He invented Daylight Savings Time, so he is evil, QED.
While I do not dispute his contributions to science and governance in the US, he had to be evil to devise Daylight Savings Time.
Year: 2014
Aviation Week Comes to the Right Decision While Ignoring the Obvious
They have an editorial where they argue (Correctly IMNSHO) that the 50 year old U-2 is a superior reconnaissance platform to the Block 3 Global Hawk UAV:
With the presentation of the Obama administration’s fiscal 2015 budget request last week, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel announced his decision in a battle that had been brewing for some time: U-2 (below) versus Global Hawk. With money as tight as it is, everyone knew it was becoming too expensive to have both options for high-altitude intelligence, reconnaissance and surveillance (ISR) missions.
It would be easy to portray this as a contest between modernity and nostalgia, pitting a cutting-edge unmanned system against a piloted Cold War relic—Hal the computer versus an aging jet jockey with a silk scarf. Indeed, when Hagel announced his decision, he said he is opting to phase out the “50-year-old U-2 in favor of the unmanned Global Hawk” beginning in 2016 (see page 30). But that comparison is not just an oversimplification, it is the wrong way to approach the question.
Hagel was more forthright when he acknowledged this was “a close call.” It surely is. The operating costs of the two fleets, for example, have been about the same.
They note that the U-2 is cheaper to buy, more flexible in its operations, flies higher, and has a sophisticated ECM suite.
But their editorial ignores the elephant in the room.
The reason that the Air Force, and the Congress, are supporting the very expensive ($200 million a copy) and inferior solution is because of pork and post-retirement employment opportunities for retired officers at defense contractors.
We really need to move to something like the Swedish Defence Materiel Administration (FMV), to take the uniformed military out of the procurement equation.
Additionally, such an agency should have as its remit the analysis of subcontracting, to ensure that work is allocated on the basis of efficiency, and not in an attempt to spread work to politically significant Congressional districts.
Gee, You Think?
In the Armed Forced Journal, Army lieutenant colonel Daniel L. Davis calls for the forced retirement of most of the US general officer corps:
The U.S. Army’s generals, as a group, have lost the ability to effectively function at the high level required of those upon whom we place the responsibility for safeguarding our nation. Over the past 20 years, our senior leaders have amassed a record of failure in major organizational, acquisition and strategic efforts. These failures have been accompanied by the hallmarks of an organization unable and unwilling to fix itself: aggressive resistance to the reporting of problems, suppression of failed test results, public declarations of success where none was justified, and the absence of accountability.
………
Events have granted us a short window of time in which we might address the problem. America is drawing down after two intense wars, while the potential threats of the future are not quite upon us. Seven decades ago, Army Chief of Staff Gen. George Marshall surveyed an officer corps similarly ill-suited for the tasks to come. He forced into retirement scores of generals, clearing the way for the ones who would help win World War II.
Today’s times, like Marshall’s, call for a reformation of the general officer corps.
………
After each of these failures, one might expect the Army and program leaders to have suffered censure. Instead, the opposite seems generally to have been the case. The leaders of failed programs and other efforts received prestigious medals, promotion to higher ranks, and plum follow-on jobs; others retired and went to work for defense contractors, often with companies that had profited from the failed acquisition effort.
………
Shrink the general officer corps. In 1945, about 2,000 general and flag officers led a total of about 12 million citizens in uniform. Today, we have about 900 generals and admirals and 1.4 million troops, and the ratio of leader-to-led has accelerated upward in the two decades since the end of the Cold War. In an age of unprecedented communications technology and with the education and training opportunities for today’s soldiers, this is indefensible. Many general officer billets are redundant and should be eliminated; others can effectively be filled by colonels or even lieutenant colonels.
I highly remommend this as a read, though I would argue that the “Up or Out” officer promotion and retention policies have also contributed to these problems.
It makes the consequences to challenging the Pentagon’s group think to be the end of a career.
Books to Read: Grounded: The Case for Abolishing the United States Air Force
I’ve got to read this book. Professor Robert Farley, an assistant professor at the Patterson School of Diplomacy and International Commerce at the University of Kentucky has written a book calling for the abolition of the US Air Force as an independent branch of the service:
The United States needs airpower, but does it need an air force? In Grounded, Robert M. Farley persuasively argues that America should end the independence of the United States Air Force (USAF) and divide its assets and missions between the United States Army and the United States Navy.
