Barack Obama, Alchemist In Chief

November 7, 2011

Individuals who have convinced sufficient Americans to vote for them to be President usually have carried adequate-to-outstanding academic credentials.  President Obama is no exception, having a Bachelor’s degree, plus a Juris Doctor’s degree (from Harvard, no less).  But a great many of us are wishing he had taken a few science, math or engineering courses—courses where the correct answers are not determined by ideology, opinion polls or judicial interpretation.  President Obama’s technology illiteracy is not just a matter of embarrassment; the cost to all of us is unsustainable.

We humans, like a lot of other animals, learn through experience.  As those experiences have been recorded for posterity, each new generation of researchers, as the saying goes, stands on the shoulders of those who came before.  In ancient times, long before the seeds of modern science were planted, alchemy was accepted as a legitimate scientific pursuit.  The best-known purpose of alchemy was its goal of converting base metals such as lead or tin into noble metals such as gold and silver.  That goal eluded its searchers for millennia, but it was thought to be possible, awaiting only a “right stuff” thinker who could accomplish what had proved impossible for so long.

Today the average person thinks of alchemy as a play toy of the incorrigible ignorant.  Although essentially true, that’s not a totally fair assessment, since alchemy was one of the seeds that lead toward modern science.  One alchemy-like problem we see today is the achievement of controlled nuclear fusion, like the controlled fission used in nuclear power plants.  But, unlike the efforts of those early alchemists, research that some day might lead to controlled fusion (the holy grail of energy sources) is being conducted by the world’s top scientists with supercolliders, supercomputers, and all of our modern research tools.

President Obama does not seem to understand that the alchemy of the middle ages cannot be made to work, in spite of his rhetoric and his desires.  It appears that his ingrained ideology and ignorance of (or contempt for) physics, mathematics and engineering makes him an easy target for confidence men.  It is painfully evident that our President believes that almost instantaneous elimination of fossil fuels is achievable via political fiat.  The President is not alone in his beliefs; many in his administration have the same fuzzy beliefs and the same contempt for those “little people” of science who can’t seem to understand what is wanted of them.

So we see billions and billions of our taxpayer dollars being donated for seed money in economically questionable renewable energy initiatives.  A recent winner in our energy folly lottery is the late lamented Solyndra company that filed for bankruptcy in early September.  At this point there is no evidence of any wrongdoing on the part of Solyndra, aside from poor management and possible lack of due diligence.

Poor decision-making and overconfidence are seen from time to time in totally private initiatives, those with no taxpayer money at risk and no political favor rewards (see Diogenes and Technology Breakthroughs).  Such examples just remind us that there is risk inherent in all business ventures.  Venture capitalists understand risk management very well, but still they continue to finance new startups regularly.  However, when the venture capital is taxpayer money (which belongs to no one) due diligence has, or should have, a completely different definition.

The use of tax monies to finance business startups is generally regarded as inappropriate, but there may be room for debate on that subject.  However, no debate should be required about risk management where public moneys are involved.  Most of us believe that investing taxpayers’ money in the finest, invisible, fabric from which to make the President’s new suit should be held up to considerably more scrutiny than its counterpart private investment.

But worse than questionable investments of our money is the President’s belief that if he can starve us of electricity from coal-fired plants, we will be forced to turn to wind or solar.  Unfortunately, our President doesn’t understand or believe that there is no replacement in sight for the electricity currently derived from coal.  Or perhaps he thinks we won’t mind the absence of power at night, when solar cells produce nothing and wind turbines produce little.

We voters are a little late in vetting our President’s technology awareness and competence (and also vetting his candidates for appointment to positions related to technology).  Our recourse at this point is to do our best to make sure that potential future Presidents do not have significant technology blind spots or contempt for technologists.  It would help if we could demand more technology familiarity from the media; technology-challenged reporters and anchors seem to be the norm.

My suggestion is to support candidates for President only if they are on a technology level of George Washington or better (or Thomas Jefferson, or Benjamin Franklin, or…).

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Posted by thedrake01

Wind Gifts And Other Homages

October 10, 2011

Sociologists and legal scholars have written extensively on the elements of a caste system present in the U.S. and its relationship to ignorance levels.    My wife and I have lived, worked and raised our children across a number of states, from the middle of the plains, to the Gulf coast, to the Pacific coast, and on to the Atlantic coast.   Somehow, in all those locations, in all those years, I failed to see or even think about castes.

But recently my wife and I operated a small resale shop, along with our partners.  It was located on a minor but important state highway that traverses most of the width of our state.  Our experience in the resale / collectibles business in a low-population part of a low-population state have enabled a tiny view of this caste system at work in America.  It just took a while to see it.

The distribution of work in our partnership was simple; the women took care of merchandising, pricing, negotiating and handling sales while the men did the routine physical labor.  Upon opening the shop the women were busy opening blinds, turning on lights, moving mobile displays into their locations and all the other things necessary to actually sell merchandise.  Meanwhile the men were putting up the portable signs along our highway frontage, setting out eye-catching banners and flags, and similar deeply intellectual duties.

My last routine, daily-opening duty was to gather the day’s offerings of wind gifts and other homages that had been faithfully contributed by members of the lower castes.  This activity, which is not especially fulfilling nor completely unpleasant, stirs up mixed emotions.  These gifts and little rewards, that people of the lowest castes distribute to those they perceive as belonging to higher castes, are remarkably diverse.

Many of these honorariums must have involved a significant expenditure for those in the lower castes, even before the cost and/or effort of delivery is considered.  Others may have been free castoffs, stolen, or have cost very little money.  Every color in the visible spectrum is represented at one time or another.  They are made from an equally diverse range of materials; however, plastics, paper and glass are best represented.

The specific distribution techniques remain a bit cloudy.  This is mostly the result of the lower castes’ preference for anonymity.  Some are delivered in the daytime, most are delivered after dark, but the majority are delivered clandestinely.  It is as if the Untouchables and other low castes don’t even want to be seen by their presumed higher-caste recipients.  It is quite rare to actually see one of the timid low-caste donors in the act of delivering a gift, and he or she always disappears as quickly as possible.

It appears that differing distribution choices divide these honoraria into two general categories.  The preferred delivery technique, it appears, is a nonspecific-recipient technique that takes advantage of the wind (of which our state is blessed with plenty).  If a gift has a very low total weight, or has a rather large area-to-weight ratio, these low-caste donors have learned to toss them up-and-away into the wind.  Mother Nature’s delivery is efficient, although not particularly effective; only some fraction actually reach an upper-class beneficiary—many just rot away unseen in high grass, weeds, scrub timber and brush.

