Published: Monday, November 19, 2007
Energy Experts Warn Of Worker Shortfall
By ASJYLYN LODER St. Petersburg Times
While state politicians worry about what fuel will help power Florida's energy future, they have overlooked another increasingly scarce resource: the people qualified to produce the power.
Energy executives nationwide worry about the coming shortfall of workers. In the Southeast, industry leaders are doubly concerned, as the pace of growth in states like Florida drives billions into new energy projects throughout the region.
Testifying before the U.S. Senate this month , Andra Cornelius, a vice president with Workforce Florida, warned, "Unless we undertake long-term solutions to expand our energy sector work force, we'll face exceptional challenges to keep the lights on.
"Experts predict "severe" shortages and call staffing the "Achilles' heel" of the industry. The Nuclear Energy Institute, a Washington, D.C., trade group, estimates the Southeast needs 40,000 workers in Texas and along the Gulf Coast in 2008, 19,600 workers will reach retirement age in the next five years just in the nuclear industry, and 104 power plants will be built in the region over the next decade. Cornelius counted 20 generating units planned for Florida.
Retiree power
After a lull of nearly three decades, the U.S. nuclear industry appears poised to build the first of a fleet of 31 power plants - 27 of them in the Southeast.
"We've seen this coming," said Loren Plisco, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's deputy head of construction for the Southeast.
To help offset the shortage of trained local workers, Progress Energy Florida draws on its pool of retirees.
Earnie Gallion, 58, helped build the Crystal River power plant and worked there for nearly three decades. It's where he met his wife, Joy Gallion. When he retired in 2005, he knew he would come back. He promised his wife he would take at least a year off, and he did. He returned early this year for the plant's "outage," a refueling and maintenance shutdown that happens ever two years.
Carla Groleau, a utility spokeswoman, said 35 retirees came back for the outage.
The 15-month job will help Gallion and his wife pay for an addition to their Crystal River home without going into debt. It also gives the nuclear veteran a chance to pass on his experience to a new generation.
"I see a lot of former retirees back," Gallion said. "You get experienced personnel with plant knowledge. They can not only help out and provide that level experience, but also kind of show the new people the way.
"Recruiting in schools
Schools throughout the state have worked with the utilities to recruit new energy workers.
The University of Florida's nuclear program provides summer interns to power plants. Gulf Power created high school recruitment programs in the Panhandle. Progress Energy set up a high school program in Levy County, where it hopes to build a nuclear power plant.
"A lot of this labor pool are ninth- and 10th-graders right now," said Danny Roderick, Progress Energy vice president of nuclear projects and construction. "When we get into 2013, 2014 time frame, they'll be ready and qualified or what we need them to do.
"The industry needs everything: plumbers, welders, electricians, chemists and engineers.
Cornelius testified that energy jobs can pay well above state and national averages for industrial work. For example, power line installers earned an average of nearly $53,000, while power plant workers averaged nearly $60,000.
It's a challenge, Cornelius said. But for many in Florida, "this provides a wonderful opportunity."
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Monday, November 19, 2007
Sunday, November 18, 2007
Mind of a Rock...NYT
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/18/magazine/18wwln-lede-t.html?ref=magazine&pagewanted=print
The Way We Live Now
Mind of a Rock
By JIM HOLT
Most of us have no doubt that our fellow humans are conscious. We are also pretty sure that many animals have consciousness. Some, like the great ape species, even seem to possess self-consciousness, like us. Others, like dogs and cats and pigs, may lack a sense of self, but they certainly appear to experience inner states of pain and pleasure. About smaller creatures, like mosquitoes, we are not so sure; certainly we have few compunctions about killing them. As for plants, they obviously do not have minds, except in fairy tales. Nor do nonliving things like tables and rocks.
All that is common sense. But common sense has not always proved to be such a good guide in understanding the world. And the part of our world that is most recalcitrant to our understanding at the moment is consciousness itself. How could the electrochemical processes in the lump of gray matter that is our brain give rise to — or, even more mysteriously, be — the dazzling technicolor play of consciousness, with its transports of joy, its stabs of anguish and its stretches of mild contentment alternating with boredom? This has been called “the most important problem in the biological sciences” and even “the last frontier of science.” It engrosses the intellectual energies of a worldwide community of brain scientists, psychologists, philosophers, physicists, computer scientists and even, from time to time, the Dalai Lama.
So vexing has the problem of consciousness proved that some of these thinkers have been driven to a hypothesis that sounds desperate, if not downright crazy. Perhaps, they say, mind is not limited to the brains of some animals. Perhaps it is ubiquitous, present in every bit of matter, all the way up to galaxies, all the way down to electrons and neutrinos, not excluding medium-size things like a glass of water or a potted plant. Moreover, it did not suddenly arise when some physical particles on a certain planet chanced to come into the right configuration; rather, there has been consciousness in the cosmos from the very beginning of time.
The doctrine that the stuff of the world is fundamentally mind-stuff goes by the name of panpsychism. A few decades ago, the American philosopher Thomas Nagel showed that it is an inescapable consequence of some quite reasonable premises. First, our brains consist of material particles. Second, these particles, in certain arrangements, produce subjective thoughts and feelings. Third, physical properties alone cannot account for subjectivity. (How could the ineffable experience of tasting a strawberry ever arise from the equations of physics?) Now, Nagel reasoned, the properties of a complex system like the brain don’t just pop into existence from nowhere; they must derive from the properties of that system’s ultimate constituents. Those ultimate constituents must therefore have subjective features themselves — features that, in the right combinations, add up to our inner thoughts and feelings. But the electrons, protons and neutrons making up our brains are no different from those making up the rest of the world. So the entire universe must consist of little bits of consciousness.
Nagel himself stopped short of embracing panpsychism, but today it is enjoying something of a vogue. The Australian philosopher David Chalmers and the Oxford physicist Roger Penrose have spoken on its behalf. In the recent book “Consciousness and Its Place in Nature,” the British philosopher Galen Strawson defends panpsychism against numerous critics. How, the skeptics wonder, could bits of mind-dust, with their presumably simple mental states, combine to form the kinds of complicated experiences we humans have? After all, when you put a bunch of people in the same room, their individual minds do not form a single collective mind. (Or do they?) Then there is the inconvenient fact that you can’t scientifically test the claim that, say, the moon is having mental experiences. (But the same applies to people — how could you prove that your fellow office workers aren’t unconscious robots, like Commander Data on “Star Trek”?) Finally, there is the sheer loopiness of the idea that something like a photon could have proto-emotions, proto-beliefs and proto-desires. What could the content of a photon’s desire possibly be? “Perhaps it wishes it were a quark,” one anti-panpsychist cracked.
Panpsychism may be easier to parody than to refute. But even if it proves a cul-de-sac in the quest to understand consciousness, it might still help rouse us from a certain parochiality in our cosmic outlook. We are biological beings. We exist because of self-replicating chemicals. We detect and act on information from our environment so that the self-replication will continue. As a byproduct, we have developed brains that, we fondly believe, are the most intricate things in the universe. We look down our noses at brute matter.
Take that rock over there. It doesn’t seem to be doing much of anything, at least to our gross perception. But at the microlevel it consists of an unimaginable number of atoms connected by springy chemical bonds, all jiggling around at a rate that even our fastest supercomputer might envy. And they are not jiggling at random. The rock’s innards “see” the entire universe by means of the gravitational and electromagnetic signals it is continuously receiving. Such a system can be viewed as an all-purpose information processor, one whose inner dynamics mirror any sequence of mental states that our brains might run through. And where there is information, says panpsychism, there is consciousness. In David Chalmers’s slogan, “Experience is information from the inside; physics is information from the outside.”
But the rock doesn’t exert itself as a result of all this “thinking.” Why should it? Its existence, unlike ours, doesn’t depend on the struggle to survive and self-replicate. It is indifferent to the prospect of being pulverized. If you are poetically inclined, you might think of the rock as a purely contemplative being. And you might draw the moral that the universe is, and always has been, saturated with mind, even though we snobbish Darwinian-replicating latecomers are too blinkered to notice.
Jim Holt, a contributing writer, is working on a book about the puzzle of existence.
The Way We Live Now
Mind of a Rock
By JIM HOLT
Most of us have no doubt that our fellow humans are conscious. We are also pretty sure that many animals have consciousness. Some, like the great ape species, even seem to possess self-consciousness, like us. Others, like dogs and cats and pigs, may lack a sense of self, but they certainly appear to experience inner states of pain and pleasure. About smaller creatures, like mosquitoes, we are not so sure; certainly we have few compunctions about killing them. As for plants, they obviously do not have minds, except in fairy tales. Nor do nonliving things like tables and rocks.
All that is common sense. But common sense has not always proved to be such a good guide in understanding the world. And the part of our world that is most recalcitrant to our understanding at the moment is consciousness itself. How could the electrochemical processes in the lump of gray matter that is our brain give rise to — or, even more mysteriously, be — the dazzling technicolor play of consciousness, with its transports of joy, its stabs of anguish and its stretches of mild contentment alternating with boredom? This has been called “the most important problem in the biological sciences” and even “the last frontier of science.” It engrosses the intellectual energies of a worldwide community of brain scientists, psychologists, philosophers, physicists, computer scientists and even, from time to time, the Dalai Lama.
So vexing has the problem of consciousness proved that some of these thinkers have been driven to a hypothesis that sounds desperate, if not downright crazy. Perhaps, they say, mind is not limited to the brains of some animals. Perhaps it is ubiquitous, present in every bit of matter, all the way up to galaxies, all the way down to electrons and neutrinos, not excluding medium-size things like a glass of water or a potted plant. Moreover, it did not suddenly arise when some physical particles on a certain planet chanced to come into the right configuration; rather, there has been consciousness in the cosmos from the very beginning of time.
The doctrine that the stuff of the world is fundamentally mind-stuff goes by the name of panpsychism. A few decades ago, the American philosopher Thomas Nagel showed that it is an inescapable consequence of some quite reasonable premises. First, our brains consist of material particles. Second, these particles, in certain arrangements, produce subjective thoughts and feelings. Third, physical properties alone cannot account for subjectivity. (How could the ineffable experience of tasting a strawberry ever arise from the equations of physics?) Now, Nagel reasoned, the properties of a complex system like the brain don’t just pop into existence from nowhere; they must derive from the properties of that system’s ultimate constituents. Those ultimate constituents must therefore have subjective features themselves — features that, in the right combinations, add up to our inner thoughts and feelings. But the electrons, protons and neutrons making up our brains are no different from those making up the rest of the world. So the entire universe must consist of little bits of consciousness.
Nagel himself stopped short of embracing panpsychism, but today it is enjoying something of a vogue. The Australian philosopher David Chalmers and the Oxford physicist Roger Penrose have spoken on its behalf. In the recent book “Consciousness and Its Place in Nature,” the British philosopher Galen Strawson defends panpsychism against numerous critics. How, the skeptics wonder, could bits of mind-dust, with their presumably simple mental states, combine to form the kinds of complicated experiences we humans have? After all, when you put a bunch of people in the same room, their individual minds do not form a single collective mind. (Or do they?) Then there is the inconvenient fact that you can’t scientifically test the claim that, say, the moon is having mental experiences. (But the same applies to people — how could you prove that your fellow office workers aren’t unconscious robots, like Commander Data on “Star Trek”?) Finally, there is the sheer loopiness of the idea that something like a photon could have proto-emotions, proto-beliefs and proto-desires. What could the content of a photon’s desire possibly be? “Perhaps it wishes it were a quark,” one anti-panpsychist cracked.
Panpsychism may be easier to parody than to refute. But even if it proves a cul-de-sac in the quest to understand consciousness, it might still help rouse us from a certain parochiality in our cosmic outlook. We are biological beings. We exist because of self-replicating chemicals. We detect and act on information from our environment so that the self-replication will continue. As a byproduct, we have developed brains that, we fondly believe, are the most intricate things in the universe. We look down our noses at brute matter.
Take that rock over there. It doesn’t seem to be doing much of anything, at least to our gross perception. But at the microlevel it consists of an unimaginable number of atoms connected by springy chemical bonds, all jiggling around at a rate that even our fastest supercomputer might envy. And they are not jiggling at random. The rock’s innards “see” the entire universe by means of the gravitational and electromagnetic signals it is continuously receiving. Such a system can be viewed as an all-purpose information processor, one whose inner dynamics mirror any sequence of mental states that our brains might run through. And where there is information, says panpsychism, there is consciousness. In David Chalmers’s slogan, “Experience is information from the inside; physics is information from the outside.”
But the rock doesn’t exert itself as a result of all this “thinking.” Why should it? Its existence, unlike ours, doesn’t depend on the struggle to survive and self-replicate. It is indifferent to the prospect of being pulverized. If you are poetically inclined, you might think of the rock as a purely contemplative being. And you might draw the moral that the universe is, and always has been, saturated with mind, even though we snobbish Darwinian-replicating latecomers are too blinkered to notice.
Jim Holt, a contributing writer, is working on a book about the puzzle of existence.
Expansion simultaneously of both the naval nuclear program and the domestic nuclear industry.
http://www.navytimes.com/news/2007/11/navy_nuclearwarships_071118/
Expansion simultaneously both the naval nuclear program and the domestic nuclear industry.
Can anyone imagine the magnitude of the new experienced worker, operators and the professional people needed for the expansion of the navy nuclear program and the nuclear Renaissance at the same time? Both the domestic nuclear industry and the Naval nuclear programs are sitting on the edge of collapse…
I like to talk about the submarines training, operation and maintenance budgets…their trends. I think the function of the submarines force is to feed the shipyards with submarine projects. So our primary function of the submarine fleet is to make money for the ship yards and to keep them in business….that ultimately feeds the corrupt political campaign contribution system in Washington.
There is very little interest in funding the support systems of submarines and naval reactors…bettering the peoples associated with maintaining the fleet…and those systems that better supports the bureaucracy.
All our money goes into the metal shell of the submarine…our war fighting strategy is primarily about keeping the shipyards and defense establishments well fed...fed like pigs...the nuclear ship yards…not in making these submarines more effective fighting machines relevant for our times.
Lawmakers: Nuclear power is Navy’s future
Bipartisan effort would wean fleet off of fossil fuels
By Zachary M. Peterson - Staff writerPosted : Sunday Nov 18, 2007 8:58:44 EST
The Navy should be required to use nuclear propulsion to fuel all large surface ships beginning with its next-generation cruisers, two top members of the House Armed Services Committee said.
Reps. Gene Taylor, D-Miss., and Roscoe Bartlett, R-Md., told Navy Times on Nov. 7 that nuclear power is the “right way to go” for future Navy surface ships in light of the rising cost of fossil fuels and the benefit of being able to spend more time at sea without having to refuel.
Language in the House version of the 2008 defense authorization bill calls for nuclear power to be used in all large vessels, which would include destroyers and cruisers. The Senate version of the bill contains no such provision.
Taylor said Rep. Ike Skelton, D-Mo., strongly supports the nuclear power measure in the House bill and is fighting to keep it. However, some senators have argued that requiring nuclear propulsion on surface ships would be too costly for a service already struggling with its shipbuilding plans.
But Bartlett and Taylor argue it is cheaper to go nuclear in the long run.
The Navy could be at “the edge” of nuclear power becoming cheaper with the cost of oil at nearly $100 dollars per barrel, Taylor said.
“If you look at the enormous cost escalation we’ve seen with the [Littoral Combat Ship program] because we’re dealing with unknowns and something that is new and different, nuclear propulsion has been around a long time,” he said. “The cost of a nuclear power plant is a known entity.
“Oil is a limited commodity,” Taylor added.
Bartlett said he thinks the Senate has been hesitant to support the measure “solely because of the upfront costs.”
Upfront cost estimates for nuclear-powered ships range from $600 million to $800 million more than conventional ships.
The price would come down with orders for nuclear-powered ships, Taylor said.
Right now, only two U.S.-based shipbuilders are certified by the Navy to build nuclear-powered ships: Northrop Grumman’s Newport News facility in Virginia, which builds aircraft carriers and submarines, and General Dynamics’ Electric Boat division in Connecticut and Rhode Island, which builds submarines.
Taylor said that if the measure becomes law, other shipyards, such as Northrop Grumman’s Ingalls shipyard in his district in Mississippi and General Dynamics’ Bath Iron Works facility in Maine would be encouraged to become nuclear-certified.
