The Math and Madness of Medicare

INTRODUCTION

In this paper I will explore two fundamental failures of the Medicare system. First, why it simply does not work mathematically -- it is literally accounting fraud and private businessmen like Bernie Madoff have been tried and convicted for lesser schemes.  Second, I will touch on why removing the "customer" from the payment process and removing the price from the product has created inflation and perversion of epic proportions.  I readily admit that I have used a few statements from my sources nearly verbatim -- there was simply not a better way of putting it.  I have cited my sources and give them serious credit and thank them for making my job easier.  

WHAT IS THE MATTER WITH MEDICARE

America enjoys freedoms beyond that of many advanced nations.  We like that -- it makes us uniquely American.  We, in general, don't like governments who unduly burden us or regulate our personal behavior.  Insidiously though American's have been willing to give up bits and pieces of itself to a nanny-state mentality -- we have allowed others to take responsibility for our care and well-being.  Most voters don't see the small losses of freedom as being dramatic -- but even Everest is scaled one small step at a time - you ultimately get to the top (weather permitting) and in this same incremental process America will reach its bottom. We are in fact losing one of the characteristics that made us America.

We often look at other governments as being oppressive and at the same time dismiss the elements that those governments might have that are strong points.  Throwing the baby out with the bath water as it were.  I don't often look to Asia for leadership role models nor for examples of transparency -- specifically I don't look at China -- China scares me.  But in this case Asia has got it right -- I never dreamed I would say this.

Take Singapore. Singapore’s paternalistic government is unappealing to many Americans — media restrictions (freedom of speech is a non-issue, there really is none).  They have a one-party system and even stiff penalties for gum-chewing -- yes gum chewing. But Singapore’s retirement system is a model of honesty and transparency compared with Medicare and Social Security.  

Of course in a one party system making drastic changes is far easier than it is in our world of two parties and some lesser party spin offs.  Our system while protecting some freedoms also creates a division.  I am not suggesting at all we should change our system to a one-party rule.  I am suggesting that as Americans we must at times lose our party ties; we must consider what is good for America and what our individual responsibility is.

Back to Singapore. In 1984, then-Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew drastically redesigned his country’s retirement system to, as he later wrote, “avoid placing the burden of the present generation’s welfare costs onto the next generation.” The Singapore government makes no promises to anyone for extended care, benefits or medical coverage but instead requires all citizens to save up to 36% of their income for their own retirement and health care. The government invests the savings in stocks and bonds; the money is not used by the government to pay for current expenditures. They do not rob Peter to pay Paul.  It truly remains the money of the individual.  As an American you might decry that "taking" 36% of your income away from your current cash flow is outrageous and highway robbery.  If that is so, how can that be worse than taking my money out of my current paycheck to pay for someone else's care and benefits?  In the Singapore model -- at least it remains the individual's money.

The result? Singaporeans retire well, they are quite comfortable and they have left the subsequent generations with their own earnings to save and invest - they pay for themselves. Their health-care system scores far better than ours costing 80%  less than ours according to 2010 findings from the World Health Organization;  all of it is financed without imposing debt on the next generation -- imagine a generation that is not saddled with the debt of their parents and grandparents. Singapore even reported an uptick in medical tourism last year.  A step toward Obamacare is a dramatic step away from this model and will only perpetuate the declining health and well being of our nation's healthcare system and will add to the shifted burden of responsibility. 

Why is the system so much cheaper?  An 80% reduction is a lot! It all comes down to pricing. For example, consider the difference between the full-page grocery store advertisements that appear in every daily newspaper and those promoting your local hospital or health care provider. They both run ads. They both want your business but they go about "selling" themselves in dramatically different ways. The grocery store ads, no matter in what papers they appear, the NY Times or the local Prairie Times, are dominated by one thing: the price of the advertised goods. Health care firms also advertise, and their ads inform us about why we should use their respective facilities, the characteristics that set them apart from their competition, but price is never mentioned. 

Why is price prominent in grocery advertising but never mentioned in ads for hospitals or medical clinics? The reason is simple, and it is a major reason for the escalating per-capita cost of Medicare: the majority of consumers of medical care are not concerned about its cost because they aren’t directly paying for it. Because we, as buyers, are not concerned about medical care costs, the sellers of medical care aren’t either. Consumers are happy to demand and receive state-of-the-art care, and providers are happy to supply it.  Even when you try to "opt out" of the state-of-the-art stuff because you believe it is over-kill, you are dismissed as "not being a doctor" and in effect not knowing what is "best" for you.  

Here are two personal examples:

I was in the emergency room about two years ago for a kidney infection.  I knew what I had. They knew what I had.  After a roughly three-hour stay and a battery of tests later I was released with some added fluids and antibiotics.  The bill arrived and those three hours cost $12,000.  After the insurance paid their portion, I was left with $1800 to pay.  That is $600 an hour.  At the time of treatment I attempted to ask what test they were running and what the costs of the tests were going to be and I was regarded as though I had two heads.  They marveled "why does it matter, it's your health!?  They don't test you for the PROBABILITY they test you for every remote POSSIBILITY. In another example I once attempted to find out the actual price of some of my regular prescriptions when I was on a healthcare plan that left me responsible for a percentage of their cost. In this case I had a handful of options -- different drugs from different companies that treated the same thing.  In an attempt to make a sound financial decision for my own cash flow purposes and my household budget I attempted to find out the price of each drug so I could determine how much each one would cost me (remember I was responsible for a percentage of the price).  Call after call resulted in no usable information.  The drug companies could not tell me the price, the physician could not tell me the price, and the insurance company could not tell me the price. In fact they had no resources of their own to find out.  No one knew and they were frustrated with me for wanting to know.  I had to make my decision based on the age of the product figuring the "newer" the drug the more expensive it would be.  It was the best information I had.  Would you go to the grocery store and fill your cart without ANY idea the price of the products it contained?  Of course not.  But again, at the checkout stand it is your money you are handing over.

