Keeping A-Breast of Change

On November 16^th, a federal advisory panel (U.S. Preventive Services Task Force) suggested that unless a woman had a special susceptibility to breast cancer, routine mammograms for women in their 40s were unnecessary; only one life in 1904 women was saved by this procedure. Women were told to move that routine practice into their lives after age 50. As my wife was about to take her annual 60 mile breast cancer awareness/fund-raiser walk in San Diego under the sponsorship of the Dallas-based Susan G. Komen for the Cure foundation, the news was greeted by outrage and anger; two of her closest friends had mastectomies this month – both were in their 40s.

There’s a lot in the news, as healthcare reform sits high on the Obama administration’s agenda priorities, and there has been lots of press including recent blogs by me, about the staggering waste of “litigation-avoiding” defensive medicine, whereby doctors order a battery of unnecessary tests as a shield against a zealous malpractice lawsuit – just in case. That, when combined with doctors ordering expensive procedures from test-centers in which they have an ownership interest, has drawn an angry bead of ire from those seeking radically to reduce medical costs in this country – a nation where for the most part, doctors and hospitals are rewarded with more payments the more they order additional “procedures.” The suggestion is that perhaps breast cancer screening before age 50 is such a wasteful process.

For women in their 30s trying to figure out if they should proceed and women already in their 40s who have endured the painful mammograms, maybe the news that they don’t have to go through that procedure is something they want to hear. And if we can make this common practice of screening women in the 40s for breast cancer slowly disappear in future generations (but we could actually find a cure for this disfiguring, life-threatened disease!), think of all the money we’ll save… perhaps creating just a few additional job openings along the way.

I can promise you that those organizations created to battle cancer are, unfortunately, going to have to divert precious money from research-directed expenditures back into undoing the government’s message. If you know, are or have been someone with breast cancer, I suspect you are grateful that people are trying to stop this killer early in its growth to save lives and minimize disfigurement.

The news from the feds hasn’t impacted the plans of many, as this New York Times quote (Nov. 18) suggests: “Several doctors said that while they understood the panel’s risk-benefit analysis, their patients would not see it that way. ‘My patients tell me they can live with a little anxiety and distress but they can’t live with a little cancer,’ said Dr. Carolyn Runowicz, director of the Neag Comprehensive Cancer Center at the University of Connecticut…. ‘It’s kind of hard to suggest that we should stop examining our patients and screening them,’ said Dr. Annekathryn Goodman, director of the fellowship program in gynecological oncology at Massachusetts General Hospital. ‘I would be cautious about changing a practice that seems to work’…

“Most of the doctors, however, said they would inform younger women that the recommendations said they did not need mammograms if they were low-risk. They said they would also point out that groups like the American Cancer Society and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists are sticking to the earlier guidelines.”

For those thousands and thousands of individuals making their annual Susan G. Komen walks, at various times and in various cities across the U.S., keep your heads on high; you fight the noble fight. And take heart in this statement in the November 18 New York Times: “Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius … issued a strong statement intended to put distance between federal policy and an influential panel’s recommendations that most women should start regular breast cancer screening at age 50, not 40… ‘There is no question that the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force Recommendations have caused a great deal of confusion and worry among women and their families across this country. I want to address that confusion head on. The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force is an outside independent panel of doctors and scientists who make recommendations. They do not set federal policy and they don’t determine what services are covered by the federal government. … My message to women is simple. Mammograms have always been an important life-saving tool in the fight against breast cancer and they still are today. Keep doing what you have been doing for years – talk to your doctor about your individual history, ask questions, and make the decision that is right for you.’”

I’m Peter Dekom, and this was an easy one.

We Will Inject Our Swine Before Our Time

We bail ’em when dey’s failin’; they be sailin’ when they should be jailin’… The seeming slogan of the United States of Goldman. And we have a global outbreak of the Pandemic H1N1/09 virus – a/k/a the swine flu. It’s killed between 1,500 and 2,000 Americans to date and infected tens of thousands of others, impacting 48 of the 50 states. So clearly, the government has made sure that their very scare supply of flu vaccine has gone to the most vulnerable, right? “[T]hose with asthma, diabetes, obesity, heart disease, children with neurodevelopmental conditions, or persons who are pregnant or have a weakened immune system. There are small subsets of patients, even among young persons previously healthy, who rapidly develop severe pneumonia, typically 3 to 5 days after initial onset of symptoms. Deterioration can be very rapid, with many patients progressing to respiratory failure within 24 hours, requiring intensive care and ventilation support.” Wikipedia. They got the vaccine first, right? Not exactly.

You see, it does matter how much money you make, what you do for a living and whether you are in one of those fields of endeavor that the government believes to be more important than the value of the average American, even if such “average American” happens to be in a high risk “swine flu” category – those who face serious complications or even death. If you work on Wall Street for one of those exceptionally high-profile financial institutions, particularly if you are a big revenue-generator in a company that took federal bailout money, apparently the government doesn’t want to lose its investment in your overpaid body.

The November 6^th Los Angeles Times: “‘Why is it that so many Americans have had to wait in line and then been denied the vaccine, and others can just walk in and get it?’ said Melanie Sloan, executive director of the Washington, D.C.-based Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. ‘People might die because people at a lower risk got the vaccine instead. How does some rich 50-year-old banker at Goldman Sachs get a vaccine that a pregnant woman or a healthcare worker in Los Angeles can't get?’… New York City health officials have had to defend the distribution of H1N1 vaccines there after reports that Wall Street firms were among the first to receive shipments… Vaccines are supposed to be directed to five priority groups: pregnant women, people ages 2 to 24, healthcare workers, caregivers of babies under 6 months old, and those ages 25 to 64 with chronic health conditions that put them at increased risk of complications from the flu.”

