Maximizing Earnings

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) has filed suit against ITT Educational Services, Inc., a provider of a "college education" on-line,  charging predatory student lending. The company has tens of thousands of students from forty states. The problem is that the education is not very good, as the credits that students earned “typically did not transfer to local community colleges or other nonprofit schools such as public or private colleges.”

Furthermore, the education there is not cheap; $44,000 for an associates degree, $88,000 for a bachelors degree. The cost is exacerbated by the student being pushed into private student loans even though they may have been eligible for government loans. The suit charges that “ students did not even know they had a private student loan until they started getting collection calls.” Plus: “ITT knew that most of its students would ultimately default on their private student loans; it projected a default rate for its students of 64 percent.”

Searching for true love

Optic Nerve

That's the name Britain’s Government Communications Headquarters, or GCHQ, gave to its program of capturing video webcam images from Yahoo users, no matter who they were. GCHQ is still collecting images. It has collected a lot of images; in six months of 2008 it collected webcam images from more than 1.8 million Yahoo user accounts around the world. Naturally, the agency did not tell Yahoo what it was doing.

GCHQ did not want to overload its servers so it collected one image every five minutes from users’ feeds. Supposedly it restricted its image searches to metadata. But it allowed its spies to view the contents of webcam chats between users whose usernames matched those of surveillance targets. And some of those chats were interesting in that they had sexual images.

Getting Closer

The fallout from Fukushima has been detected near Vancouver and is expected near San Francisco in April. So far, scientists think that the radiation level will be quite a bit below the safety limit for drinking water.

Increase the gas tax

The federal tax on gasoline is 18.4 cents per gallon. This rate was set in 1993; in 2014 dollars the tax has dropped to 11.5 cents per gallon. These taxes go into the Highway Trust Fund, which now stands at $46 billion. That is less than the $50 billion we spend each year on surface transportation programs that support highways, public transportation, and intercity passenger rail. This trust fund has been hard hit by dramatic improvements in vehicle fuel efficiency and reduced driving; it looks as though the fund will be bust by August of this year. 

The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the Highway Trust Fund will require $15 billion in additional revenue in FY 2015 to remain solvent. It is time for Congress to increase the tax substantially or find a sustainable, long-term funding source to support federal transportation programs for decades to come. 

Lining up for food in Yarmouk, Damascus, Syria

Yarmouk, a neighborhood in Damascus occupied mainly by 20,000 Palestinians, has been under siege by the Syrian army since July 2013. 

Believable?

Do you believe that "State and local governments have awarded at least $110 billion in taxpayer subsidies to business, with 3 of every 4 dollars going to fewer than 1,000 big corporations"?. That's the claim made by David Cay Johnston based on a report by an organization called Good Jobs First.The organization studied state and local government agencies that it believes subsidize companies in ways such as cash giveaways, building and land transfers, tax abatements and steep discounts on electric and water bills. It has developed a database you can access to see just what subsidies have been provided. The five companies receiving the most money are Boeing ($13.2 billion) Alcoa ($5.6 billion), Intel ($3.9 billion), General Motors ($3.5 billion) and Ford Motor ($2.5 billion).

Cutting the Defense Budget?

It doesn't sound that way according to William Hartung.




And we still spend more money than anybody.

9/11 Redux?

Gary Hart and Norm Augustine think 9/11 could occur again because Congress has done nothing but confuse management of the Department of Homeland Security, which is now the third largest federal agency. Who would expect any organization to function smoothly if it is being overseen by 108 committees and subcommittees of Congress?

That's a cloud

This is another piece from Marvelous. It was taken by Daniela Eberl in Uruguay.

