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Miscellaneous Good News, August, 2003
[Commentary] ©2003 Phil Hyde, The Timesizing Wire, Box 622, Cambridge MA 02140 USA (617) 623-8080

8/30/2003   headlines from heaven - alias glimmers of random hope/intelligence -

1. [1 UPsizing - 250 restored jobs]
   Delta to recall 250 pilots laid off during war, NYT, B3.

2. A top Blair aide resigns as a dispute over Iraq rages, by Warren Hoge, NYT, A4.
   LONDON...- Alastair Campbell, the influential and combative director of communications and strategy for PM Tony Blair, announced his resignation [yester]day as controversy raged over his role in portraying the nature of Iraq's threat to the West....
   [Great, now how about you Brits quit screwing around and ditch Blair with a simple Vote of No Confidence - the whole advantage of UK/Can.etc-style Parliament over US Congress is that it's sooo much easier to do a Vote of No Confidence than a presidential Impeachment. SO DO IT! If we hadn't had that moron Blair and his snooty British accent backing up moron Bush and moronic Texas accent, it would have been a lot harder for our moron to push through his utterly insane and bankrupting invasion of Iraq.]

1. [1 UPsizing]
   Abbott Laboratories to add 90 workers at plant in Arizona, Bloomberg, NYT, C3.
   ...Abbott's Ross Products unit will receive $3000-6000 for each new hire from Arizona's Dept. of Commerce to use for employee training, the company...based in Abbott Park IL..\..said. The site now has about 400 employees and 25 contract personnel. The Ross unit makes drinks like Ensure for adults, and baby formulas....
   [Never tells where in Arizona, but this is a 90/(400+25)-90= 90/335= 27% upsizing. Note several stories today where there should have been upsizings but none are mentioned -]
   Dollar General posts 41% rise in income, Reuters via NYT, C4 (//WSJ C14).
   [and]
   Kellwood Co. - Profit jumps 70%, but outlook for full fiscal year is reduced, Dow Jones via WSJ, C14 (//NYT C3).
   [Here's a neat way to skip hiring despite 70% profit jump - just reduce your forecast - though this one was only cut from $2.70 to $2.60 a share (4%). And our biggest downsizing today (4056 cuts in Japan) occurred from a position of profit (at Konica Minolta in Japan) - see 8/29/2003 #1 - with this hint given, "The plan features a 12% reduction in its work force...over the next 3 years and 162B yen ($1.38B) in capital outlays over the next four years." "Capital outlays" could be code for robotization. If CEOs want this kind of corporate-level firing option and profit-raising-without-workforce-growing flexibility, they need some timesizing type of economy-level discipline, or they will incessantly deepen recession by nibbling away their own markets.]

2. The Okies [Oklahomans] take over, by Jesse Eisinger, WSJ, C1.
   ...We have national securities laws, national regulators and national authorities because the markets wouldn't function with 50 different [state] sets of law (not to mention what Guam might say). That's all the more reason for the Feds not to give any [state or] local authority a \reason to get involved.  So\ note to those Feds who cringe every time Oklahoma Atty Gen. Drew Edmondson denounces Bernie Ebbers..: you brought this on yourselves. For this is the result of federal investigators at the SEC and the Justice Dept. not enforcing the nation's antifraud statutes to the fullest extent of the law.
   Sure some boardroom miscreants who dabbled in fraud actually get indicted. Some even go to jail.
   • ImClone's Sam Waksal is in prison (though not for acctg fraud).
   • Enron's Andy Fastow awaits trial.
   But most of the time, the wheels of justice fall off the wagon.
   • Cendant's Walter Forbes is under indictment but still hasn't been brought to trial.
   • The statute of limitations to bring criminal charges against Sunbeam's Al ['Chainsaw'] Dunlap expired.
   • Many WorldCom executives have been charged, but they are small fry compared with [the big fish -] Ken Lay, Jeff Skilling, Richard Scrushy, and Mr. Ebbers, all of whom proclaim their innocence.
   And so ambitious [players] from the states step in. The Feds should have learned their lesson from Eliot Spitzer and seen this coming. In the case of WorldCom (now called MCI), public frustration is palpable. The accounting fraud was revealed well over a year ago....
   The Feds complain about how difficult it is to prove accounting fraud. But it is their culture that sets them up for 2nd-rate results. They love to settle. When the SEC settles, the guilty party neither admits nor denies wrongdoing.
   [And the settlement may be just a tiny fraction of the "haul" from the fraud.]
   ...Settlements are less significant than prosecutions that result in prison. Household names need to be busted quickly and some need to head to jail.
   [Otherwise the message is, "Hey, give it a try! Ken Lay, Jeff Skilling, Richard Scrushy, Bernie Ebbers, Chainsaw Dunlap and countless others are still out there laughing and lying in the sun!"]

