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 About Hans THE FOUNDING FATHERS SET THIS COUNTRY ON A COURSE THAT MADE US THE MOST POWERFUL, MOST PROSPEROUS, MOST COMPASSIONATE AND, PERHAPS FOR A WHILE, THE MOST MORAL NATION ON EARTH. In recent years we have drifted away from first principals, to increased government involvement in our economy and our lives, denial of our religous foundations, creation of inefficient bureaucracies and sometimes ineffective, often counter productive, social programs ---- encroaching upon our liberty and dissipating our wealth. All of the Federal Government’s major programs are now on the brink of financial failure: Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, even the US Postal Service. Despite this highly flawed record, our Federal Government is proceeding to take over the management of health care, one sixth of our economy. We need to return to first principals as embodied in the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights as explained in the Federalist Papers. Precisely this is my position. --- a position shared by Mrs. B, known to her friends as Tish. 
About Tish |
About Putin and Trump
October 21, 2015 If circumstances developed where the United States became un-united with each state being a separate country and if a leader emerged with reunification as his mission, he would be seen as a patriot and his mission, a noble one. Putin is in that position. Distressed by the collapse of the Soviet Union, he recognizes that reunification is not possible but seeks to rebuild Russia to its former role as a world power. He is a Russian patriot and, from the view point of Russians, his mission is a noble one. A powerful Russia can be a threat to the U.S. or it can be a benefit, depending upon OUR policy. A mutually supportive, closely integrated relationship with Russia in pursuit of a common goal, namely the destruction of radical Islam, is a possible and highly desirable goal. The first step toward that goal is to stop demonizing Putin and talk to him. Trump is the only one with the common sense to take the first step in that direction. No One in Washington, including the President and seasoned legislators, has the foresight to leave the door open to this positive goal. This alone is sufficient reason to elect Trump. If a Trump-Carson ticket were to develop, election would be highly probable, in my opinion and, hopefully, that will happen.
President Obama and the Roots of Racism
In a statement that aired on December 8th, President Obama said that racism is "deeply rooted in our society, deeply rooted in our history".
Let's take a closer look at these roots.
No one can deny that regrettable part of our history where blacks were seen and treated as inferior because they were slaves or former slaves or descendants of slaves. Nor should it be denied that there are hostile feelings against blacks on the part of some whites today.
Does the President really believe that there is a carryover to this day of historical racism with its roots in slavery? That people who think ill of blacks do so because of some association with slavery?
Historical racism was real but it vanished generations ago. No rational person, however prejudiced, relates their feelings for blacks to slavery.
If the historical roots are absent today and they are, then what is the cause of current ill feelings, current racism?
Extreme anti-white rhetoric by some black leaders who ignore the $22 trillion spent in the War on Poverty, the disintegration of the black family structure and it's effect on black youth and that a white majority elected and reelected a black President --- these are, in part, the reason for the recent resurgence of racial tensions.
Racial division is bad for America. Fortunately current racial tensions are NOT deep rooted but a reaction to an accumulation of relatively recent events. If the next election provides us leaders that are healers rather than dividers, --- we'll get over this.
Ukraine has always had a “special significance” for Russia and failure to understand that “was a fatal mistake.” (1)
That has been the position here in article after article.
The Secretary's concern seems to be focused on economic discussions/agreements between the European Union and Ukraine which excluded Russia, but problems started much earlier with US/NATO expansion toward Russian borders beginning in 1999.
These were unwarranted provocative acts which started the confrontation and were clearly a mistake in that they made the world a far more dangerous place.
Someone with the knowledge and wisdom of Secretary Kissinger is badly needed in our government to advise the President.
(1) http://rt.com/news/203795-kissinger-warns-cold-war/
On the 50th anniversary of the War on Poverty, an article in the New York Times (1) displayed this graph which tells an amazing story that you will not hear from today's liberal dominated media, a major point being ---
The only substantive benefit to the poor over this half century came from competitive-free-enterprise-driven innovation and cost reduction and not from the $22 trillion dollars spent on welfare programs.
The article acknowledges the benefit to the poor, clear from the red lines in the graph, with the observation :
"Is a family with a car in the driveway, a flat-screen television and a computer with an Internet connection poor? Americans — even many of the poorest — enjoy a level of material abundance unthinkable just a generation or two ago".
