At The Crossroad

Posted on January 21, 2012 by Francisco

For almost a year, I felt tugged in many directions and despite my resolve to share my thoughts regularly on this blog, it was easier to relegate my task to later. It wasn’t fun feeling pulled away. I wanted to stay loyal to my writing, but carelessly didn’t find the right moment to broach the topics that seemed important at the time.

A good number of my impressions still found their way to scrutiny and dissent. I posted comments on a social network website where mostly friends bore the brunt of my opinionated outlooks. In hindsight, it would’ve been better to post them on this site.

Today, as the year turns, it’s politics and the economy that occupy the nation as a whole. The two seem to encroach on everyone’s peace of mind, if my friends fit the typical profile of people making time to post their own concerns on the Internet. Truly, both issues also stir me, but the health and welfare of the dwindling few remaining elderly members of my family claim a larger share of my present unrest. 

It’s clear now from this perspective that as I witness the frailty of those I love, I begin to weigh in, way more heavily than before–when time seemed eternal–on higher order issues: the meaning of life, my purpose on Earth, the cryptic designs of a Supreme Being whose existence I feel deep in my soul, but I cannot see. Crossing the indelible line reserved for the old unobtrusively changes an individual’s focus of attention. It’s curious how the brain begins to search for pivotal events from our past to question them, to relive them, and to try to make better sense of them.

I begin to look for meaning in the difficulties I faced, those I couldn’t conquer, the many I overcame, the multiple lessons learned. I recall intensely painful events, ecstatically joyful ones, a good number of heart-breaks, and numberless meaningful moments where love reigned. I analyze all from a distance, coldly now, and I marvel at how each contributed to shape me into who I am and to define the personal milestones I achieved.

In the fullness of my life as I reflect on its entirety, I find peace. But significantly, many of these souvenirs serve me to underscore how the hardships of yesteryear pale in comparison to the ghosts I face today. With time slowly fading away, I scramble to find the last few pieces of my puzzle and struggle to fit them together, to complete the painted canvas that sheds a positive light on the self-image of my existence. I endeavor to leave an imprint, anything of value to mark my path, but I also question where I am along this endless road.     

The big earthquake in Japan, the tsunami that ensued, and the subsequent meltdown of the atomic energy plant at Fukushima alarmed me in early 2011. I mourned the victims and felt deeply for that distant country’s toll. I lost sleep over a nuclear disaster that could devastate my family too, but more, over my grandchildren’s potential plight. They’ll have to deal with the cataclysm long after I’m gone. 

I realize now how simple my life unfolded when the safety of my water and the quality of my food was never in question. All I needed to sleep soundly in my youth was the fair opportunity to raise my family. As John Wayne proposed on film, all I wanted and found was an honest day’s work for an honest day’s wage. 

My work bought me a roof over our head and a home for my children, food on our table, and the opportunity to enable open and effective–if often loud for outsiders–communication among us in the weaving of the fiber that makes up our family today. With my brood I shared the dinner-table nightly. I managed to clothe them and to find the energy after work to talk and laugh, to educate them, and to straighten them up when the need arose–perhaps not too long on temper and rather short on tolerance for repeated misdemeanors, but always with the best of intentions at heart. I fostered principles and lasting values in them. I strived to empower them for living healthy and fit, honest and prepared; ultimately to become productive members of society and to carry on as I fade behind. 

Today, I find myself wondering about tomorrow and how many tomorrows still remain. I question the relevance of arguments over matters I cannot change. I learned to accept instead of defend against other points of view. And in this newly found acceptance, I feel wiser. Undoubtedly, my new patterns of thought are a by-product of the calendar; a reflection of the complete awareness of my presence.

Posted in Finances, General, Parenting | 2 Comments

A Reply to Mr. Leon Cooperman’s Open Letter

Posted on December 6, 2011 by Francisco

While Mr. Cooperman’s letter in the Wall Street Journal a few days ago speaks loudly, it leaves out some of the fundamental issues separating our country today. The most essential seems to be re-defining for this century “The American Way,” the “Land of Opportunity,” and arriving at a complete and unbiased understanding of what it means to be and to live free in this great land. Until the current generations adopt as their cultural compass the meaning of these three philosophically-rooted concepts and everything each embodies, we will remain divided along ideological class-warfaring lines. Allow me to elaborate with my own personal experience.

In the USA where I grew up, “The American Way” was to move forward making the best of myself with the opportunities before me. It did not mean that I expected others to give me anything or that others would be forced to give me anything. To recall a line delivered by John Wayne in one of his more famous cowboy movies, it meant that I received an honest day’s wage for an honest day’s work; no one gave me anything beyond the opportunity to do a job in exchange for a fair wage. 

