Understandably, our intelligence analysts (having been burned by Bush-era foisting of forged Iraqi Mossad Czech Italian Nigerian just plain phony nukyaler documents) won’t speculate as to its authenticity. One wonders about the origins of this purportedly leaked super-secret Iranian official document. Let me think for a minute second about who could A) obtain it, B) benefit from it, and C) propagate it. Okay, I’m done thinking, I’ve got my guess. A fourth option to consider is that this might be another forgery. But that would just be crazy. Self-serving and ruthless. Never happen.

The New York Times wonders what it all means. Not ones to shy away from hawking hawkishness, perhaps theirs is a more balanced take than the article Bill provided.

Bill also commented that Iran failed to declare facilities, but they did declare Qom, whether coerced or not. Ahmadinejad and Iran’s foreign minister also separately declared openly their intention to build 10 or 15 more. Will they later be accused of “failing to declare” them if they start working on them now? And, again, Iran is within its rights to unilaterally withdraw from the NPT at any time and for any — or no — reason. So are we. So is Israel — oh, no, wait. Israel never signed it. Israel won’t declare its facilities or open them to international inspections, kind of like when they refused to allow international inspectors under Goldstone to visit sites or interview witnesses of alleged Israeli atrocities in Gaza.

Which brings up a point I made in commenting on Bill’s piece, which he dodged. What are we to make of the officially declared Dahiya doctrine, adopted by Israel in 2003? What sort of disproportionality can we expect should Israel attempt to show the 90% of Iranian green revolutionaries that they are accountable for their leaders’ actions?

In the face of a Western invasion (largely at the behest of Israel and its “intelligence” they “shared” with the U.S. and Britain) of Iraq for (as Tony Blair later put it rather bluntly) “regime change,” would it really be unreasonable for Iran to evaluate all options, whether it intended to pursue them or not? Especially when one reads pieces like Bill’s which advocate sanctioned assassinations, military bombing campaigns, missile strikes, and so forth?

If you stick with the story, the ethical question is raised (buried) toward the end of the article.

General Attributes of the Plan

As mentioned above the current overall price tag (before amendments and the inevitable earmark add-ons) is $825 billion. That is split into two general categories of spending.

The first category is $275 billion in “economic recovery tax cuts.” Presumably this is the “tax cuts for 95% of Americans” that Obama continuously talked about on the campaign trail. If there are 305 million Americans and they split the tax cut evenly, each would enjoy a lessened tax burden of $949.09 each. I’ll take it gladly; indeed, they owe us more of our own money back. Unfortunately, this will almost certainly be offset by the sun-setting of the Bush tax cuts, which there is little doubt Congress and the President will allow to expire.

The second category is $550 billion in “targeted priority investments.” According to the summary from the Committee on Appropriations, “[t]his package is the crucial first step in a concerted effort to create and save 3 to 4 million jobs, jumpstart our economy, and being the process of transforming it for the 21^st century.” The committee summary goes on to state that, “with the passage of this package, unemployment rates are expected to rise to between eight and nine percent this year. Without this package, we are warned that unemployment could explode to near twelve percent.” As such, assuming these numbers are correct and this package would prevent the unemployment rate from experiencing an additional 3% rise, the package will prevent the loss of 3.93 million jobs* through new unemployment claims. This means that by their own numbers, this package will not create any new jobs, as Obama has been touting, but rather would prevent the anticipated loss of 4 million jobs.

* In case anyone is interested, I came up with this number by looking at the increase in unemployment as reported on the Bureau of Labor Statistics website (http://www.bls.gov/ces/) for the December report. That report said unemployment rose from 6.8% to 7.2% or by +0.4%. That increase corresponded with a decrease in the number of jobs of 524,000. If 0.4% is equivalent to 524,000 jobs, then 4% would equal 3.93 million jobs.

The summary acknowledges that the plan will result in “a large deficit for years to come.” But, justifies its passage by playing on the fears of not passing it: “Without it, those deficits will be devastating [as though the deficits we invite will not be] and we will face the risk of economic chaos.”

Since 2001, as worker productivity went up, 96% of the income growth in this country went to the wealthiest 10% of society [I assume they are not referring to the government]. While they were benefiting from record high worker productivity, the remaining 90% of Americans were struggling to sustain their standard [sic] of living. They sustained it by borrowing…and borrowing…and borrowing, and when they couldn’t borrow anymore, the bottom fell out. This plan will strengthen the middle class, not just Wall Street CEOs and special interests in Washington [who have already received government welfare in the form of bailouts which took priority over taxpayer relief].

