Awards

We Americans love awards and award programs. We want to celebrate success in competition. We want to recognize and honor excellence. We have awards for almost everything. We have awards for entertainment such as the Emmys, the Oscars, the Golden Globe awards, the Grammys, the Country and Western Music awards and the daytime Emmys. For sports we not only have our championship games in football, baseball, hockey and basketball, but we have awards like Rookie of the Year, Most Valuable Player and the many Hall of Fame honors.

Americans, make up less than 5% of the world population, but earn many times their share of international awards as well. We earn the majority of Nobel Prizes and Pulitzer prizes in many categories like physics, economics, literature, peace and medicine.

Our prizewinners are then entitled to add the award to their name much like aristocratic titles of old and those still granted today in England. The person is introduced as Pulitzer Prize winner or Nobel Prize winner or Hall of Fame inductee or Oscar winner. The title gives the holder greater authority and usually a bigger future pay check in their field.

But these prizes are not without much controversy and disagreement.

In the field of sports awards, questions have arisen as to whether an athlete’s moral character should be a factor in the selection process. There are several recent examples. A man considered the best baseball player ever because he hit the most home runs in a single season and the most in a career while also winning many Golden Glove awards for fielding excellence and several season MVP awards and for making many All Star game appearances, had been accused of using performance enhancing drugs. Should he be eligible for the Baseball Hall of Fame? What about another who denied similar charges for years and finally admitted that he had lied repeatedly and had actually used the forbidden fruit? Should he ever be eligible since he too was a great player and a team leader? Then there was the man with the most base hits who lost his career for betting on baseball. Can he ever be forgiven and awarded for his performance?

In the entertainment industry, awards are even more in question. How does a movie get nominated for best picture but the director doesn’t get a mention? How do some movies or actors win when few believe that they were the best? Remember when “Chicago” won best picture? Remember when Halle Barry won Best Actress for that dreadful movie? And why do Meryl Streep and Helen Mirren seem to win so often just because they are by far the best two actresses in the world? Can’t we set quotas on how often one could be nominated or win this treasured award? Why doesn’t Maggie Smith win more awards? And why didn’t the Mentalist and Simon Baker get awards when their’s was one of the best American T.V. shows for many years?

The latest claim against the entertainment awards is that they do not go enough to people of different ethnic and racial populations. The feeling is that awards should be more proportional.

This disproportionality has also affected international awards like the Nobel and Pulitzer. Members of one religious/ethnic group which represents less than .2% of the world population has won more than half the awards since the end of World War II, while a religious group’s membership, accounting for almost a quarter of the world’s population, has won only three or four and one of those was a peace prize that went to a terrorist.

Time magazine also has an annual award - Person of the Year. The recent nominees have included some of the least likely people like a genocidal dictator, an alleged narcissistic traitor, and a woman who was able to avoid paying inheritance taxes on her wife’s multi-million dollar estate.

President Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize when he was first elected. Since then he has done everything possible to earn it retroactively. He got us out of Iraq and Afghanistan and kept us out of Libya, Egypt, Iran, Syria, and Ukraine. He has realized that regional countries and their organizations should deal with conflicts in their area. We and our troops will no longer be the 911 of the world. His next step should be to close many of our 700+ foreign military bases. But he would have done all this even without the Nobel prize.

We already have many ways of voting for our favorites.

In sports, we have the statistics which give an objective evaluation of the player’s greatness. In baseball we have batting averages and stats on the number of home runs hit, the number of runs batted in, the number of bases stolen, etc. We know who the best players are in every area. We also have objective statistics in football, basketball, hockey, etc. Our best athletes are known, clearly identified by accomplishments and are paid accordingly. We have athletes who make as much as $20 million a year, surely that is a reward and an award.

In other areas of entertainment we have other solid criteria and rewards to honor the best. The best actors get the best parts, generate some of the best box office receipts and most importantly are paid generously for their accomplishments.

In the case of awards for economics, literature, science and politics as we see in the Pulitzer and the Nobel prizes as well as dozens of lesser known ones, they are also very subjective while there are objective criteria that are recognized for these high achievers.

In economics there are clear winners who provide theories that greatly affect economic analysis. They are awarded high level positions in academia and the business sector that profit from the ideas and are awarded generous salaries. How many award winners in economics warned us about the crash of 2008? How many have come out with a simple and fair federal tax code?

