Palin Not Always Speechless

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What is the True Cost?

By Robert J. Samuelson and [Pointer]
Thursday, September 25, 2008;
[The loss of Black Monday cost the USA 1.2 trillion dollar in a couple of hours.]
Love it or hate it, the true cost of Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson's proposed rescue of the financial system is not the sticker price of $700 billion. Conceivably, the government could make money; with glum assumptions, the losses would probably be less than $250 billion. No one knows the correct answer -- not Paulson, not Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke nor anyone else -- but here's how to think about the problem.
Under Paulson's proposal, the Treasury could buy distressed mortgage-backed securities. Consider a batch of hypothetical securities originally worth $100 million and paying an interest rate of 6 percent. They're no longer worth $100 million because half of the homeowners have stopped making their monthly payments. Suppose, then, that the government buys the mortgages for $50 million. It earns 6 percent on its $50 million, and if it borrowed money at 4 percent to buy the securities, it would make a tidy profit. If the government holds the securities until maturity and all the remaining homeowners repay their mortgages, the government would come out ahead.
Would something like this happen?
It could, and Pimco's Bill Gross argued in today's Post that it might, but there are several reasons it might not.
First, we don't know what price the government would pay for the mortgage-backed securities. There are conflicting goals. On the one hand, the government wants to minimize the bailout's costs to taxpayers; that would favor paying the lowest possible price. In my example, the profit would be greater if the government paid only $40 million. On the other hand, the whole idea of the bailout is to help banks and other financial institutions get rid of risky assets and replace them with cash that would encourage a resumption of normal lending and investing. That favors a higher price. If the government paid $80 million instead of $40 million, say, it would lose money.
[Paulson was not willing to accept any oversight and control, without responsibility and accountability in front of Congress nor court, what should make him the most powerful and untouchable man on earth.]
Second, we don't know how a weakening economy will affect future mortgage repayments.
[You surely know, but you don’t want to know.]
The worse the economy gets, the more homeowners will default. At the end of June, about 2.75 percent of home mortgages were in foreclosure, and an additional 6.4 percent were at least 30 days behind in their payments. The unemployment rate was 6.1 percent in August. If it rose to 7 percent or higher, defaults and delinquencies would climb. In my example, if only 25 percent of borrowers repaid their mortgages, the government would lose money.
[And without bailout a rising unemployment to 20%? Do you have an answer on that?]
No wonder members of Congress -- and the public -- are confused. My simple example captures the main unknowns, but in practice there are many more. What bonds and securities would Treasury buy? Would the government hold them to maturity or later try to resell them to private investors?
To all questions, Paulson has said in effect: Trust us.
[Well that’s a big problem. The Bush Administration did never show up to be trustworthy.]
Mark Zandi of Moody's Economy.com has crudely estimated that the ultimate cost of Paulson's plan and all the other rescues (of the mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the investment bank Bear Stearns, and the insurer AIG) won't exceed $250 billion. That's a lot, but consider that the annual federal budget runs at about $3 trillion. Compounding the confusion is this: For budget purposes, the Paulson rescue would probably be "scored" under the Federal Credit Reform Act. This law sets budget spending at the proposal's ultimate cost -- not the annual cash flows. For now, the Congressional Budget Office says there are so many unknowns that it can't make an estimate.
[That makes the check in fact a blank check and if it can be more, it shall be more. The reasoning for more will be: If we don’t spent another 700billion the first 700billion is lost for nothing. Such a reasoning can ever be repeated. So, openness, oversight and control is absolutely first necessarily.]
But the biggest unknown lies elsewhere. What happens if Congress doesn't approve the plan, or something like it? Zandi, a supporter, argues that the economy will get much weaker, that many more banks and financial institutions will fail, and that the rise of joblessness will be greater, as will the fall in tax revenue and the increase in unemployment insurance and other government payments. Is this scare talk or a realistic threat?
[You bet. Why is the Party of Fear now at once afraid of “scare talk”? History showed how it works in the 19-twenties with the same politics. Europe has showed in more recent years how to manage such a crisis. Japan has showed how it works when you are late. The Republican Party has in 20 years (Reagan 8, Bush41 4 and Bush43 8 years) Reaganomics prepared and is deliberating arranging a new Great Depression to fight an ideological war against liberalism.]
The true cost of Paulson's plan hangs on the answer, and if the danger is real and imminent, then the cost of doing nothing would be far greater.
[No, there is no Paulson’s plan anymore, thus the true costs depends on speed of the governments answer and the Republican Party anyway will not favor a bailout. They can’t sell there base a principle of the Democratic Party that government’s regulation, control and interference are necessarily and good for the economy.
The free market has to be protected against the exclusive Army of Greed to serve the broader Army of Need.]

