1 Boring Old Man

 

Note: The GDP is expressed in this graph as the % change since the last report.

We did some right things [non-Hoover things] to keep the bottom from falling out. President Bush gave us TARP to keep Banks from failing on a colossal scale [I don’t approve of how TARP happened or was managed, but it was in the right ball park]. The Stimulus Package [ARRA] was a good measure; as was Cash for Clunkers; as was extending Unemployment benefits.

Police: SC state attorney caught with stripper
AJC
By MEG KINNARD
10/28/2009

COLUMBIA, S.C. — A deputy assistant attorney general who said he was on his lunch break when an officer found him with a stripper and sex toys in his sport utility vehicle has been fired, his boss said Wednesday.

Roland Corning, 66, a former state legislator, was in a secluded part of a downtown cemetery when an officer spotted him Monday, according to a police report obtained by The Associated Press under the Freedom of Information Act. As the officer approached, Corning sped off, then pulled over a few blocks away. He and the 18-year-old woman with him, an employee of the Platinum Plus Gentleman’s Club, gave conflicting stories about what they were doing in the cemetery, Officer Michael Wines wrote in his report, though he did not elaborate.

Corning gave Wines a badge showing he worked for the state Attorney General’s Office. Wines, whose wife also works there, called her to make sure Corning was telling the truth. He then searched the SUV, where he found a Viagra pill and several sex toys, items Corning said he always kept with him, "just in case," according to the report. Corning and the woman were let go without charges. Wines’ wife reported the call to her supervisor, who told Attorney General Henry McMaster.

"We received credible information about inappropriate behavior Monday afternoon," McMaster said Wednesday. "And by the close of business, he was no longer working here." Such a trip to the cemetery "would not be appropriate, at any time, for an assistant attorney general," McMaster said…

^{A deflationary spiral is a situation where decreases in price lead to lower production, which in turn leads to lower wages and demand, which leads to further decreases in price. Since reductions in general price level are called deflation, a deflationary spiral is when reductions in price lead to a vicious circle, where a problem exacerbates its own cause.}

^{At a July 5, 2001 White House gathering of the FAA, the Coast Guard, the FBI, Secret Service and INS, Clarke stated that "Something really spectacular is going to happen here, and it’s going to happen soon." Donald Kerrick, a three-star general who was a deputy National Security Advisor in the late Clinton administration and stayed on into the Bush administration, wrote Hadley a classified two-page memo stating that the NSA needed to "pay attention to Al-Qaida and counterterrorism" and that the U.S. would be "struck again." As a result of writing that memo, he was not invited to any more meetings. On August 6, 2001, Clarke finally delivered a Daily Briefing Memo to President Bush entitled Bin Laden determined to attack inside the United States, five weeks before the attacks. It featured information about ongoing Al-Qaeda activities within the United States, signs of a terror support network, indications of hijacking preparations and plans for domestic attacks using explosives.}

^{Last January 20th, our successors in office were given the highest honors that the voters of this country can give any two citizens. Along with that, George W. Bush and I handed the new president and vice president both a record of success in the war on terror, and the policies to continue that record and ultimately prevail. We had been the decision makers, but those seven years, four months, and nine days without another 9/11 or worse, were a combined achievement: a credit to all who serve in the defense of America, including some of the finest people I’ve ever met.}

"Yeah, when you and George Junior took office, you set out on an agenda left over from your days as his father’s Secretary of Defense, ignoring the very real threat from the present. After 9/11, instead of responding to this real problem you had ignored, you still stuck to your anachronistic agenda and invaded Iraq, giving too little attention to the Afghanistan War and the hunt for al Qaeda. Meanwhile, you two did nothing I can see to address the the financial catastrophe that grew and festered right under your noses until it exploded like the Twin Towers and fell down around us.  And you want gratitude?"

