Says it all

The following are just a few words from a report by the Afghanistan Study Group, an ad-hoc group of some experienced and bright people who have been reviewing the situation for the past couple of years. The words are few but the meaning is clear.

Although the United States should support democratic rule, human rights and economic development, its capacity to mold other societies is inherently limited. The costs of trying should be weighed against our need to counter global terrorist threats directly, reduce America’s $1.4 trillion budget deficit, repair eroding U.S. infrastructure, and other critical national purposes. Our support of these issues will be better achieved as part of a coordinated international group with which expenses and burdens can be shared.

File Sharing is an Immigration and Customs Matter?

I don't have a strong opinion about file sharing, but I must say I find it bizarre that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has shut down some web sites because they claim these sites are illegally sharing files.

How can sharing files be a matter for Immigration and Customs, which, by the way, is part of our great protector, Homeland Security?

Inat

That's what the people in Sarajevo called their living their lives normally although there were people in the hills that were trying to kill them every day. My rough translation - F. U. You're not running my life despite the fact that I may be killed today. Roger Cohen thinks that we should be using the word with regards to the TSA. While I  argued last week primarily that the emphasis on air travel is misplaced and a doomed attempt to make us feel safe, Cohen argues that the efforts of the TSA will, if continued, jeopardize our freedom. He has a point.

Airplane Travel 2010

Kansas follows

Last week I wrote about a town in Oklahoma that drove the Westboro Baptists idiots crazy. This week I'm pleased to tell you that people from Harrisonville, Kansas, and their neighbors repeated the effort. They simply made sure that the shouts of the Westboro crowd were not heard by the family of the fallen soldier.

I Guess The Journal Was Right

The FBI has begun raiding hedge funds; yesterday they raided three. While the firms were in different states, it looks as though there are ties among the firms' employees, as you would expect. The initial generator of this investigation may have been the Galleon Group case, which has already implicated Goldman Sachs.

We Thought It The Worst Day of Our Lives

Image by TheAlieness GiselaGiardino²³ via Flickr

But we were still in our twenties when JFK was shot. There were many more and many worse days to come. (However, to be quite honest, there were many good days to come as well.)

Kennedy's death was, to we young liberals who had actually seen him in Boston and Cambridge, a tragedy, as the country had begun to awaken from the torpor of the 1950s. Sure, JFK's influence was more symbolic than factual but inspiring the nation is part of the president's job. In my day we have not had a president after Kennedy who could really fire up the populace. Why is that? Johnson had more clout with Congress. Clinton may have been smarter. Reagan was able to convince enough voters to be elected twice. Maybe, it was our youth but I doubt that. Connecting with the people is a skill that hardly any of our leaders have had in the past 47 years. I doubt that I'll see anyone with the necessary skills in my remaining years.

Information Is Money

The Wall Street Journal believes that there will be many arrests made of hedge funds and others using illegal insider information to trade in public companies.

Over the past few years a new division of the investment industry has started. The division provides information to investing companies. This information is normally gained from people who consult to, used to work at or still work at public companies. Much of the information focuses on upcoming mergers and acquisitions. Many major companies, including our friends at Goldman Sachs, are mentioned in the article.

According to the Journal, "authorities say (this investigation) could eclipse the impact on the financial industry of any previous such investigation".

Adultery is only for ministers

On Wednesday I reported on the Rev. Cedric Miller's demanding that his parishioners stop using Facebook as it leads to adultery. Well, guess what? The Reverend admitted in court that he participated in sexual activity with his wife and a church assistant and, occasionally, with the assistant's wife.

Beware those who know what you should and should not do, especially in matters of sex. How many times have we read of cases where those who most condemn the sexual behavior of others are themselves guilty of the same, in their words,"sin".

Follow the Money

Was 2009 a good year for your finances? If you were a Congressman or Senator, it was; your net worth increased by 16% for the year. Almost half of our legislative leaders are millionaires; I suspect that very few of my readers are millionaires. Another ten percent or so are worth $10,000,000 or more and eight have more than $100,000,000.

