Reminders of the Past

Saul Landau reminds us of the Irgun, the Zionist terrorists active in Jerusalem before 1948, and chides Tzipi Lvini for referring to Hamas as terrorists when her father was a member of the Irgun. Further, he asserts that Israel helped Hamas when it was starting as Israel was looking for a counterweight to Arafat and the PLO.

Keeping Secrets

In the current NY Review of Books, Garry Wills asserts that the fundamental legal case, U.S. v. Reynolds, which is used as the basis of many security claims by our government is, in fact, based on a lie by our government. In the four years, 1977-2001, the government cited this case sixty-two times as justification for withholding evidence from the courts. Yet, no less a legal scholar and Solicitor General than the late Erwin Griswold wrote, "It quickly becomes apparent to any person who has considerable experience with classified material that there is massive overclassification, and that the principal concern of the classifiers is not with national security, but rather with governmental embarrassment of one sort or another."

The Reynolds case concerned a crash of an Air Force Plane in 1948 in which nine died, five soldiers and four civilians. The widows of three of the civilians sued the Air Force and, as one would expect, their lawyer asked for a copy of the Air Force report on the accident. The request was never granted as the Air Force argued all the way to the Supreme Court that the report contained classified information. Rather than proceed when the Supreme Court sent the case back to a lower court, the Air Force settled with the widows for almost as much as the widows were asking; there was an important proviso that the widows would release all claims against the government.

Although the case continued to be cited as precedent, the report was never released to the public until in 1996 the Clinton administration decided to declassify documents determined originally to be restricted, as the Reynolds report was. Enter two people and the Internet.

Michael Stowe established a web site, Accident-Report.com, which, for a fee, offered copies of the reports recently declassified. At about the same time, the daughter of one of the civilians who had been killed in the crash, Judy Loether, was trying to find out information about her father whom she had never met. Stowe and Loether connected and the report became public.

And, as Griswold wrote, the accident report was covered up because it demonstrated incompetence on the part of the Air Force. There were no heat shields for the engines, thus the engines overheated and this was the primary cause of the accident. Also, escape routes were blocked or very difficult to use.

Yet, the Reynolds case is still used to deny us the right to know just what our government is doing to protect its arse.

Who Do You Believe?

The Inspector General of DOD says that body armor failed tests to determine how well they blocked bullets. Yet, some of these vests are being used today in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Secretary of the Army says the Inspector General is wrong. But, the Secretary does recall 16,000 sets of body armor.

Finishing Sixth Is Not Too Shabby

That is, if you're an investment banker. In 2008 these bankers received bonuses totaling $18.4 billion. This is the sixth highest amount of bonuses in history. Does this really make sense when, in 2008 these firms lost almost twice that? Furthermore, we're talking only cash bonuses here. Who knows what stock options were given?

The overriding question is where the money to pay the bonuses came from. If you lose $33 billion, can you afford to pay $18.4 billion? I guess you can if the money comes from we suckers, the taxpayers.

A Theme Park?

This is not a joke. See William Easterly for a few trenchant comments on this 'invitation' to a UN event.

Where the Money Will Go

The largest share (one-third) of the proposed House stimulus will go for tax cuts. This doesn't seem like the smartest way to get the economy moving.

Valuing Junk

If we establish a bank to buy the toxic assets on the books of many of our financial institutions, who is the Solomon that will establish a value for them? And, equally importantly, will this result in the banks actually lending money?

We have implemented a variant of this with Citibank and BofA. Has this helped our economy?

At some point all we'll be doing is printing money. Maybe my kids will be using $100 billion bills to buy lunch.

Do it the Swedish Way?

At least when it comes to our very troubled, if not dying, banking industry. That's the advice of Joe Stiglitz. No matter what has been done, there has been very little (just about no) increase in lending. The banks are just sitting on our money. Well, 'sitting' may not be the right word. Some are buying planes, others having parties or paying bonuses to those who got the banks in trouble.

Sweden decided that if a bank couldn't rise money privately, the state would take it over provided it was, in fact, salvageable. Then, instead of running the bank for the executives, the bank would be run for the benefit of the country. Loans would actually be made. Parties would stop. Planes would not be bought.

Sweden's approach worked well. Eventually, the banks returned to private ownership.

Clearly what we're doing has not worked. It's time to change the game.

Eight Is Enough?

A couple in California have just given birth to octuplets.

I wonder when the tv show will debut.

Zero Shame

Citibank, the company we have lent $45 billion to and whose $306 billion in bad investments we have backstopped, will be taking possession of a $50,000,000 jet to ferry its leaders.

If each commercial flight cost $2,500, the leaders could take 20,000 flights for the initial cost of this plane. Then, add in the costs of running this plane - pilot, fuel, airport fees, etc. - and maybe you want to sell your stock in Citibank.

Should they be fired?

The Associated Press recounts the status of a few banking executives whose bank has gotten some of our money:

_JPMorgan Chase & Co., which invested billions in subprime mortgages, has the same leadership team, led by CEO James Dimon. Dimon made about $28 million in 2007. The company is shedding about 10 percent of its investment bank staff.

_Cleveland-based KeyCorp, which ran subprime lending subsidiary Champion Mortgage until late 2006, received $2.5 billion in bailout money. Its chairman and CEO, Henry Meyer, has been in charge since 2001. Jeffrey Weeden, the company's chief financial officer, and Thomas Stevens, the administrative officer who oversaw the risk review group, have been on the job for years.

KeyCorp has been cutting jobs over the past two years, including 200 announced this month at a Tacoma, Wash., call center. A company spokesman said the bank was too busy preparing its earnings report to answer questions about whether taxpayers should have confidence in the company's management.

"The on-the-record comment I would make is that we declined to comment even though we'd like to, because we don't have time," spokesman Bill Murschel said.

_Capital One Financial Corp., one of the nation's biggest credit-card providers, dove into the risky mortgage business when it bought GreenPoint Mortgage in 2006. GreenPoint made exotic loans to borrowers without verifying income or credit scores, then sold those loans to investors.

A year later, Capital One shuttered GreenPoint, cutting 1,900 jobs. CEO Richard Fairbank and his top executives were not among them. The company received about $3.5 billion in bailout money.

