Category: Bureaucracy

Why a Carbon Tax is Better than a Carbon Market, Part 3.1415926

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The EU which has the largest and most ambitious carbon market world, has effectively shut it down by refusing to subsidize it:

The European Parliament this week voted 334-315 (with 60 abstentions) against a controversial “back-loading” plan that aimed to boost the flagging price of carbon, which since 2008 has fallen from about 31 euros per tonne to about 4 euros (about $5.20). Since the vote, the price has fallen even farther, to 2.80 euros. The collapsing market is hardly the kind of firm foundation needed for building a clean-energy economy.

“Now, the market is dead, as far as I can see,” said Steffen Böhm, director of the Essex Sustainability Institute at Britain’s Essex Business School.

What will be the aftermath of the ETS collapse? Here’s a quick primer on what happened, and what it could mean elsewhere, particularly in California, which inaugurated a new carbon market at the start of this year. (Related: “California Tackles Climate Change, But Will Others Follow?”

The “backloading” is an indirect subsidy which would pull carbon credits off of the market to raise prices.

Cap and trade does not work without extensive government intervention, it costs more to administer, and it requires extensive and ongoing government subsidies.

Tell me again why cap and trade is better than a carbon tax again?

The only thing that I can figure out is tribalism:  It allows politicians to create yet another mechanism for them to throw profits toward their classmates from their “elite” schools who are working at Wall Street or the City of London.

Torture, and Get a Promotion

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This is what “Looking forward, not backward,” as Obama says, is such a bad idea.

It means that deeply evil people are given the more power over the rest of us:

Today’s Washington Post has a front-page article on the impending promotion of an official involved in running the Central Intelligence Agency’s (CIA) torture program to head the CIA clandestine service. According to WaPo, the officer

helped run the CIA’s detention and interrogation program after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and signed off on the 2005 decision to destroy videotapes of prisoners being subjected to treatment critics have called torture.

WaPo reports that newly-confirmed CIA director John Brennan (who was also involved in the CIA’s torture program and has since moved on to writing an assassination-without-due-process “playbook”) has tapped three former senior officials to oversee the appointment of the former chief of staff to brazen torture apologist Jose Rodriguez to head the CIA’s clandestine service. The group consists of John McLaughlin (CIA deputy director during the CIA’s torture heyday), Stephen Kappes (another rendition, torture, and interrogation (RDI) supervisor – read about his covering up a prisoner’s death here) and Mary Margaret Graham (whose problematic professional history you can read about in Steve Coll’s recent New Yorker piece on CIA whistleblower John Kiriakou). Does anyone not see the problem with RDI daddy Brennan assigning RDI supervisors to promote the RDI queenpin?

BTW, she is hip deep on the coverup of torture:

When the head of the Counterterrorism Center, Jose Rodriguez, was promoted to head of the clandestine service in 2004, he took the female officer along as his chief of staff. According to former officials, the two repeatedly sought permission to have the tapes destroyed but were denied.

In 2005, instructions to get rid of the recordings went out anyway. Former officials said the order carried just two names: Rodriguez and his chief of staff.

Not only should this woman not be promoted, this woman should never hold a security clearance ever again.

This is a Good Thing

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Map courtesy of the Kaiser Family Foundation

Notwithstanding the statements of the Obama administration that it was essential that the states should run their own health insurance exchanges, it’s good news that the Federal Government will run 26 of 50 of the exchanges:

Friday was a very important day for health policy days. It was the last day for states to tell the federal government whether they wanted any part in running the Affordable Care Act health exchanges come 2014.

The federal government did not get many takers. Some of the most closely watched states, including Florida and New Jersey, decided to leave the entire task to the federal government. All told, the federal government will run 26 of the state health exchanges. It also will partner with seven states, where state and federal officials take joint responsibility for the marketplace. Seventeen states and the District of Columbia will take on the task themselves. Here’s what that looks like in map form, via the Kaiser Family Foundation.

………

The big question moving forward is: Does this split matter? Is it better or worse for the federal government to be running the majority of the state health exchanges?

In the health policy world, there are essentially two schools of thought on this. The first is that states opting out of the exchanges is horrible for the Obama administration. All along, Health and Human Services has urged states to move forward on their own. Now, HHS has the massive task of setting up 26 separate state exchanges.

………

That is the pessimist’s take on the federal government’s very big workload. But there’s also an optimist’s take, one that suggests that federal oversight of most Affordable Care Act marketplaces will ultimately strengthen the health overhaul.

Remember, House Democrats originally wanted one national health exchange, where everyone in all 50 states could purchase coverage. That idea was nixed in the Senate bill, which aimed to give states a larger role in setting up the Affordable Care Act.

In a way, all these states turning over their exchanges to the federal government brings Obamacare a little closer to the more liberal House bill, which had the federal government running one big marketplace. It allows the White House to have more control over setting up its signature legislative accomplishment. It also creates some economies of scale, as HHS can develop one template exchange that all 26 states it handles will use.

