Monday, April 30, 2012

Another Drone Theater

The Philippines have now felt the wrath of the drones.  Earlier this year the drones killed 15 people who were supposedly involved with terrorist organizations.  It did not help that this area is a center of Islam for Filippinos and that it has been at war with the central government for seemingly eternity.

We do love our drones so we plan to increase the number of drones 'assigned' to the Philippines by 30%.  Will we also be increasing the number of our soldiers stationed there?


Why this photograph?


Because the police in Germany were able to solve some burglaries through the use of earprints.  That's right, earprints, not fingerprints.  If rats can be identified by their ears, why can't people?  The police claim that earprints are as unique as fingerprints. 

I'm not sure I agree with the police as the Blogger spell check accepts fingerprints but not earprints.

Sharing is not always good

It depends on whose doing the sharing.  For example, many terrorist groups have adopted the al Qaida label and are working together: cooperating with each other, sharing money and guns, training together, advising each other and, most critically, sharing a deep-seated hatred of the West. These groups are operating in Yemen, Algeria, Mali, Pakistan, Somalia and Nigeria.

While they have adopted the al Qaida label, these groups are self-motivated; they do not need orders from al Qaida itself. Most of their strikes have been local.  However, can the day when they go beyond their frontiers be far away?

Quotes

I do read the Quotation of the Day that is on the right side of this page.  Most days they are quite good.  Today is a very good quote by Charlotte Perkins Gilman:
To attain happiness in another world we need only to believe something, while to secure it in this world we must do something.

Your life expectancy may depend on where you live

That's what a study by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, a University of Washington division, seems to show.  For example, people in Johnson County near Kansas City, Kansas, have high life expectancies matching those in comparable countries such as Sweden and Switzerland.  Residents in Wyandotte County, also near Kansas City, have life expectancies matching those of Libya or Sri Lanka.

Kansas was not the only area showing stark differences.  "In Marin County, Calif., men could expect to live to a ripe 81.6 years. In two Mississippi counties, male life expectancy was just 66.1 years, about the same as in Pakistan.  Women’s life expectancies ranged from 85.8 years in Collier County, Fla., to 74.1 years in McDowell, W.Va., comparable to that of Algeria."

The question is why the differences.  Some of the reasons proposed: high unemployment, low rates of home ownership, low educational attainment, poverty, quality of public health.

Look at the results for your county: Life Expectancy US Counties


Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2012/04/30/147111/study-life-expectancies-in-much.html#storylink=cpy

Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2012/04/30/147111/study-life-expectancies-in-much.html#storylink=cpy

Sunday, April 29, 2012

An Amazing Movie

I first saw "Winged Migration" maybe ten years ago. I was blown away then and I've been blown away each time I've seen it or even parts of it. And I'm not much of a nature guy. How they were able to film this is beyond me. I know it took four years and there are no special effects. YouTube has eight videos which comprise the entire movie.  Watch them.



Something's going on in Israel

In the past week three prominent Israelis have spoken out against Netanyahu's fulminations about Iran.

Yuval Diskin was head of Shin Bet, the Israeli internal intelligence agency; he retired last year.  Here are some of his comments (my emphasis):
"My major problem is that I have no faith in the current leadership, which must lead us in an event on the scale of war with Iran or a regional war."

"I don't believe in either the prime minister or the defence minister. I don't believe in a leadership that makes decisions based on messianic feelings. Believe me, I have observed them from up close ... They are not people who I, on a personal level, trust to lead Israel to an event on that scale and carry it off."

"They are misleading the public on the Iran issue. They tell the public that if Israel acts, Iran won't have a nuclear bomb. This is misleading. Actually, many experts say that an Israeli attack would accelerate the Iranian nuclear race."
Next we have Benny Gantz, Israel's top military man:
"Decisions can and must be made carefully, out of historic responsibility but without hysteria."

He also said he did not believe the Iranian leadership was prepared to "go the extra mile" to acquire nuclear weapons because it was "composed of very rational people" who understood the consequences.
Finally,  the former head of the Mossad, Meir Dagan, who has said that attacking Iran was "the stupidest thing I have ever heard" and that the Iranian regime was rational.

Saturday, April 28, 2012

Holy S**t!

Before there was MF Global, there was Refco, which has entered the history books as a predecessor to MFG and another firm that made off with customer money.  You can follow Refco's demise here.  

Amazingly, a former insider at Refco, John Roe, has taken it upon himself to kill MFG. He has co-founded a nonprofit which is contacting the courts, the regulators and anyone else that Roe thinks may have influence.  Supposedly, the non-profit is "advocating in the courts and public arena on behalf of over 8,000 customers of MF Global". Roe has written that with MFG there was  “intent to commit an actual fraud…”

What Roe's role at Refco was I know not.  He does claim to know the accounting technology used at Refco to bilk its customers.  I assume that Roe feels he was not one of the bilkers.

Jobs

For years the U.S. has had a higher employment-to-population ratio than Europe.  This ratio measures the share of adults that are employed.  That situation is changing, at least in the last decade.  In 2000 the difference between the ratios for the two areas was 10.5 percentage points; in 2009 it had sunk to 1.7.

The authors of the latest study attribute the decline to three factors:  "declining U.S. employment rates across almost all age-gender groups; more women working in Europe, particularly prime-age and older workers; and rising employment for older European men. We link most of these shifts to the influence of underlying trends (many reflecting changes in European social policies) and to differences in labor market performance during the Great Recession."

What is most interesting to me is that it looks as though the number of women in the labor force is decreasing here when compared to the number in Europe.  This is the case even with highly educated women.

Another factor is the greater protection for workers in Europe.  Many countries restrict the firing of workers; some have a policy of work sharing whereby workers' hours are fewer, but they are divided among the current work force.

Where are the most low wage workers?

If you define low wage work as employees earning less than 2/3 of the median wage (approximately $10 per hour or $20,000 per year), then the U.S. is the leader among developed nations.

