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unhappycamper
unhappycamper's Journal
unhappycamper's Journal
September 26, 2013
Crushing the Middle Class
by Mike Whitney | September 25, 2013 - 8:51am
The Federal Reserve presently lends money at a lower rate than anytime in history. In fact, the rate at which the Fed lends money is more than a full percentage point below the current rate of inflation. That means the Fed is subsidizing borrowing. Naturally, zero rates create price distortions which are greatly amplified by the Fed’s asset purchase program called Quantitative Easing. During its three rounds of QE, the Fed has ballooned its balance sheet by more than $2.8 trillion inflating the prices of financial assets across-the-board while establishing itself as the world’s biggest buyer of US Treasuries, the benchmark asset class upon which every financial asset in the world is priced. Those prices are now grossly distorted due to the Fed’s presence in the market. (Note: Fed chairman Ben Bernanke set the Federal funds rate in the range of zero to 0.25% in December, 2008 and has kept it there ever since. The policy is called zero-interest-rate-policy or ZIRP.)
~snip~
The main beneficiary of the Fed’s policies has been the investor class. While low rates have helped households reduce their debtload more easily, low interest lending coupled with the ocean of liquidity provided via QE has triggered a long-term stock market rally that has increased equities funds inflows to new records, boosted margin debt to precrisis levels, quadrupled stock buybacks from their 2008 lows, buoyed covenant-lite loan sales to $188.7 billion (“far surpassing the record of 2007?
, and sent all three major indices to new highs. Unable to find profitable outlets for investment in the real economy, investors have taken their lead from hedge fund manager Ben Bernanke, snatching up stocks and bonds in a ravenous, yield-crazed flurry of speculation. Indeed, they have done quite well too, raking in sizable profits even while the real economy is still flat on its back. The bottom line: All the gains from ZIRP and QE have gone to Wall Street with precious little trickling down to the workerbees.
After 5 years of monetary policy that has failed to produce a strong, sustainable recovery, reasonable people have begun to wonder if Bernanke’s real objectives are different than those in his official pronouncements. After all, the Dow Jones and S & P 500 have more than doubled in the last 4 years, corporate earnings just hit an all-time high of $2.1 trillion, the banks announced record profits of $42 billion in Q2, and–according to a new study by Emmanuel Saez, an economics professor at UC Berkeley— the top 10% of earners in the US captured 50.4% of total income in 2012, a level higher than any other year since 1917.” (LA Times) Meanwhile, 47 million people are scraping by on food stamps, labor’s share of productivity gains have never been smaller, median household income has plummeted by 7.3 percent since the end of the recession, (Sentier Research), and 46.5 million Americans now live in poverty. (US Census Bureau). Inequality– which is already at levels not seen since the Gilded Age–continues to widen at an accelerating pace while the battered and rudderless economy drifts from one crisis to another.
To pretend that the objectives of ZIRP and QE are different than the results they’ve produced (ie–greater concentration of wealth and political power, and the crushing of the middle class) is laughable given the fact that they’ve been in place for more than 5 years without any significant change. This suggests that the Fed’s policies are doing what they were designed to do, shift more wealth upwards to the uber-rich while political leaders dismantle vital safteynet programs which protect ordinary working people from the ravages of unregulated capitalism. The Central Bank and the political establishment in Washington are working hand-in-hand to restructure the economy along the same lines as they would any third world banana republic. And that’s the real goal of the current policy.
Crushing the Middle Class
http://smirkingchimp.com/thread/mike-whitney/51788/crushing-the-middle-classCrushing the Middle Class
by Mike Whitney | September 25, 2013 - 8:51am
The Federal Reserve presently lends money at a lower rate than anytime in history. In fact, the rate at which the Fed lends money is more than a full percentage point below the current rate of inflation. That means the Fed is subsidizing borrowing. Naturally, zero rates create price distortions which are greatly amplified by the Fed’s asset purchase program called Quantitative Easing. During its three rounds of QE, the Fed has ballooned its balance sheet by more than $2.8 trillion inflating the prices of financial assets across-the-board while establishing itself as the world’s biggest buyer of US Treasuries, the benchmark asset class upon which every financial asset in the world is priced. Those prices are now grossly distorted due to the Fed’s presence in the market. (Note: Fed chairman Ben Bernanke set the Federal funds rate in the range of zero to 0.25% in December, 2008 and has kept it there ever since. The policy is called zero-interest-rate-policy or ZIRP.)
~snip~
The main beneficiary of the Fed’s policies has been the investor class. While low rates have helped households reduce their debtload more easily, low interest lending coupled with the ocean of liquidity provided via QE has triggered a long-term stock market rally that has increased equities funds inflows to new records, boosted margin debt to precrisis levels, quadrupled stock buybacks from their 2008 lows, buoyed covenant-lite loan sales to $188.7 billion (“far surpassing the record of 2007?
