Snuggly, the DOJ spokesperson

You never know what an image of a baby can do

The European Parliament has a lot of faith in a baby's image.  They think that a baby's image on a container of breast-milk substitute will discourage breastfeeding.  Furthermore, since it is difficult to know the precise age of the baby depicted consumers will be confused.

Warming Everywhere

Today's NY Times talks about the melting of the glaciers in the Alps of Switzerland.  Over the last century the glaciers in the upper Alps have receded by 650 feet as the temperatures have increased. The glaciers serve as a kind of glue holding the mountainous land together.  That 'glue' is weakening, causing major rock falls and a far more often round of floods.  Flooding has become so bad that the town spent $15,000,000 to build a tunnel to channel excess water when the lake swells in the summer. Before that was done, summer floodwaters regularly pushed gigantic ice blocks down the gorge. 

Our Justice Department

Goat on the loose in Brazil

Sequestration and Stupidity

It's obvious that we are experiencing a lot more tornadoes, hurricanes and other forms of extreme weather.  A good share of the damages caused by these storms is attributed to flooding.  FEMA produces flood insurance maps which are used to calculate the premiums we pay for flood insurance. The maps also give homeowners and buyers the latest understanding of how likely their communities are to flood.

Recognizing the value of these maps for a revitalized insurance program, Congress authorized the government to spend $400 million a year for the next five years to update these maps.  Unfortunately, our brilliant Congress appropriated just a quarter of that for this fiscal year.  Sequestration has cut another $5 million, leaving $95 million for flood mapping this year.  As recently as 2010 the map budget was $221,000,000. Obama would like to cut it to $84,000,000 for next year.

It's not as though we have plenty of up-to-date maps.  FEMA's goal is to get only 80% of the country’s flood hazard data up-to-date.  Many of the maps go back to the 1970s and 1980s.  There are obvious benefits to updating the maps. New maps can guide development toward areas that are less likely to flood. They also tend to be far more accurate. Today’s mapmakers can take advantage of technologies including lidar, or laser radar, and ADCIRC, a computer program that’s used to model hurricane storm surge. They can also incorporate more years of flooding data into their models.

Cutting the deficit

How much could we cut the deficit if we taxed offshore profits?  Here is a list of only ten companies which have a significant amount of offshore profits:

Leonard Downie comments on the AP scandal.

Leonard Downie was the executive editor of the Washington Post from 1991 to 2008.  I think he was a fairly objective viewer of the world.  His recent article about the Obama's efforts re AP does not fill me with relief as to the motives and actions of the administration.  Here are some excerpts:

Only half a dozen AP journalists reported, wrote and edited the May 7, 2012, story, but “thousands upon thousands of news-gathering calls” by more than 100 AP journalists using newsroom, home and mobile phones are included in the records seized by Justice investigators, AP President Gary B. Pruitt said in an interview with CBS’s “Face the Nation.” In a letter of protest to Holder, Pruitt said that “these records potentially reveal communications with confidential sources across all of the newsgathering activities undertaken by the AP during a two-month period, provide a road map to AP’s newsgathering operations and disclose information about AP’s activities and operations that the government has no conceivable right to know.”

Journalists who covered the George W. Bush administration said they encountered arrogant attitudes toward the press but were usually able to engage knowledgeable officials in productive dialogue.But reporters covering the Obama administration say more and more officials will no longer talk at all and refer them to uncommunicative or even hostile and bullying press aides.  

It amounts to the White House reporting on itself, presenting an appearance of greater openness while avoiding penetrating questions from journalists who have the knowledge and experience to do meaningful accountability reporting. The administration’s media manipulation extends even to photography: Professional photojournalists are banned from many White House events and presidential activities; only approved images of Obama taken by a White House photographer are supplied to the news media.

Upstate New York, May 25 and 26, 2013

Three feet of snow in the Adirondacks.

Let's just wait until more bridges collapse

The photo above is of the latest bridge collapse.  This one was near Seattle.  Fortunately, no one died or was seriously injured.  But which of our 607,839 bridges will fail next?  The average age of a bridge in this country is 42 years.  The Federal Highway Administration thinks we should be spending about $20.5 billion annually for the next 16 years to properly update our bridges; that's only 60% more than we are spending today.  With today's low interest rates, this would be perhaps the cheapest time to do so.

A General says that there is something wrong with our 21st century military

Karl Eikenberry was a Lieutenant General as well as our Ambassador to Afghanistan.  He and David Kennedy, an historian, have written perhaps the most sensible op-ed I've read about the separation of the military from we citizens.  This separation is the result of three factors: the volunteer army, the use of technology and the military's movement into nation building.

With regards to the volunteer army the authors quote Samuel Adams, “A standing Army, however necessary it may be at some times, is always dangerous to the Liberties of the People. Soldiers are apt to consider themselves as a Body distinct from the rest of the Citizens.” They also point out that 1/2% of the population serves in the armed forces; in WWII it was 12%.  And many of the current troops are sons and daughters of former troops, so that in some ways the military can be considered a family business.  Looking at our leaders, in 1975 70% of the Congress had served in the armed forces, now it's 20%.  All my male relatives served in WWII.  We all knew guys who moved to Canada to escape serving in Vietnam.  Now, very seldom do I meet someone whose child is serving in the military.

