December 21, 2009

A SUBVERSIVE FOR OUR TIMES

Sam Smith

In the movie Invictus, Nelson Mandela proposes the outrageous notion that one of the best ways to deal with ethnic conflict is to get both sides doing something they mutually find more important than disliking each other. This is not a popular idea among liberals, black or white, too many of whom prefer to scold, outlaw or regulate, as if all respect, decency and friendship required was enough frowns or the proper legal terminology.

Nelson Mandela knew better and used rugby, rather than rules, as an early tool for remaking South Africa. In doing so, he had to overcome not only the resistance of whites but of blacks who saw rugby as an evil symbol of the land under apartheid. Mandela managed, nonetheless, to turn the game into pride that was mutually shared.

Although we seldom notice it, we have more than a little evidence in this country that Mandela's approach works. Consider that sports teams are among the most integrated institutions in the land or that a shared search for goods at a shopping mall does a better job of bringing ethnicities together than many law firms or the US Senate have managed. Or how we take cross cultural experience for granted when eating at an ethnic restaurant.

But as with so many things these days, when we think about such matters we tend to impose institutional and regulatory solutions even though the conflict is based on beliefs and assumptions as personal as one can find.

Mandela's approach was subversive of prevailing values but not unique. After all, Saul Alinsky's organizing efforts were based in part on bringing normally separated or antagonistic groups together to take on the establishment. Earl Long's power in Louisiana was based in part on his success in getting blacks registered in one of the most segregated states in the union. And Martin Luther King Jr. said that "Something must happen so as to touch the hearts and souls of men that they will come together, not because the law says it, but because it is natural and right." He told his colleagues that among their dreams should be that  someday their enemies would be their friends.

Two years after the riots in DC, when the gap between blacks and whites in the city was enormous, a small biracial group of us formed the DC Statehood Party. It was years before I realized how strange that was because, at the time, we thought nothing of it. Political equality just seemed far more important than ethnic divisions. Besides, our leader had shown us how. Julius Hobson lived a life beyond such divisions. As a Marxist he knew he knew money was the driving cultural force. And he was a black man married to a white woman who was also a mentor to black nationalist Stokley Carmichael. Like Mandela, he refused to live by the cliches.

Mandela was subversive in another way. He was an existentialist. While even intellectuals tend to trivialize existentialism as simply an obsession with angst and despair, that is gross misreading.

Existentialism is the idea, as Sartre put it, that one's existence precedes and defines one's essence. We are what we do. This is the obverse of predestination and original sin with their presumption of an innate essence. It is also at greatly at odds with the assumption of ethnic or cultural impermeability.

In fact, some existentialists argue that we are not fully us until we die because until that moment we are still making decisions and taking actions that define ourselves. Even the condemned person, one said, has a choice of how to approach the gallows.

Wrote Sartre: "Man is nothing else but that which he makes of himself. That is the first principle of existentialism . . . Man is condemned to be free. . . From the moment he is thrown into this world he is responsible for everything he does."

In a world dominated by dichotomies, debate, definition and deconstruction, existentialism suggests not a result but a way, not a solution but an approach, not goal but a far and misty horizon. It is, says Robert Solomon, "a sensibility . . . an attitude towards oneself, an attitude towards one's world, an attitude towards one's behavior."

Mississippi writer Tom Lowe put it this way, "The truth lies neither in the left or the right or in some middle-of-the-road position that borrows from both sides. The truth is that we are responsible for everything we do and for everyone and everything our behavior affects, and that responsibility extends to our collective, as well as our individual, behavior. Responsibility is like a seamless web -- we are all connected with each other and ultimately with the entire world. It encompasses the choices we make in our capacity as spouses, as parents, as voters, as stockholders, as corporate officers, as employers, as public officials, and as purchasers of goods, but it extends to the entire planet."

This sense of being individually responsible yet part of a seamless web of others produces neither certainty nor excuses. One can, one must, be responsible without the comfort of being sure. Camus once admitted that he would be unwilling to die for his beliefs. He was asked why. "What if I'm wrong?" And when he spoke of rebellion, like Mandela, he also spoke of moderation:

"There does exist for man, therefore, a way of acting and thinking which is possible on the level of moderation which he belongs. Every undertaking that is more ambitious than this proves to be contradictory. The absolute is not attained nor, above all, created through history . . . Finally, it is those who know how to rebel, at the appropriate moment, against history who really advance its interests. . . The words that reverberate for us at the confines of this long adventure of rebellion are not formulas of optimism, for which we have no possible use in the extremities of our unhappiness, but words of courage and intelligence which, on the shores of the eternal seas, even have the qualities of virtue."

This existential combination of what Alfie Rohl described as "both affirmation and rebellion" goes to the heart what Mandela was about.

As the poem Invictus was being recited in the film, I found myself mouthing the words to myself. I was suddenly taken back to the table where, as a young boy, my father used to make us recite poems at Sunday lunch. Invictus had been one of my favorites.

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.


In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.


Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.


It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

The same poem Mandela gave rugby team captain Francois Pienaar,  my father had given me. And I suddenly realized why I had always liked Mandela. It was not just for what he had done but because of a poem we had both read that had helped us grasp the still subversive idea that the best way to overcome overbearing negative cultural forces is by the personal witness of individuals demonstrating another way.

December 17, 2009

HEALTHCARE SOLUTION: PASS A BILL. . . THEN GET THE BASTARDS

Sam Smith - On a number of occasions I have noted the lack of real numbers in the healthcare debate. This is somewhat corrected in what follows, bearing in mind that the enumerators have a vested interest in the bill's passage. Nonetheless, much as the bill is one of the worst contrived social measures ever to come this close to passage, it also seems that the measure helps a large number of people if at extraordinary and corrupt cost.

I think the problem in part is that these days the politically active - liberals in this case - tend to pay too much attention to the game and not enough about what the game is about. You shouldn't play games with people's lives and health.

The arguments against the bill rightfully point out the insidious subsidies to the insurance industry and the costs, but fail to provide any substantial proof that there are not significant positive benefits buried in the slime. Absent that proof the balance is in the bill's favor.

If this is true, then voting the bill down will hurt many people and deny many others needed progress. That doesn't however, mean that progressives are without power to make their point.

The easiest way is to openly help make Harry Reid history. He's headed for defeat anyway, and aggressive progressive assistance would wake up a few other Democrats.

The other way, even it seems a little wild, would be to start a drive to run Howard Dean for president in 2012. Dean, after all, is the guy who got the Democratic Party in good enough shape to elect Obama who then treated him like dirt. Obama is in far worse condition than the Democrats or the sycophantic media want to admit. The mere existence of a Draft Dean movement could shake things up substantially and positively. And that's from a guy who doesn't even agree with Dean on what to with the Senate health bill.

The point is that defeating legislation to make a point is not always the best strategy, especially if a lot people will blame you for their continued problems with health insurance. It may sometimes be better to live with the bad deal and get your political justice elsewhere.

Some stats

Families USA - 707,000 people in Virginia will gain coverage by 2019 under the Senate health reform bill. Based on Congressional Budget Office data, also shows that, without health reform, a Famlies USA report finds that 182,000 people in Virginia will lose health coverage by 2019. In 2007 and 2008, the average number of uninsured people in Virginia was 1,049,000, but that total will rise to 1,231,000 if the bill fails to pass.

Nationally, the number of uninsured will reach 54 million in 2019 in the absence of comprehensive health reform.

The Senate bill requires insurers to offer coverage to every person who applies, regardless of health status, age, or gender.

The Senate bill will help millions of middle-class families who simply cannot afford health coverage by creating a new health insurance marketplace where they will be able to purchase quality coverage, regardless of gender or health status. In addition, the bill will make premium subsidies available to families with incomes up to 400 percent of the federal poverty level ($88,200 in annual income for a family of four in 2009).

Currently, in 42 states, adults without dependent children are not eligible for Medicaid at all-even if they are penniless. The Senate bill will make all individuals who have incomes below 133 percent of poverty (about $29,330 for a family of four in 2009) eligible for Medicaid regardless of whether they have dependent children or not, substantially increasing the number of very low-income people with health coverage.

Progress Report - The Senate bill has a number of provisions to contain costs and "ensure that working class Americans will no longer go without basic health care coverage," says American Progress Action Fund President John Podesta. It would lower insurance premiums by an average of 8.4 percent, provide subsidies for people who cannot afford insurance and "represents the largest single expansion of Medicaid since its inception." According to the Congressional Budget Office, the bill covers 31 million currently uninsured Americans, extending coverage to 98 percent of legal residents. And according to the CBO, the amount that subsidized individuals would pay for insurance coverage "would be roughly 56 percent to 59 percent lower on average than the non-group premiums charged under current law."

