I’ve written a few things here and elsewhere about the need to close military bases, about how we should go about closing them, and about the possible civilian reuses for these sites. Later this month, I’ll be discussing some examples around the world, drawing from cases in a new book, Sustainable Regeneration of Former Military Sites published by Routledge.


I wrote a chapter covering two cases in Philadelphia — the Frankford Arsenal and the Philadelphia Navy Yard — and co-wrote another on the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Other places featured in the book include the Brunswick Naval Air Station in Maine, and an arts community in Marfa, Texas, once home to Fort Russell, a German POW camp in World War II. My friend and former colleague Connor Ryan wrote about the Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) process. But the volume mostly addresses non‑U.S. cases, including former defense sites in the UK, Croatia, the Netherlands, Finland, Sweden, China, and Taiwan. The experiences are as varied as the sites themselves, but common challenges include environmental cleanup, jurisdictional disputes (i.e. who controls the process, and who benefits), and local resistance to change. Eventually, these former military facilities do find other uses that provide clear benefits for their surrounding communities. And some recover quite quickly.


I’ll be speaking at the Association of Defense Communities’ National Summit here in DC, in the morning on Tuesday, June 21st. Then, on the afternoon of Wednesday, June 22nd, I’m traveling to New York City for an official book launch with the co-editors Celia Clark and Samer Bagaeen at historic Governors Island. A flyer with more details about that event, and the book, is featured below.

Something unsurprising but very interesting is happening in Austin, Texas. Last month, voters in Austin voted against Proposition 1, which would have repealed regulations mandating that wannabe rideshare drivers include fingerprints as part of their applications. Uber and Lyft left the city in the wake of the vote. Predictably, drivers and passengers have turned to social media to keep ridesharing going in a city without Uber and Lyft. While it’s nice to see drivers and passengers trying to adapt to Uber and Lyft leaving Austin, the approach does pose some privacy and safety concerns.

Austin residents looking for a ride need not resort to taxis. Rather, they can join the Facebook group “Arcade City Austin/​Request a Ride.” Members of the group can request rides. These requests includes arrival and pickup locations as well as preferred times. Drivers in the group interested in driving the passenger can comment on the request with a phone number, fare, and “brochure” showing that Uber and Lyft had approved them to drive.

As Arcade City notes, their approach removes “corporations” (read: Uber) and other institutions that act as middlemen in popular ridesharing services. There is no Uber or Lyft connecting passengers with drivers, the two parties voluntarily submit information to one-another in order to make each other better off.

As great as it is to see so-called micro-entrepreneurs in Austin working around poorly-considered local regulations, the Facebook group isn’t without concerns.

The “brochures” put on display by drivers could be faked without too much difficulty. A driver found via the Facebook page could be dangerous person who knows how to use Photoshop. Passengers do not know for sure that their potential driver was cleared by Uber or Lyft. In fact, they don’t even know if the driver has a valid license or insurance.

Speaking of insurance, drivers could end up in trouble if they are in an accident while driving a passenger using this Facebook group. Absent clarifying legislation personal auto insurance will be of little help if you’re involved in an accident while driving someone in exchange for money.

There are additional safety concerns associated with Arcade City’s Facebook page. It doesn’t seem difficult to be added to the Facebook group. In fact, I was promptly added to the group after I sent in my request, despite the fact that I work in Washington, D.C. and live in Virginia. It’s not hard to see how this page could be used by stalkers or would-be assailants to identify or track targets. As the screenshot below shows, passengers using the page can reveal specific addresses and telephone numbers.

Arcade City, which has yet to release its app, claims that their platform will allow drivers to create a profile that can embed a social media account, which will enable them to list their safety qualification, as TechCrunch explained:

Arcade City is confident they have a solution that will protect riders, while still remaining decentralized.

The startup explained that each driver will have a profile that can embed a Facebook or Twitter profile, background check, FBI check, driver’s license, proof of physical address, and more. Each driver can attach as few or as many of these verification options as they like, and the app will use these to compile a score that summarizes trustworthiness for each driver. Essentially, since riders will always be able to pick their driver, drivers who choose not to verify should be weeded out of the platform.

However, while this approach may work to provide some safety reassurance, it remains the case that the current Facebook page doesn’t provide rides as safe as Uber or Lyft rides.

Ironically, Uber and Lyft leaving Austin over a safety regulation has left residents with a ridesharing platform more dangerous than the services offered by Uber and Lyft.

Venezuela no longer can feed or care for its people. Yet many Americans have forgotten what socialism really is. Sen. Bernie Sanders campaigns as if Karl Marx was just another Santa Claus.

Real socialism largely disappeared decades ago. The collapse of the Soviet Union and its Eastern European satellites effectively ended the age of collectivism.

