Monday, April 02, 2012
Republicans Not Saving Money
Wednesday, March 21, 2012
Bankers Pay Obama for Dumping Warren
Bloomberg has recently posted a story about how many payday lenders are supporting Romney, because he has pledged to overturn Dodd-Frank, which under the leadership of Elizabeth Warren, cracked down on payday lenders and other unscrupulous loan businesses through the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which Warren created.
It's interesting that the big banks, like JP Morgan, have responded to the new regulations by supporting Obama for getting rid of Warren, while the little guys, like the payday lenders, have responded by supporting Romney, hoping to get rid of the regulation entirely.
Wednesday, February 29, 2012
Sad That Sen. Snowe Is Leaving
Monday, February 27, 2012
Obama Tax Cuts
One reason interest rates are so low is that rich have plenty of money are are not investing. Thus relatively few people are borrowing to start businesses, etc. The current wisdom is that banks are not lending, but mainly that means not lending to regular people. The rich can get loans; they just don't need or want them.
Obama's going to help them out anyway, because they will give him money if he does. Of course, they will end up making a lot more money than they contribute to his campaign, but he'll get his cut.
Monday, February 13, 2012
Syria Is Another Religious War
In the Iraq war, the US overthrew the Sunni government and set up a Shiite government that is best friends with Iran. Now, the Republicans, who defeated Iran's worst enemy, Saddam Hussein, want to send in American troops to die overthrowing the Iranian government that was strengthened by the US invasion of Iraq. I guess the important thing is that the American government wants to foment sectarian warfare in the Middle East. It may well be coming next in Egypt.
Tuesday, January 31, 2012
Jews for America
For example, The New York Times Magazine highlighted the issue of Israel's invading Iran, which I don't think is entirely favorable to Israel.
Monday, January 30, 2012
Israel Lovers Buy Newt
The article says that Adelson, who was born in America, did not get the Israel bug until middle age, but once he got it, he really got it. It's not surprising that Adelson supports Israel, per my earlier post, but I don't know why Newt is such a fervent supporter of Israel. Why should America base its entire foreign policy on a relatively small country? I doubt that he subscribes to the evangelical Christian ideas about the importance of Israel for the endtime. Newt is not Jewish, but I'm guessing that he likes all the financial and political support that the gets from Jews for espousing pro-Israel policies. Jews have wealth and political influence far exceeding their proportional representation in the American population.
It sounds as if Newt is willing to send thousands of young American gentiles for fight and die in Iran, because Israel feels threatened by Iran. This from a man who was a draft dodger during the Vietnam War. Ironically, Newt's father was apparently in the Army infantry, but Newt had no intention of following in his father's footsteps. Although there were many reasons for the US invasion of Iraq -- 9/11, Bush II's love/hate relationship with his father, massive intelligence failures -- one was certainly the Israeli/Jewish desire to get rid of Saddam Hussein, who in the first Gulf War had fired Scud missiles into Israel. There was enormous Jewish pressure to attack Iraq, led by prominent Jews such as Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz. Israelis were not willing to invade. In fact, few American Jews enlisted to fight Iraq, but rich Jews paid to have poor, gentile rednecks fight there.
Of course, now that it has come out how unjust the American income tax system is, it looks like rich Jews did not really pay that much to the rednecks. They just got Congress to support the war, and the gentile middle class fought and financed Israel's war on Iraq. Thank you Joe Lieberman, Carl Levin and your many Jewish political colleagues. Of course, ironically for both Israel and the US, the Iraq War may have ended up strengthening Iran, thus further endangering Israel, rather than protecting it. Iraq never really posed a threat to the US.
I'm not sure, but Jews may perceive Mormons as less obsessed with Israel than other Christians, perhaps even as somewhat anti-Semitic. Therefore there could be a Jewish movement for anybody but Romney, with Newt currently the most feasible not-Romney.
Saturday, January 28, 2012
Jews Support Israel over America
It is understandable that after the Holocaust, the Jews would have special relationship with Israel. Israel is sort of like Jews’ "panic room" if there is ever something else like the Holocaust. However, the world of nation states is not exactly like your own house. It is subject to certain international standards, although you are free to flout those standards if you can withstand the international pressure supporting them, e.g., the United Nations, various international courts, etc. One of the main complaints against Israel, in part because it is intended to be a safe home for Jews, is that it engages in apartheid-like discrimination against non-Jews, particularly Muslim Arabs.
In America, the main support for Israel is funneled through AIPAC, although there are many other pro-Israel organizations and publications in the US. It raises the suspicion in my mind that many Jews see the US primarily as a defender of Israel. They support the US, because the US supports Israel. Hence the huge amount of American government aid to Israel, sponsored by Jewish Congressmen and Senators, as well as by many gentile politicians. In addition to government-to-government aid, American Jews give huge private donations to Israel and Israeli charities.
The difference between Israel and the home countries of other immigrants to the US is that most American Jews did not emigrate from Israel. Many older Jews came from Europe before Israel even existed. Other immigrants, who came from other countries – European, Asian, African, Latin American – left countries that they were unhappy with for some reason, political, economic or social. Some will go back, but most will stay if America will let them. They chose to leave their birthplace. Most Jews, however, did not choose to leave Israel for America. They were born in America, or left some third country for America. Israel and America facilitate this arrangement by allowing all sorts of dual nationality possibilities that would be very unusual for other countries.
