Falling 25,000 feet

Something should be done

Like maybe deporting those convicted of a major crime.

Prison in Paraguay

You can rent this prison cell for a down payment of $5,000 and weekly rent of $600.

There are three rooms in the cell, including a conference room, library and kitchen. You'll also have had air conditioning, comfortable furniture, an en-suite bathroom and a DVD collection. It was occupied by a drug lord from Brazil.

More mismanagement in Afghanistan

Five years ago we signed a contract with an organization entitled "Afghanistan Integrated Support Services JV" to maintain the vehicles of the Afghanistan army and police force. The contract was for five years and $182,000,000. Well, the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) audited the results, such as they were, and concluded that we: (1) made inaccurate assumptions about the capacity of the Afghans to manage the supply chain and conduct maintenance, (2) underestimated the cost of spare parts, and (3) established performance metrics that did not accurately assess contractor performance or progress towards contract goals. These added more than $100,000,000 to the costs of the contract. Furthermore, the performance metrics established by DOD to track contractor performance were vague and unenforceable.

The contract is being renewed as DOD has promised to remedy the problems. The estimated cost over the next several years is estimated to be $1 Billion. 

Presidential Calibre?

Donald called

I've been at Duncaster for 5+ years. Duncaster does not usually change the telephone number associated with a particular apartment. Apparently, the previous resident of my apartment was a Republican. How else can I explain the two telephone calls I received today from Mr. Trump asking for money? I just wish he had not called at 9 tonight.

Six terms, $142,000,000

Joe Arpaio has served six terms as sheriff of Maricopa County.  In that time the county has paid $142 million in legal fees, settlements and court awards, largely due to cases involving racial profiling against Latino residents. And it looks like the county may be on the hook for another $5.9 million in legal fees and expenses for pursuing contempt of court charges against the sheriff. 

Sometimes gimmicks pay off

The Ice Bucket Challenge was the gimmick of 2014. It was a simple gimmick; people (17,000,000 in this case) poured cold water over themselves and posted the video on social media. The aim of the gimmick was to raise money to fight ALS. The gimmick was successful in raising money, $115,000,000. And the money has funded six research projects. One of these projects has identified a gene, NEK1, which appears to hold considerable promise. 

Selling guns the right way

Solar Impulse 2 circles the earth

Solar Impulse 2, a solar-powered aircraft landed in Abu Dhabi on Tuesday, completing the first fuel-free flight around the world. It took 16 months due largely to problems along the way. The two pilots, Swiss explorers Bertrand Piccard and André Borschberg, flew the 500 hours required.

The propeller-driven aircraft’s four engines are powered exclusively by energy collected from more than 17,000 solar cells built the plane’s wings. Excess energy is stored in four batteries during daylight hours to keep the plane flying after dark.

Excerpts from the Panama Papers

The Basics of Islam

Truth or Consequences

People collect anything

Here's a sample of what some English artists collect.

The above is the feces of a skunk. You can see it and nineteen other examples of feces at the National Poo Museum, which opened in March at the Isle of Wight Zoo in Sandown, England. It includes the feces of a pigeon, a meerkat, a lion a cowpat and others. 

If you want to start your own 'museum', here's how. In your walks look for animal feces and take interesting ones home. Then, dry it. Then put clear resin in a container like a fish bowl. You're finished when you put in the feces.

Summary of the Republican convention

The Smell of the Crowd

Some supporters of Bernie Sanders will not give up. They are presently compiling a storehouse of beans to be used in a beans supper on Thursday night. They are hoping that the results of the meal will generate the “world’s largest fart-in” during Clinton’s acceptance speech at the Democratic national convention. 

How odd are we?

From DataVisualised

The media has to fill space

They've filled a lot of it this year with word of Trump. Some of the coverage has compared him to dictators and other bad people, such as Hugo Chavez, Augusto Pinochet, Kim Jong-Il, Joseph Stalin, Benito Mussolini, Hitler, Putin, and, believe it or not, Osama bin Laden. 

