Year: 2010

A Must Read on Obama and the 3rd Way

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Daniel De Groot at Open Left pulls a comment by sTivo and it may be the clearest explanation of both Barack and 3rd way politicians yet given:

When Barack Obama made his famous remarks about Ronald Reagan being transformational, it was misinterpreted as being political, an attempt to reach out to the other side. It actually was, as some feared, philosophical. It really did mean, sincerely, that except around the edges, he thought that Reaganism-Thatcherism was irreversible. Just as Bill Clinton does, just as Tony Blair does.

The Third-Wayers are serious about this. Seriously deluded, perhaps, but dead serious. There was never an attempt to triangulate the “independent center”, those who still believed in Reaganism but were distressed by the partisan cultural meanness. That was sincere. Those who were played were the Democratic base. They would have to be satisfied with corporate-style knockoffs of social-democratic ideas (health care being the most obvious example). Labor reformers would have to be mollified with “we don’t have 60 votes”. And symbolic gestures devoid of content like inviting Pete Seeger to the White House.

(emphasis mine)

Occam’s razor seems to mitigate toward this explanation.

Go read the rest.

H/t Atrios.

Why the Hell is the US Government Supporting the Karzai Government?

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The largest bank in Afghanistan, Da Kabul Bank, is in the process of imploding due in a miasma of corruption and self dealing, as ordinary depositors rush to pull out their money from the institution following a number of stories revealing their corruption:

The Karzai government is corrupt and rotten to the core. Not a single US soldier should die to prop it up. The lie that we are fighting “al–Qaeda” in Afghanistan needs to be exposed. The US and NATO are fighting four or five groups of Pashtun insurgents, some of them until fairly recently US allies. The goal of the fighting is to keep the Karzai government from falling to the guerrillas and to train up an army and police force that could go on defending Kabul. The Afghanistan National Army from all accounts has poor morale. No wonder. What Afghan soldier or policeman would die for a ponzi scheme?

But Juan Cole’s outrage at this was premature, because it is actually worse than he first reported, because after the government seized control of the bank, as the Washington Post hed states, “Officials freeze assets of Kabul Bank shareholders, excepting Karzai’s brother.”

Why we supported his continued corruption, and his election theft, I’ll never know, but enough is enough.

Get out now, because the alternative, replacing him (see Diệm, Jean Baptiste Ngô Đình) just won’t work.

Obama Calls for Weak Tea, and Cedes Ground to the Right Wing

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So now, instead of trying for something that works to reduce unemployment, Obama is calling for a modest public works program, $50 Billion over 6 years, significantly less than what we are flushing down the toilet on the unnecessary F-35 Joint Strike Fighter.*

What’s more, once again, he throws a bargaining chip to the Republicans, who have shown their unwillingness to negotiate in good faith, by also proposing that the R&D tax credit be extended and made permanent.

Once again, when trying to put forward even the most modest proposal, he kneecaps himself by taking what could have been used as a lever to derive support, and handing it to his enemies so that they can use it as a cudgel against him.

Week tea, constructed to make it even weaker, once again.

*This is not meant to be a commentary on the capabilities of the F-35, simply a statement that these capabilities are simply not necessary in current of foreseeable future conflicts, and the same goes for the F-22, so please don’t make this a Raptor/Lightning II pissing contest.

So Now You Can Patent Recipes

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It appears that a French company has patented Plumpy’nut, a fortified peanut butter as a treatment for severe malnutrition:

Should a revolutionary humanitarian food product be protected by commercial patent, when lifting restrictions might save millions of starving children?

That is the moral conundrum at the heart of a bitter transatlantic legal dispute.

On one side are the French inventors of Plumpy’nut, a peanut paste which in the last five years has transformed treatment of acute malnutrition in Africa.

Nutriset, the Normandy-based company, says the patent is needed to safeguard production of Plumpy’nut in the developing world, and to stop the market being swamped by cheap US surpluses.

And on the other side are two American not-for-profit organisations that have filed a suit at a Washington DC federal court to have the patent overturned.

They say they are being stopped by Nutriset from manufacturing similar – and cheaper – peanut-based food products, despite the proven demand from aid agencies.

“By their actions, Nutriset are preventing malnourished children from getting what they need to survive. It is as simple as that,” said Mike Mellace, of the San Diego-based Mama Cares Foundation.

I will spare you the picture of the severely malnourished child in the article, but it appears to me that this patent is not only morally indefensible, but also a very real expansion of IP law to an area where it had not previously applied, recipes, which are rather famously not covered by copyright (see here), and the patent appears to be rather broad, covering pretty much every nut based food with milk in it, which would include the Nutella from which Plumpy’nut was originally derived.

