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Travel to Galapagos II: Exploring Darwin's Islands

2011-01-13T12:10:00.002-06:00

Frigatebird

( Read my Blog entitled Travel to Galapagos I: Quito, Equador)

The Galapagos Islands are one of the best and easiest to reach destinations outside the continental United States. It is surprisingly close and not outrageously expensive (as compared to Europe).

They offer rare and beautiful flora and fauna, great scuba diving and snorkeling opportunities, and a warm climate twelve months of the year.

Galapagos is chock full of gorgeous animals and birds that have been indigenous for several millennia. Prominent are the Iguana, blue footed booties, frigatebirds, land turtles and flightless cormorants. We were fortunate to see the albatross, which we had previously seen nesting on the South Georgia Island, which is a terminal at the other end of the migratory journey of these magnificent birds.

What I did not anticipate was the remarkable geography and how it revealed the origin of species to the brilliant eye of Charles Darwin.

The Galapagos Islands lie about 600 miles west of the South American mainland. They were unspoiled and uninhabited for several thousand years. Even the pirates would not use the islands as safe haven because of a scarcity of fresh water.

The islands are not only remote, but they are largely isolated from each other. Many of the animals cannot fly or swim from one island to the other. Thus many species have been confined to their own self contained habitats for thousands of years

Charles Darwin was a naturalist traveling with an English expedition that was mapping the western side of South America. He was charged with identifying the plants and animals he encountered along the way.

When the ships reached the Galapagos Archepelago, Darwin was overwhelmed by the hundreds of animals and plants that had never before been seen in the western world. He dutifully sketched, and cataloged these new found species and carried his treasure trove back to England.

During the return trip he pondered on the significance of all the information he had gathered. For instance he was struck by the fact that there were different species of mockingbirds on the various islands. These birds were similar in appearance but could not mate with their cousins from other islands. He firmly believed that these different mockingbirds had a common ancestor at some point in history, and wondered how they could evolve into different species.

He thus deduced that these birds living separately and apart had been required to adapt to the demands of their own environment. He concluded that the animal that could adapt tended to propagate more abundantly and gradually the survivors passed their traits on to subsequent generations. Inasmuch as the mockingbirds on separate islands were confronted with different environments, they had evolved in different directions until they ultimately became different species.

Darwin thus anticipated what twentieth century scientists confirmed that environmental adaptation can alter our genetic makeup. As far as I know, the discovery of DNA did nothing but confirm the accuracy of his observation.

It is an unique and exciting experience for the traveler to visit these Island, which are largely unspoiled, and observe the flora and fauna in the same light as Darwin did. I have three specific recommendations for the trip:.

- Read a good biography of Darwin.

- Be sure to travel by boat, while you are there. It is important that you see as many islands as time permits and the boats are the most efficient means of getting around.

- Be sure to bring along some very good walking shoes and be prepared to walk over demanding surfaces of volcanic rock, which are everywhere. It is not a place for flip flops.

And, of course there is one more recommendation - have a great time.

A Spanish Wedding

2010-12-15T17:10:00.013-06:00

I am not sure what I expected a Spanish wedding to be like. I suppose I had conjured up an image of traditional Spanish dancers with black vails and patent leather shoes. I also anticipated much pomp and circumstance. Whatever image I may have had, it was shattered by reality.

Monty and I flew into Madrid where we met Teodoro Nieto, an artist Monty represents and a long time friend, along with Franz and Laura Reinart. Franz is German born but had migrated to Mexico where he met and married Laura, who is a native born Mexican. They live in San Diego, but most of their business interests are located in Mexico. Laura serves as a North American representative for Teodoro.

We rented a car and drove with the Nieto entourage to Ayllon, a small town of about twenty five hundred residents located about eighty miles from Madrid. Although Teodoro has worked and lived for most of his adult life in Madrid, he has maintained strong ties with Ayllon, where he was born and now owns significant properties. The great majority of his landscapes portray Ayllon.

Allyon, Spain View Ayllon, Spain in a larger map

The wedding took place in a small community was about five miles from Ayllon. Oscar Ramirez, the groom, lived in that small town of about 500 people and was its mayor. He owned and operated a vineyard nearby. The bride named Lorena was Teodoro’s daughter. She ran a restaurant in Ayllon, which her father owned.

Our group arrived at the little country church about five minutes before noon, when the wedding ceremony was supposed to begin. I was fearful that we would be late. After all, we usually show up a half an hour in advance for Birmingham weddings. To my surprise, although there was an enormous crowd in front of the church, no one had gone inside. The church could seat no more than about one hundred people but two hundred had been invited.. It appeared that all the invitees had come. Therefore not all the guests could be seated in the church.

We entered the church in order to get a good seat, which was no particular problem because no one else seemed to be in a hurry to go inside. The bride and groom arrived separately and fashionably late. I expected to see a procession with bridesmaids, ushers and the grand entrance of the family, but it did not happen that way. The bride and groom ambled in with the rest of the crowd. Lorena was wearing a long green dress, but it hardly appeared to be what we would consider a wedding dress. A band consisting of a flute, drum, tambourine and a couple of horns began playing music which was joyful and loud, but not very religious to my ear. The entrance of the bride and groom appeared to be quite similar to that of a politician entering a rally.

Lorena and Oscar took their seats at the altar accompanied by Teodoro, the father of the bride, and the mother of the groom. Henar, the mother of the bride, sat somewhere near the front.

Hollywood could not have found a more appropriate priest for the occasion. He was probably no more than about 30 years old. He stood about five foot five inches tall. Despite his youth and short stature, he had already acquired the demeanor of a parish priest, with an angelic look and a broad comforting smile.

The guests began to file in occupying all the seats, packing the aisles and slipping into every available nook and cranny. So much for our great seats. Our main view was of the back of the necks of persons who were standing in the aisles. Still others who could not find space stayed outside looking in through open doorway.

The service went on for at least and hour and a half. Since it was mostly spoken in Spanish, we could not follow what was being said most of the time. Monty detected at one point that the priest was repeating the Apostles Creed.

At another point, the priest seemed to using the word “bambino” frequently. I have known that Catholic priests encourage the couple to have children early and often, but his instruction in that regard seemed a bit superfluous in this instance. Lorena was already carrying a baby. She was about four months along and clearly showing. There was no shame or embarrassment, though. She was happy, her parents were happy, and I believe the priest was happy to see the early arrival.

At another point, the priest turned his attention away from the bride and groom and received the two children of Lorena’s sister, Ruth. The priest then baptized them. That was a first for me. Obviously the priest was open for business and prepared to take on any religious duties required of him at that time.

Perhaps the biggest surprise was the music during the service. There was a trio of sopranos who performed from time to time during the service along with the band. They sang a couple of songs I did not know, although they produced a pleasant pastoral sound which seemed to be inspired by the madrigal music of the Renaissance.

Then came the only point in the service performed in English when the trio sang “Moon River.” Where did that come from? Ir reminded me of the time that Tutter Tyndal of our church allowed a performance of “Take Me Out To The Ball Game” at the wedding of Tim Hudson, who is now a star pitcher with the Atlanta Braves. This wedding was really getting to be interesting!

Later on the band performed an African piece which I believe was the theme song of the TV show “The Ladies Number One Detective Agency.” By that time I thought nothing would surprise me.

When the service came to an end, the guests began to leave the sanctuary while the wedding party was remained at the altar. This made some sense and because the aisles were so clogged that the bride and groom could not get through. However, even guests continued to leave until no one was left in the sanctuary .except the wedding party and a few stragglers such as Monty and me.

Then Lorena, Oscar and their families strolled out with little fan fare. When Lorena and Oscar reached the doorway a celebration erupted into a frenzy the band playing in the parking lot. There was hugging, kissing, laughing and joy like I have seldom seen. The men grabbed the groom and threw him into the air. It was noisy, raucous and just plain fun.

But Spanish weddings are not limited to the church ceremony. The entire crowd migrated to Ayllon to the restaurant owned by Teodoro. there was a new band with many hor d’oeuvres served and drinks flowing. The Spanish seem to drink a lot but do not take strong drinks. In that way they can continue to party for hours without peeling over. And they love to dance. The Spanish are graceful dancers, and they are tireless.

Lunch was served in a seated dinner at four o’clock. During the meal, many of Oscar’s contemporaries would shout at Oscar. I could not translate what was being said but it was apparent that his friends were doing their best to embarrass Oscar, probably by referring to past misadventures. Oscar was up to the task and would responded with his own retorts.

I was able to understand one of the guests who shouted out,”Kiss the Bride!” There was no response. Then he repeated, “Kiss the bride!” Still no response. The rest of the crowd started to join in by chanting in unison, “Kiss the bride! Kiss the Bride!” Finally the couple relented, stood up and joined in a warm embrace - and everyone cheered. The Spanish know how to have a good time.

After the lunch the dancing resumed. Monty and I were exhausted and decided to retire to our room for a rest. The party was still in high gear when we returned in two hours, and it did not appear that anyone, old or young, had left.

Dinner was served at eight thirty. Mercifully it was a light meal featuring the Spanish version of sandwiches, but the party was showing no evidence of slowing up. About ten thirty Monty and I gave up and went in for the night. We understand that Teodoro closed the party at midnight.

We had planned to leave the next morning to drive over to the Pyrenees for a few days. We were ready to leave by nine thirty. We wanted to say goodbye to Teodoro and thank him for his hospitality, but were concerned that we would not be able to see him. Surely he would sleep in to midday after that ordeal. Nevertheless we stopped by the restaurant, and, somewhat to our surprise, Teodoro was busy at work cleaning up the mess created the night before. It turned out that he had gone to sleep at two in the morning and awakened at five to start work. We also saw Ruth who was supervising half dozen workmen in the ballroom cleaning up and setting up for another event that would start the next day Next came Henar The whole family was there except Lorena.. No, I was mistaken. Around the corner came Lorena in her work clothes.

I was stunned at the sight. Obviously the Nietos work as hard as they play. They are quite a family.

I would never have felt that any wedding was worth traveling across the Atlantic Ocean to see, but I was wrong.

Teachers and Test Scores

2010-08-30T10:24:00.001-05:00

It is not fair to blame Paul Hubbert, Executive Secretary of the Alabama Education Association, for all that is wrong with our school system. We suffered for many generations with poor schools long before he came along. Nevertheless, he manages to be identified with substantial road blocks to progress in education.

It is noteworthy, then, when he makes a sound point. I am referring to his opposition to using test scores to evaluate teacher performance. It is understandable why the boards may want to find an objective measuring stick to determine promotions and retention of teachers. With strong tenure rules, the incompetent teachers seem to be embedded in the system. Bureaucrats need an objective test that is both fair and effective in weeding out the incompetents. Unfortunately test scores may be objective, but they are not a fair measuring tool.

I do not think that these tests were designed to evaluate teachers or schools. They are supposed to assess the progress, accomplishments and capacity for learning of the individual student. The tests provide valuable information which should enable the school to determine the needs and opportunities available to that student.

Using test scores to make hiring, firing and retention decisions is based on an assumption that teachers have the capacity to materially affect those scores. That is simply not the case. For instance, Mountain Brook students regularly score at the top and those from poorer communities bring up the rear. Is it realistic to suggest that the teachers in a black belt county can under any circumstances teach their students up to the Mountain Brook level? I have no hesitation to suggest that the students of the worst teacher in the Mountain Book System would easily out perform those of the best teacher in one of our poor counties. On the other hand I suspect that the star teacher from the poorer school would be much the better teacher.

Therefore, where is the fairness in comparing teachers on a test score basis when they are not working on a level playing field?

A common retort would be that the teacher should be measured by the “improvement” in test scores instead. The assumption there is that all teachers in all systems have been performing poorly in the past and even an average teacher should be able to raise the scores. Do I need to answer that argument?

Then there is the teacher who does in fact raise the scores but has turned the class room into a year long cram course for the test. This can be done by finding in old tests and looking at the tendencies that would indicate what will be asked. (Law graduates do this all the time when preparing for the bar exam.) If the score has been raised, it means nothing other than that the school has learned how to short cut the system. It does not indicate any inherent improvement in the quality of the education.

The truth is that successes of great teachers are not measured by improving statistics but by their impact of the teacher on individuals one by one. Most people who are successful in life can point to one or two of such teachers and are grateful for the profound impact those teachers made. That is what teaching is all about.

I wish I could say that this phobia over test score evaluations is harmless, but it is not. In the first place, it represents a gigantic misuse of scarce resources. But it is much more. It stifles creative teaching. I had much rather my child be exposed him to the magic of Mark Twain or Louisa May Alcott, rather than pouring over old tests.or listening to a lecture on how to eliminate the obviously wrong answer on a multiple choice test in order to improve the odds of finding the correct one.

Worst of all, the test score is so simplistic that the school boards (who are a big part of the problem but not the subject of this blog) act on misinformation and come up with poor choices in the direction of their school systems. Their job of making personnel evaluations is extremely difficult and can always be flawed, but there is no panacea. Drawing draconian conclusions based on a multiple choice tests is both meretricious and misguided.

Mark up an attaboy for Paul Hubbert.

Mosques and Demogogues

2010-08-23T06:25:00.001-05:00

The dispute over a mosque across the street from Ground Zero is an excellent example of how democracy can get steered into the Theater of the Absurd. (I am not sure what Theater of the Absurd is all about, but it sounds like an apt metaphor.)

The Imam in charge of the proposed mosque stated that he was seeking to serve as a bridge of understanding between Islam and the United States.

If that was his goal, he got off to a bad start. New Yorkers are super sensitive about the Twin Towers, and their pain has not subsided. Thus a highly predictable uproar erupted over the proposed facility. As best I can tell the local officials jumped in quickly seeking some solution that would be satisfactory to the Imam and would abate the criticism. I have not heard anyone claim that there was any genuine objection to some compromise effort. In fact it would be reasonable to assume that the support of the local authorities would in fact aide the effort of the Muslims to build bridges.

Under any circumstances, every politician who feels the need for publicity seems to be conscience stricken to step in and be of assistance.

One such politician was Congressmen Rick Lazio, who is engaged in a heated contest for governor of the state. He seem to be certain that the problem was caused by the ineffectiveness of the state attorney general, who happens to be his opponent. He suggested that the Imam may be using money from nefarious sources which needs to be investigated before the mosque is approved..

That is fine indeed, but, apparently, he did not think up this idea until the polls told him that the proposal was extremely unpopular with the electorate. Moreover, he has an Italian name. That makes him Italian, not American. He must have some connection with the Mafia - at least as much as does the Imam with the Al Qaeda. Why isn’t he taking his witch hunt to Manhattan to find out the source of funding of at least half of the finer Italian restaurants in the city?

Then the matter was ratcheted up again by our President, who has a disconcerting habit of opening his mouth before his brain is fully activated, entered the fray. He wrapped himself in the comforting arms of the Bill of Rights. He said that the Muslims have a constitutional right to build a mosque in accordance with local laws.

