holidays

So many issues; so little space on a page.

Every culture or religion in the northern hemisphere it seems commemorates the winter solstice, and for what seems like a good reason to the primitive mind.  The days were getting shorter.  What happens if they keep getting shorter and it becomes night all the time?  What will happen to us?  Of course the more astute tribal members were aware of the cycle and had learned to predict almost to the day when the days would start getting longer, a time for rejoicing, or perhaps penitence.  This has taken many forms; I’m sure far more than I am aware of.  Is there a Southern Hemisphere equivalent?  One of these ancient celebrations has settled into a complex form usually known in the modern western world as Christmastime.

There it becomes an unnecessary controversy.  Some insist it is a religious holiday requiring certain reverence others want it to be just a fun time for spending money, and possibly even licentious behavior at least on New Year’s Eve.  Some have different holidays that they want to celebrate independently of Christmas. My personal wish is that everyone gets to celebrate this wonderful time of year in the way that brings them the most joy to share.

America is unusual among nations in that it did not evolve from a unique tribal culture, but as an amalgam of many.  Now it is true that the most powerful factions have not always been kind to the powerless, however our founding documents say we should.  Some of us try to blend, while others feel put upon that some minority wants equal (special?) treatment.  One faction’s religious display in a public place becomes offensive to another.  The other wants equality, but does not have comparable resources.  There is not enough choice public space to please everyone.  A minority’s humble display might look tacky (or respectful) next to a wealthy sect’s ostentatious display.

So many things to disagree over.  Some are obsessing over coffee cups that are too sectarian, or not sectarian enough. Is it right to put a Christian Christmas tree in a public park?  Wait! the tree was a harmless Pagan symbol that northern Europeans elected to keep, when they were Christianized over 1000 years ago.  In fact if you look into the past of many religious symbols you find will that in one way or another they were adopted from another culture.

To me whatever faith my friends and neighbors choose to follow, or to not follow is their business.  I hope it gives them hope and comfort, but I do insist they not force it on others.  I do not have faith in a divine being, nor do I deny one; I do notice a lack of evidence.  Perhaps “God is an imaginary playmate for grown-ups,” Morgan Freeman, The Big Bounce. “He who made kittens put snakes in the grass,” Jethro Tull, Bungle In The Jungle. 

I have my faith that the laws of math, physics and chemistry will always have predictable outcome; that the laws of the soft sciences, if we ever understand them, will be similarly predictable and that human curiosity and ingenuity to solve what problems we still have, that almost everything can be scientifically explained.

I do believe: There was one miracle: Somehow, improbably, unexplainably, life started spontaneously, on this insignificant lonely planet.  There is no evidence of anything like it within the observable universe.  Evolution via natural selection is a viable explanation for the adaption of a variety of life forms to their environment leading from inexplicably simple life forms to one that attempts to understand it all and appreciate one another.

“I see friends shaking hands saying how do you do. They're really saying I love you.”  Louis Armstrong, What a Wonderful World. Although I may not share another’s faith I am never offended by a friendly greeting whether it’s Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, Mele Kalikimaka, Shalom Aleichem, Aloha, simply Hi or Happy New Year it’s all the same.  They're really saying in a small way I love you.” 

green polution

There is a source of pollution nobody seems to notice.  A huge quantity of green waste is allowed to rot on the ground in Hawaii, conservatively 60,000 tons a year* (*my estimate) No doubt others will challenge my figures, but they’re the best I can find.  Sure it makes topsoil, in about 100 years, but it makes pollutants, methane and carbon dioxide (CO2) immediately.

Hawaii, like most places, has energy issues, but environmentally friendly options.  Wind and solar are popular but they have limits too; neither can be depended upon when the need is greatest.  Solar needs sunlight, but peak demand is in the evening.  Wind is fickle.  The turbines only work in a relatively narrow speed range, if the wind is too slow they can’t make usable power, if it’s too fast they can break.  Some efficient inexpensive storage is needed. Unfortunately all known methods for storing electricity are expensive or inefficient.

