Unshred America

Wimpy Competitors

2012-01-29T22:09:00.000-08:00

A long time ago, and seemingly oh-so-far away, the United States of America had the highest high school and college graduation rate in the world. But that was 1970, and today, we have ignominiously fallen to 21st in high school graduation, 15th in college completion… and we’re still dropping. If it were just the rising cost of education combined with the recession, perhaps that would be an

“Nein”!

2012-01-28T22:14:00.000-08:00

Recently-appointed managing director of the International Monetary Fund, Christine Lagarde (above), drilled into the German-led press for strong austerity measures across the Eurozone, noting that without a combination of government spending directed at growth, such deficit-reduction measures could send Europe – and perhaps the global economy – into more than just the expected European

Government by Militia – Nigeria

2012-01-27T22:05:00.000-08:00

Nigeria is “the second largest film industry in the world in terms of number of annual film productions, placing it ahead of the United States and behind the Indian film industry.” Wikipedia. It is also a major oil and gas producing nation, heavily reliant on fossil fuels: “As of 2000, oil and gas exports accounted for more than 98% of export earnings and about 83% of federal government

Government by Militia – Kurdistan

2012-01-26T17:35:00.000-08:00

With the heat from the exhaust pipes of departing American forces still lingering in the air, the world has focused on the escalating tensions in Iraq between majority Shiites (in the al-Maliki government) and increasingly disenfranchised Sunnis, who have pulled out of the government as the Shiite-led regime seeks to arrest the most prominent Sunni leader and has invited the militia forces

Government by Militia - Brazil

2012-01-25T20:38:00.000-08:00

There is a very fine line between violent gangs and militia who rise up to step into replace an ineffective government or are sucked into the vortex of a political vacuum where leadership has absconded or been removed. The Mafia had its roots in providing locals with governing structures in old Sicily. A militia that is wildly successful and completely replaces an incumbent government

We Hate You, We Really Hate You!

2012-01-23T21:13:00.000-08:00

As increasing numbers of Americans slip out of the middle class into the “low income or less” socioeconomic class (according to the 2010 Census, that is now half of us), as the number of homes in foreclosure or underwater soars to record heights, and as the number of people who have simply given up looking for work hits a level we have never seen before, the Washington Post-ABC shows

Biosafety Level 4

2012-01-22T00:06:00.000-08:00

It is said to be the ultimate containment system for deadly and highly contagious agents; a biosafety level 4 laboratory (the one at Fort Detrick, MD is pictured above) is where scientists experiment on and store the most deadly infectious agents of disease that they want to examine. Both Russia and the United States, for example, store the active small pox virus in such facilities.

Let’s Get Clinical

2012-01-20T18:23:00.000-08:00

Nobody is going to tell the world that it needs more abortions. As much as we argue about “right to life” vs. a “right to choose,” and notwithstanding China’s acceptance of abortion as a mechanism to implement its “one child” per couple mandate, induced abortion is never pretty, never free from emotional struggle and never pleasant. The moral and religious overtones can complicate an

I-ran So Far

2012-01-17T19:05:00.000-08:00

There are several stories in the news of late that all wrap around Iran’s escalating nuclear weapons threat. I’ve already hammered the risks about our possible responses to their closing the threat to Strait of Hormuz (if the Western allies escalate their economic sanctions and boycott Iranian oil) in my Risk of Confrontation December 31st blog. Iran’s now also demanding that U.S. naval

Hot Texas Tea

2012-01-15T19:24:00.001-08:00

With about 4.5 million public school students (using about 48 million textbooks, second only to California), when Texas modifies its textbook requirements, many of those changes become standard issue for the rest of the United States. Academic publishers cannot afford to create alternative variations for different states – a lowest common denominator effect. The Texas State Board of

“Greed, for Lack of a Better Term, is Good” Gordon Gekko in the motion picture “Wall Street”

