brainiac conspiracy

Why We Fight

There might have been a time---WWII, for sure---when we fought wars for legitimate reasons, but in my lifetime, I can't think of a single one our nation has waged (with the provisional exception of Afghanistan; was probably justifiable 12 years ago, but not anymore) that was even remotely defensible on national-security grounds. Then again, when war-toy manufacturing is among your political leaders' preferred government make-work programs, you've got to keep buying all the shiny toys those people make, and what's the use in buying them of you're never going to use them? So perpetual war, at this point, is essentially baked into America Inc.'s business model.

---Baron V

Yet Another Reason

For that Truth & Reconciliation Commission:

The New York Police Department has abandoned a secretive program that dispatched plainclothes detectives into Muslim neighborhoods to eavesdrop on conversations and built detailed files on where people ate, prayed and shopped, the department said.

The decision by the nation’s largest police force to shutter the surveillance program represents the first sign that William J. Bratton, the department’s new commissioner, is backing away from some of the post-9/11 intelligence-gathering practices of his predecessor. The move comes as the federal government reconsiders and re-evaluates some of its post-9/11 policies, including the National Security Agency’s bulk data collection.

It beggars belief---at least to me!---that the current players for Team White House have not only been the least bit curious to know what inexcusable things were done in our name over the last decade but that they are doubling down on the secrecy regime. As stated many times on this stupid blog, a complete and total moral failing all around, and one that---I am guessing---history will not view charitably.

---Baron V

Nothing We Won't Do to Help Them

I don't know if this article is true or if it's just another attempt by some horrible people in our foreign-policy establishment to gin up another war in central Asia, but either way, it disabuses us of the notion that the people who govern us are, in the aggregate, anything other than a protection racket for a bunch of incompetently managed banks. Glad we're clear on that.

---Baron V

Keeping Us Safe

The people who govern us never cease to remind us that protecting us against the threat of cyber-terror is Job 1 for them. Notwithstanding all those times when, you know, it isn't.

I am guessing we know where Heartbleed originated, and it wasn't with some hipster in Silicon Beach.

---Baron V

You Want To Control Health-Care Costs

Then you control health-care costs. Otherwise

The Medicare program is the source of a small fortune for many U.S. doctors, according to a trove of government records that reveal unprecedented details about physician billing practices nationwide.

The government insurance program for older people paid nearly 4,000 physicians in excess of $1 million each in 2012, according to the new data. Those figures do not include what the doctors billed private insurance firms [...]

Among the highest billers were a cardiologist in Ocala, Fla., who took in $18.1 million, mainly putting in stents. A New Jersey pathologist who received $12.6 million performing tissue exams and other tests. And a Michigan vascular surgeon who got $10.1 million.

---Baron V

Today's Worst Person

We could retire the award with this awful person.

Honestly, when did Team Democrat become so infested with privatizing grifters? Sure, there have been corrupt Democratic mayors and party chiefs in the past---Boss Tweed, Boss Daley, et al---but at least they were considerate enough not to bankrupt their own employees while doling out the spoils.

---Baron V

Grifters Gonna Grift

Because whenever you read Fournier praising some nonpartisan heroics:

It always helps to read the fine print:

Troiano is cofounder of The Can Kicks Back, a nonpartisan campaign that advocates for U.S. debt reduction. His supporters include deficit hawks Erskine Bowles, a Democrat, and Alan Simpson, a Republican, as well as Ross Verney, who advised the presidential campaign of independent Ross Perot.

---Baron V

Why We Can Never Have Nice Things

Because the people who govern us simply don't trust us. Wish they did, though!

---Baron V

No Money For Free Higher Education

Because we had to pump

billions of dollars into a war-riven country without the financial structure to absorb this scale of funding. Afghanistan, which barely had roads, electricity or running water when the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, occurred, found itself suddenly drowning in money following the fall of the Taliban. Without a dependable banking system, people relied on cold, hard cash to pay for services, employ people and buy goods of every kind. The money was carried around in "bricks"---$100 notes in stacks of 1,000 each, totaling $100,000 per packet. Customs officers at the Kabul airport would watch as bundles of currency, estimated at around $1 billion a year, would fly out of the country in suitcases toted by well-dressed Afghan travelers. President Hamid Karzai famously referred to the stacks of CIA money dropped off at his office as "petty cash," which he would use to pay off warlords and other Afghan leaders.

I'm willing to bet that I've written at least once a week about the need for a Truth & Reconciliation Commission ever since I launched this stupid blog nearly seven years ago. It really gets old, but the need still exists, and as long as the people who govern us refuse to consent to this, America will have no moral authority on the global stage.

---Baron V

Can't Keep Going Down This Road Forever

We are running out of water, and overheating the planet, so the people who govern us can have their wars. More to the point, besides diverting money away from necessary improvements---health care, infrastructure, poverty relief---it's hideously wasteful and destructive of our environment. Unfortunately, so many of our job creators have got their tentacles in the Pentagon gravy boat at this point, it's hard to imagine how we will ever reverse the growth of these institutions that not only threaten our liberty but also our viability as a species. Guess the best thing we can do for now is elect leaders who understand that major systemic changes need to be made in the way we run our society, and that will require equally far-reaching changes in the collective consciousness of America's leadership class. All great military empires eventually crumble under their own weight. This time around, though, our collapse could possibly take the rest of the world down with it.

