Dense Pack
News that President “Obama proposed a two-year freeze on raises for federal employees, apparently in some sort of concession to the reality of the midterm elections” signals the erosion of fixed incomes before the raging deficit torrents.
The American Spectator’s Phil Klein notes that the pay freeze represents a “sixth-tenths of one percent reduction in the projected $4.52 trillion deficit over that same period (2011 through 2015).” It is a thin wedge in a gigantic pie. The graph below can be visualized as a blue-hulled ship with a small red superstructure. What will happen is that the $4,520 billion will pull under the $28 billion. That blue hull is taking on water all the time in the form of interest costs and is getting heavier. The pay freeze has the effect of lightening the red part, but as long as the blue part keeps expanding it is a lost cause.
The Pie That Ate Itself
Government employees will have to give up pay in order to feed the deficit monster. Moreover, since the only way the government can meet interest payments is to print money, inflation may sooner or later start galloping and then federal employees will be caught between an income ceiling and a rapidly rising inflationary floor. It will be like one of those Republic Serials where the the hero is trapped in some vise. Except in this case there’s no way out in the next reel.
The blue, flooded part of the ship was partly caused by the expansion of the federal bureaucracy itself, a process which will continue as new entitlement programs like Obamacare kick in. The New York Daily News says “federal payrolls jumped by more than 137,000 slots in the last two years – at a time when unemployment in the private sector climbed close to double digits and nearly 15 million workers are without jobs.” And in the salad days before people realized the money would run out — and have to be borrowed — the government offered generous terms. “Federal employees ran 36% ahead of inflation since 2000. Private-sector workers limped along at 9% above inflation in the same period.” Now it turns out that government wrote a check it can’t cash.
The politicians who did the hiring neglected to say they would be paying salaries on credit; funding it from the deficit; putting it on the credit card. Now that the monthly minimums can’t be met except by borrowing from the printing press, they’ve come to the reluctant conclusion that they have to welsh on those promised salaries and pensions to those already onboard.
The Huffington Post calls the pay freeze a “stupid and cynically symbolic” move because there’s still so much that needs to be done! Disaster relief, police protection, healthcare, etc. Don Surber’s roundup of reactions includes this gem: “the plan is small potatoes that risks driving away valuable civil servants with little budgetary upside.” But that misses the point. What is driving away value in government is the bloating of government itself. The cumulative weight of all those wonderful programs, all of which the politicians touted as absolutely necessary, is now crushing itself to death, like an 800 pound obese man on a bed suffocating under his own weight. Feeding him won’t help. Things have reached the point when growth causes as much damage as it purports to help. All government expansion is now budgetary fratricide.
How to upset those within the state who would normally be supportive, while not satisfying anyone else.
seems he really could fail lunch!
As a slight tangent,
I’m on the icy PIIG, and not seeing much work at present, but I emphatically do not want to accept the narcotic of state welfare.
I’m not immoral enough to accept other’s money as part of a political scheme,
but,
as a thought experiment, I’m thinking through the consequences of conservatives and classical liberals reaching the point of such disgust that they withdraw from productive activity and claim welfare for the sake of hastening the collapse.
As the model of Keynesian style economics seems to call for ever growing deficit spending and state printed funnymoney/Obamabux, is this freeze a sign that the collapse may be near for the US? like closer than the next session of Congress near?
How were our missiles supposed to launch through that debris cloud without getting trashed?
Wish me luck, amigos. Got some very good news a few minutes ago. If I can get past their medical screeners and jump through the various pre-deployment hoops, I’ll be wishing y’all Merry Christmas from down range on my third rodeo.
Good luck Cannoneer.
Its mind-boggling to me, that Paul Ryan with his aggressive plan (roadmap for America) is actually going to be the chairman of the Budget Committee [Republicans actually doing something correct!?? Astonishing .. them not being the stupid party in this one instance].
The money quote from Paul Ryan in the above segment: “You cannot preempt a debt crisis, get this fiscal house in order without dealing with health care”.
This is very promising, as it means Obamacare is front & center for the house Republicans… As Paul Ryan *is* writing the next Budget of the United States (in conjunction with Chair of the senate Budget Committee of course).
Health care is a major portion of the big blue circle; so its going to have to be addressed, one way or another …
The Day the Dollar Died has gone viral ….and for good reason. Truth
http://tinyurl.com/39mr8uw
“How were our missiles supposed to launch through that debris cloud without getting trashed?”
Fratriciding government programs, sounds like a plan.
Cannoneer,
May Saint Barbara keep her eye on you. Best wishes and keep your eye on the bubble.
Good Luck, Cannoneer No. 4 –getting there, and getting back –
The only way that the really valuable civil servants can be sustainably employed is when it stays in sync with the tax base.
I’ve occasionally posted here with my “$2.5 trillion” meme.
A $2.5 trillion federal government is what we can afford, based on what revenue can be derived with current levels of taxation and other federal sources of revenue (excluding all borrowed money, of course). We’re actually able to collect something like $2.2-2.3 trillion in this down economy, but aiming for the “magic number” of $2.5 trillion is likely to encourage the private sector to loosen up and forge ahead, and make up the difference.
$2.5 trillion still buys a lot of government — it roughly approximates what was spent in the second Clinton and first Bush terms.
I’ve got a great idea. Let’s have our store raise prices by 50% and then cut them from the raised level by 20% and declare it a customer friendly sale.
I’m one of those looking at a pay freeze. So be it. I’ll manage just fine, and, having been a frequenter of this and many sites that have followed events, I fully expected something like this. That’s why I’ve built up, and continue to build, a serious cash reserve. The irony is that we feds have plenty of benefits to help us do just fine despite the freeze (assuming we don’t have galloping inflation by 2012).
As Wretchard points out, freezing the pay of millions of federal workers as if it was intended to continue keeping all of them is of little or no consequence. It makes more sense to get rid of entire functions, with the resulting attrition of federal workers. What the feds are likely to do if they go for attrition, is to keep all of its federal functions in place while trying to use fewer workers to perform those tasks. That strategy will result in even greater federal incompetence and inefficiency.
The federal and state governments have to be willing to stop doing certain services and subsidies, etc., entirely.
The best advertisement for Dense Pack was that it had the right enemies.
Cannoneer No. 4 @ 3 said:
“How were our missiles supposed to launch through that debris cloud without getting trashed?”
We were supposed to launch on warning (RWE could comment upon this with more authority). For almost 2 decades, the Cold War was waged on a hair-fine trigger with tens of thousands thermonuclear warheads set to detonate within a period of less than 2 hours. The war would have been over before the debris clouds starting coming up from our silos. It’s a miracle that we survived. We must never again base our national security upon mutual assured destruction.
The civil servants are most displeased about the salary freeze (I’m only a lowly contractor and not directly impacted). The union bosses say that it’s no big thing and the civil servants will still get their pay raises as bonuses. As Wretchard correctly said, the wages of the civil servants are statistically insignificant. Due to aging Baby Boomers, Social Security and Medicare costs were poised to explode before Obamacare was invented. Obamacare was merely the stake-through-the-heart. After the Social Security checks start being reduced due to program insolvency, the American taxpayer will be screaming for discretionary programs like NASA to be terminated even though NASA’s funding is relatively insignificant. NASA is already on its knees after cancellation of the Constellation program and termination of the Space Shuttle. NASA is currently funded under “Continuing Resolution” (CR) and it’s rumored that we’ll get knocked back to 2007 funding because Congress can’t be bothered to vote out a new budget. Because we’re on CR funding, the situation has gotten crazy with people doing work in support of cancelled projects (we’re running around in circles).
I wonder how much this will help in trimming the budget?
http://hotair.com/archives/2010/11/30/end-of-the-line-for-ethanol/
The first thing wrong with the day the dollar died is that Obama is reading from notes rather than a teleprompter.
The second thing wrong with the “day the dollar died” is that the Euro is still there. They are as busy, if not busier, digging themselves into a hole. If the US can attain to some kind of economic rationality in this world of madness it will become the dominant power to the end of the 21st century.
The real tragedy is that it is led by elites who think clothing themselves in castoff European ideology is haute couture and are so eager to array themselves in the suffocating clothes of socialism that they’ve failed to notice that it has pinched Europe into gangrene and given them bad feet besides.
Much of what has to be done consists not of acts of genius but acts of commonsense.
This is a symbolic victory for the tea party. By taking this action Obama has just validated the main concern of the tea party, and thus the tea party itself. More, Obama has acknowledged that federal payrolls are a legitimate target for cost control.
In this one step, as tiny as it is in impact on the budget, Obama has shifted from the offense, growing government, to defense, limiting government. Expect his far left supporters to recognize the betrayal.
I see it as another example of divide and conquer. By cutting budgets on existing bureaucrats to make room for new bureaucrats, the Obomination is setting old bureaucrats against new bureaucrats. Any targeted budget cuts will do the same thing. All cuts have to be across the board. Go back to ’08 and see what the final numbers for the federal government were. What ever the deficit was as a percentage of the revenue, cut the budget by that much. A hiring freeze is in order. I realise this is too simple and effective to be politically possible, but one can hope.
Schindler always waved his fingers when he was making a sale. It even works for the good guys.
