News and Views From my kids accomplishments, to my heretical perspective of the world

I have traveled in Muslim countries before and I’m used to seeing women covering their hair as a matter of modesty. But sometimes when I see a women here with her hair all covered up in typical Muslim head covering, the thought passes through my mind, “Why don’t they just go with the local custom so they don’t stand out?”

But I think a good analogy is to imagine my wife, mother or sister traveling to, or being forced to live in, a country where it is customary for women to bare their breasts in public. Would I expect the women in my life to just “go along with the local custom”? No, I don’t think I would. The idea is deeply ingrained that it would be shameful, even if the locals wouldn’t care or notice.

I know that many women from Muslim countries feel the same shame and modesty about uncovering their hair, and I need to respect that, as long as they are doing it voluntarily. But I can’t push that tolerance to the point of accepting the full body covers that leave just a mesh to look through. That’s just inhumane, and I can’t believe any intelligent woman would voluntarily submit to it.

There was a good Frontline program on last night with the same title as this post about brain damage in NFL players.

The evidence seems very conclusive that playing football at any level (NFL, college, high school, and even younger) can and will cause brain damage in almost every player. The damage seems to be worse if the player has multiple concussions, but even without a concussion the stresses of the head jerking around with every hit take an accumulated toll.

The NFL, just like the historical tobacco companies and cancer, refuses to accept the data and insists that the verdict is still out and that more research needs to be done. Considering the multi-billion dollars they rake in every year, it’s not surprising that they are desperate to protect their product.

It’s a quandary. The game is fun to watch and fun to play. I don’t see any way to successfully protect the players without fatally modifying the game. At a minimum, the NFL should admit the problem, and players should be made completely aware of the risk they are taking. Then the NFL should compensate and pay for health care for any player found to have suffered typical football-related cerebral damage, even if it shows up 20 years after playing.

Of course improved helmets might help too, and changing the rules e.g. against “leading with your head” (as has been done to some extent) makes sense. In any other industry the company would be forced to protect its workers from occupational hazards. But it’s hard to imagine how to eliminate the problem and preserve football as we know it.

I think a very important and relevant point that isn’t being discussed enough is that the House simply refuses to even bring to a vote a simple “clean” continuing resolution on the budget.

The House sent a few bills to the Senate that included defunding or delaying Obamacare. The Senate stripped out the Obamacare parts, passed the resulting budget bills and sent them back to the House. But the House wouldn’t even vote on the returned bills.

Why? Because if they had voted they likely would have passed. Enough moderate Republicans would have joined with all Democrats and passed one of the budget bills.

But if Boehner allowed it to come to a vote, and especially if it passed, the majority of the Republicans in the House would have been unhappy, and he would probably lose his job as Speaker. The Speaker of the House is chosen by his own party only.

This whole thing would be settled quickly and easily if the House would just let Democracy function and simply vote on a clear budget.

It’s a crazy situation when a minority can prevent the majority from acting.

The Kaiser Foundation recently completed a poll of Americans on the Affordable Care Act. The findings are interesting.

43% of those polled had an unfavorable impression of the law (vs. 39% favorable), but just 35% think opponents of the law should continue their efforts to repeal the law or keep it from being implemented.

But it gets really interesting when they polled people about their knowledge of the new law.

–Only 59% knew that coverage could not be denied based on medical history.
–42% thought that the government would set up panels to make end of life decisions for those on Medicare (the infamous “Death Panels”).
–43% thought that illegal immigrants would be given financial assistance to buy insurance coverage
–52% (over half!) thought that there would be a new government run insurance plan
–Only 65% knew about the new health insurance exchanges.
–42% thought that Medicare benefits would be cut.
–Only 42% knew that the act helps close the Medicare prescription “doughnut hole”.

When you consider the widespread ignorance about what the act does, the polls about favorable/unfavorable opinions become pretty meaningless.

I recently read a very interesting book, “The Measure of a Nation“. The author compared the United States to thirteen other large, developed democracies (Australia, Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Japan, Portugal, Netherlands, Korea, Spain, and the UK) on several factors, including health, wealth, crime, education, equality, freedom and democracy.

There is a general opinion in the US that we are the best in the world in almost every way. It’s certainly true that we have the largest economy and the strongest military, but an objective evaluation shows that we lag behind in other measures.

