Stealth isn't a universal military panacea

A recent article highlights the very important fact that stealth in military aircraft isn't the be-all and end-all of existence.

The commander of Sweden’s air force, Mats Helgesson, recently made the bold statement that his country’s Saab Gripen E fighter could beat Russia’s formidable fleet of Sukhoi jets with none of the expensive stealth technology the US relies on.

Saab Gripen (image courtesy of Wikipedia - click it for a larger view)

“Gripen, especially the E-model, is designed to kill Sukhois. There we have a black belt,” Helgesson told Yle at a presentation in Finland, where Sweden is trying to export the jets.

. . .

The Gripen can’t carry the most weapons and has no real stealth. And it isn’t the longest-range, the fastest, or even the cheapest jet. But it has a singular focus that makes it a nightmare for Russia’s fighter jets.

Justin Bronk, an aerial-combat expert at the Royal United Services Institute, told Business Insider that like the A-10 Warthog was built around a massive cannon, the Gripen was built around electronic warfare.

Virtually all modern jets conduct some degree of electronic warfare, but the Gripen E stands above the rest, according to Bronk.

. . .

To defeat Russia’s fearsome fighters and surface-to-air missiles, the US has largely turned to stealth aircraft. Stealth costs a fortune and must be built into the shape of the plane.

If Russia somehow cracks the code of detecting stealth-shaped fighters, the US’s F-35, the most expensive weapons system in history, is cooked.

But Saab took a different, and cheaper, approach to combating Russia’s fighters and missiles by focusing on electronic attack, which gives them an advantage over stealth because they can evolve the software without a ground-up rebuild, according to Bronk.

There's more at the link.

I'd have to agree to a large extent with the article's arguments.  Back in the 1980's, South Africa was faced with what many considered to be the most comprehensive air defense system outside the Warsaw Pact, during its war with Angola.  It was able to penetrate it routinely, and carry out raids on enemy positions without major difficulty (even though it had lost air superiority to the later-generation MiG and other fighter aircraft, and modern anti-aircraft missiles, operated by Communist forces).  Similarly, Israel has been able to operate over Syria almost with impunity, despite the latter's relatively modern air defense systems.  This capability was publicly displayed in the famous 2007 raid on a nuclear reactor complex being built in that country:  "The attack pioneered the use of the Israel’s electronic warfare capabilities,as IAF electronic warfare (EW) systems took over Syria’s air defense systems, feeding them a false sky-picture for the entire period of time that the Israeli fighter jets needed to cross Syria, bomb their target and return".  Over the past couple of years, it's been evident in Israeli air strikes against Iranian and terrorist positions in Syria.

Stealth is very useful, but it has limitations.  It's another arrow in the quiver, but not the only one.  I think the Swedish approach (and that of Israel and other powers) is equally viable.  I also note that Israel insisted on the right to modify the stealthy F-35 with its own software and electronic systems before it agreed to buy it for its Air Force (a concession granted to no other foreign purchaser).  I suspect Israeli F-35's will combine stealth and electronic warfare to create a truly formidable adversary.

Peter

The self-inflicted abdication of moral authority

Two searing headlines about the Catholic Church and the morality (or otherwise) of some of its clergy sum up the current mess in that institution.

• Pope publicly acknowledges clergy sexual abuse of nuns
• Four in five Vatican priests are gay, book claims

That, plus the persistent refusal of so many Church leaders to publicly proclaim what the Church teaches and (at least officially) believes, has in turn led to this cynical condemnation:

• Catholic Clergy: Making Themselves Irrelevant

I'm afraid that last headline is all too accurate in many cases.  I have a friend who's in the process of preparing to get married in a few weeks' time.  His local diocese is insisting on all sorts of bureaucratic i-dotting and t-crossing, none of which have a single thing to do with his actual faith, and all of which are obstacles to celebrating his nuptials in the sight of Christ and his church.  Those involved are behaving like lawyers and bureaucrats, not men and women of faith.  The Church has, in far too many cases, become nothing more than yet another worldly institution, where filling out the right forms and clocking in and out of the office on time are more important than the faith it's supposed to preach, teach and practice.

As for the (im)moral situation of at least some of its clergy . . . what more can be said that hasn't already been said?  Priests and bishops are supposed to lead by example:  yet very few of them are making even a token attempt to do so.  Many are hunkering down, not daring to stand out in public and defend the truths of their faith for fear that their own hierarchy will discipline them for doing so.  The few that actually preach and practice what the Church teaches are in constant danger of being removed from their pastoral offices, because such behavior is no longer politically correct.  In how many parishes today can one hear sermons about the moral evil of abortion, or promiscuous sex, or honesty, or fidelity?  Precious few.

The clergy child sex abuse crisis over the past couple of decades is symptomatic of the decline - if not the virtual extinction - of the moral authority that the Catholic Church once had.  If it tries to proclaim today that something is immoral, it's more likely to be greeted with scorn and derision than with agreement, along with the pointed observation that people in glass churches should not throw stones.  It no longer has the moral authority it possessed for centuries . . . because it's thrown it away.  Some might suggest a stronger verb than "thrown".  I agree.

I've cited Bob Mumford before.  He's a Pentecostal evangelist who, back in the 1970's, defined secular humanism as "what happens when the world evangelizes the church".  I think he was exactly right, and I think that's what we're seeing in so many Christian churches today.  (The Catholic Church is far from alone in its moral malaise, more's the pity.)  More and more, the so-called "Benedict Option" (a term coined by Rod Dreher) seems to make sense.  Certainly, I don't see any other way in which the teachings of Christ can survive in an utterly secular, post-Christian First World society and culture, since the Catholic Church (and most other Christian churches) are no longer proclaiming, defending or living them.

I recommend Dreher's book on the subject to those who see no other way forward.

He doesn't have all the answers, to be sure . . . but I think he offers more of them than the current institutional Church - and that's a tragedy in itself.

Peter

Trying to de-technify . . . and failing

Kashmir Hill spent six weeks trying to "divorce" herself from the five major businesses that dominate the Internet:  Amazon, Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Apple.  She's written a series of articles about her efforts, which demonstrate very clearly how the Big 5 dominate Internet commerce and business, and how hard it is to avoid their tentacles.

As an example, here are excerpts from her article about "locking out" Amazon for a week.

I am on a mission to live without the tech giants—to discover whether such a thing is even possible. Not just through sheer willpower but technologically, with the use of a custom-built tool that would literally prevent my devices from accessing these companies, and them from accessing me and my data.

. . .

Amazon reportedly controls 50 percent of online commerce, which means half of all purchases made online in America, which is obscene.

Amazon is not just an online store—that’s not even the hardest thing to cut out of my life. Its global empire also includes Amazon Web Services (AWS), the vast server network that provides the backbone for much of the internet, as well as Twitch.tv, the broadcasting behemoth that is the backbone of the online gaming industry, and Whole Foods, the organic backbone of the yuppie diet.

