the rix mix

USDA: Corn estimates drop amid deepening drought
ST. LOUIS (AP) — A deepening drought in the nation's farm states has cut further into this fall's harvest, with farmers now expected to pull from their fields the lowest corn yield in more than a decade.

But American farmers are still expected to produce their eighth-largest harvest ever, and while there's sure to be a rise in prices at the grocery stores, there's little risk of a failed harvest that would lead to shortages on the shelves. 

The U.S. Agriculture Department predicted the nation's biggest harvest ever in the spring, when farmers planted 96.4 million acres of corn — the most since 1937. But it cut its estimate a month ago and again Friday, saying it now expects the nation to produce 10.8 billion bushels, the least since 2006. 

If that estimate holds, the federal government says it will be enough to meet the world's needs and ensure there are no shortages. But experts say food prices will almost certainly climb as corn is a widely used ingredient found in everything from cosmetics to cereal, colas and candy bars.

Has anyone yet suggested God is punishing us for our Muslim president. Just a matter of time.

Commodity prices aren't an interest of mine. Weather is. There's a lot of contradictory information being fed to the public about the drought, even from different Federal agencies. Food prices up (they are going up), meat prices down, at least temporarily. Enough corn for export, not enough corn. What if the drought continues through 2013? Or instead, there are ruinous rains & floods? Extreme weather seems to be becoming the norm. But there's nothing unusual about this summer in Jersey so far as I've observed. The winter was mild. We had a blizzard last October turned out to be our most significant snowfall of the season.

The better safe than sorry solution? Get rid of the Muslim president, elect a Mormon?  Still not quite right given the de facto religion of the Republican base is fundamentalist Baptist.  Mormon folklore has it that an enormous flock of seagulls saved them from starvation  by eating the massive swarm of katydids devouring their crops in 1848.  There's a famous seagull monument in Salt Lake City.

Labels: How's the economy?, weather

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Wearing helmets and wielding batons, New York police evicted Occupy Wall Street protesters from a park early on Tuesday, two months after they set up camp and sparked a national movement against economic inequality.

Hundreds of police dismantled the sea of tents, tarps, outdoor furniture, mattresses and protests signs at Zuccotti Park, arresting 147 people, including about a dozen who had chained themselves to each other and to trees.

It was just matter of time until Mayor Mike joined the Hall of Shame. Along with the mayors of other cities who conspired via conference call to coordinate their evictions & crackdowns.

George Lakoff discusses "framing."  in relation to Occupy Wall Street. Framing is a very useful word in its newer meaning, over-used but fills a purpose.

Media was "framing" OWS Zuccotti Park as an urban encampment settling in for winter permanence.  The questions were changing from "What are you protesting?" to "Where do you pee?" This change in focus wasn't some media conspiracy;  for  a street reporter  the details of life there were where the daily stories about OWS were to be found.  "Where do  you pee?" was a real issue. But it also played into hands of NYC Mayor & faux limousine  liberal Bloomberg & his Wall Street pals & allies. Bloomberg watched how Occupy evictions played out in other cities, apparently became convinced downtown Manhattan wasn't Oakland or Berkeley (it isn't), & finally did what everyone knew he would do eventually. His timing was off.  Bloomberg probably should have done it last week under cover of the Penn State scandal. 

I hope Bloomberg  poked a beehive with a stick.

If the "agenda" of OWS  devolves to  asserting a right to  a permanent squatter camp,  then it has become too small & provincial. Yes, it's the source of the "Occupy"  in Occupy Wall Street.  As a center of resistance, Zuccotti Park served a purpose. But its PR value has been declining for weeks, & the public  wasn't much interested in how it governed & policed itself.  I think Americans were beginning to imagine what an annoyance the place was to the 99% simply trying to go about their business in the vicinity.  OWS has to be careful not to turn itself into into its own  1%.

The agenda of OWS is to point to the truth of the agendas of the 1% at the top.

The Occupy movement successfully appropriated the word Occupy, & that counts for something. You can take that word anywhere now, into any form of protest against corporate exploitation & unjust entitlement,  just as Solidarity gained new, positive, universal meaning as it spread out of Poland in the '80s.  & there will be more Occupy camps.  Occupy isn't going away. .

Labels: How's the economy?, in the news

You can tell when protests are having an an effect. My sole conservative friend - if I'm in doubt about an issue I never go wrong choosing the opposite side to him - is reduced to posting snide remarks about Occupy Wall Street on Facebook. True, he's the the kind of guy who sees nuns demonstrating for peace & calls them crazy liberals, it's that automatic. Not much in the Occupy movement for a winger to grab on to. Few hot heads, any screwball leftist placards obviously don't represent the sentiments of  the middle class majority.  It's tough seeing  a smart, good-hearted & in many ways wise man from a working class town side with  Wall Street & the super-rich,  I so much want him to be raging labor unionist, he has personality for it,  but he's hardly the first I've met like that.

