perfidy

Right now, we have two armored divisions, several heavy mechanized infantry divisions, the 101st and 82nd Airborne divisions, and the 10th Mountain division. If we added a couple more armored and heavy infantry divisions, would we be little better off than now. Certainly, we would have more troops, which would ease the pressure on the existing units. Prepositioned stocks of equipment ease somewhat the cost and delay of shipping heavy equipment to the battle zone.

But the primary problem we have faced since 9/11 is getting troops, and more importantly their equipment, close to the enemy. Adding more heavy divisions will not ease this problem, it will exacerbate it. There are two aspects to the logistical bottleneck. First, lack of transport. The Air Force has a finite capacity for airlift. The Navy has a functionally infinite capacity, but it can take months to get gear in place by sealift. Second, the size and weight of the Army and Marine gear that must be moved.

The M1 Abrams tank is far and away the most lethal main battle tank ever built. It is virtually invulnerable to most enemy tank guns, while its main gun can shoot through a Soviet tank lengthwise. It is fast, accurate and on the whole reliable. It also weighs 70 tons. Only the two largest Air Force transports can carry the M1. The C17 can carry one, and the C5 can carry two. There are 100 C5s in the Air Force, so they could transport all the tanks in an armored division anywhere in the world in ten days. Of course, they would not be able to carry anything else, like fuel, food, ammunition, humvees, guns, troops, or whatever for the army. And of course they would not be moving missiles or armaments for any of the other services either.

It has been said many times that amateur strategists study tactics, professional strategists study logistics. So, let’s pretend to be professional. A division is more than 16,000 soldiers and all the equipment, ammunition, fuel, food and water they need to fight. We have several types of divisions. The airborne and mountain divisions are the easiest to transport, because they have the least amount of vehicles. The 82nd has its own Air Force transport wing, and they train to make deployments quickly and efficiently. In theory, the entire division can deploy in under a week to anywhere in the world.

The heavy divisions are in exactly the opposite situation. During the cold war, they had complete equipment sets positioned in Germany, and all the divisions had to do was fly to Europe and match up with their gear. They would hold off the Soviets while the Navy and Merchant Marine began shipping over equipment in quantity. When these divisions are needed elsewhere, we face the monumental problem of getting all their stuff to where its needed. As mentioned above, airlift is a narrow but fast pipe, while sealift is a fat but slow one.

The military gets around this to some extent by setting up equipment depots around the world, to cut the time needed to ship stuff where we need it. Roll-on, Roll-off cargo ships have all the tanks, trucks, humvees, Bradleys, fuel and so on for an entire division. The Air Force has detailed plans to use its airlift capacity at maximum efficiency. If we are to not only increase the size, but increase the deployability of our forces, we need to increase the logistical throughput of our military.

The simplest method would be to first of all more Air Force transports. No new technology is required, the planes have already been designed and tested. We just buy more of them - small intra-theater transports like the C-130 Hercules, up to the large airlift planes like the C-17 Globemaster and the C-5 Galaxy. The Air Force has a institutional prejudice against “trash-hauling”, preferring high tech wonders like the B-2 Spirit bomber and the F-22 Raptor fighter. However, the Air Force already has the ability to crush, decisively, every other air force in the world, and to penetrate the tightest air defenses and deliver precision munitions. Transport is the biggest priority.

The Navy is responsible, strangely enough, for sealift. The biggest limitation with sealift is the requirement for basing rights for storage, and safe harbors with docking facilities to unload all the gear. The latter means either convincing a conveniently located nation with port facilities to help us, or using one of the Airborne divisions or the Marines to take one from the enemy and convert it to our use. Even long-term allies like Turkey have denied us the right to use their ports to unload our gear.

