THE RIGHT COMBINATION OF AMERICAN REALISM AND OPTIMISM

The below article by Bill Sharon in "Next Gov." should be required reading for all of us who are concerned about our government and where we are headed as a country:

http://techinsider.nextgov.com/2008/04/einstein.php


Mr. Sharon does not pull any punches regarding how our collective heads of state, our citizen attitudes and our war machine in recent years have placed this country in a precarious position economically, strategically and environmentally.

But he holds out hope and begins to detail how the US will be forced to respond as it always has during times of extraordinary challenge in the past; waiting too long to take action but with a genius for finally getting it right after a substantial sacrifice and a heroic effort.


"Getting to the Next Level to Solve Problems
By Bill Sharon Tuesday, April 15, 2008 4:37 PM /Techinsider/Next gov.com


No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it.
~Albert Einstein~

We hear a lot about consciousness these days. This attention to a new level of awareness has increasing numbers of people checking their egos, performing acts of kindness and attempting to inject a greater level of civility into our daily discourse. All of which is welcome indeed, but it is less clear how the expansion of consciousness will have any impact on the very serious issues we all face in the world of politics, business and the economy. Einstein’s quotation gives us a hint.

Regardless of whether we protested or agreed, we have all lived in a political and social context over the recent years that operated on two fundamental principals: We could have war without cost and profit without value. On their face, these principals make no sense. We all knew they made no sense. Now we are beginning to experience the reality that they make no sense and the potential consequences from an economic perspective look worse every day. Just when the latest mortgage backed securities write-offs by UBS were supposed to mark the end of that crisis, we discover that the financial turmoil has seriously impacted GE, a stalwart performer whose stock price dropped nearly 15 percent last week. So much for the theory that the credit crisis would only affect the financial services sector of the economy.

The cost of the war, at $3 billion a day, also has finally come into our awareness. We can do the math in our heads to know that the amount spent in Iraq could have a significant impact on education, health care and the state of our infrastructure. Since we haven’t taxed ourselves to pay for the war, we have borrowed the money and grown the debt to astronomical proportions. There is a new context – an understanding of what we have done and the choices that we have made – even though those choices were in many ways a decision to let someone else decide.

Now that we are at the beginning of this awareness, many are clamoring for a “solution” to the many problems that face us. More regulation, say some. Less regulation, let the market sort itself out, say others. Withdraw immediately, say some. Remain for the foreseeable future, say others. These are all reactions in the same “consciousness” that created the problems. Reactive change is never resilient change and despite some transient upward ticks in the stock market, any of these actions are unlikely to have a prolonged effect.

To move to the next level of awareness it is becoming clear that we will need to experience a more detailed understanding of what we got ourselves into. The unraveling of the financial system will happen in due course. This is far beyond the supposedly normal process of a business cycle. The issues we need to deal with have to do with the corrosive effects of debt and the worthless nature of many “structured financial products." Those who cheer at the collapse of companies and financial institutions are foolish indeed; there has been and will continue to be much suffering.

But we can also see the beginnings of the new consciousness that Einstein suggests impacting both the economic and the political realities. Energy generation from what we now call “alternate” sources is beginning to come on stream in a significant way around the world. We will likely see these energy technologies develop both at a local level with individuals and municipalities deploying them and at a macro level as companies like Shell and BP continue to invest in them. The fundamental difference here is that the source of the energy (wind, solar, ocean currents, etc.) is essentially free. The economics will revolve around acquiring the devices to harness the free energy, and we will likely see significant changes in the economic structure of the current liquid fuel industry. This is not futuristic babble – the technologies exist today. It is well within the realm of the probable that our children will see the fossil fuel economy the same way we saw communism – seemingly impregnable and immovable and then a dusty memory. In any event, who with any sense and a blank piece of paper would choose to base an economy on an energy source that was limited, increasingly hard to find, dirty and located in some of the most unstable regions of the world?