Keeping myself from walking into a Whole Foods is easy enough, but I also want to stop using any of Amazon’s digital services, from Amazon.com (and its damn app) to any other websites or apps that use AWS to host their content. To do that, I enlist the help of a technologist, Dhruv Mehrotra, who built me a custom VPN through which to route my internet requests. The VPN blocks any traffic to or from an IP address controlled by Amazon. I connect my computers and my phone to the VPN at all times, as well as all the connected devices in my home; it’s supposed to weed out every single digital thing that Amazon touches.

Ultimately, though, we found Amazon was too huge to conquer.

. . .

Dhruv keeps track of all the times my devices try to ping Amazon’s servers during the week. It happens nearly 300,000 times, probably in part because apps frustrated not to get a reply from the mothership keep pinging repeatedly until I close them. My devices try to reach Amazon via 3,800 different IP addresses, which suggests that there are a lot of different apps and websites attempting to connect to Amazon throughout the week.

. . .

Amazon has embedded itself so thoroughly into the infrastructure of modern life, and into the business models of so many companies, including its competitors, that it’s nearly impossible to avoid it.

In her blockbuster academic article, Lina Khan, now a legal fellow at the Federal Trade Commission, argues that Amazon is breaking the spirit of antitrust law, but that regulators have failed to act because that law has evolved in a way to ignore monopolies if they result in immediate low costs to consumers.

But Khan says that our increasing reliance on Amazon in our everyday lives carries harms that we are only beginning to see, including Amazon being able to exploit its workers (who reportedly pee in bottles to keep up with the company’s punishing pace), being able to massively data-mine Americans whose activity it has vast access to (meaning it could charge different people different prices based on what it knows about them, which it experimented with in the past), and being able to kill off competitors who would otherwise offer consumers a variety of options and prices (R.I.P. Diapers.com).

There's much more at the link, and in the rest of the series of articles.  Highly recommended reading.

This is a very sobering series of articles.  Effectively, we're in a monopoly situation on the Internet, even though it doesn't fit the "traditional" definition of a monopoly.  Each of the Big 5 have so much clout in the market that they can effectively wipe out competitors by undercutting them, then buy up the remains and incorporate them into their own companies.  (As the article says, look at what Amazon did to Diapers.com.  That's just one example out of many that could have been chosen.)

I'm in a similar situation in that, as an independent author, I sell my books exclusively on Amazon.com.  That's because the time and hassle of selling them across multiple platforms is outweighed by the better terms offered by Amazon.  If Amazon chose to alter those terms (which it can do at any time, without warning), keeping more of the sales proceeds for itself and giving me less of them, I might be in all sorts of trouble.  That's a very uncomfortable thought.

On the other hand, having seen the enormous inefficiencies demonstrated by the US government when it tries to regulate commerce and industry, would an attempt to break up these de facto monopolies actually result in anything better?  That's the big question no-one's able to answer right now . . . but sooner or later, someone's going to have to make the attempt.

Peter

That'll git 'er done . . .

Seen at Wirecutter's place (clickit to biggit):

The "towed" vehicle looks like it's on the way to the scrapyard, so I don't suppose it matters to its owner that it's being carried like that . . . but I bet the combination would disrupt traffic, as every driver in the vicinity braked hard and stared!




Peter

Not a bad attitude towards money, IMHO

From Pearls Before Swine yesterday (click the image to be taken to a larger view at the comic's Web site):

I approve.  I've met a number of fairly wealthy people in my time, some during my business career, others as a pastor or chaplain.  The one trait most of them had in common was that they didn't own their money . . . their money owned them.  They spent so much time worrying about how to keep it, and how to make more, that they forgot to sit back, relax, and enjoy what they had.

I don't ever want to be like that.

Peter

The Founding Fathers gave us an Electoral College for a reason

I note that one of the myriad Democratic Party candidates for that party's presidential nomination in 2020 has come out four-square against the Electoral College.

Pete Buttigieg, the Democratic mayor of South Bend, Ind., and a 2020 presidential candidate, on Thursday called for abandoning the Electoral College, saying it has made the country less democratic.

“We’ve got to repair our democracy. The Electoral College needs to go, because it’s made our society less and less democratic," Buttigieg said during an appearance on "CBS This Morning."

"We’ve got to explain our values and explain why Democrats are committed to freedom, to democracy, to security," Buttigieg added.

Some Democrats have voiced increasing criticism of the Electoral College since President Trump defeated Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election despite Clinton winning the popular vote.

There's more at the link.

There's just one problem, Mayor Buttigieg.  The United States is not a democracy.  It's a constitutional republic.

One of the hallmarks of a constitutional state of any kind (be it a democracy, a monarchy, or whatever) is that the will of the ruling power (the majority of voters, or the king, or whatever) is constrained by the legal requirements of the constitution - the so-called "Rule of Law".  In other words, they can do what they wish within those constraints, but they may not go beyond them.

The United States is such a nation.  In the case of the Electoral College, the only way to amend or abolish it is to use the process to amend the Constitution, thoughtfully provided by the Founding Fathers.  It's difficult to accomplish - deliberately so - but it's the only legal way to do it.  Any other way will be illegal in terms of the Constitution, and will therefore be disobeyed by any and all right-thinking Americans.

So, Mayor Buttigieg, I'm afraid your dream (a nightmare to the rest of us) won't become reality unless and until you and your party can get the necessary supermajorities in Congress and the Senate, or among the member States of the Union.  Somehow, I suspect that's not about to happen.

Peter

Just like love, money will find a way

I'm sure many of my readers know the old proverb, "Love will find a way".  That may or may not be true . . . but money usually does, too, and probably much more reliably than love.  If someone wants something badly enough to pay the costs involved, someone else will find a way to supply it, irrespective of laws, natural obstacles and any other barriers.  (Witness the trade in illegal drugs, which flourishes despite literally tens of billions of dollars spent fighting it each and every year.)

In that light, I was amused to read an account of how US ethanol is still being sold in China free of tariffs, despite nominally crippling import duties.

Although China slapped retaliatory tariffs up to 70 percent on U.S. ethanol shipments, the fuel can still legally enter China tariff-free if it arrives blended with at least 40 percent Asian-produced fuel, according to trade rules established between China and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), the regional economic and political body.

In a striking example of how global commodity markets respond to government policies blocking free trade, some 88,000 tonnes of U.S. ethanol landed on Malaysian shores through November of last year – all since June, shortly after China hiked its tax on U.S. shipments. The surge follows years of negligible imports of U.S. ethanol to Malaysia.

In turn, Malaysia has exported 69,000 tonnes of ethanol to China, the first time the nation has been an exporter of the fuel in at least three years, according to Chinese import data.

Blending U.S. and Asian ethanol for the Chinese market undermines the intent of Beijing’s tariffs and helps struggling American ethanol producers by keeping a path open to a major export market that would otherwise be closed.

