"The Disease of Desperation"

In Sunday’s Los Angeles Times, a front-page story described in heartbreaking detail the desperation that drove one man, Tom Hill, into the deceptive arms of a company that promised him injections of stem cells to cure his ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease). He is dead now; his family, while wrestling with grief, is also dealing with the waste of more than $10,000, paid out to a company called BioMark (although some of that money was recouped), and the lingering residue of dashed hopes. Grief is hard enough without the bitter aftertaste of betrayal by people who apparently think nothing of exploiting the desperation of others.

...

Desperation is a disease too, one that we will probably never find a cure for because it’s encoded deep within us. When confronted with the untimely ravages of disease or injury, we fight to recover. It’s human nature to want to live, to want to be healed of what is taking our own life or the life of a loved one. Faced with a terrifying diagnosis, logic crumbles. We reach for anything that promises a reprieve.

...

As long as the true potential of stem-cell treatment is delayed, blocked and hampered by the government, people will in their desperation reach for whatever they can find. They will empty out their life savings, leave their families burdened with debt, all in the desperate attempt to live a longer life, to be free of disease. To see their children get married, to meet grandchildren who haven’t been born yet, to walk along the beach with their spouse or partner, to wake in the morning without pain or medicine or fear.

...

Bush apparently feels comfortable and justified in allowing clusters of cells—the result of in vitro fertilization procedures—to be destroyed rather than allow them to be used for potentially life-saving research. We know already some of the miraculous characteristics of embryonic stem cells; the miracles we don’t know about are waiting to be discovered. According to the president, his position is a religious one. These cells could possibly become human beings. But they never will. They are being destroyed, routinely and frequently. That’s the part you don’t hear about in the president’s press conferences or in the State of the Union addresses.

The cost of this administration’s heartlessness will be measured in lives. Not only in the lives of people battling fatal illnesses or spinal cord injuries, but in the lives of family members and loved ones, who watch helplessly as bank accounts are drained to finance the desperate hopes of someone who simply doesn’t want to die yet. It’s doubtful that any of them will be comforted by religious homilies coming out of the White House.

>> Commentary, "The Disease of Desperation"

It's odd but I don't feel surprised by what some businesses are doing to desperate people decaying from disease. I guess because my whole philosophy infers that such deceptions in various areas are common place anyway, just from the "immoral" way some or many people are (I say "or" because of the subjectivity of what is "moral" in various eyes).

But the authors' assertion that it's happening because the government has banned research is false, I believe. This would be happening even if the government approved and funded extensive stem cell research. There are just plenty of people out there with the flexibility in "morals" to provide them an inclination for such deception for profit. "The 'Disease' of Deception and Dishonesty."

Shooting the Messengers

Your Right to Know Is Under Attack

By Jonathan Alter

Newsweek

Jim Taricani, a local TV news reporter in providence, R.I., cannot go to the grocery store. Because Taricani is a heart-transplant survivor, a federal judge is letting him serve his six-month prison sentence at home, but he is prohibited from using the Internet, talking to the media or leaving the house except for medical care. Taricani's crime is that he would not reveal to a grand jury who leaked him an FBI videotape that showed a top aide to former Providence mayor Buddy Cianci accepting a bribe. The leaker, a defense attorney, came forward to say he'd given Taricani the tape. It didn't matter. Judge Ernest Torres still ruled that Taricani must be placed under house arrest, while the attorney will likely get off with a wrist slap.

Something strange is going on in the relationship between the media and the criminal-justice system. With the mainstream media less popular than HMO administrators, frustrated prosecutors in federal cases are increasingly shooting the messengers. It doesn't work in state court, because almost every state has either shield laws or court decisions that give journalists a "privilege" that allows them to refuse to testify. But while lawyers, clergy, psychiatrists and, under a recent Supreme Court decision, social workers can protect confidentiality before federal grand juries, journalists cannot.

This is scary stuff. My greatest concern is not the personal fates of Taricani or Judy Miller of The New York Times and Matt Cooper of Time, though the latter two are friends of mine who heard from a federal appeals court last week that they will likely go to jail for up to 18 months for refusing to testify before a grand jury in the Valerie Plame case. What worries me more are the consequences for the citizens of Providence, who aren't likely to catch a glimpse of their local officials taking envelopes of cash again any time soon; the baseball fans who wouldn't have known which players were juiced on steroids if the San Francisco Chronicle had not published grand jury testimony (those reporters are being threatened by prosecutors), and the broader American public, which may be entering an era where our news consists of press releases, spin and nothing much that the government does not want us to know.

