Just thoughts

Well General Flynn is ready to talk, think we need to hear what he has to say.

We have more and more gullible elected official in the Government it seems, take Nunes who let himself be played by the White House. 

Republicans are acting just like they did before the election, more enjoyable when its to a Republican president.

Hey, it seems like when Americans realized that Obamacare and the Affordable Care Act were the same thing they started to like it.

We may see less things get done with this congress than ever before.  Talk about the gang that couldn't shoot straight.

Nobody wants to buy more coal than they are buying now and the Chinese are cutting back.  Not gonna create a lot of anything there.

Think its becoming clearer and clearer that its automation taking the jobs, not the trade agreements.

If we don't become a leader in the new technologies, we will have even less jobs.

Moving into the future is the only real option we have.  The attempts to roll back the clock will fail, but may cause us to be late.

We need to face our challenges, not run away from them.

Where's the Middle

One trend that has escalated in recent years is the polarization of American politics.  Now this is based purely on my observations, but not so long ago the two major parties agreed on quite a few things, to the point that critics argued there was no real difference between them.

There were differences but there was, at least to my view, a pretty broad consensus on important things like defense, immigration, crime, and other issues with a bit of variation in how to attack the problems.

Even issues that were divisive, like abortion rights or immigration were mostly civil in tone.

Then the fringe elements figured out how to hijack the parties using the primary system.

So progressives being more energized than most voted in the Democratic primaries.

Evangelicals and tea party activists voted in the Republican primaries.

The candidates produced in those votes were much more strident in their positions and less willing to compromise.

Further, the threat of primary challenges got many of the more moderate elected officials to move further left or right.

So we now have a Government where we appear to be deeply divided on almost everything and see legislation where no one from one of the parties will vote for it.

The parties themselves are further divided as the more extreme members exercise significant power because the moderates of both parties can't support each other.

George Washington actually warned us about this in his farewell address, that political factions were a great danger to our then young democracy, so this is not a new problem.  It just seems to keep getting worse.

The point though is that I am pretty confident that most American actually share a common set of values and beliefs and that the extreme positions taken are not reflective of what we really want.

I think the majority has lost their representation in Washington as it has become a reality TV show where we are tracking winners and losers.  The failures are not failures of the Republicans or the Democrats, they are a failure to govern, and we all are the losers.

Nervous America

When you think about it most of us want the same basic things.  What those things seem to be is what is different.

Most of us would like to have some security in our lives.  Security in the form of a good job, a safe place to live and a safe world.

Now if you don't have one of those things, you are going to feel worried.

However, we've become a society where because of perception, even if we have those things, we are afraid someone is going to take it away.

We have the same issues when it comes to our children's education, our relationships, and most aspects of our lives.

We are bombarded with news and media that suggests someone is out to take these things away from us, if they already haven't.

There was a time when we could read the paper or watch the news and understand that while terrible things happened, they weren't happening to us.

This seems to have changed as Americans see changes, that may or may not affect them and react in fear and anger.

Now of course if you lost your job, your home, your family, these things happened to you.  Without going into whose fault it was, it happened.

However those Americans who didn't have these things happen have developed a sense of unease.

There are very few guarantees today, so most of us live on the edge.  Its nice for a financial advisor to recommend a six month safety net of savings, but that is mostly a joke to most working people.

They've seen what happens to friends and neighbors who lose their jobs or their health.  Its not pretty. 

It is this sense of unease that is making everyone angry and crazy and looking for someone to blame.

It only seems lie it is getting worse.

Keystone Cops in DC

The madcap antic in Washington get stranger every day and its hard to keep up with who is or is not on the truck.

We have the twitter captions to tell us the plot, although they are often out of sync with the action.

In less than 100 days they have managed to accomplish almost nothing while creating a general commotion of epic proportions.

They are pulling in different directions and falling all about the place.

They seem to have patched clips together from different movies and are playing them out of sequence.

Have the Russians, the Muslims and the Mexicans all adding to the chaos.

Its madcap and its funny but unfortunately it has a long way to go.

This sort of thing is fun for a bit, but time for it to stop and actually figure out what they are doing.

Whatever it is supposed to be.

Not the Best

Many of our leaders have a vested interest in keeping American in the dark about things.  An informed electorate is likely to demand real changes.

Living in America means you live in the strongest country that ever existed.  It doesn't mean that America can do whatever it wants, It also doesn't mean that America is the best. 

Being best and being strongest are not the same thing.  Now, measuring the best requires some sort of standard.  It also isn't the easiest thing to do on an overall basis.

Clearly the best in having the lowest taxes might impact being the best in providing universal health care.  We actually have transferred much of the cost of providing health care to companies but of course that simply means we pay for it in the price of goods we buy, a hidden cost.

It makes the cost sort of invisible and allows us to pretend we are not paying it, but we are.

Consumer taxes like this becomes are of course the most regressive since they hit everyone who buys the product equally with no regard for ability to pay.

So every time you buy a box of breakfast cereal you are paying for someone's health care, although admittedly indirectly.

This is part of the slight of hand we play in this country and it points out an area where we are far behind most of the civilized world, and that is in understanding how Government actually works.

We do horribly anytime anyone tests us on this knowledge and there is no evidence indicating we are getting better at it.

We live in a semi delusional world where things we don't understand happen and everybody blames the other side for it.

We end up voting for people based on either personality, where we grew up or some lies they tell us.

We have people in office who tell us that climate change isn't real when no educated person can really believe that anymore.

