Mason Says

1-1-1-1 A Spending Plan that Gaurantees a Great Rate of Return

2012-01-16T07:49:00.002-05:00

Spending 6 billion dollars for each 1 million jobs may be the most efficient spending spree the country has ever been on.

I'm no economist but if this idea helps so be it better for all of us. So here goes with just enough effort on my part to allow me to engage in my real interests.

What if I told you we thepeople, acting as the American Government, could spend 6 billion dollars andpretty much be sure we have created 1 million good paying, permanent, UnitedStates, full time jobs - new jobs not just replacing jobs or keeping some, butactual newly made necessary jobs? Before you answer think of all that we havespent our money on and how much more of a value this 1 million jobs would be ifit were true.

Think about the fact that themoney will come back in the form of increased tax revenue and decreased statewide need, but it would be an unknown number of years before that happened. Ifwe could fill 15 million of these full time good paying U.S. jobsneeded for our full and vital and healthful unemployment, we would be on somekind of economic joy ride where growth is so frequent and strong we need toorder ourselves to b/uild up into the sky. Imagine 6 billion dollars onmilitary? Perhaps on development of one plane? Building a few aircraftcarriers?

Now what if spending themoney was no more painful than spending we have been doing, borrowing withunmanageable interest, hundreds of billions of dollars just to keep up with theneeds of the country, no more painful than the last loan. Except with this loaninstead of spending on hypothesis of job plans what successes you can hardlymeasure, hardly quantify, you buy a large diamond in the rough, that stays withthe citizens for a long time and produces a lot of positive effects oneverything in society.

Now what if spending the 6billion dollars produced a function of a seemingly perpetual machine of jobscreation running in circles and cranking out nothing but optimism and resourcesto build with it's own product which when used causes more energy to perpetuatethe motion of the machine.

What if the product of themachine is increasing need to employ each other? Is this a better thing tospend our 6 billion dollars on? If we spend 60 billion are we guaranteeing 10million new real jobs? Even if the answer in the context the plan explainedbelow, is maybe . . it would still be the best spent 60 billion dollars we haveever committed to in a long long time!

A household in financialdistress can easily become torn apart and usually the children are hurt themost, and they grow up to be lousy adults. The following formula could bring usto full employment quickly and end this unethical condition that we letcontinue.

Motivated by an income taxdeduction they would be foolish to refuse, each of millions of millionairessponsor 1 or 2 new full time jobs in 1 year for about $60,000 each. The taxdeduction should return at least 200% (double the money, matching of private funds spent on the program) of sponsorship cost to the millionaire tax deduction user. The sponsor may usethe deduction only 10 times within 15 years for life.

$20,000 tax free discretionaryfunds go to the new employee at signing of a contract. Debts paid, homes saved,big ticket spending, relief for families. Or the employee can blow it all ongambling. This freedom of spending must be allowed for this formula to work,motivation for all parties to participate must be strong. Policies will preventemployees from jumping from job to job, defrauding millionaire sponsors. A newemployee must have been unemployed for a number of months.

$20,000 is secured to be partof the employee’s salary. This could pale in comparison to the regular rate ofpay at a workplace. The plan is flexible to change this amount relatively tothe reasonable good pay of the job.

$20,000 discretionary fundinggoes to the new employer, who in addition to his new subsidized employee, couldthen subsidize a second new employee, or buy equipment, training, oradvertising. Or, the employer could lose everything in Vegas. Stronglymotivating the employer is the discretionary aspect of the sponsorship, whichallows for thousands of uses for the cash. This freedom of spending will beappealing and inspire creative expansion for brand new tasks, for brand newjobs, to meet the demands of their brand new employees.

Imagine 1 millionaire matched with 1 unemployed person and 1 employerwithin 1 year, followed by the injection into our economy of $60,000 from every single new job. Imagine ithappens many millions of times for a few years. Imagine a labor shortage andemployers needing really good resumes.

The formula requires no sacrificethat is not repaid. It has no loop-holes or inadequacies that can not behandled by policy. It’s free-market dependent, it increases existing wealth andmakes more millionaires, it pays for itself, it’s voluntary, temporary, makesmillionaires patriots. It has the potential to start strong and fast if theformula is adhered to. Most importantly it makes a nation of happy and healthyemployees whose families stay together.

Reader ask yourself, ask yourpeers, what you the reader find what would be wrong with this plan, why itwon't work, what would make it fail, what loopholes can be prevented? Do yousee why the economy would get stronger and stronger? Do you see whyconservatives and liberals should like this plan equally? Do you see how boththe poor and the rich and the middle class, benefit from the formula? What areour chances of passing a plan using this formula, with this congress and thispresident?

Reader, please don't consideryour approval or not of this proposal today. Please chew on this proposal.Families are falling apart right now and they need and deserve your thoroughconsideration of this program. Ignore your party affiliation or this will failand more families and children will suffer permanent damage. Besides, foolsmake up their minds in seconds for answers to problems taking years to developand to grow complex.

Reader, some of you hate thispresident and so will discriminatingly see several things wrong with theproposal just because he will be signing it into law. Personally I wouldsupport an Oak tree if the tree had a plan that saves families from despair.But it's your prerogative and it's your post death legacy.

Supplying the $60,000 in taxreturn in payment for participation will cost 6 billion dollars for every 1million jobs. It comes back of course, but not for years, but we can budgetthis loss and take from other areas we all agree are wasteful like militaryspending.

James G. Mason
Author: Destiny a science fiction and the End of All Suffering.

Occupy Movement: Don't Rest Yet!

2011-12-24T10:27:00.001-05:00


Author sells his buttons, NYC anti Iraq invasion, 2002.

To: The Hartford Courant

[published December 19, 2011

Dear Editor,

Occupy Movement participants: You may not realize it but throughall of those newspaper and television images you are broadcasting hopeto millions of your fellow citizens. I wish for a moment that you colorfullyimagine the sight of one of you young and passionate people, sitting on yourrear-end right smack on the center of the floor of the people of the UnitedStates of America's capital building as a pleasant looking Capital securityguard brings you a warm drink and a blanket. I am sure this would be the mostbeautiful display of a free society advancing that you and I and billions ofothers will ever see in a lifetime. DONT REST YET! (peace symbol).

Grace on the United States!

James Mason

Connecticut

I Could Not Have Said It Better

2011-09-24T08:00:00.002-04:00

Liberals have been communicating this for years. The philosophy of taxation's effect on all of us, rich or poor, is infrequently understood and many false assertions come from this misunderstanding. Especially from those who never properly learned to share in childhood.

Elizabeth Warren understands liberal philosophy and has an eloquent description to aid in understanding the core of the issue.

Lost Dreams Storage Rentals Inc.

2011-01-12T13:41:00.008-05:00

A lot of people in our country think that because something is legal it must be moral. Far from true. Example is a television show called Storage Wars where the stars are tattooed beer bellied scavengers who take advantage of the unexpected losses and failures in the lives of poor people. The motto of the goods grabbers is “Don’t pay your bills we’ll take your stuff!” Most of the storage unit renters, by economic causes beyond their control, have for reasons of food verses storage rental, become rental delinquents. We have all passed the concrete cubicles in our cars, storage prisons surrounded by electrified chain link fences, that to many represent the always losing and ever struggling Poverty Wars.

The whole context of the show is immoral. The stored goods of poor people are auctioned off to strangers. Anyone enjoying this show is either immoral or just too stupid and ignorant to realize when immorality is practiced right under their noses. The winners of these auctions are happy with glee to forage through poor people’s stuff, 99% of which is thrown out, and the show follows every happy moment except those precious moments when poor people's photo albums are thrown in the trash.

If you consider yourself a moral person don’t buy a storage rental compound because you’ll frequently have to make a moral decision whether to sell off the many boxes of someone’s lost dreams, or put it all outside somewhere, like underneath a carport. But if you consider that anything legal you can get away with must be moral, then go ahead and buy one these poor people’s container compounds, you immoral scumbag.

There are a lot of activities that are legal but immoral - here is a short list: It’s immoral and legal to sell cigarettes knowing full well that most of the population of smokers will be killing themselves slowly. It’s a legal offense to all to immorally dodge one’s fair share of taxes. Billing Medicare for something just because the health care providers say it happened and patients won’t check their itemized billing anyway, is immoral. It is immoral to own a bar or lounge miles outside of town with a parking lot that holds the cars of 50 likely drunk drivers. It is legal and immoral to buy a pedigree dog while thousands of perfectly healthy lovable dogs are put to death daily. It is legal and immoral to sit back while your nation begins a clearly unnecessary war that kills thousands. It is legal and immoral to cut back funding for social services based on political hypothesis.

In the minds of the storage unit vultures someone is going to buy this stuff anyway, so why not us! Following the actions of immoral people does not make a follower moral. Whether someone else is going to buy the possessions or not does not make the buyers moral. In this writer’s mind the owners and the buyers of these auctions are all a bunch of scumbags who don’t deserve anyone’s time. Viewers should stop looking at the Storage Wars show before their children see it and deduce that selling off poor people’s things is perfectly moral. If a town or city or state allows these landlords of despair to practice their cold hearted behavior in their districts then they are complicit in this immorality that effects only poor people.

Here’s an idea to be moral and to have some civic pride. If you have a few hundred dollars and feel like helping someone, go to the nearest furniture prison and pay off one or two back rents for people in delinquency. I guarantee that you will be helping poor people and I guarantee you will feel better about having done that than the pride you felt at your graduation.

One solution to the storage unit immorality is for towns and cities to build their own concrete compounds and charge a not-for-profit fee. Rentals can be restricted to local citizens only. These towns should offer complete forgiveness to any renters who have hit rock bottom. One good rule: never throw out or sell somebody’s stuff. Those towns and cities that do this should receive an award for morality above the call of legality.

To Glenn Beck and the Tea Party new comers:

2011-01-02T10:06:00.018-05:00

"Government is the coming together of people to do for one another collectively what they could not do as well or at all privately through the market system or philanthropy."

“People” coming together as a “collective,” disrespecting our market system and the failures of “philanthropy?” Does that quote sound like something a conservative would say? No of course not. It sounds socialist and practically communist. In the 1860s the fairly new Republican party was comprised mostly of members with Liberal ideals. And the Democratic party members had conservative ideals. A lot of people who study American history know that, but you newbies to politics choose to not find that out, or you are just in denial. Even your leader Glen Beck didn't know that when he chose the Lincoln memorial for your fall rally in 09. There have been party ideology switches this century in the baby boomer generation, such as the conservative democrats flight to change parties after the Civil Rights Act of 1964. (the act that effectively ended legal segregation in our nation). Go ahead ask somone! The quotation above is famous in Liberal circles and was said by Abraham Lincoln (See "Lincoln's Hands," his original manuscript). If you folks, who praise President Lincoln, and think he represented your party today, knew this to begin with, you would not have been making fools of yourselves in front of the Lincoln memorial and in the minds of US historians, intellectuals and liberals, 8 out of 10 Phds, 94% of all scientists, and half of our politicians. It is apparent to me that Tea Partyers and conservatives really only like Lincoln because he freed the slaves (something that Liberals had wanted for for decades). And if they praise Lincoln then that provides cover from the media so that the conservative right doesn’t look as if they are racists. And with President Lincoln in their pockets they can attract more African American members, from somewhere. The racism of the right wing is pretty clear because of the right’s hatred for a black president who is doing less damage and more reform, that helps all citizens, than the white conservative president before him had ever done in 8 years. Where was the tea party while the white President Bush was adding more than 3 trillion dollars to our national debt for two wars that were not even necessary? Where was the Tea Party when that white President Bush gave tax cuts to rich people without even making up for it anywhere else in his budgets! President Bush was a tax and spend Republican. So was the white Ronald Reagan who tripled our national debt. Why were the Tea Partiers not carrying posters of the white George Bush as a black African witchdoctor with a bone through his nose at their tax day march? Answer: deep down inside, hidden from political correctness of our society, a black president is an affront to the sensibilities of a true conservative.

By pretending to embrace Lincoln’s party politics you conservatives are warping history. Don’t you care that students learn true facts about our past? Or does that concern mean less to you than boosting your roles by hiding behind a liberal. A liberal Lincoln who clearly used “big government,” to better the United States as whole, when the states had continuously failed to better themselves and bring fairness to their citizens?

Our government representatives have not spent 234 years passing laws willy nilly for the fun of it. Tea Partiers and other conservatives go ahead and study President Lincoln’s record of laws passed. While you are studying Lincoln’s ideals and ask yourselves which federal government laws existing today used to be run just fine without Lincoln’s ideal of what our government really is? Ask yourselves which federal laws can you honestly say were not even needed before they were created, and why were they needed, and do those problems that cause us to write laws, remain today? What were the continuing failures of small governments and individuals that caused our representatives to come together for nationwide solutions? You can also contemplate which specific laws you want to get rid of now that you think that the problems that they had addressed can be handled well at the local level? Look at your past and find evidence that supports your beliefs that the big bad government can’t do anything right. The truth is our Democratic Republic has a centralized government that does a hell of lot more good for its citizens than a pack of conservative governors running around in circles, mostly ending up where their state had started from.

At your convention last year, 80% of the audience when asked if “you have ever been involved in politics before?” raised their hands to answer no. This ignorance is really making you guys look foolish. Tea Partiers and other conservatives should return to school, take civics and United States history. Perhaps you could make a new website called Government as Seen through Tea Party Tainted Glasses.

”It is an established maxim and moral that he who makes an assertion without knowing whether it is true or false is guilty of falsehood, and the accidental truth of the assertion does not justify or excuse him.”

-- Abraham Lincoln, chiding the editor of a Springfield, Illinois, newspaper

Sales Reps Invade our Doctor's Offices

2010-12-26T15:36:00.006-05:00

Denial is strong when we are compelled by accessibility to depend on one hospital. No one will admit to living near a bad hospital, or even a hospital with a problem – that would be cause for community wide fear and distrust. That is why your hospital will never get the full truth from the great majority of your patients.

On Wednesday, December 15th, between of 11:05 a.m. and 11:20 a.m., I witnessed 5 sales representatives exit the building through the lobby of Middlesex Primary Care in Essex while I sat nauseous waiting to be seen. The door kept opening, the freezing air kept blowing in. A sales person seemed to be crossing the threshold every couple of minutes.

I felt like a second priority in that office. I thought that if one of these sales people has been sitting with my doctor for even one minute that might have been mine, then I was being ripped off by big faceless unaccountable corporations at my doctor’s office. Corporations so deep in competition they have to send out armies of young pill pushers with gifts to sit waiting in lobby chairs intended for patients. Is my doctor capable of researching his own drugs? Can he not make the decision to prescribe a medication based on his own qualified opinion? If my doctor’s practice has been tainted by the influence of corporate sales representatives, I should be entitled to know.

This letter represents an opportunity for Middlesex Hospital to live up to its own published policy. From your own web page titled Standards of Business Ethics and Conduct: “It should be remembered that the appearance of a conflict of interest may be just as damaging to the system’s reputation as a real conflict, and the appearance is often difficult for the individuals involved to discern.”

Most importantly I want to trust my doctor. When he gives me a prescription order I want to know he is behind it with his full confidence. I want to trust that he is not giving me a particular drug because its maker supplied him with pens and clipboards and passed him (under the table) tickets to Hawaii. I would also like know that the health care professionals treating me are not a bunch of sell-outs.

Last year by general agreement, arranged by a private standards company, with no consequences, the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, not the people’s laws, issued an unenforceable edict that drug companies are no longer supposed to give influential gifts. But little has changed. Some pharmaceutical companies have ignored the new standards. And the rest of these companies have realized that a gift unseen is no gift at all, essentially fooling the public and hospital administrators.

I don’t bitch about something without having an answer to the problem. Here is a solution which can stop the conflict of interest, and the appearance of conflict of interest: Stop all daily sales representative traffic. Hold a monthly conference (like an indoor boat show) where sales representatives can swarm in with all their goodies like parachuters on D-day and have great access to the health care professionals of your hospital. Agree on one rule: for instance gifts to walk away with should be no larger than a football. Hospitals and health care products companies can collaborate to make this monthly event a great day. Convince the drug companies to foot the bill (it would really be in their interest). Lilly can set up a carousel for the children. Roche can hire a band. Glaxo Smith Kline can supply food, and etcetera. A fun day for all with unmatched corporate sales access that the patient does not have to see. Imagine the capitalism, United States corporations winning over clients because they have a better product than the other corporations. That sounds familiar.

Why Attempted Suicide Should be Legal

2010-12-25T21:39:00.040-05:00

“There is a certain a right by which we may deprive a man of life, but none by which we may deprive him of death.” – Nietzsche

"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." - Benjamin Franklin

“The right to choose one’s time and manner of death seems to me unassailable. The right to die is the last and greatest human freedom.” - Dr. Eustace Chesser

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” – Thomas Jefferson

WARNING: This article contains discussion of suicide and death. If you would normally avoid this topic, you should avoid this article.

Notice: The appearance of light hearted rhetoric and metaphor is to make this essay more compelling and less dark, and not to make light of a very serious issue.

Life is great! But for some of us prolonged and profound suffering of the physical or the mental type is reasonable cause to check-out early. Regardless of your state of mind, be it drunk or high or just very depressed, your decision to do with your body what you want is a natural human right that no one should be able to forcefully take away, not a laws happy government, and not a traveling pack of well intentioned professional do-gooders hell-bent on keeping miserable people alive. Our Supreme Court ruled in favor of this philosophy in Roe v. Wade, where the case was not just about a woman’s womb being liberated. It was decided that the fourth amendment right to privacy extends to the human body male or female and this right clearly towers over any collective desire for government to manipulate and compel a person’s sacrosanct body with laws. In Roe v. Wade the court was protecting natural human rights, which are the foundation and context for James Madison’s Bill of Rights of the Constitution of the United States of America, and Thomas Jefferson’s preamble to the Declaration of Independence, and John Locke’s The Rights of Man.

When ever I learn of my government interfering with someone’s body, I get a sickly feeling in my gut that we have all lost something very important, and we may never get it back. If this makes more of us feel sick or morally conflicted then we may stand a chance at redemption by history’s judges.

This writer takes a pro-choice position and my opinion and others who protect natural rights are up against millions of pro-lifers who see it as a no-brainer that potential quitters must be apprehended before they take the plunge. If only James Madison could have foreseen what would happen to natural rights, he would have added another wordy amendment to specify all natural rights for all citizens, especially for those who are too ignorant of natural rights to know when it’s time to stop fighting the concept of freedom and choice and stand up and fight for them.

For an example of the way society interrupts someone’s natural rights, let’s say you really wanted to bite the bullet. Before you choose the exit door from the theater of life, it is likely you will want to talk to another human for one last time, just so somebody can hear your cry of “good bye cruel world.” Before your forever decision, and unless you want your natural human rights violated, don’t call any government funded office of mental health. If you do call them and you tell them over the phone that you “are gonna do it.” That’s the psychology cavalry's cue to come charging out of the bat cave from a secret location in Middletown. They will locate your home by using reverse dialing, a process allowed to them by the pro-life phone company in cahoots. A collection of pro-lifers will show up at your home comprised of social workers, a psychiatrist, an ambulance standing by and two or three police cruisers. This team of idealistic storm trooper wanna-be heroes, who are genuinely certain they are doing the right thing, will trespass into your home if you don’t let them in. Then they’ll lock you up in a private hospital. An unaccountable and well hidden CEO of a corporation will then have more control over your body than you do! You will lose every civil right you ever enjoyed. The lock down area is as depressing as your thoughts, and at this point you might conclude that you were better off dead instead of signaling for the compassion squad. You might be in this mini gulag for up to three days before being transferred up stairs where it is slightly more comfortable. You’ll wear less than three ounces of thin cloth. With you in the lock-down area there may be heroin addicts and drunks coming down from the previous night’s partying, awake all night, talking, yelling, making demands of the nurses, and pacing around like gerbils in a cage. It can literally seem like a madhouse. Stripped of privacy and with no door, your sleeping area is monitored with video surveillance by a security guard.