In the USA where I grew up, the “Land of Opportunity” meant that the responsibility for making headway in life rested solely on my shoulders, on my education, on my ability to work hard within our legal system, to build a better mouse trap and bring it to the market, the ultimate judge of valuable ideas. It did not mean that I would twist the laws and disparage my competitors to walk over their carcasses as the way to succeed. It meant that my ingenuity and my creativity worked together to carry me to the goals I envisioned for myself.

In the USA where I grew up, the meaning of freedom was never argued; never questioned. We were blessed by living in a country where everyone was equal and no one received government funding for projects that would otherwise fail in the marketplace simply because politicians fostered enough power to sway things the way of their minions. It meant that every day, as we awoke, we were presented with the priceless opportunity to re-invent ourselves, re-direct our steps, choose our path, and move forward in the direction of our dreams. It did not mean that the government would take away from others to give us anything. It meant that we worked hard and fairly to earn what we made and that we worked equally as hard and fought to the death those who tried to take away from us what we gained throughout our working years, often, if not mostly, after much spent blood, sweat, and tears.

It is clear to me that we live in a different USA. Today’s America needs to find its way out of the shifting sands of selfishness, ignorance, government corruption and abuse. Beyond an open debate on values, we need a miracle.

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On the Erosion of the Middle Class in the United States

Posted on October 2, 2010 by Francisco

Passion on any subject generally brings out excellent discussions. Many of my former students who befriended me on Facebook at times post comments or raise concerns that for being very pertinent to our era are well-deserving of reflection and exposition. They often–not always–motivate me to throw in my two cents candidly. One such instance took place a couple of days ago.  I find the discussion worthy of posting here to share with everyone and raise everyone’s level of awareness, ultimately promoting a change for the better. The late, great Michael Jackson said it best when he sang that positive change starts with “the man in the mirror.” 

As a society, somewhere over the last forty years, we stopped holding dear the notion that the creation of wealth should be the crowning glory of our hard work. We changed our work ethic along the way, moving away from the protestant ethic and into a belief that wealth should be amassed quickly and at any price. We lost our desire to excel by displaying real skills and became a service society that benefits from being the middle man in a transaction, adding nothing to the equation, but taking a chunk of money in the process. We call it being clever and commercially savvy.

Statistics show that over the last forty years, the country’s middle class has been slowly eroding. It’s actually becoming extinct, but it’s not anyone’s fault in particular. We must blame each other, We the people, who refused along the years to own up to our responsibility as free citizens of a great nation founded in liberty.

We failed to elect representative government by remaining apathetic in a system that engulfs everyone not conscious enough of the ramifications of inertia and apathy. We allowed the corporations to flee to foreign lands where their taxes and operational costs are lower. We discovered and encouraged the advances in technology that caused men (and women!) to be replaced by machinery without stressing the need for new sources of employment as we shifted away from the industrial society and into a modern technologically based one. We allowed our foreign competition to thrive by selling our secrets to them.

Today, the middle class, as the books describe it and some of us old enough knew it, is a thing of the past. The Henry Ford who paid higher wages to his workers in his factories is not our story. It’s the story of our grandparents’ generation, the Generation X and Y generation’s great-grandparents’.

The erosion of our work force by the excesses union bosses extracted from business owners, the lack of accountability from teachers, as demanded by union contracts, the failed parental oversight due to an excess of consumption that often required double work shifts and a minimum of two incomes to feed our endless desire for a better standard of living at seriously high costs to our society, all, are not the cause of the government. They are the cause of our desire to surround ourselves with possessions and our short-sighted focus on superficial values as a nation. The American way defined the meaning of conspicuous consumption.

Even today, it’s not the government’s fault. Governments are there to perpetuate themselves, expand themselves, and encroach on the civil liberties of the governed who are otherwise too busy and too careless to watch them, fight them, and restrict them. We are the culprits. The buck stops at our front door.

Our economic future lies in the hands of the people. It’s always lain there. It’s time to become vigilant, active, and ingenious lest we lose our historic way of life forever.

We must re-invent ourselves as a society to bring us forward to a better moment in our history, reminiscent of the time where the world measured its advances by how it compared to the American lifestyle. We need to bring back the sources of labor that left our land by devising creative ways of motivating large businesses to return. It’s time to limit the waste of large government institutions.

It’s time to roll back the benefits that the politicians gave themselves at the expense of the working individuals, the working middle class. We cannot create a middle class made up of government bureaucrats because the government does not create wealth. It extracts wealth from the citizens.

