President Obama versus the Baby Boomers

Obama will be a great president, one of our best ever. I know this because the time ultimately makes the man. He’s the right person in the right place at the right time.

To fulfill this prediction he needs to be able to see the entire forest and visualize a future for our nation. He has visualized the United States as a great nation.

Being able to see a future means that Obama will be able to make decisions that are not just bailout band-aids. Decisions that will stabilize our country and preserve the chance for future greatness.

The number one problem in the United States is also the strength of our country - the Baby Boomers.

Follow the yellow-brick road has always been the mantra of the Baby Boomer. Whatever the current yellow-brick road was it lead to mass hypnosis and enough generalized hysteria to follow it.

First it was get a good education and a great job. This lead to huge competition in the educational system and the work place. Later this was replaced with various mantras like: invest in houses – they never going down in value, or buy stocks - they’re going to the moon. Besides education were any of these mantras proven correct?

Being a member of the baby-boom generation I believe I can see the sacrifices that we’re going to have to make to help our country remain a land of opportunity for future generations.

The 2008 shearing of the Baby Boomers was the first sacrifice. The Baby Boomers don’t like it but it was necessary to keep us focused and to help the country. A wealthy baby-boom generation leads to a lazy under-productive class of people. But a hungry set of Baby Boomers leads to a group of people focused on the future and willing to accept that it’s truly not what our country can do for us but what we can do for the future of our country. This will require more sacrifices. Our parents understood this because they lived through the Great Depression and the wars that followed.

The next sacrifice is that a large proportion of the Baby Boomers will have to delay retirement. Delay gratification. The fact is that the Social Security System was never designed for the parameters of the baby boom (i.e. a huge percentage of the population sucking at the government teat).

The third sacrifice is that medical care for baby boomers will have to be capped. In other words health care dollars will have to be invested where it’s needed most, preventive health care for the young, the prevention of metabolic diseases and advanced medical research.

Organ transplantation is a wonderful thing but it’s just too much for the system.

The advancement of medicine is important. Allowing our parents and Baby Boomers to suck up the resources is just not acceptable.

This leads to the fourth sacrifice. Jack Kevorkian was right. We need euthanasia. It already exists in the countries of northern Europe. This does not have to be a Soylent-Green scenario. Voluntary euthanasia and giving geriatric physicians the training and the right to perform should be all that’s necessary.
Warehousing Baby Boomers with permanent dementia makes absolutely no sense. There are just too many of us and too few care givers and resources.

Whenever a group is asked to make sacrifices they should be compensated. How do we compensate the Baby Boomers for the resolution of these issues?

The first thing is that the shearing of 2008 must be ameliorated.

How do you do that?

It’s pretty obvious at this point that the bailout given to the banks has gone into their coffers and they are not going to lend it out freely. The demands they are making to protect “their money” are just too onerous. People cannot get loans. The entire system is jammed. It’s only the flow of money and optimism that keeps any financial system afloat. If you believe you are going to lose your job and your home it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Money is meant to circulate freely. This flow of money keeps the system healthy.

So the government is going to have to make direct loans to homeowners with only one-string attached.

The interest rate for banks to get money at this point is somewhere between zero and .25%. Anyone who has a mortgage should be able to sign a note to the government at a 3% interest rate and obtain a thirty-year unassumable mortgage. If they keep up their payments (the attached string) then the most onerous part of the housing crisis will be over. I guarantee this will get the economy moving.
What about the fact that 30% of mortgage holders owe more on their houses than they are worth. To get the 3% money the individual homeowner will have to accept that they borrowed the money and so they will have to pay it back.

The devaluations of the housing crisis are not going to end until the next set of Baby Boomers get to the stage where they are in the market to buy a home. This is going to be a while as the next baby-boom generation is now in elementary school.

The second thing Baby Boomers will receive in return for their sacrifices is the ability to opt into this new stripped-down Medicare system immediately. This will put a security net under baby boomers and prevent health insurance companies from exsanguinating their bank accounts.

