and I'm sure many will follow. For now, if you can, contribute. Our neighbors need you.
On a happy note, I am absolutely thrilled to tell you that Baldandy and Newsie have joined The Daily Pulse as regular contributors. It will be an expanded version of the regular Daily Pulse, with Newsie adding a news summary and Baldandy doing a pundit parade. I hope you'll pop over and join us.
Also, I'm still looking for contributors, particularly somebody to do a regular letters column, and perhaps even a foreign editorial column. Let me know if you're interested in doing one alone, or as part of a team you or I can put together.
The Jersey Journal
This is a fascinating, though wonkish, editorial about the effects of population growth on developing economies. The conclusion is basically that the Bush Administration's position that population growth stimulates economic growth is hogwash, and that the US's work AGAINST population control (and let me add- its insane insistence on limitations on what can even be talked about by anybody taking American money, even if also using other money) is an enormous factor in keeping the undeveloped nations from improving their lot. This has a direct effect on Americans, not only as human beings concerned about the lot of others, but because the world wide costs in environmental destruction, emergency aid, health crisis, etc., are all affected by the tragedies in the third world.
George W. Bush is contributing to world poverty
Apologists for the Bush Administration are making claims that rapid rates of population growth somehow stimulate economic growth. The contention is that rapid rates of population growth stimulate consumerism and that the added demand fuels economic growth.
Actually, the opposite is true. The economies of many developing countries are being crippled by the fact that a high percentage of personal and national income is spent on the immediate consumption needs of food, housing and clothing - because there are too many children dependent on each working adult - leaving little income available to form investment capital. ...
Meeting the entire need for family planning information and services of just $15.2 billion per year for several decades could reap a long-term benefit of over $1 trillion per year in reduced need for developing-world infrastructure growth and would enhance the health and welfare of people worldwide, while protecting the environment from further development. In the meantime, the Administration allocates less than 1 percent of the federal budget to humanitarian assistance for struggling countries. This stinginess not only hurts the people of the developing countries. Their poverty and suffering are major factors in the growing worldwide resentment toward the U.S. and its way of life.
EDITOR'S NOTE: Ryerson is President of Population Media Center, a non-profit organization that uses specially-created radio and TV soap operas, written and produced in developing countries, to change behavior around the world with regard to family size, family planning, the status of women, avoidance of AIDS, and related issues. His email is ryerson@populationmedia.org.
Letters to the Editor
The Jersey Journal
A bursting housing bubble is inevitable. Inflation, given our astounding deficit spending, is also inevitable. Katrina, however, might accelerate the events. In the short term, I actually disagree with this editorial, for Katrina will be a big windfall for construction- enormous areas must be rebuilt. But inflation will go along with it, as demand for material out paces supply. The inflation caused by rising fuel costs will spiral out of control, with the real pain being felt when the winter heating bills start to arrive.
Katrina adjusts picture on energy
As Katrina pounded the Gulf Coast states crude oil futures were trading at above the $70 a barrel mark with the news that the hurricane shut down about 8 to 10 percent of this nation's refining capacity. Eventually, the market cooled and a barrel of light crude settled at $67.20 on the New York Mercantile Exchange. ...
With the nation addicted to fossil fuels, the fuel increases are not expected to be reduced any time soon, but rather stay stable or grow. Economists warn this could well mean inflation rises and that the national economy could take a big hit. This in turn would burst the big bubble in housing market prices that have been predicted for several months. ...
What is not needed are announcements out of Detroit that the new lines of trucks and SUVs are about to go on display - unless they are much more fuel efficient than those gas-guzzlers of the past.
It is to be hoped that Katrina has blown in a little common sense.
Letters to the Editor
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
The Iraqi draft constitution is an unmitigated disaster. Read it if you can. It claims to offer "rights," but each and every right is limited "as long as it does not violate public order and morality." In other words, there are no rights, for "morality" is undefined. The religion police will be able to trump "rights," if the "speech" you enjoy offends Islam, if the sex you enjoy offends your neighbors, etc. Think of a bill of rights that says `you have the right to free speech (that doesn't offend), a right to free exercise of religion (that the community approves), etc.' Just how free is that?
