Failed States Index

Foreign Policy Magazine and the Fund for Peace have just published an index of Failed States. The index is based on 12 indicators - demographic pressures, refugees and displaced persons, group grievance, human flight, uneven development, economic decline, delegitimization of state, public services, human rights, security apparatus, factionalized elites and external intervention. These states, which are in danger of collapsing, are a direct threat to their own and the world's health and safety. About 2 billion people (one-third of the world's population) live in the 60 countries listed in the index.

To no one's surprise, the nations that make the top 10 are largely from Africa. But there are some surprising names on this list of 60 countries: Bhutan, Guatemela, Paraguay, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Bahrain and Russia.

Some of these countries have been on the verge of collapse or have actually collapsed before and come out of it. However, the World Bank found that half of the countries that had come back from a collapse were down again within five years.

Of the 12 indicators used, two are most common: uneven development and delegitimization of the state. By uneven development they are referring to economic inequality even in countries, like Venezuela, which you would not normally classify as an impoverished nation. Delegitimization refers to situations where the state is corrupt or simply incapable of providing basic services.

And, of course, we have limited attention spans and tend to be insular. So that, we seldom hear of the nations such as Ivory Coast, Somalia and Congo where the risk of failure is highest.

I can't imagine where the senior Bush got his kids

Now Jeb Bush wants to find out whether Michael Schiavo was negligent in reporting his wife's collapse, which occured long ago when the brothers Bush were not in politics. Why can't the Bush kids accept reality? The woman is dead. She was in a permanent vegetative state. Another investigation will not bring her back. Does he think she was killed by her husband?

Bush pere seemed to accept reality. Why won't his kids?

I thought I was back in Canada

I had been driving for more than 40 years when we moved to Canada in 1994. In all my years driving in the states I had never heard of tires flying off trucks. I found that in Canada this phenomenon occured at least once annually, but, when we returned home, I was convinced it would not happen here.

Well, I was wrong. Today driving on the Massachusetts Turnpike, I saw a Greyhound bus traveling a little ahead of me; flames were coming from underneath it due to the metal wheel scraping the ground as the tire was traveling across and up the road. The tire must have traveled a quarter to a half mile before hitting the guard rail and crossing the road once more to finally land in the shoulder.

Fortunately, the driver was able to bring the bus to a halt by the side of the road. It's doubtful that anyone was severely hurt. But, it certainly caused me and other drivers to really slow down as we followed the tire.

Greyhound is facing some major competition on the Boston - New York run. I wonder whether they've skimped on maintenance as one way to cut costs to meet the competition.

Afghanistan is getting warmer

First, it was the recent increase in attacks. Now, they’ve started up the propaganda war. Mullah Akhtar Esmani, a leading Taliban commander, appeared on Pakistani TV and proclaimed, “We will engage the US allied forces in combat everywhere in Afghanistan.” His TV appearance was the first by a major Taliban figure since our victory in 2001.

A little bit different view on the deficit

Felix Rohatyn, a financial eminence gris, has an interesting op-ed in today’s Wall Street Journal. It’s a kind of why-didn’t-I-think-of-that article relative to the deficit. Rohatyn's proposal is very simple: establish a government trust fund to develop our capital assets, such as infrastructure, education, scientific research, etc. The trust fund would be funded by very long term (50 years?) bonds.

He refers to history for support - Eisenhower and the Federal Highway Act, Jefferson and the Louisiana Purchase, Lincoln and land grant colleges, FDR and the GI Bill – all of which were investments (and very significant ones) in this country and all of which have paid off enormously.

And he makes a point I’ve tried to make often. We can compete with China “only by fighting tooth and nail for supremacy in education, intellectual capital and R&D” and the government, state and federal, must play a role.

Back to the '50s?

In the 1950s there were a couple of guys who earned their living making sure that only true Americans (in their definition) appeared on radio and television. Are we reverting back to those days? It seems that Ken Tomlinson, the chairman of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, entered into a contract with one Fred Mann to pay him almost $15,000 to monitor the political leanings of the now-defunct Bill Moyers “Now”.

What are we becoming? PBU24

My mind is made up

Scott McClellan reported todat that the results of the Schiavo autopsy will "not change the president's position on the Schiavo case". I guess this is called determination.

It's a different world

In Pakistan the local council sentenced a girl to be gang raped for a 'crime' committed by her 12-year old brother, although there is even a question as to whether he was a criminal or a victim. When, after she had 'served' her sentence, she was invited to the US to speak, the government arrested her and prevented her leaving the country to speak in the US.

In India the local council decreed that since her father-in-law had raped her, she had to marry the father-in-law.

In the first case international PR caused Pakistan to change its mind and allow the girl to leave the country. In the second case, national courts overthrew the decision.

How to conduct an executive search - not!

Whether or not they actually believe or practice it, almost all boards of directors specify the kind of person they are looking for when seeking a new CEO; no one is automatically ruled out. Morgan Stanley is different. They’ve specified who will not be considered: just about anybody who disagreed with Purcell, the current CEO. You wonder where there brains are.

Purcell will not be suffering as he leaves with at least $63,000,000. Not bad, but a trifle compared to the $1.45 billion the firm owes Perelman, largely for Purcell’s arrogance.

Fallows again

Okay, his current article in the Atlantic Monthly, "Countdown to a Meltdown", is a bit over the top in an attempt to warn us of the folly of our current strategies. The real meat is in the footnotes, which detail some of the history of the past several years.

Unsurprisingly, he nails Bush's tax cuts as a prime mover in our downward path. The Congressional Budget Office in January of this year reported that 48% of the increased deficit over Bush's first term could be attributed to the tax cuts. The tax cuts have lowered the federal government's share of GDP to 16%, a level not seen since 1959 and significantly lower than the 17.5% to 20% they consumed from 1962 to 2002. The GAO warns that if the tax cuts are made permanent, by 2015 we would barely cover our fixed costs.

Of course, the problem is not simply the tax cuts. We just don't save very much any more; our savings rate has gone from 8% of disposable income in the 1950s to virtually zero today. So, we are not buying bonds to finance our government, China and other foreign governments are, making us vulnerable to the needs and wishes of these foreign governments. We are placing a very big bet on these foreign governments' willingness to finance our deficit.

Fallows has an interesting take on the oil situation with regard to China and India. He claims they are using their oil for their factories, we are using our oil for our cars. And he has some numbers to back up his claim about our use. In 1973 we used 35 quadrillion BTUs of oil. In 2003 that number had grown to 39 quadrillion, but consumption by industry has been flat, and two-thirds of the oil is being used for transportation.

Did you know that Gwinnett County in Georgia imported 27 teachers from Hyderabad in 2004? Or, that England outsourced grading of high school exams to India? I would have thought that education would always be a local affair. I guess I was wrong.

Our phenomenal growth over the past 200+ years has been based on savings, investment, education and innovation. We've talked about the savings problem. Here are some footnotes apropos to investment, education and innovation.

In 2005 the American Society of Civil Engineers gave a grade of D to our infrastructure - roads, bridges, etc.

One third of our high schools students fail to graduate on time.

California, a leader in public education in the post WWII world, now spends less on education than the average of other states and is now just above Arkansas.

In 2003 Shanghai opened a 'maglev' train system in which the trains averaged 267 mph and were on time 99.7% of the time. (Is the Acela back in service yet?)

What will people think of Fallows' article in 2016, his dateline. Will we miss the opportunities we have today? Will we return soon to the principles and actions that made this country great? Will we heed the Cassandras of today?

A Narrative of Scandal

In the current issue of the New York Review of Books, Mark Danner proposes a 'narrative of scandal', i.e., a life cycle that American scandals since Watergate follow: revelation, investigation and expiation. In the current Iraq scandal, we can't seem to get beyond the revelation stage. We all know that this war has been marked by scandal; as the Downing Street memo shows, the scandal began even before the war began. It manifested itself with Abu Gharaib. And continues to this day with our sending detainees to other countries and having them do our dirty work.

There has yet to be an investigation, by the courts or Congress, to tell the story of what happened or an expiation where sentences are handed down and the bad guys punished, so that we can finally return to a state of grace.

