The Dark Side of the Moon - Essays and Articles by Jim Freeman

SOPA My Back and Wash Me Down the Drain

2012-01-23T08:09:00.000-08:00

The Guardian (UK): Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA)

The US attempt to control internet piracy has sparked a fierce battle between the creative industries and the free speech lobby. That was headline and opener in a John Naughton article for The Guardian's weekend edition, in which he tried to makes sense to the British for various American goings-on.

The 'creative industries' sounds pleasantly like writers, musicians and indie film-makers arguing for their financial health against those who want the internet to stay open and unrestricted. In actuality, 'creative industries' is just a user friendly moniker for the biggest of big businesses, the movie and music guys like Warner Brothers, Paramount and Sony/Columbia.

Those three alone account for half a worldwide business that generates nearly $30 billion a year in revenues. The proposed SOPA legislation was written by Hollywood and the somewhat less less centric Music Industry (with revenues of about $140 billion), all of which adds up to a huge chunk of change to spread around Congress. And spread it they do, along with horror stories of what will happen to their neat little monopoly on access and distribution, wailing that the 'artists' they represent must be saved from the greed of fans worldwide.

Greed is certainly a part of the equation, but hardly on the part of fans, subject as they are to the eight buck average for a ticket and an additional five bucks for a small popcorn.

We small players without access to entry, who have finally found a way to enter the publishing, music or film game through the internet will be lathered by SOPA and then washed down the drain to irrationally support and industry that's already in a state of decline. Rather than adapt to the impact of the virtually free uploading and swapping of content, the Malibu Moguls want Congress to fix their leaky roof, no matter who gets wet.

But someone always comes along to fill a need and among the many, Apple built a business plan on inclusion rather than exclusion. iTunes lept out of the starting gate, delivering what the public wanted at a price they wanted to pay. According to Wikipedia,

"The latest era of phenomenal success for the company has been in the iOS range of products that began with the iPhone, iPod Touch and now iPad. As of 2011, Apple is the largest technology firm in the world, with annual revenues of more than $60 billion."

So the problem has nothing at all to do with copyright issues. The problem is an industry faced with technological changes to which it refuses to adapt and screaming copyright issues to cover their shortsighted and uncreative asses.

Let's face it, book publishers, those in the film and music industries and all those who had comfortable lives supporting them, are watching their market-share decline. That's life in the fast lane, but it doesn't come with a guarantee and certainly is not either cured or saved by Congress (once again) selling their influence to the highest private industry bidder.

According to what SOPA explains as necessary, you or I uploading a portion of a movie or Michael Jackson album to somewhere or someone such as Youtube for free, will make us liable to a five year prison sentence. As a not-so-humorous aside, Michael Jackson's freaky doctor who actually killed Michael with a drug overdose is doing four years for that crime.

Ah well, life is stranger than fiction in its unlimited permutations, but the buddy-buddy relationship between big-business and the United States Congress relies on money flowing in one direction and targeted legislation in the other. That free-speech lobby The Guardian mentioned may as well be the lobby of your nearby Motel 6 for all the hearing it gets in the legislative halls of Congress. Not that that's not important--I'm a firm believer in squeaking when my tail has been stepped upon, but to equate a squeak with a roar is to confuse citizens with corporations.

Oops, I forgot our Supreme Court already settled that issue by stifling the public squeak and seating the corporate roar front and center.

In any event, should either The Guardian or Wikipedia take umbrage to my use of their content without written permission (which is what the fine print already requires), even though I have attributed the stuff quoted, if SOPA prevails, I shall be off to the slammer. Not only that, my devoted reader, but you shan't even be aware of the loss--my site will simply go dark and that will be that.

Imagine the irony of The Dark Side of the Moon going dark.

DISASTER PLANS THAT DON'T BOTHER TO ANTICIPATE DISASTER

2010-05-08T03:40:00.000-07:00

It’s been a week now since Pressure grows for action by BP was reported by Steve Mufson and Mike Shear of the Washington Post. A week of too little too late
.

The BP of interest is British Petroleum, the guys who brought you an Exxon Valdez redux, this time on the Gulf of Mexico. The Gulf is actually a more serious matter environmentally because, as its name would imply, it’s pretty much a closed bowl, a super-sized teacup.

Additionally to that (and certainly not through any fault of BP) the Gulf fishery is already seriously threatened, due to agricultural runoff. Currently, the area over which the fishery is essentially dead covers some 8,500 square miles. Poor old, beautiful and historic New Orleans. Down to a single Fortune 500 company headquarters as the Mississippi shipping moved north, victim of an entire coastal way of life gone dead, then Hurricane Katrina and now an oil spill disaster.

According to Mufson and Shear;

BP's own exploration plan, submitted to federal regulators in February 2009, minimized the danger of a spill. The company said "it is unlikely that an accidental oil spill release would occur from the proposed activities." While it acknowledged that a spill could "cause impacts to wetlands" and to beaches, it added that "due to the distance to shore (48 miles) and the response capabilities that would be implemented, no significant adverse impacts are expected." It said any effects on fish or shellfish would be "sub-lethal."

Yup. And now the ‘response capabilities’ are not sufficiently responsive. Surprise, surprise.

Coast Guard Commandant Thad Allen said in an interview Friday that the company's plans for responding to oil spills did not address the complete failure of equipment on the seafloor designed to prevent a blowout of the sort that took place on the massive drilling rig.

"We're breaking new ground here. It's hard to write a plan for a catastrophic event that has no precedent, which is what this was," Allen said, defending the company against not writing a response for "what could never be in a plan, what you couldn't anticipate."

Hogwash. If BP can design a plan, they can anticipate complete failure of installed equipment. That’s what a plan is. That’s how a plan differs from a pipe dream. The BP drilling platform hovered a full mile above the sea floor into which it was drilling. It was (before it blew up) a floating rig, turning a mile of drill pipe before it ever hit its target. We don’t have centuries of drilling history upon which to estimate possibilities . . . offshore drilling is a relatively new technology.

Now, the Department of Interior is lining up to cover its backside as well.

Hammond Eve, who did environmental impact studies of offshore drilling for the Interior Department's Minerals Management Service, said the federal agency never planned for response to an oil spill of this size. "We never imagined that it would happen because the safety measures were supposed to work and prevent it from happening," he said.

He added that the MMS began from the "premise that if something like this happened, that it would be shut down fairly soon and a discrete amount of oil would be released and these cleanup measures would begin and you would never end up with a situation like this."

They began with a faulty and ridiculous premise, and then failed to plan for a possibility below that premise.

Seems to me I’ve heard this one before. Wall Street built a derivative investment scheme that was so wildly profitable that they turned a blind eye to the possibility that housing prices might just fall. That over exuberance (Alan Greenspan’s definition) damned near sunk the planet economically and may yet do so.

If BP were an individual, it would be in deeper water than the length of its drilling pipe. But BP, like all corporations, chooses corporate limited liability when it serves them and corporate ‘personhood’ when that choice is appealing. You and I are not offered that choice when we kill someone or overwhelm the environment. We cannot ruin someone economically or foul their living space without the force of law coming down on our individual necks.

Corporations can and do. Our Supreme Court supports them in this, even though a main author of our vaunted Constitution warned against it. Experienced as he was in corporate colonialism from the then British corporations, chartered by the crown to do business in North America, Thomas Jefferson wrote;

I hope we shall... crush in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations which dare already to challenge our government in a trial of strength, and bid defiance to the laws of our country.

We have not done so.

Perhaps we will. Perhaps, with the egregious bulldozing of a once thriving economy, the off-shoring of every job that could be sent elsewhere, the continued environmental destruction and the yet to be reckoned-with loosened purse strings of corporate political support, we will yet come to our sense and find truth in Jefferson’s warnings and rein in the foolishness of corporate personhood.

Perhaps not.

But, at the very least, we can reject the chimera of disaster plans that profitably and conveniently turn their backs on the possibility of things gone wrong when it serves the corporate profit to do so.

READING THE DOLMA LEAVES

2010-05-01T05:17:00.000-07:00

Dolmades is that lovely Greek dish of stuffed grape leaves. But all is not well in Greece these days, as more is politically and economically stuffed than dolma. The Greek legislative process led to grand programs, unaccounted investment, outright fraud, a government Ponzi scheme and . . . you guessed it . . . the man on the street left to clean up the mess.

Without the slightest irony, the Washington Post headlines;

Stocks slump as Greece debt downgraded to junk

The downgrade fanned investors' doubts that the proposed economic reforms in Greece will go far enough to prevent the country from spiraling into even deeper trouble.