Well over 90% of all payments to hospitals in the year 1990 were not paid by the recipients of hospital services. For physicians services, over 80% of all payments were not paid by patients. Even for dental services and prescription drugs, relative newcomers to the prepaid insurance market, more than 50% of payments in 1990 were not made by the patients. If the patients aren’t paying, who is? The payers are the federal government, through Medicare, and the patients, indirectly through various medical prepayment plans (commonly known as medical insurance, although the insurance companies simply administer group plans and are not at risk as they would be if insurance was really involved).

Let's compare the two systems, Singapore and the Untied States. When Medicare was debated and enacted, Paul Samuelson was America’s most revered economist. He was an adviser to presidents Kennedy and Johnson, author of the nation’s best-selling economics textbook and a soon-to-be Nobel laureate. In 1967, Samuelson wrote in Newsweek about the funding mechanism for Medicare and Social Security: 

“The beauty about social insurance is that it is actuarially unsound. Everyone who reaches retirement age is given benefit privileges that far exceed anything he has paid in. . . . Always there are more youths than old folks in a growing population. More important, with real incomes growing at some 3 per cent per year, the taxable base upon which benefits rest in any period are much greater than the taxes paid historically by the generation now retired. . . . A growing nation is the greatest Ponzi game ever contrived.” 

But the baby boom was ending as Samuelson wrote these words. Births per woman had fallen from 3.7 in 1960 to 2.6 by 1967 and then to 1.8 by 1975. By 1990, births were back to 2.0 per woman, but the demographics of the next century had been determined: The rapidly growing population needed to make up for insufficient savings by each generation of Americans was no more.

Anyone could see that this would mean trouble for Medicare and Social Security when the boomers began to retire. But our leaders chose to protect the programs rather than restructure them, and they have used dubious accounting standards to hide the burden placed on younger Americans. Denial was in full glory.  In 1967 even the brilliant Samuelson could not predict an added element to the already questionable equation. In a US census document from 2008 it determined that the birthrate in women already on social assistance was three times the birthrate of those not on any sort of welfare or state and federal aid (http://www.census.gov/prod/2008pubs/p20-558.pdf). So now the population of the payors we even more greatly reduced as compared to those receiving benefits and not paying for them. Once again, shifting the burden of responsibility from the individual to the masses has lead to choices that further and further our national decline.  The "price" of having a child no longer matters.

China’s leaders made dramatically different choices - they  had to. With a one-child policy, they surely couldn't rely on the next generation to pay for current retirees. Instead, they have designed a system much like Singapore’s: The government makes few retirement promises, and Chinese citizens save significant portions of their income — the average household put away 38% of their current income in 2010, Bloomberg Businessweek reported, compared with only 3.9% for U.S. households. Much of those savings are invested by China’s state-owned banks into U.S. Treasury bonds, which our government sells to finance Americans’ retirements. So Chinese retirees hold US debt instruments that earn money to pay for their own care tools so we can borrow from them to pay our current healthcare bills.  That does not sound like any sort of "social security" to me. This situation is as dangerous as it is ironic.

Of the $16+ of U.S. public debt — this doesn’t count the over $4.8 trillion held by our government, largely in IOUs to itself for Social Security — the Chinese own over $1.2 trillion, making them the largest holder of U.S. Treasuries after the Federal Reserve.

The Treasury Department’s 2011 annual report shows U.S. debt as a share of the economy (gross domestic product) rising — to 125% of gross domestic product by 2042 and 287 percent by 2086 — as retirement promises turn into cash outflows. That is just like owing 125% of the value of your home.  And if Medicare’s costs per beneficiary grow at historical rates (and no changes have been made to predict otherwise), the U.S. debt-to-GDP ratio will eventually exceed 500 percent (like owing %500 of the value of your home). Remember that Greece was pushed into crisis with a debt-to-GDP ratio of 113% -- we will exceed that in no time. Talk about being upside down.

How long will foreign investors like China, who own half of outstanding Treasuries, be willing to use their savings to finance our promises? At some point won't they want to cash in? What then? In December, the head of China’s sovereign wealth fund, which invests $400 billion of his country’s savings, criticized Europe’s welfare system in brutal terms, saying that it induces “sloth, indolence.” Our system is no different. We are becoming a nation not of innovation and hard work, the essence of what it used to be to BE America but passing the buck or more accurately passing the bill.

In the United States the largest private buyer of Treasuries, said last month that our retirement promises have “similar characteristics” to Bernie Madoff’s scheme and predicted a Greek-like crisis if the system is not reformed. Bernie Madoff is serving a 150 year prison term -- more than most murderers. Meanwhile, the Federal Reserve bought 60 percent of Treasuries issued last year. This rate of purchases cannot continue indefinitely. There will be a crash.

Today’s US leaders did not design the Medicare and Social Security systmes as an intergenerational transfer (although that is what they were from day one), and they did not choose the government’s misleading accounting standards. But because these bad choices have not been corrected, many Americans believe that a cut to Medicare or Social Security is a confiscation of money they paid into a trust fund when in fact it is not. This misconception greatly complicates our politics.  Beneficiaries of Medicare and Social Security receive a far greater value in their withdrawal from the system than the vast majority has ever put into it.  With people living longer, the issue exacerbates itself.  Does your bank let you withdraw more from your account than you have in your account?

The good news is that Americans know changes are needed. The bad news is many of those same people don't want the changes to take place until after they have received their benefits.  If this "not me" attitude continues, nothing will change. Our health-care system can be reformed to reduce the burden on our children and their children. We need better information to have this critical national discussion and we need to take seriously the information that is already right in front of our faces.