One Nobel Prize winning economist supported the mistaken idea that the Occupy Wall Street people came up with that our problems are caused not by Wall Street but by the top 1%, making 99% of us innocent and helpless underdogs. So every household earning $400,000 or more is the enemy. This includes all successful actors, professional athletes, musicians, comedians, writers, educators, surgeons and economists. He didn’t realize that he himself was in the group. Or maybe he did.

(We are now being told by socialist Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders that the fault really lies with our top .0002%, our 536 billionaires. That would make 99.9998% of us helpless, economic and political victims - a nation of underdogs.)

In literature we have best-selling authors as well as those who produce great classics. Shakespeare never won a Pulitzer or Nobel prize, but we still know how great he was. The same with Salinger, Peter Beagle, John Barth, etc.

(Full disclosure: I did not get a Pulitzer for my novel, “Reflections of a Freelance Monk,” though it is considered by some the best example of its genre - the modern metaphysical murder mystery memoir appearing to be an unauthorized and unintentional autobiography. Had I won, I would have donated the prize money to organizations helping young, inner-city metaphysicians.) 

In science we have great inventions and cures. The scientists who devise these breakthroughs are known, recognized and rewarded regardless of award ceremonies. Prize winning scientists get into trouble when they venture outside their very specific area of expertise.

One Nobel Prize winner recently made some absurd comments regarding working in a lab with women and was forced to resign his unpaid position in humiliation. Award winning physicists embarrass themselves when they venture into philosophy, especially metaphysics. Their genius is as limited as is their award specialty. They would be well advised to opine only in their very narrow area of expertise.

It seems that these many awards and award shows promote narcissism and controversy and emphasize the extrinsic rather than encourage excellence.

Could we ever live without these awards, bold symbols of our meritocracy? Could we establish people’s authority without knowing their provenance?

I think that it would be nice to try.

The British Are Coming!

I admit that one of my many pleasures is television. I have loved it ever since the early 50s. Back then in the days of black and white reception, we had comedies with people like Milton Berle, Groucho Marx, Jack Benny, Lucy, Burns and Allen, Bob Hope, Sid Cesar,  Jackie Gleason, Laurel and Hardy and the Three Stooges, and later by Don Rickles, Rodney Dangerfield, and Flip Wilson, to name a few. We had family comedies that reflected our middle class values like “Father Knows Best.” “Leave It to Beaver,” “Donna Reed” and “Make Room for Daddy.” We had several popular Western shows with heroes like Hopalong Cassidy, the Lone Ranger with his trusty friend, Tonto,  Matt Dillon in “Gunsmoke,” Roy Rogers with Dale Evans and Trigger, Maverick, and Paladin. We had a few police shows like Dragnet and variety shows like “Ed Sullivan” and Steve Allen’s show.

That was then. This is now and very different.

Now we have “reality T.V.” shows, many of which seem to me to be neither reality nor T.V. shows. We have shows like “Big Brother,” “The Biggest Loser,” “The Bachelor,” “The Bachelorette,” “Dancing with the Stars,” “Survivor,” “American Idol,” “So You Think You Can Dance,” “Hell’s Kitchen,” “Real Housewives” from everywhere, et al.  “Project Runway,” is the only one I actually watch.

And we have endless crime shows with violence and sequels. How many
“NCIS,” “C.S.I.”  or “Law and Order” variations are there? Do we now have one for every major city? For those of us who enjoy even more violence, there is always “24,” sure to return for yet another season, “Blacklist,” and “Homeland,” shows that allow us to actually watch T.V. characters being tortured. For those of us who enjoy soft crime stories we have what used to be “60 Minutes” style news magazines like “Dateline” and “48 Hours” now showing us exclusively real life stories about murder among our middle class population, proving that even doctors, lawyers and business executives kill people, usually their spouses.

But now with the “Mentalist” gone along with “Covert Affairs,” “Fairly Legal,”  “Human Target,” “House” and now, “Mad Men” and probably soon, “Suits,” I find little left on American T.V. to look forward to watching. There will still be “Grey’s Anatomy” next season,  but with so many good characters dying off, it’s beginning to resemble Death’s Anatomy. “X Files” and “Twin Peaks” are supposed to return giving American viewers like me some hope.

For comedy, I am left with “the Big Bang Theory.” The “Colbert Report” is gone as will soon be “The Daily Show.”

What is this T.V. lover to do?

