$3 trillion and growing

Joseph Stiglitz, Nobel laureate, has increased his estimate of the ultimate cost of our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to $3 trillion. Wasn't this supposed to be a self-financing war?

Since many of these are future costs (e.g., taking care of our veterans), shouldn't we be worrying even more about our economic future as we seem to be ignoring the coming cataclysm with Social Security and Medicare? It is selfish to say it - but I'm glad I'm old and won't be around when these disasters strike.

It would be refreshing if one of the people striving to lead this country would give their views as to what we should do today to minimize the problems of tomorrow.

A Different Kind of Conservative

William Buckley didn't demonize liberals. He fought hard for his ideas. I didn't agree with a lot of his positions, but he seemed to be a good human being. We - liberals, conservatives, middle-roaders - need more people like him.

Stay Away

For some strange reason the Archbishop of the Kansas City diocese, has ruled that a scientific exhibition, Bodies Revealed, should not be seen by students on scientific field trips as the exhibit is "unseemly and inappropriate" because, in the opinion of the archbishop, "the use of human bodies in this way fails to respect the persons involved". The fact that the bodies have been donated to science by their 'owners' has no bearing in the decision.

Moving towards a market economy

Since sanctions began in the early 1990s, Iraq has offered its citizens food via a rationing program. The war, with its attendant corruption and insecurity, has made it difficult to continue the program. Now that food prices around the world are increasing and Iraq has an inflation rate in the double digits, this program is being cut back. At the start of this year, the program was cut back to flour, sugar, rice, oil and milk. In June the program will be available only to the 'needy'.

The World Bank applauds this move to a market economy. I'm not sure that the 25% of Iraqi kids under the age of 5 applaud this; that's how many are under-nourished. Nor do I understand how one has a market economy in a time of war.

You may not agree with everything he says

but you'll agree with a lot of what Nader is saying.

The following is an abridgment of a post by Flimsy Sanity. It lists some of Nader's hot buttons.

1) crackdown on the corporate crime, fraud, and abuse.

2) demand that workers receive a living wage instead of a minimum wage.

3) withdraw from the WTO and NAFTA.

4) income tax system to be substantially revamped so that workers can keep more of their wages while we tax the things we like least, such as pollution, stock speculation, addictive industries, and energy guzzling technologies.

5) a single payer health system.

6) candidates stand up to the commercial interests profiting from our current energy situation.

7) reduction in the military budget

8) electoral reform.

9) failed war on drugs that costs nearly $50 billion annually.

10) The candidates will ignore the diverse Israeli peace movement whose members have developed accords for a two state solution with their Palestinian and American counterparts.

11) stand up to business interests that have backed changes to our civil justice system that restrict or close the courtroom to wrongfully injured and cheated individuals, but not to corporations.

Relevance as defined by politicians

Another tempest in a teapot is being waged over the photo of Obama dressed in the clothes of his father's native land, Kenya. Who cares?

Why won't the people who aspire to lead this country talks about serious matters - and how they will pay for their idealistic plans? When will the media dissect the proposals these people are advancing? Why can't we have a reasoned discussion?

7 kids and just 17 years old

A girl from a remote town in Argentina had her first child when she was 14. A year later she had triplets. And this year - you wouldn't believe she had triplets again, would you? But, the BBC says she did and I think it's true.

Similarities

It's always seemed to me that Hillary Clinton's policy on Iraq is very similar to that of the current administration. But, Frank Rich points out another similarity: her campaign for the president has been run very much like the way the current administration has run the Iraq war - over-confident, poorly planned, wasteful, ignorant about the natives.

An interesting take on what appears to be rapidly becoming an unwinnable battle for Ms Clinton. Fortunately, this battle will be over in six months or less, not the hundred years McCain thinks the war might last.

Ralph's In

Nader has announced his candidacy for president. This will be his third try. While he has done good work, I just have the sense that, unlike that of 2000, his candidacy of 2008 will have little impact on the final results.

Bob's not smiling now

You've probably seen the ads for Enzyte, which supposedly increases a man's sexual pleasure. Well, the owner of the company that sold Enzyte was just convicted of fraud. The company was able to sell more than $100,000,000 of the stuff as the owner was able to steal that much.

You Have to Help Your Family

But some help their families more than others do. For example, take our senators. 87 of them - that's 87 out of 100 - gave money from their campaign or political action committee to a family member. Some payments were not chicken feed: Bunning paid his daughter $138,933.37, Boxer paid her son's company $320,000, Enzi paid his daughter-in-law's company $306,251.58, Shelby paid himself $188,890.80, Hutchison paid herself $170,468.07.

