Lies, Damn Lies and Poverty Statistics

Even an intelligent and objective U.S. President relies on advisors when it comes to economics.  Many former such advisors can be seen/heard giving market and economic opinions regularly.  Few of them, however, are objective and nearly all received indoctrination in the same long-standing economic principles.  The textbooks are yet to be written on the effects of instant transfer of funds and information in 24/7 markets.

One who has recognized this is Stephen Roach of Morgan-Stanley.
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(Feb 21, 2006) “The cross-border linkages and spillovers of globalization have reshaped—and in many cases redefined  the forces that drive inflation, interest rates, wages, profits, employment, currencies, and economic growth.  Yet most of our models — both economic and financial — are still wedded to the single-country approach of yesteryear.  A new macro is needed that replaces antiquated closed models with the open models of globalization.”
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IMO, there is little likelihood of revising our current overly optimistic methods of measuring this data.  Bureaucrats remain employed at the pleasure of politicians who want things to look better than reality.

A bit of searching can give a more accurate picture, but the media will never try to wrestle with more than a simple “better than” or “less then” report.  A key measure currently of what is the genuine market feeling is seen in the recent rise of the gold price and the lack of rising long-term U.S. Treasury Bonds. (The Greenspan “conundrum”)

Taking a longer view at the U.S. worker:
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U.S. Department of Commerce, Economic and Statistics Administration,Bureau of the Census — Changes in Median Household Income, 1969-1996, by John McNeil
Median household income rose only 6.3% (in 1996 dollars) even though the number of workers per household increased.
However,the per capita income rose 51%. (I wonder where the gains went.)

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U.S. Wages: Lower than 1996
http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/jan2006/nf20060117_7351_db084.htm

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We can look forward to a diminishing middle class and growing poverty class as more jobs are sold to the lowest bidders and the tax breaks continue for the wealthiest.

How you manage to be more pessimistic than I am escapes me WTH, but your first paragraph there is a zinger. Economics is primarily a group of cults with fortune tellers (not completely, but “primarily").  I agree that the 24/7 and increasing speed of the market is a serious factor that is not being addressed too.  You could get whiplash watching markets rise and fall.

Plug for Henry George--- If land is treated as capital or left out of the formula then the whole theory is crank.

There are better measures. We do actually progress sometimes WTH. The simple act of repealing NAFTA might have profoundly positive effects.

No one wants poverty stats to elevate during their watch. But no one wants accurate data, either, to know whether they have actually elevated or declined.

That tells me that it’s the perceptions about poverty, it’s the nature of the media spin that can be mustered in regards to economic well-being or distress, that has them disturbed. More so than actual poverty levels, which they seem not to want to know (or at least to have publicized).

They’re less discomfited by the substance than they are by the distorted image, even when they’re aware of the distortion. They feel this even while knowing that it’s the actuality of privation that leads to a bitter quality of life for real people who are living in real poverty.

Classic doublethink. We know the figures are unrepresentative, but blank out when confronted with the idea of using better ones. And any suggestion that methods might change is regarded as though the one making the proposal is a maverick or a fringe weirdo; they’re basically ignored to death. Regarding such a suggestion as a gesture contributing to improved governance is apparently too much to ask.

Improved governance. Less of a priority, I guess.

Cooked data, sugar-coated assessments, calculations of modern circumstances using formulae that literally belong to a previous century. Your typical college undergrad in Bio 101 adheres to better standards. I’m reminded of Dr. Hwang Woo-suk, the researcher who recently faked data on reproduction of stem cell lines. If the data-euphemizers referred to in the article were part of virtually any enterprise other than government, they’d have been fired and disgraced. As it is, they self-perpetuate through the decades, insulated from accountability. And their bad-faith number crunching only lends more fuel to the fire of those whose attitudes about government is cynical at best.

Flavia Colgan’s piece on the weak ethics in Congress comes to mind. The National Academy of Sciences released its report to the Joint Economic Committee 11 years ago. What’s the hold up?

Of course I know the hold up. Moraff’s article pretty much spells it out. It’s not in enough people’s interest that the system change, therefore it has not. What I don’t know won’t interfere with me and my party buddies getting re-elected.

Wiley,

“Plug for Henry George--- If land is treated as capital or left out of the formula then the whole theory is crank.”

A new twist George didn’t need to consider:

The immanence of Eminent Domain — Now stealing someone’s home is spun to look like a benefit for society as a whole.  (The corporation redeveloping the land getting a bundle from the deal is just coincidental.)

“There are better measures. We do actually progress sometimes WTH. The simple act of repealing NAFTA might have profoundly positive effects.”

Is there actually any hope of this? I have been writing against this to everyone I can think of since 1993.  I think it is too late to matter.  NAFTA (Not A Fine Thing America) is another well-spun myth — “NAFTA will benefit both U.S. and Mexican workers.”

Existing low threshold “poverty” income accuratly measures the number of families and people -
*living in financial desperation,
*facing regular hunger,
*barely get ANY health care
*face imminent homelessness
*have no real chance for improvment or success
*totally lack financial security.

In short these people live a life of fear and deprivation in a nation of abundance and wealth, often extreme wealth.

And here we argue about how many angels fit on the head of a pin.

WTH Henry would have probably used a lot of serious adjectives to describe the injustice of this Eminent Domain thing. He would have recognized it as the legalized theft for the owning class that is. He would also recognize NAFTA and CAFTA as scams would be my guess.

Anything that can written into law, can be written out. Of course, there is a possibility. Much of the world is rejecting the WTO and IMF. Neoliberal economic policy is losing ground as we speak. I’m not saying that things are going to be all rosy, we might all suffer miserably in its aftermath, but things will change. That’s what things do.

I noticed you have a tendency WTH to discount an idea if it can be defeated by a possibility---that’s everything that ever was and ever will be. That’s why I shoot for the approximate and for improvement.

We’re not going to make a perfect world. If the U.S. economy bottoms out, then I hope we find a decent way to deal with that.

Righteous post Kuya. Everything gets back to education. If we had the math skills and rhetorical skills not to be so easily bamboozled. If we weren’t all brain washed with the idea that supply-side economics is God’s blueprints of economies that are ruled by laws neither God nor Human and not a faulty theory.  If professors could focus on research and teaching instead of having to come up with more crap theories to publish so they can keep their job and advance. If independent media, especially news were the norm. If we weren’t living in a plutocracy and corporate feudal state that educates us to believe that we are “free” because we can say anything we want to our fellow drones and we can express opinions, and we are “free” to be unemployed because if all the work has been bought up with red tape, tribute money to government officials, and big marketing budgets.

We’ll know we live in a free market when someone with the idea of measuring our economic well-being is highly encouraged to do so on their own dime. Who can’t benefit from a hobby?

Wiley,

“I noticed you have a tendency WTH to discount an idea if it can be defeated by a possibility---”

Yeah, I guess you are right on with that. Maybe it comes from seeing it happen so regularly over the past several decades in my business contacts.
Locally owned companies cared about their employees, the community and the country far more than the multi-national, stock-price oriented conglomerates who now control us. We have been reduced to competing against the next closest cities and states for the leftovers. Whoever offers the biggest bribe gets them.

Our kids, even those with an expensive ivy league college education are in constant threat of losing out to India’s cheaper (and well educated) workers. More than fifty people I know by name have lost at least one job or been forced into early retirement. Our charities such as United Way have not only lost major corporate contributions (no civic loyalty from afar), but individuals have tightened their giving out of actual lowering income or fear of it.

It looks like to me like we are becoming so globally oriented that talk centers on the masses and ignores individuals.

Then you hear about people who are really hard up and feel stupid and selfish for complaining.

I hear you WTH.

If it’s any consolation, Indian phone workers are having nervous breakdowns. At first, they didn’t think it was real work. Ha ha. I so totally saw that coming---it’s not digging ditches, it takes its pound of flesh out of your head.

However “globalism” has affected our economy (and I think the term “globalism” is as ambiguous, impure, and dishonest as the term “capitalism"), we need to start making things. We must manufacture. And we must learn how to do business if we want to live a decent life in the future. Necessity is the mother of invention, I say start with an underground economy and expand (among other things).

One possible trend I’ve read about recently is cutting all the unnecessary classes for some college degrees and just getting people trained to do high tech jobs. College is too expensive for most people to spend sixty hours of class time in classes that have nothing to do with the field they want to enter.

Having a trade track for high schoolers is being talked about too. I don’t think it’s great that so many electricians, plumbers, mechanics, and carpenters learned their skills in prison. We need good, skilled crafts people, and if a teenager knows he/she loves welding, then why not let him/her have the tools and training in high school, instead of having to take courses geared toward an academic career he/she is not interested in. And why act as if having academic training makes a person superior to or smarter than a crackerjack arc welder?