In the wake of World War I, advocates of the Air Force argued that an organizationally independent air force would render other military branches obsolete. These boosters promised clean, easy wars: airpower would destroy cities beyond the reach of the armies and would sink navies before they could reach the coast. However, as Farley demonstrates, independent air forces failed to deliver on these promises in World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the first Gulf War, the Kosovo conflict, and the War on Terror. They have also had perverse effects on foreign and security policy, as politicians have been tempted by the vision of devastating airpower to initiate otherwise ill-considered conflicts. The existence of the USAF also produces turf wars with the Navy and the Army, leading to redundant expenditures, nonsensical restrictions on equipment use, and bad tactical decisions.
I certainly agree with this idea. The raison d’être for an independent air force is Douhet’s theory about how strategic bombing could win wars.
History has shown this to be completely false. Strategic bombing with the possible exception of the use of nuclear weapons against Japan, have never won wars, nor do they appear to have shortened wars.
H/t War is Boring.
Yes, the Consumer Financial Protection Board is Doing Things: For Profit Colllege Edition
The CFPB has filed suit against ITT Technical alleging that it behaves more like a payday lender than an institute of learning.
It’s not just the CFPB, 32 state Attorneys General have filed suit as well, but the CFPB’s involvement makes it far less likely that other federal agencies, most notably the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, will attempt to preempt the investigation:
Honest, well-run for-profit colleges can be helpful to students who do not qualify for traditional schools. But the robber barons in the for-profit sector represent a menace that requires more federal oversight. They saddle students with crushing debt while furnishing them useless degrees – or no degrees at all. These schools have been known to push students who are eligible for low-cost, federal loans into ruinously priced private loans that have fewer consumer protections and that give borrowers who get in trouble little choice but to default. That in turn makes it difficult for them to find jobs, get credit or rent apartments. And because private student loans are difficult to escape through bankruptcy, the stricken borrower might never recover.
Attorneys general in 32 states are actively pursuing this problem . This week the federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau finally got into the act. On Wednesday it filed suit against an Indiana-based for-profit chain, ITT Educational Services, Inc., which has tens of thousands of students enrolled online or at one of roughly 150 institutions in nearly 40 states. The bureau, which paints a damning portrait of the company’s policies, accuses the chain of practicing “predatory student lending.”
………
The suit makes the company look very much like a storefront payday lender that ropes borrowers into loans that they cannot repay, then hammers them with fees and interest. In this case, the bureau asserts that the company rushed students through the application process without giving them a chance to understand what was happening. In some cases “ students did not even know they had a private student loan until they started getting collection calls.” Moreover, it says: “ITT knew that most of its students would ultimately default on their private student loans; it projected a default rate for its students of 64 percent.”
I really hope that this results in meaningful change.
The for profit college industry is full of parasites and predators who make their money off of federally guaranteed loans.
Full CFPB release after break:
CFPB Sues For-Profit College Chain ITT For Predatory Lending
ITT Pushed Consumers into High-Cost Student Loans Likely to Fail
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Today the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) filed a lawsuit against ITT Educational Services, Inc., accusing the for-profit college chain of predatory student lending. The CFPB alleges that ITT exploited its students and pushed them into high-cost private student loans that were very likely to end in default. The CFPB is seeking restitution for victims, a civil fine, and an injunction against the company.
“ITT marketed itself as improving consumers’ lives but it was really just improving its bottom line,” said CFPB Director Richard Cordray. “We believe ITT used high-pressure tactics to push many consumers into expensive loans destined to default. Today’s action should serve as a warning to the for-profit college industry that we will be vigilant about protecting students against predatory lending tactics.”
Like the mortgage market in the lead-up to the financial crisis, the for-profit college industry may be experiencing misaligned incentives. These colleges benefit when students take out large amounts of loans, regardless of the students’ long-term success. The CFPB is concerned that some of these corporations may be employing practices to coax consumers into taking out more federal and private student loans. Today’s announcement is the Bureau’s first public enforcement action against a company in the for-profit college industry.
ITT Educational Services, Inc. is an Indiana-based for-profit provider of post-secondary technical education. Tens of thousands of students are enrolled online or at one of ITT’s roughly 150 institutions in nearly 40 states. ITT’s tuition costs are among the highest in the country in the for-profit industry. Earning an associate’s degree at ITT can cost more than $44,000. Bachelor’s degree programs can cost $88,000. That is significantly higher than the cost of similar degrees at a community college or a public four-year institution.