^{"To the loved ones of the victims of 9/11, to them who are here in this room, to those who are watching on television, your government failed you. Those entrusted with protecting you failed you. And I failed you. We tried hard, but that doesn’t matter because we failed. And for that failure, I would ask, once all the facts are out, for your understanding and for your forgiveness."}

Victory for Obama Over Military Lobby
The New York Times
By CHRISTOPHER DREW
October 28, 2009

When the Obama administration proposed canceling a host of expensive weapons systems last spring, some of the military industry’s allies in Congress assumed, as they had in the past, that they would have the final say. But as the president signed a $680 billion military policy bill on Wednesday, it was clear that he had succeeded in paring back nearly all of the programs and setting a tone of greater restraint than the Pentagon had seen in many years.

Now the question is whether Mr. Obama can sustain that push next year, when the midterm elections are likely to make Congress more resistant to further cuts and job losses. White House officials say Mr. Obama took advantage of a rare political moment to break through one of Washington’s most powerful lobbies and trim more weapons systems than any president had in decades.

Rahm Emanuel, the White House chief of staff, said Wednesday that the plan was to threaten a veto over a prominent program — in this case, the F-22 fighter jet — “to show we were willing to expend political capital and could win on something that people thought we could not”…

…Our military organization today bears little relation to that known by any of my predecessors in peacetime, or indeed by the fighting men of World War II or Korea. Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry. American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well. But now we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense; we have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. Added to this, three and a half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment. We annually spend on military security more than the net income of all United States corporations.

This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence – economic, political, even spiritual – is felt in every city, every State house, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together…

The Reagan/Bush I/Bush II teams ramped up military spending while preaching fiscal responsibility. They fed the beast both in peace and in war. Clinton began to trim the spending, but George W. summarily reversed his efforts – throwing in a few wars to up the ante. It’s a sticky economic problem. The military and the industry that supports it are major U.S. employers. Cutting military spending cuts jobs and leaves the communities that grew up around Defense Contractors and military bases in the lurch.

All that aside, this was a sterling accomplishment, Obama’s paring back spending on a lot of unnecessary and exotic weaponry. Reagan, the Bushes, and the neoconservatives pursued a foreign policy that would position us as the military enforcer for the entire world. I don’t think we want to do that [or pay for it]. I’m not sure we ever did. The Republicans that followed Eisenhower never listened to him. I’m glad someone is finally trying to heed his warnings.

Joe’s Other Switcheroo
Talking Points Memo
by Josh Marshall
October 28, 2009

Reformers are all up in arms over Joe Lieberman’s new effort to scuttle health care reform, for good reason. What got far less attention was that between yesterday and today Joe completely changed his rationale for why he thinks the public option is a bad idea. Indeed, explanation two contradicts explanation one. And number two is so nonsensical as to suggest he’s making up the reasons for his opposition as he goes along.

Yesterday, Lieberman argued that the public option is a new entitlement that will balloon the deficit. I don’t think it’s a good argument. But there is a logic to it. He was basically saying that the government will start a public option, have the program run into trouble and then have to come in and bail it out,. So more money added to the federal debt. Here’s the quote …

^{I think a lot of people may think that the public option is free. It’s going to cost the taxpayers and people who have health insurance now. and if it doesn’t its going to add terribly to our national debt….all the history we have of health entitlement programs, including [medicare/medicaid] is that they end up costing more than we’re prepared to pay.}

Again, there are some real holes in that argument. But the idea that the government might later have to get into subsidizing the public option isn’t crazy. But this morning he changed his argument completely. He now says that the public option will work so well at negotiating good deals with hospitals, doctors and pharmaceutical companies that those companies will be out a lot of money and they’ll have to make it up by charging higher rates to private insurers, thus upping everyone’s premiums. Here’s Lieberman this morning on Fox …