Government payrolls and benefits must be rolled back to reflect the working place of the free enterprise, the mom and pop shops that are the source of real employment and true wealth creation in our economy. We must stop this ridiculous claim that the redistribution of wealth is the way in which everyone benefits. That’s baloney. The redistribution of wealth is code phrase for socialism and in socialist systems everyone is poor and the government is a dictatorship filled with mediocrity and bureaucratic red tape, inhibiting liberty in all its manifestations.

And I have not yet touched upon the nefarious Federal Reserve and the phony security it provides in its fractional banking system. Fractional banking allows the levering of small equity, little capital, and is based on the assumption that debt must be paid back with interest. Capital is multiplied thirty and forty times to encourage borrowing and lending at the expense of an individual’s freedom when improperly used, often resulting in indented servitude to a banking system that is protected by the government and in collusion against the individual. The last few years have proved the fallacy of these assumptions.

Arguably, the largest share of blame is reserved for our educational system. If we had educated people properly across the land, we would not have the problems we face today. In the past, the middle class was made up of skilled laborers. Today our labor force is filled with unskilled workers.

Commercial enterprises need bodies to deliver their goods to the consumers, but how many times do we get served anywhere by individuals who take pride in what they do and own up to the situation, trying to resolve it expeditiously and in a professional manner? The instances where we leave an establishment satisfied with the level of service received are fewer and fewer every day. Until we have a well-educated group of citizens who think, reason, and reflect on their quality of life and constantly strive to improve it, we will live and relive the same abominations that caused the middle class to fade into oblivion.

We need to turn out at the polls in every election and select the best candidates, not the least bad candidate. We need to motivate young thinkers to run for office. We need to emulate a return to the work ethic as the foundation of our society, not wealth at any cost. It’s not about the money. It’s about the process of making it that is important and how everyone benefits.  

As with every posting, your comments and thoughts are encouraged and truly appreciated.

Posted in Education, Family, Finances, General, Parenting, Politics | Leave a comment

Religion and Ignorance

Posted on September 11, 2010 by Francisco

As a citizen of this country, not of Muslim faith, I object to the persecution of Muslims as I object to the persecution of any religious faith. In our country, every religious faith is equal in every respect. Our duty as good Americans is to defend the right of every religious faith to worship in freedom.

We should no more consider Muslims unworthy of our freedoms than we should find all men of the cloth unfit to lead a congregation over the transgressions and horrors of a few. Ignorance is prevalent but not excusable. The current today demonizes Muslims without remorse, for it’s done out of a visceral reaction, stirred by individuals with a vested interest in promoting this immoral outcome. If we practiced what is preached in our Christian churches, we would need to follow the commandment that Christ called his most important: To love others as we love ourselves.

Just as the masses do not paint Christianity with a single brush, they should also be prevented from blaming every Muslim for the actions of a few; a few who simply label themselves Muslim and followers of Islam for their own vested interest in inflaming a group of people against everything our country stands for, as these wicked groups pursue their own nefarious interests. If we fail to live up to who we are and within the spirit of our Constitution, we would allow hateful groups to diminish us as a nation by engaging in their same hateful message, in absence of love and by extension, in absence of God.

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A Practical Solution To The Marriage Turf Debate

Posted on August 9, 2010 by Francisco

In the current arguments pro and con, most who opine seem to look at the marriage issue from within the box where those wanting to regulate it placed it hundreds of years ago. It would be more logical to review the concept of marriage and understand that, when individuals feel obligated to remain in a union, the union is not free. When we are not free, we are unable to make the right decisions about anything in life. Freedom is essential to our human existence.

For this observer, California’s Proposition 8 and all other “defense of marriage acts” across the country are equally as intrusive as having the church and the government identifying those with the privilege to enter into indented servitude. Let’s face it: Marriage is an enslaving institution into which most people enter blindly assuming a piece of paper will ensure their eternal bliss together. Quite the contrary, it is eternally doomed to fail as soon as one of the parties realizes it forces them to remain together after the love, the lust, the attraction, the peace, and the romance vanished into thin air, which according to current statistics, takes place over 60% of the time.

There is a much better solution. If the church and the government in their collusion would think outside the box, they would instead regulate divorce with the same zeal they are using today to dictate who is able to enter into a marriage contract. The threat of not being able to divorce–or live apart after the desire to break up shows its ugly face–would be a better way to raise the level of analysis and presence of mind required by those considering the august decision of entering into an endless marriage–even if it did not make a faithful husband out of Henry VIII; but his Majesty enjoyed the right to write his own laws and form his own church, joyful actions that the rest of us do not possess. 

