Saturday, March 31, 2012

More Fallout from the War on Drugs

The Joint Chief of Staff, Gen. Martin Dempsey, thinks that the drug networks in Latin America have to be eliminated as they could become an avenue for terrorists to ship bombs and other weapons into the U.S. through the networks.  Naturally, we will help the Latin American countries eliminate the networks as we have been doing for quite a while now with no major effect at all.

Why do the networks exist?  I think it's obvious that our zeal to control people's use of drugs is the raison d'etre for the networks that Dempsey is worried about.


Pushing the Envelope

Groupon had a number of accounting problems leading up to its IPO.  And now that it's public the problems persist. Ernst & Young would not give them a clean bill of health because the company wasn't reserving enough money for customer refunds.  In their fourth quarter Groupon reserved $42,300,000 for refunds.  Ernst & Young thought $64,900,000 was a better number.  That's just about 50% more than Groupon thought justified.  Sales were also cut from $507,000,000 to $492,000,000.  Furthermore, Ernst felt that Groupon needs help in closing its books.

When will the company hire a competent CFO?

Friday, March 30, 2012

You Won't Believe This Kid Is 2 Years Old

Challenging the NDAA

Chris Hedges and others are challenging the National Defense Authorization Act in court. The challenge is based on what is seen as loose definitions of such terms as "associated forces", "supporter of terrorism", "substantial support".  It's possible, for example, that one could define a supporter of terrorism as peaceful activists, authors, academics and even journalists interviewing members of radical groups. Basically, this law allows the military to arrest just about anybody anywhere without cause.

Thursday, March 29, 2012

Eat eggs. Be healthy



The eggs pictured above are known as "virgin boy eggs" in Dongyang, China.  The name is derived from the fact that the eggs are soaked and cooked in the urine of young boys, preferably under 10. The cooks 'collect' the urine from school toilets.  One resident who bought 20 eggs from a street vendor claimed "By eating these eggs, we will not have any pain in our waists, legs and joints. Also, you will have more energy when you work."

FRB Dallas says no to 'Too Big To Fail'

Here's what the annual report of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas has to say about our inability to face up to the problems arising from the very idea of applying life-saving maneuvers to dying mega-banks:
"As a nation, we face a distinct choice. We can perpetuate TBTF, with its inequities and dangers, or we can end it. Eliminating TBTF won’t be easy, but the vitality of our capitalist system and the long-term prosperity it produces hang in the balance."
The report reminds us that it was people, not institutions, that were responsible for The Great Recession.  Another needed reminder: the mega-banks did fail, the government saved them.

The report doesn't simply list a catalogue of reasons for the failure.  It advocates higher capital requirements, but only for the behemoths. The authors seek a "financial system composed of more banks—numerous enough to ensure competition but none of them big enough to put the overall economy in jeopardy—(that) will give the United States a better chance of navigating through future financial potholes, restoring our nation’s faith in market capitalism" Such a system means breaking up the huge banks, most of which still are over-burdened with toxic assets.  And this is not something we should spend years debating. The time is now.

Wednesday, March 28, 2012

My kid must go to college

ETS, the firm responsible for the SATs,  has decided that they need to better monitor those who take the test.  The decision to upgrade their entrance process was made yesterday and consists primarily of better photo id procedures.  ETS decided to make these changes because of the arrest of students on Long Island who developed a business whereby smarter students took tests for those who don't test well.

I don't doubt that cheating on tests has gone on for just about forever.  What gets me is the money involved here.  As much as $3,500 changed hands for each test taken by an impostor.  The question is where would a typical teenager get this much money.  The only plausible answer is Mom and Dad. Doesn't it make sense in a society where thousands are spent trying to get 3- and4-year-olds into the right pre-school?

Notice the left foot


Courtesy of McClatchy

Tuesday, March 27, 2012

Future Head of World Bank Performs

Jim Yong Kim, president of Dartmouth and nominee to head the World Bank, is not afraid to perform for his students. He appears about half-way into this video.

Honoring Your Father


The painting above was smuggled into the Glenbow Museum in Calgary.It was painted by Gerald Dwight Byron, who died 50 years ago.  Someone, likely Mr. Byron's son, simply walked into the museum during business hours and hung the painting.  He also included a note:
“As a child 50 years ago I recall my father Gerald Dwight Byron with pride would frequently state that his art would be in a museum one day. With regret he passed away that same year. Well today I which (sic) to fulfil my fathers (sic) dreams.”
“I have been hesitant with a conscience. My actions might be selfish and irresponsible but Im (sic) being torn apart. What takes precedent (sic), my moral obligations to my parents or museum policy. . . . Please do not disrupt a joyous occasion. I will contact you in one week.”
The museum will return the painting to the 'donor'.

Monday, March 26, 2012

Has DSK become a whipping boy?

Dominique Strauss-Kahn was served with preliminary charges that he was involved in a prostitution ring.  On Wednesday in New York the civil trial relative to his hotel stay begins. 

Be glad you don't have three names.

The rope gets smaller as our freedoms diminish

It looks as though Mitchell Palmer is one of Attorney General Holder's heroes.  Palmer was the AG who was determined to rid this country of anarchists (as he defined them) in the early 1920s.  History does not look favorably on Palmer's efforts, which, like those of McCarthy in the 1950s, identified those who thought differently as enemies of the state who should be silenced.

