Category: Weird thoughts about impeachment

OK, so the Dems want to impeach Trump because he beat Hillary and is dismantling a lot of their pet programs, many of which are on shaky legal ground. Understood. But what is going on with the CIA, the FBI and the State Department? Why are George Kent, Bill Taylor, John Brennan, James Comey, Marie Yovanovich, Susan Rice, and so many others opposing the president, whose job it is to set foreign policy? What is it with the FISA warrants and the unmaskings and the whistleblower and all that?

Simple. It’s all about Russia and China.

Russia has been treated as an enemy of the Unites States since the Truman Doctrine in 1947. The CIA was founded by Truman to keep an eye on the Soviets. The FBI made many of its most famous busts (after Al Capone) of Russian spies. The State Department has coordinated US policy against the Russians for over seventy years. Every senior diplomat in the US cut their teeth on opposition to the Soviets and Russia. It’s what they know. It’s ALL they know.

China, in contrast, has been a friend of the United States since 1972, when Henry Kissinger negotiated a trip by Richard Nixon to visit Mao Tse-Dong. China had been an ally of the United States against Japan in the Second Word War, but there was tension — and the Korean War — from the rise of the communists in China. The theory was that, if we were friends with China, and they become more capitalist, then surely political freedom would follow. We let them into the WTO, and they ate our lunch. Former State Department officials like Henry Kissinger and Madeline Albright have made millions consulting for US companies relocating manufacturing to China. Meanwhile, China is actually cracking down on freedoms, with the Uighurs, with Falun Gong, with Hong Kong.

When the Soviet Union broke up in 1991, there was an opportunity to be friends with Russia. We had been friends before, in allying against the Nazis, and that was with Stalin. We certainly don’t have problems being friendly with people who aren’t exactly saints. The big fly in the ointment? George H. W. Bush, who had been head of the CIA and ambassador to China. Do you see it now?

So what’s the current kerfuffle all about? What the hell is it with Ukraine, anyway? And Syria, too, for that matter? Simple. Naval bases.

Russia has six major naval bases. St. Petersburg, Kaliningrad, Murmansk, Vladivostok, Tartus, and Sebastopol. St. Petersburg is iced in over the winter. Kaliningrad isn’t iced in, but it isn’t contiguous to Russia. Poland and the Baltics are in between, much as Canada is between the main part of the US and Alaska. Murmansk is iced in much of the year, and it is primarily a submarine base. Vladivostok is north of Korea, and the Russians actually have to heat the harbor to keep it open all winter.

Which leaves Tartus and Sebastopol. Tartus is in Syria, a base Bashar al Assad leases to the Russians. Do you see now why Russia will support the Assad regime against all comers? Tartus is a warm-water base on the Mediterranean, where Russian ships can be serviced without transitting the Dardanelles and the Bosporus Strait through Turkey.

As for Sebastopol, in the Crimea, the naval base there was founded by the Russians in 1783, before the US even had the Constitution. The city of Sebastopol was actually founded to support the naval base, because if you’re going to have a naval base, you need a place for all the hookers and bartenders to live, as well as a railhead for supplies.

So how the hell did the Crimea end up with Ukraine?

In the 1930s, there was a movement in Ukraine to break off from the USSR. Stalin starved Ukraine, and millions died. When Stalin died in 1953, Khrushchev took over. Whereas Stalin had been from Georgia, a neighbor and rival of Ukraine, Khrushchev had been born near the Russian-Ukraine border. He made nice with the Ukrainians, transferring Crimea and the Donbass to the Ukrainian SSR. This was all still within the USSR, so, no problem.

When the Soviet Union broke up, however, the Ukraine split off, and took Crimea and the Donbass — which are completely ethnically Russian; no Ukrainians there at all — with them, including the naval base at Sebastopol. This was still not a problem, because the Ukrainian government was pro-Russian.

Enter our heroes, the CIA and the State Department. Yes, that’s sarcasm. US stated policy was “regime change” in Syria. What does that mean to Russia? No more Tartus naval base. Oops. And we actively worked to support pro-Western politicians in Ukraine, and pushed for Ukraine membership in the EU and NATO. This would put the Russians’ naval base in Sebastopol — which has been theirs for 236 years — in NATO, an organization formed to oppose the Russians. Oops.

Why the hell would we do that? These aren’t in our national interest. No, but they are directly opposed to the Russians’ national interest in a major way. We’ll show those guys. So Putin continues to support Bashar al Assad, and he took the Crimea and the Donbass back from the Ukraine in 2014, after the election of a pro-Western government. We’ve made Putin out to be the huge big bad guy over this, but ANY Russian leader, even the most enlightened, would have done the exact same thing.