Another JPMorgan Death

Wall Street on Parade has been writing about the deaths of young JPMorgan employees in recent months. I've written about them recently. Some of these deaths were probably caused by suicide, the cause of others is unknown. All of these employees were in their 30s. Pam Martens writes, "When a rash of sudden deaths occur among a most unlikely cohort of 30-year olds at a bank that has just settled felony charges and been put on notice that it will be indicted if it commits any further felonies; when it is currently under investigation on multiple continents for potentially committing criminal acts in the realm of interest rate and/or foreign exchange rigging — for the press to cavalierly call these deaths “non suspicious” before inquests have been conducted and findings released by medical examiners shows an unseemly indifference to a worker’s life and an alarming insensitivity to the grief stricken families still searching for answers."

Deep State

Mike Lofgren has some interesting thoughts on our current governmental situation. Here are some excerpts:

The Deep State does not consist of the entire government. It is a hybrid of national security and law enforcement agencies: the Department of Defense, the Department of State, the Department of Homeland Security, the Central Intelligence Agency and the Justice Department. I also include the Department of the Treasury because of its jurisdiction over financial flows, its enforcement of international sanctions and its organic symbiosis with Wall Street. All these agencies are coordinated by the Executive Office of the President via the National Security Council. Certain key areas of the judiciary belong to the Deep State, such as the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, whose actions are mysterious even to most members of Congress. Also included are a handful of vital federal trial courts, such as the Eastern District of Virginia and the Southern District of Manhattan, where sensitive proceedings in national security cases are conducted. The final government component (and possibly last in precedence among the formal branches of government established by the Constitution) is a kind of rump Congress consisting of the congressional leadership and some (but not all) of the members of the defense and intelligence committees. The rest of Congress, normally so fractious and partisan, is mostly only intermittently aware of the Deep State and when required usually submits to a few well-chosen words from the State’s emissaries.
__________________________________________________
As the indemnification vote showed, the Deep State does not consist only of government agencies. What is euphemistically called “private enterprise” is an integral part of its operations. In a special series in The Washington Postcalled “Top Secret America,” Dana Priest and William K. Arkin described the scope of the privatized Deep State and the degree to which it has metastasized after the September 11 attacks. There are now 854,000 contract personnel with top-secret clearances — a number greater than that of top-secret-cleared civilian employees of the government. While they work throughout the country and the world, their heavy concentration in and around the Washington suburbs is unmistakable: Since 9/11, 33 facilities for top-secret intelligence have been built or are under construction. Combined, they occupy the floor space of almost three Pentagons — about 17 million square feet. Seventy percent of the intelligence community’s budget goes to paying contracts. And the membrane between government and industry is highly permeable: The Director of National Intelligence, James R. Clapper, is a former executive of Booz Allen Hamilton, one of the government’s largest intelligence contractors. His predecessor as director, Admiral Mike McConnell, is the current vice chairman of the same company; Booz Allen is 99 percent dependent on government business. These contractors now set the political and social tone of Washington, just as they are increasingly setting the direction of the country, but they are doing it quietly, their doings unrecorded in the Congressional Record or the Federal Register, and are rarely subject to congressional hearings.
__________________________________

it has become publicly evident that Silicon Valley is a vital node of the Deep State as well. Unlike military and intelligence contractors, Silicon Valley overwhelmingly sells to the private market, but its business is so important to the government that a strange relationship has emerged. 
__________________________________

That the secret and unaccountable Deep State floats freely above the gridlock between both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue is the paradox of American government in the 21st century: drone strikes, data mining, secret prisons and Panopticon-likecontrol on the one hand; and on the other, the ordinary, visible parliamentary institutions of self-government declining to the status of a banana republic amid the gradual collapse of public infrastructure.
__________________________________

The Deep State is the big story of our time. It is the red thread that runs through the war on terrorism, the financialization and deindustrialization of the American economy, the rise of a plutocratic social structure and political dysfunction. Washington is the headquarters of the Deep State, and its time in the sun as a rival to Rome, Constantinople or London may be term-limited by its overweening sense of self-importance and its habit, as Winwood Reade said of Rome, to “live upon its principal till ruin stared it in the face.” “Living upon its principal,” in this case, means that the Deep State has been extracting value from the American people in vampire-like fashion.
__________________________________

