Posts from — January 2005

Depending on the M$M‘s acceptance of the right-wing equivalency claims, we have to listen to how Armstrong Williams’ secret acceptance of a quarter million dollars of government money to promote “Nickleby” on his syndicated media shows and his columns is the same as two liberal bloggers accepting consulting work with the Howard Dean campaign.

I must have missed the display on Williams’ columns and media appearances of a tag saying he was being paid by the Department of Education, you know, something similar to the blurb at the top of the Daily KOS when he was working for Dean. Of course, Jerome Armstrong didn’t have a blurb, because he didn’t blog while he was working for Dean, he just told everyone he had landed the work.

There is also the problem that the payments to Williams are quite probably criminal and are being investigated by the FCC and Congress, while the Dean payments were totally legal and openly reported in multiple government documents.

By now, anyone who listens to the news, reads news sites, or watches the news, has heard the disclaimers that the story being reported is about a group or company that funds the news. If the M$M understands that this is a requirement, why don’t they understand that this is what Williams did wrong?

August J. Pollak makes it plain.

Fact checking the claims in the discussion over Social Security, Jeanne Sahadi, CNN/Money senior writer, warns us:

That means truth – or at least the whole truth delivered in context – is sometimes sacrificed or exaggerated by both sides in the interest of making their point. Oh, and your friends and neighbors may have a few things wrong, too.

So beware the blarney.

She lists five examples of “exaggerations” with pop-up explanations, but the problem is the “even-handedness” of the media. Her explanations of all five points show who is making the “exaggerations”, who is “sacrificing the truth”, but she feels the need to imply that the people on the other side are just as culpable, apparently for exposing the distortions.

That one side of any controversy is known to be lying does not automatically mean that the other side is telling the truth, but, neither does it mean they are also lying. You evaluate the claims of both sides independently and report the facts: it is a concept that was once known as “journalism”.

Friday Cat Blogging^TM [Kevin Drum]

I’m sure Mom won’t mind if I leap on her.

The computer system that was supposed to modernize the FBI record keeping and information sharing, doesn’t work and isn’t ever likely to do what the bureau needs. Very old news in the computer world.

A large organization has no IT resources in-house and refuses to pay for professionals to write a requirements document. They specify what they want and the day after the contract is signed they have to start making changes because they left major requirements out of their “Request For Bids”. Small contractors generally have to suffer the costs of the changes and go broke, but the big players know this will happen and make their profits from the change orders.

The biggest problem seems to be the sudden interest in counter-terrorism after September 11, 2001. There were no provisions for counter-terrorism activities prior to that time.

An independent $2 million review of the system has concluded that it would be cheaper to start over that to try to patch what has been done up to this point. Some people claim that the vendor, SAIC, took advantage of the FBI, knowing that the system would never be what they needed.

Having been there and done that with government contracts, I can tell you that you will never be awarded a contract if you don’t follow the bid to the letter, even when you know the bid is stupid. SAIC knows the rules of government contracts and I know a number of programmers who work on these projects. You know going in that nothing you write in the first two years will be in the final product.

The new VA computer system is about to be dumped, the Florida Children and Families system was a total failure, and the list goes on. You have to follow the contract to the letter to get paid, and the contract is always garbage.

The Children and Families system was a classic. The contract specified that all information be stored based on the client’s name. Apparently, whoever wrote the specifications didn’t consider the possibility that there might be more than one person named John Smith.

The last test of the missile defense system didn’t work because the attack vehicle didn’t launch. The Air Force general in charge said the problem was a minor software glitch.

It turns out the software monitors for errors and communications “drop-outs” during the launch cycle and aborts the launch if there are too many errors. The “fix” was to increase the number of permitted errors.

Let’s not find out why there are so many errors, errors that might make life exciting for airline passengers, because the data being sent to the attack vehicle before launch are the target tracking data, we’ll just let the vehicle launch with even less information than before.

This is so typical: our missile can’t pass when a “C” is 70%, so we’ll make a “C” 50%.

