tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-62011576144475862712024-03-13T20:55:15.827-07:00Necessary WordsVoxmagihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04251587616604083194noreply@blogger.comBlogger14125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6201157614447586271.post-69505391949171183712016-03-25T23:22:00.000-07:002016-03-25T23:22:28.241-07:00A Message To Democrat Superdelegates 2016 has already been a year of tumultuous changes, some good and some bad, but there is a chance to experience a change we haven't dared in a long time. I mean Democrats that are relevant and meaningful to American workers and voters, and I say that because at present the Democrats are of little or no consequence in most states and make little difference in our everyday lives except when they rubberstamp the kinds of things we generally think of as associated with conservatism and neo-con globalist business requests.<br />
<br />
Most of America's legislatures are heavily tinged toward a reddish purple, to the great detriment of those states, and to the detriment of the people living in them. A democrat in the Oval Office has not reduced the suffering and diminished hopes in those states by much at all, because state legislatures and governors have enormous influence over local affairs, while congresspersons have clout over national issues (assuming they choose to wield it.)<br />
<br />
Unionism is scarcely relevant in the United States political world, save for a few hold out donors in major races, and with red states locking down voting polls in new and innovative ways every year it becomes challenging to break out of the gerrymandered status quo that dominates the U.S. landscape. This is especially hard in an era where voter participation is only modest at the best of times, and dismal at all others. The doldrums of political life in the U.S. are well documented, and contempt for our Congress and all associated entities, state and local alike, is at an all time high.<br />
<br />
2016 has brought a fairly obvious game changer into the mix, one that has been denied and ignored for entirely transparent reasons. The status quo works. It gets congresspersons paid and paid well, gives them a pipeline to the private sector after time in office that ensures their financial well being, and pumps cash into their re-election while garnering support from their party as long as they toe the line. Losing ground for America and relevance as a party is profitable as hell, and even if its hard to stay elected to office, who cares as long the checks are good, right?<br />
<br />
The game changer is Bernie Sanders. I didn't start off as a fan, and in truth I grossly underestimated his abilities and his draw. I thought he was unrealistic, I was concerned that he lacked the clout to make good on any of his intentions, and I was genuinely looking for a possible Republican in the vast field of would be candidates that better suited my tastes, because I have no faith in the Clinton brand and can't ethically support her candidacy. Not because of Benghazi or any of the other micro scandals cooked up over trivia and spewed by right wing media, but because her stances and voting record speak for themselves, and because her powerful connections to Wall Street make it very clear that she may not BE 'the problem', but she certainly has a friendly relationship with it. You can scarcely find a person more dedicated to faux-centrism and capitulation to high finance in current American politics. This isn't news...since she holds the remarkable distinction of being the most disliked candidate ever shored up by her party. Her chief selling point is the threat of a Republican victory, and I strongly suspect that only reason we saw a herd of Republicans lining up to battle for the chance to run against is because they already understand her vulnerability as a candidate, but we have another option. A better option, and surprisingly, a more viable and genuinely more electable choice. We have Sanders.<br />
<br />
His support is largely from a younger crowd, and a very large younger crowd at that. These are people new to politics, likely only having voted in one or two presidential elections prior to this, and in many cases, this their first major election cycle. That millennial or post millennial bulge in population has a value beyond just their immediate presence at rallies, filling stadiums that have never seen a political event of such size or scope before. They represent a more politically active, more engaged, more socially connected generation, with attitudes and norms that almost automatically place them far from the existing GOP and its stance on social issues.<br />
<br />
This is a one time gold mine of an opportunity to brand a generation with a sense of connection to a single party, but there's only one candidate that can make that happen...and that is Sanders. Even if Clinton takes the nomination, and even if she wins a divisive battle for the presidency with only a portion of Sander's fans capitulating for the sake of a win against the GOP, the rest of the surge of youth will vanish into the woodwork, accepting as law that politics is meaningless and their votes count for nothing against an establishment that is entrenched to serve interests wildly divergent from their lives. That opportunity to revitalize the DNC is lost, gone until some new candidate arrives who knows how far into the future. The local races will go on with few participants, with vote suppression by Republicans and apathy by Democrats deciding that most states will remain mostly red and slowly sliding into ignominious failure and irrelevance.<br />
<br />
Or you can use those superdelegate votes to tie the party wagon to the excitement and vigor that is Sanders' campaign and its supporters, and hand Democrats all over the country a surge of new voters that can actually overcome the gerrymandering, the suppression tactics and every other dirty trick being used by Republicans to cling to power. The GOP has never been weaker or more vulnerable. So fractured that an outsider can topple all the party stalwarts. Likewise the DNC has never been so firmly rebuffed by constituents, with an independent who has actually walked the walk pulling in arena rock numbers at rallies...and this from the kids that ostensibly love their iPhones and Xboxes more than sunshine and air and real life!<br />
<br />
This is your chance to capitalize on a generation that is aching to support someone and something better than conservative values. Discard and ignore them and you discard the generation that can make you relevant once again, and sustain you while the GOP slowly collapses in on itself. Or vote for Clinton. Vote for the machine politics and the dirty tricks and the same rackets that have made most Americans left of center turn away in disgust and repulsion. You can do that if you wish, but history is being written, and your names can be among those lauded as visionaries...or they can become synonymous with treason, ineptitude and graft. The decision is yours. Voxmagihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04251587616604083194noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6201157614447586271.post-43660965019675797302013-07-14T22:22:00.000-07:002013-07-14T22:22:20.582-07:00Standing Your Ground...Against The Zimmerman Verdict To start, I'd like to carefully point out my nearly unilateral support for the concept behind Stand Your Ground laws nationwide. Too often we've heard of the victim of a break-in or an attack being charged and tried for acting their own defense. Many states have grown weary of having no legal recourse but to pursue the letter of the law, even when the spirit and intent of same are being stretched beyond the believable.<br />
<br />
It should be unquestionably true that people have an inborn right to defend themselves, their loved ones, and their homes and possessions when necessary. Sometimes the force used may be excessive, but as terrible as it may sound to some...I have no empathy for a robber or rapist who unexpectedly winds up the victim of an ironic turn of circumstance. Crawling in a window or creeping up another person's stairwell pretty much clears the victim of the break-in of any obligation to be reasonable or merciful. It is safer to assume the ill-intent of an intruding stranger suddenly found in your home. If someone dislikes being shot at...then they should probably consider looking into a career that doesn't involve home invasion or assaulting strangers.<br />
<br />
Stand your ground laws came into being to prevent people who had survived a criminal assault or intrusion (by exercising the right to defend themselves) from being incarcerated or prosecuted for an act of very clear self defense. Such laws have a worthwhile place in the world, and are founded on common sense...something too often lacking in our highly politicized legal system. It doesn't help that the act of creating a new precedent regarding an existing law is considered a career building exercise for lawyers and judges. This process actually lends itself to wild stretches of existing law.<br />
<br />
I support the right to own firearms, even a wide variety of firearms, since different purposes call for different firearms. I cannot accept any claim that standard shotguns, rifles or pistols should be banned for any reason. I do believe in registration...and tracking of manufacturers shipments...because what constitutes a genuine 'ban' begins when someone cannot gain access to a gun...not, as some would claim, when they had to sign for it so that, if they kill another person with it, they can be traced and arrested. If you kill someone with it, either you have a reason worth explaining and should report yourself...or you should be arrested period. Registration is actually a more powerful deterrent than death penalties...and is measurably less fatal.<br />
<br />
Having said all this, and having spelled out that I still support the concept of stand your ground laws, we must inevitably move toward the sad drama of George Zimmerman and Trayvon Martin. The basic facts, even the ones spelled out by Zimmerman in police reports, cry out for an arrest...not for a stand your ground claim. Zimmerman was making his rounds as neighborhood watch, which trains all participants to observe and report...not intervene, when he saw Trayvon hop a fence on the way home. Zimmerman observed a black youth in a hoodie walk down a street after dark. He did not observe a crime in progress. He still called the police as he followed by car, and was instructed to wait while police were dispatched and keep watching.<br />
<br />
Sometime during that conversation Trayvon seems to have noticed that a man in a car was slowly following him down the street, which is something most of us would find creepy even in daylight, much less at night. When Trayvon hurried to get to safety, Zimmerman appeared to become convinced that the 'suspect' (again...the suspect of nothing but walking) was 'getting away'. Having duly convinced himself that a criminal was clearly escaping, Zimmerman left the car and physically assaulted Trayvon Martin, resulting in a scuffle or brawl. Frankly speaking, Zimmerman was fortunate he didn't attack a legally armed adult...because assaulting a person pretty much at random as they hurry for home is pretty much grounds for a self defense claim.<br />
<br />
Trayvon seems to have defended himself well...assuming that Zimmerman, the only survivor, is being accurate and truthful about the injuries he sustained. We'll assume that he was honest about it, because it's still not relevant. This is because when attacked by a strange man at night, everyone has the right to defend themselves, perhaps even excessively, because the fault lies with the aggressor, not the victim. Zimmerman's role as the aggressor is unquestionable, because his own explanation of events very clearly spells out that he was in no danger when he chose to leave his car and 'detain' (read that as physically assault an innocent person) Trayvon Martin.<br />
<br />
Now we come to the ugliest parts. Zimmerman, apparently bleeding and bruised after losing a brawl with a frightened and angry teenager roughly less than 75% his own weight, breaks off the fight and flees to the car, claiming that he was in fear of his life. Again, frankly, he deserved to be in fear for his life, because he'd decided to attack a stranger without even marginally real justification, just his own questionable mental state guiding him to 'be a hero'...if being a hero means attacking strangers at the drop of a hat. Still threatened by the angry victim of his assault, Zimmerman gets his gun from the car...and his defense now includes the claim that Martin nearly took the gun from him. Once again, we return to the other perspective: Trayvon's. The crazed assailant that stalked and attacked you has drawn a weapon...and wrestling it away from him is an act of desperate self defense in an attempt to keep a madman from taking your life. These would be the acts of a person defending their life and person within the boundaries of the law.<br />
<br />
And then we come to the end of Trayvon's life. He fails to wrestle the gun away...and makes a break for it in a last ditch attempt to save his own life. He runs...and out of five shots three manage to hit him in the back as he flees for safety. By the time police arrive Zimmerman is the only survivor and witness to the entire ordeal, and we have only his word and the police reports to draw from, so the whole truth cannot be known. A 17 year old is dead and the police inexplicably invoke stand your ground laws immediately...suggesting that an unarmed teen who bought snacks after dark was so dangerous that he deserved to be stalked, harassed, assaulted and then fatally shot while fleeing his own attacker.<br />
<br />
The entire case only became national because family members saw the horrible flaw in the reasoning of the police: you cannot "stand your ground" against an innocent person you stalked and attacked, then shot after taking a well deserved beating. The police exercised 'stand your ground' completely out of its context, stretching its definition to include vigilantes who disobey clear police directives, because any loosening of stand your ground laws is so unacceptable that even terrible injustices somehow became unimportant.<br />
<br />
People have made much of the dead kid's internet life...a 17 year old who had occasionally used marijuana and profanity (and yet maintained a superb grade point average and avoided actual trouble). I cannot recall a male teenager in the course of my entire life whose image wouldn't be tarnished by a thorough search of every deed and spoken word, because teenage boys seek out every opportunity to show themselves off in front of peers, to act tough or cool, to seem confident when they aren't. Marijuana was suddenly treated as a violence-inducing drug...despite the fact that marijuana has only ever induced violence against snack foods...not people. There's been much made of the wearing of a hoodie, much the way trenchcoats were made suspect in the wake of Columbine...as if clothes determine or indicate criminal intent (they assuredly do not, or at least play so slender a role that no serious attention can be given to these claims, especially regarding trenchcoats and hoodies, which are ubiqitous.)<br />
<br />
In the end, the diversions all come down to attempts to assassinate Trayvon Martin twice...once in life and again in death, to somehow make his death acceptable. The idea that 'stand your ground' laws might be jeopardized by a lone gunman vigilante who attacked an unarmed student walking home...is too much weight for minds to bear...and so they take the easy route to safer grounds...and blame the victim.<br />
<br />
To my mind, the only person who had a right to stand their ground, was Trayvon Martin, and despite making every attempt to get away first, he wound up forced into a confrontation and barely fought off his assailant...and paid for his courage and success with his life, only to have that life slandered in acts of naked partisan bigotry.<br />
<br />
Zimmerman's trial was so pathetic that I am forced to assume that the prosecution actually planned to fail...intentionally. It was a trial in name only, devoid of facts, full of theatrics, and empty of justice. Murder 2 was non-provable. In truth, Zimmerman was not guilty...because Murder in the second degree would have had to show planning instead of desperate reaction to a crisis (even a self created crisis.) The prosecution MUST have known this to be true...and so I presume that their overreaching was entirely deliberate. Manslaughter would have been an accurate charge, since it doesn't imply planning or intent to kill, just responsibility for the fatal ending of that encounter. Manslaughter could have proven beyond reasonable doubt, and yet it wasn't chosen as a charge, and the wildly improbably Murder 2 was chosen instead.<br />
<br />
