Unintended Consequences

(Cartoon by Lee Judge/Kansas City Star (2/25/14) and featured at McClatchy DC.  Click on image to enlarge.)

File this in the "Well, DUH!" box.

From the 2/21/14 New York Times:

Signaling how difficult the atmosphere for retailers remains across a wide range of customers, Walmart Stores and Nordstrom on Thursday both issued fairly weak forecasts for the coming year as they reported disappointing earnings for the fourth quarter.

 

Walmart cited international uncertainties like currency fluctuations and an economically struggling customer base at home as partial reasons for such sluggishness. ...

In a call with reporters, William S. Simon, the chief executive of Walmart U.S., said that cuts to the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or food stamps, crimped the company’s results. An exceptionally ferocious winter with multiple storms also cut into earnings, Mr. Simon said, detracting from a positive performance during the six-week holiday shopping period. He said the storms “aren’t an excuse, but merely an explanation.”

 

Ken Perkins, founder of Retail Metrics, said the company’s central problem was the plight of its core consumers, who are still struggling with stagnant wages and have been left out of areas of economic growth, like rising stocks and home values.  [Emphasis added]

It doesn't take an economics genius to explain the drop in earnings and the forecast for more of same, and I'm not talking about polar vortices, either.  When people don't have money to spend because they either aren't working or are making too little in wages, they can't spend. 

Maybe Walmart and Nordstrom could set an example and start paying decent salaries and provide such benefits as health insurance.  Or their lobbyists could start lobbying Congress to pass a reasonable minimum wage bill and an extension of unemployment.

In the meantime, I am just bitch enough to rather enjoy these corporations' fiscal discomfort.

Why I Have Bruises On My Forehead

Six months after the fact, an independent investigation of the circumstances of the pepper spraying of student protesters at UC-Davis has finally been released (sorta-kinda, to comply with state law with respect to state employees): the conclusion is that the leadership of UC-Davis and its police department were woefully misguided in its handling of the situation right from the start.

Well, duh!

From the Sacramento Bee:

But despite weeks of discussion as protests turned violent at some other UC campuses and California cities, UC Davis administrators were woefully unprepared to manage the demonstrations when tents went up on the quad in November.

Instead, they responded with such a lack of communication and decision-making that it represented "systemic and repeated failures" by university leaders.

Well, yes. But, the question is whether that was just woeful ignorance or willful intention. It's clear that cities and other municipalities were in contact with DHS on how to deal with Occupy protesters and that guidelines were issued. Those guidelines somehow failed to consider First Amendment Rights.

Well, duh!

So, who do we look to for this egregious behavior? Just Officer Pike, whose picture and balletic and cavalier pepper spraying was captured on cell phones?

Again, from the Sacramento Bee:

The independent assessment of events leading up to the infamous Nov. 18 pepper-spraying incident at the University of California, Davis, provides a devastating indictment of the leadership of Chancellor Linda P.B. Katehi and key vice chancellors – and of the operations of the campus Police Department.

In our reading, Katehi showed either extreme naiveté or incompetence in weighing a response to protesters camping in the Quad. The report of the task force, led by former California Supreme Court Associate Justice Cruz Reynoso, revealed a deeply flawed structure for decisionmaking. Little or no consideration of alternatives. Failing to record and adequately communicate key decisions, so that ambiguity and uncertainty ruled.

You think maybe?

What is so infuriating is that the Faculty Senate ultimately backed down in its confidence vote on Chancellor Katehi, even though the ultimate responsibility was hers. She failed to make clear to the campus police chief just what would be required and what would be tolerated. Her excuse that she feared sexual misconduct by the protesters is both laughable and insulting. She had her orders from somewhere else.

Once again, the owners have succeeded. Nothing to see here: move along, move along.

OK, Watertiger, move over. I need your desk again.

About Damned Time!

No, this isn't a post kvetching about the annual change to Daylight Savings Time (which I loathe with every fiber of my being). It's about hospitals finally recognizing that they can do more for their elder patients.

At least one-third of hospital patients older than 70 leave more frail than when they arrived, and many become too weak to go home. Nursing home care or rehabilitation often are needed, and even then, research suggests more than two-thirds remain weaker a year after being in the hospital.

Elder-care experts challenge the idea that this decline is an inevitable part of growing old. They say conventional hospital care focusing on treating disease rather than preventing frailty contributes to the problem.

"Non-medical people say, 'Grandma went to the hospital with pneumonia ... and she was never the same again," said Dr. Kenneth Covinsky, a geriatrics specialist at University of California at San Francisco. "Pneumonia is a serious illness, but it is treatable" and should not leave patients disabled.

He and other advocates say hospitals need to revamp old-fashioned models of patient care to address the nation's aging population — from getting patients out of bed to offering better food and homey surroundings. [Emphasis added]

Well, duh!

All patients do better if they are encouraged to get out of bed and do a little walking, even if it is with assistance. Lying in bed facing four white walls and/or a television set for twenty-fours a day is not conducive to healing.

And offering food that is more palatable is also a good thing. What complicates it somewhat for elders is special diets for those with full or partial dentures are sometimes required, but all hospitals have dieticians who should know this and design the elders' food accordingly. And serving foods in cellophane packaging (such as sandwiches or cookies) or cartons (such as milk or juice) may require aides to open them for the elders if arthritic hands and fingers make it difficult.