By high school, everyone should be able to find a niche where they feel alive and can discover and exercise talents, instead of feeling like they’re dumb because Camus doesn’t interest them, or that education is irrelevant because it often is.

Wiley,

I like your realistic view of practical education. Mortimer Adler (a brilliant, independent thinker) was an advocate of a general education for all — then specialization much later. I believe Jefferson was an advocate of an education similar to your view.

“… I think the term “globalism” is as ambiguous, impure, and dishonest as the term “capitalism”...”

Yes, to me it is the camouflage needed to hide the massive movement of money/power from our middle class (both white and blue collars) to the elite. Hell, I’m sounding like a Marxist (not Groucho this time). 

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“Necessity is the mother of invention, I say start with an underground economy and expand (among other things). ”

Agreed.  The son of a friend is a computer whiz, but has a day job building and installing kitchen cabinets. Even if they ship them in from China he will probably have some work.

Since I retired (actually since my last client left town) a year ago, I have begun bartering.  My barber cuts what little hair I have and in exchange I have done art and design for his business — new business cards, a brochure for his hair replacement sideline, etc.

He had open heart surgery and had only major medical coverage (huge deductible— $17,000). I was scheduled to do a brochure for his resort condo (his retirement plan), but due to the big jump in his premium, the $1,000/month he was paying on the mortgage is needed to pay his insurance costs and he has no more retirement plan.

I had a similar experience with my insurance a few years back when I had a couple surgeries prior to Medicare eligibility.

My son traveled to the Soviet Union with his class in the early 1980s where the government prices were well published and the black market flourished. They can try to tell us how good things are and that they are in control, but the “real market” will always be independent of any government’s BS.

We’ve agreed on so much now, WTH. Refreshing.

I figure if the dollar and joblessness tanks enough we’ll be able to barter with doctors and dentists. Like the old West----here’s a fifth of whiskey and some apples doc.

“Whiskey, excellent!  Just a moment while I sterilize my tools...”

Wiley & Harrower,

Funny you should mention this example — perfect timing. I just got back from my dentist (Hell of a toothache about 2:00 AM). He’s sending me to a specialist for a root canal, then back to him for refitting the gold crown I got a year ago.  The specialist can see me Tuesday the 7th — $965 one half due at each of two appointments. :-(

My best customers used to pay me in 30 days, but then pain is a good incentive.  I can try the whiskey trade if I still have any left by then.  That’s too long a time to just bite the bullet.  :-)

OUCH, WTH.  You might want to soak some gauze with Anbesol and pack it around the offended tooth and gum area. Sip the whiskey through a straw, unless you are taking vicodan or oxycontin. The risk of a vegetative state does not outweigh the benefits of even the finest Scotch.

If you can’t find compromizing photos of your dentist, then you’re stuck with that hefty bill. Shelling out a gran hurts, but a tooth is worth it, especially if it’s a back tooth. 

What’s the real value of your tooth?

Wiley,

Thanks for the sympathy & info.  It is a back tooth and with an investment of close to $2,000 in it in two years, I’ve decided to live long enough to make it worth while.
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“We’ve agreed on so much now, WTH. Refreshing.”

Yes, I think a lot of disagreement among Americans is fostered by the fact that news has become largely entertainment in order to be a money maker for the networks.  One way to do this is to create conflict.  I see it in the “news people” chosen for their attitudes as much as their opinions.  Left or right they are out to establish a group of fans much like a sports team. Recent White House occupants have made it easy to do.

Issues seem to draw reactions based on a like/dislike of Bill Clinton or George W. than on merit. “Facts” seem dependent on the speed/frequency of repetition more than evidence. People are willing to accept w/o actual proof what they want want to be true.

(Votes Notes—
I voted FOR: Barry Goldwater — air war only/ no troops,
John B. Anderson — his $ 0.50/gal. gas tax for developing alternate energy, and Ross Perot — the only guy who could see the damage of rushing into globalization. 
All others have been a vote against the alternative candidates.)

IMO, The economy is a long standing example of “belief over reality” — the dollar’s strength with nothing backing it, the tech bubble, the housing bubble, historical evidence predicting future events, etc.  I’m inclined to think this is also the case for much of the disagreement over the War on Terror (bad nomenclature - like War on Poverty).

I had the TV on (and tape) when the planes hit and watched it through the day.  I had to keep reminding myself this IS HAPPENING NOW. This is NOT a Bruce Willis movie. Life is not the virtual reality we are being fed 24/7.

I found this interesting:
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Larry King suggested to Jon Stewart that the current low ebb of the Democrats and Republicans was good for Mr. Stewart’s business.

King: So, in a sense you’re happy over this.

Stewart: No.

King: This gives you fodder.

Mr. Stewart replied that if government “began to solve problems in a rational way rather than just a way that involved political dividends, we would be the happiest people in the world to turn our attention to idiots like, you know, media people, no offense.”

King: So, you don’t want it to be bad?

Stewart: Did you really just ask me if I want it to be bad?

King: Yes because you--

Stewart: What are you--I have kids. What do you think? I want things to corrode to the point where we’re all living in huts?

King: You don’t want Medicare to fail?

Stewart: Are you insane?

http://www.opinionjournal.com/columnists/dhenninger/?id=110008042

Wow, WTH, television news started to make me feel like that a long time ago. That conversation is trippy. Is Larry King on acid. Am I on acid? Did someone slip me a mickey? I can’t believe I’m seeing this conversation. Especially the interview guys---they get so creepy. I have rarely watched television my whole life, but found myself glued to it during Gulf War I. I’m ashamed to say that along with getting the news, I was looking for a glimpse of my favorite aircraft---the A-10. While I was watching video clips on CNN I thought this is an Air Force Now film, and I stopped watching televized coverage.

In 2001 I was a 24/7 live-in caregiver for a man and his daughter. My client had a television, and I ordered cable. (The Daily Show and reruns of old Outer Limits are the only things we miss.) So, I saw some coverage of 9/11, but wasn’t glued to it, because it was the same thing over and over again and because I typically worked 14 hours a day.

While her father was having a medical procedure done I took his daughter with me to a store in the VA hospital. They had a television on with 9/11 images with the scene of people jumping out the building. I saw that the girl was looking at it, and I guided her away from the television and told her I didn’t want her watching that. Even six year olds know the latest in parenting fashion, it’s so transparent---she said, “oh, it doesn’t bother me---it’s just like watching a movie.” I told her <i> It’s not a movie! It is real life and those people died! I don’t want you to look at their deaths like it’s a movie!

I wonder sometimes if that’s what the MSM is working toward---it’s just a movie. Everybody get in costume and get on your marks.

Does this have anything to do with poverty and statistics? No. Sorry.

I won’t do these as cartoons to avoid any bloodshed.

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It strikes me that when we hear, “Dubai,” George W. hears, “Do buy!”

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And…

How about a prime time TV program featuring people whose jobs have been outsourced. (I just got off my phone company’s “Customer Service” line to India.)

The show would of course be: AMERICAN IDLE

Hey! What happened to my LOL? I posted you and LOL WTH, “American Idle” is a hit.

Good people

It strikes me that the regurgitation of useless information that passes for education in this country feeds directly into the corporate conglomerate.Young children are not allowed to find areas of intrest that are “outside” structured teaching.The college students who don’t have silver spoons are forced to pay loans to insure their economic role back into the mainstream....

This educational quagmire can be called “progress” because of a very simple political tool used by both Dems and Repubs in many different
areas -

“Our economy is healthy....”

“Brownie’s doin’ a great job ....”

“The War in Iraq is going well....”

“No one knew the levees would break....”

If we say it, it’s the Truth.

Amazing

Wiley,

Did you already use that line and I missed it, or were you writing about the one I sent?

As for missing LOL — I have had a couple of lengthy posts disappear on this site. Not good — too much to remember and repeat. Now I often type into a DTP program, copy and paste it here just to play safe.

It seems to be quite absurd to base poverty statistics, especially ones used to determine program eligiability on the old model developed in 1963.  Food costs in the US occupy a lower portion of the family budget than anywhere else in the entire world!  Certainly nobody spends thirty three percent of their income on food when the average spent on housing for those at or around the median is held to be about twenty five percent.  This figure to has increased for those below the median, however.  Most people below the median income spend about 20-25% of their income on food depending on how many children or dependants they support. 

In any case, the triple food basket model is outdated as a concept, not only in terms of proportionality.  The real target figure should address what it takes to achieve a certain socially acceptable standard of living for a particular size household.  It should consider the general cost of living including healthcare, housing, education, and other related necessities including food.  The triple food budget model seems arbitrary as much as outmoded.

