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Sponsored by: Arceneaux Ford
Jan 17, 2014 9:14 AM by Cecilia Stevenson
Errol Johnson, 54 years of age, Address-Belle Rose, Louisiana was arrested on 01/16/2014 @ 11:57am
Charge: Simple Burglary of a Vehicle; Illegal Possession of Stolen Things(Vehicle-Value$8,000); Illegal Possession of Stolen Things under $500.00; Aggravated Flight from an Officer; Unauthorized Entry of a Place of Business; Possession of Drug Paraphernalia; Operating a Vehicle with a Suspended Drivers License; Hold for Terrebone Parish Sheriff's Office-Warrants: Simple Burglary and Unauthorized Use of an Access Card
On 01/16/2014 the Morgan City Police Department received information from Terrebone Parish to be on the lookout for a male subject approaching females at businesses and staging a gasoline leak near their vehicle. The subject, according to the information would approach the females, pretending to come to their aid and eventually rob the females.
A short time later, the Morgan City Police Department received a complaint at a drug store located on Brashear Avenue which described a black male subject who approached a female, alleging a gasoline leak and asking for the vehicle keys. Officer were provided a description of the suspect and a vehicle which the suspect was driving. As officers searched the area and began to search for the suspect, Terrebone Parish Sheriff's Office was contacted and more information was relayed regarding the bulletin and possible suspects. Patrolling officers encountered a vehicle and driver which fit the description provided in the bulletin, however, the suspect, upon seeing officers, immediately fled in the vehicle leading officers on a vehicle pursuit. The suspect eventually pulled his vehicle to a Highway 182 business, exited his vehicle and attempted to flee on foot into the businesses warehouse. Officers gave pursuit and were able to apprehend the suspect, identified as Errol Johnson inside the warehouse. Johnson was found to possess credit cards in his possession which did not belong to him along with items of drug paraphernalia.
As officers secured the scene, they learned of a vehicle burglary which occurred at a Brashear Ave. supermarket. The officers recovered items which Johnson attempted to discard during the pursuit which was allegedly taken in that burglary.
Errol Johnson, who was found to be operating a vehicle with a Suspended Drivers License was found to be driving a stolen vehicle from Lafayette, La. during the pursuit. It was recovered.
Errol Johnson was arrested, and transported to the Morgan City Police Department where he was questioned by Detectives of the Morgan City Police Department as well as Terrebone and St. Mary Parish Sheriff's Department. Based on those interviews and other evidence obtained, additional charges may follow. The suspect was booked into the Morgan City Jail Facility where he remains incarcerated. Terrebone Parish Authorities have placed a hold on additional warrants for Simple Burglary and Unauthorized Use of an Access Card related to incidents in that jurisdiction. If anyone has any information regarding this subject, Errol Johnson, or any other crime, please contact the Morgan City Police Department @ 985-380-4605 or your local law enforcement agency.
Nicole M. Hillebrandt, 35 years of age, Address-Mallard St. Morgan City, La. was arrested on 01/16/2014 @ 6:58pm
Charge: Operating a Vehicle with a Suspended Drivers License; Stop Light Violation
A patrolling officer detained the driver of a vehicle on Highway 182 and Florence St. after the vehicle failed to negotiate a stop light. The driver, Nicole Hillebrandt was found to be operating a vehicle with a suspended drivers license and was arrested. She was transported to the Morgan City Police Department where she was booked and incarcerated.
3 months ago


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Updated on
September 05, 2012,
asks from
Fort Worth, TX
April 16, 2009
Strong Odor and Can't Figure It Out!!!
Okay Mommies I don't know where to start, but I need some ideas or suggestions. We have lived in our house for over a year and it was built in '02. No problems until a few months ago when the weather started to heat up. My sons room is in the corner of the house, next to the bathroom, and on the warmer days it reaks. I mean the best description is almost like a gas smell. We have cleaned the carpets, removed everything from the room, and taken the fan down that we installed. We have also had a plumber come out and a critter control person whom both did not find anything. Oh also did I mention that we do not have gas in our house of any kind. The critter guy said that if it were a rodent that it would have decomposed in 7-10 days, well we are going on 4 months now. There are no signs on the carpet or walls that would indicate anything, but I am curious to see if anyone else is going through this or has before. We have heard of the Chinese dry wall that puts off an odor, but why would it only be in one room in our house. Our last resort is to rip out all of the dry wall and see what is in the wall. But any other suggestions or possibilities would be great. Thanks Ladies!
1 mom found this helpful
Featured Answers
A.K. answers from Dallas on April 17, 2009
OK, I probably have the strangest possibility for you :o). We have a room that has smelled for years - usually worse in warm or wet weather. Like you, we had a plumber and pest guy come out and found nothing. We removed the carpet, painted the concrete floor, got new pad and carpet, etc. Nothing seemed to work. Then, we were removing all the shrubs from the beds in front of that room and found a large snake. Come to find out, snakes have a VERY smelly gooey defense mechanism! After the shrubs were gone (along with the large snake) we hardly ever have that smell any more. I live on 3 acres and know there are still some snakes, so I have smelled something similar but nothing like it used to be when he lived under the window to that room.
Good Luck!
E.H. answers from Dallas on April 17, 2009
You can call my office COrnerstone Chem-Dry and ask to speak to Randy -- tell them E. told you to only speak to him and he may be able to help you! ###-###-####
E. Herman
Cornerstone Chem-Dry
More Answers
P.W. answers from Dallas on April 16, 2009
One thought. I don't want to scare you but we had something like this but it was in Colorado. No one could find this smell and I was sure it smelled like gas. The gas company came out twice. A handyman with a sniffer. A neighbor who worked for the fire department and his sniffer. Nobody could find anything. Finally we called a company called Stink Inc. We kept the house shut tight until he got there. Sure enough we had a tiny gas leak. It was coming from a fireplace heatilator. Now, I'm not sure this is your problem because you say it is only during warm weather......unless you keep a window open during the cooler months. Is the house worse after it has been closed up? Is there a gas line anywhere near the odor?
2nd thought: does the smell come after a rain? Or after the sprinklers have been run? If yes, look for rotted wood outside in the area of the odor.
3rd thought: dead mouse in the wall. LOL! Good luck!
1 mom found this helpful
K.K. answers from Dallas on April 16, 2009
Is you air and heating unit up above the area where you smell, somtimes there can be condensation that builds up causes mold.
We were having reoccurring mold in a bathroom and after having to reove all the dry wall we had found an old drip pan were an old unit used to sit and created the mold that took us years to figure out.
A.J. answers from Dallas on April 17, 2009
I hope someone has a great answer for you other than having to rip out your dry wall. However, if you indeed do have to pull out the dry wall I recently contracted with a great guy. He pulled out the full wall panneling in our living room and replaced with drywall. He has done several jobs for us and he is always the lowest bid.
I hope you dont need him but just in case Len Vinsko ###-###-####.
Good luck!
A.R. answers from Dallas on April 17, 2009
I know exactly what you are going through!!!! We have a new home as well, built in 06. When it began to warm up the spring of 07 we had a horrible smell coming from our master bedroom. I was pregnant and was unable to sleep in there...it was awful!!! After much of the same exploration you have done, we found that when they built our house a nail went through the sewer vent pipe. It would leak out the sewer gas and smell horrible. I would suggest you have a plumber out to see if he can scope it and see if there are any punctures in the pipe. It took a plumber 3 tries to find ours, but once they did and replaced the pipe the smell is gone! Good luck.
C.S. answers from Dallas on April 17, 2009
Very interesting.
They put up these houses so fast you never know what you might find. Could be mildew in the insulation or wood. It's really easy to remove and replace drywall. If you have tried everything, that would be my best bet.
Also mold will cause neurological damage in children. best check it out. Possibly some water damage sealed in when house was built? I am curious as to the findings.
Mostly support, C.
G.W. answers from Dallas on April 17, 2009
whoa I read that fox news story and that sounds like what you have.
But I also wanted to mention that when I toured the stockyards, they told us of a funny story about a man who built his home of bricks from the stockyards, thinking it would be really prestigious. Turns out, when it rained, all the bricks emitted a cow manure smell from being at the stockyards! So, I guess it could be the location of the room and the amount of moisture it receives and the building materials used in that part of the house. Sounds like it's a combination of all 3. But, truthfully, that chinese drywall thing sounds the closest, if it truly is a gas smell. I'd try to contact the original contractor to find out where he bought his drywall and maybe any other homes that were built at the same time as yours by the same builder and talk to homeowners.
C.L. answers from Dallas on April 17, 2009
Pull back the carpets and see if the smell gets stronger. It could be in the cushioning/pad under the carpets, then all you you have to do is get a replacement pad for the carpet in your son's room.
M.F. answers from Dallas on April 17, 2009
Very similar thing happened to us at our old house that was newly built. It turns out it was the drain under our washer. The water was not staying in the part of the pipe where it should stay so that gases don't come up. I think they call it a "g" pipe and some water should sit in the lower part until flushed out again. Check it out.

subset: commoncrawl


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Cardiovascular conditioning can be in the water too! Without the pounding on joint, our hour-long aqua fit classes still provide great exercise and toning, leading to improved range of motion, strength, coordination and flexibility. It's all about fun and sweat! While our level increases in intensity, beginners and new comers are always welcome to participate at their own pace. Instructor
For class times check our group fitness schedule.
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Chlorophyll Byproducts Light Up Cell Deconstruction
July 28, 2010
As bananas age, the chlorophyll in their peels breaks down into particles called FCC's (fluorescent chlorophyll catabolites). Since these glowing particles occur in close proximity to dying tissue, they hold promise of lighting the way in studying programmed cell death.
Technology Internet, Health Medical Pharma, Tetrapyrroles, Photosynthetic pigments, Chlorophyll, Federal Communications Commission, Banana, Environment


