Negotiation is the Answer

I recently saw an article in which Warren Buffett says single payer is the solution to our health care issue.
http://www.msn.com/en-us/money/healthcare/heres-how-buffett-thinks-we-should-fix-american-health-care/ar-BBDqF35?ocid=spartandhp



Now what he is saying is actually common sense and it is that we should take the burden of health care off employers and go with a single payer.

He makes some good points, which have been made by others, but maybe they will get getter traction coming from him.

Unfortunately health care and other issues have become so politicized because well that's what we do now.

Republicans think Democrats are evil and vice versa, even though all the evidence shows we share almost all the same values with each other.

However both parties have allowed the debate to be controlled by the fringe elements who are more motivated and who show up to vote in primaries.

Once someone is nominated in a safe district he will get elected and because he was probably a bit fanatical from the start is unlikely to be a compromiser in Washington.

Now there may be some issues that have "bright" lines but the vast majority of issues such as health care, immigration reform, our tax system or how we spend our tax dollars are things that should be negotiated to ensure we end up with something fair.

Of course it is now news that a bi-partisan solution is even being considered by the Senate to pass health care.

Shameful really.

Health Cost

The issue about health care is the cost of it.  What we call insurance has morphed into something else.

Insurance is something you buy to protect yourself from a potential risk and you pay based on the likelihood of that risk occurring and the cost if it does.  So for example is your home is worth $100,000 and the risk of losing it to a fire is 1%, you would theoretically pay 1% of that $100,000 or $1000 to insure it (plus admin and profit).  As long as the number of people in similar circumstances buy insurance at the end of the day everyone is covered, claims are paid and the insurer makes some profit.

Now if you want to cover a house that has already burned down, it is no longer insurance.  If your house burns down and you can get it replaced by paying a premium of $1000, it would be a pretty sweet deal and you would have no reason to buy insurance before the loss occurred.

Obviously no one could make money selling you that coverage so it would be impossible to get.

Now in health insurance we cover things that are guaranteed to happen and now we cover pre-existing conditions.

So the issue is no longer one of risk, the risk is 100% but simply how do we provide this coverage at a reasonable price.  Well if you take those 100% risk people and add them to people who have no existing condition you can average out the cost.

Of course this makes healthy people pay more but allows those with catastrophic bills to pay something they can afford.

This is sort of what the Affordable Care Act did and why it mandated coverage, to force young healthy people to pay some of the cost of the ones already ill.  Now of course there was some chance that the young healthy people would switch ranks and end up on more or less even, but in this case is it better to have your house burn down to collect insurance or better to nor have it burn down?  I think we all prefer the latter even though it means we pay year after year with no return. 

Similarly, the best thing that can happen to young people is that they live a long healthy life, even if they then pay for almost nothing.

Public Relations

In a world where some deliberately lie and publish lies, an honest mistake is problematic.

We all know mistakes happen and we use to accept that fact and accept honest apologies as the end of the matter.

However, if you are potentially at fault and a host of stories point out your real issues, one honest mistaken story becomes a god send.

You use the one to try to discredit all the actual reporting.

Its merely showmanship and its designed to sway the home crowd and maybe put some doubt in the undecided.

Now we live in a world where everything is framed as adversarial, at least more so than ever before.

Instead of laying out your case, its easier to try to discredit your nemesis.

no one is perfect and pointing our errors and fallacies can be effective, even if in the long or short run they have no impact on the issue.

Its something we have all learned to live with and its a sad development.

So grab some mud and start slinging, you'll get used to it.

Fake News?

Even though it might appear that we have more access to information the fact is the increased amount has led to almost as much bad information as good information.

All this bad information looks and often feels just like the valid information available.

The primary providers of this data have not taken significant efforts to restrict it for a number of reasons, one being that it would in fact be hard and confrontational.

In the days when mainstream media provided facts you could rest assured that they had a process designed to filter our bullshit.

Was it always successful?  Of course not, but they did put a lot of effort into it and you could use what they provided with a certain degree of confidence.

However now often total bullshit is intertwined with real facts to such a degree that the average person has no way of telling.

For example, if you goggle Sandy Hook the third choice on the list is the Sandy Hook Conspiracies which then leads to pros and cons about whether the event was staged.

Now I am certain beyond any reasonable doubt that this tragedy took place, the news coverage the tragedy were all too horrid.

So why is there any question about it?  Well because we have people in this country who either for a political or social reason like to question these things.

