What Has Happened to America?

What Has Happened to America?

In 1960 we produced 90% of our products and services, we now we produce only 2%. We helped Europe win the first and second world wars, now we have been in Afghanistan for training and supporting their troops for 17 years and costing American lives and billions of tax payer dollars and are still not winning. We were seen as the world's saviors now we are feared and disliked by many of the world's nations. In the 50s and sixties we built great cars, especially in the mid 50s. Cadillacs and Lincolns were the ultimate luxury cars, now neither is valued. We now buy German and Japanese cars. Who wants to buy an American car? We helped our WWll enemies Germany and Japan recover from the war, now we depend on them. And now we have moved so far to the left that we all of sudden wanted the Washington Redskins to change the name they had for 81 years. When polled 90% American's Indians said it didn't bother them. When one sick racist killed 15 people in a church in South Carolina and we saw pictures of him carrying the old Southern flag, we all of a sudden wanted all those flags taken down Then we decided recently that statues of Confederate generals and leaders, to tear down these monuments which had been up for 100 years. Now we want leaders who had slaves or thought blacks to be inferior to lose their states and names at universities. This would include George Washington, our founding fathers, Woodrow Wilson and Teddy Roosevelt. Next we will want the state of Washington and our nation's capital to change their names. Soon we will want Mt Rushmore to be destroyed. We decry the alt right but ignore what the alt left is doing. We weren't that upset when U.C. Berkeley students denied conservatives like Milo and Coulter the right to exercise their free speech when these anti-free speech students rioted at Berkeley destroying property while the campus police were ordered to let it happen. Free speech is good as long as we don't disagree with it. Now like a herd of sheep or lemmings we follow these radical leftist views without much thought and are proud of our righteous indignation. We demonstrate against the elected president who has expressed some unfortunate opinions like getting Mexico to pay for the wall, that he would not allow transgender people to serve in the military or that he would not allow any Muslims from entering the country. He modified that to refugees from six Muslim countries. He has proven to be narcissistic and dishonest so we have decided that we hate him and use four-letter words in our placards and even say that he should be killed. This from our peace-loving fellow citizens. 

Have we all gone mad?

A Call For Moderation

A Call for Moderation

I am not a Democrat or a Republican, a liberal or a conservative. I am an independent moderate. I have recommended changes to the Affordable Care Act that should satisfy members of both parties and ensure that everyone who wants healthcare coverage can get it. I have recommended changes in the tax code which should satisfy both party members. My recommendations have fallen on deaf ears. Our senators and representatives are too busy to represent us. 

Now I see that both sides have a growing number of radicals - the alt right and the alt left. The alt right has been more open about their White Supremisist positions while the alt-left will not allow free speech unless they agree with it. Some factions are even openly against the police and historical figures thinking that it all right to destroy historical landmarks as does ISIS in the Middle East. 

While those the Right decry the radicals, the Left feels afraid to confront their radicals. 

It never used to be this way. Both parties were mainly moderate. President Obama was a moderate until he got pressure from the minority community to reduce his deportations of people here illegally and to champion the black cause after a young, high school football player was killed while he was trying to kill the shooter. The president sided with the football player even though a jury consisting of six mothers found it to be self-defense as did the U.S Attorney General. President Clinton was also a centrist moderate as were both Bushes, though the younger started turning to the Right. JFK and Nixon were also moderate.

I think that it is high time for our people to come out against the radicals in both parties. The vast majority of us are against bigotry and we are against those who violently clash to suppress free speech with which they disagree . It takes no intelligence or courage to be against bigotry just as it is not brave to come out against cancer, forrest fires or heart disease. The Conservatives have come out against this small minority of right wing fascists but have not stopped the attempts by the Left to destroy history as well as free expression.

Those on Left hate haters and have no tolerance for those labeled intolerant not realizing their hypocrisy.