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For months, consumer advocates have been cheered by Federal Reserve statistics showing that people are steadily paying down billions of dollars on their combined revolving debt, which includes credit cards.
At the end of 2008, people owed a combined $958 billion in revolving debt. Since then, that figure has fallen to $864.4 billion as of the end of January. The steepest decline came in November, when consumer credit fell at an annualized 18.5 percent rate, while January saw the slowest drop in recent memory with just a 2.3 percent annualized drop.
However, a recent USA Today article quoted Odysseas Papadimitriou, CEO of CardHub.com, as estimating that 90 percent of this decline has been due to credit card company charge offs. In turn, he has reportedly determined that only about $10 billion in lower debts can be traced to consumers actually paying down their balances, and much of this may have taken place early last year.
USA Today also noted that the average American household has nine credit cards.
The report brings to mind a debate among economists that flared during the recession about whether people were permanently changing their spending habits and becoming more responsible, or whether lenders were simply making credit tougher for most people to get. Instead, it may be that neither answer is completely correct.
With a charge off, a credit card company has essentially given up on the likelihood of ever collecting a specific debt. However, a consumer is still liable for that debt, and will suffer damage to their credit score because of it. Some cardholders have also been subject to lawsuits for not paying their debts, while many others can expect to hear from collections agencies if one of their accounts is charged off.
Driven by a high unemployment rate, many of the nation's leading credit card companies have reported charge off rates in the 10 percent neighborhood for much of the recession. Unemployment has also been a factor in other negative financial indicators, such as foreclosures and credit card accounts that are 30 or 60 days past due.
When checking one's credit report, a factor like payment history accounts for about 30 percent of the formula used to calculate a credit score. Other factors include the size of one's existing balances and the length of the credit history in question.


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Scalloped Zucchini and Potato with dill
From Francybhall Report abuse
This recipe was submitted by a reader and has not been tested in our kitchen.
A layered vegetarian casserole with zucchini, red potatoes, yellow onion, goat cheese, vegetable broth, dill and other spices.
*To make vegan, substitute crumbled, firm tofu that has been mixed with dill, onion and garlic*
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Serves: large servings
Prep Time: 20 min
Cook Time: 1 hr 30 min
U.S. | Metric | Conversion chart |
- 2 medium Zucchini, Slice medium thick rounds
- 4 medium Red Potatoes, Slice thin rounds
- 1 medium Yellow Onion, Slice into thin strips
- 3 ounce(s) Goat Cheese, Lightly melted
- 1 tablespoon(s) Dill, found in spice aisle
- 2 teaspoon(s) Sea Salt
- 2 teaspoon(s) Powdered Garlic
- 6 ounce(s) Vegetable Broth, or substitute your choice of broth
- Slice Zucchini in medium thick rounds.Slice Red Potatoes in thin rounds. Slice Yellow Onion in thin strips.Pour half the broth in glass baking dish; layer potatoes, then zucchini, then onions on top of each other. pour Lightly melt goat cheese and mix in the dill, salt and garlic. Pour over the top of the layers. Add second layer of vegetables same as the first. Pour remaining broth on top and then pour remaining goat cheese on top.Cover and cook at 325 for 60-90 minutes, uncover for the last 15 minutes.Let rest 10 minutes then serve.
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Marine Optics and Remote Sensing Laboratory
Our group is interested in problems of radiance transfer in seawater, light utilisation by phytoplankton, optical monitoring of ecological processes, and remote sensing in the marine environment. These problems all involve the application of physical principles in an interdisciplinary context. Activities range from in situ measurement of optical properties at sea from ships and other platforms, through radiative transfer simulations of underwater and water leaving light fields, to development of new algorithms for interpretation of ocean colour remote sensing data from satellite-borne sensors.
About us – The MORSE group currently has eight members and has more than £1.1m funding from the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC), the Marine Alliance for Science and Technology Scotland (MASTS), the Scottish Government and the European Space Agency.
Collaborations – We work closely with colleagues from across Scotland, the UK and worldwide. See research project pages for specific details. The group is a member of the Marine Alliance for Science and Technology Scotland (MASTS) research pool. We are also a founding partner of the Ultrafast Advanced Spectroscopy Shared Facility: http://www.ultrachemphys.org
Hyperspectral radiance reflectance profile from the Tropical North Atlantic showing chlorophyll fluorescence peak at ~685nm and Raman scattering peak shifting between ~580 – 620nm.


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I've been wondering that too! I've been really busy lately with dyeing special orders, teaching classes and knitting. Oh and I have been redecorating my house so that involved a little shopping. Since my house sits in a wooded area and doesn't get much natural light coming in, I wanted to brighten things up a little to make it less dark all of the time. I really like what I've done and it has really helped lift my spirits.
I think in one of my last posts I was starting the February Lady Sweater with Classic Elite Renaissance yarn. I ended up ripping it out. The yarn was too dark and earthy for what I thought should be a feminine looking sweater. Hmmm….I see a trend. I ended up ordering Dream in Color Classy in the Butter Peeps colorway and I'm liking it much better.
I haven't gotten very far yet, but I didn't get very far into the first one when I frogged it either. I've discovered that I can wear yellow now and so I'm loving knitting with this yarn since it is a color I haven't worked very much with.
In between frogging the first FLS and starting the second, I started Mr. Greenjeans out of Classic Elite Waterlily in a beautiful green. This is another sweater that I've been wanting to make for awhile and I'm enjoying working on it too. I love the shading of the greens in this yarn but it wants to split every now and then which is annoying (it is 4 strands of 2 ply).
I want to focus on knitting sweaters this spring and summer. We'll see how that goes! I just need to keep remembering how cold I was this winter. This was the first Missouri winter where I was actually cold most of the time and felt like I needed a sweater or a scarf. Which reminds me I bought a skein of Malabrigo laceweight to do a scarf which may interrupt my sweater knitting. I'll just let it me my diversion when I need one.


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The Volunteer Advisory Steering Committee (VASC), established in 2010, acts as the core of the volunteer-led structure being the voice of the volunteers, advisors to all operational committees and creates a transparent environment between the work of the council and its members.
VASC was established to work with current and future volunteer committees in Girl Scouts of Southwest Texas.
VASC members began by researching the functions and purpose of all committees and task groups to gain a better understanding of council and volunteer needs. They then evaluated how committees could work to communicate more efficiently and accomplish overall goals.
After this research, VASC appointed a volunteer from the committee to work in partnership with a staff liaison to the committees in each function (Girl Scout Leadership Experience, Administration, Membership & Community Development, Brand/Communication, and Volunteerism). The partnership will work together to develop a stronger volunteer voice in the council and get a recommitment from the committees and its members.
VASC works in partnership with council to ensure that the volunteers' voice is heard. The committee members actively solicit volunteer feedback through surveys, community conversation opportunities and through regional and council level committees.
Volunteer Structure
After nine Community Conversations in Spring 2012 with volunteers throughout the 21 counties, volunteers overwhelmingly agreed that the service unit structure with all of the volunteer positions was not working. It was noted that a majority of the service units did not have volunteers filling the 16 volunteer positions and could not recruit volunteers to fill those positions. In other instances, one or two volunteers were filling multiple roles on the service unit team and unable to fulfill the responsibilities. The information was presented to staff and they agreed with the volunteers' concerns. The staff quickly moved forward to review the position descriptions and make determinations on what responsibilities were critical to supporting the service units. It was evident that everyone wanted to see changes that would result in better support to volunteers which, in turn, would result in girls in every service unit receiving the best Girl Scout Leadership Experience!
This chart (click here) shows the new service unit and regional volunteer structure for the 2012-2013 membership year and the graphic (click here) showing the relationship of the service unit and regional area and staff partnerships.
Position Descriptions
You can view the position descriptions for each service unit and regional volunteer position below. If you are interested in any of the positions or know of someone who would be great in the position, please let your Service Unit Director or GO Team staff liaison know! Service units will also be developing special volunteer committees for work throughout the year and are always interested in involving new adults to help deliver Girl Scout opportunities to the girls and volunteers! Become a part of Girl Scout Leadership today!
Service Unit
Service Unit Director
Service Unit Administrative Assistant
Service Unit Treasurer (in development)
Service Unit Adult Learning & Recognition Coordinator
Service Unit Event & Outdoor Coordinator
Service Unit Membership Coordinator
Service Unit Cookie Manager
Service Unit Nut Expert
Regional Coordinator (in development)
Regional Finance Coordinator
Regional Event & Outdoor Coordinator
Regional Communications Coordinator
Regional SHARE Coordinator
Regional Interfaith Coordinator