Most of ITT’s students borrow large sums to pay the high tuition costs and the majority of this money is borrowed from federal student loan programs. But private student loans also provide critical revenue for ITT. Because most ITT students’ federal aid does not cover the full cost of an ITT program, most students face a “tuition gap” requiring them to find other sources of funding.
The CFPB’s lawsuit alleges that ITT encouraged new students to enroll at ITT by providing them funding for this tuition gap with a zero-interest loan called “Temporary Credit.” This loan typically had to be paid in full at the end of the student’s first academic year. But ITT knew from the outset that many students would not be able to repay their Temporary Credit balances or fund their next year’s tuition gap.
The CFPB lawsuit alleges that between July 2011 and December 2011, ITT pushed its students into repaying their Temporary Credit and funding their second-year tuition gaps through high-cost private student loan programs. Students were left in the dark about the fact that taking out these high-cost loans would be required to continue their studies. However, ITT’s CEO revealed in investor calls that converting the temporary loans to long-term loans was the company’s “plan all along.”
Under the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, the CFPB has the authority to take action against institutions engaging in unfair, deceptive, or abusive practices. Specifically, in today’s lawsuit, the Bureau alleges the following conduct by ITT:
- Pressured into predatory loans: ITT used its financial aid staff to rush students through an automated application process without affording them a fair opportunity to understand the loan obligations involved. In some cases, students did not even know they had a private student loan until they started getting collection calls. The loans were high-cost. For borrowers with credit scores under 600, for example, the costs of the private student loans included 10 percent origination fees and interest rates as high as 16.25 percent.
- Credits not transferable: ITT was accredited by a national organization that accredits many for-profit schools, but the credits that students earned typically did not transfer to local community colleges or other nonprofit schools such as public or private colleges. ITT used the prospect of expulsion and the loss of the money already spent during the student’s first year to coerce students into taking out the private loans.
- Misleading future job prospects: The Bureau believes that ITT’s representations led students to think that when they graduated they were likely to land good jobs and enough salary to repay their private student loans. In this way, ITT exploited student expectations while it knew that a majority of students would default.
- Loans likely to fail: ITT knew that most of its students would ultimately default on their private student loans; it projected a default rate for its students of 64 percent. Defaulting on private student loans can have grave consequences for consumers. It can make it difficult to get any kind of loan for years and even affect a borrower’s job prospects. And, because private student loans are difficult to discharge in bankruptcy, the debt can be very difficult to recover from.
The complaint against ITT can be found at: http://files.consumerfinance.gov/f/201402_cfpb_complaint_ITT.pdf
The Bureau’s complaint is not a finding or ruling that the defendant has actually violated the law.
To assist student loan borrowers who may be in delinquency or default, the CFPB recently launched an updated version of the Repay Student Debt interactive tool.
The CFPB also recently finalized a rule allowing it to supervise certain nonbank servicers of federal and private student loans. The rule takes effect on March 1.
CFPB takes complaints about student loans. To submit a complaint, consumers can:
- Go online at consumerfinance.gov/complaint
- Call the toll-free phone number at 1-855-411-CFPB (2372) or TTY/TDD phone number at 1-855-729-CFPB (2372)
- Fax the CFPB at 1-855-237-2392
- Mail a letter to: Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, P.O. Box 4503, Iowa City, Iowa 52244
Turns out that Snowden Did Take it to His Superiors
Yet another lie about Edward Snowden is disproved:
Edward J. Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor who leaked a trove of documents revealing the agency’s surveillance operations, said he raised his concerns to more than 10 officials, “none of whom took any action to address them,” before he decided to give the documents to journalists.
Mr. Snowden’s comments, in written answers to questions by members of the European Parliament that were released on Friday, amplified previous assertions that he initially tried to raise concerns internally about surveillance collection he believed went too far.
An N.S.A. spokeswoman declined to comment, but the agency has previously said its internal investigation, including interviews with co-workers, found no evidence that he had brought concerns to the attention of anyone.
But in his written testimony, Mr. Snowden insisted that he had, adding that his efforts had elicited two types of responses. Some people, he said, responded with “well-meaning but hushed warnings not to ‘rock the boat’ ” for fear of retaliation like being investigated by the F.B.I. as a suspected leaker.“Everyone in the intelligence community is aware of what happens to people who report concerns about unlawful but authorized operations,” he wrote.
