Nesmith's Notes

Entries for February, 2005

Howard Dean to Lead DNC

Democratic National Committee
Howard Dean takes the helm of the DNC amid much speculation. Here is his message along with a few other opions.
“A message from Chairman Dean
Today your representatives elected new Party leadership. But more importantly they endorsed the idea that our Party must always be led by the people — because your participation [...]

North Korea Concerns Increase

Yahoo! News – North Korea Boasts It Has Nuclear Weapons
As North Korea announces its possession of nuclear weapons, various experts discuss the evidence.
Economist.com | Dealing with North Korea
“Tests by America’s Department of Energy have convinced American officials that North Korea may well have supplied the uranium hexafluoride gas—partly-processed uranium which can be spun in centrifuge [...]

Right to Speak and a Right to Disagree

Ward Churchill’s Banality of Evil
The right to free speech doesn’t mean you’re right
by Anthony Lappé
“The storm around Churchill’s statements has many on the far left coming to his defense. As a Native American activist, he has a long record of fighting injustice (see my interview with his frequent co-author Jim Vander Wall here), and I [...]

Optimism in the Middle East

Economist.com | The Middle East peace summit:
Ariel Sharon and Mahmoud Abbas have declared an end to all hostilities after their first summit, in Sharm el-Sheikh. So, after four years of bloodshed, can the uprising be over? There is cause for optimism, though we have been here before.
“THE calm which will prevail in our lands starting [...]

Truth in Political Advertising – or not!

FactCheck.org Social Security Ads: Risk or Protection?
In this the first round of what will surely be a contentious issue for the congress, FactCheck.org weighs in on the accuracy of current ads.
“A pro-Bush TV ad gets the central fact right about Social Security: by the time today’s young workers retire there are projected to be only [...]

Don’t blame trade for US job losses

The McKinsey Quarterly

The US recession officially ended in late 2001, and ever since, despite recent gains, aggregate job creation has been extremely weak—weaker even than during the “jobless recovery” that followed the 1990–91 recession (Exhibit 1). Contributing most to the overall number of US jobs lost since 2000 has been the manufacturing sector, which shed [...]

Social Security: Some Facts

NCPA – Social Security – Facts About Social Security
Social Security reform has emerged as one of the defining issues of the 2000 election, but a number of myths and half-truths have clouded the dialogue.
Fact #1: The System Is in Trouble. Social Security is structured as a pay-as-you-go system. That means today’s workers pay the benefits [...]

Social Security and Your Finances according to AARP

The Role of Social Security in Your Financial Planning

“Fact 1: Social Security is the guaranteed part of your retirement plan.
There have been lots of questions raised about Social Security lately. And granted, it isn’t perfect. We at AARP know that it was never intended to be the sole solution to financial security in retirement. But [...]

A Plan for Reforming Social Security

The 6.2 Percent Solution: A Plan for Reforming Social Security:
“For the past several years there has been a growing consensus about the need to reform Social Security. Now, however, the debate has advanced to the point where it becomes important to move beyond generalities and provide specific proposals for transforming Social Security to a system [...]

Managing next-generation IT infrastructure

The McKinsey Quarterly

In recent years, companies have worked hard to reduce the cost of the IT infrastructure—the data centers, networks, databases, and software tools that support businesses. These efforts to consolidate, standardize, and streamline assets, technologies, and processes have delivered major savings. Yet even the most effective cost-cutting program eventually hits a wall: the complexity [...]

Facts Don’t Line up for Bush or MoveOn

FactCheck.org Bush’s State of the Union: Social Security “Bankruptcy?”:
FactCheck.org MoveOn.org Social Security Ad
The folks at FactCheck.org are equally critical of Bush’s use of agressive projections and language as he pushed his plan to revamp Social Security in his State of the Union address and MoveOn.org’s use of false claims regarding cuts in benefit payments.
“In his [...]

  

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