tagged w/ PRC
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On Friday the White House announced that President Obama was appointing Tony Hammond as the fifth commissioner on the Postal Regulatory Commission (PRC). No offense to Mr. Hammond, but that’s probably not good news for communities trying to save their post office or processing plant, and it’s not good news for postal workers either.
The PRC is supposed to have five commissioners, but for months now, there have been only four, and we’ve been waiting to hear who the fifth would be. According to US Code, "Not more than three of the Commissioners may be adherents of the same political party." Currently there are two Democrats — Ruth Goldway and Nanci Langley — and two Republicans — Mark Acton and Robert Taub. Obama could have appointed a Democrat, but instead he chose Hammond, a Republican. If confirmed by the Senate, Hammond will give the PRC a Republican majority until 2016.
It’s not that Hammond is ill equipped to be a Commissioner. He was on the PRC from 2002 to 2010, and he served twice as its Vice-Chairman. He obviously knows the ropes.
Still, with all those years on the PRC, you wouldn’t say Hammond brings a fresh perspective to the Commission, and he is definitely hard-core Republican. For much of his career, he was a Republican political operative. From 1989 to 1994, he was the director of the Missouri Republican Party, and in 1998 he was Director of Campaign Operations for the Republican National Committee. Hammond was involved with postal matters during the ten years he served on Capitol Hill on the staff of Southwest Missouri Congressman Gene Taylor, the Ranking Member of the Post Office and Civil Service Committee.
Hammond also learned about the Postal Service when he worked as the VP of a direct marketing business. That experience has probably given him a particularly sympathetic understanding of issues facing direct marketers, who play a big role in influencing postal policies, rates, and so on.
Politics shouldn’t matter in PRC decisions, but they do. Since Commissioners perform in a manner similar to judges, they are supposed to make rational decisions based solely on the evidence, independently of their politics. But as we’ve seen with the Supreme Court, justices are human and inevitably influenced by their political persuasion.
Nothing’s more political than postal business. Efforts to downsize the Postal Service are greeted with applause by anti-government, anti-union Republicans, while Democrats have shown more interest in protecting postal jobs. Since Republicans don’t like government regulation of business, they’re less inclined to favor a strong role for the PRC than Democrats might be.
But the Postal Service is not a private business, and postal politics often make strange bedfellows. In the case of the exigent rate increase, for example, the mail industry actually found itself — at least for a moment — siding with the PRC when it turned down the Postal Service’s request for a rate hike last year.
Preserving post offices is another unique case. Elected representatives on both sides of the aisle have been hearing it from their constituents about post office closings. That’s why proposed legislation coming out of a bipartisan committee in the Senate has an amendment that would make it harder to close rural post offices.
The consolidation of processing plants is yet another case where geography often matters more than politics. Many Republicans, who generally favor cost-cutting measures like closing plants, have been fighting to save the plants in their districts.
Generally speaking, though, Republicans are pushing harder than Democrats to make the Postal Service act “like a business” rather than a public service. The bill that comes out of the Republican-dominated House will give the Postal Service much more power to close post offices and slash jobs than the Senate version. It’s Republicans who want to see the the union workforce drastically reduced in size and power, and there aren't many Democrats talking about privatizing the Postal Service.
With a Republican-dominated PRC, it’s hard to imagine many appeals on post office closures winning a “remand” decision. It’s been hard enough getting a victory with two Democrats and two Republicans. Of the last twenty decisions, just two were remanded, and only Chairman Goldway has issued dissents from decisions to affirm the closing.
You can get an idea of how Hammond feels about remanding decisions by looking at the dissenting opinion he co-authored on the case of the post office in Rentiesvile, Oklahoma. That office was closed for an emergency suspension in 2004, six years after the discontinuance process had been initiated. In 2010, the Postal Service moved to formally close the post office based on data and public comments that were by that time twelve years old. For that reason, the PRC remanded the decision for further consideration.
In his dissent Hammond wrote, “Remanding this determination requires the Postal Service to engage in a process which will most likely yield the same result as the one it came to in this current case.” As unusual as the Rentiesville case was, that kind of thinking could be applied to any closing decision the Postal Service makes, and it doesn’t bode well for future appeals.
READ MORE »On Friday the White House announced that President Obama was appointing Tony Hammond... more
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Yesterday, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton gave a speech on internet freedom in which she argued that it was a critical part of US foreign policy. She called out a few countries by name for restricting their citizens' access the information online. China was one of them. Unsurprisingly, today China expressed its unhappiness with Mrs. Clinton's speech...
