Year: 2008

US Air Force Intent on Committing Suicide

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Gen. Bruce Carlson, chief of Air Force Materiel Command, told a group of reporters Wednesday that the Air Force will figure out a way to buy 380 F-22s, despite the fact that the Pentagon – through the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) – has capped the number of Raptors to be procured at 183.

What is first obvious is that is engaging in insubordination by giving a press conference saying that he will find a way to subvert the decisions of a superior in his chain of command, and he should be fired immediately.

This is far more brassy, and far more public than anything MacArthur did to Truman.

That being said, if he gets his wish, he will destroy the USAF as a fighting unit.

Flight International’s Stephen Trimble does the numbers, and gets an additional 20 F-22s a year at $150 million an aircraft gets another $3 Billion a year over the next 10 years.

Based on my experience with military contracting, I’d double that number when operational expenses, the inevitable cost overruns, and gold plated block improvements are added.

To do this, I think that you need to slash personnel, and cancel pretty much every other program, the F-35, the KC-X, the next gen bomber, the next gen freighter, etc.

You will also have to reduce the existing inventory to cut costs and to reflect the fact that you don’t have enough people to keep the stuff running

Obama’s Presents Economic Plan

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Contrary to complaints, we actually have a decent bit of detail here.

  • Payment for program by elimination of upper class tax breaks and ending Iraq war.
    • My comment: I still think that you need more, at least a thorough review of the Byzantine system of tax credits and deductions to get enough money.
  • A National Infrastructure Reinvestment Bank, spending about $60 billion over the next decade repairing infrastructure.
    • My comment: Good, but we probably need to spend more. Unsure of the amount that states would have to match. Also, should include a similar amount for mass transit and/or freight rail, both of which save energy, etc..
  • Ending tax breaks for moving jobs overseas.
    • My comment: This one has almost become a cliche, but there are also programs that subsidize this in the US that need to be addressed (Ex/Im bank comes to mind).

Generally it’s pretty good. Generally, it’s also pretty similar to Hillary Clinton’s too.

However, there is something else that I found both interesting and laudable, which accompanies his speech (H/T to the other Matthew for the catch), specifically a credit card bill of rights:

  • Ban Unilateral Changes: Currently, credit card companies can unilaterally change the terms of a credit card agreement at any time for any reason with only a 15-day notice to the consumer. Barack Obama will ban these unilateral changes in credit card agreements unless companies have obtained written consent from consumers and have followed the rules and terms of the agreement.
  • Apply Interest Rate Increases Only to Future Debt: Credit card companies often apply increased interest rates to both new debt incurred by the cardholder, as well as previously incurred debt. Barack Obama will require increased interest rates to apply only to future credit card debt, and not to debt incurred prior to the increase.
  • Prohibit Interest on Fees: Credit card companies often charge interest on transaction fees, such as late fees or paying a bill by telephone. Barack Obama will prohibit credit card issuers from charging interest on transaction fees.
  • Prohibit “Universal Defaults”: “Universal defaults” are a practice in which a credit card company raises an individual’s interest rate based on failure to pay a different creditor on time. Barack Obama will prohibit this practice.
  • Require Prompt and Fair Crediting of Cardholder Payments: Barack Obama will require credit card issuers to apply payments first to the credit card balance with the highest rate of interest and to minimize finance charges.

This is interesting for a number of reasons:

  1. It’s very good policy.
  2. This is a proposal where there is actually a loser, the credit card issuers, which is a change from his typical proposals where the policy is not a zero sum game.
  3. This is actually a fairly specific refution of the Washington DC/DLC/Milton Friedman orthodoxy that financial services need to be completely deregulated in order to provide maximum benefit. This may be more important than the first two in revealing his attitude on such matters. Much of the credit crunch today is due to the repeal of Glass-Steagel, which was driven by this ideology.

All in all, a solid B+ to my mind.

Economics Update

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Well, we have Bernanke and Paulson acknowledging that the economy is in trouble, but denying that there will be a recession in 2008.

The thing is, we are already in a recession. Let’s seem consumer spending is flat, with a false increase being driven by increasing food and fuel prices, and the growth rate is less than the real inflation rate.

In bond insurance, we have NY governor Elliot Spitzer saying that the Monolininers have 4-5 business days to recapitalize, or they will lose their AAA ratings, and regulators will have to, “have to step in and separate bond insurers’ municipal businesses from their more troubled structured finance units”.

Bet that offer from Warren Buffet does not look so awful now.

In mortgage loans, banks are lobbying hard to put off their bad investment choices on the US tax payers, which is not surprising, considering that house prices took their biggest quarterly drop ever, a national median price drop of 5.8% in Q4 of 2007.

Annually, that comes to about 23%/year.

The credit crisis is extending further, with delinqencies in assets backed by auto loans surging.

The Trade deficit fell in 2007, for the first time since the 2001 recession.

More Evidence that Destroyed Evidence Will Prevent Fair Trials at Gitmo

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It appears that tapes of interviews and torture interrogations were routinely overwritten, in defiance of a court order.

Not only does cast a pall over the Guantanamo show trials, it may make it impossible to hold a trial in a real court as a result.

The cynic in me believes that this was the intent. Screw it up so badly that the only alternative is a Kangaroo court.

Look at Saddam Hussein’s trial. How you run such an unfair trial, when the defendant was so plainly guilty, is completely beyond me.

Taliban Style CatholicsGo After High School Sports

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In Kansas*, a religious high school refused to allow a female referee to officiate at their game, because they did not believe that women should ever have authority over men.