No Obscenely Expensive Defense Project Left Behind.

Let’s plug in some real numbers: under Bush, a real world growth mutual fund [Jennison Growth and similar] that would be typical for retirement savings has lost in excess of one-third of its value. During the same period Treasury bills have been paying in excess of 5% per annum. Social Security is invested in Treasury bills.

So at the start of Bush’s term a $100K in a private fund is now worth $66K, but the same money in Social Security is now worth > $120K. Treasury bills have a guaranteed return, while there are no guarantees with stocks.

Buying stocks is a gamble, buying Treasury bills is not. Do people really want to gamble with their retirement?

There is a possibility that you can make much more money in the stock market, than buying Treasury bills, but you can just as easily make less. In a single year, 1995, that growth portfolio made 26%, and then from 2001 to 2005 it dropped 33%.

If you bought the Dow Jones Industrial Average your $100K would still be worth approximately $100K after 4 years. Bush has pushed most of the traditional “buttons”: tax cuts, deficit spending, etc. and it hasn’t worked. If you don’t create jobs, people can’t spend money. Two-thirds of the GDP is based on consumer spending, and once everyone has maxed their credit cards, the spending is over and the GDP drops.

Another suggestion is that when you retire you can take your retirement account and buy an annuity that will provide you with a stable monthly income. Maybe, but in the case of Pacific Lumber retirees whose fully funded retirement was replaced with annuities after a leveraged buy-out, they lost it all when the insurance company that provided the annuities went bankrupt.

The current Social Security system is backed by the full faith and credit of the United States government. This privatization plan is backed by the full faith and credit of large businesses, like Enron, Tyco, MCI, Halliburton. Who do you trust with your retirement?

BTW, if you were wondering why Bush seems so interested in the asbestos lawsuits, guess what brilliant business visionary, while CEO of Halliburton, bought a company with a massive asbestos liability?

In the early hours of January 13^th, 1969 I was forced to accept something that I had known for a while, but had pushed to the back of my mind: I was mortal and was going to die.

This was the first of several incidents when my chance of survival was a good deal less than 1 in 2. This wasn’t the scariest, but it was the first, and following on the heels of the terrible events of 1968, it had the biggest impact.

In the end the only “death” was an airplane, Rivet Ball, the Air Force’s only RC-135S. The military version of the Boeing 707, the fuselage broke in half, like an eggshell, on impact. A very talented pilot, John Achor, the aircraft commander, was responsible for that miracle.

It’s official: there were no Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq and the only Weapons of Mass Destruction-Related Program Activities were the standard science courses given in high schools and colleges throughout the world.

It’s official: there were no Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq and the only Weapons of Mass Destruction-Related Program Activities were the standard science courses given in high schools and colleges throughout the world.

Why did “everyone” think Saddam might have such weapons? Because he hadn’t used up all of the weapons the Reagan administration gave him during his war with Iran and when he attacked the Kurds.

How could this have been resolved peacefully? By allowing the UN Weapons Inspectors finish their job, instead of ordering them out so the country could be bombed and invaded.

Was this war ever about Weapons of Mass Destruction? If there had been any real interest in WMDs would we have ignored major weapons dumps and nuclear facilities? Would we have left them unguarded to be looted?

What did the invading army protect from looters? Oil facilities.

A great nation is like a great man:
When he makes a mistake, he realizes it.
Having realized it, he admits it.
Having admitted it, he corrects it.
He considers those who point out his faults
as his most benevolent teachers.
He thinks of his enemy
as the shadow he himself casts.
Tao Te Ching

Problems cannot be solved by the same level of thinking that created them.
Albert Einstein

At some point I have a wonderful story of how truly incompetent the US government actually is, but I have to wait until the problem is fixed before explaining.

For want of a nail the shoe was lost.
For want of a shoe the horse was lost.
For want of a horse the rider was lost.
For want of a rider the battle was lost.
For want of a battle the kingdom was lost.
And all for the want of a horseshoe nail.
Nursery Rhyme

CBS has the story of two Cold War spies who are trying to sue the CIA for reneging on a promise to provide lifetime financial support.