Goldman Sachs contributed to and egged the Greek Government into their current mess. What a surprise. Further along in the article, its perseverant WaPo reporters opine;

A central question is whether the government will be able to enact the reforms.

Something to ponder in the grape-leaves as we struggle with our own economic reform bill the Republicans have ungraciously (and finally) loosed upon the Senate. There was a time, dare I say it . . . ?

It took 205 years for the federal deficit to reach nearly $1 trillion. That deficit amounted to $974 billion when Ronald Reagan assumed office in 1981. Eight years later, he faded off into the sunset, leaving us $2.6 trillion, having just about tripled what a Civil War, two World Wars and numerous ongoing economic catastrophes had thus far wrought upon us.

This, during eight years of peace. Yet he's a Republican hero, even though he placed the football on the tee for the kickoff into financial oblivion.

Reagan deregulated everything he could lay his hands on and set the stage for the savings and loan debacle of the eighties, to be followed by the worldwide financial meltdown of the early years after 2000. But by god he never raised taxes.

We raised, instead, a government and a nation built upon debt. In the vernacular, "How's that workin' out fer yuh, Sarah Palin?"

It's not a Republican or Democrat thing, in all fairness, although it's interesting to realize the last president to balance the budget and pay down a portion of national debt, was Bill Clinton. Yeah, the guy of the stained blue dress, who had a reverence for ethical governance, if not ethical personal behavior. What a joke on us all.

In this evangelical nation of ours, we haven't had a stained blue dress since then, yet the indelible stain of national debt now stands at near $13 trillion. We don't really know the true number, any more than Greeks know, as their disaster grows by each week's numbing revelations. Our $13 trillion doesn't even count unfunded Medicare, secret military budgets, 'black' CIA funding, Social Security red ink and future bailouts to bankrupt states like California. Who the hell knows what the actual number is that we ignore?

But it's interesting that many of we ordinary folk quietly cheered on the sidelines as Iceland flatly refused (by public referendum) to transfer their banker's debt to the shoulders of Icelandic citizens. Damned right, we agreed.

Its 320,000 citizens were to be saddled with some $20,000 for each and every one of them, because of banker fraud. Iceland collectively gave the finger to that greed and avarice, throwing in a volcanic eruption for good measure. Bless 'em. No harm, no foul.

Here in America of course, it's an entirely different situation. We bailed our banks with hardly a murmur and apparently are comfortable with our personal share of national debt standing at $41,700 and counting upward, always upward. The National Debt increases by an average of $4.07 billion a day. Thirteen bucks for each of us. Who cares? Chump change.

Even so, thirteen bucks a day, over a year amounts to $4,745, which really isn't change and gives a new meaning to chump.

Is your family the scrubbed-faced, smiling average of four? Sit down to dinner tonight and talk about the $166,800.00 you and the kids owe and that this heart-stopping figure will grow by $19,000.00 this year. Yet you and the wife just had a chat recently about family credit cards getting close to maxed out.

Your family has already unknowingly been maxed out.

Forget the tea-leaves. Read the dolma-leaves instead and ponder the Greek prescience of an American collapse.

PUTTING OUT THE GARBAGE

2010-04-25T09:54:00.000-07:00

Interesting place, America.

Each year we bury over 400 million tons of municipal garbage. Over a ton per person. Forty pounds a week for every one of us, out to the curb. At the same time, we're publicly and politically in a dither over alternative energy sources. How much sense does it make to dig holes in America and shove garbage into them? Decomposing, it leaches into the groundwater or escapes as methane.

A lot of what we pitch out (plastic and such) is, essentially, here with us forever. We're creating a sort of kitchen-sink time capsule for the survivors of our species to dig up in future millennia and ponder.

Meanwhile, over in good old decadent, outmoded, backward and irrelevant Europe, according to a recent article by Elisabeth Rosenthal of the New York Times;

Waste incineration plants "have become both the mainstay of garbage disposal and a crucial fuel source across Denmark, from wealthy exurbs . . . to Copenhagen’s downtown area. Their use has not only reduced the country’s energy costs and reliance on oil and gas, but also benefited the environment, diminishing the use of landfills and cutting carbon dioxide emissions."

Yeah, been there, done that. Who wants a smoky old garbage-burner in their neighborhood?

"The plants run so cleanly that many times more dioxin is now released from home fireplaces and backyard barbecues than from incineration."

New York City, meantime, trucks ten thousand tons of garbage a day to landfills in Ohio, Pennsylvania and as far as South Carolina. Who could possibly have imagined that a Hefty Bag, dragged to the curb on West 115th Street would take a vacation it's creator would envy, to the sunny South?

So, essentially, we in America are spending money, while the Danes reduce their costs, as well as their dependency on oil and gas. They make money and lower costs, while we pay for expensive trucking. Hmmm. Something going on there that's worth learning.

All is not rotten in Denmark.

"Denmark now has 29 such plants, serving 98 municipalities in a country of 5.5 million people, and 10 more are planned or under construction. Across Europe, there are about 400 plants, with Denmark, Germany and the Netherlands leading the pack in expanding them and building new ones.

"By contrast, no new waste-to-energy plants are being planned or built in the United States, the Environmental Protection Agency says — even though the federal government and 24 states now classify waste that is burned this way for energy as a renewable fuel, in many cases eligible for subsidies."

How does that happen?

From a 'follow-the-money' perspective, who profits and who loses by the high cost of landfill disposal? In 2008, NYC spent one and a quarter billion dollars to collect and dispose of its garbage, including $400 million to truck it away and not a penny was returned for the trouble. The booty is divided among national hitters such as Houston's Waste Management, Inc. and a plethora of mob related haulage companies.

Waste-wise we're caught in a wasteland of state and local rules, political payoffs, industry clout and endlessly complicated zoning variations. The 'not in my backyard' mentality has deep roots and is not at all helped by the growing (and justified) distrust of politicians.

Meanwhile, we lay out the dough to haul it all away, instead of getting something back--but hey--it's only heat and light. There may be no free lunch in this world, but it's a shame to get stuck with the bill when you never even sat down at the table.

Don't want an energy generating incinerator in your neighborhood? Think again:

HORSHOLM, Denmark — The lawyers and engineers who dwell in an elegant enclave here are at peace with the hulking neighbor just over the back fence: a vast energy plant that burns thousands of tons of household garbage and industrial waste, round the clock. . . Far cleaner than conventional incinerators, this new type of plant converts local trash into heat and electricity. Dozens of filters catch pollutants, from mercury to dioxin, that would have emerged from its smokestack only a decade ago. . . With all these innovations, Denmark now regards garbage as a clean alternative fuel rather than a smelly, unsightly problem. And the incinerators, known as waste-to-energy plants, have acquired considerable cachet as communities like Horsholm vie to have them built.

Lawyers and engineers in agreement . . . a sort of miracle in itself. In America, the main waste disposal sticking points are among lawyers, litigating to death any profitable (and meaningful) attempt to progress along a path that's supportive to energy independence.

This one lowers the cost of municipal garbage pickup, gives you heat, provides light and lowers your taxes.

What's not to like?

NO NEED TO 'TURN OVER ROCKS,' JUST CHECK THE VIOLATIONS ALREADY ON RECORD

2010-04-08T05:08:00.000-07:00

Union-buster Massey Energy cited 2118 times for safety violations
by Tim Wheeler, April 7, 2010

Standing near the portal of the Massey Energy mine where at least 25 miners have died in a deadly explosion, Joe Main, assistant labor secretary for Mine Safety and Health, vowed to "turn over every rock" to get to the bottom of the cause of the April 5 tragedy.

That's a lot of rocks, Joe, when the tally-sheet of violations already in your hands totals over two thousand, just for this mine. Maybe you ought to leave the portal-standing to someone who matters to mine safety.

Possibly, you could get back to the office and become relevant.
Remember Stan Suboleski? A former Commissioner of yours, who now sits on Massey Energy's Board.

They keeping a chair warm for you, Joe?

Since 2005, Massey Energy as a whole, has been cited for 38,997 safety violations in its 35 underground and 12 mountaintop removal mines.
MSHA "proposed" fines totaling $43.5 million for those violations but the company contested the vast majority of these fines, 85 percent in 2007, for example. MSHA, then packed with former coal company executives, backed down. Massey, as one critic put it, "got away, literally, with murder," paying a combined total of only $11.8 million over that five year period.

Why the 'proposed' fines, Joe?