Finally, before getting into the specifics of the “targeted priority investments,” it should be noted that “[t]here are no earmarks in this package.” I guess I don’t really know what an earmark, because I thought it was an appropriation that was targeted to a particular project, or “priority investment,” if you prefer. Oh well. Orwell lives.

One last note before we dive into an examination of the specific spending proposals. We should probably keep in mind that, according to most of the economists I’ve heard speak about the crisis, the overriding problem is that credit is unavailable to consumers and businesses. It is probably helpful to hold this in the forefront of one’s thoughts as he approaches each of these broad spending categories. A thoughtful person would probably ask, “Does this spending help to free up credit to consumers and businesses?”

The Targeted Priority Investments

The “Targeted Priority Investments” fall into seven broad areas.
[Please do not call them earmarks]

The first is “Clean, Efficient, American Energy.” The overall goal of this spending is the “doubling of renewable energy production and renovate buildings to make them more energy efficient.” To that end, Obama proposes to spend $32 billion on upgrading the energy delivery system (“The Grid”), $16 billion to repair public housing, and $6.2 billion to weatherize “modest income homes.”

Until very recently, I haven’t paid a ton of attention to Obama’s rhetoric about this package, but what I have heard seemed to focus on this area of spending as its main selling point. Kermit’s lament notwithstanding, Obama wants America to be green. And yet, it seems that this plan allocates only 6.5% of its budget to that end. What gives? I thought that was the focus of the plan.

A more specific beef, however, is that last line item. The government is proposing to spend $6.2 billion to weatherize poor peoples’ houses. I thought it was the fat cats that used all the energy. Why in the world would we focus our expenditures on making those who use the least energy, the most efficient? Of course, it makes no sense, but as you will see, there is a theme running through this package. It seems the package overall purpose is to give poor people as many goodies as can be packed into one bill – all while wrapping it in rhetoric that favors the “middle class.” I’m beginning to think that the part of the middle class to which I belong is being seen as the obscenely wealthy. Orwell again, I suppose.

The second area is “Transform our Economy with Science and Technology.” This is Obama’s version of faith-based initiatives, I think. All told, $16 billion is earmarked er, targeted to this spending area. To this end, Obama is proposing spending $6 billion to deliver broadband and wireless services to rural areas. (Maybe he thinks he can turn these Red areas into Blue areas with this pandering?). According to the House summary, for every dollar invested in broadband the economy sees a ten-fold return on that investment. Even if that is true, I would guess that is largely because the market has focused on investing in high-population areas where the investment is much smaller relative to the benefit. This proposal is almost certain to lessen that ratio as each dollar will return much less benefit. It fails to occur to those in government that if there were such a clear return for providing broadband to the hinterlands, some enterprising private concern would have already done so.

There are couple other items in this category that warrant a word or two. First there is this: “$400 million to put more scientists to work doing climate change research.” This represents two-thirds of the money that is earmarked er, targeted for NASA. One hopes that the government money does not come with strings attached as to the nature of the results they expect from their money. Along those same lines, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is to be given $600 million for satellite development and acquisitions, including censors and climate modeling. They’d better hurry because the space shuttle flights are coming to an end. They’ll probably have to purchase space on French rockets in order to do anything other than have some nice shiny satellite to put in their corporate lobbies. Between these two line items, it looks like we are firmly committed to furthering the narrative about the coming devastation of global warming, er, cooling, er, climate-change-that-could-go-either-way-but-in-the-end-will-be-catastrophic-to-life-on-earth.

Thrown into the middle, and fitting under no category, is a line item for spending $650 million to continue the coupon program to enable American households to convert from analog television transmission to digital transmission. On a spending for spending basis, this ranks in priority as more than four time more important than funding the improvement of our air traffic control system (“$150 million for research, development, and demonstration to improve aviation safety and Next Generation air traffic control”).