“Global commodity markets are incredibly creative in finding ways to ensure willing sellers are able to meet the demands of willing buyers,” Geoff Cooper, head of the Renewable Fuels Association, said in a statement to Reuters. The group represents U.S. ethanol producers.

. . .

Malaysia has no track record of significant domestic ethanol production, so it is unclear where the ethanol blended with the U.S. product originates.

There's more at the link.

I don't know where the "Malaysian" ethanol is coming from, but it wouldn't surprise me to learn that it was also from US sources.  Import and export certifications can always be "arranged", with the help of a few greased palms.  (Nor should we feel smug about US businessmen getting one over on China.  I'll lay long odds that Chinese companies are doing the same with their exports to the USA, one way or another.  It's a universal phenomenon.)

I lived in South Africa during the period when economic and military sanctions were at their most swingeing, from the late 1970's through to the early 1990's.  They exacted an economic toll, to be sure;  but they didn't stop most really important necessities from being imported or "substituted".  A few examples:

• For a particular item of military equipment, a miniature electronic component was needed that was unobtainable through normal sources, because its military application was well-known.  However, a certain Far Eastern watch company made a wristwatch that contained an almost identical component, applied to a different purpose.  As a result, South Africa rapidly became the single largest market for that model of wristwatch in the entire world, importing them by the thousands.  They were all opened up, the needed component removed, and the rest scrapped without further ado.  It was a little more expensive than buying the component itself, but not much more.
• A number of South African military and research establishments needed access to computer equipment to conduct their work, but sanctions made it very difficult to obtain this through normal commercial sources.  Undaunted, a South African company began importing "spares" for DEC PDP-11 minicomputers.  This rapidly turned into a worldwide hunt for the necessary parts, as well as manufacturing some locally and having others "pirated" in Far Eastern factories that turned a blind eye to the illegality of the procedure - provided they were paid in gold or hard currency.  I understand that several hundred of these computers were produced, by the simple expedient of assembling parts acquired from all those sources.  They became crucial elements of South Africa's national security data processing infrastructure.
• High-precision industrial controllers could still be exported to South Africa under sanctions, for use in industry.  I found it interesting that a well-known West German brand of "industrial controller" was clearly visible (albeit carefully relabeled) in the fire control system of locally developed armored vehicles.  Since the same German firm happened to manufacture both industrial controllers and military fire control systems, it was obvious that the housing of one device had been used to conceal electronic innards from the other.  Nobody turned a hair.

Where there's a will, and money to be made, there's always a way.

Peter

Be my anti-Valentine?

Two news reports bring a new twist to Valentines Day.  The first is from Oregon.

"Did you fall hook, line, and sinker for someone who broke your heart?" the Wildlife Images Rehabilitation & Education Center asked in its promotion. "Kodi & Yak would love to help you get your revenge!"

For a $20 donation, the animal rehab center will name a salmon after the ex of your choosing and feed it to their bears, send you a certificate and photos of Kodi and Yak enjoying the salmon named after your former love.

There's more at the link.

In similar vein, here's one from England.

For those that don’t quite require revenge, there’s another way to make you feel better about getting back at your ex this Valentine’s Day.

The [Hemsley Conservation Center] is offering the chance to name a cockroach in honor of your friend's worthless ex-“someone” on this special holiday of love.

Again, more at the link.

(EDITED TO ADD:  El Paso Zoo is doing the same thing - and then feeding the cockroach to the meerkats on February 14th.)

Hmmm . . . a dead fish, or a live cockroach - or both?  I suspect you'd better be sure that your relationship with the victim is terminally "ex", or such gifts might make getting together again a bit risky!




Peter

Doofus Of The Day #1,036

Today's award goes to a hapless Australian heavy transport driver.

The northbound off-ramp on the M1 Pacific Motorway at Cameron Park in Newcastle is expected to remain closed into the evening after a truck transporting a huge piece of refinery equipment became wedged on the guard rail.

The incident has caused traffic chaos, as the scene remains closed to motorists.

Emergency crews and experts including police, Rural Fire Service, RMS, heavy vehicle inspectors and a bridge engineer have spent the day trying to extricate the truck from the off-ramp, but the vehicle is wedged in tight.

There's more at the link.

I've seen taller loads squashed under bridges, but that's the first wide load I've seen that couldn't get through a tight spot.  Around here, loads like that often take off-ramps to avoid going under bridges or between guardrails on the highway.  Their escort vehicles lead them up the off-ramp, across the crossing road, and down the on-ramp again, precisely to avoid that sort of trouble.  I guess there wasn't an alternate route in this case . . . but surely someone should have done the measurements, and foreseen trouble?  (Unless they measured above or below the constriction of the guard rail.  That might be a factor.)

Peter

This is when a pilot earns his flying pay

A Boeing 787 was coming in to land at London's Heathrow Airport last week during a winter storm.  It got caught by turbulence (possibly wind shear) during the last few feet of its descent, and almost went out of control.  Full marks to the pilots for getting out of that mess.

A brown-trouser moment for sure, to the observers.  I'm not sure whether the passengers realized what a close call they'd had.  Kudos to the flight crew for their quick reactions.

Peter

Sunday morning music

Edward Elgar is one of the best-known British composers.  Here's his Serenade for Strings, performed by the Concertgebouw Chamber Orchestra in Holland in 2016.

It's interesting that this rendition is paced slightly faster than most recordings of the Serenade for Strings.  Its timing is very close indeed to a recording of the piece conducted by its composer in 1933, shortly before his death, which you can also hear on YouTube.  To my ear, the faster rendition seems to flow more naturally than some of the slower ones I've heard.

Peter

I did not know that

Bell pepper facts, found on Gab:

I didn't know that either.  I wonder if bell peppers can suffer from gender dysphoria - or is that merely a matter of taste?




Peter

EDITED TO ADD:  Apparently (according to commenters) this is fake news. Oh, well . . .

50 years ago today . . .

. . . the first flight of the Boeing 747, the famous "Jumbo Jet", took place, on February 9th, 1969.  Here's Boeing's official video of proceedings.  The actual takeoff is shown from about 14m. 30s. onwards.

Congratulations to Boeing on a landmark in aviation history.  As of December 2018, over 1,500 747's had been built, and the type is still in low-rate limited production, primarily in freighter configuration.  It's proved to be one of the most successful aircraft programs of all time, particularly in terms of the number of people carried - including the largest number ever carried on a single flight by a passenger aircraft, during Operation Solomon:

An astounding record was set on 24 May 1991 when 1086 Ethiopian Jews were evacuated to Israel in one plane. This was more than double the normal capacity of a passenger jumbo jet, and not surprisingly, never before had so many people flown in a commercial airliner. Two babies were born en route bringing the total who landed in Israel to 1088. The flight was just one of 40 which were put on to evacuate a total of 14,200 Jews to their promised land from Addis Ababa, the besieged capital of Ethiopia, all in the space of 24 hours.

