On January 8th, a tragedy occurred that sparked a debate regarding civility in our political discourse. We promised to be more respectful of one another, and that we don't condone political violence.
But the truth is, vowing to kiss and make up lest someone gets hurt isn't truly enough. Something needs to fundamentally change within our political dynamic in order for us to get anywhere near something resembling respect and civility.
In order for there to be grounds for mutual respect, our politics must be based upon reason, and I don't see this happening. The healthcare debate this month in the House was a catastrophe, with Republicans claiming that it was a "job-killing bill," a point upon which FactCheck.org presented their evidence to the contrary, only for Eric Cantor's office to repeat its claim, stating that, "Anyone who argues otherwise is ignoring the construct of the health care law and the widely accepted facts1."
"Widely-accepted facts?" Widely-accepted by who? Manufactured by whom?
Furthermore, the Congressional Budget Office estimated that repealing healthcare reform would add $130-230 billion to the deficit2. So what did the Republican establishment do? They went after the CBO itself3. This kind of self-deception is not enabling of civil discourse. How can we treat someone with respect when they are operating on deliberate lies? It is quite interesting to watch the Republican House of Representatives at once lament the expanding deficit and at the same time add to it, only to attempt to discredit those who point out this tragic discrepancy.
Is it considered civil discourse to insinuate that the President of the United States is illegitimate, or even an enemy of the country which he was elected to represent? Is terrifying your audience and manipulating them into betraying their own economic interests fostering of civil discourse?
Last week, Glenn Beck launched a campaign against a 78-year-old sociology professor at CUNY for an article she wrote in 1966 for The Nation, in which which she suggested that in order to enact real change, the unemployed should overwhelm the welfare system4. According to the NYTimes, the Center for Constitutional Rights claims that Glenn Beck's tirade has resulted in his followers sending Prof Piven death threats: "Somebody tell Frances I have 5000 rounds ready and I’ll give My life to take Our freedom back."
It would be perfectly reasonable to say that you disagree with her, but to suggest that a sociology professor wants to cause the country to collapse is nothing short of utter nonsense, and betrays a complete lack of understanding of academia. Not only that, but one is actually trampling on the Constitution itself by indirectly attempting to suppress freedom of speech by way of attacking her for expressing herself. The goal often of academics and philosophers is simply to present a different perspective of society in a way that forces one to consider how it operates and how it can be improved for the greatest number of people.
"COMMUNISM!!!!" No, it's not Communism. We're talking ideally about about a democracy, in which the majority governs (with certain exception, often to counteract the effects of mob rule. Minority rights, for example), so it would follow that as a democracy, we should be interested in helping the maximum number of people possible so that our democracy is preserved, otherwise we disenfranchise what is essentially our government (the people) by withholding opportunity and it collapses into an oligarchy or dictatorship because the number of people who are able to participate as educated citizens diminishes. Thus, as a democratic society, we have an interest in preserving opportunity and passing along our knowledge in order for others to succeed.
The task of academics such as Prof Piven is to point out where our society fails to meet this obligation, why it fails, and what can be done to correct it. Often these inequalities are so deeply rooted in our institutions that the only way to rectify them is through monumental action such as the solution Beck is currently having a conniption over. I am not going to debate the possible impact Prof Piven's proposition, but I am going to say that she absolutely has a right to present her ideas, and I am going to venture to suggest that we are better for it.
The irony of Beck and the Tea Party is that while they so worship the Constitution, they are swift to attack anyone they disagree with on a personal level with the goal of shutting them up. A few months ago, Glenn Beck attacked George Soros because Soros had suggested that gold was liable to collapse. Glenn Beck, as a "conservative libertarian" (who, ironically, knows absolutely nothing about liberty and thinks Thomas Paine was a conservative...), wishes to return to the Gold Standard because of some strange insecurity inherent in paper currency. But the truth is that Beck attacked Soros because he was a spokesperson for GoldLine, and had an immediate vested interest in people being scared of an impending apocalypse and buying gold(5&6).
Representative Gregg Harper of Mississippi stated in an interview with Politico that he "hunt[s] liberal, tree-hugging Democrats, although it does seem like a waste of good ammunition7." Rush Limbaugh's latest feat was to mock Chinese President Hu Jintao by pretending to speak Chinese8.
To be at least partially fair, Eric Fuller, one of the survivors of the Tuscon Tragedy two weeks ago, attended a town hall meeting and made threatening remarks toward a Republican representative and a Tea Party activist: "Fuller then swiveled in his chair, raised his camera and took a photo of the pro-gun speaker, muttering, 'You're dead,' according to Joel Tranter, who was sitting behind him9." However, this man is understood to be traumatized after the shooting, and in my opinion should not have placed himself in such a position in which he would knowingly get so agitated. Fuller is now under psychiatric care10.
The irony is that while Fuller did make this threat and was probably serious, the Tea Party's gun fetish remains the larger problem. For Humphries himself to be worried by Mr Fuller is rather silly, given the frightening rhetoric employed by the GOP/Tea Party establishment on a regular basis. No Democratic commentator had put Fuller up to this or suggested to Fuller that he should threaten Mr Humphries, while such suggestions remain a systemic problem in the Tea Party and GOP at large.
Let's talk about the Second Amendment, from which much of the rhetoric employed by those on the right stems. The Second Amendment stems from the needs of a fledgling society seeking to break away from foreign control. As such, it was enacted because of the cruel nature of the time and a guard against a repeat of history (much like the Establishment Clause, which guarded against theocratic tyranny). But the problem now is that the government created and legitimized by the Constitution itself cannot be justly overthrown because its legitimacy is inextricably tied to the Constitution. If you lose the government, you lose the Constitution. It is the duty of the judiciary to keep the government in line with the Constitution.
The open-carry policies enacted by several states do not make us any safer. We do not live in the 19th century Midwest, and the people arguing for open-carry do not appear to be of rational disposition and cannot be guaranteed to use it responsibly. It only takes one bullet to ruin everything. We have a military and police force, which are both sufficient to maintain order, and have in place procedures by which they can lawfully operate, and many protections for when they do not. I would not begin to argue that these protections are always guaranteed in a court of law, but the kind of protections most of us require are present on a sufficient basis at least enough for a reasonable person to not feel immediately oppressed.
The gun rhetoric has thus been used to incite paranoia and hark back to the Old West or even the War for Independence, ages which passed and are vastly different from today, in which the United States was a fledgling nation and could not support the massive expansion across the continent by way of a police force or military. The rhetoric draws on a theme of oppression, which seems strange given the relative health of our society, in which law and order are respected enough so that we are not rioting or abusing one another at a terrifying rate, nor has this present government sought to oppress those who currently feel oppressed. There are no FEMA concentration camps, no one is taking away citizens' guns, no one is trying to destroy society economically (at least not the people whom the Tea Party accuses of trying to destroy society), and Obama is not a Muslim Communist.
All of these ideas aim chiefly to scare people, and that is the problem. The people employing this revolutionary rhetoric are doing it in order to terrify people, and a terrified citizenry does not understand civil discourse. When people are scared, the ability to reason is eradicated, and democracy cannot happen. Fear and the loss of rational faculties always leads to violence.
The political environment in which one entire party finds itself is not only toxic, it is downright delusional and therefore far more dangerous than professional commentators are willing to state. Attacking the CBO for its estimations because they hinder the GOP's talking points warrants disgust, not respect. We will never have anything resembling civil discourse, nor will the option even be open to us, so long as the GOP/Tea Party continues to operate under delusion and vitriol.
