A good article by that title in New York magazine by Kurt Andersen. Says Andersen, “What I hadn’t realized until I recently started watching his show night after night was how completely and seamlessly he mingles actual news with opinion and straight-out tirade,” calling Dobbs’ show, a “Daily Show without jokes or irony.” We agree.

As Andersen notes in conclusion, “Populist anti-Establishment anger is now a major part of the CNN brand.” How sad. We wish CNN had a brighter line between news and opinion, and wish further that they’d make sure their opinions were informed and not just rabble-rousers like Lou.

Hollywood spouse and apparent climate expert Laurie David has a piece in today’s WaPo, expressing outrage that corporate America is helping to support science education in the schools. As outrages go, this one is truly a head-scratcher. Her latest rant was triggered by the National Science Teachers Association’s refusal to accept 50,000 free copies of Al Gore’s one-sided propaganda film, “An Inconvenient Truth,” a political film with a political message made by a once and likely future Presidential candidate.

David smells a rat since NSTA is the recipient of corporate largess supporting science education in the schools, presumably an otherwise-laudable goal. Seems that the nation’s premiere organization of science teachers demurred because they didn’t want to offer a “political” endorsement of the film. What?!? The nation’s science teachers are concerned about politics masked as science? Go figure. A portion of Corporate America’s contributions, says David, supports a program that brings “standards-based teaching and learning” into the school. Oh, the horror. Imagine if standards-based teaching caught on — where would it end?

David, of course, has been widely critiqued for her hypocrisy, Gulfstreaming around the country and fouling up the wetlands in Martha’s Vineyard, site of one of her many homes — all energy-efficient, no doubt. Every one of them. As for the “Gulfstreaming” of liberals, said Greg Easterbrook, quoting Eric Alterman, “Conservation is what other people should do.”

But the piece doesn’t fall for hypocrisy alone, although it’s an eyesore. She also is just flat wrong on the facts, referring twice to “shortfalls in education funding” and “tight education budgets.” This when education budgets are at all-time highs, far outpacing student performance. No matter. This alleged shortfall is the gap through which corporate America is rushing, filling it all with so much propaganda in David’s view. Like programs that support standards-based teaching and learning.

We noted a piece last week that critiqued Al Gore’s dismissal of peer review. California Attorney General Bill Lockyer has hunted down those who disagree with him on climate change with unequaled zeal. This Star Chamber “off with their heads” approach to this debate by the left is a new low — even for the left. This is a world where no dissent is entertained, where skeptics are harassed and intimidated. Whatever happened to open debate?

For our part, we applaud the move of the nation’s science teachers, who teach the scientific method every day, who hopefully are instilling in young minds some degree of curiosity, inquisitiveness and yes, even skepticism. In the end, that’s what science teachers are supposed to be teaching.

Maybe David should pitch Al’s movie to the teachers of politics — or fiction.

Because the waters of the Drake Passage have been unusually calm, we headed
over to Elephant Island, named by the early explorers for the abundance of Elephant seals found here. It was on this island that Ernest Shackleton organized his mission to rescue his men that he left behind after The Endurance got caught in frozen ice less than a century ago.

Because of the historic significance of where we were headed, it was fitting then, that our first lecture this morning was about the motley crew that joined Shackleton.

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Yesterday’s blog carried a story about a new book on Reagan’s economic legacy by author Gene Heck. His books looks at regulatory costs as well as tax cuts and their impact on the economy.

A recent piece about tax rates around the world, with roughly the same title as this blog entry, shows how powerful the Reagan Revolution has been. The story is fairly simple: countries all around the world have been cutting their tax rates to spur economic growth and lure investment. With the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the author, Dan Henninger, points out that Estonia was the first former Iron Curtain country (in 1994) to cut taxes and tariffs, thus spurring its economy. Most of the rest of the former Iron Curtain countries followed suit, even Russia.

On the other side of that infamous Curtain, the UK was one of the first (in 1985) with a corporate tax rate cut by the Thatcher government. The Reagan administration cut the top marginal rate for individuals from 70 percent to 28 percent.

Lest anyone think that was the end of tax cutting abroad, they only have to look at the rest of the developed world through the lens of the OECD. The average corporate tax rate among OECD countries is a full ten points BELOW the U.S. rate, which has fairly not budged in many years at 40 percent. Only Japan remains higher. Germany, France, Austria, Ireland–the list is lengthy and is proof that Reagan tax cutting has a lot of followers abroad. For a really good chart on this tide, click here or read our report, The Escalating Cost Crisis, which discusses it as well.

