It’s become increasingly popular in recent years for liberals to speak of racial and ethnic diversity as a civic virtue. From multicultural festivals to political speeches, the message is always the same, “our differences make us stronger”. (The definition of diversity being "a wide range of sub-cultures and value systems".) However, a recent study based on interviews with nearly 30,000 people across the country has concluded just the opposite. Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam has found that “the greater the diversity in a community, the fewer people vote and the less they volunteer, the less they give to charity and work on community projects. In the most diverse communities, neighbors trust one another about half as much as they do in the most homogenous settings.” The study found that virtually all measures of civic involvement are lower in the more diverse settings, with more diverse communities tending to be larger, have greater income ranges, higher crime rates, and more mobility among their residents. Putnam writes that those in more diverse communities tend to "distrust their neighbors, regardless of the color of their skin, to withdraw even from close friends, to expect the worst from their community and its leaders, to volunteer less, give less to charity and work on community projects less often, to register to vote less, to agitate for social reform more but have less faith that they can actually make a difference, and to huddle unhappily in front of the television." "People living in ethnically diverse settings appear to 'hunker down' -- that is, to pull in like a turtle.”
The study comes when the American melting pot is the center of a hot political debate over immigration, and it challenges both sides of the argument. It’s also, and somewhat prematurely, being cited as proof that large-scale immigration severely harms the nation's society. But still, the immigration problem has bedeviled this nation for well over a century now, and we’ve managed to survive, mostly by letting time and established immigration limits solve the problem. Before those limits were established however, our larger cities bore the brunt of immigration, and severely suffered from the same ailments that Professor Putnam describes.
Since the 1830’s the United States has seen a steady stream of immigration almost totally from Europe. These immigrants proved troublesome for the cities, but with national expansion they were assimilated for the most part. Still, large slum areas developed in every city, and proved impossible to extinguish. Shortly after the Civil War, the United States was inundated with a flood of immigrants from all over the world, but still primarily from Europe. These immigrants, like their forerunners, having an alien culture and little or no knowledge of the English language, found themselves banding together along ethnic lines merely to survive. (At least you could ask the neighbors where the grocery store was with a good chance that they’d understand you.) With this, our major cities found themselves being divided into a wide assortment of “districts” (for lack of a better word), based on ethnicity, religion, and culture. Who hasn’t heard of the “Old Bowery”, “Little Italy” or “Chinatown”? With the skills they brought with them, most immigrants found jobs of one sort or another, and by learning the language they were able to spread across the country and become part of the American culture. Look around you and consider the national origin of your friends and neighbors last names… they are after all descended from immigrants, and probably their families arrived in this country less than two hundred years ago. My own great grandfather got off the boat with a shilling or two in his pocket, and speaking only Gaelic. The only job he could find was with the Union Army, and of necessity he learned to speak “American English”. After the Civil War he went to work with a good many other Irishmen building the Union Pacific Railroad, and found himself in the wild and woolly west, which was certainly a far cry from his native Tipperary! Within a few years and with a lot of hard work he owned a New Mexico cattle ranch. Not bad for an Irish immigrant lad in the 1870’s.
Following WW II the US again felt a surge of European immigrants and soon assimilated them with no major difficulties, because of cultural similarities. In the aftermath of the Korean and Vietnam wars we played host to a surge of immigration from the orient. This time around we had problems that continue today because of the vast difference between oriental cultures and our European based national culture. Still, that wave of immigration was limited for the most part, and with considerable effort our society was able to absorb most of our new citizens. Today however we’re being inundated by a virtual flood of illegal immigrants from third world countries, with an even greater variation of languages, religions, and cultural backgrounds… and who resist assimilation into main stream America. Making things even more difficult, a large portion of these immigrants have no saleable skills, and in many cases are relatively uneducated by our standards. Unfortunately for them, the market for unskilled day labor (or guerrilla fighters) is rapidly drying up in this country, they’re forced to depend on welfare or crime to survive, and of necessity continue to live in assorted “ghettos” in our cities, often completely ignoring our laws and social standards. The “promise of America” has certainly changed over the last seventy-five years, and apparently the “word” hasn’t gotten out to everyone yet!
