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Mike Spence, follows a popular Governor Mitch Daniels of Indiana. On social issues Spence has stood up for legislation that is socially conservative and representing Middle America. On many of the economic and other important issues Mitch Daniels had already set out and achieved much of the Republican agenda in Indiana. Spence is the son of a gas station manager who went to Hanover College, and won a seat in Congress after several tries including the first one in 1988. He hosted the Mike Spence Show on radio reaching out to conservatives after failing in campaigns in 1988 and 1990. The show ran from 1993 to 1999. In 2000 he won a race for Congress followed by a run for Governor. In 2015 he signed a religious freedom law after making some changes to accomodate critics.

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How did Roger Bannister do the 4 minute mile in Oxford 1954. The shoes were heavy, Bannister was on war time rations growing up, he worked during the day, there were mental barrriers says his friend Coe. And on the day Bannister ran it was raining and wind gusts of 25mph made it not certain he would make the run.Bannister puts it this way- "Sport is aobut adapting to the unexpected and being able to modify plans at the last minute. Sport, like all life, is aobut taking your chances." And after it was filmed by the BBC, Bannister was known all over the world, yet as an amateur he did not benefit from it financially, as runners do today. His friend Coe talks to The Guardian about this achievement and the story behind it.

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Venezuela faces an uncertain future after U.S. efforts to support Mr. Guaido and call for new free and fair elections have failed. With help from Russia the Venezuelan economy is showing signs of recovery from the steep decline and high inflation in 2019. Oil production is expected to reach 1 million barrels a day in 2020 after falling to 650,000- 700,000 barrels a day in 2019. Russia's oil company Rosneft provides critical help for Venezuelan oil sales and maintenance in oil fields.  National Security Adviser John Bolton is faulted for his advice to president Trump on Venezuela, that merely voicing support for 36 year old Guaido, would lead to regime change without action from the U.S. With the recovery in Venezuela with help from Russia and Cuba, Mr. Guaido's popularity has dropped by 20 points to 38%, according to a Venezuelan pollster Datanalisis. Most Cubans and Venezuelans in the U.S. are in Florida where there is support for new elections, and Mr. Trump continues to support Mr. Guaido. The lack of support for change from other countries including Europe, India, Turkey, and Mexico have led to a stalled situation in Venezuela. There is concern for the steep inflation, the migration of about 4.5 million Venezuelans, the shortages of critical supplies as a result of the economic collapse in 2019. The situation is stabilizing for the government yet the future of Venezuela with U.S. sanctions and weak economy leaves Venezuela in a precarious situation. Venezuela continues to be an example of how well meaning changes for social justice can lead to political changes that bring about economic collapse. This happens  when business and the economy flounder under mismanagement and corruption under crony socialism, a variant of crony capitalism. The old capitalist class and the privileged families who ran the country under its old two party system are gone. Replaced with a new class. The trying out of untested economic ideas in the quest for social balance leads to economic mismanagement, loss of critical human resources which leave the country, and a higher degree of poverty with shortages than before.  Today in Latin America Brazil shows how allowing generous pension benefits at the expense of basic needs and public services in the budget can hurt the economy. Argentina's overborrowing once again shows how this leads to IMF loans and harsh economic austerity. Chile shows how not financing pensions and public services can lead to collapse of public confidence and riots. Venezuela shows how the quest for social justice and reducing privilege can itself get flawed, leading to mass migration of as many as 4.5 million citizens. This happens under models that vary from free enterprise models to socialist or nationalist models showing that models can be less relevant than good sense and good management. In the beginning and for some time each of these models worked well, commodity price supported booms concealed real problems. Avoiding extremes, prudent spending, good investment and hard work, investment in education and infrastructure, building consensus, and good management, is critical for the future to avoid the bad outcomes facing much of Latin America. A lesson also for Asian and African countries that basic virtue is more important than socialism or free enterprise or nationalism when it comes to development.   ...

