Author: Matthew G. Saroff

This Week in Bad Ideas

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A picture of the guy who came up with this idea

Rather unsurprisingly, this one involves automobiles, and the Italian auto industry.

You see, FIAT will be offering an in car esopresso maker on the Fiat 500:

Oh how those Italians love their espresso. And starting in October, they’ll be able to have a doppio on the go in the new Fiat 500L.

At the presentation of the car to the global press in Turin this month, Fiat announced that the 500L will be “the first standard-production car in the world to offer a true espresso coffee machine.”

The espresso maker will be an option in the new, bigger, four-door 500L that goes on sale in Italy in October and in the rest of Europe shortly after. (Think of the 500L as the Fiat 500 equivalent of the Mini Cooper Countryman — there’s even a vague similarity in silhouette.)

A coffee IV drip I could understand, but an espresso machine is insane.

Cancel the Littoral Combat Ship Now

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The US Navy conducted studies of LCS capabilities, and it ain’t pretty:

  • It’s modular mission systems, which were supposed to allow the ship to be refitted in a couple of days in theater are “untenable”, because the logistics are more involved than previously forseen.
  • The ship is intended to take on 21 day missions, but only carries 14 days of food.
  • The crew is too small.
  • It was intended to replace frigates, mine hunters, and patrol boats, but it is, “The new assessments conclude the ships are not equal to today’s frigates or mine countermeasures ships, and they are too large to operate as patrol boats.”
  • It has no effective defense against cruise missiles.
  • It has no meaningful offensive capability now that the  Non-Line of Sight Launch System (NLOS-LS) missile system has been canceled.

So, except for its high dash speed, it pretty much has failed every capability that was intended when it was conceived.

Cancel it, and get some honest to got frigates and mine hunters.

The Next Gen Gripen Looks to Be a World Beater

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Click for full size


This is a lot cheaper

Saab put out a very impressive briefing on the next generation of Gripen at Farnborough, where the headline was much lower direct operating costs:

Third (and most important) is that all air forces are finally realizing that operating costs are more important than acquisition costs. The debate over JSF costs – from the Navair leaks of 2010, through program director VAdm Dave Venlet’s “it makes their knees go weak” quote in April 2011 to Lockheed Martin’s recent assaults on the competence of Pentagon accountants – revolves around operating costs, and that is a fight that Gripen wins.

Saab says that the E/F will cost under $5,000 per flight hour – one-third to one-quarter of its estimates for Eurofighter, Rafale or JSF (Saab uses Australian numbers for the latter, which are lower than some).

These numbers are not just pie in the sky. The Gripen has been in service for over a decade, as has its engine, and it’s half the size of its competitors, and you pay for aircraft like you pay for ground beef, by the pound.  (And yes, the numbers for the JSF are unsupportable)

However, what I found most interesting was the fact that they touted the advantages of non-integrated avionics, (page 33) explaining how you can move more quickly if your tactical avionics are separate from flight critical systems, which also allows greater access by the operating nations who might want to make their own upgrades and weapons.

This is a direct challenge to the tightly integrated, and inaccessible avionics package in the JSF.

PDF after the break. (H/T Eric Palmer for the embed.)

Americans Used to Work in Meatpacking

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When one looks at the phrase, “Jobs Americans Won’t Do,” which is frequently used to justify both a lax policy on legal immigration, and salutary neglect toward illegal aliens.

One of the jobs that is supposed to be in this category is working in meat packing.

Dean Baker makes the point that his is inaccurate and ahistorical.

There were many Americans who worked in meat packing, and made a decent living from doing so, until engage in a decades long program of pushing down wages in the industry, which involved aggressive pursuit of undocumented workers and a vicious campaign against the unions.

The idea that there are jobs that Americans won’t do is a myth.

When someone says that, they mean that there are jobs that Americans won’t do if you have sh%$ty wages and benefits.

