Economic James K. Galbraith argues in Salon that Bush wants a stagnant job market to "keep the help from getting uppity." He writes: "The transcendent economic issue this election year isn't the growth rate. It isn't the stock market. It isn't the budget deficit. And it isn't even the rate of unemployment. It's the number of people in this country who have decent work -- and the number who don't."
Reuters reports:: Investor concerns that consumers would shun beef after last month's discovery of the first U.S. case of mad cow disease appear to have evaporated as shares of steakhouses and hamburger chains have snapped back to their previous levels.In the days following the Dec. 23 announcement, restaurant stocks fell hard on fears that meat from a cow with the deadly brain-wasting disease, formally known as bovine spongiform encephalopathy, had entered the food chain. Humans can contract a form of the disease known as variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease by eating infected beef."
AP reports that lobbyists are campaigning for a Bush mention Tuesday night: "'You tell everybody you can think to tell' in the White House, said Dan Danner, lobbyist for the National Federation of Independent Business. 'You tell the speechwriters. You tell the congressional people. You tell the policy people. You tell the public liaison people and the economic shop.' Danner's issue is what the federation calls Association Health Plan legislation. It would allow small business organizations to provide insurance for members' workers. President Bush has endorsed the idea often, but not in the State of the Union, the annual showpiece of his administration. A reference in the roughly hourlong address Tuesday night would be a declaration that the president considers the plan a priority and would send the same message to lawmakers whose 2004 session got under way earlier in the day."
Kevin Danaher and Jason Mark write on Alternet: "As it turns out, corporations operating in a deregulated environment do what is in the best interest of no one except the top corporate officials: government agencies and investors get lied to, pension funds lose billions, companies go bankrupt, thousands of workers lose their jobs, shareholders lose their investments, and faith in the system is shaken. Now we citizens must decide which definition of 'free enterprise' will prevail. Will it be 'the freedom of large corporations to go anywhere and do anything to people and planet' or will it be 'the freedom of everyone to be enterprising'?"