Who are my peers?

That's a question CEOs of big companies ask when it comes time to set their compensation for the year.  The compensation committee answers the question for the CEO.  Of course, they want to fairly evaluate the CEO's performance.  How better than by comparing the CEO to CEOs who run similar companies?  

The problem is that the board, most of whose members owe their appointment to the CEO, has a problem defining peers.  Many boards define peers that are quite larger than their company or are in different industries.  Larger companies tend to pay their CEO more than smaller companies do.  Some industries have a higher pay scale than others.  So, you can see that the board, by selecting the 'right' peers, can easily gimmick the situation so that the CEO is paid more than he's worth.  For example, CBS paid its CEO $69,000,000 after the board discovered that the company's peers were on average more than twice as large as CBS, and many in businesses far afield from media. 

Basing the CEO's pay on peer companies is one of the reasons why the adjusted average compensation of CEOs in the S&P 500 (SPX) rose to $12.9 million in 2011, or 380 times the average worker’s pay, up from $625,000, or 42 times the average worker’s pay, in 1980.

Friday, April 27, 2012

Re-election above everything

Would you believe that Obama is still using Jon Corzine to raise money for him?  I could understand that happening before the MF Global explosion.  All this did for Obama's campaign financing was a refusal of Corzine's money but not any severing  of ties enabling Corzine to ask his friends for money to help Barack stay in power.

While Corzine has had a storied career it looks as though it is falling apart.  There are just too many questions that Corzine will not answer and responsibilities he will not assume.  In the matter of responsibilities Corzine reminds me of Rupert Murdoch as seen by Jon Stewart.

Most of us have come across people who somehow made the money, got the big job, in a word - succeeded. Yet, these people had only the talent to convince the higher-ups that they were one of them.  The talent to get the job done professionally, honestly, humanely was just not there.  It's beginning to look as though Mr. Corzine is one of those people.  And, when you think about it, maybe our last two presidents are in the same league.

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Stewart on Murdoch

I've written about Rupert Murdoch only with regard to his weakening of the Wall Street Journal.  Here Stewart talks about Murdoch's influence in the world of politics. 


Wednesday, April 25, 2012

Another Re-election Stunt?

We now have an Atrocity Prevention Board, or so Mr. Obama announced in a talk at the Holocaust Museum on Monday.  And, with typical American chutzpah the board will be charged with preventing atrocities anywhere in the world.  I wonder if the board will be charged with preventing atrocities that may occur in the United States or be committed by Americans.  Or, is that situation even possible in the board's eyes?

Defining an atrocity is not a simple task, as James Gibney of Bloomberg asks, "Is an atrocity the fact that more than 90 percent of Egyptian married women have undergone female genital mutilation? Is it an Israeli missile that goes astray and kills a Palestinian family? Is it an abject Japanese government failure to regulate its nuclear plants, resulting in the deaths of thousands? Just where does one draw the line?"

Preventing an atrocity is also not a simple task.  How would we have prevented the atrocities that have occurred in a number of nations?  Barbara Harff, who has been involved with assessing such risks for almost twenty years, thinks that the following countries are at varying levels of risk: Myanmar, Syria, China, Sudan, Pakistan, Ethiopia, Zimbabwe, Rwanda, Iran, Congo, Somalia, Saudi Arabia, Sri Lanka, Nigeria, Cameroon, Congo, Uganda, North Korea, Guatemala, Uzbekistan. Will we investigate these countries?  Will we seek input from the beleaguered in those countries?  Sure, we should have acted sooner re Hitler, but would his atrocities have been prevented in any other manner but by our going to war?

I can understand why Mr. Obama would announce this board at the Holocaust Museum.  A cynic would say he chose the place because there are a lot of Jewish voters in this country.

Tuesday, April 24, 2012

Arrest #1


Kurt Mix was a drilling and completions engineer for BP. He was involved in trying to estimate the flow of oil from the Deepwater well and stop it. He is charged with obstruction of justice for deliberately destroying evidence.  Despite being told by BP to save all his messages, he is accused of deleting about 200 messages with his boss and 100 with a contractor.  If convicted, Mix faces a maximum of 20 years in prison and fines of up to $250,000 per count.

Will any higher-ups be brought to trial?  If it's like the financial world, the answer is "No".

Act as though it was reality

That's essentially what three prominent Israelis - a former commander of the Israeli Navy and head of the Israeli domestic security agency, an entrepreneur and a peace negotiator and chief of staff to the Israeli prime minister from 1999 to 2001 - write in this article. They are saying that Israel should act as though the two-state concept were reality.  Of course, the writers recognize today's reality and advocate steps that can be taken without damaging Israel's security.

Their solution is based on the idea that the primary problem is the settlements. Israel should renounce claims to areas east of the existing security barrier, stop construction of all settlements in contested areas and devise incentives to have 100,000 settlers move back to the 1967 borders.  

Not all of these moves would happen immediately.  Most would not happen until an agreement was signed with Palestine.  Furthermore, the Israeli army would stay in the West Bank until the deal was signed.

It's an interesting idea proposed by people of substance.  However, it will go nowhere with the Likud in power.

A Big Surprise?

A headline in yesterday's NY Times told us that "Social Security’s Financial Health Worsens".  Since we reduced the Social Security payroll tax in 2010 and 2011, should lower Social Security revenue be a surprise?  Since unemployment is still a major problem, should lower Social Security revenue be a surprise? Since this worsening is measured by the fact that projections made by human beings show that the Social Security trust funds will run out of money three years earlier than was predicted by human beings last year, can we attribute any of this shortfall to the aforesaid tax reduction and unemployment?

Interestingly, the report also says that after 2033 when the trust funds run out continued tax income will enable the payment of "about three-quarters of scheduled benefits through 2086". 

There is a fairly easy way to remedy the projected problems: eliminate the maximum taxable amount, which is now $110,100.  Most people believe this will eliminate any future deficits.

