ISIS: Understanding Asymmetry -- Now Paris

An Update -- January, 2015:

MeanMesa is re-posting this from October, 2014, due to its increased relevance to events in France last week. This decision is more than an "I told you so," because what is described in this post -- events in Canada last year -- are now becoming much more likely to be repeated in the present. The ISIL "caliphate's" edict to all supporters everywhere --"fight everywhere with whatever weapons you've got" -- is, perhaps, the ultimate in asymmetric warfare effort the world has witnessed in a very long time.

MeanMesa suggests having another look at what events have led up to the Paris attack.

Be safe.

A Confusing Paradigm

Is this an attack? Is this terrorism?

What is this?

News in the last week or so has, predictably, focused on what are frankly unusual episodes of violent attacks against military and governmental personnel in Canada and the United States. Westerners, seeing these accounts, are understandable perplexed. These attacks don't seem to have any particular military value, and they also seem to "fall flat" in terms of evoking very much terror from the greater populations.

[MeanMesa will continue to refer to the Sunni rebels in Syria and Iraq as "ISIS," presuming that the group will probably return to this name sooner or later. In the meantime, who cares?]

Three of the most recent of these unusual, isolated attacks are reported in the following news stories. Have a look at these "samples," and then we'll get down to figuring out what they mean -- or might mean.

BBC

1. New York axe attack 'terrorist act by Muslim convert'

25 October 2014
[BBC - excerpted. Read the original article here.]

[photo New York Police Department]

Police in New York say an axe attack on two officers was a terrorist act carried out by a radicalised Muslim convert.

Zale Thompson, 32, was shot dead after wounding the two officers, one critically, in Queens on Thursday.

Commissioner William Bratton said Thompson was not on any watch lists but had browsed al-Qaeda web sites and watched beheadings.

A bystander shot in the incident is critical but stable in hospital.

'Loner'

Witnesses said the man deliberately targeted the foot-patrol officers, charging them and then swinging the axe two-handed.

One officer, Kenneth Healy, 25, was hit on the head and was listed as critical but stable in hospital. The other officer was hit on the arm.

The officers fired several rounds, killing the attacker and wounding a female bystander, police said.

Canadian Parliament Building [image - CBS News]

2. 2014 shootings 

at Parliament Hill, Ottawa

A series of shootings occurred on October 22, 2014, at Parliament Hill and nearby in Ottawa, Canada. Michael Zehaf-Bibeau fatally shot Corporal Nathan Cirillo, a Canadian soldier on ceremonial guard duty at the Canadian National War Memorial. He then launched an attack in the nearby Centre Block parliament building, where members of the Parliament of Canada were attending caucuses. Zehaf-Bibeau was killed inside the building in a gunfight with parliament security personnel. Following the shootings, the downtown core of Ottawa was placed on lockdown while police searched for any potential additional threats.

[Excerpted. Read entire WIKI article here.]

3. 2014 Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu

 ramming attack

[image MeanMesa]

The 2014 Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu ramming attack was an attack in which a car was deliberately rammed into a group of Canadian soldiers in Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu, Quebec, Canada, on October 20, 2014 at 11:30 a.m. ET. The attack was perpetrated by a radicalized Muslim convert, Martin Couture-Rouleau, who killed Warrant Officer Patrice Vincent before himself being killed by police following a police chase.

Attack

A 25-year-old terrorist, Martin Couture-Rouleau, a French-Canadian, rammed a car into two Canadian Armed Forces soldiers. He sat in a parking lot for over two hours before attacking the two soldiers. Couture-Rouleau was a 25-year-old with extensive police encounters who had become a Muslim convert in 2013 and was a supporter of ISIL. Couture-Rouleau used his car to run down the two soldiers before being fatally shot by police during an ensuing car chase. One of the soldiers, Warrant Officer Patrice Vincent, age 52, subsequently died from his injuries.

[Excerpted. Visit the original WIKI article here.]

An Abbreviated Glimpse at "Asymmetry"

Definitions might keep this post "on the tracks."

Because the "essence" of these events is based the asymmetric tactics ISIS is utilizing in pursuing the "foreign" part of its ambition to establish its caliphate, a couple of general definitions may provide visitors with a "base line understanding." This may be important, because MeanMesa suspects that we will be seeing more events similar to these in the weeks and months ahead.

Asymmetry is the absence of, or a violation of, symmetry (the property of an object being invariant to a transformation, such as reflection). Symmetry is an important property of both physical and abstract systems and it may be displayed in precise terms or in more aesthetic terms. The absence of violation of symmetry that are either expected or desired can have important consequences for a system.

[Read the WIKI article here.]

Asymmetric warfare is war between belligerents whose relative military power differs significantly, or whose strategy or tactics differ significantly.

Asymmetric warfare can describe a conflict in which the resources of two belligerents differ in essence and in the struggle, interact and attempt to exploit each other's characteristic weaknesses. Such struggles often involve strategies and tactics of unconventional warfare, the weaker combatants attempting to use strategy to offset deficiencies in quantity or quality. Such strategies may not necessarily be militarized. This is in contrast to symmetric warfare, where two powers have similar military power and resources and rely on tactics that are similar overall, differing only in details and execution.

The term is frequently used to describe what is also called "guerrilla warfare", "insurgency", "terrorism", "counterinsurgency", and "counter terrorism", essentially violent conflict between a formal military and an informal, less equipped and supported, undermanned but resilient opponent.

 [Read the WIKI article here.]

Bombs, Guns, Videos and Psychology

Well rounded terrorism for the 21st Century

A general theme of "asymmetric response" has run through the tactics of insurgent planning for several years, but the introduction of a more "institutional" style of military response to meet such insurgencies has provided an incentive for them to even further refine such practices. The final verdict is still out as to the long term effectiveness of selecting this "institutional" military response. There really are alternatives.

