Pangloss

Defense is the low hanging fruit in my mind. I don't have any other answers but defense. Defense spending is an accounting black hole. We don't know where the money is going.

No it's not, actually. You may indeed have a valid criticism regarding transparency, but this broad generalization is incorrect. The big picture is pretty well known, and the cost of most weapons systems is pretty well documented, right down to the unit level and beyond -- all the way down to the expensive toilets and hammers so frequently cited in Proxmirian news stories.

What would you cut?

You have? How many were you planning on having?

 

From Global Security the Carrier numbers are;

USA : 22

Brazil : 1

France : 1 1/2

India : 1

Italy : 1

South Korea : 1

Russia : 1

Spain : 1

Thailand : 1

UK : 4

 

Looking at deckspace as a measure, the US has 70 acres of deckspace compared to the ROWs combined total of 15 acres.

 

TBH, I think you're caught in the result of the Cold War. The military industrial complex had to be big and spend a lot to keep ahead of the arms race with the Soviets, but that pressure no longer exists. Put it another way, how many of those F-111s, F-16s, F-14s,and F-15s that are sitting in the desert waiting to be scrapped ever saw combat? It's the ultimate consumer society, you have to have the very latest high tech aircraft (that you won't use) to replace the last generation of high tech aircraft (that you didn't use). It reminds me of Jon Stewart on SUVs "Ooooh, that will really pull the boat I don't own up the mountain I don't live near."

 

In other areas, the technology can't be improved all that much. Missile targetting in the 70s was accurate to about a mile for an ICBM, what is it now? 10 feet? Past a certain point more R & D simply isn't worth it.

 

But at some point you're going to have to face the new reality and bite the bullet. Nobody is going to invade you and it's highly unlikely that a major conflict will erupt suddenly.

 

You have to ask the question "How much is enough?". Like in the Cold War, the US had enough nukes to destroy the planet 300 times over or something like that. The rest of us thought that enough to destroy the planet once would have been sufficient. Anything more was rather pointless we thought.

 

Or the "Doomsday" Cobalt bomb. "We've built a bomb that when detonated will kill all animal life on the planet in 6 months"

"Just 1 bomb?"

"It only takes one to destroy the world, but we've built 20."

Cool, John, thanks for taking a shot at it. So... what do you feel would be the correct number of aircraft carriers for us to have?

22 sounds like a lot, but half of those are really troop ships with a few helicopters (and a couple with Harriers) on the roof. There are precisely 10 true aircraft carriers. That number is being reduced to 8 over the next couple of years, with a new class ship (Gerald Ford) coming on line to replacing the aging Enterprise and Nimitz-class ships. That new class represents a major step down in cost from the original plan, by the way.

10 ships sounds like a lot too, but they move at ship speeds, not airplane speeds, and can't be relocated quickly. The idea of 10 is to have two per ocean, with one out and the other in dock (a rotation). So when "something happens", as President of the United States you don't really have 22 carriers at your disposal.

You have one.

Now, you can still call that a Cold War era plan if you like, but it's hardly overkill -- in most of the world, most of the time, there's no coverage at all. I wonder what you'd think of that if you lived in Taiwan, or even Japan, which has had a number of diplomatic incidents with China recently.

An American president can put troops on the ground, bombs on targets, or deliver massive amounts of aid and support following a disaster anywhere in the world in a matter of hours. No other country in the world can make that claim. A few countries have submarines that approach the same coverage and can fire cruise missiles; that's about it. It's not hard to see the appeal here.

So I ask, how many would you scrap? I can tell you right now that economically it's not going to matter much unless you scrap most or all of them. Anything less means that the infrastructure and support network, as well as the need for replacement parts and future development, remains more or less the same, which is most of the operating and all of the future development cost.

And of course, as you point out, nobody else really has any. Well that's not entirely fair -- Great Britain is building two brand new carriers, so that helps a bit. More than a bit, really. But let's face it, if you cut American carrier power you're going to affect everyone's security. We're the ones you scream at when Sydney gets bombed by state-sponsored terrorists. Why do you think Australia doesn't feel that it needs any aircraft carriers? (You're welcome.)

