One more example. I get requirements that make little sense sometimes, really. It happens. I take it to the program manager, who takes it to… whoever. Sometimes we fix the requirement then and there. Sometimes we let it stand, code to it, let it get raised as an issue in verification validation and it gets fixed then. It's not for me to cowboy it; we have process we have to adhere to.
He claims that the FBI should be immune from criticism and oversight so that, get this, they can preserve the rule of law and protect us from tyranny.
He tells a bald face lie about the law pertaining the the Director of the FBI: "The 10-year term given to all directors following J. Edgar Hoover’s 48-year tenure was created to provide independence for the director and for the bureau." That is exactly backward. The Director does not have a term; he serves at the President's pleasure. But he is prohibited from serving more than 10 years, without a special dispensation from Congress. That was done to limit the independence of the director, so as to try to prevent another Hoover. It seems to have been less than successful.
Webster also lies about the AG report, claiming that it found the scandalous Russia/Trump investigation to be well founded.
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Boy, do we ever need Trump.
Merry (day after) Christmas!
Thomas William Fuller,
"Merry (day after) Christmas!"
That's Boxing Day in much of the English speaking world. My wife and I just came back from a Boxing Day party.
Happy Xmas everyone.
and Lucia and family.
Looking forward to a freezing 2020!!
reply to: DeWitt Payne (Comment #178580)
One thing the writer of the article didn't address was that most aircraft have systems that assist the pilot in maintaining trim – among other things. MCAS was a new way to do that. automatically managing trim is not considered to be something that can fail catastrophically because the pilot can detect the failure (as the article writer stated) and disable the trim management function and handle trim management automatically. These systems would not have been considered a safety critical function and Boeing likely used the existing hazard assessments for an auto trim function failing to realize that there could be pilots out there that would fail to detect the problem and disable the autotrim function. The change in the balance of the airplane probably gives the pilot less time to recognize the problem, but from what my pilot friends have told me, it should still have been easily managed if the pilots had any clue about such a failure mode.
There have been grumblings in the industry about just how poor the pilot training is in some parts of the world, but it hadn't made its way to the Boeing design team or the regulators and Airworthiness Representatives (the same thing as an FAA Designated Engineering Representative) mentioned in the article. So they went with the legacy hazard assessment which allowed for a single-thread design (meaning no redundancy or cross checking).
As the article said, things fail in aircraft. The design assumed the pilots would be able to recognize and deal with the problem without difficulty, but the pilots in command of the aircrafts that crashed did not and could not – which means a crash.
Having worked as both a DER, and designer of safety critical airplane systems, I'm fairly confident that the new design has an updated hazard assessment pushing it to require a more robust design with redundancy and cross checking in it. That could have been done before, I don't think I would have put that much faith in the pilot if I didn't need to for a design I worked on (I have scars from other projects that say you never rely on humans to follow the rules unless you have no other feasible way to avoid it), but I also know that design teams and regulators tend to focus their attention on the areas they KNOW are safety critical.
The fact that the large number of people that had to have agreed that the design was reasonable, including Boeing pilots, safety experts, certification experts, and regulators (also including flight control engineers, safety experts, and pilots) tells me that Boeing alone isn't responsible for accepting the design as reasonable.
What you aren't seeing discussed in the media too much is that the airlines whose pilots were unable to recognize and deal with what should have been a trivial problem were doing allowing those pilots to fly their aircraft.
2 bits from a retired Boeing Engineer…
I suppose I should be thankful that conservatives are finally recognizing that scrutiny of both law enforcement and intelligence gathering is important. Liberals like myself knew this decades ago, although some of us seem to have forgotten in recent years.
To be fair, some of the very conservative have been even more wary than we liberals.
Mechanisms for maintaining order within a society will always be abused. Sometimes to protect criminal activity by those in power, such as today. Sometimes to prevent mass disagreement with policy, as in the Sixties and Seventies.
Pity that 'Starve the Beast' seemed to always refer to those parts of the Beast that were not armed.
Tom,
Take the labels out of your comment and it then rings of truth.
It depends on whose ox is being gored. The behavioral responses seem identical regardless of how you label them. It almost makes one wonder what the point of labeling is.
I submit that the actions of those in power and the motivations behind them are the same, regardless of political labeling. The only thing different is the story being told as to why.
Earle (Comment #178653): "I submit that the actions of those in power and the motivations behind them are the same, regardless of political labeling. The only thing different is the story being told as to why."
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Indeed.
Thomas Fuller, I concede I gave too much weight to Lanny Davis's claim that he got a close look of how this surveillance operated, and he found privacy to be well taken care of. This had to do not with FISC but the NSA databases.
Now the reality appears to be any contractor could look at whatever he wanted on anyone.
MikeN,
"Now the reality appears to be any contractor could look at whatever he wanted on anyone."
Or any Congressional committee chair can look, and then make them public. Talk about abuse of power. But if the correct ox is being gored, the MSM not merely doesn't care, but thinks it's a great idea.
Thomas Fuller
**Pity that 'Starve the Beast' seemed to always refer to those parts of the Beast that were not armed.**
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Sounds like you are giving us a reason to support the 2nd amendment. 🙂
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**Mechanisms for maintaining order within a society will always be abused.**
Yes. Like when the IRS placed conservative groups under intense scrutiny during the Obama administration.
** Sometimes to protect criminal activity by those in power, such as today. **
Or during the Obama administration when Hilary appears to have been protected. Oh.. yeah… the FBI investigated the IRS and uhmm…. James Comey But these must be what you are referring to when you say "today".
pauligon59 (Comment #178651)
December 27th, 2019 at 11:21 am
This post by pauligon59 has a view of the Boeing problem that coincides with what I read from a single source that I believe was in the WSJ. Why is it so difficult to get views like this out to the public? I think it has to do with it not fitting some generally accepted view that is considered more newsworthy. If pilot training globally is an issue here would not emphasis on other issues detract from getting that problem the attention it requires? I also think that regulators get off the hook rather easily is these situations.
Earle (Comment #178653)
December 27th, 2019 at 2:49 pm
I think Earle's post encompasses my views on these political contradictions by way of the ox being gored. Unfortunately I think it has to do with a two party system where the parties and their cheerleaders use all kinds of rationalizations to defend the actions of their party and its members for that which they would condemn the other party and its members. These discussions miss the point, in this libertarian's view, in that it fails to address the common thread of government power and its consequences.
Kenneth,
The "whose ox is being gored" issue isn't limited to two party systems. It happens in 1 party systems (like communist party governments). It happens in the presence of many parties. It happens in families, schools, professional societies investigating ethical or business issues… wherever. It just happens.
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When a particular group or person is in power, they tend to not go after their own or not go after those they see as "friendlies".
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"We" tend to notice when "they" come after "us". But if "we" go after "them"… well either "they" really truly deserved it, or it's not such a big issue relative to "real" issues — you know the ones that are really "important".
pauligon59 (Comment #178651),
"One thing the writer of the article didn't address was that most aircraft have systems that assist the pilot in maintaining trim – among other things."