Will our leaders give us an honest accounting and discussion of our choices, or will we have to wait for a debt crisis to force the issue?  Evidence of our current presidential campaign polls show us that voters would rather be told what they want to hear. Will our leaders, like they are already doing, create even more complicated and burdensome systems to pile on top of an already broken system? 

I predict the latter.  You can dress up a pig, but it is still a pig.

Sources : 
The Washington Post - To fix Medicare and Social Security, look to Singapore
http://www.census.gov/prod/2008pubs/p20-558.pdf
The Rise and Fall of Medicare - Andrew J. Rettinmaier and Thomas A. Saving: Texas A & M University

Living with RA -- The Bitch

RA, short for rheumatoid arthritis, is my companion.  I didn't ask her to come along for this ride, didn't invite, imply or deserve her company -- one day she just crashed the party and she never left.  Then she went totally nuts.

Who is this RA?  Well she is a misguided, confused, and nasty little thing who insists that she is doing me a favor.  She riles up my internal army, MY own immune system, and gets them to march off to war.  She INSISTS there is war. There is no war -- it is all in her head. But she insists and leads her equally confused army off to battle every god damned day.  And now she thinks that I am the enemy. She is a lot like Hitler, she has a charisma that instills a fervor in her followers -- they never question her; they never doubt her; they just rally and roll.  They no longer listen to me, their genetic master. They have forgotten the common language we spoke for 27 years.  She is a powerful leader and I have utterly lost control of the army. Wasn't this my party?

There are times it seems they have retreated into the hills -- sending out only small guerilla forces, engaging in small skirmishes in random places. They really are insane. I think those times they are just in training, getting stronger, more organized and more determined. Damn this girl is messed up.  I have tried to talk to her, reason with her but she is convinced that I am part of a great conspiracy to rid the world of her.  She is right.  For a while I would have been willing to reason with her -- now I want her dead.  Drawn, quartered and offered up to the devil himself. I have to keep those thoughts to myself though.  I must continue to be kind, to be gentle and to be patient.  When I get riled somehow she knows it.  She has spies who send messages back to camp.  She knows there is a price on her head but I have to make certain she doesn't know that it is me who wants to collect that bounty. Hell I don’t want the money -- I just want her dead. The moment she perceives a threat she raises holy hell.

She is mean too and narcissistic; everything has to be about her.  When something else is going on, when I am down, when I am struggling with some emotion or other physical pain she has to put on a bigger show.  She hates it when someone else gets the attention.  Again, she must have spies in every region of my body who run back to her and tell her that she is losing her limelight… She thinks the whole world is hers anyway and any sort of perceived weakness must be destroyed.  So when I am weak she is more hell-bent than ever. Sick, sick, sick.

What is crazy is I don't know where she got her training!  She is a bit like Mendel too -- a mad scientist. She breeds and produces an army at an uncanny rate.  She must be gestating them in jars or something -- Brave New Fucking World.  I have had to resort to buying my army -- hired guns really and I can't seem to buy them fast enough to keep pace with her production rate. They do their best in a land that is not their own -- their heart isn't in it -- it isn't their land they are defending.  Think about, she has invaded my own land with my own people and turned them against me. My hired army is very expensive and she knows it.  I don't have the luxury of releasing my army for surprise attacks.  They show up, regularly schedule once a month -- I inject them into my thigh, hoping that they can seek her out and destroy her. 

My army is usually moderately successful.  They take out a lot of her forces -- but with that breeding factory she has she never runs out of soldiers.  She never has to go into battle herself either.  She just sits on her throne, eating Turkish Delight, ordering her minions to do her bidding.  I on the other hand am exhausted after 27 years -- I am in every single skirmish, battle and scrap. I am beat.  I grow old; she never ages. There is no end to this war.  She is betting on the come that I will give up, retreat, bruised and battle-weary.  If I do that I give up all my land…and my land is me. So I have no choice but to fight.

I wish she could see the land she claims to defend is being destroyed by her.  There are regions that will never recover -- there is just too much damage.  The grass will never grow; the waters never run clear, they are gnarled outcroppings of brutality. Yet as damaged as they are she still leads battles to those pathetic places and damages them even more. These places are now filled with brambles of rusty barbed wire, craters and polluted soup that was once the lubricant of the life that lived there. She doesn't care.

I write this from a weary camp of soldiers who need to be fed.  We are shivering, our boots are worn and our supplies are low. The mystery is when I feed them, sometimes her army seems to get into the soup line too.  When I feed my army, sometimes hers gets stronger.  There are certain foods that seem to make them uber warriors and sometimes I never know what that super-food is until it is too late.  Her army is ever-changing -- mine is the same every month.  We do the best we can.  It takes so much time and money to train my army that advances in strategy are rare and sometimes dangerous -- if you get an untested army in there you never know what else they might do.  That is a chance I cannot take.  I have lost too much already.

My hope, well there are many, but I guess my primary hope is that she doesn't damage this land to the point where it is not worth defending.  I have slowed her army but there is no way to stop them. This war will never, not ever end.  It ends when the land dies and with that would go everything. They never sleep, I don't think she even has to feed them.  They live off the morsels they snatch from me.  I don't know how she does it. They flourish under the worst of circumstances.

The first thing I feel every morning is the war, the ravages of now decades of battle.  I have to live each day with the battle but not IN it.  There are times when all I can do is fight -- those times suck.  They are times when nothing else seems to matter but the fighting -- her narcissistic nature loves those times.  But each time, I have to deliberately trudge through the carnage and continue to pretend that other things matter…until they do.

