The truth at any cost lowers all other costs — curated by former US spy Robert David Steele.
March 25, 2011
Dear friends,
So much is happening under the guise of “the budget crisis” that I thought it might be useful to deconstruct this issue a bit.
Phi Beta Iota: Tom has produced a relatively long and meticulously documented essay
Tom Christie spent almost 50 years inside the DOD acquisition apparatus, concluding his career as a top level civilian professional directing DOD's office of Operational Test and Evaluation. Since the 1960s, he has seen every single stab at reforming how we develop and buy weapons come and go – and fail. Today, as measured by GAO and many others, cost overruns are higher, deliveries are later, and the biggest DOD budget since the end of World War II buys us the smallest, oldest force structure and weapons inventory since 1946.
Christie has a straight forward explanation: the buying apparatus in the Pentagon, Congress and industry does not enforce the declared intent of acquisition laws and regulations, they circumvent the intent – thanks to the multiple loopholes and dodges assiduously inserted by Congress, the Pentagon and industry. Politely, he calls this a lack of “discipline.”
Listen to his interview and explanation at Federal News Radio.
This interview is part of a series; find a link to these and several other related interviews at one of the webpages devoted to the anthology, The Pentagon Labyrinth: 10 Short Essays to Help You Through It.
Interested in more details of Christie's explanation? Find the text of his essay in The Pentagon Labyrinth at , and find the entire text of The Pentagon Labyrinth.
Want to make a comment about Christie's or any other author's essay? Want to hold a debate? We welcome that. Let me know by emailing winslowwheeler at msn.com.
Phi Beta Iota: Integrity is a self-healing system. No one dealing with acquisition has it. This has gotten so out of hand it is now an atrocity.
But Nobody Pays That
G.E.’s Strategies Let It Avoid Taxes Altogether
The New York Times, March 24, 2011
General Electric, the nation’s largest corporation, had a very good year
in 2010.
The company reported worldwide profits of $14.2 billion, and said $5.1
billion of the total came from its operations in the United States.
Its American tax bill? None. In fact, G.E. claimed a tax benefit of $3.2
billion.
Phi Beta Iota: This is an atrocity, a crime against humanity. Legalized crime in the US has reached heights not seen in modern history. There is no social contract between the government and those puportedlyostensibly governed. GRIFTOPIA meets Empire of Illusion. The systemic corruption of America–the Paradigms of Failure–is daunting to those who strive to serve the public interest. Integrity–one word–absent across the board. Why? Because they can get away with it.
Although a partisan paper, the Examiner does show the lack of
understanding that is permeating the current administration……..
By: Byron York 03/24/11 8:05 PM
The Examiner
“I see Obama's visiting the United States,” said Rush Limbaugh on
Thursday, the president's first full day back in Washington after a spring
break diplomatic tour of Latin America….
. . . . . . .
After ordering troops into action, the president headed off to South
America with his wife, daughters, mother-in-law, and mother-in-law's
friend in tow. There was no solemn, reasoned speech to explain why the
U.S. was going to war…..
Meanwhile, the White House is at times having difficulty simply making
sense. The president talked about an “exit strategy” in which American forces would not exit at all. And administration officials are going out of their way to deny that the Libyan fighting, which involves a significant fleet of U.S. warships and U.S. warplanes, is a “war.” Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes told reporters Wednesday that Libya
wasn't a war, describing it instead as a “kinetic military action.”
Phi Beta Iota: Original Image from Palestinian Pundit.
Syria’s Bashar al-Assad faces most serious unrest of his tenure
By Leila Fadel, Thursday, March 24
Washington Post
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad was facing the most serious unrest of his 11-year tenure Thursday as anti-government protests in a southwestern city threatened to escalate after a deadly crackdown.
. . . . . . .
On Wednesday, security forces launched a pre-dawn raid in the city in which dozens of people were killed, according to witnesses and activists. Precise estimates of the death toll range from 15 to 51.
On Thursday, witnesses said, thousands of people gathered in the city to bury the dead, chanting, “Syria! Freedom!”
Phi Beta Iota: “Freedom” is neither a partisan term, nor one that can be bought by Lockheed Martin or discounted by Goldman Sachs. Young, freedom, and the autonomous Internet. Not at all what the “elite” had planned. Most interestingly, the dominos falling to non-violent public will are in sharp contrast to the published plan of the neo-conservatives to take down the Middle East by force–nuclear if necessary.
Review: Endgame–The Blueprint for Victory in the War on Terror
what now, army cow? who's actually in control of the guts of Helmand?
BLOG: Taliban Cuts Cellphone Service in Helmand
Media: At War (NY Times)
Byline: RAY RIVERA
Date: 24 March 2011
KABUL, Afghanistan — President Hamid Karzai surprised some people this week when he announced that his forces would take over security responsibilities from international forces in the city of Lashkar Gah, capital of the volatile southern province of Helmand, this summer.
But if the news spread quickly, it did not travel by cellphone. That’s because mobile phone networks throughout the province have been silenced for nearly a week now under orders of the Taliban, according to company officials.
Time does not permit the detailed study a topic of this importance merits (it would be an excellent PhD project for a bi-lingual Japanese-English speaking PhD candidate) but here is what we do know:
1. The risks were known.
2. A tsunami risk was specificially brought up and dismissed at a critical juncture.
3. There was no “what if” planning or critical supply chain planning for contaminated water and food.
We speculate that an intense look at the information terrain surrounded Japan's nuclear and global warming and related environmental degradation and energy-commercial competitiveness discussions will yield an almost perfect understanding of where the data asymmetries and information pathologies were that allowed Industrial Era decision systems (inherently secret and corrupt) to ignore open source information on risk.
This is also a good place to study how disasters turn into catastrophes instead of remaining disasters, for lack of the proper political-legal, socio-economic, and ideo-cultural mindsets.
Fifty years from today, the catastrophe in Japan may be regarded as the moment of awakening for the global mind.