There is another answer, of course. America has the best healthcare system in the world… if you can afford it. Don’t let those negative infant death statistics and medical horror stories about those who have become one of this nation’s 46 million without health insurance get you down. If you had enough money, you could access the best healthcare system in the world. OK, there have some private groups, like the Kaiser Permanente hospitals here in California, that got some of the first shipments too, but what really does not appear to be happening is a rationing of the vaccine, until supplies can expand, to those at risk. Wanna name names? DailyFinance.com and AP (Nov. 6^th) did: “But at least those 175,000 Wall Streeters are mortal, right? Sure -- except that hundreds of Wall Street employees will be able to reduce their risk of infection from H1N1... How so? Some of the biggest Wall Street banks -- including Goldman Sachs Group (GS) and Citigroup (C) -- will be receiving the swine flu virus before you, according to The Associated Press.” Hey, they promise it will only be for their high risk employees and dependents! Did I tell you the one about the Easter Bunny and the tortoise?

The government tells us that shortages in H1N1 vaccine may mean that even those most at risk might see relief until the end of December. In the meantime, how many of these high risk candidates will have funerals before then or spend weeks if not months in the hospital with lots of them in intensive care? But no worries about our Wall Street bankers; they should be in great shape when sailing season returns in the spring. Life’s like that in the United States of Goldman.

I’m Peter Dekom, and I am outraged too!

Yeah! Yeah! Yemen !

Sunnis, 85% of Islam, believe in the literal interpretation of the Qu’ran and that each Muslim should read the Holy Book, preferably in classical Arabic, to develop their own one-on-one relationship with God. Shiites, most of the other 15%, believe that the Qu’ran is a mystical revelation from God, and that only the most senior religious leaders are capable of understanding and interpreting its true meaning. The heart of the concentration of Shiite believers is Iran (and neighboring Iraq ), and the heart (and funding source) for conservative Sunnis believers is Saudi Arabia .

While the Saudis are obligated to keep the Holy cities of Mecca and Medina open for all Muslims on their mandatory at least once-in-a-lifetime pilgrimage (the Hajj), allowing Shiites from Iran into these cities has always been uncomfortable for the Saudi Royal Family. Put another way, Saudis and Iranians don’t trust each other… Okay, they hate each other’s guts. Sunnis have been hunting down Shiites since the battle of Ashura, October 10, 680 – the date of the martyrdom (slaughter) of Husayn ibn Ali, the grandson of the Islamic Prophet Muhammad and a band of his followers at the Battle of Karbala, just a few decades after the death of the Prophet Mohammad.

But despite their proximity across the Persian Gulf, the Saudis and the Iranians seldom engage in direct confrontation, preferring to fight their battles through their proxies – very much like the military support the Saudis gave Iraq ’s Saddam Hussein in the Iran-Iraq war (1980-1988). Today, that Saudi/Sunni versus Iran/Shiite conflict rages in another regional conflict: the long-standing civil war in Yemen, an impoverished nation that sits very strategically on Saudi Arabia’s southwestern tip. The Saudi-backed Yemeni government (mostly Sunnis) has been fending off Hawthi rebels (who just happen to be Shiites) for the past five years. Suspicions – coupled with some pretty damning evidence – that Iran is backing the Hawthi has escalated tensions in this oil-rich region.

The November 15^th Washington Post: “ Saudi Arabia 's entry into the conflict has touched a nerve with Iran . This week, Iran 's foreign minister, Manouchehr Mottaki, declared that no nation should ‘interfere’ in Yemen 's internal affairs, a veiled snipe at Saudi Arabia . Some analysts say if Saudi Arabia continues to attack the rebels, Iran might decide to back the Hawthis, if it hasn't already, as a way to gain leverage over Riyadh [the Saudi capital]… ‘ Iran believes the biggest obstacle to its growing influence in the region is Saudi Arabia ," said Najib Ghallab, a political researcher at Sanaa University . ‘To weaken Saudi influence, Iran believes Yemen is the starting point.’”

What does this mean for the United States ? “The fighting could have serious implications for the U.S. anti-terrorism effort in a failing nation [Yemen] where al-Qaeda is gaining strength, Western diplomats and Yemeni analysts say [but an alliance between Sunni al Qaeda and the Shitte Hawthis is clearly unlikely]. The war is drawing attention and scarce resources away from efforts to combat poverty, a secessionist movement in the south and piracy along the nation's shores. A prolonged conflict, they say, could further weaken Yemen 's government and deepen societal fissures, allowing al-Qaeda militants to thrive… ‘The longer the war in the north continues and the longer the problems in the south continue without resolution, the more we pave the road for al-Qaeda,’ said Yahya Abu Asbu, a Foreign Ministry official and deputy secretary general of the Yemeni Socialist Party. ‘ Yemen will become more dangerous than Somalia .’” The Post.

The region, like most of the Middle East , is rife with tribalism and profound religious passions. The Post: “The Hawthis, who believe in the Zaydi branch of Shiite Islam, ruled northern Yemen as a religious imamate for nearly a millennium before being overthrown in a 1962 coup. Ever since, Yemen 's rulers have been wary of them and other Zaydi clans. The Zaydis make up more than a quarter of Yemen 's population and constitute a majority in the north.” For the Saudis, having the Iranian Shiite across the Gulf in the north and the Hawthis at their southern border represents an encirclement by dreaded Shiite factions, an untenable situation for them.

The battle lines have been drawn in some unexpected places. For example, Iran ’s state-supported Arabic language news channel, Al-Alam (which means “the world” in Arabic; note that Iran ’s language is Farsi and not Arabic), was removed from the two major Arab satellite platforms: Nilesat and Arabsat, depriving Shiite Iran of a voice in reaching the “hearts and minds” of the region’s Arabs. Nilesat’s majority owner is the secular Egyptian government in this mostly Sunni nation, and Saudi Arabia is the majority stakeholder in Arabsat. Likewise, Al-Arabiya, a Saudi-owned pan-Arab news network, had its Tehran bureau shut down this past summer.