What's the pointof even having a Cabinet position that includes Mine Safety and Health, when it trades violations for money and doesn't even require compliance?

On average, Massey Energy has amassed 1,142 violations per mine over the past five years. Maybe it's time to require 30 or 45-day mine closings, with Massey paying their miners during that period, so miners don't go hungry for violations that put them at risk.

Deaths are headline makers. Injuries and health issues merely pile up without a whimper from authorities.

Bureau of Labor Statistics) More serious injuries and illnesses generally require days away from work to give the worker time to recuperate. . . The rate in bituminous coal underground mining was 444.7, and the rate in anthracite mining was 358.6 per 10,000 full-time workers.

There are 47,000 coal miners working today. 20,900 coal miners suffered injury in 2006.

"Our creativity on safety is second to none," Blankenship (Massey Energy CEO) said to CNN in a low drawl on Tuesday.

Well, I guess that says it all on the part of Don Blankenship, who reported $24 million in salary and stock options in 2007

Even in a low drawl, creativity is the rich man's way to avoid compliance.

CHINESE STYLE MINE SAFETY HERE IN AMERICA AS WELL

2010-04-07T13:51:00.000-07:00

latimes.com
West Virginia coal mine rescue crews race against time

Attempts to contact 4 missing miners prove fruitless. Workers drill a new ventilation hole at site where 25 men were killed Monday; governor says there's only 'a sliver of hope' of finding survivors.

By Kim Geiger and Bob Drogin, reporting from Washington and Montcoal, W. Va.

Officials said the explosion occurred at 3:02 p.m. Monday as 31 miners were coming off the day shift. The blast knocked out lights, communications and ventilation fans, and created a windstorm that roared up shafts to the surface, shooting rocks, dirt and debris into the air.

. . . The cause of the explosion is undetermined, although the mine owner, Massey Energy Co., has come under increasing fire for a spotty record of safety operations at Upper Big Branch, including 10 citations this year for inadequate ventilation of explosive gases.

Several members of Congress vowed to hold hearings into the disaster and seek tougher mine safety rules.

"Clearly we must get to the bottom of what happened, how, and who was responsible," Sen. Robert Byrd (D-W. Va.), a former coal miner, said in a statement. "And we must and will hold those parties responsible."

To which my friend, Christopher Cook responds in an e-mail he titles 'Coal Miner's Slaughter":

So, at least 25 miners die in a mine owned by Massey Energy Company, a coal mining company with a poor worker safety and environmental record.

Well, let's see who's on the board of directors of Massey Energy Company. Let's just take a peek at the corporate website...

Hmmm, here's Bobby Inman, of Austin, Texas, a former Director of the U.S. National Security Agency and Deputy Director of the CIA. That's interesting.

And here's General Robert H. “Doc” Foglesong, U.S. Air Force (retired), most recently Commander, U.S. Air Forces in Europe, and former Vice Chief of Staff, Headquarters U.S. Air Force, Washington, D.C. Geez, I wonder why he's on the board?

And don't forget Lady Judge, also chair of the board of the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority, formerly a Commissioner of the United States Securities and Exchange Commission, and now a Member of the Trilateral Commission.

And surprise surprise, here's Stanley C. Suboleski, a former Commissioner of the Federal Mine Safety and Health Review Commission. Wonder why he's there.

Well, it's good to know the company has people running it who really really REALLY care about miners, ain't it?

The almost simultaneous Chinese mine disaster in Xiangning claimed nine lives in a mine that had 50 safety violations in a single month.

Well, we're no China, thank god. Our capitalist adventurer (with other people's lives), Massey Energy, had a mere ten citations this year, all of them for inadequate ventilation of explosive gases. Who would ever guess a 'massive explosion' would occur?

Certainly not Stanley Suboleski, who failed his constituency as Mine Safety Commissioner and took a fat-cat seat on the Massey Board. I wonder how well he sleeps these recent nights?

The difference (I guess) is that there will be executions in China.

AMERICA WANTS AN UNSCRIPTED OBAMA

2010-04-03T02:29:00.000-07:00

Obama Attracts More Supporters Than Opponents at Maine Event
Maine Public Broadcasting Network Reported By: Josie Huang

President Obama used his first trip to Maine since he took office to tout the benefits of the newly-enacted health care overhaul. His talk of expanding affordable health coverage was embraced inside the Portland Expo, but outside, protesters accused him of leading a government takeover of health care and individual rights.

The president's visit took on the feel of a campaign event, with many ardent supporters of his filling the Expo, after waiting hours for tickets the day before.

They listened as the president took aim at Republicans and pundits who criticize the law. "Every single day since I signed reform law, there's been another poll or headline that says, 'Nation still divided on health care reform. Polls haven't changed yet. Well, yeah. It's just happened last week!"

. . . He said by 2014, small businesses and the uninsured will be able to purchase affordable coverage through a health insurance exchange. Some buyers will qualify for tax credits.

"Now, this what everybody's been hollering about as the end of freedom, and now that it's passed, they're already promising, 'We're going to repeal it.'?They're going to run on a platform of repeal in November.?And, my attitude is, go for it," the president said.

President Obama's background and speaking skills make him the most skilled 'communicator' since Ronald Reagan.

Yet, unlike Reagan, who was an actor, rather than an educator and a lawyer, Obama has thus far failed to project the homeyness with which Reagan captured America's attention and, some would say, their hearts.

We forgave Reagan his rhetorical bumps of the head, as he covered a lack of depth and occasional lapses of syntax with that famous grin and a charming sense of self-deprecation. By comparison, Obama makes no such mistakes, with a razor sharp and instant recall of detail not seen since Bill Clinton.

Yet, he's thus far largely failed to use this most formidable weapon--throwing away the teleprompters and leaving his speech writers behind to connect more intimately with his audience. He's at his best in that format.

Compare his State of the Union speech or Nobel Peace Prize acceptance with his appearance before the Republican caucus, where he took on political opponents for a four-hour live, televised, unscripted defense of his policies. That's his strength. That's where he's most comfortable and effective. That's where America respects and admires him.

Obama's weekly video address to the nation, a kind of video edition of the FDR Fireside Chat, is scripted--and flat, because of the speechifying.

Toss it out, Mr. President, except for the most formal occasions.

We love you best in conversation.

THE DOGS THAT WON'T BARK

2010-03-23T05:48:00.000-07:00

Chris Cillizza writes in the Washington Post:

2012 Republicans line up in opposition to Obama health care bill

1. Making clear that the recently-passed health care bill will be a major point of debate in the 2012 presidential race, Republicans eying a run for the top spot sought to one-up each other with their condemnations of the bill.

The country at large is of a hundred minds about healthcare, wanting it for all citizens (by a wide majority) and unhappy with what they have been given (by a lesser but significant number).

Me too. Put me on that list.

But, for me at least, lowering the entry bar to Medicare is a moderate but sufficient answer to my desire to see a 'public option' survive in some form. On the abortion issue, private 'add on' insurance is available and no doubt insurers will pick up on that, so I'm OK. Not yet dancing on the table about the legislation, but OK.

Interestingly, Republicans are setting their attack dogs loose against, essentially, every issue that connects the current 40% who no longer consider themselves Democrat or Republican. That's a damned big number to be factored into the last four elections, all of which were decided by micro-percentages and during which 'swing voters' didn't approach 10%, much less forty.

The base for both parties is less and less relevant. Dedicated party voters may hold their noses, but they're not going to vote for the other guy. The self proclaimed 40% are made up of those who have thrown up their hands in horror of their own party's inability to govern.

They are the key to the upcoming mid-terms and, if Republicans think they will respond to a no-solution, no-protection, no-alternative style of fear based politics, I think they are badly mistaken.

Come mid-term elections, those dogs simply will not bark.

I personally think both parties will be punished, as they well deserve, in a more random and unfathomable way.

BROOKING NO EXCUSES FROM ALAN GREENSPAN

2010-03-18T20:29:00.000-07:00

Pardon the headline pun, but there is hardly a more comfortable place to float a re-writing of your own personal history than the conservative enclave known as the Brookings Institute. The Greenmeister laid his golden egg yesterday at that worthy institution, a forty-eight page paper that expressed some remorse. And yet, wetting a finger to the friendly winds in the audience, the ex-Fed-Chief who ate the American economy pleaded that "little could be done to identify a bubble before it burst, much less to pop it." Except of course, those who forecast it, those who made billions short-selling it and those who pleaded for investigations of the likes of Bernie Madoff, Lehman Brothers and AIG. An even halfway hungry dog might have wandered away from his food-bowl long enough to sniff out itinerant workers buying $700,000 homes. Forget the family spaniel's instincts, Alan Greenspan was sanguine as hedge fund managers copped $100 million a year, stock prices reflected forty times earnings ratios and Goldman Sachs shorted (inside the company) the same investments it was touting (outside the company). A hell of a lot can be done to identify a bubble, Alan, but precious little was done on your watch. At the end of this article there are links to articles I wrote about Mr. Greenspan from 2002 to 2007 (leaving the later entries as too close to the current history). If a dummy like me was on the scent, how does our top economic policymaker make a claim to ignorance?