Attorney General Holder has decided that the government can keep private information on American citizens for up to five years whether or not that citizen is suspected of being a terrorist. Holder felt that the 180 day period in the original guidelines of the National Counterterrorism Center were inadequate as the number of American citizens practicing terrorism has increase geometrically.  And we must be protected by those by who know what is best for us.

Another Industry That Has Changed

Greg Smith's op-ed re his leaving Goldman Sachs will likely prompt similar ones.  Wendell Potter, a former PR boss at Humana and Cigna, told the same story as Smith, but Potter told it sooner. He told it before the Senate in 2009 and in a book, Deadly Spin, also in 2009. 

Potter came to the same conclusion as Smith: the customer is only a revenue source.  The goal of the company is to make big bucks mainly for the bosses and, sometimes, for the stockholders. 

Bacevich One More Time

Andrew Bacevich should be one of the people directing the future of this country. I've posted many articles based on Bacevich's work. Here are some excerpts from his latest talk with Bill Moyers.
We are not, the people are not engaged in any serious way. The people are not asked to sacrifice. The people are asked only to applaud when we are told after the fact that an attack has succeeded. For example, the raid into Pakistan that killed Osama bin Laden.
And I would applaud, and do applaud, the raid that killed Osama bin Laden. But I also have this question to ask. And that is, what is the political objective of a strategy of targeted assassination? How many people do we think we're going to kill? How long are we going to kill people in Yemen or in Somalia or in Pakistan before we get to some point where we can say, “Yes, now our political purposes have been achieved, and therefore the war can end, that Plan C will have run its course?” And my fear is that we'll never, we'll never run out of targets. And that describes where we are.

permanent, open-ended war cannot be good for the country. Permanent, open-ended war, in essence, is an abdication of strategic thought. Are we so unimaginative, are we so wedded to the reliance on military means, that we cannot conceive of any way to reconcile our differences with groups, nations, in the Islamic world, and therefore bring this conflict to an end? And there may be some people who would answer, “No, there is no way.” Well, I-- woe betide our nation, if indeed there is no alternative but endless war.

That there are people out there who are plotting. Whose minds cannot be changed. And we do need to identify them and do whatever is necessary to ensure that they cannot harm us. But, those groups, those individuals exist within a milieu, a political context, a culture.
And it seems to me that the strategic imperative is to understand that milieu, to understand the grievances that ultimately gave rise to this animosity expressing itself in terrorist activity. And as a realist, and somebody who's not given to optimism, it seems to me that there are indications that we can engage or have some hope in positive change.

I think the harder, deeper problem is the retarded development of nations in the Arab world. Meaning that the people have been denied opportunity. They've been denied opportunities to exercise freedom. But I think that we have to concede that an element of that harder, deeper problem is the West's involvement and presence in the Arab world, or more broadly, the Islamic world.
That presence, those activities, have never been motivated by British concern, French concern, or American concern, about the well-being of the people who live there. That presence has been motivated by imperial ambition, by desire to have access to oil, by geopolitical calculations relative to the Soviet Union back in Cold War days.
We have made it harder. We have made it deeper. And I think the beginning of wisdom, in terms of finding a way out, is to acknowledge that we have contributed to the difficulties we face.

The problem is that prior to 9/11, we were largely ignorant of the historical record. We have been a prisoner of a particular narrative of the 20th century that has focused on a series of events, World War I, followed by World War II, followed by the Cold War. In that narrative, the Islamic world has never been anywhere except on the periphery.

he never imagined that he would live in a world in which the biggest threat to the United States of America was Iran. I mean, threats used to be powers that somehow more or less were our equivalent. Countries that had big armies. Countries that possessed empires. Countries that had thousands of nuclear weapons. Countries that possessed the ability to destroy us in a heartbeat.
Well, Iran can't do any of those things. Iran doesn't possess any of those things. So whatever threat Iran poses is very, very limited. And certainly does not constitute any kind of a justification for yet another experiment with preventive war.

I mean, this is-- we don't live in a perfect world. In a better world, we would eliminate nuclear weapons. Well, we're the ones who invented them, we're the ones who used them, we're the ones who once defined power in terms of the size of your nuclear arsenal. So, it seems unlikely to me that we are going to lead the way to the elimination of nuclear weapons. So we're going to have to live with the snake under the bed. And I believe it's better to live with that snake under the bed than to undertake another war.

But, you know, again, when you look at it from an Iranian perspective, and I have to emphasize, it's always important in these matters to look at things from your adversary's perspective, they do have serious security threats. They have every reason to view the United States of America as hostile.

We should now appreciate the extent to which any war is a roll of the dice. That anyone who pretends to predict how a war is going to play out is-- doesn't know what they're talking about. So yes, this would be a big roll of the dice, maybe more than most. Because you and I don't know what intelligence is available about Iranian nuclear sites. I'm not sure the extent to which the intelligence community actually is confident in their intelligence.

You know, I think honesty requires us to say that were we Israeli Jews, we might evaluate us this threat somewhat differently. I'm not an Israeli Jew, I'm an American. And I believe that the basis for deciding when and where the United States rolls the dice to go to war needs to be informed above all by a calculation of what serves the interest of the American people.