"...calling on the United States government “to respect the truth and to stop using the so-called Internet freedom question to level baseless accusations.”
Ma Zhaoxu, a Foreign Ministry spokesman, said in a written statement posted Friday afternoon on the ministry’s Web site that the criticism leveled by Mrs. Clinton on Thursday was “harmful to Sino-American relations.”
“The Chinese Internet is open,” he said.
Here's video of Mrs. Clinton's speech from yesterday.
The speech gives a new dimension to China's fight with Google. China has been making it out to be a business-only spat, but Clinton seems to have made it not just China vs. Google but China vs. US foreign policy.
Interestingly though, Joshua Keating at FP Passport thinks China's response was overblown and made Clinton look like she was being harder on China than she was:
It strikes me that Beijing could have issued a statement along the lines of, "Secretary Clinton is right to say that the United States and China have different views on this issue. We welcome her invitation to dialog but ask that the United States respect the sovereignty of our electronic space and unique political context. We are actively engaged in cracking down on criminals and extremists who take refuge in cyberspace."
Acting as if Clinton's temperate remarks amounted to a thrown gauntlet makes it appear to the outside world that they have something to be ashamed of. It doesn't seem like the response of a secure superpower.
If China is treating Clinton's speech like a 'thrown gauntlet', what will be the next step for the US? The Obama Administration up to now has been very reserved in its criticisms of China. Will criticism increase?
Recently on the Current News Blog:
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- Haiti: Following along in the newsYesterday, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton gave a speech on internet freedom in... more
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In a move claiming to be part of a campaign against pornography, the Chinese government will start monitoring text messages. According to undisclosed criteria, some messages will be deemed 'unhealthy' content and mobile services will have a list of keywords provided by police. Though some of those words could be immoral or offensive content (Gawker calls it a "war on sexting") it just as likely that they could be political or anti-government content.
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On Tuesday, China executed a British national accused of smuggling heroin. Akhmal Shaikh was a 53-year-old father whom relatives have said was mentally ill. Britain diplomatically protested the execution right up to the end, but the man's relatives say the government didn't do enough.
...[I]n a letter to the Guardian newspaper, his cousins Amina and Ridwan Shaikh lamented the lack of real British influence in the case.
"Did the British government pull out its diplomats in protest? Did it have a hard-hitting strategy to persuade the Chinese authorities to change their decision?" they wrote.
"This is an example of Britain's powerlessness in the world. Their strategy of being shoulder to shoulder with the US in the 'war on terror' has not given them the status they so desperately desire."
The cousins noted that "one of the justifications we are told for invading countries like Afghanistan is 'human rights violations'."
"If it is accepted by all that there are gross violations taking place in China, why aren't they, too, invaded? This is purely to do with the fact that China is a powerful country economically.
"Britain's economic dependence far outweighs these 'individual cases'."
China contends that it was a criminal case, independent of diplomacy, in which a drug smuggler was convicted with 4 kg of heroin.
This video has a statement from the Chinese government and some reactions from Chinese citizens.
British Citizen Executed in China: Raw Video
If Shaikh was mentally ill, arguably in the West he would have been granted some sort of different treatment. Additionally, he would not have been sentenced to death even if found guilty. There would also have been more transparency to his trial. But, this was in China. Regardless of his guilt or innocence, Shaikh's relatives raise a good point. Britain, still considered a diplomatic powerhouse on the world stage, does need to bend significantly to China's economic might. And with views to human rights (and subsequently criminal trials) markedly different between the PRC and the West, this sort of incident could easily crop up again.
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- Mexico City legalizes gay marriageOn Tuesday, China executed a British national accused of smuggling heroin. Akhmal... more
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Gawker pointed out this story out of China: The ancient home of kung fu, the Shaolin Temple, is planning to go public in 2011. The temple is a big tourist attraction and pulls in about $20million a year from ticket sales (150m yuan). The venture is expect to help boost tourism in the region.
The head of the temple, Shi Yongxin, has become known as the CEO Monk for his work to transform Shaolin into a global brand. He's faced plenty of criticism from people who say he's exploiting a sacred home of Zen Buddhism.
Maybe he was just fed up for not getting cut in by the world's foremost promoters of the Shaolin brand: The Wu-Tang Clan.