Our share of that fraction of wind gifts that actually reach a recipient still provide an abundant sample of materials, colors, textures and designs.  They are also sprinkled with well-known brand names, particularly McDonalds, Burger King, Frito-Lay and other food providers.  One category of wind gift producers is especially well represented—tobacco companies.  It seems that low-caste people don’t have the means or education to select innovative or unique gifts for those of us they consider upper-caste.  Therefore, colorful wrappers of all kinds of products predominate—candy bars, chewing gum, and so forth.  Each day reveals a never-ending variety of these simple, inexpensive offerings.

Those gifts which are too heavy for the wind are placed, or possibly tossed, onto the property of a selected recipient.  Those gifts made of glass are in this category; some fraction arrive intact, but the remainder are unfortunately broken in the delivery process.  The variety of colors and designs of the labels on these glass gifts is quite large, but the colors of the glass itself is essentially limited to three—primarily brown, with the remainder divided between green and clear.  Brand names, although well-known, are somewhat limited—Budweiser, Millers, Coors and a few others.

Aluminum cans used for beverages, both beer and soft drink, have the characteristics of both hand-delivered and wind-delivered gifts.  If a can is completely empty it can be wind-delivered; but if it has more than half a swallow of liquid, it must be placed or tossed.  Therefore it is difficult to tell if this type of gift was intended to be hand- or wind-delivered.  As I collected these pitiful little gifts, I always had a sense of guilt over the knowledge that the low-caste donors are unaware of the potential monetary value of aluminum cans.

But my greatest sense of guilt came about because of our limited means to properly display all the gifts.  Rather quickly I had to start storing them in a 55-gallon drum, and I feared that the donors might see me and think I didn’t appreciate their homages.  That 55-gallon drum could easily be mistaken for a rubbish container, and I certainly did not want to break the hearts of those poor little, miserable people.  It’s bad enough for the low castes to know that they are the bottom of the barrel, and the thought of them believing I would put their carefully delivered gifts in a trash barrel was heart-breaking for me.

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Unsinkable Medicare, Diminished Capacity Epidemic

June 1, 2011

At the time the Titanic was launched, many people—inside the steamship lines and outside—truly believed the marvelous new liner was unsinkable.  However, in hindsight, it turned out that a number of decisions were very questionable:  insufficient lifeboat capacity for the Titanic’s passengers and crew, insufficient testing of a new lifeboat davit design, insufficient emergency drills for the crew, inadequate lookouts posted for the conditions, etc.  With an “unsinkable” mentality it is possible to see how such decisions might have come about.

Ironically, there was also a serious flaw in the Titanic’s design, one that significantly contributed to the rapidity with which the ship sank after the collision with an iceberg.  It is has been speculated that the “unsinkable” mindset was one of the reasons the design flaw was not identified before the accident.  But we must remember that the technology of the Titanic was “modern” in comparison to what came before.  Just like today, many people had arrived at that state of mind:  “The latest and greatest must be better than anything that came before”.  Complacency derives from overconfidence.

One hundred years later, we are becoming aware of another “unsinkable” mentality, one that will result in hundreds of times more victims than the Titanic catastrophe unless serious design flaws are recognized and unless corrective actions are taken in time.  In 1965 many people either believed that anything which a modern government dreamed up could be trusted to have been thoroughly and completely evaluated and tested, or else they were convinced (like me) that “it doesn’t apply to me so I don’t have to worry whether it’s competent or crazy”.  Thus a piece of legislation that should have been laughed out of committee into the rubbish can became the law of our land.

This legislation, which looked, sounded, and felt like it was designed by a committee of lunatics, suffered all of the possible ills that a committee is capable of creating.  It started with a failure to perform a basic analysis of the problem it was supposed to solve.  Therefore it fit perfectly into the category of gratuitous solution to an undefined problem, and things got worse from that point.  Since the hard part (the problem definition) had been skipped, that left each individual on the committee free to indulge in all kinds of legislative fantasies.  But, as in the Titanic catastrophe, there was a serious design flaw, a terminal flaw.

This design flaw came about, according to some number of observers, because of the demands of a powerful, world-class-egotistical politician.  This might be true, but in most cases blaming any serious problem on a single personality is usually too simplistic.  But, because I am one of the many who did not perform my duty as a citizen to at least peruse the law, I certainly can’t comment on incompetent politicians.  It does not make me feel a bit better to know that the number of us who failed to catch such an obvious design flaw must be in the millions.  Most of us, I suspect, were guilty of overconfidence—trusting that “someone” was looking out for us.

So Medicare has been sailing along, essentially blind, for more than 45 years; it is a miracle that it didn’t hit an iceberg long ago.  Given our good fortune to date, we might be tempted to add lots more lifeboats, redesign the davits, schedule more emergency drills for the crew, etc.  However, all those initiatives cannot make up for the fatal design flaw.  Medicare was built upon the premise of absolute government monopoly in health care of citizens above a certain age; and the law made sure that no enterprising senior citizen could find a way to acquire private health insurance in order to get around the law.  One small irony is that the only thing that has allowed Medicare to stay afloat this long is the legislative “adjustment” which added optional private Medicare-Complement health insurance.  As we all should have learned by now, government does nothing well, is remarkably inefficient, and too often is completely ineffective.

So what keeps us from applying the lessons of history and designing an effective health care strategy for senior citizens?  It appears that a serious epidemic of diminished mental capacity raging through the ranks of us who are no longer youth-challenged is one significant barrier.  The word “apparent” must be used because there is yet to appear any reliable reporting of this medical phenomenon.  All we have are anecdotes, like town hall meetings where senior citizens present exhibit dementia symptoms such as lambasting honest efforts by their political representatives to forestall the coming financial collapse of Medicare as reported by the Medicare Trustees in their latest report.  The seniors seem to be saying, “I don’t care if Medicare ceases to be—changes frighten me!”  Politicians across the entire political spectrum must be perplexed.

A concomitant barrier to fixing Medicare is the political value of frightened or diminished-capacity elder citizens.  Evidently the Democratic National Committee still sees value in one of their favorite political stratagems;  the Committee is advising Democrats to continue accusing Republicans of planning to precipitously terminate Medicare and kill Grandma.  A number of Republicans seem to have been shocked to see how well this orthodox Democratic demagoguery works during our apparent diminished capacity epidemic.

