This is not the Navy's month

Today's NY Times begins the tale of Inchcape Shipping Services and the U.S. Navy. I suspect the story is only beginning, as no Navy personnel have been mentioned as being involved. Inchcape, which happens to be owned by the government of Dubai, had a very simple scheme. It paid commissions to subcontractors willing to give large discounts, then pocketed the difference instead of refunding it to the Navy. The difference was in the millions and the scheme went on for years. At the same time the Navy extended its contract with Inchcape although the Justice Department had begun investigating a whistle-blower's allegations of fraud and thievery.

Stay tuned.

The Draft and Congress

Dana Milbank offers another argument for bringing back the draft. We might get a better Congress.  Here's the nub of his argument: "Because so few serving in politics have worn their country’s uniform, they have collectively forgotten how to put country before party and self-interest. They have forgotten a “cause greater than self,” and they have lost the knowledge of how to make compromises for the good of the country. Without a history of sacrifice and service, they’ve turned politics into war."

He may have a point, as only 19% of our legislators have seen military service; this is the lowest since WWII. 

Summing up Pope Francis?

From Toles in the Washington Post

A Slow Recovery

The Dallas Fed has two interesting charts about the current economy. Chart 1 shows that the recovery from the Great Recession is pretty bad. Five years after the business-cycle peak our recovery is much worse that previous major recessions.

Chart 2 shows some of the economic indicators. Employment and production are especially bad.

What is the real India?

Pankaj Mishra reviews the latest writings of Amartya Sen and Jagdish Bhagwati, two prominent Indian economists. Sen is a Nobel laureate. I had thought that India had made many advances in the 21st century. But, if Mishra is right - and I have no reason to doubt him - it is the upper classes that have moved forward; it is still a backward country. Here are some excerpts from the review:

The 2011 census revealed that half of all Indian households have to practice open defecation. Nearly half of all Indian children are underweight (compared to 25 percent in sub-Saharan Africa), and as Sen and Drèze point out, despite a rise in literacy rates, “a large proportion” of them “learn very little at school.” Almost all Indians buy health services from private providers, exposing themselves to crippling debt as well as quackery. Inequalities have widened between classes, regions, and rural and urban areas. More worryingly, they seem unbridgeable owing to the lack of adequate education and public health. Not surprisingly, poverty declines very slowly in India, slower than in Nepal and Bangladesh, and unevenly.20 Calorie and protein intake among the poor has actually dropped.

“India today,” the historian Ramachandra Guha writes, “is an environmental basket-case; marked by polluted skies, dead rivers, falling water-tables, ever-increasing amounts of untreated wastes, disappearing forests.”22 Meanwhile, as Sen and Drèze write, the largely corporate-owned media, deeply indifferent to poverty and inequality, and reflexively intolerant of any remedial action by the government, produce “an unreal picture of the lives of Indians in general” by celebrating the fame and wealth of billionaires and cricket and Bollywood stars.

That drama is one of an elite that expands and is entrenching itself. Increasingly impatient with the rules and ethics of democracy, India’s ruling class today consists, as C. Rammanohar Reddy, editor of The Economic and Political Weekly, defines it, “of large Indian businesses, the new entrepreneurs in real estate, finance, and IT, the upper segment of the urban middle classes, the upper echelons among the bureaucracy, and even large sections of the media.”

Kids show the way

War on Irrational Fear

Incitement Design has launched the War on Irrational Fear. The basis of much of this first video is the work of John Mueller, of whom I wrote a while ago.

Keeping photographers out

Last week I wrote about what appears to be a new White House policy barring media photographers from certain events while at the same time having White House photographers film the events and make them generally available. The deputy press secretary explains the policy, “There are certain circumstances where it is simply not feasible to have independent journalists in the room when the president is making decisions.”

Apparently, Mr. Obama makes decisions at some strange events. Dana Milbank has some examples: The president and first lady waving to a sea of people, with the Washington Monument in the background, on the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King’s march; Obama swimming with one of his daughters in the Gulf of Mexico to show that the water is clean; Obama embracing one of his daughters in Nelson Mandela’s prison cell; the president touring the West Bank church on the spot where Jesus is thought to have been born (news photographers were allowed to shoot images when George W. Bush toured that location); Obama alone on the Rosa Parks bus, sitting in the same row where the civil rights icon sat; Obama shaking hands on Veterans Day with the oldest living World War II veteran; Obama shaking hands with Mitt Romney in the Oval Office; the first lady and the president greeting kids the day White House tours resumed this month.

A transparent administration or a 1984 administration?

The Craziness of Sports

Did you know that 41 states have passed the Uniform Athlete Agents Act? This is a law crafted by the NCAA to restrict contact between sports agents and college athletes. Such contact was part of the NCAA rules. Now it is part of our laws.

