April 21, 2010 by admin.

My wife and I were walking today and talking about the impending date of December 21, 2012. This day is eventful because of the so-called Mayan “long count” calendar. For thousands of years the calendar has accurately ticked off the time, but when a few days before Christmas of 2012 comes up, nothing. Nada. Zippo. The calendar runs out and there is a big blank as if the universe ceases to exist.

This has some seriously interesting implications, and folks from entertainment venues like The History Channel have started running shows about 2012 more frequently than before. A night or two ago I recorded a History Channel HD show linking the famous 16th century seer Nostradamus prophecies with this fatalistic date. The show indicates that Nostradamus–an astrologer who avidly watched the nighttime sky–was able to see this forthcoming time. Like anything else Nostradamus writes, we’re not talking here about pleasant things. Nostradamus was definitely a fire and brimstone curmudgeon whose writings do not speak of daisies and sweetness and light, but of war, bloodshed, violence and world catastrophes. But lots of what he did see has amazingly come true.

Before Christians dismiss Nostradamus as a false prophet because he was an astrologer, I want to tell you a quick story to see if I can temper that instinct a little bit. When my wife and I toured Israel the first time in 1996, we visited what was refuted to be the oldest synagogue on the earth in a little town near the Sea of Galilee called Tiberias. The thing that was most notable about this synagogue wasn’t that the tiny 1″ square floor tiles making up the center of the synagogue were still mostly intact, it was that they represented a giant zodiac. Turns out the ancient Hebrews and other people groups watched the nighttime skies and were quite aware of the rhythm of the circling sea of stars above them. For example, we know that the three wise men found Jesus by virtue of the stars. Of course we cannot pretend to say they were all faithful followers of YHWH, but we can say that the majority of them earnestly believed in the Ancient one and were not interested in some other form of worship. That is, they were not worshiping the stars, but looking for the One who had been prophesied.

Ever since seeing that zodiac in the synagogue, I have rethought my position about astrology. I still do not think people should be living their lives based upon their daily horoscope, and I still think that reading Tarot cards is a wicked thing to be doing–it is witchcraft. You should be looking to God only for your information about your future. That said, it is clear to me that the ancient Hebrews did not harbor the same sort of thinking we more conservative Christians today do about astrology. They believed that God put signs and stories in the sky by which people could chart their lives.

At one time I used to tell people I thought Nostradamus was in the same league as Edgar Cayce and Kalil Gibran–he had a familiar spirit, not of God, and someone we should not be listening to him. Today I am not so sure. Maybe Nostradamus was so hooked into the movements of constellations and planets that he was more of an astronomer than an astrologer. Where his prophetic capabilities come from, I am still not sure–maybe they’re evil, maybe they’re from God. But if you take a spin in the Bible through I and II Kings, you’ll read about prophets of God who were closer to God’s ear than others. For example Elijah and Elisha were clearly right in line with the Father, whereas there were other lesser prophets who were not mentioned in the scriptures but who were nonetheless prophets. The one thing I can say is that Nostradamus did not urge people to worship someone or something other than the one true God. Near as i know he didn’t urge people to worship anything at all. He simply wrote his quatrains. If anyone out there has conflicting information to what I’ve just written, please feel free to post your thoughts. I am not out to make Nostradamus look like a great man of God, because I don’t think he was, but I do think his prophecies are interesting and serve as compelling reading when we consider 12-21-12.

The History Channel show draws some pretty interesting intersections between Nostradamus and the sun. Evidently Nostradamus predicted a time near our infamous 12-21-12 date when the sun would go nuts. He predicts there will be some heavy solar activity, the extent of which we have seen before. Some solar scientists say we are in the 13th solar cycle (each of which is roughly 12 years or so) and this 13th cycle is thought to be the most irritable of all.

At the same time, astronomers are saying that the planets will go into an exact alignment that only happens once every 26,000 years. It is called the “galactic alignment.”

Here’s the interesting problem: If the sun gives off too huge of a solar flare, there is a possibility that the earth’s magnetic poles could shift, which would cause things that rely on magnetism–motors and gyroscopes to name a couple–to behave very erratically or not work at all. This could conceivably cause all motorized equipment relying on magnets to pull copper windings around a center point to stop, which is bad for things like powerplants, submarines, and the like. No power, no lights, computers, refrigeration, and so forth. Everything would come to a virtual standstill everywhere on the planet. Anywhere that electricity is being generated by powerplants relying on turbines, there would be no power. Batteries would eventually give up, and finally the world would fall into pre-electricity darkness.

Think about this for a moment: If the poles changed and didn’t exactly flip over in a 180 degree turn, but landed somewhere opposite one another in a completely different part of the world, it may take us quite a while to even figure out where the poles are at. Once we knew where the magnetic poles were we could begin rebuilding, but not before.