With Democrats’ perceived political success of painting themselves into a Medicare-status-quo corner, and Republicans having second thoughts about trying to develop a workable and affordable health care strategy for older Americans, the President, Senate and House might just opt for dropping this hot potato and letting Medicare go spectacularly bankrupt.  We have watched the federal government for years pass laws and implement programs without worrying about  how to financially sustain them in the future.  Perhaps it now appears to progressive politicians that they can let Medicare fail abruptly and then successfully blame the catastrophe on their opponents.

Obamacare suffers from the same design problems as Medicare—no rigorous effort to define the problem, only the shallowest lip service regarding how to pay for it, and the entire house of cards dependent on the biggest federal bureaucracy ever imagined.  To add insult to the injury, Obamacare also strips the financially-failing Medicare of $500 billion of its funding.  Is it possible that the progressive politicians are maneuvering toward the mother of all bankruptcies—that of the United States—to blame upon their opponents?

So far the the only big loser in the Medicare / Medicaid / Obamacare morass is common sense.  The same six or eight relatively simple steps to make health care more affordable, accessible and effective will work for all of us.  We have all had the opportunity to learn this short and simple list of effective health care improvements (although, like my Medicare inconsideration in 1965, many of us haven’t taken the time to do so):  Health insurance available across state lines, irrespective of company or customer location; at least as much transparency in health care as there is in the retail auto business; ongoing health maintenance and disease prevention information and training available for people of all ages, etc.  Simple; problem solved.

Now all we have to do is figure out a way to provide progressive politicians with the perception that  constituents with good health could have political value.

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Let’s Play 20 Questions

January 26, 2011

When I was in grade school the boys (and occasionally, but rarely, a girl or two) would play a trivia game we called “Twenty Questions”.  This began around the time of advanced intellectual achievement, say the fourth or fifth grade.  The winner was almost always one of two or three boys.  Each had a large knowledge base of common information and each could be counted on to be up on current affairs.

The rules, which varied a little from time to time, were simple.  A questioner was expected to actually know the answer to his or her question.  A respondent’s answer was judged as correct or incorrect by the whole group; in case of a dispute, that particular answer was held in abeyance until someone checked an appropriate reference book.  The individual who answered the most questions was the winner; ties were not unusual, requiring more games to find a clear winner.

As we went on to junior high school, that “expected-winner” circle grew larger.  By the end of high school that group comprised a dozen or so.  Of course, we were not playing 20-question games by that age.  We were actually having intellectual discussions, with a possible hint of “can you top this” competition.  I have said for many years that I learned more from my fellow students than from the faculty in high school—a good portion of it in these discussions.

What I miss today is the confidence that an answer to almost any question could be found within that small group of people proven to be very knowledgeable.  However, at this point I would be interested in presenting only those questions for which I have yet to discover any satisfactory answer—answers I really don’t know.  The internet and its search engines are good at overwhelming us with unmanageable volumes of data, but finding useful information in that pile is much more difficult than locating that old needle in the haystack.

A few of the questions active at the moment in my fickle, impatient and deteriorating memory include:

1.      Given the entire history of Marxist movements, can a dedicated Marxist believe in tomorrow (exempting tyrants who use Marxism only as a sales pitch)?

2.      Have the courage and dedication shown by Bill Cosby and Juan Williams been shaken by the “Black Leaders” noted in Williams’ book, “Enough!”?

3.      Why does the public, by and large, go on accepting computer operating systems which have deficient security architecture and remain susceptible to hackers?

4.      What is the fraction of our citizens who place their faith in government rather than in God?

5.      What is the fraction of our citizens who have assumed responsibility for their own health, as opposed to expecting the medical community and/or the government to be responsible?

6.      Is the Supreme Court the weakest link in the United States Constitution?

7.      What would our founding fathers have come up with if they had decided that class envy was a sufficient basis for a theory of government?

8.      Are there any reliable statistics available on how well labor unions fare if membership is voluntary, as opposed to compulsory?

9.      If a Wikileaks-type had gone around shopping the Normandy Invasion Plan to newspapers and radio broadcasters in March of 1944, would the New York Times and the Washington Post and NBC Radio have broken their necks rushing to scoop each other?

10.  Is the 10th Amendment to the Constitution having a resurgence in believers?

11.  Is a flat tax so elegantly simple that devious politicians and true-believer collectivist partisans are unable to grasp its simplicity, effectiveness and fairness?

12.  Has anyone polled us Social Security and Medicare welfare dependents to find out what fraction of us understand that these “Entitlements” constitute an unsustainable Ponzi Scheme?

13.  Why have we not repealed the 17th Amendment to the Constitution, just like we repealed the 18th Amendment, once we figured out that it did not work nor accomplish the desired result?

14.  Did the Founding Fathers have the same low opinion of, or contempt of, average American citizens that the left-liberal leaders of today exhibit?

15.  When did the concept of profits as a reason and motivator for business start being vilified in the U.S.?

16.  Why has no one coughed up the cash to hire pollsters to find out how many of us would really prefer a Hugo Chavez-type of government in the U.S.?

17.  Why does the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum continue to lead all other museums in attendance, year after year?

18.  If baseball is the American pastime, why does auto racing attract so many more fans?

19.  The classic hamburger had four ingredients in the bun (mustard, meat, onions, pickles); whose monster burger has the most ingredients today?

20.  Is the peanut butter and jelly sandwich a truly authentic American innovation?

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Running To Equilibrium

December 1, 2010

One of the most significant of all the presents given to me by my wife over the years was a membership to Dr. Kenneth Cooper’s Aerobics Activity Center in Dallas.

A year or three earlier, my wife and I had begun to take our health seriously, when we arrived at that thirty-something age where we had acquired a little perspective on our family’s journey through life. My wife had bought Dr. Cooper’s new book, “Aerobics”, and it convinced both of us of the need to be serious also about getting adequate exercise of the right kind.

But the vagaries of corporate machinations abruptly intervened and we rather suddenly found ourselves relocated to another city.  My wife was submerged in new schools, new doctors, new merchants and all the other explorations required for family survival in the new city.  I was similarly consumed with starting over from the bottom as a result of being on the “losing” side of a corporate merger.  Somehow exercise didn’t seem to have the same sense of urgency for a while.

But, bless my wife’s curiosity, vision and persistence, she discovered that our exercise guru and health mentor was practicing in Dallas and doing more than just urging us all on to better fitness.  So one of her real estate commissions gave me entry into the Cooper Aerobics Activity Center.