Obama Doctrine: 'Just because we have the best hammer does not mean that every problem is a nail'

[DailyKos]

["Institutional military assets?" Even amid an almost frantic barrage of pessimistic criticism, the Obama Administration has resolutely stuck to the idea of using low exposure "institutional" military assets -- at least so far as what is offered for public consumption -- in its response to ISIS. This means jet fighter bombers, drones and ship to surface missiles. The previous "President" chose to use massively more, high exposure "institutional" military assets in campaigns in the region which included tanks and lots of combat troops and Marines.]

An insurgency such as ISIS can be considered a "hybrid" form of traditional terrorists. Unlike an organization such as Al Qaeda, ISIS has been able to muster and equip ground forces and hold territory, but all of this military activity has been specifically regional and -- so far -- very "low tech." "Institutional" military power can be defined as being comprised of assets which provide the capability of "projecting power." 

In this regard, ISIS is having difficulty even "projecting" its military power to readily accessible targets such as the nearby city of Kobane.

The "hybrid" idea comes into relevance when we consider that ISIS is a military power in its immediate vicinity, but one which must rely on more conventional psychological terrorism to "project" terrorism beyond the borders of the territory it currently holds. One side of this "projection" can be seen in the publicized video accounts of "crowd management" atrocities being committed within its territory.

However, no matter how shockingly sanguine these videos may be, none of them can imply a direct, material threat to their audience in the West. They may cause nightmares among some of those they reach, but their impact, while causing "conceptual" fear, does not evoke the type of fear one might expect from, say, the approach of an invading army or even something along the lines of the 9/11 attacks.

So, what can ISIS do to "fill this vacuum?"

For this answer we can return to the examples provided above.

An Army of Ones

"Making do" - Middle East style...

Remembering Rumsfeld: "You go to war with the Army you have -- not the Army you might want or wish to have at a later time."

[Read the entire article Crooks and Liars - here.]

First, kindly indulge MeanMesa in a brief, "Sentimental Journey" back to 9/11.

What did bin Laden want?

By now we see that the conveniently simple "urban myth" that bin Laden was motivated to anger by US troops in Saudi Arabia was no more than a necessary fabrication to satisfy the curiosity of already geographically addled American public. Quite the contrary, Bin Laden saw an opening opportunity seldom matched even in the long string of coincidences littering modern history.

Al Qeada's leader saw incompetent, effeminate President was controlled by a cravenly ambitious "billionaire wanna be" who stood to gain literally billions if war with Sadam Hussein could be triggered by a terrorist attack. In hindsight, bin Laden probably didn't care much at all about the "purity and innocence" of the Saudi sands, Afghanistan or Iraq.

bin Laden wanted to impale the American economy. He had a good plan, and -- $6 Tn later -- his Al Qaeda operatives executed it quite well. While we can hardly blame bin Laden's efforts for all the painful aspects of the 2008 Bush Economic Disaster, the results of his work certainly didn't help and, in fact, set the stage for many of them.

The Difference Between bin Laden's Al Qaeda and the Modern ISIS

9/11 -- regardless of whom one might currently suspect of having quietly "being in charge" -- was a masterful clockwork with each component specifically tailored to take advantage of existing "weak links" in the US security apparatus. Most of those "weak links" are now gone, making an ISIS repetition of such a complex scheme incredibly more difficult.

Although ISIS has demonstrated a respectable "savvy" at issues such as appealing to recruits and public image development through social media with the dual intentions of soliciting sympathizers and terrifying everyone else, the group has yet to show much evidence of the capacity required for a major terrorist attack similar to 9/11.

Interestingly, "money" may not be what's holding ISIS back, either.

Instead, two factors are much more likely at play in the thinking of the ISIS "high command."  

First, unlike conditions facing Al Qaeda, the odds of failing are significantly greater, and a highly public failure would "throw a wrench" in the caliphate's international recruiting program. And, remember, these insurgents are not only recruiting ground troops, they are also quite interested in recruiting "sponsors" with check books and an axe to grind.

Absolutely nothing screws up fund raising of this sort as much as a gloriously expensive, highly public, poorly planned, outrageously over ambitious screw up does.

Second, unlike conditions facing Al Qaeda, ISIS is incredibly more "publicly known." Even in the "double secret" bunker below the ISIS command center, you can probably "feel the buzz" from the thousands of  spy gizmos now focused on every move the insurgents are making, discussing or even fantasizing while fast asleep in one of their delusional terrorist wet dreams.

This leaves us ready to discuss the "Army of Ones" idea.

If you are in command of ISIS, just about now you are finding more and more of your stolen equipment has been reduced to burned out wreckage all across the Anwar desert, your purloined oil wells have been reduced to stuff you can only sell to recycled metal dealers, your "Blitzkrieg" advance across the tatters of Syria seems to be "petering out" in the middle of no where and the "bright shiny object" with the strategic potential to become a glittering propaganda show piece that had so ignited your dreams, Kobane, looks like it's about to send your crack siege troops packing.

The great beheading videos which worked so well have fallen victim to the inevitable entropy of the US media's "headline cycle" and are now more like a stubborn toothache -- an annoying tid bit from "yesterday's news" that only elicits a passing "Yeah, I guess I heard something..." at US water fountains.

Then you have an idea.

Why not juice up some recruit "wanna be" where ever you can find one with the idea of narcotically righteous, random self-sacrifice in a half baked, utterly amateurish, screw ball attack on any near by "soft target." "Drive over an unsuspecting soldier in your car!" "Shoot the bored honor guard at the veterans' memorial when he's not looking!" "Empty your clip in the Parliament's hall way!"

