Have a glass of Nebraska water

Another Rothkopf blast about our current foreign policy in the Middle East

David Rothkopf, the editor of Foreign Policy has been inveighing against Obama for a while and, in my opinion, he makes a lot of sense. Here are some of his comments from a lengthy article on Obama and the Middle East that you should read:

• The situation in the region is unprecedented. For the first time since the World Wars, virtually every country from Libya to Afghanistan is involved in a military conflict. (Oman seems to be the exception.) The degree of chaos, uncertainty, and complexity among the twisted and often contradictory alliances and enmities is mind-boggling. America and its allies are fighting alongside Iran to combat the Islamic State (IS) in Iraq and Syria but in Yemen, the United States and many of those same regional partners are collaborating to push back Iranian-backed Houthi forces. Israel and Saudi Arabia are closely aligned in their concerns about Iran while historical divisions between the two remain great. Iran supports Bashar al-Assad in Syria; the United States and Western allies deplore his policies but tolerate his presence while some of the rebel forces we are supporting in the fight against the Islamic State in that country seek his (long overdue) removal. The United States wants the states of the region to stand up for their own interests — just not in Libya or when they don’t get America’s permission first. The technical foreign-policy term for this is giant cluster-fuck.
• this is a moment that requires great vigilance and should be producing much greater multilateral action by the United States and our allies and within the U.N. Having effectively every country in the region at war is as likely to lead to escalation as it is to solutions. More so. We are not far from seeing the conflicts connect into what could be the biggest conflagration the world has seen since August 1945. And even if that does not happen, prolonged chaos will feed into the spread of extremism in Africa, Asia, and the spread of terrorism in Europe and North America. The stakes could not be higher. And it is clear, even if we recognize America’s limited ability to impact what is happening on the ground, that we have an urgent obligation to try and to try to do so in new ways. Because what we have done for the past six years is just not working and in fact is making the world’s worst situation worse.

The TPP and ISDS

The people behind the TPP (Trans-Pacific Partnership) don't like to use the courts to settle disputes; the courts have appeals procedures and build up case law via precedent. They would rather use ISDS (investor-state dispute settlement mechanisms), which allow companies to take governments to arbitration, where neither precedent nor appeals exist.

You should also know that the TPP would be incorporated as a U.S. law rather than as a treaty. As a law, it only needs a majority in both Houses of Congress. If it were to be offered for approval as a treaty, it would need a 2/3 majority in the Senate, with no House vote.

Marketing Food 101

I'm not drinking that

Extrait : Bientôt dans vos assiettes... - Interview de Patrick Moore

The DEA and Prostitutes

In the early years of the 21st century, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) assigned some of its agents to Colombia to fight the war on drugs. This week a report about some of these activities was issued by the IG for DOJ. Here's a quote from that report, "The foreign officer allegedly arranged 'sex parties' with prostitutes funded by the local drug cartels for these DEA agents at their government-leased quarters, over a period of several years".

At these parties, the cartel also provided protection for the DEA agents' weapons and property during the parties. Furthermore, the report goes on, "The foreign officers further alleged that in addition to soliciting prostitutes, three DEA SSAs [special agents] in particular were provided money, expensive gifts, and weapons from drug cartel members."

Diagnosing climate change

A visit to purgatory

I had the misfortune to watch morning television today, as my car service took over three hours. The least offensive and weird was something called "Live! with Kelly and Michael". I think Kelly has been on tv for quite a while, Michael is a former professional football player. The focus here seemed to be on interviewing currently hot celebrities between bantering between the two hosts. It was hard to hear much of what went on but it seemed to be innocuous.

The two other shows I watched were unreal. Let's Make a Deal featured weirdly dressed people from the audience. Some of costumes: police officer, clog dance, honey bee, pirate; there were hundreds more. A great deal of yelling and clapping at almost every word. The Price is Right also had a ton of yelling and clapping. But the dress was more formal - people wore different colored t-shirts. It was sad to see Drew Carey as the primary host; his show many moons ago was pretty funny.

