Figure Skating Is Not A Sport

It is ridiculous that ice skating is in the Olympics. It is not a sport and should not be given any credibility by receiving the international stamp of approval. Ice skating is nothing more than performing on ice, which does not constitute a sport. It should be removed from the Olympics, so we do not have to continue listening to the soap opera dramas that are associated with it.

A sport is very simple. There must be a objective method to determine who the winner and loser are. In many sports a person is racing against the clock - an unforgiving force and something that cannot be manipulated. In other sports, the athlete is competing with another to score more points. That’s it.

Any activity where there is a “judge” who will provide some subjective score to determine which performer is the winner falls outside the definition of a sport. The Olympics is designed to have athletes compete with one another in sports, not performances - leave those awards up to the Tonies or the Academy.

The debacle in the 2002 Olympics is a case in point. The French judge was on the take so she sandbagged one of the ice skating competitors and gave them a score that was way out of range with the other judges. Then this big turmoil arose as to how a judge could be on the take in the “prestigious” Olympics - which was already marred by the call girl scandal (much more interesting than a French ice skating judge). If ice skating had an objective perspective that could not be tampered with this brew haha would never had occurred. The reality is that the event is completely subjective, which prevents it from receiving any credibility.

There are a number of performances that the Olympics appear to hang on to. Diving, synchronized swimming, freestyle aerials, etc. This is not to say that these and other performance based events are not difficult, they are just not sports. Ballet dancing is difficult. So is rock climbing. Neither of these are in the Olympics, because the world is content to rank these as activities and not sports. There is no difference between ballet dancing and ice skating in terms of how they should be evaluated for a place in the Olympics. Neither should be there.

There will always be some form of human error in sports. A baseball umpire can call balls and strikes differently for different teams, which will result in a different result for the ultimate score. Many sports have sought to eliminate the subjective aspect. American football has instituted the instant replay so under certain circumstances the referees can review the tv camera to determine if the call made on the field was accurate. Horse racing has had the photo finish for many many years, so an unbiased viewpoint can be used to determine the winner. These kind of checks cannot be implemented for the subjective activities.

It is time to take the soap opera out of the Olympics and stick to serious sports drama such as the Miracle on Ice and other great moments in sports history.

Faux Science

The former Governor of New Jersey, Christie Whitman, who left office to become the head of the Environmental Protection Agency in 2000 was recently interviewed. One of the commentators asked her a question about global warming and she was emphatic that it is not "global warming" but rather "global climate change." The reason for this distinction, according to Governor/Secretary Whitman, is that not everywhere in the world is going to warm up; rather the climate will change. It is true that scientific predictions show that due to human activity not everywhere in the world will get warmer. For instance, the predictions are that Western Europe will become much colder and possible even similar to a tundra.

Contrary to Governor Whitman’s statement, it is "Global Warming" and not "Global Climate Change." The issue is not that Global Warming is going to cause everyplace in the world to become warmer, the point is that the average temperature of the Earth is increasing causing the climates of the world to change. If Governor Whitman, who was recently the former head of the EPA, does not understand what "Global Warming" refers to, then it is apparent that this entire administration does not understand the term or the issue. This may, in part, explain why the Bush Administration refused to reduce the amount of arsenic in drinking water, pulled out of the Kyoto Climate Treaty, seeks to drill oil in ANWAR, and walked out of the Montreal Climate Summit - they did not understand the environmental issues with which they were presented.

The Administration, with backing from corporations like Exxon-Mobile, maintains that Global Warming is not actually occurring. It is argued that the Earth goes through cycles of warm and cold and scientists cannot show a causal link because carbon emissions and global warming. Some Republicans, such as Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK), argue that Global Warming is the "greatest single hoax ever perpetrated on the American people." They even stand on the Senate floor and point to the novel State of Fear by Michael Crichton as support for the notion that Global Warming is not occurring.

Michael Crichton also wrote a book about an island full of dinosaurs that was going to be used as an amusement park. Do the people that use State of Fear as support for their argument regarding Global Warming also believe that Jurassic Park is based in fact? If Jurassic Park is not based in fact, then what makes them think that State of Fear is? If they do think there is a dinosaur park on some remote island somewhere, do we really think these people are credible to speak about issues of science such as Global Warming, and do we really want these people running our country? Many of these same people are also attacking the teaching of evolution in schools. Are these the people we want deciding what our science curriculum should be?

