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Makework Stories, Jan-Aug, 2003

8/28/2003  1 makework case - cited in Wall Street Journal (WSJ) &/or New York Times (NYT) or Boston Globe (BG) -

1. Records: Halliburton has over $1.7B in Iraq contracts - Firm seen in position to earn more in reconstruction work, by Michael Dobbs, Washington Post via BG, A34, flagged by colleague Kate.
   [nooo kidding]
   WASHINGTON -...The company formerly [recently!] headed by VP Dick Cheney has 'won' [our quotes] contracts worth more than $1.7B out of Operation Iraqi Freedom
   [Ha, more like Operation Cheney Enrichment - for which YOUR kids are dying, you gulls!]
   and stands to make hundreds of millions more dollars under a no-bid contract awarded by the US Army Corps of Engineers, according to newly available documents.
   [Ah yes, the Corps of Engineers, another big makework center, and now apparently corrupted.]
   The size and scope of the government contracts awarded to Halliburton in connection with the [otherwise unnecessary] war in Iraq are significantly greater than previously disclosed....

1. U.S. corn subsidies said to damage Mexico, by Elizabeth Becker, NYT, C4.
   [Not to mention the American taxpayer! -]
   WASHINGTON...- The more than $10 billion that American taxpayers give corn farmers every year in agricultural subsidies has helped destroy the livelihoods of millions of small Mexican farmers, according to a report to be released on Wednesday...by Oxfam International....
   [If Mexican farmers are our responsibility, so are farmers of every other nationality - or are we racist? The other huge damage is to the American diet, because subsidizing all the bloated executive 'compensation' of American agribusiness to grow corn corn corn and desperately turn much of it into corn syrup, wondrous to relate/mirabile dictu it finds its way into every single "food" produced in this grossly overweight country, and you can hardly find anything sugarfree to eat.]

1. Tetra Tech Inc., NYT, C4.
   ...Pasadena CA, a provider of engineering and technical services...received a 1-year $65m contract from the U.S. military to check captured munitions and destroy selected items as part of the revitalization plan for postwar[?] Iraq.
   [Unspecified temporary "jobs."]

1. 8/23 Dying economy fuels exodus from America's heartland, by Hal Clifford, Boston Globe, A3, flagged by nurseryman Peter Bodycombe of Willseyville NY.
   America's population grew by 33m during the 1990s, but a visitor to most of the Great Plains could hardly tell the difference. Hundreds of rural counties, particularly in the Western farming states, have been losing population for the last 2 decades.
   [Same trend as in China, and similar cause -]
   The principal cause, say residents and specialists who study those areas, has been a lack of economic opportunities....
   [Translation: "it all comes down to (40-hr/wk) jobs."]
   Legislation introduced in Congress by Sen. Byron Dorgan (D- ND) is designed..\..to change that situation....
   [But with makework to pad out those obsolete 40-hour weeks, not simply a system to share the vanishing work.]
   The New Homestead Act proposes to stimulate job growth from the ground up [like anything from DC is 'ground up'!] by helping individuals start businesses or invest in rural areas. ...The bill would authorize investment tax credits of $1m per eligible county, allow accelerated depreciation of business investments, and create a $3 billion venture capital fund to invest in rural businesses....
   [Ain't it wunnerful how these high rollers always manage to justify more subsidies for the rich, when that policy, funneled via big agribusiness, is responsible for the concentration of income, lack of jobs and depopulation of the 'heartland' in the first place?! Unspecified, but probably not very many, new "jobs."]
   The average size of a farm..\..in places like Bottineau County ND...was 1,000 acres a generation [30 yrs] ago..\..said David Geiszler, chairman of the board of country commissioners...but now it is about 3,000 acres. That consolidation means fewer farm families and fewer opportunities for people to stay in the community..\..
   Another thrust of the legislation seeks to promote the growth of the professional class in rural areas by subsidizing higher education and home ownership. ...Provisions would forgive up to $2,000 per year of student loans for people who move into the counties, establish tax credits of up to $5,000 for home purchases, and allow homeowners to write off losses if their residences lose value.
   [Oh that'll be a BIG help - higher education already constituting one of our major realms of makework (see #19). And as for homes - weren't we focusing on JOBS, without which homes aren't much use?]
   The bill would also create "homestead accounts" to encourage individuals to save up to $2,500 annually, tax-free, and provide matching federal funds. The accounts could be used to pay for graduate studies, medical expenses, first-time home purchases, and business capital costs..\..
   [More and more backwards-bending big-government micromanagement. Aren't our rural areas afflicted enough with that kind of policy? Hasn't Byron 'Dork' Dorgan ever heard "he who governs least governs best," and "he who meddles, mars"?]
   The bill's provisions would apply to any rural county that has lost 10% or more of its population during the preceding 20 years....
   [Whoopee, there's a lotta jobs just digging that data!]
   This is the 2nd year the New Homestead Act [such a heart-warming name!] has been introduced. Congressional observers say it is not likely to be passed this session, either.
   [Thank God.]