Managing risk in this new environment or consciousness will be a challenge but it will be a welcome change from the defensive posture of the last several decades. We have been operating in the economics of scarcity and we are now entering the economics of abundance. Instead of looking at the world from the perspective of a country that constitutes 5 percent of the global population and consumes 30 percent of the world’s resources, we can conceive of a reality where, from an energy standpoint, an unlimited supply is achievable. Creating economic models that allow for the construction and deployment of the machines necessary to harness these energies has already begun.

So we are in the process of a tremendous change, one that seems unachievable and one that will cause a good deal of suffering even in the best scenarios. Einstein’s quotation provides us with a signpost of the direction that we need to move toward. We need to take the risk.


About Bill Sharon
Founder and Chief Executive Officer
Strategic Operational Risk Management Solutions

Bill has 25 years' experience in the financial services and marketing and communications industry in a variety of C-level positions and consultancies. As the chief operating officer of corporate real estate at JP Morgan, he was a key player in its transformation from a commercial bank to an investment bank through the development and construction of high-tech offices in 23 markets that reflected a new organizational culture. Bill went on to develop cross-functional risk management processes for penetrating markets and establishing products. He also created the first proactive operational risk management process designed as a vehicle to communicate opportunities as well as hazards.

At Price Waterhouse, Bill established the North American operational risk management practice, which focused on the upside of risk — the choices an organization has to make to stay competitive. Most recently, as the chief information officer at McCann Worldgroup, Bill developed a global collaborative system as the foundation for supporting the cross-discipline business strategy of demand creation.

Bill holds a clinical degree and for the first 10 years of his professional life worked with adolescents in the South Bronx and East Harlem, an experience that taught him the difficult skill of how to listen. "

Video Artwork By Fellow Veteran

This video is a remarkably beautiful and informative work combining education with art and music. It was choreographed by Phillip Cunningham, a fellow veteran at the Minnesota Veteran's Home in Hastings, Minnesota.

http://www.metacafe.com/watch/5289335/the_amazing_human_body_fearfully_and_wonderfully_made/

THE U.S. FEDERAL GOVERNMENT PROCUREMENT MACHINE IS BROKEN

A federal court has forced the General Services Administration to forgo the award of the largest information technology (IT) Government -Wide Acquisition Contract (GWAC) in recent memory. Alliant (valued at $50B) was awarded earlier this year and subsequently protested by the losers. See the following Next Gov link:

http://www.nextgov.com/nextgov/ng_20080328_8261.php?zone=ngtoday

More than 60 companies have spent millions marketing, forming teams and preparing proposals for this program. It is now likely that it will be totally re-competed.

The federal court agreed with the protesters that the past performance award criteria for the Alliant contracts was fatally flawed. At the heart of the protest is the performance of a polling firm contracted by the GSA to conduct past performance ratings. The firm turned out to be totally unfamiliar with the Alliant Program Technology and delivered results the GSA foolishly trusted and the court ruled were unfair.

The GAO has also noticed a disturbing trend in government outsourcing of proposal evaluations to outside firms who have serious influence conflicts in performing objective determination of winning companies as revealed in this Next Gov Article:

http://www.nextgov.com/nextgov/ng_20080321_1740.php?zone=themostread

IBM has been suspended from further federal government contracts, apparently due to violations of the Federal Acquisition Regulation tolerated by the EPA under IBM’s contracts valued annually in excess of $1.5 B per year.

http://www.nextgov.com/nextgov/ng_20080331_3516.php?zone=ngtoday

Add the above to the sorrowful performance history of federal government contract administration in high technology, homeland security and Iraq military support projects that this blog has covered in detail and there is one inescapable conclusion:

Our domestic procurement contracting agencies are woefully lacking in expertise to administer the billions entrusted to them.

We must downsize the agencies in charge of these wasteful boondoggles, reform federal government acquisition, reassess our priorities and establish qualified professionals in the government ranks who can be trusted to spend public monies professionally and autonomously.

The best way to do this is to pull the budget purse strings shut until an agency can demonstrate the expertise, the plans and the objectives that Congress mandates. It may grind the government to a halt in certain quarters but a pause is in order before the machine collapses from waste, fraud, abuse and incompetence.