This is not rocket science, people.

Yes, the improvements may require additional expense, but they aren't nearly as expensive as a stay in a convalescent hospital or nursing home after release from the hospital. Further, judicious use of volunteers trained to work with elders with special needs may diminish some of that expense.

For more tips on hospital care for elders, go visit Ronni Bennett's helpful post on How To Survive A Hospital Say." Once again, she brings the truth.

Not Poor, But Close

File this one under "Well, duh!"

The New York Times asked the Census Bureau to take another look at findings with respect to the financial status of working Americans and the results are a little different than what the Census people expected. Many Americans who consider themselves middle class are just one unexpected bill away from catastrophe. These people may own a house (which they probably couldn't sell if they had to) and a car (but not a new one), and may be working full time, but they are still living paycheck to paycheck and just barely scraping by.

When the Census Bureau this month released a new measure of poverty, meant to better count disposable income, it began altering the portrait of national need. Perhaps the most startling differences between the old measure and the new involves data the government has not yet published, showing 51 million people with incomes less than 50 percent above the poverty line. That number of Americans is 76 percent higher than the official account, published in September. All told, that places 100 million people — one in three Americans — either in poverty or in the fretful zone just above it.

After a lost decade of flat wages and the worst downturn since the Great Depression, the findings can be thought of as putting numbers to the bleak national mood — quantifying the expressions of unease erupting in protests and political swings. They convey levels of economic stress sharply felt but until now hard to measure. ...

Demographically, they look more like “The Brady Bunch” than “The Wire.” Half live in households headed by a married couple; 49 percent live in the suburbs. Nearly half are non-Hispanic white, 18 percent are black and 26 percent are Latino.

Perhaps the most surprising finding is that 28 percent work full-time, year round. ... [Emphasis added]

While the conservatives at AEI find the term "near poor" offensive and hardly scientific, the term certainly does convey how many people who bought into the American dream are feeling. Parents have had unemployed or underemployed adult children move back in with them. Many cannot afford even minimal health insurance for themselves or their families. Most haven't seen a raise significant enough to cover price hikes at the grocery store in years. A broken leg or the need for a new roof will do them in.

Is it any wonder that the Occupy movement has struck a chord with so many of these "middle class" Americans? Or that they have become cynical about politicians who routinely get pay raises, yet can't find a way to right the dismal economic picture for their constituents?

I'm not sure just what the tipping point will be, but I do think some kind of implosion is near. I just hope I live long enough to see it.

Unsurprising News

File this AP report under "Well, duh!".

Americans have yet to find a Republican they'd clearly prefer over President Barack Obama, although half say the president does not deserve re-election.

First of all, it's no secret that President Obama is not the most popular of men after nearly three years in office. The GOP has been relentless in its refusal to cooperate on even the most basic of issues, including the usually routine raising of the debt limit when necessary, with the man they promised would serve only one term. Additionally, the president himself has done nothing more than extend all of the worst programs of the last administration, thereby alienating the liberal base which played a large part in his election. And, of course, the economy is still in the toilet for most of us.

Second of all, and perhaps more important, the 2012 election is still more than a year away. We haven't had anything but a couple of non-binding, pay-to-vote straw polls to date for Republican candidates, all of whom are still trying to formulate their policies after seven very curious debates. It's simply too early to tell what the electorate has in mind. But the press needs a horse race to cover, so many of them are commissioning these polls to keep the narrative going.

At any rate, here are the numbers as of the day before Tuesday's debate in Nevada, which means the numbers might very well be already out of date:

In the poll, Romney was the choice of 30 percent of Republicans, with Cain about even at 26 percent. Perry was preferred by 13 percent, and Rep. Ron Paul of Texas topped the list of those in single digits. ...

Among all adults, regardless of party identification, 21 percent say they'd like the GOP to nominate Romney. Eighteen percent name Cain, 13 percent Perry and 11 percent Paul.

The first real test, that is, a primary or binding caucus vote, will come no earlier than December. If Nevada backs down from its threatened date, the first test will be the New Hampshire primary sometime in early January, 2012. Even then, there still would be eight months to the conventions and eleven months to the election. There's still plenty of time for the electorate to make up its mind.

I guess it would be too much to ask the media to cover more important issues at this point, like the 112th Congress and its failure to get things done which would actually help define the issues for the election.

Well, Duh

Tonight the candidates for the 2012 Republican nomination will hold another debate, this one with now-front runner Rick Perry in attendance. The debate will take place at the Ronald Reagan Library in Simi, California, which is, in some respects quite fitting. I think it safe to say that there will be plenty of references to and accolades for Saint Ronald uttered by the candidates, each of whom will claim his mantle.

One of the ironies is that it will probably be one of the few visits to this state any of these candidates will make. California is not exactly a hot-bed of Republicanism, as the Sacramento Bee points out, and with good reason.

...in the years since George H.W. Bush won California – the last Republican presidential candidate to do so – the party flailed, losing ground to Democrats as Latino registration increased and white, non-Hispanic voters' share of the electorate fell.

The state is now so heavily Democratic that no Republican presidential candidate is expected to campaign seriously here in the general election against President Barack Obama in 2012.

