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I’m going to purposely make some drastic simplifications – but in the simplification, we may actually be able to view "the truth".  In order to understand "cost" we have to understand what we mean by "productivity".

A workable definition of "PRODUCTIVITY" is a measure of how efficient you are at converting people’s "time" into "goods and services".  Outside of raw materials, all we really have is "time".  G-d gives us this gift one minute at a time and once it passes, it’s gone….it is a perishable asset – if you don’t use it … you loose it.

When organizations, industries or even countries become less productive, they require more of people’s time to produce the same goods and services as their competitors require.

When productivity falls, it means either that people who produce the goods or services get paid less OR the price for those goods and services increases.

If you are a monopoly or near-monopoly, usually the best course of action is to raise prices.

The cost of any good or service is determined by many things, primarily it is driven by the cost of raw materials (including energy) and the cost of labor….the cost of people’s "time".  The price of a good or service is determined by supply and demand…. and without getting into a seminar on economics, since medical care requires negligible raw materials, the only reason for costs to increase beyond the rate of inflation is that more and more of "people’s time" is being used to deliver the care…. we’re becoming less productive .

It’s that simple.

Before anyone starts accusing me of saying that doctors and nurses are not working hard…I am not saying that…I’m looking at the entire system… the providers, the insurance companies, the pharmaceutical companies, the medical device manufacturers – everyone… all together are requiring more and more "time" to produce the same "product".  Productivity goes down, costs go up.

What makes productivity go down?  Ask anyone in the healthcare industry and you’ll learn something.  When a doctor who has invested 20 years of his/her life to advanced education has to spend 15 minutes talking to a person with a high school education trying to get insurance to approve a medication – that is inefficiency….particularly when that high school educated worker is just entering data into a computer and allowing the computer to record the fact that questions X,Y or Z were asked of the doctor before approval was given….that is inefficiency.

When a doctor can’t use his/her "judgment" for fear of a law suit…and orders unnecessary tests or refers the patient to this or that "specialist" because he/she doesn’t have the time to take a good patient history – this is inefficiency …. its a waste of time .

When lawyers get involved in frivolous law suits and waste the time of doctors, medical device manufacturers, hospitals and courts…and even other lawyers…its a waste of time .

Time is consumed but nothing is produced.

Yes, the lawyers, the clerks, the administrators, the form submitters, the high school graduate who answers the phone call from the physician….they all get paid – but to the extent that their efforts do not result in more patients being served better – they are adding to the cost but not to the benefit side of the equation and "productivity" goes down.

The only way to bring costs down is to allow innovative organizations the ability compete and be competitive – this means "to be productive"…to more efficiently turn "time" into "product and services".

A few suggestions:

1. Allow competition nationally to health insurance – why on earth does "insurance" need to be "regional"??
2. Create a panel of doctors who review malpractice suits – if a panel of doctors view the actions of a doctor as within acceptable levels of medical judgment – within the bounds of medical ‘best practices’…then the doctor becomes protected from malpractice litigation.  Society must make it clear that medicine is NOT the same as auto mechanics – that a "bad outcome" does not mean that the doctor was at fault.  If the litigant wants to pursue litigation after being turned down by this panel, they are liable for expenses if the jury finds that the suit had no merit.
3. Make the medical boards "liable" for allowing physicians who have a history of sloppy practice to maintain their licensing.  The medical boards have to have the fortitude to make the painful decisions when malpractice is really what is going on.
4. Make insurance companies "liable" for malpractice when they "practice medicine" by forcing the doctor to make decisions based on cost – not efficacy.
5. Patients should be motivated to use the less costly drugs because it saves THEM money – allow the patient in consultation with his/her physician to do the cost-benefit analysis: the role of the insurance company is to pay the claim.
6. Return medical insurance back to its role as "insurance"…the concept of paying money to pool your risk and part of your assets into a larger "risk pool" so that if you have an insurable event – you appear to be very wealthy for one thing only…to pay your medical bills .  Medical insurance is not a "right" its an asset that people buy to protect themselves and their family.

We need to recognize that the problem is not "that healthcare costs are increasing"…

….the problem is that we are wasting people’s time.

America needs to wake up to the fact that wasting people’s time gets "expensive".

While people may have lots of views on the advisability of establishing some kind of Government-supplied, taxpayer funded universal health insurance – the debate itself leaves a lot to be desired.  Most of the mis-information and confusion comes from the lack of understanding of what "insurance" is.

In short, health insurance is a "pooled asset" that is used to pay for things in one very narrow case only – when you are sick.  To understand this sentence, let’s take an example.

If you had several billion dollars, would you need medical insurance?  Probably not…. you could pay for any care you needed "out of pocket"… your finances wouldn’t show even a blip under almost any circumstance – no matter how much care you needed.  This condition is sometimes referred to as "self insured".

The (sad) fact is that most of us don’t have billions of dollars – so we "pool" our assets as well as our risk into a bigger group so that statistically, in the off chance that we need to spend lots of money to restore our health we can appear to be worth billions in only this one aspect of our life.  The "pool" is a pool of assets – (our money) and a pool of our risk (the chance that some of us will get sick) so that we can be eligible to get service "in the off chance event" of our illness.

