6 years since Obamacare was signed into law.

It's almost been 6 years since Obamacare was signed into law, and we're now seeing the problems in the law.  Democrats rightfully say that more people are covered by health insurance, while Republicans rightfully say that there are fewer choices in medical care. What is the objective truth?

To look at this law objectively, one has to look through the lens of American politics, and what happens when the political system periodically breaks down in this country. The other day Rachel Maddow talked about an interesting phenomena on her show. It had to do about "Nativism" and when it pops up in our society.  Nativism, as I like to describe it, relates to a frustration held by native born citizens related to their place in society (and in the economy), a tendency to blame their problems on the foreign born, and a remedy to stop (or reverse) immigration by unwanted foreigners. 

When Nativism first became important, it was in the guise of the "no nothing" movement. Our political system was breaking down over the festering issue of slavery, there was political paralysis caused by the Northern and Southern states refusing to work together to govern effectively. In the end, the Whig party died, the GOP was born, and we had a brutal civil war before we had a government that could govern again.

We are again seeing the signs of our political system breaking down.  Donald Trump is only a symptom of a much larger problem. 

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America is again at a crossroads.  Every so often, its politicians tend to become so opposed to each other, that the normal business of government doesn't get done.  We have a Supreme Court nomination that the GOP controlled Senate refuses to act upon, simply because it wants to deny the current Democratic president any ability to make constitutionally mandated decisions that may affect the balance of power for years to come. They falsely claim that a lame duck president has no right nominate a person for a Supreme Court opening, stating that the next president should be the one making the nomination. Tribal loyalty is trumping (no pun intended here) duty to the nation. And we all suffer for it.

As a nation we have serious problems that are not being addressed.  We have refused to act on rationalizing America's immigration policy for years, effectively encouraging a "catch and release" policy for illegal immigrants.  Many people believe that the big problem is Mexican immigration to the USA, when the reality is that Mexicans are going home because of opportunities opening up there.  We have people who want "forever wars", and a Military-Industrial complex which is all too eager to oblige them.  We warehouse many of our poor in prisons, locked away for trumped up charges, all in the name of keeping our nation safe from crime.  (We'd be better off legalizing hard drugs, and taking away the reasons people commit crimes to buy these substances, and imitate Portugal in this area.)  We still have not been able to cover 100% of Americans in a medical insurance program, in part because of political bickering, in part because of big pharma having prevented some of the meaningful reforms that would allow medical insurance to be profitable for both the customer and the corporate entity providing it, and in part because because we do not have a "Public Option" ("Medicare for All", as Bernie Sanders would call it) where private industry can't afford to provide care.  Our political class is paralyzed, and the people are revolting at the polls.

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This situation has happened in other countries, and we've seen the disasters. To me, the most notable disaster was the fall of Weimar Germany and the ascent of Hitler and the "Thousand Year Reich".  We all know what happened there. Europe's economies were destroyed for at least a generation, and many of the continent's scars are visible to this day. Yet, Nativism still flourishes there, with far right parties trying to throw the immigrants out. And I can't blame the Nativists, because many of these immigrants have not assimilated into European society, many still live in cultural ghettos, and many cause problems by trying to bring the failed social values of their old homelands to the new.

The Nativists are just as much of the problem as are the unassimilated immigrants. Neither has adapted to change.  In many ways, both cling to a past which has not served them well, and has left them unprepared for the future.  It's sad, as neither group realizes that the past is the problem and not the solution.  In both the US and in Europe, Nativists resent immigrants who they feel are stealing their jobs. In reality, they are doing the kinds of work that the native born consider beneath themselves to do.  To make things worse, the jobs that many of the Nativists once did are no longer available.  Both Britain and the US have reduced their needs for coal, but no one has provided for the displaced workers. They have good reason to feel angry.  Immigrants are also part of the problem, as they bring ways of life which are incompatible with life in the new countries.  Muslim immigrants are often shocked that Western countries do not, and will not accept Sharia law in their midst.  The native born Christians in these lands rightfully see this as a problem, as it could lead to an all out war between them, and a growing Muslim population.

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The future is not as bleak as one might think. Mexican immigrants have assimilated more easily into American society the further away they are from Mexico.  In the lands which once were part of Mexico, they have tended to maintain a stronger cultural identity, and pose an interesting problem for America.  How do we insure their primary loyalty is to America? Most Muslim immigrants do not want any part of Sharia law, nor do they want the customs of their homelands.  They see the problems in places such as Egypt, where the government has no value to the common person.  They also see that government in the USA has a rightful place in public life, and is much of an asset here, as much as it was a liability in the lands from which they came. And in virtually all cases, it is education that has made the difference.

It's hard to learn to think critically without a good education.  And many of Obamacare's greatest opponents come from the masses who have not been educated well.  They do not see the law as an important first step towards an effective health care system for Americans, as they have not been taught civics in our schools.  They do not know how the government functions, nor do they know how to achieve their goals using the powers reserved for the people.  Instead, they look for a strong leader to deliver them from the mess that they, themselves have made. The masses have caused their own problems, because they, themselves have delegated their thinking to others.

