Shaping Up

The U.S. House of Representatives, if it is supposed to represent the voters of this great nation, is bent out of shape. The majority of voters in the recent elections voted for Democrat candidates for the House but somehow the majority of the new House are Republicans. The "somehow" is called gerrymandering. 

If you look at a map of the House districts in many of our states you will see some really strange and wondrous shapes. I would hate to be a Representative of one of these districts. I would probably get lost trying to get from one end to the other. In fact, in the district drawn for my current Representative it would be impossible without going outside the district. The roads don't run that way. I hope my Rep doesn't go broke buying gas for the trips to visit his constituents. Or that we constituents don't go broke trying to get to him. It might be simpler to catch him in Washington.

As a move toward saving gasoline, not to mention fairer representation, I recommend that we use a little geometry in drawing the district maps. In geometry the most compact two-dimensional space is a circle. The least compact space would look something like the drawing of a snake or, in other words, something like the congressional districts you see on some state maps. Certainly our districts can't all be circles but any competent mathematician could tell you how to regulate the compactness of the districts on a map. Better yet, you could easily program a computer to draw a certain number of optimally compact districts on a map. I know that such a procedure is not specified in the Constitution, state or federal, but we were a little short of computer knowledge back then.

What I am suggesting is that in the interests of better and more democratic representation we pass a law requiring that congressional districts, both federal and state, be drawn with at least a mathematically-specified minimum degree of compactness. Congress can appoint a committee of mathematicians and computer geeks to write the bill. Or such a group can write a model bill, a la the Simpson-Bowles Plan. It would be utterly simple to administer the law. Any decent computer could do it. In fact, I expect to see an app for it any day now.

Sales Tax = Less Sales

Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives and in several of our recently elected state governments seem to be favoring an increase in sales taxes to finance their activities. This is insane if they truly wish to serve their supporters in the business community. Sales taxes take the wind out of the sails of the economy more directly than any other form of taxation. Sales taxes siphon money out of the transactions that create a healthy economy, namely the making and movement of stuff. If the money in people's pockets buys less stuff then stores sell less stuff, salespeople and transporters and manufacturers lose the business of making and moving stuff and more people are laid off and our economy begins to resemble the U.S. in the 1930s.

Do the Republicans hate Obama so much that they are willing to tank the economy and damage their base just to keep him from succeeding? Is the business community willing to let them do that?

Perhaps the problem is simply that income taxes are politically unpopular. Republicans have pledged not to increase income taxes, but the budget cannot be balanced responsibly without increased revenues. Where else can they go but to sales taxes? Well, other nations have gone to Value Added Taxes. That is one possibility but the problem is that those other nations are European Socialists. Certainly we don't want to copy them.

We could tax imports more heavily but import taxes are really another form of sales tax levied at a higher level. Wal-Mart would scream bloody murder.

So how about taxing land use more heavily. No one really owns the land. Kings used to think they owned land and could grant it to their favorites, but the American Revolution disposed of that notion. Our governments at various levels reserve some land to themselves but individuals and corporations pay for their land, either in purchase price or rent. One of the gaps in our economic laws is that land purchases exist in perpetuity and can be passed on to inheritors. This often leads to poor economic use of our national land treasure.

A better and fairer system would assign all land to a unit of the people's government and limit land usage entitlement to a fixed period, such as 50 years, after which control reverts to the government. A person or corporation wishing to continue to use the land would negotiate a price for a fixed period. That price could be a lump sum or a rent but the proceeds would go to the government and would be used to pay for necessary government services.

For Republicans the wondrous part of this solution is that it takes us back to our roots. Hallelujah!

The Logic of Guns

We are safest if every responsible person owns a gun or nobody owns one. We are most at risk when half the population has a gun and the other half doesn't. Thus all attempts at gun control face an uphill battle.

When every responsible person owns a gun (and we must assume it is loaded) a reasonable assailant must assume he/she is outgunned and vulnerable to immediate retaliation. Therefore only unreasonable assailants will start an attack. When no one owns a gun an assailant may start something but the attack is much less likely to be lethal either to the victim or to the assailant.

If the National Rifle Association is serious about Article 2 and the need for an armed militia, and is not just a shill for the gun manufacturers, then it should propose that a gun should be provided to every responsible person who wants one. There are enough guns in America to arm every adult, no matter how poor they may be. The NRA could ask its members to donate excess weaponry for distribution to the poor and otherwise unarmed so that we will all be safer.

