I also strongly disagree with the claim that "...with the increased strain of retiring Baby Boomers the system needs serious reform or it will be absolutely bankrupt ..."

I particularly disagree wth the sleight-of-hand being worked here. The demographics are the same no matter how retirement security is funded. If the three workers per retiree are supporting the retiree they are doing so no matter how the support is done. The demographic argument isn't an argument at all, it's just propaganda.

I'm not saying the demographics don't matter, I'm saying that if there is a problem due to the changing demographics then that problem affects both Social Security and the hypothetical personal account scheme. It's simply invalid to say that demographics affect Social Security and then completely ignore that demographcs affect the personal account scheme.

(I can anticipate standard right-wing "yes but" arguments here. Ignored. I have to see analysis, not arguments. It's a financial matter, I want to see it analyzed as such. Doesn't the general retirement system for all workers deserve analysis? If a change in the general retirement system is being proposed shouldn't the proposed change be analyzed? Just as important, shouldn't the results of that analysis be shown and then be discussed? I've seen some people blow this off with "they can work out the details later. That's a very poor argument and accepting it is a very bad idea.)

Posted at August 16, 2006 8:33 PM in response to The Republican Push To Privatize Social Security Is Back!

I don't care of you are or aren't Republican, I don't care if you criticize Democrats, even unfairly. But what I think I see from you is pure Republican propaganda for the so-called "personal accounts." Why not at least have the good sense and courtesy to examine what the personal accounts would be and examine how they would be run? Won't they at best provide a limited number of investment choices and a limited freedom to change the choices from time to time? The Republicans put a fancy "workers can choose how to invest their money" gloss on the schmee but they as yet have not even introduced a bill in Congress that describes the personal account scheme (so asking you to examine the scheme in any detail is asking you to do something impossible: they won't tell us.) There are here and there non-binding claims about what the scheme will be or might be but it's still a pig-in-a-poke: we can't see the details because they won't show them. As an investment that's a very bad choice for where to put your money. When the guy selling you the investment won't tell you the details and won't give you a prospectus the best (and the only logical) thing to do is to get away from that guy as fast as possible - and then stay away. Right now "that guy" is Bush. He won't tell you the details of the scheme he wants you to invest in. While his slick sales pitch may appeal to whatever-you-are-that-isn't-Republican (scant mystery about that) those who aren't pre-primed to be sucked in by hand-waving about "choosing how to invest your own money" can be more rational and simply refuse to consent to ANY undescribed plan.

Not that it's fully undescribed. Probably you didn't notice this but Bush at least four times on the road (in Alabama, Arizona, Colorado, and New Mexico) made it very clear that retirees would be denied access to their accumulated principal in their lifetimes. All they could get, according to the words straight out of Bush's mouth, would be the "interest." That doesn't quite look like "controlling your own money" to me.

And don't forget it's a pig-in-a-poke. Social Security is subjected to an annual analysis and that analysis is reported. The analysis is done making various assumptions about the financial future of the US. For the personal account scheme we have seen, to date, no analysis whatsoever. All we've seen is a crude attempt to use historical figures from the period during which the US was converting to an industrial economy and without the general retirement monies invested in financial markets to predict the results for the US economy in the post-industrial phase and with the general retirement monies invested in the financial markets. How much change in the financial markets do these projections indicate will result from the huge new investments? That's an invalid question: the projection is so crude it takes nothing at all into account. It's not a financial analysis at all, it's a sales pitch - and one that no stockbroker or mutual find salesman would ever be allowed to make. Unlike politicians, they have standards they must meet.

Show me the prospectus. I've seen the sales pitch. Anyone considering an investment needs to see the prospectus. Where is it?

Posted at August 16, 2006 8:22 PM in response to The Republican Push To Privatize Social Security Is Back!

The personal accounts are not a "good idea," they are a "good fantasy." The Republicans have not yet actually described any plan, thay have only make sales-pitch claims. Let's see a full description of the plan.

