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Bridget Phillipson and Keir Starmer are politicians who would like to get things done and take ideas from all sides in the effort to improve life for British parents and children. See the article alongside on the changes proposed by Phillipson and Starmer to bring better education to all schools, and keeping the best of the Academy system- just spreading the best to all parts of the country.  Zoe Wiliiams had this interview with Bridget Philipson in The Guardian, March 21, 2023, when she was UK Shadow Education Secretary with big plans to revive childcare and children's education in UK schools. Phillipson is now Education Secretary and is getting a bill passed in Parliament to improve some aspects of the British education system keeping the infrastructure and foundations that are delivering well. Phillipson grew up in a dilapidated northeast England neighborhood in Tyne and Wear. She describes this as a place with an air of decline with a railroad track and idled chemical plant in the area, high youth unemployment. He mother and her grandparents provided a caring home and signed her up for drama lessons on Saturdays. She attended Catholic school and went on to study at Oxford University in Modern Languages and Modern History, returning to work for Sunderland City Council for 2 years instead of going to London. She is seen as self-effacing but vigorous in putting forward ideas on better childcare and children's education for British children.   ...

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Milan will host the World Cities Culture Summit in 2020, and the Winter Olympics in 2026 shared with the Alpine town of Cortina. The international book fair of Turin is moving to Milan. The left of centre Mayor Giuseppe Sala has promoted the city to increase tourism by 50%. And foreign investment is increasing for new construction projects with $21 billion to be taken up in the next 15 years. Experts are asking if this is coming at a price as the rest of Italy has stagnated for 20 years, and the rural large city gap is increasing throughout Europe. The flow of professionals to cities such as Milan, Paris, Munich, Berlin, from other towns and cities is creating a huge shift that experts at the Centre of European Reform see as a problem because of the political turmoil, and rising inequality with ever widening gaps between smaller cities and towns and rural areas with the big cities. This is compounded by ageing and demographics such as seen in the eastern part of Germany, and parts of France. Experts call it The Big European Sort, where a sifting or sorting process is increasingly transforming the demographics of European countries and driving polarisation. This process is also happening in the U.S. Experts say the big cities benefitted from the change with the European single market and the European Union. Places where working class people live are not seeing and increase in wealth which is disproportionately going to professionals clustered in big cities. Deindustrialisation has turned places like Mezio only 20 miles from Milan into industrial ruins. Towns that once voted socialist are now voting far right in these hollowed out industrial places. In the U.S. and in Europe the process was exacerbated by the flow of cheap imports from Asia hollowing out factories in regions around big cities, and by the growth of services industry in big cities with globalization in finance, legal, and other professional services. Fro 1980 to 1995 Paris region lost about $5.5 billion in industrial output and gained $20 billion in services output that also aligns with globalization in areas such as finance, according to CER, Eurostat. The process had accelerated in 1995-2020. By telling this story about Milan and the Lombard region around it like Mezio, The Guardian is saying it is time to look at how everything works together rather than breaking apart- citing the Finnish architect Saarinen about how a chair fits into a room, a room into a house, and a house into its environment, an environment in a city. So the question is how can we build the future by seeing that the city fits into a region, and a region fits into a country. As a young professional described this on BBC television interview recently this is a difficult period with the ability to design the future seemingly snatched away by the times, but also an opportunity to rethink and take the actions today for a better tomorrow for all. This is part of the coverage on Cities in The Guardian looking at how cities can work, and how cities can become part of healthy regions, for organic growth. ...