“We had been lulled into a sense of complacency by the only modestly negative economic aftermaths of the stock market crash of 1987 and the dot-com boom,” Mr. Greenspan wrote. “Given history, we believed that any declines in home prices would be gradual. Destabilizing debt problems were not perceived to arise under those conditions,” the great man droned from the lectern.

Lulled? Goddammit, your only job was to not be lulled.

“Unless there is a societal choice to abandon dynamic markets and leverage for some form of central planning, I fear that preventing bubbles will in the end turn out to be infeasible,” Mr. Greenspan wrote. “Assuaging their aftermath seems the best we can hope for.”

Societal choice? Where are you Al, on Planet Greenspan or back in your study boning up on Ayn Rand again? Society hasn't had a choice in our American history as it relates to dynamic markets, except to buy their food, clothing, homes and cars at whatever best price they are offeredby the central planning of industry..

ARRIVAL TIME, 2010; A VIABLE THIRD-PARTY OPTION

2010-03-16T08:47:00.000-07:00

No matter how you break it down, or whose numbers you care to adhere to, a growing number of Americans are leaving their Republican or Democrat tags to declare themselves independent. Most figures hover at approximately 40%. Two-party dominance isn’t working anymore, if it ever really did. The swing from Republican to Democratic control in Washington merely serves to further polarize hard-line subservience to one ‘base’ or another, leaving the un-served 40% adrift and frustrated. If ever there was a time for a serious third-party organization, it is now. Logjam confrontations between the radical right and liberal left isolates conservative Democrats and liberal Republicans, leaving no room under the closed umbrella for authentic bi-partisanism. Majority and minority leaders in both parties demand a more and more isolationist party-line rationale, firing up their respective bases and hoping for, depending upon electoral majority the next time around, while the nation suffers the consequences. Bipartisan government is, increasingly, a sham and a fraud. You are not well represented by it, nor am I. Our two-party system is a staggering, tired horse. The answer, I suggest, is a move toward coalition politics rather than bipartisan confrontation. Coalition is, by definition, ‘an organization of people involved in a pact or treaty’ and neither liberal Republicans nor conservative Democrats are able to serve in this capacity, due to fear of retaliation from their majority-minority whips or ideological base. Only a viable third party will suffice, one that truly represents the 40% of Americans who have become, essentially, a ‘swing constituency.’ But how to do it? The list of failed attempts is long; the Constitution Party of 1992, the Green Party of 1996 and the Libertarian Party of 1971. Ross Perot ran as an independent and fired up some interest in the 1992 presidential election, the self-destructed. Ralph Nader is a perennial candidate, but these candidacies are more spoiler than useful and the problem, I would argue, is the very polarization and frustration of candidates with no chance to win, but who may draw enough votes to prevent one of the leading candidates from winning. We don’t need a third presidential candidate. The problem lies not with presidents. The problem is (and remains) endemic within the Congress. The unrepresented 40% do not need—and likely would not rally behind—a third-party presidential candidate. They want representation. A viable third-party must not be anchored by a presidential candidate. The time may come, some decades down the road, when that possibility may arise, but that time is not (nor should it be) now. Yet the disenfranchised 40% is no wild-eyed sliver group. Attribute the remaining 60% however you like, they cannot govern without listening to (and satisfying) the third party, essentially extending representation to the unrepresented. I accede that 40% unrepresented does not guarantee 40% elected. Pick your own figure between twenty and fifty percent, it’s still a force to be reckoned with. So, let’s suppose. Let’s go through a scenario that might actually have a positive effect on national politics and, perhaps, eventually bleed into state and local governance as well. Here are some ‘what ifs’ to start the ball rolling: What if this supposed party held a National Platform Convention, outlining specific party positions on the hot-button issues 40% of Americans feel most deeply about? Perhaps those might include, but not be limited to; • Putting aside the rhetoric of feel-good (hope, change) for determining the possible (specific, targeted, identifiable) • Disconnecting linkage between lobbyists and legislation • Eschewing all campaign contribution from lobbyists, PACs and special interest groups • Junking the current tax code in favor of a simplified system that removes all exemptions, creating a single-page and equitable substitute • Including unrestricted Medicare as a viable public option to healthcare legislation • Calling for a return to constitutional democracy, including privacy issues and regard for America as a nation under law • Creatively addressing immigration issues • Taking a stand on Dwight Eisenhower’s warning over an uncontrolled military-industrial complex • Proposing guidelines for economic oversight and recovery • Prioritizing the State Department as a more independent and professional arm of foreign affairs • Attending to the long-ignored subject of neglected nationwide infrastructure • Addressing energy independence as a capital and labor-intensive asset • Policies centered around the recovery of American business and industry at home, where jobs are needed Those are some starters. You will have more and so must they. What if 435 candidates for the House of Representatives and 100 Senatorial candidates were financed by the third-party in national elections, essentially running on that Party Platform? What if only 20% of them were elected in the first election cycle? The political scene in Washington would be dramatically changed for the better. No longer would 60 (either Democrat or Republican) Senators be required to keep the wheels of governance rolling. The iron grip of majority and minority whips in congress would be loosened, if not entirely broken. Hard-core bases on either side of the aisle would be equally diminished, as the dominance and purpose of ‘all or nothing’ political stalemate became untenable. Look at the power of a single swing-vote (Joe Lieberman as an example). Imagine twenty such Senators. Each Representative and Senator would now face two contenders for their seat after the primary dust had settled, greatly reducing scare campaigns and the demonizing of the ‘other’ party. Presuming that issues change (as they do) and that light and air are good for the body politic (as it is), few hard right or hard left candidates would survive in an environment where there was only ‘the other guy’ to run against. How many of us have voted, holding our noses, because one candidate or another was simply not possible to vote for? Personally, over six decades in the voting booth, that occasion has delivered my unenthusiastic vote a number of times. How many more have simply stayed away from the polls. Based on the number of eligible voters disdaining national elections, that frightening fact continues as a tragically downward spiral. But how would a truly viable third party find funding? Who’d put up the dough? Once one concentrates on congressional candidates (instead of presidential aspirants), the math gets pretty simple and the chances of success improve dramatically. The average cost of candidacy for a Representative is one million dollars; the average for a Senator, four million. A concerted national TV campaign, to drive home the third party’s Political Platform, would significantly lower these individual costs of campaigning. But let’s leave the numbers as they are and guesstimate. • $15 million to run a national convention and establish a platform (Democrats, 2008) • $435 million for Representative races • $400 million for Senate races • $1,000 million ($1 billion) for a national Party Platform TV campaign ($2.5 billion was spent in 2008, but that included both party candidates, as well as their presidential campaigns) So, the prize is out there for under $2 billion, but who is to pick up the cost if we conclude that political contribution equates to disguised (or undisguised) and undue influence? A rich patriot? A group of such public-spirited men and women? Remember also that costs are not one-time, as they continue to roll on through election cycles yet to come. But one presumes significant growth of small-donor contributions as (and only if) the third party’s walk matches its talk. No matter for this discussion. It’s pocket-change for certain individuals, if one can but find such patriots interested in the rescue of American-style democracy from its sick bed. Bill Gates? Warren Buffet? Alice Walton? Michael Bloomberg? Ted Turner? A coalition of these worthy men and women, to give birth to and nurture a true and elegant version of coalition politics?

“For money you can have everything it is said. No, that is not true. You can buy food, but not appetite; medicine, but not health; soft beds, but not sleep; knowledge but not intelligence; glitter, but not comfort; fun, but not pleasure; acquaintances, but not friendship; servants, but not faithfulness; grey hair, but not honor; quiet days, but not peace. The shell of all things you can get for money. But not the kernel. That cannot be had for money" -Arne Garborg, writer (1851-1924)

What I suggest is not the shell, but the kernel. If troubled times bring forth great men and women, what times are more troubled in America than now? Troubled, not so much economically or spiritually; these are things that come and go and we will recover to an unknown extent. But we are off the rails in the ability to govern ourselves, and failing test after test of the very sense of purpose that made us the enviable place on this planet to meet the aspirations of human hope. The time, if ever, is now. The resources and that deep American need to be the best we are capable of being is there. Can, or will, such a thing happen? Why not?