However, the Navy came up with a solution: the JMOB, or Joint Mobile Offshore Base. The concept is simple – using technology developed for mobile drilling platforms, create several thousand foot long cargo ship modules designed to connect to each other. Each module can sail independently to a hot spot, where it would link up with four other modules to create the JMOB. On the top of each module would be a runway, and when all five modules are connected, the JMOB becomes an airport capable of handling C-17 and C-5 transports, and all but the largest civilian cargo jets. Inside each module is storage, and lots of it. Space for fuel, food, vehicles and everything else the well equipped soldier needs. And each module has port facilities, so that material stored on the JMOB, or arriving by plane or cargo ship can be rapidly and efficiently loaded onto landing craft to be dispatched to the beach.

The beauty of this concept is that it totally eliminates the need to get basing rights from other nations. Carriers allow us to project air power almost anywhere in the world. Mid-flight refueling gives our Air Force the ability to strike anywhere in the world. JMOB would give this same power projection to even heavy armor divisions. It would give us entirely new capabilities, while vastly increasing the usefulness of things we already have, like roll-on, roll-off cargo ships, landing craft and armored divisions. No JMOB has yet been authorized for construction, and at a billion dollars a pop, the JMOB is not cheap; and we’d need several of them, at least. However, the freedom of operation that they would give us would be well worth the price.

Other smaller, but still needed improvements could also be made that would improve our ability to transport soldiers to the battlefield, but if these two steps were taken, half the logistics battle would be won.

The recent reports of troops being rotated home for two week leave highlight some of the problems that we have faced in maintaining military preparedness when the military is being asked to handle so very many jobs. I commented earlier on the extent to which our forces were committed, and the need to expand the military to meet even current requirements.

But how should we expand the military, and how much? In this post and its sequels, I will concentrate on the Army, and on Army logistical issues that affect the other services. I have more ideas for what to do with the other services, but that will have to wait for later.

In general, but especially for the last twenty years or so, the United States has emphasized quality over quantity. During most of the cold war, it was assumed that highly trained, lavishly equipped American soldiers would be able to stem the red tide should the Soviets ever decide to kick off WWIII. During the 80s, ever-greater sums were devoted to developing advanced weaponry to equip our forces for confrontation with their Soviet counterparts.

By the 90s, advances in American civilian technology began to greatly affect the types of weapons that the military could develop. Space and computer technology made possible the revolution in smart, brilliant, and jesus-that’s-smart weapons that we now see in the hands of our military. These wizard weapons allow soldiers to fight in the dark, our tanks to shoot completely through enemy tanks, Air Force pilots to target individual rooms in buildings, and so on. But the core of our amazing military effectiveness lies not in the panoply of wizard weapons our soldiers carry, but in the communications and logistics technologies that surround them.

Our military is wired for communications to a level unimaginable fifteen years ago. Military networks allow information and intelligence to be transmitted to troops in the field with remarkable rapidity. These networks allow units to coordinate their activities to the point where they can act almost like a single intelligence. This is what gives us our flexibility, adaptability and speed. This is the heart of our lethality.

When we think about what kinds of units we would like to add to the army, these are things that need to be kept in mind. But before we even think about adding more troops, we need to think about how to move them.

Music good. Silence boring. Ugh. Buckethead not know much about music. Can't even bang antellope thigh bone in time with music.

It has been commonly observed that there are many parallels between Prohibition and the War on Drugs. The lack of any real effect in terms of decreasing alcohol or drug use, or even effecting prices; vast increases in organized crime activity; erosion of civil liberties; increases in government police powers; etc, etc. These problems are well known and not really contested by anyone. Those who are for the war on drugs largely use the same script as the prohibitionists - drugs (alcohol) are destroying our youth, drugs (alcohol) are contributing to the immorality of women, and so on. They argue that the costs to society of not banning these drugs is higher than the costs of fighting them.

But who actually, really benefits from the drug war? Arguably, through our efforts, we have saved children from addiction. Or convinced some who might have used drugs and damaged their lives to take a different course. Those who feel the need to take a moral stand on other people's behavior feel a righteous and warming satisfaction.