Discounting the questions continuously being raised by special interests about the quota system, legal immigrants are supposed to meet certain standards. Among those are requirements that they’re not bringing various contagious or hard to treat disease with them. Another is that they must not have a criminal background. Face it, we’ve got more than enough home grown criminals without importing even more, and we certainly don’t need additional “gang members” in our cities! They are also required to have a sponsor who will be responsible for seeing that they do not become a burden on the public treasury. I see nothing ethically wrong with these requirements, after all, it is our country, and the legal citizens should have the right to determine who’s coming in, and who’s not! I have stated repeatedly that I do not oppose immigration… and I still don’t… as long as that immigration is legal and controlled. The term “legal immigration” is pretty well self-explanatory I’d think. On the other hand, congress seems to need a definition of “Controlled immigration”. That is, quite simply, we need to limit by whatever means necessary the number of immigrants each year to only those that our American culture is able to absorb!
After all, if they don’t want to be “American” as we understand it, perhaps they should stay home and solve their nations problems, rather than running away from them by coming here and adding to our problems.
Sunday, June 29, 2008
Wednesday, June 25, 2008
Economy
Looking at the gloom and doom predictions in the financial pages generally gives me a headache from trying to understand all the acronyms and arcane theories so easily tossed about by economists. Of course my never having studied the world of high finance, and having just about zero interest in it, probably explains part of the problem. However, if I just pick out one sentence at a time and worry it to death I can usually come up with some vague idea of what they’re babbling about. From that, it appears that at present the faltering global economy is the major concern, closely followed by the worldwide cost and the (apparently artificial) shortage of oil. Here in the US, the Federal Reserve is constantly trying to “adjust” the supply of money, which only serves to further confuse the issue at home, and helps to preserve the rather jittery financial situation in the rest of the world. Congress on the other hand appears to be greatly concerned with keeping the mortgage market intact with federal bailouts, and of course increasing the taxes on oil yet again, neither of which are helping the average citizen any at all. Then of course we have other economic worries as well.
From a recent story on the MSN financial pages it would appear that the UN financial gurus are predicting that a global famine will strike within the next few years. Historically, famine was a regional problem brought about by crop failures, drought, war, or pests of one sort or another (usually either locusts or the tax collector I believe). In this case there are several causes for the threat. The first is the perennial bug-a-boo of over-population, and I can hardly find fault with the logic used. Consider that in the 63 years since the end of WW II, the United States population has doubled, and it’s predicted to double again by the year 2040, and the world population increase is not far behind. The second cause relates to the world population and the subsequent increased demand for improved nutrition world wide, combined with government subsidized demand for “green” biofuels that are produced from our limited supply of food crops. The fixed amount of arable land available worldwide not only has to provide our food but it also has to provide living space for the population. Then to, our unsettled climate isn’t helping the situation any at all. “Experts” state that the world’s arable land “could” feed a population of ten billion people, with some claims as high as thirty billion. (Ten maybe. But thirty!?)
Many parts of the third world are already experiencing food shortages and escalating prices, in some cases to the point of starvation for the “poorer classes”. That food crisis is not only promoting civil unrest hither and yon, but is being used as a weapon in “ethnic cleansing” campaigns. It’s also bringing on the very serious threat of previously stable governments failing, and also of war between the “have” and “have not” nations. That threat is serious enough that much of the UN is becoming quite concerned. The food crisis is not only being felt among the worlds poor, but is also cutting into the gains of the working and middle classes in the more affluent nations, sowing discontent and putting new pressures on various governments. In Cairo, the military is being put to work baking bread. In parts of sub-Saharan Africa, food riots are breaking out as never before. In Malaysia, the government was nearly ousted by voters who cite food and fuel price increases as their main concerns. The sudden rise of commodity prices pits the world’s poorer nations against the relatively wealthy, adding to demands for reform of rich nations' farm policies. But experts say there are few quick fixes to a crisis brought on by so many factors, from the strong demand for food in emerging economies like China and India, to rising oil prices that cause the diversion of food resources to make biofuels. There are no quick answers to handling the crisis either. Asian governments are organizing measures to limit hoarding of rice after shoppers panicked at price increases and bought up everything they could. In Thailand, which produces more rice than it consumes, supermarkets have limited the amount of rice shoppers are allowed to purchase. The Indonesian government recently revised its budget, increasing the amount it will spend on food subsidies by about $280 million. In Senegal, one of Africa's oldest and most stable democracies, police in riot gear used tear gas against people protesting high food prices.
In an MSNBS news report, Arif Husain, senior food security analyst at the World Food Program asked "Why are these riots happening? The human instinct is to survive, and people are going to do no matter what to survive. And if you're hungry you get angry quicker." The report further stated; “Food riots caused by rising food prices have erupted around the world. Five people died in uprisings in Haiti, perhaps the first of many casualties to come from the fad of being “green”. Food riots also broke out in Egypt, Cameroon, Ivory Coast, Senegal and Ethiopia. The military is being deployed in Pakistan and Thailand to protect fields and warehouses. Higher energy costs and policies promoting the use of biofuels such as ethanol are being blamed.” "When millions of people are going hungry, it’s a crime against humanity that food should be diverted to biofuels," an Indian government official told the Wall Street Journal.