Just so you know, the above video contains explicit lyrics. Don't say I didn't warn you. For a more family-friendly video experience, please watch the video below - in which the Wu-Tang gives literal meaning to Chessboxin'
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- Philippines just can't catch a break - Mayon Volcano evacuations
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- British arrest warrant for Tzipi Livni, former Israeli Foreign MinisterGawker pointed out this story out of China: The ancient home of kung fu, the Shaolin... more
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I was watching Obama's town hall meeting with students in Shanghai last night. As he wrapped up his prepared remarks, stepped away from the podium, and began to explain the format of the town hall portion I realized that this might be absolutely foreign to many of these students. Here is a country's President, a very famous and powerful man, asking them to raise their hands and ask him a question. Whatever they asked him, he'd answer. We obviously take this sort of thing for granted - heck our most recent town halls seem to have devolved into purely shouting at our elected officials. But I couldn't shake the feeling that Obama, who was not joined on stage by any major Chinese official, had smuggled a little democracy into the PRC.
This video of his introducing the concept is from CNN and their anchor, predictably, talks all over him, but you can hear the second half. If anyone can find a clean video - I'll replace this one with it.
He also, and this was the headlining remark, asserted the American position that it's okay for everyone to use Twitter.
President Barack Obama pointedly nudged China on Monday to stop censoring Internet access, offering an animated defense of the tool that helped him win the White House and suggesting Beijing need not fear a little criticism....
"I think that the more freely information flows, the stronger the society becomes, because then citizens of countries around the world can hold their own governments accountable," Obama told students during his first-ever trip to China. "They can begin to think for themselves."
If the President's goal was to sneak a little democracy into the People's Republic, it seems to have not reached too many citizens. The event was not broadcast nationally - only on local Shanghai stations - and the live feed from the White House web site was reportedly choppy and hard to watch in China.
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During the Beijing Olympics, the People's Republic of China gave a lot of clout to a new government agency: the weather modification office. Apparently, they're still at work: kicking up an early snowfall for drought-ridden Beijing.
Man Makes it Snow in Beijing (Video)
This year's snow came two months earlier than last year, and a lot heavier, thanks to silver iodide rockets shot into the clouds. (I'm not kidding.)
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The Supreme Court voted today to hear the appeal of 14 Chinese Uighurs being held in captivity at Guantanamo Bay. The Uighurs, Chinese Muslims, were found five years ago to be innocent of being "enemy combatants", but remain in custody. One of the reasons releasing them is tricky is that they don't really want to go back to their native country of China. Why don't the Uighurs want to go home? China considers them to be dissidents, intent on separating Uighur areas like the Xinjiang Province from China. Laura Ling spoke to a few Uighurs living in exile in "China's Wild West". This is an excerpt from that show.
Vanguard on China's Uighurs (Video)The Supreme Court voted today to hear the appeal of 14 Chinese Uighurs being held in... more
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Seriously, we're talking one of the biggest goshdarn parades I've ever seen:
China's 60th Anniversary Parade (Video)
Current.com users had a range of reactions to yesterday's post.
User bdub4u:
ok im not condoning human rights abuses but
OPEN YOUR EYES PEOPLE
CHINA IS THE FUTURE
Ever notice how they can do things that we can't? like oh i dunno, allot 600 billion to renewable energy over the next decade??? these things get mucked up in our democracy and we can get em passed. Sometimes I wonder... I realize as a believer in the western cannon and human rights, self acualization, free markets, individuality, privacy, etc. I may sound blasphemous right now. But hey, how authentic is our democracy anyway?? At least China provides real economic opportunities, the poor get poorer in america by voting against their own interestes, while the Chinese have lifted 400 million ppl out of poverty!!
THIS HAS NEVER BEEN DONE IN HUMAN HISTORY!!!
Can america do that? no.
And user rtravs:
YEA!!! Let's hear it for a government that has killed TENS OF MILLIONS in 60 years. YEA!!!
The Great Leap Forward! The Cultural Revolution! Millions upon millions tortured and killed!!!
What a country! What a celebration!
Party time in China, baby!!! Too bad Hitler, Stalin and Pol Pot couldn't be there to help blow out the candles!
Yea!!! Oh, look who just arrived! It's the GHOSTS OF TIANAMEN SQUARE...thousands of dead students and young people.
They fought to be free and then were TORTURED AND MURDERED by this partyin' crowd!
Oh goodness gracious--everyone makes mistakes, I guess!
Hey China, where's the guy who stood in fron of the tanks??? Ooops!!! You tortured and killed him, too??? Yeah, baby!!!
Cool!!! LET'S PAAARRRTYYY!!!!!
