Times Online writes, "The credit crunch will ensure that China becomes the world's largest economy within a decade, up to 11 years earlier than previously expected, it is forecast today."
Except China is a mercantilist economy that sells predominantly to the US; the credit crunch means that the US is not buying trinkets from China anymore.
This article describes some of the economic and political issues facing China. There seems to be little incentive for the Chinese economy to become a consumer based one, rather than a mercantilist Tiger economy based on making products for the wealthy US consumer - who is a bit tapped out at the moment. (more)
Dave Bath : The Economist said that China would be selling more to asian economies than western before too long (I think 2020 was their guess), and trans-himalayan trade is booming: India and China will soon be each other's largest trading partner.
When trans-himalayan trade gets between 30 and 40 per cent of the trade for both India and China, China will be able to jettison the US dollar, if not before.
The electoral system in the United States is heavily federal in character with the states controlling many of the machinations and procedures for the national elections. A common device used by the states to keep out unwanted candidates is the requirement for a certain number of signatures to be collected for someone to be on the ballot. In my opinion this is an onerous task which acts as barrier to compete for many candidates.
It also has some oddities, for instance today the Republican would-be challenger to Senator John Kerry was thirty short;
According to Secretary of State William F. Galvin's office, Ogonowski's campaign delivered just 9,970 certified voter signatures to its election division today just before the final deadline, 30 short of the 10,000 he needed.It will most likely mean he is off the ballot short of legal re-instatement.
I cannot work out American car design; it has always produced distinctive cars but you have to be blind to the absolute stinkers that get produced along with the classics. There are some cars that just do not look right. The American Ford Focus is such a car. (more)
cam : More proof:
People bought it. Autoblog commented:
People bought it. Autoblog commented:
We're well aware that there are many satisfied owners out there who appreciate the practical design of the Aztek's interior layout, smooth ride and the world's best built anti-theft device (i.e. its looks).heh. Someone penned this design, and people agreed that it looked ok, and then with that design much money was spent to bring it to market. Including moulds and dies. How many people hated their jobs with this car?
avocadia : The thing I noticed when I was over there wasn't so much ugly as boring. We had two or three Chevrolet Impalas - I can't actually remember what we were driving around LA - and it is just a boring looking car. And it had to be boring for me to notice despite my twin handicaps of having a tin eye for design in general and so not being a car person at all.
cam : I was talking to someone about why American cars tend to be black/white/silver/cream. Apparently having a fashionable colour can date a car too quickly and destroy its resale value. So the chartreuse colours you see on Holdens won't be on the Pontiacs they are importing. It is a wierd sort of commercial conservatism. I guess it is just the companies responding to the markets; Honda/Toyota/etc have equally boring colour choices.
Californian companies are starting to do the process of insourcing. This is where a company creates satellite offices in nearby cities, such as Phoenix, Denver, Salt Lake City or Portland to do development. One of the reasons is ease of communication; most of those cities are a day flight away from San Francisco. Another concern with outsourcing overseas is that a vendor is intimate with your business logic.
I thought the lower rent and salaries in these cities was a major consideration but it is not. The Californian labor market is tapped out of quality technology candidates and smaller tech companies are having trouble competing with the 'cool' billion dollar companies like Google* for skilled workers. (more)
An ethics reform bill has passed in the US. I think those bullet points will help improve legislative governance. It is a shame the Australian Senate is not independent enough from the executive presently to pass similar laws which enforce process on the Senate. (more)
Robert Dallek has an op-ed in the WaPo which argues for a constitutional amendment to remove an unpopular and failed President - a recall election in other words. The electorate had their opportunity to judge in 2004 and they decided to democratically re-elect President Bush. So I do not buy that argument. (more)
A Henrico District Court Judge has decided that the fees on Virginian drivers which are in addition to the normal penalties are unconstitutional. Too often the judicial ends up being the last barrier between bad laws and bad policy; legislators and the executive force this state of affairs. The decision was immediately appealed by commonwealth lawyers. (more)
I am opposed to impeaching the President of the United States until concrete solid evidence turns up. The only place I can currently see that happening is around the FISA wiretappings. Impeachment is not a process to recall an inept, incompetent or unpopular President. It is a specific legal process that requires proof of "treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors". (more)
avocadia :
The phrase does not reappear in impeachment proceedings until 1450. In that year articles of impeachment against William de la Pole, Duke of Suffolk (a descendant of Michael), charged him with several acts of high treason, but also with "high Crimes and Misdemeanors," including such various offenses as "advising the King to grant liberties and privileges to certain persons to the hindrance of the due execution of the laws," "procuring offices for person who were unfit , and unworthy of them" and "squandering away the public treasure."I am sure you will allow that we could find quite a number of candidates to fulfill the second of those high crims and misdemeanors :- ) I believe that there are a number of recent examples of the first as well, Ms Miers and so on. Do we have a equivalent in Australia? No confidence votes? Or do we just inherit the English version of impeachment?
