The Wrongologist

From Public Shaming:

Tim Lambesis of Christian metal band As I Lay Dying was arrested last Tuesday night in a murder-for-hire plot. Apparently, he tried to hire a hit man to murder his wife, who was filing for divorce.

And what does Twitter light up with when fans hear that the lead singer of a band it likes attempted to KILL his ex? Well, they blame her! She must be a bitch who deserved to die.

True Christians will say they forgive Lambesis, but there is no forgiving these turds on Twitter.

As you read the Tweets, remember, these are fans of a CHRISTIAN band:

We are weaker mentally as a nation than we can possibly know.

What’s
Wrong Today:

Readers of
The Wrongologist blog believe that today’s version of capitalism no longer functions in a manner that makes
all stakeholders better off. Let’s remember that a firm’s stakeholders
include the shareholders, employees, customers, suppliers and the communities in
which the firm operates.

Take a look
at the ratio of corporate profits to GDP since 1950:

Without
the inconvenient interruption of the Great Recession, it is almost straight up
since 2000. Let’s also remember that we still have more than 11.5 million
Americans unemployed and that we have 3 million fewer jobs today than in 2008.

In
Big,
Bad and Wrong Ideas, the Wrongologist argued that the idea that mandates
that companies must maximize return to shareholders needs to be reassessed. We
cited the following:

• Today’s shareholders are the most mobile of
  corporate stakeholders:
  High frequency trading represents 70+% of today’s stock trading by volume. High
  frequency shareholders hold their positions for fractions of a second, so they
  are only interested in corporate strategies that maximize short-term profits
  and dividends.

• Professional
  funds managers own large chunks of equity in public firms. They have a free
  hand to get wealthy because they earn management fees tied to the fund’s size, without
  real responsibility for the longer term performance of the corporations whose
  equity they hold.

• Some
  companies even ignore votes by shareholders that turn directors out of office.
  So the power of small shareholders has diminished over time.

How
did the idea of maximizing shareholder value become enshrined in the business
lexicon?  Its intellectual underpinning
is a 1919 case decided in the Michigan Supreme Court called Dodge vs. Ford
Motor Company.

In 1916,
the Ford Motor Company had a capital surplus of $60 million. The price of the
Model T had been successively cut over the years while workers’ wages had increased.
Henry Ford wanted to end special dividends for shareholders in favor of
investments in new plants that would enable Ford to increase production, while
continuing to cut the costs and prices of his cars. Ford declared:

The minority shareholders objected to this
strategy, demanding that Ford stop reducing his prices since they could barely
fill current orders for cars, and to continue to pay out special dividends from the
capital surplus in lieu of his proposed plant investments.

Two
brothers, John Francis Dodge and Horace Elgin Dodge, owned 10% of the company,
among the largest shareholders next to Ford. They sued, won in a lower court,
and the case went to the Michigan Supreme Court.

The
Michigan Supremes held that a business corporation is organized primarily for
the profit of the stockholders, as opposed to the community or its employees.
They found that the directors had to work toward achieving that end, that they
could not reduce profits or fail to distribute profits to stockholders in order
to benefit the public.

Ford was
ordered to pay an extra dividend of $39 million. He bought out the minority
shareholders instead. The Dodge brothers used the money they received from the
case to expand their competitor to Ford, the Dodge Brothers Company,
which was originally an auto parts company that was sold to the Chrysler
Corporation in 1928.

The case isn’t about maximizing profits.
That was mentioned only in passing in the opinion. As Lynn Stout of the UCLA
School of Law has written,
the case and the decision are about breach of fiduciary duty to the Dodge
brothers.

As the majority
shareholder in the Ford Motor Company, Ford stood to reap a much greater
economic benefit from any dividends the company paid than John and Horace Dodge
did. But Ford was at odds with the Dodge brothers, since they wished to set up
their own car company to compete with Ford (as they eventually did). What Ford really
wanted was to deprive them of liquid funds for investment.

Stout concludes:
(emphasis by the Wrongologist)
 

The US
Supreme Court has not decided a case about the purpose of the corporation and
neither has the State of Delaware, the most corporation-friendly location in
the US. So, for all our MBA friends and fellow-traveler legislators who piously
speak of maximizing shareholder value as part of the natural law or as its own
religion, please take a step back and reflect.

In 2005, Joel
Bakan published The
Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power. Bakan’s thesis is that
corporations are indeed dedicated to maximizing shareholder wealth without
regard to law, ethics, or the interests of society.

Bakan argues
that this means corporations are dangerously psychopathic entities (that can
donate unlimited amounts to politicians, according to Citizens United).

Bottom-Line: We need new and different ideas to inform our effort to steer the ship
of state to higher GDP growth and full employment.

We need to end our love affair with unrestrained, free-market
capitalism and install a better-regulated variety.  

How
about tying executive performance to adequate returns for all STAKEHOLDERS rather than to maximum return to
shareholders?