So... how many would you scrap?

So here you're admitting that government-created jobs such as the ones made by Obama's Stimulus do have an effect on the economy as a whole, right?

There's more than one way to create a job, bascule. Are you saying that the ones created by defense spending and the military-industry complex are more efficient than private-sector jobs?

I'm glad you agree, though, that major defense cuts will have an adverse effect on the economy and jobs.

To quote Depeche Mode, everything counts in large amounts, and that's what we're talking about with defense spending, to the tune of tens of billions of dollars. Cutting defense spending, consolidating overlap between branches, and requiring the DoD account for its spending are all positive steps we can take to reduce overall government spending.

I agree. And I'll see your rationale and raise you an additional one: Compromise on this issue helps to pave the way for agreement in other areas.

As a systems architect I look at the DoD as suffering from unnecessary program overlaps to the tune of tens of billions of dollars.

If you know about unnecessary program overlaps worth tens of billions of dollars I'd love to hear what they are.

But it does bring us to a great question for discussion: What should we cut?

Wow, imagine that. Sensible things can come out of his mouth! The DoD remains the only federal department which is exempt from auditing. There's endless waste that can't be accounted for, massive overlap, and that's not to mention that our military budget is larger than that of every other country on earth combined.

Yes, by GDP we spend around 4.3% of GDP on the Military, Compared to China's 2% or Russia's 3.5%, but then Saudi Arabia and Israel spend over 7% of their GDP on Defense. Then we do have a very high comparable cost in personnel (including benefits), equipment and R&D programs, which justifies some of it.

 

This morning Eric Cantor said cutting Discretionary Spending by 100B$, would do the trick and very disappointing in my mind. They best start thinking in "across the board" and quit the politics.

First of all, if I have to discard my meme about the US having more immigration than all the rest of the countries combined because we're supposed to look at immigration in terms of percentage of the population, then I think it's only fair to discard this one regarding defense spending as well. I won't bring back that meme because it was also of dubious accuracy, but I'll happily trot one out saying that we allow more immigrants than X countries combined. So if Jackson's point above is accurate it should be acknowledged. If not you know what my next immigration argument will be.

Second, I think bascule makes a valid point (and one we haven't discussed before, I don't believe) regarding accountability in defense spending. I'd like to see more done in this area, and I think it's a significant point.

Third, addressing defense spending cannot resolve the budget deficit. It can help a little bit, but not as much as people will want to see. Not enough to matter. Even the newly "reduced" deficit is twice the budget of the defense department, including spending in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Fourth, we probably cannot significantly reduce defense spending without causing potentially millions of layoffs, either directly or indirectly. There are something like 2 million people employed directly by the military (source). I don't know how many are employed by the military-industrial complex but it is surely much larger. The number of people currently unemployed in the US right now is something like 15 million. So we're obviously talking about a very large potential effect on unemployment.

Fifth, we're spent most of the last 10-15 years reducing and eliminating expensive weapons programs. Many of the more advanced platforms were "pushed" in the Clinton administration, then scaled back during the Bush years. To fly the F-15 Eagle for the last 34 years has required almost 1200 aircraft. The number of F-22s we've purchased is -- get this -- 183. Understand, that's not the initial startup number -- that's the entire production run. To restart the line later would increase unit cost by a whopping 50%. Instead they plan to make up the coverage difference by producing more F-35s, which are currently in flight testing. That might work, but there's a reason we have had both F-16s and F-15s. Different roles require different engineering goals. We've been down this road before, and it didn't work out so well. But no matter, that ship has sailed and there's little we can do about it now.

Both airplanes represent the very best technology... of the 1990s. Meanwhile China, Russia, and Europe have begun to produce superior technology. And it doesn't stop with airplanes. We've cut back on aircraft carriers, submarines, and other technologies, and replaced high-tech planned replacement models with much lower-cost, older-technology upgrades.