, and sent all three major indices to new highs. Unable to find profitable outlets for investment in the real economy, investors have taken their lead from hedge fund manager Ben Bernanke, snatching up stocks and bonds in a ravenous, yield-crazed flurry of speculation. Indeed, they have done quite well too, raking in sizable profits even while the real economy is still flat on its back. The bottom line: All the gains from ZIRP and QE have gone to Wall Street with precious little trickling down to the workerbees.
After 5 years of monetary policy that has failed to produce a strong, sustainable recovery, reasonable people have begun to wonder if Bernanke’s real objectives are different than those in his official pronouncements. After all, the Dow Jones and S & P 500 have more than doubled in the last 4 years, corporate earnings just hit an all-time high of $2.1 trillion, the banks announced record profits of $42 billion in Q2, and–according to a new study by Emmanuel Saez, an economics professor at UC Berkeley— the top 10% of earners in the US captured 50.4% of total income in 2012, a level higher than any other year since 1917.” (LA Times) Meanwhile, 47 million people are scraping by on food stamps, labor’s share of productivity gains have never been smaller, median household income has plummeted by 7.3 percent since the end of the recession, (Sentier Research), and 46.5 million Americans now live in poverty. (US Census Bureau). Inequality– which is already at levels not seen since the Gilded Age–continues to widen at an accelerating pace while the battered and rudderless economy drifts from one crisis to another.
To pretend that the objectives of ZIRP and QE are different than the results they’ve produced (ie–greater concentration of wealth and political power, and the crushing of the middle class) is laughable given the fact that they’ve been in place for more than 5 years without any significant change. This suggests that the Fed’s policies are doing what they were designed to do, shift more wealth upwards to the uber-rich while political leaders dismantle vital safteynet programs which protect ordinary working people from the ravages of unregulated capitalism. The Central Bank and the political establishment in Washington are working hand-in-hand to restructure the economy along the same lines as they would any third world banana republic. And that’s the real goal of the current policy.
September 26, 2013
On Privatization's Cutting Edge
Rick Perlstein on September 5, 2013 - 3:08 PM ET
Last week, for the opening of the school year, I wrote about my interview with Tom Geoghegan about his (so-far) failed suit to stop Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s morally and educationally disastrous crusade to close fifty schools in Chicago. But that’s not all I talked about with Tom. “I don’t want this just to be a Mayor Emanuel–bashing session,” I said. “Because we have to bash Mayor Daley.”
Everyone, I suppose, dislikes parking meters. Chicagoans hate them even more. That’s because Mayor Richard M. Daley in 2008 struck a deal with the investment consortium Chicago Parking Meters LLC, or CPM, that included Morgan Stanley, Allianz Capital Partners and, yes, the Sovereign Wealth Fund of Abu Dhabi, to privatize our meters. The price of parking—and the intensity of enforcement—skyrocketed. The terms were negotiated in secret. City Council members got two days to study the billion-dollar, seventy-five-year contract before signing off on it. An early estimate from the Chicago inspector general was that the city had sold off its property for about half of what it was worth. Then an alderman said it was worth about four times what the city had been paid. Finally, in 2010, Forbes reported that in fact the city had been underpaid by a factor of ten.
Well, Chicagoans, Tom Geoghegan is here to tell you that the whole damn thing is illegal under the Illinois Constitution—and most other constitutions, too. He’s in the middle of a suit to have the whole thing torn up. The argument is driven by the legal theory that “a seventy-five-year-agreement to run parking meters is an unconstitutional restriction on the police power—the sovereign right of the city to control its public streets and ways…. This is a very traditional, conservative, really, argument: what the City of Chicago did was not sell the meters. They sold the police power of the city.”
The deal, you see, is structured like this. Not only does CPM get the money its meters hoover up from the fine upstanding citizens of Chicago. It gets money even if the meters are not used. Each meter has been assigned a “fair market valuation.” If the City takes what is called a “reserve power adverse action”—that can mean anything from removing a meter because it impedes traffic flow, shutting down a street for a block party or discouraging traffic from coming into the city during rush hour—“CPM has the right to trigger an immediate payment for the entire loss of the meter’s fair market value over the entire life of the seventy-five-year agreement.”
unhappycamper comment: This thread inspired by a SmirkingChimp article: http://smirkingchimp.com/thread/gaius-publius/51791/this-week-in-privatization-they-really-do-have-a-bridge-to-sell-you
On Privatization's Cutting Edge
http://www.thenation.com/blog/176043/privatizations-cutting-edge#On Privatization's Cutting Edge
Rick Perlstein on September 5, 2013 - 3:08 PM ET
Last week, for the opening of the school year, I wrote about my interview with Tom Geoghegan about his (so-far) failed suit to stop Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s morally and educationally disastrous crusade to close fifty schools in Chicago. But that’s not all I talked about with Tom. “I don’t want this just to be a Mayor Emanuel–bashing session,” I said. “Because we have to bash Mayor Daley.”
