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Thinking About the Slurry Wall on 9/11

It’s 13 years since that beautiful sky-blue September day when our world changed.

Consider the parallelism. Today, as we remember the terrorist attack 13 years ago, we begin another “war” against yet other group of Sunni terrorists. Mr. Obama, who was elected in 2008 to get us out of wars in the Middle East, has us on track to lead another “coalition of the willing” into the ME. The purpose of this crusade sounds depressingly familiar: To blunt the threat of another attack on the Homeland, despite little evidence that an attack is possible or imminent. And we do this because the people who face a direct ISIS threat can’t (or won’t) handle it for themselves.

The rise of ISIS is in part a consequence of US policy in the ME. Our war in Iraq and the subsequent 8 years of Iraqi internal political squabble have left many Sunnis in Iraq willing to support any challenge to the Shia central government. And now, 13 years after 9/11, we’re again strapping on our weapons and heading into war.

So today, let’s talk about the slurry wall at the World Trade Center. The Wrongologist took this photo in July, 2014 of the portion of the slurry wall that remains exposed in the Foundation Hall of the National September 11 Memorial Museum:

The slurry wall is the outer wall of what WTC engineers called the “Bathtub” in the 1960’s:

The bathtub is the 9-block area of the World Trade Center site that is excavated down to bedrock…and ringed by the slurry wall. The bathtub was created to enable the building of the Twin Towers’ foundations, and was ultimately filled with seven stories of basements housing the parking garage, mall, and building services.

Except that this bathtub kept water out of the 70’ deep basement. The ground water level at the WTC site is just a few feet below the surface, while bedrock is about 70 feet below the surface. Creating the bathtub required first building a 7-story dam below the water level of the adjacent Hudson River – that was the slurry wall.

After the 9/11 attack, the concern was that the slurry wall would fail. A breach in the wall and a flooding of the bathtub might have also flooded other adjacent below-grade structures, such as the PATH tunnels that passed through the bathtub. The NY subway, built below the PATH tubes could also have flooded with a breach of the wall.

On 9/11, most of the central portion of the wall’s south side (bordering Liberty Street) had moved inward by more than 10 inches. But, it held. According to the New York Times, George Tamaro, a former staff engineer at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, who was closely involved with the construction of the trade center, believes: (brackets by the Wrongologist)

[The slurry wall construction]…may have helped prevent the Hudson River from flooding parts of Lower Manhattan

According to Tamaro’s report on the aftermath of the attack, the PATH tunnels in Jersey City, New Jersey, at the Exchange Place Station, were 5 feet lower in elevation than at the WTC PATH Station. Exchange Place became a sump for fire water, river water, and broken water mains discharging into the bathtub. But the slurry wall held.

Looking up at the exposed portion of the slurry wall in Foundation Hall, one can’t help but be thankful for the work of engineers and construction workers back in the sixties who built the bathtub, and the engineers and firefighters who stabilized the walls after 9/11. Since the attack, that unseen wall is now a symbol of the resilience of both New Yorkers and America.

But the world has spun off its normal axis since September 11, 2001. Isn’t it interesting that 9/11 was supposed to be about America striking back against a foreign enemy of freedom. Yet in the process of attempting to win the “War on Terror”, American citizens have given up a significant part of their personal freedoms. And just this month, we are starting to have a national discussion about how, since 9/11, the US Department of Homeland Security has transformed our local police into a paramilitary force. For example, the Los Angles School District Police got a MRAP (mine resistant vehicle) and 3 grenade launchers.

Schools need grenade launchers now? James Madison said in 1787:

A standing military force, with an overgrown Executive will not long be safe companions to liberty. The means of defense against foreign danger have been always the instruments of tyranny at home…

Today, Americans own enormous numbers of weapons. Pew Research reports that the number of guns in the US is between 270 and 310 million, or roughly one for each of us. But, estimates are that about 37% of us actually own all the weapons.