• [1 UPsizing]
  Izod [sportswear] plans 155 stores in China, by Tracy Rozhon, NYT, C3.
  ...over the next 5 years \with\ a Chinese company...Hempel International Group...based in Hangshou....
  [Unspecified new low-wage retail jobs.]

• [1 UPsizing]
  Yum plans Mexican expansion, WSJ, C3.
  MEXICO CITY - Yum Brands Inc. plans to invest close to $50m in Mexico during the next 4 years as part of an effort to expand its local restaurant network to 1,000 units....
  [Unspecified new jobs. So who the hell are they?]
  Yum Brands is owner of the KFC, Pizza Hut and Taco Bell fast-food restaurants.
  [Ohhh yeah.]
  ..\..David Novak, chairman of the restaurant company, told Mexican Pres. Vicente Fox at a meeting that Yum Brands expects to open 590 restaurants across the country within the next 4 years. The Louisville KY company currently has 410 restaurants across Mexico....

1. Canada's health-care system offers cost savings, study finds, by Joe Pereira, WSJ, D3.
   [Interesting how neo-con misled Americans are now changing their tune about Canada's universal-coverage health-insurance system.]
   BOSTON - A study on healthcare costs found that, on a per-patient basis, the cost of processing paperwork in the U.S. is more than 3 times the cost in Canada, partly due to wrangling over who is going to pay the bill. The study - conducted by researchers at Harvard Medical School and published in today's New England Journal of Medicine - said savings gained from a national health-insurance system like Canada's would be sufficient to provide medical insurance for the 41 million Americans who lack coverage....

