brainiac conspiracy

Friday Night Transit Blogging

Because we're all just squatters on some giant cosmic ant farm. It's nice to have mobility, though!

(Via.)

---Baron V

Rainy-Day Priorities

Just when I was getting comfortable with a little rain---because we hardly ever get any in Los Angeles---they had to remind me that

truly massive atmospheric rivers that cause catastrophic flooding seem to hit the state about once every 200 years, according to evidence recently pieced together [...]

The last megaflood was in 1861; rains arrived for 43 days, obliterating Sacramento and bankrupting the state. The disaster is largely forgotten, but the same region is now home to more than six million people.

Simulations of a 23-day storm there indicate that more than $400 billion of damage and losses would occur, far surpassing the $60 billion estimates for Hurricane Sandy’s effects. New research also shows that climate change may make these storms more likely to occur.

Sacramento has been a Katrina/Sandy-style disaster-in-waiting for decades. The threat of massive earthquakes is always present, and in the last half of this century, rising sea levels won't be any help, either. Some work has been done to shore up the Depression-era levees, but it is far from completed, and even if/when it is, the reality remains that the Delta is still sinking due to water-use/subsidence issues, and it will need shoring up repeatedly over time. Just in case anyone needed an assignment to pass along to the Corps of Engineers---just as soon as they finish building playpens for militarists.

---Baron V

They're Setting Our Money on Fire

To keep us protected, naturally. Too bad they can't protect us from their own incompetence:

The U.S. Air Force drone, on a classified spy mission over the Indian Ocean, was destined for disaster from the start.

An inexperienced military contractor, flying by remote control in shorts and a T-shirt from a trailer at Seychelles International Airport, committed blunder after blunder during a six-minute span on April 4.

The pilot of the unarmed MQ-9 Reaper drone took off without getting permission from the control tower. One minute later, he yanked the wrong lever at his console, killing the engine without realizing why.

As he tried to make an emergency landing, he forgot to put down the wheels. The $8.9 million aircraft belly-flopped on the runway, bounced into the air and then plunged into the tropical waters at the airport’s edge, according to a previously undisclosed Air Force accident investigation report.

The out-of-control drone crashed at a civilian airport that serves a half-million passengers a year, most sun-seeking tourists. No one was hurt, but it was the second Reaper accident there in five months---under eerily similar circumstances.

“I will be blunt here,” an Air Force official at the scene told investigators afterward. “I said, ‘I can’t believe this is happening again.’ ” He added: “You go, ‘How stupid are you?’ ”

An even more relevant question is, how stupid are we to keep putting up with this ever-expanding program that seems to lack any semblance of mission, protocol, or basic civilian oversight? At the very least, nine million dollars equals 180 jobs paying $50,000 a year. You start crashing these things by the dozens, and pretty soon we're talking about real money that we could be using to pay hundreds of union construction workers to erect storm barriers around Long Island Sound instead of crashing a bunch of oversized R/C toys in some far-flung outpost where we weren't invited and where we don't belong. Just a thought.

---Baron V

Welcome to The Next Four Years

Can't say I'm terribly surprised by this:

An explosion violently shook the Social Security Administration building in Casa Grande but didn't injure anyone Friday morning.

The blast was caused by a device that detonated at the rear of the building, according to Agustin Avalos of the city of Casa Grande.

Truth to tell, I'm only surprised there hasn't been an Oklahoma City-style attack in this country within the last four years. Who knows, maybe the Homeland Security people have thwarted a few that we'll never be told about, or maybe we've just been lucky up to now. Not wishing ill on anyone here, but I would be surprised if this is the last time a government building is bombed between now and January 2016. Sure hope not, though.

