Torture?

Most people would consider electric shock treatment as torture, but the parents of students at the Judge Rotenberg Educational Center do not. You can understand why because the parents feel that the treatment their kids are receiving at the Center is the first time that the kids have been under control. I've written before about the Center and each time I've wondered what I would do if my child behaved the way most of the Center students have before going to the Center.

I write today because, once more, the Center is in the news; this time for its lobbying efforts last year. The Center spent $100,000 in its efforts to kill a bill that it felt would ban the treatment they feature. Since the Center's revenue is about $50,000,000, $100,000 is not a lot of money. Yet, the Boston Globe discusses the lobbying in a major article.

Perhaps, what really makes the case against the Center's treatment is that it is the only school in the U.S that uses electric shock therapy as a behavior modification technique. The following is a sound objection to the practice: “If it was so good, everybody else would be doing it,’’ said Barbara Trader, executive director of TASH, a disabled rights group in Washington.

At What Risk?

That's the title of the latest report from the Commission on Wartime Contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan. The table of contents below summarizes what the Commission sees as the major problems for what has clearly resulted in the waste of billions and billions of our money:

• Contractors have become the default option
• Agencies do not treat contingency contracting as a core function.
• Interagency organizational structures do not support contingency operations.
• Policies and practices hamper contingency competition
• Enforcement policies and controls fail to ensure contractor accountability

Wishful Thinking

The Nieman Watchdog usually has very sound, realistic articles. But this one from Barry Sussman is just whistling Dixie. Sussman argues that because the polls show that Americans are, by and large, opposed to the war in Afghanistan we will mimic Egypt and have a "Facebook revolution" to bring our troops home now.

I agree with him that the American public had a lot to do with ending the Vietnam War. But the opposition was more than someone telling a pollster he was opposed to the war. People actually demonstrated. People marched. People ran for office on an anti-war platform. That is not happening here. In our recent elections we heard almost nothing about our militarism. Today's headlines are filled with the rantings of the deficit nutters or the attempts to make the average Joe pay the price of saving our states financially. War? People dying? People wounded? You can count the news about these issues on one hand.

It was the draft that drove the people of this country to get us out of Vietnam. It was not the polls. A professional army does have some advantages. The big disadvantage it has is that it makes us more likely to get involved in stupid wars.

Little has changed for US

That's what Tim Geithner apparently thinks. Despite the experience of the Great Recession and our failure to rein in the companies largely responsible for it, Tim thinks that "Now, financial firms are different because of the risk, but you can contain that through regulation.” I guess Tim thinks we've actually made some serious changes in our regulatory system that will prevent our having to bail out the financial industry when it crashes again.

This is the guy Obama thinks can restore our economy to a level where unemployment is less than 5%, the tax system is fairer, the deficit is shrinking and - maybe not the good times but - reasonable times are back again?

Am I in Canada?

I've asked myself that question more than once over the past couple of days. I moved from Martha's Vineyard to Bloomfield, Ct on Wednesday. That's where I am today. So, what's this thing with Canada? There are a couple of reasons for my being unsure as to where I am.

First of all, the last move we made from a place where we lived in our own house for many years was in 1994 when we moved from Wellesley to Ottawa. This move is also a move away from a house of many years and memories. I think the idea of living in our house is more powerful for me than I thought. In Canada we lived in an apartment; here in Bloomfield my home is also an apartment. In both cases the apartment was nice, but we were tenants, subject to the tastes and whims of someone else. Don't get me wrong! We enjoyed our time in Ottawa immensely and did have reasonable and non-intrusive landlords. But it was not the same as our house in Wellesley. Obviously, my stay here in Bloomfield will not be the same as my stay on Martha's Vineyard. It may be better, it may be worse. It will not be the same. C'est la vie.

Clearly, the idea of moving to a foreign country should have more stress than moving to another state. But, this move has also been stressful. The Vineyard is a truly unique place. It is part of the U.S., yes. But, mainland America it is not. Although I have spent the bulk of my lifetime on the mainland, I have lived the past nine years on an island, visiting the mainland occasionally. So, part of my thinking is probably due to my recognition of how different the mainland is when compared to the Vineyard so that I feel that I am moving to a foreign country once more.

Do I want to be in Canada now? No. Do I want to be on the Vineyard today? No. I made a decision many months ago that moving to a continuing care retirement community near my daughter was the right move for me at this point in my life. Now I just have to do the "job" I know I can do.

McChrystal Redux?