2. At long last, salarymen are given their due, by Norimitsu Onishi, NYT, A4.
   TOKYO - Every Tuesday evening, millions of Japanese are moved, often to tears, by [a TV] series "Project X: Challengers," which documents successful projects undertaken by Every(salary)man.... The heroes tend to be salarymen, aging and unsung, who make for stiff studio guests..\.. An improbable[?] TV hit and cultural phenomenon, the show...has spun off books, comics and DVD's.... Each technological innovation - invariably the fruit of forbearance and selflessness, single-minded devotion to work and company - recalls an age when values went unquestioned [and Japan practiced LIFELONG EMPLOYMENT, not downsizing!]..\..
   • Japanese engineers after World War II succeeded in pumping crude out of a particularly difficult oil field
   • building a bridge in western Japan
   • inventing the electric rice-cooker...
   • coming up with the VHS standard...
   • plasma television...
   • the rotary engine...
   • engineers completed a hydroelectric dam in Osaka...
   • developed the automated ticket gates used at train stations across the country..\..
   • [not to mention developing
     • JIT (just in time) aka kanban manufacturing,
     • and TQM (total quality management) under the guidance of American statistician and Japanese economic hero, W. Edwards Deming,
     • and related bells and whistles of Japanese management such as zaibatsu, and William Ouchi's "Theory Z" management,
     • and highly robotized "flexible manufacturing," especially in auto making.
     The only thing Japanese engineers did not do, and this was their fatal lack, was ensure that their massive contributions to work-saving technology would be responded to neither by makework and featherbedding, not by downsizing, but by timesizing. Engineer and inventor Arthur Dahlberg established the general direction in 1932 with "Jobs, Machines and Capitalism," and linguist and economic designer Philip Hyde devoted his life, from 1974 on, to making the direction into a practical economic program.]
   In a country groping its way out of [or merely through] a long economic malaise, the program illuminates a recent past when all seemed possible, inspiring feelings of validation and nostalgia among older Japanese, envy and desire among some younger ones. ...Said Katsuya Kondo, a 36-year-old computer engineer, "...Now we're living in an era without dreams. I'm envious of the people in 'Project X'"....
   Akira Imai...the creator and producer of the program, said he came up with the idea 3 years ago, a ddcade after the collapse of Japan's so-called bubble economy.
   [Ha! That economy was more solid than their current disaster, because it was based on lifelong employment, which maintained the Japanese consumer base and domestic demand. The bubble economy is what they have now, afflicted with downsizing, and not yet converted to worksharing aka timesizing. Until they proceed much further in that direction than just the municipal, prefectural and sporadic-corporate level that they've accomplished, they'll just, like us/US, be blowing economic bubbles.]
   ..\..A typical 45-minute episode might start with a look back at the suffering endured during World War II. Against big odds - say, American occupying forces who sneered at Japanese efforts to look for oil in the Middle East, or American supermarkets that waved away a soya sauce company's product as "bug juice" - the salarymen gain a toehold. After the inevitable disaster or setback, the project succeeds, after which a mixture of historical film and dramatic re-creation gives way to brief studio interviews with the protagonists, or, if they are dead, with their colleagues or relatives. The camera shows the aging salarymen walking slowly into the studio and bowing. As the camera zooms in on a wrinkly face, capturing the slightest hint of a watery eye at a critical moment, many viewers like..\..Tomiko Sakamoto, 47...just lose it. "These people succeeded after repeated setbacks," Ms. Sakamoto said.... "It's the best program!" said Mitsuyoshi Saito, 55, an air-conditioning company employee, in a...room inside the Karaoke No Tetsujin in the Ginza district of Tokyo, a huge building with rooms rented by the hour [where many go to view taped episodes of 'Project X']. "My dream," Mr. Saito said, "is to become the kind of man worthy enough to appear on 'Project X'"..\..
   "Japanese were hurt and had lost vitality [in the 1990s]," said [creator/producer] Mr. Imai, in an interview at the HQ of NHK, Japan's public TV network. "I thought that the middle-aged and older people who built up Japan after the war, when they looked back on their own lives, must have felt that their lives had been negated."...
   [Any time the Japanese want to quit feeling negated and looking backward, and start feeling affirmed and looking ahead again, Phil Hyde is ready to go over and help them pull together their low-level worksharing efforts into a powerful and solid national economic recovery program. With many worksharing programs already in place in municipalities, prefectures and individual corporations across the islands, Japan, as the second-largest economy, is within easy distance of ousting Europe from first place in worksharing technology. Japan has the potential of leading the world once it debugs the worksharing/timesizing prototype. Then, once again, Japan will be the envy of American management, and thousands of books will be written about Japanese managers' insights and excellence, as they were in the 1980s.]

1. [1 UPsizing]
   Computer Sciences to add 1,000 jobs in India, Bloomberg via NYT, C7.
   ...based in El Segundo CA..\..double its workforce in India...this fiscal year...with highly educated, lower-wage employees [= smaller consumers] to sell services more cheaply. Shares fell....
   [The race to the bottom roars on.]

2. DVD-audio format hasn't caught on, by Wailin Wong, WSJ, B4.
   [Is this really quality-enhancing technology or is it just change for the sake of change, that is, masked makework?]