Monday, April 23, 2012

Bruce Schneier on TSA

Here are some thoughts about the Transportation Security Agency from a true expert on security:
In my previous two statements, I made two basic arguments about post-9/11 airport security. One, we are not doing the right things: the focus on airports at the expense of the broader threat is not making us safer. And two, the things we are doing are wrong: the specific security measures put in place since 9/11 do not work.
          -------------------------
He (the head of TSA) wants us to trust that a 400-ml bottle of liquid is dangerous, but transferring it to four 100-ml bottles magically makes it safe. He wants us to trust that the butter knives given to first-class passengers are nevertheless too dangerous to be taken through a security checkpoint. He wants us to trust the no-fly list: 21,000 people so dangerous they’re not allowed to fly, yet so innocent they can’t be arrested. He wants us to trust that the deployment of expensive full-body scanners has nothing to do with the fact that the former secretary of homeland security, Michael Chertoff, lobbies for one of the companies that makes them. He wants us to trust that there’s a reason to confiscate a cupcake (Las Vegas), a 3-inch plastic toy gun (London Gatwick), a purse with an embroidered gun on it (Norfolk, VA), a T-shirt with a picture of a gun on it (London Heathrow) and a plastic lightsaber that’s really a flashlight with a long cone on top (Dallas/Fort Worth).
           -------------------------
In 2004, the average extra waiting time due to TSA procedures was 19.5 minutes per person. That’s a total economic loss—in –America—of $10 billion per year, more than the TSA’s entire budget. The increased automobile deaths due to people deciding to drive instead of fly is 500 per year. Both of these numbers are for America only, and by themselves demonstrate that post-9/11 airport security has done more harm than good.
 
The current TSA measures create an even greater harm: loss of liberty. Airports are effectively rights-free zones. Security officers have enormous power over you as a passenger. You have limited rights to refuse a search. Your possessions can be confiscated. You cannot make jokes, or wear clothing, that airport security does not approve of. You cannot travel anonymously. (Remember when we would mock Soviet-style “show me your papers” societies? That we’ve become inured to the very practice is a harm.) And if you’re on a certain secret list, you cannot fly, and you enter a Kafkaesque world where you cannot face your accuser, protest your innocence, clear your name, or even get confirmation from the government that someone, somewhere, has judged you guilty. These police powers would be illegal anywhere but in an airport, and we are all harmed—individually and collectively—by their existence.

Free Speech Is Dying In America

I was going to write about Tarek Mehanna based on an article in yesterday's NY Times by Andrew March, a teacher at Yale, who was an expert witness for the defense of Mehanna, who was convicted of material support for terrorism, conspiring to provide material support to terrorists and conspiring to kill in a foreign country.  

I was intrigued that, while March certainly was paid for being a defense witness, he felt deeply enough about the case to write an article about it.  March argues that basically Mehanna was convicted for his speech rather than his action.  He makes a number of good points.

My research led me to an article by Sahar Aziz in the Christian Science Monitor. He makes arguments similar to those of March.  But he also makes this analogy which I found quite interesting:
"Some Americans may view Mehanna’s conviction as legitimate and necessary to protect Americans from terrorists. But if Mehanna’s case becomes the norm for prosecuting people for vocalizing extremist views, then it is now incumbent on the government to be much more vigilant and file hundreds of indictments against white militia groups, patriot groups, and even some tea party chapters who spew vitriolic anti-government rhetoric and churn out extremist literature as some of them sit on large caches of weapons."
But the most interesting of the articles was Mehanna's speech to the court which I found in Glenn Greenwald's blog.   Here are some excerpts:
All those videos and translations and childish bickering over ‘Oh, he translated this paragraph’ and ‘Oh, he edited that sentence,’ and all those exhibits revolved around a single issue: Muslims who were defending themselves against American soldiers doing to them exactly what the British did to America. It was made crystal clear at trial that I never, ever plotted to “kill Americans” at shopping malls or whatever the story was. The government’s own witnesses contradicted this claim, and we put expert after expert up on that stand, who spent hours dissecting my every written word, who explained my beliefs. Further, when I was free, the government sent an undercover agent to prod me into one of their little “terror plots,” but I refused to participate. Mysteriously, however, the jury never heard this.

But when that home is a Muslim land, and that invader is the US military, for some reason the standards suddenly change. Common sense is renamed ”terrorism” and the people defending themselves against those who come to kill them from across the ocean become “the terrorists” who are ”killing Americans.” The mentality that America was victimized with when British soldiers walked these streets 2 ½ centuries ago is the same mentality Muslims are victimized by as American soldiers walk their streets today. It’s the mentality of colonialism.

In your eyes, I’m a terrorist, and it’s perfectly reasonable that I be standing here in an orange jumpsuit. But one day, America will change and people will recognize this day for what it is. They will look at how hundreds of thousands of Muslims were killed and maimed by the US military in foreign countries, yet somehow I’m the one going to prison for “conspiring to kill and maim” in those countries – because I support the Mujahidin defending those people. They will look back on how the government spent millions of dollars to imprison me as a ”terrorist,” yet if we were to somehow bring Abeer al-Janabi back to life in the moment she was being gang-raped by your soldiers, to put her on that witness stand and ask her who the “terrorists” are, she sure wouldn’t be pointing at me.
 What does all this say about America in 2012?

MF Global - a study in pride and ambition

Thus far, Jon Corzine has had a relatively easy time re his role in the MF Global downfall.  But, I suspect things will get a lot harder for him.

Clearly, Corzine has had an outstanding career as we plebeians have seen in the mass media: Senator, Governor, CEO of Goldman Sachs.  All of this may be washed away by his role in MF Global. Thus far, he's been able to escape being blamed for the eighth largest bankruptcy in our history as well as the misplacement of $1.6 billion of customers' money.  If the Senators who have been conducting a series of hearings on MF read the articles by Pam Martens and William Cohan, Mr. Corzine's reputation will be shattered at tomorrow's Senate hearing.