Fortunately, thanks to PBS, the British are coming and many have already arrived. Our friends back in England have brought us shows like “Downton Abbey,” “Foyle’s War,” “Inspector Morse,” “Inspector Lewis,” “Poirot,” “Sherlock Holmes,” “Sherlock,” “Endeavour,” “Miss Fisher’s Murder Mystery,” “Mrs. Bradley Mysteries,” “Rosemary & Thyme,” “Father Brown,” “Grantchester,” “Midsomer Mystery,” “Vera,” “Zen,” and “George Gently.” And these are just my favorite English shows.

These productions are not all on during the same season or even the same year and some were first broadcast in England as long ago as the 1980s. Many are period pieces ranging from the late 19th century to the beginning of the 21st.

These English shows are mainly murder mysteries, “Downton Abbey” being the exception. But they are different from American crime shows in almost every way.

While American crime dramas take place mainly in large cities like New York, Chicago, L.A., Baltimore and Miami, English crime dramas mainly take place in small villages such as those in Yorkshire and Oxfordshire. While in America we see the urban plight and ruthless, brutal murderers, British shows feature nice, middle class, civilized people who sometimes commit murder.

While on American T.V. the criminals are extremely diverse and violent, those on British T.V. shows are much less so. While American crime stories show us every part of the murder including all of its brutality, in the English versions the murder usually has already been committed and all we see is the result and that without gruesome detail. We see the inspector’s reaction to the corpse more than the body itself.

And while America’s mainstream news media have made much of the term “unarmed victim,” trying to equate “unarmed” with “harmless innocent,” in British T.V. shows most murders are committed by unarmed assailants. England has a very strict gun control system. We are slowly learning in America that an unarmed man can also commit murder, sometimes with his bare hands or by using someone else’s weapon.

The detectives on American crime shows always carry a gun and make frequent use of it along with their hand-to-hand fighting skills so necessary in our violent environment. Inspectors on British shows are unarmed and almost never use force. Their challenge is usually intellectual, trying to figure out what really happened and getting the witnesses and guilty parties to tell the truth, even if it kills them.

While American police seem to have minimal education, many of those on English shows are almost erudite. Inspector Morse and his young version, Endeavour (Morse’s first name, his mother was a Quaker), attended Oxford and is a lover of classical music. His sergeant, Lewis, went on years later to get his own show and has a sergeant, James Hathaway, who attended Cambridge in the hope of becoming a priest and seems to know every subject in its entirety. Many of their suspects are brilliant college professors who are amazed at how knowledgeable Hathaway is.

After watching some of these shows, I feel more educated, more civilized and even more intelligent. The feeling soon wears off.

And the majority of lead officers in these shows are not only educated, but extremely kind and compassionate.

Father Brown is a Catholic priest in this Protestant country. He is not only educated but wise. He is able to solve crimes by mentoring the suspects and getting them to realize their moral obligations while at the same time offering them solace and forgiveness. Grantchester is a young, handsome and Protestant version of Father Brown.

Some, like Foyle, George Gently and Zen, a police inspector in Rome with a name said to be Venetian, are solving crimes while fighting their own police bureaucracy. They are opposed in their efforts by corrupt superiors who usually do the wrong thing but for understandable, though sometimes misguided, reasons. Most are decent people who made some judgement errors.  

These British murder mysteries show that even murderers can be civilized and that even civilized people can commit murder. I’m all for people being civilized.

Although we declared our independence from England back in 1776, I have become dependent on the British for my evening entertainment.

 Please don’t think me unpatriotic.

     

What Can America Do for You?

America is the third largest country in the world and the very richest. More people apply for entry here each year than they do to all the other 194 countries in the world combined. America started the United Nations and is its largest contributor. America is also the major force in NATO and in the World Bank, which distributes money from the richest countries to the poorest. America also has the largest and best trained and equipped armed forces.

So what can America do for you?

Was there a natural disaster in your country as we saw in the Japan, the Philippines and Indonesia? Do you want America to send money and aid? Was there a mining disaster? Do you want America to send technical assistance?

Are the angry mobs in your country calling for the ouster of your leader as has happened recently in Yemen, Libya, Egypt, Syria, Egypt again and Tunisia? Do you want America to provide military assistance? We know you never meant “Death to America” when you yelled it in the streets. And after we help you, we will not mind if you repeat your old slogan. We know that we are not perfect no matter how hard we try.