There are a number of technologies that can turn that green waste, a fuel, into electricity, and while storing electricity is difficult, storing fuel is not.  We have been doing it for eons. Green waste is not only available it is abundant.  Hawaii County Environmental services collects 40,000 tons of green waste annually converts it to mulch, hauls it 40 miles and gives it away.  That pales compared to undocumented green waste rotting by the roadside.  The total green waste is probably over 100,000 tons a year*.  Half the people I know have a secret “puka” where they dump green waste rather than burn gas to drive 40 miles to Puuanhulu.  I alone dispose of a thousand pounds a year from my house lot.  Then there is the timber from trees that Helco has to cut to protect power lines.  No the diesel fuel to haul it to a power plant is not prohibitive; I did the calculations.  Burning 100,000 tons of green waste - renewable biofuel- could generate about 290 megawatt hours* of electricity a year, about what we need.  If those numbers sound absurd, consider that Hawaii used to export over a million tons of sugar a year (Wikipedia) and burn a comparable amount of the bagasse, waste to generate electricity.  The idle Hu Honua plant was built to burn bagasse; then converted to coal and recently began conversion to burn logs.  Anything that will burn and release energy, can be used to fuel a power plant. (Babcock and Wilcox) Yes, there are more sophisticated ways to turn waste to electricity, or even motor fuel.  Why not?

Now one objection that comes to mind is that burning creates CO2, but so does rotting.  Rotting also creates methane a greenhouse gas ten times as powerful as CO2.   A power plant that can turn green waste to energy can also do it with garbage and trash.  If adding recyclable paper, to the mix can make it viable that should not be arbitrarily ruled out.  Granted there are concerns that in order to make such a plant viable there would be a temptation to burn recyclable material. So?

I support recycling but just as there is a wasteful mentality there is a recycle-at-any-price mentality that leads us to pay $140 a ton to ship low value recyclable materials to the mainland where most of it will hopefully be recycled.  On the other hand using paper for fuel - worth maybe $40 a ton* - is summarily rejected. So the actual cost to recycle it is about $180 a ton. There is an environmental impact of shipping it 2600 miles.   

Recycling is a means to achieve a goal. It should not be the goal.  Otherwise we could recycle more by insisting on more wasteful packaging. Sometimes the highest and best use of surplus material is to extract the energy.  The measure is not how much we recycle, but how little we consume unnecessarily.  What do you think? obenskik@gmail.com

war on poor

One leading cause of being poor is being born poor with limited job opportunities, higher expenses, defeatist attitude of poor neighbors and extra attention from police.  Lacking a Costco card, or a way to get there, or even WalMart one has to pay the inflated prices at the local liquor store.   

It’s hard to start a business; it can take a year to get simple permits, complicated to employ and if necessary fire people. Business owners oppose increasing minimum wage for obviously selfish reasons that often sound a lot like slave owners opposition to freeing slaves. Many employers argue that increasing minimum wage would make them less competitive, even though their competitors would bear the same burden. Employers schedule short capricious work hours that make it impossible to qualify for benefits, and difficult to hold down a second job. Seattle/Tacoma raised minimum wage to $15 and business there is booming.

Some financial transactions are taxed the same amount whether the transaction is $10, $10,000 or$10,000,000. Hawaii car registration fees are based on weight, so the owner of an old beater pays more. General Excise Tax (GET) is regressive in a subtle way. It is an added cost of doing business to local businesses, where the poor often have to shop, but less costly to chains that buy nationally. There are strange exceptions that seem to benefit the wealthy, like aircraft maintenance. The tax code is so complex that only those who can afford professional help pay the legal minimum. Parking fees are hard to make progressive, but why does it cost less per square foot to park a personal jet at the airport than a family car. (I did not make this up)

Affordable housing is a great idea, but the most affordable version, the ohana unit is often illegal.  

 
If a person is fined for an offense it should be equally painful no matter who the offender is, but it's not. If the laborer is fined $55 for a parking violation that is a day’s take home pay. His kids might not eat. To the stock trader that's just one less imported cigar. "Thirty dollars or thirty days" is catastrophic to the dish washer, insignificant to the trader.

Courts treat failure-to-appear very severely. The unschooled laborer is likely offend inadvertently and be subjected to unpayable fines. Faced with losing a day's pay or not making a court date may seem simple. Mandatory minimum sentencing impacts those who cannot afford representation making it difficult to comply and get out from under the legal albatross; the victim is stigmatized for life.
 
Efforts to combat drug dealing and violent gangs often sweep up the poor who just happen to be in the path. Guilt by association often works against the defendant. Civil forfeiture allows law enforcement to confiscate property. The well off can weather it, or hire a lawyer, the poor just become poorer, possibly losing their only way to get to work. 
  