What’s
Wrong Today:

Designing gadgets
with 3D printers is nothing new. But prior to August, 2012, no one had ever
used an at-home printer to help build an assault rifle:

The firearm in
question was a .22-caliber rifle developed last year by amateur
gunsmith Michael Guslick. Using his Stratasys 3D printer and blueprints
downloaded from the internet, Guslick
successfully printed the lower receiver of an AR-15 rifle. The rest of
his rifle was assembled from commercial off-the-shelf (mostly metal) parts.

Legally, Guslick printed
a firearm. Under the Gun Control Act of 1968, the receiver is what determines
whether a gun is a gun. No receiver, no gun. Guslick didn’t violate any laws
surrounding the manufacturing of the gun without a license, since he made it for
personal use. If he attempted to sell it, or opened up a factory producing the
weapons, he’d need authorization from the government.

Now, 9
months later, Defense Distributed has produced the world’s first fully 3-D
printed gun. It’s been tested, and it works.

According
to Danger Room, Defense Distributed’s
founder, Cody Wilson, fired one round from the weapon, which Wilson calls the
Liberator. In a video, after pulling the trigger, the printable handgun recoils
backwards as a single bullet blasts out. Blueprints of the gun were made available for download.

Wilson
used an $8,000 Stratasys 3-D printer to produce the gun. He told Danger Room:

Next, Wilson
plans to release barrels capable of firing nine-millimeter and .22 caliber
bullets. At one point during testing in recent weeks, one of the barrels
exploded, but the design works.

(Defense Distributed’s 3-D printed gun. Source: Wired)

Questions
continue regarding whether Wilson’s gun is legal. On Sunday, Sen. Charles
Schumer (D-NY) became the most prominent lawmaker to call for banning 3-D printed
handguns.
Schumer said:

Schumer proposes
updating the Undetectable Firearms Act of 1988, which bans guns that can defeat
airport security metal detectors, to include printable gun magazines. The law exempts
licensed manufacturers to produce plastic guns for use as models and
prototypes.

According
to Wikipedia, Cody Wilson espouses crypto-anarchist
views. He was named one of the 15 most dangerous people by Wired Magazine. It’s a shame he doesn’t
use his skills to help mankind. And who does a 3D printed gun help? How is it a
positive contribution to society? What good can come of this invention?

Finally, did
someone say plastic bullets?

There you
have it, plastic training bullets every bit as deadly as the real thing, as
long as you are within approximately 50 ft of your target.

The primary
use of these untraceable devices is likely to be by terrorists and criminals.

Think
about the current legal loopholes:  It is
legal to make your own firearms in the US. It is legal to purchase plastic
bullets for “training”. It is legal to shoot a plastic weapon.

The real
question is why would you?

In any
city, you can buy a gun on the block. You get a throw away weapon. It happens
every day all across America. That is the niche the 3D printed plastic weapon is competing with,
the untraceable weapon for crime.

In
the case of an all-plastic gun that you could make at home, the government has
a vital interest in trying to control the product. Gun owners will dismiss it
as a toy, since they already own real guns.

But
there is also a vital and growing sub-culture that really, really wants America to
have untraceable weapons. On Monday, we said connect the dots. This is another in a growing, troubling group of anti-American sub-cultures.

BTW,
the Undetectable Firearms Act expires on December 9, 2013.

Want
to bet it is renewed?

What’s Wrong Today:

Let’s connect a few dots today.

Dot #1: Salon
reported that a group armed with loaded rifles, led by former marine Adam
Kokesh is planning to march in Washington DC on July 4th. From the
groups’ Facebook site:

The Facebook site warns: (emphasis by the Wrongologist)

Kokesh is a former Marine who was discharged in 2007 after violating
the military’s code against engaging in political activity while in uniform. His
recent tweets include:

So, Kokesh’s message is: We dare you.

This is sure to go well.

Dot #2: You may have seen something about the Fairleigh
Dickinson University poll
reporting reaction to the statement: “in
the next few years, an armed revolution may be necessary to protect our
liberties.” From strongly agree to strongly disagree:

The survey was conducted by phone from April 22
through April 28, 2013 using a randomly selected sample of 863 registered
voters nationwide. Fairleigh Dickenson says that the error attributable to sampling
has a range of  +/-3.4 percentage points.A

You can dismiss these results due to small sample size, but when
nearly half the self-identified
members of one of our two major political parties in any poll thinks there is a
real possibility of “armed revolution”—particularly when it’s the
supposedly conservative party—we’ve got real problems.

Dot #3: The NRA’s new president, James Porter, talks about
the importance of the 2nd Amendment as a way to ensure the American
people will be able to “resist tyranny” (i.e., shoot and kill law enforcement
officers, members of the U.S. armed services) who might disagree with their
definition of their essential “liberties”, at some undefined point in the
future.

Mr. Porter has called Barack Obama a “fake president”.