2. 8/23 The doctor's shrinking future, letter to editor by Dr. Marjorie Barnett of Silver Spring MD, NYT, A24.
   Re "Medical establishment turns to powerful allies to thwart residents' lawsuit" (news article, Aug. 18):
   When I was a resident in the 1980s, I supported long hours because I knew I could set up a private practice and earn a good salary.
   [As if you can't do that better without long hours.]
   Now the work is still emotionally rewarding, but for many doctors, it can take years to get back what they invest in training. Residents make far less per hour than other hospital workers, like nurses, but they have more education.... Doctors have become the handmaidens for insurance companies by accepting heavily discounted reimbursements and paying outrageous medical malpractice premiums....
   [Ah, the incredible private-sector makework of the American health-insurance chaos, oops, "system," which involves 3 times as much paperwork than the Canadian system - see 8/21/2003 #1.]

3. [more private sector makework? -]
   8/25 Online today -...Real time, summary blurb, WSJ, front page.
   Why consumers are finding it harder than ever to figure out what kind of PC they should buy.
   [Could it be because PCs, originally quantity-enhancing technology, have become another area of quality-enhancing technology that is far far beyond quality levels that most people can even notice, let alone use? The desperation for work and income in a fixed-workweek economy rolls on. Compare -]
   8/25 Intel raised its revenue forecast, pointer summary (to column 5), WSJ, front page.
   ...citing demand for computers from U.S. consumers and buyers in Asia. But most corporate customers are refraining from major purchases or upgrades [because they've already got far more capability than they need?!], suggesting that a broad-based tech-sector recovery may be months or quarters away.

4. 8/25 Boeing Co., Dow Jones via WSJ, B5.
   Japanese aircraft makers have asked the government to help fund their work in developing and building Boeing Co.'s 7E7 jet...nicknamed the "Dreamliner"..\..an industry organization said....
   [Shades of Paul Weaver's "The Suicidal Corporation" - always whining to government for taxpayer money. This is market economics??]

5. 8/25 Indian industrial companies plan to expand, Dow Jones via WSJ, A9.
   ...Big government-funded infrastructure projects, cheap consumer loans and expectations of higher rural spending following a good monsoon are among the mix of factors that industry watchers say will fuel a boom in capital expenditure to increase output....
   [Again the assumption that "it's all about" capital expenditure alias investment - wrong - and output aka productivity (regardless of marketability) - wrong.]

6. 8/24 Ask Marilyn -...Will life eventually stop getting more complex? question from Candy Welty of Baltimore MD & answer by Marilyn Vos Savant, Parade Mag, 6.
   I don't think so. And isn't it ironic? Consider the labor-saving devices that take so much time to learn how to operate.
   [Then they're not labor-saving, are they. They're just more desperate private-sector makework, to fill out those minimum 40-hour workweeks that we've had since 1940 before high-tech.]
   I have a TV and sound system that requires 6 remote controls. All I want to do is turn it on and off, and maybe adjust the volume or some other ordinary task. Sometimes I wish it had only a few little knobs.
   [Another area of technology that has 'advanced' to its point of diminishing returns.]
   And remember how the explosive growth of personal computers brought predictions of the "paperless office"? Well, I now buy 10 times as much paper as I did before!
   [Most of it will just pile and be a waste anyway (printing out emails to get them off your machine, Marilyn?) - and this ain't exactly great for the environment. Fixed-workweek economics and downsizing - leading to job desperation. Why will this come to an end? Anders Hayden's title gives the clue, "Sharing the Work, Sparing the Planet." We really don't have a choice. There is a worksharing imperative that is gradually materializing. We simply cannot sustain the alternatives - strained and bloating makework, or war.]

7. 8/25 The aftermath of cyberattacks, pointer digest (to C4), NYT, C1.
   The 2 recent rogue computer programs, which disrupted corporate networks and forced PC users to take remedial measures - or ignore the problem at their peril - smell a lot more like vandalism than terrorism....
   [Virus writing and virus protection - private sector makework that demonstrates that our grasping technology has far outstripped our sharing technology, and our basis of common interest is weak and far behind. Also -]
   A nasty virus may not be over, pointer digest (to C4), NYT, C1.
   The fast-spreading SoBig.F e-mail virus is slowing after failing in an initial attempt to bog down the Internet, but security experts issued fresh warnings to computer users to brace for a possible new wave....

8. 8/25 Bull S.A., the computer company, aims to emerge from dependence on France - In Europe, state subsidies are a contentious topic, by Victoria Shannon, NYT, C2.
   PARIS - Bull S.A., the computer company [has been] kept alive for decades with taxpayer money....

9. 8/25 Senators say Iraq needs more U.S. troops and money, by Brian Knowlton, International Herald Tribune via NYT, A6.
   WASHINGTON...- Senior senators from both parties urged the Bush administration [yester]day to send 1000s more American troops to Iraq and said many billions more [taxpayer] dollars were needed to stabilize and rebuild that country and Afghanistan.... McCain.... Biden.... Graham.... [Compare -]
   U.S. said to plan bigger Afghan effort, stepping up aid, by David Rohde, NYT, A3.
   [Compare -]
   U.S. to send Iraqis to site in Hungary for police course - Will train up to 28,000 - Kerik says program is needed so security duties can be turned over quickly, by Dexter Filkins, NYT, front page.
   [Notice how the most important stuff is deepest in the paper. As we approach page one, it gets more and more trivial. But it's all makework.]