But there are two groups who clearly and greatly benefit from the drug war. Drug dealers and federal law enforcement agencies.

If drugs were legalized, the vast drug cartels would be out of business in weeks. Just as the rumrunners and bootleggers had their legs cut out from under them after prohibition was repealed. There is no way that drug dealers could compete with walmart in distribution. Drug dealers are selected for willingness to commit crime or violence, not business or logistical acumen. They have a great deal at stake in keeping drugs illegal.

Federal agencies tasked with prosecuting the drug war also have much at stake. It means budget, personnel and bureaucratic turf. Those who make the most busts get bigger budgets. Possibly even more enforcement power, as was the case with the RICO statutes and civil forfeiture. (And civil foreiture allows agencies to keep some of the money or property that they seize.)

The people who are hurt by taking drugs do so largely out of their own decisions. Much like alcoholics. For them, there should be education and treatment programs like there are for alcoholics. Those who are hurt by the crime that surrounds the drug trade are not - they are hurt by the direct results of government policy. Every innocent bystander killed in drug related violence is the victim of government decisions. And that goes far beyond merely pragmatic arguments for ending the drug war. 

Found a few excellent, excellent blogs today. Doctor Frank's What's-It and Oliver Kamm. Both of these guys are good writers with interesting stuff going on inside their big heads. Finally, Winds of Change, which has lots more good stuff, including regional briefings every Tuesday and Wednesday, and sometimes Friday.

[Update] And, I realized that I never mentioned The Mind of Man when I added it a whiles back. While you're at it, why don't you visit all the sites on our blogroll, and email the bloggers to tell them to link to Perfidy. All we want is total global domination, is that so much to ask?

John O'Sullivan of the NRO has a fanciful letter from Machiavelli to Governor Dean. While the letter is interesting, the header is classic:

TO: Governor Howard Dean, The Deanery, Old McGovern Way, Montpelier, Vermont.

FROM Nick Machiavelli, Senior Partner, Machiavelli, O'Blarney, Iago, Alcibiades, and Morris, Political Consultants.

I would like to intern at that firm.

This interesting article from the daVinci institute details the ten most important financial/money related inventions of the 1900s. Fascinating read, hat tip to slashdot.

Robert Novak, whose political antennae are unusually acute, is reporting that there may be an announcement of the discovery of WMD in Iraq come september:

"Former international weapons inspector David Kay, now seeking Iraqi weapons of mass destruction for the Pentagon, has privately reported successes that are planned to be revealed to the public in mid-September.

Kay has told his superiors he has found substantial evidence of biological weapons in Iraq, plus considerable missile development. He has been less successful in locating chemical weapons, and has not yet begun a substantial effort to locate progress toward nuclear arms."

Along similar lines, the British government, will soon announce that it has new evidence that Iraq had produced and subsequently concealed biological weapons.

This is welcome news for me, on several levels. First, we know for certain that the Iraqis had WMD of various types back in the late nineties. We don't know where they went, and that is not a good thing. The discovery of a Russian reconnaissance aircraft (derived from the Mig 25) in the desert indicates that the Iraqis were like squirrels, hiding the nuts of their warmaking capacity all over the desert. Given the size of that desert, it will be hard for us to dig it all up.

If we are beginning to discover the scope of the Iraqi WMD development program, there is a decent chance that over time we can assure ourselves that the most has been discovered or destroyed.

Of course, another benefit is that this will silence some of the more annoying criticisms of the war on terror. Not that I am against criticism in general, but this one always irritated me. Perhaps with the WMD issue behind them, Democrats and the left can engage in a more coherent and useful criticism of war policy.

Happy birthday, P-dawg! Ack, that left a bad taste in my mouth. I can't even see hipness from where I live. I wanted to wish you a happy birthday before you posted it, so it wouldn't seem like I forgot, but I am before all things lazy.