If you hand money or give advice to a college athlete, you are breaking the law. The law goes beyond agents; those who act as go-betweens for the agents can also be tried under this law. The first such case is happening in North Carolina. 

Jennifer Wiley Thompson was an academic adviser for North Carolina athletes. Of course, the question of why athletes have academic advisers and other students don't boggles the mind. She was accused of helping athletes write better papers. She also passed $3,309 from an agent to a player. It is for this she is being tried, although it was not her money; she simply was a transfer agent.

The NCAA is working on expanding the Act to cover high school athletes.

Quotes from the Apostolic Exhortation of Pope Francis

Courtesy of Heather Horn of The Atlantic:

"Today everything comes under the laws of competition and the survival of the fittest," he writes. "Human beings are themselves considered consumer goods to be used and then discarded," and "man is reduced to one of his needs alone: consumption." He rejects the idea that "economic growth, encouraged by a free market, will inevitably succeed in bringing about greater justice and inclusiveness in the world." Instead, he argues, growing inequality is "the result of ideologies which defend the absolute autonomy of the marketplace and financial speculation," which "reject the right of states, charged with vigilance for the common good, to exercise any form of control." And he repeats the exact language he used in an early address: "Money must serve, not rule!"

"One cause of this situation," he writes, "is found in our relationship with money, since we calmly accept its dominion over ourselves and our societies. The current financial crisis can make us overlook the fact that it originated in a profound human crisis: the denial of the primacy of the human person!"

 "In this system, which tends to devour anything which stands in the way of increased profits, whatever is fragile, like the environment, is defenseless before the interests of a deified market, which become the only rule." 

Growth in justice ... requires decisions, programmes, mechanisms and processes specifically geared to a better distribution of income, the creation of sources of employment and an integral promotion of the poor which goes beyond a simple welfare mentality. I am far from proposing an irresponsible populism, but the economy can no longer turn to remedies that are a new poison ... We need to be convinced that charity “is the principle not only of micro-relationships (with friends, with family members or within small groups) but also of macro-relationships (social, economic and political ones)”. ... Each meaningful economic decision made in one part of the world has repercussions everywhere else; consequently, no government can act without regard for shared responsibility. Indeed, it is becoming increasingly difficult to find local solutions for enormous global problems which overwhelm local politics with difficulties to resolve.If we really want to achieve a healthy world economy, what is needed at this juncture of history is a more efficient way of interacting which, with due regard for the sovereignty of each nation, ensures the economic well-being of all countries, not just of a few.

The Nicaragua Canal

Will people in the late 21st century speak of the Nicaragua Canal as we speak of the Panama Canal? Nicaragua and China have just signed an agreement allowing the construction of a new inter-oceanic canal in Nicaragua, connecting China with the Caribbean and its Atlantic-American trade partners. Ships will be able to bypass the congested Panama Canal. 

The canal would also establish China as a major player in Central and South America.

Deciding whether to release a computer program

The Obama administration acknowledges that Healthcare.gov will not work 20% of the time on December 1. Yet, they believe that Healthcare.gov will be good enough to be used by 80% of those trying to do so. If my company released software that would not work 1 out of 5 times, I would have been out of business very quickly, as no one would be stupid enough to buy such software. Would you use Amazon if you knew you would fail 20% of the time? 

Not only would the system not work, it is likely that it will still be sending false information about applicants to the insurance companies. And, of course, if I were Spanish, I would be out of luck as the Spanish-language website will probably not be running. Nor will the online small business marketplace.

I guess the administration thinks we're idiots. I'm not sure GW thought so. 

Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2013/11/25/209704/obama-officials-healthcaregov.html#storylink=cpy

Cooking a comet

NASA is excited about Comet ISON which they refer to as a sun grazer. It should be visible with binoculars or telescopes in the next day or two. The scientists there are hoping that the comet is not destroyed by the sun but that it will emerge from its trip by the sun as being visible in daylight. 

What we do for football players

Earlier this year there was quite a commotion about two high school football players from Steubenville, Ohio, raping a fellow student who had imbibed too much alcohol. It now appears that several adults - all connected with the high school - tried to protect the football players by trying to cover things up. These adults, who have now been indicted, include the superintendent of schools, a school principal, an assistant wrestling coach, a technology director and an assistant football coach.

Keeping us safe - part 2

Questioning the NY Fed

Pam Martens of Wall Street on Parade does not think highly of the NY Federal Reserve Bank.  She finds it hard to accept that many of the board directors are the CEOs of TBTF (Too Big To Fail) banks such as Citicorp and JPMorgan.  Now she asks the question of why the NY Fed has a trading floor and highly sophisticated trading platforms; it's the only Fed bank that does. And the trading floor seems to be a very special place as the Fed will not provide a photo of the full trading area, yet its web site shows photos of its gold vault and currency vault.