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Details of the $825 billion stimulus plan. Renewable energy does well under the plan including production tax credit for renewables, with $32 billion for a "smart" electrical grid for which GE makes components and lobbied for. Renewable energy producers win an extension of production tax credits now convertible into cash for companies whose losses leave them unable to use the credits. Transportation infrastructure green projects did not do so well, with $32 billion for transportation projects and only $10 billion for mass transit projects.The Natural Resources Defense Council had compiled a list of more than 80 environmentally friendly infrastructure and transportation projects worth about $405 billion. Only a small number of these projects made it. What is in the stimulus to create jobs and stimulate capital investment? Businesses get bonus depreciation, which speeds up depreciation deductions for companies that invest in plant and equipment. The stimulus doubles the amount small businesses can immediately write off for capital investments and purchasing new eqipment, and gives incentives for businesses to invest in renewable energy. States get help with $90 billion going to increase the federal share of Medicaid payments, and an additional $79 billion to help states avoid cutbacks in education and other services. And there is a "Make Work Pay" tax credit for $500 per worer and $1000 per couple. Experts say the effects of the stimulus will be felt in the latter part of 2009 and into 2010. Which is one reason the view of economists that there would be a second half recovery does not reflect conditions on the ground. Goldman has revised its view to 2010 and even that may be optimistic. One example of what has happened in the stimulus in this respect is that the earlier optimistic view of largeinvestments in science and technology, broadband networks, and transportation projects for fast rail and transit have all been trimmed down. Part of the reason may be that the bill for the nation's banking system revival may be larger than realized as an additional amount of $15-20 billion is being negotiated for Bank of America and more money will go to Citigroup. $6 billion is shown for highspeed internet access for rural and underserved areas. Science facilities get $10 billion. Repair of public infrastructure (read roads and bridges) gets $31 billion. School modernization gets $21 billion. And modernization of health information technology systems gets $20 billion which its hoped will provide equivalent or higher returns to pay for some of the universal health care costs, and preventative care gets $4 billion. There is a tax credit for R&D work on energy innovations and renewable energy production of $20 billion, and $32 billion for a "smart electricity grid." These are the proactive parts of the stimulus that create something new and make improvements. They add up to $144 billion. So much money goes to shore up the existing services and supplement incomes, and to relieve stresses on the banking system, and other ways to shore up the system, that the proactive expenditures are only a small fraction or 17% of the $825 billion stimulus. And all the time the federal deficit and debt increases with these huge outlays just to shore up the system. The Heritage Foundation Data Analysis Director Mr. Beach told Congressmen at a discussion chaired by Congressman Cantor (R), on January 16, 2009, that the federal debt would reach 92% of the nation's GDP in 2009 from 58 billion or 70% in 2008, with the $825 billion for stimulus. The federal deficit would go up to $1.31 trillion or 9.2% of GDP up from $541 billion in 2008. See the research paper on the Heritage website. ...

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Faces of migrants to Germany as Germany sees the migrants as what German chancellor Merkel calls- "A huge national challenge, not only for days or months, but for a long period of time." German civil society shows openness, and German educational institutions offer support. About 800,000 refugees will be accepted in Germany in 2015, says Merkel. An adult migrant is given 143 euros a month for pocket money and 216 euros for basic needs, medical costs are covered. Children are taken care of or attend school while their parents applications are reviewed. Registered migrants are given housing and food. The system works like nowhere else in the world, as most migrants focus on getting to Germany. The condition of the migrants is desperate- one child had not eaten for 4 days. And local doctors examine migrants, with some referred to local hospitals.

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Top 5 Things emails from junior and senior employees, from 30,000 employees of Nvidia, is how Jensen Huang stays on top of strategic direction for the AI company. Sunday night he gets such emails which tell about what is important to junior emplopyees that can geve Huang a feel for what is happening outside. He does not pay much attention to strategy meetings, tries to work in conference rooms with his ever present favorite marker. Jensen Huang is unlike anything seen in America's tech companies. 

Amazon's Jeff Bezos does not like tech presentations, he prefers a one page writeup that requires writing skills. Huang prefers emails that say briefly what junior employees are thinking.

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Paul Davies says the leadership at Deutsche Bank is short sighted and cannot afford more slip ups or missteps following the U.S. New York Fed's examination. The examination revealed serious shortcomings in regulatory reporting and failure to correct them. As U.S. operations represent one fourth of its balance sheet this raises issues for the bank's overall financial position. Deutsche Bank has committed additional $1 billion in systems investment and staff to tackle this. Added problems he mentions are that Deutsche Bank lobbied against the Fed's proposal for foreign bank capital requirements even though it remains undercapitalized. The bank's leverage ratio at 3.4% is low and Davies says changes at the top are needed if further missteps occur.

