Holder and Financial Fraud Prosecutions

He has the lowest number of financial fraud prosecutions since 1991. I won't even mention the number of prosecutions where executives were on trial as they can be counted one hand.

The chart is from Syracuse University.

So who do you believe?

“There is close to universal agreement that the demise of Lehman Brothers was the watershed event of the entire financial crisis and that the decision to allow it to fail was the watershed decision,” Alan S. Blinder, an economics professor at Princeton and former vice chairman of the Fed, wrote in his book, “After the Music Stopped.” And most would agree with Blinder. It unlocked the dam and the Great Recession began. But could the decision have gone the other way and bailed out Lehman as it did Bear Stearns, AIG and most of the major banks?

The major participants in the decision initially felt Lehman was insolvent. For example, Geithner now says, “We explored all available alternatives to avoid a collapse of Lehman, but the size of its losses were so great that they were unable to attract a buyer, and we were unable to lend on a scale that would save them.” And Paulson's comment, “Although it was Ben and Tim’s decision to make, I shared their view that Lehman was insolvent, and I know the marketplace did.”

However, the report compiled at the behest of the bankruptcy court overseeing Lehman concluded in 2010 that nearly all of the firm’s real estate valuations were reasonable. It also suggested that Lehman’s chaotic bankruptcy caused many of the losses later borne by the firm’s creditors. And today's Times claims that a New York Fed team concluded that Lehman might be salvageable but was never able to get that message to Geithner. 

In October the triumvirate had changed the message saying they were legally barred from bailing out Lehman. Yet subsequently they were to bail out AIG and the rest of the TBTF banks.

The whole truth

The Secret Service has had some problems during the Obama years. In 2009 a couple was able to crash a state dinner. We learned just recently that in 2011 someone fired into the White House and it took the Secret Service four days to realize that. There was the prostitution scandal in 2012.

And now we find out that Omar Gonzalez, who jumped the White House fence this month, made it far deeper into the president’s home than previously disclosed, overpowering a female Secret Service agent inside the North Portico entrance and running through the East Room before he was tackled. Originally, we were told that Gonzalez only made it to steps inside the North Portico after running through the front door.

What does this tell you?

Perhaps the strangest weight loss gimmick

Two companies sold women's clothing that was infused with microencapsulated caffeine, retinol, vitamin E, aloe vera and other ingredients. They called it 'shapewear" and claimed that wearing the clothes would reduce cellulite and zap fat. The FTC disagreed with these claims and ordered the companies to pay the FTC more than $1,500.000 which the FTC would use to provide refunds to the companies' customers.

Who pays the bill for police misconduct?

In 99% of the cases you do. The police budget is not touched at all, despite the fact that the numbers can get quite large. Last year Chicago paid $84,600,000 for police misconduct cases including settlement, judgments and legal fees. Bridgeport, Connecticut paid a man $198,000 after video footage captured police shooting him twice with a stun gun, then stomping all over him as he lay on the ground. And in California,Oakland paid $4,500,0000 to settle a lawsuit a man filed after being shot in the head, leaving him with permanent brain damage.

Oliver on Drones

Dolphins and Whales

The whales come in at 3 minutes and are the better part of the video.

Another view of inequality

Print your car

It's made of the same material as Lego bricks. The process went pretty fast: a design contest in April, a finished product in August. The winner of the contest, which drew 200 entries, was an Italian. There are only 50 parts that comprise the car.

Not managing DOD realty

The Department of Defense manages 557,000 facilities valued at about $828 billion as of September 30, 2012. However, it has no strategic plan to manage these facilities. It has no department-wide goals, strategies to achieve the goals, or metrics to gauge progress for how it intends to manage its real property in the most efficient manner. As a result, it can't intelligently reduce excess inventory because it does not maintain accurate and complete data on the utilization of its facilities in its Real Property Assets Database. There are many facilities that are not used or not used very much. Yet, DOD has difficulty identifying these situations. If they could do so, the savings would be in the billions.