She quotes approvingly from a speech by the bank president, William Dudley, “There is evidence of deep-seated cultural and ethical failures at many large financial institutions.  Whether this is due to size and complexity, bad incentives or some other issues is difficult to judge, but it is another critical problem that needs to be addressed. Tough enforcement and high penalties will certainly help focus management’s attention on this issue. But I am also hopeful that ending too big to fail and shifting the emphasis to longer-term sustainability will encourage the needed cultural shift necessary to restore public trust in the industry.”

More on the Healthcare.org fiasco

The NY Times has more information on what went wrong. Fundamentally, it was an attempt to manage a very sophisticated software project by people who knew very little about these types of projects. The specs were in flux almost constantly.  There was no manager of the overall project. A relatively new database system was chosen. Yet, on September 26, four days before launch, Obama said, “This is real simple. It’s a website where you can compare and purchase affordable health insurance plans side by side the same way you shop for a plane ticket on Kayak, same way you shop for a TV on Amazon. You just go on, and you start looking, and here are all the options.”

Keeping us safe

Today's DOD Accounting

Yesterday I wrote about the fact that DOD's books can't be audited. Well, according to McClatchy certain departments of DOD can be. Howsomever, the results of the audit are highly questionable. Here are McClatchy's conclusions:

– Outside audits by a certified public accounting firm of the Defense Finance and Accounting Service’s books turned out to be shoddy, according to the Pentagon’s own accountants, although that same CPA firm had endorsed the agency’s previous fiscal records for years.

– In reaction to the skeptical evaluations, Pentagon officials pressured their accountants to suppress their findings, then backdated documents in what appears to have been an effort to conceal the critiques.

– The Defense Department’s Office of the Inspector General, which was brought in to watchdog the audit, not only helped squelch the critical work but also allowed the outside firm to be paid despite the serious questions about the quality of its work.

I guess one can still conclude that DOD's books cannot be audited.

Early Prostheses

The Cartonnage Toe, 600 B.C. 

Roman artificial leg, 300 B.C.

16th century Arm

Close-up of 16th Century Arm

 

The Cairo Toe, 700-950 B.C

What JPMorgan admitted

Steven Rosenfeld has translated the legalese of JP's $13 billion settlement with the U.S. Here's what he thinks JP admitted:

• J.P. Morgan knew it had bad loans from the start.
• J.P. Morgan knew appraisers were inflating values.
• J.P. Morgan lied about these values to investors.
• When asked about bad loans, they said, ‘Don’t worry.”
• They were buying loans like sharks biting at bait.
• Their sales pitches were filled false assurances.
• Morgan knew it was buying bad loans.
• They dumped bad loans, en masse, into loan pools. 
• They had twice the bad loans as their standards allowed.
• They met with Countywide, but kept buying bad loans.
• They kept telling investors everything was peachy.
• Other Wall Street giants did the exact same thing.           

The Transparent Administration

It's not the Obama administration. Now it's press photographers the administration thinks might take the wrong photos of our esteemed leader. The White House Correspondents Association and other groups of those who photograph political activities are complaining about "White House policies that ban photojournalists from covering the president at certain events while releasing government photos and videos of the same events”

What it means to be non-auditable

Thomson Reuters is an English company but they have the most detailed report on the accounting woes of our Department of Defense that I have seen.  It "has found that the Pentagon is largely incapable of keeping track of its vast stores of weapons, ammunition and other supplies; thus it continues to spend money on new supplies it doesn't need and on storing others long out of date. It has amassed a backlog of more than half a trillion dollars in unaudited contracts with outside vendors; how much of that money paid for actual goods and services delivered isn't known. And it repeatedly falls prey to fraud and theft that can go undiscovered for years, often eventually detected by external law enforcement agencies." Yet, we give carte blanche to DOD in how it spends our money.

Can it be managed responsibly?  Robert Gates seems to doubt it when in 2011 he said that DOD is "an amalgam of fiefdoms without centralized mechanisms to allocate resources, track expenditures, and measure results. ... My staff and I learned that it was nearly impossible to get accurate information and answers to questions such as ‘How much money did you spend' and ‘How many people do you have?' "

Reuters has grouped the blunders into five categories:
TOO MUCH STUFF

Here's a comment from Navy Vice Admiral Mark Harnitchek, the director of the Defense Logistics Agency,"We have about $14 billion of inventory for lots of reasons, and probably half of that is excess to what we need."  Yet, they keep buying; as of September 30, 2012, they had $733 million worth of supplies and equipment on order that was already stocked in excess amounts on warehouse shelves. That figure was up 21% from $609 million a year earlier. The Defense Department defines "excess inventory" as anything more than a three-year supply.

OLD AND DANGEROUS

Supply depots have runway flares from the 1940s. More than one-third of the weapons and munitions the Joint Munitions Command stores at depots is obsolete.

COSTLY REPAIRS
The report rattles off  a number of computer systems that didn't do the job, costing us billions of dollars.

