A Trial at Guantanamo

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Soliciting votes in the Men's Room

Remember Larry Craig?  He was a long time Senator from Idaho who was arrested back in 2007 for soliciting sex in the Men's Room at Minneapolis-St. Paul Airport.  He eventually paid $216,000 to his lawyers before pleading guilty to a disorderly conduct charge.  The money came from his campaign funds.  The Federal Election Commission claims that was a misuse of these funds.  Craig claims he was on official business plus other Congressmen were able to use campaign funds for similar offenses.

I find his reasoning faulty.  I don't see how soliciting sex qualifies as official business.  Nor do I understand the reasoning that if one person gets away with murder then others should also.

It's a small step

The EU has decided that bonuses to bank officials should be capped at one year's salary or two year's salary if stockholders approve.  Will the banks simply raise the base salaries?  They might, but, at least, the EU is trying; we are not.

Leadership at Work

Republicans say the sequester-driven spending cuts start Friday, March 1.  The Democrats say Saturday, March 2.  Is there anything on which they can agree?  They should all resign and begin their second career with the lobbying firms now.

If they really wanted to make some cuts, all they need do is read the GAO reports, which spell out the areas that are simply waste or require intelligent management.

Reality vs. Rhetoric

Really light beer?

Anheuser-Busch is being sued in a couple of states for watering down its beers, including Budweiser and Michelob.  The suits allege that the alcohol content on the label is not accurate.  The source of the suit is reported to be former employees of the firm.  There has been no independent testing of the beer.  It does seem odd that multiple suits would be pursued based on what could be asserted are disgruntled employees.  Is the lawyer handling these suits hoping to embarrass the company to such a degree that it will pay him to go away?

The end of Fung Wah?

Fung Wah is a bus line that pioneered low fares between Boston and New York. It seems as though their ability to offer low fares is due to some fundamental problems it has had.  To wit:

Last month, one of its buses hit two pedestrians in Manhattan, according to news reports. In 2007, a Fung Wah bus crashed into a guardrail at the Allston-Brighton tolls, and a driver trying to change lanes wedged a bus atop a concrete barrier at the Weston toll booths. 
In 2006, a Boston-bound coach rolled over while rounding an interstate ramp, slightly injuring 34 passengers, and in 2005, one of its buses caught fire on a highway in Connecticut.
Fung Wah buses have been cited for 159 maintenance violations in the past two years, including 23 instances of cracked, loose, or broken frames, according to the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration. Its drivers are ranked in the bottom 3 percent of drivers nationwide, based on experience and training.
Drivers have racked up a dozen speeding violations in the past two years and been cited six times for failure to speak English or operating without a commercial driver’s license, according to federal regulators.

 Not exactly a sterling record.

Signature Strikes

That's what drone strikes against people whose identities are unknown - but believed to be persons of suspicious behavior or other “signatures” - are called.  There are a fair number of these strikes, some believe that most of the drone strikes are of this type.  The problem is that some, if not most, of these strikes have killed civilians with no connection to terrorism.

Senator McCain asks, “How can the Administration be certain it is not killing civilians in areas, like many parts of Yemen and Pakistan, where virtually all men, including civilians, carry weapons?”

Our former Ambassador to Pakistan, Cameron Munter, applies the reasonable man standard which is “a male between the ages of 20 and 40. My feeling is one man’s combatant is another man’s – well, a chump who went to a meeting.”

Too Big?

The St. Louis Federal Reserve thinks that once banks go beyond $30-50,000,000 in assets there are no more economies of scale. What does this say about the seven largest?

Negotiate with Iran

Stephen Walt argues that we should stop threatening Iran and enter into serious negotiations.  And Thomas Pickering, a veteran diplomat, agrees with him, "It's a serious mistake not to talk to people from whom we are estranged. And it's a serious mistake to believe that military force can solve diplomatic problems as we have found out most recently in Iraq."  As does Iran's Ambassador to the UN, Mohammad Khazaee, "As long as pressure is on Iran, as long as there is a sword on our neck to come to negotiations, this is not negotiations, therefore Iranians cannot accept that."