Btw, Mrs. Buckethead celebrates her birthday tomorrow. I guess that means I have to get her a gift. Shit. And a card. Damn. And then, JC gets churched up when he gets christened Saturday. And, no that doesn't involve smashing a bottle of bubbly over him.

I am now reading, for the first time, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? On page 20 of my edition, I read this:

Silence. It flashed from the woodwork and the walls; it smote him with an awful, total power, as if generated by a vast mill. It rose from the floor, up out of the tattered gray wall-to-wall carpeting. It unleashed itself from the broken and semi-broken appliances in the kitchen, and the dead machines which hadn't worked in all the time Isadore had lived there. From the useless pole lamp in the living room it oozed out, meshing with the empty and wordless descent of itself from the fly-specked ceiling. It managed in fact to emerge from every object within his range of vision, as if it - the silence - meant to supplant all things tangible. Hence it assailed not only his ears, but his eyes; as he stood by the inert TV set he experienced the silence as visible and, in its own way, alive. Alive! He had often felt its austere approach before; when it came, it burst in without subtlety, evidently unable to wait. The silence of the world could not reign back its greed. Not any longer. Not when it had virtually won.

Damn. 

[Update]: I originally posted this back in May. When the archives were being moved over, the date didn't get set right. But, it's still true today.

I started this post as a comment to Ross' statements in the comments to Pythagosaurus' "You Think We Got It Bad? or, Ambling into Mediocrity" post of yesterday. It got a little long, so here it is:

Ross, your anti-Americanism seems to have taken over your brain. While the United States is not home to two-dozen languages and cultures, it is home to a melange of hundreds of languages and cultures. The diversity of this country is remarkable, in landscape, traditions, music, food and unique turns of phrase that can be found in the small nooks and crannies.

I agree with Pythagosaurus completely on the cultural issues - there is diversity, albeit within a larger American cultural frame. One of the reasons for this is that America is not an ethnic culture, one that grew up out of one people sharing history, language, and the rest. America is different; in that there is an American culture that anyone can join simply by accepting a (very) few core ideals. And then, they are part of the history of America, share its culture, while retaining many aspects of their own. And the rest of us benefit from this as well. Even you could Ross, though you are a Canadian.

So you think traveling within the United States is going from one Walmart to another? I think you need to twist the little knob on your head. Sure, there are Walmarts and the chain restaurants. Americans appreciate efficiency. But there are also the little diners, with the old guys at the lunch counter smoking Pall Malls and trying to decide how much of an asshole the local mayor is. There are festivals, fairs, monuments to civil war veterans, local historical societies running museums devoted to the story of pumpkin horticulture in a three county area. 

There are Ethiopian restaurants in Columbus. Vast numbers of ethnic restaurants everywhere. Sporting events, bitter rivalries, local beers, roadside attractions like the world's largest ball of string, just because some weirdo thought it'd be a good idea. The beautiful and the strange, the ugly and the wonderful, and more scenic landscapes than you can imagine. If many people don't see the value of hopping on a plane and ending up in Trondheim it's because you can hop on a plane in Indianapolis and end up in New York, Boston, Washington, San Francisco, Miami, New Orleans or Chicago with equal ease, rent an apartment and get a job. You have been able to do that in the United States for over two hundred years, and it is nice that the Europeans have finally caught up.

For all that you are claiming that the United States has suddenly rushed to set up a fascist state to ensure its security from strange and disturbing Europeans, even the Patriot Act doesn't even come close. Johno and I have criticized it here, and we have not been arrested. Nor are we likely to. Despite the clear threat from Middle Eastern men between the ages of 20 and 40 hiding in our midst to prepare attacks on innocent civilians, how did we react? Vast expulsions, internment camps, beatings and lynchings? I don't remember that happening. Our president, in the wake of the most horrific attack we have ever experienced encouraged everyone to be nice to Arabs. And everyone agreed.

