Dementia Among U.S. Officials Poses National Security Threat

theintercept  |   As the national security workforce ages, dementia impacting U.S. officials poses a threat to national security, according to a first-of-its-kind study by a Pentagon-funded think tank. The report, released this spring, came as several prominent U.S. officials trusted with some of the nation’s most highly classified intelligence experienced public lapses, stoking calls for resignations and debate about Washington’s aging leadership.

Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., who had a second freezing episode last month, enjoys the most privileged access to classified information of anyone in Congress as a member of the so-called Gang of Eight congressional leadership. Ninety-year-old Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., whose decline has seen her confused about how to vote and experiencing memory lapses — forgetting conversations and not recalling a monthslong absence — was for years a member of the Gang of Eight and remains a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, on which she has served since 2001.

The study, published by the RAND Corporation’s National Security Research Division in April, identifies individuals with both current and former access to classified material who develop dementia as threats to national security, citing the possibility that they may unwittingly disclose government secrets. 

“Individuals who hold or held a security clearance and handled classified material could become a security threat if they develop dementia and unwittingly share government secrets,” the study says.

As the study notes, there does not appear to be any other publicly available research into dementia, an umbrella term for the loss of cognitive functioning, despite the fact that Americans are living longer than ever before and that the researchers were able to identify several cases in which senior intelligence officials died of Alzheimer’s disease, a progressive brain disorder and the most common cause of dementia.

“As people live longer and retire later, challenges associated with cognitive impairment in the workplace will need to be addressed,” the report says. “Our limited research suggests this concern is an emerging security blind spot.” 

Most holders of security clearances, a ballooning class of officials and other bureaucrats with access to secret government information, are subject to rigorous and invasive vetting procedures. Applying for a clearance can mean hourslong polygraph tests; character interviews with old teachers, friends, and neighbors; and ongoing automated monitoring of their bank accounts and other personal information. As one senior Pentagon official who oversees such a program told me of people who enter the intelligence bureaucracy, “You basically give up your Fourth Amendment rights.” 

Yet, as the authors of the RAND report note, there does not appear to be any vetting for age-related cognitive decline. In fact, the director of national intelligence’s directive on continuous evaluation contains no mention of age or cognitive decline.

While the study doesn’t mention any U.S. officials by name, its timing comes amid a simmering debate about gerontocracy: rule by the elderly. Following McConnell’s first freezing episode, in July, Google searches for the term “gerontocracy” spiked.

“The president called to check on me,” McConnell said when asked about the first episode. “I told him I got sandbagged,” he quipped, referring to President Joe Biden’s trip-and-fall incident during a June graduation ceremony at the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado, which sparked conservative criticisms about the 80-year-old’s own functioning.

Pending Freedom From The Pecking Order In America...,

epsilontheory|  Blake:  Put. That coffee. Down. Coffee’s for closers only. You think I’m f**king with you? I am not f**king with you. I’m here from downtown. I’m here from Mitch and Murray. And I’m here on a mission of mercy. Your name’s Levine? You call yourself a salesman, you son of a bitch?

Moss:  I don’t gotta sit here and listen to this s**t.  

Blake:  You certainly don’t, pal, ’cause the good news is — you’re fired. The bad news is — you’ve got, all of you’ve got just one week to regain your jobs starting with tonight. Starting with tonight’s sit. Oh? Have I got your attention now? Good. ‘Cause we’re adding a little something to this month’s sales contest. As you all know, first prize is a Cadillac Eldorado. Anyone wanna see second prize? Second prize is a set of steak knives. Third prize is you’re fired. Get the picture? You laughing now? You got leads. Mitch and Murray paid good money for their names. You can’t close the leads you’re given, you can’t close s**t. You ARE s**t! Hit the bricks, pal, and beat it ’cause you are going OUT!  
Glengarry Glen Ross (1992)

The truth is that unless you are really rich, you work for Mitch & Murray. Yes, that includes you, Vox writer changing the world one smarter-than-thou opinion at a time. Yes, that includes you, tech start-up developer kicking back in your flair-bedecked WeWork cubicle.