Luckily, we still have a critical mass of Americans who have been well educated, and they still outnumber the "unwashed masses".  Hopefully, these people will stop the "unwashed masses" from electing a bombastic demagogue as a strongman leader, and instead, force the two parties to work together again and govern.  I still have hope for America, as the structure of the government handed to us by the Founding Fathers is still resilient enough to deal with today's problems.  They saw the objective truth, and it wasn't pretty then.  And our objective truth is just as ugly today as it was then.  So I have faith that what was given to us by Hamilton, Franklin, Jefferson, Adams and others is strong enough to weather the likes of Trump or Clinton....











https://www.morningstar.com/news/Market-watch/TDJNMW_20160831501/update-how-gilead-broke-obamacare.html


http://www.politico.com/story/2016/07/obamacare-prescription-drugs-pharma-225444

http://www.forbes.com/sites/scottgottlieb/2015/01/08/what-a-drug-price-debate-reveals-about-obamacare/#6eed2d1578c2

It's not just what you know, but how and when you use that knowledge.

Not many people have seen an Enigma machine close up - but I have. It's an amazing piece of engineering, but not as amazing as the fact that we cracked the code AND knew enough not to use all the knowledge we had, lest we clue the enemy in to the fact that their codes were broken.

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During WW2, one of the biggest clandestine goals of British intelligence was to break the German Enigma codes. Every day, the Germans would change the rotors and give the Enigmas new settings to code and decode messages. The Allied forces could not break these codes until Alan Turing figured out the weaknesses of what the Germans were doing. 

After the codes were broken, what next? One had a good idea of what the enemy knew, but could they prevent disasters? Often, NO! Unless there was a plausible way to explain why a troop movement was changed, why a convoy was rerouted, why some action was not taken, the Allies had to accept the known attack to come.

Today, we are in a similar war - but against many powers. Ars Technica describes what one division of the NSA is likely to have done in infecting systems around the world, so that America has a technical edge which might be used militarily.  

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In the past, America has tapped Soviet (now Russian) cables connecting the mainland to Vladivostok to keep tabs on the fleet stationed there. But the Soviets were able to plant a bug in the American Embassy in Moscow - inside the Great Seal given to us as a gift. And the Chinese are known to have their electronic spies as well. All the major nations are playing this game, and they have likely evolved a form of "rules of engagement" for use when dealing with each other. But this doesn't apply to nations that aren't top tier powers. Nor does this apply to non-national powers, such as Palestine (not yet a nation) or ISIS.

As civilians, none of us (for all practical purposes) have any clue to what is going on behind the scenes. We do not know for sure how successful the STUXNET virus was in attacking Iran's Uranium enrichment program, but it likely set Iran back by a year or two. Even more interesting is North Korea's military programs - could they have been compromised by malware hidden in the hard drives they bought from outside the country? (I'd bet that China may playing a role here, as they have gotten weary of keeping this dysfunctional regime afloat.)

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Much of the time, information like this never makes it to the history books. Alan Turing's accomplishments were kept Top Secret by the British for a couple of generations. Once classified as Top Secret, few governments ever bother to reclassify information which no longer needs to be kept secret. Yet, some secrets are kept by hiding them in plain sight. Leon Theremin was reportedly kidnapped from the United States in the 1930's (there is information that says he left for tax reasons), and after a stint in the gulag, then working for the KGB, ended up at the Moscow Conservatory of music (building Theremins and other musical instruments) before becoming a professor of Physics at Moscow State University.

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There are people who want our president to go to war against ISIS, putting boots on the ground.  Are we ready to have our children come back from the war in body bags (or worse)? I doubt it. Years ago, President Kennedy contacted the pilots flying spy planes over Cuba and gave them orders (with explanations) to NOT report any hostile fire from the ground while flying their missions. Many planes came back perforated - and the pilots claimed they hit birds and other things. This gave the president the room he needed to talk peace. But it was not only an American who prevented the Third World War - there was a Soviet Officer, Vasili Arkhipov, who kept his submarine from launching nuclear missiles while the submarine he was on was being attacked by American depth charges. Hard Liners in both countries wanted war - thankfully, that war never happened. Are we ready for yet another "Forever War", because we're seeing extreme inhumanity from an enemy? Or, are there other things we can do (or are being done) that can limit the scope of the war?

Right now, we do not have all the facts, and we are being manipulated by the media. We have to watch out how the media is being manipulated - when the Jordanian pilot was burned to death, none of America's Left and Centrist media provided links to see this murder. Only the Right wing media provided links to view the murder, as it is trying to stir up the will for Americans to endure yet another war. In fact, politicians are already saying we should resort to nukes, and kill ruthlessly. Wouldn't it make more sense to get more information before another rush to war?

The failures of American Society

The American Empire is in decline, and the elite does not see this for what it is - a breakdown of the ties that bind us together as Americans.

America, like much of the Western world is suffering from structural unemployment. In short, we have too many people and too few jobs to go around. Neither political party has a clue about what has to be done, and even if one did, its actions would be negated by the other party. Winning the game of politics has become much more important than serving the people.