So it is off to another battle again today.  Maybe this one won't be as bad as the last.  Maybe worse -- but it is mine to fight.  My army gets reinforcements soon.  Hopefully that will buy me some relative peace…they seems to have lost their edge of late but that happens from time to time.  Here's hoping they are more effective this month.  I would hate to have to change battle strategies again.  I hope she hasn't figured out how to beat this one… I am running out of options.  She never runs out of options and never has to change her strategy.  It isn't fair but this isn't a gentleman's war.  If there were rules she wouldn't follow them anyway.

Love your battle weary general…

Kyle

Part II - A Gun Owner's Perspective

Okay in Part One I think we established a reason why "more bullets" might be better than fewer bullets. With my snub-nosed revolver I have five and the caliber is .38.  Honestly there is not much "stopping power" in my revolver -- again that is why I practice shooting and it is why I have hollow point bullets in it.  Ack!  Hollow points?  Sounds pretty nasty doesn't it?  The odds of any of my shots actually hitting my target is low.  So IF only one makes contact it MUST have as much stopping power as possible.

The other thing that most people never, ever consider simply because they don't know is that a hollow point bullet mushrooms upon impact.  That is why it causes damage -- it makes a bigger hole than just an unchanged or "whole" bullet would.  That ALSO protects innocent bystanders.  Upon "mushrooming" is slows the bullet down and does not allow it to "pass through".  If a bullet can simply pass through an object it 1) often just creates a little hole in the first object (or person) causing little damage unless it hits something vital and 2) It still has the velocity to continue on and strike another object or person.  We know from Part I even if I hit something vital, short of the spinal column, my attacker often still has lots of time left to inflict damage on me.

So we have that element of "why more bullets is better" covered.  I would like to have at least 15 rounds in a clip for personal protection and now to at least some degree I hope I have explained why that is not unreasonable nor is it "redneck" or "gun happy".  It is the reality of the need when presented with it.  When people ask "why would you own a gun that was specifically designed to kill a person?"  My answer is because people pose the biggest threat to me.  If I ever have to fire on a person -- my intent must be to stop them by any means possible.  A deer rifle is not designed to stop a person -- I want a weapon that is.

People rarely "stockpile" guns -- the ones that do, make headlines and we both know what that does to public perception.  It is a term used that is generally laced with innuendo and of course political charge.  The term connotes someone building an arsenal for nefarious reasons.  Many people do collect guns and people like me are getting them, "while we still can." Government -- whether Republican or Democrat -- is insidiously taking away freedoms and rights… Since 9/11 so many have allowed this to happen for the sake of "national security".  The UN Small Arms Treaty possibly being signed on July 27th is a big deal to gun owners.  It is, in essence, a beginning to at least attempt to transfer power FROM our government to an International body that does NOT govern us nor does it have the US as its primary focus and/or interest.  It doesn't seem like a big deal to people who don't own or care to own guns but to us it is a huge threat and the first step at the idea of disarming Americans.  The UN does not represent the United States and any transfer of power or governance TO them away from our own government is putting our needs as a nation, second, or worse.

I personally would like to pick up a few more weapons.  Why now?  Again, I want to do it while I still can.  Most of us who are staunch supporters of the 2nd amendment have seen our rights eroded and eroded.  It is harder and harder to buy and possess legal firearms.  When news stories like the one in Aurora come out the impression the "world" gets is that anyone can amble up to a counter anywhere and purchase a weapon.  That is simply not true.  Gun control advocates often demand "we need gun control" when in reality many mean we need to ban guns.  When I purchased a rifle for my boyfriend I had to go through a thorough CBI (Colorado Bureau of Investigation) report.  If you are a law abiding citizen it doesn't take long -- a couple of hours maybe a few more.  But they check everything and I am now on record as owning that firearm -- they know where I live, they know where I work, they know what I do, they have my fingerprints.  When I get pulled over the officer knows as he is doing it that I have a permit to carry.  I am in many, many databases and have very little privacy from government.  As a law abiding citizen who has NO record of ANY bad behavior, is that right?  Why should they know all that about me and not about anyone else?  I know that guns are scary but see if from my perspective if you can -- Big Brother really IS watching me.

Since the Brady Law was enacted instant background checks have been a mandate -- More than 100 million such checks have been made in the last decade, leading to more than 700,000 denials. (FBI.gov website). Things like "transfer taxes" are imposed -- it costs a gun buyer or seller (depends on who agrees to foot the bill) of a "used" weapon a $200 "transfer tax" when they sell a firearm, no matter what the price of the firearm -- and this is a private transaction. What right does the government have in imposing such arbitrary fee to a private transaction? When you sell your car you don't have to pay that unless you want to drive it on publically funded roadways and you register it.  The registration fee covers in part -- your use of the roadways.  A car is far more deadly than a gun. I can and will if you want provide you a list of all of the restrictions and requirements in buying a selling firearms -- but for now, just know that it is not that simple and as you can see, more people have been denied (70% of them) than approved. Lastly, and probably the most challenging to convey is our distrust of government.  I don't trust government and I REALLY don't trust a government who is trying to or wants to disarm me.

"Second Amendment rights" versus "more gun control", it's a debate that has gone on and will go on for years.  Neither side can fathom why the other feels the way they do.  What is true is that it is fueled by emotion and fear.  I fear my government and the other side fears my guns.  As a supporter of my right to bear arms I put real stock in my ability and my right to protect myself and feel genuinely threatened when anyone talks about taking it away.  The vast, vast, VAST majority of legal owners of firearms never commit a crime much less one with a gun -- yet the few that do, affect the nation's perception of all of us and want to penalize ALL of us for those random and statistically infrequent occurrences. As a person trained to use a firearm -- it is a great choice for self protection. Those who oppose the right to bear arms think guns kill people. People kill people.  Let me ask -- do you feel safer because your friend, your neighbor has weapons and knows how to use them or do you feel threatened because he has them?  Most, almost all of us, who own guns are "your neighbor".

