Cuba Libre

In an early essay on these pages, TheFundamentals displayed a chart displaying health care cost per capita (what it costs for each citizen) and average life span of each citizen.  The chart covered about 30 countries.  See:  http://thefundamentalsus.blogspot.com/2009/09/health-care-costs-in-us-and-other.html

Now, even a passing glance at the chart communicated the following:

·         Cost per capita in the United States was off the chart – double, triple many western, developed countries

·         Lifespan, how long we Americans live, was nowhere near the top, meaning

·         We were not getting anything for all our spending, meaning

·         Others, spending less, and in some cases, much less, were living longer

For us Americans,  this is heresy.  We Americans know money buys anything – matter of fact, it buys everything.  Just turn on your TV – TV is a constant reminder that all one need do is buy, buy, buy and you will be handsome, good looking, beautiful, slim, well dressed, athletic, virile, popular, and, most important, any ailment, any health failing, any disease or injury or boo-boo will be healed.

Okay, back to the chart.

From time to time, we preach the gospel of learning from others – not often, of course, we Americans tend to not believe in this gospel.  We Americans always know best so we tend to do our own thing.  We preach to others.  We don’t learn from others.  You get the idea.

Okay, back to the chart.

The average Cuban lives to be 77.7 years old.

The average American lives to be 77.4 years old.

Source:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Healthcare_in_Cuba

Some more, please –

Infant mortality in Cuba (2012) – 4.83 deaths per 1,000 births

Infant mortality in US of A (2012) – 6.00 deaths per 1,000 births

Source:  ditto

You don’t need to be David Axelrod to see a campaign propaganda pitch possibility  here, do you?  Don’t worry, David won’t touch this one.  BTW, the New England Journal of Medicine took a crack at the Cuban medical phenomenon – if interested go to:  http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp1215226

In America, we spend about $7,960.00 per American per year for health care.

In Cuba, the Cubans spend about $478.00 per Cuban per year for health care.

Source:  WHO (World Health Organization) www.who.int

Huh?  That’s gotta be a misprint.   Nope.  It’s a fact.

Havana, Cuba is about 300 miles from Miami, Florida.  From Key West, Florida to Cuba is less than 100 miles.  You can get there quickly by boat – even quicker by plane.  Except David’s buddy, Barack, and all Barack’s predecessors for the last 50 years, won’t let us go there.

We’ve been led to believe that the reason we can’t go there is because the south Florida Cuban emigrant lobby is so strong that all those brilliant American leaders were afraid to open up travel to Cuba and risk irritating them or some such nonsense.

We think it has little to do with the Cuban emigrant’s living in south Florida.  We think it has something to do with those who benefit from that  $7,960.00 per person per year health care spending. You know them as hospitals, doctors, nurses, their unions/associations, drug companies, medical equipment supply companies and, of course, lawyers.

Closing comment – one could readily conclude that this essay is about special interest groups and how much they cost us with all their lobbying and added costs that produce no measurable benefits.  And you’d be partially correct.  But, it’s also about propaganda and how the use of propaganda to pitch nonsense even in the face of overwhelming facts and figures works very well in a country that always knows best.

"Control the message – control the media by which the message is delivered – control darn near everything."  DAxelrod to BObama, 2007 - 2017

Military Industrial Complex and the 1st and 4th Amendments

Several weeks ago the US house of representatives voted on an legislative amendment that would have curtailed the federal government’s ability to collect communications data about American citizens.  It was called, Amendment 413 – to end authority for the blanket collection of records under the Patriot Act. It failed by a vote of 205 YES to end versus 217 NO to not end.

As you know the house is controlled by republicans.  An outfit called Maplight compiles data on contributions to politicians and it did some interesting work on defense and related contractors contributions to those who voted for (YES) the amendment (remember, that would have curtailed the gathering) and those who voted against it (NO) or to keep it going.

Here is a summary of defense contractor donations based on votes for/against the amendment:

Contributor                                            Voted NO               Voted YES

Defense Aerospace Contractors               $ 19,230                     $ 9,093

Defense Electronic Contractors                   12,086                        5,794

Defense Shipbuilding Contractors                  5,988                        2,391

Defense Related Services                              3,104                        1,125

Defense R and D                                               782                           181

Defense                                                             279                           108

Homeland Security Contractors                        167                             72

If you add it all up, the representatives who voted to keep the gathering going collected 122% (over double) more than did those who voted to end it.  Coincidence?  Perhaps.

Here are some more statistics about this situation.  Twenty nine (29) representatives received $100,000.00 or more from the above “contributors” during the period 1/1/2011 to 12/31/2012.  Of those 29, 8 were democrats; 21 were republicans.  Of the 29, all but 5 voted to keep gathering the data.  Of the 5 who voted to stop 2 were republicans; 3 democrats.  Included in those republicans who got at least $100,000.00 and voted to keep it going were:  John Boehner and Eric Cantor.  Nancy Pelosi also voted to keep it going – she only collected $47,000.00.

