It's Not Over

Per the Minnesota Federal Reserve we've lost more jobs in this recession than in other post-WWII recessions. When will it stop?

Not a good start

The ACLU has just issued a report summarizing the Obama administration's actions on a number of issues affecting civil rights - TRANSPARENCY, TORTURE AND ACCOUNTABILITY, DETENTION, TARGETED KILLING, MILITARY COMMISSIONS, SPEECH AND SURVEILLANCE, WATCH LISTS. The administration does not receive high marks for its handling of these issues. In act, the ACLU worries that by following many of the Bush practices in these areas "there is a very real danger that the Obama administration will enshrine permanently within the law policies and practices that were widely considered extreme and unlawful during the Bush administration. There is a real danger, in other words, that the Obama administration will preside over the creation of a new normal.”

Overdoing it

There have been many changes since Rupert Murdoch has taken over The Wall Street Journal. The one-time premier business newspaper wants to be the #1 regular newspaper. As part of this drive, they have added a sports section. I no longer read sports sections as avidly as I did; in fact, the most I usually do is quickly, very quickly, scan it.

The Journal's sports section seems to me to be an odd one. For example, they predict the winners and scores of the day's baseball games. On Tuesday there was an article on George Steinbrenner as he was portrayed on Seinfeld. However, sometimes their articles do shed a little light on our world and the bizarre things we do. To wit...........

The 'educators' who run college football continue to demonstrate that they are really the minor leagues for the NFL. As such, they have to sell the idea that their particular college is an AAA league team, not a B league team. How else to explain the ACC naming a preseason player of the year? Or Florida State's marketing their quarterback as the next Heisman Trophy winner?

The 'doctors' for professional bicycle racing teams seem to spend a lot of time figuring out ways to make the racers go faster. I deliberately chose 'racers' rather than bikes as doctors have prescribed such things to improve one's speed as wearing a mask soaked in natural alcohol to clean one's sinuses, wearing an ice vest, transporting a bker's bed from stop to stop and, of course, mucking about with diets.

All Marriages Are Different

I've always been a fan of Albert Camus. So, I've started reading the latest biography of him; this one is "Camus:A Romance" by Elizabeth Hawes. Thus far, it's pretty good.

I was struck by how often Camus was ill from his tuberculosis. I had thought he was over it when he came to adulthood. Perhaps, it was because of the frequency of these bouts that, according to Hawes, his wife was seldom with him when he was sick. I was stunned when I read this. I assumed that being with and helping your ill spouse is just part of your job. I find it hard to see how not ministering to a sick spouse squares with his proclamations about morality.

Fear, Greed, Egotism, Image

They're all there in the excellent series by Dana Priest and William Arkin in the Washington Post. The series tells the amazing tale of how foolish and disorganized are our efforts to gather top-secret information. In summary, we're spending too much money on we know not what and have no idea whether any of it is worthwhile.

Would you believe that the government has 1,271 organizations working in this one area - protecting us from the bad guys who hate us? Or, that these organizations need a few private companies, like 1,931, to help them do their job? And we're talking only about those involved in top-secret efforts, not simply vanilla secret efforts. Who knows how many of these groups there are feeding from the government trough that you and I fund?

You think the Pentagon is a huge building? Heck, these organizations need three Pentagons - 17,000,000 square feet - to do their job.

Efficiency is not a hallmark of this effort. 51 organizations are needed to focus on one issue, the financing of terrorist networks. 18 organizations do PR overseas. Do you suppose there may be a slight possibility of duplications of effort and results?

The Defense Department asked a senior, very experienced officer to review how the department was tracking its efforts in this area. His comment - "Because it lacks a synchronizing process, it inevitably results in message dissonance, reduced effectiveness and waste. We consequently can't effectively assess whether it is making us more safe."

The intelligence budget has more than doubled since 2001. But, you know and I know that a fair amount of money is spent on these efforts off the books.

Bush saw the need for control of such an effort and developed the position of Director of National Intelligence. The problem is the director has no power. Like so much else in today's world, the position is just a sop to the idea that maybe there should be some management control.

