the defeatists!

Predictably predicative predictable bullshit

 

My dad told me that a good manager was right more than 51% of the time. I think he was right -- great managers and leaders probably get it right around 60% of the time, and generally get the big things right. Republicans tend to get facts and theories and bullshit confused and are seldom right but their voters don't care that much. Like heroin, most Republican voters lose in the long run, but it's all about the rush! Quants generally get all the minor shit absolutely spot on, but punt the big things. Go figure.

My buddy Eric "El Norte Chingasa" Garland or something like that makes his living doing predictions, and he tends to be right often enough that he gets calls from moderately important people who ask him reasonably important questions for which he must provide reasonably coherent answers (Shit, man, who knows...it's all stuff. Stuff happens... Not acceptable.) that are mostly correct. Eric is not an economist. He's close enough to right to supplement his wife's income as a physician.

I'm right reasonably often -- I am not an economist. I don't get paid to be a prognosticator, so it doesn't matter. But, the only guys I'm aware of who've reasonably correct over the past few years have been the Keynesians. And of course, nobody including the US did what they recommended. So, although long, worth reading. Even considering the source...

Christmas is not about being a crazy sonofabitch...that's President's Day!

 

 

Latest piece from Vets: http://www.veteranstoday.com/2014/12/20/merry-christmas-is-what-they-tell-me/ I thought I was writing a music piece...go figure?

 

Comments are again fascinating...how anyone can go to the places my readers go from where I start amazes me and kind of scares me. Now, get in line with the 200 Mosaic laws or the Zionists will send a drone after you. 

 

Christmas should not be about being a crazy sonofabitch. That's for New Year's, President's Day and St Patrick's Day. Christmas may be about hope, peace, love overcome by futility and inadequacy and frustration -- Frank Costanza beating a man senseless trying to buy a doll for George and thus inventing Festivus, which is a logical reaction to stimulus -- but it's not about being a crazy sonofabitich conspiracy nut. Didn these people not get the memo?

 

Anyway, nobody ever wrote a good song about President's Day..except maybe this one. 

 

Hierophanies and...autoclaves and general madness

Hierophanies and...autoclaves and general madness PT II

Rational people with rational ideas can't function in our government these days, so PANIC!

Michael Farrell, Veterans Today Columnist 

IN THE crowded field of Ebola alarmists, Rand Paul of Kentucky stands out. Before he was a Republican senator with presidential ambitions, he was an eye doctor. Apparently the Hippocratic oath does not cover panic-mongering: Dr Paul has popped up on talk-radio shows, alleging that when Barack Obama or his scientists say that Ebola is rather hard to catch, they are fibbing. Or, as he puts it, they are downplaying the risk that Ebola might spread across America for reasons of “political correctness”. Ebola is “incredibly transmissible”, Dr Paul has asserted, talking of doctors falling sick even after they suited up and took “every precaution”. The Economist, Oct 14, 2014

Hand to Hand with Ebola

No one is ever going to elect me to public office. First of all I wouldn't run and secondly, if I won, I'd demand a recount. And then defect to New Zealand.  I think I'd be a great philosopher-king, but I couldn't put up with the continual salesmanship and bombast that our current situation demands. Although I think a lot of the folks who comment here and some of our writers could benefit from a few deep breathes, some relaxation exercises, and maybe a nice cold drink to calm down, Veterans Today isn't anywhere near as loony as lot of the right wing stuff we're seeing.

I think our editorial positions on a lot of stuff -- most things -- are "This is all screwed up and why can't anyone fix it?" I suspect for a lot of us -- left, right, center, floating above the fray somewhere -- are channeling St Ross of Perot and his rather simple "Don't ignore the crazy aunt in the basement...if the car doesn't work, you lift up the hood and you fix it!" Ross and Jimmy Carter were both Rickover boys in the nascent Nuclear Navy, and they brought an engineering approach to everything. Rational people with rational ideas who, despite differing ideological views, believe that with common sense, honesty and good faith you can accomplish a lot.

Which sadly, doesn't work a lot of the time in the world of government. Especially now, since engineering is based on scientific principles in a way that social science and things like politics and governance and economics are not. So just because there's evidence to support something doesn't mean we have a way to implement it. If you doubt that, I refer you to the last 3 and probably the next three Congresses. Like many observers and many economists, I keep waiting for the confidence fairy to appear and get us back to full employment, high 401Ks and a booming economy. I don't think it's going to happen, and there's some reason to think that the current stock market dip is a sign of another rough ride.

So, ISIL is either below the fold of newspapers or not the lead article on sights anymore. Rachel Maddow was primarily about Ebola last night; Shep Smith over at Fox has been forthcoming and honest in his coverage. This is a complicated problem and

This is tiring

who the hell knows what we're going to see happen in the world. What we're not going to see, in all likelihood, is a pandemic in the United States. But, the usual suspects can hope...and claim there is one. And it's obviously Obama's fault, and the Democrats and the women and the Gays and...no, not really.

Plagues and pestilence are pretty much in God's territory. He did it; or, to be theologically correct, the supreme being of the universe did it. There, does that make you feel better?

What we're arguing about is policy and that hasn't got a lot to do with the disease. For example, the Republicans, especially John "Why do we have all these Czars in the Obama Administration?" McCain demand that there be a Czar so there will be somebody in charge. Fine. Constitutionally, the Surgeon General of the United States, a Cabinet-level appointee is in charge at the direction of the President. We just don't have one. I seem to recall that one of the Bush appointees ultimately indicated that he wasn't so sure about the germ theory of disease, but that may be me oversimplifying again. Since the position has been vacant since 2013, we've had a nominee, Doctor Vitkek Murthy since late last year.