 Ms Martens is not shy.  She opens her article with this:
"Only on Wall Street can you bankrupt a company; misplace $1.6 billion of customers’ money; lose 75 percent of shareholders’ money in two weeks; speed dial high priced criminal attorney;and get a court to authorize the payment of your multi-million dollar legal tab from the failed company’s insurance policies; have regulators waive your requirements to take licensing exams required to work in the securities and commodities industry; have your Board of Directors waive your loyalty to the firm; run a bucket shop out of the UK; and still have the word “Honorable” affixed to your name in a Congressional investigations hearing."
And she goes on to make a strong case for her assertions.  You'll be amazed at the duplicity.

Cohan discusses a suit relative to a $650,000,000 bond issue by MF Global in July and August 2011, three months before MF Global declared bankruptcy.  Corzine is described as the chief criminal.  The company knew it was in severe financial trouble but lied in order to get the money it needed.

The sham continues

Back in January, as part of the PR re the State of the Union, Obama announced the formation of the Residential Mortgage-Backed Securities Working Group.  The function of this new group in the president's words: “This new unit will hold accountable those who broke the law, speed assistance to homeowners and help turn the page on an era of recklessness that hurt so many Americans.”  Obama was able to persuade Eric Schneiderman, the NY AG who had been actively pursuing the bad guys, to join the Working Group and, in fact, be one of the five co-chairs. 

I said then that I thought this committee was 'smoke and mirrors'.  This article in the NY Daily News seconds that point of view three months later.  None of the 55 staff members that AG Holder said would be hired have actually been hired. There is no office for the Working Group.  In fact, telephone operators at DOJ have not even heard of the group. And Schneiderman is still AG for NY.  I doubt he's spent really very much time on the group's work agenda.


Very interestingly, the article points out that "the new Residential Mortgage-Backed Securities Working Group was the sixth such entity formed since the start of the financial crisis in 2009. The grand total of staff working for all of the previous five groups was one.",

Sunday, April 22, 2012

More Stimulants = More PTSD Cases?

That's the question raised by Richard Friedman in an article entitled "Why Are We Drugging Our Soldiers?" in today's NY Times.  He acknowledges that it can't be proven that the answer is yes, but he certainly raises some questions.

The stimulants under discussion are medicines such as Ritalin and Adderall.  Their use by our military has increased dramatically in the past several years.  In 2001 we spent $7,500,000 on these drugs, in 2010 $39,000,000.  In 2007 3,000 prescriptions were written annually for our soldiers; that number has grown to 32,000.

Compare this growth to that of PTSD cases.  In 2002 studies show that .2% of those who served in Iraq and Afghanistan were diagnosed as having PTSD.  The number in 2008? 22%.

Something is amiss.

Ricks is against the volunteer Army

I haven't read much by Tom Ricks in the past few years, but my earlier reading leads me to believe he's an astute military correspondent.  Yet, I was surprised when he wrote this article, wherein he agreed with me that the all-volunteer force is not a good thing.  Ricks believes that the force has been very successful militarily. But, this success has meant that the public has been able to ignore our wars.  Such ignorance provides no check on our getting into more wars.  With a draft we'd be a lot more careful because our families and friends and sometimes even ourselves could become a casualty of war.

Friday, April 20, 2012

A small first step

The EPA has issued its first regulations on fracking.  They don't cover the biggest problem of water pollution and they really don't go into effect until 2015, but it's a start.  One reason that ground water could not be covered is that our esteemed Congress exempted fracking from the provisions of the Safe Water Drinking Act back in 2005; attempts to remove this exemption have failed.

The big question is when the EPA will protect us from the other risks of fracking.  The ability of the industry to postpone the regulation's implementation for three years is not a good sign that more rules will be forthcoming soon.

Thursday, April 19, 2012

A new BofA

This is a devastating indictment of Bank of America.  It's a 'spoof' site which initially was on Google's phishing list.  You should look at 'Lessons Learned', which reviews the bank's liabilities.  

Here are some more comments of interest:
Today, Bank of America should be on top of the world. We're the second largest bank holding company in the United States and the third largest company in the world. We serve tens of millions of consumers and small businesses in over 150 countries, as well as 80 percent of the Fortune 500 Global Companies. We're the single largest funder of some major US industries, like coal. We're the world’s largest issuer of credit cards, thanks to our 2006 acquisition of MBNA. We're also the number one underwriter of global high-yield debt, and the third largest underwriter of global equity, ever since our 2009 purchase of Merrill Lynch. And thanks to perhaps the best legal team in the world, we paid no U.S. federal taxes in 2010, but received a $1 billion tax refund.
With such an unprecedented combination of size, growth, and ongoing support, we should be flying high. But fate has hatched other plans. Our most recent global earnings statement, and the devastating two-year decline of our stock price — from $50 not long ago, to not far from $5 now — show clearly enough that Bank of America is in full mid-plummet. Should our stock value fall below $5, discussions of federal receivership will have to begin in earnest.

When is enough enough?

Once more, Leo Hindery speaks out against excessive CEO compensation.  In this video he blames the board. 

 

Another Look at the BP Disaster 2 Years Out

This look is by the same people who comprised the National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling.  They decided to track the progress made on their recommendations in the fifteen months since their final report.  

Interestingly, they try to give a succinct indicator of progress by assigning an alphabetic grade to the players.  The recommendations were divided into the following five categories and scored accordingly:
  • Safety and Environmental Protection B
  • Spill Response and Containment       B-
  • Impacts and Restoration                  C
  • Ensuring Adequate Resources           D
  • Frontier Areas—The Arctic                C
They also graded the players
  • Administration                   B
  • Industry                            C+
  • Congress                           D
It's a good sign that the members of this commission took the time and effort to evaluate just how well or poorly their recommendations were implemented. May others do likewise.

A Professional Army?