Similarly, the vaccination debate is based on total bullshit that was debunked long ago about a mysterious link to autism.  Yet once again the "controversy" lives on because of the internet.

We all have a responsibility to know we are dealing with real issues and not argue over silly theories that are simply contrived.

So the earth is round, we did land on the moon, vaccinations do not cause autism, the tragedy at Sandy Hook was all too real, and so on.

focus on what's real people.

The Big Con

When economic forces cause a change in the way we produce things it is disruptive, people re forced to adjust and s new age begins.

We see this in the bible story about Cain and Abel where the farmer was replacing the shepherd.

We had the Agricultural revolution, the industrial revolution, the transportation revolution and now we have the technology revolution.

The impact of cheap transportation allowed products to be made where it is most economical as the cost of shipping and the speed of shipping has decreased enough.

It actually started with sailing ships and railroads but we now have container ships and air freight as well as trucking and railroads.

Now we see technology and robots making jobs disappear and hitting the same areas.

If income in an area drops and the local mall has lost business due to on-line shopping the malls and stores will move to more populated areas creating a death spiral of sorts.

Its an unfortunate result of progress, but it happens over and over again.

Now people don't like to hear they are being ground up by the wheels of progress so they want to blame somebody.

Well blames trade deals, blame immigrants, blame the liberals, blame Mexico or China, or Europe, in fact blame everybody.

Its a big con.

The economic forces at work will continue and the players may change but like the melting glaciers, its not personal.

Its simply business.

Religious Respect

It seems that respect for other religions has been a cornerstone of American society since the colonies.

A number of the colonies were in fact founded to allow its settlers to practice their religion freely.

Of course, mostly it was a Christian religion but the concept was clear.

As the nation grew we maintained that principle and incorporated it into our constitution.

Now Islam is a religion and the number of practitioners has been growing over the years.

We are nearing the end of their holy month of Ramadan and traditionally the White House has recognized the holiday, usually with a traditional dinner.

Now however you feel about other people's religions or religious beliefs, we should give them the same respect we expect.

When a sizable part of the population shares a common religion, even if it is just a minority group, we normally expect the Government to recognize it.

Apparently not anymore as the end of Ramadan has not been acknowledge, at least so far.

American who practice Islam are still citizens and neighbors and to act like they are not is itself in-American.

Its pretty sad really.

Cost of Health Care

Health care costs have tow components, the actual cost and the profits taken.  I include the cost of administering health care in the actual cost because it is probably unavoidable.

Now if you are an insurance provider the rates you provide will include all your projected costs plus desired profit.

You can shuffle that about as to who get to pay how much or if you even provide coverage but the total will be the same unless you reduce demand.

Now you can reduce demand by making use of health care too expensive causing people to forego preventive or needed care.

This is a short term fix, which likely increases future costs as well as leading to worse consequences for the patients.

There is another way to reduce total cost, which would be to reduce the actual cost of treatment or prescriptions.  This of course requires doctors, nurses, and pharmaceutical companies to charge less, which is possible but a hard path.

So any health care plan has to address these issues and realistically no plan can change the dynamic of how cost is generated.

So plans can try to more evenly share the costs between those who can afford it and those who can't and get greater participation, (premiums).

Now if you undo that, you will be faced with the dilemma of people who can't afford need care being forced into bankruptcy or dying when they didn't have to.

This is more of a moral issue than an economic one, but we see it debated as an economic one.

Either you believe everyone should get care, or you don't.

If the first, the only fair way to do that is to do what almost every civilized country in the world has done and go with a single payer system which is government sponsored and financed by taxes.

It has many advantages including cost reduction via profit elimination.

Everything else will be flawed, just how flawed is the only question?

Corruption

One of the things about most public servants in the world is that corruption is part of the system.

They often expect some lubrication in the form of money to move your situation along.

Now its so prevalent in many areas that they don't even have to ask or try to hide it, its sort of built into their salaries much like tips in our service industries.

The other form of corruption is cronyism, where the people given the jobs are only qualified because of how much they can pay or who they are related to.

Of course there is also the midnight requisition sort of corruption where public goods transfer ownership surreptitiously.

Now because corruption is such a problem we have in this country in many jurisdictions merit systems designed to prevent it.

How successful they are obviously varies but they are designed to make sure only qualified candidates are selected, that they are held accountable and that they aren't subject to political whims.

This of course creates rules and rules can be abused.

We saw some abuse of the system at the VA, where lies were told because the performance demanded could not be met.