Depending on the quality of your health insurance they may hold you for weeks in another quasi prison on the top floor. The past few nights during your stay at the hospital have actually made you appear more like a patient with a depressive mental health disease. While you are there you’ll meet with an on duty psychiatrist and you’ll very likely be labeled as having a mental disease. Secret: many psychiatrists will not let you sit in their offices and then walk out without a diagnosis. Show me one instance where a psychiatrist met with a potential client and said “you’re fine, go on get out of here.” If you have been crying at all in front of a mental health professional, and if you have been walking around looking very sad, the stand-by head shrinker will probably pull bipolar disorder out of the hat of popular diagnoses. And the doctor might not even ask you about the existence of hypo-manic episodes in your past, a major symptom of bipolar disorder. Bipolar disorder is an extreme mood swing disorder that affects 2.6% of US population. Middletown is a hot zone for the disorder, with thousands of bipolars defying statistics that indicate there should only be about 1250 sufferers within this community.

There is consensus in most of the mental health community that if you had wanted to kill yourself you must have a mental illness. It can’t be solid reasons anymore like the many known motivations that also crush the minds of sane people. Reasons like lost love, debt and money, career, addiction, sickness and pain, foreclosure, loneliness, loss, grieving, criminal suspect, crime victim, nasty divorce, a failed life, incarceration, a big zit and on and on. There is a reason these types of devastations will greatly upset us, that’s what the brain is supposed do! For the great majority, crisis is the motivating factor to initiate change for the better in daily life. If crisis level negative events don’t launch us into crisis, the brain that normally fights for you is not doing its job! Our complex society gives us enough reason to meet the embalmer without laying a mental health disorder on the sorrowful failed daisy pusher. There are whole lot of reasons to start shoveling, and not one of these is reason enough for a fairly new, trial and error, science like psychiatry to blame your circumstances and feelings on the health of your brain. The same brain that as of last week, brought you this far in life just fine. Having this new diagnosis will be a little shocking, confusing, and frightening and depressing. You will instantly feel the stigma you have always associated with mental disease, and that will also be very depressing. To top off the negatives from this experience, unless you’re an idiot your self-esteem will be lower than it has ever been in your lifetime. And you thought you were bumming three days ago. Welcome to a new bottom in your history.

With fear of your new disease with you every day, you then begin an era of hunting for pills in your medicine cabinet, physical and mental side effects, organ damage, ineffective medications, and contributing to sending your pharmacist’s daughter to an ivy-league college. All because you wanted to exercise your right to an ancient common practice considered necessary to be freely allowed by virtually every civilization and every great thinker before us. We have not made progress on this issue. We have stepped backward into a black hole with gravity so powerful it traps rights.

One lesson you will never forget from this hospital experience is to never tell anyone again about your suicidal ideation or plans. If you hesitate in your private plan and reach for the phone, you’ll be right back in the hole, you’ll still be alive, without rights and in even more emotional pain, and you may get committed for an even longer time than your last visit to the snake pit. After that experience on the funny farm it is far more likely that you will follow through with your next reach for mortality. This time without phone calls to anyone to share in your desperation.

Some pro-lifers feel they are especially justified in forcefully apprehending the mentally ill when they are threatening to swim with the fishes. It is as if they think the mentally ill are incapable of making their own decisions, as if like farm animals the poor bastards know not what they do, so the pro-lifers need to herd them in with compassionate force and place them in a guarded lock up safe from themselves. Most mentally ill people are functional and capable of making decisions bad or good just like anyone else. Mental illness does not mean a person is stupid. And stupidity does not mean that person will attempt suicide. If one day all citizens are allowed the right of privacy to their own body, the mentally ill should also have that right in the interest of their experiencing equality and nondiscrimination. The mentally ill are one classification of people that would have more reason to commit suicide than others. If we were totally serious about keeping mentally ill people safe, we should ban their right to drive cars – the most dangerous activity next to armed shoot-outs.

There must be a law which specifically allows teams of rights stompers and police to enter through the doors of private residences and lock up the occupants who have threatened to feed the worms, and have hurt no one! Right? It’s such an intrusion to the right of privacy and naturally granted freedoms that there just must be a law somewhere! How else can these mind police operate in our state, the Constitution state, legally? There is a statute in Connecticut banning assisted or doctor assisted suicide, which is really stupid and cruel. There are state funded teen suicide prevention operations throughout out our state. But if there is a written law in the state of Connecticut which actually outlaws attempted suicide, I can’t find it. It is possible the statute is hidden within Connecticut homicide laws. It is entirely possible that no politician has ever thought it necessary to write such a law. When asked if suicide is bad thing or good thing, of course every one of us will answer that “it’s a bad thing.” So why write a law when there is already a general consensus to stop suicide because a bunch of people don’t like it?

Don’t get me wrong readers! I feel in my heart that trying to fly is never the answer to any problem. Pulling your own drain plug sucks and is the ultimate act of selfishness. We are free to make mistakes in our own daily lives. Making the ultimate decision is usually a huge mistake. We should always be allowed to make mistakes, even permanent mistakes.

In an open and free environment around the issue of casket diving, rather than having jumper’s bloated bodies polluting our rivers, and their flattened heads staining our sidewalks, rather than leaving a sobbing wife who is in shock, to the job of cleaning her husband’s brain matter off the walls. There needs to be a facility where patrons facing their last free decision can have a safe and pleasant place to go to end their lives painlessly and non-violently, smoothly and cleanly, with music and nature surrounding them, and hopefully, in an enlightened time of acceptance, with loved ones in close attendance for final lights-out time. Want to see what this might look like? Check out the end of the prophetic movie Soylent Green with Charlton Heston and Edward G. Robinson. (Edward G. Robinson died shortly after making this final film. Coincidently his character committed controlled suicide in the film.)

It is hypothesized that there would be therapeutic value within a society that allows people to put on their cement shoes. When attempting suicide is an option, choosing life becomes a reaffirmation of living. Then every breath and every day they are still alive becomes a free choice. The recently enlightened ones, who then explore the big picture of their world may begin to take responsibility for the great many actions in their lives. One alive verses dead - day at a time.

"Suicide is a whispered word, inappropriate for polite company. Family and friends often pretend they do not hear the word's dread sound even when it is uttered. For suicide is a taboo subject that stigmatizes not only the victim but the survivors as well.” - Earl A. Gollman, Suicide

People in unbearable anguish in a progressive society that allows personal finality, and provides a controlled and more pleasant end, will be far more likely to talk to someone about their ideation and plans. Open dialog of any taboo or contentious or even a morbid issue has always proved beneficial for all. We’re all grownups; let’s not hide from suicide. Let’s face the practice with a new appreciation for the precious freedom it represents. Let’s remove the shame and stigma, and embarrassment that cause so many suicidal people to hide their intentions from friends, wives and husbands, family, and coworkers. How many thousands of widows and family members have used the exact words while sobbing “I don’t understand. He was fine yesterday!”

It sounds cold and wrong at first, but when attempting to protect natural human rights, the opinions of the populace are irrelevant. The opinions of the surviving family members of a high dive are also irrelevant. Preventing loved ones from feeling the intense and long lasting emotional pain of grieving for their loss, is still in no way reason enough to violate someone’s natural human rights. No natural human right should ever be subject to democracy or voting, or especially subject to popular consensus. I’m sure Madison and Jefferson would agree, with frowns of disgust at our behavior.

If I want to meet my maker in my home as a free man, I’ll just have to pretend I’m free before blast-off. And because of the existence of the last-dream-team, and the lock up unit, I will give no warning to anyone. I’ll build barricades at my doors, and set up bear traps and throw some banana peels around if someone comes to take away my right of personal conclusion. And I will be justified in doing so. Give me liberty and give me death! Like our forefathers, I will fight like hell on Earth to be able to die a free man. In a world of someday where natural rights are back in esteem as they should be, police will be responding to stop someone who is interfering with the precious natural human right to take that long walk off a short pier.

When it comes to making yourself cold hearted, the proper answers to the question of its allowance and acceptance are not yes or no. The answers are freedom or no freedom.

Thank you for your time!
Please leave commentary below.

Bless You All!

2010-12-25T20:45:00.007-05:00

I’m a Millionaire in the United States. And I’m proud that the number of my fellow millionaires grew by 16% last year to 7.8 million of us. Imagine, if my comrades and I held hands and walked from one side of this country to the other, we could crush everything in our path with just steel pipes and martinis in our hands. Cool huh? Even better, millionaire’s households who earned more than 5 million dollars a year increased by 17% to 980,000! Marvelous. There are enough of us millionaires for 423 of us to live in each town, city, and village in the United States. Hallelujah! These are truly golden times! After all, isn’t a good measure of the success of a nation its high numbers of affluent people? Even an expert on Fox news agrees with me on that.

I’m blessed by God to be rich. Sure, I was born in the United States of America, and I guess that helped me a little bit. And sure, to become really rich I moved my merkin factory overseas for the cheap labor. But I like to tell others that I moved my factory because of taxes, which passes the blame for the unemployment I left behind me onto the big bad government. Hah! Now that I have a lot of money I get this nagging feeling of injustice whenever I have to pay taxes. Now that I have a lot of money, like some biological compulsion, I want a whole lot more of it and I want to keep every dime I have while growing my wealth. Now that I have money I feel I have to horde it in banks overseas, just to sit on it and reduce my taxable income, so that one day my net worth will be bigger than the Jones’s, who live in the mega-yacht docked next to mine. That’s right; we millionaires keep the great majority of our money. We don’t circulate the great majority of our cash through society like the poor and middle class are compelled to do with every paycheck. Suckers!

Because of these feelings of injustice upon me by this government and the liberals, I feel the most comfortable with the Republican Party. The Republican Party realizes the evil of taxation and they attempt to reduce my share of taxes at every opportunity. They agree with me that reducing taxes actually increases revenue, isn’t that just common sense? The republicans and Fox News and I agree it’s true. They don’t make me feel guilty for having all the wealth that I have. They stick-up for my lifestyle. And they say the words “freedom” and “forefathers” a lot, so I can feel more patriotic and moral. They think like I do, that all those downtrodden common folk ought to pull themselves up by the bootstraps, after all that’s what I did (sort of). They seek to end government sanctioned dependence on big government programs like Medicare and Social Security and Medicaid. This great concern for the dependency problems of United States citizens is touching and typical of the compassion known to exist somewhere in the party. They’ll either freeze spending on the annual growth of those programs, or sneakily slowly choke the program’s income, causing the programs to be seen as failures. Brilliant! I love these guys!

Then there is the brilliance of my friend the personal tax attorney and my accountant. I manage to pay a lower rate in taxes than the great majority of people! And because I take in a high quantity of money I can tell the working class that I pay much more in taxes than they do. Most people are too stupid to ask about the percentage of my income I pay in taxes. Isn’t that great! Pinch me!

All hail the Republican Party!

*Families with a net worth of at least $1 million, excluding primary residences, rose to 7.8 million in 2009, an increase from 6.7 million a year earlier, according to a survey of high- net-worth U.S. households conducted by Spectrem Group who study markets for the affluent.

*http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=509183

The Manhattan Mosque Controversy

2010-08-22T12:10:00.004-04:00

Time and again popular desires of the masses conflict with the constitution. Recent polling revealed that more then 60% of the public are in favor of stopping the Muslim community center in downtown Manhattan. If there is any question that Americans can be very ignorant it is exemplified by this controversy. The plan for a new mosque and community center in downtown Manhattan must go forth.

There are many right-wing Muslim haters that see the plan for the new community center in downtown Manhattan as an insult to a somehow sacred ground because the mosque is two blocks away from ground zero. There is also a new angry right-wing out there, which includes the new Tea Party faction. This angry new faction claims to honor the Constitution and thinks that the current government doesn’t follow the guidelines set forth in the Constitution. “Obey the Constitution,” the Tea Partier’s signs read. The mosque controversy will be resolved soon, and it’s allowance by local government will leave a bad constitutional taste in the mouths of the Muslim haters.

The first amendment to the United States Constitution is the most important amendment of the ten amendments that make up the Bill of Rights. The two clauses in that amendment that speak to religion are as follows:

Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof . . "

This is widely interpreted to mean that no governmental body is allowed to fund or intermingle with religious entities or interfere in any way with the free practice of religion. The Manhattan mosque and community center must be allowed and must remain as a matter of Constitutional principle that honors with freedom our great country.

As for the Muslim haters, keep in mind with 1.7 billion worshipers Islam is the second most popular religion in the world. The 9-11 hijackers and all of those jihadist Muslims that share their violent philosophy represent, at the most, less than .05% of Muslims. Hating and fearing all Muslims due to 9-11 is like blaming all Christians for the actions of Timothy McVeigh, a devout Christian murderer who destroyed the Oklahoma City federal building, or Eric Robert Rudolph the Christian abortion clinic bomber and murderer.

Our ignorance as a nation never ceases to amaze me.

A Liberal’s View on the Differences Between Liberals and Conservatives

2010-04-01T15:40:00.004-04:00

I should state here that because I am a liberal it is difficult to examine the differences between liberals and conservatives without being biased against conservatism, and I apologize for this almost inescapable context.

There are distinct differences between conservatives and liberals. Most of the behavioral differences seem to be philosophical in origin. The causes of particular behavioral traits can only be speculated. Parenting, environment, emotional life events and perhaps even the organization of the brain can all be contributors in the differences between liberals and conservatives.

As neurology relates to behavior U.C.L.A. has provided some evidence resulting from studies using magnetic resonance imaging, in conjunction with imaging, to observe levels of emotional response in subjects. From a New York Times Magazine article, 2007:

" our most compassionate (or even cowardly) feelings are as much a product of the brain as ''rational choice'' economic theory is. They just emanate from a different part of the brain -- most notably, the amygdala, the almond-shaped body that lies below the neocortex, in an older brain region sometimes called the limbic system. Studies of stroke victims, as well as scans of normal brains, have persuasively shown that the amygdala plays a key role in the creation of emotions like fear or empathy. . . . as The Times reported not long ago, a team of U.C.L.A. researchers analyzed the neural activity of Republicans and Democrats as they viewed a series of images from campaign ads. And the early data suggested that the most salient predictor of a ''Democrat brain'' was amygdala activity responding to certain images of violence: either the Bush ads that featured shots of a smoldering ground zero or the famous ''Daisy'' ad from Lyndon B. Johnson's 1964 campaign that ends with a mushroom cloud. Such brain activity indicates a kind of gut response, operating below the level of conscious control.”

That the amygdala reacts with greater compassion and fear in those identifying themselves as liberals makes some sense when considering liberals are known to be concerned with elements of society that may harm the vulnerable. In addition to empathy, fear of those elements can create a healthy drive to change the harmful. In this editorial I will focus only on the evident philosophical differences that can almost predict the behavior that would arise from these two frequently opposing and distinct personality traits.

Conservatives and liberals have a lot in common. Both hold family of great importance. Both have faith. Both are patriotic and want what they feel is best for their country. Both see hypocrisy in much of the actions of the other. Both feel the other is morally corrupt and each blames the other for what is wrong in society. Many liberals and conservatives accept as literal fact what they are told is true, often due to biased and selective news presentations on both sides helping to cement dichotomous views of the world. Both tend to exaggerate numbers in their favor. Both experience righteous indignation and can be zealot on an issue.

A conservative tendency is to value one's self, more so than he or she values others. On reflection at end one’s life, a liberal will be most satisfied or not, with the way that he has treated others and his family in his life time, the good that he has done for other people. A conservative will be most satisfied, or not, with what he has done for himself and his family in his lifetime.

A conservative wears rose colored glasses to see the past, forgetting the negatives and imagining a past society of Norman Rockwell appearance, of traditional conservative values where Donna Reed is a good housewife and Marcus Welby is the family doctor, where kids are good and wars winnable, and centralized government plays a minor role in the order of society. A liberal is likely to view the past with red flags that remind of poverty, sickness, inequality, and businesses run amok without regulation or labor laws.

A conservative is less likely to have an open mind when facing something new or something changing when preconceived judgments take priority over critical thinking and general intellectual curiosity. A good example of this is the David comparison. Suppose a liberal and a conservative are viewing Michael Angelo’s statue of David at the same time. The liberal is more likely to be impressed and intellectually satisfied with the nearly perfect depiction of the male human body. Quickly drawing on past lessons of shame and humility the conservative is instantly embarrassed at the full nudity before his eyes and would chose to hide David from the eyes of children.

Their differing views on entitlement programs such as food stamps are stark. A conservative will say “teach a man to catch fish and he'll fish for a life time. Give a man fish and he'll never learn to fish on his own.” While a liberal would say “teach a man to fish, but show him where the fish are and give him fish when he is without.”

Conservatives believe in “trickle down economics,” the socio economic hypothesis that tax breaks for the few wealthy will cause unselfish generous spending that will fall upon the many poor and provide jobs and happiness. Whereas a liberal subscribes to “a rising tide lifts all boats.” That providing more economic advantages (lower taxation) for the less affluent citizens benefits all – lifting all boats. This redistribution of wealth is a major point of contention between conservatives and liberals. The conservative believes that a wealthy person deserves every dime they have. Where the liberal sees that the poor have to spend every dime they have to survive.

There are foreign policy differences. While both sides exhibit patriotic behavior the conservative position in the world is jingoistic, arrogant, and proud and the good ole’ U.S. of A can do no wrong. Extravagant spending on the military is unquestioned and given priority in every budget. We have a spiritual manifest destiny guiding our place in the world because God has blessed our country above others less well-off then we are. When we act militarily we were right to do so. The U.N. is a socialist plot toward one world government. Immigrants take our jobs and are changing our way of life and we should close the borders completely. The liberal takes a more humility garnished pathway to foreign policy, realizing that we are one of many nations, one no more deserving than the other. Though a liberal is not shy about funding the military, a liberal leader is more likely to dispatch our military to end suffering such as genocide, starvation, or to keep peace. A liberal sees the U.N. as what it is intended to be, a peace orientated democratic body providing a neutral ground for nations of the Earth to settle differences.

Conservatives and liberals have distinctly differing views of what is justice and how it is hindered or progressed. Liberals speak for the weak and oppressed and want change and justice, even at risk of chaos. Conservatives speak for institutions and traditions and want order even at cost to those at the bottom. A liberal would be more likely than a conservative to come to the defense of the prosecuted or incarcerated. A liberal might argue that the founders of the United States wanted to place great emphasis on protecting the innocent from the tyranny of bad criminal justice, including unlawful incarceration. Conservatives continue to place greater importance on prosecution and increased incarceration than on the defense of the prosecuted.

Of course there are large and many governmental differences between the two dichotomous and alike thinking groups. Many conservatives will claim to be in favor of smaller governmental size and less governmental control over society to promote liberty and the general welfare. Some conservatives go so far to suggest that the government should only be in charge of the defense of the nation. While a liberal would more likely be more optimistic about the abilities of the people through government to promote liberty and the general welfare by a necessary and lawful amount of intervention into society.

Do liberals and conservatives need each other like night needs day, like ying needs yang? Just like a force needs an opposing force to define it’s properties, liberals and conservatives need each other to define each other when each is judging and evaluating the other.

A "Fair Tax" is Flat on it's Face

2010-02-19T09:00:00.006-05:00

No matter your economic status when someone says the word “taxes” a few thoughts inevitably occur at the speed of light: “my money I’ll never see again,” followed by “it’s not fair” followed by “wouldn’t it be great if I could keep it all.”

Under current “Progressive” taxation, wealthier folks pay a greater percentage of their income to taxes (or a larger slice/fraction of their own pie) then the poor who pay a smaller slice of their pie and receive in turn the same level of government services. “Regressive” taxation works backwards from progressive taxation in that the poor pay the same slice of pie that the wealthy do, and the wealthy enjoy the same level of government services.

There has existed for more than a decade a proposal called the Fair Tax. It basically imagines a large “flat” sales tax on retail goods and services. The Fair Tax proposal says that instead of paying federal income taxes everyone should have to pay $23 out of every $100 at the state level, except (in progressive fashion) the poor, who earn less than or near the federally established poverty level, would get a monthly rebate which represents the personal value of their spending on needed goods.

The bait for support of the proposal is a plethora of goodies: it forecasts the elimination of all federal taxation, no more capital gains taxes, the end of tax shelters, closure of the IRS, a simple tax form, a repeal of the 16th amendment to the constitution. The proposal imagines that already in place state tax authorities would administer the Fair Tax. To emphasize simplicity one republican congressperson compared the size of a Fair Tax bill, which was initially 133 pages, to the 3 foot high stack of federal tax code currently in place which could be trashed under a Fair Tax.

