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Anyone who has the power to make you believe absurdities has the power to make you commit injustices.

Voltaire

Senate Republicans pledge that their first crack at repealing The Affordable Care Act (ACA) won’t be their last.  Some refer to it as Obama’s Health Care Law or Obamacare.  The ACA is about Freedom.  Some factions are adamantly drilling in the idea that the ACA is taking away our freedom to not have insurance.  They push the idea that the government is trying to control your body and kill your grandma. When our presidents wife suggests we grow our own food and get more exercise she is compared to Stalin.  It is OK for a child to grow up and die in a war to protect our freedom to not have health insurance?  Please read the truth…

Today, employers can begin submitting applications for the Early Retiree Reinsurance Program. Created by the Affordable Care Act, this program provides $5 billion in financial assistance to employers, unions and state and local governments to help them maintain coverage for early retirees age 55 and older who are not yet eligible for Medicare.

For too long insurance company bureaucrats have stood between Americans and their doctors. On Tuesday, President Obama announced new regulations that will crack down on unfair practices by insurers and change the balance of power back in favor of consumers – putting consumers back in charge of their health coverage and care.

Secretary Sebelius marks the three month anniversary of the Affordable Care Act with a live webchat where she will answer your questions.

Today, HHS announced new investments under the Affordable Care Act to support prevention activities and develop the nation’s public health infrastructure which will improve health and enhance health care quality.

To read more facts go to…

Most Americans without insurance don’t have insurance because they can’t afford it not because they don’t want it.  The gentleman who owns the small restaurant had to let his family plan go to keep the business afloat and ignored his chest pains.  The waitress let her private plan go after rates increased due to her kidney stones in order to pay for her condo she paid too much for in 2005.  Most emergency rooms are full of “self-pays”  because self-pays use ER’s as their only source of health care.  Preventative care does not exist for the average self-pay American.
Most restaurants and small businesses can’t afford to offer insurance plans and private plans are expensive, with high deductibles.  There are a those not yet experiencing problems with their health, but they have rent and weddings and cell phone plans to pay for and insurance premiums just don’t fit in to the budget.

The ACA will enhance our freedom — freedom from worry about accidents and sickness, freedom from worrying that if you use your insurance the rates will go up or worse yet you’ll no longer be covered, free from discrimination, free to provide insurance for our adult children, and free preventive care for seniors.

My favorite freedom is the freedom to have your own business because you are no longer forced to work in the corporate world to provide insurance for your family.  Many corporations don’t want us to have that kind of freedom and are backing politicians who convince us to keep things just as they are.

Just be careful what you wish for.

“…The health care law is little different from Social Security. The court unanimously recognized  in 1982 that it would be “difficult, if not impossible” to maintain the financial soundness of a Social Security system from which people could opt out. The same analysis holds here: by restricting certain economic choices of individuals, we ensure the vitality of a regulatory regime clearly within Congress’s power to establish. The justices aren’t likely to be misled by the reasoning that prompted two of the four federal courts that have ruled on this legislation to invalidate it on the theory that Congress is entitled to regulate only economic “activity,” not “inactivity,” like the decision not to purchase insurance. This distinction is illusory. Individuals who don’t purchase insurance they can afford have made a choice to take a free ride on the health care system. They know that if they need emergency-room care that they can’t pay for, the public will pick up the tab. This conscious choice carries serious economic consequences for the national health care market, which makes it a proper subject for federal regulation.

By LAURENCE H. TRIBE

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I feel that an individual whose actions are motivated by the wish to bring others happiness necessarily meets with less misfortune that one who does not. Sickness, old age, mishaps of one sort or another are the same for us all. But the sufferings which undermine our internal peace – anxiety, doubt, disappointment – these are definitely less.

Dalai Lama

…so according to this graph, unless the NOAA is lying, the average temperature in 2008 was about 54 degrees F.  The average temp in 1895 was about 52 degrees F.  Perhaps this isn’t significant, but, then again, perhaps it is.

If you look at it in degrees C it is only a difference of about 11.3 to 12.1.  Not impressive enough to get you out of your Ram tough truck?

Smart scientists are having a blue bloody bird over this stuff.  We’re so busy being mad at Republicans or Democrats or Wall Street or Mexicans we aren’t looking at what is really important.  This planet isn’t just a big floating rock, it is alive and we need to keep it that way.  There isn’t another live planet for us to go to.

In August 2010, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued a joint statement on bedbug control. There was no plan of action.

