Category: Government

After Infrastructure Stimulus “Japan Is Less, Not More, Dynamic”

(p. A15) To help fight . . . economic sluggishness, Japan has invested enormously in infrastructure, building scores of bridges, tunnels, highways, and trains, as well as new airports–some barely used. The New York Times reported that, between 1991 and late 2008, the country spent $6.3 trillion on “construction-related public investment”–a staggering sum. This vast outlay has undoubtedly produced engineering marvels: in 1998, for instance, Japan completed the Akashi Kaikyō Bridge, the longest suspension bridge in the world; just this year, the country began providing bullet-train service between Tokyo and the northern island of Hokkaido. The World Competitiveness Report ranks Japan’s infrastructure as seventh-best in the world and its train infrastructure as the best. But while these trillions in spending may have kept some people working, no one can look at the Japanese numbers and conclude that the money has ramped up the growth rate. Moreover, the largesse is part of the reason that the nation now labors under a crushing public debt, worth 230 percent of GDP. Japan is less, not more, dynamic after its infrastructure bonanza.

For the full commentary, see:
Edward L. Glaeser. “Notable & Quotable: Infrastructure Isn’t Always Stimulating.” The Wall Street Journal (Weds., Sept. 14, 2016): A15.
(Note: ellipsis above added; ellipsis in article title below, in original.)
(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date Sept. 13, 2016.)

The above commentary by Glaeser was quoted from the Glaeser article:
Glaeser, Edward L. “If You Build It . . . : Myths and Realities About America’s Infrastructure Spending.” City Journal 26, no. 3 (Summer 2016): 25-33.

Murders Up More than 10% in U.S. in 2015

(p. A1) Murders in the U.S. jumped 10.8% in 2015, according to figures released Monday by the Federal Bureau of Investigation–a sharp increase that could fuel concerns that the nation’s two-decade trend of falling crime may be ending.
The figures had been expected to rise, after preliminary data released earlier this year indicated violent crime and murders were climbing. But the double-digit increase in murders dwarfed any of the past 20 years, in which the biggest one-year jump was 3.7% in 2005.

For the full story, see:
DEVLIN BARRETT. “Increase in Murders Sharpest in Decades.” The Wall Street Journal (Tues., Sept. 27, 2016): A1-A2.
(Note: the online version of the story has the date Sept. 26, 2016, and has the title “U.S. Murders Increased 10.8% in 2015.”)

“My Fate Lies with Me, Not with Heaven”

(p. A7) . . . Dr. Unschuld, who is as blunt as he is outspoken, stands at the center of a long and contentious debate in the West over Chinese medicine. For many, it is the ur-alternative to what they see as the industrialized and chemicalized medicine that dominates in the West. For others, it is little more than charlatanism, with its successes attributed to the placebo effect and the odd folk remedy.
Dr. Unschuld is a challenge to both ways of thinking. He has just finished a 28-year English translation of the three principal parts of the foundational work of Chinese medicine: the Huangdi Neijing, or Yellow Emperor’s Inner Classic, published by the University of California Press. But unlike many of the textbooks used in Chinese medicine schools in the West, Dr. Unschuld’s works are monuments to the art of serious translation; he avoids New Age jargon like “energy” or familiar Western medical terms like “pathogens,” seeing both as unfair to the ancient writers and their worldviews.
But this reflects a deep respect for the ancient authors the detractors of Chinese medicine sometimes lack. Dr. Unschuld hunts down obscure terms and devises consistent terminologies that are sometimes not easy to read, but are faithful to the original text. Almost universally, his translations are regarded as trailblazing — making available, for the first time in a Western language, the complete foundational works of Chinese medicine from up to 2,000 years ago.
. . .
. . . then there is the issue of efficacy. With his extremely dry humor, Dr. Unschuld likens Chinese medicine to the herbal formulas of the medieval Christian mystic Hildegard von Bingen. If people want to try it, they should be free to do so, he said, but not at taxpayer expense. As for himself, Dr. Unschuld says he has never tried Chinese medicine.
. . .
His purely academic approach, . . . , makes him a difficult figure for China to embrace. While widely respected for his knowledge and translations, he has done little to advance the government’s agenda of promoting Chinese medicine as soft power. Echoing other critics, he describes China’s translations of the classics as “complete swindles,” saying they are done with little care and only a political goal in mind.
For Dr. Unschuld, Chinese medicine is far more interesting as an allegory for China’s mental state. His most famous book is a history of Chinese medical ideas, in which he sees classic figures, such as the Yellow Emperor, as a reflection of the Chinese people’s deep-seated pragmatism. At a time when demons and ghosts were blamed for illness, these Chinese works from 2,000 years ago ascribed it to behavior or disease that could be corrected or cured.
“It is a metaphor for enlightenment,” he says.
Especially striking, Dr. Unschuld says, is that the Chinese approach puts responsibility on the individual, as reflected in the statement “wo ming zai wo, bu zai tian” — “my fate lies with me, not with heaven.” This mentality was reflected on a national level in the 19th and 20th centuries, when China was being attacked by outsiders. The Chinese largely blamed themselves and sought concrete answers by studying foreign ideas, industrializing and building a modern economy.

