Reducing poverty via the World Bank

This month’s issue of Foreign Policy, which is not yet posted on their web site, has some interesting comment on the World Bank’s investment arm, the International Finance Corporation (IFC).

IFC is chartered to reduce global poverty while making money for the bank.  It seems to be more involved in making money than reducing poverty.  A review by the bank’s equivalent of Inspector General found that “Most IFC projects generate satisfactory returns but do not provide evidence of identifiable opportunities for the poor to participate in, contribute to, or benefit from the economic activities that the project supports.”   The IG looked at 500 projects and found that only 13% “had objectives with an explicit focus on poor people”.

One of its latest projects is a 5-star hotel in Ghana that was built in conjunction with a Saudi prince. Ghana is ranked 172^nd in per-capita income; its roads are congested and potholed, the electricity system shaky, its food supply limited.  Does it really need a 5-star hotel more than investment in infrastructure?

The Ghana hotel is not the only 5-star hotel IFC has invested in; there are another ten scattered in such hot spots as Kenya.  And its investment portfolio includes upscale shopping malls, candy-shop chains, breweries, soft-drink distribution and other industries that don’t benefit the poor but do not also really need IFC money, as the companies are such as Dupont, Dow Chemical, KFC, Coca-Cola, SABMiller.

Is our Navy prepared?

Winslow Wheeler, former Congressional staffer for both Republicans and Democrats and now working for a Washington think tank, Project On Government Oversight (POGO), has written a series of articles that should cause some concern about the adequacy of our navy.

Wheeler first raises questions as to the reality of the Navy budget.  Over the next 30 years the Navy plans to add about 30 ships to its fleet.  Wheeler has no problem with that.  His problem is that the budget for this growth is totally inadequate.  The size of the fleet shrank from 316 to 282 in the Bush years, despite a 51% growth in the total budget.  Obama has managed to add only two ships to the fleet.  Wheeler concludes that the per-unit costs of a ship have been growing faster than the growth in the budget.  The estimates the Navy is making are far lower than the likely future costs; thus, there is no way the Navy can meet its projected building plans.

Worse than the budget problem is the question of whether the Navy is properly equipped to meet potential threats.  In the exercises conducted over the past twenty years, the Navy has had very great difficulty locating diesel-electric submarines used by potential enemies.  In these exercises almost all aircraft carriers have been "sunk" by this type of submarine.  Then take the question of sea mines.  In the post-World War II-era 19 Navy ships have been sunk or seriously damaged, 15 of them by sea mines.

In 2010 the Navy completed a study of the surface fleet’s manning, training, and equipment readiness. The conclusions: ship maintenance went underfunded for years; one-fifth of the fleet cannot pass inspections; aircraft and ships had junk as equipment and/or insufficient spare parts; fewer than one half of deployed combat aircraft are fully mission-capable at any given time; training throughout the surface fleet has been inadequate; ships are undermanned, and returning ships are cannibalized for parts to keep others running. The fleet was in substantially worse shape than it was in 2001.

Wheeler concludes:

The prospects of finding the money to address these shortfalls are bleak: the Navy plans to put its budget emphasis on new hardware, not maintenance, and is not even certain that the limited funds it does seek for maintenance will be available.

Education U. or Athletic U.? Part 2

UMass wants to be one of the big boys in college football, so they joined the Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) of the NCAA.  Thus, it now spends twice as much annually on football as it used to; the annual tab is now $8,200,000.  At the same time it was unable to expand its graduate school history program because it could not afford to spend $20,000 to hire a teaching assistant.  One student notes, “I’m sure the upgrade is meant to get us more publicity, but my tuition goes up 7 percent and at the same time, we’re adding more football players attending for free.”  

What UMass and the other 25 colleges thinking about moving up the football ladder hope to get are better quality students, more admissions, television riches, national exposure and ecstatic alumni donating money by the bushel.  But Scott Cowen, Tulane's president, does not think these goals are attainable easily, “What any school moving up in football should ask itself is this: what are the real costs of the benefits?  You will get more visibility and exposure, and at first, that seems like a very good investment. The problem is that once you wade in for keeps at the F.B.S. level, you face facility improvements, escalating coaching salaries, added staff and more athletic scholarships.  The cost curve is extremely steep, and unless you’re in a power conference, the revenue is flat.”

But, maybe, there are already enough schools competing at this level.  That point is made by John Lombardi, former president of UMass, Florida and Louisiana State, “The number of F.B.S.-level football teams is already too large to be sustainable.  And the teams at the top are a very strong, organized group. As more schools join at the bottom, it’s going to force the N.C.A.A. to restructure. They’ll have to start putting F.B.S. teams into categories.  So there will be a second tier again, and that’s certainly not what a lot of these people joining now had in mind. What happens then?”

Education U. or Athletic U.?

What is the purpose of our colleges?  They seem more and more about sports than education.  The other day I had a brief conversation with parents who are putting their kids through college.  The kids don't go to Notre Dame, Duke, Alabama or any other "big time" universities.  They go to good schools whose sports teams play in what is called Division III.  But even these schools have succumbed to the primacy of sports. 