We don’t feel the crushing power of the Mitch & Murray pecking order as palpably as the salesmen berated by Alec Baldwin feel it, because the language of David Mamet has been replaced by the language of Dick Thaler and Cass Sunstein. The modern Mitch & Murrays don’t browbeat us. They nudge us. They convince us that a set of steak knives is a darn good outcome, that it’s a promise kept rather than a threat delivered. Coffee’s not just for closers. No, no … coffee is for EVERYONE. In fact, let’s put some caffeine into everything you drink. Something nice and caffeinated to wash down that big slice of office birthday cake.

Most importantly, today’s Mitch & Murray writ large — the system of Mitch & Murrays — provides credit to the non-rich, essentially limitless credit for anything that’s intangible or depreciates quickly, anything that lets the non-rich FEEL rich. How about a nice dinner out? New smartphone? You deserve it! How about a couple of years of graduate school? More than a couple of years, shooting for a tenure track position? [Heh, heh] I mean … why certainly, even better!

Go on, try the eggs. They’re delicious.

The pecking order is real. It is beautifully masked in modern human society, but no less brutal and no less cruel than in the chicken coop.

How do you escape the pecking order? How do you quit Mitch & Murray? Well, you can make a lot of money. That’s the tried and true method. Enough money to build a walled garden around you and yours, expanding it as you can to take in others. F-you money. Somewhere between merely rich and really rich should do the trick, depending on how many generations you want to protect within those walls. Unfortunately, that’s a big gulf these days, that distance between merely rich and really rich, and it’s getting wider every day.

But there’s another way.

No matter how much money we have or don’t have, we can reject the idea that we can be Someone Who Matters to the World and instead embrace the idea that we must be Someone Who Matters to the Pack. Now maybe your pack IS the world. Probably not, but maybe. If it is, then be bold and matter to the world. But more likely it’s your family. More likely it’s your friends. More likely it’s your partners and employees. More likely it’s your church. More likely it’s your school. More likely it’s your country. It’s damn sure not your political party. It’s damn sure not an oligarch.

Why should we reject this notion of being Someone Who Matters to the World? Because that’s the shiny lure that the Nudging State and the Nudging Oligarchy dangle in front of bright young things. And bright not-so-young people, too. The shiny lure of mattering is how they set the hook — which is debt — and that’s how they reel you in. Because once you’ve got that hook in your mouth … once you’re up to your eyeballs in debt … it’s soooo hard to ever get free. I know of which I speak. So do a lot of people reading this note, I bet.

The simple truth is that we can’t escape the pecking order. We can’t escape economic inequality and the hard-wired impulses to brutality and cruelty used to support inequality. Not for long, anyway. Walled gardens never last.

Black Lives Matter Only As Long As They Mask Truly Murderous Peak Capitalism

epsilontheory  | American Airlines to Cut 19,000 Jobs by Oct. 1 When Federal Stimulus Ends (WSJ)

“American Airlines Group Inc. said it would shed 19,000 workers by Oct. 1 as the carrier prepares to downsize to cope with the coronavirus pandemic’s blow to travel demand, which isn’t expected to rebound for years.
The reductions include 17,500 furloughs of pilots, flight attendants, mechanics and others, as well as 1,500 cuts from management and administrative ranks.
Airlines received $25 billion in federal aid to pay workers through the end of September to avoid mass layoffs.
Unions and airline officials have advocated for another round of funds to keep employees on the job through March 2021.“

---

Doug Parker, American Airlines CEO and Chairman of the Board, wrote a letter to his employees today that pretty much defines high-functioning sociopathy. 

I’m going to reprint excerpts from that letter – which is couched in the saccharine vocabulary of modern team-speak, but is in truth a shakedown letter to employees and a ransom note to the US government – and then I’m going to tell you a few things about Doug.

Dear fellow team members,

We respect and greatly appreciate the sacrifice these team members have made, and continue to make, for American and their fellow team members.

Even with those sacrifices, approximately 19,000 of our team members will be involuntarily furloughed or separated from the company on Oct. 1.