If motors, computers, cars, boats, trains and other motorized machinery fails, then finally the battery-backed-up computer equipment goes the same way, we are officially back to the horse and buggy days. People will be heating their homes with wood, and lighting them with candles and kerosene or oil lamps. Most grocery stores will quickly run out of food because they’re being looted. Files stored on computer hard drives may or may not survive–who knows what records will be available once the situation is rectified? Moreover, how long will it take before it’s rectified? Months? Years? Certainly not just a few days.

The president will declare a state of martial law, but who can enforce it? None of the jets work, or the helicopters, tanks, jeeps, or ships so even though the military has the orders, it does not have the might. There will be roving gangs of thugs. People will have to defend their property with guns or whatever else they might have. They will likely band together to help each other guard against evil people. Community gardens will spring up wherever there is some soil, though people will have to haul water because the city’s water pumps aren’t working. Sewer systems will ultimately back up because the wastewater treatment plant’s machinery isn’t working. A quiet will settle over the land–even quieter than when all air traffic was halted on 9/11 because there will be no cars or building machinery working.

If the problem lasts too long, various little village systems and governances will rise up, complete with stores, saloons, town hall, sheriff and jail.

In other words, time basically resets itself. Maybe this is why the Mayan calendar saw nothing past this date. It’s not that time stops, it just resets.

I do not believe this date reflects the rapture of Christians from the earth, but I suppose it is possible. My personal eschatology says that the rapture occurs then there is at least a 3 1/2 year period in which the Antichrist reigns in power, demands each person to serve him, comes completely against Israel and ultimately winds up defeated, but only thanks to the hand of the Almighty God. Whether Christians are raptured before the seven year Tribulation period, right at the onset of the Tribulation, or somewhere after the Tribulation has started does not violate my eschatology. Knowing exact dates would.

A World Net Daily article regarding the possibility of the second return of Jesus being etched in the nighttime sky validates the idea of astronomy/astrology as an early Hebrew pasttime.

As if that isn’t scary enough, another issue to think about is the subduction of the tectonic plates underlying the San Andreas fault. The (terrible) movie 2012 included this possibility and it is certainly not out of reason. Think of two huge earthen plates a dozen or more kilometers thick. (One kilometer is roughly 2/3 of a mile.) The two plates are butting one another right underneath San Diego, Los Angeles, and San Francisco, all the way up to Seattle. One plate slowly gives way to another and begins to slide under its stronger neighbor. One day–clang!–the lower plate completes its slide underneath its neighbor and with it comes a monstrous earthquake of a size never before recorded. Entire cities, towns and geographies are reshaped, with millions of people killed in the process. The movie 2012 envisions a huge tsunami along with the devastation, and I do not think this is out of reason either.

Could a huge solar flare cause such an event? I don’t know. My guess is know one knows. Could the subduction occur near the same time as the solar flare? Why not? There is certainly nothing to stop it. Like the housing bubble bursting, most people are keenly aware that it’s just a matter of time before the San Andreas Fault shoe drops.

Or, consider a giant upside-down volcano, one of the biggest on the planet. An upside-down volcano is called a caldera, and there’s one right in the middle of Yellowstone National Park. What if the caldera decided to erupt? What would happen? At best, a highly radiated area covering 1/4 or more of the US, with a dark cloud covering the majority of the country–a miniature “nuclear winter” as it were. We have seen some recent evidence of what this would be like with the Eyjafjallajokull eruption in Iceland. Air travel over Europe virtually halted overnight, stranding thousands of travelers for a week, and putting a chink in the Airlines’ schedules for weeks to come. And this volcano is very far northwest of Europe, not anywhere as close to Europeans as the Yellowstone caldera is to US and Canadian citizens. Once that radiated ash gets up in the jet stream it’s anyone’s guess as to what kind of devastation will follow.

What if a solar flare caused the caldera to erupt in addition to the plate subduction? Or what if the subduction caused the eruption? What if all this activity happens on 12-21-2012? Are there enough first responders?

Many remember the year 2000 bug–so-called “Y2K.” This was a man-made problem that, while mischievous, was not capable of nearly the power the above-listed God-made things carry with them. If, God forbid, such events took place, let me ask you a question: Would Barack Obama or any of the other politicians matter at that point in time? What would you be thinking about? Nationalized health insurance? The Colorado Rockies or Denver Broncos?

Hardly, my friend. You’d be thinking first about survival and next about your life in the next world–whether it exists or not, and if so, what your fate may be in it. And you’d be thinking the same thing about your family.

