I think Yves is using her financial acumen to assess what is coming down the road and believes PK is being somewhat myopic; however, PK is right on the austerity clowns who advocate doom and gloom. There is an issue and it is the lack of jobs for the those who would want to work and reside in NILF. I would say too that many who have taken Disability would not have done so if jobs were available for them. Which brings up an additional point and overlooked, the costs of having excess or under utilized labor capacity to the economy. This plays out as a burden to economy.
Sorkin counters; “What? We’ve been told repeatedly that the United States has the highest corporate tax rate in the developed world — 35 percent — which is higher than the nominal tax rates in places like Ireland (12.5 percent), Britain (21 percent) and the Netherlands (25 percent) and the 24.1 percent average rate of all countries that are part of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.” Sorkin goes on with Kleinbard’s points.
“All that is true,” contends Professor Kleinbard; however, “most United States multinational companies do not pay anywhere near 35 percent. Companies paid an average 12.6 percent, according to the Government Accountability Office, which last measured it in 2010 and avoid taxes by deliberately stashing piles of cash abroad.”
On an altogether different issue. So how is it that Google maps/Earth can display images of individual vehicles from satellite cameras and the Pentagon can’t identify ISIS columns as they move across open desert stretches. The terrain in norther Syria and Iraq does have some mountainous areas, but much of the land is flat as the proverbial pancake. Even in the mountain areas there are few roads and they cross the valley area between mountainous terrain. I’m not advocating military activity by the U.S., but all this talk in the media about the need for boots on the ground seems absurd in an area that provides little safe haven for the large numbers of advancing troops with heavy artillery. What happened to all those “death star” like systems, the AC-130 comes to mind, that are supposed to be capable of wreaking havoc on the ground from the relative safety of the sky? Is this just another effort to look tough with rhetoric not meant to be accurate? I seem to recall all of those news photos of burned out Iraqi equipment and troops during “Desert Storm” operations.
wikipedia:
“Although Google uses the word satellite, most of the high-resolution imagery of cities is aerial photography taken from aircraft flying at 800 feet (240 m) to 1,500 feet (460 m)”
Jack – Even with advanced laser tracking systems you most certainly require forward combat controllers to identify and pinpoint targets. Drones do more of that than ever but without close observation collateral damage and civilian casualties become more likely.
There also has to be good verifiable intelligence to identify and acquire targets.
It takes a lot resources to maintain constant surveillance over that much territory. In any event, unless you want to make the area a free fire zone where anything that moves dies there ultimately have to be boots to hold and administer territory.
We’ve been sold a bill of goods on the whole shock and awe thing. War is not a video game and in stateless civil war type situations with combatants mixing freely with civilian populations the whole idea of remotely controlling a battle zone is pure fiction.
Air power can put a thumb on the scale for a group you may be supporting if they have the organizational strength to acquire, hold, and administer territory but that’s iffy in Syria.
There are no simple solutions, no cheap or easy answers, and a good many very slippery slopes. Colin Powell was right about one thing, you break it you bought it.
For the record, I think the only sane policy is detachment, patience in looking for opportunities to intervene with impact, containment, and ultimately very subdued expectations. It’s impossible to take sides when there are only fluid changing coalitions and quite frankly no one is our friend.
It’s Turkey’s neighborhood, they must step up. China, which is desperately dependent on oil from that area can no longer play the developing nation card, they must be willing to invest in solutions.
It’s devastating to watch the humanitarian crisis unfold but it is a delusion to believe we can stop that without creating the conditions for more of the same. The painful and ugly conclusion may be that patience and broad, very broad coalition building, might be the only ultimate solution. Leadership is not found in a Tennyson poem.
Jack satellite imagery is precise enough that they can probably read vehicle numbers and still more so the precense of an ISIS flag. But it isn’t real time, at least not for the ones with that kind of resolution. Theoretically you could put a satelite in geo-sychchronous orbit over any given place on the equator such that it could scour any particular point 24/7. But that would put it 26000 miles above the Earth’s surface and only be able to scan any given expanse of the ground below it at so much resolution for so much time. And then you would need that many observors to examine each segment of data.
So yeah I guess if you had a six billion megapixel camera with six million genetically enhanced Super Macaque Monkeys to monitor ever bit of territory covered by that geosynchronous satellite over some point on earth.