• [double surprise]
  Physicians group advocates medical coverage for all in U.S. - The government should be the sole payer, the doctors' proposal says, by Sarah Lueck, WSJ, D2.
  WASHINGTON - Citing "irrationality" in the U.S. healthcare system, a group of about 8,000 physicians is calling for a national health-insurance program that would provide medical coverage for all Americans.... The proposal was written by the Physicians for a National Health Program, a nonprofit advocacy group funded by donations from its 10,000 members..\..
  [That's nice - at laaast - considering the American Medical Assoc. (AMA) has been the biggest blocker of single-payer health insurance in this pathetic chaotic-"healthcare" country.] The government should become the single payer for medical benefits, similar to health systems in Canada and some European, according to a proposal endorsed by the group and set for publication today in the Journal of the American Medical Assoc. [JAMA].
  The proposal, aimed at reopening the debate [physicians were the only ones it was closed for] on providing universal health coverage, advocates the elimination of the current system ["system"? - what "system"], in which most insured Americans get employer-sponsored coverage from private-sector companies.
  Supporters include
  • two former U.S surgeons general from Democratic administrations,
  • the former editor in chief of the New England Journal of Medicine
  • and hundreds of medical-school professors....
  "Access to comprehensive healthcare is a human right," the article states.
  [Well, NOW they say so.]
  "It is the responsibility of society, through its government, to ensure this right."
  [Welcome to the 1960s in every other industrialized country! Ooops, looks like everyone's not yet on board -]
  The AMA, which publishes JAMA, noted in a written statement that it disagrees with the proposal. Under a single-payer system, "the U.S. would be trading one problem for a whole set of others," such as long waits for services, AMA Pres. Donald Palmisano said....
  [Don't they mean "the U.S. would be trading a whole set of problems for one other"? - since the example they give is the only example we ever hear - except maybe for "You can't choose your own doctor." And even if they both have the same number of problems, at least with all its problems, under single-payer, everyone is covered, and with all its problems, under our current chaos, increasing millions of us aren't covered. And the two examples are bogus anyway. In May, Phil Hyde couldn't get a colonoscopy till October in a supposedly "short wait" regime, and with colleague Kate's employer getting bought out on a yearly or semi-yearly basis, with all the attendant benefit changes, she's never sure if her preferred doctors are on the new list of Preferred Providers. America doesn't have a healthcare system. It has a mess. We're going to put on our pyJAMAs, grab our teddybear and sulk.   The Boston Globe fronted this story -]
  Universal health plan is endorsed - Thousands of doctors back proposal in JAMA, by Kowalczyk & Mobley, Boston Globe, front page, flagged by colleague Kate.
  [One surprise is that lots of doctors have finally reached a point of frustration with the ludicrous bedlam of insurers and paperwork to achieve this basic level of common sense. The other is that the conservative Journal joined the liberal Boston Globe in publishing the story, but we didn't see it in the supposedly liberal NY Times.]

1. [UPsizing #1]
   HSBC plans to expand U.S. unit, Dow Jones via WSJ, C5.
   HONG KONG - The CEO of HSBC Holdings PLC says it has global expansion plans for aspects of its recently acquired U.S. consumer-finance unit, Household International. "Over the medium term, we plan to take Household's platform of consumer lending and credit cards on a global basis," CEO Stephen Green said. "Demographics are such that consumer finance works well in emerging markets."
   [Oh yeah? How's collections?]
   Mexico will be the "nearest priority,"
   [brilliant! - a global expansion plan that starts with Mexico, just as we hear the "giant sucking sound" of Mexican jobs getting vacuumed to China and India]
   although HSBC plans to introduce aspects of the Household system to France [stimulated by more jobs and more shopping time thanks to its new 35-hour workweek], India [stimulated by more jobs thanks to American high-tech outsourcing and luddism], Brazil [stimulated by waves of emigrants to the U.S.] and even Hong Kong ["expansion begins at home"?], he said.
   [Unspecified new jobs.]

2. [UPsizing #2]
   Reins International Inc., Dow Jones via WSJ, D5.
   ...Tokyo..\..plans to open 1,000 Japanese-style barbecue restaurants in the U.S. during the next 10 years.... Trials at 3 pilot stores in and around Los Angeles show that Japanese-style barbecue cooking using a charcoal brazier is catching on in the U.S.
   [What a mistake to extrapolate to the whole U.S. from la-la-land! They tried one of these down the hill from us on the Somerville side of Porter Sq, Cambridge MA a couple of years ago, and PLOP!]
   Reins plans to open more of the restaurants, called "Gyukaku," by year's end and targets 50 stores mainly on the West Coast by the end of 2006. The Japanese restaurant operation will then advance east, opening stores across the U.S. and in such major cities as NY, company officials said.
   [Unspecified new GyuJobs (Japanese for McJobs). If these top-bracket morons of whatever nationality would invest in their payroll instead of evermore plant with a minimum of minimum-wage employees, they might have some decent markets, but that will never happen until they are forced by labor shortage to part with some of their highly concentrated lucre, and the only question is, will that labor shortage happen unintelligently by war &/or plague, or intelligently by timesizing?]