• Three companies win military health benefit contracts, Bloomberg via NYT, C3.
  Humana and Health Net won 5-year contracts to manage healthcare benefits for members of the US military and their families, the Defense Dept. said yesterday.
  1. Health Net, based in Woodland Hills CA won a $2.3B contract for the north region of Tricare, the health plan for troops and their families.... Humana, the biggest participant in Tricare, and Aetna lost a joint bid for the north region..\..
  2. Humana, based in Louisville KY won a $2.1B contract in the south, the Pentagon said.
  3. The west region was won by the closely held TriWest Healthcare Alliance for $2.1B.
  [Unspecified new "jobs."]

• Despite a government bailout, struggle over Resona continues - Bank will remain intact, Japan says, but suitors[/rapists?] jockey for choice units, by Henny Sender, WSJ, C5.
  The mid-May $17 billion government bailout of Resona Holdings Inc., Japan's 5th-largest bank, brought apparent stability to the country's financial system - for a moment....
  [Unspecified jobs saved - for the moment....]
  But behind the curtain of stability, the struggle over Resona continues. Over the past 13 years, Japan has repeatedly tried to rescue its troubled banks [and pump zillions of yen into public works] while failing to tackle the underlying problems of the languishing economy....
  ["Tackling" as defined by the WSJ would, of course, finish Japan off completely, but despite making the right noises (most recently on 8/01/2003 #1), Japan has also failed to get going with national worksharing, which would really dynamize its consumer markets and lift it out of depression in the same amount of time it took to tank in 1990 when it switched from Japan-style lifetime employment to US-style downsizing. Instead, Japan has wasted the last 13 years on possibly the world's biggest, costliest and longest collection of makework/public works programs, including an international airport (Kanzai? - check with Kate) on a huge artificial island - which, aptly, is sinking into the China Sea at the rate of one foot a year. Lord, these fool humans will do ANYTHING but the simple and obvious and powerful solution of automatic work SHARING - and we don't just mean the Japanese. The proof that despite its much narrower income-gap than America's, Japan still has waaay too highly concentrated levels of national income is shown in another article today -]
  Japanese stocks continue to rally, by Arran Scott, WSJ, C11.
  [So still far too much money funneling to savings/investment and far too little to dynamic spending and rapid circulation to support the massive weight of the 'black hole' of tightly compacted yen in the top brackets. Globally the over-concentration of income is suctioning the markets away from its own investments, which means, regardless of the ongoing, repeated, boring, lame attempts to "talk-start" a recovery, we're just going to blow bubbles until we centrifuge the income and dynamize spending by sharing the vanishing work via some form of market-oriented timesizing.]
  [Followup -]
  Japan: Bank expects loss, by Ken Belson, 11/15/2003 NYT, B4.
  The bank Resona Holdings Inc., which was effectively nationalized by the Japanese government, expects to lose 1.71 trillion yen ($15.6B) in the next year to next March as it writes off the bulk of its nonperforming loans. The company also said it planned to cut 4,000 more jobs.
  [Still think Japan is recovering?]

• General Dynamics and Northrop, pointer blurb (to A4), WSJ, front page.
  ...won an $8.7 billion Navy contract to build 6 submarines.
  [Oh they're real necessary. Compare, from 2 paragraphs above, -]
  German and French concerns, pointer blurb (to A6), WSJ, front page.
  ...are vying for contracts to help rebuild Iraq.

• [unspecified new 'jobs' - but only if you know certain people -]
  Bechtel ends move for work in Iraq, seeing a done deal, by Neela Banerjee, NYT, C1.
  [Re its 'move for work in Iraq,' see below 8/01/2003 #1. And if giant Bechtel drops out, it must really be raining slime over there.]
  The Bechtel Group, one of the world's biggest engineering and construction companies, has dropped out of the running for a contract to rebuild the Iraqi oil industry, as other competitors have begun to conclude that the bidding process favors the one company already working in Iraq,
  [gee, wonder what that one would be?]
  Halliburton....
  [Yep, VP Cheney's own Halliburton Co. So wake up, you miserable Democrats, and IMPEACH the whole rotten nest of them! Senior administration officials, caring more about vindictiveness than the law, have illegally "outed" a covert CIA operative -]
  Iraq arms critic reacts to report on wife, by Douglas Jehl, NYT, A9.
  Joseph Wilson IV, a retired ambassador who was a secret envoy of the Bush administration to Africa and who publicly voiced doubts about a reported Iraqi weapons program, says he has become a target of a campaign to discourage others like him from going public.... It was not until after Mr. Wilson made his account public last month in an op-ed article in The NYT, to the intense discomfort of pResident Bush's aides [not Bush of course cuz NYT has drifted so far right], that the White House acknowledged that it had erred in including the disputed accusations in Mr. Bush's State of the Union address in January.
  Days after the column...Mr. Wilson's wife was identified by name as a covert CIA operative in a column by the conservative [ha!] columnist Robert Novak, a disclosure that Mr. Novak has attributed to senior administration officials.
  Officials are barred by law from disclosing the identities of Americans who work undercover for the CIA. That provision is intended to protect the security of operatives whose lives might be jeopardized if their identities are known. [Sen.] Charles Schumer of NY...has asked Robert Mueller, director of the FBI, to look into the case....
  [Cut the kid gloves, Schumer, and call for impeachment. The neighboring ad has the guts if you don't -]
  IMPEACH BUSH! - George W. Bush lied about weapons of mass destruction to push the U.S. into the Iraq war, 1/9-page ad by Lawrence Lader, NYT, A9.
  He should be held accountable for damaging our nation and our democracy and should be impeached for causing unnecessary deaths of over 248 American soldiers.
  Let Congress know your views: call 202-224-3121.
  Citizens for Impeachment; Lawrence Lader, President; PO Box 443, NYC, NY 10276-0443.
  [Lord Christ, if the parties were reversed, the Republicans would have been calling for impeachment two YEARS ago after their trigger-happy impeachment attempt against Clinton just for having sex with an intern in the White House. Thirty years ago, the White House was already BESIEGED by demonstrators calling for Nixon's impeachment merely for snooping on Democratic campaign headquarters. Sleeping America is making a farce of democracy and turning itself into a slave state, the new USSR.]