Biofuels have generally turned out to be a losing proposition. Claims by environmentalists and the industry as to reducing the demand for oil, and to lowering greenhouse gas emissions have proven false. Research shows that biofuels increase greenhouse gas emissions over the total production/usage cycle (raising the crops, harvesting, conversion, transportation, usage). Adding to the problem is the diversion of food crops and food crop acreage to producing fuels. That diversion has contributed to higher food prices and a reduced food supply. Nor is the situation going to improve in the near future, as cutting farm subsidies and tariffs on sugarcane based fuel imports is another political hot potato that congress can’t seem to get a grip on. Biofuel advocates tell us the reliance on food crops to produce biodiesel and ethanol is only temporary, as they plan a future where biomass (such as wood chips, corn stalks and straw) are the feedstock for cellulose ethanol. But the technology for producing that ethanol is nowhere near mature, and the greenhouse gasses produced over the entire lifecycle will probably be worse than what we’re already seeing. Nor will the cost per gallon of liquid fuels necessarily decrease either. Food riots are only the beginning, now we can expect to see energy riots as well. The world’s population is always growing remember, and those additional people will need food and energy. Yet the Sierra Club fights to shut down coal-fired power plants, the Natural Resources Defense Council fights to keep nuclear power from replacing coal, and Earth First is campaigning against power plants that use natural gas.
Just what the world needs today, overpopulation, a faltering economy, an energy crunch, approaching famine, and rabid environmentalism calling the shots on domestic oil production. I think the Cold War was probably easier to handle!
From a recent story on the MSN financial pages it would appear that the UN financial gurus are predicting that a global famine will strike within the next few years. Historically, famine was a regional problem brought about by crop failures, drought, war, or pests of one sort or another (usually either locusts or the tax collector I believe). In this case there are several causes for the threat. The first is the perennial bug-a-boo of over-population, and I can hardly find fault with the logic used. Consider that in the 63 years since the end of WW II, the United States population has doubled, and it’s predicted to double again by the year 2040, and the world population increase is not far behind. The second cause relates to the world population and the subsequent increased demand for improved nutrition world wide, combined with government subsidized demand for “green” biofuels that are produced from our limited supply of food crops. The fixed amount of arable land available worldwide not only has to provide our food but it also has to provide living space for the population. Then to, our unsettled climate isn’t helping the situation any at all. “Experts” state that the world’s arable land “could” feed a population of ten billion people, with some claims as high as thirty billion. (Ten maybe. But thirty!?)
Many parts of the third world are already experiencing food shortages and escalating prices, in some cases to the point of starvation for the “poorer classes”. That food crisis is not only promoting civil unrest hither and yon, but is being used as a weapon in “ethnic cleansing” campaigns. It’s also bringing on the very serious threat of previously stable governments failing, and also of war between the “have” and “have not” nations. That threat is serious enough that much of the UN is becoming quite concerned. The food crisis is not only being felt among the worlds poor, but is also cutting into the gains of the working and middle classes in the more affluent nations, sowing discontent and putting new pressures on various governments. In Cairo, the military is being put to work baking bread. In parts of sub-Saharan Africa, food riots are breaking out as never before. In Malaysia, the government was nearly ousted by voters who cite food and fuel price increases as their main concerns. The sudden rise of commodity prices pits the world’s poorer nations against the relatively wealthy, adding to demands for reform of rich nations' farm policies. But experts say there are few quick fixes to a crisis brought on by so many factors, from the strong demand for food in emerging economies like China and India, to rising oil prices that cause the diversion of food resources to make biofuels. There are no quick answers to handling the crisis either. Asian governments are organizing measures to limit hoarding of rice after shoppers panicked at price increases and bought up everything they could. In Thailand, which produces more rice than it consumes, supermarkets have limited the amount of rice shoppers are allowed to purchase. The Indonesian government recently revised its budget, increasing the amount it will spend on food subsidies by about $280 million. In Senegal, one of Africa's oldest and most stable democracies, police in riot gear used tear gas against people protesting high food prices.