Regarding the $22 trillion dollars spent on the War on Poverty, many analysts (2,3,4) concluded that it was money wasted. Other than the benefits cited above, the poor are no better off today. Massive welfare simply doesn't produce the desired result of leading people out of poverty.
But it's actually worse than that. Welfare resulted in major damage to the traditional family structure of the black community in causing illegitimacy to go from 25% to 72.3% over this time span as discussed in the article below.
The Wealth Spread
Liberals seem distressed by the fact that the entrepreneurs that generated the wealth that everyone is benefitting from are also benefitting generously.
This is seen as a problem that needs to be corrected. How? By spending. "Democrats have generally argued that addressing this disjunction requires providing more support for the poor ---".
However, they are not adverse to feathering their own nests. Academia, the seat of liberalism, has helped itself to the largest cost increase by far of any sector; see uppermost green line. Note also that as government involvement with healthcare increased through growth of Medicare/Medicaid, cost increased while all private sectors produced lower costs, green Health care line .
Not the conclusions the New York Times drew, but facts speak for themselves.
(1) http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/01/business/economy/changed-life-of-the-poor-squeak-by-and-buy-a-lot.html?_r=0
THE MOYNIHAN REPORT, THE REVERENDS AND FERGUSON
In 1965 Daniel Patrick Moynihan, then Assistant Secretary of Labor, distressed by poverty in the negro community and by an illegitimacy rate of 25%, proposed a plan of assistance called "The Negro Family: The Case for National Action" or the "Moynihan Report". Moynihan made a compelling argument to provide vocational training and educational programs for the Black community to increase incomes so that African-American men could support families.
The report was condemned by the Rev. Jesse Jackson, and the Rev. Al Sharpton because it blamed blacks for their own troubles. The problem, as they saw it, was white racism and the solution they supported instead, in essence, was to provide compensation for the victims (1). They got their way.
Compensation included financial support for out-of-wedlock child bearing. In other words, teenagers were paid to get pregnant. The result was an increase in illegitimacy from the 25% that distressed Moynihan to the current staggering 72.3%, largely destroying the African-American family structure, blame for which can be laid directly at feet of the Reverends.
These same Reverends are now in Washington at the invitation of the President to find solutions to the Ferguson issue.
That the off-spring of teen aged single mothers may not have had the best of upbringging's will not be talked about. It's the bad cops that's the problem. Right.
(1) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Negro_Family:_The_Case_for_National_Action
1. Why did African-American witnesses falsify events at Ferguson?
Did the President exacerbate the problem by lending credence to the false "victim narrative"?
It seems likely that Russian support for Ukrainian dissident is limited by Putin's desire, at this time, to maintain plausible deniability. Sending in "volunteers", private equipment etc instead of the regular army is, perhaps, how this is being handled.
Since Russia is being accused of direct involvement and is being sanctioned accordingly, there is little incentive to continue this limited involvement. Russia might just as well do what it is being accused of by moving in militarily, declaring the dissident regions independent of Ukraine and militarily protecting their independence.
This is a possible outcome of current poorly conceived policy.
Quotes from articles below:
August 30, 2014:
May 22, 2014:
April 6, 2014:
The predicted response, in-kind counter reactions and escalation appear to have started:
November 12, 2014:*
" we have to maintain (Russia's) military presence in the western Atlantic and eastern Pacific, as well as the Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico" -- including sending bombers "as part of the drills."
"In many respects, this is connected with the situation in Ukraine, with fomentation of anti-Russian moods on the part of NATO and reinforcement of foreign military presence next to our border," he said, apparently referring to Operation SaberStrike.
Shoigu also said Russia will expand its presence in the Arctic region, which could affect Alaska and northern Canada.
This includes full radar coverage of that region by year's end, leaving Russia ready "to meet unwanted guests" both from the north and east by 2015, Shoigu said, according to a state-run TASS news agency report.
That means Russia's new drills will fly near most of America's coastline, said Barry Pavel, an international security expert at the Washington-based Atlantic Council think tank.
"We're talking about ringing the United States, ---" Pavel said.