The third spending area is “Modernize Roads, Bridges, Transit and Waterways.” This is the other big selling point I have been hearing for Obama’s stimulus package – Green Jobs and Good Roads. All told, $90 billion dollars have been set aside for this category. This is a traditional area of federal government expenditure, and inasmuch as that is so, I really have little problem with this section. I would quibble with the government’s continuing folly with the funding of Amtrak ($1.1 billion) to make them faster and higher capacity (so there will be more empty seats – at least the ride will be roomy for Amtrak’s few customers), but overall the government should be spending money on maintaining the channels of interstate commerce. However, $9 billion is devoted to transit systems which all tend to be intrastate in nature. It seems these expenses should be borne by the States which will benefit from them and not by the federal government.

Lumped under this category, however, are several items that have little to do with roads, bridges, transit, waterways, channels of interstate commerce or instrumentalities of interstate commerce. For instance, $245 million are targeted for “critical IT improvements to systems that have been unable to handle workload increases” in the Farm Service Agency. Of course, the other way to solve that problem would be to shut down that program and sell whatever equipment they have at auction. Seems to me that would be a net gain going forward.

It seems that the Veterans Administration has identified a $5 billion backlog in needed repairs to its medical facilities. To address this need, the plan includes $950 million for veterans’ facilities. Does this seem to be a metaphor of this president’s views of our troops to anyone besides me? Stay tuned for Walter Reed II: the sequel.

The fourth spending area is “Education for the 21st Century.” This is the largest of the “targeted priority investments” representing more than 17% of the entire package with an outlay of $141.6 billion. It seems the days of hoping that a president would eliminate the Department of Education and restore the traditional roles of local government vis federal government are firmly behind us. We can thank George W. Bush, I think, for this with his Head Start program. Its passage has green-lighted every liberal federal intervention into our communities that they can dream up and connect to the children.

One particularly galling item is this: $13 billion devoted to IDEA special education. Keep in mind that the stimulus package states that the spending on education is to “help our kids compete with any worker in the world.” I know this is going to sound callous, but how much money will it take to make a special education student the equal of any worker in the world? Will any amount? Why do we persist in flushing our tax monies down the toilet like this? No matter what we spend on educating these students, they will still be capable of only the most menial tasks. We should teach them to tie their shoes, be continent, and maybe make sandwiches for themselves. (“No, son, the baloney goes on the inside and the bread on the outside. Not the other way around”). Beyond that, it seems we are wasting our money on attempting to “educate” special education children.

Under the banner of “signs of the times” is this one: $2 billion to provide day care for an additional 300,000 children in low-income families while their parents go to work. We truly are the nanny state, quite literally.

The fifth area of spending is “Lower Healthcare Costs.” This area represents $26.7 billion of spending. Most of that spending will be on computerizing health records ($20 billion).

Another $1.1 billion is set aside for “Healthcare Research and Quality” wherein will we conduct a study to “compare the effectiveness of different medical treatments funded by Medicare, Medicaid, and SCHIP” in order to find out what works best. While I cringe that this will cost us $1.1 billion, I welcome the inevitable outcome of such a study that reveals that none of it works because there is too much government involvement. But, of course, who am I kidding? They’re paying for the study. We all know how that one ends. The problem, I foresee, is that we haven’t been spending enough money on those programs.

The House summary contains the following enlightening nugget, “$600 million to address shortages [of primary care providers] and prepare our country for universal health care. (See? They already know the answer to the $1.1 billion study – I say we dispense with the charade of a study and at least save ourselves $1.1 billion).

Does anyone besides me feel like they are living through one of those scenes in the movies (wasn’t there one in one of the Indiana Jones movies) where you’re in a coal bucket careening out of control into the depths of an ancient mine toward a yawning chasm where the tracks suddenly leave off?

The sixth area of spending is “Help Workers Hurt by the Economy.” Before you get all excited thinking that maybe here there is some sort of program that addresses the credit crunch, think again. The government proposes to spend $102 billion in this area. The larger programs are $4 billion for training and employment services; $27 billion to extend unemployment benefits an additional 33 weeks; $9 billion to increase the unemployment benefit by $25 per week; $30.3 billion to help unemployed pay for COBRA; $1.5 billion “to help local communities to build and rehabilitate low-income housing using green technologies;” and $5 billion for building repair and modernization of public housing.

On this last item, the House summary states that for every dollar spent on the Public Housing Capital Fund, there is a $2.12 economic return. This begs the question of why we don’t just spend $68 trillion on the project, reap the $144 trillion economic return and everyone can go home happy secure in the knowledge that the economy is humming blithely along.