1) http://factcheck.org/2011/01/a-job-killing-law/
2 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/01/06/AR2011010606159.html
3) http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/2011/01/column_the_republican_war_on_t.html
4) http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/22/business/media/22beck.html
5) http://articles.cnn.com/2010-11-13/opinion/wolraich.beck.soros_1_george-soros-billionaire-drug-cartel?_s=PM:OPINION
6) http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/glenn-beck-fox-hosts-golden-advertiser-goldline-investigation/story?id=11197000
7) http://www.politico.com/click/stories/0910/get_to_know_a_congressman4.html
8) http://gawker.com/5738044/rush-limbaugh-shows-off-his-chinese-voice (with audio)
9) http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/01/15/eric-fuller-arrested-tea-party-arizona-shooting_n_809584.html
10) http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-504083_162-20028762-504083.html
Sunday, January 23, 2011
Monday, January 10, 2011
Tuscon Tragedy
On Saturday, Democratic Representative Gabrielle Giffords, Judge John Roll, and a 9 year old girl, among at least 15 others, were shot by 22-year-old Jared Lee Loughner1. Roll and the 9-year-old girl were killed, and Giffords herself had sustained significant brain injuries.
A firestorm ensued on both sides: Rightnetwork.com had tried to pin the shooter as a liberal by using his favorite books as evidence. There is a signoficant problem with this strategy, however:
"Books:
I had favorite books: Animal Farm, Brave New World, The Wizard Of OZ, Aesop Fables, The Odyssey, Alice Adventures Into Wonderland, Fahrenheit 451, Peter Pan, To Kill A Mockingbird, We The Living, Phantom Toll Booth, One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, Pulp,Through The Looking Glass, The Communist Manifesto, Siddhartha, The Old Man And The Sea, Gulliver’s Travels, Mein Kampf, The Republic, and Meno"2.
We the Living, The Communist Manifesto, and Mein Kampf; Rand, Marx, and Hitler. It would truly be impossible to try to pigeonhole the rest of these works as Liberal or Conservative, and get any kind of reliable motive from them. I have read most of these books (save for Mein Kampf, Aesop, Wizard of Oz, The Phantom Tollbooth, Peter Pan, Pulp, Gulliver's Travels, or the Communist Manifesto), and I have a far greater respect for human life than Mr Loughner.
Furthermore, it would make absolutely no sense, if it were true that Loughner was a Liberal, for him to target Mrs Giffords because she is a Democrat.
On the other hand, a Facebook page called Americans Against the Tea Party, of which I am a part, has been chomping at the bit to place the blame on Fox News and Sarah Palin. AATP has a point that Sarah Palin's rhetoric has been grossly irresponsible, but there is a major problem in constructing a convincing case that Mr Loughner is connected to the Tea Party.
Here is where I personally stand; I will be upfront about this: I am as excited as the rest of my fellow Democrats to crash the Tea Party. I have previously explained what a threat it presents to our society. HOWEVER, I (we) do not have the compelling evidence required to make any accusations. The only evidence we have of any kind of motive rests on his Youtube account, in which Mr Loughner discusses "Conscience Dreaming" and a "currency" that seems to only have a passing connection to actual money3.
"Conscience Dreaming" only leads to a man named Robert Moss, and is commonly understood as lucid dreaming, which means to simply be aware that one is dreaming.
Now we're getting somewhere. A reader wrote to columnist Andrew Sullivan of the Atlantic that his writings indicate that Mr Loughner is severely emotionally disturbed, and suggested evidence of paranoid schizophrenia4.
With at least a rudimentary knowledge of psychology (having taken classes both in high school and college, and have expressed much interest in it during my depressive phase), I would have to concur with that assumption.
Loughner expresses a fear that we are being controlled by grammar, something that, as an English major, appears to me as absolutely absurd--as language is designed to expand means of expression, not contract them (place counterargument from Orwell's Ingsoc here)--and he spoke incoherently of some issue of currency, which some supposed to be libertarian, but it was too inconsistent and not worth using.
Mr Loughner appeared in court today (1/9), and allegedly he was coherent and was able to answer the questions he was asked. Also according to CNN, "...court documents released Sunday show that investigators found a letter from the congresswoman in a safe at the house where Loughner lived with his parents, thanking him for attending a similar 2007 event"5.
Psychologically, the case is starting to make sense from the point of view that Loughner suffers from paranoid schizophrenia as substantiated by some bizarre personal obsession with the target. Also of note is that the family had been uncooperative with the FBI6. I would surmise from Bloomburg News that authorities had made it into his home and have found his writings that describe Saturday's attack. Also according to that same article, Loughner does have some history of psychological problems and strange behavior7.
These are the major points of the case at the time of this writing, and in my personal opinion, the political angle of the case can be ruled out.
1) http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/09/us/politics/09giffords.html
2) http://gatewaypundit.rightnetwork.com/2011/01/shooter-jarod-laughner/
3) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nHoaZaLbqB4&feature=share
4) http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2011/01/murder-in-arizona-live-blogging.html
5) http://www.cnn.com/2011/CRIME/01/10/arizona.shooting.investigation/index.html
6) http://www.tucsonweekly.com/TheRange/archives/2011/01/10/arizona-republic-the-loughner-family-is-barricading-themselves-in
7) http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-01-10/loughner-s-writings-actions-analyzed-for-clues-in-arizona-shooting-case.html
A firestorm ensued on both sides: Rightnetwork.com had tried to pin the shooter as a liberal by using his favorite books as evidence. There is a signoficant problem with this strategy, however:
"Books:
I had favorite books: Animal Farm, Brave New World, The Wizard Of OZ, Aesop Fables, The Odyssey, Alice Adventures Into Wonderland, Fahrenheit 451, Peter Pan, To Kill A Mockingbird, We The Living, Phantom Toll Booth, One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, Pulp,Through The Looking Glass, The Communist Manifesto, Siddhartha, The Old Man And The Sea, Gulliver’s Travels, Mein Kampf, The Republic, and Meno"2.
We the Living, The Communist Manifesto, and Mein Kampf; Rand, Marx, and Hitler. It would truly be impossible to try to pigeonhole the rest of these works as Liberal or Conservative, and get any kind of reliable motive from them. I have read most of these books (save for Mein Kampf, Aesop, Wizard of Oz, The Phantom Tollbooth, Peter Pan, Pulp, Gulliver's Travels, or the Communist Manifesto), and I have a far greater respect for human life than Mr Loughner.
Furthermore, it would make absolutely no sense, if it were true that Loughner was a Liberal, for him to target Mrs Giffords because she is a Democrat.
On the other hand, a Facebook page called Americans Against the Tea Party, of which I am a part, has been chomping at the bit to place the blame on Fox News and Sarah Palin. AATP has a point that Sarah Palin's rhetoric has been grossly irresponsible, but there is a major problem in constructing a convincing case that Mr Loughner is connected to the Tea Party.
Here is where I personally stand; I will be upfront about this: I am as excited as the rest of my fellow Democrats to crash the Tea Party. I have previously explained what a threat it presents to our society. HOWEVER, I (we) do not have the compelling evidence required to make any accusations. The only evidence we have of any kind of motive rests on his Youtube account, in which Mr Loughner discusses "Conscience Dreaming" and a "currency" that seems to only have a passing connection to actual money3.
"Conscience Dreaming" only leads to a man named Robert Moss, and is commonly understood as lucid dreaming, which means to simply be aware that one is dreaming.
Now we're getting somewhere. A reader wrote to columnist Andrew Sullivan of the Atlantic that his writings indicate that Mr Loughner is severely emotionally disturbed, and suggested evidence of paranoid schizophrenia4.
With at least a rudimentary knowledge of psychology (having taken classes both in high school and college, and have expressed much interest in it during my depressive phase), I would have to concur with that assumption.
Loughner expresses a fear that we are being controlled by grammar, something that, as an English major, appears to me as absolutely absurd--as language is designed to expand means of expression, not contract them (place counterargument from Orwell's Ingsoc here)--and he spoke incoherently of some issue of currency, which some supposed to be libertarian, but it was too inconsistent and not worth using.
Mr Loughner appeared in court today (1/9), and allegedly he was coherent and was able to answer the questions he was asked. Also according to CNN, "...court documents released Sunday show that investigators found a letter from the congresswoman in a safe at the house where Loughner lived with his parents, thanking him for attending a similar 2007 event"5.
Psychologically, the case is starting to make sense from the point of view that Loughner suffers from paranoid schizophrenia as substantiated by some bizarre personal obsession with the target. Also of note is that the family had been uncooperative with the FBI6. I would surmise from Bloomburg News that authorities had made it into his home and have found his writings that describe Saturday's attack. Also according to that same article, Loughner does have some history of psychological problems and strange behavior7.