Another bishop punished by the Pope

This time it's Bishop Rogelio Livieres Plano of Paraguay. Pope Francis fired him for protecting and promoting a priest described by his former church superiors in the United States as "a serious threat to young people." In 2002 the priest was removed from his position in Pennsylvania triggered by a civil suit over the alleged abuse of boys in his pastoral care. He was sent to Canada for a psychological exam which concluded that the priest was "locked into" a sexual attraction to male minors, that he should be banned from the ministry, and that he should have no contact with young people.

The priest moved to Paraguay in 2004 and became a favorite of Bishop Livieres, who earlier this year appointed him as vicar-general, the number two in the diocese and the official with responsibility for investigating allegations of inappropriate sexual behavior by priests.

How strong is the stock market?

The market doesn't look that strong today as it's down 250. That could be anomaly or the start of a bear market. It's possible that the 17000+ the Dow has reached won't be seen again for some time as it looks as though a good part of the rise was due to companies buying back their stock. Some interesting numbers:

• Russell 2000 index that measures the performance of smaller capitalized companies is down 3 percent this year versus the big capitalized companies in Standard and Poor’s 500 – which is up 8.9 percent year-to-date through the close yesterday.
• the number of stocks advancing versus the number declining. Last week, the New York Stock Exchange had 1604 stocks advancing versus 1622 declining. Nasdaq, for the same period, had 1093 advancers versus 1742 decliners.
• Last week, 307 Nasdaq stocks set new highs while 433 set new lows.

A Paean to Massachusetts

An interest in details

The White House press-pool has been operating for a long time. The pool consists of reporters who forward articles to other reporters, who incorporate them into news articles. It so happens that the actual forwarding is done by the Administration and sometimes the reports get censored. It's amazing the trivial articles that are censored. Some examples:

• a White House intern had fainted at the end of the daily press briefing
• the details of a series of private presidential receptions for campaign donors during inauguration week 
• Michelle Obama working out at a hotel gym during a presidential trip to Asia

Do the people doing the censoring have anything else to do? 

A very mature 11-year-older

Another indication that Pope Francis is serious

Josef Wesolowski, the former Vatican Ambassador to the Dominican Republic, was placed under house arrest by the Vatican. The Vatican also opened a criminal trial against him, the first time a high-ranking Vatican official has ever faced criminal charges for sexually abusing youngsters.

This is the second step in punishing Wesolowski. In June he lost his priestly credentials when he was found guilty of abuse by the Vatican’s canon law court.

Looking at the 990 of the NFL

Steven Brill has taken a fairly detailed look at the NFL's Form 990, which is the income tax form filed by non-profit organizations, which the NFL is so designated. Why aren't the NBA and major league baseball also non-profits?

Here are some interesting details from the 990:

• The NFL reported a profit of $9 million and $326 million in “program service revenue”.
• It paid over a $1,000,000 in lobbying fees.
• Goodell was not the only recipient of an eight-figure paycheck. The “executive vice president for media,”  took home $26 million.
• The NFL has high legal bills. Its general counsel received $7,862,000. Outside lawyers were paid over $16,000,000.

Are you mentioned in this video?

Wealth-X And UBS Billionaire Census 2014 from Wealth-X on Vimeo.

The Slowness of the Pentagon

Tracey Koehlmoos seems to be quite accomplished: Ph.D., MHA, special assistant to the assistant commandant of the Marine Corps, an adjunct professor at George Mason University, an army veteran, and a gold star wife. She is quite upset at the slowness of the Pentagon.

In May 2013 she visited Afghanistan. All the medical military people she met expressed the same need. Despite several requests, they did not have tranexamic acid (TXA) which is used to treat or prevent excessive blood loss during surgery and in various medical conditions or disorders. It can decrease the risk of death in people who have significant bleeding due to trauma and could have a significant impact in the reduction of combat casualty from blood loss. Its listing 
on the World Health Organization's Essential Drugs List means that it is cost effective with good evidence on safety and efficacy and; it satisfies an essential healthcare need.

