Choices

On life's journey, each twist and turn presents us with choices, and opportunities. How wisely we choose, how open we are to exploiting opportunities, will determine
our success or failure, and the quality of our lives. This is true for society as for
individuals.
Over the last 8 years the overwhelming majority of American people came to realize that the policies by which they were being governed were failed. Those failed policies caused them to lose their jobs, their homes, their nest eggs, their self respect, their pride, their confidence, and their sense of security at home and abroad.
So, in record numbers they voted for change. Now that change is imminent they have panicked. Out of fear, many have concluded that they prefer to stay with the known , but failed, policies of yore than risk new ones which "might" fail in the future, but which also are ones that hold out hope for turning this country away from the downhill spiral it is now on. This fear is fostered and nurtured by the vested interests which have profited from the status quo, at the expense of the public they
are frightening.
For eight years the large financial institutions worked diligently to erode all regulations protecting the public from dishonest and predatory practices. Once they
accomplished that mission greed took over and ran rampant. The result was a collapse of real estate values, which made up much of the wealth of the middle class, the
disappearance of credit which lubricates the gears of business, and a massive loss
of equity values in retirement plans and personal savings.
Having suffered such massive loss of wealth, it would seem logical that the public would clamor for government intervention to rescue the economy and limit the damage.
But the few who have gotten obscenely wealthy under the system as it was, want to keep it as it was. They have the media power to indoctrinate the gullible that the
government, the ONLY institution with enough power to ward off a major depression,
is evil, too big, too wasteful, and too profligate with the public's money to be
trusted. Only the private interests who brought us to this state have the ability, and the resources to solve the mess they put us into.
They are fighting on all fronts, be it health insurance, and regulations controlling derivatives and other toxic investment
products they foisted on a greedy and uninformed public. Even some states, Florida, New York among them, lost huge sums from their employee pension funds under those
nefarious schemes.
Only an awakening by the public that they are being manipulated in assisting in
actions against their own best interests offers any hope that they will wake up
from their thrall before the opportunity to make meaningful changes is lost.

Bribe our way out of Afghanistan?

In my blog "Presidential Suicide Pact" dealing with our dilemma in Afghanistan,
published September 5th, I advocated that we "get the hell out of there" because,
among other reasons, our only allies in the country were the people we bribed. Allies
that are for sale are not a foundation for nation building.
Fareed Zakaria, editor of the International Edition of NEWSWEEK, and a frequent
commentator on the Sunday morning TV news programs, published an incisive article
in the September 12th issue entitled "The Way out of Afghanistan". He recognizes
that our attempt to build a self sufficient nation of Afghanistan by military force
would fail. He recommends that we bribe the Pashtun tribes, of which President Karzai is a member, and who though corrupt enjoys Pashtun support, to reach an accomodation with the Taliban, thus achieving a degree of control.
Hopefully that would enable that agglomeration of tribes to act as a stable, if impoverished, nation. That is an idea worth consideration. The questions associated with it are weighty and have serious implications for the U. S.
Who will fund the bribing? How much will be required? For how long? Who will
control and distribute the funds? To whom? How long will we be involved? How will we
judge success? How will we insure accountability in a sink of corruption?
Does the administration have the political muscle to implement such a policy? Will the American public accept a deal paying bribes to Afghans?

Would such a deal be better than getting the hell out of there?

Last President, and counting.

President Obama made an elequent, moving, and logical speech to the joint session of congress, promising to work with them "in the interests of the nation" so that he will be the last President to have to deal with a failing health care system.

The plan he outlined included many sound solutions to the problems in the existing
heath care insurance system, but contained one fatal omission which dooms any plan to failure. It seems the omission was for pregmatic, political reasons, to win
support from the portion of the public which now has health insurance. He made a catagorical promise that if one now had health insurance one could keep it. The only
changes would be provisions to strengthen protections against cancellation, and unreasonable benefit limitations. Here is where the flaw resides! The existing insurance system contains the seeds of destruction and bankruptcy of itself, and the entire economy of the nation.
Medical care is payed for on the basis of fee per PROCEDURE. The providor of care has a list of procedures on which he checks off what treatment was given. Each
procedure has a dollar value. The checked list is forwarded to the insurer who then
pays the total value of the list. Therefor, the more procedures, the more money earned. Gaming the system, plus unnecessary procedures for defensive purposes is
widepread. Recognizing the profit potential, many providers have established their own lab facilities to which they refer their patients. All the incentives are for inflating costs. Insurance company treatment directives often require diagnostic
tests and procedures which the attending physician may believe are not necessary.
Until the reimbursement policy is changed to a single value for effective treatment
based on outcomes, the inflation in health care costs will continue, and at an increasing rate.

Presidential suicide pact.

