The Wrongologist – Page 207 – Geopolitics, Power and Political Economy

The “System” of Prisons

Politicians throw the term “reform” around all the time, and it usually means nothing. One problem that most agree requires reform is the US prison system. VICE did a fantastic job with their report, “Fixing the System,” which aired on HBO, about America’s broken criminal justice system. You can see it on YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oTL_3WL5gfw

Those who read the Wrongologist in email can see the video here.

In July, VICE followed Mr. Obama to the El Reno Correctional Institution in El Reno, Oklahoma, and recorded the first time a presently serving president sat down with a bunch of inmates at a prison. He talked about their families, how they got into crime, why they copped a plea, what kind of businesses they’d like to start, how they might get financing to start those businesses, what kind of responsibilities they have as parents and to their communities, the reasons for and against the War on Drugs, and the impact of the cycle of mass incarceration on communities of color.

Perhaps a little background. The US has 2.2 million prison inmates. China is second with 1.5 million, and Russia third with 874,000. According to PrisonPolicy.org, The US incarcerates 716 people for every 100,000 residents, more than any other country. And Vox reports that 16 US states have more people in prisons than in college housing!

The HBO show says that this era of mass incarceration came about due to the war on drugs which focused on crack cocaine, meaning that many nonviolent people of color wound up in prison. Next, mandatory-minimum sentencing laws led to a throw-away-the-key culture, with long, destructive prison terms.

Well, leave it to David Brooks to take exception yesterday to the common view that prison reform would be a net positive for American society:

The drug war is not even close to being the primary driver behind the sharp rise in incarceration. About 90% of America’s prisoners are held in state institutions. Only 17% of these inmates are in for a drug-related offense, or less than one in five.

See what he did there? Brooks reframed the discussion to state prisons. Sadly, on the federal level, 48% were in prison for drug crimes, according to Department of Justice statistics. Brooks also misunderstands that the Federal sentencing minimums do not necessarily apply in state courts. He is incorrect that states hold 90% of prisoners. They hold 64%, or 1.4 million of the 2.2 million prisoners. They do hold the vast majority of violent offenders, with 725,000 (53%) jailed for violent offenses. Brooks wanders around and at the end, lands in his typically happy place:

Lifting the spirits of inmates, as described in the outstanding Atlantic online video “Angola for Life,” can also help. But the fundamental situation won’t be altered without a comprehensive surge, unless we flood the zone with economic, familial, psychological and social repair.

Well, Mr. Brooks, if you wanted to make sure that nothing changed, you would recommend waiting for an entire cluster of problems to be addressed, not one of which is remotely likely to happen. He doesn’t support any solutions. And he studiously avoids the stacked deck that makes the prison population so black.

He also missed the other elephant in the room. You can’t escape the parallel between mass incarceration and the growth of for-profit prisons. These corporations have contracts that require that cities and states provide them sufficient prisoners to meet an agreed number, or pay the prison in cash.

This incentivizes putting people behind bars, and should have nothing to do with free market capitalism. This is a policy error that must be corrected.

Two final points:

• Crime flourishes in areas where economic abandonment has produced poor schools and poor prospects. Yet Brooks has argued in the past that the minimum wage should not be raised, that welfare is wasted on moochers, and that the social safety net is too expensive to maintain.
• The plea-bargain system is another culprit. Somewhere in the 1970s, prosecutors figured out an easier way. Threaten an accused with massive charges and punishments, and then propose a plea bargain to a lesser charge. Because people are risk-averse, and/or do not have the money to hire the lawyers to fight the worst charges, they accept the plea bargain and end up in jail, without a trial. This is why it’s always important (if you can do so) to get in contact with a firm such as Mark Rees Law and similar alternatives to ensure you get a fair trial when it comes to your court date.

Conservatives like to cite the number of one-parent households and how the lack of both parents around makes it more likely that a child from a poor area will become a criminal. Mr. Brooks seems to think that releasing non-violent drug offenders from prison will not have much effect on society. But many prisoners are parents.

How many children could have a parent back with them, and maybe avoid incarceration themselves?

See the documentary. Reform the system!