I wonder where our leaders invest their money. Is it with the local bank or druggist? Or is it with the Fortune 500 companies who wine and dine our leaders?

How do you define "representative"? Our leaders certainly are not. That's probably why they are not doing the job they should be doing. They represent only themselves.

Something to brag about or to be concerned about?

A major story in yesterday's Boston Globe had the headline "Bay State 12th-graders top nation in test results". The opening paragraph seconded the headline with regard to reading and math. But if you read further, you began to have doubts as to the real significance of these results.

First, this was a pilot program in which only eleven states participated. How representative of the nation are these eleven states?

More importantly, the degree of success of these 12th graders is dicey, shall I say. Fewer than half (46%)of the Massachusetts students, the leaders in this test, were considered proficient in reading; 37% of the rest of the group was considered proficient. The same situation prevailed in mathematics; Mass.kids scored 36%, nationally the score of proficient students was 25%.

How in the Lord's name can anyone consider these results good?

Do the math

All the current concern about the deficit could be considerably allayed by a simple move - cut defense spending. It amounts to 23% of our budget and is more than the defense spending of all other nations combined. Yes, there are jobs in the defense industry that would be lost, but this loss can be more than made up by investing in bringing our infrastructure up to snuff (It now receives a grade of D by civil engineers) and by returning to an economy where real R&D is practiced.

Back in January a number of specialists in security and defense economics wrote to the Deficit Reduction Commission. Some of their recommendations were:

• Focus on defense and deterrence rather than trying to change the world.
• Reduce our combat power in line with today's world.
• Bring the troops home from all over the world.
• Have the courage to cancel expensive weapons systems whose capabilities in today's world are suspect.
• Manage better.

What's wrong with these recommendations?

We Must Be Safe

Do you think that we are safer because of the new regimen of body scanning at airports? Do terrorists go from place to place only by airplane? Do more people travel each day by train, bus, boat or car than by airplane? Are there more people on a cruise ship than in an airplane?

Why do we let our leaders spend our money pretending that they are making us safer? Don't all of us live in the real world where all of us will eventually die and very few of us will die from the act of a terrorist?

Facebook Leads to Adultery

Or so sayeth the Reverend Cedric Miller, pastor of Living Word Christian Fellowship Church. Over the last six months 4% of his congregation have had marital problems due to their use of Facebook, mainly connecting with old friends and lovers. The Reverend has ordered church leaders to drop their Facebook account or their leadership position. On Sunday, he "will strongly suggest" that all married couples quit Facebook.

Temptation is all around us.

Oklahoma Shows The Way

The hate-mongers of the Westboro Baptist Church finally met up with some real opposition. Readers can guess that I think the "church" deserves - really, really deserves - as much crap as they get. These are the people who protest at veterans' funerals, not because they are anti-war but because they think that the deceased soldiers were protecting our homosexual nation.

The protesters were surprised when they appeared at the funeral of a soldier from McAlester, Ok. First, they were greeted by counter-protesters numbering in the hundreds. Upon leaving the funeral the protesters discovered that their tires had been slashed. Then, they found that no one in town would fix the tires. They had to have their car towed out of town.

Don't you feel sorry for them?

A Better Use of Our Money

You'll feel very sad when you read the McClatchy article on construction projects in Afghanistan. In the U.S.A. the economy sucks and the infrastructure sucks, yet we are afraid to spend money on bringing our infrastructure into the 21st century. However, we are quite willing to piss money away in Afghanistan.

And we are wasting lots of cash trying to bring Afghanistan into the 19th century. Today in Afghanistan, we are sponsoring the kind of investment we should be making in this country. The problem is that the Afghanis do not have the expertise to complete many of these projects. We are willing to accept bids that are clearly too low. We are willing to accept sub-standard work. We are willing to re-hire companies that have proven, time and time again, they are incapable of getting the job done.

This is no way to help Afghanistan or ourselves. When will we smarten up?