If president-elect Obama does not recognize that Baby Boomers are the problem and the cure then fewer and fewer Americans will own more and more of the resources and ultimately we will have two classes of citizens: the ultra wealthy and those facing poverty.

Americans are not cut out to take this solution. This result will lead to violence and revolution. We don’t need either. We don’t need revolution we need resolution. The resolution of Baby Boomers to make the required sacrifices.

When there is no opportunity for our young people how long will they be willing to play the game of you-do-all-the-work-yet-you-can’t-get-ahead?

The strength of our nation during our life times has been the strong middle class with cash in their pockets that they’re willing to spend.

I believe Barrack Obama knows and understands these things.

So what makes this a Dark Comedy?

If good decisions aren’t made then we’ll be facing the darkest times of our lives with no respite in sight.

And how come the media and our last sixteen years of leadership have not seen the nine-hundred pound gorilla sitting in the room? It seems pretty obvious at this point. Late but obvious.

If we’re not willing to laugh at ourselves then we better just curl up in the corner and moan because if we don’t make these sacrifices it’s going to get very dark.

It's True Santa, Cats Suck the Breath of Babies by Theophilous Thorne-Bush

I hate to break it to you at the holidays. There’s nothing a cat likes better than the breath of a newborn. That exquisite aroma of sour milk. That tiny little creature with your whiskers plastered over its mouth and nose. Nothing like feeling your paws pressing on its scrawny chest. As I’ve always said, there’s nothing better at the holidays than a warm baby.

I could go on about breath variation and an infant’s age and diet but I’d either be preaching to the pride or giving you the heebie jeebies.

There’s no middle ground when it comes to breathe sucking.

It’s shocking. I’ve tried to quit. I’ve been through a cat’s nine-step program. But then I recognized that if a cat has the good fortune to be trained early to only inhale the breath of babies to the point of unconsciousness, it’s not such a bad thing. Unconsciousness looks a lot like sleep to me.

Most families don’t even know it’s happening. If all goes according to plan. It’s only when a cat has a lung ratio of twice the baby’s breath capacity that mishaps occur. It’s unfortunate. But there’s no use crying over spilled milk, is there?

And my owner started me early. In the photo on the right you see a little boy whose breath I’ve just sucked. If you look closely you’ll see my calling card – a 1/8 scale stuffed cat made in my image. It’s left in the spirit of good will with the idea that there should be fair exchange in all things.

Hanging around and asking if it was good for the other party is inadequate and smacks of the egocentric activities of a self-centered mammal.

In the photo on the left I’m working on this article and pondering the idea that I could start a program, the International Breath Sucking Cats Association (IBSCA) or Ibsca (also known as the “I be a sucking cat assoc").

My role would be teaching kittens safe sucking technique, the most effective methods for breath sucking and how not to get hooked on breath or get caught in the act by a less sophisticated mother or grand mother. There’s nothing sadder at the holiday than a young cat locked away for infanticide.

I guess you now know why at the crèche of baby Jesus they don’t have a cat in attendance. And I’ve got to admit that personally I don’t believe any of the wild cat tales of the Little Cat of Bethlehem. But who knows, when it comes to breath sucking a cat’s got to do what a cat’s got to do.

If you would like to nominate your family’s cat for membership in IBSCA just leave a comment or send us a picture of your pet caught in the act. And no making up stuff. I hate it when I have to go to the Claw. And I will if you try to fake a comment.

So in the coming year here’s to that hoodoo that I do so well.

It's A Wonderful Life for Dark Comedy

It's A Wonderful life - my favorite movie. I’ve spent some time this holiday season thinking about the movie, not the suicide part, the part that pertains to our financial crisis.

And now we’re hearing that subprime mortgages were just the start. Now it’s time for two other types of home mortgages to hit the wall. The foreclosure wall.

Who’s going to be in the market to buy a car when they don’t know if they’re going to lose their home? Who’s going to be in the market to buy a new home if they fear for their job? It’s all interconnected.

I hear people say that if you don’t understand your mortgage you deserve what you get. And things like, if you can’t pay for a home then you shouldn’t buy a home. But these folks are missing an important point. At some point we’re all in this together. Where do the dominoes stop? The answer is, potentially they don’t.

