Infrastructure Disaster

The past week has been one to remember for disasters due to the crumbling state of the infrastructure of this country. The natural gas explosion and fire in San Bruno, CA and the wind and fires in Detroit are the two most recent major examples.

The San Bruno fires have been attributed to a 50 year old natural gas main, the Detroit fires to high winds and falling electrical lines. As an electrician working in the Detroit area, I am well acquainted with the poor condition of Detroit's electrical grid. That the neighborhood electrical lines would break during high winds is no great shock. The pole to pole lines beside my house are in terrible condition. The insulation on the wires is frayed or missing and the lines have numerous splices from previous breaks. Why broken lines are repaired time after time instead of being replaced I don't completely understand. The short term economics are one thing but how many splices can one line have and still maintain structural integrity? Any one who has driven on Michigan roads can ask a similar question. How many times can you patch a patch?

Any good engineer knows that new material is stronger than repaired. New wires can withstand wind storms much more easily than those with multiple splices. What we need from our utilities and governments is a commitment to replace an upgrade our roads, gas and electrical and water lines at a vastly accelerated rate. Infrastructure spending must increase at a substantial rate or our infrastructure will likely collapse around us before it can be replaced with better, more modern and longer lasting materials.

I am aware of the great costs of these endeavors but I for one am willing to pay a bit more to have a secure utility and transportation infrastructure. Are you?

An Inconvenient Constitution?

I hear increasing chatter from the extreme right about repealing the 14th amendment. If I read American history correctly, amendments to the constitution have always been used to expand and define individual rights. It concerns me that these same people who supposedly stand for the values of the constitution are the first ones to seek to change that same constitution to restrict individual rights when those rights inconveniently conflict with their philosophical/political bent.

You can't have it both ways. You can't preach a message of freedom to the world and, at the same time, restrict those same freedoms at home. Most countries of the world look to the USA for the best examples of freedom and individual rights. These people and politicians of the far right have accused those on the left of being Fascist. Read your history. Fascists restrict individual rights and are from the conservative right.

To get up and preach freedom to the world while restricting it at home is the ultimate example of hypocrisy. This country once welcomed the poor and destitute but no more! These radicals from the right are nothing but hypocrites who fly in the face of the principles this country was founded on.

Justice for the Children

As an immigrant I am especially interested in the ongoing immigration debate. I still feel that the single biggest problem is the backlog in the system due to a lack of congressional funding but another issue came to my attention last week.

A young man in Arizona who has been in the country since seven years of age voluntarily went back to Mexico to try and immigrate legally. He was brought here, as a child, by his mother. He was educated in Arizona and graduated last year with an engineering degree from Arizona State. His wife and child remain in the US legally and he is being denied permission to immigrate. His hardship petition was denied. What does USCIS define as hardship? Is it not a hardship on his family to be separated from their husband and father?

Apart from the hardship argument another question must be asked in cases such as this. Should a child who is brought here illegally by their parents be held responsible for their unlawful presence? Since when are children held responsible for the crimes or sins of their parents? If the child is raised and educated in the US from an early age and becomes an adult who contributes to society and has committed no crimes, why should he or she be forced to return to a country they do not know. They had no choice in coming here and should not be treated as if they did.

Children of illegals who are raised here should be allowed to stay and not be held to the same standards as their parents. This is one issue that must be addressed in any proposed immigration reform.

Curious Parallels?

Have you ever noticed how divisive American politics has become? The "Conservative" right accuses the left of being socialist! Most of them don't even really know what the word even means. Is it a coincidence that the extreme right are the big 'C' conservatives and the extreme radical Muslims are also the big 'C' conservatives within their own world? Neither one is accepting of any moderation of their extreme viewpoints, yet both are willing to fight each other at the drop of a hat.

What has happened to the common sense of the American people? Why is a narrow and extreme political philosophy so attractive to so many? People, please use the minds God gave you and think. Educate yourselves and stop believing everything the political extremes are selling. Do your own research and learn. Remember, foot notes and documentation authors use can be used to back up any point of view they wish to present. Using information from only those who you agree with will never present a balanced view, presenting all sides of an argument, allowing the reader to truly make up his or her own mind.

Banking Hypocrisy!

