DHS Doesn’t Want to Scan Shipping Containers

/19 Comments/in /by

In 2007, Congress passed the 9/11 Act mandating the government implement the remaining recommendations of the 9/11 Commission. As part of this, they required that, by 2012, all shipping containers be scanned before they get to the United States. Only, DHS is balking at this, calling it unachievable. So GAO did a study of efforts to scan shipping containers to see whether DHS really knows whether it is achievable or not. The study shows that DHS has basically refused to even figure out whether 100% scans is feasible, and instead plans on just granting all ports a waiver from this law.

Basically, DHS is refusing to follow the law because it doesn’t want globalized trade to pay for the costs of making such trade secure.

As a reminder, the 9/11 Commission recommended scanning all shipping containers for WMDs (really, nukes, since they’re not doing chemical or biological scans). But scans would be valuable, as well, for hindering the importation of other things–drugs, arms, and people. Basically, scanning shipping containers would address one of the security risks of globalized trade that all sorts of illicit groups are currently exploiting. It would be asking importers to pay the full cost of importing foreign goods.

But no one wants to do this. GAO describes the complaints about the mandate to screen shipping containers.

Both DHS and CBP, as well as foreign governments and customs organizations, have expressed serious concerns regarding the feasibility and efficacy of the 100 percent scanning requirement. In April 2009, the Acting Commissioner for CBP testified that much had been done to enhance the security of cargo containers relative to other modes of transportation, and added that the area of maritime security should not be overemphasized to the detriment of other transportation modes. He also emphasized that the threat of a significant nuclear weapon in a container remains remote and requested that the scanning requirement be thoughtfully reconsidered by Congress. In January 2009, the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security also stated that any requirement regarding container scanning from Congress must be achievable and affordable and noted that the July 2012 deadline for 100 percent container scanning appeared to be unattainable. In April 2009, the Secretary determined that CBP would focus deployment of the SFI program to foreign locations of strategic importance in a way that will maximize security benefits given its limited resources. In addition to DHS’ concerns that the requirement to scan all U.S.-bound cargo containers cannot be met, foreign governments and customs organizations have expressed their opposition to the requirement. For example, in June 2008, members of the WCO unanimously endorsed a resolution expressing concern that implementation of 100 percent scanning would be detrimental to world trade and could result in unreasonable delays, port congestion, and international trading difficulties.10 Similarly, in May 2008, the European Parliament issued a resolution calling for the United States to repeal the 100 percent scanning requirement.

Now, the GAO explains a number of real impediments to scanning all shipping containers at other ports: governments at those ports don’t want to do the scans, the scan technology is not yet robust or effective enough to work well. And, of particular concern, there are safety concerns for drivers that drive the shipping containers through scanners.

Read more →

Share the Turkey

/18 Comments/in /by

Picture 146A couple of weeks ago, the USDA put numbers to the reality that has appeared, anecdotally, all over the country: more and more people in this country don’t have enough food. Almost 15% of the country had at least some food insecurity last year. 5 million more kids faced hunger last year than the year before.

That means the food banks that have helped such families fill the gap are slammed, facing far more demand than they can meet.

So as you prepare to join family and friends tomorrow to give thanks for everything you’ve got, if you’re able, please consider helping the food banks that are trying to put Thanksgiving meals on so many tables this year.

Feeding America

Pantry Net

Angel Food Ministries

Foodpantries.org

Gleaners Community Food Bank, Southeastern MI

Food Gatherers, Washtenaw County, MI

(Susie’s got more links here)

NY Post Floats Dimon to Replace Geithner

/86 Comments/in /by

Talk about unclear on the concept! The NY Post claims that “a number of policy makers” have proposed ousting Geithner and giving the position of Treasury Secretary to one of the MOTUs who was effectively Geithner’s “client” at both the NY Fed and Treasury. (h/t scribe)

Sources tell The Post that a number of policy makers have begun mentioning Dimon as a successor to Geithner, whose standing in Washington has suffered because of the country’s high unemployment rate, the weakness of the dollar, the slow pace of the recovery and the government’s mounting deficit.

Last week, Geithner faced a withering attack from some Republican members of the Joint Economic Committee, getting into a testy exchange with one congressman who at one point asked Geithner if he would step down.

Dimon, meanwhile, has achieved rock star status during the financial crisis, having navigated JPMorgan through the recession and being a go-to guy when Uncle Sam last year needed Wall Street’s help during the collapses of Bear Stearns and Washington Mutual.