"We could easily see this coming," Field Poll director Mark DiCamillo said. "What has been remarkable to me as a nonpartisan pollster is that the Republican Party has never chosen to confront this particular problem. With the Latino advantage to the Democrats, it's really a major uphill battle for the Republicans, and I think that's what's changed over time." [Emphasis added]

While there are other elements at work, among them a strong union presence which helped Democrats run the table in the November, 2010 election, the increase in Latino voters as immigrants have become citizens and the next generation has reached voting age is a strong index of how the demographics have changed in the state. The Republicans, more interested in immigrant bashing than in expanding the party's influence, fell asleep at the switch.

...the proportion of registered voters who are Latino grew by about 2.3 million, from 10 percent of the state's registered voters in 1992 to 22 percent today, according to the poll. In the 2008 presidential election, those Latinos provided Democrats an advantage of more than nine percentage points.

And that doesn't look to change in California if the current crop of candidates fielded by the GOP for 2012 is any indication. This ain't Reagan's Republican Party any more. It's the Tea Party's. It's also the Koch Brothers, Inc.'s party and that of Wall Street and BofA. Less government, more money for the moneyed: that's the foundation of the GOP these days.

In a state with 12% unemployment and a devastated public education system, the Tea Party and its various iterations don't have much to say, especially to a significant portion of the electorate.

So, Welcome to California, folks. Oh, and dress comfortably. You can expect triple-digit temperatures today.

Well, Duh!

WaPo's Chris Cillizza makes a pretty good case that the GOP has a rocky road ahead of them when it comes to the new demographics.

The numbers are eye-opening. Hispanics now account for more than 16 percent of the total population, making them the largest minority group in the country. More than half of all population growth in the United States over the past decade came from Hispanics. Perhaps most amazing is that nearly a quarter — 23 percent — of all children age 17 or younger are Latino.

That’s a major problem for Republicans, given that in the 2008 presidential election, Sen. John McCain (Ariz.) — far from the GOP’s most ardent advocate of stricter immigration laws — won just 31 percent of the Hispanic vote, according to exit polls.

As Republican candidates at all levels continue to pander to their basest base on the issue, pushing for draconian laws at the federal and state levels which absolutely preclude any kind of "amnesty" for immigrants already here, the problems will only get worse. Just ask California's Republicans: last November they lost every single statewide office and one of the main reasons was they could not gain any traction with Latino voters.

Mike Murphy, a senior Republican strategist who worked on former eBay chief executive Meg Whitman’s unsuccessful campaign for California governor in 2010, argues that the reason his side has struggled to make inroads with Hispanics is “mostly driven by the fact that too many Republicans have attempted to use illegal immigration as a wedge issue.” ...

Murphy describes it as a “base-driven strategy that has injected red-hot rhetoric into our party’s message on immigration,” adding: “Primary politics have made the situation even worse.” (Murphy suggests that GOP opposition to some sort of path toward legalization is a “non-starter” for Hispanic voters.)

The state's Democrats, however, didn't take anything for granted, especially with the well-heeled candidacies of Meg Whitman and Carly Fiorina staring them in the face. The Dems, with the help of unions, went block by block urging Latinos eligible to vote to turn out to avoid the harsh promises made by Republicans. It worked.

As the 2012 presidential primary system starts heating up (even without any clearly declared candidates), I suspect that the GOP still won't get the message. The Tea Party and the Fundagelicals will continue to call the tune. I would imagine that's what President Obama is counting on.

Unfortunately, that also means that we won't get any meaningful immigration reform legislation this year.

Well, Duh

[Note: I not only overslept this morning, which is a rarity, my dial-up is borked and will remain borked until AT&T gets the phone lines in our area cleaned up. In all likelihood, posting will be later in the morning the rest of the week.]

The House of Representatives is about to open a challenge to Obamacare. Republican leaders will introduce a bill to repeal the bill in its entirety, as they promised. A full repeal, of course, hasn't a chance. The Democrats still hold the Senate and the President still has a veto pen, but the Republicans didn't want to pass up a chance at a little theater for the benefit of folks back home.

Not to be outdone, the Administration offered its own entry into the games.

As many as 129 million Americans under age 65 have medical problems that are red flags for health insurers, according to an analysis that marks the government's first attempt to quantify the number of people at risk of being rejected by insurance companies or paying more for coverage. ...

The study found that one-fifth to one-half of non-elderly people in the United States have ailments that trigger rejection or higher prices in the individual insurance market. They range from cancer to chronic illnesses such as heart disease, asthma and high blood pressure.

Well, duh.

The study, which was issued shortly before the debate in the House, certainly didn't provide anything new. Most people are aware that people from 55 to 64 to have health problems of one sort another. That awareness becomes most acute when individuals with any chronic condition try to get an individual policy and are either rejected by an insurance company or face huge monthly premiums. The new healthcare law tried to remedy both by requiring that insurance companies not deny coverage for preexisting conditions and not charge individuals more for such a policy. Unfortunately, that provision doesn't take effect until 2014 for all but children.

Republicans and insurance companies immediately cried foul at the release of the study, claiming that the timing of the release was a clear political ploy to offset the move to repeal the underlying bill. Both parties accused the president of playing politics.

