C-Span 1. Book TV. Book TV Schedule. After Words and Q&A. The first of the month brings “In Depth,” with Richard John Neuhaus.
Month: June 2005
UPDATE: Sen. McCain’s Amendment to NAGPRA
John McCain has been trying to sneak in an amendment to NAGPRA, The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, that would effectively gut it for the benefit of a few Indian tribes. (Previous posts on this topic are here and here.) This is a big deal, because if the tribes get their way they will be able to veto the study of any prehistoric human remains found in the USA, even if those remains have no connection to existing tribes.
Moira Breen, who has been at the forefront of Internet efforts to block the hijacking of NAGPRA, reports that popular opposition to McCain has had some effect, but that McCain is not giving up and plans a stacked hearing to ram his amendment through. It is therefore important for concerned individuals to contact their Congressional representatives (again) ASAP and make their opinions known.
I repost Moira’s note in its entirety:
Status update on S.536 Section 108:
Thanks again to all of you who blogged on McCain’s stealth amendment to NAGPRA
(Section 108, S.536). A public hearing on this amendment is now scheduled
for 14 June. I heard through the grapevine that the decision to hold a
hearing on this deplorable “‘was’ vs. ‘is'” amendment was effected by the
number and variety of citizens who wrote in protest. I know many people
wrote to say they’d contacted their congressmen; I’d like to think the
blogosphere had a hand in getting this into the light.
More Adventures in Customer Service
Adventure 1: Buying hard drives!
-OfficeMax has appropriate HD on sale at good price w/2 rebates!
-BUT online ordering system fails to credit me for one of the rebates and phone-support person will not acknowledge the problem, so. . .
-CompUSA has adequate HD on sale at great price w/2 rebates!
-BUT online ordering system won’t let me check out, even though I attempt to place order multiple times over two days, using two different browsers. Can’t get a human being on the phone. Remembering wasted time from OfficeMax experience, it’s time to. . .
-ABANDON SHIP. Now I will wait for an Office Depot sale or buy from Old (relatively) Reliable.
Adventure 2: Camera repair!
-Find name of local repair guy recommended by someone in online discussion forum. Excellent! A trustworthy local craftsman! Call him up => no answer. Repeat for about a week. Consider visiting his shop (about five miles away). . .
-BUT with traffic this would take an hour and he might not be there => not worth it.
-Return to online discussion group, find name of highly recommended repair person 3k miles away. I email query, she replies promptly with answers and a price quote. I drive ten minutes to FedEx office and ship camera (which will be shipped back directly to my address, negating any need for me to pick it up).
-Outcome pending.
Abandonment of the Euro Becomes Conceivable
From FT.com:
The under-fire euro fell further on Wednesday, slumping to an eight-month low against the US dollar amid rumblings over the long-term future of the eurozone.
The fresh selling was prompted by a report claiming that Hans Eichel, the German finance minister, and Axel Weber, the president of the Bundesbank, were present at a meeting at which the possible break-up of European Monetary Union was discussed.
The German Bundestag is also said to have commissioned a report on the legal repercussions of a country wishing to leave the EMU.
Germany’s finance ministry labelled the talk “absurd”, while Mr Eichel and Mr Weber issued a statement saying the euro was a “unique success story”. But the damage had been done.
Of course there are pro forma denials, but it looks like the French and Dutch referendum results have allowed the German govt to raise the obvious questions about why the Bundesbank should continue to support Europe’s weaker economies. The bigger question is why Germany went along with the Euro scheme in the first place. But having done it, and finding the going perhaps harder than they anticipated, the German pols and finance bureaucrats may now be looking for a place to get off the train.
Although most currency analysts regard the break-up of the eurozone as an extremely faint prospect, they said the potentially disastrous repercussions of such an event mean it could not be totally ignored.
Tony Norfield, global head of forex strategy at ABN Amro, put the probability of a splintering of the eurozone at “5 per cent or less”.
“Our view is that EMU will not break up. That will be way down the line as the last resort because of the political capital eveyone has got invested in it,” he said.
Nevertheless Mr Norfield added that if a break-up was to occur, it would be a “disaster” for the euro.
When people start talking like this it means that the odds of the events they are trying to dismiss are now high enough to be undismissable. This doesn’t mean Euro abandonment is a certainty, only that the odds of it are increasing. Look for more such talk in Germany and elsewhere.
If the Euro falls apart it won’t happen suddenly, just as Euro introduction was planned over an extended period. Governments are usually slow and deliberate about such major policy changes. Nonetheless, EMU failure would be like a giant fish hook ripped from the guts of the European political class: painful, messy and very interesting to watch. And it just became more likely.