We can't get to the investigatory phase because words no longer have meaning.

"Something's wrong with the system"

So sayeth Donald Rumsfeld with reference to our weapons building process.

"We're No. 1 in the world in military capabilities, but on the business side, the Defense Department gets a D- giving them the benefit of the doubt." sayeth the GAO.

The problems:

• Overly expensive technological requirements that are far beyond current capabilities.


• Gross under-estimates of anticipated costs.


• Lack of oversight by the Pentagon; the contractors are expected to police the contract.


• Unrealistic testing


• Costs are hidden under a cloak of secrecy


• Congress approves weapons the military doesn't want.

The costs of new weapons is growing faster than the defense budget. But, are we any safer? Or, our troops better prepared? Or, is it that I should invest in defense contractors, where the ordinary rules of business and common sense do not seem to apply?

June 9, 1954

"Have you no sense of decency, sir?" With these seven words 51 years ago today, Joseph Welch, a Boston lawyer, put the finishing touch to one of the most shameful periods of the 20th century in the US. These seven words really encapsulated the McCarthy era. I wonder whether they will also come to encapsulate the current era, in which words are used with the same disregard for the truth as they were then.

Back then, it didn't matter whether what you said was true or false; it mattered whether you defended your position without regard to the merits of that position. The present times are becoming more and more like those days. Eventually, everybody will become a 'Red', McCarthy's term for his enemies.

Copenhagen Consensus

In 2002 the Environmental Assessment Institute, a Danish organization, had a rather novel idea: given that there is a finite amount of money in the world, how can it best be spent in an economic sense. They formed an organization called the Copenhagen Consensus and recruited leading economists from around the world, including some Nobel Prize winners, to answer that question. Papers were presented in Copenhagen in 2004, but for some unknown reason, word of the conclusions these economists reached has only now been made available in this country by that bastion of capitalism, the Wall Street Journal.

Of course, you have to agree with the basic premise that economic analysis of rates of return is a good way to establish priorities for the use of resources to solve basic problems. Some may not agree, but, if you have limited money, you have to prioritize, you have no choice. And rate of return – i.e., what are the expected and realistic benefits to be gained from my investment – is a good way to set the priorities.

The work of the consensus is available on the web. Here’s a summary of their conclusions:

Very good projects:
Control HIV/AIDS
Provide micronutrients to combat malnutrition
Liberalize trade
Control malaria

Good projects:
Develop new agricultural technologies
Improve water and sanitation on a small scale to enable people to earn money
Enable communities to manage their own water supply and sanitation
Lower the cost of starting a business

Fair projects:
Lower barriers to migration of skilled workers
Improve infant and child nutrition
Reduce the prevalence of low birth weight
Improve basic health services

Poor projects:
Guest worker programs for the unskilled
Optional carbon tax
Kyoto protocol
Value-at-risk carbon tax

There are some interesting conclusions here, particularly the low payoff of projects to counter global warming. It behooves further study.

An honest and realistic man?

Can you imagine a bush appointee saying that we "are not doing well" in convincing the Iraqi people that we are not interested in their oil or in otherwise screwing them? It happened yesterday. That's what Zalmay Khalilzad told the Senate committee interviewing him.
I knew there was one honest man in the Bush administration.

Where are they now?

At lunch today one of the guys was reminiscing about the cars of his youth - Austin, MG, Triumph, Austin Healy. These are all English cars that have passed on into car heaven. I wonder whether our kids will have a similar conversation about Buick, Lincoln, Mercury, Dodge, etc. Both GM and Ford are in bad shape and Chrysler is no longer really an American company. GM just announced what I think will be the first of many job cuts; 25,000 GM employees will lose their jobs over the next three years. We've come a long way since Engine Charlie Wilson could claim, "What's good for GM is good for the country."

Will Bush become a believer?

The science academies of the G8 nations, which includes the US, are urging prompt action to combat global warming. Will Bush now believe that there is a problem? Or, will he remain in his closed world, saying "I think I can, I think I can" indefinetely wishing away problems?

The basics and the FBI software failure

Today’s Washington Post has another article on the failed FBI software project to automate case files. It’s based on a report by the Survey and Investigations Staff of the House Appropriations Committee. The highlights of that report are the failure of the FBI to notify SAIC, the contractor, of problems they had found and the FBI’s spending $17,000,000 testing a system they knew would be scrapped.

There are many reasons why this project failed, but I think two are central. According to an audit by the NRC the application development process did not include any users. How in the Lord’s name you can build something without getting input from the people it is to be used by boggles the mind?

The other is a failure to ask the obvious questions as described by Michael Schrage of MIT in this article. Quoting Schrage,“For example, the FBI never addressed how its agents currently used technology to manage their cases, and how the new software would modify and improve that process.” The frequent changing of specifications is one indication that there was no basic description of the problem and how it was to be resolved. The groundwork for this is usually an overall enterprise architecture, which, as the NRC found, did not exist at the FBI.

Some movement re Sudan

At the behest of the UN, the International Criminal Court has started an investigation into war crimes in Sudan, even though Sudan will not cooperate. Surprisingly, the US did not veto the UN's referral of the case.

Smuggling by Apron

Australian Customs stopped a woman when they heard 'squishy' noises emanating from her. It seems that someone had gone to a fair bit of trouble and created a special apron. The apron had 15 waterproof pockets in which Customs found 51 tropical fish.

World Environment Day

Some interesting views of our world , courtesy of the BBC and the UN. And more tales of the oceans getting warmer.

The Draft Redux

I can’t say that you heard it here first, but I’m just about convinced that the draft will return. It may not return with Bush in charge, as he is loathe to act where reason is concerned; but return it will.

Most people don’t want to willingly risk their life and will not willingly join the armed services when the chances of death or dismemberment are not zero. Consider that this current war has now go on longer than all but two of our wars – WWII and the Civil War – and it looks like we’ll have troops there for a long while yet, certainly until the next congressional election and maybe even the presidential election of 2008. More soldiers have left the Army this year than last and the rate of leaving has significantly exceeded the Army’s expectations. How many are willing to join today as opposed to September 12, 2001? What happens if another area of the world explodes and we need troops there?

I’ve been lucky in that my children have, thus far, not had to fight in a war. I’m less optimistic that my grandchildren will be as lucky.

He lit one little candle

In what often seems like a cruel place, every so often something good happens. This is the case for the Safe Blood for Africa Foundation. It was started by Jeff Busch in 1999. He was working in Africa, saw the devastation wreaked by AIDS and recognized that a lot of the problem arose from blood transfusions. Blood donors were not being screened and blood was not being tested before being transmitted; as a result infected blood was being passed from one to another.

His foundation trains people to screen donors and test blood. A fairly simple idea, but the results have been so good (e.g., the amount of blood suitable for transfusions in Botswana has increased by 80% in one year) that China, Brazil and India want to set up similar operations.

We frequently castigate “big business’, but the foundation gets 70% of its funding from business. Companies such as Exxon Mobile, Merck, Johnson & Johnson have contributed. And the Gates Foundation is involved here as well as US AID and the World Bank.

Bush is no Nixon

The brouhaha about Deep Throat naturally brought back some memories of the Nixon era and started me thinking about the differences between the Nixon administration and that of Bush II. I think the primary differences between the two are Nixon’s willingness to act against type and the caliber of another branch of government, the legislature.

The Men
We all know that Nixon “went to China”, but, unless you were alive when he was hunting “Communists”, you really can’t appreciate how much against type this trip was. And it was not his only action against type; the first SALT Treaty was signed in Nixon’s administration. He was willing to act to try to turn around a sagging economy, even though his attempt at wage and price controls failed. He introduced revenue sharing with the states, sought to protect the environment and started the first Consumer Product Safety Commission. He had the gumption to get out of Vietnam. I was never a fan of Tricky Dick, but you have to give him credit for being willing to act counter to his historical beliefs in an attempt to improve the world.