With so many organizations in an increasingly politicized field you're bound to have turf battles and finger pointing. And we do.

Many of the staff are young with little life experience, let alone intelligence experience. Few understand Arabic languages. Many of the reports - and there are over 1,000 produced every week - are like this and most other blogs - a rehash of what someone else has said.

Sometimes things have to go beyond the level of top-secret, they become ultra-secret. In these cases a Special Access Program is created. The Pentagon alone has so many of these programs that it takes 300 pages to list the names of these programs. (These programs are referred to as SAPs by insiders. This short form of the name is an apt description of us for tolerating this crap.)

Many of these organizations are based in the Greater DC area. Is it a coincidence that six of the 10 richest counties in the U.S. are also located in this area? Is this why the schools 'teach students as young as 10 what kind of lifestyle it takes to get a security clearance and what kind of behavior would disqualify them'. 1984, anyone?

You owe it to yourself as a citizen to read the articles.

Telling it like it is

Here are a couple of excerpts from an interview with Vicente Fox, ex-president of Mexico, in today's NY Times:


Are you saying America has become less tolerant? 
Yes, yes. And maybe the best way to qualify it is “fear.” That fear has been promoted by those who want to go back to the past, to nationalistic attitudes, to building walls and isolating themselves from the rest of the world.
You think the United States is causing Mexico’s crime wave? 
Absolutely, yes. The cartel gangs are nourished through the drug consumption in the United States. That’s why my position is that we should move as fast as possible into legalizing drug consumption.

A Good Description of America 2010

From Tony Auth of the Philadelphia Inquirer

One cost of war

Survivors of WWI

One more sign of the changing world

And another indication of our decline from #1. This time it's becoming #2 in energy consumption. China is now the biggest consumer of energy in the world. We had been #1 for about one hundred years. True, we are still at the top of the class on a per capita basis and probably will be for some years, but the shift in total energy usage has wide implications on a geopolitical basis. And the impact on climate change policy - and actions - could be decisive.

I'm sure there will be some who believe that a major reason for the change is that we have become more energy efficient, which is a good thing. They have a point. However, we are still #1 in per capita energy usage, so we're still using a hell of a lot of energy.

I see the situation as another indication of the decline of our empire.

Conservation is great as long as I can live the way I want

Image via Wikipedia

I know that I am out of touch with the real world of the American consumer. So I shouldn't have been surprised when I read that some people have paid as much as $5,457 for a showerhead. True, it's not a showerhead I would use; it has a 24-inch spray, 358 no-clog channels and a triple massage option. But it is one that has been bought by a number of my fellow citizens. And it is one that the government feels is too wasteful and should not be sold.

Need I mention that the manufacturers of these showerheads are up in arms at the effrontery of the government? They feel that they should be allowed to sell these devices even though they use 12 gallons of water per minute. The government is trying "to regulate the bathing habits of Americans". How can the government do this? Are our resources not infinite?

Desperate Politicians?

The governors of Minnesota, Missouri, South Dakota, Vermont and Massachusetts are now in Iraq. No, they are not fighting the enemy. They are boosting the morale of the National Guard troops from their states, or so the governors believe. Is there the slightest chance that these politicians think that a visit to Iraq could boost their chances of being re-elected? Four of the governors are running for re-election, the governor of Minnesota has presidential ambitions.

I think it's shameful and cynical for these supposed leaders to use the troops in what I hope is a vain attempt to retain their offices. Plus, it's costing us a lot of money to fly these patriots there and then escort them around the country.

An Unauthorized Biography

Simon Johnson doesn't actually write a biography of Tim Geithner in this  blog post. However, he does summarize the major gaffes our esteemed Treasury Secretary has made over the years. Read it and you will agree with me and many, many others that Geithner has to go.

Strong Language

Andrew Bacevich certainly does not mince words when giving his opinion of our Commander-in-Chief. Here's his latest from a blog in The New Republic.

