Standing up in Iran

Solid picture.

I think this lady's facing longer odds than even the picture suggests. But you gotta admire someone who's looking down the street at that - and still has the guts to stand there.

(H/t to Dynagirl)

Loan servicing agencies: Sorry sir, you cannot have a life preserver...

...because we've determined there's money to be made in watching you drown.

Here's the NYT

...industry insiders and legal experts say the limited capacity of mortgage companies is not the primary factor impeding the government’s $75 billion program to prevent foreclosures. Instead, it is that many mortgage companies are reluctant to give strapped homeowners a break because the companies collect lucrative fees on delinquent loans.

...and here's CJR's Chittum putting a finer point on it.

The key to understanding this story is to get that it’s talking about mortgage servicers, not the people who actually own the loans (at least in most cases). Fees aren’t going to come close to making up the huge losses incurred by a foreclosure that the actual lender takes. But the servicer’s entire business is fees. The more the merrier. The longer it can string out a borrower and tack on late fees and the like, the more revenue it makes. It gets paid out of the proceeds of the eventual sale, the Times reports, and then makes money on the actual sale, too.

Call me suspicious, but...

So, it's been buzzing around the techwire that some unfortunate Chinese worker committed suicide over a missing iPhone.

It's the old story:

• Dude has fourth generation iPhone prototype
• Dude loses fourth generation iPhone prototype
• Dude jumps out of a high rise apartment to his death

Nothing to see, really.

Except there's a disturbing subtext in the official statements. See if you can spot it:

Apple's statement to C|net:

...we are awaiting results of the investigations into his death...We require our suppliers to treat all workers with dignity and respect.

Then Foxconn (the dead man's employer) agrees to pay the surviving family members $52,000 as compensation.

Which begs the question: Why does an employer pay compensation for a suicide that occurred at a private residence?

and the there's this:

Foxconn apparently suspended a security official after Sun's death, and the case was turned over to Chinese authorities to investigate. The security officer denied beating Sun but did acknowledge that he became "a little angry," according to The New York Times.

Curious, to say the least. You wonder what the rest of the story will turn out to be.

The patio

When we moved into our new digs, E and I made an unofficial vow that this house would be the house we did not phone it in on.

If there was an issue, it would get solved. The right way.

Sure, I got a laundry list of things that aren't done yet, but the gist is simple: You make a list, do it in any order - but anytime something gets crossed off - it isn't coming back for a loooong time.

With that in mind, we tackled the landscaping. This had been an issue in the previous house - we were the low spot and collected the neighborhood's surplus rainwater. It sucked.

This time around, we're in the middle of a hill - something I liked, but didn't fully appreciate. If you're on the side of a hill, you naturally have a hill taking away all the water from three sides of your house.

It's that fourth side you need to worry about. The uphill side. Done right, its water is diverted to either side and thence to the bottom of the hill. Done badly, you inherit all the rainwater landing between the side of your house and the top of the hill.

Our fourth side? Done badly.

So we called in the experts and had them re-grade 3/4ths of our lawn. It was expensive, annoying and took a long time. But we wanted it crossed off.

And so it was - except for one thing.

The patio.

The people who used to own the house (let's call them..ah - The Doofuses) they'd put in a brick patio right outside of the addition. Trouble is, they'd put it in dead level. And pretty high up - it stopped right below the level of the siding. Meaning, water easily sloped against the house and was trapped between the wooden sill plate and the brick/concrete of the patio.

If you were water and had the choice of going through concrete, or going through wood, which would you choose?

Hint: Not the concrete

First landscaping guy we had look at our yard told us we'd have to tear out the patio and put it in lower. "It's a Pandora's Box you got right there. No telling what you'll find when you start digging."

Yes, no telling.

Well, we paid the guys to dig it up - so I'm telling.

We found a concrete slab about 6" thick, resting atop 8" thick foundation walls that ran over four feet down into the ground. We also found carpenter ant damage. Lots and lots of carpenter ant damage. Luckily it wasn’t structural, so all we needed to do was seal it up and we’d be good, assuming we got the drainage issue solved.

Originally, we'd asked the landscaping guys to tear out the concrete, when they told me that would involve digging a canyon and cost thousands more I asked them what the structural threat was.

"Zero. You can put in your patio once we take off the top slab and you're good. All you'll need is a base to put the bricks on and we'll set that up for you."

(I have this ghost of a memory where they even offered to have their bobcat scrape off the top few inches of the remaining patio footing. But since that would be supremely ironic given what happened later, I’m going to presume I’m mistaken. For the record, we’re going to say they refused to help. Laughed at me and refused my money. It’s just simpler that way.)

Oh. Okay - I thought. I envisioned my landscaping done and a perfectly smooth, properly graded layer of sand awaiting an afternoon's work of replacing the patio bricks.

In the grand tradition of vendor-client relations, there was a bit of a miscommunication.

The vendor did remove the top slab completely, that was good.
But his version of "setting up a base" for my bricks was to put my 700 bricks on two pallets atop a heap of sand.

Meaning, not only would I have to level and grade my own sand - I would first have to move 700 bricks to one side. And then I could start.

Nice.

What if Gitmo detainees had their day in court?

Well, it might look like this

Of computer code theft and high speed trading

CJR was on this weeks ago:

[Goldmann Sachs] has raised the possibility that there is a danger that somebody who knew how to use this program could use it to manipulate markets in unfair ways.