So, today on the 13th anniversary of 9/11, we need to ask each other: What are we to make of a country in which:
• Local police are militarizing
• Citizens continue to arm themselves
• The federal government tramples on our Bill of Rights

Let’s think about what has been won and lost so far in the War on Terror. And let’s think about what remains of our social fabric. Is it as strong as that slurry wall? Will it hold when attacked? Do we still have that same problem-solving genius that built a slurry wall that was strong enough to survive attack?

Is America still built to last?

Not Voting This Time

A Harvard University survey conducted in April found that less than 25% of Millennial voters under 30 definitely plan to vote in November. That’s less than one in four, folks.

According to the surveys, Millennials’ views on politics are not easy to follow. They support big government, unless it costs more money. They’re for smaller government, unless budget cuts scratch a program they’ve heard of. They’d like Washington to fix everything, just so long as it doesn’t grow the government.

There have been three surveys of Millennials this year, by Pew, Reason as well as Harvard. The Pew report also found inconsistencies:
• Millennials hate the political parties more than everyone else, but they have the highest opinion of Congress
• Young people are the most likely to be single parents and the least likely to approve of single parenthood
• Young people voted overwhelmingly for Obama when he promised universal health care, but they oppose Obamacare as much as the rest of the country… even though they show strong support for universal health care.

Millennials are often described as the new “me” generation. They invented the selfie, and they post most of their waking thoughts on social media. They see themselves as controlling their destinies, despite being underemployed, so it may be difficult for one party (or ideology) to hold them for very long. Maybe what they thought was cool, supporting Obama in 2008, is now passé. After all, Instagram didn’t even exist in 2008.

Some facts about Millennial voters from Do Something.org:
• By 2015, Millennials will account for one third of the electorate
• 50% of eligible young voters (ages 18-29) cast a vote in 2012, amounting to 23 million votes, and 19% of all votes cast in 2012 came from young voters
• The majority of young voters supported President Obama over the Republican candidate in both 2008 and 2012 elections
• Fewer young voters supported President Obama in 2012 than in 2008. In 2008, Obama won 66% of the youth vote (John McCain won 32%) and in 2012, he won 60% (Mitt Romney won 36%).
• In 2012, the youth vote won toss-up states, Ohio, Florida, Virginia and Pennsylvania for Obama.

The Harvard survey shows voter enthusiasm among young people is lower than even in 2010, when Republicans took back the House of Representatives. Enthusiasm for the 2014 midterms is especially low among Democratic Millennials. John Della Volpe, Harvard’s survey director, said:

Young people still care about our country, but we will likely see more volunteerism than voting in 2014…

Harvard surveyed 3,058 web-enabled interviews with 18- to 29- year-olds. Of those surveyed, 48% were male and 52% were female. Other demographic data: 57% were between the ages of 18 and 24; 43% are between the ages of 25 and 29. 18% were married, 11% were living with a partner, 1% were divorced, and 69% had never been married. The survey also found that young women, another key Democratic constituency, are feeling uninspired to head to the polls. Just 19% of women said they were “definitely” going to cast a ballot, compared to 28% of men.

Part of the reason young people are not interested in voting, experts said, is they don’t believe politicians in Washington are addressing issues that matter to them. For example, the poll found that young people are very concerned about issues like wealth disparity in the country and student debt.

Interestingly, both parties seem to care deeply about garnering a majority share of the votes of Millennials, although in the case of Republicans, they seem to want to wait until they all have good paying jobs before trying to move them into their camp.

And for you Millennials, a piece of advice: the best way to make sure politicians continue to not give a damn about your issues is not to vote. Why vote? Let your elders determine the country’s future. Go on, abdicate any role in the decision.

After November, when the Tea Party controls both houses of Congress, and passes laws you may not agree with, maybe then you’ll think about growing some enthusiasm, and vote.

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – September 7, 2014

It seems that we have nearly reached peak moron, but since WWIII ain’t gonna start itself, Mr. Putin and the guys at ISIS are trying to do what they can to move us in that direction:

NATO is happy to get back to an enemy it understands:

Putin wants peace with Ukraine, now that he owns about 1/3 of the country:

Turning to domestic news, on Monday, the Senate will vote on a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United. The Democracy for All amendment, Senate Joint Resolution 19, allows governments to distinguish between people and corporations. It won’t pass in the House, so the Koch Brothers will be free to continue marching the Country toward Fascism.