The unemployment rate reached 25 percent during the Great Depression and the job market only revived because we had to spend a lot of money to fight World War Two.

"Right now, the unemployment rate would be more than twice as bad if you go back to the way this figure used to be calculated.
In 1994 the Clinton White House decided that the unemployment rate needed to be modernized.

So anyone who had been out of work for at least a year was no longer counted as unemployed - they were just too lazy and discouraged to find work.

John Williams, an economist who tracks this stuff on his Web site ShadowStats.com, says today's unemployment rate would be 16.5 percent if we went back to the old way of measuring it.

Already, the share of men older than 20 with jobs was at its lowest point last month since 1983, and very close to the low point of the last 60 years."

We certainly have resolved the subprime mess, only 85,000 people lost their homes in October. In fact some banks are not even evicting foreclosed upon homeowners during the holiday season. But what happens January 2nd?

I heard on the business channel that this mess started with the housing market and that it won’t end until the housing market crisis ends. With this in mind let’s see what Jimmy Stewart as George Bailey says –
"Just a minute - just a minute. Now, hold on, Mr. Potter. You're right when you say my father was no businessman. I know that. Why he ever started this cheap, penny-ante Building and Loan, I'll never know. But neither you nor anyone else can say anything against his character, because his whole life was - why, in the twenty-five years since he and Uncle Billy started this thing, he never once thought of himself. Isn't that right, Uncle Billy? He didn't save enough money to send Harry to school, let alone me. But he did help a few people get out of your slums, Mr. Potter, and what's wrong with that? Why - here, you're all businessmen here. Doesn't it make them better citizens? Doesn't it make them better customers? You - you said - what'd you say a minute ago? They had to wait and save their money before they even ought to think of a decent home. Wait? Wait for what? Until their children grow up and leave them? Until they're so old and broken down that they... Do you know how long it takes a working man to save five thousand dollars? Just remember this, Mr. Potter, that this rabble you're talking about... they do most of the working and paying and living and dying in this community. Well, is it too much to have them work and pay and live and die in a couple of decent rooms and a bath? Anyway, my father didn't think so. People were human beings to him. But to you, a warped, frustrated old man, they're cattle. Well, in my book he died a much richer man than you'll ever be."

Perhaps if these thoughts influenced our decision-makers then we’d put the brakes on the housing crisis. And when people don’t think they’re going to lose everything then they’ll begin to buy something. And when they begin to buy the snowball of optimism will gain some momentum and things will turn around. Do we really need another world war to stop this?

If that’s not darkly comical enough here’s my take on It’s A Wonderful Life.

The movie is a finely crafted story about the power of witchcraft. Mary Bailey, played exquisitely by Donna Reed, throws a rock breaking a window in the old house killing George Bailey’s father triggering a cascade of events trapping George in Bedford Falls.

She then takes advantage of a run on the savings and loan during the Great Depression to bewitch Bert and Ernie into helping her abscond with the rundown mansion.

This interpretation of the movie doesn’t make me like it less and I’m sure 99% of the people who love the story would disagree. But the next time you curl up on the couch to see this classic consider for a moment that this could be the correct interpretation. The dark comedy interpretation. It still has a happy ending but George Bailey never does escape Bedford Falls.

Universal Health Care or It's No Bailout if it Solves the Problem

The Most Effective Preventive Medicine

The Third Ring of Health Insurance Hell

It seems to me that the health insurance industry is broken all the way to the bank.

If I were to have taken all the money I have paid for health insurance over the last 36 years and put it in an old sock every month I could now own a fairly substantial building. Instead I have an ancient empty sock and our health insurance company has the building. And it’s quite a large good-looking building.

What’s worse I continue to pay every month for a policy that has a deductible of $5,000 for each event. You heard right, that’s not per year but per event. I didn’t sign up for that, they just slowly but surely moved me into the third ring of health insurance hell.

Yet I continue to pay.

What kind of fool am I? The kind who seems to be able to afford health insurance but can’t pay for the health care I need.

Meanwhile the health insurance company plunders my bank account every month. And annually they raise their fees 8-14%.