Even if nothing happens 12-21-12–if it is a non-event like Y2K was–nonetheless, it should make us think about the possibilities and what we were really put on the earth for. These next two years are a time for introspection, for gaining back ones’ spirituality, finding God for the first time or afresh and rededicating oneself anew, treating other people as you would have them treat you, and preparing for One of whom John the Baptist said he was “…unworthy to untie His sandals.”

There is a God, there is an afterlife–a life beyond this earth–and He has a place for you in it. Now is the time to rethink and reconsider yourself. Now is the time to find the spiritual you.

Posted in Technology, Energy, Politics, Spiritual | No Comments »

February 7, 2010 by admin.

The day after Sarah Palin gave her keynote at the first ever Tea Party convention I watched the speech on You-Tube, and read about some of the highlights of her statements on various web sites.

Most of the Left in America find her distasteful, even disgusting. I have read or heard from leftists every kind of nasty proclamation about her. I cannot understand the vitriol  leftist liberals use when addressing her.  I find the woman fascinating for a variety of reasons. Personally, I see her as a real-world person, as opposed to a silver-spoon elitist who has never had to work for a living. She believes in God - so do I. She is people-oriented, understands what the working man and woman in this country are all about. She represents the America outside Boston, New York, Chicago or L.A. - that section of America where the “unwashed masses” live, and as Jimmy Stewart said, where “most of the living and dying goes on.”

I am currently reading a very good book titled Transformational and Charismatic Leadership: The Road Ahead, by Bruce J. Avolio, and Francis J. Yammarino (2008, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Bingley, UK).  The book discusses what makes up charismatic leaders, and talks about developments to expect in the next 35 years (2001 - 2034). One of the points the authors make is “…by 2034, a considerably larger percentage of CEOs in the USA compared to today will be women…” and minorities (p. 381). They also note that “Patterns of leadership behavior are likely to change by 2034 as women tend to be more transformational than their male counterparts…do more networking, are more focused on relationships and are more concerned about…social justice, equity, and fairness” (p. 381).

The interesting word in the previous quotation is transformational. This is exactly the kind of leadership Sarah Palin is exhibiting, as opposed to the old transactional style. To be fair, great leaders switch between both styles, depending on the circumstances, but the point is that leaders who primarily operate within a transformational framework are far more successful than their transactional counterparts. Within that construct, it is important to understand the difference between the two:

Transactional Leadership

Contingent reward -You will be suitably rewarded, provided you accomplish this task or goal.

Active management by exception - Leaders are always looking for errors, and stand at the ready to provide guidance.

Passive management by exception - Leaders take a less proactive approach, getting involved only when problems occur.

Laissez-faire leadership - Literally, “let the people do as they choose…”

 Transformational Leadership

Influence (charisma) - Regardless of how the left despises her, makes fun of her, calls her every kind of vile name they can imagine, she manages to rise to the top with a smile on her face, exuding self-confidence.

Inspirational motivation - She believes a higher power has control over man’s destiny. She obtains her inspiration from a higher source than socialist-leaning law school professors.

Intellectual stimulation - Some describe Sarah as stupid. But the times I have watched her, she comes across as one whose thoughts are organized, well-formulated and balanced.  I find statements such as the one she made at the Tea Party convention highly stimulating - “What we need is a Commander-In-Chief, not a law-school professor at the lectern.”

Individualized consideration -Many in the left are not concerned about the individual - they see a broader social picture. Sarah Palin has proven she can focus on individuals, as well as speak to huge groups.

Networking - Appearing out of nowhere to stand alongside John McCain for the 2008 Republican Presidential campaign, Ms. Palin has gone on to become influential in a variety of ways, including writing, and now speaking to a public audience over nationally syndicated television. Thus she has dramatically increased her sphere of influence and now has the ear of many who are well equipped to bring about real, actual, meaningful transformation in society.

Focused on relationships - Ms. Palin exhibits this no more clearly than with her family. I cannot imagine how difficult it would be to manage all of the myriad responsibilities she has and continue to maintain a strong family life, but she does. She has said before that her family is the motivating factor for her to continue doing what she is doing. But, unlike elitists, it is not about the money or the power, it is about the vision, the purpose, and the people.

Concerned about social justice, equity, fairness - Without naming names in the current administration, it is clear that there is one-sided social justice at work, a social justice that most Americans do not share. Conversely, Ms. Palin sees the need for the kind of social justice that brings criminals to justice, rewards hard work, and dignifies the “Joe Six-Pack” of America.

Innovative - I am continually surprised with the ideas and notions Ms. Palin displays, especially in the face of tremendous adversity.

Responsive - She is not afraid to countermand opposition attacks with the confidence of her convictions, and a swift repartee) and she is ready to meet the needs of Americans.

Flexible - Nowhere is this more closely exhibited than in her efforts during the McCain campaign. I kept wishing that she was running for president and had a suitable vice-presidential nominee, rather than the other way around.