Costs of dying

The Kaiser Family Foundation recently studied "Medicare Spending at the End of Life" for 2014. Here are some of their findings:

• More than half of Medicare decedents were age 80 or older in 2014.
• Average total Medicare per capita spending was nearly four times higher for beneficiaries in traditional Medicare who died at some point in 2014 than for those who lived the entire year.
• Higher Medicare per capita spending among decedents than survivors in traditional Medicare is primarily driven by much higher spending on inpatient hospital services.
• Medicare per capita spending was higher for decedents under age 65 in 2014 than for those over age 65.
• Per capita Medicare spending generally declines with age among decedents in traditional Medicare who are over age 65.
• The decline in Medicare per capita spending by age for decedents over age 65 in 2014 was mainly due to lower inpatient spending.

Just Words?

Sunrise on Oak Bluffs, Martha Vineyard

Thoughts to ponder

Richard Cordray, the head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, spoke at the NAACP's convention. Some of his words: 

 “For white households in America, median income is $60,000; for African-American households, it is $35,000. White households in America have an average net worth of $134,000, but for African-American households, it is $11,000. Home ownership among white consumers is about 71 percent; for African Americans, it is about 42 percent. And the median house owned by a white homeowner is worth over $85,000, compared to $50,000 for African Americans. Small wonder that many feel trapped in a system that seems to barricade every avenue for economic advancement.”

General McChrystal, a human being

And like most human beings he has done some good things and some bad things. It appears that since he has left the Army he has done more good things. Some examples: advocacy of gun control; espousing his belief that "every city and town needs to be at risk" in wartime; questioning our excessive use of private military contractors.

Today in an article entitled ‘You Don’t Have to Wear a Military Uniform to Serve Your Country’, he is pushing the idea that our young people should spend a year "teaching, tutoring, and mentoring disadvantaged students; cleaning neighborhoods in need of renewal; renovating homes in blighted areas; and helping veterans reintegrate into their communities".

Will he be appointed to the Cabinet?

by Dan Wasserman of the Boston Globe

Is it old age?

Or more cars on the road? Or poorer drivers? Whatever it is, it's leading me to boycott the Mass Turnpike. 

The Pike is not new to me; I drove it when it was new. And, when I lived in Massachusetts (and was younger), I drove it very often as it was a very effective way to get out of the state. Now, I live in Connecticut and don't travel the pike very often. But every time I do, it is agony. Trips that took an hour and 45 minutes TO Hartford now take 2 hours and 30 minutes FROM Hartford. Most of this delay is due to extended periods of driving less than 30 mph. These delays are mysterious as I never see an accident which might cause the delay. The delays end as mysteriously as they begin. It's weird and extremely frustrating.

Spiking marijuana

Glass-Steagall Coming Back?

That's what the platforms of both the Democrats and Republicans say.

Largest Defense Budgets

United States - $569.3bn 
China - $190.9bn 
United Kingdom -$66.5bn 
Russia - $53.2bn 
France - $52.7bn 
India - $49.7bn 

Per The Telegraph

More on Derivatives

Under Dodd-Frank, the Wall Street banks were required to move their derivatives to exchanges or central clearinghouses. That has not happened as shown by the following table from the recent OCC report.

As you can see, the four banks that account for the vast majority of all derivatives in the U.S. had moved a mere sliver of their derivatives to exchanges. Out of JPMorgan Chase’s $52.9 trillion in derivatives, it had moved a mere 4.4 percent to exchanges (Percent Exch Traded Contracts), leaving 95.6 percent (Percent OTC Contracts) in Over-the-Counter contracts — private contracts between the bank and counterparties whose terms are often off limits to regulators.

Also, Citigroup, at the bank holding company level, has now eclipsed JPMorgan Chase in total derivatives, holding 35 percent more than it did at the time it blew itself up in 2008.