If you were to believe the media you might think that firearm related crimes were an epidemic.  They are not.  Firearm-related crime has plummeted since 1993. From 1993 through 1997, less than 1% of serious nonfatal violent victimizations resulted in gunshot wounds.  In 1993 there were 1,054,820 non-fatal firearm related crimes.  In 2009 there were 326,090 non-fatal firearm related crimes. The rate of victimization in 1993 was 5.9 people in 1000 -- in 2009 it was 1.4 in a thousand.  That means that you have a .14% chance of being a victim.  Not epidemic.  Of course when "Aurora" happens all rationale and attention paid to the real numbers goes away because we are all emotional beasts.  We are rushing out to buy guns because we want to protect ourselves from "Aurora" and the other side is clamoring to bans guns to protect ourselves from "Aurora".  My desire to buy more is rooted in fear of my government -- an emotion, I know, but a trend that is insidious and I believe on a trajectory.  I can only make decisions on what I believe to be true or not true and I do as much homework as I can to avoid being purely emotional about it.

I understand though -- for someone who is not familiar with guns, they are scary.  They are unknown and in untrained hands they are dangerous.  But the response to guns by the media and many in America is purely an emotional one. I wish every American owned a gun and knew how to use it.

Let's look at some statistics to get perspective. Forty-eight point five (it's math, I know you can't have .5 of a person) people die from lightening strikes while playing golf every year.  But on average 1 person a year in the U.S. is killed by a shark.  We have a much more emotional reaction to sharks than we do golf -- but statistically golf is much more dangerous.  Sharks are scary, golf is not.  There has never been a Hollywood movie about "deadly golf"; there is not a "Golf Week" on The Discovery Channel every year.  Golf doesn't scare us. Heck more people a year are killed by vending machines falling over on them than they are killed by sharks! A far greater number of people in America are viciously attacked by deer than they are bears -- but bears scare us more.  Thirty-one people a year are killed by pet dogs -- on average one person a year is killed by a mountain lion -- which is scarier? Our emotions color how we feel about things -- they ARE what we feel about things and so often we make decisions or base "rational" on them; it is not a rational thing to do.

There have been 278 revolutions in the world since 1900 alone. There are 198 countries in the world (give or take over time).  It probably never will happen in the United States but with those numbers I am going to be certain that my government, no matter how much I like them, does not get my firearms.  Call it an insurance policy.  It is an insurance policy when a thug wonders if he should mug and rape me and it is an insurance policy when a government begins to feel omnipotent. Do I have the delusion that if it came down to "the people" vs. "the government", me and my squirrel gun would have a chance?  Of course not.  But it is my hope that globally our government would not want to risk that.  Sounds crazy?  Ask the 278 countries that fought a revolution in the last 100+ years.

So yes, I fear my government and it is a healthy fear.  Because of that I am a more prudent citizen.  I don't fear the revolution as much as I fear the laws around guns getting so strict that gun ownership is all but an impossibility.  Once we are unarmed our "insurance policy" is gone.  Then I would begin to fear my government in a new way.  I don’t at all expect to convert you or to convince you to feel the way I do.  I just want to let you know how "we" feel and why we are so ardent about protecting our rights.

PART I - Self Protection and Magazines: Hollywood vs. Reality

PART I - Self Protection and Magazines: Hollywood vs. Reality

(I got a lot of help from thejustnation.org)

I am going to do this in two parts.  First I will get detailed about what a self protection situation is really like.  What you can expect to happen.  You will be amazed at how inadequate you will feel at the end with your simple hand gun…  In part two I will go into detail about why people feel the need to own what they own (to the best of my ability) and tell you why people are "rushing" to arm themselves…

First let's examine a realistic "self defense" situation.

Let's first look at what folks like to call "assault" weapons.  As I said in my post on FB (I have one essay I might post and then I am done with this on FB) civilians cannot legally own assault rifles.  What people mis-label as assault weapons are really semi-automatic weapons.  An assault weapons has a fully automatic option which means you pull the trigger and hold it down ONCE and it keeps firing.  A semi-means for every bullet fired you MUST pull the trigger -- but you do not need to chamber a bullet.  When the weapon is fired it chambers the next bullet for you.  It is also called a "double action" weapon -- meaning with ONE action from you the weapon does TWO actions -- it fires a bullet and chambers a new bullet.  The AR-15 "asshole" had in Aurora was a semi-automatic weapon (I won't type his name so pardon the profanity -- it is cleaner than his name).  What I think freaks folks out is that something like an AR-15 has a "magazine" which can hold a lot of ammunition. It freaks them out because they don't know a thing about reality -- they know Hollywood.

My personal protection weapon is a revolver, a snub-nosed (short barrel) Tarus .38.  It holds five bullets.  That sounds like "plenty" -- it is NOT. When faced with a situation where I need to fire it -- I had better be a good shot because 1) a sub-nosed gun is not very accurate 2) a moving target, even moving toward you is VERY hard to hit and 3) the fear of the situation affects accuracy immensely.  We are taught to put two bullets in center mass/thoracic cavity and one to the head in our concealed-carry classes.  My revolver is a .38 and if I put one bullet out of those three into an attacker he can easily keep coming -- I can put all five in him and he can keep coming.  A .38 will NOT knock a man down.  I MUST be accurate.  I will empty my gun into any attacker if he is still coming and when my five bullets are gone -- they are GONE and if he is still coming I am up shit creek.  There is a chance that after firing five bullets he is either not even hit or not wounded enough to be stopped -- that is why I PRACTICE.  Why do I carry such a weapon?  First it is small and easier to conceal and the law actually requires that I conceal it so I don't cause public panic and fear.  Second, a revolver needs very little care and maintenance.  I can neglect it, I can mistreat it and it will still fire; they are kind of fail-safe.  A semi-automatic is MUCH more demanding and much more "fragile" if you will.  I am considering a second sidearm that is a semi but need to shop carefully and practice even more.  My hands with my RA make pulling the slide on a semi-automatic sidearm tough and if I get "stuck" then it is shit creek again.  There are a lot of things that can go "wrong" when using a semi that leaves the shooter very vulnerable -- I like the idea of having more bullets though (for the reasons I just listed).

