The VA Must Have the Very Best Executives in Government!

On June 17^th, I addressed the perils of whistleblowers working in government, how the law really doesn’t protect them when they do their sworn duty and alert their superiors of serious misfeasance or malfeasance in their midst. It is, as I suggested, an unwritten code of conduct within too many government agencies that parallels the “don’t rat” code among convicted incarcerated felons. It costs the taxpayers billions, deprives agencies of their ability to deliver their mandate and demoralizes civil servants across the board. But there is a bigger consequence to making whistleblowing so difficult to do.

When a cost-cutting Congress makes it impossible to deliver the required government services many agencies are charged to provide, how can those supervisors – used to receiving nice bonus checks based on good annual evaluations – keep getting those stellar benefits? Simply, by lying… by misreporting statistics, putting matters and people that cannot meet required deadlines into statistical boxes where failure isn’t measured… or simply by transferring those elements about to fall into a “failure” category in a new category to start the clock over again. It’s the American way, and if anything, it defines a broad ethos in too many Veterans Administration medical facilities. At what other agencies is this the unwritten rule?

While the VA was saved from direct cuts during the Congress’ “Sequester,” unfortunately for the VA, they depend on too many other agencies, the military itself, for essential aspects of their operations. Those other supporting agencies were not spared cuts. Making old, worn out VA computers respond to excessive new demands, when they really need to be replaced, doesn’t come out of the VA budget. Too many medical services are military budget items and not VA budget items. So the system begins to implode as demand increases (more military and more dependents from recent wars, many entitled to lifetime benefits because of retirement or because of service-related injuries) without offsetting increases in support and funding.

But as reports continue to pour out of the VA, showing that as many as 10,000 veterans were/are waiting for treatment were hopelessly delayed. The VA itself has admitted that 23 veteran patients died because they were effectively denied necessary medical treatments, having been placed on waitlists with no real doctor or treatment ever being scheduled at all. But if you look at the VA supervisor evaluations, the VA would have to be one of the best administered government agencies ever!

“A top VA official confirmed to a congressional committee on [June 20^th] that 78% of VA senior managers qualified for extra pay or other compensation in fiscal year 2013 by receiving ratings of ‘outstanding’ or ‘exceeds fully successful,’ and that all 470 of them got ratings of "fully successful" or better.” CNN.com, June 20^th. “[And] at least 65 percent of the executives received performance awards, which averaged around $9,000. Only about 20 percent received the middle of the five ratings.

“Veterans Affairs officials sought to play down the data, saying that only 15 senior executives across the entire federal government had received either of the two lowest ratings in the most recent year — suggesting that the high ratings enjoyed by V.A. officials were not out of line with those of their counterparts at other government agencies.” New York Times, June 20^th. 15?! Out of tens of thousands?! This suggests that the bonus system needs to be replaced, that evaluations need some greater objective review and that supervisors who create or support false data within their departments should either be fired for incompetence or, if they really pushed the results into false categories, be required to face immediate criminal prosecution.

“But the data, which were a focus of a House Veterans Affairs Committee hearing, angered lawmakers who said they provided further evidence that the highest reaches of the department were out of touch with problems in the system and that there was a lack of accountability for poor management… In all, the department paid performance awards to senior executives that totaled $4.7 million in 2010 and $2.7 million in the most recent fiscal year.

“The bonus system was originally intended to reward high performers and to help the department retain its best employees, and it is widely viewed as having helped professionalize the V.A. in the 1990s. As reports of problems accumulated this year, the department suspended the awards for senior health care executives.” NY Times.  CNN (June 23^rd) reports that the Office of Special Counsel (the recipient of whistleblowers’ reports) has sent a letter to the President stating that despite the VA’s denial that there was any further harm to patients based on delays, Special Counsel does not believe that the VA is sufficiently investigating the “harm,” that there are 50 additional serious claims coming from whistleblowers and presented an example of a veteran with serious mental illness issues who was reevaluated for eight years!