Another good move for the NRA would be to form actual militias that provide, in fact require, arms and training for all competent citizens. Of course the NRA could avoid this responsibility by calling for mandatory military service, but I doubt that fits their agenda.

Universal training and militia service would leave mental state as the only issue that really needs to be tackled in order for all of us to be safer. And mental state would be easier to assess on a national scale if everyone had to undergo something like the Basic Training provided by our armed services. On this issue I speak as one who went through that training and then became an intake interviewer at a base Mental Hygiene Clinic. Basic military training has a way of bringing the kook out in all of us, if the kook is there.

Too Big Not To Fail

Being too big to fail did not work for the dinosaurs. And it is not working too well for our modern dinosaurs of business either.

Our local hospital, WakeMed, thought it was too big to fail. It billed Medicare millions of dollars for overnight stays in its heart center by patients who were released and did not stay overnight. Such false billing is fraud but the U.S. Attorney's office chose to overlook the criminal behavior and instead negotiated a fine of $8 million and WakeMed agreed to pay this pocket change. U.S. District Judge Terrence Boyle threw out the agreement and ordered the prosecuting attorneys to pursue indictments for those who were responsible for the fraud. If the case is proven it could disqualify WakeMed from receiving Medicare payments and, essentially, put the hospital out of business. I don't want to put my local hospital out of business but there have to be real consequences of fraud, not just a slap on the hand.

I discovered another sign that WakeMed is too big when I went to my cardiologist's office for a checkup. Emblazoned on the door was a new sign proclaiming that my doctor and his colleagues are now "Associates" of WakeMed hospital. The waiting room was much busier than usual, indicating perhaps that the association has brought them new patients. The receptionist required new information from me because, she said, they were now tied into the hospital's computer system. The only change I noticed in my care was that the doctor spent less time with me. But the new link with WakeMed also means that they can bill Medicare and Medicaid at substantially higher rates without any real change in the cost of providing the care. And this little caper is legal. I favor national health care but not if it is just going to support an epidemic of fraud and price gouging by the medical community. Now I have to look for a new cardiologist.

We also saw "too big to fail" at work in our recent elections. The U.S. Supreme Court's "Citizens United" decision enabled corporations and rich individuals to create Super Pacs. These new ogres collected and spent enormous amounts of money on TV ads supporting candidates who would be more susceptible to the bribery of lobbyists. Yet a statistical analysis of the results showed that the Super Pacs had almost no effect on the election results. My guess is that the American public has become adept at ignoring TV ads, especially ads that they see over and over again. The size of the Super Pacs may actually have gotten in the way of their message.

What God intends.

I believe that a human life begins at conception. That is a staple of the Pro-Life position. It is also a scientific truth. But it is not the end of the story. Nearly half of all fertilized eggs die before reaching the birth stage. Either they fail to implant or spontaneous abortion occurs. If you believe that God intended every conception to lead to birth then your God has a lot to answer for.

Life can certainly be unfair, but it is a human trait to try to overcome an ill fate if possible. So why have we wasted so much time speculating about what God intends? If you believe that God intended rape to produce a child then logically you also believe that in some cases God intended that a pregnancy be aborted. We don't know what God intended until it happens.

I have been trying to figure out how the belief that life begins at conception trumps a woman's right to decide whether to let her body be a baby factory. Even a woman who takes reasonable precautions can find herself in that unplanned condition. It seems unfair both to the woman and to the fetus. An unwanted child is likely to have a hard life.

Did God not intend that humans develop the ability to build complex machinery? We now possess the capability to remove and freeze human ova and spermatozoa that can later be unfrozen and combined to generate a fetus that can then be implanted in a uterus. Did God not intend all of that? At least I don't hear any complaint that we should stop artificial insemination.

All we need is an artificial uterus to complete the job. A bit of upgrading of the incubator ought to do it. Then women can finally cry "Free at last, free at last, thank God we are free at last!"

Jobs?

During the election campaign everyone was saying we must concentrate on creating jobs and stimulating
the economy. In today's newspaper and the morning news on TV I couldn't find a single story about jobs and the economy. I guess that problem must have been solved.