GIVE IT UP ON ALL THE FOX-BASHING

2010-03-14T09:40:00.000-07:00

Why don't honest journalists take on Roger Ailes and Fox News? By Howell Raines Sunday, March 14, 2010; B05 One question has tugged at my professional conscience throughout the year-long congressional debate over health-care reform, and it has nothing to do with the public option, portability or medical malpractice. It is this: Why haven't America's old-school news organizations blown the whistle on Roger Ailes, chief of Fox News, for using the network to conduct a propaganda campaign against the Obama administration -- a campaign without precedent in our modern political history? Oh come now. Unprecedented? The ex-executive editor of the New York Times, suddenly having a professional conscience after all those years of Bush passes on his watch? In the words of another Raines (Claude, in Casablanca), "I'm shocked, Howard, simply shocked." . . . Through clever use of the Fox News Channel and its cadre of raucous commentators, Ailes has overturned standards of fairness and objectivity that have guided American print and broadcast journalists since World War II. Yet, many members of my profession seem to stand by in silence as Ailes tears up the rulebook that served this country well as we covered the major stories of the past three generations, from the civil rights revolution to Watergate to the Wall Street scandals. Maybe we ought to give the journalism profession a pass on Wall Street. Investigative journalism pretty much slept through the run-up to that--and then ran off to the wrong fire while laying blame. They are still sleeping through any meaningful investigation of our paid-off Congress, bagging money to prevent significant health care and financial oversight. So, Roger Ailes and the Republicans are giving the public what it wants in the place of journalism, an American Idol approach to issues. Who can blame them? There are no Walter Cronkites and Edward R. Murrows left today, and it's certainly not because the need has abandoned us. . . . My great fear, however, is that some journalists of my generation who once prided themselves on blowing whistles and afflicting the comfortable have also been intimidated by Fox's financial power and expanding audience, as well as Ailes's proven willingness to dismantle the reputation of anyone who crosses him. You're the guy, if memory serves, who beat the drum for advocacy journalism at the Times, a form of reportage 'intended to be factual, and thus distinguished from propaganda.' How'd that work out for you? Now it seems your goal is to drive a stake through the heart (difficult target) of Rupert Murdoch. Let me lay another scenario at your feet. We once had independent and powerful newspapers run by independent and powerful publishers (think San Francisco's Hearst and Chicago's McCormick). They were not always to our liking and were self-serving to the core, but at least they did not control 200 papers, 500 radio stations or 20-30 television outlets. Murdoch is not the reason for that continuing disaster, but the entirely predictable result of it. As jobs in journalism shrink, what reporter is going to piss off a man he may be called to work for, or a major advertiser (or stockholder) in his newspaper? I know you don't like Murdoch, but was the New York Times ever seriously likely (even under your steady hand) to pop an unflattering story about Carlos Slim Helu? Wall Street ran down the economy, the Bush White House trampled the Constitution, lobbyists control legislation and we have become as corrupt as a banana-republic. The current presidency is run down like a rabbit in the road, while we all stand by with our thumbs up our ass in the middle of a stampede. But it is not the fault of Wall Street, Bush, lobbyists or our thumbs. We worked very hard for decades to get here. We deregulated everything in sight, including Tom DeLay's and Newt Gingrich's final assault on what little integrity the Congress had left. If we are to "round up the usual suspects," they will be found in each of our bathroom mirrors. Take a look, Howell.

LABELS NEEDED FOR LUDICROUS LEGISLATION

2010-03-06T07:12:00.000-08:00

Labels urged for foods that can choke kids By Shelby Lin Erdman, CNN February 22, 2010 (CNN) -- It's a silent, often overlooked danger that kills dozens of children every year, and it's easily preventable: choking to death on food. Now the largest pediatrician group in the United States is calling for warning labels on foods that pose the highest risk for choking. The American Academy of Pediatrics estimates at least one child in the United States dies every five days from choking on food. The academy rates choking as the leading cause of death among children 14 and younger. . . lists hot dogs as the highest risk food for young kids. The American Academy of Pediatrics has, in this instance become more of an Academy of Histrionics. They're not even close on their statistics, nor does CNN (apparently) do the simple cross-check usually associated with accurate reportage. One every five days. 73 kids annually. Not even close to a 'leading killer.' 0-1 years: * Developmental and genetic conditions that were present at birth * Sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) (4,895 in 1992) * All conditions associated with prematurity and low birth weight 1-4 years: * Accidents * Developmental and genetic conditions that were present at birth * Cancer 5-14 years: * Accidents * Cancer * Homicide . . . The group is issuing a new policy statement calling on the government and manufacturers to implement a food labeling system warning parents of these risks. One can but wonder what foods might make the cut. It is, in fact, hard to think of a food that has not been pulverized beyond recognition (salt and sugar added) upon which a kid might not choke. . . . "This is a call to action," said Dr. Gary Smith, a pediatrician and immediate past chairman of the Committee on Injury, Violence and Poison Prevention of the American Academy of Pediatrics. A call without a purpose. Tell me, Gary, to whom are you calling and over what? Celery? Pork chops? Sugar-coated Cheerios? Maybe a Tweet would be more appropriate whenever you see a kid snarfing down the crust of bread its mother handed to it in the stroller. . . . "For many years, the U.S. has protected children from choking on toys. We have legislation. We have regulation. We have voluntary standards. We have labeling. We have recall programs," said Smith, also director of the Center for Injury, Research and Policy at Nationwide Children's Hospital in Columbus, Ohio. Those programs are in place to pinpoint unsafe manufacture. A hot-dog is a hot-dog. . . . "But we don't have a consistent set of measures that have been put together for prevention of choking on food." Yes we do. Those measures are called common-sense. We once actually had parents in this country who practiced that nearly lost art. If, in those bygone days, a parent had the temerity to admit their child had (or had nearly) choked on a hot-dog, they would be told quietly not to exercise such questionable judgment. The federal government would most likely have been left out of the equation. I know you miss all those symposiums you no longer attend, since your chairmanship became an immediate past-chairmanship. I understand the pain and withdrawal. But leave us, unimpeded, to our hot-dogs and the meaningful debate between the Chicago and New York style of presentation. And, for god's sake, Dr. Smith, find a meaningful line of work.

SCHUMER TRIES TO 'LEGISLATE BACK' OUR LOST MANUFACTURING BASE

2010-03-04T06:39:00.000-08:00

Four Democratic senators aim to halt stimulus wind project By Dan Eggen Washington Post Staff Writer Thursday, March 4, 2010; A06 A group of Democratic senators called Wednesday for the government to halt a federal stimulus program aimed at building wind farms and other clean-energy projects, arguing that too much of the money spent so far has gone to create jobs overseas. The Obama administration and wind-energy advocates strongly disputed the criticism by Sen. Charles E. Schumer (N.Y.) and three other Democrats, saying that most of the jobs under the Energy Department program have been created in the United States, despite the dominance of foreign manufacturers in the green-technology sector. Ah yes, Chuck, it seems all that off-shoring of the American industrial base has come back to bite you in the ankle. Not a whimper about our disappeared manufacturing or heavy-industry sectors, nor a nod to the fact that Congress has waved goodbye to the American production of everything from toasters to bridge-steel. Yet wind-turbine engines are the straw that broke Chuck Schumer's back. . . . The dispute marks a rare public split among Democrats over the $862 billion stimulus package, which the Obama administration and party leaders have defended as crucial to saving jobs and easing the recession's impact. Republicans have spent the past year attacking the package as a wasteful boondoggle. I submit that 'irony' is a more accurate word that 'boondoggle.' "Useless, wasteful and trivial" are hardly an accurate description of an effort to bring America back to a reasonable level of employment. The irony is, that a co-conspiratorial Congress has suddenly awakened from their lobbyist-inspired stupor to find that, by way of manufacturing, there is no 'there' there. No American worker is left to stimulate, without most of the dough going offshore.

