Iraq and al-Quaida
Mood:  sad
Topic: War on terror
Just a few months ago optimistic news reports suggested that the Sunni population of Western Iraq was turning on the foreign terrorists led by Zarqawi. Intelligence was provided and many Sunni political leaders were offering to join the political process. However, the terrorists have clearly carried the day. The conciliatory Sunni leaders have been assassinated or threated with such. The suicide bombings continue unabated and are likely to bring about Shiit repraisals. The events at Haditha in which Marines lost control and killed innocents are dwarfed by the systematic targeting of Shiites by Zarqawi. However, it is clear that our actions as outsiders will draw far greater condemnation that those of any internal party including Zarqawi et al. This is a given in any of these wars and should be understood going in.

Fixing the Medicare Part D prescription plan
Mood:  incredulous
Topic: Medicare Prescriptions
The new Medicare Part D prescription program has been unbelievably difficult for Seniors to negotiate. There are offered myrian different private plans with confusing details. The biggest drawback in the long run will be the exaggerated cost relative to benefit that has been built in for the benefit of drug makers and health insurers. This cost will bring that point much closer when benefits will exceed payroll tax revenues. On the other hand the fact that the precedent of drug coverage was established by a republican administration will help progressives. Now they only have to fix it. Indeed a single payer prescription coverage system typically has drawbacks. To save costs, expensive advertised drugs are excluded for coverage whenever they are found to have cheaper generic equivalents for the same conditions. This can result in opposition to the formulary when those who have been convinced that only the expensive drug will work for them. Known as a closed formulary, programs that exclude such drugs often must confront patient constituents supports by the drug company that insists on the high return. The current Part D skirts that issue out of deference to drug interests. Therefore an effective reform would be to offer a closed formulary plan equivalent to the Veteren's Administration program. This program would provide the brand name preferred and generic drugs with a limited copay and no limits on annual expenses. Those who are unhappy with the choice in the formulary would still have a private plan available to them. The VA type of plan would be offered to all eligible Seniors and would be simple and straightforward for them to understand. The existing private sector plans could compete with them and offer the idea of choices.

Facts on Legal Immigration
Topic: Immigration Reform
The intensity of the immigration debate reflects varying philosophies about the nature of citizenship and how we should conduct ourselves as a nation. However, it has been improperly intensified by obvious misstatements of fact. The most obvious is the conclusion that illegal immigrants have chosen to ignore and bypass immigration law. This statement assumes one chooses to risk life and limb to cross the Arizona desert rather than follow some bureaucratic procedure in Mexico City that would allow them to come legally. In fact legal immigration is not an option for the Mexican, Carribean, and Central American immigrants who are coming illegally. When one says they should follow the law, in effect that is saying they should not come at all. Legal immigration is fundamentally two processes. The first allows prior legal immigrants to bring in their relatives and the second allows select employers to bring in high skilled professionals for specific jobs. For instance, the Dept. of Homeland Security reported on 1,063,732 permanent legal immigrants for FY 2002. Sixty-three percent entered as family members of citizens of legal residents, 17% came on visas for special occupations, 12 % were refugees and 8% were in other categories. Of these million legal immigrants, there were at best about 100,000 visas available for the rest of the world.
Whether we call it guest worker of some other euphemism, illegal immigration will be curbed only when large number of immigrants from Mexico and other underdeveloped societies are admitted legally. Employers who employ these immigrants should be required to recruit American employees as a percentage of their workforce. The government should not dump the verification/green card process back on employers but set up a system to do it itself. But above all, we should debate these issues based on facts rather than convenient fictions.

Is in Bush or the Neo-Cons
Mood:  incredulous
Topic: Personalizing failure
Domestic political "wars" a waged in terms of personal insults or praise while policies actually create the results. Hence the tendency of administration opponents to pile on the President for the Iraq war, deficit spending, social security privatization, the Katrina response, etc. could backfire in the long run as Conservatives define these failures and personal incompetence rather than policy failure. In fact, the problems that confront us are the inevitable result of the long term application of the Conservative policies advocated over the last 20 years. The war derives from the belief that advanced military technology and the ready use of a military threat would result in the retreat by our adversaries. However, the adversaries have their own advantages such as a ready supply of young men from societies with high birth rates.
Similarly, deficit spending results from defense spending combined with massive tax cuts for the rich, the primary plank of conservative platform. Katrina failures result from a belief that government solutions are worthless and FEMA should be replaced by targeted tax cuts to initiate private solutions. Social security, the replacement of health insurance by savings accounts, the elimination of employer paid pensions result in the impoverishment of low and middle income Americans. These have all been ongoing Conservative proposals. So if we simply links these failures to Bush personally, we invite the substitution of a new personality such as any one of the proposed Republican candidates. The new candidate will suggest that they can remedy these problems because they are personally more competent than Bush when the cause lie in the policies themselves.