2012-01-14T16:53:00.000-08:00

Whether we like it or not, if capitalism fails, so do most Western democracies, including our own. But as the financial collapse that continues to surround us proves rather substantially, an unregulated contemporary financial sector generally does what’s good for senior managers (and occasionally shareholders) but rarely takes into consideration any social or non-legal ethical consequences,

The Fracks of Life

2012-01-10T19:52:00.000-08:00

As we seek certain forms of energy – from traditional fossil fuels to alternative forms of power generation such as geothermal – we have to play with subsurface pressures. In some cases we inject liquids into the earth to force out pockets of natural gas to be used in power generation. “Invented by Halliburton in the 1940s, [“fracking” or hydraulic fracturing] involves injecting a mixture of

Growth?

2012-01-08T21:01:00.000-08:00

According to an article in the prestigious Economist (forwarded to me by my friend Dennis Duitch) looking at what the world will likely produce in this coming year: “2012 may be the year of self-induced stagnation… How grim will depend on how far, and for how long, politicians persist with misguided policies, since America is unlikely to see big political compromises in a

Dribbling through Islam Dunk

2012-01-07T23:04:00.000-08:00

We have engaged in two Middle Eastern wars to grapple with terrorist and terrorist-supporting states, focused heavily on al Qaeda and their less-than-clandestine-supporters, the Taliban. We have proselytized against other groups, with which we have pledged we will not deal, ranging from the Palestinian Hamas Party (ensconced in Gaza and seemingly dedicated to the destruction of Israel) and

How High is My Valley

2012-01-06T21:34:00.001-08:00

“After 10 years of US-led war in Afghanistan, the country remains the world’s leading opium supplier, responsible for 90 percent of the global supply, according to the United Nations… The latest Afghanistan Opium Survey by the UN Office of Drugs and Crime found that opium cultivation rose by 7 percent in 2011 compared with [2010]. Opium production also climbed 61 percent [in

My Representative Can Beat Your Representative… and Me!

2012-01-05T22:58:00.000-08:00

How do you feel about a Congress that continues to vote for and support tax relief for the highest earners in America, even as the US Census tells us that half of all Americans are now categorized as low income or less? Would you feel any different if the earnings of those elected to Congress were among the major beneficiaries of such taxation largesse? Try these facts on for size: “

1984 is Back – with a Vengeance

2012-01-04T22:54:00.000-08:00

With every technological gain, there is often a concomitant sacrifice. Storing data in highly efficient file servers used to take rooms or entire buildings with banks of air-cooled machines to store what so many people can do in their own homes today. An average tablet computer has way more computing power than every electronic device in the rocket that carried men to the Moon in 1969. File

What’s Wrong with this Picture?

2012-01-03T20:34:00.000-08:00

We live in a very different United States of America than the one I was born in. Republican President Dwight Eisenhower tried to warn us back in the 50s and 60s (see my October 5th blog: Dwight David Eisenhower & the Military Industrial Complex), but in the end, the power elites of this nation rule fairly completely to the exclusion of the interests of the majority of Americans. Both the

How We Do Drone On!

2012-01-02T20:42:00.000-08:00

In older times, military surrogates were usually mercenaries hired by one side to fight against the “enemy” on the other. Oh sure, “surrogate wars” were/are often fought between the puppets of greater powers rather than risk more direct confrontations: the squabbling factions within Vietnam represented communists backed by the USSR and China against “elected” governmental and pro-Western

Women, Work and Power

2012-01-01T20:21:00.000-08:00

The great and continuing recession is fundamentally altering the very nature of our workforce. With compensation and job security falling, with pension benefits teetering and healthcare insurance zooming upwards, not working in a paying job is no longer a choice for most adults. Except for the rarified rich, those who aren’t working are either disabled, retired or involuntarily excluded from