But we don’t have that may geo-synchonous satellites or cameras with that kind of resolution from 26000 miles up or that many super monkeys to analyze imagery to make all that real time intelligence possilbe
Sure the U.S. should, could and probably does have enough combined capabilities between satellites orbiting at various elevations (and so having differing times over any given stretch of terriroty) and manned overflights and drones to monitor certain limited areas 24/7. But some people seem to think that Google Earth does that for the whole world in real time ALREADY. Well it doesn’t. It only seems up to date and seamless if you don’t look at it carefully.
So, in effect, there is no real time satellite based aerial surveillance adequate to direct air borne armaments which could be used to combat open terrain troop advances. How then does the current air borne effort to confront ISIS result in any effective result? And what of the use of U2 spy plane surveillance? The naked eye view from 70K feet is pretty clear in this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q48Swb2ATww.
My point is only that it seems pretty unusual to my unskilled (in regards to military adventurism) view that with drones, spy plane surveillance, etc. that ISIS seems to have masses of troops flowing over open terrain in a desert environment and can’t be obliterated. I’m not advocating for such military activities. I’m only questioning the effort and its seeming lack of full effectiveness. The picture doesn’t make sense the way it is currently being presented.
70000 ft is a lot different than 26000 miles Something on the order of 1500 to 1. And a spy plane flying Mach 1+ only spends seconds over any given spot. That is the better the resolution the more data posts needed to sample any given piece of ground and so more data interpreters.
And the latter is maybe the key point. The NSA can maybe suck every piece of voice and data ever transmitted but how do you sift and interprt that material in real time?
How many 10 square meter patches are there In the Middle East? And how would you select the interesting ones in advance of your data collection? Chickens and eggs. No matter the quality of the subsequent data sample.
Satellite optics is very good, satellite radar imaging may not be so good (both are very classified). The satellites are the 90 minute of so orbit, they can be moved/cued but it uses “fuel” and is limited. So not the kind of thing that can track columns moving.
The ISIS guys are going to learn camoflaging, and routing around staellite times, the satellites are big enough to see and there are catalogues on the web…..
Global Hawk (big, loitering drone) imaging is not as good as satellite……….
Then there is the “kill chain”. Timeliness, distribution and accuracies of dtata are problematic. Much less turning imagery data into flight plans.
The bomber can target by: computed trajectory, laser designated (requires “lighting” the target), GPS, and autonomous image identification (a bit in the future).
Timely good data is problematic, as well as the probability of kill.
If anyyou thinks $500K per Toyota is a good deal and that might be strategy I have a bridge.
Particularly since many of the “Toyotas” in this case are uparmored Humvees the U.S. paid for the first time around. And which some war hawks insist we will just replace for the Iraqi Army to surrender the next time around.
Can you say MIC? DDE did and as former CC SHAEF and then CiC of the USA, the USN, the USMC and the USAF and not unmindful of the OSS turned CIA and the then top, top secret NSA knew his acronyms. And exactly how those translated into $$$. And of course still do.
Dear Speaker Pelosi, Vice Presidents Biden and Gore et al.:
Just letting you know I have received many many emails from all of you apparently so puzzled and hurt by my continuing refusal to provide any financial support for your desperate efforts to retain Democratic seats in many house and senate races. I decided to respond on Angry Bear because apparently none of your “unsubscribe” links work. I have noticed Madame Secretary Clinton’s database suffers from the same issue, maybe you all hired the same tech contractors. Here’s hoping you can find a solution to the technology issues soon.
In any event since you’re all apparently distraught at my complete non response I will reveal that I’m here and still receiving your missives. And by way of reassurance I will further reveal that yes I will be at the polls and will do my utmost with the franchise guaranteed by the constitution to further many of your interests. Such as it is here in the state of TX.
However, I simply cannot provide financial support to your organization at this time, and it’s not clear I will be doing so again at any time in the future. I have followed the administration’s efforts closely both in the first term when you enjoyed a numerical advantage in congress and in the first half of this second one. Outside the real accomplishments of the ACA (such as they are) it is difficult for me to discern any genuine policy achievement that would make my financial support justified.