A Better Approach

Okay, I get upset when I receive poor customer service, which is becoming the norm in this country. However, every so often a company does what it should be doing to retain customers. I've just returned from a weekend during which I rode the train. I must confess that I was expecting poor service, as I would be riding Amtrak. I was wrong. Amtrak did provide quite good service.

The first indication that something might be right came when I used the ticket kiosk. I couldn't believe it took seconds to print my tickets. Then when I was boarding the train the conductor helped with my bag. When he took my ticket he explained the 'privileges' of business class as it was obvious that I was a 'newbie'. Upcoming stations were announced in plenty of time. Explanations of planned and unplanned delays were forthcoming promptly. All in all, a pleasurable experience which I look forward to repeating.

I Make The Rules

Here's an excerpt from the Code of Conduct for U.S. Judges:

“a judge should not personally participate in fund-raising activities, solicit funds for any organization, or use or permit the use of the prestige of judicial office for that purpose. A judge should not personally participate in membership solicitation if the solicitation might reasonably be perceived as coercive or is essentially a fund-raising mechanism.”

Apparently this clause does not apply to the Justices of the Supreme Court. Alito, Scalia, Thomas and who knows who else have helped raise money for causes they support.

Just to make sure they are like Caesar's wife, the Justices have exempted themselves from this and other clauses concerning ethical standards.

Lest We Forget

What I'm about to write is probably sacrilegious in 21st century America. I'm wondering why we honor veterans of today's army with the same - if not greater - fervor than we honor veterans of earlier armies. The difference is in how these veterans came to serve in the military. Before 1973 just about everyone was eligible for the draft. True, some were able to evade the draft, but, in general, most of the people with whom I grew up knew that there was a chance of their being drafted; earlier generations knew that they could be conscripted. When I was a kid, all of my male cousins were drafted into WWII and the windows of several homes displayed the fact that a Gold Star Mother lived there; she had lost a son who in all likelihood had been drafted into the military.

But today's All-Volunteer military is just that. People willingly serve in the military. It is the job they have chosen. Yes, some may have had little choice if they wanted a job, but they were not forced to serve. Other than the degree of danger, do soldiers provide more of a public service than firemen, policemen, teachers, doctors or anyone else who just does his or her job as well as they can? I don't think so. Yet, today you may go to a parade which honors the military; you'll read an op-ed or hear a pundit praise the servicemen and servicewomen. When, except when a catastrophe occurs, will you hear or see anything about the good job the guy down the street - the doctor, teacher, fireman, etc. - has done?

A Better Way To Acknowledge Armistice Day

Yes, I know we now refer to November 11 as Veterans Day, but I prefer Armistice Day, which focuses more on avoiding war than the term "Veterans Day". I agree with Daniel Bendetson that we should acknowledge the importance of this day in a more forthright manner: a period of silence that we share as a group.

Bendetson is just a kid but he is starting out well.

How Soon We Forget

Image via Wikipedia

Stephen Walt doesn't want us to forget just how bad a president George W. Bush was. True, Mr. Obama has fallen far short of my expectations, but he's still way ahead of W. Read Walt's list and see for yourself.

It's hard to believe....

but some Afghan females are so fed up with their lives that they are committing suicide. Okay, that's tough to read but it is the way many of them are killing themselves that is really bad: they burn themselves. Of all the injuries people incur, burns may be the most painful. Yet, the lives of Afghan females can be so bad that fire is the only way they have of doing the deed.

This article in the NY Times is not easy to read. I used the word 'female' in the preceding paragraph because many of the victims are really not old enough to be considered women. Some are married as young as 12 years of age. In Afghanistan women really get the short end of the stick. Basically, they are stuck being slaves not only to their husbands but to the husband's family as well.

Will our occupation of the country change the lives of women there? Should it?

A Very Interesting Idea

It may be that Charles Ferguson, a man of many talents, has hit upon a very good idea for this country. Like many really good ideas, it is quite simple - Obama should hire the best persons in the world for his economic team. 

