Understanding Evolution in Part

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Popularity, the President and Congress

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

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

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

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

Trying to Understand Our Own Economy

Fractions Thereof and Percentages are Understood

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

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

Truth in Budget Reporting

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

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

Understanding our Wallets

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

Taking Responsibility for the Bad Stuff in Society

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

Our Congress' Wuss Factor is Our Fault

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

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

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

UNFINISHED sorry. It just got tedious.

 

Great Expectations to Get Out of Iraq

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

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

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

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

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

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

Democratic Party Wimps?

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

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

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

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

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

Managed by the Media Makes Mediocrity into Melodrama

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

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

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

-Media Matters

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

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

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

-Media Matters

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

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

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

Conservatives in Tupperware with Labels

There is an old term in resurgence that

everyone who is a liberal needs to learn:
Authoritarian

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

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

Main Entry: au·thor·i·tar·i·an
Pronunciation: o-"thär-&-'ter-E-&n, &-, -"thor-
Function: adjective

 
1 : of, relating to, or favoring blind submission to authority authoritarian parents>

2 : of, relating to, or favoring a concentration of power in a leader or an elite not constitutionally responsible to the people authoritarian regime>
- authoritarian noun

 
- au·thor·i·tar·i·an·ism /-E-&-"ni-z&m/ noun

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

From Wickopedia

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Single Payer Health Care - FAQ

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Paris' Behavior is None of Our Business

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

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

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

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

How to Stop Urban Sprawl

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

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

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

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

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

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

Knows No Internalization of Costs

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He Has Become His Own Imagined Enemy

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Problems in our control:

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

Benefits of White Road:

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

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

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

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

From around the blogs on this subject:

At Half Baked.Com

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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