And so Jews who have become very economically and politically powerful in the US use their power to benefit Israel. They are happy to see the US embroiled in the Middle East, spending American lives and treasure on wars that mainly benefit Israel. Jews are pushing very strongly to get America to stop Iran’s nuclear program by force if necessary. If the Iraq war had gone as planned, Israel would have been the main beneficiary, but because the US mucked it up so badly, Iran has probably been the main beneficiary, to the chagrin of both Israel and the US.
I think more Jews vote Democratic than Republican, but in general Republicans seem to pride themselves on being stronger defenders of Israel than Democrats. In the Republican primaries, the candidates have delighted in saying that Obama is not a good enough friend to Israel.
I worry that because of the existence of Israel, there is a danger on issues that in any way affect Israel, from wars in the Middle East to banking regulation, there are influential American Jews who will put Israel’s interests ahead of America’s.
Monday, January 23, 2012
New Round of Tariffs
The Technology Review article calls for some kind of Fair Trade standard, like that used for coffee. I think it is unlikely that such a standard would be tough enough to make any meaningful change in the electronics industry. A tariff would have to be carefully constructed to avoid another Harley-Smoot disaster, but it could be based on protecting the health and welfare of the workers in exporting countries. The worse the working conditions, the higher the tariff. There could be verifiable standards, death rates of workers, hours worked per day, etc.
Instead of creating pressure to lower US working conditions to Chinese standards, such tariffs would pressure developing countries to provide better working conditions. It would help level the playing field for developing and developed countries. The current system unfairly benefits developing countries such as China.
Friday, January 20, 2012
Another Letter to Congressmen
Why do rich people hate America so much that they refuse to support it? And why does Congress accede to their wishes? Money! It just shows how corrupt the Congress is. Laws are up for sale to the highest bidder.
It's sad that all those graves in Arlington Cemetery were for nothing. America has become unjust and undemocratic. We are becoming the old Soviet Union or Nazi Germany, or something else equally bad. We have a department called "Homeland" Security, which sounds like it is straight out of Nazi Germany. Since when is "homeland" a good American word? The first thing Wikipedia says about "heimat" is that it is a German concept that has no simple English translation, although it is often expressed as "homeland." Wikipedia says, "Heimat is a German concept." I doubt that George Washington or Thomas Jefferson ever used the word "homeland," although I haven't researched it. (Searching the Washington papers in the Library of Congress, it appears to be used once, in a footnote by the editor about a Dutchman whom Washington knew.)
At the moment, I am inclined to support no candidate from a major party, Democratic or Republican, because I believe both parties are corrupt. One of the few politicians I support at the moment is Elizabeth Warren. Obama and the Democrats lost my vote when he threw her under the bus after she had worked tirelessly for the consumer protection bureau. Jamie Dimon, his fellow bank CEOs, their lawyers, their lobbyists, and their money, blocked her appointment.
This is a sad state of affairs, and you are part of it.
I hope that I won't go to jail under PIPA or SOPA for quoting from Wikipedia. Although maybe today is like the day back in 1846 when Henry Thoreau went to jail for refusing to pay his poll tax, leading to his seminal work on "Civil Disobedience." It's better to be in jail than to support a corrupt government.
Note: I am a Vietnam veteran (Army artillery) and a retired Foreign Service officer. My grandfather, a veteran of World War I, is buried in Arlington Cemetery. My father was a veteran of World War II and the Korean War.
We need a country that is more concerned about honor than money.
Tuesday, January 17, 2012
How Do We Stop the Iranian Bomb?
The main impetus behind Iran's drive to build a bomb is Israel's bomb. It's not clear that the Iranians actually have a dedicated bomb development program, but it is clear that they want a nuclear infrastructure that would allow them to build a bomb in a relatively short time, if they decided that they needed one. And why would they need one, probably because they felt threatened by Israel. Of course, Israel feels threatened by Iran. But the cold war was basically about mutual threats between the US and Russia, and we both survived, so far.
If we were serious, about getting Iran to back off of its nuclear program, we all have to get serious about nuclear arms. The US and Russia both have to seriously disarm. Israel, Pakistan, and the rest have to give up their nuclear programs. George Bush actually increased cooperation with India's civil nuclear program, despite is military nuclear program, a step undermining non-proliferation globally, although it may have made sense bilaterally.
If the US were to invade Iran to shut down its nuclear program, by rights it should also invade Israel, Pakistan, North Korea, India, and other problem countries. Arguably, the older nuclear powers, the US and Russia, are grandfathered under the regime, although they are theoretically obligated to disarm, too.
Newt Gave Up on America
I was in the process of transferring from Poland to Italy at the State Department's request when Newt shut the government down. The US Embassy in Rome furloughed me, along with most employees, but it left me with no place to live. All my worldly possessions were in storage or in my car getting ready to leave Warsaw for Rome in one hour when they called and said, "Don't leave." But my wife and I had no place to stay in Warsaw. It worked out, but no thanks to Newt. The government should not send people to foreign countries and then abandon them. Newt is totally irresponsible. The idea that he might be President is deeply disturbing.
Romney and Jobs
In some cases, businesses fail because the men who started them don't have the heart to fire people who have been with them for years, although the company's hard times require it. The Mitt Romneys of the world can come in and do it because they are heartless. And they end up preserving some jobs, just not all of them.
But what is Romneys view of the importance of jobs versus profits? We don't know, and probably never will, because Romney seems to have no permanent views on anything.