Ill-fated draft / Iraq's constitution will split the country
After several months of deliberations and nearly 2-1/2 years into the war, Iraqis in principle completed work Sunday on a draft constitution. ...
President Bush, nevertheless, has called the draft Iraqi constitution, "a document of which the Iraqis and the rest of the world can be proud." It is hard to see how he can say that. He has either fallen off his bike again, or is embarking on another course of pretending that something is true which is not, as he did with Iraq's non-existent weapons of mass destruction, its fictive links to al-Qaida and 9/11, his belief that invading U.S. troops would be received by Iraqis with joy, the idea that a post-invasion Iraq would serve as a beacon of democracy in the Middle East, or that America's oil situation would be improved by attacking Iraq.
The draft constitution is almost inevitably ill-fated in terms of the future of Iraq itself and the U.S. presence there. The U.S. effort to impose one constitutes another destructive American mistake in that tragic country. It will likely be an expensive one in terms of cash and blood.
Letters to the Editor
Indianapolis Star
In Indiana the Governor commuted the death sentence of a man who (a) committed heinous multiple murders, and (b) is clearly mentally deranged. Whatever your feeling about the death penalty in general, we are simply not a modern or moral nation if we execute our children or our mentally ill. This decision was a good one. Soon, Texas will be alone in its fervor for judicial murder.
Prisoner will live, and so will issue
Gov. Mitch Daniels' decision to commute the death sentence of Arthur P. Baird II was correct for more reasons than those he gave in Monday's order. ...
If the prisoner was delusional in passing up a life-saving plea bargain, and if it is ambiguous whether he knows what he perpetrated or why he was condemned, how does it make sense for the state to proceed with an irreversible punishment?...
Arthur Baird lost his place in civilized society when he murdered his wife and parents. But there is strong evidence, the Indiana Parole Board's stubborn denial to the contrary, that he was not in control of himself when he committed those horrible acts and has not grasped what has been done with him since then. A jury of his peers wanted to put him away without another killing, a governor in a new era has allowed that second chance, and an issue remains alive for the next stage of capital punishment's evolution.
Letters to the Editor
Reading Eagle
Santorum not only refused to speak to three teenagers at a book signing, his hired help, an off duty Delaware State Police Sgt., acted like a damned thug. Somebody needs to take these three girls, and the mother who was also mistreated, to every Santorum event between now and November, 2006. They should dog him like that damned chicken a few years ago. Santorum seems to really be working at making an ass of himself at every opportunity. We should oblige him.
Santorum missed golden opportunity
It appears as though Sen. Rick Santorum, a Pennsylvania Republican, has taken a page out of President Bush's book: Dissenting opinions are not welcome at public appearances. ...
Al Mascitti, a columnist for the Wilmington News Journal, reported that college students Stacey Galperin and Miriam Rocek of Newark, Del., and recent high school graduate Hannah Shaffer of Glen Mills, Delaware County, wanted to tell the senator they thought he was wrong about some of his attitudes concerning women.
But before Santorum arrived, one of his advance people heard the girls talking. A short time later off-duty Delaware State Police Sgt. Michael DiJiacomo, who was hired for the occasion through a private security firm, ordered the girls out of the store and threatened to arrest them.
DiJiacomo even tried to ban them from the nearby Concord Mall. ..
But Santorum, who is up for re-election next year, missed an opportunity not only to defend his beliefs but also to engage some teens in political debate. Too often young people are alienated by politics and stay away from the polls on Election Day in overwhelming numbers. ...
Letters to the Editor
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Health and Human Services made a promise to get Crawford confirmed, then broke the promise for obvious political pandering. Plan B should be approved, and the entire set of machinations over "young teens" is just utter crap, a brand new concern never even uttered about the sale of any other drug. The FDA is supposed to be in the drug business, not the morality business. But when the entire country is being turned into a Christian version of the Taliban, it is not all that surprising to see Torquemada running a department.