In an MSNBS news report, Arif Husain, senior food security analyst at the World Food Program asked "Why are these riots happening? The human instinct is to survive, and people are going to do no matter what to survive. And if you're hungry you get angry quicker." The report further stated; “Food riots caused by rising food prices have erupted around the world. Five people died in uprisings in Haiti, perhaps the first of many casualties to come from the fad of being “green”. Food riots also broke out in Egypt, Cameroon, Ivory Coast, Senegal and Ethiopia. The military is being deployed in Pakistan and Thailand to protect fields and warehouses. Higher energy costs and policies promoting the use of biofuels such as ethanol are being blamed.” "When millions of people are going hungry, it’s a crime against humanity that food should be diverted to biofuels," an Indian government official told the Wall Street Journal.
Biofuels have generally turned out to be a losing proposition. Claims by environmentalists and the industry as to reducing the demand for oil, and to lowering greenhouse gas emissions have proven false. Research shows that biofuels increase greenhouse gas emissions over the total production/usage cycle (raising the crops, harvesting, conversion, transportation, usage). Adding to the problem is the diversion of food crops and food crop acreage to producing fuels. That diversion has contributed to higher food prices and a reduced food supply. Nor is the situation going to improve in the near future, as cutting farm subsidies and tariffs on sugarcane based fuel imports is another political hot potato that congress can’t seem to get a grip on. Biofuel advocates tell us the reliance on food crops to produce biodiesel and ethanol is only temporary, as they plan a future where biomass (such as wood chips, corn stalks and straw) are the feedstock for cellulose ethanol. But the technology for producing that ethanol is nowhere near mature, and the greenhouse gasses produced over the entire lifecycle will probably be worse than what we’re already seeing. Nor will the cost per gallon of liquid fuels necessarily decrease either. Food riots are only the beginning, now we can expect to see energy riots as well. The world’s population is always growing remember, and those additional people will need food and energy. Yet the Sierra Club fights to shut down coal-fired power plants, the Natural Resources Defense Council fights to keep nuclear power from replacing coal, and Earth First is campaigning against power plants that use natural gas.
Just what the world needs today, overpopulation, a faltering economy, an energy crunch, approaching famine, and rabid environmentalism calling the shots on domestic oil production. I think the Cold War was probably easier to handle!
Tuesday, June 17, 2008
I'm Back
There was no IMO column last issue, mostly because I was an unexpected guest at the Boise VA hospital for a few days. On Friday I went down to the hospital for my annual check-up, which is somewhat akin to having a minor tune-up, oil change, and rotating the tires. It seems that I made a error in telling the good doctor that I hadn’t been feeling all that well for the last few weeks, and with that he decided to keep me around for a few days. The next thing I know I’ve been admitted to the ICU “Step Down Unit” which is rather like a half-way house for folks that have been really sick but are preparing to become one of those who make everybody around them ill by constantly talking about their “operation”. Temporarily, and purely in the interest of journalism you understand, I’ll join that irritating group of people who have nothing better to talk about but their seemingly endless medical problems.
I have been examined, measured, poked, prodded, monitored, swabbed, sampled, X-rayed, gamma rayed, ultrasounded, tested, stressed and strained, EKG’d, injected, IV’d, and oxygenated, along with being cussed and discussed no end by a small army of Doctors, Medical Specialists, Technicians, Nurses, Administrators, Medical Students, CNA’s, and probably the FBI, CIA, IRS, and Homeland Security as well, until there’s nothing left to learn! I’ve been starved on a low cholesterol / low sodium hospital diet (I think the powdered eggs were army rations left over from the War of 1812), and for the most part just plain bored to tears for the last few days. About the only indignity I was spared is an enema, and I wasn’t about to mention that little oversight to the doctor or nurses! Somebody would inevitably come along and wake me up every couple of hours all night long so that a happy, smiling, efficient, and disgustingly cheerful nurse could record my vital signs. (WARNING!! If you wake me up at 2 AM, I am NOT inclined to be happy and smiling!) About the time I’d get back to sleep, an equally cheerful vampire would come in and wake me up again so she could draw a few more gallons of blood with a dull needle that I think was manufactured by the village blacksmith from an old 10 gauge shotgun barrel. I’ve been hooked up to more wires and plumbing than a space shuttle undergoing pre-launch tests!
They’ve given me some new medications and taken away some of the old ones. I’ve got a pocket sized “heart monitor” thingy that I’m supposed to wear constantly for the next couple of weeks. I’ve also got a multi-page set of instructions and a mess of general orders (most of which I’ll probably ignore anyway). After all this, and likely a scadzillion dollar dent in the VA’s annual budget, the medico’s still don’t really know what’s wrong. So far their diagnosis pretty well matches my own as I understand things, which is that I’ve experienced a couple of heart attacks in the past, and as a result now have a very slow heart rate which causes a lot of other problems, and that there really isn’t a whole lot they can do about it. I’ll give them a big "E for effort" though.
