Category: Budget

Least Surprising Education News of the Year

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In the New York Times, Paul Campos notes that much of the increase in the cost of a college education comes from an explosion of spending in administrators:

By contrast, a major factor driving increasing costs is the constant expansion of university administration. According to the Department of Education data, administrative positions at colleges and universities grew by 60 percent between 1993 and 2009, which Bloomberg reported was 10 times the rate of growth of tenured faculty positions.

He also notes that university presidents are now getting 7 figure salaries.

I am not sure how to fix this, but with a 17 year old daughter, I’d love to find a fix.

This is a Very Good Idea

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For many years, the Department of Defense’s spending has been so byzantine that it has been impossible to conduct a meaningful audit of their spending.

a bipartisan group of Senators has put forward a bill that would strip the Pentagon of authority if this situation continues:

A bipartisan group of senators has introduced legislation that would impose penalties on the Defense Department if the agency fails meet a legally mandated goal of being fully auditable by September 2017.

The bill – sponsored by Republican Sens. Ted Cruz (Texas) and Rand Paul (Ky.) and Democrats Joe Manchin (W.Va.) and Ron Wyden (Oregon) – calls for increased oversight every year the department fails to meet the target and would eventually strip the Pentagon’s ability to reprogram and transfer funds between its accounts.

“One of best ways to find the most accurate information about our military’s spending and priorities is to shed light on the Department of Defense budget without jeopardizing our national security secrets,” Manchin, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said in a statement.

“It is simply unacceptable that the Department of Defense is the only major federal agency that has not completed a financial audit. Our bill will help to solve that problem,” he added.

Since 1997, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) has been required to audit the federal government’s consolidated financial statements, but the watchdog agency has repeatedly said its reviews of the Pentagon are not based on accurate data.

In 2010, it was determined that nearly $6 billion spent to improve the agency’s financial information was unsuccessful and GAO could not predict when the DOD would be able to provide these financial statements.

Considering that the volume of inefficiency, incompetence, and malfeasance in the Pentagon dwarfs that of the rest of the government, it’s a step in the right direction.

The defense budget, and particularly the portion dealing with procurement, is a complete mess.

Why do I Think that Obama is Playing to Lose on this Issue?

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Barack Obama is now proposing a tax on foreign profits that are not repatriated:

President Barack Obama will propose that U.S.-based companies pay a minimum 19 percent tax on their future foreign earnings, capturing profits that are now often beyond the government’s reach.

Obama will also seek a 14 percent mandatory tax on about $2 trillion in stockpiled offshore profits, said two people familiar with his budget proposals, declining to be named because the document won’t be made public until Feb. 2. Companies would pay that tax regardless of whether they bring the money back to the U.S., the two said, creating a revenue stream the president would use to pay for roads, bridges and other infrastructure projects.

Obama’s latest proposals add new details to the administration’s efforts to revamp the U.S. business tax system. The issue has been stalled in Congress, though lawmakers of both parties say they see potential room for agreement on business taxes.

In one sense, Obama is offering U.S. companies the kind of system they have sought — one with lower corporate marginal tax rates and with future foreign profits subject to little or no extra U.S. tax when brought home.

However, he’s offering to do so on terms that are less favorable than companies would want, with rates that could mean significant tax increases for companies that have been shifting profits to jurisdictions such as Bermuda and Ireland and paying less than 10 percent on their foreign profits.

Do you want me to map out the road map here?

  1. Obama proposes corporate tax reform which includes tax cuts juxtaposed with progressive changes to the tax code.
  2. As would be expected by anyone who can fog a mirror, the Republicans categorically reject the progressive changes to the tax code, and propose elimination of ordinary folks’ tax decuctions along with the tax cuts on businesses.
  3. Obama caves, and the rest of us get f%$#ed.

The trick here is that if you have been listening to Obama over the past few years, this is something that he supported.  He has long been making noises about tax ciode “reforms” that consist largely of eliminating middle class tax cuts (mortgage deduction in particular),

This is not a meaningful tax proposal, this is political atmospherics.

A Classic Case of Trotskyite Thinking

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My experience with Trotskyites, and I’ve had more than I would have preferred, having a liberal Jewish mom who grew up in New York,* is that their beliefs are impervious to facts.

When the facts don’t cooperate, you change the facts.

Well, an interesting fact is that pretty much everyone among the founders of Neoconservatism, except William F. Buckley, started off as Trotskyites.

While their beliefs had changed, their way of thinking remains in a similar form, and has infested conservatism more generally.

Case in point, the Republicans are about to introduce funny math at the Congressional Budget Office: (CBO)

After the drama of electing a new speaker of the House and the changing of control in the Senate, the House on Tuesday approved an obscure but significant rule change requiring the economic effects of legislation to be included in a bill’s official cost to the Treasury.