The seats had been removed, of course, to make more room, but even so - talk about a crowded flight!




Peter

More over-the-top Bollywood

This fight scene from the 2014 movie Maanikya is utterly impossible.  Anyone sustaining the sort of blows and injuries depicted would certainly not be capable of fighting back, let alone the miraculous recovery exhibited by the protagonist:  and the feats of strength (including launching seven or eight attackers into the air simultaneously) are just plain ridiculous.  Nevertheless, the movie was a smash hit in India - perhaps not surprising, given all the smashing and hitting in this scene!

Peter

Danger, disguised as a toy

It seems some criminals at least have found a new way to put their intended victims off their guard for just long enough to get within striking distance.

Police caught a felon painting a shotgun to look like a toy in a Spokane motel room Monday, according to Spokane Police Department in a news release.

The suspect, Elijah B. Zon, also was in possession of three black-powder guns, methamphetamine, heroin and ammunition.

He was arrested and booked into the Spokane County Jail.

. . .

They found Zon in the middle of painting a double-barreled, sawed-off shotgun green and yellow with an orange tip to resemble a toy, according to the news release. Pictures display a shotgun painted on one side.

“Officers throughout Spokane County and across the nation come across real guns that are made to look like replicas,” the news release stated.

There's more at the link.

Police officers of my acquaintance have seen the same thing, although not quite so garish or covering so much of the firearm.  It's not uncommon for the tip of the barrel of a criminal's gun to be painted orange, so that the weapon resembles an Airsoft toy.  You can imagine the advantage this gives the criminal if his residence is raided by the police.  Their automatic assumption used to be that a toy gun was precisely that - a toy - and that it presented no threat.  They can't assume that any longer.

Similarly, if you're confronted by a young criminal waving something like that shotgun, you can no longer assume it's a toy.  It may be a deadly threat.  Certainly, if I see something like that, I'm going to take every precaution to safeguard myself and my wife.  Tragically, that may expose real kids, with real toys, to real risk . . . but then, criminals don't care about such niceties.




Peter

If you use Flickr, download your images right away

It seems that Flickr is reducing the storage provided to non-paying users of its facilities.

The company said months ago that it planned to whittle free accounts down from a terabyte to only 1,000 images and delete the rest on Feb. 5. After that, if users wanted to post more photos to the site, they would have to purchase a Flickr Pro account that would run them $50 annually. Flickr announced these changes back in November as part of an overhaul to focus on paid subscriptions after it was purchased by SmugMug last year.

But despite giving users plenty of time to prepare for this massive photo purge, many were—hm, let’s say unprepared ... Some users also reported getting error messages while they were attempting to download their photos, which the company seemed to imply in its statement Wednesday was part of the reason it pushed the deadline back to March 12. Needless to say, some Flickr users seemed genuinely pleased to have another month to get this squared away.

For a step-by-step guide for how to download your photos, we’ve got you covered right here. But photo nerds, seriously, this is your last chance.

There's more at the link.

I don't use Flickr myself, but I know many people who do.  You've got less than a month to download your images, after which you may lose them - or most of them, at any rate.

Peter

Emergency potable water supplies - an update

Some years ago, I wrote about the importance of water storage and purification as part of one's emergency preparations.  It's a very important, but often neglected topic.  All I had to say in that article remains valid.

Over the years, I've noticed that storing water long-term in most plastic containers has an added problem.  The water takes on a sort of "plastic taste" that I find unpleasant.  It's not dangerous to one's health (provided one uses containers made of food-safe plastic), but it's strong enough to taint the taste of food, and can discourage drinking enough to stay properly hydrated.  One can remove most of it by using a carbon filter device (such as a water filter jug), but that's an added step that might not be convenient, and can't provide large quantities of filtered water on demand - it takes time to filter each jugful.  Another approach is to stock potable water ready-packed in plastic bottles, usually holding about a pint each (about half a liter, for those used to metric measurements).  This deals with the problem, but involves buying a lot of small bottles.  Storing them can be problematic.  I keep a few flats of them on hand, because they're so useful, but it's not an ideal solution.

Recently, I found that Sams Club was selling 4-gallon water jugs, made to fit the water vending machines sold there, for a very reasonable price - four dollars and change.  They may be labeled as "Spring Water" or "Purified Water", but the jugs are the same.

Similar jugs, usually three to five gallons in capacity, mostly sell for higher prices (sometimes much higher, up to $20 or more).  Most are sold empty - one has to fill them oneself.  The Sams Club jugs are a very cost-effective deal by comparison.  What's more, by design, these water jugs (made of food-safe material) don't spoil the water by imparting a plastic taste to it.  They have a "use by" date a couple of years ahead, and probably will stay fresh rather longer than that.

I looked around, and found that there are many stands available to hold such water jugs ready for use.  I decided to try this one, because it was reasonably priced, and came with two taps that screwed onto the jug and made dispensing water very easy.  I found it worked very well with the Sams Club water jug;  the taps fit well and were watertight in use, with no leaks.  The stand made dispensing the water from our kitchen counter an effortless procedure.

I also found that several companies make caps to fit these jugs, so that one can refill them once they've been used.  I chose these caps after carefully reading reviews, and found that they do a good job.  They're very tight indeed, hard to get on, but completely watertight once fitted.  This means I can refill the bottles every so often with potable water, either after use or after their "use by" date, and re-seal them for re-use.  (While you're at it, handles like this one make it much easier to carry around the big water jugs.)

I've accordingly upgraded our emergency water storage.  I now have eight of those 4-gallon jugs in store, holding 32 gallons of purified, good-tasting potable water.  At a gallon per person per day, that provides Miss D. and I with approximately two weeks worth of drinking and cooking water.  I have another eight gallons in small, one-pint bottles, for convenience when carrying them around, so we have a total of 40 gallons of potable water.  I also have about 40 gallons of tap water stored in "regular" containers like these.  They'll generally impart a plastic taste to the water over time, so I reserve them for cleaning and washing purposes - again, about two weeks' supply at one gallon each per day.  That's probably more than we need to be prepared for most emergencies;  but I've learned the hard way (as regular readers will recall) that it's hard to predict what might happen.  I'd rather be safe than sorry, and all the water together takes only two shelves in a storage unit in our garage.  I can live with that.

I also have water filters, etc. (as mentioned in my earlier article) to cater for possible longer-term needs.  I think every household should have at least one.  (I currently use the Sawyer Mini system for individual needs, with one available for each vehicle, and the Lifestraw Family 1.0 unit for household needs if worse comes to worst.  I find the latter much more cost-effective than the excellent, but very expensive, Berkey and Katadyn countertop systems.  I think the latter are worthwhile if one uses them constantly to purify hard or chemically impure water, but aren't cost-justifiable to leave sitting on a shelf for possible emergency use - not unless you have a lot more money to spend on that sort of thing than I do!  Also, their replacement filters are anything but cheap.)  If you'd like to know more, this Web site offers comprehensive reviews of almost every portable water filter on the market.  Recommended reading.

