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亲们，周四的作业~~ 元旦也不要忘记做作业哦~
这次的越障生词不多，不太难，大家主要练结构昂~ 加油！
【Speed】
Time 1:
'Fiscal Cliff' Agreement to Include Farm Bill Fix
[attachimg=599,352]112440[/attachimg]
WASHINGTON — For many Americans, New Year’s Eve focused on the U.S. Congress going over the so-called "fiscal cliff" of massive tax hikes and spending cuts. But congressional gridlock has produced another precipice, this one in the dairy aisles of U.S. grocery stores.
Beginning in the Great Depression of the 1930s, Congress wrote legislation intended to stabilize food supplies and keep struggling farmers in business. Congress is supposed to rewrite the law every five years or so. But the law has expired, and lawmakers have not passed a new one, says Mary Kay Thatcher, a lobbyist for the largest farmers’ group - the American Farm Bureau Federation.
"What happens when it expires is, it reverts to what’s called ‘permanent law,’ which [is] laws that were written in the 1930s and the 1940s,” she says.
Under the 1940s law, the government will buy milk from farmers at about twice of what it costs today. And prices for consumers will follow.
Thatcher says the U.S. Department of Agriculture, or USDA, will need a few weeks to implement the policy. She says she hopes the issue will be settled by then because what’s being called the “dairy cliff” is just the beginning. Programs supporting other crop farmers revert back to 1940s policy, too.
“The next cliff would probably be looking at wheat, because [in] about March, the USDA would have to say, ‘Here’s what the price of wheat will be,” Thatcher explained.
(246 words)
Time 2:
And that is not all that is expected to happen with the expiration of the Farm Bill, says Roger Johnson, head of another leading farmers’ group - the National Farmers Union.
“The renewable energy programs are all gone. A number of the conservation programs are gone. A number of the beginning farmer and rancher programs are gone," Johnson says. "The disaster programs are all gone.”
The main reason comes down to food aid programs for the poor. These are among the nutrition programs make up about 80 percent of the spending in the Farm Bill.
Record numbers of Americans are using one key program, known as food stamps. But at a time of record deficits, the program is a target for spending cuts, says the Farm Bureau’s Mary Kay Thatcher.
“And there’s quite a philosophical debate on the Hill [i.e., Capitol Hill] where in general, Democrats don’t want to cut any funding at all out of food stamps, and in general, Republicans want to cut significantly more than either the House or the Senate have been willing to do so far,” Thatcher added.
And critics say the bill included subsidies for farmers that were far too generous.
The Democratic-led Senate passed a version of the bill; the Republican-led House of Representatives did not vote on its version.
So the previous law has expired, and milk will likely be the first casualty. The irony, says Roger Johnson with the National Farmers Union, is that a dispute over cutting spending might have the opposite effect.
“We could potentially end up with legislation that’s going to cost us far more money and produce far fewer benefits to the public, and all because we’ve got a Congress that can’t seem to do its job,” Johnson says.
And now the job for lawmakers is bringing farm policy back from the 1940s.
(306words)
Time 3:
US Farmers Back Immigration Reform
[attachimg=566,334]112422[/attachimg]
EAGLE SPRINGS, NORTH CAROLINA — North Carolina tobacco farmer Billy Carter is a rarity among American farmers. He hires Mexican workers legally, through the government's H-2A visa program.
But this year was a good example of its shortcomings. The program requires farmers to set workers' start date months in advance.
The weather has its own schedule. A rainy summer meant the harvest arrived early; earlier, in fact, than his harvest crew.
And that meant lost tobacco.
“You’re looking at a crop that is done, all but the harvest, and you don’t have the laborers to bring it in,” Carter says.
Immigration reform
With most of the U.S. farm workforce made up of illegal immigrants, farmers like Carter want the next Congress to fix the nation's immigration laws to ensure a reliable, legal labor force.
Immigration reform is expected to be back on the agenda in the next U.S. Congress, after an election in which voters with Hispanic roots decisively supported President Obama's bid for a second term.