I think Romney's income taxes may be revealing, if he releases them. He probably benefitted from all the tax breaks for rich people, particularly those in investment activities, that the lobbyists have gotten passed over the years, thanks to huge donations from rich people. They can afford huge payments to lobbyists and campaign contributions to politicians, because the resulting tax breaks save them obscene amounts of money. I'm guessing Mitt benefited enormously. It will be even worse if it turns out that he is hiding income by putting assets in the Cayman Islands, or some other tax haven.
Obama Abandons Democratic Party
Obama is a worthless coward. People make a big deal of his approving the raid on Osama bin Laden and continued drone strikes, but in both cases he was just saying yes to hardliners in the military and intelligence communities. Closing Guantanamo would take guts, and he won't do it, because he doesn't have the guts. Elizabeth Warren makes him look like a little crybaby. It's no wonder he didn't want her anywhere near him; the comparison is devastating.
Sunday, January 08, 2012
Republican Primary as Reality Show
USAA and the Decline of the American Military
Vietnam destroyed respect for the American military, but because of the draft during the first part of the war, there were still a lot of good people who became officers. With the end of the draft and rising disrespect of the military, particularly by “good” families, fewer and fewer people who were destined to become community leaders served as officers. As a result USAA’s pool of excellent customers has been shrinking. Now, instead of having a favorable opinion of former officers, Americans tend to have an unfavorable opinion, making it more difficult for former officers to rise to prominence in the civilian community.
As an example, look at recent Presidential elections. The last military officer to serve as President was George H. W. Bush. He was defeated for his second term by Clinton, who avoided service in Vietnam. Clinton defeated Bob Dole, a World War II hero, to win his second term. Al Gore, Clinton’s Vice President, served in Vietnam, probably because as the son of a senator, he inherited a now antiquated family tradition of national service. When he ran for President, however, he was defeated by George W. Bush, who did not inherit his father’s tradition of national service, and who avoided service in Vietnam by joining the Alabama National Guard, where he seldom did anything, even in Alabama. For his next term Bush ran against Sen. John Kerry, who served in Vietnam and was awarded a Purple Heart medal. The Republican Swift Boat veterans ridiculed Kerry’s service, in what to me was the most egregious attack on veterans by a major political party. In order to win Bush a second term, the Republicans defamed all veterans by attacking Kerry for being a veteran. In a turnaround, the Republicans nominated a veteran, war hero John McCain, in the next election. McCain was defeated by Obama, who is not a veteran but is too young to have been influenced by Vietnam and the draft. Although he did not serve in Vietnam, Bush II was probably eligible for USAA insurance under their old rules, although none of the other Presidents would have been.
The Presidential elections illustrate how Americans have turned against those who serve in their country’s military. The result has been a significant downgrading of the USAA customer base, from leaders of American communities to those relegated to a lower social and economic status because of their service in the military.
Wednesday, January 04, 2012
Predictable Iowa
Mitt was smart to move the non-Mitt vote to Santorum instead of Gingrich, because Santorum will be a weaker challenger. But none of the non-Mitts really had much support of their own.
What a waste of time, energy, and money! And how discouraging to think that this is how Americans elect a President.
Iowa Caucuses
Friday, December 30, 2011
Obama's Failure on Consumer Protection
Friday, December 02, 2011
Jews Need to Clean Up Their Act
Women Leaders
Elizabeth Warren,
Christine Legarde, and
Angela Merkel.
When Barney Frank was discussing his legacy on PBS yesterday, one the things he emphasized was the consumer protection provisions of the Dodd-Frank law. Elizabeth Warren was largely responsible for that, and then when push came to shove, Obama abandoned her, clearly as a result of pressure from the crooks on Wall Street, led by Jamie Dimon of Chase Bank.
Christine Legarde did a good job as French Finance Minister and is currently sorely missed as France tries to deal with the European financial crisis. However, she will be able to help as head of the IMF. I trust her to do the right thing more than I did her disgraced predecessor, Dominique Strauss-Kahn.
Angela Merkel gets a lot of bad press from financial journalists and commentators, in part because they see her Germanic honesty as a rebuke to American dishonesty. People seldom mention that she is from the old East Germany, and grew up in conditions far different from the prosperous unified Germany that she now leads. She, more than others, remembers the trials and sacrifices that West Germany undertook to unify with East Germany. When they look at the sacrifices they are being called on to make for Greece, et al, the Germans can say, "Been there; done that." However, before the sacrifices were for fellow Germans; now the sacrifices are for countries and peoples with whom the Germans share much less. Although Europe needs to be saved, Merkel is right not to have Germany commit suicide to save its poorer partners.
Germany More Moral Than America
Wednesday, November 09, 2011
More Welfare for Millionaires
This is also an example of the "beggar thy neighbor" policies pursued by many government jurisdictions, from nations to cities. One of the big Republican arguments for lower business taxes is that other nations have lower taxes; if we don't match their low rates, all companies will leave the US, they say. Within the US, companies move to the states with the lowest business taxes. Most big companies incorporate in Delaware because it has the most lenient laws governing corporations. In the Denver area, the Aurora suburb is bidding to take the annual stock show away from Denver proper by offering all kinds of tax advantages to it and the Gaylord hotel chain which would build a new hotel near the stock show grounds.