As people die on the ground in Yemen , and as the battle for sympathetic support from television viewers escalates, it is unlikely that these tensions are going to settle anytime soon; a mindful eye should remain on this potential tinderbox. In an area of multiple “flashpoints,” sometimes it is worthwhile to look at those conflicts that do not dominate our headlines… yet.

I’m Peter Dekom, and I approve this message.

Retiring Debt

There are two basic kinds of employer-provided retirement plans: 1. Defined contribution (where the employer – sometimes with the employee – contributes a fixed amount to the plan, and the money available to be distributed upon retirement is a function of how much is in that retirement account). 2. Defined benefit (where there is a fixed monthly payment on retirement – which may be adjusted by the cost of living – based on seniority, number of years in service, age at retirement, etc.). In the early days of pension plans, virtually all of the union-based and governmental employers (federal, state and local) provided defined benefit plans, which, over the years, required an increasing contribution from the employer every year (or left the employer with a growing unfunded retirement obligation).

IRA and individual 401(k) retirement plans started out the same way, but folks quickly realized that the rising percentage of current income required to sustain the future fixed benefits was, for all but the richest of us, unsustainable. So these individual plans are, for the most part now “you can retire on what you saved, but there are no guarantees what you’ll get each month” – defined contribution. Government was the place where you went for mediocre pay but also for job security and spectacular medical, disability and retirement benefits. As this economy collapsed, those government jobs are now looking pretty lucrative these days, and those fringe benefits are like driving a brand new Rolls Royce in a sea of subcompacts. Military, police and fire retirements, some enabling a retirement in 20 or thirty years regardless of age, are among the most generous defined benefit plans on earth.

As these pension funds have been slammed by the economic collapse – hammered by investments in subprime mortgages and in plummeting stocks – it’s pretty clear that many are edging towards bankruptcy, particularly those with defined benefits. Private plans get some coverage under ERISA (federal pension insurance), but as the bankruptcies of General Motors and Chrysler have shown, they hardly provide the retirees with anything near what they were expecting.

Two of the largest governmental pensions funds are, fairly obviously, in California – the California Public Employees’ Retirement System (CalPERS – the largest pension fund in the U.S and the fourth largest on earth) and the California State Teachers’ Retirement System (CalSTRS), but the decline in their asset base has required that they seeking additional contributions from state agencies to meet their obligations. And of course, California is hemorrhaging red ink, hardly the place to go for more money. The feds can increase the M1 money supply (the modern equivalent of “printing money”) – not particularly good to support the value of the dollar or stem inflation – but states, well, they just get deeper into trouble and debt.

So Chapter 9 of the Bankruptcy Code provides a not-too-graceful debt relief for “municipalities” (which are basically governmental units that are less than a “state”… forcing a state to go bankrupt in pieces) if they file for bankruptcy – while they are relieved of their debt and contractual obligations and do not lose their governmental assets, they do lose operating control of their “municipality” to a federal government trustee in bankruptcy. The strange question to ask is whether a bankruptcy might not be necessary to bring at least the state governments back to the pension reality that so many of us peons discovered a long time ago: neither the states nor the taxpayers can afford early retirements or defined benefit plans anymore, and if it take a bankruptcy to right this ship, that might be the cure. Tough cure. But state governments seem to be headed in that direction by reason of such generate fringe benefits and a litany of other problems, many stemming from the horrible economy.

According the Pew Center on the States, all but two states faced budgetary shortfalls this year (North Dakota and Montana), but ten states are leaning towards financial collapse. Here are the ten worst in the Pew study (“Beyond California: States in Fiscal Peril”) as reported on DailyFinance.com (Nov. 11):

California – Budget shortfall: 49.3%

“California topped all states for the magnitude of its budget shortfall in fiscal year 2010, both in dollars and in share -- in this case, nearly half -- of its general funds, which pay for most state operations.”

Arizona – Budget shortfall: 41.1%

Like many states, “Arizona's lawmakers relied on one-time fixes to balance its budgets instead of making long-term changes,” the report said. Lawmakers were still wrestling with a $1 billion gap in this year's budget in October.

Rhode Island – Budget shortfall: 19.2%

On top of its poor record of fiscal management, “Rhode Island constantly ranks near the top of states with the highest unemployment rates, and last year it had the highest home foreclosure rate in all of New England.”

Michigan – Budget shortfall: 12.0%

“Two of the Big Three Detroit-based automakers went bankrupt in 2009, sending shockwaves through a state that is on track to lose a quarter of it jobs this decade.”

Nevada – Budget shortfall: 37.8%

“Nevada's unique gaming-based economy is in jeopardy, as is its state budget that relies on gambling sales to provide 60% of its revenues.”

Oregon ­– Budget shortfall: 14.5%

“State revenues plummeted 19% between the first quarter of 2008 and the first quarter of 2009, a reflection of Oregon's heavy reliance on income taxes,” the report said. Voters have rejected adding a sales tax nine times, thwarting attempts at creating a new source of state revenue.

Florida – Budget shortfall: 22.8%

“For the first time since World War II, Florida's population is shrinking. This is a disturbing revelation for a state that has built its economy -- and structured its budget -- on the assumption that throngs of new residents will move to its sunny shores each year.”

New Jersey – Budget shortfall: 29.9%

“New Jersey is playing catch-up after years of fiscal mismanagement and a daunting structural imbalance between what it collects and what it spends.”

Illinois – Budget shortfall: 47.3%

“Since the last recession earlier this decade, the state piled up huge backlogs of Medicaid bills and borrowed money to pay its pension obligations,” the report said. The 2010 budget shortfall topped $13.2 billion, among the worst in the nation.

Wisconsin – Budget shortfall: 23.2%

“Wisconsin's history of budget shortfalls and pattern of borrowing frequently to cover operating expenses, among other measures, made it poorly positioned to weather the most recent severe economic downturn.”