The daughter of one couple is dating a player on the school's basketball team.  Her Christmas vacation began on December 18 and will last through January 23.  His began on December 21 and will end on January 8.  Why should the fact that he is on the basketball team impact his personal life to that degree?  I've never seen a story about the school's sports teams; I suspect that most have not.  It's unlikely the kid or any other player on the team will ever play any form of professional ball.  It makes little sense to me why the school places so much emphasis on sports.

The daughter of another couple is on the lacrosse team of a different school, again the school is not known for sports.  Yet, the team members are the first to schedule their classes, otherwise how could they be sure that they can make practices.  And practices are so important that the players must be available at the training facility at least one-half hour before practice begins, else they are penalized.  The pressure to be a team are applied even in their non-lacrosse lives; there is a separate dormitory for the lacrosse team.

We must protect ourselves

And the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) is another fine way we do so.  Thank the Lord that our Congress has signed the latest iteration of the act and our president will soon sign it.  We should all feel a lot safer.  We can continue to be subject to invasions of privacy by our government, in the words of Sen. Durbin, “as long as an additional purpose of the surveillance is targeting a person outside the United States.” 

Of course, we don't know how many of us have been invaded as our intelligence agencies won't tell us.  After all, why do we need to know such secrets?

Recruiting for al Qaida?

That's what we appear to be doing with our drone strikes in Yemen.   We have tripled the number of drone attacks in Yemen since 2011.  At the same time the number of rank and file members in Al Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) has also tripled.  And the leadership of AQAP has not been seriously damaged.  So, although our commitment has escalated - drone activity has mushroomed, we have U.S. forces training Yemeni troops and we have spent over $300,000,000 fighting AQAP - things have gotten worse.  Plus, we've managed to kill some innocent people along the way.

It's the cold dinners that do it

A local parish priest in Italy has caused quite a kerfuffle with his Christmas message in which he asserted that women are to blame for the violence against them.  

He claims that  "girls and mature women going around scantily dressed and in provocative clothes... provoke the worst instincts, which end in violence or sexual abuse. They should search their consciences and ask: did we bring this on ourselves?"

He goes on "The fact is that women are increasingly provocative, they become arrogant, they believe themselves to be self-sufficient and end up exacerbating the situation.
Children are abandoned to their own devices, homes are dirty, meals are cold or fast food, clothes are filthy."

We are not alone in having our idiots expostulate about their version of reality.

Best Exotic Marigold Hotel

It was a pretty good movie about English retirees who moved to India to be able to afford their retirement days.  It looks as though moving to a foreign country to afford retirement is happening in real life.  Over 10,000 Germans have so moved, some voluntarily.  It is likely that this number will increase as there are over 400,000 Germans unable to afford a retirement home in Germany.  It is expected that this number will increase about 5% a year for the next several years.

When will such a move happen here?

The odds are far worse

On Saturday I reported some of the findings by Robert Spitzer about gun control.  One conclusion he had reached was that the chance of a child dying from a violent attack at school was about one in a million.  I don't dispute his finding, but one has to realize he is basing it on the entire country.  And in Chicago the chances of being killed in school are far higher.  In 2010, nearly 700 Chicago school children were shot and 66 of them died. The odds that year were clearly a lot higher.  If the entire population of Chicago were made up only of school children, the rate would be close to twenty-five in a million. Last year, Mayor Rahm Emanuel attended a memorial for 260 school children who had been killed in just the previous three years.

 

 

Our world

Aren't we alone?

Do you know of any other modern country which employs armed guards at schools?  Is there a modern country which has more deaths caused by guns than the U.S.?  Why do we lead the world in the number of citizens per capita in jail?  How civilized are we?

The Great Negotiator

If there is such a person, it is definitely not Mr. Obama.  It's amazing to me that he seems to have learned nothing from his negotiating miscues in the past four years.  He's been negotiating with the same people and getting beat time and time again.  Doesn't he understand his opposition? He'd do much better if he actually lived up to his oratory. 

Why would a supposed liberal agree to lowering Social Security benefits?  But that's exactly what he is doing by promoting the 'chained CPI'.  He -and we - would be much better off if he proposed to cut the defense budget.  It's just about as large as it has ever been.  Why are we still in Iraq and Afghanistan?  Why do we need bases all over the world?  Why can't he read the monthly GAO reports that continually point out defense projects that are outdated, inefficient and have a perpetually changing completion date?

I don't understand fashion

Based on advertising in the NY Times, I know that Marc Jacobs is a famous designer of women's clothes. I guess he feels he needs to be noticed more. So, this is how he came to a recent fashion event.

Thoughts on Defense

Barney Frank concludes an essay on defense with the following:  

The United States was indispensable in 1945 and for many years thereafter, given the weakness of other nations, including our closest allies, and the strength of the Soviet Union. But things have changed. We can no longer afford to be the indispensable nation extending a military umbrella over many allies on whom it is not raining—and who can well afford their own protective gear if it does. Fortunately, there is no longer any need for us to play that role, and that in turn is fortunate because, for a number of reasons, we cannot succeed at the job when we try.

This all means that a major political task going forward for liberals is pushing for further reductions in military spending, an objective that we now know is not only socially and economically necessary but also politically achievable.

Gun Control Myths?