1. 8/10 The angry season - Outrage is back: Americans of the left and right alike are asking, 'Where are these guys leading us?'
   • Down with the plutocrats - In my travels, I find widespread dismay, frustration, resentment and outright anger that no one in power is standing with [people] against this, by Jim Hightower, Boston Globe, H12, flagged by colleague Kate.
     ...The question I hear everywhere is: "Where the hell are the Democrats?" Well, as the pundits, if so many people oppose the Bush agenda, why did they vote to give Republicans a sweeping victory - indeed, a "mandate" - in last year's congressional elections?
     They didn't. The majority of voters gagged on their choices and didn't vote at all - only 33% of those eligible cast a ballot in races for the House. The bottom line is that Bush's GOP got only 17% of eligible voters. Some "mandate."
     More pathetic is that the Democrats drew only 15%. They did so poorly because their consultants and money baggers convinced them not to run against Bush's extremist agenda. Instead, Democrats offered this bumper sticker to the electorate: "Hey, we supported those tax breaks for the rich too. And we also backed Bush's war. Plus we voted for that big honking Homeland Security department. Only we're not quite as enthusiastic about it all as the Republicans are. So vote for us."
     It's hard for the donkeys to win the race if they're going to carry the elephants on their backs.
     Yet party chairman Terry McAuliffe, the corporatist Dem leadership Council, Senate minority leader Tom Daschle, and the other strategic geniuses in charge plan to stay this disastrous course. They believe their [mega-]corporate-friendly, Republican-lite, socially liberal agenda will siphon off just enough wishy-washy soccer moms to eke out a Democratic "win." If the meek ever inherit the earth, these guys will be land barons.
     Here's my wacky idea: What if the Democrats were to reach out to - dare we dream - Democrats, specifically wading into that deep pool of [100-33=] 67% who are mostly working class and who feel politically homeless? That's 121 million people. Get even 10% of them and Democrats start winning every race.
     The conventional wisdom is that being overtly and aggressively progressive is passe. But look again. A broad progressive movement not only exists, it's moving [see "Backed by Soros" below]. Beneath the national media radar, grassroots groups have been organizing and winning all across the country on such issues as...public financing of elections, stopping Wal-Mart, banning sweatshop-produced goods, and providing universal healthcare.
     Meanwhile, Bush's chickens are coming home to roost - stunning deficits, angry families of troops mired in Iraq, missing WMD's, a newly skeptical media, state budget crises, the exportation of high tech's middle class jobs, the naked rightwing loopiness of Tom DeLay.... Far from being politically invincible, Bush now has only 47% of Americans saying they want him re-elected, with 46% opposing him.
     And note that the Democratic presidential contenders who are out ahead are not retread Republicans, but upstarts who want to put a little kick back in the Democratic donkey. Professional politicos have been stunned by the "Howard Dean phenomenon."
     But they're missing the signficance of [Dean's] surge...which is that there is a roiled group of unaligned voters looking for someone who thinks like them. Dean didn't create this phenomenon; it created him. And the next election may well be won by a progressive candidate who can harness their anger.
     [Amen amen amen.]