Despite their objections to the science supporting "Global Warming," the consensus is that it is occurring. It is also the scientific consensus that human activity is a significant contributor to the Global Warming. Since we have a government that is antagonistic and obviously misinformed on this as well as other sound scientific theories, what is the incentive to believe anything the Administration or the Republican Party says on any scientific matter? There is none, and it is time that the people force the Administration and the Republican Party to acknowledge that they are and traditionally have been wrong on these issues to the detriment of the Country.

The American Rule

One idea for tort reform is to have the loser of a lawsuit pay the costs and attorneys fees for the prevailing party. It is believed that this rule, if implemented, would prevent "frivolous" lawsuits from being filed. While a rule requiring losers to pay in all situations would likely reduce the number of lawsuits from being filed, it would not serve the ends of justice we seek to have our court system achieve.

The rule discussed is commonly referred to as the "English Rule" because in Great Britain, the loser of a lawsuit is required to pay the costs and fees of the prevailing party. The "American Rule" has traditionally been that each party pays for their own representation. There are some exceptions to the American Rule. For instance, in federal civil rights cases, if the plaintiff wins, he/she can require that the government pay the costs and attorneys fees expended to vindicate the person’s rights. There are also specific statutes on the federal and state levels that provide for a prevailing party to be awarded attorneys fees. For the most part, however, every party is responsible for their own attorney’s costs.

For over ten years people were suing the tobacco companies alleging that the product that they put on the market was dangerous as designed and the tobacco companies should have been held liable for the harm caused by their product. For over ten years, the tobacco companies took a hard line stance on the issue and required that each and every case go to trial. This strategy served several purposes. First, the tobacco companies did not want to set a precedence of paying damage awards to anyone who died of lung cancer. Second, they figured they could win number of the cases through a war of attrition, which is to say the tobacco companies knew they could out spend the plaintiffs, inundate that plaintiffs with hoards of paper, and a number of the cases would go away simply because the plaintiffs could not afford to continue fighting the legal battles. This strategy worked for a long time.

In the late 1990s the first cases against the tobacco companies was won. A jury, for the first time, awarded a plaintiff with a stunning victory against one of the largest corporations in the nation. This seemingly anomalous result came about when it was learned that the tobacco companies had lied about knowing just how addictive their product was and their work to manipulate the addictive nature of the product. Now the tobacco companies are settling or consistently losing the cases that are brought against them.

During the years they were winning cases, the tobacco companies were able to pay for extensive legal representation. They paid the top firms huge sums of money to have numerous attorneys work on each case throughout the country. The attorneys’ fees were likely in the millions for each and every case that went to trial.

For ten years, plaintiffs lost their cases, but were they frivolous cases? At the time, they probably seemed to have been, but in retrospect, it is clear that they were appropriate. Additionally, it was in large part the ground work laid by the early cases that have allowed the later cases to succeed. Under the English Rule, however, each of the plaintiffs who lost the early cases would have been required to pay millions of dollars to the tobacco companies for their attorneys’ fees. This would have bankrupted even the most prosperous of plaintiffs.

The plaintiff has no control over the type of legal representation that corporations retain. Some corporations will retain the largest most expensive firms. Some corporations, like the tobacco companies, will not only retain these large expensive firms, but they will also seek to have numerous attorneys from those firms work on each and every case. It is not appropriate for the corporations to become immune from lawsuit simply because they are able to scare people out of bringing suit, even legitimate suits, based upon the fear of having to pay millions of dollars in the corporation’s attorneys’ fees in the event the plaintiff loses.

The English rule would have prevented the tobacco companies from ever getting sued for the hazards they created. It would have probably prevented Ford from being sued over the Pinto or the SUV rollovers, and it would have prevented a number of other cases which are meritorious from being brought simply because everyone knows that these corporations can outspend any individual that might consider suing a large conglomerate. This type of tort reform is bad policy and should be avoided and resisted by everyone who looks to the courts to assist people to vindicate their rights.

Foreign Reliance

The head of the Government Accounting Office, David Walker, has severe criticism for the Congress due to its fiscal irresponsibility. He has said in Business Week Magazine that the current course is liable to lead to the economic destruction of this nation just as fiscal irresponsibility destroyed the Roman Empire.