Perhaps a Sarah Palin & Scott Brown ticket is in order for the 2012 campaign. Both of these individuals are young, with a transformational leadership style, a can-do attitude, and a respect for all of the things that have made America great, and which leftists with a socialist agenda wish to destroy.

God bless America.

Posted in Politics | No Comments »

September 10, 2009 by Bill.

I like to watch TED videos on my iPod Touch. I think TED stands for Technology, Education and Design. What happens is that the TED folks assemble some of the greatest thinkers on the planet to come together on a routine basis to talk about stuff.

Sounds ordinary, right? Well, the “stuff” they talk about is truly extraordinary. You’ll just have to run out to the TED web site and watch one or two to get the drift of what I’m talking about.

So, last night I’m working out on the elliptical machine at Bally Fitness and I’m watching a TED video by Mike Rowe, host of the Discovery Channel show “Dirty Jobs.”  This guy, dressed in ordinary workaday clothing, has no PowerPoint presentation, no props, no videos or music or gimmicks. He just stands up there and tells a story.

The story he tells is at once riveting and repulsive. He talks about castrating lambs on a ranch in Craig, Colorado–how it’s expected to be done, and how it’s actually done, and the difference between the two.

But the talk isn’t important because you learn something about castration. That part is fascinating and entertaining–Rowe is a very good story-teller.

What’s salient about Rowe’s 20 minutes is that he makes a very important American point: We’re losing the job battle.

While we have heartfelt and strong dialogs (diatribes?) about important things like health care reform and American soldiers overseas,  we have almost lost the notion of what it means to be an American worker. Rowe talks about the need for technical schools and colleges; not enough plumbers, carpenters, electricians and the like. Not enough mechanical engineers–heck, not enough engineers period.

Not enough people willing to a) dig into the math, physics, chemistry and other hard topics required to understand the deepness of engineering, and/or b) not enough people willing to bend over and get their hands dirty and backs aching in the process of carrying out good old fashioned American work.

Rowe’s point is that it’s job first, other things second. In one part of the video, he talks about “safety third,” meaning that despite the platitude of “safety first” and OSHA laws, and of course each person’s regard for their own well-being, nevertheless workers undertake things like mining, deep-sea fishing, logging and other dangerous occupations because they’re good jobs, they pay well and they feed families.

He doesn’t say it, but I think the point stands out: In many cases, we’ve let ideology get in the way of practicality. Case in point: so-called “green” jobs. Pundits and politicians bring platitudes that talk about the need to switch over from 20th century energy sources to renewable energy methodologies.

Fine. I have no argument with that–though I don’t think the economics bear out a short-term forklift switching over to renewables from conventional energy resources. The problem is that we’ve let strongly ideological environmental groups get in the way of progress toward renewable energy goals. Can’t build offshore wind turbines in the north Atlantic because the folks on Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard will see them in the distance and their white blades spinning away will disturb the pristine view. It’s a beautiful site on Maui I can tell you. Don’t know why it’s anathema off the New England coast.

Can’t build transmission lines leading from a humongous concentrating solar array in the Desert Southwest to the nation’s cities because that would involve drilling holes in the ground for tower caissons and stringing unsightly wire across miles of American soil.

Can’t drill for natural gas–of which T. Boone Pickens claims there is enough for “100 years’ worth of clean-burning energy for Americans.” Why? Because drilling disrupts natural environments, and makes things unsightly and causes animals to have to rethink their living patterns or worse, kills them, and, well, there’s just something ideologically wrong about drilling for gas when there are other renewable energy sources we could be using instead. Never mind that the payback periods and inefficiencies of said renewables really aren’t sufficient enough for us to adopt them in a wholesale fashion…yet. Given enough time (decades) sure, we’re there. We’re all over that. But right now what we need is gas and coal and oil and power lines and power plants and refineries.

Which takes me back to jobs. It is ideologically unpleasant to watch Rowe’s Dirty Jobs TED talk because he talks about the politically correct (and wrong) method for castrating a lamb. And then he talks about an American worker who is, in the immortal words of Larry the Cable Guy, able to “get ‘er done.” And the getting it done is actually better for the lamb, as it turns out. Oh, and it keeps ranchers employed.

So here’s the thing: Rowe is talking about something very basic and important. What he’s really saying is that we need to put America back to work. Which means that a lot of the students in our schools today really shouldn’t be planning on going to college to study things like history, and psychology, and social topics. The jobs just aren’t there in numbers large enough to support a lot of students in those majors.

Instead, students should be planning on going into technical schools to learn about jobs that are important to Americans. For example, Process Tech, a major students can take at many community colleges across the country, teaches young people how to properly operate industrial facilities such as power plants, factories, and such.

