LEARNING FROM OUR ELDERS

One of the more stupid things that was said by Republican supporters during the recent Presidential campaign (and there were many stupid things said by both sides) was, “We don’t want European style democracy.” As much as we love the USA and wouldn’t want to live anywhere else, there are many things European we admire. We’ve always been fans of English furniture, German cars, French food, and Italian shoes, but we also think that the Europeans do a lot of things better than we do. However, since one of things they do better is reading, we are going to address this in a series of posts so not to strain the attention span of the average American reader.

First, and most frequently mentioned is universal health care. Frankly, we are weary of the debate. The facts are irrefutable. In Europe life expectancies are higher. Infant mortality is lower. Every citizen has access to health care. Every type of illness is less common…cancers, heart disease, stroke, diabetes. Finally costs are lower. Isn’t it simply a matter of putting a group of experts in a room and asking them to design a US health care system based on European best practices? There is really no reason why we can’t have a European type health care system implemented within a couple of years. That is, there isn’t any reason other than the lobbies of the AMA, pharmaceutical labs, medical equipment manufacturers, and insurance companies. In the end we will do it for the same reason the Europeans did it. We can no longer afford the way we’re doing it now.

Second is mass transit. Rail transportation in Europe is convenient, safe, clean, and fast, very fast. Eurostar trains transport passengers from London to Paris at speeds of 186 mph in just over two hours. Try getting through an airport, board a plane, and leave the ground in less than two hours here in the US, much less arrive at your destination. All major cities in Europe can conveniently be reached by train. Furthermore, once you arrive in the city central, you can transfer to the city’s light rail system/subway and be taken to a convenient distance, often walking distance of your destination. This one is a little harder to accomplish. We have to make a major infrastructure investment and a major cultural change.

This could easily be a series of essays on its own. Virtually nothing is uniquely American as the cult of private ownership of an automobile. Only New Yorkers actually have the opportunity to mature unencumbered by the forced reliance on private transportation. There is no other aspect of the American way of life in which we are so uniformly inculcated. An adult without a drivers license in the US is more of a minority than a black Lesbian with a Hispanic surname. In all seriousness, we have been codependent with the oil companies, the auto industry, and the insurance companies in an unholy addiction to the automobile. Try this exercise, add up your car note, your insurance premium, the cost of gas, the cost of parking, and your annual maintenance costs. When I talked to my dad about buying my first car, he told me, “Son, I started to work as a welder when I was 14 years old. I was making so much money I didn’t know how to spend it all. Then I bought my first car and I’ve been broke every since.” It’s time for America to grow up and get a real transportation system.

Next: Managing our military.

BY THE NUMBERS

We love numbers. We remember a science fiction film where Pi, the constant used to calculate the circumference of a circle or the volume of a sphere, was used to create a universal language with which to communicate with extraterrestrials. Well, we want to use numbers to communicate with just the American electorate. Your elected representatives have just committed to giving $700B (that’s shorthand for $700,000,000,000.00) to the people who have made a living loaning you money. Think about that. Your elected representatives, the people you have chosen to look after your interests, have just given $700B of your money to people to loan to you WITH interest. Now that doesn’t make much sense to us. How about we loan $700B to these incompetent, greedy, lazy leeches on the American people, AND they pay us interest?

Here’s the good news, most of us won’t have to pay the $700B. According to the National Taxpayers Union 25 percent of the American population pays 86.27 percent of what our government spends. (We were going to round up, but when dealing with numbers this large, a fraction of a point is a whole lot of money) That means 75 percent of us will only have to pay for $175B. What’s that you say? $175B is still a big number? Well, let’s see if we can make you feel better. Fifty percent of the American households will only have to pay for 2.99 percent (No, we don’t want to round up to three percent) Fifty percent of the American households will only have to pay for 2.99 percent of the tab or $20.93B. That’s only $214.77 per family. That doesn’t sound too bad, does it? Americans are generous people. We are always willing to help a starving child in Africa or a Harvard MBA who just had his Christmas bonus cut from $100K to $50K.

Now what is your individual liability? Well, like we just said if your household income is $32,000 or less, you only pay $214.77 of the cost of the bailout. What? You and your wife no longer work at MacDonald’s since you got out of high school? Well, if you make more it’s not too bad. If you and your better half make $65,000 or more your share will be $24,787.12. Don’t worry. It seems worse than it is. Little Johnny can probably get a student loan. Now, suppose you worked your way through college and you and your spouse are living the American dream…paying a mortgage, two car notes, and private school tuition (you went to public school and you wish your kids could too, but the schools were safe then) OK, if you make $110,000 or more your share of the biggest sucker bet in history is a whopping $50,848.40. That’s right, nearly half of your income has been given to a group of losers, in fact the biggest losers in history. We’re right there with you. We have an income of about $150,000 a year, pay a mortgage on a $250,000 home, own three cars (we have a daughter in college), and help our mothers with their rent. Our share of the debt will be $82,545.10, 55 percent of our income. We, too, were panicked until we remembered that we can pass this bill to our children, and their children, and their children…Isn’t American a great country? Isn’t it???

HISTORY REPEATS ITSELF

During our Presidential campaign Vice President Elect, Joe Biden, infamously said, “…It will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama …”. Well, it didn’t even take six hours before Russian President Dmitry Medvedev threw down the gauntlet. On Tuesday, while 53 percent of the American electorate was celebrating over the election of the US first non-white President, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev announced the deployment of conventionally armed ballistic missiles on the borders of Lithuania and Poland, in response to US missile defense plans. On Saturday Obama spoke with the Russian President after which the Kremlin issued a statement which said, in part, that Obama and Medvedev "…expressed the determination to create constructive and positive interaction for the good of global stability and development…" Obama foreign policy adviser Denis McDonough said Saturday that Obama also had "a good conversation" with Polish President Lech Kaczynski on Friday about the U.S.-Polish alliance but that Obama had made no commitment on the missile shield plan.

During an 18 minute press conference Friday, most of the media exhibited the typical American myopia, focusing on the US economy and what type puppy the Obamas would bring to the White House. When pressed about foreign affairs Obama sidestepped the issue, citing political protocol and reminded us all the George W. Bush was still President. Well, people, we are old enough to remember John F. Kennedy’s disastrous first dealings with the Soviet Union and we want to know more about that conversation between Medvedev and Obama. It is chilling that the exact same issue is on the table now as was in 1962. Is our press corps so young or ignorant of history or both that they don’t recall why they call it “The Cuban Missile Crisis”? While 53 percent of voters may cast a ballot based on the belief that Obama is a 21st century version of JFK, we don’t think they knew that they were betting their lives on it.