Ron Paul and the Despoiling of the Middle Class, and the Cost of War, and the Military-Industrial Complex: Help!

“Republican” candidate Ron Paul did pretty well in the Michigan primary. In a good mood, he addressed his supporters at the end of the day. He said two things that surprised me, one that even surprised me a lot. During these primaries (plural), I have heard Dr Paul make a goodly number or strange or downright false statements (see postings on this blog). So, I don’t believe him anymore but it does not mean that everything he says is false. Some of his statements could easily be true and interesting. However, his record is so bad as far as I am concerned that I don’t feel like checking anything he says that sounds strange, or aright, or false. I hope someone will help me, a Paulista, or a folklorist perhaps.

1 The wars we have had for ten years, he said (I assume he means Iraq and Afghanistan), have added four trillion dollars to the US national debt ($4,000,000,000,000). I have no idea where this comes from. I doubt the contribution of the wars to the national debt can even be calculated. Yet, I would be happy if this figure were merely a pretty good approximation. I would say it’s fine even if the order of magnitude were right. How demanding is this? That’s the statement that surprises me only moderately.

At any rate, I sure hope this large amount included the 20 billion dollars per year just air-conditioning American forces in the two relevant countries Paul said it cost.

2 The congressman announced that there was a “transfer of wealth from the middle class” to the rich. That’s not a surprising statement since it’s also the basis of the Obama class war. What is surprising is the way this transfer takes place, according to the congressman. It is through the erosion of the currency, the US dollar’s value, according to Dr Paul. I don’t know how this could be. I have no quarrel with the idea that the US dollar has lost much value in say, 20 years, relative to something, to gold in particular. What I don’t know is how what is lost by the “middle-class” (whatever that is) comes to accrue to the benefit of “the rich.” Here again, I am open-minded. Please, help.

Speaking of mind, Paul’s followers applauded mindlessly when he offered this strange reasoning that is too difficult for me to grasp. Or maybe, just maybe, it’s just me and he has thousands, tens of thousands of followers (or devotees) who are both better informed and more intelligent than I am. Depressing thought!

Dr Paul needs a language style adviser. For me, it would be easier to believe him if he forswore expressions that bring back to life the distant days when young women lusted helplessly after me. (And I am not exaggerating.) One such, one of Paul’s favorites: “the military-industrial complex.” No kidding!

American Deaths from Fukushima Radiation (With an Important and Shameful correction)

  Note: This is the second time I have to make a correction to this posting. They were  important corrections both times. I must be losing my innate criticality. It’s probably from interacting too much with true believers. There is no need to repeat my mistakes. Instead, I am bolding the sentences subjected to recent corrections.

Periodically, I take the time to ridicule on this blog what I think is excessive, unsupported alarm about the Fukushima unclear reactor meltdown.

I point out that the available hard information does not correspond well with the level of fear the event generated and continues to generate. I am especially impressed with the failure to update the alleged human damage. It’s impressive because by its nature an excess of deaths and their purported radiation cause cannot easily be hidden.

My skepticism is fed by my vivid memory of the Chernobyl nuclear plant meltdown that also gave rise to massive hysteria only to be quietly abandoned as a journalistic topic in a few months.

In the case of Fukushima, the most interesting fact that has gone largely unreported is that today in Feb, 2012, no one has yet died from radiation exposure there. No one, not even any of the brave workers involved in the shutting down of the plant.

I don’t mean to convey the message that radiations are good for you. They are bad in large doses. I am glad for the existence of a 12 mile exclusion zone for humans around the plant. I am also very curious to find out what will happen to the wild fauna in the same area. It turns out the large exclusion zone around Chernobyl is a poacher’s paradise. Of course, I can’t bring myself to believe that radiations are deadly to one kind of animals, us, but not to others.

At any rate, it’s only fair to report that there is a new study of possible American deaths associated to radiation from Fukushima. I would not dismiss the study because it’s published in a good scholarly journal that practices peer-review (not everything but much better than nothing). Of the study’s two authors, one is an MD with good credentials; the other is a “health administrator” who I think is a crank. The study’s credibility is hemmed in by limited data but it’s done quite methodically and uses well what data do exist.

The study blames 14,000 extra deaths on Fukushima radiation. That’s out of a total US annual deaths of about 2,440,000. That’s about one and half excess death for 250 American deaths. You decide whether it’s big. (Note: I am fairly sure I had picked up from the study of reference itself a much lower – and false – number of annual US deaths. I can’t affirm it because I have not been able to access again this morning the study itself in the International J. of Public Health.)