There’s a lot of pain in our future, but there is also the opportunity to learn from our past mistakes and create a new world going forward that we might actually be able to afford. It’s just hard for me to believe that we are in “recovery mode” with rising unemployment (which is unlikely to abate any time soon), frozen consumer spending, a tanked real estate market and states facing genuine insolvency. The stock market rise is hardly convincing.

I’m Peter Dekom, and I approve this message.

Jail deBait

In a narrow 5-4 decision (Ropers vs. Simmons), in 2005 the United States Supreme Court held that the “Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments forbid imposition of the death penalty on offenders who were under the age of 18 when their crimes were committed.” The Supreme Court faces the next “cruel and unusual punishment” issue involving sentencing children in a pair of cases heard before the Court on November 9^th – Sullivan v. Florida and Graham v. Florida. All of the 100 juveniles on earth sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole for a crime not involving a killing are in the United States; more than three quarters of those are in the Sunshine State – Florida.

The cases, covering the very serious crimes of rape and robbery, stir the passions of those on both sides of this uncomfortable issue. The incarcerated juveniles were 13-years-old and a 17-years-old when they committed the crimes for which they were sentenced; Joe Sullivan is now 33, and Terrance Graham is now 22. The goal of these appeals is to have a court reexamine the sentences themselves (in a new hearing) and perhaps reduce them or at least allow for the possibility of rehabilitation and parole.

The November 4^th Newsweek notes that American practices allowing children to be sentenced to life imprisonment is unique to this country: “There are about 2,500 juveniles (ranging in age from 13 to 17) currently sentenced to life in prison in the United States. No other country in the world currently has adolescents serving this sentence, reports the Frank C. Newman International Human Rights Law Clinic.”

What could possibly justify such harsh treatment? The November 7^th New York Times: “The state’s attorney general, Bill McCollum, explained the roots of the state’s approach in the first paragraph of his brief in Mr. Graham’s case...‘By the 1990s, violent juvenile crime rates had reached unprecedented high levels throughout the nation,’ Mr. McCollum wrote. ‘Florida’s problem was particularly dire, compromising the safety of residents, visitors and international tourists, and threatening the state’s bedrock tourism industry.’ Nine foreign tourists were killed over 11 months in 1992 and 1993, one of them by a 14-year-old… [State Representative William D. Snyder, a Republican who is chairman of the House’s Criminal and Civil Justice Policy Council], put it this way: ‘Instead of the Sunshine State, it was the Gun-shine State.’”

Snyder believes that “it would be wrong for the Supreme Court to say that it was patently illegal or improper to send a youthful offender to life without parole. At a certain point, juveniles cross the line, and they have to be treated as adults and punished as adults.” The Times. But as the only country on earth with such drastic sentences, is the United States completely out of step with the notion of “human rights” it seems to proselytize in international circles?

When the Court heard arguments on November 9^th, the tea leaves suggest a split along ideological lines. The November 10^th Washington Post provided these observations and excerpts from statements from the bench from both conservative and liberal factions:

Conservative: Chief Justice John Roberts “‘There is certainly nothing in the Eighth Amendment that suggests there is a difference between 16 and 17.’ He also compared the Ropers decision (noted above) saying that ‘death is different’… Rather than having rigid rules based on age, he said it would be better to require judges to consider the defendant's age when imposing harsh sentences, and then having courts review whether they are disproportionate to the crime.” The Post added this observation: “…Antonin Scalia and Samuel A. Alito Jr. said that retribution is also part of the equation, and that society has a right to punish severely for heinous crimes, even those by juveniles… Alito recounted a string of juvenile offenses in Florida ‘so horrible that I couldn't have imagined them if I hadn't actually seen them.’ Scalia added: ‘One of the purposes is retribution, punishment for just perfectly horrible actions. And I don't know why that value of retribution diminishes to the point of zero when it's a person who's, you know, 17 years, 9 months old.’”

Liberal: “Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said Roberts's idea would not solve the basic problem: that juveniles are still developing and are not fully culpable for their actions. Decisions about whether they have reformed can be made only later. The question is, ‘Has this person overcome those youthful disabilities?’ she said… Justice Sonia Sotomayor pressed [Florida Solicitor General Scott D.] Makar on the minimum age at which a child in Florida could be subjected to the circumstances that could lead to a sentence of life without parole. He said there is no minimum. ‘So a 5-year-old could be put away for life?’ she asked… ‘That is, theoretically,’ Makar answered. ‘We would hope that the system would not allow that.’”

Or are our children clearly the worst on earth? To give you an idea of how other nations impose sentences, Germany won’t impose a sentence on a juvenile of more than ten years, and Italy caps out at twenty-four years. Clearly, a life sentence is not just a question of mental capacity and responsibility; it is also a factor of age, fairness and hope. We anxiously await the Court’s final decision.

I’m Peter Dekom, and I approve this message.

Small Unmanned Ground Vehicle

VS

$100 billion or so later, we are fighting with ground-based robots. We’ve seen earlier versions of these little puppies in movies like The Hurt Locker, where Army bomb disposal units we happy to send in these little fellers into harm’s way for a little “look-see,” but like their aerial counterparts, the shootin’ and blastin’ drones, they clearly represent the way of the future for combat missions. This particular robot’s mission? To be the “first contact” between U.S. forces and “the enemy.” This is a first, and we can expect deployment into Afghanistan in the very near future.

“The SUGV was developed as part of the U.S. Army's Future Combat System, an ambitious collection of manned and unmanned systems that were supposed to be linked together through a single network. After that estimated $100 billion program was canceled last year, mainly out of cost considerations, the Defense Department opted to keep the SUGV as part of a new strategy to bolster infantry combat teams.” The November 11 Sphere.com. But with debates over numbers of troops we can afford to send into Afghanistan, they represent the next best hope for military commanders short on troops and long on mission requirements. We had one way to deploy more combatants without sending more military: the wonder and glory of “contractors” (ok, mercenaries) in Iraq, but their gleaming popularity seems to be waning, except for “outsourced” diplomatic guard duty, which continues to be a sore spot for many.