Yes, but in this case the MCAS was put in not as simply a pilot aid, but as a software kludge to fix a fundamental flaw in the design, an increase in angle of attack with increased thrust. And fairly late in the process, the maximum change in trim that the MCAS could apply was quadrupled.
As far as pilot training, the cause of the second 737Max crash seemed to me to be mainly pilot error (WSJ article that I could probably find again if necessary). The MCAS was disabled initially after the plane nosed down, but the engines remained at takeoff thrust in spite of an audible cockpit alert, heard on the flight recorder, that airspeed was too high. The high airspeed made it even more difficult for the pilot to pull the stick back to raise the nose or adjust the trim manually. Then the MCAS was TURNED BACK ON.
lucia (Comment #178672)
December 28th, 2019 at 1:14 pm
With what you say here, Lucia, I do not disagree, but taking sides in voluntary relationships is much less consequential, diffused and subject to individual options than in one were the order of the day is coercion. With a two party political system one will rule and thus taking sides is more consequential than if multiple parties prevailed and taking sides was related to political parties.
Hi Lucia
merry xmas & happy new year to all from the UK
Notwithstanding comments above, the MCAS system is designed to make a "bridge too far" upgrade of an obsolete aircraft behave as its earlier variants and therefore save the customers the cost of training and certification of pilots on a new type.
Obsolescence. The 737 is a short-medium haul aircraft. It came in to service in 1968. It was designed with "short legs" so it sits close to the ground because the regional airports only had air stairs and baggage handlers chucking suitcases from the ground into the hold.
Original 737s had turbojet engines. These have been superceded with turbofans. This is an issue with the 737 because turbofans have a much larger frontal diameter than turbojets there are problems with foreign object injestion and ground clearance. If you look at a picture of a 737 from the front you will see that the lower part of the intake nacelles are flattened. This is to alleviate the clearance FOD problem .
The 737Max has further enlarged engines. With no more room to fit them under the wing, they are mounted on extended pylons. This changes the thrust moment and causes pitch-up, especially under take off power. MCAS was introduced to automatically trim nose down in these conditions, particularly so that pilots could transfer from earlier versions [b]without needing extra training[/b]
Lets run through this. Takeoff achieved, running through 300ft AGL and fully occupied with cleaning up. Undercarriage up, speed increasing, flaps up etc. etc. Bing bong bing bong. The hooters go off, the cockpit lights up like Tokyo At Night, the aircraft pitches steeply nose down and and won't respond to pulling full strength at the wheel. You have 300ft to diagnose and fix the problem. Don't forget, this is a 737Max and you don't need extra training
Bloke in Japan,
I don't think there is anything obsolete about the 737. It never had turbojet engines; the only Boeing civilian aircraft with such engines were early versions of the 707 built in the 50's. Your accident description bears no ressemblance to the actual accidents that happened.
There have been several plane incidents over the past few decades where automated sensors/systems have failures and the pilots don't recover from them, basically putting too much trust in systems that have worked reliably in their experience.
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Automated travel systems in cars will likely suffer the same fate. Once automated driving systems on interstates become common / mandatory people will lose the skill of car handling that we all have built up. So the automated systems will work great and improve safety, but might just decide to leave it to the human when it hits a construction area at night in heavy weather. The inexperienced human will then proceed to do rather poorly.
Nothing wrong with automation systems as long as they are designed with the appropriate robustness. In the case of the 737MAX, at least in my opinion, it is clear that the MCAS was not designed with the robustness needed given the way some airlines operate. 20/20 hindsight and all that. This sort of thing has happened before – Lauda Air had a 767 come apart while in cruise when an engine thrust reverser deployed. The cause – the airline continued to operate the airplane even though it was annunciating several faults in the thrust reverser system that were identified as "non-dispatchable" by Boeing. In other words, the faults that were present needed to be fixed before flying again. They didn't fix them and finally the next failure occurred that caused the thrust reverser to deploy at the worst possible time. As a result, Boeing changed the design of the thrust reversers so that it would be even more difficult for an operator to cause the same thing to happen.
History is full of that kind of thing – assumptions that should have been questioned (like all pilots will recognize what lure of the trim system will look like and know how to deal with it) don't get the necessary critical thinking applied and it ends up at best costing someone a lot of money and at worst killing people. Killing people causes drastic reactions by the design teams to keep that particular class of issues from arising in future designs.
Automobile automation of controls has been going on for quite some time. Computers are managing most of the engine functions in cars built in the last twenty years or so. Speed controls have been around even longer but are getting much better now. Adaptive Cruise Control has been around for quite awhile as well but is now being seen on more models at lower trimlines – I have it on both of my cars and love it.
When it is done right, the automation simplifies the effort of driving so that the driver can spend more time on important stuff like situational awareness. But stupid is as stupid does and some drivers decide that they don't need to spend as much time on what is going on around them and no level of automation will protect you from being stupid.
Eventually, automakers will be able to put the sensor and computing package into a car that will allow the "driver" to safely take a nap. But they don't have it yet.
Mike M. You are wrong. A search for images of the 737 200 will clearly show them fitted with turbojets and not turbofans.
Juan Brown (a very experienced ex-military and current 777 FO) has posted a number of very detailed analyses of the problems with the 737Max and the MCAS sytem. His most recent video where he goes through the Lion Air flight recorder crash data is here:
Essentially the pilots were confronted with two failures: unreliable air speed and excessive angle of attack. They were unable to diagnose and rectify the problem and they crashed. That makes two crashed 737Maxs.
Bloke in Japan,
No, it is you who are mistaken. The original 737 engines were low by-pass turbofans, with a bypass ratio of about 1, not turbojets: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pratt_%26_Whitney_JT8D
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Appearances can be be deceptive.
In the CBS News summary of the year yesterday, there was no mention of the IG report on the FISA warrants. There was a comment meant to disparage Trump's firing of Comey.
But there's no bias in network news and the FBI doesn't need oversight or to be subordinate to the President. /sarc
If you watch airline crash documentaries you will find that almost all modern crashes are caused by a sequence of failures. Most single point failures have been rooted out and the response to crashes is pretty good IMO to prevent repeated crashes (The MAX possibly being an exception). For those who grew up in 1970's and before it is amazing how few crashes there are now given how many * trillions * of miles are actually being flown. There are ~20x more miles now than in the the 1970's and the accident rate is way down. https://aviation-safety.net/graphics/infographics/Fatal-Accidents-Per-Year-1946-2017.jpg
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It's getting to the point where the automated system giving up and handing it off to the human might be more risky in many situations.
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I got a drone for Christmas (oops, I was told quad copter is a less threatening term, ha ha) and even these thing have automated Return To Home functionality and obstacle avoidance functionality while the drone automatically follows you as you walk/bike/etc. Of course you can type "drone crash video" into YouTube and see it isn't quite perfected by any definition yet. Wires and bare tree branches take down a lot of drones with automated crash avoidance sensors, but pilot failure is of course the leading cause.