Measure targets CG(X)
The first Navy ship that would be affected by the measure would be the next-generation cruiser, CG(X). The service plans to build 19 of the ships between fiscal 2011 and fiscal 2023.
Nuclear cruisers would not be a first for the Navy, which deactivated the last of its nuclear cruiser fleet, the California, in 1998. The ship was built by Newport News Shipbuilding in the early 1970s.
“Operationally, these [surface ships] are supporting carriers and submarines that are fueled for 30, 33 years and these ships are fueled in three to five days,” Bartlett said. “Operationally, it makes a whole lot of sense to go nuclear.”
Current warships could be at risk because they are dependent on oilers to refuel at sea, Bartlett said.
With the increase in electric technology onboard future naval vessels, it makes sense to go nuclear to ensure ships have enough organic power generation, he added.
Barlett said he had a “long talk” with Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Gary Roughead, and the congressman said he thought cost was the only argument the CNO had against nuclear propulsion for surface vessels.
When life-cycle costs are considered, however, Bartlett said the additional cost upfront is “easily explained to the American people.”
Expansion simultaneously both the naval nuclear program and the domestic nuclear industry.
Can anyone imagine the magnitude of the new experienced worker, operators and the professional people needed for the expansion of the navy nuclear program and the nuclear Renaissance at the same time? Both the domestic nuclear industry and the Naval nuclear programs are sitting on the edge of collapse…
I like to talk about the submarines training, operation and maintenance budgets…their trends. I think the function of the submarines force is to feed the shipyards with submarine projects. So our primary function of the submarine fleet is to make money for the ship yards and to keep them in business….that ultimately feeds the corrupt political campaign contribution system in Washington.
There is very little interest in funding the support systems of submarines and naval reactors…bettering the peoples associated with maintaining the fleet…and those systems that better supports the bureaucracy.
All our money goes into the metal shell of the submarine…our war fighting strategy is primarily about keeping the shipyards and defense establishments well fed...fed like pigs...the nuclear ship yards…not in making these submarines more effective fighting machines relevant for our times.
Lawmakers: Nuclear power is Navy’s future
Bipartisan effort would wean fleet off of fossil fuels
By Zachary M. Peterson - Staff writerPosted : Sunday Nov 18, 2007 8:58:44 EST
The Navy should be required to use nuclear propulsion to fuel all large surface ships beginning with its next-generation cruisers, two top members of the House Armed Services Committee said.
Reps. Gene Taylor, D-Miss., and Roscoe Bartlett, R-Md., told Navy Times on Nov. 7 that nuclear power is the “right way to go” for future Navy surface ships in light of the rising cost of fossil fuels and the benefit of being able to spend more time at sea without having to refuel.
Language in the House version of the 2008 defense authorization bill calls for nuclear power to be used in all large vessels, which would include destroyers and cruisers. The Senate version of the bill contains no such provision.
Taylor said Rep. Ike Skelton, D-Mo., strongly supports the nuclear power measure in the House bill and is fighting to keep it. However, some senators have argued that requiring nuclear propulsion on surface ships would be too costly for a service already struggling with its shipbuilding plans.
But Bartlett and Taylor argue it is cheaper to go nuclear in the long run.
The Navy could be at “the edge” of nuclear power becoming cheaper with the cost of oil at nearly $100 dollars per barrel, Taylor said.
“If you look at the enormous cost escalation we’ve seen with the [Littoral Combat Ship program] because we’re dealing with unknowns and something that is new and different, nuclear propulsion has been around a long time,” he said. “The cost of a nuclear power plant is a known entity.
“Oil is a limited commodity,” Taylor added.
Bartlett said he thinks the Senate has been hesitant to support the measure “solely because of the upfront costs.”
Upfront cost estimates for nuclear-powered ships range from $600 million to $800 million more than conventional ships.
The price would come down with orders for nuclear-powered ships, Taylor said.
Right now, only two U.S.-based shipbuilders are certified by the Navy to build nuclear-powered ships: Northrop Grumman’s Newport News facility in Virginia, which builds aircraft carriers and submarines, and General Dynamics’ Electric Boat division in Connecticut and Rhode Island, which builds submarines.
Taylor said that if the measure becomes law, other shipyards, such as Northrop Grumman’s Ingalls shipyard in his district in Mississippi and General Dynamics’ Bath Iron Works facility in Maine would be encouraged to become nuclear-certified.
Measure targets CG(X)
The first Navy ship that would be affected by the measure would be the next-generation cruiser, CG(X). The service plans to build 19 of the ships between fiscal 2011 and fiscal 2023.
Nuclear cruisers would not be a first for the Navy, which deactivated the last of its nuclear cruiser fleet, the California, in 1998. The ship was built by Newport News Shipbuilding in the early 1970s.
“Operationally, these [surface ships] are supporting carriers and submarines that are fueled for 30, 33 years and these ships are fueled in three to five days,” Bartlett said. “Operationally, it makes a whole lot of sense to go nuclear.”
Current warships could be at risk because they are dependent on oilers to refuel at sea, Bartlett said.
With the increase in electric technology onboard future naval vessels, it makes sense to go nuclear to ensure ships have enough organic power generation, he added.
Barlett said he had a “long talk” with Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Gary Roughead, and the congressman said he thought cost was the only argument the CNO had against nuclear propulsion for surface vessels.
When life-cycle costs are considered, however, Bartlett said the additional cost upfront is “easily explained to the American people.”
Broken Windows, submarines and leadership
The next submariner generation?
http://bubbleheads.blogspot.com/2007/11/uss-hampton-easy-button.html
Submarine Iconoclast said...
LMAO at "loyalty up and loyalty down" being used as defense of SUBFOR leadership. Maybe we just have different definitions of loyalty - here is mine:
Hard, honest, capable and willing work is the only loyalty your superiors need. Not patronizing them by holding them to a lower standard than you hold your own men. In turn, establishing clear goals, putting them in position to meet those goals, and recognizing a job well done is the loyalty your men expect from you. Not pressuring them to report good results no matter what the facts are, and claiming any glory for yourself while blaming your men whenever the organization falls short.
Guess which brand of loyalty I have experienced at submarine commands, and which I've seen elsewhere in the Navy and on Joint tours?
Focusing attention where things are going well helps you look good, but doesn't allow you to get better. The Submarine Force has grown arrogant and narcissistic; we need to get over the infatuation with how good we'd like to think we are and start concentrating on where we must improve. Lamenting that junior guys let us down is neither entirely true (yes, some let us down - but that ignores the root causes and dooms us to more of the same) nor productive.
When was the last time someone messed up, stood up and admitted it before anyone else even noticed, was given the chance to fix it, fixed it, and went on to have a successful career in the sub force? THAT is a significant factor in the widespread integrity issues many of us see every day, but are only rarely acknowledged officially. The refusal to admit there is a larger problem is a second major factor in developing the culture of lying found on HAMPTON (and to some extent on many more submarines operating today). VADM Donnelly should be leading change to correct these problems, not insulting his Force by describing real, hard problems we face every day as a simple case of a few individuals choosing the easy way out of a problem.
11/17/2007 8:54 AM
We have been talking about broken windows on rootcauseconference for many years now….you should do a look-up on broken windows and Keric. Notice the date when I first mentioned “broken windows” and NRC chairman Klein!
NRC commissioner Klein:
“First, carelessness in small things may lead to carelessness about bigger things. In the early 1980s, the sociologist James Q. Wilson pioneered the so-called "broken windows" theory of law-enforcement. The idea was that when small signs of disorder or decay—such as vandalism, graffiti, or even excessive littering—are allowed to persist, it leads to bigger crimes, because people assume that the neighborhood does not have any standards, and that no one is enforcing the law.
It is a theory that was actually put into practice in several major cities, and led to major reductions in crimes. One lesson we can take from that is: Perception leads to reality.”
I think Klein is using a sociological theory of “broken windows” in a extremely shallow way…it’s almost false. It is like we are looking at the problem of the inner city blight and poverty through the lens of the power, influence and wealth system...as an infration of laws by the powerless people by the powerful…while the little people feel they have no way to climb out of poverty, hopelessness and their sins…because all of society has shunned the poor and all paths has been cut off to the middle class....because there is too little social mobility.
Nothing more represents this than in New Orleans’s within Katrina…where the American Katina refugees were trying to flee the horrendous conditions through the “Crescent City Connection”…"The bridge to Gretna"…where the whites by force of guns where keeping the blacks and poor within the inhumane conditions of our largest natural disaster.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gretna,_Louisiana
I think that “bridge to Gretna” represent a class and wealth demarcation…with the wealthy keep out the dirty poor by what ever means necessary.
I am astonished Klein sees this in such simplistic terms...and doesn't want to understand this in its complete complexity. I hope he doesn't see the problems in the current industry and the new nukes...in these simplistic terms.
God help the nuclear industry then!
----- Original Message ----
From: Michael Mulligan
To: USS_Scorpion_SSN-589@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Saturday, November 10, 2007 10:55:59 AM
Subject: Re: [USS_Scorpion_SSN-589] Re: Credibility, facts and evidence....and gulags
Todd,
Actually it began big time with Mayor Giuliani of NYC and ending with his police chief Kerik. All the rest of the country followed them. It is interesting looking at this from today…with Keric accused of fraud and mafia ties. Giuliani began the big “broken window” policy…filled up our prisons with the mentally ill…in defense of sterilizing Manhattan for the moneyed interest. You can’t get by corrupt NYC police chief Keric with his mafia Gucci shoes that ended the Giuliani broken windows years….with the justice of the homeless and mentally ill sitting in prisons. You get that don’t you, Giuliani and Keric fingered the law breaking of the littlest peoples…while Keric is the police chief… and lies and break laws, steals and is corrupt beyond belief. Sounds like the Navy to me?
I worked on the Vermont Governor Dean issue during his presidential campaign…with him covering up the gulag like conditions of Vermont state mental hospital. In order to be president we have to show financial responsibility as a state governor…no deficits…and thus making worst the horrors of the state hospital under his watch.
Of course all of these politician’s are doing the bidding of the American public.
Thanks,
mike
----- Original Message ----
From: Michael Mulligan
To: Michael Mulligan
Sent: Wednesday, September 13, 2006 10:46:41 AM
Subject: Re: [rootcauseconference] Start with ????Giuliani
So who picks up that dirt on the floor, is it the powerless Kerik’s illegal alien housekeeper who he’s not paying taxes on? Is it the low paid worker you just hired? Who metaphorically gets fingered with culpability...is it a sliding scale? How about the long term employees...who knows about the results of not dealing with small problems? Should we more blame the degreed individual who has been trained on the broad view...how about the managers? The higher the degree... the more we should blame them for walking by the same problems. The executives, the CEO...all the governmental overseers...don’t think these guys operated a broom in a long
time...maybe we should key culpability to income levels. Should we hold the elders more culpable more than the teenagers? How about a loner or somebody who is very popular?
So for the sin of walking past the exact same dirt on the floor...ignoring it...for the entry level employee, to the president of the USA...do we hold them equally culpable for ignoring the small problems...should we hold one more culpable because of their knowledge and position...the power they hold?
Thanks,
mike
http://bubbleheads.blogspot.com/2007/11/uss-hampton-easy-button.html
Submarine Iconoclast said...
LMAO at "loyalty up and loyalty down" being used as defense of SUBFOR leadership. Maybe we just have different definitions of loyalty - here is mine:
Hard, honest, capable and willing work is the only loyalty your superiors need. Not patronizing them by holding them to a lower standard than you hold your own men. In turn, establishing clear goals, putting them in position to meet those goals, and recognizing a job well done is the loyalty your men expect from you. Not pressuring them to report good results no matter what the facts are, and claiming any glory for yourself while blaming your men whenever the organization falls short.
Guess which brand of loyalty I have experienced at submarine commands, and which I've seen elsewhere in the Navy and on Joint tours?
Focusing attention where things are going well helps you look good, but doesn't allow you to get better. The Submarine Force has grown arrogant and narcissistic; we need to get over the infatuation with how good we'd like to think we are and start concentrating on where we must improve. Lamenting that junior guys let us down is neither entirely true (yes, some let us down - but that ignores the root causes and dooms us to more of the same) nor productive.
When was the last time someone messed up, stood up and admitted it before anyone else even noticed, was given the chance to fix it, fixed it, and went on to have a successful career in the sub force? THAT is a significant factor in the widespread integrity issues many of us see every day, but are only rarely acknowledged officially. The refusal to admit there is a larger problem is a second major factor in developing the culture of lying found on HAMPTON (and to some extent on many more submarines operating today). VADM Donnelly should be leading change to correct these problems, not insulting his Force by describing real, hard problems we face every day as a simple case of a few individuals choosing the easy way out of a problem.
11/17/2007 8:54 AM
We have been talking about broken windows on rootcauseconference for many years now….you should do a look-up on broken windows and Keric. Notice the date when I first mentioned “broken windows” and NRC chairman Klein!
NRC commissioner Klein:
“First, carelessness in small things may lead to carelessness about bigger things. In the early 1980s, the sociologist James Q. Wilson pioneered the so-called "broken windows" theory of law-enforcement. The idea was that when small signs of disorder or decay—such as vandalism, graffiti, or even excessive littering—are allowed to persist, it leads to bigger crimes, because people assume that the neighborhood does not have any standards, and that no one is enforcing the law.
It is a theory that was actually put into practice in several major cities, and led to major reductions in crimes. One lesson we can take from that is: Perception leads to reality.”
I think Klein is using a sociological theory of “broken windows” in a extremely shallow way…it’s almost false. It is like we are looking at the problem of the inner city blight and poverty through the lens of the power, influence and wealth system...as an infration of laws by the powerless people by the powerful…while the little people feel they have no way to climb out of poverty, hopelessness and their sins…because all of society has shunned the poor and all paths has been cut off to the middle class....because there is too little social mobility.
Nothing more represents this than in New Orleans’s within Katrina…where the American Katina refugees were trying to flee the horrendous conditions through the “Crescent City Connection”…"The bridge to Gretna"…where the whites by force of guns where keeping the blacks and poor within the inhumane conditions of our largest natural disaster.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gretna,_Louisiana
I think that “bridge to Gretna” represent a class and wealth demarcation…with the wealthy keep out the dirty poor by what ever means necessary.
I am astonished Klein sees this in such simplistic terms...and doesn't want to understand this in its complete complexity. I hope he doesn't see the problems in the current industry and the new nukes...in these simplistic terms.
God help the nuclear industry then!
----- Original Message ----
From: Michael Mulligan
To: USS_Scorpion_SSN-589@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Saturday, November 10, 2007 10:55:59 AM
Subject: Re: [USS_Scorpion_SSN-589] Re: Credibility, facts and evidence....and gulags
Todd,
Actually it began big time with Mayor Giuliani of NYC and ending with his police chief Kerik. All the rest of the country followed them. It is interesting looking at this from today…with Keric accused of fraud and mafia ties. Giuliani began the big “broken window” policy…filled up our prisons with the mentally ill…in defense of sterilizing Manhattan for the moneyed interest. You can’t get by corrupt NYC police chief Keric with his mafia Gucci shoes that ended the Giuliani broken windows years….with the justice of the homeless and mentally ill sitting in prisons. You get that don’t you, Giuliani and Keric fingered the law breaking of the littlest peoples…while Keric is the police chief… and lies and break laws, steals and is corrupt beyond belief. Sounds like the Navy to me?
I worked on the Vermont Governor Dean issue during his presidential campaign…with him covering up the gulag like conditions of Vermont state mental hospital. In order to be president we have to show financial responsibility as a state governor…no deficits…and thus making worst the horrors of the state hospital under his watch.
Of course all of these politician’s are doing the bidding of the American public.
Thanks,
mike
----- Original Message ----
From: Michael Mulligan
To: Michael Mulligan
Sent: Wednesday, September 13, 2006 10:46:41 AM
Subject: Re: [rootcauseconference] Start with ????Giuliani
So who picks up that dirt on the floor, is it the powerless Kerik’s illegal alien housekeeper who he’s not paying taxes on? Is it the low paid worker you just hired? Who metaphorically gets fingered with culpability...is it a sliding scale? How about the long term employees...who knows about the results of not dealing with small problems? Should we more blame the degreed individual who has been trained on the broad view...how about the managers? The higher the degree... the more we should blame them for walking by the same problems. The executives, the CEO...all the governmental overseers...don’t think these guys operated a broom in a long
time...maybe we should key culpability to income levels. Should we hold the elders more culpable more than the teenagers? How about a loner or somebody who is very popular?
