows what is normal.
“A patient comes in because he’s in pain,” said Dr. Nelda Wray, a senior research scientist at the Methodist Institute for Technology in Houston. “We see something in a scan, and we assume causation. But we have no idea of the prevalence of the abnormality in routine populations.”
Now, as more and more people have scans for everything from headaches to foot aches, more are left in a medical lurch, or with unnecessary or sometimes even harmful treatments, including surgery.
“Every time we get a new technology that provides insights into structures we didn’t encounter before, we end up saying, ‘Oh, my God, look at all those abnormalities.’ They might be dangerous,” said Dr. David Felson, a professor of medicine and epidemiology at Boston University Medical School. “Some are, some aren’t, but it ends up leading to a lot of care that’s unnecessary.”
So here’s a little experiment. Imagine that a Congressional bailout effectively pays for $10 an hour of the retiree benefits. That’s roughly the gap between the Big Three’s retiree costs and those of the Japanese-owned plants in this country. Imagine, also, that the U.A.W. agrees to reduce pay and benefits for current workers to $45 an hour — the same as at Honda and Toyota.
Do you know how much that would reduce the cost of producing a Big Three vehicle? Only about $800.
That’s because labor costs, for all the attention they have been receiving, make up only about 10 percent of the cost of making a vehicle. An extra $800 per vehicle would certainly help Detroit, but the Big Three already often sell their cars for about $2,500 less than equivalent cars from Japanese companies, analysts at the International Motor Vehicle Program say. Even so, many Americans no longer want to own the cars being made by General Motors, Ford and Chrysler.
The rocks are lying everywhere in the streets. Thousands and thousands of them. Iron rods are also littered about, as are makeshift wooden clubs and spent cartridges. The sharp stench of teargas floats through the air, mixed with the acrid odor of melted plastic. Flames shoot out of trash bins; a Japanese compact lies on its side. And from behind the fence surrounding the Athens Polytechnic, black clad rioters are chanting as loud as they can:
“Pigs! Swine! Murderers!”
“Pigs! Swine! Murderers!”
Facing them, around 10 or 20 meters away, is a unit of riot police, armed with truncheons and armored with shields and white helmets. Earlier, the police had spoken of following a strategy of de-escalation — but by late Tuesday night, that, apparently, had been discarded. “Come on out you cowards! Come out and get us,” yells the police commander. He bends down to grab a rock and hurls it at the demonstrators. His men do the same. It’s a revolt in reverse.
It is the fourth night since 15-year-old Alexandros Grigoropoulos died after being shot in the breast by a policeman. And still, peace refuses to return to the Greek capital.
From a different article in Spiegel….
The two seem enthusiastic as they chat to each other, smiling and cracking jokes. Perhaps they’re related. At the same time, the mates of a rioter standing next to him are busy ripping apart the sidewalk. The woman says goodbye, kissing both of his cheeks, before gracefully tottering away. Then one of the rioters turns around, picks up a large rock and throws it down into the street where the police are standing.
It’s the daily dose of anarchy in Athens, that entered into its fifth day on Wednesday.
The Greek riots are a textbook example of how deep a country can sink if it lacks democracy’s most important element, the support and acceptance of its people. The scales of democracy have tipped here, and one inevitably gets the impression these days that there are few left who still trust the government to find the right path. Their experiences with its scandals, cronyism and corruption are too deeply seated. And it is in their unanimous rejection of the elite that both business people and the Black Bloc anarchists have found common ground.
Spiegel almost makes it sound heroic to destroy the sidewalk and throw it at the police. Granted, the Greek political elite is pretty corrupt, but the people of Greece are hardly oppressed. If they were being oppressed, there would be a lot more then just one punk dead. Heck, the police are barred by law from entering the universities. This gives the rioters a place to rearm and regroup unmolested by the evil forces of authority. How is that for oppression? Whats more, the protesters have been rioting for almost a week without have any clear idea of what they hope to accomplish. I guess they just want hope and change.
Greece has the government that it deserves but that government has no authority.