The FBI disgraced themselves over the last few years. It's time they go back to their real jobs instead of sticking their noses into high profile/low impact politics. The Russia collusion/interference narrative was way overblown and the FBI did nothing to prevent the hysteria. Comey's media appearances along with Clapper and company was a disaster for the integrity of these organizations. You can't stop them from doing it but it was rather unhelpful. Trump may be flawed in numerous areas, but he is a magician in making his opponents publicly bring out the worst in themselves.
Mark Bofill,
There is no doubt the FBI does useful things. They get themselves into trouble because of either ‘power corrupts’, they get involved in politics (politics is mostly corrupt!), or as in this case, both. I think there are a few ways to improve the FBI:
1) Make even the *appearance* of politics influencing any investigation (like the star-crossed FBI lovers…. and many others at DOJ and FBI) grounds for automatic firing and loss of pension.
2) Make all political appointments (FBI and DOJ) automatically terminate at the end of an administration.
3) Set strict rules for politically sensitive investigations which lead to criminal prosecution of the *investigators* if in any way violated.
4) Modify the FISA process to require solid evidence (essentially legal proof) of felonious behavior *before* issuing any warrant on a US citizen, and a requirement of explicit confirmation of that felonious behavior from the initial FISA warrant *before* any renewal of the warrant.
That is quite a list in the Wikipedia article. And it does not even mention the massive FBI failures leading up to Sept. 11.
Interesting ideas Steve. Lemme think about those.
I am in Hawaii, and am scheduled to take a Helicopter tour on the Big Island on Jan. 2d. I am generally suspicious of the safety of helicopters, but thought it was something my children (14 & 18) would enjoy. About 11 days ago, there was a fatal accident in New Zealand and 4 days ago there was a fatal accident in Hawaii. (Kauai). Am somewhat conflicted, but currently leaning towards cancelling the flight. Curious what people here would do and how they would view the statistical chances of something bad happening.
Should add that I talked to a local familiar with weather conditions (I am staying close to Makaha surf spot now, and locals tend to be well-versed in weather because of impact on surf breaks), and he said that he thought wind up and down drafts were unpredictable and probably caused the Kauai crash, implying that he wouldn't put his family on one of these helicopters.
JD Ohio,
Local news reports say 18 helicopter crashes in the last 5 years in all of the state, but only 8 fatal crashes. Most crashes appear to have been sightseeing tours. I guess you would need to know the number of sightseeing tours run over 5 years to rationally evaluate the risk. Suppose there are 200 helicopter tours a day…. so maybe 40,000 tours over 5 years. The risk of a crash is then ~18/40,000… about 1 in 2,100….. 1 in 5,000 for a fatal crash. Maybe there is source of how many tour flights actually take place every year.
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FWIW: When I carried significantly more life insurance (younger kids) my policies all were voided if I flew on anything other than a standard commercial airline. That indicates to me significant statistical risk for all other flights.
Tom Scharf (Comment #178717)
December 31st, 2019 at 10:30 am
That analysis appeared from the start one that was just waiting to be refuted. What is interesting is that supposedly learned people were willing to immediately take the conclusions and run with them.
JD Ohio (Comment #178709)
December 31st, 2019 at 1:10 am
At this point in time it probably is not so much statistical analysis that might preclude the trip but rather your frame of mind. An auto trip around the island might not be as safe as in the air but you might feel more comfortable and in control.
KF. I talked to the company this morning, and they had a fatal crash killing 4 people in 2001 and 2 hard landings this year. Might do an airplane tour, or may not do it at all. The view on either helicopter or airplane is no big deal to me.– Risk reward calculation from my standpoint is not great. Doing this mainly for my children.
The link below delves into what I find inherently wrong with any government controlled national police force.
Looking at tax rates in Europe, it is clear they get their big government with heavy taxes on the middle class. I ran similar things with US numbers. Someone suggested tax rates of
30% on income above $100,000.
44% on income above 200,000 plus the 30% on the 100,000 between 100,000 and 200,000.
55% on income above 500,000 plus the…
68% on income above 1,000,000 plus the…
70% on income above 2,000,000 plus the…
Should be enough to balance the budget, pay for health care, feed the poor, address climate change, etc.
The numbers were because it was in response to my list of tax rates from 1980, before Reaganomics.
30% on income above $15,000.
44% on income above 28,800.
55% on income above 41,500.
68% on income above 81,800.
70% on income above 108,000.
with no inflation adjustment.
I calculated what the suggested tax rates would raise. Approximately an additional $600 billion from people making over $100k, and $250 billion more overall.
# returns| %| total accumulated AGI(thousands) | % | # in bracket| income below | income above| income in | tax in bracket
$1,000,000 or more 494,857 0.3 1,658,924,512 15.1 494,857 494,857,000.0 1,658,924,512.0 1,164,067,512.0 950,932,933
$500,000 or more 1,505,060 1.0 2,338,866,097 21.2 1,010,203 505,101,500.0 679,941,585.0 174,840,085.0 259,814,933
$200,000 or more 7,720,106 5.0 4,109,681,667 37.3 6,215,046 1,243,009,200.0 1,770,815,570.0 527,806,370.0 418,686,183
$100,000 or more 27,671,555 18.1 6,817,522,625 61.9 19,951,450 1,995,145,000.0 2,707,840,958.0 712,695,958.0 213,808,787
(methodology: 500k-1million, 1 million returns, income 2338B-(1658B making >1 million)=679B.
Subtract 500 billion that is below 500K and not taxed at 55%. Tax at 55%, + 162K per return for tax on first 500k)
Using taxable income instead of adjusted gross income lowers this from 1.8 trillion to 1.2 trillion.
Key thing is there is only 1.2 trillion in income over $1,000,000, and 2.6 trillion income above 200k.
Kenneth Fritsch (Comment #178723): "The link below delves into what I find inherently wrong with any government controlled national police force."
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I just can't see replacing the FBI with the likes of the Pinkerton Detective Agency as an improvement.
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Federal laws would seem to require a federal police force. Of course, we could do with whole lot less federal laws and federal policing. But what remains would still require oversight. It seems to me that the biggest problem with the FBI has been lack of proper oversight.
Mike M. (Comment #178725)
December 31st, 2019 at 3:04 pm
"Of course, we could do with whole lot less federal laws and federal policing. But what remains would still require oversight. It seems to me that the biggest problem with the FBI has been lack of proper oversight."
And do you see any of that improving any time soon? I do not and in fact see it getting worse.
I wish Lucia and all the friends of The Blackboard a happy new year.
Kenneth Fritsch (Comment #178726): "And do you see any of that improving any time soon?"
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Frankly, no. And your point is what?
Happy New Year's all.
Happy New Decade!
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The FBI does do some good work, and we must keep in mind we do live in one of the least corrupt nations in the world, so something is going right. There have been no major terror attacks since 2001 which was their priority for the last 20 years.