The couple tried to defect from their Eastern Bloc country but the CIA promised them that if they became spies they would be brought out later and given new identities and a paycheck for life.

The couple kept up their side of the bargain, but the CIA has decided to cut costs, including the couple’s pension.

Espionage is a very strange business. It is built on lying, cheating, stealing, etc., but underlying that is a foundation of trust between agents and their handlers. When an agent is burned, the handler is worthless to his/her agency. When an agency fails to live up to its agreements, no one will work for them.

The CIA doesn’t pay its bills, Osama bin Laden does. Who will the shadowy people in Asia who have the information everyone needs trust?

The Seattle Post Intelligencer has this Associated Press article on the Maryland Assessment Test. It would seem that the head of the Maryland School for the Deaf is upset that in the reading comprehension portion of the test children are required to figure out which words sound alike.

Yep, we have to have standardized testing to show how well our schools are doing and the tests are prepared by experts to measure progress.

Is it really surprising that they have to pay people to praise this system?

As long as they don’t expect celibacy or chastity, I can deal with it.

Elayne Riggs points to Atrios who points to Tapped and this pledge:

I swear that I have never taken money — neither directly nor indirectly — from any political campaign or government agency — whether federal, state, or local — in exchange for any service performed in my job as a journalist (or commentator, or blogger, or whatever you think I should be called).

This is in response to the Armstrong Williams affair over accepting $240K to say nice things about “Nickleby” [AKA – NCLB or No Child Left Behind]. Of course, Duncan is a little touchy about this because the M$M claimed that he was being paid to blog on Eschaton.

I am a consultant and do get paid for my opinions, but my clients pay me with the understanding that I won’t, under rather severe penalty, discuss my opinions with others. I’m generally consulting on business problems that companies don’t want to be made public as this would help competitors. In my line of work, you only screw up once, because if you do, your name is pulled from the Rolodex.

This is a personal effort: no advertising, no payoffs, no wish list, no tips jar. I do it when I have the time and I have something to say.

Several times in reference to various posts I have noticed that the Pentagon doesn’t seem to be addressing problems that Congress has authorized money to fix. The “up armoring” of vehicles was the most recent, but the purchase of effective body armor, the acquisition of small arms ammunition, the equipping of Iraqi security forces, are all issues where the money has been authorized but the Pentagon hasn’t spent it.

If you look at the Iraqi reconstruction fund, less than $2 billion of the $18 billion Congress approved in the “famous” $87 billion request has even been put under contract. There are also Iraqi oil funds that haven’t been accounted for after the dissolution of the Coalition Provisional Authority. There is a sizable chunk of money in limbo.

Let’s add to the mix the hiring of Chilean and South African mercenaries for security jobs in Iraq, the appointment of John Negroponte as the ambassador, and an image of the failed “death squad” approach to counter insurgency comes to mind.

Death squads, like torture, seem like a good idea to deskbound cowardly people. Since these people have no real morals; since they lack the humanity to suffer torture or death to save friends, family, and ideals; they don’t believe that other people have these values.

Look at the people in charge. The only “adult” is Colin Powell, an ex-soldier. The rest avoided military service because they didn’t want to risk injury or death. They lacked the core conviction to risk it all.

If these fools introduce death squads, all they achieve is a further destabilization of Iraq. We are already dealing with the “blow back” from earlier decisions, including helping Saddam Hussein come to and remain in power, the creation of mujahidin forces in Afghanistan, installing the Shah in Iran, do we really want to make matters worse?

Assuming the Bush administration realizes we are in a hole, when are they going to stop digging?

Spellbound is a nice little spell checker for the Firefox browser. People who have to read my comments will now be saved from some of my more egregious typos.

If I could just figure out how to edit the “forms” feature, I wouldn’t have any complaints left about Firefox.