You may as well hear the bad news from me; I’m a cancer survivor and a type 2 diabetic. I feel comfortable telling you that because the Hippa laws allowed every insurance company in the world access to my medical history. Sure there was an elaborate stage play of pharmacies trying to protect our information. This was for the gullible among us who believe Hippa had something for the little guy.

And what do I get for my money every month? Well, they use their size to negotiate a fee with the medical profession for their services.

What if I didn’t have this negotiated fee? Well I have been without health insurance at one point and when I went to the hospital I found myself in what felt like a vice. I had assets but no insurance, and so the fees I was charged subsidized both the patients covered by health insurance and the indigent patients who could pay nothing.

So I sit on the knife blade of the poorly insured. I don’t believe when the chips are down I’ll get good care and yet I see the major breach in my bank account being drained for the edification of the insurance company and their minions.

Did you ever stop and think what percentage of Americans work for the insurance industry? It shocked me when I was told 10% of Americans work in the insurance industry. If I worked for the industry I’d be embarrassed.

The state of Florida even has an insurance commissioner and when you phone and discuss any kind of problem with your insurance carrier they are quick to let you know that the insurance commissioners office was established to stop insurance fraud (i.e. to protect giant insurance companies from their customers). They already have lawyers, lobbyists, and elected officials in all varieties, why do they need a taxpayer paid government official? Isn’t that overkill? When you try to stand up to an insurance company you already feel like David without any stones for his sling.

So what does the insurance industry do?

1. It gives us peace of mind.
2. It allows us to hold a mortgage so the banks and other mortgage holders will be protected.
3. It makes money by shuffling a mountain of paper through a mountain of computers.
4. It replaces our health if it’s lost.
5. It employees 10% of the American population to shuffle paper and tell policy holders, "no."

Well one out of five is not bad. It’s awful.

And it’s not as though health insurance isn’t costing us an arm and a leg (sometimes literally) We pay 16% of our Gross Domestic Product for health care. That’s a higher percentage than any other nation. And 41% of working-age adults are paying off accrued medical debt. Yet the United States is 29th in the world in infant mortality and 48th in life expectancy!

Talk about a squeaky wheel.

Teddy Roosevelt, in 1912, recognized the need for universal health care in the United States.

Resolving the health care crisis and providing a boost to the security of every ordinary American would help the economy. And it wouldn’t cost the taxpayers 700 billion dollars.

If Iraq has it worked out, and Canada has it worked out, and all the countries of the European Common Market have it worked out, why don’t we?

Aren’t we the innovators? Aren’t we the people who leave our borders to bring democracy to the less democratic?

What could be a more democratic issue than adequate, affordable health care?

Could it be that the health insurance industry doesn’t want it resolved? Could it be that big pharma likes the current system? Could it be that someone in the medical industry wants the system that we have? I hope not.

Don’t count on our representatives in Washington helping with this problem as they and their families have the best health insurance guaranteed for the rest of their lives.

A good start to solving this whole issue might be taking away the health care of every elected official and their family and make them go out into the marketplace and find and pay for their own policy. Then they would begin to understand part of what the citizens of this country are facing.

When I went through surgery and six months of chemotherapy I was fortunate to have a loving wife who would battle our health insurance company because she had to fight for everything in the policy we had paid for over a twenty year period. I honestly believe her fight was more difficult and stressful than the one I fought to survive. Then when the health battle was over they doubled our policy cost every year until they rooted out the cancer – me.

Where’s the dark comedy in this? Perhaps I should run for political office with my entire platform being, "Vote for me – I need the health

insurance."

Here’s where it gets darkly comical. I went to the emergency room a few weeks ago. They promptly triaged my health insurance card and had a hearty laugh. And I waited, and waited and…

A friend of mine with a potentially fatal brain aneurysm had almost the same experience except he woke up in the basement of the hospital, disoriented, dressed in his skivvies with a discharge note taped to his wrist.

The Robin Hood of People-less Homes

Everyone Needs a Home

In Miami there is now a homeless real estate agent. No, not a real estate agent that’s homeless (although I’m sure there are a number of those) but a person who is liberating foreclosed homes and matching homeless people with people-less homes.