The change on “dynamic scoring” — ardently sought since the 1990s by Republicans — could ease passage of major tax cuts by showing that their impact on economic growth would substantially reduce their cost to the Treasury. The move is widely seen as a way for Republican leaders to set ground rules for an ambitious overhaul of the entire United States tax code.

Democrats blasted the change as “voodoo economics,” a “gamble” and “tax fraud.” Opponents said the rule change would invite politicized scorekeeping, further tilt policy to benefit the rich, and expand the budget deficit. Shaun Donovan, the White House budget director, implored the House not to “upend the level playing field that has existed for decades” and “call into question the accuracy, consistency and fairness” of congressional budget estimates.

“The basic problem remains that macroeconomic work is useful in the laboratory but not in the field,” said Edward D. Kleinbard, a law professor at the University of Southern California and a longtime chief of staff at the congressional Joint Committee on Taxation, which officially tallies the cost of tax proposals. “The models are too simplistic and the range of the possible outcomes so great that it opens the process to too much in the way of political intuitions.”

Also, I would note that we had a 12 year experiment with the Laughable (Laffer) Curve, under Reagan and Bush, where the deficit exploded, and where average GDP growth was less than under Carter or Clinton. (Link)

And then there is the disaster that is Sam Brownback’s Kansas.

But like any good Trotskyite, the Republicans are not going to allow facts to get in the way of their theories.

*In fact, my older brother, AKA Bear who Swims, had a teddy bear named Bronny bear, named after Lev Davidovich Bronshtein.†
†Don’t ask him about it. The loss of the bear in the Juneau Alaska airport is one of the great traumas of his life.‡
‡FWIW, no, Stephen is not a Trotskyite. If anything he is more disdainful of those idiots than I am.

Cuomo and Christie Find a New Way to F%$# the Poor

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As a part of the phony Port Authority plan to the proposed by Cuomo and Christie, they are looking to end overnight PATH service Irks Riders, which would have toe effect of making commuting to work for the night shift in “The City that Never Sleeps” less convenient and more expensive:

………

As if Mr. Parada’s commute were not grueling enough, he and thousands of his fellow riders found out there could be no commute whatsoever in the future. At the end of December, their Legislatures already adjourned, Governors Andrew M. Cuomo of New York and Chris Christie of New Jersey, vetoed a sweeping bill that would have reformed the agency. The governors, who jointly control the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, then unveiled a report of their own calling for changes.

Buried among the proposals was one considering the elimination of service between 1 a.m. and 5 a.m. on the Port Authority Trans-Hudson, known as PATH, the train linking Manhattan with nearby cities in New Jersey.

During this time, ridership plummets, with roughly 2,000 crossing the Hudson on weeknights. They account for just under 1 percent of daily passengers, and eliminating service would save the authority $10 million from its $330 million budget, according to the governors’ report.

The idea was universally rejected by those lonely souls crisscrossing the Hudson River in the early morning hours, including the bartenders and clubgoers, the swing-shift construction and postal workers, and the foreign-exchange traders heading in on Frankfurt time.

To them, the overnight PATH is a lifeline, the only one into or out of New York City when all other trains and buses have stopped and taxis, at $50 to $100, are too costly.

I guess that they need to free up some money for do nothing jobs for their political allies.

Ratf%$#s.

The Battle over Tax Avoidance in the EU Begins

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The EU is instituting major changes in the taxation of digital items in EU.

It makes changes in the Value Added Tax (VAT), both in rates and how it is assessed:

Europe’s tax showdown could be headed straight to people’s wallets.

With the new year, a change in fiscal rules in the European Union is increasing the tax on many purchases of digital content like e-books and smartphone applications.

Under the new rules, first approved in 2008, the tax rate on digital services like cloud storage and movie streaming will be determined by where consumers live, and not where the company selling the product has its European headquarters. Tax experts say Europe’s revamped rules could add up to an extra $1 billion in annual tax revenue for European governments.

The bit about having the VAT assessed based on the location of the purchaser (technically it works this way in the US, but this rule is rarely followed).

This this is all about the predatory tax policies of places like Luxemburg and Ireland:

The changes to Europe’s so-called value-added tax — a tax on goods and services similar to sales taxes in the United States — are part of a continuing push by lawmakers to tax the region’s digital economy more heavily. Companies like Apple and Amazon have been roundly criticized for housing their European operations in low-tax countries like Ireland and Luxembourg. The companies say they operate there legally.

Many of the world’s largest tech companies selling digital products, like Amazon and Microsoft, now house their European digital businesses in Luxembourg, where the V.A.T. rate is as low as 3 percent for e-book purchases. In contrast, countries like Britain charge companies a 20 percent sales tax for selling e-books. Analysts say the current rules provide an advantage to global companies that have the financial muscle to shop around for the lowest tax rate.