One of the factors leading to the end of the Vietnam War was the television shots of coffins being unloaded at military air bases.  Now, the tv shows photos of drone operators working from home.  The soldier in the field has much more fire power now due to the gains in technology. 

The military is moving beyond simply fighting wars.  In Iraq and Afghanistan, commanders orchestrated, alongside their combat missions, “nation-building” initiatives like infrastructure projects and promotion of the rule of law and of women’s rights.

We have become much more aggressive since we switched to a volunteer army. 

 The Congressional Research Service has documented 144 military deployments in the 40 years since adoption of the all-voluntary force in 1973, compared with 19 in the 27-year period of the Selective Service draft following World War II — an increase in reliance on military force traceable in no small part to the distance that has come to separate the civil and military sectors. The modern force presents presidents with a moral hazard, making it easier for them to resort to arms with little concern for the economic consequences or political accountability. Meanwhile, Americans are happy to thank the volunteer soldiers who make it possible for them not to serve, and deem it is somehow unpatriotic to call their armed forces to task when things go awry.

Congress must reassert its powers.  The last time it formally declared war was WWII.  The 1973 War Powers Act must be amended so that the presidents must seek Congress' approval before going to war, not afterward.

Other measures to strengthen citizen engagement with the military should include decreased reliance on contractors for noncombat tasks, so that the true size of the force would be more transparent; integrating veteran and civilian hospitals and rehabilitation facilities, which would let civilians see war’s wounded firsthand; and shrinking self-contained residential neighborhoods on domestic military bases, so that more service members could pray, play and educate their children alongside their fellow Americans. Schools, the media and organs of popular culture also have a duty to help promote civic vigilance.

Sheriff Joe lost one court battle

Sheriff Joe Arpaio has been in the limelight over the past few years for his attempts to rid Arizona of Latinos as well as for searching for documents that would prove Obama is not really of citizen of the U.S.A.  Finally, he may have been stopped by a US District Court ruling that he violated the constitutional rights of Latinos by targeting them during raids and traffic stops.  Many of those targeted by Arpaio were, in fact, citizens or legal residents.  The judge in the case also pointed out that Arpaio spent more of his time targeting Latinos than fighting crime.

Perhaps he will be a different Pope

A new monopoly card

from The Big Picture

A different view of geography

Apple - and our tax codes - have a strange definition of "overseas".  If a company makes money overseas and keeps it there, there are no taxes due the U.S.A.  Seems pretty straightforward.  Right?  However, Apple has $102 billion in offshore profits stored in banks in a foreign place called New York City.  Furthermore, these funds are managed by a group of Apple employees based in another foreign place, Reno, Nevada. However, Apple has "assigned' these funds to its Irish subsidiaries; thus, it is considered to be under foreign control and not subject to our income tax.

Does this make any sense to you?

Is climate change real?

Business Insider has a series of "before and after" photographs from around the world. The ones below are of the Muir Glacier in 1882 and 2005. Can you guess which photo reflects what year?

Another casualty of sequestration?

Will there be enough money in FEMA's budget to cover the Oklahoma tornado plus the damage that will undoubtedly occur during this year's hurricane season which begins very soon?  Heck, these events affect only the average Joe.  Why should we care how much is available to help them?

Tom Coburn, one of Oklahoma's Senators, believes that any aid to Oklahoma should be balanced by budget cuts elsewhere.  I guess he can consider himself consistent, but maybe Emerson was right, "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds."

"10 Warning Signs that You Are a Liberal Imperialist."

(from Stephen Walt)
#1: You frequently find yourself advocating that the United States send troops, drones, weapons, Special Forces, or combat air patrols to some country that you have never visited, whose language(s) you don't speak, and that you never paid much attention to until bad things started happening there.
#2: You tend to argue that the United States is morally obligated to "do something" rather than just stay out of nasty internecine quarrels in faraway lands. In the global classroom that is our digitized current world, you believe that being a bystander -- even thousands of miles away -- is as bad as being the bully. So you hardly ever find yourself saying that "we should sit this one out."
#3: You think globally and speak, um, globally. You are quick to condemn human rights violations by other governments, but American abuses (e.g., torture, rendition, targeted assassinations, Guantánamo, etc.) and those of America's allies get a pass. You worry privately (and correctly) that aiming your critique homeward might get in the way of a future job.
#4: You are a strong proponent of international law, except when it gets in the way of Doing the Right Thing. Then you emphasize its limitations and explain why the United States doesn't need to be bound by it in this case.
#5: You belong to the respectful chorus of those who publicly praise the service of anyone in the U.S. military, but you would probably discourage your own progeny from pursuing a military career.
#6. Even if you don't know very much about military history, logistics, or modern military operations, you are still convinced that military power can achieve complex political objectives at relatively low cost.
#7: To your credit, you have powerful sympathies for anyone opposing a tyrant. Unfortunately, you tend not to ask whether rebels, exiles, and other anti-regime forces are trying to enlist your support by telling you what they think you want to hear. (Two words: Ahmed Chalabi.)
#8. You are convinced that the desire for freedom is hard-wired into human DNA and that Western-style liberal democracy is the only legitimate form of government. Accordingly, you believe that democracy can triumph anywhere -- even in deeply divided societies that have never been democratic before -- if outsiders provide enough help.
#9. You respect the arguments of those who are skeptical about intervening, but you secretly believe that they don't really care about saving human lives.
#10. You believe that if the United States does not try to stop a humanitarian outrage, its credibility as an ally will collapse and its moral authority as a defender of human rights will be tarnished, even if there are no vital strategic interests at stake.

