Single Payer?

Will the proposed tax cuts reverse this trend?

Why don't we fire him?

Your granddaughter?

Money wasted on healthcare

ProPublica has been writing about this issue for a while. Here's a summary of what they've found. 

Experts estimate the U.S. health care system wastes $765 billion annually — about a quarter of all the money that’s spent. Of that, an estimated $210 billion goes to unnecessary or needlessly expensive care, according to a 2012 report by the National Academy of Medicine. ProPublica has been documenting the ways waste is baked into the system. Hospitals throw away new supplies and nursing homes discard still-potent medication. Drugmakers combine cheap ingredients to create expensive specialty pills and arbitrary drug expiration dates force hospitals and pharmacies to toss valuable drugs. We also reported how drug companies make oversize eyedrops and vials of cancer drugs, forcing patients to pay for medication they are unable to use. In response, a group of U.S. senators introduced a bill this month to reduce what they called “colossal and completely preventable waste.”

Overtreatment related to mammograms is a common problem. The national cost of false-positive tests and overdiagnosed breast cancer is estimated at $4 billion a year, according to a 2015 study in Health Affairs. Some of this is fueled by anxious patients, some by doctors who know that missing a cancer diagnosis can be grounds for a medical malpractice lawsuit. But advocates, patients and even some doctors note the screenings can also be a cash cow for physicians and hospitals.

Patients aren’t true health care consumers because they typically can’t shop by price and they often don’t have control over the care they receive, Saini said. The medical evidence may support multiple paths for providing care, but patients are unable to tell what is or is not discretionary, he said. Time pressure adds urgency, which makes it difficult to discuss or research various options.

Pretty scary! 

It's all over the map

Source: Center for American Progress

Running on wine

Earlier this month I wrote about the London bus system which is testing the use of coffee extract as part of the fuel used by its diesel buses. It turns out that incorporating waste products into fuel is not new. Parallel Products, a California company, has been doing it for thirty years. The waste it uses comes from wine, beer, tainted liquors and flat colas. According to its website “Each year, Parallel Products receives and recycles over 13 million cases and 3 million bulk liquid gallons of unsaleable beverage products.”

Courtesy of our Florida correspondent.

Flying with the birds

Safe driving

In 1990 there were many more killed in auto accidents than in 2015. Here is a list of the deaths per billion vehicle miles traveled that year:

France      25.7
Israel        22.4
Germany   19.7
Australia    14.7
Canada      14.5
U.S.           12.9
Sweden      12

Now look at the results for 2015:

France         5.9
Israel           5.9
Germany      4.6
Australia       4.9
Canada        5.1
U.S.             7
Sweden        3.2

Where we were the second safest country in 1990, we were the worst in 2015.

Flies under water

Black Friday

$5.6 or $1.52 trillion

The Pentagon says that our wars since 9/11 have cost $1.52 trillion, or $7,740 each for you and me. But this cost does not include war-related costs of the departments of state, veterans affairs, and homeland security, as well as the cost of interest paid to date on the money the US has borrowed to pay for the wars. When you add in these costs, as was done by the Costs of War project, based at Brown University’s Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs, you get $5.6 trillion, or $23,386 each for you and me.

But, as the report states, even $5.6 trillion is not the total cost. It does not include the substantial costs of war to state and local governments—most significantly, the costs of caring for veterans—or the millions of dollars in excess military equipment the US donates to countries in and near the war zones. 

Furthermore, the $5.6 trillion figure does not include the money the US commits to operations in the Horn of Africa, Uganda, Trans-Sahara, the Caribbean, and Central America as part of Operation Enduring Freedom. Nor does it tally spending through the Department of Defense European Reassurance Initiative meant to deter Russia; money for Operation Odyssey Lightning, which paid for airstrikes against ISIS in Libya beginning in 2016; or US counterterrorism activities taking place in dozens of countries across the world.

What do you think the total costs are?