This is not the first time the United States has engaged in fiscal irresponsibility to the point of possibly bankrupting the nation; however, it is the first time our government has acted with reckless malice while the nation has been the economic powerhouse of the world. The Guilded Age and the 1920s were both decades with the government and the people spending out of control. During neither of those decades was the United States looked upon as the most important world market, which is why those times are different from the times we are currently in. If the United State’s cannot reign in its current spending, then its entire economy could collapse and with it could go the entire world.

The world market is financing the reckless spending. China is one of the nation’s biggest creditors. It is constantly purchasing US bonds which are then used to pay the interest and payments on the deficit. It is dangerous to have China and other nations continue to finance this nation’s economy mainly because at any time China could decide to no longer purchase the US bonds and economic ruin would result.

If China invaded Taiwan, the United States would be politically obligated to intervene militarily. Or if North Korea announced that it was going to return to its prior policy of building nuclear weapons and the United States determined that it was in the nation and world’s best interest to militarily intervene in the nuclear weapons proliferation, China could decide that it will retaliate by stopping its constant purchases of US bonds. The United States would be in desperate need of money to finance the new wars, yet its largest financier would have disappeared.
Without China continuing to purchase the bonds, economic ruin could result. The United States could face the same scenario as Argentina just a few years ago when all of its debt was called in and Argentina could not pay it. The nation spiraled into depression and unemployment spiked. Argentina’s currency became worthless almost overnight.

Many economist say this could never happen to the US, but such rosy eyed views of the future are misplaced. There is no reason to think that the US will continue to be the world’s dominant economy. In years past the Netherlands dominated the world economy and then it was Great Britain. When they were the economic heavy weights they believed that the good times would never end, but they did. While it may now be the US which is the economic gorilla, it will not always be that way. Since China holds a significant amount of the US debt, if China wanted to become the next dominant economy it could send the US into ruin for the sole purpose of allowing China to become the principal economy.

The GOP has taken away protections for Americans who have over extended themselves financially, such as the bankruptcy protections. The GOP did this while saying that the people have to be responsible for their own actions. Yet, the GOP refuses to be responsible for its own actions. It refuses to stop the frenzied spending and reckless tax cuts. This course will result in a continued dependence on other nations and one day bankruptcy of the entire nation could result. The only question is, who will be there to pick up the pieces when it does occur.

The Fundamental Questions

During the recent Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearings questioning, Judge Alito, among other things, said that Roe v. Wade was an important case and since the decision had been affirmed on more than one occasion, its precedence must be respected. Judge Alito’s responses were circular and were not enlightening in the least about how he would rule on a matter concerning abortion.

The issue around Roe is not whether precedence requires that the decision be upheld; rather, whether a fundamental right can be taken away whenever political expediency mandates such a reversal. A fundamental right is one that is so inherent and so embodied in the Constitution that it is beyond the government’s ability to restrict or remove it. No right has been deemed fundamental and then subsequently removed by the Supreme Court.

Roe established a fundamental right in a women’s right to privacy within their own body which includes being allowed to obtain an abortion under specific circumstances. The fact that abortion has been deemed to be fundamental requires that it forever remain part of the rights embodied in the American people.

The Senators asked Judge Alito if time was a factor in determining whether a case must be upheld or could be overturned. One example that was used during the questioning was whether it was proper for Plessy v. Ferguson to be reversed by Brown v. Board of Education nearly fifty years after Plessy was decided. What was not discussed or acknowledged was that there is a significant difference between the "separate but equal" doctrine set forth in Plessy, which is merely a national policy, and the fundamental right created in Roe. Plessy did not grant a right in a class of persons; rather, it prevented a group of people from obtaining a right and was used to suppress blacks. Whereas, Roe established a fundamental right that is inherent in the American people and firmly embedded in the Constitution. No amount of time can pass to remove this fundamental right in the same way that politics altered over the course of fifty years to go from separate but equal to integration. Fundamental rights, once created, must be deemed to be sacrosanct. Such rights cannot be taken away not just because precedence precludes the Court from removing the right, but because the Constitution prohibits such a removal of the right.

Bush v. Gore created a fundamental right. It is the only decision by the United States Supreme Court dealing with the counting of ballots and the requirement that it be done consistently throughout specific areas. This case cannot be overturned the next time a vote counting case comes to the Court just because there is no other case affirming the decision but because it created a fundamental right. Such a right once articulated becomes integral in society and even the Supreme Court should not be able to remove such rights.