What does take courage and intelligence is fighting for a middle ground-moderation. Our leaders and representatives have to stand up in favor of compromise in their legislation, and we the people must come together to find common - sense solutions to our nation's issues emphasizing our shared interests, finding our common ground. 

Our country needs us to come together. Please.

Some Ideas for the Congress on Healthcare Reform and A new Tax Policy

The Congress cannot seem able to come up with a cure for the Affordable Care Act or for tax reform. Here is how I would deal with these problems.

I have recommended in a recent blog a way to fix the ACA. It is so obvious but no one seems to figure it out. Briefly, it would make enrollment voluntary, and allow insurers to reject applicants for medical reasons. Those rejected would immediately be eligible to the public option which would be a federal program so the states could not deny the expansion as 19 states are doing now. There would be a share of cost depending on the applicant's income. It would raise the number of people getting public assistance by maybe five to ten million. Private insurers would then have to compete for their share of healthy applicants by ending deductibles and offering a scaled down version of coverage. The extra cost incurred by the option could be offset by getting drug makers to reduce their charges and by not having to pay insurers billion to cover their costs. This way every American who want coverage will have it.

I have had a mutual friend hand deliver my suggestion directly to Nancy Pelosi, the actual creator of this failed system. I can only hope that she follows up on it.

There is also a pretty easy solution to making the federal tax code both simple and fair. 

First eliminate all itemized deductions and credits. The rich benefit most from these. I would replace them with a $40,000 standard deduction for families and $20,000 one for individuals. I would have five or six tax brackets ranging from 10% to 35%, which would apply to those earning $1 million or more. There could be a surtax of 5% for those earning more than $5 million and a 10% surtax for those earning more than $10 million. Those earning more than $1 million would have a straight tax with no other brackets. So a family earning $2 million would pay a straight 35% or $700,000.

This would make calculating one's taxes easy. They would pay on all their W2 and 1099s. Earned income workers would be allowed to deduct their FICA withholding. All sources of income would be equally taxable be they Social Security benefits which are now only taxable at 85% and dividends, now taxed at 15% or 28%. The tax system would so simple that the IRS could send the taxpayer the bill or the people could compute it themselves in a matter of minutes.

The IRS which is understaffed could then focus on self-employed income which would have itemized deductions, and corporate taxes which would also have itemized deductions with the net income taxed at 15%. Corporations don't really pay taxes, the cost is paid for by consumers and the shareholders.

Depending on how the brackets are defined, we would gain billions on these changes.

The only ones hurt by this plan would be the tax preparing services who would focus on helping the self employed and smaller companies.

    

All The News the Media Care to Share

The Catholic Church defines two kinds of sin - sins of commission and sins of omission. It seems that the media commit both, but mainly sins of omission. They decide what stories to print and which not to.

They have stated repeatedly that Russian hacked into the DNC and turned the damaging emails over to Wikileaks. The Russians and Wikileaks have repeatedly denied this. Now it appears possible that a DNC staffer named Sean Rich was the guilty party. Wikileaks founder Julian Assange confirmed as much. Rich was murdered a few months ago. But the media want it to be Russia's fault, it makes for more interesting news and seems to confirm that Russia is evil.

None of the reports I have read tell what U.S did to interfere with fair elections in other countries doing more much more than trying to hack into our actual voting booths. The U.S. got rid of Chile's  elected president, Allende, and put Pinochet in control, for fear that Allende would be too far to the left. The U.S. got rid of Iran's elected official for fear that he would stop providing us with oil and put in his place the Shah of Iran, who arrested and tortured his own people. More recently we helped overthrow the longtime presidents

of Egypt and Libya turning the latter into chaos. We helped get rid of the the elected president of the Ukraine fearing that he would side with Russia and not join NATO. Then President Obama told the English that if they voted for Brexit, they would be last on his list for trade, trying to influence their election.