Also, "the bill also ends insurer discrimination against women -- who currently pay as much as 48% more for coverage than men -- and gives them access preventive services with no cost sharing."

December 15, 2009

NOTES FROM A LOUSY TIME

Sam Smith

This is a lousy time. We're in the worst economic collapse since the 1930s depression. We can't get out of one war we were never able to justify. We are escalating another war we can't even explain, let alone justify. The environment is deteriorating. Nobody around the globe seems to respect America any more, including many of our own politicians. Our manufacturing economy caved, and so did the hedge fund economy that replaced it. Our Constitution is gaining the feel of a long out of print book. Our politics have never been more corrupt. And the president who was meant to be our messiah has turned out to be only the first syllable of that dream.

We've been in a lousy time for some time. What's happening is not new, only worse. We're finally reaping the full harvest of thirty years of greed, corruption, intellectual dissembling, political intrigue, environmental contempt, and journalistic adultery in which the media deserts its readers and viewers to have endless affairs with its sources.

Basically, America as a nation is in a state of collapse. The First American Republic is over. We don't talk about it that way because it's too shocking and embarrassing, but our politics, economy social values, and culture seem to be in free fall and there doesn't seem anyone who is both interested and powerful enough to do anything about it.This does not, however, mean our communities or even our states are in a similar state of distress.

This is a crisis shared by conservatives, liberals, the middle and the indifferent. The conservatives react with anger, the liberals with delusion or depression, the middle by remaining muddled, and the indifferent by clinging to their detachment.

This happens to cultures. Which is why we use Timex watches instead of Mayan calendars to tell what day it is. And while it is happening, other strange and gratuitously disruptive things happen as well.

For example, widespread myths arise that attempt to explain it all. Here are several examples:

The Indian ghost dance

A ceremonial religious dance connected with the messiah doctrine, which originated among the Paviotso in Nevada about 1888, and spread rapidly among other tribes until it numbered among its adherents nearly all the Indians . . . from Missouri river to or beyond the Rockies. The prophet of the religion was a young Paiute Indian, at that time not yet 35 years of age, known among his own people as Wovoka, and 'commonly called by the whites Jack Wilson, from having worked in the family of a ranchman named Wilson.

About the close of 1888, he was attacked by a dangerous fever. While he was ill an eclipse spread excitement among the Indians, with the result that Wovoka became delirious and imagined that he had been taken into the spirit world, and there received a direct revelation from the God of the Indians. Briefly stated, the revelation was to the effect that a new dispensation was close at hand by which the Indians would be restored to their inheritance and reunited with their departed friends, and that they must prepare for the event by practicing the songs and dance ceremonies which the prophet gave them.

Within a very short time the dance spread to the tribes east of the mountains, where it became known commonly only as the Spirit or Ghost dance. . . - Access Geneology

Cargo Cults

The most widely known period of cargo cult activity occurred amongst Pacific islanders in the years during and after World War II. First, the Japanese arrived with a great deal of unknown equipment, and later, Allied forces also used the islands in the same way. The vast amounts of war materiel that was airdropped (or airlifted to airstrips) onto these islands during the Pacific campaign between the Allies and the Empire of Japan necessarily meant drastic changes to the lifestyle of the islanders, many of whom had never seen Westerners or Easterners before.

Manufactured clothing, medicine, canned food, tents, weapons, and other useful goods arrived in vast quantities to equip soldiers. Some of it was shared with the islanders who were their guides and hosts. . .

With the end of the war, the airbases were abandoned, and cargo was no longer dropped. In response, cults developed within remote Melanesian populations that promised to bestow the followers with deliveries of food, arms, jeeps, etc., from their own ancestors, or other sources, as had happened to the outsider armies. In attempts to get cargo to fall by parachute or land in planes or ships again, islanders imitated the same practices they had seen the soldiers, sailors, and airmen use.

Cult behaviors usually involved mimicking the day to day activities and dress styles of US soldiers, such as performing parade ground drills with wooden or salvaged rifles. They carved headphones from wood and wore them while sitting in fabricated control towers. They waved the landing signals while standing on the runways. They lit signal fires and torches to light up runways and lighthouses. In a form of sympathetic magic, many built life-size replicas of airplanes out of straw and created new military-style landing strips, hoping to attract more airplanes. The cult members thought that the foreigners had some special connection to the deities and ancestors of the natives, who were the only beings powerful enough to produce such riches. - Wikipedia

The Sarah Palin Cult

As in the aforementioned examples, the Sarah Palin Cult has arisen during a time in which traditional culture and values were breaking down. The Indians were reacting to the invasion of the whites and the Melanesians to the aerial invasions by U.S. and Japanese forces. The Palin Cult can perhaps best be seen as a reaction not to Democrats or to a black president, but to modernity itself. Life has moved on and left it behind.

It is not unusual in these situations for the mythology to be driven by a relatively few manipulators and con artists.

This does not mean, however, that the believers are con artists. The believers are trying to maintain their traditional values and culture and have been given little help in moving into a new time. Liberals excoriate them, the media doesn't explain things well, and the politicians take advantage of them.

In a recent interview with Wired, Whitman College sociologist Kari Marie Norgaard, discussed the problem as it relates to climate change:

"Climate change is disturbing. It's something we don't want to think about. So what we do in our everyday lives is create a world where it's not there, and keep it distant. For relatively privileged people like myself, we don't have to see the impact in everyday life. I can read about different flood regimes in Bangladesh, or people in the Maldives losing their islands to sea level rise, or highways in Alaska that are altered as permafrost changes. But that's not my life. We have a vast capacity for this. . .

"In order to have a positive sense of self-identity and get through the day, we're constantly being selective of what we think about and pay attention to. To create a sense of a good, safe world for ourselves, we screen out all kinds of information, from where food comes from to how our clothes our made. When we talk with our friends, we talk about something pleasant. . .

"Stanford University psychologist Jon Krosnick has studied this, and showed that people stop paying attention to climate change when they realize there's no easy solution. People judge as serious only those problems for which actions can be taken.

"Another factor is that we no longer have a sense of permanence. Another psychologist, Robert Lifton, wrote about what the existence of atomic bombs did to our psyche. There was a sense that the world could end at any moment.

"Global warming is the same in that it threatens the survival of our species. Psychologists tell us that it's very important to have a sense of the continuity of life. That's why we invest in big monuments and want our work to stand after we die and have our family name go on.

"That sense of continuity is being ruptured. But climate change has an added aspect that is very important. The scientists who built nuclear bombs felt guilt about what they did. Now the guilt is real for the broader public."

And there is another aspect that psychologist Bruce E. Levine noted:

"When one already feels beaten down and demoralized, the likely response to the pain of shame is not constructive action, but more attempts to shut down or divert oneself from this pain. It is not likely that the truth of one's humiliating oppression is going to energize one to constructive actions.

"In the United States, 47 million people are without health insurance, and many millions more are underinsured or a job layoff away from losing their coverage. But despite the current sellout by their elected officials to the insurance industry, there is no outpouring of millions of U.S. citizens on the streets of Washington, D.C., protesting this betrayal. . .

"U.S. citizens do not actively protest obvious injustices for the same reasons that people cannot leave their abusive spouses: They feel helpless to effect change. The more we don't act, the weaker we get. . .

"The U.S. population is increasingly broken by the social isolation created by corporate-governmental policies. A 2006 American Sociological Review reported that, in 2004, 25 percent of Americans did not have a single confidant. (In 1985, 10 percent of Americans reported not having a single confidant.) . . .

"Today, increasing numbers of people in the U.S. who do not comply with authority are being diagnosed with mental illnesses and medicated with psychiatric drugs that make them less pained about their boredom, resentments, and other negative emotions, thus rendering them more compliant and manageable.. . .

"When human beings feel too terrified and broken to actively protest, they may stage a 'passive-aggressive revolution' by simply getting depressed, staying drunk, and not doing anything -- this is one reason why the Soviet empire crumbled. However, the diseasing/medicalizing of rebellion and drug 'treatments' have weakened the power of even this passive-aggressive revolution."

A good politics would recognize the problems and help people do something about them. For example, recycling has moved into our culture with little fuss; natural foods are prominently featured in supermarkets and buying locally makes both liberals and conservatives happy. But our politicians and media, from Obama on down, are tone deaf when it comes to climate change. They don't know how to sing the song. And so they talk endlessly about cap and trade when most Americans don't know what the hell it's about. And so the right has a field day.

