From Pine View Farm

Commence Operation Scapegoat (emphasis added):

Newly released documents show Blackwater workers and their supervisors in Afghanistan running amok – drinking heavily, using weapons without permission and ignoring Army protocol, all adding to an environment that may have contributed to the killings of unarmed civilians.

After two workers, including a Virginia Beach man, shot and killed two Afghan civilians last year, the Moyock, N.C.-based Blackwater was thrown off its $25 million subcontract, but not without a fight, the documents reveal.

The supervisor of the two men was specifically identified in e-mails and letters as fostering such an environment. And even after the killings last May, Blackwater – which now calls itself Xe Services – tried to keep him on the job and distance itself from the shootings.

The functions in question should have been performed by United States employees beholden and subject to the United States, not by mercenaries.

The outsourcing of military functions is bogus. It makes the official military budget look a little smaller (or more accurately not as big), while funneling money into private hands not beholden to the United States except on payday to perform the same functions with less efficiency, less effectiveness, undoubtedly less discipline, but at much greater expense.

It’s the hand-in-the-pocket thingee again.

Because all politics is economics. Anything else is a red herring.

The magician prattles on about magic powers and beautiful assistants so you don’t watch his hands in his pockets.

The Republicans prattle on about family values for the same reason. The difference is that their hands are in the country’s pockets.

That is, an unwholesome fixation on one thing, like ladies’ shoes.

Joseph Stiglitz on “deficit cut fetishism”:

Most economists also agree that it is a mistake to look at only one side of a balance sheet (whether for the public or private sector). One has to look not only at what a country or firm owes, but also at its assets. This should help answer those financial sector hawks who are raising alarms about government spending. After all, even deficit hawks acknowledge that we should be focusing not on today’s deficit, but on the long-term national debt. Spending, especially on investments in education, technology, and infrastructure, can actually lead to lower long-term deficits. Banks’ short-sightedness helped create the crisis; we cannot let government short-sightedness – prodded by the financial sector – prolong it.

Read the whole thing, particularly the paragraph towards the end in which he points out

America’s financial industry polluted the world with toxic mortgages, and, in line with the well established “polluter pays” principle, taxes should be imposed on it.

America’s financial industry has shown that it subtracts, rather than adding value and that incompetence is not its own reward; rather, incompetence deserves ginormous bonuses. And country club memberships.

Its advice should be discounted.

Via TPM.

A little better:

Initial claims for state unemployment benefits dropped 29,000 to a seasonally adjusted 469,000 in the week ended February 27, down from an upwardly revised 498,000 the prior week, the Labor Department said. * Analysts polled by Reuters had expected claims to drop to 470,000 from a previously reported 496,000 the prior week. * Initial claims data in recent weeks has been distorted by bad weather, making it difficult to gauge the labor market trend. * The four-week moving average of new claims, which irons out week-to-week volatility, fell 3,500 to 470,750, the Labor Department said. * The number of people still receiving benefits after an initial week of aid dropped 134,000 to 4.5 million in the week ended February 20, the lowest since early January 2009. * The insured unemployment rate, which measures the percentage of the insured labor force that is jobless, slipped to 3.5 percent in the week ended February 20 from 3.6 percent.

Analysis and commentary at the link.

Medical tort reform:

The health-care debate has been marred by the distortions, demagoguery, and outright lies that are typical of modern American political discourse. For example, lacking any substantive ideas of their own, reform opponents have seized on tort reform – taking away the rights of injured patients – as their solution to America’s health-care problems, despite ample evidence that it’s no solution at all.

Let’s call this tort-reform fixation what it is: a sign that many Republicans are bereft of ideas and obsessed with an issue that will do nothing to lower care costs or cover the uninsured. Medical malpractice is a political crutch that opponents of the health-care bills lean on time and time again to justify their efforts to derail reform.

The author of the column is a trial lawyer. Nevertheless, that does not keep him from being right. There may need to be some reform medical malpractice law in the interest of justice and good medical practice, but the effects of malpractice insurance, suits, and settlements on costs are minimal:

“It’s really just a distraction,” said Tom Baker, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania Law School and author of “The Medical Malpractice Myth.” “If you were to eliminate medical malpractice liability, even forgetting the negative consequences that would have for safety, accountability, and responsiveness, maybe we’d be talking about 1.5 percent of health care costs. So we’re not talking about real money. It’s small relative to the out-of-control cost of health care.”