Everyone, I suppose, dislikes parking meters. Chicagoans hate them even more. That’s because Mayor Richard M. Daley in 2008 struck a deal with the investment consortium Chicago Parking Meters LLC, or CPM, that included Morgan Stanley, Allianz Capital Partners and, yes, the Sovereign Wealth Fund of Abu Dhabi, to privatize our meters. The price of parking—and the intensity of enforcement—skyrocketed. The terms were negotiated in secret. City Council members got two days to study the billion-dollar, seventy-five-year contract before signing off on it. An early estimate from the Chicago inspector general was that the city had sold off its property for about half of what it was worth. Then an alderman said it was worth about four times what the city had been paid. Finally, in 2010, Forbes reported that in fact the city had been underpaid by a factor of ten.
Well, Chicagoans, Tom Geoghegan is here to tell you that the whole damn thing is illegal under the Illinois Constitution—and most other constitutions, too. He’s in the middle of a suit to have the whole thing torn up. The argument is driven by the legal theory that “a seventy-five-year-agreement to run parking meters is an unconstitutional restriction on the police power—the sovereign right of the city to control its public streets and ways…. This is a very traditional, conservative, really, argument: what the City of Chicago did was not sell the meters. They sold the police power of the city.”
The deal, you see, is structured like this. Not only does CPM get the money its meters hoover up from the fine upstanding citizens of Chicago. It gets money even if the meters are not used. Each meter has been assigned a “fair market valuation.” If the City takes what is called a “reserve power adverse action”—that can mean anything from removing a meter because it impedes traffic flow, shutting down a street for a block party or discouraging traffic from coming into the city during rush hour—“CPM has the right to trigger an immediate payment for the entire loss of the meter’s fair market value over the entire life of the seventy-five-year agreement.”
unhappycamper comment: This thread inspired by a SmirkingChimp article: http://smirkingchimp.com/thread/gaius-publius/51791/this-week-in-privatization-they-really-do-have-a-bridge-to-sell-you
September 26, 2013
Part 2. Viva Zapata
by Russ Baker | September 25, 2013 - 10:06am
Skull and Bones
In 1945, with the end of the war, George H. W. “Poppy” Bush entered Yale University. The CIA recruited heavily at all of the Ivy League schools in those days, with the New Haven campus the standout. “Yale has always been the agency’s biggest feeder,” recalled CIA officer Osborne Day (class of’43), “In my Yale class alone there were thirty-five guys in the agency.” Bush’s father, Prescott, was on the university’s board, and the school was crawling with faculty serving as recruiters for the intelligence services . . . Yale’s society’s boys were the cream of the crop, and could keep secrets to boot. And no secret society was more suited to the spy establishment than Skull and Bones, for which Poppy Bush, like his father, was tapped in his junior year. Established in 1832, Skull and Bones is the oldest secret society at Yale, and thus at least theoretically entrusted its membership with a more comprehensive body of secrets than any other campus group. Bones alumni would appear throughout the public and private history of both wartime and peacetime intelligence . . .
When Bush entered Yale, the university was welcoming back countless veterans of the OSS to its faculty. Bush, with naval intelligence work already under his belt by the time he arrived at Yale, would have been seen as a particularly prime candidate for recruitment.
Bonesmen Have All the Muscle
Out of Yale, Bush went directly into the employ of Dresser Industries, a peculiar, family-connected firm providing essential services to the oil industry. Dresser has never received the scrutiny it deserves. Between the lines of its official story can be discerned an alternate version that could suggest a corporate double life . . .
The S. R. Dresser Manufacturing Company had been a small, solid, unexceptional outfit, . . . [when it found] eager buyers in Prescott Bush’s Yale friends Roland and W. Averell Harriman – the sons of railroad tycoon E. H. Harriman – who had only recently set up a merchant bank to assist wealthy families in such endeavors. At the time, Dresser’s principal assets consisted of two very valuable patents in the rapidly expanding oil industry. One was for a packer that made it much easier to remove oil from the ground; the other was for a coupler that made long-range natural gas pipelines feasible. Instead of controlling the oil, Dresser’s strategy was to control the technology that made drilling possible. W.A. Harriman and Company, which had brought Prescott Bush aboard two years earlier, purchased Dresser in 1928.
Part 2. Viva Zapata
http://smirkingchimp.com/thread/russ-baker/51793/part-2-viva-zapataPart 2. Viva Zapata
by Russ Baker | September 25, 2013 - 10:06am
Skull and Bones
In 1945, with the end of the war, George H. W. “Poppy” Bush entered Yale University. The CIA recruited heavily at all of the Ivy League schools in those days, with the New Haven campus the standout. “Yale has always been the agency’s biggest feeder,” recalled CIA officer Osborne Day (class of’43), “In my Yale class alone there were thirty-five guys in the agency.” Bush’s father, Prescott, was on the university’s board, and the school was crawling with faculty serving as recruiters for the intelligence services . . . Yale’s society’s boys were the cream of the crop, and could keep secrets to boot. And no secret society was more suited to the spy establishment than Skull and Bones, for which Poppy Bush, like his father, was tapped in his junior year. Established in 1832, Skull and Bones is the oldest secret society at Yale, and thus at least theoretically entrusted its membership with a more comprehensive body of secrets than any other campus group. Bones alumni would appear throughout the public and private history of both wartime and peacetime intelligence . . .