^{If the public option, the government run health insurance company, negotitates hard to lower the reimbursement, the money it’s paying to hospitals, doctors, they’re gonna have to get that money somewhere, and where they’re gonna get it is from the 200 million americans who today have private health insurance. Premiums will go up. It’s exactly what’s happened with Medicare and Medicaid. My hospitals in Connecticut told me a while ago that they get 70 percent of the average cost of patient care from Medicaid, about 90 percent from Medicare. If that was it they’d go out of business. So they charge the private health insurance companies 130 percent of the average cost, and that’s what would happen with this new entitlement, new government run health care program. It’s just not worth the risk.}

Now, that’s a totally different argument and it leaves out the fact that the public option will be competing against the private insurers — at least with a certain number of potential customers. So private insurers will be under a lot of pressure not to allow their rates to get too far out in front of the public option. The key with Medicare and private insurance is that they deal in pools that are totally walled off from each other. Lieberman seems to completely ignore what most assume would be downward pressure on private insurance costs since the private insurers will have to be competing, at least to some degree, with a lower cost competitor. Insurers obviously have a great deal of negotiating leverage too. So it’s not like they simply have to accept dictates from the providers.

Admittedly this is all a bit deep in the policy weeds. But it does point to what experience with Joe suggest — which is that this is opposition for the sake of opposition, the politics of pique. Why else would change his argument overnight?

Health Care costs too much, no matter how you look at it. Joe doesn’t get that. It’s not the fault of Medicare, Medicaide, Private Insurors, Doctors, Nurses, Drug Companies, Hospital Corporations, or any other entity. It’s the fault of the whole system combined – all entities involved. The bottom line is simple, Health Care costs too much. Obama knows this. If you listen to him talk on the subject, he always says it, though it’s rarely picked up on by the reporters. The whole point of Health Care Reform is to bring down the cost of Health Care. So, the public option, a sort of Medicare level reimbursment program scares the be-jesus out of the medicine-as-business types. It should scare them because they need to be scared. Either their system changes or they go south.

Why are there so many uninsured people? Why do businesses balk at having to provide Health Insurance? At the risk of being monotonous, it’s because Medical Insurance costs too much, because Health Care costs too much. Health Care Reform proposes to make sure Health Care is available to all people by insisting that everyone be covered. That won’t work if Health Care costs don’t come tumbling down. Okay, I’ll say it just one more time. Health Care costs too much.

Whose job is it to fix that problem? The Health Care Industry is the answer. They are raising holy hell right now, because there’s going to be less money flowing into Health Care, and the system is going to have to adapt. The only alternative is true socialization of Medicine and Americans don’t want that.

1. Cut the hell out of medical costs.
2. Socialized Medicine like England has.
3. Go on as we are.

The last choice is no longer available. It’s past its prime. Medical Care isn’t going to go out of business. It’s just going to change a lot – a whole lot – no matter what we do. The sooner we all recognize that, the better the inevitable changes will go.

Democrats say CIA may have misled Congress on interrogations 5 times
The Hill
By Jared Allen
10/27/09

The CIA may have misled Congress at least five times since 2001, two Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee said Tuesday. Intelligence subcommittee Chairwomen Jan Schakowsky [D-Ill] and Anna Eshoo [D-Calif] are leading an investigation into what they described as a practice of incomplete and often misleading intelligence briefings, which arose in the wake of CIA Director Leon Panetta’s June 24 admission that intelligence officials failed to notify Congress about a top-secret program to assassinate al Qaeda leaders.

“That is an example of a failure to notify but we think a symptom of a larger disease,” Schakowsky said on Tuesday. “There have been many instances where we’ve come to a committee hearing, after having read in the paper of something that should have been notified to us, where it’s followed up my mea culpas by the intelligence community,” Schakowsky said. “And examples where the committee actually has been lied to.” “You can understand that the committee has felt very frustrated that the executive branch has not notified us of intelligence activity,” she said. “We’re in the process of reviewing several instances where the executive branch may have violated the [notification] requirements that are in the National Security Act.”