I suspect that there are a number of people who watch these shows every day. I would question their sanity.

Dancing Grannies

Over the past few years middle-aged and elderly Chinese women have taken to dancing in streets and in public squares, usually at night. Apparently, the dancing has become too popular as the government is cracking down. The government's points are that the participants are over enthusiastic and too noisy. Therefore, the government will soon introduce 12 authorized routines and also permissible times and music volume.

Money from traffic violations and truly petty crime

2 charts say a lot about America today

Corporate Profits (after Tax) as a percent of GDP

Wages as a percent of GDP

Courtesy of Business Insider

Making executives pay

In all the settlements the banks have made with legal authorities, the money being put out for the fines comes from the company itself, i.e., the shareholders. It costs the executives nothing.

Today's NY Times writes of two attempts to make executives pay. The first is a shareholders proposal at Citibank, which has paid billions in fines. This proposal would require that top executives at the company contribute a substantial portion of their compensation each year to a pool of money that would be available to pay penalties if legal violations were uncovered at the bank. To ensure that the money would be available for a long enough period — investigations into wrongdoing take years to develop — the proposal would require that the executives keep their pay in the pool for 10 years. The proposal would also require that Citigroup advise shareholders of forfeitures that resulted under the program. And the money could be tapped even if the executives contributing to it were not responsible for the wrongdoing.

The second is a proposal from Gregory Zipes, a trial lawyer for the Office of the United States Trustee, the nation’s watchdog over the bankruptcy system. Mr. Zipes calls for the creation of a contract to be signed by a company’s top executives that could be enforced after a significant corporate governance failure. Executives would agree to pay back 25 percent of their gross compensation for the three years before the beginning of improprieties. The agreement would be in effect whether or not the executives knew about the misdeeds inside their companies.

The chances of anything happening soon are slim, but it is a beginning.

Warming up

Problems with the F-35 summarized

I've been writing about the F-35 boondoggle for almost ten years.The Center for Defense Information has a good summary of the major issues. The summary is in the form of an article's table of contents:

• Cooking the Numbers 
• Testing Being Deferred, Not Completed 
• Significant Safety Risks Are Still Unresolved 
• Wing Drop Concerns 
• Engine Problems Continue to Hold the F-35 Program Back 
• Dangerous Helmet Failures 
• Initial Combat Capabilities for the Marien Corps Variant Will Be Even More Limited Than Planned 
• ALIS Software Failures 
• Software Snarls Jeopardize Combat Suitability 
• Hiding Today's Failings While Building a Huge Future Cost "Bow Wave" 
• A Maintenance Nightmare 
• Conclusion: Exquisitely Limited Capability

Maybe you shouldn't try Alcoholics Anonymous

AA is the name that comes readily to mind when you think of help for an alcoholic. But there are other sources and they may be better for a particular alcoholic, says Gabrielle Glaser in The Atlantic. The fact that there are alternatives - such as prescription drugs and therapies that aim to help patients learn to drink in moderation - may be news to you and me. But, as Glaser points out, Alcoholics Anonymous came into being in 1935 and the scientific world has changed. Now, there are methods based on modern science and proven, in randomized, controlled studies, to work. There is hardly any scientific evidence validating AA's reputation. AA's 12-step approach does not rely on modern science: not the character building, not the tough love, not even the standard 28-day rehab stay.

Part of the problem is an extension of AA's program from its original 'market' - chronic, severe drinkers who may be powerless over alcohol - to a much broader market. Today's scientific world knows that there are different types of people with alcohol problems. At least one comprehensive analysis of treatments for alcoholism ranked AA 38th out of 48 methods. The analysis concluded that the best approach consisted of: brief interventions by a medical professional; motivational enhancement, a form of counseling that aims to help people see the need to change; and acamprosate or a similar drug, a drug that eases cravings.

Do you believe Mr. Kenny?