It's the same way with healthcare. The healthcare bills have good parts but they are buried in payoffs to insurance companies, policies that raise unnecessary issues such as mandated purchase of insurance, and a massive indifference to the individual costs of some of the programs. So, again, the right has a field day. An earlier generation of Democratic politicians would have come up with something simpler and much more weighted toward what real people wanted. This crowd could never have gotten Social Security, a minimum wage or Medicare passed. They are too technocratic and autocratic. And they don't know how to listen.

Many liberals think everyone opposed to them is just another Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck or Bill O'Reilly. But Noam Chomsky described it much better:

"If you look at those people and listen to them on talk radio, these are people with real grievances. I listen to talk radio a lot and it's kind of interesting. If you can sort of suspend your knowledge of the world and just enter into the world of the people who are calling in, you can understand them. I've never seen a study, but my sense is that these are people who feel really aggrieved. These people think, 'I've done everything right all my life, I'm a god-fearing Christian, I'm white, I'm male, I've worked hard, and I carry a gun. I do everything I'm supposed to do. And I'm getting shafted.'

"And in fact they are getting shafted. For 30 years their wages have stagnated or declined, the social conditions have worsened, the children are going crazy, there are no schools, there's nothing, so somebody must be doing something to them, and they want to know who it is. Well - Rush Limbaugh has answered - it's the rich liberals who own the banks and run the government, and of course run the media, and they don't care about you-they just want to give everything away to illegal immigrants and gays and communists and so on.

"The reaction we should be having to them is not ridicule, but rather self-criticism. Why aren't we organizing them? I mean, we are the ones that ought to be organizing them, not Rush Limbaugh. There are historical analogs, which are not exact, of course, but are close enough to be worrisome. This is a whiff of early Nazi Germany. Hitler was appealing to groups with similar grievances, and giving them crazy answers, but at least they were answers; these groups weren't getting them anywhere else.

"The liberal Democrats aren't going to tell the average American, 'Yeah, you're being shafted because of the policies that we've established over the years that we're maintaining now.' That's not going to be an answer. And they're not getting answers from the left. So, there's an internal coherence and logic to what they get from Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, and the rest of these guys. And they sound very convincing, they're very self-confident, and they have an answer to everything-a crazy answer, but it's an answer. And it's our fault if that goes on. So one thing to be done is don't ridicule these people, join them, and talk about their real grievances and give them a sensible answer. . . "

And Levine notes:

"When people get caught up in humiliating abuse syndromes, more truths about their oppressive humiliations don't set them free. What sets them free is morale.

"What gives people morale? Encouragement. Small victories. Models of courageous behaviors. And anything that helps them break out of the vicious cycle of pain, shut down, immobilization, shame over immobilization, more pain, and more shut down.

"An elitist assumption is that people don't change because they are either ignorant of their problems or ignorant of solutions. . . An elitist who has never been broken by his or her circumstances does not know that people who have become demoralized do not need analyses and pontifications. Rather the immobilized need a shot of morale."

Where is the morale for these people coming from the liberal wing of the Democratic Party? It's a rare commodity. Just consider how little attention liberals have paid of late to foreclosures, job loss, credit card interest rates and so forth? It's so much easier just to dump on Glenn Beck and his viewers and feel superior about it.

So if the liberals won't help the way they did in the New Deal and the Great Society, where is the help going to come from?

When politics fail, you need movements, movements formed around issues, not a political institution. Movements that deal with things people really care about - like where they are going to find a job or how they are going to keep their house - not things that are, at best, 23rd on their list like that "transparency" the Obamites never stop talking about.

It's happened before. The abolition movement, union organizing, the civil rights movement, the 1960s. . . All you need is a big enough space - like the one the two parties have created - for someone else to fill.

And it doesn't initially have to happen on a national level. In fact, it seldom does. The sit-ins of the civil rights movement and the anti-apartheid movement are examples of local action transforming a whole county. We are not limited by either Sarah Palin or Obama. We can create oases of environmental, economic and political decency wherever we live and with the aid of the Internet share what we've learned and learn what others have discovered. Along the way we may find allies we never expected, even ones who own guns and don't like abortion.

If Obama can't save you, as appears to be the case, maybe you're part of a real answer. Why not give it a try?

THE SENATE'S IATROGENIC HEALTHCARE PLAN

Sam Smith

While no one that we can find has produced a comprehensive, factual summary of who and how many will be helped or hurt by pending healthcare legislation, it is clear that the measure will cut both ways - and to an uncertain degree will prove iatrogenic, i.e. the procedures will create new disease.

It may not be so obvious. Consider, for example, a comment by Dr. Steffie Woolhandler of Physicians for a National Health Plan: "In our studies, we found that 62 percent of all bankruptcies in the United States are due at least in part to medical illness or medical bills and that the majority of folks in medical bankruptcy started that illness with private health insurance."

The pending healthcare bill greatly increases the chances of bankruptcy in two ways:

- By mandating purchase of health insurance by many currently uncovered Americans, which the legislation's authors think they can afford, but which their checking account may say they can't.

- By subsidizing to an inadequate degree private health insurance plans - with the same effect.

I've not seen one article that addressed this issue.

And while there have been pieces about the potential loss of coverage under Medicare, many of these have been disingenuously dismissive. This is a serious question, all the more so because of the strong effort on the part of some Democratic senators and the nefarious Peterson Foundation to undermine both Medicare and Social Security.

Further, much of the statistical arguments and review have centered around budgets rather than human life. There is no Congressional Humanity Office to detail what effect a measure like this will have on our lives.

There is no doubt that the pending legislation is one of the greatest subsidies ever granted to a private industry. There is no doubt that much of the legislation is indefensible both morally and pragmatically. There is no doubt that some people will be helped and others hurt, but no seems interested in determining how many of each and in what ways.

Oddly, the Democrats promoting this legislation may be digging their own graves. It is predictable that after any such a complicated bill is approved, unfortunate details of the measure will trickle out, especially around election time. There are few things worse for politicians than for it to be discovered that they voted for some bad policy they didn't even know they were approving. In 2010 and 2012, the healthcare bill could easily be as risky as a highway around Baghdad.

Still, just as there are strong arguments for handing your wallet to a robber, so there are strong arguments for voting for this measure. If it saves tens of thousands of lives, the fact that it also unconsciously subsidizes the health insurance industry is a problem we may want to put on hold.

But it would help if some of the honest players in the battle could give us some of the basic facts such as how many people will be positively or negatively affected.

One thing is sure. Barack Obama, Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi have left us feeling far more ill than before. And we don't need iatrogenic politicians on top of all our other problems.

December 06, 2009

WHAT BASEBALL, POKER AND THE STOCK MARKET CAN TEACH US ABOUT CLIMATE CHANGE

Sam Smith

One thing is clear as the climate change debate chugs along: we need to teach math better in our schools. And it wouldn't hurt if journalism schools taught some math as well. 

For example, it is apparent that those who argue that one good snow storm destroys the case for climate change never got a good introduction to odds and averages.

An exception seems to be baseball. I have never heard a critic of ecological theory argue that a good hitter's failure to get to base in a particular game  indicates that he should be immediately traded. Sometimes it's because he swings badly and sometimes because the pitch is low and outside, but nobody says that's proof he's a bad hitter.

Yet, have one cold winter and they want to dump climate change.

I'm mystified by this. How can a culture that understand formulas like





have such a hard time with temperature variations?

My only explanation is that sports writers have done a far better job getting people to understand (or just accept) things like odds and averages than scientists or journalists. The unfortunate thing is that too many seem to think they only apply to sports.

Maybe we should forget about Copenhagen and have a Monday Night Climate Countdown.

There are some other people good at figuring out odds and averages, such as poker players.

Over a decade ago, I offered a poker player's guide to environmental risk assessment. Key points included:

1. Figure the stakes as well as the odds.

2. The odds of something happening at any moment are not the same as the odds of something ever happening. In ecological calculations - especially ones in which the downside could ruin your whole millennium - it is the latter odds that are important.

3. When confronted with conflicting odds, ask what happens if each projection is wrong. Temporary job loss because of environmental restrictions may come and go, but the loss of the ozone layer is something you can have forever.

4. When confronted with conflicting odds, remember that you don't have to play the game. There are other things to do with your time - or with the economy or with the environment - that may produce better results. Thus, instead of playing poker you could be making love. Or instead of getting jobs from some air or water degrading activity, the same jobs could come from more benign industry such as retrofitting a whole city for solar energy.