Our system allows a fairly small number of voters to dictate who wins a primary and in some places winning the right primary guarantees election.  

Our failure to understand our system, understand how Government works and understand what the real issues are is something that we need to fix to make America great.

Cutting funds for public broadcasting is designed to do exactly the opposite.

You Are Responsible

There are more and more stories about how a certain group of people are feeling depressed.  This group is white men who don't have college or technical skills.

The essence of the story is that they felt they were living the American dream, getting out of High School, getting a good job, raising a family and generally enjoying life.  

Then something happened.

It turned out that all those nerds had the right idea, study, go to college and develop skills.

It turns out, much to their dismay, that an uneducated, unskilled white man is exactly the same as any other uneducated, unskilled person, whether black, Hispanic or whatever.

They thought that they were entitled to a good life because of some whim of fate that had them born to the favored race.

Well fate is fickle, and reality is hard.  The demand for unskilled labor is decreasing and while it is still generally better to be a white man looking for work than anyone else, it isn't that much better.

Even worse, the pay has diminished to what they are really worth, since the mindless work they can do can be done cheaper and probably better by robots or foreign workers.

They want the world of their father's back, where all you really had to do was show up and stay our of serious trouble to make a decent living.

It isn't coming back and the value that was placed on that labor was always disproportionate to what it should have been. 

It is unlikely that mindless good paying work is coming back anytime soon so stop blaming others and realize that those people in high school who told you to buckle down and get more education were giving you good advice.

Its never too late to do something besides complain, take a course, learn some skills, stop taking pills and drinking so much beer.

Or don't.  Its all up to you.

How About Fixing Things?

The Affordable Care Act survived another challenge yesterday, but while I believe it is far superior to what the GOP was proposing, it isn't perfect.

It isn't of course in a death spiral, it is going through some adjustments as the markets try to hit the right levels.

The cost of a policy is simply the estimated cost of services for the group, plus admin and profit divided by the number of customers.  Because of the pent up demand of people with serious health conditions, the amount of care provided per customer was higher than initial estimates, since more healthy people opted not to participate.

Getting them to participate is an important aspect and there are certainly ways to add incentives, but solutions require people working together as opposed to taking stances.

There are some issues in health care that have nothing to do with the Affordable Care Act, such as a shortage of doctors in certain parts of the country or the high cost of prescription medicine.  The first is a problem that we have had for a very long time, and training more doctors or importing more is the obvious solution, the second is a bit more problematic because of how research has to be recovered.

Drug companies incur a lot of cost developing new medicines.  Once a drug is approved, they have a monopoly for as long as the patent lasts, often less than ten years from marketing (patents are applied for early in development, so run during the approval cycle).  The actual cost of producing the drug is often a much smaller amount than the recovery of these costs plus add in the costs of drugs that aren't approved yet.

So they have to charge all of this in the first 10 or so years before the generics enter the market and drive the prices down. 

Increasing doctors, reducing the cost of care and getting young people to sign up are really not political issues, they are issues that benefit all Americans.

What about it?

To Vote or not To Vote

Forcing a vote for a bill that is ill designed and unpopular seems like a strange concept.  Of course, you may believe that some who oppose it will be intimidated at the last minute and swing it to a victory, it seemed to happen in the November election.

Of course if it does pass, it still has to go to the Senate and the drama will continue.  If it fails or they cancel the vote, they can move on to the rest of their rob the poor agenda.

To those of you not paying attention, the basic republican philosophy is to give more to the rich, because they make things happen and it encourages more people to become rich. 

If it was only so easy.

Now, They don't have enough rich people to get elected so they have to fool the not so rich into thinking they will also benefit.  Some might if they don't mind a society where the haves and the have-nots keep getting further apart.

It is much more likely that these people will become a have-not then that they will become wealthy and trying to stay in the middle is really pricey.

Which brings us back to health care, the one thing most likely to cause a financial catastrophe.  Now a country where a bad diagnosis can mean not only a fight for your life but also a chance to impoverish your family is hardly a civilized place. 

Losing your job is of course also a terrible blow but one you have some chance of recovering from.  But a significant illness, can impoverish you while also possibly killing you.  A certain number of people have decided it was better to end it rather than put up with the treatment and the financial danger.  I don't know if we have enough data to figure that out, but I believe it is significant.

It doesn't seem like the vote today, if it happens will be successful because the changes aren't harsh enough.  A bunch of well off old white men think anyone who happens to get pregnant should have to figure out how to pay for it, and they have to have the baby by the way.

The fact that so many Americans vote for these people is the really sick thing.  Many just vote for the party thinking it represents them, but of course if they aren't wealthy it really doesn't.

We have almost two years of this before we get to vote again, lets pay attention.

Its Simply Stacked Against You

In general the Health Care industry has every advantage possible when it come to dealing with individual patients.  They are big, they deal with important and complex issues which are vitally important to the patients, and they do it all the time while each patient does most of it just once.

It is a stacked deck and while you can try to do your homework and try to even the odds a bit, its not like most other things where you know, for example, that you plan to buy a car, its more like your car died and you need one today.

When you get subjected to a real health emergency you are faced with decisions and details that are difficult to deal with, especially since it is of vital interest to you and you really don't know what they are telling you.

Obviously some things like routine physicals and minor illnesses are easy to deal with, but when you go in for a sore throat that won't go away and get subjected to a series of tests and referrals that ultimately tell you that you have a serious illness and need surgery followed by post surgery treatments, you are pretty much in a no win situation.