Here is a link that will take you to an article that is itself linked to  the study published in the International Journal of Health Services:

http://www.zerohedge.com/contributed/study-fukushima-radiation-has-already-killed-14000-americans

A Scientific American blog called the study “Voodoo science” but the fact is that it was published in a good, peer-reviewed journal. I am slow to dismiss the work of peer reviewers except in “climate science,” of course where conspiracy rules.

If you are still worried about Japanese radiation and you don’t take the trouble to look at the study, you should lose much credibility in your own eyes, I think.

Massacre of Civilians Just Fine

The massacre of children and women continues in Syria, largely with weapons of war employed point-blank against civilian areas.

The Obama administration ‘s heart may be in the right place this time but the president has spent so much time degrading the US military and he is so much in debt to the communist wing of his party that he is paralyzed.

Ron Paul’s libertarians have it easier: The intra-societal conflict in Syria is somehow our fault and it’s none of our business  how many children Assad kills as long as they are Syrian citizens. I am waiting for some Paulista to give me a high moral reason why this is the right moral position to have. Maybe, they are too ashamed to oblige,

My position is clear, always has been: When you have a chance to hurt an enemy while performing a humanitarian mission at little risk, you should not miss it. If we blew up twenty of Assad’s tanks from the air, we would change the balance of power against the dying fascist regime of the Baath part. (Saddam Hussein’s own old party.)

Credibility and Virginity

I have engaged in enough discussions, enough arguments on this blog that it’s time to clarify my standards, or to clarify them again.

Life is short, and getting shorter as one ages. I avoid wasting it arguing with people who lack credibility unless they give me an occasion to enlarge the sum total of what is credible in the world. Same statement: If I can augment truth by slaying an untruth, it’s often worth the time.

If someone begins a long argument designed to show how wrong I am on some opinion or on some fact I cited, if he begins with the statement: “ It’s Tuesday,” and it’s actually Wednesday, I go on reading after making a mental note that the writer is careless.

If someone begin the same long demonstration with the statement: “When the sun rises in the West as it does every day,” it’s unlikely that I will keep reading. If I do, I will be watching like a hawk for some other statement of nonsense, either factual nonsense or vices of reasoning. Of course, I never fail to find one such, or two, or twelve.

I believe that people who engage in public argument should prize their credibility like a nun her virginity. However if, like me, you have accumulated a large capital in credibility you may be allowed a small number of involuntary slip-ups.

Ron Paul: Iran Surrounded

I watched what is probably the last Republican presidential candidate debate on 2/22/12. I am retired, that’s why!

In the past I have pointed out candidate Ron Paul’s indifference to facts on several postings. Yesterday, he gave yet another demonstration. Queried about what he would do about Iran’s supposed race toward the acquisition of nuclear devices, he said, as expected, that he would do nothing.

He argued that the Islamic Republic of Iran sometimes acted threatening because its Islamo-Fascist elite (not his words) feels threatened itself by our own actions. He pointed out that Iran was surrounded by “forty-five” of our bases.

I have been conversant about US military policies since the sixties. Yet, I have no idea what Congressman Paul’s meant. The main problem is that I don’t know what he means by “surrounded.” If he counts American military bases say, in Greenland and in Okinawa, the statement might just be right. Or, is it perhaps a statement that cannot be judged true or false, one way or the other?

I think this utterance is not a small thing because most people are not that conversant and they will naturally assume that it is factually correct. This is yet another time when what I think is an irresponsible statement at best serves to shore up Mr Paul’s undeserved credibility.

Reminder: I have said before that Ron Paul lives in an imaginary world as far as international policies are concerned.

In this case, I will reserve judgment in the hope that some Paul faithful will explain the quaint utterance: What forty-five bases?

I don’t bother to ask the Paul campaign because, the last time I asked a question of it, there was no response at all. I am attracting the attention of the libertarian blog “Notes on Liberty” to this question.

2/24/12 Update: Paulista Brandon Crackpot left a map with a vengeful note in response to my challenge. The map show American bases in…Iraq…. Wish like hell it were true!  Of course, I think this is not a validation of Ron Paul’s comment.