If the problem were structural unemployment alone, we might look back to the Great Depression and develop "make work" programs such as the WPA, using the labor to rebuild our crumbling infrastructure. Sadly, this is not the case. Many of America's social problems go back to the post WW2 era, and the slow desegregation of American society. Whites did not want to have their children educated in the same schools as "colored" children, and busing began to be used to desegregate the schools. The Southern churches became a hot bed of activity on both sides of the battle.

Richard Nixon sensed that the South could be flipped from Blue to Red, and implemented the GOP's "Southern Strategy" - opposing busing at all turns, and aligning the party with fundamentalist ministries who, in the past, had no political allegiance. Within a generation, the South had flipped from Blue to Red, and the traditional mix of power in both political parties had changed for the worse. The Democrats became a party of urban liberals, while the GOP became a party of rural conservatives. No longer was there a tie in either party that held rural and urban states together.

Culturally, we have become very divided.  Jonathan Haidt identified 5 basic moral triggers that people use to judge right from wrong, and they include:

• Harm/care: People are sensitive to suffering and have negative feelings toward those who are harmful and cruel. They value kindness and compassion.
• Fairness/reciprocity: A history of cooperation means humans have evolved a sense of fairness and reciprocity, leading to altruistic actions.  
• Ingroup/loyalty: People place moral value on those who do what's good for the group; are loyal to the group; and dislike disloyal members. 
  
• Authority/respect: Humans tend to respect authority and tradition.
• Purity/sanctity: The idea that we view our bodies as sacred. This idea ties into religious views about the body and human actions.

Liberals tend to care only about harm and fairness when considering whether something is moral or not, while conservatives have a more traditional moral structure, and tend to care about all five morality factors. Couple the conservative viewpoint with a belief that economic failure is a result of moral failure, and one will have problems when addressing major economic issues such as structural unemployment.

In the past, we once had common broadcast news outlets, where reporting bias had to be skewed toward the middle in order to keep a nationwide audience. Was there really much difference between CBS, NBC and ABC, save for their anchors (Cronkite, Huntley/Brinkley, and Smith)? I don't think so. Without the ability to choose narrowcasted news, the American public got a balanced idea of what was happening in the world. This is not the case today. Cable allows us to select the narrowcasted news outlets of our choice, and we are fed the pablum that our biases want to hear - be it Fox News, MSNBC, or CNN. It's much harder to see things clearly when our news outlets have been chosen because they reinforce our political biases.

Why is narrowcasted news a problem? In the past, objective news coverage from Vietnam helped cause the removal of American troops from that country and end an unneeded war. Today, with narrowcasted news, there is little pressure to check and balance what the politicians are doing - and this has allowed the Military/Business elite (that Eisenhower warned us about) to put us in a position of fighting a "forever war".

"Forever Wars" take resources away from the needed rebuilding of our country's physical infrastructure. As a result, we've seen bridges fail, water mains fail, the electric supply grid fail, among other infrastructure problems. And little is done. When Hurricane Sandy hit New York a while back, we were woefully unprepared. The rebuilding of infrastructure is costing much more than it should, as we no longer know how to build and/or repair things at a reasonable cost. 

We've evolved to having an "us/them" society. If I talk about poverty, the first thought that comes to many minds is of a poor black "welfare mother" who leeches off our system. What most people don't see is that there is just as much rural poverty as there is urban poverty. Do those poor white mothers leech any less off our system?  I doubt it.  Both urban and rural poor are doing all they can do to get by on a daily basis - but the system is stacked against them.  Strangely enough two of the best posts I've read about poverty in this country came from cracked.com, the humor site....

• 5 Things That Nobody Tells You About Being Poor
• 5 Stupidest Habits One Learns Growing up Poor

And the sentiment is now being echoed in mainstream websites, such as in this article appearing in slate.com.

• Why Poor People Stay Poor

What people aren't noticing is that poverty has now come to the supposedly "safe" suburbs. Structural unemployment has left many families in need. And now, suburban food pantries are just as busy as urban food pantries.

The business elite no longer feels that it has to be in the same boat as the workers in the firms they manage. In the past, a CEO would rarely earn more than 30x-50x the salary of the firm's average worker. Now, CEO's tend to get 300x-400x the salary of the firm's average worker. Are the CEOs any better than they used to be?  I doubt it. A while back, the firm I worked for decided to merge with one of its competitors in the worst of economies. Cost savings, in part, would be achieved by letting people go - when the odds were very much against these former workers finding work at a livable wage. Who gained? The workers? No. The Stockholders? Not in a reasonable time frame. Upper Management? Of Course! But my old firm is only one of many. A major technical firm has outsourced many of its employees, so that it achieves the flexibility of having a labor force without rights. Who gains?  Certainly not labor.  Nor do the states where this firm has located its business units.

So, is there any hope? If we go back to Jonathan Haidt's moral value structures, we also find that liberals and conservatives have a lot in common - when they can stop talking past each other. They both want to resolve the problems of society, but they are caught in webs (as I see it) of tribal loyalties. If we can begin to recognize that all the stake holders in our society have legitimate grievances, only then can we start to repair the damage caused by our dysfunctional, disconnected elites....