Furthermore, while many bank chiefs are facing heat over outsize bonuses, Dimon has repeatedly made clear he won’t write fat checks to attract or keep talent.

Now, you can never tell whether the Post is reporting news or spewing propaganda, and the fact that the Post reports only that Republicans want to get rid of Geithner and not–for example–Democrat Peter DeFazio suggests that this might be the current state of Republican spin.

Still, it is true that Obama thinks Dimon can do no wrong. And it is true that Obama’s economic policy has been totally captured by people like … Dimon.

So who knows? Maybe this is a genuine trial balloon?

Mika Brzezinski and her 7% Husband

/88 Comments/in , /by

In the guise of pitching her book on career and family yesterday, Mika Brzezinski had this to say:

Finding a job is hard enough, but have you ever considered the odds and the challenges of finding a good man?

Bad news, girls. The odds are definitely better on getting the right job than getting a good partner for life. Someone who will grow with you. Someone to develop memories with. Someone who was there in the beginning. Someone who will be there at the end.

Don’t push away that chance if you’re one of the lucky ones who find that partner. And remember, you can always change a job. I hear it’s much harder to switch out a husband.

Now maybe this will come as a surprise to someone born into fame and connections like Mika, but it’s not actually all that easy to find a job. As CNN pointed out the other day, statistically it’s actually harder to find a job right now than it is to get into Harvard (or Mika’s alma mater of Williams).

Since the beginning of the recession in December 2007, job openings declined from 4.4 million to 2.4 million and the number of officially unemployed persons grew from 7.5 million to 15.7 million, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

If the 15.7 million officially unemployed workers were to apply for those 2.4 million jobs, the chance of any one of them finding a job are about 15 percent, or roughly the same odds as being accepted to the University of Pennsylvania.

Read more →

Break with the Bankers

/57 Comments/in , /by

In the calm before yesterday’s election night storm, Howie Kurtz took a moment to engage in his favorite hobby, obsessing about Democratic men’s penises.

If any of the candidates are patronizing hookers, Chris Matthews has the right guest. Eliot Spitzer, on the set.

But Matthews may in fact have had the most logical guest on to interpret last night’s results. As Digby concluded last night,

At this point, the only thing that seems obvious to me is that the super wealthy just aren’t as popular as they used to be. Even in New York City.

You see, regardless of his own considerable fortune and whether he has paid for sex, Spitzer had this to say yesterday (presumably before Bloomberg almost failed to buy a city):

Imagine this: by next spring, an intellectual consensus will have emerged that the concentration in the banking sector that developed from the 1980s until the crash of ‘08 was misguided. Voices as disparate as Former Fed Chair Paul Volcker, Bank of England Governor Mervyn King, meta- investor George Soros, and the Wall Street Journal editorial page will be in agreement on this point.A few brave souls on the Right — recognizing that the Republican Party has been bereft of ideas in its attacks on President Obama — will then try to re-define a populist, conservative attack by asserting that the White House has been captured by Wall Street. Real populism and change, they will argue, will come from the Republican, not the Democratic, party.

The power of such an attack from the Right should not be underestimated. There will be a huge first mover advantage that goes to the candidates who grab the real banner of attacking the structure of Wall Street as having been the root of the crash of ‘08.

[snip]

So the simple question remains: why aren’t we focusing on the problem that got us here in the first instance — the scope, range, and size of the mega-institutions whose risk taking has so far inflicted only enormous harm on our economy? If the Republicans pick up this issue before we do, the elections of 2010 could be even worse than we are now fearing.

The teabaggers failed yesterday, but there’s every reason to believe they will be more successful at mobilizing anxiety and frustration in Florida. And they’ll be doing it all the while downplaying Dick Armey’s considerable financial largesse.

If the teabaggers can then turn their energy into a focus on Wall Street, I do believe they’ll be successful in coming years. Particularly if the Administration continues to coddle the bankers.

Update: Speaking of Spitzer, Gawker has the journalist/flack emails from the first days that scandal broke.

Leo Gerard: I’m Tired of Hearing about Stimulus

/11 Comments/in /by

I’m at the New American Economy Conference, watching Leo Gerard, the head of the Steelworkers, talk about the need for a manufacturing plan. He has quoted Jeff Immelt and Alan Mulally talking about the need for a concerted focus on manufacturing in the United States.