Some charts he uses to back himself up can be found here.

!@#$%^&*()_+

Day 1 of Spring 2015. Of course, it should also be day 1 of the Spring snows.

Solar eclipse over the Faroe Islands

Education in India must be cutthroat

The photo above is of parents and friends trying to pass cheat sheets to students taking 10th-grade examinations. If the students fail the exams, their education stops. So, the pressure to pass is very high.  6 million parents and others accompanied the students to the examination centers. The authorities posted police at all schools where examinations were being held.

About 600 high school students were expelled for cheating on the exams. Given that 1,400,000 students took the exam, that's not very many cheaters. It's the parents climbing the walls that is truly bizarre.

Another Bank fine

This time it's Bank of New York Mellon. Their agreement with the state and the feds costs them $714 million to settle accusations that it cheated government pension funds and other investors for more than a decade. The agreement also calls for the bank to dismiss some employees and make fuller public disclosures of its foreign exchange operation. The agreement with the most senior employee, a managing director, does not say when he must leave the bank nor does it require him to pay any financial penalty. So, how severely is he being punished?

Photos of history

Thanks to our Plymouth correspondent

Destroying the Amazon

In favor of right to work in Wisconsin

Freedom of Information

The U.S. Freedom of Information Act is a good act. It requires the government to release public records to those who ask for them unless disclosure would hurt national security, violate personal privacy or expose business secrets or confidential decision-making in certain areas. 

However, it appears as though the government is not anxious to release all the records asked for. That's understandable. Of the 714,231 requests for information it received in 2014, it responded to 647,142.. Not too bad, you say. But in 250,581 of those responses, it censored or completely denied access to information. In another 215,584 cases it did not deliver information because it could not find records, the requester refused to pay for copies or the request was determined to be unreasonable or improper. 

Understandably, the time to wait for a response from the government varies.  Some took a day, some took years. The timing of the response seems to be increasing. Its backlog of unanswered requests at year's end grew remarkably by 55 percent to more than 200,000. Perhaps, that was because the number of employees responding decreased by 9%, representing the fewest number of employees working on the issue in five years.

Sometimes the government's refusal to turn over a document is challenged. The government acknowledged in nearly 1 in 3 cases that its initial decisions to withhold or censor records were improper under the law — but only when it was challenged.

A Top Notch Musical Program

This afternoon I went to a top notch jazz and pops program that could have been on Broadway. It was a mix of dancing, singing and a great band. Very surprising to me everyone on stage was a student at Hall High School in West Hartford, CT. 

I should not have been as surprised as Hall was one of the first high schools in the United States to integrate jazz into its daily curriculum, and Hall students have performed around the world. They have performed at the White House and such prominent affairs as the Essentially Ellington Competition at Lincoln Center, and the Berklee School of Music Jazz Festival, where they have won first prize. Amazingly, the band has won a Downbeat award for “Best Big Band”.

Medicare Advantage and Risk

The government pays Medicare Advantage plans a set fee every month. This fee is based on a "risk score", which is supposed to be a measure of how sick each patient is. The sicker the patient, the higher the payment. Would you believe that between 2004 and 2008, the risk scores grew twice as fast as they would have had the same person remained in traditional Medicare? 

It was like magic; the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services found that it was “extremely unlikely” the MA patients were actually getting that much sicker. Yet, nothing was done to curb this increase in scores. Thus, from 2008 to 2013, “improper” payments amounted to $70 billion, mostly due to overbilling.

Taking Uruguay to the World Bank

That's what Phillip Morris is doing. It thinks that Uruguay's photos on Marlboro and other cigarettes is costing the company money. Phillip Morris is looking for $25,000,000 in damages to their brand plus the overturn of Uruguay's cigarette labeling law. This is not exactly a battle of financial equals: Phillip Morris has annual revenues greater than Uruguay's entire GDP - $80 billion vs. $59 billion. 
 