The Good Guys Beat the Borg (For Once)

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Specifically, Wikileaks has won a case against Visa for cutting off their credit card donations:

The Reykjavík District Court has ruled that Valitor, formerly known as VISA Iceland, violated contract laws by blocking credit card donations to Wikileaks, according to a press release posted on the whistleblowers’ Twitter account.

The court also ordered that the donation gateway should be reopened within 14 days otherwise Valitor will be forced to pay a fine of $6,200 daily. Valitor CEO Vidar Thorkellsson told Bloomberg, however, that the company would appeal the ruling. He declined to comment further.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange said “This is a significant victory against Washington’s attempt to silence WikiLeaks. We will not be silenced. Economic censorship is censorship. It is wrong. When it’s done outside of the rule of law its doubly wrong. One by one those involved in the attempted censorship of WikiLeaks will find themselves on the wrong side of history.”

Most Transparent Administration Ever

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Have you heard the latest? The FDA spied on outside critics in an attempt to find out who were the whistleblowers.

The f%$#ing F f%$#ing D f%$#ing A was engaged in a f%$#ing witch hunt and coverup?

Un-f%$#ing-believable:

A wide-ranging surveillance operation by the Food and Drug Administration against a group of its own scientists used an enemies list of sorts as it secretly captured thousands of e-mails that the disgruntled scientists sent privately to members of Congress, lawyers, labor officials, journalists and even President Obama, previously undisclosed records show.
What began as a narrow investigation into the possible leaking of confidential agency information by five scientists quickly grew in mid-2010 into a much broader campaign to counter outside critics of the agency’s medical review process, according to the cache of more than 80,000 pages of computer documents generated by the surveillance effort.
Moving to quell what one memorandum called the “collaboration” of the F.D.A.’s opponents, the surveillance operation identified 21 agency employees, Congressional officials, outside medical researchers and journalists thought to be working together to put out negative and “defamatory” information about the agency.
F.D.A. officials defended the surveillance operation, saying that the computer monitoring was limited to the five scientists suspected of leaking confidential information about the safety and design of medical devices.
While they acknowledged that the surveillance tracked the communications that the scientists had with Congressional officials, journalists and others, they said it was never intended to impede those communications, but only to determine whether information was being improperly shared.
The agency, using so-called spy software designed to help employers monitor workers, captured screen images from the government laptops of the five scientists as they were being used at work or at home. The software tracked their keystrokes, intercepted their personal e-mails, copied the documents on their personal thumb drives and even followed their messages line by line as they were being drafted, the documents show.
The extraordinary surveillance effort grew out of a bitter dispute lasting years between the scientists and their bosses at the F.D.A. over the scientists’ claims that faulty review procedures at the agency had led to the approval of medical imaging devices for mammograms and colonoscopies that exposed patients to dangerous levels of radiation.
A confidential government review in May by the Office of Special Counsel, which deals with the grievances of government workers, found that the scientists’ medical claims were valid enough to warrant a full investigation into what it termed “a substantial and specific danger to public safety.”

There is a saying, “A fish rots from the head,” and this is completely in line with the Obama administration’s jihad against whistle blowers.

Dutch Parliament Deals Blow to JSF

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The Dutch Parliament has voted to ask the PM and cabinet to cancel the jet order:

The Netherlands should scrap plans to buy F-35 Joint Strike Fighter jets because it cannot afford the project’s ballooning costs as the country attempts to cut spending, a majority of parliament said on Thursday.

One leading party, Labour, will submit a proposal to the 150-seat legislature on the last session before Sept. 12 elections calling for an end to Dutch participation in the Lockheed Martin Corp warplanes project.

Whether the Netherlands, which has already ordered two F-35 test planes, will quit the project depends on the outcome of the elections, and the new government that takes office afterwards.

The Dutch government collapsed over painful austerity measures in April, but the state has to cut costs by billions of euros to meet EU guidelines. About 4.5 billion euros has been set aside for the F-35 jets.