Maybe it’s time to increase accountability, not just with the supervisors who fudge their numbers, but among the members of the House (where all appropriation bills must, under the Constitution, originate), who really seem unable to do their jobs either. Yeah, the same butt-heads who are holding committee meeting to shift the blame entirely to the VA, when the buck has to stop with the House itself! According to a Gallup Poll, Congress gets a 13% approval rating from the American voters. Why is that rating so high?! Yes we need civil servants who serve taxpayers, but we need more a Congress that actually cares more about the United States of America than their little fiefdoms of power.

I’m Peter Dekom, and it’s time to wake up America and ask them why they continue to elect people to Congress who are rather consistently operating to end the viability of the entire nation.

I-Rock, I-Ran, I-Rue the Day… An Iraq Conflict Primer

OK, al Qaeda fans, this is that exciting background blog you have been dreaming about (nightmares?) for weeks. Here the hot issues you need to understand in order to make the slightest sense of what is happening in the civil war in Iraq.

Sykes-Picot Agreement of 1916 – Scheming superpowers, France and England, secretly agreed how to carve up their respective future Middle Eastern colonies (spheres of influence) upon the expected loss of World War I by the Ottoman Empire (modern day Turkey). Ignoring the clear ethnic and religious local divides entirely, this Anglo-French agreement artificially blended three relatively divergent groups (easier to draw straight lines and recognize natural border demarcations than figure out who really would be compatible citizens) in to a single new colony called “Iraq.” Kurds (a bit over 20% of Iraq) live in the north (and across neighboring Syria and Turkey) and are more defined by their ethnicity than by religion. Shiites (about 60% of the population) live in the South and control the Gulf access. Sunnis live in the West and the area between Baghdad and the Kurds, and while they occupy most of the land, they represent around 20% of the total Iraqi population.

Sunni vs. Shiite – These diverse sects of Islam have either gotten along as good neighbors or been at each other’s throats. What began, after the death of the Prophet Muhammad, as a struggle of leadership, escalated into differing theological interpretations of the faith (e.g., Sunnis believe in a literal reading of the Qur’an by every believer, while Shiites believe the Qur’an is a mystical book that can only be interpreted by the most senior cleric(s)), a schism that is generally used by extremist religious factions from time to time to stir up ancient animosities and manipulate the masses to desired political outcomes. Prior to the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, these factions just got along, never really thinking about the differences. The issues weren’t a particular priority until we stepped in. Today, walls have been erected in Baghdad to separate Sunni and Shiite neighborhoods. Sunnis, once the ruling sect, have been slammed and marginalized by Shiite regime of Iraqi President Nouri al-Maliki, elected to power in an American imposed “democracy” that effectively gave the majority Shiites a blank check to run roughshod over their former Sunni rulers. Sunni extremists, supported by foreign fighters often supplied by al Qaeda, have been blasting away at Shiite targets in response. While 85% of Islam is Sunni, there are heavy concentrations of Shiites particularly in Iraq (60% Shiite) and Iran (95%). Syria is about 80% Sunni, but the Assad leadership comes from a 10% minority of Shiites (the Alawite sect).

The Syrian Factor – When a sustained drought (climate change!) in northeastern Syria caused a million (Sunni) farmers (and their families) to leave their homes to find another way to survive, this disenfranchised mass (all Sunnis) formed the backbone of the initial Syrian rebellion against the incumbent Shiite Assad regime. Soon joined by foreign fighters frequently supplied by al Qaeda (Sunni), the Syrian rebellion destabilized not just Syria, but all the neighboring countries that straddled supply routes and absorbed the millions of fleeing civilians seeking sanctuary from the battle. Lebanon has been unable to conduct normal elections with an influx of Syrian refugees that now make up 20% of the population. As U.S. drone strikes began to take out top al Qaeda leaders, the next generation of replacement killers broke apart over how far they would be willing to go to implement their goals. Old line al Qaeda leaders were moderating, but the young fighters – adept in social media and computer-enhanced organization – wanted a scorched earth policy that resulted in horrific policy of execution of non-Sunnis and anyone else who opposed them. They broke off from “too moderate” al Qaeda, and yearning for a vast new Sunni nation – stretching from the Mediterranean in the east, embracing what have been traditional Kurdish oil fields around Kirkuk and absorbing the area around Baghdad – became soldiers for the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). They began their march into Iraq, and we have been watching the news reports of their rampant and violent successes. The above map shows the intended borders of this new nation, leaving the Kurds in the north to form their own state. Foreign fighters flocked to the ISIS cause, joining these extreme Sunni fundamentalists (otherwise mostly locals from Iraq and Syria) seeking to create a Sunni version of the Shiite Islamic Republic of Iran.