Upon her return to Washington. she met with the appropriate Pentagon manager to try to convince him of the urgency of the situation and the need for TXA. She was unsuccessful then and is still unsuccessful.

I wonder how many deaths could have been prevented had the Pentagon acted within a reasonable time frame.

Investing in Chinese stocks

Alibaba has certainly been in the financial news these past few weeks. It raised the most money - $25 billion - in its IPO than any other company. On its initial trading day it gained 38%. However, as Pam Martens points out, one should be very leery about investing in this or any Chinese company.

The problems are manifold. These Chinese companies are structured as Variable Interest Equities (VIE) and call the Cayman Islands their financial home. They are really shell companies; investors have a claim on the company's profits but are not owners. Chinese courts and arbitrators have invalidated VIE contracts. Actually, buying Alibaba shares is really buying shares in a Cayman Islands shell company. The prospectus actually states:

“The Alibaba Partnership and related voting agreements will limit your ability to nominate and elect directors."
“The equity holders, directors and executive officers of the variable interest entities, as well as our employees who execute other strategic initiatives may have potential conflicts of interest with our company."
“We cannot assure you that these individuals will always act in the best interests of our company should any conflicts of interest arise, or that any conflicts of interest will always be resolved in our favor.”

Several Chinese-based companies have been charged by the SEC with fraud. Also, the Chinese offices of some major accounting firms have been barred by an SEC Administrative Law Judge from auditing American companies.

Caveat emptor.

Today is Climate Day

A group of high muck-a-mucks - four former presidents or prime ministers, two Nobel economics laureates and people from financial institutions such as the World Bank, IMF and Asian Development Bank -  have produced another report, "Better Growth, Better Climate". As the title indicates, the report argues that improved economic and intelligent growth will improve our climate picture.

The report advocates structural reform in urban infrastructure, in farmland and forests and in energy markets. The three of these areas account for the lion's share of greenhouse-gas emissions. Cities generate the most emissions and are where most of the population growth will occur. The authors believe that cities are too spread out. If they were more dense and had better transportation, urban sprawl would not be the problem it is today. And sprawl is costly; the authors estimate it costs us $400 billion a year and would be significantly reduced if we had more extensive systems of roads, sewers and the like. As important, a better infrastructure would cut greenhouse-gas emissions by the equivalent of 1.5 billion tons of carbon dioxide a year, mainly because commuters would switch from cars to public transport (or bicycles).

The solution is not restricted to cities. The authors believe we should double our investment in agriculture research and forests. Major cuts in subsidies for fertilizers would go far to eliminate greenhouse gas emissions. While we're on subsidies, let's look at those for fossil fuels which currently run at $540 billion a year. They say we should eliminate them and stop using coal.

Here is a summary of their plan.

Will more marches make a difference in combating climate change?

Marches have started all over the world today; things are going on in 161 countries. The People's Climate March has been estimated to be behind 2,000 marches around the world, the first of which brought many thousands of Australians to march; 20,000 in Melbourne alone.

New York is expected to bring out over 100,000 marchers, one of whom will be Ban Ki-moon, UN Secretary General. The UN will host a climate summit this week when 125 heads of states will gather to discuss what can be done. At the same time the UN has appointed Leonardo DiCaprio as its representative on climate change. Do you think these celebrities actually accomplish enough in these matters to deserve all the hype? I don't except possibly with the young. I think appointments such as these trivialize the cause.

How can being a Congressman be considered work?

They took off most of the summer and have now left until November 12. So, our leaders have had a vacation for about 3.5 months this year. When they were 'working', they did little. They have passed only 163 bills since they took office in 2012. Only 108 were considered substantive by Pew Research.

You're probably too young to remember the "Do Nothing Congress" castigated by Harry Truman. They passed over 900 laws in their two-year term.

37 military interventions in 34 years

Freedom of the Press?