Don't forget to have water purification chemicals on hand.  They'll kill bacteria and viruses that might survive filtration.  If your water supply is in any way suspect, they're essential.  I keep these tablets in stock for smaller quantities, and pool shock chemicals for bulk water supplies (see here for a primer on how that's done, and make sure you get chemicals that are at least 75% calcium hypochlorite - I currently keep this brand in my emergency supplies).  I prefer to apply them prior to filtration.  That removes many impurities from the water, leaving it clearer and cleaner, so there's less load on the filter:  and any aftertaste will be reduced, if not eliminated, by the filtration process.  YMMV on that.

Also, plan for additional water containers to collect impure or unfiltered water.  You don't want to use your purified-water containers for that, for obvious reasons.  I use 5-gallon buckets for the purpose.  They're cheap, and fast and easy to use.  With screw-on or snap-on lids, they won't spill, either.  (If you're using snap-on lids, make sure you have a pail opener tool handy.  It's a lot quicker and more convenient than doing it the hard way, and you won't break as many lids.  How do I know this?  Trust me.  I know this!)

Peter

A bureaucratic twist to the public pension crisis

We've spoken several times about the crisis in public pensions that confronts this country.  It now emerges that a significant part of that crisis was caused by bureaucratic mismanagement.

The second-longest bull market in American history hasn’t stopped the deterioration of state and local pension funds, whose unfunded debt has almost quadrupled—by their own accounting—from about $360 billion in 2007 to $1.4 trillion today. Having relied on overly optimistic and inaccurate financial assumptions for decades, public pension administrators are now forced to acknowledge that the systems owe much more than previously thought. Even as local governments struggle to pay for this debt, it keeps growing.

. . .

In 2014, several communities in Illinois discovered that officials were using mortality tables from 1971, when life expectancy was much shorter, which vastly underestimated pension costs. The resulting outcry forced those communities to update their calculations, and led to average increases in costs by about 20 percent. Most state plans now use more recent numbers, but even year-to-year adjustments in mortality rates put pressure on communities already struggling to meet pension obligations. After New York State’s retirement system updated its mortality tables in 2015, for instance, localities increased their pension payments from 14.2 percent of salaries to 18.2 percent, according to S&P.

Longer lives for public employees will mean higher costs, and not just for pension plans. Many state and local governments promise to pay for the health care of their retired workers, but few have enough money set aside to do so. A recent analysis by Pew found that states spent $20 billion on retiree health care in 2015, and that, collectively, states owe nearly $700 billion in promises they’ve made to finance their workers’ health insurance in retirement. But that number is undoubtedly higher, given longer life spans.

. . .

In about half of the states, added costs from these inaccurate projections fall entirely on taxpayers. That’s because these states have laws or constitutional provisions that limit the ability of governments to alter pensions for current workers for as long as they remain employed. Among other things, governments often can’t require higher contributions from workers themselves; nor can they lower benefits. Consequently, the amount of money that local governments must pay into the system has been rising steadily. As the latest study on mortality rates shows, that trend is going to continue.

There's more at the link.

In the old days, one might have a single job from college graduation to retirement.  A teacher might accumulate 40 or 45 years of service before starting to draw a pension, and would contribute to his or her retirement fund for that long - and then, of course, they'd die within a decade or so, not drawing a pension for very long.  Nowadays, a person might turn to teaching as a second career, starting in their 40's and retiring at 65.  Others may retire as soon as they reach 20 years of service, when their pensions vest.  It's not inconceivable that a teacher retiring today might draw a pension for more than twice as long as he or she was employed as a teacher . . . and that changes the whole actuarial perspective.  Health care costs, too, are so much higher today that they drastically affect long-term financial considerations.

One would have thought that the bureaucrats administering the pension plans would have been more alert to such changes . . . but they're bureaucrats.  They push pencils, dot I's and cross T's.




Peter

The root of many of our economic problems

Several articles in recent years have focused on the so-called "financialization" of business and commerce.  I'll highlight a couple of them here.  I think they explain very clearly why our economy is out of balance.  Basically:

• This is how you get a company like Bain Capital, asset-stripping the companies it buys, maximizing "shareholder value", and then selling off the stripped shell, leaving employees without jobs or pensions.  Its primary focus is on finance, not production.
• This is how you get product pricing that has nothing whatsoever to do with the intrinsic value of the product, or the amount of work or materials that went into it, but is predicated solely on what the market will bear - thus leading, for example, to prices for established medicines increasing by hundreds or even thousands of percent, purely to subsidize owner or shareholder "value".
• This is why profits go, not to the workers who made the product, or the people who invented or developed it, but to professional managers and financiers who manipulated the market, rather than producing any part of that underlying value.
• This is why major companies in reality derive a very large proportion of their profits, not from their products, but from financializing those products (for example, the securitization of mortgages and other financial instruments).  This often produces more income for the companies than the sale of the original product.

This is also why President Trump's economic measures are focused, not on Wall Street - the heart of financialization - but on Main Street, where business and commerce are actually conducted.  As a result, we have a Wall Street financial elite who are adamantly opposed to many of this Administration's policies, because it will mean less money for financiers and their cronies.  On the other hand, the ordinary working man and woman is delighted to be earning higher (and more steady) wages, and wants more of the same.  It's as much of a divide in society as the famous rift between the "haves" and the "have-nots".  In this case, it's the financiers who "have", and the rest of us who are left out in the cold with the crumbs they decide to toss us from time to time.

Click on the headline for each article to read it in full.


1.  The Pitfalls of the ‘Financialization’ of American Business.

Today, finance, while making up only 7% of the economy and creating a mere 4% of all jobs, generates more than a fourth of corporate profits — up from 10% 25 years ago.

Parallel to the ascendance of finance ... was a decline in American business as large corporations increasingly came to mimic the banks that were supposed to serve them and to seek profits in ‘financial engineering’ activities divorced from their core services and goods.

. . .

A famous Harvard Business Review article from 1980, “Managing Our Way to Economic Decline,” dates falling investment in research and development back to the mid-1960s. Increasingly, the authors found, U.S. companies focused on “sophisticated and exotic” management of their growing cash reserves, grew preoccupied with cost-cutting measures, and treated “technological matters simply as if they were adjuncts to finance or marketing decisions.”

. . .

The purpose of the corporation, Milton Friedman and others asserted, was to maximize financial value ... Accordingly, maximizing stock prices was increasingly elevated as a cardinal virtue. In 1990, the Business Roundtable (a group of CEOs from America’s largest companies) defined management’s responsibility as that of serving a broad range of stakeholders, including but not limited to stockholders. Just seven years later, the wording had changed. Management’s “paramount duty” was to stockholders — the interests of other stakeholders relevant only “as a derivative” to that primary loyalty.