These are the major points of the case at the time of this writing, and in my personal opinion, the political angle of the case can be ruled out.
1) http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/09/us/politics/09giffords.html
2) http://gatewaypundit.rightnetwork.com/2011/01/shooter-jarod-laughner/
3) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nHoaZaLbqB4&feature=share
4) http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2011/01/murder-in-arizona-live-blogging.html
5) http://www.cnn.com/2011/CRIME/01/10/arizona.shooting.investigation/index.html
6) http://www.tucsonweekly.com/TheRange/archives/2011/01/10/arizona-republic-the-loughner-family-is-barricading-themselves-in
7) http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-01-10/loughner-s-writings-actions-analyzed-for-clues-in-arizona-shooting-case.html
Friday, January 7, 2011
Jan Brewer's Death Panel
I only heard about this story an hour ago, and quite honestly it is the most abhorrent piece of news I've heard in a long time.
According to ABC News and CNN, two people have died as a result of state Medicaid budget cuts, specifically those allocated to transplants. ABC says that,
"They [Brewer's administration and the GOP-controlled legislature] eliminated heart transplants for non-ischemic cardiomyopathy, lung transplants, pancreatic transplants, some bone marrow transplants, and liver transplants for patients infected with hepatitis C. Arizona also restricted coverage of prosthetics, eliminated podiatric services, preventive dental services, and wellness and physical exams for adult Medicaid enrollees1."
The article also mentions a man named Mark Price, 37 years of age, who died waiting for a bone marrow transplant that an anonymous person offered to pay for.
It turns out--and I would imagine that it is obvious to everyone--that Jan Brewer and the GOP legislature are doing exactly what Sarah Palin had warned Obama's health care would do. But they are doing it backwards: They are cutting the programs most necessary to keep people alive: Heart transplants, lung transplants, pancreatic transplants and liver transplants. The human body has only one heart, one pancreas, and one liver, all of which it needs to function properly. Bone marrow is responsible for the creation of white blood cells, which fight infection. I would conclude that the programs cut are the most necessary, and Brewer's government would be hard-pressed to do any worse.
But while the complete disregard for human life is abhorrent enough, the blatant hypocrisy only serves as icing on the cake: Sarah Palin's comment about Death Panels spread like wildfire throughout the ranks of the Tea Party and the GOP at large, and people probably still think that Healthcare Reform is inherently evil (hell, they still believe that Obama was not born in the United States--because Hawaii is not a state--and they still think he's a Muslim. Why, they still think people rode dinosaurs to church!), but that what they hate Obama for doing is entirely permissible in their own camp. Obama can't kill grandma, but we sure can!
There are several options here. Was Alan Grayson right when he eloquently described the Republican Health Care Plan ("If you do get sick, die quickly!")? Does it make more sense to deny people healthcare that will save their lives than to pay for them to lie around waiting to die? Doesn't the public foot that bill if they are uninsured anyway?
I see a pattern here, a very sick and very twisted pattern. I am looking at this in the same way as I look at the fight we had over the Zadroga Act.
There are things that government needs to do, and one of those things is to help provide for people who cannot provide for themselves, especially when the matter is of such paramount importance as life and death.
To be at least partially fair to Ms Brewer and her colleagues, it is true that healthcare spending is exorbitantly high and that it contributes greatly to the national deficit. But there are very important things that the GOP at large fails to consider: Namely, the social impact of their cuts.
Would it have been possible, for example, to try to cut less-necessary procedures or exams before considering cutting things like organ transplants, which are normally considered last-resort procedures? Cutting preventive care, however, strikes me as odd: While preventive care may at first seem extraneous, or an area where charlatans reside, the long-term cost of healthcare may be decreased because of the reduced occurrence of larger and more expensive problems. Allowing people to afford to go to the doctor more often may result in people getting better and more effective treatment earlier, and greatly reducing the cost burden on society. Refusing to pay for preventative care will result in a population that is sick more often and less productive.
Granted, it is possible for people to see the doctor too often, but if someone is complaining of abdominal pain or feels short of breath for a week without an apparent cause, they should go to the doctor.
It seems that they are cutting whatever is convenient, whatever conflicts with their ideology without regard to consequence. The GOP at large has expressed a desire to repeal healthcare reform, even though the Congressional Budget Office stated that the action would add upwards of $200 billion to the deficit2. The GOP is also unwilling to touch the Bush tax cuts, even though they contributed heavily to our problem, and most commentators I've heard state that it would be impossible to fix the deficit without raising taxes, a belief I also happen to share.
Here's what I would want to know: Who, exactly, is making these policy recommendations in Arizona? I could only imagine that the Medicaid insurance structure operates much like any corporate entity: Immediate cost first, quality of life--or life at all--second. In other words, are there any doctors on these Death Panels, or are they all just goons?
If we are going to have a serious discussion about saving money on healthcare, we need to assess the pragmatic and long-term value of preventative care. What can we do to mitigate the long-term cost burden on the state and prevent as best we can the need for such expensive procedures without deciding who lives and who dies? No system is going to be perfect, but budget cuts to programs people actually need with a complete lack of foresight will only kill people. There has to be a way to do this without a cost of human life.
1) http://abcnews.go.com/Health/News/arizona-transplant-deaths/story?id=12559369&page=1
2) http://articles.cnn.com/2011-01-06/politics/health.care_1_health-care-repeal-overhaul?_s=PM:POLITICS
According to ABC News and CNN, two people have died as a result of state Medicaid budget cuts, specifically those allocated to transplants. ABC says that,
"They [Brewer's administration and the GOP-controlled legislature] eliminated heart transplants for non-ischemic cardiomyopathy, lung transplants, pancreatic transplants, some bone marrow transplants, and liver transplants for patients infected with hepatitis C. Arizona also restricted coverage of prosthetics, eliminated podiatric services, preventive dental services, and wellness and physical exams for adult Medicaid enrollees1."
The article also mentions a man named Mark Price, 37 years of age, who died waiting for a bone marrow transplant that an anonymous person offered to pay for.
It turns out--and I would imagine that it is obvious to everyone--that Jan Brewer and the GOP legislature are doing exactly what Sarah Palin had warned Obama's health care would do. But they are doing it backwards: They are cutting the programs most necessary to keep people alive: Heart transplants, lung transplants, pancreatic transplants and liver transplants. The human body has only one heart, one pancreas, and one liver, all of which it needs to function properly. Bone marrow is responsible for the creation of white blood cells, which fight infection. I would conclude that the programs cut are the most necessary, and Brewer's government would be hard-pressed to do any worse.
But while the complete disregard for human life is abhorrent enough, the blatant hypocrisy only serves as icing on the cake: Sarah Palin's comment about Death Panels spread like wildfire throughout the ranks of the Tea Party and the GOP at large, and people probably still think that Healthcare Reform is inherently evil (hell, they still believe that Obama was not born in the United States--because Hawaii is not a state--and they still think he's a Muslim. Why, they still think people rode dinosaurs to church!), but that what they hate Obama for doing is entirely permissible in their own camp. Obama can't kill grandma, but we sure can!
There are several options here. Was Alan Grayson right when he eloquently described the Republican Health Care Plan ("If you do get sick, die quickly!")? Does it make more sense to deny people healthcare that will save their lives than to pay for them to lie around waiting to die? Doesn't the public foot that bill if they are uninsured anyway?
I see a pattern here, a very sick and very twisted pattern. I am looking at this in the same way as I look at the fight we had over the Zadroga Act.
There are things that government needs to do, and one of those things is to help provide for people who cannot provide for themselves, especially when the matter is of such paramount importance as life and death.
To be at least partially fair to Ms Brewer and her colleagues, it is true that healthcare spending is exorbitantly high and that it contributes greatly to the national deficit. But there are very important things that the GOP at large fails to consider: Namely, the social impact of their cuts.