Now clearly lying about performance in order to get a bonus or keep you position is corruption but it is perhaps a more subtle form.

Budget cuts were made at many federal agencies but performance demands weren't lowered.

Do more with less, eliminate waste or get rid of dead wood all sound good, but if it was that easy it would have been done.

Generally budget curs lead to decrease in moral and that leads to good people leaving.  The bad performers stay because they have no where to go.

Now this eventually leads to worse performance and scapegoats are found but often if it gets bad enough the new leaders are provided more adequate funding.

Now at the VA we see a change to make management more agile, allowing them to move senior leader in and out without the prior restrictions.  Now if that solves the underfunding and vacancy problem I'll be pleasantly surprised.

Let's see.

The Halcyon Age

I think a lot of people have images of the 50s and 60s based on some odd media images they have in their heads.

These were the halcyon days that they want to return to because, well, real Americans were prosperous and happy.

Of course that wasn't true for everybody and I'm not sure it was true for most.

If you want to ignore the growing issues in the inner cities that blossomed in the 70s with race riots and drug epidemics you eliminate a lot of the population.

We had pretty rampant alcoholism that we didn't talk about as the six pack or the bottle relieved the mind numbing shift they just got off.

The men had in many cases fought in Europe or the Pacific or in Korea and had to just man up and get over it, never mind the horrors they had seen.

Wives were often happy if their husbands spent a few hours after work at the local gin mill, it meant a little less abuse for her.

Schools were terribly overcrowded and we were entering the debt society where people bought suburban houses for little down but with a mortgage and credit cards allowed many to go into more debt.

Yes we had an exodus from the old neighborhoods that helped lead to the problems in the inner cities to come.

There were jobs, often good paying ones for most people as America benefited from the destruction of the war but the jobs were in many cases mind numbing and we introduced the term wage slaves to depict how trapped many felt.

Now these are some of the things from that period that are conveniently ignored when we talk about them.  It doesn't mean everyone was unhappy and generally it was probably a fairly golden time for the children who were generally unaware of the problem facing their parents.

It just wasn't great for everybody.

Resentment

There is a large sense of resentment in this country about how things are unfair.

Of course the most unfair thing relates to the haves vs the have nots, but that isn't high on the resentment list.

People resent immigrants and poor people for getting things that working people don't.

The resentment is because they haven't earned it.

Now some of this is based on lies and some based on actual programs.

However, being an immigrant or being poor in this country isn't as nice as seem to think.

Of course getting up every morning to a job you don't like so you can pay bills isn't pleasant either.

There is a dialog in this country concerning the non-deserving poor. It implies that they would rather be unemployed and milking the Government rather than getting a job.

Now that is true to some extent, the degree is the question.

Do they stay home, do drugs, have babies and reap the windfall that the government provides?  Maybe some, but the bigger question is what should we do about it.

People are smart and can figure out how to qualify for government programs even when we install safeguards. By and large however those people aren't immigrants. 

The resentment builds when some people unfamiliar with the ins and outs of those programs have trouble when they run into financial difficulties.

Its a building force in our political environment and it needs to be addressed.

Right now it is being used as a weapon, which is no solution at all.

Not Everyone is Evil

Sometime it seems with all the rhetoric that people think everybody who isn't with them is out to get them.

Now there are people who disagree with you politically and other people who want to steal from you but the vast majority of people are not out to get you.

In fact despite the rhetoric most Americans share most of the same values.

But we live in age with a rabid media that talks about the other side like they are in fact demons from hell conspiring to bring down the country.

The difference in how we provide health care is only life threatening to the few who might be cut off.

To most of us its simply a debate.

Of course the environment does have serious consequences and it should be discussed seriously but I'm not aware of anyone who wants to put cities underwater or induce cancer in people via contaminants.  Just need to go over the issue calmly and agree on what to do.

I really do think the media has created a win lose attitude in much of the country as opposed to a lets compromise one.

If the only thing good enough is total victory, you are probably going to be disappointed.

It happens, get over it, don't resort to violence.

One Person, One Vote?

We may talk about one person one vote and all votes being equal, but we have never had a system that resulted in that being true in this country.

Starting with our presidential elections and then considering the way we select the senate and finally how we draw our congressional districts, some votes count more than others.

On the national level states with small populations gain an advantage because of the way the constitution allocates senators and the electoral college so a senator from California represents a lot more people than a senator from Wyoming.