Given the conduct of the officers on that initial night, and their rush to attribute the well-connected Zimmerman son's conduct to a stand your ground defense, it's actually safe to say that Sanford's law enforcement and judicial community are now suspect of not just incompetence, but actual conspiracy to obstruct justice. The appropriate act would be a federal intervention and investigation, to determine if the prosecutor, judge or any other local officials colluded to build a severely flawed case against Zimmerman, one which they were sure would fail in court and leave Zimmerman a free man.<br />
<br />
However much I like stand your ground laws, and I really do, I deeply despise unequal treatment under the law. The backbone of a free republic is a legal system that struggles constantly to avoid bias and prejudice. Our courts should let the actual events speak for themselves...not the pocketbooks or skin colors or accents of the defendants decide the outcomes. The fact that our legal system is such a shamble of patchwork local evasions and racially motivated exceptions should rightly be offensive to us all, because it stand in direct contradiction to everything that the earliest Americans were striving to prevent from recurring after the end of British rule and the imperious and unjust conduct of Crown courts. Knowing that a man or woman's life or freedom is at stake means that legal proceedings should be undertaken with great seriousness, and that innocence is assumed until guilt is proven beyond reasonable doubt. Unfortunately for Trayvon, guilt was assumed on sight, the sentence was death, and there was no trial to clear him...just a fraudulent show of legal trickery to ensure the freedom of his killer, while for the killer no expense was spared, innocence was assumed despite a confession that contradicted even that generous assumtion, and no serious charges were filed against him...just a laughably inept attempt to press an improbable claim of Murder 2.<br />
<br />
My condolences go not just to the family of Trayvon Martin, but to the people of an entire country who watched their legal system fail, and watched crowds of violent, slanderous bigots cheer for a gross miscarriage of justice. Nearly as culpable as George Zimmerman is our culture of partisan obligations...which induces normally sane people to bend their minds in every possible way to avoid ugly truths. We encourage a culture of frightened sheep to clutch their firearms to the breasts and sleep lightly, ready to open fire at a moment's notice. This sad attitude has even penetrated police departments, until officers that once would have responded with calm assurance and minimal force, now open fire almost at random, or make use of tasers and tear gas when dealing with small children and elderly persons. The inherent cowardice in this is a reflection of a society losing its intestinal fortitude but unwilling to acknowledge that painful reality. If you live in fear, you will be ruled by it and act on it, and you do not have the 'right' to call those actions 'reason'. Cowardice is not courage, failure is not success, and feelings are not substitutes for facts. The world is a dangerous place...and it's made that way mostly by fear...so kidding ourselves about our own fears and their influence over us not only won't make us safer...it puts us all at greater risk than ever before. Let's hope Trayvon's legacy, if he can be said to have one despite a life cut short, is a wake up call to the fearful who let their fear give birth to the kind of madness that took a young man's life without cause.Voxmagihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04251587616604083194noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6201157614447586271.post-55383626199186913382011-06-02T14:23:00.001-07:002011-06-02T22:32:18.793-07:00Unraveling 40 Years Of Economic Failure: Part 1There is a reason that economists often seem disassociated from reality...and the reason is that they, in many ways, are actually disassociated from human reality...the reality of everyday life. This isn't a unique condition, however, and can be equally applied to most people when discussing the mathematical reality of economics. There is a disconnect...because the subject too easily lends itself to emotional reactions based on personal experience or political philosophy. When the numbers are in the trillions, and the ebb and flow of wealth becomes divorced from anything we can connect to, we seek out meaning and connection...even imposing false meaning atop empirical evidence to the contrary. Reality, especially with regard to a mathematical absolute, is far less digestible than patented buzzwords and comforting slogans. The purpose of this exercise is to reacquaint at least some small number of people with fiscal realities that may have political ramifications...and may be philosophically repugnant...but remain absolutely true just the same, without regard for finer sentiments.<div><br /></div><div>An economy is, at its core, the financial actions of millions upon millions of people, interacting on small scales and large, simultaneously and constantly. In addition to its classical origin, our new era of information transfer and high speed communication has lent itself to the swift movement and calculation of immeasurable wealth...with fewer human involvements than ever before. The dynamics of past eras cannot be said to have remained unchanged by this leap forward in technology. To postulate otherwise is the manifestation of desperate desire for a grounding in the familiar. The way in which our economy can be called 'managed' has changed radically in a very small number of decades...and the results have been measurable. The very wealthy have grown considerable more wealthy, with a corresponding increase in influence...while the more average worker has experience an increase only in hardship, a loss of opportunity, and a diminished relevance politically and socially, with corresponding stresses in other facets of their lives.</div><div><br /></div><div>To begin in earnest, lets dismiss the concept of a 'free market'. The popular imagination has absorbed the two words with an attached meaning implying few or no interferences by government...an attempt to move back to a time when markets ebbed and flowed with little involvement by outside forces, which is ludicrous after even a short historical study of economics. There has never been a time when the choices of governments, be they theocracies, monarchies or democracies, have left markets theoretically untouched and allowed to flow freely. Government, in all its forms, is always a powerful mover of capital, shifting wealth from place to place, sometimes toward industrialization and modernization, sometimes toward military conquest, sometimes to art and science and faith. The degree of involvement may vary, but its impact has always (and will always) be massive. The only issue at stake is where its influence is most effective and generates the most positive overall effect. Some weigh 'positive effect' differently than others. For my purpose, I consider the most positive effect to be a broad involvement of as many people as possible in the economic system of a nation. More is better in my view. 350 million involved people generate greater results economically than 100 million involved people. The greater their level of involvement, the greater the corresponding gain on a national scale. This is not an unreasonable assumption.</div><div><br /></div><div>No market has ever been truly free. Once we accept this, we move unerringly to the understanding that what marks a healthy 'unfree' market from an unhealthy 'unfree' market is the degree of accessibility and level of accountability to legitimate civil authority. The worst examples of poorly regulated, ill managed economies have given us visions of hell on Earth. Pre-revolution France, pre-Soviet Russia, modern Haiti etc etc. These markets and nations suffered from both an excess and a shortage of freedom at the same time. Freedom became a limited commodity available only to those who could wrest it away from others...and with no civil authority strong enough to maintain a balance and no means to equitably involve a wide array of people in the economy, revolution, violence and chaos ensued.</div><div><br /></div><div>Again, it is just my view, but as far as I am concerned Communism failed utterly in its attempts to create a more just system of governance that would level the playing field. In every case where it has been attempted, the system has always been subverted by a limited group of powerful players who diminished access for others and enriched themselves, recreating a new class struggle even while railing against it. We can assume safely that class will always be an issue, that some will have more and others less, but it is how we manage and balance that difference between classes that determines if we spiral into anarchy and bloodshed...or if we trundle along with comparative contentment.</div><div><br /></div><div>By way of example, lets consider an automobile. Imagine a car with countless rules thrust upon it and its driver. Its every function is micromanaged and carefully controlled until minimal risk is achieved. It is utterly stagnant, slow, and nearly valueless as a means of transport or personal freedom of movement. Imagine a second car and driver, on which no controls of any kind are placed. It careens wildly from place to place with no nod toward safety or even survival, at speeds that would normally be considered suicidal in the hands of any but the most expert, and ultimately crashes spectacularly. Neither of these is a desirable outcome. Somewhere between the two exists a harmonious acceptance of limits that allows both modest usefulness and likely safety. Somewhere between the extremes lies a long term path to success. This is also true in economics.</div><div><br /></div><div>My contention would be that, in part by design, and in part by accident, the United States briefly stumbled upon that happy medium. Even a cursory glance at its changes through the Twentieth Century would show a country that shifted gears from a largely rural, isolationist nation of modest means...to an economic powerhouse that unquestioningly dominated the global scene by any measurement that one cares to use. Note that this article isn't about the countless small inequities which have occurred along the way. Inequities arise...always...and can and have been dealt with in any number of ways for better or worse. What is being reviewed and examined here is the impact of economic policy on the United States...and what portions of those policies have resulted in great gain for many...and what portions have resulted in great gain for few at the expense of many.</div><div><br /></div><div>Let's consider money supply in the most simple possible terms. There is money. The supply of same is not and has never been based solely on the basis of limited precious metals. For those who imagine a rosy era of gold standards absolutely determining the total amount of wealth a nation can possess...the bad news is that this is a modern fiction when weighed against the history of global economics. It had been a factor...not an absolute, and it remains a factor, not an absolute. The wealth of a nation is in part its goods and services, its productivity and the countless tiny exchanges of materials and services and wealth. The supply of money allotted is loosely based on the approximate total value of all that is transpiring at a given time...and this is both reasonable and true. What isn't reasonable is expanding the supply of money infinitely or excessively for mere convenience. In this, popular conservative views of economic policy are absolutely correct, even if they rarely apply this truth when it's inconvenient for them. It should be agreed upon that any increase in the theoretical supply of money based on anything other than actual value is essentially a devaluation of the existing currency, stretching and flattening dough until it becomes thinner and thinner...ultimately creating less value for all (especially for those who possess quite a bit already, and have no desire to see the real time value of a billion dollars become something more like 600 million.)</div><div><br /></div><div>Having asserted that there is, and should be, a limited supply of money at any given time (with room for adjustment as the combined value of economic activity changes), let us move to how that total wealth is managed and measured, and what difference it makes. Government, be it elected or unelected, for better or worse, looms large in its ability to organize and accomplish large scale tasks. How trustworthy it is...that is another issue...but every monumentally large task undertaken throughout history has always returned to government. The Great Wall, the Pyramids, Hoover Dam etc...leaving aside the religious connotations and connections as inspiration, the actual work was organized and executed by act of government. Government rarely ever has managed all wealth in a nation, but has always been involved in the controlled movement of wealth...determining the means by which wealth is measured, the value of the available money, the terms under which the money is used and distributed and the taxation of property, goods, services and other forms of economic activity. In this era, where finance is crucial and goals incalculably more complicated than in the past, government finds itself with more on its plate than ever before. No highly successful or internationally relevant government is lax and divorced from the process of oversight.</div><div><br /></div><div>Management and measurement of capital and wealth are, in fact, the primary task of government. In measurement, it is a matter of maintaining an accurate picture of the value and nature of the accumulated wealth and influence of a nation...and in management it is the determining of where that wealth is best directed or supported...and for what gain. With the measurement of gain being considered as a vibrant economy in which the widest possible number of people are included and involved (purchasing goods, services, property and making investments), it becomes obvious that government's ideal part in the process is furthering that goal and moving to include as many people as possible in the economic activity...which furthers gain for both government and business as a pleasant side effect.</div><div><br /></div><div>Obviously (to most), the money cannot be simply gathered up and doled out perfectly equally. This is as abhorrent and pathetic a concept as its opposite (the money simply being piled at the top with zero accessibility to others). As soon as money begins to move, whenever value is allowed to change hands, it begins to accumulate in greater or lesser amounts that wildly vary from person to person. Capitalism, for all its faults, acknowledges this simple reality. No successful attempt has ever been made to equitably deal with this reality...only failed attempts that stifled opportunity and led to a gangsterish clique with near total control of the supply of wealth...a grotesque mirror parody of capitalism at its worst. The only realistic approach is to accept that money will accumulate in specific places as it changes hands...and then take action to force that money to continue moving. Whether this is ethical or not is irrelevant...it is still less horrifying than the consequences of letting money stagnate. Ask the Russian monarchy about it...if you can find any who are alive.</div><div><br /></div><div>The movement of money is not unlike the movement of fluid...it flows fastest where a path is cut for it...or left to its own devices cuts a path for itself and then sticks to precisely that path unless diverted. Since it is untenable to leave money utterly to its own devices, or to assume control of all of it, it is both reasonable and right to make attempts to divert it and control its flow. Let us make for our example a small population of 10,000 people, because it is far more difficult to keep our minds on simple realities of the task when the numbers move into the hundreds of millions. Of that ten thousand people, all desire to live and prosper, and all must find sustenance and shelter in a modern economy. All have access to at least some small amount of money, and some few have access to quite a bit more than others. The ebb and flow of goods, services and property are already assumed to be in place, the presence of jobs and of government may likewise be assumed to be in place. Consider it a tiny, miniature America if you will, in proportion identical to the makeup of the United States. Assume an identical timeline politically and socially as well...and we begin.</div><div><br /></div><div>At and during the period of its greatest power and influence, government had a heavy hand in taxation and distribution of wealth, as well as in the oversight of commercial activity. This heavy hand came into being after a period of increasing laxity that resulted in extreme losses and considerable harm to many people. The resulting firm hand and excessive involvement came about as a response intended to smooth the flow of wealth and prevent future crises...and to reassure the people that they were invested in the process and should not choose to destroy it in favor of some other political/financial system. Government had its hand in nearly everything...doling out money for education, infrastructure large and small, research, agriculture, defense, and even general employment and oversight of seemingly minute issues. Money was effectively moved from everyone...but most visibly from the very wealthy...and shuffled about in many ways and for many ends...but more important than where it moved...was THAT it moved.