All of this takes money away from basic activities that governments perform, from defense to education to building and maintaining roads. Colorado just voted down a small increase in taxes for education, but it has millions to subsidize big corporations in "enterprise zones," or to get the stock show to move ten miles out of town.
Wednesday, November 02, 2011
Rich Doctors Are America's Problem
He doesn't break down the doctors' incomes, but it's pretty well known that the richest doctors are the specialists, the heart guys, the bone guys, etc. Many of them getting rich on Medicare because old people have heart attacks, broken hips, etc. The general practitioners, who keep people healthy, rather than repairing them after they are sick, don't make nearly as much.
It's a system where the rewards are misallocated, and that threatens to destroy the whole American economy.
Thursday, October 13, 2011
Another Congressional Letter
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3036789/#44886865
They discussed Warren Buffett's release of his income tax. It shows he is correct that rich people who make most of their money from investments pay a lower percentage of their income in taxes than much poorer working people do. This country clearly hates people who work for a living, just like it claims to love veterans, but then won't give them a job when they come home from Iraq or Afghanistan. As a Vietnam veteran, I know that anybody who fights for this country for any but the most patriotic reasons is a fool. This country will kiss you on the lips while the TV cameras are on, and then stab you in the back when they go off. No one representing me in Congress is a veteran. When Senator John Kerry ran for President, George W. Bush's huge political apparatus "Swift Boat Veterans" reviled him (and every other Vietnam veteran) because Kerry was a veteran, Bush was not a real veteran. He spent the war getting drunk and becoming an alcoholic in the Alabama National Guard. Then after 9/11 he sent many National Guard troops to Iraq and Afghanistan, despite the fact that the National Guard has been his refuge from combat.
The best part of the "Morning Joe" clip above is the presentation by former Obama automotive czar Steve Rattner, which shows how badly income in the US has skewed toward the rich in the last few years. This is a corrupt government. Democrats and Republicans have betrayed the American people, by selling themselves to the wealthiest one percent. I have not joined the Occupy Wall Street protesters, but I am mad, too. This is a failed government run by cowardly, incompetent or evil people. The corrupt characters in HBO's "Boardwalk Empire" would be right at home in today's Washington.
On veterans again, I am very disappointed that the Army's Walter Reed Hospital has been closed and wounded Army soldiers transferred to Bethesda Naval Hospital. People like you don't understand that the Army and Navy are different. Or you probably don't care. But the Army and Navy have different cultures and traditions. It is truly insensitive to take someone who has spent five or ten years in the Army, and then when he gets badly wounded, to add to his problems by putting him in a Navy environment. No wonder so many of our troops have mental problems. But you don't care; you saved some millionaire ten dollars on his taxes.
Tuesday, October 11, 2011
Killing American Citizens
According to the press, Awlaki encouraged other Americans to kill their fellow citizens and to oppose the US government, but it's not clear that he personally killed any Americans, or anybody else, for that matter. He was more an accessory to murder than a murderer. Secondly, its not clear that there was no other way to stop him than to kill him by remote control drone. That may have been the easiest way to kill him, but not the only way.
I think there should at least have been an effort to take him prisoner and return him to the US. I also think we should have tried to capture and return Osama bin Laden. The problem is that the US legal system is unable to deal with terrorists, because Americans are so afraid of them. Guantanamo should have been closed years ago, but Americans are afraid of the men there. There was some talk of a terrorist trial in Kentucky, and Sen. Mitch McConnell almost had a fit he was so scared. This is a man who refused to fight in Vietnam, and got his patron, Sen. John Sherman Cooper, to help get him out of military service during the war, although officially he got a medical discharge.
These legal niceties are what our troops are supposed to be fighting to protect, but we are afraid to apply them. In many ways Osama bin Laden won, because people like Barak Obama and Mitch McConnell are afraid to stand up for them. Of course, the real cowards were George W. Bush, who spent the Vietnam War becoming a drunkard in the Alabama National Guard, and Dick Cheney, who avoided service by churning out babies. These are men who liked running the country, but had no concept of what it was to serve the country. They were missing in action on 9/11. Bush flew away to Nebraska or somewhere, and Cheney retreated to a spider hole under the White House.
Monday, October 10, 2011
State Slouches Toward Failure in Iraq
Meanwhile, the WP reported on the huge undertaking that the State Department is committing itself to by taking over in Iraq where the military is leaving off. After downsizing from hundreds of thousands of US military troops, about 50,000 remain in Iraq. Their functions will supposedly soon be taken on by the State Department Foreign Service. According to Wikipedia, there are about 15,000 Foreign Service officers total, staffing over 200 American embassies and consulates, as well as the State Department in Washington. Thus, the only way the State Department can even hope to cope with this mess is by hiring tens of thousands of contractors. The idea that State can manage tens of thousands of contractors, when according to the book mentioned above, it can't even manage the small scale programs it was running with its own officers , is ludicrous. Hillary Clinton is being the good soldier by taking on the mess left behind by the military, but it is bound to impact negatively on what in other countries is the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. State's expertise is political and economic analysis, not program management. The military managed not to lose in Iraq (at least not yet), but it is leaving a mess. The op-ed above says:
When my team tried to give away fruit tree seedlings to replant ruined orchards, a farmer spat on the ground and said, “You killed my son and now you are giving me a tree?”and
One Iraqi I met observed that the United States had sponsored expensive art shows in his neighborhood three years in a row, but did nothing about the lack of functioning sewers, electricity and running water. “It is like I am standing naked in a room with a big hat on my head,” he told me. “Everyone comes in and puts ribbons on my hat, but no one seems to notice that I am naked.”The WP compares the Iraq undertaking to the Marshall Plan, but after World War II, the US had clearly won. There was little danger of Americans being assassinated in Paris. The French and other Western Europeans still had competent bureaucrats to administer the American aid. Before the war, Western Europe had been more or less on a par with the US politically and economically. They shared similar cultures. None of that is true in Iraq.