Neither congress nor the administration has managed to hold any of the worst actors of the financial crisis accountable in any way I can see. Similarly the horrific illegal detainments in guantanamo etc., the unconstitutional warrantless surveillance, the ongoing war on public education, the complete lack of action on our decaying infrastructure, the accompanying inability to drive meaning job opportunities for our newest citizens etc. You’ve even managed to backtrack efforts to end our disastrous military engagements in the middle east, a particularly worrisome trend of late. On and on and on I struggle to come up with a single concrete thing that would create a convincing narrative around your continued leadership. It’s exhausting, honestly.
So in an effort to make your future entreaties regarding my bank account more productive I simply wanted to suggest you manage to do a better job of actually governing the country. Or appearing to. Whatever. In point of fact I would submit that managing some greater success in the governing arena may actually make the future fundraisers not only more successful, but less necessary, since voters would probably not need quite so much hammering with the endless media buys to be convinced to vote Democratic.
So it’s win win! I’d have more of a reason to contribute, and you wouldn’t need so much of my money to sell yourselves as responsible and thoughtful stewards of our country!
Best of luck and warmest personal regards for all your future efforts,
Bruce, Totally correct, but I don’t think ISIS can keep the contractors around fixing the stuff they captured when the Shiite conscripts bugged out after the Sunni buddies turned on them.
The $500K per target is not my estimate, I came up with a bit less.
Smooth your tail feathers down brother. I’m just saying that in TX you can actually discern the GOP from DEM candidates. The Dems are less insane, even the “moderate” DLC types. Usually.
And BTW the local NPR affiliate (KUT) ran a story this morning about an effort by pro-business (and okay pro hospital) republicans to revisit the expansion of Medicaid here. So there are some non-insane GOP types. Sometimes.
RE:
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2014/10/paul-krugman-still-believes-debt-can-problem-u-s.html
Why are people that cannot read writing articles?
In what world does PKs column state anything at all like the writer claims it states?
Disclaimer: I have been banned from NC due to my comments on different ACA posts.
EMichael:
I think Yves is using her financial acumen to assess what is coming down the road and believes PK is being somewhat myopic; however, PK is right on the austerity clowns who advocate doom and gloom. There is an issue and it is the lack of jobs for the those who would want to work and reside in NILF. I would say too that many who have taken Disability would not have done so if jobs were available for them. Which brings up an additional point and overlooked, the costs of having excess or under utilized labor capacity to the economy. This plays out as a burden to economy.
Corporate profits as a share of GDP are at all time record levels.
Business profit margins are at all time record levels.
Exports are soaring and imports are stagnating.
What exactly is the evidence that the US tax code is making US firms uncompetitive?
Spencer:
As I wrote here: http://angrybearblog.strategydemo.com/2014/08/have-it-your-way.html , there is no evidence the corporate tax code is an issue for inversions.
Sorkin counters; “What? We’ve been told repeatedly that the United States has the highest corporate tax rate in the developed world — 35 percent — which is higher than the nominal tax rates in places like Ireland (12.5 percent), Britain (21 percent) and the Netherlands (25 percent) and the 24.1 percent average rate of all countries that are part of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.” Sorkin goes on with Kleinbard’s points.
“All that is true,” contends Professor Kleinbard; however, “most United States multinational companies do not pay anywhere near 35 percent. Companies paid an average 12.6 percent, according to the Government Accountability Office, which last measured it in 2010 and avoid taxes by deliberately stashing piles of cash abroad.”
On an altogether different issue. So how is it that Google maps/Earth can display images of individual vehicles from satellite cameras and the Pentagon can’t identify ISIS columns as they move across open desert stretches. The terrain in norther Syria and Iraq does have some mountainous areas, but much of the land is flat as the proverbial pancake. Even in the mountain areas there are few roads and they cross the valley area between mountainous terrain. I’m not advocating military activity by the U.S., but all this talk in the media about the need for boots on the ground seems absurd in an area that provides little safe haven for the large numbers of advancing troops with heavy artillery. What happened to all those “death star” like systems, the AC-130 comes to mind, that are supposed to be capable of wreaking havoc on the ground from the relative safety of the sky? Is this just another effort to look tough with rhetoric not meant to be accurate? I seem to recall all of those news photos of burned out Iraqi equipment and troops during “Desert Storm” operations.
wikipedia:
“Although Google uses the word satellite, most of the high-resolution imagery of cities is aerial photography taken from aircraft flying at 800 feet (240 m) to 1,500 feet (460 m)”
Jack – Even with advanced laser tracking systems you most certainly require forward combat controllers to identify and pinpoint targets. Drones do more of that than ever but without close observation collateral damage and civilian casualties become more likely.