Sunni Factions – While ISIS fighters seem to be the only invading Iraq, that statement is far from the truth. Drawn together to battle a common enemy, several factions – another Sunni extremist group (Islamic Jihad), the secularists (Baathists) who once ruled Iraq (Saddam Hussein’s group), local tribal forces (Sunnis who hate the al-Maliki Shiite regime) but are only interested in their local communities, etc., etc. – these forces are very unlikely and unstable partners of interim convenience. Should the fighting stop and the territory conquered, we should expect internecine Sunni struggles to remain violent. For example, a recent battle, near Kirkuk, recently erupted between ISIS and Baathist forces, leaving 17 dead.

Shiite Factions – Iran is the uber-Shiite power in the world, and most certainly is looking at the ISIS juggernaut in neighboring Iraq with particular fear. ISIS threatens to destroy Shiite shrines as they march, and Iran swears that it will use any power at its disposal to prevent that from happening. Iran’s stooge in Iraq is recently re-elected President Nouri al-Makiki. One of his first acts upon the departure of U.S. forces was to order the arrest of the Sunni’s highest ranking elected official. He invited Iraqi Shiite militia, theretofore hiding in Iran, to return to Iraq and to become part of the Iraqi Army. But Shiite militia generally are small political clusters and generally do not trust each other. Militant cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and his Mahdi Army would probably be the most recognizable militia, but there are equally powerful Shiite warlords ready to fight with their own loyal militia. Al-Maliki needs those militias to fend off the ISIS invasion, but their mutual animosity has resulted in their being accorded very different geographical defense assignments around Baghdad so that they do not turn on each other. The deeply respected Iraqi Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani has issued a call to arms for Iraqi Shiites (he actually included government-loyal/moderate Sunnis as well, but… well…. ) everywhere to come to the aid of the crumbling Iraqi Army to defend the homeland against ISIS. If there is ever to be any form of détente or accord between attacking Sunnis and defending Shiites, expect al-Sistani to be an essential ingredient in that negotiation. And despite his recent solidification of power in Iraq, expect that President al-Maliki must depart his office to extinguish the flames he has fanned for so many years. In fact, many expect that the United States would require his resignation as a condition for any U.S. weapons being deployed against ISIS. Catch-22: those Shiite militias have a dark past, many with allegiance only to their charismatic leaders… and they have a lot of dead Sunnis on their minds. The civil war could simply get a lot worse, fracturing Iraq into the three nations that  many experts have predicted.

The United States of America – American actions, starting with their misjudged and under-planned 2003 invasion of Iraq, reopened old wounds, emboldened extremists to join a direct conflict with “the Great Satan,” created al Qaeda (and other extremist) recruitment posters (remember those ignominious picture of our torture of prisoners in Abu Ghraib Prison?) and installed a Shiite majority as the power, effectively handing the country to Iran’s sphere of influence, decimating any hope for treating Sunnis as anything but second or third class citizens in their own country. Dick Cheney – whose credibility in justifying his position on Iraq was decimated even by right-wing-sympathetic Fox News – has become a court jester-meets-Rasputin of American politics. Cheney, with arch-junior-fool Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld sharing a parallel credibility malfunction, architected the George W Bush administration’s military and diplomatic strategy on Iraq and Afghanistan. Even overlooking the long discredited-WMD excuse for invading Iraq, Cheney just needed a war to convince Congress to repeal all the restrictions imposed on presidential war power after the failed Vietnam War. A trillion dollars and 4,500 dead Americans later, Iraq is devolving into the very civil war that experts predicted in 2003. That President Obama continued this war unnecessarily for years definitely adds a big piece of the blame to his administration. Why didn’t we support al-Maliki against the rising tide of Sunni extremists as he requested or as so many GOP critics want to know? That he was now Iran’s best friend and those Sunni militants served to contain Iran might have had something to do with it… and the fact that Americans were sick of our involvement in the region. Had we left Iraq to Saddam Hussein, the factions would sill hate each other, the drought in Syria would have spurred dissent, but the mess that represents modern Iraq would never have spun out of control as it has today.