Israel is in a circumstance right now where I think it perceives itself and perhaps accurately perceives itself as increasingly isolated in the world stage. Isolated, and therefore evermore dependent upon the United States as patron, partner, supporter, source of security assistance, a couple billion dollars per year.

I mean, we need to be able to see the world and ourselves and the consequences of our actions in very real terms. Nowhere more so than when it comes to the exercise of military power.

It means that history has moved on. It means that the 21st century is in all likelihood, to the extent that we can foresee the future, and we must all acknowledge that our capacity to do so is very limited, but to the extent that we think we can glimpse the future, the 21st century is going to be a multipolar order. There are going to be some number, bigger than one, some number of powers who together will either create order or replicate the catastrophes that occurred in the first half of the 20th century, when the last multipolar order collapsed.

Well, I think it does. We began the 21st century with a balanced budget. For the past few years now, we've had a trillion dollar deficit. We began the 21st century, with a military that we were not only persuaded was the best in the world, but with a military that we were certain could win any fight quickly, achieve victory.
We've been engaged in war for more than a decade now and we have no victories that we can claim. We began the decade with an economy that seemed to be cooking on all cylinders. And that for the past several years now has been in deep recession with large numbers of Americans, we're still what, over 8 percent unemployment without work, millions losing their homes. What does this signify? What do these bits of evidence signify? Well, they signify something. And what they signify is not that the American century continues or that chance about American exceptionalism constitute the basis for sound policy.

That if there was an American century, it's over. That the combination of the failure of President George W. Bush's Freedom Agenda and the onset of the Great Recession, as we call it, has opened up a new era. And we need both to contemplate on the significance of the era past, and to begin to think about the uncharted territory in which we are headed.



Thursday, March 22, 2012

Lessons Learned


Lesson #1:  The United States lost. 
Lesson #2: It's not that hard to hijack the United States into a war. 
Lesson #3: The United States gets in big trouble when the "marketplace of ideas" breaks down and when the public and our leadership do not have an open debate about what to do.
Lesson #4: The secularism and middle-class character of Iraqi society was overrated. 
Lesson #5: Don't listen to ambitious exiles.
Lesson #6: It's very hard to improvise an occupation.
Lesson #7:  Don't be surprised when adversaries act to defend their own interests, and in ways we won't like.   
Lesson #8: Counterinsurgency warfare is ugly and inevitably leads to war crimes, atrocities, or other forms of abuse.
Lesson #9: Better "planning" may not be the answer.
Lesson #10: Rethink U.S. grand strategy, not just tactics or methods.

It sounds to me that we'll 'learn' the same lessons with Afghanistan.

Wasting money

I wonder why the taxpayers of Maricopa County continue to elect Mr. Arpaio as their Sheriff.  He's been accused of "unconstitutional policing" of the Latino community.  How much money Arpaio has spent in that crusade has not yet been counted.  How much money he spent investigating Obama's birth certificate has not been counted.  Now he wants others to adopt his wasteful ways. He has asked the Selective Service Administration to check Obama's Selective Service registration.

Wednesday, March 21, 2012

Premature Announcement?

The EPA has begin investigating the fracking situation in Pennsylvania.  They began with the town of Dimock, which has been attracting attention re fracking since 2009.  The EPA planned to study the water situation in 60 homes.  After receiving lab results for 11 of these homes, the EPA decided to announce these results, which did not present a health concern.  Why they made this announcement with less than 80% of the results still to be analyzed is an interesting question.

The EPA has provided more information to many of the home owners.  It appears that there are a number of nasty things in the water of Dimock, but these nasty things have not yet been definitively explained.

It's not over

We can only focus on one war at a time.  A few years ago Iraq was the focal point, today it's Afghanistan.  Unfortunately, the opposition does not need to focus on more than one theater of war. 



On Monday there were attacks across Iraq; 43 were killed and more than 100 wounded. There was little discrimination in the attacks: mosques, pilgrims, Foreign Ministry, wealthy neighborhoods; it made no difference.

The attacks were intended to make a point with the Arab leaders who will be gathering in Baghdad next week.

Monday, March 19, 2012

There are report cards for everything

The Center for Public Integrity, Global Integrity and PRI have published a report card on the risk of corruption in each of the fifty states. They evaluated a state's 'integrity' by looking at the strength or weakness of the laws, policies and procedures designed to assure transparency and accountability in state government.They looked at a variety of things, including public access to information, political financing, executive accountability, legislative accountability, judicial accountability, state budget processes, civil service management, procurement, internal auditing, lobbying disclosure, pension fund management, ethics enforcement, insurance commissions, and redistricting.

They didn't like what they saw.  "Open records laws with hundreds of exemptions.  Crucial budgeting decisions made behind closed doors by a handful of power brokers. “Citizen” lawmakers voting on bills that would benefit them directly. Scores of legislators turning into lobbyists seemingly overnight. Disclosure laws without much disclosure. Ethics panels that haven’t met in years."

No state received an 'A', five got a B, 18 C and 19 D. 8 states flunked.

I particularly liked the report of "A West Virginia governor (who) borrowed a car from his local dealership to take it for a “test drive.” He kept the car for four years, during which the dealership won millions in state contracts."