Cutting defense just isn't going to... cut it. Opponents just aren't going to get the cuts they want, and even if they do it's not going to make enough of a difference.

IMO, scrap the current Health Care Program, Extend the Bush Tax Cuts indefinitely (can always be changed later) and reduce Corporate Taxes (there just passed on anyway) and 2M Jobs will suddenly appear overnight!!!

Well to the extent that there's a perception problem amongst small business owners and operators those things might have some impact. It's my understanding though that the lack of available credit is a more significant stumbling block to short term growth at the moment. Though I suppose is small businesses began to show a little growth and solvency they might find it easier to obtain credit, since small-business lending is also influenced by perception.

What candidates has Fox News endorsed?

Sarah Palin and Mike Huckabee are now paid employees of Fox

Neither Sarah Palin nor Mike Huckabee are candidates for political office.

And employing a political commentator is not the same thing as endorsing their ideological view or their candidacy for a future office.

By the way, Fox's Chris Wallace appeared on The Daily Show this week, and something he said seems relevant here. He said that the very moment either of them announces their candidacy for political office, their tenure as employees at Fox News Channel comes to an end. I don't know if he was exposing inside information about their contracts, passing on a factual statement based on his own knowledge of FNC policy, or simply expressing his own opinion, but that's what the man said.

Fox still presents the facade that they are fair and balanced.

 

I think it is possible to have political bias and still possess a certain amount of objectivity. Endorsing candidates throws that out of the window.

What candidates has Fox News endorsed?

Do I need to transcribe the video for the list? Are you really going to pretend that you weren't aware that Sarah Palin endorsed candidates?

Sarah Palin does not represent the editorial position of Fox News channel. Neither does former Democratic Vice Presidential candidate Geraldine Ferraro, who has been a Fox News Channel analyst since 1999.

Nor does Paul Krugman represent the editorial position of the New York Times. And the New York Times endorses candidates all the time. Here are some of the ones they endorsed in 2010. Why is that okay, but if Fox News were to do it (which I don't believe they do) that would not be okay?

A commentator quoting a newspaper (and showing a picture of the story) is the same as a discussion post? Really? They have the same level of credibility?

I didn't mean to imply that, rather I was cringing at the idea of having to watch Rachel Maddow. I watched your video and responded to it in the previous post. I appreciate that you went and found some articles but it wasn't necessary on my account -- I accepted your source.

Hannity appears on the Fox news channel and the foxnews.com website, which proclaim to be fair and balanced.

CNN claims objectivity, yet it employs people like Joy Behar and Andersen Cooper. NBC claims objectivity, yet its cable news arm employs people like Rachel Maddow and Ken Olbermann.

To me it's pretty obvious that there is one. It's a matter of being a commentator and a cheerleader. Whether there's the hope that maybe you won't be lied to on a continuing basis. The difference between perhaps watching a program that might discuss topics of interest to you, and someone just repeating the talking points.

Well that's your opinion and more power to you, and that's why I made my suggestion that we should have an accepted practice for multiple levels of political commentary in professional presentation that's applied more or less across the board.

It's an interesting idea but it seems a bit complicated. Maybe something a little simpler?

How can it be Photoshopped if it's on the production DVD purchased by thousands of people?

I don't own a copy myself but that's what I gathered from at least one story I read on this.

I have a question, did Keith make this campaign contribution and use the fact that he made it to influence others or did he do it privately with no advertisement of it?

As with Sean Hannity and others, the contributions were not promoted on their programs. Since contributions are transparent, they became visible to those looking at contribution lists.

Fox still presents the facade that they are fair and balanced.

 

I think it is possible to have political bias and still possess a certain amount of objectivity. Endorsing candidates throws that out of the window.

What candidates has Fox News endorsed?

The clip clearly showed and mentioned a story in the St. Paul Pioneer Press and showed the quote. Why is that insufficient?