The prerequisite required physical also included the first of numerous treadmill stress tests that I have experienced over the years.  Based on the results of the physical exam and the stress test, a personalized exercise start-up program and regular program were developed. The objective was to improve from my initial fitness level (“fair”) up to a “good” (or “excellent”) level, to be maintained indefinitely.

The great contribution from Dr. Cooper’s research is the quantification of “how much exercise is enough”.  The relatively simple Cooper point-count system covers most forms of exercise that any of us might engage in, with a broad range of performance-level groups.  All we have to do is keep track of our exercise points and make sure we are getting the minimum or recommended amount of exercise.

My conditioning program (for beginners with fitness level of less than “Good”) was a walking program that worked up to three miles a day, across a six-week period.  The end point, as I recall,  was three miles in 42 minutes—a brisk but comfortable pace.  But the next phase, which would become the “regular”, “routine”, or “maintenance” program of lifetime fitness did not come so easily.

Five miles at a very brisk walk (army “forced-march” pace) was a little more difficult, but I managed to get to that level.  If I could maintain that program for five days a week it would yield the number of exercise points recommended to maintain optimum fitness.  It was then that I had to come to terms with the amount of exercise versus the time expended.

Ten to fifteen minutes of clothing change and warm-up; one hour of very brisk walking; five to ten minutes of cool-down;  and shower and re-dress added up to about two hours a day—ten hours added to my normal work week.  After checking the Cooper Point Count tables for Walking / Running, I figured that I could get the required exercise in three days a week if I could improve to an average of something less than ten minutes per mile.

My transitioning from walking to running introduced me to a new problem:  building too large an oxygen deficit.  The standard advice from the exercise experts was to run for some distance (the point where I would be getting seriously out of breath); then walk for some distance; return to a run, and so on.  But, for me, it didn’t work the way I expected.

When I was out of breath, the walking distance (and time) took a lot longer in practice than in my mental planning.  Adding insult to my ineptitude, I also ran out of breath sooner in the subsequent running segment, and the process spiraled downward from there.  I realized that some other solution had to be found, or just live with the 10-hours-a-week cost of exercise.

Somehow, a vision of running as if in a slow-motion moving picture came into my head.  I thought about it for a minute or two, and decided to give it a try, irrespective of how silly it might look.  The value, I reasoned, was in keeping to a running gait and avoiding a change back and forth between walking and running.  I tried running with a sort of shuffle step, barely getting each foot off the ground, and landing on the heel.  In practice, it reminded me of the advice given me by my ice skating instructor many years earlier, “You want to achieve a smooth, gliding motion”.

Surprisingly, it worked.  I was able to “run” at my slow motion pace for two full miles, stopping then only for fear of overdoing it (even though I had been walking for five miles daily for some time).  In less than two weeks I was “running” five miles, at a pace of about 11½ minutes per mile.  But I wasn’t sure I could speed up to reach the required pace.

I decided to keep at my now-comfortable “slow motion” pace for a couple of weeks, to be sure I was ready to start working on improving my time.  Several days later, at the end of a really comfortable run, I was mystified:  my watch indicated a full minute and a half per mile improvement—about a 10% reduction.  Because I was still maintaining my slow-motion pace, with no intent of speeding up, I figured that I must not have set my watch properly at the start.  But the next day brought the pleasant confirmation that I was actually running faster, without any noticeable extra effort.

A follow-on strategy emerged:  don’t push—just go with the flow, not straining my cardiovascular system or my leg muscles.  If something felt like it was being overused at the moment, consciously slow down; try to maintain a “comfortable” pace at all times.  I thought of this process as “running to equilibrium”.

Over the initial months that I concentrated on this new approach, it worked better than I could have envisioned.  The bottom line, which still amazes me when I look back through my running logs:  a reduction from sixty minutes for the five miles, down to thirty-seven minutes (without any conscious effort to run faster).  Thereafter, for quite some number of years, my regular exercise program was to run six miles (which took 45 minutes,  plus or minus), three days a week.

When I think back to that difficulty of building up the cardiovascular and muscular stamina to run for a reasonable distance, I believe that what made “running to equilibrium” work for me was simply the tempering of my impatience to achieve a given result.  Is there a deeper, broader implication for “running to equilibrium”?  I don’t know, and after putting down more words than the subject seems worth, I think I may have already over-thought it.

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Bernie Madoff: Social Security Savior

November 15, 2010

As everyone knows, and as everyone except very left-leaning politicians will admit, Social Security is doomed unless it undergoes significant reform.  As everyone also knows, and the majority of us will admit, a significant fraction  of all “discussions” of Social Security reform really boil down to emotional diatribes.  Devious politicians, extreme left partisans, and diminished capacity citizens own the Social Security hot button outright; they have patented, copyrighted and trademarked Social Security Reform®.  With this body of expertise, vested interest and irrational passion dedicated to prohibiting any discussion of Social Security futures, there is no human being of sufficient stature, strength and persistence to bring about the “adult conversation” so desperately needed.  Except one:  Bernard Madoff.

Bernie Madoff’s business model was identical to that of our Social Security system—in all respects save one.  Social Security is legal, only because a number of Representatives and Senators, and a President, made it legal, irrespective of ethical or right-and-wrong considerations.

Charles Ponzi, although not the originator of the business model used by Madoff, is the person who became notorious for his 1920 large-scale use of it.  Today’s slang for that business model would be  “scam” or “con”; but in Ponzi’s time the word used was “scheme”.  Ponzi’s error, we now know, was that he failed to assemble sufficient Congressional conspirators and then provide adequate incentives for the President to sign a bill into law.

The Wickipedia describes a Ponzi scheme:  “A Ponzi scheme is a fraudulent investment operation that pays returns to separate investors from their own money or money paid by subsequent investors, rather than from any actual profit earned. … The system is destined to collapse because the earnings, if any, are less than the payments to investors”.

The Social Security Administration angrily denies that there is anything other than a superficial resemblance of Social Security to Ponzi schemes.  The difference they point out is that a Ponzi scheme operator must find a never-ending stream of new sucker-investors in order to provide sufficient funds for the periodic payments to earlier investors.  Social Security, in contrast, (they say, somewhat gleefully) has an absolutely endless supply of U. S. tax dollars;  Congress and the President will simply increase tax rates—right up to 100% and beyond—as necessary.