Saturday, March 17, 2012

Brave New World

It's certainly moving in that direction.  The latest is the 'Ashley treatment'.  It's been around for five years, but I just heard of it.  (Get to the point. What is it?)

The treatment is designed to limit the growth of severely disabled kids. And by 'limit' I mean keeping them essentially as infants for the rest of their lives.  These kids will not walk, talk, grow.  They will always be kids.  But if they will never talk, never become even a kid, remain always an infant, can we ever consider them as kids?

Clearly, we will never know just how much the parents and the kids suffered before the decision was made to prevent the kids' growth.  There are not a lot of these cases, less than a couple of hundred in the world. The primary element in the therapy is hormonal.  Surgery is also usually involved as well. 

Need I say that disability groups oppose the therapy?  I find the therapy extreme, but I've been lucky thus far in that my kids have been normal.  I also find it interesting that some of these children were adopted and, I believe, had their condition at the time of adoption.  Why would these parents have adopted the kids?  Did they have a faith in medicine and in their abilities that led them to believe they could ameliorate the problem?

Friday, March 16, 2012

Opening the fraud floodgates

That's what the JOBS (Jump-start Our Business Start-ups) Act will do: make it easier for people to commit fraud.  Consider the following aspects of this proposed law:
  • Now underwriters must be quiet while an IPO is ongoing. Under the JOBS bill, the underwriters could publish 'research' during the IPO. Furthermore, the company would not have any responsibility as to the underwriter's statements.
  • Anyone can use the web to propose an investment idea and collect money for it. If you raise less than $1,000,000, no financial statements need be posted.
  • Some public companies would be able to stop distributing financial information to its shareholders.
  • Companies going public would not need to have effective and audited internal controls until their market value was $700,000,000 or revenue was $1 billion.
  • Audited statements would not be needed.
What planet are our legislators living on?

A bribe?

One benefit Netanyahu got from his visit with Obama was more weapons, as long as Israel holds off attacking Iran until 2013, which, as you and Mr. Obama know, is after our elections. The weapons will include some advanced types such as bunker-busting bombs and long-range refueling planes.

You may know that about half of our military aid goes to Israel; its share amounts to $3 billion a year. Israel gets to do things with this money that most nations cannot. For example, they get the $3 billion in a form that it can be deposited into an interest-bearing account with the Federal Reserve Bank. The interest, collected by Israel on its military aid balance, is used to pay down debt from earlier Israeli non-guaranteed loans from the United States. Furthermore, about 25 percent of the money can be used to buy arms from Israeli companies; Israel is unique in having that privilege.

Thursday, March 15, 2012

Staying out of jail

Every country has at least one weird law related to sex.  In Morocco rapists can avoid jail if they marry the person they raped.  The one raped has no say in the matter.  If a judge rules that the raper is entitled to avoid jail, then attacker and victim become one.

At least one victim did not want to marry her attacker. She decided her only way out was to commit suicide.  So, she ate rat poison.  She was 16 years old, he was 26.

Wednesday, March 14, 2012

More sloppy recordkeeping by a bank

JPMorgan Chase & Co. is the subject of a series in the American Banker. The first article in the series seems to show that the bank's administrative failures with mortgages extended to credit card debt.  The problem may have begun with a failure of computer systems to communicate.  But it soon escalated to another instance of management valuing money more than truth and accuracy.  People signing documents made up their titles in an attempt to make their signatures more palatable.  Essential information, such as proof of judgment, was often missing. And, as with mortgages, how much was really owed was problematic.

How much of this did Jamie Dimon know?

The Client as Muppet

The very notion of serving the client is no longer one of the driving forces at Goldman Sachs, or so says Greg Smith, who resigned as an executive director at Goldman today. His resignation is quite public, as it is a leading op-ed in today's NY Times. 

This article will be widely quoted and referenced.  If Smith is correct - and I get the feeling he is telling things as they are - his article is fodder for those who do not have positive feelings for Wall Street.

Smith is not shy about blaming Blankfein and Cohn for what Smith sees as a fatal change in culture.  Smith writes,
"Leadership used to be about ideas, setting an example and doing the right thing. Today, if you make enough money for the firm (and are not currently an ax murderer) you will be promoted into a position of influence."
In his view, Goldman has lost sight of the client, which loss will eventually bring the firm down. Smith believes that "Goldman Sachs today has become too much about shortcuts and not enough about achievement."

Tuesday, March 13, 2012

Charging the Nameless

The Inspector General for HUD has just released a series of reports documenting problems with the foreclosure processes of five big lenders - Citicorp, JP Morgan, BofA, Welles Fargo and Ally.  The IG said, “I believe the reports we just released will leave the reader asking one question — how could so many people have participated in this misconduct? The answer — simple greed.”  Yet, who is being charged for these crimes?

Many of the charges have become common such as invented titles for those signing documents and documents which were checked for format and spelling errors, not for facts.  Not prosecuting the higher-ups responsible for these crimes has also become quite common.

