Guardians of Morality?

There is quite a big to-do in the news about the members of the cast in the reality show about a family that lives in the woods.  The head of the family is reported (I haven’t watched any of this first hand, so I can only state what I have read in the papers, that I have heard that these things were said) to have read from the Bible certain passages about homosexuality and then apparently added some of his own comments.

As one would guess, the world is in an uproar and this is now ‘front page’ news.  The fellow in question has been at least temporarily kicked off the show by the network that owns and airs the show, but the tempest continues.  And everyone has chosen at this point to come out and either defend or attack him.

A fellow who is a political commentator and former advisor to President Bush made the observation that the fellow in question had the right to say what he wanted – the 1^st Amendment protecting his speech, and the TV station had the right to fire (actually suspend) him, it being their TV station.

But, the firestorm of outrage continues as the ‘pure of heart,’ in self-righteous indignation demand that ‘something be done.’

First, the guy quoted from the Bible – then added his own comments.  I think most folks pretty much agree with the Bible, perhaps not in every single detail or in the understanding of each passage, but they do pretty much hold to what the Bible says.  So are the voices of outrage angry at the Bible?  I’m curious.  If so, they should explain themselves; I suspect most Americans would find that ‘enlightening.’

Second, his own comments were a bit strident, and he has, I understand, offered some sort of apology.  Whenever someone on the far left says something harsh, simple and not necessarily heart-felt apologies seem to do the trick.  Not so in this case.

Third, is there a very real effort to control speech in this country, of regulating everything that comes from those who do not dwell at one particular end of the political spectrum?  Absolutely. But, we knew that already.

But what I find interesting is this: in all of its high dudgeon over his hate speech or whatever they are calling it, the station in question is going to run a whole weekend of the reruns, there being millions of followers of the show who want to watch it, and therefore money to be made.

I am sure, given the amount of publicity that has been generated in virtually every newspaper, TV news show, internet sites and presumably all those social media sites that many of the fame hungry work so hard, that there will be record audiences and everyone is going to make some more money off this.

So, what might we conclude from this?  That to many of the political and moneyed elite the money is much more important than, well, anything and everything else.  Everybody is willing to stand on principal – as long as it doesn’t affect the profit margin.

A number of years ago William F. Buckley asked a fellow from one of the cable networks whether there was any moral or ethical limit to what he would broadcast; the fellow tried to dodge the question, responding more or less that audiences had a ‘right’ to watch whatever they want and who was he to ‘censor’ what they watched.  Buckley then asked, ‘if that is the case, would you broadcast some sort of ‘fight to the death’ or a snuff film?’  The response was ‘those events would be illegal.’  To which Buckley suggested that they could as easily air from a ship at sea, or Antarctica or from some war-torn country where there was no rule of law.  No answer was given.

Buckley’s point was – and is – obvious.  And it is probably more germane today then ever, where we have more bizarre and immoral behavior on television then ever.  This isn’t because there is any more disgusting behavior today then there was in the past.  A quick review of history finds it full of lust, murder, hate, greed and all the seven deadly sins – in abundance.

I am pretty much a libertarian myself, and I have a great deal of trouble with government – particularly the federal government – censoring in any way what is printed, aired, etc.  But I do believe in self-censoring; there are some things that shouldn’t be said, or filmed, or aired.  And while I am not advocating for censors, I am advocating that people should draw meaningful conclusions about people from their behavior.

There are two points that make today’s ‘entertainment industry’ a bit different from what we have seen in the past; one is the willingness, the eagerness with which the modern TV / Cable systems seek to air anything and everything, irrespective of what it may show, well beyond the pale of anything that was being aired just 10 or 15 years ago, all the while wrapping themselves up in the 1^st Amendment. And the second point is their holier than thou attitude, castigating someone for his ‘outrageous’ beliefs while routinely demonstrating that they have none.

So, go ahead and make your noise, condemn people for their beliefs, and then make sure you make your money off it.  But don’t expect me to respect your opinions, your perspectives on life or morals, or for that matter, respect you. 

Pearl Harbor - 72

72 years ago... A million stories of courage.  Here's one I know (my friend J.R. prodded me into sharing a story - thanks.  I've added a few comments for clarification):

Late 1980s, I was out at Monterey, CA. at the Naval Postgraduate School, I had just graduated, and packed out my apartment, etc., and I swung by the small exchange to get a haircut.

There was one barber working and he told me to come in and have a seat in one of the chairs, so I did.  There were two men in the shop with him: one getting his hair cut and one sitting in the barber chair next to him and they were talking about golf and their grand kids.  Both were probably in their late 70s.

The barber finished up and they paid and left.  Then the barber turns to me and says: 'See those two guys?  Both have Navy Crosses. (The Navy Cross is the second highest award for heroism in combat, immediately below the Medal of Honor.)  Both also survived Pearl Harbor.  The fellow whose hair I just cut was one of the engineers on OKLAHOMA.  When the ship was hit he was in the engine room and tried to control flooding, but they lost power and he couldn't do it and the ship started rolling."

USS OKLAHOMA, one the US battleships in Pearl Harbor, was in the process of having some work done and the access plates to the bilges had been removed; these are about 20 inch wide plates that are normally bolted in place and make certain spaces water tight. You can take them off in port, but once you do that there is no easy, fast way to close them up and make the ship water-tight.  Once the ship started taking on water any effort to control flooding, or try to settle the ship straight down onto the bottom became hopeless.  Additionally, any ship that has taken that much damage will normally lose power, not only making it impossible to operate pumps, but also plunging the interior of the ship into darkness.  The ship rolled over but hit bottom in the shallow water of the harbor and ended up on its side.

