Jill

Nintendo makes more profit per employee than investment bank.

The Financial Times (9/16, Harding) reports that "the average employee at Japanese video games maker Nintendo is on track to earn more for their company this year than the average Goldman Sachs employee did in 2007, the investment bank's best ever year." The video games maker "also makes more per employee than Internet group Google." The Times notes that, "for an electronics company to make more per employee than a high-powered investment bank is exceptional, and the figures highlight how profitable Nintendo," which has "less than 3,000 permanent employees, has become after the success of its Wii and DS consoles."

The Detroit Free Press (8/14, Higgins) reported, "More than 450 UAW (United Auto Workers union) members from St. Louis (Mo.) protested outside Chrysler LLC's Auburn Hills headquarters" Thursday morning against "the automaker's decision to shut down the minivan plant in that community." Joe Shields, president of UAW Local 110, which "represents workers at the St. Louis minivan plant," said, "We're an American car company, but they're taking all of our work outside the company." Jeff Hagler, president of UAW Local 412 told the Free Press, "We must send a strong message that enough is enough. We at Local 412 have made it perfectly clear to the company that we know that we can be a world-class workforce at a competitive cost." Hagler "encouraged his metro Detroit members to turn out to help support the protest." Mary Beth Halprin, a Chrysler spokeswoman, who "said the company worked with UAW organizers to ensure a safe demonstration," added, "We are committed to treating those affected by the manufacturing actions in a socially responsible manner."

"...hospital maternity care in the United States is typically not supportive of this process. More than half of women are induced into labor, or it is sped up with artificial hormones; the vast majority of women labor and push in the desultory flat-on-the-back or leaning-back position; and (perhaps not surprisingly) nearly one-third of women end up giving birth through major surgery, the caesarean section.

This has led to an epidemic of pre-term births in the United States. A 2006 survey showed that the majority of babies are now born before the spontaneous onset of labor, which leaves them more prone to breathing and feeding difficulties. Caesareans are also contributing to a rising maternal death rate...

...Studies of "low-risk" women in North America planning out-of-hospital births with midwives have found that 95 percent give birth vaginally with hardly any medical intervention. The largest and most rigorous study to date published in the British Medical Journal found that in North America, babies were born at home just as safely as in the hospital."

"The AMA's statement calls for legislation that could be used against women who choose home birth, possibly resulting in child-abuse or neglect charges."

An Open letter to All Airline Customers:

Our country is facing a possible sharp economic downturn because of skyrocketing oil and fuel prices, but by pulling together, we can all do something to help now. Visit www.StopOilSpeculationNow.com.

For airlines, ultra-expensive fuel means thousands of lost jobs and severe reductions in air service to both large and small communities. To the broader economy, oil prices mean slower activity and widespread economic pain. This pain can be alleviated, and that is why we are taking the extraordinary step of writing this joint letter to our customers.

Since high oil prices are partly a response to normal market forces, the nation needs to focus on increased energy supplies and conservation. However, there is another side to this story because normal market forces are being dangerously amplified by poorly regulated market speculation.

Twenty years ago, 21 percent of oil contracts were purchased by speculators who trade oil on paper with no intention of ever taking delivery. Today, oil speculators purchase 66 percent of all oil futures contracts, and that reflects just the transactions that are known. Speculators buy up large amounts of oil and then sell it to each other again and again. A barrel of oil may trade 20-plus times before it is delivered and used; the price goes up with each trade and consumers pick up the final tab. Some market experts estimate that current prices reflect as much as $30 to $60 per barrel in unnecessary speculative costs.

Over seventy years ago, Congress established regulations to control excessive, largely unchecked market speculation and manipulation. However, over the past two decades, these regulatory limits have been weakened or removed. We believe that restoring and enforcing these limits, along with several other modest measures, will provide more disclosure, transparency and sound market oversight. Together, these reforms will help cool the over-heated oil market and permit the economy to prosper.

The nation needs to pull together to reform the oil markets and solve this growing problem. We need your help. Get more information and contact Congress by visiting www.StopOilSpeculationNow.com.

Robert Fornaro
Chairman, President and CEO
AirTran Airways

Bill Ayer
Chairman, President and CEO
Alaska Airlines, Inc.

Gerard J. Arpey
Chairman, President and CEO
American Airlines, Inc.

Lawrence W. Kellner
Chairman and CEO
Continental Airlines, Inc.

Richard Anderson
CEO
Delta Air Lines, Inc.

Mark B. Dunkerley
President and CEO
Hawaiian Airlines, Inc.

Dave Barger
CEO
JetBlue Airways Corporation

Timothy E. Hoeksema
Chairman, President and CEO
Midwest Airlines

Douglas M. Steenland
President and CEO
Northwest Airlines, Inc.

Gary Kelly
Chairman and CEO
Southwest Airlines Co.

Glenn F. Tilton
Chairman, President and CEO
United Airlines, Inc.

Douglas Parker
Chairman and CEO
US Airways Group, Inc.

June 12, 2008

[recipient address was inserted here]


[recipient name was inserted here],

I am concerned about the current integrity of the United States of
America's good name in the world. We are allowing our own President to
side-step our laws, our Congress, our Constitution and our fore-fathers
without accountability for his actions. To let him leave office without
even a slap on the wrist for declaring war without Congressional approval,
for his inability to sufficiently protect and serve his citizens after
Hurricane Katrina, for condoning and encouraging spying, imprisoning and
torturing his own citizens, is unacceptable. To allow this to be a
precedent for future leaders of our country is unconscionable.

I urge you to please support the resolution to impeach President Bush. If
not for me, for our country's future.

Sincerely,


Jill DeLong

Just a brief update to you all…

After 2 days of tense worries and anticipation my wife Mary and I finally got to talk last night to our daughter Katie and her husband Thomas in China. They live in Sichuan province very near the earthquake center. Their town has had minimal damage because most of its buildings have been built in the last 20 years. Their apartment was built 5 years ago and only suffered minor cracks to plaster walls here and there. There however were some deaths on the campus where they are going to school - 3 miles from them. They lost power for a day but power, gas, phone and internet services are now mostly working. They have not slept in their 7th floor apartment since the quake. Aftershocks have been occurring a couple times an hour for the last 2 days making it hard to sleep. So they are staying in the first floor apartment of their best friends.

But the story is very different when you leave town, especially heading north into the mountains. They with a community of “like minded” friends from Chengdu in coordination with the Red Cross have organized their own recovery and aid team. They have a larger 4 wheel drive utility/ambulance vehicle and 2 other 4WD trucks with supplies and some medical aid that they are now driving into the mountains as far as they can - to provide what help and assistance they can. The roads are in extremely bad shape with rock slides and quake damage. The majority of homes and buildings in the mountains have collapsed. And as you have seen pictures on TV the living have no place to live.

Thank you all for your prayers and expressions of support for our family these past 2 days.

Vintage motorcycle unearthed at Camp Ripley

CAMP RIPLEY, Minn. (AP) -- A bit of military history has been unearthed at Camp Ripley.

Plumbers were digging a 15-foot-deep trench to lay a new sewer line when they uncovered a World War I military motorcycle and sidecar.

David Hanson, who directs Camp Ripley's Military Museum, says the cycle is at least early 1918, 1919 or maybe early '20s vintage.

Hanson says the motorcycle was discovered only 200 yards away from the museum.

He says there have been rumors that the Army dumped dozens of similar bikes in the old Camp Ripley landfill, which was located at the spot where the plumbers made their discovery.

Hanson says the cycle will be restored and displayed at the museum.