We need welders, carpenters, electricians, brick-layers, mechanics, linemen (OK, linepersons), cosmetologists, machine workers, miners, loggers, and other skilled tradepersons. We need to get back to building and farming. We need dental hygienists and nurses. We need engineers.

We’ve got plenty of psychologists, anthropologists, sociologists (and other ‘ists), cultural studies majors, historians, and English majors. Boat’s full. Don’t major there. No jobs there. Nothing to do or see there.

What we don’t need is one more guy or gal with a history degree working as a barista.

(As an aside, one thing I noticed on a recent trip to Europe this summer was that all of England, France and Italy was planted. Not with Kentucky blue grass, but with stuff people can eat and use. Corn, hops, wheat, sunflowers, lavender, and yes, tobacco. The land wasn’t allowed to lie fallow. It was used. While I recognize if you drive through eastern Colorado, Iowa, Nebraska and Kansas you’re going to see lots of crops, I still wonder what the proportion of crops grown in America by acre of soil is to Europe. I bet there’s a drastic difference. It made me think: where are all the American farmers?)

Rowe’s point is that, of necessity, American jobs have to be dirty jobs. If we’re to maintain the status quo in this country, feed and educate our kids, house ourselves, maintain our health and make this country better–what I’m talking about is good old-fashioned improving our lot–we’ve got to get our hands dirty again. And our backs aching. And our bodies and minds working in harmony in the process of creating things that people need in order to live.

Turns out our ancestors had the right idea. It’s the dirty jobs that are the best jobs after all.

Posted in Politics, Education | No Comments »

August 16, 2009 by Bill.

I have two daughters, one 29, the other 31. Neither of them have medical insurance. When they get sick, they first try to tough it out, then they find a healthcare provider that will take them in without insurance, and bill them or take a credit card in payment. They ask for generic prescriptions, and fill them at the cheapest place in town, typically Walgreens.

Ditto for the dentist.

As an aside: I find it interesting that in this whole Democratic health care debate, none of the Senators, Congresspersons, or even POTUS can find time to talk about free dental care for all. Guess that’s not as important, though I can tell you in the majority of cases, my daughters’ health emergencies have been dental in nature, and I’ve covered the bill.

Thank God they haven’t had something dire that required more attention than an Amoxicillin prescription or an extraction.

My daughters are a part of those 48 million who don’t have medical insurance who choose not to purchase it. So naturally, I like the idea of my daughters being able to obtain medical insurance.

I also support the idea of health care for all including immigrants (legal and illegal). Before you get hot under the collar about the illegals consider: They currently go to an ER where they must be treated. I think it would be a whole lot better from a cost perspective if they could go to a regular doctor to get treatment for their sinus infections and pregnancies, don’t you?

What I don’t support is the idea of the Federal government managing a national health care system.

Why? Well, because frankly, the Federal government can’t manage its way out of a paper bag. Can you name a Federal project that was not cost-overrun, did not miss its deadlines, and/or was not laden with pork that added things (at great cost) that should never have been added?

That’s what I thought. You can’t. I can’t. In the 35 years I’ve been watching the leaders in the Federal government, I can’t really point to any one significant project or endeavor that I thought was pulled off with great project management skills, managed well from top to bottom, ended up with the desired result, was pleasing to most people, and actually cut costs.

Yeah, yeah, there are probably some out there. No doubt. But I’m talking about the billion-dollar efforts that politicians paint with grandiose pie-in-the-sky colors and brushes.

Military? Forget it.

Nasa? No hope.

Education? Uh-uh.

Stimulus plan? Really? You’ve got to be kidding.

“Cash for Clunkers” program? A farce. A joke.

No, no. The Federal government should not be trusted with something as precious as our health.

Call me crazy, but I just don’t think the government has innovated anything - well, OK, maybe with the exception of attaching pork projects to bills.

I think health care–including medical research–should stay within the domain of the private sector.

I once worked for a company that developed 3D cardiac ultrasound software which was then bundled in with HP untra-sound scanners. For a lot of reasons, the company went out of business - but I think the company’s executives would admit that the government was a big part of the problem, not the solution.

I’m blessed. My employer provides medical insurance for my wife and I. In fact we have an ala carte plan, with a couple of different providers. I chose Kaiser Permanente (KP).

Let me tell you what I think of this company: As far as I can tell, KP is doing a great job managing their money, and their patients. Oh sure, there are people that will grouse about KP’s care. But let me be honest: I have had a couple of different (relatively minor) surgical procedures, the normal array of sinus infections and flu, and yearly physicals. KP’s doctors have been good about talking with me (not to me), and working with me to solve any health issues that have arisen. They’re responsive and they get the job done. Their equipment is state of the art, their facilities are all over Denver, and, near as I can tell, they’re always fully staffed.