The lead story in my newspaper is about the state Division of Motor Vehicles deciding not to issue driving permits to illegal immigrants who have received deferrals from deportation. That means about 18,000 immigrants may not be able to get to their jobs. I suppose that may free up some jobs for other people but the story didn't mention that as part of the plan.

Our new Governor chose as one of his first acts to give a 5 percent pay raise to the members of his new Cabinet. Because they have done such a good job, I guess. Of course the state doesn't have the money for these raises, so I imagine they are going to have to lay off some more government workers.

The Pentagon is freezing civilian hiring and postponing maintenance work in preparation for expected budget cuts. The are also delaying contract awards, so I expect the contractors will also be laying off workers.

Perhaps we should treat the NRA proposal to put an armed police officer in every school as a job creator. But it might be just a reassignment of existing personnel. Meanwhile our existing teachers are facing a threat of being required to teach remedial reading in the summer without pay if their students don't score better on their end-of-grade tests. Does creating jobs without pay count?

The National Hockey League is finally getting back to work. That doesn't create any jobs, since the positions were already filled. But it does constitute renewed economic activity. I'll put that in the plus column, but that is about all the good news I could find.

 

Drill!

Several stories with a common center were scattered all over my newspaper this morning. "Feds to review Shell's Arctic operations" "2012 was hottest yet in U.S." "The state's lawmakers will be sworn in today with Republicans heavily in control"

The common element in these and other recent stories is our national fixation on oil and natural gas supplies as the solution to our problems. The Obama administration supports drilling in the Arctic seas despite the fact that it is against the desires of most Democrats, is very dangerous and costly and, if successful, will exacerbate the problem of global warming. The new Governor and legislators of the State of North Carolina support fracking for natural gas in that state despite the fact that it is predicted to yield less than a 5-year supply of the state's own needs. Also, because of the structure of the shale deposits close to potable water supplies, it is likely to ruin permanently the supply of drinking water in the center of the state.

The power link between these stories is the oil and natural gas lobby. Fueled by the enormous profits of our oil and natural gas companies--I call them "our" companies even though they are all multinationals--the lobbyists bend government policy to suit their own interests, not the true interests of the American public. Yes, in the short run Arctic oil exploration and domestic fracking may reduce energy prices. But in the long run it is going to strangle us slowly with bad air, fouled water, and the ever-increasing costs of fighting pollution and global warming.

One other disturbing element is revealed by this complex of stories. Our state and national leaders lack wisdom and courage. They succumb easily to short-term solutions and bribery. The lack of wisdom in our leaders is nothing new, but the increasing complexity of our economy and our ever-growing ability to exert massive change on our environment require wiser leadership. Without it we are simply hastening the extinction of the human race, not to mention other forms of life on Earth.

In a democracy is it possible for the people to exercise the wisdom needed to elect wise and brave leaders? Yes, but only if the people are well-educated and aware of the facts. So long as we have schools that are underfunded and our adults are routinely misled by the news media, we are in deep doodoo. And it is getting deeper every time we drill.

Time Warner Cable

I used to teach business administration. I used a lot of case histories in my teaching and most of the cases were about how not to do it. Consider this to be another such case.

The story begins with a mailed flyer from Time Warner Cable (TWC) inviting me to return as a customer because "A lot has changed since you've been gone." It offered a two-year price guarantee of $89.99/month for "TV+Internet+Phone" with "FREE Installation, No long-term contract, 30-day Money-Back Guarantee*" That asterisk led to a notice on the other side of the flyer that "30-day money-back guarantee does not include installation charges in most cases" and a bunch of other exceptions.

The timing of their flyer was good. My monthly bills from AT&T U-verse had been increasing steadily toward $200 even though there were no special orders or changes in my usage to account for the increases.
So I called Time Warner and we settled on a package that, according to my notes on the flyer, would cost me $148/month with tax. Although that price was nothing like the "$89.99/month" promised by the flyer I had opted for some upgrades and had been told that the "core" charge had risen to $99.99/month and, of course, did not include taxes. I should have seen the red flags.

The first shock was that when the TWC installer arrived on October 25 (two hours late) he had no information about the features of the system he was installing except a flyer in fine print on the functions of the buttons on the remote control. Each cable company has its own numbering system for the channels and I was left to fish without a map for the channels I wanted.