During a debate with Dutch Defence Minister Hans Hillen, lawmakers complained about the project’s escalating costs and said there were no guarantees over Dutch jobs or future costs.

I’m beginning to think that this will end up a lot like the F-111.

The only people who bought that plane were us and the Australians. (The British canceled after escalating costs)

I Call Coverup and Scapegoating

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JP Morgan is now claiming that its traders intentionally deceived them when they lost $2 4.4 5.8 7 billion:

JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM)’s announcement that an internal inquiry may show “intent” to misprice trades in a unit that lost $5.8 billion may help a U.S. investigation while putting distance between management and any wrongdoers.

“E-mails, voice tapes and other documents, supplemented by interviews” were “suggestive of trader intent not to mark positions where they believed they could execute,” the bank said in a presentation yesterday as it reported net income fell 9 percent to $4.96 billion. “Traders may have been seeking to avoid showing full amount of losses,” the bank said, noting management had concerns about the integrity of the prices used. The bank didn’t provide evidence to support the allegations.

The U.S. Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation in New York in May began a probe of the bank’s trading losses, a person familiar with the matter said. The Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which regulates derivatives trading, are also examining New York-based JPMorgan’s trading activities, according to people familiar with those probes.

Yes, of course, none of it was senior management’s fault, it was all the fault of those damn Eskimos.

Quoting Richard Widmark playing Col. Tad Lawson in Judgement at Nuremberg:

There are no Nazis in Germany, didn’t you know that, Judge? The Eskimos invaded Germany and took over. That’s how all those terrible things happened. It wasn’t the fault of the Germans, it was the fault of those damn Eskimos!

This is such a transperent case of cover-your-ass as I have ever seen.

Yes, Geithner Sent Out a Strongly Worded Memo, and Kept LIBOR Fraud Secret

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Yes, in response to proof that one of the most critical benchmarks in international finance was being fraudulently manipulated, Timothy “Eddie Haskell” Geithner sent a memo, and then followed up by doing ……… absolutely nothing.

What a surprise.

Geithner has always been supportive of allowing the banksters to amass ill gotten gains in order to fill the holes in the balance sheets.

Israel Developing Python 6 Based on Stunner SAM/ATBM

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The Israeli defense company Rafael is working to develop a successor to the Python 5 and the Derby based on their Stunner surface to air missile (paid subscription required):

Rafael, Israel’s leading missile development center, continues to work quietly on an air-to-air derivative of the Stunner interceptor—to be designated Python 6, or the Future Advanced Air-to-Air Missile (FAAM).


The Stunner is a surface-to-air weapon being developed in partnership with Raytheon for Israel’s David’s Sling air and missile defense system. The Python 6 has been chronicled for almost a decade.


Although the Israeli air force (IAF) still has not officially endorsed an air-to-air version, sources at Rafael say consultations over the features of such a missile have been underway since the final stages of development of the Python 5, currently in production.


The IAF could avoid committing its own funding to FAAM development, hoping that Rafael can first strike a deal with a U.S. partner to obtain the next-generation air-to-air missile. But according to Chairman Ilan Biran, Rafael is in the meantime using its R&D budget, estimated at $125 million, to fund the project.


………


The Stunner was designed as a “platform-agnostic” missile that can be adapted for air and ground launch, from rail or ejector racks, in conventional or internal carriage configurations. The Mach 5.5, long-range missile is equipped with a dual electro-optic/radio-frequency seeker and an advanced multistage rocket motor. Designed as a hit-to-kill anti-missile weapon , Stunner has no warhead and instead can carry a more powerful rocket motor capable of ranges beyond any air-to-air missile available today.


Druker says the FAAM will likely cost significantly less than today’s AIM-120 , Derby or Meteor, but more than the current short-range missiles. Although the FAAM and Stunner do not share a common configuration, Rafael expects that the overall life-cycle cost offered by the Stunner will be much lower than any other missile combination.