The public finally got behind the issue of personal privacy when nude celebrity photos were hacked from the cloud:

And the fight we really want to win goes on:

Finally, RIP Joan Rivers:

We Have to do Something!

Syria, Ukraine, Iraq, Afghanistan, and ISIS: We have to do something! What’s the plan, Obama? In fact most Americans have heard that Mr. Obama said “we don’t have a strategy yet” to deal with ISIS.

WTF? In fact, Obama was speaking solely about ISIS in Syria. A reporter asked last Thursday:

Do you need Congress’s approval to go into Syria?

Obama replied:

We don’t have a strategy yet…We need to make sure that we’ve got clear plans, that we’re developing them. At that point, I will consult with Congress

This has led to the “We have to do something” chorus. Consider Fox Anchor Heather Childers:

https://twitter.com/HeatherChilders/status/506918798298198018

Ever hear of the “Politician’s Syllogism”? It is a logical fallacy that takes this form:
1. We have to do something
2. This is something
3. Therefore, we have to do this.

Sound familiar? We see and hear it every Sunday morning on “Bloviating with The Old Pundits”, also known as the network week in review shows. Here is what this can lead to: The Hill reports that House and the Senate are considering action to “do something”:

Rep. Frank R. Wolf, R-Va., said in a statement Wednesday he will introduce legislation when Congress reconvenes next week that would authorize the use of military force against ISIS and other terror groups around the world, including al Nusra, Ansar al Sharia, al Shabaab and Boko Haram

House Speaker Boehner said in an appearance on conservative Hugh Hewitt’s radio show that the president will need congressional authority if he wants to strike at ISIS in its Syrian strongholds:

…If he’s going after ISIS…I think he would have to provide a War Powers notification to the Congress…And then it would be up to the House to make a decision about whether we dealt with the issue or not

Are you feeling better? We saw the pitfalls of “We must do something” following 9/11. Initial reactions to the attacks on America were shock and confusion. Traditional ideological divides were blurred, but then the Right trotted out a line that resonated with all Americans and caused the antiwar left to dissolve: We have to do something!

In US political speak, the one thing we have to do “something” about always refers to a foreign policy concern. Politicans don’t feel that we “have to do something” about domestic problems. Poverty? No need to act. Corrupt bankers? Inaction is fine.

In foreign policy, when a crisis flares up overseas, and especially if it involves possible opponents that the War Hawks, the defense industry and the media can categorize as bad guys, “we have to do something” means military action.

But, there are always supplements to military action. Half-measures can come in both military (money and weapons, but no boots on the ground), quasi-military (military and political advisers) and geo-political or diplomatic forms (coalitions, sanctions or embargoes). We can employ some, or all of those options. Or, after careful consideration of our short and long term interests, we can do nothing.

Any and all of that is called “strategy”.

And that’s the problem. We need to do something effective that has long and short term benefits, and that doesn’t bankrupt the nation. We can drop some more bombs and send more advisers. To have a useful strategy, we have to come to grips with these facts:
• We’re going to have to give Assad a pass for killing his countrymen and doing mean things with chemical weapons, because we have to work together on eliminating ISIS
• We may need to ally with Iran, a non-democratic and anti-Sunni regime that most Americans think of as an enemy
• We may need to confront our allies, Saudi Arabia and Turkey, who have, at best, been “soft” on ISIS
• We have to accept that we now bomb our own weapons that have been seized by ISIS. Are we OK with more of that down the road, if that is the outcome of arming the “moderates” in Iraq and Syria?

With two beheadings, American opinion is being whipped up by certain politicians and the media to get us to strike back, hard. Fine, but let’s spend a few seconds thinking about WHY ISIS is whacking the hornets’ nest that is America. We are told that it is to get America to stop the bombing in Iraq.

Could it be just the opposite, that it is their invitation to join in yet another Middle East quagmire?

Could it be that they want a chance to defeat the “sole superpower” on their way to creating their caliphate? The logic of this form of asymmetric terror is pretty straightforward. But our “tough on defense” politicians fall for it every time. They take another bite of the “counter-insurgency” apple.