Your dream is that these will convince the 400 million people living in the United States and Canada that it's only a matter of time until snarling, covert ISIS fighters will begin appearing everywhere -- spewing death and horror -- from Fort Yukon to Miami.

Unhappily, the same 400 million people have already invested as much of their life energy -- and media attention -- in your back woods terrorism scams as they intend to -- yawn...winter's coming, Thanksgiving is just around the corner and some of them are having an election. 

MeanMesa thinks that maybe the ISIS big shots are thinking that George W. Bush is still in the Oval Office. Sorry guys. Not all US Presidents come from gated mansions in Connecticut -- some of them come from South Chicago. Meet the black guy.

MeanMesa's compliments to the President.

Explaining the Re-Unionizing of America

 "Dis-Organized" Labor in the 21st Century

Think of it as capturing slaves in Africa

 or maybe just as a early dawn rabbit hunt

Many of MeanMesa's visitors are too young to have effective memories about what the US economy was like when unions were much more prevalent than now. Yet, these same young visitors perhaps see various images posted on Face Book or other social media enumerating the quite significant advantages to both union workers, but also to non-union workers and the country's well being generally.

Here are a few examples of what these young visitors might be seeing.

[image source]

[image source]

[image source]

Right away, considering the relentless savagery currently being inflicted on US workers during the on-going oligarchic coup, these "not from the age of organized labor" young minds can look through these great middle class benefits derived from union labor contracts and conclude that somehow "re-unionizing America" would be a fabulously good idea.

Although this old codger is far too old to be included among those who could possibly claim to be "not from the age of organized labor," MeanMesa would still strongly agree with their conclusions. Having lots of active unions was good for the country then, and it would be good for the country now.

In fact, having a substantial increase in the percentage of workers who were unionized might actually represent the most promising, single "available" opportunity which could possibly still counter the nation's descent into the bizarre, dynastic regression currently mapping our most likely course in both  the near and longer term future.

Unions could change this. Organized labor established the foundation for the masses in the middle class years ago, and it could do the same thing again.

However, without any hesitation whatsoever, MeanMesa realizes -- in fact, remembers -- that labor unions, while offering this possibility, had plenty of warts and wrinkles of their own. Some of the warts and wrinkles were pretty serious, too.

The Era of US War Lords:

 Union Bosses, Capitalists, Mobsters,

 Politicians and Banksters

Times of economic plenty brought a little more tolerance...

Six or seven decades ago Americans could look at statistics comparing the US economy to all others in the world to see just about all areas of activity far above the nearest competitors. This position, at the time, appeared to be quite durable. This unmatched prosperity was not exclusively the result of having a robust portion of workers in unions. Many other factors -- notably the destruction and rebuilding of WWII, advancing technology for all sorts of manufactured products and the early signs of faltering in the Soviet Communist model -- were important contributors.

Importantly, during this time there was money flowing through just about all the layers of the US economy in previously unparalleled amounts. Some of the "civics lessons" responsibilities began to seem less important than before.

A new crop of billionaires and corporatists were emerging -- both were considered something of an economic and ideological accomplishment. Federal deficits, abhorrent before the Axis aggression scared the pants off voters, became far less painful, growing in time to become the "new normal." Likewise, the idea of "bringing home the political bacon" grew from a low level, curious phenomenon to a massive "Congressional industry."

What had traditionally been limited to financing a few questionable local bridge projects became a lumbering ten digit scheme for trade agreements, tax loop holes, unfettered military procurement contracts and dozens of similar, on-going, legal "General Fund extraction" scams.

Because the US economy during this period was primarily driven by manufacturing, the two "principal players" -- labor and management [the term "management" generally replaced the slightly more suspicious moniker of "capitalist"] -- very predictably began "acting badly."

Union leadership, in many cases, fell under the thrall of organized crime interests, but the descent was tolerated because union wages were good and job security was strong. On the other side, business interests became obsessed with doing everything possible to recapture the high labor costs and convert them to profit. One "wild card" in the mix was the fact that organized labor workers supplied powerful ground troops for political campaigns -- campaigns which often enjoyed substantial union contributions.

Union membership had been declining steadily since the early 1900's, but by around the time of the Reagan years it was clear that the billionaires had won this contest when then President Reagan fired 11,000 striking air traffic controllers. [Read more here.]The decimation of organized labor in the economy emerged "into the light" with this very direct Presidential and Congressional antagonism -- and action.

Unions and Middle Class Income [image source]

While the chart [above] details the correlation between middle class income and union membership, the more important conclusion appears when we look at "where the money went." The economy has been cranking out wealth at a more or less steady rate for all these years. In the earlier part of the curve middle class Americans were steadily accumulating a respectable increase in wealth thanks to high wages.

However, the blue line [above] shows an equally steady decline in the rate of middle class "wealth growth" as the billionaires' strategy of gradually transforming what had been good wages into profit continued to develop. Middle class "wealth" comes from middle class pay checks. The amount on those pay checks is determined by the wage being paid.

US Politics and Growth of Oligarchy [image source]

A central feature of the billionaires' strategy was based on their growing influence on the Congress. That influence is firmly founded on public opinion issues such as a mistrust of government, propaganda inciting the political obstruction of normal government ["normal" in the sense that "every tax payer gets something"] and the resulting "necessary" -- at least if we are going to do this -- paralysing polarization of media driven, domestic politics.

The chart shows that this has worked very well for America's ambitious oligarch "wanna-bes." They apparently missed the chapters describing the historical outcome of such a process in, say, the French Revolution or the Soviet Revolution.

So, What Can Be Done Now?

It isn't quite organized well enough for guillotines yet...