Yeah, we have a nominee, a physician with the usual long list of credentials, Yale Medicine and Business Schools, successful entrepreneur, attending physician and an instructor at Brigham and Women’s Hospital at Harvard Medical School. He hasn't been confirmed because the NRA threatened to score the vote on his nomination because he would like to see more laws and regulations for guns in this country. Given the number of people killed by guns in the US and the damn near universal agreement in public health circles about some additional restrictions being a good idea, a public health expert and scientist who adopted any other position would probably also believe that the sun and planets revolve around the earth and the earth is flat...all those satellite photos being faked.

Since the Senate is adjourned, I don't exactly understand why the President hasn't done a recess appointment here.

Of course, lately I don't understand this President at all.

We don't know what Solomon would have done had neither claimant not opposed cutting the baby in half, but the point of the story was that the wise king knew that the real mother would do anything to save her child. President Obama would seem to be so wedded to some concept of rational discourse and fairness that faced with the same situation, he might still have the baby cut in half. Regardless, the solution here is simple -- if Doctor Murthy still wants to be Surgeon General, make him the damned Ebola Czar and then let him have authority over the empire of the Surgeon General in order to find a solution. Instead, they appoint Ron Klain, a somewhat anonymous White House and Democratic operative. What the hell are they thinking? 

Ron Paul and Friends out for a Sunday drive

Well, I don't know. Most Czars have damn little to do with the problem they're appointed to fix and the one's who do the best jobs seem to be the one's who are highly capable executives and leaders. Murthy is more of a technocratic operator but has some leadership success and does understand public health really well. Klain is a government technocrat who's been chief of staff to two vice presidents, Gore and Biden. The theory here was that he's the guy who can integrate the government response and coordinate all the agencies that will be involved. Unfortunately, most of the agencies doing things will be health care related, and I suspect a lot of the "stuff" of getting this controlled will be pretty highly technical. While I'm sure he's a competent guy, if the Administration didn't know this was going to excite those who thrive on panic and despair and hatred, they're even less situationally aware than I already think they are. When you're being chomped by alligators and nibbled by ducks, you don't need more damn gators or ducks. 

The administration has confused their duck-nibbling, gator-chomping swamp with a petting zoo. 

Back in 2005, a group of friends and I started The Defeatists. Our basic approach was that defeat and disaster was inevitable so approach it with that in mind. I think we were being satirical, although at times I wonder.

Anyway, I think the correct response to this nonsense by the President and Vice President is to invite John Boehner and Mitch McConnell to the White House, offer them some Merlot or some Wild Turkey, and then hand to the two Republican leaders their resignations.

"You won't cooperate, you won't negotiate, you spread lies, despair, gloom and all for your own political advantage at the expense of the welfare of the nation and the people. To hell with  you, you broke it, so you bought it..."

Then leave the room. Have Chief Justice Roberts dragged in and tell them to wait. Give them a half hour to think of what they want to propose as an alternative.

These guys aren't stupid. President-designate Boehner would probably really be in tears. McConnell would definitely be doing his turtle routine. 

This would be the ultimate Defeatist karate -- the two leaders don't want to be in charge of the government and Roberts isn't really interested in trying to preside over a major constitutional crisis the government; they just want to piss on it.

Make them put some skin in the games, and see how they respond. Then maybe we might get around to getting something done about stuff...lots of stuff.

(To be continued)

 

November End Times, Hierophanies and General Nuttiness

Sometimes insight arrives from the oddest places...

  

As I suspect a lot of us are experiencing,  some of my closest friends like Bob Redford and Babs Striesland are convincved the world is going to end tomorrow or on election day or whenever the next planeload of homosexual-lesbian-Ebola-Carrier-Central-American-ISIL supported Islamo-Narco-Fiat Money-Bums lands in McAllen Texas and heads north to steal our precious body fluids. Or, perhaps when the next set of Troglodyte-Fascist-1%-Libertarian-Anti-school-Lunch-pro-gun-Creationist-Koch-Soul-Brother-Malefactors (of great wealth) enter Congress and the White House and the Supreme Court. Or, on Election Day. And only a vote for Jean Shaheen or that Iowan Pig Castrator, for Bernie Sanders' or Ted Cruz's favorite can save us so SEND US ALL YOUR MONEY.

Citizens United --One of the obvious unintended consequences, because I don't think the Conservative Cabal on the Court is that ironically subtle, of Citizens United is that Americans are getting more and more irritated with politics in general and election politics in specific. It's really a sad commentary -- the people doing this or allowing it to be done in their name are then going to have to have a complete psychological and spiritual makeover in order to not be totally incapable of working for the good of the nation or people or world through debate, discussion, imagination and compromise. There are Think Tanks and Special Interests to serve, because the next election is coming...and it starts all over again.

When I saw the Ted Toles cartoon, I realized that he'd nailed the situation in this country for those of us over 40, who grew up on 5:00 PM and Saturday Morning cartoons. I suspect that I'm not the only one who realizes that while much of my thinking might be influenced by priests and nuns, the Founding Fathers, St Augustine, Aristotle and Kierkegaard, Kennedy's Inaugural and Assassination, Vietnam and Watergate, the real drivers of my education were Bugs, and Daffy, and Foghorn Leghorn, and Rocky and Bullwinkle and Popeye and Alice the Goon. However, the real existential fifth columnist was the Road Runner and his ceaseless Sisyphean encounters with his stalker, the Wiley Coyote. What can I say -- the great cartoonists of the mid-2oth Century were literate social commentators who wrote for an audience far more sophisticated than the one today.

And so it goes; we are now faced with a set of situations that require cool thinking, steely determination and self-sacrifice with a more than a little bit of compassion and a combination of life experience and education that was pretty normal then, and is really lacking today. We have politicians instead of statesmen, who are like the Coyote, trying to bag that damned Coyote with the same level of tools, thought and commitment. We have presidents, candidates, and congressional delegations that flit around from idea to idea, problem to problem, issue to issue with the same causal negligence of the road runner. We have "leaders" from the school of Foghorn Leghorn and Fearless Leader; policy wonks like Henry the Chickenhawk and Wimpy; volunteer saviors who resemble Bullwinkle and Dudley Doright, Nell and Clementine. Texas is governed by Quick Draw McGraw who figures that he can go to a marvelous hospital and get marvelous treatment so of course, everybody can because they can all pay for it...yeah. We have a "war hero" Ghost who's response to international problems is the same as Cecil the Seasick Sea Serpent -- MORE MOREMOREMORE BPMBS!  Jesus could look down over the hill on this new Jerusalem and be torn, not knowing whether to laugh or cry.