When we do we will see that Americans will not have control of their money. they won't even have access to it. Take a look at what Bush said in Alabama, Arizona, Colorado, and New Mexico: once they have invested their money in the so-called personal accounts they can never, in their lifetimes, get any of it back. Nor can they get back any of the growth in those accounts during their working years.

The reason for that prohibition is that the scheme is a stock market bubble. The new feature of that bubble is that it would be government-mandated and government-controlled. By prohibiting retirees access to their money the backers of the personal account scheme hope to prolong the bubble. Prolong it that will, but it is still a bubble and it still will end in collapse.

The stock market is exactly what the name imples: a market. It would be influenced by all the transactions by the workers saving for their retirement. While the investments are greater than the withdrawals stock prices will go up, artificially, purely by supply-and-demand logic. When sales of stock (in order to get back their money for their retirement) by retirees equal and then exceed the investments stock prices will fall, for exctly the same reason: supply and demand.

That's part of the reason the Republicans will not give a full description of the plan. They could not get away with what they are doing if they were stock brokers or mutual fund salesmen: they'd have to provide a prospectus for what they are selling. As politicians they can lie. They lie. The essence of the lie is that the stock market is a magic money machine. It isn't. It's a market.

Posted at August 9, 2006 6:56 AM in response to Saving Social Security: Phase II

Propaganda isn't necessarily untrue. The US press published a lot of propaganda during the second world war, but that doens't mean that the US press published a lot of lies. Propaganda is, in a way, simply a word for "political advertising," with "political advertising" not confined to advertising directly related to an upcoming election. Advertising isn't always untrue, but it surely is slanted, biased, spun. Same with propaganda.

When the politicians in the current administration spout propaganda we can't discern much about what they think other than that they think what they are saying will influence people to back what they want to do, or go along with it, or will allow themselves to be distracted by what they are saying to the extent that the overlook something they are doing.

They know that TV will cover, in a news program, maybe 4 stories. They know TV will leap on stories that have some drama to them, with a controversial nature being a very dramatic feature. So they can very nearly control TV news by choosing what they say and when they say it. They also know (by experience, by now, if not from first principles) that if they attack anyone who says or advocates something contrary to what they want that attack will be given huge coverage, largely submerging the adverse statements or advocacy. That goes beyond propaganda but all of it (propaganda and non-propaganda) mixed together are actions in pursuit of an objective. If a story that has negative implications for the administration is coming up they can bury that story by creating a different story of the type that is more attractive to TV news producers. It's always (to the TV news producers) a better story if the administration attacks someone than, say, a story about billions of dollars being misspent or lost. They can control the news to a large extent merely a "jamming" technique, where they use their position to create stories of such high drama (even if of low importance or value) that substantive news stories get downgraded or ignored.

With an administration in power that manages the news in that manner isn't it pointless to speculate about what any one of them actually believes? They believe in getting done what they want to get done, and the news is just one of the tools that can be used to further that goal.

Posted at August 2, 2006 9:03 AM in response to Lies and Beliefs

"For my curiousity, how could you and bretheren, who you may or may not know, be found and found fairly quickly?"

Ask the existing experts in the CIA. I firmly believe they are there. If not then a very high priority should be given to getting such experts into the CIA. Isn't that why the CIA exists? Isn't that (having competent experts in defense-related technical fields) what the CIA requires to be effective?

Note what Prados reported. When a joint CIA-DIA meeting was held to discuss the trailers only one agent believed the trailers were for WMD culture. All the rest (apparently) believed the trailers were for hydrogen production, which is the truth. The experts were there, in place, where they were needed. They applied their expertise and provided their analysis. That was disregarded in favor of the opinion of one analyst (Tenet misspoke when he said "analysts in his building" believed the trailers were for WMD culture: it was just one analyst. Note Tenet did not say he believed that nor did he say the CIA believed that, just that "analysts in his building" believed that. You have to pay careful attention to how things are said, pay attention to the difference between what is implied and what is explicitly stated. Tenet implied the trailers were for WMD culture and implied that was the belief but only said that "analysts in his building" believed that.)