Considering the horror stories we’ve all heard about the VA medical system over the last few years, most people would be somewhat concerned about being hospitalized there. However, I can honestly say that I have no problems with the VA hospital system, and I really do think that the Boise VA Medical Center staff are a great bunch of people who put a lot of effort into taking good care of us old “high mileage” vet’s. (Well… lem’me think about the vampires a bit…) The nurses in particular are a fantastic bunch, but they run to darn fast for us old codgers to catch! In all, I’m a pretty well satisfied customer of VA medical care.
We’ve also heard about all the people in this country who don’t have access to medical care due to the high cost of medical insurance. That sorry situation is a problem that we as a nation need to address, and socialized medicine isn’t going to be a workable answer either. The first question of course is why are those medical insurance costs so high? Insurance companies try to provide a service to the public for a (large) fee, essentially you send ‘em a big part of your paycheck every month, and in return if you get sick they pay the medical bills, or at least part of ‘em. As insurance companies are stockholder owned businesses, they have to show a profit lest the stockholders get upset and fire the highly paid CEO, which is a really bad day sort of thing for the CEO. Most hospitals are also privately owned, which means they have to show a profit as well, and for much the same reason. Then we have the Doctors, who spend a lot of their youth learning the trade, and generally have some horrendous student loans to repay. If they can’t make a very comfortable living after all that effort, they’re going to be out looking for another line of work, in which case we’d soon have complete amateurs doing brain surgery. The nurses and technicians have a similar problem on an only slightly smaller scale, and there are a lot of people in the various supporting positions that must be paid as well. While I don’t know the exact percentage, I’d bet that payroll is probably by far the largest part of a hospital’s budget.
During my hospital “visit”, I gave the nurses the slip on occasion, and wandered around searching for that secret room where they hide your britches so you can’t escape. I noticed that there are a lot of shiny “gadgets” called medical equipment, scattered around all over the place. Because of my EMT/Paramedic background, most of those fancy gadgets weren’t a complete mystery to me, but there were some items I had to think about for a moment, and more than a few puzzlers that I’d have to ask someone about. Essentially they do the same thing as the equipment I worked with more than thirty years ago. But today’s hospital equipment seems to be highly updated, a lot faster working, and mostly computerized, which I well know raises the purchase price considerably. All this fancy equipment is necessary of course, both to make a diagnosis more accurate, and treatment quicker, which saves lives. Unfortunately, like everything else hi-tech, they become obsolete fairly soon and must be replaced. Thus hospitals are caught up in a continuous arms race to have the newest and most modern equipment (a “keeping up with the Jones’s” sort of thing), so that they can attract more patients and thus show even greater profits. With the modern day “electronic office” available, I often wonder why a hospital, or any business for that matter, needs so many administrative personnel. After all, I once ran an entire rural fire department, without computers you might note, and in addition to being Fire Chief I was the entire administrative staff! ‘Course that was back in the dark ages, before so much federally mandated record keeping and useless reports came along…
Overall our medical services do a pretty good job of keeping us alive and kicking, while the insurance industry does pay the bills, most of the time. But still, medical care is by its nature a quite expensive proposition, and the consumer always gets to pay for everything in the end, including some rather large insurance company profit margins.
I have been examined, measured, poked, prodded, monitored, swabbed, sampled, X-rayed, gamma rayed, ultrasounded, tested, stressed and strained, EKG’d, injected, IV’d, and oxygenated, along with being cussed and discussed no end by a small army of Doctors, Medical Specialists, Technicians, Nurses, Administrators, Medical Students, CNA’s, and probably the FBI, CIA, IRS, and Homeland Security as well, until there’s nothing left to learn! I’ve been starved on a low cholesterol / low sodium hospital diet (I think the powdered eggs were army rations left over from the War of 1812), and for the most part just plain bored to tears for the last few days. About the only indignity I was spared is an enema, and I wasn’t about to mention that little oversight to the doctor or nurses! Somebody would inevitably come along and wake me up every couple of hours all night long so that a happy, smiling, efficient, and disgustingly cheerful nurse could record my vital signs. (WARNING!! If you wake me up at 2 AM, I am NOT inclined to be happy and smiling!) About the time I’d get back to sleep, an equally cheerful vampire would come in and wake me up again so she could draw a few more gallons of blood with a dull needle that I think was manufactured by the village blacksmith from an old 10 gauge shotgun barrel. I’ve been hooked up to more wires and plumbing than a space shuttle undergoing pre-launch tests!
