The devil is in the details …
How many times have we witnessed lofty goals proposed by politicians only to see the end result fail in a morass of special interest contractors, mismanagement, cost overruns, corruption, malfeasance and outright stupidity?
So pardon me when I cast my skeptical, cynical eye at Obama’s pronouncement and wonder about the details.
Politico.com is reporting …
“Obama unveils 21st Century New Deal”
“On Saturday, Barack Obama pledged the largest new investment in roads and bridges since President Dwight D. Eisenhower built the Interstate system in the 1950's.”
“President-elect Barack Obama added sweep and meat to his economic agenda on Saturday, pledging the largest new investment in roads and bridges since President Dwight D. Eisenhower built the Interstate system in the late 1950s, and tying his key initiatives – education, energy, health care –back to jobs in a package that has the makings of a smaller and modern version of FDR's New Deal marriage of job creation with infrastructure upgrades.”
Modernizing schools …
“The president-elect also said for the first time that he will ‘launch the most sweeping effort to modernize and upgrade school buildings that this country has ever seen.’ ‘We will repair broken schools, make them energy-efficient, and put new computers in our classrooms,’ he said in the address.”
There is no doubt that the members of the activist left have sought to infiltrate the educational process and thus be able to expose youngsters to their radical philosophies at an early age. What would have been considered inappropriate subject matter in years gone by is now routinely taught as being normal and customary. Therefore, one must ask if this initiative will lead to the expansion of federal intervention into what has been local control over education.
Pandering to the unions …
It is no secret that two of the core constituencies courted by the liberal democrat leftists in this last election cycle were the unions. Specifically, the teachers unions and the trade unions. Therefore, it comes as no surprise that the major beneficiaries of the construction and school upgrades will be the unions.
Perhaps if Obama was serious about his recently announced initiative, he would think through the process to demand further improvements which would benefit all Americans.
To curtail costs, for each government project, the union would suspend its onerous work rules and hefty contributions to its pension and benefit funds to match local labor rates. As well as to allow any American to work on the project without the necessity for joining a union or being forced to surrender a portion of his wage as a substitute for union dues.
To assist in immigration reform, to demand that only American citizens be allowed to work on these construction projects and that each worker be required to present a valid picture identification card and have their social security number verified.
In addition, to further educational goals, perhaps a requirement that all teachers be re-certified in their subject matter specialty as well as be certified in the basics of proven teaching methods. Also, this might be a good time to reduce the administrator-to-teacher ratio and to stop paying additional monies for teachers who are overqualified to teach certain grades. There should be no reward for a teacher with a master’s degree to teach a second-grade class unless it was a specialized education class requiring a higher level of education and training. Here, the list of improvements, long fought by the education unions, should be reconsidered. After all, it is public money that is being spent and for a public purpose.
Medical records …
Yes, we are all tired of filling out the same forms each time we enter a doctor’s office or having critical healthcare information locked away in a cabinet when it might be used to assist the attending physician in his diagnosis and choice of treatments.
Truth-be-told, this is a somewhat flawed goal when it comes to paper-pushing routine paper. Primary care doctors, and some specialists, are so overscheduled that they do not have time to read voluminous records, in paper or electronic form, and tend not to rely on past data. It is a standard operating practice to re-interview the patient for current complaints, order tests and then proceed from this point. It is also an open secret that certain exculpatory and exclusionary tests will be run simply to protect the doctor from future medical claims by patients with profit-minded trial lawyers. Another class of donors that seems to be beholden to the liberal democrat legislators.
Without getting into the arguments or infrastructure requirements of a government-controlled single-payor system, suffice it to say that electronic recordkeeping moves the process forward. One should consider that allowing insurance companies to insert themselves into the delivery of medical care has resulted in skyrocketing costs and shoddy medical care in many cases. There is no difference, at least in my mind, between the greedy Wall Street Wizards who gamed the mortgage marketplace to reap multi-million dollar bonuses and those that reap multi-million dollar bonuses by manipulating the healthcare system.
It is a shame that even those caught defrauding the system are given relative slaps on the wrist and the recovery of funds is so low as to be considered a cost of doing business. Everyone knows how to manipulate the coding system to change an elective “nose job” into a “rhinoplasty to repair a deviated septum.”
But even more dangerous considerations loom …
What about the lack of strong legislation to protect the compromise of medical records for political and profit-making reasons.
Let us not forget that the personal medical records of Britney Spears and a number of other highly interesting celebrities were allegedly accessed and sold to the tabloids.
Let us not forget that the personal records of “Joe the Plumber” were accessed and released to the media for political purposes.
And what did the democrat governor of Ohio, Ted Strickland, do about this egregious and systematic misuse of government computers and the release of personal and confidential information? Or the attempted cover-up.
According to the Columbus Dispatch …
“Gov. Ted Strickland, a Democrat, placed Jones-Kelley on a one-month unpaid suspension last month after Inspector General Thomas P. Charles found she authorized the check on Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher, aka Joe the Plumber, for no legitimate government purpose.
“Thompson also was suspended for a month after Charles found that he participated in directing the check and instructed Niekamp to send a deceptive e-mail about it. Three others received lesser punishment.” <Source>
At the very minimum, these people should have all been terminated and faced fines and jail time for there clearly illegal actions. This wasn’t a case of ill-advised curiosity, this information was fed to the media in the attempt to embarrass the opposition political party.
The possibility that your medical records could be used for political or criminal purposes such as blackmail or extortion pale compared to their potential use as a determining factor in the denial of insurance coverage, rate setting or in the denial of employment opportunities.
And we have no legal defense against government or other workers who engage in this activity. Even if you could prove damages, the resulting efforts will never clear your name or remove you from the collective database known as the Internet.
