Will Republicans Maintain America's Honor?

The current political situation is bringing back some bad memories from my days in the Foreign Service.

The last time the Republicans took over Congress, with Newt Gingrich in the mid-1990’s, they cut off funding for one of the main scientific cooperation projects I was working on in Warsaw, Poland, although the US had signed an agreement to fund it for five years just before I got there a year or two earlier. A senior official in the Polish foreign ministry used to call me in periodically and berate me because the US had failed to honor its promise. As a Southerner who grew up with a strong dose of the importance of “honor,” I really didn’t like it.

Then the State Department asked me to go to Rome, and the Republicans shut down the government on the very day my wife and I were leaving. We had moved out of our house in Warsaw, had everything in the car ready to drive to Rome, when the Embassy in Rome called at about 4:30 pm and said, “Don’t leave; we don’t have money to pay for the trip.” That left us on the street in Warsaw with no place to live. It turned out that the DCM (deputy chief of mission, the Ambassador’s deputy) in Rome was a friend from a prior tour in Brasilia. When I spoke to him, he said, “Come on, we’ll work it out.” But the whole thing left a very bad taste in my mouth.

Then when we got to Rome, one of my responsibilities was the nuclear agreement with North Korea. Again, the Republicans refused to fund all of the American obligations under the agreement; so, one of my jobs was to go hat in hand to the Italian government, who at that time held the Presidency of the European Union, and ask them to fund some of the things that we wouldn’t, so that the US would not be in violation of its agreement with North Korea.

That’s one of the reasons I retired. I didn’t want to represent a government that would not honor its promises.

Does the current batch of Republicans in the House have any concept of honor? We'll see. Back in the 1990's one of the Republican complaints about the Democrats was that because they had no business experience, the Democrats did not know how to "meet a payroll." Then, it turned out that it was the Republicans who didn't know how to meet a payroll, or honor their legal, treaty obligations.

Glenn Beck and Elites

Glenn Beck talks about Jimmy Stewart & Bedford Falls, and elites, saying that George Soros represents the elites.  But in fact Fox is the spokesman for the elites, which are big corporations and banks.  George Soros is part of it, but the rich Republican establishment, represented today particularly by the Chamber of Commerce, is an even larger part of it.  Beck doesn't mention them, the Koch brothers, for example.

His participation in the Fox News disinformation campaign to claim that Obama's Indiq trip will cost $200 million per day is also despicable. The claim is based on an incorrect statement by some low ranking Indian local official. It's just the Communist big lie.  

The Economist on the Elections

The Economist magazine has some good points about the Republican landslide, the best being:

Only four years after the voters sent them packing, handing both chambers of Congress to the Democrats at the 2006 mid-terms, the Republicans are back. Voters then (and again in 2008) decided that Republican policies had blown up the deficit with unaffordable tax cuts, let the banks run wild, dragged America into two costly wars and produced a wretched harvest of stagnant wages, rising job insecurity and soaring health-care costs. Now they seem to have decided that they like Barack Obama and the Democrats even less.

I don't get it. The Republicans created huge deficits, a financial crisis, two worthless but expensive wars, destroyed the middle class, and seriously damaged the our system of medical care by giving the health insurance companies huge profits and greater control over patients. Then, since Obama didn't solve all these problems in two years, America voted the Republicans back in.

Obama's image of the Republicans as the people who drove the car into the ditch, seems perfectly logical to me. Why would America ask them to drive again? But people laughed at that simple comparison.

The first test will probably be the vote to raise the debt ceiling. Will the Republicans shut down the government again as they did under Newt Gingrich? The next will probably be what to do about the Bush tax cuts. The safest thing is probably to extend all the cuts for a year or two, although that is a defeat for the Democrats. Unfortunately, the Republicans are like a crazy man with gun; you can't risk trying to reason with them. It doesn't bother them if thousands of people go hungry, are cold, get poor medical care, but it bothers Democrats.

US Stimulus Goes Overseas

The other morning, Erin Burnett of CNBC said on "Morning Joe" that Bernanke and the Fed had generated about 20% of additional cash, but the economy had grown only about 2%. The implication is that the quantitative easing is not working. So where did the money go?

Businessweek last week said:

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke has tried everything to feed the U.S. economy the liquidity it needs to revive. In the process, he has conjured up more than $1 trillion of fresh monetary stimulus out of thin air. Inevitably, much of it has ventured overseas in search of yield. The big beneficiaries have been the stock markets of the emerging-market economies.