Who favors the Fair Tax? The term "fair" is subjective, the name of the plan has been criticized as deceptive by liberals and claimed accurate by many conservatives. The proposal was first introduced in 1999 by Republicans, but the bill and several successive attempts have never made it out of committee. The newly organized right-wing group that call themselves the Tea Party favor the Fair Tax. Many of them listen to a conservative charismatic loud and sometimes obnoxious radio talk show host named Neil Boortz, who frequently touts the Fair Tax on the air nationwide, and has written a book called The Fair Tax Book. The website Fairtax.org states that the proposal has hundreds of thousands perhaps millions of supporters including less than 80 U.S. economists.

What is wrong with the Fair Tax? In a regressive manner struggling middle income families won’t have exemptions yet wont be wealthy either so their taxable slice of the pie will be the same as the wealthy. Even with the rebate exemption for the poor who are earning under or near the federally established poverty line, the question remains; is it fair that a middle income person pays the same slice of his or her pie as the wealthy person? The price of consumer goods will rise by 23%, the greatest rate of inflation ever known. This inflation will likely reduce the rate of national consumption. Luxury items will cost far more, motivating cheap-skate rich people to buy overseas and maybe even leave the country. State sales taxes will not be eliminated. The additional taxes can effectively raise the tax burden to 30% or more.

World wide, tax rules share one thing in common; they start out simple and end up complex. Exceptions are born slowly as new realizations of unfairness are discovered and brought to the attention of the governing bodies. Already the complexity of the Fair Tax proposal begins as exemptions pile-up. Beginning with the “prebate” for the poor. Then comes an exemption for families with children. Next, the middle income families feel cheated because they earn too much for monthly prebates and earn too little to be called wealthy. Next, since the Supreme Court now considers corporations persons, folks will begin to demand that they pay the Fair Tax as well. Then particular corporations will petition/lobby for tax exemptions, and get them.

They want to scrap the tax code, which is a very tempting piece of bait. But while they start over with a new tax system we all have to wait for them to learn their lesson and pile on exemptions to the point where our new tax system will look an awful lot like the old tax code.

One good way to think of the flat or “fair” tax is to realize that the same percentage to a rich person is not nearly as valuable as the same percentage to a poor or middle class person. Does that sound fair?

Medical Marijuana Dispenseries and Cafes Face Extraordinary Gauntlets of Regulations

2010-02-11T12:45:00.007-05:00

Ordinarily a governing body would not regulate out of existence a business which provides health care, but in the case of medical marijuana there are behind the times local governments that put up road blocks to this particular type of health care.

In 12 states compassionate medical marijuana laws have been accepted that are designed to lessen the suffering of the chronically ill. In 7 other states medical marijuana laws have been passed that are more conservative - prescriptions can be written only for “special circumstances,” for example in Connecticut for glaucoma and cancer only. But without dispensaries the medical marijuana laws are useless. To be as convenient as possible for the chronically ill, many of whom may be in wheelchairs, the dispensaries must exist in as many numbers and in as many locations as is possible just like any other type of business. But unfortunately once they have set-up, not-in-my-backyard politics take over to establish many hoops for these businesses to jump through. They face the old-fashion indignation of locals, town councils, mayors, selectmen and just about anyone afraid of what they see, “drugs” being distributed to seemingly regular people. The brisker the business, or the more numbers of these “storefronts” exist, the more likely a city or town is to clamp down with regulations designed to make them nearly impossible to stay in business.

Perhaps the best example of this NIMBY political politics takes place in the huge city of Los Angeles. Enacted in 1996, California was the first state to pass a medical marijuana allowance for the chronically ill. Then at one point in 2009 there were more medical marijuana dispensaries and “legal to smoke” cafes within the city limits (approximately 600) than McDonalds and Starbucks restaurants put together. This predominance of storefronts and cafes was enough to garner thousands of complaints over the years from city citizens. There were complaints ranging from the smell of marijuana lingering in the air around the cafes, to gripes about loitering, and the types of people loitering, in front of the store fronts and cafes. So the city began a campaign of creative regulations designed to shut down as many dispensaries as possible. The first creative set of regulations barred the existence of the dispensaries and cafes near public gathering places like churches and schools and day care centers. This regulation has forced the closing of some 500 of the dispensaries. Next the city enacted a requirement that made dispensaries get certifications from laboratories to measure the amount of pesticides in the product. This may turn-out to be the toughest regulation of all because no labs exist in California that are equipped to test marijuana for pesticides and the predicament remains that there is no safe established level of pesticide in marijuana to determine how much is too much.

The commercial growers of medicinal marijuana also face extraordinary regulations which directly hinder the amount of care they can provide. Rules such as limiting the number of patients that one “caregiver” can grow for, and limitations on the numbers of plants a caregiver can grow at once.

Medical marijuana users are harmless people. They seek only freedom and not fear to consume their medicine. They are people in our neighborhoods, most of them sitting at home, fighting with their pain, nausea, depression, or lack of appetite, and others who are out in the world struggling daily to continue to be active in our communities. Consider that overly discriminating regulations on marijuana related businesses only hurt these people who attempt to access, without fear of arrest, their choice of health care therapy.

The Mad Haters Tea Party

2010-02-10T12:15:00.005-05:00

When the simple folk rise up from political obscurity, be wary for they know not exactly what they want, but they do know what they hate. For the past couple of years the Tea Party out of the United States has been a confused and dissembled group of disenfranchised, disillusioned, economically frustrated, scared of change, narrowly informed, non critical thinking, religious and simplistic conservative bigots and very likely a smattering of racists.

In a measure of their naivety of complex issues and ignorance of how politics works, in a room of some 600 people at the recent Tea Party convention, nearly 80% raised their hands when asked if they “had never been into politics before.”

Mob: a large or disorderly crowd; especially one bent on riotous or destructive action.

The original tea party of 1773 were a mob of merchants and locals concerned with taxation by England without representation (or favor) of the local populace of the colonies. But it was not just tea taxes that upset the Massachusetts colonists; it was a build-up of tension brought about by the Stamp Act, the Townsend Acts, and the Boston massacre. The modern Tea Party is a mob made up of right-wing “pure” conservatives angry and hateful at taxation without representation (in Tea Party meaning: taxation without their support) and debt. But it is not just taxes and debt that upsets the modern day Tea Party, it is a build-up of tension brought about by years of watching liberalism and socialism take increasingly prominent positions in society. For an outlet of this tension the Tea Partiers have found scapegoats of programs and people with little ability to defend themselves within the media of the right-wing. Scapegoats like president Obama, government run anything (except for our military), infrastructure based earmarks by congresspersons, gun control laws, regulations of the “free market,” health care reform, welfare and entitlement programs, government overreach into the business of the states, same sex marriage, economic bailouts, abortion rights, RINOS (republican in name only), and religious restrictions by mandate of the U.S. constitution and it’s pesky separation of church and state.

“We believe in Limited Government, Free Speech, the 2nd Amendment, our Military, Secure Borders and our Country!” – Tea Party Nation web site

To the Tea Party “limited government” means that government should only protect us and keep us militarily secure from our enemies. They use a Thomas Jefferson quote to justify this ideal: “The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others,” (found on a Tea Party web site). Jefferson was speaking in generality of the purpose of United States government. “Injurious,” in this quotation does not only mean physical harm by a foreign military, but in all matters which could be injurious and in which government intervention, enforced through written law, can protect individuals from harm. Such government interventionist laws as making slavery illegal nationwide, workplace laws that protect the vitality and safety of the worker nationwide, civil rights laws that protect minorities and individuals from harm and unfair treatment nationwide, and business regulation which protects the populace from monopolization and unfair business practices across state borders.

“Free speech” in Tea Party nuance means that the religious should be able to express their faith through government entities like in a public school. Support for the 2nd amendment, means all gun control laws are unconstitutional (never mind that pesky Militia part). Support for the military is support for supreme United States power, empirical status and interventionism toward the favorite enemy of the moment. “Secure borders” is all about immigration, illegal and legal, and supporting English only in all government communications and in the schools especially. Their love of country is jingoism pure and simple (extreme chauvinism or nationalism marked especially by a belligerent foreign policy).

The movement and the members of the Tea Party were indeed born yesterday. But their ideas are as old and as wrong as conservatism itself. From Birthers to Gun Nuts to Pro Lifers, the Tea Partyers revel in their own justification of their conservative ideals. Despite the successful history of U.S. style liberalism they are certain they are right. They have even made their own media to further cement their right thinking ways. They now live in a bubble of right-wing media. A comfortable place for a Tea Partier to be
.
The world we live in is not black and white and unfortunately we do not vote by jelly beans in jars labeled with issues as the Tea Partiers might wish. We vote on a huge sundry of modern issues, some complex and some simple, using representative democracy in a republic. And unfortunately for the Tea Partiers we do not live by the literal words of the U.S. constitution, we have a Supreme Court which relates our modern day problems to solutions offered under constitutional foundation – that is clearly how the founders thought it should be.

On United States Socialism

2010-01-27T07:52:00.005-05:00

Afraid of socialism? It’s been here a long time. Somewhere between Capitalism and Communism lies the never fully achieved idea of Socialism. The United States is an experiment in combined socialism and capitalism, in a Republic using the tools provided through the practice of democracy.

In socialist fashion the citizens of the United States have collectively determined the need for publicly owned and operated entities such as the local police and fire departments, publicly owned and operated school systems, postal services, and even the military is socialist. All collectively created rules and regulations administered on businesses are socialist practices. All unions are practicing socialism. The shopping clubs are a socialist idea. Our collectively owned and maintained roads and highways are a socialist idea. Social Security is a socialist idea. Medicare and Medicaid is a socialist practice. Collective stock ownership is a socialist practice. So is progressive taxation because it strives toward equality in taxation.

A true conservative in the modern United States favors eliminating all rules and regulations on businesses, privatizing our school systems, tolling our roads and highways, enacting a flat tax system, fully privatizing medical delivery and leaving assistance to the poor entirely up to private charity. A true socialist democratic citizen is optimistic about our collective ability to solve problems after laissez-faire methods have failed; such is the case with health care reform and the rather socialist idea of a publicly owned and operated not-for-profit health insurance company.

Marijuana Users Relatively Harmless

2010-01-06T12:21:00.004-05:00

Marijuana use is a relatively harmless behavior. There is a lot of curiosity around the use of the weed marijuana. When asked what the high is like I will refer to a description in the National Academy of Sciences report of 1999, [p. 84]: “The most commonly reported effects of smoked marijuana are a sense of well-being or euphoria and increased talkativeness and laughter alternating with periods of introspective dreaminess followed by lethargy and sleepiness. A characteristic feature of a marijuana "high" is a distortion in the sense of time associated with deficits in short-term memory and learning. A marijuana smoker typically has a sense of enhanced physical and emotional sensitivity, including a feeling of greater interpersonal closeness. The most obvious behavioral abnormality displayed by someone under the influence of marijuana is difficulty in carrying on an intelligible conversation, perhaps because of an inability to remember what was just said even a few words earlier.”

The same report included a study polling the users of various popular substances. Of those who reported a dependence on the substance: Tobacco 32% Alcohol 15% Cocaine 17% Heroin 23% and only 9% of Marijuana users [p. 95] reported feelings and behaviors closely associated to substance dependence both of the psychological and physical type.

Is marijuana a gateway drug leading to more dangerous and more addictive substances? "It does not appear to be a gateway drug to the extent that it is the cause or even that it is the most significant predictor of serious drug abuse; that is, care must be taken not to attribute cause to association," [p. 101] and "There is no evidence that marijuana serves as a stepping stone on the basis of its particular physiological effect." [p. 99]

Infrequently and in deep contrast to alcohol related instances, there have been accidents with marijuana, usually performed by beginning users of the herb, such as a man who recently fell asleep in his car while in a McDonald’s drive-thru, or an occasional wrong way turn onto a one way street.

Incredibly, approximately 840,000 persons will be arrested for the possession of marijuana this year. Putting aside the many behaviors associated with the illegality of marijuana, is it really worth the trouble for our society to continue to prosecute these harmless people?

Related: Driving while stoned

Drug Testing and Privacy

2009-12-26T12:15:00.003-05:00

Copy and send this letter!

To the editor,

Employee drug testing is a civil liberties violation and a highly flawed practice. The U.S. Department of Labor has reported that 9% of current employees and 12% of job applicants test positive for illegal drug use. Given these numbers, and the fact that drug abuse is estimated to cost business $100 billion per year in lost profits, it is no wonder that many businesses react with knee-jerk simplicity by requiring drug testing.

The urine and blood in my body is sacrosanct, personal, and it is my choice and my business to do with it as I will. That choice and that privacy should not become a personal dilemma under pressure from an employer. This is the primary reason why I will never work for an employer who begins our relationship by testing my body for illegal drugs. There are several other reasons why employees, applicants, and employers should be against workplace drug testing.

Drug testing amounts to unequal treatment under the law. There are hundreds of thousands of employees hooked on pain killers and anti-anxiety medications. Are they compelled to an invasion of privacy and then discriminated against? No. What about alcoholics coming to work with a hangover every day? Are they tested and then discriminated against? No. Fairly distributed employee testing should include pharmaceutical addicts, alcoholics, the chronically fatigued, the emotionally unstable, the attention deficit sufferer, the dyslexic, the hyperactive, and the ill-tempered. Imagine the uncounted trillions of dollars of profit lost to these human flaws.

Human error in the lab, or the test's failure to distinguish between legal and illegal substances, can make even a small margin of error add up to a huge number of false positives. In 1992, an estimated 22 million tests were administered. If 5% yielded false positive results (a low estimate), 1.1 million people could have been fired, or denied jobs because of a mistake.

Drug testing can be abused in many ways. In 1988, the Washington, D.C. Police Department admitted it used urine samples collected from drug tests to screen female employees for pregnancy, without their knowledge or consent.

Drug testing is a slippery slope. If we all sit idly by while this widely-accepted invasion of privacy continues unchallenged, then the genetic traits of you and your family will become the next accepted form of invasion used to discriminate.

Stop the War on Marijuana!

2009-12-05T11:34:00.003-05:00

COPY AND SEND THIS LETTER!

To the editor,

If the government trusts us to use alcohol responsibly, it is ridiculous to assume that citizens are incapable of using marijuana responsibly. Marijuana poses nowhere near the health and welfare danger that goes with alcohol. Freedom from the tyranny of prohibition of this widely used product is desperately needed. Police agents at all levels trample on our Bill of Rights by conducting illegal car searches, phone and email taps, garbage scrounging, and door busting night raids upon harmless people.

According a study by Harvard economist Jeffery Miron, legalization could save 7.7 billion a year in enforcement savings, while producing 6.2 billion a year in tax revenues alone.

In 13 states further liberty is granted where the possession of marijuana is no longer criminalized. In a Gallup poll of 2005, 55% say possession of personal amounts of marijuana should not be criminal. In a Rasmussen poll, 51% say alcohol is more dangerous than marijuana while only 19% say the opposite. The American Medical Association has recently called for a new policy to review marijuana’s status as a Schedule I drug in the federal Controlled Substances Act.

In the end of prohibition millions taking anti-depressant and anti-anxiety medication may find that marijuana fulfills the need for these prescription drugs. Cancer patients, Glaucoma patients, and persons with chronic pain find marijuana to be an irreplaceable product. In many situations the calming effect of marijuana could prevent domestic violence. The psychoactive properties of marijuana can readily replace far more harmful substances.

Today hundreds to thousands of individuals will be arrested for possession of a personal amount of marijuana. Tonight, to relieve stress, at least a million Americans will sit on their couches and light-up a joint. Tomorrow they will return to work rested and ready to perform without a hangover or a physical addiction.

Doctors as Bean Counters

2009-06-17T14:30:00.005-04:00

Wouldn’t it be nice if doctors stood out of the way, let consumers shape health care reform, and take what they get? After all they are supposed to be serving us, the consumers, right? Not the other way around. And they are supposed to be healers, not social scientists or economists, or “bean counters,” as the President recently exclaimed.

It should go without saying that doctor’s and all health care provider’s care given, should remain the same in quality and quantity, and only be allowed to get better under any new health care reform. Democratically appointed boards or committees of health care representation should see to that, and I don’t doubt that’s what we’ll see when health care universality is complete.

“But we are speaking for our patients! That’s why we don’t want government run health care! For our patients!” Say the doctor’s opposed to change. Gibberish I say. The truth is a doctor in America knows that if he or she takes Medicare recipients, that there is a cap, or a “ceiling” on reimbursement that is far lower than what private insurance pays for its own customers. And that is the measure the doctor’s use to analogize a newer system created by government. And so they fear a money reduction. The answer to how much reimbursement lay somewhere in between. An average perhaps. That average would truly speak for the patients. And in only the interest of the patients, economists and social scientists, who should be the only one’s creating a universal health care system, would be speaking for the people – speaking only for the patients.

We want doctors to live above the average pay line, far above it. We want them to earn hundreds of thousands of dollars per year. We want them to have nice homes, multiple cars, country club memberships and exotic vacations. We don’t want doctors who earn millions. We don’t want them to grow used to mansions, limousines, second homes in foreign lands and luxury motor yachts and tax loopholes.

Understanding Evolution in Part

2007-12-13T15:16:00.001-05:00

Evolution theory (yes it’s a theory, which means it’s been tested and retested, and peer reviewed and peer accepted) states that all life on Earth arose from a circumstance of need for survival and need to proliferate.

Generally this change due to a need to proliferate, and synonymously to survive, is called “Natural Selection.” Natural as in: happened in nature, or happened with an effort of naturally cooperative materials, i.e. life forms, and energies. Selection as in: to chose and keep, to make one’s own, to incorporate a part or in whole an addition. “Natural selection,” is a process that is chief in understanding Darwin’s evolution.

The spiked and bristled weed grows in the forest. Insects leave it alone, unable to eat of it’s topsides due to the inhospitable climb to the top. The weed proliferates, its species surviving. Did God give it bristles? Preferring to save the pollen on top for the bees? No, a mutation occurred (like a third arm or a Siamese twin) that proved advantageous to the weed, proved necessary.

Creationists dismiss evolution’s merit due to the unlikely “chance of random events creating such complex structures in life!”

Very little about evolution is dependent upon a random “falling” or “bumping into” of one structure of life upon another. It’s not about random it’s about necessity.

A junkyard sits in the path of tornado velocity wind storms. The idiot who put the junkyard there is no where to be seen. Along comes the fierce winds and lifts every piece of metal up into the air, twists them all around, and drops it all on the ground where it originated. A pile of randomized, chaotic, junk is what’s left. Then imagine the winds come back five hundred times. Now we have something, not a Timex watch the size of a house, but a sturdy metallic windproof junk pile. Environment can cause life to form complex structures towards better survival and more procreation.

If we evolved from apes, then why are the apes still here? Simple, we didn’t evolve from them, we created an evolutionary branch. Most likely the branch is the result of many mutations which favored the species before it, but presupposed an advantage for the species ahead, us homo-sapiens.

If water is wet on the other side of this universe, which it very very likely is, then evolution is a process in place in millions of forms of evolution on the other side of the universe, and everywhere in the universe. In fact examination of stars and galaxies indicates that the entire universe is life form in an ongoing process of evolution. Praise be science and evolution!

Popularity, the President and Congress

2007-11-02T06:54:00.000-04:00

“Congress are a bunch of cowards! They need to get a spine! Hell man they’re up against a president with a %24 favorable rating and they can’t get anything done!”

If the popularity of the president, belonging to a party, was the main criterion for accomplishing passage of laws in congress, then the minority party might as well go home for the entire session. But that wouldn’t really work; the president would just veto everything he didn’t like, popular opinion and polls be dammed. In congress the minority may not be voting with the president per say, they just happen to feel similarly about an issue, like withdrawal from Iraq, or spending a sliver of our annual budget on additional health care insurance for kids.

That minority party voting has been enough to stall vital legislation. That voting causes the majority (the Democratic Party) to duck and rethink the session ahead of them. What rationally can be passed becomes the dogmatic prerogative for the Senate. So, what was a full steam ahead charge to stop the occupation, to get health care for kids, becomes a slow and gentle nudging of hold-out Senators to get their points of view changed.

The House of Representatives, the south side of the Capital Building, has voted pretty well in terms of listening to their constituents. But they don’t have to have %60 to get a bill off the floor and into the committee process. The Senate does have to achieve %60, which, even in sheer mathematical ideal is a strong majority. Are they cowards? I say not. The Senate is like a person bound with rope, hopping around the basement floor, trying to reach the stairway, unsuccessfully.