</div><div><br /></div><div>We return to that example of 10,000 theoretical citizens...they have ample access to education and higher education at reasonable prices, sound infrastructure that enables development and transportation, subsidized utilities and a marketplace that remains competitive while keeping competition checked against excess. Legitimate means are available to seek redress of both economic and social grievances. In short...there is balance...certainly not perfect balance, but sufficient to engender an environment of affluence for more people than usual. A larger percentage of the average population can afford what other countries might consider luxuries...and we agree that this is good. Investment is at an all time high...and stability and peaceful transfer of power is more visible than elsewhere in the world.</div><div><br /></div><div>Popular wisdom has become, largely by advertisement and think tank propaganda, that taxes are wholly onerous...doubly so when placed heavily upon corporations and the wealthy, and that taxes stifle investment and expansion. The conventional wisdom holds that if companies and wealthy individuals have more money...they have more to invest in innovation, expansion and hiring. Despite the fact that the greatest widespread economic growth took place while top tax rates were double or even near triple the current rates, and that considerable regulation and restriction and oversight were in place...the popular myth remains that low taxes lead to greater investment.</div><div><br /></div><div>The opposite is true. I know its hard to believe after two generations of the same drumbeat...but the exact opposite is true. Taxes breed investment. In fact...they force it into being by default. Lower taxes promote hoarding of capital and flatly discourage any form of investment save for the most spurious and intangible. Why on earth would anyone...anyone at all...with enormous amounts of capital and imaginative ways to increase it with few taxes...turn around and squander that money on hiring, wages, safety, expansion or any other form of civic or civil investment? They logically shouldn't, and just as logically...now they don't. Onerous taxes...especially applied heavily to those individuals who build enormous amounts of capital through profit or inheritance, force investment because the money serves them better when invested and tax-free...even when spent on hiring, wages and charitable causes, than it does when withdrawn as profit and made subject to taxation. Who wouldn't choose to take home a 1 million dollar paycheck and lose half to taxes...rather than withdraw 100 million in profit and see 85% of it vanish instead? This is precisely why many of the great 'gifts', bequeaths, trusts and other foundations came into being. The money they were created with would have been devoured by taxes if not given away in a goodwill raising public relations gesture. Taxes built the greatest economic engine, with the soundest wages, and with the most productivity and shared wealth in the history of the planet. Taxes funded the largest public works programs and developed the most modern infrastructure ever conceived by humankind. Taxes developed a quality of life that set one nation apart from the entire world, a model of futuristic potential achievement that all others merely sought to copy.</div><div><br /></div><div>And then we started slashing them.</div><div> </div><div><div><br /></div><div> </div></div>Voxmagihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04251587616604083194noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6201157614447586271.post-20913849276410394822010-12-24T11:38:00.000-08:002010-12-24T12:26:11.640-08:00The Assange Quandary: Wikileaks Under FireIt's rapidly becoming the fight of our times, the crucial battle to define all future battles, the question that once answered will decide what future questions will be permitted. Is Wikileaks a terrorist organization with the purpose of harming world governments as its core mission? Or is Wikileaks a whistleblower's paradise, a large and well run website that funnels evidence of criminal wrongdoing into the public eye when no one else will touch it with a ten foot pole?<div><br /></div><div>It may be easy enough to play devil's advocate and fight for the little guy (Assange) who is presently under attack by multiple governments and legal systems at the same time...not to mention the heretofore unheard of decision by various corporations to shut off routes for funding and donation for Wikileaks as well as Assange personally. My instincts always push me to root for the underdog, but the question of the hour is whether the underdog is worth rooting for.</div><div><br /></div><div>More than personalities or state security, what is now at stake is decidedly larger than like or dislike of any one government or that governments actions. Much larger than the petty frauds of global corporations. Infinitely larger than the bruised egos of various players around the world. What is underway now is the fight to close off any future avenue by which information might move from the hands of the protected few, into the hands of the outraged many.</div><div><br /></div><div>The ability to make an informed decision is the backbone of actual democracy. Take that away and all that is left is a gilded land of make believe where citizens make decisions they believe are right...never knowing that if the information they needed had been available to them...they might have chosen differently. Information is freedom, because it determines the faith one has in one's leaders, decides the course of action one sees as wise, and makes possible the best decisions when ignorance only breeds the worst.</div><div><br /></div><div>Wikileaks, for all its faults, as well as Julian Assange, may be less than noble at heart and full of human errors and flaws...but the purpose they serve is larger than they are, more precious than they can ever hope to be. We are in the Information Age...and that name is no accident. The capacity to move data around the globe in seconds is the defining characteristic of our new era, and the debate over virtual rights and control of same has become the deciding question of our time.</div><div><br /></div><div>We scoff at China's Great Firewall, or North Korea and Iran's attempts to clamp down on what is seen and heard and read and even spoken...but when the hard question is asked of us...how will we respond? Is transparency worth its risks and price? Are we really better than the nations we scorn? Does inconvenient truth have greater value to us than to others?</div><div><br /></div><div>In Australia, attempts to blacklist the worst extremes of pornography passed and became law...and it was universally agreed to be a good thing except by the shrillest voices at the fringe. Of course, after the fact we all look at the inclusion of political and religious sites among the blocked...and consider that an overuse of power by the Australian government. The temptation was too great...once some small group of persons was entrusted with the choice over what Aussies might be allowed to see or read on the internet, the censoring immediately spun out of control and moved far beyond what was agreed to at the outset.</div><div><br /></div><div>The United Kingdom has bandied about a new anti-porn system, intended to make it necessary for people to 'opt in' if they wish to view pornography...but this has been poo-pooed as unwieldy and too difficult to implement...and even without such a law the surveillance state of England has already intruded into the personal lives of every citizen in the proclaimed fight against terror...even resulting in the recent case of a 12 year old being questioned by local police and accused of 'terrorism related activities' in advance of the public protest he planned to save a local youth building.</div><div><br /></div><div>Control of internet access and the way in which it may be employed is a planet wide battle, a patchwork quilt of corporate lobbied notions and rights groups insistences, shifting to and fro depending on who wins the debate in what country. The U.S. Congress will likely be reviewing the FCC's latest compromise on net neutrality...if such a thing can be called neutrality when it surrenders most of the power to decide content to the largest players in the game.</div><div><br /></div><div>Everywhere the battle is being fought, but depending on the information available to you, your position is subject to change. Imagine for the briefest of moments a world where someone wrote a script to be read in front of you, and that script was called your news, and that person who wrote it decided on your behalf what sides would be taken, what questions asked, what information revealed. That script constitutes all that you know of the world beyond your doors and your town and your political choices hinge on what that script tells you. That imagined world is entirely possible...that world is China, Iran, and North Korea.</div><div><br /></div><div>So in the end, whether the underdog of the moment is an unworthy individual or group like Assange or Wikileaks as a whole, and whether I find fault with them personally, I stand absolutely and resolutely on the side of both genuine net neutrality and transparency by questionable means when necessary (since any legitimate means to achieve transparency are thwarted easily). It may be ugly, but it must be done, because the concept of an informed citizenry was and is rightly seen as necessary for the maintenance of a truly free society. Whether Benjamin Franklin or Thomas Paine would have agreed, I cannot say...but to me their principles apply just as well in an era of cathode ray tubes as they did in an era of hand printed pamphlets.</div><div><br /></div><div>Hate them or love them, Assange and Wikileaks are the voice of future freedom, with all its entailed costs and curses. There is one other voice...and that voice is an droning Orwellian recording, repeating endless praises for the State and constant assurances that all is well. That is the voice that should be silenced, muffled, gagged and cut off once and for all. That is the voice of a future that no one would choose...if they were allowed to know they were choosing it. </div>Voxmagihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04251587616604083194noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6201157614447586271.post-1132195916575865502010-10-30T23:47:00.000-07:002010-10-31T00:10:01.412-07:00VoteI know that ultimately this is just a whisper being fired into a tornado...but it's my whisper and I'll do with it what I please. Vote.<div><br /></div><div>Technically it may invest you in the process that gets us into this mess we're neck deep in...and I know it doesn't feel good to know that whomever you voted for didn't achieve what you'd hoped. Vote anyway.</div><div><br /></div><div>I know it's a fuss and a bother and involves standing in a line with a bunch of people that you have nothing in common with...except that you do...voting. Vote.</div><div><br /></div><div>It really is a great deal like a lottery...there is very little chance that you'll hit the perfect combination and get what you want...but there is no chance of any kind if you don't get up and get out and join in. Vote.</div><div><br /></div><div>The choices are like most choices in life, no better or worse. It's usually a range of compromises that aren't always fun to make...but that's life. Get over it and vote.</div><div><br /></div><div>Vote because you can, because others paid a bitter price to give you that freedom. Vote because it is something that exists in many other places...but which still escapes many countries. Vote.</div><div><br /></div><div>The national scene has comparatively little impact on your daily life, but the city, county, and state electorate is directly tied to your vote...and has an enormous impact on how you live every day. Vote.</div><div><br /></div><div>Vote not because you agree with me, but because it is an expression of your beliefs, whatever they may be. In this we are true equals. Vote.</div><div><br /></div><div>You have a voice. It is a very small voice. One among a din of millions. Not everyone will hear you...but you will be heard. Vote.</div><div><br /></div><div>Vote because it is the one truly momentous thing you share with every nearby neighbor and with every far flung citizen...people as far away as geographically possible...Americans one and all. We all have one thing in common...we can vote, and let that tiny voice be heard, take that tiny chance at getting what we want or believe in, express that freedom that was bought so dearly by others and given to us as a gift...with only one string attached...we have to use it to keep it.</div><div><br /></div><div>So vote. </div><div><br /></div><div> </div>Voxmagihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04251587616604083194noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6201157614447586271.post-75857462864133042572010-10-26T15:19:00.000-07:002010-10-26T16:39:20.622-07:00The Beast With A Thousand Heads: Why is the Tea Party so hard to pin down?Like the Lernaean Hydra of old, the Tea Party presents the media, and average people everywhere with a political bent to their nature, with a tantalizing conundrum. It came into being quickly, gelling as a national force, albeit a smaller one than many would like to admit, and devouring as much media attention as groups many hundreds of times their size. Despite this, when the topic of the Tea Party comes up there are as many definitions as there are people in the room. It is all things to all people, a ghost in the machine that cannot be explained away, a different mask on each of a hundred different faces. What the hell is the Tea Party?...and more importantly, if we're defining it inaccurately, how can we honestly oppose it when we aren't genuinely sure of what it is?<div><br /></div><div>And therein lies the truth of the problem. We can't easily define it, because in a way that is eerily reminiscent of the vast coalition of smaller groups that dominated the 2008 election of Barack Obama, the Tea Party Movement is everything and none of the above. It is comprised of widely varying groups as well as lone citizens joining others for the first time. It is anti-government, anti-tax, anti-regulation, pro-white, pro-Christian, anti-Federal reserve, and pro or anti ALMOST anything you can imagine...plus a few more things besides.</div><div><br /></div><div>You can't easily lump them all as bigots or racists...because a vast many of them are not racist at all. One of the heads of the hydra bellows the N-word...and the other heads disagree and drown it out, sheepishly embarrassed by one of their own number. Another head shouts out for the belief that America is a purely Christian nation chosen by God to dominate the world...and the other heads roll their eyes and facepalm themselves while trying to quiet things back down. Likewise the conspiracy theorists, the Birthers, the 9/11 Truthers and more more more. </div><div><br /></div><div>For every diverse little face in the crowd, there is someone outside of the Tea Party who equates that person with the totality of the movement itself. If a person hates Fundamentalist Christians, then Fundamentalists become the aspect of the Tea Party that he despises most and perceives as the dominant characteristic of the Tea Party. If a person despises racism, then the fringe of white power activists in the Tea Party becomes the powerhouse of the movement, defining it utterly as a racist organization.</div><div><br /></div><div>This is neither truthful or productive...and by micro focusing an attack against a tiny portion of the Tea Party (even if you believe that its not tiny) it becomes like struggling in quicksand. The tiny grains cannot be dealt with...but the whole is the greater problem. Insulting a large number of people who may be very genuinely opposed to the taxes they pay and the general corruption of federal government isn't the answer. Being clear and concise in criticism of the worst elements is more effective than attempting to brand the whole with a label that won't stick...because people, despite their faults and foibles, generally trust personal experience over simple labeling.</div><div><br /></div><div>I've been as guilty as others...sometimes venting my frustration at the general ignorance of Tea enthusiasts by blasting them with broad strokes...and I have to admit that after giving due consideration to the matter, I was wrong. I may have been right about the individual I was dealing with, but I was wrong about their relevance to the whole movement. In the future, I will try to aim my criticism with precision, because I would appreciate and admire the same courtesy being shown by others, and even if they don't do this it would still set my mind at ease and prevent hypocrisy on my part.