Why continue to drive a broken vehicle until it collapses and runs us into the ditch?

WHERE AMERICANS CAN SEE WHERE THEIR MONEY GOES

Our thanks to Phil Cunningham for suggesting and making available Bazarro's fine art as a companion piece for this article.

BELOW IS A QUOTE FROM A NEW FEDERAL GOVERNMENT WEB SITE:

"Have you ever wanted to find more information on government spending? Have you ever wondered where federal contracting dollars and grant awards go? Or perhaps you would just like to know, as a citizen, what the government is really doing with your money.

The Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act of 2006 (Transparency Act) requires a single searchable website, accessible by the public for free that includes for each Federal award:

1. The name of the entity receiving the award
2. The amount of the award
3. Information on the award including transaction type, funding agency, etc
4. The location of the entity receiving the award
5. A unique identifier of the entity receiving the award"

CLICK ON THE BELOW LINK TO ACCESS THE DATA DISCUSSED IN THE ABOVE ARTICLE:

http://www.usaspending.gov/

OFFERING SOME "INTELLIGENCE" TO THE CIA - THE WASHINGTON THINK TANKS - AND THE MILITARY INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX (MIC)

USA Today recently reported in its Washington Section that the CIA plans to utilize more open sources and blogs in its intelligence work and outsource more of its intelligence software development to commercial contractors in an attempt to re-establish itself as the premiere world intelligence agency. The "Strategic Intent" is posted on the CIA public web site.

Defense Industry Daily reports that General Electric gobbled up Smith's Industries for $4.8B.

http://www.defenseindustrydaily.com/2007/01/ge-buys-smiths-aerospace-for-48b/index.php

Let's look at these developments for a moment and do our patriotic duty by reading along with the CIA (after all, they have announced they are reading this blog).

1. The new CIA approach comes exactly at the formation of the agency’s new "External Advisory Board", which consists of the following:

* A former Pentagon Chairman of the Joints Chief who is now a Northrop Grumman Corporation Board Member

* A deposed Chairman of the Board of Hewlett Packard Corporation (HP)

* A Former Deputy Secretary of Defense who now heads up a Washington think tank with Henry Kissinger

2. Northrop Grumman Corporation and Hewlett Packard are two huge government contractors in the Pentagon and CIA custom software development arena. Their combined contracts with the government just for IT are in the multiples of millions. I wonder what the advisory board is filling the CIA's ear with?

3. Washington "Think Tanks" are fronts for big-time lobbies, sophisticated in their operations, claiming non-partisanship, but tremendously influential on K Street. If a lobby cannot buy its way in, why not sit on the advisory board?

4. GE already has the military aircraft jet engine market sewn up. In buying Smith's, it takes one more major defense corporation out of the opposition and further reduces the government's competition tools. GE now joins the other monoliths such as Lockheed Martin, Boeing, General Dynamics, Northrop Grumman and Raytheon with tremendous leverage in the $500B +++ per year defense market.

5. Note the synergy that now exists between the Pentagon and the CIA. Note the influence by the major corporations and the think tanks.

6. Also note the balance in your bank account and your aspirations for future generations. Both are going down.

7. The huge Military Industrial Complex (MIC) continues to march. Taxes and the national debt are marching straight up the wall to support it.

8. Do you have any "Intelligence" to offer the CIA, the MIC and the Think Tanks?

HOW THE PENTAGON CONTRACTS ITSELF INTO A CORNER

Government Computer News (GCN) carried a story on the difficulties experienced with, "Performance-Based Contracting". The process was made part of the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) in an attempt to pre-establish at contract award those discrete outcomes that determine if and when a contractor will be paid.

Interestingly enough, the article splits the blame for the difficulties right down the middle, stating the government typically has problems defining what it wants as an end product or outcome and looks to contractors to define it for them. More than willing to do so, the contactors detail specific end products or outcomes, set schedule milestones and submit competitive proposals.