If you read the white paper with the idea that the CIA employed competent experts in mind you have to wonder why people who knew the evidence indicated hydorgen manufacture was the purpose of the trailers would write such a bumbling, amateurish white paper: there would be a substantial risk that the falsity would be detected.

(I just answered the question "Why?" Did you catch that?)

After the white paper was released one of the authors was re-assigned in the CIA, one was sent to Iraq. Does that look like a reward or does that look like punishment? What might you do if you knew, from your expertise, that the purpose of the trailers was for hydrogen manufacture but nonetheless someone of high rank was feeding you nonsensical (to a technical person) arguments for why what you knew wasn't necessarily definitive? Might you finally say "OK" and put the nonsensical arguments made by that person of high rank in the required document, expecting that the nonsense would quickly be detected and used to discredit the report? The nonsense very obviously is in the white paper. The possible explanations for the presence of the nonsense in the report seem to be two:

1. Incompetence
2. Deliberate inclusion of nonsense despite knowing it was nonsense.

Other than the white paper all we see on the trailers (and also what we don't see but read about) shows that the experts correctly analyzed the trailers and did so and reported so prior to the release of the white paper. Doesn't that rule out reason 1, "incompetence"?

I've got a favored explanation(2.) Is there a reason 3 that I don't see because of my bias?

Think of the disdain you've seen. Might not such experts finally think "screw this guy - I'll put his garbage in the white paper so it comes back to bite him, which is just what he deserves" and then follow through?

Posted at August 2, 2006 8:38 AM in response to Lies and Beliefs

Wow. I should have looked sooner.

The mobile WMD facilities (the notion of them) were created by the administration as a way assail the effectiveness of UN inspectors. If the Iraqis moved the WMD creation operation around, the argument went, inspectors couldn't find it. There was no evidence for the mobile WMD facilities, they were simply a talking point.

"Curveball" at some point learned of the mobile facilities claim and began saying he had firsthand knowledge of them. That reached German intelligence and through them US intelligence. Hearing their own lie back many in the administration were thrilled - and asked for more. "Curveball" complied.

After Iraq fell there were a couple of hydrogen-generation trailers sitting partly gutted at a former Iraqi base. A news team photographed them I think the team was from Fox) and suggested these were two of the claimed mobile biological WMD culture units. This after they'd just sat there for weeks. The administration learned of the trailers through the news.

Desperate for any evidence of WMD in Iraq the administration seized on the trailers and found a way to compel the CIA to issue the CIA/DIA white paper that purported to conclude the trailers were for biological WMD. They knew the trailers were claimed by the Iraqis to be for hydrogen production so they had to deal with that.

I'm a chemist, I've made hydrogen by a simple reaction using relatively inexpensive reactants. As soon as I heard about the white paper I wondered if the white paper would contain enough evidence to show the trailers were for hydrogen production, even though the white paper asserted that the trailers were for biological WMD culture. So I found the white paper on the CA web site and read it.

The first thing I notied was that despite the claim of biological WMD use there was no block diagram to show how the equipment connected as it was could be used for WMD culture. That seemed weak. Very weak.

The second thing I noticed was the report that the so-called fermentor contained aluminum residues. Well, well, well. Al metal is one of the reactants in the reaction I'd used to make hydrogen. Did they also find the other main component? If so, case closed: hydrogen generation.

So I looked for mention of finding lye (sodium hydroxide.) Didn't find it, but I did find mention of "caustic," claimed to have been used by the Iraqs to remove evidence of biological WMD activity (a ridiculous claim on its own merits, if you think about it. If the trailers are going to fall into "US hands simply blow the darned things up, leaving no evidence at all.)

So to me the "caustic" was, in fact, "lye" (sodium hydroxide.) But isn't that curious? It's got a common name ("lye") and a chemical name ("sodium hydroxide") but the white paper calls it "caustic." Looks like somebody is trying to hide something, right? Something like the fact that both components used to make hydrogen were found on the trailer. To cover the lye the white paper had to come up with a bogus claim about using "caustic" to remove the evidence of WMD culture activity. (The Duelfer report confirms it was lye.)