Bernie Madoff pushed the envelope of his Ponzi scheme farther than anyone in history.  The best guess of U. S. prosecutors is that Madoff bilked his investors out of $25 billion directly, and about $40 billion in lost potential earnings.  Like all Ponzi operators, Madoff made periodic “investment earnings” payments to his earlier account holders, using cash just received from later, newer investors.  Was any of the money from Bernie’s clients actually invested?  Not a penny.  Was any of the $25 billion recovered and returned to those who had been swindled?  Not really (although assets from Bernie’s extravagant lifestyle were seized, sold, and provided a tiny fraction of restitution).  Have investigators figured out where the money went?  If they have, that information has not been released.

I wouldn’t presume to know more than the Social Security administrators, so I’ll take their word for it that the National Ponzi Scheme is not a Ponzi scheme.  Social Security income is withheld from each worker’s paycheck; that seems OK.  In addition, an equal amount must be added by the worker’s employer; that seems odd (like not telling the employee that his witholding is actually double), but I guess that’s OK also.  Every quarter employers remit that money collected for Social Security.  For some number of years there was, as one would expect, more than enough money coming in to make payments to the early enrolled beneficiaries and have some left to be building a fund for future retirees.

Has any of the money ever been invested?  That’s an interesting question, and all answers seem to have significant political philosophy content.  However, there are no common, income-producing  investments like stocks, bonds, real estate mortgages, etc.  But with a combination of government accounting methods and a dash of political philosophy, one might stretch a little and use the word “investments” (which look to us ignoranti like the government moving money from one pocket to another and then claiming interest from the first pocket).

If there was an excess of revenues over expenditures in previous years, does anyone know where it all went?  Actually, yes.  As an accounting gimmick to obscure the government’s ever-increasing expenditures, it was “loaned” to various government agencies.  But it is to wonder where any agency could get the money to “repay” its loans back to the non-existent “Social Security Trust Fund”.  But not to worry.

Bernie Madoff to the rescue!

Bernard Madoff proved to the world that he is a genius at stealth accounting methods, clever and innovative bookkeeping, and navigating around auditing reefs and barriers.  In short, he showed us that he is more than a match for those like the gang of evil geniuses who forged the stealthy and convoluted “Health Care Reform Bill” (in 3000 or so pages).

The President should parole Mr. Madoff, on condition that he will lead a Presidential Social Security Reform Commission. The Commission’s charter will be to develop, and describe the details of, a true reform to the present Social Security system.  Orders to the Commission  must be clear and simple:

1.     The reformed system  must not resemble a Ponzi scheme whatsoever

2.    The system must use Defined-Contribution instead of Defined-Benefits

3.    Tax monies will not be used to pay any normal retirement benefits

4.     The system must be actuarially sound

5.     Implementation must be designed for minimal-to-no impact on current retirees and tolerable impact on near-term future retirees

Madoff will select one third of the Commission  members; the Republican and Democratic leaders of the House will each select one of the remaining thirds.

The President should dip into his slush funds as deep as necessary to adequately fund this Commission, enabling it to seek out highly qualified experts to participate as necessary in the effort.

When the Commission successfully completes its mission, the President can commute Bernie’s sentence.  Congress, in gratitude for the solution to the United States’ most serious existential problem, could appropriate $65 billion to make all of Madoff’s victims whole ($65 billion is pocket change compared to the multi-trillion dollar liability of the old Social Security system).

What then, for Madoff?  He may be free at that point; but Bernie must continue serving a life sentence of having to live like the rest of us non-billionaires.

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United States Defense Paralysis

August 9, 2010

The Law of Unintended Consequences

William Shirer’s “The Collapse of the Third Republic” is well worth re-reading today.  The situation facing voters in the United States in the upcoming election remains eerily similar to that which French voters faced just before World War II.  Major political parties maneuvered, like boxers beginning a fight, to find openings to deliver mighty punches.  Political strategists planned the test flying of slogans and key-phrase campaign ideas (“sound bytes”) that might resonate with factions of the parties.  Secondary parties and splinter groups scurried about like hound dogs sniffing for a bone while avoiding being trod upon by major players.

In France, the parties had names like the Agrarian Party, the Communist Party, the Labor Party, the Popular French Party, the French Socialist Party, the Radical Party, the Radical-Socialist Party, the Rally of the French People, and the (plain old) Socialist Party.  Additionally there were some number of pacifists and anti-war zealots.  Today these names must have an almost comical ring to American ears, because we are familiar and comfortable with our Democrat and Republican, along with our Liberal, Conservative, Communist, Socialist, Libertarian, and other parties accredited in some states—not to mention the conservative, liberal, and socialist wings of the major parties, plus those ever-present anti-war agitators.

Then, as now, each of the factions of each of the parties worked hard to advance its single cause or address its two or three key issues.  Many of their issues seem trivial to us today.  But we must remember the world situation with Germany, Italy and Japan at the time.  It appears to us that French politicians argued for pet projects as if their implementation would make Adolph Hitler just go away and also cause Japan to decide it had plenty of rice land after all.

Political warfare between the Ins and the Outs has not changed much to this day.  Parties on the out always seek to embarrass the party in power, and entrenched “In” incumbents use the full power of the state to diminish or destroy rival parties and individuals.   Then as now, any scandal or rumor of scandal is considered a legitimate weapon.  Statistics, as always, allowed politicians to stretch; bend; fold, staple and mutilate; chew and otherwise mold truth to fit their visions.  Of course, The Fourth Estate played its game, toying with facts or evidence in order to titillate its voyeur’s palate and aid its favorites.  In short, the political game in France in the late 1930’s was played much as it is today in the United States.

But there was an ominous overtone to the rhetoric, one heard today possibly only with a seventy-year hindsight of history.   The line between legitimate scrutiny of dealing with dangerous adversaries, and the subtle sabotaging of defense measures, became blurred in the minds of some of the players.   After all, most politicians were well aware of the military facts:  France had overwhelming superiority in men, guns, tanks and front line fighters in Europe.  Therefore, measures that would embarrass the country, at a cost of some small benefit to Hitler, Mussolini or Stalin, perhaps didn’t seem particularly dangerous.  Leaking sensitive secrets also must have been viewed as just part of the game.  Besides, if the end justifies the means, anything which benefits our party must be fair.

But the French electorate’s failure to recognize the gravity of the situation and to evaluate political promises within the context of fundamental priorities cost them dearly.

Germany sent 34 divisions, two thirds of which were poorly trained, ill-equipped and minimally supported reserves, against 85 fully armed, front-line French divisions.  Examination of the German High Command documents after the war led to an understanding that Germany never thought it could seriously challenge the French army.  The invasion of France was actually a diversion, intended to minimize France’s contribution to the defense of Poland.  Germany planned to sue for peace and withdraw, once their conquest of Poland was assured.