>> Full Source Column [NEWSWEEK:MSNBC]

Political Cartoon (#1 for 2-20-05)

Letters to the Editor (2-18)

It's fair criticism, not hateful

Michael Barone, in his Feb. 15 column, invokes a conservative mantra that I am getting tired of hearing, which is that those of us who take exception to the policies of the administration are "Bush haters." Do I need to remind readers of which side a few years back set the example of venomous hostility toward the commander in chief?

From the moment Bill Clinton was first elected, we were subjected to a 24/7 tirade of bitter attacks on him by Rush Limbaugh, G. Gordon Liddy, Newt Gingrich, et al. The tone was personal, and it was ugly. Clinton was not without his flaws, and I took issue with him at times myself. But he led the nation during some of the most peaceful and prosperous years in recent memory.

Times have changed. President George W. Bush has exploited the tragedy of Sept. 11, 2001, to carry out an arrogant and reckless foreign policy, turned most of the world against us, trashed environmental protections, undermined civil liberties, turned a national monetary surplus into a devastating deficit and is now threatening to dismantle a retirement security program that has served our nation well for 70 years.

I have problems with these things. If you think that makes me hateful, then I have no idea what the heck your definition of hatred is.

Mark Osborn
Columbia, Mo.


Try diplomacy

I am confused. When I want to buy a new Ford, I don't negotiate with the Chevy dealer down the street. When the police have a hostage situation, they don't negotiate with the neighbors next door.

If President Bush has a problem with North Korea and Kim Jong Il, why is he negotiating with China and a multinational group? The neoconservative influences in the administration like tough talk but it seems counterproductive to be talking among yourselves rather than with the person you need to reach an agreement with.

Calling your adversary names does not make America safer. Diplomacy might.

Shawn Joseph
St. Charles


Off the Christo map

The Feb. 13 article by Jeff Daniel, "Deja Nuws" was boldly spoken, well said and unfortunately, dead right. St. Louis swings and misses. Another example of how the city squandered away a chance for worldwide notice.

What we do get is money being dumped into sport teams with delusions of grandeur, an opera house that sits idle while begging for redevelopment, one of the worst looking airports anywhere, and expensive fireworks displays that "make us all feel good."

I'm eager to see how good the upcoming college basketball hoopla will make us feel. And certainly that will put us in the center of the world map. Not!

Paul Beasley
St. Charles

Political Cartoon (#4 for 2-17-05)

Political Cartoon (#3 for 2-17-05)

Political Cartoon (#2 for 2-17-05)

Political Cartoon (#1 for 2-17-05)

Selected Newsweek Columns

I found two more articles in the February 14th issue of NEWSWEEK magazine than the two on Social Security that I have not cared to find the online versions of:

- "Harry Reid's 'Roulette'"
- "Hail to the Flip-Flopper"

"Harry Reid's 'Roulette'"

Last week Howard Dean, almost certainly the next Democratic Party chairman, said: "I hate Republicans and everything they stand for." Either Dean means what he says, in which case he is as unhinged as the rest of the party's Michael Moore caucus, or he does not, in which case he is a blowhard like, well, Moore. Yet for several weeks Dean has been one of the four most conspicuous Democrats on the national stage.

Two of the others have been Ted Kennedy, the shrill essence of East Coast liberalism, and California Sen. Barbara Boxer, who comes from Marin County, a habitat for West Coast liberals who find the city across the Golden Gate Bridge too tepidly "progressive." The fourth, and most important, is Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, who seems determined to earn the description Teddy Roosevelt applied to President John Tyler—"a politician of monumental littleness."

In December, Reid, speaking about President Bush's proposal for Social Security reform—a proposal Bush had not yet announced—said: "[Republicans] are trying to destroy Social Security by giving this money to the fat cats on Wall Street." Good grief. "Destroy"? The "fat cats" will not get fatter from the estimated 0.3 percent cost of handling the funds.