The conclusion that politics stands in the way of change in the Bush era is an obvious one to reach.  Poverty is the last thing on Bush’s mind and the old model of measurement suits him precisely because it hides the real extent of US poverty.  The twenty percent or greater rates seem to be the more realistic.

As the economy gets set for more GDP growth based on ever greater wealth concentration and rates of foreign direct investment (which actually counts toward US GDP because it measures productivity not consumption) poverty rates in the US will surely grow along with it almost as a function of the economic growth itself.  This is because our economic model promotes growth at the expense of the poor and working class rather than in their interest.  Those in doubt should look at how even manufacturing job outsourcing/consumer goods importing model is seeking to remove the few decent paying transportation and west coast port authority jobs to Mexico via the NAFTA Superhighway.

WTH, I had posted a one line LOL because I thought American Idol was funny. I usually select and save as I go on short posts. On long posts I often type it in word and then paste and edit.

I think I might have hit a button that made the post disappear, and assumed it posted. A round later, I noticed it wasn’t there. I have tics in my hands and blinks sometimes so I hit buttons (and drop things) unconsciously.

And sometimes, the posts just drop out for what I assume is server reasons.

cabdriver, on my hiatus, I got a lot done, but forgot to work on a spiel about projecting the past onto the future. Maybe, later. I have been thinking about it, but I’ve also been thinking a lot about nuclear war and gardening---those usually trump everything else for a while.

Speaking of gardening---the low budget Americans have for groceries represents a lot of crap food, which means more dollars spent on doctors. It would be nice if they grew a few vegetables and fruits so they could see what “fresh” is really like, then maybe small, local farmers could get a boost in demand, and the citizens could get a taste of self-reliance. (It tastes just like chicken.)

The main problem with the indicators is that they aren’t for the working people, they’re for the financiers and serious stock players and props for lies. If the government wanted to know how Americans were really doing, they could ask---a poll with a lot of questions that require the poll taker to write down the answer, not that multiple or bipolar choice non-sense.

I finally heard a comedian say it not too long ago----try to live in the U.S. on a dollar a day! We have high rent in some places and every single little thing has a price on it. I carry a backpack so I can leave the house without spending money. But if everyone did that, our economy would get sicker than it already is.

What to do? What to do?

Wiley,

Localizing food production and organic and sustainable farming is an immense topic and one of great complexity.  Agribusiness has undoubtedly increased the cost and decreased the quality of food for most people today.  In some interesting internet research I was doing I ran across a website called CARP (Corporate Agribusiness Research Project) in which it is estimated that about three quarters of the farms in the US currently produce about 7% of the value of produce sold while about 7% of the Farms glean three quarters of the value of farm products sold.  A fascinating inverse proportion but also one that indicates much about the true sources of poverty, malnutrician, and food costs in America currently.

US agribusiness has polluted the environment, caused public health problems, increased the price of food, and caused a concentration in the rural distribution of wealth by replacing profitable, locally based family farms with big, industrial feed lots that exploit immigrant labor and market expensive and fattening processsed food products full of preservatives and growth hormones.  This has contributed to ill health both from highly processed food consumption and from the environmental impact of agribusiness factory-farm production and to poverty stemming from the economic effects.

The sustainable agriculture movement is one answer to this problem.

Join the People’s Impeachment Lobby taking place today and tomorrow, February 28 - March 1 and demand that the representative from your district support H.Res.635 calling for a Congressional inquiry to investigate the grounds for impeachment.

There are now 27 members of the House of Representatives, including John Conyers, the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee who are supporting a bill, H. Res 635, calling for “a select committee to investigate the Administration’s intent to go to war before Congressional authorization, manipulation of pre-war intelligence, encouraging and countenancing torture, retaliating against critics, and to make recommendations regarding grounds for possible impeachment.” Tell your representative today that you want him or her to co-sponsor this important measure.

1) Click here, or go to ImpeachBush.org, where we have set up another easy-to-use mechanism so that impeachment campaign members and supporters can quickly send a message directly to your representative insisting they support H.Res.635. We have a sample message that you can use and customize before you send it.

2) Tell your friends and family and urge them to also send a message to Congress. You can forward this e-mail simply by clicking the email-this-page button above. After you have sent a message you will also be given a link that lets you send a message to your friends and family encouraging them to participate in the People’s Impeachment Lobby.

3) Donate to help the impeachment campaign and to place the next major impeachment newspaper ad by clicking here. The full-page New York Times ad brought tens of thousands of new people into the impeachment movement and brought the crimes of this administration into public view in no uncertain terms. We want to place the next full page ad in the San Francisco Chronicle within the next ten days—prior to the March 18 mass anti-war demonstration in San Francisco that will include a large impeachment contingent. Let’s keep the pressure going and spread the word. Click here to help place this ad.

- All of us at VoteToImpeach / ImpeachBush.org

Worse than the independant feedlots, which are only part of a vast vertically integrated industrial agribusiness structure and a weak link at that, are the big four meatpackers (cargill, IBP, conagra, and national farmland) who control 85% of the US market for Beef.  They pay the feedlots low prices for slaughtered cattle while jacking up the price to the consumer.  In recent years the average rancher went from taking two-thirds of the retail beef dollar to two fifths currently.  The small local cattle farmers that don’t operate the big feedlots can hardly get in the game at all and usually consign their livestock to the big feedlots at a very low price or go out of business altogether.  The big four Packers sock it to the US public but still worse is the monopsonist retailers like Walmart who jack up the prices still further.  Though independant producers have never had so small a share of the food dollar, real beef prices have never been higher!  Agribusiness corporate profits are through the roof.  The small and medium size producer is merely a link in a vertically integrated food commodity chain with no real independance and lots of financial vulmerability as he is squeezed by the “big four.”

Again, it is our current monopolist economic model of capitalism and globalized production chains sustained by concentrated government subsidies and monopoly profits that is creating greater poverty and instability. In a word, it is our system that is at the core of the problem. Monopoly is created as subsidies create overproduction that lowers prices so that only the biggest firms and farms can survive in the increasingly concentrating market.  This leaves America’s two million family farms vulnerable.  It is US agribusiness that is hurting community farming both at home and (through dumping of subsidized produce) abroad.

The invisible hand of the capitalistic economy (that elusive, metaphysical economic nirvana) is so fickle that sometimes ranchers cut the throats of their cattle and chuck them off a cliff to cut their losses. Killing all their product can lose them less than shipping the cattle to a market.

I say, cut the invisible hand off if it offends thee. (You can usually find it among economic rentiers.)

I find it amusing that people think that poverty is something they are insulated from…

especially in this country, which has whole heartedly adopted the ‘Company Store’ style of economics.

You are 2 or 3 pay cheques from losing your house , average American.

You buy too much on credit.....you are too caught up in the bullshit of daily existence, buying ( or , even worse, leasing ) houses and cars you can’t afford.

You indenture yourselves to pay cheques that are, increasingly, uncertain.

Welcome to your economic slavery.... just don’t think that it’s anything better or more secure than it really is, ok?

Sheesh!

I don’t know about your neighborhood, Minerva, but no one I know feels “insulated” from poverty. Most of the people I know fear losing their health insurance and, in some cases, fear dying as a result of not being able to afford their medication or hospitalization. Most of those life saving medications are marked up thousands of times over the cost of producing them, and that’s not because R & D costs so much----It’s because advertizing wall to wall and spending what averages out to $2,000 dollars per physician in the U.S. for promotions and junkets costs a lot of money.

We rent in my parts. Some of us are prepared to live in a car if it becomes advantageous for the short term or unavoidable. None of us are living beyond our means. Our cars are paid for. No debt.

Most Americans declaring bankruptcy are doing so because of medical bills, btw.

I think you’re referring to the middle class, which may not be “average” for long.

BTW, blaming the economy on people’s spending habits is pure bunk. People can become more fiscally responsible for their own good, but if they lived in mud huts and lived on rice and lentil soup, you can bet that employers would pay them just enough to live in a mud hut and live on rice and lentil soup.

Oh, and one more thing Minerva, what’s your point? There are certainly a lot Americans over their heads in debt, but how many American individuals can’t account for 3 trillion dollars?

Hey, Brian, did it. Thanks for the update. I’ve lost count of the number of impeachment petitions I’ve signed, but things are starting to get really hot. Exciting, isn’t it? Cheney’s emails? YES!!

Wiley & Brian,

Harper’s March issue ran an essay by editor, Lewis Lapham titled, “The Case for Impeachment.”

While as you know, I am not a Bush fan, but I cannot see impeachment as anything but media fodder — they would love it.  The Clinton trip served no useful purpose. The Republicans are repeatedly shooting themselves in the foot (others in the face) and congress should be directing their attention (and ours) to more urgent business.

Here are some observations on the Lapham article.
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The argument:

• Bush hated Saddam and had predetermined to get rid of him.