Torture, murder and EAT CAKE!!!
Happy 60th, KILLERS!!!
Have an opinion on the 60th anniversary of the People's Republic? Leave it here at Current.com.
Also from inside China:
- China Cave Dwellers Video)
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- China: A Little More Gay (Video)Seriously, we're talking one of the biggest goshdarn parades I've ever seen:... more
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Preparations have been taking place in Beijing for weeks as China gets ready to celebrate its 60th year of communist rule.
Big Picture has a great series: China prepares for its 60th anniversary
Washington Post writes up the security situation in advance of the big day: Beijing locked down ahead of national day parade
Officials have been coy about what threats they fear but say they are not over-reacting, pointing to recent protests in the remote regions of Tibet and Xinjiang as a reminder that the country is vulnerable to security threats.
And meanwhile, the Empire State Building has generated some controversy by renting out its lights to the celebrations, attracting protests: A Red and Yellow Glow for Celebration, and for Protest
Not everyone in New York thought this was an especially wise move, including 20 or so pro-Tibet protesters who stood outside the building’s Fifth Avenue entrance on Wednesday morning to denounce the Empire State’s collaboration with a regime that has harshly occupied Tibet for the last five decades. They carried signs bearing slogans like “Mao’s Empire State Building.”
Also from China:
- China's Wild West (Video) - Laura Ling reports on the Uighurs in Xinjiang Province
- City On Steroids (Video) - Adam Yamaguchi reports on Chongqing, the biggest city you've never heard of.Preparations have been taking place in Beijing for weeks as China gets ready to... more
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It started with the Internet. Google cried foul on China and allegations that government-backed hackers were trying to infiltrate Gmail accounts. Then Sec. of State Hillary Clinton gave a talk in which she criticized China's record on internet freedom. China and its media responded vociferously.
Things haven't been getting better in 2010 for China and the US. The US is planning an arms deal with Taiwan to the tune of $6.4 billion. China threatened sanctions and cut off relations between the two powers' militaries. Today China told the Obama Administration to shun the Dalai Lama. But Obama said he'd meet with the Tibetan leader anyway.
So in the Obama Administration's list of New Years Resolutions was "Standing up to China" right next to "Push for bipartisanship"? After a year of pledging to work closely with the PRC and seeing little gains from it is Obama changing his tack? From the Telegraph:
...But after a trip in November to China which made no visible goodwill gestures to him, not freeing any dissidents or even broadcasting nationally his one public forum, the president returned on the defensive.
Weigh in down in the (newly vote-enabled) comments: What's the best tactic for Obama to deal with China right now? Is it good to start to show some spine or is this a reckless endangerment of a necessary partnership?
It started with the Internet. Google cried foul on China and allegations... more
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We've all somehow been there, even though we've never set foot there: Tiananmen Square, The Square of Heavenly Peace. This is -- as they say -- China's "money shot." Andreea & I were on a very tight schedule which almost caused us to miss our Shanghai connecting flight, but these were some the moving images we snagged as we traversed from north to south along the expanse of this Beijing landmark, from the Forbidden City to Mao's Mausoleum. Sorry I'm mumbling a bit, but the capital was positively freezing on this day. Wind gusts and the like. Thanks again for watching!We've all somehow been there, even though we've never set foot there:... more
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gtowna
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Gawker pointed out this story out of China: The ancient home of kung fu, the Shaolin Temple, is planning to go public in 2011. The temple is a big tourist attraction and pulls in about $20million a year from ticket sales (150m yuan). The venture is expect to help boost tourism in the region.
The head of the temple, Shi Yongxin, has become known as the CEO Monk for his work to transform Shaolin into a global brand. He's faced plenty of criticism from people who say he's exploiting a sacred home of Zen Buddhism.
Maybe he was just fed up for not getting cut in by the world's foremost promoters of the Shaolin brand: The Wu-Tang Clan.