Armed with this ideology, powerful shareholders like Carl Icahn pressured companies to pass on more and more of their earnings to those who owned stock in the company — in the form of higher dividends, and increasingly, stock buybacks. In 1982, the SEC loosened regulations limiting a company’s ability to repurchase its own stock, despite protests by some dissenters that this would essentially legalize market manipulation. And this, Foroohar and others argue, is exactly what happened.

Reducing the number of outstanding shares on the market artificially inflates a key measure of a company’s value: its earnings-per-share, or EPS. Buybacks are often followed by an immediate surge in stock price, at least in the short term. The concern is that prominent owners of a stock will lobby for buybacks and then sell off that same stock, reaping a healthy profit even though there has been no change in a company’s underlying value. Icahn was recently charged with such a “pump and dump” strategy when, after successfully lobbying Apple to engage in a series of costly repurchases, he sold his entire stake in the company.

The buyback boom began in the 1980s, and has only accelerated since. In the last decade, the author writes, “American firms have spent a stunning $7 trillion buying back their own stock — the equivalent of half their profits.”

. . .

Complicating matters further, Foroohar and others point out, is the fact that stock options account for a huge chunk of executive compensation — creating a built-in incentive to engage in financial maneuvering that lifts stock prices but doesn’t create real value. This has eroded American competitiveness, a Brookings Institute paper worries, by replacing a “retain-and-reinvest” corporate model with a “downsize-and-distribute” one. The end result, the author of the paper writes, is “profits without prosperity” as business focuses on “value extraction” instead of “value creation.”

2.  Why Financialization Has Run Amok.

Financialization isn’t bad in itself. Its initial role is the healthy one of translating work-products and services into exchangeable financial instruments to facilitate trade in the real economy. Through mortgages, workers can trade their promise of future wages for a home. Through insurance, homeowners are able to share financial risks and avoid financial catastrophe. The problems begin when financialization becomes excessive.

Throughout history, periods of excessive financialization have often coincided with periods of national economic setbacks ... The focus by elites on “making money out of money” rather than making real goods and services has led to wealth for the few, and overall national economic decline. “In a financialized economy, the financial tail is wagging the economic dog.”

. . .

Quite apart from the tendency of a super-sized financial sector to cause increasingly bad global financial crashes, excessive financialization leads to resources being misallocated. “As far back as 1984 the Nobel Prize–winning economist James Tobin observed that ‘very little of the work done by the securities industry...has to do with the financing of real investment.’ He was troubled that ‘we are throwing more and more of our resources, including the cream of our youth, into financial activities remote from the production of goods and services...that generate high private rewards disproportionate to their social productivity.’”

. . .

... we need more fundamental change in the way we think about management—a radical transformation in the whole notion of how companies, both financial and non-financial, should be run.

. . .

Obsolete ideas like maximizing shareholder value need to be discarded ... Instead, we need to get back to Peter Drucker’s 1973 insight: the only valid purpose of a firm is to create a customer.

Most worrying of all, financialization also creates a pathway to socialism.  If socialists see an imbalance of wealth between the financializers and the rest of society, it gives them an opportunity to peddle their unworkable, historically catastrophic policies by claiming that they'll "nationalize" the wealth and spread it around.  They never do, of course:  they end up becoming wealthy themselves, a new "ruling class" to replace those they displaced.  Nevertheless, they can (and do) use the imbalance as a lever to pry their way into power.  Right now, in these United States, that's a very real threat.

Peter

Another weird Bollywood fight scene

The title of this movie is apparently "Baazigar", but it's not the film of that name profiled on Wikipedia.  Judging from the poor quality of the reproduction, it predates it.  It may have been made and/or released under a different name, and renamed in its Hindu release.  At any rate, it's a weird fight scene.  I'll let you figure it out for yourself.

Confused?  So am I!




Peter

China: worrying signs

China's economy is now regarded as the largest in the world, by most normal standards of measurements.  Many - in some economic sectors, most - of the consumer goods sold in Europe and the USA are sourced from Chinese factories.  Any impact on the Chinese economy would undoubtedly have a ripple effect in our own - and not just economic, either, as I'll explain later.

That's why three recent reports have concerned me.  I've linked to each one, followed by an extract to highlight the issues they note.  Click each headline to read the rest of the article - which I highly recommend, if you'd like to stay informed about this.


1.  Rush to Beat Trump Tariffs Turns Into Another Headwind for China.

Warehouses in southern California are full to bursting with Chinese goods rushed across the Pacific ahead of President Donald Trump’s tariff deadlines.

. . .

Those chock-a-block dockyards seen in mid-January are evidence of a phenomenon in global trade which economists are still struggling to capture the full extent of: “front loading.”

Customers for Chinese goods brought forward their orders in the expectation that duties would rise at the end of 2018, cushioning the blow from the trade war on China’s economy through most of 2018. Problem is, that forward buying means that fewer orders than normal are set to get booked now, depressing trade at the start of the year.

How this distortion in the U.S.-China trading relationship combines with the other risks to China’s export performance this year will help determine how bad the slowdown in the world’s second-largest economy will become.

2.  Fudged growth numbers take the shine off China's 'miracle'.

China is one of the few countries that target economic growth, and growth numbers are manufactured to be consistent with the objectives of various Chinese development plans.

Notice, unlike most developed countries, the quarterly rates are amazingly stable, quarter to quarter. Yet, financial markets accept and trade on the announced growth numbers as if they are a real measure of the actual state of the Chinese economy.

Some years ago, while I was on a business trip to China, the authorities announced the growth rate for the September quarter in the middle of the month of September, before the quarter had ended. In Australia, our statistician would not be able to announce the September quarter result until about the first or second week of December.

Recently a Chinese professor was censored after suggesting that growth was below 2 per cent in 2018, not 6.5 per cent as announced by the authorities.

One of the reasons offered for why the Chinese government consistently exaggerates growth numbers is its concern about social unrest if the Chinese people were told the truth about growth and the state of the Chinese economy – that economic performance was falling well short of the objectives or promises of its economic plans. There is real concern as to how to continue to control a population of 1.4 billion.

3.  'It could be on the scale of 2008': Expert sends warning on China downturn.

China is in the grip of a dangerous downturn and may be forced to rescue large parts of its financial and economic system, the world's leading expert on debt crises has warned.

Harvard professor Ken Rogoff said the key policy instruments of the Communist Party are losing traction and the country has exhausted its credit-driven growth model. This is rapidly becoming the greatest single threat to the global financial system.

"People have this stupefying belief that China is different from everywhere else and can grow to the moon," said Professor Rogoff, a former chief economist at the International Monetary Fund.

"China can't just keep creating credit. They are in a serious growth recession and the trade war is kicking them on the way down," he told UK's The Daily Telegraph, speaking before the World Economic Forum in Davos.