Now that all the "chips are on the table" for interested American voters to see, there remains very little mystery about what the picture shows. That "interest level" has been steadily increasing, too, as previously "less interested" voters get more and more bruised and mangled by the corpse-like US economy, apparently permanently assigned to a rolling stretcher in the hall way outside the critical care ward.

This may be "one of those things" which are easy to complain about, but which become rather complicated when it's time to propose a solution. There is no shortage of complaining, but MeanMesa finds the vacuous hopelessness accompanying most of it rather disheartening. Either the situation itself or the desolate, depressing lamentations about it might be enough to, sooner or later, find oneself having come full circle back to the "guillotine idea."

We should at least try a few other things before we settle on that solution.

Just like MeanMesa's naive Face Book friends, it's an appealing fantasy to simply "revert" back to the organized labor days of the past and wait for all the benefits to begin materializing. It won't be that easy. Not only are there now a clutch of incredibly rich billionaires who, aside from owning the Congress, would rather die than start paying living wages, there is also a long list of economic and industrial "structural problems" we have picked up by neglecting this for so long.

Some of the items on the chart [below] show clear advantages to the economy and society from the re-unionization process, but some of them also show necessary "pre-conditions" required to make re-unionization a real possibility.

Perhaps the first and most important of these "pre-conditions" doesn't actually have a place on the chart. That would be the acknowledgement by the billionaires that their very successful wealth redistribution scheme has left the consumers they rely upon without enough money to consume very much at all.

Importantly, essentially no one now has enough power to persuade or coerce these billionaires to consider things in this way. When you're that rich, you don't tend to listen much.

As children these "trust funders" may have been taught not to care one whit about what the poor people did, but as adult billionaires and oligarchs, they might come to their senses, realizing that for consumers to consume -- a process required, at least in the short term, to sustain their precious dynastic wealth -- American buyers will need to have enough change left in their pockets to actually buy something.

[Note from MeanMesa: "Short term?" Actually the oligarchs' dream goes on quite a way beyond this to a point where they become "totally purified parasites," receiving a portion of every penny ever spent for anything in the country whether the particular transaction has anything to do with their personal empires or not. At this point the oligarchy becomes self-sustaining and permanent -- that is, "permanent" until violently dislodged by a class war induced revolution or, perhaps, by a cataclysmic reorganization due to climate change. Think of what conditions finally ended the suffocating economic grip of the European mercantile royalty in the 1600's.

Finding some less destructive means to alter the current course becomes quite desirable, but destructive and violent or not, the current course -- one now recklessly careening toward complete oligarchy --  will, inevitably, be altered.]

 Stopping the Oligarchy

One pay check at a time

MeanMesa suggests that re-unionization and the corresponding increase in middle class wealth could, in time, change the path of top end wealth consolidation ["wealth inequality"] and the economic and political "dynasty building" which is presently consuming the US democracy. The representative political process to which we might have previously -- during better times -- looked for solutions is now the undeniable "property" of precisely the influences causing the problem.

While it may seem quite unlikely for the foreseeable future that we might see much of a change in this dangerous development, it may be worthwhile to look again. The "unlikely" part is that the oligarchs currently controlling the government might relinquish some of their ambitions to allow even a marginal return to the old "free market opportunity" model.

However, that "unlikely" development may actually not turn out to be what is absolutely required to begin the transformational process. We must remember -- the wealth of oligarchs still depends on a functional US economy. Current trends in the economy are beginning to suggest that consumers' discretionary purchasing power, still so vital to the health of corporations and billionaires, is steadily plummeting.

The 40% reduction in the fundamental wealth of the middle class which occurred in a matter of one or two months in 2008 didn't help much.

Relief may emerge from Congressional action. If the owners of Congress should decide at some point to relent, at least temporarily, in their onslaught of looting the economy, they might instruct the "elected representatives" to pass legislation to re-invigorate it, hoping to sustain their wealth and protect what remains of their consumer market.

This is where it gets interesting, and, possibly, slightly more hopeful.

"Easing up" on their efforts to permanently cripple organized labor is an idea which might start looking more attractive. If we had an actual Congress, all sorts of really constructive legislative ideas could come into play rather rapidly. But even if all we had  was a Congress still roughly the same as the one we have now but one which had been instructed to resurrect the economy to the benefit of its owners, the "locked box could still be opened" -- even if only a little bit.

The following chart suggests some of the benefits which might be possible should the government's current attack on labor be "eased."

What can stop the oligarchy? [image MeanMesa]

 Please note that some of the benefits [particularly those at the bottom of the chart] are not even really generally associated with economic resurgence. Realistic thinking needs to include such apparently disparate items in the "package" when it comes to healing the tattered economy.

Hope springs eternal.

Vote in November.

If all the candidates on your ballot "suck swamp water," consider running yourself next time.

Martinez Administration's "Heavily Soiled" Out Sourcing Collapses

In case you haven't voted for Gary King yet.

 

 

 

Arizona firm 

needs money to continue in N.M.

[Visit the original article here.]

                  By Patrick Malone  
The New Mexican 

One of the Arizona companies that replaced New Mexico behavioral health agencies accused of Medicaid fraud last year is in financial jeopardy, threatening to further disrupt the state’s system of care for the mentally ill that has been in turmoil for more than a year, according to documents obtained by The New Mexican.

The company, Turquoise Health and Wellness, informed the state in a report this month that it is hemorrhaging money and must be paid more if it is to stay afloat.

“Turquoise is currently not a financially viable organization on its own,” says the company’s Oct. 9 report to the state Human Services Department and managed care organizations that pay it.