The red dots indicate situations where a journalist has been threatened. The map was created by the Index on Censorship, which was created to study censorship in Europe initially. It was developed because violence against journalists seems to have increased in the European Union (EU), which espouses free speech in its charter and whose countries guarantee freedom of expression as a basic human right in their national laws. Thus far, Index has verified 276 cases of violence or threats of violence to journalists in the EU. The country most cited is Serbia with 33, but Turkey and Hungary are not far behind.

Some examples:

• Police seized reporters’ hardware in the UK
• Muslims threatened to behead a Kosovar journalist
• A French reporter was blocked by the far right Front National Party from attending a rally
• A Serbian editor was beaten—twice—with a baseball bat.

Where have all the flowers gone?

The question could be rephrased as "Where have all the leaders gone". I've been watching some of the Roosevelt film of Ken Burns. I've learned a lot about Teddy. But tonight Franklin was featured, mainly in his first administration. Lord, what a difference between him and our current leaders! 

Especially when you compare what he did in 100 days with what our 21st century presidents have done in 14 years. 

FDR:Restoring confidence in the banks. Launching the FDIC, the WPA the CCC. Of course, we can't forget the other 12  years of his presidency:Social Security, TVA, NLRB, the SEC. Sure, he did screw up every so often (vide packing the Supreme Court), but we would be thoroughly pleased if GW or BO had accomplished one-tenth of FDR's achievements.

Our 21st century leaders: the Great Recession (from which we have not yet recovered), two,verging on three, wars, a Congress of ineptitude.

Manipulating Shadows

Bring the German-style corporation to the U.S.

That's the argument Susan Holmberg and Mark  Schmitt make as a way of reducing CEO pay. They contend that the emphasis on shareholder primacy or pay for performance has ignored the other stakeholders in a corporation - its customers, its community, and its employees. 

Germany has given a great deal of power to one of these stakeholders by making sure that the corporation's employees have a strong say in a corporation's activities. The employees of corporations there are on the company's board of directors; half of the members of the board of some companies are employees.

The Gibbous Moon on Sengekantacket Pond, Martha's Vineyard

Photo by Timothy Johnson

What are they doing now?

Several pundits with a military background have been advocating a much stronger response to the ISIS situation than Obama has proposed, some are advocating boots on the ground. When these pundits speak on television or write an op-ed, they are identified by their former title, e.g., "former general", "retired admiral". The credit just about never refers to their current occupation.

The Nation fills in the current occupations of two frequent speakers, retired generals Anthony Zinni and Jack Keane. Neither of them is starving, as their compensation from defense companies is pretty good. Keane was paid $258,006 by General Dynamics and that's only one of his sources of income. He is also a "special adviser to Academi, the contractor formerly known as Blackwater; a board member to tank and aircraft manufacturer General Dynamics; a venture partner to SCP Partners, an investment firm that partners with defense contractors, including an “operations management decision support system” company used in Air Force drone training and as president of his own consulting firm, GSI LLC." Zinni has a similar background.

The question is: are these former generals pushing a stronger response because they are really employees of defense companies who make their money by eliciting fear in the populace so that the Pentagon can spend still more money on weapons.

Stewart on the ISIS Threat

The last minute is particularly astute. Stewart calls on Muslim countries to disown the various terrorist groups operating as Muslim entities.

The Daily Show
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Why not go to war against North Korea

After all, they've convicted and imprisoned an American. Is it because he demanded asylum from the U.S. when he entered North Korea?

Football is a dangerous sport

At least as played in the NFL. Actuaries in the current case - which is trying to come to a settlement between the league and former players - have calculated that nearly a third of retired players will develop long-term cognitive problems, the most common being Alzheimer's and other forms of advanced dementia. Furthermore, the players will be struck by these diseases quite a bit younger than non-players.  

It costs money to build and to destroy

We all know that weapons are expensive. For example, it costs the Pentagon $6,000,000 for a tank, over $500,000 for a Howitzer cannon and $1,000,000 for the MRAP made popular in Ferguson. We left a lot of these weapons behind in Iraq and ISIS and others are using them. 

We don't want that to happen so we are now bombing these weapons using F-16s, which cost from $22,000 to $30,000 to operate for an hour. All of which results in spending around $100,000 to destroy over a million dollars of captured equipment.