"He led a few men 'up' to the bottom but they got separated in the dark.  Eventually, he found himself alone in a space, in the dark, and the water was at the door to the space. He also found a large wrench.  In the dark he could feel a number of items bolted to the deck and bulkhead - now above him - and he unbolted them and let them fall, so he could have clear access to the deck/hull.  Then he began to beat on the hull at regular intervals.  Eventually, he received a tap back.  And then he waited.  He was one of the last guys cut out of the hull, on 9 December."

32 men were cut out of OKLAHOMA's hull between the end of the attack the morning of 7 December until the last few were rescued early in the morning of 09 December.  The man who led the effort to cut them out was a civilian shipyard worker, Julio DeCastro, 'Lead Caulker and Chipper' at the Navy Yard.  Beating on the hull from inside - from areas that were already under water - continued for several more days but they couldn't reach those guys.

And the other guy? I asked.

"He was the OOD (Officer Of the Deck – the man responsible to the captain at any given time, for the operation and safety of the ship) on ARIZONA on 6 December.  On the morning of the 6th his wife dropped him off at the small-boat landing to take the launch out to the ship, and as he was saying good-buy to his wife and 2 boys, RADM Kidd showed up.  

RADM Isaac Kidd was Commander BatDiv 1, Battleship Division 1, which consisted of the three battleships ARIZONA, NEVADA, and OKLAHOMA.  Battleships were known for their spit and polish and ARIZONA had a particular reputation as a ship that was always 'inspection ready.'  RADM Kidd died on ARIZONA on the 7th, and was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor.  In total, 15 men were awarded the Medal of Honor from action on 7 December, 10 of them posthumously.

"Kidd said hello, and said hello to the wife and kids, and one of the kids said something to the effect that 'we're going to spend the night on the ship with dad.'  So, Kidd says 'you should sleep with them in my in-port cabin and I will sleep in the at-sea cabin.' " 

In warships the captain has two cabins: an 'at-sea' cabin located near the bridge, so he can get some rest but be close at hand, and an ‘in-port’ cabin which is normally the nicest - and largest - cabin on the ship.  Except for ships that are designed to carry admirals.  In those cases, the admiral will also have an ‘in-port’ and an 'at sea' cabin.  And the admiral's in-port cabin can be counted on to be an exceptional space, as it was normally used not only for the admiral to live in, but also for the admiral to entertain official guests.  And the ARIZONA's was apparently a particular example of what the Navy can do when it wants to...

"So that night he picked the kids up, took them to the ship where they ate in the wardroom and slept in the Flag in-port cabin (the Admiral’s cabin – Admirals are referred to as ‘Flags’ because admirals traditionally fly a flag when on a ship that allows people to know there is in fact an admiral embarked), then in the morning he got the kids up early, turned over the watch early, and headed ashore to meet his wife for 0800 Catholic Mass at the base chapel.  And he was walking into church when the first round hit.  The two men went on to fight across the Pacific, and both retired as captains, and later retired in Carmel."

Health Care Again - pt. 2

All of the debates about healthcare, and the discussion we had in the previous article, seem to lead us back to the issue of providing healthcare insurance to those who couldn’t afford it, in order to keep people from ‘dieing early.’  But that really is two separate things, isn’t it?  Is the ACA really an effort to prevent people from ‘dieing early’ or is it an effort to make certain that everyone has health insurance?  The difference is important.  Those with large amounts of extra money (the ‘rich’) really don’t need health insurance – if you have $50 million in the bank earning 2% interest every year you don’t need health insurance.  And, in fact, some 240 million to 250 million US citizens were covered by health insurance of some sort or another before the ACA.  The ACA is supposed to add 30 million citizens onto the list.  Why the government didn’t construct a system that addressed all 60 – 70 million (there are 311 million US citizens) is a bit of a mystery to me (not that I want them to, but it is curious).

But at the same time there is no effort to increase either the total quantity or the overall quality of health care.  So, the ‘goal’ of the ACA is in reality ‘more people with health insurance’ while making no efforts elsewhere to improve healthcare.  Ask yourself this question: if the goal were to improve overall health of American citizens and increase life spans, is this how you would have gone about it?

The ACA expands the amount of money the federal government pushes into healthcare each year without otherwise addressing the fundamentals of healthcare.  That translates into expanded federal control. That seems to make it fairly clear that the ACA is about issues of control and mandatory insurance is a vehicle for that control, and that actual healthcare is secondary to the issue of control.  (For those who doubt that government bureaucracies equate ‘money’ and ‘control’ you need to go look no further than education; the federal government has repeatedly asserted that it can dictate terms to private schools if any student at the school accepts federally guaranteed student loans, whether the school knows of the loan or not.)

It is worth noting that every single person in the US already has access to critical or crisis care through Medicaid.  But it is also worth understanding that long before Medicaid / Medicare, or the Department of Health and Human Services, or its predecessor the Department of Health, Education and Welfare, were created, or even gleams in some bureaucrat’s eye, hospitals across this country operated within the confines of a strict moral and ethical code that demanded that they treat everyone who showed up at their doors.  Further, every doctor in the country individually operated under the same code.  The fact is that if people could get themselves to a doctor’s office or a hospital they would receive care.  When money became a problem, ways were found around it.

What was missing from healthcare were: 1) a program to pay for annual physicals as a preventative to further problems; 2) some sort of coverage to address catastrophic illness; and 3) a means to address the shifting demographics that left certain segments of the population physically isolated from medical care – in particular inner city poor as hospitals expanded outside urban centers and doctors and nurses moved away from urban centers.  The ACA sort of covers #1, in some cases may cover #2, and ignores #3. 