So for the sin of walking past the exact same dirt on the floor...ignoring it...for the entry level employee, to the president of the USA...do we hold them equally culpable for ignoring the small problems...should we hold one more culpable because of their knowledge and position...the power they hold?
Thanks,
mike
Defending an attack on my integrity by Stephen Johnson
----- Original Message ----From: Michael Mulligan To: USS_Scorpion_SSN-589@yahoogroups.comSent: Friday, November 9, 2007 1:18:13 PMSubject: [USS_Scorpion_SSN-589] Re: Credibility, facts and evidence....and gulags
Three big police officers tackled him out of his wheel chair and flung his foot through a plate glass window. I had been feeding this guy by hand and watching him crawl out of his wheelchair to go to the bathroom. You have no idea with the problems with steps and the mechanics of pissing with a guy like this. I requested a meeting with a police chief. He didn’t have his job long after that. I asked them why had his policemen tackle him out of the wheel chair. They told me they thought he had a pistil or revolver…they only did it for the protection of the police.
He and they were afraid of Tom with a fork…they though he would poke his eye out with a fork…he had such troubles controlling his muscles. Tom couldn’t hold a revolver. I got so mad at the police chief. I remember him and his lieutenant standing up in the meeting when I became so upset with this, telling me to calm down right now, you are frightening us….or you will be cuffed and arrested right here in the police chief’s office.
But for the grace of god…that could have been my son! At the time I was having some difficulties accepting the cards that had been dealt to me. I watched my son’s bent legs and horrendous running gait at school….and I remember my son asking me why couldn’t run like the rest of the kids. I remember the stares he got from people. I was so mad a god....then Tom came into my life. But for the grace of god!
Thanks,
mike
----- Original Message ----From: Michael Mulliganyahoo.com>To: USS_Scorpion_ SSN-589@yahoogro ups.comSent: Friday, November 9, 2007 12:48:28 PMSubject: Credibility, facts and evidence.... and gulags
This e-mail wouldn’t have happened if I haven’t hit a huge nerve.
What do we think of his two degrees…one in history and the other one in music…Tom. Because his muscle tone was different than all of the rest of us including his stomach….medication responded differently than the rest of us. He and his mother hated medications because of this.
The community couldn’t afford his proper care….so they found a way to arrest him. They put him in a antiquated county jail….and the warden called up the judge telling him it was a gross human rights violation. The faculty just wasn’t designed for a guy like him. When I went in there visiting him I discovered a lot of the inmates have a mental illness. I couldn't believe this was America!
Don’t get me talking “ Crotched Mountain ” rehabilitation facility run by one of the most politically connected republican families in the USA .
Stephen Johnson:
“Here's a passage that appears to be a question to you regarding your devolving into some odd discussion about care for people with cerebral palsy. (I suggest the man in question may have suffered from Tardive Dyskinesia due to long-term use of anti-psychotic medications and probably did not have Cerebral Palsey):”
I suppose my son…you know my adopted Korean son has cerebral palsy (CP)...it was disclosed way after the adoption process. We discovered it a few months after he arrived in our house. So you are telling me he’s is psychotic. What kind of investigation journalist are you? I get it now you think all CP people are psychotic. Next you will tell me all mental illness is their fault. He was so sick, under weight and undeveloped at four months old. He is a perfectly normal young man today. We had to clip some of his tendons.
That is the gulags! We’d seen the mentality of the gulags in our culture before they even showed up through our war on terrorism, 9/11 and Iraq . It’s been simmering is our society in our care of those with a mental illness, in our institutions, community care, police and the jails…way before 9/11.
To this day I still get a parade of Vermont Employees telling me their problems in the plant and w/i their corporations… they know I will get it in the newspapers and we will force the NRC to correct that.
I considered the future up ahead of us in 2001…I though we could no longer be mindlessly anti nuclear…and thus I disconnected myself from the NECNP. I forced them to work on VY when I was there.
Honour cultures are all around us!
Thanks,
mike mulligan
Three big police officers tackled him out of his wheel chair and flung his foot through a plate glass window. I had been feeding this guy by hand and watching him crawl out of his wheelchair to go to the bathroom. You have no idea with the problems with steps and the mechanics of pissing with a guy like this. I requested a meeting with a police chief. He didn’t have his job long after that. I asked them why had his policemen tackle him out of the wheel chair. They told me they thought he had a pistil or revolver…they only did it for the protection of the police.
He and they were afraid of Tom with a fork…they though he would poke his eye out with a fork…he had such troubles controlling his muscles. Tom couldn’t hold a revolver. I got so mad at the police chief. I remember him and his lieutenant standing up in the meeting when I became so upset with this, telling me to calm down right now, you are frightening us….or you will be cuffed and arrested right here in the police chief’s office.
But for the grace of god…that could have been my son! At the time I was having some difficulties accepting the cards that had been dealt to me. I watched my son’s bent legs and horrendous running gait at school….and I remember my son asking me why couldn’t run like the rest of the kids. I remember the stares he got from people. I was so mad a god....then Tom came into my life. But for the grace of god!
Thanks,
mike
----- Original Message ----From: Michael Mulligan
This e-mail wouldn’t have happened if I haven’t hit a huge nerve.
What do we think of his two degrees…one in history and the other one in music…Tom. Because his muscle tone was different than all of the rest of us including his stomach….medication responded differently than the rest of us. He and his mother hated medications because of this.
The community couldn’t afford his proper care….so they found a way to arrest him. They put him in a antiquated county jail….and the warden called up the judge telling him it was a gross human rights violation. The faculty just wasn’t designed for a guy like him. When I went in there visiting him I discovered a lot of the inmates have a mental illness. I couldn't believe this was America!
Don’t get me talking “ Crotched Mountain ” rehabilitation facility run by one of the most politically connected republican families in the USA .
Stephen Johnson:
“Here's a passage that appears to be a question to you regarding your devolving into some odd discussion about care for people with cerebral palsy. (I suggest the man in question may have suffered from Tardive Dyskinesia due to long-term use of anti-psychotic medications and probably did not have Cerebral Palsey):”
I suppose my son…you know my adopted Korean son has cerebral palsy (CP)...it was disclosed way after the adoption process. We discovered it a few months after he arrived in our house. So you are telling me he’s is psychotic. What kind of investigation journalist are you? I get it now you think all CP people are psychotic. Next you will tell me all mental illness is their fault. He was so sick, under weight and undeveloped at four months old. He is a perfectly normal young man today. We had to clip some of his tendons.
That is the gulags! We’d seen the mentality of the gulags in our culture before they even showed up through our war on terrorism, 9/11 and Iraq . It’s been simmering is our society in our care of those with a mental illness, in our institutions, community care, police and the jails…way before 9/11.
To this day I still get a parade of Vermont Employees telling me their problems in the plant and w/i their corporations… they know I will get it in the newspapers and we will force the NRC to correct that.
I considered the future up ahead of us in 2001…I though we could no longer be mindlessly anti nuclear…and thus I disconnected myself from the NECNP. I forced them to work on VY when I was there.
Honour cultures are all around us!
Thanks,
mike mulligan
NRC commissioner, triumphalism, broken windows and the early nuclear industry.
This speech’s triumphalism reminds me of a sub prime mortgage CEO who is living in his rich isolation, in his sea side mansion in East Hampton long island…who is obliterate to the mortgage mess in Cleveland OH.
Think of how Klein has oversimplified the terms of the troubles with the nuclear industry and regulator’s of the 1970’s …how arrogant and isolated they were to the needs of the public and transparency back then, how the industry and the NRC had blinded themselves internally and externally…look at how simplified Klien has used the term “broken windows” today. He is using these terms in a simplified selective Orwellian disinformation campaign. These guys spend an enormous amount of print with blaming the outsiders on the early developmental problems with the nuclear industry…stagflation and external interveners.
Imagine if they are regulating nuclear power and bringing on the nuclear Renaissance through such a class warfare lens, top down hierarchal and nuclear industry centric perspective…through such a lens?
Can you imagine if Klein was the CEO of Palo Verde or a shift supervision of a plant…how he would externalization the blame to outside influences with the troubles on the largest nuclear facility in the USA? He’s be better explaining what was the exact problems were with the NRC communication and IT technology...or what cause the tower collapsed at Vermont Yankee and why everyone missed it. He’s be better explaining how the INPO missed the VY tower issue…instead of playing nice with these guys in his speech.
See, these guys are all into the risk perspective…they are interested in the magnitude of an accident at a nuclear plant…they are extremely careless with the idea of a non safety accident that obliterates the credibility of the NRC and the industry…can a non nuclear accident cause as much financial damage as a nuclear accident based not based on risk? The ideology of the risk perspective doesn’t capture this effect….and it is an ideological and class tool.
Again, he implying historic pressures with re-licencing and new plants…we don’t have a understanding with how much the resources of the agency doesn’t match their current and future responsibilities…this unseen financial drought…the mismatch of resources…the pressure and intimidations…the internal and external pressures creating blindness…this has been at the bottom of all our institutional failures.
Doesn’t it bother anyone after ever incident and accident the agency always says they got to better communicate to the public…as if the problem is just about communication…that they will next correct the NRC’s communication problem and a accident will never happen again. What a conn job.
Can anyone see this repeated addictive externalization of problems on a grand scale?
Play attention to the date of this speech!
http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/commission/speeches/2007/s-07-050.html
Remarks Prepared for NRC Chairman Dale E. Klein
"Past, Present, and Future: Reflections on the State of the Nuclear Renaissance"INPOAtlanta, GA
November 15, 2007
Good afternoon. I appreciate the invitation to speak to you today.
I have a lot a tell you. I do not mean that my speech will be excessively long; it won't be. What I mean is that I have some substantial and important things I need to say to you. Some of what I need to discuss with you is negative. Of course, pointing out the negative is part of my job as a regulator. But I should also mention that there is good news. In fact, those of you who are optimists could say that the glass is half-full.
This counterpoint, in fact, leads me to the theme of my remarks, which is: contrast.
The contrast between the things that are going well, and where we need to be better.
The contrast between perception and reality. And the contrast between the past and the present.
I want to say a brief word about each of those, but not necessarily in that order. Let's look at the contrast between past and present first. Certainly things are very different today than, say, thirty years ago when the building of new nuclear power plants ground to a halt.
During the "stagflation" of the late 1970s, demand for energy was predicted to level off. The NRC had only recently been created, and—frankly—was not a very efficient or predictable regulator, in my view. And the only problem people had with "carbon" was that the stuff rubbed off on your fingers when you made "carbon copies" in the typewriter. The prospects for nuclear power did not appear bright. Today, of course, the situation is very different—as all of you know very well.
Even within the last year, we have seen dramatic changes. Brown's Ferry Unit 1 was re-started; and the President of the United States personally attended the ribbon-cutting. Construction resumed at Watts Bar Unit 2. The NRC issued three license renewals this year, with 10 more under review; while 13 power uprates are under review, with one already issued this year. We are expecting applications for several new uranium mining operations; and if the Department of Energy follows through on what it has said, we could be receiving an application for Yucca Mountain next year. In addition, of course, the first COL applications—for NRG in Texas and Bellefonte in Alabama—have been submitted. And we are preparing for quite a few more.
These are not the signs of a stagnant industry. To the contrary, these are signs of expansion and growth. The NRC is probably the busiest we have been in our history.And that points us away from the past and the present, into the future. However, I don't work on Wall Street, so I am not in the business of predicting the future. I would rather focus on the here and now. You have probably heard the saying, "If we do our jobs in the present, the future will take care of itself." I think that's true.
So let me turn to the contrast between what we are doing, and what we should be doing. Or rather, let's frame it in terms of some things that should not be happening.
We should not have cooling towers collapsing, corrosion of safety-system piping, or security guards sleeping.
Not to mention sirens that don't work, emergency diesels that won't run, safety- related valves that don't work, safety-related breakers that don't work, and ECCS sump suction lines full of duct tape.
In addition to these items, we currently have a site that is already in column four, with three more that could move into column four within the next 18 months.
This is not a good situation.
Now, when I said "we" a moment ago, I really did mean that all of us need to improve. I think you are all aware of our agency's embarrassment over the GAO sting involving materials licenses given to a bogus company. Obviously, the NRC is not exempt from error or failure.
We need to be doing a better job in a number of areas, including communications. We also need to improve our information systems, and make information publicly available and transparent. And we need to upgrade our technology and business practices more generally. As I have told the staff several times: We should strive to hold ourselves to the same standards we expect from our licensees.
Now, you and I know that from the perspective of risk-informed analysis, most of the items I listed were not matters of significant safety risk. But, let me stress, that doesn't matter, for several reasons.First, carelessness in small things may lead to carelessness about bigger things. In the early 1980s, the sociologist James Q. Wilson pioneered the so-called "broken windows" theory of law-enforcement. The idea was that when small signs of disorder or decay—such as vandalism, graffiti, or even excessive littering—are allowed to persist, it leads to bigger crimes, because people assume that the neighborhood does not have any standards, and that no one is enforcing the law. It is a theory that was actually put into practice in several major cities, and led to major reductions in crimes. One lesson we can take from that is: Perception leads to reality.
If the public believes that standards at nuclear plants are not being enforced, it leads to an erosion of public confidence in the whole nuclear energy industry. On the other hand, when industry does its job, it leads to public confidence in nuclear power more broadly—which lends credence to the work of the NRC. And when we, in turn, hold the utilities to a high standard of safety and security, it enhances confidence in the job you are doing.
Last week I spoke to a delegation of Japanese government officials and utility executives from the Japanese nuclear power industry. I think some of you may be with us today. One of the things I mentioned is that nuclear utilities and regulators from both of our countries need to do a much better job of communicating with the public when an incident occurs at a nuclear facility.
At the time of the Kashiwazaki earthquake, I am not sure that the public was given the accurate and timely information it needed to understand the risk and safety issues. In many cases, when there is an incident at a nuclear facility, the headlines in the newspapers should read, "All safety systems worked." But, as we know, this important fact is often not made clear. And often—though not always—this is because no one had laid the communications groundwork ahead of time to make it clear.
The NRC needs to do better in this regard, as well. For example, I don't think we have done a great job explaining to people—especially on Capitol Hill—the difference between today's Reactor Oversight Process and the Independent Safety Assessment that was done away with years ago—why we made that change, and how the ROP is a greatly superior, internationally recognized approach for promoting safety.
So we need to be better at explaining these facts, and these incidents. Of course, it would also make things easier if there were fewer incidents that required explanation.
Another reason all this is important is that the United States is at the forefront of the global nuclear expansion. People all over the world are paying close attention to what we do. Now, I have mentioned this often, and at times people have responded by saying, "Well, so what? Let others watch us, if they want. That doesn't make us responsible for the rest of the world."
Well, that is true, except for this significant fact: The rest of the world is not just watching the U.S. nuclear renaissance; they are participating in it! Whether it be major components, minor parts supplied by sub-vendors, reactor designs, manpower, software, or other elements, a new reactor today depends on a supply chain that is truly global in scope. This wasn't necessarily the case, say, 20 years ago. But I think that it has become clear that it simply isn't possible to obtain all the necessary components domestically. Just consider that the number of N-stamps held by U.S. companies today is about a fifth of what it was in 1980.
So the safety of both new and existing reactors in the United States simply can't be separated from what is happening internationally. That is what I mean when I say that "A nuclear accident anywhere is a nuclear accident everywhere." I hope that you will consider helping by expanding your international outreach efforts.In fact, this is such a good idea, I would even say, don't stop with extending cooperation and communication around the world, try it here at home. What I mean is, as the nuclear resurgence gets under way, I hope you engage in more collaboration and sharing of information among yourselves.
If we are serious about the need for greater standardization in the future—and I think we all know this must happen—we need to share information within the nuclear industry. If there is some way you can get together and critique or "red-team" each other's COL applications—to ensure completeness, accuracy, and quality—it will streamline the process for us, promote the goal of standardization, and lead to enhanced safety for the future fleet.
Ladies and gentlemen, let me conclude my remarks on two personal notes. The first concerns human resources—which is a big issue for all of us.
As both industry and government seek to locate and train the next generation of employees, let's remember to work on expanding the talent pool as much as possible. The NRC has a very aggressive recruitment effort to expand the diversity of our workforce, with the result that 60 percent of our new hires in FY2007 are women and minorities.
