Commerce Department Quotes

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And Mr. Greaves…,” Meyers said. “At the Commerce Department they say he’s outsmarted the best smugglers in the business. He’ll help flush out these bastards.
Kathleen Concannon (A Deadly Bluff: A Dana Madison Mystery)
Our world isn’t about ideology anymore. It’s about complexity. We live in a complex bureaucratic state with complex laws and complex business practices, and the few organizations with the corporate willpower to master these complexities will inevitably own the political power. On the other hand, movements like the Tea Party more than anything else reflect a widespread longing for simpler times and simple solutions—just throw the U.S. Constitution at the whole mess and everything will be jake. For immigration, build a big fence. Abolish the Federal Reserve, the Department of Commerce, the Department of Education. At times the overt longing for simple answers that you get from Tea Party leaders is so earnest and touching, it almost makes you forget how insane most of them are.
Matt Taibbi (Griftopia: Bubble Machines, Vampire Squids, and the Long Con That Is Breaking America)
What we call the beginning is often the end And to make and end is to make a beginning. The end is where we start from. And every phrase And sentence that is right (where every word is at home, Taking its place to support the others, The word neither diffident nor ostentatious, An easy commerce of the old and the new, The common word exact without vulgarity, The formal word precise but not pedantic, The complete consort dancing together) Every phrase and every sentence is an end and a beginning, Every poem an epitaph. And any action Is a step to the block, to the fire, down the sea's throat Or to an illegible stone: and that is where we start. We die with the dying: See, they depart, and we go with them. We are born with the dead: See, they return, and bring us with them. The moment of the rose and the moment of the yew-tree Are of equal duration. A people without history Is not redeemed from time, for history is a pattern Of timeless moments. So, while the light fails On a winter's afternoon, in a secluded chapel History is now and England.
T.S. Eliot (Little Gidding)
In another discussion with the president, Cohn unveiled a Commerce Department study showing the U.S. absolutely needed to trade with China. “If you’re the Chinese and you want to really just destroy us, just stop sending us antibiotics. You know we don’t really produce antibiotics in the United States?” The study also showed that nine major antibiotics were not produced in the United States, including penicillin. China sold 96.6 percent of all antibiotics used here. “We don’t produce penicillin.” Trump looked at Cohn strangely. “Sir, so when mothers’ babies are dying of strep throat, what are you going to say to them?” Cohn asked Trump if he would tell them, “Trade deficits matter”? “We’ll buy it from another country,” Trump proposed. “So now the Chinese are going to sell it [antibiotics] to the Germans, and the Germans are going to mark it up and sell it to us. So our trade deficit will go down with the Chinese, up with the Germans.” U.S. consumers would be paying a markup. “Is that good for our economy?” Navarro said they would buy it through some country other than Germany. Same problem, Cohn said. “You’re just rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.
Bob Woodward (Fear: Trump in the White House)
Mr. Colbert, the famous minister of Louis XIV, was a man of probity, of great industry and knowledge of detail, of great experience and acuteness in the examination of public accounts, and of abilities, in short, every way fitted for introducing method and good order into the collection and expenditure of the public revenue. That minister had unfortunately embraced all the prejudices of the mercantile system, in its nature and essence a system of restraint and regulation, and such as could scarce fail to be agreeable to a laborious and plodding man of business, who had been accustomed to regulate the different departments of public offices, and to establish the necessary checks and controls for confining each to its proper sphere. The industry and commerce of a great country he endeavoured to regulate upon the same model as the departments of a public office; and instead of allowing every man to pursue his own interest in his own way, upon the liberal plan of equality, liberty, and justice, he bestowed upon certain branches of industry extraordinary privileges, while he laid others under as extraordinary restraints.
Adam Smith (An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations)
The Obama administration warned federal employees that materials released by WikiLeaks remained classified—even though they were being published by some of the world’s leading news organizations including the New York Times and the Guardian. Employees were told that accessing the material, whether on WikiLeaks.org or in the New York Times, would amount to a security violation.21 Government agencies such as the Library of Congress, the Commerce Department and the US military blocked access to WikiLeaks materials over their networks. The ban was not limited to the public sector. Employees from the US government warned academic institutions that students hoping to pursue a career in public service should stay clear of material released by WikiLeaks in their research and in their online activity.
