Changing

An old Bob Dylan song says times they are a changing and it is apropos for today’s world. This change has its roots in the Viet Nam War where disillusionment in government came to life. Over the next 20 years this feeling of unease was accelerated as the county slowly and painfully watched as the war on drugs and the war on poverty slipped away. On top of that came the realization that the government sponsored public education system was leaving behind our most vulnerable students while smaller areas like the post office and Amtrak floundered in sea of debt. Next came the public sector where employee benefits like pensions and health care were causing cities, counties and states to follow the federal government into the abyss of debt. The concept of spending more than what one earns spread to the private sector and now when we total up our long term obligations to future generations we are approaching the time when we will have to introduce an new word into the average person’s vocabulary and that word is quadrillion. And now we are confronted with the final straw in the governments back and that is Obamacare. The belief that the government could solve problems started with the great victory in WW 11 but as the deficits piled up year after year times started a changing. When Reagan said that the government is not the solution but the problem he stuck a cord deep inside the people and that has come alive over the past thirty years and people are now awake and ready to turn the ship of state around. As people watch the huge apartment complexes known as, “the projects”, or what I like to call the modern day equivalent of the reservation, come tumbling down overwhelmed by crime and addiction they began to have doubts. When year after year we see the inner cities crumble both literally and figuratively as the gap in education grows ever wider we have doubts. When individuals lose their dignity as they are forced to rely more and more on government aid and when words like personal responsibility are considered racist we have doubts. When young boys grow up with no role models and young girls seek the safety of their own apartments by having babies we have doubts. When the government bails out big banks and big corporations while people lose their homes, we have doubts. When elected officials care more about party than country, we have doubts. When so many see their only hope for the good life is winning the lottery we have doubts. But in the midst of all these doubts there is still hope because there is a changing. It is the awakening of the individual spirit that made this country great and it will arise again like the Phoenix. It is the realization that each of us must learn to take responsibility for our lives and reach for the brass ring. In this great land, the home of the free and brave it can be done and it starts with a change in attitude. We must get back the can-do attitude we had when I was growing up. We hear in the news every day that we have just been through the worst economic times since the Great Depression but those people came through and built the greatest generation and it can be done again because times are a changing.

Pope's economics

I, like many others, see our new pope as a man of the people and he recently said that many around the word are too materialistic. I am not sure that he understands the free market capitalist system. When consumers buy stuff they create profits for the companies that sell stuff and these companies create jobs and all of these people pay taxes. Some of the profits from companies and some of the taxes that governments collect are used for research and development. From this R&D came things like the polio vaccine, AIDS medicine which saved lives in Africa, farm equipment that allow the US to feed our population and many millions around the world. Over 2 billion people have access to the Internet and over 5 billion have cell phones. People in remote parts of the world are now connected and this helps them learn new ways of doing things. R&D has brought clean water to many parts of the world and reduced the health problems associated with bad water. The ways in which R&D has improved the lives of people around the world is almost endless. If consumers here in the US quit consuming we will have a depression and that will spread around the world and the poorest of the poor would be hurt the most. Remember when the United States sneezes the rest of the world catches a cold and the third world countries get pneumonia. I think the pope needs an economic advisor and that with his good heart and his good intentions could go a long way to helping many of the poor around the world.

Health care cost

In 1973 I sat in a classroom for three full days listening to an expert tell me about health care insurance. The morning of the second day my classmates and I discussed what we had learned and we all agreed there were two major problems. The first was that with low deductible and low co-payments the patients did not pay out of pocket enough for services rendered and this would cause a rapid increase in cost. The second was the realization that no country could afford to provide total care for all of its citizens. Fast forward 40 years and much to my surprise Obamacare has stumbled and bumbled its way into solving both of these problems. The up-front cost problem is solved with high deductibles and the total care is solved by rationing. The rationing will be primarily directed toward patients near the end of life and the deductibles will hit the middle and upper middle class. These two aspects of Obamacare will reduce the long term cost and bring that in line with the regular cost of living. The saving will be large enough to provide free or almost free care for the poor and Obamacare will do all that was promised. It will reduce long term cost and insure everyone. Since money was taken from Medicare by reducing payments to physicians and hospitals there will be some reduction in service to us folks who are on Medicare and of course we will face the prospect of rationing but remember there is no free lunch.

