konane's Blog

"Red tape 'turning best firms away from Europe'
By David Rennie in Brussels

SOURCE telegraph.co.uk

"Europe's most successful companies are turning their backs on EU markets because of red tape, a high-level report said yesterday.

The companies that Europe needed to survive were instead investing more money than ever in the United States and Asia, concluded the report, presented to the European Commission in Brussels.

The lack of investment was so dire that it threatened Europe's "comfortable" way of life. "Europe has to act before it's too late," said the report's author, Esko Aho, the former prime minister of Finland.

The findings made unsettling reading for the EU leaders, ripping into their pledges to build a "knowledge-based Europe" that would overtake America in 10 years.

The reality was the opposite. Not only were US, Chinese and Japanese firms outspending Europe on research and development, the gap with Europe was growing.

Perhaps most damagingly, Europe's most important countries were pouring more and more of their technology investment overseas, as they despaired of the European Union becoming "innovation friendly".

Unless EU governments took bold action to increase spending on research, freed labour markets so skilled workers could move more easily, and stopped pouring taxpayers' money into dying industries, Europe's post-war way of life was doomed.

The report said: "Europe must break out of structures and expectations established in the post-Second World War era that leave it today living a moderately comfortable life on slowly declining capital.

"This society, averse to risk and reluctant to change, is in itself alarming but it is also unsustainable in the face of rising competition from other parts of the world. For many citizens without work, or in less-favoured regions, even the claim to comfort is untrue."

Mr Aho refused to follow the lead of French or German politicians, who have attacked major corporations for investing overseas and called for more "economic patriotism".

He said: "We cannot blame them. They are trying to take care of global competitiveness. Unfortunately, these companies can survive without Europe, but Europe cannot survive without these companies. That is why Europe has to act before it's too late."

His report listed a string of gloomy indicators. In 1992, six out of the 10 top-selling pharmaceuticals were produced by European companies. In 2002, this figure had fallen down to two. European firms invested billions more in the United States than US firms invested in Europe.

The report called for better access to venture capital funding to finance innovative companies and more movement between universities and business. The total pool of risk capital investment spent in Europe had shrunk by 90 per cent since the height of the information technology boom in 2000.

European governments were criticised for continuing to pour state aid into dying industries such as cars, steel and textiles. As part of the so-called Lisbon agenda of 2001 EU leaders committed themselves to spending three per cent of their gross domestic product on research and development.

Halfway through the 10-year Lisbon agenda programme, the EU still spent a meagre 1.9 per cent, far behind the US or Japan.

The commission recently predicted that China, for long seen a source of nothing more than basic manufacturing, is spending so much on higher education and research that it would itself overtake the EU on research spending by 2010.

In productivity, the report noted that Europe badly needed to extract more productivity from each worker."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/01/21/weurope21.xml&sSheet=/portal/2006/01/21/ixportal.html

The positive metrics of the current economy are undeniable. Gross Domestic Product exceeded three percent growth for all of 2005, and has grown for sixteen straight quarters. U.S. businesses created over two million new jobs last year. Hourly wage rates increased over three percent in 2005 to an average of over $16 an hour. The unemployment rate stands at a historically low rate of five percent. The Dow Jones Industrial Average surpassed 11,000 this week for the first time since 2001. But U.S. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) is insisting that the economy is spoiled.

Pelosi stated in a January 6 press release,

“The President claims he has created a strong economy, but working Americans are telling a different story. They feel the American dream slipping further from their grasp and they know the reality is that this economy is not delivering for middle-class families.”

Why does Pelosi contend that this economy has failed so-called middle-class Americans, when all the metrics continually prove her wrong? First, she and her fellow liberals have carved out a position on every issue – including the economy, and the war on terrorism – that defines success for their party only if the economy and our efforts in fighting terrorism fail.

Second, in the face of record economic growth, Pelosi and her liberal flies must resort to class warfare tactics to divide America into phantom groups of haves and have-nots. Currently 50% of all taxpayers, starting with a taxable income of approximately $29,000 or higher, pay 97% of all personal income taxes. The truth is there is no definition of “middle-class,” and liberals will never provide a definition. The term “middle-class,” like “working Americans” and “the rich,” has value only in its ability to create class envy among Americans who perceive themselves as victims. The liberal flies are only too willing to encourage class envy when they have lost the war on facts and results.