Republicans immediately disparaged the analysis as "public relations." An insurance industry spokesman acknowledged that sick people can have trouble buying insurance on their own but said the analysis overstates the problem.

Well, duh.

So, after the House passes the bill to repeal Obamacare, and the Senate throws it out, the House will move on to the next step: dismantling the bill, piece by piece, starting with the individual mandate requiring every American to buy health insurance. That will make the Republican's Tea Party backers happy. Of course, it will not make insurance companies happy as they lose a huge chunk of guaranteed business, much of it from younger people without chronic health problems who won't cost the insurer much, if anything.

In any event, this little tempest in a teapot will take up a lot of time, energy, oxygen, and electrons.

Meanwhile, the really important issues, like joblessness, won't get addressed.

Well, duh.

Another I Told You So Moment

Anyone with half a functioning brain knew that building a virtual fence around the US to keep the pesky interlopers from the rest of the world out was not going to work. That didn't stop George W. Bush (who is no doubt still hunting for WMDs) from demanding it and the Republican-led Congress from funding it in 2004. Billions of dollars and six years later, the project hopelessly behind schedule, DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano has frozen further funding on the project.

The center-left editorial board of the Los Angeles Times also admits that the project maybe wasn't such a good idea.

It turns out the smart fence was kind of a dumb idea after all.

The virtual border wall, a network of sensors, cameras and radar meant to help the Border Patrol nab illegal crossers, has never worked as planned, and according to the Government Accountability Office, even the tests designed to evaluate it are badly flawed. After ordering a reassessment of the project two months ago, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said Tuesday that she would freeze all funding for the 2005 Bush administration initiative until the probe is complete. ...

Bush believed that technology also could be used to secure the border. Hoping to placate Congress, which scoffed at his proposals on comprehensive immigration reform and seemed solely interested in halting the flow of immigrants, Bush called for a virtual fence that by 2011 was supposed to cover nearly the entire 2,000-mile southern border. Roughly $1 billion later, we have two testing sites in the Arizona desert, where drifting sagebrush and wildlife often set off the sensors. The system is so slow that on the rare occasions it does sense a human border crosser, by the time cameras can focus on the area, the lawbreaker is gone.

It would be great if there were a technological solution to illegal immigration. But it would be extraordinarily hard, not to mention expensive, to develop an effective technology that couldn't be speedily defeated by clever human smugglers. And even in the unlikely event that a foolproof fence could be built, it wouldn't address the huge number of immigrants who cross the border legally but then overstay their visas.

In addition to Bush's missile shield, Obama aims to kill his predecessor's misguided mission to put astronauts back on the moon. While he's at it, he should scrap the border fence too, and focus on real-world policies that would not only secure the borders but deal humanely with the millions of illegal immigrants already in the country.

Well, duh!

President Obama has promised to look at immigration reform, but only after he gets his health care reform in place. Right now, that looks to be sometime late in his first (and perhaps only) term. In the mean time, he's decided to step up enforcement of immigration policies by rousting the undocumented people here already. See my post from yesterday as to just how stiff and unyielding that policy is.

A proposal for immigration reform has been presented to the White House by two senators, and President Obama has acknowledged it with a luke-warm announcement that the reform is still on his agenda. I'm sure immigration reform supporters from both parties were thrilled with that bit of news.

November is less than ten months away. Something more than a luke-warm response is going to be needed if the Democrats wish to keep their majority in Congress. Anyone with half a functioning brain knows that.

Pennies Make Dollars

Sometimes I despair at the stupidity of government bureaucrats. Other times I get cynical and realize that those same bureaucrats aren't stupid, just lazy or, even worse, in the business of making private contractors happy. I'm not sure which of the emotions got twanged the hardest by this story.

Her name is Nancy Fichtner. Normally she works at the VA Medical Center in Grand Junction, Colo.

But today Fichtner was at the White House with her children, receiving an award from President Obama.

This being the federal government, the award has a cute acronym: the SAVE (Securing Americans Value and Efficiency) Award. The idea started earlier this year when Obama asked federal employees for their cost-saving ideas. Some 38,000 proposals came in, most passed along to their agencies for implementation. Officials winnowed the best down to the final four and put them to an online vote that attracted almost 85,000 votes. The three runner-ups: make Social Security appointments online; stop double-inspecting HUD housing; direct deposit of National Forest fees.

And the winner was ... Fichtner, who noticed that the VA hospitals were discarding medicine before sending patients home. Her elegantly simple but potentially financial windfall of an idea: let veterans keep their remaining meds on being discharged instead of charging the VA to fill new prescriptions. [Emphasis added]

Here's the deal: a patient at a VA hospital is given medicine to take during his stay, say an inhaler. The vet doesn't use up the entire lot before being released and because it's been started by the patient, the hospital just chucks the remainder. Then the vet, who still needs the medication, goes to the pharmacy and gets a prescription filled for the same med and the VA pays for it. How dumb is that?

Well, maybe not so dumb from the standpoint of the manufacturer of the drug, who probably is quite unhappy at the change being implemented thanks to Ms. Fichter, but that's another story, one we've seen play out over the past decade.

So, this one simple idea should save the Veteran's Administration (and us taxpayers) a tidy sum. As one congresscritter wisely noted years ago, "A billion here, a billion there: pretty soon you're talking real money."

