“The Geography of Chinese Power, How Far Can Beijing Reach on Land and at Sea?” is from the May / June edition of Foreign Affairs.

Robert D. Kaplan’s article envisions changes in China’s policy concerning adjoining countries and relationship with the USA over future decades. It suggests the inevitability of our ceding China the same control over its surrounding seas as we expect for ourselves.

A reader referred NewsLanc to the following articles from the Nashville Post. To us, the significance appears twofold:

(1) Tom Beeman was brought to Lancaster General Hospital as CEO to pursue an aggressive expansion and acquisition policy, which he has done.

In “Ill Fares The Land”, famed British historian Tony Judt observes:

“…there is a significant distinction between ‘socialism’ and ‘social democracy’. Socialism was about transformative change: the displacement of capitalism with a successor regime based on an entirely different system of production and ownership.

The Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) was designed and endorsed by the George W. Bush Administration and passed with Democrat support. It has been an unmitigated success in saving the banking system and is proving to be highly profitable for tax payers. Although designed for the purchase of “toxic securities”, the direction was bravely and wisely changed within 60 days when that approach was found to be impractical and, instead, the funds were lent to major banking institutions in exchange for interest and, in the case of CitiGroup, new stock in the company.

Considerable anger is directed at the current Pennsylvania Academy of Music by members of the public and a few who are to share the blame for the past financial debacle. Yet, apart from students and faculty, there are no links from the PAM of today with that of the past.

In his recently published “Ill Fares The Land”, famed British historian Tony Judt observes:

“The United States is a country founded upon small communities. As anyone who has lived for any length of time in such places can attest, the natural instinct is always to impose a regulative uniformity upon members’ public behavior. In the US, this disposition is partly countered by the individualistic propensities of the early settlers and the constitutional protections they prescribed for minority and individual dissent.

The United States can be fiscally responsible and meet the urgent necessities of the American people by stopping corporate welfare to concentrated industries, taxing the wealthiest that profited from three decades of tax breaks and reigning in weapons and war spending. Expanding Medicare to cover all Americans will save money and improve health.

Barely two weeks after a challenge to an estate valued at over a million dollar bequeathed to the Lancaster County Public Library (Duke Street) was dismissed by Orphan’s Court, attorney Stephen Blair filed an appeal on behalf of his father-in-law former Judge Wilson Bucher and himself.

“Cornered is a real eye opener for American’s business community. Barry Lynn details how the concentration of power in large global corporations can hurt entrepreneurs, stunt innovation, and slow growth. This book is essential to understanding how we got into our current mess.” – Michael Mandel, chief economist, Business Week

From the PITTSBURGH POST-GAZETTE OP-ED: “Arizona’s new immigration law has polarized Arizona and much of the country. The recently introduced Pennsylvania House Bill 2479, which also would provide for police to check a person’s legal status when stopped for another reason, could produce a similar result here…

I finished Tony Judt’s “Ill Fares The Land.” It was an excellent read and I agree with his premise that we need to develop a new language that builds on the success of social democracy programs (in the U.S. those would be New Deal and Great Society programs) combined with putting forward a new vision for an economy that works for more than the top 0 .5%. Indeed, social democracy is probably the closest to my political ideology when it comes to economics…