Reid's hyperbole suggests that Deanspeak is contagious. In Reid's televised "response" to the president's State of the Union address—written before the address—he disparaged the idea of voluntary personal retirement accounts funded by portions of individuals' Social Security taxes as "Social Security roulette." This is the crux of the Democrats' argument against Bush's plan: Equities markets are terribly risky—indeed, are as irrational and risky as roulette.

Roulette is a game without any element of skill. By comparing the investment of some Social Security funds in stocks and bonds to gambling on roulette, Reid is saying that the risks and rewards of America's capital markets, which are the foundation of the nation's economic rationality and prosperity, are as random as the caroms of the ball in a roulette wheel.

It is especially so for a reason Bush delivered with a rhetorical rapier thrust in his State of the Union address. After saying that the 4 percentage points of Social Security taxes could be invested only in a few broadly diversified stock and bond funds, Bush pointedly said to the assembled representatives and senators: "Personal retirement accounts should be familiar to federal employees, because you already have something similar, called the Thrift Savings Plan, which lets workers deposit a portion of their paychecks into any of five different broadly based investment funds." Touché.

Begun in 1987, the Thrift Savings Plan, which as of December 2004 had assets of $152 billion, is a retirement-savings plan open to all civilian federal employees, including senators, and all members of the uniformed services.

They can invest as much as 14 percent of their salaries in one of five retirement funds. Consider the rate of return of C Fund, one of the five. It is a common-stock fund, so it should represent the risks that Reid thinks should terrify Americans:

In only four of 17 years has the rate of return been negative. But in 11 years the rate has been greater than 10 percent, in eight years it has been greater than 20 percent, in four years it has been greater than 30 percent. The compound annual rate of return for the last 10 years has been 12 percent, and the return over the 17 years has been 12.1 percent.

Reid participates in the plan, but opposes allowing all Americans the comparable opportunity that Bush is proposing. But if the numbers just cited are the result of roulette, the legislators should let the rest of us into the game in which they are prospering.

>> Full Article [MSNBC:NEWSWEEK]

The end of the article assumes that the funds won't have an inevitable period of decline and loss greater than a year or two in a row and that it'll always keep growing and growing. I don't know how sound such an assumption is on something that may not be as predictable as it seems.

But designating something perhaps falsely like the Democrats are doing with "Social Security Roulette" is effective propoganda to the masses. Just like calling the estate tax the "Death tax", amd the big goverment "Patriot" act that few legislators in Washington supposedly read before passing shortly after 9/11.

"Hail to the Flip-Flopper"

Feb. 14 issue - Last week's elections were a great day for Iraq, for the Middle East, for America and for one American in particular. George W. Bush rightly deserves credit for these elections and what they symbolize. Many have argued that the events vindicate Bush's steadfast, unwavering, even stubborn style of leadership. But do they? The Iraqi elections occurred because George Bush changed course, junked a previous plan and adapted to realities on the ground. In fact, much of the progress in Iraq over the past eight months can be traced to Bush's willingness to reverse himself. The enduring problems in Iraq, on the other hand, developed and grew because his administration doggedly refused to recognize errors and make changes. This is more than a point of historical interest. Going forward in Iraq—and beyond—we will need more of Bush's suppleness and less of the much-lauded steadfastness.

The American plan was not to hold elections this January. Paul Bremer had set out a seven-step process in which the United States kept tight control of Iraq. Elections were to be held only after an elaborate series of caucuses to choose an assembly and draft a constitution, followed by a national referendum. Washington stood firm on this plan—"We will stay the course," Bush said repeatedly in the face of criticism—until it became clear that things were unraveling. A man to whom the U.S. had paid no attention, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, the most powerful voice in the Shia community, was dead set against it.

Recognizing reality, Washington in March 2004 hastily asked the United Nations to go in and broker a compromise. The administration then accepted an entirely new plan agreed to by Sistani and U.N. envoy Lakhdar Brahimi. "[Brahimi] was the quarterback," Bush admitted, enraging many conservatives in Washington. In fact, these reversals were extremely wise and rescued America's Iraq policy.
...

President Bush has often said that he emulates Abraham Lincoln. In a recent letter to a Civil War historian, he wrote, "Lincoln set the goal and stayed the course. I will do the same." But what is remarkable about Lincoln is how willing he was to admit that his choices weren't working, and to insist on changes. He ran through seven generals in three years (George McClellan twice, the second time after one month) until he found the man who could do the job—Ulysses S. Grant. He was often pilloried for his constant shifts of personnel and policy.