More recently the media has failed to report the misadventures of the DNC's former leader, Debbie Wasserman Shultz, for hiring IT brothers who were arrested as they tried to leave the country. They had all the correspondence of the DNC and its efforts to elect HRC by getting rid of her opponent Bernie Sanders.

In California, the media has not released the mindlessness of the CHP, which sent 18 officers to guard an unpopular Republican state congressman who backed an increase of the state's gasoline tax. There were about 15 peaceful protesters who left the building and a force of 18 CHP officers were there to guard against them. The Highway Patrol's duty is to patrol the highway. They came in about 18 patrol vehicles including cars, motorcycles and had a helicopter overhead. 

CBS news anchor Elaine Quijano when reporting on incidents involving undocumented immigrants like bus crashes or those crossing the border inside a sealed truck, refuses to call them undocumented immigrants as other stations do, preferring to just call them people, which of course they are.

They do not report that German chancellor Angela Merkel's tragic mistake of inviting all those wanting to leave their lands to come to Europe flooding Greece, Italy and going to England, France and Sweden, countries that have generous welfare programs. Many EU countries have closed their doors to them.

The media doesn't report that most of the 50 Muslim countries refuse to take these refugees citing security concerns. While Turkey and Jordan have taken many in, countries like Saudi Arabia will not accept their fellow Sunnis and Iran will not accept its fellow Shiites  and the other Gulf states have also closed their doors to these refugees. Many refugees who share common religious and cultural values do not seem to want to go to their neighboring countries because even if they were accepted, they would not get generous welfare programs. They also fail to report that the refugees coming to America are treated better than many of our 30+ million Americans who live in poverty, by getting free housing, food vouchers, and even employment opportunities. 

The media does not tell us how undocumented immigrants claiming asylum can wait years to get a hearing and when denied in appeal the  denial which also takes years and then appeal the appeal being denied asylum and ordered deported, they still get to stay to start families and raise American citizens. So millions of people ordered deported because their lives are not in danger in their home country can stay indefinitely. The media does not question the claim that if the parents leave, their American children would be left behind. The media fail to remind us that when parents move to different states or countries the children go with them. This is something we usually take for granted but not so with the undocumented, who also claim that they entered the country to help their family back home that they abandoned to have families here.

The media reports that the GAO guesses that 15 million people would lose their healthcare over 10 years if enrollment would become voluntary. Most of the reports on PBS had guests who said that 15 million people would lose their benefits making it sound like this would happen every year, leaving out the fact that is over 10 years meaning that 1.5 million Americans would lose their coverage each year. Most of these 1.5 million would be those who would drop it if they had a choice. 

The media fail to tell us that the undocumented immigrants are taking jobs that could be done by our poor, mainly hurting minority members, mainly blacks and Latinos who have the highest unemployment rate. They say Americans don't the jobs that are lost. But in most the named vocations the majority of workers are Americans.

The media were loathe to admit that the person accused of the so-called "Stand your ground" murder was found innocent by a jury of six mothers because it was clearly self defense and that the shooter was laying on the ground with young football banging his head into the ground. The police knew it was self evident almost immediately after it happened. The U.S. Attorney General went to investigate and also concluded the obvious - that it was self defense. Then when a young six foot five former high school football player who was thought to have had his hands up when he was shot by a police officer didn't. A grand jury after four months that the young man was coming to the police officer with intentions to kill him. The U.S. Attorney General investigated this and concluded it was self defense. The town's residents rioted for four months looting and even destroying businesses. 

They also failed to report that the young man who died in a police paddy wagon had been resisting his 20th arrest for drug dealing and while angrily protesting in the wagon, hit his head and later died. The Baltimore mayor awarded the young man's destitute mother $6.5 million dollars before juries found the police innocent. She wanted to avoid more riots. The media did report that 56 people were killed in the six weeks following the charges but failed to mention that 55 of them were and were black killed by fellow blacks. 