So while Bernanke is pumping out cash, the main beneficiaries are sending that cash overseas to emerging markets. That is a problem with a concentration of wealth. The very rich, who are the main recipients of the cash, are not investing or spending in America. They are investing overseas. This tends to drive down the dollar, which offends the other countries, whose currencies are driven up, thus making their exports more expensive and harder to sell, etc. It will be an issue at the upcoming G-20 meeting.

If the rich were loyal Americans, like those running corporations for a generation after World War II, Bernanke's largess would stay in the US and benefit Americans, not Chinese, Indians and Brazilians.

Deja Vu

This 1994 Republican Congress redux is hard for me to take.

In 1994 or 1995 I was at the American Embassy in Warsaw, Poland, supposedly running a science cooperation program between Polish and American scientists. The Republicans cut off the funding although the United States had signed an agreement promising to participate for two or three more years. I was accused of being dishonest by the Polish foreign ministry. Polish scientists who lost their government funding because of the overthrow of Communism got no help from the US. Poland is now doing well, but thanks to the EU, not the US. The people who took Reagan's advice to "tear down this wall" got punched in the nose by his hard-hearted, mean-spirited Republican successors.

Then the State Department asked me to go to the embassy in Rome. As my wife and I were about to leave Warsaw, with our car packed, including two dogs, the Republicans shut down the government. Rome called and said, "Don't come." But we had nowhere to live in Warsaw, and it was cold. Eventually got Rome to agree that I could come, but I will never forgive the United States for putting me and my wife out on the street in Warsaw when I was moving because the government had reassigned me. Clearly the Republicans have no idea of what it is like to run a business and meet a payroll.

Then, when I got t9 Rome, where I had been assigned because Italy had just assumed the presidency of the European Union, one of my main jobs was to beg the Europeans for more money to meet the terms of the nuclear agreement that we had signed with North Korea, because the Republican Congress would not appropriate the funds for the agreement. The Republicans apparently decided that the North Koreans were going to violate the terms of the agreement, so the Republicans wanted to violate it first.

Republicans have no honor. Their promise means nothing. To them the word of the United States is garbage. They will sell America's honor for filthy lucre.

Swift Boaters Still Around

As a Vietnam veteran, the most unpatriotic group I know of is the group that sponsored the Swift boat ads against John Kerry. Whether Kerry was a hero or not, he went to Vietnam, and he should not have been attacked for serving his country.

The people who funded the Swift boat ads are scurrilous cowards who represent the very worst of America. While they had front men who actually served in Vietnam, I think the front men were used by the cowardly millionaires. I doubt the people funding the ad actually served, or if they did, they served in some very safe capacity.

The idea that they are now behind the flood of attack ads for the 2010 election is almost more than I can stand. The worst is that it worked. Now we will have a bunch of mean-spirited morons trying to govern the country, while it is fighting two worthless wars that they started and dealing with an economic and financial crisis that they created through their greed and incompetence. This is clearly not the greatest generation; this is a generation of draft dodgers and people who have no conception of what it means to serve their country and their fellowman. Steven Pearlstein has an excellent article in the Washington Post about what it means to serve in Congress, but I don't think they will pay any attention to it. They are too stupid and selfish, but for sure Big Brother (Fox and American Crossroads) will make sure that their friends get rich at Ameica's expense.

Jon Stewart vs. Obama

This column from the Washington Post pretty much sums up the commentary about Pres. Obama's appearance on the "Daily Show." It was Stewart versus Obama, and Stewart won. He made the President look like an ignorant fool, although the Republicans and unhappy Democrats will say that Obama made himself look like a fool.

But the problem is that Obama is not a fool. He is an intelligent guy trying to run an unruly country that is in trouble. Its business model for the last 50 years no longer works, and nobody is sure if there is a new model that can support the American lifestyle. The Republicans have a model: "Give us your money!" They want no taxes, no restraint on business. Unbridled greed is the Republican model. And for some reason many Americans like that.

Obama is trying to defend the middle and lower classes, but it appears to be a losing battle. By declaring war on Obama, Jon Stewart seems to have forgotten that Bill and Hillary failed to get any health care reform. The Republicans don't care about some compromise that might be good for America; they just want to win power. We don't have a pubic option in the health care bill because the Republicans kept it out, not because Obama didn't want it.