I’m not sure why the Obama administration was so big on the state run exchanges.

My guess was that they are worried about the inevitable teething problems, and wanted as many opportunities as possible to spread the blame around.

The state based insurance system has resulted in a lot of oligopolies in healthcare, and has allowed the insurance corporations to purchase legislators and regulators, so I see this as an unalloyed good.

It moves us away from the inevitable race to the bottom that will occur in state based systems.

Surrender Your Privacy for the Good of the State Comrade

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The good folks at the Orwellian named Department of Homeland security has decided that they can seize and search your electronics without cause:

The Department of Homeland Security’s civil rights watchdog has concluded that travelers along the nation’s borders may have their electronics seized and the contents of those devices examined for any reason whatsoever — all in the name of national security.

The DHS, which secures the nation’s border, in 2009 announced that it would conduct a “Civil Liberties Impact Assessment” of its suspicionless search-and-seizure policy pertaining to electronic devices “within 120 days.” More than three years later, the DHS office of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties published a two-page executive summary of its findings.

“We also conclude that imposing a requirement that officers have reasonable suspicion in order to conduct a border search of an electronic device would be operationally harmful without concomitant civil rights/civil liberties benefits,” the executive summary said.

The memo highlights the friction between today’s reality that electronic devices have become virtual extensions of ourselves housing everything from e-mail to instant-message chats to photos and our papers and effects — juxtaposed against the government’s stated quest for national security.

Civil rights? How September 10th of you.

I do not like what our country is becoming.

History Repeats Itself………

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They’re Back!!  Yes, the symbol looks very familiar

The Golden Dawn, the resurgent Greek Fascist party.

Rather surprisingly, their increasing popularity in Greece, along with the increasing violence associated with their actions, along with evidence that Greek police are increasingly directly colluding with them.

When you consider the fact EU measures have produced an economic collapse that has women in labor refused admission to hospital, and a descent to a barter economy, you would think that the Greek ruling elite, as well as the Eurocrats in Brussels, along with the Germans who pull their chain, would be running around like their hair was on fire about this.

It’s not happening, because the however uncomfortable the corrupt Greek elites are with Fascists, they hate the Greek left as manifested by SYRIZA, the Greek party of the left, because if they win, they threaten to undermine the kleptocratic duopoly of the PASOK New Democracy party.

On the European Union side, however uncomfortable they are with Fascism, they hate the Greek left as manifested by SYRIZA, and more generally they hate the underlying ideas that the EU bureaucracy should serve the will of the people (witness the gyrations to prevent votes on EU expansion once the referenda started to fail), and that neoliberal bank coddling policies are a bad.

So, why is there the studious ignorance regarding the rise of Fascism in Greece (and in a number of other EU nations)?

Well, when you look at the attitudes of the Eurocrats toward SYRIZA, or the Left Party in Germany, or similar, you see a hell of a lot more alarm at them, but they are not xenophobic violent antidemocratic groups.

I would argue that what we are seeing is a tacit endorsement of the rise in Fascism in Europe, because they are seen as “useful idiots” who can serve to counteract the threat of a resurgent left, either by providing an outlet for nationalist sentiments, or through violence.

Does this sound familiar to you?  It does to me.

In the late 1920s and the early 1930s, industrialists funded Fascists all over Europe, most notably in Germany, because of concerns about potential gains of leftists parties as a result of the economic collapse. (Yes, I know, Godwin’s Law)

I’m wondering when we are going to see the blond boy singing Tomorrow Belongs to Me.

My brother is pessimist.  He expects there to be a collapse the EU and war in the near future.

I am an optimist.  I expect there to be a collapse the EU and cold war in the near future.

Until the Eurocrats are put back under public control, and until Germany realizes that their morality play wet dreams do nothing but kill people, I do not see a better outcome in the next couple of decades.

This Might Explain the Problems We Have With General Officer Corps

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The Washington Post details the rock-star lifestyle of US General Officers (Generals and Admirals), and it goes a long way toward explaining some of the problems that exist with them.

Simply put, they have no connection to reality, and they have every incentive to delay their retirement well past the limits their usefulness:

Then-defense secretary Robert M. Gates stopped bagging his leaves when he moved into a small Washington military enclave in 2007. His next-door neighbor was Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the time, who had a chef, a personal valet and — not lost on Gates — troops to tend his property.

Gates may have been the civilian leader of the world’s largest military, but his position did not come with household staff. So, he often joked, he disposed of his leaves by blowing them onto the chairman’s lawn.

“I was often jealous because he had four enlisted people helping him all the time,” Gates said in response to a question after a speech Thursday. He wryly complained to his wife that “Mullen’s got guys over there who are fixing meals for him, and I’m shoving something into the microwave. And I’m his boss.”

Of the many facts that have come to light in the scandal involving former CIA director David H. Petraeus, among the most curious was that during his days as a four-star general, he was once escorted by 28 police motorcycles as he traveled from his Central Command headquarters in Tampa to socialite Jill Kelley’s mansion. Although most of his trips did not involve a presidential-size convoy, the scandal has prompted new scrutiny of the imperial trappings that come with a senior general’s lifestyle.

