By Tom on 10/27/2009 9:56 AM

Harry Reid is sending a health care reform bill to the senate said to include "robust" public option. As this blog has maintained, no "Public Option" bill is sufficiently robust to wipe Reid's bottom. The logic underlying that is two-fold, one,  there's not enough money to fund the PO due to the subsidies now provided to the insurance industry under the "Advantage" aegis, and two, there will be enough fine print to ensure that the PO will suffer early programmed cell death. It's a scam, menwomen, intended to keep single payer off the table. Off the table, hell, in the outhouse.

Meanwhile that gifted seer and writer Gary Younge has a column in The Nation for October 26 titled Obama and the Decline of White America that will scare the PO out of you. Paraphrased, his  explanation is  that this Fall's outbreak of ugliness is the "unleashing of a panic" over loss of White supremacy. Younge has consistently displayed the ability to see behind the obvious and, boy, does he ever do it this time.

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By Tom on 10/25/2009 7:46 PM

This is a partial review of Ellen Brown's book of that title.I read the first half carefully then became overwhelmed by a bunch of case histories and decided the tone was turning polemical. So I skimmed the rest. At about 85 %, turning to recipes for reform, she does a good job on alternate currencies except at the end says they are not the answer, that the national mess has to be fixed. The final recipe was lengthy, and by now I had not the appetite to read it. The book does have a consistent theme, bank money is harmful. There is a paradox on the side: She ignores William Greider, the dean of US financial critics, but refers to the work of Bernard Lietaer, whom I regard as the dean summa cum laude of finance. Nobody has better creds. Plus, Lietaer actually plugs her book! In sum, I do think there is much solid information and fine critical thinking here. There is also a loose cannon of opinion rolling along. With a good edit this could be a very good book. Oh, by the way she gives no credit to Naomi Klein's...

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By Tom on 10/24/2009 8:32 AM

Listening to Richard Goldstone last night was an hour to remember. Partly the fascination was with that face, the lips barely moving, and with expression showing only at fleeting moments, like the sky attempting a sunburst. In whole, the fascination was with the precision of report and judgement. He never hesitated, hemmed nor hawed, although at moments of extreme effort to make a point he stuttered. I'm having trouble here to reach the heart of his take on things, so have to get specific. Here's Hiroshima. Moyers asked if it was a war crime. Goldstone was oblique. He said that under current perception of international law it was! My god what an answer. A somewhat similar pass was given the US when he was evaluating the IDF's degree of effort to protect non-combatants. Of course we all now know that point number one of the report was that the IDF deliberately targeted non-combatants. But here's his side comment: he said that the US military took exceptional care to avoid collateral harm to civilians! So here you...

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By Tom on 10/12/2009 8:59 AM

Last eve at the Vashon Theater, Peter Ray showed Robert Greenwald's documentary on Afghanistan which makes one sick to be an American. This morning I emptied my email box which wiped out my desire to create anything. Normally that is what gets me over my hangups -- the hotsies to do something. Best I can do is record the feeble twitching of overstressed neurons.

What's to be done in a country where a mother whose son was killed in Iraq gets attacked by the police, sound cannon, tear gas, the works? There is no hope for this country. There is hope that small cells of outrage will form within which one can cling to a raft. Alone, facing shocks like done to Sheehan, one feels impotent, wants off the daily duty to honor the gift of life. Problem is, here on Vashon there is little concerted recognition that Vashon is the only peopling we can control. Am I making this clear? There is no possibility of getting Congress to stop warring and start saving the US from hell. Mexico either. There is only one front on...

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By Tom on 9/15/2009 11:02 AM

Today, Sep 15. Dennis Kucinich charted the passage of public option health care legislation through Congress. He said it will fail in the Senate and the final bill will be horrible. I won't, could not,  dispute his prediction but can offer a different view on that loss in the Senate. Dennis kind of implies that the PO is desirable, although he maybe just didn't want to clutter his prediction, and can safely assume that everybody knows he is for SP period.  So here's my take: The PO thing was from the start a fake candidate. The administration's plan is to keep SP out of the debate by drawing attention to the " next best", "step in the right direction" PO.  PO of course would then conveniently die, from natural and inflicted causes.