It's possible that nobody really expects this to work. Maybe it's just a cover for the US to pull its military out of Iraq. But State will be left with egg on its face. And Iraq will still be a mess.
I don't think the US is serious about helping Iraq, especially when I look back at my experience in Poland after the fall of Communism. Newt Gingrich and the Republicans, with the cooperation of Bill Clinton and company, basically told the Poles, "You're on your own, unless there is some money-making deal we can line up an American company to get in on." Poland came out okay, but I think it's because the EU became Poland's Marshall Plan. America basically dumped Poland, but Western Europe came through. Maybe Turkey or China (or Iran) will come through for the Iraqis.
Monday, September 26, 2011
Why I Left the Foreign Service V
I had just gone through a similar situation in Warsaw when the US cut off funding for our joint science cooperation program years before the agreement was to expire. Once again, I was in the position of saying that the US would not fulfill its international agreements. I always did what I was told, but I was not a happy camper. I did not like representing an America that was a deadbeat dad, that made promises and then didn't fulfill them. I don't remember where I left this matter. The Italians were somewhat horrified that the US might default, and thus legally entitle North Korea to resume its proliferating ways. But I don't recall that they said definitely that they would help. I think we were only asking for about $2 million.
But I didn't like it. If I had wanted to do this kind of thing, I could have become a criminal lawyer or a bankruptcy lawyer. I wanted to be a diplomat for the greatest nation on earth; I didn't want to be like Hitler's German diplomats negotiating the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. The American government was too corrupt and dishonest for me, and so I left.
Helms-Burton and Children's Visas. Another nail in coffin of my career came late in my stay in Rome. I was at a reception for a satellite launching, celebrating a satellite that the US was going to launch for Italy. The launch did not take place as scheduled, but that wasn't the issue. At the reception I struck up a conversation with a man who worked on communications satellites for the Italian phone company. He said something like, "You must really hate me to deny a visa to Disney World to my daughter, just because I work for the Italian phone company." I was taken aback and asked him what had happened. He said his daughter had been denied a US visa under the Helms-Burton Act because the Italian phone company had some tenuous connection to Cuba through its cooperation with the Mexican phone company. Later I went and talked to the head of the consular section in Rome, and it sounded like this was indeed the case.
Unfortunately it reminded me of some books I had read when I first joined the Foreign Service. One of my friends from law school had been reading them, and said they had quite a lot about the Foreign Service. They were "The Winds of War," and "War and Remembrance" by Herman Wouk. They are a fictional account of several families, some American military officers and diplomats, and one a Jewish family living in Europe. A Jewish mother and child are trying to get out of Europe and go to Palestine, soon to become Israel, but she can't leave without a visa (shades of "Casablanca"). The German embassy in Rome is willing to give the mother a visa, but not her child. It was just too close to what America was doing to this Italian engineer. Punishing children for the crimes of their fathers is not something I am enthusiastic about, especially when the father's crime is just working for a company that has some weak connection to Cuba. I think by the time this happened, I had already decided to retire, but this made me glad that I had.
This was not Ronald Reagan's "shining city on a hill."
Tuesday, September 20, 2011
Why I Left the Foreign Service IV
In addition, between by predecessor's departure and my arrival, the embassy had redesigned the science office suite. The way they had set it up, all of my assistant's visitors had to pass through my office to get to her office. The doors should have been arranged so that her visitors could enter her office directly from the reception area. I don't know what the suite had looked like before, but by the time I got there, the construction was completed.
Most importantly, the embassy did not want me. I had not realized that my assignment by the State Department was the result of a fight between the Embassy and the State Department headquarters in Washington. The previous Science Counselor had been a friend of the Ambassador's. He had been a political appointee in Ambassador Bartholomew's office, when Bartholomew had been an Under Secretary of State, and had traveled to Rome, when Bartholomew as assigned to Rome. However, the time he could serve as a political appointee, a Schedule C employee, ran out, and the State Department would not let him stay longer. I presume there was a big fight between the Embassy and Washington to try to get permission for him to stay. When that failed, the Embassy apparently decided that it wanted a particular Civil Service employee in Washington to replace him. The Foreign Service tries to look after its own, and apparently tried to block a Civil Service employee from taking a plum Foreign Service position in Rome. Thus, the call out of the blue to me in Warsaw asking if I would be willing to go to Rome. But after I arrived, it became clear that the Embassy had not given up and still wanted to get rid of me and get the Civil Service employee. Making my life difficult by not finding housing, for example, was part of that strategy. The Ambassador succeeded. I retired, and I think the State Department relented and approved the Civil Service employee as my replacement.
I guess I sound pretty weak in this description, not fighting the Embassy harder, but in my defense, ever since I didn't fight the draft and agreed to go into the Army and off to Vietnam, my desire was to serve my country, not to have my country serve me. I was willing to put up with hardships that were imposed by external forces, like the North Vietnamese Army, or living and working at an embassy in a poor country with few amenities. But I was not willing to accept hardships or mistreatment that were imposed by the American Government itself, in the government shutdown, or by the unwelcoming reception in Rome. It was not the government that I volunteered to serve.