Meanwhile, we continue to be friends with China, while they steal our technology, round up the Uighurs into concentration camps, practice religious oppression against the Falun Gong, welch on their treaty obligations over Hong Kong, and cheat on WTO rules.

WTF?

So Trump, when campaigning, said China was the problem, and wondered aloud why we couldn’t be friends with Russia. This was a huge threat to the established order in the CIA, FBI, and the State Department. All these people have been fighting the Russians for decades. It’s all they know. If Trump made friends with the Russians, all their Russia-fighting credentials — and funding — are gone. Can you imagine the interview questions? “So, uh, what else do you know? Anything?” All their clout, all their experience, all their influence depends on the US being enemies with Russia.

The reason we’re on the side of the Ukraine, which is the most corrupt country in Europe, is because they’re fighting with the Russians. Ukraine should just give Crimea and the Donbass back to Russia. Problem solved. But you heard George Kent testify on Wednesday that the cornerstone of US policy on Ukraine is the “security of an intact Ukraine.” Notice that key phrase, “intact Ukraine.” Meaning, taking Crimea and the naval base from the Russians.

The reason we’re in favor of regime change in Syria is because that would deny the Russians the naval base in Tartus. It has nothing to do with Bashar al Assad being a bad ruler. There’s a ton of those guys around. Why is this guy so important? Because we can cost the Russians another naval base. Bwahahahaha.

We continue to have troubles with Russia — expensive troubles, over issues important enough to Russia to go to war over — because we have a bunch of career people in Washington whose whole career is worthless without troubles with Russia.

And that’s why the foreign policy establishment hates Trump. He would remake US foreign policy to reflect current realities, which would make them irrelevant.

Category: Weird thoughts about systemic racism

Oh, I’ll probably get in trouble for this one. What the hell, here goes.

There’s a lot of talk about systemic racism among the Democratic presidential candidates lately. America is a racist country, etc. I want to agree in part and disagree in part.

First, let’s face it, most of the wealth, power, and cool shit in this country is in the possession and control of white people. That is, I think, not realistically contestable.

But there are a lot of black people and Asian people who have also made a lot of money, wield a lot of power, or have a lot of cool shit. And there are a lot — the vast majority — of white people who don’t have any of it. So it’s clearly not race, or not just race, that determines those outcomes.

I’ve also heard about young black people being excoriated by their friends for “acting white” when they study, speak proper English, or eschew drugs and dressing like a gangbanger.

The confluence of those facts led me to a stunning realization. The people with money and power and cool shit in this country don’t have it because they *are* white, they have it because they *act* white.

So what is “acting white”? How does one do that? I think it’s pretty simple.

– Be well-spoken. Lose the ghetto slang.

– Be well-read, especially about history and economics.

– Don’t commit crime. No shoplifting or theft or breaking into cars or running stop signs or driving like a nut case.

– Don’t do drugs, and use alcohol moderately if at all.

– Don’t get pregnant — or get somebody else pregnant — until you finish school.

– Work at school. Graduate. Go to college. Graduate.

– Don’t hang out with, or dress like, gangbangers.

– Unless you have a carry permit, leave the guns at home.

And realize that people who tell young blacks that they’re acting white don’t want those young blacks to have money, wield power, or have cool shit, because so-called “acting white,” whether you’re white or not, is the way to get them.

There are a ton of examples. Clarence Thomas, Condoleeza Rice, Ben Carson, Tim Scott, Larry Elder, Walter Williams, Thomas Sowell, Mia Love, Barack Obama, Michelle Obama, Kamala Harris, Cory Booker, Herman Cain, Robert Johnson, John Johnson, Charles Payne, Bob Woodson — and that’s just off the top of my head as I write this.

It doesn’t depend on your starting circumstances. Ben Carson, for example, was raised in the projects by a single mother who could not read, and he became a brain surgeon and head of pediatric neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins before becoming HUD secretary.

That’s just blacks. Asians are better at “acting white” than white people are. In fact, it might better be called “acting Asian.” And there are a lot of whites who don’t “act white.” They also end up without money, power, or cool shit. Southern cracker culture in particular is antithetical to “acting white.”

I bounced this idea off a black friend the other night. “It’s not because they are white, but because they act white. Wow.” They thought about it, then slowly nodded their head and said it was a powerful insight.

It does explain a lot. And it means that, in this country at least, people’s futures are largely in their own hands.

It also means that no attempts to ‘correct injustice’ that don’t address personal behaviors can ever succeed.