So now you have some of the basic facts you need to know better to understand the mess we call Iraq.

I’m Peter Dekom, and why we didn’t understand the long-standing cultural and historical facts before we dived head-first into the empty swimming pool is still puzzling, but it still seems to be the modern American way.

Traditionalists’ Greatest Fear: One Person, One Vote

When demographic trend lines tell you that your point of view, your values and your political perspective are rapidly becoming casualties, perhaps even “endangered species,” what do you do? Live with the change and learn the art of compromise? Embrace the new demographics into your political sphere of influence? Or dig in your heels, trying imposing and continuing demographic exclusions, finding ways to minimize the voting power of those who threaten your position and resist change with every fiber in your body?

Common sense would seem to tell you to co-opt those who threaten your position if they are eventually going to overwhelm you in the not-so-distant future. But common sense doesn’t seem to have much sway with a vast constituency that still believes that God will not let them down. All’s fair in love, war and voting. The ends justify the means. Insert additional clichés here. The resistance to fairness is so powerful, you have to wonder whether these excluded voters will retaliate against this traditionalist minority when the new kids on the block inevitably set the rules sometime in the future.

We’ve had an acceleration of Republican-legislature-driven spate of “make it impossible for Democrats to win” gerrymandering that seems to have emboldened ultra-right-wing social conservatives, pushing Republican moderates out or further right. The notion of legislative compromise has definitely left the building, as former House majority leader, Representative Eric Cantor (R, Virginia) just found out in his primary loss to a Tea Party opponent.

Gerrymandering works, it seems, and so what else can the GOP do to marginalize the opposition? The Voting Rights Act of 1965 [President Lyndon Johnson’s signing is pictured above] has been amended several times to keep it relevant. But ever since a conservative Supreme Court struck down the heart of the Act by a 5-to-4 vote a year ago, freeing nine, mostly southern states, to change their once-clearly exclusionary election laws without advance federal approval, too many GOP-controlled states have been working overtime to make sure that those least likely to vote Republican have increasing barriers to having access to the ballot box. Folks who live in big cities – particularly the poorer elements who don’t drive and thus do not have drivers licenses with photo IDs – would be particularly good folks to keep from the ballot box. They’ll never vote Republican.

“With the midterm elections only months away, efforts to carry out some of the country’s strictest photo ID requirements and shorten early voting in several politically pivotal states have been thrown into limbo by a series of court decisions concluding that the measures infringe on the right to vote…

“The court decisions have gone both ways, but several have provided a new round of judicial rebukes to the wave of voting restrictions, nearly all of them introduced since 2011 in states with Republican majorities. The decisions have ensured that challenges will remain a significant part of the voting landscape, perhaps for years…

“Opponents of these voting laws have been heartened by the successes of the past six months in places like Arkansas, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. But with cases still awaiting legal action in seven states, including appellate rulings, it remains unclear what kind of impact the rulings will have on the midterms… A few state and federal appeals courts have indicated they may rule before Election Day, potentially affecting voting in Arizona, Arkansas and Kansas, among other states.

“‘There have been a string of victories, but as to the ultimate balance, it’s too early to tell,’ said Richard L. Hasen, an election law expert at the University of California, Irvine. ‘But at the moment the courts have been leaning more toward striking down some of these laws.’... Still, many states are already rolling out stricter voting requirements, and not all the laws have been challenged or overturned, in part because the laws vary widely in terms of the restrictions they place. The effects remain unclear, because much of the voting this year has come during primaries, for which fewer voters turn out. Those who do vote tend to be the most committed and best prepared.” Washington Post, June 17th.