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There are about 18 million Florida residents who directly or indirectly make their living from the visits of the 50 million tourists who come here every year.  Why do you think they come here?  This place is beautiful and  magical–  the critters, the flowers, the waters, the Everglades, the history it is all absolutely enchanting.  What is disenchanting is the runaway sprawl and the devastation to our swamp and it’s water quality and the resultant effects on lives.

The  coastal areas of Florida are beige on a satellite view.  When you zoom in a bit more you’ll see the ant-like cars moving slowly in traffic.  Within these beige areas along the coasts there are towns that can be redone, rebuilt, restored.  Prosperity and development can live on without devouring any more of the everglades and its endowments to us.  We just need to insist.

In the middle of Florida just south of Lake Okeechobee is a huge dike that stops the flow of water that created the Everglades.  This area is beige on a satellite view as well.  This dike was built and canals were dug to enhance development and sugar plantations and cattle ranching.  The run off and phosphorus is killing the Everglades.  Why should we care?  Well, if you don’t care about the river of grass, the  panthers, the wild orchids, and the fact that its slow flow into the estuaries of the tip of Florida serves as fish nurseries and it sits on top of the aquifer that gives us drinking water and there is no other place on earth like it and if we can’t save it then it is a message to the world that we failed.

Well–other than that you must at least care about the otters.  The happy resourceful otters are disappearing.  Otters are the only other land mammal that does stuff just because it is fun (like us)  What is bad for them is bad for us.  So while your crawling along in traffic think about the otters.  When is the last time you saw one?

The enormous growth of metropolitan Atlanta, and the resulting increase in water withdrawals from the Chattahoochee river have an effect on the oysters in the Apalachicola Bay in Northern Florida.  The oysters depend on the brackish water mixture of river and ocean water.  “Water transfers” also occur prior to reaching Apalachicola Bay.  Water is withdrawn from the Chattahoochee, then discharged as treated sewage water into another river, such as the Oconee River, which flows to the Atlantic Seaboard. The Congress of the United States has been asked to intervene in the fight between Georgia, Florida, and Alabama over rights to the river water. The lawsuit is now in court, and that may take quite a few years to resolve.

Why should you care?  You don’t like oysters? You may be interested to know that each oyster individually filters 50 gallons of water per day.  Oysters are to bays and estuaries as our kidneys are to us, we die without them.

Florida has a strong and powerful nature conservancy, Audubon Society and Ocean Conservancy. It also has powerful developers, ranchers and plantation owners who employ the masses (as well as immigrants).  A constant war is ongoing.  A war that has never been won by either side, but, much has been lost.  I look at the empty concrete strip malls that have been a result of too much too fast and the swamp land that was filled between dredged canals.  Another CVS replaces the eagle nest, a banyan tree that ended its 50 year life to a blockbuster store that is now defunct, another mangrove island (fish nursery) losing its life to another development.  I think some just love the fight no matter the devastation.

“You inherit an old house.  A real fixer-upper.  You scramble around to earn some money and scrape together some funding to start improving it.  Some of your better-off friends are a little jealous because, while the place is a wreck, it’s in a great location.  You start fixing the foundations where the floor was sagging.  You spend money replacing the galvanized pipes with copper…you start re-wiring the outlets so they’ll be grounded.  You throw a party even though you’ve just started the renovation.  People who come over see a fixer-upper.  A dump.  Some may see the potential.  Most just cannot believe you spent X-dollars and the house is still a mess.

This country is that house.  The previous administration looted the Treasury and the moral underpinnings of American Values were smashed.  A lot of effort has been made to stabilize the wreckage and it doesn’t show up to an observer who can’t imagine what it would look like if it had been allowed to continue to fall apart.”   David Gene Echt

Half the country needs to be educated or re-educated to take on the jobs of change. He promised us change, and we’re getting it. Now we have to participate,  involve ourselves in the change. Velma Hart is obviously doing everything right, kids in private schools, a noble profession, no credit card, living within her means; what do you say to that? The healthcare reforms,bank bailouts, credit card rules and education changes that Obama has undertaken aren’t helping her,because she paid her mortgage, has health care through the VA (which, by the way, is socialist health care), she doesn’t use a credit card and she has always lived within her means so they won’t help her or the half of the country who lives as she lives , they help the irresponsible half and that half doesn’t want anything to change, and they don’t want to participate in change.

