Bassem Youssef, who produced a popular television show modeled on “The Daily Show”, was informed Saturday that he needs to go to a police station to answer for the warrant, charging him with insulting President Morsi and denigrating Islam. He said that he would probably go on Sunday, the first day of the workweek in Egypt. He mentioned that they could save him the transportation if they would just come and pick him up. Apparently, the police have been watching Mr Youssef for some time and had appointed a judge to investigate the complaints against him. The new government of Egypt has been suppressing dissent with the same brutality as the old government. Just last week, five anti-Islamist activists were arrested on charges of inciting violence against the Muslim Brotherhood.
The television show that Mr Youssef produced had been the subject of numerous complaints by Islamists who were offended by his references to Mr Morsi and the followers of the Muslim Brotherhood. This is the first time, however, that a public prosecutor has issued an arrest warrant. No doubt this signals the end of Mr Youssef’s weekly TV show. He has had a wild ride with conservatives, even reconciling with some of them, but has made many enemies among the Salafists.
At the same time, Egypt is facing an intense shortage of diesel fuel and many critical items such as wheat for bread, which is imported. Locally grown wheat is poor quality and is mixed with imported wheat to make an edible bread. The shortages stem from Egypt’s economic collapse over the last two years. Tourism has dwindled to nothing, and reserves are collapsing. The Europeans are negotiating a loan which may perhaps be more realistically seen as a grant in aid. There are systemic issues that make these chaotic conditions inevitable.
Right now, the Supreme Court of Egypt has nullified some of the election laws and new laws must be written. The Legislature, however, is in recess and President Morsi thinks he is better off waiting. At the same time, someone must sign off on the tax increases and other painful measures demanded as part of the European “loan.”
The apparently unreasonable behavior of the people in this crisis situation is inevitable and events will continue to unfold regardless of what the people do. There are too many people, and this is creating a strain on resources that radiates through-out the system. The strains are manifest as food shortages, fuel shortages, interpersonal violence, migration, and collapse of government.
Egypt would benefit if they had a better leadership but there is so much complicated overlay in the present system that little can be done constitutionally. The Court system is full of leftovers from the previous autocratic administration who interfere with government action at every turn. Now, in a “free” election for President, the Egyptian electorate has been forced to choose between a known Islamist and a lackey of the previous administration. The Constitution is hurriedly revised, with solo input from Islamist sources. The only effective behavior at present seems to be to negotiate loans. Elections are difficult when the Court invalidates all the election law.
Egypt is dependent for its survival as a coherent nation state on the assistance of external organizations. We, the United States, and many other nations, must step in and provide assistance where it is most needed.
Ma Mei-ling
Summer 1972
I actually met Mei-ling Ma in my summer organic chemistry class. She was in the lab, and we met in the hallway; she stopped and looked at me. She smiled at me and said something like “Hi, how are you?” I smiled back and that was all. At that time I remember she was a Chinese girl of about my age or a little older, about five foot three, with long, straight black hair. She was wearing jeans and a tight black top. She had a wide belt with a big buckle that had a figure on it. She was very well proportioned, with a narrow waist and full chest, and I liked her face a lot. Her face looked kind of long and flat but it was beautiful.
I didn’t meet her again until the first meeting of the winter term advanced biochemistry class–cellular metabolism. After the first class, she came up to me and we started talking. We were together for the next four months, until I became angry at her over some slight.
The next time I saw her was in Los Angeles, in 1980, in February or March. She called me on the phone after sending me a letter; I didn’t get the letter until after she had talked to me. She said that she found my name in the LA region alumni book and wanted to look me up and see how I was doing. She said she was married and had two children. Her husband was a neurosurgeon who worked for Kaiser and she worked for Kaiser also. I went up to her house and had dinner with her and met her husband and children. They were beautiful people, and we really enjoyed that dinner together.
That was the last I saw of her.
Recently, my father sent me a pile of letters from his files that he wanted to pass on to me. Mei ling’s name was mentioned in one of my letters: “1972 April 1. Mei-ling is in Jamaica…” That sparked my memory, and I looked for her on the Internet but didn’t find her. There is a Mei-ling Schwartz who works for Kaiser as head of a department there. I sent her an email at the work address they gave but didn’t hear back. It might or might not be her anyway.
That jog of memory lead to me thinking about writing a story about her or about the circumstances; that’s where “bicycle” came from.