Turquoise was one of five Arizona firms hired by Gov. Susana Martinez’s administration last year after the abrupt termination of 15 New Mexico behavioral health providers suspected of Medicaid fraud. The controversial switch, which followed an audit that found $36 million in overbilling by the New Mexico companies, has been challenged by Democratic lawmakers and the ousted providers.

A slow-moving investigation by the New Mexico Attorney General’s Office has contradicted the audit that was cited as the basis for the shake-up. To date, the Attorney General’s Office has cleared two providers, although the investigation into one of them has been reopened. Many of the ousted providers have expressed frustration that they don’t know details of the accusations against them because the audit’s findings remain secret during the attorney general’s investigation.

The Arizona companies received about $24 million in transition costs to take over for the in-state companies. Turquoise received about $2.8 million in transition funds during the second half of 2013, according to state financial records.

Some Arizona firms billed the state between $250 and $300 per hour for time spent going through airport security lines and waiting for flights, among other things. At least one of the replacement companies, Agave Health, billed the state for transition work done before the launch of the audit that the Human Services Department cited as the reason for removal of the New Mexico providers.

Despite the transition fees and a pay increase for services approved by the state this summer, Turquoise’s recent report to the Human Services Department paints a picture of a company in distress. The company, which is providing services in southeastern New Mexico, has endured staff turnover exceeding 50 percent, according to its report. The company decried the “lack of qualified workforce” and lamented that “all areas [it serves] are rural/frontier and widely scattered.”

During the first six months of 2014, the company lost $1.3 million and maxed out a $3 million line of credit from its parent company, Phoenix-based Lifewell Behavioral Wellness Inc., according to the report.

Phone calls and emails to the company seeking comment were not returned.

Expenses outpaced revenues in all three cities where Turquoise operates. Losses totaled nearly $750,000 in Carlsbad and about $500,000 in Roswell. In Clovis, Turquoise operated in the red as well, but nearly broke even.

Trouble reconciling claims, the need to upgrade the computer system it inherited from its in-state predecessors and damage from recent flooding to buildings that housed some of its programs in Carlsbad have compounded the financial problems at Turquoise, according to the report.

More than $500,000 in claims for service the company provided has been denied. Some of the claims were rejected because they were not submitted on time. Another $575,000 in billing hasn’t been completed because supervisors haven’t been available to authorize it due to a staffing shortage.

“This is an internal issue, but illustrates the burden placed upon the organization by requiring a supervisor to sign off on every staff note,” the report said. “As we have struggled with adequate staffing in several areas, this has been an on-going administrative and financial burden.”

Six managed care organizations that receive funding from the state to pay behavioral health providers for services owe Turquoise more than $2.6 million for the fiscal year that ended June 30, according to the report.

It’s these same managed care organizations, and not the state, that Turquoise is asking for a rate increase, according to Human Services Department spokesman Matt Kennicott. He said the department scheduled a meeting with the managed care organizations at Turquoise’s request, and the report was presented there.

The state pays managed care organizations fixed rates per member, per month for clients receiving services. From that pool of funds, the managed care organizations pay providers such as Turquoise a negotiated rate.

“The provider and the managed care organizations must negotiate with each other if they want higher or different rates,” Kennicott said. “Turquoise Health and Wellness presented the rate requests, but we did not discuss it at the meeting.”

Some of the managed care organizations that Turquoise asked for more money beginning Nov. 1 were unprepared to comment last week on whether they’d grant the request.

In July, the Human Services Department announced a 7.5 percent increase in pay to providers for Medicaid-funded behavioral health services, according to an email from the department to providers obtained by The New Mexican.

Without another increase in the rate they’re paid for services, Turquoise painted a bleak picture of its future in New Mexico. At the current pace, the company projects its Carlsbad and Roswell operations will lose more than $1 million each between now and next July.

Contact Patrick Malone at 986-3017 or pmalone@sfnewmexican.com. Follow him on Twitter @pmalonenm.

Hold it! ADHD America?

The Romans and 

Their Lead Coated Wine Bottles

Exactly how crazy did it actually get?

Back in the day when most of us were still relying on the merest "tid bits" of fact which might have survived the scripts' dramatic plot requirements for Hollywood movies about ancient Rome, an interesting sort of "urban myth" sometimes surfaced. That was the tale which placed almost the entire cause of the decline and fall on the fact that the old Romans really liked to use lead in so many applications -- many of which had to do with drinking.

Lead was plentiful, relatively easy to mine and refine and easily malleable into all manner of things the Romans needed. [Read more here.] They lined their famous aqueducts with it, built pipes from it for their baths and fountains and, later even began using it to line their famous ceramic wine flasks. Sheets of lead were even used to "wrap" bodies for burial. [Read more here.]

The movie versions which employed this "lead poisoning cause" often depicted Romans who were becoming increasingly insane because of the lead poisoning these practices introduced. Modern research attributes some of the problems Romans were having in those days to lead poisoning, but, as it turns out, although the lead poisoning certainly didn't help, Rome had enough other problems to, over time, "seal its fate."

In more modern culture one very common problematic use of lead was in paint. Children wound up with high lead levels -- in many cases from eating paint chips flaking off walls of domestic residences.

Almost all children in the United States are exposed to lead. Common sources include lead paint and lead contained in water and soil. Housing built before 1950 has the greatest risks of containing lead-based paint. Some children may eat or swallow chips of paint (pica) which increases their risk of exposure to lead. 

Exposure to lead can have a wide range of effects on a child's development and behavior. Even when exposed to small amounts of lead levels, children may appear inattentive, hyperactive and irritable. Children with greater lead levels may also have problems with learning and reading, delayed growth and hearing loss. At high levels, lead can cause permanent brain damage and even death.

[Read the entire article here.]