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Do you have any info on how to prepare acadamically before you arrive to AMS. example- info on the little blue book or patriot hand book, Also what to prepare for on the academic tests?
Thanks for the help.
I just finished my interview with the board and was offered the comm officer position, my package was sent up to the NGB. So I hope Ill get a date realtively soon. I shouldnt have any problems with pushups, situps or the run, I figured I could get a jump on the academics.
So your saying if you memorize the samples of behavior you should be well prepared for all the tests?
Also what kind of info is in the patriot handbook, Do they give you a pop quiz and if you get it wrong your doing pushups? About how many pushups at one time do they make you do 20-30? or more?
Where is a good place to read up on the marching commands when you are marching around the base to and from the chow hall, etc?
Thanks again for the help.
Thanks for all the information Quatro! It gives me a better idea of what to expect, then just going in cold.
In AMS, whats is the standard PT requirements to pass?
50 pushups/50 situps in 1 minute for max points? or how is it in AMS?
Is it a mile and a half run or 3 mile run? What is the required passing time.
I am prior AD Airforce, but I have been out of AD for 10 years and in the Air National Guard for the past 5 years.
Thanks again!
Hi Quatro,
The haircuts are not like Basic Training again are they? or just AF standards? What is the percentage of people who complete AMS? or who fail out due to PT or academics?
Is it true that if your BMI is between 18 and 24.9 you get the full 30 points for Body composition and dont need to be taped for ab circumference? Or do you get taped no matter what and your score is based on ab circumference?
Military Aviation News & Video
Guard & Reserve Unit Map
Gouge Vault Access
Pilot Candidate Stats Ultimate UPT Gouge
Order of Merit (OM) Calculator


text: Voice over Internet Protocol, usually said as "Voice over IP" or "VOIP", is a telecommunications system that uses the Internet or other Internet Protocol network to transmit telephone calls. This technology allows you to make telephone calls using a broadband Internet connection instead of a regular (analog) phone line. VoIP Gateways or Media Gateways are network devices that convert voice, fax, and other incoming calls between the public telephone network (PSTN) and an IP network. With a minimum of one Ethernet and telephone port yet expandable to fit the needs of any network configuration, gateways translate the varying coding techniques allowing companies to seamlessly communicate with other parties across other networks (VoIP or a standard phone service).


text: Marshawn Lynch sports gold cleats for Super Bowl warmup... Marshawn Lynch sports gold cleats for Super Bowl warmup... Spurs' Tim Duncan sues financial advisor for more than... Spurs' Tim Duncan sues financial advisor for more than... Space Jam Inspired Art Exhibition Hits NYC Space Jam Inspired Art Exhibition Hits NYC SMU notified of allegations by NCAA SMU notified of allegations by NCAA Chargers WR Keenan Allen potentially out for rest of th... Chargers WR Keenan Allen potentially out for rest of th... Jon Lester featured on this week's Sports Illustrated c... Jon Lester featured on this week's Sports Illustrated c... Marcus Mariota shines on Letterman Marcus Mariota shines on Letterman Close Tweet0 Share0 Comment0 Share0 Share0 Stumble It0 Print0 More SI Wire Ian Kinsler calls Texas GM Jon Daniels 'a sleazeball,' hopes Rangers go 0-162 by Tim Polzer Email Posted: Tue Mar. 4, 2014 Ian Kinsler was part of a blockbuster trade that brought Prince Fielder to Texas. (Mark Cunningham/Getty Images)Second baseman Ian Kinsler, traded from the Rangers to the Tigers in the offseason, has come out blasting his former team and its general manager Jon Daniels in an upcoming ESPN The Magazine feature by Robert Sanchez.Kinsler, who played eight seasons with the Rangers, said he's happy he was part of this offseason's blockbuster deal that sent Prince Fielder to Texas, but he criticizes Daniels for his handling of his trade and the 2013 exit of friend Michael Young. From the story:"There was no remorse from the Rangers," Kinsler says of the trade. "They did not care." He obviously still does. "The team had changed. It was not the same personalities, not the same players, not the same chemistry. To be traded, it was refreshing to start new."Kinsler complained that a Dallas radio personality informed him that he'd been traded, not Daniels. Daniels did leave Kinsler a voicemail after the deal, but Kinsler never called him back."I want to be the one who tells Ian," Daniels told ESPN, "but literally, the story breaks while I'm on a plane to Tucson. I feel bad that's how he found out."Kinsler did not appreciate Daniels asking him to shift to first base last offseason to make room in the lineup for prospect Jurickson Profar and also didn't like being asked to be a team leader. He turned in disappointing offensive numbers -- hitting .277/.344/.413 with 13 homers and 15 steals -- in a hitter-friendly ballpark just one year after signing a five-year, $75 million extension with the Rangers."I was bogged down," he told ESPN. "They wanted me to lead these young players, teach them the way to compete, when the only thing I should be worried about is how I'm performing in the game."Kinsler also blamed Daniels for pushing team president Nolan Ryan out of baseball decisions, which led to Ryan leaving the organization. He then went further."Daniels is a sleazeball," he told ESPN. "He got in good with the owners and straight pushed [Nolan] Ryan out. He thought all the things he should get credit for, Ryan got credit for. It's just ego. Once we went to the World Series, everybody's ego got huge, except for Nolan's."CORCORAN: These big names have something to prove in 2014Kinsler said he still has friends in the Rangers' clubhouse -- including manager Ron Washington -- but he hopes his old club goes winless in 2014. From Sanchez's piece:"I'll miss all my teammates," he says. "I'll miss Elvis [Andrus] and [Adrian] Beltre, Mitch [Moreland], Matt Harrison and Washington." But the frustration -- with his play, with the team, with the organization -- is still so raw. "To be honest with you, I hope they go 0-162." Promoted Stories Comments


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Lastly, Murdoch was kind enough to offer Brauchli a ride back from DC on his private jet the night news broke (elsewhere, because of interference by Murdoch) that he was out as Journal editor, and we get this scene:
After the dinner, Brauchli took Murdoch up on his offer for a ride home. He boarded the private plane, which carried Murdoch, Ginsberg, speechwriter and new Journal columnist William McGurn, and longtime Murdoch investment banker Stanley Shuman. Murdoch, propped up on cashmere pillows, bow tie loosened, watched The O'Reilly Factor on the mammoth flat-screen TV that overlooked the conference table where all his guests sat. Murdoch dipped in and out of the conversation. No one spoke a word about Brauchli's resignation. When Murdoch occasionally lost interest, he turned toward the television and adjusted the volume so he could hear a bit better. "Has a good rhythm, doesn't it?" he said to polite nods.
I think I would have taken the Fung Wah, myself.
What does Brauchli think now?
Privately he has told friends that the Journal has "lost ambition, depth, and originality," which once set it apart. When asked about his recollections of his tussle with Murdoch, Brauchli replied, from his desk at the Post, "Do I miss being there? Not really. It's a different place than it was when I grew up there."
To say the least.
Which again raises questions about the noticeable silence from ex-honchos at Dow Jones and the Journal about what's happened to their beloved paper.
Where are you guys?


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This page is for all Title I schools and their Title I Contacts. If there is any additional information that you believe would be helpful, please email Morgan Kibby or call 2301.
Title I Expenses
All Check Requests, Timesheets, Stipend Agreements, Consultant Agreements, etc with a Title I account number must be sent to Morgan Kibby first.
Time and Effort
100% Federal Funded - this Time and Effort log must be filled out once a semester by all employees that are paid only from Title I. They are due on January 16, 2015 and May 22, 2015.
Partially Federal Funded - this Time and Effort log must be filled out monthly by all employees who are paid out of Title I and the general fund or have two different job descriptions along with the calendar. These are due before the 5th of the following month.
Time and Effort Calendar - this calendar is filled out monthly by all employees paid out of Title I and general fund (or another grant fund) along with the log. Please change your print option to "landscape" for this to print properly.
Time and Effort Partially Federal Funded Example
Time and Effort 100% Federal Funded Example
Title I Contacts
2014-2015 Calendar - important dates for Title I Contacts
Stipend Form - this is the form that will be used to pay Title I Contacts their stipend for the 2014-2015 school year - please send this to Morgan Kibby by the end of April 2015.
Consultant Agreement Form - this form will be used to pay any Parent Liaison's that the school has budgeted for.
If you have any questions, suggestions, or comments, please contact:
Morgan Kibby
Title I Supervisor/Grant Manager
(719) 579-2301


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Ben Wiggs
Animator at DNEG
"From Animation-wanabe to Animator at DNEG – I owe Escape big time."
Animation is where it's at
It's official: Animated Characters have taken over British TV. With the likes of Alexander the Meerkat, who has made us all laugh, to the latest CG Andrex Puppy who has divided the nation, the animation market is flourishing. Good job that escapee Ben Wiggs has a secure position as Animator at one of London's top post production houses; DNEG. Ben has worked on some huge titles: Cadbury's - Spots vs Stripes, Ademe - Garbage Monster, Want to See Something (short film), York - Polar Bear and Airwick –Freshmatic, to name but a few. Ben is in the perfect role at the perfect time but let's take a look at his journey and how he got there.
Why Animation?
Ben is someone who knows what he wants and from the time he first saw 'Akira' aged thirteen he was hooked on the idea of becoming an animator. "I was so smitten I began dabbling with a bit of stop-motion on an old cine camera, before teenage life kicked in and distracted me totally from it. "But, it wasn't long before his passion for animation was re-ignited by the legendary Ray Harryhausen who inspired Ben to follow his dream "I was totally fascinated by him and particularly loved 'Clash of the Titans'. It undoubtedly had a direct effect on my willingness to try some stop-motion animation and I knew what I wanted to do with my life I just needed the skills to get me there".
To Escape and Beyond
Ben didn't study at University because he just wasn't convinced he was a 'University type of guy'. So, he set to work on the internet looking up courses, eventually finding Escape Studios. Before he knew it, he was coming in for an open day tour and signing up to study his dream subject. Ben told us that the main reason he chose to study with Escape was because he knew that Maya was the industry-standard software of choice and the courses taught at Escape were 12 week comprehensive Maya master-classes. "It was perfect for me as a young animator-wannabe trying to find a way in to this industry. It was more than I could ever have hoped it would be! The course literally took a bunch of novices and set us up ready to start a career in CG".
Once Ben had completed his course he was ready to start looking for his first job in the industry. So, he did what all of our graduates do and met with our Recruitment Team: "Escape's recruitment service played a massive role in my career. After a stint at Weta in New Zealand, I came back and approached Escape as an ex-student hoping for some contacts. Within weeks they found me my first job in London at Steel Drum Studios, where I stayed for two years. Then later in my career, as a freelance animator, Escape got me gigs at the likes of Glassworks, Not to Scale and Th1ng – I know I couldn't have done with without them."