The winner is selected based on what the government thinks it needs at the time to fullfill its requirement and a contract is negotiated. Once underway, the government decides it wants something else (usually a management-by-government committee phenomina with a contractor growing his product or service by offering lots of options).

The resulting change of contract scope invalidates the original price and schedule, so a whole new round of proposals and negotiations must occur with the winner while the losers watch something totally different evolve than that for which they competed. The clock keeps ticking and the winner keeps getting his montlhy bill paid based on incurred cost or progress payments.
The link to the GCN ariticle is below and is yet another indication of how government keeps getting bigger by incompetancy:

http://www.gcn.com/online/vol1_no1/42691-1.html

Latch onto the 1980's HBO Movie, "The Pentagon Wars", a humorous but remarkably true story of the design and development of one of the costliest weapons systems ever to grace the Pentagon Budget, the "Bradley Fighting Vehicle". The movie starred Kelsey Grammer as the Pentagon General who led the government establishment sponsoring the vehicle program. The profusion of design and performance specification changes and other difficulties which plagued the program for years was hilariously but accurately portrayed in the film. It was nominated for an Emmy.

Further details on The Defense Industrial Complex see the following posting:

http://rosecoveredglasses.blogspot.com/2007/02/warped-priorities.html

VANITY FAIR EXPOSE' ON IRAQ

The People vs. the Profiteers
Vanity Fair - November 2007
Americans working in Iraq for Halliburton spin-off KBR have been outraged by the massive fraud they saw there. Dozens are suing the giant military contractor, on the taxpayers' behalf. Whose side is the Justice Department on?
by David Rose November 2007

HELP FOR A US NAVY VET WITHOUT A COUNTRY

We have a military veteran friend who was honorably discharged during the Vietnam era. He served in the US Navy while having dual citizenship (Canadian/US). He was born in England and his family moved to New York Via Canada when he was a child, where he became a dual Canadian and US Citizen.

After discharge my friend worked in the US for over 3 decades, paying US taxes and Social Security. When it came time to retire and apply for his pension he was informed that the US Department of Homeland Security had revoked his US citizenship and did not recognize his Canadian citizenship.

The Social Security Administration will not begin his pension payments until his citizenship issue is resolved. He has been trying to work this matter through the VA, his local representatives in government (congressional level) and directly through the Social Security Office. No one seems to know what to do, who should take action and who has responsibility. The DHS will not reply to his inquiries. Any ideas?



POST SCRIPT: This request was sent to DHS today:

ANTHONY ALDO ROSE
MINNESOTA STATE VETERAN’S HOME HASTINGS
1200 18TH STREET
BOX 202
HASTINGS, MINNESOTA 55033

(Certified Mail, Return Receipt Requested)

11 November 2007

Mr. Brian J. Welsh
U.S. Citizenship & Immigration Services
National Records Center, FOIA/PA Office
P. O. Box 648010
Lee's Summit, MO 64064-8010

Subject: Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) Request for Records

Enclosure: DD Form 214 – Discharge from United States Armed Forces

Dear Mr. Welsh:

The purpose of this letter is to request records in my name on file in the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The undersigned is a US Navy veteran who is a resident in a state veteran’s facility in Hastings, Minnesota. I am writing to you on Veteran’s Day to request any and all records on file at the Department of Homeland Security pertinent to my citizenship in the United States of America and the disposition of my records status as a citizen of the US, to include notifying the US Social Security Administration of my citizenship status.

I have lived in the United States since 1946 having moved from Windser, Ontario, Canada to Detroit Michigan with my family that year. I attained dual citizenship in Canada and the United States and achieved a US Social Security Number. I served in the Armed Forces of the US honorably and I have paid state and federal taxes to include social security from 1963 to the present in the United States of America.

In 2006, upon my retirement, I applied for my Social Security Pension and was informed by the Social Security Administration that the Department of Homeland Security had taken administrative records action that denied my citizenship status and precluded my being able to obtain my pension. I have attempted to resolve this matter for over a year and have been without a pension during that period.