Risk of Confrontation

2011-12-31T13:45:00.001-08:00

Iran is hell-bent on accelerating and implementing their nuclear program (with a ray of discussed later), one that seems to have weapons capability at its core, notwithstanding their claims of only peaceful intentions. “But a controversial report challenges the Iranians’ claim. On Nov. 8, 2011, United Nations weapons inspectors released a trove of new evidence that they say makes a ‘

When You’re a Jet…

2011-12-30T21:40:00.000-08:00

Bidding on U.S. military technology is hardly about the money; it’s about the technology, and if you think that a government vendor bidding on a potential new weapons system is stuck with the dollar cap set out in the bid that may win the contract (where there even is such a dollar bid!!!), well… you would be wrong. The arguments against meeting their bids (again, if they even exist) given

Tyranny of the Majority

2011-12-29T18:18:00.000-08:00

In my opinion, what best differentiates the American democratic model from many other purportedly democratic forms of government is the protection of the minority from the tyranny of the majority. This wondrous feature wasn’t really an important part at the inception of the United States of America, but the first ten amendments to the Constitution, known at the Bill of Rights, were ratified

Kim Jong was Ill

2011-12-28T22:01:00.000-08:00

A stroke accelerated the inevitable death of a very sick Dear Leader, and whether the sobbing/ wailing in the streets is genuine (to many it is, because their only view of the world and their leader is totally controlled) or induced by self-inflicted pinching enhanced with onion juice doesn’t matter… Dear Leader is dearly departed. His cult status is no longer relevant anymore. But as a

France’s Big Christmas Turkey

2011-12-27T21:41:00.000-08:00

Everybody admits that a whole lot of Armenians died in and around 1915 at the hands of the Ottoman Empire (today’s Turkey), but while Armenians call it genocide, Turkey still claims it was self-defense against an internal enemy during wartime (WWI): “The key issue in this controversy is not the extent of Armenian suffering; both sides agree that several hundred thousand Christians [Armenians

To the Vectors Belong the Spoils

2011-12-26T20:52:00.001-08:00

When top policy-makers choose a direction based on some underlying “axiomatic” belief – a notion that a fundamental driving concept is the proper route in all circumstances – increasingly in times where complexity abounds, those vectors inevitably fall short. Example: don’t spend more than you make. Great concept, and we would never need loans, mortgages or incur any deficits. But economic

Convicting with Junk Science

2011-12-25T21:40:00.000-08:00

There have been a whole lot of criminal convictions in the United States based on what prosecutors and the courts have held to be “hard scientific evidence,” where the evidence was neither hard nor scientific. The original standard for the scientific systems in criminal trials – generally accepted and established principals of science – was established in 1923 in a District of Columbia

Putin on the Rich

2011-12-24T22:22:00.000-08:00

Russia is a mystery to many, often including the Russians themselves. Addicted to blaming the United States for as much as possible from decades of post-WWII Cold War mutual bashing, yet again, the Russian leadership is blaming America for the massive street protests alleging substantial election fraud as Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s party claimed an overwhelming victory (but with lower

Down to Earth Discoveries

2011-12-23T21:29:00.000-08:00

Somewhere, over the rainbow, way up high… and 600 light years from earth… sits a (maybe) bright blue-green planet where the average ambient temperature is a lovely 72 degrees Fahrenheit (22 degrees Celsius). While its radius is 2.4 times bigger than that of earth (hope you appreciate the gravity of that statement), Kepler-22b (what a romantic name, a veritable destination-beckoning resort

Is the U.S. “Relationship” with Pakistan Over?

2011-12-22T22:37:00.000-08:00

Despite the rantings of historically and culturally illiterate members Congress that an ungrateful Pakistan – with a military that has received billions from the U.S. over the years – should be deprived of that “aid” because of its duplicitous failure to support our “war on terror” (as they still describe our efforts), that central Asia nation remains an essential ingredient in regional

Never Fund a Bank without Strings

2011-12-21T20:50:00.001-08:00

Among the provisions in the 1933 federal statute – the Glass-Steagall Act – that created the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation was a provision preventing the same holding company from controlling both a commercial bank and an investment bank. The notion was to keep banks from being torn between their trading interests and the normal lending/savings business inherent in commercial banking

What Did We Learn from Iraq?