For the full story, see:
IAN JOHNSON. “The Saturday Profile; An Expert on Chinese Medicine, but No New Age Healer.” The New York Times (Sat., SEPT. 24, 2016): A7.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date SEPT. 23, 2016, and has the title “Gandhi the Imperialist – Book Review.”)

The recently finished book mentioned above, is:
Unschuld, Paul U. Huang Di Nei Jing Ling Shu: The Ancient Classic on Needle Therapy. Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 2016.

Without Property Rights “No One Is Safe”

(p. 1) BINDURA, Zimbabwe — Dozens of angry young men jumped off a truck in front of Agrippah Mutambara’s gate, shouting obscenities and threatening to seize his 530-acre farm in the name of Zimbabwe’s president. They tried to scale the fence, scattering only when he raised and cocked his gun.
Zimbabwe made international headlines when it started seizing white-owned farms in 2000. But Mr. Mutambara is not a white farmer. Far from it, he is a hero of this country’s war of liberation who served as Zimbabwe’s ambassador to three nations over two decades.
But when he defected from President Robert Mugabe’s party to join the opposition a few months ago, he immediately put his farm at risk.
“When it was happening to the whites, we thought we were redressing colonial wrongs,” said Mr. Mutambara, 64, who got his farm after it had been seized from a white farmer. “But now we realize it’s also coming back to us. It’s also haunting us.”
. . .
(p. 10) “No one is safe,” said Temba Mliswa, 44, who was the chairman of the party’s chapter in Mashonaland West Province before his expulsion from the party in 2014.
Mr. Mliswa got a 2,000-acre farm belonging to a white Zimbabwean in 2005. When he took possession, Mr. Mliswa said, police officers beat the white farmer and his workers.
But last year, Mr. Mliswa said, hundreds of youths sent by the party invaded the farm again, destroying property and beating his workers. They eventually left, but one of Mr. Mugabe’s ministers recently held a rally in which he threatened to take Mr. Mliswa’s farm unless he stopped criticizing the president’s party.
“They use the land to control you,” Mr. Mliswa said.
. . .
Mr. Mliswa said he had received his farm when his uncle headed the lands ministry. Once considered Mr. Mugabe’s right-hand man, the uncle was also expelled from the governing party in 2014 and now risks losing his farm, too, Mr. Mliswa said.
“There was blood spilt on my farm, there was violence, which I really, really, really, really regret,” he said of the seizure of his farm from its white owner in 2005. “I apologize profusely, but it was because of the system I was involved in. I belonged to a party whose culture is violence.”

For the full story, see:
NORIMITSU ONISHI. “‘No One Is Safe’: Zimbabwe Threatens to Seize Farms of Party Defectors.” The New York Times, First Section (Sun., AUG. 28, 2016): 1 & 12.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date AUG. 24, [sic] 2016, and has the title “‘No One Is Safe’: Zimbabwe Threatens to Seize Farms of Party Defectors.”)

Low Interest Rates Cannot Substitute for Needed Deeper Reforms

(p. B3) MUMBAI, India — Three years before the 2008 global financial crisis, an Indian economist named Raghuram G. Rajan presciently warned a skeptical audience of top economic thinkers that excessive risk threatened the entire global financial system.
As Mr. Rajan stepped down on Sunday [Sept. 4, 2016] as India’s top central banker, following intense criticism at home, he offered a new warning: Low interest rates globally could distort markets and would be difficult to abandon.
Countries around the world, including the United States and Europe, have kept interest rates low as a way to encourage growth. But countries could become “trapped” by fear that when they eventually raised rates, they “would see growth slow down,” he said.
Low interest rates should not be a substitute for “other instruments of policy” and “various kinds of reforms” that are needed to encourage growth, Mr. Rajan said in a recent interview with The New York Times. “Often when monetary policy is really easy, it becomes the residual policy of choice,” he said, when deeper reforms are needed.
. . .
In discussing the Indian economy in the interview, Mr. Rajan offered a less-than-ringing endorsement of the government’s emphasis on manufacturing in India — what the prime minister has called his Make in India campaign.
Mr. Rajan said he did not support the view of critics that it was too late in world economic history for India to become a manufacturing hub. But he also said that he would not focus exclusively on manufacturing as the solution to joblessness.
If India improves infrastructure and reduces government regulations, manufacturing might take off in a big way, but it “could also be services. It could be value-added agriculture also.”`

For the full story, see:
GEETA ANAND. “A Departing Central Banker’s Warning.” The New York Times (Mon., SEPT. 5, 2016): B3.
(Note: ellipsis, and bracketed date, added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date SEPT. 4, 2016, and has the title “Raghuram Rajan, India’s Departing Central Banker, Has a New Warning.” The online version is somewhat longer than the print version, and has minor differences in the last three paragraphs quoted above. The last three paragraphs quoted above, are from the online version.)