The banks were also required under Dodd-Frank to move their derivatives out of the FDIC-insured banks they owned and onto the books of uninsured affiliates to prevent another forced bailout by taxpayers. That didn’t happen either and Citigroup was able to slip language into the December 2014 spending bill to completely repeal that provision of Dodd-Frank.

Derivatives: a continuing problem

Derivatives were a major cause of the Great Depression and will probably be the same with our next economic failure. The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) has published a chart showing the 25 banks with the largest holdings of derivatives as of March 31, 2016.

You can see that the largest holders of derivatives are the TBTF banks. The leader is Citigroup with a total notional amount of derivatives of $55.6 trillion. If you add the four other mega Wall Street banks (JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Bank of America and Morgan Stanley) yoiu wind up with $231.4 trillion in derivatives or 93 percent of all derivatives in the entire FDIC banking universe of 6,122 banks and savings associations.

Voting in America from a Mid-East Point of View

Student Loans Are a Problem in the U.S.

That's obvious. Americans owe $1.3 trillion in student loans. More than seven million borrowers are in default, and millions more are behind on their payments. But, if you look at other countries they don't have the same problems. First of all, our students have ten years to pay off their loan, in Europe some countries expect payment over thirty years. 

And payments there are based on the graduate's income, starting low and increasing as salaries increase. In the United States, payments do not adjust automatically; they are based on the previous year’s income and are flat for a year. If borrowers’ earnings fluctuate during the year and they want to adjust payments, they must fill out new paperwork, and that can take months.

It looks like a relatively easy problem to solve.

Gone fishin'

Could you beat her?

The biggest loan shark?

That would be the state of New Jersey. It is so concerned with its reputation with the financial world that it will do almost anything to collect. For example, repayments cannot be adjusted based on income, and borrowers who are unemployed or facing other financial hardships are given few breaks. Plus, it carries higher interest rates than similar federal programs. It can garnish wages, rescind state income tax refunds, revoke professional licenses, even take away lottery winnings — all without having to get court approval.

Moving back home

That's all the Chagossians want to do. They are the people who were thrown off the island of Diego Garcia almost fifty years ago. They were thrown off because we wanted to build a military base there as it occupies a strategic position in the Indian Ocean. For some reason the powers that be felt it necessary that there be no other residents on the island other than the military, despite the fact that just about all our military installations around the world are bordered by civilians. 

You may not have heard about Diego Garcia when you were in school as it is a British colony. But we were able to convince the British to remove the Chagossians. The British rounded up the population of 1,500 or so, put them on overcrowded cargo ships and deported them 1,200 miles to Mauritius and the Seychelles without any sort of financial assistance. While the people awaited deportation, British agents and U.S. Navy personnel rounded up and killed the Chagossians’ pet dogs by gassing and burning them in sealed cargo sheds. The Chagossians have been fighting to return home ever since. 

Thus far, their legal battle has been in vain.

More waste

This is a follow-up to a posting in December 2013.

Veterans killing themselves

7300 veterans killed themselves in 2014. That's 20 a day, almost 1 an hour. The VA looked at 55 million veterans records between 1979 and 2014 from all 50 states. Two interesting findings: 65 percent of all veterans who committed suicide in 2014 were 50 years or older. Since 2001, adult civilian suicides increased 23 percent, while veteran suicides increased 32 percent.

However, the rate of suicide was less for those male veterans who used veterans affairs services (11%) and increased 35 percent among those who didn’t. Among female veterans who used the services suicides increased nearly 5% and increased 98%.

Protecting America

A gift not many get

Donor-advised funds are good for the donor, the broker...

... but not the charities. Donors give their charitable donations (and get a tax deduction) to investment companies to be managed in separate client accounts. Money in such donor-advised funds is invested and held until the clients give instructions (“advise”) about distributions to operating charities. Donor-advised funds (or DAFs) give donors all of the tax benefits of charitable giving while imposing no obligation that the money be put to active charitable use. They have become the second-most-popular “charity”. 