The general impact has been to reduce non-Republican voters to 5/8 of the voting power of Republicans. Thus, the conservative incumbents have extended their hold until the minorities are able to overcome that voting disadvantage.

“Just 16 percent of Americans currently say they approve of Congress, compared with a previous low of 21 percent just before the 2010 midterms.” Huffington Post (citing a Gallup poll), June 17th. Last mid-terms (2010), despite similar low approval ratings, 85% of House incumbents then running were re-elected. We hate Congress, but we vote them back in.

The bigger question is whether the United States can actually survive intact, without breaking into smaller nations in accordance with their constituents’ beliefs, within the 50 years or so it will take to reverse the voting skew regardless of schema designed to disenfranchise left of center voters. We really have little justifiable claim to being a viable and functional democracy these days, and the People’s Republic of China is making sure the rest of the world knows this!

I’m Peter Dekom, and the disdain for true representational democracy shown by so many Americans seems to me to be shameful.

A House Divided Against Itself Cannot Stand

  Abraham Lincoln, June 16, 1858

The last time the United States was this severely polarized, we fought our Civil War. It’s not just that Americans disagree with their political opponents, too many think of the other side as evil and leading to the ultimate demise of the United States itself. A Pew Research Center survey, released on June 12^th, asked some pretty pointed political questions of 10,000 adults, and the results suggest that the U.S. may actually be in the nascent stages of fracturing into new nations with new geographic boundaries, a fate that can only accelerate as climate change issues create high-cost disasters that will exceed a federal response capacity. It’s every man, every region, every ideology for him/itself.

The Pew Results are well-summarized in their chart above.  The survey was polite, choosing words like “well-being,” but the real meaning screams with clarity. You can see it in the new GOP in our House of Representatives, where compromise can cost you an election. Simply put, the views of too many Americans – most facing an economic reset that will cut upward mobility across the throat, continue to plunge our average standard of living and cast a dark shadow over our economic and political future – cast irreconcilable differences. Gun control. Healthcare. Regulation and taxation. Social safety nets. The environment. Social values and perspectives. Religion and government. Immigration. Military and diplomatic involvement overseas. Deficits. Each issue slices like a sharp sword across the American body politic.

BBC News anchor, Katty Kay, writing for Linkedin (June13th), adds her perspective to the above survey results. “This is beyond political polarization, it is suspicion and antipathy on a scale we have never seen before. But if America wants to overcome the challenges it faces, it must also find a way to overcome this antagonism.

“Here are a few more highlights from the Pew poll that show how the gulf is widening:

·         The extremes are growing. The share of Americans who call themselves either consistently conservative or consistently liberal has double over the past 20 years.

·         The dislike is growing. The number of people, on both sides, who say they have very unfavorable views of the other party has more than doubled.

·         People are increasingly hanging out only with people who share their views. They are forming “ideological silos.”

·         People on the political extremes are louder than everyone else and dominate the political process. They vote more and give more money to candidates.

“Interestingly, the polarization doesn’t limit itself to party preference. It is reflected in how Americans live as well – right down to the size of your house and the street you inhabit. Three-quarters of people who describe themselves as consistently conservative would prefer to live in an area where the “the houses are larger and farther apart, but schools, stores and restaurants are several miles away.” Some 77% of people who say they are liberal prefer smaller houses and more urban settings. It’s almost comical, it’s so stereotypical, but Pew’s numbers suggest conservatives are indeed more rural/exurban and liberals are more urban/suburban.”

As I have blogged before, American traditionalists – which can definitely be equated with “rural/exurban” white values – are watching as census numbers tell us that the United States is has become a majority of minorities, most of whom have those “urban/suburban” values. They see immigration reform ultimately tipping the balance to a point where even gerrymandering cannot guarantee a stranglehold that gives urban dwellers 5/8 of the voting power of rural traditionalists. They cannot support a government that has betrayed them, allowing minorities to take over and supplant their place in America, and they are experiencing a fairly strong and historically consistent “circling of the wagons, looking for minorities to blame” mantra.