The ACA does not address the issue that the young – who are predominantly healthy – feel they don’t need healthcare insurance, except by taxing them (which only serves to underline George Washington’s point that in the end governments are really only about force – forcing people to do things. (It also serves to point out Washington’s point, that governments must, therefore, be kept on very tight leashes)).  Using taxation to force certain behavior is both a favorite tactic of governments throughout history, and hardly the mark of a limited government.

If the issue were to improve healthcare, and there was a real desire to improve the quality of healthcare might it not have been better do have done something like this?

1)             Every dollar spent on healthcare insurance – no matter your income level – is deducted from your gross income, thereby reducing your taxable income, creating an incentive for people to buy healthcare.

2)             Everyone is free to buy any insurance they want, in any county or state – no arbitrary federal, state or local regulations protecting this or that insurance company.

3)             Provide tax breaks for retirement age doctors and nurses, creating incentives for them to remain in practice.

4)             Provide ‘fast-track’ procedures for foreign doctors and nurses to immigrate and receive accreditation, working with the AMA and others as necessary to maintain standards.

5)             Work with the AMA, the universities of the US, US hospitals and American industry to provide opportunities to found new schools and expand old schools of medicine, and to expand the various residency programs.

6)             Work with hospitals, clinics and industry to develop an improved, streamlined process for the FDA to approve new drugs and new treatments.  The FDA approval process is currently one of the slowest and most cumbersome in the world.

7)             Work with universities, hospitals and industry to expedite new technologies and new techniques that improve healthcare.  Expedite in particular the approval of those treatments that exploit technologies that utilize non-medical personnel, as well as ‘remote’ technologies that allow more medical care to those people physically distant from treatment centers.

8)             Provide tax incentives for doctors, nurses, other medical personnel, and companies across the entire medical industry to provide healthcare to the poor; ensure that these incentives are easily tracked and that the paperwork is not onerous.

9)             Develop legislation that provides caps or limits to malpractice liability claims – for individuals and organizations.

This is a start.  There is more, but we should begin here.

We need to realize is that shoveling more money at healthcare while expanding government control is unlikely to work; it hasn’t worked in the past and why it would mysteriously start working now is beyond me.  But especially ludicrous is the unspoken premise that ‘healthcare can be fixed,’ that the government can mandate some sort of solution and then it’s fixed, that the solution the government comes up with today will work just as well in 5, 10, 20 or 50 years.  The fact is that healthcare, as with a great many other problems, is a very complex set of issues that not only defies easy characterization, it defies nearly any characterization at all.  There are large segments of the healthcare industry that, far from being broken, are performing superbly.  Any action by the government in these areas is likely to make matters worse, not better.  More to the point, we need to accept that in anything as vast, as complex – and as personal – as healthcare there can be no ‘right’ answers, no answer that is adequate and appropriate for every person, no answer that once given will never change.  Instead, every answer is constantly evolving, as technology and treatment change, and as we as individuals and as a society change.  The answers to healthcare do not lie in the offices of politicians or bureaucrats at all; the only thing government can do is to, as best as possible, ‘clear the field’ and allow the ingenuity and creativity of people across the nation to continue to refine and develop healthcare.  The real answers can only be found among patients (that’s all of us), doctors and nurses, and inventors and engineers; let’s go there for the solutions.  

Health Care - Again pt. 1

The Affordable Care Act (ACA) has now been effect for more than a month.  We are all aware of the mess that is the computer support piece of the ACA.  Although that is a ‘non-trivial’ issue, centralized, computerized support for healthcare being a key element of ACA, I’m going to ignore it for today.  Irrespective of the computer support for the healthcare, the central issue is whether the healthcare provided under the ACA will be an improvement or not.  So, let’s take a look at the issue of the healthcare that will be provided versus what needs to be done.

First, here are a couple of observations from a survey of healthcare workers – doctors and nurses - who were asked what effect the ACA will have on healthcare nationwide, this from an article in the Washington Examiner on 27 September: 

- More than nine in 10 believe that there could be major negative impacts such as a drop in quality care

- 53% believe that “Quality of health insurance policies will suffer.”

- 51% believe that “Quality of care will go down.”

- 42% believe that “Insurance exchanges will be poorly managed.”

- 19% believe that “Americans will die earlier.”

I would think the last line would give people pause: just a bit less than 1 in 5 doctors and nurses think that the ACA will result in Americans dieing earlier.  Isn’t healthcare about people living longer, healthier lives?  Yet 1 in 5 doctors think this new healthcare system will result in a decrease in life expectancy.   That alone should cause a great deal of concern. 

But, the proponents of increased government oversight and control of healthcare will respond that with the rising costs of healthcare over the past 4 decades something needed to be done for those who were without health insurance and were already dieing ‘early.’  So, let’s set aside for a moment the new concerns about dieing earlier and simply ask two questions: 1) What caused healthcare costs to rise above the rate of inflation over the past 45 years?  And 2) What might be done to control costs?  (Asked otherwise: How does the ACA address these issues?)