2011-12-20T20:31:00.000-08:00

As bombs blast away at random targets, mostly in Baghdad, as the Shiite Iraqi government we installed and Iran grow even closer together, exactly what did we learn about attacking this purported resting place of so many “weapons of mass destruction”… which were never found? As majority Shiites push and shove their way against the once ruling Sunni minority, who literally blast back. 4,500

Soar Like My Healthcare Costs

2011-12-19T22:55:00.000-08:00

“The Supreme Court announced [December 19th] that it will use an unprecedented week’s worth of argument time in late March to decide the constitutionality of President Barack Obama’s historic health care overhaul before the 2012 presidential elections.” Washington Post, December 19th. A full week of arguments never happens. With massive unemployment (where health insurance benefits, where

Throw Them All Out!

2011-12-18T21:11:00.000-08:00

The anti-incumbent mood in this country is mounting, just as exceptionally-well funded Congressional Super Political Action Committees are flooding the market with their messages, looking for the willing and compliant candidates to support, in an election year that will break all records for campaign money spent. Billionaires and ultra-conservative corporations, still blessed under Citizens

Separation Anxiety

2011-12-17T20:47:00.000-08:00

Back in 1967, City University of New York social psychology professor Stanley Milgam, with the efforts of 296 volunteers, showed how closely people from all over the earth were actually linked (the famous “six degrees of separation”): “In the experiment, Milgram sent several packages to 160 random people living in Omaha, Nebraska, asking them to forward the package to a friend or

Riot Gear

2011-12-16T22:02:00.000-08:00

The clothing and equipment carried by American police officers to quell civil disturbances has changed significantly over the years. While the tank-like water cannons we see in overseas footage are often the stuff of news footage about the Arab Spring are not standard issue here, the actually physical clothing and “stuff” that individual officers carry today has evolved significantly.

ICU

2011-12-14T20:40:00.000-08:00

The machinery needed to tap phones, peer around corners and through closed curtains or listen to distant conversations with crystal clarity is the stuff of terrorist hunters, police, spies and… just about anybody with the money to buy the equipment. Want your own drone, one that can fly over your target’s property, mimic a cellphone tower and intercept phone call and WiFi signals, while

He Was a Retiring Sort

2011-12-13T21:30:00.001-08:00

The fiscal winds are blowing cold in state capitols as legislators face the inevitable conclusion that their tax base and committed capital simply cannot handle the existing, much less the expected future, load of retiree benefits, both pensions and healthcare. Older state and municipal employees are smelling burning flesh in the air, hoping that it is not their own. While so many workers

“Airplanes Don’t Flap Their Wings”

2011-12-13T00:18:00.000-08:00

When inventors mirror, expand and “improve” on inherent abilities in nature, the general trend is to create functioning machines that are quite different from their inspirational counterparts in nature. Imagine a computer that forgot stuff or got angry easily. And sitting in an aircraft with flapping wings would have to be a pretty uncomfortable journey. The above quote pretty much says it

Arrested Development

2011-12-11T18:55:00.000-08:00

A Brooklyn cop became concerned that NYPD policies where no longer serving the public interest. “To document his concerns, he began carrying around a digital sound recorder, secretly recording his colleagues and superiors… He recorded precinct roll calls. He recorded his precinct commander and other supervisors. He recorded street encounters. He recorded small talk and stationhouse banter.