Even though all but the very top of the economic ladder are facing the big economic reset that blackens their hopes for the future, they are fighting a rear-guard action to stop change and de-fund a government that has led to this demise in their power. The have made it really clear that minorities are not welcome to their inside circle, so until their power is overwhelmed by demographic reality, they will continue to elect brick-wall obstructionists for whom “compromise” is fast ticket out of office.

Sooner or later, rural white power will be supplanted by these urban-oriented minorities. When gerrymandering fails, what is the next step? Particularly as a government grapples with costly damage from storm surges/flooding in one region and sustained drought and fires in others.

Does circling the wagons at phase two add the necessity of secession? Is this inevitable? Unless there is a willingness to compromise to find national solutions now, is there really any hope that we can keep the United States together? Add the reality of gun ownership, particularly across the West, Midwest and the South, does this movement become violent or does the federal government simply devolve with too many problems, letting the states figure it out for themselves? Think it might be better idea to find a way to work together and compromise now?

I’m Peter Dekom, and we really better find a path to living together and getting along… or someday, we just won’t!

And to the Banana, for Which It Stands

One of the hallmarks of a “banana republic,” according to Wikipedia, “It typically has stratified social classes, including a large, impoverished working class and a ruling plutocracy of business, political, and military elites.” According to CNBC.com (September16, 2013), the 400 wealthiest Americans are worth more than $2 trillion, more than the bottom 50% of the U.S. population combined, and “more than the annual GDP of Italy, Mexico or Canada.” With the bottom 60% of Americans owning 2.3% of the nation’s wealth just as the middle class is contracting, we do seem to have the markings of a plutocracy.

Add the Citizens United and the McCutcheon cases, Supreme Court decisions that let the rich pretty much pour as much money into any political campaign, often anonymously, as they wish, the markings seem to get a bit clearer. According to the April 14^th theDiplomat.com, “the U.S. defense budget accounts for 37 percent of global military expenditures while China only accounts for 11 percent of worldwide defense spending.” Think that there is actually a separation between the “military-industrial complex,” which tries to locate military bases or manufacturers in every Congressional district they can, and government? Our military elite is more the mega-vendors of military hardware, but they are very real and very, very powerful.

So we have lots of characteristics that define a banana republic? How does the international community look at this? To the People’s Republic of China, these numbers represent unequivocal evidence that the American system does not serve the vast majority of its citizens, that our “democracy” is a failed experiment, and that China, employing a party-appointed centralized bureaucracy appointed to maximize the well-being of its people, can accomplish much more. They have taken a billion people out of dire poverty in three decades, and we seem to be going the other way unless you are in the top 5% of earners and wealth-holders, in whose favor our tax code and regulatory schema are rather deeply slanted.

To the International Monetary Fund, we are just an embarrassment to the rest of the developed world. The IMF’s June growth forecast (a meager 2% for 2014) for the United States show 50 million Americans living in poverty as defined by U.S. government criteria for poverty. “[T]he labour market is weaker than is suggested by the headline numbers for people out of work. Long-term unemployment is high and many people are not even seeking work, which means they don't register in the official jobless numbers. Wages are stagnant and poverty is stuck at more than 15%. Seven years on from the onset of the financial crisis, the scars on the wider US economy - never mind some European countries - have still not really healed.

“[The IMF report] said a hike in the minimum wage would raise incomes for ‘millions of working poor’ and help to create ‘a meaningful increase’ in after-tax earnings for the nation's poorest households… The IMF said it only expected the economy to reach full employment by the end of 2017, with ‘muted’ inflation pressures… ‘Labor markets are weaker than is implied by the headline unemployment number, the IMF said, saying long-term unemployment remained high and wages were stagnant.” BBC.co.uk, June 16^th. Our minimum wages rates are the lowest for any comparably-situated developed nation, says the IMF, and the U.S. needs to address what have become never-ending cycles of institutionalized segments of poverty.

