Category Archives: History

The Rocky Flats Nuclear Weapons Plant I Remember; Its Rise and Fall

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This book by Clayton Lagerquist could be considered a companion to my book, “An Insider’s View of Rocky Flats, Urban Myths Debunked.” We write about many of the same subjects and issues. However, I was careful not to identify other people and he was careful to identify everyone he could remember. I worked with Clayton after I was transferred from production support research and development to the environmental and health organization in the early 1970s. (He calls himself “Clayt” in messages, so I’ll begin using that name.) He is an interesting person who holds numerous technical degrees, and much of the book is about his role in the early days of Health Physics Department and the people in that organization. He is complimentary to most of those people, but there are others who receive less than glowing reviews. He refers to one manager “an arrogant ass.” He describes another manager as “easy to dislike.” But then he writes, “For some reason, I liked him.” Clayt’s assessment of the FBI raid and ensuring fiasco is quite blunt. He writes at the end of the Introduction, “The Federal Government closely supervised all activities with an on-site office and conducted numerous audits using outside experts. I say all this to remind everyone that in the end, the Federal Government sued Rockwell International for environmental misconduct in federal court and won. This has to be the most colossal act of arrogant stupidity that I have ever seen.”

The book would be of interest to anyone wanting to know more about the people of Rocky Flats and the constant efforts to improve the technology for monitoring external and internal dosimetry. There are descriptions of an unfortunate incident involving a gentleman who lost a thumb and forefinger from an explosive reaction between plutonium chips and carbon tetracholoride in the glovebox where he was working. There are details about the actions that followed to treat the worker and measure the extent of plutonium contamination in his hand and body. Clayt writes that he spent considerable time with the injured man, “…and was amazed at the patience he exhibited during this time. He was a first case in many ways and was willing to go along with all suggestions even though it involved inconvenience to him.” Clayt also writes about the autopsy program and the research program using beagles to investigate how plutonium translocates in the body following a contaminated puncture wound. Continue reading →

Warning to the West–Part II

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The first review about this book discussed the speeches given by Alexander Solzhenitsyn to the AFL-CIO union and the U.S. Congress. This review is about a speech he gave to the members of the Senate and House of Representative on July 15, 1975 and both an interview and a speech on the BBC. His first comment in the speech to Congress was to thank the Senate for “…twice endeavoring to declare me an honorary citizen of the United States.” He quickly transitioned to his warnings to the West. He pointed out that in 1973, the year the United States embarked on detente and “…was precisely the year when starvation rations in Soviet prisons and concentration camps were reduced even further. He then mentions that the United States had the burden of leadership “…for at least half the world.” “We do not look upon you as Democrats or Republicans…we see statesmen, each of whom will play a direct and decisive role in the further course of world history, as it proceeds toward tragedy or salvation.”

The next entry in the book is the text of an interview, which I read to be contentious at times, on the BBC March 1, 1976. Solzhenitsyn responded to a question as to why the Soviets had exiled him instead of sending him back to the concentration camps. He observed that this was an instance where the West took a strong stand, and “…the Soviet Politburo simply took fright.” “I think now …they do regret it–we must remember they …had no choice. This was a rare moment when the West demonstrated unprecedented firmness and forced them to retreat.” However, Solzhenitsyn expressed dismay about the West’s reactions in most circumstances. Russians believed that the West would help raise them from slavery, but the West separated their own freedoms from the fate of the Russians. The press is accused of participating by not understanding their responsibility to publish the truth instead of mediocre headlines. He accuses that the West stood by while several countries fell to Communist rule. Continue reading →

Warning to the West–Part I

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This book contains the texts of speeches given by Alexander Solzhenitsyn in the United States and Britain after his expulsion from the Soviet Union in 1974. The first two in this review will be were given to the AFL-CIO. Solzhenitsyn condemned the Soviet Union and “…its intolerable policy of repression, yet also sharply criticizes those complacent Westerners who support their government’s misguided policy of detente and timidly fear to take up the obligations that freedom-hungry people expect from the leading democracies of the world. ‘Interfere more and more, he pleads…We beg you to come and interfere’.” As an aside from the speeches, Ronald Reagan was campaigning against Gerald Ford for the Republican Presidential nomination in 1974-1975 with warnings about detente with the Soviets. Solzhenitsyn said in one of his AFL-CIO speeches that the USSR was “the concentration of world evil.” Detente with the Soviets did not end until Reagan replaced Carter and declared the USSR to be “The Evil Empire.” 

Solzhenitsyn begins his first speech to the labor leaders with a short history of the Russian Revolution and tells them “…only four months after the October Revolution…all the representatives of the Petrograd factories were denouncing the Communists who had deceived them…” The Communists had fled from Petrograd to Moscow, and had given orders to open fire on the crowds of factory workers demanding election of independent officers. A lathe operator named Alexander Shliapnikov led the Communists before the Revolution: Lenin wasn’t even in the country. Shliapnikov charged in 1921 that the Communist leadership had betrayed the interests of the workers, and he disappeared.