Which raises the obvious question of whether Goldman Sachs itself uses the program to manipulate markets in unfair ways. What controls are there on this? Who regulates it? I’ll look forward to some explanatory pieces on this in the days ahead.

but it looks like those explanatory pieces have started to arrive.

The NYT goes front and center with coverage of how the big trading firms use computer banks and top shelf algorithms to outmanuver the rank and file investors.

How does this work?

Goldmann's computers monitor oodles of trades and react instantly to price shifts. Okay, that seems tricky but they're essentially speed reading the market, so how is this a problem?

Quoth the NYT:

While markets are supposed to ensure transparency by showing orders to everyone simultaneously, a loophole in regulations allows marketplaces like Nasdaq to show traders some orders ahead of everyone else in exchange for a fee.

Oh, they bought better access for their hyperfast computers so they can bend the market.

Well, I guess I'm with Goldmann on this. Someone could use these tools to "manipulate markets in unfair ways."

They've been doing it for years.

(H/t emptywheel)

Full disclosure

I read Penelope Trunk's blog.

Not for career advice. I read it for her uncommonly fearless appraisal of her life. Life has not been good to her and she does not shy from telling you about it.

Even by her own standards her latest post just floored me.

When I was five, I knew something was not right. That’s when I started therapy. I was never totally sure why my parents were sending me.

When I was seven I knew something was not right because the neighbor came over to our house when my parents were smashing picture frames over each others’ head. The neighbor said to me and my little brother, “Come with me.”

Then my memories get blurry. The next thing I remember is my high school homeroom teacher. I skipped a day of school and then came to school with a black eye and a note from my dad that said I had been sick. She said that she was not accepting notes from my dad anymore. She said I could not come back to school the next time I miss a day unless I called the police.

I've said before, you have to root for this person - because how could you do otherwise?

Ye gods.

Mark to Market accounting returns from the dead?

Can it be true?

The Financial Standards Accounting Board appears to be doing a one-eighty on mark to market accounting.

Having let banks declare their assets are worth whatever they want since April, they appear to be changing their mind.

CJR's Ryan Chittum observes:

...the obvious problem with the paper-things-over approach [is] you’re never truly going to get the jitters out of the system until everyone knows where the losses are. Right now, you’re just not going to know if banks are valuing their toxic assets at ninety-seven cents on the dollar, while shoveling them out the backdoor at thirty-five cents—or what.

So FASB’s ingenious approach to the dilemma of mark-to-market vs. mark-to-myth accounting is to let investors see both numbers.

Suffice it to say, the banks aren't happy at all.

I don't think anyone expected the April change to be permanent, but I'm wondering if this short interval was always the plan - or if some bureaucratic tide has shifted.

Interesting.

Late edit: corrected my typo. Thanks AUL.

What the McAllen pig trough says about the state of health care

(H/t to E)

If you're interested in understanding how one of the richest nations on earth can be bankrupting itself on health care - you could do worse than to read Atul Gawande's article in the New Yorker, The Cost Conundrum.

Armed with national stats on medicare expenses by county, Atul visits McAllen, Texas. McAllen is a city of about 100,000 that for some reason spends more Medicare money per person than almost any other American city. Only Miami spends more.

The obvious question is, why?

...there’s no evidence that the treatments and technologies available at McAllen are better than those found elsewhere in the country. The annual reports that hospitals file with Medicare show that those in McAllen and El Paso offer comparable technologies—neonatal intensive-care units, advanced cardiac services, PET scans, and so on. Public statistics show no difference in the supply of doctors. Hidalgo County actually has fewer specialists than the national average.

Nor does the care given in McAllen stand out for its quality. Medicare ranks hospitals on twenty-five metrics of care. On all but two of these, McAllen’s five largest hospitals performed worse, on average, than El Paso’s. McAllen costs Medicare seven thousand dollars more per person each year than does the average city in America. But not, so far as one can tell, because it’s delivering better health care.

So, what the hell? Gawande lays it out: (emphasis mine)

The Medicare payment data provided the most detail. Between 2001 and 2005, critically ill Medicare patients received almost fifty per cent more specialist visits in McAllen than in El Paso, and were two-thirds more likely to see ten or more specialists in a six-month period. In 2005 and 2006, patients in McAllen received twenty per cent more abdominal ultrasounds, thirty per cent more bone-density studies, sixty per cent more stress tests with echocardiography, two hundred per cent more nerve-conduction studies to diagnose carpal-tunnel syndrome, and five hundred and fifty per cent more urine-flow studies to diagnose prostate troubles.
     They received one-fifth to two-thirds more gallbladder operations, knee replacements, breast biopsies, and bladder scopes. They also received two to three times as many pacemakers, implantable defibrillators, cardiac-bypass operations, carotid endarterectomies, and coronary-artery stents. And Medicare paid for five times as many home-nurse visits. The primary cause of McAllen’s extreme costs was, very simply, the across-the-board overuse of medicine.

He quotes a McAllen cardiac surgeon as saying "Medicine has become a pig trough here."