• The Bush Administration distorted intelligence to make their case for war.

• Intel which did not make their case, or in fact, opposed it were ignored.

Possibilities:

• The Bush administration may have been planning to depose Saddam even before 9/11.
If so, why? Was it because Saddam had tried to “kill my Dad,” or because they were genuinely convinced he was an imminent threat?

• If they distorted the intel, again ask “why?”
Could they have believed it was such an immediate threat that another attack could come before debate ended?

Parallel Observations:

• The author hated George Bush before we went to war. (see pg 34, “...stealing elections,”

• Isn’t Lapham actually selecting media assertions and innuendo to make the case to impeach and ignoring all else?
It yet to be judicially determined whether the President of the U.S.
has violated the law in any way? 
Isn’t it only media repetition which has made it accepted as “fact”?

• While ranting against abuses of the Constitution the writer is ignoring our long held belief that a person is innocent until proven guilty — even presidents.

• The author uses inflammatory rhetoric and claims which would bring litigation against him if it were a private citizen being so accused.

Conclusions:

• There may or may not be reason to impeach. (Think in rational, legal terms — not emotional.)

• There will need to be a better argument than this to do so. (Think about info access.)

• Major differences in perception — Bush says, “We are at war.”
Lapham, “No, the country isn’t at war...” (pg 34)

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Questions:

• How long would the impeachment process take?

• Do the potential benefits of impeachment out way the potential dangers to the nation?
The business of the country would be essentially on hold.
The huge polarization problem we face could only worsen.
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Wiley,

I understand what you’re saying about ranchers slaughtering their cattle to cut rather than incur loses.  This has less to do with the invisible hand than with the Corporate (beef packing and retailing) monopolization of the US economy.  Ranching is itself pretty concentrated-more than half of the beef sold to the big four packing houses come from 5% of the big feedlots.  I say support the small free range ranchers and cut down on red meat in general; its unhealthy and very expensive!

Red meat has a lot in common with the automobile and fossile fuels like coal, oil, and natural gas.  It encourages expensive mass consumption through the creation of a highly concentrated, waste-producing, capital intensive, system that concentrates profits, externalizes social costs from the system to society, leads to centralized corporate control, creates unstable labor markets and high unemployment, and awards high profits to a few at the expense of a sustainable and more democratic economy.  True, peak phases of the business cycle see high GDP growth but at the expense of long-term social well-being.

This leads back to the original question of US poverty and its measurement.  Thorough going change is needed at the very core of our societies structure, management, and value system if the real and necessary changes are to occur.

The invisible hand is a bastardized and overwrought concept used to deflect responsibility from government and corporations for the results of their actions and policies. There is no invisible hand, IMO, there is cause and effect, and choices that people make (and advertizing and marketing, but that ‘s too big a tangent for the moment).

These measurements are nothing if not cynical. If every working American adult went out one day, spent their last dime and maxed out their credit cards on pesticide, asbestos, cyanide, and salad dressing; then went home and killed their children then themselves, it would be one of the all-time great days according to current economic measures.

Value cannot really be measured and is quite subjective and dependent on circumstance. Price and trades, and dollars can be enumerated (sp?). That , of course, is more important to financiers and economic rentiers who make their money from money than it is to people who make money producing wealth and services.

To see about the value of 5 million dollars, see The House of Nine.

Re; Impeachment

As I said earlier I doubt the case for impeachment can do anything substantive. I do believe it will occupy too many people who should have better things to do.

Bush is just a liightning rod. Mostly he is drawing attacks from those who did not vote for him. Even though he is losing prior supporters (if polls are a vallid measure) This is just an emotional exercise.

Even if he were to be gotten rid of, think of who succeeds him — Cheney! Followed by Dennis hassert?

IMO we need a radical change in the congress. 

As it now stands… They make their own pay and benefit schedules, investigate their own scandals, and have established their own form of tenure. We pay for it all including their pork projects which get them re-elected.

They have not been doing their part in checking and balancing for decades.

How we do we change that?

We need a radical change alright, WTH I am for impeachment though, indictment, and prosecution for all crimes committed by government officials in their capacity as government officials. We can’t keep letting them get away with murder and expect things to change.

Mr. Kirkpatrick is hard at work. Bless his heart. I can almost say that I pray for him every day.

I think the most profound changes would require monetary reform, making elections completely public, and letting officials know that abuse of the public trust and accepting bribes is more criminal and damaging than smoking crack and should require much harsher penalties.

I hope impeachment succeeds! It is the therapy and the solution for the return of US democracy!

Wiley and Cabdriver,

Bush is an idiot, but I think he is more honest than most people think. He thinks in black and white and is just honestly gullible. I believe he sees himself as “doing good.” We all know who owns the Good Intentions Paving Company and where it leads.

It may feel good, but it is no more effective than outlawing guns, banning the bomb, warning labels on everything from cigarettes to “Baby On Board.”

This is a systemic national ailment not limited to any one political party, not limited to post 9/11, not about Iraq.

Elections without a paper trail scare the hell out of me. I first read about how to rig an election using computers about 15 years ago before I had ever used one.  Now I know how easy it would be.  Can’t remember the book, but it had suspicions of a S. Korean vote.

On the other hand, what difference whether the national elections are fixed? Neither major party ever presents a decent candidate and my votes for independent and minority ones have been meaningless beyond the symbolism.

Expecting congress to do more than offer a sacrificial lamb as a token of their remorse is a pipe dream. Those who have been nailed in the past have ridden off into the sunset along with their pensions.

What kind of monetary reform do you have in mind, Wiley?

http://www.inthesetimes.com/site/main/article/2515/

February 27, Party of One

As an extension of the “Good Economy” topic here, you might find the above to be an interesting article.

Suggestion — Don’t read it just before retiring for the night.

Also, check out the book reviews on Amazon for an idea of his “solution.”

Correction to above post:  That’s Fitzgerald not “Kirkpatrick” the God I don’t believe or disbelieve in knew who I meant when I almost prayed for him----that prosecutor with the Justice Department that’s got Libby, has cornered Rove, and is working on Cheney.

WTH stupid and presidents is as stupid and presidents does. He signed on, he signed the legislation, he’s responsible no matter how misguided, or well intentioned he is. His character is not al that relevant. He’s not in a Miss American Pageant he’s the president. He is in the venue of LAW.

Perhaps, since he doesn’t understand the role of President as Commander in Chief as one of civilian oversight he should be charged with Impersonating an Officer. That would be a good start.

It’s Cheny, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, and Rove I would most like to see brought to justice but whether Bush is plain folk or a sociopath matters not. His appointments to vital offices like head of FEMA demonstrates that he doesn’t have the slightest understanding of the concept of RESPONSIBILITY, and that has cost live. He’s let Rumsfeld destroy our ground forces, and on and on and on.

His good intentions seem directed mostly at people who gave him dollars---he can pave his road to hell with their intentions and gold if he likes.

Reducing holding government officials to the law to a “feel good proposition” is some silly bit of sophistry, WTH. I don’t want this administration to be in court because I enjoy other people’s suffering, I want to see them in court because I want democracy, and I do not want my country launching illegal aggressive attacks and looting our treasury to pay for them, and shitting on every treaty my country has ever made, and creating a huge corporate welfare state.

I dont’ have an emotional relationship with our leaders like so many people have emotional relationships with celebrities. I don’t care about their personalities, or who they’re dating, or whether or not they cheat on their wives, or where they summer, or whether I would like to have a beer with them.

I care about how well they do the job, and whether or not they deserve public trust. I wouldn’t trust Bush with a peanut butter sandwich.

Wiley,

I was thinking economic terms (this article).  You mentioned monetary reform.
IMO economists fit into three categories:

1.) Only interested in playing the money game using the alleged stats. CNBC-type blather.

2.) Genuine data nerds using a very narrow view and all using out dated texts and models.

Countless how to books — diversity, balanced risk, low term holding, etc.
or…

3.) Well aware the numbers are phony and are perpetuating a scam with cooperation from many in congress and the bureaucracy. This possibly is a global game.  I find the article I referred to earlier plausible and in agreement with some of my long held suspicions about Davos.

http://www.inthesetimes.com/site/main/article/2515/
February 27, Party of One

You have much more confidence than I when it comes to fighting at the fed level.  I have fought city hall and won (real estate assessment and taxes). Beat two auto insurance companies. (They were in arbitration which would have placed 30% blame on my son — we got 100%.) And, my best score, fought attorneys in three states and won a copyright infringement over use of my illustrations. At his level you don’t need an attorney as much as anger and determination.

But with the federal government — they will use the favorite legal tactic — stall.  I had the advantage of being able to make stalling or going to court too expensive.  The feds have unlimited use to our money. 