* quoted from http://www.cnn.com/2014/11/13/world/europe/russia-bombers-plan/index.html
For almost all of the last century, the US has faced enemies that sought to spread a suppressive governance system world-wide by force: the Communist Soviet Union, Nazi Germany and now, Islam.
Russia appears to have no such ambitions. All of the territory that is now Ukraine was part of the Soviet Union under control of Moscow as recently as 1991. The haphazard dissolution of the Soviet Union left many Russian going to bed one night as citizens living in their homeland, only to wake up the next morning as foreigners in a foreign land.
President Putin's efforts can be seen as attempting to correct, in part, the mishandling of the Soviet dissolution and bring Russian speaking persons that wish to do so, back under one roof. You may or may not agree with this action -- but it does NOT constitute a threat to the US.
What does constitute a threat is (a) the unreasonable and unnecessary provocation* of a country with nuclear capability comparable to our own which has, so far, sought only peaceful and friendly relations with us and (b) this administration minimizing the real threat, namely Islam.
* such as Operation SaberStrike , US led NATO military execises on Russia's border.
When a government agency completes its mission and the highly paid leadership faces losing their jobs, there is incentive to prevent this income loss. Continuing with a redefined mission is one of several ways to hang onto the good jobs. One of Murphy's Laws deals with this mode of bureaucratic perpetuation.
U.S. agencies in existence long after completing their mission are not uncommon. Heritage Foundation (1) lists 10, such as the depression era REA, the Rural Electrification Administration.
It is not known if job retention was the real reason for extending the life of these agencies but it very well could have been a factor.
NATO completed it's mission in the Cold War in 1991 with the disbanding of the Warsaw Pact and the dissolution of the Soviet Union. However, NATO was not disbanded. Bill Bradley, three term Senator from New Jersey, Rhodes Scholar and Hall of Fame Basketball star found this and related NATO activity to be "A Diplomatic Mystery" (2). When smart people find no reasonable explanation for an act, it leaves the door open for a less-than-reasonable explanation.
With NATO now making military threats and Russia retaliating by testing U.S. Air defenses in Alaska --- thereby moving the world a step closer to catastrophe, one cannot help but wonder if something as trivial as NATO job retention was a factor in the current crisis.
(1) Scott Hodge, ED052997: Top 10 Obsolete Government Programs
(2) Bill Bradley, "A Diplomatic Mystery" Foreign Policy August 24, 2009
On this Administrations Policy Opposite Russia and the Ukraine
"Those who do not know history's mistakes are doomed to repeat them"
Part 1
This administrations' belief that punishing Russia can bring about a change in behavior is naive and dangerous.
To understand President Putin's purposes one needs to look back at events in the Soviet Union in the late 1980's and early 1990's.
The police state under Stalin was a horror. Millions of Soviet citizens were murdered, sometimes for the least deviations from the party line. The bureaucracy was frozen with fear. Matters were a bit better but still bad under subsequent leaders, until Mikhail Gorbachev came along. He brought freedom to the Soviet Union.
Totally unaccustomed to freedom, Soviet bureaucracy behaved erratically. On December 8, 1991, in a snowbound dacha in the Belavezhaskaya forest near Minsk, surely over an ample supply of vodka, the leaders of the three largest Soviet Republics, Russia, Belarus and Ukraine, elevated themselves from subservience to a central leader to CEO's of their own republics by dissolving the Soviet Union. A few days later, the leaders of eleven of the twelve remaining Republics gave themselves similar promotions, finalizing the demise of the Soviet Union.
Russians, living in their homeland one day, found themselves foreigners in a foreign land the next day.
Part 2
An alternative view is that of the Whitehouse, namely that Putin's actions are part of a grand plan to restore the Soviet Empire, initially by placing agents into the Ukraine to stir up trouble to provide a pretext for intervention. Onsite investigation by reporters for both Time Magazine and the New York Times found no evidence to support this position (1,2).
Russia paid dearly for freedom, coming down from a position of dominance where they controlled most of Europe east of Berlin, to a single Republic, with NATO at its borders, subjected to scolding by an ill-informed U.S. President.
Germany after WWI revisited.