Private Nav Canada More Innovative than Government FAA

(p. D1) Ottawa
Flying over the U.S.-Canadian border is like time travel for pilots. Going north to south, you leave a modern air-traffic control system run by a company and enter one run by the government struggling to catch up.
Airlines, the air-traffic controllers’ union and key congressional leaders all support turning over U.S. air-traffic control services to a newly created nonprofit company and leaving the Federal Aviation Administration as a safety regulator. It’s an idea that still faces strong opposition in Congress, but has gained traction this year.
The model is Nav Canada, the world’s second-largest air-traffic control agency, after the U.S.
. . .
The key, Nav Canada says, is its nongovernmental structure. Technology, critical to efficient airspace use these days, gets developed faster than if a government agency were trying to do it, officials say. Critics say slow technology development has been the FAA’s Achilles’ heel.
“We can fly optimal routes because of the technology they have. It makes a big difference,” American Airlines vice president Lorne Cass says. “These are things customers don’t see except they shave off minutes.”
Mr. Cass, who has worked for several airlines and the FAA, first visited Nav Canada in 2004 to see new technology. “They’ve always been pretty good at continuous modernization,” he says. “They just have more flexibility than the FAA has.”
. . .
(p. D2) In government, you often need giant programs with huge promises to get funding. But Nav Canada opted for small projects, often with no idea what the outcome should look like. The company hired a corps of techies that the federal agency had never had and involved controllers in development.
“We’re convinced you’re better off doing things incrementally than a big bang approach,” Mr. Koslow says.
Data linkage between cockpits and control centers is one example. Text messages with cockpits have been in use across oceans, in parts of Europe and across all of Canada for several years. Controllers in Montreal who handle planes to and from North America and both Europe and Asia say the texting system virtually eliminates problems of mishearing instructions and readbacks over the radio because of foreign accents.
Another innovation adopted around the world is electronic flight strips–critical information about each flight that gets changed on touch screens and passed from one controller to another electronically. Nav Canada has used them for more than 13 years. Many U.S. air controllers still use paper printouts placed in plastic carriers about the size of a 6-inch ruler that controllers scribble on.
. . .
Jerome Gagnon, a shift manager in Montreal’s control tower, says the electronic system has reduced workload, errors and noise. “We don’t want controllers to just be heads down. There’s a lot of stuff that happens out the window,” he says.
Rarely do controllers have to call each other to coordinate flights anymore, but making changes with the FAA on cross-border flights can’t be done electronically.
As he explains the process in the Montreal tower, other controllers start laughing. One blurts out incredulously: “You still have to call the FAA by phone!””

For the full story, see:
SCOTT MCCARTNEY. “THE MIDDLE SEAT; The Air-Traffic System U.S. Airlines Wish They Had.” The Wall Street Journal (Thurs., April 28, 2016): D1-D2.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date April 27, 2016. The online version has a couple of extra sentences that are included in the passages quoted above.)

Airline Startups Stall in Bureaucratic Regulatory Headwinds

(p. B4) Mr. Vallas owns California Pacific Airlines, known as CP Air, his latest venture in a peripatetic business career that has included stints in areas as varied as land development and other aviation-related ventures.
CP Air has sat on a metaphorical runway for years — engines idling, ready for takeoff — while awaiting certification by the Federal Aviation Administration.
Mr. Vallas’s patience is wearing thin. After all, he is 95, and he regards the airline as a legacy, an exclamation point to a colorful life.
. . .
. . . then there was that matter with the F.A.A. The agency has repeatedly denied applications. A letter from 2013, one of several from the agency, advised him that the application’s contents were “incomplete, inaccurate and do not appear to have been reviewed for quality.”
. . .
The government shutdown in 2013 and the F.A.A.’s staff reduction did not help matters, the agency acknowledges.
. . .
The process of greenlighting a new airline has become more complicated since Mr. Vallas sold a previous venture, a charter service called Air Resorts, in 1997.
He acknowledges the vast increase in paperwork since that era but contends that the conditions for acceptance have been met.
Mr. Vallas’s airline is not the only one that has encountered bureaucratic headwinds. Other proposed airlines are in limbo for various reasons, including Baltia Airlines, created in 1989 to fly between New York City and Russia, which still lacks the authorities’ blessing.