I should add that in contrast to the unwelcoming official reception in Rome, several of the officers there were personally very welcoming, from the Deputy Chief of Mission (the #2 in the Embassy) to my assistant, who got furloughed when I got un-furloughed in order to travel from Warsaw to Rome during the shutdown.
Why I left the Foreign Service III
One of the best parts of my job as Science Officer in various embassies was that I was the representative of NASA, and everyone loved NASA. In addition to being glamorous, NASA had stuff to give away, like observation time on the space telescope, rides on the Shuttle, etc. The local space agency always wanted to stay on my good side. When I came to Rome, I inherited an agreement under which the Shuttle would carry a tethered satellite for the Italian Space Agency. This satellite would be reusable. It would ride in the Shuttle cargo bay, and when the Shuttle was in orbit, it would be released on a long tether to collect data away from the pollution of the Shuttle. Then, when the Shuttle was getting ready to return to earth, the satellite would be reeled in, much like a fishing line would be reeled in. The satellite would be stored in the cargo bay and returned to earth until it was flown on another mission. It promised huge savings because satellites are so expensive to build, impossible to repair in space, etc.
On its first flight, however, the reel jammed, the tether broke, and the expensive satellite drifted off into space beyond the reach of the Shuttle. For a change, being the NASA representative was not so great. The crew of that Shuttle visited Rome, and while it was not billed as an apology tour for losing the satellite, that's basically what it was. Meanwhile, the head of the Italian Space Agency was in political trouble. While his problems were not directly linked to the failed satellite, losing the satellite did not help his position. I was unhappy, because I was feeling snake bit. I had had little to do with the mission, which had been planned long before I arrived in Rome, but I was there when it happened. It turned out that because I was retiring, the head of the Italian Space Agency and I left Rome about the same time. He was going to take some time off before moving on to his next venture. While my only fault was being in the wrong place at the wrong time, it added to the dissatisfaction I was feeling about the job. If the best part of my job, working with NASA, turned sour, there was not much left.
Saturday, September 17, 2011
Why I Left the Foreign Service II
Thursday, September 15, 2011
MTCR and Skawina in Poland
MTCR. Before the fall of Communism, there had been some security failure at the embassy in Poland, so that even after the fall, there was a lot of concern about security of classified material. As a result, there were a limited number of paper copies of classified cables, with few distributed to anybody except the office that had "action," i.e., that had to act on or respond to the cable from the Department of State. In other embassies, more people might have gotten "info" copies, so that they would know more of what was going on in the embassy.
Besides overseeing the science cooperation, which was cancelled, I also had responsibility for environmental issues and some nuclear related matters, one of which was export control matters such as the Zangger List, which controlled exports of items which might be used for nuclear proliferation. In that capacity, I often dealt with a Polish diplomat at the Foreign Ministry,. Ambassador Strulak, who worked on a variety of proliferation issues. One day while I was talking to him, he asked me if I could find out why the US had blackballed Poland's membership in the Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR). This came as a shock to me, because I had worked on MTCR issues for years in the Department of State, and I had seen nothing about the MTCR in the embassy cable traffic. It turned out that the "action" on MTCR cables went to the political section, and I did not get a copy in the science section, although after years of working on the issue, I had to be one of the experts on the MTCR. In fact that is why Amb. Strulak had asked me about it. On one of his visits to Washington, he was asking around in the State Department about why Poland had been blackballed, and someone had told him to ask me in Warsaw, because I was an expert. Until then Amb. Strulak never knew that I had worked on missile proliferation as well as nuclear proliferation.
By then, however, I had been out of the loop for several years, working on other issues. However, I called back to my old office and talked to the man then running it, Vann Van Diepen. I had known Vann since he was in intern and I was an analyst in the State Department Bureau of Intelligence and Research. However, Vann told me there was nothing I could do, because President Clinton had personally decided to blackball Poland. It's not unusual for an issue that can't be agreed between agencies to go to the White House for decision. I also knew what the problem was: The MTCR was unwieldy because it basically operated on consensus. The US wanted to get a more controllable management structure before it got too big, and adding Poland would have made it bigger. On the other hand, the Poles wanted to cooperate so badly that they would not have been a problem in reaching consensus.
Anyway, I was disappointed that no one thought it worthwhile to consult me or even to inform me that this matter was on-going, when I had been the main working level person handling this issue a few years earlier in Washington. It was as if they didn't think the science office could handle a policy issue.
Skawina. Although they didn't think I should be involved in political matters, it was pretty much accepted that I handled environmental issues. This main mainly meant working with the Polish environment ministry, and supporting an organization called the Ekofundusz (or Eco-fund). The Ekofundusz was a non-governmental group funded by forgiven US debt. Instead of being repaid, the US authorized the Ekofundusz to finance environmental projects in Poland that it found worthwhile. I don't remember its budget, but most of the projects were relatively small, maybe in the tens of thousands of dollars.
For me one of the best things about the Ekofundusz was that it provided a refuge for liberal environmentalists who had supported the overthrow of Communism. In the mid-1990s when I was there, the old former Commies were back in power in many places, including the environment ministry. The Ekofundusz was like a Brookings Institution or Heritage Foundation, it gave the anti-communist environmentalists an office and a little salary until they had a chance to get back into government. This is the same kind of thing that the Maria Skladowska Curie Fund could have done for anti-Communist scientists and engineers, but by cutting off the funding, the Republicans cut them off at the knees. Fortunately, because of the vagaries of the law, the environmentalists' funds were not cut off.