The gun Congress can't ban

That's the subtitle of an article by Dan Baum in this month's Harpers.   The gun in question is the AR-15, which has been the most talked about weapon in the current 'debate'.  Baum seems to have spent a lot of time pondering the issue.  He thinks that both sides are not facing reality.  Those favoring gun control should accept the fact that we have about 300,000,000 guns in this country, almost one per person.  In his view the question should not be “How can we ban more guns?” but “How can we live more safely among the millions of guns already floating around?”  Those opposed to gun control should be much more vigilant in keeping their guns locked up.  A surprising number of gun-related crimes are perpetrated by those who have used the guns of their parents, relatives or friends without their consent.

What surprised me most was how difficult it would be to ban the AR-15.  First of all, the weapon is not a single package, it is made up of several components.  It is highly modular and can fairly easily be tailored to your particular needs.  But because only one part of the gun - the lower receiver - has a serial number, it is the only module that is legally considered a firearm.  Thus, one can obtain all the other modules without any possibility of government oversight.

You could also make an AR-15 yourself.  This is perfectly legal.  Someone in Texas has used a 3-D printer to make one out of plastic.  Several companies will sell you an almost complete AR-15; you need only have the proper tools (which are readily available) to drill some holes and cut some sections to have a working AR-15, which will qualify as being home-made under the law.

Bidder 70

From Bill Moyers & Company:

Tim DeChristopher, an environmental activist who, in 2008, went to an auction during which drilling rights for the natural gas and oil beneath stretches of pristine Utah wilderness were being sold off. DeChristopher decided he couldn’t stand by and watch the process, so he signed on as a bidder. He purchased plot after plot, knowing he had no way of paying for them, in order to keep the land out of the hands of the oil and gas companies. His act of protest landed him in jail.

A film has been made of DeChristopher's struggle.  Here is the trailer.

Some great photos from the National Geographic Traveler Photo Contest

There are tons of them here.

Water Balloons Can Kill

North Carolina is well aware of the dangers of water balloons, particularly when in the hands of high school seniors. Enloe High School took the requisite action to prevent a calamity. The administration called in the police who arrested seven seniors for this crime.




This was the second incident this month for which police had to be called to arrest a dangerous high school student.

From The New Yorker

A nation of fear

Stephen Walt comments about the AP imbroglio (my emphases):

The greater but more subtle danger, however, is that our society gradually acclimates to ever-increasing levels of secrecy and escalating levels of government monitoring, all of it justified by the need to "keep us safe." Instead of accepting that a (very small) amount of risk is inevitable in the modern world, our desire for total safety allows government officials to simultaneously shrink the circle of individual freedoms and to place more and more of what they are doing beyond our purview.

All over the globe

We now have more than 1,000 military bases outside of the U.S.A.  Some are relatively small, housing a few hundred troops.  Others are huge, such as the latest in Italy.  It includes a brigade headquarters, two sets of barracks, a natural-gas-powered energy plant, a hospital, two schools, a fitness center, dining facilities, and a mini-mall.  The total cost of construction and supplying this one base should amount to a half billion U.S. dollars.  When you add in the costs of all our overseas bases, you're talking about $200 billion per year.

Does the above give you any ideas for lowering the deficit?

Maybe she is serious

Elizabeth Warren seems to be living up to her reputation.  Her latest salvo is a letter she wrote to the Fed, SEC and Justice Department asking them for evidence on how a settlement that doesn't require a bank to admit guilt would be better policy than taking the bank to trial.  She comments, "if a regulator reveals itself to be unwilling to take large financial institutions all the way to trial - either because it is too timid or because it lacks resources - the regulator has a lot less leverage in settlement negotiations and will be forced to settle on terms that are much more favorable to the wrongdoer.  
 
The consequence can be insufficient compensation to those who are harmed by illegal activity and inadequate deterrence of future violations.  If large financial institutions can break the law and accumulate millions in profits and, if they get caught, settle by paying out of those profits, they do not have much incentive to follow the law."

She sent the same basic letter to OCC without getting much satisfaction.  Will she get a decent response from the three agencies listed?