 

Healthcare costs have risen as a result of a number of different forces, each is relevant, but all are to blame, so the order below is not significant.

a)     Government funding; simply, when government starts pushing money into medicine (or any sector of the economy), prices rise; the greater the government ‘flow,’ the more the increase in prices.  (Government support of housing loans caused home prices to rise, for example.)

b)    Technology; as technology to diagnose and treat diseases has improved, treatments that weren’t available 5, 10, 15 or 20 years ago are now available, whether we talk about drugs (think of some of the pharmaceuticals developed in the last 20 years), treatment schemes (the advancement in cancer treatment) or hard technology (MRI, etc.)  These new technologies are incredibly capable, but they also expensive.

c)     Liability Law and Malpractice Insurance; various court decisions have had the effect of driving costs up across the board; malpractice insurance rates soared, and every element of the healthcare industry became possibly culpable in nearly any situation.  This has not only increased the amount of oversight – and hence cost – in medical care, it has also led to changes in medical practices, to include greater specialization as well as increases in the breadth of diagnostic testing – both of which drove up medical costs.

d)    Supply; the number of medical schools and nursing schools, and residency programs, in the US has remained essentially unchanged for most of the last 40 years.  This began as an effort – by the AMA and the federal government – to maintain standards.  But it is now unbalanced, and the US now produces less than half the number of doctors and nurses it needs.  Further complicating the issue, one of the effects of medical malpractice has been to drive physicians out of certain fields and into others, resulting in even greater shortages, for example among general practitioners and OB/GYNs.

 

In short, over the last 45 years ‘supply’ has more or less been kept constant, real costs (technology and the operating costs of hospitals and doctors’ offices) have increased, and the government has poured money into the ‘industry.’  Where does that leave us with the second question: What might be done to reduce costs? 

 The first issue is that there is no easy answer to the ‘supply’ problem.  There needs to be a concerted effort to open new medical schools and nursing schools and new residency programs around the country.  Doing so while maintaining standards will not be easy – or quick, but it must be done.  In the meantime, two steps should be taken: provide some sort of incentive to older doctors and nurses so that they put off retirement for several years, and pass a specific immigration bill to facilitate the immigration of doctors and nurses.

Steps must also be taken to cap or otherwise limit malpractice settlements.  The ‘deep pockets’ that the courts have dipped into in the past have been emptied at the expense of the entire nation.  Limits must be set on such settlements.  At the same time, the insurance conundrum is further complicated by limiting all concerned with insurance coverage within their own state – for doctors, nurses, and patients.  Now it appears that within the ACA there will be prohibitions to not only crossing state borders, but in some cases crossing county borders.  In short, one of the key issues with insurance costs that needed to be addressed has been made decidedly worse under the ACA.  That should be ended – it simply stifles competition and drives up prices.

Can anything be done to control the costs associated with new technology?  Probably less then we want.  The approval process (within the FDA) for new drugs and new treatments could be dramatically streamlined and that would be helpful.  But the truth is that many of these new drugs and new tools are expensive.  But with those new and expensive tools come cheaper ways to do business. Thus, operations that used to require a week in the hospital now often mean surgery and release on the same day.  Costs increase because of the technology involved, but the overall cost of treatment might be less.  In short, the real answer would be in letting the ‘marketplace’ develop the answer.  Certainly the technology has improved over the last 75 years in such a manner that medical care that was not available to kings, queens and presidents at the time is now available to everyone, and at reasonable costs.  Technology and the market place are like that – it takes time for technology and education and production and ‘SOPs’ (standard operating procedures) to all catch up and balance out – it cannot happen overnight, and government attempts to make it do so only result in severe imbalances, price spikes and mistakes.

Where does that leave the ACA?  Sadly, the only thing the ACA does is pour more money into the healthcare field.  Shortages are not addressed, nor are any of the other cost drivers – except eligibility for treatment.  In short, more money – which will mean higher prices, and managed access to supply, which is a polite way to say ‘rationing.’

There is another way to say that as well: Pay more, get less.

Tomorrow: some suggestions on what government might do – if it were inclined to actually improve the health of the citizenry.

Gentlemen Don't Read Each Other's Mail

There is quite a furor in the news about the efforts of NSA – The National Security Agency – to listen in on the phone calls of various world leaders. Unfortunately, no one seems to be in the process of either explaining or defending what NSA is doing.  Part of this is simple: virtually all of what NSA does in classified, and any attempt to explain is felt to be inappropriate.  Many at NSA probably wish, at this time, to fade back into the woodwork where they existed for several decades, where, among those who knew, NSA was jokingly said to mean ‘No Such Agency.’  The joke was even more delicious because those who really did know what they were doing could only share it among themselves – it was a real insider’s joke.

That period is long gone.  There have not only been a wide range of unofficial revelations (many of them inaccurate), there have also been enough statements made by those who do know – to include several directors who made comments while they were heading the agency – that it is now fairly clear precisely what is the mission of NSA.

Now, with the revelations provided by the traitor Snowden, there are a whole host of folks who are up in arms.  Conceptually, they fall into two distinct camps: American citizens, and everyone else.

For the American citizens, there is a totally legitimate discussion that needs to take place as to the limits of government security efforts.  NSA, and its leadership, and those above NSA (to include the Director of National Intelligence, the Commander of Strategic Command, the Secretary of Defense, and ultimately the President), need to constantly remember that they are the servants of the people.  They are not princes, they have no rights to their positions, they have no powers beyond those granted them under the Constitution.  They are servants of the people, no more.  The people have the right to insist on observance of the Constitution and for your removal if you fail to do so.

The citizenry of the US also have the right to insist, demand is perhaps a better word, that the operations and efforts of NSA be both the most effective and efficient on the one hand – in keeping with US national security concerns – and Constitutional on the other.  All well and good.

But what about everyone else?  What can the people of Germany, Gabon, Guinea Bissau, Guatemala, or the Galapagos Islands (part of Ecuador) expect from NSA?  The answer is simple: Nothing.