Julian Assange
Yet just eighty years ago it still seemed an impossible mission when U.S. President Herbert Hoover was tasked with beating back the Great Depression with only a mixed bag of numbers, ranging from share values to the price of iron to the volume of road transport. Even his most important metric – the “blast-furnace index” – was little more than an unwieldy construct that attempted to pin down production levels in the steel industry. If you had asked Hoover how “the economy” was doing, he would have given you a puzzled look. Not only because this wasn’t among the numbers in his bag, but because he would have had no notion of our modern understanding of the word “economy.” “Economy” isn’t really a thing, after all – it’s an idea, and that idea had yet to be invented. In 1931, Congress called together the country’s leading statisticians and found them unable to answer even the most basic questions about the state of the nation. That something was fundamentally wrong seemed evident, but their last reliable figures dated from 1929. It was obvious that the homeless population was growing and that companies were going bankrupt left and right, but as to the actual extent of the problem, nobody knew. A few months earlier, President Hoover had dispatched a number of Commerce Department employees around the country to report on the situation. They returned with mainly anecdotal evidence that aligned with Hoover’s own belief that economic recovery was just around the bend. Congress wasn’t reassured, however. In 1932, it appointed a brilliant young Russian professor by the name of Simon Kuznets to answer a simple question: How much stuff can we make? Over the next few years, Kuznets laid the foundations of what would later become the GDP. His
Rutger Bregman (Utopia for Realists: And How We Can Get There)
Mexico has lost hundreds of thousands of jobs to China. U.S. Department of Commerce data reveal that from 2002 to 2003 Mexico lost market share in thirteen of its top twenty export industries, nearly always to China. With fewer jobs at home, Mexicans are finding it all the more compelling to cross the border into the United States in search of work. No fence is high enough to bar workers desperate to feed their families.
Ellen Ruppel Shell (Cheap: The High Cost of Discount Culture)
Chastened by their losses, some businessmen tried conciliation, one delegation going so far as to travel to Chicago to persuade former sharecroppers that things had changed and it was time they came back. (The sharecroppers showed no interest and instead took the opportunity to complain about being cheated and whipped while in their employ.) In the 1920s, the Tennessee Association of Commerce, the Department of Immigration of Louisiana, the Mississippi Welfare League, and the Southern Alluvial Land Association all sent representatives north to try to bring colored workers back. They offered free train tickets and promised better wages and living conditions. They returned empty-handed.
Isabel Wilkerson (The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration)
the president, Cohn unveiled a Commerce Department study showing the U.S. absolutely needed to trade with China. “If you’re the Chinese and you want to really just destroy us, just stop sending us antibiotics. You know we don’t really produce antibiotics in the United States?” The study also showed that nine major antibiotics were not produced in the United States, including penicillin. China sold 96.6 percent of all antibiotics used here. “We don’t produce penicillin.
Bob Woodward (Fear: Trump in the White House)
Commerce Department reports show that U.S. investment in Germany increased some 48.5 percent between 1929 and 1940, while declining sharply everywhere else in continental Europe.
Christopher Simpson (The Splendid Blond Beast: Money, Law, and Genocide in the Twentieth Century (Forbidden Bookshelf))
There’s nothing illegal about a Defense Department funding research. It’s certainly better than a Commerce Department or Education Department funding research . . . because that would lead to thought control. I would much rather have the military in charge of that . . . the military people make no bones about what they want, so we’re not under any subtle pressures. It’s clear what’s going on. The case of ARPA was unique, because they felt that what this country needed was people good in defense technology. In case we ever needed it, we’d have it.
Steven Levy (Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution)
Two months into their tenure, Republicans on the House Energy and Commerce Committee also led a crusade against alternative, renewable energy programs. They successfully branded the government’s stimulus support for Solyndra, a California manufacturer of solar panels, and other clean energy firms an Obama scandal. In fact, the loan guarantee program in the Energy Department that extended the controversial financing to the company began under the Bush administration. Contrary to the partisan hype, it actually returned a profit to taxpayers.