CONTRACT HITS

The Defense Contract Audit Agency is charged with making sure that a contract was fulfilled and the money ended up in the right place. They have a 'small' backlog of over 20,000 contracts to audit; some go back to 1996. Did we get what we paid for? Who knows?

PLUGGING ALONG
This refers to cases where DOD's numbers don't match Treasury's. DOD makes up the numbers and calls them "reconciling amounts". This amounted to $9.22 billion in 2012.

Defining the vast majority

Obama's press secretary, Jay Carney, defines it as 80% when referring to the Healthcare.gov site. He says that 20% of the people using the site on November 30 will experience difficulties.  These 20% are divided into three groups: computer neophytes, those with situations too complex to determine whether they qualify for a subsidy, and those who encounter technical problems (i.e., bugs in the computer vernacular). Of course, he does not say how he thinks the 20% is divided amongst the three categories. 

I doubt very many neophytes will be using the site in the next 12 days. That leaves most of the 20% group divided among those who experience 'technical' problems and those who experience complexity problems. In my days of programming both would be considered system bugs. Granted there is no software that is perfect, but a system which works 80% of the time is pushing the definition of a workable piece of software.

Is the wind telling us anything?

The wind has been a major news story for the past several days - the Philippines on Friday, the Midwest on Sunday and yesterday Sardinia. Death and destruction at levels seldom seen in different parts of the globe in a fairly short time span. I can't rely on my memory too much anymore, but I can't recall a similar situation since I've been here.

More waste that could be cut fairly easily

Medicare Part D enables people to obtain drugs, the cost of which is subsidized by us. One problem is that Medicare does not seem concerned that some doctors prescribe name-brand drugs when generics could do as good a job.  ProPublica estimates that "Just 913 internists, family medicine and general practice physicians cost taxpayers an extra $300 million in 2011 alone by disproportionately choosing name-brand drugs. These doctors each wrote at least 5,000 prescriptions that year, including refills, and ranked among the program’s most prolific prescribers."  Half of these doctors 'consult' to pharmaceuticasl companies.

Part D also subsidizes the drugs of low-income patients.  This often results in these patients having no incentive to buy generics, which often cost a mere fraction of a name-brand drug. This subsidy represented one-third of the money spent on Part D last year.
So, who in our Congress is watching the store?

Maybe the TPP won't be fast- tracked

Obama has wanted to fast-track TPP (Trans-Pacific Partnership), which means that lawmakers would be limited to a simple up-or-down vote on the completed deal, shortening floor debate and prohibiting amendments. Some Congressmen are saying "no".  Last week 23 Republican and 151 Democratic Congressmen wrote to Obama in opposition to fast-tracking the issue.  Who knows whether they will succeed, but at least some of our leaders are finally saying something about TPP.

Twins' first bath

Hat tip to our Florida correspondent

Wikileaks reveals a section of the Trans-Pacific Partnership Treaty

Here are some summary comments about the leaked section:

Bill Black 
Obama has caused the TPP to violate every standard he has endorsed as president, including secret lobbying.  There is no limit on the political contributions that corporations can make to influence TPP policy or disclosure of their lobbying positions.  The TPP is bankrolled” by the world’s most powerful corporate interests.  TPP policies are not made by the American people, but they are also not made by our elected representatives in Congress. Obama’s “fast track” process for adopting TPP is designed to eliminate normal congressional powers.  Obama knows TPP is indefensible and that Americans would vote against it.  He is desperate to avoid any open, democratic debate between the people of America and the corporations, most of them foreign, that TPP seeks to make our unelected, all-powerful rulers.  

Dean Baker  
Specifically, there are several provisions that will increase protectionism in the prescription drug market, pushing up prices in the countries that sign the agreement. There are also provisions that would strengthen copyright protection, increasing the responsibility of third parties to assist copyright holders in enforcing their copyrights.

The TPP also provides for stronger and longer protection for test data used to establish a drug’s safety and effectiveness. If this gets into law, patients in many countries will likely have to wait longer before having access to generic versions of drugs. The US proposed language for the TPP that would require countries to issue patents for medical procedures. This means that a surgeon who has developed a creative way to carry through a particular operation – or was at least able to get a patent issued — would be able to sue other doctors for doing similar operations.

Colleges are primarily businesses in the 21st century

“He knows how to raise money.”  That seems to be the primary criterion for college presidents. They make a lot of money while they are performing their presidential duties  and they continue to make a lot of money when they retire. Here are some examples of Massachusetts colleges.

Brandeis - they pay the ex-president $600,000 a year.

Tufts - gave $1,700,00 to the retiring president as “end of service compensation.” 

Harvard - paid president  his presidential salary of $580,000 for several years after he stepped down in 2006.

Wellesley College - had two former presidents on its payroll in the last six years, including one who received $430,000 a year for two years after she retired and her duties ended.