Another KGB Killing

It certainly seems as though Russia has reverted to the days of the KGB. Every few months another vocal dissident is killed. The latest is Stanislav Markelov, a lawyer and human rights advocate. A journalist, Anastasia Baburina, with whom he was walking was also killed. Baburina worked for the Novaya Gazeta, which is not a good place to work if you write articles questioning the government, as the staff is gradually being whittled down through murders.

Shooting for the moon

William Easterly takes Robert Zoellick, president of the World Bank, to task for asking for too much.

Over the past few days Zoellick has had op-eds in the NY Times and the Financial Times. The articles argue for $6 billion more for foreign aid from the U.S. Easterly contends that Zoellick, in having an extensive laundry list of projects, is really not being realistic and upfront. Easterly's primary concern with foreign aid money is that it is well-spent.

His conclusion about Zoellick's proposals:

If you are not accountable for promises, if you try to do everything and focus on nothing, and if you obsess about aid money raised rather than results achieved, haven’t you already told us that the money will not be “well spent”?

Wishing Obama Fails

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

Fox News Fear Imbalance

Barack Obama Interview
John McCain Interview

Sarah Palin Video
Funny Election Video

You can find fault with Obama. You can hate him. But how can you want him to fail?

Another Interactive map

The Center for American Progress shows where a good portion of the House's stimulus plan will go. They couldn't figure out all of the distribution, but they've taken care of about two-thirds. The map shows the distribution by state. The backup data lists the areas to be supported - energy, infrastructure, education, etc. See what your state will be getting if the House version becomes the final one.

See where the first $200 billion went

The Wall Street Journal has a fascinating chart and equally fascinating list showing which banks got how much of the TARP money so far. I hope you can access it.

The only one of the Massachusetts banks I recognized was State Street. That doesn't mean much, as I had never heard of OneUnited before either. How many of the nine Mass. banks were 'healthy' as defined by TARP?

The British Sense of Humor?

These are photos of road signs in England. I'm sure we have similar names in this country, but the NY Times hasn't decided to write about them. Some others listed: Crapstone, Ugley, East Breast, North Piddle, Spanker Lane, Crotch Crescent, Titty Ho, Wetwang, Slutshole Lane, and Thong.

Making Money

CEOs of large public companies are, in many cases, more skillful at making money for themselves rather than the company. This ability is demonstrated when they first take on the job, while they are performing it and when they leave it. And it is about leave-taking that I'd like to speak today.

While some CEOs have trouble with math, some of them have learned a great deal about present value (i.e., what a dollar I will receive in the future is worth today). They know that when interest rates are high, then the present value of a dollar is less than when interest rates are low.

Companies calculate the brass' pension based on an interest rate, how long the boss may live, the salary of the boss, how long he's worked there, etc. Many of these factors can be quickly established; two cannot - the interest rate to use and when the boss will die. Hence, the company has to use its best judgment on these two rather important factors.

CEOs have a built-in fear that the company cannot survive without them. If the company does fail, he and his pension are not protected by the government as you and I would be. The CEO becomes an unsecured creditor. Thus, believing that a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush, the CEO opts to take his pension in a lump sum when he leaves. And this is where his knowledge of present value, the company's judgment of his mortality and interest rates come into play.

If you're looking for a low interest rate in the world of pensions, what better source than the Pension Guaranty Benefit Corp. (PBGC)? It's a government agency that is charged with worrying about the pensions of we average Joes. Years ago they produced a formula to use to calculate a lump sum for a pension. The formula produces an interest rate that is almost always quite lower than the market rate. The PBGC uses it only on pensions whose lump sum is less than $5,000; further the agency itself says that the formula is outmoded. Yet, this is the formula used by some companies whose CEO decides to take a lump sum.

Let's use Hartford Financial Services as an example of what this means in dollars and cents. The company has recorded his pension benefits as $27,000,000 if he takes it over his remaining life. However, when they filed this pension information with the SEC under new regulations, the CEO will actually get $37,000,000 the day he leaves.

McKesson Corp. is a more egregious example of the stockholders getting screwed. Their CEO has a deal whereby he will be paid for more years than he will serve and for more money than he was actually paid (he'll be credited with 150% of his real bonus). Add in the interest rate assumption and you wind up with $84,600,000 should the 49-year-old retire tomorrow and get paid his pension as he walked out the door.

And, to really get my blood pressure up, today's mail brough news that my IRA lost 30% in the last few months.

What's with Virginia Tech?

Was it last year that a number of people were shot on campus? Yesterday, someone was decapitated.

The Lord Works in Mysterious Ways

The Lord wanted Mr. & Mrs. Pratt to move to Florida. So, he arranged for their bank to increase the Pratt's money by a hundred-fold. Mr. Pratt's deposit of $1.772.50 became $177,250 due to the workings of the Lord.

Praise be to the Lord!

Have I Got an Investment for You

First, let me tell you about an order the FDIC hit my investment selection with. My investment, OneUnited Bank, was ordered to cease and desist:

a. Operating with an inadequate level of capital for the kind and quality of assets held;
b. Failing to provide adequate supervision and direction over the officers of the Bank;
c. Operating without an appropriate risk management program that establishes acceptable risk exposure and ensures appropriate policies and practices are in place;
d. Allowing the payment of excessive compensation, fees and benefits to its senior executive officers;
e. Operating with an excessive level of criticized assets;
f. Operating without effective underwriting standards and practices;
g. Operating without an effective loan documentation program;
h. Failing to provide for an effective system to identify problem assets and prevent deterioration;
i. Engaging in speculative investment practices and failing to prudently diversify its equities portfolio;
j. Operating without a system to monitor and evaluate earnings and ensure maintenance of adequate capital and reserves;
k. Operating with deficient earnings;
l. Operating without sufficient liquidity, in light of the asset and liability mix and overall financial condition of the Bank; and
m. Committing violations of law and regulation.

Okay, it does look a trifle dicey. But, hey, the bank was able to enjoy $12,000,000 of our TARP money due apparently to the concerns Barney Frank had about the bank's troubles after investments in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac went sour. So, why don't you look closer? The Treasury obviously did before giving OneUnited our money.

See, the Treasury was supposed to give our money to healthy banks so that they would be able to lend to people. And OneUnited had little capital left plus the bank was accused of poor lending practices and paying their executives too much so that they could buy gas for the company Porsche.