5. Don't let anyone - in industry, government, or the media - define an "acceptable level of risk" for your own death or disease. They may not have the same vested interest in the right answer as you do.

6. If the stakes are too high, the game is not worth it. If you can't stand the pain, don't attempt the gain.

Lately I've been wondering how a successful stock market investor might figure out whether global warming was a good investment.

Most stock market charts look much like climate records kept by NASA - an awful lot of detail in a small space that is hard for the impatient or untrained to figure out.

But there is one kind of chart that addresses the key issue: which way a stock really headed. It's called a point and figure chart. It consists of columns of Xs and Os - the former indicating a rising stock, the latter a falling one.

The neat trick is that you only change directions if the stock moves a certain amount - typically three points. What this does is to eliminate minor fluctuations and emphasizes the important stuff.

For example, let's say you bought a stock for 20 and it went up to 22. You would do nothing, but when it hit 23 you would show three Xs in a column.

Now let's say the stock goes down to 21 and then back to 23. You would do nothing because it hasn't moved three points. But let's say it goes down to 18. Then you would show five Os.

A normal chart of such things shows change in neatly divided time frames. Point & figure charts don't care much about time - mostly about movement.

I tried this approach on global temperatures since 1880 as reported by NASA. Using as the basis the average temperature for 1951-1980, here's what resulted:





Note the consistency in the patterns until 1981. Then suddenly there is a breakout combined with rising peaks. This is known as an ascending triple top breakout - and in the stock market it's a really good thing. The stock continues to rise and fall but the peaks keep getting higher. If this is a stock you may well want to buy it, but if it's climate change you don't want it at all.

Note also that the temperature has bounced up and down 3-6 points about a dozen times since 1880 just like the stock market. And just like the rest of life, come to think of it.

Of course, to those who think climate change is a purely ideological or theological issue, none of this means much.

Still, if someone tells you that the snow outside proves there's no global warming, remind them that in 2009 Albert Pujols only got a hit 33% of the time. 

WHAT BASEBALL, POKER AND THE STOCK MARKET CAN TEACH US ABOUT CLIMATE CHANGE

Sam Smith 

One thing is clear as the climate change debate chugs along: we need to teach math better in our schools. And it wouldn't hurt if journalism schools taught some math as well. 

For example, it is apparent that those who argue that one good snow storm destroys the case for climate change never got a good introduction to odds and averages.

An exception seems to be baseball. I have never heard a critic of ecological theory argue that a good hitter's failure to get to base in a particular game  indicates that he should be immediately traded. Sometimes it's because he swings badly and sometimes because the pitch is low and outside, but nobody says that's proof he's a bad hitter.

Yet, have one cold winter and they want to dump climate change.

I'm mystified by this. How can a culture that understand formulas like


have such a hard time with temperature variations?

My only explanation is that sports writers have done a far better job getting people to understand (or just accept) things like odds and averages than scientists or journalists. The unfortunate thing is that too many seem to think they only apply to sports.

Maybe we should forget about Copenhagen and have a Monday Night Climate Countdown.

There are some other people good at figuring out odds and averages, such as poker players.

Over a decade ago, I offered a poker player's guide to environmental risk assessment. Key points included:

1. Figure the stakes as well as the odds.

2. The odds of something happening at any moment are not the same as the odds of something ever happening. In ecological calculations - especially ones in which the downside could ruin your whole millennium - it is the latter odds that are important.

3. When confronted with conflicting odds, ask what happens if each projection is wrong. Temporary job loss because of environmental restrictions may come and go, but the loss of the ozone layer is something you can have forever.

4. When confronted with conflicting odds, remember that you don't have to play the game. There are other things to do with your time - or with the economy or with the environment - that may produce better results. Thus, instead of playing poker you could be making love. Or instead of getting jobs from some air or water degrading activity, the same jobs could come from more benign industry such as retrofitting a whole city for solar energy.

5. Don't let anyone - in industry, government, or the media - define an "acceptable level of risk" for your own death or disease. They may not have the same vested interest in the right answer as you do.

6. If the stakes are too high, the game is not worth it. If you can't stand the pain, don't attempt the gain.

Lately I've been wondering how a successful stock market investor might figure out whether global warming was a good investment.

Most stock market charts look much like climate records kept by NASA - an awful lot of detail in a small space that is hard for the impatient or untrained to figure out.

But there is one kind of chart that addresses the key issue: which way a stock really headed. It's called a point and figure chart. It consists of columns of Xs and Os - the former indicating a rising stock, the latter a falling one.

The neat trick is that you only change directions if the stock moves a certain amount - typically three points. What this does is to eliminate minor fluctuations and emphasizes the important stuff.

For example, let's say you bought a stock for 20 and it went up to 22. You would do nothing, but when it hit 23 you would show three Xs in a column.

Now let's say the stock goes down to 21 and then back to 23. You would do nothing because it hasn't moved three points. But let's say it goes down to 18. Then you would show five Os.

A normal chart of such things shows change in neatly divided time frames. Point & figure charts don't care much about time - mostly about movement.

I tried this approach on global temperatures since 1880 as reported by NASA. Using as the basis the average temperature for 1951-1980, here's what resulted:



Note the consistency in the patterns until 1981. Then suddenly there is a breakout combined with rising peaks. This is known as an ascending triple top breakout - and in the stock market it's a really good thing. The stock continues to rise and fall but the peaks keep getting higher. If this is a stock you may well want to buy it, but if it's climate change you don't want it at all.

Note also that the temperature has bounced up and down 3-6 points about a dozen times since 1880 just like the stock market. And just like the rest of life, come to think of it.

Of course, to those who think climate change is a purely ideological or theological issue, none of this means much.

Still, if someone tells you that the snow outside proves there's no global warming, remind them that in 2009 Albert Pujols only got a hit 33% of the time. 

December 02, 2009

GROWING UP PART JEWISH

I grew up part Jewish. It was hard not to if you lived in a New Deal family where your father was involved in things like starting Americans for Democratic Action. My own introduction to politics came as a pre-teen stuffing envelopes for the local ADA director Leon Shull as he helped organize the removal of Philadelphia's 69-year-old Republican machine. Shull was one of those who early convinced me that there were three branches of Judaism: your Orthodox, your Reform and your Liberal Democratic, with the last clearly the most powerful. I was certain that Jews were put on this earth to run labor unions and win elections for the good guys.

If you think I'm kidding, consider this: for many years we lived across the street from a prominent activist couple - she black, he Jewish. One day one of their sons came over and slumped at our kitchen table. "What's the matter?" asked my wife. "I had a terrible night," the boy explained. "I dreamt I was Jacob Javits." He had already learned to fear becoming a Jewish Republican.

Although I knew Jews went to synagogue, I wasn't all that impressed. After all, as my friend Peter Temin was going to Hebrew school on Saturdays, I got to go to the Henry Glass music store and take drum lessons, clearly the better deal. During the week we went to a Quaker school where perhaps a quarter of the students were Jewish and nobody thought it odd. The tradition continues. The joke about Washington's Sidwell Friends School is that it is a place where Episcopalians teach Jews how to act like Quakers.

Much later I would figure out what Quakerism and Judaism had in common: a blend of individualism, pragmatism, and responsibility, with a particular emphasis on the last. You didn't come into the world pre-ordained and your primary goal wasn't to leave it saved; what really mattered is what you did in the meantime.

For much of my life, what I have done and what I have thought have been deeply influenced by existential Judaism and its practitioners. I can't even begin to count the number of times I have come across Jews in the lonely corners of hope trying to do what others, through lack of interest or courage, would not.

But a number of things have happened since I was first introduced to Judaism. The direct ties to the often radical Jewish immigrant tradition began to fade. The offspring of the immigrants became wealthier and less involved. America of whatever ethnicity began paying less attention to others and more to itself.

As I put it once, "The great 20th century social movements [were] successful enough to create their own old boy and girl networks, powerful enough to enter the Chevy Chase Club, and indifferent enough to ignore those left behind. The minority elites had joined the Yankee and the Southern aristocrat and the rest of God's frozen people to form the largest, most prosperous, and most narcissistic intelligentsia in our history. But as the best and brightest drove around town in their Range Rovers, who would speak for those who were still, in Bill Mauldin's phrase, fugitives from the law of averages? The work of witness remained."