For impeachment based on any “broken laws” good luck. Proving laws were broken with regard to the war or FEMA (step one) would be like proving Pearl Harbor was avoidable or Kennedy’s murder was a conspiracy.

Well, you’ve had days in court and won! That’s some notches on your belt. I (almost) pray to the God (I don’t believe or disbelieve in) that I never require the services of a lawyer. Yet I like sending money to the ACLU.

I don’t have a lot of confidence that the rabid bats at the helm will be brought down before there is much weeping and gnashing of teeth all around. But I do believe that there are possibilities and possible solutions to most of our problems.

I think you have economists fairly pegged.  And the feds have made an art of stalling, and dodging, and passing the buck, and LYING THROUGH THEIR TEETH.

I consider the possibility that members of the administrations will be found guilty of crimes, and do time to be a real possibility. Not a probability, but a possibility.

Wiley,

We’re pretty much in synch on the economic mess and I know in I know we differ on the war issue, but even with my basically pessimistic world view I have been encouraged by the apparent change in U.S. public opinion recently.

Last night on CNN (Lou Dobbs Show) there were three radio talk show hosts. Each one, along with Dobbs, said they have never had such a massive response on a single issue as they had with Dubai.

I noticed a similar trend in reader responses at opinionjournal.com (Wall Street Journal).

The common thread:
“We are either at war or we are not. You say we are, yet you do nothing about our border security and now our ports. You say the Coast Guard is in charge of port security, but have just cut their budget. You have repeatedly let business considerations trump security.You cannot have it both ways.” I have written many emails and letters with similar comments.

The WH solution:
Send Bush out to make a series of speeches.

At times I wonder if Bush is on something. I think his father was on a thyroid drug when he threw up all over Japan. (There is a similar spaced-out look which neither had early in their terms.)

In my view McCain and Lieberman are in the real world concerning the threat from radical Islam.

WTH,

I basically agree with the thrust of your comments.  Though turning over the management of a US port facility to a foreign power isn’t necessarily a security risk and certainly not unprecedented I have serious questions about Du’bai.  The US public’a basic instincts are right.  There is a contradiction between fighting terror and opening our borders to the area of the world that hosts and finances so much of the world’s terrorism especially while cutting related security funding!  Bush increasingly appears pathologically greedy using the Waronterror politically.  The mixed signals from Bush are beginning to wear thin on the US public and rightly so.  Also engaged are some populist anti-globalization instincts!  A US port is not just a business, it is part of our national infrastructure and seen as sacrosanct.

This is yet another reason to doubt that the waronterror is any more real than the warondrugs.In both cases a security cause is deployed to wreak incredible violence on political enemies with no real visible effect on the actual problem itself.  There are no efforts to attack the problem’s root cause either. In both cases the powers that be seem to be doing business with and are long in cahoots with the very source we are told is causing the problem.  We deliberately laid off Osama bin Laden.  The Medallin Cartel is alive and well with attempts to expose it’s connections to US political authority met with unfettered and uninvestigated lethal force (Gary Webb of the LA Times?) Ultimately the waronterror is a war to globalize the world economy with no holds barred. The Du’bai issue emphasises this point.

I know I have harped on this before so I’ll avoid repetition except to say that we should expect port facilities to be globalized as well as everything else. The southern Iraqi port of Umm Qasr that was built in the late 1950s with great national pride by the Iraqi people after a nationalist coup was taken over early in the “reconstruction” epoch when Bremer was selling Iraq off to the highest bidder. It was a bitter pill to swallow.  Now comes the turn of the US public.  Tax payer dollars built our great port facilities which in turn served the trade in goods that built our country and now it is be outsourced for profit to someone with no connection to our history or concerns.  As trade in goods has come to replace domestic manufacturing as the core of the US economy one consolation has been a commensurate rise in the number of good paying jobs that will come from trade in the fields of shipping, longshore and dock work, transportation, and warehousing.  The one sector that globalization has currently built for us is now being outsourced as well with the building of the NAFTA highway (hwy 69) stretching north from Mexico to Canada. The US West Coast will lose jobs to the Mexican Pacific Coast for the container trade from China and many US jobs in the shipping industry will go with it. There will be greater foreign dependance of our economy.  We will become poorer. Capitalism is in the global phase and this is the real issue. US Income will skew and polarize even more with increasing domestic poverty. The big corporations, US and foreign, will benefit.  At stake is our future.  This is the real issue. This is what is behind the real US public outcry.

Cabdriver,

One of the things each of the radio hosts and Dobbs agreed on is the “unifying effect” on Americans Dubai seems to have had. They felt that it was sort of the last straw after all the other fiascoes with too, little too late responses.

I have been opposed to the War on Drugs for years. Even though I’ve only smoked tobacco and use alcohol moderately, I think the invasion into people’s lives is excessive and the cost to fight it is bewilderingly stupid.

My war view:
I believe we are at war with radical Islam. (Some of them speak openly about it and have been attacking us repeated over a couple of decades.)

I think G.H.W. Bush should have gone on to remove Saddam in 1991.  The halt of our coalition forces allowed Saddam to slaughter thousands.  Read the account at Human Rights Watch. http://www.hrw.org/reports/1993/iraq/

George W. and his managers were justifiably worried about continuing attacks following 9/11, but have made huge mistakes. (These guys are all former CEOs who never admit mistakes.) They had already decided Saddam had to go and 9/11 was a perfect cover.

They gave many reasons for going into both Afghanistan and Iraq, but let the 24/7 media boil it down to WMD. In their arrogance they ignored the history of a thousand years and the history of 1991. (the hrw article) thinking our troops would be welcomed like the liberation of Rome and Paris in WW2. They made democracy a goal. (The U.S. period of post Civil War Reconstruction got off to a good start and sputtered when Grant let politics overrule enforcement — I expect a similar result in Iraq.)

I have talked with several returning soldiers and Marines who give encouraging accounts of their relationship with Iraqis which the media never tell. But, the ordinary grunts see a very limited picture. On of the worse mistakes (IMO) is too few boots to hold territory and they must keep retaking the same neighborhoods. Again, as with Grant, political goals win out. “No more troops are needed. The field commanders are not asking for more.” After retiring a few have said otherwise.

I have a good friend who is a retired Army Lt. Col. It is his opinion we should/could have gotten rid of Saddam without a major invasion and let the Iraqis work out his successor. His son was in Iraq and both of them have maintained contact with our guys over there. The word they get from the troops is they can’t believe the news they hear from the U.S. media is about the same place. Only the bad, none of the good.

Iran is a scary problem since their president is evidently a religious radical. Whatever we do it should not be unilateral, but it had better be soon or we may very well have a nuclear shootout at the OK Corral in that neighborhood.

WTH,

The US media does report much that is negative about the US presence in Iraq.  The media is not liberal or conservative but a very large business enterprise that goes along with the prevailing winds.  At the moment the majority of US public see very little good that can come of further occupation of that country.  Even conservative sources admit that various news polls around the country show that most Americans do not feel that the Coalition can bring about a stable, peaceful, healthy, democratic regime in Iraq. Most everyone wants a timetable for an orderly US withdrawl.  Most see a real civil war developing that we can niether manage nor stop. Most don’t want to “cut and run” but want to gradually internationalize the issue which is exactly what should have been the policy three y ears ago!

The accounts of returning US military personel are quite diverse ranging from a great accomplishment to total disaster and much in the middle.  Many DO see a much profiteering and corruption and almost all feel that the humanitarian side has been given short shrift while much unnecessary meddling in such internal issues as the economy, the new constitution, vetting candidates for the various elections, and certain nation-building efforts were overly intrusive creating more problems than were solved.  Most also think we’ve overstayed our welcome.

WTH, I see a big problem ahead. We have litterally undertaken to colonize and reshape a country in the old manner of the British colonialists with arrogance and greed.  We need to leave and stop pretending this is about democracy and security.  These goals would be better served without the US/UK intrusion.  What we now have is a horrible theocracy based on the Shi’ite majority with Kurdish rump state attached and many angry Sunnis up in arms about the deliberate dismemberment of their state.  Iraq needs to be reconsolidated with a genuine reconstruction program that ensures the wealth of that country stays localized and that the participation of Iraqis takes precidence over US/UK corporate globalization.  Further, there needs to be equality and adequate political representation for all Iraqi social groups.  Only this will stem the civil strife and violence.

Iran whould remain the UN’s concern for now as we have enough on are hands.  One war is enough.

WTH, you and I both know we’re not going to agree on the war issue, but on the defense of the homeland, I say HIRE AMERICANS!

I am anti-war, but not a pacifist. I believe in a strong defense. The whole time we’ve been spending all this money on radioactive munitions to kill people and ruin the world of the survivors we should have been working to protect our ports, borders, and the air space we so clearly failed to protect before the “war on terror” was launched.

