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Why Do They Report “Offense” As “Defense”?
How can any journalist or even any conscience writer mix up the "defense" "offense" vocabulary like in this piece?
Pentagon creating teams to launch cyberattacks as threat grows
The Pentagon’s Cyber Command will create 13 offensive teams by the fall of 2015 to help defend the nation against major computer attacks from abroad, Gen. Keith Alexander testified to Congress on Tuesday, a rare acknowledgment of the military’s ability to use cyberweapons.
"Offensive teams" are obviously created to attack a foes computersystems, not to "defend" ones own. To "defend" ones computersystems requires no offensive capability. It only requires to close off ones networks and to carefully scrutinize the hard- and software one is using. Then there is the attribution problem. In today's internet it is nearly impossible to find the source of a competent attack if the attacker is willing to hide its identity. Any "offensive team" is thereby by definition not to "defend" but, as its name says, to attack. Why is the reporter trying to obfuscate that?
And the writing gets even worse:
Alexander said the 13 teams would defend against destructive attacks. “I would like to be clear that this team . . . is an offensive team,” he said.
How can the reporter summarize what the General says as to "defend against attacks" when the General is quoted saying the very opposite in the very next sentence? Have the writer and the readers internalized newspeak so much that the glaring contradiction in that paragraph is acceptable as "truth"?
Twenty-seven other teams would support commands such as the Pacific Command and the Central Command as they plan offensive cyber capabilities.
General Alexander is clearly emphasizing the unilateral offensive side of his plans. But the reporter still subsumes it all under "defense". What kind of cool-aid do they serve in Washington to lower cerebral capabilities to such a level?
our economics theories are just as convoluted. The best way to stimulate the economy would be to raise top marginal rates and to raise cap gains. This encourages capital intensive production over cap lite production (finance, professions, in short paper pushers) This is because those higher rates force firms to either pay taxes to the gov’t, or convert their gross profits into other deductible avenues–really mean an oppressive avenues like, employee hiring, benefits, training, R&D, capital expansion/innovation/maintenance, even advertising. Far from causing firms to leave our shores, higher taxes will make them bring production home.
Higher cap gains also reward cap intensive production, by definition cap intensive producers use capital to make stuff. That capital ages or “depreciates” according to some schedule, 5-50years depending on the life expectancy of the capital involved. The higher the capital gains rate, the more lucrative the depreciation “tax credit”
The corollary is that low tax rates encourage executive profligacy, liquidation, speculation on commodities and anything else under the sun. These all result in higher “rents” or more expensive commodities, so not only gov’t taxes the economy–oil should be 1/3 the price if supply and demand were solely determinative of price. Not only that, but lower cap gains makes liquidation (off shoring) of production more lucrative, and creates a perverse incentive for execs to liquidate factories, off shore production, and pay themselves a bonus for “finding” that extra revenue.
The low tax advocates are such frauds, they conflate net and gross profits, effective and nominal rates. In fact, only cap lite players would want effective and nominal rates to be the same. Real producers get to write off business expenses at the nominal rate while only paying at the effective rate. The greater the spread the greater the defacto incentive to reinvest. Imagine, a program whereby the gov’t encourages reinvestment, expansion without telling how and what to do. This isn’t socialism, isn’t command economy, rather, it’s firm directed investment in areas that are more productive than profit taking–that’s why these activities are deductible after all.
Financiers, lobbyists, economists, lawyers have no experience with this, as their “business” model doesn’t really allow access to the deductions. These people hire few others, don’t use equipment, short of a computer, cell phone and a fancy car. They may not even have a physical office. These paper pushing cap lite producers have co-opted our political field and destroyed our economy. Their activities don’t add a dime to GDP, as they tax the economy for their income, and all they do is to (hopefully) add efficiency to the economy. Well, only so much “efficiency” is efficient. When Reagan took office, top marginal rates in the US were 70% on income exceeding $200k/yr, cap gains were 25-35%, and finance was less than 15% of the economy. Today, top marginal rates are 39% in income exceeding $400k, and cap gains are 15% (so low that “depreciation” is an archaic word.) Finance today is 40% of the US economy.
I’ve taken this argument to many financial experts, and they can’t refute it. Some dismiss it, but can’t deny the logic so they deny and run away. I cannot think of a simpler change to make the economy more productive, help middle class incomes rise, bring manufacturing home. And, please remember, effective tax rates won’t change much. The effective rates on cap intensive producers would fall, while professional services will see a bit of a higher rate. The top, top professionals will indeed be discouraged, and that frankly is a good thing. These are the top “eagles” who parlay their access into cash. This is also known as lobbying, or the revolving door.
My grandfather worked his whole life under the pre-Reagan tax rates. He ran a Fortune 100 firm. Though he never got more than a $1/4million/year. The guy that followed him, in the middle 80s got $1.3million/yr. My grandfather is mad about that to this day. I suggested the stockholders should be mad, he told me to love it (USA) or leave it. Now that illustrates his pettiness and how the execs have different interests than the stockholders, who are the real owners of the firms. If execs wanted to feather their nest, quite simply, they had to feather their employee’s nests too. That’s how high tax rates creates pensions, employee training programs and a more productive economy.
Posted by: scottindallas | Mar 13 2013 12:26 utc | 6
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