There also has to be good verifiable intelligence to identify and acquire targets.
It takes a lot resources to maintain constant surveillance over that much territory. In any event, unless you want to make the area a free fire zone where anything that moves dies there ultimately have to be boots to hold and administer territory.
We’ve been sold a bill of goods on the whole shock and awe thing. War is not a video game and in stateless civil war type situations with combatants mixing freely with civilian populations the whole idea of remotely controlling a battle zone is pure fiction.
Air power can put a thumb on the scale for a group you may be supporting if they have the organizational strength to acquire, hold, and administer territory but that’s iffy in Syria.
There are no simple solutions, no cheap or easy answers, and a good many very slippery slopes. Colin Powell was right about one thing, you break it you bought it.
For the record, I think the only sane policy is detachment, patience in looking for opportunities to intervene with impact, containment, and ultimately very subdued expectations. It’s impossible to take sides when there are only fluid changing coalitions and quite frankly no one is our friend.
It’s Turkey’s neighborhood, they must step up. China, which is desperately dependent on oil from that area can no longer play the developing nation card, they must be willing to invest in solutions.
It’s devastating to watch the humanitarian crisis unfold but it is a delusion to believe we can stop that without creating the conditions for more of the same. The painful and ugly conclusion may be that patience and broad, very broad coalition building, might be the only ultimate solution. Leadership is not found in a Tennyson poem.
Jack satellite imagery is precise enough that they can probably read vehicle numbers and still more so the precense of an ISIS flag. But it isn’t real time, at least not for the ones with that kind of resolution. Theoretically you could put a satelite in geo-sychchronous orbit over any given place on the equator such that it could scour any particular point 24/7. But that would put it 26000 miles above the Earth’s surface and only be able to scan any given expanse of the ground below it at so much resolution for so much time. And then you would need that many observors to examine each segment of data.
So yeah I guess if you had a six billion megapixel camera with six million genetically enhanced Super Macaque Monkeys to monitor ever bit of territory covered by that geosynchronous satellite over some point on earth.
But we don’t have that may geo-synchonous satellites or cameras with that kind of resolution from 26000 miles up or that many super monkeys to analyze imagery to make all that real time intelligence possilbe
Sure the U.S. should, could and probably does have enough combined capabilities between satellites orbiting at various elevations (and so having differing times over any given stretch of terriroty) and manned overflights and drones to monitor certain limited areas 24/7. But some people seem to think that Google Earth does that for the whole world in real time ALREADY. Well it doesn’t. It only seems up to date and seamless if you don’t look at it carefully.
So, in effect, there is no real time satellite based aerial surveillance adequate to direct air borne armaments which could be used to combat open terrain troop advances. How then does the current air borne effort to confront ISIS result in any effective result? And what of the use of U2 spy plane surveillance? The naked eye view from 70K feet is pretty clear in this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q48Swb2ATww.
My point is only that it seems pretty unusual to my unskilled (in regards to military adventurism) view that with drones, spy plane surveillance, etc. that ISIS seems to have masses of troops flowing over open terrain in a desert environment and can’t be obliterated. I’m not advocating for such military activities. I’m only questioning the effort and its seeming lack of full effectiveness. The picture doesn’t make sense the way it is currently being presented.
70000 ft is a lot different than 26000 miles Something on the order of 1500 to 1. And a spy plane flying Mach 1+ only spends seconds over any given spot. That is the better the resolution the more data posts needed to sample any given piece of ground and so more data interpreters.
And the latter is maybe the key point. The NSA can maybe suck every piece of voice and data ever transmitted but how do you sift and interprt that material in real time?
How many 10 square meter patches are there In the Middle East? And how would you select the interesting ones in advance of your data collection? Chickens and eggs. No matter the quality of the subsequent data sample.
Satellite optics is very good, satellite radar imaging may not be so good (both are very classified). The satellites are the 90 minute of so orbit, they can be moved/cued but it uses “fuel” and is limited. So not the kind of thing that can track columns moving.
The ISIS guys are going to learn camoflaging, and routing around staellite times, the satellites are big enough to see and there are catalogues on the web…..
Global Hawk (big, loitering drone) imaging is not as good as satellite……….
Then there is the “kill chain”. Timeliness, distribution and accuracies of dtata are problematic. Much less turning imagery data into flight plans.