War is Hell, But What the Hell Does it Cost?

One Week at War in Iraq and Afghanistan for $3.5 Billion
By William D. Hartung

War is hell -- deadly, dangerous, and expensive. But just how expensive is it?

In a recent interview, Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz asserted that the costs of the Iraq war -- budgetary, economic, and societal -- could reach $5 trillion.

That's a hard number to comprehend. Figuring out how many times $5 trillion would circle the globe (if we took it all in one dollar bills) doesn't really help matters much, nor does estimating how many times we could paper over every square inch of Rhode Island with it. The fact that total war costs could buy six trillion donuts for volunteers to the Clinton, Obama, McCain, and Huckabee campaigns -- assuming a bulk discount -- is impressive in its own way, but not all that meaningful either. In fact, the Bush administration's war costs have already moved beyond the human scale of comprehension.

But what if we were to try another tack? How about breaking those soaring trillions down into smaller pieces, into mere millions and billions? How much, for instance, does one week of George Bush's wars cost?

Glad you asked. If we consider the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan together -- which we might as well do, since we and our children and grandchildren will be paying for them together into the distant future -- a conservative single-week estimate comes to $3.5 billion. Remember, that's per week!

By contrast, the whole international community spends less than $400 million per year on the International Atomic Energy Agency, the primary institution for monitoring and preventing the spread of nuclear weapons; that's less than one day's worth of war costs. The U.S. government spends just $1 billion per year securing and destroying loose nuclear weapons and bomb-making materials, or less than two days' worth of war costs; and Washington spends a total of just $7 billion per year on combating global warming, or a whopping two weeks' worth of war costs.

So, perhaps you're wondering, what does that $3.5 billion per week actually pay for? And how would we even know? The Bush administration submits a supplemental request -- over and above the more than $500 billion per year the Pentagon is now receiving in its official budget -- to pay for the purported costs of the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and for the Global War on Terrorism (GWOT). If you can stay awake long enough to read the whole 159-page document for 2008, it has some fascinating revelations.

For example, to hear the howling of the white-collar warriors in Washington every time anyone suggests knocking a nickel off administration war-spending requests, you would think that the weekly $3.5 billion outlay is all "for the troops." In fact, only 10% of it, or under $350 million per week, goes to pay and benefits for uniformed military personnel. That's less than a quarter of the weekly $1.4 billion that goes to war contractors to pay for everything from bullets to bombers. As a slogan, insisting that we need to keep the current flood of military outlays flowing "for Boeing and Lockheed Martin" just doesn't quite have the same ring to it.

You could argue, of course, that all these contracting dollars represent the most efficient way to get our troops the equipment they need to operate safely and effectively in a war zone -- but you would be wrong. Much of that money is being wasted every week on the wrong kinds of equipment at exorbitant prices. And even when it is the right kind of equipment, there are often startling delays in getting it to the battlefield, as was the case with advanced armored vehicles for the Marine Corps.

But before we get to equipment costs, let's take a look at a week's worth of another kind of support. The Pentagon and the State Department don't make a big point -- or really any kind of point -- out of telling us how much we're spending on gun-toting private-contract employees from companies like Blackwater and Triple Canopy, our "shadow army" in Iraq, but we can make an educated guess. For example, at the high end of the scale, individual employees of private military firms make up to 10 times what many U.S. enlisted personnel make, or as much as $7,500 per week. If even one-tenth of the 5,000 to 6,000 armed contract employees in Iraq make that much, we're talking about at least $40 million per week. If the rest make $1,000 a week -- an extremely conservative estimate -- then we have nearly $100 million per week going just to the armed cohort of private-contract employees operating there.