A whole history began to disappear. A part of the story was told by journalist Paul S. Green in his memoir, From the Streets of Brooklyn to the War in Europe. He notes that by the dawn of the 20th century

"Jewish youth in Poland grew more and more impatient with the narrow focus of their lives. They were determined to take part in the opportunities opening up around them - exciting new developments in science, the arts, in social relationships. This brought them into conflict with their parents and grandparents. In seeking a different way of life, they began to do the unthinkable - to reject the strict age-old Orthodoxy of their ancestors. "
Out of this grew several new movements, one of which, Zionism, looked towards retrieving a Jewish nation. Others were socialist, ranging from hard-core Bolshevik to the Bund, which Green describes as

"An organization of free-thinking Jewish youth who whole-heartedly embraced Yiddish culture and a Yiddish life that completely rejected traditional religion. The Bundists believed that only a socialist government - evolutionary rather than revolutionary - could hope to bring together all peoples of whatever origin and outlaw racial and religious conflict, with all men becoming brothers, thereby bringing an end to anti-Semitism and pogroms."

And so we find, not too many years later, the New York City Jewish cigar-makers each contributing a small sum to hire a man to sit with them as they worked - reading aloud the classic works of Yiddish literature. And the leader of the New York cigar-makers, Samuel Gompers, became the first president of the American Federation of Labor.

Green's own family joined the rebellion:

"In embracing the principles of free-thinking non-religious belief, my parents had made a profound break with the past. The generation gap with their own parents was unbelievably deep. They had been born and brought up in a world that brooked no deviation. . . They were turning their backs on the fearsome God of their forefathers who had ruled Jewish lives for thousands of years. . . They realized that maintaining their beliefs set them apart from the mainstream of Jewish life, but the fact that they were a small minority did not bother them. "

They became part of a Jewish tradition that profoundly shaped the politics, social conscience, and cultural course of 20th century America. It helped to create the organizations, causes, and values that built this country's social democracy. While Protestants and Irish Catholics controlled the institutions of politics, the ideas of modern social democracy disproportionately came from native populists and immigrant socialists, heavily Jewish.

It is certainly impossible to imagine liberalism, the civil rights movement, or the Vietnam protests without the Jewish left. There is, in fact, no greater parable of the potential power of a conscious, conscientious minority than the influence of secular Jews on 20th century modern American politics.

Sadly, however, social and economic progress inevitably produced a dilution of passion for justice and change not just among Jews but within the entire post-liberal elite. And, in many ways, Israel became the icon that replaced the cause of social justice. This is not to say that the two are antithetical. That certainly wasn't the case when I was younger. But as Jewish rhetoric and politics became increasingly in the hands of powerful conservative interests, an iconic, unexamined Israel began to serve Jews much as an absurdly trivialized Jesus has been used by the powerful conservative Christian interests to serve their ends. And other things just got forgotten.

Just as it is important for Americans not to define their country's past by the tragic distortions of the past quarter century, it is important for Jews not to be misled by a powerful right wing's reduction of Judaism to the goals of a deeply misguided and militaristic nation.

The fact is both America and Israel have badly damaged themselves through grandiosity, arrogance and narcissism. Beyond that is a truth few want to admit: no culture, no ethnicity, no value system can exist in a vacuum any more. This is not the fault of terrorists or anti-Semites. It's the result of television and multinational corporations that have usurped the role of culture, values and ethnicities. Add to that Israel's demographic trends and you've got a problem that AIPAC and Abe Foxman can't help you with in the slightest.

The answer, to the extent there still is one for the human species, is to be found in honest, personal witness. You can't save Christianity with hypocrisy and you can't save Judaism with missiles. What might work, however, is to reach back into the past of one's own culture or ethnicity and find examples of actions and behaviors that produced positive change. Neither Christians nor Jews have always been as absurdly self-destructive as they are today. And before they offer any more dangerous directions for dealing with today's problems, they need to rediscover their own good paths.

It is along such paths - and not on battlefields - that faith is solidified, admiration is encouraged, and loyalty is attracted. And along the way you may even pick up some unorthodox stragglers like me.

THE FIGHT THAT DOESN'T MATTER

ThLast night, browsing through Sartre before bedtime, I came across this:

"Existentialism isn't so atheistic that it wears itself out showing that God does not exist. Rather it declares that even if God did exist, that would change nothing. . . Not that we believe that God exists, but we think that the problem of His existence is not the issue."
It struck me as I read this that here was the key to the currently inflated battle between church and state: in the end it doesn't matter. The moral Christian, Jew or Muslim and the moral rationalist will follow much the same path. Keep them away from the pulpit and you may not be able to tell them apart.

The difference lies not in their actual life but in what they believe about it. The existentialist, for example, believes that existence - and behavior in it - precedes and defines essence. The religious true believer thinks it's faith, or what is known in science as speculation and, in gambling, a bet.

Now one can have an interesting debate about this, but the point here is that as far as politics and social policy are concerned the difference should make no difference once it moves to the level of actually doing something rather than just talking about, celebrating or praising why you're doing it.

Of course, politically, it does make a difference. One reason is that there are a hell of a lot more registered practicing Christians than there are registered practicing existentialists. Another is that politicians, aware of this demographic, find it much easier to pander to the faith that drives these voters rather than to the works the faith demands.

Thus, whether in the White House or in Selma, you never hear politicians described themselves as "works-based Christians," because it is much easier to associate oneself with unchallengeable holiness than with intended products too simple to observe and assess.
There was a time when there are a lot more works-based Christians around to serve as models. At one point, for example, we had Father Drinan in Congress, Father Baroni in the Department of Housing and Urban Development and Father Kemp on the DC school board. During the war on poverty I found myself constantly in the company of preachers, some of whom became close friends. When I asked myself why, my answer was in part that while the engines driving us were different, our intended routes were the same. We accepted uncertainty, honored inquiry and persisted in the hope that what we did that day might make a difference.

Today's obsession with faith is driven by a number of causes, among them the deterioration of American culture and democracy, a desperate searching for certainty, evangelical abuse and heresy, political cynicism and deceit, as well as a media that perpetuates the illusion that it is better to raise one's hands in prayer than to use them for good in this life and on this day.

Of these forces, it is the media that often wields the greatest clout - a media that pretends to be fact-based and objective yet all but writhes in the aisle, screams Hallelujah and shouts Jesus' name when a fraudulent pol mounts the pulpit or a president declares some carefully concocted connection with the Almighty for his war or budget policy. This adulation of false faith and the indifference to true works is not only cynical but is helping to destroy America.

It has also helped turn the press from being reporters to being mere acolytes at the holy communion of America's powerful. If, on the other hand, the media followed the lead of Sartre, it would do us all a great service. Instead of telling us what politicians pretended to believe it would report on what they actually did. . . moving, one might say, from faith-based to fact-based reporting

MOVING ON WITHOUT OBAMA

Sam Smith

With his expansion of the Af-Pak war, Barack Obama has now fully established himself as the Bernie Madoff of change and hope. He had been well on his way, what with all those billions for banks and so little for troubled homeowners and small businesses; his continuation of Bushic unconstitutional assaults on civil liberties; and the convoluted corruption of the health care issue. But a war that he can not explain or defend with any modicum of logic pretty well seals the deal.

While those of us who thought he was a con man from the start no longer find ourselves so lonely, there remains the problem of what to do about it.

My sense is that the infatuation over Obama was based on much larger problems including the iconization of politics, an excessive infatuation with words over deeds, as well as naive assumptions of what having the first black president would be like. Few recognized that true equality among ethnicities includes a balanced dispersal of sins and weakness as well as virtues.

Most of all, however, Obama represented a triumph of a generation of liberals dramatically different from their predecessors, most markedly in their general indifference to issues of economic as well as ethnic equality.

This heavily professional liberal class never once - in the manner of their predecessors of the New Deal and Great Society - took the lead in pressing for economic reforms. It wasn’t that they opposed them; they just never seemed to occur to them.

They, after all, had risen in status even as much of the rest of the country was slipping. Over a quarter of a century passed and the best the liberal Democrats could come up with was to slash welfare and raise the age for Social Security.

Obama was the epitome of this new generation: well educated, well connected and well toned in rhetoric. But far distant from the concerns of so many.

So it is small wonder that the O'Reilly, Becks and Palins rose to the fore. They simply hijacked the populist tradition of the Democrats and turned it into a rhetorical toy with which they could play in any manner they desired.

It wasn't the first time it had happened. Germany's willingness to accept Hitler was the product of many cultural characteristics specific to that country, to the anger and frustrations in the wake of the World War I defeat, to extraordinary inflation and particular dumb reactions to it, and, of course, to the appeal of anti-Semitism. But, bearing in mind all the foregoing, there was also:

- A collapse of conventional liberal and conservative politics that bears uncomfortable similarities to what we are now experiencing.