The question with the new leadership on Capitol Hill is this: are there any followers left up there? The R&D tax credit needs extending as do a slew of other tax cuts. Will these be passed and give the economy a tonic or will Congress swim against this tide and make U.S. rates even higher while the rest of the world slashes away?

Click here for the full text of Dan Henninger’s column.

Today is our first full day at sea. We are very fortunate in that the turbulent waters of the Drake Passage that plagued explorers nearly a century ago have been quite calm for us. The Drake Passage can be difficult to navigate because of the Antarctic Convergence: a place where the warmer south Pacific waters meet with the colder Antarctic waters.

Its hard to imagine that less than a century ago, in 1916 (the continent was first crossed in 1773), Antarctica was still dangerous place for explorers and their crew, including the notable expedition of Ernest Shackleton. The 1916 trip by Shackleton aboard the Endurance was a risky proposition. In fact, Shackleton’s call for explorers to join him read, “Men wanted for hazardous journey, small wages, return doubtful.”

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A lot has been written since the recent election about the new crop of Democratic and Republican freshmen and that this election, more than others before it, show the extent to which Ronald Reagan’s economic legacy has become an accepted dimension of the U.S. political and economic landscape.

The newcomers were by and large elected on a platform that The Gipper would have been comfortable with: smaller government, lower taxes and limited judicial interference. Polls show over and over again that this is where the American center lies. Virginia Senator-elect Jim Webb ran ads in my state featuring Ronald Reagan’s endorsement of him as Navy Secretary. Those ads helped pull in GOP and independent voters for Mr. Webb and, as we know, his election determined the political make up of the U.S. Senate.

We are fortunate to have a new book out that discusses the principles of the Reagan Revolution and how they have built the platform on which today’s U.S. prosperity is built. The author, Gene Heck, is a former U.S. foreign service officer who is currently a business development economist working in the Mideast.

Building Prosperity, Why Ronald Reagan and the Founding Fathers Were Right on the Economy is a good book for anyone interested in the direction of the U.S. economy. Mr. Heck reminds us that the Reagan Presidency left the economy transformed: “the top marginal tax rate had been sharply reduced from a 70 percent high to 28 percent….inflation had been brought down [from 15 percent] to 4.1 percent, unemployment [from 11 percent] to 5.2 percent and the federal discount rate [from 14 percent] to 6.5 percent.” His chapters cover these essential topics that are highly relevant to today’s manufacturing:

* why regulatory costs matter
* why tax levels matter
* why global trade competitiveness matters
* why technology-based development matters and
* education and the technology-development process.

Mr. Heck uses quotes from Madison, Jefferson, Franklin and others throughout his book to tie his premise with their views about government and the economy. He also quotes Jeremy Leonard, author of two studies by NAM, The Manufacturing Institute and The Manufacturers Alliance/MAPI about costs government impose on U.S. manufacturing. Our recent report, The Escalating Cost Crisis, shows that this country adds at least 31.7 percent in costs to U.S. manufacturers when compared with nine overseas rivals. If you read our study along with Mr. Heck’s book, you’ll have a pretty good idea of the agenda the U.S. government should follow if it wants to spur the U.S. manufacturing sector.

Greetings from Ushuaia, Argentina! The Blogger-in-Chief has graciously allowed me to veer off topic (yet again) and write a daily travel entry on the blog. Similar to last’s years travel report from Australia, where this humble blog was the first to post a blog entry in 2006, we are making yet another historic first. Today begins the first of ten blog entries on our voyage to Antarctica.

We arrived today from the Buenos Aires (EZE) aeropuerto (airport) to Ushuaia. Ushuaia is flanked on one side by the Andes Mountains. A town of about 60,000 people, it looks like something out of the TV show Northern Exposure.

It is here where the Pan-American Highway (Route #3) begins and ends (the other terminus is at Fairbanks, Alaska).

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“Black Friday,” you may know, is so-called because it is supposedly the day that retailers move from red to black ink, given the boost in sales.

In any event, we commemorated it again this year, just to see all those manufactured products flying off the shelves. Here’s a link to last year’s post on the topic entitled, “American Pamplona.” This year we took video, not still, photos. Not sure any of it is blog-worthy, but it was quite a scene nonetheless. At 5 a.m., the line around the Wal-Mart in Springfield, Virginia wended its way around the entire building. One man was asleep in a shopping cart, creating the illusion that either he had just been purchased or was on his way to the “Returns” window. Not sure where he ended up.