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Reports by David Sanger and other reporters from the NYT on the situation in Ukraine as seen from the US, Russian, European, and Ukrainian sides. Russian president Putin sees Ukraine as part of the Russian cultural and economic sphere with deep ties to Ukraine in its history. The western parts of Ukraine near Poland and near the capital Kiev see their future more in relation to other Eastern European countries that have moved closer to or joined the European Union such as Poland and the Baltic republics of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. It is not clear even to advisors to the Russian government what Mr. Putin's intentions and plans are. Russia has not yet recognized the two breakaway republics in Eastern Ukraine based in Donestsk.  Some of the key points in Ukraine's recent history- one needs to know this because Ukraine has a difficult history in its relations with Poland/Lithuania and with Russia alternating over centuries, with neither relationship providing the kind of government that would have helped Ukraine's people. Formed only in 1991 the Republic of Ukraine has a long history since 1500 of being part of Poland and Lithuania, and later part of Russia, with some parts of Ukraine under the Austrian Hapsburgs till 1900. Ukraine was part of the Soviet Union in the 1920's to the 1950's in one phase in which it suffered badly with collectivization of agriculture under Communist Soviet leadership and famines. In the second phase of Soviet rule after the 1950's Ukraine made a dramatic recovery as Krushchev assumed control with Leonid Brezhnev who was from Ukraine. After 1964 Brezhnev ran the the Soviet Union till 1984 and this was a good period for Ukraine. The Soviet Union collapsed in 1990 and Russian leader Yeltsin separated Ukraine and Belarus to go their own ways as separate countries from Russia. For 1990-2000 Ukraine did badly losing about 60% of its GDP, a situation also experienced by Russia with economic instability. Russia recovered under Putin, yet Ukraine has struggled since because of mismanagement under different governments and widespread entrenched corruption.  Governments alternated in the period 2000 to 2020 between ones friendly to Russia and friendly to Poland and European Union. This happened in 2004 and again with protests in 2014. The protests in 2014 in Kiev and Lviv led to a government that favored closer ties with EU and NATO. It is this pendulum swing that is Ukraine's and Eastern Europe's experience in the 20th century and it continues into the 21st. What Russia wants is for Ukraine to not be a place for NATO operations, even if it is not allied to Russia after Russian president Putin was disappointed with the Russian allied government's performance under Yanukovich in the 2000-2014 period with corruption and mismanagement. France in the 16th and to 18th century is described by Brendan Simms of Cambridge in his new book on Europe, as needing the external danger for unity, and unity to meet external danger. This could be true also for Russia as the danger posed by NATO helps bring unity to Russia. And this could be a way to unify Russia and provide it with the confidence that it seeks in its effort for parity with the European Union and the US, China in the 21st century.   ...

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This is an high exceptional report in the NYT by Rosenthal, Fitzsimmons and Laforgia on the crumbling infrastructure in the U.S., taking the New York subway system as one of the most glaring examples of this failure of public administration since World War II. The woes of the system amount to a kind of defunding of the subway system for update, maintenance and technological improvement to meet the doubled ridership since 1950. Read this to understand why this is happening throughout the U.S. for clues to the possible causes, and what needs to be done. As this is now in the hands of ordinary citizens who suffer daily from the inefficiencies, delays, and rundown conditions on the subways compared to other subway systems in Europe, Japan and China. One report in the media in Nov. 2017 says Japan's Shinkansen railways apologized to customers for a train leaving 24 seconds early. Small details get accounted for in other countries, whereas they are ignored here in one of the largest cities in the world. A former New York transit system president from the 1970's calls it "heartbreaking" making him mad when he thinks about what is happening in the way New York subways are run. Financial deals have saddled the New York subway system with added $5 billion in interest on debt in return for  short term cash infusion. The result is that about 17% of the budget goes to paying interest on debt. In 1997 this was about 6%. So that needed maintenance and capital projects suffer. The New York subway system has only a 65% on time record,  the worst of any subway system in the world. And technology dates back to the 1930's with a signals system from that period,  says this New York Times report. Maintenance needs have suffered under the Cuomo administration says this report.  The system has suffered an enormous stagnation, leaving it in a shape that has not changed for decades. There are fewer miles of track than in 1950 after the war, while the ridership of 5.7 million today has doubled. The budget for maintenance has barely budged from 25 years ago. This report says the politicians who ran the city and the state of New York bear much of the responsibility for the crumbling infrastructure of the subways in New York.   ...

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A sad situation at the library system in San Jose with exorbitant late fees turning young people from low income families, immigrant children- the very group that needs to be integrated better into society with improved English language skills and a path to higher literacy and reading scores that can lead to college- turning these children away from libraries to avoid the late fee penalties. Parents with low incomes can ill afford the high late fees in the San Jose library system, and some residents keep a distance after being pursued by collection agencies, according to this report by Carol Pogash in the NYT. The situation is different in San Francisco which charges less in late fees, and with the openness of libraries in New York which counts more reading time in libraries as a way to pay off any late fees. The numbers are significant as this report shows 187,000 accounts at the San Jose library system, or 39 percent of all cardholders owe the library late fees. Compared to 50 cents a day for unreturned books at San Jose, San Francisco charges 10 cents a day for adults and no late charges for users under 17 years. Here the principal of Washington Elementary School in San Jose, Maria Arias Evans, and librarian Ms. Bourne, draw attention to a problem when 95 percent of the children attending the school qualify for free and reduced lunch programs. When America is seriously reflecting on the issue of lack upward mobility through education in 2016, better integration of immigrants into society, turning away young students from libraries is the last thing we need as a society and a nation. The digital and other divide in San Jose has never been so evident even from the outside. In March the German new weekly ran a story on San Jose and Silicon Valley satirically titled "Beyond Awesome."...