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Edmund Phelps, is 2006 Nobel prize winner and director of the Center on Capitalism and Society at Columbia University. Phelps offers a deep reflection on capitalism and what it is as a system and isn't, from the insights gathered and knowledge accumulated about its workings- conditions in which operates best, and conditions under which it is stressed or fails. It is the actors and overseer's, the public's ignorance about how the system works, the insights about its advantages and its serious hazards if neglected, that lead him to say we need deep reform and re-education. Capitalist systems, he says, are mechanisms by which economies may generate growth in knowledge- with much uncertainty in the process owing to the incompleteness of knowledge- with growth in that knowledge leading to income growth and job satisfaction. The uncertainty can be serious and dangerous if not accounted for, and the knowledge offers opportunities for personal growth, problem solving and exploration. There has been an intellectual failure in developing a wide understanding of its benefits as well as its serious costs if not kept in check, costs that arise from uncertainty and moral issues of proper behaviours if not properly guided. This is an admirable and clear expression of what capitalism is and how it should be understood....

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The kind of Nation America will be is already being determined in America's classrooms. The share of students chronically absent from US schools has jumped from about 15% before the pandemic in 2018 to 26% in 2023. In the richest districts from 10% to 19%, in the poorest districts from 19% and  to 32%. Losing about a third of children K-12 in schools for absenteeism is a huge learning loss to the Nation. Missing more than 10% of classes counts as chronically absent, the data is from 40 states in the US K-12. Majority White went from 13% to 22%, Majority Non White went from 17% to 32%. Analysis of data from American Enterprise Institute. This has real implications for learning loss and student behavior. Even school districts which opened earlier in the pandemic are affected to same degree with absenteeism doubling in Victoria, Texas school district. In this report NYT has a place where you can enter the school district name for instance entering Dearborn School District in Michigan and it shows the absenteeism has gone from 10% to 26% in this district and this means it has close to tripled. In adjoining Dearborn Heights it went from 25% to 44%. In New York City this goes from 25% pre pandemic to 36%. Compare this with the richest districts in the Nation when we entered Scarsdale we found absenteeism up from 4% to 7%, next Piedmont in California 6% to 9%. Irvine Unified relatively affluent 5% to 12%. What this means is that across the board there is learning loss and in addition the disparities are also growing from the wealthiest to the middle income and the larger population districts such as New York, and the diverse Dearborn, MI.  ...

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Like hundreds of thousands of other young migrant workers in China's factories, Yuan Yandong is from a rural area and lived on a farm. Better incomes have brought them to the factories in urban areas. In this case travelling long distance by train from Guangdong province to Shenzhen. As living standards improved across China and the government expressed a keen willingness to encourage workers to exercize their rights to fair wages and working conditons- especially by creating increased awareness of new labor laws in the state run media- migrant workers are becoming restless with conditions they accepted a few years ago. The growing use of cellphones and access to the internet have made news travel faster. A visit to a Foxconn factory shows a young worker, age 24, sitting on a stool 6 nights a week, 12 hours a night, with a quota to assemble 1600 hard drives for American computer storage company EMC, with the pressure to work continuously against the clock for each step in the manufacturing process. Foxconn is known for its highly disciplined nature of work, akin to a military style. Behind the scenes factories like Foxconn employ methods once used in the US at a similiar stage of industrialization, with 500 technical people continuously looking for the most efficient way to organize each step in the production process. Each movement and action of the worker is measured for time taken and process efficiency, according to experts at Tsinghua University in China. This means many factories can use less automation- and so less capital intensive manufacturing- and go to extremes where workers perform like machines. Yuan's ambition is to work only for another 2 years and then use his savings to get into hotel management. His wages are 75 cents an hour, and with the overtime premium about $235 a month. Foxconn announced a 33% raise in wages as a result of worker protests. The mind numbing monotony is becoming less acceptable in a changing China, and worker turnover in such factories is rising. After the initial burst of industrialization in which young migrant workers played a signifcant role in manufacturing, a new chapter in China's development is beginning- one less likely to create the large trade deficits with the US and Europe- which is moving in the direction of a larger domestic market with higher worker wages....