If that's all you can offer then I suppose it will have to do. It's objectionable for the same reason as jackson33 quoting a discussion post from Free Republic. No matter, I'll grin and bear it if I must.

I don't see a difference in this regard. Olbermann got suspended, though, because msnbc has an ethics rule that doesn't exist at Fox.

Right, not because of some sort of overall professional practice. It's not just Fox News that's lacking such a rule, and the question here is whether one would be a good idea. I don't see the point.

I think I'm starting to see the appeal to partisans, though. Such a rule would aid companies in fooling unsuspecting viewers into thinking that their commentators are impartial. This would be particularly beneficial to any ideology which is based on lulling and tricking a stupid and unsuspecting public into doing what's best for it. I wonder where we might find a philosophy like that.

I think there's a difference between being a commentator and being a shill. Fox "commentators" give money to and help raise money for candidates, and Hannity (and perhaps others) did not disclose this despite Fox promising he would.

Okay, so having gritted my teeth and watched this:

1) Sean Hannity is alleged to be fair and balanced. (Not true, that's a Fox News position and Sean Hannity, like Rachel Maddow, is a partisan commentator known to favor a specific ideological group.)

2) Fox News promised ONLY that HE would disclose his campaign contribution during the interview (there's no sign here of your allegation of "perhaps others"). This is valid but seems irrelevant because Sean Hannity speaks only for himself. He should be suspended if he broke a rule, but I don't see where he fooled anyone.

I think there's a difference between being a commentator and being a shill. Fox "commentators" give money to and help raise money for candidates, and Hannity (and perhaps others) did not disclose this despite Fox promising he would.

Says Rachel Maddow? It's an intriguing allegation, but can we get a better source for the claim that Fox promised to reveal campaign contributions, please? (Or was that in one of the other articles?)

Also, it seems to me that we've made a bit of a leap here from what I thought was campaign donations being found through normal transparency, to expecting commentators to reveal their donations. I'm not sure how we got from there to here. (IE why you see Olbermann as different from Hannity.) If you could clarify that I'd appreciate it.

Thanks.

For the "commentators," they can give their opinions, and I don't know if they are obligated to give equal time to interviewing candidates with whom they disagree. But as soon as money gets involved, it's no longer commentary.

They're not.

Why shouldn't they be allowed to put their money where their mouth is? Can't we expect the public to understand that they're a "shill" for one ideology or another? Or is that the problem -- not everyone will understand?

Pangloss, I was reluctant to offer this thread but frankly it's been reported on all Networks, all around the Internet and many have questioned the safety issue. I only added the purpose and economical value or maybe the traditional way these things HAVE been handled. If you don't want certain links used, make a list and I'll try to follow, but have used three different ones on this thread.

Can you cite a single source that has done its own fact-checking and/or investigation on this?

The Anenberg FactCheck outfit has debunked it. CNN has debunked it. Links below. If there is no credible source on this then it is discredited and the discussion is over, and I'm going to close the thread on the grounds of integrity (essentially making the community look bad).

http://factcheck.org/2010/11/ask-factcheck-trip-to-mumbai/

http://www.cnn.com/2010/POLITICS/11/05/obama.asia.cost/?iref=obnetwork

We have data on how much past Presidential trips have cost. If they say the costs here are comparable and there is no evidence to the contrary, we have to take them at their word, jackson. We cannot accept a single unattributed source as accurate.

In the case of some Clinton trips, we have figures from a 1999 report by the U.S. General Accounting Office — now called the Government Accountability Office. The GAO said that Clinton’s trips to Africa, Chile and China in 1998 cost at least $42.8 million, $10.5 million and $18.8 million, respectively — not counting the still-classified cost of providing Secret Service protection.

 

In Africa, Clinton was accompanied by about 1,300 individuals — not including members of the Secret Service — representing the White House, the Department of Defense and other federal agencies. The president visited six countries in 12 days, which means the trip cost $3.6 million per day.