</div><div><br /></div><div>What do I see the Tea Party as now? They're new, largely white and Christian, fast forming into a national brand, and concerned with a wide variety of different issues...but focusing broadly on the reduction of taxes and the curtailing of federal authority.</div><div><br /></div><div>And unfortunately, despite the degree to which I agree with those two concepts, they are massively underwritten by powerful conservative groups who are channeling that general dissatisfaction into a movement that will vote alongside the neo-conservative bloc of the GOP. There is no question in my mind on this single issue. Despite some bucking at the reins and complaints from within, the Tea Party as a whole is completely co-opted at the national level, and is being manipulated to help coalesce support for the party and policies that treat government's task as the facilitation of ease for business interests...not service to the people of the nation that elected them. This is worse in principle than even "big government liberalism" at its most onerous.</div><div><br /></div><div>Government's role is not to facilitate the creation of an atmosphere conducive to easy money for the top percent of citizens. Government may serve best when it serves least, but it should be a duly elected body that serves all of its people, equally, not just a few...and its ability to act should be supreme when necessary. If you want an example of weak central authority and free markets...look no further than Haiti. It isn't pretty, but it's an honest picture of how those principles fare in the real world. Government is a necessary evil...but one which should be kept in check by various balances of power...and if I could encourage Tea Party enthusiasts to adopt one single platform it would be the restoration of the checks and balances originally framed in the Constitution and Bill Of Rights of the United States.</div><div><br /></div><div>One helpful side note for them as well...if you undertake anything as radical as a call for real and effective change to make the government the servant of citizens and not vice versa...neither FreedomWorks nor the Koch Bros. will be there for you with free buses and pickets...there will be no website developers leaping to your aid on the house, and there will be no media firestorm beating its path to your office doors...because the minute you no longer serve the interests of the supremely wealthy individuals who are footing the bill and seem so sympathetic now, you will be on your own. If power welcomes you to speak truth and hands you a microphone to do it...it must not be dangerous to them...and if it doesn't meet that criteria, you are just an quiet ally to entrenched power and a fart in the wind tunnel of public discourse.</div><div><br /></div><div>But if they should need advice on how to cope with that sudden loss of support and the distance suddenly placed between them and access to media and influence...they can always talk to the real Left. The genuine Left (which is to be distinguished from the DNC...a completely separate being with nearly no relationship, political, philosophical or otherwise to the political Left) have been experiencing exactly that for generations now, and they already know its the price they pay for threatening the flow of money between powerful people with interruption and expecting government to serve rather than represent those who expect service from all.</div><div><br /></div><div>In the end, even if the Tea Party's members can't acknowledge that every single member doesn't share their personal branch's beliefs...and that some of those members' beliefs are so radical as to be horrifying and even downright evil, they will splinter and fragment, remaining a vocal new minority...but they'll never have national relevance as they collapse in on themselves. </div><div><br /></div><div>At some point the 'big house' times must come to an end, and an honest appraisal of what they expect from members will have to come. At that point, honesty about the fringes in their ranks will take hold and the worst elements will have to be chased off. The militant Christian brigades, the Aryan Nation spin offs, and others will have to be toned down or ejected. In all likelihood, as this happens, they will also form a coherent platform that pretty much represents the best interests of corporations and wealthy individuals, and vote as one alongside the bought and paid for politicians they despise, and with the same results...stagnant corruption in our leadership and financial duress for most Americans. It isn't really going out on a limb to predict this, since they're lined up eagerly, with representatives who have spelled out most of what they support, ready for election time in just a few weeks...and I don't see that trend changing until after the November dust settles.</div><div><br /></div><div>I hope that, in the aftermath of this time of chaos and uncertainty, the rancor isn't so great that common ground is impossible to find. There are core principles in the Tea Party that I find admirable...in principle...but I see a great rush to apply them in a way that will only diminish both our personal rights and prosperity. I actually feel great regret that a movement that emerged partly as a response to genuine frustration with corrupt government has become the fighting arm of that which it theoretically opposed. If the Kool Aid wears off and the desire to fight for justice and the rule of law over corporations and people alike ever kicks in, I will welcome them with open arms as brothers and sisters in the fight to leave something better for our children, but for now, however much sympathy I may have for the principles, they are effectively little more than well meaning dupes for the enemies of all who value freedom and democracy.</div><div><br /></div><div>And lest anyone think I am painting with too broad a brush stroke: they are not all racists, they are not all Fundamentalists, and they are not all crazy or stupid...but they're still just working for the wrong side, and because that's a terrible thing to understand and live with, they just don't want to know it.</div><div><br /></div><div> </div>Voxmagihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04251587616604083194noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6201157614447586271.post-37993636793826848072010-10-08T16:00:00.000-07:002010-10-20T10:54:22.622-07:00Death By ConvenienceAmerica is clamoring for change...some of it good, some of it bad, and some of it downright ridiculous, but most of it is wishful thinking or the essence of a pipe dream at best. Much of it is powered by good intentions and emotionally charged visions of a better America...but all of it stands to face an uphill battle against the status quo...and the status quo is more powerful than ever before. <div><br /></div><div>What makes even the smallest changes such an uphill struggle? Corruption, negligence, crony-ism and more reasons roll off the tongue easily, but there is a hidden poison that has added to the problem at every level, altering the mechanisms that would bring about changes for any party interested in making them.</div><div><br /></div><div>What separates this era from any other? What marks this time and place as unique in history? What impedes the normal process of flux and change from progressing as it normally would?</div><div><br /></div><div>Given the title of the article, it's clear that I think the problem is convenience, so let me outline why I believe this to be true.</div><div><br /></div><div>First and foremost, just since the advent of television as a medium for entertainment and advertising, the culture of consumerism and the sedentary nature of leisure activities is a fact so well documented and evident that it literally requires no evidence to back it up...beyond asking people to examine the contents of their homes and assess for themselves the nature of their entertainment/leisure pursuits. </div><div><br /></div><div>The hallmark of American life is the vast variety of creature comforts that are available to us. In fact, it's even the way we advertise our superiority to the world, advocating that they too could someday be as comfortable as we. Our food is price fixed to stay affordable so that chain restaurants can keep those cheap meals flowing fast. Even households not blessed with great income have DVD players, CD players, radio, wireless, cellphones with internet access and more more more.</div><div><br /></div><div>We are a convenience culture, with stores on every corner, food that comes ready made or can be prepared and consumed in minutes, and entertainment that can soothe the restless mind always ready at hand...and this is not all bad...but there are side effects that may not have been given the consideration they were due.</div><div><br /></div><div>In a world where one struggles for little, what value does patience or determination really have? Thinking cautiously and planning for the future are reflections of an ethos that was necessary a few generations ago...but is no longer relevant the way it once was. A person prepared to endure adversity...to go without what they desire in the short term so that they may have what they prioritize in the long term...is a person well prepared for survival in ANY era...but that person is rarer than ever.</div><div><br /></div><div>As clear as in our personal lives, our politics also darkly reflect an intemperate, hasty, slapdash sort of thinking...a hunger for immediate satisfaction that can quickly turn into outraged frustration... more-so now than ever before. The overwhelming and sudden success of the Tea Party is a mirror held up to our own nature as a society. Where once people rose up and faced violence to fight for labor conditions that weren't terrifying or downright routinely lethal...or for civil rights so that each individual citizen might have the same access to the benefits of citizenship in a free society as any other...now we are treated to the spectacle of people rising up on behalf of the well funded pundits and think tanks that answer the question in their souls: Why am I not happier?</div><div><br /></div><div>Like snake oil salesman, the pitch is delivered fluently, sympathetically and skillfully...aimed at people who in the midst of overwhelming plenty, still are not content, and who need somewhere...someone on whom to lay the blame. The secret of advertising is to know your target audience...to understand what moves their hearts. Insecurity? Fear? Anger? Loneliness? Whatever your emotions may be, an appeal is being made to them, calculated to have an impact that isn't thought about...but which is responded to quickly.</div><div><br /></div><div>The great peril in a free society where advertising and convenient entertainment is an everyday experience is that the people so exposed to that culture of convenience may become less conscious of their own responses, simply reacting from the gut without any understanding of how they can be manipulated. Our society has been built on the back of self determination and self management...principles that in theory are quite conservative...and very agreeable to me in principle.</div><div><br /></div><div>But what becomes of such a society if it allows the minds and spirits to degrade into a state of pure, animalistic reaction? How then will a people, supposedly the masters of their own destinies, manage themselves well in a democracy? The answer is that they don't. It ceases to be a democracy in anything but name, and the gifted will simply manipulate vast herds people into believing, with righteous indignation, that they are enacting their own will...rather than echoing what has been spoon fed to them as the latest cure-all for their ills.</div><div><br /></div><div>And here we are...nearing the eve of mid-term elections with a new and thundering voice being heard...clamoring not for freedom, but for the right to reduce inconvenient freedoms. Sounding off, not for the rights of people...but for the rights of corporations. Crying out not for equality...but for a limited superiority for certain classes of citizens.</div><div><br /></div><div>How low have we fallen from the ideals that brought us into being as a country? How much lower can we fall? We'll find out in our lifetimes...and we should have a fairly clear vision of what that fall will be like...just a few weeks from now. An electorate driven by emotional responses to carefully selected buzzwords cannot prevail and choose a wise course, or wise leaders...and in due time we'll see where a life no longer built on patience and self determination, but instead crafted of convenience, has led us. </div><div><br /></div><div> </div>Voxmagihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04251587616604083194noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6201157614447586271.post-29480808229199133242010-08-09T17:45:00.000-07:002010-08-09T17:47:49.536-07:00It's Not My Grandfather's GOP Anymore<div>It was hard for me to watch the past 30 years, as the GOP of my childhood morphed and warped into a twisted caricature of the party it had once been, and as classical conservatism slowly faded away only to be transformed into neo-conservatism, the political force now stronger than ever today. This was hard to watch not because of the harm that has been done to political discourse in general and to millions of Americans through misguided policy, but because I still hold a deep affection for the old principles that once guided the conservatism of a bygone era, and because those principles have been cast to the wayside as a consequence of the past several decades of political wrangling.</div><div><br /></div><div>Conservatism once offered up an ideal counterbalance to the excesses of hurried idealism that fueled liberal changes to law, government and life, mostly by virtue of applying caution and a respect for fiscal sanity (in principle if not always in practice) into the debate. The two extremes functioned like Yin and Yang, each grinding away the roughest and worst edges of the other. That balance is entirely lost to us now.</div><div><br /></div><div>Many remember the more recent struggles for the 'soul of the party', but the battle has been going on much longer than that. So long, in fact, that most have forgotten what Republicans and conservatives were like prior to the 1980's and the Reagan administration, which swept into power an enormous number of early neo-conservatives and entrenched them in both our political system and public political dialog.</div><div><br /></div><div>From Christine Whitman of New Jersey, whose brief stint as head of the EPA was ended by an apparent hesitance to routinely lie and creatively edit scientific studies that didn't jibe with the administration's platform, to General Colin Powell and former prosecutor David Iglesias, conservatives who display moderation and unflinching fairness without regard to party interests are removed from power and replaced with persons who share the new party zeal for strict neo-conservative orthodoxy.</div><div><br /></div><div>Locally, for those of us in this part of Michigan, we watched the removal of Joe Schwartz from the party ticket, against the will of his many supporters, so that a radical neo-conservative preacher could campaign in his stead. Two years later, the position was in Democratic hands, since no one really felt comfortable with a radical weirdo and support shifted to a Democrat who at least gave the impression of being sane.</div><div><br /></div><div>A few notes regarding Joe Schwartz should be included to understand why he didn't pass the neo-con litmus test. As a military veteran and former intelligence officer, he was a firm supporter of veteran's rights, which is inconvenient in an era where more veterans than ever are being mishandled and abused by a system intent on reducing their financial impact on the federal government. As a doctor, he opposed excessive restrictions on abortion access and gag rules that limit a doctor's ability to give sound medical advice. In the new orthodoxy this is akin to heresy, and Joe Schwartz paid the price for bucking at the reins. He was proof that a conservative Republican could support efforts to reduce abortion by reducing its causes in a sensible fashion, without falling back on draconian attacks on the individual liberty of women. That kind of thinking is unwelcome at GOP meetings these days.</div><div><br /></div><div>But how did it come to this? What was different about the GOP prior to its radicalization? Does anyone even remember? I can't speak for everyone, but I can speak from first and second hand experience by referring to my grandfather, a man I admired enormously and loved without condition.</div><div><br /></div><div>He was comfortably middle class, in part because he often treated people when payment was an unresolved issue. He didn't always make the 'right' financial choice, but he tried very hard to never make the wrong ethical choice. When it came to health, the town was his flock, and the needs of the flock sometimes outweighed the needs of the shepherd. It's almost impossible for people today to imagine a doctor in wintertime in the 1940's hitching a sleigh with bells and riding a circuit through the area so that people stuck in distant farms could wave for help if anyone was sick and couldn't get to town...but that was the town doctor that he was. It was his badge of honor and he served it, not vice-versa. </div><div><br /></div><div>My grandfather was a practicing doctor, and his wife was a practicing RN. They were ardent Catholics, stolid lifetime Republicans, active in charities and in personal hobbies, local politics and schools, and an integral part of the community the lived in throughout their lives. They were both extremely literate, not merely in necessary sciences for their jobs, but in poetry, classical literature and popular fiction. They enjoyed travel, photography, piloting small aircraft, hunting and fishing, bird watching and nature conservation.