The West, under current Whitehouse leadership, has created the incentive for Russia to find a way to respond. The response is likely to be an anti-western Asian Alliance led by Russia and China. The gas deal was, perhaps, the first step in that direction.
Besides leaving our children and grandchildren a mountain of debt, this President will leave them a world far more dangerous than when he took office.
(1)http://time.com/74405/exclusive-pro-russian-separatists-eastern-ukraine/
Background on the Crimea Issue: A Contrarian Opinion
"I've tried to untangle a mystery that has bothered me -- and tainted U.S. relations with Russia -- for nearly two decades: Just how exactly did the United States end up expanding NATO into Eastern Europe after the Cold War, when NATO's ostensible purpose would seem to have expired along with the Soviet Union itself?"
A fair question considering that the opponent of NATO, the Warsaw Pact, disbanded on March 31, 1991, that the Soviet Union dissolved itself on December 26, 1991 and that the last Russian troops left Germany in August 1994.
The expansion the Senator refers to is the move of NATO in March 1999 into Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic, in March 2004 into Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovenia, Bulgaria and Rumania and in April 2009 into Albania and Croatia --- thereby surrounding western Russia.
"The Russians insist that NATO expansion violated an explicxit promise ---. During a trip to Moscow, Mikhail Gorbachev -- told me that -- U.S. Secretary of State James Baker -- said, "look, if you remove your troops and allow unification of Germany in NATO, NATO will not expand one inch to the east."" This Baker-Gorgachev meeting took place on February 9, 1990.
"When I spoke with Baker, he agreed that he told Gorbachev that if the Soviet Union allowed German reunification and membership in NATO, the West would not expand NATO "one inch to the east." But "the east," for Baker, meant East Germany -- not Eastern Europe."
Baker's revision of what he meant by "east" seems disingenuous but even if it were not, over 9 years elapsed from the time of the Baker promise to the NATO expansion. No opportunity arose during those years before Russian troop pullout to have the "east ambiguity" clarified? Sorry, not believable. The expansion may have been in our security interest but a major and understandable provocation of Russia.
"Americans have not only denied it (the promise), but seem quite unaware of how much this dispute has haunted U.S. dealings with Russia."
NATO takeover of formerly Russian controlled eastern Europe after promising not to do so was a major humiliation to Russia. President Putin wants no further NATO expansion in his backyard, a reasonable position. Ejection of a Russian favoring Ukraine President and replacing him with ad hoc western-leaning leadership is what Russia is reacting to in their acquisition of Crimea.
No further expansion of NATO near Russian borders is not an unreasonable request. Crimean's voted overwhelmingly to join Russia and their will should be honored. Making these relatively minor concessions is far more likely to settle the issues than provocative sanctions and threats which invite in-kind counter reactions and escalation.
Our current policy is akin to "piling on" after beating an opponent to the ground. We're better than that and should act accordingly.
If the shoe were on the other foot --- if Russia were doing to us what we are doing and have done to them -----
1. Russia, after promising not to do so, makes military alliances with countries near US except neighboring Mexico (Ukraine).
How would all that sit with you?
The Crimea Issue
The map immediately below shows the territories controlled by NATO (peach color) and by Russia (Warsaw Pact countries, yellow color) at the end of the cold war in 1989. The map below that is current. Outlined in green dots is the territory over which Russia lost control since end of the cold war. (Click on maps to enlarge). Crimea just voted to rejoined Russia. In 2008, South Ossetia voted overwhelmingly to secede from Georgia which it did with the aid of Russia. These recovered areas of influence are a tiny fraction of the buffer zone to the west that Russia once enjoyed.
This former buffer zone did not just go neutral. It was largely filled by NATO, a military alliance led, for all practical purposes, by the US. NATO put a military presence close to, and in the cases of Latvia and Estonia, directly on the Russian border. Currently US led military exercises are being conducted in these border countries (Operation Saber Strike).
These are facts.
President Kennedy considered going to go to war over Russian millitary activities in nearby Cuba. Are our activities on Russia's borders any less provocative?
This is a complex situation and not the simple, "we're good guys, you are bad guys doing bad things that you need to stop",--- the way our legislators and the media are presenting it.