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Sophie Egan has put together this wonderful clarification of what works well in foods and what one should eat by taking apart some myths. Myth No.10 is that stuff on nutrition is always changing. It isn't and she gives Michael Pollan's seven words as an example- "Eat Food. Not too Much. Mostly Plants." A recent book has title Ikigai, on people with healthy bodies and minds well into their nineties. It pulls together information from persons in Okinawa, Japan, who passed one hundred years and they say not eating too much, eating plant foods, and community spirit, a passion for doing something worthwhile that you enjoy doing and do well referred to in Japanese as Ikigai, is a way to keep healthy. Other myth clarification- Sophie Egan offers is that soy based foods are good for us, and that plant protein when consumed in different forms can give complete nutrition. Not all fats are bad olive oil and seeds nuts are good for us, and white potatoes are also healthy eaten with the skin. All this adds up to good common sense without getting tied up into knots by too much attention to studies. ...

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India's outsourcing industry has plenty of room to grow as a t prensent only 10% of the $400-$450 billion global technology services are outsourced, and the renewed pressure on margins leads companies to cut costs by outsourcing work.

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Michael Gordon of the NYT points out that the nuclear deal with Iran reached in Geneva on Nov. 23, 2013, is largely a holding action and a way to put some constraints on the nuclear program till Iran and the U.S. can work out some major differences. The Obama administration looks to be willing to concede Iran's rights to enrich uranium- it is the strict limits that are needed that are the points of negotiation. The agreement is given in the 4 page document- the Joint Plan of Action which leaves most of the core sanctions in place and lets Iran keep most of its nuclear infrastructure.

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The NYT's Kristof gives this exceptional report on the use of cancer causing chemicals all around us in many consumer products. With the increased use of chemicals has come the tripling of asthma rates in the last 25 years, leukemia up by 1% a year, increasing obesity, and breast cancer rates increasing from 1% in 1975 to 12% today with only some of it from better detection. Doctors at the Mt. Sinai School of Medicine in New York, say American girls who had puberty at the age of 17 in 1800, now have puberty at the age of 14, even 12. Earlier menstrual cycles increase the risk of breast cancer because of increased exposure to estrogen. Studies show exposure to pesticides, PCB's and other cancer causing chemicals increase the risk of cancer, and a link to early puberty. Asian women moving to the U.S. are also experiencing higher rates of breast cancer as they move to societies with higher use of chemicals in daily life, say experts at Mt. Sinai. Poor eating habits and lifestyles with less exercize are also to blame, but chemicals also play a role. Americans are moving towards shunning packaged processed foods for fresh food in their diet, and more are learning the benefits of regular exercize, but the same degree of public awareness is lacking for the extensive use of chemicals in our consumer society. In other societies around the world that are copying us such as in China, India and Brazil, the situation is even worse, with the spread of a reckless idea that modernization requires jettisoning health safety concerns. Even a simple pizza box has PFAC's chemicals made to make the box resistant to grease. In 2015 where products are labeled environmentally friendly by large companies to attract buyers and build the right image in the minds of consumers, consumers asking questions and making better choices make a difference by offering a seal of approval. Carpets have chemicals, and most disposable plastic containers contain chemicals that could seep into the food if heated. The use of plastic containers and microwaves is common practice in todays society, where less cooking is done on the stove than in the period before 1960. The sheer size of the chemicals developed since 1950 is staggering- more than 80,000 chemicals according to the Children's Environmental Health Center at Mt. Sinai. And this Center says less than 20% have been tested for toxicity. ...