Language

Tonight on the news I saw a supporter of Obamacare say that things are in disarray now but they will get better and by 2019 the cost will start to come down. I thought to myself how convenient because there is no way I can disprove that statement. The other day the President said the web site will be operating at 80% efficiency and this is another thing that cannot be disproved because we don’t know 80% of what. It was the same when the President talked about 3 million jobs saved or created and when they passed the stimulus the President said if they hadn’t done that things would have been worse. These guys are slick

Iran enrichment

The news about the agreement with Iran is being presented with an upbeat positive spin but the whole truth is not being told. Here is a quote from Secretary Kerry. Iran will stop enriching uranium beyond 5% and neutralize its stockpile of uranium enriched beyond this point. The amount beyond is about 20% and could be used as a bomb but would be bulky and awkward. The bomb dropped on Japan used 80% enriched. What Iran has done to neutralize is to change the uranium hexafluoride that is used in the centrifuges to uranium oxide. What is not revealed is that this oxide can easily and quickly be returned to the hexafluoride. In other words they have kept their 20% product on hand for future use. One common way to deceive is to reveal only part of the story and in this case it is the saying that they have neutralized without pointing out that this process is reversible. Another point has to do with inspections. IAEA has been inspecting the civilian plants but not the military instillations and this process will continue but it is presented as if this is some new inspection.

Iran nukes

As I watch the negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program, I am reminded of how Saddam Husain used the west, in his claims of not producing WMD. His strategy was to hide his efforts from the IAEA inspectors to create doubt as to his intentions. It was a classic case of miss-direction. He would say he had no such weapons and when the inspectors came to verify, he would secretly move resources around, giving the impression that he was hiding something. All the while this was going on, he was allowed to sell oil for food and medical supplies, money that he used instead to build up his army and increase his personal wealth. Every time he claimed that he had destroyed the weapons, which by the way we and other countries gave him, the IAEA would ask where he did this and he would not tell them. He knew that they could test soil samples and determine if he was being truthful. This game of cat and mouse went on for years until the US finally invaded and took down his government. Now we have Iran playing the same miss-direction game. They have suffered economic hardships because of their potential threat to build a bomb. Just like Saddam they have been willing to let their people suffer short term hardship to achieve a long term victory. They have built rockets to use as delivery systems and in the process have kept the price of oil up. This threat has kept their enemies in the region at bay and made them into the power house in the Middle East. Now they are in a position to collect economic benefits that have been withheld plus a lot more. President Obama is in a weakened position here at home and looking for a success in foreign policy and he is willing to ignore warnings from our ally Israel. Iran is still holding on to the threat of building a bomb but in a slightly limited way. It has always been my contention that Iran never wanted a nuclear bomb and I base that on the fact that they have been working with the latest technology for 25 years and have yet to produce enough enriched uranium to make a single bomb. In the 1940’s the US in the Manhattan Product created enough enriched uranium to make a bomb in three years using equipment from that time period. There is more going on here than meets the eye!

JP Morgan

J P Morgan Chase Bank has agreed to pay 13 billion in penalties and fines for their part in the mortgage crisis. In return they admit no wrong doing which means that no one goes to jail. The company has assets of 2,500 billion much of which they made during the mortgage debacle so the fine is a small payment to keep the executives out of jail. Nine billion of the 13 goes to various government agencies and 4 billion will go to 100,000 homeowners who suffered from the banks activities. This is $4,000 per home owner hardly enough to keep them from losing their homes. The government is bragging up this great achievement and the bank is bragging up its concern for home owners. This type of corruption is rampant throughout the system.