I also know from direct experience while I was at the Pentagon that our men and women in uniform are highly dedicated and professional. And regardless of the differing opinions people may have on various political questions, I think we can all agree that America owes a great debt of gratitude to those who have been disabled while serving their nation. So as we seek out the best and brightest, and seek to reflect the diversity of society at large, let's not overlook the nation's disabled veterans.
My final point is more of a personal reflection. It was just about this time last year that the NRC was facing a budget impasse, as Congress contemplated passing a year-long Continuing Resolution. And while some things change, some things stay the same, because we are facing that same situation again, and it reminds me how much I miss Ed McGaffigan.
Ed was invaluable in working with me, making numerous trips to the Hill, arguing the case for the agency, and getting us our full funding. Many of you knew him. It wasn't just Ed's technical competence that made him special, but also his willingness to fight battles on behalf of the agency, whether it was setting the record straight on the GAO sting and the RTR study, or explaining the critical work we do to members of Congress.
Ed and I didn't see eye-to-eye on every issue, but with him you always knew where you stood. He told you what he thought. We could differ, and still maintain a collegial relationship. That approach helped us achieve a lot as an agency. It helped the NRC resolve the issue of the Continuing Resolution; but it also helped us become a better place. It made us more efficient, more responsive, and more responsible. And it is something I hope we can continue to see at the NRC in the coming years.
Ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much for your invitation to join you today, and for your kind attention.
Think of how Klein has oversimplified the terms of the troubles with the nuclear industry and regulator’s of the 1970’s …how arrogant and isolated they were to the needs of the public and transparency back then, how the industry and the NRC had blinded themselves internally and externally…look at how simplified Klien has used the term “broken windows” today. He is using these terms in a simplified selective Orwellian disinformation campaign. These guys spend an enormous amount of print with blaming the outsiders on the early developmental problems with the nuclear industry…stagflation and external interveners.
Imagine if they are regulating nuclear power and bringing on the nuclear Renaissance through such a class warfare lens, top down hierarchal and nuclear industry centric perspective…through such a lens?
Can you imagine if Klein was the CEO of Palo Verde or a shift supervision of a plant…how he would externalization the blame to outside influences with the troubles on the largest nuclear facility in the USA? He’s be better explaining what was the exact problems were with the NRC communication and IT technology...or what cause the tower collapsed at Vermont Yankee and why everyone missed it. He’s be better explaining how the INPO missed the VY tower issue…instead of playing nice with these guys in his speech.
See, these guys are all into the risk perspective…they are interested in the magnitude of an accident at a nuclear plant…they are extremely careless with the idea of a non safety accident that obliterates the credibility of the NRC and the industry…can a non nuclear accident cause as much financial damage as a nuclear accident based not based on risk? The ideology of the risk perspective doesn’t capture this effect….and it is an ideological and class tool.
Again, he implying historic pressures with re-licencing and new plants…we don’t have a understanding with how much the resources of the agency doesn’t match their current and future responsibilities…this unseen financial drought…the mismatch of resources…the pressure and intimidations…the internal and external pressures creating blindness…this has been at the bottom of all our institutional failures.
Doesn’t it bother anyone after ever incident and accident the agency always says they got to better communicate to the public…as if the problem is just about communication…that they will next correct the NRC’s communication problem and a accident will never happen again. What a conn job.
Can anyone see this repeated addictive externalization of problems on a grand scale?
Play attention to the date of this speech!
http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/commission/speeches/2007/s-07-050.html
Remarks Prepared for NRC Chairman Dale E. Klein
"Past, Present, and Future: Reflections on the State of the Nuclear Renaissance"INPOAtlanta, GA
November 15, 2007
Good afternoon. I appreciate the invitation to speak to you today.
I have a lot a tell you. I do not mean that my speech will be excessively long; it won't be. What I mean is that I have some substantial and important things I need to say to you. Some of what I need to discuss with you is negative. Of course, pointing out the negative is part of my job as a regulator. But I should also mention that there is good news. In fact, those of you who are optimists could say that the glass is half-full.
This counterpoint, in fact, leads me to the theme of my remarks, which is: contrast.
The contrast between the things that are going well, and where we need to be better.
The contrast between perception and reality. And the contrast between the past and the present.
I want to say a brief word about each of those, but not necessarily in that order. Let's look at the contrast between past and present first. Certainly things are very different today than, say, thirty years ago when the building of new nuclear power plants ground to a halt.
During the "stagflation" of the late 1970s, demand for energy was predicted to level off. The NRC had only recently been created, and—frankly—was not a very efficient or predictable regulator, in my view. And the only problem people had with "carbon" was that the stuff rubbed off on your fingers when you made "carbon copies" in the typewriter. The prospects for nuclear power did not appear bright. Today, of course, the situation is very different—as all of you know very well.
Even within the last year, we have seen dramatic changes. Brown's Ferry Unit 1 was re-started; and the President of the United States personally attended the ribbon-cutting. Construction resumed at Watts Bar Unit 2. The NRC issued three license renewals this year, with 10 more under review; while 13 power uprates are under review, with one already issued this year. We are expecting applications for several new uranium mining operations; and if the Department of Energy follows through on what it has said, we could be receiving an application for Yucca Mountain next year. In addition, of course, the first COL applications—for NRG in Texas and Bellefonte in Alabama—have been submitted. And we are preparing for quite a few more.
These are not the signs of a stagnant industry. To the contrary, these are signs of expansion and growth. The NRC is probably the busiest we have been in our history.And that points us away from the past and the present, into the future. However, I don't work on Wall Street, so I am not in the business of predicting the future. I would rather focus on the here and now. You have probably heard the saying, "If we do our jobs in the present, the future will take care of itself." I think that's true.
So let me turn to the contrast between what we are doing, and what we should be doing. Or rather, let's frame it in terms of some things that should not be happening.
We should not have cooling towers collapsing, corrosion of safety-system piping, or security guards sleeping.
Not to mention sirens that don't work, emergency diesels that won't run, safety- related valves that don't work, safety-related breakers that don't work, and ECCS sump suction lines full of duct tape.
In addition to these items, we currently have a site that is already in column four, with three more that could move into column four within the next 18 months.
This is not a good situation.
Now, when I said "we" a moment ago, I really did mean that all of us need to improve. I think you are all aware of our agency's embarrassment over the GAO sting involving materials licenses given to a bogus company. Obviously, the NRC is not exempt from error or failure.
We need to be doing a better job in a number of areas, including communications. We also need to improve our information systems, and make information publicly available and transparent. And we need to upgrade our technology and business practices more generally. As I have told the staff several times: We should strive to hold ourselves to the same standards we expect from our licensees.
Now, you and I know that from the perspective of risk-informed analysis, most of the items I listed were not matters of significant safety risk. But, let me stress, that doesn't matter, for several reasons.First, carelessness in small things may lead to carelessness about bigger things. In the early 1980s, the sociologist James Q. Wilson pioneered the so-called "broken windows" theory of law-enforcement. The idea was that when small signs of disorder or decay—such as vandalism, graffiti, or even excessive littering—are allowed to persist, it leads to bigger crimes, because people assume that the neighborhood does not have any standards, and that no one is enforcing the law. It is a theory that was actually put into practice in several major cities, and led to major reductions in crimes. One lesson we can take from that is: Perception leads to reality.
If the public believes that standards at nuclear plants are not being enforced, it leads to an erosion of public confidence in the whole nuclear energy industry. On the other hand, when industry does its job, it leads to public confidence in nuclear power more broadly—which lends credence to the work of the NRC. And when we, in turn, hold the utilities to a high standard of safety and security, it enhances confidence in the job you are doing.
Last week I spoke to a delegation of Japanese government officials and utility executives from the Japanese nuclear power industry. I think some of you may be with us today. One of the things I mentioned is that nuclear utilities and regulators from both of our countries need to do a much better job of communicating with the public when an incident occurs at a nuclear facility.
At the time of the Kashiwazaki earthquake, I am not sure that the public was given the accurate and timely information it needed to understand the risk and safety issues. In many cases, when there is an incident at a nuclear facility, the headlines in the newspapers should read, "All safety systems worked." But, as we know, this important fact is often not made clear. And often—though not always—this is because no one had laid the communications groundwork ahead of time to make it clear.
The NRC needs to do better in this regard, as well. For example, I don't think we have done a great job explaining to people—especially on Capitol Hill—the difference between today's Reactor Oversight Process and the Independent Safety Assessment that was done away with years ago—why we made that change, and how the ROP is a greatly superior, internationally recognized approach for promoting safety.
So we need to be better at explaining these facts, and these incidents. Of course, it would also make things easier if there were fewer incidents that required explanation.
Another reason all this is important is that the United States is at the forefront of the global nuclear expansion. People all over the world are paying close attention to what we do. Now, I have mentioned this often, and at times people have responded by saying, "Well, so what? Let others watch us, if they want. That doesn't make us responsible for the rest of the world."
Well, that is true, except for this significant fact: The rest of the world is not just watching the U.S. nuclear renaissance; they are participating in it! Whether it be major components, minor parts supplied by sub-vendors, reactor designs, manpower, software, or other elements, a new reactor today depends on a supply chain that is truly global in scope. This wasn't necessarily the case, say, 20 years ago. But I think that it has become clear that it simply isn't possible to obtain all the necessary components domestically. Just consider that the number of N-stamps held by U.S. companies today is about a fifth of what it was in 1980.
So the safety of both new and existing reactors in the United States simply can't be separated from what is happening internationally. That is what I mean when I say that "A nuclear accident anywhere is a nuclear accident everywhere." I hope that you will consider helping by expanding your international outreach efforts.In fact, this is such a good idea, I would even say, don't stop with extending cooperation and communication around the world, try it here at home. What I mean is, as the nuclear resurgence gets under way, I hope you engage in more collaboration and sharing of information among yourselves.
If we are serious about the need for greater standardization in the future—and I think we all know this must happen—we need to share information within the nuclear industry. If there is some way you can get together and critique or "red-team" each other's COL applications—to ensure completeness, accuracy, and quality—it will streamline the process for us, promote the goal of standardization, and lead to enhanced safety for the future fleet.
Ladies and gentlemen, let me conclude my remarks on two personal notes. The first concerns human resources—which is a big issue for all of us.
As both industry and government seek to locate and train the next generation of employees, let's remember to work on expanding the talent pool as much as possible. The NRC has a very aggressive recruitment effort to expand the diversity of our workforce, with the result that 60 percent of our new hires in FY2007 are women and minorities.
I also know from direct experience while I was at the Pentagon that our men and women in uniform are highly dedicated and professional. And regardless of the differing opinions people may have on various political questions, I think we can all agree that America owes a great debt of gratitude to those who have been disabled while serving their nation. So as we seek out the best and brightest, and seek to reflect the diversity of society at large, let's not overlook the nation's disabled veterans.
My final point is more of a personal reflection. It was just about this time last year that the NRC was facing a budget impasse, as Congress contemplated passing a year-long Continuing Resolution. And while some things change, some things stay the same, because we are facing that same situation again, and it reminds me how much I miss Ed McGaffigan.
Ed was invaluable in working with me, making numerous trips to the Hill, arguing the case for the agency, and getting us our full funding. Many of you knew him. It wasn't just Ed's technical competence that made him special, but also his willingness to fight battles on behalf of the agency, whether it was setting the record straight on the GAO sting and the RTR study, or explaining the critical work we do to members of Congress.
Ed and I didn't see eye-to-eye on every issue, but with him you always knew where you stood. He told you what he thought. We could differ, and still maintain a collegial relationship. That approach helped us achieve a lot as an agency. It helped the NRC resolve the issue of the Continuing Resolution; but it also helped us become a better place. It made us more efficient, more responsive, and more responsible. And it is something I hope we can continue to see at the NRC in the coming years.
Ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much for your invitation to join you today, and for your kind attention.
BROKEN WINDOWS
Broken Windows Theory
by Tom Pryor
"If a window is broken and left unrepaired, people walking by will conclude that no one cares and no one is in charge." (1)
Political scientist James Wilson and criminologist George Kelling co-authored a March 1982 cover story in The Atlantic Monthly titled "Broken Windows". They argued the best way to fight crime is to fight the disorder that precedes it… graffiti, panhandling, uncollected trash and unrepaired buildings.
New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani adopted the Broken Windows Theory and implemented a community-policing strategy focused on order maintenance… graffiti washed nightly from subway cars, $1.25 subway turnstile-jumpers arrested, trash picked up. Minor, seemingly insignificant quality-of-life crimes were found to be the tipping point for violent crime. When New York "windows" were repaired, crime dropped.
Here's my list of Ten Broken Windows that need repair:
Broken Streets… Unrepaired potholes are like broken windows. If city management doesn't care about the street condition then they won't care if we litter them. Laura Miller was elected mayor of Dallas in 2002 running on a platform of "I'll fix the streets".
Broken Bathrooms… Dirty restrooms are like broken windows. If a hospital administrator allows public bathrooms to be dirty then he/she shouldn't be surprised when patients complain about staph infections and poor treatment by hospital staff. I speak from recent experience!
Broken Words… Curse words are like broken windows. At first people say "I'm sorry". Then they joke "Pardon my French". But with repetition and left unchecked, offensive words then flow without even noticing that listeners have been offended.
Broken English… Misspelled words and poor grammar are the broken windows of our educational system. "If you want to find out what is really important to a school, don't ask the principal, look at your child's papers." Says Charles Sykes in his book "Dumbing Down Our Kids: Why American Children Feel Good About Themselves But Can't Read, Write or Add".
Broken Workgroups… Dysfunctional departments are the broken windows of organizations. Disorganized and chaotic departments staffed with people who don't care cause a "normalization of deviance", according to author Diane Vaughan. (2) Departures from the norm become the norm. Deviations from values, quality and customer service become acceptable.
Broken Software… Software "rot" is a broken window. When software errors go unfixed, programmers call it "software rot". Broken "windows" are characterized by bad designs, wrong decisions, or poor code left unrepaired. "If there is insufficient time to fix it properly, then board it up". (3) Dr. Deming, father of the TQM movement, often said, "Employees will do a good job if they are given the best tools and training." Software is a common tool in the 21st century economy. If it's rotten, so will be employee's output.
Broken Bodies… Our diet is a broken window. According to the Barna Research Group, 91% of Americans want good physical health. Yet research shows "the average adult consumes in a typical year 25 pounds of candy, 22 pounds of salty snack foods and thirty gallons of beer." (4) USA Today reports that 80% of Americans are over weight. To fix our health we must fix our eating habits.
Broken Families… Left unchanged, the breakdown of the father-mother family unit leads to increased poverty, school dropouts, crime and much more pain. Marriage is not dead, but it is losing ground. One out of every three children under age 18 is living with a single parent, either from divorce or out of wedlock relationships. "Statistical evidence shows that people who cohabit prior to marriage have an 81% greater likelihood of getting divorced that those individuals who do not cohabit."(4) Strong families are founded on commitments that honor God, not trial relationships fixated on convenience.
Broken Standards… Abandoned values lead to abandoned truth. According to the Barna Research Group, fiscal responsibility, respect, accountability, loyalty and absolute morality have been abandoned by Americans and replaced with convenience, instant gratification, image, happiness and tolerance. Broken standards lead to broken companies. For secrecy, the management of bankrupt energy trader Enron created over 600 partnerships in the Cayman Islands to escape accountability.
Broken Books… Outdated accounting systems are broken windows to faulty financial results. Outdated, irrelevant and inaccurate formats fed by outdated formulas lead to disappointing and frustrating bottom-line results. In a Six Sigma world, underspending a budget is no better than overspending. Both are out of compliance. Peter Drucker recommends less accounting and more measuring by using the principles of Activity Based Management (ABM). And Professor Baruch Lev of NYU recommends ABM process-based P&L's. (5)
Are broken books causing broken dreams in your organization? Symptomatic of a broken cost system are the lack of answers to basic questions. Questions such as …
Are we making a profit on our largest customer?
How much does it cost us to make a 25-mile delivery?
What does it cost to treat a patient?
Are we overcharging residential customers and undercharging commercial customers?
Are we overcosting full-page ads and undercosting classified ads?
Should we buy pothole repairs or continue filling them ourselves?
Are we productive or are we just busy?
Activity Based Management systems are the "window of opportunity" that provide answers to those questions plus many more. Taking hold of the opportunity provided by ABM begins with a management team fixated on asking the right questions and acting on the answers.
During research for his best selling book, Good to Great, (6) author Jim Collins found a pattern in great organizations called "the window and the mirror". Great leaders "look out the window to apportion credit to factors outside themselves when things go well. At the same time, they look in the mirror to apportion responsibility, never blaming bad luck when things go poorly." The tipping point between your success or failure this year begins with fixing your "broken windows". Who's responsible for the repairs? Look in the mirror.