Economic talent is resident all over the world and some of these people did not succumb to the Great Recession. Most of the people in this country who were warning us of the coming problem were also not American. Ferguson argues that most American economists are obligated to the industries they are supposed to oversee. So what can we expect from these people? He makes a strong point. Is it not a global economy? It's another reason to dump Tim.

Now What?

Foreign Policy has ten ideas as to what Obama can do to regain his mojo. The ideas come from conservatives as well as liberals. The most surprising article espouses a major cut of the defense budget. The major cut is not what surprises me as I think this would also benefit the economy considerably. What surpirses me is that the article was written by Christopher Preble, the director (no less) of foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute of all places.

Some other interesting ideas:

• Cut payroll taxes for both employee and employer.
• Mandate that fleet vehicles use natural gas.
• Have both the military and the state department deal with Pakistan, India and Afghanistan; now they each have a group that deals with India and another that deals with Pakistan.
• Call for a Geneva Convention to deal with the issue of terrorists.

Not bad.

And Then There's the Issue of Pre-Sales

In September I received a telephone call from Paychex, a national vendor of payroll services. As we were not happy with our current vendor, I consented to their scheduling an appointment with us for a week later. The day of the appointment came and went without a word from Paychex despite my having called them when it became obvious that they were not going to keep the appointment. I have yet to hear from the company apologizing for missing the appointment.

Since our dissatisfaction with our current payroll services vendor continued and some of us felt like playing CYA, I contacted Paychex via their web site. It took over a week for a representative to call me. I was out when he called. I'm waiting once more for him to return my call. What are the odds he will? More importantly, what are the odds I'll consent to give him the opportunity to make a sale?

The Poor Customer Service Continues

It's time to re-order my prescription. Although I did not want to, I did re-order from drugstore.com; it was just easier or so I thought. The problems I had mentioned back in August have spread to drugstore.com itself.

I could make no progress with the web site so I telephoned the help line where I was connected to my friends at BioScrip. The fact that I was "first in queue with a wait time of less than one minute" turned into a four minute wait. Surprise! The BioScrip person I spoke to actually knew what she was doing and my order was filled with a few minutes. She was honest and acknowledged that three months after taking on drugstore.com as a customer BioScrip has problems. However, in this case I'd say the culprit was drugstore.com as its web site could not do the job.

Fallon Community Health Plan, our health insurer, provided another example of crappy customer service this week. On Monday I called with a question about a problem one of our employees was having with her policy. Despite the recorded voice stating it would respond as soon as possible, there was no response on Monday. And the same thing happened on Tuesday and Wednesday, my calls went unanswered. On Thursday the Fallon person was picking up her phone calls. We discussed the issue and she asked me to e-mail my concerns to her.

The response to my e-mail came later that day, as promised. Unfortunately, it was in the form of an encrypted e-mail. To read the e-mail, I had to supply my e-mail address and a password. Since I had never used this system and there was no way to register, I could not convince the e-mail to actually show itself in a way that I could understand. I sent an e-mail to my contact at Fallon explaining my problem.

On Friday morning I called and met the same "I'll call you back message". Later that morning I called the main number since I had not received a response. I was transferred to Member Grievances, which I would have thought would be populated with empathetic people. That assumption was smashed when a robot asked me to enter 1 or 2 or 3 for various options. What was Fallon thinking when they assigned a robot as the first person someone who had problems would "talk" with?

The supervisor of my contact could not be found. The president of Fallon was in a meeting. The person who might be able to handle my situation was on the 5th floor and the member grievance person, who was on the 9th floor, would have to walk to the 5th floor to ask that person to call me. Four hours later I had not eceived a call from Fallon.

Who pays the salaries of the Fallon president and his staff?

Do you think that maybe there might be a problem in this country in our ability to provide adequate customer service to the people paying the bills?

A great photo

from today's Boston Globe. Who knows if it's male or female? The zoo doesn't yet because the baby is being held too close by the mother.

Charles in Charge

The vote is in and Charles Oliver Cipollini has won the seat for Governor's Council from my district. He received 1,236 more votes than his opponent, Oliver Cipollini, his brother. The brothers began this contest as friends and remain so.