Other people, he said, told him to “let the issue be someone else’s problem.”
“Even among the most senior individuals to whom I reported my concerns,” he continued, “no one at N.S.A. could ever recall an instance where an official complaint had resulted in an unlawful program being ended, but there was a unanimous desire to avoid being associated with such a complaint in any form.”
Yes, “No evidence,” from the folks have been caught lying time and time again by Snowden’s revelations.
And the Snoden’s testimony about how an official complaint has never resulted in reforms rings quite true.
The entire history of the US government state security apparatus has been one of excess reigned in from outside sources.
We Learned from The Last Airbender that Aasif Mandvi was a Bad Ass
Here, he f%$#ing destroys Fox Business Channel pundit Todd Wilemon on the American healthcare system.
He makes the Malevolent Murdoch Minion™ look both stupid and evil.
I have never seen anyone as thoroughly owned, and that included Jon Stewart’s epic takedown Jim Cramer.
This is the Best News Ever!!!!!!
I’m an engineer, and I have seen way too many PowerPoint slides.
So I exult in the fact that the forum for the Large Hadron Collider at Fermilabs has banned PowerPoint slides in their presentations:
A physicist is more than the sum of his or her slides.
That’s why, about six months ago, organizers of a biweekly forum on Large Hadron Collider physics at Fermilab banned PowerPoint presentations in favor of old-fashioned, chalkboard-style talks.
“Without slides, the participants go further off-script, with more interaction and curiosity,” says Andrew Askew, an assistant professor of physics at Florida State University and a co-organizer of the forum. “We wanted to draw out the importance of the audience.”
In one recent meeting, physics professor John Paul Chou of Rutgers University (pictured above) presented to a full room holding a single page of handwritten notes and a marker. The talk became more dialogue than monologue as members of the audience, freed from their usual need to follow a series of information-stuffed slides flying by at top speed, managed to interrupt with questions and comments.
“We all feel inundated by PowerPoint,” Askew says. “With only a whiteboard, you have your ideas and a pen in your hand.”
If Zombie Osama bin Laden were to were to wage Jihad against PowerPoint, I would gladly join his evil minions.
Bitcoin Has Had a Disasterous Week
We’ve just had 3rd Bitcoin exchange robbery in a week, the suspicious death of the CEO of another exchange, the discovery the mysterious founder of Bitcoin, Satoshi Nakamoto, is actually a guy named Satoshi Nakamoto, and Japan has decided not to regulate it as currency.
I know what you are wondering why is Japan deciding not to regulate Bitcoin a bad thing?
Well, because if it is not currency, then it is subject to the VAT (sales tax) and the capital gains tax:
The Japanese government officially said Friday that it doesn’t consider bitcoin to be a currency and has no plans at present to regulate it as a financial product.
As it tries to cope with the fallout from the bankruptcy of the Tokyo-based Mt. Gox exchange, the government said that the crypto-currency would be treated like other goods and services, with commercial sales of bitcoin itself and bitcoin-based transactions subject to sales tax. In addition, any gains on exchange rates will be taxed as well.
“Any bitcoin transactions are taxable when they fulfill requisitions stated by laws on income tax, corporate tax and consumption tax,” the government said in its statement, which came in response to questions over how bitcoins will be regulated.
At the same time, the statement ruled out treatment of bitcoin as a currency or a financial instrument.
“Bitcoin are neither Japanese nor foreign currencies and its trading is different from deals stated by Japan’s bank act as well as financial instruments and exchange act,” according to a document released by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s cabinet.
(emphasis mine)
I don’t know if Bitcoin is done, but I think that a stake has been driven though the heart of the Randroid libertarian dream of completely unregulated and untraceable crypto currency.
Heh.
This is More than a Russian-Ukrainian Thing
At the New Yorker, Natalia Antelava notes that Crimean Tatars are completely without any ally or patron:
At first, Rustem Kadyrov could barely make out the mark outside his house, in the Crimean town of Bakhchysarai, but it filled him with terror. It was an X, cut deep into the gray metal of the gate, and its significance cut even deeper, evoking a memory Kadyrov shares with all Crimean Tatars. Kadyrov, who is thirty-one, grew up hearing stories about marks on doors. In May of 1944, Stalin ordered his police to tag the houses of Crimean Tatars, the native Muslim residents of the peninsula. Within a matter of days, all of them—almost two hundred thousand people—were evicted from their homes, loaded onto trains, and sent to Central Asia, on the pretext that the community had collaborated with the Nazi occupation of Crimea.