The next shock was a bill for $219.13 that came about a week later. It was for the "Service Period 10/07-11-06" and included $139.92 for installation charges. Remember that "FREE Installation" in the flyer? I called TWC and, after waiting 10 minutes, talked to "Dawn" who told me that a corrected bill would be sent.

The bill I received a few days later was for $399.15 and payment was due by 11/19/12, less than a month after installation of the service. The new bill had no correction of the installation charges. It simply added $169.04 plus $10.98 in taxes for monthly services in the 11/07-12/06 period. So what had happened to the monthly charge of $148 with tax that I had been promised before installation?

Meanwhile I had received a flyer from AT&T U-verse similar to the one from TWC, inviting me to come back. I lost no time in calling AT&T and scheduling reinstallation on 11/21. I then called TWC and cancelled their service as of that same date.

Since I had been with TWC less than 30 days I expected them to honor the 30-day money back guarantee. Their next bill seemed to do that. It debited partial monthly charges of $256.48 but inexplicably charged me $141.88 for monthly services for the 12/07-01/06 period when, of course, I was no longer receiving service from them.

I sent TWC a check for $103.51, basically covering the installation charges, together with a letter explaining why I had subtracted the service charges for the 12/07-01/06 period. Back came a new bill acknowledging the payment but rebilling me for the bogus $141.88 of service charges and demanding immediate payment. This ignited another phone call to TWC, another long wait, and a 20 minute talk with "Vickie" in Billing. After checking my records she agreed that I did not owe the $141.88 bill.

You would think that was the end of the story, but no. Two days later I received a collection notice from Credit Protection Association L.P. for the $141.88. Apparently to TWC immediate payment meant faster than a speeding bullet. Now I have to call CPALP. Help!

Christmas Candy

As I was taking down the Christmas tree I discovered hidden in the branches a candy cane I had missed earlier. The candy comes from the bill that was supposed to save us all, if only for two months, from falling off the fiscal cliff. It permits retired seniors such as myself to reduce our taxable income in 2012 and 2013 by applying our Required Minimum Distributions (RMDs) from our IRA accounts directly to our charitable donations. If we were going to make the donations anyway that means the government doesn't take a bite out of them first.

The question I have is: What was that provision doing in a bill that was supposed to be saving us from fiscal disaster? It reduces the amount of money that our government receives to pay our national debt. Why is our government giving us candy canes that will only increase the debt our children must pay? And this is only one of several pieces of garbage that were included in that bill.

Another big candy cane in the bill was that it made the Bush-era tax cuts permanent for more than 99 percent of the population. Those were the tax cuts that were passed at the same time we launched two new wars, one of which is still going. Those were the tax cuts that created much of the fiscal cliff. Otherwise it would have been just a mud slide.

My message to my President and Senators and Representative is this: Thanks for the candy, but wake up and get a backbone. To President Obama: The tea party is winning and you are becoming King George. The colonies are kicking your butt. To my Congressmen and Congresswoman: Stop trying to be Santa Claus and do your real job.

White Hats.

Great! The leap off the fiscal cliff has been postponed for two months and now Senators McCain, Lieberman and Graham want us to inject ourselves into another endless Middle Eastern war. It was the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, plus the Bush tax cuts, that brought us to the edge of the cliff. Now these ideologues want to shove us over. Before we can complete the process of cutting ourselves to the bone they want us to go and cut some Syrians and spend more billions of deficit dollars doing it. Why do these Senators hate us so much?

How did we ever get into this habit of trying to save the world? Republicans used to be isolationists who fought tooth and nail to keep us from entering into "European" wars. We stayed out of World War II even while German submarines were attacking our merchant marine, until the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. After that war we led the formation of the United Nations as the means to end war, yet now we refuse to ratify treaties involving the UN because it might "threaten our sovereignty." Instead our Senators threaten the sovereignty of Syria. Who the hell do we think we are?

The Syrian people do need help and I nominate Iran and Russia to give it to them. Those nations are already supplying arms. If they started supplying bread instead and offering asylum to Bashar al-Assad the whole mess might be cleaned up quite cheaply. Oh, I forgot. We don't want Putin and Ahmadinejad to look good. We want to wear the white hats. No matter how much it costs.