What’s with
conservatives who combine extremist language about their political opponents
with violent language about their political options? The absolute minimum
we should expect from the Republican Party and the leaders of the American conservative
movement is to condemn this “right to revolution”, and those who espouse it.

Should we conclude that the GOP is a fascist, treasonous
organization, an enemy of American democracy? They can walk us back from
that judgment if the Republican leadership says:

It’s ironic that people who surely think of themselves as patriots
are busily building an impression that loyalty to their country is strictly
contingent on following only the laws and policies they favor. And if it can’t
be achieved by ballots, then they are fine with achieving it by bullets.

Republican politicians of all stripes should be repudiating these
people instead of celebrating them. They should not accept their money and
support, and should never use their rhetoric.

We need to get right in the faces of people who assert a “right
to revolution” and make sure they explicitly acknowledge that armed revolution is not an
Independence Day parade. It means spilling the blood and taking the
lives of Americans, police officers and members of the military.

The thing these would-be traitors hang their hats on is the first line of the Declaration of
Independence: “When in the Course of human events, it becomes
necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected
them with another . . .”

But that doesn’t apply. There is no “right” to revolution in a
200+ year old democracy with functioning democratic institutions, where
presidential elections are held every 4 years and congressional elections every
2 years. You get to elect almost every public official from the school board (directly)
to (indirectly) the Supreme Court.

These conservative extremists confuse “tyranny”, that
is, oppression by a dictatorial regime, with being outvoted by a majority in a
democracy and having to live with the consequences. They didn’t get what they wanted at the ballot box, so now they want
to resort to bullets.

Conservatives have to repudiate this crap. They have to separate
themselves from those who wrongly believe they are vindicating the “original intent”
of the constitution, or defending their property rights, or exalting their God,
or protecting the unborn, all via armed revolution.

Wherever it’s coming from, it needs to stop, and you know who
you are.

If William F. Buckley could “excommunicate” Robert Welch and the
John Birch Society from the conservative movement back in the 1960s, today’s conservative
leaders can certainly do the same.

 

Happy Cinco de Mayo: Guacamole for everyone!

Syrian Debate:

Dow rockets up:

Money for Nothin’

Republicans conflicted about Immigration:

What’s
Wrong Today:

On April 27, the Virginia
Pilot Online had this thread that begins as a laugh out loud exchange between
commenters about regulating the use of pressure cookers. Then, like everything
on the web, it turns.

Another blogger
called this exchange, ‘weapons grade stupid”:

Category: Readers’
Opinions Subscribe to this blog

_
27 APRIL 2013 | 5:00 AM

Putting a lid on it

Look at the damage pressure cookers can
do in the wrong hands. The Boston Marathon tragedy and use of pressure cookers by
terrorists for their explosive devices proves that pressure cookers should be controlled.

Even if they’re only used in the kitchen,
pressure cookers can be hazardous. We should limit the public’s ability to obtain or own a
pressure cooker with a capacity of more than six quarts, and we should approve such a purchase only
after the buyer undergoes a complete background check.

Who has a need or right to own a
23-quart-capacity pressure cooker? And, of course, the individual making and exploding the bomb
and enhancing its destructive force with a pressure cooker is not responsible for what
happens with it; it’s the fault of the evil manufacturers and of the stores that sell the pressure
cookers.

Richard King

Virginia Beach

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BED, BATH AND BEYOND….
Submitted by James King, Chesapeake, VA on Sat, 04/27/2013 at 8:18
am.

…will be lobbying congress about this.
I know this is no joking matter but you never know what the government is going to do next.

PRESSURE COOKERS
Submitted by ML Manning, Virginia Beach, VA on Sat, 04/27/2013 at
8:49 am.

Pressure cookers should also be
registered with both state and federal government. On the other hand, we might should just make
them illegal for everyone except law enforcement and the military.

RIGHT ON!
Submitted by John T Roberts, Norfolk, VA on Sat, 04/27/2013 at
8:41 pm.

Right on, Brother! And any tin-foil
hatted, black helicopter-fearing racist homophobe who thinks reasonable steps to register dangerous
pressure cookers that kill women and children is a plot to deny well-cooked vegetables to
law-abiding citizens is just a freak! We don’t need no stinking pressure cookers! There will still be
well-cooked vegetables! Tyranny ain’t happenin’, Dude!

NOT ENOUGH
Submitted by William Tabor, Chesapeake, VA on Sat, 04/27/2013 at
9:02 am.

Its not enough to require background
checks at household goods retailers, we need to close the flea market loophole as well.

AND…

Submitted by Ryan P Burton, Virginia Beach, VA on Sat, 04/27/2013
at 11:20 am.

The organic farmers market’s… Garage
sale loopholes… and if that does not slow down these thugs, next will be the rationing of
sugar when you borrow it from thy neighbor! We must stop this incessant carnage and
the only way to control it is by central planning!

EXACTLY!

Submitted by John T Roberts, Norfolk, VA on Sat, 04/27/2013 at
8:26 pm.