Proposal for National Health Care Finance
All too many proposals to retain or expand national health insurance rely on expanded employer subsidies. At the same time tariffs and quotas are advocated to save American jobs against foreign competition. The way to improve the situation of workers on both fronts is to finance health care through a value added tax on consumption. Whether a product is imported or locally produced, its sale will finance the health care of Americans. No longer will employers be under competitive pressure to cut health insurance for workers and their families or force them to pay more of the cost. Rather, Walmart's imported Chinese products would also be taxed to provide the health care coverage of American workers. Right now, not only do we have to compete on wages but also the 10-15% surcharge for employee health care--not to mention the taxes for medicaid to non-covered workers. In addition I would propose retaining the employment based groupings and funding them for health care from the tax revenues rather than a payment by the employer and employee. This would counter the major criticism of the Clinton plan that it proposed large public entities to provide for coverage. Cutting out the insurance companies and placing doctors under public control will sink the plan.

Proposal: Establish a European style value added tax to raise revenues for all working age Americans and their children and non-working spouses. Require recipients to join employment and other common base organizations to contract for health insurance. Pay the tax revenues to those organizations using a formula based on demographics such as member age, family structure, and prior conditions. Supplement the general value-added tax with a tax on cigarettes, alcohol, and any other activity that contributes to expanded health expenditures. Create general guidelines for the operation of the health insurance organizations but expect member responsibility for their actions. Allow employers to suspend and payments for coverage of current workers. Retiree coverage should not be addressed because one would then have to address all retirees under the age of 65.

The ?FEMA-ization? of the CIA
It is disturbing to hear of the exodus of senior level analysts and administrators of the CIA especially when the turnover is not due to management reform but rather an effort to subordinate the professional service to the political dictates of the administration. Their issue was not that the CIA got it wrong on WMD but rather that it did not somehow “cook the books” afterwards so that we would never know that they were wrong. In addition the analysts were clearly intimidated by the vice President and Defense Intelligence agency to go along with the questionable assessments provide by the Chalaby exhile faction. With the recent purges under Porter Goss, we now have a bureaucracy that is substantially less competent and experience and more likely to be cowed by demands from the administration that it support and “prove” its politically required assertions about the world.

re: Parallels between Iraq and Vietnam
Vietnam and Iraq
The assertion than Iraq is not Vietnam may be true in many respects but one can find many parallels. While the battlefields are starkly different, the politics of how we wage war are very similar. The ultimate rationale for confronting the North Vietnam/Viet Cong forces was that they were part of an international Communist entity that would ultimately sponsor successful revolutions in Asia and the Pacific leading to another Pearl Harbor. In fact, Communist governments turned on each other and following its successful takeover of South Vietnam, the new regime promptly had major armed conflicts with China and Cambodia. Similarly, the rationale for overthrowing Saddam Hussein was that the regime supported the terrorist groups that carried out 9-11 and would supply and support them with weapons of mass destruction. However, this Iraqi regime had a major advantage for US security. It was a fundamental foe and rival of Iran, the other regime considered to be a potential threat. So Saddam represented a divisive presence within the Middle Eastern entities hostile to American interests. Moreover, the Baath party was a secular socialist movement supporting equality for women and tolerance of Christians and Jews. The new regime has strong ties to Iran and much closer in ideology to the Islamists that support Al Quaida. So we have eliminated a threat that was already effectively controlled by the international community and opened up Iraq to penetration by Iranian and other fundamentalists interests that are a much more serious threat to our security.