Bicycle
Summer 1972
I was in summer school, taking organic chemistry, to make up for being out of school last fall. I was living on the fifth, top floor of the House and I carried my bike up and down the stairs. The organic chemistry class was held in a big lecture hall north of the House, across the overpass and past the old Hall. We always walked to class– it was too close for bicycling.
We had lab in the afternoon on most days. The lab was held in a big drafty hall with tall, wide open windows, and it got pretty warm on most afternoons. We didn’t have those new-fangled exhaust hoods over our experimental benches, and some of the reaction chemicals did stink.
After class on the day before the last day, I went out for a bike ride on Massachusetts Avenue, going north on the left side of the northbound lanes, next to the center line, fast. I was trying to go up the Ave a few blocks, not going anywhere, and I decided to turn around and go south at an intersection.
I never got to turn around. I crashed into a car (a Toyota Corolla) going south. I was hit by the car on the left front quarter and went up on the hood, then back onto the roof with my butt going through the windshield. For a tiny fraction of a second, I laid back on the hood of the car, striking the edge of the roof with my back at about the lumbar-thoracic junction.
Then the driver hit his brakes, and I was catapulted forward. I performed a full sumersault in the air as I was thrown forward from the car and landed on my feet on the street, facing south and only a few feet behind a bus also going south. For a moment, I thought I had almost hit the bus. I didn’t realize that I had somersaulted off a car that was still behind me.
I turned and stepped back to the car, which was motionless in the street with a smashed windshield and dented roof. I was not aware of any pain. Looking at my hands, I could see tears in my gloves, and there were red gouges on my knees and lower legs. I sat on the hood of the car.
A passing driver offered to take me to the hospital, and for a few minutes I sat in the front passenger seat of her car. The ambulance showed up within moments, and a fireman gingerly helped me into a chair-like stretcher, strapping me in sitting down. I began to be aware of something wrong in my back, and reaching backwards, I could feel pieces of glass on my shorts and shirt.
As the ambulance drove south on Massachusetts Avenue, I looked back out of the open door at the traffic, all the cars pulled to the side of the four lane road. It was a short ride to the infirmary, which was in the building complex just to the southeast of Harvard Square. They had a small emergency room and could put people to bed for a few nights upstairs. It was the students’ idea of divine intervention.
At the hospital, I lay quietly on a gurney while the resident sutured up two rounded gouges in my left shin. Then I turned over and he examined my back. There seemed to be a bruise forming over my lower back. They relieved me of my clothes and shook the glass out of them.
Next I was sent to Xray, where they checked my lower legs and I stood up for an Xray of my midback. There was something about the Xray of my back that the technician didn’t say, but she went back and talked to the doctor, then came in and repeated the Xray. I never found out what was wrong, if anything. I just know it was painful to stand up at that point.
Then they put me to bed with instructions to collect any urine that I might pass fully into this urinal, please. I think i was rather dehydrated because my kidneys were inactive for a long time. Finally, early in the morning, I got up and urinated as instructed, then rang the nurse.
I was released around 8:30 or so and made it to class a half an hour late. I sat next to my room-mate, who had visited me in hospital, and commiserated for a while. We took notes of the last lecture. At lunch-time, we walked over to the corner where the accident had happened, and retrieved my bicycle from the basement of the restaurant across the street from where I had landed.
The man who worked there said he had, by chance, actually observed the moment of the accident, and that I had flown from the hood of the car when it stopped and I had done a complete somersault before landing on my feet on the street. This was news to me, as I didn’t remember anything about the hit. Just being hit, then being in the street.
We walked back to the House, my room-mate carrying my wrecked bicycle. Back at the House, we had a little something to revive us and discussed the future. Then we went to lab.
I had a good-sized bench to myself, with all the equipment needed to do organic syntheses and extractions, and the day’s experiment involved a simple synthesis and the concentration and characterization of the synthetic result. I went through the instructions and followed them as well as I could, but I began to feel a little wobbly, and the pain in my legs was worse.
Mostly it was in the knees, where I had two big shallow gouges taken out right below my kneecaps, but also there were my shins, with several small holes and two larger ones closed with a couple of stitches. My elbows also had some small abrasions. All this was carefully covered with sterile bandages and gauze wrappings. My hands, fortunately, had been protected by the gloves I wore.
The thing that bothered me the most wasn’t bandaged. As the hours wore on after the crash, swelling began to occur in the thoraco-lumbar region of my spine. My back began to ache, especially that afternoon as I stood at the laboratory bench.