Lincoln stayed the course on one issue: preserving the Union. Bush has been similarly steadfast in his embrace of an important and noble goal: democracy in Iraq. But he has also been steadfastly opposed to recognizing that several of his policies have made the achievement of this goal much more difficult. When observers pointed to problems that could have been fixed, he and his supporters accused them of defeatism and weakness.

The greatest president felt differently. When Grant captured Vicksburg, Lincoln—who had believed that Grant was making a tactical blunder—wrote him at once, saying, "I now wish to make the personal acknowledgment that you were right, and I was wrong." In fact, Lincoln's intellectual flexibility helped bring about his greatest legacy. In his first year in office, Lincoln had stubbornly rejected the idea of abolishing slavery. But by 1862 he recognized that the best path to preserving the Union was by freeing the slaves.

So, he wavered, reversed his position and changed course. Thank goodness.

>> Full Article [MSNBC:NEWSWEEK]

Observations

The mere "politics"(?) of just dealing with regular people like co-workers and the different associations and hypocritical alliances within just that group is interesting for me to reflect on, but impossible I think to describe here in detail. Heh. The way people interact can be quite fascinating to observe at times, especially when I notice that it effects my interaction in subtle ways.

Letters to the Editor - 2-10-05

Social Security is socialist program
The opposition to President George W. Bush's proposed changes to Social Security goes well beyond everyday partisan politics. It goes beyond the obstructionist stance that Democrats have become known for and beyond their hatred for Bush.

While all of those things enter in, the left in this country loves Social Security for two primary reasons: (1) It is a prime tool for redistributing wealth, and (2) it nurtures dependency on government like no other program we have.

Individual accounts would cause people to become more involved and ultimately more responsible for their own lives. At the same time, they would change Social Security from a wealth-redistribution system to a wealth-accumulation system. Personal responsibility and wealth accumulation. What could be worse in the mind of liberals?

Social Security is a socialist program. Its previous success can be attributed to the fact that it has been financed by a strong capitalist economy, and contributors have greatly out numbered recipients. That ratio is going to change in the next few decades, a fact no one disputes.

Why wait 'till it's a crisis? Why not fix it now?

The president has offered several options and is open to new ideas. If we leave it to the left wing that dominates the Democratic Party leadership, it will fix it the old-fashioned way, by raising taxes.

Ross L. Downey
Park Hills, Mo.

...

I appreciated Eric Mink's perspective on Gov. Blunt's spending cuts that
gave the shaft to the elderly, ill, disabled and the working poor. What galls me is that many of the people who voted for Blunt were well-meaning but deluded Christians who espouse "family values." William Sloane Coffin, the great United Church of Christ pastor, civil rights activist and social justice advocate, wrote the following in his recent book "Credo": "It's ironic to think of the number of people in this country who pray for the poor and needy on Sunday and spend the rest of the week complaining that the government is doing something about them."

Esther Talbot Fenning
St. Charles

>> Source Editorials [St. Louis Post Dispatch]

In The Middle

Global Personality Test Results

Stability (56%) moderately high which suggests you are relaxed, calm, secure, and optimistic. Orderliness (43%) moderately low which suggests you are, at times, overly flexible, improvised, and fun seeking at the expense of reliability, work ethic, and long term accomplishment. Extraversion (45%) medium which suggests you average somewhere in between being assertive and social and being withdrawn and solitary.

Take'>http://similarminds.com/global5.html">Take Free Global Personality Test
personality/'>http://similarminds.com">personality tests by similarminds.com

Sounds accurate. Even the optimistic part. I'm just not overly optimistic. The orderliness and extraversion bits sound incredibly accurate.

Kudos to Brenn since I found the link to this test on his LJ.

Brief Ramble: Effort and Persistence

Effort and persistence can mean everything and seem so powerful of a force if what you put the effort into succeeds, but it can also be a gigantic waste if it does not succeed at all. So I believe it is flawed to think that effort pays off every time. That if you put effort into something you can't fail, when you can fail -- miserably. The same goes for having "heart" and determination. Failure may not be an option, but it is inevitable sooner or later.