………

One of the European countries most affected by the tax change will be Luxembourg. The small country’s low value-added tax rates have enticed Apple to set up its international iTunes business there, and Microsoft’s digital download operation is also based there.

Luxembourg’s corporate tax system is being challenged by several European investigations into whether politicians gave preferential treatment to the likes of Amazon and a financing unit of Fiat, the Italian carmaker. And Jean-Claude Juncker, Luxembourg’s former prime minister, who now runs the executive arm of the European Union responsible for the continuing investigations, has been criticized for his role in promoting the country’s low-tax policies.

For the longest time, the EU thought that the status of tax haven EU members was considered a feature, and not a bug, but with the current fetish for austerity, this attitude appears to changed.

In any case, it is about to really suck for Luxemburg and Ireland, whose economies are largely built on being tax evasion.

So Not Surprised

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It appears that the USAF is cooking the books on A-10 use in Afghanistan to justify retiring the Warthog:

Over the past five months, Air Force leaders have pointed to one key fact while advocating for their controversial decision to retire the A-10 Warthog, an aircraft specifically designed to provide support to ground troops. The service’s top leaders say the vast majority of so-called “close air support” missions conducted in Afghanistan since 2006 have been flown by a variety of aircraft that are not A-10s. Specifically, the leaders say that the 80 percent of these missions conducted by aircraft other than the Warthog shows that a variety of aircraft can do the critical mission of reinforcing ground forces with firepower from the air.

However, a number of observers challenge the Air Force’s claim that 80 percent of close air support missions are really conducted by non-A-10 planes. These observers assert that the service has deliberately manipulated the data to support its case.

The plan to retire the A-10 has sparked a firestorm of criticism from members of Congress, A-10 pilots and airmen whose job is to embed with ground forces and call in air strikes.

In fact, Congress is well on the way to rejecting the Air Force’s plans. The House of Representatives passed legislation Thursday, rejecting sending the A-10s to the boneyard. The Senate is expected to do the same.

The Air Force says it can save $4.2 billion over the next five years by retiring the fleet of 350 A-10s. The savings would be plowed into other aircraft that can perform a variety of missions, including close air support.

And, in making the case to retire the A-10, the one number that comes up time and again at congressional hearings is this: 80 percent.

………

The PBS NewsHour asked the Air Force about the basis for the 80 percent figure. The NewsHour shared the Air Force answers with A-10 supporters and those who advocate retiring the aircraft. The complete exchange can be viewed in the document linked here.

“This is a classic case of using numbers as propaganda for some bureaucratic position.”“This 80 percent number is a total fabrication,” said Pierre Sprey, one of the key designers of the A-10 in the 1960s and 1970s. Sprey has recently been lobbying Congress to save the aircraft. “This is a classic case of using numbers as propaganda for some bureaucratic position.”

Among the data the Air Force provided was a breakdown of the number close air support sorties flown between 2010 to 1014: 121,653. Also included was the number of sorties with at least one weapon released: 8,691.

Sprey notes that of the 121,653 close air support missions conducted, “93 percent of them never drop a weapon.” Sprey says the Air Force is “counting a whole lot of fluff.”

“The Air Force is counting these missions or these activities in a way that biases strongly against the A-10,” said Winslow Wheeler, a former congressional staffer with more than three decades of experience working for both Democrats and Republicans. Wheeler is now with the Project On Government Oversight, a non-profit watchdog organization.

The Air Force is “not counting sorties where actual munitions delivery actually occurs,” he said. And they are “not distinguishing” between bombing fixed points on the ground from 20,000 feet and supporting troops that are moving while under fire from an enemy in close proximity. Wheeler said it is in situations like this “that really count” and where the A-10 outperforms all other aircraft.

………

“Measures of kinetic activity alone don’t capture events where aircraft presence was sufficient to deter attackers — which can be the better outcome in COIN [counterinsurgency] operations,” Sholtis explained in an email. “Actions like shows of force or armed overwatch of ground forces are legitimate and effective forms of CAS.” Shows of force are when aircraft fly overhead, making their presence known and signaling to the enemy — sometimes by dropping flares — that they might get bombed.

But counting shows of force is stretching the definition of close air support, according to retired Chief Master Sergeant Russell Carpenter, a 30-year veteran and specialist in leading troops who call in air strikes. When you “look up the definition of close air support, shows of force doesn’t fit in there.” Carpenter said what the Air Force has “done is said there are a variety of ways we achieve air-to-ground effects. But guess what, call that something else. But it is not close air support.”

Another controversial aspect in the way the 80 percent number was generated is the time frame of when close air support missions are counted. According to Air Force data released to the NewsHour, the service counted missions flown between 2006 and October 2013.