You can get a second opinion, or try to deal with the situation via non traditional means, but the vast majority of us simply do what they tell you to do.

I should also point out that up to this point health care was probably just something that you didn't think about much except to complain about how much it cost or how expensive it was.

However, when faced with a serious illness, the expensive really kicks into play and that insurance you paid for becomes a real bargain, assuming you can actually keep it.

This is why Government has a role to play in health care and why most civilized countries take the responsibility to make sure all residents have access to health care without worrying about the cost.

Faced with a life threatening illness, cost becomes no issue, until in fact you can't pay anymore.

Universal insurance makes all of us pay a bit more so that the truly sick don't have to sell their homes or go into financial ruin trying to stay alive. 

The United States is fairly unique in not guaranteeing health care to its residents and its likely we are getting ready to in fact make health care less available and affordable while returning about $800 billion dollars to wealthy people who of course have great coverage.

The answer is of course, don't get sick.

Not nearly Enough

I think I understand why some voters went for the current president despite all his flaws.  They think he is on their side and that the establishment isn't.

Now, for whatever reason a lot of people in this country feel entitled to a certain type of life.  They simply had to follow the rules and stay out of serious trouble and a decent job and certain lifestyle would be theirs.  They didn't make much of opportunities to improve their skills or education because they were fine with making enough money to buy a house, raise a family, have some recreation and drink a little beer.

Of course there never really was such a promise, or if someone made it, they were wrong.  Life is what it is, there are no guarantees.  The people who make decisions about things do it because either it makes them money or in some cases if for the better good.

Now, the do-gooders take a certain amount of undeserved abuse in this country.  They want to improve things for everyone, and preserve the world for our progeny.  Some probably go a bit too far, but in general they are actually people who want to do good.  If you think they are hurting you in some way, you probably need to look into it a bit deeper.  Of course, if a plant gets shut down because it is polluting everybody's air and water, you might lose a job, but while the problem wasn't created by you, it can't be allowed to continue.  However, if the plant was profitable enough, it would have been cleaned up, not shut up.

The people who do things based on pure profit and loss, don't care about people at all, except as customers.  Now, they may care about certain people, their immediate family, but they aren't in business to be do-gooders.  They make decisions based on what turns the biggest profit.

They are the ones who move businesses to cheaper locations, reduce benefits, rob pension funds, and argue against paying taxes for the safety net.  They like to argue that they would create more jobs if the policies were better, but experience tells us this isn't true.  They will do what they have to do to compete and they will manufacture things here if the numbers are better.

Of course, what has happened is that the work that doesn't require much skill is cheaper elsewhere or is done by robots.  So even if jobs are created here, and many are, they require a skill set that isn't possessed by much of our workforce.

Lot of underemployed people while skilled jobs have no one to fill them.

The current administration acts like they can change this and if they get the infrastructure package they will create some jobs that require less skills.  Not nearly enough though. 

Not nearly enough.

How low Can You Go

The campaign was notable for its attacking approach and because the American public seems to have opted for being contrarian to some extent it ended up being successful.

Now the campaign was helped by a lot of factors, which convinced just enough voters to vote for someone who they realized was outlandish but whom they assumed would become presidential if elected.

I'm also convinced, that had the polls shown him with a real chance some of those voters would have been too smart to vote for him, but considered it a protest vote against someone who was slandered on all sides.

Well it turns out it wasn't a protest vote, it was simply a stupid vote and now you have caught the car so to speak.

More presidential?  Well except for one speech where he was tele-prompted to non-idiocy, not so much.

He has lied about things and then acted like a child with cookie crumbs all over his mouth saying is wasn't his fault, blame fox. 

He of course lied to his supporters all along and now is promoting policies that will further erode their quality of life.

Now realistically, this is the sort of behavior that was cultivated in the world of construction and real estate politics.

Its not a good formula for actually governing a country and he listens to people who don't have a clue either.

His ratings (poll numbers) continue to drop and that is driving him crazy and he is lashing out at democrats and liberals for promoting fake news, that just happens to be supported by the facts.

The fact that this is happening so early in the presidency is scary but of course it was inevitable. 

We live in a country where a lot of people think someone else is at fault.  They blame the government but keep electing people who promise to destroy it, and let them fend for themselves. 

We have the president we deserve if we don't realize that the government reflects us and when it doesn't work there are real consequences to pay.

Unless you happen to be wealthy, then this is good for you.

The Nerve of Some People

Howard Cosell was a sportscaster who made the phrase, "Telling It Like It Is" popular and it certainly helped his reputation as being controversial and improved his ratings.

Americans like people who cut through the BS and "tell it like it is".

It helps if the "like it is" is in fact real.

We like a certain controversy in our public figures and to some extent it adds a certain spice to our everyday lives.  Its the same reason most people (certain fans and gamblers are the exception) like upsets, it adds an element of the unexpected.

Now, our last election featured a loud mouth who claimed he was telling it like it is and who ultimately pulled off a major upset.  You would think his popularity would be high, except it isn't.

The problem is the "like it is" bit isn't really "like it is" at all.  Also more and more Americans are realizing that the upset was on them, they were the ones who lost. 

There is a group that because of our primary and electoral process has gained influence way beyond what the actual public opinions are.  The anarchistic conservatives who want to have a Government that somehow does almost nothing for the people as long as they pay less taxes.

They long for the period of the Robber Barons who were able to do almost anything in pursuit of profit with no oversight.

Of course the wonderful days of child labor, sweat shops, company towns, crippling accidents, factory fires and cheap labor are the stuff they dream of.