Ugly Conservative Sacred Cows

Sometimes, it’s wrong to be right. Here are three issues where conservative Republicans seem to this conservative Republican to be wrong, from a practical standpoint, at least. That’s at least from a practical standpoint. They may also be morally wrong. I won’t deal with this today. Those three issues are sacred cows of contemporary conservatism, ugly cows that hardly anyone dare slaughter. I will just have to do it.

Illegal immigration

The thought that some immigrants begin their lives in this benevolent, generous country by violating our laws is infuriating. It’s especially infuriating to the American and legal resident relatives of candidates to legal immigration who stand politely in line, often for years, sometimes to no avail. (I have a short essay on this blog on legal immigration into this country. Here its a summary: for most people in the world, it’s completely impossible. I address this matter succinctly in the second half of a piece on Social Security: http://factsmatter.wordpress.com/2011/09/23/bizarre-conservative-ideas-about-immigration). And, incidentally, if you don’t know it already, I am an immigrant myself, a legal immigrant. (You may even want to read excerpts from my memoirs: “I Used to Be French…” linked to this blog.)

The question is what to do about illegal immigration? Many conservatives declare that they favor muscular responses. Chief among those are militarizing the border with Mexico and mass deportation of illegal aliens in this country (most of whom are Mexicans).

The first time a member of the armed forces kills a twenty-year old Mexican trying to cross in order to buss tables in San Jose will also be the last time. We are not like that. Those who claim to want to put the military on the border have not thought things through. The military does most good when it’s shooting and when it gives the impression that it will shoot if necessary. Do you really expect them to shoot peaceful young men, and worse, women who commit an illegal act in order to make a living? (Said illegal act was only a misdemeanor for years, like illegal parking, by the way.)

I don’t care how tough conservatives they think they are. It does not sound credible. If you keep declaring that you want to do the inhumanely absurd and the absurdly inhumane it makes you lose credibility. You need your credibility for other struggles, struggles we might actually win quickly.

The severe determination to evict millions of illegal aliens sounds like bad science fiction the minute you think about it seriously. There are probably more than ten million of them, maybe more. They are concentrated in certain states such as California. Texas and Illinois. Nevertheless, there are illegal aliens in every state by now. They go to school with our children; they work in the businesses we patronize; they share our exercise machines; they worship in our churches. One immigrant who told me he came here illegally from Mexico is now president of the local branch of my bank. He is a good bank president, by the way. In part that’s because he possesses the common immigrant vigor. In part it’s because he is Mexican by culture. But I am getting away from my topic.

And, of course, if you think about it (please, do) you will soon figure out that many illegals, who came as babies, don’t know well any language other than English. Many have American brothers and sisters. You are not going to round them up. The very popular attempt to expel the small minority of illegals who have committed crimes is not even going well. And, no, it’s not all Obama’s fault. The logistics alone are daunting.

Moreover, if you polled a hundred “tough on illegal immigration” conservatives, you would find the following:

A small number would claim not to know any illegal alien. Most of those would be factually wrong. A larger number, when pressed, would request exceptions to the mass deportation order, exceptions for illegal aliens they know well: for Maria or for Luis. Maria and Luis would be their own illegals, their special lawbreakers, who happen to be good and meritorious illegal aliens. It’s the other guy’s illegal aliens they really object to! Those other illegal aliens are rabble. (Personally, I hate the Mexican who uses a leaf-blower every Monday morning at 8 on the dot. I want him deported, whether he is illegal or not.)

I develop these arguments extensively with respect to Mexican illegals specifically in a article co-authored with another immigrant, Sergey Nikiforov, published in Liberty, and linked to the front of this blog (“ If Mexicans and Americans Could Cross the Border Freely “)

In brief, this is not a good time (2/21/12) to argue about illegal aliens. It will invariably make you sound callous, inhuman and thoughtless plus impractical. Wait until you have the power to deal with the issue in a compassionate, humane, thoughtful and rational way.

You don’t need to die for every hill all at once.

Homosexual marriage

First, don’t bother to correct me. I know that the politically correct term is “same-sex marriage.” Political correctness interferes with my rational thought. And by the way, it’s not two guys who just happen to be good friends who are itching to get hitched! Let’s no be ridiculous.

Don’t let your visceral revulsion masquerade as rational argument. Don’t allow yourself to push your religiously-based condemnation on me who is not religious. Don’t push it on others who might otherwise make good allies in the conquest of power. Doing either is un-conservative. It makes you look like the worst of Communist totalitarians. (Fidel Castro used to put homosexuals in prison until some of his rare smart advisors talked him out of it.)