POTUS, in his “town hall” meeting in Belgrade, MT on the 13th said that we should consider an insurance company that’s a great player–one who is working well with the Feds in laying out what the new health care legislation should look like: Aetna.

OK. But Aetna doesn’t run clinics or hospitals like KP, do they? They’re just an insurance company.

Several politicians have advised that we take a look at Cleveland care, because it’s a great example of how well public sector entities can run healthcare. Great, but that’s a couple orders of magnitude example when we’re talking about the Feds running healthcare for millions versus a city for 10s of thousands, isn’t it?

Several people have cited Mitt Romney’s Massacheusetts universal coverage plan, including Mitt himself. However, this  healthcare plan is a disaster. It’s in the red, and stakeholders are panicked about how to fund it going forward.

Lots of people have talked about the danger of a nationalized health care plan for seniors. There has been talk of euthanasia options over clinical treatments, “counseling” the elderly (”You’ve had a good run grandma. Now it’s time to go.) and even letting the elderly suffer without treatment to avoid unnecessary treatment costs. The Rahm brothers like the idea of “life points”–the younger you are, the more points you get. The older you get, well, you do the math.

The Central Barack Station (CBS) cited a CBS/New York Times poll that says this is absolutely not the case. Why, the elderly will be perfectly safe under the new health care plan. In fact, life for them will be better rather than worse!

Right. The New York Times is the most liberal newspaper in the country, employing the likes of the far-left-leaning pundit Paul Krugman. Why would I believe a pollster as far left as that? It cannot be said to be accurate. It simply cannot.

The governor of Montana bragged after the Belgrade town hall that “if they’d send us the paperwork, we’d have this thing knocked out in 10 days.” Yeah, right.

If we’re going to do this thing, we have to have an honest debate, not one riddled with disenguous politicking and Pelosi name-calling. People are scared and they want answers from the Feds.

So, here’s my point: I would be more than happy to chip in an extra $100 - $500 per year in order to help fund healthcare for someone else. I realize that doesn’t sound like much, but given that we have to cover about 1/6 of the people without coverage, I think this is reasonable, and if the health care providers were willing to sit with us, we could craft a decent plan.

And, I think that companies like KP, who have experience in both the clinical and the operational elements of healthcare insurance should manage a national healthcare system. I could envision KP and similar companies working together to provide this kind of healthcare.

And what would be the Federal government’s role?

Sit back, watch, and stay out of the way!

Let Americans do what Americans do best - help other people.

Posted in Health, Politics | No Comments »

July 22, 2009 by Bill.

In Lewis Carroll’s famous 1872 poem The Walrus and The Carpenter there is quite a stanza:

“The time has come,” the Walrus said,
“To talk of many things:
Of shoes–and ships–and sealing-wax–
Of cabbages–and kings–
And why the sea is boiling hot–
And whether pigs have wings.”

In this missive I don’t intend to argue the merits of what Carroll was trying to say in his poem, I’m merely fixated on the notion that he succinctly sums up what we must all be talking about at this point in 2009 and beyond:   The myriad things inadvertently swirling together that are bringing about worldwide chaos, perhaps even deep monetary depression.

The time has come for people to be paying serious attention to what their Congresspersons and Senators and POTUS are up to in Washington, because  the decisions being made there are setting up nearly every American for a drastic decrease in lifestyle, one we have never observed before in this country. As much as people hate talking about doom and gloom predictions, there are a lot of these predictions out there and we simply cannot like ostriches put our heads in the sand hoping they’ll go away. I would steer you to this YouTube video as one compelling example.

The stimulus package is not working, and I for one have serious reservations a second package will somehow, like a drop or two of penetrating oil, ratchet loose the spending logjam. Americans are not spending, they’re saving. This is a good thing, and it hearkens back to post-Depression-era American ideals. But as happy as that is, there are big problems.

One issue is that between housing, various loans and leases, and credit-card debt, not to mention the dramatic losses in our retirement savings accounts (the 401-K became the 201-K overnight) Americans are in serious debt. This was not the case in the Depression. It wasn’t very long ago that a person had to pay cash for a car–there simply weren’t any financing mechanisms available. And that 20% down a person had to have in order to purchase a house could not somehow be merged into the financing package: One had to literally have 20% of the house’s purchase price in the bank in order to make the transaction.

But today there are all sorts of first-time buyer plans. People who shouldn’t be able to buy a house do so anyway, even though they cannot afford them. This creates a huge problem because once people decide they cannot go on living in their house, they simply bail out on the loan, allowing the house to go into foreclosure. If there were only a handful of such houses, there would be no crises, the banks would merely carry the notes on their books as bad debt until the houses were sold. But if there are hundreds of thousands of these houses on the market, as there are now, that is quite another issue.