You cannot reduce the deficit without reducing the size of government. Freezing pay is nothing. The size of government needs to be reduced by a significant amount, or nothing positive will happen.
If this is not done, all the taxation in the world will not get us out of the hole we are in.
This pay freeze is just theater for the duped listening, watching, or reading the MSM.
The problem continues to be the same: obama is a liar and assumes we are as stupid as the yahoos who “elected” him.
wretchard:
Shouldn’t that be “torpedo headed toward the fiscal Lusitania”?
obummercare calls for the creation of 150+? new federal handout for halfwit (affirmative action) organizations to be formed. all government hiring is subject to AA requirements, so qualifications take a distant back seat to political correctness. he fully plans to implement this monstrosity, so cutting a little up front is his ante before the raises begin.
remember what he said right after costing the democratic party the last election, something getting along as we continue to ‘move forward’. i couldn’t believe what i was hearing until those two little words finished it off, ‘move forward’. any cuts made will be like obiwon himself, just a token.
Don Rodrigo and Alaska Paul:
On target!! i have been there and have seen the waste, fraud and abuse. But even if certain functions were paragons of efficency, ethical probity and mission accomplishment, the are irrelevent, supernumerary and redundant. In the past DoD shouldered the brunt of cut backs. The accross the board reductions and pay freezes will not salve the blood flow.
Cut out Agencies, Activities and Departments. Start with Department of Education, TSA, NEA and take it from that point. Do away with DDESS send children to off base schools at lesser expense. Cease funding ACORN like community action groups and these ridiculous green job farces,cut the EPA by half. Mine coal and drill here for petrol.
So what are the headlines about just now? “Don’t ask don’t tell.” And Julian Assange is arguing that despite the fact that he makes a living out of exposing others, that he has a right to privacy himself. Where he is, who pays him, that’s for him to know and for everyone else to find out. Hillary Clinton says Wikileaks has launched an attack on the international system. Portugal is going to meltdown and the EC increases its budget. Now President Obama is going to offset a trillion dollars in additional spending with 28 billion dollars in savings.
It’s unreal. But few in public life seem to notice or even care. That’s the scary part. It’s like Captain Queeg going into his cabin with a headache while his destroyer is sinking in a typhoon.
Everyone just carries on like everything was normal while things fall apart around them. But unlike the Caine there is no way people can relieve themselves of a whole system of dysfunctional thinking. The fruitcakes are just too numerous and ubiquitous to get rid of. Maybe the only thing left is to quietly don the life jacket and hope for the best when the ship starts to go down. Who knows, maybe the inrushing waters will float out the quart of strawberries he’s been looking for. They’ll get their cap and trade yet and they’ll celebrate it like it was the most important thing in the world, even in the middle of a snowstorm, happy for some distant reason that no one, let alone themselves, can remember.
Can fascism every really be off-topic?
When I flew out of Atlanta, Wednesday, the TSA greeter asked me to remove my shirt after ascertaining that I was wearing underwear. For my part, I pleasantly informed her that had I known I would be disrobing publicly, I would have saved us both time by coming to the airport nude under a raincoat. She was not amused but her supervisor was kind enough to help me move my belongings along.
Upon returning from South Bend, my fiancée was gently felt-up by a shriveled, three pack a day TSA attendant, who admonished her not to wear loose fitting clothing in future.
There was no word given either in Atlanta or South Bend as to what books were proscribed.
nobody in public life seems to notice or even care
wretchard, you at least, notice, and perhaps even care.
and maybe blert.
But nobody in the MSM, that’s what *makes* them the MSM, I guess.
As I said, I wrote it all off as The New Dark Ages coming around fifteen years ago now. Sancho, my armor!
America can respond quickly when it has too. Once the body politic gets it collective minds focused, the USA becomes a high speed Glacier. Once the body politic figures out that it is them in the cross hairs, things will start to happen quickly.
In WW2 when it came time to round up 120,000+ Japs, it took just a few days. That was quicker then WW1, where they interned 11,507 Germans. They sorted thru about 17% of the American population and screened them to get those 11,507. All without computers.
Most problems faced by America today have simple solutions. Those solutions are being prevented by political correctness. Once the Body politic gets motivated, the PC police will be the first ones rounded up.
For some reason I’m thinking of Stephen, the Irish fighter in “Braveheart” who talks to God. Before the big battle he tells Wallace “God says he can get me out of this but he’s pretty sure you’re f***ed!”
The easy answer is we’re f***ed. The more nuanced answer is that we’re f***ed, but what about the system?
If what the system does is not meaningfully affected by domestic political resistance- my belief is it’s not- it’s still affected by international finance. Their strategy for the last few years has been to try to paper things over until things improve, but at some point they will realize they have to really reduce government spending.
What that will *not* involve is any real layoffs or pay cuts for government workers, their key power base. They have to cut spending, but in ways that don’t affect their ability to rule. And yet that is what most spending is for, in one way or another.
Obama views it as a substantive concession, while it’s clearly no more than symbolic. This may be a sign a little light is coming on. When the people in power want something, they can make it happen, fast- that’s how we got the bailouts. But can they go in the opposite direction? Can they jam through a package of cuts that keeps both the bond markets and the helots in check? I guess we will see.
Freezing pay is a start, albeit a small one. I also support the freeze on military pay recommended by the Commission chairs, particularly for officers. I think it will be rough for the junior guys with families. It’s all symbolic, but you have to start somewhere.
civil serpents
Since Obama brought up the subject, i think that the Pubs should propose at least a 33% across the board pay cut for all non- military Federal employees, because surveys have shown consistently that the average Federal worker makes roughly 50% more than the average American Family, and that’s not even counting their gold plated pensions.
Such a move would not only take a much bigger chunk out of the Federal deficit, but symbolically, it would remind the pampered personnel of our bloated Federal Bureaucracy that they are no better than the rest of us.
Cutting salaries is symbolically important, but it won’t do much. What needs to happen is to create productivity. That probably means three things.
1. Create cheaper energy;
2. Reduce regulation;
3. Dismantle monopolies and promote competition.
You’ll know the corner has been turned when there far fewer lawyers, environmentalists, activists, spokesmen, rapporteurs, advocates and middlemen. When there are more people building products, creating markets, innovating. You’ll know things have improved when gas prices go down. When it doesn’t take hundreds of millions of dollars to prosecute a single terrorist; when common sense comes back into security, health and safety.
Things will turn up when a child points up into space and says “I want to go to Mars” not “how can we keep keep people from polluting the universe?” When you can do business and only be stopped when you’re doing something dangerous or dishonest. When we spend 99.999% of public time thinking about how to make money and 00.001% on “don’t ask don’t tell”. When people look at someone like Hillary Clinton and say not “wow, there goes the smartest woman in the world” but “oh, wow”.
We can’t go through life thinking we are a plague on the universe. We have to look up at the planets and say, “that is my future”; not that its some park to be placed under the UN, which must be the greatest insanity of all. And that reminds me, we’ll know we’ve turned the corner when the UN can only be found in a diorama beside the display in the La Brea tar pits.
Cutting salaries is only a gesture of intent. The real cuts must be in the bonds of our mind.
I don’t want to be a bore — but let me draw your attention once again to the actions of the City Fathers in Oakland, California following the Proposition 13 tax roll back around 30 years ago. They laid off the street cleaning crews, but kept the bureaucrats in charge of street cleaning on the payroll. Anything that has already happened can happen again!
Still, some of those senior bureaucrats sitting around with nothing to do are going to start probing into things. State bureaucrats in California may notice that California’s budget problems would be solved if California did not send so much tax revenue to the Feds. Most of us have been expecting that Texas would be the State to take the lead in slapping back the Feds; maybe instead it will be left-wing CA grabbing tax revenue from left-wing Federal Obamanoids.
Interesting times!
This may have come up before — lately I haven’t been able to read every thread — but just in case. On the budget cutting front, the Cato Institute has been doing incredible work with its Downsizing the Federal Government web site:
http://www.downsizinggovernment.org/balanced-budget-plan
If you need cold, hard facts to argue why certain agencies can and should be cut, this is where to get them.
stoicheion @ 29 said:
“America can respond quickly when it has too. … In WW2 when it came time to round up 120,000+ Japs, it took just a few days. … Most problems faced by America today have simple solutions. Those solutions are being prevented by political correctness. Once the Body politic gets motivated, the PC police will be the first ones rounded up.”
IMHO, the rounding up of American citizens of Japanese ancestry was the second most disgraceful act in American history. Slavery takes the prize for being the most disgraceful. Having said that, it would be emotionally satisfying if all the moonbats suddenly went “poof” and disappeared. A practical problem that I have with this is my mother, niece and assorted respected co-workers are barking moonbats. In their defense, they’re not the treasonous sort of moonbats who quote from Noam Chomsky, subscribe to “Mother Jones” magazine and wanted the US to be defeated in the Iraq War. They’re the less offensive sort who become tediously irrational whenever George W. Bush’s name is mentioned and/or think socialism is a good idea. However just for purposes of discussion, how many treasonous moonbats are there in the US? My guess is there are not more than 100 million but not less than 10 million. Assuming there are only 10 million treasonous moonbats: What are you going to do with them? If you round them up then you’ll have to care-and-feed them until they grow a brain. For most of them, that won’t happen. Now after having collected the moonbats and due to cost constraints, you’re faced with the need for Hitleresque solutions. If you resort to mass murder then your moral authority disappears, i.e. you’re no better than Hitler, Stalin or Mao. Perhaps killing armed moonbats in open battle is the only ethical solution. Unfortunately the collateral damage of modern warfare makes that an unattractive option.