If ONLY ONE CHILD can be saved from
fleas…

A THOUGHT

Submitted by Frank Papcin, Va.bch., VA on Sat, 04/27/2013 at 9:59
am.

–most of you think these posts are
ridiculous,–but the sad truth of the matter is that these posts are no more ridiculous then the words
coming out of you great leader in WASHINGTON.

–what good are new laws if you don’t
enforce the laws we already have.

–why don’t you punish the people that
use guns in crimes the way they should?

–why don’t you help the sick people the
way they need the help?

–why don’t you stop demonizing all the
people that don’t agree with you?

–why don’t a lot of thing that will
never happen. why don’t you stop teaching you children to hate in schools?–why not just teach your
children the basics that they need instead of teaching them what YOU think they should learn about
the many other things YOU think they should know,–in spite of their parents.

–social engineering
is not for the teachers in schools.–It belongs to the parents and

churches,–camps,–social
programs outside of the schools.

–no student should be taught that
blowing up women and children can be justified for any reason.–not in this country.–but it is.

–no professors should be demonizing any
political party in this country,–but it is.–even the president is doing that.–what do you
expect the children to do when it’s in their faces every day?–every where?–don’t they learn by
looking and seeing and hearing?–then doing.

–hatred is taught!–but you don’t want
to hear that–do you?

Submitted by Timothy P Delaney, Virginia Beach, VA on Sat,
04/27/2013 at 7:07 pm.

-no student should be taught that blowing
up women and children can be justified for any reason.–not in this country.–but it
is.” Where exactly is this being taught in our
country? I mean, a discussion of World War II in aclassroom might raise the history of the
bombing of cities like London, Tokyo, Dresden and of course Hiroshima and Nagasaki… is that
what you are getting at? Because I cannot imagine a discussion in a history class regarding
WWII that would not mention at least a couple of those instances….

NOT WW II

Submitted by John T Roberts, Norfolk, VA on Sat, 04/27/2013 at
8:24 pm.

Mr. Papcin may have in mind a story that’s
been on Fox News the last few days. The story involves a Tennessee high school textbook
which critics say legitimizes acts of terrorism. I think the critics have a point. You can
read about the controversy here:

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2013/04/27/textbook-case-bias-parents-say-school-reader-isbiased-vs-israel/

I READ YOUR LINK

Submitted by Timothy P Delaney, Virginia Beach, VA on Sat,
04/27/2013 at 8:53 pm.

I do not believe that that one sentence
within the context of the paragraph could possibly be extrapolated to mean that teachers are
justifying blowing up innocents. First, I do not believe that a fair reading of the piece would
lead one to the conclusion that anyone is justifying the murder of innocents. Second, I do not
believe that an elective class in one particular district can be used to create an impression that
there is some widespread problem of teachers justifying the murder of innocents.

I understand that it would be fodder for
those who are the core Fox audience, but really, could not the same argument be made for the
bombing of cities and civilians in WWII?

JOHN

Submitted by Timothy P Delaney, Virginia Beach, VA on Sat,
04/27/2013 at 10:20 pm.

I purposely noted the bombing of London
in WWII, because both sides engaged in what can only be described as terror bombing.
Sure, there were notional military /industrial targets around, but lets not try to obscure what
it was – an attempt to terrorize and beat down the population’s will. And both sides would
find a way to justify….As for the sentence in question, I
thought that while it was probably meant to spur thought/conversation, I myself could not begin
to equate the two. In war, innocents sometimes get killed and it is an accident -in terrorism,
innocents get killed and it is the objective. Obviously, one is far worse.

NOTHING FITS

Submitted by Bruce D Price, Va. Beach, VA on Sat, 04/27/2013 at
2:13 pm.

23 quarts? Would something that big fit
in a backpack? I’ve read that it would not. There would be a big bulge and everyone would think,
uh-oh, a bomb! I’m just been looking at videos which
claim to show that the Boston Marathon event was a fake.

Perhaps the most profound commentary was
from a Nevada politician who read the journalistic Code of Ethics. That’s the one where
reporters swear to tell the truth and report the facts, in order to protect their communities from
tyranny, etc.

Another commentator made the point, as he
examined pictures of a victim without a leg who was not bleeding a drop, that he should
be able to call his local paper and say look at this picture, it proves fraud. But he knows
it’s useless because the local paper belongs to the White House. On a more optimistic note, another
commentator claims that the public is getting smarter, and the hoaxes will be harder to pull off.

I SEE

Submitted by Al Markowitz, Norfolk, VA on Sat, 04/27/2013 at 3:57
pm.

your foil hat is working. . .

YOUR SARCASM DETECTOR

Submitted by William Tabor, Chesapeake, VA on Sat, 04/27/2013 at
8:08 pm.

needs realignment.

ONE HAS TO WONDER JUST HOW CLEVER THIS LETTER WRITER

Submitted by Lillian Jane Massey, Norfolk, VA on Sat, 04/27/2013
at 6:58 pm.