   • Even traditional conservatives outraged by radicalism of the right - It has become clear that this course is neither neo nor conservative, by Clyde Prestowitz, Boston Globe, H12, flagged by colleague Kate.
     For a moment during the spring, neoconservatives associated with the Bush administration thought they had died and gone to heaven.
     • The quicker than expected fall of Saddam Hussein seemed to justify their vision of a new America that would reshape world politics.
     • The United States would use its overwhelming military power to crush tyrannical regimes [(if they had oil)], they declared, and establish American-style capitalist democracies in their place.
     • Domestically, the neocons' only question was whether the taxcuts aimed at reshaping American society would be merely big or gigantic.
     As time passes, however, it has become increasingly clear that this course is neither neo nor conservative and that it may lead more quickly to hell than to heaven.
     This was not the foreign policy agenda traditional conservatives like myself voted for in 2000. Concerned about growing anti-American feeling around the world, we were pleased when candidate Bush spoke of adopting a humbler attitude in foreign policy and of reducing US overstretch abroad. We also anticipated that a new Bush administration would embrace long-standing conservative objectives such as smaller government, fiscal responsibility, taxcuts crafted with a goal of balancing budgets, strong protection of individual rights, and support for healthy state and local governments. There was certainly no mention in Bush' campaign of revolutionary schemes to transform the world.
     So imagine our surprise when instead of a new humility, the fledgling Bush administration embraced a new arrogance.
     • ...Why so loudly reject a treaty [Kyoto on global warming] that could have been left in limbo without any meaningful effect on the United States? Why make enemies so needlessly?...
     • The events of 9/11/01...allowed a small group of self-styled neoconservatives in [Bush's] administration to turn the ship of state onto a dramatically new course. ...This meant ditching America's "no first strike" commitment to deterrence in favor of preventive war.
     • Out too were long-term alliances in favor of temporary "coalitions of the willing."
     • Suddenly America's "mission" was to recast the world in the American democratic capitalist [ie: plutocratic] mold. Neoconservatives have openly called this strategy imperialistic.
       
     Domestically, the administration's new direction has been even more dramatic and, for traditional conservatives, alarming.
     • Far from being reduced, the size of government has grown larger as spending has been significantly increased to support our imperialist strategy.
     • Passage of the Patriot Act has imposed the greatest constraint on individual American freedoms since the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II.
     • In the face of budget projections now deep in the red, further taxcuts may cripple all but the most basic of government functions.
     Will traditional conservatives sit still for this? The dawning realization that the aftermath of war is likely to be long, painful, and costly, coupled with the absence of any significant WMDs, has begun to refocus attention on the viability of the preventive war doctrine and the new imperialism.
     Conservatives like former National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft have noted that despite its great power America still needs help. Yet its efforts to get that help have been undermined by global resistance to the new US strategy [except by leach countries with their hands out for handouts] and by our government's loss of credibility. Indeed, the new doctrine is seen by many as being not only ineffective but also dangerous. Resistance is also growing on the domestic front. Maine's Republican Sen. Olympia Snowe, a member of the traditionally conservative Main Street Coalition, played a key role in capping the most recent tax cut at $350B. Even more significant has been the revolt of Republicans in the House against the recent changes in FCC rules regarding the consolidation of media companies. This, quickly followed by a House vote supporting US sales of inexpensive imported drugs, again in defiance of the White House, indicates that traditional conservatives are waking up to an important discovery. ...There is nothing conservative about gigantic military establishments [absent Reagan], endless oceans of red ink [absent Reagan], and crumbling state and local governments burdened by unfunded obligations passed on by an irresponsible federal government. Far from conservatism, this is radicalism of the right, and it is unsustainable because it is at odds with fundamental - and truly conservative - American values..\..
     [And -]
     There is nothing neo about imperialism. It is just as un-American today as it was in 1776....

2. 8/09 Backed by Soros, liberals coordinate anti-Bush efforts, by Thomas Edsall, Washington Post via Boston Globe, A3.
   WASHINGTON - Labor, environmental, and women's organizations, with strong backing from international financier George Soros, have joined forces behind a new political group that plans to spend an unprecedented $75m to mobilize voters to defeat pResident Bush in 2004.
   [Thank God somebody's finally woken up.]
   The organization, calling itself Americans Coming Together, or ACT, will conduct "a massive get-out-the-vote operation...." ACT has commitments for more than $30m....
   [News flash - 12:30 pm 8/12 WGBH Boston news - Bush is down [from 69%] to 53% public approval, same as before 9/11/01. Then there's -]
   8/11 Net gains for Dean - Candidate increasing funds, support via the Web, by Joanna Weiss, Boston Globe, front page.