The EU is making a deliberate set of choices when it comes to personal freedom. And I fear that they are the wrong choices. Unelected and unaccountable bureaucrats in Brussels make regulations that affect almost 300 million people. Those people have no choice in selecting those bureaucrats. And those regulations decide whether you can form a business, publish a paper, what you say on the internet, and ten thousand other things. And there is no equivalent in the EU constitution of the Bill of Rights. The list of rights in the proposed EU constitution lists the rights of government, not of people. There is little real difference between personal freedom and freedom from regulation. The relationship between government and people is one that Americans appreciate more than anyone else. We argue about it constantly, and reprove our representatives when they overstep the bounds that we have set. We do not complacently accept dictates from elites. (At least, not all of us.)

The relative strengths of the European and American economy are related to this freedom. The more that the EU superstate layers the European economy in regulation, the more protectionist it gets, the weaker they will be. Chronic unemployment has been a feature of European economic life for decades. That we have unemployment now, in a recession, is unremarkable. The policies of Japan and Europe have kept them in the doldrums for well over a decade, during a period that America and to a lesser extent Britain were experiencing unprecedented growth and prosperity. This recession will end, likely soon by all indications. But where will Europe go? We prosper because we are free.

Ross, I resisted saying this in the last comment I made, but: if American sucks so completely; if we are a nation of provincial rubes who can't understand the wonders that the rest of the world has to offer; and have lost and forgotten freedom of expression and are busily setting up a police state; why are you living in Northern Virginia, and having this argument with two Americans on their website? And I don't mean this facetiously, in an "America, love it or leave it!" way. You are often hyper critical of America, which is your right. Obviously something compelled you to leave the country of your birth to come here. If America is as bad as you say, what are the reasons you came here?

Now this, this is effing crazy.

As usual, Lileks hits it straight off:

Only in America. And I say that as a good thing. Which reminds me: like all typical examples of American craziness, this will just horrify the Europeans.

I like the Idea of the terminator running for office. If successful, he will be the second cast member of the movie Predator to attain high office. Does anyone know where Carl Weathers lives?

On the idea of American craziness, I am all for it. The only predictablility in our foriegn policy should be steadfast loyalty to allies. As for the rest, some judicious twitchiness should have only positive effects.

In a Washington Post article, Rev. Al says that he is being dismissed because reporters are white males.

"I think when you look at the lack of diversity in the newsrooms, when you look at the lack of diversity from the editors and those in power, then you see them as automatically dismissive of anything that is not like them, which is white males," said Sharpton.

"I think we've seen some very blatant racial insensitivity in the coverage of this race so far," said Sharpton, in an interview with The Associated Press.

Jeez, I thought he was dismissed because he's an inveterate race hustler, responsible for a deadly riot, and because he manufactured the Tawana Brawley hoax. And, generally, he's a wacko.

George Will has condemned the misbehavior of both parties, giving an extensive list of both democratic and republican offenses. In describing one outrage, he says, "Nothing this undignified has happened in American politics for, well, two weeks."

Will fears that the overturning of established custom - such as the custom that district boundaries are reset only once a decade, after each census - causes permanent damage to civil society. When custom is overturned, "it is replaced either by yet more laws codifying behavior that should be regulated by good manners, or by a permanent increase in society's level of ongoing aggression."

I find it hard to disagree. In my lifetime, stretching all the way back to the chaos of the late sixties, political discourse has become progressively more polarized and acrimonious. "Each vandal seems to think that his or her passions are their own excuse for existing. As Santayana said, such thinking is the defining trait of barbarians."

Oh well, the world must be coming to an end.

Dan Simmons, author of Hyperion, has a new book out. Ilium, which I just finished, is the first of a two part series that involves little green men, robots, Greek gods, Shalespeare and Proust, post human evolution, the wandering Jew and a middle aged classics professor from Indiana. Sweet.

Joe Bob says check it out!