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There are improvements that can be made as the tools and trust the FBI are given get misused.
MikeN (Comment #178724)
December 31st, 2019 at 1:45 pm
"Looking at tax rates in Europe, it is clear they get their big government with heavy taxes on the middle class."
When you starve or kill that entity that was laying the golden eggs that is what can happen.
The answers to a quick quiz on the consequences of raising more revenue for government can be informing on were the quiz taker stands politically. The question is what you think the government will do:
1. The government will spend all the additional revenue and more and thereby increasing the government deficits and debt.
2. The government will use the extra revenue to pay down the debt.
3. The government will spend the additional revenue to fund new programs and deficits will remain the same and debt will grow.
4. Tax increases will not yield the expected increased revenue based on the history of tax increases.
5. Tax increases can be considered as investments are in the private sector where investments can improve living standards.
Tom Scharf (Comment #178732)
January 1st, 2020 at 8:20 am
"The FBI does do some good work…"
Faint praise that I suspect could be used if aimed at similar agencies in "bad" acting governments.
Tom Scharf (Comment #178732): ""There have been no major terror attacks since 2001"
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So what qualifies as a major attack? More than 100 dead?
A major attack to me is something on a similar scale of 9/11. The thinking after 2001 was complete paranoia looking back. How much damage can a group of about 20 dedicated/intelligent people with resources do to an open society? Quite a lot I expect.
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Could 2 van loads of well armed people take control of a nuclear plant? Japan's plant almost went into full meltdown by just turning off power to the cooling system. How much chaos can be caused by disabling the infrastructure of water delivery into LA?
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It's a fair question whether the FBI really stopped this from happening or it was just never in the cards to start with. They stopped some minor terror attacks in their tracks but I'm not aware of any major group attacks being prevented.
mark,
You're correct that the problem is principally a management problem.
The software engineers can't be expected to correct system engineering failures. Even system engineers who need to look at the system more holistically can't always fix management.
Thanks Lucia.
You have to be careful to not over design fault tolerant systems, it's hard to get right. These systems tend to give out a lot of false positives for example when the fault detection sensors fail. They become really complicated real fast and the systems themselves can sometimes cause the event they are designed to stop. They work about as good as the imagination of possible faults their designers expect to see. Examining other people's code can be pretty scary when you see how "fragile" a lot of computer code is.
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Manned space flight is really expensive because these systems are so hard so get right. The shuttle used 4 computers in a complicated voting system. You can't just launch 2 cheap rockets with people on them and expect at least one of them will survive, although I sometimes ponder why not. Regular humans are clearly expendable given auto and road design.
The balance between the media's Trump Derangement Syndrome and backing the killing of Iran's Suleimani is entertaining to watch. Obviously this can lead to escalated warfare with Iran, it is basically an act of war. Iran has been begging for something like this for a few years now with their carefully escalating attacks on US interests. They crossed the red line with the killing of US personnel, and they had to know that. I'm guessing that was a mistake, not that they would admit it.
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This guy openly driving around in a vehicle in Iraq after all the bad behavior he has orchestrated was naive and arrogant.
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Continued chaos in the Middle East, film at 11.
Tom Scharf,
How is killing Soleimani an act of war? He was in Baghdad. I suppose it depends on whether he was there on legitimate official business. But I suspect he wasn't.
If Iran killed General Petraeus it would clearly be an act of war, so I see it in that way. Killing very high level personnel, in this case revered personnel (although I had never heard of him until yesterday), is an act that requires a forceful response from Iran. Deescalation on their part now would be humiliating, which is the emotion that seems to dominate ME politics. They will respond, and the US will hit back.
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Nothing will get better in the short term. Iran deserves worse for their childish behavior and they will get worse if they keep asking for it. If loudmouth regimes want confrontation with the US, they generally get what they want, and are no better off for it.
Tom Scharf,
"…it is basically an act of war."
I'm sure that while Iran considered that coordinating with the Iran-backed militias in Iraq was official business for them, the US was justified in considering that coordination an act of war, especially as an American contractor was killed in the militia rocket attacks. And that's not to mention the attempt to overrun the US embassy in Baghdad.
Considering the low level US response to the shooting down of a drone and the attack on the Saudi oil refinery, some sort of escalation was required. Otherwise we might as well pull out of the Middle East entirely and let Iran, Russia and eventually China have it.
And along the line of refuting the 'it can't happen here' meme, the previously relatively stable Chile is rapidly descending into chaos.
"Latin America’s ‘Oasis’ Descends Into Chaos
What happened to Chile? Its elites lost confidence in the principles that underlay its success."
I don't think we're that far away from something similar if Warren or Sanders gets elected President along with the Democrats taking control of Congress.
Tom Scharf (Comment #178802): "If Iran killed General Petraeus it would clearly be an act of war"
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Not at all. Just to make an extreme example, they would be fully entitled to kill a U.S. General if he were walking down a street in Tehran shooting people. On the other hand, assassinating a Private on U.S. territory might well be considered an act of war.
I drove by Trump’s Palm Beach residence on my boat yesterday… there were a pair of Coast Guard boats (with 50 caliper machine guns!) guarding his residence on the Intercostal Waterway; I expect more are on the ocean side as well. The Iranians will have a difficult time getting to Trump, if that is their goal.
I thought it was a joke:
The New Yorker:
"Suleimani, a flamboyant former construction worker and bodybuilder with snowy white hair, a dapper beard, and arching salt-and-pepper eyebrows, "
He did have a dapper beard.
The media coverage of Iran seems way less coordinated than usual. They tend to speak with a unified anti-Trump angle but in this case it is all over the place. It almost resembles independent journalism, ha ha. They seem to know that being sympathetic (with a few exceptions) to Iran is a bridge too far.
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The Iran Hostage Crisis with Jimmy Carter still burns me, so you can count me out for Iran sympathy for a lifetime. Most of the people making strategic decisions lived through that as adults so my guess is Iran needs to play their cards very carefully.
One more example. I get requirements that make little sense sometimes, really. It happens. I take it to the program manager, who takes it to… whoever. Sometimes we fix the requirement then and there. Sometimes we let it stand, code to it, let it get raised as an issue in verification validation and it gets fixed then. It's not for me to cowboy it; we have process we have to adhere to.
Merry Christmas From Kentucky! 🙂
Andrew
Wow. The Deep State's roots have been firmly implanted for longer than I thought. Here is a shocking opinion piece by William Webster, who was FBI director under Carter and Reagan and CIA director under Reagan and Bush the First:
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/16/opinion/FBI-Trump-russia-investigation.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share
He claims that the FBI should be immune from criticism and oversight so that, get this, they can preserve the rule of law and protect us from tyranny.
