The story of the Chinese cottage industry of “body fishing” is an interesting look at how capitalism is affecting the country’s culture. Body fishers live by pulling dead bodies out of the Yellow River and charging the families of the deceased to retrieve the remains.

While some of the 80 to 100 bodies Wei gathers each year are victims of accidents and floods, he thinks that the majority end up in the river after suicide or murder. There’s no overt sign of a crime spree, though there’s evidence of many people taking their own lives. Indeed, suicide is the leading cause of death for women in rural China , and 26 percent of all suicides in the world take place in the nation, according to the World Health Organization

via Chinese fisherman on Yellow River reels in corpses – Yahoo! News.

Apparently, corpse fishing used to be something fisherman would do for free as a sort of human courtesy. Now, bodies are only released in exchange for cash. The amount depends on the means of the person coming to retrieve the corpse.

For bodies that are claimed, Wei has a price system that is sensitive to the income level of his customers. He charges the equivalent of US$75 to a farmer who claims a body, $300 to someone holding a job and $450 when a company is the payee.

Other corpse snatchers are reported to charge $45 just to view a body (according to practice, bodies are kept face down in the river to preserve their features so that they will be recognizable to relatives) and nearly $900 for a claim.

via Asia Times Online :: China News, China Business News, Taiwan and Hong Kong News and Business..

There is a need for public service here, for public health reasons and to discourage people from trading in grief.

The Economist uses the Obama Administration restructure and bailout of GM and Chrysler to make a reasoned argument against Obama being called a socialist.

The label “Government Motors” quickly stuck, evoking images of clunky committee-built cars that burned banknotes instead of petrol—all run by what Sarah Palin might call the socialist-in-chief.

Yet the doomsayers were wrong. Unlike, say, France’s President Nicolas Sarkozy, who used public funds to support Renault and Peugeot-Citroën on condition that they did not close factories in France, Mr Obama has been tough from the start. GM had to promise to slim down dramatically—cutting jobs, shuttering factories and shedding brands—to win its lifeline. The firm was forced to declare bankruptcy. Shareholders were wiped out. Top managers were swept aside. Unions did win some special favours: when Chrysler was divided among its creditors, for example, a union health fund did far better than secured bondholders whose claims should have been senior. Congress has put pressure on GM to build new models in America rather than Asia, and to keep open dealerships in certain electoral districts. But by and large Mr Obama has not used his stakes in GM and Chrysler for political ends. On the contrary, his goal has been to restore both firms to health and then get out as quickly as possible. GM is now profitable again and Chrysler, managed by Fiat, is making progress. Taxpayers might even turn a profit when GM is sold.

via General Motors: Government Motors no more | The Economist.

The problem is they are wasting a reasoned argument rebutting people who actually think or cynically suggest that Obama is a socialist.

Bloomberg TV interviews Mr. T about Gold. (courtesy Mr. T ‘Pities the Fool’ Who Doesn’t Buy Gold – Daniel Indiviglio – Business – The Atlantic).

Hector Tobar’s article about the relationship between the upper middle class in Brentwood, California and their domestics is a pretty good read, just for some of the candid discussions with these affluent women who for years employed a domestic who have emigrated to the U.S. illegally.

The retired teacher told me that when her immigrant housekeeper went into labor, she drove her to the hospital. “When her daughter was having problems in school I helped her with tuition for private school,” she said. “That little girl is in college now.”

Thinking about the larger issue of undocumented immigrants working in this country, this mom added: “It’s an unfortunate situation. We need to be generous to them.”The moms I met know how much work is done for them. They know the lives of those who do that work can be hard. They express compassion for the women in their kitchens and nurseries. They speak of trying to help them.

But generosity on this front seems to be in short supply these days.

We live in a country rich in hypocrisy. Here a billionaire running for governor can vow to hold employers accountable for following the law but deny accountability in her own home. And she can ask us to trust her while absolving her of any moral responsibility to try to help a woman who for so long helped her.

via Hector Tobar: Mothers with immigrant housekeepers have harsh words for Meg Whitman – latimes.com.

Tobar also spoke to a maid working illegally on a tourist visa.