But we don’t care, we only run allocate big budgets for wars we lose or fail at, defense spending like no other that keeps getting us involved in conflicts, and there is a very old world minority (but controlling our governmental purse strings) that wants fewer government solutions for the vast majority of Americans and lower taxes and fewer regulations for the rich. The rich just don’t catch enough breaks to them, so they have created the completely disproven theory of the rich being the “job creators” and having their wealth “trickle down” to the masses. Not an ounce of truth to either doctrine, but it justifies stupid policies that support the plutocracy we have become.

I’m Peter Dekom, and as long as Americans sit on their hands and buy into this mythology, the plutocracy will only get stronger!

A Litter Ration

If the hip bone is connected to the thigh bone, so then is the leaf connected to the fish. Huh? We call it an ecosystem, and in addition to the climate change fomented by the excessive burning of fossil fuels, man’s actions have roiled through nature, contracting available resources to increasing numbers of species and decimating nature’s food chain. Even if we stop looking at individual species, avoiding the specific “threatened” or “endangered” epithets, entire categories of nature’s creatures face severe contraction from man’s over-consumption. Forgetting about direct pollution from sloppy production processes and controls, we are disrupting population of wildlife in other dire ways. You can see it in the disappearance of about a third of “necessity of pollination” bee population… and there is one more example worth noting.

Published by a team of uber-prestigious academics (including Cambridge from the UK, York University in Canada, etc.), Forests fuel fish growth in freshwater deltas, a research study explores the impact on cutting down forests for urban expansion or capturing additional farmland: “Aquatic ecosystems are fuelled by biogeochemical inputs from surrounding lands and within-lake primary production. Disturbances that change these inputs may affect how aquatic ecosystems function and deliver services vital to humans. Here we test, using a forest cover gradient across eight separate catchments, whether disturbances that remove terrestrial biomass lower organic matter inputs into freshwater lakes, thereby reducing food web productivity.” Nature.com, June 11^th. What?

In English: leaves and other natural debris fall into rivers and lakes, winding up feeding the fish and other animal life in those bodies of water. Loose the forests, the food disappears for the critters in those freshwater venues… and they just die off, get too small and unhealthy or cannot reproduce.

“‘We found fish that had almost 70% of their biomass made from carbon that came from trees and leaves instead of aquatic food chain sources,’ explained lead author Andrew Tanentzap from the University of Cambridge's Department of Plant Sciences… ‘While plankton raised on algal carbon is more nutritious, organic carbon from trees washed into lakes is a hugely important food source for freshwater fish, bolstering their diet to ensure good size and strength,’ he added.” BBC.co.uk, June 13^th. So stuff on the land, not from the water, is the major life-source for freshwater fish? Yup!

“Dr Tanentzap observed: ‘Where you have more dissolved forest matter you have more bacteria, more bacteria equals more zooplankton… ‘Areas with the most zooplankton had the largest, fattest fish,’ he added, referring to the study's results… Dr Tanentzap added that the findings could also have implications for human food security. ‘It's estimated that freshwater fishes make up more than 6% of the world's annual animal protein supplies for humans - and the major and often only source of animal protein for low income families across Bangladesh, Indonesia and the Philippines.’” BBC.com.

In a cruel twist of fate, nature also has a way of culling humans in a nasty Darwinian mix. As swelling populations fill crowded cities, people are having fewer children – urban living costs too much for folks to have more than a child or maybe two. In impoverished lands, where having children substitutes for social security and cheap labor, drought, wearing out the land and supporting resources, creates life-extinguishing droughts and food shortages, starts wars and, well, kills millions. If you really believe that we are not intimately linked with the quality of our environment, when will nature’s call to “less or death” reach your family? This generation? Or is this the “gift that keeps on taking” that we are passing on to future generations?

I’m Peter Dekom, and the good news is that we really can do something about it… but we have to start!

Insert Whistle Sound Here

In prison, turning in or providing information of the illegal activity of a fellow inmate can get you killed. It’s part of the code in every jail and prison in the United States… and I suspect it is a part of the “understanding” of most prisoners everywhere. See nothing, tell nothing and keep to yourself. “Rats” die. Don’t be a rat!