If I were Barrack Obama, I'd feel justified in asking God what the hell I'd ever done to him that merited this whirlwind of insanity. I think that smart, thoughtful presidents in the 21st Century aare at an awful disadvantage politically, and have been really since the Kennedy assassination. The guy is trying to do good things, but the world doesn't cooperate. It can't -- it's the world and consists of a lot of insane people with guns, money, lawyers, ski masks  and a mass of contradictory hidden agendas and open manifestos. In some ways, ISIL is a nice change -- they don't have a secret agenda, they're pretty open. They don't report to the same God that most of us recognize in the 21st Century. A couple of Islamic friends from Teheran have told me that they regard ISIL as not Islamic but Satanist. I think that's a reasonable approach, not unlike the Pope condemning violence in the name of God. However, the fact remains that both Christianity and Islam grew by force, so there's at least a historical connection. The Crusaders killed more innocents in taking Jerusalem than the Romans did in razing it in 78AD or so. Still, they may call him Allah, but I think they worship Cthulhu or some other very dark overlord with a completely different agenda.

This is a good place to mention empire. We don't want an empire and yet history has handed us one. We really don't want to be bothered with the damn thing. Seriously, we'd like to say, we already have too many creatures in our petting zoo, go off and play with Canada or somebody else. Of course, Canada doesn't want an empire either. However, my buddy and occasional co-conspirator Eric Garland has a great piece up on the problem of denying empire in a situation that really makes empires make sense. It's laudable in some ways while hypocritical in others, denying the desire to run thingsto avoid taking responsibility, but then when everything goes to hell, we find ourselves going in to unscrew everything and then rebuild it. Since we planned on leaving Iraq and Afghanistan from the beginning, we didn't pay a lot of attention to making the places livable and functional. Oh, we spent money, and KBR, Haliburton and every other contractor swine in the world made money on it. Cheney made money on it, although nobody likes to talk about that. The Bush family through the Carlisle Group made money on it. Problem is, the money they made came from us and future generations of us. We can't even loot effectively in this silly model.

Eric is pretty clear; doing things in a half-assed way produces a half-assed result. The West needs to man up and decide what it wants to be when it grows up, and empires have been the solution since ancient Egypt and the freaking Sumerians. As a species we got pretty good at it, and what we're doing now doesn't work.  Eric sums it up very nicely...

There is, unsurprisingly, zero endgame in sight and zero reckoning with past policies, such as, “Hey, maybe those moderate rebels we armed weren’t so moderate!” or “We are pretty terrible at establishing peaceful nation-states in the Middle East!” Still, we are headed back to destroy the thing that emerged after the last thing we destroyed. The tactics that are currently approved are airstrikes, meaning that once again we intend to destroy things, but building things will be beyond our purview – for now. One supposes that the preferred strategic outcome would be for stable, liberal, Western-style democratic nation-states to emerge in the places where our bombs just fell,  (Jeffersonian Democracy anyway? Hamiltonian Federalism? The Third French Republic? )but the national security is far from broaching the particulars of our plan. I have a solution to offer which is out of the current Overton Window of political discourse: Empire...Today, America and its allies are really trying to do Empire on the cheap. There is no dirtier epithet in Washington than “isolationist,” which applies to all elected officials and policy-makers who are hesitant about invading other people’s countries. There is a broad consensus from Maine to San Diego that America’s interests clearly extend from our main streets all the way to the middle of Eurasia....And when they fail, as they usually will given such a design, we will be right back to bombing the newest bad guys. We essentially crave the geopolitical control that comes from Empire, but we skip the step where we keep the infrastructure working and provide security...Again, this has fallen outside of the window of political correctness, but someone needs to do a cost benefit analysis of how much it would cost to just run one of these countries, administer police, courts, roads, and hospitals and just call it East Texas, as opposed to spending thirteen years knocking down power structures and hoping for a suitable, friendly power to emerge. Surely the Rand Corporation can make a detailed model of the cost of running wars versus the cost of running countries. (Parentheticals and emphasis are mine.)

(To be continued)

Grace and God Part II

The news that the United Auto Workers lost a union election at a Nashville VW plant has sent the labor movement into something of a what the hell just happened spin. Unfortunately, I think that the results were preordained, back in about 1863. We have an interesting history in this country of well meaning northerners going into the backward and dirty south to enlighten these poor sons and daughters of Dixie, and it just doesn't work because the Northerners aren't trusted and the track record hasn't been all that great.

Hell, the post-union industrialization of the South wasn't by VW but it was by Northern Manufacturers who realized that they could make a lot more money moving steel from Pittsburgh to Birmingham and screw the workers in Birmingham a lot less than they were being screwed by their own boss class, but screw them a lot more than they were screwing over their own workers in the North. One might write an interesting history of American Expansion and Exception as a race to exploit the more easily exploited at cost to the somewhat less exploited. Now, the industrialization of the South screwed over a lot of people, and the big companies took the blame; it was possible to find Southern bosses and they did. Reconstruction ultimately turned out OK for the Southerners although not ideal from their point of view; hence the 100 year affiliation to the Democratic party although not necessarily the party of Roosevelt and Johnson but something else entirely.