It was great for the few, not so great for the many.  Now, in those wonderful days we had contagious diseases that reduced the need for providing any pensions and since you had to work until you were about to drop dead we had no pension financing issues.

They are fighting hard to gut the safety net because why are we helping those undeserving people?  Who were they to get sick, disabled, fired or laid off.  Can't they just have the decency to die already and stop demanding health care, clean air, safe working conditions and a chance at retirement?

The nerve of some people!

Like a Business?

One factor you hear is how the Government would be so much better if it was just run like a business.

Of course you assume they mean a successful business, but ignoring that they want the Government to be efficient and in some sense profitable.

Now, the rub is that business succeeds when they give customers what they want.  Producing those products and selling them at a profit is pretty straightforward and provides some pretty clear goals.

Now the issue becomes more complex when the product is services, and the customer has to be convinced that the services being provided is in fact worth what they pay for it.

So how would that work in Government.  Take defense, to some extent everybody in the country is a customer.  However, we don't each get to decide how much defense to buy, we rely on leadership to determine the appropriate amount.  Pretty much everyone understands that and the idea that defense could turn a profit is not a real issue. 

It gets a bit murkier when we look at most other Government services.  Take social security. It isn't designed to make money.  Ideally it would break even, but because of demographics that isn't going to happen, especially in the near future.  Now to run like a business means you either reduce the amounts paid or increase the amount collected.

Since both of those things are difficult politically, we are watching it become insolvent.  The answer of course is to get out of that business and that is basically the republican solution, let everyone fend for themselves more or less.  Of course giving wealthy people control of this money will work out very well for them, but for those who actually need Social Security, not so much.

This story repeats itself for service after service the government provides.  You can't determine how to make it profitable so the republican answer is to eliminate it. 

Service after service except ones that they find politically useful, like border patrol.

The profit in Government isn't monetary, its in the quality of life.  So having clean air and water results in healthier people.  Is that profitable, well not in the business sense.

Similarly, providing a safety net, helps people who suffer temporary setbacks.  No monetary profit there so not something a business would do.

Might not to run it like Scrooge did though.

Tolerance

A lot of people claimed that American values were in danger and to some extent the election was impacted by people who wanted to restore these values.

Now the only value that has ever made America great was tolerance.

However, they are confusing American values with intolerance for others

Now if you don't go into the armed forces your chances of being hurt by a foreign terrorist are slim.

If you don't live in one of the likely targets (generally big cities) the chances become much slimmer.

In fact the likelihood is almost non-existent for most Americans.  Not zero, but pretty slim.

We have however made a big deal out of it and certainly we should never let our guard down, but the real danger is that some troubled person who is here legally will become radicalized and do something, i.e. the Boston Marathon or the Orlando Nightclub.  They might have nothing to do with Islam.

The people coming here to escape fighting or to start a new life are not the ones we should worry about, especially since they are already extensively vetted.

In general they are more invested in making a new life for themselves. We all  know that being an immigrant has always been difficult, leaving what you know behind and starting over amid challenges and hostility. 

If something in your life isn't going the way you want it to, its unlikely to be an immigrants fault.  Not the refugees, not the ones who come here on visas, and not the ones who come here without documents.

There are of course criminal elements that operate in multiple countries, like the Russian mob or Mexican cartels and they are criminals.  Some of the people moving back and forth have associations with these groups and others, smuggling people, drugs and weapons etc. and we should do what we can to stop them.  However, the person with a family who works in a low paying job to support his family isn't the problem.  In fact, more of them are leaving recently, the ones who are staying are invested in this country and have become Americans.

The hate and fear exhibited by so many is simply wrong and in-American.  Lets restore the true American value of tolerance and stop being paranoid.

Mongrel America

It's an interesting period as we see what is best described as a rear guard action by naïve people who think they can roll back the clock.

Its also a common occurrence in certain subdivisions where people want to be the last one to move in.  Similarly each time a new wave of immigrants appear the people already here felt they were ruining things.

In the first few hundred years they at least could make them go west and deal with the frontier, but reactions in the established cities was pretty much the same.  The new group worked cheap so while the business owners and wealthy  people liked the cheap labor (they didn't have to mix with them of course) the working people resented them for taking jobs.

Of course after a generation or two the sons and daughters of immigrants became the ones resenting the new comers.

Over the years we passed restrictive immigration laws that managed who could come here to some extent as we wanted to keep our country pure.  Since we are the most mongrel nation in the world, its really an odd concept, but we seem to forget that our great grandparents hated each other as different and repulsive.

The greatness of America is that it has always been a place where immigrants and refugees could start over, not easily, but by working hard and becoming part of our mongrel community after a generation or two.  If we want to make America great that is what we need to do.

Of course it was always accompanied by inhabitants decrying how the newcomers were ruining everything and corrupting our values.

So maybe we are exactly where we have always been in that respect.

Republican Bacon

The one thing that can derail a congressman is failure to bring home the bacon.

There is a belief that Republicans want to reduce the budget and Democrats want to increase it.  It really isn't true, both parties just want to spend money in different ways.

In the reality of Washington, our insistence on not taxing our people enough to pay our bills leads to a deficit.

Now the majority of the deficit is caused by entitlement programs, Social Security, Medicare, and a few others.  They are the only places you could see cuts big enough to make a difference.

The rest of the budget, excluding interest on the national debt represents about 25% of the total and it is this which gets shuffled about.