While Obama did not serve in the military, he did serve his community. The Republicans ridiculed his being a community organizer, but it meant that he cared about other people. When he graduated from the Ivy League, he could have gone the big money route, a Wall Street law firm, or corporate law, but he didn't. To some extent he remembered his roots. Republican roots are in the board room and the country club. The Republican establishment has no concept of serving the greater good, although many Republicans do, many of them moderates, or single issue voters on gay issues, or abortion or immigration, not focused on the overarching Republican agenda of making the rich richer. It's sad that Jon Stewart advanced this Republican agenda.

Juan Williams and NPR Fund Raising

NPR has no doubt gotten a deluge of negative comments about firing Juan Williams, but I'm guessing from the tone discussed in this Washington Post article that much of it was ginned up by Fox News and other conservative media outlets. Those outraged people were not likely to be donors to NPR in any case, and probably don't even listen to it. They get their marching orders from Fox, Rush and Sarah Palin.

The cutoff of Federal funding may be more problematic, but it was likely to come anyway if the Republicans win majorities in November. If they are willing to cut funding for Social Security, they are certainly willing to cut funding for NPR, Juan or no Juan.

Juan Williams Fired by NPR

As if to show that political correctness can be evenhanded, Juan Williams was fired by NPR for comments about Muslims after Rick Sanchez was fired by CNN for comments about Jews. To me, everybody is to blame. First there's too much "talk" on cable TV and talk radio. People say outrageous things to fill up time, or they say things that they haven't thought through because they have to keep talking off the top of their heads. On the other hand, people should be able to say things that are reasonable, whether or not they are absolutely true, like "Jews control the media," or "Muslims in full headgear on a plane make me nervous." On the other hand, these pundits get paid to talk on TV, and the good ones say interesting things without crossing some invisible political correctness border.

I happen to agree with both Juan Williams and Rick Sanchez; so, I'm sad to see them punished for speaking their minds. I'm sure that NPR has been looking for an excuse to fire Juan Williams for being a Fox News commentator, and I frankly think that is somewhat justified, because Fox has a definite political point of view that Juan Williams helps sell on the air, even if he sometimes differs with the more doctrinaire Fox commentators. He has been trading on his NPR affiliation to give credance to Fox's right wing commentary.

Rick Sanchez and the Jewish Media

I’m unhappy about the flap over CNN anchor Rick Sanchez. In case you missed it, he was fired for saying during a radio interview that Jews control the media, or something like that. I was particularly upset with the hatred dumped on him by Howard Kurtz, who was the media critic for the Washington Post, and who has a show, "Reliable Sources," about the media on CNN. He is Jewish, and he had some other Jewish media types join him as commentators to dump on Sanchez. It’s ironic, because Sanchez is Cuban, and I’m not crazy about Cubans either. Sanchez basically said (not really quoting; here's the real transcript): "Jews are not an oppressed minority (look at how they control the media), but I’m Cuban; I’m an oppressed minority." I’d say Cubans are not an oppressed minority either if you look at how influential they are in Florida. Many years ago, there was an article in The Economist about how Jeb Bush got his start in Florida from some corrupt Cuban businessman, a big contractor, I think. He enabled Jeb to make his first million and go into politics.

The problem for me is that I think what Sanchez said is true, but it’s politically incorrect to say it. If it’s not true, they should refute it, not lambaste him for being anti-Semitic. It’s a difficult issue. The fact that Jews control the media (to a large extent) may not be bad. They are very smart. (Is that racist to say?) Jews own the New York Times, which I love, and the Washington Post. Some of my favorite columnists are Jews – David Brooks, Tom Friedman and Andrew Ross Sorkin, who write for the Times. My main complaint is that most Jews cannot be unbiased about Israel, although I think Friedman is as unbiased as anybody (Jew or gentile) can be. I think the 9/11 attacks were at least in part a response (by crazy fanatics) to US support for Israel. You can argue that the fanatical Muslim reaction should not stop us from supporting Israel, but that issue never gets discussed rationally, because it’s politically incorrect. If you bring it up, you’re anti-Semitic. Is the price of oil double what it would be if we didn’t treat Israel like a 51^st state? We’ll never know.

Looking for info on the Sanchez saga, I found this NPR blog, which I think defends Sanchez and criticizes Stewart better than I can. Plus the writer says she is Jewish; so, I guess that's why she's smarter than I am. I really like Jon Stewart, and I'm saddened that his episode has taken some of the gloss off of my admiration for him.