Robert Spitzer has spent a lot of time on gun control issues.  Here are some of the assumptions that he believes are faulty:

Guns are deadliest as murder weapons.
More Americans die every year from gun suicides than gun homicides.

America’s schools have become shooting galleries.
The odds of a child dying from a violent attack at school are about one in a million.

Gun regulations are incompatible with America’s gun heritage.
There have been numerous attempts to control guns going as far back at 1619.


The Second Amendment was intended to protect the right of Americans to rise up against a tyrannical government.
Spitzer thinks you have to look at Article 2 in context with other articles relative to treason and insurrection.

Andrew Sullivan has had it

He is especially upset about the current Republican party and its dominance by the Tea Party people.  Here are some excerpts from his latest screed.

But the current constitutional and economic vandalism removes any shred of doubt that this party and its lucrative media bubble is in any way conservative. They aren't. They're ideological zealots, indifferent to the consequences of their actions, contemptuous of the very to-and-fro essential for the American system to work, gerry-mandering to thwart the popular will, filibustering in a way that all but wrecks the core mechanics of American democracy, and now willing to acquiesce to the biggest tax increase imaginable because they cannot even accept Obama's compromise from his clear campaign promise to raise rates for those earning over $250,000 to $400,000 a year.

And this is not the exception. It is the rule. On abortion, the party proposes that it be made illegal in every state by amending the Constitution. Torture? More, please. Iran? It should be attacked if it merely develops the technological skill to make a nuclear bomb, let alone actually make one. Israel? Leading Republicans don't just support new settlements on the West Bank. They show up for the opening ceremonies!

Gun control? A massacre of children leads to a proposal for more guns in elementary schools and no concession on assault weapons. Immigration? Romney represented the party base - favoring a brutal regime of persecution of illegal immigrants until they are forced to "self-deport" - or rounding as many up as they can. Climate change? It's a hoax - and we should respond by shrieking "Drill, Baby, Drill!" Gay marriage? The federal constitution should be amended to bar any legal recognition of any gay relationships, including civil partnerships. Their legislative agenda in this Congress? To "make Obama a one-term president." Not saving the economy, not pursuing new policies, not cooperating to make Democratic legislation better. Just destroying a president of the opposite party. And, of course, failing.

Then there is the rhetoric. In just the last fortnight, House Republicans have asserted that secretary of state Clinton faked her recent fall and concussion at home in order to get out of testifying on the Benghazi consulate attack. And then the Weekly Standard quotes a Senate Republican staffer saying: "Send us Hagel and we will make sure every American knows he is an anti-Semite."
Enough. This faction and its unhinged fanaticism has no place in any advanced democracy. They must be broken. But the current irony is that no one has managed to expose their extremism more clearly than their own Speaker. His career is over. As is the current Republican party. We need a new governing coalition in the House - Democrats and those few sane Republicans willing to put country before ideology. But even that may be impossible.

Will anything get done in the House?

Nate Silver has an interesting analysis of the makeup of the House which indicates that it will be very difficult for anything worthwhile to pass.  Of the total membership of 433 at the present time, 233 are Republicans, 200 Democrats.  It was a surprise to me that only 51 Republicans are Tea Party people, 182 are what Silver calls Establishment Republicans.  Only 14 Democrats are considered Blue Dogs, Silver considers the remaining 186 liberal.

In the Plan B battle, speculation is that at least 34 Republicans were against it, bringing the number of GOP approving it to 199.  Thus, to reach the passing mark of 217, 18 Democrats would have to approve the proposal, but there are only 14 Blue Dogs.  Hence, Boehner's withdrawal of what, to my mind, was not a sensible proposal.

I must say that I find it indicative of our times that 12% of the House could wield such power.  Are the other members so cowardly?

We are calling it quits tomorrow

Our world will end then.  It was nice knowing you, but the Mayan calendar and other scientific authorities have never been wrong, so it's Sayonara.  I wish I could say arriverdici, but the last days give me no choice.  I did try to get a seat on Pieter Frank van der Meer's boat was too late.  Even some schools in Michigan are closing early tomorrow because of the possibility of its being our last day.  China has arrested more than 500 who are telling everyone the world is about to end.  There are lots who believe.  What if they are right? 

I hope you've enjoyed your life.

A billion here, a billion there

UBS has been hit with $1.5 billion in fines by the US and UK for manipulating interbank rates since the 21st century began.  But, again, no one from senior management will be penalized by spending a little time in jail.  A couple of traders may serve time, but not the guys who made these crimes happen.  All fines paid come from the company, not senior management.  Why should they not repeat their crimes or create new ways of robbing?

We tortured Khaled el-Masri

That's what the European Court of Human Rights has ruled.  Mr. el-Masri was mistaken for a wanted terrorist and was arrested when he crossed the Yugoslav border back in 2003.  Yugoslav 'authorities' interrogated him for three weeks in a hotel roomwhere he was

severely beaten by disguised men. He was stripped of his clothes, then sodomised with an object and later placed in a nappy and dressed in a tracksuit. Shackled and hooded, and subjected to total sensory deprivation, he was forcibly taken to an aircraft, which was surrounded by Macedonian security agents.and then handed him over to a CIA rendition team which took him to Afghanistan.  There our agents did the following to him:  When on the plane,
he was thrown to the floor, chained down and forcibly tranquilised. According to Mr El-Masri, his treatment before the flight at Skopje Airport, most likely at the hands of a rendition team of the CIA, was remarkably consistent with a subsequently disclosed CIA document describing so-called “capture shock” treatment.