Well, Duh ...

Michael Hiltzig had an interesting column in yesterday's Los Angeles Times, one that I overlooked my first time through the paper. In it he asserts that unless President Obama takes over the framing of the debate in his speech to Congress tomorrow, we will not have any meaningful health care reform. Nothing too startling about that assertion, eh?

The big mystery of the Democrats' loss of the commanding heights in the national healthcare debate is how they managed to let ideologies trump ideas.

The difference between these two terms is crucial. Ideas arise from recognizing reality for what it is; ideologies attempt to impose themselves on the real world, whether or not they fit.

In this case, the Republican ideologies of limited government, of the free market as the cherished American way and the answer to most problems, have taken over the discussion. [Emphasis added]

Well, duh.

If, however, you read further into the column, you will note that he does what the White House should have been forcefully doing all along: presenting the facts. Here are just some of the facts recited by Mr. Hiltzig:

More than 45 million people are without health insurance. Nine million of them are children, and 31 million belong to families with one or two full-time workers. Minorities and the poor are overrepresented in the group. Blacks and Hispanics account for nearly half the uninsured, and members of families living at or below the federal poverty line for more than a third. (These figures come from a report by the Kaiser Family Foundation.)

Compared with covered individuals and families, the uninsured tend to get less preventive care, defer important treatments more often, skip medication more often and fall deeper in debt from medical expenses.

Millions more Americans have health coverage that hangs by a thread, dependent on their continued employment and their employers' choice of what coverage to pay for or how much to subsidize it. Nor are those with insurance immune from the financial strain of medical costs: The UCLA Center for Health Policy Research reported last month that of the 2.2 million Californians who reported medical debts in 2007, two-thirds incurred that debt despite having insurance.

Commercial insurers deploy armies of clerks to find excuses for rejecting claims and weed out less-profitable customers. In a bold assertion of their power to dictate their own terms of business, a panel of health insurance chief executives appearing before Congress a few months ago flatly refused to disavow the practice of rescission, which means retroactively canceling policies of customers who had filed claims.

If President Obama cannot summon the energy and the integrity to deliver that speech and instead prefers to deliver another watered-down, conciliatory, can't-we-all-just-get-along speech, then there will be no reform, just added burdens to the already over-burdened citizens of this country foolish enough to have believed in the promise of change.

And that will be an horrendous default and an admission that only corporate interests count in this country.

Expensive Medicine

When do "proprietary information" and "trade secrets" trump safety? Apparently when ever PHARMA decides they do, at least for at least the last decade or so. The Food and Drug Administration has been holding back information on drugs and devices it has approved lest it violate laws obviously intended to protect formulations, not the dangers of using the drugs discovered in clinical trials. That stance might very well be changing, according to this article from the NY Times:

For years, the Food and Drug Administration has withheld information about drugs and medical devices from the public when their makers cite trade secrecy — even in cases where the agency suspects that the products are causing serious illness or death.

Now the new leadership at the F.D.A. may change that. The Obama administration plans to announce on Tuesday that it is setting up a task force within the agency to recommend ways to reveal more information about F.D.A. decisions, possibly including the disclosure of now secret data about drugs and devices under study. ...

...the goal is to open up a system in which the agency failed to inform the public that a widely prescribed heartburn drug was especially toxic to babies; that a diabetes medicine and a painkiller increased heart attack risks; and that antidepressants increased suicidal thoughts and behavior in children and teenagers.

“Many people have been harmed over the last decade because the F.D.A. has treated clinical trial results of drugs and devices as trade secrets,” said Dr. Steven Nissen, a cardiologist at the Cleveland Clinic who has campaigned for the release of such information.

The past "cautious" approach of the FDA would be laughable if it hadn't resulted in the death of the very people the agency had been charged to protect. I can't think of a single reason why the complete results of a clinical trial shouldn't be required of the pharmaceutical company applying for FDA approval of a drug and shouldn't be made available to the physicians who might prescribe the medication and to the patients who might be taking it. If there have been side affects from the formulation, whether minor or significant, the public has the right to know that, even if we may not have the right to know the exact chemical formulation in the drug itself.

In a follow-up editorial, the Times agrees:

At the insistence of industry, and its claims of proprietary information, the F.D.A. often sits on data that raise questions about a drug’s safety or therapeutic value. The consequences for some patients can be severe. ...

The agency is hemmed in by laws restricting its ability to release trade secrets and internal agency records. But there seems little doubt that it has been overly cautious and that public safety has suffered as a result.

Well, duh!

Like We Didn't Know

Now here's a real shocker: the terrorist watch list kept by the federal government is defective in that it contains the names of people who shouldn't be on it and doesn't contain the names of those who should. From the NY Times:

The Federal Bureau of Investigation has incorrectly kept nearly 24,000 people on a terrorist watch list on the basis of outdated or sometimes irrelevant information, while missing people with genuine ties to terrorism who should have been on the list, according to a Justice Department report released Wednesday.