Contrast the above actions with those of a fellow liar, a more sophisticated one, Bush (we seem to be moving more and more to Orwell’s world of 1984). Dogma seems to override common sense. Inaction is preferred to action. The environment is not something to be preserved, but to be used. He’d rather share mandates with the states, rather than provide the funds to implement the mandates. And we all know, George started a war as opposed to finishing one.

The Legislature
No one outside New Jersey had heard of Peter Rodino before Watergate. Then, his strong hand running the Judiciary Committee made his name a household word. The Republicans – and the Democrats – on the Committee were nowhere near as doctrinaire as the current crop of legislators. Six of 17 Republican members of the committee voted to bring the impeachment articles to the floor of the House. Howard Baker, Barry Goldwater and other leaders of the GOP were instrumental in convincing Nixon to resign. Sam Ervin was like an old-time prophet lamenting the sinfulness of the administration.

Where do you see today’s legislators acting in the nation’s interest and dealing with serious matters, not such tripe as gay marriage and the Schiavo case?

I guess she's a very big lady in more ways than one

I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised when hospitals go out of their way when a famous person becomes a patient, but I must say supplying eight hospital rooms to Kylie Minogue kind of goes beyond the pale. Apparently, the hospital also made it difficult for other patients to be visited. One claims she was escorted out of the hospital when trying to visit her mother; she had no problem visiting before Ms Minogue was admitted.The hospital had to ensure that Ms Minogue's security was preserved. Hmm.

And Sinopec makes three

Another Chinese oil company has bought into the Alberta oil-sands. China Petroleum & Chemical, known as Sinopec, is the third Chinese company to take a stake in oil properties next door to us. With the high price of oil today and likely for the foreseeable future, the high costs of extracting oil from the tar sands of Alberta has become affordable.

Why is it the Wall Street Journal reports all the oil deals China has made, but seldom reports deals we have made. Is it because we are not making deals? Or, is it because we are so focused on conservation and alternative energy that we don’t need to make deal?

Is it my imagination?

Or, have the number of attacks by the Taliban been on the increase over the past few months? Today comes a report of a suicide bomber killing at least 20 people, including a police chief, in a mosque in Kandahar.

And, by the way, just how well is the reconstruction of Afghanistan going? Is the opium market down this year?

Navy blind ads

I’ve run blind ads, just like the Navy does. Only my ads asked for a programmer when I really needed a programmer or a secretary when I needed a secretary. I did not pretend to be looking for a postal worker or a welder just to have someone call me. But, that’s what our Navy has been doing with the okay of the Defense Department – running deceitful blind ads so that they can get some gullible person to unknowingly call a Navy recruiter. They have been running ads nationally touting the benefits of being a postal worker among other jobs. Nowhere do the words US navy appear.

I wonder how many people are actually recruited this way. It is not only deceitful but, to my mind, a waste of time, money and resources. Why anyone would persist in talking with someone who got them there under false pretenses boggles my mind.

The web, crystal meth and the gay community

We often forget that good things can often be used for evil purposes. I was reminded of this truism while reading an article in the New Yorker about what seems to be a resurgence of sexually transmitted diseases among gay men. Some numbers quoted in the article to support the view that there is a resurgence:

• In New York City, the rate of syphilis has increased by 400% in the past five years; gay men account for virtually all of the increase.
• In Chicago in the late ‘90s 15% of the syphilis cases could be attributed to gay men; now it’s 60%.
• In this new century, the number of new diagnoses of HIV have remained relatively stable for the general population, but have increased in every year for gay men.

The author, Michael Specter, attributes the resurgence to the web and crystal methamphetamine. The web because, in the words of the writer of “Avenue Q”, “You can get sex within minutes. Anonymous. No names. No commitments. No connections.” The crystal methamphetamine causes you to lose all common sense, so that anything goes, including unprotected sex.

I’m sure that you get several pieces of spam every day touting Viagra and similar products or offering to meet your every sexual desire. But, this is probably only the tip of the iceberg. Specter reports on his using Google to turn up dozens of sites “devoted specifically to uniting men for the purposes of immediate, anonymous and, often drug-induced sex.” Even Craig’s List is being used for this purpose. And, of course, I just remembered that the first industry to make money on the web was the porn industry; so I shouldn’t be too surprised at this segment of the porn industry using the web.

What is surprising, however, is that many of the people combining the web and methamphetamine are people in their 40s and 50s who saw so many of their friends and partners die from Aids. The question is why. Larry Kramer, a New York City gay activist, asks, “What could motivate a person who has lived through the worst of the epidemic to cast off the safe-sex practices that have protected him for years?” There is some evidence that, like most of our problems, it comes down to self-esteem; the body has aged, you are no longer a hot, young stud. The crystal meth gives you back your youth for a day. Like most quick solutions, it will not solve the fundamental problem of liking who you are now and living in today’s world.

Different Worlds

We all live in different worlds and there are so many of us that’s it’s difficult to find a world that looks like it may be of value to you and to others who do not live in that world. It’s refreshing to discover such a new world and to read the ramblings of that world’s inhabitant. So, it is with my discovery of the world of Phillip Carter. He’s one of the authors of Slate’s report of the use of torture in the War on Terrorism. In scanning that report I was led to an article Carter wrote in The Washington Monthly, The Road to Abu Ghraib .

It’s a very comprehensive and reasonable article. It accepts the fact that there are sometimes circumstances where you can’t be Mr. Nice Guy all the time; you may have to bend the law to get information that may be vital to your survival. However, he argues that, if you reach that point, you need to have the approval of those at the top and those leaders should articulate very clearly what can and cannot be done and, most importantly, why it is necessary to violate the law. He recounts the concerted efforts made by the Administration to avoid this clarity and leave a very murky set of regulations as to torture so that no one really knew what the limits were.

Carter also argues fairly convincingly that the lack of sufficient troops to fight the war, their limited training, the speed with which we attacked all contributed to the mess of Abu Ghraib. He also joins a number of experienced interrogators who question the value of information gained by torture applied by inexperienced interrogators.

Of course, you tend to like those who have ideas similar to yours. So, Carter repeats my dictum that we have to win the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people and others who are our enemy today or may be our enemy tomorrow. He concludes with questioning the wisdom of Bush’s frequent assertion: You’re either with us or against us. The world, Carter asserts, is not that simple. I think you have to be pretty self-centered and naïve to believe that it is.

Carter is described as a former Army officer, a lawyer and frequent writer in security matters. In my naivete, I assumed that he would be at least in his 40’s. I was surprised when I went to his web site and discovered that he graduated from college in 1997. Oh well, some of my best friends are young people.

Achoo!

In the flu seasons of my youth my parents occasionally would recall the Flu Epidemic of 1918, which they lived through and which killed perhaps as many as 50 million people. It also debilitated many times more people for a week or more. We’ve been lucky here in the US as such an epidemic has not been repeated. Will our lucky streak continue?

Unless we do something, our luck will run out, according to acknowledged experts in influenza. The current issue of Nature warns that the avian flu that is currently moving through Southeast Asia has the potential to exceed the damage of the 1918 flu and could affect 20% of the world’s population. The scientists estimate that 60% of those hospitalized by the avian flu will die.

The damage would, according to the head of University of Minnesota’s Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy, be more than death and illness. He writes that the flu could, “change the world overnight...reducing or even ending foreign travel and trade”. And, if trade and travel are curtailed, the ability to transport vaccines and other medical supplies is also curtailed.

The writers call for a global task force to attack the problem. If the comments of Anthony Fauci, the Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, are listened to, something may actually be done in time. Fauci said, “Unless we improve our capacity to produce such countermeasures, we may experience again the devastation of past pandemics.” Of course, our outsourcing the production of last year’s flu vaccine to England should give one cause to worry whether we’ll make the necessary effort as well as do something we seldom do – cooperate with other nations.

Avarice, thy name is CEO

Of course, we all knew that directors were not the only beneficiaries of corporate munificence re air travel (see my May 22 article re American Airlines). Today’s Wall Street Journal features the air travel perks granted to CEOs of Fortune 1000 supposedly public companies. Some generous companies include IAC (its CEO earned $930,000 last year in salary alone, another $832,000 in air travel and who knows how much in stock and other benefits), Leucadia (its CEO enjoyed $744,000 worth of free air travel benefits) and E-Bay (Meg Whitman received $358,000 in free air travel benefits).