This section contains a group of programs that seem like more of the same. First is a neighborhood stabilization program, costing $4.2 billion, to help communities purchase and rehabilitate foreclosed, vacant properties in order to create more affordable housing. Second, is a program, costing $1.5 billion, which would provide “temporary” rental assistance, housing relocation, and stabilization services (whatever those are) for families during crisis. Third, is a program, costing “$500 million, to support $22 billion in direct loans and loan guarantees to help rural families and individuals to buy homes during the credit crunch.” It seems out leaders don’t get that putting people who can’t afford homes in homes is a recipe for disaster. It seems the government will continue to perpetuate the same errors repeatedly of either forcing lenders to provide loans to people who can’t afford them, or by making the loans itself. We’re screwed.

There’s also a one-time welfare payment to disabled and elderly folks which will cost $4.2 billion; a $1 billion block grant for community development; $1 billion to help low-income families pay for home heating and cooling; and $1 billion to provide federal incentive funds to collect support owed to families.

The final area of spending is “Save Public Sector Jobs and Protect Vital Services.” This area is projected to cost $91 billion. This is comprised of $87 billion in Medicaid Aid to states; $2.5 billion in block grants to states to help alleviate the needs of families “and to prevent them from cutting work programs;” $4 billion to support state and local law enforcement with $1 billion of that set aside to pay for an additional 13,000 police for three years [and after that, the States are on their own, presumably]; and $1 billion for work necessary to ensure a successful 2010 census, with a special emphasis ($150 million) to ensure that minorities are not undercounted. I wonder if that is provided a la Acorn as direct bribes to overcount certain desirable demographics.

A few thoughtsAs you can see, there appears to be very little in the way of alleviating the credit crunch. Indeed, it would appear that Obama has taken advantage of a bad economy to advance a raft of new spending that will erect an unprecedented increase in bureaucracy since the New Deal. This is grossly irresponsible given the shape of the economy. He would have done better to provide an equivalent list of programs the federal government intended to discontinue.

I’ve said before, I’m not an economist, but I do have a calculator. It doesn’t take an economist to know that when a family experiences a shortfall in income, it is time to tighten the belt, not go on a spending spree. The government is no different. The country must cut its expenses and that starts with the federal government cutting spending. Putting our fiscal house in order will strengthen our economy by making investors more eager to invest in it. If we spend profligately, what incentive do we give to outside sources of income to invest in our economy? The more we piss away our money, the less enticing we look as anything other than a risky investment that someone might take on a flier.

This plan in no way addresses the underlying problem of the availability of credit or the tenuousness of the housing market (which is related). The longer the credit problem is allowed to persist, the worse the housing market will become due to illiquidity of assets and the resulting downward pressure on the value of those assets. If anything, this plan will make credit more expensive by making the investment of new money only possible by promise of a higher return on that investment (junk returns). On the other hand, fiscal restraint would make that inflow of money cheaper and more plentiful.

I think. Of course, I’m just a guy with a calculator.

The neat picture of a branching tree is further blurred by a process called endosymbiosis. Early on in their evolution, eukaryotes are thought to have engulfed two free-living prokaryotes. One of these gave rise to the cellular power generators called mitochondria while the other was the precursor of the chloroplasts, in which photosynthesis takes place. These “endosymbionts” later transferred large chunks of their genomes into those of their eukaryote hosts, creating hybrid genomes. As if that weren’t complicated enough, some early eukaryotic lineages apparently swallowed one another and amalgamated their genomes, creating yet another layer of horizontal transfer (Trends in Ecology and Evolution, vol, 23, p 268).

This is why I believe in God.

That’s an awful lot to swallow. Their theory seems like a Deus ex Deus ex Deus ex Deus ex machina to me. The coincidences seem to engulf one another and built upon one another until the whole concept taxes one’s credulity. I suppose you have to be a true believer when first you approach a theory like this if there is any hope of wholesale adoption.

The kicker, of course, is the final sentence of the article in which Eric Bapteste, a scientist at the Pierre and Marie Curie University in Paris, says, “The tree of life was useful. It helped us to understand that evolution was real. But now we know more about evolution, it’s time to move on.”