Reading about the latest brouhaha in Afghanistan, the photos of our troops posing with Taliban corpses and parts of corpses, and last month's assassinations of civilians by one of our boys, and the similar 'minor' incidents that have occurred in Iraq and Afghanistan over the course of these wars, I started to wonder whether these incidents are another price of having a professional army.

A Google search demolished that argument.  War attracts certain people, some of whom kill civilians and prisoners of war.  When you consider the different states of the media - it is more difficult to hide war crimes now - it's possible that we are less criminal than previous armies.


Wednesday, April 18, 2012

BP Disaster - 2 years out

BP's opinion as to the state of seafood in the Gulf: "Seafood from the Gulf of Mexico is among the most tested in the world, and, according to the FDA and NOAA, it is as safe now as it was before the accident." 

Dr. Jim Cowan of LSU's Oceanography and Coastal Sciences says, "The fishermen have never seen anything like this. And in my 20 years working on red snapper, looking at somewhere between 20 and 30,000 fish, I've never seen anything like this either." 

Who is correct? Who do you believe? Before the accident were there "horribly mutated shrimp, fish with oozing sores, underdeveloped blue crabs lacking claws, eyeless crabs and shrimp"? It doesn't sound as though there were. 

One fisherman claims that half of the shrimp she caught last season had neither eyes nor eye sockets. She also asserts that crabs are affected: one-fifth the size, no claws, soft shells. A seafood processor claims, "I've seen the brown shrimp catch drop by two-thirds, and so far the white shrimp have been wiped out. The shrimp are immune compromised. We are finding shrimp with tumors on their heads, and are seeing this everyday." It is suspected that the primary cause of these troubles was the chemicals used to break up and disperse the oil. 

Where did I find this information? Not in the U.S. major media. I found it on Al Jazeera's web site. This seems strange to me. But I guess the spill is no longer an important issue for this country. It's more important to talk about the pre-election rantings of those who believe they should lead us. Here's an interesting video from Al Jazeera: 

Bridge Building - 21st Century Style

I amazed to write that the Massachusetts Department of Transportation is perhaps the leader in a new way of building bridges.  My recollection of life in Massachusetts was of a highway system that needed constant repair and the repairs took ages to complete.  So you can imagine my feelings when I saw a photo of a bridge being installed in Massachusetts not in months but in hours. 

This was not the first bridge built in Massachusetts in such a short time.  Last year the state replaced 14 bridges over I-93 in 10 weekends.

Wow!  Perhaps bringing our infrastructure back will not take decades.


Tuesday, April 17, 2012

The Spring Offensive?

Yesterday, we learned of the Taliban attacks across Afghanistan.   Today there were no bullets fired.  But about 150 Afghan schoolgirls were poisoned after drinking contaminated water at a high school in the country's north and a newly built maternity hospital was bombed.

Tell me again why we don't leave.

 

Citi Shareholders Speak Up

They voted against the bank's pay plan for executives.  Rejection of the pay plan was widespread, 55% against.  True, the vote was only 'advisory' and, thus, is not binding.  But Citi's Chairman said that changes will be made, “We’re going to have some more conversation with our shareholders, make sure we understand their concerns and then fix it.”. 

Citi's stock dropped 44% in 2011.  For such a performance the board was ready to pay Pandit $15,000,000 plus a separate retention deal that could be worth $40,000,000. 


Another sign of America's decline



Courtesy of Today's Moms.

Monday, April 16, 2012

A Day of Promise, Not of Despair

Oscar Arias, Nobel Prize Peace Prize winner and former president of Costa Rica, has some hopeful words for us on this Global Day of Action on Military Spending.

The Almighty Test

The country is moving - has moved? - to accept the idea that only testing, usually mass testing, can be used to identify talent, or as they usually say, the gifted student.  I know Massachusetts places a lot of faith on the results of student testing.  I suspect most states also do.  But I don't think that testing is as much of a mania as it is in New York.  

We've seen the ridiculous sums people are willing to spend to get their already high-achieving children into the right college.  Now we're seeing people spending money to get their kids into the right kindergarten and the right middle school. All of this has made tutoring in NYC a growth industry.  But the question of its value to the kids has not been asked.  What kind of pressure are we putting on these kids?  Is testing the sole criterion for academic excellence?  As we know, people grow and mature at different rates.  Some kids that were considered dumb when they started school end up as valedictorians when they finish school. 

What does all this say about the schools?  Most rely solely on the tests to determine whether a child should be admitted to their school.  But children are not only testers, they are much more complex than that.

Sunday, April 15, 2012

Running for President is a lot more expensive today


From Bill Moyers

We need an eyewitness

That's a common line in a crime drama.  But scientists are questioning the accuracy of eyewitness testimony, which comes some time (it could be years) after the event was witnessed.  

Take a study of people's memory of 9/11.  A very dramatic event.  A world-changing event.  Well, researchers from the New School and NYU have been tracking the recollections of people about the event. They started just after the event.  One year later 37% of the details had changed.

Or, look at the Innocence Project, which tries to free people who have been wrongly convicted.  75% of false convictions that are later overturned are based on faulty eyewitness testimony.

It seems that our recollections are always being altered, the details of the past warped by our present feelings and knowledge. The more you remember an event, the less reliable that memory becomes.

Neil Brewer, an Australian psychologist, thinks there is a better, more accurate way to get eyewitness confirmation of an event.  Give witnesses two seconds to make up their minds. Then ask them to estimate how confident they were about the suspects they identified, rather than insisting on a simple yes-no answer.  His results show a large boost in accuracy, with improvements in eyewitness performance ranging from 21% to 66%.  Even when subjects were quizzed a week later, those who were forced to choose quickly remained far more trustworthy.