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Product Number: | HH1 |
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Podcast: Play in new window | Download
On this episode of The Bella Buzz podcast, coming off a chance meeting at the recent Coke Mobility Summit, we catch up with the CEO & Founder of Aisle411.com Nathan Pettyjohn.
Aisle411 is a mobile app that is taking on the challenge of making shopping more efficient. As shoppers use the app, it helps them find items, it creates and manages shopping lists, and even provides product reviews. Beyond those excellent features, it will even help shoppers plan their shopping route within the store itself! Think about that great time saving experience. As a shopper enters a store with their shopping list planned out, the functionality of the app will direct the user through the store from aisle to aisle. No more doubling back because of something forgotten or scouring the aisles for an elusive sales clerk to point the way. It's available in the Aisle411 app.
Many podcast listeners will be familiar with the gaming and incentives that are getting built into mobile platforms such as Foursquare and Facebook Places and this app is no different. Social sharing and brand interactions are a key part of the feature set that this personal shopping concierge provides.
Major retailers are also looking to Aisle411 to build out a white label version so that they can maintain the brand equity in their mobile strategy while providing this excellent functionality. If you see your favorite store adding these features to their apps, now you will know that Nathan and his team might be working behind the scenes to help them develop it.
The business started in 2007 as an idea Nathan had while he was at a Lowe's store. After a long search trying to locate a surge protector in the big box, he encountered a customer and an associate looking for grommets. That customer ended up leaving the store after an unsatisfactory experience, but all was not lost as Nathan realized there was an opportunity to connect the store inventory to a mobile shopping app. Aisle 411 can help stop these bad experiences from happening and will help provide a more pleasant buying experience for all. Now, where do we find those grommets?
Visit the iTunes store to get the iOS version of the application, and keep an eye out for version 2.0 on both iPhone and on the Android platform in the near future. Give them a Like on their Facebook Page and follow them on Twitter to keep up with all of the latest developments.
We would like to thank Nathan for taking the time away from building and funding an exciting new business, to speak with us on The Bella Buzz podcast. We look forward to seeing the future for Aisle411.com.
Theme music for The Bella Buzz is Fallen by Digital Chemistry, available for download at the Podsafe Music Network.
You can subscribe to The Bella Buzz directly from iTunes by following this link, and we would be happy to receive listener feedback and ratings at The iTunes Store.


text: Now Viewing: resident_evil_6Tag type: Copyright 2012 Third person shooter horror game created by Capcom. It is directed by Sasaki Eiichiro and produced by Kobayashi Hiroyuki and Hirabayashi Yoshiaki. It is set after Resident Evil 5 and Resident Evil Damnation. Unlike previous main Resident Evil games, this game features three sets of protagonists instead of following one or two from beginning to end. The game is divided into three campaigns although the campaigns intersect and its characters interact with each other. It is also the first time series heroes Leon and Chris interact with each other face to face on screen. Each campaign except Ada's, stars two protagonists who are both playable. In single player mode, the other protagonist is controlled by the AI. The player can choose to play the game with a friend for a co op run. Despite the heroic efforts of Leon, Chris, Claire, and Jill, the international situation hasn't improved much. Bio-terror attacks still break out around the world. In the city of Tall Oaks, Leon witnesses the President of the United States transform into a zombie right when he was about to explain to the general populace what really happened in Raccoon City 15 years prior. The city is soon overrun with zombies and Leon teams up with Helena Harper to fight their way out in a campaign that is reminiscent of Resident Evil 2; it is also the only story with traditional zombies. They soon discover that the culprit responsible for Tall Oaks' attack is closer to home. Chris has not fared much better and has fallen into a deep depression after an entire platoon of his was killed in a bio terror attack. He has left the BSAA and has become much more hostile and anti-social than he used to be. Piers Nivans manages to convince him to return to the BSAA and the two of them head to China to deal with an outbreak there and learn that 'Ada Wong' is responsible. Upon hearing of this, Chris grows hell bent on avenging his platoon, clouding his judgement. Piers tries to get his captain to keep it together while they battle against a new breed of bio-organic weapon, the J'avo. Sherry Birkin has now grown up and is a government agent who is sent to Eastern Europe to protect mercenary Jake Muller because his blood can stop the C Virus and prevent the outbreaks from happening. The two of them work together to escape from a new and deadly B.O.W. called the Ustanak which is pursuing Muller. After the above three campaigns are completed, Ada's story is unlocked. A fourth campaign focusing on Ada Wong is unlocked after the others are completed. Her story mode is unique in that it is the only one where the main character is canonically by herself. For co-op play, a character called Agent functions as the secondary player. However, the character is not canon and does not appear in any cutscenes. Each campaign offers one side of the game's plot. The full spectrum of the plot is only revealed if the player plays through all campaigns and unlocks all of the secret files, which can be done by destroying snake emblems scattered around the environment in the main game. The game follows the basic gameplay format of Resident Evil 4 and 5. It is more action packed than previous Resident Evil installments. It features a cover system and the characters are more agile than they were before, having the ability to slide along the ground or dive backwards and shoot while they're on their backs. There is also a quick shot mechanic that lets characters fire off a rapid shot at the closest enemy stunning them at the cost of one stamina bar. The game also brings back some aspects of pre-RE4 Resident Evil like the return of classic zombies in Leon's story mode as well as Sherry Birkin who had been absent from the franchise for years. Jake's story mode is also modeled after Resident Evil 3 Nemesis. Besides the Mercenaries mode introduced in Resident Evil 4, the game adds a multiplayer Agent Hunt mode which allows players to play as the monsters and attempt to kill the human characters. On April 4, 2013, a DLC adding characters from Left 4 Dead 2 was released for the PC port of the game. The game is notably one of the more controversial installments of the franchise with a much more mixed critical reception in comparison to past entries in the series. The game sold 4.9 million copies by April 2013. Cast: Leon_S_Kennedy Helena_Harper Chris_Redfield Piers_Nivans Jake_Muller Sherry_Birkin Ada_Wong Carla_Radames Derek_C_Simmons Ingrid_Hunnigan Monsters: Ustanak J'avo Whopper Lepotitsa Rasklapanje Chrysalid Ogroman Crossover: Left_4_Dead_2 Follows: Resident_Evil_5 Other Wiki Information Last updated: 1 year ago by jojosstand This entry is not locked and you can edit it as you see fit. |


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Megan Smolenyak2Megan Smolenyak2 is a real life history detective who loves to solve mysteries. You might have spotted Megan or her handiwork on Top Chef, Who Do You Think You Are?, Finding Your Roots, Faces of America, Good Morning America, the Today Show, The Early Show, CNN, PBS and NPR.
The Family Tree of Pharrell Williams and Why He Almost Didn't ExistA peek into the family tree of Pharrell Williams reveals how a decision made by one of his ancestors in 1832 almost erased him from existence! |