Kadyrov’s grandmother, Sedeka Memetova, who was eight at the time, was among those deported. “The soldiers gave us five minutes to pack up,” she told me, when I visited the family on Thursday. “We left everything behind.” Memetova still has vivid memories of her journey into exile: the stench of the overcrowded train carriage, the wailing of a pregnant woman who sat next to her, and the solemn faces of the men who had to lower the bodies of their children off of the moving train—the only way, she said, to dispose of the dead. Four of her siblings were among the thousands of Crimean Tatars who never even made it to their final destination, Uzbekistan.
Starting in the nineteen-sixties, the Soviet Union began to allow survivors of the deportation to return. Memetova and her family came back to Crimea almost three decades ago, in 1987. This weekend, at around 3 P.M. on Saturday, Memetova’s forty-four-year-old daughter, Ava, looked out the window and saw four young men, strangers to the neighborhood, walking down the street, armed with batons. The men were also carrying pieces of paper, Ava told me—which she believes were lists of homes belonging to Crimean Tatars. Seventy years after Memetova’s deportation, her house had been marked once again. “Just as we thought we finally had a future,” she said. “How could anyone do this in the twenty-first century?”
On one side of the conflict are the Russians, (Yes, I know that Stalin was a Georgian) who engaged in Genocide in 1944, and on the other side is the neo-Nazi influenced government in Kiev.
It’s kind of like what happened to the Roma following the fall of the Warsaw pact.
The new Europe has some frightening echos to the interwar years.
Gee, Screwed By Your Cell Phone Provider. Why is this News?
OK, THIS time it’s the Feds that they overcharged:
The President Barack Obama administration accused Sprint today of overcharging the government more than $21 million in wiretapping expenses.
Sprint, like all the nation’s carriers, must comply with the Communications Assistance in Law Enforcement Act of 1994, which requires telcos to be capable of providing government-ordered wiretapping services. The act also allows carriers to recoup “reasonable expenses” associated with those services.
Sprint, of Overland Park, Kansas, inflated charges approximately 58 percent between 2007 and 2010, according to a lawsuit (.pdf) the administration brought against the carrier today.
“As alleged, Sprint over billed law enforcement agencies for carrying out court-ordered intercepts, causing a significant loss to the government’s limited resources,” said San Francisco U.S. Attorney Melinda Haag.
The authorities said the suit, filed in San Francisco federal court, was a result of an investigation by the Justice Department’s Inspector General.
It’s kind of like having your Mother-In-Law drive your brand new Mercedes over a cliff.
Linkage
- There’s No Real Difference Between Online Espionage and Online Attack (Bruce Schneier at The Atlantic) Basically, we are setting up an infrastructure to engage in unprovoked attacks on other nations computer infrastructure.
- Choosing Secure Passwords (Bruce Schneier, again)
- There’s an App for What???? (Jezebel) A phone app to practice oral sex called Lick This. Just clean your screen before and after.
- David Cameron’s porn-filter advisor arrested for possession of images of sexual abuse of children (Boing Boing) So not surprised.
J-Pop and Death Metal together at last.
Warning: That which is seen cannot be unseen.
Ukraine: Sniper Theory Leaves Tinfoil Hat Territory
We have another leaked conversation between high level diplomats involving the Ukraine, in this case Estonian Foreign Minister Urmas Paet and High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Catherine Ashton.
The big story in this discussion, a lot bigger than Victoria Nuland’s, “F%$3 the EU,” comment is Paet’s statement that sources on the ground strongly implied that the snipers at the protests were from the opposition, not Yanukovich:
A leaked phone call between the EU foreign affairs chief Catherine Ashton and Estonian foreign minister Urmas Paet has revealed that the two discussed a conspiracy theory that blamed the killing of civilian protesters in the Ukrainian capital, Kiev, on the opposition rather than the ousted government.
The 11-minute conversation was posted on YouTube – it is the second time in a month that telephone calls between western diplomats discussing Ukraine have been bugged.
In the call, Paet said he had been told snipers responsible for killing police and civilians in Kiev last month were protest movement provocateurs rather than supporters of then-president Viktor Yanukovych. Ashton responds: “I didn’t know … Gosh.”
The leak came a day after the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, said the snipers may have been opposition provocateurs. The Kremlin-funded Russia Today first carried the leaked call online.