And don’t make absurd and devious arguments by naming laws directed against homosexuals getting hitched: “Defense of Marriage Act.” Whatever homosexuals do in private, or even on the public street may be disgusting to you but it does nothing to undermine heterosexual marriage. That particular institution does not need external attacks. It self-destructs from within every minute of the day. What do you expect any way? Do you really think that if the door were terminally slammed on homosexual marriage, the percentage of first heterosexual marriage ending in divorce would slip from, say 50% to 49%? Please, take the five seconds it takes to answer this question in your mind.

And, it you think about what you already know concerning the fragility of heterosexual marriage, you must know that banning alcohol – with the death penalty for the second offense, perhaps -would almost certainly do more to preserve the institution than any prohibition applied to homosexuals.

Think through that one too, please.

My own opinion on the issue: I think no group should be allowed to use the armed force of government to change the meaning of a common word, such as “marriage.” That’s essentially what militant homosexuals are trying to do. I am completely opposed on principle. However, I don’t think it will create a precedent if they succeed. The acceptance of the idea that marriage may involve two women, or two men, or three, will not usher the day when “lie” comes to mean “truth,” by government decree and under threat of jailing.

Conservatives need to be mature enough to fight in important battles and not to pick fights based on unreasoned rage.

And, incidentally, in case you are wondering, I am not one of the brave conservative homosexuals forced to stay in the closet. I am not a homosexual but strictly a normal, vulgar T&A kind of guy.

Imposing standards of performance on schools

There are many different reasons to be appalled at the whole educational establishment, K through high-school senior and beyond, including the university, and even some graduate and professional schools. I don’t like the word “appalled.” It sounds effeminate and left-liberal. So, in truth, I am not appalled but I am really pissed off. And, as a former teacher, I could tell you stories that would make your hair stand on end. And your hair wouldn’t come down until the next morning at best. What you know is not the half of it!

To pare down the causes of our disillusionment, to get down to its core:

The more numerous the national educational establishment and the more loaded with benefits, the more unassailable its privileges, the less Johnny knows how to read.

It began with elementary school that promoted “students” who couldn’ t spell their name; it’s crept to the colleges that now offer numerous remedial classes for freshmen they admitted under their own power. I can testify personally that I know an expensive university that awards degrees each year to people who cannot line up two grammatically correct sentences in any language. Some of these same students major in a foreign language. They can’t line up anything in the foreign language either. After four years and tens of thousands of dollars, they end up illiterate in two languages. N.S. !

There is a natural tendency to want to remedy this rolling disaster with a formula that seems to succeed in business:

Evaluate, punish or reward

There are several reasons why this is likely to be counterproductive.

First, the evaluation is not as easy as current plans seem to assume: It’s for schools as for computers: Give the best schools very bad students and they will only turn out mediocre students. Give mediocre schools excellent students, they will turn them mediocre. It’s not easy to figure out what does what although it’s possible to do in principle. Children are not like so many pounds of flour. They are intensely reactive and they come into the school system with built-in strengths and built-in defects. The relevant research would be quite expensive and it would take a long time to conduct.

It’s true that liberal teachers unions use these very arguments to protect their members from scrutiny and from accountability. This does not mean that this view is incorrect. You don’t want to create a worse situation by punishing good teachers that work with difficult human material and by rewarding bad teachers that are able to pick the low-hanging cherries.

Second, don’t be surprised if teachers sabotage evaluations done by existing school hierarchies. They will do this even when they approve of the fact of being evaluated and even if they approve of the evaluation tools. Education has been a rotten, intellectually corrupt field for so long that the hierarchies it generates cannot be seen as respectable by respectable teachers.

The solution to this last problem often seems to be to use “objective” evaluation tools, mechanical evaluation devices that do not make room for supervisors’ corruption. I agree that it’s possible in principle to develop such evaluative devices. By administering them according to a “before and after” pattern, it’s also possible to remedy at once the first and second objections I raise above.

Doing so creates a third problem that is so serious that it may be worse than the original problem any evaluations are supposed to remedy.