Would it have been possible, for example, to try to cut less-necessary procedures or exams before considering cutting things like organ transplants, which are normally considered last-resort procedures? Cutting preventive care, however, strikes me as odd: While preventive care may at first seem extraneous, or an area where charlatans reside, the long-term cost of healthcare may be decreased because of the reduced occurrence of larger and more expensive problems. Allowing people to afford to go to the doctor more often may result in people getting better and more effective treatment earlier, and greatly reducing the cost burden on society. Refusing to pay for preventative care will result in a population that is sick more often and less productive.
Granted, it is possible for people to see the doctor too often, but if someone is complaining of abdominal pain or feels short of breath for a week without an apparent cause, they should go to the doctor.
It seems that they are cutting whatever is convenient, whatever conflicts with their ideology without regard to consequence. The GOP at large has expressed a desire to repeal healthcare reform, even though the Congressional Budget Office stated that the action would add upwards of $200 billion to the deficit2. The GOP is also unwilling to touch the Bush tax cuts, even though they contributed heavily to our problem, and most commentators I've heard state that it would be impossible to fix the deficit without raising taxes, a belief I also happen to share.
Here's what I would want to know: Who, exactly, is making these policy recommendations in Arizona? I could only imagine that the Medicaid insurance structure operates much like any corporate entity: Immediate cost first, quality of life--or life at all--second. In other words, are there any doctors on these Death Panels, or are they all just goons?
If we are going to have a serious discussion about saving money on healthcare, we need to assess the pragmatic and long-term value of preventative care. What can we do to mitigate the long-term cost burden on the state and prevent as best we can the need for such expensive procedures without deciding who lives and who dies? No system is going to be perfect, but budget cuts to programs people actually need with a complete lack of foresight will only kill people. There has to be a way to do this without a cost of human life.
1) http://abcnews.go.com/Health/News/arizona-transplant-deaths/story?id=12559369&page=1
2) http://articles.cnn.com/2011-01-06/politics/health.care_1_health-care-repeal-overhaul?_s=PM:POLITICS
Wednesday, January 5, 2011
Personal Goals for the New Year
This week, I cut through the enormous pile of books I plan to read: I put the books of lesser priority on a shelf of back burners, and I now have a list of books I want to read this year (not in any order):
1) When You Are Engulfed in Flames by David Sedaris
2) The Laws by Plato
3) The Sirens of Titan by Kurt Vonnegut - the last of his novels I aim to read
4) The Koran
5) The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet Nest by Stieg Larsson
6) A Visit From the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan
7) Room by Emma Donague
8) Being & Nothingness by Jean-Paul Sartre
9) V by Thomas Pynchon
10) The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test by Thomas Wolfe
11) A Prayer For Owen Meany by John Irving
12) The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen
13) Beloved by Toni Morrison
14) Cold Sassy Tree by Olive Ann Burns
15) Necessary Illusions by Noam Chomsky
16) November 1916 by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn -- I doubt I'll get to it, but here's hoping!
17) The Gates of Hell by Harrison E Salisbury
18) Life of Pi by Yann Martel
19) Water For Elephants by Sara Gruen
19) The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood
There are two books I've started and put down, which I would like to pick back up again. They are:
1) A Dead Man's Memoir by Mikahail Bulgakov
2) Coraline by Neil Gaiman
These books are incredibly short and it's an embarrassment that I haven't finished them yet. And I LOVE Bulgakov!
Last year, I read an extreme amount of philosophy, from Kierkegaard to Heidegger, de Tocqueville, and Sun Tzu. I also read Dave Cullen's account of Columbine (which was EXCELLENT) and Krakauer's exposition on Mormonism. I've even read a little theology! But this year, I want to return to something equally important to me, and cut back on the non-fiction and philosophy. I want to return to the novel.
But there's something else I want to do as an extension of my intent of returning to the novel. I want to try to read at least three really good mystery/suspense novels this year. I'm about halfway through Tana French's Faithful Place, and while it is fairly good, none of her characters move beyond the lower-class Irish stereotype set forth in Angela's Ashes. It feels sort of like I'm reading Angela's Ashes all over again, except someone got murdered.
There is one other goal I can now complete: I can watch the rest of Six Feet Under. It is kind of a relic of my depressive phase, but I still love it as a work of art. No TV series has so captivated me as SFU has.
What about getting a job and moving out? I hear you ask. Those don't need to be stated; they are a given. I'm quite sure getting a job accounts for the New Years resolution of roughly 10% of the country, and I'm one of them.
2010 ended with a crash. I had a car accident on the day after Christmas. Thankfully, the car was a $2,000 sedan, about 8 years old. It was my workhorse: only problem is that I needed it for delivery driving. I'm otherwise fine--I can even drive without having a panic attack!--but I'm still a bit shaken up by it. Despite my initial travels in that direction, the fact of a near-death experience has not made me a religious man. I cannot put enough of the pieces together to build a compelling case of divine conspiracy: There is no apparent motive, and the set pieces are natural enough on their own: I am solely responsible for what I went through, and I am comfortable understanding the random movement of my car on black ice as parallel to a roll of the dice. Occam's Razor must prevail.
But doesn't mean that the experience hasn't an affect on me. I still can't yet figure out if I have PTSD, as I still think about the event, and driving makes me a little unduly nervous, even if I'm only going into town. I'm doing deliveries tomorrow. In the Honda. That should be fun...
1) When You Are Engulfed in Flames by David Sedaris
2) The Laws by Plato
3) The Sirens of Titan by Kurt Vonnegut - the last of his novels I aim to read
4) The Koran
5) The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet Nest by Stieg Larsson
6) A Visit From the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan
7) Room by Emma Donague
8) Being & Nothingness by Jean-Paul Sartre
9) V by Thomas Pynchon
10) The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test by Thomas Wolfe
11) A Prayer For Owen Meany by John Irving
12) The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen
13) Beloved by Toni Morrison
14) Cold Sassy Tree by Olive Ann Burns
15) Necessary Illusions by Noam Chomsky
16) November 1916 by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn -- I doubt I'll get to it, but here's hoping!
17) The Gates of Hell by Harrison E Salisbury
18) Life of Pi by Yann Martel
19) Water For Elephants by Sara Gruen
19) The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood
There are two books I've started and put down, which I would like to pick back up again. They are:
1) A Dead Man's Memoir by Mikahail Bulgakov
2) Coraline by Neil Gaiman
These books are incredibly short and it's an embarrassment that I haven't finished them yet. And I LOVE Bulgakov!
Last year, I read an extreme amount of philosophy, from Kierkegaard to Heidegger, de Tocqueville, and Sun Tzu. I also read Dave Cullen's account of Columbine (which was EXCELLENT) and Krakauer's exposition on Mormonism. I've even read a little theology! But this year, I want to return to something equally important to me, and cut back on the non-fiction and philosophy. I want to return to the novel.
But there's something else I want to do as an extension of my intent of returning to the novel. I want to try to read at least three really good mystery/suspense novels this year. I'm about halfway through Tana French's Faithful Place, and while it is fairly good, none of her characters move beyond the lower-class Irish stereotype set forth in Angela's Ashes. It feels sort of like I'm reading Angela's Ashes all over again, except someone got murdered.
There is one other goal I can now complete: I can watch the rest of Six Feet Under. It is kind of a relic of my depressive phase, but I still love it as a work of art. No TV series has so captivated me as SFU has.
What about getting a job and moving out? I hear you ask. Those don't need to be stated; they are a given. I'm quite sure getting a job accounts for the New Years resolution of roughly 10% of the country, and I'm one of them.
2010 ended with a crash. I had a car accident on the day after Christmas. Thankfully, the car was a $2,000 sedan, about 8 years old. It was my workhorse: only problem is that I needed it for delivery driving. I'm otherwise fine--I can even drive without having a panic attack!--but I'm still a bit shaken up by it. Despite my initial travels in that direction, the fact of a near-death experience has not made me a religious man. I cannot put enough of the pieces together to build a compelling case of divine conspiracy: There is no apparent motive, and the set pieces are natural enough on their own: I am solely responsible for what I went through, and I am comfortable understanding the random movement of my car on black ice as parallel to a roll of the dice. Occam's Razor must prevail.