Now, let's add into that figure the whole private crew of non-government employees operating in Iraq, including all the cooks, weapons technicians, translators, interrogators, and other private-contract support personnel. That combined cost probably comes closer to $300 million per week, or almost as much as is spent on uniformed personnel by the Air Force, Army, Navy, and Marines.

By one reliable estimate, there are more contract employees in Iraq alone -- about 180,000 -- than there are U.S. troops. There are thousands more in Afghanistan. But since many of these non-military employees are poorly paid subcontract workers involved in cooking meals, doing laundry, and cleaning latrines, the total costs for the services of all private-contractor employees in Iraq probably runs somewhat less than the costs of the uniformed military. Hence our estimate.

So, if $650 million or so a week is spent on people, where does the other nearly $3 billion go? It goes for goods and services, from tanks and fighter planes to fuel and food. Most of this money ends up in the hands of private companies like Boeing, Lockheed Martin, and the former Halliburton subsidiary, Kellogg, Brown and Root.

The list of weapons and accessories paid for from our $3.5 billion is long and daunting:

$1.5 million for M-4 carbines (about 900 guns per week);
$2.3 million for machine guns (about 170 per week);
$4.3 million for Hellfire missiles (about 50 missiles per week);
$6.9 million for night vision devices (about 2,100 per week);
$10.8 million for fuel per week;
$5 million to store and transport that fuel per week;
$14.8 million for F-18E/F fighter planes per week (one every four weeks);
$23.4 million for ammunition per week;
$30.7 million for Bradley fighting vehicles (10 per week).

And that's only a very partial list. What about the more mundane items?

"Laundries, showers, and latrines" cost more than $110,000 per week;
"Parachutes and aerial delivery systems" cost $950,000 per week;
"Runway snow removal and cleaning" costs $132,000 per week;
Flares cost $50,000 per week.

Some of these figures, of course, may cover worldwide military operations for the U.S. armed forces. After all, by sticking the acronym GWOT in the title of any supplemental war-spending request, you can cram almost anything into it.
Then there are the sobering figures like: $2.4 million per week for "death gratuities" (payments to families of troops killed in action) and $10.6 million per week in "extra hazard pay."
And don't forget that all the death and destruction lurking behind these weekly numbers makes it that much harder to get people to join the military. But not to worry, $1 million per week is factored into that supplemental funding request for "advertising and recruitment" -- not enough perhaps to fill the ranks, but at least they're trying.
Keep in mind that this only gives us a sense of what we do know from the public Pentagon request; there's plenty more that we don't know. As a start, the Pentagon's breakdown of the money in its "emergency" supplemental budget leaves huge gaps.
Even your own congressman doesn't know for sure what is really in the U.S. war budget. What we do know is that the Pentagon and the military services have been stuffing more and more projects that have nothing to do with the fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, or even the war on terror, into those war supplementals.
Layered in are requests for new equipment that will take years, or even decades, to build and may never be used in combat -- unless the Iraq war really does go on for another century, as John McCain recently suggested. These "non-war" items include high-tech armored vehicles and communications devices for the Army as well as new combat aircraft for the Air Force.
Even though these systems may never be used on our current battlefields, they are war costs nonetheless. If they weren't inserted into the supplemental requests for Iraq and Afghanistan, they might never have been funded. After all, who wants to vote against a bill that is allegedly all "for the troops," even if it includes weapons those troops will never get?
These add-ons are not small change. They probably cost in the area of $500 million per week.
Given all of this, it may sound like we have a fair amount of detail about the costs of a week of war. No such luck. Until the "supplemental" costs of war are subjected to the same scrutiny as the regular Pentagon budget, there will continue to be hundreds of millions of dollars unaccounted for each and every week that the wars go on. And there will be all sorts of money for pet projects that have nothing to do with fighting current conflicts. So don't just think of that $3.5 billion per week figure as a given. Think of it as $3.5 billion… and counting.

Doesn't that make you feel safer?