Now understanding that the states had a vested interest in protecting their interests when the constitution was drawn up and gave themselves this advantage, it wasn't likely envisioned that the states would become so population diverse.

Of course within the states we see districts drawn with partisan zeal that leads to protecting the advantage of one party over the other.

It was always like this, but now with computers and demographic models there are ways to perpetuate this gerrymandering that would have been impossible 50 years ago.

Finally we see all the efforts to suppress certain voters in the name of stopping voter fraud, a virtually non-existent problem which keeps young and poor voters off the rolls.

So do we really believe in the concept of one person one vote?

Clearly only if they vote the way we want them to.

No Excuse

Oddly, even thought the election is over you still see a lot of attacks on Hillary Clinton.

Now there is no real reason for this except for one, the winner of the election is so bad, people need to pretend she would have been even worse.

Well its not going to work and in fact seems a bit pathetic.

It doesn't actually make a bit of difference at this point and I would argue its time to stop slandering a women who has demonstrably spent her life in public service.

Now considering the administration we have, well the joke's on us.

The fundamental problem is that we are governed by someone who seems to have the ethics of a New York construction man, the morals of a celebrity and the intelligence of a toddler.

He admires the dictator in North Korea and Russia but dislikes the Cuban dictator because he has some supporters who feel that way.

He believes a lot of the policies of the last half century are driven by some liberal conspiracy.

The purpose of that conspiracy isn't clear, but they have made up environmental concerns, engaged in globalization and automated manufacturing in pursuit of some unclear goal.

The sad thing is that he found enough issues that led people to vote for him despite the fact that they knew he was inept.

Anti-abortionists voted for him despite misgivings.

Gun advocates voted for him despite misgivings.

Bigots and Nazis had no misgivings.

And most sadly, many people who got left behind by the new economy voted for him even though they had to know it was really their own fault.

But the worst are the Republicans who held their noses and voted for him because he was on the Republican ticket.

Keep holding.

No Promises

Sometimes I can't for the life of me understand what America some people live in.  Now the country is far from perfect but in general most of us have a reasonably nice life.

Yes, for some it was better when manufacturing was less automated and more domestic and many low paying jobs have been eliminated due to automation, but most of us have jobs, even if they aren't as good as we would like.

Now being unhappy in your job is nothing new but some folks seem to think there was a golden age when everybody was just happy.

That never existed, and the images from TV were made up.  We talk about the greatest generation but those people dealt with the depression and World War 2.  Some remember that war as a time when Americans came together, and maybe it was except they were fighting and dying in Europe and Islands in the Pacific while millions of people died in concentration camps.

Not really a golden age.

The 50s were noted by the fact that America was in a unique place because many of our industrial rivals had been devastated but we had Korea and the constant threat of Nuclear devastation as we watched communism advance in parts of the world.

We also had Jim Crow and the oppression of a part of our population simply because of the color of their skin, a problem not yet gone.

We had dangerous pollutants being used on our food and poisoning our waterways.

Yes for many of us, primarily because we were young, life seemed simple and there was a promise that if we didn't do anything really bad we would get a good paying job and live a middle class life.

Well there never was such a promise, life is complicated and you have to do what needs to be done.

Technology has transformed the world, for the better, and we have lots of rivals in the world market.

If you thought you could spend you life getting paid for something a machine could do just as well, you were mistaken.

Get off your butt and stop blaming others, you are to blame for not developing the right skills.

Those factories and mines are gone and new opportunities will arise, but you have to be able to grab one when it comes, not cry into your beer while watching football on your color flat screen TV.

Maybe you already have the American Dream.

Conspiracy?

Well as we watch the various roll back of things like civil rights, environmental protection and banking regulation we wonder what is the expected outcome?

Clearly most Americans want clean air and water, equal protection under the law and some control  over financial actions that can lead to terrible pain.

The actions are contrary to common sense, or let me say intellectual sense.

For example it may seem like the sun goes around the earth but we know better.  We also know that the world is round although much of the time it would seem flat. 

Now these things are provable but anything that we don't do ourselves requires a certain element of trust in those who do the required tests.

So if you simply don't believe the ice is melting and sea levels are rising because they don't look like it, well all the scientific evidence in the world might not persuade you. 

However, the majority of us can see the photographs and the analysis and know that the facts are clear and the water is rising.

I find it odd that some people who lived through the same things I did seem to believe there is some sort of conspiracy against America.

Of course at first it was a communist conspiracy which to some extent made sense as they were determined to undermine our way of life.