Nevertheless, oil-rich Venezuela since became a flamboyant exponent of socialism. Its travails should remind us how America’s power is built upon a prosperous economy. Prodigal spending at home and promiscuous intervention abroad are undermining our nation’s economic foundation.

Like most Latin American nations, Venezuela never enjoyed a genuine market economy. After years of misrule, Lt. Col. Hugo Chavez attempted a coup in 1992. He failed, but six years later frustrated Venezuelans elected him president, leading to his “Bolivarian Revolution.” Before his death in 2013 he nationalized industries, provided bountiful social benefits, spent wildly on domestic and foreign ventures, turned the state oil company into a fount of political patronage, and imposed price controls.

Chavez’s successor, Vice President Nicolas Maduro, is no more competent but less charismatic. Today the economy is in virtual collapse. With oil revenues declining the regime no longer can mask its many failures.

Yet Maduro’s government only blames others—political opponents and private businessmen—for everything from pervasive shortages to hyper-inflation. Maduro recently seized private factories and jailed their owners for not producing goods at a loss. People can’t even cry in their beer, since Venezuela lacks the barley and hops necessary to brew any.

In May Maduro declared a 60-day state of emergency “to tend to our country and more importantly to prepare to denounce, neutralize and overcome the external and foreign aggressions against our country.” He said his government’s problems are “made in the U.S.A.”

In December legislative elections delivered a two-thirds parliamentary majority to the divided opposition, which is organizing a recall campaign against Maduro. Seven of ten Venezuelans say they want him gone.

The Obama administration declared the Chavista regime to be a national security threat and imposed sanctions on top Venezuelan officials. Washington often inflates foreign threats to justify intervention, but Venezuela is a danger only to its own people. The Obama administration should stay out of the worsening chaos.

In fact, as I wrote in Forbes: “there’s little good that Washington can do. Attempts at isolation, especially economic sanctions which have become America’s weapon of choice, tend to hurt those people most aligned with the U.S.”

In Venezuela Washington’s support for a failed coup in 2002 spurred nationalist support for Chavez. Only the Venezuelan people can rid themselves of the Chavistas.

As they must do. Hugo Chavez said he created “21^st century socialism.” Alas, it didn’t work any better than 19^th century socialism. Bernie Sanders, call your office. America can’t afford to import a system that continues to fail around the world.

Global Science Report is a feature from the Center for the Study of Science, where we highlight one or two important new items in the scientific literature or the popular media. For broader and more technical perspectives, consult our monthly “Current Wisdom.” 

—

Currently, details are few, but apparently the results of a major scientific study on the effects of anthropogenic aerosols on clouds are going to have large implications for climate change projections—substantially lowering future temperature rise expectations.

In a blog post from the Department of Meteorology of the University of Reading, Dr. Nicolas Bellouin describes some preliminary results from a research study he leads that is investigating the influence of aerosols on cloud properties. The behavior of clouds, including how they are formed, how long they last, how bright they are, etc., plays a very large role in the earth’s climate system, and is considered the weakest part of global climate models. The climate model cloud deficiency results from a combination of scientific uncertainty about cloud behavior, as well as the modeling challenges that come from simulating the small spatial and temporal scales over which the important processes take place.

When it comes to the influence of human aerosol emissions on cloud properties, the scientific mainstream view is that aerosols modify clouds in such a way as to result in an enhanced cooling of the earth’s surface—a cooling influence which has acted to offset some portion of the warming influence resulting from human emissions of greenhouse gases (primarily from the burning of fossil fuels, like coal, oil, and natural gas to produce energy). In the absence of this presumed aerosol cooling effect, climate models predict that the earth should warm at a much faster rate than has been observed. A large cooling effect from aerosols was thus introduced in the early 1990s as a way to “fix” the climate models and bring them closer in line with the modest pace of observed warming. Despite that “fix,” climate models continue to overpredict the observed warming rate—which is bad enough news for climate models already.

But the new results, reported by Bellouin, make things much worse for them. His team shows that the anthropogenic cooling impact from clouds is much less than “assessed” by the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and also much less than employed by climate models. Less enhanced cloud cooling means that greenhouse gases have produced less warming than the climate models have determined. Another way to put it is that this new finding implies that the earth’s climate sensitivity—how much the earth’s surface will warm from a doubling of the pre-industrial atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration—is much below that of the average climate model (3.2°C) and near the low end of the IPCC’s 1.5°C to 4.5°C assessed range. This result comports with the concept of “lukewarming,” which we describe in an upcoming (August) hardcover book as “the new science that changes everything” (you can get a sneak peak here).