Place your order now

If you plan on going to Gaza soon, you can feel comfortable knowing that you can get your KFC fix there.  Residents of Gaza are now able to order Kentucky Fried Chicken from Eqypt.  Just dial 2889797.  It will be delivered via the same tunnels that supply a vast array of goods that avoid the Israeli blockade.

We don't have enough programmers and other technical and scientific workers

That's been the cry from companies that employ science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) workers.  That's why any talk of immigration includes exceptions for these workers.  We give temporary visas to foreigners in these fields and green cards to every foreign graduate of an American college with a master’s or PhD in a STEM field.  Yet, studies consistently find that the US produces several times the number of STEM graduates than can get jobs in their fields. NIH, NSF and other organizations report that hundreds of thousands of STEM workers in the US are unemployed or underemployed. 

Why is that?  On one hand the workers are not organized, and their story is being largely ignored in the debate over immigration reform. On the other hand, companies and universities benefit from this foreign help. Temporary visas allow employers to pay skilled workers below-market wages, and these visas are valid only for specific jobs. Workers are unable to take another job, making them akin to indentured servants. Universities also use temporary visas to recruit international graduate students and postdoctoral scientists, mainly from China, to do the gruntwork for professors’ grants. 

I must say that there really was a shortage of programmers in the 20th century.  At one point, we imported some from Russia.  But in the 21st century programmer salaries have not escalated as they had in the 1900s; they are flat or have declined. Supply and demand are still relevant.  By increasing the number of STEM workers we are lowering the costs of companies and universities and damaging native Americans who made the mistake of studying science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.

Will he ever get upset?

There are virtues in maintaining one's cool when others are going off the deep end.  But only sometimes.  Obama does it just about all the time. He seems to have an inability to get  really emotional or to accept blame.  No matter what the issue, the buck should stop with him, as Harry Truman said.  He needs to use the bully pulpit.

Yes, the Benghazi issue is basically politics.  The IRS and AP issues are not.  They are attacks on our freedom. Obama is not speaking up or doing anything about that freedom.  As Dana Milbank writes, he has become President Passerby.

Part D for Dumb?

Medicare Part D helps people pay for drugs.  However, there is no attempt made by Medicare to see that the drugs prescribed are actually related to the patient's condition and may actually benefit the patient.  ProPublica has analyzed four years of Medicare prescription records and found that some doctors and other health professionals across the country prescribe large quantities of drugs that are potentially harmful, disorienting or addictive. Sadly, federal officials have done little to detect or deter these hazardous prescribing patterns.

Some drugs increase the risk of death in some cases.  Others are used in situations where there is little scientific support.  Soma, a muscle relaxant, is banned in Europe; yet in 2010 more than 500,000 prescriptions were written for the drug to patients 65 and older.

The Inspector General at HHS has criticized the failure of medicare personnel to police the use of Part D, but without getting any changes in procedures. State Medicaid programs police their programs. Medicare does nothing with providers who have been suspended or disciplined by other regulatory authorities.

Oh, well.  It's only our money and our lives.

Big Brother

The Obama administration really wants to keep things secret.  Thus far, it has has brought six cases against people suspected of providing classified information, more than under all previous presidents combined.  Its latest affront to freedom is the seizure of two months of telephone records of AP reporters who worked on a story about the successful prevention of a plot by terrorists. 

Normally, the government informs the news organization that it wants phone records and they negotiate about it.  However, this Justice Department is above the law. It claims that AP's revealing anything about the plot "pose(s) a substantial threat to the integrity of the investigation" as to who revealed the information to AP.  

The AP had already delayed reporting the story at the request of government officials who said it would jeopardize national security. Once officials said those concerns were allayed, the AP disclosed the plot, though the Obama administration continued to request that the story be held until the administration could make an official announcement. 

I guess we should be thankful that the Justice Department informed AP of the seizure.  Perhaps, next time they won't.

Student Loans Today

Joe Stiglitz outlines some statistics re student loans today:  

• 13% of student-loan borrowers of all ages owe more than $50,000
• 4% owe more than $100,000 
• 17% of student-loan borrowers were 90 days or more behind in payments
• three-year default rates exceeded 13%
• total student debt, around $1 trillion, surpassed total credit-card debt last year.

The job market is not getting better.  Salaries for the average worker are not increasing.  Do we have a problem?  What are our leaders doing about it?

Is Rust Consulting the most inept company in America?

Rust is a company hired by the OCC to handle much of the foreclosure settlements.  The company is not doing the job very well.  First, they sent out checks that in many instances bounced.  Then, they shortchanged many of the recipients; for example, 96,000 of 217,000 borrowers serviced by Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley had to be sent a second check because the first check was too small.  They have been unable to clean up clerical errors, such as checks sent to the wrong addresses or issued to deceased borrowers.

The OCC is not exactly without stain in this. First of all, determining who got what was inherently arbitrary.  The settlement money from the banks was inadequate to compensate most of the people for the damage they suffered due to the banks' incompetence.