 

King Harvest (Has Surely Come)

Corn in the fields.
Listen to the rice when the wind blows 'cross the water,
King Harvest has surely come
I work for the union 'cause she's so good to me;
And I'm bound to come out on top,
That's where she said I should be
I will hear every word the boss may say,
For he's the one who hands me down my pay
Looks like this time I'm gonna get to stay,
I'm a union man, now, all the way
The smell of the leaves,
From the magnolia trees in the meadow,
King Harvest has surely come -- Robbie Robertson, the Band

Billy Yank and Johnny Reb compare resumes There's a wonderful moment in Gettysburg when an Officer of the 2oth Maine is talking with some Southern prisoners, primarily with a private. It's pretty interesting in that I think it's incredibly real and captures something that we miss at times. They ask each other where they're from, and the Rebel says, "Tennessee. How about you?" The Yank says, "Maine. I've never been to Tennessee." The Reb says, "Don't reckon I've ever been to Tennesse either." The Yank officer says, " I don't mean no disrespect about you all fighting, but I have to wonder, what are you fighting for?" Reb private responds, "What are you fighting for?"  Yank responds, "Why to free the slaves, of course. Preserve the union." Reb says, "I can't talk for anyone else, but I don't care about no darkies one way or the other. I'm fightin' for my Raaattts." Yank has no clue what he means, and says "What?" Rebel says, "My Raattts. That's what all of us are fighting for." The conversation continues, they agree that the war is an awful thing, they wish it was over and the Rebel admits to some acceptance that since he's a prisoner, he'll get to sit the rest of it out. They wish each other good luck and say "See you in Hell, Billy Yank." "See you in Hell, Johnny Reb." And one marches off to prison camp, and the other to Little Round Top.

 

If people like the UAW realized what that private was telling us and them, and what the scene was telling us, they might have been far more successful. First of all, we have radically different understandings of why we do things and what we're doing. Lots of reasons for that, and I've talked about  some of them before. But, we don't understand each other -- the UAW can talk about industrial democracy and having a way to influence the company through the union; the Southerner doesn't understand Industrial Democracy (Of course, neither does the UAW) and since he knows his bosses, he trusts them. The VW plant management may not have been actively opposed to the union drive, but they've treated the workers well and haven't lied to them too much. The workers want to be left alone and allowed to work and be treated fairly. The Germans have done a good job of that. So...

Now, I've had a checkered career, and have talked to a lot of people over the years in a lot of professions, including those in State Workforce Development Programs. A few years ago at a Conference, I was chatting with fellow Vet who a honcho in the Alabama Workforce Development Department and a guy who was working in the South Carolina Workforce Development. They told both told me that BMW in South Carolina and Mercedes Benz in Alabama had far lower turnover, fewer problems, lower unemployment insurance rates and lower employee incidence of lawsuits than the Honda and Nissan plants in both states. The Alabama guy said the same thing about the Koreans and Hyundai. Far more success than Honda with their workers. The reasons were simple; the German and the Korean attitudes toward the workers and the resulting culture were really far more attractive. At Mercedes, the workers all basically dress the same on the floor -- the blue lab/worker coat that those of us who've spent time in Germany are familiar with. There is no reserved parking for the bosses, it's all first come/first serve except for handicapped parking. The example that they both shared vigorously was the subject of litter -- at the German and Korean plants, if one of the bosses passed some litter, he'd stop and pick it up, either put it in his pocket or toss it in the trash. No big deal. At the Japanese plants, it was the opposite; before a Japanese manager would pick up a piece of litter, he would go find an American to have him pick up the litter.

Consider that. As an occasional management consultant, I can tell you that outsiders offering opinions about all the crap " you all are doing wrong" doesn't work well -- "It's the stranger with a stopwatch, brief case asking to borrow your watch so they can break it"- syndrome built large.So, the UAW goes south. They pick a plant that generally has good relations with the workers and where the company sees a union on the German Works Council model as a way to have better relations and produce higher quality. However, the company wasn't doing the organizing drive; the UAW was. I trust Bob, but who the hell are you?

So, while the Republican party did their people at the Nashville plant a major disservice by lying about the impact of the effort to organize on future industrial growth and continued production, the real disservice had to do with strategic stupidity on the part of the UAW. Go for the low hanging fruit, not the one's where you need to build a crane to pick at it. Or a step ladder. Go after the people the workers don't like, not those they more or less are indifferent to or actually like and trust. Next, the scene referenced above is interesting because the accents are so telling although a rural Maine accent is in a lot of ways not that different than a mountain Tennessee pattern. But, make certain the folks doing the organizing are "from around here." After forever in the Army, I consistently talk in a way that makes people think I'm from 100 miles or so south of them unless I'm in the south where they figure I'm from 100 miles north. If you're not driving a Ford or Chevvy, Pickup or a  VW Golf GT, why were you in Nashville as an organizer? If not, at least drive a 5.0 Mustang or a Five Liter Charger if you're headed to a Japanese plant. Get people who drive those sorts of cars, who like country music, and can sing along to Freebird and Sweet home Alabama.

The key thing about the South is the importance of family. Since they've been so embattled over time and so battered by various outsiders who mean well, the importance of "kin" among working class Southerners is a key thing. I was trying to enforce some simple Army regulations and found myself accused while in exile with the Reserves in Texas of being " a goddamned outside Yankee agitator." I made a point of being culturally nonsensitive despite which I still managed to make some friends for whom I still care deeply. Last time I cried over someone's death who wasn't family was when I heard that the S3 Secretary in the Brigade I was assigned to died from cancer. But, I was there long enough to lead by example and develop some expert and referent power. Just show up and start preaching, especially about what "the union is going to do for you..." without that and the native Texan or Alabamian or Tennessean hears some Yankee saying, "We're gonna take your women, corn and horses, and there's nothing much you can do about it." If the meaning of the message is what the receiver hears, well, nothing much you can do about it by shouting it louder.

 

This isn't any different than the spirit that grows up in military units -- there's me, my team, my squad, my platoon and my company. Everybody else is the damn enemy until proven otherwise.