avocadia : I tried to link to the source, but I wrapped it in a cite element and it got stripped :- )
Washington Post
John Barrdear : I essentially agree with Megan McArdle's view on this. Whatever the legal pros and cons of attempting the impeachment, it would occupy the entirety of Congress right up to and including the 2008 election.
More productive things can be done with that time, both in electoral terms (there's nothing further to be gained at the ballot box from an impeachment than is already available from Bush's own doings) and in practical, actually-doing-good-by-the-nation terms (not that we'll see any of that coming out before 2009 anyway).
cam : Must put the cite tag in as allowed html. Executive privilege in the US is not judicially tested. So Bush is fighting over convention and asserting sovereignty over a grey area. They have been pretty careful how they have legally exposed themselves and most of their attempts to expand executive power have been in the conventions. So the subpoena issues would have to be tested by the judicial first to determine if executive privilege applies (I dont it does) before Congress got dibs on it.
Because of the checks and balances in the Washington system a lot of the placement of executive positions is done with the Senates approval. So Congress is just as much responsible for the bad governannce of the Bush Administration as the executive itself. It is supposed to act as an energetic branch to stop this kind of thing. They have not in so many areas. It is only recently they got the (populist) courage to act energetically. It is party-machine based to an extent but separating the legislative from the executive enables those types of electoral outcomes.
Isn't the GG our assertion of sovereignty over the parliamentary executive who says, "Nup, election time you bunch of hopeless losers." No confidence too, as adam argued in the past that assertion of sovereignty ends up in an election in a parliamentary system. There are arguments against that due to democracy's morality, but it is probably the only way to hold an executive accountable when they control the House.
cam : If Congress finds irrefutable proof of illegal activity - and I suspect they will - then I have no problem with the Bush Administration being impeached. I believe it is important that the legislative is very very energetic and reasserts their sovereignty over the executive so that any future expansionist executive's have a tonne of precedents to climb over. I would not mind if bill passing came to a complete halt and the legislative spent their entire time investigating the Bush Administration.
The problem is that the legislative in the last six years, as per exception governance, has been so weak and has enabled and accelerated executive rule. They have passed legislation that enables arbitrary governance from the executive and a trampling of liberties. The legislative is one step ahead of the executive at this stage though as electoral will was forced on them in 2006.
It is a pretty crummy state of affairs.
Felix the Cassowary : I know you much prefer the Washington system to the Westminster one, but I think this is one case that shows the superiority of Westminster (or, in general, parliamentary). With a parliamentary government, the Prime Minister is not elected by the people so the people are not responsibility to him to let him serve a complete term. If a Prime Minister is elected in a marginal government and the make-up of the house(s) to which he is responsible changes during a term, the Prime Minister and his Government can be brought down, as Gough so famously discovered. Before him, Gorton discovered that even if your party has the confidence of Parliament, you personally can be brought down if you aren't as popular as you need to be. PS: Can you add a preview mechanism?
Leonard E. Levy writes, "They [America] resorted to arms in 1775, the Continental Congress believed, not to establish new liberties, but to defend old ones. In fact, they did establish many new liberties but convinced themselves that those liberties were old." (more)
adam : I love this process of creative misinterpretaton, of casting innovation in the terms of the conservative past. It is however a similar process to the reinterpretation of clear founding documents by incremental decisions by the Supreme Court.