It is reassuring to know that the First Amendment has not been abrogated recently, but he injected a non-issue into the conversation.. No one claims to be denying the freedom of religion to the Muslims. Even he seems to recognize by implication that the issue of where the mosque might be located is a matter of local law. What the President did was mischaracterize the facts so that he could utter an inapplicable principle relating to a situation that does not exist.

The President’s position was not good politics, either, since about a fourth of the population believes that he is Muslim, himself.

Now the runaway train is totally out of control. Newt Gingrich equates the location of the mosque next ot Ground Zero with placing Nazi headquarters next to a holocaust memorial. The Democrats loved that. Now the Arab world has been encouraged by our President to believe that a substantial segment of our country is attempting to override the constitution in support of efforts to persecute the Muslims who live here.. People in all continents of every persuasion are now weighing in - all because our politicians stuck their nose into a matter that probably would have been handled best by the persons in the City of New York who have been entrusted with the responsibility of dealing with the situation.

Ain’t democracy great!

Travel to Galapagos I : Quito, Equador

2010-03-26T13:54:00.001-05:00

Monty and I have just returned from a trip to Equador and Galapagos Islands. We first went to Quito for a short visit, flew on to the Islands and boarded a small ship that cruised around the Archipelago, and then returned to the port city of Guayaquil. I plan to report on my reactions to this very exciting trip in ths series of four postings.

I did not know what to expect from Quito. I knew it was the capital but little else. As it turned out, Quito is a very interesting city with one of the best preserved old towns in the world and a rich history.

The city itself is a metaphor for a paradox. It has many beautiful buildings constructed in the European style and yet it is bordered by the slums we come to expect in less developed countries. It is a major international city plopped in the middle of the Andes Mountains over 9,000 feet above sea level. The contrast of a modern city surrounded by the rugged mountain is landscape is overwhelming. It is located on the slopes of an active volcano and within about a mile of the equator.

How could this immense, sophisticated city emerge in the remotest of possible locales rather than on the Pacific coast? I can only speculate that Quito was located where it is for military reasons. The Spanish must have found a need to establish a presence in the mountains in order to sustain the conquest of the indigenous people who for their own reasons lived in the heart of the Andes.

Under any circumstances it is not surprising that Quito a was the first city to be designated by UNESCO as a world heritage site.

The people of Equador also piqued my curiosity. Our guide said that eighty per cent of the inhabitants are of Indian stock. Unlike Mexico and many Central American countries, neither the invasion of the Spaniards nor the transporting of Africans to the Western Hemisphere seem to have made much of a dent into the Equadorian genetic pool. As a result, these people give us a peek into what the Incan people must have been like. They are very short in stature but very muscular, and appear to be somewhat mild mannered. Even their food is less spicy than that found in some of the neighboring countries. I saw very little begging or evidence of idleness. Our jingoistic caricatures of hotheaded Latins loafing around aimlessly is not substantiated by these people.

Equador on the surface seems to be a relatively stable economy with an emphasis on a robust fishing industry, a wide variety of agricultural products and some oil. I got the feeling from the people I talked to that there is a nervousness about whether this stability can continue. A major threat is cocaine. The government of Columbia, which is next door, is engaged in a war with its drug lords. So far Equador has been spared from being a significant player in drug trafficking, but the Columbian drug lords are slipping across the border to set up operations that could be a serious problem down the road. Second, Equador’s current president is flirting with Chavez of Venezuela. There is a concern that the Equador’s bustling trading relationship with the United States could be disrupted if the Venezuela populist movement slips into the Equadorian political landscape.

I have run into many people who express a desire to visit the Galapagos Islands, but there is very little mention of the mainland portion of the trip. If you of that persuasion, let me assure you that you are in for a surprise.

The Stabler Health Cost Reduction Plan

2010-03-18T09:25:00.001-05:00

I have identified four primary sources of the rise in costs - the impact of medical research (2/26/10), restrictive entry into medical schools causing anti competitive pricing (3/2/10), an over insured population (3/5/10), and tort law suits (3/9/10). These four issues must be addressed in order to contain health costs. Here are the components of the Stabler Health Cost Reduction Plan:

1. Medical schools must reorganize their teaching methods, particularly in the clinical programs, and use their impressive resources more efficiently in order to double or triple the number of doctors produced each year. If medical educators really put their mind to the project, I suspect that the additional tuition income would come close to covering the marginal costs of educating additional students. The economic savings coming from increased enrollments would significantly reduce costs, increase the availability of medical services and thus produce a far superior health care system.

2. I propose to limit tax deductible plans to those that pay no more than 80% of the ordinary medical costs with a 20% deductible paid by the insured. I believe that in most cases the cumulative savings from lower premiums would exceed the cost of paying the larger deductible. With low cost plans being the norm, universal coverage would be much easier to accomplish.. Moreover, the patient who has a 20% stake in the cost of medical services will pay much closer attention to how the money is spent. The Stabler Plan would allow greater, but not 100%, coverage for catastrophic expenses and would provide some sort of welfare payments for the indigent.

3. It is doubtful that the pace of medical research will ever happen, nor should it. The only way I can see that its effect on medical costs can be reduced would be to invest more public moneys into research to replace the work of pharmaceutical and medical equipment companies. Public investments do not need to be recovered out of the proceeds of sales. Nevertheless, the savings, if any, from that source would require much more investigation and study that I am capable of producing.

4. I see little prospect of material cost reduction coming out of tort reform as long as health care is dispensed in a noncompetitive environment. Therefore, the Stabler Plan requires that the supply of doctors and other health professions be dramatically increased before tort reform is included in the program. (See my discussion in the posting issued on 3/5/10). It would be unconscionable to give the doctors full immunity from the consequences of their tortious actions. Two features of tort reform have merit, however. Punitive damages deserve to be curbed, or even abolished. I believe that it is the province of the criminal laws to mete out punishment. The proper role of civil law suits is to compensate victims for their loss. Second, tort laws could be amended to give the medical professionals a good faith defense. Most medical procedures have a risk attached to them. The defendant who can prove that he or she acted in good faith and with diligence should be given a break.

Is Tort Reform Really the Answer to Rising Health Costs?

2010-03-09T21:52:00.001-06:00

Is Tort Reform Really the Answer to Rising Health Costs?

Tort Reform is one of the cornerstones of every Republican health care proposal. Normally the tort reform package proposal takes the form of some sort of cap on recoveries. Tort reform is not simply a cost savings device. There are considerations other than cost that weigh heavily in the tort reform debate. My limited concern at this point is whether tort reform can induce meaningful cost savings.

The proponents frequently make the argument that there are too many frivolous malpractice claims. It is true that there are many frivolous claims because, at least in Alabama, the defendant prevails in a very high percentage of the claims filed. Nevertheless, I submit that it is not the frivolous claims that raise the costs most significantly. It is the meritorious claims that cost the big bucks.

Costs of tort reform can be easily identified because virtually every practitioner carries insurance and the premiums define the dominant cost. The complexity comes from the fact that the premiums vary widely based on the specialty. The highest premiums are paid be obstetricians which have been reported to be in the range of $150,000. The reason for this are because babies suffer the most serious damage and have the longest life expectancy extending the time that they may suffer the consequences of an adverse event. Both factors run up the cost of claims dramatically. These premiums are not typical. I suspect that the premiums for pathologists would be toward the bottom of the scale and would be negligible, but other specialties are spread all over the landscape. The point is that there is more need for reform for some aspects of the practice than others.

I cannot figure out whether tort reform would have any effect on the cost of medical services. As I have discussed in another posting, the doctors enjoy monopoly power which means that they can raise their prices above the competitive level. Insurance would be classified as a fixed cost. As I recall from distant studies of price theory the true monopolist will raise prices until the price matches the marginal cost. Marginal cost represent the additional costs for serving one more patient. The cost of insurance does not materially increase when a patient is added.

Put another way. Competitive prices have a close relationship to costs. In a competitive environment additional costs translate into higher prices. On the other hand the monopolist charges what the traffic will bear regardless of total costs. Therefore, it would seem to me that the cost of insurance does not govern the prices set by the medical profession for their services.

I suspect you can detect, that I really do not fully know what the economic impact of tort reform on the cost of health care would be. I would like to find studies done by respectable academicians (who are not employed to find a predetermined answer). Under any circumstances I do not believe that tort reform is likely to produce substantial cost savings..

This is the last posting for the week. I will publish the next one on Tuesday, March 16, 2010 . At that time I will discuss my ideas as to the most effective means of containing health costs.

Medical Costs- Are We Overinsured?

2010-03-05T10:19:00.001-06:00

Monty and I went to the health department the other day looking for shots immunizing against various diseases we might contract on an upcoming trip. The lady at the desk advised me that my insurance and Medicare probably will not cover the costs. There was a prominently displayed sign on the wall of the nurse practitioner showing the exact cost of each and every shot that was available. We were asked whether we wanted to take a typhoid booster shot. She said that there was some typhoid threat in the jungles of the country we plan to visit, but that if we stay in the city the chance of contracting typhoid are very small. I saw that the shot would cost about $100.00. I considered whether immunizing against an extremely low risk of contracting typhoid fever was worth $100.. And decided not to take it. Would I have taken the shot had it been covered by insurance? Probably. After all there was some risk, and it would cost me nothing.

This story underlines the fact that our own over consumption of medical service is skewed because most of us are over insured. Doctors quickly cite the malpractice threat as a cause of over treatment, which has some merit. Who is complaining that our decisions to acquire medical service are unrestrained by any economic considerations. We are on a treadmill. We utilize more tests, more discretionary treatment because the insurance company will pay for it. The insurance company turns around and increases the premium to cover the costs, and we complain. Put on your glasses. You will see the enemy and the enemy is us.

Nowhere is the overuse of medical services more prevalent than when end of life decisions are faced.. Whenever our loved one dies of a long illnesses we tend to want to be sure that we have done everything we can to save her. That approach is certainly proper and laudable. However, when the decision is made on house money, too many of us keep searching for a miracle and prolong life that would have terminated earlier had not medical science devised means to sustain people who are terminal. The Democratic solution to the end of life dilemma is to have a bureaucrat make the decision taking the family and the doctor out of the equation.

Obama promises that the health plan will not increase the deficit. He is relying in part on a belief that the younger population will pay more in premiums that they will receive in benefits. That is to say, the insurance companies will overcharge the younger population to underwrite the older people who are sicker on the average. I do not know he has made his calculations.

I do know to a point of moral certainty that the additional thirty million persons receive coverage will increase their use of medical services. We already have a severe shortage of medical personnel. Has anyone addressed how we will cope with ever greater demands on a severely stretched health system?

My next blog which will most likely be posted next Tuesday to discuss tort reform. Then, in a following posting, I will discuss the elements of what I would consider to be an effective reform of the system.

How Medical Education Has Impacted Health Costs

2010-03-02T17:56:00.001-06:00

I have discussed in a previous blog (2/23/10) how economic regulation will not solve the problems of rising health costs.. In the last blog (2/26/10) I discussed how medical research and development leads to rising costs. In this posting, I will lift up the role of medical education.

The Carnegie Foundation published a report prepared by Abraham Flexner in 1910 on the state of American medical education . The report addressed many much needed issues involving the quality and amount of education needed for the training of doctors. Particularly helpful was its emphasis on clinical training.

Other aspects proved to be unfortunate, however. Flexner stated that half of the medical schools should be closed.. Whatever the merits of the suggestion may have been at the time, the American Medical Association embraced that part of the report and engaged in a determined campaign to restrict entry into medicine so as to raise the income of the doctors.

The campaign has been quite successful. As our population has expanded and with the ever growing varieties of specialties that have emerged, medical schools have continued to educate only a small portion of the doctors needed to serve our population.

The University of Alabama is a typical example.. They receive about 2000 applications a year and produce only about 175 doctors. With at least 8 hospitals, over a thousand faculty members, and a budget of perhaps a hundred million dollars, the medical school’s failure to produce more doctors cannot be considered to be a matter of necessity but of choice..

UAB is not the culprit, though. They are applying generally accepted standards which have evolved out of the Flexner Report. High quality education has served as a cover up for the less admirable goal of excessively restricting practice of medicine to a select few.

The adverse effects of restricted entry into the profession cannot be overstated. Nobel Laureate Milton Friedman pointed out in the early forties the restricted entry into medicine has been an efficient means of raising the prices above the competitive level.

Today the scarcity of doctors is growing. Small towns in Alabama must go to India to find a doctor to serve them. Internal medicine doctors can simply open their office and obtain a full stable of patients in a short time. One doctor recently commented to my daughter that if an internal medicine practitioner can see you, you probably do not want him. Doctors with waiting rooms stacked full of patients too often refer even the minor emergencies to emergency rooms because of their inability to adequately serve all of their patients.. Moreover, virtually all doctors in all specialties have little incentive to be competitive in their pricing because of the paucity of competition in their fields. The medical profession has become a gigantic cartel.

Ironically Blue Cross, which Congress wants to demonize, and Medicare are the only two entities of which I am aware that have the economic power to put any brakes on the reckless expansion of charges for medical services.

Medical education needs to be extensively overhauled whereby they will supply sufficient doctors to make the profession competitive. If this is not done from within, then outside forces should be applied to them in much the same manner as the automobile companies were forced to make high gas mileage products.

Why do health costs go up? -- Research

2010-02-26T15:09:00.001-06:00

I have previously pointed out that economic regulation will ineffective in holding down health costs. Before addressing how to contain costs, discourse should begin by exploring why costs are so high. I do not pretend to have all the answers. Nevertheless there are several obvious sources of high health costs that I will explore in this and other blogs. We will start with the impact of medical research.

Much is made of the shortfalls in our investment in science and technology. That cannot be said about medical research. I doubt the world has ever seen an explosion of medical advances like those which have occurred in my lifetime. I hear it said that the quality of care in this country is not superior to other countries. That may be true, but I find it hard to believe. Every day I see myself and others who have escaped the grim reaper because of leading edge medicine.

When I was young, my father suffered from a thyroid condition that the doctors could not diagnose for two years. He almost died because of the delay. Today standard blood tests routinely identify thyroid abnormalities. My mother died of breast cancer that would be picked up in a regularly scheduled mammogram today. My brother in law died of heart attack that would have been corrected by open heart surgery today. Two aunts were institutionalized for conditions that would now be controlled by drugs. On the other hand, my prostate operation came in time to spare me of the ravages of cancer because of the PSA test which is regularly administered on a yearly basis to middle aged males. My gall bladder operation that required a three and a half hour stay in the hospital and about a twelve hour recuperation was once a dreaded massive operation that could send the patient to bed for months with a scar that stretched across the torso..