I spent a long afternoon in the organic chemistry lab, performing the last lab exercise of the summer. I knew I had to finish this exercise to get a decent grade, otherwise all my work this summer would be wasted. I finished the exercise and got a reasonable yield for the final product, not up to my usual standards, but good enough to get a passing grade for the day’s lab.
Then I went back to the House and rested. My girlfriend came to visit that evening, and we talked over a glass of wine. My room-mate had left early, as usual, zooming away in his Porsche to get back to his dad’s home in New Greenwich.
We talked about the crash, and how I had really been at fault, and if I had been watching where I was going, it wouldn’t have happened. I agreed with everything she said, because it was true. I had made a turn where I wasn’t supposed to, in the face of oncoming traffic that I had ignored. Why did I do that?
All I remembered was that I had gone for a bike ride to blow off steam, so I had cycled really fast north on Massachusetts Avenue from northwest of the House. I had gone fast for a couple of blocks, then got in to the left lane. At the corner just north of the park, I had made an attempted U-turn to go back south on Massachusetts Avenue, but there had been traffic coming south that I just didn’t take into account. I still couldn’t answer why.
I didn’t sleep well that night. Early in the morning, a backache woke me up. I got up and took a couple of aspirins my room-mate had left me. I lay back down again, and fell back asleep for a little while.
I did well overall in the organic chemistry summer session, so I didn’t have to take it again that fall. I started taking biochemistry classes instead.
I still had a backache, especially in the morning. I went to physical therapy, and they gave me a lot of relief, especially with the infrared heat machine. The backache receded to the point where two aspirin in the morning completely took care of it, and it never came back all day.
The driver of the car got a lawyer. He came to see me one day a month or so later. We had coffee in a shop on the southeast side of Harvard Square, past which I walked every day on my way to class now. We talked to him about the accident. I told him it was really my fault that it had happened, the driver couldn’t have seen me.
He seemed cheered by this prospect. Then we began to discuss my family. He was depressed to learn that my father was a teacher at a small mid-Western college and not a rich man of some sort. I told him we didn’t have any insurance although I suspect my father had a home insurance account that might cover such things as minor son crashing his bike into a car.
The lawyer told me that he didn’t think he’d be able to file suit if my father didn’t have a lot of money, and regretfully bid me farewell. I was surprised, but I really didn’t think it was a big deal at that moment.
Later, I happened to run in to the driver on foot; we were both walking, through the park on the west side of Massachusetts Avenue a couple of blocks from where the crash had occurred. I was walking north, and he was coming south, with his girlfriend, I assumed. We stopped for a few moments to talk, and I asked him if he had been hurt. He said that he had been going to a chiropractor because his back hurt.
I realized that there was more involved, at least in the driver’s mind, than the loss to his car, which he explained to me was declared totaled by the insurance company because of the roof damage. I began to feel proud of my ability to inflict damage on inanimate objects like cars.
That winter I still had a backache; I took two Bufferin in the morning and sometimes in the evening as well. I went to physical therapy and enjoyed the infrared heat machine, especially on cold days. Cambridge got pretty cold, and the snow piled up, dirty and black on the street. I walked everywhere, partly because I didn’t have a bicycle, although my room-mate’s friend offered to let me ride his.
He had built a bicycle from parts recovered or selected individually to fit his requirements. He especially liked my brakes, and since they had been one of the few items on my bike to survive the crash, he mounted them on his bicycle. Therefore, he felt he owed me a share of the rides on his new bicycle.
I did take advantage of the privilege a number of times, although it wouldn’t have been convenient to borrow it just to do an errand or ride to class because he lived in Boston rather than Cambridge and actually drove to class in his car. He drove an old Porsche 356 that I didn’t think was as cool as my room-mate’s 912.
Riding my room-mate’s friend’s bicycle was an unusual and scary sensation. There wasn’t any pain in my back or knees but I constantly had the feeling I was going to fall. My rides usually lasted an hour, no more. It was cold anyway.
Tea Party Propaganda
- I want you to read the following “comment” gleaned from the New York Times online carefully and tell me if you think an ordinary housewife, or perhaps an illiterate janitor, wrote it. I think that it is more likely that it was written by a professional writer who was paid by a corporate entity.
- Mike Mangan
- Comstock Park, Mi.
You people don’t have a clue what the Tea Party stands for. It’s a true grass roots movement with one overriding principle: returning to limited government. We are motivated to action by a debt so large that it threatens the existence of our society. Our ranks are made up of ordinary men and women (more of the latter). If you would like to know what a Tea Party crowd looks like, go to a church basement after services when they are serving coffee and doughnuts and you’ll get the picture. Simple hard working people, most never having participated in politics, with the simple goal of keeping the country from plunging over into the abyss.