But, these numbers may be understated. The companies report the incremental cost of the flight as a benefit. Now ‘incremental’ cost sounds nice, but there are some companies which have planes that spend most of their time ferrying executives and their families and friends on personal trips, such as ferrying a nanny to their summer house. Shouldn’t the benefit as recorded by these companies include all of the costs of the plane, including fixed costs?

Some companies claim that the security of their executives warrants a private plane; this gives them tax benefits as well as being safe and secure. Yet, many companies don’t use the same rationale of their executive’s security. Should their security be so important? Are they really so valuable to their company? I think not.

Since these companies want to fulfill their patriotic duty and pay all taxes due, they do record a portion of these flight benefits as income taxable to the CEO. The problem is the tax rules allow them to record a very small amount of the benefit as taxable. The journal lists one example where income of $1500 is attributable to a flight whose incremental cost is $11,000. Moreover, many of these companies also give the CEO money to pay the taxes due on this income; Whitman was given a ‘bonus’ of $128,000 to cover her taxes on the air perquisite.

The lesson to be learned - Raise your kid to be a CEO of a Fortune 1000 company.

The Wonder Drug?

Last week we learned that Viagra is being used to make horses run faster. This week we learn that it has been given to convicted sex offenders and we are paying for it, as the funding for the pill comes from Medicaid. In the past four years, Florida has spent $93,000 on Viagra for these offenders. Other states have spent more.

The states felt that they had to supply Viagra as such dispensation conformed to the rules. Apparently, no one saw fit to ask whether supplying Viagra to convicted sex offenders might lead to more crime.

Fortunately, the federal government has now ruled that states have discretion as to the distribution of drugs under the Medicaid program and it is unlikely such a blatant misuse of common sense will recur.

Who would Pogo say was the devil?

A short while ago I read where China has an upper leg in the race for energy in that they will make a deal with the devil, whereas the US will not. But apparently the race for energy is one thing, fighting terrorism is another.

Nat Hentoff, in The Village Voice, has an interesting article (based in part on reporting by the LA Times and Nicholas Kristoff on the NY Times) asserting that our silence re the genocide in Darfur is a function of our CIA’s desire to use Sudan in our war on terrorism. So what if the powers that be there are vicious and violent murderers? We need them more than the 500 people being slaughtered every day in Darfur need a smidgeon of help.

Stating the obvious

A front page headline in today’s New York Times read “Filibuster Fight Bruises the Image of Capitol Hill”. I didn’t know that the image of our elected government could be any lower. Instead of trying to address the challenges facing us – such as Iraq, China, Afghanistan, North Korea, Iran, the deficits, our lousy educational system, the fantastic rise in our prison population and on and on and on – they waste their time on things that are really not very important – the Schiavo case, 10 words in Newsweek, gay marriage, and now the question of the century: should Senate rules be changed

I guess the media thinks we are having some slow news days. Heck, the Scott Peterson trial is over, the Runaway Bride is back home, things are slow at the Jackson trial. Now what could be more important than the brouhaha over the possible change in Senate rules to kill the filibuster? That’s why it’s hard to avoid hearing some very concerned Senator inveighing on one or the other side of the question of how they can best waste time.

Our elected leaders should start earning their bread by at least acknowledging that we have some real problems. If they really wanted to actually get work done, they could resolve this controversy in a couple of hours. PBU21

Oh, to be a board member of a Fortune 1000 firm!

You’re losing money, a lot of money. You’ve asked your employees for concessions. You are at risk of joining some of your competitors in bankruptcy court. Yet, if you're American Airlines, you let your board of directors and their families fly free and even pay the taxes due to such benefits. Does this make sense to you?

One of the directors is Philip Purcell, of Morgan Stanley fame. His travels on Morgan Stanley’s jet were worth over $450,000 last year as reported by Morgan Stanley. Yet, American stockholders paid $14,528 for his travels on American. One director was paid over $60,000 for his travels on the airline.

What’s the second best job in the US? A member of the board of a major corporation.

Are Muslims more violent than Christians or Jews?

I don't often agree with Jeff Jacoby, a conservative columnist for the Boston Globe, but in a recent column he asked the question as to why the alleged desecration of the Koran caused such violence in the Islamic world. It's an interesting question. Reports from Saudi Arabia about desecration of Christian symbols has not and will not cause Christians to riot.

Yes, the Crusades, the witch trials, the burnings at the stake were all Christian doings. But, what have the Christians or Jews done in the 20th and 21st century that is comparable to the recent doings in the Islamic world? Is it the religion? Is it the culture? Whatever it is, it is not a good sign.

Times have changed

I sometimes wonder whether I’ve become an old fart. Why else would I cringe when I read in the Wall Street Journal that about two-thirds of mortgages issued in the last half of 2004 were either adjustable rate (46%) or interest-only (17%) mortgages? Were Catherine and I fools when we put 20% down and took on a twenty-five year mortgage on the houses we’ve bought?

Or, are the people who take out these ‘new’ mortgages running a risk that we never wanted to take: that the housing market will continue to be hot for as long as they live in the house? Or, do these people feel entitled to buy a house that, in my opinion, they really can’t afford? In California 61% of the mortgages issued in the first two months of this year were interest-only mortgages. Yet it is estimated that only 18% of Californians can afford to buy an average house using the old 30-year fixed rate mortgage.

The question of entitlement is underlined by another Wall Street Journal article. Here are some numbers that should make you gag:

In 1990, household median income was just under $40,000. Now, it’s just over $40,000. In 1990, median household spending was just under $40,000. Now, it’s around $45,000. In 1990, median household debt was around $59,000. Now it’s slightly more than $100,000. Perhaps, the citizens have taken a lesson from our government: borrow, borrow, borrow. Live today, tomorrow may never come.

Maybe Purcell is getting worried

The jury in the Morgan Stanley-Ron Perelman case has awarded Perelman $850 million in punitive damages. When combined with the $604 million awarded earlier, Morgan Stanley is looking at a bill of almost $1.5 billion due to their arrogance and technical incompetence.

Of course, they will appeal. Who knows how that will turn out? Even if they win on appeal, the PR blotch on Morgan Stanley's reputation is probably worth more than $1.5 billion and is certainly fodder for the group trying to oust Purcell as CEO of the firm.

What? Me worry?

It may be nothing to worry about. But, then again, it may be the early days of a move by foreign central banks to lower their investment in US debt. In February foreign central banks bought $11.3 billion of our debt. In March they sold $15 billion of our debt; this was the first time they were net sellers since August 2003.

Although the banks turned into sellers in March, other foreign buyers (such as hedge funds) more than filled in the gap so that, on balance, foreigners continued to invest in our debt. However, the amount bought was significantly less than in the previous two months. Plus, the nature of the private buyer is much more volatile than that of the central bank.

Another worrisome factor is the purchase of US stocks by foreigners. In February it was $7.5 billion, in March $1.7 billion.

Our government’s debt – and, in a roundabout way, our economy – has been propped up by foreign investments. What happens if that goes away?

A Vital Debate

Since March the Pentagon has been studying how it should spend its future budgets. Rumsfeld and many military people say it should be spent on speed: getting to combat areas fast (before the enemy is ready for us) and destroying his capabilities fast. They have dubbed this concept “10-30-30”. Ten days to “seize the initiative” from the enemy. Thirty days to defeat the enemy. And be able to move to another combat theater in thirty days.

Other military people say that speed is important in a conventional war but few will challenge us in this way. It is more likely that we will be tested in guerilla wars ala Vietnam and Iraq. And for these wars you need troops who can defeat guerillas, restore law and order and rebuild a country. They argue that the ‘speed’ approach simply improves our already strong capabilities but does nothing for our poor capabilities in fighting a non-conventional war.

We don’t have enough money to do both. What do you think is more likely? War with China, North Korea, Iran,….? Or war with a bunch of fanatics who do not play by the rules of war? It’s not an easy question to answer.