I can't find the Economist article I remember about Jeb Bush; I don't think the on-line archives go back far enough. This article from the St. Petersburg Times, however, is right on point. There are allusions to some questionable business dealings with Cubans in Wikipedia. Here and here are copies of a 1992 article from Mother Jones about Jeb's questionable dealings with the Cuban community.

I guess the lesson of this is that every ethnic group builds shady, mafia-like networks -- WASPs (the Bush family), Jews (finance and the media), Cubans (Florida real estate and CIA shenanigans), and of course the original mafia, the Italians.

Fox and Pravda

Fox News reminds me of the old Soviet Communist newspaper Pravda. Back in the bad, old Cold War days, people said the US would become more like the Soviet Union. Well, I think it has happened Like Pravda, Fox present the news as it would like it to be, not as it is, despite the "fair and balanced" claim.

As the names of the main Communist newspaper and the main Soviet newspaper, Pravda and Izvestia, meant "the truth" and "the news" respectively, a popular Russian saying was "v Pravde net izvestiy, v Izvestiyakh net pravdy" (In the Truth there is no news, and in the News there is no truth).

This development was predicted in George Orwell's book 1984, where, according to Wikipedia:

The Ministry of Truth controls information: news, entertainment, education, and the arts. Winston Smith works in the Minitrue RecDep (Records Department), "rectifying" historical records to concord with Big Brother's current pronouncements, thus everything the Party says is true.

Obama' Detroit Rescue Was Worth It

While the Republicans railed against it, the Obama bailout of GM and Chrysler has been worth it, and it may not end up costing as much as many people feared. Steve Rattner's book seems to support that thesis, in spite of its lukewarm review by the NYT.

American manufacturing is disappearing fast enough without have most of the automotive industry go down in one fell swoop. Unemployment would be much worse with the automotive companies gone. The two bailed out would probably have taken down most of their parts suppliers, and the loss of those suppliers might have taken down Ford, which was financially strong enough to forgo a bailout. You think unemployment is bad now? What would it have been if the big 3 and all their suppliers had disappeared? We were constantly reminded that we had Honda and Toyota plants scattered around Southern parts of the country that resisted unions, but we still would have had a lot of unemployed people in the Midwest. The Republicans say we should have bitten the bullet and taken the hit, but even now they complain loudly about high rate of unemployment. You can't have it both ways. Obama did the right thing. If you are going to let the car companies go down, do it when the economy is booming and there are new jobs available.

Benevolent CEOs

The fact that corporation today are flush with cash may illustrate my hypothesis that employers today do no care about their employees. This may not have been the case fifty years ago, although with important exceptions. I think that World War II service brought the employer and employee classes closer together. Of course there was a lot of pushing from unions and lawmakers to bring it about, but that also derived in part from WW II experience, when we were all in this together. Stephen Colbert had Yogi Berra on his show welcoming the troops home from Iraq. It turns out that Yogi participated in the D-Day invasion of Normandy. He was a reminder that back then everybody served the country. Those that didn't were the exception. Women filled men's jobs while the men were overseas. Today, people don't even look at joining the military as service; it's just a job. As one wife said in an article in the American Legion magazine about military families, when the families face problems, people today don't see it as a sacrifice for the country, but as a poor career choice.

If corporations are flush with cash, it means that they could have kept more employees on board, but today the cash is more important that the welfare of the workers. While the Republicans complain about welfare, they are ready enough to fire their employees and throw them on the welfare pile for the government to take care of. This means bigger salaries and bonuses for the CEOs, so that they can have bigger houses, bigger yachts, etc. If they need more people they hire temps or they outsource to overseas workers, leaving Americans on the government dole. If corporations were going broke, such actions might be justifiable, but when they are flush with cash they are not. My grandfather may be an example, although his experience predates WW II. During the Depression, he and his employer agreed that he would not draw a salary, but he would take just enough to support his family. His employer kept him on, and obviously trusted him not to be extravagant.

I'm sure there are many small businesses where such camaraderie exists. It's one reason private equity firms have been so successful. People who start companies often tend to have a bond with their employees that prevents them from laying them off, sometimes pulling the company down toward bankruptcy. Private equity types step in, take them over, and institute mass firings. Then they sell off or leverage what they can, pay themselves handsomely, and turn the company back out to the public, often in such a weakened state that it is still questionable whether it can survive or not.