---Baron V

Poor People

As a rule, they make lousy campaign donors---which is one of many reasons why their concerns are often drowned out by the Well-Respected Men in our nation’s boardrooms, whose most creative policy solutions benefit not only the nation, they’ll gladly remind us, but also---coincidentally---themselves:

The 71 Fix the Debt CEOs who lead publicly held companies have amassed an average of $9 million in their company retirement funds. A dozen have more than $20 million in their accounts. If each of them converted their assets to an annuity when they turned 65, they would receive a monthly check for at least $110,000 for life. The Fix the Debt CEO with the largest pension fund is Honeywell's David Cote, a long-time advocate of Social Security cuts. His $78 million nest egg is enough to provide a $428,000 check every month after he turns 65. Forty-one of the 71 companies offer employee pension funds. Of these, only two have sufficient assets in their funds to meet expected obligations. The rest have combined deficits of $103 billion, or about $2.5 billion on average. General Electric has the largest deficit in its worker pension fund, with $22 billion.

It’s the dirty little secret of our New Gilded Age: The businesspeople most highly respected among our leadership elites are, for the most part, incredibly lousy at their stated professions. The only things they know how to do really well is work the refs, shave the dice, and cry butthurt whenever someone suggests we raise their taxes. But they need their taxes raised anyway!

---Baron V

Friday Morning Rain Blogging

It's soggy and saturated in the Marxist dystopia today. Quelle surprise! To stay warm, I've got oxtail bones roasting in the oven, and later, they'll go in a pot to make homemade soup stock. So while we're waiting for the skies to clear, what's on everyone else's menu today?

---Baron V

Right on Cue

The sensible centrists on Team Democrat, snatching the football away from themselves:

The Hill reports this morning that senators Dianne Feinstein, Mark Pryor, and Carl Levin are uncomfortable with a simple-majority change. Senators Max Baucus and Jack Reed have yet to be persuaded. Senators John Kerry and Jay Rockefeller say they're undecided but leaning towards a change. Senator-elect Joe Donnelly is uncommitted. Presuming Republicans vote unanimously against any changes, if Harry Reid loses six votes, filibuster reform is toast.

It’s amazing that this party ever wins a national election, isn’t it? People keep handing them a mandate to govern, and they’re too timid to do anything with it.

Yes, I realize that the Senate as it was envisioned by the Framers is anti-democratic by design, that it was constructed to place a constitutional check on the “tyranny of the majority” as manifested in the lower House and all the rest. But there’s nothing about the filibuster in the Constitution---and for much of its existence, it has been generally used in the service of loathsome and bigoted social policies. If these people cannot be roused to action after everything that has happened to them since the mid-1990s, they really are a useless entity.

But someone should remind Dianne Feinstein (my Marxist dystopia’s embarrassment-in-office) and her esteemed old white colleagues that people are still in desperate need of jobs, and money, and mortgage relief. And the only way they’ll have a chance of being helped by the federal government is for the federal government to, well, vote them some help. That’s never going to happen unless the filibuster goes away. Put it this way: You can be protective of Senate decorum, or you can be protective of constituent demands, but the way things work in Washington these days, you can’t be both anymore. Perhaps someone should remind these serious persons of that fact.

---Baron V

Playing With Matches

They know this is going to incite violence. In fact, I think that's the point of it:

Israel plans to build some 3,000 new housing units in East Jerusalem and West Bank settlements in response to the Palestinians' successful bid for recognition at the UN General Assembly this week, a senior diplomatic source told Haaretz on Friday.

According to the source, Israel also plans to advance long-frozen plans for the E1 area, which covers an area that links the city of Jerusalem with the settlement of Ma'aleh Adumim.

If built, the controversial plan would prevent territorial contiguity between the northern and southern West Bank, making it difficult for a future Palestinian state to function.

Yes, I know, we must never intervene in the affairs of our Friends in Freedom® because anti-semitism, but sooner or later, some American President is going to have to cut these assholes loose. At this point, they’re obviously stacking the deck in favor of Hamas so can self-justify their expansionist policies. Basically, it comes down to whether we want to lend our diplomatic support to people are who trying to stabilize a politically unstable region, or whether we want to support people who are actively fanning the flames. Our money is helping to underwrite their little experiment in social engineering, and everyone who lives in the Occupied Territories---and throughout the Islamic world---knows it. So maybe we should try, like, not subsidizing it!