Now it has morphed into some sort of left wing conspiracy with ill defined motives.  They seem to want to save the whales, promote green spaces and have clean air and water.

Further they want to control big business and eliminate world hunger.

Clearly they are out to destroy America which was great when robber barons destroyed all those thing with impunity.

They are fighting a conspiracy that wants to keep American habitable, think Teddy Roosevelt was its founder.

Guns with a Chance of Anger

America is a big country with plenty of guns and not that many restrictions on who can buy them.

Ratchet up the political talk to a fever pitch and you get angry people who may honestly believe that American values are in danger.

We had an incident where a shooter tried to kill members of congress while they were practicing for a bipartisan game.

Now violence is not a good response to an election loss, especially random acts like this.

The issue then becomes do we have too much anger or too many guns/

I know that an isolated incident isn't likely to change much in how we handle guns in this country and I'm not even sure what we should do.  The shooter yesterday would most likely have passed every background test.

It is clearly time for the rhetoric to become more controlled, however in the current age of media extremism, I don't see that being likely.

We may have to see more of the same.

Economics

Economics is both simple and extremely complex. 

Its simple in the fact that there are often enough clear cause and effect interactions that can be measured, analyzed and predicted.

More jobs results in more income which results in more spending.

There are many such relationships and they are fundamentally sound.

The complexity often arises when you discuss what create the cause?

So how do you get more jobs?  Well people in business like to make money so the job will be created if it creates more value than it costs.

Now this is where it gets complex.

Not every job is so clearly related to profit and loss.

Also, to make the most profit you have to produce the right amount of goods.

If you create more goods than people want, it will drive the price down hurting profitability.

If you produce too few, you will lose market share to other, hurting profitability

This is where you see supply side and demand side economics diverge.  Simply put, supply siders believe more supply will lead to lower prices, increasing demand and creating more jobs.

Sounds convincing except there is a point at which demand cannot be increased.

So at some point more supply only results in lower prices, not more demand.

Business people know this, so when you already have plenty of cash, more cash isn't going to result in more jobs.  It would be bad business.
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Ideas?

When you hear someone tout the same message that was previously touted and claim it is new, you wonder if it is just ignorance or arrogance.

You can claim you invented the wheel, but we already had them.

No one should believe you.

The ones who do or say they do have other issues.

Of course if your predecessor had much better ideas than you do, its probably better to copy them and lie about it.

Just say its new and better and you can get some people to blindly accept that as you cut their benefits and opportunities.

Maybe you should take a look at the egomania that you suffer from.

Just saying.

Business Acumen

Sometimes success in business makes people assume you are something you might not be, like smart.

Success in business means you found something that people would buy that you had available to sell.

Now that doesn't tell you a lot about someone except what I just said.

It may have been something brilliant or it may have been pure luck.

Sometimes success happens because you don't know when to quit.

If you try enough things you might get lucky with one of them.

Now of course that points to persistence or a failure to realize what most people do, that for every such success story there are many more that didn't succeed.

Some of course inherited a business and maybe they grew it, but that is also possibly because of many things.

Now of course some people may argue that successful people have an intelligence that normal people don't understand. 

Interesting, but of course one has no proof for this.

We only know that they said yes when yes was the right answer or maybe no.

Muscle Memory

We all mostly live life of routines, revolving around a thing like school or work or oftentimes both.

We get up, get ourselves and maybe others ready, go to the one or the other.  The whole thing becomes almost automatic and disruptions are keenly felt.

Of course things change and we have to adjust to a new routine seemingly forgetting the old one completely.

But every so often you end up back in the old circumstance after a period of time and almost immediately it seems like you never were gone.

We adjust our actions and responses to a set of stimuli that ultimately get locked into muscle memory, remember the brain is a muscle.

When the stimuli get recreated the old responses are pretty much as automatic as they ever were.

Its proverbial how once you've learned how to ride a bike, the knowledge never leaves you.  (of course sometimes there are physical impairments.)

It always amazes me how automatic the whole thing is.  You think it's going to be strange and challenging but it turns out to be familiar and easy.

I imagine there must be something in our evolutionary background that ingrained this ability as a survival mechanism and I believe the same sort of behavior can be observed in dogs and cats, and probably other animals not so easily observed.

We need to have normal routine to survive although obviously some seek out the extreme and dangerous.

Of course they sometimes don't survive.