The Beverly Hills maid told me she wouldn’t lie to her employer. “I know that here, for the Americans, lying is the worst,” she said. “But the necessity of this lady led her to lie. I wouldn’t do that, but I can put myself in her shoes.”

The maid told me she arrived here a few months ago on a tourist visa. She’s not supposed to be working. But so far no one has asked her for a Social Security number. And now that her husband has lost his job running a San Salvador gas station, she’s desperate to make enough to keep their two daughters in school.

“These mansions — the Americans don’t clean them,” she said as we looked across Sunset Boulevard at the opulent order of Beverly Hills. “It’s Latinas who do it.”

Read it. The Brentwood mothers didn’t understand how Meg Whitman could just dismiss a woman who had worked in her household for so long without any compassion or regard for her future.

From afar it does seem like a stunning lack of compassion, especially for a candidate that could afford to spend 140 million of her own money on her own campaign.

As a matter of politics, Whitman would’ve been better off hiring an immigration lawyer for Nicandra Diaz Santillan or sponsoring her visa the minute she had designs to run for Governor of California. As a matter of compassion, after 9 years of service, even if Whitman felt the best solution was to dismiss Santillan, she she seems to have done it without any regard for Santillan’s well being.

Either way, Whitman says that she knows “Nicky really well” (video below) and that her public statement was due to manipulation by Gloria Allred. Apparently she didn’t know her well enough.

Good news:

President Obama will not sign legislation approved by Congress that could make it harder for homeowners to fight foreclosures in court.

White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said at his daily press briefing that Obama will not sign the “Interstate Recognition of Notarizations Act.”

The legislation would require federal and state courts to accept document notarizations from out of state. The measure would have included notarizations filed electronically, which critics say have been used to improperly rush home foreclosures through the courts.

“Our concern is the unintended consequences on consumer protections,” Gibbs said. “So the president is exercising a pocket veto to send that bill back to Congress to iron out some of those unintended consequences.”

via Obama to pocket veto bill that could affect foreclosure fights – The Hill’s Blog Briefing Room.

I still don’t know how this bill made it through the Senate amidst a worldwide financial crisis and US foreclosure crisis.

As our military is engaged in winding down the Iraq War, ramping up the Afghanistan War and fighting a covert war in Pakistan all based on the COIN strategy (trying to win Hearts and Minds), it’s quite simple that we remember how flawed a strategy this is.

After our military attacks and occupies a country, we will then convince it’s citizens that they should side with our country. John Cole keeps it simple:

Again, this is not rocket surgery. If they were not sympathetic to the Taliban and Al Qaeda before, after you bomb the shit out of them, they will be. As far as I am concerned, the Obama reliance on this kind of warfare is the absolute worst thing he has done since he has come into office, yet, oddly enough, few seem to give a shit.

via Balloon Juice » Blog Archive » Very Complicated Logic.

And to be fair, Obama thought this war was worth fighting and campaigned to fight this war so walking into the war built on COIN, properly staffing the current strategic initiative makes sense administratively. It just seems that COIN is a strategy that flies in the face of human nature. My sincere hope is that Obama sticks fast to deadline for wind down of the Afghanistan War next summer regardless of what various generals may say or want. If American military brass attempt delay or reject Obama’s efforts to end the war in Afghanistan, he needs to be firm in terminating their commands and finding generals that will prepare an end to the war in earnest. The war has been too long and the cost of this military engagement is too great.

It seems to me hoping the leaders of the previous religious tyrannical regime and the leaders of the current hand picked corrupt administration can agree to some sort of working treaty seems much more realistic than hoping COIN creates some acceptable equilibrium in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Ever hear of H.R. 3808 Interstate Recognition of Notarizations Act of 2010? It was a bill passed through the Senate by unanimous consent, and it’s a mess:

A bill that homeowners advocates warn will make it more difficult to challenge improper foreclosure attempts by big mortgage processors is awaiting President Barack Obama’s signature after it quietly zoomed through the Senate last week.

The bill, passed without public debate in a way that even surprised its main sponsor, Republican Representative Robert Aderholt, requires courts to accept as valid document notarizations made out of state, making it harder to challenge the authenticity of foreclosure and other legal documents.