One of the instances being closely examined by the two Democrats is the September 2002 briefing on enhanced interrogation techniques that became the basis for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s [D-Calif] claim that the CIA lied to her. Findings on this point could bolster Pelosi’s case. The Speaker came under fire after she said at a testy press conference in May that the CIA had lied to her and other members during a 2002 briefing about its use of waterboarding on detainees. Pelosi was the ranking member of the Intelligence panel at the time.

 

“We were told explicitly that waterboarding was not being used,” she said at the May press conference. “They [the CIA] misled us all the time”…

The argument for certain things being secret is in opposition to our basic principles of government. We say that our government is a government of, by, and for the people – ergo, the people should know what’s going on. We grant exceptions for matters where transparency would be detrimental to  our National Security. But even in those situations, we always tag on some mechanism for outside "oversight." So in the area of domestic surveillance, we have a very specific court to review requests for any "invasion of privacy" for cause. With the C.I.A., we have Congressional Committees that are specifically tasked to review their programs to make sure they stay within the bounds of our laws and our "meaning."

We already know that the Bush Administration abused oversight at every turn. They "skipped" the F.I.S.A. Court. Cheney closed his records to all scrutiny. And the C.I.A. did a lot of stuff that was unseen outside of Langley’s borders. The Administration "classified" anything they didn’t want us to know rather than following the  National Security rule. We know all about that already. This  C.I.A. investigation is a big deal. We need a C.I.A. and we need for it to be monitored. If the C.I.A. is operating on its own, it’s probably too dangerous to have operating at all.

Greenspan Says U.S. Should Consider Breaking Up Large Banks
Bloomberg
By Michael McKee and Scott Lanman
October 15, 2009

U.S. regulators should consider breaking up large financial institutions considered “too big to fail,” former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan said. Those banks have an implicit subsidy allowing them to borrow at lower cost because lenders believe the government will always step in to guarantee their obligations. That squeezes out competition and creates a danger to the financial system, Greenspan told the Council on Foreign Relations in New York.

“If they’re too big to fail, they’re too big,” Greenspan said today. “In 1911 we broke up Standard Oil – so what happened? The individual parts became more valuable than the whole. Maybe that’s what we need to do.” At one point, no bank was considered too big to fail, Greenspan said. That changed after the Treasury Department under then-Secretary Hank Paulson effectively nationalized Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and the Treasury and Fed bailed out Bear Stearns Cos. and American International Group Inc.

“It’s going to be very difficult to repair their credibility on that because when push came to shove, they didn’t stand up,” Greenspan said. Fed officials have suggested imposing a tax or requiring higher capital ratios on larger banks to ensure the firms’ safety and reduce some of the competitive advantage from the implied subsidy. Greenspan said that won’t work. “I don’t think merely raising the fees or capital on large institutions or taxing them is enough,” Greenspan said. “I think they’ll absorb that, they’ll work with that, and it’s totally inefficient and they’ll still be using the savings.”

Really Arbitrarily

The former Fed chairman said while “just really arbitrarily breaking down organizations into various different sizes” goes against his philosophical leanings, something must be done to solve the too-big-to-fail issue. “If you don’t neutralize that, you’re going to get a moribund group of obsolescent institutions which will be a big drain on the savings of the society,” he said. “Failure is an integral part, a necessary part of a market system,” he said. “If you start focusing on those who should be shrinking, it undermines growing standards of living and can even bring them down.”

But we have a problem too. Alan Greenspan is an unlikely celebrity. He looks like he evolved along the amphibian branch of our developmental line, yet we treated him as if he were a wing-footed Mercury bringing us the message from the gods. And it took us a bit to realize that he was a big part of the problem from the start. Both our former idealization and subsequent disillusionment color our ability to trust his formulations.