In any event, happy Black Friday to you all. Don’t forget all the manufacturers who make it possible.

UPDATE: (By Carter Wood): Or, just a comment, we suppose. Don’t recall hearing “Black Friday” referring to the day after Thanksgiving, until moving back to Washington, D.C, in 2001. Always thought it unpleasant terminology, since “Black Friday” otherwise refers to days of economic catastrophe. Smacks of a journalist’s conceit, trying to enliven an utterly routine, annual story assignment. (“Ho, ho. A Jay Gould reference in my article about modern capitalism.”)

Around here, the day is marked by the annual memorial playing of Steely Dan’s Katy Lied.

In recent years, the Wall Street Journal has taken to profiling the top 50 Women to Watch at major corporations and nonprofits. Their list for 2006 was published on November 20 and I’d commend it to you because it is a good insight into today’s busienss world. Click here for the full list.

The article notes, “PepsiCo Inc. recently tapped former president and chief financial officer Indra Nooyi as its new CEO. Earlier this year, Archer-Daniels-Midland Co., the grain-processing giant and largest U.S. producer of corn-derived ethanol fuel, recruited former Chevron Corp. executive Patricia Woertz as the first outsider to hold the company’s top job.” (Click on the bolding above to read the women’s corporate bios).

The Journal pointed out that there has not been a lot of progress in the number of women in senior management at large companies. Women held 16.4 percent of Fortune 500 corporate-officer jobs in 2005, an increase of just 0.7 percent from 2002 according to a survey by a New York research group. But the story does go on to say that “something new is beginning to occur….women are making their marke across a broad spectrum of businesses…from heavy manufacturing, chemicals and computer technology to consumer products, fashion and media.”

Now the reporter is on to something here. She has hit on the fact that women are increasingly managing today’s manufacturing. Of the 50 companies and nonprofits profiled in the 2006 ranking, at least 18 of them are in manufacturing. They are women like Ellen Kullman, EVP at DuPont who now heads two of that company’s most important divisions, responsible for 63 percent of DuPont operating income. And Ursula Burns, president of Business Group Operations at Xerox (and an NAM board member as well).

As impressive as this list is, there is an equally impressive story going on in manufacturing when you get below the Fortune 500 companies. That story is that women are increasingly running smaller and medium sized manufacturing firms than ever before. The number of women-owned firms in manufacturing has doubled in the past decade. The Center for Women’s Business Research estimates that 16 percent of all manufacturing employees now work in women-owned firms. Read all about it in our Facts About Modern Manufacturing (click here).

For a really cool interview with the woman who is president of ACE Clearwater Enterprises (manufacturer of aerospace components in Torrance, CA), click here and watch the short video.

Catching up on our Canadian political news this week, we were shocked to discover that the federal government may actually end the Canadian Wheat Board (as we know it)! Why, the Winnipeg-based Wheat Board is as Canadian as socialized health care, Sergeant Preston of the Yukon, and the Calgary Stampede. Hard to imagine it going away.

The Canadian Wheat Board is a government-mandated monopsony, which is to say if you’re a wheat or barley grower in Western Canada you MUST sell your grain to the CWB. (Not Eastern Canadian grain growers, just those farmers in Western Canada.) The Wheat Board then functions as a single desk seller, presumably gaining market advantage through its size and — many U.S. farmers rationally assert — secret deals that violate international trade agreements. The Wheat Board is notoriously non-transparent.

Younger, more aggressive Canadian farmers — especially in Alberta and Saskatachewan — also resent the idea they may not decide what to do with THEIR OWN GRAIN. By law, they must sell to the CWB.

But now, Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Agriculture Minister Chuck Strahl are proposing making membership in the CWB voluntary, and of course, all heck is breaking loose. This excellent column by Paul Jackson on the CWB appeared Nov. 21 in the Calgary Sun.

Canadian Wheat Board practices are a long-standing trade irritant with the United States, and U.S. prairie populist progressive protectionist politicians gain great purchase with their arguments against the CWB. (Although the P⁵, almost by definition, would find some other Canadian practice to fulminate against even if the CWB disappeared altogether.)

Our interest in the debate? Mostly theoretical:
1. Freedom is good.
2. Transparency is good.
3. Open markets are good.

Sun columns tend to disappear behind archival walls after a while, so you can find more of a “fair use” excerpt of Jackson’s column in the extended entry. And here’s a link to a good University of Manitoba student editorial.

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