How can he do it

This guy was born with cerebral palsy. Using only one finger, he paints with a typewriter.

Courtesy of a Duncaster correspondent

One man's view of Iraq

Tim Urban runs the Wait But Why website. He has spent the summer traveling around the world. One of the last places he visited was Iraq. Here is his view of the country.

A few excerpts from Obama's speech

Quote 1:

In a region that has known so much bloodshed, these terrorists are unique in their brutality. They execute captured prisoners. They kill children. They enslave, rape, and force women into marriage. They threatened a religious minority with genocide. And in acts of barbarism, they took the lives of two American journalists -- Jim Foley and Steven Sotloff. 

Is ISIL unique in their brutality? Saudi Arabia has beheaded eight(?) so far this year. Aren't there others - particularly in the Middle East - that have been as brutal as ISIL? For example, Hussein, Assad, Sunnis, Shiites, etc.

Quote 2:

So tonight, with a new Iraqi government in place, and following consultations with allies abroad and Congress at home, I can announce that America will lead a broad coalition to roll back this terrorist threat.

How many days has this new government existed? A week? How many Sunnis have joined it?

Quote 3:

we will increase our support to forces fighting these terrorists on the ground. In June, I deployed several hundred American service members to Iraq to assess how we can best support Iraqi Security Forces. Now that those teams have completed their work - and Iraq has formed a government - we will send an additional 475 service members to Iraq. As I have said before, these American forces will not have a combat mission - we will not get dragged into another ground war in Iraq.

The 475 "service members" bring the number of our troops to over 1,000. How do you define combat? We're living in an age of misuse of words, which practice used to be called lying.

Want to bet?

We'll have at least 5,000 troops on the ground fighting ISIL by year-end.

Until we and our leaders stop living in fear, we'll continue to believe that the bad guys will be killing us soon.

The Cost of Carbon

More examples of our local militias

Where are the birds going?

10 years

I can't believe that I've been doing this for ten years. You have my son, Greg, to blame.

Parking is not cheap

How's about $560,000 for a parking space in your apartment building in Boston? That's chicken feed. NYC has truly set a new limit: $1,000,000 for a parking space at 42 Crosby Street. You won't even own the space, as you get a 99-year-long license for each spot and, if you move,you have to sell it.

These spaces cost more than the apartments: $5,000 and $6,666 a square foot, whereas the nine three-bedroom units upstairs will range between $8.70 million, or about $3,170 a square foot. They also cost more than four times the national median sales price of $217,800 for a home.

Questioning the Fed

Wall Street on Parade looks somewhat askance at our financial regulators. Their latest area of concern is the Fed's recent announcement that it would consider a “high quality liquid assets” - i.e, assets that could be easily liquidated if there was a run on the bank - U.S. Treasury securities and also corporate bonds and corporate common stocks in the Russell 1000 index.

It is the inclusion of corporate securities that really worries Wall Street on Parade because, in its opinion, the corporate bond market is quite illiquid. Studies show that - the aggregate illiquidity doubled from its pre-crisis average in August 2007, when the credit problem first broke out, and tripled in March 2008, during the collapse of Bear Stearns. By September 2008, during the Lehman default and the bailout of AIG, it was five times its pre-crisis average and over 12 standard deviations away". A translation of which is: you'll have a hard time selling corporate bonds at any sort of a reasonable price when the next panic hits.

Oliver on Student Debt

Another Cost of the War on Drugs

Are Think Tanks Lobbyists?

There is more than a hint of that this is so. The NY Times has just published a study of the relationship between some foreign countries and some major American think tanks, such as the Brookings Institute. The paper says that there are "more than a dozen prominent Washington research groups [that] have received tens of millions of dollars from foreign governments in recent years while pushing United States government officials to adopt policies that often reflect the donors’ priorities".