(1) Tipping Point, by Malcolm Gladwell, Little, Brown & Company, 2000 (2) The Challenger Launch Decision, Diane Vaughan, 1996 (3) The Pragmatic Programmer, Addison Wesley, 2000 (4) Boiling Point, George Barna and Mark Hatch, Regal Publishing, 2001(4) Ibid. (5) Intangibles: Management, Measurement, and Reporting, Baruch Lev, Brookings Press, 2001 (6) Good To Great, Jim Collins, Harper Business, 2001
by Tom Pryor
"If a window is broken and left unrepaired, people walking by will conclude that no one cares and no one is in charge." (1)
Political scientist James Wilson and criminologist George Kelling co-authored a March 1982 cover story in The Atlantic Monthly titled "Broken Windows". They argued the best way to fight crime is to fight the disorder that precedes it… graffiti, panhandling, uncollected trash and unrepaired buildings.
New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani adopted the Broken Windows Theory and implemented a community-policing strategy focused on order maintenance… graffiti washed nightly from subway cars, $1.25 subway turnstile-jumpers arrested, trash picked up. Minor, seemingly insignificant quality-of-life crimes were found to be the tipping point for violent crime. When New York "windows" were repaired, crime dropped.
Here's my list of Ten Broken Windows that need repair:
Broken Streets… Unrepaired potholes are like broken windows. If city management doesn't care about the street condition then they won't care if we litter them. Laura Miller was elected mayor of Dallas in 2002 running on a platform of "I'll fix the streets".
Broken Bathrooms… Dirty restrooms are like broken windows. If a hospital administrator allows public bathrooms to be dirty then he/she shouldn't be surprised when patients complain about staph infections and poor treatment by hospital staff. I speak from recent experience!
Broken Words… Curse words are like broken windows. At first people say "I'm sorry". Then they joke "Pardon my French". But with repetition and left unchecked, offensive words then flow without even noticing that listeners have been offended.
Broken English… Misspelled words and poor grammar are the broken windows of our educational system. "If you want to find out what is really important to a school, don't ask the principal, look at your child's papers." Says Charles Sykes in his book "Dumbing Down Our Kids: Why American Children Feel Good About Themselves But Can't Read, Write or Add".
Broken Workgroups… Dysfunctional departments are the broken windows of organizations. Disorganized and chaotic departments staffed with people who don't care cause a "normalization of deviance", according to author Diane Vaughan. (2) Departures from the norm become the norm. Deviations from values, quality and customer service become acceptable.
Broken Software… Software "rot" is a broken window. When software errors go unfixed, programmers call it "software rot". Broken "windows" are characterized by bad designs, wrong decisions, or poor code left unrepaired. "If there is insufficient time to fix it properly, then board it up". (3) Dr. Deming, father of the TQM movement, often said, "Employees will do a good job if they are given the best tools and training." Software is a common tool in the 21st century economy. If it's rotten, so will be employee's output.
Broken Bodies… Our diet is a broken window. According to the Barna Research Group, 91% of Americans want good physical health. Yet research shows "the average adult consumes in a typical year 25 pounds of candy, 22 pounds of salty snack foods and thirty gallons of beer." (4) USA Today reports that 80% of Americans are over weight. To fix our health we must fix our eating habits.
Broken Families… Left unchanged, the breakdown of the father-mother family unit leads to increased poverty, school dropouts, crime and much more pain. Marriage is not dead, but it is losing ground. One out of every three children under age 18 is living with a single parent, either from divorce or out of wedlock relationships. "Statistical evidence shows that people who cohabit prior to marriage have an 81% greater likelihood of getting divorced that those individuals who do not cohabit."(4) Strong families are founded on commitments that honor God, not trial relationships fixated on convenience.
Broken Standards… Abandoned values lead to abandoned truth. According to the Barna Research Group, fiscal responsibility, respect, accountability, loyalty and absolute morality have been abandoned by Americans and replaced with convenience, instant gratification, image, happiness and tolerance. Broken standards lead to broken companies. For secrecy, the management of bankrupt energy trader Enron created over 600 partnerships in the Cayman Islands to escape accountability.
Broken Books… Outdated accounting systems are broken windows to faulty financial results. Outdated, irrelevant and inaccurate formats fed by outdated formulas lead to disappointing and frustrating bottom-line results. In a Six Sigma world, underspending a budget is no better than overspending. Both are out of compliance. Peter Drucker recommends less accounting and more measuring by using the principles of Activity Based Management (ABM). And Professor Baruch Lev of NYU recommends ABM process-based P&L's. (5)
Are broken books causing broken dreams in your organization? Symptomatic of a broken cost system are the lack of answers to basic questions. Questions such as …
Are we making a profit on our largest customer?
How much does it cost us to make a 25-mile delivery?
What does it cost to treat a patient?
Are we overcharging residential customers and undercharging commercial customers?
Are we overcosting full-page ads and undercosting classified ads?
Should we buy pothole repairs or continue filling them ourselves?
Are we productive or are we just busy?
Activity Based Management systems are the "window of opportunity" that provide answers to those questions plus many more. Taking hold of the opportunity provided by ABM begins with a management team fixated on asking the right questions and acting on the answers.
During research for his best selling book, Good to Great, (6) author Jim Collins found a pattern in great organizations called "the window and the mirror". Great leaders "look out the window to apportion credit to factors outside themselves when things go well. At the same time, they look in the mirror to apportion responsibility, never blaming bad luck when things go poorly." The tipping point between your success or failure this year begins with fixing your "broken windows". Who's responsible for the repairs? Look in the mirror.
(1) Tipping Point, by Malcolm Gladwell, Little, Brown & Company, 2000 (2) The Challenger Launch Decision, Diane Vaughan, 1996 (3) The Pragmatic Programmer, Addison Wesley, 2000 (4) Boiling Point, George Barna and Mark Hatch, Regal Publishing, 2001(4) Ibid. (5) Intangibles: Management, Measurement, and Reporting, Baruch Lev, Brookings Press, 2001 (6) Good To Great, Jim Collins, Harper Business, 2001
Saturday, November 17, 2007
Why we build submarines?
The primary function of the submarine service is to provide profits for the shipyards and defense establishments, to provide jobs to the surrounding communities and provide a media platform to the politician’s. It’s not a national security weapons platform.
It’s turned into a kind of welfare for the defense establishment, local jobs and politician’s egos.
It’s turned into a kind of welfare for the defense establishment, local jobs and politician’s egos.
Friday, November 16, 2007
Starving Budgets and Black holes
Starving budgets and black holes
----- Original Message ----From: Michael MulliganTo: USS_Scorpion_SSN-589@yahoogroups.comSent: Thursday, November 1, 2007 11:43:25 AMSubject: Re: [USS_Scorpion_SSN-589]
The Navy is bleeding
Most of all of our institutional catastrophes… the accident ends up costing a ton more monies than what has been saved. It ends up being about cost cutting and cost containment. The idea of cost cutting sets up behaviors…higher ups ends up dictating, it ends up being extremely coalescing to the managers because they think they are on some grand and important voyage and mission…a mission for the good of the organization. There is usually a lot of pushback and bickering with the group…it creates isolation and even more coalescing of the in play managers. It creates filters with understanding subtle and developing problems…the cost cutting ends up putting a dark shadow over the whole organization. I don’t think the “in our heads” stuff is fully understood…our group behaviors and organization group behavior and interrelationships The poorly implemented cutting program sets in motion a special kind of blindness in the managers…they focus on the target of the cost cutting…the sloughing off of information that contradicts the goals of the budget cutting…the exhilaration of first meeting the cost cutting goal, or ratcheting up the horsepower into meeting unmet goals….we turn off parts of our brain that contradicts the objective of this voyage of insiders trying to meet these budget cuts. It diverts to I am not the CO of a submarine… or commander of a group of submarines….I am a cost cutting manager….all I am dealing with is issues with budgets and accommodating a lack of resources for critical needs. I think budget cutting is an enormously group coalescing force for the insiders…the brotherhood of enforcing budget cuts…meeting a restrictive financial criterion. Tons of organizations have fallen off the cliff during this….NASA is a great example of this. Many times organizations just don’t have the necessary skills with accomplishing budget cutting…they don’t have the guts to sideline facilities and components in the face of less resources…the whole system gets starve for funds…then the weak links break, generally a very important facility has a huge and mindlessly stupid accident and everyone is astonished with how could they be so stupid. Usually there is an exodus of talent that goes out the door…everything still works…until some stress, the flapping of a butterfly’s wing, sets up a cascade accident that nobody initially understands…. or has the skills to head off.
That giant sucking sound you hear….it’s been the huge economy for the last 10 years, some say a bubble…that’s been eating up the best talent from the services.
It’s unbelievable, and squadron, the CO doesn’t have the capability to understand what’s going on….I bet these guys are going to tell the crew, don’t believe what your eyes and ears tell you…it’s not as bad as you think.
These outsiders are already characterizing what the official outcome is going to be…”just a few difficulties” .
Looking for that magic root cause that doesn’t fix anything and is inexpensive…. we’ve gone past that decades ago…it’s always factor(s), causes(s)…they are focused on that one factor…no wonder the navy is bleeding.
I got it, why don’t you throw the brass at it….the hierarchy…put it thought their filters….for their self protection. Why don’t you get civilians in there…I got it, they just won’t understand.
http://www.theday. com/re.aspx? re=47512132- a919-473f- aedb-875f85fa2ac 7
Experts Sent To Groton To Study Sub's Retention
----- Original Message ----From: Michael Mulligan
The Navy is bleeding
Most of all of our institutional catastrophes… the accident ends up costing a ton more monies than what has been saved. It ends up being about cost cutting and cost containment. The idea of cost cutting sets up behaviors…higher ups ends up dictating, it ends up being extremely coalescing to the managers because they think they are on some grand and important voyage and mission…a mission for the good of the organization. There is usually a lot of pushback and bickering with the group…it creates isolation and even more coalescing of the in play managers. It creates filters with understanding subtle and developing problems…the cost cutting ends up putting a dark shadow over the whole organization. I don’t think the “in our heads” stuff is fully understood…our group behaviors and organization group behavior and interrelationships The poorly implemented cutting program sets in motion a special kind of blindness in the managers…they focus on the target of the cost cutting…the sloughing off of information that contradicts the goals of the budget cutting…the exhilaration of first meeting the cost cutting goal, or ratcheting up the horsepower into meeting unmet goals….we turn off parts of our brain that contradicts the objective of this voyage of insiders trying to meet these budget cuts. It diverts to I am not the CO of a submarine… or commander of a group of submarines….I am a cost cutting manager….all I am dealing with is issues with budgets and accommodating a lack of resources for critical needs. I think budget cutting is an enormously group coalescing force for the insiders…the brotherhood of enforcing budget cuts…meeting a restrictive financial criterion. Tons of organizations have fallen off the cliff during this….NASA is a great example of this. Many times organizations just don’t have the necessary skills with accomplishing budget cutting…they don’t have the guts to sideline facilities and components in the face of less resources…the whole system gets starve for funds…then the weak links break, generally a very important facility has a huge and mindlessly stupid accident and everyone is astonished with how could they be so stupid. Usually there is an exodus of talent that goes out the door…everything still works…until some stress, the flapping of a butterfly’s wing, sets up a cascade accident that nobody initially understands…. or has the skills to head off.
That giant sucking sound you hear….it’s been the huge economy for the last 10 years, some say a bubble…that’s been eating up the best talent from the services.
It’s unbelievable, and squadron, the CO doesn’t have the capability to understand what’s going on….I bet these guys are going to tell the crew, don’t believe what your eyes and ears tell you…it’s not as bad as you think.
These outsiders are already characterizing what the official outcome is going to be…”just a few difficulties” .
Looking for that magic root cause that doesn’t fix anything and is inexpensive…. we’ve gone past that decades ago…it’s always factor(s), causes(s)…they are focused on that one factor…no wonder the navy is bleeding.
I got it, why don’t you throw the brass at it….the hierarchy…put it thought their filters….for their self protection. Why don’t you get civilians in there…I got it, they just won’t understand.
http://www.theday. com/re.aspx? re=47512132- a919-473f- aedb-875f85fa2ac 7
Experts Sent To Groton To Study Sub's Retention
Thursday, November 15, 2007
Stephen Johnson...author of book about the submarine Scorpion
Stephen Johnson is a talented author of a book about the sinking of the submarine Scorpion. You know these sensitive writer’s and big city newspaper reporter types…too much booze and I think we can get close to saying he has post traumatic stress syndrome.
Remember this guy might be voyeur concerning big city mayhem…you know the bloody news at 11…newspaper profits and careerism, collapse of newspaper circulation…without having the ability to know and express what this really means to the American public….to understand what’s driving this mayhem…to help the American people to correct their problems effecting their lives.
The problems I have he uses this mayhem as a defense of his self interest…selling newspapers…making a point to destructively belittle me…but he doesn’t know how to use what he knows to create deeper changes concerning the mental disabled and the dysfunctional people and systems around the disabled.
He uses his experience gained in the newspaper industry by watching the big city beat…by watching people suffer and cause suffering…as a means to put down people who disagree with him later on.
He's into the mechanic's of what sunk the Scorpion submarine...but not into the touchy feely issues, the painful issues…that got us to the point of losing a military vessel.
http://www.amazon.com/Silent-Steel-Mysterious-Nuclear-Scorpion/dp/0471267376
Thanks,
mike
----- Original Message ----From: Stephen JohnsonTo: USS_Scorpion_SSN-589@yahoogroups.comSent: Friday, November 9, 2007 3:43:29 PMSubject: Re: [USS_Scorpion_SSN-589] Re: Credibility, facts and evidence....and gulags
Mike,
I will not banter with you. I'm too busy. But listen up...
You'd like to think you've touched a nerve Mike, but I don't have a nerve left after at first reading and then ignoring your whining, self-pitying, endless postings.
"Three big police officers tackled him out of his wheelchair and flung his foot through a plate glass window..."
Until you admitted the officers believed this person had a gun, that story sounded like the most foolish claim I've ever heard in my life.
I showed up at a scene once where an ordinarily harmless dual-diagnosis woman (schizophrenia and retardation) kept a young boy in her home and released him after police arrived. They tried to force their way in and one officer was stabbed in the head with a steak knife by this woman (no serious injury) -- whom older officers knew had serious issues. A phalanx of enraged and inexperienced officers arrived and the rushed the house shooting her through the door severing her spinal cord and paralyzing her for life. It goes on and on.
The police action was inappropriate. I made the scene and wrote the story about it. The officers were wrong and the City of Houston paid a huge amount of money. Worse yet, the officers endangered themselves. However, something precipitated their actions. I've got a hundred stories like this and NONE OF THEM BELONG ON THIS SITE.
Mike, please, go somewhere else. Let's end this. You're talking to someone who literally lived on the street with the seriously mentally, who played his own role in getting murderous and dangerous police officers put in prison, someone who fought the State of Texas to get an 40-year-old woman institutional care after she was found curled up in a fetal position in a room where she had been fed under the door for her entire life, blah, blah, blah.
That was my job and that's what I did. I've seen more murder, heartbreak, cruelty, corruption and viciousness than you will ever lay your eyes upon.
If we're going to turn this website into a big pity party, then you better get out your hankie because you'll be crying a river when I get through with you and you will never be able to match me for pathos, frustration, horror and outrage.
Some of your stuff is simply not believable and seems designed to cast you in the light of "hero" or "martyr" or whatever.
I just spent a month hoisting and carrying my 200-pound father during his dying days, so don't bore me or anyone else with stories about caring for the ill. We all have these stories. You do what you must and you don't go on and on about it.
Go away do your good deeds but do them silently. Let your acts be their own reward.
You never answered my questions about what happened to your status on the Know_Nuclear Website and your affiliation with the Nuclear group you were a member of.
Get a life.
Stephen Johnson
Remember this guy might be voyeur concerning big city mayhem…you know the bloody news at 11…newspaper profits and careerism, collapse of newspaper circulation…without having the ability to know and express what this really means to the American public….to understand what’s driving this mayhem…to help the American people to correct their problems effecting their lives.
The problems I have he uses this mayhem as a defense of his self interest…selling newspapers…making a point to destructively belittle me…but he doesn’t know how to use what he knows to create deeper changes concerning the mental disabled and the dysfunctional people and systems around the disabled.