Jane Mayer (Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right)
You’ve begun to master several techniques for controlling your anxiety. You’re learning the finer points of interaction and studying ways to apply your interactive skills. The next step is to add community resources—relevant agencies, groups, and organizations—to your self-help program. As you consider your particular needs, look to your own community for ways to enhance your social system: Parks and recreation departments, churches and synagogues, singles groups, self-help groups, clubs, volunteer organizations, business associations—there is an infinite array of resources to choose from. Contact your local chamber of commerce, consult newspapers for upcoming activities, and even inquire at area shops about any clubs or groups that share an interest (for example, ask at a garden center about a garden club, at a bookstore about a book club, and so on). Working through the exercises in this book is merely one component of a total self-help program. To progress from background knowledge to practical application, you must venture beyond your home and workplace (and beyond the confines of a therapist’s office, if you are in counseling). For people with social anxiety an outside system of resources is the best place to work on interactive difficulties. Here are three excellent reasons to use community resources: 1. To facilitate self-help. Conquering social anxiety necessitates interaction and involvement within the community, which is your laboratory. Using community resources creates a practical means of refining your skills and so moving forward on your individual map for change. 2. To diminish loneliness. Becoming part of the community provides the opportunity to develop personal and professional contacts that can enhance your life in many ways. 3. To network. Community involvement will not only give you the chance to improve your interactive skills, but will allow you to promote your academic or work life as well as your social life. Building connections on different levels can be the key. Any setting can provide a good opportunity for networking. In fact, I met the writer who helped me with this book in a fairly unlikely place—on the basketball court! A mutual friend introduced us, and when the subject of our professional interests came up, we saw the opportunity to work together on this project. You never know!
Jonathan Berent (Beyond Shyness: How to Conquer Social Anxieties)
Escape from the world was the counterpoise in monastic and partly even in clerical orders, which emphasized holiness in the center of the Church in order to wink the more lightly at worldly excesses without. As a natural result the world corrupted the Church, and by its dominion over the world the Church proved an obstacle to every free development of its life. Thus making its appearance in a dualistic social state, Calvinism has wrought an entire change in the world of thoughts and conceptions. In this also, placing itself before the face of God, it has not only honored man for the sake of his likeness to the Divine image, but also the world as a Divine creation, and has at once placed to the front the great principle that there is a particular grace which works Salvation, and also a common grace by which God, maintaining the life of the world, relaxes the curse which rests upon it, arrests its process of corruption, and thus allows the untrammelled development of our life in which to glorify Himself as Creator. Thus the Church receded in order to be neither more nor less than the congregation of believers, and in every department the life of the world was not emancipated from God, but from the dominion of the Church. Thus domestic life regained its independence, trade and commerce realized their strength in liberty, art and science were set free from every ecclesiastical bond and restored to their own inspirations, and man began to understand the subjection of all nature with its hidden forces and treasures to himself as a holy duty, imposed upon him by the original ordinances of Paradise : 'Have dominion over them.' Henceforth the curse should no longer rest upon the world itself, but upon that which is sinful in it, and instead of monastic flight from the world the duty is now emphasized of serving God in the world, in every position in life. To praise God in the Church and serve Him in the world became the inspiring impulse, and, in the Church, strength was to be gathered by which to resist temptation and sin in the world.
Abraham Kuyper (Lectures on Calvinism)
Escape from the world was the counterpoise in monastic and partly even in clerical orders, which emphasized holiness in the center of the Church in order to wink the more lightly at worldly excesses without. As a natural result the world corrupted the Church, and by its dominion over the world the Church proved an obstacle to every free development of its life. Thus making its appearance in a dualistic social state, Calvinism has wrought an entire change in the world of thoughts and conceptions. In this also, placing itself before the face of God, it has not only honored man for the sake of his likeness to the Divine image, but also the world as a Divine creation, and has at once placed to the front the great principle that there is a particular grace which works Salvation, and also a common grace by which God, maintaining the life of the world, relaxes the curse which rests upon it, arrests its process of corruption, and thus allows the untrammelled development of our life in which to glorify Himself as Creator. Thus the Church receded in order to be neither more nor less than the congregation of believers, and in every department the life of the world was not emancipated from God, but from the dominion of the Church. Thus domestic life regained its independence, trade and commerce realized their strength in liberty, art and science were set free from every ecclesiastical bond and restored to their own inspirations, and man began to understand the subjection of all nature with its hidden forces and treasures to himself as a holy duty, imposed upon him by the original ordinances of Paradise : 'Have dominion over them.' Henceforth the curse should no longer rest upon the world itself, but upon that which is sinful in it, and instead of monastic flight from the world the duty is now emphasized of serving God in the world, in every position in life. To praise God in the Church and serve Him in the world became the inspiring impulse, and, in the Church, strength was to be gathered by which to resist temptation and sin in the world.