The one possibility of avoiding these involuntary reductions on Oct. 1 is a clean extension of the PSP.

If you haven’t already done so, you can let your elected officials know just how important a PSP extension is to you, your families and our economic recovery.
The American Airlines team is no stranger to adversity, and in adversity, we always come through.

We will come out on the other side of this crisis. Until then, take heart that we will get through this together.

The professionalism and care this team has shown over the past six months has been nothing short of extraordinary. We are all American Airlines, and we will survive, and one day, thrive again. Thank you for all you are doing now, and tomorrow, to carry us through.

---

Know who’s not sweating the October 1 firing line? Know who’s surviving and thriving just fine, thank you very much?

Doug Parker, that’s who.

Here are some fun facts about Doug Parker and his “leadership” of American Airlines since he became Chairman and CEO of the company in 2013, after its merger with US Airways. All of this (and more) can be found in a long note I wrote on the airline bailout back in March.

At Least 20% Of Illinois Restaurants Have Succumbed To The Controlavirus

cbslocal |  “The restaurant industry, we’ve kind of alway been up against it anyways,” said Joe Frillman, owner of Daisies Restaurant. “The statistics are never in our favor to begin with.”

Once known for its dine in homemade pastas, the kitchen at Daisies in Logan Square has pivoted to pay the bills.

“It’s all to go now, so the whole business model has changed,” said Frillman.

He debuted a new concept last weekend. In the age of COVID-19, his dining space became a farmer’s market with fresh produce, meal kits and specialty products.

“We had over 150 people come out to support us,” he said. “I was kind of blown away. We didn’t really know what to expect.”

But for every hopeful moment like these, there are thousands of others from restaurants on the brink of closing.

Jeanne Roeser, in business since 1996, was forced to close her two popular brunch destinations, Toast. Each sat only a handful of diners, and an eventual scaled back reopening didn’t add up.

“It felt like a death,” said Roeser, owner of Toast Restaurant. “It felt like going through the grieving process, which I still am. Any time I thought about it, and I looked at the prospects, it just, in my gut, didn’t feel like it was something that would be workable”

According to the Illinois Restaurant Association, in March there were 25,851 restaurants operating in the state. It estimates 20% — nearly 5,200 restaurants — will go out of business in the coming months because of COVID-19.

 

“I think it’s an undercount,” said Roeser.

“I think that’s generous,” said Frillman. “I think would be a best case scenario.”  “Independent restaurants bring wealth to the city, culturally, economically,” said Roeser.

Is There A Single Peasant Living Who Failed To Grasp That The Odds Are In The House's Favor?

wsws |  Like every great crisis, the coronavirus pandemic has laid bare everything rotten and degenerate in capitalist society.

Nowhere is that exposure more pronounced than in the case of the stock market—that vast institutionalised mechanism through which the wealth of society, produced by the labour of the working class, is siphoned to its highest echelons at the expense of the mass of the population.

Corporations are now lining up to receive a portion of the Trump administration’s massive $2.2 trillion bailout. They are employing an army of lobbyists, lawyers and financial advisers (all taking a fat fee for their services) to maximise their gains as they plead that they are strapped for cash and must be provided with money to “save the economy.”

But a report published in the Wall Street Journal at the weekend reveals that one of the main reasons for the cash shortage is the trillions of dollars spent by major corporations on share buybacks, particularly over the decade since the global financial crisis.

According to Brian Reynolds, the chief market analyst at the research firm Reynolds Strategy, upon whose research the article is based, corporate buybacks have been the “only net source of money entering the stock market” since 2008.

The sole purpose of buyback programs is to enhance the wealth of the executives who sit atop the major corporations as well as hedge funds and other traders in shares. By cutting the number of shares on issue, the stock of the corporation rises. Executives and others can then exercise their stock options to make a killing while hedge funds strike at the opportune time and rake in billions.

The buybacks are financed by using the accumulated profits of the company or, in some cases, by the raising of debt, taking advantage of the ultra-low interest rate policies of the US Federal Reserve.

According to the economist William O. Lazonick, the proportion of corporate buybacks funded through the issuing of bonds went as high as 30 percent in both 2016 and 2017.