Judge Alito should have been asked when the last time the Court removed a fundamental right from the American people and under what circumstances a fundamental right could be taken away. The correct answer is that a fundamental right can never be taken away. If Judge Alito responded with anything other than a fundamental right can never be taken away, then it would have been clear that he disregards the Constitution and only serves his political ends. Since the questions were not properly asked, we will never know what Judge Alito’s opinion is on this important issue.

Taking Personal Responsibility

Relatively recently, some high profile legislation has either been introduced into or passed by Congress giving corporations an unprecedented free pass on the injuries their products cause to consumers. One piece of legislation is the infamous "Cheeseburger Bill" which would allow fast food restaurants to be immune from so called obesity lawsuits. The lawsuits allege that McDonalds and other similar companies are liable to the person for their obesity. Another corporate immunity bill, which was passed, is for the gun industry, and it prevents people from suing gun manufacturers for injuries sustained by their product. The currently pending lawsuits allege that the gun manufacturers intentionally place more guns than the market can handle into the market stream of states with lax gun laws such a Virginia. These guns then make their way up the "iron pipeline" (e.g., the NJ Turnpike) and are sold illegally in northeastern states.
Champions of these pieces of legislation argue that the lawsuits merely require that people (i.e., potential plaintiffs) take personal responsibility for their own actions and not try to hold corporations responsible for the person’s own decisions to use these products. But when is the corporation responsible for its actions?

When a corporation puts a product on the market that is dangerous to the user then the corporation should be held responsible for the injuries its product causes. The corporation made the conscious decision to place the product on the market despite there being dangers to the unsuspecting public. The corporation is in the best position to know what dangers their product poses and the corporation must be held responsible for failing to pull an unreasonably dangerous product off the market or at a minimum warning the consumer of the potential hazards their product can cause.

For a decade lawyers sued the tobacco companies arguing that the companies placed a dangerous product on the market, which, when used as designed, caused lung ailments and resulted in death of the consumer. Eventually, juries started ruling against the tobacco companies when it was learned that the companies had lied about their product and had conducted experiments to ensure that the product was addictive. Despite the first victories for the tobacco companies, the plaintiffs kept bringing suit and eventually, the truth about the product was placed in front of a jury and the tobacco company lost. Additionally, states started suing the tobacco industries for the medicaid costs associated with tobacco related illnesses. The state lawsuits terminated in a settlement of over $200 billion.

The book Fast Food Nation details how the fast food industry adds specific ingredients into their products to create addictive properties. Specific amounts of salts and sugars in the hamburgers establish an addictive nature to them so that the consumer is sure to return. Additionally, the product is largely marketed to children, so they will establish the addiction early in life, and the companies seek to have people eat their product several times per week despite the high calorie content and the potential for the consumers becoming obese and unhealthy. The direct result of obesity from fast food restaurants can be tracked through obesity’s dramatic increase in nations where McDonalds is newly opening: Japan and African nations. This is evidence that the fast food industry produces and knowingly markets a product which is dangerous to the consumer. Yet, Congress is trying to protect the industry from being held responsible for producing harmful products.

Today we would not say that Ford should have been immune from lawsuits caused because of the defect in the Ford Pinto a defect Lee Iaccoca knew of prior to the car being placed on the market or Chevrolet for its Corvair. Today, few would deny that the tobacco industry should be held responsible for its malfeasance, so why should the fast food industry or the gun industry receive a free pass for placing unsafe products on the market. Holding the corporations responsible for the injuries they cause consumers is not a result of the consumers failing to take personal responsibility, it is holding the corporations responsible for their personal actions.

Pay to Stop Terrorism

The United States spends less money on foreign aid, compared to its GDP, than almost any other nation. Despite the war in Darfur, famines in Niger, and other atrocities occurring, the United States continues to be stingy with its money. This lack of spending, despite the obvious need, is at the core of the reason why the United States continues to spend billions upon billions ever month on the military to fight the "War on Terror."

One of the many things that the United States should have learned from its time in Somalia is that in many of the world’s nations, there is severe poverty. Many nations lack what Americans consider to be basic infrastructure. They do not have telephone lines, sewer systems, paved roads, running water and other things that are taken for granted here. As those nations’ citizens complain about their low quality of life, they continue to blame the United States for their squalor. The blame may not be properly placed, but the US is the most visible nation in the world making it the easiest nation to point at and accuse.

By blaming the United States, terrorist organizations were able to aggressively recruit Somalis to fight against the United States during the US occupation of Somalia. The terrorist organizations argued that it was the US that was to blame for there not being any food to eat and for the crumbling cities. This made sense to the people, so they raised up and successfully fought against the US.