Running on coffee

London is experimenting with coffee as a diesel fuel for its buses. This is a biofuel created by blending oil extracted from coffee waste with diesel. Biofuel from different waste products - such as cooking oil and tallow from meat processing - is already used in many of the capital's 9,500 buses. Buses can be powered using the fuel without the need for modification.

It would take just over 2.55 million cups of coffee to create the enough biofuel to run a London bus for a year once the oil has been blended with diesel.

Figure this one out

Courtesy of a Duncaster correspondent

This, too, is our earth

Courtesy of our Pembroke, MA correspondent

Automation Anxiety

Analyzing Trump's Approach

Read it. And weep?

 From the Institute of Policy Studies: 

• The three wealthiest people in the United States — Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, and Warren Buffett — now own more wealth than the entire bottom half of the American population combined, a total of 160 million people or 63 million households. 
• America’s top 25 billionaires — a group the size of a major league baseball team’s active roster — together hold $1 trillion in wealth. These 25 have as much wealth as 56 percent of the population, a total 178 million people or 70 million households. 
• The billionaires who make up the full Forbes 400 list now own more wealth than the bottom 64 percent of the U.S. population, an estimated 80 million households or 204 million people — more people than the populations of Canada and Mexico combined. 
• The median American family has a net worth of $80,000, excluding the family car. The Forbes 400 own more wealth than 33 million of these typical American families. 
• One in five U.S households, over 19 percent, have zero or negative net worth. 
• “Underwater households” make up an even higher share of households of color. Over 30 percent of black households and 27 percent of Latino households have zero or negative net worth to fall back on.

Looking for a job

Brett Talley, a deputy assistant attorney general, has been nominated by Trump to a federal district judgeship. Talley would be able to hold this position for life, which, he being 36-years-old, could be quite a long time. One 'slight' problem with this nomination is that he has never tried a case. Further, he was unanimously deemed “not qualified” by the American Bar Association. 

He is the fourth judicial nominee under President Trump to receive a “not qualified” rating from the bar association and the second to receive the rating unanimously. Since 1989, the association has unanimously rated only two other judicial nominees as not qualified. 

Just another indication of Trump's management talents.

Suing for payment of student loans

Student loans are very big business; they are the largest source of household debt outside of mortgages. With the increase in loans comes increasing defaults. And there are companies that specialize in trying to collect on defaults. One of the largest, Transworld Systems, has filed more than 38,000 lawsuits in the last three years on behalf of a single client, the National Collegiate Student Loan Trusts. However, many of these cases were flawed. In the words of Richard Cordray, the director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Transworld “sued consumers for student loans they couldn’t prove were owed and filed false and misleading affidavits in courts across the country.” In some cases Transworld employees swore that borrowers’ loans had been purchased by investors on dates that were months or even years before the loans were actually made.

The toilet the world is waiting for

It's made of 24 different Louis Vuitton bags plus one of his suitcases. It was designed by artist Illma Gore; it took her three months. You can buy it for $100,000.  

From our Florida correspondent

An appropriate article for Veterans Day

William Rivers Pitt writes about the Sacred Soldier at Truthout. He, too, questions how we deal with the voluntary Army. Some excerpts:

• After so very many years of condensed war –seven decades and counting since Pearl Harbor and the National Security Act, with the inevitable violent blowback hitting us where we live -- the United States has fully adopted the siege mentality necessary for the implementation of a permanent state of conflict. That mentality has poured out of the Pentagon and down onto Main Street everywhere, patrolled by armored police driving through communities of color with tanks and sporting military-grade weaponry that came to them at a steep discount from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. The nightly footage from the local news and the international news looks more and more similar by the day.
• The fault lies with politicians who glorify and take advantage of the Sacred Soldier in equal measure, even as they slash funding for real soldiers who desperately need it. The trauma of multiple deployments, combined with the deliberate undermining of the national economy for the benefit of the wealthy, has made for a hard homecoming for many of those real soldiers. Their reward -- to be used as advertisements for the vast payday of permanent war whether they like it or not -- is beneath contempt, and profoundly dangerous.
• Many soldiers today do not even want you to thank them for their service. They wish simply to come home, to heal, and to find their parcel of normal after a season in Hell. This is the most reasonable expectation imaginable, and the fact that this country still struggles to fulfill even this small measure of solace tells you all you need to know about our national priorities. Any nation that does not care for its war veterans has no business making new ones.