One has to wonder just how clever this
letter writer would be, as well as most the posters here, had they lost a loved one, lost a leg, a
foot an arm, a child, a mother or father in that Boston bombing. If you were friends, relatives,
even just acquaintances of any of those people personally assaulted by the bombs, would
you all really be this insensitive?

I understand tongue-in-cheek,
facetiousness and snarkiness, but considering the people who lost an awful lot at that site two
Mondays ago, I personally feel the only thing I really don’t understand is poor taste. Being so glib about such a sad, painful,
hurtful event for so many Bostonians personally, not to mention our entire country, the
letter-writer and most of you who responded to that letter give poor taste a new, much more pathetic
meaning.

DOES IT HAVE TO BE…

Submitted by John T Roberts, Norfolk, VA on Sat, 04/27/2013 at
9:02 pm.

Does it have to be “that Boston
bombing”?

I would imagine the letter writer, and
most of the commenters here, have “lost a loved one, lost a leg, a foot an arm, a child, a mother
or father” in some manner that is analogous to the Boston tragedy.

In my own case, I once knew someone who
was murdered, members of my family have died of horrific diseases, friends of family have
committed suicide, and someone I loved burned to death in an auto accident. Most people
can make similar claims.

So maybe it’s not so glib or in poor
taste to exploit the Boston bombing to make a point about gun control advocacy.

In any case, I’ve seen enough in life to
be truly opposed to gun control and the philosophies that support it.

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What’s
Wrong Today:

ADP’s
private payrolls jobs report shows a gain of 119,000
private sector jobs for April 2013. This is the weakest monthly ADP report of
private sector job growth since August 2012. ADP’s report does not
include government or public jobs.

If
Friday’s official unemployment report from the BLS matches ADP’s, it would indicate that
once again, job growth is not enough to
keep up with population growth, much less cut in to unemployment. When
the BLS report comes out, most expect to see that government job growth will be
negative, as the Sequester begins to take a toll.

Remember
that the US needs about 120,000 jobs per month, just to keep up with population growth, given current
low labor participation rates.

Speaking
of low labor participation rates, here is a great chart that looks at the
people who left the labor force in March 2013 by age group:

Source:
WSJ

The share of the
population either working or looking for work in March, 2013 hit its lowest
level since 1979.
This is called the participation rate, which now stands at 63.3%, down from 66%
when the recession began.

That
represents about 7 million workers who are now “missing” from
the labor force.

Although
the 16-24 age group make up a large slice of the working-age population, they
are becoming much less likely to work. The labor force participation among 16-
to 24-year-olds was 66% in 2000; it is now 54% (BLS).

This
is caused by declining rates of employment among high school grads. More young
people are going on for higher education in part to avoid the brutal job
market, particularly because employers
are passing on hiring teenagers for more experienced employees.

The
Great Recession and longer life expectancy have caused older Americans to
postpone retirement. The participation rate among people 55 and older is at a
50-year high. That has added about 1.2 million older workers to the labor
force, offsetting some of the decline among other age groups.

But
the focus on the labor force participation rate obscures what’s really missing
from the economy: Jobs.

Nearly four years
into the recovery, the US still employs close to three million fewer people
than when the recession began in December 2007. Nearly 12 million people remain
unemployed, 40% have been unemployed for more than six months.

The
surplus of prospective workers is so large that employers have the luxury of
waiting for the ideal candidate (meaning someone who already has the exact job)
to show up. The automated systems that score resumes also drive this by
rejecting anyone who is not a precise fit.


But technology is also having a more general impact: Many companies simply
decide to wait and leave positions unfilled, letting other workers carry the
load.

They can do this partly because technology is automating more jobs and tasks, allowing fewer workers to do more. Of course, this isn’t the only reason behind increased productivity. Multiple companies also try and make sure that their working environments are positive and supportive to make sure that employees are able to work happily. By using HIPOs management software, employers are able to ensure high potiential employees feel mentored and supported to reach their full working potential, increasing business productivity. Also, producitivity can be increased by efficient communication. Many businesses are now looking at SharePoint Alert Plus, which you can learn more here about, which automatically sends customized and conditional email notifications to keep everyone in the loop. Employee productivity grew 6.7% from 2008 to the start of 2012, while GDP was only 1.2% higher at the start of 2012 than it was in 2008. This means that employers needed 5.5% fewer employees.

Meanwhile,
our population continues to grow. It is growing by about 140,000 each month (4%
larger now than at the end of 2008).

This
is really the elephant in the room that no one talks about. Technology is
getting better and better, and things are likely to become even more difficult
for prospective workers.

The
bottom line is that in a slack labor market, employers have no incentive to
invest in training. They can wait for the perfect candidate or rely more on technology.
Too many people are being left behind.

A 2011 Accenture
survey found only 21% of US employees receiving any employer-provided formal
training in the past five years.