One point he made is that by framing economic recovery in terms of “stimulus,” rather than a manufacturing plan, you imply a one-time lightning strike, rather than the plan that Immelt and Mulally–and the Steelworkers–are calling for.

Update: He went on to say, “When I was a kid if they asked your for 15% interest, they’d arrest you. Now, they make you Employee of the Year.”

Building the New Economy Conference

/16 Comments/in , /by

A couple of days ago I pointed out how Steve Rattner, Obama’s auto czar, was absolutely blind to the degree to which his impressions of the auto industry were true, too, for Rattner’s own finance industry. That highlighted an issue I’ve been trying to focus on (between covering Obama’s cover-up of Dick Cheney’s crimes): the huge imbalance in our economy.

I’ll be heading to DC tomorrow for a conference that tries to address that issue, “Building the New Economy.” As Scott Paul, who’s been leading these issues, says,

But chalking up the blame to a few bad apples on Wall Street and their risky financial instruments, and responding by simply providing appropriate regulation in the financial services sector, will ultimately be unsatisfying. There are much deeper, structural issues which must be urgently addressed. Otherwise, the absurd positive feedback loop will continue: consumer debt, subsidized Chinese imports, American job loss and factory closures, the growing U.S. current account deficit, burgeoning Chinese currency reserves reinvested in American debt … These will only inflate new bubbles and reinforce our current problems.

Some of us warned that this day would come. We knew that an economic strategy predicated on replacing wage growth with debt and credit to maintain a certain standard of living was doomed to fail. We knew that this nation could not replace manufacturing jobs and their multiplier effect, as well as their positive impact on the trade balance and wealth generation, with lower-wage service and retail jobs.

If you’re in town, stop by–some cool bloggers–and people like Sherrod Brown and Richard Trumka will be there.

Hopefully, we can fix health care then start talking about how Americans can make something again.

Depression Economy

/87 Comments/in /by

picture-133.png

It says something, I think that the State Chamber of Commerce that has invited Glenn Beck as a keynote speaker this week–Michigan–has a state economy that is functionally in a depression.

Hell Loses Its Guard Dog

/12 Comments/in , /by

cerberus.thumbnail.jpgAtrios baited me to weigh in on Cerberus’ imminent demise.

Investors in hedge funds run by Cerberus Capital Management LP, whose audacious multi-billion dollar bet on the U.S. auto industry went bust, are bolting for the door, clinching one of the highest-profile falls from grace of a superstar in the investment world.

Clients are withdrawing more than $5.5 billion, or nearly 71% of the hedge fund assets, in response to big investment losses and their own need for cash, according to people familiar with the matter.

"We have been surprised by this response," Cerberus chief Stephen Feinberg and co-founder William Richter wrote in a letter delivered to clients late Thursday.

And while I suggested I would keep my schadenfreude in check until such time as I got to see Cerberus’ Senate defender, Bob Corker, weep, I just couldn’t resist two points.

First, who the hell thought a financial institution in which John Snow, 43’s failed Treasury secretary, and Dan Quayle, 41’s laughable Vice President, had significant management roles would succeed? Sure, having Snow and Quayle on board promised that people like Corker would subvert the national interest in favor of his buddies at Cerberus. But even an institution wired into the best crony network must exhibit some basic competence.

And, too, I take some joy that this model of financialized predation has failed. Yeah, Cerberus is not singlehandedly responsible for Chrysler’s failure. But it is nice to see Cerberus pay for its efforts to suck some value out of a company by extracting its financial wing at the expense of its productive core.

It’s just a damned pity that so many real human beings have suffered in the interim.

(Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/puyo/ / CC BY-ND 2.0)

Greetings from Steel-Town

/55 Comments/in /by

I know I’m going to have a blast visiting with people here at Netroots Nation. But I’ve already done what will likely be the coolest thing I do: a tour of a local steel plant. There were about 30 of us who took a bus out into the Monongahela Valley and all dolled up in hard hats, Nomex suits, and safety glasses to see how they make steel (Jane will be posting a photo of us, but I’m sure it won’t give you the proper sense of just how gorgeous Jane looks in an industrial suit). 

The video doesn’t give you a full sense of the size and heat of the process. The ladle that appears in the early part of the video is maybe a story and a half high, all moved around on a giant pulley system.

There were a number of us who left saying, "next time I hear someone complaining about their job, I will tell them to shut up unless they’re a steelworker." It is hot, there are tons of steps everywhere. But the whole trip was a fascinating way to understand something about Pittsburgh–and about where our cars and stuff comes from.