Of course, there is always the possibility that threatening Iran will reinforce their interest in having a latent nuclear weapons capability, and might eventually convince them that they need to get an actual bomb.

The world as battlefield

That's been our position since 9/11.  The enemy can be anywhere in the world, thus the battlefield can be anywhere, including the U.S.  Since the president can do almost anything he wants on a battlefield, such as use drones to kill American citizens in foreign countries, then, by this reasoning, he could use drones to kill American citizens in the U.S.  Glenn Greenwald devotes a lengthy column to the question of whether the administration thinks it has the right to practice its drone policy here.

Greenwald quotes both Obama and CIA Director-designate Brennan in their responses to two questions.  

To Brennan - Could you describe the geographical limits on the Administration's conduct drone strikes?  Brennan's answer: "we do not view our authority to use military force against al-Qa'ida and associated forces as being limited to 'hot' battlefields like Afghanistan." 

To Obama - "what will you do to create a legal framework to make American citizens within the United States believe know that drone strikes cannot be used against American citizens?" Obama's answer: there "has never been a drone used on an American citizen on American soil."

The truth shall set you free.

Return to Nature

For me it started maybe five or so years ago.  First, it was turkeys walking down a main street in Oak Bluffs.  Then, it seemed as though the deer appeared in our yard just about every morning.  Stories about coyote sightings were next.  When I moved to Connecticut, it was the sighting of bears that made the news.  Soon, the cougar who traveled over 1,000 miles to Connecticut was the subject of the news for a week or so. Clearly, 'wild' animals are getting closer and closer to our cities and towns.  Jim Sterba has written a book about this invasion - "Nature Wars: The Incredible Story of How Wildlife Comebacks Turned Backyards into Battlegrounds" - which Russell Baker reviews in the NY Review of Books. 

Sterba attributes this growth to a couple of changes that have occurred in the past fifty years.  Chief among these changes: we do not rely on hunting for our food or wood for our heat and buildings; we've moved further and further away from town centers; the forest has regrown; the demise of the family farm.  He thinks we should have more hunters and should be more aware that nature is really not benign but Darwinian.

Benefits of a draft

Thom Hartmann has an excellent article on why we should reinstate the draft.  His conclusion:

It levels the playing field, and causes everyone to be affected by war. It makes our lawmakers think twice before sending our men and women into battle. It helps to galvanize public opinion, which is the greatest power to end wars. It helps to hold our military industrial complex in check, preventing war profiteers from making profits at the expense of American lives. And it even helps to rebuild our nation, while providing a culturally important a rite of passage to adulthood.

The trillion dollar plane

The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter has some problems; it seems that there is a crack in a turbine blade.  All flights have been suspended.  This is not the first problem with the plane.  It has had to be redesigned, the bulkhead has cracked, software is late.  As a result, it  is seven years behind schedule and 70 percent over its initial cost estimate. It was expected to have 1591 planes by 2017, that estimate has been cut to 365.

It was expected to be an affordable, state-of-the-art stealth jet serving three military branches and U.S. allies.  At almost $400 billion, it’s the most expensive weapons system in U.S. history; it is expected to eventually cost about $1.5 trillion.  The cost of each plane has gone from $69,000,000 in 2001 to $137,000,000 last year.

 Shouldn't we can this project?  Not if it employs 133,000 in 45 states.

More on Lew

The more one learns about Jack Lew, the more convinced one becomes of his inappropriateness as Treasury Secretary.  He has been the beneficiary of some strange mortgage transactions all the while he was being compensated quite well.  Also, when he was VP of Operations at NYU, the university admitted guilt in a student-loan kickback case.

Tim's non-payment of taxes seems like chickenfeed compared to Lew's shenanigans.

Another troop deployment

This time to Niger.   The deployment is in support of the French troops in Mali. Niger will soon start to become more important in that it will be the home of another drone base.  We must protect ourselves.