William D. Hartung is the director of the Arms and Security Initiative at the New America Foundation. He is the author of And Weapons for All (Harper Collins, 1994) and How Much Are You Making on the War, Daddy? A Quick and Dirty Guide to War Profiteering in the Bush Administration (Nation Books, 2004). His commentaries on military and economic issues have appeared in the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Newsday, and the Nation magazine.

[Source Note: Readers who want to check out the latest Department of Defense supplemental request for war-fighting funds can click here (PDF file) and read, "FY 2008 Global War on Terror Pending Request" from the Office of the Secretary of Defense.]

Change is already Ringing the Bell

The published proposal can be found here (pdf).
When John McCain said he would suspend his campaign and the first presidential debate with Barack Obama to go to Washington and show some real leadership there, Pointer wrote September 25 on the debating site Repptide.com that Barack had nothing to do in Washington than putting his amends (listed by Pointer) on the table and return campaigning. Love it or leave it! That is the message.
McCain should not return to campaigning until substantial results in solving the problem should be reached. Bur McCain had to break his promise and it turned out that Obama did what was needed and the negotiators agreed on the message.
They had no choice and McCain c.s. all champions of deregulation, favoring the Army of Greed, that caused the mess of the financial market, could not do anything about it. Paulson had to re-balance and change his proposal. The Army of Need, called "Main Street" has to get full control over their tax-money and becomes shared owners with preference, earning the money back when times will become better, perhaps with some profit. It's the Swedish model to handle such crises.

Nevertheless, while it is a initial proposal of the Republican Administration it needs the approval of a severe amount of Republicans in House and Senate. Let's watch and wait. The only things the Republicans can do is suspend the voting some days and that's all. The free market, when it is reigned by greed and fraud, is real hellfire.
Will they vote to burn?

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Anti-Palin rally calls for Colberg removal

TROOPERGATE: More than 1,000 protesters gather in downtown Anchorage park.

A protest slamming Gov. Sarah Palin's handling of the state's so-called Troopergate investigation -- and calling for the attorney general to lose his job -- drew more than 1,000 people to the Delaney Park Strip in Anchorage on Saturday.
Protesters chanted "recall Palin!" as organizers told the crowd to push state legislators to keep after their investigation into the governor's firing of her top cop.
An investigator hired by the lawmakers is scheduled to present his report on Oct. 10.
"This report needs to be released. Not just for us ... it needs to be released for all those people in the Lower 48 who are going to make a decision on Nov. 4," Democratic blogger Linda Kellen Biegel told hundreds of protesters gathered on the Park Strip grass.
The McCain-Palin campaign dismissed the rally as nothing more than a partisan strike from Barack Obama loyalists. [Pointer: Of course it is. Barack Obama stands for enforcing truth and openness!]
The crowd lined I Street, waving signs that said "Steady on her heels, wobbly on her words" and "Dude, where's my governor?" at passing cars. They dressed as Richard Nixon, or Hillary Clinton, or as Palin herself, holding a sign that said "hold me accountable."
A group calling itself Alaskans for Truth organized the event, which at times resembled an Obama campaign rally.
Between speeches, Anchorage singer-songwriter Libby Roderick led the crowd in a chorus of "We're gonna keep on moving forward" and "Stand tall for Obama." Obama volunteers signed up supporters under a nearby tent.
"Clearly this was an Obama rally and nothing else," Palin campaign spokeswoman Meghan Stapleton said in an e-mailed statement. "The rally proves the point of partisanship which the Governor has been trying to remove from the investigation in an effort to get a fair and just result."
Organizer Camille Conte, a radio host on left-leaning KUDO 1080 AM, said the event was about holding Palin to her word, and the pro-Obama message wasn't supposed to be part of the rally.
"It was hard to stop that once it started, and the crowd seemed to want it," she said.

FIGHTING DELAY TACTICS
Next to the political fliers sat petitions calling for the removal of Attorney General Talis Colberg.
On July 28, the Legislative Council -- a bipartisan group of 12 state lawmakers -- voted to launch an abuse-of-power investigation into Palin's firing of Public Safety Commissioner Walt Monegan.
Some Republican lawmakers have tried to get the Legislative Council, or the court, to delay the investigation until after the presidential election.
Rally organizers handed out talking points Saturday urging people to e-mail and call council members and tell them to stick with the probe.
Palin initially said she'd cooperate with the investigation. Presidential candidate Sen. John McCain announced Palin as his running mate Aug. 29, and the McCain camp has argued that the investigation became a partisan witch hunt spurred by Democrats.
Colberg is suing to quash the Legislature's subpoenas of Palin aides in what's become a struggle between the state's executive and legislative branches of government.