My Slides From LibertyCon XXXII

CyberSecurity for Writers and Scientists
Rich Weyand moderates this panel on cybersecurity for Writers and Scientists and other professionals including new threats and new countermeasures.
With Scott Bragg, Doug Loss, Gerald Martin, Jessica Schlenker, and Rich Weyand
https://www.dropbox.com/s/ntbd4xdcs6xir2j/CyberSecurity.pdf?dl=1

The Challenges of Cyberwarfare
Rich Weyand moderates this panel on the challenges of waging and surviving cyberwarfare.
With Scott Bragg, Doug Loss, Jessica Schlenker, and Rich Weyand
https://www.dropbox.com/s/jqqylg9j8f7nwvd/CyberWarfare.pdf?dl=1

Cryptocurrency
Rich Weyand will do a presentation on the technology of cryptocurrency and what you need to know.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/ydowqc2bk8sgym2/CryptoCurrency.pdf?dl=1

Pantsing For Beginners
Authors Rob Howell and Rich Weyand and Stephanie Osborn — all write without an outline — will teach their process for beginners who just can’t seem to get that first novel done.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/7v18pfhad53efw3/Pantsing.pdf?dl=1

Fixing Healthcare

Neither the ACA nor the AHCA address the real problem in health care.  The real problem is that healthcare costs too much.  Neither bill solves that, they just rearrange where the money comes from.

What is the real problem? A system that has no price transparency and no competition, so the marketplace can’t work.

You want to fix healthcare?  How to do it in a few simple steps:

1) Providers can charge whatever they want, but they must charge the same price for everybody. No PPO prices. No negotiated prices. One price for everyone, insured or not.

No more $10,000 hospital bills that they will chase the uninsured for with collection agencies, when the insured get a PPO price negotiated down to $3,000 or less. Every provider must offer services at the same price for the same procedure to everyone.

“You have money to buy insurance, so we’ll charge you less.”  What?

2) All prices for healthcare providers have to be posted on their websites by Medicare procedure number.

If it isn’t on their website, then it’s free. And if you prove it wasn’t on their website when you had the procedure done, and they charged you for it anyway, it’s triple damages plus costs.

3) Allow flat-rate pricing for major procedures, such as a price-per-stent-installed or per-knee-replaced, rather than a la carte for each Medicare procedure number.  Flat-rate pricing can eliminate guesswork for the patient.  The provider can spread the costs of complications across all procedures.  Simplifies billing.

4) Allow charity pro bono medical work.  Currently Medicare must be the lowest price, so doctors cannot charge the legitimately indigent lower prices.

5) Provide some broader method to cover indigent visits to emergency rooms.  Right now it is on a per-facility basis.  Combined with the “must treat” policy, this is driving hospitals out of poorer areas.  Either state-wide or federal sharing of these costs across all facilties, or outright federal reimbursement to facilities.

One solution would be to account these at the state level, and then reimburse them as part of Medicaid, or under the Medicaid organization.  Without some relief, hospitals will move out of poor areas.  Further, hospitals will have a hard time competing in an open market against providers who do not have emergency rooms, such as imaging centers, surgery centers, etc, since they must spread the indigent emergency room costs across other services.  So get rid of the unfunded part of the mandate and its hidden costs and get the costs out in the open.  Let the entire market share these costs.  One way would be federal funding.

The other things that’s strange about the current unfunded mandate is that emergency care for the poor is funded by other people who are sick and facing big hospital bills.  The healthy take no part in funding this care for the poor, which is of general benefit to society.  Right now it’s a tax on the sick.  Some broader funding mechanism seems appropriate.

6) Enable private healthcare fraud investigators with 10% or 20% bounties on finding Medicare and insurance fraud.  Let the private sector provide a more adaptive and more effective enforcement against fraud.

7) No 100% insurance coverage for anything.

The patient has to pay 10% or 15% or 20% of everything out of pocket, up to a maximum of $2000-$3000 per year. We can figure out which numbers work best later.  This incentivizes the patient to shop prices.

8) No deductibles on which insurance pays nothing.

The insurance company should have some exposure up until the deductible is met, to incentivize insurance companies to assist the patient in controlling costs.

7 and 8 could be combined into something like 50-50 insurance and patient payment up to $4000 (so insurance pays $2000 and patient pays $2000) before insurance kicks in at 100%.

9) Allow health insurance purchase across state lines.

Get rid of the exemption, granted by Congress to the states, that sidesteps the Commerce Clause.  No state insurance boards selecting which insurance companies can and cannot sell in their state.

10) Eliminate state and federal coverage mandates that force people to buy coverage they don’t want, and substitute a simple federal basic catastrophic coverage plan as the minimum health insurance plan nationwide.