</div><div><br /></div><div>They were never racist, being firmly in the camp of meritocrats, believing that deeds measured a person's worth far more accurately than skin color or faith. Being well educated and well read, as well as having traveled broadly, they did not subscribe to generalities about other cultures. When you've met people in their native country, it's hard to be fooled by cheap punditry, and they had seen Egypt, Germany, Ireland, Japan and endless others up close and personal. Also, when you've examined thousands and thousands of people medically and seen all races and creeds naked and sick and hoping for their health back or praying for a family member's recovery it's hard to view them as truly different from each other in any meaningful way.</div><div><br /></div><div>Their conservatism was a quiet prudence...a belief that changes should be made with great caution, that public purse strings should be opened only when appropriate, and that honesty and forthrightness should always win over deceit and charlatanism. On my grandfather's desk were two signs. One read "Illegitami Non Carborundum"...Latin for "Don't Let The Bastards Grind You Down." The other was "All Men Are Self Made...Only The Successful Ones Like To Admit It." In essence, they encapsulated most of what he'd learned about life. Earn what you receive and you won't be ashamed of it. Your mistakes are just as much yours to own as your victories are. Never surrender to the pressure to be less than what you can be.</div><div><br /></div><div>Likewise, they were firm believers in capitalism as a way of life, but with the caveat that people should regulate and manage capitalism to ensure that businesses act in an ethical and transparent fashion. It was not "Socialist" to suggest that oversight might be necessary when a company or even an industry has a long track record of criminal acts with repercussions for the public...it was just common sense. If he held any opposition to modern unions (circa 1960's and 1970's) it was largely because the nature of their demands had shifted from fair compensation and safety to excessive compensation and luxuries for leadership.</div><div><br /></div><div>They were both studied naturalists, my grandfather having been a Boy Scout since Lord Baden-Powell toured the U.S. forming troops, and when it came to environmental matters they viewed the role of each generation as custodial...keeping and preserving our nation's beautiful parks, waterways and landscapes in trust for the children to come after them. It was about responsibility...accepting a burden and understanding that it was a solemn duty...not a privilege of rank to be sold off at auction for pennies on the dollar.</div><div><br /></div><div>I can remember my grandfather's deep distrust of televised advertising for new pharmaceuticals. To tell a patient the symptoms before they seek diagnosis? Madness! His desks were littered with unwanted gifts from drug manufacturers that had piled up over decades of practice, but his solitary concern was always the patient. He knew with perfect clarity that such a move would lead to people fudging their symptoms to receive treatment, and to the over-prescription of drugs that might not be as necessary as people imagined.</div><div><br /></div><div>The interference of politics in medicine was anathema to him. A physician, sworn to a Hippocratic oath that transcends party lines, should never be obliged to alter his diagnosis or the treatment for same because of outside factors. Only what the patient required to become healthy and whole had merit. As an elected county coroner, the county jail doctor, and a private practicing family physician, politics touched on his work regularly, but his commitment to being a good doctor never swayed. </div><div><br /></div><div>So deep was his commitment to that principle that only once did he knowingly and willfully violate the law, keeping the secret until very late in life, confessing it to his son near the end of his days. When civilian medical supplies were rationed during wartime, and antibiotics became hard to obtain, a flurry of whooping cough cases struck the area and susceptible patients were dying of related but treatable lung infections like pneumonia.</div><div><br /></div><div>There was a black market for antibiotics, and once he knew it existed he was placed in the worst moral dilemma of his (then) comparatively young life. If you know of a means by which to treat a patient with a high probability of recovery, but the means would include violating the law of the land, did the Hippocratic Oath supersede his belief in ethical conduct and good citizenship? In the end, the treatment of patients to the maximum of his ability was more important than obedience to law, but he accepted without reservation that what he had done was illegal and a crime during wartime. There was no attempt by him to dress it up as heroism, which some of us may feel is a better description, and a certain humility is evident in his character because of this.</div><div><br /></div><div>His personal faith survived in the face of hard questions about God and His relationship with humanity, but was never intrusive or evangelical in nature. They were Catholics in Ohio in a community with very few other Catholics, and during a time when KKK members would still spread the suspicion that as a Papist, he would secretly plot to baptize the children of others on the Pope's behalf. It sounds foolish now, but it isn't much wilder than the theories put forward by neo-conservatives regarding Muslims today. This did not change his faith, but it did make him a tireless advocate for people doing their job without intertwining it with their faith, and over time even the most suspicious residents finally warmed to 'The Doc', eventually refusing to be treated by anyone else but the town doctor they knew and trusted most.</div><div><br /></div><div>I ask myself today if my grandfather would fit in with the GOP we see before us now, and the answer is no. Like Whitman or Schwartz or Iglesias, he would have been drummed out for having displayed even a shred of real principle. He would be politically homeless, a conservative of the classical era of American prosperity and good sense, chased away by zealots frothing at the mouth with neo-conservative pscyho-babble spilling from their tongues.</div><div><br /></div><div>I don't share all of my grandfather's views, politically, socially, religiously or otherwise. I rejected Confirmation as a Catholic when I was a pre-teen, because I couldn't accept the notion of making an oath to God affirming myself as a Catholic for life and accepting all accompanying dogma...when I had deep and abiding questions about church dogma that would make such an oath a lie. The moral question was whether a lie before God was acceptable compared to abandoning a family tradition and refusing a sacrament. At a moment like that, I like to think that I showed a shred of my grandfather's character before I even knew his thoughts on deeper subjects. </div><div><br /></div><div>When I was old enough to first vote in '88, I voted Democratic primarily to oppose the neo-conservatives of the Reagan administration. I fell into the familiar pattern of imagining that the 'other party' MUST be better, because the GOP had behaved in so patently immoral a fashion. That notion was quickly disabused by the election of the Democrats to power in '92. Despite my high hopes for a swift change in the way government conducted itself I was treated to the spectacle of the Clinton era, and any blind faith I had in two party politics quickly died an ugly death.</div><div><br /></div><div>I began to judge politicians with a jaundiced, but experienced, eye...weighing them as individuals without regard to party affiliation. I would be considered broadly socially liberal today, since I hold a deep and unshakable conviction that all people should be treated equally under the law, that transparency and accountability are essential to the ethical operation of both government and private business alike, that all faiths must be free and separate from government so that they might remain free, and that the first order of government is to serve the people...not the unelected minority of business leaders whose solitary goal is to reduce obstacles on the way to profit without regard for the health or well being of the population with whom they share this country.</div><div><br /></div><div>But I never forget that I learned most of those principled beliefs I hold so dear...from lifetime Republicans and conservative people of faith. If the GOP still had room for people like them, that's where I'd probably be, but alas, we live in different times. The changes that have taken place in just 30 years are so great and so pervasive that there is no resemblance between the party of yesteryear and the GOP of today, and only when we look back at the panorama of the last century are the differences suddenly so stark and obvious.</div><div><br /></div><div>In 2008, after a battering at the polls and losses that even penetrated traditionally red states, I held my breath for just a moment, wondering if the fight for the soul of the party would finally bring better results. It was as clear as day...eight years of fiscal irresponsibility, regulatory laxity, intelligence mangling, data fixing, vote rigging, war mongering and visible tolerance of corruption inside the GOP had come home to roost. Here was the chance to purge the hateful clique of neo-con maniacs out of the party and return to a saner era of principles over personalities.</div><div><br /></div><div>And we all know how that turned out. Oh well...maybe some other century will see the GOP clean its own house instead of slowly sliding into a pit of lunacy and blind reactionary hate...but I won't be holding my breath for it. I'll be weighing politicians on an individual basis, voting locally to smite corruption wherever it's found, and pushing for a return to sound principles wherever ears are listening...and I hope, despite our many differences, that my grandfather would be proud. </div>Voxmagihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04251587616604083194noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6201157614447586271.post-17488913680033875152009-12-14T08:17:00.000-08:002009-12-14T13:10:57.377-08:00Of Hot Air And Changing ClimatesIt's a little late to chime in on the subject of climate change, but since I do this primarily to vent opinions and notions and not because of any deluded belief about making a vast difference, it hardly matters that this would have been more timely a few weeks or even a few years ago.<br /><br /> As with most issues, I fall between no clearly set boundaries and hold to few if any absolutes...we have plenty of partisans who can handle that task just fine without my assistance. I have plenty of venom to spew in both directions, and it's well deserved, since both factions in the climate debate are dominated by spin-doctors and buzzword purveyors who routinely avoid facts the way allergic diners avoid peanuts. I'd just like to cut through the fog of BS that clouds the air around the subject, just for my own peace of mind.<br /><br /> Let's begin with my complaints about the Global Warming True Believers (with a brief reminder that I have just as many problems with the other side, the Conspiracy/Denier Drones, shortly to follow).<br /><br /> Global warming is a phrase loaded with less than subtle meaning, which has been jackhammered into the public subconscious as an image of a dark future involving a swampy, tropical earth, riddled with mosquitos and disease, with most of our borders altered by rising water until the population of the earth is limited to tiny outposts on the tips of mountains. The doomsayers of global warming are many, but what wounds their cause is their own choice of advertising, which is the deceitful and wildly inaccurate portrayal of global warming as a purely man-made, reversible situation primarily driven by CO2 emissions.<br /><br /> Even at the surface level, this simplified version of events which has been packaged and marketed to the developed and underdeveloped world alike is so laughably riddled with holes that Swiss cheese looks at it in envy. Even in the scientific models used for prediction, there are efforts made to calculate for naturally occuring variables (volcanic output, solar activity etc)...but this goes unmentioned because it would unnecessarily confuse the poor, stupid people of earth, and the situation is so dire and important that a convenient white lie or two is excusable.<br /><br /> Naturally, I beg to differ. I'm just contrary that way.<br /><br /> There are both natural AND man made contributary factors at play, and lying about it, even for a theoretically good cause, only diminishes people's respect and trust for the institutions and individual scientists involved, as well as for science in general. While the deniers are lambasted for using junk science and hyperbole instead of hard facts, the painful truth is that there would be very few deniers if the advocates of climate change had chosen a more honest and direct route by which to inform people of coming changes.<br /><br /> Further, CO2 is being targeted as the primary emission in need of restriction, and the means of restriction is so ludicrous that almost defies imagining...unless you happen to be one of the lobbyists who cooked up a market for intangible 'carbon credits' that will make a few people very rich while allowing major polluters to buy their way out of being regulated. CO2 is the least of the pollutants that we should be worrying about, but remains the much ballyhooed source of all ills. Is it any wonder that a sizable block of U.S. citizens have no faith in the concept of global warming, when abundant evidence in certain areas of the United States indicates that either nothing is measurably changing, or that the few blips of change on the radar over the last decade seem explainable via means other than doomsday scenarios?<br /><br /> Again, it comes down the the openly disingenuous stance taken by people who ought to know better. If the bulk of the scientific community can be so easily gulled into backing an ad campaign built by swindlers marketing an ineffectual and contemptible concept that ignores the real need for preparation, then how can they expect the trust and respect of the general public?<br /><br /> Before I move to the deniers, let me explain a few observable and measurable phenomena that can't be whisked under the rug for the sake of convenience. These are the issues that link to the heart of the matter, and they are the things that both sides ought to be thinking about more carefully.<br /><br /> There is a Northwest Passage opening in the Arctic Sea. It isn't subject to debate. The entire Northern hemisphere is jockeying for control of newly accessible mineral rights and for control of once non-navigable waters. Governments do not hire herds of international and maritime law experts because they need to bluff the rest of us. They are moving to make their cases in courts around the world, in the Hague and elsewhere, to establish claims that will reap financial rewards for generations. The ice is melting...and it isn't coming back the way it once did.<br /><br /> If you know anyone who has visited the Swiss Alps or who lives in a place where they are in close contact with glaciers (and some of us do), the number of glaciers shrinking quickly vastly outweighs the number that are spreading. There are anomolies, and this is undeniable, but that only distracts from the fact that people with a wooden stake and a tape measure can count the difference between one years ice cover and the next...and around the world the results keep coming back in the negative overall. You can't spin the people who live there, they've watched the changes that have accumulated in just a couple of decades, and they can do the math on their own.<br /><br /> The permafrost soil of northern Russia is turning into muck. Paved roads and building foundations are sinking, oil and gas extraction efforts are complicated by this with every passing spring, and no one on the ground there is in doubt that it's a little noteworthy when ground that has been frozen since mammoths walked the earth starts turning into soup. It isn't just a fictional complaint and a handy photo op for the Left, it's a mess that costs money and resources to compensate for, and it's nothing to laugh about if you're in a business that sees the bottom line shrinking because of rising costs from equipment damage and vehicular wear and tear.