Peter
Cappelli, a professor at Wharton and former co-director of the
National Center on the Educational Quality of the Workforce during the Bush and
Clinton administrations has written a book, Why
Good People Can’t Get Jobs
(2012, Wharton Digital Press) that describes this phenomena.

Cappelli
points the finger at two interrelated factors: The process that companies are
using to identify potential hires, and their refusal to offer training or on-boarding
training for new employees.

Cappelli
explains that automated hiring software makes it easier for companies to weed
out applicants than ever before. All they need is a piece of code that can
parse application materials for the right keywords.

The result
is that firms either get the perfect hire, or none at all. A money quote from
Cappelli:

Today, in
many industries, on the job training has become a relic, with companies
increasingly fearful of investing time and money to train employees who can
then be poached by competitors. This causes a spiral where employees and
candidates increasingly have to use their own time and money to acquire the
skills that they think
employers might want.

That situation
isn’t ideal for anyone: Not just for the workers who end up going into their pockets
to get a shot at getting hired, but also for companies who can’t control the
training and ensure its quality or value to the firm.

Small
wonder, then, that Cappelli concludes his book with the observation that:

Amen.

We
hear corporations say they “give back” to their communities through media-friendly
charitable contributions.

If
companies truly cared about their communities or this country, they would put
these efforts (and their money) where
it would give back to all, through sustained job creation and on the
job training.

What’s
Wrong Today:

Yesterday
we asked the questions: Are we certain that sarin was used in Syria? If it was
used, which side used it?

What if
the alleged sarin use is a Red Herring to draw us into a mistake?

Complicating
Mr. Obama’s stumble towards a decision is the unclear situation on the ground
in Syria. The fact is that the only
effective rebel forces are Islamist extremists, and the best fighters
of that group have sworn allegiance to Al-Qaeda. While the US media was
screaming about chemical weapons, The
NYT reported on the
Syrian rebels. Here are quotes: (emphasis by the Wrongologist)

The Times goes on to say:

(Moon of Alabama reports that the cited article is the first to be written for the Times
by Ben Hubbard, an Arabic speaker, who used to report for the AP. Previously,
most NYT pieces on Syria were written by Anna Barnard in Lebanon. Barnard
speaks Russian not Arabic, and her reports often seem to come directly from the
sectarian Sunni Hariri press office.)

Hubbard
concludes that many rebels and opposition activists complain about the Western
focus on Islamist groups, some even dismissing the opposition’s ideological
differences. He quotes: (emphasis by the Wrongologist)

When the rebellion
began, defectors from the government’s secular army formed the vanguard. The
rebel movement has since grown to include fighters with a wide range of views,
including Qaeda-aligned jihadists seeking to establish an Islamic emirate,
political Islamists inspired by the Muslim Brotherhood and others who want an
Islamic-influenced legal code like that found in many Arab states.

From the
start of the revolt, the Syrian government has sought to portray the rebels as
terrorists carrying out an international plot to weaken the country. (As did Mubarak and Gaddafi)

The rise
of the extremist groups has strengthened its case and increased support among
Syrians who fear that a rebel victory could mean the end of the secular Syrian
state.

This is the landscape President Obama
confronts as
he considers if the red line was crossed and how to respond if it was crossed.
Few of the rebel groups share the political vision of the United States or
have the military might to push it forward.

Assad’s Syrian
team recognizes that the US is worried that it has few natural allies in the
armed opposition and has tried to exploit that by trying to convince, or
frighten, Washington into staying out of the fight. At every turn they promote
the notion that the alternative to Mr. Assad is an extremist Islamic state.

Steven
Heydemann, a senior adviser at the United States
Institute of Peace,
which works with the State Department, acknowledged that the current momentum
toward radicalism could be hard to reverse. The challenge, he said, is to end
the conflict before:

What to do? The
Administration has no illusions about engaging with the Assad regime. They know
it must go, but they are also very reticent to support the more hard-line
rebels. So, Assad must go, but the
only forces opposing him must not be allowed to replace him.

This
is what Washington can’t figure out and what may be out of their hands. The situation
on the ground may be more dependent on moves by Saudi Arabia and the Cooperation Council for the Arab States
of the Gulf
vs. Iran, Assad and Hezbollah.

If
this becomes Sunnis vs. Shias, what card should we play in a religious war?

Russia
backs President Assad and is suspicious of interventions in other countries’
civil disorders, partly because it faces civil disorders at home.

US
interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan offer cautionary lessons. Like those
countries, we do not fully understand the character of the Syrian opposition,
whose factions are currently united mainly by their desire to remove Assad.

As in
Egypt and Libya, those factions will likely find ways to conflict with each
other after Assad is gone.

Israel
thinks it benefits by a sustained conflict between the Sunni, Shiite and
Alawites, that a Sunni-Shia regional war just weakens Israel’s enemies and keeps
Israel as the only nuclear power in the region.

Would
enforcement of a no-fly zone, securing of the WMD and creation of a “safe” zone
solve any of these questions?