Monday Wake Up Call – September 28, 2015

Wrongo and Ms. Oh So Right were in South Hero VT for the weekend. Here is a pic just after sunset, looking west towards Plattsburg NY. There is little fall color in Northern Vermont yet:

A few thoughts about Boehner’s resignation. Boehner faced a choice between a coup and a shutdown. That led him to make a deal with the Teahadists: If he stepped down as Speaker, they would vote for a “clean” Continuing Resolution (CR) and avoid a government shutdown. Several members of the Freedom Caucus, the conservative group that led the revolt against Boehner’s leadership, said they will now support the spending bill without demands that it include language to cut off funding for Planned Parenthood. Alex Pareene summed up the Boehner era:

It was not a distinguished tenure. His meager accomplishments came in spite of himself and to the great consternation of his Republican colleagues. He pinballed from one pathetic humiliation, usually at the hands of his own caucus, to the next. The only reason Boehner remained speaker for as long as he did—to his eternal regret, it is clear—is because his bitterest opponents were too stupid to figure out how to oust him, and his likeliest replacements never wanted the job.

So, at least as of the time this is written, the corporate wing of the GOP will get their clean funding bill (and retain a shot at the Presidency next year), at the same time, the Teahadists are allowed a “victory” by getting rid of Boehner. The corporate wing will insert another one of their guys in the Speaker position and a year down the road, Boehner is out from under the lobbyist rules, and goes on to a job paying 10 times of his current salary.

But we’ve got unfinished business, like the transportation bill, the Debt Ceiling and the Omnibus Spending Bill to keep government functioning into next year. These will be left for the next Speaker.

The GOP establishment looks to be fragmenting into two parts. They have the majority, but they have lost Eric Cantor, their rain-maker. Boehner, another rainmaker and cat-herder, is now gone. McConnell has now lost the air support he used to enjoy from the House. Rep. Matt Salmon (R-AZ), a co-founder of the House Freedom Caucus, suggested that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) may need to be the next head on the chopping block, particularly for his unwillingness to get rid of the Senate filibuster. From Salmon:

We made a lot of promises to the American people, that if we took the Senate, that we would do certain things and those things have not been accomplished…A lot of the problems we are engaged in is because the Senate doesn’t take any action on anything and there’s nothing that any presidential candidate on our side says that will ever be realized as long as the modern-day filibuster is enacted in the way it is today.

The firebrands in the House say that Sen. Ted Cruz is the defacto leader of the party. The Presidential primaries might determine a different leader, but the establishment wing of the GOP doesn’t have the control it used to have.

But, all is good in the cesspool. So, let’s try to wake up both John Boehner and the Freedom Caucus. Here are The Rolling Stones with “You Can’t Always Get What You Want”, recorded live at the Max in October 1990 and released in 1991:

For those who read the Wrongologist in email, you can view the video here.

Friday Cartoon Blogging??

It sounds like an old story, but the Wrongologist and Ms. Oh So Right are again headed to a wedding in Vermont, so there will be no new posts until Monday. Therefore, cartoons!

We can’t ignore the visit of Pope Francis. Yesterday, he spoke to the Congress, and the usual spin ensued. Like the Liberty U folks when Bernie spoke there, the defining political issue for 90+% of Republicans is abortion. As long as the Pope remains with them on that issue, there’s no contradiction between their faith and political affiliation.

They will no more listen to this Pope on other issues than they did to John Paul II’s anti-war messages.

Liberals, including liberal Catholics, appreciate Francis because he says some things that they’ve believed for a long time. It’s always nice when an authority figure affirms one’s beliefs. But the three Catholic POTUS candidates, Christie, Jeb, and Santorum, have already rejected anything Francis has to say on climate change and income inequality. As have all the GOP members of Congress regardless of their religious affiliation.