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Justin Lahart of the WSJ says the positive news from the May unemployment report comes as a complete surprise. No one expected the addition of 2.5 million jobs, and the reduction of the unemployment rate from 14.7% to 13.3% for May, as reported by the Labor Department. Lahart says that even though the response rate for the Labor Department survey measuring the jobless rate had only 67%- instead of the usual 82%- it is broadly reliable. About half of the jobs bounceback comes from the leisure and hospitality industry. Some of this from the creative ways restaurants responded by doing an active takeout business and bringing in some of the workers.  Other businesses also responded in creative ways to keep running. As long as the reopening of the economy can be done safely, more people can be back to work. The significant relief from the government for small business could also help these businesses weather the crisis. The Global Vaccine Summit recently opened provided more positive news. Plans are underway for India's Serum Institute to produce 400 million doses of the Oxford vaccine by December, providing more hope for recovery. ...

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GST revenue increase is important because it finances healthcare, education, infrastructure building, jal ghar and cooking gas, Digital India initiatives, housing programs in a way that has never happened before and is needed for modernizing the Indian economy. The same approach is being taken by president Biden in the US to finance his climate and tax bill of $369 billion. It is the biggest climate action bill in history and revenues to finance renewable energy transition are coming from a 15% minimum corporate tax that is being agreed to by all countries in the world including US, Britain, European Union and India. Just today the WSJ the largest biotech company Amgen in the US paid 3.5% effective tax rate on revenues for 2013 when tax rate under federal law was 35%, and the IRS is working on getting $10.7 billion back in payments due over a decade. Much of Amgen's profits of $24 billion had been shifted to a location in Puerto Rico says a report in WSJ. The development work of the free world countries including US, EU, and India cannot happen without this. Without this the US, EU and India cannot even remain competitive with China or tackle national security threats. ...

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About 110,000 workers, or about 20% of the number of people retiring each year in France, will be able to retire at the age of 60 in 2013 under a new presidential decree. These are workers who started to work at the age of 18-19 and put in 41 years of contributions into the state run pension fund. The decree by French president Hollande leaves the Sarkozy reform of increasing the retirement age to 62 from 60 in place, but creates an exception for these workers, at a cost of 1 billion euros in 2013, and 3 billion euros in 2017. This could also be a way to get labor union support for public spending cuts to reduce the deficit which are expected.

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Ballmer is not able to answer the question about how by taking 2 companies that are slow moving you could combine them and get acceleration- except by saying that 2 people working on search would now be one person after integrating the 2 companies, and one person is freed to work on aspects of the emerging social media and work with other publishers. Is Ballmer too optimistic about such an integration of Yahoo and Microsoft when he says that we (both companies) have fantastic talent and fantastic assets, and this would just get Microsoft the breakthrough in search and advertising its looking for. The integration alone would take a lot of management time especially considering the different cultures. The comparitive freedom of the search companies and the more structured hierarchical approach, some would say regimented approach, at Microsoft. Could microsoft culture stifle Yahoo culture or would Microsoft end up changing its culture, which may be less likely considering that Microsoft and Ballmer are the ones integrating Yahoo. ...

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Gerhard Richter, who is now 80 years old, is softspoken and reticent, and works out of studios near his home in Cologne, Germany. He calls the prices for his paintings "absurd." The son of a schoolteacher in Dresden he crossed over to West Germany a year before the Berlin Wall went up. He has a range of styles, from portraits to abstract paintings with lots of color, experimenting in different ways to put the colors. Right upto 1962 he was largely unknown except in Germany, where local collectors put together collections of his work. At the time his paintings covered subjects that reflected Germany's recent history- "Aunt Marianne" who was mentally ill and was killed by the Nazis, and "Uncle Rudi," a Nazi soldier. It was not until the 1980's that he experimented with different styles and large brushes for colorful abstract paintings that have become popular in auctions. About 40% of the paintings are in museums. In 1995 New York's MOMA paid $3 million for 15 paintings called "Oct 18, 1977." They were done in 1988 after the arrest, trial and death of young German anarchists....