He tells a bald face lie about the law pertaining the the Director of the FBI: "The 10-year term given to all directors following J. Edgar Hoover’s 48-year tenure was created to provide independence for the director and for the bureau." That is exactly backward. The Director does not have a term; he serves at the President's pleasure. But he is prohibited from serving more than 10 years, without a special dispensation from Congress. That was done to limit the independence of the director, so as to try to prevent another Hoover. It seems to have been less than successful.
Webster also lies about the AG report, claiming that it found the scandalous Russia/Trump investigation to be well founded.
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Boy, do we ever need Trump.
Merry (day after) Christmas!
Thomas William Fuller,
"Merry (day after) Christmas!"
That's Boxing Day in much of the English speaking world. My wife and I just came back from a Boxing Day party.
So happy Boxing Day!
https://www.thespruce.com/what-is-boxing-day-435060
Happy Xmas everyone.
and Lucia and family.
Looking forward to a freezing 2020!!
reply to: DeWitt Payne (Comment #178580)
One thing the writer of the article didn't address was that most aircraft have systems that assist the pilot in maintaining trim – among other things. MCAS was a new way to do that. automatically managing trim is not considered to be something that can fail catastrophically because the pilot can detect the failure (as the article writer stated) and disable the trim management function and handle trim management automatically. These systems would not have been considered a safety critical function and Boeing likely used the existing hazard assessments for an auto trim function failing to realize that there could be pilots out there that would fail to detect the problem and disable the autotrim function. The change in the balance of the airplane probably gives the pilot less time to recognize the problem, but from what my pilot friends have told me, it should still have been easily managed if the pilots had any clue about such a failure mode.
There have been grumblings in the industry about just how poor the pilot training is in some parts of the world, but it hadn't made its way to the Boeing design team or the regulators and Airworthiness Representatives (the same thing as an FAA Designated Engineering Representative) mentioned in the article. So they went with the legacy hazard assessment which allowed for a single-thread design (meaning no redundancy or cross checking).
As the article said, things fail in aircraft. The design assumed the pilots would be able to recognize and deal with the problem without difficulty, but the pilots in command of the aircrafts that crashed did not and could not – which means a crash.
Having worked as both a DER, and designer of safety critical airplane systems, I'm fairly confident that the new design has an updated hazard assessment pushing it to require a more robust design with redundancy and cross checking in it. That could have been done before, I don't think I would have put that much faith in the pilot if I didn't need to for a design I worked on (I have scars from other projects that say you never rely on humans to follow the rules unless you have no other feasible way to avoid it), but I also know that design teams and regulators tend to focus their attention on the areas they KNOW are safety critical.
The fact that the large number of people that had to have agreed that the design was reasonable, including Boeing pilots, safety experts, certification experts, and regulators (also including flight control engineers, safety experts, and pilots) tells me that Boeing alone isn't responsible for accepting the design as reasonable.
What you aren't seeing discussed in the media too much is that the airlines whose pilots were unable to recognize and deal with what should have been a trivial problem were doing allowing those pilots to fly their aircraft.
2 bits from a retired Boeing Engineer…
I suppose I should be thankful that conservatives are finally recognizing that scrutiny of both law enforcement and intelligence gathering is important. Liberals like myself knew this decades ago, although some of us seem to have forgotten in recent years.
To be fair, some of the very conservative have been even more wary than we liberals.
Mechanisms for maintaining order within a society will always be abused. Sometimes to protect criminal activity by those in power, such as today. Sometimes to prevent mass disagreement with policy, as in the Sixties and Seventies.
Pity that 'Starve the Beast' seemed to always refer to those parts of the Beast that were not armed.
Tom,
Take the labels out of your comment and it then rings of truth.
It depends on whose ox is being gored. The behavioral responses seem identical regardless of how you label them. It almost makes one wonder what the point of labeling is.
I submit that the actions of those in power and the motivations behind them are the same, regardless of political labeling. The only thing different is the story being told as to why.
Earle (Comment #178653): "I submit that the actions of those in power and the motivations behind them are the same, regardless of political labeling. The only thing different is the story being told as to why."
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Indeed.
Thomas Fuller, I concede I gave too much weight to Lanny Davis's claim that he got a close look of how this surveillance operated, and he found privacy to be well taken care of. This had to do not with FISC but the NSA databases.
Now the reality appears to be any contractor could look at whatever he wanted on anyone.
MikeN,
"Now the reality appears to be any contractor could look at whatever he wanted on anyone."
Or any Congressional committee chair can look, and then make them public. Talk about abuse of power. But if the correct ox is being gored, the MSM not merely doesn't care, but thinks it's a great idea.
Thomas Fuller
**Pity that 'Starve the Beast' seemed to always refer to those parts of the Beast that were not armed.**
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Sounds like you are giving us a reason to support the 2nd amendment. 🙂
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**Mechanisms for maintaining order within a society will always be abused.**
Yes. Like when the IRS placed conservative groups under intense scrutiny during the Obama administration.
** Sometimes to protect criminal activity by those in power, such as today. **
Or during the Obama administration when Hilary appears to have been protected. Oh.. yeah… the FBI investigated the IRS and uhmm…. James Comey But these must be what you are referring to when you say "today".
pauligon59 (Comment #178651)
December 27th, 2019 at 11:21 am
This post by pauligon59 has a view of the Boeing problem that coincides with what I read from a single source that I believe was in the WSJ. Why is it so difficult to get views like this out to the public? I think it has to do with it not fitting some generally accepted view that is considered more newsworthy. If pilot training globally is an issue here would not emphasis on other issues detract from getting that problem the attention it requires? I also think that regulators get off the hook rather easily is these situations.
Earle (Comment #178653)
December 27th, 2019 at 2:49 pm
I think Earle's post encompasses my views on these political contradictions by way of the ox being gored. Unfortunately I think it has to do with a two party system where the parties and their cheerleaders use all kinds of rationalizations to defend the actions of their party and its members for that which they would condemn the other party and its members. These discussions miss the point, in this libertarian's view, in that it fails to address the common thread of government power and its consequences.
Kenneth,
The "whose ox is being gored" issue isn't limited to two party systems. It happens in 1 party systems (like communist party governments). It happens in the presence of many parties. It happens in families, schools, professional societies investigating ethical or business issues… wherever. It just happens.
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When a particular group or person is in power, they tend to not go after their own or not go after those they see as "friendlies".
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"We" tend to notice when "they" come after "us". But if "we" go after "them"… well either "they" really truly deserved it, or it's not such a big issue relative to "real" issues — you know the ones that are really "important".
pauligon59 (Comment #178651),
"One thing the writer of the article didn't address was that most aircraft have systems that assist the pilot in maintaining trim – among other things."
Yes, but in this case the MCAS was put in not as simply a pilot aid, but as a software kludge to fix a fundamental flaw in the design, an increase in angle of attack with increased thrust. And fairly late in the process, the maximum change in trim that the MCAS could apply was quadrupled.