None of this is illegal but is it right? The Committee for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington thinks it is not.

More on Aghanistan

Excerpts from Bill Moyers interviewing Sarah Chayes:

BILL MOYERS: Why is Afghanistan so important?

SARAH CHAYES: You know, there's a title of a book that's come into parlance now. Clash of Civilizations. There are a lot of people, I think, both in the West and in the Muslim world, who believe in clash of civilizations. Who want to see the world as a place dominated by two irrevocably hostile blocs. I don't want to live in that kind of world. I think that we live in an interconnected world full of rich, flawed, varied civilizations that are inextricably intertwined. And, so what I'm doing in Afghanistan, is working for that intertwined world.

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SARAH CHAYES: yeah. I mean, you know, these are districts that are in the hands of the Taliban. There's a district I used to go to frequently. We would gather herbs for our essential oil distilling up there. And now there was a deal between the district chief, the government and the Taliban saying, "so long as you don't kill the police, we'll let you go wherever you want." Now what has started to happen, couple of things have happened. One is people are just so disaffected with the government that we put in power.

BILL MOYERS: Ordinary people.

SARAH CHAYES: Ordinary people.

BILL MOYERS: Disaffected?

SARAH CHAYES: Yeah. Their government is shaking them down. I have people telling me, "We get shaking down by the government in the daytime, and shaken down by the Taliban at night. What are we supposed to do?"

BILL MOYERS: This is the Karzai government.

SARAH CHAYES: That's correct.

BILL MOYERS: This is the government the United States put in power.

SARAH CHAYES: That's correct. It's basically a criminal enterprise. And we haven't really asked it for any accounts in any serious way. And that's where the average person in Kandahar is totally perplexed. They assume that this degree of corruption, which is everywhere. You hear about it in the police department. It's not just the police department, it's in customs. It's in any adminis--You have-- you want to get a driver's license. You have to fork over money. Teachers. Yeah, kids are in schools. Teachers aren't in schools. Because their salary is $50 a month. And so they can't afford to teach. They need to do something else. In order to make enough money, they'll teach in a private school. Or they'll raid the international development assistance that's provided to students through the schools. For example, you'll have-- let's say each student is supposed to get five kilos of rice. The principal of the school is going to skim off one of those kilos and then sell. So that's 2,000 kilos he gets, if there's 2,000 kids in school. Then he sells that on the market.

BILL MOYERS: Right.

SARAH CHAYES: And then he distributes, you know, some of it to teachers.

BILL MOYERS: Does the government look the other way? Or is the government participating in it?

SARAH CHAYES: Well, every government official that I know is participating. So, with the exception of President Karzai himself, personally. How can he possibly not know? If I know. But it's not just them, what about us? We put-- us, the international community, we put these people into power. They wouldn't last a day if we weren't backing them up and propping them up in a way. So my question is, why is it that we don't begin putting some pressure on them to treat their citizens with common decency?

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SARAH CHAYES: In my co-op. We're getting three, four hours of electricity every three days. It'll come on any time. You don't know when it's going come on. So it'll come on at 1:30 in the morning, and the guys stay the night on rotation. So whoever the poor fellow is who had to spend the night that night, it's like, I'm knocking on the door, and it's like, we have to get up because there's electricity. So then we'll run the machine until 6:00 in the morning when the electricity ends. Now, okay, they're working on it, but it's six years after the fall of the Taliban. These are the things that people are wondering. If we're not there to provide reliable infrastructure, there's another real issue which is employment. And this is a kind of economic ideological problem. That when we talk about development aid, we talk about public facilities. And it's sort of against our religion to think about building a factory that would actually employ people. But Afghans don't understand that. They say, "Why aren't you people building any factories?" That's why I made my little soap factories. Because so many people were saying, "what are you foreigners doing here, if you're not employing people? Getting people off the streets."

BILL MOYERS: So what

SARAH CHAYES: So, we're not doing those things. And we're not providing a government that they can you know, feel any pride in. So that's where you go starting to hear people say, "what are you people doing for us."

BILL MOYERS: So, put on your old reporters hat.

SARAH CHAYES: Right.

BILL MOYERS: Follow the money. Where has that billion dollars gone that we have been providing?

SARAH CHAYES: You know, you can drive around the streets of Kandahar. You can drive around the streets of Kabul, and you see some massive buildings. Massive buildings. You see the price of property in Kandahar is probably close to the price of property in New York City.

BILL MOYERS: So who's living in those buildings? Who's using those buildings?