It may just be that their strategy (emulating Osama bin Laden), is to:

…in any way possible, enmesh the US and NATO in unwinnable wars, and then watch as the imperial powers disintegrate

ISIS and Al Qaeda are playing a long game. By doing flashy terrorist actions they empower the War Hawks and American conservatives. War Hawks and conservatives thereafter use their rejuvenated mandate to insist on crude and violent actions in the Middle East. They push reluctant centrists and liberals to do the same.

America then completely messes up the campaign, and further weakens its economy and social contract.

Perhaps we should let ISIS terrify Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Iran, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and the Gulf States to the point where they will all work together to destroy ISIS and its sources of funding instead of begging us to waste American lives and money there.

That is a strategy that is not exactly a do-nothing strategy, but you can already hear the War Hawk chorus, telling America to expect beheadings on Main Street next week.

Why We Are Driving Less

The Driving Boom, a six decade-long period of increases in per-capita miles driven in the US appears to be over. There are still millions driving, which means there are millions taking part in the Geico vs Progressive battle for the best insurance prices, but the number of drivers is not rising like it used to. From the Frontier Group:

Americans drive fewer total miles today than we did nine years ago, and fewer per person than we did at the end of Bill Clinton’s first term. The unique combination of conditions that fueled the Driving Boom — from cheap gas prices to the rapid expansion of the workforce during the Baby Boom generation — no longer exists.

If you drive a truck then you may want to purchase an ELD Device online to make driving more safe, one of the electronic logs is a great investment.
The Federal Highway Administration (FHA) reported in July on data from May, 2014, showing that travel on all roads and streets changed by 0.9% (2.4 billion vehicle miles) for May 2014 as compared with May 2013.

Here is an annotated graph of the FHA data from DShort:

The only other time in history that we’ve seen a similarly long time between the peak and trough was following the 1982 recession, when it took 39 months for total vehicle miles traveled to recover to its previous peak. It’s now been more than twice that long since the all-time high in vehicle miles driven, and unlike the 1980s, we don’t have a gas-tax hike to blame for it.

The research firm Behind the Numbers argues that we’re entering a new era in which Americans simply prefer to drive less. They report that it is unlikely that miles driven will eventually return to its prior trend. Among the reasons they say a sharp reversal is unlikely:

• Boomers are getting older and driving less.
• Millennials are less interested in driving, and are now the largest generation in the US.
• The trend toward living near the urban core reduces the need for driving.
• Higher gas prices discourage driving.
• Mass transportation is winning over more consumers.

As a result, Behind the Numbers thinks that tire and auto companies won’t do well in the future, since their sales are directly related to American driving. While it’s true that Baby Boomers are aging and will continue to drive less throughout their lives, the rest of their argument warrants rebuttal.

Let’s look at the relationship of miles driven to the Labor Force Participation Rate. The participation rate is the number of people over the age of 16, who are either employed or are actively looking for work. The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) has been tracking this since 1948. Here is the relationship:

Note that the left axis is the Labor Force Participation rate expressed as a % of our total population, while the Vehicle Miles Traveled is measured on the right axis, expressed in billions of miles. It is clear that once the Great Recession started, and a smaller percentage of the population had a job or were looking for work, the miles driven stopped growing and began to decline. Conversely, when the participation rate was growing briskly, America’s miles driven grew dramatically.

The long-term growth in the employment participation rate has been discussed by many, including the Wrongologist:

During the 1970s and 1980s, the labor force grew vigorously as women’s labor force participation rates surged and the baby-boom generation entered the labor market…The labor force participation rate hit an all-time peak in early 2000 of 67.3%…And labor force participation has since dropped to 63%.

So, when the number of people working declined starting in 2007, miles driven declined. THAT may explain what is happening more clearly than “Millennials don’t like cars”, or “Mass transportation is more popular” or “Online shopping equals fewer trips”, although those may also be contributing factors. For those that are still driving on the roads, it’s worth investing in a dash cam from somewhere like BlackBoxMyCar so if an accident were to ever happen, you would have video footage to protect yourself.

