The Future Is a Millisecond Away: Ask Lou

Consumer confidence seems on the rise. Foreclosures hit an all time high this month. The US government now owns 60% of General Motors. My neighbor, Dustin, now calls the company Government Motors, and not in a nice way. What to make of it all?

No one knows what lies ahead. I now realize health is the most important part of every day. When you do not have it, life becomes a walk through mounds of fire ants. Being without health insurance could change that walk into a crawl through those same carnivores. Living here in the reddest California county I see the vast majority of people oppose a universal single-payer system. A lot of people here, although not big on Darwin's theory of evolution, ironically subscribe to the survival of the fittest thinking, which means the fittest (those with the most means) get cool benefits, and those not quite fit enough (fill in your own means quotient) get squat.

Arguments, which show our current health care market forces those with the means to pay substantially more in premiums to cover those who have no coverage, have no sway on the rugged individualist when they are immersed in a discussion on why universal coverage would be a societal and economic tonic. Forget bringing up GDP numbers that show us idiots here in the states paying almost twice the price for less results than every other advanced industrial nation. Here in Bakersfield those types of facts are met with, "Boring!" some of the time. Or, "Socialism is evil!" some other amount of time. There are many who believe every ill visited on the US is due to illegal immigration. Schools, health care, jobs, roads, food and sex all would be perfect in that Prairie Home Companion/Lake Woebegone way if only all those illegals were washed away from our shores.

The only thing that might convince a few of these people is if they, or a significant member of their immediate families, suffer a big enough health crisis and go broke. Maybe the 30% out of pocket expense, as part of the affordable coverage, really hurts the pocketbook. Maybe this expense occurs as the result of a major hernia, which happened from the lap dance administered when the wife was out of town at the local relaxation lounge that cannot be explained. This expense causes some critical thinking to take place that the insurance you do have currently is really bogus right now when I need it most.

When I hear the conservatives rail at socialized medicine, and that medical choices will be determined by a government bureaucrat I always ask what difference does that make to anyone on a typical HMO or PPO plan today. The fact is a bureaucrat working for an insurance company makes the call on what treatment you get and what medicines you can take, or at least what the insurance company will pay a portion of as part of your coverage. And if you have too many, or too expensive, claims from an insurance company they simply cut you loose.

As the bigger companies continue to ship jobs and work to the least expensive nations of the world, and more small business start ups spring onto the US economic Monopoly board by displaced former employees of big companies, the cost these new small businesses can bear are not that much if they have any hope for survival. This simply means businesses can no longer be the place that subsidizes health care costs.

A quote from an MSNBC article "If we don't get it done this year, we're not going to get it done," Obama told supporters by phone as he flew home on Air Force One from a West Coast fundraising trip. -

This above quote is motivation for me. I hope it is motivation for you. No advanced nation on the planet allows an accident or illness to financially ruin a family. This can only happen in the USA.

On this date, June 2, 1941, Lou Gehrig " the luckiest man on the face of the earth" succumbed to
amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), now called Lou Gehrig's Disease. A few short years before he was the Iron Horse who never missed a game as a perennial all-star.

Your future is a millisecond away. Can you cover the small change a significant medical problem might require?

Columbine: The Nation Did Go Bowling

It's been seven years since the release of Michael Moore's Bowling For Columbine. I have had the pleasure of meeting and talking to Mr. Moore a few times in my previous life, and know him to be a stickler for getting the facts straight. On IMDB.com a small point is made that Eric and Dylan did not go bowling the morning before marching into madness on their high school campus. That could be true, but Michael Moore did get corroborating reports from eyewitness who had been interviewed by the police, the FBI and the local District Attorney's office. He also framed his argument on the image of bowling by asking a question:

"So did Dylan and Eric show up that morning and bowl two games before moving on to shoot up the school? And did they just chuck the balls down the lane? Did this mean something?"

But, the small point entirely misses the bullet hole of accuracy.

Sunday April 20, 2009 marked the 10th Anniversary for the Columbine High School tragedy. Twelve students and a teacher shot dead. The two killers shot themselves as well. Total body count fifteen people dead. A lot of people on April 20, 1999 were horrified at the violence on the high school campus, just not that horrified to change anything in the ten years that have elapsed.