According to his submissions, he was kept for over four months in a small, dirty, dark concrete cell in a brick factory near Kabul, where he was repeatedly interrogated and was beaten, kicked and threatened. His repeated requests to meet with a representative of the German Government were ignored.

The court decision, which became final with the US Supreme Court’s refusal to review the case in October 2007, stated in particular that the State’s interest in preserving State secrets outweighed Mr El-Masri’s individual interest in justice.

And Obama wants to "move forward", not backward to investigate what we have done to our fellow men in the name of protecting ourselves.

Where is our government?

One would think that the U.S. would have some pull with Mexican authorities.  They should have enough influence to get Mexico to free someone who is guilty of no crime.  Thus far, we haven't exerted much influence to free Jon Hammar, who was arrested by Mexican authorities for possession of a weapon restricted for use to Mexico’s armed forces.  The weapon was a shotgun that belonged to his great-grandfather and has been in the family for more than sixty years. 

The U.S. border agent told him it was okay to take the gun across the border.  That did not prove to be the case, as Hammar has been rotting in dangerous Mexican jails since August 13.  Attempts have been made to extort his parents on the premise he will be freed.  It looks as though the Mexican cartel has influence even in prisons.

How much time would it take for our Ambassador to Mexico to call the right people to get Hammar freed?

Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2012/12/06/176603/latest-hell-for-ex-us-marine-chained.html#storylink=omni_popular#storylink=cpy

Giving in again?

That's what it looks like regarding Social Security and Obama.  He seems to be pushing the so-called "chained CPI" as the measure for cost-of-living increases in Social Security payments in the future. The idea of the chained CPI is that, in trying times, people will substitute cheaper goods and services when prices rise.  Makes sense, doesn't it?

It does if you're not an old person whose payments for health care are a much larger share of their budget than it is for younger people.  It's pretty hard to get a cheaper doctor or to have a hernia operation when your stomach is the area that needs surgery.

When is Obama going to get some backbone?  He's saying he has it now re gun control, but the jury is out whether he will have his actions agree with his words.

Optical Illusion or End of the World?

Shanghai witnessed the following on December 10.

Other Chinese cities witnessed the same phenomenon in 2010 and 2011.

It's been 10 months

I haven't read about the Westboro Baptist Church since February.  But now they see a PR opportunity in the Newtown killings.  They say that they will be picketing the vigils there.

It's really sad how tragedy can unleash a lot of strange people who just know the right thing to do: arm the teachers, arm the staff, give the principal an M-1, blame it on same sex marriage, because the schools teach evolution and how to be a homo, etc., etc. 

The Importance of Defaults

Oftentimes many of us select default values when completing on-line forms.  Many defaults provide the correct answer plus it's easier to accept them than change them.  Bank of America probably relied on this human tendency before they provided detailed data to the 'independent' foreclosure claims reviewers who would rule whether a homeowner in default was entitled to some cash because the bank had screwed up.  We saw earlier how the bank tried to gimmick the analysis in its favor.   We just didn't know how extensively they tried.

The reviewers had to look at and analyze files supplied by the bank and answer many, many questions to determine how they should rule.  Well, the bank wanted to make the reviewer's job easier, so they filled in all the default answers where possible.  What do you think most reviewers would do?  The bank says the reviewers made their own judgments.  Do you believe that?

Should everybody go to college?

Of course, the answer is no.  McClatchy makes a big deal of a study that followed several thousand undergraduates through four years of college and found that large numbers didn't learn the critical thinking, complex reasoning and written communication skills that are widely assumed to be at the core of a college education. The problem, according to the article, is that the students aren't being taught to think critically. 

The study found that after four years, 36 percent showed no significant gains in these so-called "higher order" thinking skills.  And, surprise, surprise - "combining the hours spent studying and in class, students devoted less than a fifth of their time each week to academic pursuits. By contrast, students spent 51 percent of their time — or 85 hours a week — socializing or in extracurricular activities.  The study also showed that students who studied alone made more significant gains in learning than those who studied in groups."

Had such a study been conducted among my classmates in college more than fifty years ago the results would have been very similar.  Even then, close to half of the students should not have been there.

Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2011/01/18/106949/study-many-college-students-not.html?storylink=MI_emailed#storylink=cpy

Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2011/01/18/106949/study-many-college-students-not.html?storylink=MI_emailed#storylink=cp

B.S.?

What do you think the fellow who made the following comments in his Newtown speech will actually do? 

He vowed to use “whatever power this office holds” in coming weeks to prevent mass shootings.
"No single law, no set of laws can eliminate evil from the world or prevent every senseless act of violence in our society, but that can’t be an excuse for inaction." 
"Are we really prepared to say that we’re powerless in the face of such carnage, that the politics are too hard?”

I suppose we should cheer that he at least said something about gun control now.  Both his Giffords and Aurora talks said nothing about it.