The Estonian foreign ministry confirmed the leaked conversation was accurate. It said: “Foreign minister Paet was giving an overview of what he had heard in Kiev and expressed concern over the situation on the ground. We reject the claim that Paet was giving an assessment of the opposition’s involvement in the violence.” Ashton’s office said it did not comment on leaks.
During the conversation, Paet quoted a woman named Olga – who the Russian media identified her as Olga Bogomolets, a doctor – blaming snipers from the opposition shooting the protesters.
“What was quite disturbing, this same Olga told that, well, all the evidence shows that people who were killed by snipers from both sides, among policemen and people from the streets, that they were the same snipers killing people from both sides,” Paet said.
Note that there is no accusation of blame for the snipers, nor for a cover-up in the phone conversation, but it does indicate that allegations that elements among the protesters were behind this bears further investigation.
Also, Paet gives an eyewitness account of a member of the Ukrainian Parliament being beaten just outside of the parliament building, and harassment of MPs by “uninvited visitors” (militiamen), which would imply that there is a use of violence or threat of violence against MPs to ensure that they vote “the right way.”
I do not know what is up in the Ukraine, but it does seem that this sh%$ is all f%$#ed up and sh%$.
It’s Jobless Thursday
323K with the 4-week moving average and continuing claims falling as well.
Not bad.
Well, this is Chilling
Former NSA Chief Keith Alexander is touting, “unspecified ‘headway’ on what he termed ‘media leaks’” was forthcoming in the next several weeks, possibly to include “media leaks legislation.“
One wonders whether some skullduggery he has gotten my distinguished cousin* to back some sort of draconian equivalent to the awful Official Secrets Act that is in force in the UK.
This is a very bad idea.
It’s a bad idea because it shreds the Constitution, and it’s a bad idea because, as Dan Froomkin so aptly notes, “History has shown time and again that secrecy and bad decisions go hand in hand.”
It will make us less safe, not more safe.
*Dianne Feinstein, whoser grandfather, Sam Goldman, and my great-grandfather, Harry Goldman, were brothers.
I Called for Amputating the Financial Sector Years Ago
See here.
JD Alt at New Economic Perspectives has just called for the same thing:
All this talk about the 99% versus the 1%? I say the easiest—and likely the most useful—thing to do is just forget the 1%. Write them off. Let them have their gated communities, their mega-yachts, their island retreats and off-shore bank accounts. What do we need them for?
For one thing, we DON’T need their money. Even if we could get it—which we can’t because they steadfastly refuse to use it for anything other than casino gambling in their private and secretive financial networks. We wonder why we have a “jobless recovery”? Does it have anything to do with the fact that such a large percentage of our “capital” has, for all practical purposes, been removed from the economy?
Even when the 1% decides to invest some of their Dollars to manufacture or build something, they rarely decide to manufacture or build anything we really need—only things we really don’t need. Like strip-mines in the Bristol Bay salmon fishery, or pipe-lines across Nebraska’s freshwater aquifers, or rocket-planes for space-tourism. Thanks, but we really don’t need—or want—any of it. We’d much rather have fresh wild salmon (rather than the artificially colored hatchery-stuff) than more copper and gold, fresh water instead of tar-sands oil, and the good-old week-at-the-beach is just fine for a vacation.
He then gives the example of the huge transformers that are essential to our electrical grid.
We do not, and can not, make them in the United States, because the casino finance class doesn’t care, because they can always get them from Korea, with a a 2 year lead time.
If that’s a problem, they can always move to their summer house on a Greek island.
Here is how he poresents it going:
This little tale is made even more interesting by the fact that these very-large transformers—usually situated inside a compound protected by chain-link fencing—are easily destroyed with a few rounds of fire from a semi-automatic assault rifle. Thankfully, semi-automatic assault rifles are difficult to come by in the U.S., otherwise there might be cause for concern. The seventeen transformers recently shot to death in California (we can’t explain how this actually happened, since the NRA is only marginally active on the West Coast) are a cautionary tale: If this were repeated on just a little bit larger scale, the Department of Homeland Security has determined, our entire electric grid could be down for months—or even longer. (Come on South Korea, hurry it up…. We’re waiting!)