We'll leave the lead story there, but we may need to address the "wide spread insanity" part of the urban myth, and that, of course, means that we will be considering our own modern situation in roughly the same light.

MeanMesa has continually proposed that a couple very modern kinds of wide spread mental problems seems to be afflicting vast numbers of people in our own population. The specific, society wide "mental problems" on MeanMesa's mind have to do with not being able to concentrate or hold attention even when the desire is present to do so and the equally prevalent disorder of continually manifesting the personality traits of codependent behavior, again, whether the intention to manifest them is present or not.

We can spend a moment looking at both of these contemporary wide spread "difficulties" before we begin to approach the inevitable MeanMesa conclusions about them. Naturally, this post will reach a political angle associated with this malady a bit later, but first, we'll need to "put our money where our mouth is."

A Little Problem Concentrating

Don't worry - just about everybody seems to be the same way.
Now, where were we...

[Too often -- usually late at night --  MeanMesa drifts into an episode of really troubling morbid reflection. The insistently durable question which prompts these "not particularly helpful right before bed time" excursions into the dark valleys of worry and confusion arises from considering what the otherwise apparently rational folks surrounding me seem to be believing.

A nice cup of chamomile tea doesn't seem to help much.]

Just relax. [image source]

Selecting politics to provide an example is tempting, but this "difficulty" seems to extend to other areas far removed from that one. However, since -- in the bloggosphere -- "an example is worth a thousand words," let's look at one.

A wonderful acquaintance of this blogger is now living in Dallas. She recently found a good job working in a Dallas hospital in a non-medical capacity. She has accomplished an advanced degree and has always been quite pleasantly inquisitive and conversational, constantly showing a well appreciated respect for MeanMesa who is quite her elder. Although it hardly matters here, she is also shockingly voluptuous and classically, ethereally feminine.

This young lady phoned a day or so ago in a very anxious state. She was concerned about the ebola cases in other hospitals in Dallas, and her worrying had reached a state which had essentially left her paralysed with anxiety. In her rambling explanation of this she referred continuously to "things she had heard," "things people had said" and "reports she had seen on television."

MeanMesa immediately -- and sternly -- proposed that she "fire up" her GOOGLE and do some serious reading about ebola. [The "sternly" part is, more or less, MeanMesa's "one size fits all" approach for attempting to comfort women when they are upset. Don't try this at home -- only extremely old counsel can safely employ this method.] To this suggestion she replied that it was all "too confusing" and that many of the articles, although at this point still unseen and unread, were "dangerously contradictory."

Remember -- this woman has a graduate degree.

Here, we can presume that she was clearly quite competent at concentration during the time she was a student only a few years ago. What happened? It seems very unlikely indeed that she "caught" an attention disorder suddenly after she graduated or, for that matter, since she moved to Dallas only a few months ago.

Considering this example, we come to the point of this first "far too common" malady. Just when she might benefit the most from a good session of sensible, educational reading about ebola to calm her anxiety, she, instead, "flew off" to a mine field littered with useless preconceptions.

She was declining MeanMesa's suggestion to simply concentrate on collecting what facts were available, and she was justifying her decision with an arcane collection of fear inducing talking points -- any single one of which would have evaporated in "the light of day" if its veracity and utility were to have been measured more rationally.

While we think, perhaps over-clinically, of attention deficit disorders as being limited primarily to the realm of adolescent boys who can't sit still in a classroom, MeanMesa is proposing that the problem is far more wide spread. Far more. Further, although there may well be diagnostic "causes" for the disorder's effect on younger patients, we see it appearing with alarming frequency in adults all around us.

Think of it as the 2014, bi-partisan version of the old Roman lead problem.

A Long List of "Causes and Conditions"

A bar room brawl between religious superstition,

political propaganda, urban myths and old wives' tales...

One interesting side of the medical "cause" explanation concerns the incredible level of distractions that modern people face daily. And, these "distractions" are far from coincidental distractions. These "distractions" are things which were designed to be distractions.

There has long been a steady litany of "expert suspicions" about video games, texting, stimulants and even fast rock and roll music, but MeanMesa sees causes even more widely encountered in daily life. For example, the fear mongering media ambitiously sustains a moment by moment state of stress, anger and dread in the minds of millions. The internet has transformed what used to be books into talking points superimposed on pictures of something else.

TWITTER has converted the age old activity of pensive, thoughtful, written discourse into a grotesque 140 character "communication amputee."

The point here is that, while all this was developing, our social values failed to rise to the challenge of attaching value to concentration. Naturally, the "fruits" of concentration also suffered. These distractions originally could claim to be "time saving" or "effort reducing" modern tools, but that gradually redefined itself until we began to casually accept them as convenient "external alternatives" to actually pondering a question we might pose to ourselves.

Remember pondering? That stubborn process of repeatedly calling your mind back to the topic you were concentrating and deliberating upon until you were finally satisfied with the "thought product" created by your efforts?

MeanMesa can remember that "impulse of brave mental confidence" which emerged in the background when the issue being considered seemed to continually elude satisfactory comprehension or understanding. On the contrary, it now seems that we are surrounded by folks who are satisfied with a degree of quite inauthentic comprehension and understanding which, if considered even a little more, would not "meet the measure" by even their own busy standards.

Even though specific causes may remain a mystery, hundreds of millions of citizens in this country are suffering from attention deficit disorder, and it shows.