The Pope’s big job:

Brian Williams returned from banishment to anchor coverage of the Pope:

We may see a government shutdown this fall. One thing to keep in mind about the Republican debate over whether or not to risk a government shutdown for the “defund Planned Parenthood” movement is that this isn’t a fight over goals or principles. There isn’t a single Republican presidential candidate who does not favor “defunding Planned Parenthood:

The GOP is moving on to Carly:

Volkswagen’s CEO Martin Winterkorn resigned on Wednesday over the emissions cheating scandal, saying “I’m not aware of any wrongdoing on my part.” Strange choice of words, probably written by his PR team. This is a rogue company that undertook anti-social activities for profit. Anyone can see that this is the outcome we should expect if Mr. Market is allowed to run free:

The Beetle morphs:

Corporations Want Europe to Add Refugees

According to The Guardian, the European Union ministers forced through a plan to relocate Middle Eastern asylum-seekers throughout the EU. The plan would distribute 120,000 souls across all EU countries.

The headline yesterday was that Romania, Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic voted against the proposal, but could be forced to take immigrants anyway. These Eastern European governments have been among the most vocal opponents of plans to relocate refugees across the EU. But, according to The Economist, this position ignores economic logic:

A survey by Manpower Group, a consultancy, found that two out of five firms in Poland struggle to fill vacancies. In Hungary, almost half could not get the staff they need. In the Czech Republic and Slovakia fewer employers report difficulties (18% and 28%) but the share has been climbing steadily over the past few years.

Here is their chart showing the difficulty in filling jobs in the EU:

The argument in the countries that need to fill jobs but do not want migrants is that they can fill skill gaps by drawing in labor from neighboring countries with more similar cultures. This may fill some positions, but wages are much lower in the countries needing labor. The Economist reports that wages in Germany are 150% higher than in Hungary. And Germany’s social safety net is superior.

These statistics point to serious problems in the EU’s local economies. But the real issue isn’t under population in the EU. We have been told for years that the unemployment rate among young Europeans is very high. Trading Economics reports that the overall jobless rate in the Eurozone fell to 10.9% in July, from 11.1% in the previous three months. That means 17.4 million EU citizens are unemployed. But, youth unemployment averages 21.9%. Here are some depressing Youth Unemployment statistics from summer, 2015: (Source: Statista.com)

Greece: 53.7%
Spain: 49.2%
Italy: 44.2%
France: 23.6%
Germany: 7.1%

So, even if people in certain EU countries understand that there might be an economic upside to allowing immigrants into their country, their opening position is: “why aren’t we hiring our own kids?”

Then there is the anti-immigrant issue that transcends economic concerns, the ethnic makeup of one’s own country, and what migrants may do to impact these old European cultures. No argument about the economic merits of increased immigration will likely sway voters if they believe their way of life will be compromised. The fear of a “mob at the gates” drives anti-immigrant feeling throughout the world.

So, who says Europe needs all of this migrant labor? Much like in the US, it is the corporations who say they can’t fill jobs with the requisite talent. What they really mean is, talent at a price.

Why can’t German firms import Italian or Spanish kids to do the work?

This sounds remarkably similar to tech firms in the US saying that they cannot find STEM workers, and so ask the government to add more H-1B visas so that migrants from India can fill jobs in Silicon Valley.

The global picture is clear: Many jobs now done by humans are being taken over by machines. Computers will ease our transition to declining populations. Even many low-skilled jobs in manufacturing and agriculture can be handled by robots, requiring a large jump in the skills humans need to learn in order to get the fewer, better paying jobs that remain.

A partial solution may be to import some migrants to fill a few low skilled jobs, but adoption of new technologies rather than population growth, is a better way to go about raising the living standards in Europe.

And we must shut off global population growth sometime soon. The Wrongologist has reported before on “The Coming Jobs War” by Jim Clifton, in which Clifton says that globally, some 3 billion people are looking for work right now, and nearly all of them are willing to work for less than the average American or European.

Every society will be more secure economically if they can promote a high resource-to-population ratio. Those countries who can become close to self-sufficient in food, water, energy, and renewable resources will be the only ones with middle-class living conditions.

Middle Eastern migrants understand this. Some may be fleeing for their lives, but the vast majority are simply economic migrants. The EU is being led by the nose to focus on asylum-seekers, when even they are economic migrants.

Although the poorer parts of the world experience very high population growth, and the developed world does not, it is a safe guess that not a single country today has a population that is low enough to guarantee success in the future world economic order.