Solzhenitsyn thanked the AFL for publishing a map of Soviet concentration camps to counteract charges by Liberals in the U.S. who were claiming the camps did not exist. He points out that Liberals weren’t the only group supporting the Communists. Capitalists were encouraging business dealings with the Soviets, which of course gave badly needed economic support. He mentions Armand Hammer by name. Some American businessmen arrange an exhibit of criminological technology in Moscow. The KGB purchased the equipment, copied it, and used it to spy on citizens. Solzhenitsyn tells a story about Lenin predicting that Western Capitalists would compete with each other to sell the Soviets everything they needed without any concern for the future. He predicts that “…when the bourgeoisie a rope and the bourgeoisie will hang itself.” Lenin is asked where they would get enough rope for that, he replied, “They will sell it to us themselves.” Continue reading →

The Financial Crisis–Part II

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Eamon R. Moran has written a comprehensive and well-referenced, 97-page article for the University of North Carolina School of Law’s North Carolina Banking Institute Journal about the causes of the crisis.  In Part I of this blog I focused on the role of the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) of 1977.  This entry will focus on other regulations and acts that contributed to the mortgage meltdown.

Congress enacted many measures between 1980 and 2003 to make home ownership more attainable for moderate and low income borrowers.  Some of those measures included:

  • An act that preempted state ceilings on home mortgage loans and encouraged subprime loans
  • Another act that allowed adjustable rate mortgages, the loan of choice for subprime loans
  • Tax law was revised to made interest on home loans the only consumer loan that is tax deductible
  • HUD changed regulations so that borrowers no longer had to prove their incomes would remain stable
  • CRA was strengthened to impose fines and business penalties on banks that refused home loans to low income borrowers
  • Tax law was revised again to exempt most home sales from capital gains taxes

The outcome of these actions was that a borrower in California with an annual income of $14,000 was approved for a $720,000 home loan.  An investor in Minneapolis borrowed $2.4 million to buy ten properties, and all would go into foreclosure.  Financial institutions began bundling loans into complex packages, the rating agencies gave the packages AAA ratings, and the packages were sold around the world.  Millions of other examples such as these led to the eventual collapse of home values and created the crisis.

Congress leapt into action and passed a massive financial regulation while studiously ignoring the history of government’s role in creating the crisis.  The new laws will undoubtedly impede an economic recovery, and Congress will be given the opportunity to pass even more laws.


Gulag Voices, Surviving the Gulag

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The first two parts of the review of Anne Applebaum’s collection of writings by survivors of the Soviet slave complex were about daily life and women in the Gulag, which Applebaum writes is an acronym for the Soviet term “Main Camp Administration.” (Wikipedia says it is “Chief Administration of Corrective Labor Camps and Colonies.”) The people who wrote the memoirs were remarkable because they were literate and they survived. A large number of the estimated 25 million people who were sentenced to the concentration camps, labor camps, exile villages, criminal and political camps, and prisons did not survive. One writer observed only a few people in the slave camps would survive the first few months of imprisonment. There was mention of an unfunny joke that the first few years were the hardest. This part of the review is about how people used cleverness and religious faith to survive.

Dimitry S. Likhachev was an intellectual who was imprisoned after he was accused of counter-revolutionary activities. He and fellow literature club members saluted one another in ancient Greek, which was interpreted to mean he was an enemy of the state. He was arrested after an acquaintance visited him and asked whether his library had anything anti-Soviet after looking at a copy of Henry Ford’s The International Jew, describes Jews as “vicious capitalists and Bolsheviks.” He describes his initial imprisonment and some of the people in detail. One person in his cell had been the head of the Petrograd Boy Scouts. He mentions that a favorite game of the “warders” was to sweep a rat back and forth with brooms as it attempted escape until the rat died of exhaustion. He writes about the irony that he was arrested for meeting once weekly for intellectual discussions to be thrown in with people who had similar discussions continually while in prison. Likhachev was released after four years and became “…Russia’s best-known literary historian, critic, and scholar.” Continue reading →

The Financial Crisis–Part I

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There are those who advocate there weren’t enough regulations (read Barney Frank) to prevent the financial meltdown in 2008.   My contention is that the crisis began with numerous government regulations that encouraged home ownership for people who couldn’t afford homes. The regulators decided encouraging wasn’t a strong enough approach and began demanding that lenders make loans to people who couldn’t afford to repay them.  Greedy speculators noticed opportunities for profits by creating packages of  “subprime” (read “risky”) loans and selling them to other speculators.  The real estate bubble grew because of the artificial increase in demand. The collapse probably began when the first home couldn’t sell for the original purchase price.

The march to the crisis began when the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) was signed by President Carter in 1977.  That Act was the beginning of numerous actions by the government to encourage, or force, home loan agencies to make loans to borrowers in low income neighborhoods.  The intent was to open up the American Dream of home ownership to people who couldn’t previously convince their bankers they could repay the loans.  The Act was reinforced during the Clinton era by imposing penalties on loan agencies that didn’t meet requirements for loans in inner cities.  The CATO Institute warned in 1993 that the changes would be costly to the economy, and the warning was studiously ignored.

The push to make home ownership available to everyone continued into 2000.  The Government Sponsored Enterprises (GSEs) Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were directed to devote a significant percentage of their lending to support “affordable housing.” Fannie Mae announced in 2001 it had a goal to finance $500 billion in CRA loans by 2010.  The Federal Reserve joined the party by lowering interest rates, which encouraged new borrowers to initiate loans and others to refinance their loans and use the proceeds to buy new luxury items.

There have been charges that racism is involved in deciding who is given home loans.  A Princeton study confirms the validity of that charge.  African-Americans were more likely to be offered subprime loans compared to whites who had similar financial backgrounds.