So, on the heels of a nearly flawless jobs report, I thought I’d finally give in and make a list of a few things Republicans can blame on President Obama:

• Job losses were cut by more than 50% within his first 4 months in office.
• He saved the American auto industry.
• Has cut our deficits by more than half.
• Killed Osama bin Ladin.
• Got Syria to give up their chemical weapons without firing a single shot.
• Presided over record breaking stock levels (with the Dow just recently closing over 17,000 for the first time in its 118-year history).
• Reduced unemployment from 10% to 6.1%.
• We just saw the fastest first quarter of job growth in the United States since 1999.
• The quickest drop in unemployment in 30 years.
• 52 straight months of private sector job growth.
• 9.7 million private sector jobs created.
• Over 8 million people signed up for health care thanks to the Affordable Care Act.
• Millions of Americans have gained, or kept, health care coverage thanks to Medicaid expansions and being able to stay on their parents’ insurance longer.
• He hasn’t started a single war.
• Hasn’t tried to confiscate a single gun.

- See more at: http://www.forwardprogressives.com/list-of-things-you-can-blame-on-president-obama/#sthash.rb2zXMZ6.dpuf

The New Era of Unbridled Belief

Modern, effortless and convenient!
What do you mean by "checking?"

t of what I just

t of what I just

Over 8 million people signed up for health care thanks to the Affordable Care Act. Millions of Americans have gained, or kept, health care coverage thanks to Medicaid expansions and being able to stay on their parents’ insurance longer. He hasn’t started a single war. Hasn’t tried to confiscate a single gun. - See more at: http://www.forwardprogressives.com/list-of-things-you-can-blame-on-president-obama/#sthash.rb2zXMZ6.dpuf

Americans have, apparently, "cast the surly bonds" of their famous, old fashioned skepticism in favor of a new willingness to automatically grant blind, hysterical credibility to practically anything. 2014 is a year in which incredible technology has provided essentially unlimited access to information beyond the wildest dreams of only a few years ago.

One might think that, because of this, modern folks would be "checking" things right and left. Further, the inevitable charlatans among us, understanding this, would be "working over time" to really complicate and obscure the deceptions they were so anxious for their audiences to "accept as fact."

This isn't the case at all. The charlatans are doing swell.

We no longer see travelling medicine men peddling "secret elixir" from horse drawn wagons, but we see their modern equivalent expounding -- and successfully broadcasting -- bold face lies with an eerie confidence. In the political arena this phenomenon becomes material. Votes are cast based on falsehoods, but they are cast by voters who might have effortlessly remedied such misinformation in a few minutes! 

MeanMesa has always been impressed with the carefully devised mythologies of the religionist scams. There are millions of Americans who are "absolutely convinced" that a book written thousands of years ago describing a conveniently revised, incomprehensible  mythology -- a tale already at something like its "seventh edition" when this particular book was first begun -- offers incontrovertible guidance for all manner of life's challenges.

However, we won't be needing Martin Luther or Imanuel Kant to support this modern argument. A simple conversation at MeanMesa's favorite coffee shop provides an abundant supply of casual evidence. The grotesque avoidance of questioning anything seems even further aggravated in the case of conspiracies.

This particular conversation, appearing absolutely innocent and lasting less than thirty minutes revealed the following -- all expounded with breathless certainty and urgency.

1. "Those aren't really clouds. Those are chem trails. That's how they poison us."

2. "All elections are crooked. You have to buy off somebody in power to win."

3. "Obama said he was god."

4. "The world is only weeks or months from a nuclear holocaust, martial law and fully legalized sodomy for children."

The people expressing these "facts" are, more or less, reasonable people. This was a coffee shop -- not the visitors' waiting room in an asylum for the criminally insane. But the conclusions unavoidably accompanying a more generalized presumption is that most Americans have at least a little of this running loose in them is truly unsettling.

Frighteningly, that would include most of the Americans finding their way to voting booths.

Now, one might ask himself, "Are the comments of these people reporting these strange 'facts' the product of some devilishly clever, long term propaganda scheme?" Had teams of PhD psychologists worked out every detail of this nonsense for years before suddenly "unleashing" it on an otherwise unsuspecting public?

No, actually, there was hardly any scheme at all, because hardly any scheme was needed.

The pundits who originally introduced these "facts" probably only received the instructions to do so on the very morning before the coffee shop acquaintances heard it that afternoon. The sold out net work managers and the think tanks may have also received "instructions" to continually repeat them, day after day, until instructed to replace them with the next set of "facts."

Where Does ADHD Come In?

I'm already spinning as fast as I can...
By the way, did you hear...

There is an intriguing "disconnection" between what the coffee shop acquaintances were saying and what propositions the same folks could have, otherwise, really been able to believe - and by "able to believe," MeanMesa means propositions folks might have "thought were accurate," "thought were possible" or even "thought might be sensible."

It appears to be a "new luxury." Any idea -- no matter how seriously lacking in credibility -- can be painlessly absorbed and then repeated. Even the unusually unlikely can be transformed into "coffee shop" chatter. Chatter which, pursuant to "good manners," must be at least publicly accepted as a precious, fascinating, conversational "something" which is tacitly tolerated as rational, relevant or important.

If the Emperor had no clothes, the coffee shop looked amazingly similar to a "not particularly pretty" nudist colony.

Further, no matter how grotesque the coffee shop blather might be, it is a mere twinkle when held up to what is spewing forth from AM radio and the cable mouth junk talkers. The alphabet networks' "business plan" is founded on the axiom that guarantees that absolutely no one will spend a single second actually considering what has just been broadcast.

Until "it" gets to the coffee shop or the voting booth, of course.

The cable networks are even worse -- a grotesque "free range" version of what the network broadcasters are offering, totally unhindered by any FCC complaints, warnings or suggestions.

The nation-wide ADHD is required for the vital "free market" cash lubrication this monstrosity demands. Not even the tooth paste commercials make sense.

There you have it.