University of Massachusetts - paid the ex-president $425,000 during a yearlong sabbatical after stepping down to become a professor at University of Massachusetts Lowell, where he now earns $269,180.

Suffolk  - paid severance of $854,085. 

Amherst - paid ex-president $1,400,000, mostly for deferred compensation he accrued during his eight-year presidency and a sabbatical he never took.

Northeastern - pays an annual pension of $209,690, plus $30,000 to teach a history class.

Removing the fuel rods at Fukushima

Tepco will soon be starting to remove 1535 fuel rods.  John Light comments on this effort:

The rods are capable of producing radiation at levels 14,000 times greater than what was released when America dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima. It’s a highly dangerous operation that has never been attempted on such a scale before, and a key part of decommissioning the facility, which could cost $50 billion and take 40 years.

The fuel rod removal effort is expected to take 13 months to complete, but experts warn that putting the radioactive rods into safe storage won’t be easy. If any of the 15-foot, 660-pound rods break or are exposed to air, huge amounts of radioactive gasses could be released. Should there be another natural disaster like the earthquake Suzuki warned of, those rods could set off a catastrophic reaction that would be more dangerous than the meltdowns the plant has already experienced.

In September when the removal date was set at November 15, I commented:

If any two of the rods touch it could cause a nuclear reaction that would be uncontrollable. The risk of touching is high.  The rods are in a badly damaged pool perched 100 feet in the air.  The building containing the rods is tilting, sinking and could easily come down in the next earthquake, if not on its own.

The Earthquake Research Institute at the University of Tokyo said earlier this year that there’s a 70 percent chance a 7.0-magnitude or higher quake will strike Tokyo, near Fukushima, by 2016. 

Was $878,000,000 spent wisely?

That's what the Transportation Security Administration has spent since 2007 on a program to scan crowds for signs that someone is a terrorist. The Government Accountability Office reviewed the program and found that there is no evidence that the tactic works.  Yet, we are employing 2,800 people in this program, known as the Screening of Passengers by Observation Techniques (SPOT). The results of the program for 2012:37,370 passengers were targeted under the SPOT program, 2,214 were referred to a police officer and 199 were arrested.

A good use of our money?

Body interfaces

The Peace Ark is very discriminating

The Peace Ark is a state-of-the-art Chinese hospital ship and a big one. It has 300 beds, 20 ICUs and 8 operating theatres,  It has just completed a cruise serving the needs of eight countries.  The Philippines are 1,200 miles from Shanghai, where the ship is berthed. Yet, it does not appear as though it will do anything to help with the disaster there.  I guess China's political dispute with the Philippines is more relevant to China's philosophy than helping people in unbelievable distress.

Update
China has had a change of heart and has sent the Peace Ark to the Philippines.

Today's efforts to keep us safe

Today, we learned that the CIA monitors international money transfers, many of which are made by Western Union.  This is probably not as bad as other monitoring in that they are not - yet - monitoring purely domestic transfers or bank-to-bank transactions.  Furthermore, there is the Bank Secrecy Act which grants some legal authority. 

Still, it's another government agency spying on more files.

Be careful where you buy your books

Doug Williams offered for sale a book which instructed you how to fudge lie detector tests. Naturally, he kept records of his customers. The Customs and Border Protection Service thought that some of their employees may have bought the book and used it for nefarious doings. Customs was also concerned that employees of other federal agencies may also have similar employees. So, it sent to thirty other federal agencies a list of the 4,904 people who bought the book. The list included Social Security numbers, addresses and professions of many people. However, most of the 4,904 did not work for the federal government; they were nurses, firefighters, police officers, private attorneys, employees of Rite Aid, Paramount Pictures, the American Red Cross and Georgetown University. etc. In short, many innocent people became the subjects of government inquiries and searches.  

The funny thing about this is that the validity of lie detector tests has become questionable. Despite this, several of our fellow citizens had their privacy validated for no good reason  In the words of one government official, “There’s no indication that any of these individuals did anything wrong, actually received hands-on training, took a polygraph anywhere, utilized countermeasures or are with any federal agency" .

Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2013/11/14/208438/americans-personal-data-shared.html#storylink=cpy

Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2013/11/14/208438/americans-personal-data-shared.html#storylink=cpy

Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2013/11/14/208438/americans-personal-data-shared.html#storylink=cpy

Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2013/11/14/208438/americans-personal-data-shared.html#storylink=cpy

Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2013/11/14/208438/americans-personal-data-shared.html#storylink=cpy

Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2013/11/14/208438/americans-personal-data-shared.html#storylink=cpy

It's getting to be a habit with me

Yes, I know the title is a line from a popular song of the 1940s, but this post will be another about the Pope. The following photo really sums up this post.