<br /><br /> Ocean salinity really is dropping, with freshwater melt and runoff ever so slightly changing both the level of acidity and the salinity of the ocean. Skeptics are sometimes accurate, when they mention that the change has been very, very small, but then the same skeptics quickly hustle on before anyone brings up high school level science class material and mentions that when dealing with millions upon millions of gallons of water, even a change of 0.001% is sufficient to shift patterns of evaporation and alter rainfall dramatically.<br /><br /> Low lying islands really are losing ground, displacing populations and making it clear that, in certain areas, just an inch or two of water makes an enormous difference. Doesn't mean much for Idaho, but if you live on a coral atoll in the Pacific, things are looking pretty grim. More relevant to the U.S., parts of the coastal South are already experiencing increased saltwater intrusion into freshwater wells. In areas with high concentrations of population, losing even a few percentage points off of available water supplies means citywide shortages and rationing. Ask Atlanta, Georgia and the smaller towns on its ouskirts. Drought isn't a rare spell of bad luck, it's a way of life with a few pleasant breaks when the rainfall is just right.<br /><br /> The concept of micro-climates goes almost unmentioned in the press. It's a little too complicated for the average reader, or so they must think, since they're the ones sticking to the party line and leaving out the, if you'll excuse the term, "Inconvenient Truth". The earth is a collection of micro-climates, small areas that have unique individual weather patterns and atmospheric conditions, and many of these are experiencing change. Sometimes that change isn't consistent 'warming', which trashes the whole concept of 'global warming' and fuels skepticism, but once they started on the journey by picking a simple concept that could be easily communicated, they just wouldn't back off, largely for fear of being ignored entirely. Now, as they sit in gridlock, spinning wheels in Copenhagen, I hope that at least some of them look back and wonder if they were right to hitch themselves to Al Gore's snappy line of patter and familiar song and dance.<br /><br /> For the deniers, I can't spare enough venom for all the idiocy I've witnessed. Some believe that God Almighty is their personal Merry Maid service, and will clean up any mess that humans make, because a divine being would never let his planet be harmed by mere humans. Yeah...sure...that's why the city dump should shut down tomorrow. God will make trash, refuse and pollutants magically disappear because he loves us. He also makes my bed in the morning and does my dishes at night. Please, dump your used battery acid in your vegetable garden...God will make it disappear so your food will still be safe to eat. Don't kill the messenger, but even pre-asssuming the presence of a divine Creator, God has a long track record as a hands-off manager, and historically speaking, He hasn't been in the business of fixing our mistakes for the last two thousand years, and any God worth worshipping would expect about the same level of discipline from his flock as most of us would expect from an unruly teenager. (You break it...you fix it. Whining will get you nowhere. Do you think your room is going to clean itself?)<br /><br /> Another category of idiot is needed just for the partisans that aren't really interested in any measurable data, but are drawn to the fray because the party or pundit they hate said something, which apparently completely justifies spewing froth and bile at every opportunity. The issue itself is irrelevant to them, but the opportunity to hurl barely coherent invective at their hated enemies is their life's solitary joy. There are days when I pray that Hillary Clinton, Al Gore and Barack Obama would join hands and announce publicly that they support the breathing of air and the use of lungs for dispersing oxygen to the blood, because that would be more than sufficient to drive herds of retards into gluing their noses and throats shut to defy such obvious nonsense. These are the kind of people that could be drowning neck deep in water and swear they're in the desert, as long it was an enemy of theirs who claimed there was too much rain.<br /><br /> Less offensive, but equally ridiculous, are the buzzword drones that sagely repeat the same lies they were spoonfed, never questioning the motivation of a think tank representative that recieves his pay because dozens of corporations spent a fortune finding ways to spin a few words that showed the most potential to stick in people's minds. Is it really so unlikely that, facing regulations that would shave a percent or two off the bottom line for a few years, corporations would use staggering amounts of cash to pump the airwaves full of contradictory noise and hope that as long as the issue was 'undecided', no one would get back to them with any solid expectations for changed behavior? I find this crowd less offensive only because innocence and naivete are excusable...up to a point. There is, however, a point at which people stop merely being accidental dupes who wrongly placed their trust, and start being responsible for choosing to stay a sucker for the long haul. If you weren't aware that corporations fund the creation of almost all think tanks, or that the think tanks provide the 'research' that coincidentally matches those parent corporations' interests, or that the hired speaker who represents them on TV or radio is hired primarily for his or her ability to put forward the information said think tank agrees with in a convincing and believable way...well...I'm not sure anyone down here can help you without divine intervention...so start praying.<br /><br /> Enough of the deniers (I won't even go into the conspiracy theorists, because they're half right that lies are being told...it's where they go with it from there that leaves the rational mind staggering), and back to a point worth summing up, which applies to both sides of the spectrum. You can find hacks on both sides that deserve nothing but complete contempt, and who deserve a special hell, just for sowing discord when the world needs thoughtful and decisive action.<br /><br /> The special hell shouldn't be reserved for those who cheerlead BS from the sidelines, the special hell should be for those who labor to bend numbers and find irrelevant anomalies to quibble over, knowing full well that this doesn't disprove that things are rapidly changing. The lobbyists and pundits who know it's just a game with a score that's scrupulously kept, politics as usual, and that the people displaced by sudden changes in their environment are far less important than keeping their political foes at loggerheads. The politicians who gladly gloss over the visible impact on the daily lives of people, because the party line doesn't allow for realism or pragmatism when partisanship is on the line. The sellout who knows that real efforts are called for, but who meekly accepts a toothless compromise because 'it's better than nothing', or 'it's a start'. These are just the souls to fill that special hell...the pied pipers that piped a merry tune all the way to destruction and chaos, because the suffering of others was somehow acceptable, as long they had enough cash to insulate themselves from the troubles that others would have to face.<br /><br /> What do I believe? I don't believe in any comprehensive theory of 'global warming', but I do believe that climate change is happening. The evidence isn't manufactured data from a lefty think tank or a movie with Al Gore. The evidence is in the Arctic Sea, the Alps, Greenland, Atlanta, Siberia, The Himalayas, Florida and in micro climates across the globe. The evidence is the eyes of friends who have been alive long enough to notice that these aren't incredibly gradual changes that took decades to notice, but sharp sudden changes that became noticeable within a few short years.<br /><br /> 'Man made' or naturally occuring' is irrelevant as well. I may have a hearty distrust of corporations and a cynical certainty that their ultimate goal is always to extract profit without any reasonable responsibility for the consequences of their actions, but that doesn't change the need to focus first and foremost on how to cope with changes that might very well be disastrous...if we allow them to be that way through total inaction. Industrialization and rising population have played a part in changing the world, but the world also changes of its own accord, ignoring our pleas for stability and normalcy. Having a plan to deal with change is better than having a long argument about who flushed while we're all spiralling downward.<br /><br /> I hold freshwater resources to be the most important resource of the 21st, or any other century. As long as potable water is plentiful, most other problems can eventually be overcome, but if you really want to see a world gone mad, by all means, please take no actions to ensure that existing water supplies are protected and bolstered. A few countries are already pushing forward with coastal desalinization plants, but the scale is still fairly small and the process complicated and costly. Still, much better than nothing, and attempts at self sufficience are always better than waiting for the rest of world to ship water to you in little plastic bottles. I'd applaud Al Gore or Dick Cheney, if either one of them stood up and spoke comprehensively about securing potable water against future shifts of rainfall or seawater intrusion, but most of what I've heard so far has been equally pathetic bleating about whether anything is happening or not.<br /><br /> Sustainable food sources, diverse enough that sharp changes in temperature or rainfall (in any direction, be it more or less, hot or cold, wet or dry), instead of mono-crops that leave entire economies crumbling when the weather shifts or hiccups, would go a long way toward enhancing my confidence that change would be easily survivable with very little suffering except for a few minor changes of diet. Try to remember that in the course of recorded human history, deserts have grown out of what were once lush grasslands where endless herds grazed. Those bedraggled people on TV who hike miles to fetch water for their tiny flock of half starved cattle...are the descendants of empires that once knew overwhelming plenty. The pyramids were not built in a nation of sand and dust, they were erected near a fertile flood plain with arable cropland close at hand. Change happens, and it doesn't set appointments for our convenience. If we aren't ready to adapt quickly, we will become irrelevant.<br /><br /> That covers food and water, and shelter makes up the last of the important triangle of human necessity. Shoring up vulnerable coastlines may well be staggeringly costly, but there are certain areas where it wouldn't take a left wing nutjob's overblown prediction of a twenty foot wave to wreak havoc...it would only take a few creeping inches over half a decade to transform a modern community into a swamp. It doesn't take wild eyed, hysterical rants about worst case scenarios to make real estate an issue, because it is an issue, especially to the millions of people dwelling near or directly on coastlines in this country alone. It really shouldn't take that much of a struggle to agree on a level of encroachment that is generally regarded as unacceptable, and keep plans for the preservation of coastlines at the ready until we draw too close to that level. The operative words are 'shouldn't be', but until people detach themselves from the politics and start operating on principle and observable fact...we still have problems.<br /><br /> Just to round things out lets throw in power as well, and I really don't care what kind. It would be wonderful if we had solar power and wind power and wave power all worked out in advance and ready to roll in plenty of time for hasty change, but since that doesn't seem especially likely, the pragmatist in me wants the cushion of knowing that current sources of energy, be they fossil-based or otherwise, are properly protected, with suitable contingency plans made to compensate for disruption. It would be uncomfortable in the extreme to find yourself moving to higher ground, well fed, water handy and a place to stay waiting for you...but no light handy that doesn't involve burning wood or animal fat.<br /><br /> Maybe it sounds crass and vaguely exploitative, but clarity of purpose can seem that way in a world where clarity is scarce. The goal should be simple: to make those adjustments which are necessary in order to allow the greatest number of people possible to transition smoothly through periods of change to their environment, with as little human suffering as possible along the way.<br /><br /> The blame game can come after the fact. If nothing happens in the next twenty years and everything returns to familiar seasonal averages from decades past...hey, great! We can hold a party and use 'green economy' fans as pinatas! On the other hand, if seawater drives you out of your beachfront condo...and it isn't even storm season, you should be able to request a free voucher to rabbit punch Rush Limbaugh until your arms get tired (assuming of course that he hasn't OD'd or just plain exploded by then). What really matters is that we have firm, workable plans in place and ready for implimentation, giving us the ability to prosper and thrive in an uncertain future. Playing the blame game first, as we're doing now, would almost be excusable, if it wasn't just an exercise in trying to pin the price tag for a planet-wide game of financial three-card monty on the loser. Whether it's the blame game or the 'global warming' game, in the end, the loser winds up being everyone who isn't hauling a few million bucks around to cover the cost of a comfortable life.<br /><br /> Cutting 'emissions' sounds all well and good, but CO2 be damned, I'd sleep easier if we just managed to keep the heavy metals and petro-residues from saturating every neighborhood and every store shelf. Maybe it's just a gut instinct, and this isn't backed by any personally observed facts, but I've got a strong suspicion that cancer wouldn't be half so prevalent in this new century if we could be bothered to outlaw just the substances we already know beyond doubt to be lethally poisonous and carcinogenic...and when I say outlaw, I don't mean politely request that companies properly dispose of the leftovers after using the forbidden substances anyway, I mean outlaw, complete with lengthy sentences to the kind of prison where you don't quibble with your cellmate over who gets to use the squash court Wednesday afternoon, but generally spend each day praying that you aren't shanked during a mealtime dispute.<br /><br /> It ends with the word 'priorities', because those are what vanished in the din as soon as each side's Pied Pipers started playing. One side marched off ditzily, 'visualizing whirled peas', when they could have been concentrating on concrete steps to get rid of 100% deadly, kill-you-if-you-breath-it, genuine poisons...and lowering other emissions as a bonus byproduct of an ironclad cause, while the other side marched off the deep end to defend the status quo, on behalf of people who have plenty enough cash to survive the inevitable end of said status quo, all the while happily forgetting that when the stink hits the fan...those same wealthy folks who paid to provide people with ready made doubts and distractions won't be sharing their umbrella with the clods they used as cannon fodder to buy themselves a few more years of unhindered profits.<br /><br />Stop listening to the pied pipers, and you might suddenly be able to see the priorities.Voxmagihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04251587616604083194noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6201157614447586271.post-16397172143745835432009-09-21T12:31:00.000-07:002009-09-21T13:36:50.789-07:00Dan Brown's "The Lost Symbol"Don't worry, this will post isn't a matter of spoilers and inside info for those who haven't read the book yet, but it is a musing on some of the notions that have been put forward by the publication of such a book, by such a very popular author. No major plot revelations will be unveiled, but there will be some affectionate examination of key concepts. All good? Then let's go!<br /><br />Most people have likely never heard of Noetic science, which has only recently gelled into a coherent scientific discipline, but more than a few of us drifting along the fringe of scientific and spiritual thought have already run into many of the precursors and crude early experiments that eventually blossomed into Noetics.<br /><br />Mr. Brown, by virtue of his popularity, has achieved something very like one of the experiments put forward in his book. He has released a concept into the minds of a wide audience and, simply by introducing millions of people to Noetic science, he has altered human consciousness by a very small degree, with results that we can only guess at as time moves on.