But that's not the most amazing bogus claim. That honor goes, in a split decision, to the claim that the cooling unit was for biological WMD culture and proved that use and to the claim that the compressor and gas bottles were ("maybe" - that old standby of the slick liar) to compress and store a tell-tale off-gas from the biological WMD culture so that inspectors miles downwind couldn't discover the illicit activity.

The cooling unit was a needed part of the hydrogen generation system because the reaction releases a lot of heat in addition to the hydorgen, enough to cause the water (the third component and the actual source of the hydrogen) to boil. The white paper is doubly wrong because a real biological culture system would have, from the first design, a full temperature control system. (Brewing and baking are based on biological culture processes. In both there is strict temperature control.)

The compressor and gas bottles story is even more outrageous, starting with the admission that both are compatible with hydrogen manufacture. Yeah, that's true: if your product is a gas you'd compress it and store it. But then there's the matter of an unnamed off-gas from an unnamed process to culture an unnamed biological WMD component being used as evidence when the simpler explanation has been thrown out. There's the fact that any off-gas would be biological and the fact that anything biological can be destroyed by combustion, producing gasses that are characteristic simply of biological combustion. If inspectors did indeed sample the air (there's no evidence they ever did that) they'd discover combustion had taken place. That's not specific for WMD.

The point of all this is that the CIA/DIA white paper was a crude and transparent lie. There isn't one fact in that white paper or anywhere else that supports the claim that the trailers were for biological WMD culture. All the support comes from tortured arguments, many of which are based on the dubious tactic of assuming the trailers were for biological WMD culture and then struggling to find a way to force the facts to fit that assumption. (That's not my idea of how the CIA works. I don't think the CIA was the ultimate originating source of the claims in the white paper.)

So, yes, look at the post-invasion behavior. You will find that the administration forced through a false claim of WMD evidence being found and then instantly began loudly proclaiming that the missing WMD evicdence had been found. Note that the administration itself couldn't make the claims: that would have been analyzed. Instead the CIA was forced into issueing a highly unusual" white paper that contained the lie.

Not only is that evidence of a deliberate lie it is evidence of an impeachable offense. The lie was told to serve a political purpose. Forcing the CIA to lie is a misuse of a government agency.

Incidentally, John Prados, in his book "Hoodwinked," reports that at a meeting of CIA and DIA analysts to consider the trailers only one analyst in the entire group believed the trailers were for biological WMD culture. All the rest beleived they were for hydrogen manufacture, just as the Duelfer report says, just as the report made to Washington before the white paper was issued said. That report is still classified but the Washington Post reported that the content of that report was carried through to the Duelfer report.

By the way, the Duelfer report does show a block diagram and gives an explanation of how that system configuration was used to make hydrogen.

Posted at July 15, 2006 9:38 AM in response to Lies and Beliefs

Riight you are.  But you didn't need the Duelfer report to know the white paper was deliberately false - I knew it as soon as I read it on-line.  I've made hydrogen using the same reaction (pop bottle scale) and I know from experience (boiling bottle of lye with a balloon on the top) that the reaction releases a lot of heat.  The cooling unit is essential.

The actual argument in the white paper, the heart of the conclusion, is that the trailers would be "inefficient" for producing hydrogen.  No discussion is made of the attitude toward efficiency of the government of Iraq nor of the Iraqi army, no quantitation s made of the "efficiency," just a declaration that the trailers would be inefficient.  Aluminum metal, lye, and water are cheap starting materials, the reaction is simple.  The Iraqis could tolerate inefficiency. And did.

 As to the off-gas fable uesd to explain the compressor and gas bottles that's obvious baloney.  They name no process, no WMD component, no off-gas - yet they claim that the gas would give away the illicit WMD process to inspectors with detectors miles downwind.  How can the inspectors detect tbe evidence if nobody knows what it is? If there were a tell-tale off-gas the Iraqis could far more simply get rid of it by burning.  It's just a stupid fable concocted to give an alternate explanation for units that very clearly show the product of the trailer was a gas that was compressed and stored.