Catching Spies

John Hamre is a former deputy secretary of defense and chairman of the Defense Policy Board.  He has had security clearance for 27 years, but his clearance must be renewed every five years.  He recounts his experience in doing so and along the way points out the stupidity and waste of time and money of the process.

Some examples:

• The last time he renewed his clearance he did so electronically.  Now, the computer system asks him to start from scratch. Why can't he start from his last submission's data?
• The form asks him to list all foreign travel he's taken in the last seven years.  He travels extensively and completes a security report each time.  Why doesn't the system know this?
• Because he refused to repeat a litany of his travels, he was visited by a representative of the Office of Personnel Management, which is the agency which stores these records.  The investigator went by the book asking him his name, address, etc., basically everything that he had entered on the magic form.

His summary of his experience:

In other words, to grant a top-secret clearance in the United States, we ask a potential spy to fill out a form, which is given to an employee, possibly a contract worker, who then asks the candidate to verbally confirm what he has written. 

When reviewing applications to determine whether they are fraudulent, very, very few companies are as inefficient as the federal government.  Hamre estimates this is costing us $1 billion annually.  Using modern technology would whittle this cost down substantially.

It's very hard work

Congressmen and Senators work very hard; sometimes they even work - as opposed to campaign - five days a week.  So, of course, they should get a pension, at least a decent pension.  Currently, almost 500 of our retired representatives get a pension; the total annual cost is $28,000,000.  The amount of the pension varies with years of service.  You need to have served at least five years, the maximum annual pension of $125,000 is paid to those who have served thirty-two years.  There is also a 401(k)-type plan where we match the representative's contribution up to 5 percent.

The fact that they receive a pension does not, of course, prevent them from working.  Some have become consultants to defense companies, which are largely financed by the taxpayers and depend on Congress for their revenue.

It's a wonderful life.

A PostMortem on the Occupy Movement

Jeff Madrick thinks that the Occupy Movement was done in by the police, not by a failure of leadership or the lack of a consistent message.  His article in the current Harper's (which I cannot access although I am a subscriber) cites a number of arrests by the NYPD which seem to have been somewhat arbitrary.  He also argues that many successful protests were as unorganized as Occupy.

While there were arrests in other cities, Madrick does not analyze any of them as he does some of the NY arrests.  Also, he fails to acknowledge that successful protests did have a consistent message.

These are parlous times.  If the governmental dysfunction, poor economy, overemphasis on security and excessive militarization continue, there will be protests and, eventually, they will succeed or all of what have we worked for in the past couple of hundred years will be lost.

Estimates changed once more

It was only a few months ago that Netanyahu was telling the world that Iran would have the bomb in 2013.  Now that he has been reelected, the date has slipped to 2015 or 2016.  This shifting estimate is not new; in 1992, Peres announced that Iran was on pace to have the bomb by 1999.  

Jacques Hymans attributes this frequent re-estimating to the failure of Israel (and the US) to consider that since the 1970s most countries seeking to join the nuclear club have not had an easy time.  Libya gave up after thirty years; it took North Korea fifty years to detonate the bomb.  Hymans believes the issue is poor management, not poor scientists.  For example, Iran is a leading oil state yet imports 40% of its oil because its refineries are not up to the job.  We need to better understand what's going on in Iran before we begin another unnecessary war.

What's with India?

Rape seems to be the dominant story in 2013.  The latest being the rape and murder of three sisters, aged 6 to 11.

1 or 2 dolphins

That's 1 or 2 thousand dolphins - maybe more - swimming off San Diego.

Now, they're all around us

Since the meteorite damage in Russia, it seems that almost every day a meteorite is spotted.  Last week it was Cuba and California.  Yesterday it was Florida.

Government in 21st century America

POGO has published a sickening report on the interactions between the SEC and its former employees.  In summary, POGO found that "former employees of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) routinely help corporations try to influence SEC rule-making, counter the agency’s investigations of suspected wrongdoing, soften the blow of SEC enforcement actions, block shareholder proposals, and win exemptions from federal law.  Yet, the SEC has exempted certain senior employees from a “cooling off period” that would have restricted their ability to leave the SEC and then represent clients before the agency. In addition, the SEC has shielded some former employees from public scrutiny by blacking out their names in documents they must file when they go through the revolving door.