Trying to Understand Our Own Economy

2007-10-21T07:54:00.001-04:00

Fractions Thereof and Percentages are Understood

Another thing that must change for the sake of understanding and truthfulness is how we report income of the masses to the masses. Income must, from now on, be reported as percentages of everything relevant and everything being compared with income. Percentage relative to average personal earnings. Percentage of income from per capita persons in existence as earners. Percentages of comparisons, for example “2-1 or 66% of earners below $50,000.” Percentages are fractions and fractions are more easily understood by everyone and place our numbers in relative terms. By expressing our national economics in percentages and fractions, we allow for the less numerically practiced working Americans, to understand economy.

A great specific example of poor reporting on numbers that effect us all, is when we hear the common reporting of “the wage gap between the top 1% of earners verses the bottom 20% of earners is getting larger!” Few if any newspapers or television news reports will explain what this means. It means the bottom 20% is earning less and the top 1% is earning more (not the same . . more . . increasing). Why count these fractions of the population as first 1/5th and then 1/100th? Its easier to count the rich verses the lower middle class and poor, who are more elusive, sometimes don’t even file taxes (not enough income), so getting more participants in the polling of the lower middle class and poor means a more accurate result. The reporting of the “gap” getting larger means that upward mobility in America, a trait that few would disagree grows the middleclass and thus grows productivity and grows the nation in general, is faltering, worse . . . it could be said, actually causing our economy to move backwards.

Truth in Budget Reporting

Few realize that since Ronald Reagan was forced to make-up for his frivolous tax breaks for the upper class, the Social Security trust fund has been raided in budgets every year, save for a few during the Clinton administration. Wouldn’t it be nice to hear this number when the numbers of the annual budget were released, how much of the Social Security trust fun has been stolen (errr borrowed) from? Perhaps the added attention would bring added outrage from the voters?

The same type of reporting needs to be given to the state of Medicare and Medicaid. Two related programs suffering a hemorrhage from rising health care costs, treatment happy doctors, corrupt secondary providers, greedy health care accessories makers, and the programs take a bruising from an uncompassionate congress, which year after year (during republican reign), chose to cut the budgets. These cuts were seldom if not too quietly reported to the people. The people should know, loudly and widespread, when these programs are being cut and or changed in anyway significant.

Understanding our Wallets

For so many people, economics and mathematics are nasty words, to me grammar is a nasty word. Just explaining something mathematical involves negative terms like “ . . then you have to . . .” But television news could do a great job of helping Americans break through this negativity barrier, by using fractions and percentages only whenever possible, by using colorful graphics, funny graphics, memorable images. I know, asking the media to do the right thing is next to impossible if ratings can’t be proved before hand. But the media should consider that this is one of those new and fascinating shticks what’s novel presence alone might just get better ratings for any television news show or newspaper. Percentages, fractions thereof, graphics . . a more understanding population may lead to a congress that writes responsible budgets, and increases all around accountability in programs.

Taking Responsibility for the Bad Stuff in Society

2007-10-14T10:28:00.000-04:00

There is a visible distinction between some people who tend to feel responsible, or who feel a shared responsibility, for the world’s, the nation’s or their community’s bad stuff that happens. From gun violence, to global climate change, to endemic chronic diabetes and obesity, some people want to continue with their lives with no guilt and thusly no responsibility. Those who read my blog know; here comes another difference between Liberals and Conservatives opinion!

Those not feeling responsible tend to attack the determinations of the cause by the other side. Perhaps there is no better current example of this than the wordy battle over global climate change. The opposition to the very premise that global warming and its associated climate change is caused by mankind’s carbon and other gases output, likes to state that the “jury is still out (on man made global warming).” Although essentially 98% of all scientific, peer reviewed articles, having to do with the subject agree that global warming is a man made phenomena. It could very well be that the opposition does not want to take shared responsibility, does not want to share one inkling of guilt for having polluted all their lives.

Were those who deny responsibility punished too harshly as children? Developmental psychologist Erik Erickson may have something to say about this behavior using his classic theory. Operant Conditioning is a form of learning in which the consequences of behavior produce changes in the probability that the behavior will occur, and occur again given similarities in circumstance. Similarities like taking responsibility, sharing responsibility for what effects us all.

This same opposition doesn’t want take responsibility for obesity or diabetes. “Its their own damn fault, not mine!” But if their child’s high school has high fructose corn syrup soda machines in its cafeteria, that’s not their fault. “Hey other parents can tell their kids to stay away, that’s all, its that simple, its not my fault, sugar Nazis!”

Gun control is another clearly defined issue which separates those willing to take responsibility for all our behavior and all of our problem, and those who want to ignore their guilt, shun their responsibility and cast blame on a different causality. Tell a gun owner he should put trigger locks on his handguns at home and he’ll tell you “I teach my kids how to shoot, they are responsible with our guns, they don’t need trigger locks!” This brilliant response both takes away responsibility and places it firmly on the shoulders of his children and attacks the causality of gun violence in the home by suggesting that it is cause, somehow, by children who have not learned “gun safety,” from their parents (“gun safety” is the code for teaching your family how to shoot the shit out of a “target.”)

The gun owner, rather than agree to most sensible suggestions of control over firearms sales and shipping, will attack using a new root cause. A favorite target is the courts and law enforcement who don’t keep criminals locked up long enough, or don’t enact the death penalty with wild abandon to scare off the criminal element. Its as if the only answer that won’t cause their guilt, won’t cause them to have to share some responsibility is to do away with justice and law and order almost completely, or change it into some kind of draconian Dark Ages justice.

Examine where your (usually) conservative opposition gets his or her causality for problems, and their reasoning for solutions (or lack of), for opposing a fix, or ignoring a problem. Notice the words form a meaning that says “no responsibility for me, no guilt. Dammit Liberal I’m sleeping good tonight!”

Also read my earlier related article titled Cognitive Dissonance Around 9/11 Questions is Understandable.

Atheism on the Rise - Humanity Returns

2007-10-13T10:54:00.000-04:00

Its been about six thousand years but it looks like Atheism is making a comeback! Comfortable are the mainstream media in talking about it, showing, even mocking western religion. See for example the Comedy Central network, mocking and parodying western religions from Southpark to the Daily Show, from the perverts of the Catholic church to the wack-a-doodles of the Church of Scientology, no known religion is out of bounds anymore.

Sure too many are still in the closet, where with recent polls just about 2% answering they don’t believe in a god, to about 10% answering that they have no religion, to fully 40% admitting they don’t go to church. We’re secularizing as a society. Its got to be the result of thought, good long free-thought of the critical type, that’s bringing mankind back to the basic natural birth state of mind . . without belief.

But with non-thought catching on fast, i.e. under-funded and lightly numbered teaching institutions, the popularity of television and video games and gabbing on the cell phone, this process of progress is in danger. Schools must be invested in. Colleges made much more affordable.

Yes the process of progress. The religious reading this will say to themselves (probably right now!), “Progress? Being more atheist is progress? But how?” Before religion which very likely spawned from stories, which spawned from the creative arts that fossil findings have found to be approximately forty thousand years old, there was a-theology and non belief, known today to be “atheism.” It is with this clarity of mind, absent mythology and stories told to be possibly real, that mankind went forth fast, creating the wheel, harnessing the smelting of metals, organizing the hunt like never before.

So what you say? No god belief so what? It wasn’t just absence of a god belief that allowed mankind to excel, all of those thousands of years ago. It was an absence of ANY BELIEF AT ALL. Yes! No belief at all. An entirely possible state of mind which allows for thought of endless possibilities, with limitations instantly considered to be only challenges to be overcome. We humans of today are all touched by belief somehow. Even an atheist like myself once believed in Santa Clause and the Easter Bunny. Even those childish mythology’s clouded our judgments back then as children, as we threw temper-tantrums over our gifts, we failed to make gifts for our parents expecting Santa to bring them for us.

It may be another couple of thousand years before religion is wiped out. And this atheist makes no bones-about-it, I want religions wiped out on Earth. I would love to see an embrace of non-belief of all things requiring belief, all things un-seeable, un-testable. Because I love humanity. Pitiful and only sometimes humble, vulnerable, belief filled humanity. Aren’t the humans so cute!

Our Congress' Wuss Factor is Our Fault

2007-10-11T06:01:00.000-04:00

This democratic congress is finding it easy to be seen as soft on civil liberties, and by voting for militaristic measures and funding, finding it tough to be seen as soft on fighting terrorist acts. Many are complaining about this “wuss factor” seen in the democratic party’s elected representatives, and called so by an increasing number of their constituents. I know, we want to cast a schoolyard type blame, to imply some inherent trait in their characters, for their seeming inability to have a spine, but that is too easy an out for us who are seeking legitimate answers. But it is the constituents fault alone that our representatives have been voting as they have.

The fault for the democratic congress voting against civil liberties, like the expansion of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) extension bill of August, 2007, lies firmly with the people, with their knowledge, and with their willingness to communicate with their representatives. Consider it is easy to be soft on civil liberties because the constituency is relaxed on civil liberties. The people find the bill of rights too complex, too boring, too much nuance. The arguments for and against amendments in the Constitution are tedious, intellectual, and deep. Its no wonder the phones and fax machines don’t ring off the hook, from the people in the districts, save for a few dedicated civil libertarians and liberals screaming to save civil rights. Hence, it is easy to vote on the floor for measures which tip the scales out of balance from civil liberties to fighting terrorism and militarism.

In 1755 (Pennsylvania Assembly: Reply to the Governor, Tue, Nov 11, 1755), Franklin wrote: "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." This is likely a truism. However a key word here is “essential,” as in our basic needs for liberty, for freedom. Too many simple thinkers can not foresee them ever losing their essential freedoms, sure losing some liberties they can concede, but the basics, just not fathomable.

UNFINISHED sorry. It just got tedious.

Great Expectations to Get Out of Iraq

2007-08-16T08:39:00.000-04:00

Hypothetically, what would you say if a new political party took over congress, and within five months managed to pass a bipartisan bill that was signed by the president, that arranged for an end to the occupation of Iraq? Would you stomp your feet and whine that it “took too long?” Would you complain about the bills’ bi-partisan characteristics and its Republican party allowances, like leaving permanent bases behind? Maybe you would quietly acknowledge a job well done and say something like “now that’s representation!”

Whatever you said in the above hypothetical, the fact that it happened at all and so soon, would have been amazing. To expect that kind of expediency in the kind of complex situation that is the Iraq occupation would indeed be a great expectation. It would be a great expectation for our Congress, designed the way it has been, with two distinct houses and a then an executive branch that must sign off on everything completed. Our legislature moves slow the way its supposed to go.

The grassroots of the Democratic party as of late, would take the complaining route whether a successful bill to get out of Iraq was bi-partisan or not. Democrats are heard complaining because expression is the first step in getting something accomplished, especially something that has been out of one’s control per say. Democrats are also heard complaining because they know what to complain about, they are more likely to be informed in full than they other side, and that information comes in the form of nuanced understanding and not simplistic or shallow arguments.

No one said that invading and occupying a sovereign nation in the Middle East would be easy. More importantly, anyone who had a half decent mind for foreign policy would have said that getting out of such a situation(a quagmire) would be impossible to do satisfactorily.

Politically getting out is impossible to do without unilateral strong arming in congress and even that requires the physical presence of a veto proof majority.

Technically getting out is impossible to do without leaving the spoils of the illegal war behind. The empire thinkers in the Republican party won’t let us leave without an oil arrangement we can live with (like most of the oil for American corporations and a lock on pumping facilities). They won’t let us leave without allowing permanent military bases dotted throughout the sands of Iraq.

Democratic Party Wimps?

Lets recall how we got into this mess. Bush and his cronies fixed the intelligence around a goal of invading Iraq, i.e. yellow cake uranium, Colin Powell’s presentation of fictional threats to the U.N., Cheney on television scaring the bejeezus out of everyone.

To address the threat congress is offered up a Use of Force Resolution against Saddam Hussein. The Republican controlled congress, who wrote the bill, passed the bill. Most Democratic representatives voted against it in both houses. Keep in mind the intelligence was fixed, this fact was revealed by the release of the Downing Street Memos. So much so that intell privy to a certain few members of congress was also the “fixed” version of events and applied facts.

Asking of a representative today, who voted the resolution in 2003 “if you could, would you vote for the resolution again?” Might very well receive the response “yes I would.” Because the intelligence was fixed. If a congressperson believed what he or she saw then (what they were allowed to see), then they would have to believe it again today, they would have no choice.

The resolution provided for the use of force if there is either no cooperation from Saddam Hussein or if there is actual weapons stockpiles found. The resolution clearly stipulates that the United Nations is to be involved wholly in the endeavor to search for WMDs, with the U.S. attending and receiving votes from the U.N. Security Council, not once, but twice, after inspections, and again before force is used. Finally nearly a year of U.N. and U.S. monitored weapons inspectors combing the entire country looking for signs of weapons of mass destruction. With Saddam Hussein’s full cooperation, as testified to by the chief inspector. George W. Bush acted without the U.N. resolutions, violating international law already agreed upon. He violated the promise of congressional resolution. He used the U.N. and then violated the promises made to the member nations. He had lied to Congress at the State of the Union address a few months earlier. The war was now as illegal as it could get.

So now we’re in and finding it nearly impossible to get out and that should come as no surprise. My fellow liberals must lower their expectations to quell their emotions, but at the same time keep up the pressure on Congress.

Managed by the Media Makes Mediocrity into Melodrama

2007-08-13T10:22:00.000-04:00

By selectively reporting and obfuscating the truth our media outlets, newspapers and television, can pit one newsmaker against another without our even having knowledge of the manipulation. The motivation for doing so is powerful. The cause is competition driven, and it is necessary for the survival - of the most dishonest.

In a most recent example, as reported by Media Matters, two newspapers, USA Today, and the venerable New York Times, left out a vital piece of information, in an apparent action designed to fuel the fire to sell more papers.

“Summary: The New York Times and USA Today uncritically reported President Bush's attacks on Democrats over congressional investigations of Alberto Gonzales, but neither newspaper noted that criticism of Gonzales has been bipartisan: numerous Republicans have called for Gonzales' resignation, several have criticized the administration's lack of cooperation with congressional investigations, and senior Republican Judiciary Committee members have joined Democrats in voting to authorize subpoenas of Bush administration officials as part of investigations involving Gonzales.”

-Media Matters

In the case above, being critical of both sides would have been a fair and more balanced approach to journalism. But in so reporting one-sided, they butter one side of the bread, but they leave the knife out to butter the other at a later time. Because conflict is interesting for all and even exciting for some. A good fight is worth watching. A good highway car crash is worth rubber necking.

The following is another example of the news pitting one side against another. The example is close on the calendar to the above example to indicate the frequency of such selective news reporting. In the following example the author of the article in question had already printed the factual information, which is missing, a month earlier. But he then chose to not print it again when it may make the candidate look like a failure.

“In a July 31 article on possible Republican presidential candidate Fred Thompson's June fundraising totals, Washington Post staff writer Matthew Mosk reported that Thompson "will file the first accounting of his potential presidential campaign's fundraising activity with the Internal Revenue Service tomorrow, and the report will show that the enterprise raised between $3.1 million and $3.2 million in June, according to sources familiar with the Thompson operation." But the article failed to note that Thompson's fundraising haul falls short of a June goal of $5 million the Post itself reported at the time that the campaign had set.”

-Media Matters

The media in America has become so corporate and so conglomerated that the competition for viewers is now concentrated to dangerously small levels. For instance with just three cable and television news networks, this means one media owning group could take away %20-%33 from the other two via mistakes from the other side, or getting or creating a “scoop,” on their side.

For instance, FOX News has already cemented in its %33 of American viewers. Fox News is notorious for obfuscation and one sided reporting in favor of the Conservative political side of “understanding.” A University of Maryland study on media ethics recently found that fully 6/10ths of their viewers thought that Saddam Hussien was responsible for the 9/11 attack. As the Bush administration would like them to.

What do we do about this kind reporting and this kind of media corporate decision making that results in this kind of reporting? We hit our favorite reporters and News Directors with letters every time we see a one sided report. We call the studios. Be an old coot with nothing better to do. Don’t mind if stranger think you really are one. That’s what it takes. Get them thinking. Send emails constantly. If any legislation appears which restricts media conglomeration support it with calls and letters. Recruit a friend after explaining the seriousness of the situation. Use the Media Matters.Org web site to keep abreast of media wrongs and to find the contact information you’ll need to let those media outlets know you are watching them closely.

Hidden Shame and Outward Pride - The Southern Duplicity

2007-08-05T09:52:00.000-04:00

The deep south still has a color problem. But not entirely a problem of race but of flags. Where I live in south central Georgia the landscape is adorned with decorative Confederate flag license plates, flag decals, caps and t-shirts and actual flags of the Confederacy flying on poles in front yards. Its all on display like fans displaying the colors of a favorite sports team in a college town. Yet slavery guilt, civil war loser shame and cause of the civil war denial are also present to the observant.

I can’t discuss Southern pride or Southern shame without a discussion of the Confederate flag, what’s many controversies sum-up the issues surrounding Southern identity. Today the 20th century Confederate flag is but a modernization of several flags of the civil war era. The “stars and bars” or “Dixie” as some call it, is displayed for many reasons besides a longing for war with the Yankees – don’t disregard this yearning.

A general rebellion against the federal government is one reason to fly the Stars and Bars. A sense of free will is exerted in the direction of the north, where the federal government is located. “Don’t tell me what to do, northerners!”

During the recent referendum on the Georgia state flag, words flew high and mighty over the meaning of the flag, as fans of the confederacy fought hard to keep the Stars and Bars as part of the state flag. They won. But one interesting slogan touted to convince others of the banality of the request of having “Dixie” stay on the flag was “Its Heritage Not Hate.” It was a long and hard fought battle, the Antietum of popular referendums. It was also a telling battle. Because it is often what oppositions don’t say that says as much about background and motive as any outward statements and sloganeering.

The white supremacists groups will also fly the Stars and Bars as an outward defiant statement of racism, white power, and pro segregation.

Civil War re-enactors and other enthusiasts will tout the flag for authenticity and for heritage motives. The modern “Dixie” of today was the battle flag of the 1860s.

Heritage (and not necessarily hatred) is indeed another reason for flying the Stars and Bars. Heritage that is inherently connected to identity needed to overcome the status and power of the industrial, now high tech, north. The North; where everyone seems to live, where the majority of the welfare dollars originate for the recipients in the south. The North where television shows are focused upon as if the world is centered there. The North where beautiful women speak without “twang,” and have good posture and express themselves sexually, as seen on television. The Stars and Bars overcomes an identity ignored, enforces an identity lost to modern media, brings comfort to those all too aware of the disparity yet all too aware that they may never leave the south. Embrace the Stars and Bars and learn to love yourself Southern Man.

On the polar side of the merits of waving the Stars and Bars there is the shame, the prejudice, the hatred conveyed and or just perceived, the out-right slap in the face racism that some feel when seeing this symbol.

Civil War Shame

The shame is everywhere. It begins with Atlanta and the humiliation of Sherman’s conquer and occupation of that fair city. Still not forgotten in the sub conscience of the southerner. Then Sherman marched south and east burning, looting, killing, and raping, on orders from Washington D.C.. Tearing a path of humility and shame with him. Where were the men to protect those people? Gone, fighting somewhere else and dying by the tens of thousands while their wives and children suffered and lost everything life and material.

Meet the web site of the Dublin, Georgia chamber of commerce and the page titled The History of Dublin; an approximately 5,000 word article which mysteriously stops telling its own history at 1854. The Dublin historian writing this article chose not to tell that Dublin was smack in the middle of General Sherman’s reign of terror from Atlanta to Savannah, that the town was razed, that the young men of Dublin were no where to be found because they were off dying somewhere else.

A fascinating entry by the historian on the web page was a mention of the slave statistics of the immediate area (see below). Having left out the entire Civil War from her notations she saw fit to include the following.

From the History of Laurens County, Georgia, by Harriet Claxton:
”Slavery was a national institution, and although most of the people in Laurens County did not own slaves, they were loyal to the principle of slavery and resented any disrupting influences of the Abolitionists. In 1845, there were 3,258 whites and 2,760 slaves in the county."

The majority of white people did not own slaves. In fact more than %90 did not own slaves, they could not afford to. Slaves belonged to the wealthy mega acreage land owners who grew cotton, tobacco and corn, it is these few men who had everything to lose from abolition of slavery, and men like these who bankrolled the Civil War.