Bellouin summarizes his findings:

Radiative forcing is a measure of the imbalance in the Earth’s energy budget caused by perturbations external to the natural climate system, such as the emission of aerosols into the atmosphere by human activities. Our preliminary [research] estimate of radiative forcing due to aerosol-cloud interactions, based on satellite observations of aerosol amounts and cloud reflectivity, is –0.6 W m⁻². The negative sign indicates a loss of energy for the climate system. The estimate of climate models for the same radiative forcing is stronger, typically larger than –1 W m⁻². What causes that discrepancy? Over the past few months, I have discussed with experts in aerosol-cloud interactions, and there are reasons to expect that aerosol-cloud interactions are weaker than simulated by climate models – and perhaps even weaker than the preliminary [research] estimate.

Bellouin promises a more formal and detailed release of his team’s findings in August.

As they stand, the results of this new study confirm the results of an analysis published last year by Bjorn Stevens of the Max-Planck Institute for Meteorology.

When the Stevens results were incorporated into a determination of the earth’s climate sensitivity made by Nic Lewis, the result was a best estimate of the climate sensitivity of 1.5°C with a narrow range of 1.2°C to 1.8°C. This is a significant lowering and narrowing of the IPCC’s assessed range (again, 1.5°C to 4.5°C). The lower the climate sensitivity, the less future warming will result from our greenhouse gas emissions, the smaller any resultant impact, and the less the “need” to “do something” about it. Also, Lewis’ narrow range of uncertainty increases our confidence that climate change will not be catastrophic—that is, will not proceed at a rate that exceeds our ability to keep up.

At the time, we wrote: 

If this Stevens/​Lewis result holds up, it is the death blow to global warming hysteria.

The findings being reported by Nicolas Bellouin show, in fact, the Stevens/​Lewis result to be holding up quite nicely.

Climate alarm continues to morph into lukewarming, as we have predicted for decades.

Distrusted by most Americans and generating little enthusiasm even among supporters, Hillary Clinton has fallen behind Donald Trump in the polls. Last week she launched a brutal attack on his foreign policy views.

Clinton is the Democratic neoconservative who backed every major conflict fought by the U.S. over the last quarter century. Her needless foreign adventures consistently created new crises and consequent demands for more intervention and war.

Nevertheless, her basic message was that Donald Trump is “temperamentally unfit” for the presidency. True, but common sense still occasionally surfaces in the Trump world view. It rarely makes an appearance as Clinton backs Washington’s attempted domination of the globe.

Ultimately, she is most appalled that Trump appears to oppose the conventional wisdom that Washington is destined to micro-manage the globe. For instance, she began by posing “a choice between a fearful America that’s less secure and less engaged with the world, and strong, confident America that leads to keep our country safe and our economy growing.” However, Clinton-backed military interventions have left America poorer and less secure.

In her speech she imagined Trump “leading us into war just because somebody got under his very thin skin.” He could. But she doesn’t require even that much justification for going to war. She has backed U.S. involvement in virtually every unnecessary conflict.

She pushed her husband to remake the Balkans. She strongly supported the Iraq invasion, one of America’s worst foreign policy blunders.

She backed doubling down in nation-building in Afghanistan. She orchestrated the campaign in Libya, which resulted in a vacuum filled by ISIS. She advocates that the U.S. get more involved militarily in Syria, a multi-sided civil war in which America has no vital interest and for which Washington has no answer.

Yet she believes this list of mistakes entitles her to the presidency: “I’m proud to run on my record.”

In her speech she said “we need to stick with our allies,” which make “us exceptional.” Yet America is not exceptional because dozens of whiny dependents expect the U.S. to subsidize, reassure, and defend them. Actually, nations all over the world are begging Washington to do so.

Allies should make the U.S. stronger. America should not protect those who can protect themselves.

The Europeans are not only wealthier and more populous than Russia, their only serious potential antagonist, but also America, which does most of the heavy lifting in defending the continent. South Korea has more than 40 times the GDP and twice the population of North Korea.

These alliances are a source of conflict, not strength. Washington has no cause to risk war over the Baltic States, Japan’s claims to the Senkaku Islands, or who controls the Korean peninsula.

Clinton endorsed diplomacy and specifically the Iran nuclear accord. She’s right, but though Trump has been inconsistent on Iran, he appears to be more open to diplomacy elsewhere, especially in dealing with the PRC and Russia.

She advocated being “firm but wise with our rivals.” Clinton rightly criticized Trump’s sometimes bizarre praise of foreign dictators, but she supports confrontation with Russia over Ukraine even though the latter is not in NATO and is of far greater interest to the Europeans.

She also argued that “We need a real plan for confronting terrorism,” but, as I point out in Forbes, she “failed to mention the most obvious point. Stop creating enemies around the globe. Terrorism is evil and awful, but it almost always is a political act directed against outsiders, in this case, unfortunately, Americans.”