However, critics say farmers should be raising wages and improving conditions for legal, domestic workers rather than turning to immigrants to do the difficult and dangerous work of agriculture.
Complicated system
Many farmers opt out of the government's seasonal agricultural worker program and the risk of lost crops isn't the only reason.
"It’s definitely fair to say the H-2A system is complicated," says Lee Wicker with the North Carolina Growers Association.
Employers must demonstrate no American workers are available. Government-inspected housing must be provided. Rules for fair wages, worker safety and more require more paperwork.
NCGA will handle the bureaucracy for about $1,000 per worker.
Wicker warns farmers the system is complex and expensive.
"If you have a way to harvest your crops without going into the H-2A program, you should do that as long as you can," he says.
(311words)
Time 4:
Legal labor scarce
Most farmers are taking his advice. Government figures show H-2A workers make up just 10 percent of the agricultural labor force.
Farmers say they want to hire legal workers, but Americans apparently don’t want the work.
In 2007, the North Carolina Farm Bureau tried recruiting workers with radio ads and a toll-free number.
According to N.C. Farm Bureau President Larry Wooten, the ads told “anybody that wanted to work in agriculture [to] give us a call on this 800 number. We’d try to get you a job placed working in agriculture. We had about three calls."
Lower wages
There are good reasons for that lack of interest, according to Eric Ruark at the Federation for American Immigration Reform.
"I agree with the grower who is claiming he can’t find a worker who is willing to take below-living wage to endure brutal conditions which sometimes may be unsanitary and unsafe," he says. " eople aren’t going to line up to take those jobs and we shouldn’t expect that they would.”
Ruark says raising farm workers’ wages by a third or more would not put farmers out of business or cause major pain at the grocery store.
He says the rights of American and immigrant workers are better protected when farmers use the H-2A program and that, if growers can get away without using the H-2A program, they don't have to pay workers as well.
"We can see that as very simple logic," Ruark says. "And they see the simple logic, but it’s unacceptable. And it’s not only illegal, it’s unethical behavior."
Legitimate concerns
Farmer Billy Carter chooses to hire H-2A workers because, despite the program's flaws, he gets a reliable, and legal, supply of good workers. And he can afford it for his high-value crop.
But he says Congress needs to fix it because it doesn't work for many other farmers.
"But it’s such a political football, and there are legitimate concerns on both sides of the equation that, at this point, are not being addressed, and certainly won’t be in the short term," Carter says.
That's why he doubts the new political season's harvest will include significant immigration reform.
(361words)
Time 5:
Reporter 'Forced Out' of China Following Visa Issue
China has forced the departure of a New York Times journalist after failing to renew his visa, prompting fresh accusations that Beijing is retaliating against foreign media because of coverage critical of the Communist Party.
The Times says correspondent Chris Buckley "was forced to leave mainland China" Monday after authorities declined to issue him a visa for 2013 by year's end, despite "numerous requests" by the U.S. paper.
The paper also says its new Beijing bureau chief Philip P. Pan, who applied for a visa in March, has yet to be accredited. It said the visa and credential process normally takes only weeks or a couple months.
New York Times executive editor Jill Abramson said in a statement she hopes Beijing will approve the visas as soon as possible so the journalists can continue their work.
Beijing blocked both the Chinese and English websites of the Times in October, after the paper published a blockbuster story detailing the massive alleged wealth of the family of Prime Minister Wen Jiabao.
Just months earlier, China responded similarly to the reporting of Bloomberg News, which published an investigation into the riches of the Communist Party's new leader, Xi Jinping.
While news reporting on corruption is increasingly common in China, the government reacts nervously to allegations against its top leaders.
In what some observers say is an attempt to curb the critical reporting, the government has placed more pressure on foreign news organizations and journalists.
In May, Al-Jazeera journalist Melissa Chan, who had reported on China's network of extralegal detention centers, was forced to leave the country after the Chinese government failed to renew her credentials.
Authorities never gave a specific reason why Chan was expelled from the country, but a government spokesperson later said foreign correspondents "must abide by Chinese law and regulations and journalistic ethics when reporting in China."