It was also these few men who distributed the propaganda needed to launch a Civil War, through the newspapers they owned. Not well known is that most white men in the north were not willing to fight a war to free slaves. Most northern men had never even seen a slave. In the south, because the great majority of white men did not own slaves, they were not willing to fight a war to keep slaves. Enter the rich white propaganda machine; “fight a war over taxes and tariffs!” The old battle cry of no taxation without representation would have fit well. It was enough to fool the masses and garnish the unlearned to arms to fight and die over slavery.

Yes the Civil War was fought over slavery. Southerners who are still sore losers and feel the guilt, and will concoct hypotheses, and will produce antique letters. But the truth of the matter is that if the issue of slavery were not there, nor would have been the Civil War.

Southern states have higher monetary needs than do the northern states, absorbed through federal government distribution via natural disaster relief, hurricanes and tornadoes, and via welfare and infrastructure needs like highway funds (larger states longer highways more bridges), and health care of the uninsured. In fact, if there is a welfare queen, she lives in the deep south or Texas. So the southerner should in fairness love the “union” part of the “United States.” But if one day the South were to secede from the North, their poverty would be unimaginable, while the North would benefit through release of burden.

The Rebel southerner loves the idea of the confederacy of 8 generations past, and at the same time takes shame in his ancestors having gotten their asses kicked by Yankees because their leadership of the time wanted to maintain slavery, and the right to secede to do so. As shown in the example of the Dublin, Georgia, history page on their web site, purposefully leaving off the Civil War and General Sherman’s “visit.”

Join the army and fight for our freedom, because freedom is not free. Take pride in knowing that you are fighting to keep America free. Simultaneously, while at home, fly a confederate flag and tout the merits of the South, as a Rebel would. This is the duplicity of the southern confederate patriot. Crossing the line from duplicity into hypocrisy is the war in Iraq and the large numbers of Southern Rebel enlisted men and women from southern states. The identity they tout is one of separation at home yet they fight overseas for democratic governance and a unified nation in the middle east.

For further reading, Kenneth Stampp's (1993 Lincoln Prize for lifetime achievement by the Civil War Institute at Gettysburg College) Causes of the Civil War..

Conservatives in Tupperware with Labels

2007-07-17T06:30:00.001-04:00

There is an old term in resurgence that

everyone who is a liberal needs to learn:
Authoritarian

Just as, I’m sure, conservatives sit around putting liberals into classification boxes, so do we liberals place them into little categorized Tupperware containers. The difference is that the liberals, i.e. myself included, will explain why a label fits on a particular Tupperware container and why a particular type of conservative fits inside so nicely. This willingness and ability to explain a nuance such as "why I have classified you this way,” is a trait far more common to liberals and intellectuals of the left than of the right.

Since the rise and folly and fall of the Reagan and Bush and Bush and Gingrich administrations a psychological theorem first written about nearly fifty years ago has seen a resurgence among those who dare to ask “why? What on this Earth makes a conservative?” The theorem is call Authoritarianism.

Main Entry: au·thor·i·tar·i·an
Pronunciation: o-"thär-&-'ter-E-&n, &-, -"thor-
Function: adjective
1 : of, relating to, or favoring blind submission to authority authoritarian parents>
2 : of, relating to, or favoring a concentration of power in a leader or an elite not constitutionally responsible to the people authoritarian regime>
- authoritarian noun
- au·thor·i·tar·i·an·ism /-E-&-"ni-z&m/ noun

This is the name of the part of the Tupperware warehouse that holds thirty-million containers categorized as American Conservatives. The theorem is widely accepted as true among the world psychologists, hence it is safe to call it a theorem.

From Wickopedia: “Right-wing Authoritarianism (RWA) is a psychological personality variable or "ideological attitude". It is defined as the convergence of three attitudinal clusters in an individual:”

Authoritarian submission — a high degree of submission to the authorities who are perceived to be established and legitimate in the society in which one lives. "It is good to have a strong authoritarian leader."

This behavior is best observed with the ear, by listening to American talk radio. Listen over a period of time so that you can realize that the authoritarians calling in to the radio talk shows are not changing their loyalties. No matter what happens. A recent poll determined that nearly %30 of Americans still “favor the job that “president” George W. Bush is doing,” despite wide spread acknowledgement that he will not only be the worse president in American history but the most tragic. The authoritarians will stretch the facts beyond belief and beyond reasonable assumption to excuse their beloved leader. Their authority, they very classification of the leaders that give them their own title.

Authoritarian aggression — a general aggressiveness, directed against various persons, that is perceived to be sanctioned by established authorities. "It is acceptable to be cruel to those who do not follow the rules."

For example the illegal immigrant condition: The many small and seemingly acceptable restrictions that anyone who is here without legal papers are faced with daily, become the evidence for the authoritarian that it is socially acceptable to shun the illegal, to further complain about them. “If the government is doing it, why can’t we?” Repercussions are likely to be small if anything. It’s a hateful comfort zone. In New Mexico, citizen militias have formed, from mainly white men without jobs, and stake-out regions of the Mexican border with rifles and other military equipment at hand.

Conventionalism — a high degree of adherence to the social conventions that are perceived to be endorsed by society and its established authorities. "Traditional ways are best."

As a simple example: Do you know someone who sings television commercial jingles? Who believes every bit of those pharmaceutical company adds in magazines and television? They do because they gladly, perhaps blissfully, accept the mainstream. But paying for advertising time is not legitimizing your product, but to the authoritarian its good enough.

Some studies have discovered that the Authoritarian usually always rises upwards within the Right Wing of political party. Thus the acronym: RWA, Right Wing Authoritarian. Below are some better details of the RWA. See if you can spot that angry uncle within these descriptions:

From Wickopedia

“1: Faulty reasoning — RWAs are more likely to:

Make many incorrect inferences from evidence.
Hold contradictory ideas that result from a cognitive attribute known as compartmentalized thinking.
Uncritically accept that many problems are ‘our most serious problem.’
Uncritically accept insufficient evidence that supports their beliefs.
Uncritically trust people who tell them what they want to hear.
Use many double standards in their thinking and judgments.

2: Hostility Toward Outgroups — RWAs are more likely to:

Weaken constitutional guarantees of liberty such as the Bill of Rights.
Severely punish ‘common’ criminals in a role-playing situation.
Admit they obtain personal pleasure from punishing such people.
Be prejudiced against racial, ethnic, nationalistic, and linguistic minorities.
Be hostile toward homosexuals.
Volunteer to help the government persecute almost anyone.
Be mean-spirited toward those who have made mistakes and suffered.

3: Profound Character Attributes — RWAs are more likely to:

Be dogmatic.
Be zealots.
Be hypocrites.
Be absolutists
Be bullies when they have power over others.
Help cause and inflame intergroup conflict.
Seek dominance over others by being competitive and destructive in situations requiring cooperation.

4: Blindness To One’s Own Failings And To The Failings Of Authority Figures Whom They Respect— RWAs are more likely to:

Believe they have no personal failings.
Avoid learning about their personal failings.
Be highly self-righteous.

(1) have a conservative economic philosophy; (2) believe in social dominance; (3) are ethnocentric; (4) are highly nationalistic; (5) oppose abortion; (6) support capital punishment; (7) oppose gun-control legislation; (8) say they value freedom but actually want to undermine the Bill of Rights; (9) do not value equality very highly and oppose measures to increase it; (10) are not likely to rise in the Democratic party, but do so among Republicans." (The Authoritarian Specter)”

”Altemeyer's own statement about this may be worth noting (from p. 239 of "Enemies of Freedom"): "right-wing authoritarians show little preference in general for any political party," and their prevalence in the Republican party reflects the long term effects of point (10) above.”

“Alfred Adler provided another perspective, linking the "will to power over others" as a central neurotic trait, usually emerging as aggressive over-compensation for felt and dreaded feelings of inferiority and insignificance. The authoritarian need to maintain control and prove superiority over others is rooted in a world view populated by enemies, empty of equality, empathy, and mutual benefit.”

Consider how easy it would be to turn your authoritarian mass into a fascist army of angry censor happy fundamentalists marching in lock-step shouting ugly stereotypes down the street left and right of them. Consider how easy it will be to feed them the language of the day, the faxed talking points, the television sound bites for first thing in the morning. Consider this and you are considering the end of a democracy, a bill of rights, the end of tolerance, of diversity, of equality and justice under the law.

If you are reading this and it totally reminds you of a conservative you know. Here is my suggestion: Teach him or her about him self. Teach them about authoritarianism, its history, and its narrow attributes. Don’t demean them. Teach them about it as if it were only a simple difference between you, not a flaw. Bring them around by helping them understand themselves.

Single Payer Health Care - FAQ

2007-06-30T11:27:00.000-04:00

Since monitory and other numerical figures vary by interest group whose sources vary by funding. Statistics and figures will be absent in the following FAQ. Instead the document will focus on the reasoned pro argument and con dispute.

Other countries that have socialized medicine have long waits for surgery and we do not. Why should we become like them?

Those other nations triage their patients in order of need so an average wait is going to be longer for elective knee surgery or rhinoplasty than for kidney transplant or appendicitis repair.

We don’t have to be like any other nation’s health care. Ours can be our own. The best of other nations’ health care systems and the creative new methods we are capable of, will make-up a new Single Payer Health Care system.

Why should my family and I pay for those who do not pay for their own health insurance? It doesn’t seem fair to me.

You already pay for their health care. Except that by the time those without insurance get to a doctor, or hospital, their ailments / diseases have progressed to their most expensive stages. Costing the taxpayers far more, easily surpassing funding enough to have bought them health insurance in the first place. So, the absence of coverage for the poor and middle class, who can’t afford premiums and deductibles, costs taxpayers a lot of money, billions.

What’s more fair to the taxpaying American, every single taxpayer paying for everyone’s health care at once, or allowing tens of millions of taxpayers (yes they all have jobs) without affordable health care access to enter the system upon charity conditions (taxpayer subsidies to hospitals) with their diseases advanced to a point of expensive post onset care? The latter is not fair.

What about fraud by doctors and hospitals and those equipment manufacturers and sales people?

Under and new SPHC system stopping fraud will have to be paramount. The ideology that we are all spending our own fortunes, our own hard earned dollars on each other will have to be understood widespread throughout the system, by patients who will be welcomed whistle blowers, by everyone from kitchen employees to the chief surgeon.

A new anti fraud division will be necessary. It must draw a balance between punishment and repercussions for just being investigated, so that those subject to investigation are not threatened should they be innocent.

Some of the types of fraud to watch for will be: over treatment (padding the bill) tough to prove, best discovered by the patient. Over billing for treatment (especially common now towards Medicare and Medicaid systems due to their absence of investigative funding). Equipment over billing and over production and over manufacturing: titanium wheel chairs are not necessary, carved / milled walking canes are a luxury and less sturdy than aluminum canes. Over medicating by physicians; doctors are susceptible to the influences of pharmaceutical company sales persons and their perks, i.e. vacations, flights, golf junkets. Doctors often pile-on medications to the point where side effects from one medication are masking the side effects of another, creating a dangerous situation for the patient. The alert patient is the best whistleblower for this type of fraud and abuse.

No one is going to want to be a doctor or nurse under this kind of strictly regulated and restricted environment?

If its strict and restrictive environments that doctors and nurses don’t like, they should leave now. Because, under the current system the greatest pain in the ass is the health insurance companies that determine if a procedure can be paid for – literally a faceless voice on the phone dictates to a nurse or doctor whether or not a healthful or lifesaving procedure can be performed. Some hospitals dedicate an entire floor or wing to desks of workers whose main job is to communicate with mega bureaucratic health insurance companies. Does that seem right?

Under a SPHC system the Administrative body or the SPHCA will allow any and all procedures deemed reasonable by the doctor in charge.

Quality should be rewarded with monitory bonuses and promotions to health care workers.

Under an SPHC system funding will be made available for health care professional higher education and even the building of new campuses dedicated to professional training in medicine.

Government sometimes seems to get things so wrong, I don’t trust it. Why would a SPHC system be any different than other government failures, with fraud, negligence and etcetera?

Democracy is the answer to the checks and balances needed to ensure that a SPHC system continues efficiently and without fraud. A hierarchy of councils which ends at the top in Washington D.C. at the SPHCA and a cabinet level appointed bipartisan committee members totaling 9 members (for instance – a tie breaking number of members i.e. the Supreme Court).

The SPHCA must be created via Constitutional Amendment. The main purpose of this would be to separate the funding from the U.S. Congress, which could be swayed by power shifts to functionally change the SPHC system by removal of funds. The second reason the SPHCA should birth via Constitutional Amendment is that the people should be behind it in unanimity. This will ensure an extended life of the program as generations will recall in memory why they created the SPHCA.

The accountability to the consumer should begin with democracy at the local level (as per Clinton Health Care Reform plan of 1995). A Health Care Regional Council District (HCRCD), several or more than one in each state depending on population and number of health care facilities, will be voted in by the local populace during each general election (every four years). This local council would review all consumer complaints. It would review all medical professional complaints. The council must contain a minority of medical professionals and a majority of non medical professional citizens, and this will require run off electioneering allowing election boards to chose second tier candidates to meet the mandate.

The spirit of competition does not have to die with SPHC. Consumer information plays a crucial role in maintaining and building the quality of a facility and its staff. Internet and mailing pamphlets must be prolific in each HCRCD ensuring citizen awareness and input. No citizen should have to be limited to receiving care in his or her own local HCRCD, this is the competitive edge maintained by the consumer/citizen. This edge raises and lowers the numerical value points of any given facility.

You must ask the question of yourself: Do I like democracy? Has America worked pretty well? What if I knew a full accounting of the quality and performance of the hospital in my local area? What if I never had to deal with a health insurance company again?

Visit SiCKOCure.org to learn more and become a part of the struggle for real universal health care.

Paris' Behavior is None of Our Business

2007-06-29T09:39:00.000-04:00

Be who you are Paris. I envy you. Be free; you’re in America. Do nothing with your life or do something great or find a place of accomplishment in-between. You have the privilege of opportunity unmatched by others except by a few on Earth and that also means opportunity to do nothing. Rescuing third world orphans or participating in a Hagen-Daz ice cream marathon on your couch every day is all your choice to make.

Do what you will, but harm no one. That’s a credo of Humanism and a damn good one for all of us to follow. Paris Hilton appears to be following that ethic, as far as I can see. She was caught driving a car drunk, twice, and needed to be reminded and that’s fine, and had to be punished, that’s the rules and that’s good. Still however she has hurt no one. She has no obligation to be anyone in particular besides herself, for anyone, no matter how wealthy she is, no matter what pedigree of privilege, so long as she harms no one.

Enter the pundits editorializing about who Paris should be, how she should act. Some pundits go as far as to suggest that she somehow owes society a different woman to be presented, that her position of wealth and celebrity dictates she have good behavior, be a role model, stay "on" whenever out. Bull. Says who? Would you tell a minority of color that he or she needs to be a role model, that he has to behave differently because of who he is and who he was on the day he was born? That’s counter to the spirit of freedom our founders had envisioned when writing the Bill of Rights. That all men are created equal. That the pursuit of happiness can only be accomplished by recognition of the individualism that is a man or woman in their own element, free, unhindered.

You go girl. Party on or volunteer. Whatever. Its your life and this writer remains jealous.

The Miracle Splurger

2007-06-26T11:04:00.000-04:00

Is anyone else sick of hearing everyone and their cousin proclaim an event to be a miracle? Like an individual surviving a tornado when the great majority of people near tornados do survive anyway. Like when a team of medical professionals uses a vast amount of science, compiled knowledge and costly technology to save someone’s life when those same procedures would not be used if they had a large failure rate anyway. In a more extreme example of misplaced miracles: many people are killed in a catastrophe, either natural or man made, and the survivors proclaim them selves to be recipients of “a miracle!” What about all those dead people? Part of “ . . God’s plan,” is a terribly easy excuse to justify misfortune of others within the boundaries of the beliefs we protect so dearly. Were the dead, victims of, an anti-miracle?

Would not a true miracle defy all reasonable natural law? If one person walks away from a plane crash that killed 200, that’s not miraculous, that’s fortunate timing and placement of his or her body within metal. Consider that it’s reasonable to expect that there may be at least one survivor. To a rescue worker on the scene the real amazing thing would be if no-one survived that plane crash. If you pull a slot machine lever 10,000 times to get the jackpot and still loose. Then some bum walks up to that same machine after you, pulls the lever once, hits the jackpot; was a god favoring him? No, he had the same exact odds of winning that you did. It was reasonable to expect that someone would win, sometime, or else the casino business would go under.

Get off it miracles splurgers. The world is predictable, reasonable, logical and best of all . . . the world is not supernatural.

How to Stop Urban Sprawl

2007-06-12T11:31:00.000-04:00

Urban sprawl is the condition of humankind and its associated ecological foot-print of asphalt, housing and pollution stomping all over nature as humankind itself requires more and more space. Urban sprawl usually occurs in concentric rings from a city center outward. Urban sprawl drives out wildlife, fauna, vistas. Trees which function to exchange oxygen are reduced numbers greatly, adding to the air pollution already increased exponentially by the presence of bio burning humans. In all urban sprawl situations, no matter how tough regulations, human waste usually finds its way to spill into waterways, lakes, oceans, underground aquifers. Nearly half of people reading this will be part of urban sprawl and relatively helpless to change their own role in urban sprawl, due to economics.

Stopping urban sprawl and shrinking the negative ecological foot-print is entirely possible. It will take first consensus and secondly courage. Consensus that all the ailments of urban sprawl exist and must be halted. Courage to vote in the majority for the changes needed to stop urban sprawl.

We must stop building outward to stop all urban sprawl. We must become a society of people living above one and other like stacked pancakes. We can begin in the suburbs where everyone dreams of owning their own home. Spacious, private, yours to do with what you will. We take that single family home concept and stack it. No more condominiums in the suburbs in which living is squeezed side by side with others in two bedroom compact “homes.” A nice alternative to the suburbia model would be to stack the 1500 – 2200 square feet, of a nice single family home, onto one and another five or ten high. A large community backyard fulfills the need to play in the grass, to stretch one’s legs, to lay in the sun and to have some trees.

We revitalize the age of the skyscraper as housing for the masses. Spiking the skies with glass towers that gleam and dance with the sunlight. The towers of housing will compete for grandeur and perfection, for efficiency and affordability. Thousands of individuals or a thousand more families can exist in one small ecological foot-print. Home Towers they might be called, with roof top airports, basement recreation centers, underground shopping malls, cities within cities that accommodate every need. No need to drive anywhere for the Home Tower dweller, no need for even a car. The Home Tower captures wind energy with propellers lining the exterior of the top 100 floors from all sides, it captures solar energy from a large array that encircles the rooftop and top 50 floors. The Home Tower is %98 off the grid.

Consensus must be reached that the change is necessary. Petition your government for a redress of grievances with phone calls and snail mail.

Courage must be achieved among our legislators that the wishes of the wealthy few must be overcome for the sake of the planet and of the people, its stewards.

Knows No Internalization of Costs

2007-06-08T12:37:00.000-04:00

The Health Care industry knows no internalization of costs. Rather, no internal company sacrifice to deduct from profits, like nearly all other businesses in the United States, save for the oil industry. Under U.S. style corporate regulation, basically, if you the consumer have to have it for life and lifestyle, then you can bet on it, they the corporation will pass every penny of every new cost on to you, nice. Where is the equilibrium between us and them? What balances out the vacuum machine that is these types of businesses sucking relentlessly on our precious dollars? The balance we dream of is non existent without controls by government, a.k.a. us, we the people.

Good capitalism places checks and out-right restrictions on industries. Why?

1. To ensure the continued growth of all industries by:

Curbing anti-competitive behavior by any one corporation.
Preventing monopolization of resources.
Enforcing ethical labor standards across industries.
Enforcing and ensuring a fair and equitable internalization of costs of businesses.

2. Ensuring that workers are able to provide for themselves.

Instituting a Living Wage nationally.
Providing a nationalized health plan for all.
Provide for workers accident compensation, Social Security, individual pensions.

In Venezuela the Chavez government has taken control of the oil industry and provided a methodology for all of the people to benefit from every dollar of proceeds. Because oil lies deep under the people’s ground, in pools stretching for tens of miles, it can not be measured to belong to one man or one corporation. This is the thinking for the people from the Chavez governments plan and it works just fine. In the united states, in the 1880s when this very condition was argued in court, the rich mining companies won because they already had the drilling equipment, the political clout, and the riches needed to get started exploiting the under-earth. They became the Robber Barrons and the inequity they wrought with their predatory and ex-ploitative, dis-compassionate behaviors, brought us into an era of widespread poverty unmatched in U.S. history.