But these minor problems should not bother you as OneUnited had a friend in Washington, a guy named Barney Frank, who happened to be the chairman of the House Financial Services Committee. Barney helped write the bill so that OneUnited would be eligible for TARP funds and then he spoke to someone in Treasury about the bank's plight.

So, you see. You've nothing to worry about. You have a friend in Washington.

The UN Weighs In

Manfred Nowak, the UN's specialist on torture, believes that Bush and Rumsfield should be brought up on charges of torture. In Nowak's view, we ratified the UN convention on torture which required "all means, particularly penal law" to be used to bring proceedings against those violating it.

War Crimes?

It certainly looks that way in Gaza as the UN, Human Rights Watch and now Amnesty International have accused Israel of using white phosphorus in densely populated areas. White phosphorus is a truly hot item; it burns until its contact with oxygen is eliminated, which means that it burns through flesh and bone. It is not banned by international law, but the law is a tricky thing. It does speak of the indiscriminate use of weapons in a civilian area as a possible basis of charges of war crimes.

Amnesty's munitions expert who visited Gaza on Sunday said, "Artillery is an area weapon; not good for pinpoint targeting. The fact that these munitions, which are usually used as ground burst, were fired as air bursts increases the likely size of the danger area”.

Israel has yet to respond to these charges other than to say it is investigating them.

Countervailing Thought

David Edelstein and Ronald Krebs have a different take on Obama and the war on terrorism. Essentially, they don't think much will change. His comments during the campaign and after do not sound very different from Bush and company.

Gaza and the Arms Export Control Act

For years we have had on our books the Arms Export Control Act (AECA) which is an attempt to ensure that weapons we sell to foreign nations are not used in war. The act requires nations receiving U.S. arms to certify the weapons are used for internal security and legitimate self-defense, and that their use doesn't lead to an escalation of conflict.

Most of Israel's armaments are made in the USA and there are a lot of them. Under Bush Israel got $19 billion of weapons, more than any other country. These armaments include planes, tanks, personnel carriers, bombs, missiles, etc. Do you suppose that any of these weapons were used in Gaza these past weeks? Will we move to enforce the AECA against Israel?

Here's $176,000,000 we can cut from the federal budget

That's the amount we have allocated to funding abstinence programs this year. Over the past decade we've spent over a billion dollars on programs that just do not work. This is one area that can be dropped quite easily. Will our government of change do so?

Truth or BS?

That's the question all of us face every day on all levels - from world issues to personal issues. None of us is always correct in our answer to that question, for it is a very difficult question. Some of us adopt the attitude that if I say it, it is positively, definitely true. This is an attitude that both Hamas and Israel have adopted when discussing the Gaza Strip. Here's an example.

Maxwell Gaylard, the UN's chief humanitarian coordinator in Israel, says that before the attack Israel willfully prevented the UN from building up its supply of food for Gazans in need. "The food was in Israel but we couldn't get it in. This is before. The blockade was very tight."

The response of the Israelis? "unqualified bullshit". "At no time was there a shortage of food in Gaza over the past three weeks."

Yet it is pretty obvious that there was a considerable lack of food and other necessities of life in Gaza for the past three weeks.

Who is telling the truth?

What the f***?

The lack of control over the spending of the first tranche of the TARP has been its hallmark. It appears that all we've done is given money to banks without any control and without the funds having much of an effect on the general economy. Granted the Obama administration should be different than the Bush, but there is no certainty of this.

The House put some meat in their consideration of tranche 2. Barney Frank, chair of the House Financial Services Committee, said, “We intend to trust, but verify." The Senate did not feel the same way. It just gave the money to the Obama administration to do with as it sees fit. This is not a good sign.

"All Presidents Are Blind Dates"

That's a line from Jonathan Alter that really encapsulates my feelings about our new President. He's talked a good game, but this reminds me of at least one blind date when I was very young. The girl sounded like a dream over the telephone, but wasn't exactly a great date; in fact, it was a lousy date.

The country has had a love affair with Obama and we all want it to continue. Will it? We really don't know whether he is up to the job. We can only hope and pray that he is and that we all help him succeed.

More sniper fire?

Vineyard Haven Harbor - January 16, 2009, 6:40a.m.

Courtesy of the Martha's Vineyard Times

Get your 100 trillion dollar bill here

Another new record was set by Zimbabwe. It has issued a $10 trillion bill and will soon be issuing a $100 trillion bill. I guess this makes it possible for people to carry their money on their person rather than in a cart, as the Germans did 70+ years ago. Prices are doubling every day. Unemployment is 80%. 2000 have died of cholera.

Hell on earth.

The Devil's in the Details

Details as to the Obama/Democrats stimulus plan are starting to emerge. I and at least one other person can't understand how tax cuts will encourage the spending and eventual investment which is necessary if we are to get out of this mess. My getting a tax credit of $1200 on my 2009 taxes doesn't mean that I will spend $1200 today. Nor does converting the $7500 tax credit for first home buyers into a grant mean that spending will increase by $7500. Yet almost 40% of the stimulus is going to be in the form of tax cuts, as defined by the Obama/Democrats today.

And is it right that businesses can apply this year's tax losses to profits made in the past five years? Will this mean more spending or investing by businesses? I don't think so.

The plan as outlined by the Wall Street Journal does not mention anything about unemployment benefits. Does this mean that there will be no changes made that affect the people likeliest to spend money?

And then there's the whole question of the effect of lobbying.

No Holding Back Now

There have been several reports of Israel bombing a UN warehouse, which is part of the UN compound in Gaza. Last week it was a UN school that was bombed; 43 were killed. In both cases the Israelis claim Hamas was in the buildings firing at them. The UN does not believe the Israelis.

Israel has become an equal opportunity bomber. A Red Crescent hospital and offices of Reuters and Associated Press have been attacked.

Obama's Inaugural Address

Tom Engelhardt muses on presidential inaugural addresses and hopes that Obama reverts to an address whose tone is similar to that of our first presidents - modest and realistic. Engelhardt has taken a shot at a suitable Obama address and it's pretty good. See for yourself.

In a Dark Valley

Barack Obama's Inaugural Address

In my lifetime, presidents have regularly come before you, the American people, proclaiming new dawns or hailing this country as a shining city upon a hill, an example to the rest of the world. But on this cold, wintry day, I hardly need tell you that we seem to have joined much of the rest of the world in an increasingly shadowy, sunless valley.