We need well trained first responders and communications----in short, every thing that went wrong or didn’t happen for New Orleans will go wrong or not happen in the case of a terrorist attack if our homeland defense is not fortified and organized---- that’s military and civilian working together. All hands on deck. And proper education.

Duct tape, my butt---people need solid information. We’ve already paid for that information too, the funds need to be diverted from public relations propoganda to teaching citizens how to deal with various emergency situations. And the dopes in office need to listen to people who know what they’re talking about and have experience handling disasters.

As it stands now, it appears that the administration prefers that citizens feel completely helpless.

Cabdriver,

There has been no consistent attempt by the administration to counter the “negative-only” media reporting. The constant call for an exit strategy should get an equally repetitive, “We will leave when the Iraqi government forces can maintain adequate security.”

If anyone (pre-invasion) had any sense of history, they would not have made democratization any part of the mission. Our troops are were trained for that. We had too few to take and hold the territory. We had too few allies.

An aside: It seems to have been forgotten just who we later found had ulterior motives NOT to stop the U.N. inspections and therefore NOT to participate in the removal of Saddam. France, Russia, China and Germany all wanted to continue dealing with him. The Oil-for-Food deal was enriching many through UN connections. These were great incentives for another 12 years of same-old, same-old.

For these reasons I would not leave the Iran problem up to the UN. Europe has more reason to participate now than before. Spain, France, Denmark and Great Britain have experienced post 9/11 radical Muslim induced violence. They are also easy targets for Iranian mischief. Some have very large Muslim populations. Perhaps NATO still serves a purpose.

Wiley,

As you said,

“We need well trained first responders and communications----in short, every thing that went wrong or didn’t happen for New Orleans will go wrong or not happen in the case of a terrorist attack if our homeland defense is not fortified and organized---- that’s military and civilian working together. All hands on deck. And proper education.

YES!

Picture the U.S. predicament if something like this were to actually be carried out.

U.K.: Al Qaeda Plot Foiled, Sunday, August 21, 2005
LONDON — Scotland Yard believes it has thwarted an Al Qaeda gas attack aimed at ministers and members of parliament. The plot, hatched last year, is understood to have been discovered in coded e-mails on computers seized from terror suspects in Britain and Pakistan.

--------------------------

Our first visit to London was the week of the first gulf war. We were impressed by their security as compared to that at O’Hare. On another trip there was a bomb discovered near Trefalgar in mid afternoon while we were shopping. They have a way of downplaying it all and there was no feeling of panic.

Having memories of WW2 I am disappointed that our government still avoids treating this war with the same seriousness.  Rather than risk criticism or believing it would be too distressing, we pretty much carry on with business as usual.

After watching the BBC program, DIRTY WAR. last spring, I have tried to suggest to those who should be concerned about such an attack that we prepare a public defense. My army experience included CBR (Chemical, Biological, Radiological) training. I believe we have the resources in our retirees, Boy and Girl Scouting programs, service clubs and other groups to teach a proper response and avoid panic in such an event.

Number one on the agenda — a warning/communication system in case of power outages. Did’nt we learn anything from The Big (not so)Easy?

No one at any level of government has responded to my letters and emails. Not my congressman, not Homeland Security, the Surgeon General’s office — nada.

There are suppliers of emergency equipment, but none can sell a nerve gas antidote.

That reminds me, WTH, while I was stationed in Germany, there was a major flood in Austin, Texas and people died. I have an uncle who is a hydraulic engineer and what could have prevented the flood was something he had pushed for for years to no avail. ANYWAY---the emergency broadcast system didn’t work at all. Radio stations just shut down. No claxoms. No information of where to turn or what to do. Mensch.

Also, while I was in Germany, terrorist alerts were a regular thing. Al Queda is not the one and only original group of terrorists. One reason why the British and the Germans respond differently to the threat of terrorist attacks is because they’ve been dealing with it for a long time, and they deal with it well---logic, solid intelligence, police work, undercover people who speak many languages, etc. 

I guess I’ll post my response to the crisis training in the next post to keep it simple.

got atropine

Ran into this article today.  Here are a few excerpts:

NEWPORT, Ind. - Army officials said Wednesday a drain-plug that dislodged in a chemical reactor caused about 300 gallons of caustic wastewater to spill at a plant built to a destroy western Indiana’s stockpile of a deadly nerve agent.

Tuesday’s spill the Newport Chemical Depot halted chemical neutralization of the VX nerve agent until the problem is corrected. It was the fourth such spill since May 2005, when an Army contractor began destroying VX at the complex.

No one was injured or exposed to the hydrolysate, which Kimmell said contained no active VX, which is so deadly that a single droplet can kill a human within minutes.

Spills occurred last June, July and October. The spill in October was the largest to date, dumping about 490 gallons of hydrolysate when degraded gaskets failed.

After the spills in June and October, neutralization was halted until Army contractor Parsons Technology Inc. determined the cause and made necessary repairs or upgrades. The July spill occurred as neutralization was still in “pause” mode following June’s spill.

A federal review continues into the Army’s plan to ship the hydrolysate to a DuPont Co. plant in New Jersey for final treatment and disposal into the Delaware River.

The Army reported that as of Tuesday about 33,375 gallons of VX had been destroyed - about 13 percent of the more than 250,000 gallons originally stored at the depot about 30 miles north of Terre Haute.
The total cost of the project now stands at $1.2 billion, including Parsons’ $782 million contract. That contract would run through the end of 2007, when the VX destruction is scheduled to be complete, leaving behind between 2 million and 4 million gallons of the wastewater.
http://staff.washington.edu/~chudler/vxd.html

This is an excerpt from an amazing children’s site I found today:

Chemical weapons (nerve agents) are some of the most deadly substances in the world. At the US Army Newport Chemical Depot (Newport, Indiana), 1,269 tons of the nerve agent called “VX” sits in 1,690 containers. The Army wants to destroy the VX by treating it with chemicals. This treatment would make the VX less dangerous and create several million gallons of waste water called caustic VX hydrolysate (CVXH). The CVXH then would be transported from Indiana to Deepwater, New Jersey, where the CVXH would be treated and then dumped into the Delaware river.

There is even a map of the U.S. on this page next to all this hunky-dory information. I don’t like the extreme secretive personality of this administration, but you would think that someone somewhere in the system would have cautioned against giving such information up easily.
Maybe it’s a total lie to confuse the enemy.

It’s so much work getting rid of WMDs and so hard to find good help these days. Four times. This is just one stockpile.

Instead of obsessing as if al Queda has completely cornered the market on threats, I think it would be more important to focus on “disaster preparedness”. Of course, and al Queda attack would be a disaster, but so would a lot of other things. A sucking chest wound is a sucking chest wound. Radiological poisoning is radiological poisoning.
Nerve gas is nerve gas---it doesn’t matter who made it or who spread it.

I would like to see Americans and first responders feel confident that they can handle a disaster, because they are competent to deal with a disaster, and are properly equipped, and networked. Drill, drill, drill.

We need to break out of this victim mentally, and good/evil melodrama and start dealing with what we can control without giving up our liberties, IMO.

Wiley,

“I don’t like the extreme secretive personality of this administration, but you would think that someone somewhere in the system would have cautioned against giving such information up easily.
Maybe it’s a total lie to confuse the enemy.”

----------------------------
Secrecy in WW2 was much better than what ours appears to be now. I say appears because much of what was secret back then was revealed when a thirty year limit lid was removed. I get the impression that today they make a big deal out things they should just admit and slough off (Cheney’s shooting accident) but they allow the important ones to fester (Torture).

Bush was going to veto the McCain proposal over the remote possibility of a “ticking bomb” emergency!?!  Hey, in such a case use the, “It is much easier to get forgiveness than get permission,” approach. Duh! Instead he make the U.S. look like the mistreatments already revealed were are OK. I wonder what happened to Captain Fishback who got McCain to go to bat for him — he should get a promotion.

If “they” are trying to confuse the enemy maybe it is through pretending to be incompetent. But that may only encourage our enemies — so it must be the real “they.”

What better way to keep the “truth” a secret than by flooding the news wires with conflicting stories. People need to remember that just because it was written it is not necessarily true. The WW2 Canadian master spy William Stephenson said, “Nothing deceives like a document.” Also, though, regarding WMD — not finding does not equal not existing.

Wiley,

Thanks for the nerve gas info — amazing and unbelievably inept, thoughtless and stupid. There are not enough words to cover this.

“We need to break out of this victim mentally, and good/evil melodrama and start dealing with what we can control without giving up our liberties, IMO.”
--------------------------

Agreed. Our first responders should be genuinely capable — not just perceived to be.

