Jim Nichols

If it were not for decades of violence, Mindanao’s climate and scenery could make it as popular a tourist destination as Thailand, Bali or Malaysia (or the Philippine island of Boracay).

I once attended a family wedding on an idyllic island off Davao and later climbed with my wife through tropical forest to the frosty summit of Mount Apo, the dormant Mindanao volcano that is country’s highest peak. We were the only visitors at the time to this extraordinarily beautiful place. Perhaps the fact that our guide stumbled into a New People’s Army (communist) guerrilla on the path ahead of us explained the lack of fellow-tourists.

The problems facing Mindanao are reasonably well known – corruption, overpopulation, bad government and separatism fuelled by religious extremism – but the solutions are far from obvious.

On Tuesday, President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo responded to this week’s atrocity by declaring a state of emergency in parts of the island, but since neither national nor regional governments have proved capable of enforcing the law, it was probably no more than a necessary political gesture. The politics of Mindanao remain as challenging for Philippine leaders today as those of Cebu and Mactan were for Magellan nearly half a millennium ago.

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As research shows for the typical U.S. worker (in the middle of the national pay scale) unionization raises wages about 14%.

For low-wage workers, unionization raises wages even more – about 21%.  For more on economic impacts or unions you can check out the Center for Economic and Policy Research.

Being in a union has given my wife opportunity and quality of life--not to mention a ticket into the middle class that we wouldn't have had without it. 

Wanted to pass on some recent labor news from activist David Bacon...

         

Click here to download:

Labor_in_the_news_St._Francis_.zip (171 KB)

     

Click here to download:

0Labor_in_the_news_St._Francis_.zip (105 KB)

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To expand on my US Deficit/Health Care Reform Thread...

My friends on the left support nationalizing the health care system and creating a single payer system like Canada or the UK.  

A position which Obama and Democrat leaders wrote off from the start--another of oh so many examples that show how absurd the claim that the Democratic leadership are controlled by the liberal wing of their party is!

Not to mention the left--Greens, socialists, et al who find the Democratic Parties center-right policies far too conservative.

Though I personally thought a reasonable compromise would be to create a strong public option its useful to look at our long term deficits in this scenario as well for good context.

Here's the US Deficit if health care costs aligned with the UK's health care system---which is very popular in the UK, as was noted earlier this year in the Financial Times: Health Attacks rile Britons.

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One of the top priorities of the Federal government over the long term is to cut the deficit.  In fact one of the single biggest reasons I opposed the Bush tax cuts was that is took a US budget surplus and turned it into budget deficits leading the US Government to bring in less revenue that was currently committed to by the Federal Government.

One of the key reasons I support health care reform is that the key source of our long term deficits are health care costs and starting the process of cutting costs we begin the serious task of taking on the long term deficit.

The Center for Economic and Policy Research's Health Care Budget Deficit Calculator is a great tool to get a better context on the health care debate...

Former Chair of the Henry County Republican Party Charles Mobley has taken to calling me "The Political Scientist" because I advocate research over political theory.  My degree in political science predisposes me to empirical data--and having watched a lot of nonsense transpire in the past two years working as a legislative aide at the Captiol I can tell you point blank citizens need to do their own homework because our politicians and the media can't be trusted when it comes to giving you "all the facts". 

So here's your "homework" so to speak--go check out the Calculator.

CEPR's calculator does a great job of putting health care reform into context using empirical data in an easily assessable manner.  So take a moment and check out the calculator----sidenote--- I have to use firefox to view it, when I did my last Internet Explorer update the Calculator no long works for me for some reason.  

Here are the long-term deficits with no change to our health care system in yellow and in blue you can see the deficit if health care costs are purely coming from aging within the population rather than the skyrocketing health care inflation we currently face.

Update: What would happen to the deficit if we nationalized the US health care system?

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An infusion of stimulus funding is helping Camden County schools stay afloat financially, saving jobs and programs.

Because of its own budget problems, the state may reduce the more than $6.4 million it had planned to forward to the district, Superintendent Will Hardin said.

So far, the district has received $2.6 million of the $3.7 million it was scheduled to receive from the state to apply toward its overall budget. In addition, the district is set to receive nearly $938,000 in Title I grants, $46,000 for school lunch equipment, $56,000 for preschool programs and about $1.7 million for special education programs.

Some of the stimulus money is used to fund salaries for 19 teachers the next two years, school officials said.

"It's being sent to us piecemeal," Hardin said. "We submit requests, and they reimburse us."

When the school board was preparing its budget for the current year, there were concerns that programs would be cut and teachers could lose their jobs.

Sixteen high-seniority employees, including two principals, 13 teachers and a guidance counselor, accepted early retirements last year as a way to save lower-paying teachers' jobs.

Former St. Marys Middle School Principal Jo Beth Bird said her decision to retire last year - at least four years before she intended - probably saved two or three teaching jobs.

In all, administrators cut 43 positions through retirement, attrition and increased class size. There are now about two additional students in each class.

In an earlier interview, Board of Education Chairman Herb Rowland said the district's student-teacher ratio is still below the state average.

He said every department made sacrifices to have minimal impact on teachers, students and programs.

Hardin said he and other administrators would have been forced to either raise school taxes or cut more teaching positions without the stimulus money.

"The cuts to personnel would have been deeper," he said. "It has helped us save some jobs."

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