Congresswoman Pelosi is not alone in her denial of the facts, but due to her elected position and seniority she is the face and mouthpiece of lies and deception. When she proclaims that the potato salad is bad, the other flies show up if they can get a reporter, radio show, or camera to listen to them. The media’s story is not that the sun is shining and USA-Americans are enjoying the picnic, but that a few flies are trying to ruin it.

When liberal media outlets do not fall for the deception, Pelosi and her posse resort to distraction. They challenge and criticize President Bush’s authority to use whatever means necessary to protect our nation from further terrorist attacks. Four years and four months ago Islamic terrorists attacked the U.S. on our own soil, but we have not been attacked since. The liberal flies refuse to believe that the Bush administration is effectively prosecuting the war on terrorism. They need to get over their hatred for the president and start placing national security over their pipe dreams of power. The war on terrorism goes through Afghanistan, Iraq, Europe, Asia and the U.S. The attacks on U.S. soil so vivid in our minds are not going unanswered, despite the liberals’ best efforts to deny a victory over the terrorists who want to kill all of us.

The people of this great nation deserve the truth on the economy and the war on terrorism based on the undeniable facts. USA-Americans also deserve integrity and honesty from their elected officials, no matter what political party or ideology they represent.

National security and the economy are our two most important issues. One of our greatest concerns should be the extent to which professional politicians will lie about these issues to promote their political agendas and their next election. A professional politician who places her political career and the leftist ideology over economic freedom and a secure homeland for all Americans is no longer a fly bothering our picnic on a sunny day. As General Douglas MacArthur once stated, “I am concerned for the security of our great nation; not so much because of any threat from without, but because of the insidious forces working from within.”

Herman Cain is host of the nationally syndicated radio talk show The Bottom Line with Herman Cain and a contributing columnist on Townhall.com.

http://www.townhall.com/opinion/columns/HermanCain/2006/01/13/182214.html

'Real Power Is Something You Take'

By James H. Joyner Jr

Source Tech Central Station Daily 

"The controversy over President Bush’s ordering the NSA to monitor phone conversations without a warrant is the latest in a long line of fights over executive authority during wartime. Congress has been increasingly frustrated at being cut out of the decision loop in matters ranging from the conduct of the war in Iraq to the treatment of prisoners in Guantánamo Bay. South Carolina Republican Lindsey Graham asked a very pointed question during the Alito confirmation hearings: “Do you believe that any president, because we're at war, could say the statute on torture gets in the way of my ability to defend the United States, therefore, I don't have to comply with it?”

Liberal blogger Kevin Drum poses a more fundamental question: What is a wartime president? He acknowledges that, “It’s safe to say that whatever Bush’s NSA program actually involves, no one would have batted an eyelash if FDR had approved a similar program during World War II.” Still, the United States has, to varying extents, been in a state of war for most of the last 60 years. Where do we draw the line?

Nearly half a century ago, legal scholar Edward S. Corwin wrote that, “The Constitution is an invitation to struggle for the privilege of directing American foreign policy.”[1] His argument was that, while the Framers clearly intended for the legislature to be the predominant branch in domestic policy, both branches had substantial power in the realm of international affairs without bright lines to delineate them. Most notably, the Congress had the power to declare war but the president, as Commander-in-Chief, had the power to send troops into harm’s way.

Fictional “Dallas” patriarch Jock Ewing once told his equally fictional son, Bobby, that “Nobody gives you power. Real power is something you take.” All of our great presidents -- and some of the less-than-great ones -- took great liberty with the Constitution. The have seized the initiative and forced Congress to react.

Teddy Roosevelt quipped, “I took the canal zone and let Congress debate, and while the debate goes on the canal does also.” More famously, he solved a dispute with Congress over sending the fleet around the world thusly:

“The head of the Senate Committee on Naval Affairs announced that the fleet should not and could not go because Congress would refuse to appropriate the money—he being from an Eastern seaboard State. However, I announced in response that I had enough money to take the fleet around to the Pacific anyhow, that the fleet would certainly go, and that if Congress did not choose to appropriate enough money to get the fleet back, why, it would stay in the Pacific. There was no further difficulty about the money.”