In 1965 with race riots across America, Junior Walker and the All-Stars rang on radios "Shotgun, shoot 'em fore he run." Shotgun, big hit.

1968 was a big year for America in terms of gun violence. Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King were both assassinated that year. The same year The Beatles released their White Album, which contained Happiness is a Warm Gun and Bungalow Bill. The two songs contain two very radical and opposing looks at the American preoccupation with guns. The Rolling Stones had Street Fighting Man come out in 1968 with "I'll kill the king and rail at all his servants." Jimi Hendrix took off on Hey, Joe and Machine Gun for audiences that year.

Neil Young and Crazy Horse came with Down by the River in 1969, and a few years later would pen Ohio with his other group of friends Crosby, Stills and Nash. Even Southern rockers like Lynyrd Skynyrd with Saturday Night Special implored in song some sanity regarding the gun. Nothing changed.

Over the years thousands of songs have been recorded about guns and gun violence. Violence, and our fascination with the ultimate period maker, sells.

Even though gun violence is highly marketable, it is tough making sense out of the continual carnage, tougher still finding a way of reducing the arms race in America. Barack Obama gets elected as an agent of change for America. Americans flood gun stores to stock up thinking one change might be limits on guns.

Remember the crazy girl who didn't like Mondays? Big hit for the Boomtown Rats and Bob Geldoff.

That incident would barely register today. It barely registered in 1993 when Colin Ferguson, deranged but armed boarded a Long Island Rail car at Penn Station and decided some people had to die. Six people died and nineteen were injured that December evening. The wife of one of the dead victims, Carolyn McCarthy, ran and was elected to Congress due in part to her son's amazing recovery from the wounds suffered and her tenacity in putting together a campaign to stop senseless gun violence. After twelve years on the job Representative Carolyn McCarthy has learned guns are a much larger third rail than even Social Security. The only legislation of note Representative McCarthy can show for twelve years in Congress was a fairly watered down background check bill passed last year. In fairness this was the first gun reform legislation passed in Congress in over fourteen years. It came on the heels of the Virginia Tech slaughter that claimed thirty-two lives. We still remember that one, but the memory has softened over the two year fade of time.

How could it not? After all, in this era of the gun let us just recount the brutality of American existence from the growing list of death. In September of 2008 on the roads of Skagit County, Washington six people shot and killed before the shooter turns himself in to authorities. For celebrity sake, we have in Chicago, Illinois Jennifer Hudson's mother and brother shot and killed in their home in late October of 2008. In Arkansas, two days after the Hudson killings two people are killed and another wounded on the campus at the University of Central Arkansas. November 2008 saw an eight year old in Arizona shoot and kill his father and a family friend with a rifle at close range. Right after Christmas in Covina, California Santa Claus shot and killed nine people (family members and friends) before killing himself. Outrage? Not in 2008.

Thus far 2009 we have witnessed a real ramp up of gun carnage. An eleven year old boy shot his father's pregnant fiancee in the head while she slept and then took the bus for school. Seven people were shot, but amazingly no one died at a Mardi Gras parade in February this year. March in Samson, Alabama saw a man shoot and kill nine people before killing himself. According to reports there were ten crime scenes for the Alabama rampage. Also in March, bullets flew into a nursing home where eight people were killed by a middle aged man. And in Oakland four police officers were slain along with their killer in a shootout. This April we have already gotten thirteen dead innocents at an immigration help center in New York state plus the shooter dead from a fatal suicide shot. And two more dead college students at a community college just west of Detroit. Three police officers died this month in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

It's hard to get press in Iraq and Afghanistan these days when we're in the middle of bowling people down with carbines.

"Have A Nice Day."

April Fools

Sun's up. A morning breeze cools the french roast in my hand with doves, jays and sparrows taking their usual breakfast places underneath the plum tree. The dog trots on patrol from one side of the yard to the other letting out various low sounds of growl indicating a feline intruder wandered the grounds recently. The morning commute echos in the air, forming the usual wall-of-sound din that serves as the sonic background to my urban lifestyle. My big cat inside the house peers through the french-door windows with a look of disgust at his imprisonment. I walk inside with the dog to cheer him up. It's not my endearments, but the offering of dried salmon which rescues the awkward reality. The lady inmate cats appear quickly to receive their usual ration of dried fish, which always must follow the big guy's preferred bribe.