When Bush entered Yale, the university was welcoming back countless veterans of the OSS to its faculty. Bush, with naval intelligence work already under his belt by the time he arrived at Yale, would have been seen as a particularly prime candidate for recruitment.
Bonesmen Have All the Muscle
Out of Yale, Bush went directly into the employ of Dresser Industries, a peculiar, family-connected firm providing essential services to the oil industry. Dresser has never received the scrutiny it deserves. Between the lines of its official story can be discerned an alternate version that could suggest a corporate double life . . .
The S. R. Dresser Manufacturing Company had been a small, solid, unexceptional outfit, . . . [when it found] eager buyers in Prescott Bush’s Yale friends Roland and W. Averell Harriman – the sons of railroad tycoon E. H. Harriman – who had only recently set up a merchant bank to assist wealthy families in such endeavors. At the time, Dresser’s principal assets consisted of two very valuable patents in the rapidly expanding oil industry. One was for a packer that made it much easier to remove oil from the ground; the other was for a coupler that made long-range natural gas pipelines feasible. Instead of controlling the oil, Dresser’s strategy was to control the technology that made drilling possible. W.A. Harriman and Company, which had brought Prescott Bush aboard two years earlier, purchased Dresser in 1928.
September 26, 2013
Army Capt. William Swenson, of Seattle, Washington, calls for air support on his radio as his force was ambushed in the village of Ganjgal in Afghanistan.
Military commanders investigated for mishandling Army’s ‘lost’ Medal of Honor nomination
Posted on Wednesday, September 25, 2013
by Jonathan S. Landay | McClatchy Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON — A Pentagon investigation into how a Medal of Honor nomination was “lost” – possibly because of an improper effort to kill the award – is focused on its mishandling by members of the chain of command that included retired Army Gen. David Petraeus and other senior U.S. commanders.
The investigation is being conducted by the Directorate for Investigations of Senior Officials, a division of the Defense Department Office of Inspector General that handles cases involving top military and civilian defense officials.
“Specifically, officials within the Directorate for Investigations of Senior Officials are conducting an inquiry into the circumstances surrounding the lost recommendation,” the inspector general’s office wrote in a Sept. 3 letter to Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., who pressed for the probe.
The review is the latest turn in the convoluted history of the Medal of Honor nomination of former Army Capt. William Swenson, who was recommended for the nation’s highest military decoration for valor for his actions on Sept. 8, 2009, in one of the most extraordinary battles of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars. The Seattle native is scheduled to receive the medal from President Barack Obama on Oct. 15, nearly four years after he was first nominated and more than a year after his papers reached the White House.
Military commanders investigated for mishandling Army’s ‘lost’ Medal of Honor nomination
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2013/09/25/203232/military-commanders-investigated.htmlArmy Capt. William Swenson, of Seattle, Washington, calls for air support on his radio as his force was ambushed in the village of Ganjgal in Afghanistan.
Military commanders investigated for mishandling Army’s ‘lost’ Medal of Honor nomination
Posted on Wednesday, September 25, 2013
by Jonathan S. Landay | McClatchy Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON — A Pentagon investigation into how a Medal of Honor nomination was “lost” – possibly because of an improper effort to kill the award – is focused on its mishandling by members of the chain of command that included retired Army Gen. David Petraeus and other senior U.S. commanders.
The investigation is being conducted by the Directorate for Investigations of Senior Officials, a division of the Defense Department Office of Inspector General that handles cases involving top military and civilian defense officials.
“Specifically, officials within the Directorate for Investigations of Senior Officials are conducting an inquiry into the circumstances surrounding the lost recommendation,” the inspector general’s office wrote in a Sept. 3 letter to Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., who pressed for the probe.
The review is the latest turn in the convoluted history of the Medal of Honor nomination of former Army Capt. William Swenson, who was recommended for the nation’s highest military decoration for valor for his actions on Sept. 8, 2009, in one of the most extraordinary battles of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars. The Seattle native is scheduled to receive the medal from President Barack Obama on Oct. 15, nearly four years after he was first nominated and more than a year after his papers reached the White House.
September 26, 2013
Federal highway funding crisis will hurt states, lawmakers told
By Curtis Tate | McClatchy Washington Bureau
Posted on Wednesday, September 25, 2013
WASHINGTON — The federal highway trust fund will run out of money by 2015, which will have a “devastating impact” in states that rely heavily on federal funds for their road maintenance and construction needs, transportation officials told lawmakers Wednesday.
To preserve the fund, road builders and engineers, state transportation officials and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce are pleading with Congress to raise the federal gasoline tax for the first time in 20 years.