This is the way all "insurances" work – people pool their money so that they are eligible to "look rich" in in a single type of circumstance.  For example, "homeowner’s insurance" allows us to "look rich" in the single event of where our home is destroyed – we can rebuild it.  How many of us could rebuild our home in the off chance that it burned down – with insurance we can.

There are many areas where government asks us to "pool our assets" by taxing us.  The most obvious area is in defense – where we "pool our assets" to fund an army to defend our country…the primary and most ancient obligation of government.

Not many would argue that pooling our assets for defense doesn’t make sense…so how is health insurance different from pooling our assets for defense?

The answer:  the fact that you are defended from foreign attack does not diminish me in any way.  Even if you don’t pay into the "defense pool"…I don’t have to pay "extra" for you to be defended.  The fact that you are defended is essentially a free by-product

Pooled health insurance only makes sense if everyone is contributing the same for the same level of insurance.  Otherwise I am diminished by the fact that you are in my pool  and you didn’t pay anything and are getting the same benefit that I’m getting.

Being able to get health care is quite valuable – and it costs lots of money.  There may be ways of making the care cheaper…but giving it away to those who can’t afford it dimishes me (at a minimum, by taking more of my taxes and worse by potentially limiting my access to care) – and this is a cost that I get absolutely no benefit from.

If you claim that it is my "responsibility" as a fellow human being to care for the less fortunate – this argument I can understand and in fact is a the only valid argument.  But then it is quite a major move to force me to accept a responsibility that I didn’t have before, especially when taking this responsibility puts my family at risk either by excessive tax burdens or by reduced access to health care.  This is probably where all the "backlash" to the idea of universal coverage comes from – it threatens me, it threatens my family.

But in the end, if each of us as individuals accept it upon ourselves to help our fellow human being – it is definately a courageous and laudable act…but we should call it by what it is and not confuse matters.  This is not "insurance" … it goes by another name:  "charity".

Americans do relish their marketing buzz words…we search for those short, pithy phrases that embody our ethos – define “who we are”. In no other debate do we seem to find two camps neatly defined by their simple buzzword monikers: Pro-choice and Pro-life.

Both “life” and “choice” are good things… things that we all should be promoting. The problem of course is that if you view that “life begins at conception” then abortion is no longer a choice any more than we have a choice whether or not to shoot our neighbour.

In order to bridge this divide, we have to examine each of the “positions” at their extreme limits to see if they still make sense. On the pro-choice position, does a pregnant woman really have an inalienable “right” to terminate a pregnancy 1 hour before delivery?… I think the vast majority would claim – “no”…there is some point prior to the “last hour” where the unborn child attained a civil right to not be killed.

Before we get too deep into this discussion, we have to state that nothing I say here has anything to do with the situation where the mother’s life is at risk. It is well established in all codes of ethics that the mother’s life is to take precedence at all times – even if it means terminating the pregnancy.

The extreme limit of the “pro-life” position is at the other end of the pregnancy – at conception. On the day after conception, does society have the right to remove the mother’s “choice” as to how to proceed with her pregnancy? If this is so, society’s “right” has to be grounded not in a religious viewpoint but in a universalist viewpoint.

The concept that “life begins at conception”, while a tenet of Christianity that “abortion” is “murder”…this concept is not shared by Judaism. The traditional Judaic viewpoint is that the purposeful loss of a fetus is not “murder” but is a case of “damages”. When a pregnant woman who is attacked and looses her fetus – it is not a case of murder – she is awarded “damages”.

If the concept that “abortion is murder” is not a universalist viewpoint…then it is a religious tenet and therefore on the day after conception – we would have to impose a religious viewpoint on any pregnant woman – clearly a repugnant concept for a secular society.

So we are now faced with a fact that we have always known – that pregnancy is a “process”…it begins at conception and ends roughly 9 months later at birth. The “pro-choice” viewpoint cannot stand the “morality” test at point right before birth and the “pro-life” viewpoint cannot stand the “morality” test on the day after conception because we, as a secular society, do not impose religious viewpoints on our citizens.

We are left with the conclusion that the pro-life viewpoint cannot be established in secular society at the beginning of a pregnancy and the pure pro-choice viewpoint cannot be established at the end of a pregnancy.

So we are left with a “truth” that we can no longer ignore – that the resolution of the conundrum is that the point in the “process of pregnancy” where society’s “right” to protect a fetus overrides the mother’s “right” to “choice”…that this point lies somewhere between conception and birth.

Since neither the pro-life or pro-choice viewpoints can be acceptable, it is up to some body; either the judiciary or the legislators to decide at what point during a pregnancy should a mother’s rights be subjugated to the obligations of society to protect the life of one of it’s members.

Most likely such a deliberation would choose as this “dividing line” a logical point during the process where the fetus could reliably live outside the womb of the mother. The impact on the expectant mother is that she would have to make a decision sometime during the first 4-6 months of her pregnancy – not a too terribly onerous restriction.