11) Tort reform, to make costly defensive medicine unnecessary.

Limitation on pain and suffering damages.  Actual economic damages, wrongful death, etc. are not limited.  Perhaps the actual limit should be 150% of actual economic damages, so the plaintiff is 100% restored after the lawyers take their one-third contingency payment.

12) Insurance companies not allowed to drop you when you get sick.

13) No pre-existing conditions if you have been continuously insured.  No refusal of insurance to anyone.  One-year maximum exclusion of any pre-existing condition for someone who has not been insured.

14) An initial grace period with no pre-existing conditions and guaranteed acceptance even if you haven’t been previously insured, to get the system started.

15) Some sort of HSA system, where people can set aside tax-free dollars for the patient portion, and roll that into their IRA if they don’t use it. Can be inherited tax-free if it is rolled over into another HSA.

16) Tax deductions for all medical expenses, both for insurance premiums and the patient portion of expenses.

17) Get the AMA — the doctor’s union — out of the business of certifying medical schools, and using that to limit the supply of doctors.

How much would truck drivers earn if the Teamsters ran the DMV?  Would we have a shortage of truckers?  What would be the education requirements for truckers?  Would they be reasonable?

One solution is to split the AMA into a minimum of three associations — the BMA, CMA, and DMA — none of which can have more than 40% of the membership of all three taken together.  Any of the three could certify a medical school or a hospital.

18) Get rid of the residency requirement for doctors from other countries coming to the U.S. to be certified.

This could be on a country-by-country basis, but OECD countries should probably be specified right off the bat.

19) Get rid of certificate of need requirements for medical facilities.

The cheapest groceries are when Kroger and Marsh are across the street from each other, not when there is only one grocery in town.

20) If a medication has been approved and in use in another OECD country for five years, it gets approved here automatically.  No FDA requirements for approval.

21) Allow the free import of approved medications.

No more milking the American public in a closed market while selling wholesale overseas.

22) Change the dietary recommendations away from the discredited low-fat diet to a low-carb diet.

Obesity and Type 2 diabetes are being driven by the low-fat diet nonsense.  Jelly beans brag “Zero Fat!” on the package.  Order the FDA to abandon the existing food pyramid and dietary recommendations, and revise them in the light of current research.

23) At the end of every year, the government determines what the median Medicare spending per senior is for every age: 65, 66, 67, 68,….  Anyone of that age who had more Medicare spending than that, well, that’s OK.  That’s what it’s there for.  But if someone had Medicare spending below the median for their age, they get a check from the government for, say, 20% or 25% of the difference.

Example: Someone who is 65 had $4000 of Medicare spending last year, while the median spending in the age 65 group that year was $10,000.  In January, the Medicare system sends him a tax-free check for $1200, 20% of the difference of $6000.

What this does is encourage people to go to less expensive providers, and to not go to the doctor for every little thing just because it’s free.  It also encourages providers to charge less than the Medicare maximums if they can, in the hope of attracting more patients trying to save Medicare money. That is to say, it would restore market incentives even though the costs were reimbursed, which is the really tough problem to making Medicare pricing competitive.

Advice For The Young

Know that you will grow old. Age is merely the passage of time, and inside every ancient is a youth wondering what the hell happened.

Take pictures, of yourself, of your friends. Your children will never believe you were ever young, and you will need documentary evidence.

Avoid frivolous spending. A dollar saved and invested at age 23 will grow more than eight-fold in constant dollars by the time you are 62 and provide 40 cents in today’s dollars per year in income every year after that, while leaving the principal for your offspring.

Marry wisely. Beauty fades, and friendship is more valuable than sex, is more fulfilling, and can be enjoyed for many years longer.

Marry a spouse who prefers to save than to spend. No matter how much you make, it is possible to spend more; no matter how little you make, it is possible to save some. The former is the path to poverty, the latter the road to security. If your marriage partner does not understand this, you will always be poor regardless of your income.

Practice moderation in your vices. Beware what monkeys you invite onto your back. They are all cute when young, but grow into surly adulthood. Carrying them will affect your health, your savings, your family life, and your social relationships.

Slow down. Avoid the purposeless bustle of those around you. Learn to relax, to enjoy the moment, and not to chase ceaselessly after the next moment, and the next. Life is now.

Take the time to stare out the window, to let the mind wander, to dream. All dreams cannot come true, but without dreams, none of them can.

Select your career with your heart: do what you enjoy. In today’s world of high-technology cars, air travel, and space exploration, one can still make a good living as a blacksmith or a buggy whip maker. A career that you can’t enjoy is a terrible burden.