---Baron V

Rice Kernels

Realize she's become a liberal heroine-of-sorts due to Team Teabilly's rabid, arguably racist demonization of her, but while we're praising her pluck and patience, we should be mindful of the fact that for the bulk of her career, she has been an dutiful promoter of Beltway conventional wisdom that helped to produce some of Washington's most epic foreign-policy failures. Since our diplomacy has become so increasingly militarized over the past 30 years, perhaps it might be smarter to appoint a Secertary of State who has some military experience? Not thinking of anyone in particular here, but I think it's certainly worth discussing.

---Baron V

Burdensome Regulations

It's an article of faith amongst our leadership class that American businesses are struggling to stay competitive because corporate taxes are just too darn high. Can even recall both presidential candidates agreeing on this during the debates! So while they're wrangling over the finer points of cliff-jumping etiquette in the coming days, perhaps they'll take steps to rectify this situation because:

United States corporate profits reached a record high in the third quarter of this year, even adjusted for inflation, according to a report from the Bureau of Economic Analysis [...]

Additionally, all of the growth in domestic corporate profits was accounted for by the financial sector.

Naturally, no one is discussing a financial transactions tax.

---Baron V

Thursday Night Transit Blogging

Because this is the Interstate Highway System---a hundred years from now. Happy motoring!

---Baron V

QE4: Now With State Capitals

Always hard to know how much of this is for real or just posturing, but since it's being leaked by (mostly) Teabilly Congressional aides, I am assuming much of it can be taken at face value because (a) they're professing their usual irrational outrage at proposals that are (b) utterly rational:

Republican aides said they were surprised that Obama is also demanding that dividends be taxed as normal income and that the estate tax be raised and expanded to estates worth as little as $3.5 million---policies for which the Democratic Senate was unable to win approval earlier this year.

The rest of the tax increases and the entitlement savings would come next year, through congressional deliberations.

The offer also seeks funding for a new infrastructure bank, starting at $50 billion in 2013. But the most startling demand, Republicans said, was Obama’s request for sole authority over the level of the nation’s indebtedness, which is currently controlled by Congress.

Instead of letting Congress set the debt limit---currently $16.4 trillion---and seeking an increase when necessary, GOP aides said Obama is proposing to continue procedures adopted in 2011, which permit the White House to propose an increase in the debt limit which Congress can then vote to disapprove.

However, the president can veto that vote and, unless Congress musters two-thirds of each chamber to override the veto, the debt limit increase is approved.

Not keen on the quasi-Unitary Executive method being employed here, but the debt ceiling is a stupid game that should be permanently waived. The rest of the ideas are sound, too, though I've never understood the need for a "bank" for infrastructure spending when there's no reason why (so far as I know) that the Federal Reserve couldn't offer the same deal to each of the States that they made to the banks: Zero-interest loans ($1 billion worth of Treasury bonds, precisely) that can be sold back at a net profit when the bonds mature and the collateral securities regain value. Maybe there's some Separation of Powers issue (or Fed By-Law, perhaps) that I'm not aware of, but absent one, I don't see why it couldn't be done. Of course many of Team Teabilly's brighter bulbs will turn down the money, and that's fine---all the more for the rest of us. Some of us could do some really awesome things with that money!

Put another way: If the time to start spreading the wealth around isn't now, then when?

---Baron V

Public Works Projects

Previous administrations have used them in tough economic times to put people back to work and improve the nation's infrastructure. Good to see, then, the present administration following the better examples of its predecessors. They're just not doing it in this country:

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers plans to supervise construction of a five-story underground facility for an Israel Defense Forces complex, oddly named “Site 911,” at an Israeli Air Force base near Tel Aviv.

Expected to take more than two years to build, at a cost of up to $100 million, the facility is to have classrooms on Level 1, an auditorium on Level 3, a laboratory, shock-resistant doors, protection from non-ionizing radiation and very tight security. Clearances will be required for all construction workers, guards will be at the fence and barriers will separate it from the rest of the base.