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Larry Fink thinks there has been for retirement "an historical shift from certainty to uncertainty," from security in the earlypost war years of Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy and LBJ to precarious living in the post Reagan era of "free to choose." It is mind boggling to grasp the idea that 4 in 10 Americans lack $400 in emergency funds for a health emergency. It has been hard to wrap my mind around such a fact. Are you in the same boat? Larry Fink CEO of Black Rock financial firm with half of its $10 trillion of funds in investment assigned to retirement has joined us. Fink says- "America needs an organized high level effort to ensure that future generations can live out their lives in dignity." He wants some hard conversations. And here are his initial thoughts- Create predictable income streams like pensions for all workers including lower paid or part-time workers.  Follow 20 states in setting up retirement systems to cover all workers, including gig and part time workers in lower paid income jobs. This covers a huge number of workers counted by the millions who perform the work that makes the country and the economy run. From workers in restaurants to hospitality workers, and in lower paid health care jobs, in help for the elderly, help for children in child care. Encourage employers to offer matching funds. ...

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Amazon is tackling the Indian market by addressing the need of rural shoppers in all parts of India- home to nearly 800 million people. Here WSJ shows how this works with a customer in Dhowachal, in the northeastern state of Assam, who had no access to stores except by travelling for hours to the nearest town.  The customer is a teacher who received an Amazon delivery of pairs of jeans, socks, curtains, glasses and other items. Rural shoppers in India spent about $400 billion in 2017. Barclays estimates Amazon had $7 billion in gross merchandise sales volume in India in 2017, about 2% of what it does worldwide. More than 80% of customers in 2018 are from outside India's largest cities.  To do this Amazon has changed its app to work on cheaper smartphones and patchy cellular networks, added hundreds of thousands of Indian language descriptions of products and videos. It has also opened physical Amazon stores to teach people how to order online. Tens of thousands of distributors were added to deliver packages and take cash or digital payment. Amazon is spending $5 billion in India to set up a logistics network and warehouses, including staff and content development for Amazon Prime. In doing this Amazon has learned from China where Alibaba and other online retailers have grown seven fold by reaching rural areas. Amazon could not compete with Alibaba in China. In India Amazon has no strong local competitors like Alibaba. It is learning how to operate in India. The app offer tips on how to order, no email is needed, only a phone number, machine learning translates all descriptions into Hindi. Icons work well. A digital wallet lets customers without bank accounts or cards to pay or get money back. Amazon is investing aggressively using an advertising campaign and discounts to pass Flipkart which WalMart bought for $16 billion in 2018. Amazon is trying new ideas in India's situation where small stores often closet sized sell a limited number of products often going through multiple middlemen resulting in high prices. Amazon is now enlisting these small stores as package depots in its own unique distribution network. The small store gets an 8-10% commission on sales for helping guide shoppers make a purchase. In Amazon's unique "I Have Space" program 20,000 mom and pop stores in remote areas of India offer to take packages and deliver in neighborhoods for a commission. They get a uniform, a bag and a week of training. Many of these store owners know the addresses in their neighborhood having lived there a long time. The entire effort shows Amazon has adapted its delivery effort, logistics and payment systems to Indian conditions in a well planned way. Compare this to the failed effort by Apple in India, with high management turnover and lack of understanding of Indian conditions and pricing, and no real plan to tackle the Indian market.     ...

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Of the $19 billion in aid to farmers for the coronavirus, $16 billion of the Coronavirus Food Assistance Program, goes in direct payments to farmers and rancher with checks going out end of May. Another $3 billion goes to mass purchases of dairy, meat and produce that will be distributed through food banks. Faced with loss of sales with restaurants and schools closed, and disruptions in deliveries to grocery stores, farmers in the U.S. have stopped or slowed production. As a result huge quantities of food that can't be sold are being destroyed. Plowing under thousands of acres of vegetables, dumping millions of gallons of milk, and destroying eggs. In addition to this aid Agriculture Secretary Perdue says the department is using funds set aside under the larger coronavirus relief aid package of $2 trillion for the U.S., and funds from the Commodity Credit Corporation. Mr. Perdue is himself a farmer from Georgia, who was governor for eight years. These funds are separate from the $28 billion to farmers being distributed by USDA to offset losses from loss of sales to China. USDA plans to make monthly purchases of $100 million each of fresh produce, dairy products and meat, and work with the nation's food distributors to assemble a pre-approved box of food to be given out at food banks and other outlets. ...