Do not be mindful of what others may think. They don’t do it often enough to concern you.

Educate yourself. Go to school, read books, travel, work with your hands. You are your own most important asset, and your investment in this asset cannot be lost, taxed or taken away.

The value of your friendships is not determined by their number, but by their depth. Know who your friends are.

Category: Weird Thoughts About Why I Support Single Payer

I support single-payer. I bet that’s something you never expected to hear from me. But I do. I think the government should collect enough tax money, and pay all the bills. Costs will be less, and people will be better served. I believe that. I truly do.

Yes, I support single-payer software.

What did you think I meant? I’m a software engineer. I think having the government provide software free to everyone, as much as they want or need, is a great idea. I mean, who doesn’t need software? Everybody does. Why should it be provided haphazardly?

Did you know that some people don’t have as much software as they need? It’s true. Software is just too expensive. And lack of access to quality software is potentially deadly.

I mean, if you don’t have ABS brakes, or back-up cameras in your car, or lane-keeping that wakes you up when start to drift out of your lane, or any of the other wonderful things software provides, you could end up dead. It’s just not fair that the poor don’t have equal access to software.

And since I’m a software person, I think single-payer is great. I’ll always be busy, and I’ll always get paid. What’s not to like?

Oh, you thought I was talking about single-payer healthcare? Nope. Stupid idea. You say your doctor supports single-payer healthcare? Of course he does, just like I support single-payer software, and the Teamsters union guy who lives down the street probably supports single-payer shipping. As much as anyone wants, for free. After all, who doesn’t need shipping?

Don’t fall for it people. Healthcare used to be much cheaper. Then the government got involved. Did you know that government provides 53% of the healthcare in this country already? It’s true. Between Medicare, Medicaid, the VA, and health insurance for government employees, government already spends 53% of all the healthcare dollars in the United States.

So why would you think more government is the solution? Gin does not cure alcoholism, and single-payer won’t cure the problems with healthcare costs in the USA.

More of the problem isn’t the solution.

Category: Weird Thoughts About Music

When you get old, and retire, you learn all the things you should have known about yourself your whole life. I realized another one today.

I’ve been spending some time learning more about music history. Rock music history, to be specific. AXSTV has a lot of cool programs about the history of various artists. I’m not a fan of Dan Rather for a number of reasons, but his program, The Big Interview, is pretty good, and he gets good guests. Rock Legends is also a good program.

At the same time, Wendy has been taking piano lessons for a number of years, and she practices every single day. She’s become good at it, but only plays for herself. I only hear her play because the garage and the music room are in the same building (the house is actually two separate structures joined only at the edges, which makes the music room soundproof) so I hear her playing when I come or go. Playing classical pieces I know. She’s really very good.

One thing that strikes me about music is the sheer, numbing repetitiveness of being a musician. Do you have any clue how many times somebody has to play a piece of piano music before they get any good at it? Or how many times a rock band has played their signature piece? And you see one of these guys on stage, singing a song for the thousandth time, and they put such energy and emotion into it. Again.

Actors are similar. How many times has someone delivered that monologue in a five-year run on Broadway? It’s like eight shows a week, right? Every night plus a matinee once a week. Call it two THOUSAND times. Even for movies. I have heard an actor say that some director works really fast, and seldom does more than six or seven takes.

I feel like Daffy Duck in that Bugs Bunny cartoon, Hunting Season. “No. I insist that you shoot me now.”

Honest. If I were an actor and had done ten or eleven takes of a scene, and the director said, “OK. Let’s do it again. This time I want you to…,” I would kill him. With my bare hands.

I can see this when I look back on my career. I always wanted to do the things that you did once, then they got multiplied. Things with leverage. Write a piece of software, then send out thousands of copies. Design an electronics circuit, draw up the PC board pattern, then put that sucker in production. Even now in retirement, what is my hobby? Writing science fiction. Write the novel, upload it to Amazon, and sell a thousand or two thousand copies.

How these actors on Broadway do it, I don’t know. How musicians do it, where they go on tour year after year, and play the same song again and again, because that is the one song everybody really wants to hear, I don’t know. I couldn’t. I’d play the song in the studio, record it, press a million records, and be done with it. You want me to play what? No, I did that already.

Can you imagine if Kansas didn’t play Dust In The Wind? Or if Aerosmith didn’t play Dream On? Or Allman Brothers didn’t play Midnight Rider? Fans would riot.

And people screaming out “Freebird!” in Lynyrd Skynyrd concerts became a cliche.

I just couldn’t do it.

Author is good, though. Write a book once. Publish it. Done. Now write another, different book.

That I can do.