Monday, March 12, 2012

Ellsberg and the Espionage Act

In 1971 Daniel Ellsberg was charged under the Espionage Act of 1917 with leaking the Pentagon Papers.  The case was dismissed on grounds of government misconduct.  Now 41 years later Ellsberg is speaking out with regard to the same charge filed against Bradley Manning, the alleged leaker of WikiLeaks.  One difference between the two cases is that Ellsberg was accused of leaking top secret documents, whereas Manning is accused of leaking secret documents.  I've written about the effect that Obama's pushing of the act will have on the people's right to know what its government is doing.  But you really should hear from Ellsberg:
  • “Unauthorized disclosures are the lifeblood of the republic,” Ellsberg said. “You cannot have a meaningful democracy where the public only has authorized disclosures from the government. If they [officials] get control, if they can prosecute anybody who violates that, you are kidding yourself if you think you have any kind of democratic control over foreign policy, national security and homeland security. We don’t have a democracy now in foreign affairs and national security. We have a monarchy tempered by leaks. Cut off the leaks and we don’t even have that.”
  • “Had I or one of the scores of other officials who had the same high-level information acted then on our oath of office—which was not an oath to obey the president, nor to keep the secret that he was violating his own sworn obligations, but solely an oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States—that terrible war [the Vietnam War] might well have been averted altogether,” Ellsberg said. “But to hope to have that effect, we would have needed to disclose the documents when they were current, before the escalation—not five or seven, or even two years after the fateful commitments had been made.
  • “Don’t do what I did,” he cautioned. “Don’t wait until a new war has started in Iran, until more bombs have fallen in Afghanistan, in Pakistan, Libya, Iraq or Yemen. Don’t wait until thousands more have died before you go to the press and to Congress to tell the truth with documents that reveal lies or crimes or internal projections of costs and dangers. Don’t wait 40 years for it to be declassified, or seven years as I did for you or someone else to leak it.”

Citicorp celebrates 200 years

As a counter to Citi's timeline of its history, Ryan Chittum goes back to 1905 in his listing of untoward actions by Citicorp and its predecessors. Here is Chittum's view of Citicorp's last forty months:
— December 2008: Citi agrees to repurchase $7 billion in auction-rate securities it sold with the SEC for telling investors they were safe when it knew they were deteriorating. The SEC makes Citi promise not to break the law it made Citi promise not to break again back in 2001, 2005, and 2006
— February 2009: The U.S. government announces its third Citi bailout in four months, and is now the largest shareholder in Citigroup, controlling more than a third of its shares
— August 2009: Citi argues that its star energy trader should be exempted from bailout compensation restrictions and given a $100 million bonus
— 2010: Citi agrees to pay $75 million to settle SEC charges over misleading its investors at the start of the financial crisis about its subprime exposure, which it understated by $43 billion
— 2011: Citigroup pays $285 million for misleading investors on a toxic CDO deal one of its traders called “dogshit” and “possibly the best SHORT ever”
— 2012: Citigroup agrees to pay $2.2 billion to pay its portion of a settlement with the banking industry for the massive foreclosure scandal.

Trial by Jury?

It seldom happens with criminal cases in this country, or so asserts Michelle Alexander.  In an article in yesterday's NY Times, she states that "More than 90 percent of criminal cases are never tried before a jury."  If she is correct, we clearly have a problem, as all citizens have a right to a jury trial.  To Alexander's thinking, there is a very real, practical problem in these numbers: If the number of people pleading out to a crime decreases by a reasonable amount, the justice system could come to a crawl.  We'd need a lot more judges and lawyers - and time - to handle this case load.

Sunday, March 11, 2012

Another reason for Afghans to go ape

One of our soldiers stationed in Kandahar province probably snapped.  He killed at least 16 Afghan civilians today; of course, the casualties included women and children. How would you feel if you were an Afghan.  A week or two ago and Americans burned your holy book.  Now, we killed your fellow countrymen.  Will these killings be considered the My Lai of this war?

Saturday, March 10, 2012

Possible Budget Cuts

GAO has issued its 2012 Annual Report. Here is their summary of areas that should be cleaned up.