Abraham Kuyper (Lectures on Calvinism)
Escape from the world was the counterpoise in monastic and partly even in clerical orders, which emphasized holiness in the center of the Church in order to wink the more lightly at worldly excesses without. As a natural result the world corrupted the Church, and by its dominion over the world the Church proved an obstacle to every free development of its life. Thus making its appearance in a dualistic social state, Calvinism has wrought an entire change in the world of thoughts and conceptions. In this also, placing itself before the face of God, it has not only honored man for the sake of his likeness to the Divine image, but also the world as a Divine creation, and has at once placed to the front the great principle that there is a particular grace which works Salvation, and also a common grace by which God, maintaining the life of the world, relaxes the curse which rests upon it, arrests its process of corruption, and thus allows the untrammelled development of our life in which to glorify Himself as Creator. Thus the Church receded in order to be neither more nor less than the congregation of believers, and in every department the life of the world was not emancipated from God, but from the dominion of the Church. Thus domestic life regained its independence, trade and commerce realized their strength in liberty, art and science were set free from every ecclesiastical bond and restored to their own inspirations, and man began to understand the subjection of all nature with its hidden forces and treasures to himself as a holy duty, imposed upon him by the original ordinances of Paradise : 'Have dominion over them.' Henceforth the curse should no longer rest upon the world itself, but upon that which is sinful in it, and instead of monastic flight from the world the duty is now emphasized of serving God in the world, in every position in life. To praise God in the Church and serve Him in the world became the inspiring impulse, and, in the Church, strength was to be gathered by which to resist temptation and sin in the world.
Abraham Kuyper (Lectures on Calvinism)
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Instinox
During NASA’s first fifty years the agency’s accomplishments were admired globally. Democratic and Republican leaders were generally bipartisan on the future of American spaceflight. The blueprint for the twenty-first century called for sustaining the International Space Station and its fifteen-nation partnership until at least 2020, and for building the space shuttle’s heavy-lift rocket and deep spacecraft successor to enable astronauts to fly beyond the friendly confines of low earth orbit for the first time since Apollo. That deep space ship would fly them again around the moon, then farther out to our solar system’s LaGrange points, and then deeper into space for rendezvous with asteroids and comets, learning how to deal with radiation and other deep space hazards before reaching for Mars or landings on Saturn’s moons. It was the clearest, most reasonable and best cost-achievable goal that NASA had been given since President John F. Kennedy’s historic decision to land astronauts on the lunar surface. Then Barack Obama was elected president. The promising new chief executive gave NASA short shrift, turning the agency’s future over to middle-level bureaucrats with no dreams or vision, bent on slashing existing human spaceflight plans that had their genesis in the Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush, Clinton, and Bush White Houses. From the starting gate, Mr. Obama’s uncaring space team rolled the dice. First they set up a presidential commission designed to find without question we couldn’t afford the already-established spaceflight plans. Thirty to sixty thousand highly skilled jobs went on the chopping block with space towns coast to coast facing 12 percent unemployment. $9.4 billion already spent on heavy-lift rockets and deep space ships was unashamedly flushed down America’s toilet. The fifty-year dream of new frontiers was replaced with the shortsighted obligations of party politics. As 2011 dawned, NASA, one of America’s great science agencies, was effectively defunct. While Congress has so far prohibited the total cancellation of the space agency’s plans to once again fly astronauts beyond low earth orbit, Obama space operatives have systematically used bureaucratic tricks to slow roll them to a crawl. Congress holds the purse strings and spent most of 2010 saying, “Wait just a minute.” Thousands of highly skilled jobs across the economic spectrum have been lost while hundreds of billions in “stimulus” have been spent. As of this writing only Congress can stop the NASA killing. Florida’s senior U.S. Senator Bill Nelson, a Democrat, a former spaceflyer himself, is leading the fight to keep Obama space advisors from walking away from fifty years of national investment, from throwing the final spade of dirt on the memory of some of America’s most admired heroes. Congressional committees have heard from expert after expert that Mr. Obama’s proposal would be devastating. Placing America’s future in space in the hands of the Russians and inexperienced commercial operatives is foolhardy. Space legend John Glenn, a retired Democratic Senator from Ohio, told president Obama that “Retiring the space shuttles before the country has another space ship is folly. It could leave Americans stranded on the International Space Station with only a Russian spacecraft, if working, to get them off.” And Neil Armstrong testified before the Senate’s Commerce, Science & Transportation Committee that “With regard to President Obama’s 2010 plan, I have yet to find a person in NASA, the Defense Department, the Air Force, the National Academies, industry, or academia that had any knowledge of the plan prior to its announcement. Rumors abound that neither the NASA Administrator nor the President’s Science and Technology Advisor were knowledgeable about the plan. Lack of review normally guarantees that there will be overlooked requirements and unwelcome consequences. How could such a chain of events happen?
Alan Shepard (Moon Shot: The Inside Story of America's Race to the Moon)
The story also pointed out that most big cities and towns have chambers of commerce and economic development offices, but what makes Itasca unique, participants say, is a commitment to hard data and McKinsey-style analysis, as well as a willingness to depart from the script that drives many private sector lobbies.