Does your country fear invasion by another as is happening now in the Ukraine and happened 23 years ago in Kuwait? Should we intervene? Is one of your religious sects trying to destroy another causing a civil war? Do you want us to take sides - yours? Is a radical religious group trying to force its wicked ideology on your people as it is in Iraq, Syria, Pakistan, Yemen Nigeria, Darfur and Afghanistan? Is American military assistance needed?

Are two neighbors fighting each other because one wants the other to not exist while the other fights to survive? Is it America’s responsibility to settle the dispute by offering more foreign aid?

Are the people in your country no longer able to stand living in their beloved homeland because of all the poverty, violence, pollution and corruption there? Should all the poor and huddled masses come to America? The poem on the Statue of Liberty seems to offer an invitation, surely this young poet’s message must be America’s obligation. Our almost 40 million poor Americans are more than happy to be joined by millions of needy from foreign lands. We all love diversity.We're dying for it.

Is there a health crises in your homeland like Ebola or AIDs in Africa? Can America find and provide a cure? Should we send in troops and health workers to assist while risking their lives in the effort?

Do our many friends and allies need military protection from enemies from long ago? Does South Korea still need 30,00 American troops there for 60 years after the Korean War? Does Europe need American military bases in its many countries to continue to protect against a possible invasion by the Soviet Union that no longer exists? What’s $100 billion a year among friends?

But what about helping Americans? How can America help its own people?

Does your business need to pay its workers the minimum possible wage? No problem. The government can subsidize the employee and you by providing them Earned Income Credit, SNAP, housing and utilities subsidies, and free school breakfast and lunch programs for the children.

Are your banks struggling to make billions of dollars in profits each year? The Fed can lend you money at no interest so you can afford to lend it to your customers for as much as 25% interest. Why should your bank account holders get more than .1% return on their savings? You need the money more than they do - big bonuses and higher dividends need to be paid. 

Has anything terrible happened to a family member? Were any victims of a terrorist attack? Was it an air or rail-caused fatality?  The government can compensate you for your loss if there is no other deep pockets party to file a claim against. Did you lose property because of a storm in an area very vulnerable to weather conditions? Did you not have insurance for this natural disaster? The American government will cover your losses.

And if you and a mob of others are upset about something you heard about in your area, no matter how incorrect, the police will stand by as you riot in the streets, block traffic, chant obscenities and loot businesses. They will not interfere because they want you to express your First Amendment rights disregarding the fact that the amendment only covers peaceful demonstrations, not riots by angry and usually misinformed mobs.

Did you go to a college you could not afford causing you to rack up huge debt? It’s been a year now since you left school and you still owe the money as do many others. If you do pay it back, you will have less money to spend on other things like a new car or a nice vacation. Wouldn’t it make more sense for the government to bail out this trillion dollars worth of student debt? Isn’t that what you’d like? Better yet, can’t all college education be free. A lot more money could then be spent on goods and services.  Aren’t we all entitled to a free college education?

Did you borrow too much against your home over the years until you owed more than the collateral was worth when real estate values declined? Do you want the government to get the banks to lower the amount of your debt because the value of your collateral has decreased through no fault of your own?

Have you committed a terrible crime but did not put away enough money to cover your defense? No problem. The government will provide you with excellent legal defense and you will never be billed for it. This offer is also good for foreign terrorists who commit heinous crimes against this country. Surely, they deserve the best defense American tax dollars can buy. It seems like the least we owe these people.

America is here to help.

Free Speech

They say that talk is cheap, but is it actually free?

The very first amendment to the U.S. Constitution prohibits the Congress from making any law abridging the freedom of speech or the right to peaceably assemble.

Lately, this freedom here and abroad is being tested.

Last August a police officer shot and killed an 18 year old, six foot five inch man who had just committed a strong-arm robbery, a felony, and when confronted attacked the officer and tried to get the officer’s weapon in order to shoot him. The officer ordered him to surrender but was ignored and after trying to stop his advance by shooting him several times in the arm, the officer resorted to deadly force. Some the eyewitnesses bore false witness claiming that the young man had been shot in the back and at a greater distance than forensic evidence indicated. But many in this Missouri town were angry. They wanted the officer put in prison for defending himself against “an unarmed black teenager” who was attacking him.

When a grand jury, after an extensive deliberation calling every possible witness and reviewing all forensic evidence, ruled this self defense, hundreds in the town and from other areas, began rioting. Some decided to break into and loot the town’s businesses and the rest of the crowd did nothing to stop them. This went on for four months. The non peaceable assemblies were covered extensively by the media  which seems to thrive on the sensational.  So four months of riots disguised as demonstrations went on all over the country over this injustice that wasn’t. The cost to businesses and municipal governments was in the tens of millions of dollars.