Duplication, Overlap, or Fragmentation Areas

Missions Areas Identified
Agriculture 1. Protection of Food and Agriculture Centrally coordinated oversight is needed to ensure nine federal agencies effectively and efficiently implement the nation’s fragmented policy to defend the food and agriculture systems against potential terrorist attacks and major disasters.
Defense 2. Electronic Warfare Identifying opportunities to consolidate Department of Defense airborne electronic attack programs could reduce overlap in the department’s multiple efforts to develop new capabilities and improve the department’s return on its multibillion-dollar acquisition investments.
Defense 3. Unmanned Aircraft Systems Ineffective acquisition practices and collaboration efforts in the Department of Defense unmanned aircraft systems portfolio creates overlap and the potential for duplication among a number of current programs and systems.
Defense 4. Counter-Improvised Explosive Device Efforts The Department of Defense continues to risk duplication in its multibillion-dollar counter Improvised Explosive Device efforts because it does not have a comprehensive database of its projects and initiatives.
Defense 5. Defense Language and Culture Training The Department of Defense needs a more integrated approach to reduce fragmentation in training approaches and overlap in the content of training products acquired by the military services and other organizations.
Defense 6. Stabilization, Reconstruction, and Humanitarian Assistance Efforts Improving the Department of Defense’s evaluations of stabilization, reconstruction, and humanitarian assistance efforts, and addressing coordination challenges with the Department of State and the U.S. Agency for International Development, could reduce overlapping efforts and result in the more efficient use of taxpayer dollars.
Economic development 7. Support for Entrepreneurs Overlap and fragmentation among the economic development programs that support entrepreneurial efforts require the Office of Management and Budget and other agencies to better evaluate the programs and explore opportunities for program restructuring, which may include consolidation, within and across agencies.
Economic development 8. Surface Freight Transportation Fragmented federal programs and funding structures are not maximizing the efficient movement of freight.
Energy 9. Department of Energy Contractor Support Costs The Department of Energy should assess whether further opportunities could be taken to streamline support functions, estimated to cost over $5 billion, at its contractor-managed laboratory and nuclear production and testing sites, in light of contractors’ historically fragmented approach to providing these functions.
Energy 10. Nuclear Nonproliferation Comprehensive review needed to address strategic planning limitations and potential fragmentation and overlap concerns among programs combating nuclear smuggling overseas.
General government 11. Personnel Background Investigations The Office of Management and Budget should take action to prevent agencies from making potentially duplicative investments in electronic case management and adjudication systems.
General government 12. Cybersecurity Human Capital Governmentwide initiatives to enhance cybersecurity workforce in the federal government need better structure, planning, guidance, and coordination to reduce duplication.
General government 13. Spectrum Management Enhanced coordination of federal agencies' efforts to manage radio frequency spectrum and an examination of incentive mechanisms to foster more efficient spectrum use may aid regulators' attempts to jointly respond to competing demands for spectrum while identifying valuable spectrum that could be auctioned for commercial use, thereby generating revenues for the U.S. Treasury.
Health 14. Health Research Funding The National Institutes of Health, Department of Defense, and Department of Veterans Affairs can improve sharing of information to help avoid the potential for unnecessary duplication.
Health 15. Military and Veterans Health Care The Departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs need to improve integration across care coordination and case management programs to reduce duplication and better assist servicemembers, veterans, and their families.
Homeland security/Law enforcement 16. Department of Justice Grants The Department of Justice could improve how it targets nearly $3.9 billion to reduce the risk of potential, unnecessary duplication across the more than 11,000 grant awards it makes annually.
Homeland security/Law enforcement 17. Homeland Security Grants The Department of Homeland Security needs better project information and coordination among four overlapping grant programs.
Homeland security/Law enforcement 18. Federal Facility Risk Assessments Agencies are making duplicate payments for facility risk assessments by completing their own assessments, while also paying the Department of Homeland Security for assessments that the department is not performing.
Information technology 19. Information Technology Investment Management The Office of Management and Budget, and the Departments of Defense and Energy need to address potentially duplicative information technology investments to avoid investing in unnecessary systems.
International affairs 20. Overseas Administrative Services U.S. government agencies could lower the administrative cost of their operations overseas by increasing participation in the International Cooperative Administrative Support Services system and by reducing reliance on American officials overseas to provide these services.
International affairs 21. Training to Identify Fraudulent Travel Documents Establishing a formal coordination mechanism could help reduce duplicative activities among seven different entities that are involved in training foreign officials to identify fraudulent travel documents.
Science and the environment 22. Coordination of Space System Organizations Fragmented leadership has led to program challenges and potential duplication in developing multibillion-dollar space systems.
Science and the environment 23. Space Launch Contract Costs Increased collaboration between the Department of Defense and National Aeronautics and Space Administration could reduce launch contracting duplication.
Science and the environment 24. Diesel Emissions Fourteen grant and loan programs at the Department of Energy, Department of Transportation, and the Environmental Protection Agency and three tax expenditures fund activities that have the effect of reducing mobile source diesel emissions; enhanced collaboration and performance measurement could improve these fragmented and overlapping programs.
Science and the environment 25. Environmental Laboratories The Environmental Protection Agency needs to revise its overall approach to managing its 37 laboratories to address potential overlap and fragmentation and more fully leverage its limited resources.
Science and the environment 26. Green Building To evaluate the potential for overlap or fragmentation among federal green building initiatives, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Department of Energy, and the Environmental Protection Agency should lead other federal agencies in collaborating on assessing their investments in more than 90 initiatives to foster green building in the nonfederal sector.
Social services 27. Social Security Benefit Coordination Benefit offsets for related programs help reduce the potential for overlapping payments but pose administrative challenges.
Social services 28. Housing Assistance Examining the benefits and costs of housing programs and tax expenditures that address the same or similar populations or areas, and potentially consolidating them, could help mitigate overlap and fragmentation and decrease costs.
Training, employment, and education 29. Early Learning and Child Care The Departments of Education and Health and Human Services should extend their coordination efforts to other federal agencies with early learning and child care programs to mitigate the effects of program fragmentation, simplify children’s access to these services, collect the data necessary to coordinate operation of these programs, and identify and minimize any unwarranted overlap and potential duplication.
Training, employment, and education 30. Employment for People with Disabilities Better coordination among 50 programs in nine federal agencies that support employment for people with disabilities could help mitigate program fragmentation and overlap, and reduce the potential for duplication or other inefficiencies.
Training, employment, and education 31. Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics Education Strategic planning is needed to better manage overlapping programs across multiple agencies.
Training, employment, and education 32. Financial Literacy Overlap among financial literacy activities makes coordination and clarification of roles and responsibilities essential, and suggests potential benefits of consolidation.