Rolling Stone has another blockbuster about a general in our 21st century all-volunteer army. This time it's Lt. Gen. William Caldwell, who is in charge of training the Afghan troops so that they can take over when we leave (if we ever do). Basically, Caldwell directed a psy-ops group that was supposed to work on our enemies to work on us. The job of the group according to Caldwell was to convince visiting dignitaries, such as senators and congressmen, to give Caldwell and his forces more money and support. Essentially, Caldwell wanted the group to use propaganda on their fellow Americans, something that has been prohibited for years and years. Fortunately, the group rebelled.

Where does truth lie?

Jonathan Weil of Bloomberg believes it lies with the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) when comparing the OCC's opinion of Citicorp's finances to Citicorp's opinion.

On February 14, 2008 the OCC sent Citi a letter stating that the bank's internal controls were not very good and the bank's valuation of subprime mortgages could use some work. Citi's annual report was issued a week later and, surprise, no mention was made of the OCC's concerns, everything was okay. Yet, before 2008 ended, Citi had to borrow $45 billion from us. Did Citi's annual report conform to reality?

The Next Act

Yesterday was the second time I retired. In 2002 I left the software business and settled here on Martha's Vineyard with my wife. After four years of retirement, much of which was spent volunteering, I spotted an ad for a Finance Director for a non-profit here on the Vineyard. I thought that maybe it might be fun to get paid for what I was doing gratis. So in October 2006 I started with Island Elderly Housing, the largest affordable housing provider on the Vineyard. It was a good decision. I enjoyed myself and helped the organization become more professional and better known.

But, life does intervene, especially when it looks like things are going your way. Things happened in my private life and I decided that I would prefer to live on the mainland closer to family. So, this is what I will be doing next week. Mirabile dictu, I was able to sell my house after only six months, which is rather unusual here at this moment in time. I will be moving to a continuing care retirement community in Connecticut.

Now, I have a small dilemma. Do I change the name of this blog? I don't think I will. The Vineyard does get into the marrow of your bones when you live here year-round for nine years. Of course, I will never be a native, I'll always be a "wash ashore", but, strange to say (at least to me and I'm sure to my wife and kids) I have converted and consider myself, first and foremost, a Vineyarder. The Vineyard is a strange place; different people move here. Some are really different in, to me, a sad, odd way, some are different in the same way I am. This past week has been one of surprises as I have attended a couple of surprise parties for me and that has seldom happened anywhere I have lived. The Vineyard does do good by its people.

Arriverderci, MV!

Trying to stir up the troops

The troops being us, the population of the U.S. Jim McGovern, Democrat from Massachusetts, and Walter Jones, Republican from North Carolina, have an impassioned op-ed in today's Washington Post making the argument that we should get out of Afghanistan now. It's not the first time they've made the argument. The way this country is going it won't be the last time.

When was the last time you talked about Afghanistan? Maybe when you read an article about the troops living near you have come home or been deployed. How many times did candidates in the recent elections talk about our wars? End of story.

Yes, the economy sucks. But getting out of Afghanistan - and Iraq - would free up tons of money that could be used to help us get out of this mess.

Why not get rid of all taxes?

I can't understand why there is so much inveighing against tax increases. Why don't the ones screaming against tax increases simply cease paying for any government activities?

Getting more revenue is clearly what is needed now just about as much as cost reductions. Retaining the Bush tax cuts was - and will be shown to be - clearly a mistake of no small proportions. Sooner or later, we will have to raise taxes. The sooner we do it, the less of a shock there will be when the time comes. If you want a place to start. how about the GAO High Risk List? A major part of their prescription is cutting back the Pentagon. Hmm, where have I heard that before?

The economy is clearly not out of the woods. Having a laser beam focus on the deficit ignores the fact that 9% of the population is without a job. We still have to work hard to get back to some modicum of prosperity for many more of our fellow Americans.

An Adult Authored This Proposed Bill?

Here's a Place to Cut the Defense Budget

Ballistics Missile Defense schemes have been around for a while now. I'm not sure that any of these schemes have been proven to work. But, that doesn't mean we have stopped spending money on the concept. For example, in September 2009 we decided to revise our approach to the European Phased Adaptive Approach (EPAA). So, for the past sixteen months DOD has been hard at work on the project.

Here's what the GAO says about DOD's efforts thus far:

DOD has initiated multiple simultaneous efforts to implement EPAA but faces three key management challenges—the lack of clear guidance, life-cycle cost estimates, and a fully integrated schedule—which may result in inefficient planning and execution, limited oversight, and increased cost and performance risks.

How much have we spent so far on this boondoggle? Why do Gates and Obama think we need it?

Banks: Paragons of Virtue

Far from it as we know. But it's even worse than I thought. Here are three examples.