As someone who devised hundreds of tests, let me say that I don’t see how it would be possible to reformulate the evaluation tools for any area or especially, nationally with much frequency. Doing so would be extravagantly expensive, too time consuming. So, the teachers and their school “superiors” would quickly become aware of the contents of the tests, of what, very precisely the tests are actually testing. If the rewards and punishments were not significant, see above. If they were significant, you can be completely sure that most teachers, 80%, 90%, 95 % would immediately start teaching narrowly to the test.

How would you not expect teachers to do more or less this since their welfare and that of their children, even their retirement would depend exactly on their teaching to the test? I mentioned their retirement because economic self- advancement is normally done on a percentage basis. The raise you did not get this year will stay with you your whole life, literally. It will increase in relative size with every year. (I know how costly this sort of purity is because I followed such a strategy throughout my teacher career and I never caught up economically with my lackluster but conformist colleagues.)

The best possible outcome of this scenario is that after a while, American kids would read and write pretty much as well as say, Koreans, or Estonians.

Do you see where I am going? This is something very valuable that the current disastrous American education promotes or, that at least, it avoids destroying. For lack of a better word, that’s called “creativity.’ Americans have more of it than others. Look around from the Internet to giant double rolls of toilet paper in public facilities to country music!

Ideally, we would have a Johnny who would know how to read and write and who would also remain occasionally creative. I am afraid, we don’t know how to produce such a result. It does not mean that it cannot be done. It does not depend on a drastic, sudden reform though, It’s not a matter of getting tough, no more Mr Nice Guy!

Note that I am evoking here the possibility of a successful endeavor. I have not even begun to discuss the real likelihood of massive, systemic cheating in and ill-implemented “evaluate, punish, reward “ program. Look at the Atlanta school system for an example of how massively wrong this strategy can go.

I have no conclusion for this butchery proposal in three parts. I don’t need to know what ought to be don’t to stop doing what I shouldn’t do. I hope you will offer one conclusion or more.

A Good Society: The Coffee Proof

We still live in a good society. I keep forgetting this and life keeps reminding me.

I have a younger friend who graduated with honors and with a major in Philosophy. I liked him just for that. It sure beats a major in”Psychology,” or one in “Management.” Incidentally, I know that some of my readers know that I used to teach from a “Management Department.” My excuse is that I tried very hard never to teach whatever you think is “management” and that I pretty much succeeded overall. (This story will have digressions. It’s one of those days. Go with the flow.)

Anyway, my friend takes care of several coffee shops. He has become the owner’s right hand by din of being hard working and just plain reliable. Two things happened to him as a result. The first is political. My friend went to the University of California at Santa Cruz, where Stalinists communists are considered conservative. So, of course, he used to be kind of a left-winger. (That would be the honest kind, the kind that does not knowingly make false statements.) Nowadays, though, the closer the he gets to the books, to the actual accounting of the coffee shops, the more he moves to the political center. Who ever said philosophy is “useless?”

The other thing that happened to my friend through his work is that he became a coffee connoisseur. One day that he inquired about a present for me, I said, “ Surprise me with coffee.” He did. He brought me a small quantity of a variety I had never heard about. “How did you like it? “ he asked two days latter.

Well, I stopped lying – except in emergencies – at about the time I stopped lying to women. And, incidentally, there was never much reason to believe that I ever, ever deceived a single woman. Mostly, they listened to my lies smilingly because they liked the poetry of them.

At any rate, I replied to my friend that his gift coffee did not paint my particular town red. He had this superb response I have not been able to get out of my head for days now; he said that that particular coffee was “divisive.” I am so lucky! I live in a society so peaceful, so prosperous, so fulfilling that here, expensive coffee can be considered divisive!

La grande misère américaine

Comme chacun sait, il n’y a pas de couverture sociale aux Etats-Unis, aucune mesure de solidarité gérée par le gouvernment. Sauf que “chacun” se trompe, que si on est de langue française on est souvent systématiquement mal informé à ce sujet. (Il y a des raisons pour cela que je repèterai si jamais on me le demande.) En fait les programmes et projets d’aide sociale pullulent. Ceux-ci comprennent, entre autres, l’impôt négatif pour les travailleurs mal remunérés. C’est le type de mesure que le Parti Socialiste Français a, je crois, péniblement inscrit à son programme cette campagne électorale: On vous prélève mille dollars d’impôts à la source, le gouvernemnt fédéral vous en rembourse mille cinq cents. C’est chouette!