He has been such a staunch and vocal proponent of gun control that he signed bills that allow firearm possession on Amtrak trains and in national parks.  And, in 2010 the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, citing Obama’s “extraordinary silence and passivity,” awarded the President an F on gun control.

I wouldn't bet much money on anything happening.

More waste

Brand USA is a corporation created by Congress in the Travel Promotion Act of 2009 to promote the United States abroad and encourage foreign visitors to travel to the United States.  Under the Act, a $10 travel promotion fee is assessed on travelers visiting the United States from countries who participate in the Visa Waiver Program.  Those funds are collected and deposited in a special fund in the United States Treasury.  The Corporation for Travel Promotion, now known as Brand USA, can draw from this fund if it receives matching donations from the private sector.  These matching donations can be in-kind donations; for example, donations enabling the board to go to a baseball game were considered valid donations which enabled Brand USA to spend an equivalent amount of taxpayer dollars. 

And spending money is not a problem for the organization.  Although spending it wisely may be.  Some examples: $4,139 for 250 holiday cards, $3,592 for a holiday e-card and $2,449 for a ringtone version of a Rosanne Cash song, $2,700 for 26 sets of business cards and $50,252 for giveaway materials at the International Pow Wow trade show.

Japan does not like guns

In 2008 we had over 12,000 gun-related killings, Japan had 11.  Perhaps, it's because it takes a fair amount of effort to get a gun there.  First, go to this month's all-day class and pass the test.  Go to the shooting range and pass another test.  Go to hospital for a mental test and a drug test.  Finally, pass a rigorous background check for any criminal record or association with criminal or extremist groups, and you will be the proud new owner of your shotgun or air rifle. However, you must tell the police where you store your gun and its ammunition. The police will visit you every year to inspect the gun.  And every three years you will re-take the test.

What's wrong with the English way?

England has had gun control laws since the 16th century. Perhaps, that's why it has one of the lowest rates of gun homicides in the world with 0.22 recorded intentional homicides committed with a firearm per 100,000 inhabitants compared to the United States' 9.0 and to Germany's 1.1. Furthermore, guns are not used very often in the commission of crimes, only 11,226 cases in England and Wales in 2010/2011 and that includes airguns and imitation guns. 

Not all guns are banned, only fully automatic (submachine-guns, etc.) and self-loading (semi-automatic) weapons of  a calibre larger than .22 are totally banned, pistols are limited to .22 calibre in short barrel, while calibres up to .357 magnum are allowed in long barrel pistols.  Everything else is okay, as long as you have a good reason, such as target shooting, hunting, and historic and black powder weapons, but not self-defense. But, you have to get a license from the police and renew it every five years.

Here is the process of getting a license: positive verification of identity, two referees of verifiable good character who have known the applicant for at least two years (and who may themselves be interviewed and/or investigated as part of the certification), approval of the application by the applicant's own family doctor, an inspection of the premises and cabinet where firearms will be kept and a face-to-face interview by a Firearms Enquiry Officer (FEO).  A thorough background check of the applicant is then made by Special Branch on behalf of the firearms licensing department. Only when all these stages have been satisfactorily completed will a license be issued.  There are also regulations as to where the weapon can be stored.

Why would any rational person not be willing to undergo this process should they want to do some target shooting?  However, I doubt that we would adopt such a rational process.  Our constitution gives us the right to bear arms and in some states carry a concealed weapon into a school.  That's the American way!

Insider? Outsider?

So when do we have real gun control in this country?

27 people, 20 of whom were in grade school, were shot and killed in Newtown, Ct. today.

Different Sky

They are less than 100 miles apart but the sky in Connecticut is different from that in Massachusetts.  It seems more colorful, although this photo doesn't really show it.

Protecting our water supply

The EPA may not be doing such a good job.  The Safe Drinking Water Act, which was passed in 1974, explicitly prohibits injection into a source of drinking water, and requires precautions to ensure that oil and gas and disposal wells that run through them are carefully engineered not to leak. The law does allow the EPA to exempt companies from its provisions provided that the water is not being used as drinking water and that it never will be. The EPA has granted energy and mining companies more than 1500 exemptions, although the exact number is not known.  Waste can be discarded freely into these sources, and wells that run through them need not meet all standards used to prevent pollution.  As a result,  toxic material has been deposited into underground reservoirs that help supply more than half of the nation's drinking water.  Most of the exemptions are for lower-quality water of questionable use, but many allow grantees to contaminate water so pure it would barely need filtration.

The law allows the exemptions if the water will never be used for drinking.  However, advances in technology have raised real doubts as to whether a particular source of non-drinkable water could be made drinkable.  In many cases it can and at a reasonable cost.  

We are seeing that water will likely become a scarce resource later this century.  It does not seem to be the right thing to continue exempting companies from polluting the sources we have, no matter how poor the source is today.  But today. oil trumps water.

Why Go On

The Pentagon has issued its latest report on the status of our efforts in Afghanistan.  Training is not going well; only one Afghanistan brigade can operate alone, the twenty-two other cannot.  Afghan soldiers don't like us,  in 2007 they attacked our soldiers twice, so far this year there have been 37 attacks.  Karzai's government's watchwords are stealing and corruption.  The Taliban are doing well, with the help of our ally Pakistan.  Violence is worse now than before the surge.