They’ve given me some new medications and taken away some of the old ones. I’ve got a pocket sized “heart monitor” thingy that I’m supposed to wear constantly for the next couple of weeks. I’ve also got a multi-page set of instructions and a mess of general orders (most of which I’ll probably ignore anyway). After all this, and likely a scadzillion dollar dent in the VA’s annual budget, the medico’s still don’t really know what’s wrong. So far their diagnosis pretty well matches my own as I understand things, which is that I’ve experienced a couple of heart attacks in the past, and as a result now have a very slow heart rate which causes a lot of other problems, and that there really isn’t a whole lot they can do about it. I’ll give them a big "E for effort" though.
Considering the horror stories we’ve all heard about the VA medical system over the last few years, most people would be somewhat concerned about being hospitalized there. However, I can honestly say that I have no problems with the VA hospital system, and I really do think that the Boise VA Medical Center staff are a great bunch of people who put a lot of effort into taking good care of us old “high mileage” vet’s. (Well… lem’me think about the vampires a bit…) The nurses in particular are a fantastic bunch, but they run to darn fast for us old codgers to catch! In all, I’m a pretty well satisfied customer of VA medical care.
We’ve also heard about all the people in this country who don’t have access to medical care due to the high cost of medical insurance. That sorry situation is a problem that we as a nation need to address, and socialized medicine isn’t going to be a workable answer either. The first question of course is why are those medical insurance costs so high? Insurance companies try to provide a service to the public for a (large) fee, essentially you send ‘em a big part of your paycheck every month, and in return if you get sick they pay the medical bills, or at least part of ‘em. As insurance companies are stockholder owned businesses, they have to show a profit lest the stockholders get upset and fire the highly paid CEO, which is a really bad day sort of thing for the CEO. Most hospitals are also privately owned, which means they have to show a profit as well, and for much the same reason. Then we have the Doctors, who spend a lot of their youth learning the trade, and generally have some horrendous student loans to repay. If they can’t make a very comfortable living after all that effort, they’re going to be out looking for another line of work, in which case we’d soon have complete amateurs doing brain surgery. The nurses and technicians have a similar problem on an only slightly smaller scale, and there are a lot of people in the various supporting positions that must be paid as well. While I don’t know the exact percentage, I’d bet that payroll is probably by far the largest part of a hospital’s budget.
During my hospital “visit”, I gave the nurses the slip on occasion, and wandered around searching for that secret room where they hide your britches so you can’t escape. I noticed that there are a lot of shiny “gadgets” called medical equipment, scattered around all over the place. Because of my EMT/Paramedic background, most of those fancy gadgets weren’t a complete mystery to me, but there were some items I had to think about for a moment, and more than a few puzzlers that I’d have to ask someone about. Essentially they do the same thing as the equipment I worked with more than thirty years ago. But today’s hospital equipment seems to be highly updated, a lot faster working, and mostly computerized, which I well know raises the purchase price considerably. All this fancy equipment is necessary of course, both to make a diagnosis more accurate, and treatment quicker, which saves lives. Unfortunately, like everything else hi-tech, they become obsolete fairly soon and must be replaced. Thus hospitals are caught up in a continuous arms race to have the newest and most modern equipment (a “keeping up with the Jones’s” sort of thing), so that they can attract more patients and thus show even greater profits. With the modern day “electronic office” available, I often wonder why a hospital, or any business for that matter, needs so many administrative personnel. After all, I once ran an entire rural fire department, without computers you might note, and in addition to being Fire Chief I was the entire administrative staff! ‘Course that was back in the dark ages, before so much federally mandated record keeping and useless reports came along…
Overall our medical services do a pretty good job of keeping us alive and kicking, while the insurance industry does pay the bills, most of the time. But still, medical care is by its nature a quite expensive proposition, and the consumer always gets to pay for everything in the end, including some rather large insurance company profit margins.
Thursday, June 5, 2008
Oil
Oil recently hit $130 per barrel, paused briefly, and now is continuing its seemingly irresistible rise. At the gas pumps we see the prices rapidly approaching $4 or more a gallon, with no sign of leveling off anytime soon. There seems to be a lot of weeping and wailing among the owners of the big gas guzzling vehicles when the cost of a fill-up can exceed a hundred dollars, while I whimper and whine a lot when it costs fifty dollars or more to fill my little (almost thirty mile-per-gallon) car. If you really want to see people suffer, hang around a truck stop and see what it costs to fill one of those big tractor-trailers! Or just try to fill your home heating oil tank. Common road oil costs well over $2 a gallon today, and road oil is just about a waste product at the very bottom of the oil refining chain. As I understand things, there are a good many communities in this country that are about ready to forget paving (or repairing already paved) streets, and are seriously considering a return to gravel roads! Here in Grangeville our streets desperately need resurfacing, but with the current price of oil, just where is the city council supposed to find the money to do that? If nothing else, graveled city streets ought to slow our local “speed demons” down quite a bit.