He uses his experience gained in the newspaper industry by watching the big city beat…by watching people suffer and cause suffering…as a means to put down people who disagree with him later on.
He's into the mechanic's of what sunk the Scorpion submarine...but not into the touchy feely issues, the painful issues…that got us to the point of losing a military vessel.
http://www.amazon.com/Silent-Steel-Mysterious-Nuclear-Scorpion/dp/0471267376
Thanks,
mike
----- Original Message ----From: Stephen Johnson
Mike,
I will not banter with you. I'm too busy. But listen up...
You'd like to think you've touched a nerve Mike, but I don't have a nerve left after at first reading and then ignoring your whining, self-pitying, endless postings.
"Three big police officers tackled him out of his wheelchair and flung his foot through a plate glass window..."
Until you admitted the officers believed this person had a gun, that story sounded like the most foolish claim I've ever heard in my life.
I showed up at a scene once where an ordinarily harmless dual-diagnosis woman (schizophrenia and retardation) kept a young boy in her home and released him after police arrived. They tried to force their way in and one officer was stabbed in the head with a steak knife by this woman (no serious injury) -- whom older officers knew had serious issues. A phalanx of enraged and inexperienced officers arrived and the rushed the house shooting her through the door severing her spinal cord and paralyzing her for life. It goes on and on.
The police action was inappropriate. I made the scene and wrote the story about it. The officers were wrong and the City of Houston paid a huge amount of money. Worse yet, the officers endangered themselves. However, something precipitated their actions. I've got a hundred stories like this and NONE OF THEM BELONG ON THIS SITE.
Mike, please, go somewhere else. Let's end this. You're talking to someone who literally lived on the street with the seriously mentally, who played his own role in getting murderous and dangerous police officers put in prison, someone who fought the State of Texas to get an 40-year-old woman institutional care after she was found curled up in a fetal position in a room where she had been fed under the door for her entire life, blah, blah, blah.
That was my job and that's what I did. I've seen more murder, heartbreak, cruelty, corruption and viciousness than you will ever lay your eyes upon.
If we're going to turn this website into a big pity party, then you better get out your hankie because you'll be crying a river when I get through with you and you will never be able to match me for pathos, frustration, horror and outrage.
Some of your stuff is simply not believable and seems designed to cast you in the light of "hero" or "martyr" or whatever.
I just spent a month hoisting and carrying my 200-pound father during his dying days, so don't bore me or anyone else with stories about caring for the ill. We all have these stories. You do what you must and you don't go on and on about it.
Go away do your good deeds but do them silently. Let your acts be their own reward.
You never answered my questions about what happened to your status on the Know_Nuclear Website and your affiliation with the Nuclear group you were a member of.
Get a life.
Stephen Johnson
Wednesday, November 14, 2007
Famous Navy submarine doctor in early days?
Famous Navy physician…rode submarines in the early 1960’s and Scorpion.
----- Original Message ----From: Michael MulliganTo: USS_Scorpion_SSN-589@yahoogroups.comSent: Saturday, November 3, 2007 4:59:47 PMSubject: Dr.McGrew, Jr. MD FACP: his mental diagnosis with 50 years of experience, of me?
----- Original Message ----From: C. J. McGrewTo: steamshovel2002@yahoo.comSent: Saturday, November 3, 2007 2:59:38 PMSubject: Issues...
Mike, as a physician (CAPT(MC)USN/Ret) and "retired for the third and last time" and one who was in the commissioning crew of Scorpion (detached Jan 1961) and at this point have 50+ years of medical experience, I must agree with "Jim" that you have deep seated issues that might well benefit from "professional" psychiatric care. I did not want to put this e-mail out for public consumption so have sent it to you personally. I have been reading all of the posts on Scorpion for over a year and have seen all of your posts.
Dr. C. J. McGrew, Jr. MD FACP
Not too smart though…I’ll bet you there is a medical ethical violation here. Are you really worried about my mental health, or are you primarily defending the credibility of your prior Scorpion service, the Navy itself…or the military? Who are you serving Dr. McGrew?
I am absolutely amazed you would make this diagnosis upon a message board without a personal interview…then using the full weight of your professional credentials to tell me I am nuts…especially when I didn’t request any services from you.
Imagine what this guy would do to a 23 year old who was is in trouble…with this doctor doing a favor for the ship CO or base commander, an Admiral, higher…how long would I be quarantined in a mental hospital for my our good?
By the way Dr McGrew, nobody will provide mental services for free, I work in Wal-Mart at the entry position as a unloader.
Things aren't what they seem to be though?
Thanks,
Mr.Mike Mulligan Sr WM-UNLDR
----- Original Message ----From: Michael Mulligan
----- Original Message ----From: C. J. McGrew
Mike, as a physician (CAPT(MC)USN/Ret) and "retired for the third and last time" and one who was in the commissioning crew of Scorpion (detached Jan 1961) and at this point have 50+ years of medical experience, I must agree with "Jim" that you have deep seated issues that might well benefit from "professional" psychiatric care. I did not want to put this e-mail out for public consumption so have sent it to you personally. I have been reading all of the posts on Scorpion for over a year and have seen all of your posts.
Dr. C. J. McGrew, Jr. MD FACP
Not too smart though…I’ll bet you there is a medical ethical violation here. Are you really worried about my mental health, or are you primarily defending the credibility of your prior Scorpion service, the Navy itself…or the military? Who are you serving Dr. McGrew?
I am absolutely amazed you would make this diagnosis upon a message board without a personal interview…then using the full weight of your professional credentials to tell me I am nuts…especially when I didn’t request any services from you.
Imagine what this guy would do to a 23 year old who was is in trouble…with this doctor doing a favor for the ship CO or base commander, an Admiral, higher…how long would I be quarantined in a mental hospital for my our good?
By the way Dr McGrew, nobody will provide mental services for free, I work in Wal-Mart at the entry position as a unloader.
Things aren't what they seem to be though?
Thanks,
Mr.Mike Mulligan Sr WM-UNLDR
American hollow Soviet cold war style Navy.
American hollow Soviet cold war style Navy.
Everyone understands towards the end of the cold war…the Soviet Union had jazzy ship designs…many of the ships looked beautiful…but they were a bucket of bolts and had no infrastructure in order to keep these ships and weapons reliable and functional.
I believe the US Navy in 2007 has become the Soviet Navy….we have a shell of beautiful ships and aircrafts…but we have very little infrastructure to keep these ships and weapons functional. The reliability of the USA Navy is collapsing…everyone is keeping these things under wraps.
We got a Soviet style culture in the military and politician’s…cover their butts…that is hiding the collapse of our Navy!
Everyone understands towards the end of the cold war…the Soviet Union had jazzy ship designs…many of the ships looked beautiful…but they were a bucket of bolts and had no infrastructure in order to keep these ships and weapons reliable and functional.
I believe the US Navy in 2007 has become the Soviet Navy….we have a shell of beautiful ships and aircrafts…but we have very little infrastructure to keep these ships and weapons functional. The reliability of the USA Navy is collapsing…everyone is keeping these things under wraps.
We got a Soviet style culture in the military and politician’s…cover their butts…that is hiding the collapse of our Navy!
Navy nuclear Submarines and domestic Nuclear Renaissance
Everyone understands that the recent string of problems with nuclear submarines…ending in the giant falsification of logs issues associated with the nuclear reactor….is beginning to challenge nuclear safety and safe operation of US submarines in general. The submarine in question is the USS Hampton. There is a huge lack of resources with the submarine fleet…and everyone is afraid to speak up and correct this. Many people think a huge submarine accident is just around the corner.
There is a feeling that all the sailors and officers have accommodated falsification to meet impossible operational tempos…and a failure to speak up. This whole thing is threatening the credibility of anyone associated with the nuclear navy…in that they fear speaking up about the general conditions in the fleet and fear speaking up about nuclear safety issues. Just to be clear, there is such a state of intimidation in the whole submarine fleet….that all the forward and back aft sailors are afraid to speak up about grave national security degradation with unreliable and stressed out submarines…on the people side and machine side. There are indications that our submarine forward and aft, the weapons loads themselves…are technically obsolete and 30 years behind the times.
The Navy’s nuclear power program and our domestic nuclear industry are inextricably connected. Everyone associated with the Navy nuclear power program appears to be tainted with corruption and taught about not speaking up until degradations and accidents occurs. The operative is; national security dictates that you keep your mouth shut until we run our submarines into failure and accidents. It seems we have a huge group of submarines in an unknown state of reliability and this degrades national security.
Think about the implication with this with our domestic nuclear renaissance…current issues in the domestic fleet…if all the naval folks are too tainted with corruption to be involved in domestic nuclear power?
There are issues that all the nuclear sailors are poorly trained, there has been a drastic decline in the quality of nuclear sailors and officers, the submarine service is have terrible troubles with getting and maintaining nuclear operators….in other words, they are pushing nuclear operators quicker though the training in order to make up for the losses in the fleet.
What happens to the domestic renaissance if there is a nuclear accident out to sea or another submarine sinking… a nuclear fire or accident that takes out an aircraft carrier?
There is a feeling that all the sailors and officers have accommodated falsification to meet impossible operational tempos…and a failure to speak up. This whole thing is threatening the credibility of anyone associated with the nuclear navy…in that they fear speaking up about the general conditions in the fleet and fear speaking up about nuclear safety issues. Just to be clear, there is such a state of intimidation in the whole submarine fleet….that all the forward and back aft sailors are afraid to speak up about grave national security degradation with unreliable and stressed out submarines…on the people side and machine side. There are indications that our submarine forward and aft, the weapons loads themselves…are technically obsolete and 30 years behind the times.
The Navy’s nuclear power program and our domestic nuclear industry are inextricably connected. Everyone associated with the Navy nuclear power program appears to be tainted with corruption and taught about not speaking up until degradations and accidents occurs. The operative is; national security dictates that you keep your mouth shut until we run our submarines into failure and accidents. It seems we have a huge group of submarines in an unknown state of reliability and this degrades national security.
Think about the implication with this with our domestic nuclear renaissance…current issues in the domestic fleet…if all the naval folks are too tainted with corruption to be involved in domestic nuclear power?
There are issues that all the nuclear sailors are poorly trained, there has been a drastic decline in the quality of nuclear sailors and officers, the submarine service is have terrible troubles with getting and maintaining nuclear operators….in other words, they are pushing nuclear operators quicker though the training in order to make up for the losses in the fleet.
What happens to the domestic renaissance if there is a nuclear accident out to sea or another submarine sinking… a nuclear fire or accident that takes out an aircraft carrier?
Scorpion Submarine Disaster
At the route of the issue….I had the audacity to imply that the current state of the fleet and high naval bureaucracy are more of an artifact of the Scorpion disaster than any of the current written products about the sub. I have gored many interests including all of the navy, the shipyards and especially the nuclear industry. I happened to think the going “off topic” is an agreed upon euphemism for that I am making people across the board feel uncomfortable about what they have witnessed and haven’t stepped forward to correct…that is going on right now. I happen to think the Scorpion tragedy is much bigger than finding out the reason why it sunk…more like changing the climate of today’s sub fleet and changing the way we purchase Navy submarines and ships. I am throwing up a mirror…and people just don’t like to see the image.
I happened to think this group is too insider and military oriented…and not including outsiders and those with an oppositional orientations. There is no doubt this distraction theme is an agreed upon technical rouse in order to get me disconnect from the group. How come I wasn’t sent up to some kind of board….with these e-mails we accuse you of distraction…how are these related to site and does other people do the same thing? What about a process before disconnecting me…isn’t our Constitution about having a process. It’s more about group dynamics and coherence…than about what is really going on. My greatest success just maybe that I outed a troublesome side of individuals that wasn’t available for observation before this began.
I think in the future…everyone who participated or was involved in what happened on this site is going to regret their roles in this. I think the future would look very kindly to what I had tried to write about with the Scorpion. What I have tried to do is give everyone a window with what the cultural attributes was surrounded the Scorpion….and current events in the navy. I think what we’ve all learned from participation on this site; is that we can get to the bottom of what caused the lost of the Scorpion…and we should interact with current condition in the submarine fleet. I think the primary function on this site should morph towards cleaning up events in the sub fleet…making the lives of submariners better, figure out a way to keep the submarines out to sea longer….in defense of our national security. I was the first one who raised the issues of a relief crew or having two crews on a fast attack submarines….and I think we over stressed the Scorpion’s crew with having a single crew on a submarine.
I happened to think we should favor the living over the dead. Our primary area of concern should be about what we have learned about the Scorpion…and making sure that an accident is never set up in the current fleet, such that we would never have another lost of a submarine….and all of our sub’s run at absolute war time efficiency and effectiveness. We just have outrun the front page board declaration of the intentions on this site.
I think as the months and years go by…people will think that I have interacted with conditions in the current fleet and the Scorpion accident coming out of this site…and people will judge me as an extraordinarily talented individual.
I am getting signals that the domestic nuclear industry was involved on bringing attention to me with going off subject. That I implied that the totalitarianism and false altruism with the means of using military power…getting ships to sea by intimidating sailors, making dysfunctional organizations over worked with a lack of resources, teaching the heart and head of the nuclear industry over the years with how to control information and how to intimidate employees, teach executives across a grand scale in how to intimidate domestic nuclear workers…how to ramrod the regulators and NRC …this set up the unjust culture in our domestic nuclear industry. Generally the nuclear navy was the training ground with the future nuclear plant executives and NRC employees… this trained everyone in the game of controlling information and intimidating employees on a grand scale, leading to a collapse of the nuclear industry. It was training on injustice on a grand scale.
Can you imagine me on the Enterprise back in the months leading up your airplane crash…if I was in the information stream? I would have assumed those deaths were coming. I would have tried interacting with the coming accident no matter what were going to be the consequences to me. I would have been talking to congress and talking to the newspapers…I would have gone all the way up the chain of command…until they put me in the brig and accuse me of being insane. I would have sacrificed my career and the relationship of my wife, children and grand daughter pursuing the coming accident…because it’s just not worth trading your conscience for a career or having a family. It just not worth it.
"What gem? Several of Mike's emails caused me to rethink a notion I held since my first day observing this august body. That notion was that "can do," "make do," "go the extra mile," "not on my watch" were the necessary and appropriate watchwords of military service during the 60s and 70s, a time when an increasingly unpopular war was being financed very often out of operational, training and maintenance budgets, a time when the insanity of "Mutually Assured Destruction" became understandable, ergo, possible. These ill conceived notions caused us to devalue human life by wagering death and injury against "national security," and "getting the job done." It led us to several deaths, and near loss of Enterprise, to a very preventable fire, essentially caused by the lack of a jet starter hose of sufficient length to keep the starter engine exhaust a safe distance from missile warheads held on an F4's wing. Starter hoses were in short supply, so when the hose developed holes or breaks, it was common practice to simply shorten the hose. It led to my crash one night on the flight deck of USS Midway, killing 5, injuring dozens, destroying 8 aircraft, all for the shortage of operable Multiple Ejector Racks (MERs). The MER's failure caused two 500-lb bombs to be hung up on my starboard wing; normal procedure would have had me jettison both the bombs and the MER, but since MERs($4,000) were in short supply, the decision was made to bring the bombs and attendant MER aboard, a common decision primarily determined by the skill and experience of the pilot. Unfortunately, my starboard axle failed upon touchdown, and I rode the aircraft into the pack of parked aircraft, having lost the arresting cable. We must be constantly reminded of the atmosphere under which Scorpion was operating. I had minimized and discounted this "constantly scrambling and always behind" atmosphere as "Standard Operating Procedure." Mr Mulligan reminded me to not overlook the operating tempo of the time. I accuse no others of requiring this same reminder, but I owe Mike an apology for my discounting of him."
It anyone on our Scorpion site had a hint….of how much injustice and suffering…the intimidations that prevented corrections of problems with calling somebody crazy or insane…nobody would ever use that term outside of a medically qualified individual. That just might be everyone’s greatest sin on this board…caused the most suffering….with allowing somebody to call someone insane over a disagreement. You will all be judged with what you did or didn’t do, in associating with calling me insane or standing by and allowing it to happen. If only you knew the magnitude of suffering…our “American gulag”…with how we use the term insanity and how we collectively mistreat people with a mental disability. If only you knew the magnitude collectively with how the “good people” mistreat and create enormous injustices with those who have a mental disability in the name of saving a buck. Collectively today we are treating those with a mental illness worst than the 1930’s, 1940’s and 1950’s. The system is terribly under resourced and littered with unqualified people.