The Eye in the Sky

2011-12-10T22:14:00.000-08:00

Two American companies dominate the commercial satellite imagery business – Virginia-based GeoEye and Colorado-based DigiGlobe. DigiGlobe manages most of the work you see on Google Earth, but both companies are major providers to the U.S. government. The above image was taken of the recent Bangkok, Thailand floods, for example, by DigiGlobe. For those of us who have scoped out our home or

Ironically Isolated

2011-12-09T22:04:00.000-08:00

In 1588, Lord Howard of Effingham, with Sir Francis Drake as Vice Admiral, turned their badly outnumbered fleet to protect British shores from an attack from the massive Spanish Armada. Applying superior tactics and better-trained sailors, the Brits closed in for a most improbable kill: “With its superior maneuverability, the English fleet provoked Spanish fire while staying out of range

Won’t Happen in Their Lifetimes

2011-12-08T21:36:00.000-08:00

Japan is a country where no one really likes to rock the boat. Everything is alright. Don’t worry. We have it under control. A stagnant economy that has lingered for almost two decades, triggered long before the current recession, and the rather completely inept handling of the Daiichi nuclear plant debacle suggest otherwise. Every now and again, you get a story in the fading back pages

A Cold Winter

2011-12-07T19:29:00.000-08:00

Global warming is how nature seems to have responded to humankind’s excesses, but what we are doing to and feeling about each other suggests that the temperature is actually getting a lot colder. China is warning the United States against building a new military base in Australia: an expected 2,500 marines with appropriate air support to be based in Darwin. Islamists have a new mandate

Where the Wind Blows

2011-12-06T21:25:00.000-08:00

Economic priorities obviously change in a recession, particularly in a prolonged economic struggle that vainly attempts a return to what was there before. Nature doesn’t care. She is not governed by economic pressures. She does not care if the earth’s climate changes, if insects and disease move to new geographic zones where incumbent species are unprepared, if farmland dries out, water

Head Shots

2011-12-05T20:05:00.000-08:00

Professional boxers intentionally try to induce concussions in their opponents as the shortcut to victory – it’s called a knockout. But except for this extreme contact sport, professional sports (and their advanced high school and collegiate equivalents) are moving in a different direction. Even little things, like “heading” a soccer ball (literally using your head to direct the ball), are

Financial Aid(s)

2011-12-04T20:05:00.000-08:00

Okay, issue fans, let me run this one by you… and let me know what you think the answer is. Here are the facts: 1. A charitably-funded boarding school provides a superior education in a home-like environment for gifted students of limited financial means from pre-K though high school graduation (and has fulfilled this mission since 1909). The online description of the school notes: The

Historical Fears

2011-12-03T19:58:00.000-08:00

Fact: Germany is the most powerful financial engine behind the value of the euro and it is primarily that country’s credibility that keeps that currency from imploding from the downwards pressures inherent in weak currencies such as those in Greece, Italy and Spain. Fact: The weaker currency euro nations have stand-alone borrowing rates at between 6.5-15%, while Europe as a whole (if there

Oh Wow, Man!

2011-12-02T18:40:00.001-08:00

I have always been amused by presidential candidates and their statements about their “wilder” teenaged and early 20s years. Weed and other “substances.” My favorite is when Bill Clinton admitted he had tried marijuana but “didn’t inhale.” That contrasts very nicely with one current GOP candidate: “Former New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson… a Republican presidential candidate, has also

Americans Don’t Believe in the Own Future

2011-12-01T21:55:00.000-08:00

Or, it seems, their own children. We have absolutely no will to invest in our future if the budget cutting idiots in Washington are communicating their priorities to us properly. Military spending is number one. I guess because our armed forces have succeeded in achieving our goals with such regularity since WWII… NOT! Almost nothing to show for the big spend! But education is getting

Ho! Ho! Ho! Sort of!