The New York Times says China's Foreign Ministry refused to comment on whether the latest visa and accreditation problems were related to the newspaper's coverage of China.
(342 words)
【Obstacle】
A new philosophy for leadership
[attachimg=579,304]112421[/attachimg]
The current leadership model for business and finance was created at a time when leaders were convinced they knew best, abetted by an elite group of economists who were convinced that they knew the way the world worked - or should work.
However I believe that we need a new approach to leadership in which the starting point is our lack of knowledge — a frank admission that we do not really know very much about how to build a sustainable system for business and society.
In this humility-driven vision of leadership, business schools need to shift their centre of gravity away from economics, finance and dreams of individual fortune towards psychology, philosophy, law, history, political science, even the arts and humanities to present their students with a different vision of being human.
A key first step is to encourage reflexivity in our leaders and future leaders, a realisation that there are alternatives, that they need to reflect on and critique rather than accept unquestioningly theories which appeal to them because they seem to speak to their self-interest.
Business schools need to challenge their own current orthodoxy, a view of business and society rooted in a crude Darwinian view of the survival of the fittest. They need to engage with perspectives that focus on the social consequences of their actions and accept responsibility for the business excesses of recent years. What is required is a narrative of common interest to combat the mantra of personal interest, one that will need to appeal to the sense that it is leadership for all not for the few.
Learning how to manage a complex future will require new conversations beyond small top management groups hunkered down to defend themselves. It will require opening up to the discussion of what constitutes leadership to the many if those in leadership positions are to regain the respect and credibility they have lost.
Leaders need to develop new forms of self-leadership, leadership with humility, grounded in what the Chicago philosopher Martha Nussbaum describes as "cultivating humanity", balancing a concern for self with the concern for others both within and beyond their organizations.
The main challenge for those looking to reform business school teaching in line with the new business context of financial crisis is the issue of the MBA. What are we to do about this management qualification par excellence? Two strategies are possible.
The first is to keep the MBA as the key indicator of an education in management but to revise it more or less radically. Many schools are trying to do this with an explosion of courses in, for example, responsibility, sustainability and social entrepreneurship. Some are trying to be more radical, using philosophy and the arts to critique dominant business mindsets.
However, these changes too often seem to be tinkering at the edges of the curriculum, whilst responsible capitalism burns. The core remains resolutely finance and supposedly rational analysis. MBAs still market themselves on rankings in which individual salary is the main metric. Business schools will need to meet the challenge to refine and reposition the MBA as an education fit for the purpose of creating a business system, in particular a financial system responsive to the greater rather than the minority good.
The second strategy could be to create a new kind of Masters education, one that would meld an understanding of business and its potential with a broader concept of education.
Perhaps the lesson for business schools is that they should be recruiting graduates from other disciplines, the arts and humanities and the sciences, for innovative new courses that will help future leaders to imagine the products and services we so desperately need.
In the process business schools would need to become more like the agora of ancient Athens, a place where commerce had its place but it was alongside the academy where philosophers discussed the meaning of the good life and how best to achieve it, a place of dialogue where citizens collectively addressed the limits of what they knew and did not know in order to transcend those limits.
At Nottingham University Business School we see leadership as an art informed by science and as a communal rather than an individual act. It is a moral, ethical activity, best framed in terms of psychological and organizational integrity. This is also challenging as it requires such a difficult balancing act between the intellectual, emotional and spiritual.
We aim to create a learning environment in which students can explore how to balance economic necessity with the challenge of developing more humane and sustainable organizations. Our teaching draws on best practice in management and education, eastern and western philosophy, psychology, the arts and humanities, systems thinking, action and narrative inquiry, story-telling, life histories, scenario planning, management learning and personal development.
In conclusion, the main challenge for business schools is how to create a new business model out of the chaos of a crisis to which they have to acknowledge their contribution. This will require a long hard look at how leadership is taught in our Schools. Business as usual is no longer an option.
(856words)
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发表于 2013-1-2 22:38:04
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