Sales of Plan B: A deal's a deal
In delaying a decision on morning-after contraception, administration officials are reverting to form. If there's a conflict between science and political pandering, Bush officials are happy to ignore the facts, flout the law and place their faith in bringing out far-right voters.
The administration violated its own promise to make a decision this month on over-the-counter sales of Plan B to women 16 and older. Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt had said the Food and Drug Administration would act on the sales application by Sept. 1. ...
It's hard to believe the FDA intends to resolve questions about young pill buyers. The issue was obvious months ago. The FDA also ignored a science panel's advice in December 2003 to allow over-the-counter sales and deadlines for making decisions about the pill. Crawford did nothing earlier this year after saying a decision would be made within weeks.
There's a pattern: Do what Karl Rove orders.
Letters to the Editor
St. Petersburg Times
I do not know how long it will be before we understand or appreciate the tragedy of Katrina. I went through Andrew, until now the worst of our hurricanes, and it was nothing in comparison to Katrina, because it was a relatively dry storm. If you can, contribute. If you can, go there and help. Hundreds of thousands, even millions, of our neighbors need you.
Spared again
Residents along Florida's central gulf coast find themselves in a conflicted state of mind this morning: grateful that Hurricane Katrina passed them by but concerned for those who suffered the storm's full fury. There will be lessons to learn from Katrina, but our first thoughts are with the victims. ...
Much has improved in the emergency response to a looming hurricane. Advanced technology is a life-saver, providing remarkably accurate information. And with extensive coverage of past devastation in mind, residents seem to be taking the warnings seriously. ...
We won't know the extent of Katrina's damage for another day or two, but clearly it will be bad, particularly in eastern Louisiana and Mississippi. For those who would like to help, they can send contributions to:
American Red Cross, 1-800-HELP-NOW 1-800-435-7669, or online at www.redcross.org
Salvation Army, 1-800-SAL-ARMY 1-800-725-2769, or online at www.salvationarmyusa.org
Letters to the Editor
St. Louis Post Dispatch
Right now we need to get through the tragedy from the storm. But when it is over, perhaps we should consider the long-term effects we are having on our environment, from the local draining of swamps to the global pollution and warming everybody with three brain cells to rub together (and not working for Exxon) now agrees is happening.
HURRICANE KATRINA: East of Armageddon
AT DAWN ON MONDAY, Hurricane Katrina made a slight right turn as it barreled in from the Gulf, making landfall over the eastern shore of Barataria Bay, the haunt of the pirate Jean Lafitte. That last-minute turn eastward - just one percent farther east along the 1,631-mile U.S. Gulf Coast than was forecast - may have saved the United States from the worst natural disaster in its history. ...
Louisiana was designed for alligators and crawfish, shorebirds and redfish, not for man. Man has systematically destroyed or "developed" the swamps, bogs and barrier islands that protect the coast, and rechanneled the Mississippi and Atchafalaya rivers that used to drain the interior and replenish the land. He has built levees to protect him from the river, forgetting that they could one day form a basin he'd drown in. He has built houses and condos and casinos along the coast, and populated it with a million people.
One day Mother Nature may reclaim it. Monday wasn't that day, but it was perilously close.
Letters to the Editor
St. Louis Post Dispatch
Read this whole thing. It includes a list of notables absent from the Constitutional process, including Iraq's Vice President and Ayad Allawi, previously Bush's poster boy. Iraq is a disaster, turning worse by the day. Bush's repeated pronouncements are little more than holding feces in the hand and calling it chocolate.
IRAQ: Milestone or millstone?
IN THE FANTASY WORLD that President George W. Bush inhabits, the failure of Iraqi leaders to agree on a constitution is another inspiring milestone along the road to Iraqi democracy. ...
We wish Mr. Bush's fantasy were reality, that failure equaled success and wrong turns were landmarks. Both Iraq and the United States would be better off if the Iraqis could reach a consensus that could tamp down the insurgency and allow for a U.S. withdrawal. But wishing does not make it so, nor can hype turn failure into success. It suggests only the depth of the president's desperation.
With every absurd boast, it becomes more apparent that Mr. Bush has no idea how to lead the country out of the quagmire he led it into.
Letters to the Editor