<br /><br />If thought possesses mass, even though that mass may be so small as to seem inconsequential, then it certainly interacts with its environment in accordance with measurable laws that haven't yet been fully determined. What impact will millions, or tens of millions, of people have, when all their minds are trained upon the same concept for the first time? And how much of a difference will it make, when people realize that thought really can have a measurable impact on themselves and the world around them?<br /><br />Ours is a world split between the rational and the instinctive, the Id and SuperEgo, the spirit and the flesh. Superstition routinely trumps science, especially among those who need a less complicated way to make the world an orderly and understandable place. Science can be damned complicated, and speaking frankly, most people will never be completely comfortable with science, because the technical language and the frustrating requirements for neutrality don't sit well with minds that want a simple answer.<br /><br />People want a side to choose, a team to play for, a country to belong to and a way of life that ideally suits them. What people don't want, in general, is brutal self examination and introspection. Naturally, being a contrary sort of person to begin with, I went for the hard route.<br /><br />Long before Dan Brown's novel, for which I am grateful, and long before I'd ever heard of Noetics, I studied the religions of the world to find answers to my own questions. I was searching for common truths, things that spoke to the heart in every language and every culture. I wanted to bridge the gap that seperates one religion from another, and understand what motivates people to divide endlessly even while they all move toward the same expression of truth.<br /><br />I studied religion, and non-religion, Thomas Aquinas and Bertrand Russel, philosophy and non-philosophy, The Blue Rock Record and Neitzsche, science, psychology, poetry, art, history, myth and legend...always searching for the same underlying truths.<br /><br />What gratifies me now is this: that in an information friendly age, others like me have been inexorably moving toward the same conclusions, and that, leaving aside good stories with secret societies and winding plots, the long work of moving into a state of being where we accept that science and religion are simply faces of the same coin, the search for truth and understanding, and that we are capable of changing our lives and our environment through the power of our collective will, is stronger than ever.<br /><br />I don't have a monopoly on truth. I have no wisdom that can't be found elsewhere. I do have a few good ideas, and some gut instincts that haven't failed me yet, so here are just a few thoughts that might strike a chord with others.<br /><br />There is only one road...and everyone is on it whether they like it or not. Everyone is born, loves or hates, laughs or cries, and dies. The beginning and ending have no exceptions, everything in between is up to us. We are all in this together...and we are all ultimately alone. You will have no peace outside yourself if you have no peace within. We're all flawed...including you, including me...get over it and just do your best. We're all special and unique...but not so special or unique that we're excused from the laws of nature, so be special and unique...but do it with humility and grace instead of naked arrogance. Things happen...most of them you can't control, but how you deal with them is entirely within your power, so don't shortchange yourself with reactions that only make things worse. Do as little damage as possible along the way, and you can be nearly certain about looking back at your life with fewer regrets. Enjoy being alive while you can...it won't last as long as you want. Indulge...but in enough moderation that you don't make a fool of yourself. Tell the ones you love what you love about them...and try not to concentrate on the negative, trust me...they'll appreciate the effort<br /><br />And read more books. I've never been sorry for reading a book that was good enough to keep me reading to the last chapter.<br /><br />If you're inclined to read a book by Dan Brown, The Lost Symbol has twists and turns and an underlying truth that is important to us all, and if you aren't...that's okay too. Enjoy.Voxmagihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04251587616604083194noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6201157614447586271.post-13682734671180018192009-09-13T20:24:00.000-07:002009-09-21T12:29:10.359-07:00Remembering The FutureIt's startlingly easy to let my natural cynicism overwhelm me, since we live in a world almost deafened by a cacophony made up of angry voices. We are scared of the future, and what it might hold for us, or for our children, or for their children. War is an everyday fact of life, impoverishment and disease are just as problematic as they were decades ago, and it isn't hard to look at declining opportunity and standards of living and feel that our greatest days as a nation are behind us.<br /><br />Not long ago I experienced something purely incidental, an accident of timing that made me feel a sense of what is possible even in an era of limited prospects and diminished hope. I thought it would be well worth mentioning, because it's exactly the kind of thing that happens every day, all across the country, in every town and city, but goes unnoticed precisely because it IS the kind of thing that happens everyday, everywhere.<br /><br />I was on the way to work, and I parked outside the downtown building that contained the client's apartment. It was a Sunday afternoon, and a cloudy, grey one at that. Rain was falling, more of a soft patter than real drizzling rain, but it was still kind of day you wanted to spend indoors if you could.<br /><br />When I got out of my truck, I couldn't help but notice one lone figure on the local high school's track field. Out there, in the rain, on an unremarkable Sunday afternoon, there was just one lone teenager running hurdles.<br /><br />There was no one cheering him, and no one watching him that I could see in any direction. He was alone and had to move the hurdles into position on his own, and put them back into position whenever he knocked one over. There were no coaches and no parents, no pressure to achieve from any angle. It was just a kid who was willing to spend his weekend afternoon alone, in the rain, striving to be better, to be faster, to be more ready to compete against his peers.<br /><br />If that spirit is alive in just a few people in every town and city in this country, then I know that whatever comes, politically or socially, can be dealt with in good order. In that kid lived proof that there are people who are unafraid of hardship to achieve a goal. People who are dogged and determined, require no pushing from others to achieve great things, and who can rise above petty interests to reach toward victory.<br /><br />That young person was the face of the future I sometimes forget. It was a sobering reminder that the torch is always in the process of being passed, and that it never remains still. As I am aging and growing slower, another generation is at its peak, and yet another is only just beginning to hit its stride, and another, younger still, is preparing for a time when the torch will begin to pass into their hands.<br /><br />If we turn away from the television and the computer, shut off the dizzying, deafening thunder of our media, and look to our own cities and towns, it is there that we will find the future, struggling in the face of adversity, silent, stoic and brave. It is not televised or sponsored, not advertised or ballyhooed, and oftentimes it isnt even rewarded with praise. It isn't a product or a dogma, and it can't be counted or quantified in convenient formulas, and so it slips past us, largely unnoticed, while we glumly assume that the world is doomed for lack of capable hands to manage its future.<br /><br />I'll rant and fume another time, but today...today I will remember the future, and remember that somewhere, someone is ready to take up the tasks that will face them, and I will be at peace.Voxmagihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04251587616604083194noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6201157614447586271.post-5170718510481750572009-08-21T13:44:00.000-07:002009-08-21T16:36:34.662-07:00Truly Surreal PatriotismThe word <em>surreal</em> comes into play a lot these days, at least for me, and it generally comes into play when I observe other people's inexplicable one-sidedness in the pursuit of the right to express themselves politically. I'll grant that I'm exercising the same right, and that I support the right to do so <em>unilaterally and without condition. </em>However, I find myself amazed at times like this, when I realize just how many have formed fierce opinions with nothing to back them except the spurious claims of hired pundits and spokespersons. It's one thing to have a fierce opinion built on a principle that has served you a lifetime and which, after careful thought, merits ferocity, it's another thing altogether when a person rushes to judgement based on the patently manufactured outrage of a hired political pundit that hands you a string of catch phrases to repeat.<br /><br />This behavior isn't limited to one party or philosphy, to one region or religion, but can be observed everywhere, and provides a great source of interesting news clips and sound bites for the media grist mills that pass as news in the US. At the moment, the ball has fallen into the court of the aggrieved, out-of-power GOP, and we find ourselves treated to a spectacle that harkens back to the worst moments of the 1960's and 1970's. The reactionaries in our new era are largely comprised of lower middle class whites, but the single-minded determination to ignore inconvenient facts is shockingly familiar.<br /><br />I sympathize greatly with every person who is sickened by political inaction, misinformation, thinly veiled lies and deliberate obfuscation...BUT, I find an alarming number of people focusing on a single party, just as the left and many Democrats did for the last eight years. The same one-sidedness and careful avoidance of information that might conflict with a dearly held view is in place, this time for the right. I challenge this way of thinking almost daily, because I too am a person frustrated by politics in the United States, but I am ALWAYS striving to question the information I take in, and to weigh what can be trusted and what cannot. My beliefs don't come from a limited number of trusted sources, and are not dictated to me by friendly televised faces, and I strongly believe that others should accept the hard task of constantly examining their media, their beliefs and the potential consequences of their actions. For the most part, this is the high price of adulthood in a democratic republic. It is your responsibility to sift fact from fiction, instead of depending on others to do it for you.<br /><br />I can afford a certain freedom to criticize without hypocrisy, because I have a critical view of both major parties, no lasting political alliance to any organization or persons thereof, am financed by no one, and I withhold my criticism from no one. The most unbearably common technique of the informed political hack, when faced with critical questions about the point of view or representative they champion, is to dodge the issue at hand by shouting about the perfidy of the other party. This is irreverant and ignorant conduct. It simply proves beyond doubt that a person possesses no credible defense for the actions of their party or its leaders, and that they have no choice but to scurry to a different topic rather than facing the harsh and unpleasant possibility that a treasured faith in a party or person may be unwarranted.<br /><br />This stands for Democrat and Republican, conservative and liberal alike. Where was the psuedo-left and the DNC during the Clinton era? Mostly applauding loudly or defending every inept or inadequate decision. The same held true for eight years of the Bush administration, with stolid, traditional Republicans keeping a tight lipped silence and marching in lockstep instead of demanding accountability from their own party. This brings us to the current day, in an era where tension is rising fast and tempers are fraying, with one party paralyzed by internal wrangling for lobby dollars and another descending into pandering to paranoiacs and lunatics.<br /><br />When I hear the screams from barely articulate right-wing hacks about the erosion of our personal liberties and the certain doom of our way of life and the freedoms enshrined in our constitution...well, mostly, I want to vomit explosively to vent that bile and incredulity that comes from hearing concentrated idiocy. What forms in my mind after the urge to hurl has passed is a single shining question: WHERE THE HELL WERE YOU A YEAR AGO? OR FIVE YEARS AGO? OR TEN YEARS AGO? OR FIFTEEN? OR THIRTY?<br /><br />Were these people living in a cave for the last decade? Did they not notice the multiple power-grabs by the executive branch that dominated the past few decades? The court stacking and gerrymandering? The fraud and graft and collusion by both parties? Did they just now FINALLY notice that, since the president isn't an elderly white man, that the infringement of government into our personal lives is at an all-time high?<br /><br />Here's a free clue, just for those who might need it. If you paid your taxes without complaint for eight years while the federal deficit skyrocketed, but proudly "teabagged" the minute the other party was in office, before any changes were even made to our system of taxation by the new administration, you are the person who needs to wake up and think about your role in a democratic process. If you feel that you have no voice, it's because you didn't use it until the slime that passes for today's pundits told you to start feeling that outrage.<br /><br />For every person who spent eight years in silence or loudly defending the corrupt and inept Bush administration, here's your new marching orders. March home. Go to the woodshed. Beat yourselves silly for being so damned permissive about your party's behavior that you allowed it to acquire greater and greater heights of executive authority, which now rests in the hands of another party, because the rest of the country reacted in horror and disgust at your party's excesses and chose to elect anyone other than the status quo. Then shut up and sit down...we don't need you if you can't educate yourself sufficiently to make rational judgments about your own party's conduct.<br /><br />For every person who maintained radio silence during the Clinton years, but suddenly had the heart to speak up about the wicked nature of the GOP as soon as George W. entered office, here's a new set of marching orders for you. Find a VW Bug with flowers on it...drive it to the hospital...then walk in and have a doctor to examine the contents of your skull. Then go home and stay stoned and quiet long enough for another generation to take over. Your silent complicity and refusal to hold the DNC's feet to the fire is the precise reason that wind up wondering why you never get the results you want. We are better off without you.<br /><br />The people who herd you on command are not afraid of you (as they rightly OUGHT to be). They expect and receive your cooperation every single time they come calling. Your outrage exists for one party only, and you have the nerve to call yourself patriots because you are surrounded only by voices that agree with you utterly and won't challenge you to think or question. When you run across a contrary opinion, it's more likely than not that it's a person from the 'other side', your natural enemy, and they are just as poorly equipped and as sadly misinformed (and comfortable with it) as you are.<br /><br />Nothing can be solved or even marginally changed by brain dead herds of rabid followers spewing the same empty phrases from the same collection of talking heads. That isn't debate...that's sports...and at least in sports something is actually decide based on visible, recorded, measured performance. In politics we're down to people just lying and saying that something was accomplished, and with enough blind suppoprt from partisans they make it true in the history books, even while nothing tangible changes.<br /><br />I freely call this stupidity. Engaging in that kind of conduct is antithetical to patriotism. It is what patriots should oppose at every turn. Let me share a beloved quote that has guided my political thoughts like an unerring rudder for almost two decades now.<br /><br /><em>"The deadliest enemies of nations are not their foreign foes; they always dwell within their borders.... The nation blessed above all nations is she in whom the civic genius of the people does the saving day by day, by acts without external picturesqueness; by speaking writing, voting reasonably; by smiting corruption swiftly; by good temper between parties; by the people knowing true men when they see them, and preferring them as leaders to rabid partisans or empty quacks."