The Air Force told the NewsHour “unfortunately we do not have information prior to 2006 available in our AFCENT Combined Air Operations Center database.” Other Air Force officers who asked that their names not be used in this article, because they were not authorized to speak publicly, also told the NewsHour that the Air Force has not maintained records from before 2006.

But critics are skeptical.

“The date 2006 was not picked by accident,” said Sprey, the A-10 aircraft designer.

From March 2002 to December 2006, the only fixed-wing aircraft that could operate from the austere and dilapidated runways in Afghanistan were A-10s, according to the Air Force. Sprey believes counting close air support missions beginning in 2006 is suspect because that time period marks the point when different types of aircraft were beginning to operate out of the newly improved runways in Afghanistan.

“Before 2006, they couldn’t even get fighters into Afghanistan, they couldn’t land anywhere,” Sprey said. “They were totally dependent on the A-10 before and they don’t want to admit that, so they don’t tell you about it before 2006.”

The USAF has wanted to kill the A-10 and replace it with a “Wild Blue Yonder” alternative  since it began to enter service in the 1970s.

Close air support has been a responsibility that the Air Force has consistently shirked since before its creation as an independent service.

As Nome, Alaska Goes, So Goes the Country

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Well, not usually, though the good people of Nome have been at the forefront of dealing urban polar bear infestations.

In this case, however, if Nome decides to charge sales taxes to churches and other non-profits, it will be a very big deal:

Nome, Alaska, is a tiny town of less than 4000 people. Despite its size, its name is well-known, showing up in popular culture venues from “The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour” of the 1950’s, to “The X-Files,” to “The Simpsons Movie.” And Nome is the finish line of the 1049 mile-long Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race.

 Nome, Alaska, may one day soon be known for another reason: as the first American town to tax its churches.

 Strapped for cash, the town’s Finance Director, Julie Liew believes taxing churches and other non-profits could raise $300,000 annually. The city council has already met to debate the idea, and it looks like they may move forward.

“You get rid of the sales tax exemption, most of the time these other exemptions aren’t given — we’re a very nice city [to do] it,” City Council member Matt Culley said, according to KNOM. “When we sit down at budget time, [with] the numbers to look at, if we want to donate that [money back to nonprofits], the money can go all back in … but we have control over it now, as opposed to it going whatever direction that we have it going now.”

This is a very good idea.

More money is being spent on various tax exemptions in the United States than is spent on food stamps. (source of the table above)

Subsidizing religion and religiosity is not a good thing

Korea Hedges its Bets on the F-35

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There are still budget issues to be decided by the parliament, but the defense ministry has approved going forward on the KF-X fighter program:

South Korea’s proposed KF-X indigenous fighter program is now closer to being launched than at any time since it was proposed in the late 1990s, following conditional approval for full-scale development from the defense ministry.

The aircraft, which has been pushed by the ministry’s Agency for Defense Development (ADD) and would probably be built by Korea Aerospace Industries (KAI), must still overcome opposition from the finance ministry and some members of parliament.

If the KF-X survives while production of older European and U.S. aircraft winds down, then next decade it may be the only alternative to the Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning as a fighter engineered for compatibility with Western weapons and communications. The South Korean program also offers the most immediate sales prospects for Western manufacturers of fighter engines and equipment.

The ministry’s Defense Program Execution Committee, chaired by Defense Minister Han Minkoo, on Sept. 24 approved the basic plan for full-scale development of the KF-X starting in 2015. The committee required that the ministry’s Defense Acquisition Program Agency (DAPA) and the finance ministry agree on the total program cost. DAPA may not issue a request for proposals until it and the finance ministry have that agreement. The agency “cannot be optimistic about the result,” says the Yonhap news agency. The finance ministry habitually opposes costly defense programs or at least seeks delays.

Even if DAPA and the finance ministry agree, full-scale development cannot begin next year without funding authorized by parliament in the government budget due to be settled in December. Members of parliament often take a skeptical view of the defense ministry’s largest ambitions.

DAPA is trying to persuade the finance ministry that the KF-X can be developed for the 8.5 trillion won ($8.1 billion) estimated by an influential think tank, the Korea Institute of Defense Analysis. But the Naeil newspaper reports 8.5 trillion won would pay for an aircraft with only air-to-air capability. Air-to-ground capability would take a further 600 billion won and 4.5 years.

There is also the problem that 20% of the development cost is supposed to be borne by industry, including Lockheed Martin. The U.S. company agreed to support the KF-X technically in return for South Korea last year choosing the F-35A in the F-X Phase 3 fighter competition, but there is no sign that it will invest cash in it—nor should there be, since Lockheed Martin hardly wants to back a future competitor. Indonesia paid 20% of the KF-X pre-development costs and is expected to take the same share of full-scale development.