Conserve electricity at the peaks
Mood:  caffeinated
Topic: Energy conservation
I read with interest the proposals for more wind farms to produce electricity. This proposal has merit but it is not the answer to blackouts and shortages during periods of extreme heat or cold. Electricity is radically different from other energy forms because it cannot be stored yet must be immediately available on demand. The shortages occur during these peaks when air conditioning in the summer or electric heating in the winter make sudden demands on the system. When electricity is purchased in excess for these peaks, the emergency situation in California in 2001 can easily occur. The state was trying to sell electricity that it purchased for a premium as much as 75 percent below its original price. If they fail to purchase electricity and the weather turns they may have blackouts. The key to electricity conservation is not to simply reduce consumption but to reduce it when the system is nearing its peak. In other words, residents and business would have to curb heating in the coldest days and air conditioning during heat waves. If they cut use at 3 in the morning or when temperatures are moderate, they have no real impact on the problem. Similarly wind power is helpful only if it blows during extreme hot or cold periods. Solar power would help greatly during heat waves but is not useful during winter freezes.
Fortunately we do have a technology which could work effectively to reduce peak power consumption during the heat waves and cold spells. It is proven and effective and it remains a mystery to me why this was not a key part in the new energy plans. It is known as the ground-source heat pump(also geo-thermal) which is readily available to any business and home owner who is willing to bear the higher expense in order to install this system of cooling and heating. The principle is simple. Air conditioner/heat pumps must operate in the outside temperature. When the temperature is 100+ they must try to push heat into the hot air. When it is -10, the system must try to extract heat from air that has very little. However, there is a vastly superior source of heat just 4-6 feet under the ground which remains at a constant 55 degrees year round. The ground source air conditioner can easily shed heat a few feet underground and work far less than it would in the hot air. The ground source heat pump can draw heat from the ground that is far warmer than the winter air above. Not only does this system reduce electricity usage year around, it become especially effective during the extreme heat and cold when supplies are at a premium. President Bush has one for his Texas residence. When his own money is at stake, it looks like a good investment.
While more expensive to install, it would significantly minimize peak power demand even if the proportion of users were low. Residences that have a lot of ground could bury the tubing in the yard and save year around. Large shopping malls could have the tubes buried under the parking lot. The government could offer tax credits for installing these systems instead of tax credits to find more oil when domestic supplies have long since been exhausted. Because the expense of the system would go to American labor for manufacturing and installation, the credits would enhance employment here instead of the OPEC coffers. I want to stress that I have no financial interest in ground source technology. I am simply concerned at the way debate on America’s problems produces ineffective or self-serving proposals.

Not just a Pay Raise but caused by Gerrymandering
Topic: Pennsylvania Politics
The uproar over the legislature’s pay increases and the high number of legislators has ignored the third issue which is the gerrymandered district boundaries which preserve “safe” districts for the incumbents. Of course this has been an issue since the founding of the republic for all states. But recent advances in computer models have refined the traditional practices to a science that allocates voters to specific districts cutting across county and municipal boundaries. As a result voter have no idea who they are grouped with and no way to organize in opposition to the protected incumbents.
Most reform proposals suggest some sort of non-political commission but even there, legislators would pick the commission. Much better would be a constitutional amendment that require districts to follow county, municipal, and township boundaries. Congressional or legislative districts would have to include entire counties with the single exception of one county needed to meet the population requirement. Within that partial county, entire political subdivisions must be included with only one partial township or borough permitted. With the requirement that all parts of a district be contiguous, such requirements would severely limit the ability of any partisan body to arrange district boundaries to their own ends.
For example, the 9th Congressional District. Prior to 2001, this district included just 2 partial counties. After 2001, 9 partial counties were part of this district. The 12th district has parts from 8 counties along with just 1 complete county. On a map it resembles an anchor rather than a square or circle. Clearly, there may be ways to string together entire counties to produce an abnormal district but such a requirement will severely challenge any would-be gerrymander. Then constituents will know their representative and be able to hold them accountable for all of their actions not just a pay increase.

Debit Cards from FEMA: Too Good to be True
Mood:  incredulous
Topic: Katrina Response
Last week in Houston, FEMA began a new program to help Katrina refugees by giving them $2,000 ATM debit cards. This effort took advantage of our new electronic economy. Instead of transporting them around to various locations at great expense and personal anguish, the ATM cards could be used to seek out family and friends throughout the country. The card could be used for travel, motels, food, etc. Whenever, they reached a destination, they could have reported to the local welfare office for further assistance. While some would still have no place to go, we can estimate that most of those refugees would have found a place to go. Over several months the federal price tag was expected to be hundreds of millions when those who had left before the storm were covered.
However, this approach was too good to be true and was canceled the next day. There was concern that ineligible locals might come in and obtain the cards fraudulently. Clearly there would be instances of abuse and fraud but overall this program would be substantially less costly and much more satisfactory to the people in need. Now FEMA is contracting for housing with a few favored contractors to the tune of $51.8 billion(that’s with a “b”). What is going on when we worry about minor fraud by a few ineligible poor people and accept massive expenditures by connected firms to take care of people who need only a little money to take care of themselves.