En tous cas, il existe un programme de distribution de coupons de nourriture administré par le Ministère fédéral de l’agriculture. Aujour’hui, on dépense ces coupons, le plus souvent sous la forme d’une carte de crédit, dans les points de vente alimentaires ordinaires. (Mais pas dans les restaurants.) Pour vous donner une idée, une mère célibataire avec un enfant touche dans ma région trois cent cinquente dollars mensuels de coupons. Ce n’est pas assez pour faire la fête. C’est plus que suffisant pour une alimentation complète, saine et équilibrée (mais sans alcohol, malheureusement).

Aujourd’hui, temps de crise économique, on dit qu’un Americain sur cinq touche des coupons. Le Ministère de l’agriculture trouve que le nombre est trop faible. Il  vient de lancer un concours offrant des prix soixante-dix mille dollars aux gagnants. Pour gagner, il faut que soit retenue votre idée, votre stratégie, sur la meilleure façon de faire augmenter le nombre des bénéficiaires de coupons de nourriture.

Members of Military Swarm Over Ron Paul’s Campaign With Checks!

Martin Anding, a Ron Paul partisan from Santa Cruz, point out to me that I had recently questioned Congressman’s Paul statement to the effect that he received more contributions from the military than any other Presidential candidate. I did, and, once more, I must eat humble pie … after a fashion. Or maybe not. You decide.

Martin provides the following link to what he thinks (and I don’t doubt) is the Paul source for this statement: http://www.armytimes.com/news/2012/02/military-ron-paul-gets-most-military-donations-020912w/

This source, the Army Times, is, I think, a generally trustworthy periodical with only limited resources with which to check the information it receives.

The article in the Army Times confirms that Congressman Paul ‘s listed, recorded contributions from armed forces entities have been to-date much more numerous that those going to other candidates. The article states that Paul received 1405 separate donations against Mitt Romney only 55 (that’s: fifty-five).

Now, there are currently 1,45 million active personnel in the armed forces plus an equal number of reservists. I will ignore the latter because the story does not say if they are counted as potential political contributors. However, the story specifies that military dependents are included among the contributors and so are civilian employees of the military. I would be surprised if dependents and civilian employees together did not jack up the number to two million or so.

With these reasonable and moderate adjustments, here is a summary of what I learned from the article in Army Times: I am expected to believe that the proportion of military donations to two Republican candidates to the relevant population is like this:

2,000,000 members

          1,405 contributions for Ron Paul

              55 contributions to Mitt Romney

or, alternatively, that the donation figures are foolish for reasons I need not fathom to dismiss them outright.

For the record, I would bet that a proper count would show that the number of separate donations to Ron Paul originating in all branches of the active military and dependents and civilian employees, is much larger than 1,405.

Same for the number in favor of Romney. This information is worse than no information. It’s not a rare event. Journalistic neutrality has its limits. Press organs should not publish absurd information without comment.

This is just another case where Ron Paul and his staff are not paying attention to what he says or displaying an extraordinary lack of understanding of simple numbers. I suspect they do this because his rivals dismiss him while they think many of his supporters will believe just about anything he says.

Ron Paul’s 20 Billion On Military A.C. – N. S.!

In an attempt to achieve holy humility, I am dealing with objections against the several times I accused Ron Paul of being insouciant about facts. The first time I questioned on his blog Ron Paul’s veracity with respect to the alleged facts he throws out freely, I expressed disbelief at his assertion that the US spent 20 billion (B) a year on air conditioning in Iraq and Afghanistan (“ Ron Paul Won’t Get My Vote” posted December 3st 2011.) I declared, of course, that I did not believe that number for a minute. I also speculated in that posting on the possible sources of such silliness.

In reaction, frequent critic of this blog and fervent Paulista Crackpot sent me a flurry of links to press items supposedly supporting Paul’s statement. The 20 billion figure was so absurd on its face that I did not, at the time, make enough of an effort to activate the links. He sent me again recently, in a more user-friendly form, linkages to three press items purporting to prove to me that this country really spent 20 billion dollars annually on air conditioning warring in Afghanistan and in Iraq (Obviously, for Iraq, the figure has to be applied retrospectively. Not a problem.)

The first item, from the British Telegraph, usually a good source, does not endorse the claim but clearly attributes it. It turns out that the claim was made by a retired general named Steve Anderson. I think no one at all seconded him. It turns out from the Telegraph piece and, more clearly, from the third source, NPR (of all things) that the retired general had an ax to grind. He had been struggling in vain to make the higher brass accept the idea of insulating military tents with foam. It appears from the NPR report that the general had “green”concerns among other concerns of a more directly military nature. (This is not statement on whether the general was right about the foam.)