They also failed reveal that the six foot five man 300 plus pound who was obese and suffered from heart disease, diabetes and kidney failure died from a heart attack after he resisted his 30th arrest. 

The mainstream media continue to commit sins of omission. The New York Times should change their motto from printing "all the news that's fit to print" to "all the news we feel like sharing that reinforce our biases."

 

Fixing the Affordable Care Act -Again

The Affordable Care Act is in trouble. While 11 million people getting Medicaid are happy with it, those who have to pay for it aren't. Individuals without health care coverage must either choose a private insurance plan whose price increases every year, because insurers have a captive audience, or must pay a fine. For those who buy coverage, one in five have only one company to choose from. That means they have no choice at all. Insurers are dropping out because they have finally realized that they would need 10-20 healthy applicants to pay for one with serious conditions. Five percent of the population use 50% of out heath care costs. There are 19 states refusing to extend Medicare coverage to our most needy. Neither the Democrats nor the Republicans seem able to fix these problems. It's not that hard. Here is the solution.

First make signing up ACA voluntary. Insurers will no longer have a captive audience and will have to compete for healthy applicants. This will bring down the costs.

Make insurers able to reject any applicant for medical reasons. This will increase their profit margin and bring insurers back in the market. It will reduce the need for the government to give them $70 billion to cover their losses. Also let them offer a scaled down plan to cover necessary hospitalization, drug costs, lab tests, and doctor visits. And insurers must stop using deductibles.

Let everyone who is rejected for medical reasons be eligible for the "public option" which would be 100% federally funded as is Medicare with a share of cost depending on income The states cannot opt out just as they cannot opt out of Medicare. This would mean that 100% of our neediest will have coverage and that every American who wants or needs coverage would have it at affordable prices.

Also the government should use its leverage to reduce drug costs that are excessive. Most are very inexpensive but some are ridiculously high.

This will cost the government more but would be offset by eliminating the $70 billion subsidy to insurers and by reducing $100 billion that are spent for waste and fraud by $10 billion a year.

   

Religion Meets Science - Metaphysics and Physics

I was recently forwarded an article comparing the beliefs of my spiritual ancestor, Swami Vivekanada, with those of our scientific messiah, Albert Einstein. I found that they had very different beliefs but shared one: that someday science and religion will meet. I agree and believe that that day has finally arrived.

The swami was a Vedantin monk from India. He is credited with bringing Hinduism to the West in the 1890s. He came to San Francisco in 1899 to establish a Vedanta society here. Vedanta is the mystical end of the Vedas, the essence of Hinduism just as Kaballah is for Judaism, Mahayana is to Buddhism and Sufism is to Islam.

Einstein was a physicist who discovered that space and time were interdependent and that energy and matter were interrelated, different forms of the same thing,  just as were water and ice.

While science has never been my strong suit, I learned to appreciate some of the basic laws of physics and saw their relationship to metaphysics, a subject that has interested me for almost 60 years.

One of the basic laws is that energy cannot be lost in the universe - the conservation of energy principle. Another is that every action has an equal and opposite reaction. Another is that everything finite is subject to disorganization - entropy. And a more recent finding in physics is the discovery of fractals -  infinitely complex patterns that are self similar across different scales (with the emphasis on infinite). Every finite thing has an infinite number of fractals.

In metaphysics these laws are also expressed if somewhat differently.

The conservation of energy principle is called reincarnation in Mahayana, Vedanta and Kaballah. The soul or energy force of living beings cannot be lost and so is reborn into different forms. Reincarnation explains all our differences and provides motivation to live this life as though it weren’t our first or last. It explains how three year olds sit down at a piano and begin playing or how some are doing math or reading at that age. It also explains homosexuality and transgender inclinations. People who prefer partners of the same sex probably had some experience in a past life that made them so inclined. Transgenders probably had several successive past incarnations as one gender so when suddenly born as the other gender after so many past incarnations, the person feels to be the wrong gender and wants to change. Reincarnation also provides us with a basis for belief in ultimate justice.