Infrastructure? The Minneapolis bridge reconstruction was held up waiting for Japanese steel. Ditto sewer-pipe, electrical cable and even most of the drill-bits and motors.
Housing? You mean all that Chinese sheet-rock that's crumbling, or the imported formaldehyde-infested mobile home panels.
Retail? Hard to find a retail sector, from TVs and computers, to furniture and clothing that's not designed here and built in Taiwan or Indonesia.
Medicines and pharmaceutical? 72% manufactured off-shore.
Heavy machinery? More than half gone now, so Caterpillar and their like only get fifty-cents of the stimulus dollar.
Road-building? Those huge asphalt-laying machines are made in Germany. The asphalt comes from BP (British) and Shell (Dutch) companies.

. . . Schumer and the other lawmakers focused particular criticism at Cielo Wind Power of Austin, which has said it may apply for up to $450 million in stimulus funding for a massive wind farm that would be powered by turbines built in China. "It is a no-brainer that stimulus funds should only go to projects that create jobs in the United States rather than overseas," Schumer said. "These wind projects have a lot of merit, but the manufacturing should be happening here, not in China." You're a little late to the party, Chuck and for these past few decades you (along with your co-complainers) have been the smiling host. Now? Now you don't care for the list of attendees?

BEMOANING SENSIBLE BEHAVIOR--THE NEW ARGUMENT OF THE FECKLESS

2010-02-27T10:32:00.000-08:00

Germany's frugality bemoaned for inhibiting euro zone growth By Anthony Faiola Sunday, February 28, 2010; BERLIN -- Greek extravagance touched off the biggest crisis in the 11-year history of the euro. But the world's most ambitious monetary union faces a less obvious problem that might be even harder to lick -- German frugality. Well, that certainly is a problem that must be quickly stamped out, lest it lead us back to the good old days of a world in which being sensible and practical was a virtue. That damned Germany. World's largest exporter, a nation of 80 million whose heels are being nipped by a nation (China) sixteen times its size. . . . Yet in the years since, a significant part of economic growth in Germany, analysts say, was fueled by a surge of spending in Greece, Spain, Portugal and other European nations after they adopted the euro. In fact, a jump in sales of everything from BMW sedans to Miele washing machines in other parts of Europe helped make up for the lack of spending here in Germany -- where stagnant wages and a culture of conservative consumers has led to years of anemic domestic demand. Hmm. Yeah, analysts will certainly put things in perspective for us. If you have a wayward uncle, in hock up to his eyeballs, an analyst will caution you that it's not his problem, but yours, for not spending enough yourself. In a buy-now, pay-later (or never) world, it's the provider who is now at fault. And we swallow that crap, as if it were gospel. Nod our heads, agree and sink back in front of the 72" plasma screen. . . . A growing number of economists now say that must change to ensure the euro's survival. Maybe someone can explain to me why 'that must change.' The euro and the dollar have been abused, diffused and made irrelevant by the very forces economists want to reinstate. The euro and the dollar are exactly where they belong and are headed exactly where they deserve to head. Do these same economists belie the economic wisdom of currency trading? Have they suddenly abandoned their mantra of free markets, when markets prove free to wreck the value of their best loved currencies? What a joke. The British pound, American dollar and euro are in the dumper. Instead of building the environment that supports sound currencies, we profligate Westerners beg the strong to make themselves weak--to come down to our level. The strong just happen to be the Japanese, Chinese and Germans (even though the latter are suffering for trading their Deutschmark in for euros). . . . As a result of lopsided trade, Germany now enjoys a relationship with its partners in the euro not unlike that of China and the United States, with one acting as supplier and financier and the other as an overextended buyer. Case closed and stop all the whimpering. Interesting to me that Wal-Mart's heralded venture into Germany was a flop and they went scurrying back to Bentonville, Arkansas, wondering why they got their asses handed to them. Also interesting that Germany, unlike America, still actually makes something of value to export. We did that once and, presumably, tired of it as we discovered that the quick buck, the easy buck, was to brand a product and let Taiwan and China actually manufacture it. Much less factory dirt and grit under the cocktail-party fingernails that way. Rather than a lesson to be learned, our analysts and economists would rather bring the productive world down to our level than do the hard work of catching up. I wonder how that will work out for us?

WHISTLING PAST THE GRAVEYARD

2010-02-22T06:17:00.000-08:00

Here we go again, folks. This time it's CNN, but you can pick up this cheery, breathy forecasting foreplay on almost any front page in the country. Economists: Recovery is firmly on track By Chavon Sutton, staff reporter NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Leading economists are upbeat about the U.S. recovery, forecasting steady growth over the next two years as businesses grow and jobs return, according to a survey released Monday. "We see a healthy expansion under way, although it will take time to reduce economic slack and repair damaged balance sheets," said Lynn Reaser, president of the National Association for Business Economics, which conducted the survey of 48 top economic forecasters in late January and early February. And it may well be firmly on track, but the track is headed into the station at full throttle. These 'seers' and sayers of sooth are the same dudes who cheer-led at least three bubble economies and are now hip-deep in a fourth. Put down the fiddle, boys. Nero's already been there and done that, but Rome still burned. . . . forecast is for the economy to grow 3.1% in both 2010 and 2011, an estimate that is essentially unchanged from the 3.2% target in NABE's November survey. The group's estimate is a marked improvement from last year's survey, which had forecast that the economy would contract. Amazing. They don't predict three to three and a half, our economic booster-class shaves this shaky economy down to tenths of a percent. In the year between forecasts, investment banks have (once again) run off with all the money, while

Industry struggles, finally winding down their inventories, but with fewer customers than a year ago.
Unemployment is off the map if you include those, conveniently left off the roles, who have run past their benefits.
Mortgage defaults continue at a pace last seen in 1933.
Credit-card and student-loan defaults are crippling the earnings of all banks that are not 'investment banks.'
Long-term national debt is too large a figure for anyone to accurately identify.

Essentially, we sit at the doorstep of 1931. "When the Wall Street Crash of 1929 struck less than eight months after he took office, Hoover tried to combat the following Great Depression with volunteer efforts, none of which produced economic recovery during his term." Sound familiar? Unfortunately, leading economists seem not to realize that the market took five upticks, major enough to rate as bull markets, between 1929 and mid-1932. It would drop, then recover half to a third of the drop over a period of months, then drop again and repeat. We're doing that now and celebrating each recovery as the end of the crisis. . . . Most economists surveyed expect the recovery to be led by businesses. The NABE estimates that corporate earnings will grow 15% this year, which will spur hiring and ultimately bolster household spending. Businesses? Corporate earnings? Ultimately? You got a time-line for ultimately? Ultimately, we're all dead. How 'bout General Electric as a 'leader out of the swamp?'

(Wall Street Journal) General Electric Co. asked its battered investors to hang on another year, saying Friday that it could return to growth and potentially boost its dividend by 2011 as the conglomerate recovers from a recession that hollowed out profits and shook confidence in the company . . . GE posted a 19% slump in fourth-quarter profit, weighed down by poor results at its entertainment and finance units . . . redeploying resources to cover losses at GE Capital and is shrinking the unit . . . offloaded a security business to focus on more-lucrative industrial operations.

Sounds to me like a 19% slump and a 15% gain, is still a 4% net slump, chump. But maybe that's just me. Retail, manufacturing and service industries (nearly the only industry we have anymore) are all pretty much underwater and clawing their way toward the light. A 15% gain is meaningless, unless you know that corporate earnings are basically healthy--and they're not, they're patched together by creative accounting and deferred costs. . . . "Overall, our economists believe we are on a fairly healthy growth track and their will be no double dip recession," said Reaser. Likely we'll just soar past that to triple-dip and the conjurers will be off the hook.