More Toilets = Fewer Rapes

That seems to be the case in the state of Bihar, India.  Eighty-five percent of the homes in the state do not have a toilet.  So, when girls or women go out in the fields to defecate, they are liable to be raped.  Authorities think that at least 400 rapes in Bihar would not occur if toilets were generally available.  Some 85% of the rural households in the state, one of India's poorest, have no access to a toilet.

While Bihar is the poorest state in India, more than half-a-billion Indians lack access to basic sanitation.

TPP keeps moving ahead

It's been almost a year since I found out about the TransPacific Partnership, which is an attempt to create a trade agreement between the U.S. and a number of countries which surround the Pacific Ocean.   

The negotiations are being held in secret between unelected government officials and representatives from more than 600 of the world’s most powerful corporations; our elected representatives are not involved and not informed.  Perhaps that's because the TPP “will create binding policies on future Congresses in numerous areas,” including “those related to labor, patent and copyright, land use, food, agriculture and product standards, natural resources, the environment, professional licensing, state-owned enterprises and government procurement policies, as well as financial, healthcare, energy, telecommunications and other service sector regulations.”

Foreign corporations operating in the United States would no longer be subject to our laws regarding protections for the environment, finance or labor rights.  If we try to make the companies comply, they can appeal to an international tribunal made up of lawyers specializing in corporate law. 

Talking with the elephants

Elephants can follow verbal commands from people.  That's the conclusion  of a study by Think Elephants, a Thailand-based organization that promotes conservation through education.  Can your dog or cat do that?

Perhaps even more surprising the resulting academic paper was coauthored by middle school students living and studying at the East Side Middle School in Manhattan. The students communicated with the principal authors in Africa via Skype.


The founder of Think Elephants, Dr. Joshua Plotnik, arranges for three to four elephants in the camp to hang out with the students while the handlers feed them. The students can ask questions, see inside the elephants’ mouths, watch an impromptu veterinary check, etc. The publication of the paper paper capped off a “three-year endeavor to create a comprehensive middle school curriculum that educates and engages young people directly in elephant and other wildlife conservation.”

Through his experiments, Dr. Plotnik has shown that elephants have cognitive abilities on par with or that exceed dolphins, primates and even approach humans. Elephants can recognize themselves in a mirror, joining other animals that have self-awareness, express empathy and lead socially complex lives. They can lend a helping trunk and cooperate with one another in fulfilling complicated tasks. Sometimes they even cheat.

21st Century Government

A cabinet member, Kathleen Sebelius, is asking people affected by the Affordable Care Act to donate money to help implement the law.  Congress passed the law, the President signed it but in these days of austerity and dystopia not enough money was appropriated to make the law reality.  Is this any way to run a country?

According to the Justice Department cabinet members are allowed to solicit donations in their capacity of private citizens as long as, “you do not solicit funds from a subordinate or from someone who has or seeks business with the Department, and you do not use your official title”.  Since Sibelius has called health industry executives as well as others, how can these executives not feel that they are being asked for money even if the subject comes up?

I think the next step should be to ask defense contractors to help pay for our weapons or farmers to pay for their subsidies.  Where does this stupidity stop?

We have to protect our honor

The furor around the burial of Tamerlin Tsarnaev will take a while to die out.  The politicians of Caroline County, where Tsarnaev was buried, are up in arms over the burial in their hometown.  They want to be sure that all laws were followed by the Islamic Funeral Services.  They have disavowed any knowledge of the burial and want everybody to know it was not their fault.  They'd be better Americans if they paid attention to the statement of the Islamic Funeral Services,"What Tsarnaev did is between him and God. We strongly disagree with his violent actions, but that does not release us from our obligation to return his body to the earth.’’

Protecting the World

That seems to be the job of our military.  And it's a job that keeps growing.  Since the mid-20th-century we have had bases in Germany, Japan, South Korea, Italy, and the UK.  In the 21st century we have built bases in Bahrain, Djibouti, Turkey, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iraq, Afghanistan, Kosovo, and Kyrgyzstan.  We also have a military presence of some kind in Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Lebanon, Oman, Pakistan, Syria, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, U.A.E., Uzbekistan, and Yemen.  

Since 2001, the US defense budget has increased by more than a trillion dollars, not including the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.  How much is the sequester cutting from the budget?

“It portrayed America at its worst”

That's a quote from Martha Mullen with regard to the furor over burying Tamerlin Tsarnaev.  She's just an average person who upon listening to the cacophony decided that "maybe I’m the one person who needs to do something.” She contacted the Islamic Funeral Services of Virginia, who agreed to perform the burial. She, Peter Stefan, the Worcester funeral director and the Funeral Services are to be commended.

Here is part of the statement issued by the Funeral Services,“What Tsarnaev did is between him and God. We strongly disagree with his violent actions, but that does not release us from our obligation to return his body to the earth"

Hiding in plain sight.

One would think that there are not too many variations in clothing patterns with regard to soldiers camouflaging themselves.  One would be wrong.  Each branch - Army, Navy, Marines, Air Force - has its own camouflage uniform; in fact, most have more than one pattern.  Since 2002, the number of camouflage patterns worn by the military has increased from two to ten.