 

Clinton made the five-day Chile trip in order to attend the second Summit of the Americas — a meeting of 34 heads of state or governments from countries in the Americas — and to hold meetings with the president of Chile. About 600 individuals accompanied the president on the trip, which we calculated would have cost $2.1 million per day.

 

When Clinton visited China to conduct talks with the president of China, he brought along about 500 individuals. The trip lasted nine days, which works out to a little less than $2.1 million per day.

 

The total cost including Secret Service protection would of course be somewhat higher, but even doubling or tripling those figures and adding in an adjustment for inflation would not produce anything close to the figure given by the Indian news article for Obama’s trip.

I guess there is a difference between stating one's own opinion and being a spokesman for some wider agenda (think Howard Dean the governor and candidate vs. Howard Dean the DNC chair), but the latter generally claim to be the former, right?

This is an interesting point. When Dean made that transition I did find myself sort of mentally holding Howard Dean to a different set of professional practices and behavior. He was more partisan, but that felt okay (reasonable) because of his new role as party cheerleader. Also, there were a few times during that tenure when he acknowledged fair/honorably actions by specific Republicans, and he generally avoided dipping into personalized attacks except where they had already come into the discourse and/or seemed directly relevant to political practices (e.g. corruption). It's a very gray area, but it did seem like he made the right effort. I believe even saw him agree with Newt Gingrich on something recently.

How can we apply this reasoning to the growing two-level split between non-partisan commentators and those who champion a specific ideology? What about something like a set of commonly-accepted professional practices? (Or am I putting too fine a point on it?)

----------

BTW, this article in the Huffington Post suggests that there's a context to this story that suggests that his suspension has more to do with internal politics than national politics.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/11/05/keith-olbermann-suspended_n_779586.html

In recent months, Griffin has taken several bold steps to declare his authority over the network and its sometimes unruly talent: he sent a stern memo warning hosts to not publicly fight with each other, he suspended David Shuster indefinitely for filming a CNN pilot, suspended Donny Deutsch, banned Markos Moulitsas from the network, and reprimanded Ed Schultz for threatening to "torch" the network.

I think I'll just leave it at that, except to say that I think I know you well enough to know that if it does turn out that Republicans have learned from their mistakes, then you'll support their actions. I may not share your political leanings but I think you're a fair person.

The Democrats are interested in passing Wall Street reform and the Republicans are not. The Democrats are actually concerned about preventing a financial crisis from happening again. The Republicans are not.

Well I guess you've answered my question, if you interpret that question as asking how voting Democrat 100% of the time will advance one of the two equally viable economic theories over the other one.

Also as I noted before, I voted for a Republican candidate this election because I liked him more than his Democratic counterpart.

Okay. So how are you different from other Americans looking at their own candidates? Why are you making an informed decision to vote for a Republican over a Democrat, but they are being mislead by Fox News?

I'm kinda running out the door here but let me at least start a thread on this:

Some background can be found in a number of articles here:

http://news.google.com/news/more?pz=1&cf=all&ncl=daCvyinYwjANgEMuLRp4z5_EWD-yM&topic=h

In case that link doesn't work, here are some more specific links:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/nov/05/nbc-anchorman-suspended-donating-democrats

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/olbermann-sidelined-msnbc-making-political-contributions/story?id=12069567

http://www.salon.com/news/msnbc/?story=/politics/war_room/2010/11/05/olbermann_suspended

I haven't had a chance to really digest this yet, but it seems to me that MSNBC is pursing the wrong policy agenda here, and should change its policy. If Olbermann broke a rule, fine, but after punishing him they should then change the rule, because it doesn't make a lot of sense to me. He's a commentator, not a news reporter. The purpose of such a rule is to suggest impartiality, but none exists here, so what's the point?

Where I think this does open the door for an interesting debate is on where to draw the exact line between "news" and "commentary". The news industry continues to struggle with this question, constantly blurring the lines. Perhaps the line blurred so rapidly in this case that a rule intended to apply to news reporters didn't get updated in time to apply to commentators like Olbermann.