W

Shredding

I recently got rid of an old desk I had for many years and replaced it with a different one I had.  The old desk had a drawer that held vertical files which included my more current tax returns and other paper which the new desk doesn't.  So this is making me consolidate those files with others I have in a different file cabinet.

Of course part of the issue is that I can't just throw the old stuff away, I have to decide if it contains personal information and shred it is it does, since someone may very well find or use my old tax returns to become me, at least virtually.

There's something about looking at your old documents and bills and wondering if there's any reason you kept a dentist bill from 1995?  It was simply because there was room so into the shredder it goes. Of course not all the bills are mine so you see a reminder of medical tests you or a loved one took or treatments that weren't very pleasant and it reminds you of the good and the bad. 

I am on my third shredder since the age of shredding, because the first two eventually quit on me.  I don't even shred that much, evidenced by the tremendous amount of old stuff I am faced with now, but my issue is that I always want to see if I can push the envelope on the limits.

I think my first one was only a page at a time and I'm not sure if it broke or I just gave up on it, plus they go on sale frequently.

I know the second one just gave up the ghost one day as I tried to make it shred more pages than it could handle.  I probably could have fixed it, but there was one at sale that handled more pages and also shredded credit cards.

That last bit seemed promising but you really don't shred them as often as you think you might.

This one has worked well, but it hasn't really been challenged until now.   So as I go through my folders I identify quite a bit that needs to go.  So the shredder was doing fine, although once or twice it seemed to get stuck but a bit of reverse to loosen the materials and a reshred worked fine for a while.  That last batch though was chugging along, admittedly very slowly but I had hope for it then the overheat light came on.  Gave me some time to write this at least.

Now the other issue with shredders is the shreds.  Now they go neatly into the bin and the bag I have in the bin, but since I don't empty the bin until the shredder won't take any more, when I take the top off, it has remnants hanging on to it that escape to my floor. 

Now I keep the shredder in an area next to my printer for obvious reasons and these little shreds tend to find there way into all sorts of nooks.  Of course I also have a pile of papers waiting their turn next to the shredder.

Well, the overheat light just went off, so I can go back to turning my past life into tiny scraps of paper. 

No Hero

The one thing that is clear is that we have  president who has almost no interest in what is good for the country.

If the previous administration was for it, he is against it.

If his staff is accused of colluding with the Russians he counterattacks, doesn't seek the truth.

I'm not going to declare Comey a hero, his behavior in both the Clinton e-mail investigation and this Russian investigation reveals a man who is morally bankrupt and afraid to say the obvious.

The president asks him for loyalty, not that he do his job and he decides to write a memo capturing the instant instead of resigning and forcing his hand. 

In some of the back and forth yesterday when the panel tried to steer the conversation to the long irrelevant e-mail probe, he did at one point say what he should have stated clearly a long time ago, there was no case there.  It was clearly never a crime since under no circumstances has anyone ever argued that the intent was to send classified information illegally.

We had an investigation that was fired up by politics about a non-issue.  He played along and grabbed his time in the spotlight.

He may have had differences of opinion about Loretta Lynch but her behavior has not been compromised and Comey's has.

The FBI director should be above politics and not be inserting himself into a campaign with an announcement that he had to know at the time was going to have an impact.

Of course, he got Trump, and he got fired.

However, we also got Trump and we can't fire him as easily.

Someone should at least tell him the campaign is over.

So Is It Obstruction?

We now have Comey's prepared testimony and there is an ongoing debate as to whether the action of our president rise to the level of obstruction of justice or just his normal ego issues.

I'm not an expert on the law, but it seems similar to whether the drugs someone has on them is for personal use or resale.

We know you had drugs but was it enough for the greater charge.

Now the other issue is that for there to be an obstruction of justice impeachment, the house would have to vote for it and absent very convincing and overwhelming public opinion that is unlikely to happen.

So what does it all mean?

Well it shows we have a dumb ass as president but I think we already knew that.

The other fundamental issue is the role of Government.

The Government is supposed to serve the public not the president.

Now to the extent that the president is serving the public that should not be a conflict, but the best interests of the public include having public officials above reproach.

Asking the FBI Director to be loyal to the president instead of executing the laws of the land shows a failure to understand we are not a monarchy or a dictatorship.

We are a country of laws, and everyone is bound by them.

Investigations can clear people as well as convict but more importantly they get at the truth of the matter.

Something Citizen Trump used to demand when it was in his political interest.

It was always just politics.