For this we have been vilified like no group since Jews in Germany in the 1930’s. We’re called racists. Terrorists. Hostage takers. A sitting Congresswoman tells us to “Go straight to hell!” A union leader offers to “take us out” and “wage war on us” with the President sitting on the same stage. Our simple principles are being warped and distorted by the media and the Democratic party in order to portray us as the biggest threat the country faces.
We’re being scapegoated. And all the while the ignorant, hateful, bigoted people who do the scapegoating don’t have to explain how the $14 trillion debt is not a threat, how the $114 trillion in unfunded liabilities is no problem. Oh well, someone has to be the grownup in the room.
(published September 7, 2011)
The above “comment” posted on the New York Times online “Green” blog is an example of Tea Party propaganda. If you examine it carefully, you will see that it is made up to stimulate sympathy and create an appearance of honest, straightforward discourse. There is one rational point made by the statement: our National debt is “so large that it threatens the existence of our society.” This deliberately shocking, Apocalyptic claim is unsupported by any evidence but referred to as “unfunded liabilities”. The statement tries to make you think that “simple, hardworking people” are behind the Tea Party’s efforts and that they are being scapegoated for their efforts.
In fact, the Tea Party was created back in the 1970’s by Republican operatives who wanted to change the “balance of power” between government and private corporations by impairing government and empowering corporations. It has been funded through convoluted secret channels by top corporate officers in the coal and oil industries as well as individual wealthy conservatives ever since then. Billions of dollars has been spent on creating propaganda that gives the impression that its positions are shared in the opinions of “simple, hardworking people”. What has happened is the reverse of a grass-roots movement. The assertions and identifications of the propagandists have convinced many simple, hardworking people who get all of their news and political opinions from a television channel owned by a wealthy conservative: Fox News.
The Tea Party operated underground until shortly before the 2008 presidential election, when it emerged in full public view. A few demonstrations by costumed employees secured wide publicity for a simple concept: the “Tea Party” was alleged to be a spontaneous outburst by enraged citizens. The concept was easy to report on and easy to explain, although its plans remained somewhat obscure. The only clear demand was a reduction in government spending (which was precisely in line with the original motive of impairing government and empowering corporations.) Through wide publicity, a superficial knowledge of the Tea Party was spread to most Americans.
Polling showed that, initially, people didn’t know much about the “Tea Party” but were generally favorable. After a couple of years, however, polls showed that people felt much more familiar with the concept and had a generally unfavorable attitude towards it. As the plans of Tea Party champions in Congress played out, particularly their obstructionist tactics in the House, people reacted negatively. General polling showed the popularity of the “Tea Party” dropped to perhaps 20-25% once it became clear that their proponents wanted to obstruct the normal process of debt authorization in Congress.
Tea Party Republicans in the House took the “debt ceiling” bill too literally and refused to pass it unless they were promised a drastic reduction in government spending. The “sequester” has been a direct result of the negotiations that President Obama was forced to go through to get the debt ceiling bill passed in 2011. There will be intense and painful cuts to personnel in almost all government agencies as a result of the sequester. Many extremely helpful programs will be cut or eliminated. At present, the military has also been forced to make the same cuts, although the Tea Party people have magnanimously offered to restore many military cuts as a part of the next debt ceiling bill. It has been estimated that the sequester will reduce economic growth by 1/2% over the next year and delay relief of unemployment, on top of firing many important government workers.
The reality is that our government is running at a deficit because we are not collecting enough in taxes. The average, historically, has been taxes at 18% of GDP; we are now running at 14% of GDP. For good fiscal management, it is essential that we raise taxes, and for fairness, it is essential that this be done in a progressive fashion. Raising taxes on “capital gains” and raising the percentages on high incomes are the only way. Our deficit would quickly disappear if we taxed ourselves appropriately. This is not in the interest of those who are behind the Tea Party. They want to reduce government to the point that they can “drown it in a bathtub.”
It is clear that powerful interests are trying to prevent economic recovery in the United States. They are behind the Tea Party as well as other retrogressive initiatives that have come forward recently. They are actually profiting from the high unemployment and sluggish growth that afflicts us. These interests are not publicly held companies, they are private corporations and industries that find the conditions of high unemployment and depressed wages to be helpful to their businesses. They feel that the employees are more docile when they feel lucky to have any job, even at the minimum wage.