To the credit of then Kansas State High School Activities Association, they are in the process of considering banning St. Mary’s Academy from any sporting events with their members schools if this is actually their policy.

They should do so, and they so should do so for non sports activities too. Whether that be beauty contests, band competitions, car washes, or educational conferences.

These people are the real American Taliban, and any accomodation will encourage more extreme demands.

*You know, Kansas would be the last place that I would expect this. So say we all, by the might of the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

Carbon Trading: Once Again, Speculative Market Type Solutions to Real Problems Fail Abysmally

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It appears that they have discovered that outright fraud is destroying carbon trading.

According to the World Wildlife Fund, one out of every five carbon credits that’s been issued by the United Nations may be bogus in the sense that the projects being credited for reducing emissions are in fact increasing emissions.

The justification for carbon trading has been that speculative markets will magically find truth and the best way of doing things.

The real justification is that people with MBAs can create complex instruments that generate them lots of fees for doing things that do not benefit the public, or achieve the stated goals of the program.

Basically, this is gambling, and Wall Street sets itself up as the house. It’s what the FDR era regulations were supposed to minimize, and what 30 years of deregulation, starting under Carter, have given us.

It’s a system that encourages phony numbers and lying to generate fees and profits.

Carbon trading is a carbon tax, they both serve to raise the cost of releasing carbon into the atmosphere.

The only difference is that the former benefits Wall Street types, and the latter benefits everyone, so under today’s morality, the former is good, and the latter is bad.

The US Has No Permanent Military Bases Anywhere

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Remember when I claimed that Bush’s statement of “No Permanent Bases in Iraq” was a lie?

Well, now we get the parsing, because Bush and His Evil Minions™ are now saying that the US has no permanent bases anywhere in the world.

We don’t have them in Japan, or Korea, or Germany, because at some point, the host government could ask us to leave, or, in a few billion years, the sun could go nova.

I knew that his “no permanent bases” statement was a lie, but now he’s parsing it on the basis of what the word “is” is.

McCain is a Hypocrite

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Yep, ths striaght talker has voted against making torture illegal. He wants to be president, and that means that he has to make nice with pro-torture Neanderthals.

Additionally, McCain has Bo Harmon as his national political director. If you recall, Harman ran the 2002 Saxby Chambliss campaign against Max Cleland of Georgia, which questioned the courage of a man who lost an arm and both legs in military service to this country.

At the time, John McCain called it, “Worse than disgraceful,” but it now appears that it was not so disgraceful that he can’t hire this pig felching rat bastard.

Conyers Introduces Contempt Resolution Against Bolton and Miers

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It’s actually a bit more complex. He has introduced two resolutions, one for contempt against Bolton and Miers, and a second one would authorize the House Judiciary Committee to go to court, since Mukasey has said that he won’t enforce a contempt citation.

Nice that Conyers is doing this, but it ain’t gonna hit the floor, because it’s:

NOT ON THE TABLE! NOT ON THE TABLE!

Rep Markey Tries Incrementalism In New Net Neutrality Bill

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Once again, the draw by crayon libertarians at CNET get it wrong, and Harold Feld at TOTSF gets it right.

This is a change, and while it seems minor at least to the folks at CNET, it’s not.

Specifically, it ammends the FCC act of 1934 and adds a specific goal for the regulators at the FCC:

by adopting and enforcing baseline protections to guard against unreasonable discriminatory favoratism for, or degredation of, operators based upon its source, ownership or destination on the Internet.

In addition, this explicitly gives the FCC authority over “information services”, and eliminates the argument that the Telecommunications Act of 1996 stripped this authority.

Go read the whole post.

Democrats seek to narrow secrets law

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An update on my earlier post on the state secrets privilige.

Well now the Senate Judiciary Committee is working on actual legislation requiring that the Judge be given evidence of an actual proof of a state secret before granting such a motion.

The states secret privilege has been abused for many years, and in fact the original case establishing the privilege, United States v. Reynolds, was an abuse of the privilege, as it was revealed there were no secrets involved.

Pelosi Showing Some Backbone

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Holy crap. She is calling Shrub’s bluff.

On the House Vote on FISA

February 13th, 2008 by Speaker Pelosi

All Members of Congress fully understand and support our responsibility to protect the American people and the need for the President, the Congress, and policymakers to have the best possible intelligence to fight terrorism.

On Friday, a surveillance law insisted upon by the President last August will expire. Today, an overwhelming majority of House Democrats voted to extend that law for three weeks so that agreement could be reached with the Senate on a better version of that law. The President and House Republicans refused to support the extension and therefore will bear the responsibility should any adverse national consequences result.

However, even if the Protect America Act expires later this week, the American people can be confident that our country remains safe and strong. Every order entered under the law can remain in effect for 12 months from the date it was issued.

Furthermore, the underlying Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which provides for the surveillance of terrorists and provides that in emergencies surveillance can begin without warrant, remains intact and available to our intelligence agencies. Unlike last August, the FISA court has no backlog of cases, and thus can issue necessary court orders for surveillance immediately.

Conyers’ Being Innundated With Calls Calling for Impeachment

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The report of this is here:

Congressman John Conyers’ telephone, by many reports, rang endlessly on Monday, approximately 60 times per minute, or as fast as people could get through. The same thing appears to be happening today (Tuesday).

It needs to be on the table. 202-225-5126, fax: 202-225-0072,Conyers’ Judiciary Committee office: 202-225-3951, his Detroit, Mich., office: 313-961-5670, his Trenton, Mich., office: 734-675-4084.