Veteran's Day Reflections

Adapted from author: Nelson DeMille 

"Our country is filled with monuments to the men and women of the armed forces who served and who gave their lives. There is a monument in Arlington to the Unknown Soldier who represents all of the unidentified dead. There are and have been parades and special days set aside for the armed forces. But, for the dead, disabled, and discharged #veterans of the "secret war" there have been only private memorials in the lobbies or gardens of a few nonpublic buildings.

It is time to erect a public monument in the Mall; a tribute to the Cold Warriors who served and who got burned-out; whose marriages went to hell; who got shafted in bureaucratic shuffling and who died physically, mentally and sometimes spiritually. The exact nature of this monument escapes but it could be as a huge hole in the middle of the Mall, sort of a vortex, with a perpetual fog rising from the bottom, and if there is to be any inscription at all, it should read:

"Dedicated to the Cold Warriors, 1945-1989? THANKS."

This war ended, not with a bang, but with a whimper, and the transition from war to peace was mostly quiet and unremarked. There was no cohesiveness among the Cold Warriors, no sense of victory, no pomp and ceremony as divisions were deactivated; ships decommissioned; bomber squadrons put out into the desert. There was just a fading away; a piece of paper; maybe a check in the mail. In fact no one in Washington, nor anywhere, even said thank you."

EPILOG

Our returning armed forces bore the brunt and were the focus of protestors objecting to our nation's foreign policies. It was due to this domestic turmoil that when honorably discharged, many were "advised" to travel home in "civies." When they did finally resume their education or return to careers interupted, many were hesitant to disclose where they had been or what they had been doing for the previous four years.

Sad! Very Sad! They may have left their uniforms and their dignity behind... But they buried their pride deep inside where it could remain inviolate. The gratitude of our nation has yet to define the reality of our: "Cold Warriors."
Life has many itches...some should be scratched. Others? Not so much!

ANTI-DEFAMATION LEAGUE FOR BABY BOOMERS!

ANTI-DEFAMATION LEAGUE FOR BABY #BOOMERS!

Kid Rock, in an interview with Piers Morgan on CNN stated, “I shake my finger at “The Boomers;” for the damage they have done.” Today’s headlines produce yet another deliberate defamation of Boomers: “Aging Boomers Strain Cities Built For The Young.” (Who built these cities?!!!)

Given the economic strife and the political turmoil that exist in our nation today, these types of headlines and scare tactics can lead to only one “final solution”...and it didn't turn out so very well the last time. Discriminatory and inflammatory headlines need to be addressed; they cannot be permitted to go unchallenged.

Over the past fifty years, boomers built this nation...they accepted the reigns and the responsibility from their parents who were known as “The Great Generation.” The infrastructure that we have today is a consequence of their blood, sweat and tears.

Boomers were also hustled off to fight for our nation…except that it wasn't by choice and they didn’t get to come home to parades of honor. When being discharged from active duty, we were “advised” to travel home in “civies” since our #servicemen were being spat upon by their own countrymen. And so we remained silent. When we did finally go to college, courtesy of a guilt laden GI Bill that was totally inadequate to the task, we realized that we were different from our classmates. We knew it...our lives had been permanently altered. We did our nation's bidding and our nation bid us adieu.

Now, in our senior years, Boomers and boomer #veterans are still being "figuratively" spat upon by a generation molded out of post revisionist history and selective amnesia. Boomers have permitted their “successors” to remain children well into adulthood and thus they lack the skill set and the accumulated wisdom necessary for benevolent despotism.

Those of us whose working lives are behind us find ourselves sinking in the mire of a wealth redistribution. Boomers continue to “give” all that they have worked their entire lives to secure, while that with which they are left is being taken from them.

Boomers should be known as “The Generous Generation.” Their greatest mistake was their magnanimity of prematurely passing on the reigns to “The Greedy Generation or The Entitled Generation”

(What else didn’t you like about the play Mrs. Lincoln?)

THE DAY AFTER YESTERDAY: Healthcare For Today!

Something of Value: 

by Robert Ruark: "Before you take anything away, be certain that you are ready to replace it with something of value."  

"What we have here, is a failure to communicate" 

If we are looking to remake a #healthcare system that is efficient and compassionate, why would we continue to preserve the very portions of the old health care system that were anathema to the mission? Why would we carry those out-dated portions forward into the "new and improved" healthcare system? Seriously?
"Don't bother reading it, just sign it!"

The major problem as I see it is: employer linked health care. It keeps people chained to jobs, which prevents them from pursuing brighter horizons. Healthcare benefits provided by an employer were always meant to be an optional benefit and were an inducement to attract and retain the best and the brightest. 

It makes little sense to burden or inhibit an employer's objectives with the complications of healthcare administration... and then further complicate that regulation with IRS intervention and administrative oversight...and still further complicate their focused mission with the quandaries and the mires of investigating an employee's legal right to work or to reside in our country? How can this possibly create a fertile environment for innovation? Or, for the efficacy of healthcare? This unnecessarily complicated paradigm serves only to exacerbate the issues of unemployment, healthcare, right to work, immigration, taxation, migration, compensation, etc.


Demands placed upon employers for Healthcare and for immigration and investigative services are counter productive. Border security, which ensures the legal status and the right to work in our country is the number one mandate of a federal government...not of an employer! If that task were being done on the front line where it belongs, then others needn't be called upon further down the line. Terrorists seeking to do harm to the United States would not choose to enter at Kennedy Airport when we have made it readily apparent that the gates at our southern borders  have been thrown open and our men, women and children have been told to look the other way. Only when security is breached in a blinding flash are employers then held accountable for not checking the immigration status of their employees.