To just to set the scene realistically, most gun fights occur at a range that is much too close for comfort, and with insufficient or NO warning.  You’re starting off at a MAJOR tactical disadvantage (he knows he is going to attack you but you don't know he is going to attack you).

The ‘rule of threes’ is often quoted.  This suggests that most gun fights occur at a distance of about 3 yards (or less), last about 3 seconds (or less), and involve about three shots fired (or more).

So you think -- How many shots will it take?

As always (almost always), the movies get it wrong.  Forget everything you’ve ever seen in the movies, and on TV.  When you shoot a bad guy with a pistol or revolver, almost certainly, there are three things which you might expect to happen (based on the movies) but which will not happen.

1) The person isn’t going to immediately collapse, all movement stopped, instantly dead.  Quite the opposite.  He may likely not react at all to the first shot hitting him.  Indeed, some people go all the way through a gun fight and only subsequently discover they’ve been shot.  Good trainers teach their students at the end of an encounter to check themselves all over for wounds, because in the heat of the moment, they might not even realize they’ve been shot.

2) The person isn’t going to fly through the air ten feet backwards.  He probably won’t be knocked about much at all HE IS STILL COMING – the ‘best case’ scenario is that the bullet is hitting him with no more momentum than the recoil you experienced when you fired your pistol milliseconds before.  The recoil didn’t force you off your feet, and it will have the same or less effect on the person the bullet hits.  The force of the bullet leaving your hands is the same force that the bullet has hitting your attacker -- some force is actually lost in the air during travel.

3) Blood isn’t going to suddenly and dramatically start spurting out of the person every which way.  Indeed, assuming the person is wearing a couple of layers of clothing, you might not notice any evidence of the bullet having hit them at all – no blood, no big hole, nothing.

So put these three things together.  The person doesn’t collapse or move at all, and you don’t even notice a bullet hole or blood after firing your bullet.  Goodbye, Hollywood, welcome to the real world!  In other words, you probably can’t tell if you hit the person or not – and even at very short ranges, you’re as likely to miss as hit (there’s a classic situation of a gun fight in an elevator between a law enforcement officer and a bad guy, with over ten rounds fired and neither person being hit by any of the rounds).

Even in the very unlikely event that all your rounds are landing on target, the sad truth is that pistol rounds, no matter what their caliber, or what the bullet type, are woefully inadequate and are most unlikely to solve your problem with a single generic hit to the center of the thoracic cavity. Think about that -- you have hit him in the center mass and he is still coming at you…

This is why you don't stop shooting… five bullets is really nothing when you consider all of this…

But what next?  That depends on the bad guy.

If the immediate threat has stopped, you must stop shooting -- the law states you must stop when the threat has stopped.  You no longer have any legal justification to shoot at the person now they are no longer an immediate imminent threat. But if the person is still coming at you, then you need to keep on solving the problem -- you keep shooting until the threat has stopped.

Continued Shooting at the center mass/thoracic cavity?

If the bad guy is still some distance from you (but not too far, of course, or else they may not be sufficiently a threat to justify shooting in the first place unless they have a weapon) then you probably have time to fire a few more shots into their thoracic cavity.  Notice now we are talking about "a few more shots"?  At this point with my little five-shot revolver, I am out of bullets…

Maybe either or both of your first shots failed to hit him entirely, in which case maybe some additional shots will actually land on target.

Unless your bullet travels through the thoracic cavity and severs the bad guy’s spine, it will not immediately incapacitate your attacker - that high velocity rifle rounds more commonly have a very much greater immediate effect.  But who carries a .270 around?  An AR-15 is a small lightweight, low caliber rifle that can be kept in a truck and can be swung around easily.  A long range "hunting rifle" cannot.

Even if the bullet goes through the bad guy’s heart, it will take some measurable time for the guy to lose enough blood pressure and bleed sufficiently out to cease to be ‘in the fight’ -- he has adrenaline too.  How long?  Best case scenario – perhaps 30 seconds. A LOT can happen in 30 seconds.  Worst case scenario – many minutes.

Some people – especially if on drugs – will not be slowed AT ALL, even by hits that will cause their certain death in only a few minutes - they are still coming (how many bullets do I have left? NONE. I had better start running.  The drugs have in essence disconnected their brain from their body, and their brain doesn’t even realize they’ve been hit, so their body keeps responding to the brain commands as best it can.

Lastly, and probably the least likely scenario, maybe the bad guy is wearing some type of body armor.  Bullet proof vests can be legally purchased by civilians, and do a very good job of preventing pistol bullets from penetrating through the vest and into the person wearing them.

Don’t forget, of course, that all these reasons why your shots aren’t stopping the bad guy from continuing with his attack are also assuming that your rounds are landing on target.  Chances are some/many/most of them are misses – even trained police typically miss MORE OFTEN than they hit when in a gunfight.  That’s why you shoot at least twice into the center of mass.

I can go on and on and on about this -- but I think you get the picture.  You never, NOT EVER, shoot to wound.  That is probably all you are doing anyway when you shoot to STOP.  You never, NOT EVER shoot a "warning shot".  That shot goes somewhere and hits something.  It can hit an innocent person. It can ricochet and come back and hit you.  You always shoot to STOP your attacker and you keep shooting UNTIL he stops. Continue repeating until your gun runs dry or the bad guy stops.