Let’s face it. Today’s no-fault divorce makes breakup and separation a viable alternative to a concentrated effort on identifying whether a union is the right choice in the first place. It eliminates the serious analysis required of every individual before deciding to marry. This observer’s hunch is that very few, if any, would execute a contract that forces everyone to remain in the hellish existence of a bad union for the rest of their life.

If all intrusive institutions currently fighting over the regulatory turf were determined to end the desire to foolishly enter into a marriage without much thought, if they truly were concerned over the health of families and children in a divorce, if the values of the family were truly the concern here, they would instead collude to make divorce equally as difficult as they want to make marriage an impossibility for some. Any individuals willing to remain together for the rest of their life–happy or unhappy–should be able to do so;  just like everyone willing to work as a slave should be able to do so uninhibited. 

The pursuit of happiness was written into our Declaration of Independence. No one should be turned back from making a choice for themselves. Free people make choices that they have to live with for the rest of their life. Make marriage one of these transcendental choices.

The argument is embellished by all the talk about tax breaks and privileges, which as currently applied, tend to carve out a lower class made up of individuals who are single, with less equality before the law; but this too is easily corrected and could become empty chatter. There is an egalitarian solution at hand. Let the government’s taxing arm tax everyone equally across the country, regardless of whether they sleep with someone else with a signed piece of paper filled with empty promises or not. Under this well-thought out system, everyone would be free to marry but no one can live apart or get divorced after they enter into the holy state once the license is duly executed.  

Clearly, the concept of a flat tax would do away with thousands of pages in the IRS Code and in a single swoop with all the corruption from lobbies and vested interests vying for a tax break. Unlike marriage, a gradual flat tax that provides smaller brackets for lower incomes and rises to 15% for higher incomes is good for the government and great for the individual. Eliminate all deductions and simply levy a gradually increasing tax scale that starts at 0% below the poverty line and increases slowly as incomes rise, to a maximum of 15% for the highest income earners.

Both measures are fair. They are just. They are very desirable.  

They would also resolve the problem of corruption in government. The open objections would come from CPAs and tax attorneys. The underhanded opposition would come from politicians. No loopholes eliminate the need for advice. The elimination of ambiguity and tax-favored measures would eliminate political contributions from lobbyists which until today, they dole out to ensure political favors. Everyone would be equal under the tax codes and all income would be taxed according to a fixed scale.

These measures would cut everyone’s desire to join in marriage carelessly any idiot that walks their way. They would efficiently fix the world of politics and the levity in which most individuals enter married life. It would be a fix all.

Why couldn’t someone else see these fixes so clearly before?  

As with all posts, comments are encouraged. Thanks for reading my blog.

Posted in Education, Family, Finances, General, Pet peeves, Politics | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

The Cost Of Driving In Miami-Dade County Is Now Abusive

Posted on July 21, 2010 by Francisco

As if the cost of pursuing happiness in the Magic City were not already excessively high, we now have to watch where we drive. It used to be that roads were built with taxes paid by the people. There weren’t any additional taxes levied for using them. The maintenance of the roads was also paid with tax revenues from the general treasury. A built road would ensure our ability to cross it without paying anything extra. Things have changed for the worse in Dade County.  

Together with the increased cost for parking tickets, moving violations, court costs, other rising municipal services, stratospheric insurance premiums, and burdensome real estate taxes, now we have toll roads where we used to drive unfettered, as the cost of living here continues to rise in geometrical proportions. While in the past there were a couple of ten-cent tolls that turned to a quarter, later to fifty-cents, to become seventy-five cents, only to be changed a short while later to a buck, and ultimately, a buck twenty-five due when crossing very few expressways, the demand for payment only took place after ten or twenty miles of usage. Mind you, they were levied with the promise of eliminating them “after the roads were paid for,” which clearly never happened. Now, during the worst economic downturn in history since the Great Depression, we have to pay new tolls to further undermine the purchasing power of any citizen commuting to work every day. They are placed every couple of miles on SR 878 and SR 874.  Anyone coming from SR 874 will pay a toll before leaving and three between 874 and US 1.

At what point did we all miss the opportunity to knock these plans down? Were there opportunities or neighborhood meetings to discuss them? Who determined that it was fine to charge $5 every day to people who must use those roads or decay in log-jammed traffic congestion? These tolls amount to an additional $1,200 annually of automobile expenses only to commute to work. The weekend costs are not added up in this projection.  

The roads are all and all were built with our taxes. We already paid for them with our hard-earned dollars. These government clowns now allege that the tolls are for the maintenance of the roads and for improvements on their service. Is the county trying to chase everyone out of here?