"There will have to be a de facto nationalisation of large parts of the economy. I fear this really could be 'it' at last and they are going to have their own kind of Minsky moment," he said.

The thing to remember is, if past history is anything to go by, China's government will invoke some foreign "threat" (real or imagined) to blame for its economic troubles.  It'll try to mobilize public opinion against that "threat", rather than against their own government, in an attempt to maintain and/or regain control over their people.  China is not a democracy, despite outward appearances.  It's a top-down, hierarchical, highly structured, authoritarian society.  The authorities will do whatever it takes to maintain that - up to and including massacring their own rebellious people, if necessary.

For example, China may decide it's time to forcibly reintegrate Taiwan into the People's Republic, and to hell with anyone else's opinion on the matter.  That will satisfy its own people's carefully inculcated sense of patriotism, while portraying China as a "strong man" in diplomatic terms.  What's more, there's effectively nothing the rest of the world could do about it militarily - China's become too powerful.  All other countries could do is impose economic sanctions;  and because so many nations rely on imports from China, that would be very much a two-edged sword, and probably unsustainable.  Besides, if the Chinese economy is already in trouble, its rulers probably wouldn't regard sanctions as much of an additional problem - merely more of the same.

Economic trouble in China may translate to serious trouble - not just economic, but probably also diplomatic, and perhaps military as well - for the rest of the world.

Peter

Some useful advice from Warren Buffett

I'm obliged to Nourishing Obscurity for publishing this set of maxims from Warren Buffett.

If anyone understands money and finance, it's the Sage of Omaha. Worth pondering.

Peter

The (political) Pilgrim's Progress

"The Pilgrim's Progress from This World, to That Which Is to Come" is one of the most significant works of religious allegory in the English language.  Penned by John Bunyan in 1678, it's been in print ever since.

On Gab the other day, I saw this cartoon illustration of a political pilgrim's progress.  It made me smile. Click the image for a larger view.

I don't know about "this party" or "the party which is to come", but even so, it's a fun analogy.

Peter

Preparedness book proposal - what do you think?

Last week I reviewed Selco Begovic's new book.

At the time, I concluded:

As a matter of fact, Selco's book has got me wondering whether I shouldn't write one of my own, about the lessons learned in SHTF situations in the many and varied circumstances in which I've found myself over the years.  I must think about that.

Many of you left comments or sent e-mails to say that I should, indeed, write that book:  so I'll add it to my plans for this year.  I'd like to get your input on how it should be structured, and what it should contain.  I'm in a bit of a quandary here.  If it's too much "I was there, and I saw this", then it won't have enough room for the practical information I'd like to include.  If it has too much of the latter, it won't have space for very much of the former.  What balance should I aim for?

Also, I don't want to write multiple books on the subject.  I'd rather write just one.  That means being selective about the number of issues it covers.  It'll therefore address the most likely real-world problems and their solutions, but not more off-the-wall situations (otherwise it would be too long and complicated).  To take one example, a lot of people speak rather glibly about "bugging out" when a crisis hits, and setting up somewhere else.  I don't think that's practical for most people.  I've already written about the subject on this blog, and I can add more information and more real-world examples to illustrate the point.  That's the point of the book:  to be practical about emergency preparedness, not go off on a zombie-apocalypse, TEOTWAWKI tangent.  (If that happens, we're probably all going to die anyway, so I don't think it'll be very practical to prepare for it!  I'd rather address emergencies that are more likely to happen.)

So, how best to structure the book?  I'm thinking I should start with a short introductory section about disasters and emergencies I've experienced, witnessed, etc. and what I learned there.  The next section should involve analyzing your own situation.  What risks are you most likely to encounter?  Which among them can you prepare for, in realistic terms?  That would be followed by several sections covering the practicalities of preparedness:  food, water, clothing, shelter, family needs, etc.  They won't involve big, dramatic, Hollywood-type dystopian fantasies;  they'll be down-to-earth, focused on solutions to problems that are likely to arise.  I don't want to encourage the Rambo-fetishist, knife-between-the-teeth survivalists who infest so many online "prepper" forums and discussion groups.  I'm trying to help people like you and I, seeking to have a backup plan in case anything goes wrong in our lives.  (As all too many of us have learned, through earthquakes, floods, fires and storms, that's not a remote possibility.)

If you have suggestions to offer, or want to nominate subjects you'd like me to cover, please let us know in Comments.  I'll take them into account in planning the structure and content of the book.  Also, if there are areas in which I have little or no experience, I might bring in others to write those sections, to make it more practical.

Thanks in advance.

Peter

Sunday morning music

Back in 1987, Irish composer Michael McGlynn founded Anúna, a vocal ensemble spanning the boundary between classical and Irish traditional music, with a modern, almost New Age twist in many of their performances.  Thirty-two years and eighteen albums later, they're still going strong.  You can read more about them at their Web site.

I've picked four of the ensemble's songs from their very extensive portfolio.  First, here's "The Rising of the Sun", from their 2002 album "Invocation".

Next, a modern and rather different setting of an old Irish ballad, "Dulaman".  This version is from their 2010 compilation album "The Best of Anúna".

For a change of pace, here's a medley of the traditional English folk songs "Greensleeves" and "Scarborough Fair".  Both songs were covered separately on their 2014 album "Illuminations".

And finally, here's "Wind on Sea", also from the album "Invocation".

You'll find much more of their music on the group's YouTube channel, and on Amazon.com.

Peter

A fact about electric cars I didn't know

Eric Peters warns of a drawback to electric cars in colder climes.

Electric heaters cost a lot to run – in energy and so dollars. Anyone who has ever run one for any length of time knows this, or comes to know it – after receiving that month’s electric bill.

It is no different in an electric car, which is heated electrically – except that the heater draws power from a battery rather than a grid.

Your mileage – your range – begins to vary.

It would be interesting to know exactly the effect on EV range of keeping the interior of an EV warm – not survivable, but comfortably warm – on a minus 10 degree day. How much range does one lose? How much time will one have to spend shivering at an outdoor recharger – assuming it’s not blocked by the snow and assuming your EV has a built-in system to keep the battery warm, so that it can be charged.

Bet you didn’t know about that, either.

Electric car batteries can’t be recharged if the ambient air temperature is below freezing – it’s a function of battery chemistry – which means that the EV must also heat its battery during the winter months, which will cost energy (battery drain) and further reduce the range.

The EV’s defroster uses heat, too – obviously.

But also the AC, not so obviously. Many people don’t know that, either. The AC doesn’t just cool the car’s interior in the summertime; it also dehumidifies the air, without which the defroster doesn’t work very well.

In which case, you can’t see very well.