I don’t know what to do with the moonbats.
It’s not really a budget question, it’s a leadership issue. Leaders MUST share in hardships when times get tough. Shared sacrifice keeps cultural morale high and the bonds of social fellowship in order.
This is a way for federal employees to show they understand and sympathize with the hardships their fellow citizens face in an unstable economy. The symbolic value goes WAY beyond the relatively small monetary contribution the freeze makes to budget deficit reduction.
My husband is a fed employee and this will hit our family budget, but it is necessary. I just hope the President and Congress follow suit.
#35. Kinuachdrach
State bureaucrats in California may notice that California’s budget problems would be solved if California did not send so much tax revenue to the Feds.
I have never understood this argument. To my knowledge the federal government does not impose any tax on any states, only on their citizens. And furthermore, states like California are given a free ride in a sense because the state income taxes they impose upon their own citizens are tax deductible under the Federal standard. People in states where there are no state income taxes don’t get such a break.
What is the argument? If the Federal government wasn’t ripping them off so much we could rip them off more than we’re doing now? That’s a comforting thought.
But as Mark Twain once said about lies, there are three kinds: lies, damned lies, and statistics.
I don’t know what to do with the moonbats.
Relocate them to sanctuary cities.
Eggplant (#37)
Moonbats are cowards. Nothing needs to be done about them except to oppose, ridicule, and confront them.
I know (I think) whereof I speak; I have lived in the Bay Area for thirty years!
Almost all my friends are lefties of the inoffensive sort, actually very fine people. Willing to hear out their neocon friend.
Jamie Irons
peterike @ 36 said:
“On the budget cutting front, the Cato Institute has been doing incredible work with its Downsizing the Federal Government web site..”
Getting “close and personal”: The Cato Institute budget calls for cutting NASA’s budget by 50%. That’s my rice bowl. If NASA were cut by 50%, it’s funding would be below “critical mass”, i.e. all NASA could do at 50% budget would be to maintain existing infrastructure without doing anything new or innovative. A more cost effective approach would be complete termination of the Space Program and scrap the existing infrastructure (Obviously I’m not advocating this). The same sort of argument could be made for the weapons labs and much of America’s defense spending. I would counter argue that government programs that enhance national security and the economy should have their budgets increased. One could then respond that NASA does not enhance national security or help the economy. At that point the discussion gets interesting. We could present our facts and see who has the compelling arguments.
I agree with ScenarioA in terms of symbolic victory, but the skeptic in me says there is already a backroom deal in place with the public sector unions. Secret concessions somewhere down the line. Obama can no more declare war on civil service employees than a man can cut off his own leg.
I simply don’t believe this is a serious move; everything about Obama and his operation screams otherwise. Perception is reality, right?
Vaya con dios Cannoneer.
I’m an “Abolish the Department of Education” kind of guy. Look at it this way: if you were getting the kind of service from your cable TV company that we get from the Department of Eduction (spending lots of money for a lousy product), you’d get rid of your cable company and save yourself a few bucks, right? So Abolish the Department of Education. Same deal.
Then we can abolish HUD and the Department of Energy.
The way to address health care cost is through a system that emphasizes Free Markets, Free Enterprise and Innovation. And that sure ain’t Obamacare.
Everybody is afraid to name the cuts we should make because they’ll sound like the bad guy. If cuts are really going to happen they got to be named, often, so people get use to the idea. We got to be like that guy Cato the Elder. He use to end every speech — even ones about filling potholes — with “Carthage must be destroyed.”
Well, The Department of Education must be abolished! Maybe we can get someone from the Cato institute to keep saying it — over and over, until it actually happens. Hey, Carthage was not razed in a day.
Speaking of my state California, a real easy cut would be to enforce current law ( i think) that says welfare cannot go to illegals. California currently has 32.5% roughly of all welfare cases, ( 3.5 times the average per Capita) and I would bet that’s because 70-80% of them are illegals. Make that cut and it’s an easy 25% of welfare costs.
Even better would be to deny the welfare moolah all together to states that paid them to illegals. I would love to hear our new guvner scream bout that.
O/T here but relevant to Wretchard’s previous thread: Interpol has issued an arrest warrant for Mr. Wicked Leaks:
“Interpol has placed the Australian-born founder of WikiLeaks on its most-wanted list after Sweden issued an arrest warrant against him as part of a drawn-out rape investigation.
The Lyon, France-based international police organization has issued a “red notice” for 39-year old Julian Assange — the equivalent of putting him on its most wanted list.”
http://www.foxnews.com/world/2010/11/30/interpol-issues-arrest-warrant-wikileaks-founder-julian-assange/
Wonder who put pressure on Interpol.
Cutting salaries is symbolically important, but it won’t do much.
Yes, but it has weight far beyond the numbers, it’s like popping the bubble early – if you call this early, if you call this popping. With private salaries falling far, far more than anybody lets on, the continued inflation of government salaries – and the absurdly generous retirement benefits – threaten the credibility and legitimacy of the whole system.
Or alternatively, show how the triumph of socialism is to be desired by all.
Eggplant #14:
Launch On Warning was the idea that we would launch based on a reported inbound attack. Launch Under Attack was that we would not retaliate until the bombs actually hit. Launch Under Attack was the preferred approach for most of the Cold War since it would reduce the chance of an accidental launch. Launch On Warning was what we were postured to do if required and were prepared to move to as a normal procedure due to due to increased numbers of Soviet missiles with greater accuracy.
A friend of mine was stationed at a radar station in Alaska in the 60’s. It was not unusual for the radars to pick up a single “missile track” that eventually turned out to be a meteorite. One day that happened and the system went into a “do” loop and counted the same track over and over. NORAD was being told electronically that there were hundreds of tracks inbound when in fact there was only one. Then the comm lines to NORAD went down. That’s the danger of Launch On Warning.
Don Rodrigo #12:
You nailed it! That was what Al Gore’s Reinventing Government Act did. Do all the same work. Keep all the same departments. And just use fewer people.
People really do not seem to understand that “greater efficiency” does not mean “magically cause resources to appear out of thin air” or even “work harder” but rather “stop doing stupid stuff and just do what is important.”
When I was at the Pentagon and was assigned the extra duty of being the organization’s US Savings Bond Representative I found that the guy in charge of it had come up with the following plan:
1. Contact all your people and ask them if they are currently buying US Savings Bonds regularly. Report this data back to us.
2. Then contact all of you people and hand them a brochure and application form for payroll deduction explain the new features this year.
3. Report to us at the halfway mark on how you are doing with your savings bond drive.
4. The contact all your people again and gather data on how many are buying savings bonds now so we can compare the data with Step 1 and see how well we are doing and report that data to us.
Now folks, this was a plan that’s seemed to be well thought out and appropriate – to the people in charge of the savings bond program. Those of us already working 12 to 14 hour days had another opinion.
Now if I was Julian I wouldn’t worry none about no Interpol. His main problem is that if the regular cops get him they’ll ask him who leaked the documents as a way to avoid a long stretch in the hoosegow. Personally I don’t think old Julian will hold out once the prosecutors put it that way. He’ll fold.
Of course whoever did leak him the documents knows this too. Even if they think he’s a tough guy, they won’t take the risk. And the principle in all these cases is cut your losses. So it all depends on who used Julian as a conduit. If Julian’s sources are bad hombres, then Julian had better walk into a police station right now because the cops are now his best buddies.
In fact, he’d better surrender tout de suite to whatever law enforcement agent he trusts. Because then he has a chance to make a deal that will hold up. Otherwise he may discover that his ‘friends’ may be his worst enemies. Because now he’s all that stands between them and the exposure. It’s a high price to pay for fifteen minutes of fame.
Best of luck, Cannoneer No.4.
Something about “the pie that ate itself” has me laughing. Thanks! And it’s getting fatter and fatter, all the while stuffing itself and talking oh so seriously. Anyone remember La Grande Bouffe?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QP0h2l4BPIo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VKL2QzuxlQg
Sayeth the wiki:
“The tradition of the Cabinet dates back to the beginnings of the Presidency itself. Established in Article II, Section 2, of the Constitution, the Cabinet’s role is to advise the President on any subject he may require relating to the duties of each member’s respective office.
The Cabinet includes the Vice President and the heads of 15 executive departments — the Secretaries of Agriculture, Commerce, Defense, Education, Energy, Health and Human Services, Homeland Security, Housing and Urban Development, Interior, Labor, State, Transportation, Treasury, and Veterans Affairs, as well as the Attorney General.”
Jeeze, Louise! Delete Education, Energy, H&HS, Homeland Security, HUD and Veterans Affairs and either devolve their functions to the states, combine them with the remaining departments, or reduce them to bureaus reporting to the remaining cabinet level posts. And, abolish all “czars”. (Except of course, for the excellent Czar of Muscovy over at the Gorgmogons.)