It isn't biological WMD processes that are revealed by by-products, it's nuclear WMD processes, and the evidence is collected on-site, not downwind.  (Those by-products are elemental isotopes so burning them would do nothing to change their ttell-tale nature.)  It's a ridiculous fable.

The white paper has pictures.  A biological culture system would almost surely be built from stainless steel, not ordinary steel.  It wouldn't have a thick hatch on the side, secured by 20 bolts.  The "fermenter" wouldn't be a pressure vessel - the explanations of that in the press were from someone who didn't understand what reactions are and what reactions aren't speeded by higher pressure.  Nor would you ever want to culture biological WMD under pressure on a trailer with no springs, no shock absorbers - any leak in the system would leak out biological WMD, endagering the operators.

I'm confident the CIA had analysts just as able as I to make such determinations.  I'm sure such analysts did, but were forced to write what was written.  I think they did what they were told.  After the white paper came out and somebody with moreknowledge than whoever it was that forced the lies to be written read it and saw the obvious flaws the CIA authors were re-assigned.  Sounds like punishment, sounds like moving them away form access by the press.  Not that it appears the press has ever tried to talk to either of them.

John Prados reports in "Hoodwinked" that at a meeting of analysts to consider the trailers only one analyst believed the trailers were for biological WMD culture - all the rest did not.

 Tenet never said he or the CIA believed the trailers were for biological WMD culture.  His words were "analysts in his building" believed they were for the culture.  He knew it was a lie.  I know it was a lie.

By the way, the white paper that makes such a fuss over the off-gas that had to be captured says not one word about any analysis of what was in the tanks that suppseodly were used to store the captured off-gas nor of any plans to perform such an analysis.  It's supposedly an off-gas that even miles downwind, in very low concentration, reveals the illicit activity.  They couldn't/didn't look for it in the compressed form? 

The white paper is a very crude lie.  It's a smoking gun.

Posted at October 26, 2005 3:24 PM in response to Excerpt: America Unbound

The trailers Cheney claimed were for biological WMD culture and more particularly the CIA/DIA white paper that purported to conclude the trailers were for that illicit purpose are under-appreciated and under-reported.  The white paper was a crude and deliberate lie.  It contains and relies on preposterous fabrications (that is, claims for which absolutely no evidence existed or exists) to reach its conclusion.  The fabrications center on the cooling unit (needed to remove the heat generated by the reaction used to make hydrogen) and the compressor and gas bottles (needed, as the white paper itself admits, for the storage of the hydrogen.)  The claims made for these components and their use are prposterous.

The Duelfer report, which is also a CIA report, clearly and professionally shows that the white paper is false, without making that an explict claim.  The Duelfer report shows in that Annex the quality of job the CIA can do, if not forced to produce a ridiculous hack job report in order to provide political support for the administration's claims.  Almost all of the information needed to write the Annex section of the Duelfer report that debunks the trailer story was already available at the time the white paper was written - yet the white paper reached the administration's desired wrong conclusion on that same evidence, or, more properly, by selecting only parts of the evidence and ignoring and suppressing the rest.  The CIA/DIA white paper was used and intended for the deception of the American people.  That's an offense against the people and any elected official who was involved in the cooking of that white paper and its lies should be impeached.

There's far more that can be said about the white paper and its flaws.  For instance the reaction used to make hydrogen is one that uses aluminum, water, and sodium hydroxide (lye.)  The white paper admits aluminum was found on the trailers but for the lye it disguises the evidence, calling it "caustic" and claiming it was used to clean the system to remove traces of the illict biological cultiure use.  That's a self-conscious distortion of the truth and is in itself almost all that is needed to prove the white paper is a deliberate lie.  It's also one of the more minor of the offenses committed in the white paper.

Posted at October 26, 2005 1:57 PM in response to Excerpt: America Unbound