The problem here is that the other potential players in this market (EVIL term, that) are all small not for profits who would be driven to extinction with a loss in a patent court.

One solution here is to make patents like civil rights law, and allow people to file suit before infringing, for the same reason that they do with civil rights suits: because the chilling effect occurs even if no one breaks the law.

Non-Combat Role My Ass!

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Our troops are still conducting combat operations in Iraq:

US troops have been called in to help Iraqi forces battle insurgents who attacked an army base in Baghdad, killing 12 people, officials say.

It marks the first such use of US troops since the end of US combat operations five days ago.

US forces remaining in Iraq can now only participate in operations at the request of Iraqi authorities.

A US military spokesman said US forces had provided fired as Iraqis located two of the assailants inside the base.

When I said that the phony withdrawal from Iraq was a lie, I was right.

81% of the American Public Think that the Economy Sucks

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So says a CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey.

This is unsurprising, and it may explain why efforts like Clinton’s, Blair/Brown’s, and Obama’s to dismantle the New Deal/Social Democrat structure, because they believe, even more than Republicans, that “Reagan changed everything,” are driving people back into the arms of an increasingly delusional Republican Party, because a bad something always wins over a better nothing.

This is a foreseeable consequence of the “3rd Way.”

I Want to Vacation in Iceland

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I company called ECA Program is in talks to purchase 15 Su-27 Flankers from Belarus in order to set up a private air-to-air combat academy at Keflavik airport in Iceland.

The primary customer is dissimilar air combat training for NATO forces, but I would really like to get a ride on one of these aircraft, and my guess is that they will make this available to private individuals as well.

Of course, now I just need a few million dollars.

I would also note that there are some differences of opinion amongst the various players in the Icelandic government about the merit of this proposal.

Israeli MoD Approves JSF Buy

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Israel’s Ministry of Defense has approved a purchase of 20 F-35 fighters, though the report of a price of “only” $96 million a copy, is clearly a blivit,* as evidenced by this report of that 20 JSFs will cost about $2.75 billion, which gives a price of $137.5 million each, which is closer, but probably still less than, the cost of the aircraft.

In any case, while the MoD has approved, there is significant resistance from the full cabinet, with Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz expressing significant concerns about Defense Minister Ehud Barak’s decision.

It’s clear that both Lockheed Martin and the DoD were desperate to get this sale, which explains why Israel Aerospace Industries got a contract to build 800 wingsets for the stealthy fighter, which comes close to Israel being paid to take the plane.

They want a stamp of approval from a country that is not already a partner in the F-35 consortium, and Israel gives them more market credibility than almost any other non NATO nation.

*10 pounds of sh%$ in a 5 pound bag.

I Am Not Sure if This Flies, or if It’s Just So Ugly That it Repels the Ground

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You have to credit the Russian aircraft designers, this eleptical fuselage transport aircraft, dubbed ‘EkoJet’, appears to be an interesting way of looking at how to get a large number of people on and off an aircraft.

But man, it is one fugly bird.

The designers claim that the aircraft can carry as many passengers as the Il-86 (around 350 in an all coach configuration), but that it would weigh 80 tons less, or about 40% less than the IL-86’s 217t MTOW, which I simply don’t find credible.

The problems with the Il-86 were always its propulsion, not its structure, and a 40% weight savings seems to violate the laws of physics.

Kremlin Elizabeth Warren Watching

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One of the big questions out there is who Barack Obama will appoint to appoint to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

The leading candidate has always been Elizabeth Warren, who literally wrote the book on predatory finance in the age of the mega-banks, but the mega-banks, along with Tim Geithner, just don’t like her, because, she might actually, you know, protect consumers.

That being said, the democratic wing of the Democratic Party has rallied behind her to an astonishing degree, and so it has increasingly appeared that Obama will nominate her, if only to allow the nomination to be filibustered, as they did in the case of his nominee to head the Office of Legal Counsel, Dawn Johnsen.

Given just how demoralized the party base is, politics demands it.

Nothing has been announced yet though, so the press is engaging in a process similar to Kremlinology, and we have another data point: Ms. Warren has pulled out of the contract law class that she was teaching at Harvard.

I still expect that if Obama nominates Warren, he won’t fight for her, but it is beginning to look like he will nominate her.

Feds Sue Sheriff Joe Arpaio

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They have had a civil rights investigation of his department since (at least) 2009, and he has refused to turn over documents, so the DoJ has filed suit against the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office.