One of the great things about the Internet is that we now get a chance to see how many people react and respond to news of a shooting - we see the real deal now and not just Hollywood.  We can now post comments alongside the news stories and whenever there’s a story of a shooting you’ll see plenty of comments (most commonly from ‘armchair experts’ who have never held a gun in their lives) suggesting that the police should have shot to ‘shoot the gun out of his hand’ or in the foot, ankle, or knee, so as to cause the guy to collapse and no longer be able to move towards the policeman.  They, having no knowledge of how it all really works make all sorts of judgments and "suggestions" of how the shooter (often the cops) SHOULD have done it.  How they should have been less aggressive and/or more humane. As I have outlined -- humane is the LAST thing you should be thinking about -- your attacker it Inhuman if he is attacking you.

These are well intentioned people or just plain folks who are ignorant, "know-it-alls" who really know nothing.  The crux? Many may well become jurors, so it is important to understand how uninvolved people react to shooting situations; their suggestions are dangerously naive, impractical and wrong.

Your struggle with your "bad guy" will be at a too close range, in a position where you probably do not have any sort of strategic advantage or time buffer, and you are confronting the imminent probability of the bad guy attacking you, grievously wounding you, and possibly killing you.

You don’t have the time or skill to try for some trick Hollywood-style feats of marksmanship – your accuracy when target shooting on a calm day with no time, fear or stress acting on you at a range with a static target at the range will be a dream.  You are now alone in a dark alley late at night with the bad guy rushing towards you.

If the situation has got to the point where you need to use lethal force to stop a threat, and that is a lawful thing for you to do, then you need to do just that.  Your prime concern is stopping the threat and saving yourself or your family.  The ONLY effective way of doing that is shots to the center of mass, possibly followed by shots to the head. Anything else is giving the bad guy the advantage -- he already has the advantage -- don't give him more…  And there’s no law or moral justification for making it easier for him to win and you to lose.

Electric Cars -- The Truth, the Cost and Food for Thought

I am sorry but I find the electric car ads rather humorous. They go on and on like it is "free" to "plug-in". It seems that because electricity is invisible it is magic! Wow :-) If you read the Edumnds.com review on the real cost of running an electric car you will be surprised! Also, over 70% of the electricity in the US is made from fossil fuel -- so just because they have converted that nasty coal into electricity does NOT mean your little e-car does not run on fossil fuels! LOL Do they really think we are that dumb?

So what's the true cost of an electric car? Hard to say. They cost a lot to buy -- The Chevy Volt has a sticker price of $40,280, the Nissan Leaf is priced at $32,780 -- but buyers get a $7,500 tax credit that reduces the cost. I can buy a more well appointed Chevy Cruz for half that. The government even gives tax credits to buyers of the $109,000 Tesla Roadster. So your tax dollars are being given to someone who can afford to buy a $100K car.

The tax credits are just the most visible form of federal support. Energy Secretary Steven Chu, says the government has invested $5 billion (of your money) so far to electrify the nation's transportation system. It gave loans of $2.6 billion to Nissan, Tesla and Fisker to established electric car factories, $2.4 billion in grants to establish 30 electric vehicle battery and component and another $80 million for advanced research and development. (editorial.autos.msn.com) 

(Cut and paste this White House Report) http://www.whitehouse.gov/files/documents/Battery-and-Electric-Vehicle-Report-FINAL.pdf 

Every electric car and component maker reflects your tax dollars at work. Ecotality, for example, (they make the Blink charging stations) is leading a $230 million initiative, half of which is funded by DOE, that plans to install more than 15,000 EV charging stations in the coming months. So why are the collective tax dollars going to benefit a handful of people who choose to drive or who are ABLE to drive electric cars? It would be impossible for me to make that choice with where I live and where I work... I thought the Obama administration was all about "fairness".

Also are we trading one boogeyman for another? These cars are based on a lithium-ion battery. They need a lithium supply. The world's current supply of lithium comes from very few countries. One third of the current supply comes from Chile, but Bolivia and Afghanistan also have massive deposits. We know the pitfalls of Afghanistan. Bolivia is not a lot better -- we had a major falling out with them, they are unstable and we don't want to be dependent on them -- the diplomacy is getting better but it is fragile at best... Santigo, Chile is father away from Washington DC than Moscow is -- so just because they are on the same hunk of landmass, does not mean they are nearby. If Americans start driving electric cars in earnest, the question naturally arises: Will we be at the mercy of the world's producers? It's a question that sounds eerily familiar, right?

Most lithium is produced from brine and the surge in the use of lithium for car batteries has prompted further exploration. Wait now, exploration? Isn't that what they do for oil? Now won't they have to trample all over mother nature looking for lithium?

A recent research paper from the Argonne National Laboratory in Argonne, Ill., concludes, "It appears that even an aggressive program of vehicles with electric drive can be supported for decades with known supplies." They estimate that current lithium "deposits" (again, sounds familiar right?) will last until 2100 -- that is 88 years... What then? I thought electricity was "forever" and clean and well yes magic -- so now these cars not only rely on fossil fuels to make the electricity but they now rely on another element, lithium, to be built in the first place -- that sounds like a double whammy to me rife with costs and political potential.

"Everything comes at a higher cost than expected, so while the environmental impact (of lithium production) might not be as bad as mountaintop mining, it’s going to be important to pay attention to this lithium race and the politcal costs, social costs, and general level of cooperation displayed. Not to mention the regulatory processes, foresight, and yes, the environmental impact, because there will be one. " (downtoearthnw.com) 

This was my mental morning exercise. Hopefully something to think about :-) I hope folks are prompted to dig for the whole story -- if not, let me know, maybe I will do it!

