"Our job is not to make up anybody’s mind, but to open minds, and to make the agony of decision-making so intense you can escape only by thinking."
- Fred W. Friendly (1915-1998)

"Ye shall know the truth, and the truth will make you mad."
- Aldous Huxley

"If you have ever injected truth into politics, then you have no politics."
- Will Rogers

Saturday, January 25, 2014

Income Inequality - Part I

You will be hearing a lot about this as the 2016 campaign prematurely warms up, and President Obama is expected to make it a central theme of his upcoming State of the Union drone (err. I mean speech...yawn).

Unfortunately most of the noise is going to come from brainless politicians who have no relationship with rational thinking or logic.  Fortunately, there are some bright people who are digging into it in a methodical and fact based way:



I will be trying to point out the intelligent resources for thinkers amid all of the political chaff as we move on.  Look for the Economic Inequality tag.

Friday, January 24, 2014

Wow...Just Wow!

If you are 22 years old, you can spend your life posting meaningless crap to Facebook (or mercifully short but equally meaningless crap to Twitter), or you can spend your time doing something like this.  Scroll down slowly...it goes from "that's kinda cool" at the top to "holy s__t" near the bottom. 

Needless to say he has attracted a bit of attention.

Thursday, January 23, 2014

This Rock Still Isn't Ready

Pilots have already heaped scorn on the way, way, way over budget and under performing F-35 ("the plane you can't see to operate". 

The claims for "benefits" of this money black hole are also exaggerated it seems, though that is hardly surprising for the Pentagon, who after all thought the never-functional "Star Wars" program was a great idea.

The saga continues, nobody likes this poor orphan......

Friday, January 17, 2014

Affordable Care Act BS

There has been a lot of this thrown about over the last year -- all untrue but making for good-sounding popular "twits" (my name for particularly inane or unintelligent Tweets) and providing ammo to the uninformed (or just plain unintelligent).

But, it is interesting to note that TWO former CEOs -  one with a non-profit and one with a for-profit health care insurer (sometimes fondly referred to as "death panels" -- thank you Sarah Palin) have both come out rather strongly that the American health care system is extremely broken...on its good days.

ACA is a start in the right direction, but because the least intelligent among us (politicians) got involved, it still falls short of what other countries have been able to do -- this isn't even a conversation topic there.

First up is George Halvorson, former CEO and chairman of Kaiser Permanante - a not for-profit health plan who just wrote a book Don't Let Healthcare Bankrupt America which I plan on reading. (It is not widely available yet, though Amazon has it for Kindles).   



The other is a person I believe I have referred to before - Wendell Porter who is a former CIGNA executive (and probably not very well liked in his old stomping grounds right now).

We can do better folks --- and the ACA is just a first baby step fouled up by politicians!

Saturday, January 4, 2014

Inequality in the Land of Equality

This is one of the best Shields and Brooks episodes in recent memory.  They are basically in agreement that income inequality is serious and unsupportable but seem uncertain about how or if government has the will to actually do anything about it.

I especially appreciated Mark Shield's observation about the last four years...95% of the US wealth flowed to the top 1% of the individuals who own 33% of the available stock.  Doesn't sound like socialism to me either, Mark!