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Business Briefcase (Dec. 29, 2013)
Cherie Birkey, RN, HaysMed Wound Care Center, has earned Wound Care Certification from the National Alliance of Wound Care and Ostomy. The WCC provides direct patient wound and skin care in acute, long-term care and home-care settings. Skin and wound management is a specialized area that focuses on overall skin care and promotion of an optimal wound environment, including prevention, therapeutic interventions and rehabilitative interventions. Birkey is the wound care nurse manager and has been an employee of HaysMed since 2009.
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Col. Ernest E. Garcia, superintendent of the Kansas Highway Patrol, has announced Master Trooper Dennis Dinkel has been promoted to lieutenant and will oversee field troopers in the Troop D area or northwest Kansas. Dinkel originally is from Victoria. He graduated from Victoria High School. He earned an associate's degree in criminal justice from Barton County Community College. Dinkel first joined the patrol Jan. 7, 2001, as a trooper I stationed in Ellis County.
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Jenny Dixon reached 10 years of service with Nex-Tech on Dec. 8. She is a senior marketing analyst at the Hays office. Eric Pfannenstiel reached 10 years of service with Nex-Tech on Dec. 15. He is a senior combination technician based in Great Bend.
Email items to email@example.com or mail them to 507 Main, Hays, KS 67601.
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It's interesting how certain quotes find a new life in events that follow later, and with them, I suppose, the people that spoke them. Today quotes4all.net was featuring a quote by the late Douglas Adams, author of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which might as well have been made yesterday about the BP oil spill):
"The major difference between a thing that might go wrong and a thing that cannot possibly go wrong is that when a thing that cannot possibly go wrong goes wrong it usually turns out to be impossible to get at or repair."
I've been listening to the audiobook of The Big Short recently and am about halfway through it. It explains a lot about the specific reasoning that led to the recent financial collapse. A lot of it comes down to the notion that some banks could not conceive of the notion of something really bad happening, so they operated on the notion that the insurance they were selling was free money (that is, they were selling insurance on something they'd never have to pay out for), so they priced it very badly. From the audiobook:
"Theirs was a union of the weirdly like-minded. Ben shared Charlie and Jamie's view that people and markets tended to underestimate the probability of extreme change. But he took his thinking a step further. Charlie and Jamie were interested chiefly in the probabilities of disasters in financial markets. Ben walked around with some very tiny fraction of his mind alert to the probabilities of disasters in real life. People underestimated these too, he believed, because they didn't want to think about them."
A lot of what seems to drive the world these days is an addiction to money and power. There is no rational reason for any single individual to need as much money or power as they seem to have amassed, and it seems to be that what goes along with that is an increase in "betting," even irrational betting. Digging a well or making money on the stock market seems to be almost secondary to the drive to take ever bigger risks, often at the expense of others. Maybe it's about the adrenaline rush. Maybe it's about the fame of doing something others haven't. Maybe it's just the multiple levels of detachment between the person making decisions and the person affected.
I hope you can see the connection I'm making. The BP oil spill was not inconceivable. The company just refused to conceive it. The financial problems with banks were not inconceivable. The banks just refused to conceive them.
I don't know what is required to get this under control. More regulation of businesses? Capping the size of businesses? What I do know is that less regulation and leaving companies to their own devices is not the answer. Rachel Maddow put it well recently when she said:
"At the core of the 'I hate government' sentiment that's very fashionable right now is a sort of nostalgia or maybe fantasy about not having government at all, about free people, free families, untaxed, unconstrained by external authority, living according to their religious beliefs and the motivations provided to them by the free market—which, you know, when you put it that way, it sounds kind of bucolic and awesome, right?
"When you see it in action in a country that hasn't had a government in about 18 years, it actually looks like this. This is Somalia. From which NBC's chief foreign correspondent, Richard Engel, has just recently returned. ..."
The report by Richard Engel she was leading in to paints a grim picture. And yet she's right. It's scarily like the kind of world Libertarians seem to want to paint for us, not in effect but in structure. And yet it's the structure that leads to the effect.
As a source of ideas, maybe the Libertarian party still offers some interesting food for thought. Sure, all other things being equal, if we have a choice between a big government solution and a small government solution that are both guaranteed to work, why spend the extra money? But the Libertarian party goes farther than that, and here I part company with them. They paint an image in which small government is a virtue in and of itself, and independent of consequence. This has never been more clear than in this quote from Rand Paul about the oil spill:
"...maybe sometimes
accidents just happen..."
Rand Paul's words stunned me as Michael Dukakis stunned those who might have otherwise been his supporters in his response to a question about the death penalty in a 1988 Presidential debate. The level of intellectual detachment from reality was shocking.
Sometimes indeed, accidents do happen. But the BP oil spill was not one. And neither was the financial collapse. These were the results of allowing companies to do as they please without fear of the consequences. The companies should have known there would be consequences. So should we have. The system must be reformed to acknowledge that.
As noted before, I'm not making a specific proposal about what needs to happen. I'm just noting the obvious—that the problem here was not "too much government" and that no push toward "less government" is going to make this kind of thing less common. That's not the opinion of someone who's a die-hard proponent of big government, just the common sense observation of someone who understands cause and effect. I think the applicable quote for that is this:
"When the cat's away,
the mice will play."
If you got value from this post, please "rate" it.
This is part one of a two-part series.
See the continuation here:
Renouncing my Status as a Republican Wannabe
Accidents always happen; they're inevitable. What we do is try to foresee the consequences of accidents and take steps to ensure that the results aren't catastrophic. That is, Paul's conflated two issues: whether the BP oil spill was deliberately caused (debatable, but probably not--the argument has to do with the nature of "cause", which can be hard to pin down), or whether it could have been foreseen given the regulatory situation that was deliberately set up. There's a tenuous link here to sins of commission versus sins of omission, but I won't go into that. Instead I'd say, as you do, that people could have and should have foreseen what could have happened and did happen. It's like saying, "I lost all my money at the roulette table; oh, well, I can't control chance." Yeah, but...
Ah, it must be nice to slide through life with no conception of reality.
I think, is the cost of elitism—living so far separated from the cruelty of the world that one is able to indulge the luxury of believing that the world is no longer cruel. I heard an analyst on TV sometime in the last few weeks remarking about Rand Paul that his point about racial protections seemed to be that "Yeah, well, maybe it wouldn't have worked out the first time, but the world has grown so much that it wouldn't backslide." That, of course, is either totally disingenuous or totally naive. (I'm betting most people I know will conclude the former, but I think the latter is a possibility no less bad.)
most of the worst catastrophes of the last three decades can be fairly attributed to the deregulation rush that started in a small way during the Carter administration, took off under Reagan, was perpetuated by Bush I and Clinton, and reached its apotheosis under He Who Shall Not Be Named
but we're not strictly talking about small government, or unintrusive government here, the size of the government and its intrusiveness into individual lives exploded even as corporations were unchained
to get the full picture you have to see that deregulation was a result of the takeover of government by concentrated financial power, not by any true libertarian impulse
it's easy to see the results of government emasculation by corporate power in the ongoing financial/economic crisis and in disasters like Massey coal and the BP debacle in the gulf, what I haven't seen much comment on is the way the "national security" government/corporate alliance (what Eisenhower warned us against half a century ago as the "military-industrial complex") shapes American foreign/military policy to guarantee an ongoing massive diversion of wealth to weapons manufacturers and privatized quasi-military mercenaries, by playing on the public's fear of the enemy du jour (communists, drug lords, islamic terrorists, or permutations of all three), under Cheney/Bush (ok, I named them) and perpetuated under Obama, they've managed to create a self-sustaining permanent state of war that guarantees cost-plus profiteering while taking the extreme costs in lives and treasure, which fuel public outrage for Wall Street and Big Oil, right off the social balance sheet, we don't even notice that we're being robbed and our young are being killed to sustain their profits
Nikki, Democrats want the very best in people to come out but are too trusting. Ironically, the Republicans (who offer a theory that people who should be left to their own devices) never actually trust that things will just come out ok, left to their own devices. They control everything they can, all in the name of suggesting that no control of anything is ever needed. Go figure. But the net result is that Republicans command the political stage not out of popularity but unliteral abdication by the Democrats, who refuse to boldly offer a message that refutes the nonsense spoken by the Republicans and the Libertarians.
Kenny, I don't know how many would listen, but you're welcome to circulate the news. I myself have traditionally counted myself as part-Libertarian, but am reconsidering that stance. See my follow-up post, coming soon (probably tomorrow or Tuesday).
The single most regulated financial entities were the GSE's, who had a dedicated regulator who reported directly to congress. This regulator had a large staff and did extensive audit work, etc.
The gulf oil spill is far from the worst in the world. However, BP will be held accountable to an extent that is unprecedented in history. The financial consequences of deep water drilling will be recognized and dealt with.
I am not arguing for Libertarianism. Rather that new technologies are always going to produce new types of failures and some will be severe.
The fact that BP will pay $15 billion for this (personal estimate) or more is actually good. If other, smaller companies had been responsible, the costs would have directly fallen to the government. And that could have easily happened.
The fact that the US government is able to stand up to BP is one of the differences between us and Somalia.
Coyote, there'd be more enjoyment from me about that if I thought they could see their own hypocrisy, since I think it might help to enlighten them. The sad part in their ability to be that way and not see it is that a perfectly legitimate talking/learning point is going to waste.
As to whether we are standing up to BP, I doubt that. I am certain there will be people who are impacted negatively without an ability to reclaim that. I am certain the government will help with some of that without being reimbursed and that some people will be just SOL. Moreover, BP should have suffered not just the need to repay but should be penalized. For example, being told to dig a relief well means being told to create a new revenue source. Fine about that, but let's have us own that revenue source, not BP.
Maybe I'm misremembering, but when Microsoft sparred with someone (Apple? Netscape?) and lost, I seem to recall part of MS's "punishment" was to have to give lots of free copies of their OS to schools... something they would have probably bribed politicians for a chance to do if they could have. Not a punishment at all. This situation is like that. BP is still making money all the way through this "punishment". The things they're being asked to do are all about salvaging oil they can sell, not about just stopping the flow period. They should feel it so soundly that no one is ever tempted to do this again.
