Justice is not blind, society shares part of the blame, mental illness is not understood, the death penalty is wrong.

The Cleve Foster saga continues.

Articles also on David Dodge’s critique of Canadian health care (ed’s note – frog in water), the history of US taxation, how S&P earnings support the stock market recovery, a rail against oil price apocalypse, the Great Chinese Bubble, how America is blocking Chinese companies from doing business state side, Arizona’s fight against obesity, European rate increases, and the end of Beck’s run at Fox

Veins on fire, the death sentence in Texas.

Atlantic -- In Texas, a Brave, New Lethal Injection
Texas prison officials are about to carry out an execution with a combination of drugs and procedures that they have not used before, and that a veterinarian is proscribed from using when terminating an animal's life.

Related.

Associated Content – The Case of Cleve Foster, Another Innocent Man on Texas’ Death Row
Since the recent clemency of Kenneth Foster Jr., by Governor Rick Perry from Texas, my attention has been drawn to the case of Cleve Foster, or "Sarge" as his friends call him.

Related.

Cleve Foster

Related

Pdf below – Regulating Death in the Lone Star State

David Dodge jumps into the campaign story line, Canada’s unhealthy health care system.

Pdf below -- The Health Papers

Related.

Macleans – David Dodge’s Plea
The former governor of the Bank of Canada has released a new report calling for an adult discussion of the approaching health care crunch. Mr. Dodge made a similar plea to the Liberal conference in Montreal last year.

Mummy, how did income taxes come into being? To pay for war.

Visualising Economics -- Percent of Households Filing an Income Tax Return: 1913-2008
A federal income tax was imposed on several occasions in the 1800s.

 

The S&P 500 earnings' marvelous recovery.

Chart of the Day – S&P 500 Earnings 1900-2010
With first-quarter earnings season set to officially kick-off on Monday when Alcoa reports first-quarter earnings, today's chart provides some long-term perspective to the current earnings environment by focusing on 12-month, as reported S&P 500 earnings.

 

Peter Foster on separating hyperbole from the facts. Thanks to David of London for sending this in.

Financial Post -- Fossil-fuel bonanza makes peak oil theorists look ridiculous
In his devastating 2008 book, An Appeal to Reason: A Cool Look at Global Warming, former British Chancellor of the Exchequer Nigel Lawson noted the perhaps unprecedented hypocrisy surrounding the climate issue.

How Chinese companies are finding the American market difficult to operate in because security and economic fears are getting in the way of business.

Financial Times – China and the US: Access Denied
In December 1997, Ren Zhengfei and his management team gathered by the fireplace in a Silicon Valley hotel to discuss their recent meetings with a clutch of US technology firms.

 

Related.

Financial Times -- The new global geometry of power
This week, the US withdrew its aircraft from shooting duty over Libya. And Barack Obama sent out an e-mail saying he would seek re-election in 2012. The timing was probably coincidental. There was, though, a connection

Related.

Wall Street Journal – Would IKE Have Gone to Libya?
Thick histories may well be written about how President Obama—a Democrat from the leftward wing of his party, a use-of-force skeptic who campaigned against Iraq as a war of choice—came to involve the U.S. in a third Mideastern war.

When Yasuo Goto paid $39,921,750  for Van Gogh’s Sunflowers it was thought to be a real and present example of the ascension of Japan as a great power. It wasn’t. It was the product of a credit driven stock market and real estate bubble typical of economies where good sense was overtaken by hubris. Stories about the Chinese art market today must surely be a sign of something similar.

China bubble.

Atlantic -- The Art of Bubbles: How Sotheby's Predicts the World Economy
Once again, China has surpassed the United States in a key economic number. No, it's not GDP. It's art.

 

Related. (ed’s note: the mall is empty, a Chinese coal baron pays 1.5 million for a red Tibetan Mastiff).

Yahoo Finance -- Look Out Below: Why Skyscrapers are Classic Bubble Indicators
In China, five of the world’s ten largest buildings are now under construction. Look out below!, says Vikram Mansharamani, a financial services veteran and part-time academic who has developed a multidisciplinary framework for sniffing out bubbles.

 

Related.

Yale Global Online -- China Bubble: Empty Mega Mall and Million Dollar Pooch
China remains one of the world’s fastest growing economies, yet numerous signs point to a speculative mania underway.

 

Inflation mea culpa: we don’t know how the economy really works. (ed’s note: great …)

Financial Times – Nasty Choices in a Time of Rising Prices
What Mervyn King, governor of the Bank of England, called the Nice (“non-inflationary, consistently expansionary”) decade has vanished. In its place, we see what I would now call the Nasty (“nightmare of austere and stagflationary years”).

Fighting obesity in Arizona.

The Globalist – Will Arizona Lead the Global Anti-Obesity Revolution?
Even though the U.S. state of Arizona is generally viewed as a bastion of conservatism, it may become known as the launching pad for America’s battle against the obesity scourge.

Weimer’s ghost, the ECB raises rates.

Economist – Up They Go
THE day after Portugal threw in its hand and asked for rescue funding from the EU, the European Central Bank increased the pressure on the beleaguered economies of southern Europe and Ireland by raising interest rates.

 

PIMCO -- Europe's Not Back to Normal, So Why Is the ECB Hiking Rates?
Is this the week in which we can call a close to the global financial crisis and get back to business as normal?

Thoughts on why Glenn Beck lost his audience.

Washington Post – Why Glenn Beck Lost It
On Friday, the unemployment rate dropped to 8.8 percent, as businesses added jobs for the 13th straight month.