The commanders who lead the nation’s military services and those who oversee troops around the world enjoy an array of perquisites befitting a billionaire, including executive jets, palatial homes, drivers, security guards and aides to carry their bags, press their uniforms and track their schedules in 10-minute increments. Their food is prepared by gourmet chefs. If they want music with their dinner parties, their staff can summon a string quartet or a choir.

The elite regional commanders who preside over large swaths of the planet don’t have to settle for Gulfstream V jets. They each have a C-40, the military equivalent of a Boeing 737, some of which are configured with beds.

In a war zone, I could understand why a general might have someone to take care of ordinary day-to-day tasks, but for someone deployed to the wilds of Alexandria, Virginia, they can take out their own trash, and mow their own damn lawn.

The ratio of officers to enlisted men is not now 1:5.  For most of history, it was 1:10.  Additionally, we now have more general officers, with 1.5 million active duty military, than we did at the height of the 2nd world war when we had 12+ million men under arms.

The terms “top heavy” and “bloated” come to mind.

And This is Why Targeted Wildcat Strikes are Necessary

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Because just about every official institution at every level is virulently anti-union. Case in point, the World Bank:

The World Bank has taken the extremely dubious science of deregulation one step further by creating a guide, known as the Doing Business report, that quantifies the regulatory “burden” that investors may face in various countries. The 2013 report was released this week.

Echoing the corporate “job creator” mythology of the Washington consensus, Doing Business encourages financiers and governments to erode public-interest protections, including safeguards for unions and workers. Labor groups say the publication’s warped views on regulation and worker protections effectively gives a statistical justification for leveraging economic aid or investment to pressure countries to privatize, deregulate and undermine unions.

Labor advocates are particularly critical of the section of the report that crystallizes these views, the “Employing Workers Indicator” (EWI) which purports to measure labor policy “as it affects the hiring and redundancy of workers and the rigidity of working hours.” Despite the World Bank’s past assurances that its analysis of labor regulations won’t factor into the main rankings on business friendliness, critics fear that these data nonetheless filter into the report’s evaluations, and in turn imply labor laws essentially impede development.

This is not just the “technocrats” who have this opinion. It’s the overwhelming majority on the so-called “center-left”.

Whenever you hear a Democrat talking about “training” so that workers are ready for “the new economy”, they are saying that they think that labor unions are an anachronism, and they won’t do anything to support them.

We need a real Labo(u)r party in the United States, because the political establishment is hostile to unions.

A Good Primer on Why the US Patent System is F%$#ed Up

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Over at Ars Technica, Timothy Lee has a couple of very good articles on what was wrong with our patent system.

The first is about how the Federal Circuit Appeals Court, which set up to be the sole appellate court for patent matters, and how is has gone completely off the rails ). He calls it a rogue court:

“It is not common in the life of the law in America for a lower court and a major segment of its bar to take on the nation’s highest court, effectively reversing some major precedents or at least substantially mitigating their impact,” notes Steven Flanders in a recent history of the patent court. “Yet this was done.”

 The Federal Circuit, he said, also took on “the quieter and subtler effort to re-educate trial judges throughout the judiciary, to make them friendlier to patent-holders (or at least to the system of patents) as well.” (Flanders, it should be noted, is an avowed supporter of the Federal Circuit and its efforts to reshape patent law).

 This dismissive attitude toward Supreme Court precedents apparently survives to this day among patent lawyers. In the wake of this year’s decision limiting patents on the practice of medicine, patent attorney Gene Quinn wondered, “How long will it take the Federal Circuit to overrule this inexplicable nonsense?” Obviously, the Federal Circuit can’t “overrule” a Supreme Court decision. But with enough persistence, it can, and often does, subvert the principles enunciated by the nation’s highest court. And when it does so, it almost always works in the direction of making patents easier to obtain and enforce.

It’s a good description of how and why our patent system has gone nuts. 

He gives a good summary of how we got there, and why the Supreme court is increasingly willing (perhaps eager) to bitch slap this court.

My only complaint is that he did not cover the seminal patent trolling case, NTP v. RIM (Blackberry), which was crucial in making both SCOTUS, and increasingly larger segments of the “Very Serious People”.  (You are seeing this in legislation about patents floating around Congress)

As some background, when NTP got an injunction against RIM, they asked RIM to cut off all commercial and residential users in the United States, and RIM’s response was that this wasn’t possible, so they would cut off all their users, including the government.

This would mean is that people like Congressmen, their aides, and Supreme Court Justices and their clerks would lose access to their “Crackberries”.

As a result, the consequences of patent trolling suddenly got real for them, and they realized that the Federal Circuit Appeals Court is full of a bunch of extremist nutcases.  (I’m sure that there is an obscure legal term for this in Latin, but I’m an engineer, not a lawyer, dammit.*)

I emailed him about this and he noted that he had included a number of injunctions from patent trolls, including the Blackberry case, but ended up on the cutting room floor.