There is no way to produce meat in a sustainable fashion

Cows grazing from http://www.ars.usda.gov/is/g...
Cows grazing from http://www.ars.usda.gov/is/graphics/photos/ Image Number K7686-7 Dryland grazing on the Great Plains in Colorado. Each cow on a pasture can emit about 350 liters (230 grams) of methane per day. Photo by Scott Bauer. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
That's the argument James McWilliams makes in Thursday's NY Times.  He thinks that all the alternatives for producing meat industrially have severe limitations.  Here are the key points in his argument:
  • Grass-grazing cows emit considerably more methane than grain-fed cows. Pastured organic chickens have a 20 percent greater impact on global warming. It requires 2 to 20 acres to raise a cow on grass. If we raised all the cows in the United States on grass (all 100 million of them), cattle would require (using the figure of 10 acres per cow) almost half the country’s land (and this figure excludes space needed for pastured chicken and pigs). 
  • Many farmers who raise chickens on pasture use industrial breeds that have been bred to do one thing well: fatten quickly in confinement. As a result, they can suffer painful leg injuries after several weeks of living a “natural” life pecking around a large pasture. Free-range pigs are routinely affixed with nose rings to prevent them from rooting, which is one of their most basic instincts. In essence, what we see as natural doesn’t necessarily conform to what is natural from the animals’ perspectives. 
  • The economics of alternative animal systems are similarly problematic. Subsidies notwithstanding, the unfortunate reality of commodifying animals is that confinement pays. 
  • But rotational grazing works better in theory than in practice. Consider Joel Salatin, the guru of nutrient cycling, who employs chickens to enrich his cows’ grazing lands with nutrients. His plan appears to be impressively eco-correct, until we learn that he feeds his chickens with tens of thousands of pounds a year of imported corn and soy feed. This common practice is an economic necessity.  
  • there is no avoiding the fact that the nutrient cycle is interrupted every time a farmer steps in and slaughters a perfectly healthy manure-generating animal, something that is done before animals live a quarter of their natural lives.
  • Farmers could avoid this waste by exploiting animals only for their manure, allowing them to live out the entirety of their lives on the farm, all the while doing their own breeding and growing of feed. But they’d better have a trust fund. 
In McWilliams' eyes the only answer today is to stop eating meat.
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Friday, April 13, 2012

Be Safe Rather Than Sorry

That's a mantra for many Fortune 500 companies.  Why else would they spend significant money on making sure that their CEOs are secure?  The primary way they can meet that obligation is to make sure the CEO always travels by private plane, even if he is traveling to his vacation spot.  Other ways to protect the CEO?  Home alarm systems, 24-hour monitoring, chauffeur-driven vehicles. 

The real reason why companies spend so much money on the CEO's security is to minimize the tax consequences of some perks.  If a company can get a 'consultant' to declare that the CEO needs to fly on a private plane for his safety whether or not he is flying on business, the CEO's tax burden is reduced.  But it is not only the CEO's flight costs that are covered by the company, those of his family also are.  

And security is needed not only in the air but on the ground.  Northrop Grumman bought its lead director a new 'more secure residence'. 

Medical Practitiioner

Around here Nurse Practitioners do a lot of work that was formerly performed by doctors.  I have yet to find anyone who thinks this is a mistake.  It's just part of your medical care.  Some people are trying to make the same thing happen with dentistry, i.e., create the job of Dental Practitioner.  Currently Alaska and Minnesota are the only states to allow people to become Registered Dental Practitioners (RDP); activists in 15 other states are trying to make the practice accepted in their state.

Kansas is one of those states because western Kansas is a virtual desert with regard to the availability of dentists.  Most counties in the western half of the state have only one or two dentists, if any.  A dozen counties, plus three more in eastern Kansas, have no dentist at all.  At a typical clinic by the Kansas Dental Charitable Foundation they had to close the doors almost at the same time they opened them, as patients had spent the night waiting for the doors to open and there were more than could be seen by the 165 dentists that had donated their time.


The Kansas ADA chapter is against the idea of an RDP and is fighting proposed legislation to establish the position.

Dina Rasor Does It Again

In a blistering article in Truthout Dina Rasor and Charles Smith really lower the boom on some in the military who look more to their future nonmilitary employment than to their jobs as our fiscal stewards.  This time the subject is KBR, a unit of Halliburton.

In the early 2000s KBR won a major logistics contract (LOGCAP) for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.  After the contract had been going for awhile, the government decided to audit the costs that had been incurred to date.  Guess what?  The government auditors said they could not vouch for the accuracy of the audit because KBR accounting systems sucked: KBR's data was not auditable. (Sound familiar?  DOD, itself, is unauditable.)  However, the auditors were able to conclude that $1.2 billion in KBR costs were unsupported by documentation and, therefore, should not be recognized by the Army when determining how much or even whether KBR should eligible for a bonus, known as award fees.  Also, another small amount - $250,000,000 - was padded into the dining costs.

Since KBR hoped to be able to renew this contract at some point, they realized that something had to be done about this unauditability and other matters.  The something they did was not to repair them but to get the military to change its mind about the deficiencies.  How could they do this?  Simple.  Hire an ex-Army man who had influence with the Army people responsible for the contract.

KBR found their man in retired Lt. Gen. Paul Cerjan. He made the problem go away.  He got the nasty people - those who wanted to do their job - to go away.   The deficiencies were redefined or ignored so that they didn't count as negatives for KBR.  Mr. Cerjan certainly earned his pay. KBR has billed more than $50 billion under this contract and it's still in effect.

Thursday, April 12, 2012

Amazon the Corporate Citizen

Amazon as a corporate citizen is a little bit different kettle of fish than Amazon  the employer.  I think it was fairly obvious that you wouldn't take a warehouse job there unless you had no other choice.  Evaluating the company as a "corporate citizen" is not as obvious.  

Yes, the company is not in the same league as Microsoft or Boeing or Nordstrom's when it comes to giving money to charity.  But Bezos has made major contributions to charities as an individual.  Philosophically, he does not think companies should practice philanthropy.  I can understand that point of view although I disagree with it.

It's at the employee level that I have my reservations as he makes it difficult for employees to contribute to charity via payroll donations: it costs them 6% to do so.