The majority of this is spent on defense and neither side is looking to cut that so you are left with the dregs of the budget, such as the EPA, Arts, Science, Veterans etc, etc.

You can gut foreign aid to fund more defense but the deficit doesn't change.

Now, remember each congressman knows what federal programs operate in their districts.  Cutting one on those and eliminating jobs is never a good policy.  Shutting down the local social security office and making people drive further is simply going to cost votes.

This is why the budget is so hard to control.  Now you may think the government is wasteful, and similarly to all other human endeavors, I'm sure it is to some extent, but its not really much different than any enterprise.

When you cut a budget the inefficiency doesn't get better, it generally gets worse as work is transferred and starts over, workloads become more unmanageable and morale suffers.  Now to coin a phrase, everybody but the current president knows its pretty complex.

However, getting a budget to pass requires appeasing members who have to get re-elected.

No one is porkier than republicans so it should be fun to watch.

Musing about government.

Politics is the way it is because that's the only way to get a few things done.  Now, once in a while someone can force something on people because of a special circumstance but its not like people like to be liars and influence peddlers, well maybe some do, but generally you learn that you have to compromise without losing your support, the very definition of politics.

Once in a while we elect someone who tries to just govern, but that is a sure fire way to self eliminate yourself.  When you strive to find the best course of action, you end up getting attacked by pretty much everybody.

Now the people who've been in the Government learn this.  They need to find money, they need to convince their base they are defending them and they may need to get something done.  However the getting something done is not going to interfere with the first two or you won't be around very long.

Getting money is the primary goal.  You can distort things to your base and suppress the opposition to a certain degree, but you need to make sure you have the money to do it. 

Getting money is job one for a politician and there was an interesting article about this in The Atlantic during the last election about how each party makes members spend hours fundraising.  Now we do make contributions tax deductible, but realistically,  a few big donors are a lot better then millions of small ones.  The big donors know what they want and they are willing to tell you.

In fact the system we have today came about because its good for the people with money.  Its important to note that people with money mostly want more money.  Similarly people with power want more power.  Of course those two things are not really that different.

The idea that politicians entered politics to perform public service is pretty silly although you hear it a lot.  Politicians, at least those that survive, do it because they like power and money.  Having power will end up getting you money and as much as we pass ethics laws it hasn't really changed.

In fact if you consider Government the one everyone deals with are the civil servants who really are just people who got jobs doing government work.  Not being politicians they get to tell people what they can't have, and the politicians are happy to blame them for this, although they simply follow the rules written by the congress. 

If you think about your general interactions with these people, it might be frustrating, they generally are understaffed and it might seem confusing, the regulations and rules are an area that isn't mastered by many, but generally its pretty fair.  If you don't get what you want, you may not feel that way, but the size of your social security check or your access to VA benefits is based on laws that apply the same to everybody.

Unfortunately, this isn't going to get better, since in order to give some money back to the wealthy, the number people who serve the public will be reduced even further.

How bad is it going to get?  Hard to say.  I'm sure there will be exposes about the failings, like we had for the VA when they were unable to keep up with their workload.  I know that it won't be good for the people who need these services, I'm just not sure how bad it will get. 

Except for those who die waiting, it probably doesn't make much difference.

Monte Python Insurance

On the British comedy show, Monte Python, there was a skit where a customer was trying to file an insurance claim.

The duologue follows:

Vicar: But my car was hit by a lorry while standing in the garage and you refuse to pay my claim.
Devious: (rising and crossing to a filing cabinet) Oh well, Reverend Morrison, in your policy... in your policy... (he opens the drawer of the filing cabins and takes out a shabby old sports jacket; he feels in the pocket and pulls out a crumpled dog-eared piece of paper then puts the coat back and shuts the filing cabinet).... here we are. It states quite clearly that no claim you make will be paid.
Vicar: Oh dear.
Devious: You see, you unfortunately plumped for our 'Neverpay' policy, which, you know, if you never claim is very worthwhile, but you had to claim, and, well, there it is.

Now in many ways the new republican health insurance seems to have the same basic premise.  People who aren't likely to file claims get to pay less.  However people who really need the insurance are going to pay more, in some instances a lot more.

Now the numbers look like an overall reduction because of all those young people who seldom file a claim.  Now the idea of the affordable care act was to make insurance more affordable for all by including the young and the old, the sick and the healthy in one pool. 

Yes this means if you are young you pay more, but since you are likely to be old at some point in time it eventually sorts itself out.  However, being old and sick now means that you are never going to be young and healthy again, so guess the republican solution is that you should hurry up and die.

When you take away the subsidies that made the insurance affordable for poor people, you of course save money.  Take away mandated coverage and you allow insurance companies to offer tailored products.

In other words the "Neverpay" policy is making a comeback.  At least its affordable.

Learn Who They Are

A lot of people break things down into us vs them. The problem is that most of those people are picking the wrong "thems".

If you lost your job because of a manufacturing plant closing down, that was a business decision, not some Hollywood celebrity.

Immigrants coming into this country has been allowed because they provide cheap labor, not because liberals want it.

Now if you just hate the idea of social progress and equal rights for all, then go ahead and blame the liberals.  However, your economic issues are the result of business decisions which were made by wealthy executives, not a bunch of hippies.

No one is after your guns or going to tell you what religion to practice.  The people lying to you about that want you to focus on the wrong "them".

The people who want clean air and water are trying to improve your health as well, so if you hate them you might want to ask why.  The jobs didn't leave because of that, it was a business decision.