These stories are not unique. Our life expectancies are expanded because of massive investments, public and private, into medical research over the previous decades. Nevertheless, inventions carry their costs. When a new medicine is developed, its inventor receives a legal monopoly for a specified period of time. The FDA must allow the pharmaceutical company to recover its research costs of developing that drug. These companies must also recoup the costs attributable to exploratory research that did not result in producing a marketable drug. Otherwise the enterprise cannot sustain itself.

Moreover when a drug, device or procedure is invented, the costs must often be recovered out sales in a relatively small market. An MRI machine for instance can only be sold to a handful of hospitals and other diagnostic centers. You cannot sell MRI machines like automobiles that fill up two car garages.

Some demagogues argue that those costs can be avoided by letting the government control all medical research thereby eliminating “excess profits.” Don’t believe it. The costs described above exist regardless of who may bear them. If the government does not receive enough return for its investment to cover the successful and unsuccessful research as well as the cost of raising the necessary capital, then it must absorb the costs and charge us to make up the loss costs either by taxing us or borrowing the money from somebody, probably the Chinese. We are getting a full dose nowadays of the dangers of that tactic.

The costs of research are vividly revealed when our favorite medicine becomes generic and the research costs are no longer a factor. Our insurance companies have educated us to the fact that generic drugs are the same medicine at drastically reduced prices, simply because the influence of research costs on the price of medicine has ended.

Under any circumstances, I doubt that our appetite for medical innovation is waning. I do not believe that we, the consumers, will tolerate a reduction in medical research, particularly with respect to the ailment that affects us or our families. Moreover, I would not be surprised if the recoverable costs actually increase as the drugs and devices brought onto the market become more specialized treating fewer patients a thereby creating ever smaller markets for the products.

In my next blog, I will discuss American medical education and how it contributes to higher costs.

Obama's Price Controls- Is he disingenuous or brain dead?

2010-02-23T15:15:00.003-06:00

Obama is in a hole. He needs to get out of it as soon as possible. He needs a bill with the title “Health Care Reform” on top of it. He needs to put this mess to bed as fast as possible and go on to other matters. I was encouraged last week that he had seen the light. This week I am not so sure.

He is now pulling out his new panacea. He is pushing for a general federal jurisdiction over price controls on health care insurance, effectively controlling all prices for hospital and medical services as well as pharmaceuticals. If he seriously pushes for this jurisdiction, he will drag the country back through the dismal swamp of partisanship. I cannot believe that a reprise of this sort will enure to the benefit of his party. It is bad politics, but it is worse economics.

It has been pretty well established since the New Deal experience that government regulation could can be quite effective in matters other than prices. such safety and environmental regulations. Business interests predicted the sky would fall in when OSCHA and automobile mileage standards were enacted, but by and large these laws have worked.

On the other hand studies have shown that efforts to control pricing have not effectively reduced costs. Price control has been tried in industries classified as so called natural monopolies such as transportation, communication, natural gas and electrification It is pretty well established that these control have resulted in no significant savings to the consumer.

Instead regulated industries have often become inefficient and unncompetitive as a result of regulation. For instance, when the airline industry was deregulated, prices were reduced drastically because of competitive forces in the industry. Regulation was actually holding prices up rather than down.

Nixon’s attempt to resurrect price controls during the spiraling stagflation was ineffective. Market forces are simply too strong to be controlled by a bureaucracy.

So, when Obama suggests that health costs can be controlled by the government for any length of time, he is either disingenuous or brain dead.

Sen. Judd Gregg of New Hampshire claimed on the PBS Newshour last night that this attempt to regulate health care insurance is a predicate for going to a single payer system, which is a euphemism for extending Medicare to all persons. Democratic Senator Sherrod Brown did not deny the allegation.

If Gregg’s assertions are correct, we are really facing a debacle. It is generally agreed that the federal budget problems are caused primarily by the rigid entitlements found in Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.. Our president voices concern about that deficit and at the same time seems to be working toward quadrupling Medicare, which is our biggest fiscal problem. He reminds me of a lawyer person I once knew whose nkickname was Gator. That is, he smiled at you and ate you up.

Gambling In Alabama

2010-02-22T13:14:00.002-06:00

Recent newspaper reports show that Milton McGregor has donated in excess of a million and half dollars to the campaign to legalize bingo gambling. This current effort is a part of the ongoing fight to bring the gambling industry to the state.

I am opposed to the whole idea. My objection is not based simply the issue of morality of gambling. Like most of us, I find a small wager to be entertaining and do not feel that I have committed some mortal sin in doing so.

I do not feel the same way about the gambling industry. It is a fact that the leading employers in a community have a direct effect on the quality of life. Our governor has successfully brought industries into Alabama that employ many of our citizens who were previously unemployed or under employed. These companies are good citizens and serve to bring about a better community life. Does the gambling industry offer the same? I do not think so.

Several weeks ago it was reported that a prominent politician who had been friendly to gambling interests visited a casino in Mississippi and encountered unbelievable good luck hitting jackpot after jackpot until he won over a million dollars. Welcome to the real world of gambling.

What does the gambling industry offer to the state? It can provide a handful of low paying jobs and a little entertainment for their patrons. From time to time some patrons lose their pay check, or their car, or their house, and receive nothing in exchange. The casinos flood the highways with billboards containing false advertising puffing all the winnings, when we know that losing is ultimately inevitable. Consider the millions that Toyota is expending because of the public outcry over perhaps a hundred incidents worldwide. Yet the gambling industry wipes out its customers regularly and not a peep is heard.

And now they gambling interests are using what appears to be phenomenal profits to push for more and more of the same. What kind of leaders will we have when they, too, “enjoy phenomenal good luck” in the slots or at the crap table? Next time it will be casino gambling. What next? Nevada has pushed the envelope now to cover legalized prostitution. Before we aspire to be the next gambling Mecca, I suggest that we consider whether we want Las Vegas and Atlantic City to be our future.

Books of the Bible- Answers to the test

2010-02-16T17:12:00.001-06:00

1. Which of the following books does not begin with the words “In the beginning”?

C. Matthew

Genesis opens with “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth”. John begins with “In the beginning was the word...”

2. Which of the following books is found in the New Testament?

C. Philemon.

Philemon is a short letter from Paul to a friend recommending to him the services of Onesimus. Though short in length, this letter is considered an authentic example of the fellowship of the early Christian believers.

Ezra is the story about the priestly rule of Israel when Israelites returned from captivity. Nahum is a minor prophet.

3. Which of the following books takes place totally outside the land now known as Israel?

D. All the above.

Daniel took place in Babylonia under the rule of Nebuchadnezzar and Daniel lived during the time after the Persians conquered Babylonia. Numbers chronicles the wandering of the Israelites in the wilderness after leaving Egypt but before they reached the promised land.

4. Which two books did Martin Luther say should have been excluded from the bible?

B. James and Revelations.

5. Which of the following letters was not written by Paul?

A. Jude

6. Which of the following books (Genesis, Matthew, and Romans) does not mention Moses by name?

A. Genesis

The events in Genesis took place before Moses was born. Matthew stated that Jesus directed the leper he had healed to present the offering that Moses commanded (8:4) he also reported that Moses appeared to Jesus at the time of the transfiguration (17:3) and Jesus later discusses his stricter attitude toward divorce as compared with Moses (19:7-9). Paul argues that the law did not exist up until the time of Moses and thus “Death reigned “ but for grace. (5:14).

7. Which of the following books (Genesis, Matthew, and Romans) does not mention Abraham by name?

D. None of the above.

The narrative of Abraham’s life appears in Genesis. Matthew leads off the genealogy in the first chapter with Abraham (1:2) Jesus chastised the Pharisees for claiming that they had Abraham as their father (3:9) In chapter 8 Jesus states that many will recline at the table of Abraham in heaven (8:11). He reminded those who said that God is the God of Abraham that the Father is the God of the living (22:32). In Romans Paul

7. Which of the following books does not contain words spoken by Jesus?

A. Mark
B. John
C. Acts
D. None of the above.

8. Which of the following books were written to a person known as “Theophilus”?

A. Luke and Acts.

9. What is the last book in the Old Testament?

B. Malachi

10. In which book did the Jews finally arrive in the promised land?

B. Joshua.

Books of the Bible

2010-02-15T07:11:00.002-06:00

The following is a test of your knowledge of the Books of the Bible. The answers will appear in tomorrow’s blog:

1. Which of the following books does not begin with the words “In the beginning”?

A. Genesis.
B. John.
C. Matthew
D. None of the above.

2. Which of the following books is found in the New Testament?

A. Ezra.
B. Nahum.
C. Philemon.
D. None of the above.

3. Which of the following books takes place totally outside the land now known as Israel?

A. Daniel
B. Esther
C. Numbers
D. All the above.

4. Which two books did Martin Luther say should have been excluded from the bible?

A. Ezra and Nehemiah.
B. James and Revelations.
C. Song of Solomon and Ecclesiastes.
D. None of the above.

5. Which of the following letters was not written by Paul?

A. Jude
B. Philippians.
C. Titus.
D. All of the above.

6. Which of the following books does not mention Moses by name?

A. Genesis
B. Matthew
C. Romans.
D. None of the above.

7. Which of the following books does not mention Abraham by name?

A. Genesis
B. Matthew
C. Romans.
D. None of the above.

7. Which of the following books does not contain words spoken by Jesus?

A. Mark
B. John
C. Acts
D. None of the above.

8. Which of the following books were written to a person known as “Theophilus”?

A. Luke and Acts.
B. Corinthians I and Corinthians II.
C. Chronicles I and Chronicles II.
D. None of the above.

9. What is the last book in the Old Testament?

A. Haggai.
B. Malachi
C. Revelation.
D. None of the above.

10. In which book did the Jews finally arrive in the promised land?

A. Deuteronomy.
B. Joshua.
C. Kings I
D. None of the above.

Travel - The legacy of the Khmer Empire

2010-02-11T10:11:00.001-06:00

Angkor Wat Archeological Park is located near Siam Reap, Cambodia. The park contains a series of the millennium-old temple ruins of the Khmer Empire dating back to 1000 A.D. If it were located in this hemisphere or near Europe, it would be as famous and as popular with travelers as the pyramids and Machu Picchu. It has been designated by UNESCO as a World Class Heritage Site.

Angkor Wat, is a massive 'temple-mountain' dedicated to the Hindu god, Vishnu. It is surrounded by a moat and an exterior wall measuring 1300 meters x 1500 meters. The entire temple is covered with murals and art images .but the most memorable are the bas reliefs on the exterior walls depicting stories and characters from Hindu mythology and the historical wars of the rule at that time. These pictures are an unparalleled display of the life and times of the Khmer Empire.

There is much more to see at Angkor Wat with countless numbers of other temples. The entire area was abandoned for many centuries. As a result many of the structures were invaded by enormous trees that cannot be fully extricated from the ruins. Thus, it is a fascinating study of the power of unabated jungle growth

It is not necessary to live in a hut in Cambodia either. Like most Southeast Asia destinations Siam Reap has a world class hotel called the Angkor Wat very close to the ruins. The rates are quite reasonable, too.

Travel: An Overlooked Gem in Alabama

2010-02-10T14:04:00.002-06:00

Travel: A Gem in Alabama

I have previously suggested trips to distant lands in Asia and Africa in this series. You may recoil at the time, effort, and expense needed to reach those places. You have no such excuse with respect to today’s posting. It surprises me that so few of my acquaintances have ever been to what I regard as the second best travel destination in Alabama, Tuskegee University.

Booker T. Washington was an amazing man. He was employed in the late Nineteenth Century to run an impoverished school for Negroes in an unlikely locale in Southeast Alabama. When he completed his work, Tuskegee Institute was one of the finest educational institutions for African American in the United States and remains so today. He had a remarkable ability to raise funds from rich Yankees and Southern white politicians. He also became the primary spokesman for African Americans during the first two decades of the Twentieth Century.

Tuskegee University campus remains a reflection of the man, Booker T. Washington. He believed that true liberation to the black man would come from education, particularly education that qualified his graduates to have the skills necessary to be gainfully employed. His students constructed the early buildings on the campus out of materials that they had manufactured themselves. These buildings remain today. They are simply designed but an eloquent statement of the history of the school

Monty and I visited Tuskegee primarily to see the “Singing Windows,” portraying various Negro Spirituals. It is probably the best known window in the state. The window was nice enough, but I was stunned by the chapel itself. The old chapel had burned down and the new one was designed by the famous architect and Auburn graduate, Paul Rudulph. It is the most impressive contemporary building I have seen in Alabama, and there are few that can match it anywhere.

Other sites well worth the trip are the Booker T. Washington-George Washington Carver museum. We saw the movie on Booker T. Washington, and it is well worth the twenty minutes or so. Washington’s home is now on display on the campus. The airport where the Tuskegee Airmen were trained during World War is a few miles out of town. One of those flyers, Chappie Hayes, a Tuskegee graduate, became the first African American General in the Air Force. I had the privilege of hearing him speak at the Birmingham Rotary Club in the early seventies, where he received a rarely bestowed standing ovation.

Spend a day at Tuskegee and you will not regret it.

Breaking News - President Obama’s News Conference

2010-02-09T13:45:00.000-06:00

I have just heard Obama’s news conference concerning his meeting with Congressional leaders from both parties. It was, in my judgment, a watershed event

Obama seems to be doing all the things he should done a year ago. He stated that the country cannot endure another year of wrangling over health care. He called on the leaders to find those parts on which they can reach agreement.. In addition he indicated a willingness to horse trade on the issues which are the sacred cows of both parties.

He must have been persuasive because the Republican leaders hinted that they are willing to participate in the process.

He also took a middle position on the energy policy. He said that both sides must recognize that there is a need for expanding our use of carbon fuels to satisfy the needs for the short run and for research and development of “clean” sources of energy, particularly for the long run. I believe that his position will resonate well in Congress and in the country.

I view that this new position towards compromise and accommodation may reverse the downward trent of hyper-partisanship and that the country will benefit from it.

What has happened to bring about a change of heart? We certainly can thank the people of Massachusetts who sent a welcome wake up call to Washington. Another possibility has not been mentioned anywhere to my knowledge. Obviously President Obama read, studied and understood the message contained in Mainlineexpress.blogpot.com last week!

Travel - A Charming Saharan Land

2010-02-08T11:50:00.002-06:00

If you are squeamish about visiting Arab countries, then consider Morocco. The U.S. enjoys its oldest non-broken friendship treaty with this country. It has a peaceful history and is very hospitable to foreigners.(Morocco is not to be confused with the neighboring Algeria, which has a much more speckled history.) It is also a delightful country worthy of a trip.

Geographically, Morocco is divided by the Atlas Mountains which run parallel to the Mediterranean coast. Most of the economic and governmental centers are north of the mountains. The Saharan desert is located to the south.

We flew into Marrakech, which lies on the northern edge of the Atlas Mountains. Marrakech is a popular spot for Europeans but does not get its due from USA. It has great hotels, top restaurants and other accoutements of a modern tourist town and also has authentic old town where story tellers and snake charmers can be found.