SARAH CHAYES: Government officials and drug traffickers. So it's either the opium money, or it's the development money. And we're not following that money trail. The same problem in Iraq. I mean, there's just millions of dollars that are kind of leaking out of the system.

BILL MOYERS: So, has this become an opium economy?

SARAH CHAYES: Definitely, it's an opium economy. And it's totally integrated into the economy. It's a normal aspect of the economy. And you can feel it. For example, in opium harvesting season, we needed one of our herbs. We needed somebody to -- basically wild crafting to harvest herbs up in the hills. We couldn't get anybody because there were you know, buses at the Helmand, is the province right next door to us where most of the opium is growing. And there would be, you know, from the Helmand bus depot, they would just drive people straight out into the fields. Because, and the price of labor was going up. Normally, labor is unskilled labor is $4 a day. It was $20 to $25 a day in opium harvesting season. It totally absorbs all of the available manpower. Now, the cliché that I don't subscribe to is that the Taliban are running the opium business.

BILL MOYERS: Because that's what we hear.

SARAH CHAYES: Yes. They're not.

BILL MOYERS: That's what's said official.

SARAH CHAYES: No.

BILL MOYERS: You don't think they are?

SARAH CHAYES: No, no, of course not. It's a business. It's businessmen.

BILL MOYERS: Criminal gains.

SARAH CHAYES: They're just businessmen. They happen to traffic opium rather than trafficking, you know, cars, or trafficking televisions. They're businessmen who buy and sell opium. And it's a slightly complicated buying and selling. But, in fact, they've got some really excellent business practices. Like they provide credit to farmers. So, for example, one of the reasons that so many people grow opium is, there is no available access to credit. Ordinary credit. Not just business credit. But like, I mean, I suspect most of the people listening to us, have a credit card in their pocket. Afghans need credit, just as much as we do. They can't get it. And so, they borrow money. They need to marry off their sons, for example. It's going cost them $5,000 or $10,000. They have to pay a bride price. They have to have a feast for the entire village. They have to-- you know, where are they going get that money? So they turn to the opium trafficker, who lends them money. And he demands repayment in opium.

BILL MOYERS: So what happens if the American ambassador there, who's a big advocate of aerial spraying to destroy the poppy fields. What happens if he succeeds? What happens if the United States government sprays all the poppy plants and kills them, as happened in Colombia. What do the farmers do?

SARAH CHAYES: They join the Taliban. I mean, it's the biggest gift we could possibly do for the insurgency. What else would they do? They're furious. Their livelihood is taken away. Their children might be poisoned. Or they might think their children are poisoned. They join the Taliban. They take revenge.

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SARAH CHAYES: Has anybody done very strict accounting on where that money is going? I suspect that if you start looking at some of the receipts, you'll find that there's money missing. I mean, I find it really amazing that, for example, recently, there was a cross border raid, that killed an Al Qaeda commander named Al-Libi in Beluchistan province of Pakistan. Now, the entire Taliban top command, or at least the top command of the part that's operating in the south, is based on Beluchistan provide. People know exactly where they are. Why has we never required those guys heads from Islamabad? Or why have we not considered taking them out ourselves? It's been very clear to me, watching since 2002, that Pakistan has been buying us off, by a well-timed delivery of an Al Qaeda operative, which has then caused us to look the other way about the Taliban.

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SARAH CHAYES: In this particular metaphor, we're the sheriff, right? We're going go out after the outlaw, Osama bin Laden. We gather this posse of Afghan criminals to gallop off with us. And then we put them in positions of the governor. We make them into the governor, the mayor, the, you know. And we don't ask them anything about how they're governing. We don't demand-- all we say is, we have to support the Afghan government. We have to support the Afghan government. And so we've fed them money, we've fed them arms, and then we say to the people, "okay, you're supposed to hold your government accountable." they're looking at these thugs with the whole power of the entire world, is what it looks like to them, behind them. And the Afghan people say, "you want us to hold them accountable?" So this, I think, is really the root of the problem.

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SARAH CHAYES: I think there are two binds. One is our relationship with Pakistan, which is a contradictory one. And the other is our unwillingness to hold Afghan public officials to any standard of decency in government. We keep hearing in the west, about the democratically-elected Afghan government. And, oh, no, we can't get in there and interfere with any of these people, because they're the government of a sovereign country. Well, you could have fooled the Afghans. The Afghans-- the only person who's really elected, who has any power, is president Karzai. But every other government official that Afghans interact with on a daily basis, they didn't elect. And they don't have any recourse. They've got no way of lodging a complaint against this person. Or nobody who can put any leverage on them. And that's the other bind. We're only fooling ourselves when we talk about this democratically-elected Afghan government.