• France's government, pointer blurb (to A11), WSJ, front page (//NYT W1).
  ...is bailing out engineering group Alstom. The rescue will draw scrutiny from the EC.
  [Here's the indicated article -]
  French bailout of Alstom to get close EU scrutiny - State to take 30% stake in ailing engineer group despite rules limiting aid, by John Carreyrou, WSJ, A11.
  ...by buying half [300m] of the 600m euros ($680m) in new shares the company plans to issue to stave off a cash crisis.... Alstom is one of the nation's biggest employers, with more than 100,000 workers worldwide, including over 30,000 in France, and letting the company fail would present the state with an unemployment headache.
  [100,000 'jobs' saved - for the moment.]
  And France's banks, including RNP Paribas and Societe Generale, have successfully argued that letting Alstom go under would damage the French banking system....
  [Ah, the trials and tribs of a primitive form of capitalism that, lacking a workweek automatically fluctuating against unemployment, HAS TO perpetuate failure and corruption - until they're much much worse.]

1. Bechtel Group, by Jackie Calmes, WSJ, A4.
   ...lead contractor on Iraq's infrastructure, now figures the price is at least $16B - more than 23 times the $680m the U.S. [taxpayer!] is so far contributing. Power and water will each take more than $6B; airports and building repairs will $2.6B. By 50% vs. 35%, poll respondents say U.S. hasn't kept war costs under control.
   [All for a totally irrelevant, completely unnecessary, invasion of a strange, weak country on the other side of the world. Vote for Bush-Cheney, America's hungry tapeworms!]

2. Halliburton turns to a profit, aided by U.S.'s Iraq jobs, by Russell Gold, WSJ, B5.
   Halliburton Co.'s government contracts in Iraq boosted revenue in an otherwise poorly performing segment and helped swing the company to a $26m profit in the second quarter. The profit, equal to 6 cents a share, was a sharp reversal from a loss of $498m, or $1.15 a share, a year ago.
   [No wonder Cheney was desperate to shove American taxpayers into war - "War is declared - universal joy among the merchants!" We need to impeach this war criminal and his gang.]
   ...The Houston...oil-field services and construction company said work in Iraq, including a controversial no-bid contract to rebuild the postwar oil industry, contributed 9% of the quarter's total revenue....
   [The Bush administration is smashing America down far deeper and faster than any puny Osama bin Laden.]

• [here's an attempt to slow the mushrooming of the one of America's biggest makework campaigns, higher education (see #19 on our realms of makework page) -]
  Tens of thousands will lose college aid, report says - Researchers say $270m in Pell grants will be shed, by Greg Winter, NYT, A13.
  The first report to document the impact of the government's new formula for financial aid has found that it will reduce the nation's largest grant program by $270m...once it takes effect in the 2004-5 academic year \-\ the report [is] by the Congressional Research Service, the research arm of Congress.... That amount...probably means that hundreds of thousands of students will end up getting smaller Pell grants, not counting the 84,000 who it is estimated will no longer qualify [at all]..\.. The Dept. of Education has cited its obligation under federal law to revise the formula and played down the impact.... The Dept...notes that government spending on education will continue to rise [regardless]. Because of the swell in college-age students, and the rising popularity of higher education among low-income families, about 300,000 more people will receive Pell grants by 2004 than do now....

1. California: Settling environmental case, AP via NYT, A20.
   The City of Oakland has agreed to pay $2 million to settle a case arising from the dispute arrest of two environmentalists who[m!] jurors ruled were wrongly accused of being "eco-terrorists" when their car exploded in 1990. The City Council decided not to appeal the case and agreed on Tuesday to settle after its legal fees in the 12-year-old case topped $4 million. The two, Darryl Cherney...and the late Judi Bari [all the more for Darryl!], of the group Earth First, were arrested by the Oakland police after the explosion. The case fell apart weeks later when prosecutors said there was not sufficient evidence to bring charges.
   [So let's see. Oakland now has to pay $6 million, whereas if it had settled immediately on this case of overzealous police, paranoid prosecutors and greedily imaginative lawyers, it would only have had to pay 1/3 of that. Well, Darryl in the photo is wearing a big smile. Truly the American Dream has become Hitting the Lottery or, as in this case, Suing the Deep Pocket. RIP Oakland taxpayers. Unspecified dragged-out government 'jobs', especially for lawyers, all those 2003-1990= 13 years, not just 12.]

