The Downside of Using Mercenaries

Who the hell thought this was a good idea?  The Randian imbeciles want to outsource anything and everything in the name of profit. 

We are ruled by fools. Oftentimes, belligerent, malicious fools. 

WASHINGTON — Just weeks before Blackwater guards fatally shot 17 civilians at Baghdad's Nisour Square in 2007, the State Department began investigating the security contractor's operations in Iraq. But the inquiry was abandoned after Blackwater's top manager there issued a threat: "that he could kill" the government's chief investigator and "no one could or would do anything about it as we were in Iraq," according to department reports. American Embassy officials in Baghdad sided with Blackwater rather than the State Department investigators as a dispute over the probe escalated in August 2007, the previously undisclosed documents show. The officials told the investigators that they had disrupted the embassy's relationship with the security contractor and ordered them to leave the country, according to the reports. After returning to Washington, the chief investigator wrote a scathing report to State Department officials documenting misconduct by Blackwater employees and warning that lax oversight of the company, which had a contract worth more than $1 billion to protect American diplomats, had created "an environment full of liability and negligence."

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/30/us/before-shooting-in-iraq-warning-on-blackwater.html?_r=0

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Brilliant Essay On Inequality By A Rational 0.01%er

Read and share.

Just go read Hanauer today, by @DavidOAtkins

"But the problem isn't that we have inequality. Some inequality is intrinsic to any high-functioning capitalist economy. The problem is that inequality is at historically high levels and getting worse every day. Our country is rapidly becoming less a capitalist society and more a feudal society. Unless our policies change dramatically, the middle class will disappear, and we will be back to late 18th-century France. Before the revolution. And so I have a message for my fellow filthy rich, for all of us who live in our gated bubble worlds: Wake up, people. It won't last. If we don't do something to fix the glaring inequities in this economy, the pitchforks are going to come for us. No society can sustain this kind of rising inequality. In fact, there is no example in human history where wealth accumulated like this and the pitchforks didn't eventually come out. You show me a highly unequal society, and I will show you a police state. Or an uprising. There are no counterexamples. None. It's not if, it's when...."

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2014/06/just-go-read-hanauer-today-by.html

I've long held this view, though I am not a wealthy person.  It is cold logic.  And frankly, I do not want my family and friends trampled by the mob - or becoming the mob - at pitchfork time.  Nor do I wish to live in a police state.  We need to make social changes before it gets to that point, and we are already far along that road.

Fulton Street Really Coming Together

View towards uptown 4/5 platform.

View towards A/C/2/3/J/Z connection

View from the sidewalk on Broadway.

Yes, construction is ongoing with finishing work and the escalators are not running yet, but the station is closer and closer to a full opening.  For all the delays, and the cost overruns (not all of which are the fault of MTA, by the way, see, e.g., Corbin Building) this oft-maligned new headhouse will change the lives of the people who pass through here on a daily basis.

The old station was a byzantine maze with the air of a medieval dungeon.  One might have expected to face a Minotaur in the bowels of the complex.  One can already tell that commuting through this station will be a more civilized, uplifting experience.  It's impossible to put a price tag on an intangible like this, and I won't say that this was the best possible use of transit funds.  But let's be honest, this station complex was a depressing mess before.

Our number one focus should be on expanding the reach and capacity of the system, but the overall rider experience is important too.

Do We Ever Learn?

Another $500M to destabilize Syria. 

Meanwhile we can't pass a highway bill, or care for our vets, or adequately invest in mass transit, or [insert valuable domestic initiative here]. 

Sometimes I feel like I'm living in a Twilight Zone episode. 

Arming And Training Has Worked Great So Far

"President Barack Obama is asking Congress for $500 million to train and arm vetted members of the Syrian opposition"

http://www.eschatonblog.com/2014/06/arming-and-training-has-worked-great-so.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+blogspot%2FbRuz+%28Eschaton%29

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Reckless Driver Decapitated In Cobble Hill

Thankfully no pedestrians were injured.  Something else to consider: this interchange is dangerous even without reckless behavior.  But alas, when the state cancelled the Stakeholders Advisory Committee for the Brooklyn Heights portion of the BQE, any plan to improve this stretch of highway and its ramps was shelved.

Police Chase Ends in Decapitation

"A car chase through Brooklyn ended in a horrifying scene yesterday when the driver of a black Infiniti crashed into the back of a flatbed truck and lost his head. According to a witness, the 22-year-old driver was going about 80 miles per hour when he slammed into the back of the stopped truck at the end of the Atlantic Avenue exit on the Gowanus Expressway. "

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2014/06/police-chase-ends-in-decapitation.html

Never run from the police.  Your odds of success are slim, and the chance of vastly upgraded charges (and the chance that you will gravely harm yourself or someone else) are great.

de Blasio's NYC DOT Ahead In Implementing Vision Zero, But When Will New York State DOT Enter 21st Century?

From earlier this week, Mayor de Blasio signed 11 bills into law to improve the safety of NYC's streets:

Mayor de Blasio signed a sweeping package of 11 new laws Monday designed to crack down on reckless drivers and advance his “Vision Zero” plan to cut traffic deaths.

The new laws will lower the speed limit to 15 to 20 miles per hours near 50 schools each year, and allow the city to suspend the license of a cabbie who kills or seriously injures someone while committing a traffic violation.

They will make it a crime to hit a pedestrian or cyclist who has the right of way, as well as banning stunt driving by motorcyclists and requiring the city to fix broken traffic signals within 24 hours.

“Fundamentally, it comes down to reducing speeding, reducing reckless driving,” de Blasio said.

“The vision is to end traffic fatalities in this city. It’s not easy,” he said. “We can’t keep losing New Yorkers because we haven’t done all in our power to protect them.”

But on the other hand, New York State DOT has declined to adopt NACTO standards for safer, multi-modal streets:

The 2014 Smart Growth America “Dangerous by Design” pedestrian fatality study found that, though just 15 percent of lane miles in New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut are classified as arterials, from 2003 to 2012 they accounted for 50 percent or more of pedestrian deaths in 90 percent of counties.

There’s a reason the report is called “Dangerous by Design” — streets and roads designed for maximum auto throughput are not safe for people who walk and bike. If anything, the status quo on these streets should be an argument in favor of incorporating NACTO designs into the NYS DOT tool kit. Though states including California, Washington, Massachusetts — even Tennessee — have updated their guidelines, apparently NYS DOT won’t be following suit because they conflict with outmoded designs recommended by AASHTO.

 It would be great to see a cultural change at NYS DOT to reflect the current state of the art in street safety.  As it stands our state DOT is still steeped in a mid to late 20th century mindset.

Don't get me started on my old state of New Jersey, which is home to some truly disastrous traffic engineering that has rendered large swaths of the state brutally inhospitable to pedestrians.  It will take decades to undo the damage in NJ.  And there's no time like the present to get started.

Reminder: Elliot Abrams Is A War Criminal

Yet in this Bizarro America we inhabit, Elliot Abrams is not rotting in a prison. He was hired by George W. Bush to commit further depraved acts. And now he's getting articles published in Politico. 

Meritocracy!

The worst neocon of all? I think it's this guy...

"He's one of those zombies who's been around for decades wreaking havoc wherever he goes. But he did something very, very, very bad during the 1980s that ranks up there with the worst things Americans have ever done --- he covered up a massacre by US sponsored forces in El Salvador. That's not a "policy disagreement". It's a straight-up war crime. Basically, this proves that there is literally nothing a hawk can ever do to lose his reputation in the American national security establishment."

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2014/06/the-worst-neocon-of-all-i-think-its.html

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