In 2002 the Marines were unsatisfied with the existing patterns.  So, they took two years and $319,000 to develop two new patterns, one for desert and one for woodland.  Not to be outdone, in 2005 the Army decided to produce a "universal" camouflage. Two-and-a-half million dollars later they did it.  However, they soon discoverered it was not working in Afghanistan and another $2.9 million brought them one that could be used there.  The Army is still not satisfied and is developing another pattern; this one is 'cheap' - $4.2 mil and counting.

Two years later in 2007 it was the Air Force's turn. After spending more than $3 mil, they had it.  Howsomever, it could not be used in Afghanistan.  Also, very few Air Force people actually fight on the ground; thus, the number of people that needed the camouflage was quite small.  The Navy was more economical when they created their own uniforms in 2011; they spent only $435,000 designing three styles.

A very strange defense of Jamie Dimon

Jeffrey Sonnenfeld teaches at Yale and has studied corporate governance for 35 years.  So why does he think that Dimon is the victim of a witch hunt because some shareholders are pushing to separate the CEO and Chairman roles at JPM?  He spends the entire article pointing out situations where this combination of roles has not worked out for some companies.  He does not point out any companies which have been as subsidized by us as JPM.  He does not point out any companies that have violated the law as many times as JPM.  He does not point out any companies where the CEO was unaware of billion dollar mistakes taking place. 

I wonder how close Prof. Sonnenfeld is to Mr. Dimon.

Sequester Effects To Date

ProPublica has an extensive list of what has happened thus far.  First, let's list some areas not affected: Congressional salaries, nuclear weapons, Veterans Affairs, an infant nutrition program, and funding for security at U.S. embassies abroad.  Some agencies have been able to evade some of the provisions of the law through lobbying and other pressures: FAA, Agriculture, Fish and Wildlife.

Research and education have been especially hard hit.  NSF will make 1,000 fewer grants.  DOE may have to cancel all new programs and initiatives for at least two years. Education on Indian reservations as the government pays 60% of the reservations' school budget. Seventy thousand kids will not be able to attend Head Start.

At least Obama has agreed to return 5% of his salary.

How the Moneyed Work

In the autumn of 2010, Catherine Black, at the time chair of Hearst, was nominated to be Chancellor of the New York City Schools.  She had no background in public education and, in fact, lacked the credentials specified for the job.  What to do?  Get a waiver to avoid the credentials issue.  To do so would require popular support.

In the world in which she and the mayor traveled they knew a lot of relatively famous people.  So, they decided to tap the women of that segment of the voting public, such as Oprah Winfrey, Whoopie Godlberg, Diane von Furstenburg, Donna Karan, Evelyn Lauder.  

There were a number of e-mails exchanged between the Black and Bloomberg camps.  A young reporter, Sergio Hernandez, decided to dig into the affair and filed requests for information under the appropriate law.  When Bloomberg did not supply the information, Hernandez appealed to the courts.  Bloomberg was ordered to comply, but he decided to try another court avenue.  He lost there and, after a third court attempt, finally conceded.

How much did the city spend on this attempt to hide the facts.  So far, it's at least $27,500; it will likely increase when the city pay's Hernandez's lawyers.

And, the by way, Ms Black was forced out as chancellor after serving 95 days.

Moving beyond oil

Charles Mann has a fascinating but lengthy article about the world's supply of energy and the various forms we have used - wood, coal, oil, natural gas, wind, sun.  Surprisingly, he does not mention nuclear energy.  Nor does he say very much about the environmental costs of such techniques as fracking.

One of the primary points he makes is that we have consistently been able to develop new techniques for extracting energy from the earth.  It does take a long period time to develop the technologies, but we have done so up to now.  The problem is that climate change is moving so fast that we may not have time today.

One example of the effect of technology on the development of energy is the Kern River oil field in California.  Drilling of the field began in 1899.  In 1949 analysts estimated there were 47,000,000 barrels left in the reserve.  In the next 40 years, 945,000,000 barrels were produced.  At that point, 1989, the estimate of the reserve was increased to 697,000,000 barrels.  In the next twenty years 1.3 billion barrels were produced and the estimated reserve was still close to 600,000,000 barrels.  These analysts are obviously not stupid people, yet they were fantastically wrong here and in many other places.

Land is not the only area to mine for energy.  Since the 1970s we have been trying to mine the sea for crystalline natural gas known as methane hydrate.  Estimates of how much methane hydrate exists in the oceans range from 100 times more than America's current annual energy consumption to 3 million times.  Some expect we will be producing methane hydrate within ten years.

Another issue Mann discusses is oil as both an energy source and a source of political power.  Would we pay any attention to Saudi Arabia if they were not an oil power?  If the world does move to methane hydrate, what would the oil nations do to preserve their political power?

And then if we are mining the seas, what are the risks of conflict between nations?

We are currently lucky because of the boom in natural gas.  But, it too has problems.  Mann is a believer in renewable energy.  However, the costs of converting to renewables is astronomical and conversion cannot happen overnight.  Just think of the effort and money needed to revamp the electrical power grid.  Can we do it in time to save the planet?