By Reynolds’ calculations, since the beginning of 2009, buybacks have added a net $4 trillion to the stock market, an amount equivalent to one-fifth of the total $20.9 trillion market value of the companies in the S&P 500 index.

Calculations by Lazonick put share buybacks as equivalent to 52 percent of all corporate profits, with dividends on shares accounting for another $3.3 trillion.

Tracking Monsters Presumes You Have the Nerve and Means to Do Something About Them

project-syndicate |  We are living in the Dark Ages of inequality statistics. More than a decade after the “Great Recession,” governments are still unable to track accurately the evolution of income and wealth. Statistical agencies produce income-growth statistics for the population as a whole (national accounts), but not for the “middle class,” the “working class,” or the richest 1% and 0.1%. At a time when Google, Facebook, Visa, Mastercard, and other multinational corporations know intimate details about our private lives, governments still do not capture, let alone publish, the most basic statistics concerning the distribution of income and wealth.

This failure has huge costs for society. The perception that inequalities are reaching unjustifiable heights in many countries, combined with a lack of any possible informed choice for voters, is fodder for demagogues and critics of democracy.

Making matters worse, experts in the field of inequality are sometimes depicted as being overly reliant on specific methodological approaches, as illustrated in The Economist’s recent cover story, “Inequality illusions.” But, of course, data in the social sciences are by their very nature open to challenge, which makes methodological debates largely unavoidable. The question is where to draw the line between legitimate academic disagreement about inequality levels and trends and outright inequality denialism.

Whether or not inequality is acceptable – and whether or not something should be done about it – is a matter of collective choice. To help inform the debate, more than 100 researchers from around the world have joined forces to develop innovative methods for compiling inequality statistics through the World Inequality Database, which now covers more than 100 countries. The WID includes the widest possible array of available data sources, from household surveys, tax-administration data, national accounts, and wealth rankings published in the media, to the “Panama Papers,” through which the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists exposed stockpiles of wealth stashed in various tax havens.

Monsters Cause Wars and Go to Exhausting Lengths to Cover-Up Their Crimes

speigel |  On Nov. 23, DER SPIEGEL reported on the background of the so-called Magnitsky sanctions (the English report was published on Nov. 26). The sanctions, applied by the U.S. and others to Russian officials, are largely based on depictions provided by the former investor Bill Browder and are related to the fate of his employee Sergei Magnitsky.

Magnitsky died in 2009 in a Moscow prison under circumstances that haven't been completely clarified. Browder claims that Magnitsky was murdered because he had uncovered a tax scandal. The report from DER SPIEGEL describes the inconsistencies in Browder's version of events and demonstrates that he is unable to present sufficient proof for his claims.

Browder has now gone public with his complaints about the DER SPIEGEL story in the form of a letter to the newsmagazine's editor-in-chief in addition to a complaint filed with the German Press Council. In his letter, he accuses DER SPIEGEL of having misrepresented the facts.

We believe his complaint has no basis and would like to review why we have considerable doubts about Browder's story and why we felt it necessary to present those doubts publicly. The English text of the original story can be found here, and the paywall has been removed from the German version, which can be read here. In addition, you will find links below to some of the sources that we relied on in our reporting.

Peasants Tolerate the Hot Breath of Monsters on the Backs of Their Necks...,

Kunstler |  What is most perilous for our country now, would be to journey through a second epic crisis of authority in recent times without anybody facing the consequences of crimes they might have committed. The result will be a people turned utterly cynical, with no faith in their institutions or the rule of law, and no way to imagine a restoration of their lost faith within the bounds of law. It will be a deadly divorce between truth and reality. It will be an invitation to civil violence, a broken social contract, and the end of the framework for American life that was set up in 1788.