Liberals February 8, 2014 Most liberals are intelligent people strongly motivated to help the less fortunate. Intelligent but not smart, in being ignorant of, or ignoring, the harmful unintended consequences (see entry July 28, 2013) of their programs. They appear to be totally in the dark on how normal human self-interest corrupts their well-intentioned programs. They appear to be so convinced of the virtue of their goals that lying, distorting, misuse of power, character assassination are all means that arejustified. For evidence, observe the day-to-day performance of our liberal-in-chief. Affordable Care Act based on fallacies January 1, 2014 The Affordable Care Act is based on two fallacies: (1) that the critical problem with healthcare is lack of availability to the poor and (2) that health insurance can be equated to healthcare. Both, of course, are untrue but much of the country has been persuaded to believe it. Medical ethics requires that medical services be provided to all that need it whether they can pay or not. The ACA substitutes an entitlement for ethically mandated charitable healthcare services, providing a greater degree of dignity to some. That is the sole real benefit of the Affordable Care Act. In providing this marginal benefit it locks in, through federal law, a badly flawed healthcare pricing system where the need for reform is critical --- that, among a host of other problems.
Healthcare Pricing: A Flawed System of Imbalanced Incentives December 27, 2013 Prior to the 1960's when health insurance was a rarity, consumers determined what they spent on healthcare (HC). Costs remained under 6% of GDP. Today in Singapore, where the consumer has control over HC expenditures with HC savings accounts, HC costs are less than 4% of GDP and have been so for decades. Today in the US, consumers have little say, insurers and HC providers determining how the consumers HC money is spent. Costs are at 18% of GDP and rising. Near term, the incentive of insurers coincides with that of consumers, namely cost containment. Long term however, this incentive match breaks down, the insurer benefiting from higher costs which mean a greater volume of business and bigger profits. The incentive is to progressively provide more generous approved charges resulting in higher HC costs and higher insurance premiums. HC costs could not have risen to the current 18% of GDP without the concurrence of insurers. No wrong doing is implied. We have a flawed system of imbalanced incentives, reminiscent of events of a century ago that led to anti-trust laws, that needs to be corrected legislatively. The Affordable Care Act: The Worst from Both Sides of the Political Spectrum December 16, 2013 The Affordable Care Act locks into place, through federal law, a corrupted conservative program(1) and the results of failed liberal programs(2) producing results harmful to the majority of Americans. (1) Conservatives believe in free markets operating on a level playing field. Healthcare financing is a free market operating on a distinctly uneven playing field tilted to the advantage of healthcare providers and insurers and to the disadvantage of the public, i.e. costs rising from less than 6% to 18% of the nations annual wealth production and projected to go higher, since insurance-driven replaced consumer-driven healthcare pricing. (2) Incentive and family destroying hand-out programs which included financially rewarding illegitimate childbearing, contributing to illegitimacy rates now at 73% in some groups, and producing offspring unprepared to earn decent salaries --- despite their history of failure, are again offered as health insurance hand-outs. JUST A REMINDER: Consumer-driven healthcare costs:
Insurance-driven Healthcare costs, current US: 18% of GDP, not constant but continually increasing. Highest in the world. Healthcare quality: 38th in the world according to the World Health Organization.
My friends: Hans, have you gone mad? You want to burden us with more government rules?
The nation is currently at risk due to healthcare costs for reasons, I believe, that are somewhat similar to the circumstance of a century ago. See if the following argument makes sense.
It is normal for healthcare costs to increase when the costs of everything else is increasing. However, the fraction of the nations annual wealth production devoted to healthcare should not increase unless the nations demographics are changing. An aging population is a legitimate reason for increases in the % GDP devoted to healthcare.
Earlier in our history, prior to the 1960's, healthcare costs remained stable at less than 6% of GDP because no dramatic shifts in demographics were occurring. In Singapore which has a relatively stable, young population, healthcare costs have remained at about 4% of GDP for decades.
Then how do you account for the increase in the % GDP going to healthcare in the US from 1965, to before aging baby boomer had an impact, say 1995? The reason is not demographics. The reason is that a major change occurred in how healthcare charges are determined, one that threatens Americans' financial wellbeing and that needs to be addressed legislatively ---- namely a change from consumer-driven to insurance-driven pricing.