- The gross mismanagement of the economy and of such key worker concerns as wages, inflation, pensions, layoffs, and rising property taxes. Many of the actions were taken in the name of efficiency, an improved economy and the "rationalization of production." There were also bankruptcies, negative trade balance, major decline in national production, large national debt rise compensated for by foreign investment. In other words, a hyped version of what America and its workers are experiencing today.

- The collapse of the country's self image. Thomas Childers points out that Germany had been a world leader in education, industry, science, and literacy. Much of the madness that we see today stems from attempts to compensate for our own battered self-image.

This is only a caution, not a prediction. But without a strong populist progressive movement, based on the economic and social well being of all Americans, we run a serious risk of further disintegration.

The first thing that needs to happen is for there to be a clear distinction between smug, self-serving liberalism contemptuous of so many Americans and a populist progressive movement that seeks unity with those many liberals prefer simply to condemn.

The magnets for this unity are such obvious yet ignored issues as the creation of jobs, the preservation of pensions, decent treatment of endangered homeowners, an end to credit card usury, respect for local decision-making, and, yes, a healthcare plan based on providing financial assistance, not bureaucratic nightmares.

Such a movement would have to be formed issue by issue. It can not rely on empty icons or over-packed ideology. If one agrees on how to handle foreclosures but disagrees on abortion, leave the latter for another day. It is by working together on the things upon which we agree that both respect and power are gained.

Such principles were almost a given in much of the best organizing of the 1960s and 70s, but they have become obscured in a time when one's political identity is so tied to the ego and so indifferent to real progress.

We need to return to issue politics. To get out of the comfortable church of our own ideology and on the street with reality and real people. In the words of one populist of long ago, "we need to raise less corn and more hell."

Obama has had his chance. He blew it. It's our turn now. If we don't take it, we'll have far more than Afghanistan to worry about.

November 30, 2009

HEALTH CARE: OF LIVES AND PRINCIPLE

Sam Smith

The pending health care legislation is as corrupt, cynical and contemptuous of simple decency as any bill I've seen in over a half century of covering national politics. Which still leaves the question of what to do about it.

After all, living in the Mafia neighborhood that contemporary America has become, survival can easily, and wisely, take precedence over principle.

For example the Institute of Medicine estimates that around 18,000 Americans die because of a lack of health insurance. A study in the December issue of American Journal of Public Health puts the figure for those 18-64 at 45,000 lives lost a year. Does one ignore such numbers in order to stand on principle against an indefensible payoff to the health insurance industry?

Or consider these assets of the pending legislation as outlined by Joshua Holland for Alternet:

[] According to the Congressional Budget Office, Medicaid expansion alone would offer public insurance to more than 10 million low-income Americans who would otherwise be without. . . More than nine in ten people who lack insurance in America fall beneath 400 percent of the poverty line, and every one of them will get some help getting coverage. . .

"The House legislation is a watered-down bill that would do little to contain America's overall health-care costs, but would help contain the family health-care expenses of tens of millions of real working people, while covering 36 million who would otherwise be uninsured." []

But now look at another side of the story. How many people will die or become ill because of provisions in the measure?

For example, the Medicare cost-cutting raises a serious threat to elderly. How big a threat one can't tell right now, but you can get a sense of the problem by considering the recent report favoring a drastic reduction in mammograms. Thanks to the strength of the women's movement, this suggestion was quickly squashed, but what about similar cuts in examinations or services to those under Medicare who are less likely to cause a fuss?

Further, we are looking at a system in which the standards for care will be judged for both health benefit and budgetary efficiency by the same government agencies. The conflict of interest is enormous and will especially affect those whose illnesses and response do not match the government-approved average. How many people will die or suffer continued bad health as a result? To what degree is there a submerged bias in the bills against older patients suffering what might be called statistical deficit disorder? What will be the death rate as a result of seniors giving up Medicare Advantage? What will be the health effects of the mandatory mandate on a family that is about to have their house foreclosed and simultaneously faces criminal charges for not paying protection money to the insurance industry? We seem to have forgotten that beyond the poor are a huge number who need only be slightly pushed to go over the edge.

It is useful to recall that Obama's original point man in this sick game was Tom Daschle who said that health care reform "will not be pain free" and that seniors should accept more of that pain rather than treating it.

Daschle pushed for a federal review body modeled after the one in Britain that distinguished itself by such things as a rule that elderly patients couldn't get an expensive eye drug until one of their eyes went blind. It took three years of protest to reverse that decision.

Now, quietly snuck into the stimulus package, we have something called the Federal Coordinating Council for Comparative Effectiveness Research, which consists of 15 government officials and no outside experts. This body will be making purportedly unbiased evaluations of treatments but every official on it will be actually serving two gods: health and the budget.

In short, we are moving from a de facto triage system based on income to one based on appropriations.

And on age.

The silent and widespread acceptance of huge cuts in Medicare as part of "health reform" is an indicator of where the elderly really stand in current political priorities. As Cecil Connolly of the Washington Post noted last summer, "It appears seniors are the net losers under bills" then pending in the House.

No small part of the reason for this is that our health "reform" is being designed on an economic rather than a medical or moral basis. Since seniors are less productive than younger people, their lifespan simply isn't that important to a government so fiscally obsessed.

You can get a sense of how this works from an article in the Boston Globe by Linda Bilmes of the Harvard Kennedy School and Rosemarie Day of Massaschusetts' health insurance authority:

"The premature death of thousands of Americans can be translated into monetary terms using the economic "value of a statistical life.'' . . . A recent study by Stanford economists has demonstrated that the average economic value of a year of human life is about $129,000. Most insurance companies, and many countries around the world, already use a variant of this concept. They implicitly ascribe the value of an additional year of human life at $50,000 by setting that as the threshold for approving treatments. (Any treatment that costs $50,000 will be reimbursed if it is predicted to add another year of life for the patient)."

Significantly, no figures were given for the elderly, retired or infirm but it is clear from the subtext of the current debate that those in charge know whose lives they want to save and it ain't your grandmother.

There are other problems lurking behind the teleprompters. For example, the National Committee to Preserve Medicare and Social Security notes:

[] The health care reform bills now before Congress contain an unpleasant surprise for older Americans: Age-based increases in health insurance premiums for those under 65. This is nothing more than a giveaway to the private insurance industry.

At first blush, it might appear that this is justified assuming that as we age, we cost the health care system more. In fact, age is far from an entirely reliable predictor of health care costs, accounting for less than 20% of the variation in costs across age groups. A healthy 55-year-old may well consume fewer health care dollars than a 35-year-old who is obese or has diabetes.

Both the House and Senate bills include provisions to eliminate coverage for pre-existing conditions, which clearly serves the public interest.

Permitting premiums to rise with age contradicts the intent, if not the letter, of that regulation as aging can reasonably be considered an immutable, pre-existing condition. Moreover, the new regulation disproportionately affects Americans between 55 and 64, who already shoulder a financial burden for health care that is higher than any other age group, regardless of insurance status. . .

Here's a question for policymakers and the public to consider: Will the proposed age-rating of premiums, coupled with the absence of a robust, affordable public option, push more older Americans into the pool of people unable to afford health coverage?. . .

A recent Harvard study published in the American Journal of Public Health found that American adults under 65 who lack health insurance have a 40 percent higher risk of death than those who have coverage. Ailing and uninsured people in their 50s and 60s will likely add to the strain on Medicare's budget as they seek care for neglected health problems as soon as they become eligible for this entitlement.

The private insurance industry stands to make big profits from the millions of new customers it will pick up through health care reform. Adding to its bounty by putting the squeeze on the finances of older Americans is not only unjust, it is poor economic policy. []

Add to this the efforts by a powerful coalition that wishes to gut both Social Security and Medicare, epitomized by the insidious Concord Coalition and Peterson Foundation, as well as a development reported recently by Chris Bowers in Open Left:

"Of all the various blocs and gangs that have been formed in Congress this year, Senators Bayh, Conrad, Feinstein, Lieberman and Warner have managed to form the most regressive one yet. Currently, these five Democrats are demanding that Speaker Pelosi hand over all relevant Congressional power to an independent commission that will be allowed to slash and partially privatize Social Security and Medicare, or else they will allow the United States to default on its debt."

