Pentagon wasted $30 billion during wars

We keep hearing about these outrageous wastes of money yet somehow, too few people in Washington do anything about it. The wars keep going on - they even expand into new countries - and nobody dares question the spending. It's seemingly OK to cut funds from middle class Americans who are already suffering but no, the military keeps getting a free ride. No wonder so few people like either Congress or the president. What's to like about any of them? There's absolutely no leadership in Washington from either side.

The Pentagon has wasted more than $30 billion on contracts in Iraq and Afghanistan due to shoddy management and a lack of competition, an independent inquiry said Monday.

In its final report to Congress due to be released Wednesday, the bipartisan Commission on Wartime Contracting warns that waste and fraud have undermined American diplomacy, fomented corruption in host countries and tarnished the US image abroad.

"Tens of billions of taxpayer dollars have been wasted through poor planning, vague and shifting requirements, inadequate competition, substandard contract management and oversight, lax accountability, weak inter-agency coordination, and subpar performance or outright misconduct by some contractors and federal employees," the co-chairs of the panel, Christopher Shays and Michael Thibault, wrote in the Washington Post.

"Both government and contractors need to do better," said the commentary published Monday.

The next question is what happens to all of the soldiers who return to middle class life when they come back from the wars? They often need assistance yet the budget has already been blown on wasteful contracts. It's absolutely pathetic. Read the rest of this post...

One of my favorite videos of Paris, and favorite vids of all time

This video is just under 7 minutes, and one of my favorites of all time. It's a vignette from a longer film called "Paris, je'taime." The movie is a compilation of 18 different smaller films, like this one, each set in a different neighborhood in Paris, and each directed by someone different. This one is about Montparnasse (the 14th), the neighborhood I lived in when I studied abroad a very long time ago, and the neighborhood Chris and his wife Joelle live in (they live around the corner from my old phonetics class). It's written and directed by Alexander Payne, an American.

It's about an unmarried postal worker from Denver who takes a "French for adults" class, and after two years of saving up her money goes on her first ever trip to Europe, to Paris.  I get chills every time I watch the ending of this thing.  Please do give it a look.

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The US-led battles in Iraq/Afghanistan seem to be going far less well than the multinational campaign in Libya

Following up on Chris' post on GOP presidential hopeful Rick Perry, in which Perry said that US forces in Libya should be led by US commanders, not "multilateral debating societies," let's compare how well those multilateral debating societies are doing, as compared to the US-led efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Combined cost of US led mission in Iraq and US mission in Afghanistan:

225,000 Killed
$3.2-4 Trillion
[Source Brown University]

Cost of UN sanctioned, Libyan rebel led, NATO supported mission in Libya:

Unknown Killed
$1 Billion
[Source Fox News]

So far the 'multilateral debating society' that led the campaign in Libya seems to be working better than the alternatives proposed by current (Perry) and former (Bush) Texas governors. And, mind you, I'm citing the Brown University numbers for Iraq/Afghanistan which are certainly on the low end of credible estimates, and Fox News numbers for Libya which are almost certainly over-estimates. Libya still comes out better than Iraq/Afghanistan.

The number killed in the fighting in Libya is currently unknown but certainly in the thousands, possibly tens of thousands. But the number killed in the fighting is considerably less than the 50,000 people taken prisoner by the Gaddafi regime and currently unaccounted for. Read the rest of this post...

Cheney doesn’t think the Iraq war has hurt the US’ image abroad

Sure.

“I don’t think that it damaged our reputation around the world,’’ he told Matt Lauer. “I just don’t believe that. I think the critics at home want to argue that. In fact, I think it was sound policy that dealt with a very serious problem and eliminated Saddam Hussein from the kind of problem he presented before.

“What would’ve happened this week if Moammar Gadhafi had still been in power with a nuclear weapon in Libya? Would he have fled? I doubt it.’’

I love that last little line about Gadhafi he threw in there. What does that have to do with anything, since of course we now know that Saddam not only didn't have nukes, he didn't even have any WMD at all. Now we're pretending Gadhafi had them too? Read the rest of this post...

Actress Darryl Hannah & 100 others arrested at White House Toxic Tar Sands protest

The protests against the sludge-oil-carrying Keystone Pipeline is growing. More arrests occurred today outside the White House, including actress Darryl Hannah this time, and protests sprung up in Minneapolis. NBC News (my emphasis):

"Sometimes it's necessary to sacrifice your freedom for a greater freedom," Hannah said in Lafayette Park before her arrest. "And we want to be free from the horrible death and destruction that fossil fuels cause, and have a clean energy future."

With dozens of others, Hannah sat on the sidewalk in front of the White House and refused three requests from the Park Police to move.

The group organizing the protest, Tar Sands Action, has said the Keystone pipeline -- which will stretch from Canada to the Gulf -- is among the most important environmental decisions that confront the president.

An estimated 100 people were arrested outside the White House Tuesday. In Minneapolis, more than 20 protesters held up signs outside the American Legion national convention, at which President Barack Obama spoke Tuesday.