Unfortunately, these conditions are unstable. The extreme levels of income and wealth inequality that exist now cause social unrest and intensify anger in dispossessed populations. Extreme inequality leads to social disintegration. Our current systems are trending towards more and more inequality. I think that there will inevitably be an increase in social unrest and just plain violence (like the Newtown massacre). To this end, it is useful that there are an estimated 276 million firearms in private hands in the United States.
To combat inequality, government must be established that takes effective measures. Progressive taxation is one measure that is likely to prove efficient over the long term. Insulation from financial risks for the individual is also essential. One of the most serious individual financial risks is currently serious illness: 60% of bankruptcies list medical bills. Single payer medical insurance is the most effective answer to this problem. Premiums for medical insurance would be paid through the income tax, thus progressive as well. European countries that use this system pay half of what we pay for medical care, and no-one is bankrupted by illness or injury.
One aspect of government that must be established in order to achieve greater equality is truly representative government. This will be established by outlawing all campaign contributions. All publicity for campaigns must come from a public fund that includes free television time. The right to use the public airways will include a tax on broadcasters that covers the cost of providing TV time. Candidates will first be selected locally by small groups, say a hundred people, and then progress to larger groups, say of ten thousand. After passing through these primaries, candidates can use TV time to reach voters en masse.
Voting will be required of all citizens; the right to vote will be conferred by a free identity card issued by the federal government. The card will contain a unique number that can be used to vote through any medium, including the telephone. Ballots will include, in addition to the names of all qualified candidates and a write in line, a choice of “none of the above.” The polls will be open continuously from the time the campaign starts until a prescribed cut-off date and time.
That’s my plan.
- Linda’s View Massachusetts
As an individual who has experienced severe adverse reactions to a number of medications, my problem has been with medical professionals failure to report to the FDA reactions I have had. I do believe, in a number of issues, including near death from a Baycal-type reaction to Lipitor as well as permanent physical injury caused by an over usage of the IV antibiotic, Ciprofloxacillin(joint damage, tendon and ligament tears as well as all my teeth breaking loose and now must wear dentures) doctors do not want to turn against “BIG PHARMA” and do not report these reactions. Also, there is always the fear of class action lawsuits. I just know the harm that has been done to me by just these two drugs is not just applicable to me;especially in the case of the two drugs I have specifically named! something has to be done about the seriousness of the adverse reactions, but how can it when medical professionals fail to do the right thing?If these adverse reactions could happen to me, how many others in this nation are suffering without knowing it came from an adverse reaction to a drugs and either singularly or in a combination of other medications! Also, from what i understand, the same group of medical professionals within the FDA that approve drugs are also responsible for having to pull them when enough people suffer side effects that it can’t be kept secret. Just a thought.
my post, to Linda:
Just to let you know, Linda, the tendon damage you suffered during treatment with ciprofloxacin is a serious, known adverse reaction to this drug/class of drugs… so what you had could have been predicted, in, say, 10% of people who received ciprofloxacin…
As to the “Baycal-type reaction” I assume you mean “Baycol” and, as apparently you already realize, Lipitor can be responsible for a smaller number but equally serious type of reaction as Baycol, starting with hyperglycemia and going on and on…
So, your doctors should have warned you that you could have a reaction, as it was already known that people could have that type of reaction (it’s even in the drug information passed out to all doctors, the Physician’s Desk Reference) but then, I’m sure they were much too busy with other things, and I mean this very seriously as the average doctor has little time to do anything so complex as giving informed consent on all of the six or eight different drugs on the regimen of the average patient with chronic illness.
I guess this is turning into a rant…my apologies…
Your chances of getting better as a patient depend critically upon your doing your own research on the drugs you are given and upon your making a personal decision to take the drug given the known advantages and disadvantages. You must also, at the same time, use all the non-drug remedies available to you as a patient, starting with rest, rehydration, and withdrawal from stressful situations of all types. Enuf.
My question: where is the smallest difference between the two posted texts? to vs too.
I would like to draw your attention to an article by Steven Brill published in Time on February 20 (http://healthland.time.com/2013/02/20/bitter-pill-why-medical-bills-are-killing-us/print/) which explains a great deal of what is wrong with medical costs in the USA today. This is a long article, based on several example bills that struck real patients recently. I encourage you to peruse its contents and ponder if there is any possible solution to the problems it presents.