At a time when everyone is short of cash and attempting to make ends meet, the county commissioners in all their stupidity impose an additional heavy burden on every family that must commute to work using these roads. This new tax is an attack on our way of life and it is preposterous. We must rise in opposition to it and cram thousands of citizens in, out, and around the next County Commission meeting to make sure that the commissioners hear us, fear for their cushy jobs with tens if not hundreds of staff members, and feel the heat arising from their despotic ordinances that only serve to unite us all with the solid determination to throw them all out of office at the next election.

This assault on our freedom to move without additional taxes must not be dismissed. It must not be swept under the table as we acquiesce and remain victims of these abuses of power. We must not stand for it and we must unite in boycotting the roads until the tolls are removed.

As with all posts, your contribution is more than welcome. It is encouraged and appreciated. Thanks for reading my blog.

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Healthy Eating Works For Me

Posted on June 18, 2010 by Francisco

Recently, there was a furor over Merryl Streep’s movie where she played the role of Julia Childs. It caused a rush to go out and buy the famous chef’s book that was out of print. It also brought to the forefront the desire to create family meals that taste good while helping everyone to remain healthy.

Alas, gone are the excessive amounts of dairy products used to ensure savory creams to pour over plain, everyday nourishment. In, today, is everything healthy, all the stuff that balances correctly our diet striving to keep down the blood pressure, steer us away from diabetes type II, and holds our cholesterol inside the healthy range. The refined carbohydrates, the processed rice, and all forms of potato are definitely out of favor, while the whole grains, the brown rice, the yam, the seeds and the leafy vegetables all, moved up to become very much in vogue.

Happily, Leo, my friend of many years, who is also my very trusted doctor, issued me a stern warning in January. He alerted me to the dismal results of my latest blood profile tests. He explained that I was under an imminent threat of becoming a pre-diabetic type II. It sounded awful.

Leo underscored how the data show the eventual onset of diabetes if not by the latest test results alone, simply by the continued increase of my weight along the last few years. He explained the relation between high cholesterol, high blood pressure, and high blood sugar in cardiovascular disease. He pointed to the data he collected on my health over the years and explained, without any ambiguity in his message, that my lifestyle and my eating habits were forecasting a premature death or worse, a stroke and paralysis. Clearly, my daughter Alina’s words resonated in my brain as Leo’s words hit me. “We choose how we want to die,” was Ali’s mantra when she watched me slowly become more sedentary and largely careless of my diet.

Lucky for me, there was still time remaining to redress the ills of a lifetime of bad eating. The wine consumption and the rich desserts surreptitiously laced with sweet tasting corn syrup had finally come home to roost. “It was up to me,” Leo said seriously, “to reverse these awful lab results,” and he gave me ninety days to prove my determination to do so before he prescribed pills to counteract so many years of physical neglect.

He emphasized that all I had to do was walk at least 20 minutes every night. That sounded easy enough and walking became my latest fad. Now I watch other neighbors with whom I stopped to chat along the way following the same prescription to get their weight under control too.

After ninety days in a rather comfortable schedule of walking every day for one hour, it was time to return for another round of blood profiles and off I went, very eager to see the product of my effort over the last three months. The new results proved that my daily strolls and a very slight correction in my diet were effective. They showed signs of a slight reversal on the trend. From a figure of 115 on the diabetic screens in January, the April number was 95.  There was definite improvement that Leo downplayed understandably, as he called it a good beginning, but he wanted more weight loss and more exercise for my return visit in six months.

Walking slightly more than two and a half miles every day proved successful in reducing an initial 10 pounds from my ultimate goal of 30 to regain the weight that Leo called healthy. Frankly, walking in good weather was a cinch. January through March is dry, pleasant and refreshing in Miami.

Walking as the days grew longer and hotter from April through August has become exhaustive and too easy to leave for later or tomorrow. The heat causes in me relentless procrastination. It’s easier than sweating and suffering under the hot Miami sun, scorched and thirsty along the length of my suburban trail.

For these current weather conditions, I had to find alternatives. I had to expand my diet by reducing my caloric intake without sacrificing nutrition or the energy my body requires to complete the walks as often as the weather permits. And this finding is my sensible bridge with the film Julie and Julia. I have returned to my days of single fatherhood when my children were small. Now, I find myself back in the kitchen, cooking up healthy meals that are tasteful, which for me, was an oxymoron.

The lowering of our daily caloric intake may sound easy for most, but very difficult to accomplish when all day, everyone around us eats. They eat in the office. They eat on television. They eat in magazines. They eat on the billboards while we drive and next to our car at the stop lights. Everyone eats all the time, despite everything we read or hear about the evils of obesity.