My own biases interfere too. When it comes to money, I err on the side of safety. The repeal of Glass-Stegall, the Derivatives Market [particularly unregulated], Hedge Funds, and mega  banks   financial institutions  whatever-they-are’s are all frightening to me – unsafe, risky. I don’t stand near the edge of overlooks, ride motorcycles [anymore], hang-glide, collect guns, things like that. So, I’m reflexly opposed to any of these financial methodologies that have the argument – "it’s good for business" or "without it, we can’t compete in foreign markets." Things that have names like "exotic financial instruments" are particularly suspect to me. But I like it when things are good and investments are paying off. I just don’t have a felt sense of when a risk is a justifiable risk versus folly. In the financial arena, most risk feels like folly to me.

I do have some financial intuition I trust. I immediately knew Reaganomics would bring us to ruin. I didn’t have any knowledge of "financial bubbles," but when we decided to sell our big house in town, I was a nervous wreck until it sold, being sure the house values would crash. And a year before the crash, I wanted to get out of the Stock Market altogether, but was over-ruled by my wife and financial planner [and do I ever enjoy reminding them!]. So I’m not a dunce in these matters. One area where that intuition was the loudest has been about the Banks. Back in the 1980’s when the Banks all started merging and buying each other, I balked. Whenever I got the notice that my Bank had changed names, I cringed. I kept changing my accounts to locally owned Banks, only to see in the paper that they’d been "acquired" by somebody else.

So my hunches agree with Greenspan. But there’s something else. I’m currently in love with Paul Volcker. He doesn’t trust these people and focuses on their obvious profit motives. Volcker’s track record is stellar. He says break up the Banks, so that’s something I trust. But Greenspan is not to be ignored here even though he helped create these monsters. When he says, "Those banks have an implicit subsidy allowing them to borrow at lower cost because lenders believe the government will always step in to guarantee their obligations," it sounds to me like he’s thinking clearly. And this, "… you’re going to get a moribund group of obsolescent institutions which will be a big drain on the savings of the society. Failure is an integral part, a necessary part of a market system. If you start focusing on those who should be shrinking, it undermines growing standards of living and can even bring them down.” I really like the "Failure" part.

               ^{blah, blah, blah…}

Somebody Buy Joe Lieberman a Puppy
FiveThirtyEight: Politics Done Right
By Nate Silver
10/26/09

The reason this is a little scary for Democrats is because the usual things that serve to motivate a Congressman don’t seem to motivate Joe Lieberman.

• Would voting to filibuster the Democrats’ health care bill (if it contains a decent public option) endear Lieberman to his constituents? No; Connecticutians favor the public option 64-31.
• Would it make his path to re-election easier? No, because it would virtually assure that Lieberman faces a vigorous and well-funded challenge from a credible, capital-D Democrat, and polls show him losing such a match-up badly.
• Would it buy him more power in the Senate? No, because Democrats would have every reason to strip him of his chairmanship of the Homeland Security Committee.
• Is Lieberman’s stance intended to placate the special interests in his state? Perhaps this is part of it – there are a lot of insurance companies in Connecticut – but Lieberman is generally not one of the more sold-out Senators, ranking 75th out of the 100-member chamber in the percentage of his fundraising that comes from corporate PACs.
• Are there any particular compromises or concessions he wants in the bill? He hasn’t stipulated any, at least not publicly.
• Might he have a legitimate policy objection to the public option? Certainly there are some legitimate objections – whether or not you agree with them. But Lieberman’s objections don’t make any sense.
  1. He says he’s worried about blunting "the economic recovery we’re in" even though the public option provisions wouldn’t kick in until 2013.
  2. He says he’s worried about debt-reduction when the public option would make the bill more deficit-neutral. And he campaigned on a public-option type alternative called "MediChoice" in 2006.