For short term relief (and "short term" will probably be considered the next few decades), we’re told that part of the solution for consumers is going to be a greatly increased supply of crude oil. Unfortunately a steady supply of Iraqi oil depends on al-Qaeda, the Saudis already said "no way" when President Bush asked them to increase production, and Iranian oil is out of the question due to international politics. If we were to ask Mr. Chavez to please boost Venezuelan production he’d likely laugh in our faces and jump the price even higher. Mexico is in a nasty shooting war with the narcotics cartels, so the fact that they’re pumping any oil at all is probably some sort of a miracle. The North Sea production has already peaked, and that supply is earmarked for the European market. I suppose we might ask China and India to cut back on their rapidly increasing petroleum demands, but somehow I don’t see much chance of that happening either.
But really, is the problem a lack of oil? After all, we’ve got hundreds or even thousands of producing wells in this country that are capped off. Our refineries are working at around 60% capacity, even after hurricane Katrina supposedly flattened so many refineries on the gulf coast. We’ve got super tankers anchored off our coasts that are loaded with oil, and are acting as temporary floating storage tanks! Ahh… OK, what’s wrong with this picture?
There are also the claims that the uncertainty of oil production, brought on by the war in Iraq, the Iranians, or the volatile political situation in Venezuela, or maybe the pirates off the Somalia coast, are to blame. After all, if the investors can’t get a fair return on their money, they aren’t going to buy even more stock in big oil companies. We’ve all heard tales about the price of gasoline in most oil producing nations being in the fifteen to forty cents per gallon range, and I really don’t have any reason to misbelieve such claims, considering that those wells are in close proximity to the refineries, so close in fact that the “investors” and “big oil” can’t weasel their way into the production chain. Another explanation for these high prices is that the oil companies must show a good profit, or they won’t be able to afford exploration and drilling new wells. Yet even when the president of Exxon Mobile announced a 43 billion profit for the yearm he also told his stockholders that Exxon has no intent of drilling for more oil, as they already have more product available than they can use!
Exxon Mobil Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Rex Tillerson later told the Wall Street Journal this week that he found it "astonishing" for President Bush to ask Saudi Arabia to pump more oil, rather than working harder to clear the way for more oil production at home. After all, we do have more proven oil reserves in this country than we know what to do with. Certainly American crude isn’t quite as easy to reach as the oil of the mid east, but we’ve got it. In a report prepared for the U.S. Department of Energy in 2006, technical analysts at Advanced Research International said "undeveloped domestic oil resources still in the ground total of 1.1 trillion barrels" and "the U.S. still has 400 billion barrels of undeveloped technically recoverable oil." Environmentalists of course tell us that the U.S. has only 21 billion barrels of "proven oil reserves", and in the meantime Saudi Arabia says it has 260 billion barrels of proven reserves available. What this tells me is that the United States has about four times as much oil in the ground as the Saudi’s do… and we’re still buying Saudi oil??? Again, what’s wrong with this picture?
The federal government has cooperated with those states that want to ban offshore oil production, primarily California, Florida and New Jersey. The federal government has also happily cooperated with the environmentalists who demand that oil under the Alaskan National Wildlife Refuge also remain off limits. Drilling opponents consistently argue that the environmental damage caused by more domestic oil recovery will not be worth the small amount of oil that will be gained. So why is it then that China can drill for oil off Florida and the US can’t? Why do Californians pay $5 per gallon for gas while millions of barrels of crude lie under the Pacific a short distance from shore? Why are folks in New Jersey paying through the nose for gas when a steady supply of oil is within sight of the New Jersey Turnpike? The public outrage over high fuel prices hides the extreme profits enjoyed by oil executives, in several cases people who admit they have no idea of just how much they get paid per year, other than it’s “in the millions”.
For years environmentalists have insisted that pristine views, uncluttered by dirty old oil wells, are ever so much more important than availability of the oil which could be easing our lives (and the strain on our wallets) today. The New York Times calls oil production in ANWR "Drilling in the Cathedral", thus raising miles of frozen tundra to the status of Yosemite National Park. They’ve decreed that drilling for oil would not be worth spoiling someone's kayaking trip, or disturbing their eco-tourism experience. And Congress, despite being elected to serve the public good, consistently goes along with the environmentalist’s wishes, while the rest of us suffer mightily.