Solid information is needed for solid management

How in the Lord's name can we feel the remotest confidence in the management of the Defense Department?  The latest GAO report on the operation and support of major weapons systems found an unbelievable number of inconsistencies in the reporting by DOD.  Here's an excerpt from the report:
Program offices were inconsistent in (1) the explanatory information they included with the cost estimates; (2) the source of the cost estimate they cited as the basis for the reported costs; (3) the unit of measure they used to portray average costs; (4) the frequency with which they updated reported costs; and (5) the reporting of costs for an antecedent system being replaced by the new weapon system. For example, 35 (42 percent) of the 84 programs that reported O&S costs in the 2010 SAR did not cite a source of these data, contrary to DOD’s guidance, and 57 (68 percent) of the programs did not report O&S costs for an antecedent system. Also, O&S cost submissions in the SAR did not always incorporate best practices for presenting cost estimates, such as tracking cost changes over time and identifying cost drivers. In addition, 11 systems did not provide O&S cost estimates in the 2010 SAR.
Do you get the feeling that the cuts proposed by DOD are simply window dressing?  There is a lot more that can be cut and used to make this nation better.

Wasting money? Yes. Safety risks? Yes


Our stockpile of nuclear weapons is under the control of the National Nuclear Safety Administration (NNSA), an independently managed unit of the Energy Department.  NNSA is not well run.  For years, GAO has been saying something like this, "NNSA does not have reliable enterprise-wide management information on program budgets and costs, which potentially increases risk to NNSA’s programs". For example, in 2010, NNSA did not know its total costs to operate and maintain essential weapons activities facilities and infrastructure. Last year GAO reported that NNSA did not really know the condition of its infrastructure. Perhaps most importantly, questions have been raised as to NNSA's ability to ensure the nuclear stockpile is safe and secure.

Counting People

We've increased the number of civilians working in Afghanistan for the State Department and the Defense Department.  Unfortunately, we don't know some basic information about these workers.  With regards to the State Department, we don't know where the workers are and what positions they hold.  As you would expect, the information relative to the Defense Department is worse: we don't know how many workers there are.

It's not as though the plans for these workers are new; the agencies have supposedly been working on this since January 2009.  The workers are there to help Afghanistan build a functioning government.  It would be nice if these agencies functioned well themselves.

Thursday, March 08, 2012

Reelection Trumps All

Why do you think that Mr. Obama would want to give the commencement speech at Barnard rather than at his alma mater, Columbia?  Why do you think Barnard would drop Jill Abramson, the first NYT female executive editor, as the speaker? It's all politics.  Obama thinks his speaking at a women's college will help his cause with female voters.  Barnard was in a tough spot.  How do you say no to the President?  If I were female, Obama's action would not endear him to me.

Wednesday, March 07, 2012

Chemicals found at fracking sites

ProPublica has a good summary of the chemicals and links to the CDC site which explains the hazards of particular chemicals found in places where fracking has occurred.Among the chemicals found are crystalline silica, methanol, isopropanol, diesel, ethylene glycol, formaldehyde, benzene, kerosene, etc.

What makes a good teacher

The District of Columbia and many other school systems say it's how well students' test scores in reading and math compare to the scores predicted by a computer algorithm.  The DC schools base half of a teacher's evaluation on an algorithm.  That's a lot of faith to place in a computer program written by human beings; by its very nature a computer program is never 100% error-free.  Yet DC has the faith.  Furthermore, the test results are affected by non-classroom influences, such as poverty, learning disabilities and random testing day incidents such as illness, crime or a family emergency.

The Washington Post interviewed a teacher who was recently fired because her students did not measure up to the predicted scores.  The teacher claims that the basis of the prediction was faulty; predictions were based on the previous year's tests, which are being investigated for cheating.  Some of these students had difficulty reading although their reading test scores for the previous year were quite high. 

The teacher was fired despite an evaluation which read, “It is a pleasure to visit a classroom in which the elements of sound teaching, motivated students and a positive learning environment are so effectively combined."

College Insanity

I swear that this country is going insane with regards to a college education.  Now, we have high school freshmen preparing for college admission. Some schools even have seventh- and eighth-graders visiting college campuses.  Most of the schools pushing this are for-profit schools.  One of these advocates, who has been head of school at Dalton and the School at Columbia (and should know better), advances the idea that 'an early start  allows students to focus on an area of mastery — a critical tenet of the Avenues curriculum — and showcase that for colleges.' I don't know about you but I didn't find out what I wanted to do with my life until I was in my late 20s and I don't think that I'm that unique in this regard.

I know that there are people who select a preschool with a particular college in mind.  For 'legacy' students this may de rigeur, for most of the rest it's bizarre behavior that I don't think is good for the child or the parents.

Focusing just about all of the four years of high school on getting into college is truly ridiculous.  Life is more than going to school; most of the principles by which we run our lives are learned by living our lives fully, not focusing solely on formal education.

Tuesday, March 06, 2012

We can kill anyone anywhere...