Busines and Government

Government and business are simply different.  Now the first issue is simply that a business knows if it is successful, it makes money.  Governments don't make money they provide services which by their nature are going to benefit some more than others.

If a company decides to issue a new product, everyone has the chance to buy it or not buy it.  If people don't like it and don't buy it goes away, if they like it and buy it, it stays.

Government doesn't have that sort of feedback and in general the things promised become more outcomes than the methods.

Now of course some things like efficiencies can be used in both places, but the Government may have to spend money that business never would.

Take the public that is simply on the edge of normalcy, outliers so to speak.

No business would normally create a product just for them, unless it was a niche company.  You wouldn't be in business long if all your products were more expensive than your competition because you had to design it for the outliers as well as the mainstream. 

But Government has to do this.  In education we can't ignore children with conditions like ADD or Autism, we have to provide services for them and in general that makes it inefficient.

Similarly with health care.  Of course if you tailor everybody's plan to what you or they think they need, some will buy almost no coverage at all.  However those with conditions or who are older will pay a lot more.  That is a business approach to the problem and if as a result the old and sick can't get the service they need, it doesn't matter if the policies they sell are profitable.

This is not the purpose of Government, everyone should have access to publicly funded services, and the medical industry is largely Government funded either directly or indirectly.

If you decide to take a business approach to Government the result will be outliers being left our, they are too expensive.

However, they are still citizens of this country and that should mean something.

What is Patriotism?

I know its not putting some symbols on a higher level than my fellow citizens, but what is it?

Its a bit of an odd concept in many ways since the country we live in is two things, an area on the map and the people who occupy that area.

So are we loyal to the geography or to the people or something else.

We talk about our native land, our mother land and sometimes vow to defend it, but many Americans can't identify parts of their country on a map.

Some parts of it are call National Treasures and we protect treasures, so maybe its Niagara Falls, the Grand Canyon, the Great Plains or Death Valley that we support?

No they don't really need us to do much and certainly they are simply geographic characteristics.

What about the people?  Patriotism or nationalism arose from the sense of clan and tribe that was essential to our early survival.  Clearly you needed help to protect yourself and your family and the scale of that protection obviously varied based on the circumstances.  In fact many countries that we know today are named after tribes that occupied them, France and Franks, England and Angles for example. 

Of course the tribes demanded a certain loyalty and as our modern world developed this grew into what we call patriotism.  Of course it started as loyalty to the leader or King who symbolized the tribe for all.  So is patriotism a commitment to our fellow citizens?

It is to some extent, however, in many cases they don't really like each other.  Its hard to imagine that a gun supporting evangelical is supporting a transgender anti gun atheist and vice versa.

They may support the right of each other to exist but maybe just barely.

So what do we support?

Well to some extent its an idea and that idea is symbolized by our constitution and our laws. 

These are the only things that bind us together as a nation and what we all share.

The constitution expresses the fundamental rights of its citizens in its amendments and those rights and obligations are what make us a people.  Not the color of our skin or our religion or our national origin. 

It makes us Americans.

Constitution, it slows him down

Our megalomaniac president who seems to be afraid of his own shadow said in no uncertain terms that he wants to ban Muslims is whole or in part because they might be terrorists.

Now I'm in favor of banning terrorists and I actually support incarcerating them, but as an American who believes in the constitution there is a presumption of innocence until proven guilty.

Where you are born or who your parents are is not grounds for discrimination.

Some argue that the constitution doesn't apply, but it applies to all our laws and actions as a nation and not just to citizens.  Two people apply for admittance, their religion can't be the reason we accept one and reject the other.

Its our laws and policies that the constitution governs, even if it is inconvenient for someone's political agenda.

When you say the courts are slow and political, they may be, but they are required to follow the constitution.

As of course the president is, someone should tell him.

Our system of Government has its flaws, it led to a president who lost the popular vote by a lot due to the way we set up the electoral college.  However, we abide by the outcome because the constitution is the law of the land, even if its inconvenient.

I'm in favor of amending it to fix its flaws, nothing is ever perfect but that would be through a constitutional process.

Otherwise we have to follow it.

It's the law!

London Bridge

In what appears to be another act of terrorism, six people lost their lives as a Van was crashed into a crowd on the bridge.

The attackers were all killed and the people who died were simply out to have a good time on a Saturday night.

This was a very low tech affair with a van and knives which are hard to control in any country.

I don't know if there is any particular reason that Great Britain seems to be the target recently, might just be a coincidence.

I know they are strong supporters of the war against terrorism.