Makes you think all this public private discussion is a waste of breath. As Atul puts it:

Providing health care is like building a house. The task requires experts, expensive equipment and materials, and a huge amount of coördination. Imagine that, instead of paying a contractor to pull a team together and keep them on track, you paid an electrician for every outlet he recommends, a plumber for every faucet, and a carpenter for every cabinet. Would you be surprised if you got a house with a thousand outlets, faucets, and cabinets, at three times the cost you expected, and the whole thing fell apart a couple of years later? Getting the country’s best electrician on the job (he trained at Harvard, somebody tells you) isn’t going to solve this problem. Nor will changing the person who writes him the check

The good news, is that Gawande shows you places where medical centers have rolled up their sleeves and solved the issue for themselves. Mayo, Marshfield, Intermountain - places where facilities have severed the procedure/reimbursement connection, pooled all the Medicare money and just started paying doctors salaries. You get a set wage. Stop thinking about keeping them in treatment - your job is to keep people healthy.

Totally worth the read.

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

Also, there's an interesting follow up on the Health Care Blog where a McAllen physician reflects on how the practice of medicine changed over time:

...in 1983 I'd see a patient with intermittent chest pain, and that day refer him to the cardiologist for evaluation. He'd call me on the phone and say, "David, I've seen your patient Mr. So-and-so, examined him, listened to his heart, and have done a tread mill stress test. Everything seems ok, so I'm sending him back to you for further evaluation for his problems." Fine.

But by 1987, I'd make the referral and never hear another word. Running into the cardiologist in the hospital hallway or locker room, and asking what happened to my patient, I'd get this response: "Oh, well if I remember correctly I admitted him to the hospital and we did angiography, which was normal. But he was having a headache, so the neurologist ran some CT scans, and I asked the gastroenterologist to do endoscopy because there was a question of some GI problems. As I recall, everything was normal, but I still see him every month for his blood pressure."

Storming the gate

In CorpWorld, building security is a big deal.

When your pockets are deep enough, you pay people to worry about them. Sooner or later they get around to site security.  Above and beyond simple theft there are trade secrets, confidentiality laws, and liability for staff safety.

All it takes is a single domestic situation blowing up at work, and suddenly your PR wing has to go on television to explain how the hell some whackjob was able to access the inner sanctum and beat on their ex. Or some other nightmare scenario.

Site security is at odds with the fact that your entire staff needs to come and go with a minimum of hassle.

Where I work - we do this with security doors and badge readers.

I carry a badge.

Present the badge to the reader, door beeps and unlocks - and you're in.

-and very likely - so is the person behind you.

The common courtesy of holding the door open for the next person is the gaping hole in this system. Drafting, tailgating - whatever you call it - it's asking an awful lot of people to follow proper procedure.

People who've scanned their way in are not going to block the door until it closes - and people on their way in aren't going to wait for that door to close so they can present their own badge.

It goes against all common sense. Workers aren't interested in site security, they are interested in getting to work.

When something like forgetting their badge stops them from getting in - people get creative. And that's where drafting comes in.

You're walking into the open access lobby and there's a few people ahead of you. Bonus, you just speed up until you're almost part of their group. They scan in, hold the door - and scene.

It's made a lot easier with the addition of handicap access doors, which stay open for many useful seconds after someone opens them.

The real challenge to access is always finding someone to draft. You're in a crowd, you're good. You're the only one in the lobby, ya look kinda stupid standing by the door.

This being CorpWorld, its best to look busy - whip out a cell phone and act like you're texting. Walk in a slow orbit away from the doors and watch the doors to the outside. Soon as you get somebody coming in, you pace your orbit to come in behind them - they scan and...bingo.

Looping in the lobby can look pretty odd after awhile. There's only so long you can appear to be texting. If the people aren't coming to you, you need to go to them.

My cadillac plan has always been the gift shop. Lobbys with gift shops or cafes are people magnets. You go in, scope the merch and wait for a fellow worker. Soon as you have one, you can liesurely pick something up - cup of coffee, whatever - and you're in line behind them. From then on, it's a snap to fumble with your wallet and purchase all the way to the security door. Cup of coffee, an open wallet and a pen in your mouth and you don't get a second look as people hold the the door for you.

But all that's ending. The professional worry-warts in CorpWord have dialed up the paranoia to end drafting once and for all.

Turnstile access. One admission per badge - no exceptions. It even weighs you so you can't have two people go through at a time.

My co-worker with a seeing eye dog has been consulted about how they will get through (perhaps the dog will get their own badge).

But no more drafting.

Frankly, I don't care all that much. I'm sort of a roll with it kind of person. The satisfaction of an elegant draft aside - there's no upside to forgetting your badge. I've drilled it into my routine so arriving without a badge is a freak occurrance these days - but I do have to wonder...

...What the hell prompted this level of door security? I mean, single admission per badge will slow things down. I'm sure they will do their best, but it's hard to compete with an open door.

It's their building and their liability, but jeez - why now? You'd think there'd be better ways to spend the bucks.

Bow your head for the Montasaurus

Ms. No-H has lost a buddy.

Obama on transparency:

Fail.

Late edit: TPM reports the White House has reversed themselves on this one issue. It remains to be seen if the list of people was comprehensive, or an edited list.

Later edit: Just goes to show that you never take the first draft seriously. It was an edited list, and not the actual records.

CJR has the goods:

...it certainly isn’t right to say that “Obama quickly reversed their decision.” As to the “quickly” part, it’s worth noting that the Secret Service originally denied the request on July 7, not yesterday. But ,far more importantly, Obama hasn’t decided to reverse anything. All he’s decided to do is voluntarily release the most pertinent information that would have been contained in the records CREW requested. And while that counts for something, he didn’t reverse the decision to deny the actual request; FOIA requests are for records, not for the information that may be contained within those records, as CREW points out a letter they sent in response to Craig today.

