The Sunday 'Report;' 01/16/2011

What The National Pamphleteers Don't Tell You:
Lookin' For Work?
WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — A good job is still hard to find, though recent labor-market data indicate the employment situation is slowly improving.   While the economy is adding jobs at lower levels than workers would like, analysts expect some growth in a wide range of service jobs this year — including retail, information technology, professional, scientific and technical jobs — and continuing growth in health care. Read more about the job market’s lost decade. Read more about unemployment rate drops to 9.4%.
    Jobs data proves mixedJobs growth disappoints, but some details of labor reading show promise, Barrons.com's Bob O'Brien reports.  “Primary job generation will be across a wide range of private service areas,” said Nigel Gault, chief U.S. economist at IHS Global Insight, an economic consulting firm in Lexington, Mass.  With the aging population, health care remains a primary field for job growth, experts say. “Health care is always adding jobs. That will clearly continue,” said Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, a Washington think tank.  Among the positions expected to have greater demand in coming years: nurses, [....]
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/where-the-jobs-are-in-2011-2011-01-10?siteid=nwhpf

The Secretary and the Sheriff

January 10, 2011
By Seth Leibsohn


    As you’ve read, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told an audience in Abu Dhabi: “Look we have extremists in my country. A wonderful, incredibly brave young woman congress member, Congresswoman Giffords, was just shot in our country. We have the same kinds of problems. So rather than standing off from each other, we should work to try to prevent the extremists anywhere from being able to commit violence.”
    This is little different from the sheriff in Tucson, Clarence Dupnik calling his state “a mecca for prejudice and bigotry.”   Why is it little different? Because it’s quite hard to discern just what motivated the assassin in Tucson — he’s been described by friends as [....]
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/256710/secretary-and-sheriff-seth-leibsohn

Katie Couric: Koranic Scholar
by Deroy Murdock;
January 10, 2011
The hostess is not anchored in reality.
     Amid late 2010’s snowstorms and champagne toasts, most folks likely missed a truly stunning comment by a high-profile U.S. journalist. Katie Couric’s words epitomize the ignorance and politically correct blindness that befall too many of America’s media elite.
    In a CBSNews.com year-in-review discussion, the Evening News anchor lamented that “the bigotry expressed against Muslims in this country has been one of the most disturbing stories to surface this year.” She complained about “this seething hatred many people feel for all Muslims, which I think is so misdirected, and so wrong — and so disappointing.”
Couric added: “Maybe we need a Muslim version of The Cosby Show.…I know that sounds crazy. But The Cosby Show did so much to change attitudes about African-Americans in this country, and I think sometimes people are afraid of what they don’t understand.”  With apologies to chickens, ostriches, and other feathered creatures,  [....]
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/256608/katie-couric-koranic-scholar-deroy-murdock?page=1

A 'Flying Car' In Your Garage?
Flying cars are no longer the stuff of science fiction. Terrafugia, a company based in Woburn, Mass., plans to introduce its car-plane, the Transition, next year.  How does the car-plane work? The Transition has wings that unfold for flying. The wings can fold back up in one minute, and the car is ready to drive. A runway is still required for landing and takeoff. The plane is designed to fly below 10,000 feet, thus flying under bad weather instead of flying into it. The maximum takeoff weight is just 1,410 pounds.
    The basic car-plane costs $194,000 for the basic model. Extras include such items as a radio, transponder and full plane parachute. So far, the company has orders for 70 vehicles.  Terrafugia, which is Latin for "escape from the land," is working closely with the FAA to meet aircraft regulations and with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to meet safety regulations.  The company was founded in 2006 by five Massachusetts Institute of Technology grad students who were also pilots. They received some seed money [....]
http://www.terrafugia.com/
http://www.bloggingstocks.com/2010/07/06/the-flying-car/
http://www.moller.com/
http://www.futurecars.com/flying-cars-reviews.html

Support for Public Employee Unions Declines

January 10, 2011
    With states across the country finding that benefits for public workers are becoming nearly impossible to fund in the current economic climate, support for public employee unions has fallen.
A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey shows that 45% of Americans now at least somewhat favor unions for public employees, while the identical number (45%) are opposed to them. These findings include 21% who Strongly Favor such unions versus 30% who are Strongly Opposed to them. (To see survey question wording, click here.)
    In May of last year, 53% of Adults favored unions for public employees, while 37% opposed them.
By comparison, 51% now at least somewhat favor unions for private sector workers, with just 39% opposed.
http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/business/jobs_employment/january_2011/support_for_public_employee_unions_declines
 
Violence and Revolutionary Rhetoric

January 10, 2011
By Kevin D. Williamson
     The problem with contemporary conservative rhetoric, Alex Pareene protests, is that it indulges revolutionary tropes. Disagreement is fine and all, he argues, but some ideas are impermissible or dangerous, especially the idea “that the opponent is not simply wrong, but has illegitimately seized power, and is illegally exercising that power.” To be clear: “The attempted assassination of a member of Congress,” he writes, “seems depressingly like the inevitable conclusion of two years of hysterical revolutionary language suffusing every single domestic political debate.”
    I am aware of no serious conservative who believes that Barack Obama or Democratic congressmen have “illegitimately seized power.” But it is true that Barack Obama is the first president to be commonly denounced by his opponents as illegitimate since . . . the last one. The belief that the Bush administration was installed through a judicial coup d’état was — and is — an article of faith for much of the Left. As recently as December 2010, you could read this sentence at the Huffington Post: “The 2000 election was a coup d’état.”
    Mr. Pareene would not have to look very far to find examples of the Left arguing that a conservative politician “is not simply wrong, but has illegitimately seized power, and is illegally exercising that power.” He might look in his own publication, for instance.  Salon.com co-founder Gary Kamiya wrote that the Bush-Gore contest was “rigged” and “fixed.” Illegitimate governing institutions, you say? Mr. Kamiya wrote: “The American people’s allegiance to democracy should be greater than our fealty to a court that has just spat in its face.” Reviewing Alan Dershowitz’s book on the 2000 election [....]
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/256722/violence-and-revolutionary-rhetoric-kevin-d-williamson

Getting Started In Personal Investing

    Investing in the financial markets is no easy task, but learning the basics can move you ahead and make you feel confident about where you decide to put your money. That’s what Getting Started is all about.  This site explains the processes for investing in:

Mutual funds

What's a mutual fund?
    A mutual fund, also referred to as an open-end fund, is an investment company that spreads its money across a diversified portfolio of securities -- including stocks, bonds, or money market instruments. 
Shareholders who invest in a fund each own a representative portion of those investments, less any expenses charged by the fund. [....]

Stocks

Introduction
    Everything is now working in favor of individual investors to learn about stocks and trade them. The Internet has opened up a new world to everyone.  Online trading has changed the average investors' involvement in trading their own stocks. The availability of company information has become so widespread and easily attainable that researching and finding stocks to buy and sell is as easy as logging onto your computer.   Buying a stock for the long term means that you want to own part of a company and you think that in the future the company will be profitable. [....]

ETF Investing

Using ETFs for trading or buy-and-hold investing
Exchange-traded funds are increasingly popular vehicles to gain exposure to a specific stock market, industry sector, or investment style. Yet many investors would be pressed to explain exactly what ETFs are and how they work. Do ETFs belong in your portfolio? The answers to these questions can help decide.
The ABCs of ETFs are straightforward.  [....]
And many, many other investment vehicles and topics.
http://www.marketwatch.com/pf/started/gettingstarted_default.asp
Til Next Sunday....