Damn the Nation, Full Stop Ahead!

Instead of pitching in and helping implement the health care reform and making
it work efficiently, the sore-losers Republicans have shown their true colors.
Their purpose has been to oppose and obstruct the President's agenda for turning
this nation from its slide into bankruptcy and third world status. This for the
narrow end of making his a failed presidency. That such a strategy
will cause irreparable harm to the nation is of no concern to those power obsessed
neanderthals. One of the leading Republican figures, Presidential candidate John
McCain said publically that there will be no further Republican cooperation in trying to solve the critical problems we must still deal with for the rest of this year. Holding the welfare of the nation hostage to petty political goals reveals the
true nature of his party. How Sad. How mean spirited. How Dangerous.

We still face enormously complicated problems affecting the very survival of this
nation as a capitalist democracy. The growing, crippling deficit will reach a point of no return soon, but in order to pull the economy out of the worst, intractable
recession in 80 years, we will still have to resort to deficit pump priming.
We are fully engaged in two foreign wars which we finance by cutting taxes on the wealthy, something done in no earlier wars.
Unemployment is rising and persistent, causing millions to lose their homes,
savings and future security. The foreclosure deluge has devastated neighborhoods, depressed housing values, shut off construction, adding to unemployment.
Our reliance on imported oil is a punitive surcharge on our economy, weakening the
dollar, fouling our environment, and driving us ever deeper into debt and dependancy
on China and the Oil sheikdoms.
Our educational system has become third rate compared to the other developed countries and to the Asian steamrollers. As a result our technological lead has
largely disappeared. I could go on listing more problems, but the point is made;
the Republicans intend to offer NO COOPERATION toward solving any of the above, so says their Presidential candidate. Is that attitude statesmanship? Is it worthy
of a party that wants to take over control of our government? Are they mature politicians, or spoiled brats who, if they can't win, won't play?
They are assassins of a system of governing which served us well for more than two centuries and made us a shining beacon of liberty and prosperity to the world.
That beacon is being extinguished!

Health Care--what is next?

Now that health care, make that health insurance, reform is on the way to becoming a reality, where is it going next? Certain inevitabilities can be expected:

1. Republicans will try to repeal whatever form the final bill takes. They have invested too much venom and lies in their anti-campaign to face the possibility that
it may work out well. That would represent their total repudiation, with disastrous
effects at election time.

2.When the final bill is signed and becomes law, the agencies that opposed it and who will be charged with conforming with its provisions, such as insurance companies, will find many opportunities to make mischief, even sabotage, to gain
advantages the law sought to take away.

3. No matter how carefully planned, no law can anticipate unintended consequences.
These will provide grist for the mills of the nay-sayers. Only when the beneficial
results for the millions of victims of the present system become evident will those ill-wishers be silenced. That may take a while, but as it happened with Social Security and Medicare, so will it happen with health reform. A decade from now I predict not a single opponent of the reform will advocate retracting it.

4. The predicted costs will be greater, and deficit reductions much less. Government
operates through bureaucracies which inevitably develope a life of their own and
a self perpetuating constituency. If the benefits far exceed the costs, the
program will succeed. That is likely to occur in a program of such vital importance to the life and health of our nation. How healthy it would be if everyone united
in good faith to make it succeed!

An Unhealthy Health Care Bill

The bill the Dems are attempting to slip-slide through the House and get to the
President for signature is a product of compromise, horse trading, negotiation
and bribery, and completely satisfies no one. It contains some noble provisions such as vastly expanded coverage, limits on some of the most unsavory insurance company practices, some realizable cost savings and measures to streamline Medicare and make it more cost effective. However many of the needed changes have delayed effective
dates, and savings which will depend on future congresses to implement. If these
were so difficult and distasteful to this congress to implement now, the likelihood
that future congressmen will have the backbone to put them in force is almost non
existent.
What confronts us now is a Hobson's choice: Do we finally face the problem that the status quo is unsustainable and pass a bill, though far from perfect, that makes a substantial effort to improve matters, or do we allow the perfect to be the enemy of the good, and leave the problem to fester? It is likely that our present health
care system will continue to increase costs, reduce the number of people insured,
and cause serious economic damage to the middle class. Medicare and Medicaid will
bring the nation to the brink of bankruptcy within a decade or so if not altered.
Waiting until after elections to tackle the problems could bring us to that tipping point even sooner.

Renewing America

America is like an old dowager beset by dreams of her maiden days when she was
young and beautiful. Her closet is full of faded gowns of her youth, but
her present raiment is threadbare and decrepit. Only illusion keeps her from
seeing her own countenance as it is.