We -- not just we Americans but all of us -- are living in a world in peril, one in which we have far more to fear than fear itself. And don't imagine, having just taken the oath of office on the Bible Abraham Lincoln laid his hand on in an earlier moment of national crisis, that I don't have my own fears about the task ahead. I can't help but worry whether my abilities are up to challenges, which would surely have been daunting even to a Washington, a Lincoln, or a Roosevelt.

Nonetheless, you elected me. You have, I know, invested your hopes in me in these trying times. And fortunately, I sense that you are at my side now and will, I hope, remain there, encouraging and criticizing, praising or chiding as you see fit, through the worst and, with luck, the best of times. I'm thankful for that. Without your support, your wisdom, what could I hope to accomplish? We -- and in this presidency, when I use that word, I will mean you and me, not the royal "we" to which American presidents have become far too attached -- we can, I think, hope to accomplish much, but only if we're honest with ourselves.

This nation was founded in the immodest modesty of experimentation by men who hoped for much but were aware that they did not always know what might work. They were ready to falter, to fall on their faces, to fail, and yet not to quit. We -- you and I -- must be willing to do the same. In this difficult moment, we must be willing to acknowledge our limits, to admit our mistakes, and to welcome all others who care to join us, or want us to join them, on the path of experimentation in a needy world.

Let me, then, start -- not simply as your new president but as a human being, a proud American, and the father of two children who deserve a better future, not a thoroughly degraded world -- with two simple words: I'm sorry.

In the last eight years, we Americans have in no way lived up to our better natures. Our country has, in fact, repeatedly caused grievous damage to others and to ourselves. The mistakes, the misguided policies, have been legion. We -- you and I -- must do our best to correct them and make amends. For Americans, at home and abroad, there must be a better way.

The kidnapping of people off the streets of global cities, the disappearing of suspects who have no chance to face judge or jury, the torture, abuse, and killing of prisoners, these are wounds inflicted on the world and on ourselves. There must be a better way.

Shock-and-awe assaults on other nations, whether by ourselves or allies we've green-lighted, lead -- it should be clear enough by now -- to horrors beyond measure visited on civilians. There must be a better way.

The repeated firing of missiles at, and the bombing of, villages halfway across the globe, the repeated killing of innocent farm families while on missions to protect ourselves, constitutes a global war for terror, not against it. There must be a better way.

The twisting of our Constitution into whatever shape a president (and his lawyers) find useful or power-enhancing constitutes a body blow to this nation. There must be a better way.

The offering of vast bailouts, without strings or oversight, to the most profligate and greediest among us, while ignoring the daily suffering of ordinary Americans inflicts grievous harm on our society. There must be a better way.

The turning of our government -- your government -- into a surveillance state, a spy society, meant to eternally watch you cannot represent the fulfillment of the dreams of Washington or Jefferson. There must be a better way.

Transforming the heavens into a storage depot for greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuels is like passing a death sentence on humanity. There must be a better way.

Considering war and military action the solution of first, not last, resort whenever a difficult or painful problem arises represents a disastrous path. There must be a better way.

Of all times, this is no time to be at war. For our recent wars, all of us have paid a heavy price, not just in lives that should never have been lost, but in distraction from what truly matters.

We were once proudly a can do nation. For the last eight years, we have been a can't do nation, incapable of rebuilding great cities or small towns, replacing failing bridges or shoring up our systems of levees. And yet we've had the presumption to believe that we, who had lost the knack for rebuilding at home, had a special ability to rebuild other societies far from home. All of this has to end now. We need to do better.

Everywhere on this shaky planet people feel insecure and unsafe -- and we have only sharpened such feelings in these last years. To feel secure and safe should be the most basic of rights. It is, however, far past time for us to give the very idea of security new meaning. Yes, we must protect ourselves. Any country must do that for its citizens, but you, the American people, must also hear a truth that has not been said in these last eight years. It is a fantasy to believe that, in the long run, we can make ourselves secure to the detriment of everyone else. On that path lies only insecurity for all. We need to do better.

In policy terms, tomorrow is the day to roll up our sleeves and begin, but today I want to say to you: Don't despair. Yes, the news is grim. Yes, as Americans and as citizens of this world we should know our limits and the increasingly apparent limits of our small planet, but we should also dream, and struggle, and plan, and innovate.

I repeated one phrase many times during the long presidential campaign, and I emphatically repeat it today: Yes, we can!

And when we do, we have to reach out to the world with our discoveries and ideas, but without the sense that those discoveries, those ideas, are the be-all and end-all. We have to learn how to listen as well as teach.

Our planet will either be an ark, which will carry us, and our children and grandchildren, through time and space, or it will be our grave. This is a stark choice that seems no choice at all. But believe me, to choose the ark, not the grave, is the hardest thing of all. Nonetheless, may that be the choice to which we Americans consecrate ourselves on this day and in all the days to come.

Thank you and God bless us all.

Maybe they'd get lost

People who broadcast professional sports move about the country a lot, so you can understand that they may need help in getting to the park from their hotel. Maybe that was the idea behind Joseph Brand's decision to find a means of transporting Tim McCarver etal to Fenway Park and other ballparks around the country.

Before you give kudos to Mr. Brand, you should know that he was a member of the ethics team of the U.S. Marshals Service. He decided that the sportcasters should be transported by the U.S. Marshals Service, which we fund. Mr. Brand also appears to be a real sports aficionado as he had marshals help him in his detailed record keeping of the game in progress.

$25 billion is not enough...

for Bank of America. Although they said they didn't need it back in September, they took $25 billion from TARP and now are back looking for more, which Mr. Paulson, being a good guy, will likely give them, as it's needed to enable BofA to close on the Merrill deal and, using the current cliche, they are too big to fail.

It is amazing that we are spending so much on companies that are essentially dinosaurs; they were king of the hill for many years but could not adapt to the new world. Think GM. What is wrong with letting these companies declare bankruptcy. The good parts of them will survive albeit under different - and likely smarter - ownership.

CitiCorp wants to divorce you

That is, if you're a regular schmuck or a small businessman. Citicorp is abandoning its financial supermarket. They're in the process of selling a good part of Smith Barney to Morgan Stanley and will be announcing plans to focus on large companies and rich people. It will dump its consumer-finance operations and its credit card businesses that do not cater to the elite. They plan to be a third smaller.