2. Sweden shows way [to makework], compiled by Don Clark, WSJ, B4.
   Swedes used to call their country Wireless Valley, due to thousands of mobile-technology start-ups and telecom powerhouse Telefon AB L.M. Ericcson. Over the past few years however, Ericsson has seen cellphone sales drop, cut its workforce nearly in half [see most recently 4/30/2003 #1]....
   Now Sweden's government is trying to renew some of the excitement. One weapon: a new Internet application for mobile phones, called MapMate. Developed by the National Land Survey, the Swedish government's 300-year-old mapmaking department, the service offers unusually quick and easy downloads of high-quality maps for handheld computers....
   [Unspecified prolonged government 'jobs' with accompanying imposition on taxpayers. There are certainly enough software map companies in the private-sector now to rebut the outdated claim that government involvement is needed. Compare the next article, "Paper chase," which starts, "Heard the old joke about the paperless office? It will arrive after the paperless bathroom." This is an outdated joke, what with the tremendous progress the Japanese have made toward just such paperless toilets. New toilets under brandnames like Toto have control panels that rival 747s'. They'll do everything for you - spraywash your posterior, blow-dry it etc. - except tie a bow around your butt. Colleague Kate sat a little too far forward once and it practically spraywashed the ceiling behind her! Lonely nerds no longer need Wendy the Blowup Plastic Girl or private rooms on the Internet - they can simply buy a Toto and emerge from la Petite Salle with smiles of satisfaction.]

1. Rehiring initiative is extended to workers outside of ruling, Dow Jones via WSJ, C10.
   Verizon Communications Inc. is rehiring 1,100 laid-off workers in the Northeast who weren't covered by last week's order [see 7/12/2003 below] by an arbitrator to take back 2,300 employees in New York who were improperly dismissed in a cost-cutting initiative. The reinstatment possibly pre-empt[s] similar rulings in labor grievances in other states.... Arbitrator Shyam Das ruled Friday that Verizon's justification for the December layoffs - a weak economy and toughening competition from rivals and new technology [our italics] - wasn't permissable under \a\ union...contract covering 75,000 of the NY telephone company's nearly 230,000 employees.... "We disagree with that ruling," Verizon spokesman Eric Rabe said. "Now, we have voluntarily decided to no longer contest union grievances over layoffs in the other states. So we will rehire workers laid off in Pennsylvania, New Jersey and New England as well."
   [Just as well, if they want any markets left wherein to sell their wares and services. We suggest they wake up to the power of timesizing, not downsizing.]

2. Government to study weight-loss successes, by Otesa Middleton, Dow Jones via WSJ, D4.
   WASHINGTON -...The National Institutes of Health this week announced a 3-year, 1,600-[participant] study to answer that question \of\ how to lose weight and keep it off....
   [Unspecified gov't 'jobs' propped up. Somehow in the last century, the federal government got into the diet business. The costly makework orientation of big government rolls on and on regardless of party in power.]

1. North Korea will be paid, news blurb, WSJ, front page.
   ...$2.1 million by the U.S. to help conduct four searches for remains of U.S. servicemen missing since the Korean War.
   [This isn't makework for America. It's not even makework for an ally. This is makework for an enemy. What kind of ship is Bush and fellow CEOs running? He's already created the biggest national debt and annual deficit in history and he can't think of anything better to do with $2,000,000 than to pay a nuclear power with warheads pointed at us to search for soldiers that went missing in a war half a century ago??? As Jesus said, "Let the dead bury their dead and come, follow me" - whereupon he (Big J) went off healing the sick, of whom we in America are getting a lot more without health insurance every week.]

2. [and France in North America has a leetle makework problem too -]
   On Bastille Day, far away but fervently French, by Clifford Strauss, NYT, A4.
   ISLES ST. PIERRE & MIQUELON - ...Forty percent of the people are on the government payroll..\..
   [Ouch. That rivals the Canadian north.]
   "We are very close to Canada [off southern Newfoundland], but we are more French than the French of France," the mayor of St. Pierre, Karine Claireaux, said....
   [Hey, so are half the Quebecois, and half the Anglo-Canucks are more British than the Brits.]

• Verizon is told it must reinstate 2,300 workers let go last year, by Steven Greenhouse, NYT, B1.
  [This is a new (to us) wrinkle on makework!]
  An arbitrator has ruled that Verizon Communications improperly laid off 2,300 workers in December and must reinstate them, a decision that union officials [who should be fighting like hell for timesizing, not featherbedding!] hailed but that company executives said underlined Verizon's need to gain more flexibility in contract talks to cut costs....
  [The unions should have flexible timesizing, not rigid job-padding 'feather-bedding' in their contract as if the 40-hour workweek came down with Moses from Mt. Sinai. By the way, it was actually workweek reduction that came down with Moses from Mt. Sinai, because the Fourth Commandment cuts the Hebrews' workweek from the Philistines' seven-day workweek to a radical new six-day workweek, wherein the seventh day is set aside for appreciating YHWH (Rasta 'Jah', Jehovah's Witness 'Jehovah' = consonants of Yahweh with vowels of Edonay, 'lord', always printed in small caps 'LORD' in standard Bibles) probably originally Yahweh (3d-person singular imperfective-tense causative-mood of verb håyå = 'to be', 'to happen', standalone meaning 'he who causes to be or happen', 'executive', 'commander', apparently originally leader of small band(s) of Semitic samurai, superbly trained swordsmen who patrolled certain sheep-grazing tracts in the Middle East on a randomized schedule enforcing a heterosexual code. For the code, theory see Gen.1:28 'be fruitful & multiply' and practice see Gen.18:13 YHWH 'why did Sarah laugh?' And for the enforcement, see Gen.19:11 & 24 'Sodom & Gomorrah'. Note the primacy of loyalty to a best friend (albeit a reproductively dysfunctional wife) over functioning heterosexuality (in a pregnant but disrepectful maid) in Gen.16:6. The seventh day of rest (Saturn's Day) got changed to a first day of rest (Sun Day) by the early Church in honor of the affirmed resurrection of Jesus after his capital punishment two days earlier (Friyya's Day to us Angles, Venus' Day to Rome's brood) = three days earlier according to Roman inclusive counting. The original seven-day week was based on the set of seven moving/roving lights in the sky - Sun, Moon, Mercury (Tiu), Mars (Woden), Jupiter (Thor), Venus (Frigga), Saturn - which were visible to the naked eye, and all originally called 'rovers' (Greek 'planets'). Hence our basic Anglic numb-ers: Sun (½, later 0 ), Moon (1), Tiu (2), Woden (2½), Thor (3), Frigga (4).]