Wanna know exactly how popular they were in Iraq (before they were denied a renewed operating license by the Iraqis)? The November 10^th NY Times: “Top executives at Blackwater Worldwide [famous “contractors”] authorized secret payments of about $1 million to Iraqi officials that were intended to silence their criticism and buy their support after a September 2007 episode in which Blackwater security guards fatally shot 17 Iraqi civilians in Baghdad, according to former company officials.” Isn’t there a law against Americans paying off foreign government officials? These days, Blackwater has a cool new name – Xe Services – guess they hope you don’t confuse them with their past. Robots seem more honorable somehow, and they can be very effective.

According to the Army, 52% of their casualties come from “first contact” with the enemy. Add a video-game-trained soldier with a joystick and you have the Army’s answer to the “walking the point” without risking death or dismemberment. Reconnaissance without pain. The future holds the same probable development sequence as the aerial technologies that have been deployed – reconnaissance, real-time-human-controlled firing of weapons, human-selected-robot-controlled firing of weapons, and arrrrghhhh! – robot-selected-robot controlled firing of weapons.

Considering that today cruise missiles can be and often are launched with an internal visual menu of potential targets (complete with strategic priorities) where the missile makes the “decision” in the field, this is nothing new. But with the ground-based systems, the robots will soon be reacting to hostile fire directed at them, making an entirely new set of “decisions” on what targets to kill – targets that have not been “pre-identified” by human decision-makers.

The moral and ethical issues are quite profound, but fortunately, we may never have to reach into that morass, since making a buck probably dictates that these capacities are all but certainties. After all, if “we don’t do this, our enemy will.” Where have I read that before? Sphere.com: “Military robots have fast grown into a multibillion-dollar business. Massachusetts company iRobot has already delivered around 2,700 robots to militaries around the world. Some of those were part of a December 2007, $300 million U.S. Defense Department contract that iRobot won after prevailing over an upstart that purloined its technology. A second Massachusetts firm, Foster-Miller, won a contract in 2008 for another $400 million to supply thousands of its TALON robots. Both iRobot's PackBot and Foster-Miller's TALON are mostly used to locate and detonate improvised explosive devices, or IEDs, which have proved to be one of the Taliban's deadliest weapons.”

Who can argue with using robot to defuse bombs? And who wants to see American soldiers die when they don’t have to. But the other kind of robots? Don’t you just hate “computer glitches”? Oh well… Jobs now; death later.

I’m Peter Dekom, and I approve this message.

The Water Wars

Jobs, energy, education… the United States, for that matter, the world, seems to be a story of the misery imposed on the exploding population of humanity from shortages. Is nature trying to eliminate “nature’s senior predator” with war, plague, pestilence and famine? Do those four horsemen ride with God’s mandate? The big shortage I’ve blogged about in Kenya – the drought-plagued African Rift Valley – WATER… is very much a part of the American landscape as well. An excerpt from a book I published last year on Kindle:

As urban growth in desert landscapes continues, looking at cities like Las Vegas (flying over Lake Mead shows you just how far the water table has fallen) and Los Angeles, and as aquifers in places like Montana and Idaho are rapidly being drained, the 21^st century may well be remembered as the time when we ran out of water. The April 4, 2007 New York Times noted that while the western states are struggling with a drought that began in 1999 combined with the impact of global warming and population growth, even with $2.5 billion in new water projects, water wars loom as battle lines are being drawn. The Ogallala Aquifer (which runs beneath eight states, between the Rocky Mountains and the Mississippi River, and provides water for the grain-producing states) was once the size of Lake Huron, but at a net consumption of five feet of water per year, some time in the next two or three decades, that water will be gone, and those [mid-west] states face the possibility of turning into a vast and infertile dust bowl.

As rain water runoff pours down the “Los Angeles River” – a drainage ditch with a fancy name – on those rare occasions that it “rains in Southern California,” I am reminded of the water wars waged with the Northern California Owens Valley so many years ago (rent the move Chinatown if you want to see a dramatic rendition – great film), the agreement among the Western states (made at Bishops Lodge outside of Santa Fe New Mexico in 1922) to divvy up the waters of the Colorado River and the trickle of water than remains to flow into Mexico after American thirst and water waste has had its fill. I read scary articles about the radiation leak in north central New Mexico (from Los Alamos) into the aquifers that slake so many of the homes around Santa Fe. California’s Imperial Valley grows desperately-needed food with scare water diverted into this desert region (never really suited for farming) from everywhere but the Imperial Valley.

As massive dams built to store water and generate electricity slow from the inevitable build-up of silt, the future of water… and hence the United States… is increasingly on the line. Just about everything man builds – sooner or later – wears out. California, a state where even San Francisco is really a desert, is a place where water issues are always at the top of the political agenda. Water restrictions are common, but while eastern states have too much water, the western region is a desiccated mess. And the tales of desalinization seldom take into consideration the considerable energy needs and massive costs of such a long-term infrastructure project.

On an ePage featuring an ad of “Endless Pools,” the November 5^th Los Angeles Times wrote of what California is proposing for its less-than-moist future: “Lawmakers capped months of discussions, weeks of tedious negotiations and years of chasing a water deal with approval of major legislation in a marathon session that ended [November 4^th] as the sun rose… The package, which includes an $11.1-billion bond that must go before voters, would nudge California in new directions on water policy while giving something to each of the major factions that have warred over the state's supplies… The measure, likely to reach the governor's desk [in the week of November 9^th], would establish a statewide program that for the first time would measure if too much water is being pumped from underground aquifers. It mandates an overall 20% drop in the state's per capita water use by 2020 and creates a new, politically appointed council to oversee management of the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, the state's water hub…”

“The bond has to be approved by voters, a gamble in a time of gaping budget deficits and job losses. The big infrastructure projects it would fund are probably years away from construction. Mending the crippled delta is far from a sure thing… The package's broad scope is in part a recognition that the good old days are gone, and that the state must embrace new approaches to meet its water needs… ‘This is California slowly and painfully coming to terms with a static water supply,’ said Phil Isenberg, a former legislator who has grappled with water issues for years. ‘There are big problems and [we] have to do a bunch of different things.’”