3. 8/09 Thousands rally in France, trade battle in mind, by John Tagliabue, NYT, A2.
   ...Tens of thousands of people, young, old and in-between, gathered on this sunbaked, wind-swept plateau in southwest France [yester]day, heeding the call of organizations opposed to the way global commerce is being reorganized. They were brought together to discuss ways to influence WTO talks in Cancun, Mexico in September.
   It was a 'Woodstock' against globalization.... Much discussion revolved around the menace to diversity in the food world....

4. 8/11 Navy turns auctioneer, lets sailors bid for unpopular posts, by Greg Jaffe, WSJ, B1.
   ...To keep skilled sailors in the service - which entails keeping their families happy - Navy officials put some of those out-of-favor jobs up for online auction, a la eBay. Among the first to bite was Petty Officer 1st Class Elishaine Moses. He offered to take a job in Yokusha, Japan, but only if the Navy was willing to bump up his salary by $350 a month [so he could] save enough money to build a house....

1. [1 UPsizing]
   Church's plans 60 restaurants in Mideast, AP via NYT, C6.
   [They gotta be crazy.]
   Church's Chicken [based in Atlanta] announced an agreement today with a poultry company in Kuwait to develop 60 restaurants in 6 Middle East countries...Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, and Qatar in the next 5 years...under the name Texas Chicken....
   [Oh Bush's state should go over real big - like a lead balloon. Unspecified new jobs.]

2. [and a double about-face at the Wall Street Journal - about-face #1 -]
   Our friends the Saudis - The Kingdom's terror cooperation, or lack thereof, becomes a U.S. political issue, editorial, WSJ, A8.
   There was a day when those words didn't invite cynicism.... It's not just that 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudi nationals.... A hearing last Thursday before the Senate Government Affairs Committee exposed the 2 large public questions at issue:
   1. Whether the Saudis are doing all they should to crack down on terrorists and their support network,
      [or how about, whether the Saudi government IS the terrorist support network]
   2. and whether our own government has been too inclined to look the other way when they don't [i.e., when the Saudis don't do all they should to crack down etc.]...
      [or how about, whether certain members of our own government, such as Cheney, conspired with certain members of the Saudi government, such as Bandar, to instigate terrorism against the U.S. that would provide a provocation for war against Saddam Hussein with a view to creating wildly lucrative business for Bush's oil pals and Cheney's Halliburton Co. - see our makework page today, 8/8/2003. After all, Cheney has been obsessing about Iraq for years, ever since the first Gulf War by Bush Sr.]
   [and this in the Journal! -]
   The larger point is that America's post-9/11 relationship with Saudi Arabia is no longer a matter of private diplomacy that can be resolved at the Crawford ranch.... The White House is simply not going to be able to get away with the same old secrecy....
   [Then the Journal tries a strange face-saver -]
   The Saudi question has finally given opportunistic Democrats a chance to get to the pResident's political right [our mixed casing] on fighting terror....
   ["Opportunistic"? How about "patriotic"?! "Finally"? What about Bush's stinting homeland security and US soldiers' benefits - almost asking for more terrorism against us to provide him with more war-president photo ops for his re-election?! To the "political right"? As if rightwingers have a monopoly on fighting terror?! What simpletons.]

3. [about-face #2 -]
   The end of maestro- [cf. macro-] economics - Chairman Greenspan has forfeited his credibility, editorial-page piece by Melvyn Krauss, WSJ, A8.
   [Krugman said this in the Times months ago - see "Is the maestro a hack?" on 2/07/2003 #4. Then this revelation -]
   ...Most of the growth in the second quarter was due to non-recurring war expenditure....
   ["Non-recurring" unless Bush heats up Liberia, and Iran, and North Korea, and Saudi Arabia, and France, and Canada, and Mexico... and... and.... There's an infinite war expenditure in crusading and inquisitioning and witch-hunting round the world.]

• Park Place Entertainment Corp., NYT, C2.
  ...Las Vegas, the world's largest casino operator, may have its credit rating cut to below investment grade by S&P's because it plans to build a casino near Chicago....
  [Unspecified jobcuts.]
  S&P's said Park Place should pay down debt before expanding.