Israel Warns American Jews

This worries me. In "The Atlantic" Jeffrey Goldberg says:

There's been some controversy here in Washington about a short sermon Michael Oren, Israel's ambassador to the United States, delivered at my synagogue, Adas Israel, and two other synagogues over the course of Yom Kippur. I took the sermon as a warning from the Netanyahu government: There may be tough times ahead, in the peace process, and with Iran, so it is time for American Jews to cowboy-up and deal with the difficulties our brethren in Israel are facing. Others in my congregation took the speech as a signal that Israel was prepping American Jewry for an inevitable attack on Iran, or, at the very least, for an Israeli unwillingness to freeze settlement growth, which could lead to the end of the current round of peace talks.

Breyer v. Beck

I have been watching Charlie Rose interview Justice Stephen Breyer while Glenn Beck is recording on the DVR, after I watched Glenn for a while. Listening to Breyer talk about the United States, the Constitution, and how government works, there is no comparison. To me only Breyer is the real patriot. Beck is just ranting and calling people names. It's encouraging that our court still inspires confidence. I think the weakest Justice is Clarance Thomas. I would like to hear him talk to Charlie Rose.

Still Support Obama

There is so much negative commentary about President Obama these days, that I'm just saying that I still support him. I think that he, more than most in Congress, is doing what he thinks is best for America, rather than what is best for his party, for him personally, or for his fat cat donors. That's one reason the commentariat is so full of talk about Democratic candidates who are mad at him. They put there political careers above the nation's interests.

On the Daily Show, former President Clinton tried to defend the health care plan. But you can't defend it with people who don't love their neighbors. As I see the Tea Party people, they say, "I choose that my children die so that I can live six months or a year longer." Nobody faces up to the fact that much of Medicare expense is for the last six months of life. Tea Partyers won't give up anything so that more younger people can get health care.

The talking heads are also down on Obama for the war in Afghanistan. I'm not really in favor of the war, but I support him on what he is doing. My view is that he is giving the military some time to redeem itself. Under Bush, the military botched Afghanistan badly because Bush pulled all the troops out to go to Iraq. In addition, it sounds as if the military had Osama bin Laden cornered in Tora Bora in late 2001, but chickened out and failed to go after him with all of its resources. The whole purpose of the Afghan war was to get Osama bin Laden; the failure to get him was one of the most ignominious defeats in US military history, although not in terms of casualties, since the US didn't commit any troops. Osama bin Laden punched Bush in the nose on 9/11, and Bush ran home crying. Obama is trying to redeem America's honor. It seems to matter only to the soldiers who fought there and whose honor is at stake. The average American is totally disengaged from the war and doesn't care about America's honor.

Ironically, Glenn Beck's restoring honor mall fiasco totally missed the point. Glenn Beck is only interested in restoring honor to himself. The troops make a useful patriotic backdrop, as they did for Bush, nothing more.

Emily Dickinson on Fame

Emily Dickinson had the right attitude toward the 15 minutes of fame problem we face daily thanks to the Internet and cable TV

I'm nobody! Who are you?
Are you nobody, too?
Then there's a pair of us -- don't tell!
They'd banish us. you know.

How dreary to be somebody!
How public, like a frog
To tell your name the livelong day
To an admiring bog!

Take that Paris Hilton, Madonna, Newt Gingrich, and all the rest of you, croaking in your bog.

Big Shots Don't Serve

As the Iraq war ends, I'm still bitter about my cohorts who should have served in Vietnam, but didn't, many of them prominent Republicans. At the top of the list are George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, as well as Bill Clinton. Al Gore is the only one to have served in the military in Vietnam. But also Mitch McConnell and John Boehner both avoided service, although Boehner may be young enough that we was not under the draft. He still could have served if he had wanted to.

I'm not sure where this web page showing who served came from, but it seems pretty accurate, although it is now somewhat dated.

America's Disappearing Middle Class

Three articles in Saturday's papers highlight the decline of the middle class in America. The largest and most pertinent one is in the Financial Times where Edward Luce writes about "The Crisis of Middle Class America." He says:

The annual incomes of the bottom 90 per cent of US families have been essentially flat since 1973 – having risen by only 10 per cent in real terms over the past 37 years. That means most Americans have been treading water for more than a generation. Over the same period the incomes of the top 1 per cent have tripled. In 1973, chief executives were on average paid 26 times the median income. Now the multiple is above 300.