That established:

If we are to remain a compassionate nation, then The Bill of Rights needs to be amended to include the right of equal access to equal heath care... YOU paid for it! R&D; University Grants, Subsidies, and countless other public and private funding means. 

Let's face up to our realities. All of the statistical indicators would support a statement that contrary to the jingoist mantras and propaganda being perpetuated and promulgated, (See? My years in the service of our country taught me that word) we do not have "the best health care in the world." Waving the flag won't change the facts. While other nations are experiencing greater longevity and healthier lifestyles, we are actually losing ground. Our delivery system is failing us. Yet, we continue to pay the highest, most exorbitant rates in the world. Exactly what is it that impedes our delivery system? Convoluted Insurance, Excessive Administration, Fraud, Waste and Abuse. There appears to be nothing new in the health care law that would mitigate any of this. Or, that would indicate a willingness on the part of the Executive, Legislative or Judicial branches of government, or law enforcement to address these issues. The malware from the old hard drive has simply been ported over to the new hard drive. (We are capable of writing completely logical code for software...it shouldn't be a stretch to apply the very same logical progression to a new and improved health care system. Better yet, get IBM's Watson to write a new health care bill for us! Seriously!)

Insurance was conceived to level the playing field...until they became "too big to fail" and were allowed to cherry pick. We hear from those who say, "I don't want to pay for someone else's bad behavior." We're already paying for uninsured motorists and Anthony Wiener. How fair is that? How does it possibly make sense that insurance companies are restricted to selling in their home state? We are a mobile population...why is National Insurance such a difficult concept?

Technology:
There is something abhorrent about profit motivated health care. It doesn't pass the smell test. Technology is deliberately held back in the name of profit. Few  providers in the healthcare industry want to shell out funds to remain on the cutting edge before or until they have realized all of their potential profit from existing or fading technologies. Are we doomed to rely on yesterday's technology while emerging nations jump right into the cutting edge?

We don't need to reinvent the wheel...successful healthcare systems abound in other nations. Based on a population of three hundred and forty-five million people, we actually have a distinct advantage. It shouldn't take a retired trumpet player to calculate the cost for a fiscally cohesive healthcare system. Let's see...One Trillion Dollars per year would be: $2898.55 pp/pa superannuated at 4% = $2782.60. Need more than $1T? Do the math. No matter how you cut it, we are paying way too much.
Fools figure and figures fool!

The Day After Yesterday Is Here!

TREACHEROUS SEAS

I woke up this morning (sounds like a B.B. King song) after one of my recurring #NAVY dreams...being back in the frozen arctic and north seas on an aging and creaking guided missile cruiser while escorting the Soviet NAVY back home at the end of the Cuban Missile crisis. The turbulent seas were tossing us around like a telephone pole at the Scottish highland games. Our two cats, Mork and Mindy decided that I deserved breakfast in bed as they presented me with their freshly caught Gecko du jour. What? No coffee?

A German soldier in occupied France had just "possessed" a French woman in the nicest of all possible ways. While pulling up his trousers, he said to her, "in nine months you vil haf a baby...you can call him Fritz if you like. She replied, (in the nicest of all possible ways) "in two weeks you vil have a rash...you can call it Measles if you like."

Wait; Wait...It Gets Better:

Our government: "of the people, for the people and by the people" has shut down. (Must be a rash! Or...a rash of closures) 

Let's Seeeeeeeeeeee.

Government...People....Of...For...By... I must be missing something. If the government has shut down, then one would logically conclude that we, the people must have been shut down. I don't know about you, but I don't feel shut down...all of my systems seem to be functioning properly...especially after my breakfast of Gecko Tartar. Maybe it's time for "the people" to demonstrate what a shutdown really looks like. How about a week long National Strike. Everybody take off at the same time...kind of like "The Blue Flu." (You can call it Measles if you like)

We the people, having formed a less than perfect union, do now declare that we are sick...sick and tired of those people whom we have elected to represent our best interests but, like a rash, they have buried themselves deep in our most intimate of places where neither elections, Vladimir Putin (on the Ritz) nor talcum powder can shake off these pesky varmints.  Like genetically modified proteins, they remain immune to the very legislation that they enact. How about genetically modified legislators? Maybe they already are?

What do you get when you put nine justices together in the same room? Certainly not a supreme court. First of all, it's a rubber room where every logical conclusion bounces around like free radicals at a gay pride parade. Or...Neutrons at a heterosexual meltdown. (Apologies for the double mixed metaphors.) Secondly, these nine justices are not your warm and fuzzy family portrait of grandma and grandpa sittin' on the front porch chawin' bakkee and teaching the grand kids the finer points of a good arm fart. No, they're more like The Housewives of New Jersey on steroids...Combative and dysfunctional.

THE MORNING AFTER: Government Shutdown

Job Creation? Exportation of American Manufacturing?  
Are we still paying a price for NAFTA? Or...was NAFTA a long term commitment to the realities of expanding populations and diminishing employment opportunities?

It's a brave new world and the questionable physical need for a labor force is a different issue than a fiscal imperative. First we must ensure a level playing field...one of the few mandates of a federal government along with protection of our borders from the marauding barbarians and those irascible Canadians! :>)

 I believe that our need for a labor force will continue to diminish as the exponential growth and integration of technology renders such as redundant. Shared employment; shorter work week; spare time management! That's in our future. Not such a bad thing if we learn to adapt. Manufacturing? 3D copiers are just an early clarion call to adapt, accept and integrate.

Nanobots To You All, And To All A Good Defrag.