Trim 80 years of mission creep!
quick note –anybody remember the system used by the so-called ‘base-closing commission’? Now, this commission wasn’t like Obama’s can-kicking CYA commissions –this one had a legal mandate from congress, and the legal power to submit proposals to congress for a timely –and binding –up-or-down vote. A bipartisan commission, like the current Simpson/Bowles, which itself could and would be a world-changer IF and only if it had the power to submit its rec’s to congress for an up or down.
Obama festoons the consciousness with commissions, but of course they all curtsy to the king.
#44. hdgreene
I agree with you totally. And there are a lot of agencies that most people have never heard of that deserve to be eradicated as well. To a great extent the purpose of modern government is to provide jobs for government employees. Its a cancer in the body politic.
Once upon a time many years ago my mother (who has been dead for many years) got involved in politics. One of the things that came to her attention down here in Nueces County, Texas was the existence of the Nueces County School Board. In Texas there were county schools, but as individual counties got larger the task of education was taken over by independent school districts. At this time there were no county schools in Nueces County at all, but there was still an elected Nueces County School Board, which was an elected and paid position. The positions were held by people who were part of the local political machine.
My mother ran for one of the positions and won. She then began to bring to the attention of the local press and State legislators that the County School Board of Nueces County needed to be abolished. All of the checks for her “service” on the County School Board were signed over to the Salvation Army, and soon the Nueces County School Board was indeed abolished by the legislature, much to the chagrin of the political hyenas who depended on it for a check.
Yeah–very few of us measure up to Conan the Barbarian in turning back the tide. You may be just a mouse, and the enemy of the moment may just be a rat, but you do that for what you believe in. Respect is due to all who fight against evil whether they be mice armed with thorns fighting against rats or great warriors fighting with swords against dragons.
Dense packed snow will turn to ice
As quickly as you please
Long time no raise will not be nice
Because of two year freeze
But think about the upside now
Forget the lefty shouts
We’ve got to get rid of somehow
Those bureaucratic louts
Who sit all day and dream of ways
To make life worse for all
Now we can sit and count the days
Before the blessed fall
Of bloated government and yes
Of bloated unions too
The Tea Parties will clean the mess
And turn Reds white and blue
Is there a valid reason why federal and state pensions start being paid out prior to the retirement age of social security?
Seems like an awful lot of money goes to people who are younger than the retirement age to not work.
Seems like federal and state pensions should be tied to kick in at the age that social security does, between 62 and 67, and pro-rated as is social security.
BTW, I am in my mid-40s, and it seems utterly ridiculous that if I had started working for the fed or state government in my early 20′s, I would be getting ready to cash in my job for retirement and be able to start living off (in part) a federal or state pension, or go to another job and work for twenty years to get a second pension.
I am not planning on retirement for another 25 to 30 years, and have worked over 20 years in the private sector already.
Guys, remember it’s the social programs that cost all the money, we’re in need of some serious military these days, and just interest on the debt is a big chunk. Trying to balance the budget on what’s left is a losing proposition.
(wasn’t I just on the other side a few posts ago? oh, whatever)
Which is why the “real” fix is fixing the economy. I’m starting to suspect what the form of that will have to be, and I can’t imagine how we’re going to get there from here. Need some serious leadership, communications, brainpower – just when we seem to have none of those, as wretchard was bemoaning above … nor was I being hopeful about it there, either.
A lot will depend on the mad science experiments of The Bernank.
We shall see.
I think this video best summarizes the current situation and the results.
http://youtu.be/BlK62rjQWLk
I knew a fellow in grad school who suggested to me that MAD was all a cover story, and that the real U.S. strategy was and had always been a first strike.
At the time I thought he was off his nut, but years later I saw a cover of IEEE Spectrum magazine, showing reentry tracks at the Marshall Islands test range, where two Minuteman III MIRVs were attacking three targets, with criss-crossed tracks for pairs of RV’s coming down on three places. One had to be naive to know this was not a test of a counter-force missile attack.
The U-2 and later Corona intelligence revealed the missile and bomber gaps to be a combination of Russian bluff and U.S. hysteria in the media. The U.S. strategy has always been to maintain overwhelming superiority, the 1970′s Russian build-up notwithstanding.
This is not to say that a first-strike was not an extremely high risk strategy, but it was an option open to the President, in the event of some existential crisis that an overwelming counter-force strike by authorized. That crisis could be some clear evidence of a mobilization for war — say, a massing of tanks or a civilian evacuation of major city centers or some other unmistakable preparation short of ICBMs being launched.
Why do you think the Russians were insisting on a renunciation of first-use? Why did Gorbachev consider the Trident D-5 deployment as “game over” for Russia (highly MIRVed SLBMs with high accuracy)? Launch on warning? The strategy was more like Launch on Good Intelligence of Mobilization.
Josh, don’t get me wrong –i was talking about the mechanism of, not the mission of, the ‘base-closing commission’. The tool –the automatic on demand up-or-down –is a way to start hammering lumber into the torpedo holes. The public outcry goes to the commission, the pres can’t do a thing about it. the commission ideally would be composed of gray eminences from throughout society –not from congressionals worried about elections.
The new senator from Illinois, Mark Kirk, was talking to greta von susterwazzis about applying the mechanism to the whole budget, thinking big –hey, Illinois may finally have that Lincoln –
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Base_Realignment_and_Closure
key –outsource the mission in order to extract the cuts from politics as much as possible –and –it worked!
***
PM/58; The Peackeeper MIRVs coming down –fantastic pic of the system we are dismantling as we speak.
(just as, as we speak, Russia is limbering up the Ikanders!)
“Nature abhors a vacuum”
“You’ll know the corner has been turned when there far fewer lawyers, environmentalists, activists, spokesmen, rapporteurs, advocates and middlemen.”
Although I believe you’re correct, I think the only way this can possibly happen is for this society to collapse and allow for a new society to grow from it’s ashes.
that process can’t possibly happen in our lifetimes.
Don’t worry government worker, what they takes away in the big print, they gives you back in the little print. I almost guarantee that the union officers of the unions that most federal workers belong to have been briefed and will inform their members this week that, while ATB (across the board) increases have been abolished for the next two years, in range and step increases will be accelerated to compensate.
These guys are scum, crooked scum!
pm @ 58: not sure what you are talking about, did you have the impression that a second-strike force could be simple and dumb? second strike by definition means we’re shooting at a target that still has all its defenses.
–
Private-sector workers limped along at 9% above inflation in the same (since 2000) period.
Absurd. Cut off the top 1%, and the remainder was surely below inflation. Cut off the bottom 10% – which I suspect has done somewhat better in recent years – and the middle class has probably lost 10% or more since 2000. Cut out the government workers who were going up and katie bar the door.
For IT and STEM workers, it’s more like 50% 50% 50% lower since, oh, say 1998 to get us *before* the bubble. Since the height of bubble, don’t even ask, but I guess those numbers were just way too good to be true.
Keith@2: “as a thought experiment, I’m thinking through the consequences of conservatives and classical liberals reaching the point of such disgust that they withdraw from productive activity and claim welfare for the sake of hastening the collapse.”
I’m sorta there now. I’ve been unemployed for about 5 months now. I’ve been looking for work, but not too hard. I spent 25 years working my butt off and having 1/3 of it handed over to various governments. I decided to collect some from the government for a change before that’s impossible. I want to see a little bit of my little girl growing up before I get back to work.
I’ve been out of work before, but never claimed unemployment and was always employed within a month or 6 weeks again. Due to the severity of conditions and the fact that I moved to the country and I’m a software developer it would probably have taken a little longer this time, but I could have been employed again by now if I really wanted to. I guess I sort of went Galt, at least for a little while. I’m getting antsy again though, and who knows what changes they’ll make to eligibility for unemployment?
I’ll probably get back to work this winter…but I won’t regret this little vacation from the world. And I won’t regret the extra time I’ve been able to spend with my daughter. I’m a little rejuvenated…guess it’s time to go back for the second half of my work life. Ugh.
My take on this is that Obama has decided to tack a bit to the center on meaningless symbolic stuff because he decided he wants to be re-elected–and he decided he wants re-election in part as an ego thing, and in part because as long as he’s President it’s impossible to repeal ObamaCare.
58. MAD was no cover story- even if the primary plan was a counter-force first strike, we still had to guard against the possibility of a Soviet surprise attack. Nothing but the survivability of our arsenal guaranteed that they wouldn’t simply launch all their nukes simultaneously with no buildup.
Jamie Irons @ 41 said:
“Moonbats are cowards. Nothing needs to be done about them except to oppose, ridicule, and confront them.”
Unfortunately, the moonbats control the entertainment industry but they’d be extremely easy to ridicule and satirize (they are so damned silly!). Making it embarrassing to be a moonbat might be the non-violent way to rid ourselves of them. The initial steps would be to regain control of the entertainment industry and the MSM (no easy task).
Jamie Irons also said:
“I know (I think) whereof I speak; I have lived in the Bay Area for thirty years!”