Worthwhile initiatives that need careful scrutiny …
We need to consider much more than the broad strokes of Obamas “five key parts" of his economic plan:
—ENERGY: “[W]e will launch a massive effort to make public buildings more energy-efficient. Our government now pays the highest energy bill in the world. We need to change that. We need to upgrade our federal buildings by replacing old heating systems and installing efficient light bulbs. That won’t just save you, the American taxpayer, billions of dollars each year. It will put people back to work.”
I do not know why we should trust the federal government to manage construction and renovation projects which end up creating additional naming opportunities as monuments to legislative egos.
One need only consider the recent visitor’s reception center – built in part because Harry Reid does apparently does not like to smell his fellow citizens on a hot day --- and whose construction schedule was delayed for three years while costs ballooned from an estimated $71 million dollars to a final cost of $621 million.
—ROADS AND BRIDGES: “[W]e will create millions of jobs by making the single largest new investment in our national infrastructure since the creation of the federal highway system in the 1950s. We’ll invest your precious tax dollars in new and smarter ways, and we’ll set a simple rule – use it or lose it. If a state doesn’t act quickly to invest in roads and bridges in their communities, they’ll lose the money.”
—SCHOOLS: “[M]y economic recovery plan will launch the most sweeping effort to modernize and upgrade school buildings that this country has ever seen. We will repair broken schools, make them energy-efficient, and put new computers in our classrooms. Because to help our children compete in a 21st century economy, we need to send them to 21st century schools.”
This is an outright falsehood. It’s not the buildings that will increase our competitiveness, it is the quality of education. Here in Los Angeles we have a billion dollar educational complex and a $320 million dollar modern art high school. Will these improve the graduation ratio of LAUSD (Los Angeles Unified School District) students. I think not. These are the people who couldn’t even manage a $100+ million payroll system or have the guts to simply fire a $300,000 ex-Vice Admiral who is more about motivational programs than education.
—BROADBAND: “As we renew our schools and highways, we’ll also renew our information superhighway. It is unacceptable that the United States ranks 15th in the world in broadband adoption. Here, in the country that invented the Internet, every child should have the chance to get online, and they’ll get that chance when I’m president – because that’s how we’ll strengthen America’s competitiveness in the world.”
(Incoming White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel had talked about expanding broadband access, but this is the first time the transition has formally proposed it.)
Again, we need to be extremely wary of the Administration’s handling of electronic privacy, Internet neutrality and other issues which may involve the curtailing of your First Amendment rights. We know that the common carriers, the telephone companies, cable companies and wireless operators all want to act as the gatekeepers to enable them to profit from the content being delivered over their infrastructure. It is not enough we pay for our own hardware, software, maintenance and connectivity – they now want to surcharge high-bandwidth items such as videos and other creative content belonging to others. Needless to say, they are also publishing reports that Google is using a disproportionate share of the nation’s bandwidth. We have all heard about the coming fight over the old “fairness doctrine” which has been re-labeled as a “locality access” issue, so we must be ever vigilant when our Constitutional rights may be at stake.
—ELECTRONIC MEDICAL RECORDS: “In addition to connecting our libraries and schools to the Internet, we must also ensure that our hospitals are connected to each other through the Internet. That is why the economic recovery plan I’m proposing will help modernize our health care system – and that won’t just save jobs, it will save lives. We will make sure that every doctor’s office and hospital in this country is using cutting edge technology and electronic medical records so that we can cut red tape, prevent medical mistakes, and help save billions of dollars each year.”
Again, we need clear and binding legislation covering the privacy of electronic communications and medical records before proceeding with this massive creation of the world’s largest interconnected and distributed database of medical records. We need to also remember that the government has empowered law enforcement agencies with the technology to tap these massive communications systems at will. Sometimes with warrants and sometimes with little more than a wink and a nod.
One need only consider that jailed private-eye Anthony Pelicano was alleged to use police officers and even a member of the FBI to obtain personal and private information for commercial use.
In the final analysis, I ask you a simple question: Can you think of a major project or system which has been on-time, on-budget and not obsolete before installation? Even excluding military systems?
One need look no further than the physical and electronic fencing which was supposed to protect America from an onslaught of illegal aliens who were rapidly destroying our education, healthcare, judicial, retirement, social and cultural infrastructure to see what the confluence of money, political power and special interests means to construction projects.
What can YOU do?
Until I see successful pilot or demonstration projects that were managed by the government, I will consider Barack Obama’s announcement to be nothing more, nor less, than another government giveaway to special interests and a media campaign to make the American people feel good.
As Americans we need to scrutinize the actions of the government and hold our elected officials to account for the mismanagement of our economy.
We are rapidly approaching a critical mass, when the number of government employees and entitlement recipients can vote together to drain our national treasury at will. This must not be allowed to happen and power needs to be de-federalized and returned to the states where it can be more easily managed under the watchful eye of the citizenry.
We need to demand more transparency in governmental contracting down to the granularity level of putting payments to contractors and others on-line for analysis by citizens. It’s our money that is being spent and our government that is spending it our name.
Be well, take care and consider that these difficult economic times will pass – unfortunately for some, with the pain of a kidney stone. We will have another chance to re-adjust government in 2010 – provided that we are still functioning.
-- steve
Quote of the Day: “The American people should be made aware of the trend toward monopolization of the great public information vehicles and the concentration of more and more power over public opinion in fewer and fewer hands." – Spiro Agnew
A reminder from OneCitizenSpeaking.com: a large improvement can result from a small change…
The object in life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane. -- Marcus Aurelius
Reference Links:
Obama unveils 21st Century New Deal - Mike Allen and Jonathan Martin - Politico.com
Comments