Writing in Global Research, Shamus Cooke gives rare attention to still other hidden ills of the healthcare legislation:

[] And although the final bill has yet to be crafted, there exists general agreements as to what the end version will look like. Americans will be forced to buy shoddy corporate insurance with no limit to the cost, no guarantee of quality, with large premiums and other tricks to further gouge consumers. If a public option emerges in the final bill - by no means a guarantee - it will be shrunken enough to insure very few people (2 percent of the U.S. population).

But it gets worse. How this health care "reform" will be paid for has implications that dwarf the above atrocities. . .

The two biggest cost saving schemes are the most damaging. The first is the enormous attack on Medicare. Since its inception, the corporate elite wanted this program struck down. Now they have their man for the job - a Republican could never get away with such obvious treachery. . .

One way that both Congressional health care bills will gut Medicare is referred to as "forced productivity gains" - cost saving measures essentially; trimming the fat.

What are these savings? The most mentioned device - by politicians and media alike - is the reduction of "wasteful tests" and procedures that doctors routinely perform, an idea that the health care mega-corporations love. It will save them billions, while having catastrophic effects on the health care of millions of people. . .

Another piece of Medicare that's being trimmed is Medicare Advantage, a favorite program of the elderly because of its comprehensive services. . .

Finally, The Senate health care bill attacks Medicare by reducing payments to doctors by 25 percent. If doctors receive such a drastic reduction in pay, they will simply refuse to see Medicare or Medicaid patients; people will thus be insured only on paper. The newly insured Medicaid patients under any new congressional bill will be sorely disappointed.

Once Medicare is undermined in the above ways, the corporate sponsored right-wing will make a very convincing argument that "Medicare doesn't work", leading to future cuts that will further destroy the program.

The second hidden disaster in financing a congressional health care bill is the tax on so-called "gold-plated" or "Cadillac" health insurance policies that some employers offer their workers. This tax is supposedly meant to apply to the health care policies that "elite" employees receive. . .

As it turns out, many, if not most workers in unions will be included in this tax, which, under the Senate version, will include any plan worth more than $8,000 for individuals and $21,000 for families. Hardly elite, considering the still-soaring costs for health care.

If this provision were to pass - and it's very popular in Congress - the immediate reaction would be very predictable: employers would immediately drop their health care plans, forcing workers into the now-forced purchasing of inadequate health care. . . []

But facts have never been important in this debate. For example, the Democrats have done their best to conceal how long it will be before provisions actually go into effect - such as the much touted ban on denial due to preexisting provisions. Nor will anyone admit the truth that a real advantage of the mandatory mandate is that the administration can claim - dishonestly to be sure - that it is not raising taxes. It is. The affected are just sending their checks to an insurance company rather than to the IRS.

In the end, the legislation will save lives while simultaneously causing other deaths. Not only does no one know the real numbers, but no one that I can find has even tried to come up with such figures. How do the saved uninsured match up against those driven out of existing plans (such as Medicare Advantage and so-called "Cadillac" programs) and how many seniors will die prematurely because of added costs or efficiency measures that claim their tests to treatment aren't worth it? I suspect there will be a net saving of life but that's not what all of us being created equal and with inalienable rights was meant to be about. None of our founders mentioned cost effectiveness as a precondition of human decency.

It's all a sad example of America's cultural and political collapse. This crowd - from Obama on down - could never have gotten Social Security, a minimum wage or Medicare passed. And it probably wouldn't have bothered them all that much, since today's politics has no higher goal than next quarter's campaign contributions.

Still, in reacting to it, this is a different situation than, say, being a conscientious objector in which one refuses to join in the killing and where virtue and effect are in sync. If, as I suppose, more lives will be saved than lost under the healthcare bill, then it is worth backing however cruel the choice - because you can't stand on principle in this instance without contributing to the damage. It seem that we have to pay the protection money to the insurance mob, save some lives and then turn to fighting the struggle on better ground.

November 15, 2009

A BRIEF GUIDE TO AVOIDING SOCIALISM

Sam Smith

Last May, the Republican National Committee condemned Obama and the Democratic Congress for leading America towards socialism. Since then the line has been picked up by numerous others on the right including the tea baggers, a group that believes it is standing for true American rights by invoking memories of a fight that was actually about merely getting Americans some representation in the British Parliament and not about full independence.

That's not the only mistake made by those complaining about the threat of socialism. If Obama is leading America anywhere, it is - like his immediate predecessors - towards fascism. Socialism is about the state running things on behalf of the public; fascism is about the state running things on behalf of corporations. Adrian Lyttelton in his book on Mussolini wrote that "fascism can be viewed as a product of the transition from the market capitalism of the independent producer to the organized capitalism of the oligopoly." It was a point that Orwell noted when he described fascism as being but an extension of capitalism. Lyttelton quoted Italian Nationalist theorist Affredo Rocco: "The Fascist economy is. . . an organized economy. It is organized by the producers themselves, under the supreme direction and control of the State."

This is the way we have been heading for some time and Obama has merely joined the club.

Still, all the talk got me thinking about what avoiding socialism in America would truly be about. What if we set out to rid ourselves of all intrusions of this purported political curse? Here are a few things we might do:

- Return to the old system of fire fighting in which blazes were handled by private fire brigades hired by private insurance companies. Brooke Harrington described the practice in Economic Sociology: "If you wanted a fire brigade to come to your aid in . . . emergencies, you had to join a kind of club with private membership fees. It worked like this: you ponied up the fees, the club gave you a plaque to put over your front door, and then if fire swept through the neighborhood, the club dispatched help, but they only assisted paying members. So if you didn't have that plaque over your door, the fire rescue teams would pass you right on by. It would not be uncommon to find that your house burned down while the one next door would be saved." Sounds a little like our health insurance system.

- End public education. Public schools - which strongly aided the growth of America - are about as socialistic as you can get. Obama, it should be noted, is trying to help reduce this deleterious influence by converting public schools into profit-making charter operations.

- Close down all federal highways or sell them off to the highest bidder so they can turn them into profit-making roads using tolls.

- Abolish Social Security, Medicare, food stamps and all other such welfare programs.

- End all government interference with the banking and financial industries. This would have recently saved us hundred of billions in bailout funds.

- End all veterans programs including closing veterans' hospitals.

- Sell off all public transportation to unregulated private interests.

- Close all public hospitals, end public subsidies to other hospitals and privatize all ambulance service.

- End all government regulation of food or health products.

- End the practice of government plowing streets after a snow storm. As Boston mayor James Curly put it, "The Lord brought it; let the Lord take it away."

There.

Feeling better yet?

Bet you never realized what a bunch of closet socialists we are.

We got there, though, because - instead of hurling theories and cliches at each other - we decided on a case by case basis who could do a particular job best. And the funny thing is, it's worked pretty well.

People who complain about the threat of socialism remind me of the man from Virginia who went to college on the GI Bill and bought his first house with a VA loan. When a hurricane struck he got federal disaster aid. When he got sick he was treated at a veteran's hospital. When he was laid off he received unemployment insurance and then got a SBA loan to start his own business. His bank funds were protected under federal deposit insurance laws. When he retired he went on Social Security and Medicare. The other day he got into his car, drove the federal interstate to the railroad station, parked in the public lot, took Amtrak to Washington and went to Capitol Hill to ask his congressman to get the government off his back.

November 10, 2009

POLITICS IN THE TIME OF MYTH

Sam Smith

Although America's politics is increasingly being driven by myth - witness the stunning decline in those who believe that global temperatures are rising - the media, academia and political activists tend to act primarily with dismay and disgust or to satisfy themselves by labeling the myth followers wing nuts. Serious consideration of this huge factor in American life is largely absent.

Little time is spent on how to educate people on a complex or scientific matter, to help them deal with probabilities as well as certainties, or how best to convince rather than merely to condemn.

Here's a thought for starters: Bring together journalists, philosophers, pollsters, historians, anthropologists and activists to put the matter on the table. Begin with the premise that myth is normal in any culture; it even has important healthy functions. But what happens when, as now, myth gets out of hand? What causes this? How do we stop myth from being self destructive? How, metaphorically, do we return safely from Jonestown to the First Baptist Church down the street?

If there were such a conference - or, better, a series of conferences - here are some of potential topics:

What causes myth to change its role in the same culture?

How important are different segments of the culture in this: education, religion, media, political campaigns etc?

How does this shift reflect a failure to understand basic things like the variations in a multi-year chart of global temperatures? What can be done about this?

How do we raise the understanding of probability in dealing with such matters? For example, I often use the poker analogy in dealing with the environment, emphasizing such points as considering the stakes as well as the odds.