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Workers Choose Not to Turn Tennessee into Detroit

Workers Choose Not to Turn Tennessee into Detroit

Crystal clear at last -- Half right is all Wrong!

 

I yield to no one in my appreciation of the general perversity of human beings in groups. However, looking at things rationally, I tend to come to the Conan Doyle understanding -- when you eliminate the possible, the impossible however improbable is probably true. Hamlet was only half right -- the fault is not with our stars but lives among them!

When Ayn Rand and Friedman bit you in the butt

I knew this was going to happen, as did a lot of us. Theoretically, it was the stuff of public health discussions and philosophy of science and ethics for a long time. First clue that the end was coming was probably when MRSA became a big issue. But, a friend of mine with too much time on his hands Facebook-ed this  earlier today with the note that it was time to start singing the doom song.  Since he's a system administrator for start-ups by profession, he's used to everyone running around saying the world will end tomorrow...in this case, it might.

Another reality is there’s not much money to be made in making new antibiotics, so we saw a lot of drug companies who left the field of antibiotic development because of this combination of factors, that it was getting really hard to discover, to develop new antibiotics, and you don’t make a lot of money in selling these drugs, so the market really wasn’t there. …I can’t tell a patient who has a resistant infection, “If we can get you through this next six months or this next year, there’s going to be a great drug that’s coming.” Or I can’t tell oncologists, for example, “Well, six months from now we’re going to have therapies to offer you; we’re going to have something to combat these infections.”

The drugs aren’t there. And we know it takes a long time to get drugs from the development stage through testing and into the market. Right now, I can’t tell you when you’re going to have a new antibiotic to treat these highly resistant Gram negatives. The best I can say is it’s probably going to be several years, but I can’t point to one that’s in development and say, “We’re going to have that one in three years.”

There is a temptation to be snarky here. "We don't have effective antibiotics? No problem--get some turtle dung, eye of newt and blood of frog and go to town. Maybe some fire...yeah, lots of fire." Unfortunately, this is actually kind of real and is another reason why we should be spending a lot of taxpayer money on developing new therapies. Instead, the Rs are worrying about a bad software site. Bengazi. The fucking national debt that they exploded, TARP that they demanded. Here's the thing -- if we have a succession of plagues caused by diseases we could have treated but now can't, everyone is vulnerable. EVERYONE. The weaker and less healthy will get sick first, but everybody will be at serious risk. This demands a systemic response to which the Ryan-Boehner-Barton-McKeon response will be something along the lines of denial, blaming Obama, scheduling days of prayer and perhaps having Teddy Cruz's dad, the faith-healing Cuban minister (Santeria, anyone?) do some TV faith-healing. After all, it's OK in their minds to swear in to the Congress by TV?

Of course, the Randian-Markets are Magic crowd can indicate the cited interview. After all, this was on PBS, on Frontline. Commie bastards! And the guy in question is a government scientist. Pointy-headed, drone! A damn take wants us to worry...ok, how about the head of R&D from Pfizer, Dr. Charles Knirsch?  The drugs aren't there. They're not even working on them...

Q. But did that mean that you had to close down the antibiotic thing to focus on vaccines? Why couldn’t you do both?

A. Oh, good question. And it’s not a matter of closing down antibiotics. We were having limited success. We had had antibiotics that we would get pretty far along, and a toxicity would emerge either before we even went into human testing or actually in human testing that would lead to discontinuation of those programs. Again, the science was difficult, and we have these other platforms, these vaccine platforms that are state of the art that we think that the prudent allocation of capital addressing very, very important medical need, we would devote the resources to those programs.

Q.  So you decided essentially to shift the capital away from antibiotics and toward vaccine platforms.

A. Yes.

Q. And there were, according to people we’ve talked to, promising compounds at that time. You certainly had what some people described to us as the best and the brightest in the world working on some of these things at Pfizer. But you just said to me that there were problems with them and that there were difficulties, so I just wonder, was this program not the best and the brightest and one of the best in the world?

A. I don’t know which programs you’re referring to. Could you be more specific? Some of these programs right now haven’t even been moved into animal testing.

Now, I want any reader to understand this -- Pfizer is doing this not because they're greedy bastards, or at least, not solely because they are greedy bastards. They're doing because they see antibiotics as a dead end and they need to do something else which is going to require some hard and expensive research, development and clinical trials taking years. They didn't see the "return on innovation," and saw too much risk due to the difficulties of the science involved and the "uncertain regulatory pathways." In other words, things cost too much to do, too much risk of failure and then it just takes time to get a drug through testing, even if it's fast tracked. Should the new antibiotic cause serious side effects that outweigh the benefits, the legal liabilities are incredible. "So, get the divining rod out, Myrtle, we need to find a new well and different magic beans."

I'm honestly not knocking big Pharma so much as capitalism -- the unchecked Capitalism and greed advocated by the Republican Party of the "de-regulate, we're sorry BP, Enron didn't do anything wrong" era. Dr. Krnirsch speaks about public-private partnerships involving government research, universities and what really amounts to cross-fertilization between the various big and small pharmaceutical firms as scientists move between academe, government and business. Frankly, this is one place where the revolving door is not only not a problem for the nation, but where it works to our advantage. But, the fact is that scientific research is part of that "discretionary" funding thing shut down as non-essential during the latest Tea Party led unpleasantness. We're spending a lot less on pure science than we used to, and people like Palin, Cruz, Lee, Bachmann, Demint, Anne Coulter, Hannity and O'Reilly and so on delight in laughing at research studies and the boundary-less nature of what government has funded in the past.

Basic research costs more and more because it's less and less basic, and science is pretty much boundary-less by it's nature. If you are a PhD in biology specializing in primates, you have a deep understanding of math, statistics, chemistry, and some familiarity with physics, earth science and other more esoteric things besides how monkeys work. Basic science and hard science is not something best left to the private sector because the private sector, even the hugely financially successful Pharmaceutical industry, is not designed to take on high risk, low return efforts.