If a donor fails to distribute the account during her lifetime, she can pass on the privilege of making distributions to her children or grandchildren or anyone else she chooses. Thus, assets that have been given the tax benefits of charitable donations can be held in a DAF for decades or even centuries, all the while earning management fees for the financial institution.

While the donor cedes all legal control over donated funds, he can save taxes in a number of ways. If he donates shares of stock—rather than cash, he can save an additional 20 percent in capital gains taxes. If he donates property that is not publicly traded stock and the property goes up in value, his deduction also goes up. For example, if a donor invested $100,000 in a hedge fund, and it grew to be worth $2 million, the donor would get only a $100,000 deduction if it were given to a private foundation, but would get a $2 million deduction if it were given to a DAF.

Stupidity in Action

One of the credit card companies I use has decided to outsource its website. So, naturally(?) they expect you to register on the new site. Okay, that's not such a big deal, I thought. 

Part of the process was entering a new user id. I tried it twice to no avail; the system said it could not understand my input and that was it, no mention of what my error was. I called technical support.

The technician asked what my error code was. There was no code that I could see. He explained that the code was written in white (as opposed to black) and was difficult to see on the screen. The only way to bring it into view was to move the mouse around the bottom of the screen and hope it highlighted the code, which, after a while it did. The code stood by itself, no indication of what it meant. Fortunately, he knew the code and I was able to finally log on.

5 years and 2 billion miles

Saving an eagle

America 2016

Computers and hospitals

Remember Kate Smith?

Corny but ...

... there are a lot of familar faces: Ann Margaret, Lucille Ball, Jack Benny, George Burns, Johnny Cash, Roy Clark, Bing Crosby, Phyllis Diller, Lorne Greene, Bob Hope, Forrest Lewis, Dean Martin, William Shatner, Tom Smothers, and many more.


Courtesy of our Glastonbury correspondent.

Need legal help for a minor infraction?

Go to DoNotPay.co.uk. It's the website of Joshua Browder, a 19-year-old British student at Stanford. He claims to have beaten 160,000 of the 250,000 London parking tickets submitted to the site and 10,000 of 24,000 NYC submitted tickets. It's a fairly simple site but I do find his numbers questionable.

Only 8%

At the end of 2013, private prisons only held 8 percent of all U.S. prisoners. But, with the profits they can make - the two biggest prison companies make hundreds of millions a year - it's likely that they now control more than 8%. These companies do more than simply run a prison. They transport prisoners, operate prison bank accounts, sell prescription drugs, prepare inmate food, and manage health care, prison phone and computer time.

The companies, as you would expect, cut costs, but often these cuts result in not enough guards to handle the job. An Idaho prison was understaffed by 26,000 man-hours in 2012, according to a state audit, and the company falsified records to hide the uncovered shifts.

Here is what a California privatized prison looks like.

1 in 3 citizens are arrested

That's what happened in Gretna, Louisiana, in 2013. It is the one town in America in which you are most likely to be arrested. The town's population was about 18,000; 6,566 adults were arrested. That's the highest rate in the country.

Life in Gretna is even worse for blacks. The town is about a third African-American, two-thirds of those arrested in Gretna are black—an overall rate of roughly eight arrests for every nine black adults.

Gretna does not appear to be a violent town. In 2013, exactly 49 adult arrests by the Gretna police department were for the serious violent offenses of murder, rape, robbery, or aggravated assault. About a tenth of adult arrests, 652, were for drug violations, putting Gretna near the very top of the country in per-capita drug arrests. But the bulk of the arrests are even less consequential, with 948 arrests for drunkenness or disorderly conduct, and 4,258 arrests in the category of “other offenses,” not significant enough for the FBI to track.

Gretna became known nationally during Katrina when police stood at the end of the bridge, guns drawn, to block the crowds who were trying to evacuate New Orleans.

Helping an elephant

Mosha was seven months old when a leg was blown off by a landmine along the border between Myanmar and Thailand. Volunteers have fitted her with a new prosthetic leg nine times as the elephant has grown.