To do otherwise leaves us in a society which is untenable from many points of view.  In a pure pro-choice world, infanticide is allowed and we as a society stoop to the lowest levels of barbarism.  In a pure pro-life world, we decend into a society of forced religious perspectives.

While I view the sacredness of life as an imperative and I agree with the pro-life agenda – I cannot in good conscience adopt their methods.  The pro-life forces in America cannot be allowed to resort to inquisition-like techniques of forcing their religious perspective on to the general population which may not share their viewpoint.  The pro-life forces have to go through the difficult, generations-long process of teaching our the young people of our nation the value and sacredness of life and the responsibility of parenthood.

In the last part of my message to you,  [click here] I congratulated you on an excellent campaign and expressed many of my concerns and disappointments in what has transpired.   I expressed mostly a disappointment in the "press"…the profession of journalism but mostly I was disappointed with the 62 million Americans who voted for Obama – those who heard his wonderful words while blindly ignoring the choices he made in his past.

Yes, I’m disappointed with you – the Obama supporter, not because you wanted "change"…but because you seemed totally unconcerned with the character of the person who you were entrusting to deliver that "change".

One of my readers (and cousin of mine…an ardent Obama supporter) pointed out that Obama is just as inexperienced as Lincoln was when he was elected president and he was careful to point out that there was no "therefore" implied by his comment.  While I can agree with him that lack of experience is no prescription for success as President, I must observe that lack of experience coupled with breathtaking deficits of moral judgement do bode ill for success as President.  While President Lincoln was definately inexperienced when he became President, there is every evidence that he had a spotless character.

It is my most fervent prayer that Obama’s choices in his past have no bearing on how he will act in the future and if indeed there is a "different Obama" that somehow I was unable to see, I will be honored and happy to acknowledge his good deeds in the future once I see how Obama chooses to act as President of the United States.

Since this is a letter to those who voted for Obama, I’d like to point out a few things that seem obvious.  First off, while the bulk of you were voting "against Bush" – you must also realize that the vast bulk of those who voted for McCain were in fact voting "against Obama".  I say this because Bush won’t be running in 2012 (he wasn’t in ‘08…but not in a lot of people’s minds) ….but Obama most likely will be running – he will have to increase his appeal well beyond today’s level to win.

While Obama ran on the "get out of Iraq" platform, he has inherited a "victory in Iraq" and he will need to insure that it stays that way – while the war in Iraq may have been unpopular, America paid for it in blood and treasure and we Americans would absolutely hate to see that investment botched.    Obama ran energized by a lot of people who lived through the 60’s Vietnam-war protest era. While that may have been a great tactical move to get himself elected, he and his supporters need to notice a key difference between then and now:  in the Vietnam-war protest era you had throngs of veterans coming back home to energize the anti-war movement (John Kerry amongst them) – today you have the vast bulk of veterans supporting our efforts in Iraq – they know that it’s in America’s interest…it’s in the interest of the civilized world  that Iraq be left as a democracy – tolerant of the "the other"…whether they be Shite, Sunni, Kurd, Jew or Christian.  Our mission there is critical if we are to avoid a wider global war that would, more than likely, kill millions [see here] .

Obama will get an education over the next 4 years, an education paid for by our children’s blood and our nation’s treasure – it is my sincere hope that he is a very, very quick study.  He will soon understand that "peace" is not the absence of "war" – that peace is brought about by people respecting each other’s existence and each other’s rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

America will come to learn that "war" is what happens when all other avenues for arriving at "peace" have been blocked.  America will ultimately come to learn that the ultimate and unresolvable "block" to peace is when a "people" engages in or supports terrorism.  Terrorism is the ultimate and final statement that the terror victims – not only the ones killed – but the entire people that are being terrorized do not have the right "to exist".

George Bernard Shaw observed that " We learn from history that we learn nothing from history" – we are seeing this observation vindicated yet again.   What Obama will ultimately learn and America will have to re-learn is that when dealing with megalomaniacs – with people who want to "take over the world" and create a worldwide "order" – that it is much, much, much cheaper in blood and treasure to stop these people early rather than later.  As much as President Bush does not seem to have a firm grasp of the English language – he spoke the truth clearly when he said "..as if some ingenious argument would persuade them that they had been wrong all along…we’ve heard this foolishness long ago…the false comfort of appeasement which has been repeatedly discredited by history" .

I was brought up, and I’ve tried to bring my kids up with the idea that it is not bad to make a mistake – but… to make the same mistake twice is really, really bad.  It would be truly a sad, sad commentary if my children or grandchildren have to look back on my generation and ask "why didn’t you study history?"… why did you make the same mistake again?  World War 1 killed 1.2% of the world’s population.  World War 2 killed 2.8% of the world’s population.  To understand the value of avoiding a World War 3 – we have to understand that 2-3% of the world’s population today represents almost 1/5th of a billion souls.

If, and I really mean "if", the war on terror – bringing Iraq into the 20th century…allowing it to create a stable and tolerant society… if the "war on terror" succeeds – and that victory motivates other peoples to demand the same freedom from tyranny that the Iraqis have created – then we will most definitely will have avoided making the same mistake twice.  Yes, we will have sacrificed much blood and treasure – but nothing like the sacrifice that would be extracted if we fail now.

