One of central causes of the financial meltdown was the lack of transparency in the complex derivatives, like bundled mortgages and credit default swaps. Advocates of global warming would have us to believe that they can construct a transparent carbon emissions trading scheme that will provide market incentives to reduce the emission of greenhouse gases.
At the center of this trading scheme is the idea of a carbon credit, which is a generic term for any tradable certificate or permit representing the right to emit one ton of carbon or carbon dioxide equivalent. Think of a carbon credit as property in a free market economy — Ayn Rand, meet Global Warming.
Egypt is throbbing with resistance. Cairo is cloven between the forces of revolution and those of counterrevolution. Hundreds of thousands of people – on Tuesday, February 1, well over a million – have been streaming each day into Tahrir Square, the largest plaza in the Arab world, located in the heart of downtown Cairo. Army tanks line the streets, helicopters and F16s buzz overhead, and pro-Mubarak demonstrators, many of them hired thugs, bloodied thousands of protesters yesterday in Tahrir and elsewhere. Yet the people keep pushing for Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak's unconditional ouster, and not just in Cairo. Alexandria has been convulsed, while Suez, a small city abutting the Suez Canal, has been riven with some of the fiercest street battles between the police and protesters, while workers there have gone on strike, demanding that Mubarak step down from his palace in Heliopolis.
Phi Beta Iota: The US appears naive and uninformed at this time. This would have a much better outcome if there were a strategic game plan for pulling US forces out of the region, cutting all US military assistance to the region, and pushing Israel out of the US policy process while redirecting 50% of existing US assistance toward waging peace, the other 50% toward deficit reduction. The sooner the US can achieve intelligence with integrity, the better for all.
I'M HAVING trouble writing about the GOP effort to reach a compromise over whether to cut $100 billion out of the 2011 budget, or just $50-60 billion. My problem is that I can't really write about the advantages or disadvantages of one or another version of the cuts when the entire enterprise appears completely senseless to me.
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That still wouldn't have anything to do with what the US economy needs over the next year or two. But at least it would make sense as a long-term strategy. What the GOP is doing now is frenziedly cutting often worthwhile small programmes because they can't face the political consequences of taking on entitlements and defence or proposing tax hikes, and it's very hard for me to take the charade seriously.
Phi Beta Iota: Below the line is a most intriguing speculative analytic comment on what role Saudi Arabia may have played, and the intersection between religion, despots, military, and the public.
This is a classic, and it bears mention that the Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) revolution began in the US military. Here is the human in the loop essence that no computer can create. USDI and D/DIA have chosen to ignore their responsibility for OSINT despite General Tony Zinni's clear cut statement that all that they do now provides “at best” 4% of a commander's needs; General Mike Flynn's documentation of the “irrelevance” of US intelligence in Afghanistan, and the still standing requirements from the Aspin-Brown Commission and others to make OSINT a “top priority” for funding and a “top priority” for DCI (today DNI) attention.
WASHINGTON — Health care fraud used to be a faceless crime — until now.
Medicare and Medicaid scams cost taxpayers more than $60 billion a year, but the average bank holdup is likely to get more attention. Seeking the public's help to catch more than 170 fugitive fraudsters, the government has launched a new health care most-wanted list, with its own website. Read more…
Phi Beta Iota: What the government does in terms of fraud, waste, and abuse is VASTLY greater, resulting from a mix of ignorance and corruption. It's a good idea–achieving full transparency for all records would put all citizen eyeballs on the mix and produce more corruption leads faster, better, cheaper. What the government is not telling us is that the Connelly law firm has created a 15 company team led by Booz Allen that is about to take over “profit recovery” for the US Government across the entire health care industry–privateers with with civil and criminal authorities. BAD IDEA and the natural outcome of the government not being able to do the right thing–competent employees and trusted information–so instead it does the wrong thing righter–gets bigger, more expensive, outsources more.
On 31 January 2011 Secrecy News returned to a subject that had been discussed earlier: the federal investigations of former NSA employee Thomas Drake for revealing classified information and of a former congressional intelligence committee staffer, Diane Roark, for assisting him. This latest article essentially quotes former NSA Deputy Director Barbara McNamara as saying Roark fell into the category of staffers that were, “overly intrusive and vindictive” and employed NSA employees as her personal informants. Since I personally know something of this business, I would like to add my own observations on the subject.