The same thing happened a few months later in New York City when officers tried to arrest a 6 foot, five inch 300+ man who refused to be arrested. The officers grabbed whatever was small enough to get their arms around, his neck, and he died on the scene. It turned out that he had several severe health risks in addition to his morbid obesity including diabetes, heart disease and asthma. The officers did not know of his condition which is protected by HIPPA regulations which restrict free speech when medical information is involved. It was a tragedy.

Once again there were demonstrations when a grand jury did not recommend an indictment for the officers involved. The crowd was seemingly unaware of the fact that there could be no indictment without provable intent. There was no intent to kill or even injure this victim. The people used the First Amendment to complain about a judicial injustice that never happened.

The Mayor exercised his free speech right to express his shock at the verdict and went on to say that he warns his son, who is black, to be aware of the danger police represent forgetting to mention that the majority of all violent deaths in the U.S. are suffered by blacks who number only 13% of the population; that 93% of all violence against blacks is by other blacks and that police are there to protect the victims from the predators. He chose not to use his free speech to talk about this much greater problem.

The NYPD officers used their First Amendment rights by peacefully protesting the remarks their Mayor freely spoke. They turned their backs to him when two officers were assassinated by a young black man who was inspired by the riots against the police and the false impression that the police were the enemy. Many New Yorkers thought that the police went too far in their peaceful expression.

A few weeks ago a French paper known for being at the edge of free speech, published cartoons that were much more offensive than they were funny. They ridiculed Islam by showing depictions of the prophet being vulgar. They knew that some of the six million Muslims living in France might be offended but did it anyway because they were free to do so. Free speech was described by France’s President as being at the very core of French culture along with equality and fraternity. Everyone must be free to say or write whatever they want. The French people gathered to demonstrate their support for this freedom with an estimated 3.7 million in attendance.

A few days later, a black French Muslim comedian posted some remarks on Facebook that were sympathetic to the Muslim terrorists who killed 12 people in response to the cartoons. The Muslim comedian was arrested. Apparently, in France, some speech is more than free than other speech. His comments on his Facebook page were not free but came with a cost - jail.

The other day, the Pope, believed to be infallible, denounced the vicious, murderous attacks but also reminded us that there are limits to free speech. It is not acceptable to use free speech to insult someone else’s religion. Then he went on to say that if a Cardinal said something bad about the Pope’s mother, now long gone, Il Papa would hit him in the face. The Pope would punch someone in the face for exercising his free speech or for any other reason? The Pope? But aren’t we taught to turn the other cheek when offended? Is he saying that if someone offends us that we have a right to strike out violently. Really?

We see the media selectively showing and telling us the news, unwilling to tell the whole story for fear of losing a share of the audience and, therefore, advertising revenue, the life blood of the media, by fully exercising their free speech.

So maybe speech isn’t really free but has a price.

When an old, somewhat demented man exercised his free speech in a private conversation in his own home with his young assistant/mistress by telling her that he objected to the people she was hanging out with and didn’t want them coming to his basketball team’s home games, he was outed and vilified. Never mind that his privacy was violated by taping and then selling the private conversation to a sensation - hungry media. He was sanctioned by the NBA, fined and forced to sell his team for only $2 billion. His privacy was not private and his free speech was not free.

When we learned that a famous Southern cooking maven had once testified during a deposition to using a word the begins with the letter between M and O, we rose up as one and insisted that she be punished severely for that one use of a forbidden word, a word we are not free to speak. It cost her millions of dollars as once-loyal sponsors dropped her as though she was on fire.

When we learned that a recently-hired CEO of a large internet server company had used his free speech to make a campaign contribution of $1,000 to a California initiative that won majority support but not ours, we wanted him fired. How dare he use his constitutionally guaranteed right to support something many of us are against? He resigned. His speech wasn’t free.

At the 50th anniversary of the free speech movement on college campuses which began at our own, U.C. Berkeley, some of its students wanted to deny a famous liberal comedian the right to speak at their commencement ceremony because although he is the champion of liberal causes, he had spoken out against religion and Islam, in particular. They did not agree with his views on one subject and so these young, liberal college students decided him to be unfit to address them. He disregarded their objections and came and gave a speech about being a liberal to a group who knew liberal all too well.