Angela Merkel – Chancellor of Germany – is apparently in a huff over the report that NSA was copying her cell phone.   The point is that NSA initially defended its ‘we listen to everything’ approach on the grounds that it was going after terrorists.  Chancellor Merkel is obviously not a terrorist.  So, why oh why is NSA listening in?

REALLY????  Is that a serious question?  Does anyone other than Miss Manners think that we shouldn’t eavesdrop?  Does anyone think that, if given half a chance, every other country – and every company – on the planet wouldn’t pay good money to know what the President of the US, the Speaker of the House, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs – and the secretary of every department is saying every single day?  Here’s a hint: the answer to the question is: they do pay good money.  Perhaps the Vatican doesn’t pay for that intelligence.  If so, they are probably the only ones. 

A couple of things are going on here: first, everyone is jealous of the capabilities of NSA.  Every country out there wishes they had this capability.  Two, it’s always irritating when you find out that someone else heard you say something you wish you hadn’t said.  Three, when you are caught saying something stupid, the necessary response in politics is to issue counter-accusations.

But, more importantly is this: every nation collects intelligence.  And they always have.  On their friends as well as their enemies.  And in particular on the leadership.  In several museums in – gee, Germany – there are thousands of clay tablets, covered in writings.  They date from the 12^th century BC.  They are the notes from the various official representatives from the Hittite courts to the courts of various kingdoms – Egypt, Babylon, and others; in short, they are the reports from the Hittite ambassadors to their king.  (These include the negotiations and eventual agreement between Hattushilish III and Ramses II.)  The point is that for at least the last 3300 years ambassadors have been collecting intelligence on the leaders of other countries – that’s what they do.  We may talk of intelligence agencies collecting information on terrorists.  But much more important than that is information on leaders – current, former, and emerging.  Is it important to the US leadership that they know what Chancellor Merkel is thinking?  Or perhaps the US government shouldn’t be paying attention to the Chancellor?  Should the US be building files on the ‘rising stars’ of German politics?  Or should we ignore such information and wait to be surprised?

One thing is certain: the Germans (and the Guatemalans, and everyone else) are collecting on US politicians; not simply the President, but every major figure they bump into.  After all those dinner parties in Washington DC – all those people – all the foreigners at least - go home and they keep working, writing down what they heard, who said what, their impressions of various figures, who might be susceptible to being a ‘special friend,’ etc.  And that is everyone; the Ambassador from country ‘X’ and his charming and clever wife – they will go home and compare notes, then write them down and send them home – so that folks like Chancellor Merkel can read them. 

The Army attaché from Italy and his beautiful girl-friend from the ‘Economics’ office – they aren’t just there for the drinks and hors d’oeurvres.  If they are good – and the rule is that virtually every country sends their very best to Washington – they have collected everything they can on everyone they met: the under-Secretary of Commerce and his wife: get their names, their address, the names and ages of the kids and what sports they play, schools they went to, the wife’s law firm, what cases has she handled, who she date dated in college, his hat size and bowling score – it’s all going to be collected and put in a file.  All that and as detailed a physical description as they can remember – what they were wearing, how they wore it, how they parted their hair, birthmarks and everything, even the mole on the side of his nose.

In 1929 Henry Stimson, the Secretary of State for President Hoover, closed the State Department’s cryptanalyst office, and uttered the now famous remark that ‘Gentlemen don’t read each other’s mail.’ 12 years later Stimson, by then the Secretary of War for President Franklin Roosevelt, was reading Japanese ‘mail’ every day.  The times didn’t change – every nation has attempted to read each other’s mail for millennia – Stimson did.  Chancellor Merkel may be upset, but her pique is not representative of wise policy.

There is an old saw, often attributed to the French, but in fact as old as civilization itself, which goes that “Countries don’t have friends, they have interests.”  The US, and this President in particular, may take great notice of its many allies.  But, before any of its allies, the US must address its own interests.  And it is always in our interests to know as much as we can about the leadership of the countries with whom we are dealing.  They are doing the same to the US.  I repeat: they are doing the same to the US.  They are watching every move of not only the President, but of every senior official.  If they have a chance to eavesdrop, they will.  If they can listen in on a conversation, they will.  If Merkel is genuinely upset and thinks this kind of thing shouldn’t be taking place, she is naïve and immature.  If President Obama didn’t understand that US intelligence agencies were, and always have been, interested in the activities, and conversations, of foreign leadership, then he is idiot.

Frankly, I don’t think President Obama is an idiot, nor do I think Chancellor Merkel is naïve or immature.  So, this is ‘theater.’  So, say your lines, get off the stage, and lets get on to something more important.  Just remember this: whatever you do, don’t do something now that will hurt our intelligence capabilities in the future.

Miss Blige and the National Anthem

Mary J. Blige sang the national anthem at the start of the Word Series last night.  The rule always seems that we slam those who make a mistake and ignore those who do a good job.  That being said, I would like to take the opportunity to say ‘Well done’ to Miss Blige.

Furthermore, I think it was fairly obvious to the average observer, as the cameras focused on her in the seconds before she began to sing, that Miss Blige, accomplished, award winning vocalist though she may be, was a bit nervous.  I would suggest that that speaks all the better of her, that at one level she had the ‘butterflies’ of all professionals in the moments before they begin to perform – no matter what the profession: sports, singing, acting, medicine, the military in any of a score of fields – professionals all want to perform at their best; and in those few seconds before they begin, they do experience ‘butterflies.’