We are faced with two disagreeable implications. First, that the Deep State is so heavily entrenched, so well protected by surveillance, firepower, money and its ability to co-opt resistance that it is almost impervious to change. Second, that just as in so many previous empires, the Deep State is populated with those whose instinctive reaction to the failure of their policies is to double down on those very policies in the future. Iraq was a failure briefly camouflaged by the wholly propagandistic success of the so-called surge; this legerdemain allowed for the surge in Afghanistan, which equally came to naught. Undeterred by that failure, the functionaries of the Deep State plunged into Libya; the smoking rubble of the Benghazi consulate, rather than discouraging further misadventure, seemed merely to incite the itch to bomb Syria. Will the Deep State ride on the back of the American people from failure to failure until the country itself, despite its huge reserves of human and material capital, is slowly exhausted? The dusty road of empire is strewn with the bones of former great powers that exhausted themselves in like manner.

Finding a market

I don't watch very much television, so the following may not reflect reality.

Last night I watched a movie on BET, a channel aimed at African-Americans. Judging from the fact that there were several commercials for the Army and one for the Marines, it seems that the armed forces consider African-Americans as prime prospects. The pitch was not for privates, but for officers. It's possible that the pitchman for the Army commercials was not an actor.

I have yet to see any ads for the military on other channels.

250,000 tons

That's how much radioactive topsoil Japan has put into bags and stored in thirty locations (some in town centers) round Fukushima. Someone is praying that the bags do not break, leak, or fall over. But since the bags are temporary, prayers need to be offered for only five years as that's how long the bags can withstand the environment. 

2014 has not started well re Fukushima. In January Tepco had such a problem finding workers to clean up the mess that it had to recruit the homeless in Tokyo. In February, Tepco said that the levels of strontium-90 in te water was five times higher than previously estimated. At least one scientist has forecast that the Fukushima Daiichi plant cannot safely be reoccupied for at least 165 years.

Would we be able to do better? Where in the United States of America would a power company or government authority safely bury 250,000 tons of radioactive soil, millions of gallons of high-radiation water, and the detritus of abandoned homes and farms across thousands of acres of land? 

Scholars of American History

Courtesy of our Florida correspondent

Making Money from Pigs - Part 2

In December I wrote about Questor Pharmaceutical, a company that has converted a $100,000 purchase of a drug in 2001 to a $4 billion valuation of the company. Much of the increase in valuation was attributed to two things - increasing the price of the drug (which incidentally is made from the pituitary glands of slaughtered pigs) from $50 to $28,000 and changing the marketing from that of a rare infant disease to multiple sclerosis patients and for adults suffering from nephrotic syndrome and rheumatologic conditions.  

The president, Don Bailey, is probably a pretty sharp guy. Like many CEOs of public companies he has a plan by which he sells company stock in the middle of each month so he avoids any appearance of trading on inside information. Jesse Eisinger has noticed that at least six times over the last ten months Questor has issued a news release which reports good news and drives the stick price up. The news release comes out mid-month and Mr. Bailey sells his stock, usually at the stock's highest point in the month.

Coincidence?

Death and Finance

Something weird is going on in the financial world, especially at JPMorgan.  Yesterday, it was reported that a 33-year-old J.P. Morgan employee leapt from the roof of the company's Hong Kong headquarters. This was the third 'suicide' of a JPM employee this year. On January 27 a senior manager in London jumped to his death. Last week an executive director was found dead in his home. All of these employees were in their thirties. And there seems to be a couple of versions as to what happened in each case.

Other finance people have died violently. On Jan. 26, a former Deutsche Bank and Merrill Lynch executive with close ties to the co-chief executive of Deutsche Bank was found hanged in London. In Washington state, the chief economist for Russell Investments fell down a 50-foot embankment and died. Two weeks ago, Richard Talley, 57, the founder of American Title Services, apparently killed himself with a nail gun.  And also in January, U.K.-based communications director at Swiss Re AG, Tim Dickenson, was found dead; the circumstances surrounding his death remain unknown.