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Shoichiro Toyoda and Okuda who ran Toyota in the eighties and nineties to make Toyota what it is today, question Toyota's strategy. The precise criticism is outlined in this article at the timwe Tooyota was considering its eigth plant in Tupelo, Mississippi. Their criticism focusses on the complacency to tolerate higher labor costs, to accept less manufacturing efficiency in overseas plants compared to Japan, and put in billions of dollars in new plants which may not be profitable quickly when the same result can be accomplished by adding more assembly lines to existing plants. The Toyota Tundra plant in Texas has overcapacity as the pickup has not sold as expected and this could happen at other plants if Toyota is not careful enough. Also the decisions to build plants in many different states appears to be based not just on manufacturing efficiency but also on desire to win political support in those states- California, Indiana and 6 southern states. Has that gone too far even when it is cheaper to manufacture in Japan because of the weaker yen? If it helps to keep the targets for Toyota vehicle content made in the USA (when imports have increased significantly) cannot this be accomplished by adding more assembly lines to existing plants? These are the points made by Shoichiro and Okuda. Especially that complacency may be getting into decisionmaking at Toyota. Behind all this is the fear that the Big Three may finally be breaking free of the higher unionized wage and benefit costs that put them at a disadvantage. And at the same time the quality gap may be shruinking between Toyota and the US manufacturers. This is evidenced in other articles, one recently on Ford's progress in JD Powers surveys. Here the figure of 2.3 million vehicles recalled in 2005 by Toyota is cited as showing Toyota slipping in the quality it was known for....

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The House healthcare bill that just passed by amargin of 220 to 215. The cost would be $1.055 trillion over 10 years, with cost of $894 billion factoring in penalties for individuals and businesses that don't buy insurance. Adding increased coverage for Medicare prescirption drug coverage for seniors its around $1.2 trillion. $460 billion is from new taxes on single people with income of over $500,000 or couples with inocme of $1 million. There are $400 billion in cuts to Medicare and Medicaid, and additional money coming from penalties for not buying insurance. First column here is Senate version, second for House version and third President's version. Other features individuals must have insurance or pay afee of 2.5% of income, hardhip waivers will be available. Employers must provide insurance to employees or pay a penalty of 8% of payroll. Small businesses with fewer than 10 workers get tax credits. The threshhold is $500,000 of payroll. To help families with lower incomes and the poor the bill provides: families earning $29,000 a year pay no more than 1.5% of income for premiums. Families with incomes of $88,000 ayear would pay no more than 12% of income for premiums. ...

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Many important changes in the health care bill do not come till 2013 or 2014. Its only in 2014 that government will hand out tax credits to low and middle incoem Americans to offset the cost of buying insurance and expand Medicaid federal-state programs to help expand insurance for the poorer sections of society.