Today, when they look at Washington, Americans see a cool, dispassionate, calculating president whose administration lacks a moral core. For prosecution exhibit number one, we need look no further than the meandering course of Obama’s war, its casualties and costs mounting without discernible purpose.

Obama doesn’t want to be in Afghanistan any more than Benjamin Netanyahu wants to be in the West Bank. Yet like the Israeli prime minister, the president lacks the guts to get out. It’s all so complicated. There are risks involved. Things might go wrong. There’s an election to think about.

So the war continues. Sustaining some artfully updated version of the status quo becomes the easier (or more expedient) course. Thus does a would-be messiah promising salvation and renewal succumb to the imperatives of “politics”—with young soldiers and their families left to bear the consequences.

The question demands to be asked: Who is more deserving of contempt? The commander-in-chief who sends young Americans to die for a cause, however misguided, in which he sincerely believes? Or the commander-in-chief who sends young Americans to die for a cause in which he manifestly does not believe and yet refuses to forsake?

My emphases.

It's only money

Stephen Engelberg of ProPublica raises the issue of the value received from the money we spend on counter-espionage. The FBI has not revealed how much they spent on tracking the Russian plants overs a 10-year period. Certainly, it has to be in the millions. Equally certainly, we got nothing out of it or we would have at least charged these people with espionage.

And then there is the case of the defecting Iranian nuclear scientist. Who screwed up? Reports say this cost us at least $5,000,000 paid to the scientists, but we don't know how much the CIA spent on this case. 

Engelberg does not think the money was well-spent. How can you disagree with him?

5 Strikes

Tony Hsieh, the president of Zappo's, has been on a PR kick the past few months. I read his statement of principles in the NY Times a couple of months ago and now I see he's made the Washington Post with his claim that Zappo's has it all - profits, happy employees and satisfied customers. Well, I know one client who is not satisfied and has become an ex-customer. That client is me.

I used Zappo's for the first and only time to buy a birthday gift for a granddaughter. Strike 1 - I had to call customer service as I could not buy the item directly on-line. Strike 2- the person who took the order entered the shipping address as W Ledge Road, rather than Westledge Road. Strike 3 - when I called to straighten this out, the customer service agent wanted the zip code of the delivery site. Since this was not on the confirmation I received from Zappo's and I did not want to hunt it down, I asked to speak to his boss. I guess he didn't know what a 'boss' was as he asked me if I wanted to speak to a 'lead'. Strike 4 - After the lead agreed to re-ship the order, I received a confirmation. That confirmation had my granddaughter as the billing party. I returned the confirmation with a note as to this error. Strike 5 - Their 'correction' moved me to my granddaughter's town.

How inept can a company be?

Evil Women

The Vatican is doing something about priests and pedophilia, or so they believe. While they have instituted procedures that they think will result in faster processing of claims of abuse, they still are keeping everything in house; no reporting of the breaking of the law to the civil authorities. Furthermore, they went out of their way to make sure that women are still considered second class citizens. Now in a document primarily about pedophilia, they went out of their way to assert that a priest who tries to ordain the nasty females is not only excommunicated but defrocked.

This is the 21st century is it not?

Funding the Taliban

We, you and I, are helping fund the Taliban in Afghanistan. A few weeks ago we learned that we pay them not to attack our convoys. Now, the Taliban collect revenue from an electrical plant we built and finance. The plant is good for the Taliban in three ways - they make money, there is less money for the "official" government and the power helps the poppy grow.

When do we wise up?

Greece Needs Protection

That's why they need to spend more than twice as much on armaments than any other EU country as shown in the chart below from the Wall Street Journal.

In fact, Greece imports more weapons than any other country in Europe, although, with 11,000,000 inhabitants, it is one of the smallest countries in Europe. An interesting aspect of Greece's military spending is that a lot of it was with Germany, which is now having to contribute significantly to keep Greece going. Of course, the euros from Greece went to German companies but it's the German people that are bailing Greece out. So what's new?