It's ironic that the nucleus of the company was Commercial Credit, a company that catered to we less affluent.

Rough Roads

It is the case that Afghanistan is a more primitive country than Iraq, one aspect of this primitiveness is the few highways and limited paved roads. Plus Afghanistan is more mountainous. All of which translates into a different kind of battle.

The IED is a major tool of the Iraqis. First of all because there are fewer paved roads, the use of IEDs is limited. Further, we are equipped with vehicles built to resist these bombs. However, of necessity, these vehicles are very heavy and have a hard time keeping up with the SUVs of the Afghans when chasing them on natural terrain, which is quite rough.

Weight is also a problem pursuing the Taliban on foot. Our troops are protected with bulletproof vests that weigh 60 pounds. Try climbing a mountain with one.

Even the Humvees are finding Afghanistan a difficult place. The transmissions keep breaking down.

Cordesman on Gaza

Anthony Cordesman on the war in Gaza.

The fact remains, however, that the growing human tragedy in Gaza is steadily raising more serious questions as to whether the kind of tactical gains that Israel now reports are worth the suffering involved. As of the 14th day of the war, nearly 800 Palestinian have died and over 3,000 have been wounded. Fewer and fewer have been Hamas fighters, while more and more have been civilians.

These direct costs are also only part of the story. Gaza’s economy had already collapsed long before the current fighting began and now has far greater problems. Its infrastructure is crippled in critical areas like power and water. This war has compounded the impact of a struggle that has gone on since 2000. It has reduced living standards in basic ways like food, education, as well as medical supplies and services. It has also left most Gazans without a productive form of employment. The current war has consequences more far-reaching than casualties. It involves a legacy of greatly increased suffering for the 1.5 million people who will survive this current conflict.

It is also far from clear that the tactical gains are worth the political and strategic cost to Israel. At least to date, the reporting from within Gaza indicates that each new Israeli air strike or advance on the ground has increased popular support for Hamas and anger against Israel in Gaza. The same is true in the West Bank and the Islamic world. Iran and Hezbollah are capitalizing on the conflict. Anti-American demonstrations over the fighting have taken place in areas as “remote” as Kabul. Even friends of Israel like Turkey see the war as unjust. The Egyptian government comes under greater pressure with every casualty. The US is seen as having done virtually nothing, focusing only on the threat from Hamas, and the President elect is getting as much blame as the President who still serves.

This raises a question that every Israeli and its supporters now needs to ask. What is the strategic purpose behind the present fighting? After two weeks of combat Olmert, Livni, and Barak have still not said a word that indicates that Israel will gain strategic or grand strategic benefits, or tactical benefits much larger than the gains it made from selectively striking key Hamas facilities early in the war. In fact, their silence raises haunting questions about whether they will repeat the same massive failures made by Israel’s top political leadership during the Israeli-Hezbollah War in 2006. Has Israel somehow blundered into a steadily escalating war without a clear strategic goal or at least one it can credibly achieve? Will Israel end in empowering an enemy in political terms that it defeated in tactical terms? Will Israel’s actions seriously damage the US position in the region, any hope of peace, as well as moderate Arab regimes and voices in the process?
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To blunt, the answer so far seems to be yes. To paraphrase a comment about the British government’s management of the British Army in World War I, lions seem to be led by donkeys. If Israel has a credible ceasefire plan that could really secure Gaza, it is not apparent. If Israel has a plan that could credibly destroy and replace Hamas, it is not apparent. If Israel has any plan to help the Gazans and move them back towards peace, it is not apparent. If Israel has any plan to use US or other friendly influence productively, it not apparent.

As we have seen all too clearly from US mistakes, any leader can take a tough stand and claim that tactical gains are a meaningful victory. If this is all that Olmert, Livni, and Barak have for an answer, then they have disgraced themselves and damaged their country and their friends. If there is more, it is time to make such goals public and demonstrate how they can be achieved. The question is not whether the IDF learned the tactical lessons of the fighting in 2006. It is whether Israel's top political leadership has even minimal competence to lead them.

Counterinsurgency in Afghanistan

Nathaniel Fick and John Nagl know a lot about counterinsurgency; Nagl was one of the authors of the current Army Field manual.

They believe that we are operating from two false premises as regards Afghanistan:

• The border area between Afghanistan and Pakistan cannot be governed.
• Afghans want us out now.

It may not be a Western-style government but for centuries the border area has been governed by local leaders. We should work with them more often and more intelligently to stabilize the area.

Afghans want a normal, simple life and are frustrated that the West cannot provide it. They do not want the Taliban back in control.

The prescription that Fick and Nagl offer is taken from the Counterinsurgency Field Manual and is framed in terms of paradoxes:

1. Some of the best weapons do not shoot. Development is the sine qua non for winning in this country.

2. Sometimes the more you protect your force, the less secure you may be. We need to live and work with the people.

3. The hosts doing something tolerably is often better than foreigners doing it well. We need to help build a viable Afghan security force and competent government.

4. Sometimes the more force is used, the less effective it is. Our bombing strategy is killing too many civilians.

5. Sometimes doing nothing is the best reaction. We can't win by going into Pakistan. We need to ensure that Pakistan is a solid ally and that the governments of both Pakistan and Afghanistan can be viable.

It will take time...

lots of time for nuclear power to realize the promises many have for it. That's the argument Charles Ferguson and Michelle Smith make in the current Foreign Policy. To maintain the current share of electric production (15%) a nuclear power plant with a 1,000 megawatt reactor would have to be built every 16 days for the next 21 years. To reduce 14% of the estimated greenhouse gas emissions in 2050 would require a 1,000 megawatt reactor coming online every 14 days for the next 41 years.

It seems like we have a problem.

Keeping it secret

Clint Hendler discusses government secrecy in the current issue of the Columbia Journalism Review. (They haven't posted this issue yet on their site, cjr.org/magazine.) Two areas were interesting to me - presidential records and the flouting of federal law regarding our right to know what is going on in our government that is spending our money.

It didn't start with George W.. but our presidents seem to have the same attitude towards the Presidential Records Act, one requirement of which is that ex-presidents give up control of their administration's records twelve years after leaving office. Simply stated, they don't want to do it. Clinton fought to keep George One's records private after the twelve year period. George Two has issued an executive order to keep Reagan's and George Two's records unavailable to us. Two's order also gave the heirs of past presidents and vice presidents teh right to withhold their ancestor's records from public scrutiny.