I hate motivational speakers

I do. Hate them, that is.

To a degree that is at once corporeal and elusive.

It's too easy to focus on the charlatans (Think and Grow Rich! or The Secret) or any of the endless parade of buy-my-book hucksters.

How they emphatically speak their nonsense as if it were God's own gospel. How they charge up a roomful of hopefuls, bill them for the experience, then loose them on a world that will subsequently swallow them whole.

I hate these people. Faith healers at least have to ask you to believe in magic - motivational speakers would have you believe their message is scientific. It's been tested.

Look! A testimonial! Thousands of paying customers cannot be wrong!

The more challenging targets for me - are the ones who sound reasonable. People like Marcus Buckingham.

This morning, our group is asked to watch a video of his called Trombone Player Wanted.

Buckingham. Note the off-center focal point.

And it's maddeningly great.

High production values, charismatic speaker, good soundtrack, engaging subplot in the background imagery.
Worst of all - that tried and true formula - a central message that is simple and doesn't promise the world.

This might work for you - why not give it a try?

Yes, why not?

So, there you are, asking yourself - am I just the kind of cynic who will reject good advice solely on the basis of how it was delivered? or am I the kind of person who would follow the advice of a slick motivational speaker?

And so while I'm fumbling for the familiar words: charlatan, bullsh!t, etc. I'm still psyched.

And I hate that - either I'm a complete fool, staring into the open maw of corporate reality with a big dopey smile on my face - or I'm dismissing a viewpoint because its author looked too rehearsed during their anecdote about confronting their father?

Of course mindset has a lot to do with success - who doubts that?

I'm of the opinion that self censorship is the biggest professional limitation. They'll say no, so I won't ask.

My job, I spend hours asking for the unlikely and being told no. And I still keep asking. And it gets really tiresome. When I catch myself holding back, I feel like a complete sell out. So I go back out and pitch more crazy.

But there aren't a lot of rewards for that kind of approach. It is hard to watch bad design be laid down in stone - but we are asked to do what good we can.

Buckingham is telling us that we should focus on our strengths and stop focusing on stuff we suck at. It makes you wonder - what the hell am I good at? and who would pay me to focus on that?

And a motivational speaker that makes me wonder is particularly infuriating.
It's just so much easier to loathe them reflexively, en masse.

Get back with the quacks where you belong.

Wambach nets 100

Things suck all over - but at least one thing's right in the world:

Abby Wambach has 100 goals in a USA uniform.

Scoreline - July 20, 2009
USA: 1
Wambach 79'
Canada: 0

Welcome back, Abby. Nicely done.

Now bring us home some silverware.

Lt. Colonel Ralph Peters' version of supporting the troops

(Via TPM)

You gotta be sh!tting me.

Fox News analyst Lt. Col. Peters is asked to weigh in on how the US military should react to the capture of a US soldier by the Taleban. At first, he starts out okay:

I want to stress we need to wait until all the facts are in to make a final judgment.

And then he proceeds accuse the captured soldier of being a deserter. Then implies that this soldier deserves their current predicament.

Apparently his version of waiting until the facts are in is to crucify this soldier on national television:

We know this private is a liar, we're not sure if he's a deserter, but the media needs to hit the pause button and not portray this guy as a hero.

The Fox reader, Julie - appears startled by this response and tries to steer him back to what should the military will do to get him back.

But Col. Peters will not be deflected from his crazy.

Peters: I want to be clear - If when the facts are in we find out that there's some convoluted chain of events he really was captured by the Taleban, I'm with him.

But if he walked away from his post and his buddies in wartime - I don't care how hard it sounds. As far as I'm concerned the Taleban can save a lot of legal hassles and legal bills.

Fox Reader: Alright Lt. Colonel Ralph Peters, thank you very very much. regardless of what the situations is, we don't want to see any US soldier in harm's way. And we hope he gets out of there safely. He's an American, he's one of ours. Thank-

Peters: Julie, Think about his buddies, think about his buddies.

Fox Reader: -And of course everyone who's over there in his group. Thank you very much...for talking to us.

Yes, thank you for trashing a US service member who is currently being held by the enemy. Whose name is known, whose parents are desperate for his release.

Thank you for that. Now get back to whatever sadistic pastime you use to pass the time between your televised bouts of insanity.

What the freaking hell?

Selling life preservers to the drowning

The NYT has another of those stories sure to get the blood boiling.

Back to Business - A second act in the mortgage disaster
Some of the very people who made a killing in subprime mortgages are now offering loan modifications for desperate homeowners.

In the vast sea of drowning mortgage holders, there's money to be made in selling them loan modifications.

Sadly, the same parasites who sold the orginal loans are among the first to market - and all they seem to be selling is hype.

Samples:

 “Our job was to get the money in and then we’re done,” said Paul Pejman, a former sales agent who worked out of FedMod’s two-story headquarters in Irvine, Calif. He recounted his experience, he said, because “I really feel bad.”

“I had people calling me crying, and we were telling them, ‘You can pay me or you can lose your house,’ ” Mr. Pejman said. “People were giving me every dime they had, opening credit cards. But I never saw one client come out of it with a successful loan modification.”

and

[FedMod's] three original partners brought in Mr. Anz to gain a crucial asset: his law license. Having a lawyer in charge enabled them to market their venture as a law firm and thus collect upfront payments under California rules.