Seeing as how it’s pretty clear that the Sheriff’s office is guilty, Arpaio has campaigned on harassing people on the basis of their ethnicity, one hopes that they get the documents, and an injunction, before Sheriff Joe goes and abuses his power to go Jim Crow on Hispanic voters this year.

Economics Update

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Click for full size

There is more scary graph pr0n at Calculated Risk


And workforce participation is the lowest since 1984

The non-farm payroll numbers came out, and, though better than expected, they really suck, with NFP falling by 54,000 and unemployment rising slightly to 9.6%, though most of that was the demobilization of the US census, and private payrolls increased by a better than expected 67,000.

Once again, the Panglossian members of the financial 4th estate cast this as unbelievably good news.

It isn’t. It’s no where near the 100-125 K new jobs needed every month just to absorb new entrants to the job market.

Things are still getting worse.

And we have more evidence that the stimulus package that has driven the economy is running out of steam with the Institute for Supply Management’s Non-Manufacturing index, a measure of activity in the service industry, continues to decline.

It’s still showing meager growth, but only barely, and it missed expectations.

I Don’t Approve of 3 Strikes Laws Either, But……

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I Wonder if the DA Would do This to a White Man

Timothy Barnett is a con man. He has been convicted twice of using fraud to steal from homeowners.

Well, he appears to be back at his game, to the tune of 23 counts, and the DA has decided to pursue him with the 3rd strike law which would put him in prison for the rest of his life.

I think that 3rd strike laws are generally bad ideas, and the one in California is worse, but this is the sort of guy who makes me want to throw the book at him:

Timothy Barnett spent nearly five years in state prison for a 1990s foreclosure rescue scam in which he conned homeowners out of tens of thousands of dollars. Now, prosecutors say, he has been at it again, targeting residents in the same South Los Angeles neighborhood he fleeced before.

But this time, the state is unleashing one of its more powerful weapons against him. The Los Angeles County district attorney’s office has charged Barnett under California’s much-debated three-strikes law. Usually aimed at offenders with a history of violent crime, it is rarely used for white-collar offenses such as fraud.

Arrested in April, the 47-year-old Barnett is charged with 23 felonies — including theft from the elderly, identity theft and real estate fraud — for allegedly tricking five people into unknowingly granting him title to their homes. He has pleaded not guilty.

Some experts said the case would be one of the first times a person charged with a white-collar crime was prosecuted under the state’s three-strikes law. If convicted, Barnett could face life in prison.

I do think if you have 3rd strike laws, and I don’t think that you should, then it should be applied to white collar criminals.

But I think that 3rd strike laws are yet another case of what H.L. Menken, the Bard of Baltimore, meant when he said, “For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.”

C=MI*

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Seriously, It Sounds Like Tertiary Syphillis


And then when challenged by the press, she flees

I don’t know what is going on with Arizona governor Jan Brewer, but I hope that she has a substance abuse problem, because if her opening statment at the debate and her interview post debate are any indication, if it’s not that, she has a serious neurological problem.

Of course, I am an engineer, not a Doctor, Dammit†, but her goes well beyond someone who, thanks to Barack Obama hiring Napolitano, was promoted well past her capabilities, she has a serious screw loose.

Props to here opponent Terry Goddard, who, when accused of being responsible for the boycott, or at least supporting it, responds that when the governor of the state is lying about beheadings, it makes her a part of the tourism downturn.

I still think that Brewer is going to win, particularly with Sheriff Arpaio continuing his attempt to intimidate and harass Hispanic voters in the Phoenix area, but what passes for a mainstream Republican these days just buggers the mind.

*Conservatism = Mental Illness.

†I LOVE IT when I get to go all Doctor McCoy!!!

Economics Update

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It’s jobless Thursday, and initial claims fell slightly to a still awful 472,000, in the middle of the 450-485k range it has been been in, with one exception, for the past 6 months, while the less volatile 4-week moving average fell to 485,500 last week from 488,000, and continuing claims fell to 4.46 million, and the people on emergency UI fell as well.

It’s a lot of press about improvement, but this is not even treading water, this is a number in which payrolls continue to fall.

Pending home sales rose slightly in July, and beat estimates, but the market is still pretty much dead.

Lifelong Peonage and Are the Main Feature

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Click for full size


Click for Ginormous Graphic

Barry Ritholtz has a useful infographic showing just how education loans have become the latest way that the banks keep us in debt slavery.

Note that the value of outstanding student loans is now larger than that of credit card debt, and its holders cannot discharge it through bankruptcy, ever.

This goes hand in hand with changes in the job market, where jobs that do not require a college to degree require a college degree to get, along with the explosion of for-profit schools that make false promises of a career in order to get you to overpay for trade school.

It really is remarkable just how predatory our society has become.