This being the Corps, they're getting it right to the very last detail:

The Corps offered a lengthy description of the mezuzas the contractor is to provide “for each door or opening exclusive of toilets or shower rooms” in the Site 911 building. A mezuza (also spelled mezuzah) is a parchment which has been inscribed with Hebrew verses from the Torah, placed in a case and attached to a door frame of a Jewish family’s house as a sign of faith. Some interpret Jewish law as requiring---as in this case---that a mezuza be attached to every door in a house.

These mezuzas, notes the Corps, “shall be written in inerasable ink, on . . . uncoated leather parchment” and be handwritten by a scribe “holding a written authorization according to Jewish law.” The writing may be “Ashkenazik or Sepharadik” but “not a mixture” and “must be uniform.”

Also, “The Mezuzahs shall be proof-read by a computer at an authorized institution for Mezuzah inspection, as well as manually proof-read for the form of the letters by a proof-reader authorized by the Chief Rabbinate.” The mezuza shall be supplied with an aluminum housing with holes so it can be connected to the door frame or opening. Finally, “All Mezuzahs for the facility shall be affixed by the Base’s Rabbi or his appointed representative and not by the contractor staff.”

Is there anyone else out there who finds this as, well, offensive as I do? I mean, if these self-righteous assholes want to invoke their Bronze Age divinity's protective powers on their drive to destabilize the entire Middle East, let 'em hire their own damn work crews and bring the Corps members home. It's not like there's some shortage of constructive projects they could working on here, now, is there?

Sometimes, guys (takes deep breath), I have to admit, I really get the feeling that I am over this country, and ready to try living in some other Republic where the government has better things to do with its resources than building high-tech bomb shelters for the benefit of foreigners.

---Baron V

Obama Energy Policy

Simply put, it's anything but a carbon tax:

Tomorrow, as part of President Obama’s all-of-the-above energy strategy to continue to expand safe and responsible domestic energy production, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) will hold an oil and gas lease sale that will make more than 20 million offshore acres available, and represents all unleased areas in the Western Gulf of Mexico Planning Area. The Western Gulf of Mexico Lease Sale builds on two major Gulf of Mexico lease sales in the past year alone, a 21 million acre sale held last December and a 39 million acre sale held in June.

"Safe and responsible" offshore oil extraction: kinda like "clean coal." Which is to say, unicorns.

Meanwhile, all-of-the-above energy strategies.

---Baron V

Low Expectations

This almost sounds to good to be true:

“A lot of the big entitlement savings comes in the 10- to 20-year budget window, not the next 10 years,” a Democratic aide said. “Everybody will need to get on board understanding that. Paul Ryan and the Obama budget are the same on health cuts for the next 10 years.”

But that will most likely be the deal Republicans will be staring at: tax hikes now in exchange for Medicare changes way later.

When we say "good," of course, we're referring to Congress deferring any decisions on Medicare cuts for ten years, at which time they could, well, make savage cuts to Medicare, or---more likely, given their track record on these matters---opt to defer their decision again. Naturally, I'd prefer to see Medicare taken off the table altogether and all the tax cuts expire because (a) I don't think it will be as ruinous to the economy as lot of people seem to think it will be, (b) a lot of rich people can afford a much bigger tax hike than only 3.6 percent, and (c) because I hit the Medicare eligibility age---yep---ten years from now. But given what we know about our leaders' ability to dither and procrastinate, this seems far from a worst-case scenario. Also, devil = details, and yes, this is Politico, so we will have to wait and see what specifics our leaders actually trot out for us. But if there is any truth to this story, then they will have bought us another ten years during which we can stock up on penicillin and pet food. That's not saying very much, but if it raises revenues and reassures the markets, i.e., discourages our corporate overlords from settling the world on fire again, that might the best we can hope for. Still think that a second New Deal would be a lot better for everyone, though!

---Baron V

Bad Idea

Just when you think you've heard them all:

Romney was once a world-class management consultant with a legendary appetite for “the data.” His private-equity success was due partly to his knack for identifying and purging inefficiencies from bloated, underperforming enterprises. It’s time, therefore, to set him loose (analytically speaking) on the mother of all domestic challenges: America’s radically inefficient health-care system.