Lots of good sounding ideas to solve our health care problem (too expensive, too inaccessible to the poor, too extravagant) have been tossed out. Most fail to meet permanence of solution, just curbing some costs for some time. A Republican politician recently proposed his ideas be enacted if he is elected: “We need to educate the people! People need to know about calories from fat, soda and red meats, damage from alcohol. We need to inform aggressively about the dangers of smoking and inactivity and the benefits of exercise. Why diabetes alone, if reduced, could save us a billion a year! I predict that our health care industry could save up to %10 per year if these aggressive instructional measures are enacted.” Ten percent? Is he nuts? This year alone the cost of health care in America will increase by %12-%16 over the year before. That has been the rate of rising expense since the late nineteen eighties. Remember: There is no internalization of costs in either the health care industry or big-oil, no absorbtion of unwanted expenses, everything can be passed on to someone. But, how is a %10 health education program supposed to begin to overcome that? It won’t. The politician is lost. He is paying lip service politically to the naive who may vote for him. But more importantly he is protecting an army of CEOs and lobbyists he has come to know during the course of his carrier.

How do we regulate the health care industry for the protection of the people and the continuation of healthy capitalism? We barely do now , that’s the problem, that’s why I write on this subject. Why not? Political solicitation of a caliber which exceeds by far any type of access you or I could get to our representatives. There are approximately 40,000 lobbyists in Washington D.C. waiting to pounce in front of your interests, to circumvent you for a purely corporate interest.

What to do about it all? Begin with absolute public financing of every campaign and no exceptions for the wealthy. Free Television advertisements, where a television station uses the publicly owned airwaves.

Everything else follows the accomplishment of public financing. All fixes. All reforms. National living wage. National Health Care, or Medicare for All, a National Pharmaceutical Association which belongs to the people. Tough controls on multiple ownership of media, of natural resources consuming industries, of overseas exploitation of cheap and child labor.

Visit SiCKOCure.org to learn more and become a part of the struggle for real universal health care.

He Has Become His Own Imagined Enemy

2007-05-29T13:11:00.001-04:00

I was pumping gas and leaning on the side my car as my wife sat cooling in the car, on a Friday evening around six o'clock. As I watched the numbers rolling by on the pump's gauge a mumbling and low voice occurred behind me, I glanced back over my shoulder. It was a man in his mid-fifties reading my bumper stickers. "Keep Church and State Separate," and "I'm Too Poor to Vote Republican," my chrome plated Darwin fish and "One Nation Undereducated," and the clencher, much smaller, on the lower right of the bumper "Attack Iraq? NO!"

"Figures!" He then said loudly enough for me to hear, "A commie, pinko, liberal, bunch of liberal crap!" He then huffed off to his truck. I stayed silent – trying to stay cool – and letting him be. But he wasn't through yet. He backed up his truck to within inches of my front bumper and then leaned out to see me while he added more angry diatribe from the comfort zone of his own front seat. "See that tag I got! See that license plate! "I got that in combat fighting for you to have the right to put that communist crap on your car! "Asshole! Pinko!"

I nodded for him to show him I acknowledged his Purple Heart that was displayed on his commemorative license plate that the state of Georgia was kind enough to make available. But I stayed silent and he finally drove off while the sound of words of disdain for me grew quieter has he left the parking lot.

Was he saying that he fought for my freedom, more specifically my freedom to political speech? I think he was. It was a reach, a long reach for reason, teetering on excuse for disagreeing with someone who is disagreeing with the status quo. Kind of like "Jesus died for your sins!" Essentially disagreeing with the wing of the status quo that had supported you – or said they had, seemed they had.

The gas station, mouth wielding vigilante was Vietnam age and I'll assume his Purple Heart comes from that theatre. A war based on a lie that accomplished nothing. What incredible disappointment it must be, the type that weighs like a brick in the chest, like a feeling of pressure on the brain, to return from that invasion and occupation considering yourself a patriot. A patriot so long as the mind stays closed, the brain stays shallow, and selective acceptance of news and of hear-say. Another veteran of that occupation might be a disdainful dissenter when the truth is known, having to deal with his anger, his reality. One man realizes he fought and was wounded in Vietnam for nothing and eventually is cool with the geo-political of it. The other is stubbornly insistent that he did something about communism, that the world is better off for what he did. He is sick of being the minority, so he may become a recluse, hiding himself and his family from the dissenters for the rest of his life. When faced with a dissenter and his bumper stickers, a button is pushed, a rage boils up, reality is hitting him the face, an affront to so much that he personally exalts about god and country.

For the veteran, in confronting the dissenter, with hostility and belligerence, in the gas station parking lot, he has violated the civil rights of the dissenter with the harmless bumper-stickers. He has become the freedom grabbing enemy he imagined he was fighting against. His own personal imagined enemy.

Living with Heat In . . .We May Have to . .

2007-04-11T10:25:00.000-04:00

There are billions of miles of black asphalt roadways on Earth, okay maybe 50 million miles. Would you believe 5 million? These roads of fossil fuel as tar and crushed rock both absorb the energy of light from the sun and retain and radiate that energy back upwards as heat, heating up our liveable lower atmosphere and that heat is also wasting a lot of energy as hot road beds, hot roadsides, and hot road kill. White Roads would make a significant difference if industrialized nations would just do it. But besides those evil roads, there are a lot of sources of heat where there wouldn’t not be if it were not for our human existence.

Problems in our control:

Urban Heat Islands, From the FY 2003 Report on NASA's Earth Science Enterprise (ESE): “NASA’s Solar Radiation and Climate Experiment (SORCE) was successfully launched in January 2003. SORCE is studying the Sun’s influence on Earth and will measure how the Sun affects the Earth’s ozone layer, atmospheric circulation, clouds, and oceans . . . . New evidence from NASA Earth observation systems and Earth science models reveals how urban areas, with their asphalt, buildings, and aerosols, are impacting local and possibly global climate processes . . .”
5 million cattle walking around eating and mooing, maintaining a temperature while outdoors (you try doing that naked!), farting methane gas, crapping pies in the fields that stay nice and warm for about a half hour – hey its just a guess. The gas does not break down in the atmosphere to be recycled as carbon dioxide and so contributes to the dense layer of “undigested” complex gases we call “greenhouse.”
Cars burning fossil fuels. Engine blocks reaching 300 degrees Fahrenheit on hot days or cold days. In America there are at least 2 motor vehicles registered for every driving aged person.
Household heat: Everything from water heaters which inefficiently leak heat, to boilers which throw at least %70 of their heat into a chimney flu and up, to black asphalt roofing tiles, black tar driveways, plumbing vents which channel hot water steam and its associated heat up and out the roofs of each home, and channel methane gas from the human occupants upward and out as well.
That darn NASA sending rockets into orbit all the time (it seems). Did you ever see the flames on those things? Man!

Benefits of White Road:

This is all a picture of a large footprint of impact on the planet, and the footprint can be made by one person in one day. But he might not eat a whole cow in one day, unless he’s American. He or she can reduce each part of this footprint, each day. And in many cases, the whole thing. Personally, I would prefer life in a jungle hut, with women, scratch that – one nice woman, and smoking dynamite weed, and having a very tiny ecological footprint.

But White Roads (WR) would be an excellent economic advancement. The scale of the projects in the industrialized world would employ, and re-employ tens of millions, much like the Eisenhower revitalization of the Roosevelt Highway initiative post World War II, had done for work starved veterans. Employment would be needed for the tire manufacturing as all new tires would have to be made of white rubber through and through as to not mark up the new roads. Motor oil would have to be clear or white to avoid those ugly stains.

For safety we’ll all realize that the roads should have been bright white to begin with. A WR would be more visible, as its sides, and its horizon image would jump out at a dreary driver, or a rain storm driver watching through windshield wipers. Exits two or three miles ahead would be visible to any driver with half a brain and eyeballs. Bumps absent of brightness would demarcate the center of every road. Gone are the expensive reflective ceramic roadway markers that have marked roads for so long, i.e. the Dobson’s Bumps of the California Transportation System.

Finally, not so much cooling. But an absence of intense heating via a product we can control and change by our own doing. Have you ever walked on a black-top barefoot? Hurts does it not? A normally 115 dg. road might be only 90 dg. midday.

From around the blogs on this subject:

At Half Baked.Com

“Ice also melts faster on black roads. Would white roads then require lots more rock salt, leading to faster car corrosion, big changes in local water chemistry, airborne pollution from rock salt manufacture/transport, &c.? Would the white roads themselves require more (or less) energy- intensive manufacturing and maintenance? How would they affect accident rates (daytime vs. night-time, of course)?”

“There's a stretch of I-40 in North Carolina that's very light gray with both black and white lane markings (black for day, white reflective for night). Kind of a prototype... croissant.”

“If we paint the roads white by using spray cans, does it all cancel out?”

“I'm voting against the idea because it's incredibly racist.”

“White roads would reflect light as light. Black roads reflect (re-emit) light as heat. (Infra red.) Greenhouse gases trap heat (IR), not light. White roads would cool Earth.”

“The light deflected off the planet would also make Earth quite a good space lighthouse when star-travel moves into full swing.”

“Black absorbs heat. Roads are black. Roads absorb heat. Lots of roads absorb lots of heat. Lots of roads criss-cross Earth.”

“White deflects heat. Roads are white. Roads deflect heat. Lots of roads deflect lots of heat. Lots of roads criss-cross Earth . . .”

“Also many people, more born every second. Hair scatters light--no good. Mandatory baldness, and heads painted white. Much better! Everyone squinting all the time. And writing in short sentences too.”

Impeachment is Just Alright With Me!

2007-01-30T10:53:00.000-05:00

"We need to impeach out of pure respect for the Constitution and the freedom loving pioneers that founded this Republic."

Impeachment is a process included in our Constitution, Articles of Confederation, that the founders of the USA expected us the use. They fully expected that the inevitable would happen, that a corrupt or indecent or dishonest president would fall out of favor with the congress . So impeachment was included and mentioned six times in the Constitution.

With no call from the people, congress would not impeach by themselves, as no automatic trigger exists to begin investigation towards impeachment. If it were not for the voice of the constituency, as is with all situations under the tool of democracy, no action would even begin. And so here in 2007 the people see an obvious condition in our White House and they cry out “impeach!” And the congress investigates to validate their desires. Oddly as it may seem to modern folk, the congress is not compelled in any way to hold investigative hearings into matters in any detail, into the crimes of nuance levels, or definitions of ways and means. Impeachment arguments for or against could very well be heard on the floor of the House of Representatives prior to votes or a single vote up or down.

Factually, the constitution included one obvious word what’s meaning has apparently grown weak in 220 years, but this word if enforced to its original intent would be enough to excuse most seemingly needed investigations. The word is: Honorable. It had one meaning: honesty. It referred to a man who can be trusted to never be dishonest. Who did not reach his station in life by any dishonest means. No dishonesty. No man who can not say he is honorable, was ever supposed to take a seat at the highest office of the executive branch in the United States.

Section 1; Oath of the President of the United States:

"I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."

To the letter: when George W. Bush refused to adopt already agreed up on treaties (each refusal to comply represents a constitutional violation), the Anti Ballistics Missile treaty, the Kyoto Protocols on reducing carbon emissions treaty, the UN brokered Land Mine treaty. When his office furthered violated the constitution (Separation clause of the 1st amendment) with the creation of the Office of Faith Based Initiatives, he become dishonorable and became perfectly eligible for impeachment by the U.S. House of Representatives. In a United States where its elected representatives follow the intent of the constitution, the Bush presidency would have been over by the spring of his first year. A more honorable man could then be designated president. Because reputation is honor, and honor reputation, a man with a standing and proud reputation of honor (never lying never deceiving) would be placed in office to carry out the term.

Several reasons allowable for impeachment are mentioned, giving congress wide girth in decision making and giving a sitting president a narrow passage of good behavior that only an honorable man could walk through.

Section 4 – Disqualification:

The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.

In a political pool of sharks and chum for a representative to come out and say aloud “impeach him!” Might be draping chum around one’s neck for those sharks. But who said congressional duty was supposed to be comfortable and easy? It is a once in a lifetime political public service position. A chance to be bold and brave in the face of career ending possibilities should be expected, and often looked forward to, if you are a servant of the people in the federal office of Congress.

Impeachment is the law. Some congresspersons are fearful of stating that their goals may very well be impeachment. Imagine a county or state prosecutor who will not tell the alleged, or his defense attorney, or the judge presiding, that he or she “doesn’t want to say whether or not his goal is conviction of the defendant.” Of course his goal is conviction, that’s his job. A jury will vote on whether he made is case for conviction. A congress will vote on whether a congress had made its own case for impeachment. Incidentally the Senate then conducts a trial on the Senate floor, complete with testimony. Its Okay to say conviction; its okay to say impeachment. The later term is merely a removal from a job, a trusted job that had required honorable service.

For the sake of history our Congress and Senate should investigate all dishonorable acts committed by this Presidency. For the fulfillment of a code of conduct spelled-out definitively in our Constitution that must be followed by every president, an impeachment proceeding should begin posthaste, and a trial, in the Senate, complete with testimony should follow immediately.

In Health Care Delivery: No Sustainable Place for Profits Above People

2007-01-26T10:17:00.000-05:00

“Universal Healthcare,” are words on the table of national discussion again. Thank goodness. But with the words so come the multitudes of idiots who wish to push an agenda related to the issues, but whose sincerity is absent, as can be measured by the amazing illogical methodology they propose. Like George Bush’s proposal of taxing more the businesses that already can afford to contribute to the health insurance costs of their employees. Moron!

So with the parade begun, George W. Bush begins the politician show at a hospital, gathered in a small conference room with a chosen few white coats, he spouted his illogical proposals that favored protecting the tax dollars of his base (the rich). The anxious doctors and nurses, probably compelled to sit there while their children are held by Secret Service agents in an undisclosed location, pointed their ears, noses, and throats at the idiot with the clearly defined Fetal Alcohol Syndrome eye sockets and beady little dishonest rapidly dodging eyeballs.

Why in the hell do we (the mainstream public) have the impression that health care professionals, i.e. doctors and nurses, diagnosticians and so on, are qualified to give us a worthy opinion on creating a social infrastructure change so vast as initiating a universal health care system? I spent five years in Nursing. I worked in the one of the most elaborate for profit hospitals on the West Coast. I have spent hundreds of hours getting to know other Nurses, aides, doctors, and administrative staff. Their knowledge of health care politics and what is needed, or what is not, is so vastly deficient it can only be compared to knowledge by a recluse in a trailer home somewhere of Hollywood celebrity comings and goings. Next time you see a politician standing in front of a bunch of white coats with stethoscopes, keep this fact in mind. . . they are not the experts in health care reform! Far from it! They have filled their studious minds with important knowledge, but for them to begin to study for a solution to our deficient health care system would result in vastly bias answers.

Who are the real experts? The mother and father who lost their child a decade or more ago due to an insurance company that refused to pay for a procedure, a test, a piece of equipment. Or their child is lost due to a hospital, or a surgical unit, that refused to begin the procedure without a guarantee of payment. That mother and father became experts on health care reform by little choice of their own. They studied with passion and determination to learn what went wrong, how to prevent it, how to permanently solve the problem for thousands of parents like them. The result of their study would result in bias too, but it would be the kind of bias we all would want, bias study that would result in solutions for all of us, doctors and nurses, politicians and tycoons.

If the republicans are going to take the health insurance issue and make it their own, you can bet that for profit insurance companies will be front and center in the plan, and capitation of services charges will be a taboo aspect that won’t even reach committee. The republicans will do anything to protect the cruel and capitalistic branch of human waste called the Insurance Company. States where for-profit h.m.o.’s have spread like a virus across the entire region, monopolizing all care but government funded clinics for the poor, will be protected by the republicans who will naturally decry “states rights!” Rather than allow a federal program to buy out facilities and infrastructure existing.

A new national health care plan must be fully socialized, treating all, disallowing the purchase of frills and extras or expedited service by the rich and impatient that live on the hill.

One of the first things that we the people need to get straight is some of the language. In the quest for a solution to the inadequate health services in our country, we must recognize the problem is money, not services, not technology, not research, not parking, not access other than the money. Money would solve all our health care problems. But not money alone. Money with caveats, and money with capitation, money that flows with ease and money that does not have to be seen or handled by the patient or patient’s family.

Instead of asking for “Universal healthcare.” We must be asking for Single Payer Healthcare. This describes the problem to be solved. The condition of favor (Universal Healthcare) is besides the point, a goal to aspire to, an ultimate status that may or may not ever happen. But “Single Payer . . “ describes the simplicity of the solution, and reminds us of the major problem of the past, i.e. multiple payers and multiple payees, cost sharing, employer contributions, and etcetera. The later, all conditions of confusion. A sticky web of payments and collection, that allowed the consumer to get caught, without ability to get free. With no middle man between you and your provider, there is but a “single payer,” needed to be your wallet, your health care bank. One organization to watch after, to be audited frequently, to report back to you, the citizenry. “A Single payer.”

Instead of a discussion of “Health Insurance,” i.e. what to do about it, how to pay for it, how to dispense it, who gets a cut of it, we must only discuss “Health Care.” That is the problem, not insurance. Insurance is a profit scam, not a solution towards better health. Insurance costs, it’s a general negative, it invokes concern in most, it invokes fear in others. Others who may be unable to pay for it, as 44 million Americans have been, or unable to pay for a proper amount to remain healthy, unable to receive a specific treatment because “Insurance,” says that you can not. “Health Care,” is what the entire reform movement is about and the insurance was one of the symptoms of the disease. Health care is what Americans only want, just good, care. Its affordability does not have to be a matter of concern for the great many citizens. Health Care is all that matters. The saying rings true in the quest for real reform: “If you’ve got your health, you’ve got everything.”

Expand Medicare to all U.S. citizens and foreign visitors. Outlaw the sale of health insurance by all insurance companies that are not the Medicare National Fund / the Peoples’ Insurance. Create an enforcement wing of Medicare to reign in over billing, over treatment, equipment scams, and pharmaceutical profit gouging.

Shift all for profit health insurance employees into the employment of the new expanded Medicare system. Any officer of a company or CEO who earned more than a reasonable amount of annual salary and or bonus on the backs of the sick and desperate, can hit the highway, and perhaps sell Amway. We won’t want their kind in a new inclusive people run system.

Visit SiCKOCure.org to learn more and become a part of the struggle for real universal health care.

Hang Em High Boys! Yee Hawww!

2006-12-30T16:33:00.000-05:00

1. Too bad not one of the charges against Saddamm included any of the several contacts and cooperative deals with the Reagan and Bush I administrations. Gee what a coincidence.

2. NYT: " In His Death, as in Life, Hussein Divides Iraq Sects 3:19 PM ET. When will the NYT be through hiring high school juniors to write Headlines? Saddam held the sects together within Iraq, to the point where after nearly 30 years of his dictatorial rule, many Sunnis were married and or doing business with Shites, and thinking nothing of it! Morons.

3. It was reported that Saddams face was severly bruised and bloody. What happened? Fell down some stairs accidently in front of a live video feed to the White House, accidently?

4. Worse case of Kangaroo court justice, seen on the international front, since ummmm I don't know. Speedy and vindictive selective justice is not Justice by any decent Western Republic definition. Shame on all concerned.

5 Hanging is a fairly humane death . . over fast, lights out instantaneously. Kind of merciful for all the talk from the vengence blowhards. Maybe they just don't know it. Death by NYC roach bites in a crowded tenement building would have been far more horrific.

6. You want punishment? Make Saddam sit in a 5x8 cell for 30 years to life. Living is largely pain by definition. Without entertainment of course. Well okay, let him play several video game titles: Operation Just Cause; Iraqi Invasion, Full Spectrum Warrior - Ten Hammers, lead a team of Seals through a fictional city in Iraq, death of civilians is frowned upon, but allowed.

Bill of Rights was First - Abused High Technology Came Later

2006-10-06T12:46:00.000-04:00

Angry parents who want to stop child predators on the internet would like to see a strict law against talk online that would indicate that one user is advancing sexually upon the other user, and assuming one of the users is an adult and the other is a minor. In other words they want to prevent crime by attacking crime’s premeditations, assuming they know what those premeditations were, or if those thoughts were going to become actions. It’s a lot of assumptions in this new idea of crime fighting on the Internet. It is the manifestation of the Thought Police that we all used to snicker about when pondering the future. The future is here.