And, at another level, I suspect there is a slight additional increase in the ‘number of butterflies’ when you are getting ready to sing the national anthem.  Unless you are an arrogant and cynical soul, singing the national anthem will move you.  Doing so in front of tens of thousands (millions if you include the TV audience) even more so.  It seemed apparent to me that it moved Miss Blige.

And so, I would like to say to her: Thank You!  Great Job!

More Than Meets the Eye

The polls suggest that only 10% of the citizenry believe Congress is doing a good job.  I’m not certain what they say about the President, but I think his figure is something in the high 30% range, maybe even 40%.   These numbers, of course, reflect the frustration many feel following the Washington DC drama of the last month.

But they also tell a different story, if we care to peel back things and take a closer look.  And that means putting all this in the context of everything else that is going on around us.

The first item to note is this: there has not been a real budget passed by the ‘Government’ since the last Bush budget.  (That budget, submitted as President Bush was leaving office, was passed in 2009.)  How then have we been grinding forward for nearly 5 years?  Several processes are in work: First, we have had a long series of ‘continuing resolutions,’ bills passed by both the House and the Senate, and then signed by the President, that basically say ‘same as before.’  Spending continues as before overall.  No new projects can be started, no changes can be made to any particular element of the huge federal budget except by specific action.  So, everyone keeps getting paid, for example.  If there is a desire to raise the pay for folks in uniform, for example, that must be specifically addressed.

Now, from the outside, that probably seems like some sort of budgeting process, and it is.  But the big difference is this: at no point in this whole churn is there a comprehensive look at what the whole government is doing, and the necessary trade-offs between this and that.  Instead, we see a long stream of disconnected bills that make their way through various committees, get voted on, eventually pass both the House and Senate, and then are signed into law by the President.  (There are more steps then that, but you get the point.)

The second side of it is that it leaves so much ‘up in the air’ that it is nearly impossible to figure out what is really happening.  You may have read the frustration that some folks have with the Department of Defense budget, and the call for an across the department audit to see where the money is going.  The issue is both comical and trivial; comical because anyone who has spent any time in the military knows just how much waste there is – even of the technically legal kind (you know, where a piece of gear (from pencil sharpener to jet-fighter) is ‘written off’ and a new one requested because ‘it’s just too hard to fix this one’) – across the entire DOD.  So, even without looking for some sort of illegal waste or abuse of the federal monies, there is a mountain of waste in just the way DOD does business.  But, the simple truth is this: of all the executive departments DOD is just about the most diligent in trying to wisely spend the people’s money.  Anyone who has had to deal with several departments at once will recognize this to be the case.  And DOD is only 1/5^th of the federal government.  So how much waste is there?

The answer, of course, is ‘A LOT.’  But it is going to be essentially impossible to know if we don’t even have a budget. 

The problem with doing things this way is simple: No one, least of all the President, need sit down and work out a comprehensive plan.  Has the President submitted comprehensive budgets?  Yes, every year.  In several of those years the budget was so clearly not serious, so different from what reality said was possible, that even in the Reid controlled Senate – one of the most liberal in our history – no one – not one single senator – supported the whole budget.  And Senator Reid, a clear devotee of the President, has several times over the past few years expressed clear apathy to the budget process.

And the sad part of it is this: without real budgets, without a need for the President to propose serious budgets, and for members of the House and Senate to sit down and talk across various departments, to make hard decisions about what gets more money and what gets less, there is no real possibility of our getting our debt under control.  But, there is more to it then that.

The real issue here is that without real, regular budgets, and real, independent audits – across the breadth and depth of the federal government – there is no real way to see depth of inefficiency in the government.  We have all seen pieces, but just to take a look at some items that have appeared in the news recently:

Obamacare registration: the system does not work.  After three years of preparation – for a program that will affect the entire $2 trillion healthcare system - the system is a mess.  How much did we pay for this?  Well, the original contract was for something on the order of $100 million, but the Department of Health and Human Services has already spent in excess of $600 million.  And it does not work.

Here are other examples of truly bizarre waste (From Sen. Coburn of Oklahoma, who identified more than $18 billion of similar waste in last years spending):

Moroccan Pottery Training Program – for Moroccans: $27 million

A Boutique Brewery: $750,970 in federal funds to build three new brew tanks

Beef jerky: $639,884 technology

Pet shampoo: $505,000

Lake Murray airport (averages 1 flight per month): $450,000

Robotic squirrel San Diego State University: $325,000

Smokey Bear promotions: $49,447

Fullerton Public Library Vending machine for library books: $35,000

Alabama Watermelon Queen tour: $25,000

Circus classes: $20,000

But these are truly insignificant when we take a look at major pieces of the government.  Consider two major issues (if only to keep this short): energy and education.  Under President Carter the government created two new federal departments: the Department of Energy and the Department of Education. 

The Department of Energy was created to do two things: reduce US energy dependence on foreign energy – oil, and to manage the maintenance of US nuclear weapons programs.  Since the creation of the Department US dependence on foreign oil increased steadily for 30 years – only turning downward during the last few years because of oil and gas development in South Dakota and elsewhere utilizing new technology.  This development has taken place almost completely on private lands, and over the objections, and sometimes strong objections, of: the Department of Energy.  At the same time, as US consumption of oil has increased, US refining capacity has not kept pace with growth – a direct result of Departmental policies, forcing the US to import not only crude oil but often more expensive refined products.  Meanwhile, the maintenance of our nation’s nuclear weapons arsenal has slowed to a crawl, much has been delayed and pushed off – making future maintenance even more expensive, and there is nearly universal concern – outside the Department’s senior management – that future maintenance will be even more expensive then planned.