I feel your pain and also live in the Bay Area (did my undergraduate work at UC Berkeley). I’ve learned the skill of smiling politely and holding my tongue as a moonbat pisses straight up and thinks he’s being clever.
RWE @ 48 said:
“It was not unusual for the radars to pick up a single “missile track” that eventually turned out to be a meteorite. One day that happened and the system went into a “do” loop and counted the same track over and over. NORAD was being told electronically that there were hundreds of tracks inbound when in fact there was only one. Then the comm lines to NORAD went down. That’s the danger of Launch On Warning.”
That story is terrifying. Supposedly the Russians had a similar experience with a Norwegian(?) sounding rocket. As a consequence, a Russian officer was supposed to have given the ICBM launch command but disobeyed his standing orders. We were so close to being cremated alive.
Paul Milenkovic @ 58 said:
“I knew a fellow in grad school who suggested to me that MAD was all a cover story, and that the real U.S. strategy was and had always been a first strike. … Why do you think the Russians were insisting on a renunciation of first-use? Why did Gorbachev consider the Trident D-5 deployment as “game over” for Russia (highly MIRVed SLBMs with high accuracy)?”
The Trident D-5 SLBM and Peacekeeper MX ICBM were effectively “zero CEP” weapon systems, i.e. they could take out command bunkers. Although a tactical weapon, the Pershing-II was essentially a nuclear decapitation weapon designed to take out silos and command bunkers. The Pershing-II scared the crap out of the Soviet leadership. I’ve had the opportunity to play with the Pershing-II RV aerodynamic model and it’s easily the most sophisticated one that I’ve ever encountered (way more sophisticated than the Apollo-CM aerodynamic model). The D-5, MX and Pershing-II had a flashing neon sign over them saying “Nuclear First Strike!”. Add to that, Reagan’s Star Wars program of trying to develop a practical ABM system and it’s no wonder the Soviets were freaking-out.
Now people say that Star Wars was all bluff. They argue that the goal was to force the Soviets to over-spend on their defense program and implode their economy. The Soviets did in fact implode their economy but was it due to Star Wars? Did Reagan think it was a bluff or did he really believe that Star Wars was a viable system? I personally think Reagan was playing Russian Roulette with Gorbachev. It was like a scene out of the “Deer Hunter” where Reagan spun the revolver, put the gun to his own head, smiled, pulled the trigger, the hammer clicked and then he handed the revolver to Gorbachev. Gorbachev then crapped his pants and said “You are F-ing crazy! I don’t want to play this game anymore!”. So the Cold War ended. It’s hard to argue with success but when Reagan pointed that revolver at this own head, he effectively pointed it at the heads of everyone in the United States. I really don’t like the idea that he gambled with my life.
Marty @64 wrote “and in part because as long as he’s President it’s impossible to repeal ObamaCare.”
Don’t be too sure of that, Marty …
Even the president can’t indefinitely resist something that 58% of the public wants to repeal.
Already 47% of voters expect health care to be repealed, grow that a bit, and it starts to become inevitable …
See for example Health Care Compact:
Interesting times we live in …
#66 Eggplant – His name is Stanislav Petrov, and it was even closer than you think. Apparently, he had taken someone else’s shift on duty on that particular occasion. Somewhere, in another universe across the quantum divide, the man who should have had the duty did have it, and civilisation ended on 26 September 1983. His actions were contrary to set procedures, and not following procedure in Soviet Russia was damned dangerous.
Stanislav Petrov ought to have statues dedicated to him. This was one of the rare examples where one man really can save civilisation. And he did.
Cannoneer 4,
Good Luck and check six. I’m heading to the JOC during a similar time period -always watching wazowski.
Eggplant, IIRC it was the guy who planned the Air Campaign for Desert Storm who said’ ‘Bombs kill voters. Precision guided weapons kill politicians.’ Or something like that. The biggest single advantage the USA has over Russia or any other despotic regime is that we change leadership more often then the average Muslim changes his drawers.
Kill Putin, Kim, Chevaz, et. al. and those nations fall apart until a new despot emerges from the rubble. Obama dies and Biden takes over. Biden dies and Fancy Nancy takes over. She dies and Hill -de-beast gets to be the target for a while. If by some chance DC gets nuked and ALL the pols dies, we just elect new ones. No one person is larger then the USA. Nobody is bigger then the Constitution.
That is why new START is treasonous. ANYTHING that reduces the American advantage in nuclear weapons is not in the interest of America. Those with a phobia about nuclear war actually increase the chance of one. The world would be a much better place today if Truman had the ‘nads to nuke Moscow in ’48.
#37 “A practical problem that I have with this is my mother, niece and assorted respected co-workers are barking moonbats”.
I see you as having three choices, based on my experience. #1 Direct confrontation. #2 indirect confrontation, and #3 – ignoring them.
#3 won’t work because you’ll not change their minds. #1 rarely works unless you kill them metaphorically or otherwise. So #2 it is.
By “indirect” I mean inserting the tiniest threads of doubt in ther minds as they spew the “narrative”. Every time they make moonbat comments, you “ju jitsu” them – use their momentum (their words and beliefs) to throw them off balance. You aren’t going for a kill – you want them to self-immobilize.
For example – the whole alternative fuels fracas, now that Algore has admitted he was merely acting politically when he suggested that ethanol would work.
And when your moonbats begin to slow down because their minds are inserting the doubts, then you ramp it up a bit and show them the door to another perspective. They’ll open it, most of them.
You just have to keep up the steady pressure and never engage in direct confrontation.
A wage freeze is symbolic and necessary, but the real change needs to be much more substantial.
What really needs to happen is for 30-40% of all non-military jobs at all levels of government to be cut completely and forever, with the remaining jobs pay scale cut 25% and locked at their level (no COLAs, no CPI adjustments, no changes for seniority) for a period of 25 or more years. Then, begin the process of eliminating public pension systems or making them no better than Social Security. Then, make public sector unions illegal and the act of belonging to or organizing one an act of treason. Then limit unemployment benefits to six months regardless of economic conditions. Then, reduce the overall regulatory burden on business and means test or otherwise contextually modify it further for small or medium businesses.
This will accomplish the following:
-Immediately decrease the size and expense of government.
-Insure that in the coming high inflation period the size and cost of government will continue to decrease vs the overall economy.
-Force a large sector of American society to seek jobs in the private economy which will ultimately displace illegal aliens. (Another problem solved!)
-Make public sector employment as a lifetime thing sufficiently unattractive that only a very few people will actually do this, and only those who are there for love of the job and not for guaranteed income stream.
-Start the process of getting the public to have a more realistic notion of the worth of their labor in material and job-security terms.
-Shift money away from pencil pushing bureaucrats who produce nothing of real worth and actually destroy wealth by harming private industry with unncessary and harmful regulation.
-Free up capital for small and medium business to hire and innovate.
No doubt howls will burst forth if this is tried. There will be those government workers who will cry out at having to leave a comfy office and do manual labor. There will be a LARGE downsizing of the lifestyle of millions of people, something which is a necessary corrective, but will be resisted at every turn. The NPR-listening crowd, who believe what they hear (wrongly) on their “information” source about how military spending is 60% of the Federal budget, will scream about how we can keep going with government employment at it’s current level if we only cut defense spending. They’re wrong, but they’re passionate.
We’ll have to push these things over all those folks and their protests, anyways. Nothing less will get the government back into line, and restore the social contract between public workers and private (broken decades ago not by the private sector, but by the public sector) to what it was intended to be by the Founders.
I have seen no discussion of the fact that a salary cap would in a high or hyper inflation environment would allow excessive government salaries to be inflated away the same way all the debt would. What we need is the same kind of a cap on entitlements like SS and Medicare, and then there might be a hope of killing the beast by hyperinflation. As long as the entitlements are inflation indexed, we are doublely screwed.
#71 Real Old Salt By “indirect” I mean inserting the tiniest threads of doubt in ther minds as they spew the “narrative”. Every time they make moonbat comments, you “ju jitsu” them – use their momentum (their words and beliefs) to throw them off balance.
I concur. My “indirect” approach is to respond, “Oh, my, food stamp recipients are up to 42 million, from 26 million only 4 years ago. We have to help these people by creating jobs and prosperity.”
This sometimes simply generates a response involving windmills powered by unicorn farts and windfall profits tax on leprechaun gold pots, but I’ve also seen the desired common sense seed take lodgement in moonbat brain soil which has lain fallow for many seasons.
I would add to my wish list two other items:
-Change the rules so that a government employee at any level who is guilty of malfeasance, misfeasance, or nonfeasance can be removed from his job QUICKLY and will lose his pension, and will be prohibited from taking any public sector job at any level for life.
-Random drug tests would be mandatory for all public sector employees (as well as welfare recipients) and failure to be drug-free would result in immediate removal of checks and any pension, followed by a similar ban on any public sector compensation for life.
Agree, #73. Cap things during high inflation – be it salaries OR benefits – and you can inflate away some of the hurt.
What is the moonbats’ staple? PC.
Take it away and they wither. As Wretchard hints, [paraphrasing] common sense to a moonbat is the same as garlic to a vampire.