What Joe Lieberman wants, in all probability, is attention. He wants Harry Reid to have to stand up and say things like: "I don’t have anyone that I’ve worked harder with, have more respect for, in the Senate than Joe Lieberman." He wants face time on Meet the Press. He wants to make liberals feel some pain – especially those who tried to get Ned Lamont elected in his place. He wants everyone to know how maverick-y he is…

Nate’s right. Lieberman is like one of those Roman Senators in the old movies like The Gladiator or Julius Caesar – plotting and scheming for power, or glory, or revenge, or attention, or envy, or who-knows-what that doesn’t have anything to do with the issue on the table. He’s having his moment in the sun being oh-so-very important like he did with his pal John McCain during the campaign. Obama should’ve picked him for VP when McCain didn’t to get him out of the Senate. Then he could’ve just ignored him for four years. Whatever Joe’s up to, it’s kibitzing and grandstanding that runs his motor. I hope he enjoys himself.

As for me, the Lieberman announcement got me kind of down. It rained all day here with a high, cold wind, so I had to much time to think. It was like last time, Bush days, when some ploy like Lieberman’s went on all the time. We never know the real story, so we spent all our time guessing about the back story. And here we go again. What does Lieberman want? Indeed. Lieberman is hardly the point. As Nate points out, his objections make little sense. The most I can make of what he said is that he doesn’t want to vote for it because he doesn’t want to vote for it. And what of his constituents? "Connecticutians favor the public option 64-31."

Sen. Lieberman Literally in Bed With Drug Lobby
Truthdig
By Joe Conason
Jul 12, 2006

Editor’s note: In this column, Conason points out that the Connecticut senator who would lecture us on ethics drafted a bill in 2005 that made generous giveaways to pharmaceutical companies—one month after his wife went to work in the pharmaceuticals division of a major lobbying and PR firm.

---

… Sen. Lieberman has long been known to cultivate the insurance and pharmaceutical industries, which provide jobs in his home state and contributions to his campaign fund. But he has literally been sleeping with one of their Washington representatives ever since his wife, Hadassah, joined Hill & Knowlton last year. The legendary lobbying and PR firm hired her as a “senior counselor” in its “health and pharmaceuticals practice.”

This news marked Hadassah Lieberman’s return to consulting after more than a decade of retirement. “I have had a life-long commitment to helping people gain better health care,” she said in the press release announcing her new job. “I am excited about the opportunity to work with the talented team at Hill & Knowlton to counsel a terrific stable of clients toward that same goal.”

It would be uplifting to imagine that Hill & Knowlton—after spending the past decade as a defendant in tobacco class-action lawsuits because of its role in propaganda disputing the deadly effects of smoking—is now devoted to improving everybody’s health. More likely, the firm remains devoted to improving the profits of its clientele, which has historically included Enron, the Bank of Credit and Commerce International, Saudis, Kuwaitis, American International Group and Boeing.

When a senator’s wife works for one of the capital’s largest lobby shops, appearances tend to matter. In this case, something happened immediately that didn’t look very good. Mrs. Lieberman signed up with Hill & Knowlton in March 2005. The firm’s clients included GlaxoSmithKline, the British pharmaceutical giant that manufactures flu vaccines along with many other drugs. In April 2005, Sen. Lieberman introduced a bill that would award an array of new government “incentives” to companies like GSK to produce more vaccines—notably patent extensions on other products, at a cost of billions to governments and consumers.

That legislation provoked irritated comment by his hometown newspaper, the New Haven Register. In an editorial headlined “Lieberman Crafts Drug Company Perk,” the Register noted that his bill was even more generous to the pharmaceutical industry than a similar proposal by the Senate Republican leadership. “The government can offer incentives and guarantees for needed public health measures,” said the editorial. “But it should not write a blank check, as these bills do, to the pharmaceutical industry that has such a large cost to the public with what may be an uncertain or dubious return.”