And how much will the Department of Energy receive in 2013? $30 billion

Or consider the Department of Education, also started during the Carter Administration.  Charged with improving the performance of US students in all grades, the Department has mainly been successful in increasing the cost of education.  Over the past 30 years there has been no substantive change in graduation rates or in literacy, and US performance in math sciences has dropped.  But cost of education has increased at more than twice the rate of inflation.  In short, we are getting less for a lot more.  In fact, the US now spends more per capita on education then virtually any other country. 

And leading that charge, the Department will spend $70 billion in 2013.

Several weeks ago the President said that ‘raising the debt ceiling does not mean raising the debt.’  The debt ceiling was raised a couple of days ago and the debt climbed more than $300 billion yesterday – as the President’s Department of Treasury played clever accounting games and reshuffled some debt that it has been keeping off the books for the past few months.

The President is sitting on top of an executive branch that knows how to spend, but seemingly little else.  It is not efficient, and it is often not effective.  We all know that something is wrong, that this beast that we are funding – the ‘government’ – is massively wasteful and nearly out of control.  The Congress is doing little to control it, the President even less.  Deep down I suspect that is what everyone is saying.  But until we do something definitive, until we insist that the President and Congress get OUR ‘books’ in order, this economy – OUR economy – will continue to move further down the road to ruin.

Whose Fault Default?

We need a little clarity: Default occurs when a debtor fails to meet a legal obligation.  Or to put it more simply: when you fail to pay a bill.  Now, the federal government has a host of bills: bills owed to a host of contractors for things (from desks and pencils to bombers and aircraft carriers), for services (from janitorial service to building maintenance to tippy top secret stuff people are doing for the CIA), and for money (the borrowing that everyone talks of, amounting to more than $17 billion.)

In addition to these debts, the federal government pays out a great deal of money to what are euphemistically known as entitlements, that is, those receiving it are ‘entitled’ to them, without providing any goods or services.  Strictly speaking, many of these are not debts.  Failure to provide aid to unwed mothers may seem unsavory, but if the US Government did so, it would not constitute default in the financial sense.

Further, there is a legal hierarchy for debt.  At the top of that hierarchy are outside debtors.  Thus, no company can refuse to pay a mortgage based on the claim that they must pay their workers first.  The bank that owns the mortgage comes before the employees.  So, with the US in debt to the tune of $17 billion, total annual payments to service that debt come before any other payments.  For the year 2013 total interest is a bit short of $416 billion.  This works out to about $35 billion per month. Thus, the US need only pay that amount, plus the payoffs for the various Treasury notes – some 20 and some 30 year notes – that will come due (mature) each year; so, we add perhaps another $700 billion, or $58 billion per month.  Thus, for some $95 billion per month the US will not default.

Does the US have $95 billion per month?  Absolutely.  US tax revenue will total about $2.6 trillion for 2013, or about $215 billion per month.  So, we – the US – can pay our debts and still have $120 billion per month to spend on critical issues.  No default.

Repeat that: no default.

So, how could we default?  For the near term (the next few years), there are only two ways we could default:

1)    The Treasury / IRS stop collecting taxes. How that would happen is a mystery, but I suppose it is possible, perhaps UFOs land on the Mall and the aliens take control.  Short of that, it seems pretty unlikely, in as much as the federal withholding tax process has a stranglehold on everyone’s income.

2)    The Treasury decides to stop paying the debt as it comes due.

It should be noted that #2 above is illegal.  It would require a willful act on the part of the Secretary of Treasury, he would have to make the decision to pay out money into other programs before he paid money to service debt.  That is illegal under US law.  I have to assume the Secretary of Treasury knows this, as does, I assume, the President.

Which leads to simple question: Why did both Secretary Lew and President Obama both say that the current tempest in Washington risked pushing the nation into a default?  Is it possible that President Obama and the Secretary Lew don’t know that most basic of laws: that debtors must be serviced first?  Secretary Lew and President Obama are both lawyers.  Certainly they know the law.  Secretary Lew has worked both at the Office of Management and Budget and at CitiGroup.  I suspect he knows fairly well the law as it pertains to debt and bonds.  President Obama is a Constitutional scholar.  And he has regularly commented on the law as it pertains to debt and in particular the national debt.  In March 2006, when US debt was $8 trillion (less than half of where it now stands), one  senator commented:

"The fact that we are here today to debate raising America’s debt limit is a sign of leadership failure. It is a sign that the US Government cannot pay its own bills. It is a sign that we now depend on ongoing financial assistance from foreign countries to finance our Government’s reckless fiscal policies.  Increasing America’s debt weakens us domestically and internationally. Leadership means that 'the buck stops here'. Instead, Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and Grandchildren. America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership. Americans deserve better."

That was the then junior senator from Illinois, Barack Obama.  Presumably, then Senator Obama was not advocating default, he was simply saying that the US should live within an $8 trillion debt.  Since then US debt has doubled, 7 of the 9 trillion coming at the hands of President Obama; and it promises to increase at nearly $1 trillion per year for the next 10 years – if we adhere to President Obama’s spending plans.

So, how is it that then senator Obama felt that the right thing to do was oppose a debt increase and now President Obama says that to do so risks default?  Is it that he no longer understands the issue, that such an act cannot precipitate default unless the government actually decides not to pay?  Or is it that he is fear mongering?  Whatever the reason, one thing is certain, it certainly doesn’t constitute the leadership he spoke of 6 years ago.