The report said the mistakes posed a risk to national security, because of the failure to flag actual terrorism suspects, and an unnecessary nuisance for nonsuspects who may be questioned at traffic stops or kept from boarding airplanes. [Emphasis added]

Unnecessary nuisance? Oh, please! Enough with the euphemisms. If an individual is on any kind of list kept by the federal government it is more than just a nuisance, particularly when that list has the magical word "terrorist" attached to it. Those on that list trying to fly or to enter or leave the country are sometimes faced with more than a "delay." They are sequestered, questioned, often detained/incarcerated until matters are "sorted out." If stopped for a broken tail light by the local constabulary, it might just result in handcuffs and several days (usually longer)in the local jail, after which, without knowledgeable counsel, it might (and has) resulted in a transfer to the federal holding cells until a magistrate is available to look at the matter.

And it's not like this list is any different than any other F.B.I. list, especially since the F.B.I. has merged some of its old lists in with the watch list:

One of the biggest problems identified in the report was the use of outdated information, or material unconnected to terrorism, to keep people on the bureau’s own terror watch list, which is incorporated in the consolidated list. The report, examining nearly 69,000 referrals to the F.B.I. list that were either brought or processed by the bureau, found that 35 percent of those people, both Americans and foreigners, remained on the list despite inadequate justification.

“Many of these watch-listed records were associated with outdated terrorism case classifications or case classifications unrelated to terrorism,” the report said. [Emphasis added]

Those on that list may find that they can't get a security clearance for a new job with a contractor because they helped assemble giant puppets or hung pink ribbons on the White House fence. They may also find out that they can't get a mortgage because that kind of information is part of a file that somehow (who knows?) follows them wherever they go.

That's bad and it's unjustifiable and it's clearly unconstitutional. It's remarkable evidence of a government that chose cowardice over freedom. But here's the kicker: it didn't and still doesn't frickin' work. Names of people who really might harm the US didn't make it on the list on more than one occasion. Here's just an example.

In one case, for instance, a Special Forces soldier was investigated and ultimately convicted of stealing some 16,500 rounds of ammunition, C-4 explosives and other matériel from Afghanistan and shipping them to the United States in what investigators suspected might be the makings of a domestic terrorist plot. Yet the suspect was not placed on the watch list until nearly five months after the investigation opened.

But he was Special Forces and probably white, so I guess there was nothing to worry about.

I don't know what disgusts me more: that we have such loons running this show or that we are allowing them to do so.

Strength and Weakness

To the world's usual misfortune, there is a quaint ethic of strong action that shares with the wild west and unilateral invasion of other countries a belief that using your head is not strength. Today we have another instance of it from its bulwark in Texas, with the usual tragic consequences.

You just know these blithering idiots listen to hate radio, and answer 'Yeah' to the litany, as they careen thru traffic on their way to commit more stupid blunders. We drive with them every time we go down the highway, the two-legged Hummers of the hemisphere.

The Dallas Cowboys had a training camp to turn out great football players, what did they need with building codes? Typically, that strong type went ahead and used an uninspected facility they'd farmed out to other strong guys to build.

The Dallas Cowboys applied last year for a building permit to replace the high-tension fabric roof on the indoor practice facility that collapsed Saturday and injured 12 people. But the team never had city officials inspect any completed work, which is required by Irving's building code.

In city documents released Monday, the team is listed as the general contractor for the reroofing project that was estimated to cost $600,000. Irving does not issue a building permit unless the general contractor is registered with the city. The Cowboys registered as a general contractor on the same day they requested a permit for the roof work.

City officials were aware that work began on the roof last year but never received word from the team that it was complete.

Team officials declined to answer questions about the work Monday.

Officials with the Occupational Safety and Health Administration were in Valley Ranch on Monday investigating what caused the 85-foot-tall facility's high-tension fabric shell and metal structure to fold onto itself and collapse Saturday. The National Weather Service said a microburst of up to 70-mph wind carried by passing thunderstorms struck the facility.

About 70 players, coaches, team support personnel and members of the media were inside. Ambulances transported 10 injured people; two others sought help on their own, officials said.

Scouting assistant Rich Behm was permanently paralyzed from the waist down after he suffered a spine fracture.

Using rational judgment is unpopular with the wingnuts we have voting in the officials that have wreaked havoc with our country's safety in so many ways. What actually has been shown as sorely lacking; that's a return from bombast to a degree of functional regulation and laws, basic to function. The continuing proof that a system of laws and regulations are what protect us from disaster shouldn't have been needed.

The myth that strength of purpose disdains reflection has again led to tragedy.

Darwin Awards are called for all around, ('Honoring those who improve the species...by accidentally removing themselves from it!') though the victims really deserved a rational approach that would have prevented their injuries.

Our walking Hummers are going to have themselves a good laugh over it, after a couple of Buds.

I Am Not Surprised

Well, what do you know: it now appears that the National Security Agency overstepped its bounds in collecting the private emails of citizens without a warrant. Even though the 110th Congress renewed the unconstitutional program with little in the way of changes, the NSA still couldn't get it right, perhaps because it had no intention to.

From the NY Times:

The National Security Agency intercepted private e-mail messages and phone calls of Americans in recent months on a scale that went beyond the broad legal limits established by Congress last year, government officials said in recent interviews.

Several intelligence officials, as well as lawyers briefed about the matter, said the N.S.A. had been engaged in “overcollection” of domestic communications of Americans. They described the practice as significant and systemic, although one official said it was believed to have been unintentional.

Unintentional? Unlikely.

