How can a seemingly intelligent man be so naive? I blame his Harvard MBA.

UN Convention aginst corruption. hahahahaha!

Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross complains that American companies aren't meeting Africa's demand for services.

WASHINGTON – Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said American companies are not “meeting” the demand for high-quality products, services and infrastructure in Africa.

Ross said economic growth and “demographic trends across Africa” are translating into “rising buying power” and a demand for quality is increasing.

“American companies should be meeting this demand. However, it’s not happening. Last year, U.S. exports to Africa hit a 10-year low just two years after an all-time high. Now, I know that African imports are down, but we are also losing market share. 

Just one acronym answers Mr. Ross: FCPA, or the "Foreign Corrupt Practices Act",. which prohibits American companies from bribing foreign officials. One can approve or disapprove of the law, but the entire African continent runs on bribes, and if you can't bribe, you can't do business. John Blankley, former executive at BP before he came to this country to run for the office of First Selectman, once told me that England has a similar, though less restrictive law, and BP simply couldn't compete with the French who, he said, would arrive with "suitcases of cash and white women"—what a great line.

The real winners in Africa these days are the Chinese, who couldn't care less about bribing local government officials (and why should they, when that's how their own country operates?), and so they're spreading across the continent  with the speed of an Ebola epidemic. 

Because of the nebulous wording of FCPA, U.S. prosecutors have a 97% success rate when they bring charges. Ask Greenwich's Frederic Burke, who spent a year in prison after a farcical trial that denied him the right to cross-examine the government's chief witness, his supposed "co-conspirator". So what American executive would want to do business in a place that requires bribery to succeed, when his government is poised to imprison him if he does?

There are better ways to make a living.

This may prove ill-advised

In fact, I think that's already been demonstrated.*  Fortunately for the mayor, there's a Republican president in office, and the media will shift all blame to the east. Somewhere, Ray Nagin is chuckling.

August 25th: Houston Mayor urges residents to stay put.

* August 27th: Thousands flee their homes as catastrophic flood strike Houston

Exactly as predicted and warned about days ago

HOUSTON — The remnants of Hurricane Harvey sent devastating floods pouring into the nation’s fourth-largest city Sunday as rising water chased thousands of people to rooftops or higher ground and overwhelmed rescuers who could not keep up with the constant calls for help.

Helicopters, boats and high-water vehicles swarmed around inundated Houston neighborhoods, pulling people from their homes or from the turbid water, which was high enough in some places to gush into second floors.

The flooding was so widespread that authorities had trouble pinpointing the worst areas. They urged people to get on top of their homes to avoid becoming trapped in attics and to wave sheets or towels to draw attention to their location.

Sometimes, the good guys win

Public citizen: I hate when this happens!

August, 2017, New England Journal of Medicine: drug Canakinumbab shown to reduce risk of heart attack,  lung cancer deaths.

A first: Drug lowers heart risks by curbing inflammation

For the first time, a drug has helped prevent heart attacks by curbing inflammation, a new and very different approach than lowering cholesterol, the focus for many years.

People on the drug also had surprisingly lower cancer death rates, especially from lung cancer. An anti-tumor effect is an exciting possibility, but it needs much more study because the heart experiment wasn’t intended to test that.

Doctors say the results on the drug, canakinumab (can-uh-KIN-yoo-mab), open a new frontier. Many heart attacks occur in people whose cholesterol is normal and whose main risk is chronic inflammation that can lead to clogged arteries.

“We suddenly know we can address the inflammation itself, the same way we learned almost 25 years ago that we could address cholesterol. It’s very exciting,” said the study’s leader, Dr. Paul Ridker of Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston.

It’s hard to get big reductions in risk by adding a new drug like canakinumab if people already are taking optimal medicines, said Dr. Mark Creager, director of the Dartmouth-Hitchkock heart and vascular center and past president of the American Heart Association.

But even a small improvement makes a huge difference considering how common heart attacks are, he said. “That’s going to save a lot of people.”

The best part is having a new way to help patients, said the Cleveland Clinic’s heart chief, Dr. Steven Nissen, who has consulted for Novartis without fee.

“For the first time we have this new target — inflammation,” Nissen said. “It’s sort of the dawning of a new era. I really think it’s that big.”

July, 2011: Public Citizen demands an end to "unethical" trials of Canakinumbab.

Public Citizen, founded by Ralph Nader, is a self-styled "consumer advocacy group". It is —surprise! —funded by George Soros. 

How many other consumers has it harmed since it began in the early 70s?

Rip up this trail of racism!

Or honor the founder's original intent and purpose, and restrict entry?

The Pacific Crest Trail, which runs from the Olympic Peninsula to Mexico, founded on racism. I've hiked a fair distance on the Pacific Crest, but of course would have never stepped foot on it had I known its origins. While we can't expect every decent American hiker to find other hiking venues, surely the Californians will want to. Perhaps Governor Moonbeam can block the route through his state.