In addition, USAID had a much larger environmental program as part of its agenda. One of its projects was to build a scrubber for an old electric power plant near Krakow, called Skawina. I frankly didn't pay much attention to it, although AID was better than the political section about keeping me informed. So, I knew we were building this scrubber, and we turned it over to the Poles. After a while, I began to hear from my Polish contacts that the scrubber didn't work. Basically, it blew exhaust from the power plant through a process in which lime stone was supposed to remove most of the sulfur from the gas. When I began to look into it, it turned out that it didn't work. The chemical properties of Polish limestone were not suitable for the process. It was somewhat galling, because the main Poles complaining were old Communist apparatchiks who were happy to see the US fail, but they were right that the system did not work. One took me to a much bigger power plant with working scrubbers; they were built by the Dutch, but were based on General Electric designs. I think that when I left Warsaw for Rome, Skiwina was still not working.
Thursday, September 08, 2011
Why I Left the Foreign Service I
Brazil Space Program. One of the first serious things that went wrong was years before I retired, while I was serving as the science officer in Brasilia in the 1980s. NASA was a great asset for the US in relations with other courntries. Because I was the embassy's representative for NASA, I had good relations with the Brazilian space agency, INPE. INPE wanted to build some satellites and ground stations to monitor them with, to survey the Amazon. The US bidder on the ground stations, Scientific Atlanta, for some reason failed to get its bid in on time and lost to a Japanese company. I persuaded INPE to reopen the bidding, and as a result, Scientific Atlanta won. Then the Defense Department, I think the office of Steve Hadley (who went on to be NSC chief), denied the export license for the ground stations. My friends at INPE were livid and my good relationship ended. I think Hadley was a Richard Perle acolyte in the Pentagon, and Perle hated Brazil.
Polish Science Fund. In the 1990s I went to Poland as embassy Science Counselor, where my main job was to oversee science cooperation beteen the US and Poland under a joint fund called the Maria Sklodowska Curie Fund which was to continue for five years. After about two years, the Republicans under Newt Gingrich were elected, and cut off funding for the cooperation under a clause in the agreement allowing either side not to fund it if funding was impossible. This was clearly inserted into the agreement for Poland, which faced many financial challenges as it emerged from Communism, but the US used the clause instead. For the rest of my tour, I was periodically called into the Polish Foreign Minsitry by a senior official and berated for the US not fulfilling its commitment. Meanwhile, Polish scientsts who had lost most of the government funding also lost what would have been an American lifeline, a sort of anti-Marshall Plan. As an added insult, the Ambassador eliminated my science office in the embassy, because there was no more joint program to oversee.
Government Shutdown. Meanwhile, the State Department asked me if I would like to go to Rome, because the Science Counselor there had been fired for some other budgetary reason. I agreed, but on the day I was leaving Warsaw with the car packed, Embassy Rome called and said don't leave because the government shutdown meant there was no money for travel. However, my wife and I then had no place to live. The house the embassy had rented for us was empty and was being returned to the owner. The idea that the US government would put us out on the streets of Warsaw was so abhorrent to me that it was pretty much the straw that broke the camel's back, as far as continuing to work for the US. I was usually the good soldier, doing as I was ordered, but this time I was so mad that I called Rome to see if I could get their order reversed. I did, and we started driving to Rome, but for me the damage was done. The US government had said, "Hey, you're expendible. You and your wife can die freezing on the streets of Warsaw. We don't care."
Vietnam War. It reminded me of the day I arrived in Vietnam, and the Army assigned me to Dong Ha on the DMZ, so close to North Vietnam that the dot on the map for Dong Ha projected into North Vietnam. I went where the Army told me to go, but for the State Department to do that to me and my wife was, I thought, beyond the pale. There have been a lot of Foreign Service officers assigned to Iraq and Afghanistan (without spouses), but hopefully, the State Department didn't drop them off in some God forsaken village and say, "Hey, we can't afford to come back for you. You will have to walk back. Try to avoid the Taliban." When I was at an artillery firebase near the Laotian border, Firebase Barbara, we had no American infantry support because we were turning over the war to the Vietnamese. We had two American "dusters" assigned to protect us, old anti-aircraft guns that fired 40 mm rounds with every round a tracer, firepower that tended to inspire some awe in the North Vietnamese. One night when there was a alert that we might be attacked because of activity spotted by an intelligence fly-over, our battalion headquarters said, "Don't give any gasoline to the dusters. Their supply people are lazy and incompetent. We don't want to help them out." Of course the alternative was to have the dusters not shoot to protect us. We gave the dusters the gas they needed. They blew away several square kilometers at the base of the mountain, and we were not attacked. Did the penny pinchers in Washington really want us to die? Probably not, but did they really care? Probably not. Did they really care about us in Warsaw? Probably not.
When we got to Rome, things did not get any better for me from a policy perspective. More on this later, Some topics:
Rome: Fisheries. Constitutional responsibilities and Ambassador's letter.
Rome: Tethered Satellite. Firing of space agency chief.
Rome: Help on North Korean Nuclear Proliferation.
Rome: Denial of Visas to Children. Helms-Burton and "Winds of War."