But the inadvertently deadly results of single-issue politics and a dreamily disengaged electorate were to paralyze the French government and its world-class military.  Hitler was handed a never-expected plum in the most unlikely military defeat in the history of modern warfare.

Can American voters understand the gravity of a multi-dimensional war, declared by non-nation states, against the concept of personal and economic liberty and the concept of rule by secular law?  Will they realize that the Islamic extremists find the idea of personal freedom abhorrent?  Can they figure out before it is too late that Islamic terrorists will be satisfied with nothing less than our deaths―all of us?

Will the various single-issue groups inadvertently decide to poison the well if their issues don’t prevail?   Will the all-important pet political issues seem trivial seventy years from now?  Could our government and world-class military suffer a paralysis such that The United States could cease to exist as a country?

Yes, it would be good to read “The Collapse of the Third Republic” (and its predecessor “The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich”) at this time.

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Leadership Perceptions

July 3, 2010

The removal of General Stanley McChrystal from his Afghanistan command  filled the news and talk channels for one news cycle with a lot of perceptions of “leadership”.  From the knee-jerk commentators (is there such a thing as “reporter” any more?) we get a picture where the Top General says “Frog!” and immediately all the Colonels jump, the Majors jump, the Captains jump, the Lieutenants jump, and all the enlisted personnel jump—down to the lowest Private.

But from the perspective of my short years in the U. S. Army, that’s not quite how it works.  Had any of these reporter-commentators  known what a Warrant Officer is, they might have allowed that Warrants occasionally do have a streak of independence.  Moreover, any reporters who had actually served a full term in the military could have known the power of Sergeants (non-commissioned officers being the backbone of the military).

Strictly speaking, a “leader” is one who has a following, and that following must be voluntary (think Mahatma Gandhi, Joan of Arc, Jesus, …).  The voluntary followers are attracted because they believe the leader is more often right than wrong.  Very simple.

Informal use of “leader” today applies to almost anyone who occupies some position above the very bottom within a hierarchy.  A Corporal may be a leader of Privates.  A Sergeant frequently leads Corporals and Privates, and so on.  The owner of a company may place his son in the position of President of one of the company’s divisions; the son is called a leader.  We citizens occasionally exercise our voting privileges and elect a person to fill a position in a unit of government; that person is often referred to as a leader (Mayor, Governor, etc.).  These are examples of appointed leaders, not quite fitting the pure definition of leader with voluntary following.  But these appointed or self-appointed “leaders” are the most numerous, and they are the leaders we will most commonly encounter.

However, we shouldn’t disrespect an appointed leader just because he or she doesn’t meet the strict definition of having a voluntary following.  In fact, there is commonly some sort of merit process by which a leader earns the appointment.  Moreover, the merit process is usually believed to include evaluation of a seldom-mentioned individual quality—the ability to consistently accomplish tangible, measurable goals.  As all of us (or most of us) find out sooner or later, the quality of, or rigorous application of, this merit process varies as widely as does human fallibility.

Think of the company owner mentioned above who appoints his son to a leadership position; the owner may or may not have evaluated his son’s record of accomplishments.  Likewise, we voters not infrequently appoint incompetent or corrupt candidates to political positions that they should never have held (and we all get to painfully watch them fail, at our expense).  But these anecdotes are not an indictment of the promotional merit process.  It’s likely that in almost every failure of an individual in a leadership position, the process error was failing to thoroughly evaluate available facts before promoting that individual.

If we examine the leadership merit process and General McChrystal’s military career, it really appears that he truly earned his leadership positions, from West Point through four-star general.  The bottom line seems to be that McChrystal proved often enough that he could get the job done.  In fact, it appears that the only goal he fell short on was that of keeping a petulant and thin-skinned boss happy.  We can sympathize with McChrystal, but a great many of us have also faced that requirement of understanding the boss’ frailties and keeping him or her as happy as possible.

Astute bosses realize the value and rarity of people who have a knack for getting things done.  Such bosses evaluate the cost-versus-worth of managing a “difficult” employee whose saving grace is a solid record of real accomplishments.  But not all bosses are so astute.  Some bosses are also fickle; we voter-bosses are notoriously fickle.  After Winston Churchill single-handedly dragged Britain to victory and helped save the western world from the National Socialist German Worker’s Party leader, British voters promptly fired him and elected a questionable replacement.

What lessons should we take from the McChrystal debacle?  First, we need to stay focused on what’s important—making sure that what needs to be done is completed.   Second, if we are required to evaluate an individual’s fitness for a position, as we voters regularly do, we must peer through the smokescreen of “qualifications” to see if this person has ever really accomplished anything tangible or worthwhile.  Third, (for public servants) we must have the courage and the persistence to give both boss and subordinate the value of our common-sense advice.

We can’t help General McChrystal at this point, other than to thank him for his service to our country.  But we can avoid putting another incompetent “boss” with absolutely no record of accomplishments of any kind into a political position where that individual’s failure is inevitable.

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Immigration Reform: A Common Sense Look

April 30, 2010

Arizona’s new immigration reform law has energized a substantial percentage of the protest-prone crowd to paint their faces and come to the ProtestFest.  This is not the only state law of its kind, and it’s far from the first to attract emotional objectors.  Oklahoma implemented a similar law in 2007 (which continues in effect today), and at that time all of those we would expect to protest did show up for the festivities.  According to print and TV news reporters at that time, about 60 – 70 percent of the participants were Oklahoma residents, with the remainder coming from the normal emotional storm locations.  If Texas and two other states pass a similar law in the next few months, the protesters may find themselves stretched thin.

The first thing we notice in the brouhaha is the childish arguments between individuals who each claim to have read the law carefully and then proceed with a classic four-year-old’s “Is so!” / “Is not so!” circular debate / riot.  But what we never see is a journeyman-level PROBLEM DESCRIPTION (unless we count “I’m unhappy”, “I’m uncomfortable”, or “I’m constipated”).

The problem, vexing as it may be, is actually simple to define and equally simple to solve.  I do have to admit, though,  that there are two derivative aggravations that tend to hamper the implementation of any solution.  But watch carefully for the problem definition, to avoid overlooking it.

PROBLEM DEFINITION:  The United States needs entry-level / low-skilled / semi-skilled workers that it cannot supply from its citizen population.