So obviously it bothers me a bit when people make it sound like effort and persistence pays off 100% on the positive side 100% of the time. Especially when you see that some people do not even need to put practically any effort into things to succeed while others can pour their hearts into things and come no where close to succeeding.

Last bit for today?

This is an actual product, I noticed it when helping the new Manager-in-Training out in the aisle he was working in: "Cousin Willie's Buttery Explosion". If you have no idea what's so "funny", nevermind. You're not "corrupted" enough.

Recap / Overview

I wasn't sure in what order to put the last three posts in, so after a lengthy internal battle about the ordering I figured why not put an overview or table of contents kind of deal.

Hardball Transcript: Mathews and Maher >> Feb 3rd telecast. Mathews talks with comedian Bill Maher about the State of the Union and the election for a National Assembly in Iraq. Found this to be very entertaining. Some humor and sarcasm here and there by the guest.

Iraq: A Potential Corrupt Quasi-Democracy >> a column in the latest NEWSWEEK magazine titled "Elections Are Not Democracy" examines how certain things need to be done to establish a liberal democracy, which have not been fulfilled. Found this to be very interesting.

Elections and Stunts >> commentaries regarding voter turnout differences in war-torn Iraq and more peaceful America and on the politicians who went to the State of the Union with ink stained fingers.

It's Been a While >> Back after a five day tension easing work-related break from blogging.

Iraq: A Potential Corrupt Quasi-Democracy

Came across this article when reading through the latest NEWSWEEK magazine while on my 1:30 am break Thursday night.

Elections Are Not Democracy

The United States has essentially stopped trying to build a democratic order in Iraq, and is simply trying to gain stability and legitimacy

By Fareed Zakaria
Newsweek

Feb. 7 issue - By the time you read this, you will know how the elections in Iraq have gone. No matter what the violence, the elections are an important step forward, for Iraq and for the Middle East. But it is also true, alas, that no matter how the voting turns out, the prospects
for genuine democracy in Iraq are increasingly grim. Unless there is a major change in course, Iraq is on track to become another corrupt, oil-rich quasi-democracy, like Russia and Nigeria.

In April 2003, around the time Baghdad fell, I published a book that described the path to liberal democracy. In it, I pointed out that there had been elections in several countries around the world-most prominently Russia-that put governments in place that then abused their authority and undermined basic human rights. I called such regimes illiberal democracies. In NEWSWEEK that month, I outlined the three conditions Iraq had to fulfill to avoid this fate. It is currently doing badly at all three.

First, you need to avoid major ethnic or religious strife. In almost any "divided" society, elections can exacerbate group tensions unless there is a strong effort to make a deal between the groups, getting all to buy into the new order. "The one precondition for democracy to work is a consensus among major ethnic, regional, or religious groups," says Larry Diamond, one of the leading experts on democratization. This has not happened. Instead the Shia, Sunnis and Kurds are increasingly wary of one another and are thinking along purely sectarian lines. This "groupism" also overemphasizes the religious voices in these communities, and gives rise to a less secular, less liberal kind of politics.

Second, create a non-oil-based economy and government. When a government has easy access to money, it doesn't need to create a real economy. In fact, it doesn't need its citizens because it doesn't tax them. The result is a royal court, distant and detached from its society.

Iraq's oil revenues were supposed to be managed well, going into a specially earmarked development fund rather than used to finance general government activities. The Coalition Provisional Authority steered this process reasonably well, though its auditors gave it a less-than-glowing review. Since the transfer of power to the Iraqi provisional government, Iraq's oil revenues have been managed in an opaque manner, with scarce information. "There is little doubt that Iraq is now using its oil wealth for general revenues," says Isam al Khafaji, who worked for the CPA briefly and now runs Iraq Revenue Watch for the Open Society Institute. "Plus, the Iraqi government now has two sources of easy money. If the oil revenues aren't enough, there's Uncle Sam. The United States is spending its money extremely unwisely in Iraq."

This is a complaint one hears over and over again. America is spending billions of dollars in Iraq and getting very little for it in terms of improvements on the ground, let alone the good will of the people. "Most of the money is being spent for reasons of political patronage, not creating the basis for a real economy," says al Khafaji. Most of it is spent on Americans, no matter what the cost. The rest goes to favored Iraqis. "We have studied this and I can say with certainty that not a single Iraqi contractor has received his contract through a bidding process that was open and transparent."