Well, that is the problem, isn't it? The new prescription benefit program will actually help some people, but at the cost of doing enormous damage elsewhere. Including these nuggets of goodness is what allows these abominations to become law. Because some disingenuous senator can point to the one nice bit and say, "but look, we're helping old people get the meds they need and not have to eat cat food! You don't want old people to eat cat food, do you?"

I don't oppose helping people. I do oppose helping people who don't need to be helped. But the AARP and others oppose means testing tooth and nail. And the sad fact is that if a benefit becomes available, people will use it regardless of whether or not they "need" it. Soon after, they will feel entitled to that benefit, and will scream bloody murder if some cold hearted conservative tries to take it away. Every beneficiary of one of these vast entitlement programs becomes an instant, permanent constituent for whoever says they'll continue or expand these programs.

When we create these programs we have to limit the eligibility, and everywhere possible build in mechanisms that encourage people to leave the program. It should never be just a handout. It should never provide everything, otherwise there is never any incentive to provide for yourself. A safety net is just that - something to catch you if you fall. It shouldn't be a place to live permanently. Benefit programs have to be set up with an eye toward personal responsibility. The responsibility to work, to provide for your own retirement, etc. Privatizing Social Security would go a long way towards allowing people to actually provide for their own futures.

Instead of blindly paying a huge chunk of your earnings (matched by your employer, remember) to the government, imagine that that money went into your own account. Every quarter you'd get a statement showing how much money you had. If you die, your family would inherit the cash - unlike the current system where the money largely just disappears into the government black hole. In this scenario, everyone would actually be providing for their own futures, and we wouldn't have to worry about SS going bust, and we'd worry far less about providing for the needs of seniors.

While I'm on a roll, commenting on everything Pythagosaurus posts (I'll get my own brain soon, I promise) I thought I'd throw in my thoughts on the whole health care thingy:

The interesting thing about the prescription drug benefit is that it was intended as leverage to get certain elements of Congress to agree to reform Medicare. There is a certain crunchy political compromise sort of goodness to that - in exchange for enacting a hideously expensive piece of crap legislation, we will excise the worst parts of a grotesquely expensive, double-plus crappy abomination of a legislation. Instead, we now have both, which is more stupendously expensive crappiness than you can shake a stick at, plus the stick.

The prescription drug benefit program's only saving grace is that it might not kill the goose that lays the wonderful, groovy new drugs. In every other way, it is an immoral, bald faced, long term mandate for thievery from the younger generations. But the drug benefits are really a side show in the larger catastrophe.

There are three elements that form the center of my perception of the problem:

• The health "industry" constitutes as much as a seventh of the total US economy.
• Old people represent a growing percentage of the whole population. Not as bad as Europe or Japan, but still…
• The Byzantine and corrupt nature of the industry as a whole compromises the effectiveness of the system.

Starting from the bottom, why does it cost $12,000 to get your arm repaired after your neighbor jumps up and down on it? Assuming that your mom drives you to the hospital, what kind of costs are we talking about? A few minutes for the receptionist. A half hour each for a nurse and a doctor, fifteen minutes for the radiologist and the cost of running the x-ray machine, the broken bone kit in the nifty sterile packaging, some overhead costs to keep the nice hospital open, and some powerful narcotics to dull the existential angst of realizing what a dumbass you were to let your neighbor jump on your arm.

I added that up, and came up with about $500. And that was assuming that doctors were charging $300/ hour for their time, and nurses half that. Even assuming that my perception of the costs was off by an order of magnitude, that still leaves you $7,000 short of $12,000. Where does the extra money come from?

Malpractice insurance to protect doctors from the ridiculous lawsuits we as a people are prone to. Also, extra tests as an added safeguard from lawsuits. The bloat of the insurance industries, which encourages doctors to overcharge. And the labyrinthine regulatory hairball that surrounds the entire industry.