Here is an example of some labels

Corporate Welfare

Today, I came across a website, Good Jobs First, which has built a database to track federal grants and tax credits awarded to big companies over the past fifteen years. It's quite fascinating. 

It's comprehensive; it stores information from more than 160,000 awards from 137 programs. Over the past fifteen years, two-thirds of the $68 billion awarded by the federal government have gone to large corporations.

It also shows the relationship between subsidiary and parent. Among the fifty largest beneficiaries are Boeing, Ford Motor, General Electric, General Motors and JPMorgan Chase. Six of these parents - Iberdrola, NextEra Energy (parent of Florida Power & Light), NRG Energy, Southern Company, Summit Power and SCS Energy - have received at least received $1 billion or more in federal grants and allocated tax credits (those awarded to specific companies) since 2000; 21 have received $500 million or more; and 98 have received $100 million or more. Just 582 large companies account for 67 percent of the $68 billion total.
 
As you can see, the six big receivers are energy companies. The leader at $2.2 billion is Iberdrola, a Spanish energy company, which invested in wind farms in the U.S.

The database also looks at the bank bailouts. How's this for a bailout: 
Bank of America at just under $3.5 trillion, Citigroup ($2.6 trillion), Morgan Stanley ($2.1 trillion) and JPMorgan Chase ($1.3 trillion). A dozen U.S. and foreign banks account for 78 percent of total face value of loans, loan guarantees and bailout.

The aurora in Fairbanks, March 16, 2015

from Washington Post

Some interesting numbers about America in the 21st century

Paul Buchheit of DePaul has made a few interesting - and depressing - calculations based on what appears to be solid numbers:

1.138,000 Kids Were Homeless while 115,000 Households Were Each Making $10 Million Per Year
2. The Average U.S. Household Pays $400 to Feed and Clothe Walmart, McDonalds, and Other Low-Wage Workers
3. As $30 Trillion in New Wealth was being Created, the Number of Kids on Food Stamps Increased 70%
4. Despite the Decline in Food Security, the Food Stamp Program was Cut by $8.6 Billion and the Money Paid to Corporate Agriculture

The Real March Madness

The biggest freshwater fish?

Thailand may be the place to go to catch one. Last week a giant stingray, which may be one of the oldest fish on the planet, was caught in Thailand’s Mae Klong River. In 2005 the river was the home of a 693 pound-catfish, which had been considered the largest freshwater fish ever caught. The most recent catch is 14 feet long and 8 feet wide, and weighs an estimated 600 to 800 pounds.

Freedom of Information

The Associated Press has filed suit against the State Department for failing to turn over files covering Hillary Rodham Clinton's tenure as secretary of state, including one request made five years ago. Gary Pruitt, the head of AP, has a catalog of problems with the Freedom of Information Act at both federal and state levels. 

The federal government is very slow - some requests have taken nine years - and redacts requested documents - the Treasury redacted almost all of the 237 pages they sent to AP. 

States see FOIA requests as a source of revenue. Ferguson, Missouri, billed the AP $135 an hour for nearly a day's work merely to retrieve emails from a handful of accounts about the fatal shooting of Michael Brown. Broward County would charge $399,000 and take four years to supply copies of emails that contained a derogatory word for gays. Mississippi wanted more than $70 an hour to review records when a reporter asked for its reorganization plans.

How does the government define public as in public records?

Flipping the classroom

Over the past couple of years some schools have been working on a different approach to education: Flipping class work and homework. That is, students listen to lectures at home and then in the classroom the next day do the work necessary to understand the subject. The lectures are recorded by teachers and watched by students on their smartphones, home computers or at lunch in the school’s tech lab. In class, they do projects, exercises or lab experiments in small groups while the teacher circulates. Essentially, students learn by doing and asking questions.

Since the teacher does not have to take time lecturing, he can deliver targeted instruction to students one-on-one or in small groups, help those who struggle, and challenge those who have mastered the content.

The system shows promise. Here is a short video of the experience  with flipping at Cliftondale High School near Detroit.