So, my dear Obama supporter – I really, really, really want Obama to succeed as President – to succeed at leaving the world a better place than when he took office.  Unfortunately, my perspective now is that President Obama is appearing to not be an Abraham Lincoln, but a Neville Chamberlain.  All his eloquent words, all his lofty rhetoric and visions of "change" will simply not be achieved if the man doesn’t have the moral spine required.

I hate to be so gloomy…so pedestrian…so practical….but as it looks now, I just hope that in 2010 we can make him think twice before he puts his hands into our children’s wallets.

– Robert Light

By Robert Light

About this time during any Israeli attempt to deal with the barbarians which surround her, with the punctual precision of the precession of the earth about the sun bringing spring flowers, world leaders trot out the old tired indictment that Israel is guilty of using “disproportionate force”.

At first, it seemed as if this time it was different. Israel has been hammered with rocket fire from it’s neighbors in Gaza – the very neighbors that were given entire towns, entire industries, entire farms in which to feed themselves – Israel’s neighbors in Gaza repaid their unconditional withdrawal with a reign of terror and over 5,000 rockets and mortars.

These rockets are not of the “precision-guided-type” that Israel uses – the Gazans use exclusively the “hope-the-rocket-lands-somewhere-where-there-might-be-Jews-to-hit-type”.

I must admit that when someone I know uses the phrase: “disproportionate use of force”, my first impulse is to say something to the effect: “That’s the stupidest comment I’ve ever heard”.

Lately, however, I’ve started to actually listen to those who complain that Israel is using “disproportionate force”. French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who holds the rotating presidency of the European Union, condemned Israel’s "disproportionate use of force”.  The U.N. Secretary General condemned the excessive use of force that might lead to civilian deaths. Navi Pillay, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights "strongly condemned Israel’s disproportionate use of force”.

Obviously, these people are not stupid. Behind the words renouncing “disproportionate force” is an entire world view that allows the speaker to say those words and yet not feel that they are speaking nonsense.

Words are indeed important – they are windows through which you can see the world through the speaker’s eyes. When a person uses such words as “disproportionate force”, on the face of it we can assume that he means that, in their view, Israel should use a smaller stick in their reaction to the incessant rocket and mortar fire coming from Gaza. In their calculation, those rockets and mortars fired indiscriminately into residential neighborhoods should be met with a softer response by Israel.

There are many, many professional legal evaluations of Israel’s actions over the many years and while there were uncountable accusations of “Israeli war crimes”, while not for the lack of trying each and every attempt has one thing in common – they have all failed.

So where do people who use the words “disproportionate response” come from? What is their world view that allows them to use those words and yet not feel that they are saying something “stupid”?

To understand this, we need to look at a situation where most would use the words “disproportionate response” and it would make perfect sense. The case I would like to present is one where a parent is disciplining their child or a teacher is reprimanding their student.

In the case where a parent is disciplining a child, a minor misdeed should invoke a gentle rebuke – a major misdeed, a more firm rebuke. When a parent invokes a “disproportionate response” we usually call it by what it is: child abuse. If a teacher used “disproportionate response” in disciplining a child, we would demand that the school fire the teacher.

It is my assertion that when people trot out the “disproportionate response” indictment against Israel, they are speaking principally like a therapist counseling a couple on how to heal their damaged relationship. They look at the relationship between the Arabs and Israelis as a dysfunctional relationship that needs to be “healed” in some way.

My criticism on this regard is not only of people such as the UN Secretary General or the French President, there are enormous numbers of very influential people in the Israeli political and intellectual communities who view the situation the same way – too many Israeli intellectuals feel that Israel needs to repair its relationship with the Arabs.

The problem looking at this as a “relationship problem” is twofold – first, there are few, if any, people in Gaza who see this as a “relationship problem” and secondly, there are many, many people in Gaza who simply want to annihilate the Jews.

In this “new-age” world, it seems as if we have lost our sense of propriety – we project solutions which may be appropriate for dealing with a difficult child or a conflict between spouses and use them at the level of international relations.

It was not long ago that when a country lobbed missiles onto a neighboring country – it was either “a regrettable mistake” or it was considered an act of war – there was no “in between”. The response to the act of war was usually a declaration of war. In those days of civilized behavior, the party launching the missile had better be ready to go to war – because they knew that they were initiating a war.

In the perverted world view of those who view this dispute as a relationship-gone-sour, the first missile attack should be interpreted as an expression of displeasure. After a few more missiles, it is an expression of anger. When hundreds or thousands of missiles and mortars are fired, it is an expression of extreme anger.

The realist in Israel is finally faced with the cold hard fact that his only choice is to stop trying to change the minds of those who lob missiles at their civilian populations. The realist must admit that their only choice is to change the demographics of the Gazan population and eliminate those who wish to have a relationship at gunpoint. The realist in Israel has to wake up to the fact that “peace” is not the absence of war but that although "war is hell", it is the completely moral, last-to-be-used tool for achieving “peace”.