It seems like any one with more than a high school education here has their kids in a private school. The public schools are filled with immigrants for whom English is a second language. Even if the teachers were highly qualified, and many are not, it would be hard to teach well with this demographic. Their recent goal, have third graders reading at grade level in ten years!  Hawaii public schools consistently rank close to number 50. Parents are charged extra for school bus service!

 
Can we fix all of these?
Probably not, but some are obviously not in the best interest of us collectively.  Raising minimum wage circulates money and boosts the economy for everyone. An extra dollar earned amounts to about $2.40 to the economy in a year, because it changes hands many times. Better education creates better workers.

conservatives

       “They’re called conservatives; what do they conserve?”  Conserve: protect something, (especially an environmentally or culturally important place or thing) from harm or destruction. Based on their political behavior we seem to have a contradiction, but that is based on emphasizing the parenthetical. They seem opposed to conservation.  First of all we must remember that neither conservative nor liberal is a species.  Until recently there was more variation within either grouping than between them. They even overlapped. Both sides talk Flat Tax, but with entirely different goal. Unfortunately we have become more polarized since Vietnam.  Conservative used to mean: A person who is averse to change and holds to traditional values and attitudes, typically in relation to politics or simply safe.  In most professions conservative means doing what you know will probably work or at least do no harm.

Many so called conservatives today do not seem to want to preserve what works but rather to re-implement policies that it seems will be to their benefit, many of which are old abandoned policies like Jim Crow laws, intrusions into personal life that should be nobody’s business, and especially less tax for the rich.  They seem to be pro fossil fuels and pro war, any war, like the War-On-Drugs. War and fossil fuels are highly profitable for some.

There are different kinds of conservatives, and I won’t claim to identify them all. The Conservative leadership is dominated by white, old, rich, men (WORMS) e.g. McConnell, Gingrich, defending trickle-down economics. To give them credit they are very good at raising banners that collect followers. Second are the ideologues that read Ayn Rand and believe in a conservative philosophy much like a religion, for example the “Militia” that occupied the Malheur Wildlife Refuge. They cling to what is or they believe should be theirs. The largest group is ordinary people who tend to agree with those around them who happen to act conservative because of their environment: police, military, small town, or Bible-Belt. They watch Fox (Faux) News and call for less government rules for themselves, but law-and-order for those that they perceive as undeserving, e.g. minorities, and “liberals”.  

The typical conservatives have not been victim of discrimination so they seldom perceive it as a problem.  Some however have started to portray themselves as persecuted when they are told not to discriminate. Very few conservatives are a member of a minority, but there are exceptions: Carson, Thomas.  Conservatives tend to support discrimination such as complex voter ID rules, and regressive taxation e.g. GET (sales tax) on food, but not aircraft maintenance.   They also tend to lockstep on issues.  Agree on every principal or be labeled a ‘Liberal’. A liberal might support a conservative idea, but seldom the reverse

"The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts." - Bertrand Russell

          Conservatives seem to consider Liberal the worst insult without ever defining Liberal and apply it to anyone who disagrees.  They often give it the same inflection as vermin.  American conservatism tends to unify on many seemingly disparate issues, pro-life, but anti-health-care subsidy, lower taxes, but mainly for the rich, trillions for defense, but not one red cent for Planned Parenthood. Liberals on the other hand are famously disorganized, because by definition a liberal is one open to new ideas, albeit sometimes too open.  Liberals I know are like Will “I am not a member of an organized political party; I’m a Democrat” Rogers. Liberals can agree to disagree and still be friends. They get angry and complain about perceived injustice, sometimes for themselves, but often just for others.  Liberals never seem to promote hate of people.  I hope I am wrong, but conservatives seem to use fear and hate to ‘conserve’ i.e. protect white, old, rich, male privilege. 

   

Who knew

Everybody knew health care would be complicated!   It’s not just the health care itself that is complicated.  To some extent that is unavoidable; humans are complex and fussy about their comfort.  The health care delivery system does a pretty good job for most Americans most of the time. 

Unfortunately the health care financial system is like a platypus redesigned by a dysfunctional committee using meth.  Actually you can’t really call it a system, because it’s an uncoordinated conglomeration of semi-autonomous entities.  I can’t name them all, can you?  First, in the news, is the GOPcare replacement for ACA (aka Obamacare) then, Medicare and Medicaid. That’s just the Federal Civilian programs.  Then pubic private partnerships like Queens.  The military has their own, plus CHAMPUS for dependents, and don’t forget the VA.  On the civil – aka, free market - side we have HMO’s like Humana and Kaiser.  We also have insurers like Blue Cross (HMSA), and Aetna.