Transportation funding had brought Democrats and Republicans together in the past, but the parties are now deeply divided over fiscal policy, including increases to taxes that fund infrastructure.
If Congress doesn’t act, some warned, states will feel the pain.
unhappycamper comment: And the reason for this 'crisis':
Transportation: 3%
Military: 57%
Federal highway funding crisis will hurt states, lawmakers told
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2013/09/25/203253/federal-highway-funding-crisis.htmlFederal highway funding crisis will hurt states, lawmakers told
By Curtis Tate | McClatchy Washington Bureau
Posted on Wednesday, September 25, 2013
WASHINGTON — The federal highway trust fund will run out of money by 2015, which will have a “devastating impact” in states that rely heavily on federal funds for their road maintenance and construction needs, transportation officials told lawmakers Wednesday.
To preserve the fund, road builders and engineers, state transportation officials and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce are pleading with Congress to raise the federal gasoline tax for the first time in 20 years.
Transportation funding had brought Democrats and Republicans together in the past, but the parties are now deeply divided over fiscal policy, including increases to taxes that fund infrastructure.
If Congress doesn’t act, some warned, states will feel the pain.
unhappycamper comment: And the reason for this 'crisis':
Transportation: 3%
Military: 57%
September 26, 2013
Why The Army Wants To Ban Tattoos
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
on September 25, 2013 at 12:57 PM
~snip~
But there’s method to the Army’s madness. This is just one small step in the service’s campaign to raise standards and discipline after it opened the floodgates to felons, high school dropouts, and other dubious recruits when it boosted its ranks at the height of the Iraq war.
Current regulations ban tattoos only on the face unless they’re “extremist, indecent, sexist or racist”: no swastikas or naked ladies, sorry, but almost anything else goes. On Saturday, however, Sergeant Major of the Army Raymond Chandler told troops in Afghanistan that the service was about to ban them on the neck, below the elbows, or below the knees. The ban means, in essence, no tattoos anywhere they’d be visible on a soldier wearing short sleeves and shorts. The service may well let some soldiers already in uniform keep their ink, but new recruits may have to pay out of their own pockets to get offending tattoos removed.
Why should ink disqualify you from being a soldier? “Is being willing to die for your country not good enough?” the commentator on the video asks (fast-forward to 0:45). “Does the military just have a surplus of people sitting around that they can be this choosey?”
Well, actually, it does. Between the end of the Iraq war, the drawdown in Afghanistan, and tightening budgets, the military can’t afford all the people it has, let alone the ships, planes, and main battle tanks. In fact, if the ongoing automatic spending cuts called sequestration continue for 10 years, as current law mandates, then the US will not have the firepower to defeat a single major enemy, e.g. North Korea, the chiefs of the Army, Navy, and Air Force told Congress last week. (The Commandant of the Marine Corps was predictably more gung-ho).
Why The Army Wants To Ban Tattoos
http://breakingdefense.com/2013/09/25/why-the-army-wants-to-ban-tattooos/Why The Army Wants To Ban Tattoos
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
on September 25, 2013 at 12:57 PM
~snip~
But there’s method to the Army’s madness. This is just one small step in the service’s campaign to raise standards and discipline after it opened the floodgates to felons, high school dropouts, and other dubious recruits when it boosted its ranks at the height of the Iraq war.
Current regulations ban tattoos only on the face unless they’re “extremist, indecent, sexist or racist”: no swastikas or naked ladies, sorry, but almost anything else goes. On Saturday, however, Sergeant Major of the Army Raymond Chandler told troops in Afghanistan that the service was about to ban them on the neck, below the elbows, or below the knees. The ban means, in essence, no tattoos anywhere they’d be visible on a soldier wearing short sleeves and shorts. The service may well let some soldiers already in uniform keep their ink, but new recruits may have to pay out of their own pockets to get offending tattoos removed.
Why should ink disqualify you from being a soldier? “Is being willing to die for your country not good enough?” the commentator on the video asks (fast-forward to 0:45). “Does the military just have a surplus of people sitting around that they can be this choosey?”
Well, actually, it does. Between the end of the Iraq war, the drawdown in Afghanistan, and tightening budgets, the military can’t afford all the people it has, let alone the ships, planes, and main battle tanks. In fact, if the ongoing automatic spending cuts called sequestration continue for 10 years, as current law mandates, then the US will not have the firepower to defeat a single major enemy, e.g. North Korea, the chiefs of the Army, Navy, and Air Force told Congress last week. (The Commandant of the Marine Corps was predictably more gung-ho).
September 26, 2013
Lockheed F-35 Quality Failings Cited by Inspector General
By Tony Capaccio - Sep 25, 2013 12:21 PM ET
The Pentagon’s inspector general has flagged hundreds of deficiencies and corrective actions needed for Lockheed Martin Corp. (LMT)’s F-35 fighter, the military’s costliest program.