Additionally, he writes a good article on the International Trade Commission, which routinely prevents products from being imported on the basis of (frequently bogus) patent claims:

If you follow the smartphone patent wars, you’ve probably heard of the International Trade Commission (ITC), which seems to get dragged into every high-profile patent dispute over the devices. Just this month, Motorola asked the ITC to ban various Apple products from the US, and the ITC separately ruled that Apple doesn’t infringe some Samsung patents. But how did this obscure Washington bureaucracy become a major front in the patent wars?

The ITC has the authority to police “unfair methods of competition” by importers, a phrase interpreted to include patent infringement. Because virtually all mobile devices are manufactured overseas, getting the ITC to ban the importation of a device can be just as effective as getting an injunction from a regular court.

A new study from the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, suggests that the ITC’s patent-enforcement process is tilted in favor of patent holders—and especially patent trolls. The author, K. William Watson, argues that the inherently discriminatory nature of ITC patent enforcement—ITC cases can only be brought against imported products, not domestically produced ones—violates America’s obligations under World Trade Organization rules not to discriminate against foreign products. He says Congress should eliminate the provision of trade law, known as Section 337, that gives the ITC authority over patent issues.

Go read both articles.

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

I am Sick to Death of Right Wing Democrats

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Case in point, the Obama’s OMB chair turned overpaid Wall Street puke ( Vice Chairman of Global Banking at Citigroup) Peter Ortag, who is suggesting that the solution to the problems of the US Post Office is to let the financial industry to steal it from the American people:

Those who believe in the usefulness of government must be vigilant about making sure all its activities are vital ones, since the unnecessary ones undermine public confidence. With this in mind, Congress should now privatize the U.S. Postal Service.

Further evidence for why this should happen came last week, when the Postal Service announced that it would be unable to meet billions of dollars in payments that are coming due in August and September for future retiree health benefits. Privatization is not always the best way to improve efficiency, but the problems facing the Postal Service will be difficult to address if it remains within the government, and there is no longer any sound reason for it not to go private.

This ignores the fact that the US Post Office, one of the functions specifically mentioned in the Constitution, is actually running a primary surplus.
It is having money problems because, in 2006, the Republicans required them to fully fund their pension plan out to 75 years over a 10 year period.

Right now, the Post Office is on track to default on a $5.5 billion pension payment to the US treasury tomorrow:

The U.S. Postal Service affirmed it won’t make a required $5.5 billion payment due tomorrow to the U.S. Treasury for future retirees’ health care, an obligation the agency said must end for it to become financially viable.

The service has said for months it couldn’t afford the payment, which was initially due last September, nor a $5.6 billion payment required by Sept. 30 for this year. Postal legislation passed by the U.S. Senate on April 25 would slow the schedule for those obligations. The House hasn’t acted on a different postal measure aimed at changes to help the service cope with declining mail volume.

“This has no effect on mail processing or delivery, no impact on post offices, and employees will continue to get paid,” Dave Partenheimer, a Postal Service spokesman, said today in a phone interview.

Just in case your wondering, the USPS is on a pace to lose about $12 billion this year, after taking into account paying for the retirement of people who haven’t been born yet.

Their pension is grossly over funded, (A true rarity in the US) and if they did not have to make these payments, then they would be turning something on the order of an $8 billion profit.

But according to Orzag, the real problem is that Post Office is not able to unleash its free market super-powers.

It’s really all about allowing his cow-orkers at Citi to generate the enormous fees that would be the product of any privatization this massive.

CFPB Draws First Blood

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They just fined Capital One $210 million for misleading consumers on credit protection and protection monitoring programs:

Capital One Financial agreed to pay $210 million to resolve charges by banking regulators that its call-center representatives misled consumers into paying for extra credit card products.

The enforcement action, announced on Wednesday, is the first by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which said it unearthed the activities through an examination of the bank.

The CFPB was created by the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial reform law and is nearing its one-year anniversary.

The government said $150 million of the sanctions will go to reimburse affected customers, while the remaining penalty will be split between the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, which fined the bank $35 million, and the CFPB, which will collect $25 million.

“We are putting companies on notice that these deceptive practices are against the law and will not be tolerated,” said CFPB Director Richard Cordray.

The regulators alleged that employees at call centers used by Capital One pressured and misled consumers into paying for “add-on products” such as payment protection and credit monitoring when they activated their credit cards.

In a briefing with reporters, Cordray said he anticipated actions against other banks over similar tactics but declined to name any targets.

“We know these deceptive tactics are not unique to a single institution … we expect announcements about other institutions as our ongoing work continues to unfold,” Cordray said.

In a statement, the president of Capital One’s credit card business, Ryan Schneider, apologized to customers who were affected and said the bank is committed to “making it right.”

What’s in your wallet?