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SARAH CHAYES: No. But, I did ask one of them--one of my guys has an orchard. His sharecroppers were killed in one of these drive-by incidents. There was an improvised bomb that hit a Canadian armed vehicle. The scared Canadian soldiers fired. Killed a sharecropper and his 7-year old son. The 12-year old son survived. We started talking about this in the cooperative. And I asked my other guys, "you know, well, if that happened to you, if your brother, for example, got killed in one of these things, what would you do?" One of them said, "I would resign on-the-spot, and I'd pick up my gun and start shooting Canadians." Then I said, "what if it was the Taliban who killed your brother?" And he said the same thing. So this is another way that I can see this whole thing coming apart. It's a kind of privatization. You know. You've got people now with blood feud against NATO troops because of things like, you know, civilian casualties. These are people who need-- it's blood debt. They need to recoup that debt. And they're not going to be persuaded out of that.

(emphasis added)

"Civil Recovery" Is Not Civil

"Civil Recovery" refers to state laws that allow retailers to dun people accused of shoplifting. I said 'accused', not convicted. As you would expect, there are law firms that specialize in this practice. One, Palmer Reifler, sends out 1,200,000 letters a year demanding civil recovery. The letters threaten suit unless payment is made immediately. How many are actually sued? Less than ten a year.

The demands are not governed by any relation to the value of the amount supposedly stolen. Nor are the firms reluctant to make demands of those whom the police have declared to be innocent.

We need to be educated

That's what the Air Force thinks. If we are not, the Air Force will not be able "to maintain its stature amongst the other services". Education will come in the form of an ad campaign, a $59,000,000 ad campaign. The hope is that each of us will see thirty Air Force ads over the next year and, as a result, we'll recognize just how valuable the Air Force is, which, in turn, will lead to bigger budgets for the Air Force.

So, what's wrong with that?

Captains less valuable than privates?

We're aware that the Army is now giving bonuses of $40,000 to new recruits. But, as Fred Kaplan points out in Slate, this may not be a good idea for a couple of reasons:

• The money is paid after service is completed. Why should someone re-enlist?
• The amount is a third more than the bonus given to captains who re-enlist. Who's more important - a captain or a private?
• Emphasizing cash bonuses attracts people who are mainly money- rather than service-oriented.

Bring back the draft.

Democracy in Action

I guess Bush was not pleased with the results in Pakistan. He wants Musharraf to stay even though his party lost badly, managing to keep only 38 of their 132 seats in the national assembly.

Don't the Pakistanis have the right to decide whether to keep him?

Good News from Pakistan

It looks as though the fundamentalists have suffered a huge defeat in the elections. In 2002 they elected 57 members to the national parliament, this year the number was 5. In the hotbed of fundamentalism, the North West Frontier province, the numbers went from 67 to 9 and this is a provincial parliament that seats 96 members.

Maybe something will finally be done about the terrorists hiding in Pakistan.

We need a few more days

KKR Financial Holdings, part of the KKR private equity kingdom, did not make a payment on its short term debt last Friday. They need another week to come up with the cash. This is the second time in six months they've had to make late payments, despite having raised $270,000,000 in September, a scant five months ago.

This, together with oil topping $100 yesterday, is not a good sign.

U.S. Military Index

Foreign Policy and the Center for a New American Security have just published the results of a study of 3,400 military people. Although 72% of the respondents were 60 years of age or older and had been retired for 11 or more years, it is still a fascinating study covering a broad range of issues. Here are some of the highlights:

Health of the Force
60% said it was weaker than five, ten or fifteen years ago, although the morale is fairly high.
Unsurprisingly, 77% championed increased defense spending.
The Army and Marine Corps seem to be in the most trouble in their ability to meet the challenges of today and tomorrow.
We don't take very good care of our veterans and their families, particularly those with mental problems.

Iraq War
As expected, they think poorly of the decisions made on the number of troops at the start of the war and the disbanding of of the Iraqi military. They do support the surge.
The war has stretched the military dangerously thin.
The country that has gained the most is Iran.
The Pentagon set unreasonable goals.
Almost half feel that our troops have had inadequate equipment.

Next War
We're really not ready for a major war, but might be ready for action in some hot spots, such as North Korea or Syria.

Torture
There is an almost equal split between those who believe and those who do not believe that waterboarding is torture.
A slight majority agree that torture is never acceptable.

Civil-Military Relations
Congress is held in very low regard with the military, as it is with we civilians.
Only a third thought that our elected leaders were informed about today's military.
Surprisingly, they would allow private security contractors quite a bit of leeway.