This wasn’t about the technical details with what failed the Scorpion…what pipe broke….it was about a large and prolonged breakdown of ethics, morality, justice and injustice…and the game is still in play with the Navy. It’s what broke on the Scorpion board.
You people needed a human sacrifice and to nail somebody on the cross…isn’t that the story of the Navy? Nobody needs to make an apology to me…I forgave you before this all began.
Thanks,
Mike Mulligan
Hinsdale, NH
Tuesday, June 07, 2005
Hinsdale schools changing the New Hampshire school dialog-maybe nationwide
(Ps If it is the kind of money where you as us give you a report every six months to a year –keep your money. What we need more than the money, is your commitment of time, education, experience –mostly your time over many years ... and your heart.)
Hinsdale schools changing the New Hampshire school dialog-maybe nationwide
Hinsdale recently passed a new school primary and secondary school bond and construction program.
Now what did they say about that just putting a poor person in a middle class pay class –you reduce amazingly their mental health sicknesses and symptoms.
So the experiment is asked –what happens if you putting a first class palatial palace of a set of schools in a poor community –what happens to the kids and what happens to the community?
So, we need benefactor or corporate sponsor -preferable a corporate sponsor- who would sponsor our schools to the tune of 10 to 40 million additional dollars. I really don’t know what the amounts are –just guessing. What kind of pride could you build from this in a community? We would need a very good architect to get us a world renown school. We could load this school up in the most up to date communication technology and computers –the most modern ways of communications and IT as a renowned business. As Bill Gates says, our high schools are obsolete –so we could have to most modern curriculum, the most educated teachers...how about wiring up our town for wifi... What kind of businesses would want to move here...
Can you imagine the media attention we would get? We would reset the school standards of this whole area –the whole state –what is wrong with a little educational envy? We could change the conservative education economic philosophy –property taxes- of the state through this dialog –and maybe in many other states...millions of kids....
Can you imagine as our kids progress testing results drastically improving ...can you imagine all the media interest in this –can’t you imagine the increase in pride this would make in the community –how it would change the community –how it would draw in success...growth... We could even have business experts come into our schools on a periodic level –teach the kids –give free lectures and business seminars to the local businesses on best practices and newest technology- get our kids going in and out of these local and city businesses and corporations in a seamless fashion with education.
We could change the educational philosophy and school taxes economic environment of the state of NH –and we would seriously challenge the status quo of the conseratives and half-dead democrats.
Imagine the changes we could get if we woke up saying –you know money makes a big difference in making our kids smarter and more creative. Here is the proof in Hinsdale –the kids get more stable -the community gets more stable –and more smart growth oriented. After all, our elites know that you need to give your kids the best education that money can buy...
Thanks
mike mulligan
Hinsdale, NH
Hinsdale schools changing the New Hampshire school dialog-maybe nationwide
Hinsdale recently passed a new school primary and secondary school bond and construction program.
Now what did they say about that just putting a poor person in a middle class pay class –you reduce amazingly their mental health sicknesses and symptoms.
So the experiment is asked –what happens if you putting a first class palatial palace of a set of schools in a poor community –what happens to the kids and what happens to the community?
So, we need benefactor or corporate sponsor -preferable a corporate sponsor- who would sponsor our schools to the tune of 10 to 40 million additional dollars. I really don’t know what the amounts are –just guessing. What kind of pride could you build from this in a community? We would need a very good architect to get us a world renown school. We could load this school up in the most up to date communication technology and computers –the most modern ways of communications and IT as a renowned business. As Bill Gates says, our high schools are obsolete –so we could have to most modern curriculum, the most educated teachers...how about wiring up our town for wifi... What kind of businesses would want to move here...
Can you imagine the media attention we would get? We would reset the school standards of this whole area –the whole state –what is wrong with a little educational envy? We could change the conservative education economic philosophy –property taxes- of the state through this dialog –and maybe in many other states...millions of kids....
Can you imagine as our kids progress testing results drastically improving ...can you imagine all the media interest in this –can’t you imagine the increase in pride this would make in the community –how it would change the community –how it would draw in success...growth... We could even have business experts come into our schools on a periodic level –teach the kids –give free lectures and business seminars to the local businesses on best practices and newest technology- get our kids going in and out of these local and city businesses and corporations in a seamless fashion with education.
We could change the educational philosophy and school taxes economic environment of the state of NH –and we would seriously challenge the status quo of the conseratives and half-dead democrats.
Imagine the changes we could get if we woke up saying –you know money makes a big difference in making our kids smarter and more creative. Here is the proof in Hinsdale –the kids get more stable -the community gets more stable –and more smart growth oriented. After all, our elites know that you need to give your kids the best education that money can buy...
Thanks
mike mulligan
Hinsdale, NH
Thursday, May 26, 2005
American Gulag per Amnesty International
'American Gulag'
PostThursday, May 26, 2005; A26
IT'S ALWAYS SAD when a solid, trustworthy institution loses its bearings and joins in the partisan fracas that nowadays passes for political discourse. It's particularly sad when the institution is Amnesty International, which for more than 40 years has been a tough, single-minded defender of political prisoners around the world and a scourge of left- and right-wing dictators alike. True, Amnesty continues to keep track of the world's political prisoners, as it has always done, and its reports remain a vital source of human rights information. But lately the organization has tended to save its most vitriolic condemnations not for the world's dictators but for the United States.
That vitriol reached a new level this week when, at a news conference held to mark the publication of Amnesty's annual report, the organization's secretary general, Irene Khan, called the U.S. detention facilities at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, the "gulag of our times." In her written introduction to the report, Ms. Khan also mentioned only two countries at length: Sudan and the United States, the "unrivalled political, military and economic hyper-power," which "thumbs its nose at the rule of law and human rights."
Like Amnesty, we, too, have written extensively about U.S. prisoner abuse at Guantanamo Bay, in Afghanistan and in Iraq. We have done so not only because the phenomenon is disturbing in its own right but also because it gives undemocratic regimes around the world an excuse to justify their own use of torture and indefinite detention and because it damages the U.S. government's ability to promote human rights.
But we draw the line at the use of the word "gulag" or at the implication that the United States has somehow become the modern equivalent of Stalin's Soviet Union. Guantanamo Bay is an ad hoc creation, designed to contain captured enemy combatants in wartime. Abuses there -- including new evidence of desecrating the Koran -- have been investigated and discussed by the FBI, the press and, to a still limited extent, the military. The Soviet gulag, by contrast, was a massive forced labor complex consisting of thousands of concentration camps and hundreds of exile villages through which more than 20 million people passed during Stalin's lifetime and whose existence was not acknowledged until after his death. Its modern equivalent is not Guantanamo Bay, but the prisons of Cuba, where Amnesty itself says a new generation of prisoners of conscience reside; or the labor camps of North Korea, which were set up on Stalinist lines; or China's laogai , the true size of which isn't even known; or, until recently, the prisons of Saddam Hussein's Iraq.
Worrying about the use of a word may seem like mere semantics, but it is not. Turning a report on prisoner detention into another excuse for Bush-bashing or America-bashing undermines Amnesty's legitimate criticisms of U.S. policies and weakens the force of its investigations of prison systems in closed societies. It also gives the administration another excuse to dismiss valid objections to its policies as "hysterical."
© 2005 The Washington Post Company
PostThursday, May 26, 2005; A26
IT'S ALWAYS SAD when a solid, trustworthy institution loses its bearings and joins in the partisan fracas that nowadays passes for political discourse. It's particularly sad when the institution is Amnesty International, which for more than 40 years has been a tough, single-minded defender of political prisoners around the world and a scourge of left- and right-wing dictators alike. True, Amnesty continues to keep track of the world's political prisoners, as it has always done, and its reports remain a vital source of human rights information. But lately the organization has tended to save its most vitriolic condemnations not for the world's dictators but for the United States.
That vitriol reached a new level this week when, at a news conference held to mark the publication of Amnesty's annual report, the organization's secretary general, Irene Khan, called the U.S. detention facilities at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, the "gulag of our times." In her written introduction to the report, Ms. Khan also mentioned only two countries at length: Sudan and the United States, the "unrivalled political, military and economic hyper-power," which "thumbs its nose at the rule of law and human rights."
Like Amnesty, we, too, have written extensively about U.S. prisoner abuse at Guantanamo Bay, in Afghanistan and in Iraq. We have done so not only because the phenomenon is disturbing in its own right but also because it gives undemocratic regimes around the world an excuse to justify their own use of torture and indefinite detention and because it damages the U.S. government's ability to promote human rights.
But we draw the line at the use of the word "gulag" or at the implication that the United States has somehow become the modern equivalent of Stalin's Soviet Union. Guantanamo Bay is an ad hoc creation, designed to contain captured enemy combatants in wartime. Abuses there -- including new evidence of desecrating the Koran -- have been investigated and discussed by the FBI, the press and, to a still limited extent, the military. The Soviet gulag, by contrast, was a massive forced labor complex consisting of thousands of concentration camps and hundreds of exile villages through which more than 20 million people passed during Stalin's lifetime and whose existence was not acknowledged until after his death. Its modern equivalent is not Guantanamo Bay, but the prisons of Cuba, where Amnesty itself says a new generation of prisoners of conscience reside; or the labor camps of North Korea, which were set up on Stalinist lines; or China's laogai , the true size of which isn't even known; or, until recently, the prisons of Saddam Hussein's Iraq.
Worrying about the use of a word may seem like mere semantics, but it is not. Turning a report on prisoner detention into another excuse for Bush-bashing or America-bashing undermines Amnesty's legitimate criticisms of U.S. policies and weakens the force of its investigations of prison systems in closed societies. It also gives the administration another excuse to dismiss valid objections to its policies as "hysterical."
© 2005 The Washington Post Company
Saturday, April 30, 2005
Incineration in Hinsdale NH
The challenge of teardowns
Published April 30, 2005
Who would have thought too much prosperity would be a problem for Chicago?
Chicago and the suburbs, to be more precise. Traditional suburban ranch houses with floor plans of 1,200 square feet or so are no longer large enough in some places. They are being demolished to make room for far grander homes. The same thing is happening to some modest Chicago bungalows.
In their place rise suburban single-family houses with three stories and three-car garages, and "chateauesque" city dwellings with as much as 6,000 square feet of floor space on a postage-stamp lot. Most of the city joints span from sidewalk to alley, omitting the traditional back porches and yards.
The symmetry of a winding street of single-story ranch houses is abruptly broken by a brand-new mansionette--with turrets, great rooms, chandeliers, the works. The result can look as if a meteorite landed in the middle of the comfortably familiar community.
This is the "teardown" phenomenon, and pressure is building in many communities to halt it.
Some members of the Arlington Heights Village Board recently tried to pass a moratorium on teardowns. They were unsuccessful.
In October, though, Arlington Heights issued design guidelines for single-family homes. The guidelines don't just attempt to regulate the height, setbacks and density of new houses, the traditional purview of local government zoning. The guidelines venture into aesthetics.
The phrase "character of a neighborhood" seems to be the guidelines' leitmotif. The village Design Commission might recommend changes in the look or details of a home if it would not be in keeping with its neighbors. Modern designs are likely to be a tough sell in Arlington Heights.
Should local officials pass judgment on the design of your home? If the residential design prevalent in Hyde Park had been a criterion for approving the construction of Robie House, it would not exist: The Frank Lloyd Wright masterpiece did not fit in with its surroundings.
A more workable approach is that tried in Hinsdale. The village stays clear of debates about aesthetics per se, but it imposes numerous requirements--height, setbacks and density, even the location of portable toilets during the construction.
The teardown debate reflects two conflicting forces. One is all-American individualism: It's my property and I'll do whatever I want. The other is the Levittown instinct that there is security and comfort in uniformity and familiarity.
Hinsdale, Naperville and some other suburbs are finding the right balance. Teardowns are an inevitable part of growth, but municipalities can regulate the height, bulk and other physical parameters of new construction.
Just leave room for creativity and design that may seem incongruous now, but given time, may become tomorrow's classics.
Copyright © 2005, Chicago Tribune
Published April 30, 2005
Who would have thought too much prosperity would be a problem for Chicago?
Chicago and the suburbs, to be more precise. Traditional suburban ranch houses with floor plans of 1,200 square feet or so are no longer large enough in some places. They are being demolished to make room for far grander homes. The same thing is happening to some modest Chicago bungalows.
In their place rise suburban single-family houses with three stories and three-car garages, and "chateauesque" city dwellings with as much as 6,000 square feet of floor space on a postage-stamp lot. Most of the city joints span from sidewalk to alley, omitting the traditional back porches and yards.
The symmetry of a winding street of single-story ranch houses is abruptly broken by a brand-new mansionette--with turrets, great rooms, chandeliers, the works. The result can look as if a meteorite landed in the middle of the comfortably familiar community.
This is the "teardown" phenomenon, and pressure is building in many communities to halt it.
Some members of the Arlington Heights Village Board recently tried to pass a moratorium on teardowns. They were unsuccessful.
In October, though, Arlington Heights issued design guidelines for single-family homes. The guidelines don't just attempt to regulate the height, setbacks and density of new houses, the traditional purview of local government zoning. The guidelines venture into aesthetics.
The phrase "character of a neighborhood" seems to be the guidelines' leitmotif. The village Design Commission might recommend changes in the look or details of a home if it would not be in keeping with its neighbors. Modern designs are likely to be a tough sell in Arlington Heights.
Should local officials pass judgment on the design of your home? If the residential design prevalent in Hyde Park had been a criterion for approving the construction of Robie House, it would not exist: The Frank Lloyd Wright masterpiece did not fit in with its surroundings.
A more workable approach is that tried in Hinsdale. The village stays clear of debates about aesthetics per se, but it imposes numerous requirements--height, setbacks and density, even the location of portable toilets during the construction.
The teardown debate reflects two conflicting forces. One is all-American individualism: It's my property and I'll do whatever I want. The other is the Levittown instinct that there is security and comfort in uniformity and familiarity.
Hinsdale, Naperville and some other suburbs are finding the right balance. Teardowns are an inevitable part of growth, but municipalities can regulate the height, bulk and other physical parameters of new construction.
Just leave room for creativity and design that may seem incongruous now, but given time, may become tomorrow's classics.
Copyright © 2005, Chicago Tribune
Tuesday, April 26, 2005
American Gulag -hearing the cries of our children
Jail timeApril 26, 2005
On its face, the rate of incarceration in the United States speaks of a social pathology so large that most people don't see it.
The pathology is not in the level of criminality in the United States. It is in the crude and destructive way that the nation has chosen to respond to behavior that does not necessarily require jail time.
The United States imprisons more people as a percentage of population than any other nation — more than Russia, China or other nations noted for the brutal treatment of their people. One out of every 138 Americans is in jail — a total of 2.1 million.
In 2004, 61 percent of inmates were racial minorities. One-eighth of all black men in their late 20s were in prison.
That is an enormous cost to millions of individuals and to communities and society. These numbers provoke the question: Are we so lawless as a nation that we require massive imprisonment to maintain order? Or do these high numbers exist for political reasons?
The war on drugs and the larger campaign against crime in the 1980s and 1990s are principally responsible for the increase in the number of jailed Americans. Like other states, Vermont has watched its jails fill up and has had to build new ones, which just as quickly filled up. Corrections budgets have become an enormous burden on the states, and prison building and operations have become big business.
Politically, it was hard to resist get-tough policies. Racism is not as overt as it used to be, but latent racism finds expression in acquiescence to policies that lead white people to shrug passively as the jails fill up with poor black men. The presumption is that they deserve it. They are drug users. They have committed crimes.
But the jailing of small-time drug users is a choice, and the question is whether long terms in jail for the possession of a small amount of drugs have any relation to justice. Vermont has taken steps in recent years to cut back on the jail time resulting from drug use. The state has begun to establish drug courts to steer defendants toward treatment instead of jail. And the Legislature is examining sentencing policies that might be overzealous and self-defeating in the battle against drugs.
There are those who will argue that the decline in crime in the past decade proves that it is useful to lock up the bad guys. It is an argument with a whiff of the Soviet Union about it: employing the machinery of the state to engineer social control, irrespective of the justice of individual cases. And the decline in crime may well have more to do with demographics than anything else. Even so, the number of inmates is increasing even as crime has been falling. It appears the machinery of social control is eating up a huge segment of our communities.