Max breaks in. Max evaluates the home. And, like a good realtor, Max then translates the houses features into the property’s benefits for its future occupants and finally matches the home to his list of homeless people who need a home. Voila, Max makes his choice and then helps the homeless make the best of the situation.

I assume making the best of the situation means he helps them get the water and electric turned on. And I’m sure the cable company doesn’t want to be left out. After all the utility companies are used to making money from every house on the block and they will be happy to provide the service if the payments are prompt and in full.

A group called, Take Back the Land, will even help the homeless with second-hand furniture, cleaning supplies and yard upkeep. There is no free lunch. Home residency has its responsibilities.

Two years ago I would have been opposed to this flagrant squatting. I would have wondered what kind of third-world country allows it. Not today. Today there’s a little spot in my heart that applauds the behavior. It goes to show you how much has changed in two years.

Of course they’re not living in my foreclosed home or a foreclosed home in my neighborhood (that I know of), but in someone else’s neighborhood. I suppose if my neighbors were homeless people living in a pirated house, I might feel differently. When it happens I’m wondering if the "not in my neighborhood" syndrome will kick in for me.

Here’s where it gets darkly comical.

The only problem is that when I say this I’ve got to admit I don’t actually know or associate with my closest neighbors.

One neighbor moved away about three months ago and can’t sell their house for a decent price. And of course when they sell it for a low-ball price this will affect the value of every house in our area. And when I look back these folks were nice but so busy all we ever saw of them were their taillights.

Another close neighbor (close in proximity) is so busy when I do see him, he’s totally preoccupied.

A third neighbor is a medical doctor who must work 120 hours a week because you never see him.

And our final set of neighbors we have absolutely nothing in common with. In fact I’m sure in the greater scheme of the universe our views cancel each other out leaving only empty space.

So the darkly comical aspect is: what if these homeless people moved in and they took care of the yard and the house and were willing to communicate and function as neighbors? This could all work out.

Well, "all work out" except for the banks that own all this foreclosed property and I’m sure they would now feel violated.

But aren’t they the ones who are receiving this umpteen-billion-dollar bailout?

America: Land of the Free, Home of the Brave?

On Black Friday, appropriately named, a Wal-Mart employee, Jdimytai Damour (34) was trampled by a frenzied group of shoppers on Long Island.

Prior to the doors opening the crowd of 2,000 had been chanting "Push the doors in! Push the doors in!" And when the doors were opened the "out of control" shoppers took the doors off their hinges and in the process of storming the entrance knocked down Mister Damour. Crushed him. Caused him a fatal heart attack.

When told they had to leave because an employee had been killed, some responded with, "I’ve been on line since –

And they kept right on shopping.

Shopping for life changing products like:
$798 Samsung 50" plasma HDTV
$28 Bissell upright vacuums
$8 men’s Wrangler Tough Jeans
$9 DVD’s of the Incredible Hulk

Once the store was cleared of shoppers and the carnage cleaned it reopened at 1:00 PM and was packed within minutes.

What does this tragedy have to do with Dark Comedy/Black Comedy?

There’s always the sitter, "I’d rather die than pay $9 for a DVD of the Incredible Hulk."

Here are some comments I read that were attached to a local news article:

"There wasn’t anything special that day. They had the absolute worst service. I went to Best Buy and got in and out in 15 minutes and they had a much larger selection."

"The entire country has become nothing but mindless zombies addicted to bad television shows, worse music and the power of suggestion. Marketing and advertising, in conjunction with media, controls the minds of America. They proved it by getting Obama elected."

"Help is on the way. Obaminos and the Pelosi-Reed cabal have pledged to shut down all Wal-marts so that this stuff never happens again. It’s for the sake of the children."

"Moooo, get along little doggies."

"This is all the more reason I shop online. Shop online – you get the same deals and even if you have to pay for shipping it’s worth not getting killed."

"It’s Bush’s fault because of the low gasoline prices having enabled people to get to the store."

Need I say more?