Personally, I’m a little bit dubious that the missile will go completely without a warhead, the PAC-3 Patriot, for example is hit to kill, but contains a “lethality enhancer” (basically a tiny warhead to scatter shrapnel in the path of the target.

That being said, using a dual mode seeker (you can see how the IR seeker is offset so as to allow a radar to be placed behind it) the missile’s accuracy should be pretty high.

They also expect this to be the last AAM they develop.

Yosi Druker, director of Rafael’s Air-to-Air and Air Defense Directorate, suggests that they will be superseded by new technologies, because “the next generation of interceptors will employ other kill mechanisms, not necessarily a missile, to defeat airborne targets,” which I take to be a reference to directed energy weapons.

I’m dubious of this, but I’ve been wrong more often than not when I have been dubious about a technological development.

Background here.

Martin O’Malley 2012

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This has to be one of the best slams of the Presidential election so far:

Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley introduced a new line of attack on Gov. Mitt Romney today, saying the public should be suspicious of him because in 2008 Sen. John McCain considered the now-presumptive Republican nominee to be his running mate…but picked Sarah Palin instead.

“What about running for the office of the presidency this year makes it less important than the job that he didn’t get over Palin the last time around?” O’Malley asked BuzzFeed, referencing the 23 years of returns Romney allowed McCain to examine while he was being vetted but hasn’t released to the public.

Pressed in an interview at the National Governors Association meeting here whether there would be anything in those returns that would disqualify Romney from the presidency, O’Malley said he doesn’t know — and that’s why Democrats want to see them.

“But why would you pick somebody — why would you pick Palin over Romney?” he asked.

(emphasis mine)

Sweet!

Adventures in Journamalism

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The CJR discovers that the the news media repeatedly uncritically quote anti-worker lobbyists to demonstrate things like the fictitious worker shortage:

Two weeks ago The New York Times wheeled out that old chestnut of Great Recession-era economic reporting: Companies can’t find workers, despite high unemployment.

………

But what really sends the BS meter into the red zone is when you learn that the anecdotes are populated with business people with ties to lobbying groups that news organizations, for whatever reason, fail to disclose.

Take one of the Times’s main anecdotes, Drew Greenblatt, who owns a small manufacturing firm in Baltimore called Marlin Steel Wire and who gets his picture in the Times. This was his third NYT hit in three months. Here are Mr. Greenblatt’s other press hits in June: The NBC Nightly News, PBS Newshour (twice), NPR’s Morning Edition, The Hamilton Spectator. So far this year he’s also been on CNN Newsroom and Fox Business (four times), and in the Financial Times, Reuters, and the Associated Press, plus a number of smaller publications. Two years ago, Greenblatt and his company were the focus of a flattering 2,300 word Atlantic profile and a couple of WaPo profiles in 2001 and 2007. This guy is like the Greg Packer of small manufacturers.

………

Undisclosed in any of these stories is the fact that Greenblatt is an executive-committee member of the board of the National Association of Manufacturers, the powerful DC trade lobby. NAM not only pushes Congress for anti-labor policies (like banning picketing), it lobbies for government-funded workforce training programs (“to be led by the business community,” naturally).

………

A couple of weeks ago, blogger Steve M. at Balloon Juice and No More Mister Nice Blog caught NPR and NBC talking to the same small businessman, Joe Olivo, about how Obama’s health care law is keeping him from hiring for his printing business. Turns out Olivo’s quite the active member of the National Federation of Independent Businesses, the big right-wing, pro-corporate lobbying group that was the lead plaintiff in the Supreme Court case against Obamacare, which is called National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius. His NFIB connections, needless to say, weren’t disclosed by either broadcast. And Steve M. caught NPR going back to the well a week later, with yet another anti-Obamacare Olivo interview with no disclosure of his lobbying ties.

This is hardly the first time this has happened with Olivo.