...as long as the president gives the okay.  It matters not of what country the victim is a citizen. It matters not that American citizens may be so targeted without any thought of a U.S. court having some input on the process.  In the words of Attorney General Holder, "the president may use force abroad against a senior operational leader of a foreign terrorist organization with which the United States is at war - even if that individual happens to be a U.S. citizen."

How does this differ from Bush's claim that torture is fine as long as we are the torturers?

Monday, March 05, 2012

After the 'day after'

Ehud Eiran is a former Israeli official who believes that it is imperative that Israel fully consider the potential longer-term aspects of attacking Iran.  There are six areas that should be looked at: the preparedness of Israel’s home front; the contours of an Israeli exit strategy; the impact on U.S.-Israel relations; the global diplomatic fallout; the stability of world energy markets; and the outcome within Iran itself. 

Eiran's article in Foreign Affairs discusses each of these areas in depth. Oh, that Netanyahu would read it.

A better use for the defense budget cuts

Lawrence Korb etal have proposed that the defense budget cuts proposed be used to help our veterans return to what was once thought of as an American middle class. Here is their proposal as to how specific cuts can be used to help veterans.

Should Rush Be Sued For Defamation?

Usually Rush Limbaugh enjoys being in the news, but one gets the impression his recent appearances are not enjoyable for him.  Limbaugh has made news because of his calling a Georgetown law student a slut and a prostitute.  This type of news has made his sponsors nervous; at least seven have withdrawn their commercial support of Rush's talk show, but it is unknown for how long they will continue to do so.  It's likely that if the student brought suit against Rush for defamation, sponsors would not quickly resume advertising on Limbaugh's program.  Such a suit might also serve to temper the crazy talk of the wild men of the right and left.

Sunday, March 04, 2012

Government spending helped Reagan

We hear from the Republicans that there has been too much government spending in the Obama years and this 'over-spending' has been a primary reason why the recovery has been so slow. Things improved much faster under Reagan because he cut spending is another oft-heard trope. The problem with these assertions is that they are not true.

Frank Lysy, a former World Bank executive, seems to me to have the numbers (from the Department of Commerce) that prove his point, namely, that the Reagan recovery was due to massive government spending. The primary reason for for the slowness of the Obama recovery is due to limited government spending.

Lysy's conclusions:

In summary:
1)  The recovery of GDP in the recent economic downturn has been slow, with unemployment still high.  Not only is a vast amount of potential output being lost, but long periods of unemployment is particularly cruel to the lives of those who must suffer this.
2)  Prominent Republican leaders have repeatedly asserted that the slow recovery has been due to an explosion of government spending under Obama.  This is simply not true.  Growth in government spending since the onset of the recession in December 2007 has been slower than in any other downturn of the last four decades in the US, and has been far less than the growth seen following the 1981 downturn during the Reagan years.
3)  Growth in government spending following the 1981 downturn during the Reagan period was in fact the highest by a substantial margin of any of the six downturns.
4)  If government spending had been allowed to grow in the recent downturn as it had during these Reagan years, the economy by the end of 2011 would likely have been at or close to full employment.
5)  Residential investment has also collapsed following the housing bubble that reached its peak in 2005/6, and has contributed substantially to the current downturn.  Its impact, while significant, is however quantitatively less than the impact of slow government spending, since residential investment is normally (and even at its peak) well less than government spending as a share of GDP.

Friday, March 02, 2012

When will mortgage fraudsters be indicted as individuals?

Phil Angelides, the head of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, weighs in on Obama's committee to investigate mortgage fraud, a committee that I think is mere window dressing for the reelection campaign.  Angelides believes that Justice is not deploying enough resources to the investigation of the crimes committed by many in the mortgage industry. His advice to the committee:
  • First, the working group must have a strong and independent staff with the budget, expertise and training to do the job. 
  • Second, bank regulators, who are currently not part of the group, should be.
  • Third, the working group’s scope needs to be broader — it should include mortgage origination, not just securitization. It should eschew a narrow view of mortgage fraud that focuses primarily on borrowers in favor of one that also encompasses the wholesale creation, sale and packaging of defective mortgages led by corporate executives.  
  • Finally, the working group needs to prioritize the cases that caused the biggest losses and damage, moving with the creativity and flexibility that state attorneys general like Mr. Schneiderman have urged.
It would be great if the committee followed this advice.  I doubt that it will.  The financial thieves have gotten away with their crimes for at least five years.  Why should they worry now?

Thursday, March 01, 2012

Viewing drones up close

Pakistan is probably the nation that has seen the most drone activity.  The current issue of Foreign Policy has an article about drones by a Pakistani, Pir Zubair Shah, who has witnessed the drone war up close, or as close as any journalist can get in an area that is almost inaccessible.

In Shah's view the  reaction to the drones of Pakistanis who do not live in the tribal areas where the drone action is is not uniform. While the drone attacks have exacerbated the hatred many Pakistanis feel for America, some feel that the drones have performed some useful tasks, such as killing the suspected assassin of Benazir Bhutto. 

Those who live in the tribal area are also of two minds. Some see the drone strikes as less of a problem than military raids or bombing raids.  

I wonder what our reaction would be if we were attacked by drones?