The law of equal and opposite reaction is called karma in Vedantin and Buddhist metaphysics. The law of karma says that activities have consequences either now or later. If you are good to others, others will be good to you. If you do others harm, you will later suffer harm, though it might not happen right away or even in this lifetime. The law of karma gives reason to do the right thing because we never get away with anything. Tibetan Buddhism has a most complex understanding of karma relating both to the action and its motivation. So for Mahayana Buddhism karma is based not only on the act itself but also on the thought that goes with it.  If you are generous in this lifetime, you will be rich in the next. But if you are generous because you want to be rich, you will be rich but will suffer in some other way.

Entropy might be the explanation of why there is suffering. While the Buddha thought that suffering was caused by attachment to the finite, the more basic cause could be entropy. Everything finite is subject to disorganization, whether it be a living being getting old, sick, crazy, dishonest, poor, or violent or whether it is a system or thing like marriage, finances, policy, diplomacy, weather conditions, appliances or geography becoming disorganized. Everything that has a beginning will have an end. 

The discovery of the existence of fractals which are infinite within every finite being or thing is perhaps most profound. It reveals perhaps the ultimate and essential paradox - the finite is infinite and the infinite is finite. This idea is not new but its expression is. Hindu, Greek, Roman and even Christian mythology point to this paradox. Hindu, Greek and Roman gods were immortal - not finite - but took human forms which were finite. Christ was mortal. He was born, grew older and died. But he was also part of the trinity - the father, the son and the holy ghost - three aspects of G-d. So he was mortal and immortal - finite and infinite.

There is a story about a young man who travels to India to ask a great guru how to find G-d. The guru says “Tat twam asi” or “you are that.” The man is overwhelmed. He runs to the middle of the street and sees an elephant rushing toward him. He orders the beast to stop given his newfound infinite power, but the elephant keeps coming and the young man has to jump out of the way to avoid being crushed. He goes back to the guru and asks him why the elephant did not obey him given that he was G-d. “The elephant is also G-d,” the guru answers.

Some scientists now concede that everything - both matter and energy - is and has consciousness.  Mystics have said that it is all consciousness. That’s why the Vedantins and Buddhists call the material world “Maya” - illusion - the product of consciousness. The Hebrew bible begins with G-d creating the universe saying “let there be.” The mystical belief is that G-d is constantly making the world - thinking it.  A zen koan expresses this by asking what is the sound of a tree falling in the forest if there is no one to hear it. The answer is that absent consciousness, nothing can be said to exist. Consciousness precedes and creates existence. Consciousness is both infinite and finite.

We can finally assure the spirit of our good swami and that of our greatest scientific theorist, that science and religion have been joined - physics meets metaphysics.                                                                                                       

No Truth in Labeling

One of the most interesting and disturbing aspects of this past year’s coverage of the campaign for President was the way the media and people quoted in it found it easy to label people based on remarks or actions. Labeling allows us to quickly react emotionally without having to think much about it and to discredit everything the labeled person says or does to dramatically limit free speech with which we disagree.

The two greatest Russian metaphysicians, George Gurdjieff and P.D. Ouspensky, theorized that emotions are much faster than thoughts and that many of us have been conditioned to react emotionally to certain images formed by labels making us more like machines whose reactions are pre-programmed.

During this election cycle we have heard many people label others based on something that person had allegedly said or done. And worse yet, we saw people labeled by extending their past actions to extremes. The examples abound.

The main, but not only, focus was Donald Trump. He said that he wanted to build a wall on our southern border to stop illegal immigration from that direction. He said some illegals were bringing drugs, crime and even rape. This was translated as him saying that all Mexicans are drug dealers and criminals. It was morphed into him being against all immigrants and that he was afraid of other cultures. He was labeled anti-immigrant, xenophobic and racist. When actually he was against illegal immigration. He married two immigrants, hired thousands and started businesses in countries all over the world. How is that being anti immigrant, racist or xenophobic?