Filling the Ranks
78% think we can best meet recruiting goals by allowing legal permanent residents to obtain citizenship in exchange for serving.

Preparing the Military for the Future
To win the war on terror we must improve our intelligence.

Good and Bad CDS

Just a relatively few years ago when you saw CD on the financial pages you knew it referred to a certificate of deposit, a deal made between you and your bank whereby you would keep at least a certain amount of money on deposit for a certain period and the bank would pay you a higher rate of interest.

Now when you see CD you look for another letter, an 'O' for a Collateral Debt Obligation or an 'S' for a Credit Default Swap. We've seen the disasters that have befallen the CDO. Now it looks like we're in for the same with the CDS. These seem to be as arcane - perhaps more so - than the CDO. But, like the CDO, you don't really know who the eventual payee might be in the event of default.

The CDS is an attempt to mitigate losses on corporate bonds (usually). A bond investor finds an insurer (not necessarily an insurance company) to guarantee that the bond will be paid, no matter what happens to the company that issued the bond. In exchange for this guarantee, the investor makes periodic payments to the insurer.

While the investor may know the insurer, this is not always the case. Even if it is so, very often the insurer sells the paper you've signed to another 'insurer' who may repeat the process. Eventually, should the bond issuer default, you will likely have a hard time finding out who is obligated to pay you. And, you may be in for a shock that this company cannot pay you.

The possible loss of your investment is not the only glitch in this type of an investment. The insurer also has total discretion as to the value he places on this swap when it reaches his balance sheet, as there is no exchange where these instruments trade. For example AIG had overstated its swaps by $3.6 billion in the eyes of its auditors.

This market has grown phenomenally. It is now at $45.5 trillion, double the stock market and ten times the treasury market. Of course, the International Swaps and Derivatives Association says 'trust us'.

E-tail

You can buy almost anything on the web nowadays, even guns. So, why shouldn't gun merchants be as sophisticated as the next merchant? Eric Thompson certainly is. He runs at least two websites that sell guns. This way he was able to make a sale to two people who ran amock recently - Mr. Cho at Virginia Tech and Mr. Kazmeirczak at Northern Illinois

Another view of the surge

This time from General William Odom.

Finally, the most questionable aspect of the surge concerns the consolidation of power by sheiks and other local leaders. Most weak states in the world have strongly consolidated local leadership. That is why their central governments remain weak. Once such enclaves of power are created by local strongmen, they almost never yield, or even share it more than temporarily, with the central government.

Political consolidation is achieved almost without exception through civil wars. Is that not the American experience? And the English experiences with their Welsh, Scottish, and Irish clans? In Iraq, even Saddam never succeeded in breaking the clan structure, only in buying them off from time to time. The Ottomans never tried. Can U.S. forces achieve the centralization that has eluded all previous regimes there?

After a bombing

Here's an excerpt from the Baghdad Observer describing a suicide bombing in a pet market:

When the head of the female suicide bomber was found in the al Ghazil pet market, Iraqis filmed it on their cell phones.

A man lifted the head of a woman by her brown hair and with blood seeping from the severed neck he placed it gingerly into a shopping bag. Dead birds and animals were gathered up and put into a dumpster. Cleaners swept away the pools of blood, shop owners began to repair their shops once again and life went on.

Part of the reason

Mortgage insurers are adopting stricter standards the Wall Street Journal reports. One of the biggest players in the field, MGIC, will no longer insure borrowers unless they have a down payment of at least 5%.

That's right, I said 5%. Who in their right mind would consider this a strict standard? I guess it is if the alternative were no money down. No wonder the number of foreclosures has ballooned.

Whatever it takes

John McCain is once more demonstrating that he will do anything to become our leader. This time it seems that he agrees with the Bush administration that the CIA can do whatever it wants vis-a-vis "interrogations". This is another change of heart as he previously inveighed against torture.

Straight shooter? Man of integrity? Right!

Bitterness Unleashed

A little over two weeks ago two vehicles collided here on the Vineyard. One vehicle was driven by a young woman of 20, the other by a young man of 22. The woman died. The man and his passenger were injured and airlifted to a hospital in Boston. The local newspaper led its weekly edition with the story. The accident and the story generated almost 300 comments (so far!) on the newspaper's web site. That number is a record for this small island of c. 19,000 residents.