DOGGED PROTESTERS
Nicole McCullough came to the rally with her grand-niece and grand-nephew -- twins born the day before Palin's youngest son, Trig. McCullough wore a pitbull mask with giant red lips, a reference to a Palin's joke about hockey moms, pit bulls and lipstick at the Republican National Convention.
The twins held pit bull masks too.
A Hillary Clinton supporter earlier in the election, McCullough called Palin "a female Dan Quayle" and carried a sign that read: "Gov. Pitbull: call off your McCain dogs."
It was a reference to the McCain spokespeople and attorneys, including the self-described "Truth Squad" who have been defending the governor in regular Anchorage press conferences.
The Outside lawyers are clogging Alaska's legislative process, McCullough said.
The McCain camp says it's the other side that's making things political. For example, they say statements by Sen. Hollis French, who is overseeing the investigation and said the probe could end in impeachment, show Democrats are gunning for the governor.
The rally stretched past two hours, with a string of speeches from bloggers, the head of the troopers union and Monegan's mom. Someone read a written statement from Democratic Anchorage Rep. Les Gara -- which at one point ignited a chant of Obama's campaign slogan, "Yes we can" -- and calling for a "shout out" to French.
Like a similar rally two weeks earlier, the event gathered anti-Palin protesters from all corners. Some held signs saying "My body, my rights," while others criticized her views on aerial wolf-hunting.
Unlike last time, no organized counter-protest appeared.

Brigade homeland tours start October 1, 2008

Photo: The Alleged Terrorists


3rd Infantry’s 1st BCT trains for a new dwell-time mission. Helping ‘people at home’ may become a permanent part of the active Army
By Gina Cavallaro - Posted at Army Times: Monday Sep 8, 2008 6:15:06 EDT

The 3rd Infantry Division’s 1st Brigade Combat Team has spent 35 of the last 60 months in Iraq patrolling in full battle rattle, helping restore essential services and escorting supply convoys. Now they’re training for the same mission — with a twist — at home.