But doesn't mean that the experience hasn't an affect on me. I still can't yet figure out if I have PTSD, as I still think about the event, and driving makes me a little unduly nervous, even if I'm only going into town. I'm doing deliveries tomorrow. In the Honda. That should be fun...
Saturday, January 1, 2011
Could I Ever Be Brief?
Brevity and I, for better or worse, are not on friendly terms, as many of my posts clearly indicate. But word has finally gotten around to me that my beloved audience feels that my essays are far too long. My essay on the deficit spanned 4 pages on paper single-spaced, which, in college, would be 8 pages double-spaced.
I realize that hardly anyone has time to sit and read War & Peace on a computer screen. I can't even get through Call of Cthulhu on a computer (I also do not own an e-reader). But the dilemma is this:
I like to write
I try to be complex
I equate "longer" with "better", not for simply writing more (someone could write 1069 pages of nonsense and it would still be garbage1), but because I want to be thorough, and I have a lot to say.
I feel that if I were to shorten it, the quality of this blog would suffer because I would be writing less per post, and you would get Misanthrope: The Abridged Version with some glaring omissions. On top of that, an author naturally views all of his work as equally important, and I don't have an objective editor on hand. It should be noted that the UK Cards Association tried to get the University of Cambridge to take down a student paper that exposed loopholes in the security systems of ATMs (the university's response made me grin ear-to-ear)2. It would be worth mentioning Upton Sinclair in this case, or, in a parallel example, Galileo Galilee, Copernicus, and Charles Darwin. None of my potential editors have the kind of fearless belligerence required.
So editing is out. But the dilemma remains (and, ironically, the length of this essay will probably add to the evidence that I have Diarrhea of the Keyboard). Another problem is that it takes a few paragraphs for me really get rolling. I noticed in my "Response to Henry Giroux..." that it was fairly weak in the beginning. My Christmas essay two weeks ago had the same problem.
Often I write on impulse; I feel as though if I leave it in my head for too long, the ideas get diluted. The writing itself serves as both fuel and the engine by which I continue, and everything starts to flow.
Writing is not so cut-and-and dry. "BE BRIEF!" For some, like my favorite Russians, this is virtually impossible. Twitter gives me only 160 characters, and I can barely fit my title in a post. As a side note, we tell people to compress, and then we lament that they can't write. That's kind of funny to me...Oh wait. I'm only saying that because I love to write. Most people really don't care at all. People normally communicate at the 7th grade level. The last book (chronologically) to impress me in terms of style was The Grapes of Wrath, which was written in 1939. The inadequacies of our educational system are really beginning to show, not just in business communications (see any job advertisement), but even where writing is paramount: In literature. The last place to find decent prose, unfortunately, is in scientific papers, but those are too disinterested and boring for most people.
What I can do is try to outline my posts, but again, it is the writing itself that gets me thinking, much like a snowball.
I also don't believe that it would be wise for me to do this kind of thing for pay. This blog itself is entirely personal, and as much as being paid to write is attractive, creative control would be sacrificed to please a Mr Moneybags who may not have the best intentions in mind, and the quality of this blog--or any other I would maintain--would suffer still.
This blog depends entirely upon me saying what I believe to be true, and pointing it out in a way as to draw the most attention to it as possible. If my ability to speak freely here were ever compromised, I would cease to be interesting, or even become a hypocrite, which is worse.
The only demographic I could ever bend to is my readership, and only in terms of making my posts faster to read or easier on the eyes.
As a solution (I hate that word), I'm going to create two polls and leave each up for one month. First, I want to know if this new color palette is easier for you to read than the old black and white one. The next poll will focus on the length of my posts, because I will only change my writing as a last resort.
1) Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand Signet Classics Edition
I realize that hardly anyone has time to sit and read War & Peace on a computer screen. I can't even get through Call of Cthulhu on a computer (I also do not own an e-reader). But the dilemma is this:
I like to write
I try to be complex
I equate "longer" with "better", not for simply writing more (someone could write 1069 pages of nonsense and it would still be garbage1), but because I want to be thorough, and I have a lot to say.
I feel that if I were to shorten it, the quality of this blog would suffer because I would be writing less per post, and you would get Misanthrope: The Abridged Version with some glaring omissions. On top of that, an author naturally views all of his work as equally important, and I don't have an objective editor on hand. It should be noted that the UK Cards Association tried to get the University of Cambridge to take down a student paper that exposed loopholes in the security systems of ATMs (the university's response made me grin ear-to-ear)2. It would be worth mentioning Upton Sinclair in this case, or, in a parallel example, Galileo Galilee, Copernicus, and Charles Darwin. None of my potential editors have the kind of fearless belligerence required.
So editing is out. But the dilemma remains (and, ironically, the length of this essay will probably add to the evidence that I have Diarrhea of the Keyboard). Another problem is that it takes a few paragraphs for me really get rolling. I noticed in my "Response to Henry Giroux..." that it was fairly weak in the beginning. My Christmas essay two weeks ago had the same problem.
Often I write on impulse; I feel as though if I leave it in my head for too long, the ideas get diluted. The writing itself serves as both fuel and the engine by which I continue, and everything starts to flow.
Writing is not so cut-and-and dry. "BE BRIEF!" For some, like my favorite Russians, this is virtually impossible. Twitter gives me only 160 characters, and I can barely fit my title in a post. As a side note, we tell people to compress, and then we lament that they can't write. That's kind of funny to me...Oh wait. I'm only saying that because I love to write. Most people really don't care at all. People normally communicate at the 7th grade level. The last book (chronologically) to impress me in terms of style was The Grapes of Wrath, which was written in 1939. The inadequacies of our educational system are really beginning to show, not just in business communications (see any job advertisement), but even where writing is paramount: In literature. The last place to find decent prose, unfortunately, is in scientific papers, but those are too disinterested and boring for most people.
What I can do is try to outline my posts, but again, it is the writing itself that gets me thinking, much like a snowball.
I also don't believe that it would be wise for me to do this kind of thing for pay. This blog itself is entirely personal, and as much as being paid to write is attractive, creative control would be sacrificed to please a Mr Moneybags who may not have the best intentions in mind, and the quality of this blog--or any other I would maintain--would suffer still.
This blog depends entirely upon me saying what I believe to be true, and pointing it out in a way as to draw the most attention to it as possible. If my ability to speak freely here were ever compromised, I would cease to be interesting, or even become a hypocrite, which is worse.
The only demographic I could ever bend to is my readership, and only in terms of making my posts faster to read or easier on the eyes.
As a solution (I hate that word), I'm going to create two polls and leave each up for one month. First, I want to know if this new color palette is easier for you to read than the old black and white one. The next poll will focus on the length of my posts, because I will only change my writing as a last resort.
1) Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand Signet Classics Edition
Wednesday, December 22, 2010
My Obligatory Christmas Essay
Right now, I am evaluating my philosophical journey--where I was and where I am now in the past 6 years, from virulently anti-religious bigot to a more understanding and respectful(-able) philosophical disposition.
One thing continues to bother me. A part of me feels as though I am making a concession. This notion has been gnawing at the back of my mind after someone made a remark at work a few months ago. It was a harmless indication of acceptance, but a kind of unilateral acceptance that made me a bit uncomfortable: "He's OK. He knows the Bible." It's a kind of strange tribalism, where it takes someone truly unique to move past the ideological barriers that divide people.
But I wonder... Would it be possible that someone could take the time to understand that atheism does not lead automatically to nihilism? That actually quite few of us godless heathens are Dmitri Karamazov or his father? Even Dostoevsky himself understood that there was merit to rationalism, setting Ivan and Alyosha up as equals in a debate which forms the entire purpose of the novel.
But there are two problems with this notion of a concession: What about the people I know and respect? Can't I use them as the standard by which I judge the respect I feel I deserve and ignore the rest of the population in this matter? Doesn't the fact that I have people who are able to reciprocate and appreciate the effort I invest into learning about religion satisfy me? And, more pressing, who am I doing this for? Am I doing this for myself, or for the kind of people who pay attention to the Religious Right, and wholly ignore Jesus' message in the first place?