Summarizing the Foreclosure Debacle

                       

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More Sequester Stupidity

Sometimes spending a dollar today results in your saving more than a dollar tomorrow.  Dave Johnson has a list of some of those investments that have been cut by the sequester:

• Meals on Wheels - keeping people in their homes by bringing them meals is a tad - a big tad - better than moving them to nursing homes.
• IRS - laying off 89,000 agents means less enforcement of tax collections. One estimate: $1 saved in expenses means $200 lost in revenue.
• Scientific and Medical Research - who knows what inventions may never see the light of day?
• Defense - this across-the-board cut prevents spending money on worthwhile projects.

The days go on but what are our leaders doing about anything beyond arguing?

TBTF banks may be starting to worry

They probably have little to worry about, as it's highly unlikely the Brown-Vitter bill will pass.  And Daniel Tarullo, a governor of the Federal Reserve, was only giving a speech to the Peterson Institute.  However, Eric Schneiderman, the New York Attorney General, actually filed a suit.

Tarullo probably worried trading banks more than typical banks; he wants them to hold more capital, although he did not specify a ratio.  He feels that, "We would do the American public a fundamental disservice were we to declare victory without tackling the structural weaknesses of short-term wholesale funding markets, both in general and as they affect the ‘too big to fail’ problem.” 

Schneiderman filed a suit against Wells Fargo and BofA for violating the terms of the National Mortgage Settlement, which was agreed to last year by five of the super-banks and the attorneys general of 49 states.  The settlement laid out more than 300 servicing standards that each bank must follow when working with struggling homeowners. Those terms include notifying borrowers within five days that the banks have received necessary documents to complete a loan modification. Schneiderman says that since last October Wells Fargo has violated these standards 210 times and BofA 129 times.

Keeping us safe

That's the mantra of the government in the 21st century.  The amount of time, effort, people and money involved in this effort is almost beyond belief.  The Washington Post had a series of in-depth articles on "Top Secret America"  in 2010.  

The conclusion they reached can be found in the words of retired Army Lt. Gen. John R. Vines, former commander of 145,000 troops in Iraq,

 "I'm not aware of any agency with the authority, responsibility or a process in place to coordinate all these interagency and commercial activities. The complexity of this system defies description."
"Because it (the security agencies) lacks a synchronizing process, it inevitably results in  message dissonance, reduced effectiveness and waste. We consequently can't effectively assess whether it is making us more safe."

Here are some of the major conclusions of the series:
* Some 1,271 government organizations and 1,931 private companies work on programs related to counterterrorism, homeland security and intelligence in about 10,000 locations across the United States.
* An estimated 854,000 people, nearly 1.5 times as many people as live in Washington, D.C., hold top-secret security clearances.
* In Washington and the surrounding area, 33 building complexes for top-secret intelligence work are under construction or have been built since September 2001. Together they occupy the equivalent of almost three Pentagons or 22 U.S. Capitol buildings - about 17 million square feet of space.
* Many security and intelligence agencies do the same work, creating redundancy and waste. For example, 51 federal organizations and military commands, operating in 15 U.S. cities, track the flow of money to and from terrorist networks.
* Analysts who make sense of documents and conversations obtained by foreign and domestic spying share their judgment by publishing 50,000 intelligence reports each year - a volume so large that many are routinely ignored.

Again, this report was printed in 2010.  That was almost 3 years ago.  Can you imagine how much worse it is now?

Patriotism or Humanity

The city of Cambridge will not allow the body of Tamerlin Tsarnaev to be buried in Cambridge Cemetery.  The City Manager, Robert Healy, thinks it will cause " turmoil, protests and widespread media presence.”  I wonder whether Healy would feel the same way if the Westboro Baptist Church were to appear at a burial in the cemetery or if a convicted criminal were to be buried there.  His actions are what one would expect in a totalitarian or backward nation, not in the land of the free and home of the brave.. 

Making a Dollar

One of the saddest stories of this week is that of the 5-year-old who killed his 2-year-old sister with a Crickett rifle. It was an accident, but you have to wonder about the company that would market a gun to a kid.  Here is an ad from this company.



They have since gone into hiding. Their web site is gone as is their Twitter account.

Suicide Prevention or Torture?

Apparently, Obama feels that the forced feeding of Guantanamo inmates is preventing them from committing suicide.  The U.N. Human Rights Commission has said in the past that forced feeding is torture and violates international law. Hundreds of physicians around the world have spoken out on behalf of the World Medical Association -- in addition to the American Medical Association -- in saying that what the U.S. is doing is inhumane.

Here's the procedure we are following: We shackle the inmate's wrists and ankles to a chair, snake a tube up his nose, down the back of his throat, into his stomach, and pumps a can of Ensure inside.  This is done twice a day.