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A Swedish supplier Autoliv's scientists say GM in the late 1990's asked the supplier to match Takata's airbag that saved several dollars per airbag. The problem say the scientists at Autoliv was that the Takata airbag that was made at lower cost used a dangerous volatile compound. Autoliv cited here by Tabuchi of the NYT, says it refused to do this. Years later 100 million of the Takata airbags are installed on cars in the U.S. made by GM and other automakers.  The chemical ammonium nitrate used by Takata is still being used to make airbags with modifications to reduce its explosiveness. In this indepth account Tabuchi looks at the evidence against using ammonium nitrate, the warnings that were not heeded from Autoliv, and the work of Italian and other scientists that confirm the explosiveness of the substance when exposed to temperature and moisture changes. Here Tabuchi cites reports from suppliers of the nitrate who were hesitant to supply the substance to Takata because of liability issues. And he points out that there was manipulation of testing quality control for the defective airbags that passed the test, so that in addition to the use of the faulty chemical, the company failed to maintain strict quality control as required by the automakers. The pressure from automakers for cost reduction is given as one of the reasons for the problem, just as the pressure from BP to cut costs led to some of the faulty work done by suppliers at oil wells leading to explosions on a oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico. Before the approval of the faulty chemical for airbags Takata airbag business was in dire straits leading to management looking for ways to develop a viable business, as other propellants had failed to deliver results. It is at that point that Takata approved ammonium nitrate despite evidence of its explosiveness that led to TRW, another airbag maker, to reject it.  ...

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President Biden says he opposed reducing minimum sentences for crimes in Washington D.C. such as carjackings, as proposed by a new law in D.C. Biden says Republican efforts to block that legislation would bring that to his desk and he would not veto the Republican proposal blocking reducing sentences. Crime is up 40% in Washington D.C say police. In the New York election for Congress, and in the recent Chicago mayoral election crime was an issue for Republicans leading to losses for Democrats and for Lori Lightfoot in Chicago. Biden wants to focus on the major issues for workers and families in the country, on infrastructure, jobs, inflation, and the US economy, and not let his plan for America's renewal lose focus because Republicans are able to make crime an issue.

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This WSJ report looks at the state of manufacturing in India in 2023. Foreign companies in renewable energy from Denmark, Apple Computer, and local companies such as Ola in electric scooters, are building factories and expanding manufacturing capacity in Sriperumbudur and other special economic zones in Tamilandu state of India. BMW and Nissan are also located in the state. It comes as friendshoring from the US is encouraging foreign companies to invest in India. There is a definite acceleration in the growth of electronics and machinery exports under the Indian government's Make in India plan. This report shows that India is in a learning curve in developing its manufacturing base. Not shown here are how the goals and execution of a sound overall plan is envisioned by the government. The Gati Shakti plan put forward by Mr. Modi is intended to bring together all agencies of the government to work together seamlessly to provided an overall execution of infrastructure development for logistics, airports, fast rail, roads and bridges, and modern housing. It is a National Master Plan for Multi Modal Connectivity that brings together 16 ministries for building state of the art infrastructure. The national plann ing agency NITI Aayog says it recognizes the multiplier effects plus spillover effects of infrastructure development for  Indian manufacturing, and understands how the US, Japan and China accomplished this going back to the New Deal in the US in the 1930's. It can also pioneer in new ways learning from the experience of these countries. This will bring results in demonstrating how India is learning and developing its own model of the best way to build excellent infrastructure, and do this with renewable energy, and environment inclusive efforts.    ...

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Elizabeth Warren's Medicare for All plan in the U.S. draws support from about 60% of people polled for the New York Times. Over 66% support Warren's 2% wealth tax on people with wealth over $50 million. The support is consistent among all groups, gender and race. Only a group of Republican men with college degrees which is likely to include the bulk of the people with wealth over $50 million oppose the wealth tax and Medicare for All. Over the past year wealth tax and Medicare for All support has grown with about 60% of people supporting Medicare for All, a plan similar to government plans in most of Europe and in Canada which have worked over many years.

Warren's plan wins support by showing how it will be paid for and why most people will pay no more than they are paying today, and overall much less because of unnecessary costs taken out of the system.