Nature probably doesn’t care if the legislation passes or not and probably is agnostic to whether human beings actually take any steps at all to moderate water usage. She probably doesn’t even care if the cause is climate change or wasteful consumption practices; when there isn’t enough, the water just runs out. If communities die and people cannot sustain life without the precious droplets, so what if they make for some future archaeologist’s PhD thesis study of ancient man’s abandoned civilizations?

I’m Peter Dekom, and I approve this message.

What’s Left in India

To anyone who has ever traveled to India, it is almost an unfathomable amalgamation of inconsistency. Well over a quarter of this great nation lives on a paltry 40 cents or less per day. Somewhere north of 320 million (out of approximately 1.2 billion people) fall within a global definition of middle class or better; yet, the vast majority of India’s people are profoundly poor. India is like first world, second world and a third world nations layered on top of each other, living together under one democratic system, a sea of humanity that seems as if it really shouldn’t exist in relative harmony. Languages vary from region to region, and their legal system has embraced English as a necessary tongue of commercial expediency (definitely a language learned almost exclusively by the upper and middle classes).

New high tech complexes, in and around places like Hyderabad or Chennai or Bangalore, offer gated and guarded “mini-cities” technology parks with modern streets, chrome and glass buildings, fiber-optic linkage and state-of-the-art residential offerings. Immediately outside these gates often lie crumbling or inadequate infrastructure, from streets to waste treatment, and immeasurable squalor and poverty. Open sewers. Legions of beggars. sJury-rigged ramshackle “homes” that shelter millions. Cities offer ultra-modern amenities – spa, clubs, restaurants and shopping malls with the latest fashions (pictured above) – while sheltering teaming millions in dirt and truly ugly inhumane conditions right around the corner.

That harmony may be more of a cacophony, one in which peaceful co-existence is rapidly deteriorating. India has always had its share of political violence and rabble-rousing, but a disturbing factionalism has been rising violently, particularly in the eastern quadrant of the country – extreme left-wing Maoism. The November 1^st New York Times: “In the last four years, the Maoists have killed more than 900 Indian security officers, a figure almost as high as the more than 1,100 members of the coalition forces killed in Afghanistan during the same period… If the Maoists were once dismissed as a ragtag band of outdated ideologues, Indian leaders are now preparing to deploy nearly 70,000 paramilitary officers for a prolonged counterinsurgency campaign to hunt down the guerrillas in some of the country’s most rugged, isolated terrain.”

The Maoists don’t just want a voice within the massive Indian political spectrum; they want to topple the current government and take over entirely. Their efforts have found traction among impoverished tribes and deprived masses whose plight has become that much more transparent in the accelerated growth of the Indian economy, an expansion of the middle class that has completely left most Indians behind.

The Times: “Once considered Robin Hood figures, the Maoists claim to represent the dispossessed of Indian society, particularly the indigenous tribal groups, who suffer some of the country’s highest rates of poverty, illiteracy and infant mortality. Many intellectuals and even some politicians once sympathized with their cause, but the growing Maoist violence has forced a wrenching reconsideration of whether they can still be tolerated… ‘The root of this is dispossession and deprivation,’ said Ramachandra Guha, a prominent historian based in Bangalore. ‘The Maoists are an ugly manifestation of this. This is a serious problem that is not going to disappear.’…

“[I]n the state of Chattisgarh, Maoists dominate thousands of square miles of territory and have pushed into neighboring states of Orissa, Bihar, Jharkhand and Maharashtra, part of a so-called Red Corridor stretching across central and eastern India... Violence erupts almost daily. In the past five years, Maoists have detonated more than 1,000 improvised explosive devices in Chattisgarh. Within the past two weeks, Maoists have burned two schools in Jharkhand, hijacked and later released a passenger train in West Bengal while also carrying out a raid against a West Bengal police station.”

The cry of poverty in India is overwhelming; the solution to the horrific human condition, even in times of explosive economic growth, is elusive. Populism has elected xenophobes, anti-Muslims and uncompromising ideologues along the way… movements that have been tempered with the underhanded cash flow of the richest segments of society. But this new Maoist movement, spreading its violent wings with a strong presence in 20 out of India’s 28 states, is indeed a power to be reckoned with, one that threatens the very existence of this great democracy.

I’m Peter Dekom, and I approve this message.

Avarice and Greed? Meet Arrogance and Overconfidence!

A couple of years ago, at my college reunion, alumni were treated to a series of lectures in many subjects. Among those we attended, my wife and I were fascinated by a presentation at the Yale School of Management – based on numerous studies sponsored by the University – which effectively repealed the notion of a marketplace governed by a rational person driving the pricing structure based on informed economic self-interest. OK, everyone should have known better simply based on the word “informed.”

Despite all of the market research, the analytics of experts, it seemed as if those who trade in the marketplace, particularly the non-expert day-traders, made their decisions under the assumption that with a little bit of reading, they could out-perform the marketplace. Statistics showed that, in fact, these non-expert day-traders trailed market averages with the reports of the occasional mega-success of one of their compatriots fueling their raging fires of overconfidence.

In fact, when Yale began making market predictions based on psychological factors, their estimates proved so much more accurate that the “rational economic man” predictions of professional analysts that the big financial institutions began absorbing the Yale predictors into their own analyses. The result? The professional analysts’ reports became more accurate, but the value of the psychological predictors was lost now that everyone was using the same formula.