Enough Said

Betting on Death

JPMorgan and others have gone in the business of 'longevity risk', which, in English, means trying to beat the actuaries. JP created the LifeMetrics Index to enable pension plans to hedge the risk of payments to retirees and incorporated “historical and current statistics on mortality rates and life expectancy, across genders, ages, and nationalities.” To bolster its position JP has received four patents on quantifying longevity risks and structuring wagers via death derivatives.

Also, JP’s Chief Investment Office oversees Bank Owned Life Insurance (BOLI) and Corporate Owned Life Insurance (COLI) plans which allow the corporation to reap huge tax benefits by taking out life insurance policies on workers – even low wage workers – and naming the corporation the beneficiary of the death benefit. Both the buildup in the policy and the benefit at death are received tax free to the corporation. In 2009 the company had $12 billion in BOLI.

Too much of a 'good' thing

Living at Duncaster brings many benefits, one of which is not having to worry about snow storms. There is no shoveling to be done, my car is cleaned off, the generator is available should we lose power, etc. But since being human also means being a complainer, I'm getting tired of the snow. Our 14th snow storm of the year has just begun. Since today is the 59th day of winter, that works out to a storm every four days or so. I say enough already and look forward to today plus 31 days when it will be the start of spring.

How much do directors of Fortune 500 companies make?

Look at Director Watch from the Center for Economic and Policy Research and Pay Pals from the Huntington Post. Director Watch makes the argument against exorbitant pay, while Pay Pals has a data base of quite a few directors.

Director Watch highlights Erskine Bowles (of Bowles-Simpson fame) and Martin Feldstein, a prominent conservative economist. Bowles grossed over $3,000,000 in directors fees for the five years 2008-2012, Feldstein over $1,000,000 in that time period.

Pay Pals highlights William H. Gray, III. He made over $5,000,000 from 2008-2012 as a director of Pfizer, JPMorgan, Prudential and Dell.

Supply and Demand Explained

The Caves of Lake Superior

There are more photos here.

Kayden in the rain

from the Marvelous.com site

I guess Sirota was right

On Wednesday I reported David Sirota's allegations that PBS was bought off by the Arnold Foundation. It looks like he was right as WNET, the PBS affiliate in New York, is returning the grant it received from the foundation “in order to eliminate any perception on the part of the public, our viewers and donors that the foundation’s interests influenced the editorial integrity of the reporting for this program.” 

Assaulting a police officer

That's the charge against Cecily McMillan, who was arrested two years ago during an Occupy Wall Street demonstration in Manhattan. She was beaten black and blue on her ribs and arms by the police until she went into a seizure. When she felt her right breast grabbed from behind, McMillan instinctively threw an elbow, catching a cop under the eye, and that is why she is being prosecuted for assaulting a police officer, a class D felony with a possible seven-year prison term. Her trial began this week.

The Holy Grail

Scientists at the U.S. Army Natick Soldier Research, Development and Engineering Center have discovered how to create a pizza that will last for three years.  As one of the scientists says, ‘You can basically take the pizza, leave it on the counter, packaged, for three years and it'd still be edible. The only thing missing from that experience would be it’s not hot when you eat it. It’s room temperature.’ There is even an option for those who don't eat pork - turkey pepperoni pizza.

Kowtowing to Facebook?

That's the question to ask the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Facebook was sued in 2011 by parents who objected to the company using photographs of their children without their consent. 

Here's how Facebook works: If a user “likes” a company that advertises on Facebook, or if she “checks in” (identifies her location) at a restaurant, or uses an application associated with that company, her image may appear next to an ad for the business on Facebook, with text suggesting that she endorses that business. It is unlikely the children or the parents will know it’s going to happen until after it has occurred. 

The Appeals Court 'settled' the suit by telling Facebook to include new language in its terms of service stating that users under age 18 “represent” that their parents consented to the use of the children’s names and images in advertising. The settlement does not require Facebook to obtain consent from the parents. How this decision addresses the issue is a mystery to my non-lawyerly mind. Further, the decision violates the law in seven states.