Bezos is not active within the Seattle business community, Amazon's hometown.  He did not appear at a luncheon honoring him as "Executive of the Year.  Amazon has built many buildings in Seattle, but neither he nor his staff come to groundbreaking ceremonies held by the city and state.

It's Chicken Feed To Goldman Sachs

The latest government fine Goldman has to pay is $22,000,000.  You would love to have that amount of money at your disposal. It's chump change for Goldman, they really consider it a cost of doing business.  How else to explain the number of times the firm has been fined or censured by the SEC and other agencies?  The current fine is for giving confidential data to favored customers over a five-year period.  Why doesn't the SEC proceed against the people who have committed these violations?

Wednesday, April 11, 2012

Amazon the Employer

I swear by buying just about anything I can from Amazon.  The prices are reasonable.  The customer service is excellent.  The web site is easy to manipulate. 

But an article in the Columbia Journalism Review led me to this expose about Amazon's warehouse practices in Pennsylvania.  It does not lead me to think I would like to work for Amazon.  

First of all, it would be difficult to work for them at this warehouse, as most of the staff is first hired on a temporary basis by an outside agency.  The article was written last September and a good number of worker complaints were due to the heat in the warehouse during a summer heat wave.  Temperatures exceeded 100 degrees.  Unlike most warehouses, Amazon kept all the doors closed to "prevent theft".  The heat was so bad that Amazon hired paramedics and an ambulance to stay outside the warehouse to treat employees staggered from the heat.

But heat was not the only complaint.  Some employees claimed that overtime was mandatory.  Others were pushed over and over to up their productivity no matter how high that productivity already was. In an economy where unemployment is high and jobs scarce Amazon was able to make demands of their employees which, to put it charitably, were not indicative of a company that cared for its workers.

There are other areas besides working conditions that lead one to have severe reservations about buying at Amazon.  I'll be discussing them over the next few days.

One Bank Has to Pay Up

Wells Fargo was hit with a $3,100,000 judgment for their handling of a mortgage held by Michael Jones of New Orleans, who really got creamed by the bank. He was charged $24,000 in fees because of a computer glitch.His mortgage payments were applied to interest and fees rather than principal in violation of his contract.  And, of course Wells Fargo used every legal trick in the book to slow down the proceedings.

The Final Stage Begins

I can't say that the last year or so of campaigning for the presidency has been this country's best days.  But I don't see the next seven months being any better.  While the quality of presidential candidates has been going downhill as I age, I really never thought it would sink this low.  I had thought that GW was the nadir.  I was wrong as Barack has done a good job of screwing up as badly as George.  One thing that George had over Barack is that he actually believed what he said - no matter how silly he sounded - and was willing to fight for it. The idea of Barack believing in something and actually fighting for it has not been something I have seen.  Of course, Mitt has difficulty espousing the same cause over a short period of time; he almost makes Barack seem to have deep-seated beliefs.  I lived in Massachusetts when Mitt was governor. I thought he was a lousy governor and can't see him having improved over the years.

The quality of the candidates and the campaigns they will run is probably the most salient indicator of this country's decline.  Oh, how I wish Harry were resurrected and maybe even Tricky Dick.

Tuesday, April 10, 2012

Reconciling the Payroll

As you'd expect, the Army's payroll is pretty big; for those on active duty it amounted to about $47 billion in 2010. The GSA found that accounting for this payroll stinks. The Army - as well as the Navy and Air Force - could not identify who should have gotten paid; the personnel files and the pay accounts did not match.  Reaching this conclusion  was not an overnight job.  It took three months before the Army could provide a list of those who received active duty pay and another two months to compare this list to the personnel files.  One of the tests GSA used was based on a small sample of 250 pay accounts.  The Army could only document 5 of these accounts.




The Company You Keep

It seems that Mr. Arpaio is not alone in being accused by the Justice Department of using his office to intimidate political opponents.  Andrew Thomas, the former Maricopa County Attorney, is also being accused by DOJ of the same behavior.  Here are some of the charges Mr. Thomas will have to answer to : "filing criminal and civil cases without probable cause or evidentiary basis; bringing them to embarrass, burden or delay; dishonesty and fraud; incompetence; conflicts of interest; and engaging in criminal conduct (by causing an unknowing sheriff’s detective to swear to a false affidavit for charging a judge with crimes after others had balked". Also two of Mr. Thomas' assistants are being charged.  Maricopa County seems like a political cesspool.

An ER for seniors?

Some say it's just a marketing gimmick.  Others say it results in better treatment.  The "it" is the separate hospital emergency room for old people.  This is a relatively new move by hospitals, the first senior ER was opened just a few years ago.  Within the next year or two there will be more than 50 ERs for seniors.  It seems to me, a senior, that this is more than a marketing gimmick, but more experience is needed.

The senior ER has features tailored for the elderly: "nonskid floors, rails along the walls, reclining chairs for patients and thicker mattresses to reduce bedsores. To keep the noise down, the curtain rings and rods around the beds are made of plastic instead of metal".  There are volunteers to provide human interaction and other amenities - such as reading glasses, Sudoku puzzles and hearing aids - while patients wait to be treated.  Patients are also given Ipads with which they
can have a two-way video conversation with a nurse, or touch the screen to ask for lunch, pain medication or music. 

There are financial incentives for the hospital under Obamacare.  One factor in reimbursements to the hospital is patient satisfaction.  These new ERs should result in higher satisfaction scores. Keep in mind that 15-20% of those visiting the ER are elderly; this ratio can only increase as more baby boomers age.

It will be interesting to see what the situation looks like a few years from now.

Monday, April 09, 2012

The Birds, The Bees, The Butterflies

Mitt and Bibi

It's interesting but inconsequential that both Romney and Netanyahu are better known by their nicknames - Mitt and Bibi - than by their given names - Willard and Benjamin.  It is also interesting but very consequential that they have been friends since the late 1970s.  What effect would this friendship have on this country should Romney become our next president?