But psychological variables still dominate the market-valuation process. One of the interesting economic iconoclasts to come around in the last few years is 46-year-old Malcolm Gladwell, a staff writer for The New Yorker since 1996 and best known as the author of the books The Tipping Point (2000), Blink (2005), and Outliers (2008). In a July 2009 article in The New Yorker, Gladwell examined the dominant theme that tried to explain the colossal failures of Wall Street that gave rise to our economic collapse. Popular notions of insufficient governmental regulation or incompetent analysis and decision-making were insufficient explanations to Gladwell. He felt there was a bigger cause: irrational and obvious overconfidence.

Is America, land of the free, home of the brave, where “cowboy” is a term of endearment, simply a culture that is too aggressive for its own good? But isn’t that what made America great? Perhaps the recent economic overconfidence (hubris) of a few was accelerated by the insecurities of the many (the sheep who followed out of fear that not following would have reflected their true ignorance). The November 6^th theDeal.com excerpts this analysis from Gladwell’s July piece entitled Cocksure: Banks, battles, and the psychology of overconfidence. (Read Gladwell's piece here.)

Several years ago, a team headed by the psychologist Mark Fenton-O'Creevy created a computer program that mimicked the ups and downs of an index like the Dow, and recruited, as subjects, members of a highly paid profession. As the line moved across the screen, Fenton-O'Creevy asked his subjects to press a series of buttons, which, they were told, might or might not affect the course of the line. At the end of the session, they were asked to rate their effectiveness in moving the line upward. The buttons had no effect at all on the line. But many of the players were convinced that their manipulation of the buttons made the index go up and up. The world these people inhabited was competitive and stressful and complex. They had been given every reason to be confident in their own judgments. If they sat down next to you, with a tape recorder, it wouldn't take much for them to believe that they had you in the palm of their hand. They were traders at an investment bank.

TheDeal.com’s observation: “However, Gladwell also notes that overconfidence, particularly on Wall Street, can be an advantage since investment bankers borrow billions on the terms that they are able to pay it back. He cites Harvard biological anthropologist Richard Wrangham, who writes, ‘In conflicts involving mutual assessment, an exaggerated assessment of the probability of winning increases the probability of winning. Selection therefore favors this form of overconfidence.’”

And when you join this litany of psychological dysfunctions with hubris, the results can be staggering. As Goldman Sachs bankers soaked up their laden paychecks, bonus compensation and stock appreciation, their CEO, Lloyd Blankfein, justified his company to the London Times saying: “We help companies to grow by helping them to raise capital. Companies that grow create wealth. This, in turn, allows people to have jobs that create more growth and more wealth. We have a social purpose.”

Yeah, I’ve been keeping an eye on that job growth, Lloyd, 10.2% national unemployment (17.5% if you counter part-timers and those who’ve given up but still want full-time job) – nice work! The November 9^th DailyFinance.com added: “[Blankfein] has put an unusual spin on the bank's activities. He says his firm is doing ‘God's work.’ This may seem like an audacious statement coming from a man whose company has been harshly criticized for planning to give many of its employees multi-million pay packages just a bit more than a year after the collapse of the credit markets.”

Hmmmm! Dekom on what needs to happen: When you have a bevy of overconfident, arrogant and overpaid cowboys holding the well-being of an entire nation in their sweating palms, you need to watch them like a hawk and corral their excesses with a vicious herd dog and the sounds of a strident whip! Crack! Snap! Grrrrrrrrrrrrrr!

I’m Peter Dekom, and I approve this message.

Splitting the Baby in Half – The Great Healthcare Abortion Debate

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi struggled and failed to make legalized abortions a part of the costs covered by the proposed healthcare legislation. A number of conservative Democrats (there was only one Republican supporter – Louisiana Rep. Anh "Joseph" Cao, elected in a heavily Democratic district because his opponent was battling corruption charges) railed at this concept, and in the end, the version of the healthcare legislation that did clear the House (here comes the Senate and the likely Republican/independent filibuster; the bill could be DOA as a result)… but with a catch: “Her attempts at winning them over had failed, and Ms. Pelosi, the first woman speaker and an ardent defender of abortion rights, had no choice but to do the unthinkable. To save the health care bill she had to give in to abortion opponents in her party and allow them to propose tight restrictions barring any insurance plan that is purchased with government subsidies from covering abortions.”

So I thought to myself, what is the most controversial statistical analysis that bolsters a conservative agenda but clearly supports the notion of legalized abortion? And then I remembered a section in Steven Levitt’s & Stephen Dubner’s mega-best seller, Freakonomics (Harper, 2005, 2006, 2009). Levitt is an award-winning and highly respected economist at the University of Chicago who has specialized in challenging generally accepted theories and “common knowledge” with the credible evidence of detailed statistical analysis.

The premise, which will undoubtedly get under some of my readers’ skin, is that the exceptionally significant reduction in violent crime in the 1990’s was not the result of better police enforcement, an increase in the rate of incarceration of criminals (such as under the three strikes legislation adopted by most states), or enlightened social policies. Instead argue Levitt and Dubner, it was the legacy of the 1973 U.S. Supreme Court decision banning restrictions on abortion set forth in the famous Roe vs. Wade decision.

Their conclusion was that legalized abortion literally gave unwed mothers and those who knew they really would not be responsible mothers the option of terminating a pregnancy – people at the bottom of the socio-economic ladder had a choice. Since, the authors assert, these mothers would have most likely produced children without credible parental guidance and care, those children most “at risk” for social maladjustment and living in the crime-plagued lower economic neighborhood, the reduction in birthrates in this limited group of “potential criminals” had its obvious effect decades later when those who would have been born would have been old enough to commit the projected crimes.

Some excerpts: “In the first year after Rose v. Wade, some 750,000 women had abortions in the United States (representing one abortion for every 4 live births). By 1980 the number of abortions reached 1.6 million (one for every 2.25 live births), where it leveled off.” (page 138)

“One study has shown that the typical child who went unborn in the earliest years of legalized abortion would have 50% more likely than average to live in poverty; he would have been 60% more likely to grow up with just one parent. These two factors – childhood poverty and a single-parent household – are among the strongest predictors that a child will have a criminal future.” (pages 138-139).