Thomas L. Friedman (Thank You for Being Late: An Optimist's Guide to Thriving in the Age of Accelerations)
The U.S. Treasury Department has issued at least four licenses to companies that want to establish ferry service to Cuba from Key West, Miami, Fort Lauderdale and Tampa. Baleària, a Spanish company, presently owns the Baleària Bahamas Express ferry service from Fort Lauderdale to Freeport, Grand Bahamas, and is now considering a ferry to operate between Florida and Cuba. United Caribbean and Havana Partners have expressed an interest in a service from Tampa to Havana and Mexico. Baja Ferries USA wants to open routes between the Port of Miami and Port Everglades to Cuba. Some of the ferries will offer duty-free shopping, restaurants, bars and even swimming pools. The details regarding feasibility depends on government restrictions and tariffs placed on them by the countries, as well as the ports involved. Tampa would be a straight run 331 miles due south, but some of the other ports would be closer. In the end it will come down to money, availability of cargo and logistics. As of the summer of 2016, perspective ferry operators are awaiting final approval and licensing from the Cuban government. Because of this the ferry companies are on hold and are still waiting to begin operations. Tampa and The Port of Tampa have expressed their enthusiasm to become fully involved in these new ventures. Bob Rohrlack, President of the Greater Tampa Chamber of Commerce, has been to Cuba several times, taking corporate delegates in preparation for improved, open relations with Cuba.
Hank Bracker
According to the Commerce Department, employee pay is down to the smallest share of the economy since the government began collecting wage and salary figures data in 1929. Meanwhile, corporate profits now constitute the largest share of the economy since 1929. In
Robert B. Reich (Beyond Outrage (Expanded Edition): What has gone wrong with our economy and our democracy, and how to fix it)
According to the Commerce Department, American-based global corporations added 2.4 million workers abroad in the first decade of this century while cutting their American workforce by 2.9 million. Between 2009 and 2011, the thirty-five biggest U.S. companies added 113,000 American jobs but almost three times that many jobs (333,000) abroad, according to a survey by The Wall Street Journal. Nearly 60 percent of their revenue growth came from outside the United States. Apple employs 43,000 people in the United States but contracts with over 700,000 workers abroad.
Robert B. Reich (Beyond Outrage (Expanded Edition): What has gone wrong with our economy and our democracy, and how to fix it)
United States is committed to protecting privacy. It is an element of individual dignity and an aspect of participation in democratic society. To an increasing extent, privacy protections have become critical to the information-based economy. Stronger consumer data privacy protections will buttress the trust that is necessary to promote the full economic, social, and political uses of networked technologies. The increasing quantities of personal data that these technologies subject to collection, use, and disclosure have fueled innovation and significant social benefits. We can preserve these benefits while also ensuring that our consumer data privacy policy better reflects the value that Americans place on privacy and bolsters trust in the Internet and other networked technologies. The framework set forth in the preceding pages provides a way to achieve these goals. The Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights should be the legal baseline that governs consumer data privacy in the United States. The Administration will work with Congress to bring this about, but it will also work with privatesector stakeholders to adopt the Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights in the absence of legislation. To encourage adoption, the Department of Commerce will convene multistakeholder processes to encourage the development of enforceable, context-specific codes of conduct. The United States Government will engage with our international partners to increase the interoperability of our respective consumer data privacy frameworks. Federal agencies will continue to develop innovative privacy-protecting programs and guidance as well as enforce the broad array of existing Federal laws that protect consumer privacy. A cornerstone of this framework is its call for the ongoing participation of private-sector stakeholders. The views that companies, civil society, academics, and advocates provided to the Administration through written comments, public symposia, and informal discussions have been invaluable in shaping this framework. Implementing it, and making progress toward consumer data privacy protections that support a more trustworthy networked world, will require all of us to continue to work together★ 45 ★
Anonymous
The Commerce Department said the trade deficit jumped 43.1 percent to $51.4 billion in March, the largest since October 2008. The percent rise was the biggest since December 1996.
Anonymous
Qiu Guangling, director of the Department of Foreign Investment Administration at the Ministry of Commerce, said recently, "The revision this time aims to unify domestic laws on foreign investments and will focus on the equal treatment of foreign and domestic investments, strengthening security review and advancing the reforms of foreign investment regulation.