The first crisis of the era was the Great Financial Crash of 2008 based on widespread malfeasance in the banking world, an unprecedented suspension of rules, norms, and laws. GFC poster-boy Angelo Mozilo, CEO and chairman of Countrywide Financial, a sub-prime mortgage racketeering outfit, sucked at least half a billion dollars out of his operation before it blew up, and finally was nicked for $67 million in fines by the SEC — partly paid by Countrywide’s indemnity insurer — with criminal charges of securities fraud eventually dropped in the janky “settlement.” In other words, the cost of doing business. Scores of other fraudsters and swindlers in that orgy of banking malfeasance were never marched into a courtroom, never had to answer for their depredations, and remained at their desks in the C-suites collecting extravagant bonuses. The problems they caused were papered over with trillions of dollars that all of us are still on-the-hook for. And, contrary to appearances, the banking system never actually recovered. It is permanently demoralized.

How it was that Barack Obama came on-duty in January of 2009 and got away with doing absolutely nothing about all that for eight years remains one of the abiding mysteries of life on earth. Perhaps getting the first black president into the White House was such an intoxicating triumph of righteousness that nothing else seemed to matter anymore. Perhaps Mr. Obama was just a cat’s paw for banksterdom. (Sure kinda seems like it, when your first two hires are Robert Rubin and Larry Summers.) The failure to assign penalties for massive bad behavior has set up the nation for another financial fiasco, surely of greater magnitude than the blow-up of 2008, considering the current debt landscape. Not a few astute observers say they feel the hot breath of that monster on the back of their necks lately, with all the strange action in the RePo market — $500 billion “liquidity” injections in six weeks.

Remove Fairness from Society and You Create the Conditions for Revolt

nakedcapitalism |  This site regularly discusses the rise of neoliberalism and its consequences, such as rising inequality and lower labor bargaining rights. But it’s also important to understand that these changes were not organic but were the result of a well-financed campaign to change the values of judges and society at large to be more business-friendly. But the sacrifice of fair dealing as a bedrock business and social principle has had large costs. 

We’ve pointed out how lower trust has increased contracting costs: things that use to be done on a handshake or a simple letter agreement are now elaborately papered up. The fact that job candidates will now engage in ghosting, simply stopping to communicate with a recruiter rather than giving a ritually minimalistic sign off, is a testament to how impersonal hiring is now perceived to be, as well as often-abused workers engaging in some power tit for tat when they can. 

But on a higher level, the idea of fair play was about self-regulation of conduct. Most people want to see themselves as morally upright, even if some have to go through awfully complicated rationalizations to believe that. But when most individuals lived in fairly stable social and business communities, they had reason to be concerned that bad conduct might catch up with them. It even happens to a small degree now. Greg Lippmann, patient zero of toxic CDOs at Deutsche Bank, was unable to get his kids into fancy Manhattan private schools because his reputation preceded him. But the case examples for decades have gone overwhelmingly the other way. My belief is that a watershed event was the ability of Wall Street renegade, and later convicted felon Mike Milken, to rehabilitate himself spoke volumes as to the new normal of money trumping propriety. 

Another aspect of the decline in the importance of fair dealing is the notion of the obligations of power, that individuals in a position of authority have a duty to those in their sway. 

The abandonment of lofty-sounding principles like being fair has other costs. We’ve written about the concept of obliquity, how in complex systems, it’s not possible to chart a simple path though them because it’s impossible to understand it well enough to begin to do so. John Kay, who has made a study of the issue and eventually wrote a book about it, pointed out as an illustration that studies of similarly-sized companies in the same industry showed that ones that adopted nobler objectives did better in financial terms than ones that focused on maximizing shareholder value.

Healthcare CEO's Work SO HARD For The Money

hcrenewal |  Inflated executive compensation in health care is rarely challenged, but when it is, the responses are formulaic.  Justifications are usually made by public relations flacks who are accountable to these executives, or the executives' cronies on their boards of trustees.  As I wrote in 2015,  and in May, 2016,  It seems nearly every attempt made to defend the outsize compensation given hospital and health system executives involves the same arguments, thus suggesting they were authored as public relations talking points. Additional examples appear here, here here, here, here, and here, here and here. 

The talking points are:
- We have to pay competitive rates
- We have to pay enough to retain at least competent executives, given how hard it is to be an executive
- Our executives are not merely competitive, but brilliant (and have to be to do such a difficult job).