This is why the People have Thrown You Out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qJSnozJ4LVg&feature=player_embedded
HT Rantburg
What worries me about this mess is that the usual solution is to gut the defense budget.
And I don’t think people realize just how badly hollowed out DOD is. The Navy is a good 50 ships below its recommended strength…and what ships we have average 20 years old. The same with aircraft – more than half the Air Force consists of Reagan-era relics. Politicians who would not dream of sending their own kids to college in a 5-year-old car are eager to send our troops to fight in 25-year-old tanks.
No. The smart solution is to specifically keep DOD spending off the table. Cut back on the welfares, cut back on regulation, consolidate Federal agencies. The Republicans have talked for years about eliminating the Department of Commerce. This is a gutless idea. A better one would be to keep the Department of Commerce…and consolidate in it the current Departments of Commerce, Transportation, Labor, Agriculture, and Energy.
Now, if you want to increase DOD internal efficiency, that is quite another matter. Deep-sixing the current acquisition process and all the Congressional back-seat-driving that has gone with it would produce tremendous savings. But that is another matter.
stoi/70; of all the cities destroyed and inhabitants slain or enslaved, in recorded history, only two of the thousands upon thousands have been due to nukes –and outside the urban infrastructure centers of Hue and Grozny –nary a one in the 65 years since those two nukes were used –as you know, but i’m just extending the point –
***
mike m/78; the heartbreak is, well just for one example, the F-22 shutdowns. The costs are sunk, except for the each copy, and the tens of thousands of engineers and machinists and supports were in place and copying. Now, they’re scattered (what about that unemploymnt, huh?) and the savings, which could well be nearly infinitely mooted if we ever combat-need the copies we didn’t build (and those unbuilt copies would instantly off the line be working as deterrents even without that combat-need, and pushing the odds of that combat-need further and further away, per copy), but the crowning stupidity is that as cap-ex, the dollars spent on the copies go into GDP –capitalized, not expensed.
I’ll believe that politicians and bureaucrats are serious about deficit reduction when they immediately reduce their salaries and befits by twenty three percent, like they are proposing to do to medicare doctors.
I say that reduction should apply to all the politicians and bureaucrats at all levels of government, excluding military personnel — including state and local, special districts, unions, and park facilities.
Their salaries/benefits are pure overhead, a total drain on the budget because they create no wealth. As a matter of fact, they have chosen to fund their backwards government policies by penalizing those who actually provide the funds to run their circus.
An example of their backwards thinking is that they created that monstrosity of a so-called government health care plan, actually a white whale of scam that costs taxpayers trillions of dollars, which will increase the demand for doctors’ services. Then they drive the existing doctors and future doctors away by reducing the amount of money they actually control that goes to doctors by twenty three percent. Stupid, stupid, stupid!
The politicians and their lackey bureaucrats don’t deserve the lavish lifestyle they have stolen from us. I think i am being generous in proposing that they only cut their pay and benefits by twenty three percent.
Eggplant #66:
You that that is terrifying?
Consider this: When the comm lines to NORAD went down the backup comm. method went down too. But my friend quickly came up with a different way to get through to NOARD and tell them that the hundreds (eventually it was something like 4000) of inbound missiles were fake and not to start WWIII.
The next week he received a message berating him for using a non-standard comm. method to contact NORAD. And shortly thereafter another message arrived, officially approving the method he came up with.
And the people who are now doing the various bailouts, Obamacare, the New START, and pushing for homosexuals in the military are those who were not smart enough and honest enough to be in the Air Force.
As for SDI, consider that the two main arguments against it were:
1. It won’t work.
2. Yes it will.
Richard –
I work for the federal government (as in I actually do work for the public, not merely manage some secondary program or write reports or supervise others).
Yes, I am upset that I will not get the small raise that was scheduled. Mainly because it would have helped offset the whopping 11% increase in my health insurance premiums!
RWE, when the enemy says “It won’t work, so please don’t build it” –well, only an American lefty could miss the Giant Clue –
To the ‘civil servants’ and the myriad of other federal employees, YOU are strangling the economy.
Sure you can attempt to placate blame on previous administrations, the shrinking private sector, the benes are TOO good to pass up, etc., fact of the matter is – your ‘company’s’ ever expanding waistline is gluttony.
Heck, even the http://federaljobs.net/ site BRAGS about being the largest employer in the U.S.
Though what I like about the aforementioned site is putting to rest the fictitious argument of ‘federal workers making less than the private sector’ – read the 2nd paragraph. It admits it makes more than double the average private sector salary.
I hope parents out there with teens or children in college encourage their children to get a sought-after degree or they too may be a federal employee.
Cannoneer No.4 – Good luck my friend. God speed and a hearty ‘thank you’ is a tip-of-the-iceberg kind of response.
#3 #14
Re: our ICBMs going through the debris field
It’s no so clear our policy was consistently launch on warning. It is likely even that for a large portion of the cold war we were on a launch under attack alert. Don’t want to look like the bad guys when the whole world is burning!
Our ICBMs could go up through a debris field and stay functional since they were moving much more slowly than warheads coming down. Also, the nose cone of the missile covered the warheads inside, while the incoming fire would be thin skinned warheads alone.
#58
The Russian strategy was to “win” a nuclear war by protecting their productive civilian capacity. To that wit they had a real civil defense program and plans to evacuate key personnel very quickly and surreptitiously. The Moscow subway was designed with this in mind. Their missile defense strategy was to use their nukes to zap the first wave of incoming warheads over Moscow to give their people time to get to shelter before the next waves came down.
The commies had plans to evacuate millions of people from the cities and factories into the mountains, with prepared shelters and food stores, and stockpiled equipment to resume farming and industry afterward. Google Nuclear War Survival Skills by Kearny
The US had no comparable preparations, except for VIPs. Indeed, an evacuation of US civilians could have been seen as preparation for a first strike. Instead the US focused on force protection and ignored civilian casualties.
Also, Russian silos are built to eject the missile from the silo before starting the engine. Then reload the silo and launch again. Their installations are complete with extra missiles, trucks, and equipment to reload the silos. Our silos are burned up and cannot be reused without a total rebuild because the engines start inside the silo. That is a reason the US wanted very accurate warheads to knock out their silos.
#35
If the new legislators move to reduce fed payroll, the agencies will respond with “force protection” and what happened in Oakland will be nationwide.
The cuts will only be in those who do the actual work. The supervisors, directors, assistant managers, program liaisons, assistant managers ad nauseum will stay on. They have seniority and big salaries. The folks who actually work for $50-75g will be cut, and the agencies will proclaim that they cannot provide effective services with a smaller workforce and smaller budget.
Other entities — corporations, cities, states — do the one thing that would make a difference: they cut payroll by laying off people.
Federal employees basically have tenure. They might be fired for cause but there is no such thing as a mandated cut in payroll such as all other employers experience.
84. paul_unalaska
Paul – I work for a civilian federal agency, and I could honestly be making about TWICE as much in the private sector. Why don’t I do that? In my field, I would have a lot more stress and less flexibility with hours and vacations in the private sector. And some times business would be great and other times very slow. I like consistency, and I have a family which is worth more to me than that $50,000.
The reason that average gov pay is higher is because we don’t employ any unskilled workers. The security, janitorial, maintenance, grunt work – all of them are contractors. Almost all jobs now require a college degree. We do pay lawyers and engineers less than they could make in the private sector. I know this firsthand.
You should know that we also have a lot more managers, directors, and assistants than the private sector. There are a lot of middle managers in the chain of command. And a lot of people charged by Congress with writing reports on what we are doing. All of these people, who don’t have any special skill or training, have seniority and big salaries by virtue of being managers. They always make more money than the skilled professionals who do the actual work.
My observation is that the fedgov is run like a university – where they think every department needs an administrator, office, staff, computers, manager, and secretaries – even if they don’t teach anything or provide any direct service. Meanwhile the actual teaching and research is done by underpaid grad students.
State bureaucrats in California may notice that California’s budget problems would be solved if California did not send so much tax revenue to the Feds.
This argument makes me nutz. You hear this from Libs all the time. They say “look at how the blue states send more money to Washington than the red states,” the implication being the red states are freeloaders who scream hypocritically about too much taxes.
But this factoid is simply an artifact of our highly progressive tax system. Almost 60% of the taxes that go to DC are paid by the top 5% of earners. And where are those people concentrated? In the big blue cities: NY, San Fran, Chicago, DC itself, etc. (reverse snob Warren Buffet being a major exception to the rule). So of course the blue states send more money overall, because the system is grossly weighted toward the top. (Top 25% pays 86%! These #s are from 2008).
What I would want to see is what percent of people from each state pay any taxes and what percent pay none. That would be the true “freeloader” data, and I suspect you would find freeloaders heavily weighted into the blue states.
Jay #88:
Back in the early 90’s I recall reading about a NYC program to do repairs of the homes of poor. It employed about 4 to 5 carpenters, plumbers and electricians on a part time basis to do the work.
It also employed 17 full time supervisors.
Do you think when the crunch hits they will lay off some of the supervisors or just say they have no money to hire the real workers?
And when I described this outrage to a Federal GS employee I worked with she replied “Well, at least they have jobs.”