First and foremost I am doing this for myself, and in a way I feel that my previous treatment of religion and the religious was somewhat unfair. I say "somewhat" because I still believe that fundamentalism deserves to be hammered into the ground.
I also believe that individual religions--especially Islam, which I wrote about previously--are misunderstood, and I want to play a role in rectifying that situation. I promise I will eventually read the Koran.
I feel that atheists, for their part--much like I find myself--could play a role in improving relations between major religions. Instead of trying to attack everyone (though it is understandable because we often find ourselves under attack), by virtue of being outsiders, could illuminate the similarities of the different religions in a way that is constructive and leads to greater understanding between them. However, I readily admit that gaining the trust of these religions is a daunting task, as we are the most reviled minority in existence and have been for a long time. Equally difficult, if this is any consolation, is their earning of our trust as a group because of this truth.
The more I consider the mechanisms by which tribes such as religious communities operate, the more difficult--nay, impossible--my utopian pipe dream becomes. "Utopia" actually means "nowhere" in Greek.
There is one major thing we would have to change about how we operate, and this goes back to what I said in a previous essay. We would have to look at religions not in a way that renders them true or false, but whether they are accomplishing what they claim to want to accomplish. We would have to look at their holy texts not as actual accounts of history, such as fundamentalists do, but how we would want them to be examined, as literature.
I've taken up all this time and I haven't said a word about Christmas.
Is there anything that needs to be said about Christmas? Should I give space to the imaginary campaign of the War on Christmas, which contradicts everything Christians should be working toward? Or should I give space to Congress, which actually had to fight to pass healthcare for 9/11 first responders (about which Stephen Colbert had quite a lot to say1), and congressmen who continually complain that they will have to work between Christmas and New Years?
No, I don't have to elaborate on any of that. None of that will ever change for the better. I will, however, share with you that, using Nicholas Kristoff's editorial as a guide, I donated $20 to Fonkoze to send a Haitian girl to elementary school for a year2. That's a pretty good Christmas present for a child over there, I think. Of the options listed, I chose the one which I believe would have the greatest impact.
Happy holidays!
1) "If this is going to be a Christian nation that doesn't help the poor, either we've got to pretend that Jesus was just as selfish as we are, or we've got to acknowledge that he commanded us to love the poor and serve the needy without condition and then admit that we just don't want to do it." ~ Stephen Colbert http://www.casadeblundell.com/jonathan/the-genius-that-is-stephen-colbert/
2) http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/19/opinion/19kristof.html?_r=1&ref=nicholasdkristof
One thing continues to bother me. A part of me feels as though I am making a concession. This notion has been gnawing at the back of my mind after someone made a remark at work a few months ago. It was a harmless indication of acceptance, but a kind of unilateral acceptance that made me a bit uncomfortable: "He's OK. He knows the Bible." It's a kind of strange tribalism, where it takes someone truly unique to move past the ideological barriers that divide people.
But I wonder... Would it be possible that someone could take the time to understand that atheism does not lead automatically to nihilism? That actually quite few of us godless heathens are Dmitri Karamazov or his father? Even Dostoevsky himself understood that there was merit to rationalism, setting Ivan and Alyosha up as equals in a debate which forms the entire purpose of the novel.
But there are two problems with this notion of a concession: What about the people I know and respect? Can't I use them as the standard by which I judge the respect I feel I deserve and ignore the rest of the population in this matter? Doesn't the fact that I have people who are able to reciprocate and appreciate the effort I invest into learning about religion satisfy me? And, more pressing, who am I doing this for? Am I doing this for myself, or for the kind of people who pay attention to the Religious Right, and wholly ignore Jesus' message in the first place?
First and foremost I am doing this for myself, and in a way I feel that my previous treatment of religion and the religious was somewhat unfair. I say "somewhat" because I still believe that fundamentalism deserves to be hammered into the ground.
I also believe that individual religions--especially Islam, which I wrote about previously--are misunderstood, and I want to play a role in rectifying that situation. I promise I will eventually read the Koran.
I feel that atheists, for their part--much like I find myself--could play a role in improving relations between major religions. Instead of trying to attack everyone (though it is understandable because we often find ourselves under attack), by virtue of being outsiders, could illuminate the similarities of the different religions in a way that is constructive and leads to greater understanding between them. However, I readily admit that gaining the trust of these religions is a daunting task, as we are the most reviled minority in existence and have been for a long time. Equally difficult, if this is any consolation, is their earning of our trust as a group because of this truth.
The more I consider the mechanisms by which tribes such as religious communities operate, the more difficult--nay, impossible--my utopian pipe dream becomes. "Utopia" actually means "nowhere" in Greek.
There is one major thing we would have to change about how we operate, and this goes back to what I said in a previous essay. We would have to look at religions not in a way that renders them true or false, but whether they are accomplishing what they claim to want to accomplish. We would have to look at their holy texts not as actual accounts of history, such as fundamentalists do, but how we would want them to be examined, as literature.
I've taken up all this time and I haven't said a word about Christmas.
Is there anything that needs to be said about Christmas? Should I give space to the imaginary campaign of the War on Christmas, which contradicts everything Christians should be working toward? Or should I give space to Congress, which actually had to fight to pass healthcare for 9/11 first responders (about which Stephen Colbert had quite a lot to say1), and congressmen who continually complain that they will have to work between Christmas and New Years?
No, I don't have to elaborate on any of that. None of that will ever change for the better. I will, however, share with you that, using Nicholas Kristoff's editorial as a guide, I donated $20 to Fonkoze to send a Haitian girl to elementary school for a year2. That's a pretty good Christmas present for a child over there, I think. Of the options listed, I chose the one which I believe would have the greatest impact.
Happy holidays!
1) "If this is going to be a Christian nation that doesn't help the poor, either we've got to pretend that Jesus was just as selfish as we are, or we've got to acknowledge that he commanded us to love the poor and serve the needy without condition and then admit that we just don't want to do it." ~ Stephen Colbert http://www.casadeblundell.com/jonathan/the-genius-that-is-stephen-colbert/
2) http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/19/opinion/19kristof.html?_r=1&ref=nicholasdkristof
Tuesday, December 7, 2010
Solving the Deficit Problem
One of the most pressing issues during the past year and a half is the deficit. No one can deny that the United States has been spending far, far more than it can afford, and has not been doing enough to recoup the money it spends.
My task here is not to laugh at conservatives as they take $1.2 billion in earmarks after campaigning heavily upon the promise to cut or eliminate them entirely, but rather to figure out a way to make serious headway into this enormous problem.
I am guided by two facts: 1) There are things the government needs to spend money on, and 2) We are in a recession. Ideally, I would recommend that we wait until the economy recovers before we attempt to fix this problem (a suggestion advanced by Paul Krugman of the NYTimes), but I will do my best considering the fact that circumstances are less than ideal.
The first thing I would do is order a massive government study of the effectiveness of all programs over the past 20 years. I would use this to decide which programs to cut entirely. Then I would ask which programs could be reduced by 10-25% with minimal impact to society (under this category would be Social Security, Medicare, Disability, and Prescription Drug programs for the elderly).
Also on this point, the fact remains that Medicare fraud is an enormous problem that costs the government a significant amount of money. To combat this, a comprehensive database should be set up in order to check the frequency of prescription refills and doctors visits complaining of similar symptoms. For example, certain medications are given in certain amounts. The medication I took for a long time gave me 30 pills per prescription. Now, using this knowledge, it would be quite easy to figure out who is either abusing their medication--or, worse, selling it--by the frequency with which they had their prescription filled and how many pills were dispensed, and the frequency with which these pills should be taken (X times/day). All of the information required is already available, but we currently do not combine it in a way such that we could effectively combat fraud.
Before anyone makes the outlandish claim about the government tracking them, this would apply for people who registered for the program, ie it is voluntary, and the government should take responsibility to protect public money from fraud. No one's access to medical services would be severed until there was justification to do so (evidence of fraud).
On the other side, there is a way to prevent doctors from over-prescribing procedures and medications unnecessarily, and this is quite frequent where the elderly are concerned. While the elderly do need medical services more than any other demographic, it is also true that doctors do wish to see them more than necessary. As an example, my grandmother, who has, as of yet, short-term memory loss, had three physicals and two flu shots in one month, and then her GP asked her to return again two weeks later even though there were no outstanding physical problems.