Once the floodgate was opened, the NSA began diving into our private lives with gusto and with the assistance of the telecoms (now free of any liability for mistakes). Why the sudden spate of investigations by the Justice Department and Congress? Apparently the NSA picked the "wrong" subject to electronically monitor:

While the N.S.A.’s operations in recent months have come under examination, new details are also emerging about earlier domestic-surveillance activities, including the agency’s attempt to wiretap a member of Congress, without court approval, on an overseas trip, current and former intelligence officials said. [Emphasis added]

Big mistake, that. It's one thing to mess with the privacy rights of plain old citizens, but members of Congress? No way.

The truly enraging part of this scenario is that the current administration, which promised "change" when it came to adhering to the Constitution, is not calling for the repeal of the law which allows for such warrantless searches. Instead, satisfied that the NSA has done the cosmetic tinkering ordered by the last Congress, Attorney General Holder has certified the program as now A-OK. Apparently he can accept the excuse that although millions of our emails have been unlawfully collected and cached, not all of them have been read. Yet.

I don't see much in the way of change here. And, frankly, I am not surprised.

A Toast To Brewing

Although the WSJ wannabe editorial staff usually disappoints, today is time for a toast to the Dallas Morning News. The lead editorial calls for an end to prohibition-era restrictions that keep small breweries from making a profit. Breweries, unlike wineries, are not allowed to sell to visitors to their site.

I am a great fan of the fine brews, and personally think it would be nice to encourage them.

Free beer in Texas!

Now, that would be one heck of a rallying cry to attract people – especially college students – to the Lone Star State. But we don't mean it that way. Rather, we call on the Legislature to break the shackles of outdated regulation on brewing in Texas and make it more feasible for our beer makers to join the microbrewery revolution sweeping the country.

As food critic Robb Walsh wrote recently in the Houston Press and Dallas Observer, Texas is home to more beer drinkers than just about any other state but only a tiny handful of small craft breweries. Michigan has 70. New York has 60.

Texas? We have six.

The reason, as Mr. Walsh explained, has to do with Prohibition-era laws making it illegal for breweries to sell their product on site. Unlike the state's wineries, which do a brisk business with visitors to their gift shops, Texas breweries are forbidden to vend directly to customers. If they don't sell their beer through distributors, they can't sell it.

Trouble is, most microbreweries don't make enough beer to engage the interest of distributors or retailers.

So why not change the law?

Bottoms up to that.

Thought it was so much opposed to the public interest that it editorially endorsed Sen. McCain for president, here the News has shown good taste for a change. Salud for the good stand on suds.

Some Really Unsurprising News

This editorial in today's NY Times has managed to state the obvious. Troop levels will remain high in Iraq until President Bush leaves office.

Speaking at the National Defense University, he said he would withdraw only 8,000 more troops from Iraq by the time he leaves office. That would leave 138,000 troops behind — more than were deployed in Iraq before his January 2007 “surge.”

All of this seems to be driven more by what is happening in American battleground states than any battleground in Iraq.

While Mr. Bush and his party’s nominee, John McCain, both want to stay the course until some undefined “victory” is achieved, American voters have run out of patience. Mr. Bush and his advisers are clearly hoping that this token withdrawal will be enough to keep Iraq out of the news and out of the election debate. (Ironically, Mr. McCain who doesn’t want to withdraw any troops at all, had no choice but to declare his support for the president’s plan.)

Of course President Bush won't be withdrawing troops anytime soon. To do so would imply that his glorious adventure wasn't a success, although that it wasn't a success became clear years ago. It would also mean that an open discussion of this illegal and misbegotten war could be had, one which examines not only the way the American public was lied into the war, but also its miserably incompetent execution by an administration who apparently couldn't see the actual military landscape for the oil located beneath that landscape. Obviously Mr. Bush doesn't want to go there, it wouldn't (in the words of his father) be prudent, especially during an election season in which the GOP prefers to dangle a moose-dressing hockey mom in front of the public rather than face up to the disaster that the Iraq War has been for the US, including its devastating effect on the economy as billions were siphoned off to prosecute it.

No, Mr. Bush will leave it to his successor to clean up the mess he has made in Iraq, which is just one of many messes he has made in the last nearly eight years. And if that successor is John McCain, it is doubtful any of those messes will be cleaned up.

132 days.

Rocket Science

Occasionally a news article causes me to scratch my head in bewilderment and then in amazement. This is one of those articles.

The federal ''self-deportation'' pilot program ending Friday has drawn only a handful of illegal immigrants volunteering to return to their home countries, but immigrant-rights advocates who ridiculed the effort now wonder if it will used to justify or even escalate workplace raids.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement offered the three-week pilot program in five U.S. cities, giving illegal immigrants facing court orders to leave 90 days to plan their departure and coordinate travel with relatives instead of facing the prospect of being arrested, detained and deported. The program was well publicized but only six people signed up in the first week.

The program theoretically does have at least one positive. I mean, we've seen several news articles in the past month of undocumented workers dying in detention for lack of medical care. For most who have been the subject of court orders, however, that's not really a problem, unless, of course, detention is at Guantanamo Bay.

And there are a whole lot of downsides to the plan. First of all, travel would be at the workers' expense, and many are working at marginal jobs and don't have the documents to board a plane, a train, or a bus to cross the border. Second, many of them have families here in the US now, close family, as in husbands, wives, and children, many of whom are either not subject to a deportation order or who are legally here. Where's the incentive?