So perhaps we can say it’s like “The Animal Farm” in which all were equal but some were more equal than others: We believe in free speech even when it is offensive as long as we are not offended by it. Say something that many don’t want to hear and you find that your words will have a real cost. 

How much will these words cost?  

Hopes and Expectations - Gratitude and Entitlement

Hopes and Expectations - Gratitude and Entitlement

A few years ago, comedian Lewis Black had a routine about our expectations. The upshot was that we should start lowering our expectations.

We should lower our expectations of our elected representatives with Congress hitting a new low of 9% approval rating. Rather than serve the public, many politicians want to serve their party even if it hurts the country as a whole.

We have been forced to lower our expectations of organized religion with years of revelations about the corruption of the Catholic Church and the violent misunderstanding of Islam by millions of its believers.

We have been forced to lower our expectations about our banking sector after the unbridled greed of Wall Street traders led to the near collapse of our economy in 2008.

We have been disappointed in our public education system, losing our confidence that students will get an excellent education that will prepare them to succeed in the future. It seems that families that can afford it are putting their children in private or parochial schools rather than having them suffer through years of inadequate education.

We have had expectations of our mainstream media. We expected them to be objective, thorough and responsible. Instead we find subjective, sensationalist and superficial reporting. We didn’t expect stories to drag on daily for weeks and months with the very coverage inciting the news segment. Coverage of the four month-long protest riots in St. Louis is just the latest example. It’s as though the press is saying “giving us more dirt for our report. The more outlandish the better, the longer the better.”

And it’s gotten down to the individual level. We have been disappointed by our colleagues, employers, friends, acquaintances and family members. Promises are broken and truth gets lost in the shuffle. It seems that we no longer know what to expect or whom to trust.

A recent poll taken by the media, asked Americans if they still believe in the American dream. Half of those surveyed said “no.” We’ve lowered our expectations.

I have realized that expectations lead to disappointment because we are not all the same. We do not share the same values and beliefs or cultural identification. Our goals and objectives are different as are our talents, abilities and ethics. “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” ( creating an expectation and possible disappointment) should be changed to “do unto others in the hope that they will do that unto you, but without expectation of that happening,” saving you a lot of unnecessary, but predicable, disappointment.

While we are told of the advantage of diversity we are painfully aware of its many downsides. Remember the tower of Babble. It was not created to make humans more productive. It was not a reward.

President Obama campaigned on the prospect of hope. He said that we can hope for a better future that includes greater prosperity for a larger share of the population. The optimism he espoused has drowned in a sea of partisanship, ego and limited intellect.

I have decided to cultivate hope and I believe that expectations are to entitlement as hope is to gratitude.  

I hope for the best in everything I do but have no expectations.

Having had a very successful career as an analyst, I send suggestions to our representatives in the hopes that they will read them and use them to help the affected population. But I don’t expect them to even read them. I would be grateful if they did, but I don’t feel that I am entitled to their attention.

I have suggested a way to avoid the massive foreclosures that occurred in 2008 and continued for years. I could not get response from any of our representatives even though my idea would have saved thousands of people their homes and would have prevented or, at least, eased the collapse in housing values. I now believe that they knew my idea but wanted to give billions to homeowners. ( I wrote to the CEO of the largest lender with my idea. He had the executive in charge of the bank’s mortgage program respond, telling me that that option has been available from the start, but it was never mentioned or publicized. That was unexpected.)

I have recently suggested a way to save the Affordable Care Act by eliminating the need for it to be mandatory, have penalties for non-compliance or provide tax credits to subsidize the insurance companies by allowing them to charge higher rates knowing that the customer will get a tax rebate. My idea is so obvious, you would think that the many great minds that engineered this important legislation would have also come up with it. Yet, I still hope that a decision maker will read my plan and make good use of it. But I don’t expect it. Just because I am a constituent and supporter, a taxpayer and a neighbor, I don’t feel myself entitled to their response, but I’d sure appreciate it.

I write a column and a blog that is also available on Facebook. I write in the hope of helping people by stimulating thought and conversation about issues that I think are important. I hope that people will read and appreciate my ideas. But I don’t expect it. I would hope to get feedback from my readers and am grateful when I do. I don’t think that I am entitled to thoughtful response from my audience.

I hope that this very column will be read and be helpful to a number of people. It would be nice to receive response to it. If I do, I will feel very grateful.