To correct this issue, my father provided an excellent suggestion: Give general practitioners a yearly spending threshold--not a cap, because I don't think money should be cut off if someone does has a serious problem--and give them an incentive for staying below that threshold. It would be, as I described the idea back to my father--as he is a salesman--the inverse of a sales goal: Instead of a sales goal like he has, where he is rewarded for surpassing it, doctors should be rewarded for staying below the threshold. What this threshold should be would of course be left up to experts who understand the medical profession, but, ideally, not be beholden to it.
I would cut some military spending. I realize that R&D is vital to the military, as it is in civilian science, but it is also true that the military develops things that it doesn't use, such as the Crowd Disperser weapon, which relies on microwaves to make people uncomfortable. I would fund only the most essential projects that the military is most interested in with a guarantee that they would see use on the battlefield.
We would have to remove our soldiers from Afghanistan and Iraq entirely as soon as humanly possible. The current cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is $1.08 trillion. This is a little less than half of total healthcare costs in 2009 ($2.5 trillion)1. This analysis is not taking into account the political consequences of premature departure in the region, but is merely interested in the war's monetary cost for the sake of the analysis of the deficit.
I would use the same guiding principle in civilian science: Only the most promising and the most useful studies--such as those pertaining to cancer research, transplants, and AIDS--would be funded.
I would massively cut foreign aid. Keep in mind that the United States gives a lot of money to countries that abuse their power in the region, and/or hate the hand that feeds them. I would cut all foreign aid to the Middle East--especially to Israel, whom we now recognize as an oppressor and is undeserving of the blank check it receives from us.
I would revoke the subsidies given to the oil industry, and invest that money into clean energy. This would, in a decade or two, give the United States significantly more leverage in the Middle East.
Now for the most uncomfortable aspect of this issue. I agree that it would be unreasonable to expect a surplus after cutting spending alone. I further believe that the wealthiest Americans should pay more in taxes, as they also derive benefits from society. On page 135 of Hot, Flat, & Crowded , Tom Friedman puts the problem in perspective by comparing the American War for Independence with the oil states in the Middle East, advocating a kind of pay-to-play system: Paying one's taxes ensures that he has a say and can be represented in government. This is kind of an offshoot also of Social Contract Theory in the way that representation is established. To demonstrate, Tom Friedman writes, "The motto of the American Revolution was 'No Taxation Without Representation.' The motto of the petrolist authoritarian state is "No taxation, so no representation, either.' Oil-backed regimes can just drill an oil well and sell the oil abroad--also they do not have listen to their people or represent their wishes."2
Alexis de Tocqueville spends a lot of time in Democracy in America talking about the lack of influence the aristocracy has in the government, but by now it should be immediately obvious to anyone who pays attention to current events that what would be considered the aristocracy has gotten involved in politics to an unprecedented degree. This is not to say that rich people have themselves personally been elected to office, but they have more or less bought candidates wholesale. No other explanation is sufficient enough to justify why the current GOP senators are holding tax cuts we should put in place (those for middle-class Americans) hostage in exchange for tax cuts for people who not only do not need them, but will not use them to stimulate the economy (a fact we have known since the 1980s; specifically, Trickle-Down Economics).
Furthermore, the wealthiest Americans are not working for the society at large, but are merely manipulating the system in order to preserve themselves, often at the expense of the rest of the population. It would be naive to say that the wealthiest Americans really think that deregulation will help anyone else but them, because where they sit, no one else even exists. They are protected against the hardships of unemployment and even their own employees, who now possess little or no job security at all. Furthermore, the wealthiest Americans absolutely fail to recognize that the decisions they made during the previous two decades which plunged the nation--and the world--into a maelstrom of economic catastrophe warrant punishment.
Also of significance is the fact that most businesses in the United States pay no income tax. The NYTimes states that "Two out of every three United States corporations paid no federal income taxes from 1998 through 2005, according to a report released Tuesday by the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress."3 And yet businesses are still outsourcing overseas. They do not contribute to the system. Critics say that higher taxes will force businesses to leave the United States, but it really doesn't matter, as they outsource even when they don't pay income taxes. I doubt arguments from nationalism could work on such people, as all they seem to care about is the profit margin. If I am again to use Social Contract Theory as the basis for my system, I would have to say that in order to stay, they should have to pay their share.
But that's just it: They don't care where they go as long as they don't have to pay, and for this society generally should feel the most profound disgust, but like anything else that isn't green and made of paper, that too means nothing.
Of course, none of this helps society. If they have to pay taxes, they will leave, but if they don't pay taxes, they aren't helping. And yet they are still able to gear the system to their own ends.
However, to characterize the aristocracy as a greedy class callous and even destructive toward democracy is unfair, but only slightly; there are a few wealthy Americans who understand that they must do something to help the rest of the nation, and here I give them special mention. But it is also true that they are a very small minority among this class. For every 1 Warren Buffett, there are about 10 Donald Trumps.
The extent to which the aristocracy should have to pay taxes should be determined mostly by the difference in spending cuts in order to reach a reasonable goal that would get us on track to regaining a significant surplus in the next 10-15 years, and by the extent of the damage done to the economy. I make no pretensions that the aristocracy should be severely punished not only for their responsibility for economic catastrophe, but also their willful impotence in fixing it.
All of the measures I have thus far provided restricting in military and science spending would be in place for a projected 10-15 years. Foreign aid programs would be restricted temporarily, but with scrupulous oversight, taking into consideration its effectiveness and the politics of the region, especially in the Middle East, where money intended for aid is returned to us in bullets.
This is not to say that I am comfortable with all of these measures. I deem science to be extremely essential to our society, and to see it be restricted in this way--even temporarily--is very painful. But it is something I would be willing to support if it meant the preservation of our superpower status in the future. We would also, of course, feel extreme pain as the subsidies given to oil are revoked. This is something I would also be willing to do. I would personally be willing to pay more for energy in the short term to gain cheaper energy later, and as well be assured that I would be contributing far less to the destruction of the environment. Furthermore, this short-term pain would lead to greater national independence in the future, as I have often said: We would no longer be so dependent--or at all dependent--on energy that poisons the environment and comes from people who want to kill us. By relinquishing oil for cleaner energy, our leverage on the international stage would be enormous, and no longer would we be drawn into conflagrations that are the indirect result of our consumption habits. Not only would we have almost nothing to do with the Middle East, but I dare say that our roles would be reversed: They would either depend upon us for foreign aid to even survive, or forced to become democratic as the despotic regimes failed to support themselves. If the former occurred, terrorism from the region would cease almost overnight.
As I am willing to give, the aristocracy and its representative party must also be willing to give. If the aristocracy is not able or willing to contribute to society, then I very much doubt that we would be at all successful--or at least to the degree that we desire.
1) http://www.prohealthlab.org/prohealth-lab-newsletter/newsletter-archive/141-us-healthcare-costs-rise-sharply
2) Friedman, Tom Hot, Flat, & Crowded Picador Press New York 2005
3) http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/13/business/13tax.html
My task here is not to laugh at conservatives as they take $1.2 billion in earmarks after campaigning heavily upon the promise to cut or eliminate them entirely, but rather to figure out a way to make serious headway into this enormous problem.
I am guided by two facts: 1) There are things the government needs to spend money on, and 2) We are in a recession. Ideally, I would recommend that we wait until the economy recovers before we attempt to fix this problem (a suggestion advanced by Paul Krugman of the NYTimes), but I will do my best considering the fact that circumstances are less than ideal.
The first thing I would do is order a massive government study of the effectiveness of all programs over the past 20 years. I would use this to decide which programs to cut entirely. Then I would ask which programs could be reduced by 10-25% with minimal impact to society (under this category would be Social Security, Medicare, Disability, and Prescription Drug programs for the elderly).