In my years of dealing with CEOs and mid managers, I never ceased to be surprised at how little imagination so many people have. It was nearly impossible to get them to think of any long term effects. The focus was too often only on money—how much? and how soon?

We need a Homeland Security head who thinks BIG! An emergency like Katrina’s, even though a huge and total disaster to those directly affected, is nothing compared to a nuclear or chemical catastrophe (attack or accident).

The immediacy of either would be too overwhelming for even the best trained first responders. Nerve gas works very fast. The antidote is also a poison, so an immediate determination is vital. It may be preferable to die in a nuclear blast rather than not to know what too avoid and how to decontaminate after one.

A national program is necessary to teach civilians to identify/deal with such events.  It must be coordinated from the top down. IMO the military is best qualified to do it.  I taught decon classes (also booby trap and land mines avoidance) using Army materials — so simplified and basic that anyone could learn it.

We need to develop a radio/cell phone/independent generator or whatever alert system. We need to designate car washes, athletic clubs, school showers, etc. as decon centers the way we used to label fallout shelters.  Not addressing these issues for whatever reasons (political is the best bet) is criminal.

I believe many of our liberties are long gone. When the military replaced the service number with an individual’s SSN, it was a big lifetime loss of privacy. Personal information security is history. Frisking before boarding is here to stay. Anything we ever have said and connected to our names is forever on the net. Insurance companies have merged with banking and the health info may decrease chances of a loan — it’s endless.

My brain is very lazy today, so I’m not going to say much before I watch the rest of “Good Night, and Good Luck”. What I’ve watched so far makes me miss Walter Cronkite. Those news casts were delivered with the assumption that the audience could read.  Today’s journalists are nattering gossipmongers by comparison.

Competence and quality. Where did they go?

I think it was Reagan who repealed the Eisenhower act that made it law to declassify government information after 40 years? First thing Bush 2 did when he took office was to keep Reagan and Bush 1 information from being released.

You did notice, WTH that we have stockpiles of WMD? Yes?

Wiley,

Compitence and quality. Hmmm?  When I was a kid there were reporters and there were “News Commentators” — Gabriel Heater, H.V. Kaltenborn, and of course, correspondents like Ed Morrow. Now everyone mixes in opinion without batting an eye.

WMD stockpiles? Yes, but we have had them since WW2, so no surprise. Doesn’t everyone? My wife has related how scared she always was when we had “Duck and Cover” drills in school. I grew up assuming I would be in a war (My uncles were in WW1, an uncle and several cousins in WW2 and Korea.)So, I took ROTC in high school, enlisted in the Army soon after HS graduation. I figured if I was going I wanted to know as much as possible ahead of time.

Korea was just over and Vietnam had not begun during my six years “obligation”. I was one of the lucky ones.

Now I find it puzzling that while we are in a war (They are never like the previous one.) we are so disorganized and unfocused. The politicians killed thousands of our own in Vietnam — Johnson shot off his mouth before a major air strike, we kept score in body counts and ignored the reasons the locals were opposed to us. Just as with Vietnam, too few troops in Iraq to hold and pacify the cities much less the country’s borders. 

We do a sweep and leave — the insurgents return. Is it any wonder the people want us out?  Picture any U.S. city where people are afraid to testify because of gang retaliation. Is this a solution in the masking?

Yesterday we had a big air attack — nothing said about a change in strategy. All glitz and no substance.

Even after all that recent experience we are repeating the same mistakes. Politicians have managed to divide us, offend nearly the whole world, claimed imminent threat while ignoring our borders and ports and condoned war crime activities in the name of expediency.

Recently a General in charge of tsunami relief by U.S. troops told how well liked our people are there — couldn’t we identify a model here which would serve us all?

Try to communicate any of this to a congressman. To hell with the age qualification — before eligibility to be seated our Congress — Draft them all to serve at least six months in the hot zone. Put nerve gas storage tanks upwind from their homes. Line them up shoulder to shoulder along the Rio Grande for a couple of months. Let them stand in line with thousands for a chance at one of a few jobs. Make them work a year a less than minimum wage as a “guest worker” doing the kind of work Americans won’t do but an illegal is doing for slave pay.
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There!  Not a chance in hell, but I feel better now.

I’m not ignoring you WTH, but perhaps because I haven’t finished my first cup of coffee I don’t quite get your point.

You know we aren’t going to agree in the war, and that I don’t understand your disconnect between “don’t we all (have left over nerve gas)” and attacking Iraq for WMD they didn’t have.

Sorry, Wiley, pointless I guess. I’m just frustrated. I read a couple war related articles this AM and am totally disgusted with the mishandling of the war.

I can agree we haven’t produced enough WMD to justify the invasion.  Not finding it could mean Saddam had used it all on the Iranians and Kurds, he was able to ship it out before we went in, it is still buried somewhere, or he destroyed it as he was supposed to do.  If the last were true why not give the inspectors the information? I gather you must accept the last possibility, right?

What little we came up with in Iraq was just a few sarin gas shells.  I knew we had a supply of nerve gas somewhere. Having and using is an important distinction. General Marshall wanted to use gas in WW2, but as far as I know we did not. My wife’s uncle and my next door neighbor’s father died from the effects of it in WW1. A nasty way to go and we yousaid yesterday we need a competent group to deal with it.

What bothers me most — we keep repeating stupid actions as if somehow there will be a different result.  We need not have gone in, but we did. So take the ground and hold it , protect the people, and then let them take over and leave.

Wiley,

On the China thread I noticed your comment:

“Our government has decided that China is our enemy, while they produce almost everything on our shelves.  China, having discovered that it is our enemy and major supplier is beefing up its military now. As threatening as that might appear, it just means that they aren’t stupid and/or too poor to defend themselves.”

China as a military threat pops to the surface once again with the recent discovery of China training the Latin American military officers. This is just going to add to the mixed messages to and from D.C.

This seems to me to be another Bush administration (also with Clinton) dichotomy. China as “our greatest military threat” and WH economic spin of a “billion person market.” Add to that the fact they are our massive source of credit. We have a huge trade imbalance, but much of their total exporting is from U.S. expatriot companies. Our CEOs just love this setup.

The loss of our jobs has taken 13 years to gather momentum, (NAFTA) but I see a lot of criticism on conservative websites now that white collars are severely threatened.

What I see as our future unless there is a major U.S. policy change…

• The most well educated people will take the best jobs left, at far less than currently being paid. (deflationary) Steve Roach at Morgan Stanley calls this “ a race to the bottom” fear — I see it happening here in our city now.

• Employers will hire whoever is willing to work the cheapest. (Probably those with kids who MUST take what they can get.)

• This will make it more difficult for younger people just out of school and those older ones with health problems of any kind.

• They will hire whoever has the most experience and/or ability.

• Minority U.S. Citizens will be pushed farther down the ladder.

• Heavy public pressure will increase welfare programs and therefore — taxes.

• The likelihood of a backlash by people who feel they have been short changed or see their lifestyle declining will target Hispanics both legal and not.

• Everyone except the wealthiest will be increasingly cynical regarding politics, capitalism and demand change.

• The gains world wide may not equal the loss of foreign aid and charity due to the lowering of U.S. living standards.

Call it pessimist or realistic — but human nature, in my opinion, has been too long ignored and the wider consequences could lead to a war far beyond the war on terror. Anyone who thinks the relationship of trading partners will prevent armed conflict should read “The Proud Tower,” by Barbara Tuchman.

I would agree that all your predictions are possible and most are probable.

But, after things fall apart enough, I can see human creativity kicking into action. Our economy is built on sand.  It needs to fall apart, because most people are running around using up resources and producing a lot of waste to produce products and services that are, at best, not necessary.

It’s an old chinese saying, let me see if I can find that fortune cookie fortune---

muzak

Didn’t find it, but found “You are strong and brave enough to pull yourself through”. That’s a good one.

In a nutshell---in crisis there is the opportunity for change.

World War is not inevitable. Probable, but not inevitable.

I just finished “The Superpower Syndrome” by Jay Lifton. In a nut-shell, the whole total-spectrum-domination thing is like a mental illness and is an expression of fearfullness and paranoia.

Wouldn’t avoiding a nuclear war be better than doing everything in our power to be the king of s*it creek?

I think any government that has a modicum of power is quickly making alliances to grab vital resources like oil and water that are dwindling. And nothing makes sense outside of that framework. No one is going to war for altruistic reasons.

I seem to remember back about the mid 1970s, I did a job for a client who gave me a Chinese character he wanted to use in a logo design which he said meant both “crisis” and “opportunity” depending on context or inflection. Something like that.

Seems plausible since so many of life’s crucial decisions can go either way.

Tis true that the character is the same. It’s in the I Ching.

The main thing, is not to panic. And whatever you see before your eyes, no matter how crazy---believe your eyes. That moment of disbelief can get ya.