Immigration authorities had to have known all of this before making this oh-so-generous offer, so what's the deal?

Try some old-fashioned CYA.

ICE said it hatched the plan to quell criticism of the surge in workplace raids. One supporter of the agency said the low turnout will help insulate federal immigration agents from some of the criticism.

''It was calling their bluff,'' said Ira Mehlman, a spokesman for the Federation for American Immigration Reform.

How cynical is that?

Now, if they were really serious about the whole plan, they would have offered some incentives rather than some disincentives. The feds could have offered some cash to cover the cost of self-deportation. They could have set up a system whereby the deportees could have applied for US work permits based on work history and payroll taxes paid and made those applications immediately available rather than require a ten-year wait. They could have, but that wasn't what this is all about.

What this is all about is countering all the bad press ICE has garnered in the past year. And we can't have that.

Stupid.

Not to mention shameful.

Death By Diet

Just back from my little garden, which is calling me to water it several times a day now that we're over 105F. It keeps producing elitist lettuce, somehow, and my brussels sprouts are coming along nicely. Then I read a prison menu at MotherJones and am really glad I have those fresh good things. Why don't they let prisoners feed themselves what they grow at these places?

Oh, right, the Cheneys are making their living off of the jail system.

FEAR AND LOAFING
VERMONT PRISONERS SAY NUTRALOAF IS CRUEL AND UNUSUAL NOURISHMENT. PRISON OFFICIALS SAY IT'S WHAT'S FOR DINNER.

"Nutraloaf is a 'food product' composed of 'whole wheat bread, non-dairy cheese, raw carrots, spinach, seedless raisins, Great Northern beans, vegetable oil, tomato paste, powdered milk, and dehydrated potato flakes;' these ingredients are 'mixed and baked.'" —Vermont appellate court brief, November 2006

"Nutraloaf is neither punishment, nor is its quality inferior to that of regular inmate meals...[It] is only provided to inmates who are placed in segregated confinement for the misuse of food and bodily waste." —Prison official's legal memorandum, Vermont Superior Court, September 2005

"If defendant wants to continue to spin out his Orwellian fantasy, and claim that nutraloaf is of the same 'quality' as normal prison food, this Court need only order a judicial tasting." —Prisoners' memorandum, Vermont Superior Court, September 2005

MEAN CUISINE
Prison moonshine, or pruno, is made by sealing fruit, sugar, ketchup, and water in a garbage bag, often stored inside a toilet for several days.

Tired of mess-hall food, some prisoners prepare "prison pizza"—a crust of ramen noodles and crushed chips or crackers, topped with cheese spread and sausage.

This sounds like offal from the school kitchen where I went to grammar school, something you wouldn't feed your family and they wouldn't eat. Doesn't it seem reasonable to let prisoners take care of their own needs, instead of making license plates? Making a plate of food instead would teach them something they could use, and give them the exercise they need.

I will offer you a few good pictures - Larry,DFH's pumpkin and my elitist lettuce. That looks to me like something that would engage a prison population - that would be doing something better for themselves than is being done for them.

Can the loaf.

Well, Duh

Who could have imagined? Pharmaceutical companies made huge profits under Medicare Part D. With no price controls allowed under the program, PHARMA's members made billions of dollars more than they would have if the same type of controls existed under this plan as exist under Medicaid, according to this article in today's Los Angeles Times.

U.S. drug manufacturers are reaping a windfall from taxpayers because Medicare's privately administered prescription drug benefit program pays more than other government programs for the same medicines, a House committee charged in a report Thursday.

The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform found that taxpayers are paying up to 30% more for prescription drugs under Medicare's privatized Part D program for seniors and the disabled than under the government's Medicaid program for the poor. ...

"Medicare Part D has given the major drug companies a taxpayer-funded windfall worth billions of dollars," said committee Chairman Henry A. Waxman (D-Beverly Hills). ...

Under Medicaid, drug companies have to sell prescription drugs to the government at discounted prices. When Medicare Part D was enacted in January 2006, drug companies were no longer obliged to cut rates for their products.

In the two years Medicare Part D has been in effect, drug manufacturers have taken in $3.7 billion more than they would have through prices under the Medicaid program, committee investigators found.

"The drug companies are making the same drugs. They are being used by the same beneficiaries. Yet because the drugs are being bought through Medicare Part D instead of Medicaid, the prices paid by the taxpayers have ballooned by billions of dollars," Waxman said. [Emphasis added]

How unsurprising. Equally as unsurprising has been the PHARMA response to this news:

Richard Smith, a vice president with the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, the leading drug industry group, warned in a statement to the committee against government interference in Medicare Part D.

"It is primarily the effective operation of the competitive market that has driven down Part D costs for beneficiaries and taxpayers compared to previous estimates," Smith said.

In other words, the pharmaceuticals aren't making as much as they thought they would when they lobbied successfully to foreclose any government negotiation on prices under the plan.

Congressman Waxman has promised to fix the pricing problem. While he's at it, he might want to look at the other flaws in this deeply flawed plan, like the donut hole that exists for elders on expensive medications after a certain threshold is reached.

Morons.