You might think that the comments were largely sympathetic to the dead woman and, perhaps, also to the young man. And, if both parties were Vineyarders, I'm sure that's what would have happened. But, the woman was a Vineyarder, the man was a Brazilian who was here illegally. While a fair number of the comments mourned the woman, the overwhelming majority castigated the man and just about all Brazilians. The accident unleashed a stream of invective against the Brazilians, accusing them of all kinds of evil. It was something that I'm sure many residents did not expect, as most people believe that the Vineyard is a civilized, kind place. And, it is most of the time. But, the bloom is off the financial rose here and people are getting nervous and afraid, which leads to the display of our baser instincts.

Many of the comments cited the fact that the man did not have a driver's license. In fact, he had been previously cited twice for not having a license. As you might expect when someone is castigating his fellow man on the internet, anonymity is the rule. Less than 10% of the commenters used their full name, most used pseudonyms, such as T.A.C.

Now two weeks later more facts have come out as the investigation of the accident proceeds. The woman was driving in excess of 80 m.p.h. on a road where the speed limit is 40. The man, who was making a turn, was driving 9 m.p.h. He had 2.6 seconds to react. He failed to and the woman's car crashed into his and moved both of them another 50 feet. More details will be forthcoming as the investigation moves along. I wonder whether more facts will change anyone's opinions.

First Oil, Then Coal

The run-up in the price of oil in the last 18 months is due in large measure to the demands of China, India and other rising powers. This surge in demand is happening with coal. In 2003 coal was around $20 a metric ton, on Monday it way $125. In 2006 China exported 83 million tons of coal, last year 2 million; this year it is expected they will import 15 million tons.

India, Australia and other countries are ramping up production. Demand is not slowing. What this does to global warming is anybody's guess.

Delusions

Edward Current is the man behind both of the following videos.

Stupidity , Cupidity and Need

Here's how the article in Tuesday's Wall Street Journal begins:

One recent morning, dozens of elderly and disabled people, some propped on walkers and canes, gathered at Small Loans Inc. Many had borrowed money from Small Loans and turned over their Social Security benefits to pay back the high-interest lender. Now they were waiting for their "allowance" -- their monthly check, minus Small Loans' cut.

The article proceeds to describe the greed of some 'payday loan' firms and the shenanigans they and some banks go through to circumvent the law.

Talk about greed? 180% is a low interest rate for these people. Talk about circumventing the law? They make deals with banks who accept Social Security direct deposits and immediately send them to the vultures. Talk about preying on people? Many of these firms have offices very close to low income housing for seniors and the disabled.

How's this for a measure of the integrity of these firms? The law says that creditors cannot seize Social Security, disability and Veteran's benefits to pay a debt. That doesn't matter to these bastards who sue loan recipients who fall behind in their payments; they even threaten criminal prosecution.

What a sad, sad story! Let's hope that this article spurs action to rectify this disgusting situation.

Why is this front page news

in the NY Times, the Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal? Why is Congress wasting our money on the fact that athletes take steroids?

A negative view of the surge

The Center for American Progress has a different view of where we are now in Iraq. They argue that our support of the Sunni militias has exacerbated the political problems and sectarian issues, making the eventual operation of some form of national government more difficult. An effective government can only happen with national reconciliation, which seems to be moving father and farther away as this clip from NPR shows, or this from IPS News.

Back to the Future?

A Russian plane buzzed a U.S. carrier over the weekend.

It's a great business

The private security contracting business, that is. Now, we find out that they've been in Africa for the past four years and are about to issue a new contract for the services of these private armies to train peacekeepers and provide logistical support. This new contract is worth $1 billion.

Remember AFRICAP. You'll become familiar with it in the near future.

Coincidence?

This week in the northwest section of Pakistan - the section near Afghanistan - two kidnappings have occurred. First, the Pakistani ambassador to Afghanistan disappeared. And then two employees of Pakistan's nuclear agency.

It doesn't have to happen

FP Passport has a list of ten things that they feel will not change when the occupant of the White House changes:

1. Our relationship with China
2. The lack of bipartisanship
3. Dependence on foreign oil
4. Decline in manufacturing jobs
5. Illegal drug use
6. The defense budget
7. The clout of lobbyists
8. Our support for Israel
9. Subsidies for ethanol
10. The way we elect the president.

If we had the will, the only thing that is impossible to change is our dependence on China because of the amount of money they have invested with us. Bringing back manufacturing will also be extremely difficult.

But, given the leaders we have and will likely have, I suspect that hardly any of these things will change. Hell, are the candidates saying anything about these issues?

Words AND Music

The older I get the more I appreciate both the words and music created by Jacques Brel. This is a surprisingly effective rendition of "Sons Of" by Gay Marshall.

A different view

Thomas Palley, an economist, wants to go back to a better time. He argues that, over the past twenty-five years or so, the economy has shifted from one whose growth was fueled by higher wages due to higher productivity to an economy where growth is fueled by cheap imports. This new economy relies on trade deficits, higher and higher prices for assets (vide the housing boom), more debt, less manufacturing.