And this guy is running for President

Over the weekend, Senator Lindsey Graham said, “I would literally use the military to keep them in if I had to. We’re not leaving town until we restore these defense cuts. We are not leaving town until we restore the intel cuts.” The "them" he is referring to is the United States Congress.

Sadly, we'll hear many more similar statements from Democrats and Republicans over the next 20 months. When did we let idiots become hold government positions.

Snake loves frog

From the Smithsonian

She's gotta be kidding us.

A quote from Hillary's press conference yesterday, “I did not email any classified material to anyone on my email.” I'm under the impression that she used only her personal email, not her government one. It defies credulity that in four years she never sent a message about "classified material". She admits that more than 30,000 emails were government related and not one contained "classified material". This in an era when the government classified more than 80,000,000 documents in one year.

Re-examine our basic assumptions

That's what Andrew Bacevich says once more in this article which castigates such past luminaries as McGeorge Bundy, Walt Rostow and Samuel Huntington. Further, he thinks Ashton Carter is likely to make the same mistakes because he subscribes to the same theory of national security, namely "that a monolith called Communism, controlled by a small group of fanatic ideologues hidden behind the walls of the Kremlin, posed an existential threat not simply to America and its allies, but to the very idea of freedom itself.  The claim came with this essential corollary: the only hope of avoiding such a cataclysmic outcome was for the United States to vigorously resist the Communist threat wherever it reared its ugly head." Substitute Terrorism for Communism and you have the raison d'etre of America in the 21st century.

Does he have a point? I think so, as it is this theory that has resulted in our becoming a nation of fear.

Butting in on foreign policy

Last week we saw the President of Israel lecture Congress about the evils of any deal with Iran. This week, it's the Senators trying to directly scuttle the Administration's foreign policy before any sort of a deal is on the table. Forty-seven Republican senators sent a letter to the Iranian leaders telling them to lay off signing a deal with us. The last time such a usurpation of powers by the Legislature was in 1979 and it was only the second time this had occurred. 

The Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif had a few interesting comments about the letter: 

• “In our view, this letter has no legal value and is mostly a propaganda ploy,” he said in comments carried by Iranian media. “It is very interesting that while negotiations are still in progress and while no agreement has been reached, some political pressure groups are so afraid even of the prospect of an agreement that they resort to unconventional methods, unprecedented in diplomatic history.”

• “The authors may not fully understand that in international law, governments represent the entirety of their respective states, are responsible for the conduct of foreign affairs, are required to fulfill the obligations they undertake with other states and may not invoke their internal law as justification for failure to perform their international obligations.”

Furthermore, he added that the deal is being negotiated as a multilateral agreement between Iran and the P5+1 countries -- the United States, China, Russia, France, the United Kingdom, and Germany -- and not a bilateral treaty between Washington and Tehran. Rather than go to the Senate for ratification. Ergo, the final deal will go to the Security Council for final approval.

It's just another indication of the idiocy of our leaders. We should have a recall.

An Igloo in Boston

The igloo, built by Steve McGaff of West Roxbury has 6-foot ceilings, windows, and enough room for a dozen people.

America's alien races

Be grateful you don't live in Gaza

Following up an oil train spill

On Friday I wrote about another oil spill from a train. It seemed to be relatively minor. But further work by the EPA found that the spill was an “imminent and substantial danger” of contaminating the Mississippi River, as it contained 630,000 gallons of crude oil. Plus, it threatens the Galena River, a tributary of the Mississippi, and the Upper Mississippi National Wildlife and Fish Refuge, one of the most complex ecosystems in North America.

I'll take this occasion to report another oil train spill. This one was in Ontario, Canada on Saturday.

Previous oil spills had been attributed to older tank cars, the DOT-111 specifically.  However the new tank cars, the CPC-1232, which are supposed to be safer than previous ones, have failed in at least four derailments this year and at least two in 2014.

