Weekend Tids and Bits

I KNOW I PUT IT SOMEWHERE… Lou Dobbs, the often-controversial CNN anchor resigned and there’s talk he might make a run for the Senate from New Jersey, where he has a home, or for president in the 2012 race. Dobbs, whose views on immigration and whether or not President Obama is a U.S. citizen stirred much controversy must be  making double sure that he has all the documentation proving he’s the native Texan he says he is.

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WHAT BUTTON PLEASE STARTS THIS WATER PLANT?  The New York Times is reporting that lots of high-tech infrastructure donated to rebuild Iraq and funded by American tax dollars is confronting a serious problem: the Iraqis don’t know how to run the damned things. Read the article at http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/21/world/middleeast/21reconstruct.html?hp

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WE MIGHT HAVE A PROBLEM HERE seems to the stance of the Department of Defense after Army Major Nidal Malik Hasan killed 13 and wounded more than 30 in a Nov. 5 shooting spree at Fort Hood, apparently sparked by his radical Islamist beliefs. The department announced a 45-day probe to see if there were gaps in the procedures that might have flagged Hasan as a threat. Ordinary civilians might see more than a dozen dead bodies, a trail of peer complaints and suspicious e-mails and conclude that there were  gaps, but the DOD has its methods.

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WE REALLY HAVE A PROBLEM HERE when the breathless media buzz is over how much of the Tool That Did The Deed will be on display in Levi Johnston’s Playgirl shoot, apparently concluded last week.  Johnston is the father of a baby, whose mother is Bristol Palin, whose mother is Sarah Palin, who failed to be elected Vice President of The United States and so seems to be running for President. All of which seems to make perfect sense to folks in certain media and political circles.

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LAST WEEK’S STUFF:

·        Medicare Plan P, for Playing The Odds seems a natural when various medical bigwigs are disagreeing in public over mammograms and other procedures and practices. Why not set medical payments on how often the medicos make the right guess? http://larryblaskosaid.blogspot.com/2009/11/plan-whose-time-has-come-medicare-plan_18.html

·        Sense From Congress? Yes, at least from four Republican senators who note that we’ve created a government of the incumbents, by the incumbents and for the incumbents and have proposed a Constitutional Amendment that would make it perish from the face of the earth. (Sorry, Abe.) http://larryblaskosaid.blogspot.com/2009/11/stunning-departure-sense-from-congress.html

·        Major party honors buzzed up for Sarah Palin, just maybe not from the party you might think in http://larryblaskosaid.blogspot.com/2009/11/hear-hear-major-party-honors-for-sarah.html

Have a great weekend!

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Hear! Hear!

Major Party Honors

For Sarah Palin ?

A major political party may be honoring former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, according to uninformed party outsiders who requested anonymity. The revelations came in an after-meeting apologue with cocktails among the party’s national committee.

“She’s done so much for us!” said one character, who added “and she hasn’t asked us for one dime for doing it!”

Palin is currently on what is being billed as a book tour for her memoir, “Going Rogue: An American Life.” Some political analysts have suggested the tour is less about selling books than about keeping her political image fresh, but she’s drawing enthusiastic crowds and the book is ranking at the top of Amazon.com’s bestseller list.

Palin’s love/hate relationship with the national media continues with a dustup over a Newsweek cover photo of her in super-tight-and-short running gear and a spate of snide reporting about her confusing Iraq and Iran.

“That’s just what makes her so valuable to the party!” was the explanation offered by another commenting pol. “She’s doing things that no other politician out there would dream of doing and she’s doing them consistently.”

Palin was Republican Presidential Candidate John McCain’s surprise pick for the veep slot in the 2008 presidential campaign. She brought a style and command of both the facts and issues seldom seen on the national political stage.  Less than six month after the inauguration of Barack Obama as the nation’s 44^th President, Palin announced her resignation as Alaska’s governor.

“Former Gov. Palin and the crowds she draws are exactly the sort of thing we need to energize our base and draw the contrasts between us and them,” one party workhorse explained. “She’s really helping voters to understand the difference between what we offer and what the other side is pitching.”

Palin’s family life has been the subject of some media coverage since her unwed daughter Bristol delivered a baby boy and the expected marriage to the baby’s father, Levi Johnston, got sidetracked. Johnston, meanwhile, has posed for Playgirl.

“Those are just real-life, everyday issues the voters she attracts deal with in their own families and the contrast Gov. Palin makes with the way others handle those things has been a major asset for our party’s reach-out efforts,” a senior party official beamed.

Others were no less effusive in their praise of Palin, who is considered by many to be positioning herself for a 2012 run at the White House, talk she coyly turns. But there was no coyness in this meeting as the party elders filled their glasses and the most senior among them rose and said “Ladies and gentlemen, to Sarah Palin and her future!”

“Hear! Hear!” chorused the members of the Democratic National Committee.

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Stunning Departure

Sense From Congress! Really!

Every once in a while, folks in Congress suggest something that makes sense, and no, this isn’t like saying that even a blind hog finds an acorn now and then.