Clinton advocated that Americans “stay true to our values.” Her criticisms of Trump’s grotesque behavior struck home.

Yet her public values are worse: a belief in global social engineering, a willingness to go to war for frivolous reasons, a willingness to wreck entire nations while pursuing failed policies. Clinton, too, is not qualified to be commander-in-chief.

Clinton made a case against herself as well as Trump. Whatever happens in November is likely to leave Americans in greater danger.

Waste, fraud, and abuse are a common target on the campaign trail. Politicians from both parties point promise that eliminating this problem is a cure-all for whatever mathematical problems their tax and spending proposals might face. Eliminating waste, fraud, and abuse is not controversial, and allows them to avoid naming any actual programs they would phase out or reduce. As my Cato colleagues have pointed out, even completely eliminating all improper payments (which are somewhat related but not quite the same thing) won’t magically make next year’s budget deficit disappear and would do nothing to address the country’s more serious longer-term fiscal issues. Even with that caveat, improper payments are a pervasive and persistent problem, reaching $137 billion in 2015, a new record. Given the persistently high error rates and the outsized problems in government health care programs, it’s very likely that there will be another record high next year.

Total Improper Payments by Program, 2011–2015

Source: OMB via pay​men​tac​cu​ra​cy​.gov

Improper payments are somewhat related to the oft-cited triumvirate of waste, fraud, and abuse. These payments can stem from fraud and abuse, but also misidentification, insufficient documentation, and clerical errors. The vast majority of improper payments are overpayments, 92 percent in 2015, but a portion of this total does come from underpayments, or payments that are too low according to program rules. These amounts only measure amounts and rates relative to these rules, so say nothing about the effectiveness or propriety of the programs themselves.

If the $137 billion in combined improper payments were one program, it would be almost as large as the Social Security Disability Insurance program. As the figure above illustrates, most of these improper payments are concentrated in a few “high-error” programs. Three of the programs with the biggest improper payment amounts are health care programs, and projected growth in health care spending overall and recent government expansions in this sphere will likely lead to even higher amounts over the next decade. If Medicaid’s error payment rate were to remain constant over the next decade, improper payments in this program alone would be more than $60 billion in 2026.

While the magnitude of these improper payments is a serious concern, it is almost more troubling that they are so persistent, despite repeated efforts to address them. Since 2011, cumulative improper payments totaled almost $600 billion, which is more than total domestic discretionary federal spending last year.

While a few “high-error” programs have seen some progress in reducing improper payment rates, in most cases the rate has been relatively steady over the past five years, and in some instances has even increased. Medicare Fee-for-Service, one of the largest components with $358 billion in total outlays last year, had an improper payment rate over 12 percent the last two years, the highest on record.

Improper Payment Rates by Program, 2011–2015

Source: OMB via pay​men​tac​cu​ra​cy​.gov

Note: Some programs lack data for specific years.

Cutting down the scope of the federal government’s improper payments won’t solve all of our other fiscal problems, but these outlays do represent a significant misallocation and waste of taxpayer money. In many cases, error rates remain stubbornly high even after a program has been identified as one needing additional oversight. It is one thing for a politician to promise they’ll address the persistent improper payment problem, and quite another to actually do it.

Over the course of the last decade, as the United States got bogged down in quagmires in Iraq and Afghanistan, many Americans anticipated that war-weariness or an Iraq/​Afghanistan syndrome would diminish the United States’ propensity to use military force. That expectation is proving to be somewhat unjustified, however. President Obama, who staunchly opposed the war in Iraq, has overseen new wars in Libya and Iraq/​Syria, as well as an ongoing drone strike campaign throughout the greater Middle East. Although the lessons of Iraq and Afghanistan have not dissuaded President Obama from employing military force, they have influenced the manner in which he has done so. To avoid becoming embroiled in another ground war in the Middle East, the Obama administration has adopted a “light footprint” approach. Rather than deploying large contingents of ground troops, the administration has employed standoff strike capabilities and small contingents of Special Operations Forces, often in support of indigenous ground troops.

In a new Cato Policy Analysis, I present a thorough analysis of that approach, arguing that the light footprint essentially constitutes a tactical shift. The Obama administration has sought to achieve the same strategic objectives—the eradication of terrorism and the promotion of democracy in the greater Middle East—with less obtrusive military instruments. Unfortunately, although the light footprint has yielded tactical dividends, it appears unlikely to advance those strategic objectives. As the Obama administration draws to a close, it is the perfect time to stop tinkering with military tactics and begin a serious discussion about reorienting U.S. national security strategy—particularly with regard to the Middle East.