Next we looked at the representatives who didn’t get even one cent from the “contributors.”  There were  28 of them – not a penny.  Sixteen (16) voted to end the collection of data.  Coincidence?  Perhaps.

Source:  http://maplight.org

It is to the shame of the republicans that this simple amendment failed.   Republicans are full accomplices to the record setting deficits and debt accumulated in Washington DC.  They do not stand for individual privacy as defined in the US constitution and they whine about the party in power – endlessly.  They are leaderless, spineless, meandering gypsies grabbing what they can to line their pockets for one more day (no offense intended to our authentic gypsy friends out there.)

It was said a long time ago – those who trade freedom for security, end up with neither.  The poster boy/girl for the political version of that statement is the republican party.

Mrs. Clinton – The Facile Candidate

Facile is a great word – it is an English word that fits Mr. Obama to a T.  Here is the definition of facile:

Adjective - 1.  (esp. of a theory or argument) Appearing neat and comprehensive by ignoring the complexities of an issue; superficial. 2.  (of a person) Having a superficial or simplistic knowledge or approach.   Synonyms - light

When it comes to the complexities of an issue – in Obama’s world – there are no complexities.  When asked about the delays in implementation of his signature piece of legislation – the affordable care act (now commonly referred to as Obamacare) he ignored the question and quickly reverted to a few components of the legislation which had been implemented and actually could have been implemented without any overhaul of American medical insurance. To wit:

·         Kids can stay on their parents health insurance longer

·         Preexisting conditions cannot be a basis for insurance denial

The affordable care act is so difficult to understand, much less implement, because it obviously contains provisions that make no sense.  On the very surface of the wording of the legislation there are obvious, contradictory problems.  No, the implementation is not being postponed because American business needs time to get its act together.  That argument is not just facile, it is dead wrong.  The government cannot get its act together and that is actually the good news.  Even the government is reluctant to enact something that is downright unworkable – in theory now that the theory is understood – and most certainly will be every bit the train wreck as one of its principal Democrat supporters recently defined it.  If you doubt this assessment ask your physician about Obamacare.  You will get an earful.  What happens when the train wreck becomes apparent?  More facile answers, we would surmise which forces us to look into the future a bit.

Obama now says he was out front on the NSA spying situation.  Huh?  Some poor kid is now a guest of the Russians because he got out front on the NSA spying situation.  In any other time or place the Democrats would be pulling for the kid.  But the facile president has kowtowed to the bureaucrats and why not – what are a few freedoms if it means he does not need to answer any questions about an event on his watch? 

About the last thing anyone ever wishes to find in a purported leader is this “facile” characteristic.   Yet, we see that Mr. Obama has turned over his propagandist  - David Axelrod to Mrs. Clinton for the sole purpose of propping her up with this very same trait.  When she dismissed questions about an event on her watch with the insult – what difference does it make? – she actually faced a critical decision.  Do I accept responsibility because I am responsible, ultimately for whatever happens on my watch or do I skip out – provide a simplistic dodge and dismiss the topic so that all who follow me, support me, who I want to vote for me can follow my simple response.

She chose – a facile response.  This is a character issue.  We believe it to be a disqualifying issue.  Perhaps not for a congress person or a senator, even a mayor or governor.  But when our country faces a massive debt which is clearly our most critical long term problem/issue – be it national security or just financial responsibility,  a woman who follows the lead of a facile man is not capable of leading a country back to a solid foundation.

In her most recent speech, she chose the facile issue of voting rights – an issue without any substance.  This simply means she chose to rile up her black voters so that they will not ignore the midterm elections and not turn their back on her in three years.  She chose a facile situation instead of a leadership situation – debt, deficits and the unworkability of a massive federal government.

She chose badly – again and she will do it again and again. Today she is a facile candidate.  She is a well trained, facile candidate. 

Survival

Is survival a relative concept? 

What do you mean, a relative concept?

Well, is survival defined the same in the Hamptons as it is along Grand Boulevard in Detroit?

Uh, now that you put it that way – yes, survival is very relative.

What, then, would survival look like in Detroit?

What do you mean?

Well, would survival mean continuation of a refugee camp style existence for the next 10 years?   20 years?

Don’t think so.  Not too many folk think that living standards in the good old US of A involve lengthy periods of “refugee camp” living standards.

Okay, so what would survival for Detroit look like?

Well just go back a hundred years or so.  Detroit was flooded with uneducated, unskilled, in many cases unemployable immigrants and minorities – refuges from Europe and the southern states who came to Detroit to work.  Not all that different from what it looks like today.  Yet, there were jobs.  There was business – automobiles.  Stores.  Services. 

You mean they would hire these folks with not much on their resumes?

Of course, they trained them – taught them what they were to do, how to do it, how quickly to do it.  They told them where  to show up, when to show up and what was expected of them.  They paid them a “living wage” and those who put some extra oomph into their jobs actually got promoted, earned more, sent their kids to college, and, as they like to say, the rest is history.

So, you think that can happen again?

Of course it can.  But.

What do you mean, “But?”