Friday, August 26, 2011
Republicans want America to fail
It is not unlike what Paul Krugman says in his NYT column. He said Bernanke is less likely to move aggressively to support the US economy if Rick Perry is going to call him a traitor for doing so.
Tuesday, July 26, 2011
How We Got into Libya.
Debt and Global Waming
Thoughts on Reading "Obama's Wars"
Letter to Veterans Committee
As a Vietnam veteran I ask, because press reports, including a recent email from the American Legion, indicate that this Congress wants to drastically cut veterans benefits.
It sounds like Chairman Miller is from the Pensacola area. When I was growing up, the Pensacola Naval Air Station was one of the most important things around Pensacola, but I find it is not mentioned in the Chairman's bio. I grew up in Mobile, Alabama, and my mother and I used to shop at the Naval commissary while my father was serving in the Army in Korea during that war.
It is terrible that this Congress is attacking veterans as dead and wounded veterans come home from two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and some kind of military action in
Wednesday, July 20, 2011
Elizabeth Warren Redux
I have seen in the news that Elizabeth Warren is considering a run for the Massachusetts Senate seat held by Scott Brown. I can't imagine why a woman with her high moral character would want to join a corrupt, dysfunctional body like the US Senate, but she could only raise its standards. Nevertheless, she surely would have been more useful as head of the consumer agency.
The consensus seems to be that Congress will come up with some way to raise the debt ceiling, whether the minimalist Mitch McConnell approach to raise the ceiling but do nothing about the budget, or the gang of six maximalist approach to make huge modifications to the budget. Because I have no confidence in Congress, and because Congress has dithered until the last minute, I do not expect anything important to come out of this mess. I don't see how it can reform Medicare, Social Security and the tax code in less than two weeks.
I am hopeful that the ceiling will be raised somehow so that the US does not default on its debt at the same time that Europe is facing much more substantive debt problems. Europe has to deal with the future of the entire Euro zone, while the US is tied up in knots over a simple procedural issue. But the two together could bring down the world economy, or at least transfer world leadership from the West to China.
Monday, July 18, 2011
Swift Boat Vets Don't Love the Troops
The most anti-veteran thing I remember was Swift Boat veterans ads that the Republicans ran against John Kerry when he ran for President. Although it was directed at a fellow Swift Boat veteran, Kerry, it was really an attack on all veterans, particularly against Vietnam vets. It ironic that except for pilots and Seal teams, Swift Boat vets have been the only Navy vets who have actually fought the enemy since World War II. I think most Navy personnel killed or injured in Iraq or Afghanistan are medics assigned to Marine units.
In retrospect, I think the attitude of the general public toward Vietnam veterans coming home was that the Vietnamese should have killed the returning vets. They thought that would have been more just, because Vietnam vets were perverted baby killers. Those who didn't go -- Clinton, Bush, Cheney -- felt they had to condemn Vietnam vets, because otherwise the draft dodgers would have looked bad. They weren't necessarily cowards, but they were selfish, not willing to serve their country.
As a result, Vietnam vets have something in common with low ranking German Nazi vets, who fought in WW II because they had to, and they fought for the guy in the foxhole next to them, like the troops in Afghanistan, not for any Nazi ideals. But they will forever be branded as low grade war criminals. That's more or less how those who didn't fight see Vietnam vets. It was particularly hard on minorities and less educated vets, who were drafted or volunteered in disproportionately large numbers because the more advantaged youths refused to go.
Wednesday, July 13, 2011
Do Republicans Understand Debt Crissis?
Thursday, June 30, 2011
Republicans vs. Elizabeth Warren
The Huffington Post reports that the Republicans will keep both the House and the Senate in session. Basically, Obama asked for this yesterday. The question is whether they will do anything. Huff Post thinks somebody will just appear on the floor every few days and make some meaningless statement to keep the session active. If so, it will be meaningless for the debt crisis.
Another result, however, will be to prevent Obama from making recess appointments, in particular of Elizabeth Warren. I find it significant that the Republicans and big business are so afraid of her. I think she is just someone who supports the average American. It means to me that the Republicans and big business must really hate the average American. They succeed by following P.T. Barnum's saying that "There's a sucker born every minute."
Monday, June 20, 2011
Letter to Senators and Congressman
Yesterday, former Reagan budget chief David Stockman called for reform of the capital gains tax on Fareed Zakaria's GPS program on CNN. He said that it made some sense when inflation was high, so that capital gains merely reflected inflation and not an increase in the real value of an asset. But today, there is virtually no inflation. The other justification is that it encourages new business. There is some basis for that. Perhaps, people who start their own businesses and true venture capitalists should get some kind of tax break to encourage them, although most venture capitalists are multi-millionaires. But someone who buys Apple stock at $200 and sells it a year later for $300 hasn't really encouraged entrepreneurship. A favorable view is that he made a good investment; a less favorable view is that he was just gambling and made a winning bet. Why should this country encourage gambling over doing a hard day's work as an engineer or waitress?
Earlier, I wrote you suggesting the gradual elimination of the home mortgage tax deduction, because it unreasonably favors homeowners over renters, especially if the homeowners paid no money down and have no equity in their homes. They are essentially renters, but get a homeowner's tax break. It might be fair to continue the deduction for people with substantial equity in their houses. Building up equity is the saving which the deduction was originally intended to encourage. But the subprime housing crisis illustrated the economic dislocation that the tax deduction helped create.