Japanese responders continue to battle rising heat and pressure and falling water levels in the damaged reactors, Units 1 and 3, at Fukushima I (Daiichi) Nuclear Power Station.

I spent much of the day Friday pointing out how stupid it was for Obama to put outsourcer, China nut, and TBTF bankster Jeff Immelt in charge of his Council on Jobs and Competitiveness. Meanwhile, Paul Krugman and Robert Reich have been focusing on Obama’s frame for the problem as “competitiveness.”

Immelt and GE aren’t about building the jobs American needs (for graphic representation of that, see this post). Rather, they’re about transforming the fruits of American manufacturing into yet more destabilizing casino games.

A few CT machines in a handful of hospitals exposed several hundred patients to an over-dose of radiation over the course of eighteen months.

One malfunctioning scanning machine at one airport will over-dose thousands in the course of one week.

Feeling safe yet?

General Electric didn’t pay US income taxes last year, but it wants Massachusetts taxpayers to pony up $25 million in tax credits or face loss of hundreds of jobs. Another victory for the Corporate Person at the expense of the human person.

Continuing its practice of appointing to important offices only people who were wrong about everything, the Obama Administration is considering the appointment of Jeffrey Immelt to take Larry Summers’ place.

There are a multitude of reasons NOT to award the Chinese a contract for our new high speed rail. And yes, jingo-istic industrial support is one of them.

This YouTube is seriously one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen, with the blow-dry circle of Fox and Friends accusing MSNBC of being overly political and biased. O’Really? I always assumed that O’Reilly himself was always in danger of throwing a rod over Olbermann’s taunting, but that the network as a whole took a “good for ratings” attitude about it.

Members of the Writers Guild of America, East, walk the picket line in New York.

Last year, a group of television workers at WMUR in New Hampshire voted to join a union—Electrical Workers (IBEW) Local 1228. But management didn’t want to negotiate a contract with them—and there’s nothing in U.S. labor law that says employers must agree to a contract. So, until this month, the workers had no contract.

Then, one after another, the Democratic presidential candidates started writing letters to WMUR-TV General Manager Jeff Bartlett urging him to go back to the bargaining table and work out an agreement.

Guess what? He did.

After months of deadlock, the WMUR technicians and drivers now have a contract that includes wage increases ranging from 18 percent to 35 percent and improvements in the pension and vacation benefits.