The settlement did involve Facebook paying some agencies. One, the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood (CCFC), refused the $290,000 it was offered because it opposes the agreement as the settlement’s supposed protections for minors were “hollow” and “meaningless.”

Another dose of reality

Something's happening in North Carolina

North Carolina was one of the earliest states to start the Civil Rights movement in 1960. Now, it looks as though it may have begun another movement, a movement towards a saner, fairer, more compassionate state government. This movement goes by the name Moral Monday. It started last summer with a gathering of 300. In a major rally last year there were 15,000 protesters. In the first rally of 2014 the number was 80,000 or more. Some protesters came from other states.

The movement was triggered by the actions of Republicans who, after a century in the minority, now control the government of North Carolina. Here's a summary of what they have done since assuming power:

• eliminated the earned-income tax credit for 900,000 North Carolinians; 
• refused Medicaid coverage for 500,000; 
• ended federal unemployment benefits for 170,000; 
• cut pre-K for 30,000 kids while shifting $90 million from public education to voucher schools; 
• slashed taxes for the top five percent while raising taxes on the bottom 95 percent; 
• prohibited death row inmates from challenging racially discriminatory verdicts; 
• passed one of the country’s most draconian anti-choice laws; 
• and enacted the country’s which mandates strict voter ID, cuts early voting and eliminates same-day registration, among other things.

Not exactly a people's government.

Conflict of Interest in the World of Medicine

We know that some medical companies have entered into questionable relationships with doctors and other medical personnel. It is a question of conflict of interest that in some cases appears to come close to bribery. The latest incident concerns an organization I had never heard of, the National Quality Forum. The forum is not a government agency but has been paid millions of dollars by Medicare to set the benchmarks that Medicare uses to compensate hospitals based on performance.

Dr. Christine Cassel, the top executive of the Forum, is paid a goodly sum (c.$500,000) to run the organization. It so happens that she is also on the board of Kaiser Foundation Health Plans and Hospitals as well as Premier, Inc., a medical organization. Her board position at each company pays her in the low six figures. It is unclear how she handles these conflicts of interest. 

The Forum was in the news last month when the Justice Dept accused the former co-chair of one of the Forum's endorsement committees of accepting $11,600,000 in  kickbacks to help a drugmaker win favorable treatment.

Freedom of the Press

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) publishes the World Press Freedom Index every year. You know that things have not been good for reporters; they get killed, arrested, harassed for simply doing their jobs. The countries ranked with the most press freedom are Finland, Netherlands, Norway, and Luxembourg. Those with the least press freedom of the 180 countries ranked are Eritrea, Syria, Turkmenistan, and North Korea.

The U.S. did not fare well. We were ranked 46th just above such beacons of freedom as Trinidad and Tobago, Papua New Guinea, and Romania. Last year we ranked 33rd. Some of the reasons for the drop in the rankings: Chelsea Manning, Edward Snowden and the Justice Department's move to secretly obtain two months of phone records from the Associated Press in a search for information about a CIA leak of a foiled terror plot. 

PBS selling out?

That's what David Sirota asserts. He argues that basically PBS has been bought off by the Arnold Foundation so that its series "Pension Peril" is really not an impartial look at the problems attending the pensions to state employees. He makes a strong argument. What do you think?

Living in an Alternate World - 2

I don't watch television much, most of my watching is of old movies. Last July I stumbled across a program called Toddlers and Tiaras, which was a beauty pageant for kids as young as 22 months. The fact that such a show existed and was able to raise the money to show it amazed me. The parents, mostly mothers, amazed me more, as they seemed to be living their lives through their daughters.

Well, last night I stumbled again and saw something called Dance Moms, which might be even weirder. There are the mothers championing their daughters and themselves. There are the daughters who look like robots, even though some are 15 years old. But most of all there is the woman who directs the dancers. She runs a dance studio on Pittsburgh, her name is Abby Lee Miller. To say that she is domineering would be an understatement. She has no people skills and is totally ignorant when it comes to dealing with children. Why people come to her dance studio is not obvious. I find it hard to believe this is truly a 'reality' show. There must be someone behind the scenes writing the scripts and coming up with the unreality that marks this show.