So my example is this: Why doesn’t President Obama propose that since the 1% have no interest in doing it, the U.S. sovereign government build a plant to manufacture very-large transformers, hire engineers to train unemployed people to do the labor, pay those unemployed trainees for making the effort to learn how to make a giant-sized transformer, then hire those newly trained workers to run the manufacturing process? We could build a backup supply of these critical electric grid components so that in the (increasingly likely) event some crazy, anti-government sociopath seizes the opportunity to turn out America’s lights, we could turn them back on in fairly short order.
It’s an interesting mental exercise, and I am not sure how serious this proposal is,it has a Jonathan Swift — A Modest Proposal snarky feel to it.
Still, breaking the lock of the “Washington Consensus” of so-called free trade and the continuing financialization of our economy is a non trivial task.
That’s why my calls for amputation involve a zero tolerance criminal prosecution policy.
Senate Votes Down Sexual Assault Accountability and the Army’s Top Sex Crime Prosecutor Relieved for Sex Crime
On the same f%$#ing day as a filibuster killed sex crime prosecution reform in the Senate, Lt. Col. Joseph “Jay” Morse, the top sex-crimes prosecutor in the US Army, was Asuspended for alleged sexual assault:
The top Army prosecutor for sexual assault cases has been suspended after a lawyer who worked for him recently reported he’d groped her and tried to kiss her at a sexual-assault legal conference more than two years ago.
………
Morse was removed from his job when the allegations came to light, one source said. To date, no charges have been filed in the case.
………
Sources told Stars and Stripes that the Army lawyer alleged that Morse attempted to kiss and grope her against her will. The alleged assault reportedly took place in a hotel room at a 2011 sexual assault legal conference attended by special victims prosecutors in Alexandria, Va., before he was appointed as chief of the Trial Counsel Assistance Program.
So long as those ratf%$#s in the Senate are unwilling to protect the troops from the corrupt elements in our officer corps, this crap will continue.
Bigoted Moron of the Day
Randa Jarrar, who just penned, “Why I can’t stand white belly dancers,” on Salon.
Seeing as how I know about 1 half dozen white who have made a study of traditional, as in pre 1600, Middle Eastern dance. Somehow Ms. Jarrar, the product of Sara Lawrence and UT Austin, believes that their interest is somehow inauthentic.
Art is supposed to be universal, and cross cultural art can produce some amazing things.
Feh.
Looters Gotta Loot
It’s not enough that schools get tax dollars, and get showered with funds from private “charities” dedicated to destroying public education, they want taxpayers to pay for their rent as well:
Eva Moskowitz said she would go to the president of the United States to help her students if she had to. For now, she’s stopping at Andrew Cuomo.
Moskowitz, C.E.O. of Success Academy charter schools in New York City, helped organize a massive rally outside the state Capitol on Tuesday, where she said she was “delighted” to have the governor’s support.
………
During the mayoral campaign, de Blasio threatened to charge charter schools rent and pledged that Moskowitz’s schools specifically would not enjoy the same treatment under his administration as they did under Michael Bloomberg’s. He fulfilled that promise last week when he overturned three Bloomberg administration approvals for co-locations, all Success Academy schools.
“We never expected… I mean, I frankly thought the rhetoric of the mayor would change once he got into government,” Moskowitz said, responding to de Blasio’s decision to reverse the co-locations. “Campaigning is generally different, so I didn’t expect to be in this position. And we’re feeling very vulnerable.”
So, in addition to your getting taxpayer money, you want your basic overhead paid by the taxpayers as well, meaning that the schools are getting more funding than the regular public schools, which cover both their and your building costs.
And while we are at it, I would note that she pays herself a lot of money with taxpayer dollars:
The 990s for Success Academy are public record and located here, so see for yourself: http://www.guidestar.org/FinDocuments/2012/205/298/2012-205298861-095c435d-9.pdf
According to their 2012 tax filings, in 2011, Eva’s salary was $475,244.00 with an additional $12,459.00 in other compensation, totaling $487,703.00. The tax statement also says that was for providing “management and administrative supporting services to nine district charter schools…” Let me repeat, NINE SCHOOLS in 2011.
By comparison, the pay the same year for NYC Schools Chancellor Walcott for managing 1,700 schools was $212,614.00. Let me repeat, ONE THOUSAND AND SEVEN HUNDRED SCHOOLS. Then there is US Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, who oversees the massive federal Department of Education and earns a base salary of $179,700.
Eva’s salary is obscene. Charters want to be called public schools except when it’s more convenient to be labeled private, such as when asking for CEO salaries similar to private corporations, but their revenue is tax dollars –and for schools that pay no rent. If Eva wants a CEO salary similar to private enterprises, she should open up her own privately funded schools, not raid the public coffers.