Pursuant to requesting a hearing with regard to this matter I hereby request copies of all records in the Department of Homeland Security against my name, my social security number, my service number, my former addresses and my citizenship status, to include correspondence to other agencies such as the Social Security Administration.


Anthony Aldo Rose

UPDATE:

MISSISSIPPI SUNRISE MIST - HASTINGS, MINNESOTA

PLEASE CLICK ON IMAGE OR DOWNLOAD TO ENLARGE

Mist arise through brilliant light
Slowly clear from shrouded night
Offer visions through the pane
Allowing me to sleep again

Brief delay from clarity
Softly rise to comfort me
I am not ready yet for day
With harsh detail and waiting ray

Wash this trance all over me
Cloak my vision
Set me free
To dream with my illusions

GEORGE FRIEDMAN AT STRATFOR - BRILLIANT SYNOPSIS OF 911 6 YEARS LATER

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The link at this post is the best objective view of all parties involved in the global war on terrorism at time now. It reminds veterans of Korea, Vietnam, the Balkans, and all other recent global interventions in which the US has been involved that the USA is singing the same song with a different set of singers; a parody of human weakness and political blundering. The above accompanying poetry is from an old Vet's Heart. The question by George at the end of his analysis is an excellent one. How will we answer it?

VETERAN'S PLEA - IRAQ WAR LORDS – AND TALKING HEADS OF NATIONS AT WAR

WE WHO HAVE BEEN IN BATTLE BESEECH YOU

LISTEN TO NATURE
NOT THE ARTIFICIAL REALITY
YOU ARE CREATING
WITH WEAPONS AND EGO

AS YOU STREAK TOWARD PREMATURE GREY
AS YOUR CHILDREN DIE BEFORE THEIR TIME
LOOK AROUND AND LISTEN

LIFE IS PRECIOUS
TIME IS SHORT
LEARN FROM NATURE

TREASURE THE REALITY OF TODAY
FIND PEACE IN THE BEAUTY
AND THE SYNERGY
OF THE NATURAL WORLD
AND EMULATE IT TO SURVIVE

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US SECEDES FROM VERMONT

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THE WAR BUSINESS, Squeezing A Profit from the Wreckage in Iraq

Link to Chalmers Johnson's prophetic article in November 2003 Harper's Magazine.

If you are concerned about the Military Industrial Complex and how it controls our government, this is a must read.

The War Business

NATURE EXPRESSIONS WITH PICS - MAY 2007 - PLEASE CLICK ON IMAGE TO ENLARGE

THIS BOOK IS FREE IN ELECTRONIC FORMAT UPON REQUEST. CONTACT:

larsoke4@live.com

LOST IN HOMELAND SECURITY

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IRAQ QUAGMIRE COSTS

IN MEMORY OF DAVID HALBERSTAM, KILLED THIS WEEK IN A CAR CRASH.

ONE OF OUR FAVORITES AND A HERO TO JOURNALISM, DAVID WAS AMONG THE FIRST TO USE THE WORD "QUAGMIRE" TO DESCRIBE THE VIETNAM WAR.

NOW COMES GEORGE C. WILSON ON IRAQ:

Forward Observer: Quagmire Costs
By George C. Wilson, CongressDaily

President Bush, with his little war in Iraq, has outspent President Lyndon Johnson with his big war in Vietnam during comparative five-year periods, according to the Pentagon's own recently released figures.

The Pentagon's chief bean counter, the comptroller, sets forth figures documenting this in his "National Defense Estimates for FY 2008." The impartial numbers show that Johnson spent $2.1 trillion in fiscal 2008 dollars on the American military from fiscal 1964 through fiscal 1968 when both the Vietnam and Cold wars were raging. He put more than 500,000 troops on the ground in Vietnam from an active duty force of 3.5 million men and women, many of them low-cost draftees.


Bush spent $2.5 trillion in the same fiscal 2008 dollars on military activities from fiscal 2003 through fiscal 2007, even though his expeditionary force in Iraq was only about one-fourth as big as Johnson's -- some 140,000 troopers -- and the Cold War was long gone.