Now that Republican politicians, at all levels of governing, have displayed a pattern of hunting and flirting with underage boys on the internet, we should take advantage of the up-swell of the voices of angry mothers and fathers to address the technology that brought us to this point and not cast blame on the right to free expression granted to us all by the U.S. Constitution’s Bill of Rights. Free expression of the type granted by the First Amendment came first and foremost to our country. This unique characteristic has allowed our country to grow thus far. It has kept our government in-check and our populace more satisfied, given their frequent and easy ability to express themselves.

There are so many among us who would take the easy way out of a technical problem. Easy as they see it to change, or violate the ideals of, the Constitution rather than attack a huge technically challenging problem. Such is the case with children on the Internet and the dangers they face from pedophiles, imagery, or disturbing and unhealthful ideology.

I defend the idea that was the United States of America as it was foreseen at the time of its creation. I do not defend its boundaries, or its wealth, or military power, or any particular culturally popular trend. I defend the Bill or Rights, particularly the first ten amendments, for they are almost entirely personal to you and I, they describe the limitations in our relationship with our government. For example as personal as an experience on the internet is, as the privacy that one expects when using the internet for communication, for expression, and for valued information transfer.

Four points of fact around this issue:

The Internet has allowed child predators access to a new tool. Nevertheless, be aware the old tools that were reliable to predators still remain; hanging at the ice-cream shop, bringing a cute dog to the playground and etc..
Child predators are harder to catch given the anonymity of the net. The predators are practiced at appearing to be peers.
Children on-line are easily fooled by false identity.
Children on-line are often unsupervised by an at-home adult. The home computer has become the new nanny to the television’s reign in that role.

Two ongoing programs to protect children using the Internet must receive serious attention from the federal government because the states would turn nearly any initiative to deal with a national endemic into a mish-mash of corruptible and escapable laws with no teeth. The first is information gathering: who, when, on what technology, where from, what times, what ages, at what frequency of use. The second is mandating identity proof for teenagers. Perhaps cards that unlock computer terminals, or keyboards, or modems, for all teenagers and children. The magnetic strip wallet sized card could contain the information and double as a photo id to protect the safety and use by the minor in many other functions.

The Social Security Administration is the appropriate management organization to be expanded to accept this role of security and identity and statistical information gathering. What organization is better to establish accurate birth dates? Who better to track identity cards than a management network that already issues SSI cards and assumes the role of fund management for nearly every US citizen.

Technological answers must be used to address to this technological problem. Answers such as:

Identification cards for all children. Swipe cards used at every keyboard. Cards should expire at age eighteen so that no adult could use them past the holder’s eighteenth birthday, nor could another minor use the card, if stolen or lost. Adult users could operate solely with passwords to unlock terminals at home or in public.
Corporate sponsors could offer earned gifts from stores and on-line shopping sites, adding points to ID cards, which should offer incentive to care for the card and to use it properly, by one’s self.
Every newly registering URL must belong to an adult. Every domain registration company must wait in compliance form identification to be verified. Every adult domain must have a “dot x” label, and ISP’s will be responsible for verification. Every commercial chat service or IM provider would have to save and deliver to each parent or guardian a full log of their minor’s conversations.
Restriction to supervised use of any computer, such as at a library, to any paroled or past sex offender, as a strict condition of release. If a parent or guardian chooses to only allow supervised online time, his or her password would be required within a timed period of the minor’s sign-in, or swipe through.
The ID card issued to the minor could have a tracer tag implanted within, rendering the card useless if tampered with. The “taggent,” could be vital in locating the child should he or she disappear.

If we allow perverts to force a change in our fundamental rights, rights which were paramount in beginning our nation, then we have become lazy, selfish, narrow minded fools. Our Bill of Rights is not just a set of protections against our government and a compilation of rights, it is a table of challenges through the ages to be met by the generations. Let’s not be the generation of soft sided pansies ready to fold at signs that cause us real fear.

When the parentally outraged are calmed down enough to think straight, without calling for everyone’s head (understandably), talk can proceed regarding a real solution which doesn’t affect our freedom, the freedom that existed long before cyber-stalking or other such internet behavior. Be ready however, for the hundreds of individual stories of little boys and girls who lost their freedom to perverts while “those ACLU types,” are fighting to protect the freedom of children who will grow to have rights and use them accordingly as adults.

A Republican With a Cause

2006-09-15T11:33:00.001-04:00

Iraq is far from what it appears to be to many Americans who still trust in Government, or even still trust in the status quo. The illegal invasion and occupation of that small and basically unarmed and boxed-in, patrolled by air and inspected over and over impoverished nation had nothing to do with protecting our safety, or protecting our freedom, or freeing those poor Iraqis, or liberating Iraqi women and bringing a western style democracy to a middle east Arab nation creating a domino effect of democratizing throughout the nation, or breaking up a relationship between Al Queda and Saddam Hussien. Invading this nation because it had weapons of mass destruction was especially not the reason, in fact we would not have invaded if Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. All bunk, all strongly evidenced to be bunk already by thousands of other documents besides this, especially by the now infamous Downing Street Memos.

A politician and his or her political planners will do nothing for just one reason. If they had nothing to do with their entire day, not even getting out of bed for the sake of being awake would be enough by itself to rise and face the day. Two or three beneficial reasons are usually the standard, and even better is three or four. The politicians of either party will practice their actions in this manner, but there is one party that takes the deceptive route consistently, because the motivations for their actions are usually unpalatable to the public. The debacle encircling a quagmire, wrapped in political deception that is the Iraq invasion and occupation is the ultimate example in our modern history of this often unrealized rule.

Often those needed to be brought into the fold to carry out said plan, will have goals they themselves need fulfilled as a condition for their participation, adding to the wish list (or “grab bag”) of causes required to conduct a scheme, or a conspiracy, a legislative action like an “earmark” into a budget bill and etcetera. A cadre becomes meshed together, most of its members without knowledge of the others, and deals are then made, hand offs, hand outs, pay-offs and favors, trades and reconciliation’s are set-up to be conducted in a web of actions traceable only by some super computer from a yet to be invented science fiction future.

Political Correctness has motivated the Republicans to go into stealth mode and pass legislation that hides their feelings and hides the intolerance of their own voting constituents, and the stereotypes they hold; the hatred of the lower classes who thanklessly milk the public dole. These past couple of decades this known obstacle has kept the Republican politician in-check, but only until he or she learned how to circle around that intimidating boulder that remains called Political Correctness Rock. Examples of the non “pc” type of goals of Republicans might be; expanded oil drilling, oil rights, destruction of protections either environmental, labor, or corporate legal, elimination of public programs including schools and Head Start, lunches, and food stamps, Medicaid and Veteran’s benefits. All terribly non-politically correct and publicly embarrassing to the point where many of their own favored voters would turn away from them, if they only knew the truth.

So to avoid these embarrassments and violations of Political Correctness, paying back the lumber companies becomes The Healthy Forests Initiative, and returning a campaign promise to the Coal industry becomes the Clear Skies Initiative, and covertly destroying public schools becomes No Child Left Behind, and shrinking-down the need for the funding of social welfare programs is introduced as Faith Based Initiatives.

With Iraq they had it in mind all along. Kill several birds with one stone and profit enormously while at it. The administration at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue are former oil company executives, former oil industry tycoons. VP Cheney (really the president) is still on the board at Halliburton/KBR. Rumsfeld was a Pharmaceutical Company (Searl) CEO, peddling his influence and arms directly to Saddam Hussien in 1983. Rice was a Chevron board member – and in a testimony to her relationship with them, they named a giant new tanker for her. Bush: his family's ties to the Bin Laden family (yes the same Bin Ladens) go way back to his failed days as a drunken stoner in Houston, collapsing companies and drilling dry holes. Former aero Industry executives from Lockheed Martin and Boeing, largely make-up the rest of the administration. Currently there is 8.8 billion in cash completely missing from Iraq supplements. Someone has this money and its disappearance has become history’s greatest theft in dollar amount. Who would have the ability, or the power, to seemingly ship this much money out of Iraq, being seen by many witnesses, using several trucks and laborers and likely a military airlift cargo plane? War profiteering is one of most dastardly and unpatriotic and traitorous actions a person can do to his or her country.

Iraq was about as un “pc,” as war gets and that is clearly why, it’s launching and delivery to the people of the United States was deceptive, was handled by a cadre, was mixed into a network of favoritism, payments and corporate pay outs. The president lied to congress about the validity of military intelligence. It was an unprovoked invasion. .

The United States Constitution requires that the president and the congress follow every treaty as “the law of the land.” All treaties ever signed by the United States regarding rules of war, including torture, detainment, field conduct, which weapons, civilian death, were violated in the course of this illegal occupation.

Article VI,

“This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any state to the Contrary notwithstanding.”

What the Republicans and the Administration of George
W. Bush, and their friends and colleagues, gained by invading and occupying Iraq:

· Control over Iraqi oil export amounts and rates of production. It doesn’t matter whether the oil flows fast or slow, large or small, just that the Americans, or the American companies have their hands on the pipelines and pumps. Preferably the oil flow is slow or hindered resulting in high gas prices via OPEC realized opportunities.

· Provide tens of thousands of for profit American jobs for corporations that’s for years have been known to, connected to, or having dealt with the administration officials and family. Out or work Iraqis are standing on the side of roads watching chubby Americans drive by them in trucks making good money while they experience %50 unemployment.

· Reap political benefits of being a war president at war. Enjoy all the political benefits of antiquated war time rhetorical phrases: Fighting for Our Freedom! Over There! While They Are Dying For Our Freedom! Support the Troops! Freedom Isn’t Free!

· Vengeance for 1993 Saudi Arabian attempted assassination of George W. Bush’s daughters, wife and mother and father. Bettering his father by invading and removing Saddam Hussien, as many said his father should have in 1991.

· Establishing permanent military presence throughout Iraq, to threaten and perhaps launch attacks on Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia in future years.

· An opportunity to practice long discussed hypotheses of slim and efficient mobile military supported by private mercenary armies.

· Instigate Armageddon as described in Revelations. As has been publicly divulged to be believed in by this president. Destabilize the entire mid east causing eventually a massive war over Israel which kills all Jews, at such time the U.S. can step in, kill off remaining Muslims and fill the Holy Land with pasty white Christians.

Other sources indicating War Profiteering by the Bush administration:

War Profiteering Iraq

In summary:

· No politician gets out of bed without a plan that accomplishes at least more than one goal.

· Both parties politicians do this but Republicans have to hide their goals completely, due to the non politically correct nature of their goals. “If their own voters only knew.”

· Iraq is our nation’s current prime example of this deceptiveness; with the gouging and thievery and corporate involvement in Iraq, the American occupation is the epitome of deceptive greed/goal motivated actions by a government’s politicians.

· The Iraq invasion and occupation violated the treaties of many conventions both brokered by the United Nations and by the International Red Cross at the Geneva Conferences. Constitutionally, treaties are the law of the land.

· There are numerous reasons for the Bush administration to have invaded and occupied Iraq, besides those told to the public. Including religious belief in End of Days scenario for which George W. Bush has said “God told him to preside over.”

Our Really F%#ked Up Health Care Delivery and Payment System

2006-09-10T18:12:00.000-04:00

Sorry the article below does not begin to describe the details of the illustration above. However, each line represents the taking or giving of services and or money to and from each of the entities shown. Each line represents the way we are dealing with the inevitable struggle of health care delivery and financing that every single American will have to deal with.

1860, Growing Town, U.S.A.:

George Common seeks opportunity, as he sits and thinks, nursing a jug of whiskey.

“Gee, as I look around town I see that about half of my fellow townspeople go into debt with old’ Doc Wilkins, every time they sick. Hmmm, how can I capitalize on this problem? How can I exploit this condition of depravity to my gain? I’ve got it! I’ll collect a pool, of sorts, of their money, like say One Hundred bucks per year! Since most of my fellow community members don’t get sick within a year, heck most of them go several years without anything going wrong, I’ll have more than enough to pay their medical bill to Doc Wilkins, take a good share for myself and expand the scam, err the business.”

Thus a new type of insurance company was born. Of course selling insurance was nothing new at this time, Lloyds of London was offering Casualty and Loss insurance already for centuries.

For all new business ventures there has to exist a need to fill, a condition to exploit. For success there also must exist; a disciplined and consistent methodology of profit which is too advantageously provocative to turn away from.

Medicine was primitive in the nineteenth century, but still leaps and bounds beyond the centuries past. Surgery had advanced, arterial manipulation had begun to save lives, the meaning of a fever had begun to be understood, and clean surgical method was being practiced. So people who visited the town doctor began to live beyond their diseases. Although the odds of their deaths were still greatly against them, it was getting better, and this made the sale of medical insurance financially feasible. Because a person might live, he she would live to see the debt acquired post medical treatment. In the urban centers the doctors were charging more where wealth existed, and when a contagion broke-out, it spread to many. For the doctors, charging the wealthy more allowed for a quasi compensated volunteerism towards the poor, who were afflicted with any number of air and blood born illnesses. Health insurance was not advantageous here in the cities of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, because the poor couldn’t pay anything, and the wealthy and middle class could easily afford to pay cash.

As the industrial revolution rose to fruition health insurance grew with it, but known as Sickness Insurance, which often shared its title with Disability Insurance, so that health treatment claims were directly related to the person’s inability to further work. This restriction meant the patient paid for any illness not related to work or ability to work further for his employer. This also meant that selling policies what’s adverse risks only came into play if the insured policy holders work was threatened, was clearly profitable.

The 1950s, and the nice doctor next-door your mother wanted you to be:

In the television 1950’s (not to be confused with reality in that decade) your town doctor might just live next door to you, sharing a driveway perhaps. You see Doctor J. Atomic when you get your mail, and you chat over the backyard fence. His car is a Chevy, just like yours. He and his wife are on the PTA, he did a term on the city council. His house is a three bedroom, just like yours, he borrows stuff from your garage, you and his wife play Bridge together on Thursday nights, a month ago you all got too drunk and a huge yelling fight ensued, causing the game to end early. But you all quickly forgave each other a few days later. Doctor Atomic charges Twenty dollars an hour for office visits, and he doesn’t care if you have insurance or not. Sure, it’s nice to have a patient with insurance, but most folks in town pay any debt they have to him anyway. After all, it’s not a large town, and he’s so nice, so relaxed, and you guessed it: he looks amazingly like actor Robert Young, circa 1954.

2006:

Doctor J. Modern is not that doctor of nearly fifty years ago. He doesn’t live next door anymore. Not really. You know he or she is in “that” house. But that house is now two hundred yards away. The lawn has an iron fence and a gate with security cameras. He drives a BMW with its windows so dark you can’t even see him. His kids are shuffled off to a private school somewhere on the outside of town. You know someone who goes to him, at a privately owned clinic on the fifth floor of a mirrored glass cube of a ten story building in an office park. Doctor J. Modern is a General Practitioner – that’s what the “sees generally all ailments” doctors are called now. It takes about two months to get an appointment with him and folks in town will leave their own grandmothers hanging-out on a street corner to make that appointment on time. He golf’s as much as he can but you can’t golf with him because the country club he goes to is $12,000 per year.

New Costs:

Consumers are demanding their insurance companies meet more of these ever increasing costs. Competition between the insurance companies is but a moot concept, as premium prices, deductibles, and issued claim amounts vary only in the names and amount dispersals. Insurance industry conventions and secret meetings in the Bahamas between the top executives, “insure,” that premiums are nearly identical, that pay-outs are chocked-off through the use of numerous excuses, by using billions of dollars to employ thousands of lawyers to fight legitimate claims in courts, and the use of very fine print in initial contracts. Television and magazine advertising show middle aged wives and mothers looking into the camera, with an almost tear in their eyes and saying, “I don’t know what we would have done without Nationwide Premium Health, they really were there for my family when we needed them.” Stoking the fire of fear in the consumer public the insurance industry makes uses of the greatest known propaganda tactic to “insure,” their ever lasting survival.

Enter Medicare, 1965:

The insurance industry was just beginning to realize the incredible potential of selling health insurance as more and more citizens annually had been buying insurance. Better, having health insurance provided as a “benefit,” through one’s employer was bringing millions into the fold of the insurance industry. But the decades long debate over covering the poor and indigent and seniors with government subsidized health insurance had won out in favor of a new program called Medicare. Signed into law on June, 30th, 1965, as part of President Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society initiatives. The corporate lobbying by Health Insurance providers that went into trying to stop this legislation was probably the beginning of non-war related corporate lobbying as it is known today. In 1972 the program was extended to include the disabled of any age, and those using the Social Security Income program for household income. Practically overnight the nation insured 30 million seniors and disabled citizens. At the time the premium for Part B Medicare, office visits, hospital stays and etc., was $3 per month. No longer did little old ladies have to eat cat food so they could afford to pay an insurance company valued at $200 million, $25-100 per month for coverage. In the 1970s Health Maintenance Organizations began cropping up, often formed by groups of doctors, or private investors seeking their piece of the health care pie. Soon, Medicare became available to these HMOs. Health Insurance premiums rose like an Apollo launching during the late 1970s-1980s, it seemed that Medicare was just too good to allow those insurance companies their “sky is the limit,” growth.

Medicare and the Provider’s Nightmare:

For the hospital managing to stay solvent financially is all they want to do. For Dr. J. Modern, its different, because his family and house is an expensive lifestyle he is not willing to reduce, he wants to be rich enough to be able to quit the practice when ever he wants.

Now, in 2006, a lot of providers have started to refuse to accept Medicare patients. Since its inception, out payments to providers have been gradually cut almost every year. Payments to providers have reached a point where from the viewpoint of the professional provider almost any private insurance is far better than Medicare. An entire segment of our Congress has hated Medicare since its beginnings. They despised the whole socialist sounding dogma of President Johnson’s Great Society. We may never know but it appears as if the Republicans wanted a nation of haves and have nots. The have nots working and stagnating without upward mobility, always serving the haves. The conservatives strongly feel that getting sick and using medical care should cost a person money, his or her own money, not hand-outs. So attack Medicare and Medicaid they did. Taking little nibbles year after year like small carnivorous fish in a creek that Americans have to walk through. Often the cuts were concessions with the other side of the congressional isle, deals, back rubbing. One can be assured that insurance company lobbying, fighting to reduce the effectiveness of their greatest competitor, had a lot to do with those budget cutting decisions.

Even though Medicare has kept itself solvent year after year, with solvency forecast between four and twenty eight years throughout its history. It was cast as a failure by the Republicans. They broadcast complaints from sought after individual stories, of little old ladies being denied services having resulted from the very programs Medicare was forced to cut back on, due to their ruthless budgeting priorities. Oddly the complaint that most galvanized public discord to agree with the Republicans was the stories of the long waits on the telephone, just to ask a question.

Private insurance monthly premiums increased two and three fold, just within the 1980s. The excuse from the insurance companies was those blasted diagnostic tests. Yes they were expensive. But that never explains the increasing profits of the insurance companies. After all, if preventing a monetary loss while still providing the quality insurance services that their customers expected, had been their goal all along. They could never have gone public and sold shares, their offices would not be skyscrapers, their executive bonuses would not be among the highest in the world.

Recipients responsibility for Medicare Part B, was now $85 per month mid 2006. Wages and or Social Security incomes from Medicare recipients never did catch-up to this type of cost increase. The only group of individuals who may have seen an increase of 28 times their original rate of pay, might be the insurance company executives.

Behind the office park where Dr. Modern’s office is located (along with the offices of fifty other doctors and medical specialists) is the hospital. The facility was built in the early 1980’s at a cost of around $42 million. In today’s costs of construction and medical equipment, including all the latest diagnostic equipment, computers, monitors, cameras and etc, that same capacity hospital would cost more than $200 million. A new hospital would never pay for itself at that start-up cost. That cost would have to be passed on to the consumer in any way possible, often desperately. The existing hospital built twenty five years back, has not escaped the inflation of medical costs, it had to upgrade everything just like all the other health care providers and hospitals. Additionally the nations’ pharmacopoeia has grown by thousands of percent just since the early 1980s.