You Have Got to Be Kidding Me

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I did not think that it was possible for a pedophile priest could get any less sympathetic, but the Transportation Security Administration has proved me wrong, because they hired him as a supervisor of the gropers at Philadelphia International Airport:

The CBS 3 I-Team has learned that a Catholic priest who was removed from the ministry over sex abuse allegations now holds a sensitive security post at Philadelphia International Airport.

The security checkpoint between Terminals D and E is a busy place where thousands of people – including lots of kids – pass through every day. But you might not believe who the I-Team observed working as a TSA supervisor at that checkpoint this week: Thomas Harkins.

Until 2002, Harkins was a Catholic priest working at churches across South Jersey. But the Diocese of Camden removed him from ministry because it found he sexually abused two young girls. Now, in a new lawsuit, a third woman is claiming she also is one of Harkins’ victims.

The I-Team asked Harkins about the suit as he was leaving his shift at the airport.

“I have nothing to say,” was Harkins’ reply.

The new lawsuit, filed in federal court against the Camden Diocese says quite a bit. It accuses Harkins of sexually abusing an 11-year-old girl 10 to 15 times in 1980 and 1981. The lawsuit, filed on behalf of the alleged victim, claims the abuse occurred while Harkins was a priest at Saint Anthony of Padua parish in Hammonton, NJ, with one assault even occurring in Harkins’ bedroom at the rectory.

Seriously, this just boggles the mind.

BTW, props to the Camden Diocese, which, unlike to many other dioceses, got rid of this guy, but f%$# the TSA.

H/T Americablog.

Finally, the National Dems Do Something in Wisconsin

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After saying that the recalls does not matter, DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz has finally deigned to spend a few hours in Wisconsin campaigning for a recall:

Racine — Democratic National Committee Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz told 75 Democratic Party supporters Wednesday that the national party was “putting all of our effort into this fight” to help Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett topple Gov. Scott Walker in Tuesday’s recall election.

“Scott Walker has worked hard to make sure that people think that he’s the rock star of the right-wing tea-party extremism that the Republican Party has allowed to take them over,” she said. “And that is not what voters in Wisconsin want to see happen.”

Wasserman Schultz made two appearances in Wisconsin, appearing with Barrett at a fundraiser in Milwaukee and then speaking with campaign volunteers at a Democratic Party headquarters in Racine.

The optimist would hope that the internal polling is showing good numbers.

The pessimist would say that she was getting so much flak from the base that she had to make a pro-forma attempt.

I am a pessimist.

On a related note, if anyone was wondering if Martin O’Malley is looking to run for president, wonder no more:

Gov. Martin O’Malley, continuing to build on his high national profile as head of the Democratic Governors Association, will travel to Wisconsin Thursday to campaign for the challenger in the effort to recall Republican Gov. Scott Walker.

Colm O’Comartun, executive director of the DGA, said O’Malley will make a one-day trip to the Badger State to support Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett in the hard-fought contest. O’Malley will follow that trip with a three-state swing through New England.

Walker, who was elected in 2010, was forced into a recall election after pushing through legislation stripping public employees in Wisconsin of collective bargaining rights. That action made him a target of organized labor, but also brought him a huge infusion of campaign cash from national business groups and conservative organizations.

O’Comartun said the DGA has already supplied $3.2 million to the Barrett campaign as part of a strategy adopted even before Barrett won the nomination in a primary earlier this month. Despite a wide gap in financing between the challenger and the incumbent, O’Comartun said Barrett is in “good shape” with days to go before the June 5 election. Recent independent polls have shown Walker ahead of Barrett, though a Democratic survey released Wednesday shows the race a dead heat.

Unlike the DNC, the DGA has aggressively supported the recall, and, win or lose, they, and by extension Hizzoner, have come off as stand up guy.

Good for him.

The Pedophile Protection Society Goes After Girl Scouts

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Well what do you know, in their latest attempt to distract people from their actions protecting child predators, they have put the the Girl Scouts in their cross hairs.

Why the Girl scouts, because it’s not like they are going to f%$# them, that’s the boy scouts:

The sometimes tense relationship between the Catholic Church and the Girl Scouts appears to be moving toward a resolution, as the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has asked scout leaders to clarify programs and material that some religious conservatives think promote contraception and abortion.

Potentially at stake is whether troops can continue meeting in Catholic churches, and whether many Catholic girls, who make up a quarter of the nation’s 3 million Girl Scouts, will continue in scouting as the organization marks its 100th year.

In a letter dated March 28, the head of the bishops committee that has been looking into concerns about the Girl Scouts said he wanted to identify and address all remaining questions. The letter was written by Kevin C. Rhoades, bishop of Fort Wayne, who was a leading critic of the University of Notre Dame when it awarded President Obama an honorary degree in 2009.

The Associated Press reported on the letter Thursday, referring to it as an “official inquiry.”

The Girl Scouts???  Seriously?!?!?!? The US Confrence of Bishops has gone off the f%$#ing deep end.