We have known since the early 1970s that a labor shortage was coming.  The mathematics of declining birth rates and an expanding economy made the shortage inevitable; it was not a question of “If”, but one of “When”.  The solution at that time was just as simple as the solution today.  But those aggravations (about which, more later) discouraged the development and implementation of a simple solution then.  Like any problem, the longer we looked the other way, the easier it became to ignore it.  Now we find ourselves tossed about in a whirlpool of claims, counter-claims, and misinformation; it’s getting more and more difficult to see the forest because of all those trees getting in the way!

The objective of our solution is to fill those vacant job positions with willing workers.  Because those workers will, for the most part, come from third-world countries whose laws and standards are not up to our levels, it is necessary to be at least a little selective.  We can, assuming we are able to overcome the aforementioned aggravations, add a minimum level of reasonable and proper requirements for entering our country and joining our labor force.  The cooperation of the worker’s home country and the worker’s U. S. employer is an essential part of immigration reform.

ONE, the U. S. must require prospective guest workers to fill out a U. S. application form in his or her home country.  The U. S. must also negotiate with the various home countries to perform minimal processing of the applications—attest to the accuracy of the data entered, and assure that the applicant has no criminal record.  The home country must also obtain a biometric ID (finger prints or retinal scan) to be a permanent part of the application.

Applications may be presented at any official U. S. port of entry, where U. S. personnel will re-verify identification of the applicant, process the application, and issue a provisional guest worker permit / ID.  The applicant may then legally travel to the location where he or she expects to find a job.  A little database help in matching job openings with prospective guest workers would be nice, but it’s not required for immigration reform.

TWO, the employer must re-verify the applicant’s ID, check on the validity of his or her permit / ID, and if the worker is hired notify the government (who will remove the “provisional” status).  When a guest worker quits or is laid off, the  employer must again notify the government (and status of the permit will revert to “provisional”).

The two steps outlined above accomplish essential objectives of immigration reform:  (A) We know who the guest workers are; (B) we have a degree of assurance that they have no criminal past; (C) they possess documentation which authorizes them to be in the U. S for the purpose of employment; and (D) we know where they are employed and we know if they separate from that employment.  Legislation to  implement these two steps might be styled as “The Workable Green Card Law”.

What about a path to citizenship?  How do Green Card holders today go about applying for and completing the requirements for citizenship?  What about the families of these new guest workers?  How are families of Green Card holders treated today?  What about enforcement of the rules for employers?  What about dealing with questionable cooperation of the home country governments?  The point is, we can make any law as complicated and convoluted as Congressional staff can dream up; but why include more in one understandable law than is absolutely necessary?

Assuming that the solution presented above is not too simple for our legislators to grasp, what are those aggravations to implementation?  One is the Democratic Party; the other is U. S. labor unions.

The Democratic Party has specialized in wooing special-interest groups, especially government-dependency groups like Social Security recipients (a group to which I belong) and Medicare beneficiaries (another of my groups).  The illegal immigrants in the U. S. today are predominantly from Mexico and Central and South American countries.  Therefore they represent a “two-fer” special interest group—illegals, and Latino culture.  Because many of them work for minimum wages in the U. S., they could also be a “three-fer” group, with government dependency on the public assistance available to low-income families.

With estimates of illegals ranging from 10 million to 18 million, the Democratic Party is going to insist on provisions in any immigration reform law that will turn them into another rock-solid, 90%, voter-group windfall for the Party (as quickly as they can be made able to vote).  Do not expect the Democrats to give up easily when such a lucrative prize awaits.

For the labor unions, it’s a numbers game also.  Just like their current legislative initiatives to make unionization of private companies easier (“card check”), and to force all public employees in the U. S. to be unionized, the unions are not going to ignore the potential plum these illegals represent.

While the Democrats and the unions bob and weave, maneuvering for a political knockout, the rest of us will sit on the sidelines and watch the current Arizona-bashing exercise.  I suspect it will proceed just like the Oklahoma law:  the hysteria will wear itself down; the feared civil rights violations will not occur; the protesters will gravitate toward a fresh emotional appeal elsewhere; the media will bend its (short) attention (span) to some other extravaganza; and the police will continue doing their duty as usual.  In Oklahoma, the reduction in crimes by illegals was modest but measurable, and in Arizona the same will be true (but starting from a much higher level of illegal immigrant-related crime).

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Health Care Costs: A Common-Sense Look

March 17, 2010

Information overload is an insidious hazard today.  We are swamped with waves of health care data from print media, broadcast media, and the various forms of Internet-based information sources.  That’s bad enough, but all of us (except for recluse people who hide in caves) hear plenty from our friends, neighbors and acquaintances on a daily basis.  How can we possibly take the time to diligently ferret out the communication errors, myths and misinformation?  The bad news is we can’t; but the good news is we can develop our own personal coping strategies.

Right now, the best testing ground for misinformation inoculations is The Great Health Care (or, Healthcare, if you prefer) Debate.  As I noted, we have enormous volumes of data coming at us from all directions.  Common sense tells us that a significant fraction of that data is just plain wrong.  We don’t have to be conspiracy theorists to understand that the dissemination of some part of the bad information is intentional, coming from both amateur and professional propagandists.

Since the majority of us don’t have ready access to people who are truly knowledgeable about current health care requirements and practices, we must turn to our asset most-despised by politicians and partisans—common sense.  My own knowledge of the health care system is very limited:  a long-time interest in the application of information technology to the practice of medicine, and more than ten years as an information technologist for a regional health insurance company.  Like many people, I hear a lot of questionable health care “information” that just doesn’t sound right; and I have learned that trying to get to the truth can be time-consuming and often frustrating.  At those times I am reminded of an admonition by world-class problem-solver Dr. Gene Woolsey, paraphrased as “before you try a smart-alec solution, try the dumb-bunny one first”.  I believe Dr. Woolsey must be an advocate for common sense.

We can be certain of only a small number of easily-verifiable facts about health care costs:  (1) usage rates and total costs are higher when there is a third-party payer (health insurer or governmental health program); (2) costs have gone up faster than the rate of inflation for a number of years, and out-of-pocket costs for the insured may have gone up even faster; and (3) a remarkable number of advances in medical technology have become routinely available over the past 40 years, and the cost today of bringing new medicines and other medical technologies to market is accelerating.  Beyond these three items, there is mostly speculation and competition between the various political factions to see what group can be most vilified—health insurance companies, hospitals, doctors, pharmacology laboratories, or other players in health care.