As far as pilot training, the cause of the second 737Max crash seemed to me to be mainly pilot error (WSJ article that I could probably find again if necessary). The MCAS was disabled initially after the plane nosed down, but the engines remained at takeoff thrust in spite of an audible cockpit alert, heard on the flight recorder, that airspeed was too high. The high airspeed made it even more difficult for the pilot to pull the stick back to raise the nose or adjust the trim manually. Then the MCAS was TURNED BACK ON.
lucia (Comment #178672)
December 28th, 2019 at 1:14 pm
With what you say here, Lucia, I do not disagree, but taking sides in voluntary relationships is much less consequential, diffused and subject to individual options than in one were the order of the day is coercion. With a two party political system one will rule and thus taking sides is more consequential than if multiple parties prevailed and taking sides was related to political parties.
Hi Lucia
merry xmas & happy new year to all from the UK
Notwithstanding comments above, the MCAS system is designed to make a "bridge too far" upgrade of an obsolete aircraft behave as its earlier variants and therefore save the customers the cost of training and certification of pilots on a new type.
Obsolescence. The 737 is a short-medium haul aircraft. It came in to service in 1968. It was designed with "short legs" so it sits close to the ground because the regional airports only had air stairs and baggage handlers chucking suitcases from the ground into the hold.
Original 737s had turbojet engines. These have been superceded with turbofans. This is an issue with the 737 because turbofans have a much larger frontal diameter than turbojets there are problems with foreign object injestion and ground clearance. If you look at a picture of a 737 from the front you will see that the lower part of the intake nacelles are flattened. This is to alleviate the clearance FOD problem .
The 737Max has further enlarged engines. With no more room to fit them under the wing, they are mounted on extended pylons. This changes the thrust moment and causes pitch-up, especially under take off power. MCAS was introduced to automatically trim nose down in these conditions, particularly so that pilots could transfer from earlier versions [b]without needing extra training[/b]
Lets run through this. Takeoff achieved, running through 300ft AGL and fully occupied with cleaning up. Undercarriage up, speed increasing, flaps up etc. etc. Bing bong bing bong. The hooters go off, the cockpit lights up like Tokyo At Night, the aircraft pitches steeply nose down and and won't respond to pulling full strength at the wheel. You have 300ft to diagnose and fix the problem. Don't forget, this is a 737Max and you don't need extra training
Bloke in Japan,
I don't think there is anything obsolete about the 737. It never had turbojet engines; the only Boeing civilian aircraft with such engines were early versions of the 707 built in the 50's. Your accident description bears no ressemblance to the actual accidents that happened.
There have been several plane incidents over the past few decades where automated sensors/systems have failures and the pilots don't recover from them, basically putting too much trust in systems that have worked reliably in their experience.
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Automated travel systems in cars will likely suffer the same fate. Once automated driving systems on interstates become common / mandatory people will lose the skill of car handling that we all have built up. So the automated systems will work great and improve safety, but might just decide to leave it to the human when it hits a construction area at night in heavy weather. The inexperienced human will then proceed to do rather poorly.
Nothing wrong with automation systems as long as they are designed with the appropriate robustness. In the case of the 737MAX, at least in my opinion, it is clear that the MCAS was not designed with the robustness needed given the way some airlines operate. 20/20 hindsight and all that. This sort of thing has happened before – Lauda Air had a 767 come apart while in cruise when an engine thrust reverser deployed. The cause – the airline continued to operate the airplane even though it was annunciating several faults in the thrust reverser system that were identified as "non-dispatchable" by Boeing. In other words, the faults that were present needed to be fixed before flying again. They didn't fix them and finally the next failure occurred that caused the thrust reverser to deploy at the worst possible time. As a result, Boeing changed the design of the thrust reversers so that it would be even more difficult for an operator to cause the same thing to happen.
History is full of that kind of thing – assumptions that should have been questioned (like all pilots will recognize what lure of the trim system will look like and know how to deal with it) don't get the necessary critical thinking applied and it ends up at best costing someone a lot of money and at worst killing people. Killing people causes drastic reactions by the design teams to keep that particular class of issues from arising in future designs.
Automobile automation of controls has been going on for quite some time. Computers are managing most of the engine functions in cars built in the last twenty years or so. Speed controls have been around even longer but are getting much better now. Adaptive Cruise Control has been around for quite awhile as well but is now being seen on more models at lower trimlines – I have it on both of my cars and love it.
When it is done right, the automation simplifies the effort of driving so that the driver can spend more time on important stuff like situational awareness. But stupid is as stupid does and some drivers decide that they don't need to spend as much time on what is going on around them and no level of automation will protect you from being stupid.
Eventually, automakers will be able to put the sensor and computing package into a car that will allow the "driver" to safely take a nap. But they don't have it yet.
Mike M. You are wrong. A search for images of the 737 200 will clearly show them fitted with turbojets and not turbofans.
Juan Brown (a very experienced ex-military and current 777 FO) has posted a number of very detailed analyses of the problems with the 737Max and the MCAS sytem. His most recent video where he goes through the Lion Air flight recorder crash data is here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s3LrsvaCUoo&list=PL6SYmp3qb3uPh3-kPpZt1YPNSArr8oxW5&index=54&t=0s
Essentially the pilots were confronted with two failures: unreliable air speed and excessive angle of attack. They were unable to diagnose and rectify the problem and they crashed. That makes two crashed 737Maxs.
Bloke in Japan,
No, it is you who are mistaken. The original 737 engines were low by-pass turbofans, with a bypass ratio of about 1, not turbojets: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pratt_%26_Whitney_JT8D
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Appearances can be be deceptive.
Here's a comment by a former FBI agent:
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2019/12/two_possibilities_in_trump_wiretapping_and_neither_is_good.html
In the CBS News summary of the year yesterday, there was no mention of the IG report on the FISA warrants. There was a comment meant to disparage Trump's firing of Comey.
But there's no bias in network news and the FBI doesn't need oversight or to be subordinate to the President. /sarc
If you watch airline crash documentaries you will find that almost all modern crashes are caused by a sequence of failures. Most single point failures have been rooted out and the response to crashes is pretty good IMO to prevent repeated crashes (The MAX possibly being an exception). For those who grew up in 1970's and before it is amazing how few crashes there are now given how many * trillions * of miles are actually being flown. There are ~20x more miles now than in the the 1970's and the accident rate is way down.
https://aviation-safety.net/graphics/infographics/Fatal-Accidents-Per-Year-1946-2017.jpg
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It's getting to the point where the automated system giving up and handing it off to the human might be more risky in many situations.
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I got a drone for Christmas (oops, I was told quad copter is a less threatening term, ha ha) and even these thing have automated Return To Home functionality and obstacle avoidance functionality while the drone automatically follows you as you walk/bike/etc. Of course you can type "drone crash video" into YouTube and see it isn't quite perfected by any definition yet. Wires and bare tree branches take down a lot of drones with automated crash avoidance sensors, but pilot failure is of course the leading cause.