As with Presidents Johnson, G. Bush, Jack Kennedy, Obama is embarked on a suicide mission for his presidency, and for the nation. All in pursuit of the chimera, begun
under George Bush, that America is destined to convert to
Jeffersonian democracy the most primitive, tribal, societies in the world, and to prevent the victory of radical economic
ideologies or alien theocracies, wherever they raise their heads. All our missions of this nature have led to disastrous defeats, at enormous costs in lives and treasure, and shattered the cohesion and amity among our people. We are on a slippery slope to third world status, and have squandered the resources, human and capital, to reverse the trend.
Listening to the military, and the super patriots hawks, Obama is about to increase
our troops committment to Afghanistan, in support of a corrupt, cynical government
which exercises no control over any part of a non-existant state structure.
We will use an exhausted military, fighting at an enormously extended logistical distance, in a hostile, unfamiliar theatre, for a cause in which the native population has neither interest or experience. It is an effort which other empires
have tried before, with similar outcomes. We are rightly perceived in the region as alien invaders, and our only "allies" are the people we bribe.
No matter how long we remain there, we will never make any permanent impact for
change, and when we finally leave all traces of our presence will disappear into the desert sands as did the other empires.
Let us declare victory and get the hell out of there. Then we can relieve our brave soldiers, and rebuild the military, while we rebuild our shattered economy.

The Grand Bazaar

The U.S has morphed from a producer to a consumer society, where everything is for
sale; office, honor, public opinion, taste, and intergrity. To stimulate consumption
the marketers expend huge sums of money on surveys to detect the vulnerabilities of the buyers, so they can be lured to become docile and compliant enough to buy whatever the vendor is selling, even if doing so defeats their self interest.

Politicians sell out to contributors, so holding office will become a career. The public interest is only incidental. Reporters, commentators, college professors
sell their opinions to the highest bidders. The public is bombarded with propaganda pushing the agenda of the marketers. The appearance of truth in the propaganda is rare, and only if it happens to serve the purpose of the marketer.

Many purchases are made on impulse, subliminably stimulated. Saturation advertising, much of it covert through respected pundits on Radio, TV and in the print media, couched in so called "objective" terms, intoxicates the public to the point where their decisions are based on emotion, not reason. As a result the nation is controlled by an oligarchy of wealthy corporations with the most resources to manipulate the public, and the media. Nothing in our educational system prepares the public to analyze and deal with the propaganda that bombards them. "Intelligent consumers" is most often an oxymoron. Nowhere is this more evident than in the current health care debate.

That Old "Can Do" Spirit

The late eighteenth century until the mid twentieth century was the era of the dominance of the American Dream. Our creative juices were flowing. There wasn't anything we couldn't accomplish. We conquered a vast continent and turned it into
a giant productive powerhouse with a booming population, burgeoning cities filled with huge business towers, museums, parks and universities. We made scientific discoveries that eliminated plagues, took us beyond the surly bounds of Earth to
other planets, and explored the unknown oceans. Along the way we accumulated a
small empire, the Philippines, Puerto Rico, Alaska, Hawaii, and a passel of small
islands.
There were some serious stumbles in our passage; the Civil War, a number of lesser
Imperialistic foreign wars, and the Great Depression. Those lapses were more than balanced by our participation in the two great World Wars, in which we were instrumental in defeating powerful dictatorial empires and assuring the flowering of prosperity and democracy in much of the world.
Something happened in the last half of the twentieth century that made us lose our "Can Do" spirit. We became embroiled in a number of conflicts in distant lands where we mistakenly assumed our vital national interests were at stake. Without
genuine public support for those ventures, we lost, and in the process we lost our optimism and faith in America's invincibility. The costs of the Korean, Vetnam, Iraq and Afghanistan wars, in lives, treasure and international esteem are beyond measure and have contributed to the drastic economic decline of our nation. The huge national debt, and unsustainable deficits far into the future have constrained our capacity to invest in modernization of our educational system and maintenance of our infrastructure and manufacturing base, as well as provide universal health care to our citizens.
A public attitude that sacrifice is for someone else, that someone else can fight our wars and pay the costs of our past profligacy, will do nothing to halt our decline into third world status. We need a rebirth of the "Can Do' American spirit and resolve. Partisan bickering makes that unlikely--petty politicians make for petty citizens. We need our leaders, Republicans and Democrats, to be statesmen, to counsel together, not for party advantage, but for the survival of the American Dream!

Washington, keep your f....g hands off my health care (A Satire)

Any rational discussion of the health care financing problem has been submerged beneath a fog of propaganda, dishonesty and fear mongering. Lets get to the heart of the matter: As long as the PURCHASER of the health care is not the main PAYER for the care, there will never be effective cost control. Such a system is welfare based, not market based. The for-profit insurance companies make it market based
by controlling what care they will pay for. That includes provisions for overhead, advertising, profit, perks and costly claims administration. Reducing premiums under such conditions is an oxymoron. Cost control can come either from limiting treatment, or selecting only clients with little likelihood of using services for many years to come.

Here is a suggestion: Remove all cost sharing methods, including Medicare, from the medical care scene and require everyone to pay for medical care from their own resources. If there are no resources there will be no care. If lack of care increases mortality that conversely lowers the number of persons to be cared for.
To compensate citizens for their new responsibility, payroll taxes for Medicare will no longer be collected. Medicaid and state insurance for poor children will be eliminated so state and federal taxes will be further reduced. As private insurance will be ended, the billions in premiums, overhead and profits will reside with individual citizens. Government assistance will be limited to a burial allowance,
perhaps $500, as a reward for getting the government out of the health care business.

Of course, such a radical change will have a severe impact on bureaucracies within government at all levels, on insurance companies, and health care providers. But we are an infallible Capitalist society, and we know the market, on its own, will adjust and set things right! And BIG, SOCIALIST, INTRUSIVE GOVERNMENT will have gotten out of a large part of our lives!