From 2001 through 2010, more than 400 SEC alumni filed almost 2,000 disclosure forms saying they planned to represent an employer or client before the agency." 

We have to meet with our constituents

Congress is taking another 10 days off.  After all, they have to observe Presidents Day and meet with their constituents.  Perhaps they have these meetings scheduled at the unemployment office.  They're all lamenting this "crisis" which they created, yet to spend time trying to resolve the crisis is beyond them.  In January's 31 days, they met for 10 and they won't meet for many more in February.  Not a bad job for $174,000 a year plus an expense account.

Now it's really huge or so they say

A later report on the meteorite crashing in Russia has upped the injury toll to 1,200.  That I can understand.  What I can't understand is that the article claims that NASA has estimated that the amount of energy released from impact with the atmosphere was about 30 times greater than the force of the nuclear bomb dropped on Hiroshima.  That bomb destroyed Hiroshima almost totally.  It killed over 100,000 on the day of the explosion and many more from its aftereffects. No one has been reported killed by the crash.  No buildings have been obliterated.  Was this a different kind of energy?

Wedding Songs

Meteorite comes to earth

The photo shows the trail of a meteorite that landed in Russia today.  No one died, but 14 went to the hospital.  Breaking glass was the chief culprit of another 500 who were injured but not bad enough to be hospitalized.

1 Billion Rising

WOMEN AROUND THE WORLD

ARE DENIED BASIC HUMAN RIGHTS

 

WOMEN AROUND THE WORLD

ARE VICTIMS OF VIOLENCE

 

Such inhumanity towards our wives, mothers, daughters, sisters, and granddaughters

MUST STOP NOW

 

Today, Valentine’s Day, people – women and men – will be rising in 197 countries around the world to demand an end to this violence.  Some of us are rising in support.  Won’t you join us?

There are always exceptions

Take, for example, Citigroup in 2009, when it was on the ropes and existing largely because of our bailout.  Their contracts with some high-level employees stated that ‘your guaranteed incentive and retention award’ would not be paid upon exit from Citigroup.  Guess what?  There was one exception - you would receive that compensation ‘as a result of your acceptance of a full time high level position with the United States Government or a regulatory body.’ 

Jack Lew, the Obama nominee, for Secretary of the Treasury, was able to bank his $940,000 bonus when he left Citi to join the government.  Is it at all likely that Citi had the money to pay the bonus because we gave it to them? Was Citi expecting that Lew would remember the bonus when making decisions affecting Citi?

What is it with Obama's nominees for this job?  Tim hadn't paid his taxes.

Really minimum wage

Should we raise our minimum wage to $9/hour as proposed by Mr. Obama?  In Connecticut it is now $8.25, in Massachusetts $8.  Looking at other countries, we see that our minimum wage is really minimum.  Here it's 38% of median full-time wages, in countries such as France or New Zealand it's greater than 60%.  In a study by the ILO, only Japan and Spain had lower minimum wages than we did.

The 21st century dog

When our kids were young and we had dogs, we did not have to spend a lot of money on the dogs except for an occasional vet bill.  Those days have gone for many.  I suspect the willingness to spend fairly serious money on dogs is akin to the Lake Woebegone illness affecting many modern American parents.

As with we humans, keeping animals healthy is expensive.  Annual healthcare spending on pets have increased by 50% in the past decade; it is now $655 annually on average.  Apparently for some, the idea of health insurance for dogs makes a lot of sense as there are insurance companies which do not insure people, they insure animals.

And then there are the neccesities: Martha Stewart-brand dog beds ($49.99 for the "Bonequilt Snuggler" model at PetSmart.com), BK Atelier's luxury poop-bag holder ($39.99 at bitchnewyork.com) or special meals costing $7/pound.  We're talking only of  dog as normal pet.  If your dog is in the world of dog shows, you're talking big money.  One dog handler reports such necessities as pet psychics, dog chiropractors, luxury motor homes that allow the furry little kings and queens to travel between shows in style.