The FBI disgraced themselves over the last few years. It's time they go back to their real jobs instead of sticking their noses into high profile/low impact politics. The Russia collusion/interference narrative was way overblown and the FBI did nothing to prevent the hysteria. Comey's media appearances along with Clapper and company was a disaster for the integrity of these organizations. You can't stop them from doing it but it was rather unhelpful. Trump may be flawed in numerous areas, but he is a magician in making his opponents publicly bring out the worst in themselves.
I expect the FBI does useful things. I hope they do a lot of good things that we never hear about, because looking at their history one might wonder why on earth we keep them around.
https://steemit.com/politics/@careywedler/fbi-corruption-history-10-most-crooked-things-the-fbi-has-ever-done
and
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_FBI_controversies
Mark Bofill,
There is no doubt the FBI does useful things. They get themselves into trouble because of either ‘power corrupts’, they get involved in politics (politics is mostly corrupt!), or as in this case, both. I think there are a few ways to improve the FBI:
1) Make even the *appearance* of politics influencing any investigation (like the star-crossed FBI lovers…. and many others at DOJ and FBI) grounds for automatic firing and loss of pension.
2) Make all political appointments (FBI and DOJ) automatically terminate at the end of an administration.
3) Set strict rules for politically sensitive investigations which lead to criminal prosecution of the *investigators* if in any way violated.
4) Modify the FISA process to require solid evidence (essentially legal proof) of felonious behavior *before* issuing any warrant on a US citizen, and a requirement of explicit confirmation of that felonious behavior from the initial FISA warrant *before* any renewal of the warrant.
That is quite a list in the Wikipedia article. And it does not even mention the massive FBI failures leading up to Sept. 11.
Interesting ideas Steve. Lemme think about those.
I am in Hawaii, and am scheduled to take a Helicopter tour on the Big Island on Jan. 2d. I am generally suspicious of the safety of helicopters, but thought it was something my children (14 & 18) would enjoy. About 11 days ago, there was a fatal accident in New Zealand and 4 days ago there was a fatal accident in Hawaii. (Kauai). Am somewhat conflicted, but currently leaning towards cancelling the flight. Curious what people here would do and how they would view the statistical chances of something bad happening.
Should add that I talked to a local familiar with weather conditions (I am staying close to Makaha surf spot now, and locals tend to be well-versed in weather because of impact on surf breaks), and he said that he thought wind up and down drafts were unpredictable and probably caused the Kauai crash, implying that he wouldn't put his family on one of these helicopters.
JD Ohio,
Local news reports say 18 helicopter crashes in the last 5 years in all of the state, but only 8 fatal crashes. Most crashes appear to have been sightseeing tours. I guess you would need to know the number of sightseeing tours run over 5 years to rationally evaluate the risk. Suppose there are 200 helicopter tours a day…. so maybe 40,000 tours over 5 years. The risk of a crash is then ~18/40,000… about 1 in 2,100….. 1 in 5,000 for a fatal crash. Maybe there is source of how many tour flights actually take place every year.
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FWIW: When I carried significantly more life insurance (younger kids) my policies all were voided if I flew on anything other than a standard commercial airline. That indicates to me significant statistical risk for all other flights.
A while back I linked to an article on this insanity:
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Police shootings of unarmed black people linked to health problems for black infants
https://www.latimes.com/science/story/2019-12-05/police-shootings-black-people-babies-health
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"A study of nearly 1,900 fatal police encounters and millions of birth records in California suggests that police killings of unarmed black people may affect the health of black infants before they are even born."
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UPDATE: To the shock of exactly nobody, this study has been retracted due to errors in data processing that when corrected show no linkage.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/police-violence-in-utero-11577752464?mod=opinion_lead_pos2
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"A week later the study was retracted. There were errors, for example, in the classification of armed and unarmed suspects. After fixing them, the effect essentially disappeared."
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https://www.latimes.com/science/story/2019-12-16/police-shootings-black-babies-health-retraction
Tom Scharf (Comment #178717)
December 31st, 2019 at 10:30 am
That analysis appeared from the start one that was just waiting to be refuted. What is interesting is that supposedly learned people were willing to immediately take the conclusions and run with them.
JD Ohio (Comment #178709)
December 31st, 2019 at 1:10 am
At this point in time it probably is not so much statistical analysis that might preclude the trip but rather your frame of mind. An auto trip around the island might not be as safe as in the air but you might feel more comfortable and in control.
KF. I talked to the company this morning, and they had a fatal crash killing 4 people in 2001 and 2 hard landings this year. Might do an airplane tour, or may not do it at all. The view on either helicopter or airplane is no big deal to me.– Risk reward calculation from my standpoint is not great. Doing this mainly for my children.
The link below delves into what I find inherently wrong with any government controlled national police force.
https://mises.org/wire/abolish-fbi
Looking at tax rates in Europe, it is clear they get their big government with heavy taxes on the middle class. I ran similar things with US numbers. Someone suggested tax rates of
30% on income above $100,000.
44% on income above 200,000 plus the 30% on the 100,000 between 100,000 and 200,000.
55% on income above 500,000 plus the…
68% on income above 1,000,000 plus the…
70% on income above 2,000,000 plus the…
Should be enough to balance the budget, pay for health care, feed the poor, address climate change, etc.
The numbers were because it was in response to my list of tax rates from 1980, before Reaganomics.
30% on income above $15,000.
44% on income above 28,800.
55% on income above 41,500.
68% on income above 81,800.
70% on income above 108,000.
with no inflation adjustment.
I calculated what the suggested tax rates would raise. Approximately an additional $600 billion from people making over $100k, and $250 billion more overall.
# returns| %| total accumulated AGI(thousands) | % | # in bracket| income below | income above| income in | tax in bracket
$1,000,000 or more 494,857 0.3 1,658,924,512 15.1 494,857 494,857,000.0 1,658,924,512.0 1,164,067,512.0 950,932,933
$500,000 or more 1,505,060 1.0 2,338,866,097 21.2 1,010,203 505,101,500.0 679,941,585.0 174,840,085.0 259,814,933
$200,000 or more 7,720,106 5.0 4,109,681,667 37.3 6,215,046 1,243,009,200.0 1,770,815,570.0 527,806,370.0 418,686,183
$100,000 or more 27,671,555 18.1 6,817,522,625 61.9 19,951,450 1,995,145,000.0 2,707,840,958.0 712,695,958.0 213,808,787
(methodology: 500k-1million, 1 million returns, income 2338B-(1658B making >1 million)=679B.
Subtract 500 billion that is below 500K and not taxed at 55%. Tax at 55%, + 162K per return for tax on first 500k)
Using taxable income instead of adjusted gross income lowers this from 1.8 trillion to 1.2 trillion.
Key thing is there is only 1.2 trillion in income over $1,000,000, and 2.6 trillion income above 200k.
Kenneth Fritsch (Comment #178723): "The link below delves into what I find inherently wrong with any government controlled national police force."
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I just can't see replacing the FBI with the likes of the Pinkerton Detective Agency as an improvement.