Yup, he's against fracking.  And well he should, as Argentina is fourth in shale gas reserves and second in shale oil.  So, the pressure is on there.  The oil companies are meeting a fair level of opposition and things have gotten violent on occasion.

So what's with the Navy?

Yesterday I wrote about two admirals who have been suspended from accessing classified information as it appears as though they are implicated in bribery charges.  Today, we learn that three senior Navy intelligence officials, all civilians, are being investigated for another fraudulent scheme.  The brother of one of the officials spent $8,000 building some firearm silencers.  They must have been very good or very rare as he was able to sell them to us for $1.6 million.

Keeping Secrets

Fifty years ago Congress established the position of special government employee to handle cases where an agency needed help from someone who was employed elsewhere. The position was defined as "officer or employee who is retained, designated, appointed, or employed to perform temporary duties, with or without compensation, for not more than 130 days during any period of 365 consecutive days".  ProPublica decided to investigate some of these "special government employees".  

The State Department was one agency they asked for information about these employees since it was common knowledge that Huma Abedin had worked part-time for State while also working for a consulting company.  The State Dept. refused to provide a list of these employees because it "does not disclose employee information of this nature.”  So, ProPublica filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request.  State's response? We “do(es) not compile lists of personnel or positions in the category of ‘special government employee,’ and creating such a list would require “extensive research” and thus the agency is not required to respond under FOIA.  Then, when ProPublica said it would publish an article about State's refusal, State reopened the request, but nothing has happened.  

The question becomes "What is State hiding"?  Other agencies have provided such a list.

Does rehabilitation work better than incarceration?

That's an interesting question.  Our prison system focuses on incarceration, many in Europe focus on rehabilitation.  We have the highest per capita rate of prisoners, followed by the 'democracies' of China and Russia.  We spend a lot of money for our prison system; our costs have more than tripled since 1982. Drug offenses account for a large percent of the prison population. This post was triggered by a comment from our Brooklyn correspondent relative to Sweden's closing of four prisons.

The crime rate in Sweden has not fallen, but the country is using probation and shorter sentences where we use longer sentences. The prison population has decreased 15% since 2004. The drop in the population was due to a fall of 36% in theft-related crimes, 25% in drug offenses and 12% in violent crimes.

The prisons in Europe are different in that prisoners have more privacy and freedom, and the system is aimed at helping the prisoners reenter society. Look at the video and photographs for some differences in the prison systems.

Caskets at the airport

One of the scenes that led to the end of the Vietnam War were the pictures taken at Hanscom Airfield of caskets containing the dead bodies of soldiers.  At least once a week, maybe more often, they would appear on the nightly news. And every so often, you would have known - or known of  - one of the dead. But we were much closer to the military then; the draft made it so.  Now the volunteer army separates us even more from the effects of war.

One of the effects of this separation is that our political leaders have little or no military experience.  They are more likely to go to war than if they - or their sons and fathers - had the misfortune of having served in the military.  We are also more separated from the war as we know so few of those who serve. This separation will only get worse as wars become more technologically oriented. We need to restore the draft to reduce the chances of going to war.

A meeting in the sky

60 Minutes highlighted the GoPro camera last night. It's new to me but it allows you to take photos from a different angle - your body, your motorcycle,your parachute......

Pay US $864,000,000

That's what Preet Bharara, US Attorney from New York, is asking the court as a result of last month's decision against Bank of America with regard to its subsidiary, Countrywide Financial, being convicted of defrauding Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

Now it's the admirals

In June I wrote about the criminal behavior of some of our generals.  Venality is not limited to the Army, the Navy also has problems with officers trying to beat the system.  The Navy's problems, for now, center on a company called Glenn Defense Marine Asia (GDMA), a supplier of fuel, food, water, cleaning and other services to Navy ships throughout Asia and in California.  Charges  centering on bribery have been brought against the CEO of GDMA and lower level Naval officers.  Now, two admirals responsible for Naval intelligence have been suspended from accessing classified material because of their alleged ties to GDMA.

Is there some fat in the defense budget?

Let's look first at overhead.  About 40% of DOD's budget goes to overhead, but the average for many industries is 25%.  The defense contractors themselves chew up 35% of total costs in overhead.  So, it looks as though better management would lower the overhead costs of DOD by $50 billion or so.

How about cutting the number of civilians working at DOD?  There are 800,000, which is about half of all civilian federal employees.

What about reducing the number of overseas bases? We have about 800.

Read this from The Atlantic for more detail.

Dialing 911

In many cities there are a few people who call 911 often. In Washington, DC, Martha Rigsby holds the record for the number of times she has called.  In the past year she has called 911 226 times and been taken to the hospital 117 times. Over the past thirty years, she has made thousands of emergency calls and trips to the hospital after falling down.

These trips are costly; the average ambulance trip has costs $478.  Plus, the EMTs can only serve one person at a time; so, it's possible that they may not get to another, sicker person in enough time.  While she refuses to be transported in an ambulance 55% of the time, sending the EMTs out does cost money.