It really is down to Obama and a decision he can make alone. Will the environmentalists be the next under the bus? They're certainly going all out to make this his signature environmental move.

Think 2012, guy. You're going to need some non-loyalists to like you. Killing the Keystone sludge-carrying pipeline is a great place to start.

(For more on what's wrong with that continent-length pipeline and the slow-flowing toxic goo it will contain, read this.)

GP Read the rest of this post...

Now GOP wants to cut FEMA to pay for FEMA

Basically the House GOP is yet again trying to hold the entire budget hostage, and thus Americans who have just been through a disaster hostage, because it's the best and easiest way for them to fulfill their political desires, to eliminate the federal government.

House Republicans tucked $1 billion in additional funding for this year into a spending measure that also includes $2.65 billion in disaster-relief funding for fiscal 2012. The figure exceeds the $1.8 billion that President Obama requested for the next fiscal year, a move congressional Republicans said they took to avoid having to come up with more emergency dollars later.

But in doing so, Republicans shifted money from a program that lends money to auto manufacturers to build more energy-efficient cars and cut dollars from other FEMA programs. Both ideas are unacceptable to Senate Democrats.

“Does it really make sense to pay response and reconstruction costs for past disasters by reducing our capacity to prepare for or respond to future disasters?” Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.) asked in a July letter critical of the cuts the House made to replenish the disaster fund. Landrieu chairs the Senate Appropriations subcommittee that funds FEMA.

Why not raise taxes on rich corporations, and individuals, to pay for the disaster funding?

More on GOP plans to decimate FEMA:

Congressional Democrats and the White House were somewhat more successful this year in resisting cuts to FEMA that Republicans had proposed. But under the House Republicans’ plan to freeze discretionary spending at 2008 levels over a decade, FEMA cuts are inevitable. According to an analysis by the Center for American Progress’s Scott Lilly that takes into account inflation and population, this amounts to a 31 percent cut in real per capita spending on discretionary functions such as FEMA.

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Gloria Steinem will headline Obama NY fundraiser as part of big push for women’s vote in 2012

From Amanda Terkel at the Huff Post:

First Lady Michelle Obama, longtime feminist activist Gloria Steinem and several other prominent Democratic women will be the featured guests at a fundraiser in New York City next month for President Barack Obama's reelection campaign, in an effort to mobilize and energize Democratic women for 2012.

The Park Avenue fundraiser on Sept. 20 will also feature EMILY's List President Stephanie Schriock, Planned Parenthood Federation of America President Cecile Richards and Democratic National Committee Chair Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.).

Tickets prices start at $500 and go up to $38,500.

That's the first take-away, that Gloria Steinem and Stephanie Schriock are joined at the hip with Cecile Richards and Debbie Wasserman Schultz, at least as far as 2012 goes. Self-declarations are always welcome; thanks. (And EMILY, you can stop asking for money. I don't need a cut-out; I can give to Obama directly.)

Now for your second take-away: Obama doesn't win if women don't vote for him. He and McCain split the male vote in 2008, and women could be a problem this time around. Terkel again:

A recent AP-GfK poll found that less than half of all women approve of the job Obama is doing. That's a significant drop from the 100-day mark of his presidency, when 68 percent of women approved of his performance. Fifty percent now say he deserves reelection.

The Obama election still sees the problem as communicating its successes, not creating them. Good luck with that.

And your third take-away: Looks like the Clinton machine is all in for Obama. (Has he absorbed them, or are they just playing nicely together?) This good article also includes a long list of Clinton bundlers who are bundling for Obama. (Jon Corzine caught my eye. Carol Pensky was one of Hillary's 2008 superdelegates.)

To know them is ... to know them. A good piece of research.

GP

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Stiglitz: "The Fed is very good at creating problems, not so good at resolving them.... QE3 won’t help"

In the third installment of Chris' and my interview with Nobel economist Joseph Stiglitz in Paris this past Sunday, Stiglitz discusses (and explains) the Fed policy of quantitative easing.

[Previous installments:
* Stiglitz: Probabilities of a double dip recession "certainly have increased significantly"
* Stiglitz: Obama administration and Fed have demonstrated an "inability to make economic judgements".]

Stiglitz: "Monetary policy will not get us out of the mess, and all this discussion about monetary policy is a distraction.... The Fed is very good at creating problems, not so good at resolving them. QE3 won't help."

Stiglitz goes on to explain why quantitative easing didn't work (and I paraphrase what you'll see in the video below):

1. QE didn't lead to more lending, partly because we haven't fixed the banking system.

2. Lower interest rates typically do not have much effect on investment in an environment like the one we're in right now.

3. Slightly lower interest rates on bonds might have encouraged speculation in the stock market, driven up stock prices, which might induce people to consume more. But since it was pre-announced that the intervention would just be temporary, why would people go out and consume based on a knowingly volatile stock market? Only the foolish would have gone out and consumed based on a temporary boost in stock prices.

4. Competitive devaluation might have had some effect, namely lower interest rates leads to a lower US exchange rate, helping US competitiveness. Fed would never admit that this was the goal, but that was probably the only effect that was significant. But other countries responded in ways that limited the size of the positive impact.  And benefits over medium term are probably negative.