The notion that a bank robber would be told he has to pay back every dime of what he stole and then the case will be closed is ludicrous, but that's what I see here. A posture that going after BP for anything other than what can be enumerated is wrong. It's not wrong.
Nonetheless, you make a good point about how the ideological fight does obscure the fact that corporatism is a threat. It's one reason we really need to get some push to bring that under control. And, at least, Obama made a point about this in a State of the Union, he just again made some points trying to sieze the moment specifically as to BP. He's not moving as fast as I like, but I think that's his basic "work to the center, and pre-compromise all you can" thing, which really I don't like. But he does at some level show evidence of understanding.
I agree with Roy in that you can arrive at hazardous deregulation without libertarianism. Plain old garden variety political corruption can produce the same result.
However, this situation did arise from a libertarian impulse, just not a populist one. Libertarian and conservative used to describe a more or less single group that fractured over WW2 and Cold War interventionalism. The conservatives dropped their objection to joining WW2 after Pearl, and supported an otherwise "prohibitive" expansive federal government and military/industrial complex to serve their post-war borderline irrational fear of communism.
The "free market" ideas were always libertarian and, lacking a economic theory of their own, were adopted by conservatives.
It's not entirely accurate to pin all of the destructive ideas on libertarian philosophy in general. Left-libertarianism more closely resembles the Lockean liberalism we all know (even if we know we don't know it, or knew we didn't, and still wonder what it means ).
The L-Party is right-libertarianism. In short, you should have total self ownership, even to the point of harming yourself. Property/wealth is given the same near-anarchy freedoms, so it is also free to harm you.
We're all victims of conservative libertarianism, which is why they created the Tea Party as libertarian conservatism. It's kind of like a married couple that keeps their last names and have separate credit histories. When the man goes bankrupt, they live off the wife's untarnished reputation.
The "libertarian intellectuals" (given results, a term I don't think applies) solved the "It doesn't work" problem long ago. I promise you this is true --- they don't care if it works. They poo-poo at anyone suggesting it perform to that level. It is, after all, a theory of pure liberty for the sake of the theory. And it pays well.
So right. There is not much thinking that goes into the "less is more" crowd. Nostalgia for what never was as they collect their SS checks.
When we had our teabaggers on the sidewalks april 15, there was a plethora of white heads and wheelchairs among the overrkill of red, white, and blue everything. Their world no longer exists.
Great post, Kent.
I suppose we will have to agree to disagree how predictable this was. There were multiple, redundant systems to prevent leakage, but they all failed. The problem, in hindsight, is that they weren't independent. That is, the overall failure of the system caused the safety devices to fail.
This can be prevented in the future. Your idea about explosive charges would likely work, as well as a number of other things.
BP will not produce from this well. Nor will the relief wells produce oil.
Americans use 21 million barrels of oil per day.
I think BP will end up paying approximately the cost of the spill, although it is impossible to precisely compensate the victims, and some will get nothing or too little and some will reap excess compensation.
Anyway, regardless of your feelings about BP, the fact remains that Pemex or the state owned oil companies do not pay for their mistakes, generally. The US action may not satisfy you, but it is unprecedented in the world. That is, other than Europe, it simply wouldn't happen anywhere else.
40% of BP shareholders are in the US and include pension funds, so this entire notion of 'them' and 'us' is to some material extent, simply arbitrary. BP pays taxes. BP pays royalties. We use oil. The people on that rig were American workers and they didn't want to die.
I sense a danger here of letting the medial wonkiverse redefine "Libertarianism" into something the opposite of it's actuality ala "Liberal" and "Conservative".
Even the current "Libertarian Party" only co-opted the name, they are as far to the right of classic libertarian thought as Kublai Khan was to it's left.
Given that I hate anything that ends with "ism", the libertarian ethos historically was near the Jeffersonian view of democracy
initially and began diverging with the introduction of state currency decades later.
In a nutshell, limited government (though without outright evisceration, said caveat was a given at the time), social liberality conjoined with fiscal conservation.
It stopped there, but others since continually try to morph the word to serve their own ends.
A robustly free society, without foreign adventure to drag down the national purse was always the hallmark of the libertarian!
(Ayn Rand was no libertarian, she was a co-opter, this "Atlas" is shrugging!)
Down with victory through redefinition!
Nick, are you making a "too big to penalize" argument when you raise the issue of stockholders? You lost me on that. The fact is that the company did something extraordinarily bad that it never should have done. If it gets penalized, that isn't the fault of those offering the penalty. If you don't penalize them in that situation, what incentive is there for any large company with lots of stockholders to fear. Put in another metaphor, we don't usually concern ourselves with the number of mouths to feed or kids that will grow up fatherless if we send a man to prison. (Or, if we do, then getting married or having kids becomes a tool for getting lighter sentencing, which is grossly unfair.)
Fred, there may be a historical libertarianism hidden somewhere inside that is being maligned, I'm not sure. I'm weak in that area of history and will to some extent take your word about it for now, though I'll try to go research it some more later. In any case, that's not what I'm addressing. I'm much more concerned with the people who are running around nowadays pushing libertarianism as it has come to be as a virtue in and of itself. Modern libertarianism seems to have a single-minded focus on eliminating all mechanism and process and decisions that followed after the original Constitution, as if there were something near-sacred in the original texts and all that has come after is blasphemy. The fact that education and health are commonly overlooked by modern libertarians as a reasonable extension of what the "general welfare" was about (and I hear there is even some historical basis for it being about that anyway) is why I find the party to have lost its way.
Anyway, New Deal liberalism sent the libertarians in search of a new name.
The theories evolved from there, and devolved in relation to the Constitution, which is liberal. The libertarian idea of an almost non existent government and citizen volunteerism is not in the spirit or letter of the Constitution -- it's about functional liberty, not "pure."
PS-Point I meant to make above -- libertarian economic ideas rode in on the Reagan conservative wave. Then the slow destruction began......
The 2 events you refer to definitely have that lack of oversight in common. What was it that Franklin said in "Poor Richard's Almanac"? It may be appropriated here: "Put your eggs all in one basket. And then watch that basket."
My own views here are many. As long as we the US of A continue to us our military as an end to advance our goals in the world and spend so much of our GDP on it, there will be no change. One good reason Bee Pee is calling all the shots here is that it supplies our military with over 80% of its energy needs like fuel and gasoline. We the public can all boycott them to hell and back and it will not make a dime's worth of difference.
Defending our country gets big play with the limited gov't folks. National defense is number one for them.
I was just watching a news clip on the tube and heard the words cutting national entitlements. 'Tis easy for people to attack the few social programs in this country. We don't have many. It is also easy to point out that these programs will run out of money sooner rather than later. Yup, a given. What is not spoken of lately is how the revenues from these programs were moved from the programs themselves and over to the general revenue. This was like cutting their throats and making them bleed to death from lack of funding. Gee folks, now this chicken is dead, lets end his suffering here.
So after all, we the people would rather keep this money in our collective pockets. We can invest it so much better than the big gov't types.Sounds good till you think of the sick and elderly who often cannot save any money to begin with. A chain is only as strong as its weakest link.
I don't know any more answers than you do but I do know this much. Some other way to move humans around at 55 miles an hour or more needs to be found here. Or else we will have learned nothing from the horror of this oil spill.
It is coming here as I write this and so many here are screaming about it. Yet we are all to blame here too.
Policies and opinions must change. Or our human race will fail to survive. We will have fouled our own rice bowl in out quest to dominate and control.
Walter, yes, we seem to have egg on our collective face due to that failure to be watchful. :)
Mission, you're right that on top of everything else, we need to watch our collective priorities. This is a tricky thing because the priorities have to come from the people, and yet we're an advertising-driven society, which means there's a theory among some that the people will want what you tell them to want. So it calls into question the independence of the electorate at some level. But where I would really look for blame is at the top, lack of leadership. Obama is capable of leading but has only sporadically stepped up to the plate and done it. He has a lot of issues here that leave him teed up to dive right in ... to mix several sports metaphors possibly beyond recognition. Obama needs to summon his inner Jimmy Carter and get to work offering a vision for a greener tomorrow.
Modern "Libertarians" (I am a liberally conservative progressive libertarian myself) don't do those things!
Those who would like to weez the libertarian aura such as George Will aren't libertarian they are neo-cons!
I've heard Will baltantly state that "the constitution authorizes military spending but not social spending by government" yet the constitution says "the common defense and the general welfare".
Playing with definitions is their game.
Ayn Rand perverts libertarian but says she is one, idiots like Reagan and the ditto-heads who love him took that stolen ball and try to run with it.
If you accept their redefining the world through rose-colored glasses then not only do they win, but I have a song for you!
I get the problem completely. I've lived the problem in other settings, admittedly more technical. We failed to control the use of certain names we had a traditional right to and we ultimately lost claim to them.
That's true, but only in a limited sense. While there are few "card carrying" libertarians, the libertarian economic ideology has been largely adopted by Republicans, and to a lesser extent even by Democrats. In that sense libertarians have "won," even though few "official" libertarians hold political power. (In the same way that there are very few Christian reconstructionists, even as that kind of thinking now permeates much of conservative American Christianity.)
But I'd like to look at these disasters in a larger context. To the disasters that Kent has mentioned we could add the savings and loan scandal, Enron, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the loss of the manufacturing base, the increasing health care crisis, the immigration problem, the looming Social Security disaster, and so on.
In just a half-century we have gone from winning WWII and rebuilding Europe and Japan, to the current situation. We no longer seem capable of dealing with large problems. While libertarian thinking may account for some of that, surely it does not account for all of it, and there must be some other factors at work. I have a feeling that something has become rotten at the core, but I don't know what that is.
It may have something to do with an inability or unwillingness to accept reality. We fought in Iraq for several years with the situation deteriorating every month while the administration insisted that everything was fine. Everything was fine at Enron -- until it wasn't. We stand around watching our manufacturing base being destroyed and do nothing. While tens of millions have no health insurance and increasing numbers cannot afford it we have "the finest health care system in the world." We come to the brink of financial disaster and then fail to implement reforms that would prevent that from happening again. What's going on here?
I'm not even blaming anyone. I'm basically saying "Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me." (Hopefully I got that arranged better than Bush did.) My point is that we may not have realized libertarian ideas were as full of pitfalls as they turned out to be, but let's not be foolish enough to keep believing in the unseen hand to keep us safe in situations that call for good old fashioned regulation.