Why continue the charade?

What Can Be Done By The Government

The Center for American Progress has looked at some of the results of successful investments by the federal government.  It is truly astounding.

Department of Energy labs: 1943–present
The optical digital recording technology behind all music, video, and data storage; fluorescent lights; communications and observation satellites; advanced batteries now used in electric cars; modern water-purification techniques that make drinking water safe for millions; supercomputers used by government, industry, and consumers every day; more resilient passenger jets; better cancer therapies; and the confirmation that it was an asteroid that killed the dinosaurs 65 million years ago.

National Science Foundation: 1950–present 
Google, which was started by a couple of students working on a research project supported by the National Science Foundation, is today worth an estimated $250 billion and employs 54,000 people. This alone would pay for nearly all the program’s costs reaching back to its inception, but funding has also been instrumental in the development of new technologies and companies in nearly every major industry, including advanced electronics, computing, digital communications, environmental resource management, lasers, advanced manufacturing, clean energy, nanotechnology, biotechnology, and higher education.

Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA: 1958–present
The team that would go on to pioneer technologies that brought us the Internet, the Global Positioning System, and Siri.

The Apollo Space Program: 1961–1969 
Massive technological advancement and the start of huge opportunities for technology transfer, leading to more than 1,500 successful spinoffs related to areas as disparate as heart monitors, solar panels, and cordless innovation. More recently, we’ve seen a fledgling private-sector American space industry with real growth potential, which in 2012 completed its first cargo delivery to the international space station.

Human Genome Project: 1988–2003 
Critical tools to help identify, treat, and prevent causes of disease—and huge opportunities for the high-growth American biotechnology industry, which accounts for more than three-quarters of $1 trillion in economic output, or 5.4 percent of GDP, in 2010, and now depends heavily on these advances in genetics.

Better Than Average

We - I mean some of our kids - did better than average on international tests in math, science and reading.  However, we are not #1 or nowhere near it. We trailed Singapore, Korea, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan, Northern Ireland, Finland, Slovenia and Russia.

One indication of the emphasis placed on these tests by some states is Florida's policy of holding back third grade students who cannot read well.  This results in only true readers taking the fourth grade tests.  Florida is willing to sacrifice some kids so that their test scores can he inflated.

More Budget Cutting Possibilities

Guess how many military bases we have around the world.  Would you believe more than 1,000?  Frankly, I was more surprised to read that we have 4,000+ military bases here in the U.S.  These numbers were supplied by David Vine, who has spent a lot of time and effort studying our overseas military footprint.  He's probably right, otherwise the Pentagon would have corrected him before now.

Vine translates these overseas bases into a cost of $170 billion a year.  The Congress, at least on paper, seems interested in knowing these costs at it passed the Overseas Cost Summary Act whereby the Pentagon is to report annually on these costs.  The Pentagon's latest report in $22.1 billion, a far cry from Vine's estimate.  However, the act does not require the inclusion of these costs: 

• at least 18 countries and foreign territories on the Pentagon’s own list of overseas bases.
• bases in U.S. territories, such as Puerto Rico and Guam.

• bases in Marshall Islands, the Federated States of Micronesia, and Palau.
• the cost of maintaining naval vessels overseas.
• health-care costs of the million or so people at these bases.
• rent paid to other countries for the land we garrison.
• the 550 bases in Afghanistan.

The big bases are well-equipped.  One being built in Italy includes a brigade headquarters, two sets of barracks, a natural-gas-powered energy plant, a hospital, two schools, a fitness center, dining facilities and a mini-mall.

I think these are good possibilities where money can be saved.  Don't you? 

One View of Grover Norquist

A Death Sentence?

That's what the NY Times says would happen to HSBC from an indictment of the bank for money laundering because it "could cut off the bank from certain investors like pension funds and ultimately cost it its charter to operate in the United States" and eventually cause the bank to die.

I'm not a lawyer, but the word "could" does not mean "would".  Since people working for the bank actually committed the crimes, why can't the people be charged?  It just seems that the people who run banks can get away with anything as long as they are willing to spend the bank's assets paying fines.

O, to work in Belarus

"Workers cannot quit their jobs without the agreement and permission of the management of the enterprise,"  so says President Alyaksandr Lukashenka of Belarus.  He added that workers who left their jobs despite the warning would be sentenced to compulsory labor and returned to the production line.

Belarus is trying to build a strong wood-processing industry, but it is losing workers who move to Russia for substantially higher wages.  The president doesn't like that, so he resorts to forced labor.

HSBC Closes Off This One

Okay, HSBC will be paying us $1.9 billion to settle charges that it laundered money and violated our sanctions laws.  But they will still probably show some profit for the year.  What are the chances they will succumb to temptation sometime in the future and do the same thing for the almighty dollar?  If, on the other hand some of the perpetrators actually went to jail, would they be so prone to succumb?

The End of the DSK Story?

Well, Dominique Strauss-Kahn closed what may be the last door by settling with the hotel maid who accused him of forcing her to perform oral sex.  The details of the settlement are confidential, but the number $6,000,000 has been bandied about. 