Also on this point, the fact remains that Medicare fraud is an enormous problem that costs the government a significant amount of money. To combat this, a comprehensive database should be set up in order to check the frequency of prescription refills and doctors visits complaining of similar symptoms. For example, certain medications are given in certain amounts. The medication I took for a long time gave me 30 pills per prescription. Now, using this knowledge, it would be quite easy to figure out who is either abusing their medication--or, worse, selling it--by the frequency with which they had their prescription filled and how many pills were dispensed, and the frequency with which these pills should be taken (X times/day). All of the information required is already available, but we currently do not combine it in a way such that we could effectively combat fraud.
Before anyone makes the outlandish claim about the government tracking them, this would apply for people who registered for the program, ie it is voluntary, and the government should take responsibility to protect public money from fraud. No one's access to medical services would be severed until there was justification to do so (evidence of fraud).
On the other side, there is a way to prevent doctors from over-prescribing procedures and medications unnecessarily, and this is quite frequent where the elderly are concerned. While the elderly do need medical services more than any other demographic, it is also true that doctors do wish to see them more than necessary. As an example, my grandmother, who has, as of yet, short-term memory loss, had three physicals and two flu shots in one month, and then her GP asked her to return again two weeks later even though there were no outstanding physical problems.
To correct this issue, my father provided an excellent suggestion: Give general practitioners a yearly spending threshold--not a cap, because I don't think money should be cut off if someone does has a serious problem--and give them an incentive for staying below that threshold. It would be, as I described the idea back to my father--as he is a salesman--the inverse of a sales goal: Instead of a sales goal like he has, where he is rewarded for surpassing it, doctors should be rewarded for staying below the threshold. What this threshold should be would of course be left up to experts who understand the medical profession, but, ideally, not be beholden to it.
I would cut some military spending. I realize that R&D is vital to the military, as it is in civilian science, but it is also true that the military develops things that it doesn't use, such as the Crowd Disperser weapon, which relies on microwaves to make people uncomfortable. I would fund only the most essential projects that the military is most interested in with a guarantee that they would see use on the battlefield.
We would have to remove our soldiers from Afghanistan and Iraq entirely as soon as humanly possible. The current cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is $1.08 trillion. This is a little less than half of total healthcare costs in 2009 ($2.5 trillion)1. This analysis is not taking into account the political consequences of premature departure in the region, but is merely interested in the war's monetary cost for the sake of the analysis of the deficit.
I would use the same guiding principle in civilian science: Only the most promising and the most useful studies--such as those pertaining to cancer research, transplants, and AIDS--would be funded.
I would massively cut foreign aid. Keep in mind that the United States gives a lot of money to countries that abuse their power in the region, and/or hate the hand that feeds them. I would cut all foreign aid to the Middle East--especially to Israel, whom we now recognize as an oppressor and is undeserving of the blank check it receives from us.
I would revoke the subsidies given to the oil industry, and invest that money into clean energy. This would, in a decade or two, give the United States significantly more leverage in the Middle East.
Now for the most uncomfortable aspect of this issue. I agree that it would be unreasonable to expect a surplus after cutting spending alone. I further believe that the wealthiest Americans should pay more in taxes, as they also derive benefits from society. On page 135 of Hot, Flat, & Crowded , Tom Friedman puts the problem in perspective by comparing the American War for Independence with the oil states in the Middle East, advocating a kind of pay-to-play system: Paying one's taxes ensures that he has a say and can be represented in government. This is kind of an offshoot also of Social Contract Theory in the way that representation is established. To demonstrate, Tom Friedman writes, "The motto of the American Revolution was 'No Taxation Without Representation.' The motto of the petrolist authoritarian state is "No taxation, so no representation, either.' Oil-backed regimes can just drill an oil well and sell the oil abroad--also they do not have listen to their people or represent their wishes."2
Alexis de Tocqueville spends a lot of time in Democracy in America talking about the lack of influence the aristocracy has in the government, but by now it should be immediately obvious to anyone who pays attention to current events that what would be considered the aristocracy has gotten involved in politics to an unprecedented degree. This is not to say that rich people have themselves personally been elected to office, but they have more or less bought candidates wholesale. No other explanation is sufficient enough to justify why the current GOP senators are holding tax cuts we should put in place (those for middle-class Americans) hostage in exchange for tax cuts for people who not only do not need them, but will not use them to stimulate the economy (a fact we have known since the 1980s; specifically, Trickle-Down Economics).
Furthermore, the wealthiest Americans are not working for the society at large, but are merely manipulating the system in order to preserve themselves, often at the expense of the rest of the population. It would be naive to say that the wealthiest Americans really think that deregulation will help anyone else but them, because where they sit, no one else even exists. They are protected against the hardships of unemployment and even their own employees, who now possess little or no job security at all. Furthermore, the wealthiest Americans absolutely fail to recognize that the decisions they made during the previous two decades which plunged the nation--and the world--into a maelstrom of economic catastrophe warrant punishment.
Also of significance is the fact that most businesses in the United States pay no income tax. The NYTimes states that "Two out of every three United States corporations paid no federal income taxes from 1998 through 2005, according to a report released Tuesday by the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress."3 And yet businesses are still outsourcing overseas. They do not contribute to the system. Critics say that higher taxes will force businesses to leave the United States, but it really doesn't matter, as they outsource even when they don't pay income taxes. I doubt arguments from nationalism could work on such people, as all they seem to care about is the profit margin. If I am again to use Social Contract Theory as the basis for my system, I would have to say that in order to stay, they should have to pay their share.
But that's just it: They don't care where they go as long as they don't have to pay, and for this society generally should feel the most profound disgust, but like anything else that isn't green and made of paper, that too means nothing.
Of course, none of this helps society. If they have to pay taxes, they will leave, but if they don't pay taxes, they aren't helping. And yet they are still able to gear the system to their own ends.
However, to characterize the aristocracy as a greedy class callous and even destructive toward democracy is unfair, but only slightly; there are a few wealthy Americans who understand that they must do something to help the rest of the nation, and here I give them special mention. But it is also true that they are a very small minority among this class. For every 1 Warren Buffett, there are about 10 Donald Trumps.
The extent to which the aristocracy should have to pay taxes should be determined mostly by the difference in spending cuts in order to reach a reasonable goal that would get us on track to regaining a significant surplus in the next 10-15 years, and by the extent of the damage done to the economy. I make no pretensions that the aristocracy should be severely punished not only for their responsibility for economic catastrophe, but also their willful impotence in fixing it.
All of the measures I have thus far provided restricting in military and science spending would be in place for a projected 10-15 years. Foreign aid programs would be restricted temporarily, but with scrupulous oversight, taking into consideration its effectiveness and the politics of the region, especially in the Middle East, where money intended for aid is returned to us in bullets.
This is not to say that I am comfortable with all of these measures. I deem science to be extremely essential to our society, and to see it be restricted in this way--even temporarily--is very painful. But it is something I would be willing to support if it meant the preservation of our superpower status in the future. We would also, of course, feel extreme pain as the subsidies given to oil are revoked. This is something I would also be willing to do. I would personally be willing to pay more for energy in the short term to gain cheaper energy later, and as well be assured that I would be contributing far less to the destruction of the environment. Furthermore, this short-term pain would lead to greater national independence in the future, as I have often said: We would no longer be so dependent--or at all dependent--on energy that poisons the environment and comes from people who want to kill us. By relinquishing oil for cleaner energy, our leverage on the international stage would be enormous, and no longer would we be drawn into conflagrations that are the indirect result of our consumption habits. Not only would we have almost nothing to do with the Middle East, but I dare say that our roles would be reversed: They would either depend upon us for foreign aid to even survive, or forced to become democratic as the despotic regimes failed to support themselves. If the former occurred, terrorism from the region would cease almost overnight.
As I am willing to give, the aristocracy and its representative party must also be willing to give. If the aristocracy is not able or willing to contribute to society, then I very much doubt that we would be at all successful--or at least to the degree that we desire.
1) http://www.prohealthlab.org/prohealth-lab-newsletter/newsletter-archive/141-us-healthcare-costs-rise-sharply
2) Friedman, Tom Hot, Flat, & Crowded Picador Press New York 2005
3) http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/13/business/13tax.html
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