The Downing Street Memo

You really should read it. "It" being the minutes of a Prime Minister's meeting held on July 23, 2002, in London with regard to Iraq. This was published in The Times of London on May 1, has not been denied by anyone and has been confirmed by "senior officials". I have the feeling that it is a real document and not a scam.

To my mind, the key excerpt is "Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy. The NSC had no patience with the UN route, and no enthusiasm for publishing material on the Iraqi regime's record. There was little discussion in Washington of the aftermath of military action (my emphasis)."

Not exactly something to write home about if you're Philip Purcell

What does it take for some companies to get a message? Morgan Stanley, which just lost $604,000,000 to Ronald Perelman primarily due to shoddy production of primarily computerized documents such as e-mail, should certainly have been on notice that they had a problem in this area. In November 2002, it was fined for violating regulations about retaining e-mails. In July 2004 it lost a $54 million sex discrimination case where one of the major disputes centered around e-mails. Again in July 2004 they had another fine relating to failing to hand over documents. And making July a triple-header, they paid a $2.2 million fine relative to failing to disclose documents in a timely manner.

How could management tolerate this?

More than one use

We're reading more about drugs being used - and used effectively - to treat conditions for which they were not originally designed, such as a breast cancer drug helping those with prostate cancer. But, the Italians have topped the cake: Viagra, if given just prior to a race, apparently also helps horses run better.

Another dropped ball by our federal government

A suicide bomber strikes again in Jerusalem. Who knows the intimate details sooner? The FBI or the New York City Police Department? You win the prize if you say the Police Department. The department has NYC police officers serving in seven foreign cities from Singapore to Montreal. Their job is to funnel anything about terrorist attacks back to Manhattan so that the police there can be better prepared. You might ask why can’t the FBI do the same thing. After all, New York has been a prime terrorist target and is likely still one. Shouldn’t the feds be as proactive as the city police? What is the federal government doing for its citizens?

It's my God or no god

Is your belief in ‘my’ type of God a prerequisite for serving in the Armed Forces of the US of A? If the claims of Capt. MeLinda Morton, a chaplain at the Air Force Academy, are true, we are certainly moving in that direction.

Morton claims she was fired as chaplain and ordered to Japan because she accused some of the leaders of the Academy of using their positions to promote evangelical Christianity. There seems to be some basis for her contention. A study by people from Yale Divinity School found that some chaplains, in the words of the Times, “were insensitive to the religious diversity of the cadets”. Mike Weinstein, an alumnus of the Academy, a member of the Reagan administration and father of a cadet, has spoken with 117 people at the Academy who have complained about religious intimidation and proselytizing. A rabbi from a task force investigating the religious climate at the Academy called Weinstein and asked him to shut up already.

Stan Levey

When I was in college I often listened to Symphony Sid Torem, a jazz disk jockey on Boston radio. Sid had spent time in New York and personally knew many of the musicians of the modern jazz era. One of the musicians he introduced me to was Stan Levey, a drummer with Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker and a member of the Lighthouse All-Stars. He died last month.

The obituary in today’s New York Times had two interesting facts in addition to his drummig talent. He was only 19 when he played with Gillespie and Parker. He gave up music completely when he was less than fifty years old and became a commercial photographer. He was a helluva talented guy.

Stand your ground

In Florida "stand your ground" means you now have the right to shoot a gun at someone if you feel really threatened. The law was passed with the support of Governor Bush last month. The NRA intends to get a similar law passed in other states.

It sounds like the perfect excuse to wipe out someone you really don't like.

A Tiny Improvement But Still An Improvement

The March trade figures are in and March was a better month for our trade balance than February. Our trade deficit was down 9.2%. It was only $55 billion.

However, we're still on track for a record year. At our current rate the annual trade deficit will hit almost $700 billion, 13% more than the previous record.

Spin and more spin

Spin is everywhere in 21st century America and possibly also in the world at large. The latest episode is in the world of medical journals. You know – those magazines with the very scientific articles that have been reviewed by the author’s peers; the articles touted in drug ads. Those journals.

A study in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) found that, of the articles they surveyed in a study published last year, 65% did not fully report the harmful effects of a particular medical regimen. Some other interesting numbers:

• 34% of the articles described as secondary what was originally the main goal of the research
  
• 28% didn’t even specify the original main goal
  
• 19% pretended that the original secondary goal was, in fact, the main goal
  
• 17% of the articles created a new main goal for their research.

What can you believe these days?

The Complexities and Evils of War

NPR had two interesting stories this morning. One on a war that is always in the news, the other about a war that is seldom in the news. Neither warms the cockles of your heart.

An Insecure World - The Web

Yesterday's news reported a couple of major security flaws in Firefox, the browser I and 50,000,000 others use, and the attack last year on Cisco routers used by NASA, research labs and our military.

Was it Jefferson who said, "Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty"? That's even more true in today's cyberworld.

Reality Behind the Rhetoric

Here's something you should read in your quest to discover just what reality is in our world of the spin and its concomitant corruption of language.

The Good and the Bad

The bad
GE has restated its earnings going back to 2001. They ‘misapplied’ an accounting rule. It so happens that although this misapplication did not really impact annual profits, it did smooth out quarterly earnings and made them come closer to analysts’ estimates.

The good
GE is doubling its research budget for environmentally friendly technologies. By 2012 it is also aiming to improve its energy efficiency by 30% and reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 1%. (Yes, 1% is not much, but it’s something.) And, most importantly, it will report publicly every year on its progress.

Another casualty of the insurgency

The insurgents are not only killing people, they are affecting the production of oil in Iraq. In the first quarter of this year, daily production was a little over 1,800,000 barrels a day. In the last half of 2004, it was 2,000,000. Pre “Iraqi Freedom” it was 2,500,000 barrels a day. So, since the war production has declined more than 25%. Just another reason why you’re paying so much for gas and another cost of this war.

It's a judgment call

I guess my wife and I are not very good shoppers. For example, when we buy a television, we’re interested in reliability and price. Any gadgets – a vchip, flat screen, etc. – are of little concern to us. Yet to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), which, among other things, compiles the Consumer Price Index (CPI), is very concerned with the gadgets – they call them an improvement in quality of the tv – in coming to a conclusion as to whether the price of televisions has increased this month.

Now, you and I might conclude that if the price were $300 last month and is $350 this month, there has been a price increase. That doesn’t cut it with the BLS. Its possible that the price, from a CPI point of view, has actually decreased when you consider that these gadgets may have improved the quality of the tv in the judgment of the BLS analyst who specializes in televisions.

You have to admit that determining whether prices are rising or falling in a market where innovation occurs almost daily is extremely difficult. In these markets the BLS uses something called hedonics, which involves using some arcane – very arcane – statistical techniques to determine whether the tv is rising or falling in price. However, the final determination of its price change is made by a human being, like you and me. And you know how wrong we can be.

The use of hedonics is becoming more prevalent. In 1995 .2% of items were priced this way, now it’s more than 3%. What will it be in tomorrow’s wired world? In the meantime we old folks on Social Security can take little comfort that the size of a portion of our monthly check is a function of someone’s judgment. And they're making these judgments based on things that I care not one whit about.

Two more headed down the road to obscurity?

Earlier this year, AT&T bit the dust. Now two more American household names – GM and Ford – seem to be moving in the same direction as Standard & Poors lowered their bond ranking to junk status.

Remember when “Engine” Charlie Wilson, Eisenhower’s Defense Secretary and former head of GM, caused a ruckus when he said, “What’s good for General Motors is good for the country.”?

Still the best job in the world

How would you like this deal? Your job requires you to be in two distant cities at times during the year. So, having a few extra dollars and disliking life in a hotel room, you decide to buy or rent a house in each city. If you are the CEO of a Fortune 1000 or other public company, the chances are good that you can have the company pay you for living in your own house, even it's only for a few days a month. That’s what more and more companies are doing. For example, Time Warner pays its CEO $9,500,000 a year, yet he feels the need for $48,000 more to pay the rent for his apartment in LA, whether or not he spends much time in it. Michael Eisner of Disney has a better deal: he gets $120,000 a year for his Pierre Hotel pad. And the list goes on.