The watchdog office’s “quality assessment” outlines what it calls ineffective management by Pentagon oversight personnel and insufficient attention to quality assurance in the design and manufacturing phases of the $391.2 billion F-35 program, according to a summary obtained by Bloomberg News. The full report may be issued as soon as Sept. 30.
Since May 2012, the inspector general has been reviewing adherence to quality assurance standards by Bethesda, Maryland-based Lockheed and five subcontractors: Northrop Grumman Corp., BAE Systems Plc, L-3 Communications Holdings Inc., Honeywell International Inc. and United Technologies Corp.
The inspector general’s audit said the F-35 program office should modify its contracts to “include a quality escape clause, to ensure the government does not pay for nonconforming product,” according to the summary.
unhappycamper comment: Too bad these things don't come with a warranty: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Implied_warranty
Lockheed F-35 Quality Failings Cited by Inspector General
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-09-25/lockheed-f-35-quality-failings-cited-by-inspector-general.htmlLockheed F-35 Quality Failings Cited by Inspector General
By Tony Capaccio - Sep 25, 2013 12:21 PM ET
The Pentagon’s inspector general has flagged hundreds of deficiencies and corrective actions needed for Lockheed Martin Corp. (LMT)’s F-35 fighter, the military’s costliest program.
The watchdog office’s “quality assessment” outlines what it calls ineffective management by Pentagon oversight personnel and insufficient attention to quality assurance in the design and manufacturing phases of the $391.2 billion F-35 program, according to a summary obtained by Bloomberg News. The full report may be issued as soon as Sept. 30.
Since May 2012, the inspector general has been reviewing adherence to quality assurance standards by Bethesda, Maryland-based Lockheed and five subcontractors: Northrop Grumman Corp., BAE Systems Plc, L-3 Communications Holdings Inc., Honeywell International Inc. and United Technologies Corp.
The inspector general’s audit said the F-35 program office should modify its contracts to “include a quality escape clause, to ensure the government does not pay for nonconforming product,” according to the summary.
unhappycamper comment: Too bad these things don't come with a warranty: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Implied_warranty
September 26, 2013
What makes a great country like the United States of America unable to define the term “terrorism”?
The Relationship between American Peace-Keeping and Terrorism
Tishreen, Syria
By Sheikh Hussein Ahmed Shehada
Translated By Joseph McBirnie
21 September 2013
Edited by Thomas Phippen
What makes a great country like the United States of America unable to define the term “terrorism”?
Better yet, what makes the U.S. react to terrorism without moving a single step toward understanding the provocations for terroristic actions, all the while forging international laws to justify the use of armed violence, depriving people of the world through its double standards of the basic human right to defend one's own land, honor and dignity? There is no doubt that the world has been silent regarding the crude injustice of America’s use of the term “terrorism.” The U.S. threatens human civilization with the most heinous programs and imperial, counterfeit moral values. The policies of the U.S. not only distort justice and international law but break the will of the human mind itself. The moral factor still presents an obstacle for the U.S. in determining the substantive issues of terrorism and counterterrorism; hence, the involvement of some regimes in counterterrorism missions before America’s skittish and deceiving operations. These missions only exacerbate new problems in the social fabric. The question remains: If in its encyclopedia of foreign relations the U.S. considers terrorism to be any violence used by a state or nonstate to achieve limited political objectives, what does it mean to single out Arabs when the American state itself sponsors such “terrorism” in the occupation of Palestine and Iraq?
Ironically, the CIA defines terrorism as the weakening of the international system and implies that this definition should justify any American military action, including the occupation of any country under the banner of its antiterrorism laws. If the West defines “terrorism” as the threat of violence to cause unusual anxiety for political purposes, then the U.S. administration embodies this ideology by using threats, intimidation and terror to provoke horror throughout every state, nation, culture and religion that does not respond to America’s globalization ambitions. Thus, America uses their definition as a bomb to eliminate the international legal norms and to abolish morals, principles of nonaggression in international relations, principles of noninterference in the internal affairs of nations and principles of the sovereignty of individual states. Will the world pay attention to America’s power at this moment, when it has itself solidified into the most dangerous, dictatorial example of terrorism, threatening the death of the United Nations and the end of international law? The U.S. president [George Bush] provoked anger throughout the world when he said: "Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists.” It was the U.S. president who succeeded in misleading the world, not some Islamic extremist movement, which had been oblivious to the concept of “terrorism.” History will reveal the scandalous proof linking Islamic terrorism with America’s own machinations. We have already seen the State Department incite sectarian strife and support oppositional forces. We have also witnessed the State Department's blatant interference in the internal affairs of their targeted state in order to create chaos. The U.S. administration has forged tools to inflict political terrorism that condemn the Islamic world. Under their misleading definition of terrorism, the U.S. seeks to impose full control over our people, our nations and our cultural renaissance.