There is a serious impediment to changes in our medical cost system, naturally. This stumbling block is the way our government is organized, specifically the system of lobbying. The medical establishment spends more than any other on lobbying–more even than the military industrial complex. With lobbying to retain their comfortable, legally mandated position of privilege, it is unlikely that the medical system will change. The only thing that could force change now is the collapse of one of the institutions that keeps the status quo.
Government policies encourage banks to finance more loans to buy houses
Govt implicitly guarantees debt of Fannie + Freddie
Mort loans are securitized and taken out of hands of local banks
Foreign investors buy securities based on mortgages, many of which are not secure
Loans are highly leveraged by securities firms and banks without govt control of leverage
Govt fails to monitor market conditions and restrict borrowing when it becomes excessive
Loans are made without verification of income, and many are fraudulent (up to one half)
Real wages are stagnant, forcing people to borrow to get things they want
Compensation for securities firms employees increases dramatically
More people get mortgages easily and demand for houses increases
House prices rise rapidly, creating a bubble of “collateral”
People borrow more money based on higher house “value” to buy things
Economy appears to be doing well based on false increases in house values
Credit and housing bubble ends because all who could buy houses have bought them
House prices decline, pricking bubble of collateral and drying up credit markets; average decline is about 30-40%
Unemployment increases dramatically, causing homeowners to default on mortgages
Securities lose value because they are short sold by prescient investors, which causes a stampede
Overleverage causes securities firms and banks to become insolvent
Foreclosure and renegotiation are inefficient due to securitization of mortgages (Mortgages were combined into packages and sold) and “underwater” mortgage loans (loan size exceeds house value)
Securities markets, facing uncertainty, are depressed for prolonged periods
Govt is forced to take over Fannie and Freddie, creating huge deficits buying up worthless securities
Govt does not apply strong policies to increase jobs, and high unemployment persists, depressing govt income from taxes and aggravating deficits
Shortsighted politicians focus on deficit and demand reductions in government spending, which if implemented will aggravate economic weakness and worsen deficit by reducing tax income
Some of these things occurred simultaneously, some occurred earlier, and some happened later. They are not shown here in exact chronological order.
(The approach which was effective at the end of World War II should be re-used here: high, progressive income taxes and expansive government spending on projects that stimulate the economy. The result was rapid economic growth, full employment, and dramatic reduction of the deficit as a percentage of gross domestic product. Ironically, the debt only declined slightly in absolute figures, but the economy grew so rapidly that it became insignificant. The USA was affected by unemployment due to returning soldiers and a huge war debt with a world economy shattered by war, but by using progressive tactics, it was able to grow out of the debt and enhance everyone’s standard of living.)
The mistake that the short sighted politicians make is in assuming that sovereign government debt is the same as household debt. Sovereign debt can be sustained in large amounts if confidence in the government, private corporations, and the people can be maintained. The debt, and the money supply, can be managed to prevent significant inflation while running a “current accounts deficit” , sustained by selling sovereign debt. Confidence in the American dollar is currently high despite the fraught nature of our current government, and our sovereign debt is selling at very low interest rates. We would be well advised, as an American government, to take advantage of the low rates and borrow money to stimulate our economy by careful government spending. It is critically important for the government to provide money to people who will spend it immediately and not set any of it aside for savings. This is what will stimulate the economy “from the bottom up.”
Spending by people who need to buy things immediately for their survival will most effectively prime the economy because the money will move rapidly from consumers to providers of goods and services. Providers will then buy additional stock and invest in enlarging their places of business, and so on. In addition, spending by construction companies will spread quickly into salaries and payments for materials. Government “spending” on such items as tax credits or tax reductions will not be a good stimulant for the economy because the amounts involved are small and spread over large groups of people, many of whom do not need more money.
Practical problems with “gun control”
Advocates of what we can lightly call “gun control” point to its success in reducing access to firearms in countries other than the United States. These countries have very limited private access to firearms of any kind. More importantly, the number of guns is far smaller than the number in the United States. Here there are supposedly 300 million firearms of all types, one for each person; other countries have as little as one for every hundred people. Any discussion of true gun control is based on limiting the access to firearms of people who should not own weapons. There are currently intricate rules for who is allowed to legally purchase a firearm, and a form is filled in, a background check done, and the citizen must wait a week or so. There are vast quantities of “assault weapons” and large magazines legally purchased and stored in the closets of upright citizens, unused.