I know that they have withstood much greater threats and that this isn't going to weaken their resolve.

We need to give them our complete support and show them we are good friends.

It is not a political issue it is a national security issue for us and for them.

It also isn't a religious issue, it started over territory, not religion.

Stand strong with our English friends but don't become the people we fight.

Another Saturday

This outrage over Kathy Griffins bad piece of performance art is way over the line, it was still an example of free speech even if you didn't like it.

The same people who screamed about political correctness are now screaming the loudest for it, can you spell hypocrite?

Job creation is running a little slower than under the last few months of Obama's term but Trump is claiming he did something great?

Its always amazing when you see the president say things that are clearly false and easily demonstrated to be so.  He has a terrible staff plus he's very gullible.

BTW for AMERICA TO BE GREAT we need clean air and water.

He still believes that he's not an international joke. 

Some of his supporters can only argue that the alternative would have been worse as they cling to their fake news about things that never happened like sex rings and assassinations.

You know about the e-mail, they do realize that no one ever said she was sending e-mails to inappropriate people, only that she was using a private server.

I find people who lie and distort the truth on TV more reprehensible than an artist who does a bad piece of art.

The current administration is determined to make the Affordable Care Act fail, and it might succeed.  What the public will get will be the same old crap we already had. 

That system punished people for getting sick.  Guess Republicans consider that a moral flaw.

There are so many bigots in the Republican party that they hate each other.

At least they deserve each other.

Moral Obligations

One of the questions that is fundamental to our current politics is what is the responsibility of the rich nations of the world.

For many reasons, most of which were related to technological advances, Western Nations, including the United States was able to capitalize and exploit poorer nations.

Now some might argue that the major colonial powers which were the Western Europeans were the primary exploiters, if you ignore what we did to the native Americans, and discount our involvement in the territories we acquired in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.  

Of course the United States benefited from other factors such as its relatively safe location which spared it the devastation of the two World Wars. 

Now the choice is this.

Let the poor nations of the world fend as best they can, especially in combating the effects of climate change which was largely caused by the industrialization of the West and the age of the automobile or decide we have an obligation to help them.

Now that's an area that is fundamentally based on moral and ethical issues, not purely economic ones, although its also got some strong economic ones for the future.

Having much of the world too poor to be consumers or lead a decent life leads to fewer markets and more unrest, likely costing billions to contain them.

However, those possibilities are not short term.  The short term question is do the rich have a moral obligation to help the poor?

Our current administration has clearly come down opposed to that notion, both domestically as well as internationally.  I see there position pretty much as grab as much as you can and if you don't get enough its your own fault.

Of course they are not opposed to tilting the playing field in favor of those who already are successful, to make sure they get to keep everything they can.

Similarly it is obviously impossible for this administration to look on an agreement that incorporates the concept that the poorer nations need some help, therefore imposing an obligation on the richer nations as a "good" deal.  In short term dollars and cents it costs us more than we get.

The fact that we improve the world for all as a result is simply not important to them.

They have no sense of moral obligation.

Paris in Springtime

I've never been to Paris, although its on my bucket list, but it supposedly beautiful in the Spring.

Now in order to keep it that way the French as well as almost every other country in the UN signed a climate agreement to reduce carbon emissions.

Now the science behind climate change is as conclusive as scientific research can be, we have worldwide data and centuries, even millennia of comparisons using ice cores.

However there are some who still deny it just as some still deny evolution or natural selection.

We seem to have more of them in this country then elsewhere, although they may just get more credibility here.

Ice is melting, waters are rising and if you live in a low lying area, you may want to sell your house instead of leaving it to your children.  It seems, and I believe this is predictable, that it is happening faster than the average prediction.

Science isn't a radical thing and projections and conclusions almost always veer to the conservative estimate, since that is the least disputable position.  Yes we always have those who point out, what in fact I am pointing out, the worst case scenario, but while a range might be shown in the data the projections will not be at the extremes.

Now, warming feeds on itself because as ice melts more areas that warm faster get exposed. 

It is already too late to prevent a certain amount of warming and melt (rising oceans) and the impact of the fresh water on critical currents is not clear, but we need to try to slow, stop and then reverse what is happening.

We're not saving polar bear habitat, we're trying to save human habitat.

Now humanity will move to higher ground and possibly adjust, but it will be an incredibly expensive exercise for no real reason. 

Also, higher temperatures means more energy and storms will be more intense as well as more frequent.

Lets not leave Paris, we need it.