Fewer miles driven means lower revenues from gas taxes. Less revenue from gas taxes means less to spend on road and bridge repair. Less spending on roads and bridges leads us toward becoming a second-world economy.

This is just one of the truly poor outcomes caused by our inability to deal constructively with the economic fallout of the Great Recession.

What can we do to reverse our national losing streak?

We do not have what it takes to leave the dysfunction of our politics behind. We have a self-reinforcing system based on our politicians scuffling for money from corporations and therefore, performing as trained monkeys for their lobbyists.

You must get out and vote. You must work to drive turnout in November. We, the people, have to get back in the game, or our losing streak will continue.

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – August 3, 2014

For those on vacation, or without access to the Interwebs, here is a summation of this week’s wrong:
• The Senate couldn’t pass a bill to impose taxes on companies that move overseas
• The House didn’t vote on Mr. Boehner’s immigration bill because Sen. Ted Cruz blocked it
• We brokered a 72-hour cease-fire between Israel and Hamas that lasted 90 minutes
• The Times of Israel took down a blog post that made a case for genocide
• Mr. Obama admitted that we torture

That’s not a lot of humor to work with, but here are the best. Congress hurries to not finish their work:

Ted Cruz driving baby Boehner:

Genocide of Palestinians is contemplated in the Times of Israel:

Yochanan Gordon framed his premise as “a question for all the humanitarians out there”:

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu clearly stated at the outset of this incursion that his objective is to restore a sustainable quiet for the citizens of Israel. We have already established that it is the responsibility of every government to ensure the safety and security of its people. If political leaders and military experts determine that the only way to achieve its goal of sustaining quiet is through genocide is it then permissible to achieve those responsible goals?

Umm, wasn’t that the excuse Nazis gave the world about Jews, Gypsies, and Homosexuals?

And Mr. Netanyahu told the White House not to force a truce with Palestinian militants on Israel. He apparently advised the Obama administration “not to ever second guess me again” on the matter.

So, it looks increasingly like we need a 3-State solution:

In yesterday’s speech, President Obama said “We tortured some folks” and that “we shouldn’t be too sanctimonious”. The President:

It is important for us not to feel too sanctimonious in retrospect about the tough job those folks had… A lot of those folks were working hard under enormous pressure and are real patriots…That needs to be understood and accepted. We have to as a country take responsibility for that so hopefully we don’t do it again in the future.

Apparently, some people didn’t agree:

"We tortured some folks." Nope. Actually the CIA and the military did that. Don't try to put that shit on the rest of us, Obama.

— onekade (@onekade) August 1, 2014

What would cause Mr. Obama to make this “apology” for torture? Has he lost touch, or is he living in a bubble of intelligence advisers that he can’t or won’t fire?

This is reminiscent of the way that J. Edgar Hoover controlled (or intimidated) presidents in what we used to think was another age. Who, or what, is making this president say such crap, and not take what are to most of us, obvious actions?

Is GDP Growth Enough?

A strong 2014 Q2 GDP report came out yesterday, registering 4% annualized real GDP growth, better than what we have seen in several years. This is good news, but it is worth looking at it in the context of the full recovery of the US economy. The House of Debt Blog has a chart showing recoveries after every post WWII recession in the US, updated to include Q2, 2014:

The red line is the Great Recession, compared to our recovery from 9 other post-war recessions. The slight uptick at the end of the red line reflects yesterday’s GDP report. Despite this recent fun news, we remain in the weakest economic recovery in history. Reportage from the New York Times:

The US economy rebounded in the spring after a dismal winter, the Commerce Department reported on Wednesday, growing at an annual rate of 4% for the three months from April through June.
In its initial estimate for the second quarter, the government cited gains in personal consumption spending, exports and private inventory investment as the main contributors to growth. The increase exceeded economists’ expectations and further cemented their views that the decrease in America’s overall output during the first quarter was most likely a fluke tied in large part to unusually stormy winter weather as well as other anomalies.

The NYT says that first quarter numbers were also adjusted upward:

During the first quarter, output shrank by 2.1%, less than had been reported, according to the Commerce Department’s newly revised GDP figures, also released on Wednesday. The department had previously said first-quarter output decreased 2.9%.