Think about what Agent Smith said in The Matrix:

Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with the surrounding environment but you humans do not. You move to an area and you multiply and multiply until every natural resource is consumed and the only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. Do you know what it is? A virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet. You’re a plague and we are the cure.

Pope Francis on Capitalism

With the Pope starting his visit to the US, most focus will be on Conservatives’ support for the Catholic Church’s views against abortion and gay marriage. Conservatives are far less enthusiastic about Francis’ views about climate change and capitalism, both of which are covered in Pope Francis’ encyclical, Laudato Si’.

While the Wrongologist has not read Laudato Si´, he did read an extensive and thoughtful review by William Nordhaus in the NY Review of Books, who says the Pope thinks that the degradation of our environment is a symptom of deeper problems: rapid change, unsustainable over-consumption, indifference to the poor, and the decay of social values.

Nordhaus notes that the encyclical contains an extensive discussion of the features of markets and modern capitalism. It emphasizes dysfunctional tendencies and distortions, witness his criticism of excessive consumption:

Since the market tends to promote extreme consumerism in an effort to sell its products, people can easily get caught up in a whirlwind of needless buying and spending. Compulsive consumerism is one example of how the techno-economic paradigm affects individuals. [Paragraph 203]

And Francis’ criticism of the distorting effect of the drive for profit:

Once more, we need to reject a magical conception of the market, which would suggest that problems can be solved simply by an increase in the profits of companies or individuals. Is it realistic to hope that those who are obsessed with maximizing profits will stop to reflect on the environmental damage which they will leave behind for future generations? [Paragraph 190]

Nordhaus quotes Francis, who argues that profit-seeking is the source of environmental degradation:

The principle of the maximization of profits, frequently isolated from other considerations, reflects a misunderstanding of the very concept of the economy. As long as production is increased, little concern is given to whether it is at the cost of future resources or the health of the environment; as long as the clearing of a forest increases production, no one calculates the losses entailed in the desertification of the land, the harm done to biodiversity or the increased pollution. In a word, businesses profit by calculating and paying only a fraction of the costs involved. [Paragraph 195]

Francis singles out financiers for special disapproval:

In the meantime, economic powers continue to justify the current global system where priority tends to be given to speculation and the pursuit of financial gain, which fail to take the context into account, let alone the effects on human dignity and the natural environment…. [Paragraph 56]

The Pope criticizes capitalism’s push to make ultra-consumers of everyone:

This paradigm [consumerism] leads people to believe that they are free as long as they have the supposed freedom to consume. But those really free are the minority who wield economic and financial power. [Paragraph 203]

Pure capitalism ignores two major shortcomings of those economies run by Mr. Market: The first is the emergence of monopolies, or things like unregulated pollution, which distort market outcomes. The second is inequality of opportunities and income. And much has been written about rising income inequality, particularly by Seitz and Piketty, and Joseph Stiglitz.

However, it would be inaccurate to point solely to the depletion of resources or pollution as major causes of rising poverty. Instead, it is forces such as the labor-saving nature of new technologies like robots, rising imports from low- and middle-income countries, and the capture of our income taxing system by corporations and the wealthy that have distorted our markets.

Specifically, as economist Arthur Okun has written, markets do not have automatic mechanisms to guarantee an equitable distribution of income and wealth:

Given the chance, [the market] would sweep away all other values, and establish a vending-machine society. The rights and powers that money should not buy must be protected with detailed regulations and sanctions, and with countervailing aids to those with low incomes. Once those rights are protected and economic deprivation is ended, I believe that our society would be more willing to let the competitive market have its place.

So, as this week rolls out, expect to hear many voices on the right argue that Francis is an unrealistic economic fool. In particular, expect to hear George Will’s arguments this week in the National Review echoed by the media. Here is a representative quote from Mr. Will: (emphasis by the Wrongologist)

Francis’s fact-free flamboyance reduces him to a shepherd whose selectively reverent flock, genuflecting only at green altars, is tiny relative to the publicity it receives from media…He stands against modernity, rationality, science and, ultimately, the spontaneous creativity of open societies in which people and their desires are not problems but precious resources. Americans cannot simultaneously honor him and celebrate their nation’s premises.