As per usual, you attract the best minds.
I am with Mishima that something is rotten at the very core. We have become so much of a corporate country that it poisons everything we touch.
Also at work is the tendency for those who regulate an industry to become friends with that industry, and they would never hurt their friends, eh? That is part of the reason that Madoff made off with so much money.
Somalia. When Richard Burton (not Elizabeth's husband) toured the region, he asked his guide what country he was in because all the men dressed quite differently from each other. The guide said, "Oh, it's Somalia. Every man is his own Sheik."
Denese, well, I'm an independent, not a liberal, so I hope that shows through and does contribute to a readability such as you describe. Let me know how you fare. Tell them they're welcome to participate.
If "you" are a corporation, the courts of our land have adjudicated the fact that your highest and most sacred duty is to make money for your shareholders. End of story. So there is the problem and there is the solution, neither of which can be addressed by any semblance of libertarianism.
We the People, In Order to Form a More Perfect Union . . .
words that describe what the "government" is. We have to either make corporations serve a different purpose, or have a social component grafted into their rootstock or we have to create a more vigorous regulatory structure, something that is anathema to the "small gov't/no gov't" types that now call themselves libertarians.
I for one dont think the answer is hidden. Yes there will be accidents, but like cars these days that have all kinds technologies like sensors to help us know our place in space better (accident avoidance), and anti-lock brakes and better builti-in safety features like air bags/curtains, crumple zones, headrests, etc to provide some measure of survivability we need better defined regulation on both the things we use and need (banks and oil) and things that we create to serve us (corporations).
And that, is the answer to "free market libertarianism" which exists only when a government has defined and organized a market. Or you have Somalia.
But, if you wanted a nuanced view you would note that the only reason that BP was drilling where they were is that the government wouldn't let them drill in some places on land where we know there is oil. Alaska for example.
So, while you like to say it is not enough government that created a situation where an accident like this could happen, I can easily say it was too much government that created the situation where this accident could happen.
And, to piggyback on your Hitchiker quote, if the accident had occurred on land in Alaska, it would be easier to fix quickly and inexpensively.
But, I doubt nuance works at OS.
It's true what you say about the decision not to let people drill inland, but that's like a burglar saying "because you didn't let me in your house to take your jewelry, of course I broke into your garage." No one told them they had to drill that far out. So that part of your argument doesn't wash.
But there's another angle to it. Let's suppose even that we had desperately approached BP and said "get me oil" and that was all they could find. That isn't the (absence of) regulation that was a problem. CBS 60 minutes had a piece, and Rachel Maddow and Keith Olbermann echoed it the next night, but I have been unable to track down the video -- if anyone knows where it is a pointer would be appreciated -- where they basically told a story of BP rushing the process rather than just following established safety procedures. Well, ok, they shouldn't have done that. But BP's safety record had not been good. According to The Daily Green, "Two BP refineries not only account for 97% of all "flagrant" violations in the U.S. refining industry, but most of the violations cited were classified as "egregious willful," according to a Center for Public Integrity investigation of Occupational Safety and Health Administration records." Some of this you can attribute to Obama administration not pushing existing regulations as they should, but some of it is stuff that was inertial from prior administrations. As Obama has noted, the relationship between regulators and the refineries is too cozy. If a company is screwing up that badly, it should not be operating, or it should be feeling enough pain that it doesn't ever even consider saying "let's just press ahead and accept the risk." The risk should be so painful that they don't want to accept it any more than we do. Otherwise, it is not a disincentive, it's just a minor irritant and part of business as usual, to be afforded and ultimately ignored.
I think we should be able to agree that drilling a mile under the ocean is less productive and less safe than on land or closer to the shore. But, the government in fact did tell the oil companies they could not drill where it was most productive and safe so they end up drilling where it is less so. This also means that any risk taken by BP, wise and unwise, has a larger impact if an accident occurs.
I am not defending BP. They don't have a good track record. The government doesn't either since a wise cost/benefit/risk trade-off analysis would have long ago concluded that drilling in Alaska was safer. It is only ideology and the heavy hand of government that prevents the simpler course.
It may be that you don't agree with me on the issue of its undesirability, but when faced with "undesirable" vs. "really undesirable" I assume the option of "don't do either" is on the table. You may be assuming not.
"Libertarianism is the Scientology of politics."
As for the quandry you pose:
"There is no rational reason for any single individual to need as much money or power as they seem to have amassed, and it seems to be that what goes along with that is an increase in "betting," even irrational betting."
It has long been my observation that those who amass great wealth without really earning it are indeed often careless with it. Not to get to far into psychobabble, but I suspect some part of them secretly WANTS to be rid of it in order to relieve the guilt that comes with running a financial scam. In short, like a lot of garden variety criminals, they wanna get caught.
Obviously, my theory does not apply to sociopaths like Bernie Madoff or psychopaths like Dick Cheney.
Most coastal states with tourism don't want rigs spoiling the view. Sometimes you may see the lights of a rig at night, though.
The idea that "government" caused the danger because they MADE BP, etc, drill deep water is absurd. The idea that opening up ANWR would have made BP not drill deep water is also absurd. If ANWR is like North Slope, that heavy oil isn't nearly as profitable as the sweet crude. Also, the GOM is set up with the infrastructure to handle those many, many wells it has.
The "gubbermint made 'em do it" is this week's Rwing media meme. Last week was environmentalists did it, the week before --North Korean sub attack.
I'm not being critical, mind you, I'm just suggesting that Sarah Palin is a poor source of information.
McG - drilling in Alaska is pretty useless to the security and economy of the US. Right now, most of the Gulf oil ends up in Gulf refineries and is used in the US - the North Slope Alaskan crude mostly ends up in SE Asia. As an ex-oil man, I can tell you that once you lease the land (or the section of seafloor) whatever you produce is yours. The US gets a royalty payment, which is often offset by numerous tax incentives. So although the minerals of the US is really part of the commons, the people of the US dont benefit greatly from it.
As far as being "forced" to drill in deeper and deeper water, incentized might be a better description because there was virtually no royalty payments to be made from the lease in question. Further, I remember when I was doing leases for off shore and near shore slant drilling in CA reading about Gulf production. A well would be drilled and shut in as not economic if not producing at least 10k barrels a day and this was 1986, so in much shallower water.
This is to say that there is plenty of available petroleum in shallower water, BP was after the biggest fish with the least royalty cost. ANd they drilled using Cheney-led regulations which dont fly in any other deep sea drilling, not North Sea, not Brazil, not Canadian Artic. Here the issue was the oil companies wrote the regulations using the ex Halliburton CEO whose stock options went from about 4MM to $200mm during his time in the Administration.
Paul, I think you're right. If they'd been allowed to drill in Alaska not only would they probably eventually have gotten to drilling in the gulf, but there's no obvious reason they wouldn't have proceeded with both in parallel.
Tim, thanks for weighing in with additional details. There is no quota on the number of responses, so feel free to chime in elsewhere if you see fit, as should anyone else in the discussion.
Jut try the NY Times today. The article is stellar. And nuanced.
Obama proposes a commission to investigate what went wrong with BP's oil rig. What went wrong is human greed compounded by inevitable human error. Unfortunately, in this case, as is always the case with corporations, the cost of the error will not be shouldered by those most responsible for causing the disaster; it will be shouldered by people that have no real investment in BP, and much more importantly, it will be an entire ecosystem that pays the biggest price.
A commission that investigates what went wrong is not necessary and serves little to no purpose unless it designates foolproof ways to avoid the same problems in the future. What is the way to do that? Do not drill under the ocean. Instead, invest in future forms of renewable energy and an infrastructure that will support those means of energy production and usage. All the rest of it is just political theater that leads nowhere except to another human error that costs too much.
I couldn't agree more with this quote. These were not one in a billion outside possibilities, these were real and systemic problems in both cases.
Rick, I'm not terribly happy with Obama's response, but giving him the maximum benefit of the doubt, what else do you suggest in order to make sure that the case is successfully made? Jumping straight to a trial?
vzn, I'm not judging the party, I'm judging the apparent ideology. What mechanism in neolibertarianism (I'll call it, to avoid the naming issue Fred Hallman raised) do you see that will solve any of this? I don't see it. Who does speak for these ideas and why isn't that person speaking vocally out, disclaiming Rand Paul?
Steve, thanks. I had seen that article but haven't had time to read it in detail. I'll try to make the time.
Progressive Liberal, thanks for visiting and for highlighting what resonated. It's always interesting to know what's hitting home.
Having said that, I don't disagree that safety regulations are important. Of course there needs to be oversight, and Libertarians are not, for the most part, complete anarchists. But will more bureaucracy really prevent major disasters like this from happening?
The problem, I think, is that people tend to go either/or with free market vs. government. Neither entity can operate with perfect efficiency, and both are antagonistic towards the other. More free market may not be the solution, but neither is more government.
As with the dreams of utopian equality promised by communism (whose end result is a libertarian utopia which would come after the period of violent take over, reeducation and a few generations downwind) Libertarianism requires an impossible scenario.
History illustrates clearly that any power vacuum will be filled by the strongest, when there is no authority the bullies usually crop up to run the show, they do so untill the people get fed up being abused and revolt.
Somalia is the perfect Libertarian paradise and the final result of libertarian theory put into practice.
As to the $75M, I'm not sure that is going to apply, though ultimately I bet someone will try to make it. (The Daily Kos seems skeptical, too.)
I think the kinds of things it's intended to cap are things like how many years people can sue for loss of business (e.g., Can I sue again next year if the fish haven't come back?) And can people with indirect damages sue? (e.g., Can I sue if I own a hotel and no one comes because there is no beach or wildlife to visit?) Indirect damages extend in space and time and through indirect causality.
I'm not for a limit in cases like this; I think the courts should sort that out. If that bankrupts the company, then so be it. That is the cost of doing this business and if it's prohibitively high we need to be out of that business, we don't need to be pretending the cost was less and just hiding that cost by requiring indirect victims to absorb it in the name of claiming the cost was low.
For example, consider a pure hypothetical. Suppose a certain event killed all honeybees. Suppose the growers of citrus fruits, soybeans, avocados, almonds, etc. sued and the courts ruled that only the makers of honey were allowed to claim injury. Clearly if there are effects on the ecosystem and we cannot grow these things, and especially if we can never again grow them, that really matters.