Workers Compensation Is Going Down The Drain

The federal government stopped monitoring state workers’ comp laws more than a decade ago. Since then, legislators in 33 states have passed workers’ comp laws that reduce benefits or make it more difficult for those with certain injuries and diseases to qualify for them. Florida is the worst, it has cut benefits to its most severely disabled workers by 65 percent since 1994. 

There can be wide variations in benefits depending on where you get hurt. Because each state has developed its own system, an amputated arm can literally be worth two or three times as much on one side of a state line than the other. The maximum compensation for the loss of an eye is $27,280 in Alabama, but $261,525 in Pennsylvania.

Many states are not only paying less benefits; they're also cancelling benefits after an arbitrary time limit — even if workers haven’t recovered.  Employers and insurers increasingly control medical decisions, such as whether an injured worker needs surgery. The result is that employers are paying the lowest rates for workers’ comp insurance since the 1970s. And in 2013, insurers had their most profitable year in over a decade, bringing in a hefty 18 percent return.

Because benefits are less, many injured workers have been forced to seek help from government programs like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid which shell out about $30 billion a year.

Air Pollution in China

From Upworthy

Water on Mars

Another derailed oil train

This one, the third in three weeks, happened outside of Galena, Il. It was a big train, 103 of which were carrying crude oil. No one was injured. No property, other than the trains, was damaged. Maybe that's why the National Transportation Safety Board will not be investigating the incident.

A picture-taking octopus

Middlebury College scientists are studying octopi to discover if they are really as intelligent as the scientists believe. They put open boxes of food in the tank of an octopus after it had watched a video of other octopi performing the same task. They also put a G-Pro camera in the tank to film the experiment. Well, the octopus turned the camera around and began photographing the scientists. 

I guess the octopus is pretty smart.

Fear in America

Alternet is running a series, entitled "Fear in America", which will look into the role that fear has played and is playing in this country. The first in the series discusses social panics. It talks about nine panics, all of which occurred in the 20th century. I wonder why they didn't go back to the early days of America when there were witches in Salem. Anyway, here is the list. How many do you remember?

1. Reds Under the Bed and Communist Hysteria

This was the first one I can remember. Senator Joe McCarthy was all over the news, but was eventually toppled by Joseph Welch, a lawyer from Boston.

2. AIDS Panic and Misinformation

This may be the most recent one I recall. Gays, whether or not they had AIDS, were stigmatized.

3. Satanic Ritual Abuse

This harked back to the Salem trials. The McMartin Preschool trial in California was the top story, but I can recall at least one trial in Massachusetts.

4. Superpredators

I don't remember this. Supposedly, groups of teenagers were in a rage of violent crimes, especially killing young kids.

5. The Marriage Crunch

This seems a stretch to me. Although it happened it the '80s, it was basically an article in Newsweek that supposedly excised many unmarried women as it claimed that their chances of getting married were quite slim.

6. Recovered Memory Syndrome

This phenomenon of the late 20th century led to the creation of the False Memory Foundation, which is still in business. There was a wave of people in psychotherapy suddenly recovering memories of nasty things that had been done to them as children. How widespread this panic was is questionable in my mind.

7. Crack Babies

The term was fairly widespread in the early '90s. The idea here was the children of those using crack would grow up to be very nasty people. But, like many supposedly scientific studies, the idea was based on a very small sample of 23 babies.

8. Various Disease Pandemics

Remember Mad Cow Disease? Ebola?

9. Heavy Metal, Dungeons & Dragons, Satanism and Suicide

How much fear was generated in the nation by heavy metal music, etc. is questionable.

I don't think this series is off to a good start.

Yves Smith on TPP

If you read Smith's article - and you really should, you have to wonder how the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP)has gotten so far. For example, minor point: this 'trade' deal has only five of its 29 chapters dealing with tariffs.