The four Senators who are making sense – in public, no less! – happen to be Republicans. Still, their idea is so compelling that it deserves serious consideration.

The idea: a constitutional amendment that limits Congressional terms to a pair of six-year stints in the Senate and three two-year terms in the House. Not terribly radical, since the 22^nd Amendment limits the President of The United States to two terms. And anyone who thinks a Member of Congress can cause less mischief over a couple of decades than a sitting president over eight years simply hasn’t been paying attention.

The four mavericks bolting from Congress’s shuffling seniority herd are Senators Sam Brownback, Kansas; Tom Coburn, Oklahoma; Jim DeMint, South Carolina, and Kay Bailey Hutchinson, Texas.

The points they’re making seem obvious and valid, which probably guarantees rough sledding ahead for passage of their proposed amendment, but the points are worth paraphrasing here:

·        The possibility of multiple terms and human nature inevitably focus most of a Member of Congress’s attention on getting re-elected and amassing power.

·        The People’s business and interests become secondary to retaining power.

·        The system is heavily tilted toward incumbency, with the redistricting powers and others focused more on the needs of professional politicians and less on reflecting the needs or hopes of constituents.

A central part of the argument is that those who started our democracy probably didn’t envision anyone serving more than a couple of terms in Congress, which was then an act of public service, not a career. That began to change before the Civil War until a government of the people, by the people and for the people has become a government of the incumbents, by the incumbents and for the incumbents.

In a Congress ruled by The Mighty Lord Seniority, matters tend to be decided not so much by the weight of logic as by the time a member’s weight has been attached to a seat. Seniority mostly determines committee assignments and leadership. Since committees are where the work Congress occasionally does gets done, even ideologues are forced to play the game, ignoring the irony that by the time Fresh Thought reaches the seat of power, it will have unknowingly morphed into Old Orthodoxy.

So Brownback, Coburn, DeMint and Hutchinson are to be praised for seeing a tremendous problem and proposing a common-sense solution.

That’ll probably be one of the charges leveled against them from an at-last united, truly bi-partisan congressional majority which can conceive of no greater good for the nation than their next congressional paychecks.

Still, it was good of the four Republicans to try, even if, as the song suggests, only the good die young.

Which means most in Congress without this amendment will live forever.

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A Plan Whose Time Has Come

Medicare Plan P, Playing The Odds

Health care reform leaders seeking a way to avoid costs have ignored an obvious option – Medicare Plan P, Playing The Odds .

In GovSpeak, that’s (PTO).

The PTO plan should be developed after a recent burst of news reports that had the medical profession telling us to please ignore what they had told us before:

·        Get a mammogram every year after 40 became Whoops! We mean after 50, and Gee Whiz! We’re not so certain that the radiation risks outweigh the benefits. Also, we know we told you to do self-exams, but now we’re telling you not to, and we’re not so sure our own Free Feelies do any good either.

·        Drugs that were said to help various conditions may either do nothing or do harm, but we’ve always prescribed them, so please take them anyway. And drugs that are proven to help some conditions never caught on, so we just don’t prescribe them. With your best interests at heart, of course.

·        Low-fat, high-fiber diets help prevent cancer – or maybe they don’t, but don’t ask which is best. But whatever we’ve told you before, please keep doing.

·        Be Aggressive in treating prostate cancer, except when you Watch And Wait, and please, don’t ask us what the difference might be.

The view from the medical profession that not so long ago thought bleeding sick people was the way to fix them and only grudgingly accepted the germ theory is that “ask your doctor” is the universal answer. That’s because, in this benign view, the doctor has kept current and knows all the answers. And of course it assumes that you can routinely get past the N.P. A. (No Patients Allowed, aka Nurse Practitioner Assistant) and see the doctor.

And maybe the doctor does know all the answers, but the problem is that recent studies have the Right Answers all over the lot and are often mutually exclusive. While the patient has a stake in finding the Right Answer, the doctor gets paid either way, which is why Medicare Plan Playing The Odds (PTO) would be such a help.

Medicare Plan P (Playing The Odds) would reimburse a doctor according to how correctly they diagnosed and treated. If a doctor was right 50 per cent of the time, those patients on Medicare Plan P would bring the doctor a Medicare payment only 50 per cent of the fees of a doctor who was completely right. If the doctor batted 100, so would that doctor’s cash register. And the ratings would be public by law.

Of course there are record-keeping issues, but those are already sort-of addressed in the current Health Reform packages before Congress. And besides, this is a certain way to still the conservative objections that Health Care ought to be left to the marketplace, not the government.

The marketplace would allow doctors who were right a higher percentage of the time to charge higher fees, while doctors who were right only occasionally would be forced to charge lower fees. God Bless Free Markets! (and occasional, regrettable deaths of lower-income types).

Those citizens whose hard work, inheritance or plain dumb luck left them with lots of money could spend it on doctors with the highest guess-right percentages, while those with less resources could get by with the less-expensive/effective doctors.

Ain’t free enterprise health reform wonderful? Tell your elected representatives you’re For PTO!

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