“[FedMod partner] Jeff [Broughton] asked me how I could, for lack of a better word, legitimize it,” Mr. Anz said.

...

“Our big sales pitch was that an attorney could do a better job with your loan modification,” Mr. Pejman said. “If you told them these were basically washed-up people from the mortgage industry, or just people sending in paperwork, they would say, ‘Well, why bother? I might as well do this myself.’ ”

He went on: “It was misleading to the client. Attorneys never touched those files.”

and

A FedMod agent confidently described how his company could cut their monthly payments from $1,200 to $532, [FedMod customer] Mr. Garland recalled. But first, he had to pay a $995 “retainer fee.”

This was nearly as much as Mr. Garland earned in two weeks. Dental bills were piling up for his three children. He was behind on his utilities.

“I told him, ‘We have $1,200 left to make our mortgage payment, and if we give that money to you, we’re going to get further behind,’ ” Mr. Garland recalled. “He said, ‘Go ahead and make the $995 payment, because once you’re under our plan, the bank can’t foreclose on you.’ ”

After several follow-up calls from the agent, Mr. Garland paid. Then, months passed with no contact from FedMod, he said. He left countless messages seeking updates, demanding a refund. His lender foreclosed on his house, scheduling a sale for Aug. 26.

“This guy hounds me for the $1,000, and then as soon as I pay him he disappears,” Mr. Garland said.

The FTC has sued FedMod, and it is currently barred from receiving new customers - but if ever there was a business worthy of a perp-walk....

Seriously.

Taibbi on Goldman's bucks: Neither fair, nor square

Taibbi's on a tear again:

Goldman makes insane bets, runs wild on AIGFP’s house idiot Joe Cassano for a while, sticking him with $20 billion in risk, and when it all went to shit — as it inevitably had to — they drove a big stake through AIG’s heart and got the government to step in and pay them off using our money. How’s that for market capitalism? Just like Adam Smith drew it up, right? They’re just smart guys!

Read the whole thing.

(H/t The Big Picture)

And - Yes, I'm getting tired of bad economic news, too.

So here are dorky things I found on the interwebs:

• Snipers deployed to protected fairy penguins BBC
• Germany opens 'Nazi' gnome case - BBC
• Lawsuit claims Apple, Mafia sent threats via iPod - C|Net
• Company Denies its Robots Feed on the Dead - Danger Room
  

Ta ta...

Nerds + car + corporate backing = font

This is obviously a ploy by Toyota to get some play, but it's still pretty funny.

It answers the completely-not burning question of: what if you used a car to write letters, then used the resulting patterns to create an open type font?



Now you know.

The inevitable first ruling on torture evidence

Shows up at last:

In the first ruling of its kind, a federal judge on Friday barred the federal government from using any statements made by a Guantanamo Bay detainee since he was captured in Afghanistan more than six years ago, finding that all of them were “a product of torture.”  U.S. District Judge Ellen Segal Huvelle did so two days after the Obama Administration notified her that it would not oppose the efforts by lawyers for Mohammed Jawad to block the use of any of those statements as a basis for keeping him in captivity.

(Via SCOTUS blog)

Kindle's yankback functionality is Orwellian

...in more ways than one.

This morning, hundreds of Amazon Kindle owners awoke to discover that books by a certain famous author had mysteriously disappeared from their e-book readers. These were books that they had bought and paid for—thought they owned.

But no, apparently the publisher changed its mind about offering an electronic edition, and apparently Amazon, whose business lives and dies by publisher happiness, caved. It electronically deleted all books by this author from people’s Kindles and credited their accounts for the price.

You want to know the best part? The juicy, plump, dripping irony?

The author who was the victim of this Big Brotherish plot was none other than George Orwell. And the books were “1984” and “Animal Farm.”

I'd add something, but really what more can you say...?

(H/t TPM)

HPSCI to investigate violations of National Security Act

No he di-un't...

Oh yes, he di-ud!

After careful consideration and consultation with the Ranking Minority Member and other members of the Committee, the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence will conduct an investigation into possible violations of federal law, including the National Security Act of 1947
-Rep. Silvestre Reyes

This is the same man who feebed on FISA, but at least a ball is rolling in the right direction.

And- as wiser heads (including Sen. Whitehouse) have pointed out - the Nat'l Security Act does not have an enforcement clause for violations.

(H/t emptywheel)

I'm with Phil

 This is pretty freaking cool.

Not that people won't keep saying we never went there - but it's just cool to see the pictures.

(Via Bad Astronomy)

SecDef Gates: We are equipping ourselves for wars we aren't fighting

(Via Danger Room)

SecDef Gates has been trying to pare down the extravagant spending on weapons better suited for a clash of nations in favor of equipment better suited to the wars we happen to be fighting right now.

It's a thankless, uphill slog - but I'm cheering for the man.

When was the last time you heard a Defense Secretary talk like this?

...after September 11th, some things did change. The base defense budget – not counting spending for the wars – increased by some 70 percent over the next eight years.

...when all was said and done, the way the Pentagon selected, evaluated, developed, and paid for major new weapons systems and equipment did not fundamentally change – even after September 11th.

Indeed, the kinds of equipment, programs, and capabilities needed to protect our troops and defeat the insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan were not the highest priority of much of the Defense Department, even after several years of war.