The city has decided to take Rigsby to court in an attempt to have her get help.  Whether they succeed or not is up to the court.

Rewarding Police Dogs

The police chief in Nottinghamshire really appreciates the work the department's police dogs do.  Although they do not receive a salary while they are working, the chief will look after them when they retire.  When the dogs retire, the handlers usually take care of them, including paying any medical bills.  Under the chief's new plan the department will pay the handlers up to $800 a year for three years to cover the dog's medical bills.

The Postal Service's Facilities Division does not seem to be working for us

Peter Byrne has just published "Going Postal", which is billed as the results of a year-long study into a privatization scheme that has enriched the powerful and robbed ordinary Americans.  

Based on the introduction published on Alternet, Byrne thinks that the Facilities Division of the Postal Service is acting not in our interests but in the interests of the 1%.  Whether his conclusion is justified is up in the air.  However, the Post Office does not help its case as it is not at all forthcoming in responding to requests for or simply providing information about its activities.

We all know that the Post Office is not in good financial shape.  Many attribute this to the rise of e-mail.  Byrne claims that eighty percent of the deficit is caused by a law passed by Congress in 2006 that requires it to prepay retiree health benefits 75 years into the future. No other government agency has such a rule, nor do most rational companies.

Byrne gives a few examples of Post Office executives' waste of our money:

• The inspector general reported that high-ranking Postal Service executives have charged home mortgages and European vacations to their government credit cards.  
• Facilities Division expense reports reveal that staffers have purchased hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of expensive dinners, online gift cards, inspirational literature, and even toys with their government-issued credit cards. 
• The division's chief, Tom Samra, has billed the deficit-ridden Postal Service for flying first class to Europe, even though he personally is worth as much as $98 million.

His real bete noire is the Facilities Division dealings with CBRE,  the world's largest commercial real estate firm. The chairman of the firm is Richard C. Blum, who is the husband of U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein.  

Byrne's list of the questionable deals:

• CBRE appears to have repeatedly violated its contractual duty to sell postal properties at or above fair market values.
• CBRE has sold valuable postal properties to developers at prices that appear to have been steeply discounted from fair market values, resulting in the loss of tens of millions of dollars in public revenue. In a series of apparently non-arm's length transactions, CBRE negotiated the sale of postal properties all around the country to its own clients and business partners, including to one of its corporate owners, Goldman Sachs Group.
• CBRE has been paid commissions as high as 6 percent by the Postal Service for representing both the seller and the buyer in many of the negotiations, thereby raising serious questions as to whether CBRE was doing its best to obtain the highest price possible for the Postal Service.
• Senator Feinstein has lobbied the Postmaster General on behalf of a redevelopment project in which her husband’s company was involved.

There is a lot more.  You really should read at least the Alternet excerpt.

Another Japanese Quirk

Searching for Drugs - New Mexico style

Pope Francis in action

Calling for more NSA spying

Pam Martens asks, "Why wasn't the NSA spying on Bloomberg chat rooms where unprecedented market rigging was taking place?"  The chat room was the popular meeting place for those involved with rigging Libor.  

2,170

That's how many billionaires there are in the world according to Wealth-X, "the definitive source of intelligence on the ultra wealthy with the world’s largest collection of curated research on UHNW (ultra high net worth) individuals.  Who knows whether their data is accurate of not.  But here are a couple of claims they make:

• Asia is fastest growing region with 18 new billionaires in 2013
• 810 individuals became billionaires since the 2009 global financial crisis
• The billionaire population’s combined net worth more than doubled from US$3.1 trillion in 2009 to US$6.5 trillion in 2013 – enough to fund the United States budget deficit until 2024, and greater than the GDP of every country except the United States and China. 
• Europe is home to the most billionaires (766 individuals). However, North America has the most billionaire wealth (US$2,158 billion).
• Average net worth of the world’s billionaires is US$3 billion.
• Globally, there are 111 individuals who each have a net worth that exceeds US$10 billion. Their combined net worth is over US$1.9 trillion, greater than the GDP of Canada.
• 60 percent of billionaires are self-made, while 40 percent inherited their wealth or grew their fortunes from inheritance.

The human airplane

Yves Rossy is the human airplane.  Here he is flying over Mt. Fuji.

He has also flown over the English Channel, the Grand Canyon and Rio de Janeiro, as well as flying in formation with jet airplanes and a Spitfire fighter. In each flight lasting about 10 minutes, he dove from a helicopter, soared as high as 3657 metres and parachuted back to earth from an altitude of around 800 metres.

Rossy uses a 'jetman' system he designed and built.  It's a backpack with carbon-fibre wings spanning about two metres, powered by four attached jet engines modified from large model aircraft engines and can reach speeds of 300km/h.