</em> -William James<br /><br />So here is my most reasonable request. If you are uninclined to bring accountability to anyone save the side that opposes your own, if you cannot speak and respect the right of others to speak, if you cannot abide that sometimes your chosen side will find itself in the minority, if you cannot bring yourself to listen, even momentarily, to an opinion that contradicts your own, and if you cannot conduct yourself in a civil manner because the absence of genuine facts must be compensated for by the weight of your ire...stop voting. Now and forever. Just stop and stay away from even the simplest of debates.<br /><br />Get out of politics entirely, and leave it to people who are willing to endure the discomfort of hard questions and cautious consideration. You are the plague of locusts and the rain of frogs that warn the rest of us of ill times to come. You are the embodiment of all that chokes the life from good government. You are the problem because, allegorically speaking, we are struggling to repair something delicate, and you are wielding the axe that broke that delicate thing in the first place.<br /><br />Let me say in parting only this: should you find yourself questioning your own party loudly, should you realize that only by demanding the highest levels of accountability and transparency from all parties and persons can we hope to regain control of runamuck leaders, then by all means join us in the long struggle to put this country back together, so that we might rebuild a little of the greatness of spirit this nation once proudly cherished, and which our children deserve to inherit.Voxmagihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04251587616604083194noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6201157614447586271.post-31417602631701377652009-08-18T15:59:00.000-07:002009-08-18T18:48:42.550-07:00Bad MedicineDon't be fooled by the title...my thoughts on health care in the U.S. can't be easily pigeon-holed into a convenient slot...and in truth, most people's thoughts on the subject are the same...hard to classify, but that's not the impression we draw from the current news storm that drenches us daily with platitudes and misinformation.<br /><br /> I'll admit plainly that I oppose most of what is being proposed on Capitol Hill, not because I oppose the concept of health care reform, but because the choices being laid out before Congress today are largely toothless, hideously expensive and will likely only help a sparse few persons at a cost that most cannot afford.<br /><br /> To be brutally honest, if I thought that we were being presented with a choice that would make a large scale difference in the quality of care that America's working poor receive, I would support the effort and applaud it loudly, but like most people who fall into the category of independant voters, I feel a wave of suspicion creep over me when I hear the actual reform plans being discussed.<br /><br /> And let me be specific...I do not fear 'death panels', which are a genuinely pathetic twisting of words to misrepresent an actually useful initiative proposed by a Republican, transforming it into a scare tactic used by the lowest intellects in the GOP and believed by the lowest intellects everywhere else. Neither do I fear seeing private insurance forbidden to those who can afford it. This is another fiction that makes the GOP look foolish and inadequate as guardians of common sense and fiscal sanity. Given that the insurance lobbies are piling dollars into influencing both sides of the debate, it seems extremely unlikely that any bill that emerges will do anything more harmful than offering them a state sponsored opportunity to enroll millions of new customers who can look forward to the abuse the rest of already endure when trying to get a claim paid.<br /><br /> This is where my real distrust lies. Based on the partisan wrangling that passes for debate now, it's easy to draw the impression that anything useful, thoughtful or helpful will almost certainly be snuffed out of existence long before it could reach the Oval Office. What we'll likely be left with is a patchwork quilt woven from pure pork, transforming billions of tax dollars into a minimal service boondoggle that leaves millions underinsured. This isn't that different from what we have today...but it will cost oh so much more.<br /><br /> This in no way defends our current system, which amounts to a philosophy of "pay now or go die". For all the screams for the fringe that health care reform will result in poorer quality care for a majority of Americans, the irony is in their silence regarding the inequities of the system we have now. Medical debts are a staggering burden, since even fairly common treatments cost more here than in other developed nations. It is disgusting to watch relatives and friends pour hours of labor into getting a claim paid, stressed to the limit of their ability to cope WHILE dealing with illness as well. Our 'system' of health care is broken...badly...and just because the solutions being offered are ineffective half-measures, it doesn't mean that we don't have a problem.<br /><br /> Our spiraling costs for health care may have their roots in the dawn of nuisance-based malpractice suits, and while litigation and insurance to protect against it are costly, they are not the end all and be all of expenses. Stripping the right to sue for legitimate redress of grievances from all but the wealthiest of clients is not the answer, because wasteful litigation is a matter better handled by careful scrutiny of proposed cases, not the elimination of the right to sue. On this matter, left leaning lobbies (not surprisingly featuring many lawyers) favor suing the pants off of anyone who even looks like they might deserve it, and those lobbied by industry favor being made immune to any scrutiny or accountability for malfeasance; both wrong, both ultimately horrible extremes, both unworthy of being taken seriously. This is exactly why I wind up finding myself in the middle...and like it there.<br /><br /> More influential in the advance of high costs for health care was the switch from non-profit service mode to for-profit service mode. The fundamental philosophy behind administration of a hospital has shifted radically in just a few decades. We are living (and dying) with the effects of that change. No matter what people may claim, for-profit health care corporations unfailingly find themselves in the position of answering to shareholders...not patients. Sagging profits and share prices eventually add up to leadership necks on the chopping block and fresh new faces at the helm. To avert this, every half decent executive will labor to shear away costs and bolster share value. "Commitment to Quality Care" is a great phrase...but phrases mean nothing. Profit means a lot more than any string of syllables ever will. The patient has become the customer, and the customer is really just a source of income. With medicine there are always other customers, and every one of them is expendable. This is not a recipe for great care.<br /><br /> For decades, employer sponsored insurance has been the gold standard, but as costs rise and numbers of retirees grow, each requiring longer, more expensive care than ever before, even basic coverage has become incredibly burdensome for business, small and large alike. Just a few generations ago it wasn't an unreasonable expectation to demand solid, comprehensive insurance in exchange for a comparatively small contribution, organized and managed through one's employer. Unfortunately, margins are leaner these days, contributions have grown larger and larger and the coverage that smaller business can afford to offer is very nearly not worth the cost for the average lower wage employee.<br /><br /> Wages have also taken their toll on the concept of health care. Specialists are costly, and medicine is no longer practiced as a general body of knowledge, but rather as a collection of niche markets, each commanding a higher wage per hour than in days gone by. This isn't to say that demanding work that requires extensive education and training doesn't deserve higher pay, but when the luxury and elective specialists earn noticeably more than men and women who save lives daily, we've moved toward a system that prioritizes all the wrong things. To reduce staffing costs, nurses, physician's assistants, LPN's, CNA's and MA's are becoming overtaxed substitutes expected to work outside their purview in exchange for lower wages. This is one of the root causes of strikes that plague corporate hospitals today, and the solution is more staff, but that inevitably drives prices up and profits down. Where is the answer? Honestly, I don't have one either, but acknowledging that health care is subject to unique needs that aren't easily answered in a purely for-profit system is a good start.<br /><br /> Now we come to drug costs, which are a racket that easily puts running numbers to shame. Speaking for those who have seen production cost vs. sale price comparisons, most businesses only WISH they could mark up their product like that and get away with it! Can you imagine a drop-forged hammer, made (theoretically) for a dollar, and selling for $30, $300, or even $3,000? And what are we getting for these exorbitant prices? A list of side effects that take up so much space that flyers have to be attached to every bottle! Prescription drug deaths, intentional and unintentional, are becoming a rising problem, both in terms of lost lives and in terms of malpractice and class action suits that wouldn't even be necessary if drugs weren't so poorly regulated and heavily prescribed. Again, lobbies from either side of the political spectrum, industrial or public safety-minded, overstep with answers too extreme for easy compromise, and we remain at an impasse, unable to navigate our way toward safe and affordable care.<br /><br /> That brings us to the middlemen who help cushion the cost of these high priced curatives...the insurers and co-ops and HMO's who make up the industry that adds yet another layer of staff and associated costs to an already mind-frying situation. One shining truth exists: you get what you pay for, and this basic truth is seen here like nowhere else. You can get coverage cheaply in this country, right now, even without a health care reform package passed by Congress. There's only one catch...that coverage will SUCK beyond anyone's ability to adequately describe. It's not entirely unlike calling a newspaper 'coverage' when you're outdoors, naked...in January.<br /><br /> Insurance doesn't exist to help. It exists to collect money by offering to spread the costs around to a wide pool of people who all contribute at one rate or another. If you don't mind paying the exorbitant rates that aren't too troublesome for high income brackets, you can enjoy knowing that you won't often run into situations where large checks have to be doled out to cover the remaining balance. If you aren't from one of those higher income brackets...well, you might very well be better off keeping those dollars for a rainy day rather than spending them on a plan that might cover the comparatively inexpensive doctor visit or prescription, but almost none of the tests, specialists or follow ups...which is where the bills begin piling up. This is at the root of the working uninsured. That money can't be wasted on a boondoggle that barely covers the start of serious health care, so people do without and allow their personal health to deteriorate until care is required and becomes much more complicated and expensive.<br /><br /> Like many other industries, insurers jumped on the Wall Street bandwagon and owe their allegiance not to customers, but to board members and share holders. This isn't a statement about right or wrong...it's just an honest fact about doing large scale business. Profits must always increase if possible. Costs must always be driven lower. When the margin is in danger, cut, cut, cut to the bone. This isn't an environment that fosters a sense of responsibility for providing comprehensive coverage. It just isn't. Not because it's "evil" or "good", but because good or evil are irrelevant measurements compared to "profitable" or "not profitable".<br /><br /> To sum up, these are the questions that we aren't asking loudly enough: can ANY purely for-profit system ever deliver the goods to a reasonable majority of Americans, and if it can, what can we do to ensure its profitability and long term survival? Are employers genuinely no longer able to keep up with the rising costs? Is the institutional concept of the insurance company even trustworthy as a component of a system for delivering health care? Can cost reductions be enacted that could make our existing system viable again, or would that only stall for time, pushing the question back to become another generation's struggle? Is a national health care program even viable while we retain so many elements of our existing system? Would greater transparency in the political process allow us a window into how and where the misinformation and confusing numbers come<br /><br /> These are great questions, but the answers won't be found while waving guns outside of town halls. They won't be found by buying into panic-inducing rhetoric from the people on the receiving end of lobby and think tank dollars or by listening to shock jocks peddling anxiety and fear for a quick buck. If answers are ever going to be found, they will be found by careful examination of each issue, by weighing observable facts and by discussing them rationally. There is room for passion in this debate, but there is no room for hysteria or deliberate fraud. If you want answers, they are born of thought and reason, not through howled recriminations and shaking fists. It isn't as fun as shrieking incoherently and muddying the waters with references to totalitarians of bygone eras, but it's a hell of a lot more effective.Voxmagihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04251587616604083194noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6201157614447586271.post-44616446692776490542009-08-18T15:36:00.000-07:002009-08-18T15:43:10.577-07:00By Way Of IntroductionAfter some lengthy delays and false starts that bogged this process down, here I am at last, starting what should have begun last year, when many relevant issues were only beginning to unfold. Recreated here is the opening blog that was used on the original account, soon to be followed by more serious articles as time allows. Please enjoy.<br /><br /> It only seems appropriate to open this with both something in the way of a proper introduction, as well as a disclaimer. I write because I write, and acclaim is the least of my interests. We live in a complicated time, like many before us, and there are things that well deserve discussion and consideration, politics chief among them. We are fortunate enough to live in an era of unprecedented communication, where many can exchange thoughts and beliefs with relative freedom, and because of this, I choose to blog. Not so much because my opinion is better or worse than anyone elses, but because with so many hats in the ring, mine has just as much right to be there as any other.I might be no more than a white, male, middle-aged, blue collar worker with a penchant for writing and a passion for reading, but it isn't my background that matters as much as my desire to push questions into the forefront of people's minds. More questions, and better questions, ultimately lead to better answers, and in this difficult time many good questions go unasked, and thus unanswered. If I contribute but a single better question to the vast traffic of communication, then I have done as well as I could have hoped.<br /><br /> So, having said a little of myself but not too much, we move to the disclaimer, which is completely called for on a blog that will be dominated by thoughts and opinions on social and political problems.The articles that follow may be controversial, to one group or person or to another, but they are merely opinions, possibilities and notions, and in voicing them I exercise the same right I acknowledge and respect in others, including you. I am largely non-partisan, having grown cynical enough to place faith in almost no one involved in politics, and nothing has yet convinced me that I was wrong to adopt that cynicism. I reject political correctness, but not as an excuse to exercise deliberate acts of hate. I reject the idea that someone who differs in opinion from me is inherently bad, just because they disagree. I reject the notion that there are taboo subjects, because trouble brews in shadows, and turning a bright light to any topic strips it of its power to to sway us through fear. I reject censorship and the restriction of speech and expression, because they are weapons that steal from people of all parties and beliefs the power to speak their mind freely and participate in the governance of their nation.<br /><br /> I am a walking contradiction, a blend of left and right and moderate, conservative and liberal, yesterday and today and tomorrow, and really just a man who thinks too much for his own good. Please don't take any of this too personally, and remember that your opinions have the same value to me, even if I disagree with them. To paraphrase Voltaire, "I may not believe in what you say, but I will defend unto my death your right to say it."Voxmagihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04251587616604083194noreply@blogger.com0