Small Potatoes

It was only $10.7 billion that Bank of America moved off its books at quarter-end in 2007 and 2008. That's small potatoes when you have $2.3 trillion in assets. That's what the Wall Street Journal says about BofA mimicking Lehman's sham sales at quarter-end. Yet, BofA had a need to make their numbers look better and in the real world $10.7 billion is a lot of money. So,in 2007 and 2008 they claimed to have sold some mortgage-backed securities to a "trading partner"; today they admit they goofed but it was not a deliberate attempt to make their books look better. Right!

Generating Demand?

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Deficit Calculator

Image via Wikipedia

The Center for Economic and Policy Research has devised a calculator showing the effect on the federal deficit of a number of options, such as lowering parts of the defense budget or tinkering with Social Security. It's really quite illuminating. Surprisingly, we get the biggest cut by negotiating Medicare drug prices. The second largest cut is the obvious one of getting out of Iraq and Afghanistan.         

When will it stop?

Here's another war tragedy. Brendan Marocco has lost his arms and legs from an IED in Iraq, the place that we hear less and less about. His spirit is intact, but he's only 23 years old.

How many more lives will be ruined for nothing but a false pride?

The Jester

That's the last name of a contractor who advised the Treasury in the AIG matter. You may recall that the Treasury ordered AIG to pay 100 cents on the dollar to the banks that had made credit-default swaps with AIG. Of course, AIG paid the banks with our dollars. How does Mr. Jester fit into this story?

He was pushing for AIG to make full payment so Goldman and others would not have to take a loss. One could say that there were differing opinions on the matter. However, it seems that Mr. Jester may not have had our best interests at heart as he was a stockholder in and former deputy CFO of Goldman. I guess Tim didn't see anything wrong with that. Surely, he should have been aware of the conflict as in the two-month period when AIG was cratering he spoke with Mr. Jester over a hundred times by telephone; that's almost twice a day. I don't think that they were talking about the Jets. 

When will Geithner resign?

Round and Round

You really should read all of Ann Jones' piece in TomDispatch. Here's the conclusion:

You have only to look around in Kabul and elsewhere, as I did this month, to see that the more American military there is, the more insurgents there are; the more insurgent attacks, the more private security contractors; the more barriers and razor wire, the more restrictions on freedom of movement in the capital for Afghans and internationals alike; and the more security, the higher the danger pay for members of the international community who choose to stay and spend their time complaining about the way security prevents them from doing their useful work.

And so it goes round and round, this ill-oiled war machine, generating ever more incentives for almost everyone involved -- except ordinary Afghans, of course -- to keep on keeping on.  There’s a little something for quite a few: government officials in the U.S., Afghanistan, and Pakistan, for-profit contractors, defense intellectuals, generals, spies, soldiers behind the lines, international aid workers and their Afghan employees, diplomats, members of the Afghan National Army, and the police, and the Taliban, and their various pals, and the whole array of camp followers that service warfare everywhere.

It goes round and round, this inexorable machine, this elaborate construction of corporate capitalism at war, generating immense sums of money for relatively small numbers of people, immense debt for our nation, immense sacrifice from our combat soldiers, and for ordinary Afghans and those who have befriended them or been befriended by them, moments of promise and hope, moments of clarity and rage, and moments of dark laughter that sometimes cannot forestall the onset of despair.

Happy Independence Day

Image by Fibonacci Blue via Flickr

I don't think that our position in today's world is what the founders of this country wished for. Iraq, Afghanistan, the economy, our inability to drive the rascals out of leadership roles in this country, the spill, the climate changes, our educational system, ...... where does one stop? When do we say "ENOUGH"?

Is Congress Waking Up?

8 members seem to be, as they have finally formed a caucus to oppose our war in Afghanistan. Yes, we are only talking about 2% of the House, but there are two committee heads in the caucus: Conyers and Filner. 

Let's hope more Congressmen join the caucus and it spreads to the Senate and to the administration. We have been in Afghanistan long enough to know we will not make a real difference there long term.