The ideal drug for Pfizer is Viagra, which was initially developed as a tool for hypertension. The physiological effect of lowering blood pressure in the male reproductive organs those allowing better circulation was a side effect that became the reason for the drug's existence. As it came closer and closer to going off patent, Pfizer began to look at it as a mechanism for combating teenage hypertension. In fact, lower doses of the drug are marketed for some types of hypertension but are off patent; the primary money-making purpose for the drug is ED and those patents do not expire until 2019. However, there's nothing to prevent a physician from subscribing the lower dose and less expensive and possibly generic version for ED. They'd just have to prescribe multiple pills...When Canada allowed manufacture of generic Viagra, Pfizer countered by lowering the prices for the real stuff and then appealed saying that the Canadian legal system had erred. As a result, Canada invalidated all the patents on Viagra in Canada.

Scientific and medical research is not about making money; pharmaceutical firms are about making money. As we shift funding for research more to the private sector and less to the public sector, there will be less of the hard science and more of what might be considered technology, which can be described reasonably as the effort to take some scientifically known elements and apply them to resolve engineering problems of one type or another. Writing computer code is an example of a technological use of known scientific processes (coding, math logic, binary math, etc. etc. etc.) some of which is invisible to the writer and can be. But, re-designing the structure of micro-processors to depend on some as yet unknown principle of quantum mechanics or organic as opposed to inorganic chemical compound is science; the basic science lies in discovering that as yet unknown principle or compound.

Business excels at technology because the risk is an engineering solution; not so much at the other aspects of the continuum. The firm answers to the shareholders who may not be willing to absorb the losses of failed experiments trying to turn peanut butter into jet fuel. (That image is homage to Jerry Harvey and the Abilene Paradox, a great explanation for what's going on in Congress and the Republican party. Thank you Dr Harvey for again helping us all understand.) S

o, how do we get the hard science done? Lots of it is done in the great research universities around the world, funded by foundations, Pharma and government. In this country, the only organization that can absorb the cost and the risk of this sort of research -- consider it to be a form of scientific infrastructure -- is the Federal Government. Not funding that risks not having the next great innovation; more to the point, in this incredibly complex organism that is the human community, it risks not being able to respond to the next crisis because no one has even thought of the problem.

The return on investment for a firm in basic science is really limited; the return for the nation on all infrastructure -- intellectual, technological, industrial, transportation, communication -- is incredible largely because the nation is the only one who can afford to do it. To those who worry about burdening future generations with debt, I suggest they consider if the future generations would like to have a future based on eye of newt and fire in hovels and caves connected by goat carts where strep throat and pneumonia kill 50% of the population before age 12, or something marvelous. If it all falls apart, the debt is going to be not an issue; survival will be questionable. We are a community, all in this together; failing to act that way as our right wing compatriots recommend is infuriating, and amusing, and really just an awful idea. The good news is when the universal pandemic  comes, like the black death, plutocrats and senators and their families and supporters will suffer as much if not more than the poor, hungry, weak and those who serve them. However, it's cold comfort -- doing something now seems a far better approach than this when it's too late.  

Some of them were fugitives from a Jackson Brown Song

The class warfare issue: my working theory is that wealthy individuals bought themselves a radical right party, believing — correctly — that it would cut their taxes and remove regulations, but failed to realize that eventually the craziness would take on a life of its own, and that the monster they created would turn on its creators as well as the little people. And nobody knows how it ends. --Paul Krugman

I seldom agree with Congressman Pete King (Republican, County Antrim...err, New York) about much of anything. Certainly, we both have the Irish ability to prevaricate which enables him to see a difference between the Provisional IRA and al Qaeda or Hamas that really doesn't exist. Seriously, Franz Fanon could have written about Falls Road as opposed to Algeria, and same story. So, King's advocacy for gunrunners and money launderers for Green Power while absolute condemnation of anything pro-Palestinian or prop-Arab is interesting. Since I stopped drinking 23 years ago, it's harder for me to do that. I just run out of patience with my own bullshit.

 

Fortunately for the Republicans, John Bohener hasn't quit drinking. So he's able to babble insanely and push a legislative and economic agenda he doesn't believe in for a bunch of clowns he probably despises surrounded by a team he doesn't trust and NOT HAVE HIS HEAD EXPLODE! Fortunate for the Republican party in the short term, but bad for the country and the Republican party in the long run.  But, with Guinness and Bushmills as opposed to Chardonnay comes clarity and Pete King has long since reached the point of cognitive dissonance and his constituents are probably telling him to knock off the crap and get something done. No Republican seat in downstate is a safe seat; to be successful, you have to understand people and compromise and the art of getting things done. So Pete King has a pretty good tether to earth and reality. Louis Gomert and Michelle Bachmann, not so much.  So, he finds himself in something like the position of Lot in Sodom, trying to find a few more just men in the Republican Caucus. Good luck with that: 

“We can’t be going off on these false missions that Ted Cruz wants us to go on,” King continued. “The issues are too important. They’re too serious, they require real conservative solutions, not cheap headline-hunting schemes.” 

If you've been reading my rantings for any period longer than, well, this you know that I am a skeptic about most things but a firm believer that the rich and hyper-rich who are paying attention have pretty consciously been engaging in class warfare for decades. Paul Krugman's and Ezra Klein's analysis is spot on in this case. The question really is how'd we get here...and I suggest listening to  The Talking Head's for the ontological answer. Or, Google the Senate Chaplain's Barry Black's opening prayer yesterday. As Alex Rogers commented at Swampland, Time Magazine's Washington Blog, 

For some, at least, the only thing left to do was pray. “Eternal God, our ever present help in trouble, as our nation stumbles toward a seemingly unavoidable government shutdown, keep our lawmakers from sowing to the wind, thereby risking reaping the whirlwind,” prayed the Senate chaplain Barry C. Black on the floor before the vote. “Remember that all that is necessary for unintended catastrophic consequences is for good people to do nothing.”