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The $787 million settlement is for defamation damages for Dominion Voting Systems and its owner State Street Capital. On the fundamental issue of free and fair elections and freely elected governments, the settlement does not ask for an explicit statement by Fox News of misconduct. To understand what happened one has to look at the origins of the FNN in the Melbourne Herald of 1920-1950 under Keith Murdoch and the political controversy pursued to increase readership in that period. NYT says it has an implicit plea of "no contest" to several pre trial findings by the presiding judge Eric Davis- "The evidence does not support that Fox News Network television carried good faith disinterested reporting." NYT explains this as the judge saying that spreading a conspiracy theory does not fall under legally protected "news gathering." The presiding judge also decided that - "Evidence developed in this civil proceeding demonstrates that it is CRYSTAL clear none of the statements related to Dominion (by Fox News) are true." As the case is not going to trial readers may ask what happened not just in this case but in Fox News and Trump over the last decade that caused risks to the framework of democracy, of elections and transfer of power setup by the founding fathers. Fox News Network has its origins in the Melbourne Herald of the 1920-1950 period when Keith Murdoch setup the business in Australia that was expanded a generation later by Rupert Murdoch. Keith Murdoch was heavily influenced in his newspaper career by Lord Northcliffe, and by Lord Beaverbrook, a Canadian from New Brunswick, who both created a form of journalism that used political controversy to increase readership between the two world wars and in the period after that to 1957. The readership of these papers ran to 3-4 million which in that period in Britain or Australia was huge. Beaverbook took controversial positions that were built on his idea that the bloc Britain should represent was Canada, Australia and Britain with the British Empire, to have little to do with Europe or even the US. For this reason he did not support Britain's entry into the Second World War, or Britain joining in the Cold War against the Soviets till the Berlin Blockade. British prime minister Macmillan held back announcing Britain joining the European Economic Community (predecessor to the EU), because of the power of the Beaverbrook newspapers who were not interested in Europe. And British prime minister Clement Attlee faced the bitter opposition of Churchill and Beaverbrook/Northcliffe papers in sending Mountbatten to negotiate a transfer of power to India in 1947. The win of Labour's Clement Attlee in the 1951 election was opposed by Beaverbrook using the most sensational language. One can see the origins of what happened in the Trump period in the newspaper origins from the 1900-1957 period of Australian and British television networks. Of Keith Murdoch, National Biography of the Australian National University says- he supported the conservative stances of his time, was a remarkable entrepreneur and organizer of industry. Yet it also says his judgement was faulty. That he had "no real social philosophy"and lacked the originality to make useful contributions to public policy. Of Rupert Murdoch it can be said that he was also a remarkable entrepreneur and organizer of industry who built the newspaper business in Australia from one Adelaide paper left to him by Keith Murdoch. Yet his judgement proved faulty and there was no real concept of public policy or "real social philosophy." There is also the fact that like Beaverbrook from New Brunswick, Murdoch from western Australia was raised in the period of the British Empire and Commonwealth, had no real experience or grasp of the idea that is America set by the founding fathers and renewed by Lincoln, then FDR. An awareness of the origins of Murdoch's FNN is useful because it helps the American public close this chapter in the way democracies functioned in the past, and write better chapters for the future before us, keeping alive the idea that is America.     ...

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The Brazilian economy is growing too fast, and this pace not only won't be sustained, but it has signs of serious trouble ahead. The Brazilian economy grew at an estimated annualized pace of 10% in the last 6 months and generated 962,000 jobs between Jan-April of 2010. Growth in 2010 is expected to be 7%. The jump in growth is partly the result of the stimulus measures of the Lula government. But a consensus of experts is that Brazil still saves too little, has not invested enough in infrastructure,and its economy has the potential of 5% sustainable growth each year. The central bank has increased interest rates - increase of 0.75% in April 2010, and economists in Brazil think the rate will go up to 13% in 2011. About $10 billion in cuts in spending have been announced but they are cuts to an already growing budget approved by Congress, so in reality it will only slow the increase in spending. Public debt is at 42.7% of GDP. Real interest rates have fallen from close to 20% in 2003 to between 5-10%. Costs per unit of labor are increasing at about half the rate of real wages according to a finance official. The National Development Bank or BNDES played a role in helping the economy with subsidized loans when the financial markets ran into trouble. It has expanded lending by 50%, with money from the Treasury of 180 billion reais. Some of the measures of the Lula government has reduced the skewed income distribution Brazil, and in doing so has increased consumer demand. Meeting high consumer demand, and meeting the need for commodities like soyabeans and metals from China, has boosted growth in Brazil to twice the sustainable rate and it is now at a par with China and India. But this places Brazil too dependent on the boom in Chinese demand, especially as the stimulus in China slows and the property bubble threatens China's economy. See links to China. A new President after the upcoming Presidential election will have to tackle the high interest rates in 2011, lower commodity prices, and the need for better infrastructure, and make the adjustment to a sustainable pace of growth....