Most of the pact is focused on strengthening intellectual property laws to help US software and entertainment companies, along with Big Pharma, increase their hefty profits, and to aid multinationals by permitting the greatly increased use of secret, conflict-ridden arbitration panels that allow foreign investors to sue governments over laws that they contend reduced potential future profits. 

Unbelievably, the TPP gives privileges to foreign companies that are not available to domestic companies. A quote from Elizabeth Warren's Washington Post op-ed: The TPP 

"would allow foreign companies to challenge U.S. laws — and potentially to pick up huge payouts from taxpayers — without ever stepping foot in a U.S. court. Here’s how it would work. Imagine that the United States bans a toxic chemical that is often added to gasoline because of its health and environmental consequences. If a foreign company that makes the toxic chemical opposes the law, it would normally have to challenge it in a U.S. court. But with TPP, the company could skip the U.S. courts and go before an international panel of arbitrators. If the company won, the ruling couldn’t be challenged in U.S. courts, and the arbitration panel could require American taxpayers to cough up millions — and even billions — of dollars in damages."

One reason for the market's rise

And maybe the major reason are stock buybacks. It so happens that prior to the Great Recession there was also a glut of companies buying their stock. Remember Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch? Where are they now?

The money being spent to buy back stock plus paying dividends works out to just about 95% of S&P 500 index's earnings. This year, companies plan to buy $104.3 billion of their own stock. This is a record figure and it is happening in the face of 10-year Treasury yields holding below 2.1 percent, economic growth trailing forecasts and earnings estimates deteriorating. Companies are increasing buybacks with valuations reaching five-year highs just as profits are forecast to post the first back-to-back quarterly contractions since 2009. Plus, the S&P 500 trades at 18.9 times earnings, compared with an average of 16.9 since 1936, data compiled by Bloomberg and S&P show. 

When will we ever learn?

Is Hillary above the law?

State Department regulations state “All Government employees and contractors are required by law to make and preserve records containing adequate and proper documentation of the organization, functions, policies, decisions, procedures, and essential transactions of the agency (Federal Records Act, or “FRA,” 44 U.S.C. 3101 et seq).” 

Yet, Hillary never had a government email address while she was the Secretary of State. The purpose of the regulations is to ensure that government records are archived so that congressional committees, historians and members of the news media can find them.

Why she deliberately violated government laws will be a common question should she continue her quest for the presidency.

Paying for police misconduct

Last year Chicago paid $54.2 million in settlements and verdicts for police misconduct cases. That’s more than the budget for the offices of the mayor, the city treasurer, the city council, the council committees and the department of human resources – combined.

There were 161 police misconduct cases in 2014 but only 9 were the result of a jury verdict, the vast majority were settled out of court.
There were cases filed against other city departments. In fact the police misconduct complaints accounted for just 15 percent of the cases, but more than half of all payouts.

What's with the Chicago Police? Only last week it was in the news for its black site.

Some good music

I saw the PBS special on Peter, Paul and Mary last night. It was wonderfully reminiscent in the eyes and ears of an old man. The program focused on their activism. Granted the Earth is a better place because of their efforts. But the questions in the song are still unanswered.

Would you like a tarantula?

Ten Commandments for America in the 21st Century

Tom Engelhardt thinks that the following commandments would help us out.

• 1. Thou shalt not torture. 
• 2. Thou shalt not send drones to assassinate anyone, American or not.
• 3. Thou shalt not invade another country.
• 4. Thou shalt not occupy another country.
• 5. Thou shalt not upgrade thy nuclear arsenal. 
• 6. Thou shalt not intercept the communications of thy citizens or others all over the world or pursue the elaboration of a global surveillance state based on criminal acts. 
• 7. Thou shalt not be free of punishment for crimes of state.
• 8. Thou shalt not use a massive system of secret classification to deprive Americans of all real knowledge of acts of state.
• 9. Thou shalt not act punitively toward those who want to let Americans in on what the national security state is doing in their name. 
• 10. Thou shalt not infringe on the rights of the citizenry to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Infrastructure in the U.S. is really not funny