The Telegraph story gives figures that put the total annual cost of the wars in Afghanistan and in Iraq in past years at 171 billion,or possibly at 180 billion. ( I am correcting a little upward for a given Iraq estimate based on 2011, a low year). Thus according to the same report in the Telegraph, air conditioning would account for something like 1/9^th of American military expenditures for the two theaters of war together. Assuming a run-of-the mill underestimate of the total costs of war, air-conditioning would still eat up around 1/10^th (ten per cent) of the whole.

That’s ridiculous, of course, but it may make sense sense if you keep in mind that the general was trying to prove a point. His accounting involves imputing to air conditioning some unknown fraction of the very high expenses naturally incurred when moving large amounts of freight over physically difficult, undeveloped terrain and under the constant threat of military attack.

Again, it’s no clear what formula you would use to attribute a fraction of the total transport expenditure to air conditioning. I note with interest though that if there were zero air conditioning in both countries, the transportation costs of everything else (ammunition, aviation fuel, trucks, parts, food) would probably amount to pretty much the same total. This is all a little fishy.

Yet, the idea of distributing the cost of an infrastructure across all users makes sense; it’s even quite intelligent, in fact. Perhaps, it’s a practice that should be adopted whenever market forces are lacking to tell us the true price of things. But at this point, it’s a highly unusual way of presenting information. It leads to false comparisons. (See above.) And, think of an apple grown in Washington state and transported to New York City to be sold there. If there were no market to tell me the true price of this apple, I am pretty sure that, with General Anderson’s accounting method, I could probably present the New York cost of that single apple as a cool $10 or more.

Note again that no one with credentials equal to those of General Anderson seems to have confirmed his A.C estimate. The Pentagon gave some alternative figures that NPR (of all sources) faithfully reproduces. There is every reason to believe that the Pentagon, a government agency, has to rely on conventional accounting methods. The Pentagon made these two relevant statements:

1     It spends annually for energy $15 billion for all its military operations around the world. “Energy” involves much more than air conditioning, obviously. The whole wold is a lot more than Iraq and Afghanistan.

2   It gives recent figures for fuel costs for Afghanistan alone equivalent to about $2.4 billion annually. It’s difficult to imagine that fuel for air conditioning specifically constitutes more than a fraction of all the fuel used in that theater of war including for trucks, cars, and especially, for airplanes. It seems reasonable to think that the air conditioning expense for Afghanistan is a small fraction of 1/10^th of the amount advanced by General Anderson.

Now, if you think the Pentagon is lying here although it is one of most watched organizations in the world, you must either admit that there is no way to obtain this kind of information or, alternatively, you have better sources. If you do, please share them, don’t hog them, please!

I think that what happened with the bombastic allegation by Congressman Ron Paul is that the information came from some people on his overenthusiastic staff. As is often the case with enthusiasts, they didn’t take the time to study the very documents they use to shore up their pre-conceived notions. I persist in thinking that Mr Paul himself does not crack the whip on helpers with respects to such peccadilloes as saying “10” for “much less than 1.” Congressman Paul and his staff are, at minimum, unusually credulous. I am not sure I would not prefer that they lied like many other politicians and their organizations.

If you insist in spite of everything on believing the absurd 20 billion figure, you might at least console yourself with the thought that the estimated cost of the recent US military intervention in Libya was only 1/20^th as much as the cost of air conditioning the war in Afghanistan and Iraq in a hot year, with full personnel. The liberation of Libya was a steal, I would say!

(This last info is from The Week, the third source Crackpot provided in a futile attempt to overcome implausibility.)

I am not sure whether you will be able to activate the links below that Crackpot sent me. If you can’t, perhaps Crackpot will oblige again.

The UK’s Telegraph on $20 billion a year for air conditioning (which we’ve already gone over a number of times):http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/8601975/US-spends-12.5-billion-a-year-on-air-con-in-Iraq-and-Afghanistan.html

The Week on $20 billion a year:http://theweek.com/article/index/216786/the-militarys-20-billion-air-conditioning-bill-by-the-numbers

And, last but not least, NPR drops the $20 billion bomb:http://www.npr.org/2011/06/25/137414737/among-the-costs-of-war-20b-in-air-conditioning