As for Launch Under Attack versus Launch On Warning, obviously the world situation entered into which approach we would take. We can change DEFCON for non-nuclear attack events. An example was the Yom Kipper War.
90. civil servant
You’re right – particularly when you get outside the Department of Defense. DOD works on a fixed budget, it puts some pressure to do things as efficiently as the regulations allow. Which isn’t much, but it’s far better than the welfare agencies. Talk to any working-level person at GAO and they’ll cheerfully admit that DOD is the most efficient major Federal agency.
And the managers are like locusts.
Argentina handled their moonbats in 1975 by dropping them out of helicopters into the ocean. It works for me!
Cannoneer#4 – Remember; head on a swivel, let us know when you find work, send us a hello occasionally, and return safe to us; God’s speed fellow.
civil servant – I too have worked for the fed and experienced the fraud waste and abuse sickeningly, in my case in every section of the D O C.
Regarding your ‘not hiring unskilled workers’ – You’re kidding right? Go to D.C. and ‘take-in’ all the unskilled workers polluting the city. D.C. speaks of wanting to ‘become a state’ – it CAN’T happen. The fed/private sector comparison is a joke. There is NO revenue in D.C.
As for the ‘flexibility and time-off’ advantage to fed employment – perhaps in your section/case. Though in my private sector gig I get time-off/bonuses for week-ends, holidays, kudos to innovations if saving my company money/man hours, airline vouchers, gift certificates and other caveats. NONE of these were ‘policy’ for my GS paying job. I’m sure former GS-15 tapped out J. Christian Adams can’t speak of such reciprocation, understandably. Considering it’s a tax-payer subsidized entity.
The fed has infinite-like numbers of people with NO college degree(s), let alone college who work in the electronics, sciences, finances, logistics.. ad infinitum.
I’ve listed but a FEW of the departments I’d worked with and witnessed the buffoonery of it all.
Today I work alongside federal agencies and see the lethargic, here to get a paycheck kind of outlook. The fed workers are FAA, which I would categorize as ‘skilled workers’.
There’s SO MUCH privatization that could/should occur it’s mind numbing.
Nonetheless, thanks for your candid response.
Paul –
I am somewhat privileged in that my section does actual work for the public, and most of the work is being done by people with a postgrad degree. Our managers and support personnel are all college educated, though apparently a college education does not prepare them to properly work a fax machine. All of the maintenance, janitors, security – any position not needed a degree- are contracted out.
I understand in other offices the required skill set is lower, but generally most federal jobs these days need a college degree (though again that requirement could be understood as wanting the credential, not the actual education or skill).
I got bogged down reading about comment 65 or so…maybe someone brought this up.
At another website it was stated that the Federal “pay freeze” is a much smaller deal than it appears.
Bonuses are exempted.
Also, “step” increases. I got the impression that a step increase is an automatic raise when you’ve been on the job for a while. Anyone with more info on this side issue?
All of this is fine and dandy, but would you buy a huge, bloated, hematose, federal and state bureaucracy from the guy?
Here, have a look at this profit to earnings ratio, just don’t look too close, I’m sure we can make that slice of pie even smaller if we have to.
Your Deer Hunter analogy fails on several levels. Russian roullette has known probability of 1/6th of failure. That failure is catastrophic to the player. It has 5/6th probability of success, with the only benefit being maintaining status quo. Reagan’s gambit had a greater benefit than just status quo. The success of Reagan’s gambit has political, psychological and technological aspects to it that taking the variables into consideration make it a rational approach from a cost-benefit analysis. I had a lot of time to think about this back in the eighties while staring at little green lights that said “Strategic Alert.”
Wretcherd- What a wonderful vision of a weltanschaung for the future.
civil servant – Again thanks for your responses. I’m glad to read of you selected few; an educated and useful individual working for the fed and with the private industry for what sounds like admirable goals.
~Cheers
Tcobb @ 39: “I have never understood this argument. To my knowledge the federal government does not impose any tax on any states, only on their citizens.”
My bad – I should have written “California’s budget problems would be solved if Californians [instead of "California"] did not send so much tax revenue to the Feds.”
The argument is blindingly simple — Californians as a group pay more taxes into the Federal pot than their State receives back from that pot.
When the chips are down in bankrupt California, and Californian politicians are forced to think the unthinkable, one of those “outside the box” thoughts will inevitably be — Let’s require that all tax collections (State & Federal) made by businesses in the State of California be sent in the first instance to the State of California; we’ll forward the Federal taxes to the appropriate authorities, after we have taken an appropriate “handling fee”.
Instantly, California would become solvent again, without any need to reduce State payments to all the usual vested interests. And the Federal Government’s position would be that much worse.
Californian politicians would have an easy time selling this to the home team, who largely seem to detest the United States anyway — Why should Californians subsidize other parts of the US? And this will have zero impact on total taxes paid by individual Californian voters, while keeping State benefits flowing.
Given the inevitable choice in a bankrupt State between grabbing a larger share of the tax stream or cutting benefits/pensions for Californians, which path are Californian politicians likely to choose? We are entering uncharted territory here! The Age of Inter-Governmental Conflict.
Kinuachdrach #102
Given the inevitable choice in a bankrupt State between grabbing a larger share of the tax stream or cutting benefits/pensions for Californians, which path are Californian politicians likely to choose? We are entering uncharted territory here! The Age of Inter-Governmental Conflict.
A bunch of farmers and a few merchants in the middle of the 18th century were able to envision, then negotiate the creation of the most successful union the world has seen.
A bunch of progs in the 21st century, who view themselves as more advanced, smarter, more caring (and nicer too) than any who have gone before, and they’re squabbling over fiefdoms.
The endarkenment is getting too close for comfort.
Agoraphobic Plumber #63
You are right to enjoy time with your kids while they’re young, the time doesn’t come around again!
Enjoy your savings too, as I suspect that well be seeing Zimbongo style inflation in a little while.
apparently Geithner spent his early years in Zim.
#82 civil servant:
I’m in the same boat–the frozen COLA
(whoops–didn’t even hit enter!)
Civil servant: I’m in the same boat as you; the frozen COLA would have offset the increase in my health insurance premiums (whether you think of it as “offset” or “swallowed up” is a personal choice). But my husband is in the private sector and took a 25% hit last year. I still hope things can get better in the real world (private sector) so that they won’t get worse for me. A soft landing for big gov’t would be a lot less painful, if it can be managed.
And the economic genius keeps on rollin’.
Interior Secretary Ken Salazar announced Wednesday afternoon that the Obama administration will not allow offshore oil drilling in the eastern Gulf of Mexico or off the Atlantic and Pacific coasts as part of the next five-year drilling plan, reversing two key policy changes President Obama announced in late March.
It’s almost like Obama thinks that oil is white …
73. No inflation adjustment can keep up with hyperinflation. Hyperinflation will kill the beast; the only question is how many people will the beast take with it?
J/108, or that the UAW wants to put you in a $50k Chevy Volt (just park & plant geraniums in your new cash for clunkers purch) and needs a gasoline superspike to make a very very merry new year for the Trumka –and the Putin, and the Opec, and da boyz from Brazil, and the Nut Caracas Sweet.
..and remember your psychometric economikz, nothing but nothing lights off inflation like energy prices, pump prices at the gas station most of all, as gap-ups stay in the consumer mind (thus the news biz –and back n forth) 24/7 –regardless of whatever perhaps even minor incremental household budget push.
#107. Its all part of the grand strategy to nationalize large parts of the economy. Obamanation’s wet dream is for gasoline to skyrocket to $7 to $10 a gallon while public anger goes through the roof. Then an elaborate campaign, with the MSM eagerly participating, is launched that attacks the “insatiable greed” of the oil companies. Then Obummer will propose to “manage” (ie nationalize) the oil companies so that they are “run in the public’s interest instead of the interests of greed.” Half the country goes along with it because the morons believe that the price of gas will go down. Of course what happens that the price continues to go up along with usual socialist shortages. The extreme distruptions that all of this creates in the other sectors of the economy will be used to justify additional government intervention/takeovers in those sectors. And before you know it, we are an English speaking Venezuela.
PS. the media will NEVER, EVER challenge the wisdom or efficacy of government intervention in the economy during any of this.
MR/111, re “grand strategy”, just think how hard the launch of the grand strategy would have been without the BP accident –the BP extreme statistical outlier accident, the one with the witnesses refusing to testify –having come along right on time!
Like the arson investigators at the Bamboo Lounge, you know what happened but you’d have to jail City Hall to prove it –and then what?
***
yup!
#102 Kinuachdrach
I’m sorry. I didn’t make myself very clear. I understand the rationale. I just don’t understand how anybody with a functioning brain cell can buy into it.
Not only do I doubt the accuracy of the money-in versus money-out model that these folks use to make this argument but I really doubt that such a model could be made that would be valid.
Does it include Social Security payments as Federal dollars in? If so, consider that many people move to states like Florida when they retire. If enough retired New Yorkers drawing social security move to Florida, does this mean that Florida is getting an unfair share of the Federal dollars? I don’t think so.