Also, Bush was paying a much smaller active duty force, numbering about 1.4 million in fiscal 2007, during that five-year period.


The stories behind those figures, which the comptroller did not go into in his 217-page report, are that the price of paying, equipping and caring for soldiers has gone way up since the days of Johnson's draftee military; that neither Congress nor Bush has had the will to cancel super weapons, including several designed for a Cold War that no longer exists, and that American taxpayers who just sent in their income tax checks are paying more and getting less for their money because of the Pentagon's failure to hold down the costs of new weapons.


The comptroller shows on Table 6-11 (page 129) of his new report that in fiscal 1968, when the American military was much larger, the Pentagon spent $169.7 billion on its military personnel in fiscal 2008 dollars.


In fiscal 2005, when the military had been dramatically downsized but the pay of the all-volunteer force had been raised, spending on military personnel in the same dollars approached the Vietnam era total, coming in at $139 billion.


The cost of general purpose forces -- the troops and trucks and tanks that fight conventional wars on the ground like the ones in Vietnam and in Iraq, as distinguished from strategic warfare waged with ocean-spanning missiles -- has jumped from $188 billion in fiscal 1968 to $216 billion in fiscal 2007, again in comparative fiscal 2008 dollars.


As for the advanced weapons systems, the Air Force F-22 fighter was designed during the Cold War to fight Warsaw Pact forces over Europe, and the Pentagon's Selected Acquisition Report issued earlier this month shows that the Air Force will get fewer planes for more money.


The SAR reveals that the Bush Pentagon plans to buy 184 F-22s for $65.3 billion, or $355 million for just one, counting the money already spent on its research and development.


On Aug. 2, 2001, Air Force procurement executive Darleen Druyun assured a House Government Reform subcommittee that "the F-22 team remains absolutely dedicated to the objective to deliver 339 production aircraft to the warfighters at an affordable cost."


Druyun eventually went to work for Boeing Co. and was later convicted and went to prison for using her military position to negotiate the Air Force's tainted deal to lease 100 KC-767 aerial refueling tankers from Boeing.


The prices of other weapons in the Pentagon's latest SAR underscores the Government Accountability Office's lament last month that Pentagon procurement is out of control.


The SAR shows that taxpayers are expected to pay $300 billion for 2,458 Joint Strike Fighters, or $122 million each for a plane that the Pentagon originally advertised as bargain basement; $54.6 billion for 458 V-22 Ospreys, or $119 million each for this aerial taxi for the Marines that has crashed a lot and threatens to take the Corps to the poorhouse in a Cadillac; $35 billion for three Navy CVN 21 aircraft carriers at $11.7 billion a copy; and $93 billion for 30 Virginia class attack submarines despite the near demise of the once-threatening Russian undersea force, or $3.1 billion for one.


Said the GAO despairingly in its March 30 report on Pentagon procurement: "GAO's reviews of weapons over three decades have found consistent cost increases, schedule delays and performance shortfalls. The nation's growing long-range fiscal challenges may ultimately spur Congress to cut spending on new weapons and to redirect funding to other priorities. In response, DOD might be compelled to deliver new weapons and to redirect funding to other priorities."


Bush was first elected to the presidency on a platform of bringing business-like practices to Pentagon procurement, including skipping whole generations of weapons if that made sense rather than making incremental improvements on obsolete ones.


Such reforms, assuming he was serious about them, have been among the casualties of Bush's embrace of pre-emptive warfare, with Iraq bloody proof of how easy it is to launch a pre-emptive war and how hard it is to get out of one.

IN MEMORY OF A GOOD FRIEND AND FELLOW VETERAN

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WE AT ROSE COVERED GLASSES AND THE VETERAN'S COMMUNITY AT HASTINGS WILL MISS AL LONG WHO RECENTLY PASSED AWAY AFTER A BATTLE WITH CANCER.

OUR THOUGHTS ARE WITH AL'S FAMILY

NEW TERM FOR STUDY OF DEFICIT SPENDING

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CANADA PREPARES FOR NEW WAVE OF ILLEGAL U.S. IMMIGRATION

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