If there are any Israelis left in the new-age, we-need-to-fix-our-relationship-with-the-Arabs-camp, they will have to face the fact that if a ceasefire is instituted before the Gazan demographics are such that only an insignificant, ignorable few of the Palestinians in Gaza advocate lifting an armed finger towards Israel – then Israel will continue to live with a gun pointed at it’s children.

The Israeli Defense Forces have stated their aim as “…force Hamas to stop its hostile activities against Israel and Israelis from Gaza , and to bring about a significant change in the situation in southern Israel.”

Is a “significant change” a reduction from 80 missiles per day to 40 missiles per day? How about only 20 missiles per day launched at Israeli population centers? Is a reduction to only 5 missiles per day “significant”?  How about only 1 missile every so often?

The criteria for a ceasefire should be simple: there are no longer individuals alive in Gaza who are willing to take up arms against Israel and a government is instituted in Gaza which has as its mission, to eliminate any who might, in the future, take up arms.

This is the criteria that the Allies used to define the end of World War II and this must also be the criteria for ending the war in Gaza whose elected government, Hamas, has decided to wage war on Israel.

The criteria for a ceasefire must be simple: total, unconditional, surrender.

The secular humanist’s have come out with a new slick ad campaign for the upcoming Christmas season – Why Believe in God?  Just be good for goodness’ sake?

Apparently, they feel lonely on Christmas and are trying to get some “good cheer” from their fellow secular humanists and other athiests during those cold, dark winter months.

But they ask a good question, and it deserves an answer.  Blaise Pascal (1623-1662) a brilliant French mathematician attempted to give a completely logical answer to the question in what as become known as ”Pascal’s Wager ” – it is a convincing argument that has withstood scrutiny from the most articulate and thoughtful opponents. Pascal approaches the question on the basis of “decision theory”…looking at the value of expected outcomes in light of uncertainty. He makes the observation that there are only two states of reality: either God exists or God does not exist, and there are only two states of behavior – you can live your life “as if” God existed or you could live your life “as if” God didn’t exist. Pascal’s Wager only makes the argument that it is better to live your life “as if” God existed – regardless of the unknowable reality of God’s existance.

I will not reproduce the depth of Pascal’s argument and I refer you to the very good wikipedia article …but Pascal concludes that the only choice a thinking person could make is to live his life “as if” God existed.

Of course there is the reality that history is dripping in the blood of horrible acts carried out “in the name of God” (the Inquisition, the Crusades, the Islamic conquest) … and we have the present day Islamist terrorists who flew planes into buildings and butcher innocents in pizza parlors and city busses “for the sake of heaven”…but these facts do not in any way counter Pascal’s argument.  These facts just show that religion, like any other belief (e.g. nationalism, racism) can be usurped as an excuse to do the most horrible acts.  In fact, I would posit that religion used in this way is just another form of idolatry (where you elevate your desires, your needs, your views to the status of a god).

What I find remarkable about the ad campaign is that it uses the line “for goodness’ sake”.

For goodness’ sake … does that make sense?  What is “goodness” that something should be done for the “sake” of it?  Is “goodness” a bank account…and if so, in who’s bank?  Is “goodness” an entity…and if so, how is this different than “God”?  I’m terribly confused by secular humanist’s message.

Is goodness just some collection of “happy feelings” that my deeds engender?  If so, why should I be concerned about creating those “happy feelings” – if there is no God, then shouldn’t I be more concerned about creating happy feelings for me and if as a side effect, I create happy feelings for others then great..an added bonus but not a reason for the act in the first place.  In fact, that $10 I gave to charity last week will create bad feelings today as I try to scrape enough together to pay my mortgage and provide food for my kids…. so when I give that $10, I have to do a calculation as to whether my current good feelings will outweigh my bad feelings on bill day?…  something is indeed wrong with this approach as it seems that my goal is to maximize my own “happy feelings”.

The “fact” of whether or not God exists is clearly something we can never know – nor should we ever know in the same way we “know” whether or not the sun is shining right now.  If we did “know” the existence of God in this way, it would strip us of the very humanity to which we are endowed – a humanity defined by the freedom to choose.

Choice exists only when you see that you could choose either option. As an example, if I offer you a choice between 50 one dollar bills or 5 ten dollar bills…you have a choice, you might need the smaller bills or you might need the ease of having fewer bills…but there is a choice to be made.  On the other hand, if I give you the choice between 50 one dollar bills and 10,000 fifty dollar bills, I would argue that there is no choice.  Hence if you knew whether there was a God to the same degree you knew whether the sun was shining today – you would also have no choice – unless (for some reason) you viewed infinite bliss as roughly equivalent to eternal damnation .

While the above makes a case for “Why believe in God?” from a perspective of ”self interest”, I can also make a case from a societal and sociological perspective.  Quite simply, belief in God is the surest antidote for idolatry and narcisism is the ultimate form of idolatry.   I don’t mean the ancient worship of stone statues, I mean the modern form of idolatry such as worship of ideologies such as liberalism, conservatism, political correctness and the worst form: the worship of self.  So ignoring such questions as who/what “goodness” is …  that for the sake of it I need to do good – the reality is that if I don’t want to be a narcisist – someone who does things simply because it makes “me” feel good, then I should be doing good because God expects me to do good regardless of how I feel.  When I believe in God, how I feel when I “do good” is purely a side effect – it’s not the reason.