And consider the hypothetical case of the Feds buying a ten billion dollar weapons system from the ACME corporation in Nevada. Ten billion dollars to Nevada they say. Does it matter than 8 billion of that was used to buy modules from subcontractors in California, Texas, and New York? Does that 8 billion show up on the balance sheet as Federal dollars paid to California, Texas, and New York? I doubt it. And what about the subs who bought a lot of components from firms in Ohio and Arizona? Where does the chain stop?
The US economy is too complex for any such model to have validity. It is fatally flawed.
What we really have is a situation like two rapists who have just grabbed a girl off the street arguing about who gets to go first and who gets sloppy seconds.
Tc/113; yep –like that “99 MPG” on the Electric Car sticker doesn’t mention the coal burned to supply the electricity.
#114 buddy larsen
Not to worry Buddy. Our great leaders have a plan to give us total energy independence. I won’t reveal my sources, but I can tell you what the plan is. They are going to repeal the Law of Conservation of Energy. Its a sheer stroke of genius. We can run a single electric car on two AA batteries forever.
Our country is indeed in the best of hands.
Some ideas are so stupid that only a politician or bureaucrat could come up with them
Mice on a treadmill is even better than the AA batts. ‘but you have to feed the mice’ you say? Naw –when they get hungry just let ‘em loose in your next door neighbor’s pantry
***
Obama: “Oh, it’s Conservation –not Conversation …of Energy?”
Stuck in a vice is more like it: spending money we don’t have.
I haven’t read every comment, but isn’t the club generally missing the point? With all due respect to the need to keep government and regulation in check, to allow economic growth, the root of the present problem is with the overall US debt load, something like two-thirds of which is private household debt. The dollar is being destroyed, if it is, in an attempt to keep the financial sector afloat. It is the fear of what will happen if the banks go under that is bending the leg that kicks the can down the road. That fear needs to be squarely faced without looking to civil servants as scapegoats…
Tcobb @13: “What we really have is a situation like two rapists who have just grabbed a girl off the street arguing about who gets to go first and who gets sloppy seconds.”
We are in complete agreement there. I did not suggest that Californian politicians intercepting tax payments to the Feds was a good idea — simply that it was likely inevitable, given California’s bankruptcy and politicians’ unwillingness to face reality.
Here we have Democrats (and their RINO allies) talking about increasing tax rates during a recession — something that even the most died-in-the-wool Keynesian would assert is a Bad Idea. Our politicians are behaving like drug addicts desperately seeking one last fix. They have already traded away their wife’s wedding ring. As soon as they can find Mohammed, their 9-year old daughter is up for sale.
We are going to see a lot of degradation before the Political Clique and their hangers-on hit rock bottom. Let’s not be despondent — more of us than them will survive the crash. And then the joyous rebuilding begins.
Jay @ 86 said:
“Our ICBMs could go up through a debris field and stay functional since they were moving much more slowly than warheads coming down. Also, the nose cone of the missile covered the warheads inside, while the incoming fire would be thin skinned warheads alone.”
The effect of hypersonic impact is not intuitive. A light gas gun can accelerate a BB (2 mm diameter sphere) to orbital velocity (7.5 km/sec). If that BB hits a solid steel plate that’s 6 inches thick then the entry hole is 2 mm but the exit hole is about a foot in diameter (the BB’s impact forms a conical cavity in the steel target). Now replace the 6 inch thick steel plate with two aluminum sheets that are each 1 mm thick and separated by 10 cm. After impact with the BB, the first aluminum sheet will have a 2 mm hole but the second sheet will be unpenetrated but covered with the vaporized/recondensed remains of the BB and first sheet. With the 6 inch steel plate, most of the BBs original kinetic energy went through it as a shock wave, vaporizing the steel into a conical cavity. With the two aluminum sheets, the BB was initially vaporized by the first aluminum sheet and then sprayed the second aluminum sheet with vaporized metal but did not penetrate the second sheet. Shielding based upon two thin plates is called a “Whipple Shield”. Whipple shields are used to protect the International Space Station from MMOD (Micro-Meteoroid Orbital Debris) impact. The Whipple Shield is actually an old concept. A form of Whipple Shield was used in battleship and tank armour.
#119. Kinuachdrach
I apologize if my prior comments seemed to be attacking you. That was not my intention, and from reading your posts in the past I get the notion that ideologically we aren’t that far apart at all.
Its just that sometimes the very mention of certain ideas tends to get my blood to boil. The notion that its “unfair” for one state to be paying more in taxes to the Feds than they are getting back in the way of Federal goodies is one of them. I was trying to attack the idea, not you, and I did not mean to imply that I thought you agreed with it.
k/119; –And then the joyous rebuilding begins –yes, it will be that way because every individual will always want the literal tomorrow to be better than the today. The open question for the USA’s rebuilding is, which alphabet (alpha bet) will we be using?
The Pershing II scared the pants off the Soviets because it was aimed at THE critical node in Soviet power: Zossen, etc.
With great secrecy the Germans dug out a twin command complex south of Berlin. It was a quiet piece of farmland next to a highway. (B96) Its communications were buried leaving no evidence of its presence. Half of the complex was dedicated to OKH. ( Army High Command — tasked with the Soviet Campaign ) The other half was dedicated to OKW ( Armed Forces High Command — tasked with the Western Front )
As you might imagine, the Soviets were quite surprised to find fully operational command bunkers. Until the last moment they were the mechanism which permitted Hitler to exercise command even from an encircled bunker in central Berlin.
So they set up shop. Ever after Zossen was expanded to meet Soviet requirements.
It was the Zossen Complex that controlled the 64 attack divisions tasked with crushing Germany and France in an atomic blitz campaign. Its landlines would permit undetectable combat orders to trigger a snap assault straight out of the barracks.
This last aspect, a core principle of Soviet tactics, was only fully revealed after German unification. NATO officers were shown how DDR troops could go from cots to BMPs in thirty minutes — 24/7/365! When combined with the lack of civilian road traffic — motorized regiments would have been at the front before Washington woke up.
Now comes the Pershing II. It was specifically designed to take out Zossen and her sub-commands using a mobile platform that would be impossible to preempt. It also had a flight time so short that you couldn’t get out the front door before your doom.
It did not have enough range to go after Moscow.
It did have the ability to re-target ultra quick and go after any significant surviving command nodes.
Inspection of operational tempo indicates that a Pershing II would be tagging Zossen before the first motorized regiment reached the front. Hence, the ENTIRE structure of Soviet Grand Tactics was ruined.
Going on the airwaves would be a REQUIREMENT. However, the Americans owned the world of electronics/digital/signal analysis. Soviet WWII experience told them that to be defeated in communications is to be defeated everywhere.
( The Soviet Operation Uranus was predicated on seizing an Enigma wireless coding machine from the signals unit sent north from 6th Army to the Hungarian Army. Its transmissions were detected and its static deployment permitted radio direction finding to identify its location precisely. NKVD commandos moved against the Germans there in total stealth — during a white out. This ultra secret operation is movie worthy since it was immediately followed up by spoofing German wireless communications. This Enigma is the one used to stop the 29th Motorized Division from further attacks against the Southern Wing of encirclement. The Soviets merely issued a Fuhrer Command! ( It had to be them… Hitler was train bound in the mountains heading back to Berlin from the Eagles Nest! ) All German accounts point to this single Fuhrer Order as their complete undoing. At the time the 29th was slicing right through the Soviets — just mowing them down. They had not yet advanced their heavy weapons across the difficult ground while the Germans were executing a counter-stroke planned for months with a fresh elite outfit.)
Months later OKH issued revised and expanded Enigmas. ( Another rotor ) Playing Enigma games is how von Manstein sliced and diced the Soviet follow on offensive. Knowing that the Soviets were listening in von Manstein fed them a false picture. This in turn caused Stalin to go for broke. After von Manstein finished with him Stalin was in the greatest peril of the entire war — Stalin’s admission to Churchill !
If the logistics were there a plunge east to the rail line would have sundered the front and cut Moscow off from winter oil! But it didn’t happen, and the Red Army was able to re-man the front.
This fiasco was the last time Stalin overrode his generals WRT when to go for broke. All prior demands had ended up in spectacular super defeats.
The Zero is working on Zero Point Energy.
Which is pointless.
Now that Blert post at 123. That kind of thing is why this is the best club on the interwebs!
Tcobb @ 121 — no apologies necessary, since no offense taken. Likewise, I apologize if anything I wrote seemed out of line.
Dr. Samuel Johnson (of Dictionary fame) is reputed once to have said something like — ‘A man may be convinced against his will, but never pleased’. Since I have so much to learn about this rapidly-changing world, I try to work on being pleased when someone is kind enough to point out deficiencies in my thought processes.
111. Mark Razak
You had me right up until “English-speaking”.
America MUST stop all aid to foreign countries until thedebt level is gone. All aid to Iraq and Afghanistan in the form of dollars must stop.Reduce all Gov Departmants to pre-Bush levels.Stop education and medicasl treatment of ALL illegal immigrants.Stop paying farmers the ‘not to grow anything’subsidy.Also make the ‘farmer’ the one who lives there,NOT the one who lives and works in DC and just bought the farm as a tax write off.
If you are serious about debt reduction,then there are zillions of things to cut.even Obamacare.