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?

The Good Bye Brands

Lots of big news this past week to chew on with my Trader Joe's strawberry breakfast bar. General Motors announced one of their most recognizable brands, Pontiac, was toast. The magic of muscle under the hood combined with sleek design and marketing acumen crumbled away like burnt sides of white dough under the heat of competition and mismanagement at General Motors. It was, for decades, one of the most recognized brands in America. Poof! Rubbed away in a cost savings restructuring to try and save GM.

The fact is Pontiac has been a figment of a brand for a long time. The real innovation John DeLorean brought to this division had disappeared by the mid-1970s. Pontiac became a knock-off of itself, much like General Motors is today.

In my youth I got to see up close and personal what the demise of a brand meant when Chrysler put an an end to DeSoto. It ended the family dealership close to fifty years ago. Mom started teaching, dad got a new job at the local Pontiac dealership and life went on. It's funny but I remember in the early 1970s this same dealership started selling Hondas. Most of the staff joked at how small the cars were (the honda-tonka was the lot's nickname for the new arrival) and that this company would go nowhere in America. The original had a two-cylinder air-cooled engine. Great gas mileage, no creature comforts. This same local dealer has sold only Hondas for more than two decades.

The United States Supreme Court, gets a small makeover in the coming months with the announcement that Supreme Court Justice David Souter will be resigning this June. America's 41st President, George H. W. Bush, nominated David Souter who came to the Supreme Court almost 19 years ago. He was a moderate Republican nominee, and has surely found that the moderate Republican views he still holds are now labeled by current Republican leadership as being nearly socialist in nature. Whatever the reason for the Justice Souter resignation the Supreme Court finds itself swimming backward in time. Last summer the Roberts led court struck down the longstanding Washington D.C. ban on handguns. Gun violence in America still shocks the rest of the world for its size and scope.

Another major issue with a lot of history on the Supreme Court's current argument list is the Voting Rights Act. On the surface the use of the law to ensure voting rights are maintained does seem to indicate that some states are more equal in the eyes of the federal government than others. However, the Republican Party's indifference to the needs of minorities amid the South's changing political landscape might argue that this Voting Rights Act should remain unchanged.

The Republican brand of today is a strange mixture indeed. The great coalition between fiscal conservatives with a libertarian view of less taxes and more individualism (ie: no government oversight for big business) joined to the fervent evangelical amalgam of Falwell and Robertson along with the segregationists who fled the Democratic Party after the Civil Rights legislation of the 1960s appears on the verge of collapse.

Compassionate conservatism is one thing you never hear from Republican leadership today. That principle, or goal, or sales point is dead. Republicans today hate poor people, and there are a lot more poor people in this country than at any time in the nation's history. This is why only 21% of America identifies itself with the Republican Party. Only Republicans would argue that poor people, many who cannot afford a motor vehicle, and hence have no driver's license, must show a photo identification to vote.

Republicans are sinking into irrelevancy. Gallup conducted a poll in January on the State of the State looking at where the political parties favored Democrats, and where they favored Republicans. Republicans showed a double digit lead over Democrats in only four states- Utah, Wyoming, Idaho and Alaska. Those are some sparsely populated states, and graphically illustrate the complete demise of the Republican brand. If that is all you have, along with some voter finagling in the South you might be a figment of a brand at this point in time.