The think tanks have not registered as lobbyists, although they have published papers and conducted seminars which appear to push a particular government's wishes, e.g. Japan's interest in the TPP. Such activities are probably in violation of our laws, specifically the Foreign Agents Registration Act, which requires groups that are paid by foreign governments with the intention of influencing public policy to register as “foreign agents” with the Justice Department.

In the past three years at least 64 foreign governments have given money to at least 28 think tanks. The Times claims that the contributions have totaled at least $92,000,000 over the past few years, the paper believes the amount is considerably higher.

I don't understand

The Labor Department reported job growth of 142,000, which was not expected and was lower than that for the past eight months. Some New England newspapers attributed the limited growth to labor problems at Market Basket, a Massachusetts grocery chain that employs about 20,000, most of whom are part-time.

The comment in the BLS report which resulted in a front page mention on the Boston Globe was: In August, retail trade employment was little changed (-8,000). Food and beverage stores lost 17,000 jobs; this industry was impacted by employment disruptions at a grocery store chain in New England.

How one can take that comment and use it  to elevate the importance of a local business dispute I can't figure out when we're talking about a labor force in the millions and a loss of 8,000 employees in the retail trades.

Why can't life be more like this?

I was watching the PBS special on Peter, Paul and Mary and was quite moved by this rendition of "We Shall Overcome" before an audience of kids, most of whom knew the words and sang along.

Harbinger of TPP?

I've written about the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) a few times. It is a proposed treaty favored by Obama. In my opinion - and that of many others - it is not good for this country. The example of Pacific Rim's attempt to mine in El Salvador is, I think, indicative of what will happen under TPP, except that there will be more legal arguments for Pacific Rim should TPP pass.

Pacific Rim seeks to mine gold in El Salvador and obtained license for preliminary mining explorations. However, after the license was granted, it came to light that full fledged mining will cause cyanide to enter the watershed of the Rio Lempa, which provides water to half the population of El Salvador. Thus, the government did not approve Pacific Rim's environmental impact assessment. In fact, three successive presidents have said no.

Pacific Rim has sued El Salvador before the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes, part of the World Bank Group in Washington. The company is asking for over $300 million or the right to mine. Current laws allow such a suit if they contend that government actions threaten their future profits. This case will be heard by arbitrators, not a judge. Legal precedents need not be followed. And everything will be private.

How low is low

If you're talking about wages, then low is really low as the typical low-wage worker in the U.S. has not done well over the past thirty-five years. His/her wages fell by five percent over the 1979-2013 period, despite a generation of productivity gains (64.9 percent).

We don't look good when compared to other OECD countries, either. 

You won't believe this

An Adolescent Dinosaur

It may not be the largest land animal that ever lived, but - at eighty-five feet long, 30 feet tall, 130,000 pounds and still growing when it died - it comes close. The largest land animal today, at 15,000 pounds, is the African male elephant.

Scientists unearthed Dreadnaughtus in Argentina in 2005. It took four years to get it out and another five years of study before the scientists were ready to publish their findings.

Kids in families today

Council on Contemporary Families issued a report on the type of family raising children. In the 1950s, 65 percent of all children under 15 were being raised in traditional families consisting of the bread-winning father and the stay-at-home mother. That's not the case today; only 22 percent of our children live in what was the traditional family. Here's how the distribution is today:

• 23 percent are being raised by a single mother, only half of whom have ever been married.
• 7 percent live with a parent who cohabits with an unmarried partner. 
• 3 percent live with a single father.
• 3 percent live with grandparents, but no parents.

Bat Dogs

Jail time means you're a criminal?

I think most of us would say yes to the title of this post with the caveat that some innocent people are or have been incarcerated. But, we're looking at the question from the perspective of an American who lives in a land where the justice system is usually reasonable. Would we say that Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a criminal because he was in a Nazi jail? What about Pussy Riot in Moscow? Or, the three Americans in North Korea? Clearly, the answer to the last thee questions is "no".