Coal is being replaced by cheaper natural gas much more than solar or wind, although they will also become more relevant.  It isn't coming back because it isn't needed and it isn't a good business decision.

The wealthy people who run this country are the ones who are doing these things and giving them more tax breaks as a reward isn't going to create jobs, at least not in any meaningful way.

The fact that services are poor is because of those tax breaks.

Of course, you can continue to be persuaded that the enemy are people who have no real impact on your lives, the liberal media, the Hollywood elite, all those people on the coasts, but they aren't dong anything that actually impacts you.

Its the same people it has always been and you really already know that.

Spring Ahead Thoughts

Even though today we turn the clocks forward, turning back the clock is something that seems to be what many Americans want.  Its fairly common to remember the best part of the past while the painful parts don't seem as bad as when they were happening.

However, the past wasn't better than the present nor  as good as the future will be with the exception that everyone was younger.

We can't get young again although that seems to be the goal of a lot of advertising.

I'd like to feel like I did when I was young but I wouldn't want to be as stupid as I was then.

Part of human existence is the imperative to grow, live and die.  We pass on our genes and hopefully our knowledge to the next generation. 

The course of human history shows that as time passes, we progress.  Now as far as physical progress, we have things now that were unimaginable as little as a hundred years ago.  There have been some reactions to the change in technology and material things but generally most of us are happy with the changes.

But this progress isn't even and while it improves the human situation overall it doesn't work for every individual. 

The ability to use technology in manufacturing reduces the cost of products but eliminates low skill labor.

Office and business automation has eliminated a tremendous number of clerical jobs that used to exist.

Online shopping is eliminating jobs related to physical shopping.

These jobs are gone but the people remain.

New jobs are being created but they aren't the same and often don't pay as well.

It can be painful, but the clocks move forward everyday whether we like it or not.

Riding Obama's Coat Tails

When Obama took office we were in the worst financial crisis since the depression and he had to deal with it.  It wasn't easy and he took a lot of grief at the time and subsequently for the continued problems which after about a year he had turned around.

We then had an almost unprecedented period of economic and job growth, although because of various factors, primarily a change in the basis of the American economy, certain lower skilled individuals were left behind.

The solution is of course to improve the skills of the workforce to prepare them for the jobs of the future which are not going to be the mindless factory work which was at one time the backbone of the economy, robots do that now.  Humans have to apply human skills, which means thinking and developing skills.

Now the growth is real and is continuing for now and is largely the result of the last 8 years of Obama's policies but of course also the result of American entrepreneurial efforts.

What was celebrated by Trump after one month as America being great again is actually an acknowledgement of his predecessor's accomplishments, although he would never admit that.

Still the question is how long will it take him to derail our growth?

Some of his policies might lead to a short term boost if the infrastructure bill actually passes, but he seems likely to reduce trade and pursue meaningless strategies in pursuit of jobs that simply don't exist anymore.  The end result of that will be a recession, as the infrastructure spending slows, the debt increases, interest rates rise and exports fall.

Its just a question of how long really.  Obama's coat tails are only so long after all.

Denying Reality

In Alice in Wonderland, you have a girl transported to a world where reality is different.  Its a fun book and its been turned into a number of movies because the world created has few boundaries.

Now a lot of fiction is like that, depicting alternate realities that create a world which while sort of like ours is just different.

Of course, the general theme is that we leave this reality and go to that one.

Now our alt right friends and president inhabit such an alternate reality which has evil characters who are trying to destroy the life they cherish.  They have invented things like the "deep state" which is supposedly the entrenched liberal behemoth that runs things, the fake media which to most of us is the legitimate media, and a world where the undeserving get massive help while deserving people have to pay for it.

There are other aspects and the world they have created is still developing.  Of course they are certain that it is the correct reality, and in their own minds it is.

It is easy to do when developing these ideas late at night on the web when you don't actually have to face the real world.  However, when exposed to the sunlight of reality these things start to fall apart.

Take climate change. Now science is generally accepted as being non-partisan, but not in this reality.  In this reality the facts and figures are manipulated to promote a theory that allows the Government to interfere in people's lives.  We have the new head of the Environmental Protection Agency disagreeing with the consensus scientific view that carbon emissions are a leading cause of climate change.  He probably also thinks cigarettes are good for you. 

If you simply believe you can create the reality you want and then dismiss whatever disagrees with that view, you are delusional. 

Reality has to be supported by empirical proof to be well, reality.  The world appears flat until you get a larger perspective.  The sun appears to circle the earth, but we now know better.  If you continue to believe the earth is flat or the sun circles the earth, there are things that can only be explained via a conspiracy theory.

So conspiracy is the primary reality of these people.  For some reason a large number of people are distorting evidence and creating facts that aren't real.

Its almost impossible to argue with people who refuse to acknowledge that the laws of the universe are valid.  Eventually of course reality will prevail, it always does.  The consequences of that might be felt by all of us unfortunately,

Gutting the EPA

If you want to rob a bank to get money, the problems you face are the fact that the bank doesn't want to be robbed, and that the police (the Government) will try to stop or apprehend you.

Of course you have already overcome the moral issue that robbing a bank is bad, so that leaves you with the two problems above.

Considering that the bank is probably dependent on the Government to protect them, the first part is fairly easily overcome since they aren't geared up to fight back.

So getting the Government out of your way is the challenge.

Now remember, the money in the bank isn't the banks, it belongs to the depositors or the people, who trust the bank and who rely on the Government guarantee that their money is safe.