See also here, where we discover that the “hero” of Waiting for Superman Geoffrey Canada pays himself over ½ million dollars a year.
Like I said, looters gotta loot.
H/t Atrios.
That’s Mighty White of You
After much consideration, the CIA has admitted that it is supposed to follow the law:
The CIA has confirmed that it is obliged to follow a federal law barring the collection of financial information and hacking into government data networks.
But neither the agency nor its Senate overseers will say what, if any, current, recent or desired activities the law prohibits the CIA from performing – particularly since a section of the law explicitly carves out an exception for “lawfully authorized” intelligence activities.
The murky episode, arising from a public Senate hearing on intelligence last week, illustrates what observers call the frustrations inherent in getting even basic information about secret agencies into public view, a difficulty recently to the fore over whistleblower Edward Snowden’s revelations about the National Security Agency (NSA) and its surveillance partners.
Last Wednesday, in a brief exchange at the hearing, Senator Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat, asked CIA director John Brennan if the agency is subject to the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, a three-decade-old law intended to protect computer systems, like those of financial and government networks, from unauthorized access.
Brennan demurred, citing the need to check on the legal complexities posed by Wyden’s question, and pledged to give the senator an answer within a week.
The answer, agency spokesman Dean Boyd told the Guardian, is: “Yes, the statute applies to CIA.”
That was about a month ago.
Well, today, we discovered what this was all about.
It turns out that the CIA was spying on the Congressional investigation of ……… wait for it ……… the CIA:
The CIA Inspector General’s Office has asked the Justice Department to investigate allegations of malfeasance at the spy agency in connection with a yet-to-be released Senate Intelligence Committee report into the CIA’s secret detention and interrogation program, McClatchy has learned.
The criminal referral may be related to what several knowledgeable people said was CIA monitoring of computers used by Senate aides to prepare the study. The monitoring may have violated an agreement between the committee and the agency.
The development marks an unprecedented breakdown in relations between the CIA and its congressional overseers amid an extraordinary closed-door battle over the 6,300-page report on the agency’s use of waterboarding and harsh interrogation techniques on suspected terrorists held in secret overseas prisons. The report is said to be a searing indictment of the program. The CIA has disputed some of the reports findings.
………
The committee determined earlier this year that the CIA monitored computers – in possible violation of an agreement against doing so – that the agency had provided to intelligence committee staff in a secure room at CIA headquarters that the agency insisted they use to review millions of pages of top-secret reports, cables and other documents, according to people with knowledge.
Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Oregon, a panel member, apparently was referring to the monitoring when he asked CIA Director John Brennan at a Jan. 29 hearing if provisions of the Federal Computer Fraud and Abuse Act “apply to the CIA? Seems to me that’s a yes or no answer.”
Brennan replied that he’d have to get back to Wyden after looking into “what the act actually calls for and it’s applicability to CIA’s authorities.”
The law makes it a criminal act for someone to intentionally access a computer without authorization or to go beyond what they’re allowed to access.
You know, even if they did not violate the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, this was a conspiracy to obstruct a Congressional investigation, so go directly to jail, do not pass go, do not collect $200.
What’s more, it appears that Barack Obama knew of, and thus at least tacitly approved the CIA spying on Congress:
A leading US senator has said that President Obama knew of an “unprecedented action” taken by the CIA against the Senate intelligence committee, which has apparently prompted an inspector general’s inquiry at Langley.
………
Udall, a Colorado Democrat and one of the CIA’s leading pursuers on the committee, appeared to reference that surreptitious spying on Congress, which Udall said undermined democratic principles.
“As you are aware, the CIA has recently taken unprecedented action against the committee in relation to the internal CIA review and I find these actions to be incredibly troubling for the Committee’s oversight powers and for our democracy,” Udall wrote to Obama on Tuesday.
Independent observers were unaware of a precedent for the CIA spying on the congressional committees established in the 1970s to check abuses by the intelligence agencies.
“In the worst case, it would be a subversion of independent oversight, and a violation of separation of powers,” said Steven Aftergood, an intelligence analyst at the Federation of American Scientists. “It’s potentially very serious.”
(emphasis mine)
Not even Richard Nixon had the stones to use government agencies spy on the Congressional committees that were investigate him.
Worst Constitutional Law Professor ever.™