Hiding their money

The Paradise Papers focus on secretive offshore investments. Surprisingly to me, colleges - especially the upper crust - engage in this activity. I can understand why companies or individuals use these secret, low tax investments, as their job is to maximize profits within certain humanitarian limits. I find it hard to see why such activity can be considered morally correct for colleges. It is true that when schools earn income from enterprises unrelated to their core educational missions, they can be required to pay a tax that was intended to prevent nonprofits from competing unfairly with for-profit businesses. But, isn't their first obligation to their students? Could they not use that money to lower tuition? Which would result in lowering the massive debt many of these students assume.

Thoughts on Veterans Day

This is a reprint of a post of mine from November 2015.

When I was a kid in the 1940s, it was pretty obvious that this nation was at war.  Everyone was involved in some activity to help the war effort. I and my friends collected aluminum foil.  My sisters knitted.  We went to the market with ration book in hand.  Every so often we prepared for an air raid.  My brothers served in the Battle of the Bulge and other combat.  All of my male cousins and most of the men I knew were drafted.  I learned to read via the headlines and the lead stories of the war that the newspapers carried every day.  I practiced my writing by writing letters to my brothers.  All of the men in East Cambridge were drafted.  It was pretty obvious why we should celebrate their efforts.  Hardly anyone was against the GI Bill.  I can fully understand why in the '50s and '60s Armistice Day was a big deal.  And, I can readily understand why Eisenhower renamed Armistice Day to Veterans Day in 1954.

However, I find it very hard to understand the brouhaha that is now made of Veterans Day.  When Nixon abolished the draft in 1973, people now had a choice as to whether they wanted to join the military or not, as they always had a choice whether they should join the police, become a teacher, practice medicine, fight fires, etc.  There are many professions where the goal is not making a dollar.  Soldiers are not the only ones risking their lives.  Police and firefighters also risk their lives.  The military is not the only important profession that keeps this country whole.  Where would we be without teachers or policemen?  Why don't we have a teacher's day or a policemen's day?

The fact of a volunteer army makes us more susceptible to go to war, especially because we know so few of the volunteers. As I said above, many of the people I knew in the '40s were drafted and risked their lives defending this country.  Some of my relatives served in Korea.  Friends served in Vietnam or moved to Canada.  Coffins landed in the military base in Bedford, MA almost every night.  We were all involved in these wars and realized their cost.  The President didn't tell us to avoid the fact that we were at war, we were all helping the war effort.  That was our duty as citizens, no matter our age or circumstances.

It is interesting that most of the politicians that will be speaking on Veterans Day have not served in any capacity in the military.  I'll end with a comment from Aaron O'Connell, a professor at Annapolis, "Uncritical support of all things martial is quickly becoming the new normal for our youth. Hardly any of my students at the Naval Academy remember a time when their nation wasn’t at war."

Learn about bots and trolls

Growing Planes

Killing the State Department

In the nine months of Trump's presidency 60% of the career ambassadors in the State Department are no longer there. Also, there is a freeze on lower level hiring which affects the future. Career diplomats are not political appointees; they do not change with every White House administration. We need them and their experience. 

It seems as though President Trump refuses anyone who opposed his candidacy, as did most of the Republican foreign policy establishment. When asked about the vacancies, Trump said, "I'm the only one that matters."

First steps to a new mode of transportation?