Yes, the tag line “Why believe in God?” was probably viewed as a jab by the secular humanists to get people’s attention – but their unconscious coupling with the line “Just be good for goodness’ sake” results in not a “jab” but a great question – for how can you do “good” for some sake other than just to make yourself feel good?  How can you do good without it becoming a vehicle for the idolatry of self worship?  If you ultimately find yourself doing good - not because it makes you “feel good” but because you are trying to repair a blemish in the universe and all you want is to add to the “goodness” in the world and oh…by the way… yes, you may ”feel good” as a byproduct…then you are on your way to understanding what ”to connect to God” means - whether or not recognize it as “belief”.

When Moses asked God “what is your name?” – ie: how should You be known, how should You be described – God’s response was “I will be what I will be” – using the future tense.  God just “is” and it is our job to figure out a way to connect.  That is what “belief” is.

–Robert Light

Dear Obama supporter,

First off, I want to congratulate you on an excellently run campaign.  Your candidate spoke eloquently and remained focused.  Obama said many things, many of which I agreed wholeheartedly.  While I can’t possibly believe in his financial plan, I couldn’t believe in McCain’s either – America is in a mess as a result of unwarranted consumption and financial overreaching – we will get out of this mess by hard work, saving and investing in the future.  While I bristled at Bush’s advice to the American people after 9/11 of  “[I'm paraphrasing...] continue living life normally, don’t stop shopping”… I was pleased to hear both McCain’s and Obama’s message for people to come and “serve their country”.

Barack Obama is now “President-elect Obama” and while I did not vote for the man, I respect the fact that 62 million American’s did.  I will support him when I agree with him, use my “pen” to try to move the discussion in ways that I can ultimately support – but I will oppose him when I disagree with him.  What I will never do is “ridicule him” – he will be the President of the United States and he deserves all our respect.  You will never hear the kind of poisonous, hateful words like we’ve heard over the past 8 years “Bush Lied…. Buck Fush…”  that language demeans both a human being as well as the Presidency and ultimately it demeans the United States of American.  That means it demeans “all of us”.

While I can congratulate Obama and his supporters on a well run campaign… I cannot, in good honesty, congratulate America on a good election.  My main criticism is directed at one of the fundamental institutions of American life – the press.  It is with great sadness that I make the following accusation:  It was this election where the press in this country exposed themselves as blatantly partisan.  Journalism used to be a craft and a skill where the practitioner worked exceptionally hard to do “reporting” – to research the facts, get them right, get them straight and report them dispassionately.   This year, the New York Times looked more like Pravda or Izvestia – some news organizations like the Los Angeles Times and the San Fransisco Chronicle sat on news or actively buried news that would hurt “their candidate”.

There is obviously both bad news and good news in this.  The bad news is that the profession of Journalism, which once was held in high esteem, has been tarnished greatly.  The credibility of the “media” to report “the facts” is gone – one of the pillars of America’s trust – which has shown cracks in the past, has now totally collapsed.  The independent and non-partisan press was the main pillar which provided important cohesion to the American people – it allowed us to see the same thing – even for a brief moment.  In the past, it was easy to tell the difference between the editorial page and the news section – today it is not so.  We have a word in english for “editorials masquerading as news”…the word is “propaganda”…and that is not what America is used to.   This has changed….the good news is that most of America has awakened to the fact that their “press”, the pillar of their shared world view, has collapsed into dishing out propaganda – the mask is off…and this is a good thing.   Commercial interests have also recognized this fact which is why Fox has prospered and grown while MSNBC and ABC have tanked.  The fact that Tom Brokaw and Charlie Rose could sit around the table (on TV)… a few days before the election and say things like “we really don’t know what Obama’s world view is…his universe of ideas that form his world view” – this is embarrassing…these people are paid millions to “find out” those things…to ask the questions and report the answers.

The good news is that the Internet has provided an avenue for people to get the “news” when they want “news” and get opinion when they want opinion – by enlarge, they can continue (if they choose) to spend their hard earned money on their daily newspaper for those valuable coupons and the newsprint’s unsurpassed usefulness for wrapping fish and lining the hamster cage.  Yes, the “news” you get on the internet is no more reliable than the “news” you get in the paper or on a lot of cable channels – but there is easy search techniques and you can easily distill the “facts” from what you read as “news”.   The danger of course is that people won’t dig deeply for the facts.  This is not an accusation I level only at the less educated people… I have many friends and family with advanced degrees, well read, well educated who seem to work very hard at finding so-called “news articles” which fit their world view instead of digging to find the “facts” and letting the “facts” inform and form their world view.