Recently, one of our major banks has come out with a series of commercials equating good citizenship and banking. The concept is that our deposits are lent out in turn to proving mortgages, business and individual loans and in return the bank pays us interest on our deposits. That sounds like an equitable arrangement but it is in fact little more than a public relations ploy.

Credit and therefore loans is tight. Most small businesses will tell you that operating credit is not so easy to come by. Mortgages and consumer loans are harder to get and the interest paid to depositors is negligible if anything at all.

The reality is that banks are making most of their profits from trading in the stock and financial markets. These billion dollar profits benefit the banks and their stockholders. The depositors, upon whom the bank's financial foundation supposedly rests, get little or nothing from these massive profits. Do the depositors not deserve a fair share?

True citizenship implies equitable treatment. I don't see this equity in the bank's treatment of it's depositors and until this happens all the commercials about good banking being good citizenship are nothing more the a PR smoke screen.

Contrary to the Loudest Opinion

A few moments ago, the President signed the first part of his promised healthcare reforms into law. I have heard many loud voices in opposition to these changes and a question comes to mind. Was it necessary to make all of these changes by legislation ?

I'm afraid that the answer is yes and no. Changes such as removal of lifetime and annual limits, forbidding insurance companies to drop your coverage if you get sick and the elimination of pre-existing conditions are all necessary to work towards limiting the damages caused to families by personal bankruptcies due to medical bills. It is unfortunate that these changes had to be forced upon the insurance industry because they could have instituted these changes themselves, without legislative action. It was their own refusal to do what was needed and wanted by the public that forced the present situation.

There are enormous profits to be made from healthy people, not sick people. Unfortunately, this is not how insurance is supposed to work. The risk is not being spread among all subscribers as it should be if the ill cannot buy insurance or are dropped from coverage if they become sick.

Questions that I have not heard adequately asked or answered are, how much are these changes going to cost versus the costs to the economy of the personal bankruptcies due to uninsured medical expenses? How much money will be saved by more people being able to see and pay for a doctor's visit compared to the cost of an uncompensated emergency room visit?

The truth is that no one really knows how this will all shake out. To toss what has been done in favor of the status quo, before giving the new legislation a chance to work and be tweaked, is short sighted and irresponsible way to run a country or a business.

Was all of this necessary? Yes because the health insurance industry refused to do what their customers asked for and therefore forced a huge financial burden upon those customers, often destroying the lives of those customers in the process.

Are the newly instituted reforms all the correct ones? I don't know but, they must be given a fair chance to succeed or fail before a proper judgement can be rendered. Let's give them that chance.

Why "Free"?

Have you ever noticed that the most popular buzz word in the US is "free"? "Free Trade", "Free Enterprise" and "Free Market" are the words that seem to dominate all economy related discussions.

In recent years this emphasis on all things free has resulted in widespread deregulation of large sectors of the economy. This deregulation is good in theory but we seem to have forgotten why these regulations were instituted in the first place. The excesses and risks of the 1920's lead to the market crash of 1929 and the ensuing "great depression." We now find ourselves in a great recession because the leaders of this country never seem to learn anything from history.

Ninety nine point nine percent of the businesses in this country are run by honest hard working individuals. The problem is that the one tenth of one percent of business leaders are not as honest and are looking to make as much as possible at any cost. They maybe small in number but they seem to be concentrated in the wealthiest and most powerful levels of society. They have a level of wealth where they have very little, if anything, to lose when things go wrong. Their salaries are outrageous and their bonuses, which can pay many times that of their salaries, are truly obscene to the majority of the population. This 0.1 percent have the influence, through their greed and avarice, to bring to whole system down around them.

We need to replace the overuse of the word "free", in our vocabulary with "Fair". We need fair trade, fair enterprise and a fair market. The realization of the american dream for all requires the level playing field of a fair market with reasonable and fair regulation, reasonable and fair taxation, reasonable and fair trade and included in that must be reasonable and fair healthcare.

All the people need is a reasonable and fair opportunity to realize their dreams, not one which gives all the advantages to the elite, ultra wealthy, and powerful. Christ threw the dishonest money changers out of the temple and we should find a way to throw these dishonest "businessmen" out of business and hold them personally responsible for the damage they have caused.