People like Velma suffer because of the speculators and gamblers who have played around with our hard earned dollars and want to continue to do so.  There is also the fear of the unknown that is driven into our minds by the media, which is paid by those same speculators and gamblers.  I won’t even get in to the religious zealots that feed their line of garbage that plays on faith.  They are yelling, because if they yell loud enough people can’t hear the truth.

Meantime, 19 year olds are aiming bullets at each others heads in some sandy venue in the name of religious zealots, media hype, speculators, gamblers and that coveted Kardashian lifestyle.

I ran across a website that visually represented how much money BP lost due to the oil spill.   I was incredulous.  That much money exists?  It is a loss they plan to recoup.  How do you suppose they will make up the loss?

They have convinced us to drive bigger cars, drink our water from a bottle, use more plastic and carry on with war, any war.  Oil men love war.  War is what truly feeds Seymour.  You remember the insatiable plant from “Little Shop of Horrors”.  I liken the oil (and coal) industry to Seymour’s need to keep his plant alive.  In the beginning it was a nice fun little plant.  Harmless, at least relatively.  The plant like the oil industry has gotten so big it is devouring the planet through wars and plastic and large ships and cruise liners that carry us and our crap across oceans.

We are convinced that if we all pile on a giant boat together life will be more fun.  We are convinced that the stuff we have is not good enough.  It all needs to be replaced by better stuff.  Most of the stuff is plastic and plastic is made from oil and the plastic is brought to us on giant boats that require massive amounts of oil.  This insatiable need has been brought to you by the oil industry.

We can’t blame oil entirely.  Coal is what fuels this nations heat and air and lights.  The current grid was set up by the coal industry and subsidized by the US government.  It was harmless and useful in its beginnings.  What a blessing to have heat and air and light due to the fabulous grid work that traverses the nation.  Except, now it too is like Seymour’s plant.  Dividing and devouring and convincing us that nothing else will do.

So let me share the website that prompted this blog…

http://www.visualeconomics.com/what-bp-could-have-bought-with-all-the-money-they-lost/

I wrote to my smart friend Fred who gave me this reply…

So you see in the world of business BP’s loss isn’t so much. Don’t feel sorry for them. Don’t think how much good this money could have done because it pales in comparison to the money we waste on wars. Iraq I believe was $1,000 billion. That’s 112 times what BP wasted.

When you look at it this way — it isn’t oil and coal that feeds Seymour’s plant.  Economics feeds the plant.  How often does economic advantage take precedence over doing good?  Goodness faces doom when it gets in the way of the economy.

What truly amazed me is that 3.4 billion dollars would buy an ice cream sandwich for everyone in the world and yahoo is worth 20 billion.  Wouldn’t it be cool if yahoo bought an ice cream sandwich for everyone in the world?  There is probably a soy version for the lactose intolerant.

The Swiss bankers and the Roman Catholic Church were complicit in the Nazi regime. These were not terrible people. They were normal people. They closed their eyes to evil or justified it, for the sake of peace or gain or national loyalty. I sometimes wonder (and fear) whether I would have done the same if I had been in that society at that time. It is so easy not to see, not to hear, not to understand, when one’s own peace or prosperity is involved. There have been times, after all, when I have allowed blatantly racist statements to pass unchallenged in the name of good manners, or of just keeping the peace. For so little of one’s soul, or at least a little piece of it, is on the auction block.”

The Reverend Kathleen Damewood Korb

Certain persons in the media have made mephistophelian bargains for power and fame using fear and greed as their catalyst.  A few of them have marketed themselves as chosen.  Chosen to teach us what God wants us to do.  People blindly believe their utterances and it is becoming impossible to sit idly by or “close my eyes for the sake of peace”.

“Never talk politics or religion at the dinner table.”  Adhering to that rule makes for a peaceful dinner especially among friends and family with differing political values.  Once the plates are cleared and the wine and chocolates or coffee and cheesecake starts a few fists have pounded the table. There are times when we need to discuss and debate, to provide the other side of a point. Informing ourselves, sharing what we’ve learned removes animosity and hatred and misunderstanding.  Not talking at all, not sharing likes and dislikes is only useful for augmenting paranoia. 

It is always important to challenge hate; challenge it’s source and find it’s solution. When you don’t like the way things are, there is always a chance for a different outcome.  Our conversations need to look at all sides and possible outcomes. Are we better off doing nothing vs doing things differently?