2011-11-30T21:48:00.000-08:00

“I want an X-Box 360, an iPad2, and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3,” asks the little boy sitting on department store Santa’s knee as his recently laid-off dad winces in the background. Even poor kids believe that Santa is a dude with lots of stuff no matter how horrible things are their own families. With about one in four children in the United States living at or below the poverty line and

Upwardly Mobile in Pakistan

2011-11-29T22:17:00.000-08:00

When Pakistan arose from the ashes of a divided India in 1947 – a Muslim state artificially created is a bloody transition from British rule – the national army pretty much resembled the same local force organized during the Raj (British occupation). Professional soldiers recruited to fulfill a military need without strong ties to any fundamentalist Islamist faction. But that was before

3,500 People Later

2011-11-28T23:38:00.001-08:00

As 19 of the 21 nations comprising the Arab League voted on November 27th to apply economic sanctions against Syria and the Bashar a-Assad regime, two countries abstained: Iraq and Lebanon. Iran is not a member of the League, and this latest turn of events is viewed as a blow to Iran’s attempt to straddle the center of the Muslim world, and embrace nations that have traditionally been

Is the Harvard Business School the Root of All Financial Evil?

2011-11-27T21:55:00.000-08:00

Admittedly, a blog that tends to associate a litany of huge financial failures, from Enron to bundling subprime mortgages as A-rated gold and deciding to bail out the biggest baddest boyz on Wall Street, with Harvard’s esteemed Business School (HSB) has to be suspect when it is written by a Yale graduate, but hey, facts are facts. First, let’s look to a quote (executive summary) from a

Is There any Middle in the Middle Anymore?

2011-11-26T23:48:00.000-08:00

The Tea Party knows there’s something wrong with their lives, but they attribute it all to government interfering with the free market system. Most Democrats wonder what kind of tea is being consumed by their brethren to the right, because they haven’t seen a free market in America in the lifetimes of most of them. When the senior manager of a private equity fund, paid tens of millions

Messing with the Middle

2011-11-25T21:51:00.001-08:00

You have undoubtedly picked up on a couple of themes in many of my blogs, like “no investment in education, infrastructure and research = no future,” “our military expenditures – almost half of such allocations on earth – are bankrupting us,” or “America without a middle class just isn’t America,” but the linkage between such themes is staggering. As our middle class loses their

Austere Prospects

2011-11-24T22:35:00.000-08:00

I keep harping on Europe – understanding its turmoil and anger – because what is happening there is constantly slamming the markets and upside in the United States. A selfish perception, I admit, but to get Americans to care these days, issues usually have to hit them personally in the pocketbook or their religious solar plexus. I’ve blogged about the impact of Europe directly on us – from

Welcome to America with Open Arms

2011-11-23T21:25:00.000-08:00

46-year-old Detlev Hager was driving down a highway in Alabama, a state that recently passed – and prides itself on – one of the toughest immigration laws in the nation. If you are suspected of not being a legal resident when a police officer has reason to stop you or confront you, if you do not have sufficient proof of legal status, off you go to jail for violating those wonderful new laws.

Mail Supremacy No More II

2011-11-22T21:21:00.000-08:00

The US Postal Service is obviously in deep, deep trouble, even with Congressional subsidies and the even with the seemingly imminent Congressional reprieve eliminating the requirement of the USPS’ advancing $5.5 billion in future retiree health care benefits. Come fall of next year, the pressure to cut the losses may result in a Congressional mandate to turn off the lights and close the

Buying without Seeing or Sampling

2011-11-21T21:09:00.001-08:00

How many times have you ordered an item online without actually having seen it in person? What if it’s too big for your kitchen, doesn’t look good when you try it on, doesn’t fit or is a whole lot cheaper-looking in person? I am reminded of my first experience with such buying experience as a little boy when I succumbed to a children’s show selling Captain Video toys that included a special

Speaking without One Voice

2011-11-20T23:13:00.000-08:00

The Supreme Court (Citizens United vs. Federal Elections Commission) seemed to open the Pandora’s box by declaring that corporations and unions are “persons” entitled to First Amendment rights to free speech, allowing virtually unlimited spending to support back-door campaigning under guise of so-call political action committees (PACs, and the really big ones are called super-PACs). True,

E-gypt Us!

2011-11-19T20:47:00.000-08:00