• Washington wire...- Faith in labor?, by Jackie Calmes, WSJ, A4.
  Bush's Labor Dept. gives nearly $4 million to faith-based organizations for help placing disadvantaged workers in jobs. But a further $1 million goes to the AFL-CIO.
  [How long must we endure this inefficient, penny-ante strain&drain for non-profit job creation and "placement" in non-existent jobs? When can we switch to just sharing and spreading the vanishing work, and give ourselves a break?!]

• The jobs-spending connection, pointer blurb (to C2), NYT, C1.
  Any government stimulus should concentrate on areas that produce a high number of well-paying jobs. Tax cuts for the rich simply will not do it. Jeff Madrick: Economic scene.
  [Unfortunately, Jeff has still not caught up to the failure of government stimulus - apart from timesizing (1938-40) and war (1941-45) - to produce a high enough number of well-paying jobs. When FDR tried it, 1933-37, government stimulus or 'pump priming' dba makework alias public works alias job creation programs etc. succeeded only in reducing unemployment from 24.9% (in 1933 due to 1932 policy vacuum) to 14.3% (in 1937 due to 1936 stimulus policies) and then it slipped back, almost halfway, to 19.0% (in 1937 due to 1936 stimulus policies). Then why has Jeff Madrick learned absolutely nothing from the stimulus experience of Japan throughout the 1990s, when it spent ten-billions of dollars (trillions of yen) in public works that got it nowhere?! Jeff, Jeff, Jeff - when are you going to wake up to worktime economics and stop wasting your Big Microphone there in the NY Times 'Economic scene' column? We need to quit the futile straining for direct or indirect gov't job creation/'production' and just divvy up the vanishing employment that automation and robotics have still, for the moment, not appropriated.]

• [some toxic, typically American, private-sector makework -]
  Law firms' revenues rise 8.5%, aided by diversification, cuts, by Kara Scannell, WSJ, C11.
  Corporate earnings are in a slump, but revenues at law firms continue to climb despite the economic downturn.
  [Just like undertakers during a plague.]
  Gross revenues at the 100 biggest law firms rose 8.5% to $38 billion in 2002, helped by diversified-practice groups, cost cutting and higher billing rates, according to American Lawyer magazine's annual survey. ...Bankruptcy and restructuring work and the increase in litigation helped offset the decline in M&As and corporate-finance areas.
  The rise in gross revenues comes as the number of lawyers rose just 4.2%, down from 11% in 2001, the survey. Law firms haven't slashed staff like many Wall Street brokerage houses. The number of partners without equity stakes in their firms climbed an average 13% in 2002, more than four times the average growth of equity-level partners, according to the magazine. The biggest source of growth during the past decade has been outside of the U.S., where there were three times as many lawyers in 2002 as in 1992.
  [Unspecified new "jobs" - for vultures.]

• Formula-free diversity - High court allows use of race on a case-by-case basis; Hiring more admissions staff, by Daniel Golden & Sholnn Freeman, WSJ, B1.
  [You can regard this as another unfunded federal mandate, or you can regard it as yet more government-mandated, micromanaging makework -]
  ...The demand to drop statistical formulas that favor a particular group and instead evaluate candidates individually will probably require hiring extra admissions staff. ...Chief Justice William Rehnquist, writing the majority opinion, specifically warned that universities could not use "administrative challenges" as an excuse to rely on admissions formulas rather than "individualized consideration."...
  [Mandated inefficiency. In other words, it's OK in today's confused USA to practice mass layoffs which deny "individualized consideration" in kicking people out of jobs (and away from their roles as confident consumers), but it's not OK to use numerical guidelines to waft people into jobs - and roles as confident consumers. No wonder we have weak consumer markets and deflation! Rehnquist Inc. should cut the recession-deepening micromanagement and focus on easing our transition to nationwide worksharing and wage centrifugation via workweek reduction.]