5. All of this might pose the risk of higher prices back in the US - and what does the Fed do if growth remains low but inflation rises?


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LA Times on $75 Billion in Homeland 'Security'

The LA Times has a report on how some of the $75 billion spent on 'Homeland Security' is spent.

Its not $1200 toilet seats, but:

In the Los Angeles suburb of Glendale, where police fear militants might be eyeing DreamWorks Animation or the Disney creative campus, a $205,000 Homeland Security grant bought a 9-ton BearCat armored vehicle, complete with turret. More than 300 BearCats — many acquired with federal money — are now deployed by police across the country; the arrests of methamphetamine dealers and bank robbers these days often look much like a tactical assault on insurgents in Baghdad.

That makes $60 million in Bearcats alone. How many does the country really need? Do police actually need any?

As always with these stories, the shear scale of the waste makes it impossible to know how much is waste. Is there $1 billion that can be cut without any loss? Almost certainly, in fact a 2% waste rate would be exceptionally good in government (or commerce). Is there $10 billion that could be cut? More?

This is the world I work in and from the trenches, the generals' choice of priorities is bizarre. There is plenty of stuff that could make the country safer, that is cheap or no cost. But that stuff is kind of difficult to explain to the brass. Arming the police with lightweight tanks, building fences and instituting strip searches in airports is something they can understand.

My friend Bruce Schneier calls this 'Security Theater'. It is often an apt description. Read the rest of this post...

Cheney’s memoir, surprisingly, misses a few things

Nice piece by Robert Kaiser in the Post about Dick Cheney's new memoir:

If this book were read by an intelligent person who spent the past 10 years on, say, Mars, she would have no idea that Dick Cheney was the vice president in one of the most hapless American administrations of modern times. There are hints, to be sure, that things did not always go swimmingly under President George W. Bush and Cheney, but these are surrounded by triumphalist accounts of events that many readers — and future historians — are unlikely to consider triumphs.

Cheney is far from candid about the many ways he exploited that unique arrangement. There isn’t space in a book review to retell the story, but curious readers should compare, for example, two accounts of the fight waged by the vice president and his staff attorney, David Addington, against the Department of Justice over the legality of post-9/11 eavesdropping on U.S. citizens.

One account, which appears in the best book on the Cheney vice presidency, “Angler,” by former Washington Post reporter Barton Gellman, describes how Cheney and Addington provoked “a flat out rebellion” in the Department of Justice, prompting most of its top officials and the director of the FBI to draft letters of resignation in the spring of 2004, to be used if the White House refused to change course. This raised the specter of a Watergate-like scandal. Gellman shows how Cheney and White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card kept Bush in the dark about this battle royal until the very last minute. When he learned about it, Bush took DOJ’s side and ordered changes in the surveillance program.

Cheney’s account of the same episode is much briefer and far less dramatic or detailed. It ends this way:

“Faced with threats of resignation, the president decided to alter the [National Security Agency] program, even though he and his advisors were confident of his constitutional authority to continue the program unchanged.” Cheney does not say who threatened to resign, nor does he note that the entire senior staff of Bush’s Justice Department disagreed with his legal interpretation.

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IMF slashes US and EU growth for 2011, more signs the US and world economy are in trouble

There's no good news in this update from the IMF. The ridiculous budget discussion and outcome in the US certainly did not help but policy makers have been off for quite some time. Once again, the stimulus worked, but it was too small. Chances of getting a second shot are nil so brace yourself for stagnate growth (at best) being the new norm.

The IMF sharply revised down its forecast for U.S. 2011 growth to 1.6 percent from a 2.5 percent forecast made just two months ago. It lowered the outlook for 2012 to 2.0 percent from 2.7 percent, ANSA said, citing a draft of the IMF's World Economic Outlook to be issued on Sept. 20.

In view of growing risks to U.S. growth the Fed [cnbc explains] "should stand ready to adopt new non-conventional measures to sustain the economy," ANSA quoted the report as saying.

The revisions are in line with recent comments by IMF chief Christine Lagarde and other senior Fund officials, who have warned about a weakening in the global recovery and a deterioration in the outlook.

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Stiglitz: Probabilities of a double dip recession "certainly have increased significantly"

During our interview in Paris on Sunday, Nobel economist Joseph Stiglitz told Chris and me that the probabilities of a double dip recession "certainly have increased significantly."

But Stiglitz made an interesting point.  It doesn't really matter if we "officially" enter recession territory again or not - things are bad, especially in terms of jobs, and not improving, no matter what term we use to describe the current situation. So, to some degree, by saying "thank God we've avoided a double dip" (if in fact we do avoid one) we're ignoring the fact that things are still horrible and not getting better.

Stiglitz also pointed out that the economy needs to grow by 3% to 4% to get us out of the current "jobs deficit."  And that, he says, isn't going to happen any time soon - at most growth will be 1% this year.



See our earlier excerpt of the interview in which Stiglitz says the Obama administration and the Fed have demonstrated an inability to make economic judgments.
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