"The 'negro boys”' of America, he complained in 1937, had remained 'closer to the soil' and so were taking 'all the athletic prizes,' while whites suffered from 'too much sitting on soft seats in motors, too much sitting in soft seats in movies, and too much lounging in easy chairs before radios.' Only a long trip in the woods by 'clean, strong young Christians,' Clarke’s assistant wrote, could 'preserve our Christian civilization,' while eradicating communism as well. The great attraction of the new trail, according to a young man who blazed a section, was 'the fact that I was one of the first fellows to participate in such a conquest of this kind.'

Back east the founder of the Appalachian Trail, Benton MacKaye, was a rather different figure, a supporter of the Soviet Union and a friend of Sinclair Lewis, John Reed, and Lewis Mumford. MacKaye believed his trail would provide a solution to the labor unrest of the period—much of which was led by Wobbly lumberjacks and miners—by offering land and work in government-owned towns, newly built along the trail in the forest; no less a man of his time than Clarke, MacKaye termed his scheme 'colonization.'"

I suppose proper west coast liberals will have to travel 3,000 miles east and use the Appalachian. Thank goodness, for those whose parental allowance won't support that expense, there are ANTIFA riots to keep them exercised and fit.

Well this is funny

Bob Horton's right, but — ahem — I've been saying the same thing for years

The new New Lebanon school

If the measure of intelligence is the extent to which someone agrees with you, then Bob's opinion column in today's Greenwich Time demonstrates his genius.

Build the school. Build the school. Build the school.

That’s the still-faint but growing chorus from people who think the town should plow ahead with construction of the super-sized New Lebanon Elementary School without waiting to find out if the state will reimburse $23 million of the $34 million construction costs.

....

While  [Rep. Steve] Bocchino is rehearsing his pro-build choir, Greenwich Public Schools keeps releasing data proving that the planned new building is not only too large, there is no need for a new building at all. Latest enrollment projections for the coming school year show that the town’s 11 elementary schools will have almost 1,000 empty seats this coming school year.

The New Lebanon facility on the drawing board provides three classrooms for each grade, kindergarten through fifth. But the enrollments at New Lebanon for this year barely support two classrooms each for grades K-3. The fourth and fifth grades need three classrooms, but as those kids graduate, the classes coming up behind them will need less space. So, it is highly likely that, if the new school is built as planned, it will have at least six extra classrooms. Maybe Bocchino can use one for choir practice.

If or when the new school comes on line, there will be somewhere between 1,150 and 1,200 empty elementary school seats district wide. That will put tremendous political pressure on the BET, which is already facing fury from voters who think the town’s finance board has not been tight enough with tax dollars. How foolish will it look to have spent $34 million now only to close one or two schools in several years?

The shame of all this political posturing is that the kids in New Lebanon need a new building. The current building does not have such common instructional spaces as a band room or a proper sized cafeteria. Kindergarten classes were moved off campus in September 2014. By all rights, New Lebanon School kids would be starting school in a few days in a fully renovated, state-of-the-art educational facility. But no, those forces aligned behind a too-large building that is getting more and more expensive with each passing day.

But it has served one purpose, and that is to expose the Greenwich state legislative delegation as fair-weather expense cutters. Not a week goes by without one of them saying that the state is on the edge of bankruptcy. We are living on a credit card no one can afford to pay. They readily join the calls to “Starve the Beast” that is state spending. But when given a chance to say no to $23 million of un-needed state borrowing to support an unnecessary school, the all-Republican delegation lined up in support of more borrowing and more wasteful spending. As long as it is wasted in Greenwich, it is good with Greenwich Republicans. Turns out their commitment to sound fiscal management is a hoax.

Of course, considering that the town has already spent, or will soon spend, $15 million for a pool in Byram,  and  $45 million for the GHS music hall, Bocchino might be excused for demanding an extra $34 million for an unneeded school: someone has to keep the mil rate rising, and why shouldn't Byram be the one that benefits?

A theatre filled with sheep, maybe

But my people are sheep!

Nancy Pelosi claims there's no constitutional right to "cry wolf in a crowded theater".

You can follow the link to witness this deranged lady's view, or ignorance of, the First Amendment, but one commentator sums it up: "Is anyone investigating a link between botox and brain damage?"

Finally, sanity returns to sports

Fresh from whupping a bunch of girls at the CT state championships, sprinter "ANDREA" Yearwood is looking forward to her next chance, this time on an international level

The IOC announces that men will now be able to compete directly against women. 

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) confirmed that it would allow transgender athletes to compete in whatever category they wish to participate in during the 2018 Winter Olympics, a report says.

IOC officials noted that they will not require athletes to compete in categories that match their birth gender nor will there be any gender or sex testing of competitors ahead of the games, Daily Caller reported.

"Science? We don' need no stinkin' science", scoffed IOC President Thomas Bach when interviewed by FWIW. "Social constructs determine reality, not morons in lab coats. 

"This farce has been going on since 1928, when some idiot came up with the idea that athletic competitions should no longer be determined by who was fastest or strongest. but should instead be divided between those who had, or didn't have a dick — what rubbish!