So, another drain on the battery; a big one. AC compressors are energy hogs. It takes a lot to power one, whether mechanically (as in a non-EV) or electrically (as in an EV). The difference is that the non-EV can just fill up when the tank runs low – no matter how cold it is outside. But the EV’s got the double-pronged problem of reduced range – because of the power draw of accessories such as heat and AC, as well as lights and everything else that is electrically powered, which is everything in an EV – and having to find a place to recharge in time.

When it is minus 10 degrees outside, waiting can be more than merely inconvenient. It could be fatal. A discharged EV is a cold EV. No heat, until the battery recharges. Imagine sitting in a dark – and very cold – EV for the 30-45 minutes it takes to recover a partial charge at a “fast” charger . . . assuming one’s available.

. . .

EVs are being sold as if they were just like other cars – but they aren’t. EVs have functional characteristics – and deficits – that are unique to them but which are largely unknown to the general public because they’re purposely not being told about them.

There's more at the link.

I wasn't aware that one can't charge an electric vehicle in sub-freezing temperatures (unless the battery is heated).  If the battery gets too flat to keep itself heated, what then?  I can see that being a real danger to life and limb in northern states.  I wonder if the manufacturers of such vehicles point out that drawback to potential buyers before they sign on the dotted line, and hand over their money?  If they don't, it would make an interesting court case if a disappointed buyer were to sue on the grounds that the seller had deliberately concealed a potentially life-threatening problem.  I'm sure the manufacturer would claim that the issue had been mentioned in the owner's manual . . . but if the buyer hadn't been given the manual before buying the car, to read it for himself, how would he know?

Food for thought.

Peter

Heh

Found on Gab:  "Pasta Flambé.  An old family recipe."

Clickit to biggit.




Peter

Bollywood strikes again

Here's a "comedy fight scene" from the 1993 movie Dil Tera Aashiq.  I'm not sure who's who, but they all end up fighting everyone else in the end, so who cares?

Some good fight choreography, if not very good acting . . .

Peter

Corruption in Chicago: ain't we got fun?

It appears that a long-running FBI investigation may have gathered evidence to incriminate, not just Chicago city politicians, but also leading lights in the state government.

Retiring Ald. Danny Solis received sex acts, Viagra, free weekend use of an Indiana farm once owned by Oprah Winfrey and a steady stream of campaign contributions in exchange for shepherding official City Council actions, according to allegations in a federal court affidavit obtained by the Chicago Sun-Times.

The allegations are contained in an explosive search warrant application that helps explain why Solis, the powerful chairman of the City Council’s Zoning Committee, agreed to spend more than two years cooperating in a federal investigation during which he is known to have secretly recorded at least a dozen conversations with Ald. Edward M. Burke, the former chairman of the City Council’s Finance Committee.

Although no charges have been filed publicly against Solis, the 2016 affidavit lays out in detail a federal corruption case against the veteran alderman, who was one of the closest City Council allies of Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Emanuel’s predecessor, Richard M. Daley.

It also alleges that among the people recorded as part of the Solis investigation was Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan, D-Chicago, the longest-serving state House speaker in the country.

The 120-page affidavit shows federal investigators listened in on more than 18,000 conversations on one of Solis’ cellphones over the course of at least a year, while also conducting surveillance of his private meetings and trips to massage parlors.

It also indicates the Solis probe dates back at least as far as May 2014.

There's more at the link.

Two years wearing a wire, recording almost every top politician in the city and state?  Oh, boy, the dirt the FBI must have on those tapes!  Pass the popcorn.  This should be very entertaining, watching the rats and the cockroaches scurry to hide from the sudden, unexpected and absolutely unwanted light on their proceedings.

Peter

The deficit isn't just a federal government problem

We've spoken often in these pages about the federal government deficit (now standing at about $22 trillion), and how it's a crippling hobble on the entire country.  It's so incredibly large that it can probably be repaid only by devaluing the US dollar through massive inflation, and/or repudiating part of the debt.  Either step will damage the "full faith and credit of the United States".

However, that's not the only deficit in prospect.  Most of our major cities are in deep financial trouble.

According to a recent analysis of the 75 most populous cities in the U.S., 63 of them can’t pay their bills and the total amount of unfunded debt among them is nearly $330 billion. Most of the debt is due to unfunded retiree benefits such as pension and health care costs.

“This year, pension debt accounts for $189.1 billion, and other post-employment benefits (OPEB) – mainly retiree health care liabilities – totaled $139.2 billion,” the third annual "Financial State of the Cities" report produced by the Chicago-based research organization, Truth in Accounting (TIA), states.

. . .

In New York City, for example, only $4.7 billion has been set aside to fund $100.6 billion of promised retiree health care benefits. In Philadelphia, every taxpayer would have to pay $27,900 to cover the city’s debt; in San Francisco, $22,600 per taxpayer.

. . .

One major problem area TIA identifies is that city leaders have acquired massive debts despite the balanced budget requirements imposed on them.

“Unfortunately, some elected officials have used portions of the money that is owed to pension funds to keep taxes low and pay for politically popular programs,” TIA states. “This is like charging earned benefits to a credit card without having the money to pay off the debt. Instead of funding promised benefits now, they have been charged to future taxpayers. Shifting the payment of employee benefits to future taxpayers allows the budget to appear balanced, while municipal debt is increasing.”

. . .

No cities received an “A” grade. Twelve cities received a “B;” 24 a “C;” 31 a “D;” and eight failed.

There's more at the link.  You can download the complete report here.

Points to ponder:

• If you expect to receive a pension from any of the most financially mismanaged cities, it's very likely you won't receive it all, and may lose some of it - perhaps a lot - when their finances are restructured (as they'll have to be, sooner or later).  It's already happened in a number of cities.
• If you live in one of those cities, the odds are pretty good that the municipal services on which you rely (including police, fire, EMS, power, water, sewage, etc.) may deteriorate as the powers that be are forced to cut expenditure on them, to free up money to make up pension shortfalls or bond repayments.  In some cases, municipal rates and taxes will increase dramatically (Jefferson County, AL, incorporating the city of Birmingham, is a classic example).
• Property taxes are also likely to increase exponentially.  If you're a homeowner in one of those cities, this may have a serious impact on your finances.  Consider Chicago, IL, for example.  (Of course, Chicago's notorious corruption in city government is another expense.)
• I fully expect semi-bankrupt cities and states to demand a Federal bailout of their obligations.  I hope and trust that won't happen . . . but bear in mind that almost every city with serious debt problems is run by a Democratic Party administration.  If the Democrats take over the Senate and Presidency, in addition to their present hold on the House, you can bet your bottom dollar (literally) that such a bailout will be passed.  That'll put all US taxpayers on the hook for all that money - at least $5 trillion for all states and major cities right now, and probably higher.

The only thing we can do is to help ourselves by minimizing our own debt load, building up our own financial reserves, and preparing for hard times if and when they arrive.  Personally, I suspect they're on the way, in many cases due to the profligacy and poor self-control of all levels of government and both major political parties.

Peter