But for the following:

·         UAW, AFL-CIO, SEIU, AFT, NEA, AFSCME and hundreds more like them

·         Minimum wage laws, affirmative action laws, Lily Ledbetter laws, handicap laws, environmental laws, affordable health care laws, and hundreds more like them

So, you think survival is defined as a turn back – away from all the progress brought us by the unions and the laws and the rules and the bureaucracies behind all that good stuff they tell us they do for us.

Couldn’t have said it better ourselves.   Yes, you just nailed it.  You just defined survival.  What works in the Hamptons, doesn’t work in Detroit.  Open up Detroit and the people will flock to it – keep treating it like the Hamptons and it will never be the Hamptons.

It ain’t that simple.

Oh, yes it is.  Build a moratorium on the unions, special interests and all their laws and rules – limit it just to Detroit – and they will come – they will come in droves – it will make the great migration of the early 20^th century look like the line waiting outside to get in to the new “Lone Ranger” movie.  Heck, let Axelrod/Barack take credit for the idea.

 

Bubbles and Stimulants

Let’s see if we get this right:

·         The United States government has run its largest deficits ever for the last five years which, of course, followed upon the largest deficits ever in the preceding five years

·         The Federal reserve, in the earlier period describe above followed a program of ignoring the fundamentals of market distortion in lending standards which contributed to a massive build up of inflated home mortgage lending including, in many cases, loans which had no real underwriting qualifications

·         In addition, the Federal reserve, complemented its disregard for underwriting standards by lowering interest rates even though unemployment was very low – home prices were skyrocketing and mortgage debt had reached record levels

·         The combination of this excessive and ongoing stimulus – artificial injections by a clueless government (redundant statement)  – resulted in a large group of financial institutions and banks doing one of two things – staying way too late at the party resulting in the destruction of their financial condition, or, bet against the obvious bubble in the mortgage backed security markets resulting in substantial windfall profits

The consequences of the situation described above:

·         Party out of power gets power because most everyone is spooked that the sky is falling – everyone is sick of the party in power – the party in power runs an old hack politician for the top job, and the new party’s kid, hires a darn near brilliant propagandist who goes about blaming everything on either the banks or the party in power and the party about to be thrown out has no answer to said allegations

·         New party comes in and gooses up everything (they call it crisis management) – massive deficits – massive spending – massive build up of government employment – and, continuing the policies of the previous administration – no oversight/regulation/discipline of anything

·         In the meantime the Federal reserve, under the puerile guidance of a replacement economist schooled at the same places that produced this mess, goes nuts – runs the printing presses 24/7 and distributes US currency to finance the already burgeoning bubbles in everything government – at federal, state and city levels and the completely out of control excessive costs in health care and education

·         Their justification this time – if we don’t do this everything will collapse

·         So now we wait anyway, for everything to collapse

Moral of this story – given the above, why are we picking on a few baseball players who use artificial stimulants to bulk up and add a few percentage points to their performance statistics?  Such behavior is the law, the practice, the expectation of all the many governments in the country – it is legal – it is deemed “good policy” – it is ballyhooed by the party in power as the best thing that ever happened.

We, at TheFundamentals, do not understand bubble politics.  We sure don’t understand bubble governance.

American Refugee

 

 

Please Watch

 

 

 

Soul Mate's and BedFellows

Which do you follow?  Which pop culture concept appeals to the inner you?

Love at first sight, or…

…lots of fish in the sea (some refer to this approach as – got to kiss a lot of frogs before you find your prince/princess.)

TheFundamentals has no position on this matter but our inquisitive mind does suggest a possible conclusion, based on purely anecdotal evidence, that there is a certain balance in the universe.

Let’s look at a few examples:

Example #1            

 

 

  

 

Example #2

             

                  

We can’t explain boys and girls – attraction – commitment – perseverance – ups and downs – any aspect or part of it.  But there does seem to be a certain yin and yang at work here.  A certain – we deserve each other – balance.   And what really catches our attention is that not only did these two couples find each other – in a sea of many, many options and choices – the four of them found each other also.  C’mon, what are the odds of that  happening?  The very occurrence of this foursome can’t just be coincidence, huh?   Alignment of the stars perhaps?  Look at the character – the focus – the determination in this photo.  Let’s not take this lightly, huh?

We go back to a great historical figure and man of “real” science to seek some explanation – some idea of just what could be happening.  This man, who had some insight into the physicality of things, once said, “God does not play dice with the Universe" - AEinstein.

Could it be that these couplings are destined?  Could they be much more important that they seem?  We could really be fortunate that such things are given to us.  Let’s go easy on these gifts – they appear be part of a much larger plan - even though this one required a quick rearrangement of schedules (see below).



This photo is just great - as phony as a three dollar bill, but, great.  Our simple question, "Just how long do you think this coupling - these two soul mates - will last?"  If Hillary runs she will have to turn on this guy.  He doesn't like her much now and vice versa.  It will be a lot less when she is on the campaign trail.  Can't wait to watch this convenient coupling come undone.