It also occurs to me that we're starting to see a real distinction two different kinds of commentators -- impartials and partisans. Finding a good definition for these two subtypes is obviously tricky -- is Jon Stewart a partisan for the left, or an independent? What about Bill O'Reilly? Perhaps here's no question about Sean Hannity, but what about Neal Cavuto or Larry King? Tricky ground.

What do you all think?

The reason why there still evolution debate like the stem cell,cloning and genetic engineering debate is people in government and average person on the street would not even understand grade 7 science.Do to the school now are daycare now and push people along even if they don't understand what they are learning.The media and goverment also keeps dumbing down the people.

I think you'll find a lot of support for those arguments here at SFN.

In what ways do you feel that the government is dumbing-down the people? (Not that I disagree.)

I didn't realize this thread started with the referencing of a post at Free Republic. Freepers, and their liberal equivalents at Democratic Underground, are pretty abhorrent, and they are generally uninterested in reasoned debate. They are partisan's partisans -- the very worst of the worst.

I don't think it's a good idea to ever quote either of those sites here at SFN, except perhaps to point out what the extremists are saying.

Okay.

And how does voting Democrat 100% of the time fix that?

Only three votes in the poll? I thought this question would be more intriguing.

I did. My comment was an "and", not an "or".

I think that's largely the case.

Do you think it should be changed in some way?

If you have the last reply in a thread, and you post again, the system merges your new post to the previous one. Unfortunately any delay in the system during that time can cause the user to wonder if the system has recognized their input, and during this time they may click on the Post button again. An example of this may be seen in the 3rd and 4th quote-and-reply sections of this post.

I've played around with this a bit and found that it's very easy to reproduce the behavior. It's perfectly understandable because the system doesn't give you a lot of feedback that it's processing your request, and we're a pretty board so it does fall behind from time to time. Best advice we can offer is to be patient, and when you've posted go back and check to make sure you posted what you think you posted.

That wind-powered shipping notion from lemur above is an interesting idea.

I suspect the largest cost in overseas shipping is already human labor, not oil. If memory serves, shipping typically uses barely-refined, near-crude oil that's dirt cheap to make. Of course they consume a LOT of it and costs have risen in recent years so maybe it does exceed labor cost. So even if you had to add more crew you could still be saving a lot of money.

I also wonder about traffic at sea ports, which I've heard gets pretty significant. What good is it to be able to cross the ocean at 40 km/hr if you're going to have to sit outside your destination for a day or two when you get there?

But I'm just rambling here, obviously more info would be needed. Interesting idea, though.

The increase in debt under "Pelosi's watch" was largely due to two factors: expensive foreign wars started before she became speaker, and the financial crisis, which was caused by years of a "hands off" approach to Wall Street, for which there are several people to blame, most notably Greenspan, Bush, and Clinton.

... Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid...

Democrat Barney Frank, the soon-to-be-former head of the House Financial Services Committee, which oversees the Federal Reserve, Treasury, the SEC, Fannie and Freddie, and all financial services regulation. Frank headed that committee from 2007 to present.

Democrat Chuck Rangel, the former head of the House Ways and Means Committee, arguably the second or third most powerful political position in the entire world, oversaw that committee from 2007 to early this year, and now awaits trial on 13 counts of violating federal laws and house regulations.

Democrat Max Baucus, the head of the Senate Finance Committee, was in that position from 2001-2003 and again from 2007 to present. During his tenure he oversaw every piece of tax legislation, and every issue brought before the committee regarding revenues and expenditures, including the new health care law.

I'm not saying Republicans are better. I'm saying this is who you expected the American people to uphold in power, the ones you can't understand why people are upset about. Even though the only tool they have is to throw people out of office.

There's a meme going around Facebook right now that I think is really appropriate here. It says "Congratulations to Republicans on winning the right to be blamed for everything again!" IMO people do understand what's going on.

I curse thedamnyankees all the time. Usually from early April to mid-October.