Now for the issues in the data: (emphasis by the Wrongologist)

While the economy seems generally to be bouncing back from the recession, overall growth remains lackluster. Wages have failed to rise significantly, an area of concern that Janet L. Yellen, chairwoman of the Federal Reserve, noted when she appeared before Congress this month.

In fact, Doug Short at the DShort blog provides a very helpful series of charts on wages and hours for the private workforce. The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) has been collecting these data since 1964. The BLS numbers provide excellent insights on the income history of the private middle class wage earner. First, average hourly wages adjusted for inflation have remained unchanged since the Nixon Administration:

But that isn’t the bad news. Average weekly hours worked have been declining since the Johnson Administration:

Finally, DShort multiplies the real average hourly earnings by the average hours per week. This produces a hypothetical number for average weekly wages of this middle-class cohort, currently at $694 — well below its $827 peak back in the early 1970s:

$694 per week equates to a $36,000 annual wage. Then the person has to pay taxes, social security, rent, etc. So, purchasing power has declined for the middle class worker. Tomorrow, the July Jobs Report comes out. Then we’ll see if the fun times continue.

In a consumer-driven economy where wages have failed to rise, there can be no sustained economic growth. Media reports say that the economy “rebounded”, that it “exceeded economists’ expectations”. But have economic conditions for average people improved? No, for them, this is a paper rebound, not a real one.

Tracking the economy of ordinary people continues to go unremarked and untargeted by lawmakers. The economic health of average people is an afterthought to the politicians, who consider it a vague byproduct of ‘GDP’ and ‘growth’. In the real world, GDP growth does not directly correlate with improvements in the average person’s well-being.

Workers desperately need more hours at better paying jobs. How does prosperity return if wages stagnate while wealth concentration continues?

Military Sales Complicate Our Middle East Strategy

The Hill quotes President Obama’s impromptu press conference on July 16:

We live in a complex world and at a challenging time…And none of these challenges lend themselves to quick or easy solutions, but all of them require American leadership. And as commander in chief, I’m confident that, if we stay patient and determined, that we will, in fact, meet these challenges.

Of course it is a complex time. But we make our lives much more complicated by the arms deals we make with other countries. In the last three years, the US has provided tens of billions of dollars in military weapons through Foreign Military Sales (FMS) to the United Arab Emirates (UAE); Qatar; Kuwait; and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA).

Some are designed to protect against airborne missile retaliation and air attacks. For example, the US supplied Qatar ($9.9 billion), Kuwait ($4.2 billion), and UAE ($1.1 billion) with Patriot anti-missile systems and UAE also acquired a $6.5 billion theater anti-air defense (THAAD) system. The US also sold KSA $6.7 billion worth of KC-130 aerial refueling tankers, the UAE $4 billion and KSA $6.8 billion of munitions including “bunker buster bombs,” typically used to attack hardened targets like nuclear facilities (are you listening Iran?). Qatar received a $1.2 billion early warning radar; KSA $1.3 billion for 30 patrol boats for use in the Gulf of Hormuz; Qatar spent $3 billion on Apache attack helicopters used for special operations insertions. The list also includes Javelin missiles, F-18’s and F-16’s, and Sidewinder anti-air missiles.

Israel is the largest recipient of US Foreign Military Financing (FMF). For FY 2015, the President’s request for Israel adds up to about 55% of our global FMF funding. Annual FMF grants to Israel represent about 25% of the overall Israeli defense budget. We also agreed to sell Israel 19 F-35s in 2010, with options to increase that order to 75 planes. We have recently approved the only foreign sale of the V-22 Tilt-rotor Osprey aircraft to the Israelis for $3 billion.

Business Insider reports that we may have made our lives more complicated by weapons sales to Qatar. You probably are not aware that Qatar is one of Hamas’s reliable international partners:

Last week, Qatar closed the largest sale of American weaponry so far this year, purchasing $11 billion worth of Patriot missile batteries and Apache attack helicopters. The sale revealed that Qatar hasn’t exactly been lacking in strategic daring in the wake of its failed bet on Muslim Brotherhood-linked political movements throughout the Middle East.