In 2002, Congress passed a law – Sarbannes-Oxley – that requires senior managers of publicly-traded companies personally to certify their financial reports and for such companies’ outside accountant and legal advisors top resign if such financial irregularities are not corrected (noting to the government that their withdrawal was based on a Sarbanes-Oxley violation, without having to be detailed about the reason). The government hates wrongdoers! Or does it?

It is indeed refreshing to note that too many governmental agencies seem to think that the prison code of conduct – one that is standard operating procedure for convicted and incarcerated felons everywhere – is a fine model for them as well. Forget that federal employees are mandated to serve the taxpayer and may even be required to report statutory and regulatory infractions. Don’t even consider that many federal managers get performance bonuses based on meeting specific criteria, and that they are more adept as faking compliance statistics than meeting their obligations. And God help the junior civil servant who reports the truth!

Like the Veterans Administration. “Staff members at dozens of Department of Veterans Affairs hospitals across the country have objected for years to falsified patient appointment schedules and other improper practices, only to be rebuffed, disciplined or even fired after speaking up, according to interviews with current and former staff members and internal documents.

“The growing V.A. scandal over long patient wait times and fake scheduling books is emboldening hundreds of employees to go to federal watchdogs, unions, lawmakers and outside whistle-blower groups to report continuing problems, officials for those various groups said.

“The department has a history of retaliating against whistle-blowers, which Sloan D. Gibson, the acting V.A. secretary, acknowledged this month at a news conference in San Antonio. ‘I understand that we’ve got a cultural issue there, and we’re going to deal with that cultural issue,’ said Mr. Gibson, who replaced Eric K. Shinseki after Mr. Shinseki resigned over the scandal last month. Punishing whistle-blowers is ‘absolutely unacceptable,’ Mr. Gibson said.

 “The federal Office of Special Counsel, which investigates whistle-blower complaints, is examining 37 claims of retaliation by V.A. employees in 19 states, and recently persuaded the V.A. to drop the disciplining of three staff members who had spoken out. Together with reports to other watchdog agencies and the Times interviews, the accounts by V.A. whistle-blowers cover several dozen hospitals, with complaints dating back seven years or longer.” New York Times, June 15th.

But, you thought, there is a federal statute that protects whistleblowers in the federal government. Well there is: “The Whistleblower Protection Act of 1989, Pub.L. 101-12 as amended, is a United States federal law that protects federal whistleblowers who work for the government and report agency misconduct. A federal agency violates the Whistleblower Protection Act if agency authorities take (or threaten to take) retaliatory personnel action against any employee or applicant because of disclosure of information by that employee or applicant. Whistleblowers  may file complaints that they believe reasonably evidences a violation of a law, rule or regulation; gross mismanagement; gross waste of funds; an abuse of authority; or a substantial and specific danger to public health or safety.” Wikipedia

Just one catch. The statute apparently has little or no value. “The Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, only court empowered to hear appeals of whistleblower cases decided by the merit board, has been criticized by Senator Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and others in Congress for misinterpreting whistleblower laws and setting precedent that is hostile to claimants. Between 1994 and 2010, the court had ruled for whistleblowers in only three of 203 cases decided on their merits, GAP's analysis found.” Wikipedia.

The June 17th Washington Post reports a survey by MSPG showing that 30% of federal workers believe that their jobs would become difficult if they blew that whistle, and 13% of agencies did not encourage reporting of bad practices (63% actually encouraged active employees, however). Well over half of the issues involve waste, and over 10% involve corruption. About 20% of whistle blowers received direct retaliation, 10% were threatened with reprisals, 28% had angry bosses, and 17% resulted in unhappy co-workers. Fewer than 7% were lauded, and over 40% noted that nothing happened. Most civil servants want to do the right thing, but the system is stacked against that notion.

So when the government doesn’t want you to see something, you generally don’t, even if the relevant “secrecy” has nothing to do with national security or a proper government. Oh, by the way CSI fans, do you really think emails can get lost in a modern era? Really?

I’m Peter Dekom, and as usual, our passive acceptance of “stuff” too complicated for us to understand has given us the government we deserve, not the government we really should have!