It's likely that the effect would be significant.  In the Republican's December debate Romney chided Gingrich for a comment he made about the Palestinian situation: “Before I made a statement of that nature, I’d get on the phone to my friend Bibi Netanyahu and say: ‘Would it help if I say this? What would you like me to do?’ " Furthermore, most observers believe that our policy vis-a-vis Israel would be vetted by Netanyahu in the event of a Romney presidency.

Friday, April 06, 2012

It gets worse for the GSA

THE Conference has certainly been in the news the past couple of days.  Now we learn that the fellow who had budget authority for the conference was one of the favored people at GSA.  He was given a performance bonus last year even though the review board said no. He also allowed his staff to redeem reward points for taxpayer-funded gift cards and electronics, including iPods. There was no flack from his bosses.

What's to become of Iraq?

Hannah Allam was the Baghdad Bureau Chief for McClatchy from 2003 to 2006.  She has visited Baghdad off an on since she left and has had a good grasp of the situation.  In writing about her most recent visit there, she is not sanguine about Iraq's future.  She sees the country as "an unstable, deeply sectarian state that's verging on authoritarianism under the veneer of a U.S.-friendly Muslim democracy".

Allam thinks that our withdrawal has enabled Maliki to consolidate power at the cost of freedom for Kurds and Sunnis.   Further, she sees the new U.S. ambassador as a big booster of Maliki; it is highly unlikely that the ambassador will want or be able to rein in Maliki.


Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2012/04/05/144332/iraq-unstable-sectarian-with-signs.html#storylink=cpy


Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2012/04/05/144332/iraq-unstable-sectarian-with-signs.html#storylink=cpy

Thursday, April 05, 2012

The End of Newt?

His healthcare think tank, Center for Health Transformation, has itself been transformed to a bankrupt organization.  The Center has filed for bankruptcy; it has $50,000 in assets and owes an unspecified amount between 1 and 10 million dollars. 

A professor from Georgia has the last word, “While health-care costs have bankrupted many without insurance, Gingrich may be the first to go broke studying health-care delivery.”

The U.S. and China: Trusting One Another?

The Brookings Institution has published "Addressing U.S.-China Strategic Distrust", a very forthright discussion of relations between the two countries. Wang Jisi, dean of the School of International Studies at Peking University, expressed the Chinese view; he says that he was free to give his opinion. Kenneth Lieberthal, the director of the Brookings Institution’s John L. Thornton China Center, spoke for America.

China's View
The Chinese view of the situation is that distrust of the U.S. by China goes back quite far. However, recent changes have exacerbated the situation.  The changes are "the feeling in China that since 2008 the PRC has ascended to be a first-class global power; the assessment that the United States, despite ongoing great strength, is heading for decline; the observation that emerging powers like India, Brazil, Russia and South Africa are increasingly challenging Western dominance and are working more with each other and with China in doing so; and the notion that China's development model of a strong political leadership that effectively manages social and economic affairs provides an alternative to Western democracy and market economies for other developing countries to learn from." 

Jisi fears that we will try to stop "or even upset" China's rise.  Some examples of these attempts are our shipment of arms to Taiwan, Obama's pivot to Asia and  a move to protectionism.

U.S. View
Lieberthal claims that our decision makers don't distrust China.  However, they do see things as being rather murky and risky. China's growing rise to military power and its diplomacy around the world is of major concern, particularly with regard to the South China Sea.  China's undervaluing of the yuan creates economic worries. Cybertheft by China seems to be rising. And, of course, we wish China were a democracy.

It's good to see differences being spelled out to such a degree that the authors can suggest a path to raising trust.


The FDA and the Stock Market

Two professors from the University of Chicago - Eric Posner and Glen Wyle - think that new financial products should be vetted by a government agency before being allowed to be sold, sort of an FDA for financial products.  And, the FDA is their model.  Now, it is true that the FDA has had some problems, but, on the whole, it has been a benefit to we citizens over the years.

The authors don't have a good opinion of Credit Default Swaps; they think it's basically gambling that does nothing good for the financial system. Had they been subject to review and approval by an FDA-like agency, the Great Recession may not have been so great.

The idea of reviewing new financial products by a government agency is not new.  The CFTC did it in the 20th century until Congress changed the rules. The FTC and Dept. of Justice use a similar process in deciding on proposed mergers.

How would the process work?  In the case of derivatives, the authors say
"Regulators would distinguish the demand for the derivative’s beneficial uses -- diversification and insurance, supplying information to the market -- from the demand for its harmful uses -- avoidance of taxation and regulation, speculation and high-frequency trading. These assessments would help the agency determine whether the financial instrument should be licensed, restricted or prohibited."
It's not a bad idea, but I won't live to see something like this happen.


Wednesday, April 04, 2012

There's Something About Arizona

The Arizona Senate has passed a bill that would ban abortion after 20 weeks of pregnancy.  The problem here is in how they define the beginning of pregnancy: “age of the unborn child as calculated from the first day of the last menstrual period of the pregnant woman.”  Are they assuming a miraculous pregnancy?  Or do they just want to cut the period to 18 weeks?

Then you have Mr. Arpaio, who calls himself "America's toughest sheriff".  He's fixated on Obama's birth.  A federal grand jury is investigating whether he used his office to intimidate political opponents and whether he misappropriated government money.  The Department of Justice believes that he is illegally detaining Hispanics and mistreating them in jail.

How much money, time and effort is being wasted on these issues?  I'm glad I'm not an Arizona taxpayer.

Believe me. Now I'm telling the truth

The title of this post describes fairly accurately Bank of America's stance with regard to debts they have sold to collection agencies.  In the sales agreement the bank said that it would not provide records supporting their claim.  Further, it said that some of the claims it sold might already have been extinguished in bankruptcy court. Finally, it said in the agreement that the balances were "approximate" and in some cases the debt may have been paid in full.  Yet when the agencies have taken debtors to court, BofA says that their records are perfect and they can prove it with "computerized and hard copy records". 

Which is the correct version?