Hospital managers are under constant pressure to find the money. The Health Care Financing Administration in Washington D.C., which manages the Medicare financing and reports to the public, has had to cut way back on services, on which specific types of illnesses and hospital stays it would pay what percentage for. Cut backs are directly in proportion to the budget reductions from the U.S. Congress. Sadly the politicians get away with it with dirty public relations tricks. The most common is the annual budget increase, but not enough to meet the increase in annual patient needs, including the one million or so new patients added to the population, just from being born each year. This allows the President and Congressional conservatives (who hate government) to proclaim they have increased Medicare spending. To the applause of little old Republican ladies in the audience.

In the late 1980s and reaching the height of popularity by 2000 was the Medicare over-treatment and thus over-billing. This could be done in the wide open. Medicare had reached a point where its merit in terms of dollars paid, far surpassed by private insurance companies. Smiling Nurses who are on the front line of the arrangement are oblivious to what they are allowing. After all, it’s the doctor’s orders and it’s not their call. So, a seventy-two year old man with a peptic ulcer spends four nights in a private hospital room. He is prescribed a fancy new pharmaceutical, which comes from the hospital’s own pharmacy and is priced at $18 per capsule. It’s the same pill the Canadian’s are getting from the same manufacturer for just $2 per capsule. The Nurses document his recovery, from a crying and wincing dependant old man, to an upright in bed, watching television, laughing and pinching a Nurses rear-end. All within 18 hours of his arrival. He was ready to go home then. But the doctor ordered Magnetic Resonance Imaging of his esophagus, causing a wait delay, then the diagnostician’s delay. This type of testing, and delaying has allowed the hospital to bill his Medicare over $10,000 for the four day stay. But modern Medicare, after all the years of cuts, is only going to pay $8,000. A private insurance company would have paid all of this amount, but it also would have utilized %17-%28 of its income from customer premiums to process, and delay, and argue costs, and short shrift any provider it can. Amounts and percentages are all relevant in a system that allows the give and take of funding for services, unchecked, with sky is the limit boundaries.

Medicare used to have enough fraud inspectors to police the system in an adequate manner. Now there are less than 100 inspectors for approximately 3000 hospitals, a hundred thousand doctors, and so on. Getting away with bilking Medicare is almost a sure thing. Medical supply companies have seen exponential growth since lobbying efforts have won them the ability to charge Medicare for all kinds of previously prohibited equipment. Motorized wheelchairs are selling like dairy milk as those companies are now advertising full Medicare financing. Obese people who develop extreme lower back pain are getting doctors to sign off on legitimate claims of disease rather than BBQ ribs, so they can travel from the bed to the recliner to watch television.

Medicare had not failed. The idea of Medicare, and Medicaid, has not failed. What has failed is our representatives ability to protect Medicare from those who despise its very ideology. Our representatives have also failed to protect Medicare from the fraud that followed this nibbling at the ankles destruction of the program. The only type of laws our entire country seems to respect is those delineated in the United States Constitution. Therefore knowing what we would do to a new health care program, I suggest we write any new Universal Healthcare, into the Bill of Rights as an Amendment. Violating that amendment with fraud or insufficient funding, would be a violation of the Civil Rights of all.

“Frivolous Lawsuits!”

Dr. Modern complains about his liability insurance costs, he’ll gladly tell any of his patients that he spent “over eighty thousand dollars last year,” on liability insurance. If he only knew why he pays so much he might be furious; the same company that provides his liability insurance, also takes premiums money from his patients for health insurance and from citizens who drive for auto insurance. Could it be that the books of one insurance company don’t care which category of income makes what, so long as the income is positive and the stock prices go up and the executive bonuses are bigger than the year before? Yes exactly, whether their profits come from Dr. J. Modern and his brethren or all those millions of worried hypochondriacs, or even all those millions of drivers who buy auto insurance, its all the same account on someone’s desk on one of the top floors in those tallest buildings in the world.

Why does Doctor J. Modern think that his liability insurance is destroying his ability to be fruitful at his medical practice? Some politicians and pundits have been telling him that the whole problem is “frivolous lawsuits,” desperate patients suing their surgeons for silly reasons, like leaving a scar. Although less than %2 of all dollars spent on health care delivery in the U.S. is spent on litigation, one would not know it listening to Doctors like J. Modern.

Another financial secret the insurance companies, would rather Doctor J. Modern not know, is that they play with his and everybody else’s money in the stock market, in bonds and securities. In a study by the Government Accounting Office has found that “lower-than-expected investment income for 15 large insurers between 2000 and 2002 probably played an important role in their rate-setting.” (Rosman, “Background Paper: Medical Malpractice in Crisis,” p.10).

Similarly, an analysis by the American Academy of Actuaries also found that liability insurers’ investment income decreased as a percentage of premiums between 1995 and 2001, and it suggested that each one percent decrease in interest rates would require insurers to increase premiums 3 to 4 percent to offset the reduced investment income. (Schactman, Doonan, and Rosman, “Policy Brief: Medical Malpractice in Crisis,” Council on Health Care Economics and Policy, (May, 2003), p. 5).

A fourth hidden factor driving liability rates skyward is the monopolization of insurance companies. Mergers and acquisitions from one company by another, decrease competition. In fact it is often a motivation for buying-out the holdings of another insurance company. With less competition, whether they had cooperated in pricing or not, premiums for all categories of insurance can drive upwards by the remaining companies still in the market. (Rosman, “Background Paper: Medical Malpractice in Crisis,” p. 4).

Nearly all states, and recently the federal government have capped pain and suffering (the worst part of having the wrong leg chopped off) to just $250,000 in total. No longer can a judge or a jury decide (as our Constitution says they should) what is proper and just punishment for a guilty party, based upon suffering, be it lifelong or a couple years. What’s the rest of your life ruined by a busy surgeon, or a sponge stuck in your gut, worth? One or two million dollars at least? No, $250,000. Running around our system of justice to appease doctors whose real complaint should be with the insurance companies, is not the answer.

Lobbyists have everything to do with every measure passed or not in our congress, at least for the last twenty five years about health care. Using our premium dollars against us, the health insurance companies have been one of the most active and high spending lobby’s in the history of Capital Hill. It was lobbyists that convinced Republican lawmakers that the high cost of liability insurance was due to “frivolous lawsuits.” And the people were fooled too, not realizing that not one lawsuit gets past the bench and on to a trial without the judge deciding it has merit or is frivolous. The insurance industry lobbyists convinced the people that it is because they “ . . have to hire all these lawyers,” that premiums are so high for the poor doctors, “ . . we have to make it up somewhere!” These measures totally deflected all heat from the insurance industry, saved to continue to reap the profits.

While Doctor J. Modern pays $80,000 annually to have decent liability coverage, on the other side of the country some doctors are paying $180,000 annually, and they have the same insurance company. Super bilking of premiums from Beverly Hills to subsidize Suburban Town, NY is another hidden secret they don’t want these doctors to know about. It has been three years since the Republicans passed the new caps on Pain and Suffering damages to patients, and Dr. J. Modern hasn’t see his rates go down one penny, in fact they went up last year by %3. He remembers the Republican president speaking to a crown in front of an HMO in Tennessee about how frivolous lawsuits destroying our health care system. He supported him, because he was addressing an issue dear to his wallet.

When citizens elect persons who loudly exclaim the failures of government. Then those persons enter government, enjoy their congressional pay and health insurance, then they set out to prove their original contention.

In 1994 a Republican senator, speaking on the floor, displayed a diagram that was portrayed as a satire of the proposed health care reforms offered by then President Bill Clinton. He displayed a spaghetti plate network of squiggly lines to indicate to his constituents that the proposal was just the kind of government bureaucracy that he and his ilk came to Washington to destroy.

Avoiding large bureaucracy is almost impossible. Streamlining bureaucracy is possible as proven by the Clinton administration during the 1990s, when that office under the supervision of then Vice President Al Gore, cut nearly 400,000 government positions during his tenure, and maintained and even strengthened our government’s abilities.

We are the government. A government of the people, by the people, and for the people. In government all are accountable. That doesn’t mean all get caught for mismanagement and corruption, but all in the public trust are in one way or another, at some time eventually, accountable. That is a huge difference between government and the private sector. Secondly; one’s goal is to make money, the other’s goal is to meet the goal as public servants.

One excellent definition of a Democratic government is: “ . . the coming together of people or groups of people, to accomplish as a whole what they could not, or would not , as individuals or as groups of individuals.” This describes a power that has made America strong and beneficial for most for two centuries. Anyone who can agree with that the premise within this definition, must then realize that everything we are doing in terms of our health care delivery, is not working. It is a proven failure and individuals and groups of individuals have consistently failed to change the system.

So we use the power of our government once, again as in Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, and a basket of other programs designed because their needs could not be met without the democratically combined power of the whole of nation. We can use this power once again to create a universal health care payment and delivery system which covers every citizen.

This process is best defined as a “Single Payer System.” One payer in one location with one agent for a case, one check for a doctor, one payment for a hospital. No quibbles, no bickering, no thousands of lawyers to litigate their way out of their employers promises. Pharmaceuticals acquired wholesale for the best possible price to the taxpayers. Inspectors in every city and most small cities, ready to catch provider based fraud such as over billing and over treatment. The price gouging will stop, no more aluminum canes for $49.99, no more $8,000 hospital fitted reclining beds that don’t talk. A man with a esophageal ulcer won’t get an MRI, he’ll get an optical scan, and his heartburn pills won’t cost him $18, probably only $2. Clinics can be built by the thousands, specializing in preemptive healthcare, and birth to death maintenance of the body. The clinics alone will eventually save billions of dollars over the old system. An irony is, these cost saving measures on the provider side, are all the kinds of “suggestions,” health insurance companies have been peddling to providers for decades, and having success. Would you rather have your accountable government chose how to save your own money (your taxes), or have some secret coalition of health insurance companies influence those cuts, you may or may not notice the next time you go to your doctor or the local hospital? The cuts under a Single Payer system would be readily announced and even voted upon by a council appointed by the president and approved by congress. Cuts by the insurance companies are secretive, creeping deceptively, and only allow them to make more money. Private insurance premiums never go down, so the savings are the executive’s alone.

Visit SiCKOCure.org to learn more and become a part of the struggle for real universal health care.

Politcal Parties Not Always Party Poopers

2006-09-06T15:53:00.000-04:00

We Americans must accept that we have political parties and that we should find our party based upon our ideals and stick with it for awhile. Since early in our nation’s political history, partisanship has been here to stay. We must learn to grow with it, changing it from within, and enjoying its victories, and learning from its losses.

In the beginning we were not supposed to have political parties. In fact the framers spoke of the demerits of party politics in the few years before drafting a constitution. But within fifteen years of adopting our Constitution, the congress broke-off into two camps, or “parties,” and the presidential and gubernatorial candidates followed behind. Former loyalists (to the King) became the Whigs, and revolutionaries became the Federalists. The Whigs favored a strictly republic form of government with little to no citizenship representation or decision making. The Federalists favored a republic but wanted representative democracy. Thus formed the popular terms and then form parties: the Republican and the Democratic parties. Today the party conventions, primary elections, party officers both local and national, are all inventions which are not mandated in the Articles of Confederation which lay-out the architecture of our government.

We have all heard it or even said it before; “there’s no difference between the parties, they’re both a bunch of corrupt crooks and money hungry (etc..).” The statement reflects an ignorance of what is really going on. Those parties and those representatives within are no more corrupt, no more crooks, than the members of your own family, or if not, the family next door to you. Sometimes they can’t balance their check book. Sometimes the infighting is so bad, the car has to pull over off the road for the ruckus to settle. Sometimes they grow so fat and lethargic and glutinous that it becomes obvious and members must be expelled. The founders were right about the congress, its alive, its reflective of our citizenship and its no better or worse than you or I.

The parties also, each have a philosophy to be followed. Sometimes the philosophy is not written but can be examined and defined from a distance. The best way to determine a political party’s philosophy is to study their actions – as is the case with all of us, i.e. “we are what we have done.”

It is understood that there will always be two parties of merit able strength in American politics. In actuality, in most politics around the world, especially where some form of democracy is in place, a single body comprised of individual entities will form-up into legions that have coalesced into two formations.

In nature; bi symmetry is found in almost all life forms. There are not life forms where, for instance, the Democratic Party female, mates with a Republican Party male, and then an Independent and a Green Party Senator must join in to complete the process. In all warm blooded reproduction on Earth there are two phases to fertilization, the forming process (the body politic comes together), and the addition from outside of a fertilization body into the formation (a legislative act, a bill, a need, a demand).

Accept there should be two. Know that two camps of everything is natural. For example; vote for your Green Party candidates with devotion, disregarding what ever is happening in the major parties, and you really do throw away your vote. But, you also reverse the progress of a natural process that has evolved over the years. In the future, one party, or three, or four parties, will eventually be two again. Don’t put American citizens through the growing process of failed representation, all over again.

Currently in divided American party politics, one party is filled with followers who require leadership to follow, to hear its party dogma from, and to absorb that dogma into their psyche. This is one of many generalizations of the Republican Party.

The constituents who support this party are hard working, blue collar and white collar middle to lower class peoples. They are more likely to occupy the land area away from the major cities (where people live densely together they vote Democratic). They are less likely to have the time to spend investigating media reports of what politicians are doing, or which ones are responsible for what actions. They do have the time to listen to am radio in their vehicles, either at work, or driving to or from work. Since 1987 when the Ronald Reagan administration released all broadcast radio and television stations and owners from responsibility to follow an 70 years old law requiring all political opinion or campaigning be balanced with opposition, the Fairness in Broadcasting Act, religions and conservative ownership immediately moved into those markets and suddenly politically Conservative and Christian right-wing fundamentalists began owning large chunks of middle American market. The blue and white collar middle and lower working classes who really only had time to get their media from the radio in the care, could now hear Rush Limbaugh all over the country, without hearing an opposition viewpoint.

The other party proceeds slower but with more detail, more complexity, seeing and preparing for more contingencies. The members of this party base their judgments on what they have seen, or what they have read from those who make it their life’s career to know the related subjects. This is the Democratic Party and they are sort of a free pastoral range herd of independent and critical thinkers. A herd that refuses to follow a leader in any procession towards any matter they themselves have not investigated to full understanding. As disorganized as this may seem, their goals are more closely related than is first perceived. Each of them is facing toward their goal together and it’s a long term goal, with big solutions, permanent fixes to age old problems. Their goals have something else in common; for any numerous reasons, over the many years and decades, the people have not be able to reach these numerous goals themselves.

I challenge anyone reading this opinion article to disprove the following generalization which I feel accurately describes the difference between the Democratic and Republican parties:

Under Republicans

Man Exploits Man.

Under Democrats

It’s the Opposite.

This statement could be disproved by searching for legislation advocated for almost exclusively by the modern Republican party (post Civil Rights Act 1968) which does not contain provisions allowing the further, or easier, or newly created exploitation of workers, of consumers, or of immigrants, or of public servants. Go ahead look it up. The Republican party of today throws in something for the big corporations to exploit, in almost all legislation. They fight Democratic party legislation that seeks to aid and assist workers and consumers, to live better and to have equal opportunity. So, Democratic Party members and supporters seek to reverse exploitation, and Republican Party members seek to allow the exploitation of men by other men.

Hard Drives in Space: the Ultimate Long Term Data Storage Solution

2006-09-01T09:06:00.000-04:00

Hard Drives in Space (announced with a large ambient echo) might be the ultimate in long term reliable data storage for the people. Behemoth satellites can be built with principle of design for duration, for capacity, for durability, and for access from any Earth bound users.

As we see our planet reach closer towards an ends, either by war violently, by viral plague, or catastrophic geologic and or climate change, we must consider our data and what is to be the fate of all that we have done digitally. What is to become of those novels on Microsoft Word, you worked so hard on. What about those two hundred family photos you would like to keep. How about all that email you have saved for ten years? What about that 30,000 image collection of women’s naked butts you spent years downloading in your office with the lights out? There is no need for the capacity in hard drives in space to be restricted to a certain few for example the military, and government, and for that reason Hard Drives in Space must be a combined government and private citizen’s endeavor.

The satellites (as vessels for protection, maintenance of orbit, and routing upload and download streams) must be high enough in orbit not to degrade and burn up, ever. The protection from meteors and meteorites and micro-meteors must be primary in the design. A steel triple hull of the type some modern oil tankers are now using would be adequate. Sophisticated security programs must police the integrity of everyone’s data for centuries to come, assuring users that their own data will never be deleted to make room for someone else’s. Several (perhaps six) should be built and launched in the same time period. But only one uploaded to working capacity at a time. A satellite over an opposite hemisphere should function as a replicate data copy for the first. A full drive can be moved into an even higher orbit, or even sent to a lunar orbit for added safety.

Again; Hard Drives in Space, is not necessarily for our selfish use, but primarily to preserve and pass-along human history, human endeavor, and human pictures of Janet Jackson’s right nipple and record of other time consuming totally hedonistic and voyeuristic activities. In the far future there will be archeologists roaming about Earth or traveling through this solar system called “Sol.” Perhaps they will be humans who’s ancestors originated from Earth. But we can assure that they do not just find a planet of water and dust, of crumpled ruins resembling piles of rock, and all metals turned to reddish brown piles of rust. We can assure they have access to all that was us, every thought a human of our time may have had, every pleasure, every disappointment and so on.

Mason Says

1-1-1-1 A Spending Plan that Gaurantees a Great Rate of Return

I'm no economist but if this idea helps so be it better for all of us. So here goes with just enough effort on my part to allow me to engage in my real interests.

Now what if spending the 6billion dollars produced a function of a seemingly perpetual machine of jobscreation running in circles and cranking out nothing but optimism and resourcesto build with it's own product which when used causes more energy to perpetuatethe motion of the machine.

A household in financialdistress can easily become torn apart and usually the children are hurt themost, and they grow up to be lousy adults. The following formula could bring usto full employment quickly and end this unethical condition that we letcontinue.

$20,000 is secured to be partof the employee’s salary. This could pale in comparison to the regular rate ofpay at a workplace. The plan is flexible to change this amount relatively tothe reasonable good pay of the job.

Imagine 1 millionaire matched with 1 unemployed person and 1 employerwithin 1 year, followed by the injection into our economy of $60,000 from every single new job. Imagine ithappens many millions of times for a few years. Imagine a labor shortage andemployers needing really good resumes.

Supplying the $60,000 in taxreturn in payment for participation will cost 6 billion dollars for every 1million jobs. It comes back of course, but not for years, but we can budgetthis loss and take from other areas we all agree are wasteful like militaryspending.

James G. MasonAuthor: Destiny a science fiction and the End of All Suffering.

Occupy Movement: Don't Rest Yet!

I Could Not Have Said It Better

Lost Dreams Storage Rentals Inc.

To Glenn Beck and the Tea Party new comers:

Sales Reps Invade our Doctor's Offices

Why Attempted Suicide Should be Legal

Bless You All!

The Manhattan Mosque Controversy

A Liberal’s View on the Differences Between Liberals and Conservatives

A "Fair Tax" is Flat on it's Face

Medical Marijuana Dispenseries and Cafes Face Extraordinary Gauntlets of Regulations

The Mad Haters Tea Party

On United States Socialism

Marijuana Users Relatively Harmless

Drug Testing and Privacy

Stop the War on Marijuana!

Doctors as Bean Counters

Understanding Evolution in Part

Popularity, the President and Congress

Trying to Understand Our Own Economy

Taking Responsibility for the Bad Stuff in Society

Atheism on the Rise - Humanity Returns

Our Congress' Wuss Factor is Our Fault

Great Expectations to Get Out of Iraq

Managed by the Media Makes Mediocrity into Melodrama

-Media Matters

Hidden Shame and Outward Pride - The Southern Duplicity

Conservatives in Tupperware with Labels

Single Payer Health Care - FAQ

Paris' Behavior is None of Our Business

The Miracle Splurger

How to Stop Urban Sprawl

Knows No Internalization of Costs

He Has Become His Own Imagined Enemy

Living with Heat In . . .We May Have to . .

Impeachment is Just Alright With Me!

In Health Care Delivery: No Sustainable Place for Profits Above People

Hang Em High Boys! Yee Hawww!

Bill of Rights was First - Abused High Technology Came Later

A Republican With a Cause

Our Really F%#ked Up Health Care Delivery and Payment System

Politcal Parties Not Always Party Poopers

Hard Drives in Space: the Ultimate Long Term Data Storage Solution

James G. Mason
Author: Destiny a science fiction and the End of All Suffering.