Mass Shootings

Everytown for Gun Safety, a nonprofit focused on understanding and reducing gun violence, analyzed every mass shooting it was able to identify in the United States from 2009-2016. Here are their findings:

• From 2009-2016 in the U.S., there have been 156 mass shootings—incidents in which four or more people were shot and killed, not including the shooter. These incidents resulted in 1,187 victims shot: 848 people were shot and killed, and 339 people were shot and injured. In addition, 66 perpetrators killed themselves after a mass shooting, and another 17 perpetrators were shot and killed by responding law enforcement.
• The majority of mass shootings—54 percent of cases—were related to domestic or family violence.
• Mass shootings significantly impacted children: 25 percent of mass shooting fatalities (211) were children. This is primarily driven by mass shootings related to domestic or family violence, in which over 40 percent of fatalities were children.
• In nearly half of the shootings—42 percent of cases—the shooter exhibited warning signs before the shooting indicating that they posed a danger to themselves or others. These red flags included acts, attempted acts, or threats of violence towards oneself or others; violations of protective orders; or evidence of ongoing substance abuse.
• More than one-third of the shootings—34 percent—involved a shooter who was prohibited from possessing firearms.
• Only ten percent of incidents took place in “gun-free zones”, or areas where civilians are prohibited from carrying firearms and there is not a regular armed law enforcement presence (armed security guards, for example). The vast majority of incidents—63 percent—took place entirely in private homes.

The Biggest Navy Scandal

440 active-duty and retired sailors are currently under scrutiny for possibly violating ethics rules in their dealings with Glenn Defense Marine Asia. The owner of the company, Leonard Glenn Francis or "Fat Leonard", is in jail for bribery and fraud. He overcharged the Navy by around $35 million. 69 of those being investigated are admirals. Charges have been filed on 29 thus far.

It seems that Leonard didn't have to do much to sway the admirals - fancy meals, post-dinner romps that sometimes included prostitutes, and lots of alcohol. For this, he was able to overcharge for “fuel, tugboats, barges, food, water, and sewage removal,” for almost ten years.

Use cars as a model?

Nicholas Kristof has an interesting approach to our gun violence problem. He looks at the issue of car safety. In 1946 there were 9.6 deaths per 100 million miles traveled; last year that number was down to 1.18. Why? The effect of such things as seat belts, federal safety standards, a national speed limit, car safety ratings, air bags, mandatory reporting of defects. 

His suggestions for addressing the gun problem: 

• Background Checks - 22 percent of guns are obtained without one 
• Protection Orders - Keep men subject to domestic violence protection orders from having guns 
• Ban Under-21s - A ban on people under 21 purchasing firearms (this is already the case in many states) 
• Safe Storage - These include trigger locks and guns and ammunition stored separately, especially when children are in the house 
• Straw Purchases - Tighter enforcement of laws on straw purchases of weapons, and some limits on how many guns can be purchased in a month 
• Ammunition Checks - Experimentation with a one-time background check for anybody buying ammunition. 
• End Immunity - End immunity for firearm companies. That’s a subsidy to a particular industry 
• Ban Bump Stocks  - A ban on bump stocks of the kind used in Las Vegas to mimic automatic weapon fire 
• Research ‘Smart Guns’  - “Smart guns” fire only after a fingerprint or PIN is entered, or if used near a particular bracelet.

Make sense to you?

Turning urine into gold

Meditation on Daylight Saving Time

Had any plastic lately?

Studies have found plastic in the fish we eat. In one study, 1 in 4 fish that researchers purchased from fish markets in Indonesia and the United States during the second half of 2014 were found to have plastic in their guts. Studies have also found microplastics in the digestive systems of shellfish, including oysters, mussels and lobsters. Two Belgian researchers, looking at the amount of microplastics in some shellfish, concluded in 2014 that the average European seafood consumer could be eating 11,000 microplastics every year.

Plastics are the No. 1 type of trash found in the sea. Most of it comes from land from such activities as dumping of garbage into waterways. We don't do a good job of managing our waste. In 2010, over 50 percent of waste in more than 60 countries worldwide was found to be inadequately managed, mostly due to a lack of waste management infrastructure coupled with ballooning populations.  The United States is one of the world’s top five waste-generating developed countries, according to the World Economic Forum.