 

Well, they certainly didn't do nothing. Rather, they kept doing the same thing, and frankly, it's hard to pick out the most egregious, disingenuous piece of bullshit spewed by the Republican conference. I particularly like the idea that the President wasn't willing to negotiate. WE'RE IN THIS MESS BECAUSE THE PRESIDENT REFUSED TO ACCEPT THAT THE REPUBLICANS IN THE HOUSE AND SENATE WERE INCAPABLE OF NEGOTIATING IN GOOD FAITH.  If you have the patience for it, review the legislative history of the Affordable Care Act and the various budget issues over the last couple of years. I think in Barack Obama we are looking at the second coming not of Abraham Lincoln but of Woodrow Wilson. He's a reasonable man dealing with irrational people who are less interested in doing what's right for the country than in avoiding their "Base's" anger and primary action. Absurd. Wilson's ultimate failure was due to his inability to realize that some people won't see reason; Obama's history is yet to be inscribed, but I suspect that he'll have a similar fate.

I particularly like the R's decision to strip themselves and the Executive's employees of health insurance in supposed solidarity with what the American people are going through...despite the fact that there's a huge difference between the situation of the folks affected by the insurance coverage of the Affordable Care Act and the people who work for the Executive and Congressional Branches of Government. The Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare, doesn't really have anything to do with the members of Congress or their staff...They Already Have Employer Provided Health Care. This is grandstanding by plutocratic jerks and while nothing will come of it, the staff of the Republicans on the Hill should start sending out resumes now. Just what K-Street needs, more lobbyists.

I'm also enjoying the coverage of the stench of booze on both sides of the aisle; however, it seems like the Dems wait until the bill is actually passed and something is done. (It's also possible that the media is trying to be "fair and balanced" damning both sides. ) Well, now we know...for sure. Wouldn't you love to get a urine sample result from Michelle Bachmann? A breathylizer reading from Boehner?

Kierkegaard, Field Marshal Haig and Othello all walk into a bar...

Years ago, a gentleman training me in Mediation, Bruce Berquist was so unhappy with the world that he decided to stop paying attention to the news. He just took a sabbatical – figured that if anything really important was happening, one of his colleagues or his wife would tell him. This was during the Lewinski-Impeachment-Semen Stained Dress period of American history. Anyway, of late I’ve been thinking about it, and I decided to take a similar sabbatical.  Syria Today as Envisioned in HR Wells, Things to Come 1936

Among the things I’ve been trying to do is catch up on films. I finally watched the longest current surviving print of Metropolis, and was underwhelmed. However, I recently saw Things to Come, and while a less visually interesting film – Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon all over the silly thing – it got me thinking and helped me clarify some concerns.  The Syria debacle really has bothered me; when you have no good choices, don’t freaking choose. Seems simple as a dictum, but for some reason we have stumbled into a time warp where we can’t do that.  Syria is an absolute snake pit already without our holding our nose and jumping in; chemical weapons are a reasonably vile upping of the ante, but we’re already talking about two million refugees, four million internal displacements, 100000 casualties and who knows what other insanity. There are no players in the entire debacle that are particularly appealing and a number who are as appalling if not more so than Assad. What the hell? At times like this, I really wish Colin Powell had become President. If the US had followed the Powell Doctrine consistently since 1995, we’d be a happier, stronger and far more united nation and more perfect union. As you may recall, the Powell doctrine was fairly simple – Prior to committing US Forces to action, we need to have satisfactorily answered the following questions: 

Is a vital national security interest threatened?

Do we have a clear attainable objective?

Have the risks and costs been fully and frankly analyzed?

Have all other non-violent policy means been fully exhausted?

Is there a plausible exit strategy to avoid endless entanglement?

Have the consequences of our action been fully considered?

Is the action supported by the American people?

Do we have genuine broad international support?^[1] 

The Wiki piece on this tends to say there are a lot of exceptions including such things as humanitarian support wars. I don’t necessarily see that as a good idea. While it might prohibit some action in cases like Syria because of the question of vital national interests, one may reasonably argue that incidents like Libya and Syria are definitely in our geopolitical interests. However, it becomes reasonably obvious that none of our recent conflicts actually fit this model. Iraq was totally off the scale on the side of not fulfilling these criteria. We now know with a solid base of assurance that there were no vital interests of the United States involved in Iraq; on the contrary, it was counterproductive. When Powell refers to objective, he wasn’t referring to the political objective so much as the strategic military objective combined with the tactical objectives supporting it. If you can’t develop a reasonable objective, don’t commit. Risks and costs were completely disregarded; there was no pressing need to attack when we did. There was no reasonable Exit Strategy, and let me add a corollary—an exit strategy that ends up requiring 10 or 20 or 30 years continued stay is not a particularly meaningful strategy. The consequences predicted for the Iraq war were silly at best; the ultimate result was a nightmare. The American People supported the war initially but that was based on the same lies that got Secretary Powell on board. There was no real International Support for this war. It was a nightmare from start to

finish; a wholly preventable nightmare. Colin Powell[/caption] Syria is so similar as to be dumbfounding. We do have a vital national interest in not letting the region descend further into hell. However, the Arab League, Turkey, Jordan, and Israel have much more vital interests. If the Alawites become marginalized by Sunnis, Iran has a more pressing problem than Assad presents opportunities. The Gulf States have concerns about Iran and about the basic dominance in the region by l Qaeda and al Qaeda clones. Finally, as the guardian of nonproliferation and the enforcement of international norms, the UN has a vested interest here that far exceeds that of the individual members.

Chemical weapons are bad. We agree on that. However, the ability of the Syrian military to disperse delivery systems, stockpiles and command and control centers make limited strikes really ineffective. If we want to take out the power grid in a nation, that’s easy. Individual missiles, launchers and so on, not so much. 