---Baron V

Out of Control

I'm not 100-percent certain how future historians will assess the Obama administration, but I am starting to suspect that they will judge it to have been a weak and ineffectual regime that lost all control over its security-surveillance agencies. Either that, or it's one of the most paranoid gangs to have ruled in Washington. The President really doesn't seem to be that kind of person, though, so I vote incompetent.

---Baron V

Punishing Our Enemies, Wankery Without End, Etc.

Please make it stop.

I mean, why does fucking Ukraine matter to us at all? Repeat after me: WE ARE RUNNING OUT OF WATER, and America's thought leaders are debating how to teach Pooty-Poot a lesson in statesmanship. Priorities, people!

---Baron V

Tens of Thousands Were Needlessly Slaughtered

But our intentions were good, so, bygones.

Thanks for reminding me---again---why I left Team Democrat. Up to now, no regrets!

---Baron V

Today's Worst Person

Barack Obama.

I suppose some of the policy tweaks are good ones, but it's of a piece with this guy: Tinkering at the margins of bad policy when a systemic overhaul is needed. Also too, the private telecoms have done a really great job of building secure data platforms. Just ask any Target shopper.

---Baron V

Quote of The Day

Oversimplifying a bit, but basically still true:

In the economic crisis after World War I, there was no attempt at intervention or bailouts, and the economy came roaring back. In the S&L crisis, we liquidated the bad banks and their bad real estate bets. Property prices fell, capitalist juices started to flow, and the economy came roaring back. This time around, we did not liquidate the guys who made the bad bets . . . The Bernanke put---the market belief that if anything goes bad the Fed will come to the rescue---has had a profound impact on people and how they act.

It's like this: the reason why we have banks at all is to allocate capital in the most efficient manner. These people failed spectacularly at their jobs, and we rewarded them for it with trillions of dollars to cover their bets. We should not be surprised when (not if) they blow up the world again.

---Baron V

Surveillance States

Okay, so the Twittersphere is bursting with quips to the effect of "So I need 2 know about NSA spying on Huawei for why exactly?" as if this is just gratuitous salt-rubbing on the part of Snowden and Greenwald, and only meant to embarrass the Surveillor-in-Chief. Perhaps, but I think it's important that we get these subjects out in the open because (1) it's our money they're spending on this shit, (2) it's another indicator that a regime that was created to catch terrorists has spiraled out of control, and (3) spying, in general, is a necessary evil at best; it should only be done sparingly, and should never be standard operating policy. That's because spying sews seeds of distrust, and that in turn threatens to unravel the fabric that binds societies together. In other words, you simply cannot have an umbrella surveillance state and a thriving liberal democracy. They are utterly incompatible forms of self-governance.

---Baron V

Why We Can Never Have Nice Things

Regular readers of this stupid blog know that only a deranged Marxist would believe that our government is, essentially, a protection racket for America's job creators, and that our gigantic military-security-surveillance regime provides the muscle for the racketeers. Even though, you know, that's exactly what they do:

The American government conducted a major intelligence offensive against China, with targets including the Chinese government and networking company Huawei, according to documents from former NSA worker Edward Snowden that have been viewed by SPIEGEL. Among the American intelligence service's targets were former Chinese President Hu Jintao, the Chinese Trade Ministry, banks, as well as telecommunications companies.

But the NSA made a special effort to target Huawei. With 150,000 employees and €28 billion ($38.6 billion) in annual revenues, the company is the world's second largest network equipment supplier. At the beginning of 2009, the NSA began an extensive operation, referred to internally as "Shotgiant," against the company, which is considered a major competitor to US-based Cisco. The company produces smartphones and tablets, but also mobile phone infrastructure, WLAN routers and fiber optic cable---the kind of technology that is decisive in the NSA's battle for data supremacy.

Not to overlook Chinese hackery against us---they've been known to do it, too---but it would be nice if we were spending our money on something more productive than rigging the global wireless market on behalf of Silicon Valley. it certainly doesn't help to improve relations between the nations!

---Baron V

Today's Worst Person

Sam Nunn.

These incompetent grifters centrist technocrats, they're like herpes. Once they've wormed their way into the body politic, they never really go away. They only go into remission, to strike again when the host's immune system is weakest.

---Baron V

Priorities

You'd never know that our Western states are running out of water:

Estimates have ballparked the water usage of the agency’s new Bluffdale facility around 1.2 to 1.7 million gallons every day to cool an approximate 100,000 square feet of computer equipment [...]

Bluffdale is giving the NSA a massive discount on its utilities, allowing the facility to use essentially as much water as it wants without facing higher rates. Meanwhile, Utah is facing one of the worst droughts in recent history. The vast majority of the state is in a moderate drought or at least abnormally dry, and water reservoir levels are below normal for the third year in a row.

A couple of million years from now, when explorers from the planet Remulak are surveying our barren and uninhabitable world, they will surely wonder who these creatures were who behaved so insanely, and how they ever managed to ascend to the top of the food chain.

---Baron V

Income Inequality Is The Defining Issue of Our Time

And that's why we're promoting policy that will only make things worse.

---Baron V