China’s latest crop of migrant workers – young, fashionable, restless and ambitious – may want more from Beijing than they can hope to get. The FT writes: Li Feifei, a 19-year-old migrant factory worker from China’s Hubei province, dreams of becoming a clothes designer. Ms Li… got the idea of attending a fashion college and […]

In an insightful piece at The Atlantic, Derek Thompson argues that lack of productivity in the service sector is the main reason for the decline of the middle class: The reason why toasters are cheap and health insurance is not is that the productivity gains that made toasters — not to mention computers, media*, durable […]

Disturbing news out of Tripoli suggests that Qaddafi’s forces may have access to chemical weapons, including mustard gas and sarin nerve gas. From the Washington Post: Hundreds of large gas canisters are stacked in one warehouse, along with small glass bottles of yellow liquid and large plastic containers marked “shampoo” — but almost certainly not […]

Federal employees are about to find out how much protection their union dues buy.  The answer will probably be: not very much.The supercommittee is under pressure to deliver big savings without touching the programs voters love.  The easiest way out?Cut the civil servants.  Cue the Washington Post: …however you slice the numbers, federal agencies will […]

Over the past few months, “green energy” companies subsidized by the federal government encountered financial difficulties, causing one company to file for bankruptcy. These failures have not deterred the Energy Department, however, which has just announced two new loan guarantees totaling over $400 million. The New York Times reports: The department will announce Thursday that […]

Violent attacks by Pakistan-based radical groups now have China in their sights.   From the Wall Street Journal: A militant Muslim group claimed by video it carried out recent attacks in western China that killed at least three dozen people, a monitoring group said.The video was purportedly made by the Turkistan Islamic Party, which seeks […]

The twelve members of President Obama’s supercommittee on deficit reduction are open for business. Do you have piles of cash and an interest in making sure that the “wrong” federal programs don’t get cut?  The cash windows are open, and operators are standing by. …at least nine members of the 12-member supercommittee…have scheduled fundraisers this […]

Ambassador Ryan Crocker is a no-nonsense guy. In an interview with the WSJ today, the new ambassador to Afghanistan said: “The Taliban needs to feel more pain before you get to a real readiness to reconcile.”Ambassador Crocker doesn’t put much faith in the current negotiations between US forces, Kabul, and the Taliban. Of Mullah Omar’s […]

The USPS is one of the great surviving examples of the blue social model and, not surprisingly, it is going down the tubes.  Technological change has made its original mission of delivering vital information and private correspondence obsolete.  Judging by what comes in through the mail slot at the stately Mead manor these days, the […]

From the Washington Post: The Obama administration escalated its crackdown on health-care fraud Wednesday, announcing charges against 91 people in eight cities who are accused of bilking the Medicare system out of nearly $300 million and victimizing the elderly and disabled people who rely on the federal insurance program…In Miami, 45 defendants — including a doctor and […]