A good example of digging deeply is the flurry that came up over Obama’s birth certificate and by extension whether or not Obama was qualified constitutionally to even hold the office of President.  One could have read the various email threads, one could have read the various partisan “blogs” – but very quickly after Obama actually provided the physical certificate to the public – there were blogs which showed high resolution pictures of the actual document with the 3D seal and signatures.  The value of a “free press” is that ultimately the truth will come out. (this is where the so-called “fairness doctrine” is misguided and dangerous – while being “fair and balanced” is a laudable goal – it is not the reason d’etre for a “free press” to exist …but that is off subject…we’ll get into that some other day).

Finally, while I can (and have) criticized Obama for his long associations with people like Ayers, Khalidi, Rev. Wright and Rezko and while I have said that I might be able to support Obama (even with his past) after a few decades of defining himself in public life apart from these shady elements of his “erroneous youth”…it appears I won’t get that chance – he is our President-elect and I won’t have the ability to see decades of good work, decades of service to our country… I won’t have decades of written and spoken words to be able to inform my opinion of him.

My criticism of the Americans who voted for Obama is that they knew all of Obama’s baggage – but were sold on his words. His deeds meant nothing.  While it is wonderful that an American of African descent has risen to the Presidency of the United States, I cannot in good honesty say that Martin Luther King Jr’s dream “…that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” … has been fulfilled.  Maybe it is just my upbringing – I was taught that deeds are more important than words – that your character is determined by what you “choose to do” and not solely by what you “choose to say”. 

The facts still are that Obama chose to associate with the likes of Ayers and Khalidi – that somewhere in his character, he found it – in himself – to accept dinner invitations to Khalidi’s family home.  Yassar Arafat was a terrorist, Bill Ayers was a terrorist.  That made Khalidi a supporter of a terrorist (Arafat), someone who raised funds for a terrorist.  During his period when he befriended Khalidi, Obama would most likely have read in his copy of the Chicago Tribute about the latest carnage inflicted by Arafat’s PLO butchers blowing up pizza parlors and city busses…and then maybe later that day, or later that week or month…. Obama seemed to think it was ok to accept dinner invitations from Khalidi who worked for Arafat….just what was it about Obama’s character that made it possible for him to do that?  Just what was it in Obama’s character that made him think it was “ok” to go to a farewell dinner for Khalidi and laud the man and his work?

Ok…so that makes Obama someone who would accept dinner invitations of someone who supported Arafat…I can accept that.

What I can’t accept, what is painful to admit is that 62 million Americans voted for a man who had this character flaw – someone who could find in his set of morals the justification and motivation to sit at that dinner table, someone who could toast and laud such a person as Khalidi.  The fact that 62 million Americans who, on 9/11/2001, got a first class message about the evils of terror – 7 years later, those Americans voted for a man who has that breathtaking character flaw.   My view is that those 62 million Americas have just made it more likely that we will get the “9/11 message” redelivered…. and that makes me ill.

So we now have a President-elect Obama.  I will be wonderfully pleased if his deeds in the future match his words and lofty visions that he spoke on the campaign trail.  I will be pleased to see whether his deeds enhance our security, enhance our liberty and enhance our welfare.  I will be the first to laud (or criticize) him for his actual deeds.

As President, he will simply not have the opportunity to vote “present” – we will see his deeds.

I will be watching.  I hope that America will be watching too.

- Robert Light

Suppose that every day, ten men go out for beer, and the bill for all ten comes to $100.

If they paid their bill the way we pay our taxes, it would go something like this:

The first four men (the poorest) would pay nothing.
The fifth would pay $1.
The sixth would pay $3.
The seventh would pay $7.
The eighth would pay $12.
The ninth would pay $18.
The tenth man (the richest) would pay $59.

So, that’s what they decided to do. The ten men drank in the bar every
day and seemed quite happy with the arrangement, until one day, the
owner threw them a curve.

‘Since you are all such good customers, he said, I’m going to reduce
the cost of your daily beer by $20.

Drinks for the ten now cost just $80. The group still wanted to pay
their bill the way we pay our taxes so the first four men were
unaffected. They would still drink for free.

But what about the other six men – the paying customers? How could
they divide the $20 windfall so that everyone would get his ‘fair share?’

They realized that $20 divided by six is $3.33. But if they subtracted
that from everybody’s share, then the fifth man and the sixth man
would each end up being paid to drink his beer. So, the bar owner suggested
that it would be fair to reduce each man’s bill by roughly the same
amount, and he proceeded to work out the amounts each should pay.!

And so:

The fifth man, like the first four, now paid nothing (100% savings).
The sixth now paid $2 instead of $3 (33%savings).
The seventh now pay $5 instead of $7 (28%savings).
The eighth now paid $9 instead of $12 (25% savings).
The ninth now paid $14 instead of $18 (22% savings).
The tenth now paid $49 instead of $59 (16% savings).

Each of the six was better off than before. And the first four
continued to drink for free. But once outside the restaurant, the men began to
compare their savings.

‘I only got a dollar out of the $20, ‘declared the sixth man. He
pointed to the tenth man, ‘but he got $10!’

‘Yeah, that’s right,’ exclaimed the fifth man. ‘I only saved a dollar, too.
It’s unfair that he got ten times more than I!’

‘That’s true!!’ shouted the seventh man. ‘Why should he get $10 back
when I got only two? The wealthy get all the breaks!’