We stayed in a small residential hotel that ranks with the best we have seen. Our luxurious room was accompanied by a private rooftop patio. Having breakfast on the roof was an unforgettable experience.

From Marrakesh we hired a driver for the rest of the trip. Using a driver is probably the best means of travel and not prohibitively expensive, although driving a rented car is a perfectly acceptable alternative. We crossed the Atlas Mountains into Ouarzazate, where the best known Kasbahs have been preserved. Kasbahs are adobe buildings associated with Saharan Morocco.

From Ouarzazate we drove to Erfoud on the eastern corner of the desert. The drive was very interesting. We were able to observe life in the desert where camels remain the staple transportation of people and property.

Erfoud has one main attraction, that is a chance to see the desert sun at dawn. I sometimes wondered why we were going so far to see a sunrise, but Erfoud was one of our favorite stops.

The concierge at our hotel informed us that we would be picked up at four o’clock the next morning and taken to a special place to see the sunrise. The next morning we were met by one of the fiercest and most dangerous looking human beings imaginable. Monty was afraid that this man was an imposter who would kidnap us once we left the hotel. No one was awake in the hotel to confirm that he was indeed our guide for the morning. I kept my thoughts to myself, because I was not sure Monty was wrong.

Our fears were not allayed when our driver stopped the car in the loneliest place on the planet, so it seemed. It was a perfect scene for a mugging. He directed us to get out of the car, which we did with apprehensively. Then he pointed up to the sky. What we saw was as beautiful as any sight I can remember. There was the milky way in its full splendor and virtually every star in the heaven. He then broke into a big smile extremely proud of what he was showing us.

He next took us to an area where dunes dotted the landscape. We then embarked on a camel ride in the dark running through the dunes in the darkness. At the conclusion of the ride we were deposited on one of the dunes to wait for the sunrise. The whole event was so thrilling that the sunrise itself was almost an afterthought.

I have ridden on several camels and have not particularly enjoyed it, but the Erfoud ride was something special.

From Erfoud we drove to Fés, supposedly the sight of the beginning of Moroccan history. Its Medina is supposed to be the nearest the modern visitor can get to a medieval town. It is the sight of the palace of the modern day king and one of the great mosques.

I have noted three principal reasons why people who like to travel tend skip Morocco. First, most of us are apprehensive about going to countries where we do not like their politics. I have long since learned that most people are not the same as their politicians, and that concern is often overrated. Moreover, Morocco is much more closely tied to the West than many of its Middle Eastern neighbors. I believe that there is more danger attached to traveling in New York or the District of Columbia than in Morocco.

The second obstacle is that people fear that their accommodations will be inferior in what they believe to be underdeveloped countries. My experience is that the facilities in many places such as Morocco are superior to what we find in this country.

Last, but not least. Many people, often choose to take a cruise and drop off for a day trip Unfortunately, the real Morocco is not found on the Mediterranean beach. You must explore, and the rewards will be great.

The Failing Health Care Reform Bill IV - The Belligerent Left

2010-02-04T06:05:00.000-06:00

The far left seemed to insist on strict conformity with their own agenda and regularly threatened to bolt if anything less was adopted. They ignored the fundamental fact that they can only pass what the sixtieth senator will support.

For instance Senator Baucus warned them early in the fall that the public option was dead. Yet the far left threatened to revolt, if it did not stay in. Keeping that issue alive prevented the Senate leadership from reaching the magic number of 60 before the Massachusetts election..

Obama also reneged on his promise that he would seek a bipartisan solution largely because the far left forced him into a more strident posture.. Both sides accuse the other of abandoning bipartisanship. I come down squarely on the side of the Republicans on this issue. Not because they were enthusiastic participants in a bipartisan strategy, but because the Democrats gave them no other viable alternative.

The Democrats have been in charge and must take the initiative. It appears to me that the Democratic idea of bipartisanship is to adopt their own plan and ask the Republican to rubber stamp it..

I do not believe that the Democrats ever really wanted to reach an accommodation with the Republican leadership. Instead they were simply trying to pick off a handful of backbenchers so that they would have a comfortable margin to pass the Democratic plan. That is not a bipartisan strategy in my book. Those tactics made the job of the Minority Whip to keep the Republicans in line very easy.

If the bill does not pass it will be the left who killed it.

The Failing Health Care Reform Bill III - Transparency

2010-02-03T08:43:00.001-06:00

Obama vowed to bring transparency to government. Ironically, he is now identified with a massive, secretive and sometimes confusing campaign to pass health care reform.

We hear about backroom deals with blue dog senators that do not pass the smell test. In most instances the bill was drafted behind closed doors without significant dialogue in public hearings explaining how it works. It was initially presented to Congress and the Senate without any explanation as to how the costs would be covered. The public was simply supposed to trust them.

When details on financing came out, the vast bulk of the costs were to be underwritten by savings which the plan was supposed to generate. The proponents skipped over the details about how these costs would be wrenched out of the system. Obviously they were placing a lot of the burden on new regulations that they were also proposing.

I for one am cynical about cost reduction. History has proved that regulations coming out of the New Deal era were totally ineffective in reducing costs in the long run. Moreover, our government has proved that it has a rapacious appetite for spending saved moneys rather than paying off debt. I have watched the Department of Defense save costs decade after decade, but somehow the actual totals go up. We have already seen the Obama Administration’s propensity to spend. Last year the administration was downplaying the long term cost of TARP loans, because the banks would pay it back. Now that some of the banks are repaying the loans, Obama seems to be looking for ways to put the money into other give away programs.

Moreover, there are a myriad of taxes, including medicare premium increases, being proposed. Virtually every one of these taxes have been met by a maelstrom of criticism.

The sheer size of the bill also prevented thoughtful and thorough discussion of the ramifications of the plan. Most of the public, including me, does not understand all that the it entails.

Democrats charge the tea party types with distortion when they claim that the Federal government is planning to kill grandmother in order to save costs. The claim is easy to make, however, when no one can give an adequate explanation as to why that will not be the case. The cost savings are largely dependent on removing “unnecessary” expenses incurred in the final months of life. Admittedly a large portion of the costs are related to the final illness. Moreover, the present tends to enable incurring excessive expense for heroic but futile efforts to extend life. Who is going to make the decision as to which costs are unnecessary? Some bureaucrat?

The sprouting Tea Party movement has probably benefitted most from the non-transparency. They smell a conspiracy and have found that many others do, too. It is only human nature to believe that anyone who is hiding something does not want us to know the truth. I do not believe that the Democrats ever took them seriously enough until after they showed their muscle in Massachusetts. And then it was too late.

The Failing Health Care Reform Bill II- Overreaching Legislation.

2010-02-02T05:49:00.001-06:00

The Democrats should have learned from Clinton’s experience that it is extremely difficult to adopt an comprehensive plan covering various subjects, all at the same time. One constituency may be concerned about by an isolated portion of the plan, but their best strategy is to oppose the entire package. Another segment may have entirely different concerns but they join in opposition in order to prevent their own interests from being adversely affected. Thus two groups with different interests combine to constitute a more formidable opposition.

That phenomenon is apparent in the case of health reform. Obama expressed shock that the insurance companies invested so much in their lobbying activities. Why not? Proposals such as the public option and single payer government insurance threatened their existence. I already mentioned the unions who suddenly became disaffected with the new taxes being assessed on the health plans they have proudly negotiated over the years.. The Medicare generation, which was betrayed by the NAARP, does not believe that their benefits will be secure. Even those who are approaching 65 have been hearing that they will not receive all the benefits now included in Medicare. Even the issue of the deficits is tied to self interest. Three quarters of the population are happy with the insurance they now have. Most likely they see the plan as a trillion dollar boondoggle for the benefit of some one other than themselves.

Clinton made the same mistake as Obama in attempting to take too big a bite at the apple, but he quickly retreated. If the Clintons had successfully sponsored a less ambitious plan, Obama could have built on what had been done and the Democrats might have had a significant trophy in their cabinet.

Sometimes overlooked is the fact that the most significant health care reform actually enacted was proposed by George W. Bush, who procured prescription drug benefits for the elderly. It certainly was not comprehensive, but it survived the scrutiny of a contentious congress.

Instead all the Democrats have done is generate a lot of hot air and, so far, have nothing to show for their work.

The Failing Health Care Reform Bill I - Who is to blame?

2010-02-01T06:36:00.001-06:00

Obama and his party have a debacle on their hands.. They have fiddled with health care reform for an entire year, while more important issues remained unresolved. The Democrats have managed their razor thin majority in the Senate with the sophistication and finesse of a mafia hit man. Now that they have been caught making all the wrong choices, it is time to look for scapegoats.

The media has tended to look for parallels with the first years of the Reagan and Clinton. Both presidents escaped largely unharmed from their early failures. I believe that the Jimmy Carter years may be more apt. Carter had a strong mandate with a convincing victory over Gerald Ford and control of both houses. It appeared that the way was clear for the Democratic juggernaut to restore the New Deal. In fact they squabbled so much that very little was accomplished. The economy went south, and Carter ended up with a one term presidency.

The stunning defeat in Massachusetts now leaves the Democrats in limbo with a few choices that are all distasteful to them.

Abandoning the health care effort will make them look like the gang that cannot shoot straight.

Starting over again, as the Republicans smugly suggest, would take at least another six months. Neither the Congress, which is facing an uncomfortable election, nor the country will tolerate more of the endless bickering and stalemate.

The only viable choice would be for the House of Representative to adopt what the Senate already passed without changes. In that case, they would avoid the necessity of coming back to the Senate where the Republicans are armed with their forty first vote. The problem is that the Senate bill includes terms that the left wing Democrats deem to be abominable, such as restrictions on funding abortions and taxing the so-called Cadillac plans which are largely established through union collective bargaining agreements.

How did they get into the mess? I have three major suggestions, which will be discussed separately over the next three days. I hope you will join me.

Travel - A place you probably have not seen, but you should - Spice Island, Africa

2010-01-25T13:22:00.003-06:00

Yes, there is a Zanzibar. I am sure that many of you may have thought that Zanzibar is the fictitious invention of some fantasy writer such as Rudyard Kipling. Others may know it exists but could not tell you the continent where it is located.

Zanzibar in real life is just as exotic as we may conjure up in our imagination. It is one of the Spice Islands off the coast of Tanzania, which is, of course, located in East Africa. Many of us may dream of taking an African Safari, which is one of the great experiences on this planet. If you choose to visit some of the popular places such as Mount Kilimanjaro or the Serengeti, consider reserving about three nights and two days at this unique place.

Zanzibar was a slave trading mecca in the past. Hapless Africans would be captured on the continent and their new masters would carry them off to Zanzibar where the slaves would be auctioned off to be transported to destinations all over the world. Today the Slave Market includes the old auction block and holding quarters, which make a sobering statement on the cruelty of slavery.

But do not think of Zanzibar as a downer. Far from it. Zanzibar has been ruled by many peoples over the centuries including, Arabs, Asians and Europeans. As a result, the inhabitants are the product of a confluence of many cultures. The Old Stone Town appeared to me to be extremely authentic. The streets are so narrow that I felt that I could touch the walls on each side at the same time.

One night we took a meal on the open air roof of one of the local hotels. Although our own hotel was only about a quarter of a mile or less away from the restaurant, the concierge insisted that a bell boy accompany us to and from the restaurant for fear that we would be hopelessly lost in the labyrinth of alley ways that passed for streets. Needless to say that walk itself deserved four stars.

The meal was just as exciting. The starry sky was clearly visible as the guests sat on the floor surrounded by pillows to make us comfortable. The eerie music, the food which was delicious but largely mysterious, made that night one of the highlights of all of our travels.

Zanzibar produces many spices, including clove, vanilla, cinnamon, turmeric, nutmeg. and black pepper. Spice farms dot the landscape and make for a wonderful day of meandering through the countryside.

Finally, when you return home and someone at a cocktail party asks you where you have been, you can say “Zanzibar.” Most likely they will be speechless.

My Take on the Tuesday Elections

2010-01-20T10:06:00.001-06:00

Democrats and some of their friends in the media tried to spin the Scott Brown victory over Martha Coakley as a local race with minimal effect on the November elections. That tactic may have been persuasive in Virginia and even sounded reasonable when consistently Democratic New Jersey elected a Republican governor. In Massachusetts, however, Brown campaigned on platform dominated by national issues boasting that he would be the forty first senator who could derail the Obama juggernaut. Now that the Democrats have shown that they cannot hold power in the East, what is going to happen when seats are contested in the Midwest, South and beyond? It may not be pretty.

The fact is that the Democrats now have no safe seats in the November elections. Their efforts to raise money will be impaired, and they will have many more places to spend it. The health care bill has become an albatross and will only pass by use of brute force and awkwardness.

The White House is bound to be in disarray too. Obama chose to invest virtually all of his political capital on a health care plan which now enjoys support of less than a majority of Americans who view the economy as their number one priority. Health care is Nero’s fiddle while the economy is the fire burning in Rome. Moreover, Obama has not seemed to be any more effective in dealing with the mess in the Middle East than Bush.

There was another election. William Bell has finally become Birmingham’s mayor, a position that he thought would come to him many years ago. There are many needs for the city of Birmingham. At the top of my list would be the curbing of wholesale corruption, bringing sanity and some measure of competence to the education system, and attracting new businesses. Is Bell the man for the job? The answer is patently obvious.

Bell’s victory is no surprise. The election result last night was politics as usual in Birmingham. The most stunning event in my mind was a political ad Bell ran close to election day. Many years ago Art Hanes Sr., a hard nosed segregationist, was running for president of the old City Commission against Tom King, Sr., who was more moderate. (Both men had sons who ended up as distinguished judges in the Jefferson County Circuit Court. I always wondered what they discussed during coffee breaks.) The Hanes campaign hired a black man to approach King and shake his hand and a photographer to snap King’s picture. The picture was reproduced in Hanes ads to show that King was an “integrationist.” The ploy worked and Hanes was elected. That tactic has been widely regarded as one of the low points in the politics of the segregation era.

Now after many decades, the same tactic was used again in reverse. Bell ran an ad showing him and his wife accompanied by pictures of Patrick Cooper and Julia Boaz Cooper, Patrick’s ex-wife. Nothing was said in the ad, but the message was clear, Julia is white and Patrick is black. Bell was conveying the message that Patrick Cooper was not black enough to be mayor. Who said that racism is dead?

Oh well, Birmingham once called itself the “Pittsburgh of the South.” Today it would be more appropriate to be described as the “Newark of the South.”

Travel - A place you probably have not seen, but you should - The Land of the Rising Sun..

2010-01-18T13:15:00.002-06:00

When Monty and I decided to go to Japan we were met with skepticism and downright opposition from our friends. “Why do you want to go to Japan?” You would think we were going to Siberia; but then, I would not mind going there either.