Now if some very clever and long perspective criminals worked arduously to cut the police budget and reduce their equipment they would greatly reduce the possibility of Government interference in their bank robbing.

Now we all agree that bank robbing is bad or at least most of us do, but this is the very situation we are faced with today.

Getting Government out of the way so that businesses can effectively rob us and our children's clean air and water.

Now they are maintaining that the regulations aren't needed, that they eliminate jobs and are counter productive are of course self serving allegations.

The pollution we allow today will sicken us but more so the generations to follow. 

We have polluted sites all around this country from the past when industry was pretty much allowed to do what they wanted.  What they want to do is to make money and live someplace where the air and water are good.

They don't really care what the rest of us drink and breathe.

Gut the EPA and let the rest of us wonder about the increase in respiratory diseases and pollution based cancers.

Health Care Follies

The new plan rolled out by the Republicans has an uncertain future since it doesn't have support by progressives and the fiscal conservatives don't like it.

The issue is that in the spectrum between no Government involvement and a single payer, everything else will have opponents.

Some want the whole thing eliminated as they don't believe Government should play any role.  This view goes against the concept of Government in every other civilized society and is promoted by selfish rich people.  Oh they may give money to charity, but they don't like having the Government decide who needs help.  Maybe greedy is a better descriptor since they want to keep control over all their money.  The fact that some people would die is no concern of theirs, guess they just picked the wrong parents.

Single payer is a system that actually works in most of the world but we can't do it since it would reduce profits to many businesses.  They would still have a role to play in administering the system and selling supplemental insurance, but the idea of Government health insurance with basic costs paid by taxpayer dollars is a step too far, or maybe it isn't.  It would be a step in increasing our competitive position since business would get out from under the health care cost that burdens them.  It is by far potentially the cheapest and best way to provide health care tot he greatest number of people but is still considered by many a Government takeover.

The Affordable Care Act was an attempt at a compromise that failed because the republicans at the time rejected any such attempt.  It actually includes many things that were included in republican proposals previously but which they immediately attacked.  of course they also attacked things that were never part of it, such as death panels and made claims that have been proven false but there is plenty of information about the ACA for anyone interested.  It wasn't a disaster and by most measures was quite successful in reducing the number of uninsured. 

The current republican proposal is now forced to include the successful popular elements of the ACA while convincing the more strident members of their party they have gutted it.  Throw on top of this a president who seems unable to absorb reality or actual facts although it has come to his attention that health care is complex.  Apparently he believed in a simple solution, cover everybody cheaper.  Hard to argue with that really, just like its hard to dislike Santa Claus if you don't come from Philadelphia.

In fact, one of the things that the president is used to from his construction background is inflated estimates.  So maybe he should go around telling people in the health care industry to just charge less.  It would at least keep him busy.

So Many Crazies, Hard to Keep Up

So slaves in chains at the bottom of a cargo ship are immigrants looking for a better life?  This is a black person who went to medical school and has a cabinet post saying this?

Its just one of the crazy things going around now and there is so much of it its starting to seem normal.

Like being in a bizarro presidency where accusations can be made with no proof while real issues seem ignored.

Today the GOP unveiled a so-called health care bill which is really going to end up killing people.

Its going to knock people off insurance and make really sick people decide they are better off dead.

Now it is unlikely to actually save any money, since it will shift costs to hospital emergency rooms which is of course the most expensive way to get care, but it will provide tax breaks to people who don't really need them, but still want them.

Cost more, kill more is what it looks like, but I'd like to see the CBO estimates.

I'm not sure that this will actually pass, since it manages to have things to upset almost everyone, but with the craziness in Washington it might.

After all, we elected a crazy as president.

Position after position we see people picked who want to achieve the opposite of what the agency they lead is designed to do.

Pollute more, educate less, house less, feed less, cover less and let the chips fall where they may.

Meanwhile increase the deficit, increase the number of people who hate us and attack the media for doing their job.

Crazy indeed.

Media Sheep

Our media has become the enemy of the American people in the way they operate.

One of the problems is that many Americans tend to be either lazy or stupid, it doesn't matter which, and seldom get past the headlines.

So the media wants headlines that grab their attention and print some pretty outrageous sounding things in them.

Now take the latest delusional episode in our dumbed down America.

Stories about the Trump campaign interactions with the Russians during the actual campaign have been pushed off the front pages by completely unfounded allegations about wiretapping of Trump tower.  Now no reasonable person thinks that happened, including the traitor in charge of the FBI, but now that its in the headlines it is circulating as a thing.

Similar to the long campaign against Hillary Clinton, the allegations don't have to be true, they just have to be out there to permeate the public. 

Now of course the purpose here is to deflect the attention from where it should be to something else, not win an election, and it is working.

We see the intelligence committee saying they will include this as part of their investigation, which is of course silly since not a shred of evidence exists about it.

However, bringing people in and asking them about it will give it additional credibility.

Meanwhile the focus on the actual wrongdoings gets buried.

The improper interactions with the Russians. 

The media has become sheep, easily led because they don't know what the alternative is.

They need to become wolves.

Delusion in the White House

When you can simply believe totally unsubstantiated stories that are actually pretty ludicrous its hard to know how to react.

Our President like to say he is the one being persecuted when in fact he is simply a paranoid delusional person.

Yes, many people think he's a complete idiot, with a lot of justification, but the fact that he is now President means his actions have repercussions.

Back when he was a B List Celebrity he could engage in things like birther conspiracies and get away with it, but he is starting to expose himself to the ridicule he deserves.