The timing raised eyebrows, coming during a rising furor over improper affidavits and other filings in foreclosure actions by large mortgage processors such as GMAC, JPMorgan and Bank of America.

via Bank foreclosure cover seen in bill at Obama’s desk | Reuters.

President Obama needs to veto this bill if it indeed will make it easier for the banks to pass off falsified documents to foreclosure courts. The “cooling saucer” of the Senate found time to pass this bill without debate while banks are engaging in widespread fraud by seizing properties they do not have title to using false, insufficient or invalid documentation.

I am not a Nevada voter, but I don’t understand how Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, let alone any Democrat, let’s this nonsense get through the senate while his state is one of the epicenters of the foreclosure crisis, Nevada cities like Las Vegas have unemployment rates at 14.7% and he is an pitched battle with Sharon Angle.

Summaries like this are in the right direction and work as simple rebuttals to broken fiscal ideology. The president’s deputies should be able to anticipate the need for and execute these kind of voter friendly presentations as opposed to the awkward video where Obama showed us how to use Healthcare.gov.

Respect the work it takes to write a Facebook post from 2012 GOP Presidential candidate, especially Sarah Palin.

Because a guy who lost a presidential election 525 to 13 and a Senate race to Norm Coleman and hasn’t been in elected office since 1981 is exactly the guy we should want Obama to listen to.

Christine O’Donnell is not only shutting out national media and non-right wing opinion media, she is simply not having public campaign events.

But Ms. O’Donnell is not an old-fashioned kind of candidate — nor is she an anomaly. As money and news media coverage cross state borders more easily than ever, driven by fiery commentators and online groups, we are bound to see politicians who are popular vehicles more than they are actual candidates, instruments of resentment whose grass-roots support may emanate mostly from states they have never visited.

via Political Times – Christine O’Donnell Is Hard to Find at Home – NYTimes.com.

What I wonder about the prototypical married, white, conservative Republicans above age 65 who disapprove of everything Obama and are supporting tea baggers: what do they really expect from their leadership?

It’s not that Republicans, Tea Baggers and Blue Dogs don’t like cap and trade, they just prefer that their campaign and PAC accounts be the beneficiaries of the fees. Krugman runs the simple math:

Perhaps the most important thing to realize is that when billionaires put their might behind “grass roots” right-wing action, it’s not just about ideology: it’s also about business. What the Koch brothers have bought with their huge political outlays is, above all, freedom to pollute. What Mr. Murdoch is acquiring with his expanded political role is the kind of influence that lets his media empire make its own rules.

via Op-Ed Columnist – Fear and Favor – NYTimes.com.

The “cap” for pollution is the amount of money it takes to get enough politicians elected to stall, weaken or block any legislation that encourages pollution reduction. They trade that for business as usual.

UPDATE:

Apparently the energy companies have it just about right, because the American public is for the most part a willing accomplice.

Americans drive some of the largest, heaviest cars in the world, and fuel economy gains have tended to be reduced by engines that are ever more powerful.

Engineers have doubts about how fuel-efficient that kind of car can be, if Americans aren’t willing to compromise on size.

“There’s an awful lot of people that think an Escalade is a gorgeous vehicle. But they don’t care that it’s like driving a brick through the air,” said Steve Wesoloski, who spent two decades at General Motors Co. working on the Corvette and race cars.

via How Automakers Can Meet New Fuel Efficiency Standards: Scientific American.

…On top of graveyard, surrounded by a garbage dump. (Link to audio slideshow Courtesy BBC News)

First, a blurb about consumers from the lowest income brackets as astutely seen by Wal Mart US CEO Bill Simon (from the WSJ):

“And you need not go further than one of our stores on midnight at the end of the month. And it’s real interesting to watch, about 11 p.m., customers start to come in and shop, fill their grocery basket with basic items, baby formula, milk, bread, eggs,and continue to shop and mill about the store until midnight, when electronic — government electronic benefits cards get activated and then the checkout starts and occurs. And our sales for those first few hours on the first of the month are substantially and significantly higher.

