Graphic: Dick Cheney and Muammar Gaddafi
Offbeat Fun, PoliticalMarcus Aurelius: AmEx CEO Blasts Obama and Buffet
03 Economy, 09 Justice, 11 Society, Cultural Intelligence
MSNBC had Mr. Golub on the Dylan Ratigan show yesterday. The Clintonesque sub for Ratigan was aghast that Golub did not want to buy into higher tax rates and that he advocated making the 50% or so of Americans who pay no taxes pay their share. The follow-on segment had three talking heads, at least two of whom were also aghast that Golub might want to keep more of the money he earned.
My Response To Buffett And Obama
By HARVEY GOLUB
Wall Street Journal, 22 August 2011
Before you ask for more tax money from me, raise the $2.2 trillion you already collect each year more fairly and spend it more wisely.
EXTRACT:
Today, top earners–the 250,000 people who earn $1 million or more–pay 20% of all income taxes, and the 3% who earn more than $200,000 pay almost half. Almost half of all filers pay no income taxes at all. Clearly they earn less and should pay less. But they should pay something and have a stake in our government spending their money too.
. . . . . .
Continue reading “Marcus Aurelius: AmEx CEO Blasts Obama and Buffet”
Worth a Look: Pull Together Now!
Worth A LookPlace-to-Place, Face-to-Face, for a Sustainable Future
PTN Mission
Pull Together Now!’s purpose is to unite and support people committed to a peaceful and sustainable future across our shared, finite planet. We believe that the people of the world will transcend all religious, social, ethnic and political barriers and pull together place-to-place, face-to-face in support of peace, equity, justice and reconciliation with our environment and each other.
PTN Topics
- Abundant, Clean Water For All
- Arts & Culture
- Business As Usual Is Over!
- Climate Science: “Nature Bats Last!”
- Cool People Pulling Together Now!
- Fair Trade – Every Purchase Matters!
- Free Speech & Communication Rights
- Health Care
- Indigenous Peoples Wisdom & Issues
- Media supporting Sustainability Movement
- Our Food: Who grows it and how?
- Peace! & Other Human Rights
- Safe, Renewable Energy
- Science & Technology
- Transparent Government & Justice Reform
- Transportation
- Worldviews & Cross-Cultural Dialogue
Tip of the Hat to Debilyn Molineaux.
David Isenberg (Military): Government Contractors at War
03 Economy, 09 Justice, 10 Security, 11 Society, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Corruption, IO Deeds of War, Military, Officers Call
War and Private Contractors: Can't Live with Them, Can't Live Without Them
David Isenberg
Huffington Post, 9/2/2011
EXTRACT:
The number of Department of Defense (Defense), Department of State (State), and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) contractor employees in Iraq and Afghanistan has varied, but exceeded 260,000 in 2010. The contractor employee count has at times surpassed the number of U.S. military personnel in the two countries.
. . . . . . .
Although contract activity has taken on increasing importance, the resources devoted to managing contracts and contractors have not kept pace. The number of contract specialists — an occupation critical to the execution of contingency contracting — rose by only 3 percent government-wide between 1992 and 2009, despite an enormous increase in contracting activity during that period.
That last point is a diplomatic way of saying that even after 10 years of extensive use of contractors to enable and facilitate military, diplomatic and reconstruction operations, government still doesn't know how, or even worse, doesn't care, to carry out due diligence on the activities it contracts out.
. . . . . . .
Also, speaking of big firms, pause to consider the similarities between large PMCs and the financial services industry. The CWC did and found, “Because the U.S. government relies on only a handful of contractors to provide most of the support for the contingencies in Iraq and Afghanistan, this reliance potentially presents a situation analogous to the U.S. financial industry's “too big to fail” calamity.”
Read full article including list of top contractors.
Phi Beta Iota: So much for Bob Gates doing anything useful at DoD. He combined “civility” with maintenance of the status quo, ignoring both the fact that the US Government is incapable of contracting at scale, and the fact that 4% of the force takes 80% of the casualties and gets 1% of the budget. Shame everlasting. Defense is long past due for a Secretary of Defense able to combine intelligence with integrity….but that needs a restoration of integrity to the electoral process and the governance process.
Reference: Rise of the Stupid Network–Overturning Industrial Era Assumptions on Computation and Bandwidth Now Cheap and Plentiful
Advanced Cyber/IO, Articles & Chapters
See Also:
Who’s Who in Public Intelligence: David Isenberg (Network)
Alpha I-L, Cyber-Intelligence
In 1997, David S. Isenberg wrote an essay entitled, “The Rise of the Stupid Network: Why the Intelligent Network Was a Good Idea Once But Isn’t Anymore.” In it, Dr. Isenberg, then a distinguished member of technical staff at AT&T Laboratories, examined the technological bases of the existing telecom business model, laid out how the communications business would be changed by new technologies, foresaw today’s cataclysms, and imagined tomorrow’s new network.
The essay was released onto the Internet and found its way into the hands of The Wall Street Journal, Network World, and George Gilder’s Technology Report. Of the essay, The Wall Street Journal said, “it may soon assume cult status among the tech mavens that roam the World Wide Web.” Communications Week International said that the essay, “packed power [and] challenged the most sacred assumptions of the telecom world.” Inevitably, the essay found wider acceptance outside of AT&T than within it, and David Isenberg left AT&T to start the company isen.com, Inc., whose mission was to help telecommunications companies navigate from business models based on scarcity, towards new models formed by the abundance of communications infrastructure.
David S. Isenberg’s public delivery of the “Stupid Network” message is passionate and personal. He has spoken to over 100 audiences on three continents, and has been cited in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Forbes, Fortune, Wired, Business 2.0, Communications Week International, Network World, Release 1.0, Gilder Technology Report, TheStreet.com, Nikkei Communications, and numerous other publications. He has authored articles for Fortune, USA Today, IEEE Spectrum, MSNBC, Communications Week International, Light Reading, Business 2.0, America’s Network, VON Magazine, and ACM Networker.
Dr. Isenberg holds a Ph.D. in biology from Caltech, and is a Fellow of Glocom, the Institute for Global Communications of the International University of Japan. He is a founding advisor of the World Technology Network, and was a judge for the World Communications Awards in 1999 and 2001.
Who’s Who in Public Intelligence: David Isenberg (Military)
Alpha I-L, Public IntelligenceDavid Isenberg is the author of the book Shadow Force: Private Security Contractors in Iraq. His blog is The PMSC Observer. He wrote the “Dogs of War” weekly column for UPI from 2008 to 2009. During 2009 he ran the Norwegian Initiative on Small Arms Transfers project at the International Peace Research Institute, Oslo. His affiliations include the Straus Military Reform Project, Cato Institute, and the Independent Institute. He is a US Navy veteran. His e-mail is sento@earthlink.net.
David Isenberg at CATO Institute