Anonymous
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For years, President Obama and his top officials vehemently denounced China for using its surveillance capabilities for economic advantage while insisting that the United States and its allies never do any such thing. The Washington Post quoted an NSA spokesperson saying that the Department of Defense, of which the agency is a part, “ ‘does engage’ in computer network exploitation,” but “does ***not*** engage in economic espionage in any domain, including ‘cyber’ ” [emphatic asterisks in the original]. That the NSA spies for precisely the economic motive it has denied is proven by its own documents. The agency acts for the benefit of what it calls its “customers,” a list that includes not only the White House, the State Department, and the CIA, but also primarily economic agencies, such as the US Trade Representative and the Departments of Agriculture, Treasury, and Commerce:
Glenn Greenwald (No Place to Hide: Edward Snowden, the NSA and the Surveillance State)
According to Commerce Department data, private sector wage gains over the last decade have even lagged behind wage gains during the decade of the Great Depression (4 percent over the last ten years, adjusted for inflation, versus 5 percent from 1929 to 1939).
Robert B. Reich (Beyond Outrage)
Shopping Dana Gioia I enter the temple of my people but do not pray. I pass the altars of the gods but do not kneel Or offer sacrifices proper to the season. Strolling the hushed aisles of the department store, I see visions shining under glass, Divinities of leather, gold, and porcelain, Shrines of cut crystal, stainless steel, and silicon. But I wander the arcades of abundance, Empty of desire, no credit to my people, Envying the acolytes their passionate faith. Blessed are the acquisitive, For theirs is the kingdom of commerce. Redeem me, gods of the mall and marketplace. Mercury, protector of cell phones and fax machines, Venus, patroness of bath and bedroom chains, Tantalus, guardian of the food court. Beguile me with the aromas of coffee, musk, and cinnamon. Surround me with delicately colored soaps and moisturizing creams. Comfort me with posters of children with perfect smiles And pouting teenage models clad in lingerie. I am not made of stone. Show me satins, linen, crepe de chine, and silk, Heaped like cumuli in the morning sky, As if all caravans and argosies ended in this parking lot To fill these stockrooms and loading docks. Sing me the hymns of no cash down and the installment plan, Of custom fit, remote control, and priced to move. Whisper the blessing of Egyptian cotton, polyester, and cashmere. Tell me in what department my desire shall be found. Because I would buy happiness if I could find it, Spend all that I possessed or could borrow. But what can I bring you from these sad emporia? Where in this splendid clutter Shall I discover the one true thing? Nothing to carry, I should stroll easily Among the crowded countertops and eager cashiers, Bypassing the sullen lines and footsore customers, Spending only my time, discounting all I see. Instead I look for you among the pressing crowds, But they know nothing of you, turning away, Carrying their brightly packaged burdens. There is no angel among the vending stalls and signage. Where are you, my fugitive? Without you There is nothing but the getting and the spending Of things that have a price. Why else have I stalked the leased arcades Searching the kiosks and the cash machines? Where are you, my errant soul and innermost companion? Are you outside amid the potted palm trees, Bumming a cigarette or joking with the guards, Or are you wandering the parking lot Lost among the rows of Subarus and Audis? Or is it you I catch a sudden glimpse of Smiling behind the greasy window of the bus As it disappears into the evening rush?
Vaddhaka Linn (The Buddha on Wall Street: What's Wrong with Capitalism and What We Can Do about It)
I love the Constitution, but it placed ridiculously small limits on the power of the federal government. Taken literally, our total powers include coining money, raising money, budgeting for the various federal departments and agencies, declaring war, controlling federal elections, controlling and taxing imports and exports, and a few other minor things I can’t recall at the moment. We can also regulate commerce. But even that probably just meant making commerce regular between the states—prohibiting tariffs between states, which had been a problem before the Constitution, and establishing standards to be common for all states.” “That’s it?” Harlowe smiled, knowing how this would sound. “Taken literally, almost everything we do here is unconstitutional—education, healthcare, social security, housing, labor laws, minimum wages.