When I referred to “conservative websites” it was because I don’t know what else to call them. I think Wall Street Journal is pro big bucks primarily which fits a lot of characters on both sides of the aisle.

I consider myself truly conservative. I never buy on credit. (I use credit cards, but always pay in 30 days to avoid interest.) If I don’t have the cash — I just don’t buy.  I want to preserve our basic freedoms, our forests, hate urban sprawl, employ our own people while letting in immigrants from all countries at a pace the economy can absorb.

I hate to hear either Bush presidents called conservative. Clinton, while I never trusted him, was more conservative than either of his Bush bookends.

It may be that a degree of chaos would bring about a grassroots rebellion demanding a push for mass transit, alternative power generation, smaller, energy efficient housing, but history makes that doubtful.

We’ve had thirty years to do the above and neither party did anything. In fairness, I must say they probably never could have gotten popular support.
John B, Anderson offered that by way of a $0.50 gas tax in 1980 and lost decisively.

If Iran formed a coalition with Venezuela and a few others to hold back production we would begin to feel the squeeze almost immediately. When we did this to Japan in the early 1940s it only made it easier for Heideki Tojo and his gang to justify their military expansion and set off WW2.

The similarity between the Japanese military code and the Iranian president’s brand of Islamic religion is disturbing. Even the mixture of sentiment among us is very close to prewar late ‘30s and the early ‘40s.

Santana was too right about people.

Back to the main topic:

In 1993 I wrote to my representative, Don Manzullo, urging him to vote against NAFTA. This was the last paragraph of that letter.

“NAFTA would probably be good for many businesses, for the short term. It would probably be good for stockholders.  It will be good for the upper class Mexicans who, no doubt, must be the buyers of our goods.  It would probably not be good for the unskilled worker and the middle class taxpayer, but then, what is ?

NAFTA = Not A Fine Thing, America.”
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In 2005 I wrote to him with my negative comments on CAFTA and pointed out what a disaster NAFTA has been.  In his reply touting the benefits of CAFTA, he also bragged that our exports are up 84% since the North American Free Trade Agreement.
 
The fact that we are “exporting” to General Motors Electro-Motive Division, G.E, Avery-Dennison, Johnson & Johnson and others which used to be here in Illinois, was lost to him.

Our city, formerly a major machine tool manufacturing center, has lost over 10,000 since 1993. More than 50 people I know by name have lost their jobs. My business of forty years has evaporated. And my younger son has lost two jobs and has been working part time for three years.

My other son, a national merit scholarship graduate of a major university, is in imminent danger of losing his job to India.

Tell me, why should any U.S. high school grad should waste the time and money on higher education if planing to stay in our country.

WTH
Stumbled across the thread and was interested to read your personal experience of the “hollowing out” of the US.  Well, horrified would be more accurate. We are on the same road here in europe.

Your fear of wars far worse than this pretend war on terror is understandable.  Under the present politicians and their likely successors we are all in danger , but the guarantee of failure is when we allow ourselves to be sidetracked.

On the political level, anyone who persuades us to be fearful of a foreign enemy , that we are in mortal danger, has won. And we have lost.
So forget the islamo-fascist hordes.  Russia, China, Pakistan, India, France and Israel all have nuclear weapons, but aren’t going to attack America tomorrow.

The real enemy is inside the borders, and it isn’t the ‘arab american’.

Who is tearing the guts out of the US ?  If you look a bit more closely, you will find that GWB is not just a gullible good-time guy. His family and a coupla hundred more have been getting gigantically rich by robbing the US. If you look at the DoD scandals, HUD, S&Ls;, the Iraq reconstruction scandals, ETC, we are into hundreds of billions of $ over the last few years. They have a few-score thousand accomplices willing to serve and participate in the profits. They don’t give a shit if the US doesn’t make machine-tools any more, if you scrabble to pay the dentist.

Those guys own most of the media, so when the message comes across “ BE REALLY SCARED OF IRAN ! “, just remind yourself , quietly, that you do not have to do what they tell you. You are not in the Army any more, and neither am I.

Frog,

“Stumbled across the thread and was interested to read your personal experience of the “hollowing out” of the US.  Well, horrified would be more accurate. We are on the same road here in europe.

Your fear of wars far worse than this pretend war on terror is understandable.  Under the present politicians and their likely successors we are all in danger , but the guarantee of failure is when we allow ourselves to be sidetracked. .”

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I am convinced that of the above list only the religious fanatics are a genuine, imminent world wide threat.  The others listed want to live, continue to amass power, money, whatever turns them on.  Anyone who perceives death as a plus, is just plain trouble whatever brand of eternity he’s sold on.

It doesn’t have to be either/or — but can be both simultaneously. The rich aiding the the rich is a timeless phenomenon. “You line my pockets and I’ll line yours.” The new version has become more rapid and more threatening due to the speed of tech today and the ease of mass computerized data fiction. You don’t need to own the media. They are so easily manipulated it is pathetic.

Iran is both a threat to the U.S. and Europe. It is an economic (oil) threat to all industrialized nations and if nuclear armed, a threat to the world.

Our stupidest Iraq mistake (I use “our” loosely.) is advertising the democratization of a diverse group who are more tribal than national. Their thought processes are very different from ours. There is NO excuse for our officials not realizing this — anyone who can read should have known it. Bush is a dysfunctional, programmable figure who is convinced he is God’s man for the age. I had hoped for his advisors to be smarter.

I can’t help thinking of Barbara Tuchman’s book, “The March of Folly,” in which she points to several historical travesties (The Reformation, the American Revolution, WW1, the Vietnam War).  Even when it was obvious to the leaders that they were pursuing a disastrous policy, they could not, would not admit any error.

IMO we need enough troops in Iraq to hold territory, make it safe for the inhabitants, turn it over to whatever kind of government THEY develop, and leave. Civilian and military politics make this unlikely. “It is up to the Generals how many troops are needed.” Bullshit!

Even when shouting the enemy is out to kill us, these guys in Washington are more concerned about making big money. Dubai gave Bush a break by pulling out. (I wonder what they got in return.) Now, China is in charge of our shipping security incoming by way of Jamaica!  Why no outrage on this one?

How many people realize over there just how bad the global financial and economic situation is? Here the political and media spin(a bunch of parrots) is that all is well.  Every year the world’s big money controllers meet at Davos, Switzerland, to get their stories synchronized. Our gov’t numbers are a fairy tale as broadcast, yet the accurate picture can can be found by anyone willing to take the time.

WTH
Since we agree so strongly on so much, I also am a fan of the March Of Folly , I must underline where I disagree with you !

I wrote above---
“""On the political level, anyone who persuades us to be fearful of a foreign enemy , that we are in mortal danger, has won. And we have lost. “"”

My contention is that even YOU, a wideawake US citizen horrified by the criminality of those in power, have fallen for their spin on the news.

You say they “don’t even need to own the media”.  I disagee. They DO own the media, and use it unremittingly. See the video “Outfoxed” .

Religious fanatics are to be found all over. US , Israel, and the Muslim world. No reason to be scared of one lot more than the others. You seem to have fallen for the propaganda that the Muslim extremists are more dangerous than the others, which is exactly what GWBushco wants you to do . Pause for thought ?

For me Iran is not a threat.  Early on after Ahmedinejehad made his speech about Israel , then reported by Reuters, I saw a translation of the whole.., which was far less “extreme” than what is actually being served up to us by the Media. They simplify, then over-simplify, and the rest of the media copycat. Endless goebbels-like repetition.

Same thing with Hamas. I read an interview with their boss, who asked the simple question-- “which Israel do you want us to recognise, the one with the the 1948 frontier, the 1967 frontier, or what ?”
Now Israel is having an election to define its 2006 frontier .....

We may well be on the edge of an economic and financial precipice. I cannot see it any other way,and will marvel if we escape.

This whole idea you have of being afraid of “terrorists” is to me a total subservience to the Bush worldview, the one he wants us to have, and I reject it completely.

Frog,

On US economic policy (the main theme here):

I read an interesting panel discussion transcript yesterday at.  These guys are all free traders — making money big time. I think some of their comments are indicative of the thinking behind our globalization policies. It is a, “Let them eat cake” mentality.

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http://lobg2.blogspot.com/2005/03/peter-thiel-tar-baby.html
Monday, March 21, 2005

“Russia and Eastern Europe and the other Asian countries, half of the world’s population just entered the free economic system.”
“Peter, as long as China keeps moving towards economic freedom and political freedom, then I’m not sure we have so much to worry about.”

“If you start with economic freedom, you’ll end up with political freedom.”
“The short-term impulse is almost always protectionist. ....And that has to be opposed.”

“Those 2.3 billion people are, at least initially, willing to work harder and for less money than many of our workers