Alongside this legal framework of registered and licensed owners there is an equally large illegal network that requires no paperwork, only the ability to locate your neighborhood firearms supplier. Suppliers say they don’t sell to people who look like they are unstable, but that is an elastic standard, and no records are kept. Virtually all of the firearms that change hands in this shadow network are pistols and revolvers; assault weapons are usually not chosen because they are too difficult to conceal. According to the feds, about 40% of firearms change hands in this way. 97% of murders are committed with handguns.
Most assault-type weapons and their accompanying large capacity magazines are sold legally to registered owners, who leave them in their closets all of the time, or take them to the range to put them through their paces. However, the recent occurrence of shootings in which the shooter wore body armor and carried an assault weapon has led some local police responsible for school security to stock similar weapons for carrying by officers on duty at schools. This sounds suspiciously like an arms race.
The stocking of assault weapons at schools is occurring despite expert skepticism about the effectiveness of one or two armed guards against an adversary girded with body armor and carrying an assault weapon with a couple of hundred round magazines. The police have been behaving as if every reference to a gun, no matter how vague, warrants and complete lockdown and five hour search of a school. It seems that paranoia rules the day.
However, since almost all murders are committed with ordinary, legal handguns, a more aggressive posture might include a task force of prosecutors to take down illegal gun fairs and track down the black market suppliers. It is possible that restricting the illegal market will have more effect on the number of murders than restricting assault weapons.
Since there are so many weapons in the United States and there is such a strong feeling that each person should have a gun, or several, of their own, it might be more productive, still assuming that our goal is to prevent mass shootings, to target the individuals responsible for these shootings by trying to predict who will do it and preventing them. To take two recent examples, we had young, 20 or 21 year old white men who displayed strong signs of mental illness long before the shootings; the first, in Arizona, had made many Internet postings foreshadowing his crime. The second, in Connecticut, was known to be highly withdrawn and possibly antisocial for, possibly five or six years before he shot his mother and a classroom full of children. This type of person should not be that hard to spot, and we should change our mental health laws so that we can pick them out and treat and/or confine them.
I know that this type of change will be considered highly intrusive, especially if it is done the wrong way. The mental health strategies that will be most successful probably would involve interviewing and testing children at around the age of twelve to sixteen if the appropriately nonstressful screening instruments can be developed. Children who are extremely withdrawn and display antisocial personality traits can be invited (firmly) to participate in treatment programs that, in some cases, might require removing the child from his or her previous environment if the parents are causing problems. Actions such as removing the child from his home could be cast as a big move up rather than a punitive step; it is entirely possible for the remover to state that the child has won a prize and will be going to a special super quality school, and even hand over bribes.
It will be true that the children will be going to a special school, and it is important to make it comfortable and compassionate to them. They will be offered a lot more praise than they had received before.
The children must be taught prosocial behavior traits and profusely rewarded for approaching correct behaviors. It may help to have a mother figure and/or a father figure in a residential counselor, for example. Issues such as this should be subjected to objective evaluation and the program quickly changed to reflect new information.
At issue will also be the cost of this endeavor, as we may assume that, at least, initial costs will be high. There will be ways to develop income related to the work of the children which can offset costs. In addition, costs should include the costs to society that would be avoided given the success of a necessarily large diversion program like this.
In addition to diverting potentially psychotic shooters at a young age, it will be helpful to develop increased mental health screening and treatment for all ages. This effort will be costly as well. Nonetheless, we can expect a large response, and if sharing information about patients is built in to the medical records software, supervisors can compare and rate potentially dangerous traits or states in patients. At first, this cannot be used to rate patients unless they display obvious symptoms of homicidal psychosis, but the more patient evaluations there are, the better they can be compared and rated for homicidal risk. Since treatment is paired with ratings, the work will eventually fulfill a dual purpose: better mental health and reduced risk of homicides.
One reason why American medicine costs almost twice as much as the rest of the world: drug companies
The New York Times online edition yesterday published an article about how Amgen (a prominent drug maker) was able to have a bit of pork inserted into the emergency “fiscal cliff” bill passed on January 2. Herewith, I print an excerpt of key points in this article. These facts, while an egregious example of high costs in medicine, are only one of many similar methods that private companies use that increase their profits and raise costs for consumers.
The provision, inserted into the bill as “Section 632”, allows Amgen two more years of unrestricted pricing (read: however much the market will bear) on its oral drugs used to treat kidney dialysis patients. Only Senate staffers saw this provision until a few hours before it was voted upon in the full Senate; thus, there was no way to fight its inclusion without derailing the entire bill, creating a disaster for the entire economy (as we were all told.) The two year exemption from controls will cost up to $500 million in Medicare benefits.