I think that one of the things that is driving this is that Korea has real doubts as to the affordability and effectiveness of the F-35, and wants to hedge their bets.

I’m also thinking that they are expecting to see a market for a less expensive aircraft built to western standards.

Quote of the Day

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Make no mistake: this is why conservatives are so enamored of block grants. It’s not because they truly believe that states are better able to manage programs for the poor than the federal government. That’s frankly laughable. The reason they like block grants is because they know perfectly well that they’ll erode over time. That’s how you eventually drown the federal government in a bathtub.

—Kevin Drum

He makes the observation that the TANF (what used to be called Welfare) block grants have had the effect of creating massive cuts in the program, and then (IMNSHO accurate) generalizes to block grants generally:  Just level fund them, and the program shrinks to meaninglessness.

BTW, f%$# Bill Clinton for shredding the social safety net for unneeded political benefit.  (He would have beaten Bob “Bob Dole” Dole in any case)

A Fact of Ferguson that is Finally Getting Mainstream Notice

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The fact that more than 20% of the budget of the town of Ferguson comes from tickets and warrants issued by police shows that the police are not there to protect the populace, they are there to extract tribute from them:

Scratch any social crisis, and you’re likely to find economics not far below the surface. Via ArchCity Defenders, a St. Louis legal-aid nonprofit, we can see how this has worked to create the dismaying spectacle of the breakdown of justice in Ferguson. (H/t Alex Tabarrok, via Kevin Drum.)

According to the group’s recent report on the municipal court system in St. Louis County, the Ferguson court is a “chronic offender” in legal and economic harassment of its residents. There’s not much of a secret why: the municipality collects some $2.6 million a year in fines and court fees, typically from small-scale infractions like traffic violations. This is the second-largest source of income for that small, fiscally-strapped municipality.

………

For a low-income community–and for a black community subjected to the racial profiling, as the report documents–these fines can gather force like a boulder rolling downhill. 

Tabarrok points to the report’s observation that the Ferguson court processed the equivalent of three warrants and $312 in fines per household in 2013.

“You don’t get $321 in fines and fees and 3 warrants per household from an about-average crime rate,” he notes. “You get numbers like this from [B.S.] arrests for jaywalking” and what the report calls “low level harassment involving traffic stops, court appearances, high fines, and the threat of jail for failure to pay without a meaningful inquiry into whether an individual has the means to pay.”

The reason that the minorities in Ferguson do not see the police as their defenders and their protectors, it’s because they aren’t.

This arrangement, where peace officers have as their primary function tax collections, is fundamentally pathological and corrupt, and it needs to stop.

Someone Runs the Actual Cost of an F-35 JSF

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And the numbers are horrifying:

The F-35 is not just the most expensive warplane ever, it’s the most expensive weapons program ever. But to find out exactly how much a single F-35 costs, we analyzed the newest and most authoritative data.

 Here’s how much we’re paying.

 A single Air Force F-35A costs a whopping $148 million. One Marine Corps F-35B costs an unbelievable $251 million. A lone Navy F-35C costs a mind-boggling $337 million. Average the three models together, and a “generic” F-35 costs $178 million.

 It gets worse. These are just the production costs. Additional expenses for research, development, test and evaluation are not included. The dollars are 2015 dollars. This data was just released by the Senate Appropriations Committee in its report for the Pentagon’s 2015 appropriations bill.

Let’s go into the methodology for this article:

The methodology for calculating these F-35 unit costs is straightforward. Both the president’s budget and each of four congressional defense committees publish the amounts to be authorized or appropriated for each model of the F-35, including the number of aircraft to be bought.

 The rest is simple arithmetic: Divide the total dollars for each model by the quantity.

 ………

 There are just two things F-35 watchers need to be careful about.

 First, it’s necessary to add the funding from the previous year’s appropriation act to the procurement money the government allocated for 2015. This is “advance procurement” for 2015 spending, and pays for “long lead” components that take longer to acquire.

 Second, we have to add the cost of Navy and Air Force modifications.

 For the F-35, these costs are for fixing mistakes already found in the testing process. With the aircraft still in its initial testing, the modification costs to existing aircraft are very low. But the 2015 amounts for modifications are surrogates for what the costs for this year’s buy might be. If anything, this number can be an under-estimate.

 ………

 In a briefing delivered to reporters on June 9, F-35 developer Lockheed still advertised the cost of airplanes sans engines. Highly respected Aviation Week reported on July 22 that taxpayers put up $98 million for each F-35A in 2013.

 In reality, we actually paid $188 million.

 Some of these numbers are for the airframe only. In other cases, you get a “flyaway” cost. But in fact, those airplanes are incapable of operative flight. They lack the specialized tools, simulators, logistics computers—and much, much more—to make the airplane useable. They even lack the fuel to fly away.