Comparing government spending

Mark Thoma has an interesting graph comparing the growth in per capita government spending under presidents since Nixon.  I can't say whether the numbers are percentages or something else.  It would be nice to know or be smart enough to understand the chart fully.  But what is interesting to me is that Obama's reign shows a decrease, which may indicate he has not been very responsive to the problems of the Great Recession.

 

Want to get invited to the State of the Union speech?

Be an absolute idiot, otherwise known as Ted Nugent.  For some what has to be a totally bizarre reason, Mr. Obama has invited Mr. Nugent to tomorrow night's big speech.  (Of course, whether anyone will remember or care about this speech is another issue.)  Some of Mr. Nugent's recent thoughts:

• his “buddies” would be willing to start a new American Revolution if the Obama administration attempted to “re-implement the tyranny of King George” with gun control.
• called Obama a “piece of shit” who should “suck on my machine gun.”
• told reporter Jeff Glor that he would “suck your fucking dick” and then “fuck” a female producer.
• he would “demilitarize” himself by refraining from bringing a firearm to the president’s speech

Wouldn't you agree that Mr. Nugent has not exactly earned his invitation? It's just another indication that Mr. Obama lives in another universe.  He certainly doesn't live in the same universe as I do.

2nd class citizens

Of course you know I'm talking about women.  This time it's Jewish women.  Ten of them were arrested for trying to pray at the Western Wall.  They had the audacity to break a law which prohibits them from wearing prayer shawls, praying and reading out loud from the Torah collectively at the wall.  These practices are reserved for men.  Violating them makes you subject to six months in jail and a fine of $3,000.

Connections

Tim Geithner has been named a distinguished fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.  The chair of the Council is one Robert Rubin, who has been a mentor to Mr. Geithner, as well as a former Treasury Secretary at the time of the repeal of Glass-Steagall and a former muck-a-muck at Citigroup where he pulled down a fairly decent dollar.  But Rubin is not the only financier involved with the Council.  Morris Greenberg of AIG fame is an honorary vice chair.

Do you suppose that the recent bailouts to Citi and AIG had any bearing on the Council's hiring of Mr. Geithner?

Incidentally, I gleaned some of this information from Wall Street on Parade, which seems to take shall we say a different view of Wall Street.

America in the 21st century

Two quotes from a former Guantanamo prosecutor, Col. Morris Davis:

 

“We used to be the land of the free and the home of the brave. Since 9/11, we’ve been the constrained and the cowardly.”

“If you went to the airport 15 years ago and somebody felt you up, it was called a sexual assault, not pre-boarding. From that, to the ‘kill list,’ to indefinite detention, liberty’s kind of gone by the wayside. Ben Franklin said, ‘Anyone who would trade their liberty for security deserves neither,’ and here we are now.”

Changing energy prices in Australia

Australia instituted a carbon tax last year.  Lo and behold, wind power is now cheaper than coal from new plants and natural gas.  Electricity can be supplied from a new wind farm in Australia at a cost of A$80 ($84) per megawatt hour, compared with A$143 a megawatt hour from a new coal-fired power plant or A$116 from a new station powered by natural gas when the cost of carbon emissions is included, according to a Bloomberg New Energy Finance report.   Older coal-fired power stations built in the 1970s and 1980s are still cheaper than wind-powered plants can still produce power at a lower cost than that of wind, the research shows. This change in relative costs is very significant because Australia has some of the world’s best fossil fuel resources.

Checking the skies

While asteroids, comets, meteors and other objects in space have been around forever as far as we know, it is only relatively recently (basically the start of the 21st century) that we have begun to discover just how many objects there are out there.  Scientists estimate that we have discovered less than 10% of all the near-Earth objects.  And, we've focused more money and attention on the Northern Hemisphere.  So, the estimates may be way off.  Of the objects discovered it is estimated that more than two dozen asteroids have a chance of being the black swan relative to objects from space crashing into earth.  The last one that did so was in 1908 when it leveled all the trees in 825 square miles in Russia.  It is also thought that the dinosaurs vanished because of a collision with an object from space.