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Haruhiko Kuroda, 68 years old, a senior finance ministry expert who ran the ministry's currency policy as vice finance minister for 4 years in the early 2000's, is prime minister Abe's nominee for central bank chief. He lectured at Hitoshibashi University for two years before becoming the head of the Asian Development Bank. His book "Success and Failure in Fiscal and Monetary Policy," is critical of the Bank of Japan for mistakes in being first too accomodative in monetary policy to set up the 1987 crash, and then tightening too quickly leading to the deflation and recessions of the last two decades. By choosing an expert with a long experience in the field of monetary policy and a vigorous advocate of getting things right to shake off the deflationary trends, Abe is sending a strong signal to financial markets. Kuroda says he is looking at a shorter time frame to achieve a 2% target for inflation- about two years. In essence Kuroda is taking a page from the policy book of a small group of MIT trained economists, Bernanke at the U.S. Federal Reserve, Draghi at the European Central Bank, and Mervyn King at the Bank of England to boost domestic economies in the context of increasing global growth. The yen weakened to 94.77 to the dollar on Feb 25, 2013, after the announcement. Abe's nominee for one of two deputy governor appointments is Kikuo Iwata, a 70 year old economist who was also critical of Bank of Japan monetary policy since the 1990's. The Abe administration has also carefully communicated this message. Speaking at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Washington D.C. Abe said Japan's goal was to increase exports, but at the same time it will increase imports which should benefit the U.S., China, India and other countries. He described a recovery in Middle America from the Dakotas to the Carolinas and sees something like this happening also in Japan. Even the appeals to nationalist sentiment are also coupled with the message to China and S. Korea of not climbing up the escalation ladder and seeking good relations to promote mutually beneficial development. Abe's focus is on building the U.S.- Japan relationship....

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The use of fast track procedures under 510 K, for approval of Ren-Gen's Menaflex product to treat knee injuries. Under 510K rules for fast track no clinical trials are required, because the product is similiar to already existing products. Menaflex does not have asimiliar product, yet the FDA allowed Menaflex to be treated as fast track. The closest is orthopedic surgical operation, which is quite different. Menaflex is a C shaped pad used to repair a torn meniscus, a rubbery substance made from cow collagen that that acts like ashock absorber between the knee bones. Their is a booming market for meniscus repair among sports athletes. In fact originally Ren-Gen did not even apply as fast track, but only afte its clinical trials ran into trouble, did it try for fast track, which was turned down several times. At which point Ren-Gen got Democrats Senator Robert Menendez, Rep Frank Pallone, Chairman of the Health Subcommittee of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, Rep Rothman of Hackensack where Ren-Gen is based, and Senator Frank Lautenberg to intervene. At this point Senator Menendez and the others wrote to the FDA Commisssioner Dr Von Eschenbach, and Menendez spoke to the Commisssioner personally on the phone. After this intervention things started moving in Ren-Gen's dirtection, bypassing the FDA staffers who had reservations, and a special panel was appointed that again excluded anyone that had reservations, in an unusual procedure, which approved Menaflex. Now Congress and the Obama administration are being asked to review the whole process the FDA uses for medical devices because of the controversy this has caused about what is seen as unfair influence of companies in FDA approval process. Menaflex say those who had reservatoions faces alot of pounding and wear and tear between the knee bones and its safety and effectiveness needs to be proven before approval. It has been approved in Europe for afew years, but only 2800 patients have used it in Europe, only a small proportion of patients, and not enough is known about its effectiveness and any issues. ...

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The expansion plans of VW will add more competition into the US market which is declining. Martin Winterkorn ran VW's Audi business. He became VW's new CEO this year and brings a new leadership perspective to his job. He has several new strategies. In the area of pricing he wants to reduce unneeded features such as external mirrors that fold inward for narrow European streets, and bring down the price of VW Jetta and Passat models to be competitive with Toyota's Corolla and Camry models. Currently a Jetta is $17,000, a Corolla is $ 15,200 and a Passat is $23900 compared to a Camry at $20,000. VW's plans are to set a sales target of 1 million cars by 2018, tripling sales in ten years from the current 330,000 vehicles. In the next 3 years to 2010 sales world wide are expected to increase by 12 to 15%, VW wants to capture a bigger share by seeing its sales increase by 30% from the six million units today to 8 million units by 2010. Winterkorn sees this as possible given that VW has a more centralized management structure now which makes for quicker decisions. VW is also working on a new family of small fuel efficient cars on a common platform to be sold in China, India and other markets where a small car will be popular. Winterkorn referred to its new concept car as an example of the direction this would take. As importing cars from Europe is becoming costlier with the strong euro and the Japanese in contrast have the advantage of a weaker yen, the expansion plans will require lower pricing. VW looks to build a plant in the USA. Another strategy is to add 12 new models to its global product line and to launch more new vehicles in new product segments. This is what Winterkorn thinks has given Toyota its increased sales. A new compact SUV caled the Tiguan will be introduced. What all this means is that VW is seeking to move buyers of Japanese and American cars to try German cars, make German cars cost less and make a strong showing in the American and global markets. ...

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Galston says the Republican establishment's support for Trump before the Republican primary in Iowa is shortsighted and a mistake.