I think the answer would be 'no' also in the case of some Palestinians imprisoned by the Israelis. In 1969 Rasmea Odeh was arrested along with 500 other Palestinians as part of security sweep after the 1967 war. As with the other 500, Odeh was tortured. She was beaten regularly with metal rods, kicked, threatened, humiliated, denied medical care and access to a bathroom, received electrical shocks, raped with batons. and denied access to legal resources. Her father was tortured in front of her. IDF personnel even attempted to make her father rape her. 

Eventually, she gave in and signed a confession to bombing a supermarket. However, we should bear in mind that some Palestinians who were detained by the IDF were later charged with crimes they did not commit in order to justify their detention. Whether Odeh did bomb the supermarket is up in the air as far as I can see.

After serving ten years she was released and, in 1994 came to the U.S. as her father was a U.S. citizen. She became a citizen in 2004 and was very active in the Arab-American community in Chicago. In 2013 she was indicted for immigration fraud based on her time in prison. One of the questions she was asked was whether she had ever been arrested, convicted or imprisoned. She said no.

Her defenders say she thought the question was limited to her time in the States. Her lawyer thinks it was PTSD, "We believe her PTSD affected her state of mind when she answered those questions. "Like someone who is a battered woman saying she was never married because she suppresses that information so as not to think about it." A second and I think stronger argument the lawyer raises, "These military courts the Israelis set up are illegal under international law, hence, no evidence from them should be used in this case."

Airglow

This is not an edited photograph. It is NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day.

It was taken by Jeff Dai after a thunderstorm over Bangladesh in late April. The picture shows the air over Tibet and China. NASA says that "The unusual pattern is created by waves of alternating air pressure that can grow with height as the air thins, in this case about 90 kilometers up."

A little bit excessive?

The NFL has fined the owner of the Indianapolis Colts, James Irsay, $500,000, suspended him for six games and forbade him to use Twitter. How many people do you suppose looked at Irsay as a role model before his arrest for drunken driving back in March? The city recommended that his license be suspended for 90 days and fined him less than $500.

I can understand the NFL penalizing Irsay in some way but this is ridiculous, particularly when you compare Irsay's punishment to that of some players who did much worse.

Are the medical needs of our soldiers being met?

The forty military hospitals across the country are responsible for the medical needs of 1.35 million active-duty service members and their families. However, of the 8.2 million people whose health care was covered by the Defense Department last year, including military retirees who served more than 20 years and their families, only about 2.4 million were treated exclusively at military hospitals and clinics. And more than half of those were active-duty service people. The basic reason is that the quality of care in many military hospitals is not at the same level as at civilian hospitals.

The care is not as good for many reasons:

• Many of the hospitals are so small and the trickle of patients so thin that it compromises the ability of doctors and nurses to capably diagnose and treat serious illnesses. Two-thirds of the hospitals last year served 30 or fewer inpatients a day — less than a third as many as the typical civilian hospital. Nine served 10 or fewer.
• Many military doctors, including general surgeons, were not busy enough to keep their skills sharp.
• Most hospital supervisors are military officers, even though civilians make up almost half of the staff. As more seasoned military doctors move up to desk jobs, junior physicians sometimes end up heading clinical departments just months after completing their residencies. In 2012, fewer than half of Army hospitals were run by health care administrators.
• Continuity of management and care is lost as hospital commanders and doctors, as well as patients, constantly rotate from post to post. 
• Bigger hospitals offered better care than the smaller military hospitals.

Medical care accounts for about 10% of DOD's budget. The Pentagon would like to scale back the system but this will be difficult as it would take jobs out of some Congressional districts.

Here's a great candidate for the Senate

She's from Iowa.

The Good and the Bad

The news of recent days touted the potential of a new heart drug by Novartis. Today's news is not favorable to Novartis. Its Japanese subsidiary has admitted it did not report more than 2,500 cases of serious side effects in patients using its leukemia and other cancer drugs, reportedly including some fatalities.

This follows news in July when Japanese prosecutors laid charges against the unit over claims that falsified data was used to exaggerate the benefits of a popular blood-pressure drug. Plus, Japan indicted a former employee, alleging he manipulated the data in clinical studies that were later used in marketing the drug Valsartan.