The law defines three levels of secrecy relative to records - top secret, secret and confidential - limits the number of agencies and people that can make these classifications and names a branch of the National Archives as the overseer of the process. You can guess what has happened.

The people running our government decided that there was a need for another class - sensitive but unclassified - of information that could be shielded from, more agencies were authorized to keep their information classified and the National Archives was no longer the sole arbiter.

Government of the people, by the people and for the people?

What irony

An Alaskan agency working to help victims of sexual abuse ran a lottery to raise money. Who should win but a convicted sex offender. True, he says that he is trying to turn his life around. One indication of this is his donation to the agency of a significant part of his winnings.

Update: The lottery winner was attacked and beaten fairly severely.

None here but lots around the world

I'm talking about the people killed as a result of terrorism since 2004. The chart shows the increase over the past few years. Eric Brewer has been pushing Bush on this point in his press conferences, with little success.

Let's start a bank

Then we'll be eligible for some of the TARP money. Since we'd be small, we could probably get only a few million dollars. If we were Hartford Insurance or Lincoln National, we could get a couple of billion.

What will be the next industry to buy a bank and thus become eligible to get some of our money?

Now it's Alabama

Another problem for the TVA - a pond at another coal-burning plant developed a leak. It doesn't appear to be anywhere near the size of disaster caused by the leak in Tennessee and it has been contained.

No Ability, No Standards, No Answers

That's what the first report on the TARP concludes. The first report is by the congressional oversight panel headed by Harvard's Elizabeth Warren. To quote the WSJ article, "The report faults Treasury on a variety of fronts: having no ability to ensure banks lend the money they have received from the government; having no standards for measuring the success of the program; and for ignoring or offering incomplete answers to panel questions." I'd say that's a fairly damning indictment.

Basically, it sounds as though the panel thinks the Treasury does not know what it is doing. True, these are uncharted waters, but you have to wonder why you seldom hear the words "mortgage, refinance, individual" coming from the Treasury.

Going on 7 years

Sunday is the seventh anniversary of the opening of Guantanamo to so-called detainees. Thirty of the 250 still there are on a hunger strike. One of them has been striking since August 2005. Here's how we deal with the strikers:

The forced-feeding regime has guards and medical staff strap a captive into a chair, Velcro his head to a metal restraint, then tether a tube into the man's stomach through his nose to pump in liquid nourishment twice a day.

Winning friends and influencing people.

Demand is a problem

If we start saving and developing countries put their money in reserves rather than spending it, where will demand for goods and services come from? That's basically the question Joe Stiglitz asks. If there is limited demand, you have a major problem.

Stiglitz thinks we should start looking at a couple of things. Boost equality by making our tax rates more progressive and by having all developed countries commit to increased foreign aid (possibly .7% of GDP). Spend the money needed to reverse global warming. Develop a global financial reserve system.

Interesting thoughts.

A Rogue State

That's what Avi Shlaim calls Israel and Avi is not an Arab; he served in the Israeli Army. He now teaches at Oxford, but this does not disqualify him from speaking out against his native country. In this piece he almost cries out in despair at what his country has become. I suspect he represents the liberal Israelis who seldom make the U.S. media.

Shlaim opposed Israel's encroachment beyond the pre-1967 borders and attributes much of Israel's war with the Arabs as a territory grab. Gaza has always been a tough place to live; it's small, has no natural resources and has never been developed economically. Shlaim thinks Israel wanted Gaza so that it would have a source of cheap labor and, since Israel controlled all entrances and exits, a market for Israeli goods. They did nothing to help the Gazans. In fact, they exploited them. There were 8,000 Jewish settlers in Gaza in 2005. They controlled 25% of the territory, 40% of the arable land and most of the drinking water. What percent of the population was Jewish? .6%, 8,000 Jews in a land of 1,400,000 people.

A couple of interesting quotes:

Israel likes to portray itself as an island of democracy in a sea of authoritarianism. Yet Israel has never in its entire history done anything to promote democracy on the Arab side and has done a great deal to undermine it. Israel has a long history of secret collaboration with reactionary Arab regimes to suppress Palestinian nationalism. Despite all the handicaps, the Palestinian people succeeded in building the only genuine democracy in the Arab world with the possible exception of Lebanon. In January 2006, free and fair elections for the Legislative Council of the Palestinian Authority brought to power a Hamas-led government. Israel, however, refused to recognise the democratically elected government, claiming that Hamas is purely and simply a terrorist organisation.
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But the simple truth is that the Palestinian people are a normal people with normal aspirations. They are no better but they are no worse than any other national group. What they aspire to, above all, is a piece of land to call their own on which to live in freedom and dignity.
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In a broader sense, however, it is a war between Israel and the Palestinian people, because the people had elected the party to power. The declared aim of the war is to weaken Hamas and to intensify the pressure until its leaders agree to a new ceasefire on Israel's terms. The undeclared aim is to ensure that the Palestinians in Gaza are seen by the world simply as a humanitarian problem and thus to derail their struggle for independence and statehood.
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The problem with Israel's concept of security is that it denies even the most elementary security to the other community. The only way for Israel to achieve security is not through shooting but through talks with Hamas, which has repeatedly declared its readiness to negotiate a long-term ceasefire with the Jewish state within its pre-1967 borders for 20, 30, or even 50 years. Israel has rejected this offer for the same reason it spurned the Arab League peace plan of 2002, which is still on the table: it involves concessions and compromises.
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This brief review of Israel's record over the past four decades makes it difficult to resist the conclusion that it has become a rogue state with "an utterly unscrupulous set of leaders". A rogue state habitually violates international law, possesses weapons of mass destruction and practises terrorism - the use of violence against civilians for political purposes. Israel fulfils all of these three criteria; the cap fits and it must wear it. Israel's real aim is not peaceful coexistence with its Palestinian neighbours but military domination. It keeps compounding the mistakes of the past with new and more disastrous ones. Politicians, like everyone else, are of course free to repeat the lies and mistakes of the past. But it is not mandatory to do so.

Thanks to RJ of SparrowChat for introducing me to Prof. Shlaim.

A little levity would help

Learning from Israel

Andrew Bacevich contends that Israel's incursion into Gaza is an admission of strategic failure. It will not end the violence; it will make it worse.