Brian Mishara, Director of the Center for Research and Intervention on Suicide and Euthanasia in the Psychology Department at the University of Quebec, has these thoughts as to whether we are preventing suicide or torturing,  "In the case of Guantánamo, intervening to save or prolong a person's life without trying to change the person's reasons for wanting to die cannot be considered suicide prevention. Suicide prevention would involve intervening to change the person's desire to die (despite his circumstances) or changing the situation that he feels is intolerable. From the news reports I have seen, those steps are both absent, and therefore the military's force-feeding does not constitute suicide prevention."

Obama and company disagree.


 

Security or Arts

Andrew Bott opted for the arts when he became principal of Orchard Gardens school in 2010.  The school in Roxbury, MA was one of the worst public schools in the state. More than 90% qualify for free or reduced lunch, 25% are learning to speak English, and 25% require Individual Education Plans to meet special needs. Students were prohibited from wearing backpacks, for fear of concealed weapons. More than half of teachers didn’t return after a year on the job. 

Bott was the sixth principal in seven years.  He revolutionized the school.  In year one there were significant increases in the numbers of students reading at grade level and the percent of students proficient on grade level math assessments. Today, three years later, the school is a different institution - better test scores, better grades and better behavior by the students.

How did Bott do it?  He completely cut the school’s security infrastructure and revitalized its art programs. Musical instruments were pulled out of locked storage and returned to classrooms. Faculty reopened dance and art studios that had been out of commission for years.There was no inflow of new funds; he just spent the existing funds for the educational betterment of the students.

Perhaps, more schools should try this.  A 2012 study by the National Endowments for the Arts found that “At-risk students who have access to the arts in or out of school also tend to have better academic results, better workforce opportunities, and more civic engagement.”  

Hat tip to our Suffield correspondent.

They must be without sin

The Senate must confirm 1,200 people whom the White House has nominated to fill important positions.  The White House has taken a long time to make nominations and the Senate has taken perhaps a longer time to conduct hearings for the nominees.  It's just another indication of how far we have sunk.  

The NY Times points out some of the vacancies:

John Kerry is practically home alone at the State Department, toiling without permanent assistant secretaries of state for the Middle East, Asia, Europe and Africa. At the Pentagon, a temporary personnel chief is managing furloughs for 800,000 civilian employees. There has not been a director of the Internal Revenue Service since last November, and it was only on Thursday that President Obama announced a nomination for commerce secretary after the job was open for nearly a year. 

One of the worst backlogs is at the State Department, where nearly a quarter of the most senior posts are not filled, including those in charge of embassy security and counterterrorism. The Treasury Department is searching for a new No. 2, the Department of Homeland Security is missing its top two cybersecurity officials and about 30 percent of the top jobs at the Commerce Department are still vacant, including that of chief economist.  

It's a hell of a way to run a country.

It's crazy

The stock market topping 15,000 yesterday makes no sense.  There are just too many people out of work for us to consider that the economy is strong.  Sure, a decline in the unemployment rate sounds good.  But the question is how is the rate calculated.  If you are unemployed, decide that you will not be able to find a job and give up looking, you no longer figure in the calculation.  If everybody stopped looking, the rate would be zero even though the economy is in the toilet.

Of course, our leaders are working hard to put people back to work.  Right?

It's complex

But what do you expect when dealing with 21st century banks?  JPMorgan is being investigated by various government aithorities for a number of transactions.  The government investigators have accused JP of “manipulative schemes” that transformed “money-losing power plants into powerful profit centers,” and that one of its most senior executives gave “false and misleading statements” under oath.  Plus, the Madoff situation is also a subject fo interest to the government.  And, of course, there is the by now familiar question of JP's handling of home foreclosures.

Is Jamie's star dimming?

Russians are people, too

The Insanity of Fear

In today's world we have to monitor high school science fairs, as some experiments might, in the words of the Polk County Schools, be a “serious breach of conduct.” Here is an example of such a breach.

A 16-year-old student with an exemplary record conducted a small experiment with a water bottle and some household chemicals.  The experiment was conducted on the high school grounds.  It resulted in the bottle cap flying off and smoke coming from the bottle.  No injuries, no property damaged.  Yet, the student was arrested for “possession/discharge of a weapon on school property and discharging a destructive device".  Having been arrested, the student was expelled for handling a "dangerous weapon", the water bottle.

Another view of the sequester

Another shot at making banks more conservative

Sherrod Brown and David Vitter are trying to bring some sense of caution and sanity to banks, especially the mammoth ones.  They have introduced their own TBTF bill; however, TBTF here stands for Terminating Bailouts for Taxpayer Fairness.  Unlike Dodd-Frank, they don't need hundreds of pages to define their proposal.  The essential parts are greater equity holdings by the banks and an equal definition of risk for all banks.

Banks with assets greater than $500 billion would have to hold equity capital of at least 15 percent; banks with assets from $50 billion to $500 billion would have to hold 8 percent.  Equity capital would be real money.  Risk-weighting would not be allowed; banks will no longer be allowed to use a model of their own creation to weigh risk.

The bill is too sensible, too straightforward, not complex enough to pass.

Atoms up close

IBM makes atoms move in a film about a boy and his toy. It may take a while to load, but it's worth it.