This show has been around since 2011. Are there that many crazy people watching it?

Aiding Israel

Chase Madar raises the issue of the value to us of the amount of military aid we give Israel; it's now over $3 billion, the top amount to any nation. In fact, we are paying for one-fourth of Israel's defense budget. Yet, we have been unable to prevent Israel from committing some heinous actions and, despite such actions, no one wants to even talk about our aid to Israel.

Madar believes that our military aid to Israel is not just an impediment to lasting peace, but also a strategic and security liability. Petraeus and his successor, General James Mattis, told the Senate Armed Services Committee. Mattis was specific,“I paid a military security price every day as a commander of CENTCOM because the Americans were seen as biased in support of Israel, and that [alienates] all the moderate Arabs who want to be with us because they can’t come out publicly in support of people who don’t show respect for the Arab Palestinians.” 

And, it has been reported that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, mastermind of 9/11, was motivated to attack us in large part because of Washington’s leading role in assisting Israel’s repeated invasions of Lebanon and the ongoing dispossession of Palestinians.

Selective Deficit Disorder

That's a term coined by David Sirota to describe situations where, on one hand, our leaders propose to cut expenses because of the deficit while, at the same time, they increase expenses via corporate handouts. Sirota cites three examples.

1. The Farm Bill just passed. It cut $8 billion in food stamps but added $15 billion in potential subsidies.
2. Pension benefits to state workers. 10 states have pled poverty to justify draconian cuts to retiree benefits. But, as a report by Good Jobs First notes, in those same states “the total annual cost of corporate subsidies, tax breaks and loopholes exceeds the total current annual pension costs.”
3. The Super Bowl. Despite proposing an austerity Budget, New York shelled out $5,000,000 for Super Bowl promotions. New Jersey has cut pensions, yet spent $18,000,000 on its Super Bowl promotions. Plus, the state spent $400,000,000 to improve the area around the stadium.

Words, words, words

Thanks to another Duncaster Correspondent

Back in the 'deficit debate'

Jack Lew. Treasury Secretary, says that the government will not be able to pay for anything as of February 27. Unless, the debt limit is increased. We've had a couple of months to ignore reality, but it is back. Will our leaders continue to try to ignore reality?

Iowa Police in Action

My water is on fire

Slavery at the college level

I've written fairly extensively about the NCAA and their control over so-called student athletes. Now, some student-athletes are revolting. Northwestern athletes are leading the charge. They have formed the College Athletes Players Association (CAPA) and have petitioned the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) to recognize CAPA as a labor union, which could negotiate with the schools and exert the collective power of a team rather than the weak hand of an individual.

CAPA argues that Northwestern scholarship athletes are employees of the university. They are recruited, as corporations recruit executives. They are paid, not with cash but with academic scholarships. And they work full time as athletes, not students; the average football player spends 43.3 hours a week in training or games in season and Division I men’s basketball players spend 39.2 hours.

Like slavery, the universities control where these students live, what they eat, their summer activities and even what they can say to reporters. The NCAA can punish them by limiting their playing time if they change schools. Universities often revoke the scholarships of injured athletes who can no longer perform on the field. 

CAPA's demands are rather basic:  

• medical coverage for sports-related injuries sustained by current and former players.   
• efforts to minimize traumatic brain injuries. 
• improved graduation rates by establishing an educational trust fund to help former players complete degrees.

This is an ice storm

These are but two photos of the results of three days of blizzards and a freak ice storm in Slovenia. For more photos, go to Business Insider.

We have to reward our generals and admirals

After all, these are the people who have helped us lose all our wars since WWII. The way the system works is that the military’s top brass gets paid more in retirement than they did while on active service. At the same time our budget priorities have cut the retirement benefits of lower ranking service members.