A few months ago I ventured an explanation of why the PO would fail, calling it the "free lunch" analysis. In retrospect that logic was off some, but no matter. As to the title of this post, I think it refers to something Dennis said.

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By Tom on 8/31/2009 8:03 AM

The news on the web is so disheartening as to shut down a person's appetite for life. There is no hope for improved health care, no hope for US leadership on climate, and no hope for the US to pull back from grabbing turf.  The latter may be the first to get some real attention for in grabbing turf we compete with our banker, China. I used to think that the people you least want to have mad at you were the Turks. Then I heard that it was the Persians. But now I think it is the Chinese. That's a flip observation on Chinese-US relations, so here's a more serious view: we are borrowing from China to fund our conquest of Asia minor and South Asia. How to lose friends and irritate your enemy in one easy lesson. Dear Blog, forgive me for rattling on with loose nuts and bolts, for I don't have a clue what's going to happen. The only thing I am sure of is that Vashon is blind to national concerns. Our two newspapers rarely get beyond the immediate, and that's our fault not theirs. If you think I am only upset because...

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By Tom on 8/24/2009 1:04 PM

Greetings to Dan in Spokane. It's nice to hear from you and fortunate I caught your post, because I gave up looking for comment about a year ago. Peak and shrink, huh? Haven't studied as much on that as you clearly have. The best job on Peak Oil I've read is the one in the Transition Handbook.  By the way. I don't know properly how to respond to a response. That's howcome the use of this blog space.

Tom

By Tom on 8/23/2009 7:43 PM

Whereas the insurance industry will put paid to single payer, the climate will change willy nilly, the fifty-first state will be a state of war, and Wall Street will steal the very paving from Main Street, there shall be established a Society which is dedicated to the idea that Vashon can, and should, become self-sufficient in all matters of physical well-being. The attempt to get there could lead to Vashon finding a concerted voice that will cry out in outrage over US disregard for humanity. And so the heart of the dedication is that in survival we may find redemption. There will be no dues nor officers, no agenda nor schedule of meetings. The only by-law is prohibition of saying it won’t work. The Society will meet at the Café Luna. (Sent to the Beachcomber in August 2009. Unlikely to be published as sent too close to my last submission.)

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By Tom on 8/18/2009 9:20 AM

To The Loop. Health care in the year 2009 is about to get worse. The reason is that funding for existing government health care, Medicare and Medicaid, will be threatened by what ever bill gets passed: there’s zero possibility of any good coming out of the posturing and deception in congress. Another bad harbinger is that health industry lobbyists outnumber congress six to one. Maybe you differ, but maybe you will agree that Vashon should do something. One possibility I’m hearing is that we look into a self-contained single payer plan. The grail is that by eliminating paperwork we can save so much as to fund not only basic care but actually build up a reserve for corrective surgery. The national hope is dead, state hope is very slim, but Vashon hope for single payer is viable. For those having trouble sorting out the posturing and deception, the crux of the health care situation is easy to describe: it is not health care at all but instead is a commodity in which to invest for profit. Look at it this way, do...

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By Tom on 8/16/2009 2:07 PM

The Beachcomber's report August 5th on cooperation between five Island human services organizations speaks well of many people. It also is a harbinger of Vashon sharing California’s current economic fate. That disaster and dozens of lesser ones around the country are a painful re-learning of the downside of having a central bank: a downward pressure from bad loans in just one sector can spread through the network of national and private banks to the whole country like a hypodermic shot in an artery. But Vashon could defy the harbinger if it were to put in place an alternate dual currency of the proper sort. The details of such a currency are for the most part available but it has not caught hold with more than a handful of very worried islanders. The reason is that using a non-central dollar currency is like re-arranging life from the comfortable norm to one so new as to be deeply disturbing. There are some tough knots to untie in creating the dual alternate but none nearly as tough as the change in style of living....

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