We need to reflect on the dangers of excessive eating. We need to stop rationalizing that after a certain age, eating becomes the way to sublimate other impulses from our youth. We need to end the relationship that we made along the way that relates delicious treats with comfort and coziness, an overall feeling of reward and nurturing. We need to cut our dependence on food by realizing that, of all the food groups, carbohydrates are the most dangerous, for they turn inside our body into sugar and excess sugar is the most prevalent cause of diabetes II. Undoubtedly, carbs pave everyone’s road to perdition.

At this time, six months into the regimen, I am happy to report 16 pounds off and 14 to go to meet my initial weight goal. Cook books that promote a healthy lifestyle are very much on my reading list lately. Salads and green vegetables are always present on my table. Virgin coconut oil, omega 3 oil, and fresh fruits low on sugar are slowly becoming an integral part of the new me into which my new body promises to evolve.

The primal diet, the flat belly diet, and the other sensible eating habits that nurture a healthy body are part of what I currently review throughout the week. The Internet makes it very easy to find recipes for turning tasteful the healthy foods that until recently I never consumed. Eating small portions of healthy food fills me up and stops the cravings for junk food that swallowed me before.

Granted, dark chocolate still plays a significant role in my daily routine. But it’s a small part and it’s not milk chocolate. Just that slight change toward the more healthy option has helped me cope with the cravings for other food, rich in sugar and unhealthy fat that constituted my former palate.

I find that having 6 oz of low fat (1%) dark chocolate milk before taking my walks provides me with energy and minimizes my anxiety over the hour-long walk ahead in the heat. Upon my return, I have another 6 oz. of the same milk. It washes off my thirst and restores me to my normal level of energy. Is it ideal for weight loss? Probably not, but those are the findings that reward me enough to carry on with the process. Would a dietician frown upon this? Undoubtedly. But it works for me, for now.

Hopefully you have gained some knowledge into a process that you should be considering for yourself. Eating healthily is a life-long process that goes hand in hand with daily exercise. Daily exercise prevents Alzheimer’s disease, according to Amen’s book, Change Your Life, Change Your Brain, and that’s convincing enough for me.

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It’s More Than 16 Months And The Troops Are Still Not Home

Posted on June 6, 2010 by Francisco

The entire presidential campaign of 2008 questioned and rejected our incursion into Iraq and the sustained presence of our troops in the Middle East. Barack would return them all home within sixteen months. Too bad nobody cares about the lies candidates spew during the campaign and no one holds them accountable as a result. No one cares about the troops abroad now because the winning party’s support is a majority made up of the sheeple who find it acceptable to be lied to. Just like during Bush/Cheney, we the people are expected to support all troops, at home or abroad, as it is our patriotic duty to do without question or objection; support of the military industrial compound is, once again, our obligation.  And truthfully, support for the men and women in the armed forces is no effort, for the troops are following orders they get paid to follow, and they live and die convinced of doing so to defend our country.

The troops defend our interests abroad, which are the interest of the multi-national corporations that bribe the politicians to do their bidding; but the troops do not see it that way. In their heart and in their mind, they are defending this country and risking their life to do it, which is a valiant and laudable sacrifice. They are getting killed and they are constantly under fire, far away from their loved ones in a quest for a better world, which is how they perceive their effort.

The sad reality is that the troops do the dirty work for the corporations who pay for the elections of the public officials who lie to enrich themselves and become powerful because as a society we value money and power, not how the money was earned or the power was achieved. It’s not the troops’ fault they are snookered into doing what they must do lest they be shot for treason after they sign up to see the world. In shying away from demanding the fulfillment of campaign promises, the American people are either complicit or ignorant. Either they know what is going on and they condone it for personal convenience or they are completely ignorant and do not reason or think.

They do not see themselves manipulated by the political parties that polarizes them in opposing camps, sway their opinion one way or another, and blind them into accepting only two contrasting black or white frames of thought, without perceiving the different shades of grey in between. I choose to think that they are ignorant and unable to think because the public schools fail them and do not teach them to be critical thinkers above anything else. It would be an unbearable world to assume they are all conveniently complicit.

The people only react to the political parties’ propaganda that stirs in them excessive fear and inordinate greed, the all too common denominators used by Hermann Göring in World War II. Sadly, despite having foretold during the last election that Barack’s promise would not be carried out and proven right by history, in the next election, Ron Paul will, once again, be laughed at, ridiculed, and ignored by the parties and despite having thousands upon thousands of supporters, Dr. Paul will be deemed too old, too stale, and too radical because the other parties will spend over a billion dollars to Dr. Paul’s ten to twenty million at best. He will be outspent regardless of how well he manages his advertising budget and once again, he will be a silenced voice because he runs out of money. Money talks and everything else is silent.