‘Wait a minute,’ yelled the first four men in unison. ‘We didn’t get
anything at all. The system exploits the poor!’

The nine men surrounded the tenth and beat him up. The next night the
tenth man didn’t show up for drinks, so the nine sat down and had
beers without him. But when it came time to pay the bill, they discovered
something important. They didn’t have enough money between all of them
for even half of the bill!

And that, boys and girls, journalists and college professors, is how
our tax system works. The people who pay the highest taxes get the most
benefit from a tax reduction. Tax them too much, attack them for being
wealthy, and they just may not show up anymore. In fact, they might
start drinking overseas where the atmosphere is somewhat friendlier.

For those who understand, no explanation is needed.
For those who do not understand, no explanation is possible.

—————–
Credit for this explanation goes to David R. Kamerschen, Ph.D.,
Professor of Economics, University of Georgia

When you strip away all the rhetoric that has flown by this election season, the basic question facing voters when looking at the Democrats agenda vs. the Republican’s agenda with respect to taxation is simply this: “Who should distribute your money to others: Joe the Plumber or Bill the Bureaucrat?”

Joe the Plumber clearly has a few advantages and so does Bill the Bureaucrat. Joe the Plumber will distribute his money in the form of wages and purchasing – he will choose the most productive employees and will choose to purchase products from people who give him the most value for his dollar. Joe is, by definition, very discerning because after all, it is his money and he wants to get the greatest value he can for it.

Bill the Bureaucrat has some advantages too – he can give the money to whomever the Congress says he can give it to – he can give the money as tax breaks, he can give the money as wages for doing public works projects. Bill the Bureaucrat is free to give the money based on criteria that may have nothing to do with finances or value. In cases of emergencies, he can give the money to people just because those people are destitute and in need of support (e.g. Katrina relief).

Clearly, there is a place for both kinds of “giving” – but we have to be honest about the costs and the benefits of each kind of giving. Bill the Bureaucrat often gets involved in transferring “charity” to those less fortunate. In times of disaster, this is clearly a good thing, but as we saw with the “welfare society” that developed in the 60’s, 70’s, and 80’s – this charity can become a “drug” that actually diminishes the humanity of large portions of our society.

Joe the Plumber provides money as employment – the most uplifting, ennobling and enabling of all ways you might choose to support someone. The employer (or purchaser) had money that he could spare but needed work done or a product purchased and the employee had time that would otherwise be wasted or the seller had a product that he wanted to sell. Employment and commerce is the most amazing transaction – the transaction was not a zero-sum game, both parties are richer after the transaction than before it.

But before we entrust our charitable giving to Bill the Bureaucrat, we need to understand one thing – that Bill the Bureaucrat consumes a good portion of all the money we give to him – whereas Joe the Plumber may spend $100 hiring a laborer, the $100 we give to Bill the Bureaucrat may only result in $40 being given to a needy person. In general, our charitable dollars are better spent with private charities who rely primarily on volunteers to distribute our money.

As alluded to earlier, we have to also be cognizant of the terrible costs of government sponsored charity as Bill the Bureaucrat would want to do – because government mandated charity is most corrosive to society in general. The people who are forced to give the money (via taxes) resents the people that are helped by the government. The people who are helped by the government can become dependent financially on the government and loose their ability to make it on their own.

As the 12^th century Jewish philosopher, Moses Maimonides said; employment is the highest form of charity – it lifts up the person physically as well as spiritually.

Finally, in today’s global financial marketplace we need to be conscious of yet another element in our decision as to whether or not to trust Joe the Plumber or Bill the Bureaucrat and that is simply that if we increase taxes, money will flow to areas of the globe where the work can be done with fewer taxes. Admittedly, Joe the Plumber’s job is not likely to be shipped overseas – plumbing is inherently a “local operation”… but the people Joe works for are auto manufacturers, mill workers and other manufacturers – increased taxes here at home, will by definition mean that more of Joe’s customer’s jobs are going to be shipped overseas where the government takes less of a bite out of every dollar.

Barack Obama and Joe Biden are quite clear on their motivations for their tax policy – they don’t feel that the current tax burden is “fair”. Barack Obama even admitted that he doesn’t care that history has shown that with his tax policy, government revenues actually go down (and hence there is less money the government can spend for any purpose) – Obama is willing to lower the government’s revenue (by increasing taxes) just to make it “fair”.

It seems to me that “fair” is when the government has more money to spend so that it can help disaster victims in times like Hurricane Katrina or the aftermath of 9/11 or for job retraining. It is more “fair” if there is full employment and jobs are not shipped overseas where taxes are lower.

It seems to me that it is more “fair” to let Joe the Plumber decide who to pay money to – those that work hard and produce most efficiently. Remember, when Joe the Plumber distributes money – things get produced, pipes get installed – when Bill the Bureaucrat distributes money, he consumes a good chunk of it himself (in the bureaucracy) and give the remainder to others.

Whereas there is always a role for Bill the Bureaucrat, I think I’d rather rely on mainly on Joe the Plumber.

– Robert Light

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