He points out that while other nations are buying new weapons and modernizing their forces:

...other nations have learned from the experience of Saddam Hussein’s military in the first and second Iraq wars – that it is ill-advised, if not suicidal, to fight a conventional war head-to-head against the United States: fighter-to-fighter, ship-to-ship, tank-to-tank. They also learned from a bankrupted Soviet Union not to try to outspend us or match our overall capabilities.

He then takes a good hard whack at the F-22 figher jet:

...the F-22 is clearly a capability we do need – a niche, silver-bullet solution for one or two potential scenarios – specifically the defeat of a highly advanced enemy fighter fleet. The F-22, to be blunt, does not make much sense anyplace else in the spectrum of conflict. Nonetheless, supporters of the F-22 lately have promoted its use for an ever expanding list of potential missions. These range from protecting the homeland from seaborne cruise missiles to, as one retired general recommended on TV, using F-22s to go after Somali pirates who in many cases are teenagers with AK-47s – a job we know is better done by three Navy SEALs. These are examples of how far-fetched some of the arguments have become for a program that has cost $65 billion – and counting – to produce 187 aircraft, not to mention the thousands of uniformed Air Force positions that were sacrificed to help pay for it.

In light of all these factors, and with the support of the Air Force leadership, I concluded that 187 – the program of record since 2005, plus four more added in the FY 09 supplemental – was a sufficient number of F-22s and recommended as such to the president.

-and then he beats on the F-22's proponents, hard:

The reaction from parts of the Washington establishment has been predictable for many of the reasons I described before. The most substantive criticism is that completing the F-22 program means we are risking the future of U.S. air supremacy. To assess this risk, it is worth looking at real-world potential threats and assessing the capabilities that other countries have now or in the pipeline.

Consider that by 2020, the United States is projected to have nearly 2,500 manned combat aircraft of all kinds. Of those, nearly 1,100 will be the most advanced fifth generation F-35s and F-22s. China, by contrast, is projected to have no fifth generation aircraft by 2020. And by 2025, the gap only widens. The U.S. will have approximately 1,700 of the most advanced fifth generation fighters versus a handful of comparable aircraft for the Chinese. Nonetheless, some have portrayed this scenario as a dire threat to America’s national security.

His central theme is one that I wish were central to discussions of our wars in Afghanistan and Iraq (emphasis mine):

The grim reality is that with regard to the budget we have entered a zero-sum game. Every defense dollar diverted to fund excess or unneeded capacity – whether for more F-22s or anything else – is a dollar that will be unavailable to take care of our people, to win the wars we are in, to deter potential adversaries, and to improve capabilities in areas where America is underinvested and potentially vulnerable. That is a risk that I will not take and one that I cannot accept.

Amen.

I have my doubts that a presidential veto threat is going to reverse the behavior of Congress - but at least somebody's trying.

And speaking of things your government doesn't want you to know...

(Via ProPublica)

The WSJ is reporting that Bank of America has been given a "memorandum of understanding" which:

[R]equires the bank to revamp its risk and liquidity management as well as overhaul its board to have a majority of new directors.

Here's the kicker - it was ordered to do this back in May.

Here's the WSJ:

Rarely disclosed publicly, the so-called memorandum of understanding gives banks a chance to work out their problems without the glare of outside attention. Financial institutions that fail to address deficiencies can be slapped with harsher penalties that include a publicly announced cease-and-desist order.

Whereas Madoff's punishment is a media free-for-all. BofA's scolding with be handled with the utmost discretion.

Adorable.

Have gun, will travel

(Via TPM)

At last we have one: a credible reason the undisclosed CIA program wasn't shared with congress.

The finding imposed no geographical limitations on the agency's actions, and intelligence officials have said that they were not obliged to notify Congress of each operation envisaged under the directive.

NATO: Choppers on a shoestring

(Via Danger Room)

A heavy-lift helicopter, contracted by NATO, was shot down by the Taliban on Tuesday near the town of Sangin, in Afghanistan’s Helmand province. Reports indicate a rocket-propelled grenade brought down the 30-ton, Moldovan Mi-26 chopper ...the biggest operational model in the world.

...

A chronic shortage of suitable NATO choppers means the alliance contracts a large proportion of its front-line air logistics to civilian firms. When I was at the Dutch base in Uruzgan in 2007, a civilian Mi-26 was a regular visitor, alongside U.S. C-130s and Dutch CH-47 Chinooks.

British journalist Richard North points out that the destroyed chopper’s operator, Pecotox Air, has been banned from European airspace, due to safety violations — and has also been implicated in a weapons smuggling probe. The shot-down Mi-26 was reportedly hovering over Sangin to deliver “humanitarian aid,” despite major fighting in the area for three weeks now. North believes the humanitarian claim is a front — that the Mi-26 was actually delivering supplies to a British base when it was hit, but the British government wants to distance itself from Pecotox, and from the broader lack of helicopters.

The Brits are contracting with shady, private companies to get their supplies in Afghanistan airlifted...?

Makes you wonder.

Public option: a useless piece of ground

Joseph Paduda over at Managed Care Matters has a fascinating post about the much debated public plan option being offered as part of the Democrat's health care bill.

His take? As designed, the public plan will have no effect on how competitive the health care market is.

I watched HHS Sec. Kathleen Sebelieus on the Daily Show last night talk about how a public plan would have lower administrative costs and would therefore be able to put pressure on public plans to lower theirs.