I like him because of his good heart, & he's not much of an ideologue, it's mainly from the gut, & he has plenty of  it from his fondness for good beer & excellent Jersey subs (his wife is a good cook, too). Sometimes, late at night, he'll upload a photo from his basement hideout, the Post & Daily News spread out on the table, with a bottle of scotch, pack of Marlboros. Or a photo of a freshly unwrapped sub sandwich,   bottle of beer, & the scotch.  Still lifes as concise as an early William Carlos Williams poem, who resided only a few miles away from him & near the same Passaic River. He might add a Sinatra song from You Tube.

The demonstrations may lead to something, or not. In this area there's another  month or so of  decent weather, but then we'll see if only the hardier souls  make a special trip downtown to join the  24/7 campers.

This happens to be the 33rd anniversary of the death of my poetry mentor, Joel Oppenheimer. It's not a date I remember - I was reminded by his son. Joel would have been delighted by Occupy Wall Street, by the very  ordinariness of the people.

Labels: How's the economy?, in the news

Foreign students walk off Hershey’s factory job in protest

Hundreds of foreign students on a State Department cultural exchange visa program walked off their factory jobs in protest on Wednesday.

The J-1 visa program brings foreign students to the country to work for two months and learn English, and was designed in part to fill seasonal tourism jobs at resorts and seaside towns. The 400 students employed at a Pennsylvania factory that makes Hershey's candies told The New York Times that even though they make $8.35 an hour, their rent and program fees are deducted from their paychecks, leaving them with less money than they spent to get the visas and travel to the country in the first place.

Hershey's excuse is that it doesn't operate the plant, but don't think that it wasn't part of the plan on how to exploit foreign workers & avoid hiring Americans. The plant was probably rushing to produce Halloween & Christmas candy so it could go back to one shift next month.

If you spend any time at Atlantic coast vacation towns during the summer, you encounter many  young foreign workers.  Are they exploited, too? Yeah, in a way, but really no different than local seasonal workers. The Jersey shore has a such a year-round economy now that local high school & college students no longer  depend entirely on hotels, motels, & the boardwalk for summer jobs but many still do.  It simply doesn't pay for young people from outside the shore to move there for the summer & work the boardwalk. It never did. But many still do.  They crowd into apartments too crappy & distant from the beach to   be rented to vacationers, work their shifts, party or hang out on the beach in their spare time. Working as a maid, waiting in restaurants, bar-tending  - jobs with gratuities - have the potential for good earnings. But for most it's a break-even or slightly ahead proposition.  I met a young Irish woman working in Wildwood's only used book store. It was her second year at the store. She didn't have a  tan. She was a night-clubber.


I don't know what bill-of-goods was sold to the workers at the Hershey plant, inducing them  to come to America & work in a factory.  A factory is a factory no matter where it is.  Workplace conditions are probably better  in America than in China  (I wouldn't swear to it for all factories, 'cause I don't know) but you still have to keep the product moving down the line.  We're already Europe's Third World workers, underpaid, non-unionized, poor   benefits compared to many European countries.  Yet, even that isn't enough for American companies. So they import  foreign  students from China & Turkey & Eastern Europe.

Dauphin County, where Hershey is located, has an official unemployment rate of 7.7%.

Labels: How's the economy?, in the news

Do street riots ever really improve the conditions that foment them? On the evidence one can can still see in New Jersey, they wrecked neighborhoods in which they occurred & made life even more miserable for the residents, with ruinous consequences that have lasted for decades.

The youthful rioters in England have certainly gotten the attention of the government, but if they are left with desolate retail districts, burned out & vacant stores whose owners are too discouraged & frightened  to return & rebuild,  they will find that they gained nothing except what they  managed to loot. They won't have brought Mark Duggan back to life or done him justice. They don't give a damn about Mark Duggan.

We're in the residential part of South Croydon and most of the worst carnage (including the burning of a furniture warehouse) happened about 3-4 miles away in West Croydon.

There was some looting closer by: a large electronics equipment store, a small jewellery shop and some other stores were broken into and looted within a block of the charity shop where I volunteer two days a week.

I was in the shop today and on the walk down the road this morning I could smell a faint smell like burning wood in the morning air.

Carol

Relieved to hear my new friend is safe.

Labels: How's the economy?, in the news

Heavy rain showers here earlier. The really intense storms passed to the east & west.

We're so used to tornadoes tearing up trailer parks in towns we never heard of  that we forget they do hit cities. Parts of Tuscaloosa, home of University of Alabama, were devastated yesterday. Just luck the campus was spared.  Photos of the destruction in the south look like Japan after the earthquake & tsunami.

In 1999, an online acquaintance from Norman, Oklahoma was undecided about relocating. A series of tornadoes hitting Norman & downtown Oklahoma City made up her mind.  She moved to Arizona.
***
From Bloomberg.com, here's an  entry for the How's the economy doing? category:

McDonald’s and its franchisees hired 62,000 people in the U.S. after receiving more than one million applications, the Oak Brook, Illinois-based company said today in an e-mailed statement. Previously, it said it planned to hire 50,000.

The April 19 national hiring day was the company’s first, said Danya Proud, a McDonald’s spokeswoman. She declined to disclose how many of the jobs were full- versus part-time.

Labels: How's the economy?, weather