The bomber can target by: computed trajectory, laser designated (requires “lighting” the target), GPS, and autonomous image identification (a bit in the future).
Timely good data is problematic, as well as the probability of kill.
If anyyou thinks $500K per Toyota is a good deal and that might be strategy I have a bridge.
Particularly since many of the “Toyotas” in this case are uparmored Humvees the U.S. paid for the first time around. And which some war hawks insist we will just replace for the Iraqi Army to surrender the next time around.
Can you say MIC? DDE did and as former CC SHAEF and then CiC of the USA, the USN, the USMC and the USAF and not unmindful of the OSS turned CIA and the then top, top secret NSA knew his acronyms. And exactly how those translated into $$$. And of course still do.
Dear Speaker Pelosi, Vice Presidents Biden and Gore et al.:
Just letting you know I have received many many emails from all of you apparently so puzzled and hurt by my continuing refusal to provide any financial support for your desperate efforts to retain Democratic seats in many house and senate races. I decided to respond on Angry Bear because apparently none of your “unsubscribe” links work. I have noticed Madame Secretary Clinton’s database suffers from the same issue, maybe you all hired the same tech contractors. Here’s hoping you can find a solution to the technology issues soon.
In any event since you’re all apparently distraught at my complete non response I will reveal that I’m here and still receiving your missives. And by way of reassurance I will further reveal that yes I will be at the polls and will do my utmost with the franchise guaranteed by the constitution to further many of your interests. Such as it is here in the state of TX.
However, I simply cannot provide financial support to your organization at this time, and it’s not clear I will be doing so again at any time in the future. I have followed the administration’s efforts closely both in the first term when you enjoyed a numerical advantage in congress and in the first half of this second one. Outside the real accomplishments of the ACA (such as they are) it is difficult for me to discern any genuine policy achievement that would make my financial support justified.
Neither congress nor the administration has managed to hold any of the worst actors of the financial crisis accountable in any way I can see. Similarly the horrific illegal detainments in guantanamo etc., the unconstitutional warrantless surveillance, the ongoing war on public education, the complete lack of action on our decaying infrastructure, the accompanying inability to drive meaning job opportunities for our newest citizens etc. You’ve even managed to backtrack efforts to end our disastrous military engagements in the middle east, a particularly worrisome trend of late. On and on and on I struggle to come up with a single concrete thing that would create a convincing narrative around your continued leadership. It’s exhausting, honestly.
So in an effort to make your future entreaties regarding my bank account more productive I simply wanted to suggest you manage to do a better job of actually governing the country. Or appearing to. Whatever. In point of fact I would submit that managing some greater success in the governing arena may actually make the future fundraisers not only more successful, but less necessary, since voters would probably not need quite so much hammering with the endless media buys to be convinced to vote Democratic.
So it’s win win! I’d have more of a reason to contribute, and you wouldn’t need so much of my money to sell yourselves as responsible and thoughtful stewards of our country!
Best of luck and warmest personal regards for all your future efforts,
Steve Fauré
Austin TX
Bruce, Totally correct, but I don’t think ISIS can keep the contractors around fixing the stuff they captured when the Shiite conscripts bugged out after the Sunni buddies turned on them.
The $500K per target is not my estimate, I came up with a bit less.
Amateur Socialist,
It is very difficult to vote against the rethuglicans for the lesser demithugs!
It’s even harder to give them money. It looks like it just makes them less effective.
And here in TX there is usually an actual perceptible difference. Usually.
Perceptible difference?
So you can name a Rep government that increased the number of Medicaid recipients by more than 6 million?
And you can find a Rep government that increased the marginal tax rate on the wealthiest Americans by 15%(earned) and 65%(unearned)?
Strange I missed that Rep government.
Smooth your tail feathers down brother. I’m just saying that in TX you can actually discern the GOP from DEM candidates. The Dems are less insane, even the “moderate” DLC types. Usually.
And BTW the local NPR affiliate (KUT) ran a story this morning about an effort by pro-business (and okay pro hospital) republicans to revisit the expansion of Medicaid here. So there are some non-insane GOP types. Sometimes.
Maybe there are some non-insane GOP types there, but I doubt it.
Hospitals in states that rejected the Medicaid expansion are taking a financial beating.
So I think those GOP types are just checking their wallets.