Qatar is about the size of Connecticut. It has fewer than 300,000 citizens. The rest of its 2.1 million inhabitants are expatriates and foreign workers. Why does it need all these weapons?

The Israeli-Hamas fight shines a light on Qatar. The New York Times reported on the Qatari Emir’s 2012 visit to Hamas-controlled Gaza:

The emir, Sheik Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, pledged $400 million to build two housing complexes, rehabilitate three main roads and create a prosthetic center, among other projects, a transformational infusion of cash at a time when foreign aid to the Palestinian territories has been in free fall.

He was the first-ever leader of a country to meet with Hamas in Gaza. Business Insider quotes Jonathan Schanzer, the vice president at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, who said that Qatar is “believed to be the primary financier of Hamas,” which has estimated annual operating expenses of around $1 billion. In June, Qatar attempted to transfer money for long-unpaid civil service salaries for Gaza-based Hamas members through the Arab Bank, a transaction that the Bank disallowed after apparent US pressure.

Qatar is arguably a counter-productive actor in the context of the biggest Israeli-Palestinian crisis since the Second Intifada of a decade ago. Business Insider reports that David Weinberg, a scholar at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said that Congress hasn’t been concerned enough with Qatar’s policies to put a hold on weapons sales, and it confirmed the Obama administration’s recent nominee as ambassador to Doha without controversy:

It’s not clear whether Congress has the stomach for a fight over these issues with an ostensible ally when…the administration seems to be vouching for Qatari conduct.

Yes, we vouch for conduct we can’t control, or in some cases, really influence. Why is it that the first thing our lawmakers think of is “send them more arms”?

The powder keg of the Middle East has been filled in part by our policymakers’ conflicted views of Middle East politics, but largely by the political influence of America’s military contractors.

Thanks to our Congress and President, it waits only for another spark to set it off. If and when that happens, count on someone in the administration or in Congress saying: “who could have anticipated THAT happening?”

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – July 27, 2014

A corporatist meme took a face plant this week. Bloomberg Business Week charted CEO pay vs. stock market return, based on data supplied by the executive compensation consultants, Equilar. It shows that there is very little correlation between CEO pay and company performance.

Equilar ranked the salaries of 200 highly paid CEOs against their company’s stock market return, and the scattering of data looks mostly random, implying that CEO performance appears to have little to do with CEO compensation. The graph plots the relative ranking of 2013 stock market return against the relative ranking of 2013 CEO total compensation. If you go to Bloomberg, the chart below is interactive. You can hover over a dot and see information on the CEO and company.

Bottom line: there’s essentially no link between how well CEOs perform and how well they are paid:

Based on this, it seems that corporate boards are unable to predict how well their chosen CEO candidate will do once on the job, since the trend line, which didn’t plot in this screen capture, shows that the correlation is ~1%. That explodes the myth that a primary metric used by company board compensation committees to justify CEO pay is stock market return.

CEO pay isn’t the government’s business, but corporate governance is. When governance is based on something other than what shareholders are told, it is worth a look.

In other news, the immigration issue continued, with Texas Governor Perry’s grandstanding. He was joined by many in Congress and in the media, some of whom wanted to be sure that the Texas National Guard was armed against the threat implied by children illegally crossing our border.

Lady Liberty’s meditation on immigration is lost in the noise:

An alternative strategy might build sympathy for the kids’ plight:

In Obamacare news, courts made two opposite decisions using the same facts:

It was another week of some Advising but very little Consenting:

The loss of MH17 brought no new facts, just grandstanding here as well:

Gaza, along with Ukraine, show how missile use has changed in 45 years:

Did 9/11 Change Everything?

“He didn’t know what was defeating him, but he sensed it was something he could not cope with, something that was far beyond his power to control or even at this point in time comprehend.” –Hubert Selby Jr.

The Wrongologist has changed the blog’s “Quotes We Like” sidebar to add the quote above. The quote is from Selby’s Requiem for a Dream. He also wrote Last Exit To Brooklyn. These are two gritty American novels of their time and place. Exit was published in 1964 and presents a view of 1950’s Brooklyn NY. Requiem was published in 1978. Both were made into movies. Selby died in 2004.