What the threat of military action has done is energize the world in seeking some diplomatic solution. In terms of exit strategy and solutions, the use of cruise missiles and air strikes provides neither. Unless someone is going to put boots on the ground to enforce UN mandates – which isn’t going to happen with the makeup of the Security Council – we are not looking at appropriate force and an exit strategy so much as at the technological equivalent of magic beans as a key to Never Land.  Air strikes and cruise missile strikes don’t change the battlefield in and of themselves.

I sum up the Powell doctrine relatively simply: Clear, workable and defined Objective; Commitment of verwhelming, appropriate and effective force; and, Defined, workable exit strategy and time horizon. The Syria plan fails. Drop it.

Putin undoubtedly felt his cred as hemispheric godfather threatened and is reacting to prove he’s the Alpha dog. Let him. No American blood and treasure for Syria; logistics support for the UN or regional coalitions, perhaps. But as it stands, we have no dog in this fight.  

Cynical Cyclicals

The Times has an interesting article this morning on the conflict between the Japanese concept of lifetime employment and the whole Milton Friedman "Shareholder value is not the most important thing, it's the only thing!" approach.  The UAW had negotiated a similar package for its members in the 50s and while it cost money, it did keep the social fabric in places like Detroit and Flint and Gary and other places devastated by the goat rodeo that was the auto industry in the 70s, 80s, and early 90s. As that program was downsized and ultimately eliminated by through contract negotiations, bad situations got worse. Similar approaches were used by other firms, including professional firms, where "excess" engineers, planners, business managers and so on would be assigned to social programs or to nonprofits to help the recipient organizations cope with their challenges. I assume the corporation was able to write off that time on taxes as a charitable contribution, although I do not know. It certainly showed community involvement and was effective PR.

Basically, SONY offered its affected employees at one plant buy-outs and early retirements. They offered a 54 month buyout for early retirees, for example. However, a number of them refused the buy-out and so are sent to "Career Design Rooms" which the employees call "The Boredom Room." Basically, the company sends the employee there in the equivalent of sending a useless NCO off to issue basketballs in the gym or count the holes in the chainlink fence around the installation. In other words, until shame and boredom forces the employee to quit, the company expands and has a need for the now disgruntled and stale employee or the employee dies. Win/Win for every one.

Well, of course, that's the whole myth of the employment relationship. I work for company X; I can quit at anytime while they can fire me at any time. Called "At-will employment," this is a common law concept that "an employment contract of indefinite duration can be terminated by either the employer or the employee at any time for any reason; also known as terminable at will." There's an underlying assumption here that there's a general power balance between employer and employee. Well, that's obviously insane in the modern world and as a result in most countries there is a requirement for "good cause" or "just cause." The US is the only G20 nation that still has this on a national level which shows some of the benefits of a parliamentary system, I guess. In the US, only Montana is a "just cause for termination" state.  Now, if a firm is unionized or provides some other contractural assurances which can pop up in the oddest places, there are some protections; however, it appears that Japan business community which seems to include the elected government. wants to change it's system of guaranteed lifelong employment to an At-Will system. 

The standoff between workers and management at the Sendai factory underscores an intensifying battle over hiring and firing practices in Japan, where lifetime employment has long been the norm and where large-scale layoffs remain a social taboo, at least at Japan’s largest corporations. Sony wants to change that, and so does Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. As Japan’s economic recovery slows, reducing the restraints on companies has become even more important to Mr. Abe’s economic plans. He wants to loosen rigid rules on job terminations for full-time staff. Economists say bringing flexibility to the labor market in Japan would help struggling companies streamline bloated work forces to better compete in the global economy. Fewer restrictions on layoffs could make it easier for Sony to leave loss-ridden traditional businesses and concentrate resources on more innovative, promising ones.“I have a single wish for Japan’s electronics sector, and that’s labor reform,” said Atul Goyal, a technology analyst at Jefferies & Company.

On the other hand, the Japanese work force isn't quite as docile and ready to do a Banzai! charge over a cliff as the government or SONY and other companies might hope. This is probably an even stronger tendency after Fukashima  I suspect. Nothing like being systematically lied to and rapidly learning about it to make people not so believing the next time around.

 Critics of labor changes say something more important is at stake. They warn that making it easier to cut jobs would destroy Japan’s social fabric for the sake of corporate profits, causing mass unemployment and worsening income disparities. For a country that has long prided itself on stability and relatively equitable incomes, such a change would be unacceptable. “That’s not the kind of country Japan should aim to be,” said Takaaki Matsuda, who leads the Sendai chapter of Sony’s union. 

Oddly, the Times seems to take the position that there is something horrible about the Boredom Room. I mentioned this to the guy who made me aware of the article, and his response was "I'd give a lot for a moment or two of boredom. Frankly, while I understand that the boredom factor is a negative, the traditional large firm expectation in Japan  is still a helluva lot more humane than just laying people off in our somewhat ludicrous unemployment system and down economy. What does it say about the US, that the last best hope of mankind is ready to toss away 20% if its workforce like dity Kleenex?  What's I like to see is a restructuring of our system where the unemployed are offered suitable opportunities for re-training and community service while maintaining a reasonable income. Probably require an interesting adjustment to taxes but in much the way the California Disability Program works, it could be tied to the employee so that if longer term unemployment becomes the norm, the employee has alternatives besides hopelessness.

 

Philosophically, I think contemporary American capitalism puts most of us into boredom rooms most of the time. If not, there wouldn't be so many games of solitaire being played on company time! People don't play computer solitaire because they're dodging meaningful work. They're looking for a less soul-crushing and boring equivalent.

Damned right Japan doesn't want to be a company that allows employers to discard employees like waste and condemn it's workforce to cyclical  anxiety, boredom and despair. Which is what the US is, and we're paying some prices for that. Pity the unemployed in America trying to find work -- they're in effect in the waiting room for US economies boredom room.