Eideard

Same as it ever was…

This weekend’s Labor Day celebrations in America mark a difficult time for workers. Having experienced a multi-year decline in their share of national income, they are now suffering the brunt of the current economic malaise; and there is little to suggest that the situation will improve any time soon. As a result, the country’s economic hardships risk morphing from pressuring specific segments of the population to undermining more general aspects of social justice.

The numbers are striking — and worrisome. Over the last 30 years, labor’s share of the national pie has declined to 44 percent from 52 percent, with profits growing at twice the annual rate for average wages.

This…monthly employment report adds to the concerns. Unemployment remains very high, whether measured by the most-quoted unemployment rate (9.1 percent), the less partial under- and un-employment rate, (16.2 percent) or, most comprehensively, the proportion of total adults who are not working (42 percent compared to 35 percent 10 years ago).

The duration and composition of joblessness is very troubling. The average unemployed American has been without a job for 40 weeks, a record level, and 44 percent of the unemployed have been out of a job for more than 26 weeks. The incidence of joblessness is severe among those lacking a college degree (11 percent compared to 4 percent for college graduates). For 16-19 year olds the unemployment rate is a horrible 25 percent.

Whichever number you look at, America’s labor market problems constitute a full-blown crisis with far reaching economic, social and political consequences. If current trends continue, joblessness will become stubbornly embedded in the system and, distressingly, some of the unemployed will become unemployable…

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The country-by-country breakdown just released on Google’s Web site marks the first time that the Internet search leader has provided such a detailed look at the censorship and data requests that it gets from regulators, courts and other government agencies. The figures, for the roughly 100 countries in which it operates, cover the final half of last year and will be updated every six months.

Google posted the numbers nearly a month after it began redirecting search requests to its China-based service. Those requests are now handled in Hong Kong rather than mainland China so Google wouldn’t have to obey the country’s Internet censorship laws. Google said details about the censorship demands it got while in mainland China still aren’t being shared because the information is classified as a state secret.

In other countries, Google is making more extensive disclosures about censorship demands or other government requests to edit its search results. Google is also including demands to remove material from its other services, including the YouTube video site, although it is excluding removal requests related to allegations of copyright infringement, a recurring problem for YouTube.

Google is providing a more limited snapshot of government requests for its users’ personal information. The numbers are confined primarily to demands made as part of criminal cases, leaving out civil matters such as divorces. And Google isn’t revealing how often it cooperated with those data demands.

The disclosure comes as more regulators and consumers watchdogs around the world are complaining that the company doesn’t take people’s privacy seriously enough. Google maintains that its users’ privacy is one of the company’s highest priorities. The company also notes that, in one instance, it has gone to court to prevent the U.S. Justice Department from getting broad lists of people’s search requests.

I wonder if the number of requests from the DOJ has diminished?

Daylife/Getty Images used by permission

Yes, that’s irony. One of my pet peeves is critics who babble as if they own a solid-state crystal ball – letting us know all the evil that will be committed by rather ordinary [but successful] companies by virtue of being successful at providing a service. Rather like keeping a horse because some car companies build pretty good cars.

Circuitous logic at best. Bill Thompson’s earlier piece on why he feared Google was going to destroy literature as we know it fit the bill perfectly. Which is why I didn’t waste time blogging about it.

After my criticism of the proposed Google Book Search settlement was published on the BBC News website Google offered the opportunity to talk about my concerns with Santiago de la Mora, the company’s director of book partnerships in Europe.

We talked extensively about the rationale behind Book Search, the detail of the settlement and my worries over its possible adverse impact on other digitisation projects.

It is clear that for those within Google who are developing Book Search the goal is to enhance user choice and build the market for books, not simply driving more traffic and generating more advertising revenue for Google itself.

Throughout our conversation Mr de la Mora was adamant that enabling people to find books online will benefit readers, authors and publishers.

Am I the only one out here who notices that authors’ arguments against Google book search are identical to RIAA fears about music file-sharing or the MPAA position on movie file-sharing?