The vested interest of all federal employees and the military is far too large now for these same people to vote themselves out of a job. They all benefit from an ever increasing federal budget and an out of control federal government whose only ambitions are to expand further and to grab more power. The concept of reducing the federal government and its power goes hand in hand with the elimination of millions of federal jobs. Not a single federal employee or members of their family who benefit from the federal government–the largest employer in the land today, will vote for Ron Paul because if Ron Paul were to gain power and his views were generalized and adopted, the overwhelming majority of those jobs would be lost.

The USA today is already a socialist government with a centralized power structure. We are no longer the country of the Declaration of Independence or of the drafters of the Constitution. We are a western world version of China’s power structure, as repugnant as it may be for libertarians and Ron Paul supporters.

Posted in Politics, Uncategorized | Tagged , | 2 Comments

Personal Freedom versus Personal Responsibility

Posted on March 27, 2010 by Francisco

Currently, there is a national debate over health care that places personal freedom and personal responsibility in opposition to each other. The talking heads, the politicians, and the public through their representative groups’ leaders seem intent on presenting the argument as a choice between one and the other. This apparent conflict is truly not accurate.

An odd-lot made up of libertarians, tea partyists, republicans, democrats, independents, socialists, and populists objects vociferously to the recently enacted and highly controversial federal mandate that orders everyone in the US to purchase health insurance coverage by the year 2016 or face an additional tax for failing to meet the requirement of the law. This otherwise heterogeneous group of individuals use the Constitution as their weapon, trying to disarm the obligation society faces while meeting its just desire to place a safety net under every individual living in this country in the twenty-first century. As dissimilar as this group may be when each of its parts is isolated, its rallying cry, its loud objection unites them under a common denominator that labels the signed legislation unconstitutional.   

The objectors logically point to the Constitution because the revered document is the only leveler across all political divides. It is the generally respected document lending support to all who raise their voice for freedom and equality. Notwithstanding this, the years have proven the Constitution to be also a very flexible document that has lent itself across the centuries to many interpretations; even its unambiguous passages that would seem most explicit in their scope and meaning have undergone different interpretations along the span of so many years.

Unquestionably, the Constitution is today a very old document. It dates back to the time when advances in technology, in medical findings, and diagnostic testing were restricted to the application of leeches and bleedings to alleviate illness. The thinkers who drafted the document were exemplary individuals living in the eighteenth century, where life, as judged by today’s standards, was more regimented and orderly, unfolding slowly in a more homogeneous society. 

The framers of the Constitution were unable to predict that two centuries later the rise of conspicuous consumption would make it acceptable to live beyond one’s means. The Framers failed to grasp how the passing of the centuries engendered a new order of individuals more interested in pursuing hedonistic experiences than in assuming responsibility and acting appropriately. They never conceived of a Me Generation two centuries later.   

Without exception, the Framers were men of means. None was poor or indigent. They were progressive thinkers and well read men who remained abreast of the issues that threatened their newly established free experience:  insatiably powerful, despotic, repressive governments and intolerant religious institutions. The Framers took great care in protecting us against these excesses centuries later, despite our present day inclination to squander them. They were able thinkers whose primary concerns were the restriction of the power of a centralized government, the clear enumeration of inalienable rights attributed to individuals from birth, and the eradication of religious intolerance by separating religion altogether from government.

Far removed were the Framers from conceiving that more than two hundred years later municipalities would be facing the provision of health care to individuals who prefer to consume beyond their means instead of putting aside personal resources earmarked for potentially more difficult times.  Alien to them was the concept that poor, destitute, indigent individuals would overwhelm local, health delivery systems nearly three centuries later. Foreign to their intellectual abilities was the notion of complex illnesses that required intensive, chronic or routine care that could endanger the solvency of the municipalities onto which the cost of the delivery of these expensive medical procedures would be imposed.

Emphatically, the Constitution, as individuals are concerned, addresses the rights of citizens and the restrictions imposed on the powers of the federal government. The document does not address individual responsibilities nor does it address in any manner an inherent obligation individual citizens may have toward the society in which they live. Some would use this absence of explicit text to read into this void an inherent lack of obligations altogether. Others, take the opposite view. But in summary, it would seem that wielding the Constitution to determine the appropriateness of the law in question is a bit of a stretch.  Let’s face it, using the document today to base an objection to the assumption of personal responsibility over issues that arise in our present day society may seem self-servient and opportunistic.

The exercise of freedom is not libertine. Any individual’s freedom has limits. Others have rights too. Restraint is part of our liberties.  In essence, the exercise of our liberties is limited only by the rights and liberties of others. Furthermore, the respect for the rights of others is essential to the true spirit of liberty. We become libertines when we force others to defray the cost of goods or services we receive.