The Relationship between American Peace-Keeping and Terrorism
http://watchingamerica.com/News/221929/the-relationship-between-american-peace-keeping-and-terrorism/What makes a great country like the United States of America unable to define the term “terrorism”?
The Relationship between American Peace-Keeping and Terrorism
Tishreen, Syria
By Sheikh Hussein Ahmed Shehada
Translated By Joseph McBirnie
21 September 2013
Edited by Thomas Phippen
What makes a great country like the United States of America unable to define the term “terrorism”?
Better yet, what makes the U.S. react to terrorism without moving a single step toward understanding the provocations for terroristic actions, all the while forging international laws to justify the use of armed violence, depriving people of the world through its double standards of the basic human right to defend one's own land, honor and dignity? There is no doubt that the world has been silent regarding the crude injustice of America’s use of the term “terrorism.” The U.S. threatens human civilization with the most heinous programs and imperial, counterfeit moral values. The policies of the U.S. not only distort justice and international law but break the will of the human mind itself. The moral factor still presents an obstacle for the U.S. in determining the substantive issues of terrorism and counterterrorism; hence, the involvement of some regimes in counterterrorism missions before America’s skittish and deceiving operations. These missions only exacerbate new problems in the social fabric. The question remains: If in its encyclopedia of foreign relations the U.S. considers terrorism to be any violence used by a state or nonstate to achieve limited political objectives, what does it mean to single out Arabs when the American state itself sponsors such “terrorism” in the occupation of Palestine and Iraq?
Ironically, the CIA defines terrorism as the weakening of the international system and implies that this definition should justify any American military action, including the occupation of any country under the banner of its antiterrorism laws. If the West defines “terrorism” as the threat of violence to cause unusual anxiety for political purposes, then the U.S. administration embodies this ideology by using threats, intimidation and terror to provoke horror throughout every state, nation, culture and religion that does not respond to America’s globalization ambitions. Thus, America uses their definition as a bomb to eliminate the international legal norms and to abolish morals, principles of nonaggression in international relations, principles of noninterference in the internal affairs of nations and principles of the sovereignty of individual states. Will the world pay attention to America’s power at this moment, when it has itself solidified into the most dangerous, dictatorial example of terrorism, threatening the death of the United Nations and the end of international law? The U.S. president [George Bush] provoked anger throughout the world when he said: "Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists.” It was the U.S. president who succeeded in misleading the world, not some Islamic extremist movement, which had been oblivious to the concept of “terrorism.” History will reveal the scandalous proof linking Islamic terrorism with America’s own machinations. We have already seen the State Department incite sectarian strife and support oppositional forces. We have also witnessed the State Department's blatant interference in the internal affairs of their targeted state in order to create chaos. The U.S. administration has forged tools to inflict political terrorism that condemn the Islamic world. Under their misleading definition of terrorism, the U.S. seeks to impose full control over our people, our nations and our cultural renaissance.
September 26, 2013
An economist asks provocative questions about the future of social mobility
The American Dream, RIP?
Sep 21st 2013
COULD America survive the end of the American Dream? The idea is unthinkable, say political leaders of right and left. Yet it is predicted in “Average is Over”, a bracing new book by Tyler Cowen, an economist. Mr Cowen is no stranger to controversy. In 2011 he galvanised Washington with “The Great Stagnation”, in which he argued that America has used up the low-hanging fruit of free land, abundant labour and new technologies. His new book suggests that the disruptive effects of automation and ever-cheaper computer power have only just begun to be felt.
It describes a future largely stripped of middling jobs and broad prosperity. An elite 10-15% of Americans will have the brains and self-discipline to master tomorrow’s technology and extract profit from it, he speculates. They will enjoy great wealth and stimulating lives. Others will endure stagnant or even falling wages, as employers measure their output with “oppressive precision”. Some will thrive as service-providers to the rich. A few will claw their way into the elite (cheap online education will be a great leveller), bolstering the idea of a “hyper-meritocracy” at work: this “will make it easier to ignore those left behind”.
Mr Cowen’s vision is neither warm nor fuzzy. In his future, mistakes and even mediocrity will be hard to hide: eg, an ever-expanding array of ratings will expose so-so doctors and also patients who do not take their medicines or otherwise spell trouble. Young men will struggle in a labour market that rewards conscientiousness over muscle. With incomes squeezed, many Americans will head to the sort of cheap, sun-baked sprawling exurbs that give the farmers’-market-and-bike-lanes set heartburn. Many will accept rotten public services in exchange for low taxes. This may sound a bit grim, but it reflects real-world trends: 60% of employers already check the credit ratings of job candidates; young male unemployment is high and migrants have been flooding to low-tax, low-service Texas for years.
The left is sure that inequality is a recipe for riots. Mr Cowen doubts it. The have-nots will be too engrossed in video games to light real petrol bombs. An ageing population will be rather conservative, he thinks. There will be lots of Tea-Party sorts among the economically left-behind. Aid for the poor will be slashed but benefits for the old preserved. He does not fear protectionism, as most jobs that can be sent overseas have already gone. He notes that the late 1960s, when society was in turmoil, was a golden age of income equality, while some highly unequal moments in history, including in medieval times, were rather stable.