Three- and four-star generals and admirals with more than 40 years of service receive pensions greater than their basic pay at the time of retirement—2.5 percent greater per year they serve beyond forty. This means that a four-star general or admiral with 40 years of service will receive about $237,144 a year during retirement. That’s $50,000 more than he or she would have received while on active duty. (Previously, generals and admirals’ pensions were capped at 75 percent of their pay).

The Knight and His Steed

From the Sony World Photography Awards

Stiglitz on the TPP

Joe Stiglitz thinks the TPP will have the following results:

 weaken the 2001 Doha Declaration on TRIPS and Public Health
 mandate extensions of patents terms
 mandate lower standards for granting patents on medicines
 mandate granting patents on surgical procedures,
 mandate monopolies of 12 years on test data for biologic drugs
 narrow the grounds for granting compulsory license on patents,
 increase damages for infringements of patents and copyrights,
 reduce space for exceptions as regards limits on injunctions, and
 narrow copyright exceptions
 requiring life+ 70 years of copyright protection,
 mandate excessive enforcement measures for digital information, and
 otherwise restrict access to knowledge.

Why won't Obama listen?

Defending the bottom line or the country

I've written a few times about the impracticality of the F-35 fighter plane that seems to have almost no redeeming qualities other than improving the bottom line of Lockheed Martin. This video shows why this program should be stopped today. It's worth watching for the 8 minutes it plays. You'll want to tell your congressman to kill this insane project.

This is beer??

John Metcalfe writes about the weirdness that has infected some in the craft beer industry. Believe me, some of these beers are truly weird. Only those seeking to get noticed in what is now a highly competitive field would offer such inanities. Some examples:

1. (B) A new collaborative beer from Dogfish Head and Funky Buddha is reported to feature"Tanzanian chocolate, oak-fired habanero, and 'salt-salt,' a combination of sea salts – one salt locally harvested from South Florida beaches and one from Rehoboth Beach, Delaware where the Dogfish Head brewpub is located and 15 miles away from its headquarters in Milton."

2. (D) "Bilk" is a Japanese beer made with milk; a reviewer at Beer Advocate claims it has a finish that “tastes like cottage cheese." Cigar City Pickle Beer, from Tampa, "smells wonderfully of cucumbers and dill," says a drinker at Rate Beer. The other two beverages were made to celebrate the world-famous Boston clambake and Independence Day by the fermentation wizards on Esquire TV's "Brew Dogs," who used DNA coded with millions of copies of the Declaration of Independence in their freedom beer.

3. (D) (E) Take a moment to gag over Seattle's "OPB: Original Pussy Beer" (motto: "The Mother of All Beers") and Rogue's "Beard Beer," a brew that just might get stuck between your teeth, as it's made with Brewmaster John Maier's ambient facial-hair yeast.

4. (A) (B) (D) "Piss" beer does not contain actual body fluids, of course, being more of a playful jab at other watery-tasting brands. The Potter drink, like young Harry himself, is virgin. AndDuff is made by an English company that is far, far away from Springfield. 

5. (A) In 2013, Oregon's senate approved for its new "State Microbe" Saccharomyces cerevisiae, colloquially known as brewer's yeast. Certain strains of the microorganism are found in oozing tree lesions and also immunocompromised hospital patients.

6. (D) According to Dogfish Head's website: "Celest-jewel-ale is made with lunar meteorites that have been crushed into dust, then steeped like tea in a rich, malty Oktoberfest. These certified moon jewels are made up primarily of minerals and salts, helping the yeast-induced fermentation process and lending this traditional German style a subtle but complex earthiness."

7. (B) "Brew Dogs" strikes again with a "beer you can inhale made of San Francisco fog."

8. Not real are eel, hoagie, Cheetos, and foie gras. And about those testes: Denver's Wynkoop Brewing has made a Rocky Mountain Oyster Stout that's cooked with the family jewels of bulls, which it describes as the "ballsiest canned beer in the world."