I have no problem with doctors making money. They studied far harder and longer than I ever did, and they perform a vital service. I have no problem with drug companies making money - it costs billions to develop and especially get FDA approval for a new medication. They should be able to recoup their costs, and make a little folding money.

I do have a problem with jackholes making millions because they convinced a jury of their jackhole peers that they deserved to get $20 million in punitive damages because of something that no doctor could have prevented, or came up short on the odds. Nothing in life is certain. (Now, if the doctor was drunk, sue away....)

I do have a problem with government setting prices for the whole industry, and for all other kinds of intrusive regulation. My cousin used to work for a hospital, and the nightmare stories he told were unbelievable. The hoops that every part of the industry must jump through are staggering.

There has to be someway to straighten and simplify the whole thing. And tort reform would be a great start, eliminating one of the biggest costs for medical care for everyone.

The second point is the demographic change that will hit full force as the boomers start retiring in large numbers. This single fact dooms every old age entitlement scheme already in existence or merely in the planning stages. Entitlement means that those eligible get their money regardless of whether of any other needs the government or the rest of the country have. When the old reach a certain percentage of the population, the system will as a matter of course bankrupt itself because it will cross the threshold where the working population contributes enough in taxes to fund the outlays to the old.

Unless these programs are fixed, we are screwed. Privatization is one option. Raising the age of eligibility is another idea. Means testing is necessary. But something has to be done, or we will end up by 2050 paying all of our money right into the pockets of the old. Because it is damn certain that the boomers will be there with their hands out.

And we need to do something soon, because of point number one - seeing as the health industry is such a huge part of the economy, if it gets screwed up, the whole effect on the rest of the economy will be, I don't know, large. There are many ways that it could get screwed up: panicky regulation could either regulate it into stagnation or nationalize it. Increasing inefficiency and corruption could bankrupt key parts of it, leaving the system in ruins. Or, there could be piecemeal collapse, for example if malpractice insurance becomes to expensive, there will be no doctors - they will move to where they can practice and make a living.

The health industry must continue to make money in order for it to be the wonderfully effective thing that it is. It must continue to attract the best and brightest. What we need to fix is not the doctors and nurses, or even the drug companies. In principle, health insurance is a viable prospect. What we need to fix is the government side of the beastie, both in terms of regulation and heath related entitlement programs.

In reference to Pythagosaurus' recent post, I have this to say:

There is a list of many things that this administration (or any, for that matter) could do that would be good for business. This item strikes me as being very, very low on that list, if it's on it at all.

I work in the tech industry; and I and many people I know have been screwed by the comp time thingy. Since many techies are salaried, they are already exempt from most of the regulations regarding overtime. If you are an hourly worker, then by all means you should get overtime.

The only way that this suggestion would make sense is if the worker in question could opt between the two, and if he took the comp time, could take the time on his rather than his employer's discretion.

Contrary to received opinion, I am not some sort of conservative robot who automatically says "Labor bad! Business good!" Worker rights are important to me, if only because I'm a worker myself. While I have often complained about unions, especially the teacher's unions (sorry, Mike) it's mostly because they have made nuisances of themselves in recent times. I would certainly not begrudge the labor movement its utility and victories back more than a half century ago, but nowadays they seem to act more as purely special interest groups, lobbying for gains at the expense of the rest of society. Like the AARP.

So, I agree - this proposal is a pile of horseshit.

Not only was Stalin the head of the second most murderous regime in world history, responsible for reppression, famine and countless other crimes - that son of bitch Uncle Joe tried to kill the Duke.

CBS news reported this morning on the tube that in the late forties and early fifties, Stalin ordered multiple hit attempts on John Wayne, the outspoken anti-Communist actor.

If anyone had any doubt that Communism is evil, evil, evil, right to the bone, well there's your proof. You don't try and kill the Duke. Apparently, once Kruschev came to power, he stopped the assassination attempts because he was a big fan of the Duke. Go figure.