The content of our nation's closet, our infrastructure, is also decrepit. Our bridges and tunnels are collapsing. Our aging water supply systems break down and flood everywhere, and can't guarantee drinking quality. Highways designed for 1930's traffic are collapsing
under present day demands. School and municipal buildings everywhere are obsolete
and dangerous. Our state mental hospitals resemble the BEDLAM in English novels.
Our inter-city mass transit systems have almost disappeared. The National parks have
been allowed to deteriorate and state parks have closed for lack of personnel.

To renovate all of those would take money, lots of money, which we don't have,
and won't try to get by taxing those who can pay. So to address the problems would require us to go further into debt. Understanding the role of debt would be helpful
at this point.
Taking on debt which is used to acquire permanent and income producing assets is
not debt--it is investment. Debt used for non-productive purposes such as wars,
pork projects, a bloated military, huge salaries and bonuses for executives of
failed enterprises which were bailed out by public borrowed money, is destructive.
It depreciates the currency, weakens our ability to invest in productive projects
increases interest rates, and promotes inflation.

Suppose we were to embark on a massive public works project, similar to those
used during the great Depression, to put millions of unemployed to work restoring
our infrastructure. It would increase our public debt enormously but pay dividends in the form of wages, which would increase consumption and keep people in their homes.
It would translate into improved infrastructure and facilities thus increasing
efficiency and earning power. Just the savings in oil consumption alone would
make a big dent in our unproductive spending. Such debt would be INVESTMENT, repaying
itself over time. It would rejuvenate a dowager America.
If, along with that we were to rationalize the income tax laws and regulations,
and ask those at the peak on the income pyramid to accept a period of additional
marginal taxes, impose strict austerity on the bloated federal government, change
the reimbursement method for Medicare and Medicaid to rewarding outcomes, not procedures, withdrawing from foreign wars, slimming the military, within a decade
America could be in the black and ready for a new blossoming of the American Dream.
Do we still have the capacity to dream big?

A more perfect union?

As I observe our two party system congealed into a state of immobility it occurs to me that what has taken place is a brazen case of identity theft. The two parties,
Republican and Democrat, have concluded that they each individually are the embodiment of the federal union, and the other party are aliens.

The fate of the nation, its very survival, is identified by and with their party, and the other is the ENEMY. A war to the death is under way, and among the casualties are millions of citizens who are losing their livelihoods, their health
care, their homes and their very futures.

As in all warfare, there are no real winners, only temporary victors who gain the spoils of victory: a devastated economy, a diminished world status, and a bitterly divided nation. The losers nurse their wounds, re-arm and mobilize for the next time.
Meanwhile they sabotage every attempt by the victors to govern.

Is this the perfect union our founders meant for us? They tried to account for
the frailties, imperfections and pettiness of men in the checks and balances they built into our federal system. It seems they underestimated our venality.

Does my generation have a Social Contract with the next?

As I observe the failure of the Washington establishment, and the other developed
countries as well, to deal with the deteriorating financial, ecological, and demographic crises which now afflict us, I begin to question whether our generation
is guilty of criminal neglect.
In order to discuss this rationally we should begin with certain principles and questions:

1. We created the next generation, without their request or permission.

2. We were similarly created by the previous generation, which left us a legacy.
Was that legacy better than the one they received?

3. Will the legacy we leave to our progeny be as good as the one we were given?

4. If we make the sacrifices required to leave them a legacy at least as good,
or better than ours, that also makes our present lot better.

Among the crises our generation confronts:

Global climate change (provokes great argument about it and about).

The financial meltdown; was it due to lack of adequate government regulation and oversight?

The rapid population growth, causing ecological deterioration.

We are consuming the earth's assets at a rate more rapid than they can be replaced.

Aging populations require more care, consume more, and more expensive, scarce health care services.

To resolve some or all of these would require burdensome financial costs and impose
inconvenient and drastic changes in life styles, at a time of severe
recession and unemployment. They were brought on by our behavior. Do we have the moral right to pass the burden of solving them to the next generations; also
the bills?

We are not the first or last generation to inhabit our planet and our country. We are temporary lease-holders, and thus custodians of the property on which we
temporarily reside, and its economy. All leases require the tenant to leave the
property in the condition in which he found it.
Are we going to be dead beats, leaving our descendants with a deteriorated, asset depleted home, with unpaid rents for them to pay?
If we do, shame on us. And they will never forgive us.