Erne Lewis (An Act of Self-Defense)
Frederic Morrow, adviser to the Commerce Department and later the first Black man to hold an executive position at the White House, commented that most of the white secretaries in the office steno pool refused to work for him, even as he was routinely insulted and sidelined by the administration supposedly soliciting his opinion. He would go on to become the first Black vice president of Bank of America and write several books, including Black Man in the White House. Claire’s other employer, Senator Margaret Chase Smith from Maine, is an equally impressive historical figure. A lone voice to speak out on the Senate floor against McCarthy, she delivered the famous Declaration of Conscience outlining four basic principles of Americanism: the right to criticize, to hold unpopular beliefs, to protest, and to hold independent thought. An enraged McCarthy did his best to destroy her, but she outlasted him, remaining a senator until 1973. It was remarked that if a man had delivered the Declaration of Conscience, he would have been the next president. Arlene
Kate Quinn (The Briar Club)
Frederic Morrow, adviser to the Commerce Department and later the first Black man to hold an executive position at the White House, commented that most of the white secretaries in the office steno pool refused to work for him, even as he was routinely insulted and sidelined by the administration supposedly soliciting his opinion. He would go on to become the first Black vice president of Bank of America and write several books, including Black Man in the White House. Claire’s other employer, Senator
Kate Quinn (The Briar Club)
The knowledge acquired by the administration of the War Department for four years, and by the chairmanship of the Military Committee of the Senate at two different periods, still longer in combined duration, had shown me the entire lack of preparation for war in the South. The foundries and armories were in the Northern States, and there were stored all the new and improved weapons of war. In the arsenals of the Southern States were to be found only arms of the old and rejected models. The South had no manufactories of powder, and no navy to protect our harbors, no merchant-ships for foreign commerce. It was evident to me, therefore, that, if we should be involved in war, the odds against us would be far greater than what was due merely to our inferiority in population.
Jefferson Davis (The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government)
As America suffered from the Depression, Kansas City soared, thanks to the Ten-Year Plan. “In Kansas City,” said Conrad Mann, the president of the chamber of commerce, “we are building the greatest inland city the world has ever seen.” New skyscrapers sprouted from the ground every year, and jazz clubs rollicked into the morning, at a time when, as one agent put it, the rest of the country “couldn’t afford three dollars a night for a musician.” Pendergast liked to think generosity was at the core of his power. When a British parliamentarian named Marjorie Graves visited his Main Street office in 1933, he told her he helped “the poor through our organizations.” It was true that Tom’s Town was built on undervalued workers—immigrants, Black labor, the poor. “The Boss” hosted a fancy dinner for the needy every Christmas and kept quarters in his pockets for the homeless. By the early 1930s, with police brutality against the Black community on the rise, Pendergast seized control of the Kansas City Police Department, taking it back from the state of Missouri, which had assumed leadership in the Civil War era. Pendergast assigned staffing oversight to “Brother John” Lazia, the leader of the Fifth Democratic Ward and a charismatic crime boss, and when dozens more loyal Pendergast supporters were appointed to the force, The Kansas City Call reported that police brutality had declined. But Pendergast’s Ten-Year Plan funds rarely made it to Black communities, and the occasional gifts from his patronage system masked the need for lasting racial reforms.
Mark Dent (Kingdom Quarterback: Patrick Mahomes, the Kansas City Chiefs, and How a Once Swingin' Cow Town Chasedthe Ultimate Comeback)
Nearly every organized group on Oahu staked out something to do. Boy Scouts fought fires, served coffee, ran messages. The American Legion turned out for patrol and sentry duty. One Legionnaire struggled into his 1917 uniform, had a dreadful time remembering how to wind his puttees and put on his insignia. He took it out on his wife, and she told him to leave her alone —go out and fight his old enemy, the Germans. The San Jose College football team, in town from California for a benefit game the following weekend, signed up with the Police Department for guard duty. Seven of them joined the force, and Quarterback Paul Tognetti stayed on for good, ultimately going into the dairy business. A local committee, called the Major Disaster Council, had spent months preparing for this kind of day; now their foresight was paying off. Forty-five trucks belonging to American Sanitary Laundry, New Fair Dairy, and other local companies sped off to Hickam as converted ambulances. Dr. Forrest Pinkerton dashed to the Hawaii Electric Company’s refrigerator, collected the plasma stored there by the Chamber of Commerce’s Blood Bank. He piled it in the back of his car, distributed it to various hospitals, then rushed on the air, appealing for more donors. Over 500 appeared within an hour, swamping Dr. John Devereux and his three assistants. They took the blood as fast as they could, ran out of containers, used sterilized Coca-Cola bottles.
Walter Lord (Day of Infamy)
Following the secretary’s directive, agents from the Commerce Department advised state legislatures to pass statewide zoning-enabling acts and avoid using terms such as “segregation” or “exclusion.” It was best to employ phrases such as “regulate and restrict” when referring to policies intended to separate groups into racial residential districts. The model statute made this explicit: “​‘regulate and restrict’: This phrase is considered sufficiently all-embracing. Nothing will be gained by adding such terms as ‘exclude,’ ‘segregate,’ ‘limit,’ ‘determine.’​”103 Such language could not be construed to be discriminatory and could not be legally challenged. The Commerce Department also advised state officials that it was necessary for state legislatures to enforce zoning ordinances by authorizing municipalities to impose fines or imprisonment penalties for violations of the law.