FROM THE NEWS BLOG:http://blogs.current.com/news/2009/12/17/shaolin-ipo-home-of-kung-fu-to-go-public/
SOURCES: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/china-business/6831187/Shaolin-Temples-kung-fu-monks-prepare-IPO.html
http://gawker.com/5428804/shaolin-incGawker pointed out this story out of China: The ancient home of kung fu, the Shaolin... more
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So you've scored yourself a shiny new college diploma and want to take a big step up on the career ladder. You've read and heard about how China's growing like the jolly green giant so you think your best prospects of landing a promising new gig are squarely in the PRC's lap. Well, think again. While China is indeed on its "peaceful rise," you may want to re-examine things before you make your own "great leap forward." If you're not delivering some beneficial skill to the Chinese market -- something the Chinese don't already have -- you might be making a mistake in thinking your English is sufficient. That's the subject of today's episode and thanks again for watching!So you've scored yourself a shiny new college diploma and want to take a big step... more
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There are a ton of pretenders out there claiming to be another one of those so-called "China experts." Truth is, there's no such thing as a "China expert." If one thing's for certain, the PRC keeps on changing and not even China's hardline leaders know where things might ultimately head. Where better to debunk the "China expert" theory than from atop the country's Great Wall? That's right, Episode #51 comes straight to ya from the Great Wall of China north of Beijing, at the Mutianyu entrance. Enjoy the half-millennium of architectural grandeur as we juice you up with your daily dose on China...*in* China. Thanks again for watching!There are a ton of pretenders out there claiming to be another one of those so-called... more
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gtowna
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I was watching Obama's town hall meeting with students in Shanghai last night. As he wrapped up his prepared remarks, stepped away from the podium, and began to explain the format of the town hall portion I realized that this might be absolutely foreign to many of these students. Here is a country's President, a very famous and powerful man, asking them to raise their hands and ask him a question. Whatever they asked him, he'd answer. We obviously take this sort of thing for granted - heck our most recent town halls seem to have devolved into purely shouting at our elected officials. But I couldn't shake the feeling that Obama, who was not joined on stage by any major Chinese official, had smuggled a little democracy into the PRC.
[Video is featured. This video of his introducing the concept is from CNN and their anchor, predictably, talks all over him, but you can hear the second half. If anyone can find a clean video - I'll replace this one with it.]
He also, and this was the headlining remark, asserted the American position that it's okay for everyone to use Twitter.
"President Barack Obama pointedly nudged China on Monday to stop censoring Internet access, offering an animated defense of the tool that helped him win the White House and suggesting Beijing need not fear a little criticism...."I think that the more freely information flows, the stronger the society becomes, because then citizens of countries around the world can hold their own governments accountable," Obama told students during his first-ever trip to China. "They can begin to think for themselves."
If the President's goal was to sneak a little democracy into the People's Republic, it seems to have not reached too many citizens. The event was not broadcast nationally - only on local Shanghai stations - and the live feed from the White House web site was reportedly choppy and hard to watch in China.
FROM THE BLOG: http://blogs.current.com/news/2009/11/16/did-obama-smuggle-a-little-democracy-into-china/
SOURCES: http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/obama-holds-town-hall-chinese-students-introduces-us/story?id=9091246&page=2
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091116/ap_on_bi_ge/obama
http://blogs.wsj.com/chinarealtime/2009/11/15/live-blogging-obamas-shanghai-town-hall/I was watching Obama's town hall meeting with students in Shanghai last night. As... more
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DISCLAIMER | Trying something slightly different today. Hope you don't mind. Please let us know what you think, by the way...
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So have you ever wondered what's the big hullabaloo about the Chinese -- in one fell swoop -- having the power to undermine America's national economy if they one day up and decide to cash in their US foreign debt? We're talking about somewhere in the neighborhood of $1 trillion US. Well, it's more of a media-spun thing than anything, and I explain why in this episode. Thanks again for watching!DISCLAIMER | Trying something slightly different today. Hope you don't mind.... more
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gtowna
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Tomorrow is the 60th anniversary of the People's Republic of China.
FROM THE BLOG:
Preparations have been taking place in Beijing for weeks as China gets ready to celebrate its 60th year of communist rule.
Washington Post writes up the security situation in advance of the big day: Beijing locked down ahead of national day parade
"Officials have been coy about what threats they fear but say they are not over-reacting, pointing to recent protests in the remote regions of Tibet and Xinjiang as a reminder that the country is vulnerable to security threats."
And meanwhile, the Empire State Building has generated some controversy by renting out its lights to the celebrations, attracting protests: A Red and Yellow Glow for Celebration, and for Protest
"Not everyone in New York thought this was an especially wise move, including 20 or so pro-Tibet protesters who stood outside the building’s Fifth Avenue entrance on Wednesday morning to denounce the Empire State’s collaboration with a regime that has harshly occupied Tibet for the last five decades. They carried signs bearing slogans like “Mao’s Empire State Building.”Tomorrow is the 60th anniversary of the People's Republic of China.
FROM THE... more
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