The Federal government now owns the majority of private housing in America. Fannie-Mae and Freddie-Mac, both overseen by their chief benefactor, Senator Barney Frank, own 56% of American private property, foreclosed upon or not. This came about through loose legislation in the last part of the 20th century (thanks Bill Clinton), allowing for very creative mortgage loans such as loaning 120% of value (so dad could buy that speedboat he’d had his eye on), covering the 20% down spoken of earlier in a second mortgage and so on. These loose fiscal policies allowed almost anyone who was breathing and could sign his name to be able to buy a house.

This is the ships and sealing wax element of American society. We now have a double-whammy in which Americans have defaulted on a dramatic number of properties (causing a huge slow-down in new construction), resulting in the majority ownership of American property by our own wonderful government.

Additionally, the Federal government is now in the business of controlling American corporations. Instead of letting big companies like AIG and General Motors fail, as they would probably have in the mid-20th century,  and as is properly mandated by supply-side economics, the Federal government saw them as “too big to fail” and came up with an elaborate bail-out scheme. This resulted in the Feds being able to tell corporate leaders how to run their businesses, and in some cases even led to one leader being replaced by another who may or may not know anything about the business. Let’s talk of shoes and ships, shall we? The two do not go together, anymore than private corporations and the Federal government are supposed to. And yet, here we are, trying to jam a ship into a shoe. Ouch!

Then there’s the great health care plan of ‘09. Health care is too expensive, we’re told. Not everyone is getting adequate health care. What we need is a unified plan, one in which every person has the right to affordable health care.

The problem with this is that the Federal government is again a big element of the equation. Anyone who knows anything about the Veteran’s hospital system and health care for our soldiers understands that the Federal government does a piss-poor job of providing any kind of health care. (I have my own story to tell about that, but will reserve it for another time.) Suffice to say that waiting times in clinics are very long and people who need expensive tests or procedures may be forced to wait months or years for treatment, ala the Canadian, French and English health care systems. The government has done a good job of putting out propaganda artists who pooh-pooh the suggestion that other countries’ health care systems are this way, that they’re a dream of efficiency and fiscal responsibility, but this is not the truth.

We need look no further than so-called “RomneyCare” in Massacheusetts or “TennCare” in Tennessee to find out how enormously expensive and ineffectual these state-mandated unified health care plans are. Mitt Romney is running around the country proclaiming how successful his brainchild was in Massacheusetts, but the truth is that the system is so expensive state lawmakers are looking at $1 B in excess spending on the program for this year alone and have recently gone so far as to remove 30,000 legal immigrants from the list of those eligible to receive “unified” health care. Guess it’s time for the legal immigrants in this country to start going back to the emergency rooms like they were before RomneyCare. I thought unified health care meant everyone had access, but I was wrong.

The push for a national health care policy is a classic case of saying that pigs have wings, that the Federal government can properly handle the doling out of benefits for all Americans (it can’t: anyone who doubts merely needs to look at the $56 T projected deficit for Social Security).

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton recently went to India (as a part of the Obama Apology Tour of ‘09) to admit that we Americans have been flawed in previous times in our reluctance to deal with CO2 emissions into the atmosphere, and to ask Indians to cooperate in the plan to set a worldwide limitation level for said emissions.

You see, the sea is boiling hot, and we have to do something about our CO2 emissions before most of Europe and all of Florida are flooded. And we see the Indians as the country that will one day soon overtake us as the owners of the bad habit of pushing billions of tons of the gas into the atmosphere, hastening the day when all the ice-caps melt, the seas rise, and Phoenix becomes a bonfire.

But (and this is a big but) we’re willing to pay the Chinese carbon tax so they can keep emitting (China has recently overtaken America as the chief CO2 depositor in the world). Why? Because we need the stuff they manufacture for us! We can obtain Chinese goods much cheaper than we can make them ourselves right here in the US (which would mean jobs for out of work Americans), but in order to do that the stodgy Chinese, who absolutely refuse to come to the worldwide Cap-and-Trade table to talk about so-called “carbon offset credits,” must be able to continue manufacturing and spewing out their nasty CO2. Readers can surely see we’re in a quite the conundrum. It’s like buying cigarettes for your mom, even though she has COPD, because you know she loves you and will give you good things.

But it’s more laughable than that because we will be borrowing the money to pay the carbon credits for the Chinese. And who will we likely borrow this money from? The Chinese, of course, the only ones today with any money to spend.