Yet the examples above suggest that the work of a top health care manager hardly is as difficult as that of a health care professional.  And as we have discussed, these talking points are otherwise easily debunked.  But that certainly has not stopped executive compensation from rising year after year. 

The plutocratic compensation given leaders of non-profit hospitals is usually justified by the need to competitively pay exceptionally brilliant leaders who must do extremely difficult jobs.  Yet even leaders whose records seem to be the opposite of brilliance, or whose work does not seem very hard, often end up handsomely rewarded.

Other aspects of top health care managers' pay provide perverse incentives.  While ostensibly tied to hospitals' economic performance, their compensation  is rarely tied to clinical performance, health care outcomes, health care quality, or patients' safety.  Furthermore, how managers are paid seems wildly out of step with how other organizational employees, especially health care professionals, are paid.

Exalted pay of hospital managers occurred after managers largely supplanted health care professionals as leaders of health care organizations.  This is part of a societal wave of "managerialism."  Most organizations are now run by generic managers, rather than people familiar with the particulars of the organizations' work. 

That CEOs would view the minor travails of bureaucratic life as so significant suggests how deep they are within their managerialist bubbles, and how little they understand and relate to what their organizations actually are supposed to do, provide health care on the ground to real patients. 

Rather than putting patient care first, paying generic managers enough to make them rich now seems to be the leading goal of hospitals. I postulate that managerialism is a major reason the US health care system costs much more than that of any other developed country, while providing mediocre access and health care quality.

Improving the situation might first require changing regulation of executive compensation practices in hospitals, improving its oversight, and making hospital boards of trustees more accountable.  But that would be just a few small steps in the right direction

True health care reform might require something more revolutionary, the reversal of the managers' coup d'etat, returning leadership of health care to health care professionals who actually care about patients and put their and the public's health first, ahead of their personal gain.  Of course, that might not be possible without a societal revolution to separate managers from the levers of power in government, industry, and non-profit organizations. Remember the most salient example of managerialism now for most people in the US is a an executive with a Wharton business degree as the President of the United States.

Managerialism Hijacked, Parasitized, and Controls the American Medical Narrative

hcrenewal  |  A news article that featured an interview with Dr Victor Montori, the senior author of the article, noted in fact that the most recent (2018) list included quite a few CEOs of large for-profit health care corporations.

Among those topping the latest installment of the influential Modern Healthcare power index are the corporate heads of Amazon, Apple, Aetna, Humana, CVS and Minnetonka, Minn.-based United Health/Optum.

The authors concluded that

perceived influence over US health care of chief executives of health systems is increasing. To the extent that the ranking validly reflects influence, the sharp rise in the influence of chief executive officers at the expense of representatives of patients or health professionals may underscore the increasing industrialization of health care. It is not possible to find patients, patient advocates, clinicians, or clinician advocates at the top of this list. This trend placing health care influencers within C-suites, accountable to boards mostly comprising other corporate leaders, may explain the rise of business language and thinking

They suggested that it is possible that there is a

causal association between the concentration of executive influence and problems of patient care derived from efforts to optimize operational efficiency and financial performance, for example, clinician burnout, the heavy burden of treatment afflicting patients with chronic conditions, and the erection of barriers to care to optimize 'payer mix.'

Dr Montori also said in the interview

Americans increasingly find themselves in a corporate-centric healthcare echo-chamber, one in which the public will increasingly approach tough policy decisions having heard only the viewpoint from the top.

'The primary goals of CEOs are to advance the mission of their organization,' Montori says. 'If all that influences healthcare are the ideas of people who advocate for the success of their organizations, people who are not served by them will not have their voices heard.'

Furthermore, he suggested that the public may be befuddled by the current health policy debates, including those about universal health care and the possibility of reducing the power of commercial health insurance companies because

in the rest of the narrative all that they hear is about are the successes of biotech, the successes of tech companies, and the successes of healthcare corporations who achieve high levels of innovation thanks to the bold leadership of their executives. It's why we have been calling for greater awareness of the industrialization of healthcare for some time now