“And if you really think about it, the only reason somebody gets out in the middle of the night and buys baby formula is that they need it, and they’ve been waiting for it. Otherwise, we are open 24 hours — come at 5 a.m., come at 7 a.m., come at 10 a.m. But if you are there at midnight, you are there for a reason.”

via Watching Wal-Mart at Midnight – Real Time Economics – WSJ.

Now life firmly entrenched in the top income brackets for a family earning 8 times the median household income (the 99th percentile) as dissected by Brad DeLong

Now it is time for a reality check on this “most working Americans.” The median household income in the United States today is $50,000. Half of all households make more than this. Half of all households make less. The big expenses in the Xxxxxxxxx family budget–their $60,000 a year in contributions to tax-favored retirement savings vehicles, their $25,000 a year savings building home equity, their $55,000 for housing, their $60,000 in private school costs, even their $10,000 a year for new cars–are simply out of reach for the overwhelming majority of Americans. Half of all households make less than $50,000 a year–the Xxxxxxxxxs make nine times that. 90% of households make less than $100,000 a year–the Xxxxxxxxx’s make 4.5 times that. The Xxxxxxxxx’s are solidly in the top 1% of American households, in the select 1% group that receives more than $350,000 a year.

By any standard, they are really rich.

But they don’t feel rich. They have a cash flow problem. When the bills are paid at the end of the month, the money is gone–and they feel that they have to scrimp.

I know how they feel. My household income is of the same order of magnitude than theirs (although somewhat less) and we too had to juggle assets quickly when it developed that an error in Reed College’s housing system had caused them not to charge us $5,000 that we owe. We too have chosen to put our income in places (tax-favored retirement savings vehicles, building equity, housing, private college costs) where we think it is better used than $200 restaurant meals, $1000 a night resort hotel rooms, or $75,000 automobiles. But I don’t think that I am not rich.

Professor Xxxx Xxxxxxxxx’s problem is that he thinks that he ought to be able to pay off student loans, contribute to retirement savings vehicles, build equity, drive new cars, live in a big expensive house, send his children to private school, and still have plenty of cash at the end of the month for the $200 restaurant meals, the $1000 a night resort hotel rooms, and the $75,000 automobiles. And even half a million dollars a year cannot be you all of that.

But if he values the high-end consumption so much, why doesn’t he rearrange his budget? Why not stop the retirement savings contributions, why not rent rather than buy, why not send the kids to public school? Then the disposable cash at the end of the month would flow like water. His problem is that some of these decisions would strike him as imprudent. And all of them would strike him as degradations–doctor-law professor couples ought to send their kids to private schools, and live in big houses, and contribute to their 401(k)s, and also still have lots of cash for splurges. That is the way things should be.

But why does he think that that is the way things should be?

And here is the dirty secret: Professor Xxxx Xxxxxxxxx thinks that that is the way things should be because he knows people for whom that is the way it is.

via In Which Mr. Deling Responds to Someone Who Might Be Professor Xxxx Xxxxxxxxx – Grasping Reality with Both Hands.

This reminds me of this point/counterpoint from The Onion.

Direct from Whitehouse.gov:

WASHINGTON – Dr. Lawrence H. Summers, Director of the National Economic Council and Assistant to the President for Economic Policy, announced his plans to return to his position as University Professor at Harvard University at the end of the year.

Dr. Summers is the chief White House advisor to the President on the development and implementation of economic policy. He also leads the President’s daily economic briefing.

“I will always be grateful that at a time of great peril for our country, a man of Larry’s brilliance, experience and judgment was willing to answer the call and lead our economic team. Over the past two years, he has helped guide us from the depths of the worst recession since the 1930s to renewed growth. And while we have much work ahead to repair the damage done by the recession, we are on a better path thanks in no small measure to Larry’s wise counsel. We will miss him here at the White House, but I look forward to soliciting his continued advice and his counsel on an informal basis, and appreciate that he has agreed to serve as a member of the President’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board,” said President Obama.

via Dr. Lawrence H. Summers, Director of the National Economic Council, to Return to Harvard University at the End of the Year | The White House.