 ………

 Here’s another curious fact. The unit costs of the Marines’ short-takeoff, vertical-landing B-model and the Navy’s aircraft-carrier-capable C-model are growing.

 The cost of an F-35B grew from $232 million in 2014 to a bulging $251 million by 2015. The cost of the Navy’s F35C grew from $273 million in 2014 to a wallet-busting $337 million by 2015.

 The quantity numbers for the F-35B have not changed, remaining at six per year. The number of F-35Cs to be produced has slipped from four to two, but surely learning processes on the F-35 line have not been going so far backward as to explain a 23 percent, $64 million per unit cost increase.
………

 Next time an advocate tells you what the current unit cost is for a program, ask: “What is Congress appropriating for them this year?” And, “How many are we buying?” Then get out your calculator. The result might surprise you.

At these prices, I cannot see how the United States can afford to buy this aircraft, much less the partners in the program, as well as other customers.

BTW, to run some numbers, the F-35A has an empty weight of 13,199 kg, the price of gold is $42.01/gram, and the price of silver is $0.64/gram.

Running the numbers then, a similar weight of gold would be $554 million, and for silver, it would $8.4 million.

So, it costs about 1/5 of its weight in gold, and pretty much every fighter since the F-4 Phantom II has cost more than its weight in silver.

That is kind of depressing.

Well Played

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Have you heard the feud in the Senate between Senators Begich (D-AK) and McKiskill (D-MO)?

The language has gotten quite heated:

Sen. Mark Begich (D-AK), one of the more vulnerable Democrats in this fall’s midterm elections, was unusually harsh last week when he criticized his fellow Democrat, Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO), for scrutinizing the federal contracts of Alaska Native Corporations despite his “repeated attempts to reason with her.”

It was an uncharacteristically abrasive tone for Begich to strike with another Democrat. But in the context of his re-election race, it makes more sense. His campaign’s message has focused on Alaskan issues — like energy and fishing policy — and battling another Democrat is never a bad look for a Democrat in a otherwise red state.

Now a follow-up letter sent by Begich on Tuesday and the accompanying statement from McCaskill suggests that McCaskill, while legitimately pursuing an issue that she’s studied for six years, is also content to let Begich score a few political points at home.

Both sides win: McCaskill assumes the oversight role that the former state auditor relishes, and Begich gets to publicly fight on behalf of a popular program back home.

………

McCaskill’s office had previously declined to respond to Begich’s public rebuke. But asked by TPM about the letter, McCaskill called her colleague a “problem” in a prepared statement. Though, to Alaska’s voters, he might not sound like much of a problem at all.

“I’ve fought for six years to change the law in regard to Alaska Native Corporations,” she said in the statement. “There has consistently been one problem—Mark Begich. He single-handedly protects Alaska and the ANCs.”

McKaskill and Begich both win.

Begich gets points at home for fighting his own party for a program that benefits Alaskans, and McKaskill gets to present a facade of fiscal probity.

I believe that this called “Political Kabuki”.

Our Dysfunctional Pentagon

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Winslow Wheeler at War is Boring makes an interesting point about the sequestration games that the Department of Defense is engaging in: Iit is systematically cutting cheaper and more effective programs in favor of expensive systems:

There has been a short-sighted eagerness in some news articles and commentaries to disparage two actions by the House Armed Services Committee in the Fiscal Year 2015 National Defense Authorization Act.

The HASC seeks to retain in the military force structure the Air Force’s A-10 Warthog close support aircraft and the Navy’s nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS George Washington. The Air Force and the Navy want to retire these systems prematurely, thereby seeming to save money.

But the longer-term game being played is to smooth the way for far more expensive, truly unaffordable, replacements the Air Force and Navy have cued up. And in the case of the A-10, the older, cheaper alternative is the inestimably more effective one.

Like, I said, it’s not about defending our nation, it’s about our Generals getting lucrative post retirement consulting gigs.

That old Iron Triangle.

First, You Eliminate the Competition, Then You Refuse to Release Price Data for Competitive Reasons

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I knew that the taxpayers would come to regret cancelling the alternate engine for the F-32, the F136, but I did not expect it to happen so soon:

After a long battle to edge rival General Electric out of the F-35 engine market, Pratt & Whitney succeeded in 2011. GE announced it would shelve the F136 after the Pentagon refused to fund it for four years, leaving Pratt in the coveted position of a sole-source engine supplier for the largest international fighter program ever.

Three years later, though, Pratt states that its position with its F135 engine is so potentially competitive it cannot comply with the customer’s request to publicly share the target contract pricing data. At issue is Pratt’s hope for more government funding by garnering a piece of a $1 billion next-generation fighter engine. Although proposed by the Pentagon, this program has yet to be funded by Congress.