The exercise of liberty encompasses a tacit adherence to a code of ethics. Some would label it a moral code. As such, it is our moral obligation to foster liberty in others by enabling others to be and remain free. By imposing on others the cost for services we receive, we usurp their rights. We restrict others’ liberty by taking from them funds to pay for services that would otherwise be our personal responsibility. In simple terms, we are not being good citizens when we neglect to take care of our own needs.

It is our moral obligation as free citizens to ensure the proper and timely reimbursement of any and all expenses incurred by others while providing us with any service or care we require, especially, health care today when the cost of delivering such care is great. Certainly, those who object to the new law fail to recognize that it intends to correct a wrong that has plagued our municipalities for many years. The citizens who oppose the law on grounds of its constitutionality fail to recognize that the cost of health care, if not defrayed by private resources–savings or insurance–becomes an imposition on the rest of the communities across the nation. Their misguided objection to the exigency of payment from private resources creates two classes of citizens: the superior class and the inferior class. Clearly, any acceptance of this inequality of classes eradicates our liberty. Their classist stance conveys the message that one citizen is superior to another, for the superior citizen expects the inferior citizen to pay for the care and services the superior citizen receives with impunity.

When we go about our life without setting aside funds for potential times of need, we are assuming that others have the obligation to take care of us when our need arises. When we go years without assuming control of our later needs and obligations, we are relying on others to provide for us. When we fail to meet our financial obligations, we rely on others to pick up the slack. These are all evidence of infringements on the rights of others. We demonstrate a selfish attitude expecting others to take care of our needs. This reluctance to accept responsibility is not conducive to liberty and does not allow others to remain free. It places an unfair burden on our fellow citizens.

On these multiple current issues, the Framers were silent. They left it up to us to act according to the needs of our times with legislation that survives the legislative process and the separation of powers. The law on health care seeks to redress a collective wrong that has plagued our society equally as long as the advances in science and technology have been stressing the budget of communities across our land. 

All arguments are welcome. As always, comments and different points of view are explicitly encouraged.

Posted in Education, Family, Finances, General, Insurance, Politics | Leave a comment

Current Health Care Law Mandates Insolvency of Insurance Carriers

Posted on March 27, 2010 by Francisco

In repetition of something explained in one of my original blogs, insurance is not more than the substitution of a definite loss–the premium–in exchange for removing the potential for a larger financial loss if a covered peril occurs. It’s the payment of an insurance premium to eliminate a possibly larger loss if an insured peril occurs that would cause a devastating loss to the insured at a later date, during the time the policy remains in force.  The fuction word in any insurance contract is “potential,” for the insurance contract is only meant to cover against the eventuality of a potential loss if a covered peril occurs. It is not meant to address losses that are “certain” to take place.

The current Health Care law mandates the coverage of pre-existing conditions; in other words, it mandates coverage for losses that are certain to occur. This action on the part of the government de facto legislates insolvency on an insurance carrier.  Actuarially, either companies charge a premium large enough to cover a pre-existing condition to ensure adequate “reserves” to defray the losses or the insuance company forced to pay for them without adequate reserves will eventually fail. In this aspect, the government has overstepped its reach and its actions are questionable as to motivation and intent.

The purchase of life and health insurance coverages ahead of contracting or developing health conditions that would render us uninsurable is the responsible action we undertake when we purchase insurance while healthy. We clearly begin to incur a modical loss every time we pay a premium without incurring a loss, technically without having to, only to ensure coverage later, at the time an illness or death strikes while covered by insurance. It’s this principle of diverting funds early toward future obligations that works against the concept of “adverse selection.”  

Adverse selection occurs when an insurance company underwrites a peril that is inevitably going to occur. In other words, adverse selection takes place when a sick person seeks insurance coverage only after knowing an illness is present or death is imminent. With this current, legally imposed practice, the insurance carrier is unable to reserve or set aside funds with sufficient time to overcome the cost of the claim the company will have to pay on behalf of its insureds.

Some would construe that the new law is meant to drive insurance companies out of business in order to create the appropriate environment for the enactment of the “public option.” The public option places the government as the single payer of health claims and essentially eliminates competition. The elimination of private sector competition would either create a new bureaucratic entity altogether or it would expand considerably the existing government structure that currently dispenses Medicare benefits. Not only conspiracy theorists would have grounds to suspect cronyism and payment for political campaigns with government jobs by the continued and relentless expansion of the federal government as the true motivation behind this portion of the legislation.

It would be edifying to hear your arguments negating or concurring with these comments.

Posted in Finances, General, Insurance, Politics | Leave a comment