Very doubtful.

It
all comes back to the cliché: The US fears Assad’s chemical weapons “falling
into the wrong hands”. In other words, we are frightened that these chemicals
might end up in the armory of the very rebels, (but especially the Islamists),
that Washington, London, Paris, Qatar and Saudi Arabia support today.

And
if these are the “wrong hands”, then presumably the weapons in Assad’s armory
are currently in the “right hands”.

Well,
unless he used them.

When
you have a quandary like this, just ask the question: What would President Bush do?

 

What’s
Wrong Today:

Mr. Obama
told reporters at his news conference yesterday that despite the American
intelligence assessment last week that there was evidence that chemical weapons
had been used in Syria, the evidence had not yet crossed his “red line” for a
change of American strategy in Syria.

If
investigations prove that the Syrian government had used chemical weapons in the
conflict, Mr. Obama said:

So, has
Syria crossed the “red line” that warrants US military action? Has it not? The
political establishment in the United States is at odds about it. 

From The New York Times:

Immediately
afterwards, Obama’s Secretary of Defense, Chuck Hagel, said: “Suspicions are
one thing; evidence is another.”

The debate regarding whether the Syrian
government used Sarin is really an argument on whether the US should invade
Syria, since Mr. Obama has stated that use of chemical weapons was a “red line”
that, if crossed, would invoke an American military response. 

The usual suspects,
led by Sens. John McCain (R-AZ) and Lindsay Graham (R-SC), called for US
military intervention in Syria on Sunday’s Face the Nation.

McCain said:

Graham
said:

I don’t know where Sen. Beavis has been
for the last couple of years, but
Syria is already a failed State. He and his wing-man, Sen. Butt-Head, along
with the rest of the Neo Cons, need to quit trying to get us involved in yet
another Middle East adventure.  

The Pentagon estimates it would take
75,000 ground troops just to secure Syria’s chemical weapon stockpile. The troops don’t have to be American,
they might come from Middle Eastern nations, like Jordan or Turkey with some Western
advisors. However, the tanks and aircraft that would first have to quickly
reduce Assad’s conventional forces would have to come from NATO nations and
from the US in particular, since no one else has the capability. 

McCain wants the US: To
create a no-fly zone which would entail massive strikes against Assad’s air
defense system, followed by boots on the ground to secure Syria’s chemical
weapons. This would require a ground invasion and post-invasion “occupation”.

This would turn Syria
into Syraq.

Back to
the Sarin: The White House believes the chain of custody
on the blood samples that that tested positive for sarin is
muddled, raising the possibility that the samples could have been tampered with.
Another possibility is that the victims were exposed to the nerve agent in some
way that didn’t involve an attack, for example, being in (or near) a chemical
weapons facility at which the Sarin leaked.

Cheryl Rofer previously wrote:  (emphasis by the Wrongologist)

In the current Syrian
case, was it sarin? There are photos of rescuers and medics and they are not in
hazmat suits. But there are no reports of medics affected by exposure, so maybe
we should take the provenance of these samples with a huge grain of salt.

There is the question
of why Assad would use a weapon of mass destruction in tiny amounts. Foreign Policy
wrote:

From a military
perspective, it might make sense to use chemical weapons in a trial, but why
would the Syrian regime just put it in one grenade here or on one rocket
launcher? It’s not the way you’d expect a military to act.

Finally, the NYT
quoted Syrian
rebels saying that the chemical weapons attack took place in Syrian government controlled territory
and that 16 Syrian government soldiers died as a result of the attack,
along with 10 civilians plus a hundred more injured.

So, was a Red
Line crossed, or is this a Red Herring, used to lure the US into a policy error?

Since President
Obama has stated that use of chemical weapons by the Syrian government would be
a “game-changer,” anyone who wants
American intervention in the Syrian civil war has a motive to make the case
that their government has used chemical weapons. Faking the evidence is
all too easy.

More than
100,000 people have been killed in Syrian fighting. Their civil war endangers
the peace in surrounding countries, who are also taking in Syrian refugees,
whose lives have also been seriously disrupted. It is already a human
catastrophe. Should the US intervene for a single use of chemical weapons that
injured or killed a dozen or so people? Or a hundred?

Something smells
wrong here. It all seems contrived to rush the US and its allies down a path to
military intervention which would ensnare us in yet another long war and
occupation against Muslim people in the Middle East.

So,
how about the media doing its job this time?

Let’s press the Grahams and McCains
and others who favor intervention for details on what it will look like, how it
will be funded, personnel implicated along with some “what happens if”
questions.

Let’s try to understand the confused
situation on the ground in Syria:

Syrian
Shias, who are only 15% of Syria’s population but who
comprise most of the armed opposition to Assad, are in league with Iran and
Hezbollah.

Syrian
Sunnis, who are 75% of Syria’s population, are backed
by Saudi Arabia and the Cooperation Council for the Arab States
of the Gulf
.