THIRD-PARTY PAYERS TAKE IT IN THE NECK

The first fact in the list above is the most difficult to get our hands around, and it is where the most potential for dramatic reduction in costs is hidden.  It will also be the the most trying and time-consuming to bring into line.  It’s not so much that there’s something sinister involved as it is just human nature.  My favorite illustration of this human vulnerability was the time when our family was taking old friends and their middle-school-age son to one of our “special occasion” restaurants.  When our friends’ son ordered lobster, his father almost autonomously gasped, “Vince”!  Vince calmly and innocently responded, “It’s OK, Dad; Mr. Drake is paying”.

I have to admit that I have also been guilty.  All of my employers provided very good health insurance, which covered periodic physical exams / checkups.  In one city where we lived, I had an excellent primary care doctor who lived and breathed health maintenance and disease prevention.  On every visit the doctor spent the time with me to discuss lab results, review my general health, and make any recommendations for further improvements.  But on at least two occasions, the doctor ordered very expensive tests, “just to get an advance look for any emerging changes; and your insurance covers the test”.  I really didn’t think to ask about medical necessity, sense of urgency, total cost, or more cost-effective alternate tests.  Each time, the results revealed absolutely no signs whatsoever of problems; so I went away relieved, pleased, and giving no thought to charges against my employer’s health care account.

Overuse, waste, and fraud are all much higher where there is a third-party payer, and Medicare is less diligent in prevention, detection and prosecution than are private insurers. Visualize my thoughtless health care experiences, and then multiply them by the millions of people whose health costs are paid by insurance companies or government programs.  You then have a feel for the enormous amount of over-use, waste (including purely defensive-medicine costs), and even outright fraud.

Unfortunately, almost all of us bear a measure of the guilt.

THE MYSTERY OF HEALTH CARE COST DETAILS

In a routine visit my dermatologist recently removed two small moles from my chest, and he sent the tissue to the lab for biopsy (because of melanoma in my history).  When I received my Explanation Of Benefits (EOB) statements from Medicare and my private  Medicare Supplement carrier months later, I was shocked to see the lab fees.  Just two days earlier I had heard a similar story of a routine physical exam, told by a well-known television journalist, and his lab fees exceeded $10,000!  So now I’m in the process of replaying my dermatologist visit, looking for actions I might have taken and questions I should have asked (like “what is the most common lab fee for this service?”).

My doctor is cost-conscious, and he has discussed cost-effectiveness of therapy options on several occasions; but I doubt if he keeps close tabs on cooperating medical providers, including lab technicians and pathologists, who each have a share in my well-being.

I think we all may have to learn how to be good multi-level shoppers where medical care is involved.  But I don’t look forward to the detective-and-auditor efforts necessary to identify and deal with all those medical providers whose cuts of the action show up on my health care statements.  Nor will I enjoy trying to get my health insurers to help me to become a wiser medical services consumer.

TECHNOLOGY IS A TWO-EDGED SWORD

Those of us who are not so youth-challenged can remember reading about Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) in Scientific American and other popular technology publications.  After explaining how MRI worked, the articles went on to suggest the marvelous potential advantages for health care.

Eventually we were reading about production use of these rare machines.  Like many technological innovations the MRI was initially  hyper-expensive and difficult for most medical institutions to justify.  I can remember driving an elderly relative an unusual distance, at an unusual time of day, for an appointment at the nearest facility with an MRI.  Predictably, there were calls for rationing such an expensive tool, made by both politicians and insurers.  But truth and common sense won out in the case of the MRI.  As with all new technologies, MRI hardware and software costs came down across time and capabilities are continuing to increase.  Today the MRI is taken for granted as an extremely important tool in our medical arsenal.  (But we have to keep in mind that the cost of the medical specialist personnel involved in MRI efforts have not gone down like hardware and software costs.)

The MRI story is an almost perfect example what we can expect to see repeated over and over,  including introduction of new medicines.  We are going to have to learn what fraction of total health care costs are due to new technology, and we are going to have to come to terms with its cost-versus-benefits balance.

SO WHAT CAN WE ACTUALLY DO?

There are two things that all of us can do in the health care misinformation war:  (1) Maintain a healthy skepticism about any and all health care information until we have satisfied ourselves that it is correct, using our common sense plus any trusted sources of health care expertise that we have developed and tested; and (2) keep our elected Representatives and Senators aware of our beliefs and desires concerning proposed legislation—by Email, phone, letter, smoke signals, or whatever works best.

WORKBOOK EXERCISES

There are a number of areas where the information, or propaganda, doesn’t seem to compute.  Here are a few to ponder.

1. Health insurance companies are the villain du jour; but are they really the bad guys in cost escalation?

A.  Many Americans get their health insurance through their employers, and virtually every company with 1000 or more employees is self-insured (with a number of companies as small as 100 self-insured).  For all of these employees, the employer determines the cost, what is covered, what is excluded, and what rules guide the policy-administration and claims-processing contractors.  The employer is also the final authority in appeals.

What is the total number of employees, and covered family members, with this type of health insurance?  What fraction of the total number of people with health insurance does this number represent?

B.  How many people already have health insurance that provides family coverage for children up to the age of 25?

C.  Most of the 50 states have have high-risk pools for liability insurance for drivers with bad records (DUIs, moving violations, etc.).  Is there any reason why high-risk pools could not be used for health insurance for people with preexisting conditions?

D.  When all health insurers operating under the Blue Cross Association rules were not-for-profit companies, the best of them had overheads around nine percent; that is, 91% of total premium dollars went to pay claims.  What is that number today for all health insurers?  What is the average profit margin for health insurance corporations (reported in federally required corporation reports)?

2. Can health insurance be extended to an additional 30 million people at no additional cost (or even less cost)?

A.  By how many trillion dollars are the Medicare / Medicaid programs underfunded at present?

B.  By how many trillion dollars is Social Security underfunded at present (related to health care only by demands on tax monies)?

C.  Are there sufficient medical personnel to handle a 30-million person jump in patients?

3. After liability insurance premiums for light aircraft and aircraft parts manufacturers rose to become more than 30% of the cost of a new airplane, the general aviation tort reform bill was signed into law in 1994.  Although this was a fairly narrow law for limited liability of certain classes of aircraft manufacturers, the language had broader implications.

The Trial Lawyers Association opposes any attempt to cap the “pain and suffering” amounts in medical liability lawsuits.  But is there any reason, other than the objection of lawyers, that would preclude passage of a medical tort reform bill that could cut the legal and defensive-medicine costs of medical care by more than $350 billion per year?

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