Food for thought.

Larger and larger bounties

The latest budget submitted by the president asks for $15 billion to increase the size of the Army by 65,000. That's $230,000 per recruit. How much is Harvard these days? Even at $50,000 annual tuition and fees, it's less than what Bush is proposing to provide the Army with the people it needs.

And the Army needs people. It says it needs more high school graduates. Now 71% of the recruits are high school graduates. Six years ago that number was 94%. High school graduates are more likely to complete their training and meet their commitment. The Army has a novel plan for increasing this percentage. In fact, it has two plans - prep school during basic training and an on-line system and/or mentor system for those who would like to volunteer.

Then in the State of the Union speech Bush 'promised' that the families of soldiers would be able to use some of the educational and other benefits that soldiers earn. Need I say that many Congressmen think this is a good idea?

I may not live to see it. But the draft will return unless we figure out a better way to live on this earth.

Tax cuts are great.

but what kind of a country are we becoming?

With all the emphasis on security you'd be surprised to learn that the Federal Protective Service, which is responsible for the security of more than 8000 facilities of the federal government, does not have enough money to do its job. They no longer patrol the facilities. Hours have been cut. Personnel budgets have been slashed. Equipment is not being maintained. Things are so bad that a dead body was found in a vacant facility only after it had been there for three months.

There ain't no free lunch.

Starting another round of punishment

Israel will once more start reducing the amount of electricity it supplies to Gaza. This time the reason is that Israel wants to cut its ties there.

Will Iran be rational?

In this issue of the newsletter of the Strategic Studies Institute, Andrew Terrill gives three sound reasons why Iran should not unleash nuclear weapons:

• The radioactive fallout would kill many Palestinians and, very likely, other Arabs.
• They run the risk of being wiped out by an Israeli nuclear attack.
• An Iranian attack may not damage Israel very much if Israel's missile and civil defense systems work as they should.

But, as we know, man is not always rational.

Let he who is without sin

The McClatchy papers castigate Ms Clinton because she is marketing her 'do-gooder' experience, rather than her work as a lawyer and member of corporate boards. They also slap Mr. Obama on the wrist for consorting with and accepting money from someone who is facing trial for fraud.

I wonder what aspects of his life the reporter would emphasize if he were running for office.

A Businessman for President?

In my experience it has not worked out. Consider Bush, a graduate of Harvard Business School, and clearly the worst president in my lifetime. Or, take the two businessmen of the 20th century - Jimmy Carter and Herbert Hoover. Would Mr. Romney be any different?

How does one become experienced?

When it comes to the workplace, I can't think of a husband-and-wife team that I know personally where I would substitute one spouse for the other. No matter how close the couple are, actually being in the workplace is different, a lot different, from talking about it over dinner. It is true that I know nobody like the Clintons, but I find it hard to believe that her being the spouse of the president has actually given her more experience in actually running the country than Obama.

One experience both Clintons seem not to have is that of admitting an error. I don't think this is a good trait in people who want to be leaders. The only program of the Clinton administration that I know Ms Clinton led was the healthcare initiative. That was a fiasco that I would not want on my resume. And she was older and presumably more experienced then than Obama is now.

She has also had the experience of not reading background material about Iraq before she voted to grant Bush the power to invade. Nor does she seem to have learned much over the years; witness her vote to name the Iranian Guards as a terrorist force.

Of course, her experience in the White House is captured in part by documents to be stored in the Clinton Library. Why is she preventing access to many of these documents which should convey the depth of her experience helping run the country?

If Obama does not get the nomination, this country will never get out of its current funk. Lord forbid that our choice should be McCain or Clinton. It will probably be time to throw in the towel and move - except that the dollar is in such poor shape overseas. GRR.

Another casualty of our fear-crazed society?

In discussing the candidacy of Obama in today's Washington Post, Michael Chabon points out some basic truths about us:

The point of Obama's candidacy is that the damaged state of American democracy is not the fault of George W. Bush and his minions, the corporate-controlled media, the insurance industry, the oil industry, lobbyists, terrorists, illegal immigrants or Satan. The point is that this mess is our fault. We let in the serpents and liars, we exchanged shining ideals for a handful of nails and some two-by-fours, and we did it by resorting to the simplest, deepest-seated and readiest method we possess as human beings for trying to make sense of the world: through our fear. America has become a phobocracy.

Walt Kelly said it a little bit differently fifty and more years ago, "We have met the enemy and he is us."