 "Now that society has determined that there is no basis for believing that there's any difference between the assigned-at-birth sexes, and thus no reason to discriminate against youngsters formerly known as men, we are again free to conduct sports events as they should be: the winner will be the person who comes in first, with no regard whatsoever to what's going on between their legs.

"We have high expectations that the next Olympics will see so-called-women athletes returned to their proper place: the back of the pack, and the world will finally see true social justice restored."

Related: akc has decided that breed CATEGORIES will now be determined by how an individual dog may choose to self-identity

Photo credit: Well Pet. org

Good for her

The owner of 27 Marks Road, Riverside, has sold her house for $2.3 million. This is a really nice , 1920 house, renovated and expanded, and still sitting on a half-acre of its original land, $2.3's a good price for the seller, but not at all a crazy price for the buyer. Given comparative values, they did just fine, in my opinion, and I'd expect them to be quite content here: it's a great neighborhood and location. Unfortunately for them, my children are now well past their paper route days, so these new owners will miss out on John's impeccable service, but time — and Greenwich Time — marches on.

While it's true I don't visit Salon regularly, I do drop in when I see a link to one of its particularly stupid articles (of course, since they're all moronic, it has to be exceptional)

Harvey approaches: Oh, why didn't anyone tell me?

Salon: Trump has already flunked his first natural disaster test

Hurricane Harvey is predicted to be the first major storm in a decade — and Trump just tweeted a useless promotional ad in preparation.

According to the White House, Trump was briefed on the hurricane preparation efforts earlier this month, but his campaign-style commercial — fitted with a dramatic soundtrack — failed to convey any of that information to worried residents in the storm’s path. His tweet did not include basic information, like who is in danger, how to be prepared or what the government is doing to prepare. 

A month ago, Harvey wasn't even a dust storm over the Sahara, let alone a tropical storm in the Atlantic, let alone a hurricane poised to slam into Texas, so even Trump can be excused by all but the most deranged citizens for not issuing a warning.

Is there any particular value in providing "basic information" about preparing for potential damage, and evacuation plans, in a format limited to 140 characters, when the state and the federal government have suppled the same, but more detailed information via unlimited television and radio? And is their a Salon reader out there who subscribes to Trump's tweets anyway? 

Oil refineries and terminals in Texas have been forced to shut operations ahead of landfall, sending gasoline stocks soaring for the first time in more than a year.

Shutting down refiners (and drilling rigs) is standard operating procedure for oil companies when severe storms threaten. "Sending gasoline stocks soaring for the first time in over a year"? Does the editorialist's use of the term "gasoline stocks" refer to gasoline supplies, or to oil companies' stock value? Either way, "more than a year" suggests that the same phenomenon occurred during the Obama administrations eight-year reign.

But even as several Gulf states braced for the first major hurricane to make landfall in more than a decade, Trump’s newly minted head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency was busy pushing for decreases in federal disaster relief that would make local governments pay more when a hurricane hits.

This has been a critical issue for environmentalists (and limited government types) for decades: the government's floor insurance program has encouraged homeowners to build on flood plains and areas exposed to hurricane storms surges, all paid for by federal tax payers (that would be you and me). Multi-million-dollar homes in the Hamptons, Florida beach front developments, midwestern towns: all are subsidized by the rest of us. We pay to set them up, and the waters knock them down.

It is the peak of hurricane season, yet FEMA Director Brock Long is currently on a campaign to rewrite the federal flood insurance program that 5 million Americans rely on.“We’re particularly worried about the remainder of this hurricane season,” Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards said in a press conference following a meeting with Brock earlier this week. Hurricane Harvey is projected to cause major devastation to the state that was rocked by Hurricane Katrina more than a decade ago. 

Good: it's about time you were worried. The latest floods in New Orleans revealed that, 12 years after Katrina, neither the city nor the state has done anything to address the inadequate, failed storm drain system. This might be a good time to do so. And who's been in charge of the federal government during the past twelve years? Not Trump. Where was this editorial in, say, 2010? Or 2016?

While FEMA has said it is sending thousands of meals, tarps and liters of water to Randolph Air Force Base ahead of Hurricane Harvey’s arrival, its director told Bloomberg News this week that one of his top priorities ahead of September is pushing for an overhaul of disaster relief.

So Director Long should be personally folding FEMA tarps into cardboard boxes for shipment to Texas, and doing nothing else? Does this mean we can dismantle FEMA, which is  great idea, admittedly, and just appoint one guy to drop all of his other responsibilities and oversee a gang of minimum wage workers to assemble relief supplies? Works for me.

“I don’t think the taxpayer should reward risk going forward,” Long said in an interview in his office at FEMA’s headquarters in Washington. “We have to find ways to comprehensively become more resilient.”

See above.

Trump's wisdom in ignoring his critics and appealing to his base is demonstrated, once again, in this Salon piece. Everything is his fault, even before it happens: had the eclipse brought about the end of the world, as no doubt the majority of Salon readers expected and hoped for, the left's last despairing cry would have been, "we blame Trump — oh, and Bush!"

Screw 'em.