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The dangers of the Internet struck home for a Massachusetts mother when she found her own child for sale on Craigslist as part of what appears to be an international adoption scam.

Seven-month old Jacob Brennan was busy playing with toys when his mother, Jenni, got what she called a shocking e-mail, WCVB-TV reported.

“Out of the blue, some girl e-mailed us and said, ‘I think you should know someone’s using Jake’s picture in an adoption scam’,” said Brennan, who said she found the message hard to believe.

Brennan followed the link included in the e-mail and found an ad on the Craigslist Web site. The ad promised that a “cute baby boy” was available for adoption, but did not include a picture.

Brennan decided to play detective and sent an e-mail to the address listed. She quickly received a picture in her inbox.

“The picture he sends you is a picture of Jake,” Brennan said. “It was horrifying. I never would have thought in a million years that I would have the emotional reaction that I did.”

The e-mail claimed her son is Canadian born and living at an orphanage in Cameroon and said that for $300 she could begin the adoption process…

At least they didn’t Hot Link to the photo. Har!

TARP repaid with interest – $20 billion spare for bonuses
Daylife/Getty Images used by permission

Goldman Sachs Group Inc has quietly reached an agreement to end a legal dispute with a blogger who will be allowed to keep running a website critical of the investment bank.

The agreement required blogger Michael Morgan to post a disclaimer on his goldmansachs666.com website, saying it has no affiliation with the financial firm.

Morgan, a Florida investment adviser, uses his blog — whose name combines Goldman’s name with numbers used to evoke connotations with the devil — to criticize the bank and its large profits.

The bank this week posted a 33 percent increase in quarterly earnings on blowout trading results, putting its employees on pace for big bonuses at a time when many Americans are struggling…

Goldman spokeswoman Gia Moron said on Friday that “our concern about this site ceased when Mr. Morgan posted a prominent disclaimer making it clear that his site was not associated with Goldman Sachs.”

If the little financial smurf had posted a disclaimer from the beginning, he never would have been bothered by Goldman-Sachs’ legal beagles.

Yes, all the lawsuits sound silly and petty. What you don’t realize is that they are required to protect rights to a brand name. The classic defense goes back around a century with Bayer filing to defend its rights to a product they called “aspirin”. They were too late and the word went into the public domain.

The High Court has refused to preserve the anonymity of an award-winning policeman who has blogged about the force and government ministers.

Mr Justice Eady refused an injunction to prevent the Times identifying serving officer “Night Jack”, winner of an Orwell prize for blogging.

The judge said said blogging was “essentially a public rather than a private activity“.

Night Jack’s lawyer said preserving his anonymity was in the public interest.

Hugh Tomlinson QC said the thousands who communicated via the internet under a cloak of anonymity would be “horrified” to think the law would do nothing to protect their identities if someone carried out the necessary detective work to unmask them.

But the judge ruled any right of privacy on the part of the blogger would be likely to be
outweighed by a countervailing public interest in revealing that a particular police officer had been making such contributions.

In his blog “Night Jack – An English Detective” the unnamed officer chronicled his working life in an unnamed UK town: descriptions of local criminals and his struggle with police bureaucracy.

Like most bloggers, I disagree with the Judge’s decision. The quality of anonymity is what draws many to speaking out, identifying and discussing what they feel needs examination within their nation and society.

Oh, the photo? That’s some Lancashire copper named Richard Horton.

The pages of a policeman’s notebook, clumped as they are with impenetrable acronyms and tales of suspects proceeding in northerly directions, seldom crackle with urgent prose or lapse into howls of sardonic anger and moments of compassion.

But one serving officer, who used his daily jottings and professional experiences as raw material for a blog, has just been rewarded with the Orwell special prize for blogs.

According to the judges, the pronouncements of “Night Jack – An English Detective” provided a perfect example of the medium’s power and importance.