So,
it’s Saudi and the Gulf states vs. Iran, Assad and Hezbollah.

We
have to hope that Jordan (95% Sunni), Lebanon (27% Sunni, 27% Shia) remain
neutral. Jordan was neutral during the Gulf War.

So, should the US take sides in a
religious war?
Imagine
if someone outside the US took sides on an issue between the Evangelicals
(26.3%) the Catholics (23.9%).

In case anyone has forgotten, the
last time we ran down this road in Iraq, we took sides with the Shia (65% of
population).

How has that turned out?

 

(Tomorrow,
Part II: More about the unclear situation on the ground in Syria)

What’s
Wrong Today:

Our military prison
at Guantanamo Bay is experiencing a moral crisis. Not because the US is holding
166 prisoners, 86 of whom were cleared years ago for transfer back to their
home countries by a military tribunal, but because 100 of them are now engaging
in a hunger strike. From today’s NYT:

Nearly 40 Navy
nurses, corpsmen and specialists have arrived at the military prison at Guantanamo
Bay, Cuba, to augment the efforts of the local medical personnel and help carry
out the force-feedings of inmates.

The military’s
response to the hunger strike has revived complaints by medical ethics groups
that contend that mentally competent prisoners should not be force-fed if they decide
not to eat.

Last week, the
president of the American Medical Association, Dr. Jeremy A. Lazarus, wrote
a letter to Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel saying that any doctor who
participated in forcing a prisoner to eat against his will was violating:

Dr. Lazarus also
noted that the AMA endorses the World Medical
Association’s Tokyo Declaration, a 1975 statement forbidding doctors to use
their medical knowledge to facilitate torture. The statement says that if a
prisoner makes “an unimpaired and rational judgment” to refuse nourishment, “he
or she shall not be fed artificially.”

The military’s
policy, however, is that it can and should preserve the life of a detainee by
forcing him to eat if necessary. Lt. Col. Samuel House, prison spokesman, said:

Enteral feeding means
feeding via feeding tube.

For the past three months,
a majority of the 166 men imprisoned at Guantánamo Bay have been on hunger
strike. Men have lost as much as 40 pounds. Some are too weak to move.

The hunger strike expanded
among prisoners after a raid
this month in which guards confined protesting detainees to their cells.

Prisoners, through
their lawyers, cite a search for contraband on Feb. 6, during which they say
Korans were handled in a way they found offensive. The military says the Koran
search followed routine procedures.

The
Daily Beast reports that Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) sent a letter to
President Obama urging him to renew efforts to remove the 86 detainees cleared
for transfer, which she stressed has taken on greater urgency because of the
hunger strike.

As she wrote to the
president, Red Cross monitors who have visited with the men at Guantánamo
informed her that the prisoners’ desperation was at an “unprecedented” level.

So, why are these men
enduring a life-threatening protest? It seemingly stems from the Obama Administration’s
inability to end indefinite detention
without charge or trial, which, for most of Guantanamo’s remaining 166
prisoners, has entered its 12th year. This looks particularly unjust
for those 86 men the Obama Administration has cleared for release from Guantanamo.

The most direct
limitation on Mr. Obama’s ability to successfully close the prison is
self-inflicted: a ban by the US on transfers
to Yemen, which 90 of the men at Guantanamo call home. The ban was
imposed following an attempted attack in 2009 by the so-called Underwear Bomber.

Mr. Obama must make a
political calculation: Is expedient to ignore the hunger strike? To ignore his promise
to close Guantanamo? To ignore the findings of his military tribunal that 86
people could be released?

But, in doing so, he
would be ignoring a more serious moral calculation: The moral calculus involves what America’s culpability will be if and
when we see several deaths in Guantanamo.

From the Daily Beast’s
Baher Azmy:

The
Guardian reported about UK resident Shaker
Aamer, the last British resident being kept at the center. Aamer said that
authorities will soon see fatalities as a result of the current action: “I
cannot give you numbers and names, but people are dying here,” said Aamer,
who is also refusing food.

Aamer has
been cleared for release twice, but is still behind bars after 11 years. He has
never been charged or faced trial but the US refuses to allow him to return to
the UK, despite official protests by the British government.

The Times reports that Ramzi Kassem,
a City University of New York law professor who represents several detainees,
had talked to his Yemeni client,
Moath Hamza Ahmed al-Alwi, who Kassem quoted as saying:

Non-violent protests
work. In this case, the moral high ground has been ceded to the non-violent participants,
despite of the “humanitarian” efforts of the military captors at Guantanamo and
despite any possible terror affiliation by some prisoners.

How can we regain the moral
high ground here? No option chosen by Mr. Obama will be universally supported, here or abroad. 

President Obama will one
day open a presidential library of his own.  Will his legacy like Mr. Bush’s,
include a human rights travesty at Guantanamo?

Could his legacy become
worse than Mr. Bush’s? 

What should Mr. Obama
do in this case?