A better way of voting?

You really have to read the GAO report itself.

The Department of Defense (DOD) is the only government agency that is incapable of being audited as the accounting system is, at heart, not really a system.

Here's the beginning of the GAO's comments: "The Journal Voucher Working Group (Working Group), which is comprised of Department of the Army (Army) and Defense Finance and Accounting Service personnel, since 2015 has been actively working toward implementing new processes to address inadequate support for journal vouchers (JV) in the Army’s general fund. JVs are accounting entries manually entered or system generated to record corrections or adjustments in an accounting system. From October 2016 to March 2017, the Working Group identified more than 121,000 unsupported JVs totaling $455 billion in one of its reporting systems, Defense Departmental Reporting System-Budgetary (DDRS-B)."

Continue here.

Public debt of U.S. Territories

Before reading this, try to state the names of the territories. I had trouble naming them all, and there are only five.

The GAO looked at the past fifteen years. Its conclusions:

Puerto Rico's debt grew to 66% of GDP and the territory is now in default. Its financial future is unclear until debt restructuring is complete. 

Guam's debt increased to 44% of GDP. Large unfunded pensions, if unaddressed, may hamper repayment. 

The U.S. Virgin Islands' debt grew to 72% of GDP. It's uncertain if financial reform will let the territory borrow at favorable rates again. 

At 11% and 16% of GDP, respectively, American Samoa and Northern Mariana Islands had lower debt relative to the size of their economies.

Some GAO analyses of the F-35

Click here for more info.

Would better regulations save lives?

Where the money is

Less wine being produced?

The International Organization of Vine and Wine estimates that world wine production will fall 8.2 percent in 2017 compared to the previous year, reaching its lowest point in two decades. The reason: “unfavorable climate conditions” in Italy, France and Spain, the world’s three largest producers. Pinot noir is in the most danger as it is vulnerable to hail, late heat waves and other weather extremes.

And the decline in production is estimated for the U.S., as well. A peer-reviewed study in 2006 projected that climate change, by 2100, would reduce the U.S. area suitable for premium grape growing by up to 70 percent. Earlier this year an Oregon climate assessment reported that the Willamette Valley can expect a three-fold to nine-fold increase in the amount of area burned by the year 2100.

You can't join a class-action lawsuit

A while ago the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) passed a rule that would have banned the “mandatory arbitration clause” that prevents people from joining together in a class-action lawsuit. Wall Street didn't like this rule and worked hard to kill it. This spring they succeeded with Congress and this week President Trump joined them when he signed the resolution Congress had passed to kill the rule.

While we cannot band together in a lawsuit against Wall Street, they  still have a right to join with other companies to sue us for damages.

Checking the food we import

If Martha Rosenberg is correct, there is not much checking done. We have only 200 full-time inspectors policing 300 U.S. ports. One result of this staffing is that 96 percent of shrimp shipments are not opened or checked at the ports. The FDA places faith in the suppliers; it uses an automated system that flags companies with prior offenses and only then inspects documents, opens shipments or send samples to a lab. Does this make sense to you?

The Arctic is warming up

It's warming up twice as fast as the global average. You can see the result in the shrinking ice. But, perhaps what you can't see is a bigger problem. The Permafrost, which covers 25 percent of the Northern Hemisphere, is melting.  As a result, the ground warps, folds, and caves. Roadways built on top of permafrost have becoming wavy roller coasters through the tundra. Long-dormant microbes — some trapped in the ice for tens of thousands of years — are beginning to wake up, releasing equally ancient C02, and could potentially come to infect humans with deadly diseases. And the retreating ice is exposing frozen plants that haven’t seen the sun in 45,000 years.

And it's getting worse. “In the 1980s, the temperature of permafrost in Alaska, Russia and other Arctic regions averaged to be almost 18°F,” the U.S. Geological Survey explained in 2015. “Now the average is just over 28°F.”