Why do we tolerate such a policy? For one thing, the poor lack a significant political voice. And it is hard to argue for lenience in an atmosphere when toughness against crime is the prevailing mood. Where is the constituency for a message to go easy on drug users?
And yet gradually, some states are scaling back on policies that have created an American gulag. America, the leader in freedom, need not be the leader of imprisonment.
On its face, the rate of incarceration in the United States speaks of a social pathology so large that most people don't see it.
The pathology is not in the level of criminality in the United States. It is in the crude and destructive way that the nation has chosen to respond to behavior that does not necessarily require jail time.
The United States imprisons more people as a percentage of population than any other nation — more than Russia, China or other nations noted for the brutal treatment of their people. One out of every 138 Americans is in jail — a total of 2.1 million.
In 2004, 61 percent of inmates were racial minorities. One-eighth of all black men in their late 20s were in prison.
That is an enormous cost to millions of individuals and to communities and society. These numbers provoke the question: Are we so lawless as a nation that we require massive imprisonment to maintain order? Or do these high numbers exist for political reasons?
The war on drugs and the larger campaign against crime in the 1980s and 1990s are principally responsible for the increase in the number of jailed Americans. Like other states, Vermont has watched its jails fill up and has had to build new ones, which just as quickly filled up. Corrections budgets have become an enormous burden on the states, and prison building and operations have become big business.
Politically, it was hard to resist get-tough policies. Racism is not as overt as it used to be, but latent racism finds expression in acquiescence to policies that lead white people to shrug passively as the jails fill up with poor black men. The presumption is that they deserve it. They are drug users. They have committed crimes.
But the jailing of small-time drug users is a choice, and the question is whether long terms in jail for the possession of a small amount of drugs have any relation to justice. Vermont has taken steps in recent years to cut back on the jail time resulting from drug use. The state has begun to establish drug courts to steer defendants toward treatment instead of jail. And the Legislature is examining sentencing policies that might be overzealous and self-defeating in the battle against drugs.
There are those who will argue that the decline in crime in the past decade proves that it is useful to lock up the bad guys. It is an argument with a whiff of the Soviet Union about it: employing the machinery of the state to engineer social control, irrespective of the justice of individual cases. And the decline in crime may well have more to do with demographics than anything else. Even so, the number of inmates is increasing even as crime has been falling. It appears the machinery of social control is eating up a huge segment of our communities.
Why do we tolerate such a policy? For one thing, the poor lack a significant political voice. And it is hard to argue for lenience in an atmosphere when toughness against crime is the prevailing mood. Where is the constituency for a message to go easy on drug users?
And yet gradually, some states are scaling back on policies that have created an American gulag. America, the leader in freedom, need not be the leader of imprisonment.
American Gulag -hearing the cries of our children
Jail timeApril 26, 2005
On its face, the rate of incarceration in the United States speaks of a social pathology so large that most people don't see it.
The pathology is not in the level of criminality in the United States. It is in the crude and destructive way that the nation has chosen to respond to behavior that does not necessarily require jail time.
The United States imprisons more people as a percentage of population than any other nation — more than Russia, China or other nations noted for the brutal treatment of their people. One out of every 138 Americans is in jail — a total of 2.1 million.
In 2004, 61 percent of inmates were racial minorities. One-eighth of all black men in their late 20s were in prison.
That is an enormous cost to millions of individuals and to communities and society. These numbers provoke the question: Are we so lawless as a nation that we require massive imprisonment to maintain order? Or do these high numbers exist for political reasons?
The war on drugs and the larger campaign against crime in the 1980s and 1990s are principally responsible for the increase in the number of jailed Americans. Like other states, Vermont has watched its jails fill up and has had to build new ones, which just as quickly filled up. Corrections budgets have become an enormous burden on the states, and prison building and operations have become big business.
Politically, it was hard to resist get-tough policies. Racism is not as overt as it used to be, but latent racism finds expression in acquiescence to policies that lead white people to shrug passively as the jails fill up with poor black men. The presumption is that they deserve it. They are drug users. They have committed crimes.
But the jailing of small-time drug users is a choice, and the question is whether long terms in jail for the possession of a small amount of drugs have any relation to justice. Vermont has taken steps in recent years to cut back on the jail time resulting from drug use. The state has begun to establish drug courts to steer defendants toward treatment instead of jail. And the Legislature is examining sentencing policies that might be overzealous and self-defeating in the battle against drugs.
There are those who will argue that the decline in crime in the past decade proves that it is useful to lock up the bad guys. It is an argument with a whiff of the Soviet Union about it: employing the machinery of the state to engineer social control, irrespective of the justice of individual cases. And the decline in crime may well have more to do with demographics than anything else. Even so, the number of inmates is increasing even as crime has been falling. It appears the machinery of social control is eating up a huge segment of our communities.
Why do we tolerate such a policy? For one thing, the poor lack a significant political voice. And it is hard to argue for lenience in an atmosphere when toughness against crime is the prevailing mood. Where is the constituency for a message to go easy on drug users?
And yet gradually, some states are scaling back on policies that have created an American gulag. America, the leader in freedom, need not be the leader of imprisonment.
On its face, the rate of incarceration in the United States speaks of a social pathology so large that most people don't see it.
The pathology is not in the level of criminality in the United States. It is in the crude and destructive way that the nation has chosen to respond to behavior that does not necessarily require jail time.
The United States imprisons more people as a percentage of population than any other nation — more than Russia, China or other nations noted for the brutal treatment of their people. One out of every 138 Americans is in jail — a total of 2.1 million.
In 2004, 61 percent of inmates were racial minorities. One-eighth of all black men in their late 20s were in prison.
That is an enormous cost to millions of individuals and to communities and society. These numbers provoke the question: Are we so lawless as a nation that we require massive imprisonment to maintain order? Or do these high numbers exist for political reasons?
The war on drugs and the larger campaign against crime in the 1980s and 1990s are principally responsible for the increase in the number of jailed Americans. Like other states, Vermont has watched its jails fill up and has had to build new ones, which just as quickly filled up. Corrections budgets have become an enormous burden on the states, and prison building and operations have become big business.
Politically, it was hard to resist get-tough policies. Racism is not as overt as it used to be, but latent racism finds expression in acquiescence to policies that lead white people to shrug passively as the jails fill up with poor black men. The presumption is that they deserve it. They are drug users. They have committed crimes.
But the jailing of small-time drug users is a choice, and the question is whether long terms in jail for the possession of a small amount of drugs have any relation to justice. Vermont has taken steps in recent years to cut back on the jail time resulting from drug use. The state has begun to establish drug courts to steer defendants toward treatment instead of jail. And the Legislature is examining sentencing policies that might be overzealous and self-defeating in the battle against drugs.
There are those who will argue that the decline in crime in the past decade proves that it is useful to lock up the bad guys. It is an argument with a whiff of the Soviet Union about it: employing the machinery of the state to engineer social control, irrespective of the justice of individual cases. And the decline in crime may well have more to do with demographics than anything else. Even so, the number of inmates is increasing even as crime has been falling. It appears the machinery of social control is eating up a huge segment of our communities.
Why do we tolerate such a policy? For one thing, the poor lack a significant political voice. And it is hard to argue for lenience in an atmosphere when toughness against crime is the prevailing mood. Where is the constituency for a message to go easy on drug users?
And yet gradually, some states are scaling back on policies that have created an American gulag. America, the leader in freedom, need not be the leader of imprisonment.
Sunday, April 24, 2005
Blue Ribbon low income housing investigation –national endemic corruption.
I’ve been told there has been a 40% increase in low income housing (project) in NYC taken off the market because of not enough money to make them livable. Basically the federal structure of low income housing is more aligned into creating elite political favorism -I’d say there is massive national corruption in low income housing and we should take over local management by the federal government.
How about a blue ribbon NASA and 9/11 style investigation on the local management of low income housing –with the ability to demand evidence and swearing in of indiveguals.
HUD rips Newark authority
Money to house poor spent on arena project
Sunday, April 24, 2005
BY JEFFERY C. MAYS
Star-Ledger Staff
The government agency that oversees how federal housing dollars are spent blasted the Newark Housing Authority for "questionable expenditures" of $6.5 million that should have gone to house the poor.
The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development said yesterday that $3.9 million of that money went to purchase 12 building lots in the downtown arena redevelopment zone.
HUD ordered the NHA to return that amount to the accounts used to provide housing for some of the city's needy residents.
"The (Newark) housing authority has 30 days to appeal and explain ... why the money was used to purchase the property as opposed to being used for low- and moderate-income people," HUD spokesman Jerry Brown said.
HUD also ordered a full, independent audit of NHA's 2004 and 2005 financial statements.
"After a comprehensive look at NHA, HUD has determined there is a lot of room for improvement in the financial and management operations of the agency," HUD assistant secretary Michael Liu said in a prepared release.
The HUD review also significantly lowered a series of performance ratings for the NHA, bringing it into the category of a "troubled" housing agency in serious risk of being taken over by the federal government.
Of the 3,500 housing authorities HUD oversees, only 285 are listed as troubled.
In these performance ratings, a score of 100 is highest and 60 is deemed acceptable. Newark was rated poorly in every category, ranking as low as zero in financial, a 3 in management and an 8 in customer satisfaction. The NHA scored a 33 in the Public Housing Assessment and a 31 in Section 8 management.
Harold Lucas, the NHA's executive director, said he had not seen the report when reached at his East Orange home last night.
But he said the NHA did not use Section 8 money to purchase lots in the zone where a $310 million arena will be built for the New Jersey Devils.
"That's not true," Lucas said. "Those lots were bought a long time ago."
Harry Robinson, a spokesman for the NHA, said the agency will appeal HUD's findings.
The financial management of NHA was called into question as recently as last September, when the agency spent more than $1 million dollars to redo its headquarters, including the purchase of a plasma television for Lucas.
Lucas also spent money to buy luxury vehicles and paid his daughter $25,000 to run the authority's beauty pageant. Lucas has three relatives who are employed by the authority, including his wife and son.
At the same time, more than 80 people, including maintenance workers, were being laid off.
The agency also invested $1.4 million in a troubled movie theater.
Lucas, who once was the city's business administrator, also worked as assistant secretary for public and Indian housing for HUD under the Clinton administration. This is his second stint with NHA. He makes an annual salary of $202,500, according to public records, more than the mayor of the city.
The housing authority manages more than 13,000 units for 30,000 residents.
In October of last year, the city council voted to allow the NHA to be used as the redevelopment agent for the arena project, and the NHA floated the city bonds to help finance the project.
In yesterday's review, HUD said it found a "laundry list" of other serious financial and management problems at NHA that need to be addressed immediately, said Brown.
They include:
· Missing six deadlines to build low-income housing at the Archbishop Walsh site under the Hope VI funding program.
· Failing to determine the reasonable rent for available units and failing to examine family income.
· Failing to perform housing inspections and making sure that units are up to federal standards before families move in.
· Concentrating voucher housing choices in areas of high poverty with mostly minority residents creating and worsening "pockets of poverty," said Brown.
Brown also said HUD was unable to find much of the paperwork required to document the authority's spending.
"They say they spent money on an aid program or put money in a certain account, and we can't find that money," said Brown. "We believe the money has been wrongfully used."
Newark Mayor Sharpe James said yesterday the housing authority has gone from "worst to first" under the direction of Lucas. He noted that several high-rise housing complexes have been destroyed in favor of low-rise, low-density townhouse complexes.
"There is no agency on Earth that has received federal dollars that has not received an unfavorable audit and had to do corrective measures or reimbursement. This is routine for government," said James.
"Under no circumstance would I condemn an agency that has improved the quality of life for 30,000 residents."
But Brown said, "the city touts the housing authority as going from worst to the best. I think someone has skewed the recent reporting numbers."
Brown said the last few agencies to score so poorly, including the Virgin Islands and Sarasota, Fla., ended up under federal receivership. But, he said, a takeover is the last resort, and HUD will try to work with the agency first to correct problems.
Staff writer Joan Whitlow contributed to this report. Jeffery C. Mays covers Newark City Hall. He can be reached at jmays@starledger.com or (973) 392-4149.
How about a blue ribbon NASA and 9/11 style investigation on the local management of low income housing –with the ability to demand evidence and swearing in of indiveguals.
HUD rips Newark authority
Money to house poor spent on arena project
Sunday, April 24, 2005
BY JEFFERY C. MAYS
Star-Ledger Staff
The government agency that oversees how federal housing dollars are spent blasted the Newark Housing Authority for "questionable expenditures" of $6.5 million that should have gone to house the poor.
The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development said yesterday that $3.9 million of that money went to purchase 12 building lots in the downtown arena redevelopment zone.
HUD ordered the NHA to return that amount to the accounts used to provide housing for some of the city's needy residents.
"The (Newark) housing authority has 30 days to appeal and explain ... why the money was used to purchase the property as opposed to being used for low- and moderate-income people," HUD spokesman Jerry Brown said.
HUD also ordered a full, independent audit of NHA's 2004 and 2005 financial statements.
"After a comprehensive look at NHA, HUD has determined there is a lot of room for improvement in the financial and management operations of the agency," HUD assistant secretary Michael Liu said in a prepared release.
The HUD review also significantly lowered a series of performance ratings for the NHA, bringing it into the category of a "troubled" housing agency in serious risk of being taken over by the federal government.
Of the 3,500 housing authorities HUD oversees, only 285 are listed as troubled.
In these performance ratings, a score of 100 is highest and 60 is deemed acceptable. Newark was rated poorly in every category, ranking as low as zero in financial, a 3 in management and an 8 in customer satisfaction. The NHA scored a 33 in the Public Housing Assessment and a 31 in Section 8 management.
Harold Lucas, the NHA's executive director, said he had not seen the report when reached at his East Orange home last night.
But he said the NHA did not use Section 8 money to purchase lots in the zone where a $310 million arena will be built for the New Jersey Devils.
"That's not true," Lucas said. "Those lots were bought a long time ago."
Harry Robinson, a spokesman for the NHA, said the agency will appeal HUD's findings.
The financial management of NHA was called into question as recently as last September, when the agency spent more than $1 million dollars to redo its headquarters, including the purchase of a plasma television for Lucas.
Lucas also spent money to buy luxury vehicles and paid his daughter $25,000 to run the authority's beauty pageant. Lucas has three relatives who are employed by the authority, including his wife and son.
At the same time, more than 80 people, including maintenance workers, were being laid off.
The agency also invested $1.4 million in a troubled movie theater.
Lucas, who once was the city's business administrator, also worked as assistant secretary for public and Indian housing for HUD under the Clinton administration. This is his second stint with NHA. He makes an annual salary of $202,500, according to public records, more than the mayor of the city.
The housing authority manages more than 13,000 units for 30,000 residents.
In October of last year, the city council voted to allow the NHA to be used as the redevelopment agent for the arena project, and the NHA floated the city bonds to help finance the project.
In yesterday's review, HUD said it found a "laundry list" of other serious financial and management problems at NHA that need to be addressed immediately, said Brown.
They include:
· Missing six deadlines to build low-income housing at the Archbishop Walsh site under the Hope VI funding program.
· Failing to determine the reasonable rent for available units and failing to examine family income.
· Failing to perform housing inspections and making sure that units are up to federal standards before families move in.
· Concentrating voucher housing choices in areas of high poverty with mostly minority residents creating and worsening "pockets of poverty," said Brown.
Brown also said HUD was unable to find much of the paperwork required to document the authority's spending.
"They say they spent money on an aid program or put money in a certain account, and we can't find that money," said Brown. "We believe the money has been wrongfully used."
Newark Mayor Sharpe James said yesterday the housing authority has gone from "worst to first" under the direction of Lucas. He noted that several high-rise housing complexes have been destroyed in favor of low-rise, low-density townhouse complexes.
"There is no agency on Earth that has received federal dollars that has not received an unfavorable audit and had to do corrective measures or reimbursement. This is routine for government," said James.
"Under no circumstance would I condemn an agency that has improved the quality of life for 30,000 residents."
But Brown said, "the city touts the housing authority as going from worst to the best. I think someone has skewed the recent reporting numbers."
Brown said the last few agencies to score so poorly, including the Virgin Islands and Sarasota, Fla., ended up under federal receivership. But, he said, a takeover is the last resort, and HUD will try to work with the agency first to correct problems.
Staff writer Joan Whitlow contributed to this report. Jeffery C. Mays covers Newark City Hall. He can be reached at jmays@starledger.com or (973) 392-4149.
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