Japanese travelers usually appear to be aloof, iconoclastic and humorless, but, in their own country, they are the friendliest to tourists that we have seen. You are surprised aren’t you?

Before leaving we purchased a two week train pass. It was a necessity, because trains are the only feasible means of travel. After selecting our itinerary, we made a list of every train and departure time that we anticipated using for the entire trip. Shortly after reaching Tokyo we made all of our reservations with the precise dates and times for each trip. Only in Japan is such precision so easy.

I can recall at least five sites which were breathtakingly exciting and unique to Japan. They are:

1. Ryokans, the traditional hostel. It is hard to believe that sleeping in a spare room on palettes and eating meals while sitting on the floor can be one the most luxurious experiences imaginable, but it is true.

2. The Kabuki and Noh theaters. This traditional drama has a pace and eeriness unmatched in our experience.

3. The Kyoto National Museum. There are only a handful of museums in its class in the world, but it stands number one as a reflection of the nation it serves. I was particularly taken to see the early Buddhist art which was much finer than what was being produced in the West at the time.

4. Kyoto again - the vaunted tea ceremony. It is a thing of beauty and good taste and is unforgettable.

5. And of course there the trains. The Japanese idea of a late train is one that arrives two minutes after the scheduled time. All passengers line up in the premarked spots where their car will stop and it takes less than five minutes to load and unload the cars. The ride is exquisite. The most famous trains are the Shinkansen. We took one from Hiroshima to Tokyo. There were five stops and covered 850 miles in five hours.

There is not much downside to a trip to Japan. My only warning is to travel light. There are no red caps in the train stations although most of them are equipped with escolators making the walk easy

I am sorry I wrote this blog. As I think of it, I wish I were in Japan again.

Alabama’s Secret Weapon

2010-01-11T16:05:00.002-06:00

Much has been said about Alabama’s national championship, but the pundits are strangely silent about Bama’s secret weapon without whom this team would never have reached its dream. That weapon is Lady Luck.

Consider the Tennessee game. The image of Terence Cody running off the field without his helmet before the play was even over will define him as a hero for the ages, much like Van Tiffin and his kick. But really, Alabama won the Tennessee game because a kicker was twice unable to elevate field goal attempts to their normal trajectory. That is real luck. Otherwise, Cody would have been weeping on the bench and Kevin Scarbinsky would not be boasting that this team was the best ever.

Mack Brown claims that he had the superior team and that he lost simply because Marcell Demarius pinched Colt McCoy’s nerve. Mack should be a better sport than that, but it is true that Texas was unlucky and Alabama was lucky when that injury occurred. The game would have been different with a healthy McCoy, but we will never know how different it would be.

The biggest stroke of luck for Alabama is what did not happen, namely it never suffered a crippling injury throughout the year.. The only significant loss was Dante Hightower, but Alabama was lucky because he was one of many talented linebackers who ably filled the void created by his absence.

I can remember when Auburn lost all of its centers and had to move a guard to the center positiion to deliver the ball to the quarterback. Nothing like that happened to this team. Terry Grant, a fourth string running back, was injured this year, Wasn’t Alabama lucky that they did not lose Mark Ingram for the year instead?

But the scariest prospect was at quarterback. The top three quarterbacks in the nation, Sam Bradford, Tim Tebow and Colt McCoy, all suffered signifcant injuries. Isn’t Alabama lucky that the same fate did not happen to Greg McElroy? He may not be in the class of those three, but do you really believe that Alabama would have won the national championship with Starr Jackson at the helm? I don’t.

Texas cannot complain. They lost the shot at the national championship last year because of a play that took place with one second left of the clock in the Texas Tech game. This year they would not have been able to show up on January 6, if the clock had ticked one second longer on the next to last play in the Nebraska game. They were lucky this year and last year they were not.

It is not my point to belittle Alabama’s accomplishment. I believe the most championships are accompanied by a generous dose of good luck. If Alabama, is to win another championship, they need the players, the coaches, the discipline, training and dedication to do the job. But if they really expect to succeed they must pay attention to the mysterious and powerful thirteenth woman of the gridiron - Lady Luck.

Travel: Setting the Objectives of Your Trip

2009-10-06T08:23:00.003-05:00

The best trips are both entertaining and educational. But if you are looking for entertainment alone, there is no reason to go abroad. If you want to go to the beach, try Destin, not Thailand. Visiting a foreign country can be fun. The foods, accommodations, people, geographic wonders and public events all exciting. But travel exposes us to new people, attitudes, historical sites, and culture that is truly enlightening. Nothing made for good traveling experience than simple curiosity.

Study where you are going before you make your plans. I am privileged to be married to an incredibly talented traveler. When we zero in on our next trip, Monty will get out her travel books to discover what there is to see. We have a strong preference for Fodor’s series, because it discusses both the places to see and the accommodations available. It is also helpful to look at the itineraries in tour brochures to see where they go. She would also read novels written by or about people of the country being visited and leave the histories to me. The simple fact is that the more you know about the country, the better your experience will be.

To me a trip is most rewarding when connected with a special interest. Monty and I are most attracted to art. Travel is an indispensable means of enriching both pursuits. I cannot make an fair estimate as to how many art museums we have visited. It must be in the hundreds. Art reflects the history and character of a country.

We have also preferred to limit each trip destinations to one or two countries. When we took a tour to Buenos Aires, Rio de Janeiro, Chile, and Lima, it seemed that we spent about as much time on the air plane as in our destination and left too much unseen in each of those very interesting places. On the other hand, we spent over a week in Portugal, and it was one of our favorite trips.

Obama's Folly

2009-09-15T13:09:00.005-05:00

In an earlier posting, I shared my concern that President Obama might give in to the tendency of Democrats towards protectionism. (December 25, 2008) That fear is growing. Last week, the Chinese government took the first step towards impressing tariffs of American exports of automotive products and chicken meat. This move was an apparent and immediate retaliation for Obama’s decision to levy tariffs on tires imported from China.

This may should like dull stuff, but it can set in motion a trade war with far reaching effects. Consider what the combined actions of two governments can cause. China exports $1.3 Billion worth of tires into this country. The announced U.S. tariffs can reach as much as 35% of the price, which means that if China could maintain its level of exports with the tariff, American consumers would be required to pay almost $2 Billion for the same tires as before. The $40 tire would become a $60 tire. Arguably American union shop plants would get the business without being required to be competitive. You and I will thus be paying a higher price for tires in order to subsidize a plant in Akron in an attempt to preserve jobs for some loyal Democratic voters and their employers.

Actually the above scenario is not how the real world works. China would lose its edge as a low cost competitor. Other tire makers - some domestic and some foreign - could raise their prices at least to the level of the newly crowned low cost competitor, but the higher prices would apply to all tires, allowing for a smaller increase but covering a much greater volume of tire sales.

Nevertheless, the principal is the same. All of us are called upon to pay a higher price for the product in order to subsidize an inefficient industry. China is now retaliating by increasing the tariff on $899 billion worth of automotive products and $378 billion in chicken products. (This type of measured response is typical in tariff trade wars.) These tariffs will result in increasing prices for them in China, allowing other suppliers to take our market share. The resulting reduction in exports of the automotive and chicken products will penalize American firms and jeopardize jobs in the affected industries.

I wonder if workers in the automotive industry understand that they are facing further job loss because of tariffs set up for the benefit of rubber workers. When tire prices go up, will they understand that their loss of purchasing power is not the product of greedy wall street bankers but of the stroke of the pen of a politician who seems to be more concerned about the next Ohio primary than the general good?

Nice move Barack!

Travel - Choosing a Destination

2009-09-02T16:16:00.003-05:00

We were concluding an eleven day horse trip in the Bob Marshall Wilderness, Montana, under the leadership of Jack Hooker. Monty was telling Karen, Jacks wife, that she hoped we would come back again. Karen said that people like us do not come back, but move on to see other things. She understood us well. We have moved on to other places.

The patterns of our travel have been to go in ever widening circles. It is just as well to visit the closer destinations before wandering off too far. We recently discovered that we had overlooked one of the most interesting places in Alabama - Tuskegee. I bet that most of you have not been there either. It is one of the most interesting campuses in America. The campus is dominated by structures made by the students themselves, which produces and impressive but simple landscape. Its chapel designed by Paul Rudolph, John A. Welch and Louis Frey is probably the finest contemporary building in Alabama and contains the only nationally regarded stain glass window in the state. Booker T. Washington’s home, the Museum with fascinating movies of the lives of Washington and George Washington Carver, and the airport where the Tuskegee airman were trained could all deserve at least a star or two by Michelin Guide standards. Why go to a village in Italy, if you have not seen Tuskegee?

There is as much to see in this country as any where in the world. Some of my favorites are New York, Williamsburg, Glacier National Park, and Chicago, and anywhere you can find Frank Lloyd Wright architecture.

The same principal of ever widening circles applies to foreign travel. There is no reason to seek out the exotic until after you have seen the well traveled spots abroad including, Alaska and a Hawaii, which are considered foreign lands by The Traveler’s Century Club.

There is no reason to go to remote corners of the unusual places until you have visited the obvious ones. I still believe that the best destinations are the great cities of Europe - London, Paris, Rome (by way of Venice and Florence), Madrid, Athens, Berlin. Moreover all of those cities surround a treasure trove of other great destinations. These cities are popular spots for a reason. They are unusually rich in culture and our own heritage. Once you have been exposed to our own country and Europe, it is time to venture further and explore the many places throughout the world that are worthy of your time and treasure.

The following is a list of some of my favorites. In Africa the Serengeti, Lake Victoria, Capetown, and many other superb Safari locations dominate the south while Egypt and Morocco are most prominent in the North. Asia includes China, India, Japan, and all of Southeast Asia. My favorites in South America are Peru, Iguazu Falls, Chile and Argentina. In Eastern Europe there are Moscow and St. Petersburg, Russia, Poland, Czech Republic and Hungary. Travel in the Middle East has been inhibited by the conflagrations there, but Israel is a must. Leaders among the remaining parts of the world are Australia, New Zealand, Antarctica, and Spitsbergen, Norway.

There are many places we have not visited that probably should be on the list, including the Philippines, Mongolia, Bhutan, Korea, Nepal and the Galapagos Islands. Maybe we can make a dent in that list before it gets even longer.

Meanwhile, let me suggest a very special trip for you. In next year between May and September, the tiny town of Oberammergau, Germany will perform its marvelous Passion Play, for the forty first time. This is a world class event that comes along once a decade and should be seen during a lifetime. The play fills out one day leaving time to Switzerland or Austria nearby, to Italy in the south, Berlin in the east or maybe Paris in the west. You will not regret it.

Travel - What is a traveler?

2009-08-27T16:17:00.002-05:00

In 1971 Monty and I were waiting for the dining room to open in a Pesada in Obidos, Portugal,. We had been traveling around that country and had not encountered one English speaking person for almost a week. In walked a young man and woman who were about as shabby looking as possible. Their blue jeans were torn, and both had needed a haircut for several weeks. They were not promising company, but, alas, they could speak English. What the heck, we engaged them in conversation. By the end of the evening our life style changed forever.

He was an accountant and she was a school teacher from British Columbia, Canada. They had quit their jobs and withdrawn their savings to spend a year traveling though Europe and Northern Africa. They were living out of the back of a minivan they had bought in Germany and had brought only one change of clothing, including the jeans which were by then ready for the junk heap.

They entertained us with stories of places I had never thought we would ever see, such as Russia, Eastern Europe, Turkey, Algeria, Morocco and many more. It was as if we had just met Rudyard Kipling. The theme of their message was that you could go to almost any country with safety and see things that could only be found in National Geographic. That couple, whose names I have long forgot became my heroes. From that day on Monty and I broadened our horizons to the point that we came to aspire to see and experience all within the four corners of the earth.

This will begin a series on travel reflecting on some insights we have gained from traveling to 70 countries so far.

Are you a traveler? Not a tourist. Not a vacationer. A traveler relishes in the sight of new places and people. A traveler is self reliant and not afraid of the unknown. There is nothing wrong with trotting back to the same resort, playing tennis, swimming at the beaches, dressing up for the American Plan dinner. I have been there. It is fun and appropriate in many circumstances, but do not confuse such a vacation with travel. Travel is stalking the leopard hunting its prey in the marshes. Travel is reliving the history of a country as presented in its national museum. Travel is paddling in an underground river in China. Most of all travel rewards those with a relentless curiosity about all that can be discovered about the planet earth.

This series will examine some of the nuts and bolts of successful travel. In the next posting I will discuss how to select a destination. I hope you enjoy it.

THE LEGACY OF DAVID

2009-08-18T10:23:00.004-05:00

The Gospel of Luke records the angel announcing to Mary that she will be the mother of the messiah, sayings, “you will ... bear a son, whom you are to name Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High God. The Lord God will give him the throne of his ancestor David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever....” The fact that Jesus would receive the throne of David acknowledges an abiding bond between Christianity and Judaism.

Although David is at the center of several entertaining and compelling stories, many Christians fail to grasp the central role that he played in the Jewish heritage. Jesus was a Jew. He lived in the context of the Jewish heritage. It was extremely important to the early church that he came out of the line of David as had been prophesied.

The indigenous tribes were not driven out of Israel when Joshua conquered the promised land. . They were merely subjugated. Nor were the Israelites a truly united people. The land was divided into twelve sectors controlled by tribes which were descendants of different sons of Jacob. There was no single nation of Israel. No single leader.

Consequently the Israelites were plagued by chronic violent conflict with their displaced co-habitants. Tired of defending their new home from a position of weakness, the Israelites formed a single nation led by a king appointed by God.

Saul, the first king, was a capable leader, but he was flawed. David, the second king, finally accomplished the goal of uniting the people of Israel and establishing secure borders. He proved to be a ferocious general, defeating virtually every enemy of Israel at that time. By the end of his life, Israel was a legitimate member of the league of nations. Therefore, David enjoys a position in the history of Israel somewhat akin to George Washington in our country. After all, Washington converted a conglomerate of colonies into a nation.

But David’s greatness was not limited to military and political success. He had abilities that raised him above others. He was a poet. Think about it. How many generals do you know who are poets? I don’t mean roses are red and violets are blue either. His Psalms are read and beloved even today. On the other hand, how many poets do you know who could successfully lead an army into battle? They require different skill sets.

He showed remarkable capacity for compassion and forgiveness. As David’s reputation grew Saul’s jealously matured into a rage, and he sought to kill David utilizing the full strength of his army. Nevertheless, David never wavered in his devotion to Saul, who had been his patron. David declined to kill Saul when he had an opportunity, and genuinely grieved when he died.

David’s complex character is inextricably tied with his moral and ethical lapses, too. The most famous is his liaison with Bathsheba. David arranged to have her husband killed in battle so that he could marry Bathsheba and dump his wife. He was also a terrible father to Absolom.