“We have already made significant progress in advancing this technology and anticipate a competition will be held to develop this engine. Releasing engine pricing and cost data on the F135 would impact our ability to compete for this potential next-generation fighter engine program,” says Pratt spokesman Matthew Bates.

Senior Pentagon officials have, however, been urging Pratt to release at least some data in a transparency push for the highly scrutinized F-35. Bates cites a 40% drop in engine pricing since the first low-rate-initial-production (LRIP) lot in 2006. But the rate of cost reduction “slowed down when [Pratt] got the monopoly,” said Rear Adm. Randy Mahr, deputy program manager of the F-35. “We are trying to get that information out . . . But, I can’t force somebody to go ahead and report something that by law they are not” required to report. Mahr made his comments at the Sea Air Space 2014 conference here this month. “This is a subject of legal debate but the Department of Defense feels this information should be in the public domain,” according to one defense official who requested to talk on background owing to the sensitivity of the issue.

The last known engine price for the F135 was cited by Air Force Lt. Gen. Christopher Bogdan for the third lot. The F-35A/C propulsion system cost $14 million. The F-35B, which includes a Rolls-Royce lift-fan designed for short takeoff and vertical landing, cost $38 million. He is frustrated at Pratt not bringing down F135 costs as predicted. “Pratt is not meeting its commitment,” Bogdan says. “It is as simple as that. Some of their business base has dried up on other programs and projects [and] they are spreading them right where they can, and I don’t like that.”

Pratt & Whitney has declined numerous requests from Aviation Week over many months to release either its pricing data or its contractual cost targets.

I predicted that the long term budget consequences of eliminating the 2nd engine would be negative, and that the F-35 advocates’ desire to lower front end costs would be swallowed up by the price increases resulting from creating an engine monopoly.

F%$# Andrew Cuomo

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Remember when I wrote that Bloomberg approved charter school plans would have disabled kids getting therapy in the hallway?

You should, it was only 5 days ago.

I noted that New York mayor Bill DiBlasio rejected a few charter co-location applications because of these issues.

Well, Governor Andrew Cuomo hates disabled kids:

Mayor Bill de Blasio has mapped out an ambitious agenda for education in New York City. He wants to reinvigorate schools on the verge of shuttering, open 100 schools with health clinics and therapists at their core, and train more students for careers in science and technology.

But the budget deal announced by state leaders on Saturday, which would require the city to find space for charter schools, may cut into Mr. de Blasio’s priorities.

………

With classroom seats in short supply across the city, Mr. de Blasio may find it difficult to accommodate charter schools and find space for some of his own programs.

Mr. de Blasio has said he is willing to work with charter schools, so long as they do not disrupt programs run by traditional public schools. He named a committee of district officials and charter school leaders last week to help mediate disputes over space and overcrowding.

………

Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo and Republicans in the State Senate seized on the momentum, and on Saturday they announced an agreement that would provide charter schools in New York City some of the most generous protections in the country.

Under the deal, the city would be required to find space in public buildings for charter schools, which operate independently of the school district but receive public funds. If the city could not, it would have to cover the cost of renting private space, up to $40 million. Charter schools could challenge the city’s selection of space through an arbitration process.

You know that warehouse that they used to hold all those protesters in the 2004 Republican National Convention?

I would suggest locating them there

As Diane Ravitch notes, “The bottom line is that when billionaires talk, the New York legislature and Governor Cuomo listen. Actually, they sit up, bark, and roll over.”

The political reality in New York state is that a primary challenge to Cuomo is practically impossible, so it’s time to see if he is banging a hooker.

I really hope he is.

If there is anyone out there willing to take one for the team, it would be appreciated.

Liberals Win One vs. Barack Obama

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The “Grand Bargain” Is Officially Off the Table by Ed Kilgore | Political Animal | The Washington Monthly:

The White House budget to be released early next month will propose $56 billion in new spending on domestic and defense priorities and drop a proposal that was included in last year’s budget as a way to attract Republican support — a plan that would have included less generous payouts of Social Security benefits.

The budget would aim to reduce the emphasis on austerity that has been the preoccupation of American politics for the past four years and also highlights top Democratic priorities in a year when Democrats hope to save their majority in the Senate.

A White House official said President Obama decided to release a budget that fully represents his “vision,” rather than to continue to pursue a fiscal agreement, because Republicans have refused to engage in good-faith negotiations over the nation’s top priorities. Obama is planning to pay for fresh spending by closing tax breaks that disproportionately benefit the wealthy.

Make no mistake though, Obama and His Evil Minions™ REALLY wanted to do this:

………One of the White House’s most poorly kept secrets is that many of Obama’s economic advisers support Chained CPI on the merits………

Because hurting the poors is a good thing, because ……… I can haz bipartisanship!