It sounds good - but here's the rub according to Paduda (emphasis in original):

A public plan would begin with zero members. And zero bargaining power. The big health plans have lots of members, which is how they convince providers to agree to discount their services. Without volume, no discount.

...

The opponents of a public plan are equally confused, claiming it would damage the free market, adding unfair competition. The reality is that in most areas, there is no free market in health insurance; markets are already monopsonies.

...would a new governmental plan have an advantage over, say, Blue Cross of Alabama, which has market share ranging from 67 percent in Tuscaloosa to 95 percent in Gadsden? Or Blue Cross of Arkansas, with share from 63 percent in Hot Springs to 97 percent in Texarkana? Or the two dominant health plans in Ohio, with combined share ranging from 46 percent to 80 percent?

It wouldn't; in fact it would be an uphill climb on a very icy slope for a governmental plan to reach market parity, much less market dominance in most of the country's MSAs.

...

Yes, a governmental plan could try to force docs to accept lower fees, and physicians could and would tell the Feds to pound sand. There is precedence for this - try and find a doc who will accept Medicaid in New York. Recall the revolt of physicians last summer when they were facing a dramatic cut in Medicare reimbursement. Physicians do not have to work with any health plan - governmental or private.

Illuminating, to say the least.

Now if only someone would put these concerns to the dems in a public hearing...

(H/t to E)

Trek and Waltz

Two things:

1) To those that care - I have finally managed to see the newest Star Trek. That is all.


2) I finally managed to see Waltz With Bashir.

I don't believe I will ever see a more beautiful movie about mass murder.

Visually, this movie is more than I would have expected. People have gotten pretty good at making movie trailers - I'd argue they are usually better than the movie itself. Waltz with Bashir's trailer hits all the right notes for me: Great musical intro, arresting visuals, exotic war setting - and a bit of a mystery, defined by the filmmaker himself in the voice over:

After the 1982 invasion of Lebanon, I lost my memory. Now in order to remember, I am looking for those who can never forget.

The animation style of this movie is unlike any movie I've seen. Persepolis has a similar flow, but the realism in Bashir is really seductive. Their lighting effects, zooms and panning will doubtless show up in countless imitators. Waltz does something new - at least for me.

The story is largely based on interviews with veterans of the Lebanon war. You are introduced to a person being interviewed in the present day and then the animation gradually illustrates their story.

Lebanon was a genuine failure for Israel - and it's clear that it is haunting them in the way that national failures do. One of the roles art is truly suited for is broaching painful subjects that, brought up any other way, are too offensive to discuss. People can engage with the art, which will then withdraw until the intended topic dominates the conversation. A useful trap.

Bashir is up front about where it is headed. This is about the Sabra and Shatila massacres.

On September 16, 1982 Phalangist militias, benefiting from either Israeli aid or Israeli apathy moved into two Palestinian camps and spent three days raping and killing anyone they got their hands on.

It has become almost a cliché to describe mass murder using the phrase "killing men, women and children," but those are the only words available. And they are of course inadequate. They didn't just kill young boys, they filled alleys chest deep with them. They killed babies, young girls, and pregnant women. Estimates of the number of dead are fiercely debated but run from 300 to over 3,000.

Sabra and Shatila are the ultimate destination of Waltz With Bashir, which is only fitting. An event like that cannot be a backdrop, or mere backstory.You are going there and Bashir labors long to make the experience gripping and visually appealing. As cinematic spectacle, Bashir's many vignettes are an amazing experience.

The combat sequences have an intensity that rival Saving Private Ryan - where you wince when bullets smack the pavement.

As pure storytelling, however Bashir falters. It succeeds in luring you to the scene of an unimaginable crime - and then it leaves you there. It was likely the filmmaker's intent all along - but to simply stop at the camps makes the story seem unfinished.

Perhaps that is the larger point - but having been swept up in the rest of the film - I don't feel it was out of place to hope for more.

Worth seeing, though.

Wating on the Aftershock

Economist types keep saying we should not believe all the talk of upturn and recovery - that the looming tide of option ARM mortgages dwarfs subprime and hasn't yet hit the beach.

I've been waiting for the probing analysis of what that means. Yes, it will be bad - but presumably it will be different from subprime because the financial sector has learned how dangerous these types of loans can be. I certainly do not believe that they have learned their lesson - but presumably they will react differently to this new batch of financial detonations. Regardless of their cynical calculations, they should not be surprised this time.

This will be bad and they know it.

So, figuring out how bad this will be would seem to be a vital question. Who does it hit and how hard?

According to the WSJ - its going to beat hell out of the same boom markets: Florida and California.
CJR's Ryan Chittum observes:

So when these notes “reset” into normal ARMs where the principal has to like, you know, actually be paid off, these people are going to walk away in droves. Not only will the house be worth half what it was when the loan was signed, the loan itself will have increased in size during that time. It’s a recipe for destruction.

That covers half of the transaction - the borrowers in the boom markets should brace for another round of walkaways and foreclosures. The other half would be who owns these loans?

WSJ puts the spotlight on one lender in particular.

San Francisco-based Wells Fargo holds a mountain of Pick-A-Pays, having acquired $115 billion of the loans in its purchase of teetering Wachovia Corp., which it agreed to buy late last year.

According to Wells, those loans are worth 93.2 billion - which is already a $20 billon hit - and they claim they're handling it.