Moyers on Drones

Is it a tree?

Kabul through the years

The same street in Afghanistan 40 years later.  From LiveLeak.com. 

Next week's disaster story

This week we in the Northeast are being deluged by 'news' about a blizzard.  If the forecasts are correct, it will be a very bad storm.  But we've had very bad storms - a lot of them - before.  We survived without going into panic mode.  I know it's no longer the 20th century and things are so much more critical and important today than they ever used to be.  But give me a break.  Stop the hyperbole.  Get real.

Next week the story will be 2012 DA14.  This is the asteroid that will pass by us next Friday.  Unlike the blizzard hysteria, the pitch here is that everything will be okay as it will not get closer to us than 17,000 miles.  However, compared to the blizzard this is a 'black swan' event in that we have had very few asteroids crash into the earth.  So, maybe we should worry or believe that the scientists are right.  Take your pick.

Gilding the lily

U.S. News has gained a lot of credibility and prestige by publishing its annual college rankings.  I'm sure it has helped their revenues.  Some have questioned the accuracy of the data.  In many cases where the 'public' votes for the 'best of', many organizations work hard to make sure they are among the 'best'; however, the work is not done in the field in which they are being rated, it's done by getting out the vote.  Well, it looks like something similar happens with the U.S. News rankings.  Just recently five universities - Bucknell, George Washington, Tulane, Emory, Claremont McKenna - have admitted that they submitted incorrect test scores or overstated the high school rankings of their incoming freshmen.­

Some of the universities assert that there was a flaw in their data collection system; others admit someone cheated.  Gallup conducted a survey of 576 college admissions officers last year.  91% of those surveyed think other colleges had falsely reported standardized test scores and other admissions data.

A criminal charge

DOJ was able to get the Japanese unit of the Royal Bank of Scotland to plead guilty to criminal wrongdoing for its role in the LIBOR scheme.  Okay, the company was hit with the charge.  No people were.  But, it is a step up the ladder of providing enough incentive to dissuade people from violating the law. RBS also had to pay a fairly large fine, $612,000,000.

Stewart on Drones

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We don't need no stinking badges

A recent white paper by DOJ provides the legal basis for our drone attacks.

We are the United States of America and have the right to kill anyone anywhere if they are leaders of al-Qaeda or its allies, pose an "imminent threat" and their capture is not feasible.  We are always right, so we do not have to produce evidence that a specific attack is being planned if the target is generally engaged in plotting against the US.

It concludes that such killings do not violate the US Constitution as long as:

• An informed, high-level official of the US government has determined that the targeted individual poses an imminent threat of violent attack against the US
• Capture is infeasible and the US continues to monitor whether capture becomes feasible
• The operation would be conducted in a manner consistent with applicable law of war principles

It matters not whether a foreign country has given its consent.  If we say we should kill someone, we have the legal right to do so.  And, of course, we don't need a court reviewing our decisions.

This is the country we have become.

A very old bird

Wisdom, the albatross pictured above, is believed to be the oldest bird in the wild.  She is thought to be 62, which is twice the age at which most of the species die.   Not only is she old but she is still producing babies, the latest having been born Sunday.  She has had five litters and about 35 chicks.

Finally, the ratings agencies may have a problem

Surprise, surprise!  DOJ actually filed charges against a credit-rating agency, S&P.  True, it's only for civil, not criminal, fraud, but it may be a start.  And it is expected that some states will be joining the suit.  S&P is also being investigated by the SEC.

Interestingly, the government is pressing the firm to plead guilty to at least one count of fraud.  This is very different from the government's willingness to allow fraudsters to neither admit nor deny guilt.  Who knows maybe they'll even try to put someone in jail?