Despite his failings, David was quick to confess to God and repent. Much of Psalms written by him demonstrates the humility and repentance which were integral parts of his character.

David’s thus presents an impressive blend of paradoxes. A general but also a poet. A powerful king who could be ruthless, but also one who was forgiving and gracious to his adversaries. An enemy to be feared, but a friend of unflinching loyalty. At times heroic and superhuman. Other times, a woeful sinner. Susceptible to sinfulness, but repentant and accepting of God’s punishments.

These paradoxes make him more than a hero. He embraces the noblest ideals of humanity along with the inherent weakness in us all. He was truly a great human being, warts and all.

God rewarded David with a promise that the House of David would be established as the ruling family of Israel. Later God, through Jeremiah, promised that the messiah would come from the House of David. The promise of the messiah carried with it the implicit hope that Israel would return to the glory once brought upon it by David. These two promises became the imprimatur of David’s enduring influence on the course of the Jewish history.

To the Jews, it was imperative that their messiah conform to the descriptions contained in the prophecies. If so, the ultimate emolument of messiahship was the throne of Jesus’ ancestor David. Jesus inherited the throne and carried it to new levels of greatness. The throne was no longer a small kingdom but a heavenly scepter. The reaches of the kingdom were not limited to the land between Dan and Beersheba, but spread to the ends of the earth. A temporal rule was extended to the end of time.

Sessions and Sotomayor on Making Law

2009-07-27T09:55:00.003-05:00

Senator Session and Judge Sotomayor agreed during her confirmation hearing on at least one thing - good judges should not make law. They were both wrong.

The fact is that judges, particularly Supreme Court Justices, do make law. They cannot avoid it. Judge Benjamin Cardozo wrote the definitive work explaining how judges make law. Judges rely upon precedents, which are decisions in other cases with similar facts and issues. In most cases these precedents are not “on all fours.” The court must select the most persuasive precedent which controls the case at hand. In so doing they extend the influence of one precedent and limit the application of another. Cardozo thus pointed out that the law is made in the interstices between precedents.

Consider the Firefighters case in which Judge Sotomayor’s court was reversed by the Supreme Court last month. The City of Hartford had given a civil service test to firefighters in order to determine who was entitled to promotion. All of the successful applicants were white, and if the test were allowed to stand, no Afro-American firefighters would have been eligible for promotion. The white firefighters claimed that this action was reverse discrimination. Essentially the case involved the primacy of two competing values. On the one side the City was concerned about its duty to avoid discrimination against the historically disadvantaged, primarily Afro-Americans and women. They were apparently concerned that failure to promote any non-whites would be deemed to be unlawful discrimination itself. The white firefighters challenged the city’s action as discriminatory towards them who had achieved the eligibility to be promoted based on merit. The Second Circuit panel, which included Judge Sotomayor, deemed the city’s concerns to be adequate to avoid constitutional challenge. The Supreme Court reversed.

Did the Supreme Court make law in that case? Absolutely. You can be assured that city attorneys throughout the country are writing opinion letters advising their clients that from now on, when they give these tests, they should be prepared to live with the results.

Would the Supreme Court be making law if it had ruled for the city? Absolutely. The opinion letters would have contained different advice that even after the test is taken the city must take a second look to determine whether the exam results had a discriminatory effect.

Regardless of the ruling, the opinion letters would treat the decision of the United States Supreme Court with the same respect and authority as a statute enacted by Congress on the subject.

The Supreme Court makes law in another way. There are thousands of cases filed with the Court every year and which actually hears only about a hundred of them. The decision as to which cases will be heard is highly discretionary. The court does not necessarily pick cases on the basis of whether the decision in the lower court is right or wrong. They search for the cases the are of sufficient importance for them to address the issue.

This process of deciding what case will be heard gives the court the opportunity to pick the subject which the court itself wants to speak about. For instance, when Earl Warren was Chief Justice, a liberal Court took many case involving criminal justice and civil rights. A more conservative Court under Chief Justice Rehnquist look harder as cases dealing with states rights.

Which brings me to another misstatement which Sessions and Sotomayor also cozily agreed upon. They seemed to agree that the personal values of the judge do play a role in judicial decision making. I do not know where they got that from. Court opinions are rifled with explanations as to why their decisions produce a just result. The determination of justices as to what is just is inexorably tied to their own personal moral, practical and ethical values.

Judge Sotomayor made a gaffe in her speech at Duke University when she suggested that a Latino female may be able to decide cases wisely than others. After all a gaffe is frequently an inadvertent blurting out of an unpopular truth. It is foolish to deny that judges are not strongly influenced by their own life experiences when defining what is just and fair. From her point of view I am sure that she believes that her humble beginnings allow her to bring a fresh point of view to the Court. I am disappointed that she backed down on that point.

I am not suggesting that Senator Sessions was making an improper inquiry. He simply did not frame the issue correctly. Court should act within the framework of the law and not stray into matters that are legislative. Activist courts are sometimes accused of attempting to achieve a desired result by disregarding the legal framework in which they operate. Two cases that have been heavily criticized as being non-judicial are Roe v. Wade and the presidential election case which broke the tie between George Bush and Al Gore. Sessions was addressing a concern as to whether Sotomayor acknowledged the constraints that should be placed on the exercise of judicial power. Sotomayor understood what he was driving at and professed that she knew her place. By so doing she has probably avoided a bloody fight over her nomination.

Global Warming III - What is the solution?

2009-07-11T10:35:00.004-05:00

Even if we have the political will to address the global warming threat, what can we do about it?

Carbon emissions increased globally from a rate from about 1.1% per year in the nineties to more than 3% a year in 2001-2004. Broecker and Kunzig comment, "[N]o matter what happens in the West, the world’s energy consumption is going to increase dramatically in this century, not decrease. And most of that energy will probably continue to come from fossil fuels, above all coal. They are cheap, readily available, and incredibly convenient to use - and we have a global infrastructure of power plants and refineries and pipelines and gas stations that is built around using them." (P.189)

The environmental lobby has understandably focused on conservation measures that cut down on the volume of emissions. The list of energy saving ideas is long and growing. Each proposal has its champions- higher gas mileage, electric and hydrogen powered cars, windmills, solar systems, nuclear power, ethanol and so on. All of these proposals appear to be more of a palliative than a solution. For instance, it would require a sixty five foot wind mill for every man woman and child to meet our needs. Nuclear power is promising, but until nuclear fusion or some other safe, reliable system of waste disposal is developed, it will continue to be limited. Solar power is a long way from becoming cost efficient. It now costs about twenty times as much as coal fired energy. And then there is ethanol. The best I can tell, the chief function of ethanol is to help politicians win votes in the Iowa caucus.

A second approach would be to remove carbon emissions before they reach the atmosphere. The power industry is enthusiastic about flue-gas scrubbing that removes carbon from the emissions before they are released into the air. Scrubbing can be effective on new plants under construction but there is no economical way to add scrubbers to existing power plants. Scrubbing is not practical for automobile emissions, which represent 20% of the carbon emissions. Scrubbing may never become a universal solution to carbon dioxide removal. Nevertheless, coal is the cheapest and most plentiful energy source, and technology that can make the product environmentally friendly should be a welcome addition to the arsenal.

Still another approach involves preserving the capacity of nature to remove carbon from the atmosphere. Much is made of the reduction of rain forests in places such as South America. A green world will be cleaner than not, but land sources for absorbing carbon dioxide such a rain forests tend to be overestimated as the means of containing the spewing of carbon into the air. Only about 15% of the carbon dioxide emissions are consumed by natural forces on land, less that half as much as is absorbed in the ocean. That leaves 50% to remain in the atmosphere. I suspect that the best means of retaining nature’s capacity to absorb carbon may be to avoid heating up the earth, because warm waters actually release carbon dioxide into the air. So we are in a Catch 22. The earth warms and the earth consumes less carbon. The carbon retained in the atmosphere heats up the earth in turn releasing more carbon. And so on.

There remains one more option, namely the removal of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. This alternative was once considered the most ineffective solution because carbon is far less concentrated in the atmosphere than at the source of emissions. Flue gas is reduced from approximately one part in ten to one part in a million when it reaches the atmosphere. As a result, the scientific community long ignored that alternative.

Claus Lackner, a theoretical scientist, came to the conclusion that there is existing technology available that could remove carbon from the atmosphere efficiently and economically. He sold Walter Broecker on the idea, and Broecker became his champion. Through the use of venture capital, Lackner teamed up with Allen Wright to form a company that built an air extraction prototype. The prototype has been completed and Lackner’s company has declared the project a success.

If it works, the air extraction project solves many of the seemingly intractable issues. The new technology takes only a fraction of the space of wind power and does not raise the esthetic and environmental issues that wind power presents. A carbon waste must be disposed, but it can be done without presenting the toxic threat of nuclear waste. Also, because the carbon is found everywhere, the scrubbers can be located conveniently in the parts of the world where disposal is undertaken. Most important, this technology may prove to be affordable.

Broecker believes that the Lackner project holds the best prospect for fixing the climate. I certainly hope that he is right. Under any circumstances, I am convinced the ultimate solution, if there is one, will come out of our capacity to invent new technologies and that the best investment of public and private resources lies in research and development projects such as the Lackner company.
　
References:
Broecker and Kunzig Fixing the Climate (Hill and Wang 2008)
"Scrubbing the Skies," Economist.com (March, 5, 2009)

Global Warming II - Do we have the political will to solve the problem?

2009-06-25T09:06:00.003-05:00

In 1798 Thomas Malthus predicted that the world would be reduced to subsistence living as a result of overpopulation. Here we are in the twenty first century. Population has consistently expanded and, by and large, the Malthusian projections have not materialized.

Malthus underestimated the capacity of human beings to adapt to change. He did not anticipate the industrial revolution that has allowed many more people to live on this planet.
We will ultimately adapt to global warming. The question is whether we have the capacity and will to address the threat intelligently and effectively.

There are reasons to be pessimistic. There is considerable uncertainty over when the gradual increase in temperature will reach the tipping point. Governments work best in a crisis mode.

We watched Hitler storm across Europe without making more than minimal preparations for the impending war. It took Pearl Harbor to convince this country to realize that World War II was for real.

There is a strong possibility that our government and others will slack off on the global warming issue in the same manner. A massive effort to reduce carbon emissions would carry an enormous price tag, and it is hard to believe that we will place global warming the top of our priorities soon.

Moreover, as Sam Rayburn famously stated, all politics are local. Democratically elected officials respond best to the narrow interest of their separate constituencies. Global warming is not a local issue. An effective attack on global warming will require a heavy dose of altruism, which is in short supply in the world of geopolitics.

On the other hand, the environmental lobby has been very successful in capturing the attention of western democracies. The water and air quality in this country has been transformed since the Environmental Protection Agency was created during the Nixon administration. Maybe we will wake up, but crisis cannot be avoided merely by tilting wind mills and burning corn.

A United Nations sponsored group drafted the Kyoto Protocol which, among other things, required industrialized countries to reduce emissions on the average by 5.2% below 1990 levels.

Although almost all the major industrialized countries and underdeveloped countries signed and ratified the protocol, the United States never ratified it.

President Bush was bludgeoned by many environmental groups for withholding the treaty from the Senate, but opposition to Kyoto was bipartisan. In 1997, before the protocol was submitted to the countries for signature, the Senate unanimously adopted a resolution, sponsored by Senator Byrd of West Virginia among others, condemning any treaty that failed to imposed limitations on underdeveloped countries, which is the case with the Protocol. President Clinton never submitted the treaty for ratification. President Obama deftly avoided the issue by stating that there is no reason to ratify it now because it will soon be terminated.

The Protocol has not done particularly well even on those countries that ratified the treaty. Many of them will not comply with the terms of the treaty. In the mean time, although environmental regulation has been rigorous in the United States, the emissions increased by 20% between 1990 and 2007. Moreover, it has been predicted that compliance would cause a 1% to 4% reduction in our gross national product by 2010,and even the proponents concede that compliance would have a minimal effect on global warming.

One bone of contention has been the fact that China was exempted from limitations placed on other industrialized countries. China was not even on the map in 1990 with respect to carbon emissions. It is now the largest emitter in the world, although its contribution is more modest on a per capita basis than the United States.

The Kyoto Protocol has served the useful purpose of laying bare the complex matrix of differing national interests with respect to carbon emissions. Hard choices must be made to decide what are the legitimate needs of countries in various states of economic development.

Unfortunately seems to have withdrawn from its role as leader on world environmental issues by refraining for joining the Protocol and filing to initiate constructive alternatives. Like it or not, nothing will be accomplished without effective leadership coming out of the largest economy in the world.

We are probably farther away from constructive solutions than ever, even though we have a president who ran on a pro-environment platform. President Obama’s dance card is quite full. He may talk a good game on the environment, but look at his agenda. The economy has slipped into the top spot and allowed him to find new ways to spend amounts never imagined before. But he is not through. He is trying to avoid making universal medical care another empty promise. We are told that another trillion thrown at medical insurance will still leave a gigantic gap of uninsured persons. The social security mess will most likely come up again. And, by the way, did you notice? We are carrying on two wars in the Middle East. We can now update the old cliche and note that a trillion dollars here and a trillion there can add up to real money.

I suspect that a really serious effort to handle global warming is decades away, unless we can find a way to deal with the issue in a simpler less expensive manner. But that is the subject for another posting. See you next time.

Global Warming I — Is Global Warming a hoax?*

2009-06-05T09:53:00.005-05:00

Wallace S. Broecker wrote an article in a 1975 issue of the Science magazine in which he asserted that "We may be in for a climatic surprise." That sentence has instigated a maelstrom of scientific activity related to what we now know as global warming.

Critics have frequently commented that environmentalists are more concerned about the snail darter than human beings, but global warming is not simply an effort to preserve ecological balance. True, the polar bear is endangered, but human habitats are also directly at risk. Our grandchildren may witness an abrupt rise in the sea level that will submerge coastal areas and turn lowlands into swamps. Desert areas would expand dramatically, further reducing the livable areas in the world. The Arctic and Antarctic regions would melt and become more moderate climates causing adverse effects on the ecological system. The destruction of major habitats for humans may well result in gigantic economic catastrophes as well as land wars among millions of people displaced by the revamped earth. To help understand how people can fight over living space consider the ferocity of hostilities generated the last sixty years over a relatively small geographic area in Israel-Palestine. It is not a happy prospect.

We cannot afford to underestimate the threat. Nevertheless skeptics are alive and well. Politicians and various special interests believe that the cost of reducing carbon emissions is not justified by the evidence produced by the scientific community. The question is whether global warming is like the swine flu where the alarmists anticipated an epidemic that never came or more like the levees of New Orleans where the warnings were oft repeated, but nobody listened.