Martha Menchaca (The Mexican American Experience in Texas: Citizenship, Segregation, and the Struggle for Equality (The Texas Bookshelf))
Of the roughly $9 billion spent each year by the Commerce Department, $5 billion goes to NOAA, and the bulk of that money is spent, one way or another, on figuring out the weather. Each and every day, NOAA collects twice as much data as is contained in the entire book collection of the Library of Congress.
Michael Lewis (The Fifth Risk)
The big gorilla of homeowner tax breaks is the deduction for mortgage interest, which reduces income tax revenues by about $100 billion each year. That is, this one tax deduction costs more than the budgets of the departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Energy, the Interior, and the Treasury combined.
T.R. Reid (A Fine Mess: A Global Quest for a Simpler, Fairer, and More Efficient Tax System)
It is available on the website of the Commerce Department’s BEA, which has a 25-page primer and 436-page handbook on the NIPA.14
Edward Yardeni (Predicting the Markets: A Professional Autobiography)
An abridged list of victims includes Google, Booz Allen Hamilton, AT&T, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Visa, MasterCard, and the Departments of Defense, State, Homeland Security, and Energy. Hacking is central to China’s decades-long campaign to steal technologies it can’t invent and intellectual property it can’t create.
Michael Pillsbury (The Hundred-Year Marathon: China's Secret Strategy to Replace America as the Global Superpower)
RESISTANCE AND SELF-MEDICATION Do you regularly ingest any substance, controlled or otherwise, whose aim is the alleviation of depression, anxiety, etc.? I offer the following experience: I once worked as a writer for a big New York ad agency. Our boss used to tell us: Invent a disease. Come up with the disease, he said, and we can sell the cure. Attention Deficit Disorder, Seasonal Affect Disorder, Social Anxiety Disorder. These aren't diseases, they're marketing ploys. Doctors didn't discover them, copywriters did. Marketing departments did. Drug companies did. Depression and anxiety may be real. But they can also be Resistance. When we drug ourselves to blot out our soul's call, we are being good Americans and exemplary consumers. We're doing exactly what TV commercials and pop materialist culture have been brainwashing us to do from birth. Instead of applying self-knowledge, self-discipline, delayed gratification and hard work, we simply consume a product. Many pedestrians have been maimed or killed at the intersection of Resistance and Commerce.
Steven Pressfield (The War of Art)
The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) sets quality standards for meat, poultry, eggs, dairy products, fruits, vegetables, and nuts. The U.S. Department of Commerce (USDC) sets quality standards for fish and seafood.
Ruby Parker Puckett (Foodservice Manual for Health Care Institutions (J-B AHA Press Book 150))
A fuller picture of the year-end trends emerged Tuesday when the Commerce Department, in separate reports, said the U.S. economy expanded at a 5% seasonally adjusted annual rate in the third quarter, its strongest pace in 11 years, and reported that consumer spending accelerated last month amid rising incomes and falling gasoline prices.
Anonymous
like so many United States government agencies, the Department of Commerce is seriously misnamed. It has almost nothing to do with commerce directly and is actually forbidden by law from engaging in business. But it runs the United States Census, the only real picture of who Americans are as a nation.
Michael Lewis (The Fifth Risk: Undoing Democracy)
India is a highly civilized nation - a nation which developed a rich culture much earlier than any nation of Europe, and has never lost it. India was the first and only nation that proved too powerful for Alexander the Great. It was India that stopped his advance and compelled him to turn back in his career of world conquest. India gave to the world two out of six of its greatest Historic religions. Of the six greatest Epic Poems of the world India produced two. India gave to mankind - Kalidasa. India contributed enormously to the origin and advancement of Civilization by giving to the world its immensely important decimal system, which is the foundation of modern mathematics and much modern science. India early created the beginning of nearly all of the sciences, some of which she carried forward to remarkable degrees of development, thus leading the world. India has produced great literature, great arts, great philosophical systems, great religions, and great men in every department of life - rulers, statesmen, financiers, scholars, poets, generals, colonizers, ship-builders, skilled artisans and craftsmen of every kind, agriculturists, industrial organizers and leaders in far-reaching trade and commerce by land and sea. For 2,500 years India was pre-eminently the intellectual and spiritual teacher of Asia, which means of half the human race.
Jabez Thomas Sunderland