Saving the Affordable Care Act

In what is called President Obama’ s most important legislation, the Affordable Care Act, has been under constant fire. The House voted 54 times to end it. The GOP shut down the government trying to kill it. Recent polls show that the majority of  the American people are against it. It is cited as part of the reason the Democrats lost control of the House in the 2010 election and then of the Senate in 2014.

Why?

The Affordable Care Act was developed to curb the abuses of the medical insurance industry. Individuals needing health care coverage that was not available to them through their employer  or through a federal program like Medicare or Medicaid (Medical in California), had to apply to the healthcare insurance companies operating in their area. People found to have had pre-existing medical conditions were faced with very high, almost unaffordable policy options. Companies also asked questions about behavior such as whether someone smoked cigarettes or marijuana, whether one drank and how much and about any previous medical conditions even if they were no longer a problem. The companies would then raise their rates accordingly.

Insurance companies also had caps limiting the amount of claims they would accept. If the patient cost them too much, they could discontinue their coverage.

As many as 50 million were thought to be without any medical coverage. When their illness became too much to ignore, many would wind up in the emergency room of their local hospital making the cost of their treatment even greater. Some could not pay for their treatment theoretically making everyone pay a little more to make up for the loss.

The Affordable Care Act (ACA) came up with a solution. Let individuals without insurance sign up for it through a health exchange in their state. The exchange would let all the health care carriers bid to get the business. This would make their rates more competitive. The companies could not ask about pre-existing medical conditions or lifestyle questions. They had to accept all applicants. But in order for this to work for the insurers, everyone had to get coverage. To ensure that everyone got coverage, fines would be imposed on those who elected to not sign up. Hopefully, with everyone getting coverage, there would be enough healthy applicants to make up for the unhealthy ones who would be sure to sign up.

In order to ensure that everyone could afford coverage, the government promised to give tax credits to those with insufficient means. Those with almost no money would be transferred to the Medicaid program where they would get coverage for free.

We were told that those who do not sign up are being irresponsible causing the rest of us to pay for their medical care, if it is ever needed.

But many people objected. Why should the young and healthy, who might not need medical coverage subsidize the unhealthy? Why should people be forced to buy insurance they didn’t need? And why are some people getting tax credits? Will this be like the Earned Income Credit which has a fraud rate of about $11 billion a year? And does the government have the right to fine or tax the public for non-compliance?

Now that the GOP controls both chambers, it is likely they will try again to force the President to end the ACA.

I think that I have come up with a way to make everyone happy.

First, keep all the favorable parts of ACA including allowing children under 26 to be on their parents’ plan (proving what I have been saying that now anyone under 26 in still a child - that 26 is the new 21 and 18), having no caps, and having state exchanges to bring all the available companies in a competition for this once captive audience. The mandate that businesses of a certain size must offer health insurance to its employees who work at least a certain number of hours a week should remain as would federal coverage still be available to those who cannot afford coverage at all.

The individual mandate should be dropped. People should be able to keep whatever coverage they currently have and those without any coverage do not need to buy it. In return, the private insurers bidding in the state exchanges can reject any applicant with serious, long term and well-documented medical conditions like cancer, heart disease, kidney failure, liver disease, pancreatitis, and AIDS. They could not consider past injuries, alcohol or tobacco use, etc. - just the agreed upon serious pre-existing conditions. Those rejected for serious conditions would be immediately transferred to the federal program, just like those with insufficient income are, except these people would have the same share of cost as they would have through the exchange if they were healthy.

Since private carriers would have no new policies with serious medical pre-existing conditions, they would not need everyone to enroll to make money. And since people would buy insurance only if they chose to and since there would be no federal subsidy through tax credits, the insurers would have to lower their rates to be competitive. Income would not be an issue unless the person were close to indigent and therefore also eligible to federal medical coverage, but with no deductible. There would be no fines for non-compliance because compliance would be voluntary.

But what about the argument that those who choose to go without insurance are being irresponsible? Is a person who keeps himself healthy and never needs medical services irresponsible? If he does need to see a doctor, he will have to pay for it. How is that irresponsible? On the other hand, if a person abuses his body with excessive food, alcohol, tobacco and/or drugs, but has coverage and makes use of it regularly, is he responsible? Does he not cost the ratepayer and the taxpayer more than the person who takes care of himself and needs little medical attention?

I think that with these changes, most of the objections to ACA will disappear and the vast majority of our people will embrace it. Even Republicans.