There are a variety of other smaller issues that come to mind: The Gitmo detention center closure, the cigarette tax (if we tax cigarettes deeply, people will stop smoking, but then our revenue stream will dry up and we’ll be asking Camel to put out ads to entice kids to start smoking), and runaway spending on pork projects included in virtual every 1,000+ page bill that is thrust in front of Congresspersons and Senators with the demand that the vote come as early as tomorrow, never mind that lawmakers have not yet had a chance to read these bills. Oh, and there’s that nasty 9.5% unemployment rate that’s really 11.5% once you take into account that a lot of Americans’ average work-weeks have declined to 33 hours (e.g. they’ve moved from full-time to part-time).

And of course, there’s the power grab by the Executive branch–what with 27 and counting so-called “czars.”

I’m having a hard time deciding what our country is becoming, but I think it’s slowly sliding down a slippery slope toward a socialist, communist, fascist oligarchy. I can tell you it is not the country Jefferson and Adams envisioned.

Some think we have a king that’s really a cabbage. I leave that determination up to you.

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June 8, 2009 by Bill.

A couple of articles I’ve read recently have made me think about how international policies are doing relative to our own US economy. As a regular reader of the UK Economist magazine and other online sites, I like to keep in touch with what is happening internationally, for starters because I don’t believe everything the mainstream US media elitists are telling us, and secondly, because it’s good to get a variety of opinions in order to more readily facilitate one of your own. If you’re merely parroting what CBS, NBC, ABC and yes, even Fox, are telling you, then you don’t have a keen grasp on what’s really happening in the world. And, as my students will tell you, what’s new in the world is extremely important.

The first article came from the Drudge Report which subsequently pointed me to Yahoo News. In this article we discover that there seems to be a trend away from “center-left” politics in the EU toward center-right, as per the findings of the recent elections for EU commissioners. I find this interesting because some countries in Europe have served as a bellwether for the “socialism experiment,” namely the UK and France, among others. As US leaders watch whether these countries are successful in their trending away from capitalism and movement toward more socialistic tendencies, even going so far as to implement Sharia law for their Muslim inhabitants, I find it interesting that some European leaders seem to be slowly moving away from these now-entrenched policies back toward more conservative ideals. French prime-minister Sarkozy is a notable example. He has had more than his share of trouble in managing such a diverse and complicated nation. And Chancellor of Germany Angela Merkl, who has been the president of the EU in times past, is also a strong conservative leader. Even Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi has encountered high numbers over  his center-left opponent, despite corruption charges, a “deep recession,” and a fling with a model.

Looking askance at the leaders themselves and more at the notion of conservatism over liberalism (I don’t favor the so-called “progressive” tag liberals like to put on themselves) it appears that people may be getting fed up with paying so many taxes for so much bureaucracy and big-government initiatives, coupled with political double-speak, lying and corruption. We must never forget that the Beatles left the UK in favor of the US partially because they wanted to escape the 90% tax rate for millionaires.

Nor should we forget, to the disdain of our liberal brethern, that we in the US have a Constitution, which was deliberately and precisely written to constrict the advent of big government.

At the end of the day, it is firstly about peoples’ wallets, and after that it’s about ethical, judicial, legal, moral and social sensibility. It may be that people in Europe are fed up with the wild swing left and are looking for a simpler lifestyle.

On the other hand, I found this article in the Sunday, June 7, 2009, print edition of The Denver Post to be quite informative. In this article, a clinical psychologist living in Castle Rock, Colorado–one Rhonda Hackett–had some insights and “facts” to share regarding how well the Canadian health care system performs relative to the US system. We’ve see the TV commercials and heard the rumors about Canadian citizens coming to the US for health care because they can’t get it in Canada. She addresses that “myth” and others in the article, which I found quite compelling.

My wife, without reading the ariticle, had this to say about that: “Well, I can tell you that if it works out like Army health care,” (she was an Army brat), “people will wind up waiting months to get an appointment, standing in line for hours when they finally do get one, and not receiving adequate care upon seeing the doctor.”

May be. But our psychologist friend Hackett claims that in Canada it is independent doctors who manage their client base, not government, which pokes a stick in the eye of my wife’s theory because in the Army it is Army brass who decide what Army doctors will and will not do.

Hackett goes on to cite a table of some interesting medical statistics, such as Canadian average life expectancy of 80.4 years versus the US 77.8, though she does not say where these numbers came from.

The problem with articles like these are that they have an internet feel to them. They sound official and actual and important, but they may just be someone’s ranting and raving with regard to something they’re passionate about. If there is anything the internet has desensitized in all of us, it is the importance comparing and contrasting so-called “facts” with what others are saying. One person cites it, it’s all good and we run with it. The internet has done a great job of moving urban myths onto the global stage.

On the other hand, as I said, Hackett makes a compelling argument, one that’s worth more investigation. If indeed Canadian health care is as she says it is, then maybe it won’t be so bad.

Who knows?

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