5 MISSIONS, 14 GOALS AND A PARTRIDGE IN A PEAR TREE

2010-02-16T08:59:00.000-08:00

Obama officials present a strategic redefining of Homeland Security's mission By Spencer S. Hsu Washington Post Staff Writer Tuesday, February 2, 2010; 2:58 PM The Obama administration Monday delivered to Congress the nation's first Quadrennial Homeland Security Review, defining homeland security for the first time as including hazards beyond terrorism, in a strategic document intended to drive long-term budget decisions. Ah yes, when you can't find your ass (or your mission), what with all that staggering around in the China shop, it's certainly time to put out a 'strategic' document. Insisting upon clarity of purpose and effectiveness is no substitute for strategic documents. Wonder if they have someone in mind who actually knows what one is? Certainly I don't. Congress mandated the high-level strategic review in 2007, two years after Hurricane Katrina exposed failings in the government's response and four years after the creation of the Department of Homeland Security. The initiative was modeled after the Quadrennial Defense Review, another congressionally mandated effort that directed the Defense Department to reset its strategies and budgets against evolving threats every four years. That sounds strategic enough for me at the moment. If resetting your strategies and budgets doesn't paralyze 240,000 employees, it's hard to visualize what would. That strategy sounds like it was invented by Osama bin Laden. But wait, there's more. Analysts said that production of the 88-page document marked a successful milestone for DHS, even though it is not as thorough as the Pentagon's version and will not be as influential. One wonders at what particular milestone they will be strategic enough to pull some dude off an airplane before one of these already reported crazies actually succeeds in his mission. Apparently, having your own father turn you in is not enough. That might finally get DHS's attention, as hurricanes and earthquakes apparently don't count. But I'm relieved the analysts are happy. "This study has given them a road map for how they are going to think through tough problems." I thought you'd appreciate this George Carlin bit that ever-so-accurately explains the nuance of the political lexicon of 'road maps' and 'tough problems.' The issue is still vexing because many experts still struggle to explain, "What is homeland security?" "How is the homeland best made secure?" and "What does it mean to be prepared?," the review notes. Don't sweat it. We are only eight years and $400 billion into the thing and this stuff takes time. Maybe they (DHS) could check in with the Boy Scouts, to find an operating definition of 'Be Prepared.' The QHSR lists five missions, backed by 14 specific goals: preventing terrorism and enhancing security, particularly against chemical, biological, nuclear and radiological threats; securing U.S. borders; enforcing the nation's immigration laws; securing cyberspace; and ensuring resilience to disasters. Well, thank god for new brooms. We have Janet Napolitano in there now, running things and not a moment too soon. "Homeland security will only be optimized when we fully leverage the distributed and decentralized nature of the entire enterprise in the pursuit of our common goals," Napolitano said. Run, do nt walk, back to the Carlin video link. Your Honor, I rest my case.

ELMER FUDD, KWEDIT AND THOSE CWAZY KIDDIES

2010-02-08T05:36:00.000-08:00

Buy Now, Pay Later (Maybe With Your Allowance) By RANDALL STROSS Published: February 6, 2010 BUSINESSES don’t let 13-year-olds pay for purchases with a promise. At least they didn’t before last week. Ah yes. Seems the Wall Street types who invented wayS for the ineligible poor to buy half-million dollar homes have a new target in mind. Nine to twelve year-old children. Your and my nine to twelve year-old children. This New York Times article is a jaw-dropper, unless your tired jaw has long since ceased to drop. A new payment option for anyone without a credit card or a debit card, no matter how young, has just become available. It’s initially offered by FooPets and Puzzle Pirates, online game companies that are business partners of Kwedit.com, a start-up based in Mountain View, Calif. . . Cute, cuddly and couched in the language of Elmer Fudd, Kwedit is now up and running as a teething device for getting the younger and younger hooked on instant gratification. And not a moment too soon. Parents, struggling with their own credit addiction, were (and are) likely to demand their children stay off the buy-now, pay-later schemes that nearly bankrupted the family.

"Don't do drugs, alcohol or credit cards, sweetie . . . they can ruin your life."

Like neighborhood pushers, the likes of Kwedit are out there lurking. Facebook is complacent in this scheme, as is 7-Eleven and Purina, among others. . . . here’s an entirely new payment option: A user can print out a barcode and head to a 7-Eleven store, which will accept cash, scan the code and notify Kwedit that payment has been made . . . systems like these — known in the industry as nurturing games — are built to require regular investments of time and, for fullest enjoyment, money. The games are usually hosted by social networks like Facebook, or can connect to such networks so friends can follow one another’s progress. . . Nurturing games, huh? (Nurture: Noun; The properties acquired as a consequence of the way you were treated as a child) Treating your child has just been taken out of your hands, as the wail of 'everybody's doing it, mom' is accompanied by astamping foot, pouting mouth and slammed doors as your child retreats to his or her real peer-group on the pages of Facebook. You can sigh and let it go or have an honest sit-down to discuss issues you never thought you'd face at their age. Kwedit.com (as anti-parenting, insidious and dangerous to your child's future happiness as anything available online) has thus far raised its snarky head to peer into your home. If that strange old bird down the street (the one who gives candy to kids and always seems to hang around the school) worries you, you have just met the sneakier edition of the same template . . . this one in your child's room, grinning and offering a digital pet for it to feed with digital food, paid for with digital money. . . . As game purveyors, Kwedit’s current partners sell virtual goods whose marginal cost is virtually zero, so there’s no risk of real financial loss if the promise is not repaid. But by offering Kwedit’s service, the game publishers capitalize on the most frictionless form of sales: buy now, pay later. . . Yup. And they sell this trash to the most frictionless buyer, a child. . . . at FooPets, users “adopt” lifelike digitally animated pets and then buy virtual goods for them, including food, beds and chew toys. The site’s core demographic is 12- to 14-year-old girls, said Scott Sorochak, a co-founder of FooMojo, which operates the site. The company says that FooPets has one million active members and that it is signing up 20,000 to 25,000 new members daily . . . Hmmm. Twenty-five thousand is the population of a pretty good sized town in America. This dude is sucking up a town a day. How large is your town? We Americans annually spend some $18 billion a year, ostensibly to fight a losing war on illegal drugs at one level or another. Meanwhile, Scott Sorochak slips in your child's bedroom door with the 'instant gratification' drug that pretty much brought America to its knees. I guess that proves, if nothing else, we are still a nation of innovators. . . . “Kwedit is the first payment system we’ve used that doesn’t require getting a parent involved,” Mr. Sorochak said . . . Actually, he's wrong on that and taking too much kwedit. It's the second such payment system. The original was (and remains) schoolyard extortion. . . . Now an eighth grader, on her own, can use a Kwedit Promise to buy a virtual 40-pound bag of Purina Puppy Chow. The chow exists only as a photograph of a Purina package, but FooPets instructs its users that the care and feeding of the digital pets they’ve adopted should be regarded as a serious matter. “Your FooPet is a real creature that lives online,” the company’s Web site says.. . . . . . they feature living digital property — the crops in FarmVille or the fish in Happy Aquarium — that can die without care and feeding. At FooPets, death is averted because, after a short period of neglect, the pet goes to a FooShelter. (And reclaiming it becomes an expensive proposition.) . . . "Mommy, my happy-fish is just gonna die, if I don't feed it. Mommmmie!!" . . . It’s ontological nonsense, but the money that is paid for the pixels is certainly real. (The big bag of virtual puppy chow costs $3. For parents with deep pockets, a “rustic bungalow” is $333.) . . . I suppose there are no legal problems with all this. Sorochak isn't going to chase your kid for money, because he hasn't lost any. It's all digital until the trip to 7-Eleven and that's all gravy for Scott. The stuff running down your kids face isn't gravy, it's tears. But what the hell, childhood is full of tears. . . . But Kwedit is a way to become acquainted with credit early, while still on training wheels . . . This scheme will prepare your child for a lifetime of tears, with seven credit cards eventually maxed out and a mortgage three payments delinquent. Preparation is what parenting is all about. Oh, and by the way, if you look for Scott a few years down the road, don't be surprised if he's sold out to a conglomerate and bought an island in the Caribbean on what is left of your kid's instant gratification. That's the most gratifying thing about Kwedit.com.

TO BE OR NOT TO BE

2010-01-30T02:22:00.000-08:00

Ah yes, the crisis is over, the economy has righted itself and all is well in the world, according to this corner of my morning paper;

"The U.S. economy grew at a breakneck rate of 5.7 percent at the end of 2009, the government said Friday, providing the strongest evidence yet that the nation will avoid a dip back into recession."

Thank God. Back from the kitchen with a second cup of coffee and just settling in, my eye fell upon this;

"As the economy has soured, with unemployment rising, home prices tumbling and loan defaults soaring, bank failures have accelerated and sapped billions out of the federal deposit insurance fund."

The Washington Post giveth and the Washington Post taketh away. Blessed be the name of the Washington Post.

BANK OF AMERICA'S "CREDIT CYCLE IS TURNING," IF YOU CAN DEFINE THE TITANIC'S PLUNGE AS A "TURN"

2010-01-21T08:28:00.000-08:00

Bank of America Posts Loss for Year By ANDREW MARTIN and DAVID JOLLY Published: January 20, 2010 Cash-strapped consumers continued to rain on Wall Street’s victory parade on Wednesday. Even as the nation’s largest financial institutions report whopping profits from their investment banking units, those with major consumer lending portfolios continue to bleed money as unemployment and a weak housing market hamper people’s ability to repay their debts.