Mr. Strauss-Kahn has had a tough year-and-a-half.  He lost his role as head of the IMF, his chance to run for President of France and his wife.  All because he's had trouble keeping it in his pants.

Monitor the leverage cycle

John Geanakoplos is someone you don't hear much about in the mainstream media.  He is an economist, James Tobin Professor of Economics, at Yale and also a partner in a firm that trades primarily in mortgage securities.  He has a different idea about the financial crisis than most economists in the public eye.  Geanakoplos thinks the fundamental problem is leverage.

In his words: 

There are times when leverage is so high that people and institutions can buy many assets with very little money down and times when leverage is so low that buyers must have all or nearly all of the money in hand to purchase those very same assets. When leverage is loose, asset prices go up because buyers can get easy credit and spend more. Similarly, when leverage is highly constrained, that is, when credit is very difficult to obtain, prices plummet. This is what happened in real estate and what happened in the financial markets.

The collateral rate is the value of collateral that must be pledged to guarantee one dollar of loan. Today, many businesses and ordinary people are willing to agree to pay bank interest rates, but they cannot get loans because they do not have the collateral to put down to convince the banks their loan will be safe.

Geanakoplos believes that the Fed should monitor the leverage cycle as much as it monitors interest rates.  Yet, there really is no meaningful monitoring of the leverage cycle.  He makes a strong case that there should be and proposes how it could be monitored.

A very interesting thesis.

Even the Army War College Thinks Something Is Amiss

The Strategic Studies Institute of the Army War College publishes some interesting articles, many of which are free.  This month they have an article on the civil-military relationship.  The authors do not think the relationship is good in that it is becoming one where the Constitution's supremacy of the civil over the military is being frayed.  More and more, we see members of the military being treated differently than the general population.

One of the authors, Diane Mazur, blames Rehnquist for starting this separation.   Some of his Supreme Court decisions, she contends, advocated his conservative leanings. To wit, civilians should be encouraged to withdraw from active participation in civil-military relations and civilian control of the military and to see themselves as unqualified and undeserving to question assertions of military necessity. Service members should be encouraged to resent civilians, civilian society, and civilian influence over the military.  The military should be portrayed as distant, remote, and separate from civilian society. The more different the military is from the civilian society it serves, the less justification there might be for holding the military to the expectations of civilian law.  The military should be viewed as morally superior to civilian society and civilian government, and military values should be elevated above constitutional values.  Judges, courts, and other institutions of law should be reluctant to insert themselves in legal controversies involving the military, creating a vacuum that could be filled by political partisanship and allegiance.

A second author, Bruce Ackerman, looks at the increasing number of military people - active and retired - who have become senior staff or leaders in the Pentagon, NSC and other intelligence agencies.  He points out: Prior to 1980, the civilian leadership within the DoD was overwhelmingly nonmilitary; only 17 percent of these officials had as much as 5 years of military service.96 Since 1980, the numbers have changed considerably. Nearly a quarter of them have had 15 years of service, and 44 percent have had 5 years.

Eisenhower warned us.  Here is an excerpt from his 'military-industrial complex' speech:

Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.

They're fixing the debt

One way to fix the debt is to pay more taxes.  The companies behind the 'Fix the Debt' campaign don't think they should pay more taxes.  But here's the effective federal income tax rate from 2009 - 2011 for a few of these leaders:  AT&T - 6.3%, Verizon - -3.3% (yeah, they got money back),  Honeywell - -14.8% (another negative tax company),  Merck - 13.2%, Macy's 20.7%.

These 'job creators' could, I suppose, take credit for the taxes their employees paid.  The problem here is that they have cut jobs since 2007: AT&T - 54,000, Verizon - 30,000, Honeywell - 4,000, Merck - 13,000, Macy's - 7,000.

Whittling Privacy Away

Almost ten years ago, the National Academies, which advises the U.S. government on scientific matters, urged federal agencies to stop using polygraph tests as a screening technique. They felt that the risk of innocent people failing the test, and spies passing it, was too high.  Yet, last year more than 73,000 Americans submitted to polygraph tests to get or keep jobs with the federal government, although such screening is mostly banned in the private sector and widely denounced by scientists.  Many of these test disregard one's privacy by asking employees and applicants questions about their personal lives and private thoughts.  The rationale being that they have to protect us from spies, terrorists or corrupt law enforcement officers.  The test results are kept so secret that those who undergo the tests often can’t get access to information about their interrogations, and most are barred from filing complaints in federal court.

I feel so safe.

Warning All Men

Something is going on with sperm counts if a recent study of French men is reflective of men in other parts of the world.  And some studies in other countries have also shown declining sperm counts. At the same time, the incidence of testicular cancer has increased, doubling in the past thirty years.  No one knows why these things are happening, although the environment is a strong contender.   Suprisingly, some think tight underwear may be the cause as the testicles need to be below body temperature to make healthy sperm.  