Seeking a Middle Ground

Now that the GOP controls the Congress but cannot override a presidential veto, the two arms of government must work together. They must find a middle ground that both can live with and might be actually better than either extreme position. Here are our three most difficult issues:

The Affordable Care Act is probably the most contentious issue between the two parties and the electorate, which is split in its support.

Liberals feel that everyone must have health coverage and that business and government should subsidize it. They believe that having coverage must be mandated and backed by mandatory fines to ensure compliance. The mandate is necessary, they believe in order to remove all preconditions as barriers to getting affordable coverage. Further, they feel that those who cannot afford the rates should get government subsidies in the form of tax credits.

Conservatives resent being forced to buy health insurance that they might not want or need. Conservatives resent having the government subsidize payments with tax credits that are based on reported taxable income.

I have a solution that both can live with and would actually improve the current system:

Eliminate the mandates for individuals while maintaining them for businesses of a certain size for employees who work a certain number of hours a week. Individuals not covered by an employer’s group plan or by a federal program like Medicare or Medicaid, should be free to decide whether they want to buy coverage. If they so decide, they should be able to avail themselves of the health exchange which would offer deals from several different insurance groups. The insurers will be free to ask about certain medical preconditions that are long term, expensive to treat and well documented such as cancer, heart disease, type 1 diabetes, AIDS, kidney failure, liver disease, pancreatitis, alzheimer’s, etc. Insurers cannot ask or consider any medical preconditions other than those agreed upon by the decision-makers. They cannot ask about how many drinks we have or whether we have ever had marijuana or broken a leg.

The various health insurance companies will then offer competitive rates for those without any of the identified serious health conditions and refer the rejected applicants to the federal system - Medicare. Medicare will then cover these applicants and charge a share of cost equivalent to the premiums charged the healthy private coverage recipients.

This way the insurers can cover everyone who wants coverage and be motivated to lower their rates to attract more healthy members mindful that individuals will not receive government subsidies which are really also subsidies for the insurers.

Therefore coverage will not be mandatory and there will be no government tax credits saving a lot of time, trouble and fraud. Tax credits are too tempting for many to resist. The Earned Income Credit has an estimated $11 billion in fraud each year. Those who elect to forgo coverage will them be responsible for the health costs should they occur.

Illegal immigration is another sore point.

Liberals feel that if people take the time and trouble to leave their homelands because of the corruption, poverty and resultant violence, and come to our country, we should accept them and help them on their path to citizenship. “Aren’t we all descended from immigrants?” they ask. “Doesn’t the Statue of Liberty say that we want all the poor and huddled masses to come to our shores?” They do not want people found to be here without authority to be deported because it would break up the affected family, including those not yet started. 

Conservatives want the border completely secured so that no one can just walk in. They want those caught crossing, to be immediately repatriated without assignment of an attorney and a court date that will never be attended. Conservatives would like those found here to be deported regardless of their length or quality of stay. They are completely opposed to giving those here illegally permanent residency or citizenship.

I have a slight compromise:

First, completely secure the southern border and our visiting Visa system to stop the flow of illegal immigrants. Deport all those currently being held or any that still get through, almost immediately after apprehending them near the border.  They should not be imprisoned or released to the community for a future court date. People seeking asylum should be invited to do so in their native country before leaving. We have embassies and consulates that could process these requests.

Our government should work with the Latin American countries from which these immigrants are coming. We should develop a new Marshal type plan to make these countries places where people want to live not leave.

We should allow those who have been here for several years and committed no serious crimes or violations to be granted temporary residence status allowing them to live and work without fear of deportation unless they commit serious crimes in the future. They will be able to work for the same wages and benefits as their coworkers receive. Those who have committed crimes here should be deported upon completion of their prison sentences. If they have family here, one would expect them all to move back as that is what families do.

The federal income tax code is a third major issue.

Conservatives want to pay lower marginal tax rates and want more people to pay taxes. The liberals want the rich to pay more in taxes and want to see fewer tax loopholes for the wealthy.

As I have already written in previous columns, I think we should eliminate all itemized deductions and credits for personal income and replace them with a standard deduction (self employed and corporate income would still have itemized deductions). The top marginal tax rate could then be lowered to 35% for income over $1 million as opposed to the current 39.5% for income over $400,000. And all income would be equally taxable, so dividends would be the same as interest and earned income and Social Security benefits. Income is income.

This would satisfy both sides, raise a lot more revenue and would be much easier to administer with a lot less chance of fraud.

How’s that for finding middle ground for three of our country’s most divisive issues? There is reason to hope.