It appears to me that in order to disbelieve Broecker’s science, you must successfully challenge at least one of three premises. They are as follows:

1. Carbon dioxide and other gases collectively known as the greenhouse gases preserve heat in our atmosphere. The first proposition has been an accepted fact since the nineteenth century. Without these gases, heat from the sun would bounce off the earth, and we would freeze like other planets. On the other hand excessive carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will overheat the earth. I understand that even the severest critics do not contest the existence of the greenhouse effect.

2. Over the last century, industrialization has been accompanied by carbon emissions of unprecedented amounts. This second premise is based on a plethora of scientific measuring that has been thoroughly documented for at least fifty years. Fossil fuels are far and away the principal contributor to this increase. I am not aware of much dissent on that issue either.

3. If the greenhouse emissions continue to grow, the livability of the planet will be materilly affected at some time in the future. This third proposition is the bone of contention. Are gases being emitted of sufficient quantity to cause a material alteration of climate?

The mean temperature on the earth has been rising over the last century. The year 2005 is reported to be the hottest year on record. Glaciers are melting, and rain forests are receding. The dissenters contend that the rise is fully explainable by the natural rhythms which occur in nature. They deny that fossil fuel deposits are a significant factor. It is noteworthy that the critics have not been very successful in convincing their peers. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which is the most influential worldwide body in climatology, concluded that greenhouse gases are responsible for most of the rise in temperatures in recent decades. That conclusion has been endorsed by 40 scientific societies and academies of science, including all of the national academies of science of the major industrialized countries.

I do not claim to have any expertise on a subject so complex and futuristic as global warming. Nevertheless, I have more confidence in the scientists of academia than those employed by political lobbies to come up with a specified result. Scientists, good scientists, are loyal to the advancement of knowledge regardless of the consequences. When Galileo declared that the earth revolved around the sun, he was merely reporting his findings. The church that forced him to recant had a fixed view on the universe and expected science to affirm its own dogmatic vision.

It would be unfair to characterize any one who disagrees with the scientists as seeking to alter the truth. Nevertheless, the case for an impending global catastrophe seems to represent the work product of the best minds in the world who have dedicated their professional lives to the study of our environment.. Moreover, the skeptics are up against Pascal’s wager. If the skeptics should persuade us that global warming is a hoax and they are wrong, the consequences would be horrendous. On the other hand the risk of error by the scientific establishment is not so great. Admittedly the collective cost of a wild goose chase would be significant, but the reduction of carbon dioxide would still produce a more pleasant, healthier climate. On balance, I consider it risky for our society to ignore the warnings of a coming global warming surprise.

[I have relied on Broecker and Kunzig Fixing the Climate (Hill and Wang 2008) and the article on global warming in Wikipedia for most of the material of a technical nature. Both are provocative, informative and excellent reading for a mainline novice such as me.]

* This posting is the first of three installments discussing global warming.

Restraints on Power

2009-05-25T17:20:00.004-05:00

There is a certain freedom afforded to the loyal opposition. The opposition can stay on the attack and constantly criticize incumbents without the need to be consistent or even responsible for the consequences of an action proposed. There is nothing new about this phenomenon. Politicians from Thomas Jefferson, to Benjamin Disraeli to Richard Nixon would not want history to judge them based on their behavior during the time when they were ascending to power.

Moreover, a negative position is always easier to sell than positive change. Lobbyists will charge their clients much more to push legislation through, than to defeat a bill.

Nevertheless, the day of reckoning comes when the minority party seizes the reins of power. That day has arrived for President Obama. A case in point is the consternation brewing within the Democratic Party over the so-called torture issue. This appeared to be a perfect issue for the Democrats. They were claiming the moral high ground when they protested that prisoners were not being treated humanely. Because the military intelligence apparatus operate in secrecy, their defenders would not reveal what was actually going on. Therefore the Democrats could conjecture and make accusations of all sorts of misconduct and the military would not fully respond. It was not a fair fight.

President Obama is now charged with carrying out his promises to get rid of torture, to abolish Guantanamo, to try those charged with crimes in American courts applying our constitutional principles, or to send some of the accused terrorists to other countries for trials governed by their laws. He is discovering that reform is not quite so simple either as a matter of policy or practicality. Other countries are refusing to bail him out by accepting these hot potato inmates. (Their politicians want to be reelected.) Senators are willing to authorize trials in our courts but not in their state. (They want to be reelected, too.) He is learning that the maligned military tribunals serve a useful purpose, so he is replacing them with a newly reformed tribunal. I suspect that the principal reform is that he will give them a new name. His first attempt at transparency was to renege on his agreement to release pictures of torture.

The sad part is that the torture issue was somewhat mooted even before the 2008 campaign, for the simple reason that most of the work had already been done in the Bush Administration. It now appears that the Bush administration had gone a long way to eliminate the worst abuses. I understand that the last water boarding occurred in 2003, and none is contemplated in the future. There was no need for the Democrats to engage in this debate on that technique other than to preserve an issue for the 2008 political campaigns.

Moreover, I suspect that the Democrats are learning that public support for so-called torture is broader that they realized. I cannot remember an instance where a suit against law enforcement officers for violation of civil rights of persons in custody was sustained by a jury. In one prominent instance, a federal jury in Birmingham refused to award damages against police officers who allegedly used electric cattle prods on the prisoners. I thought that perhaps the strong pro law enforcement sentiment is limited to the conservative South. But when a California jury ruled in favor of the police officer defendants who were caught on tape beating a Rodney King while he was lying on the ground, I decided that jury unwillingness to hamper law enforcement efforts, even when violent and abusive, reflects a national rather than regional attitude among middle class voters. (Democrats are politicians, and they want to be reelected.)

What conclusion is to be drawn from all of this? If you are not an Obama fan, I am sure you can enjoy watching him squirm. I believe, however, that there is a more important message coming out of this mess. It is simply that our President is willing to back off when he sees that a former course is going awry. To me, his actions of implicit retraction are signs of strength. It is better to be strong in the face of criticism from his own party, even if he is called a coward, than to be cowardly in order to appear to be strong.

2009-04-30T16:08:00.002-05:00

Every decade some politician proposes to cut back on the tax deduction for charitable giving. Previously it was Steve Forbes with his flat tax. Now the Obama administration is floating the idea. In the previous post, Vastine discussed the impact such a proposal would have on the arts. I will examine its impact on other areas of charitable giving.

Proponents seem to be driven by two motivations. First, it would allegedly generate revenue for the Federal government. Second, there is a desire to punish the rich in order to narrow the gap between the rich and the poor. Unfortunately, restricting charitable giving is a clumsy tool for accomplishing those purposes.

The treasury may benefit at first, but the government should weigh what it would lose when charitable giving is lowered. Private giving plays an enormous role in supporting various eleemosynary organizations in fields such as health education, and aid to the disadvantaged.

The walls of hospitals are plastered with the names of benefactors who contribute major support for the construction of ongoing capital improvements. Private funding has joined with government in seeking and finding ways to cure many diseases which were once deemed fatal or permanently disabling. Universities, even public universities, depend on private funds to support faculties, research, capital improvements, scholarships and even routine maintenance of their schools. In fact university giving for scholarships have allowed more and more universities proudly claim that any qualified applicant can earn a degree regardless of the level of their family income. United Way has been embraced by the business community and become an a dominant force in identifying and supporting the many social services in the local community.

As the world grows flat, so does the benevolent spirit. Multi billionaires such as Ted Turner and Bill Gates, have addressed the problems of world poverty. Rotary International joined with the World Health Organization and others to eradicate polio. The United Methodist Church founded Africa University in Zimbabwe, which has dramatically opened the doors of opportunity to young African that could not have been dreamed about a few decades ago. Doctors Without Borders are bringing the blessing of modern medicine to remote parts of the earth.

These and many other examples underline the fact that private giving has created a gigantic infrastructure which, if it did not exist, would drop into the lap of government agencies. Therefore, the effort to raise money for the government by reducing charitable giving deductions would contribute to new demands on the treasury in the long run.

Private is extremely effective in identifying causes meriting support. The donor tends to support the cause that is most important to him or her. Thus private support is spread in different directions. Many eyes looking at the needs of society should be preferred over leaving the decision making power over the use of available funds to handful of bureaucrats.

Moreover, much has been said about a trend toward a widening gap between the income of the rich and the poor. Assuming that the gap is growing, philanthropy tends to counterbalance that trend. After all, philanthropy involves giving by the rich to the poor.

Finally, charitable giving has the effect of lifting the human spirit. I submit that sharing our resources encourages us to be more understanding of each other. Monty and I had the privilege of participating in a mission trip to Panama, not long after our government had bombed Panama City. Each member of the group contributed money and labor toward the construction a community center in a small development that had been constructed by our denomination for families whose homes had been bombed out during the raid. When it was time to return home, one of our members removed his shoes and give them to a young Panamanian who had worked beside him that week. Reversing roles, my friend left Panama barefooted and the Panamanian said goodbye to him wearing shoes.

In the mean time, if you are ever in Birmingham, please come by our church, Highlands United Methodist Church. We try to do our part. We feed over a hundred homeless every day, give them clothing, wash their clothes, and obtain identification cards for those who need them to get jobs. We provide Santa Claus for children in one of our economically depressed areas. Some of our members participate in an annual medical mission to Central America. Our youth travel to Appalachia every year where they repair run down houses.

These programs are supported by our members— and their gifts are tax deductible.

Arts and the Charitable Deduction

2009-03-15T15:37:00.004-05:00

Sorry about the delay. I blame technical difficulties with the computer. I recently received an E-mail from my son, Vastine, concerning funding for the Arts and the charitable tax deduction. It is worth reproducing here. I plan to follow up in a few days with another discussion concerning the charitable deduction. Here it is:

AMERICAN ARTS: STANDING IN THE WRONG LINE

Arts advocates like to point to the funding of the National Endowment for the Arts to demonstrate how poorly our government supports the arts. In the textbook I use in my introductory theatre class, the authors compare the funding for the NEA with the governmental support for the arts provided by other countries to demonstrate what they see as an indefensible lack of federal support.

It may be shocking to learn that the level of federal support for the arts in the United States is most likely the highest in the world. To understand why you need to know how non-profit arts are funded in the United States. Approximately 50% of the financial support for the arts comes from earned income and another 10 % comes from non-federal government support. The final 40% of arts funding comes from private donations. It is this 40% where the US government makes its true impact on the arts. Depending on the donor’s tax bracket, up to 35% of individual donations are funds diverted from the US Treasury to the arts through tax deductions. This amounts to a multi-billion dollar investment by the federal government each year. While many are unaware of the largess of Uncle Sam via these deductions, the fact has not escaped our current administration.

There is a proposal by the administration that is currently in committee that makes significant cuts to the tax credits given to the top income bracket for charitable donations. Currently, someone who is in the 35% tax bracket can deduct 35% of their donations to officially designated non-profits. In the current bill the most donors can deduct is 28%. This differential will make monumental changes to the giving patterns of our largest donors. As Bob Lynch, the President and CEO of Americans for the Arts, recently said on NPR, our system of arts giving is based on “incentives”. Lynch goes on to say that a little incentive would add a “massive additional blossoming of private donations…”

Note that these changes have no affect on the final take home pay of the top tax bracket. It only affects where the tax money goes. In fact, in a perfect arts world, the deduction rate would rise with the planned elevation of the top bracket to nearly 40%.

Now all of these numbers have asterisks and provisos so this is a very general explanation of the changes. On the web you can find a few news articles that go deeper into the mechanics of the changes. But the best way to demonstrate how much money the administration expects to raise with this change to the donation cap is to look at what it plans to do with this money. One of the centerpieces of the new administration’s legislative agenda is healthcare reform. It is an ambitious plan to restructure the American healthcare system while providing health coverage to the tens of millions of uninsured. Peter Orszag, director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, told CNN’s John King that the new health plan will be “budget neutral”. In other words, this massive new program will not add to the deficit. He said that there are two components to financing health reform. Part one will be eliminating waste in the current healthcare system. Orszag said the other part would come from the lowering of the deduction cap for charitable giving. Think about it, there will be enough money returned to the US Treasury from the reduction to charitable deductions to be one of only two components for financing healthcare reform.

I think the majority of Americans recognize the need for a healthcare reform that would provide for the uninsured. The problem is that this plan pits non-profits against healthcare. I believe this a tragically miscalculated approach. Already thousands of worthwhile groups are lining up to receive their allocation of the nearly trillion dollar budget non-neutral stimulus plan. At the same time, non-profit organizations have been lumped together with the oil companies, the healthcare industry and the rich are those responsible to pay for it. We need to get in the other line.

With the devastation to the funding capabilities of foundations caused by the halving of the stock market, the plummeting of the aggregate take-home pay of the American worker due to job cuts and the marked reduction in business income in this failing economy, the giving base in the United States is in the process of being decimated. When individuals face a diminishment of their giving capabilities they not only reduce donations but they also reassess their giving priorities. The arts have traditionally found themselves behind religious institutions, educationally focused charities and other worthy non-profits on the priority tree. Instead of cutting back the percentage of their giving to each of their favorite charities in equal proportions, many donors limit the number of groups they give to. The church and the alma mater beat out the little theatre on the corner almost every time.

We in the arts world permanently reside near the line between survival and failure. One of our greatest talents is the ability to make a lot out of a little. At the same time, a small loss in income can be catastrophic. There is no way around the fact that there will be major damage to the arts world during this economic crisis, it cannot be avoided, but if the changes in the tax code proposed by our government are enacted we could see an unimaginable devastation of the arts community.

So why have our arts leaders been so quiet? There is a genuine feeling among most in the arts world that the new Obama administration represents a needed new direction for our country. One of the first acts of the new administration was to increase the underfunded NEA budget by $50 million and there is a further $10 million in the Omnibus Bill. But that pales in comparison to the loss of billions. This is not a Republican or Democratic issue, this is an arts issue.

A. Vastine Stabler
andrewvs@hotmail.com

Gran Torino

2009-01-17T10:24:00.001-06:00

Movies are so bad nowadays, it is hard to find one worth the price of the ticket. It was thus a welcome sight to learn that Clint Eastwood was coming to town with still another of his highly entertaining adventures.

Gran Torino, however, was a surprise. It far exceeds the boundaries of merely escapist entertainment. It has a simple story line that resonates into multiple layers of meaning.

The first layer is an entertaining Clint Eastwood story of personal courage when one man takes on the corrupt establishment, much like the westerns and detective stories that have made Eastwood so popular. Walt Kowalski is a retired, widowed automobile worker in bad health living in a changing neighborhood. What was once dominated by a mainly caucasian working class is now occupied by Asian and African Americans. The new establishment appears to be gangs that roam the street clashing for control of their territories. Walt is a tough guy, sort of a Dirty Harry after retirement. A marine war hero, he had killed at least thirteen “kooks” in the Korean War. He exudes toughness in his exterior, but he has never let go from the torment he suffered during his war experiences. The story focuses on how this tough and savvy warrior responds to the violence and intimidation visited upon him in his neighborhood. It is deftly told with a combination of suspense and humor that provides good entertainment.