Rather than enhancing Israeli security, occupation has produced a never-ending war of attrition. Although the Israeli army seldom loses an engagement in that war, the conflict is one in which Israel cannot realistically expect to achieve definitive victory. However great the Israeli edge in tanks and fighter-bombers, demography rather than weaponry is likely to determine the conflict's ultimate outcome: That the Palestinian and Arab Israeli birthrate far exceeds the birthrate among Jewish Israelis is a fact with enormous strategic implications.

There are three lessons we should draw from the Israeli experience:

First, getting in may be easy; getting out is the hard part. Once embraced, a tar baby becomes impossible to release. For this reason, the notion that intervention offers a handy problem solver is an illusion.

Second, occupation by outsiders produces alienation, resistance, and radicalization, nowhere more so than in the Islamic world. The longer the stay, the more severe the reaction.

Third, as instruments of pacification, conventional armies possess modest utility. Rather than facilitating political solutions, coercion only exacerbates the underlying problem.

Cutting the Defense Budget

One government area that would seem to be ripe for budget cuts would be DOD. However, Steven Walt tells us how hard this will be.

Here's why it won't happen any time soon. As Cindy Williams, former director of the National Security division of the Congressional Budget Office and now a senior research scientist at MIT, points out in an as-yet unpublished paper for the Tobin Project, DOD is insulated from serious cuts by an array of impressive political advantages. First, its budget is more than 50 percent of all federal discretionary spending, and its sheer size gives it a lot of bureaucratic clout. Second, the Pentagon has a large domestic constituency: there are 1.4 million men and women in uniform, 850,000 paid members of the National Guard and Reserve, and 650,000 civilian employees. Forget GM, Ford and Chrysler: the Department of Defense is the largest single employer in the whole country. Now add the companies that provide goods and services for the military. Their employees amount to about 5.2 million jobs, which is a pretty impressive domestic constituency. And don’t forget those 25 million veterans, who are hardly shrinking violets when defense spending is concerned. Finally, a well-financed group of Beltway bandits and Washington think tanks stand ready to question the patriotism of any politician (and especially any Democrat) who tries to put the Pentagon on a diet.

The Sad State of Journalism in 2009

I probably shouldn't call it journalism, but it sure sounds weird to me. Joe the Plumber has morphed into a war correspondent and is on his way to Israel. He's being sent by Pajamas TV. I guess the plumbing business in Ohio stinks.

A quote from the next Edward R. Murrow, "Being a Christian I'm pretty well protected by God I believe. That's not saying he's going to stop a mortar for me, but you gotta take the chance."

It's getting worse

Rockets have been fired from Lebanon into Israel, only a few so far. No group has claimed that it is the culprit. If it's Hezbollah, the world is in deep shit.

Our Leaders

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

Crisis in the Senate - Deliberative Disorder

Barack Obama Interview
John McCain Interview

Sarah Palin Video
Funny Election Video

Time on their hands

The country is going down the tubes, but our leaders in Washington are spending time and effort on a triviality as to whether Burris has clean hands. Or has Blagojevich corrupted him? Where have these people come from? Why are they wasting our money?

Let's Focus on the Really Important Things

Like the college football championship game. That's what Cliff Stearns, a Congressman whose district includes the University of Florida, one of the teams in the championship round, thinks. He has asked Speaker Pelosi to reschedule votes so that he can go to the game, which is being held in Miami.

Isn't Stearns one of those people who got a $4,700 raise as of 1/1 so that his salary is now $169,300? Being a Congressman is hard.

The Protector of The Oceans

Who would have expected George W. Bush to have protected a larger area of the world’s marine environment than protected by any other person in history? I certainly would not have. But he has protected 335,561 square miles of ocean.

Gaza Today

The BBC has a summary of conditions there.

• Save the Children says there is a "severe shortage of food", but Israel claims international agencies' warehouses are well stocked and points out that it has allowed several convoys of trucks into Gaza during the fighting.
• Hospitals have been under extreme pressure, with some 2,500 people wounded in the fighting.Emergency workers are struggling to reach the wounded and a number are reported to have died trying.
  
• The UN says a million people in Gaza are without electricity. The territory's only power plant, which supplies much of Gaza City, shut down on 30 December because it ran out of industrial diesel fuel.
• The UN estimated on 5 January that 250,000 people did not have access to running water.
  

Opening Day

Today was the opening day for our embassy in Baghdad, our largest embassy in the world by far. Some comments from Foreign Policy of late 2007:

Located in Baghdad’s 4-square-mile Green Zone, the embassy will occupy 104 acres. It will be six times larger than the U.N. complex in New York and more than 10 times the size of the new U.S. Embassy being built in Beijing, which at 10 acres is America’s second-largest mission. The Baghdad compound will be entirely self-sufficient, with no need to rely on the Iraqis for services of any kind. The embassy has its own electricity plant, fresh water and sewage treatment facilities, storage warehouses, and maintenance shops. The embassy is composed of more than 20 buildings, including six apartment complexes with 619 one-bedroom units. Two office blocks will accomodate about 1,000 employees. High-ranking diplomats will enjoy well-appointed private residences. Once inside the compound, Americans will have almost no reason to leave. It will have a shopping market, food court, movie theater, beauty salon, gymnasium, swimming pool, tennis courts, a school, and an American Club for social gatherings. To protect it all, the embassy is reportedly surrounded by a wall at least 9 feet high—and it has its own defense force.

The embassy, which was at least $100,000,000 over budget, is of such a scale that the role of most embassies - to interact with the local population - is virtually impossible to fulfill.

Unmitigated Gall

One definition of gall in Merriam-Webster is "brazen boldness coupled with impudent assurance and insolence". This op-ed by John Bolton and John Yoo, paragons of modesty, certainly epitomizes the word.

Bolton and Yoo are worried that an Obama administration will avoid having the senate ratify treaties. They see the constitution as a "bulwark against presidential inclinations to lock the United States into unwise foreign commitments." These are the guys who championed the unitary executive theory. Yoo wrote the memo that opened Guantanamo. Bolton operates from a distant planet. Neither objected to the record-setting signing statements of our soon to be ex-president.

Now they urge Obama to abide by the constitution? Absolutely unbelievable!