See what George Will did there? He says that climate denialism is pro-science, while belief in climate change is anti-science.

Know the enemy by their arguments.

Monday Wake Up Call – September 21, 2015

Are you familiar with the “Bad Bank” strategy? It is a new bank set up to buy the bad loans of a bank that has a significant amount of nonperforming assets. Those assets are purchased at market prices. If the assets remained on the original bank’s books, they would be forced to take big write-downs. So, the “good bank” sells the assets to the bad bank, and clears their balance sheet.

And the “bad bank” goes off to fail, be recapitalized, or liquidated. The shareholders and bondholders of the “bad bank” stand to lose money from this solution but its depositors will be bailed out by the government.

Occidental Petroleum (OXY) made a similar deal last November by spinning off California Resources, (CRC) and since then, most investors that bought into the deal got burned.

CRC held OXY’s oil-and-gas exploration assets in California. CRC is CA’s largest natural gas producer and its largest oil-and-gas acreage holder with operations in Los Angeles, San Joaquin, Ventura, and Sacramento. OXY was the big player in the Monterey Shale formation, which had been hyped as the largest reserves of oil in the US. But, in 2014, the US Energy Information Administration (EIA) downgraded the amount of OXY’s known reserves in CA. From Wolf Richter: (emphasis and brackets by the Wrongologist)

The LA Times spilled the beans last week [May 2014] that the EIA is set to severely downgrade the Monterey Shale in California in an upcoming report. Once thought to hold 13.7 billion barrels of technically recoverable oil, the EIA now believes only about 600 million barrels are accessible. Slashing technically recoverable estimates by 96% could be enough to kill off the shale revolution in California.

Six months later, OXY exited CA shale by spinning off 80.5% of CRC to OXY’s shareholders. CRC’s shares began trading on the NYSE on December 1, 2014. As part of the spinoff, CRC paid OXY a special dividend of $6 billion. To fund the dividend, CRC issued bonds totaling $5 billion and leveraged loans for the remainder. This debt now costs CRC about $330 million a year in interest.

Back in 2014, hedge funds were clamoring for energy spinoffs. They’d buy a big stake in the parent company and push the board to do a spinoff that entailed loading the spinoff up with debt to fund a fat special dividend back to the parent.

“Unlocking value,” is the Wall Street term for this kind of financial engineering. Wall Street then made sure that there were enough unwitting or yield-desperate buyers for the bonds. The hedge funds made their money, and moved on.

Then CRC reported its second quarter earnings, which showed a net loss of $68 million on revenues that had plunged 45% to $609 million. And on September 15, Moody’s slashed CRC’s corporate rating from Ba2 to B1, and the bonds from Ba2 to B2. All of it with “negative outlook”. Moody’s described CRC’s relatively high costs of production and interest costs totaling $31.71 per barrel of oil equivalent. It pointed to low oil prices that it didn’t expect “to improve materially in 2016.”

So in 2014, no investor realized that CRC’s reserves had been cut by 96%? Or, that their break-even cost per barrel was $31+?

This Cali deal is Straight Outta Enron.

Now the question is can CRC survive without having to resort to a debt restructuring, bankruptcy, and a total shareholder wipe-out?

These kinds of deals are best pulled off in a credit bubble. Low interest rates force some investors to chase yield, and the unwitting buyers that have these fruits of Wall Street’s labor in their portfolios are the ones who feel the pain. Wall Street will tell you that the dividend and spinoff were disclosed in advance, so it’s not “fraud” by the company. It’s just “stupidity” by yield-hungry investors.

Why do you care? These securities could easily be in your 401k, or in an ETF that you own directly, assuming that you are among the 48% of Americans that have investment accounts.

So it is time for We the People to wake up to Wall Street’s financial engineering and what masquerades as legalized robbery. To help with the wake up, here is John Lennon’s “Power to the People”:

You will note the nearly completed Twin Towers at the end of the video. For those who read the Wrongologist in email, you can view the video here.