A second story kicks in involving Walt’s fractured relationship with his children and grandchildren. We are spared the details of how that family had grown so distant. The children try to be good children, but they do not know how, because they do not know their father any more. The relationship is so deteriorated that we do not know where the fault lies. There is so much water over the dam that all generations are both the victims and the perpetrators of their broken relationships. I found myself profoundly sorry for every one involved. Thus the story becomes a good parable on the consequences of a breakdown of the nuclear family.

The third layer, however, makes the movie something special. Gran Torino is, in the final analysis, a morality tale. Walt is lonely, though he can not bring himself to admit it. His closest neighbors are Vietnamese who he consistently abuses with genuine bitterness. A young girl in the Vietnamese woman reaches out to him, and he finally melts. He becomes involved with her, her brother, her family and ultimately the entire Vietnamese community. In so doing, he learns that they are in danger of succumbing to destructive forces which can destroy their dreams.

I have to leave the story at this point. I hope that I have not spoiled it for you, because I did not realize until the movie was almost over that I had been sucked into a morality tale, and now you know. Suffice it to say that he had to reach into his own soul to save this family, and in so doing he came to understand the essence of life abundant.

The viewer must tolerate a bucket load of bad language. I am weary of gratuitous vulgarities, but the language in this case serves to fill out the landscape of the world Walt lives in. Moreover, I the swearing and vulgarity is a dramatic sign of Walt’s separation from God.

One final note. Clint Eastwood is amazing. This man is seventy eight years old with the grit and muscle to convince you that if chooses to take on a teenage thug, it would be no contest.

By the way, the Gran Torino is pretty nifty, too.

Economic Sanctions Against Cuba

2009-01-12T09:57:00.003-06:00

Eugene Robinson of the Washington Post wrote an article last week, that I have been waiting to see for fifty years.

Robinson writes about Cuban-U.S. relations after fifty years of Castro rule. He complains about the “wrongheaded policies that have unwittingly helped shield Castro’s revolution from historical trends which long ago should have forced the regime to give way or at least compelled it to evolve.”

The policies to which he refers are laws and regulations forbidding trade and travel between the U.S. and Cuba. It is clear that these policies have failed. Instead of either bringing down the Castro regime or forcing them to see the error of their ways, these sanctions have induced a despotic government to become more isolated and oppressive. He contrasts our Cuban policy with the rest of the communist world which “was always to push for more contact and exchange on the theory of exposure to the Western ideas, freedoms and prosperity would hasten communism’s demise. It worked.”

It will not be easy to reverse course. The primary reason for retaining the policy is to mollify the disillusioned and angry exiles living here who have an understandable hatred of the Cuban government. Ironically they were probably exiled in this country in part because of our policies that gave comfort to the hard liners of Cuba, who had a convenient scapegoat in the US to blame for whatever failures have surfaced in the Cuban economy.

Moreover, the policy has been costly to the U.S. economy, which has been denied the opportunity to participate in a potentially profitable relationship with a country a mere ninety miles away. The beauty of open trade is that both buyers and sellers profit from the bargain. Concomitantly, when trade is suspended, both countries suffer. Because of the embargo, we cannot buy Cuban cigars and they do not purchase our products ranging from tooth paste to automobiles to computers. The benefits from open markets is insidious and hard to see some times. We can immediately calculate costs resulting from a tax or a factory close down resulting from foreign competition. But the loss of jobs and profits cause by the closing of a market and the lost buying power obtained by the purchase of more expensive products is difficult to see. Therefore, the accumulated cost of the sanctions to our economy is staggering and unnoticed.

I do not follow Robinson enough to identify whether he has jumped into the free trade debate consistently. If so, he has plenty fodder to work with. What about Iran and Korea? We have shut down the availability of our markets to them, and I see no evidence that our policies have had the least positive effect on their conduct.

We are at a cross roads in Venezuela, which has the potential for the same meltdown in our response to at tin horn dictator who is, frankly, too big for his britches. Then there is Columbia. Obama has indicated that he opposes the treaty opening up the Columbia markets. Hopefully his opposition is only campaign rhetoric, because of union opposition to the treaty. If Columbia is cut back, they will continue to trade with us, but the primary product may well be cocaine smuggled into the country, and the primary beneficiaries will be the cartels and their criminal counterparts in this country.

Time and again, when our foreign policymakers choose what is euphemistically called a “diplomatic” option, they trot out the time disgraced economic sanctions. Maybe they should look at the Cuba experience before they jump into another morass.

The Legacy of W as President

2009-01-08T16:24:00.002-06:00

It is time to reflect on the legacy of George W. Bush. He originally promised to reach across the aisle to all parties to work for the common good. If unity was to be the mantra of his administration, he failed miserably. The brief consensus after 9/11 was permanently erased by the Iraq war. Now his legacy will be defined by the ultimate consequences of the war he started.

W certainly made some monumental mistakes. His sabre rattling “axis of evil” State of the Union speech in January 2002 irretrievably placed the US in a hostile, almost warlike, stance against Iraq, Iran, and Korea. This country had neither the resources nor the political will take on those three regimes simultaneously in addition to much unfinished business in Afghanistan. In the end he chose to invade Iraq, which proved to be all this country was prepared to handle. Reagan’s strength was his ability to use power. Every one knew that when he made a threat, he was prepared to carry it out. Even the most powerful country in the world is weakened when it expends much of its energy and resources on a war that does not produce the expected results.

Second, he, or at least Cheney, claimed that the Iraqis would welcome the US in open arms because of the tyranny of Sadam. W should have talked to his father who made the same mistake in Somalia. The fact is that people fight with unrestrained determination on their own soil . I know of no example where a foreign power sought to dislodge a domestic government and did not meet the fierce resistance of the people. There may be some, but I cannot recall.

Third, he thought he could turn Iraq into a western style democracy, reversing thousands of years of nomadic culture which operate under paradigms quite opposed to democracy. Other colonial powers had tried and failed to westernize the Middle East. He thought he could do better, and he fought a war with an unrealistic goal.

All that being said, do we conclude that W was the worst president in American History, as Senator Harry Reed proudly declares? Not so fast. Opponents of the War blandly seem to assume that the Middle East would somehow have muddled along quite nicely without the American intervention. W should be measured by a comparison of where we are with where we would have been if the Iraq War had never happened. This involves a lot of speculation, but there are clues worth looking at.

In the first place, if America had known the day after 9/11 that there would be no further terrorist attacks on its soil for the next seven years, we would have been inclined to canonize W. Now that this has been accomplished, the feat is pooh poohed. With all the bumbling, W put the terrorists on the defensive, and at least they are trying to infiltrate Iraq rather than New Jersey.

Moreover, W has turned over to Obama a vastly improved military and intelligence community adept in combating terrorism. With all the talk about how W is disliked in Europe, I get the impression that the European military and intelligence communities work very closely with us to repel terrorist threats. and that the coordinated efforts of the western democracies is a formidable force that has been highly deterrent against the terrorists.

Furthermore, we can assume that Sadam would still be alive doing his thing. He obviously had imperialistic ambitions. He had already engaged in a bloody eight year war with Iran and invaded Kuwait. He had an aggressive missile development program, which evidenced a desire to dominate the Middle East militarily. His destabilization potential was immense.

I do not believe that history will fully excuse W from some of his mistakes. Nevertheless, there is a good possibility that when future generations will that his administration responded well to the changes in military goals and strategies needed to counteract terrorism. If so, many of his miscues will not loom as large as being characterized by his contemporary critics.

President-Elect Obama

2008-12-25T09:46:00.004-06:00

Welcome aboard. We have been preparing ourselves over the last month and a half for the fact that our new president is going to be Barack Obama. Now that we have him, what have we got?

Mr. Obama is now enjoying the euphoria and optimistic anticipation which normally ensues after the election of a new president. The small Democratic majority in the Senate and House gives him room to work. I remind you, however, the President Carter had a substantial majority in the Senate and Congress, and the Democrats proved that they could squabble among themselves as effectively as with the Republicans. There are differences, however. The Republican party has successfully taken over seats in Congress and the Senate that had previously been held by conservative Democrats. The Democrats may not be as fractured as before when conservative Democrats were a larger part of their caucus.

The question I want to pose, is what should we expect of our new President? Here are some thoughts:

- The experience issue is vastly overrated. In 1860 the country elected a president who had been a one term congressman and a member of the Illinois legislature. He turned out all right. The fact is that there is very little a person can do to be "qualified" for the presidency other than actually do the job. There is none other like it. Obama is extremely bright. Do you understand how capable and brilliant a person must be to be elected Editor in Chief of the Harvard Law Review? His language is measured and reflective. I believe he has the raw material to be a good president.

- Do not be overly concerned about campaign rhetoric. My father used the say that when a politician gets on the train, he gets off the platform. Most presidencies are marked by issues and events that have little to do with the issues that dominate the campaign. Obama himself has been quoted as saying that presidencies are controlled by ninety per cent circumstances and ten per cent agenda. The job takes the man to strange places. Examples: Who would have expected that a China baiting, Communist hating senator from California would ultimately open the door for stronger economic and political relations between the United States and China (and we are still feeling many positive effects of that dramatic move). Who would expect that a Texas senator who filibustered against Civil Rights legislation on several occasions would bring about a sea change in racial relations when he became president our country? And then what about 9/11? Nobody contemplated the event or the way its has changed our country or the presidency of W. Obama has already been confronted with an economic crisis of epic proportions. We do not know what Mr. Obama will be called upon to do. We must hope that Obama he has the character, wisdom and ability to do the job.
- I hope that he will not succumb to the tendency of the Democrats towards protectionism. We are living in a world economy. Tom Friedman eloquently made the point when he coined the phrase that the world is flat. Our borders are becoming less and less important. We cannot afford to back off from our position as the world leader in that flat economy.
If you have a wish list for our new President Elect, let me hear from you. Have a Merry Christmas!

A New Testment Psalm (Mumbai)

2008-12-16T10:25:00.004-06:00

Our minister recently challenged each member of a small study group to write our own Psalm. I was consumed with the Mumbai tragedy at the time, as revealed in the previous posting. Here is my Psalm:

Blessed are those who delight in the Lord; for they shall find the Kingdom of God.

The Lord loves all his creatures and not just the righteous, not just the faithful.

The Lord loves the forlorn, the forgotten, as well as those who do not know the Lord.

The Lord loves those who see through a broken glass or who profess to know the Lord when they see nothing.

The Lord weeps when we fight and kill each other in the name of the Lord.

The righteous love the Lord, and know that the Lord asks them, even commands them, to love one another, that is, to love the good and the bad people, to love the people who know God and those who do not.

Then where are the righteous? Why do the Lord’s children kill and terrorize their brothers and sisters, all in the name of the Lord, in Mumbai, in Zimbabwe, in the Middle East?

Why do the people of Gaza pray to Allah with a bomb in their hand?

Who mourns over the Mother’s loss of her baby in the West Bank, when the fatal bullet was shot in the name of Yahweh?

We who are blessed, the Lord will teach us to be righteous?

We who are righteous, the Lord will teach us to be loving?

We who are loving, the Lord will teach us to know how to love.

Blessed are those who delight in the Lord, for they shall learn how to love.

Mumbai Tragedy

2008-12-09T18:52:00.004-06:00

Several years ago, my wife and I traveled to India. While there, we visited Mumbai and stayed at the Taj Mahal Hotel, which is probably the best known hotel in the city. One day we hired a guide to show us around the city. To my surprise, I learned that she and her husband were Jewish.

There are several small Jewish communities in India dating back to Old Testament times. About twenty five per cent of the Indians of the Jewish faith live in Mumbai. The Apostle Thomas is believed to have traveled to India and died there. Inasmuch as the early Christians tended to gather in communities where Jews of the dispersion lived, perhaps Thomas came to Mumbai.

The terrorist attacks on the hotel where we stayed and on the Jewish Center, which could well have been a gathering place for our guide, has touched us in a personal way. Religious violence has cursed India for many years, although the country strives to achieve a culture of religious tolerance. In 1975 vast numbers of Sikhs were murdered and expelled from Delhi. In and around 1990 Kashmir went through a period of ethnic cleansing of Hindus in which at least three hundred persons were killed. In 1993 Mumbai endured 13 bombings as a result of Muslim-Hindu violence. In 2000 the Godra train was attacked and a car containing 58 men, women, and children, all Hindus, were burned alive. This was followed in 2002 by the infamous riots in the state of Gujurat in which over a thousand persons, Hindu and Muslim, were killed and several thousand were injured, missing or orphaned by the conflict. Other religious violence has included anti-Christian riots and recurring border wars along the Pakistani- Indian border.

The common theme of these incidents has been that the people on both sides were killing each other in the name of God. Surely God weeps over these tragedies.

As our world flattens out, all religions, including the Judeo-Christian religions-must grapple with how we live with each other even though we hold strikingly different views on the nature of the Almighty. We in this country are not immune to religious warfare. As the terrorist shouts the name of Allah while causing destruction, we naturally begin to extrapolate the terrorist personality to all of Islam. More and more the "war on terror" begins to take on the characteristics of a religious war.

Are we in danger of becoming even more embroiled in religious war? What should and could be done to prevent that from happening?

Who is a Mainliner?

2008-11-28T10:38:00.002-06:00

Welcome to the Mainline Express. Who is a Mainliner? The Mainliner lives in the fat part of the curve. As the saying goes, stand in the middle and you will get run over.

The Mainliner does not blindly follow any group on the edges. The Mainliner is less likely to say "I am a Republican.", but might well say, "I agree with the Republicans this time." The Mainliner is not a feminist, environmentalist, libertarian, etc. but may agree ad hoc with any of them on the merits.

In short, the Mainliner is independent minded and does not make decisions simply because of the identity of the proponents or opponents.

I do not mean to suggest that Mainliners are necessarily stubborn folk. Not at all. In fact, the Mainliner has a capacity for tolerance of other views, because the Mainliner strives to see all sides.
Mainline also has a context in religion. Indeed, the main line protestant denominations contain many of the characteristics of the Mainliner. They are the middle of the road compared to the Evangelicals on the right and the Unitarians on the left. Mainline religion is fair game on this site.

Are you a Mainliner? Here is a test worthy of the Parade Magazine designed to identify your Mainline tendencies:

1. When you vote, do you split your ticket rather than pull the party lever?
2. Have you voted for at least one candidate from each major party in previous presidential elections?
3. Are you willing to read articles or listen to speeches by persons who take positions that you disagree with?
4. Do you attend a movie even though you disagree with the politics of the star (e.g. Jane Fonda or Mel Gibson)?
5. Are you willing to change your mind on an issue because time has proved your initial judgment was incorrect?

Mainliners answer "yes" to the above questions. This site will discuss a variety of subjects for your consideration. If you want to bring up new and different subjects for Mainline consideration, please do so.

Welcome aboard!