Nobody is perfect

In the 20th century I finished just about every book I started, even if it was a bad book.  In this century I guess I'm more particular or finally realize that my days are numbered because I don't finish every book I start.  I've finished less than half of the books in my current book club because they are just not very good.  

I have read a few by Elmore Leonard and they have all been good.  But he's written close to 50 and he is human so he's entitled to mess up once in a while.  His latest, "Raylan", is an example of a screw up.  If it wasn't a Leonard book, I would have stopped at around page 50.  It is really three long short stories (or novellas) in one book.  There is not the suspense one expects in his books.  Most of the characters are uninteresting.  In short, I did not like it.  But, I guess because he was the author, I felt duty-bound to finish it.  My first mistake in 2013!

Does the Super Bowl Blackout Tell Us Anything?

Or is New Orleans trying to tell the country something, as it tried with Katrina?  Like we need to fix our infrastructure?  The blackout certainly did not enhance our image around the world.

More BofA

Three of the Federal Home Loan Banks are suing Bank of America alleging that the $8.5 billion settlement is too low.  Most of the allegations against BofA have stemmed from actions by Countrywide prior to being acquired.  This new suit says that nothing much changed because of the acquisition.  BofA violated its agreements with investors who bought the securities that held the mortgages by failing to buy back troubled mortgages in full once it had lowered the payments and principal on the loans.  While loan modifications resulted in big losses for the investors, BofA did not reduce the principal on second mortgages it owned on the same properties.

The Professor as Rapper

Prof. Garlick teaches at Tufts.

Maintain or Expand

My limited experience serving on town government committees demonstrated to me that governments are more likely to build a new project rather than spend the money necessary to maintain their existing projects.  This tendency seems to hold when it comes to our highways.  Federal government analysts, taxpayer advocates and transportation experts have warned for at least a decade that many states were spending too much on building highways and too little on fixing them, and that their maintenance costs would skyrocket if they didn’t change course.  For example, in 2004 Pennsylvania was spending about as much of its federal funding on expansion as it was on maintenance.   By 2011, the state was spending about four times as much on repairs, and it was still struggling to keep up.  Our highway system has reached the end of the line in the eyes of many.   We've seen bridges collapse, highways constantly being repaired.  

The federal gas tax has not been increased in twenty years.  The 18.4 cents tax has lost a third of its purchasing power.  And still we do nothing but borrow $50 billion every year from the Treasury rather than the Highway Trust Fund.

Maintenance is a good investment.   According to the National Center for Pavement Preservation, a research lab for road-building materials at the Michigan State University engineering school, every dollar spent to maintain a road in the first 15 years of its life saves $6 to $14 in maintenance costs after 20 years.

GW vs. Barack

Bill Moyers has an interesting chart comparing Bush and Obama on wartime civil liberties.  Here's a summary:

• Retained: Patriot Act, Wire taps and data collection, Guantanamo, Military commissions
• Stopped: CIA black sites, Enhanced interrogation
• Expanded: Targeted killing, drone strikes

All drug trials yield great results

The pharmaceutical industry would like you to believe that.  However, like most of man's endeavors, creating new drugs that are effective is not a simple task and does not always work.  Yet, we seldom learn about drug failures.  Sure, the medical journals are filled with supposedly perfect trials but studies have shown that half of all the clinical trials ever conducted and completed on the treatments in use today have never been published in academic journals.Why do you suppose that is the case?  Trials that show that a particular drug has failed just don't get written up.

In 2007 the FDA passed a law which required that new clinical trials conducted in the United States post summaries of their results at within a year of completion at a government web site, or be fined $10,000 a day.  Five years later, the British Medical Journal found that four out of five trials covered by the legislation had ignored the reporting requirements and no one was fined for violating the law.

And then there's the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors.  It directed that its members never again publish any clinical trial unless its existence had been declared on a publicly accessible registry before the trial began. The result from a subsequent study: the editors had broken their promise: more than half of all trials published in leading journals still weren’t properly registered, and a quarter weren’t registered at all. 

A relevant satire on prosecuting fraudsters