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – September 20, 2015

Pope Francis, Russia’s President Putin and China’s President Xi walk into a bar…Well, it won’t be that type of week exactly, but all will be in the US over the next few days. There will be summits and mini-summits, and a few hallway meetings between them and individually, with Mr. Obama. But the game-changer is likely to be Pope Francis, who is bringing his message about Mr. Market, and how Mr. Market isn’t working for the average Joe. In fact, many Republicans are suspicious of the Pope:

Rep. Paul Gosar, (R-AZ) says he’s boycotting Pope Francis’ appearance before Congress. He said:

If the Pope wants to devote his life to fighting climate change then he can do so on his personal time.

Rep. Gosar, who has received campaign contributions of $12,500 from oil and gas companies and $28,850 from electric utilities, doesn’t believe in climate change. Apparently, he would rather the Pope devotes his speech to abortion, Planned Parenthood, and to the threatened religious liberties of County Clerks.

This Pope’s message causes discomfort for people on both sides of the aisle. Conservative Catholics used to welcome Francis’ predecessors ecstatically, and with open arms, but that was in the old days, when Popes were Popes:

Even when in the Reagan Library, today’s GOP candidates can’t duplicate St. Ronnie’s message:

The GOP debate brought the smell of roasted pig:

Views now differ on Paradise:

Somewhere, Bull Connor is Smiling

You don’t remember Bull Connor? He was Commissioner of Public Safety (chief cop) in Birmingham, Alabama when, in 1963 he used fire hoses and attack dogs against civil rights activists. The films of the confrontation and Connor’s disproportionate response, became an iconic image of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s. He became an international symbol of Southern racism.

Now, science has come up with a better, more efficient crowd control product. From the Daily Dot:

Imagine being soaked, head to toe, in a frothy mix of pureed compost, gangrenous human flesh, and road kill, and you might get some idea of what it’s like to be sprayed with Skunk, according to those who’ve had the misfortune of being doused.

A few police departments in the US, including the St Louis Metropolitan Police, have reportedly purchased the spray, a non-lethal riot-control weapon originally developed by the Israeli firm Odortec, and used first in the occupied West Bank in 2008 against demonstrators. The sticky fluid, which Palestinians say smells like a “mixture of excrement, noxious gas and a decomposing donkey,” is usually fired from armored vehicles using high-pressure water cannons.

Decomposing donkey? Where and when do you learn what THAT smells like?

It was used in Hebron on February 26, 2012 to disperse a crowd of an estimated 1,000 people which clashed with Israeli soldiers during a protest described as commemorating the anniversary of the Cave of the Patriarchs Massacre.

Mistral Security, based in Bethesda MD, offers Skunk products to US police and the military. According to the company’s website, they sell it using a number of delivery systems, including 60 ounce canisters with a range of 40 feet; a “skid sprayer” equipped with a 50 gallon tank and a 5 HP motor that can shoot over 60 feet at up to 7 gallons per minute; and a 40mm grenade that can be fired by a 12-gauge shotgun.

The company reports that Skunk is made from 100% food-grade ingredients and is 100% eco-friendly – harmless to both nature and people. From their website:

Applications include, but are not limited to, border crossings, correctional facilities, demonstrations and sit-ins. Decontamination soap is available to mitigate the odor.

So what we have here is another way that our police spend money to create citizen compliance. Police have an ethical problem: How do they control (or disperse) a crowd that gets unruly without causing injury?

In the past year, we have seen several examples of “comply or die” in cities around the US. Now, we see that the technology is evolving from Bull Connor’s days of attack dogs and fire hoses, to tear gas, rubber bullets and bean bags, and now, Skunk. Policing seems to be headed in a strange direction. You better do what you’re told, and not participate in any, you know, civil disobedience, like sit-ins, protests, demonstrations and such, or we will Skunk you, (or worse).

A fundamental Constitutional issue has emerged in police response to civil disobedience in the past few years. City property has been “privatized”, with the municipal corporation as the owner. Public space is not owned, it is supposed to be available to the public with only limited conditions. But, we now see a growing number of examples where police, mayors and municipalities are limiting access for the press, for demonstrators as well as for ordinary citizens to public spaces.