In a Salon article in 2000, Selby is quoted about Requiem:

The dream I’m referring to in the book, of course, is the great American dream: prosperity, property, prestige, etc. And the fact that it’ll kill you dead. Striving for it is a disaster. Attaining it is a killer. It takes many forms, and the results are not happy. It’s not a feel-good thing

Selby continues:

‘Requiem’ is about the cancer of that dream…Of course, there are a lot of people who are successful who work very hard. They’re not all George W. Bush. But the point is they’re misguided. That’s not what life is about. We believe, probably more than anywhere, that life is getting all this material stuff. It’s a case of misguided ambition and desire

We can take this further. Today, America doesn’t know what is defeating it. America senses that it can’t cope, that there are things happening that are beyond our control or comprehension:
• We can no longer solve our domestic problems
• We are powerless to deal with the Malaysian airline disaster in Ukraine
• We can’t resolve the tri-partite struggle in Iraq
• We can no longer restrain Israel in its non-proportional response to Hamas
• We are no longer on the same side as our long-term Middle East allies, Saudi Arabia and Egypt
• We can’t figure out a non-military response for China’s initiatives throughout Asia

In fact, we no longer have a non-military response to any foreign problem. The power strategies that we employed throughout the 1950’s, continuing down to the end of the Soviet Union no longer work. Back then, we played chess, moving pieces across the board. We used whichever proxies or allies were at hand, we overthrew elected governments, thereby violating our own ideology. We supported and installed dictatorial governments. We promised freedom and prosperity, while helping to deliver hegemony, based on our military intervention, or the threat of it.

Today, we have no answers, only posturing from all of our leaders. We have become the kind of people who criticize, not the kind of people who can solve problems.

We are no longer king-makers in the third world, the neo-conservative approach of use of military power cannot stand in the face of asymmetric warfare and the devastating superiority of IEDs to up-armored military vehicles.

From Ian Welsh:

Deny the fruits of western ideology to those who reach for them, and of course they will turn against you. Pervert them even within your own countries by undermining your own democratic principles and by concentrating wealth and income in the hands of a few, while impoverishing the many; make it clear that modern neo-liberal capitalism doesn’t spread prosperity to even the core nations, and you have set up one of the preconditions of not just hegemonic collapse, but of internal collapse of a civilization

And here is Welsh’s money quote:

People who do not believe in the genuine goodness of what they are fighting for, hardly fight for it at all

That is what we see in Iraq. More importantly, that is what we see in America. Today, no one believes in the genuine goodness of what they are fighting for, be they job-hunting Millennials, unreconstructed 1960’s liberals, or today’s money-grubbing Republican and Democrat politicians.

When you no longer know how to solve problems, you turn to what is easy. You buy the next shiny object, you live through the lives of the rich and famous. Snark and incivility replace facts and discussion.

There was a display in the 9/11 Museum that showed a piece of debris about 3’ high by 6’ wide and 12’ long. It was rusty and seemed to be sedimentary in nature, visibly comprised of metal, concrete, and wires. It is actually part of 5 floors of the Trade Center, compressed by weight and softened by intense heat. Nothing of the desks, computers, phones and people are distinguishable in this artifact. The Museum calls it a “composite”. It brings home the destructive power of the falling towers on 9/11:

Photo is from before the “composite” went on display

After the Towers’ fall, the news media said that 9/11 changed everything, and we believed it. But changes to our view of the world, and its view of us, had started long before that. We stopped learning about geopolitics in the 1960’s, substituting false analogies and military aid to local strongmen for true knowledge of how to change the world.

Since then, we have been compressed by the heat and weight of events we cannot understand. If you think about it, our decline after 9/11 came because we panicked, spent all of our money on pointless wars, and gave up our core values in the name of an illusion of safety, and pure vengeance.

So, yes, America doesn’t know what is defeating it. America senses that there are things happening that are beyond its control or comprehension.

But these things are knowable, and fixable. Hopefully, by Americans.

The Wrongologist

Geopolitics, Power and Political Economy

Category: Congress