• Simon Johnson reports on work done by two academics, Bhagat and Bolton. They studied the executive compensation of 14 TBTF institutions from 2000 to 2008. The results are not pretty. A key finding - “30 times more likely to be involved in a sell trade compared to an open market buy trade” of their own bank’s stock - demonstrates that these CEOs could care less about the long term investor or really about anything but their own greed.

• Louise Story reports on banks essentially stealing money through something called "early-payment default settlements". These settlements came about when banks recognized - or acknowledged - that some of the mortgages they packaged were bad from day 1. They then went back to the issuer who paid the banks a portion of the money they had originally received upon the sale of the mortgage. What did the bank do with this 'refund'? Kept it, of course. Should they have given some of the money to the people who might the mortgage bonds?

• The third example is not about a bank. It's from the Chamber of Commerce. ThinkProgress reports that the Chamber has embarked on a program whereby they create false situations which they try to use to smear their opponents. Here's what ThinkProgress gives as an example:
  

"According to one document prepared by Team Themis, the campaign included an entrapment project. The proposal called for first creating a “false document, perhaps highlighting periodical financial information,” to give to a progressive group opposing the Chamber, and then to subsequently expose the document as a fake to undermine the credibility of the Chamber’s opponents."

Soon the Army will protect us from the possibility of getting a cold

It looks like the defense budget is going to come in at $553 billion, another year of spending more on making us truly safe. I'm really glad that the Army wants to protect us from "pandemic diseases, piracy, human trafficking, rising oceans, national debt, education, cyber warfare, the wars on terrorism and traditional state-to-state threats". We can eliminate NIH, the police, Treasury, DOE and turn the entire government over to DOD.

This is insane. Will our leaders finally put a stop to this?

CFPB Continues Forward Progress

It's the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau that is moving along. They have a web site; it's still in the early stages but it shows promise of being useful to you and me. They've hired a strong chief of enforcement. Elizabeth Warren continues to put things in place.

Good, maybe Great, Customer Service

You wouldn't believe that I'm talking about the federal government, would you? But, I am. The Feds are moving some companies to whom they grant subsidies to a different method of payment. To be eligible for this new method, you have to sign up for the Central Contractor Registration system. I have had a couple of occasions to call Customer Service. Every time I have done so, the service has been what we should always get. There is no inquisition as to the last four digits of your SSN or your birthday or whether you have two heads. Yet, they do verify that you are authorized to be accessing the information they control. And, most importantly, they answer your questions politely as fellow human beings. They know what they are doing and have answered any question promptly, intelligently and without condescension. It's been a pleasure talking with them.

I wonder

Does a moderate Muslim faction really exist? I have been struck over the past ten years by the relative silence in the Muslim world as fanatical Muslims have been wreaking havoc. I can't see that any other major religion would be as accepting of the violence that the fanatics have displayed.

Is it possible that the incipient revolution that seems to be sweeping the Arab world is the result of the average Muslim realizing that his leaders will do or say nothing about the evil that some Muslims are perpetrating?

Who Cares?

The Defense Department has issued a report that shows that it does not matter whether you have cheated the government; you'll still get a contract.

Bernie Sanders and his staff have analyzed this report and have come up with the following for the three largest contractors:

Lockheed Martin. They've cheated us via false invoices, inflated cost and settling criminal charges

Boeing. They've been fined $88.9 million since 1995. Some of the fines have been for providing equipment containing defective gears, which sometimes result in planes falling out of the sky and people dying.

Northrop Grumman has paid $519.8 in fines for overcharging us.

Sanders summary:

Over the three year period from 2007 to 2009, hundreds of contractors were found to have committed fraud in connection with a DOD contract. This apparently did not affect DOD’s contracting behavior, however. During that same three year period, DOD awarded $285 BILLION in contracts to the same companies!

I thought it was a porn site

The Girl Store claims it is raising money to keep young girls from sex slavery. Maybe they are but the introductory video is unbelievable and very far from their supposedly laudable efforts. Maybe it goes over well in India, but I, an old, 20th century American male, found it disgusting.

Rising Food Prices Stoke Revolutions

That's the argument put forth by Kevin Hall of the McClatchy Newspapers. Food prices probably have had an influence on the unrest in Egypt; they've also affected events in Jordan, Algeria and Tunisia. Even the rising giants, India and China, seem to be concerned about food prices. The FAO recorded peak prices in its index of basic food prices of December. The UN has issued warnings about the issue.

The weather has been a factor in the rising prices. More people are leaving the developing world and want what developed nations have, including food. It's also likely that the Fed's quantitative easing policy has had an effect. The policy tends to raise asset prices, no matter what kind of assets we're talking about, including food stocks. Since Bernanke announced the policy in August, prices of basic food have increased quite a bit: corn 53%, soybeans 37%, wheat 24%.