Well Duh!

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Gee, as a result of Bill Clinton’s “Reinventing Governmnent” initiative, basic functions of government were outsourced, things like supervising contractors.

The common sense descrption of this is letting the fox run the henhouse.

Case in point, the FAA :

The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration isn’t properly monitoring costs and potential ethical violations in contracts related to improvements in the nation’s air-traffic systems, an audit found.

Practices for selecting and overseeing contracts awarded since 2010 for work related to the so-called NextGen project are “not sufficient,” the Department of Transportation’s Inspector General said in a report released today.

The seven contracts examined, awarded to companies including Boeing Co., CSSI Inc., ITT Corp. and General Dynamics Corp., are valued at as much as $7.3 billion, the largest cumulative award in FAA history, according to the report. The contracts are for technical and professional support of new systems to let the FAA track aircraft using satellite navigation instead of radar.

The agency didn’t verify labor rates charged in five of seven contracts, according to the report. The FAA overestimated the labor hours required, the auditors found.

Basically, if you use contractors, and you don’t watch them like a hawk, they will do whatever they legally can to maximize profits.

The you can call this “capitalism”, or you can call it “maximizing shareholder value”, but it’s what managers are supposed to do.

My Conclusion is that Obama is Homophobic

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I don’t mean that he is personally homophobic, there is no evidence that I know of about that, but that he is is politically homophobic, and so is unwilling to do anything for gay rights unless absolutely forced to.

Writing an executive order mandating that federal contractors don’t discriminate is literally the least that he could do, but for Mr. Hopey Changey, it’s a bridge too far:

A surprising new rift opened between the White House and the gay rights movement after White House officials revealed Wednesday that President Obama would not sign an executive order sought by activists to prohibit federal contractors from discriminating on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity.

Community advocates learned of the news during a closed-door meeting with two top Obama aides, Valerie Jarrett and Cecilia Munoz, who told the group that the White House would instead lead a multi-pronged effort to urge companies, federal agencies and others to oppose discrimination.

The Center for American Progress, which is Obama’s bitch among the think tanks called this “Disappointing”, and the HRC, another member of the Obama knee pad set was similarly pissed off.

It appears that Obama does not remember the, “Don’t ask, Don’t Give,” efforts, but my guess is that he will:

And, just to confirm that it’s not going to go away, we got this via press release;

Within hours of the White House announcement, the “We Can’t Wait!” campaign received a $100,000 cash infusion from liberal donor Jonathan Lewis, the son of major Democratic philanthropist Peter Lewis.

Quotes from Jonathan Lewis:

“This isn’t a broken promise President Obama can blame on Congress. He has not been able to provide a single valid reason for why he is now refusing to sign the executive order protecting LGBT workers. It has become increasingly clear that this decision is based on cowardice rather than principled leadership.”

“Over the past several years the LGBT advocacy groups have jumped through hoops for this administration, conducting extensive research and polling — more than has been done for any similar executive order — and now the only impediment is President Obama.”

“This is nothing short of craven election-year politics, a game Obama told us he would not play.”

Jonathan Lewis and his father, Peter, are major contributors to progressive causes. And, by major, I mean they give millions.

Another reason to give to specific candidates, particularly in the primary, as opposed to OFA, the DNC, the DCCC, or the DSCC.

But hey, a wing of the Talibaptists at the Focus on the Family liked that he dissed the LBGT community.

Below, you can see Jay Carney saying that “more study is needed”.  I guess that the unspoken assumption here is that gays are just too icky to have equal rights unless we can make bigots feel better about themselves.

Seriously, Andrew Breitbart was better on gay inclusion that Barack Obama is:

Seriously, how about not being a coward on this issue. Not being a coward gets you votes.

Why the USAF Should Be Abolished, Part MLXVII

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The US Army has real and current needs for transport, and the USAF response to addressing those needs is to do their beat to ensure that they are not met: (paid subscription required)

………

Apparently, this sentiment does not apply to the interservice skirmishes at the Pentagon. The U.S. Army and Air Force are in the final throes of hashing out an updated agreement on the time-sensitive, direct-support airlift mission, the latest chapter in a years-long saga over how to ship supplies to remote soldiers despite two wars and one stunted buy of Alenia’s C-27J.

The agreement is being made between the chiefs of staff of both services. At issue is how the time-sensitive airlift mission will be handled; this includes the shuttling of small loads of supplies to forward Army units in the field.

………

The last installment of this tug-of-war took place in 2005 when, during his first major speech to the Air Force Association, the then Chief of Staff of the Air Force, Gen. T. Michael Moseley, announced he wanted a new light cargo aircraft. This was considered odd as the Army was in the midst of setting up its future cargo aircraft program, which was then crafted to replace old C-23 Sherpas and provide more immediate access to commanders for cargo support. At the time, the Army moved ahead with its own program because it felt that it had lackluster support by the Air Force to properly back its needs.