How do you spell greed? A public company CEO.

Maintaining a vibrant economy

Assumption: scientific research was the basis of our economic growth in the twentieth century. Just think of the world prior to World War II. There were no transistors, fiber optics, integrated circuits, wireless communications, LCDs, lasers, Internet, GPS, etc., etc. By far the vast majority of these inventions came from the US of A and were the result of scientific research conducted in the laboratories of the government, universities and companies.

These inventions occurred in a world where we were dominant. Now that we are being challenged by developing super-powers such as China and India, we seem to have started to take a back seat in scientific research. And it does not appear as though we are being pushed into the back seat, we’re moving there on our own. Consider the following. The federal budget spends half (on a percentage basis) on scientific research than it did in 1970. The number of graduate students in the sciences is down 20% since 1993. Fewer articles in scientific journals (usually indicating research successes) are written by Americans.

It will not get better until we improve our education system and have a government that realizes the critical importance of scientific research.

Ho Hum - Another Day, Another Audit

This time it’s led to a criminal investigation. “It” being another audit by the US Special Inspector General for Iraqi Reconstruction. In reviewing almost $120,000,000 paid out at a reconstruction office in Hilah, the IG can’t find $7,000,000, a mere discrepancy of less than 6%. Chicken feed. However, since they can’t find the right paperwork for another $89,000,000, the missing amount may grow. There were enough questions to initiate a criminal investigation. For example,

Why was a contractor paid twice for the same job?

Why was $300,000+ paid on contracts that were cancelled?

Why were two employees able to leave Iraq with $700,000 in cash?

Of course, this is peanuts compared to the $9 billion discrepancy uncovered earlier this year. How much of our Medicaid expenses would $9 billion cover?

Afraid to face the real world?

Marsh & McLennan, AIG and now MBIA. All leaders in the insurance industry. All paragons of American business. All multi-billion dollar enterprises. All now tainted by scandals. And the sad part is that all of their accounting manipulations were designed to make their earnings look better and appear smoother. Why could they not have been satisfied with good earnings most years? Why did they need to have very good and rising earnings every year?

Shit happens in this life. Let’s acknowledge it and move on with the knowledge and the will to make it happen less often and with less dire effects.

Sinlessness above all

Brazil seems to have an effective anti-AIDS program. In 1992 experts forecast that 1,200,000 Brazilians would have AIDS in ten years. They were twice as wrong, as the actual number in 2002 was close to 600,000. They did it with a combination of measures including both the encouraging of abstinence and sexual fidelity and education and distribution of condoms. Prostitutes have been very active in this campaign. Yet, a condition of receiving anti-AIDS funds from the US is the signing of a pledge condemning prostitution. This Brazil refused to do and turned their back on $40,000,000 in AIDS grants. Accepting this aid would force out of their campaign perhaps their most effective resources – the prostitutes.

The refusal of this aid was made by a commission that included church representatives. Yet, we want to impose our religious beliefs – I should say the religious beliefs of those in charge of our AIDS grants – on a sovereign nation that is succeeding in the battle against a plague killing people of all faiths and of no faith. Not only do these grants require a pledge condemning prostitution but they also oppose clean needle exchanges.

Didn’t Christ say something about the lives of the lowest among us?

Go to your room and stay there!

The impossibility of reporters moving about Baghdad with any degree of safety was, the Pentagon says, the reason why an electronic - rather than a printed - copy of their report on the killing of the Italian secret agent was issued. As a result, the classified portions of that report are now available to the world at large.

So much for the independence of the press relative to what is really going on in Iraq.

On the 1st of May

It’s a dreary day today on Martha’s Vineyard; rain is forecast. But, it is the first of May and if you want some sunshine in your life, listen to Ella Fitzgerald singing Rodgers and Hart’s “Mountain Greenery”, which begins, “On the first of May it is moving day…..”

If you don’t have her version, try that by Mel Torme or Matt Dennis.

April 30, 1975

Thirty years ago today the first war in my lifetime that was an unmitigated disaster ended. And I don’t mean only a military disaster; it was a diplomatic and moral disaster as well. Fifty-eight thousand US soldiers – and millions of Vietnamese - died in a war that certainly did not reflect what this country claims to stand for. The photograph of the helicopter on the roof that day, with our troops having to beat off Vietnamese who had supported our cause still resides in my mind as it does in the minds of most of us alive at that time.

Much has changed in the world since 1975. Yet, our current war reminds many of us of that war of our youth. Then, our leaders created a bogey man (in this case the domino theory of nations falling to Communism) and offered up our young people to defend us against this bogey man, who, thankfully in our leaders’ eyes, was in a foreign country, just as the” War on Terror is being waged on foreign soil”. In Iraq we had two bogey men – Saddam and WMD, one of whom was real, one wasn’t. The Pentagon Papers revealed many of the lies we were told during that war; we know some of the lies told in this one, but not all of them yet. We were not prepared for the guerilla war fought in the jungles of Vietnam; we were not prepared for what came after the day “Mission Accomplished” was announced in the Iraq war. We had My Lai; this war has Abu Gharaib.

And some things have changed. We all knew a couple of kids who were over there or had left for Canada. Now, with the demise of the draft, few of us know any of the professionals in Iraq. I can’t recall soldiers in Vietnam complaining of being ill-equipped the way our men in Iraq are. And who can forget the impact of television thirty years ago. The networks brought the war into our living rooms every night; we saw row after row of caskets pictured in the press and on TV. Now, the ‘news’ programs treat the war as just another ‘real’ show with no attempt to really bring it home to us. And, ironically, Vietnam is now one of our trading partners (most of the shrimp we eat come from there).

It took years for the anti-war movement to gather steam and start having an effect. Let’s hope for two things. It takes less time and fewer casualties for the people to seize back their government. Thirty years from now we are not in another war in a foreign country such as Vietnam or Iraq.

Lose it for Jesus

Fortunately, most fads pass on. Thus, a year or two from now few will remember the numerous promoters and their diets that now use the name of Jesus to sell their particular brand of salvation by losing weight. Unfortunately, right now there are a lot of them. One diet group claims to be offering weight reduction classes in 12,000 churches. One clown is quoted as saying, “We don’t do this so we can look in the mirror and be more attractive. We do it so people can look at us and see Jesus.” Did anyone mention hubris? I thought the Christian God was more interested in one’s soul than one’s body.

Maybes

Perhaps if I were born to a wealthy, powerful and influential family, the word ‘sacrifice’ would pass my lips as seldom as it passes the lips of President Bush. Consider the following which come readily to mind on a lovely Spring morning:

After 9/11 he urged us to go to the mall as our contribution to fighting terrorism.

He has signed every spending bill that has reached him.

He pushed for and got a tax cut in the face of a war in which our troops don’t have enough equipment to properly defend themselves.

He wants to eliminate the estate tax even though the number of people affected is miniscule.

Perhaps If I were born to a wealthy, powerful and influential family, I would feel that things would always work out well for me. Consider the following:

At a time when more and more reputable petro-geologists are becoming convinced that the world’s oil supply will be just about gone in this century, perhaps in as few as 25 years, the president calls for more oil production.

Despite our requiring 1,700,000 gallons of fuel in Iraq daily, Bush tolerates a Defense Department that considers fuel efficiency something “for sissies”. (Note we ‘only’ use 1,000,000 gallons of gas in the US every day.)

After a winter when many did not have enough heat, we have a budget which proposes to spend $200,000,000 on a sexual abstinence program. Since this proposal is greeted with silence, maybe Bush’s belief in things working out is justified.

For the first time in quite a while we are faced with another super power, if not two, on the world scene. And what is Bush doing? Sending experts to tell China and India how to use energy more efficiently. This from a nation of SUV drivers, a government that denies the existence of global warming.

I should stop now. To go on will only raise my blood pressure.