9. (E) In order, "The End of History" is bottled inside a dead mustelid and retailed for $764; "Mikkeller Beer Geek Brunch Weasel" is made from the mammal gut-beans that also go into ultra-pricey kopi luwak coffee; the "Brew Dogs" team made beer on a lightning-quick California train ride, just because it had never been done before; and Sapporo produced a "Space Barley" beer using descendants of grains grown aboard the International Space Station ($110 for a six-pack).

10. (B) (I) The Zappa beer was from a long line of Lagunitas beers referencing the musician, and the Grateful Dead IPA is from Dogfish Head and does indeed include granola.

Is it being involved with nuclear weapons?

Last month we learned that many Air Force officers working with nuclear weapons at a Montana base were involved in a cheating on tests they were require to take. Apparently, the cheating is not restricted to Air Force people. Now the Navy has checked in and said that at least 30 sailors involved with nuclear weapons at a South Carolina base also had a need to cheat on tests. You may recall that this is not the first Navy scandal. In November I reported on the bribery with regard to contractors to the Navy.

Not pleasant news

World Health Organization scientists think that the world is facing a "tidal wave" of cancer. It predicts the number of cancer cases will grow from 14 million a year today to 24 million a year by 2035, but half could be prevented.

It listed the major sources of preventable cancer as:

• Smoking
• Infections
• Alcohol
• Obesity and inactivity
• Radiation, both from the sun and medical scans
• Air pollution and other environmental factors
• Delayed parenthood, having fewer children and not breastfeeding

One of the scientists believes, "People can cut their risk of cancer by making healthy lifestyle choices, but it's important to remember that the government and society are also responsible for creating an environment that supports healthy lifestyles.

"It's clear that if we don't act now to curb the number of people getting cancer, we will be at the heart of a global crisis in cancer care within the next two decades."

A refreshing idea

We've all heard about how the Post Office is failing; 2013 was the seventh year in a row that the Post Office reported a net loss, this time $5 billion. The Inspector General of the Post Office has an idea how the agency can be resuscitated. It proposes to do so by partnering with banks so that it would offer many banking services to those who currently having difficulty finding and paying for needed banking services. The IG thinks this would generate $8.9 billion in new annual profits.

The focus of the PO's efforts would be the poor, who lack banking options and are often gouged by predatory financial services. The average underserved household has an annual income of $25,500 and spends $2,412 each year just on interest and fees for alternative financial services. These are the services that would be provided.

Some of the reasoning of the IG:

• Postal financial services may appeal to many customers who feel abandoned by major financial institutions. Postal organizations have an unmatched ability to reach consumers from diverse backgrounds
• Many international posts are already garnering significant new revenue and keeping citizens connected by offering financial services. Financial services have been the best new opportunity for posts to earn additional revenue. 
• On average, people who filed for bankruptcy in 2012 were just $26 per month short of meeting their expenses. 

A few other interesting points. 
• The Post Office provided banking service from 1911 - 1967 and still sells money orders.
• Post Offices, furthermore, are well-positioned to help people because of their presence in lower-income areas. The report says that “93 percent of the bank branch closings since late 2008 have been in ZIP Codes with below national median household income levels.” More than half of post offices are in ZIP Codes with zero or one bank branch. 
• Congressional approval would not be required. Obama could do it tomorrow.

Slow it down

Stephen Walt is not exactly someone who mulls things over and never divulges his thoughts. He, along with John Mearheimer. was able to express thoughts about Aipac that met with a certain degree of pushback. Today, he presents his "Top ten mistakes made in the  Afghan War".

1. Trying to Go It Alone

2. Blowing It at Tora Bora

3. The Afghan Constitution

4. The Detour Into Iraq

5. The 2009 Surge

6. Setting a Time Limit

7. Downgrading Diplomacy

8. Losing Public Support

9. Failure to Manage Unruly Allies

10. Strategic Contradictions

Read the article and let me know whether you think he has a point or two. I think points 4 - 7 are the most meaningful.