………

Moseley’s push, along with his similar and later move to take over the Army’s burgeoning UAV force, was seen as an abrupt roles-and-missions grab by the Air Force in the midst of these two wars. In the case of the cargo aircraft role, the USAF won.

At the direction of then-Defense Secretary Robert Gates, in 2009 the Air Force took over authority for the C-27J buy and control of the direct-support mission; service officials said they would combine the use of C-27Js and C-130s to provide cargo lift for the Army (though Army officials had long complained that C-130 support was inefficient owing to underloading of these larger aircraft).

Army officials say that in actuality, the CH-47 Chinook fleet has been unduly burdened in providing timely support because the helicopters are used to shuttle goods from C-130s that land at hubs to the remote locales where soldiers are stationed.

“The major rub to us is responsiveness and not efficiency,” says one Army official who requests anonymity. “When a part is needed at the front line, it flies” and shouldn’t have to wait for enough requests to fill a C-130, the official adds. “We are more about effectiveness than efficiency, and [the Air Force is] more about efficiency than effectiveness.”

……………

Two C-27Js were deployed to Afghanistan in late July 2011 and quickly started flying operational direct support missions, Gen. Raymond Johns said last fall. The C-27Js are apportioned to Army officials there via Tacon (tactical control), although USAF pilots fly the missions, but the C-130s are not. This means the C-27Js are specifically set aside only for intratheater/direct-support missions under Army authority. Though C-130s are used for this mission, they can be reassigned elsewhere in the area, if needed, Johns said.

Army officials are less than satisfied with the Air Force’s delays in delivering C-27Js to the field. At least six were to be in Afghanistan by now, and why they have not been deployed is the “golden question,” the anonymous Army official said.

One industry official says the Army is “trying to hold the Air Force’s feet to the fire to do what they signed up for” in the 2009 pact.

Alenia has delivered 13 of 21 C-27Js on contract. Originally, Alenia officials projected the U.S. market for the C-27J (including Army/Air Force buys) to support as many as 125 aircraft. Tierney said that in 2005, the Army’s projections set a low risk of handling the mission with a fleet of 78 C-27Js and a moderate risk at 54. When Gates shifted the C-27J program from Army control to the Air Force, the buy shrank to 38 aircraft.

So basically, the army has a real and current need, and the USAF’s response is to hijack it, sabotage the purchases, and not deliver it.

The creation of an independent air force from the U.S. Army Air Forces has not shown itself to be a step forward in military efficiency.

FWIW, there are historical precedents.  During the Vietnam war, the Air Force took over the operation of smaller cargo aircraft, (the Otter/Caribou if I recall) and promptly decided that they could only fly into air strips that were capable of handling the much larger C-130, eliminating much of their utility.

Finally Cashiering the Bloated General Officers in the Pentagon

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It’s a start, but considering that there is an officer for every 5 enlisted men, up from 1 for every 10 men that was the standard over the past few hundred years, it’s only a start:

With the Iraq war over and troops in Afghanistan on their way home, the U.S. military is getting down to brass tacks: culling generals and admirals from its top-heavy ranks.

Pentagon officials said they have eliminated 27 jobs for generals and admirals since March, the first time the Defense Department has imposed such a reduction since the aftermath of the Cold War, when the collapse of the Soviet Union prompted the military to downsize.

The cuts are part of a broader plan to shrink the upper ranks by 10 percent over five years, restoring them to the their size when the country was last at peace, before the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

The changes are projected to save only a modest amount of money, but defense officials said they are symbolically important as the Pentagon adjusts to an era of austerity. The Obama administration proposes to squeeze $450 billion from defense budgets over a decade. An additional $500 billion in cuts will be triggered if Congress cannot agree on a deficit-reduction plan in the next year.

This does not even qualify as a baby step in tackling the bloat at the Pentagon, but  it  is a positive development.

Have I Mentioned that I Love Barney Frank?*

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He’s calling for a major restructuring of the Federal Reserve:

U.S. Representative Barney Frank, the top Democrat on the House Financial Services Committee, is renewing a push to remove Federal Reserve regional presidents from voting on central bank interest-rate decisions.

Frank, of Massachusetts, will submit a new version of legislation to cut the voting rights of five rotating regional representatives from the 12-member Federal Open Markets Committee, he said today. The revision of Frank’s May proposal calls for replacing them with four presidential appointees, according to a position paper released by his office.

Eliminating regional presidents, who are selected by board members of their banks and approved by Fed governors, will make interest-rate votes more democratic, Frank said in the paper. The 7-3 vote at the last FOMC meeting in August underlined the need to replace the presidents, who have become a “significant constraint on national economic policy making,” he said.

Regional presidents “are neither elected nor appointed by officials who are themselves elected,” Frank wrote in the paper. “They are part of a self-perpetuating group of private citizens who select each other and who are treated as equals in setting federal monetary policy with officials appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate.”

He’s right, of course. The regional Feds are not governmental organizations, they are quite literally owned by the regional banks they nominally regulate, and these people are therefore the employees of the regional banks.