Prior to the 1960's when health insurance was a rarity, cost was a consideration in the doctors office just as it is today when shopping at Wal-Mart or the local deli.
Questions like "how much does it cost?", "do I really need it?", "is there a less costly way of getting the result?" were routinely asked and answered. The negotiation was between buyer and seller both of whom were negotiating in their own best interests. That constutes consumer-driven pricing. As said, costs stayed under 6% of GDP.
As the use of health insurance grew, healthcare costs were determined increasingly by negotiation between healthcare providers and insurers. The negotiation was between a seller having a direct interest in the outcome and a surrogate, namely the insurer, representing the buyer but not the buyer himself. That constitutes imbalanced incentives favoring the provider. That's insurance-driven pricing.
These imbalanced incentives played out exactly as one might expect, with the provider gaining a larger portion of the GDP in an almost straight line from about 6% in 1965 to the current 18%.
To make matters worse, the incentive of insurers is ambiguous. Near term, the incentive is for cost containment. Long term, the insurer benefits from higher costs which mean a greater volume of business and bigger profits. The result is more generous approved amounts, higher healthcare costs and higher premiums. Healthcare costs could not have risen to the current 18% of GDP without the concurrence of insurers.
Instead of the negotiation being between buyer and seller, it is a bit like seller and seller deciding what to charge the buyer.
There is no wrong doing on anyones part. It's a faulty system of imbalanced incentives that needs to be corrected.
My friends: But it's been the system for almost half a century. If what you say is the problem, why wasn't it recognized long before now?
Hans: I don't know, but consider this. Between 1965 and 2013, the proportion of the nations wealth production going to healthcare tripled but at a rate of only 1/4% per year, so low as to be barely noticeable --- until the aggregate impact began to pinch, raising the question, how did we get here?
That the Tea Party are extremists opposing needed healthcare reform appears to be the position of virtually all Democrats and an uncomfortable number of Republicans --- when the exact opposite is true.
Extreme are the changes the Obama administration is promoting in attempting to convert a society traditionally productive and self-reliant to one dependent on government, putting into the hands of politicians and bureaucrats authority for decisions that we formerly made for ourselves.
The Tea Party are ordinary people fighting to retain our traditional values: fiscal responsibility, constitutionally limited government and free markets. Being ordinary people in an arena dominated by skilled spin-masters they appear clumsy and make minor mistakes providing the opportunity for the spin-masters to turn the truth upside down.
Now that the administration has been caught in a succession of lies is it not time to call attention to the big Tea Party lie?
Two interpretations:
2. The ongoing program to grow the population of voters dependent upon or obligated to the government/Democratic Party, has succeeded to the extent that now 39% will support him regardless of performance.
What will that number be when votes resulting from Obamacare and immigration giveaways are harvested?
The feature common to President Obama's programs is that they grow the population of voters dependent upon or obligated to the government/Democratic Party, presumably with the goal of making the Democratic Party undefeatable. Of these programs, Obamacare is the most ambitious and, contrary to the hopes and wishes of conservatives, it is working as intended.
Huge numbers are flocking to the free Medicaid provisions of Obamacare; if not current, surely future Democratic voters. That's the real goal and it is being met.
The Obamacare-introduction-glitches will soon be fixed and lead to the "discovery" that the program is a financial disaster. Obama: "You will get more for less". Come on!
The ground work for dealing with this problem has already been laid. Obama folks have shown that they can sell
raising the National Debt to "meet our obligations" and raising taxes so "the wealthy do their fair share". These tunes will be played again.
Now Obama wants to move on to harvest the next group of voters with immigration reform.
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Former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger has given a chilling assessment of ---the Ukrainian crisis, warning of a possible new Cold War and calling the West’s approach to the crisis a “fatal mistake.” --- If the West wants to be “honest,” it should recognize, that it made a “fatal mistake"
In August 2009, Bill Bradley, Hall of Fame basketball player, Rhodes scholar, and former three-term Democratic U.S. Senator from New Jersey 
Healthcare Costs: Time for New Soft Anti-trust Rules?
Obama Strategy Right on Target