Sure do wish I also made so much money per year that I couldn’t count it…
For short term relief (and "short term" will probably be considered the next few decades), we’re told that part of the solution for consumers is going to be a greatly increased supply of crude oil. Unfortunately a steady supply of Iraqi oil depends on al-Qaeda, the Saudis already said "no way" when President Bush asked them to increase production, and Iranian oil is out of the question due to international politics. If we were to ask Mr. Chavez to please boost Venezuelan production he’d likely laugh in our faces and jump the price even higher. Mexico is in a nasty shooting war with the narcotics cartels, so the fact that they’re pumping any oil at all is probably some sort of a miracle. The North Sea production has already peaked, and that supply is earmarked for the European market. I suppose we might ask China and India to cut back on their rapidly increasing petroleum demands, but somehow I don’t see much chance of that happening either.
But really, is the problem a lack of oil? After all, we’ve got hundreds or even thousands of producing wells in this country that are capped off. Our refineries are working at around 60% capacity, even after hurricane Katrina supposedly flattened so many refineries on the gulf coast. We’ve got super tankers anchored off our coasts that are loaded with oil, and are acting as temporary floating storage tanks! Ahh… OK, what’s wrong with this picture?
There are also the claims that the uncertainty of oil production, brought on by the war in Iraq, the Iranians, or the volatile political situation in Venezuela, or maybe the pirates off the Somalia coast, are to blame. After all, if the investors can’t get a fair return on their money, they aren’t going to buy even more stock in big oil companies. We’ve all heard tales about the price of gasoline in most oil producing nations being in the fifteen to forty cents per gallon range, and I really don’t have any reason to misbelieve such claims, considering that those wells are in close proximity to the refineries, so close in fact that the “investors” and “big oil” can’t weasel their way into the production chain. Another explanation for these high prices is that the oil companies must show a good profit, or they won’t be able to afford exploration and drilling new wells. Yet even when the president of Exxon Mobile announced a 43 billion profit for the yearm he also told his stockholders that Exxon has no intent of drilling for more oil, as they already have more product available than they can use!
Exxon Mobil Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Rex Tillerson later told the Wall Street Journal this week that he found it "astonishing" for President Bush to ask Saudi Arabia to pump more oil, rather than working harder to clear the way for more oil production at home. After all, we do have more proven oil reserves in this country than we know what to do with. Certainly American crude isn’t quite as easy to reach as the oil of the mid east, but we’ve got it. In a report prepared for the U.S. Department of Energy in 2006, technical analysts at Advanced Research International said "undeveloped domestic oil resources still in the ground total of 1.1 trillion barrels" and "the U.S. still has 400 billion barrels of undeveloped technically recoverable oil." Environmentalists of course tell us that the U.S. has only 21 billion barrels of "proven oil reserves", and in the meantime Saudi Arabia says it has 260 billion barrels of proven reserves available. What this tells me is that the United States has about four times as much oil in the ground as the Saudi’s do… and we’re still buying Saudi oil??? Again, what’s wrong with this picture?
The federal government has cooperated with those states that want to ban offshore oil production, primarily California, Florida and New Jersey. The federal government has also happily cooperated with the environmentalists who demand that oil under the Alaskan National Wildlife Refuge also remain off limits. Drilling opponents consistently argue that the environmental damage caused by more domestic oil recovery will not be worth the small amount of oil that will be gained. So why is it then that China can drill for oil off Florida and the US can’t? Why do Californians pay $5 per gallon for gas while millions of barrels of crude lie under the Pacific a short distance from shore? Why are folks in New Jersey paying through the nose for gas when a steady supply of oil is within sight of the New Jersey Turnpike? The public outrage over high fuel prices hides the extreme profits enjoyed by oil executives, in several cases people who admit they have no idea of just how much they get paid per year, other than it’s “in the millions”.
For years environmentalists have insisted that pristine views, uncluttered by dirty old oil wells, are ever so much more important than availability of the oil which could be easing our lives (and the strain on our wallets) today. The New York Times calls oil production in ANWR "Drilling in the Cathedral", thus raising miles of frozen tundra to the status of Yosemite National Park. They’ve decreed that drilling for oil would not be worth spoiling someone's kayaking trip, or disturbing their eco-tourism experience. And Congress, despite being elected to serve the public good, consistently goes along with the environmentalist’s wishes, while the rest of us suffer mightily.
Sure do wish I also made so much money per year that I couldn’t count it…
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