When fists are pounding or all capital letters are being typed, chances are a point is being made.  Hopefully the point is to liberate us from hate

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If you look up alternative energy technology you’ll find articles of hope.  Energy freedom is a term to be  embraced.  I once lived in  a home we heated with a wood burning stove. heating our Wisconsin home cost nothing more than the price of a chainsaw.  It was a lot of work and I do prefer flipping a switch to stoking a wood burning stove at 2 am,  if the source of energy at the other end of that switch isn’t harming our exquisite planet.

Do you think there are energy sources out there for our near future that won’t harm the planet?   Michael Parfit writes for the National Geographic.  He has researched energy alternatives and summarized his findings nicely.  To read the entire article for yourself go to…

http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0508/feature1/text3.html

He states…

the world’s concern over energy has haunted presidential speeches, congressional campaigns, disaster books, and my own sense of well-being with the same kind of gnawing unease that characterized the Cold War.

Martin Hoffert of NYU discussed on PBS.org…

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/warming/beyond/

If you were to transplant someone from 100 years ago into the year 2000, the things we do now would certainly seem magical to them.  We’re only limited by the creativity of our scientific imagination and by our will to try to find the solution.

Professor Hoffert opens eyes and minds.  He explained that most of the technological advances of the last 100 years were driven by the military and by fear.  The market (on the other hand) will only support technology if it shows a profit within 3 years.

He introduced some pretty fantastic scenarios of mining uranium and platinum from other planets and bringing it back here to power our fuel cells and nuclear reactors. There is also an idea that would only work if us planet dwellers got along and worked together.   The idea involves the dark side of the planet buying energy from the sunny side.  Space based solar collectors would collect energy from the sun and send it to us and our switches.  I am all for anything that doesn’t involve me chopping wood or harming the planet.

What professor Hoffert proposes is a policy in which developed nations initiate programs of research and development for dramatically and drastically transformative systems of energy production on the Earth. Not all of these are going to work. But the ones that are successful – and there is a possibility that several of them might be successful in some combination — will totally transform our civilization and bring us into changes that are as dramatic as the changes that took place between the end of the 19th and the end of the 20th centuries.

This is so exciting!  Who wouldn’t be excited about a new renewable energy future. Especially after watching newscasts of dead or dying pelicans smothered in oil and that sad dolphin that gasped its last breath on national television.

There is a facility of  smart people assembled by the US government called The National Renewable Energy Laboratory. http://www.nrel.gov/.  Go to their website and just peruse the great things going on there. I just wish they had more influence on the market.

Hitting us in the pocket seems to be the only way to inspire us to conserve resources.  There are just too many of us and resources are getting scarce.  We have to go farther out to sea to find oil, we have to spend more money to have clean water fall from our taps. Some of us care about leaving a clean and livable planet to our offspring and others of us just don’t want prices to go up in the immediate sense because of “scary global warming crap” they say is made up by governments to control us.  I say the market makes up garbage propaganda to control us into buying what they are selling.  (You don’t need Febreze if you keep your house clean).

Derek Thompson a staff editor at Atlantic Business states,  When something is free, you tend to use more of it. It’s true for buffets and open bars, and it’s the same with carbon. Today producers and consumers can burn coal and drive gas-guzzlers without fully paying for their contribution to rising carbon dioxide levels. Carbon emissions have a cost, but carbon emitters don’t pay the price. Economists call this a “market failure.” You can call it, “a recipe for toasting the planet.”

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2010/06/why-carbon-pricing-matters/58386/

I just threw this little guy in here because he is so damn cute…

Second-generation biofuels use biomass-to-liquid technology, they include cellulosic biofuels from non-food crops.   http://bioenergycenter.org/what-is-bioenergy/

Bio energy is my personal favorite and our National Bioenergy Center is doing wonderful things to change us from having to continue with oil drilling and coal mining and shale blasting for fossil fuels.  Folks in Haiti made a living chopping wood until there were no more trees in Haiti, Folks in Afghanistan made a living growing poppies and selling Opiods to the point where the whole country is stoned and angry, Folks in the US and Canada have made a living in the fossil fuel industry for so long they are mortified of the idea of no more need for fossil fuels. They — and we need to move up. Many people I have met in the US are already living “off the grid”, with wind and solar.

The future of the planet and it’s ecosystem are more important than the stock market.  I believe that the truly smart players will be the ones figuring out how to make money from doing what is right for the planet.  Difficult step for those movers and shakers out there.  It will be a step up into the breezy sunshine.