When our laws are manipulated in order to suppress a free press, or personal speech, it shows contempt for the entire idea of a free people or a government of laws. When our police continually purchase new weapons to insure compliance with police orders, peaceful protest is at risk.

Consider this: At Donald Trump’s Dallas rally on Monday night, Politico reports that as the mostly white attendees filed out, they clashed with 200 or so protesters, mostly black and Hispanic.

Dozens of police officers, including several on horseback, pushed protesters off arena property. After being pushed to the other side of the street, one protest leader encouraged the rest to arm their families and teach them to protect themselves:

You’re only going to get Martin Luther King so long before you get Malcolm X.

Our police should be careful what they wish for.

See you on Sunday.

Hello Texas: Jade Helm Ended, but Your Paranoia Continues

From Vox:

On Monday, teachers at the Irving Independent School District in Irving, Texas, had police arrest a 14-year-old student named Ahmed Mohamed for bringing to school a simple electronic clock he had built as an engineering project. Police escorted Mohamed out of school in handcuffs — photos of the arrest show him wearing a NASA T-shirt — and accused him of trying to build a bomb.

It wasn’t a bomb, it was a clock. Fourteen-year-old Ahmed Mohamed wanted to get noticed by his teachers. He loved robotics club in middle school and was searching for a similar niche in his first few weeks of high school. So, he built a digital clock, and brought it to school. It was a circuit board and power supply connected to a digital display. He showed it to his engineering teacher on Monday. The student picks up the story:

He was like, ‘that’s really nice’…I would advise you not to show any other teachers.’

Then during English class, the clock beeped. The English teacher kept the clock, and during sixth period, Mohamed was pulled out of class by the principal. Here is Mohamed’s story:

They took me to a room…with five officers in which they interrogated me and searched through my stuff and took my tablet and my invention…They were like, ‘So you tried to make a bomb?’ I told them no, I was trying to make a clock. But one cop responded, ‘it looks like a movie bomb to me.’

Mohamed told NBC-Dallas Fort Worth that he was taken to police headquarters, handcuffed and fingerprinted. Then on Wednesday, Irving Police Chief Larry Body said that Mohamed would not be charged with any wrongdoing:

We have no evidence to support that there was an intention to create alarm or cause people to be concerned…

So what have we learned?

• The engineering teacher gave Ahmed good advice: The teacher intuited that the training we now give to school teachers would kick in when a non-engineering teacher saw the clock.
• The English teacher confiscated the clock by picking it up and carrying it to her desk, but the school then waited until the 6th period to interrogate the student.
• Why the delay if they truly thought it was a bomb? Protocol probably prevents you from even touching it, and probably requires immediately calling 911.
• Five cops show up. Sounds like a lot, but they probably have to do that. It’s standard practice in most jurisdictions these days for school incidents because they don’t know the scope of the problem until they investigate.
• They bring the kid in. They know it’s not a bomb, even saying it looked like a movie prop. And unless there are facts not presented in this story, they had no evidence that it was intended to be a “hoax”.

The school principal’s response should be:

Look, I know you meant well, but here’s why you caused alarm. Please learn from it and don’t do it again.

Instead he’s marched off in handcuffs. And later, Ahmed Mohamed was suspended by the school for 3 days for a violation of the school’s conduct policy.

Once you realize that the school personnel didn’t act like people who thought they were in the presence of a bomb, then what was going on? It was something beyond profiling, which would be bad enough. They did this knowing he was innocent. Maybe they feared the reaction of parents when the story got out.

Here’s what parents should tell the school principal:

So a young, smart boy builds a thing most of us wouldn’t even attempt, and shows it off, and you say he should have known better?

Maybe Texans think that such power is not for children, it must be restricted to the great corporations. Lock up the boy wizard before he destroys us all with his magic time telling device!

The saddest part of Ahmed’s story was this line, from Ahmed’s father:

He’s vowed never to take an invention to school again.

We have a massive propaganda effort telling us that many Muslims are trying to do violence in America. It’s not surprising that some of their audience – including principals and police officers – believe this crap and let it affect their judgement.