Another Fine But No One Arrested

Ho hum. Standard Bank will be paying us $330,000,000 to atone for its money laundering offenses of the past 10 years or more.  This is on top of the $340,000,000 it paid to New York in August.  Do you think their paying $670,000,000 in fines will stop Standard from breaking the law again?  Do the powers that be at the bank think they are paying these fines from their personal assets?  Will they fear being imprisoned if they break the law again?  The answer to the three questions is obviously 'no'.  Would the management of a small bank have the same answer?  I doubt it.  Why are we letting banks that broke our laws and helped plunge us into the Great Recession off so easily?

UN Treaty for Disabled

!!!!

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Earth at Night

One of many from Nasa

Sayonara, Mr. Brubeck

He died today, one day shy of his 92nd birthday.  I saw him when he and I were young and when he and I were old.  A great musician and probably a good man.  A truly great quartet: Desmond, Morello, Wright, Brubeck!

Androgel is a heck of a product

Stephen Colbert dissects the side effects. While he does make his dissection funny, it is surprising how this product could have been approved by the FDA.

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Reducing Federal Spending

Michael Sivy of Time has a simple answer.  Start with reducing fraud in federal programs.  By his numbers we could reduce fraud by $73.5 billion if we were able to eliminate it in only three programs: medicare, social security, food stamps.  Of course, Sivy doesn't think all fraud could be eliminated, but it should be reduced considerably.  When you add in the prescriptions of the GAO, the number becomes much larger, probably as much as we need to start operating smarter.

Pay scales are out of hand

The Red Sox just signed Shane Victorino to a $37,500,000 three year contract.  He's played for three different teams.  He's 32 with a career batting average of .275; last year it was .245.  He is not a home run hitter, having hit only 90 in his 10 year career.  Basically, he appears to be someone on his way down who has been an average player.  How is he worth $12,500,000 a year or $80,000 a game?

Privacy is vanishing

ProPublica lists the various types of electronic records the government can get without a warrant:  phone records, cell phone location (1,300,000 requests by law forces), IP addresses, e-mails, text messages, data stored on the internet.

Sensible words about Iran and the bomb

Steven Walt looks at history and what has happened when other countries went nuclear.  He steps through several situations:

• Did the world turn on its axis when the mighty Soviet Union tested its first bomb in 1949?  
• Did British and French acquisition of nuclear weapons slow their decline as great powers?  
• Did China's detonation of a bomb in 1964 suddenly make them a superpower?
• Does Israel's nuclear arsenal allow it to coerce its neighbors or impose its will on Hezbollah or the Palestinians?
• India's "peaceful nuclear explosion" in 1974 didn't turn it into a global superpower, and its only real effect was to spur Pakistan -- which was already an avowed rival -- to get one too.
• North Korea is as annoying and weird as it has always been, but getting nuclear weapons didn't transform it from an economic basket case into a mighty regional power and didn't make it more inclined to misbehave.

He concludes

At bottom, the whole debate on Iran rests on the assumption that Iranian acquisition of a nuclear weapon would be an event of shattering geopolitical significance: On a par with Hitler's rise to power in Germany in 1933, the fall of France in 1940, the Sino-Soviet split, or the breakup of the former Soviet Union. 
Proliferation has not transformed weak states into influential global actors, has not given nuclear-armed states the ability to blackmail their neighbors or force them to kowtow, and it has not triggered far-reaching regional arms races. In short, fears that an Iranian bomb would transform regional or global politics have been greatly exaggerated; one might even say that they are just a lot of hooey.

Global Thinkers? Really?

Foreign Policy has published their annual list of 'global thinkers'.  These are people who have had Big Ideas, ideas that change the world, wage ever-more complicated intellectual battles.   Would you believe that these are some of the global thinkers: Barack Obama, Paul Ryan, Dick and Liz Cheney, Benjamin Netanyahu, Paul Bernanke, Marissa Mayer, Sheryl Sandberg, Condoleeza Rice, Charles Murray, Robert Kagan, Rand Paul, Eliot Cohen?  The magazine has a very different view of global thinkers than I would have expected.  It's more a list of famous people.
 

Hope for some autistic people

Today's NY Times tells the story of Thorkil Sonne and how he is changing the lives of some autistic people, one of whom is his son, Lars.  I say "some" because Sonne's work does not help all autistic people, since, as in the lives of non-autistic people, some people are more talented in certain areas than other people.  Sonne started a company in Denmark that has a staff of autistic people who work as consultants in areas requiring the particular skills they have.  He has been fairly successful and will soon be trying to replicate his success in the U.S.  I don't see how he can miss.

My retirement is taken care of. Why should I care about yours?

Seventy-one major American corporations have united in a "Fix the Debt" campaign.  The CEOs of these companies have an average of $9,000,000 in their company-funded retirement plan.  Twelve of these CEOs have more than $20,000,000 in their accounts; Honeywell's CEO has $78,000,000 in his account. The bosses are doing well.  

How are the employees doing with regard to their retirement? Forty-one of these 71 companies offer employee pension funds. Of these, only two have sufficient assets in their funds to meet expected obligations. The rest have combined deficits of $103 billion, or about $2.5 billion on average. General Electric has the largest deficit in its worker pension fund, with $22 billion.

The attitude of these CEOs seems to be "I'm doing well.  Tough darts you're not."  This attitude is also seen in the campaign's push to cut Social Security and Medicare.