For the record, the US has defaulted in the past.  As recently as April and May of 1979 the US Treasury failed to make payment on time – it was an internal bookkeeping mistake.  They later made up the payments, but there was a default.  We have also in fact defaulted a number of times via de-linking the dollar from gold and letting it float – thereby reducing the value of all debts (1971); or by changing the value of the dollar such as when FDR restated the value of a dollar as 1/35^th of an ounce of gold (1933).  In short, this has happened before.  It is not an over the edge catastrophe, it is a gradual, corrosive event that undermines the whole society.  John Adams – and others – stated that at the heart of Western thought lie two ideas, inextricably tied together: the contract, and personal property.  The concept of contract means that we can individually bind ourselves, that we can make an agreement with someone else and having done so we must comply with the terms of our agreement (with all the normal exceptions – you must be competent, it must not be an illegal act, etc.)  And, there must also be personal property, that is, there must be something of ours – land, equipment, ideas, money, our labor – that are the things that are exchanged.  Undermine either one of these concepts and you threaten all the rest of the huge structure that is Western political thought.  And that, it would seem, is what the President is playing with.

Shut Down - Please!

Shut Down!  Please!

Here’s the thing: they say the government is on the verge of shutting down.  I’m aware that there are all sorts of nuances to this, but at most what will happen is that there will be a delay in a few payments, but beyond that, this is a tempest in a teapot.  Washington will play their asinine games, and the nation will grind forward.

Here’s some important things to remember: we have gone 5 years without the President and the Senate passing a comprehensive budget – which is a violation of the law.

Since May the federal debt has – officially – not increased.  Meanwhile, we have accumulated roughly $200 billion in more debt; how’s that for bookkeeping?

Raising the debt limit is next; the President has stated that ‘raising the debt doesn’t mean that we are going to raise more debt.’  But it does if we follow His Spending plans.

We have nearly doubled our national debt in the last 5 years, and the current spending plan, under the guidance of the President, will continue running up an additional $500 billion in debt every year for the next 10 years – assuming economic forecasts are as favorable as they hope – and they never have been.

Federally mandated unfunded annuities have grown from $130 Trillion (with a T) in 2008 to over $210 Trillion in the last five years.

They say that the first step in any kind of recovery is recognition that there is a problem.  The government, and in particular this President and his minions, do not believe there is a problem.  I suspect that a shutdown will not yield any real change.  But we need to wake up – we aren’t ‘in up to our necks,’ we are in deep water, by analogy we are in water thousands of feet deep and we keep taking on more weight (debt).  We need to recognize that we are headed towards a catastrophe.

  

Right to Protect

 

Another mass shooting, and as night follows the day, another litany of calls for stricter gun control.  It was by any measure an horrific event, and the perpetrator – insane or not - committed what can only be called an evil act. But before we rush off to draft new laws, perhaps we need to look at a few facts.

1) The statistics concerning overall crime are clear; anyone interested in the effects of private firearm ownership on crime rates should read John Lott’s “More Guns, Less Crime.”  It is a dry book, but the statistical analysis has not been meaningfully challenged by anyone on any side of the argument; Lott established a strong statistical correlation between higher firearm ownership rates and lower crime rates, demonstrating that for every 1% increase in firearm ownership, there is at least a 1% reduction in overall crime rates.

2) In the last 30 years there have been 78 shootings in the United States that had four or more victims and was not a drug – gang related event.  Those 78 shootings resulted in 547 dead.  During that 30-year period there were 559,000 murders in the US – among 310 million people; less than 1/10^th of 1% of the murders were mass shootings. And while the US murder rate is higher than Europe’s, the violent crime rate in Europe is substantially higher than that in the US.

3) Violent crime in the US has fallen steadily over the last several decades.  The Justice Department states that between 1993 and 2011 firearm related murders dropped 39%, and non-fatal firearm related crimes dropped 69%.

4) In all but one of the ‘mass shooting’ events, the shootings took place in ‘Gun Free Zones,’ meaning that not one of those being attacked was able to defend himself.  For those who don’t know (to include a formerly elected official in Colorado), US military bases are perhaps the strictest gun free zones in the US. At the same time there are repeated reports every month of attempted violent crimes that are stopped by armed citizens; in short, when people are given the opportunity to defend themselves, they will.

5) While various politicians lauded the Washington DC police response, the truth is that about the best response time you can expect (unless there is a policeman serendipitously nearby) is three minutes from call receipt to response – and that in a dense urban area.  Average responses are longer.  Where I live it runs about 15 minutes.  This is not to criticize the police; but the police can’t be everywhere at once, they certainly aren’t mind readers, and they don’t know when and where a psychopath is going to strike.  And while the police may get there in 4 or 5 minutes, the odds are that the shooting has already taken place.  (The average violent crime lasts 3 minutes, start to finish.)

6) Courts have traditionally noted that the police – any police – are not here to protect you individually; they are here to ‘protect and serve’ the community.  They are here to find bad guys and arrest them.  The concept that somehow we can figure out how to get police to a shooting before bad guys kills someone is foolish – it can’t be done.

7) In this case the man used a shotgun, a weapon that hasn’t been outlawed even throughout Europe (and the weapon he took from the security personnel).  Even the Soviet Union allowed shotguns.  Restricting specific types of firearms solves nothing.

Which leaves us with this: 

A) The odds of getting into one of these situations is incredibly small – thank God

B) If you do find yourself in a mass shootings, it is almost a certainty that you are in a ‘no gun zone’

C) Given B, and assuming you are a law-abiding citizen, you will be unarmed

D) If you do find yourself inside a mass shooting, or for that matter in any violent crime, the police will almost to a certainty not arrive in time to help you

 

So, before we draft any more laws, how about we answer this question: Should you have the right to defend yourself?  Because no one else is going to.