In today’s America if you are born in rags, you are likelier to stay in rags than in almost any corner of old Europe.

“I have this gnawing feeling about the future of America,” says [economist Michael] Spence. “When people lose the sense of optimism, things tend to get more volatile. The future I most fear for America is Latin American: a grossly unequal society that is prone to wild swings from populism to orthodoxy, which makes sensible government increasingly hard to imagine."

The New York Times has a front page article on the how the slowing recovery is dimming the outlook for jobs. It says that businesses are doing well and are investing in capital, but are not hiring.

The crucial driver of growth in the second quarter was business investment in such things as office buildings and equipment and software. Such activity rocketed up at an annual rate of 17 percent in the second quarter, compared with a 7.8 percent increase in the first. The equipment and software category alone grew at an annual rate of 21.9 percent, the fastest pace in 12 years.

The fact that businesses seem to be investing more in equipment than in hiring may be a reason consumers have been reluctant, or perhaps unable, to pick up the pace of their spending.

“There are limits on the degree to which you can substitute capital for labor,” Mr. Ryding said. “But you can understand that businesses don’t have to pay health care on equipment and software, and these get better tax treatment than you get for hiring people. If you can get away with upgrading capital spending and deferring hiring for a while, that makes economic sense, especially in this uncertain policy environment.”

Finally, in a NYT op-ed, Bob Herbert wrote about what corporate American has done to workers. He said:

Many ... workers were cashiered for no reason other than outright greed by corporate managers.

From the fourth quarter of 2007 to the fourth quarter of 2009, real aggregate output in the U.S., as measured by the gross domestic product, fell by about 2.5 percent. But employers cut their payrolls by 6 percent.

Worker productivity has increased dramatically, but the workers themselves have seen no gains from their increased production. It has all gone to corporate profits. This is unprecedented in the postwar years, and it is wrong.

Germany and Japan, because of a combination of government and corporate policies, suffered far less worker dislocation in the recession than the U.S. Until we begin to value our workers, and understand the critical importance of employment to a thriving economy, we will continue to see our standards of living decline.

It is sad that US tax policy favors capital so much over labor that it discourages businesses from hiring. I am beginning to think that the destruction of the middle class started with the Reagan tax cuts. It has taken more than a generation for that effect to become apparent, but nevertheless, there it is. One reason it didn't show up earlier was that Reagan was such a nice guy, he couldn't bring himself to hurt people. When it became obvious that the huge cuts in government services that his advisers wanted to go with the tax cuts would badly hurt ordinary Americans, Reagan balked, and as a result we got the beginning of the huge budget deficits that we are wrestling with today. But the Republicans have never given up on their "starve the beast" policy of cutting government services by cutting tax revenues. So, the Republicans under Bush II and Reagan have been responsible for some of the largest deficits. They have also been responsible for a massive transfer of wealth from the middle class to the upper class. In particular by eliminating the estate or "death" tax, they have created a hereditary aristocracy in America, something that we thought we had left behind when we rebelled against Great Britain. There are no titles, yet, but there are all the other trappings of an aristocracy.

Brazil Resumes Rocket Launches

Brazil has resumed test launching relatively small rockets at its Alcantara launch site, preparing for the launch of larger rockets later. Eventually it will resume testing of large rockets that could launch a satellite into orbit (an SLV in English, a VLS in Portuguese).

Brazil suffered a serious setback about a year ago when a large rocket for the SLV program exploded on the launch pad causing widespread damage.

When I was the science officer at the American Embassy in Brazil back in the 1980s, the US was adamantly opposed to its space launch program, under policies that emanated from Richard Perle at the Pentagon. The Brazilians wanted to buy ground stations to monitor telemetry from satellites passing over the Amazon, in part to track deforestation. The American company, Scientific Atlanta, somehow messed up their bid, and the Brazilians selected the Japanese to build the ground stations. At the Department of Commerce's request, I asked my contacts at INPE, the space agency, if there was any chance to reopen the bidding. They agreed to do so, and the second time around, the American company won. However, the Pentagon then denied the export license for the stations, because it said they could be used for developing missiles. The Brazilians were furious, and that pretty much ended my good relationship with INPE. The stations were not at all suited to do missile tracking, and eventually the DOD decision was reversed, but not until the everybody, especially the Brazil, was unhappy. The ironic thing was that they were intended for an environmental mission, rather than a military one.