So, on the heels of a nearly flawless jobs report, I thought I’d finally give in and make a list of a few things Republicans can blame on President Obama:

• Job losses were cut by more than 50% within his first 4 months in office.
• He saved the American auto industry.
• Has cut our deficits by more than half.
• Killed Osama bin Ladin.
• Got Syria to give up their chemical weapons without firing a single shot.
• Presided over record breaking stock levels (with the Dow just recently closing over 17,000 for the first time in its 118-year history).
• Reduced unemployment from 10% to 6.1%.
• We just saw the fastest first quarter of job growth in the United States since 1999.
• The quickest drop in unemployment in 30 years.
• 52 straight months of private sector job growth.
• 9.7 million private sector jobs created.
• Over 8 million people signed up for health care thanks to the Affordable Care Act.
• Millions of Americans have gained, or kept, health care coverage thanks to Medicaid expansions and being able to stay on their parents’ insurance longer.
• He hasn’t started a single war.
• Hasn’t tried to confiscate a single gun.

- See more at: http://www.forwardprogressives.com/list-of-things-you-can-blame-on-president-obama/#sthash.rb2zXMZ6.dpuf

So, on the heels of a nearly flawless jobs report, I thought I’d finally give in and make a list of a few things Republicans can blame on President Obama:

• Job losses were cut by more than 50% within his first 4 months in office.
• He saved the American auto industry.
• Has cut our deficits by more than half.
• Killed Osama bin Ladin.
• Got Syria to give up their chemical weapons without firing a single shot.
• Presided over record breaking stock levels (with the Dow just recently closing over 17,000 for the first time in its 118-year history).
• Reduced unemployment from 10% to 6.1%.
• We just saw the fastest first quarter of job growth in the United States since 1999.
• The quickest drop in unemployment in 30 years.
• 52 straight months of private sector job growth.
• 9.7 million private sector jobs created.
• Over 8 million people signed up for health care thanks to the Affordable Care Act.
• Millions of Americans have gained, or kept, health care coverage thanks to Medicaid expansions and being able to stay on their parents’ insurance longer.
• He hasn’t started a single war.
• Hasn’t tried to confiscate a single gun.

- See more at: http://www.forwardprogressives.com/list-of-things-you-can-blame-on-president-obama/#sthash.rb2zXMZ6.dpuf

So, on the heels of a nearly flawless jobs report, I thought I’d finally give in and make a list of a few things Republicans can blame on President Obama:

• Job losses were cut by more than 50% within his first 4 months in office.
• He saved the American auto industry.
• Has cut our deficits by more than half.
• Killed Osama bin Ladin.
• Got Syria to give up their chemical weapons without firing a single shot.
• Presided over record breaking stock levels (with the Dow just recently closing over 17,000 for the first time in its 118-year history).
• Reduced unemployment from 10% to 6.1%.
• We just saw the fastest first quarter of job growth in the United States since 1999.
• The quickest drop in unemployment in 30 years.
• 52 straight months of private sector job growth.
• 9.7 million private sector jobs created.
• Over 8 million people signed up for health care thanks to the Affordable Care Act.
• Millions of Americans have gained, or kept, health care coverage thanks to Medicaid expansions and being able to stay on their parents’ insurance longer.
• He hasn’t started a single war.
• Hasn’t tried to confiscate a single gun.

- See more at: http://www.forwardprogressives.com/list-of-things-you-can-blame-on-president-obama/#sthash.rb2zXMZ6.dpuf

So, on the heels of a nearly flawless jobs report, I thought I’d finally give in and make a list of a few things Republicans can blame on President Obama:

• Job losses were cut by more than 50% within his first 4 months in office.
• He saved the American auto industry.
• Has cut our deficits by more than half.
• Killed Osama bin Ladin.
• Got Syria to give up their chemical weapons without firing a single shot.
• Presided over record breaking stock levels (with the Dow just recently closing over 17,000 for the first time in its 118-year history).
• Reduced unemployment from 10% to 6.1%.
• We just saw the fastest first quarter of job growth in the United States since 1999.
• The quickest drop in unemployment in 30 years.
• 52 straight months of private sector job growth.
• 9.7 million private sector jobs created.
• Over 8 million people signed up for health care thanks to the Affordable Care Act.
• Millions of Americans have gained, or kept, health care coverage thanks to Medicaid expansions and being able to stay on their parents’ insurance longer.
• He hasn’t started a single war.
• Hasn’t tried to confiscate a single gun.

- See more at: http://www.forwardprogressives.com/list-of-things-you-can-blame-on-president-obama/#sthash.rb2zXMZ6.dpuf

So, on the heels of a nearly flawless jobs report, I thought I’d finally give in and make a list of a few things Republicans can blame on President Obama:

• Job losses were cut by more than 50% within his first 4 months in office.
• He saved the American auto industry.
• Has cut our deficits by more than half.
• Killed Osama bin Ladin.
• Got Syria to give up their chemical weapons without firing a single shot.
• Presided over record breaking stock levels (with the Dow just recently closing over 17,000 for the first time in its 118-year history).
• Reduced unemployment from 10% to 6.1%.
• We just saw the fastest first quarter of job growth in the United States since 1999.
• The quickest drop in unemployment in 30 years.
• 52 straight months of private sector job growth.
• 9.7 million private sector jobs created.
• Over 8 million people signed up for health care thanks to the Affordable Care Act.
• Millions of Americans have gained, or kept, health care coverage thanks to Medicaid expansions and being able to stay on their parents’ insurance longer.
• He hasn’t started a single war.
• Hasn’t tried to confiscate a single gun.

- See more at: http://www.forwardprogressives.com/list-of-things-you-can-blame-on-president-obama/#sthash.rb2zXMZ6.dpuf