Health care providers work hard and deserve to be paid, the problem is that each payer has a different schedule of what they will pay and when.  If the payment is too attractive the unnecessary happens.  If the payment is stingy, necessary care may be delayed or forgone; providers have to beg and borrow to get paid.

One reason America spends more than any other country and has mediocre results is that the “system” is configured to insure that at least 20% of health care dollars are siphoned off as insurance profit and operating cost.  Hospitals bill for every penny with a huge markup:  (cotton ball $0.09, Aspirin $0.48) spending more to account for stuff than to buy it.  To get paid they need an extensive detailed cost collection system, like a factory, but unlike a factory every unit is unique and every hour is different.

The ACA was crippled from the start, because it is an assigned risk pool.  It gets the leftovers after the profitable population has been scooped up.  The ACA carriers got all the high risk poorer, older, sicker patients with bad habits.  The low risk young-and-healthy have no motivation to enroll.

What are the options, besides more of same?

One is a single payer system. The providers would not spend time figuring who pays how much for each element of a service. There would be less duplication of effort, but someone would still have to tally up a bill and someone else to negotiate a payment and eventually pay it.  Automatic payment has a frightening potential for abuse.

Another is National Health Service:  Everyone pays a tax like we do for other government service.  Everyone gets treated; providers get standard compensation.  It’s run much like the Fire Department.  Sure some people would overconsume but how many?  It has to include everyone especially Congress.

Third option, take all the money the government and industry spend on health insurance and put it in a pool.  Everyone gets a stipend adjusted for age and demographics.  They can spend it on insurance, HMO, or even a Medical Savings Account (a naive option).   The existing providers can compete for the business.  The idea of a truly free market for health care is almost ludicrous though; nobody can negotiate in an emergency and the products are way too complicated for the buyer to comparison shop. Individuals have no real bargaining power.

GOPcare: Free market solution, chose your own plan, pay with tax credits for those who earn too little to pay taxes, or do without.

I know you’re thinking.  (I would be)  “OK, wise guy what would you do?”  I would have a small select non-partisan committee. Nine members plus staff like the Supreme Court examine the National Health Services of large countries.  Determine which one is most effective, and copy it exactly.  Don’t let Congress try to improve it because when it comes to health, failure is not an option.

Automobile

The automobile takes a lot of criticism, some of it deserved.  Yes, they consume fossil fuels and contribute to air pollution, but engineers are working on that and things have gotten much better.  The worrisome criticism is the number of fatalities, and injuries.  It’s not as safe as airlines, but then Island Air does not come to my door. Not quite as safe as busses that only pass my community 6 times a day (or not) and seldom go where I need to.  What if I need to go to 3 places or 10?  Think of the things you could not do without your car.

Critics forget two important things. The fatality rate is relatively low compared to the alternatives and for the benefits autos confer.  I did lot of research for my accident analysis books.  It’s hard to locate comparable data for injury accidents relative to walking, horses or bicycles but the available data suggests it’s much higher per mile. Horses bite, kick, run wild, pollute and carry disease.  Planners feared in 1890 that New York City would soon be uninhabitable due to horse manure.  The gross accident numbers for non-motorized travel injury appear small because so few miles are traveled.

The automobile is the flying carpet of Arabian Nights. It takes you where you want to go, when you want, quickly in any level of comfort you are willing to pay for and you can take the family.    Henry Ford did more for common people than any statesman.  His inexpensive Model T gave the working man the power to go anywhere to get a better deal: better wages, hours, or working conditions.  Farmers got the ability to take produce where they got the best price and all of us the ability to shop where prices and service are better.  Kekei go to better schools.   It has been a great equalizer, the elderly and disabled can travel as quickly, and almost as comfortably as the privileged.  You can describe middle-class as car owners.

How many lives are saved every year by the motor ambulance and fire truck?  How much would fresh groceries cost without refrigerated trucks to distribute them? How would you get fresh food home without your car?  Would it even be available or would you be content with bread and beans?

Cars changed our attitude towards strangers.  Driving or walking we have learned to trust drivers to not put us in danger. Some of us pick up hitchhikers, and sometimes hitch a ride to solve a problem, trusting strangers. To facilitate cars we paved the roads almost everywhere, and they are clean.  Before, paving was only in the wealthy areas and even those roads were mostly rough filthy cobblestone.  Filthy rods make life dirty.  There is the sheer pleasure of driving, being free.  I could go on, but plainly motor vehicles improve our lives immensely.  True there is a cost in injuries, but evidence convinced me that it more than offsets the injuries and deprivation there would be without them.  