Union-Busting at Pantex

Never heard of Pantex? It is the nation’s only nuclear weapons plant. The full name of the company is Consolidated Nuclear Security (CNS) Pantex. CNS is a combination of a who’s who of major defense contractors, including Lockheed Martin, Bechtel, and Booz Allen Hamilton. CNS took over Pantex in March, 2014.

The company assembles, disassembles, and tests nuclear weapon components for the US military. They also manage the storage and surveillance of plutonium pits. (Plutonium Pits? In Texas?)

Pantex is a union shop, and on August 29, more than 1,100 workers went on strike over CNS Pantex’ demand for health care concessions. CNS is also seeking the elimination of defined benefit pensions for new union members. In a statement, Council President Clarence Rashada said:

Wages are not the issue. Benefits, sick leave, medical coverage, prescription drugs, those are the issues.

Since work at Pantex involves exposure to dangerous chemicals and substances, the union is pushing back hard against CNS who is also seeking to shift greater health care costs onto its retirees.

The strike is the first in 45 years at Pantex, and it comes 18 months after CNS took over.

Let’s remember that Texas is a right-to-work state, so the union left one entry gate to Pantex free of picketers to allow managers and other employees to enter the plant without any commotion.

This is right up Scott Walker’s alley. The union-busting Republican governor of Wisconsin is on the campaign trail talking about preventing federal workers from collectively bargaining, creating a national right-to-work law and eliminating the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB).

And the Pantex union-busting is abetted by the Department of Energy (DOE). The union blames the DOE, arguing that a DOE rule capping worker benefits has put CNS and Pantex employees in untenable positions. By rule, CNS can’t offer employee benefits that would exceed the industry average by 5%. However, the industry baseline also includes manufacturers of cell phones and car parts, so the DOE is comparing labor costs on consumer goods and nuclear weapons, probably an Apple™ to warheads comparison.

Effectively shutting down Pantex over a labor rule that only affects 10% of DOE contractors also speaks volumes about leadership and priorities at the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), which supervises Pantex and CNS.

The Project on Government Oversight (POGO) reports that in the run-up to the government’s award of the Pantex contract to CNS, CNS claimed it could save taxpayers over $3 billion by cutting redundancies and consolidating management, but NNSA never validated the claim. POGO quotes from a GAO report about the NNSA’s evaluation of the CNS bid:

Did not clearly or completely describe expected benefits and costs…lacked key analyses and assumptions for cost savings estimates…[and] was also missing a description of the unquantified benefits CNS management might or might not offer.

So, maybe it’s a matter of “screw the government” by contractors big and experienced enough to know better. POGO says a series of recent reports have found that NNSA is skimping on upkeep for old buildings, using obsolete fire safety equipment at weapons sites, and relying on broken security sensors to protect uranium stockpiles.

CNS also runs the Y-12 facility at Oak Ridge TN, former home of the Manhattan Project. Y-12’s primary mission today is providing secure storage of nuclear material for both the US and other governments. The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists calls Y-12 a “Poster child for a dysfunctional nuclear weapons complex”, noting that although Y-12 has not produced weapons for 25 years, its annual budgets have increased by nearly 50% since 1997, to more than $1 billion a year.

POGO reported that the NNSA spent $50 million on new security systems at Y-12 but couldn’t find a way to get security guards and security sensors working in sync. The overhaul was a result of a July 2012 incident in which a then-82-year-old nun and two others broke into Y-12 to protest the production of nuclear weapons. They made it into the building where most of the US stockpile of highly enriched uranium is stored. The DOE Inspector General found:

Troubling displays of ineptitude in responding to alarms, failures to maintain critical security equipment, over reliance on compensatory measures, misunderstanding of security protocols, poor communications, and weaknesses in contract and resource management.

Follow-on security tests found that the guard force at Y-12 was cheating on evaluations.

You would think that if there’s one place where this cutting corners on safety and security would not be tolerated, it’s with nuclear weapons. CNS has demonstrated in its Y-12 and Pantex situations that competent nuclear weapons handling and security at nuclear weapons facilities should be governmental functions.

They are far too important to be left to a private contractor’s business decision.