I am tired…

I am tired of reading news stories about some group being offended by something…nobody ever said that you would like everything…

I am tired of American identifying themselves with their ethnicity first, followed by a hyphenated "American"… Are you an American or not?  If not, then go back home.  If you want to become one, you are welcome with open arms…tired, poor and huddled masses…

I am tired of groups demanding that special laws be created to protect them more than any other American…your rights should be the same as my rights and vice versa.

I am tired of law makers allowing themselves to be hijacked and I am tired of those same law makers not upholding the law equally giving the impression that these new laws are even necessary…

I am tired of groups whining that life is harder for them, therefore they need special support -- no one has any idea what battles any person faces regardless of their color, creed, sexual orientation or beliefs.

I am tired of being told that my way of life is selfish, not planet-loving and insensitive.  I am tired of hearing the slams against "big oil" while the "big green companies" go unassailed.  Time will tell which was the bigger scam…

I am tired of hearing about the atrocities of the "Church" from hundreds of years ago when the atrocities against the "Church" today, all over the world do not make headlines.

I am tired of hearing that if a person is successful and made a lot of money that he or she is somehow now a "bad guy". 

I am tired of hearing that life should be "fair".  It is not fair and if your parents or grandparents didn't teach you that -- you weren't listening…

I am tired of our soldiers being held to a higher standard than the enemy they fight…War is nasty, allow these men and women to be human…they are after all valuing your way of life more than they are their own lives…give them a break.

I am tired of being told my religion is oppressive and cannot be a part of any public program but other religions enjoy special observances and special accommodations…

I am tired of hearing any time a person of any special group feels offended or uncatered to a lawyer gets involved.  Why don't these people just sit down and talk?  Each party takes responsibility for their part and be done with it?  We are just making the lawyers rich and driving wedges deeper.

I am tired of being held responsible for other's bad decisions.  If you have a baby at 14 it is not my baby to raise or pay for.  If you weigh 400 pounds it was not my food choices that got you there.  If you stick a needle in your arm, your struggle for sobriety is your responsibility.  You try…I will be there to support you. You don’t try; you're on your own.

I am tired of the trend that the Government should be taking care of anyone….they government has no money. When they give you money they take it away from someone else…

I am tired of things the way they are going…

Eternal Victims

Louis Farrakahn spoke yesterday to Hispanics in San Diego and did nothing sort of incite them.  He celebrates that "non white" birth rates are higher than whites and that whites will be a "minority" soon.  He laments that Mexico "lost" Colorado, New Mexico, California, Arizona and Texas to those lousy whites.  He denigrates America repeatedly for taking the land in "trickery" and warfare.

Okay, let's examine this.  What IS a Mexican?  I mean originally speaking?  In general they are a mix of "indigenous" peoples -- Aztec primarily and SPANIARD.  How many of you recall, from 7th grade socials studies, learning about the INVASION of the land that is now Mexico by the evil Spaniards who were from that diabolical place called Europe? The Spanish conquest of the Aztecs in 1521, led by Hernando Cortes, was a pivotal victory for the European settlers. Following the Spanish arrival in what was to become Mexico, a huge battle erupted between the army of Cortes and the Aztec people under the rule of Montezuma.

The Spaniards were aided by the deadly advantage of disease; the Europeans brought ailments that the Aztecs had no immunity to. It is estimated that seventy-five percent of the native population died of violence or diseases like small pox and measles in just the first century of the conquest. Finally, the Aztec capital, Tenochititlan, fell on August 13, 1521. After capturing the city, the Spaniards destroyed the city, and built Mexico City on top of it. Just as Tenochititlan was destroyed, most of the Aztec civilization was destroyed with the European Conquest. 

So Mexico's capital city is built on the ruins of a City that was demolished by conquest…  Mr. Farrakahn, a Mexican is "half invader, half invaded" in a rudimentary sense…  We all are to some degree.  Everyone and I mean EVERYONE who came to this continent came from somewhere else…the human being is not indigenous to this continent as human life did not begin here.  Even the ancestors to the Maya, the Inca, the Aztec and the Anasazi came across a land bridge at the Aleutian Islands.  As people came they claimed land, they fought one another for that land and they took land.  Even the "Native Americans" have decadents who are not "native" technically speaking.

Every land mass on the planet has been occupied and reoccupied.  To judge the actions of man in the past on the values and laws of today is ridiculous and serves no purpose but to incite, to open wounds and to live in the past. But for folks who want to divide, who want to incite and want civil unrest, like Farrakahn, it is a tool.  An evil tool.

The same day I saw this article I heard another report.  Mit Romney was working his campaign and attempted to reach out to a community in West Philly -- an inner City black community.  They nearly drove him out with torches and clubs and demanded to know why he was in THEIR neighborhood? They were "offended" that he was on "their turf".  So he is damned if he does and damned if he doesn’t.  If he did not TRY to reach out - he would have been blasted for not caring.  When he does try to reach out he is blasted for being an invader.

So why is it that the the groups that demand to be treated equally have the desire to remain separate?  It seems to be that equal treatment is not what they really want -- they desire superiority.  The quickest way to get there and to be treated "special" is to cry victim.  That way you don't have to DO anything.  You don't have to BECOME anything.  You can rest on the laurels of those who achieved before you and denounce the crimes committed against your ancestors. And you can tell "half stories" omitting the crimes your ancestors took part in.  We, meaning ALL peoples of the planet, have ancestors who have been invaded, pillaged, and displaced.  I don't care who you are.  So it is time to stop looking toward the past and accept what IS.  Until you accept what IS you can't affect it in any meaningful way.  Should some things change?  Sure.  But to demand change based on things that happened hundreds of years ago is ineffective and unrealistic and lazy.