Our right to travel freely is under assault.  In the name of Zero Fatalities®, an admirable goal, speed limits are lowered with totalitarian enforcement. This European congested city, pedestrian oriented strategy cannot reduce crashes, because it creates chaos.   Can you imagine cultivated traffic jams, or $3000 speeding tickets? The Department of Transportation proposes such unrealistic measures toward that goal. They claim that no one dies from congestion, but traffic delay wastes thousands of lifetimes, one minute at a time.  Why would you cause it on purpose?  When the National 55 mph speed limit was repealed state speed limits went up and traffic fatalities went down!  A car trapped in gridlock seems safe but that’s not what cars are for.

Ken Obenski is a forensic engineer, now safety and freedom advocate in South Kona. He writes a monthly column for West Hawaii Today. E-mail obenskik@gmail.com

Why healthcare

      

1790 A yellow fever epidemic killed 10 percent of Philadelphia’s population. During epidemics everyone lived in fear, sometimes there were not enough healthy people to do the work.

Every house had a pit privy in back and a well out front, many wells were contaminated. Disease led city officials to hire Benjamin Latrobe to build a pumping station in 1801. He pumped water from the Schuylkill River, into wooden tanks and pipes.   We know that having abundant clean water to drink and wash sharply lowers infection rates. They had been losing 400 residents a year to cholera, afterward less than 10.  Today we take clean water for granted, but engineers and epidemiologist consider it the most important advancement of all time

1871 Union veterans Col. William Church and Gen. George Wingate formed the National Rifle Association, not for political purpose or personal gain. Their motivation was to reduce the time and cost of training city bred inductees who lacked marksmanship skills so we could have better defense.  

1896 The British army was dissatisfied with the sickly condition of recruits.  To strengthen their military they campaigned for and ultimately passed the National Insurance Act of 1911.  Compulsory health insurance was provided for low paid workers. The worker contributed fourpence.  An estimated 13 million workers came to be covered under this scheme.  It evolved into the National Health Service

Also 1896, Robert Baden-Powell, serving in Rhodesia, met Frederick Russell Burnham, the American-born Chief of Scouts.  During their patrols Burnham taught Baden-Powell woodcraft; skills little known in the British Army but well-known to the American scout. Baden-Powell was concerned that soldiers lacked the skills to survive outdoors weakening the army.  He published Scouting for Boys, describing the skills of frontiersmen and indigenous Americans starting Boy Scouts to make better soldiers.

1914 Henry Ford doubled the wages at Ford Company, not out of generosity.  Poor attendance and high turnover were making it hard to keep his factories running.  He became one of the richest men in history but also created the modern middle class.  Workers could buy the cars, creating a demand for more production and more workers.  He also set up schools for immigrant workers to learn to read and write English, so they could be more productive and he could make more.

1933 Henry J. Kaiser and other large construction contractors had formed an insurance consortium to meet their workers' compensation obligations, but the costs were too high and the only hospital was failing. Harold Hatch, an engineer-turned-insurance-agent suggested that the insurance companies pay Dr. Garfield a fixed amount per day, per covered worker, up front. This solved the hospital’s immediate money troubles and, at the same time, enabled Dr. Garfield to emphasize maintaining health and safety rather than merely treating illness and injury. Thus, prepayment came to America. For five cents per day, workers were provided this new form of health coverage. For an additional five cents per day, workers could also receive coverage for non-job related medical problems. Thousands of workers enrolled, and the hospital became a financial success. They profited by helping others.

All of these stories and countless others show the wisdom of providing essentials such as health care. We should not think of public health service as a give-away. When we invest tax dollars to immunize other children we protect our own children from those same diseases. The Constitution admonishes the government “to promote the general welfare.”  Healthy people are smarter, happier, safer and more productive; less likely to go on strike, resort to self-medication, drugs, alcohol and other things that lead to crime.  The young and healthy who do not need care today can think of it as insurance for when they will need care. Universal health care is the smart thing to do.

Ken Obenski is a forensic engineer, now safety and freedom advocate in South Kona. He writes a semi-monthly column for West Hawaii Today. E-mail obenskik@gmail.com