Anything that to any degree takes any governmental (or in this quasi-governmental) agency out from under the thumb of the banksters is a good thing.™

*In a 110% purely heterosexual kind of way, of course, as the General would say.

Have I Mentioned that I Love Matt Taibbi?*

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He just uncovered another bit of regulatory capture, specifically he is reporting on allegations that the SEC routinely destroyed all records of its investigations:

Imagine a world in which a man who is repeatedly investigated for a string of serious crimes, but never prosecuted, has his slate wiped clean every time the cops fail to make a case. No more Lifetime channel specials where the murderer is unveiled after police stumble upon past intrigues in some old file – “Hey, chief, didja know this guy had two wives die falling down the stairs?” No more burglary sprees cracked when some sharp cop sees the same name pop up in one too many witness statements. This is a different world, one far friendlier to lawbreakers, where even the suspicion of wrongdoing gets wiped from the record.

That, it now appears, is exactly how the Securities and Exchange Commission has been treating the Wall Street criminals who cratered the global economy a few years back. For the past two decades, according to a whistle-blower at the SEC who recently came forward to Congress, the agency has been systematically destroying records of its preliminary investigations once they are closed. By whitewashing the files of some of the nation’s worst financial criminals, the SEC has kept an entire generation of federal investigators in the dark about past inquiries into insider trading, fraud and market manipulation against companies like Goldman Sachs, Deutsche Bank and AIG. With a few strokes of the keyboard, the evidence gathered during thousands of investigations – “18,000 … including Madoff,” as one high-ranking SEC official put it during a panicked meeting about the destruction – has apparently disappeared forever into the wormhole of history.

Under a deal the SEC worked out with the National Archives and Records Administration, all of the agency’s records – “including case files relating to preliminary investigations” – are supposed to be maintained for at least 25 years. But the SEC, using history-altering practices that for once actually deserve the overused and usually hysterical term “Orwellian,” devised an elaborate and possibly illegal system under which staffers were directed to dispose of the documents from any preliminary inquiry that did not receive approval from senior staff to become a full-blown, formal investigation. Amazingly, the wholesale destruction of the cases – known as MUIs, or “Matters Under Inquiry” – was not something done on the sly, in secret. The enforcement division of the SEC even spelled out the procedure in writing, on the commission’s internal website. “After you have closed a MUI that has not become an investigation,” the site advised staffers, “you should dispose of any documents obtained in connection with the MUI.”

Many of the destroyed files involved companies and individuals who would later play prominent roles in the economic meltdown of 2008. Two MUIs involving con artist Bernie Madoff vanished. So did a 2002 inquiry into financial fraud at Lehman Brothers, as well as a 2005 case of insider trading at the same soon-to-be-bankrupt bank. A 2009 preliminary investigation of insider trading by Goldman Sachs was deleted, along with records for at least three cases involving the infamous hedge fund SAC Capital.

The widespread destruction of records was brought to the attention of Congress in July, when an SEC attorney named Darcy Flynn decided to blow the whistle. According to Flynn, who was responsible for helping to manage the commission’s records, the SEC has been destroying records of preliminary investigations since at least 1993. After he alerted NARA to the problem, Flynn reports, senior staff at the SEC scrambled to hide the commission’s improprieties.

And that’s just his first 5 paragraphs.

What’s also in the article is the pattern of what can only be described as a patterned of end loaded bribery, where SEC senior bureaucrats spiked investigations, destroyed all evidence collected, and then found well remunerated positions with firms that they had “exonerated.”

There should be hundreds of people on Wall Street, and regulating Wall Street, who should have been frog marched out of the places of work in hand cuffs.

*In a 110% purely heterosexual kind of way, of course, as the General would say.

More Like The Bush Administration Every Day

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Meet the new boss, same as the old boss

Case in point, punishing scientists who speak the truth even when big oil wants lies:

It was seen as one of the most distressing effects of climate change ever recorded: polar bears dying of exhaustion after being stranded between melting patches of Arctic sea ice.

But now the government scientist who first warned of the threat to polar bears in a warming Arctic has been suspended and his work put under official investigation for possible scientific misconduct.

Charles Monnett, a wildlife biologist, oversaw much of the scientific work for the government agency that has been examining drilling in the Arctic. He managed about $50m (£30.5m) in research projects.

Some question why Monnett, employed by the US Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement, has been suspended at this moment. The Obama administration has been accused of hounding the scientist so it can open up the fragile region to drilling by Shell and other big oil companies.

“You have to wonder: this is the guy in charge of all the science in the Arctic and he is being suspended just now as an arm of the interior department is getting ready to make its decision on offshore drilling in the Arctic seas,” said Jeff Ruch, president of the group Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility. “This is a cautionary tale with a deeply chilling message for any federal scientist who dares to publish groundbreaking research on conditions in the Arctic.”

There could be some completely innocent explanation for this, and I could be the rightful heir to the house of Saud.

I think that both are equally likely.