Hi, "Bosh" ... Interesting way of deconstructing it by looking at what those systems call on their people to be like in order to achieve Utopia. Thanks for the analysis.
We should all remember a statement, repeated endlessly in PSAs about auto safety in the '60s:
"Accidents don't happen; they are caused."
The fact that this bit of common sense has been all but forgotten today, speaks volumes about the state of public discourse in America.
Well, to the extent that oil companies get access to places that are, in effect, taken by the state, and thereby cut off from other parties who may have other uses for the same places (i.e., fishing), the comparison is valid. the comparison is even more valid when the people who get access to the places and the resources trash them through sheer negligence (if not depraved indifference) and make them unusable to others. A Gulf fisherman who has lost the environment on which he depends has indeed been robbed of his livelihood, just as surely as if you had stolen his boat and gouged a hole in its fuel tank.
On your point about the taking of private property, you're right as well. They care a great deal about the taking of private land. Consider the case of the Lost Liberty Hotel, a protest against the taking of property by eminent domain. On their better days, they care a great deal about the loss of these individual freedoms you mention.
First, I'm not specifically calling out Obama's commission; I am just saying that it doesn't serve any real purpose for the future, which is largely what he focuses on in speaking about it. Exxon Valdez has only recently been "resolved" (for lack of a better word, here), and I expect this issue will go on longer than that one did. Certainly, gathering evidence to prosecute this case is necessary. But it doesn't address the real issues.
What I'm really looking at is the refusal of most of our society to simply admit that we can't afford to continue on the same path, and that is essentially where all the present attitudes direct us. "Change" and "Hope" --- those are diversions from the realities we face. One of the most pressing realities we face is that we DO need change, but we're not getting it. Too many people are afraid to face the truth. So we tolerate these short-term displays that lead to nothing.
Even your response to me indicates a sort of short-sighted perspective. Knowing which decision-maker made which decision and which decisions led to the particular incident at hand does not address the real underlying problems we face. That is really more the point I'm making here. I don't see any real movement towards seriously addressing the real issues.
I just don't see how increased government regulation would have prevented this from happening. Call me crazy, but I don't. I don't want to sound like Rand Paul, but accidents are going to happen, and while we can try to minimize the frequency, it's all too easy to look in hindsight and say that more safety regulations would have prevented this. Shall I get into campaign contributions and outline how the lack of regulation is partially the fault of Washington in the first place? I believe BP is mostly to blame here, but let's try to be a little more honest with ourselves here.
An accident like this will inevitably lead to more safety, both from within and without, using both government intervention and self-regulation. I don't understand why it has to be one or the other, but not both. Heck, Exxon has the best safety record of any oil company out there today. I wonder why that is...
"I think a lot of this problem comes from the sense of invincibility that seems to be shown by the people making these decisions."
No doubt about your above statement; I fully agree. But how relevant is that, really, when it comes to dealing with the actual base issues? Sure, we can blame a few individuals, and we can try to strengthen regulation, but until we eliminate the actual sources of these problems, they will continue to plague us. And what I see and hear is not to eliminate those problems, but instead I hear arguments of how we can continue with them in a "safer" manner. I think that's absurdly short-sighted.
And not to beat a dead horse, but after the Bush/Cheney administration -- and having them running around giving speeches, selling books, teaching at our universities, etc -- listening to our government talk about enforcing laws just holds no real meaning to me. That's why I call it political theater; it is a good show, especially for cable network news, but it leads nowhere.
Let me approach this from a slightly different angle. Do you think we should continue drilling off-shore oil wells? If so, and if we do, then it doesn't matter how much regulation we create; the ultimate result will be another leak, another spill, etc. It is inevitable. And those who suggest that the cost is worth it, are fools. Plain and simple. And it won't undo the damage we are now facing, which will probably be with us -- you and me and the others commenting on this page -- throughout the rest of our lives to varying degrees.
I fully agree that the people who created this mess should be held fully accountable. So, let me pose another question: "Where do we draw the line of responsibility and non-responsibility?" Do we stop with BP personnel? Should we include legislators who supported this off-shore drilling and then failed to monitor it fully? What about those in Congress who insist BP responsibility be "capped" at $75, 000,000? Is that reasonable? Are they then complicit in the criminal aspects of this disaster, and if so, to what extent? And what about a citizenry that was warned about this problem over 30 years ago, and turned away from that honest, intelligent warning and, instead, elected a hollywood actor that initiated all of the deregulation that has led to this, not to mention the other administrations that continued that trend?
In the end, discovering who was actually responsible for what only creates more questions that will not be addressed. Meanwhile, all we are hearing is the question of who we should blame and how we should blame them. And the next leak/spill will bring the same question, and the next and the next and the next ...
The problem is so much bigger than BP that focusing on that alone is ridiculous and counterproductive. It seems comparable to a situation like if the U.S. had concentrated solely on repairing Pearl Harbor instead of eliminating the threat that caused that problem. I think you allude to this very point in your opening statements about the attitudes that lead to our present set of circumstances. Yet, what we hear in the news is not "how we eliminate the problem", but rather "how we can keep it".
Well, it certainly didn't happen after eight years of uninterrupted rule by regulation-happy tax-and-spend liberals. If you don't see the connections, it's because you're choosing not to look.
I don't want to sound like Rand Paul, but accidents are going to happen...
Oops, too late, you sound like Rand Paul. Like I already said, accidents don't happen; they are caused. That, at least, is what us little people are taught, because when we get into accidents, we don't have a phalanx of corporatarian suckups shielding us from the consequences; therefore we have to take reasonable measures to cause as few accidents as possible. Apparently, according to people like you and Rand Paul, "personal responsibility" only applies to the little people.
An accident like this will inevitably lead to more safety, both from within and without, using both government intervention and self-regulation.
Ah yes, the "magic of the marketplace" will "inevitably" make everything right (someday), therefore none of us have to do anything and we should all shut up and stop questioning our Brave Captains Of Industry. So how come "accidents like this" didn't ALREADY "lead to more safety?" Not destructive enough to a sufficient chunk of our environment? Also, can you give us an example of "self-regulation" being consistently effective at preventing failures and negligence?
Heck, Exxon has the best safety record of any oil company out there today. I wonder why that is...
Possibly because Exxon was forced to account to the public, while BP was allowed to skate by with the help of corporatarian ideologues and exceptions granted by bureaucracies degraded by Republicans who didn't care about small business, the environment, or American national interests.
I'm trying to see what your proposed alternative here is. Government-run oil wells, because under government regulation, nothing could ever go wrong?
Check out any of the UN or OECD tables on quality of life around the world. Whether it's in terms of longevity, literacy, low crime, reduced poverty, scant corruption, economic well-being, low unemployment, a more eductaed populace etc, the top 20 or 30 places are dominated by the higher taxed, bigger public spending countries. Move farther down the charts and you see a lot more countries where the government does less and less except maybe paying for a military strong enough to keep them in power.
That argument would sound a wee bit plausible if the people who claimed superior competence about "the technical aspects of oil drilling and deep water physics" had actually shown some.
I don't believe all these Tea Party people are really for 'small' government or less government - they are all for less of THIS government. They were all fine with the fact that Bush expanded the government and its power more than any president in history.
E.M., in your reply to motherwell, you are again coming dangerously close to putting words in someone else's mouth. Please do not do this. I think it's provocative and does not yield healthy conversation. You're not just suggesting what they might think but also a rationale for why they might think it, and a bad rationale at that. In effect, you're making an ad hominem attack on their reasoning skills and baiting an argument the other person hasn't sought to make.
Government is us. If you have a problem with self-government, this probably isn't the place to raise it.
You also write, "So let us have a bunch of people ignorant of the technical aspects of oil drilling and deep water physics make a bunch of laws."
First of all, the government is perfectly capable of finding experts on areas where it needs to. Second of all, the laws do not have to speak to the technical details. The laws could be of various different kinds. See my article Pondering Stronger Oil Drilling Regulations for examples of laws that don't require second-guessing the technical competence of the people involved. Having a plan at all for what to do in the case of a leak, especially since such leaks have historical precedence, is not rocket science. There was, in effect, no plan for this forseeable event. There should be required to be.
You write, "Yeah - that's the trick! You guys are brilliant."
Please confine your remarks to the proposals and not to the people. If there is a proposal made that is technically unsound, speak to that. If you can't, perhaps it's best to hold back. But characterizing individuals will not further debate here. Thanks.
Abrawang, I think you're right about the stats, and I tend to agree with you. I think the sell job is easier in some of those countries because they are either smaller or more homogenous, though. Part of the difficulty of doing the same here isn't that it wouldn't work, I think, but that people dislike each other enough that ... well, go to the interview I did with HoboLawStudent and read her answer to the question "what frustrates you the most?" (Search for the pink box in the middle of the article if you're in a hurry, though the entire article is fine reading for another time.) The story she tells and her commentary on it somehow seem relevant here.
Sandra, good contributed quote, thanks! Also, I'm with you on "consequences." See my article on stronger regulations and you'll see I think that responsibility and consequences are really central.


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Expert Profile
Matthew Arnold
Assistant Director, Program Strategy, Innovation and Learning
Expertise: Results monitoring, state-building, peace-building, militias, non-state armed groups and security, post-conflict transitions, insurgencies, collaborative relationships, Timor-Leste, Thailand
Matthew Arnold is The Asia Foundation's Assistant Director for Program Strategy, Innovation and Learning.
Dr. Arnold has broad field-based monitoring and evaluation experience; conducted extensive academic research on conflict, security and state fragility; and in-depth knowledge of Timor-Leste and Thailand. Prior to joining the Foundation, he worked for the UN World Food Programme focusing on the monitoring and evaluation of food aid in humanitarian crises. Most recently, Dr. Arnold was a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for Security and International Studies at Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok, Thailand.
Dr. Arnold has co-authored two books: Militias and the Challenges of Post-Conflict Peace (Zed Books, 2011) and a forthcoming book on Southern Sudan during the post-conflict period (Hurst Press, 2012). He also has published in leading journals on Asia, security and development, including Asian Survey, International Peacekeeping, and Conflict, Security and Development.
Education: PhD and MA from the London School of Economics and Political Science.