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Federal laws would seem to require a federal police force. Of course, we could do with whole lot less federal laws and federal policing. But what remains would still require oversight. It seems to me that the biggest problem with the FBI has been lack of proper oversight.
Mike M. (Comment #178725)
December 31st, 2019 at 3:04 pm
"Of course, we could do with whole lot less federal laws and federal policing. But what remains would still require oversight. It seems to me that the biggest problem with the FBI has been lack of proper oversight."
And do you see any of that improving any time soon? I do not and in fact see it getting worse.
I wish Lucia and all the friends of The Blackboard a happy new year.
Kenneth Fritsch (Comment #178726): "And do you see any of that improving any time soon?"
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Frankly, no. And your point is what?
Happy New Year's all.
Happy New Decade!
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The FBI does do some good work, and we must keep in mind we do live in one of the least corrupt nations in the world, so something is going right. There have been no major terror attacks since 2001 which was their priority for the last 20 years.
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There are improvements that can be made as the tools and trust the FBI are given get misused.
MikeN (Comment #178724)
December 31st, 2019 at 1:45 pm
"Looking at tax rates in Europe, it is clear they get their big government with heavy taxes on the middle class."
When you starve or kill that entity that was laying the golden eggs that is what can happen.
The answers to a quick quiz on the consequences of raising more revenue for government can be informing on were the quiz taker stands politically. The question is what you think the government will do:
1. The government will spend all the additional revenue and more and thereby increasing the government deficits and debt.
2. The government will use the extra revenue to pay down the debt.
3. The government will spend the additional revenue to fund new programs and deficits will remain the same and debt will grow.
4. Tax increases will not yield the expected increased revenue based on the history of tax increases.
5. Tax increases can be considered as investments are in the private sector where investments can improve living standards.
Tom Scharf (Comment #178732)
January 1st, 2020 at 8:20 am
"The FBI does do some good work…"
Faint praise that I suspect could be used if aimed at similar agencies in "bad" acting governments.
Tom Scharf (Comment #178732): ""There have been no major terror attacks since 2001"
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So what qualifies as a major attack? More than 100 dead?
A major attack to me is something on a similar scale of 9/11. The thinking after 2001 was complete paranoia looking back. How much damage can a group of about 20 dedicated/intelligent people with resources do to an open society? Quite a lot I expect.
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Could 2 van loads of well armed people take control of a nuclear plant? Japan's plant almost went into full meltdown by just turning off power to the cooling system. How much chaos can be caused by disabling the infrastructure of water delivery into LA?
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It's a fair question whether the FBI really stopped this from happening or it was just never in the cards to start with. They stopped some minor terror attacks in their tracks but I'm not aware of any major group attacks being prevented.
mark,
You're correct that the problem is principally a management problem.
The software engineers can't be expected to correct system engineering failures. Even system engineers who need to look at the system more holistically can't always fix management.
Thanks Lucia.
You have to be careful to not over design fault tolerant systems, it's hard to get right. These systems tend to give out a lot of false positives for example when the fault detection sensors fail. They become really complicated real fast and the systems themselves can sometimes cause the event they are designed to stop. They work about as good as the imagination of possible faults their designers expect to see. Examining other people's code can be pretty scary when you see how "fragile" a lot of computer code is.
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Manned space flight is really expensive because these systems are so hard so get right. The shuttle used 4 computers in a complicated voting system. You can't just launch 2 cheap rockets with people on them and expect at least one of them will survive, although I sometimes ponder why not. Regular humans are clearly expendable given auto and road design.
The balance between the media's Trump Derangement Syndrome and backing the killing of Iran's Suleimani is entertaining to watch. Obviously this can lead to escalated warfare with Iran, it is basically an act of war. Iran has been begging for something like this for a few years now with their carefully escalating attacks on US interests. They crossed the red line with the killing of US personnel, and they had to know that. I'm guessing that was a mistake, not that they would admit it.
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This guy openly driving around in a vehicle in Iraq after all the bad behavior he has orchestrated was naive and arrogant.
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Continued chaos in the Middle East, film at 11.
Tom Scharf,
How is killing Soleimani an act of war? He was in Baghdad. I suppose it depends on whether he was there on legitimate official business. But I suspect he wasn't.
If Iran killed General Petraeus it would clearly be an act of war, so I see it in that way. Killing very high level personnel, in this case revered personnel (although I had never heard of him until yesterday), is an act that requires a forceful response from Iran. Deescalation on their part now would be humiliating, which is the emotion that seems to dominate ME politics. They will respond, and the US will hit back.
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Nothing will get better in the short term. Iran deserves worse for their childish behavior and they will get worse if they keep asking for it. If loudmouth regimes want confrontation with the US, they generally get what they want, and are no better off for it.
Tom Scharf,
"…it is basically an act of war."
I'm sure that while Iran considered that coordinating with the Iran-backed militias in Iraq was official business for them, the US was justified in considering that coordination an act of war, especially as an American contractor was killed in the militia rocket attacks. And that's not to mention the attempt to overrun the US embassy in Baghdad.
Considering the low level US response to the shooting down of a drone and the attack on the Saudi oil refinery, some sort of escalation was required. Otherwise we might as well pull out of the Middle East entirely and let Iran, Russia and eventually China have it.
And along the line of refuting the 'it can't happen here' meme, the previously relatively stable Chile is rapidly descending into chaos.
"Latin America’s ‘Oasis’ Descends Into Chaos
What happened to Chile? Its elites lost confidence in the principles that underlay its success."
https://www.wsj.com/articles/latin-americas-oasis-descends-into-chaos-11577905470
I don't think we're that far away from something similar if Warren or Sanders gets elected President along with the Democrats taking control of Congress.
Tom Scharf (Comment #178802): "If Iran killed General Petraeus it would clearly be an act of war"
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Not at all. Just to make an extreme example, they would be fully entitled to kill a U.S. General if he were walking down a street in Tehran shooting people. On the other hand, assassinating a Private on U.S. territory might well be considered an act of war.
I drove by Trump’s Palm Beach residence on my boat yesterday… there were a pair of Coast Guard boats (with 50 caliper machine guns!) guarding his residence on the Intercostal Waterway; I expect more are on the ocean side as well. The Iranians will have a difficult time getting to Trump, if that is their goal.
I thought it was a joke:
The New Yorker:
"Suleimani, a flamboyant former construction worker and bodybuilder with snowy white hair, a dapper beard, and arching salt-and-pepper eyebrows, "
He did have a dapper beard.
The media coverage of Iran seems way less coordinated than usual. They tend to speak with a unified anti-Trump angle but in this case it is all over the place. It almost resembles independent journalism, ha ha. They seem to know that being sympathetic (with a few exceptions) to Iran is a bridge too far.
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The Iran Hostage Crisis with Jimmy Carter still burns me, so you can count me out for Iran sympathy for a lifetime. Most of the people making strategic decisions lived through that as adults so my guess is Iran needs to play their cards very carefully.