Amgen makes a number of new drugs that are critical for the treatment of patients with kidney failure, including Epogen, which fights the progressive anemia associated with loss of erythropoeitin (normally secreted by the kidneys), one of many debilitating side effects of kidney failure. Epogen is given by injection, and, as such, was included in an earlier cost-controlling measure passed by Congress which exempted oral medications. The use of Epogen dropped by 25% in one year when perverse incentives that encouraged its use were ended by this cost-controlling legislation.
On December 19, 2012, Amgen pleaded guilty to illegally marketing Aranesp (another anti-anemia medication) and agreed to pay $762 million. The Justice Department stated that this penalty set a record for size. Amgen had revenues of $15.6 billion in 2011. Since 2007, Amgen employees and its political action group have paid $5 million to political candidates and committees. Major recipients of Amgen contributions include Senator Max Baucus, Democratic Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, and Senator Orrin Hatch, Republican and ranking minority Finance Committee member. Republican Senator Mitch McConnell, the Senate Minority Leader, also got contributions, including a fund-raiser held this past December during the debate over the bill mentioned above. Amgen has also contributed to President Barack Obama in similar amounts. One of Senator Hatch’s top Finance Committee staff members, Dan Todd, was an Amgen employee until 2009 (he waited until 2011 to join Mr Hatch, but then worked directly on kidney dialysis legislative issues, which concern Amgen deeply).
The final “fiscal cliff” bill, which included provisions that prevented a 25% decrease in Medicare reimbursements to doctors on the first of the year, also called for a $4.9 billion dollar decrease in Medicare payments for dialysis over a period of ten years. Nonetheless, hundreds of millions more could have been cut from Medicare payments without the provision exempting oral dialysis medications for another two years.
We pay about 40 to 60% more for our medical care than do people in other countries with longer life expectancy than the US, countries such as Japan, Germany, Canada, and Great Britain. Most countries have “nationalized” control of their medical care systems, and people in those countries pay a basic tax which functions like an insurance premium, financing the system. These are known as “single payer” systems. In our country, each person is responsible for paying for his or her own medical expenses, and the government exerts little control over costs. Private companies such as drug makers control costs and charge whatever the market will bear.
The basic reason behind the high cost of medicine in this country is the fact that private companies exert control over government policy in a way that supports their profit margins and their control over markets. This is a result of our system of “democratic” government, in which those who wish to win elections and obtain government positions must pay vast sums of money to support their campaigns. Only those who are very wealthy or who can organize groups of private companies into financial support networks are able to present themselves to the public as viable candidates for office. Money alone is not enough to win office, but even those who are highly charismatic and who have highly popular campaign platforms still need large amounts of money, which they must raise privately.
Our so-called “democratic” system is completely controlled by private companies who pay for the campaigns of our elected officials. The publicity needed to be elected costs so much money that the candidates are forced to sell themselves to private companies, who have obligingly created systems of financing that conceal the true source of the money from the voters. Only when this unacknowledged system of money control is ended will democracy serve the interests of the majority of the people, rather than the interests of private companies.
Food crisis in the next couple of years
WORLD FOOD CRISIS
Posted on Dec 26 by John Mason:
According to the Food and Agriculture Organisation in Rome, global wheat production is expected to fall 5.2% in 2012 and yields from many other crops grown to feed animals could be 10% down on last year.
“Populations are growing but production is not keeping up with consumption. Prices for wheat have already risen 25% in 2012, maize 13% and dairy prices rose 7% just last month. Food reserves, held to provide a buffer against rising prices, are at a critical low level. It means that food supplies are tight across the board and there is very little room for unexpected events,” said Abdolreza Abbassian, a senior economist with the FAO. (source: Guardian, October 2012)
(Courtesy of Skeptical Science blog.)
My opinion:
If production continues to fall, within the next two years or so there will very likely be a world-wide food crisis, with some people in the worst areas starving. The price of food will rise astronomically if production falls next year and the year after that at the same rate that it fell this year.
There is a strong probability of this food disaster unless food production can be returned to, at least, last year’s levels. To account for population growth, production needs to increase every year, although population statistics have begun to level off in the last few decades. Nonetheless, we have seven billion people now and we are likely to have ten billion altogether by the time we top off (assuming that the above described crisis DOESN”T happen.)
Clearly, something has to give. Personally, I will resort to the retention of some basic food items in larger amounts. Say, twenty-five pounds of beans and the same of rice. And some corn meal.