___________________________________ In the separation of commercial from investment banks, the wheat has been separated from the chaff. Those at Goldman Sachs are up to their eyeballs in Wheaties and you and I, who may have accounts at BofA, are coming up chaffed (if not severely chafed). To be chafed is to 'feel extreme irritation or anger' rather than mildly satisfied with an 8-figure bonus.

. . . those losses posed a fresh threat to Bank of America, which reported a fourth-quarter net loss of $5.2 billion. . .

That's a loss for a single quarter. Five thousand million lost. $77 million lost every working day. In that same number of days, countless jobs were lost and homes foreclosed upon. The actual percentage of Americans out of work is far closer to 22-23% than the 10% our government declares, as if it were manageable. Not to worry, if you've been out of work a year or more. That doesn't count. The only counted jobless are those who haven't yet run out of unemployment compensation.

. . . said it suffered a loss of $4.9 billion on its consumer credit card business, compared with a $3.3 billion loss a year earlier. Total write-downs for the year totaled $33.7 billion, more than double the $16.2 billion in 2008. . .

Double a year ago, the worst year since 1933.

. . . Bank of America is “encouraged by signs the economy is improving, as we have seen in the stabilization of our credit costs, particularly in the consumer businesses”. . .

"What was that bump, Captain?" "Not to worry, the Titanic is unsinkable."

. . . Most major retail banks are facing the same problem: Citigroup said Tuesday that the $1.6 billion in losses it suffered in 2009 losses came in part from losses in the bank’s mortgage and credit card units, which overwhelmed gains from investment banking — a trend that is likely to continue. Last week, JPMorgan Chase said its consumer businesses, and particularly its credit card unit, were hemorrhaging money. . .

There is, I suspect, a difference between hemorrhage and taking on more water than the bilge-pumps can handle. One is pouring out and the other pouring in. Either way can be fatal.

GREAT DANES PERHAPS LEADING THE WAY

2010-01-14T04:23:00.000-08:00

January 12, 2010 Denmark Leads the Way in Digital Care By SINDYA N. BHANOO COPENHAGEN — Jens Danstrup, a 77-year-old retired architect, used to bike all around town. But years of smoking have weakened his lungs, and these days he finds it difficult to walk down his front steps and hail a taxi for a doctor’s appointment. Now, however, he can go to the doctor without leaving home, using some simple medical devices and a notebook computer with a Web camera. He takes his own weekly medical readings, which are sent to his doctor via a Bluetooth connection and automatically logged into an electronic record. “You see how easy it is for me?” Mr. Danstrup said, sitting at his desk while video chatting with his nurse at Frederiksberg University Hospital, a mile away. “Instead of wasting the day at the hospital?”

The Dark Side of the Moon - Essays and Articles by Jim Freeman

SOPA My Back and Wash Me Down the Drain

DISASTER PLANS THAT DON'T BOTHER TO ANTICIPATE DISASTER

READING THE DOLMA LEAVES

PUTTING OUT THE GARBAGE

NO NEED TO 'TURN OVER ROCKS,' JUST CHECK THE VIOLATIONS ALREADY ON RECORD

CHINESE STYLE MINE SAFETY HERE IN AMERICA AS WELL

AMERICA WANTS AN UNSCRIPTED OBAMA

THE DOGS THAT WON'T BARK

BROOKING NO EXCUSES FROM ALAN GREENSPAN

ARRIVAL TIME, 2010; A VIABLE THIRD-PARTY OPTION

GIVE IT UP ON ALL THE FOX-BASHING

LABELS NEEDED FOR LUDICROUS LEGISLATION

SCHUMER TRIES TO 'LEGISLATE BACK' OUR LOST MANUFACTURING BASE

BEMOANING SENSIBLE BEHAVIOR--THE NEW ARGUMENT OF THE FECKLESS

WHISTLING PAST THE GRAVEYARD

5 MISSIONS, 14 GOALS AND A PARTRIDGE IN A PEAR TREE

ELMER FUDD, KWEDIT AND THOSE CWAZY KIDDIES

TO BE OR NOT TO BE

BANK OF AMERICA'S "CREDIT CYCLE IS TURNING," IF YOU CAN DEFINE THE TITANIC'S PLUNGE AS A "TURN"

GREAT DANES PERHAPS LEADING THE WAY

JOHN YOO GETS A BOOK REVIEW INSTEAD OF JAIL TIME

TOO MANY DOLTS TO CONNECT

POLITICS AND CHESS MADE CLEARER

EXTRAORDINARY FOCUS ON A MINOR ENEMY

REALLY A MATTER OF WHO IS TANNING WHOM

WEANING CITIGROUP FROM THE TAXPAYER BAILOUT BY MILKING THE TAXPAYER

MY OLD DADDY USED TO SAY,"IF YOU WANT TO SEE TIME FLY, SIGN A 60-DAY NOTE"

OUT OF DATE, NEVER IMPLEMENTED AND REVISED SIX TIMES--HOMELAND SECURITY AT WORK

MY CAR KEYS ARE NOT 'LOST' EITHER, BUT UNTIL I LOCATE THEM I CAN'T DRIVE THE CAR

GMAC--DREAMING THE IMPOSSIBLE DREAM

THE SENATE, NOT MUCH INTERESTED IN HEALTH CARE, BUT VERY INTERESTED IN 'INTERESTS'

GOLDMAN SACHS FRANTIC TO POLISH IMAGE

LOBBYISTS RATTLE THE BONES AND SHAKE THE DICE OF HEALTH CARE

2,000 PAGES IS A PRETTY BIG GRAVEYARD FOR BURYING LOOPHOLES

THE RICH GET RICH AND THE POOR GET POORER--ON THE TAXES OF THE POOR

CIT SPRINGS AN EXTRAORDINARILY SELECTIVE BANKRUPTCY. GUESS WHO'S ON THE SHORT END?

LARRY HALPERIN, AN ICON AMONG LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTS, LOST IN MID-CAREER AT 93

GOVERNMENT HAS NO DAMN BUSINESS RULING ON EXECUTIVE PAY

HALLOWEEN IS CHILD'S PLAY--THE REAL SCARE IS RIGHT HERE, RIGHT NOW

IN TOUGH FINANCIAL TIMES, IT'S GOOD TO KNOW SOMEONE IS MAKING A BUCK

A FUNNY THING HAPPENED ON THE WAY TO THE BAILOUT

TOO DUMB FOR NEW YORK CITY, TOO UGLY FOR LA

BRIBERY TAKES ON LEADERSHIP--AND WINS

SAM ZELL--POSTER BOY FOR EVERYTHING THAT'S WRONG WITH BUSINESS TODAY

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT, LIFE ITSELF IS A 'PRE-EXISTING CONDITION'

DROWNING IN SHALLOWER WATER

HATE THE CORRUPTER, LOVE THE CORRUPT

THE OPERATIVE PHRASE HERE IS "BUYING SEATS ON THOSE AGRICULTURE COMMITTEES"

AMERICANS WILL PAY A LITTLE MORE--HONEST THEY WILL

EXTRA! EXTRA! WASHINGTON POST CONFIRMS INFOMERCIAL AS BONAFIED NEWS SOURCE

WORRIED ABOUT THE ECONOMY? FORGET IT, TAKE A PILL--IT'S THE AMERICAN WAY

THE TWO FACES OF CHARLES "CHUCK" COLSON

ABOVE THE FOLD OR BELOW THE FOLD, THE WASHINGTON POST STILL FOLDS

WHAT IT'S LIKE TO NOT BE GOLDMAN SACHS

IRONY IS NOT YET DEAD--TOYOTA GETTING THE CLUNKER MONEY

DEFINING AN 'EASING' RECESSION

HUMANITARIAN RELIEF OR MILITARY RESPONSE--YOU CALL THE SHOT

UNCOMFORTABLE REMINDER? WHY IS THE WASHINGTON POST UNCOMFORTABLE?

FOR SOME REASON, THOSE NIT-PICKY FOREIGN BANKS DON'T SHARE OUR OPTIMISM--FIRST THE SWISS, NOW THE GERMANS

SWISS CONSERVATISM REFUSES TO COOK THE BOOKS

OOPS, GUESS THAT WAS A BIT PREMATURE

BUICK DEALERS COULD TURN A LOSS INTO A SAVE

A HAT-TRICK FOR ALAN GREENSPAN

A LIFETIME AFRAID OF THINGS THAT GO BUMP IN THE NIGHT

THE NEXT STINGER STING