What is the best response to cynically created mythology such as the idea in the recent Maine campaign that gay marriage would damage heterosexual marriage or endanger children?

What is the media's responsibility in handling such issues and how could it do it better?

What are effective ways to move someone from myth to reality?

To what extent does the over-complexity of solutions (or of their administration) - i.e. the healthcare bills - contribute to mythology? Is the lesson that we should more often break such solutions into smaller, more comprehensible parts?

To what extent does burying questionable items in a complex solution - i.e again the healthcare bills - contribute to mythology and undermine support?

To what extent does the establishment's tendency to say "Case closed" on matters with continuing doubt work against reality and spur myth? For example, the World Trade Center attack was certainly not likely the creation of George Bush, but that doesn't eliminate unanswered questions about what happened in government before the attack or about the construction of the towers. To act as though it does seems to encourage, rather than eliminate, myth. This happens over and over, often because the government wants to put a matter aside and the media is too willing to help.

How can we teach honor for unanswered questions without embellishing them with unsupported theoretical conclusions?

The government often has a two track goal: solve a problem and appear that it is solving it. Often, the latter effort - as in the case of swine flu - can work against the former. You can test this out by trying to discover precisely how many people have died after taking the vaccine. I could find only one report, a minute number in a Chinese sample. But government public relations types don't think like that. The want everything to appear far more rosy and far more certain than it may actually be. How do we deal with this?

What do history and anthropology tell us about myth and how it helps and damages a culture?

And that's just for starters. The important thing is to start, to recognize that myth is not something you change by name calling but by dealing with it as a force as real and important in its own way as climate change. And something that may severely damage our approach to such issues as climate change because we forget in this scientific and technological age that not everything that matters can be easily measured.

November 09, 2009

CONFESSIONS OF A VISION IMPAIRED STAKEHOLDER WITH DUBIOUS MANAGEMENT PRACTICES EMBARKING ON AN ILL-DEFINED MISSION

Sam Smith

Have pity on me. Say a prayer. Drop a penny in the pond on my behalf. In a few days I have to go to a non-profit's strategic planning meeting. It's a great organization that does great things, but - like so many non-profits - it periodically seeks to cleanse and refresh itself by turning what it does into indecipherable abstractions. I'll survive and maybe there'll be some good food, but, as a general rule, I don't do strategic visions.

Still it's happening all over America. "Strategic plan" and its semantic variations have appeared on Google seven million times just in the past month. On the Review's list of cliches that's right between "empower" and that ultimate expression of corporate insincerity - "any inconvenience" - you know, the one for which everyone apologizes.

Strategic planning, in its non-military sense, got its start at the Harvard Business School in the 1920s. Not long after we had the Great Depression. The concept had a revival in the 1980s and contributed to the philosophy and practices that have left us with the Penultimate Great Depression.

Coincidence, perhaps, but bear in mind that in the 1950s - when the economy was booming - we were turning out only 5,000 MBAs a year. The number of people in business who had any idea of about strategic planning was minute. By 2005, we were churning out 142,000 MBAs a year and we had huge trade and budget deficits, a disappearing auto industry, one of our most costly and disastrous wars, a growing gap between rich and poor, and a constantly projected inability to care for our ill or elderly.

Worse, everyone in the country had been infected by corporate verbiage and values. And, often unconsciously, much of America had bought into the rightwing and absurdly simplistic Reaganesque view of life and the very voices that should have been among the loudest in opposition - non-profits - signed up as well.

Non-profits found that it helped to adopt the language of business. It made them seem responsible rather than just over-idealistic do-gooders. It also reflected one of the most misguided assumptions of the educated elite: if one can understand, identify, manipulate and be loyal to abstract principles, the specifics will obediently follow.

Editors and reporters, among others, know better. Reporters run into this sort of language constantly at news conferences and elsewhere. They have a professional term for it: bullshit.

And editors know that a reporter may come up with a great idea for a story and even have a strategy for carrying it out, but if the journalist doesn't know how find the right sources, or ask the right questions and write it all down, the strategy won't work.

Over the past three decades corporations have done an incredibly effective job of turning Americans into just so many more corporate employees desperate for a strategic vision that will foster formulations of actions and processes to be taken to attain the vision in accordance with agreed upon procedures in order to achieve a hierarchy of goals. It has - with bombast, bullying and baloney - convinced an extraordinary number of Americans that its childishly verbose and coldly abstract culture is transferable to every human activity from running a church to driving a tractor across a field.

Unfortunately, life doesn't work like that. You need to look no farther than the military to see this. During the post-war period when the US military devoted more effort to strategic planning that at any time in its history, it has also had the sorriest record. Over and over, the problem has been an attractive general principle overwhelmed or sabotaged by reality and facts.

Now bounce back 150 years to a war in which general strategy was more than balanced by specific generals. At one point a White House aide complained of General Grant's drinking and Lincoln invoked his best management practices - which was to tell the aide to find out what Grant was drinking and give it to all his other generals. Put that in your vision statement.

And the key battle at Little Round Top was won by a general named Joshua Chamberlain who had studied theology, taught ever subject except science and math and was fluent in nine languages. He had, however, never study military strategy.

In any specific situation, a general strategy can quickly lose value without supporting virtues like wisdom, sufficient staff, adequate budget, imagination, energy and good fortune.

But of course, if all else fails, you can always fall back on your mission statement.

Like most people, I never read mission statements except under duress or when I have nothing better to do, like standing in the lobby of a pretentious restaurant waiting to be seated.

Gordon Luk
said it well: "The easy and fun way to test whether a mission statement. . . is garbage is to negate it and see whether it still holds up. If a mission statement does not make sense for a company not to do, then why even bother stating the obvious?

"Striving to be a leader in a field? Of course you are – you better not be trying to come in dead last…

"Trying to connect people to passions or interests? Hell, why not disconnect them instead!. . .

"Douglas Adams wrote frequently about the human penchant for continuously stating the very, very obvious. Mission statements take that principle to the extreme, to the point where we even believe that we're going to persuade people about something or other by making an official public statement about what we are going to do that would be insane to negate."

Occasionally a mission statement rises to the occasion. The alternative newspaper Eat the State had one that read: "Missions were created by the Catholic Church to subjugate Native Americans in California. We oppose them." And a small computer consultancy business in West London posted a sign: 'We are not ruled by a mission statement, we are smarter than that'. But when you start to count the number of organizations - from religious to non-profit to social to political - that feel they can't get along without some gobbledygook on the inside cover of whatever they're publishing, you know the corporate cultural invasion is complete.

Which doesn't mean you shouldn't have plans, think about where you're going, discuss alternatives and figure out what you do best. But the better model should be the pragmatism, inventiveness and realism of small business culture which still provides most of America's new jobs - as many as 75 percent in some experts' view. Most small business people don't have time to sit around a table coming up with empty adjectives to describe their efforts. And they tend to call the people who buy their stuff customers rather than stakeholders, which makes sense, given that the pre-corporate definition of stakeholder was someone who held the bet during a gambling match and handed it over to the winner. Not a particularly exciting or profitable role in life.

Here's how David Weinberger put in back in 1999:

"Mission statements are vapid because they think of business as a march to a goal or a war of conquest. Businesses are far more complex than that. . . Further, missions are things you accomplish and are done with. Businesses, on the other hand, generally aim for long-term existence. The board doesn't get together and say, "Well, we've accomplished our mission of being the world's leading supplier of high quality wombats to blind gombricks, so I guess we can just shut it all down now. Good job, lads!"

"Businesses often are more like farming than like making war. How can we get maximum sustainable yield from this ground? And what happens when the ground changes radically? Are we going to keep trying to grow potatoes in the layer of ash, or are we going to see this as a splendid opportunity to succeed with ash-loving radishes?

"So, yes, write up something about your commitment to treating your customers well, building great products, and contributing to the lives of your employees and your community. Heck, even admit that you're in it for the money. But one thing is certain: if your mission statement achieves the usual goal of fitting on the back of a business card, then it's just about guaranteed to be empty of anything worth saying."

Which is why I don't look forward to my afternoon of strategic planning. We will declare, no doubt, some fine principles, but life is controlled not by the glories of the grand but by the uncertainties, blessings and perversities of the specific. It is in organizing the latter in some rational, useful, imaginative and, yes, enjoyable fashion that life becomes better. As Benjamin Franklin noted, happiness is not the result of great strokes of good fortune, but of the "little felicities" of every day.

Meanwhile, if you are still curious about my personal vision statement, please consult my optometrist.