The American Dream, RIP?
http://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21586581-economist-asks-provocative-questions-about-future-social-mobility-american?fsrc=rss|ustAn economist asks provocative questions about the future of social mobility
The American Dream, RIP?
Sep 21st 2013
COULD America survive the end of the American Dream? The idea is unthinkable, say political leaders of right and left. Yet it is predicted in “Average is Over”, a bracing new book by Tyler Cowen, an economist. Mr Cowen is no stranger to controversy. In 2011 he galvanised Washington with “The Great Stagnation”, in which he argued that America has used up the low-hanging fruit of free land, abundant labour and new technologies. His new book suggests that the disruptive effects of automation and ever-cheaper computer power have only just begun to be felt.
It describes a future largely stripped of middling jobs and broad prosperity. An elite 10-15% of Americans will have the brains and self-discipline to master tomorrow’s technology and extract profit from it, he speculates. They will enjoy great wealth and stimulating lives. Others will endure stagnant or even falling wages, as employers measure their output with “oppressive precision”. Some will thrive as service-providers to the rich. A few will claw their way into the elite (cheap online education will be a great leveller), bolstering the idea of a “hyper-meritocracy” at work: this “will make it easier to ignore those left behind”.
Mr Cowen’s vision is neither warm nor fuzzy. In his future, mistakes and even mediocrity will be hard to hide: eg, an ever-expanding array of ratings will expose so-so doctors and also patients who do not take their medicines or otherwise spell trouble. Young men will struggle in a labour market that rewards conscientiousness over muscle. With incomes squeezed, many Americans will head to the sort of cheap, sun-baked sprawling exurbs that give the farmers’-market-and-bike-lanes set heartburn. Many will accept rotten public services in exchange for low taxes. This may sound a bit grim, but it reflects real-world trends: 60% of employers already check the credit ratings of job candidates; young male unemployment is high and migrants have been flooding to low-tax, low-service Texas for years.
The left is sure that inequality is a recipe for riots. Mr Cowen doubts it. The have-nots will be too engrossed in video games to light real petrol bombs. An ageing population will be rather conservative, he thinks. There will be lots of Tea-Party sorts among the economically left-behind. Aid for the poor will be slashed but benefits for the old preserved. He does not fear protectionism, as most jobs that can be sent overseas have already gone. He notes that the late 1960s, when society was in turmoil, was a golden age of income equality, while some highly unequal moments in history, including in medieval times, were rather stable.
September 25, 2013
Exclusive: John McAfee vows to make Internet 'impossible to hack' in Silicon Valley return
Posted on Tuesday, September 24, 2013
By DAN NAKASO | San Jose Mercury News
Anti-virus software pioneer John McAfee, who buried himself in the sand to hide from police in Belize, faked a heart attack in a Guatemalan detention center and admits playing the "crazy card," says he's now ready for his next adventure: a return to Silicon Valley.
At age 67, McAfee is promising to launch a new cybersecurity company that will make the Internet safer for everyone.
"My new technology is going to provide a new type of Internet, a decentralized, floating and moving Internet that is impossible to hack, impossible to penetrate and vastly superior in terms of its facility and neutrality. It solves all of our security concerns," McAfee said in an interview with the San Jose Mercury News.
Despite his colorful lifestyle and his even more colorful recent history, McAfee remains one of the most prominent entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley history. In 1989 he founded the anti-virus software company in Santa Clara, Calif., that still bears his name and once was worth an estimated $100 million. In 1994, McAfee ended his relationship with the company and moved to Colorado.
Exclusive: John McAfee vows to make Internet 'impossible to hack' in Silicon Valley return
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2013/09/24/203134/exclusive-john-mcafee-vows-to.htmlExclusive: John McAfee vows to make Internet 'impossible to hack' in Silicon Valley return
Posted on Tuesday, September 24, 2013
By DAN NAKASO | San Jose Mercury News
Anti-virus software pioneer John McAfee, who buried himself in the sand to hide from police in Belize, faked a heart attack in a Guatemalan detention center and admits playing the "crazy card," says he's now ready for his next adventure: a return to Silicon Valley.
At age 67, McAfee is promising to launch a new cybersecurity company that will make the Internet safer for everyone.
"My new technology is going to provide a new type of Internet, a decentralized, floating and moving Internet that is impossible to hack, impossible to penetrate and vastly superior in terms of its facility and neutrality. It solves all of our security concerns," McAfee said in an interview with the San Jose Mercury News.
Despite his colorful lifestyle and his even more colorful recent history, McAfee remains one of the most prominent entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley history. In 1989 he founded the anti-virus software company in Santa Clara, Calif., that still bears his name and once was worth an estimated $100 million. In 1994, McAfee ended his relationship with the company and moved to Colorado.
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