21 Years Late

Am I the only one who is reminded of Orwell's 1984 when I hear the constant word spinning of the Administration and its allies? Nuclear option is now constitutional option, estate tax has become death tax, etc., etc.,

Supporting our troops in the modern age

I don’t know how our leaders, especially our military leaders, can look in the mirror every morning. That is, if two recent stories are true; and I have little reason to doubt that they are not true.

Yesterday’s NY Times spoke of a company of Marines that was inadequately armed and inadequately staffed. The very word ‘inadequately’ is itself inadequate to describe the failure of our government to properly supply our husbands and wives, sons and daughters with the tools they need to protect themselves as much as is possible in war time. Lord, can you imagine being in Company E which in six months last year had one-third of their number killed or wounded not because they were poor soldiers but because we did not have sufficient armor for their Humvees?

And it’s not much better today. Two years into this war the Army still relies on one small contractor to armor-clad the Humvees for all the armed services. Things have gotten so bad that the Marines have decided to take care of their own 2800+ Humvees in Iraq and have started a crash program to do so.

Not only did these Marines not have armor to protect themselves, their maps were woefully out of date and they had very few electronic devices to detect and block the homemade bombs that have killed so many. Or, how about using cardboard cutouts and camouflage shirts to create the illusion that you had more troops than you did? This for the troops of America, the world’s superpower!

Today’s Boston Globe also talks of the lack of troops, but it also describes the lack of training for the troops who have served and are serving us in Iraq. Because of the limited number of Army troops, people from the Air Force and Navy have been dragooned into such tasks as guarding convoys (perhaps the most dangerous task in Iraq today) and oil depots, defusing bombs under fire, driving trucks, and other tasks you would not normally expect them to do. And they’re doing these tasks with very little training, sometimes as little as one week, whereas a regular army soldier receives months of training.

Perhaps, these things would not have happened under the generals that were moved out of leadership positions a couple of years ago because they disagreed with Rumsfeld and other wise people.

What will we learn tomorrow?

Not the Front Page

Sometimes the most interesting news is not found on the front page. Witness today’s New York Times.

Business Section
I often scan “The Boss” column, which is supposedly written by bosses of relatively large companies and often turns out just as you’d suppose – a paean to the boss. Today’s column is not quite a paean. It features Erroll B. Davis, Jr., the chairman and CEO of Alliant Energy in Madison, WI; older readers will know it as the former Wisconsin Power and Light.

The first thing that struck my eye was Davis’ response to the question of his favorite business book. His response: never reads them. Although he does not elaborate as to his reason, I can surely understand why: most business books say the obvious, forecast either Nirvana or Armageddon, or tell the reader how wonderful the author is. His response reminded me of an old Studio One (that was a live drama show on network television, you youngsters) production in which Jackie Gleason played the role of an idiot savant appearing on a quiz show. Fifty years later, the character’s response to the usual question of “What do you do for a living” stays with me. The response of “Nothing” is, to my, at times, strange mind, a perfect comment on how we tend to define a person by their job or what books they read.

Some quotes from the article: “These are powerful positions we executives hold. I have $8 billion at my disposal. We don’t have that many checks and balances on us. You can lose perspective and start to think you’re royalty.”

Now, his ending quote: “If you lose track of where you came from, you lose track of your moral compass, what work means to the average employee.”

His company, based on its web site, seems to be as forthright and capable as he is. I may even buy some of its stock.

Styles Section
If you want froth for the arrivistes, read this section. Except for today.

The lead article is about a New York City plastic surgeon, Dr. Michael Sachs, who is very adept at PR. He was so adept at PR that he was able to convince an Irish woman, Kathleen Cregan, to fly from Ireland to his office in New York for a face-lift. Ms Cregan was 42, but thought she looked to be in her mid to late fifties. Based on the picture accompanying the article, I would have thought her to be in her late 30s or early 40s.

Whatever the reason why Ms Cregan wanted to change her appearance, she told no one in her family. Her husband’s first knowledge of her trip came when the Irish Consulate in New York called to tell him that his wife was in critical condition at St Luke’s Hospital.

If Dr. Sachs’ PR were not as good or if Ms Cregan did some searching about him, she would have found out that he was one of the most sued doctors in New York (he had settled 33 malpractice cases in the past ten years), the state Department of Health had banned him from performing complex nose jobs without supervision, he was not affiliated with any hospital, his office operating room was not accredited. In short, he was an accident waiting to happen.

I guess that if the subject weren’t plastic surgery it never would have made this section and, maybe, never made any other section of the newspaper.

The Rules of the Game

Sometimes you benefit from the rules of the game, sometimes you don’t. But, unless the rules are blatantly unfair, you don’t try to change the rules when it appears you won’t benefit, especially if the rules have been in effect for almost ninety years. Yet it seems as though this is what the Republicans in the Senate wish to do with regard to the practice of filibuster. They want to invoke cloture with a simple majority vote.

It’s not as though the Senate is exactly fast when it comes to doing anything. So, a couple of weeks tied up in a filibuster will not be the end of the world. It was not the end of the world in 1964 when Southern Senators filibustered against the Civil Rights Act. And the current Senate has an easier job in invoking closure as they need only 60 votes, whereas in 1964 67 votes were needed to stop the debate.

The Sun Behind The Clouds?

Here are some dispiriting facts.

In Botswana there is one doctor for every 3,477 people. In Zambia that single doctor has to serve 14,484 people. It gets worse; in Uganda the number is 21,280, Mozambique 41,060. And Rwanda is off the charts at 53,474. Here on my little island there is probably one doctor for every 500 people.

Combine the above with the rate of AIDS infection. In Botswana out of every 100 people you meet, almost 40 (37.3%) will be infected. In Zambia there is an improvement to 16.5%, Uganda 4.1%, Mozambique 12.2%, Rwanda 5.1%. In the US, the rate is less than 1%, it’s about 1/10%.

Looking at these numbers is not a cheery way to start the day. But there was a faint ray of hope the other day not only for these countries having so few doctors but also for a return to the generosity for which this country was known. The Institute of Medicine, part of the National Academy of Sciences, announced what’s being called a medical “Peace Corps”.

The Institute wants to start a “U.S. Global Health Service”. This organization would send specialist doctors, particularly AIDS specialists, initially to those countries receiving financial aid from us for AIDS relief. The doctors – both experienced and new - would serve for at least two years and would be paid, but not nearly as much as they could earn here. More information about the program can be found here .

Primavera arrive

The photo below shows that Spring is really here. The temperature is close to 80. The grass is starting to grow. Flowers are blooming. I drove around with both front windows open. The grandkids have been at the beach for several hours.

Entrance to Upper Makonikey April 20, 2005 

The Department of Education Is Not Alone

You’ve heard of Armstrong Williams and others who were paid by the Department of Education to promote their programs without telling any of the stations who hired Williams or the people who heard him on CNN and other media. So, it should come as no surprise that business is now using the same technique: hiring pitchmen or women to tout their products while supposedly providing impartial consumer advice. Some of the companies that have used such pitchmen as James Oppenheim, Corey Greenberg and Kathleen deMonchy include Kodak, Walmart, Sony and Energizer.

Most of these people ‘appear’ on local news programs, which in recent years have tried to become experts in consumer affairs. As with most television productions, even the local news has to be taken with a very large grain of salt.

The Truth Will Set You Free

One of the reasons why the Administration is able to get away with feeding us bullshit about Iraq is due to the fact that most, if not all, foreign reporters are scared our of their wits – justifiably so - to leave their hotel room. So, there is very little news about Iraq that is not the result of statements from the military.

Of course, the State Department’s decision to stop producing its annual report on terrorism after 19 years does not indicate a forthright, open approach to truth.

The Old Ennui

We have been at war in Iraq for two years. Has ennui set in? Read what Jim McGovern, Democrat representative from Massachusetts, has to say in the May 5^th edition of The Nation.

“What worries me almost as much as our misguided policy in Iraq is that so many of my colleagues and so many citizens have become resigned to the fact that the war will go on. Congress is not being inundated with letters and phone calls and faxes and e-mails and street protests demanding an end to our presence in Iraq. President Bush's re-election seems to have taken much of the energy out of the antiwar movement. My recent visit to Iraq only strengthened my belief that this war is wrong. And only renewed, passionate dissent by the American people can end it.” (The emphasis is mine.) These comments were made after a recent visit to Iraq.