The rule of law is the final, crucial condition. Without it, little else can work. Paul Bremer did an extremely good job building institutional safeguards for the new Iraq, creating a public-integrity commission, an election commission, a human-rights commission, inspectors general in each bureaucratic government department. Some of these have survived, but most have been shelved, corrupted, or marginalized. The courts are in better shape but could well follow the same sad fate of these other building blocks of liberal democracy. Iraq's police are routinely accused of torture and abuse of authority.

Much of the reason for this decline is, of course, the security situation. The United States has essentially stopped trying to build a democratic order in Iraq and is simply trying to fight the insurgency and gain some stability and legitimacy. In doing so, if that exacerbates group tensions, corruption, cronyism, and creates an overly centralized regime, so be it. Lawrence Kaplan, a neoconservative writer passionately in favor of the war, who coauthored "The War Over Iraq: Saddam's Tyranny and America's Mission" with William Kristol, has just returned from Iraq and written a deeply gloomy essay in the current The New Republic. His conclusion: "The war for a liberal Iraq is destroying the dream of a liberal Iraq."

Iraq will still be a country that is substantially better off than it was under Saddam Hussein. There is real pluralism and openness in the society-more so than in most of the Middle East. Russia and Nigeria aren't terrible regimes. But it was not what many of us had hoped for. Perhaps some of these negative trends can be reversed. Perhaps the Shia majority will use their power wisely. But Iraqi democracy is now at the mercy of that majority, who we must hope will listen to their better angels. That is not a sign of success. "If men were angels," James Madison once wrote, "no government would be necessary."

Elections and Stunts

The war comes home with increasing frequency now, arriving with a river of tears; shed either for those who are casualties or the lucky majority whose units make it back safely to families forced to endure the daily anxiety of being able to read and hear about battles and ambushes as they happen while wondering if a son, daughter, husband or father's fate was lucky or lethal.

Part of their service and all of their sacrifice was met with success Sunday when millions of Iraquis braved bullets and bombs to line up and vote for the first time in half a century. The explanation and argument surrounding the war here briefly faded as pictures of people determined to cast a ballot and form a government temporarily muted debate over our involvement.

In places like Boston, New York City, L.A. and so many other spots, we positively take voting for granted, if we bother to vote at all. Election day means a stop at a school or a fire station where there are small lines and no threat to safety at a ballot box.

Nobody dies. The opposition isn't armed with rocket launchers or IEDs. So how come the turnout- on a per capita basis- can be higher in parts of war ravaged cities like Mosul and Baghdad than it is in American wards and precincts where they scream about snow removal, trash pick-up, traffic, taxes and public education but don't bother to vote in numbers that would indicate they care about the country where we all live?

- Mike Barnicle, MSNBC

Ink stained fingers:
By the way, that gets me to one observation I had about covering the State of the Union, just 36 hours after being in Baghdad. To me, it was surreal to see the members of Congress arrive in their nice cars and motorcades... and then walk into the house chamber wearing their fancy suits and ties. It was even more surreal to see that some lawmakers, in this incredibly secure and safe coccoon, had stained their own index fingers.

The courage of ordinary Iraqis last Sunday was unmistakable. They were literally risking their lives by standing in line to vote and by getting their fingers stamped with ink. The members of Congress who stained their own fingers and wagged them proudly for the cameras were an affront to that courage. And in my eyes, those lawmakers diminished the true significance of what happened last weekend in Iraq. The fact is, few members of Congress have a son or daughter serving in the U.S. military. And few lawmakers have actually ever served themselves. Furthermore, in Washington, D.C., even "political courage," (never mind the real stuff) is exceptionally rare. Am I being too cynical? Probably. (And I'm sure I'll get a ton of nasty e-mails from
some of you.) But, if members of Congress want to show "solidarity" with the Iraqi people... they are welcome to head to Baghdad, put on a flak jacket, and help/advise the new assembly on writing the constitution. Or, our lawmakers could serve as "election monitors" in Iraq when the constitution is put to a vote as early as this fall. That would be courageous and show real solidarity. An ink-stained american finger, waved for the TV cameras on the floor of the House chamber... is a political stunt.

- David Shuster, MSNBC <source post>