It was helpful to be led down a dead-end path for nearly two centuries? In an academic sense, I suppose it could have been a useful exercise for scientists to hone their argumentation skills, building the strongest case they could from the evidence they could uncover. But, in the end, the evidence they produced has apparently been rent asunder, rendered completely useless.

Meanwhile, after four millenia of intense scrutiny, Yahweh still is. The further revelations that God is Trinity has withstood the battering of two thousand years’ worth of inquiry. Leaving Father, Son, and Holy Ghost as constant and immutable as the day Man discovered the nature of their God. All the while science has “progressed,” reversed its conclusions, and reinvented itself when, time after time, the latest theory is decimated by a johnny-come-lately claimant to the throne of scientific consensus.

Of course, it seems to be the vogue thing to worship Change. After all, it is something one can believe in. No matter how far-fetched.

The first and potentially most serious of the two was the impending destruction of the planet. Seriously. We were all supposed to die as the planet was sucked down a man-made black hole created by a massive particle accelerator that was switched on last night at 3:30 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time. It seems the French and Swiss, completely fed up with American aggression and arrogance, decided that they could take it no longer and, if everything went right, they’d take everyone else with them. On the positive side, I was looking forward to the prospect that I would not have to repay my student loans. And so, like the Maginot Line before it, their carefully worked out plans made a vague pffffftttt sound as they looked on in dismay. It sort of reminds me of the moment when Deep Thought proclaimed that the answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything was 42.

Of course, the other earth shattering (although less so) news that was expected today was Ron Paul’s enigmatic “Big Announcement.”

With much fanfare and anticipation, but lacking clowns and fireworks, Ron Paul announced today that he thinks we should vote for a third party candidate because the two major parties are not significantly different. THAT was the “Big Announcement.” I believe I just heard another pffffftttt sound. Luckily, it was just a pffffftttt sound because if anyone had actually learned that his proposal was to form a, I’m not kidding here, “League of Non-voters” to combat the scourge of an evil two-party system which systematically excludes the voice of the fringe candidate, like Ralph Nader and Cynthia McKinney, it probably would have sounded more like hysterical laughter and mocking.

On January 14, 1977, the Senate Select Committee on Nutrition and Human Needs, chaired by George McGovern, released a document called Dietary Goals of the United States. Dietary Goals heralded the arrival of a new consensus on nutrition: that dietary fat, by raising blood cholesterol, causes atherosclerosis and obesity, leading ultimately to premature death from coronary artery disease. The Committee aimed to lower the proportion of dietary fat to carbohydrates in American diets by recommending sharp reductions in meat and dairy consumption. This would presumably lower blood cholesterol levels and save lives.

The young Committee staffers who authored the report considered themselves to be confronting a serious public health problem by attempting to reform the most dangerous aspects of American eating habits. Of course, there were some marginalized skeptics in the scientific community who believed that, based on the existing evidence, it was premature to draw firm conclusions and make recommendations, but they were discounted as overcautious at best, or corrupt at worst. The media trumpeted the findings and recommendations, dismissing the dissenters as shills for the meat, egg, and dairy industries.

However, during the subsequent decades things didn’t quite work out as the Committee staff might have hoped. During the 1980s, rates of obesity and type-2 diabetes soared and have continued rising to this day. This occurred despite declining fat consumption and less cigarette smoking. How could this have happened?  Read the rest

According to researchers in Tibet, it might have been the gladiola who dealt it. It turns out that according to the estimates of one researcher, plants may contribute up to 236 million tonnes of methane gas to the atmosphere. Considering that methane has been implicated as a greenhouse gas which contributes to the looming global warming catastrophe, I wonder if we will next be directed to Round-up our yards and assiduously guard against weeds.

Maybe we should consider dissolving some Beano into water when we water our flower beds.

Should this tree produce as theorized, Nigeria and other African nations may finally have an industry that could pull them out of centuries of economic struggle.  In addition to producing a sustainable and renewable fuel source, the plant could reduce food costs and kick-start an entire continent’s economic engine.  Imagine an Africa where new industries spring up around newly created agricultural zones, where money and jobs pour into a once desolate and starving landscape.  Where all nations can produce wealth through agri-business instead of tribal warfare. 

Maybe I have become overtaken by the far-off possibility of a plant that cures fuel demand, eases poverty and ends starvation.  But if it works and the world takes interest, Africa’s future could be dominated by prosperity instead of strife and that is worth some time and investment.