• U.S. unveils an Iraqi building fund to create jobs - and goodwill, by David Luhnow with Keith Johnson, WSJ, A14.
  BAGHDAD, Iraq - Trying to prevent sky-high unemployment rates from fueling anti-American sentiment, officials in charge of rebuilding Iraq [pathetic and costly arrogance!] are stepping up efforts to jump-start the moribund [or rather, U.S.-murdered] economy. L. Paul Bremer, the top U.S. official in the country, yesterday unveiled a $100 million program to fund construction projects [doubtless through the Bush administration's conflict-of-interest corporate links], including refurbishing [U.S.-]damaged government buildings in Baghdad and finishing infrastructure projects interrupted by the [totally unnecessary and criminal] war. The projects, to be funded with [stolen] Iraqi money, include a surgical hospital in Baghdad and a highway linking the capital to the nation's second-largest city, Basra.
  "This fund will create jobs for thousands of Iraqi workers on important projects across the country," Mr. Bremer said.
  ["Thousands" plural and not "tens of thousands" means anything between 1.1 and 9.4 thousand. Let's give this character the benefit of the doubt and generously estimate 9,000 new "jobs."]
  "In all of these cases, work will be done by Iraqi construction companies creating work for Iraqis."
  [Sounds noble, but contradicted immediately afterward -]
  He also announced a business support and information center that will give advice to foreign and Iraqi companies that want to invest or take part in the reconstruction.
  [Didn't he just say this was going "in all of these cases" to be "done by Iraqi construction companies"?? Oh, by the way, just how high is the "sky-high" unemployment rate? We eventually get to it buried in the middle of the fourth paragraph in text, not number, form -]
  The move is part of a wider effort to get Iraqis back to work quickly. Iraqi bureaucrats estimate that prewar unemployment hovered at around half [50%] the labor force - a number that has undoubtedly risen in the wake of hostilities.
  [Let's conservatively estimate that at 60% unemployment, folks.]
  "We face an unemployment problem that is certainly without precedent in my lifetime," [the sheltered] Mr. Bremer said.
  [So the hypocrites in the self-righteous White House want to cut nasty government intervention is the U.S. economy while injecting massive government intervention in a pathetic economy on the other side of the world which posed no terrorist or conventional threat to us. In other words, the fools, morons and idiots of the Bush administration want to transfer off-the-scale levels of unemployment from, of all places, Iraq, to the United States. Anger among any informed Americans would be a mild mild response. Guess what the response is among American "beneficiaries" in Iraq -]
  Just last week, U.S. [gov't] officials started a similar fund to hire Iraqis to help clean up streets littered with garbage and bombed cars and tanks. The moves are vital to ensuring Iraq's security, because many of the unemployed are young men who in increasing numbers blame the Americans for their problems.
  [This at a time when Americans have trouble cleaning up their own littered streets, compared to Germany or even Canada, and let's not even think about the Bush administration's effect on environmental cleanup in the U.S. This is truly the administration from hell, the mother of all disasters. Will ordinary Americans wake up?]
  In the past 2 weeks, a string of violent attacks on U.S. soldiers has claimed the lives of 10 U.S. servicemen. Yesterday, one American paratrooper was killed and another wounded in a rocket-propelled-grenade attack at a weapons-collection checkpoint in Baghdad, the U.S. Central Command said.
  "Our ultimate success in Iraq will depend on the economy," Mr. Bremer said....
  [Hell, Bush can't even cope with the U.S. economy. Nor can Greenspan, Wall Street, or mainstream economists, who scarcely regard worktime as a significant economic variable, let alone a key variable, let alone the key variable. And when they do, they think rising worktime per person is a positive indicator, regardless of employment concentration and rising under-employment - just as they focus narrowly on productivity regardless of marketability. But the "stone" these "builders" reject - worksharing via workweek reduction - will be the chief cornerstone of any sustainable recovery. Not even our traditional solution, non-nuclear war (= massive government makework coupled with massive workforce eradication), is working today.]

• [Joy of joys! - a lot of peripheral makework thanks to Cheney's glorious war efforts -]
  Advertising - American companies are adjusting almost everything that represents them overseas [to avoid the fact that] - Some brands are suffering the consequences of being American, by Stuart Elliott, NYT, C5.
  [Here's the Journal's less America-, more money-focused version -]
  Multinational firms take steps to avert boycotts over war, by Glenn Simpson, WSJ, front page.
  ...Michelin produced a set of responses for its U.S. employees and managers, and other firms have quietly begun to mobilize lobbyists, pollsters and PR specialists. Multinational companies [MNCs] also are employing services that monitor the Internet for new attacks so they can be countered quickly....
  [Aaah, "employing." But that's what it's all about, isn't it (aside from Halliburton hits Megabucks etc.).]

• A military track to citizenship, by Marjorie Valbrun, WSJ, A4.
  [and that's not all -]
  When Ena Gomez moved to the U.S. from Ecuador 8 years ago, she soon hit many dead ends of the road to the American Dream.
  • She cut errant strings from newly sewn dresses at a NYC clothing factory,
  • cleaned rooms at a Hilton Hotel,
  • and rang up sales at a Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant.
  "I worked 16 hours a day making $6.50 an hour, and I couldn't get ahead," she says.
  [But then the Great GOP Makework Campaign to the Rescue! -]
  Ms. Gomez then joined the Army, and now...is Sgt. Gomez, a military recruiter based in Ft. Worth TX....
  As the war in Iraq intensifies, the prominence of immigrants such as Sgt. Gomez among the armed forces is helping to temper the emotional debate over immigration to the U.S. in the wake of the attacks on the Pentagon and WTC....
  [Yep, the Third World breeds 'em and pushes 'em over here, and we start the wars to create "jobs" and/or kill 'em off. This is an insult to intelligence. Better to have a sane referendum-valved immigration policy that's sensitive to our increasingly fragile natural environment, and a self-adjusting worksharing system that doesn't require us to create artificial jobs, whether bleeding-heart gov't ‘jobs’ à la Démocrat (CCC, WPA, TVA, CETA, Peace Corps, generous welfare, block grants, enterprise zones, farm policy, industrial policy...) or simple killorbekilled Pentagon-channeled gov't ‘jobs’ ebenso wie die Republikan Partei.]
  [Followup -]
  Immigrant soldiers, editorial, 4/4/2003 WSJ, A8.
  Two Marines killed in Iraq have now been awarded citizenship posthumously....