For the full story, see:
MIKE TIERNEY. “ITINERARIES; A Start-Up Airline Idles on a California Runway.” The New York Times (Tues., APRIL 26, 2016): B4.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date APRIL 25, 2016, and has the title “ITINERARIES; Start-Up Airline Idles on a California Runway, Stymied by Bureaucracy.”)

Lack of Control at Job Causes Stress, Leading to Cardiovascular Disease

(p. 6) Allostasis is not about preserving constancy; it is about calibrating the body’s functions in response to external as well as internal conditions. The body doesn’t so much defend a particular set point as allow it to fluctuate in response to changing demands, including those of one’s social circumstances. Allostasis is, in that sense, a politically sophisticated theory of human physiology. Indeed, because of its sensitivity to social circumstances, allostasis is in many ways better than homeostasis for explaining modern chronic diseases.
Consider hypertension. Seventy million adults in the United States have it. For more than 90 percent of them, we don’t know the cause. However, we do have some clues. Hypertension disproportionately affects blacks, especially in poor communities.
. . .
Peter Sterling, a neurobiologist and a proponent of allostasis, has written that hypertension in these communities is a normal response to “chronic arousal” (or stress).
. . .
Allostasis is attractive because it puts psychosocial factors front and center in how we think about health problems. In one of his papers, Dr. Sterling talks about how, while canvassing in poor neighborhoods in Cleveland in the 1960s, he would frequently come across black men with limps and drooping faces, results of stroke. He was shocked, but today it is well established that poverty and racism are associated with stroke and poor cardiovascular health.
These associations also hold true in white communities. One example comes from the Whitehall study of almost 30,000 Civil Service workers in Britain over the past several decades. Mortality and poor health were found to increase stepwise from the highest to the lowest levels in the occupational hierarchy: Messengers and porters, for example, had nearly twice the death rate of administrators, even after accounting for differences in smoking and alcohol consumption. Researchers concluded that stress — from financial instability, time pressures or a general lack of job control — was driving much of the difference in survival.

For the full commentary, see:
SANDEEP JAUHAR. “When Blood Pressure Is Political.” The New York Times, SundayReview Section (Sun., AUG. 7, 2016): 6.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the review has the date AUG. 6, 2016.)

The commentary quoted above is distantly related to Jauhar’s book:
Jauhar, Sandeep. Doctored: The Disillusionment of an American Physician. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2014.

Feds Use Taxpayer Money to Buy $20 Million of Cheese

(p. C1) U.S. agricultural officials agreed to purchase $20 million of cheese products from struggling dairy farmers who pleaded for a bailout earlier this month.
Around 11 million pounds of food will be donated to families throughout the country through government nutrition-assistance programs, the U.S. Department of Agriculture said.
. . .
The national Milk Producers Federation, a group of roughly 30,000 farmers, on Aug. 12 asked the agency to purchase a much as $150 million of cheese, as a glut of dairy products and other food commodities has sent prices for many farmers to the lowest levels in years.

For the full story, see:
Gee, Kelsy. “U.S. Says Cheese–to Aid Farmers.” The Wall Street Journal (Thurs., Aug. 25, 2016): C1.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: after much searching on 9/10/16, I could not find an online version of the story on the WSJ site.)

American Indians Suffer from Lack of Property Rights

(p. A15) There are almost no private businesses or entrepreneurs on Indian reservations because there are no property rights. Reservation land is held in trust by the federal government and most is also owned communally by the tribe. It’s almost impossible for tribe members to get a mortgage, let alone borrow against their property to start a business. The Bureau of Indian Affairs regulates just about every aspect of commerce on reservations.
Instead of giving Indians more control over their own land–allowing them to develop natural resources or use land as collateral to start businesses–the federal government has offered them what you might call a loophole economy. Washington carves out a sector of the economy, giving tribes a regulatory or tax advantage over non-Indians. But within a few years the government takes it away, in many cases leaving Indian tribes as impoverished and more disheartened than they were before.
. . .
What American Indians need first is less regulation. There is a reason that Native Americans say BIA, the initials for the Bureau of Indian Affairs, really stands for “Bossing Indians Around.”

For the full commentary, see:
NAOMI SCHAEFER RILEY. “The Loophole Economy Is No Jackpot for Indians; Running casinos or selling tax-free cigarettes can’t substitute for what tribes truly need: property rights.” The Wall Street Journal (Thurs., July 28, 2016): A15.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date July 27, 2016.)

The above commentary by Riley is related to her book, which is:
Riley, Naomi Schaefer. The New Trail of Tears: How Washington Is Destroying American Indians. New York: Encounter Books, 2016.