Fin de Siecle

The peaceful end of an empire is seldom told in the news pages of the media. You can see the end coming in the sports, leisure or entertainment sections.

Take, for example, the sports section of today's NY Times. A featured story is about kids in the seventh and eighth grade who are good at sports. One of them, Reeve Koehler, is 13 and already stands 6'3" and weighs 280 pounds. He has been too big to play football with kids his own age. Yet, the University of Hawaii has already offered him a full scholarship.

The story is mainly about the Football Youth All-American Bowl, which is a new series for kids in the seventh and eighth grades. They will play three games at San Antonio. One indication of the educational prowess of the organizers is this quote from the director, "Imagine if you could have saw Reggie Bush when he was in eighth grade or seventh grade and see how he develops."

Shouldn't kids be kids? Does the University of Hawaii have criteria for incoming students beyond football talent?

Reporters vs. Polls

RJ Adams of Sparrow Chat introduced me to Dahr Jamail, who appears to be a truly independent commentator on Iraq. He has a lengthy piece castigating the NY Times for ignoring polling data while relying more than primarily on the opinions of their reporters, most of whom are locked in the Green Zone or deal mainly with the middle class Iraqis.

Again, what is reality?

I really find this hard to believe

This chart is taken from The Economist. As noted,the chart is based on work by Alan Krueger and Andreas Muller. Details on which this chart is based can be found in this paper.

How one can spend less than an hour a day when one is out of work is beyond my ken! Looking for a job should be your job and you have to devote real time to that job.

The chart brought back memories of an interview years ago of someone who had been unemployed for over a year. During that time he sent out about twenty resumes. Need I say that I was flabbergasted as, when I was out of work for just six weeks, I spent a good deal of most days researching possible opportunities and sent out 600 resumes.

Results of Preliminary Testing of Tennessee Ash Spill

Although TVA has yet to release results of testing, activists have. Here is an interview with scientists from Appalachian State University. Each segment is about 10 minutes long, but the upshot is that things are really bad. There are eight toxic chemicals, toxic for people, fish, and many other beings living in Tennessee. The tests showed levels of arsenic 30 - 300 times higher than normal, lead 2 - 21 times, thallium 3 - 4 times.

A Deal On Lobsters

The owner of a restaurant in Western Mass. was friends with the owner of a towing company. This past summer a truck filled with lobsters from Canada crashed in Western Mass.; lobsters were scattered over the highway along with a 'sprinkling' of 150 gallons of fuel. A short time later the restaurant was offering a lobster special at $19.95 and was also selling lobsters in back of the restaurant.

Were they the same lobsters that had been scattered on the highway? That's what the state claims as it has charged the friends with larceny and other crimes. Were the lobsters described as having a special sauce? Probably not. Did the friends make a few dollars on the lobster special? It sure sounds that way.

Are we backing the right horse?

The UN says that one-fourth of those killed in Gaza have been civilians. Oxfam says that things are getting worse in Gaza every day. A month ago McClatchy filmed the devastation that was life in Gaza before these attacks. Watch it and then try to imagine what things must be like now that bombs are dropping. Read the words of three Palestinians.

Israel says there is sufficient food and medicine in Gaza; they are assessing the humanitarian needs of the people.

There really is no right horse. But why are we backing one horse? Granted Hamas is not a chorus of angels. But I don't think they can be exterminated from the face of the earth. One effect of the Israeli actions is to make it easier for Hamas to recruit.

What has been the effect of this war?

Since the start of Israel's operations in Gaza, Israeli sources say Palestinian militants have fired the following:

27 December 2008: 61 rockets, 33 mortar shells

28 December: 14 rockets, 16 mortar shells

29 December: 57 rockets, 15 mortar shells

30 December: 42 rockets, 6 mortar shells

31 December: 43 rockets, 25 mortar shells

Source: Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center, Israel

May 2008

The wind chill today is -4.

Another Question of Measurement

This time it's the measurement of old age. The Population Reference Bureau says that we should measure old age not simply by how many years we've lived but also by how many years we will likely live, the latter is referred to as prospective age.

When you use prospective, rather than conventional, age in a key economic and demographic comparison - the ratio of old people to young workers - the ratio improves quite a bit. For example, using the conventional age, the ratio of old to young in 2045 is expected to be 26.5%; with the prospective age measurement, the number drops to 17.7%. There are several other interesting observations in this paper.

You can't manage if you don't measure

That's a basic tenet of Management 101. However, it is imperative that you measure the right things. The Hamilton Project has published a paper which questions how we measure poverty in this country.

The authors, Rebecca Blank and Mark Greenberg, point out that we still calculate the poverty line the same way we did 40+ years ago. The original calculation was based largely on the price of food, but, as we know, food is a smaller part of one's budget today than it was in the 1960s. Also, the original measure was lacking from an income standpoint; it did not consider tax benefits and subsidies from the government such as food stamps and heating assistance. And, finally, the measure ignored variations in the cost of living across the country.

Blank and Greenberg propose a measure that includes food, clothing, housing and utilities. On the income side they want to consider after tax income as well as government subsidies. And, of course, the measure should take into account the cost of living across the country. Interesting points.

What will happen to Jews as a people?

There have been and will be many, many articles and postings on the current battle between Hamas and Israel. Few will be more poignant than an article in the Christian Science Monitor by Sara Roy, a researcher at Harvard's Center for Middle Eastern Studies and a Jew. Here is an excerpt.

And what will happen to Jews as a people whether we live in Israel or not? Why have we been unable to accept the fundamental humanity of Palestinians and include them within our moral boundaries? Rather, we reject any human connection with the people we are oppressing. Ultimately, our goal is to tribalize pain, narrowing the scope of human suffering to ourselves alone.

Our rejection of "the other" will undo us. We must incorporate Palestinians and other Arab peoples into the Jewish understanding of history, because they are a part of that history. We must question our own narrative and the one we have given others, rather than continue to cherish beliefs and sentiments that betray the Jewish ethical tradition.

Jewish intellectuals oppose racism, repression, and injustice almost everywhere in the world and yet it is still unacceptable – indeed, for some, it's an act of heresy – to oppose it when Israel is the oppressor. This double standard must end.

Israel's victories are pyrrhic and reveal the limits of Israeli power and our own limitations as a people: our inability to live a life without barriers. Are these the boundaries of our rebirth after the Holocaust?