“The insight into the everyday life of the police that Jack Night’s wonderful blog offered was – everybody felt – something which only a blog could deliver, and he delivered it brilliantly. It took you to the heart of what a policeman has to do – by the first blogpost you were hooked, and could not wait to click on to the next…”

Although he suspended his blog activities this month, Jack posted a message to accept the prize – the need to stay anonymous meant he did not attend in person.

He said he had pledged the £3,000 winnings to the Police Dependents’ Trust, and is adamant that no one outside his family and friends will learn his true identity. He is also currently working on a novel.

“It would appear I can write so I’m trying to see whether I can write more than a chapter of a police procedural,” he said. “After 20 years on the job, it’s all I know about.”

RTFA. I’m recommending it – and Night Jack – to a couple of mates who are coppers, retired or otherwise.

This is UPDATED here.

President of Goldman Sachs, Gary Cohn
Daylife/AP Photo used by permission

The bank has instructed Wall Street law firm Chadbourne & Parke to pursue blogger Mike Morgan, warning him in a recent cease-and-desist letter that he may face legal action if he does not close down his website.

Florida-based Mr Morgan began a blog entitled “Facts about Goldman Sachs” – just a few weeks ago.

In that time Mr Morgan, a registered investment adviser, has added a number of posts to the site, including one entitled “Does Goldman Sachs run the world?“. However, many of the posts relate to other Wall Street firms and issues.

According to Chadbourne & Parke’s letter, dated April 8, the bank is rattled because the site “violates several of Goldman Sachs’ intellectual property rights” and also “implies a relationship” with the bank itself.

Unsurprisingly for a man who has conjoined the bank’s name with the Number of the Beast – although he jokingly points out that 666 was also the S&P500′s bear-market bottom – Mr Morgan is unlikely to go down without a fight.

Good for you, dude. Poisonally, I think the 666 is a nice touch.

Julie LaCoste and Jules, one of her two sons

Lacoste, 31, and her two sons, Jules, 6, and Orphée, 2, are homeless. Every few weeks they pack one big duffel bag with their belongings, heave it onto a bicycle and move to another apartment. They crash on the floor of a friend’s house and rely on the charity of parents at the boys’ schools.

If they have avoided sleeping on the street so far, it is also because of the publicity Lacoste has reaped with a weekly blog she started in September.

This “diary of a homeless mother,” recounting the daily routine of juggling her job at a public library, the care for her children and the battle to find a place to stay, has resulted in dozens of offers of temporary accommodation.

It has also drawn some skepticism.

“There are other cities and villages in France where life is sweet, rents are cheaper and there is work,” Sylvaine P. wrote on the blog on Dec. 10. “One gets the feeling that you haven’t necessarily always made the right decisions.”

Lacoste’s response is categorical: “Paris is home. I have a job here and friends. All I need is an apartment.”

Lacoste, well-dressed and employed, may be an unlikely face of the homeless. But her tale has a growing resonance in France: As the global economic crisis eats into incomes and prices more struggling people out of the housing market, national pride in egalitarian values and a generous welfare system is being punctured.

The IHT doesn’t use the phrase, “From our correspondent” – but, that’s what this is. An in-depth tale of a life and lives affected by circumstances not under their control. Coping, deciding, surviving, make decisions for one or another reason, good, bad or indifferent.

RTFA. A good read and worthy of discussion.

New WordPress user Martha Stewart dedicated the September 17 episode of The Martha Stewart Show to blogging!

On the show, Martha explains how she and her staff utilize The Martha Blog and chats with some of her favorite bloggers, including WordPress users Margaret Roach, Perez Hilton, and Smitten Kitchen’s Deb Perelman.

I’ve been writing this blog for almost a year now and I have to say that I love being able to communicate so easily on a daily basis. Being in the public eye, I have a devoted following that wants to know more about my personal life and activities. Prior to blogging, we sent out a newsletter dealing with such issues. Although the printed newsletter was charming and informative, it was also a rather slow process and didn’t reach nearly as many readers as this blog does.

I really love the spontaneity of blogging and being able to post whatever, whenever.

Here’s a clip from the show:

WordPress rocks. Martha rocks. What more could you ask for?