Basically, what McGovern is saying is that we’re getting a lot of bullshit from our leaders. For example:

More electricity was available in Iraq before the invasion than afterward

the World Food Program says that hunger among the Iraqi people is getting worse.

General Petraeus conceded that less than one-fourth of the 147,000 Iraqi security forces were actually "combat capable."

He questions whether, because no one seems to know how many insurgents have actually been killed, the Iraqi security forces exaggerate their own actions.

He “was told--emphatically--that there are no plans to construct military bases. Yet Congress recently passed a huge supplemental wartime appropriations bill that includes, at the request of the Bush Administration, $500 million for military base construction.”

“I couldn't get a single US official to acknowledge any mistakes. The standard line remains, "We're moving in the right direction."

“Our young men and women in uniform are performing their difficult duties extraordinarily well. Indeed, the only honest and direct responses I got from any American in Iraq were from the soldiers. They told me they had been instructed by their superiors not to share any complaints with visitors.”

Another One Bites The Dust

The Atlantic Monthly is moving out of Boston after almost 200 years. It started in a townhouse near Boston Common in 1857. The move is part of a 'downsizing' of one of the great cities in this country. Two other Boston paragons - Gillette and Fleet Bank - were bought earlier this year and are now part of companies based in other parts of the country.

The consolidation of companies - which leads to fewer and fewer individual companies - seems to be leading to what might be considered a consolidation of cities, in that power seems to be concentrating more and more..

Not Your Father's Wall Street Journal

The front page of Wednesday's Journal had three lead articles above the fold. The datelines were Nanchang, China, Stuttgart, Germany and Port Harcourt, Nigeria. Just think of it. America's leading business paper feels that the important business stories for that day were not in the US of A nor were they about US companies.

Justice?? Sunday

Can you believe that the majority leader of the US Senate and wanna be presidential candidate, Bill Frist, will speak at what its sponsors call "Justice Sunday"? It's an April 24 gathering of so-called Christians to protest the use of a filibuster against "people of faith", that is people who support Bush's judicial nominees.

A few weeks ago he weighed in on Terri Schiavo's medical condition although he had never seen her. Now, he's apparently convinced that 'people of faith', by definition, support Bush's nominees.

How low will he sink to gather support?

More Starving of the Beast

The House has once more passed a bill to permanently eliminate the estate tax when the sunset provisions - which 'temporarily' eliminate the tax - expire in 2010. Of course, what this means is that the income tax will eat up more of the slightly above average ($1.4 mil) Joe's estate, while the truly rich will see taxes go down. Hopefully, the Senate will kill this as they have in the past.

What these guys fail to realize is that the beast they are starving is us.

Follow the link

If this blog does only one thing – convince you to read this speech by Congressman Ron Paul of Texas, no less - I will feel that I’ve really done something good for our world. I may not agree with many of the ideas he advocates on his web site, but I certainly agree with those expressed in this speech, “Who’s Better Off?

He asks some key questions:

Do the ends justify the means?

How much better off are the Iraqi people?

Why is it that what is good for the goose isn’t always good for the gander?

Are Christian Iraqis better off today?

Are the American people better off because of the Iraq war?

And tells some home truths:

In time it will become clear to everyone that support for the policies of pre-emptive war and interventionist nation-building will have much greater significance than the removal of Saddam Hussein itself.

Yet the election was held under martial law implemented by a foreign power, mirroring conditions we rightfully condemned as a farce when carried out in the old Soviet system.

Today it’s easier to get funding to rebuild infrastructure in Iraq than to build a bridge in the United States.

Because of the war, fewer dollars are available for real national security and defense of this country.

The real irony is that we are told we go hither and yon to fight for freedom and our Constitution, while carelessly sacrificing the very freedoms here at home we’re supposed to be fighting for.

We have lost our way by rejecting the beliefs that made our country great (my emphasis).

Ho Hum – Another Record Month

Unfortunately, the record is a reverse one – February was the third month in a row that our trade deficit set a new record; it reached $61,000,000,000. That’s a lot of zeros.

When did it start going wrong?

I’ve long held that the decline in the quality of our government began with the rise of a career called “politician”. I think we had better government when the Congress and Senate were made up of the teacher, the banker, the hardware store owner, the pharmacist and, yes, the lawyer who spent a couple of terms in office and then left to go back to the real world. These men were not focused primarily on winning reelection or getting a job as a lobbyist. Yes, I know there were losers back then, but, in general, those in government were focused more on doing what they saw as the right thing than is the current crop of legislators.
I was reminded of this listening to a brain surgeon on NPR this morning who pointed out the number of doctors and other health care people who were members of our first governments.
I doubt that I will ever see the demise of the politician, although one can always dream.

The Lowest Common Denominator?

Voting is not perfect in this country or elsewhere but you’ve got to worry as to whether we should be thankful that some people don’t vote or that some people lose elections. What do you make of this statement from John Kerry’s speech to the League of Women Voters in Boston yesterday?

"Leaflets are handed out saying Democrats vote on Wednesday, Republicans vote on Tuesday. People are told in telephone calls that if you've ever had a parking ticket, you're not allowed to vote."

Would you want someone who believed this crap to vote? Does Kerry actually believe this?

Devil? Saint? Human Being?

This week will see another media fest when John Bolton appears before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to testify relative to his nomination as Ambassador to the UN. There has been a raft of activity pro and con his appointment, with detractors positioning him as a devil and supporters promoting him for sainthood. Frankly, all this extreme posturing – even by those who were formerly relatively rational people - really ticks me off. Bolton is just a human being like the rest of us. He’s smart and experienced.

Whether he’s the right person for the job at this moment in time is a question. But the world has a way of surprising us every so often. Who would have thought the Red-baiter Nixon would have made the opening overture to China? Or, that mild-mannered Earl Warren would have led the Supreme Court into the 20th century? It seems to me that far fewer people demonized Nixon or Warren although they abhorred their policies and actions.

Most of the talk about Bolton has assumed that the UN is in very good shape and does not need a flame thrower, as Bolton has been said to be. But that is a false assumption. While the UN has done much good, it has had its screw-ups and scandals. As with any sixty-year-old organization, it could stand a rejuvenation, particularly as we are living in such a different world than that of post World War II.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying that Bolton should be nominated. I find it unlikely that someone who has professed hatred for the UN, disparages the value of treaties, and seems to be convinced of our perpetual righteousness would make a good UN Ambassador. But let’s go through the nomination process as rational human beings, not demonizing or sanctifying anybody.

PBU15

Some days you have to be thankful you live in the West

Rob Adams over in Sparrow Chat has a disturbing tale to tell about man’s inhumanity to man. In “Evolution or Creation” he writes of the cannibalism that is taking place today in the so-called Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Today’s BBC News has a frightening tale of nature’s ‘inhumanity’ - for lack of a better word - to man. And, it also occurs in a country in Africa, Angola. Today’s news is that the death toll from the Marburg virus is now 173. That’s out of only 200 cases of it, a fatality rate of 86%. The 200 cases have occurred in only three weeks. There is no known vaccine or medical treatment for the virus, whose primary targets are kids under 5. One good thing, I suppose, is it moves quickly; you’re dead within a week or less.

The worst part of this is that this astronomical death rate is due in large part to a very poor health system. One nurse bemoans the lack of protective clothing. There is one doctor for every 13,000 people. A fourth of the children do not make it to age 5.

We do complain a lot about this country. Many of the complaints are justified. But in many, many ways we are very lucky to be living here.

How do you define a bond?

In many ways a bond is an IOU. But, whose IOU is worth more: mine or that of the US government? President Bush may prefer mine as yesterday in his visit to the Bureau of the Public Debt he dismissed the bonds of the US by declaring, “There is no trust fund (i.e. Social Security trust fund), just IOUs that I saw firsthand.”

Let’s hope that the holders of the US bonds financing our deficit ways don’t think the same way as our President.