He insulted several people. We don’t like people doing that and for good reason. He insulted a famous personality known for not mincing words. She insulted him and he insulted her. For insulting a woman he was labeled a sexist and a possible misogynist. When we heard a tape of him talking like a teenager to a entertainment T.V. host, who happened to be the first cousin of a former president and the nephew of another, with the mic still on, we were convinced. It was vulgar and immature. But it confirmed our label that he was a misogynist especially after a few women came out claiming to have experienced unwanted advances, which were then labeled sexual assaults. Misogynists hate women. That is exactly what the name means. How does what he said or did equal hatred of women? It shows the opposite - an immature attraction to women. People who hate women are very dangerous. They do not have long loving relationships with wives and daughters.

Trump called for a delay in accepting Muslims from dangerous countries until we can be sure that they will not be a threat to Americans. He was labeled as hating all 1.7 billion Muslims even though his comments addressed only a small percent of  the 200 million people who represent less than 12% of the world’s Muslims. This concern about radicalized migrants also was seen as proof that he was xenophobic and racist.

He said he was against intervening in conflicts that do not have anything to do with us. Examples are Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Egypt, and Yemen. He said that the U.S. is paying too much while other NATO countries are paying too little for their defense. He was labeled a treaty breaker and unwilling to aid other countries. He was labeled isolationist.

He reprinted a poster showing that his opponent was in with Wall Street. The poster had a star with some writing on it. The star was six pointed, the same as a Jewish star and the star worn by many law enforcement officers. But the star associated with money labeled him an anti-Semite. He has a daughter who is married to an Orthodox Jew. Their children are Jewish. His daughter became Jewish. The Prime Minister of Israel supported him. And Trump is anti-Semitic?

The people hear these labels and respond with anger and fear. They take their frustrations to the streets feeling justified to respond violently to someone labeled sexist, racist, xenophobic, misogynistic and isolationist. The crowds become angry mobs spewing anger, hatred, vulgarity, and destruction while feeling self righteous and licensed to any level of abuse. The mob-like crowds felt entitled to hate the accused hater, to be intolerant of those labeled intolerant, to be vulgar about vulgarity and racist toward accused racists, seeing no irony or hypocrisy in their behavior.

The lack of truth in labeling has brought out the worst in some of our people. Labeling is the gateway drug to bigotry. 

Political leaders and journalists have to be aware that they reach a wide audience and that the words they write or speak affect different parts of the population differently. Some take in the reports and balance them with other sources of information. But others with serious issues to deal with take this misinformation and overreact to it.

Now we hear that immigrants are worried and live in fear of immediate deportation from the Promised Land. Even though the president said he would close the border and end illegal immigration, it does not mean that he will immediately deport 11 million people. He has said that he wants those who are involved in criminal activity to be identified and sent packing first. Then those who have arrived recently could be repatriated. Still, we hear that even those not subject to removal are living in fear.

We hear reports that women are rushing to get birth control before Trump ends the Affordable Care Act as though that would happen immediately. If they would think rather than feel, they would realize that it would take at least a year or two to make any real changes to the ACA and even with them, they will still be able to get birth control. They are frightened without reason and it is not helpful.

Muslims living in this country are saying that they don’t feel safe now. This concern even though the issue has been accepting future refugees from countries having radical activity until they are fully vetted. It is not against all Muslims or all immigrants.  

We are seeing that there is a great cost to sensational, superficial and subjective reporting. This latest wave of examples is the most exaggerated form of it.

If we are at the beginning of a revolution against the status quo, let this status be no longer quo. Let us begin to insist on fair, honest, in depth reporting free of political bias, editorializing, and sensationalizing. And let us learn to think before we react with emotion-driven violent protest.

And please don’t label me or this column something for being against labeling, but if you do, I will not label you as narrow minded or of limited intelligence.