“One way to test the effect of abortion on crime would be to measure crime date in the five states where abortion was made legal before the Supreme Court extended abortion rights to the rest of the country… And indeed, those early-legalizing states saw crime fall earlier than the other forty-five states [before the unborn children would have come of age under Roe vs. Wade-permitted abortions]… 13% compared to the other states…” (page 141)

“Sure enough, the states with the highest abortion rates in the 1970s experienced the greatest crime drops in the 1990s, while states with low abortion rates experienced smaller crime drops… Since 1985, states with high abortion rates have experienced a roughly 30 percent drop in crime relative to low-abortion states.” (page 141)

If you want to know more, read the book; I just hit the headlines on this topic. These controversial statistics seem to provide a hornet’s nest of issues to be debated. How do you feel about these findings?

I’m Peter Dekom, and I thought this was most interesting.

Breaking Up is Hard to Do

If you are rich and powerful, person or company, wouldn’t you at least allocate some of your wealth to make sure that neither your wealth nor your power were taken from you? Maybe even enhanced a little bit? If you are poor and powerless – or even if you are middle class and hanging on to what you have – wouldn’t you part with some of your wealth to make sure you got a bit more of the pie? Oh, you don’t have that wealth to get folks elected; you have to wait until people are so pissed off at the political system that money from special interests just plain doesn’t matter anymore.

In short, the system favors the special interests with the money to influence the system until things get so completely out of hand that someone has to come in and vacuum the whole mess. Kind of destroys that notion that free markets and laissez faire will always operate in the best interests of the country. Yet purists demand that the government let go… unless the government is granting business tax credits or oil depletion allowances… that we are becoming “socialist,” although I cannot think of something more socialist than “public schools.”

Just as millions of Americans are watching their life savings and pension benefits destroyed by reason of the economic malaise caused by a business-supported frenzy of over-borrowing, we learn that the fat cats at the top of the big companies are pulling down huge increases in their pensions. The November 3^rd TheDeal.com: “Here are some startling statistics: The Wall Street Journal has found that pensions for top executives rose an average of 19% last year as companies' share prices tumbled on average 37%, according to an analysis of SEC filings. ..Consider, too, that the average corporate pension fund lost 24% or so of its total value last year, compelling some companies to freeze their pension funds and to stop matching employee contributions, and the news is that much more gut-wrenching.” We already know about the huge bonuses these folks have already taken, but this excess seems interminable.

The special interests seem almost impossible to contain, and the sheer size of the aggregation of corporate power appears to make the biggest of the big immune from any semblance of rational governance, from shareholders to government regulators. Bernie Madoff scoffs at the efforts of the SEC to regulate rogue traders (such as himself). The BBBs (bailed out big banks) must have been literally laughing all the way to themselves as the government gave them billions to restart the credit markets, but they took that money and used that capital to milk the system while leaving the small business and commercial credit market in worse shape than when they got the TARP payments in the first place!

The Brits are beginning to figure out that just allowing these financial institutions to become and remain as large as they have become is an evil within itself. The November 3^rd Washington Post: “The British government announced Tuesday that it will break up parts of major financial institutions bailed out by taxpayers, highlighting a growing divide across the Atlantic over how to deal with the massive banks that were partially nationalized during the height of the financial crisis… The British government -- spurred on by European regulators -- is forcing the Royal Bank of Scotland, Lloyds Banking Group and Northern Rock to sell off parts of their operations. The Europeans are calling for more and smaller banks to increase competition and eliminate the threat posed by banks so large that they must be rescued by taxpayers, no matter how they conducted their business, in order to avoid damaging the global financial system.”

When you look at how many former “big bankers” are highly-placed officials in any U.S. administration, Republican or Democrat, it is little wonder that these big financial institutions have the clout to fight any such efforts in the United States. Let’s face it, the system of allowing big financial institutions to grow to whatever size they can achieve, by merger or acquisition, is an obvious complete and utter failure by any objective measure (look at how these institutions have fared in this meltdown when compared with small businesses and individual consumers!). “‘We still need to see exactly which parts the [British] banks will need to sell off to judge whether the goal of having smaller banks is really achieved,’ said Richard Portes, an economics professor at the London Business School. ‘But there are lessons here for the United States. The supposed economies of scale of massive financial institutions are outweighed by the difficulties in controlling risk inside them.’” The Post. Duh!

Compare the economic gains of these special interests to this report from the November issue of Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine (as reported November 3^rd on AOL news): “Nearly half of all U.S. children and 90 percent of black youngsters will be on food stamps at some point during childhood, and fallout from the current recession could push those numbers even higher, researchers say...The estimate comes from an analysis of 30 years of national data, and it bolsters other recent evidence on the pervasiveness of youngsters at economic risk… According to a [United States Department of Agriculture] report released last month, 28.4 million Americans received food stamps in an average month in 2008, and about half were younger than age 18. The average monthly benefit per household totaled $222.” Even if you think the numbers are a 100% exaggeration, the statistics are still staggering.

When crass pragmatists insist that it is political folly to think that the government can remotely impact the same kind of break-up in the U.S., because these special interests are way too powerful to contain, I would like to point out the most fundamental lesson of history: when special interests so overwhelm the best interests of the vast majority of the citizens of any nation, the political system that gave rise to the inequality will eventually fail – either through insurrection (France in 1789), conquest (the southern Soong Dynasty in 1279), separation of component states into new political units (Soviet Union in 1991) or simple collapse (Anasazi Indians of Arizona/New Mexico sometime around 1300, accelerated by climate change). It is, if I recall, how the United States came to exist in the first place in 1776.

Taking our freedoms for granted and ignoring the obvious failings of the system are nothing more than condoning the beginning of the end. And in that end, the special interests stand to lose more than anything they could possibly have gained in the interim… but who thinks that far ahead? We really must!

I’m Peter Dekom, and I reluctantly approve this message.