The cracks in the stucco need a patch and quick touch of paint. I retrieve my tools and arm myself with latex gloves. I cover the spider web lines of separation at a corner and underneath a few of the windows. I complete the fill in the back of the house where a broom handle marks the final area of wear. A fast brush after getting the paint put back together with a quick stir ends the project.

Several kids move up and down the street with ipod cords bouncing in rhythm to their steps. I see a lot of kids out and about throughout the town everyday. Apparently school schedules must be on flex time these days.

NPR buzzes with Sam Donaldson. Sam serves up some memories of Nixon, and actually praises Oliver Stone's film of the same name. Sam tells a funny story about questioning Ronald Reagan amid his popularity slide in the early eighties when the economy was about as bad today. Reagan, as Obama does today, had a habit of always reminding the nation that the previous office holder and party created the mess. Sam's question was when would Ronald Reagan accept responsibility for some of this financial crisis. Reagan's response was funny. He acknowledged that, yes, he had once been a Democrat.

I need some tunes on to calm the critters before heading out the door. I put on a collection of oldies the Nixon chronicles had tweaked into my brain. Arthur Lee exclaims, "I just got out my little red book the minute you said goodbye......................... There's just no getting over you."

Springs To Mind

Rain and hail on the third day of spring with temperatures falling twenty plus degrees in a few hours behind winds that define male shrinkage blues. It's all good inside, though. I'm still healthy. I am a little shaken (not stirred) after reading my monthly AARP magazine about Superbugs.

Superbugs is not a new alt-metal band, but deadly new bacterial diseases that resist anti-biotics and kill 90,000 patients a year right here in the good old USA. We have twenty times more people die in hospitals and clinics yearly from staphloccocus strains(notably MRSA) and clostridium difficile than the US has lost during our nation's entire time in Iraq.

This past week we saw President Obama go on the talk show circuit to pitch his stimulus package efforts and the new bazillion dollar budget. Of course, his off-the-cuff self-deprecating comment on the Jay Leno set regarding the Prez's bowling skills being the equivelent of a special olympics achievement was what the speaking tour will be remembered for. The opposition party hates government spending on anything not related to defense, or to the oil and natural gas services industries, and radically expanded health care coverage could be the line in the sand where all swords will be drawn to prevent government intervention.

I'm sure most people reading this little blog of cyber-nonsense know that America is the only major industrialized nation in the world that does have a universal health care system for its citizens. It is the only nation where a person, or family, can be wiped out financially due to illness, or accident, from medical bills.

This is an excerpt from a Reuters article published on March 13, 2009 by reporter Donna Smith.

"The Business Roundtable, which represents the largest U.S. corporations, released a study showing that for every $100 spent in the United States on healthcare, a group of five leading economic competitors -- Canada, Japan, Germany, the United Kingdom and France -- spend about 63 cents.

"While today's economic challenges span the globe, companies in other countries may be better able to weather the storm in part because the value that their healthcare systems deliver," Business Roundtable Chairman Harold McGraw told reporters in a telephone conference. McGraw is chairman, president and chief executive of The McGraw-Hill Companies.

U.S. President Barack Obama has made reforming the expensive and inefficient U.S. healthcare system one of his top priorities and Democratic leaders in Congress hope to get a bill to him by the end of the year.

The United States spends more on healthcare than any other country, but some 46 million Americans are still uninsured.

Ivan Seidenberg, chairman and chief executive of Verizon Communications, said an overhaul of the U.S. healthcare system "should have been done yesterday."

The United States, where most workers get healthcare insurance through their employers, faces an even bigger competitive disadvantage against rising economic powers Brazil, India and China, the Business Roundtable study said.

It said those countries spend about 15 cents on healthcare for every dollar spent in America.

The Business Roundtable executives said their study showed that despite the money Americans spend on healthcare, U.S. workers are less healthy than workers in other countries, putting U.S. firms an even greater disadvantage."

So today's American workers are less healthy on the job, spend more of their money for worse coverage than their counterparts in every other major nation, and have to stress over new strains of microbes whenever they visit a doctors office, but must listen to bullshit arguments about the evils of socialism and why universal coverage must be stopped or America will be ruined forever.

If the Superbugs don't get us, the stupor bugs of health care intransigence certainly will.