………

Here’s how you should assume this works, because it’s how it very often does: A journalist is on deadline on a story and needs an anecdote to make it feel “real” with some color—preferably someone who will add balance and/or support the journalist’s thesis. A speed-dialed call is made to industry flacks to supply a quotable small-business person…and, voilà!

That’s the quick-and-easy way, which is how readers get political activists presented misleadingly as random businessmen.

Take incompetence, mix it with laziness, and a little nudge from their corporate task-masters, and it’s no wonder that I find that the best sources for news about America are foreign.

Least surprising News of the Day

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It turns out that his syndicate, Premeir Radio Networks, hires ringers to call into his show:

One of the common refrains in the media world is that Rush Limbaugh has the largest audience in talk radio. He is eager to capitalize on this, multiple times per episode in fact. But how true is this claim?

Limbaugh is one of several radio hosts syndicated through Premiere Radio Networks, including right-wing darlings such as Sean Hannity and Glenn Beck as well as known liberal voices such as Randi Rhodes and the Reverend Jesse Jackson. One of the features for Premiere syndicated shows is a service Premiere On Call, a phone banking service for voice talent. What this means is, they hire people to call in. If you ever listened to one of the shows distributed by Premiere, you may find yourself impressed at how a caller would bring up a subject which then the host would have a perfect response to, like a perfect pitch in a baseball game to allow the home run hit. Premiere On Call’s hiring standards appear to be focused on hiring people able to generate accents, vocal inflections, or other ways to enable re-use of the same voice actor multiple times without being identified as such.

Limbaugh obtained the largest audience during an era when audience count was made by manually filled out diaries, a practice which has been slowly phased out over the past few years, as detailed electronic tracking became available. Once the detailed tracking was available, Rush’s ratings dropped significantly, by over a third. With an estimated weekly audience of 15 million users now, that comes to an average of less than 3,000 listeners per station, not very good ratings at all. For comparison, left-wing giant Ed Schultz on Jones Radio Network sports an estimated 8,000 listeners per station. To get these numbers, we took the totals given from Talkers Magazine and cross-referenced with the number of stations that carry each show. Rush is carried on over 10x as many stations as Big Eddie. Even though Rush’s overall listenership is high, the number per station is low.

………He gained these stations originally due to an arrangement system whereby these stations were given his show, for free, in exchange for 15 minutes of advertising space. It was a win-win for these small stations, effectively adding filler to the stations airwaves in a non-prime spot.

What a surprise, the nation’s leading spokesman for recreational Oxycontin use appears to be running a pump and dump ratings scheme.

How is Penn State Like the Catholic Church?

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Their attempts to cover up child rape are so heinous that even the hiring of the hactackular Louis Freeh to run the investigation cannot mitigate the truth:

The independent panel investigating Pennsylvania State University’s role in the Jerry Sandusky child sex abuse scandal has determined that the school’s top leaders, including legendary football coach Joe Paterno, tried to cover up the abuse for 14 years.

Former FBI Director Louis Freeh, who led the investigation, outlined the findings of the panel’s 162-page report in prepared remarks released in advance of a 10 a.m. news conference in Philadelphia.

The report is available at www.philly.com/freeh

“The most powerful men at Penn State failed to take any steps for 14 years to protect the children who Sandusky victimized,” Freeh said.

Naming Paterno, former Penn State President Graham Spanier, former Athletic Director Tim Curley and Gary Schultz, a university vice president once in charge of the campus police, Freeh said they “never demonstrated, through actions or words, any concern for the safety and well-being of Sandusky’s victims until after Sandusky’s arrest.”

To state the obvious, if this had been curling, or for that matter college Baseball, they would have turned this matter over to the police over a decade ago.

There is no better case to be made that big ticket athletic programs are a corrupt and corrupting influence on higher education, and they need to be excised from higher education, either by the schools themselves, or by the IRS pulling tax exempt status from these programs.