Beginning Oct. 1 for 12 months, the 1st BCT will be under the day-to-day control of U.S. Army North, the Army service component of Northern Command, as an on-call federal response force for natural or manmade emergencies and disasters, including terrorist attacks.
It is not the first time an active-duty unit has been tapped to help at home. In August 2005, for example, when Hurricane Katrina unleashed hell in Mississippi and Louisiana, several active-duty units were pulled from various posts and mobilized to those areas.
But this new mission marks the first time an active unit has been given a dedicated assignment to NorthCom, a joint command established in 2002 to provide command and control for federal homeland defense efforts and coordinate defense support of civil authorities.
After 1st BCT finishes its dwell-time mission, expectations are that another, as yet unnamed, active-duty brigade will take over and that the mission will be a permanent one.
“Right now, the response force requirement will be an enduring mission. How the [Defense Department] chooses to source that and whether or not they continue to assign them to NorthCom, that could change in the future,” said Army Col. Louis Vogler, chief of NorthCom future operations. “Now, the plan is to assign a force every year.”
The command is at Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado Springs, Colo., but the soldiers with 1st BCT, who returned in April after 15 months in Iraq, will operate out of their home post at Fort Stewart, Ga., where they’ll be able to go to school, spend time with their families and train for their new homeland mission as well as the counterinsurgency mission in the war zones.
Stop-loss will not be in effect, so soldiers will be able to leave the Army or move to new assignments during the mission, and the operational tempo will be variable.
Don’t look for any extra time off, though. The at-home mission does not take the place of scheduled combat-zone deployments and will take place during the so-called dwell time a unit gets to reset and regenerate after a deployment.
The 1st of the 3rd is still scheduled to deploy to either Iraq or Afghanistan in early 2010, which means the soldiers will have been home a minimum of 20 months by the time they ship out.
In the meantime, they’ll learn new skills, use some of the ones they acquired in the war zone and more than likely will not be shot at while doing any of it.
They may be called upon to help with civil unrest and crowd control or to deal with potentially horrific scenarios such as massive poisoning and chaos in response to a chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear or high-yield explosive, or CBRNE, attack.
Training for homeland scenarios has already begun at Fort Stewart and includes specialty tasks such as knowing how to use the “jaws of life” to extract a person from a mangled vehicle; extra medical training for a CBRNE incident; and working with U.S. Forestry Service experts on how to go in with chainsaws and cut and clear trees to clear a road or area.
The 1st BCT’s soldiers also will learn how to use “the first ever nonlethal package that the Army has fielded,” 1st BCT commander Col. Roger Cloutier said, referring to crowd and traffic control equipment and nonlethal weapons designed to subdue unruly or dangerous individuals without killing them.
Homeland Security
“It’s a new modular package of nonlethal capabilities that they’re fielding. They’ve been using pieces of it in Iraq, but this is the first time that these modules were consolidated and this package fielded, and because of this mission we’re undertaking we were the first to get it.”
The package includes equipment to stand up a hasty road block; spike strips for slowing, stopping or controlling traffic; shields and batons; and, beanbag bullets.
“I was the first guy in the brigade to get Tasered,” said Cloutier, describing the experience as “your worst muscle cramp ever — times 10 throughout your whole body.
“I’m not a small guy, I weigh 230 pounds ... it put me on my knees in seconds.”
The brigade will not change its name, but the force will be known for the next year as a CBRNE Consequence Management Response Force, or CCMRF (pronounced “sea-smurf”).
“I can’t think of a more noble mission than this,” said Cloutier, who took command in July. “We’ve been all over the world during this time of conflict, but now our mission is to take care of citizens at home ... and depending on where an event occurred, you’re going home to take care of your home town, your loved ones.”
While soldiers’ combat training is applicable, he said, some nuances don’t apply.
“If we go in, we’re going in to help American citizens on American soil, to save lives, provide critical life support, help clear debris, restore normalcy and support whatever local agencies need us to do, so it’s kind of a different role,” said Cloutier, who, as the division operations officer on the last rotation, learned of the homeland mission a few months ago while they were still in Iraq.
Some brigade elements will be on call around the clock, during which time they’ll do their regular marksmanship, gunnery and other deployment training. That’s because the unit will continue to train and reset for the next deployment, even as it serves in its CCMRF mission.
Should personnel be needed at an earthquake in California, for example, all or part of the brigade could be scrambled there, depending on the extent of the need and the specialties involved.
Other branches included
The active Army’s new dwell-time mission is part of a NorthCom and DOD response package.
Active-duty soldiers will be part of a force that includes elements from other military branches and dedicated National Guard Weapons of Mass Destruction-Civil Support Teams.
A final mission rehearsal exercise is scheduled for mid-September at Fort Stewart and will be run by Joint Task Force Civil Support, a unit based out of Fort Monroe, Va., that will coordinate and evaluate the interservice event.
In addition to 1st BCT, other Army units will take part in the two-week training exercise, including elements of the 1st Medical Brigade out of Fort Hood, Texas, and the 82nd Combat Aviation Brigade from Fort Bragg, N.C.
There also will be Air Force engineer and medical units, the Marine Corps Chemical, Biological Initial Reaction Force, a Navy weather team and members of the Defense Logistics Agency and the Defense Threat Reduction Agency.

One of the things Vogler said they’ll be looking at is communications capabilities between the services.
“It is a concern, and we’re trying to check that and one of the ways we do that is by having these sorts of exercises. Leading up to this, we are going to rehearse and set up some of the communications systems to make sure we have interoperability,” he said.
“I don’t know what America’s overall plan is — I just know that 24 hours a day, seven days a week, there are soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines that are standing by to come and help if they’re called,” Cloutier said. “It makes me feel good as an American to know that my country has dedicated a force to come in and help the people at home.”

BUT WHY WILL THE MILITARY USE WEAPONS OF MASS
DESTRUCTION AT HOME?

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Joe Biden & Hilary Clinton on Women's Issues

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