No.

His role as a "consultant" was not to purge inefficiencies from underperforming enterprises. It was to extract wealth from the enterprises for himself and his investors, and purging inefficiencies was simply a means to accomplish it. America's privately run health-care system is already overrun by such profit-driven wealth extractors---insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies, publicly-traded HMOs, etc. Their business model is a problem to be solved, not a solution to be embraced.

We already know how to drive down health-care costs while providing universal care. It's called single payer, and it's why every other civilized nation on the planet can provide health care to its citizens at a substantially lower cost than we do. The Affordable Care Act is a half-step in that direction. The man who just lost the last presidential election wanted to repeal it. Why his advice should be sought on this---or any other---matter of public policy simply beggars explanation. Unless elections no longer mean anything, and who knows, maybe they don't anymore.

---Baron V

Cut The Crap

So sensible, so pointless:

The best option is to let everything expire, and then pass a new tax cut that phases out over time. The new tax cut might be a reduction in rates equal to the Bush tax cuts, or it might be some other set of reductions. It doesn't matter very much. What does matter is that one-quarter of the cuts should expire in 2014, another quarter in 2015, another in 2016, and another in 2017. This would have a gradual effect on the economy, it would require no further congressional action, it would improve our medium-term deficit problem, it would take effect primarily while the economy is recovering, and it would do no more than eventually return us to the tax levels of the Clinton era.

Which were adequate to pay down the deficit and little else of lasting social utility. What about infrastructure? Medicaid? Scientific R&D? Superfund site clean-ups? Public-lands conservation? Did any of these programs receive a revenue windfall during the Clinton administration?

Here's what needs to be done, and has been needed to be done for the last 30 years:

1. Let the rich people's tax cuts expire next year. Raise rich people's taxes to 43 percent in 2014, to 47 percent in 2015, and to 50 percent in 2016.

2. Raise the corporate income tax, by whatever amount it takes to leave them with an effective rate that is comparable to other nations'.

3. Tax dividends, interest, carried income and estates just as thought they were earned via labor.

4. Eliminate the payroll-tax cutoff so all income is taxable.

5. Levy a financial transactions tax.

Each of these tax increases could raise billions. None of them affect working-class people to any pronounced degree, and our own history suggests that raising taxes sharply on rich people, in and of itself, will not, repeat not, destroy the economy.

But whatever, just cut the crap. Stop trying to split the difference between the centrists and the Teabillies. Taxes need to be raised---a lot---if the malign spell of Reaganomic economic policy is ever to be broken and the nation returned to full employment. Most middle-class people in this country understand this, and they simply don't want to get killed on their taxes. How to fix? Raise the money from the rich, the multinationals, and the assholes who crashed the economy. This is really not that difficult to figure out.

---Baron V

Bad Habits

Granted. sometimes they're extremely hard to break:

Following his reelection Mr. Obama said nice things about his ex-opponent, including that he’d like to sit down with him and hear Mr. Romney’s ideas about how to improve economic prospects for middle-income Americans.

“He presented some ideas during the campaign that I actually agree with,” said Obama in his post-election press conference.

Since the President was able to kick the tobacco habit, we know he can kick the post-partisanship habit, but obviously we are going to have to force him to do it. Either that, or we'll need to stage an intervention before he starts bargaining away Social Security in exchange for some rich people's tip money. But once again, he needs to be told---forcefully---to stop dignifying unprincipled losers with words of praise and photo ops. Voters didn't invite Governor Romney to the White House, and there were good reasons why they didn't.

---Baron V

Zero Blog Day

It's the most likely scenario, as I'm out for the better party of the day to celebrate the awesomeness of global warming. If I don't make it back sooner, go jump off a cliff or something. The serious persons will love you!

---Baron V

Can You Feel The Love?

Because there's nothing like drone bombings and targeted assassinations to bring people together.

If you're still wondering whether or not our nation's political-media culture has degraded to middle-school cheerleader status in the pursuit of upholding the Glory That Was Ancient Rome, look no further.

---Baron V