When the f%$# is the Democratic party going to nominate a Democrat for President?

The Navy Just Tried to Pull Out of the JSF Program

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It’s not particularly surprising. The F-35C is the most expensive variant, and it has no potential exports (the only operator of catapult equipped carriers are the US, the French, and the Brazilians), so it is not surprising that the navy requested a “break” from the JSF program:

OSD TOLD THE NAVY: YOU CAN’T TAKE A ‘BREAK’ FROM THE F-35C: According to a congressional source,  in its 2015 budget proposal, the Navy asked to take a three-year “break” from its production of the F-35C, its variant of the Joint Strike Fighter. Concerned this was a first step toward walking away from the program permanently, OSD told the Navy: no way.

 It’s an open secret that the Navy would prefer to invest more in its F-18 fighters rather than buy the F-35C. But if the Navy pulled out of the program, the unit cost — already under scrutiny —  would go up for the Air Force and the Marine Corps.

The Navy did not get their “time out” because Office of the Secretary of Defense understood that a 3 year break constituted a cancellation of that variant, because in 3 years it will cost even more, and the DoD budgets will be under more stress.

This is, to quote Joe Biden, “A big f%$#ing deal.”

The Manchurian Democrat Strikes Again

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Congressional Democrats are freaking out at Barack Obama’s repeated attempts to gut cut Social Security:

Democratic senators are pleading with President Obama to abandon his proposal to trim Social Security benefits before it becomes a liability for them in the midterm elections.

 The president proposed a new formula for calculating benefits in his budget last year, in hopes that the olive branch to Republicans would persuade them to back tax increases in a broader fiscal deal.

 But Democratic lawmakers say Obama should shelve the idea now that they are facing a difficult midterm election where they need to turn out the liberal base to preserve their Senate majority.

 “I’m not sure why we should be making concessions when the Republicans show absolutely no willingness to do the same,” said Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.).

 Democrats acknowledge it may be awkward for Obama to rescind his proposal, but say it would unwise of him to repeat the offer in the budget that is due out next month.

 “I think it’s difficult for the president to pull it back after he already floated it but I would love to see it shelved until Republicans show they’re actually going to do something on their side of the ledger,” Murphy said.

Obama proposed nearly $1 trillion in spending cuts in his budget, including a switch to using the Chained Consumer Price Index (CPI), which liberal policy experts estimate could cost seniors thousands of dollars in benefits over their lifetimes.

Senator Bernie Sanders nails the consequences of such a policy in a nutshell:

“I certainly hope that the president has learned a lesson from this whole process,” Sanders said. “To be honest with you, I just can’t imagine what staff people gave him the disastrous advice to propose a chain CPI, which from both a public policy point of view and political point of view is totally absurd.”

First, it’s bad politics.  Second, the “Chained” CPI does not accurately reflect the cost of living of Seniors, which is dominated by healthcare costs.

Senate Democrats should be more forceful about opposing this proposal, and if some of them were to say that they would support a filibuster of any such proposal, it would be a much needed warning to Obama.

Tom Tomorrow looks more prescient every year:


So Debate has Started, but can They End It?

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Today’s vote to allow debate to begin on continuing emergency unemployment compensation is not the same thing as either voting for the bill, nor is it a vote to shut off debate.

Instead, it is posturing by Republicans with a dash of blackmail down the road thrown in:

If you think Tuesday’s vote in the Senate to extend unemployment benefits means that Washington has finally come to its senses, think again. Although six Republican senators broke with their party and joined Democrats in supporting the notion of preserving benefits for about 1.3 million Americans who have been out of work for more than six months, this was just a procedural vote that paves the way for a full debate on the measure. And Republicans, in both the Senate and the House, have made clear that they won’t approve any actual legislation unless the White House agrees to cut spending in other areas, to cover the cost of the extension—about 6.4 billion dollars over ten years.

From a political perspective, it’s easy to see the appeal of this maneuver. Going into an election year, the last thing the Republicans want is to be depicted as heartless goons with no sympathy for the millions of Americans struggling to find work, the blameless victims of the Great Recession and its aftermath. (Of course, this is exactly how the Democrats would like to portray them.) At the same time, though, the average G.O.P. congressman or senator lives in mortal fear of upsetting right-wing groups, such as Heritage Action for America and the Club for Growth, which are leading the fight against extending jobless benefits. (On Monday, Heritage Action said it would include the Senate vote on its “legislative scorecard,” which ranks elected officials on their fealty to the conservative cause.)

Personally, I would call the Republican’s bluff, and cut things like abstinence only education and oil company subsidies, and maybe tax private jets, but I am not an elected official, nor do I work for one.