Somehow that doesn't fill me with confidence.

And is it too much to expect a higher visibility for something that could catapult us into a capital D depression?

Undisclosed Death Squads vs the Patriots-Kill-the-Bad-Guys program

The confirmation that (as should have been obvious) the Bush administration's numerous references to the surveillance program called the TSP (for "Trust us, our Surveillance is Perfectly justified") was a narrowly-parsed term designed to conceal the existence of more extensive programs has launched a new round of obfuscation masquerading as revelation.

The WSJ is quoting "former intelligence officials" as claiming that the

...Central Intelligence Agency initiative terminated by Director Leon Panetta was an attempt to carry out a 2001 presidential authorization to capture or kill al Qaeda operatives...

Marcy Wheeler doesn't buy that - and I hope she's not the only one.

Aside from the near ubiquitous drone strikes, which seem to be fully acknowledged and non-controversial, there have been enough personal strikes against al Qaeda figures that appear likely to have been assassinations, that for all intents and purposes, it appears we are assassinating al Qaeda figures.

She goes on to point out that the executive order that purports to ban assassinations can (if you believe the Bush administration) be freely ignored at the whim of the president, without altering the orignal order, or notifying anyone.

Somehow, I don't think Leon Panetta and the Dems are going to the mat over whether or not the CIA should be hunting al Qaeda. That's a little too tidy - don't you think?

Much like the TERRORIST suveilance program was advanced as a perfectly justified (never mind how often we keep hearing how many of our private conversations were hoovered up) we are now being told that the previously undisclosed initiative was intended to kill the bad guys.

Of course it was - but something tells me it isn't as cut and dried as that. Can we at long last avoid surrendering to the terms of those who wish to mislead us? Can we define something by what we know it to be, rather than what its defenders would prefer we call it?

Pretty please?

Late edit: the spin's velocity keeps increasing. Here's the AP parroting the same line (emphasis mine):

A secret intelligence program canceled by CIA Director Leon Panetta in June was meant to find and then capture or kill al-Qaida leaders at close range rather than target them with air strikes that risked civilian casualties, government officials with knowledge of the operation said Monday.

Yes, the program that was kept from Congress - caused such a flap in the DOJ - and was immediately halted by the incoming CIA director was designed to kill our enemies and save innocent life.

I'm totally buying that at face value.

Regulators: let us do our job...

...you know the one we haven't been doing.

Here's CJR's Ryan Chittum:

Getting a Consumer Financial Protection Agency passed is going to be hard enough, given how the still-extremely-powerful banking industry has vowed to fight it to the death. Now, Reuters reports that other regulators are trying to smother the agency in the cradle.

One of the only things that can rival the ferocity of a banker protecting his lucre is a bureaucrat protecting his turf. So look out.

It's a good read.

Targets wanted, will pay cash

See if you have the same reaction to this as I do:

The American and Pakistani intelligence services credit U.S. unmanned aircraft with decimating the ranks of terrorist and insurgent operatives in Pakistan. “Very frankly, it’s the only game in town in terms of confronting and trying to disrupt the Al Qaeda leadership,” CIA director Leon Panetta said in May.

But how the killer drones find their targets has been a matter of some dispute...

The Taliban are claiming that the US is paying informants to drop infrared beacons near houses where militants are located.

Here's one informant they claimed to catch:

In April, 19 year-old Habibur Rehman made a videotaped “confession” of planting such devices, just before he was executed by the Taliban as an American spy. “I was given $122 to drop chips wrapped in cigarette paper at Al Qaeda and Taliban houses,” he said. If I was successful, I was told, I would be given thousands of dollars.”

But Rehman says he didn’t just tag jihadists with the devices. “The money was good so I started throwing the chips all over. I knew people were dying because of what I was doing, but I needed the money,” he added. Which raises the possibility that the unmanned aircraft — America’s key weapons in its covert war on Pakistan’s jihadists and insurgents — may have been lead to the wrong targets.

Now, it's fair to point out that this confession was likely beaten out of this man - and that his captors have every motivation to discredit US efforts in the region - but really:

Given how badly paying bounties for Al Qaeda members played out in the past, you have to wonder: What kind of verification are they getting for these strikes?

How certain are they that their informants are targeting bad guys? At least with detainees, you get time to fix your mistakes.

(H/t Danger Room)

Least essential headlines, Vol I

Courtesy of Jen Pereira and Lee Ferran of ABC News:

Jackson's Kids Not First Famous Family to Mourn in Public - July 8, 2009

Way to jump on the public's need to know, kids.

Today only: 1 through 9

At 12:34:56 July 8, 09 (today) we’ll have the only 123456789 situation to happen for the next 100 years.

Bask in the history.

ONN gets CNN expats?

I was watching this Onion bit on the first prescription depressant for the overly cheerful:



-when I realized that the "anchor" is former CNN talking head Bobbie Battista!

Dude, hard times... although its probably better for her credibility.

He said. They said. He said back

Taibbi responds to Goldmann Sachs non-rebuttal to his previous article.

Nice.

(H/t The Big Picture)

WaPo: Fail

Talk about sh!tting yourself.

Wall Street has learned a lesson...

...and that lesson is: they can get away with murder:

Goldman Sachs employees are on pace for a $673,000 payday, according to the WSJ average of analysts’ estimates.  

According to CJR's Ryan Chittum, "that would set an all-time record."