Here he is flying over and around Mt. Fuji.

 

Can it be true?

Will we find a twin of the Earth in the next few years?  Some scientists think that is a possibility as they have found many - perhaps a few thousand, perhaps billions - planets that are about our size and may have liquid water.  They've come to that conclusion from work done with NASA's Kepler spacecraft.  One of these planets may be as 'close' as 12 light years and visible to the naked eye.

While almost ecstatic, the scientists have doubts as, although these planets are Earth-size, nobody knows what their masses are and thus whether they are rocky like the Earth, or balls of ice or gas, let alone whether anything can, or does — or ever will — live on them.

Some good ideas about voting

Today, Election Day in many states, the voter turnout will be light.  Even when we vote for president do seldom more than two-thirds of us vote.  Joe Nocera has some good ideas as to how we might increase voter turnout:

• Vote on weekends, not during the week
• Open primaries so that you could vote for anyone regardless of primary
• Make redistricting non-partisan by establishing independent committees to define voting districts
• Reward the small donor by matching their donations on a higher than 1 to 1 basis.

He also proposes term limits for the Supreme Court.  But I can't see how that would increase voter turnout.

Who writes our legislation?

Saving Money?

Why are our leaders loath to invest in our infrastructure?  As the chart below shows, we have been on a downward trend since the 1960s.

We now invest about 3.6% of GDP compared to a postwar average of 5 per cent. And this is happening in a country that has one of the lowest tax rates in the world but spends more money on the military than the next five countries combined.

Excerpts from a Conversation re the TPP

YVES SMITH: So really, it's a mistake to call it a trade agreement. This is really an agreement that's purpose is substantially to weaken nation-based regulation while at the same time strengthening intellectual property protections. So it's basically a gimme to companies on both ends. 

BILL MOYERS: Well, if there is so much secrecy, how do we know what we don't know, to paraphrase Donald Rumsfeld? 
DEAN BAKER: Well I mean there have been some leaks from people involved in the process, so there have been bits and pieces that have come out. But it's very difficult to really know what is in there. They give limited access to members of Congress. And this, again, you know, Yves was making comment about that. You know, this really, to my mind, is quite a scandal. 

BILL MOYERS: But this is the paradox to me, I mean, as you've just said, stronger copyright and patent protection is the very opposite of free trade. They involve government interference and intervention in the market. They restrict competition. They lead, as you've just said, to higher prices for consumers. How can you describe this as a free-trade agreement? 

BILL MOYERS: What is your greatest concern about this? 
YVES SMITH: I think the drugs one is my biggest one. And the second one, frankly, is financial services. Because this would also basically make a lot of financial services regulation that we now have pretty much impossible. It would force-- 

YVES SMITH: The first language in both these deals goes something along the lines with, "All signatories are required to make their laws and regulations conform to the standards of this agreement." They are literally required to make their nation-based laws subordinate to the terms of these agreements. And again, we don't know exactly what's in them. But the whole notion is that they are to permit very liberalized capital flows and minimal restrictions. So like, Dodd-Frank basically is inconsistent with that. 

BILL MOYERS: What do you suppose is the influence on President Obama that caused him to reverse course on NAFTA and not fulfill what was a campaign pledge? 
DEAN BAKER: Well, I think it's the nature of politics in the United States. I mean, it's not a secret. You know, you have very powerful politically, economically-- people who, you know, are pushing for this. And you know, we saw this with Wall Street, you know, when President Obama first came into office. You know, at that point, you know, Wall Street is on its back, meaning the financial industry. And basically President Obama had it in his ability to break up the big banks, totally restructure finance, he decided not to go that route. And his top advisors, well Robert Rubin, played an enormous role, you know, as the top executive at Citigroup and formerly Goldman Sachs. He was not going to go that route because these are the people he was listening to. And I think that's continued to be the pattern throughout his administration, that's he's listening to people with a corporate interest, he was just talking about there. Those are the people who are steering the policy. 
YVES SMITH: I mean, I'd go a little bit further than Dean on that. In that when you look at Obama's record of his campaign promises versus what he's actually done, there's sort of a normal, acceptable level of political lying, and Obama has gone way past what is historically the normal in terms of, you know, politician fudging and then doing something else when they've been in office. This is just another example.

BILL MOYERS: You both keep saying they don't talk about this crucial issue, they don't talk about that crucial issue. They don't take this stand and speak the truth to us. What's going on?
YVES SMITH: Well, I wrote something in 2010. I said that Obama believes that the response to any policy problem is better propaganda. And unfortunately, I think this was an illustration of that phenomenon.
BILL MOYERS: But is it better propaganda to be silent when people can't get jobs that job growth is down, we need to spend money, and they're not doing it.
YVES SMITH: He won in 2012, even with a terrible economy. So it didn't, you know, it didn't seem to-- running bad policies didn't seem to prevent him from getting reelected.