Health
I often hear that “America has the best healthcare system in the world”. However, US life expectancy is the lowest in the group, infant mortality is the highest, maternal mortality is the highest, and cost per person is roughly double any of the other countries. If we were a corporation the shareholders would complain that the highest cost for the worst results is hardly the “best in the world”. And medical costs here are much more likely to lead to bankruptcy than in the other countries primarily because of lack of adequate insurance.

Crime
The US homicide rate is more than twice any of the other countries. The incarceration rate is more than 4 times any other.

Education
The US ranks 10th on standardized test scores of reading, math and science, beating only Portugal, Italy, Spain and Greece. This compares with the mid-20th century when the US was known for having the best educated workforce.

Wealth and Equality
We like to think of the US as the “land of opportunity”, where anyone can make it if they only work hard enough, that America is a meritocracy. But by several measures the US is very unequal. One measure of income equality, the “Gini Index,” being a rough measure of the ratio between those at the top 10% earning level and those at the bottom 10%, puts the US in 13th place among the 14 countries. And this ratio has been getting worse over the past 2-3 decades.

One could argue that this is only fair — the people at the top have worked hardest and deserve to earn more than the laggards at the bottom. Is the US a “land of opportunity”? One way to measure is to compare a father’s income with his son’s income. If poor fathers have poor sons, that indicates little upward mobility. If there is little correlation between a father’s wealth and son’s wealth, that indicates more socioeconomic mobility. By this measure, the US has far less mobility than any of the other countries. Children of poor parents remain poor. Children of rich parents remain rich. In Canada, for example, a poor son was twice as likely to rise to a higher income level than his father, compared to the US.

Democracy
By some measures the United States invented democracy. Other countries such as ancient Greece approached it, but the US was a real breakthrough that has been emulated by many other countries around the world, including the other countries in the study. The genius of separation of powers, checks and balances, and the Bill of Rights, have remained relatively unchanged over more than two centuries. Despite its brilliance, there have been blemishes over the years, such as slavery, internment camps, election fiascoes and racial inequality. So while other countries emulated us, none of them adopted wholesale our original model, but rather changed it where they thought it could be improved, in particular with the way elections are held, and especially the antiquated Electoral College.

The US model makes it almost impossible for third party candidates to be elected, and in fact voting for Green, Tea, or Libertarian parties is seen as “throwing your vote away”. Some countries use runoff elections, where if no candidate gets a majority of the votes another election is held with only the candidates getting the most votes. Australia has an “instant runoff” system that to me seems like the best approach. When you cast your ballot you rank your candidates in order of preference. Votes are first tallied on first choices. If there is no majority, then that candidate getting the fewest votes is dropped, and his ballots are reallocated by second preference, etc. until one candidate has a majority. So you can vote for your fringe party without any risk that your vote will enhance an opposition party’s chances.

There are many other measures of democracy and freedom discussed in the book, such as voter turnout, rule of law, government stability, the “voice of the people”, government accountability, gerrymandered districts and regulatory quality, all of which put the US somewhere in the middle of the pack.

Conclusions
The book went into much more detail than I can here, explaining the statistics with charts and tables, and with recommendations for improvement. I urge everyone to read it.

The United States of America is a wonderful place to live and better than 90% of the other countries on the planet. But let’s not keep fooling ourselves that it is the best in every way and that there is no room for improvement. Let’s adopt a little humility, face the problems and learn from other countries.

In 2004 Amanda Berry’s mother asked Sylvia Browne for news about Amanda. Sylvia said “She’s not alive honey.” Her mother died a year later from heart failure, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the shock and disappointment hastened that end.

Similarly, in 2004 Browne told the parents of missing child Shawn Hornbeck that their child was dead, but he too was found alive four years later. The website “Stop Sylvia Browne” has many, many articles describing her errors and her arrogance when confronted with them. And here’s an article documenting 115 of her predictions without a single one verified correct. FBI state that no case has ever been resolved as a direct result of information provided from a psychic.

I guess “Psychic” falls under freedom of religion or freedom of speech, but it’s a shame that hucksters like Sylvia Browne and John Edwards can manipulate desperate people’s emotions and fool them out of their money the way they do. Hopefully, widespread publication of failures like this will help immunize people against their tactics.