Pass it on

Thanks to RJ

The Meaning of "Immediate"

The Consumer Product Safety Commission has a different definition of the word than you and I. Companies are required to 'immediately' notify the commission of dangerous products. A study by Public Citizen, Nader's group, shows that in many cases 'immediate' could mean almost three years, as this was the average reporting time by the manufacturers.

'Immediate' is faster to the commission itself. It only took 200+ days to inform the public of the defective product.

They're still learning

'They' is the Defense Department. They've had management problems in the past. And they still have them. The latest GAO report compared quality management practices of DOD against those used by leading commercial companies. Need I say that DOD doesn't compare well?

The report reviews eleven weapons systems projects. In almost every project the fundamental problem was poor system engineering. In more than half, we spent more money - a lot more - to produce fewer than we had requested and to receive them later than projected.

A couple of especially egregious examples:

• Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle - four years late, $750,000,000 extra
• F22A fighter jet - cracks in the canopy grounded the plane
• SATCOM satellite - 18 months late because a contractor installed fasteners incorrectly.

It seems as though the pressure to get the systems operational quickly causes DOD to approve poor designs, insufficient testing, bad parts and poor manufacturing controls.

Maybe, someday they'll get it right, but I wouldn't bet on it.

A Most Important Issue

Senator Arlen Specter is very concerned that the film used to prove that the Patriots, a football team, spied on the Jets, also a football team, was destroyed. What secrets of state were on that film? Is Specter senile?

The State of Our National Guard and Army Reserve

The Commission on National Guards and Reserves has issued a report on the state of the guards and reserves. It's not pretty. Here are its conclusions (with my emphasis added):

Conclusion One: The nation requires an operational reserve force. However, DOD and Congress have had no serious public discussion or debate on the matter, and have not formally adopted the operational reserve. Steps taken by DOD and Congress have been more reactive than proactive, more timid than bold, and more incremental than systemic. They thus far have not focused on an overarching set of alterations necessary to make the reserve components a ready, rotational force. Congress and DOD have not reformed the laws and policies governing the reserve components in ways that will sustain an operational force.

Conclusion Two: The Department of Defense must be fully prepared to protect American lives and property in the homeland. DOD must improve its capabilities and readiness to play a primary role in the response to major catastrophes that incapacitate civilian government over a wide geographic area. This is a responsibility that is equal in priority to its combat responsibilities. As part of DOD, the National Guard and Reserves should play the lead role in supporting the Department of Homeland Security, other federal agencies, and states in addressing these threats of equal or higher priority.

Conclusion Three: Current law and policy still reflect a Cold War–era vision of the employment of valuable military manpower assets and do not adequately support an operational 21st-century force. A new integrated personnel management structure is needed to provide trained and ready forces to meet mission requirements and to foster a continuum of service for the individual service member.

Conclusion Four: The reserve components have responded to the call for service. Despite shortages in equipment, training, and personnel they have once again proven their essential contribution to meeting national security requirements in a time of need. To sustain their service for the duration of the global war on terror will require maintaining the force at a new standard of readiness. Current policies cannot accomplish this task. A ready, capable, and accessible operational reserve will require an enduring commitment to invest in the readiness of the reserve

components. This commitment will necessitate service integration, additional resources, and new constructs for employing the reserve components and for assessing readiness.

Conclusion Five: To maintain an operational reserve force over the long term, DOD must appropriately support not only the service members themselves but also the two major influencers of members’ decisions to remain in the military—their families and employers. Significant improvements in current programs in all three areas are essential to sustain an operational reserve force both today and in the future.

Conclusion Six: The current reserve component structure does not meet the needs of an operational reserve force. Major changes in DOD organization, reserve component categories, and culture are needed to ensure that management of reserve and active component capabilities are integrated to maximize the effectiveness of the total force for both operational and strategic purposes.

Downgraded by Moody's?

That's a possibility for the AAA bonds of the U.S. Such a move will result not only in higher interest costs for us but a significant loss of prestige in international financial markets. This is the result of a compliant Congress and a President who believes that the world should conform to his views and wishes.

How bad is it? In 2001 when Mr. Bush took over, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) was predicting a budget surplus of $5.6 trillion through 2011. That surplus is all gone; $1.7 trillion went in the magic tax cuts endorsed by our leaders. Another large portion, of course, has gone and continues to go to our wars. Our leaders have managed to increase federal spending by 25% during this administration. This coming year we're looking at a $400 billion deficit.

I am not optimistic, as the current crop of candidates do not seem to be overly concerned with the seriousness of our plight.

For more on this topic, read today's U.S. Wall Street Journal.