1. S.E.C. chief says fixing agency is going to take time - The new budget will allow the S.E.C. to increase its staff to 4,000 employees, (by Stephen Labaton,) NYT, C5.
   [Hoooboy, more and more enforcement cuz we got no common interest as Americans stronger than a money-drowned 1-person-1-vote "democracy" and dying-union-movement "seniority." No caps on "my share" of skills, work, income, wealth. So everybody out for hisself, cheatin, lyin, stretchin the quarterlies. No mechanism for recycling wasted excess skills, employment, income or wealth per person. Timesizing starts the recycling. Till then, we got more and more tax/debt-intensive makework.]

2. [But since makework ain't enuf - always too little too late, we need systems like disability and shelters and prisons and military -]
   Cokes and candy for GI Joe - Consumer-goods companies vie to supply the military...., by Sarah Ellison, WSJ, B1.
   [Unspecified new jobs. And them's the nice jobs - the nasty ones are out there in the tents in the sand storms with Dubya-induced gas & germs comin' atcha. Den you gits to die to relieve the economy-killing officially-denied labor glut. You die an the rest of us gits a raise. Das de way it is. Cuz Dubya an de uddah rich boys too dumb to unleash de power o' sharework, not makework.]

• Some states propose end to arts spending - Seeing radical solutions for deep deficits, by Stephen Kinzer, NYT, B1.
  [The difference between art and art therapy? = "Does it sell?" And if a government buys a statue, OK, that's selling, but ongoing subsidies for people, directly or indirectly, to do art, are not selling - they're just flavored welfare, and rank in the same category as corporate welfare for agribusiness, or mining companies, or oil corporations = the makework category.]
  
  • ...The year, facing an even larger deficit \than\ last year...state legislators in Arizona...are proposing...cutting arts financing altogether. A legislative committee has recommended eliminating the state arts agency in Arizona and its $5.1m annual budget. It has also recommended that a $7m fund established as an endowment for arts programs be dissolved, so the money can be used for other purposes....
  • Gov. James McGreevey of New Jersey, who is grappling with a $5B deficit, has proposed cutting the entire $18m budget of his state's Council on the Arts and canceling a planned $10m payment to a cultural trust fund that supports small arts groups.
  • Missouri is also planning to eliminate its entire arts budget.
  [How did funding the arts become a government responsibility??? It amounts to forced charity, that often violates the tastes of taxpayers who are forced to pay for it, instead of having lower taxes and more free-market discretionary spending power of their own, with which to diversify the tastes and markets of the state (or national) economy. If this bogus financial budget "crisis" in the states and the nation has any positive effects, surely one at the top has to be eliminating some of these incomprehensible pork programs that somehow just "grew like Topsy" over the years and decades, and now have entire networks of dependent population parasitizing the public purse. And why the heck should ordinary people be forced to join the wealthy is supporting what, after all, primarily reflect the tastes of only the wealthy?]
  ...Last year...several states approved sharp cuts in their arts budgets.
  • ..\..Struggling to control a ballooning budget deficit...Arizona reduced funds for the arts....
  • California cut its support for arts and cultural programs by 41%.
  • Massachusetts went even further with a 62% cut....
  With tax revenues slumping because of the weak economy, governors and state legislators are telling arts groups that they must now rely on private rather than public donors.
  [Amen to that. Of course, as long as there is some degree of graduated (ie: centrifuging) income taxes, this will further decrease the activation-through-centrifugation of spending power and further hobble recovery, so in such states, this policy of diminishing makework sort of presupposes an operational sharework program like Timesizing to keep the states' economies from tanking further. However, in other states such as Massachusetts there are only flat (ie: non-centrifuging) taxes on income, so cutting government makework like this has no appreciable de-activating decentrifuging effect on spending power.]
  The economic downturn, however, has meant that private funds are also harder to come by....
  [That's BS. There are plenty of wealthy people who are - plenty who went through the entire Great Depression without noticing it and plenty today who never noticed the dot-com bubble burst. It's just that many of them sense their insulation and isolation so they love to indulge in complaining along with the rest of the population, and that means indulging in "play poverty" and feeling a 10% reduction in, say, a $100m estate, as acutely as if they were about to get evicted. If there's anything you have a lot of time for on a $100,000 unearned income, it's getting evermore sensitive and whiney. Just ask Phil Hyde, who lived on an unearned income of $700/month in the early 70s when that was serious traveling money and his Harvard Sq. rent was only $125/month including heat and water (but then lost everything in the Weis-Voisin debacle of '73).]

• 10,000 sail for Gulf on 7-ship U.S. armada, 4-photo caption, NYT, front page.
  Sailors and marines said goodbye to loved ones in San Diego....
  [Compare -]
  Out of Work? cartoon by Chivast, NYT, A35.
  [cartoon shows soldier wearing goggles-equipped camouflage helmet -]
  Undereducated?
  No health plan?
  Join the Army
  & see Iraq.

For earlier makework stories, click on the desired date -