No doubt Lieberman would do the bidding of the pharmaceutical lobby whether his wife was on its payroll or not, but this kind of coincidence is best avoided by a man who lectures the world about morality and ethics…

There is great irony here. Karl Marx envisioned Communism to deal with the abuses of Capitalism. But the Russian Immigrant Ayn Rand, fleeing the abuses of Communism, created an equally idealized scheme of Capitalism that had a part to play by proxy [via Greenspan] in almost sinking our ship [with] ideology-driven "hunches" that were tragically wrong…

Capitalism is a different matter. I agree with the idea of Capitalism myself. The market is where man does his business. I remember visiting Yugoslavia and Russia back in the early 1970’s – in the heyday of Communism. They may have had it as a creed, but on the streets, I’ve rarely visited more capitalistic places. The people were constantly shopping though goods were limited. They had more money than "stuff." Wandering through the Gum Department Store [a mammoth building in Moscow run with booths like a flea market], I witnessed a stampede of shoppers when a booth opened up with shoes. There was a buying frenzy like I’ve never seen before or since [in spite of the fact that all the shoes were the same, including the size]. And the bartering on the streets was equally frantic [we had the most valuable commodity of all, worn-in American jeans]. The marketplace is just an essential piece of the stuff of being human – in the old USSR, in a Maasai village of dung huts in Africa, in your local Target Store.

But there are exceptions, places where the marketplace idea doesn’t work so well. You can’t barter for safety. Individuals just can’t do much about crime, so we have government run Law Enforcement Agencies. And ironically, those places where the marketplace concept needs tweaking also include the Stock Markets and the Commodities Markets. They are too complex, too opaque for the average Joe – so we have watchdogs to make sure that the criminals are kept in check there too. Well, we used to have such things. Hopefully they’ll come back soon. Another place is retirement. Left to their own devices, people don’t plan for retirement well on their own, particularly people with limited resources. The pressing needs of "now" are way too strong to plan for "later," so we have Social Security and Medicare for the needs of the elderly [or the otherwise disabled].

Now we’re in the midst of taking on a Bear, a really Big Bear – Medical Care in general. And it’s going to be a really huge mess. No question about it. Medical care changed in the twentieth century, came into it own actually. While there had been advances in the past, the twentieth century brought us insulin, antibiotics, immunizations, I.C.U.s, preventive medicine, anti-inflammatory drugs, cardiovascular surgery, the list is beyond endless – mind boggling in fact. In the industrial age, the age of "companies," medical insurance became a way of paying people. Medical care constructed itself around the surety of being paid by insurance. As the cost of care escalated, the cost of insurance rose, and insurance companies began to negotiate the costs – leading to something called "managed care" [a misnomer because it was neither]. That has deteriorated into the current chaos. There’s a dichotomy that is insoluable. People want the least expensive insurance and the most comprehensive care – mutually exclusive categories. Medicine operates under the ethic of never turning away the sick, but these days many of the sick have no resources to pay for treatment. There are a jillion problems – malpractice suits, inadequate coverage, administrative nightmares, enormous waste. It’s a hopeless tangle, getting worse daily.

One thing we’re not going to do is nationalize the whole system – socialized medicine like England. That’s just not the American Way. What we’re planning to do is require that people be insured, just like we require that drivers have insurance for their cars. That means that we’re going to have to delve into "regulating" insurers, drug companies, care providers, hospitals, patients, etc. We’re going to have to decide what is too little care and what is too much – and cut costs. We’re already doing that with Medicare and Medicade, and it’s not exactly an easy system to navigate [I volunteer in such a system]. Moving that to all of Medicine is going to be a nightmare of untold magnitude, and it’s going to ripple through our collective psyche for years until we get it right.

Is it worth it? Sure. Sick people can’t function in a free-market medical economy, because they can’t negotiate. They’re too sick and at the mercy of the system. They can’t even plan. Medical caretakers can’t really negotiate either without abandoning the essential medical ethic [called the Hippocratic Oath, "Do no harm"]. So, in our idiosyncratic way, we are going to come closer to the idea of a true Social Democracy. In my mind, that means government involvement in the areas of life where Capitalism and the free market economy just don’t work. To me it’s part of "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."