He has supporters who believe these rantings, but those who were giving him the benefit of the doubt, have to rethink that.

Of course some of his supporters believe that there was a sex ring under a pizzeria in the District, so they believe all this crap.

However, if you have even half a brain, you should be able to see what he is.

He is delusional, and thinks the late night Internet stuff is the real news while all the well established reputable news outlets are fake news.

This is a sick man and where it can end up is anybody's guess,

America should be concerned, and maybe afraid.  What late night news story could lead to a war?

I don't care what your politics are, this is a delusional person.

Saturday Thoughts

Read an article today about how the republican leadership is afraid to let details out about their proposed health care bill.  Guess the idea of having a chance to comment and improve on it is now back to back room politics and deals.

What is scary about what I see going on is how many of the American people believe complete lies.

Its an interesting study in the impact of propaganda and how a totalitarian state can arise.

Just convince enough people that fantasy is real and that everyone else is a liar and they will let you get away with anything.

In the musical Chicago, there is a song where it says if you don't have the facts, give them the old razzle dazzle.

We are getting plenty of razzle dazzle now.

Talk about obvious lies that get believed.

Muslim refugees are not vetted, they are.

Undocumented immigrants are dangerous, less so than the general public.

The borders are wide open, they aren't.

The trade deals are terrible, well not so much.

The Affordable Care Act is a disaster, it isn't.

Can improve air and water quality while removing restrictions on pollution.

Climate change is a hoax.

And many more.

Perhaps the biggest problem is that we have a President who believes these lies himself.  Probably also bought all those products advertised on late night TV, could explain that hair.

Health Care

Ultimately sick and injured people will get treated.  The question becomes at what cost and do we want to invest in keeping those people healthy in the first place.

Now, it the world of many republican congressmen, certain constituents felt they had been inconvenienced by the Affordable Care Act.  They liked the fact that their kids could stay on until age 26 and that preventative care was not subject to deductibles or co-pays, but they thought it might have made some premiums go up, and if they owned a business with more than 50 people they had to offer heath coverage.

Also, they felt the individual mandate was Government telling people what to do, although I doubt many of those people would go a day without coverage anyways.

It also occurred to them that they were probably paying something for it in their taxes and they didn't like that, although as I said before its a pay now or pay later situation.

These things do not qualify as a disaster and in fact the initial outrage that existed in anticipation of the law actually sort of died done.  Repeal Obamacare became a thing you said, sort of like saying Amen at the end of a church service.

In fact many of the people calling for the repeal of Obamacare like the Affordable Care Act, they just didn't know it was the same thing.

Of course the term Obamacare was designed to stir up racism from the start and our media and many others played along because it was a catchy name.  It caught on so well that most Americans didn't know the real name of the law or even what was in it.

Now like the dog that catches the car, the republicans have to come up with something.  Providing multi state coverage, although think that is a state thing and savings accounts that are tax free help the people that don't have a problem now.  Even then, they may lose the pre-existing condition and age 26 benefit they love.

Just letting the insurance market do what it wants will of course bring us back to where we were in 2008 and that is probably not an acceptable solution.

Complicate this with our semi simpleton president who now understands the issue is complex, surprisingly, and has made promises that the congress doesn't want to keep.

Fun and games, except people who lose needed coverage die, so maybe not as much fun as just political games.

Environmental Regulations

There is a strong antigovernment movement in the country today which is convinced that Government is the problem.

This exists because at times Government regulations create certain requirements that slow people down or even prevent them from doing what they want.  Now, of course each person feels that whatever they want to do is good and anything in his way is bad, so after such an experience you are likely to feel there is too much Government.

Now take a regulation that prevents water pollution by restricting what you can dump into a stream on your property.  Well the stream is on your property and now you have restrictions on what products you can use.  How dare they! We were using these products for years and the stream is just fine!

Of course the stream might carry the contamination into a river and then into a lake where people go to fish and swim.  Measurements downstream show increased levels of cancer causing or other dangerous pollutants, which are being passed on to sports fishermen or swimmers.

Now the regulation restricts a few people to benefit the many.  However, the many frequently are not aware of what is being done, but the few certainly are.

Government reacts to noise, the squeaky wheel syndrome.  So the few complain and the many stay quiet, at least until the lake is shut down because its contaminated.

Its clear, at least for now, that since the worst period of pollution we have cleaner air and water, although not perfect.  Rivers that were actually dangerous are now full of fish and the reason for this is environmental protection.

It does at time inconvenience the few but we all have a better life because of it.

Going back to a more polluted past is not making anything great again.

Actions speak louder than Words

Its interesting when many of the headlines about the speech Trump made last night highlight the fact that he didn't act the usual clown.

Of course he had a lot of time to prepare and was able to stick to the script pretty well and wore a more conciliatory tie.

The question that has to be answered is simply is it just words.

A lot of the rhetoric about bringing back industries, rebuilding infrastructure, keeping the best elements of health care were fine, but can he deliver anything?

He has to deal with his own republican congress and has to actually develop a plan with details for any thing to have a chance.

The one thing I'm pretty certain about is that he is easily swayed and as time passes will continue to be erratic.

To some extent he spent much of his life as a salesman for the projects he wanted to build, making promises to potential investors that didn't always work out.

Making these promises to the American people is a bit different.

Many of them actually think they are real.

Disappointment for his supporters is pretty inevitable, at least the ones who think we are returning to some manufacturing past.

The danger is in trying to do that we may be turning our backs on our real future opportunities.