The argument continues today. People all over the world blame the US for the substandard conditions they endure. As they blame the US, they start actively opposing the United States by doing such things as joining terrorist organizations.

If the United States wants to stem this tide of new recruits for terrorist organizations, it must stop being so tight with the purse strings. The United States needs to be in the forefront to forgive foreign debt so nations can stop paying more on the interest for IMF loans than the nation spends on its own well-being. Secondly, the US needs to dramatically increase the amount of money it gives in foreign aid. It needs to provide African, Asian and South American nations significant amounts of money to assist them in building up their infrastructure and improving the quality of life for each of the nations’ citizens. The US needs to also be sure that it gets credit for the funding, so it will be visible that it is trying to improve the lives of everyone in the world.

The more active the United States becomes in foreign affairs and the more the general world population sees the government trying to raise all boats with rising tides, the less reasonable the argument will be that the US is to blame for the conditions of certain nations. If this argument can be undermined, then there will be fewer people buying into its logic and joining terrorist organizations based upon such reasoning. The obvious result to there being fewer people who join terror organizations is that the US will not be required to spend as much money on military actions around the world or on security at home.

Currently, the US is spending $8 - 10 billion per month in Iraq. Surely some of this money could be better spent on preventative measures and foreign aid than on this failed military effort.

X-Judges

In two weeks the confirmation hearings for Judge Alito will begin under the helm of Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA). Specter is known to be a relatively moderate Republican. He often tows the party line; however, he is pro-choice and must get re-elected in a “swing state” in 2010. There was controversy over his receiving the Judicial Committee chairmanship position when he stated that he would use his position as chairman to block “extremist” judges appointed by President Bush. He ultimately retracted this statement, but regardless of his subsequent statements, he made it clear what his position on ideological judges is and will be.

Thanks to Bush’s incompetence, Judge Alito’s nomination did not occur until relatively late in 2005, and the confirmation hearings were scheduled for after the holidays. Had Bush not nominated the unqualified Harriet Miers, it is possible the Alito nomination hearings would have been held by now, and it is likely that a confirmation vote would have resulted in Alito being placed on the high court. Things are different now, however.

Until recently, the only issues that the Judiciary Committee was going to have to address was whether Alito would affirm Roe v. Wade as the Supreme Court has done on at least two occasions and whether Alito can be trusted to recuse himself when he has a conflict of interest with a litigant in a matter he is hearing unlike Justice Scalia who hears cases regardless of a potential conflict of interest. Now, however, thanks to the delay in the confirmation hearing process, a new and potentially devastating issue has cropped up - domestic spying.

Alito wrote a 1985 memo stating that the government has the authority to engage in domestic spying and that even if it did not, the Attorney General should receive immunity for any illegal acts he may commit in the process of conducting domestic spying operations. This appears to be a position that is consistent with the Administration’s actions giving the NSA authority to track domestic communication despite a 1978 law prohibiting it.

This one issue could and should derail Alito’s nomination. The nation is outraged at the idea that our government would conduct domestic spying activities and circumvent the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). Under FISA the administration could easily have obtained warrants to conduct legitimate operations; in fact in the history of the Act, only 4 requests have been turned down. The circumvention of the Act indicates that the surveillance was on improper persons and for illegitimate reasons.

Alito’s support for such activities, especially in conjunction with his position on abortion and his refusal to recuse himself when his own personal finances could be affected by his decision, shows that he is an “extremist” judge that must be denied confirmation. This is the very type of judge Sen. Specter said he would block, and it is time that the good Senator made good on his promise.

Only the Healthy Stay Insured

As people continue to be forced to rely upon employer based healthcare insurance anyone who is in the greatest need for healthcare are being shut out and denied the medical access they need.

As the system is currently set up, a person must have a job with an employer which provides healthcare coverage. Alternatively, a person needs to be married or related to a person who holds a job with an employer that provides healthcare insurance. In the day and age when many people are not married to the person they live with or are homosexual and are not allowed to marry their partner, there are a significant number of people who cannot get access to healthcare insurance through their partners.

Even the people who have healthcare insurance are one sickness away from being without any insurance. If a person gets too sick to work for more than twelve weeks, there is no national law which requires that the employer continue paying or providing an employee with healthcare insurance. On the thirteenth week that a person has a serious health condition which prevents them from working is the end of that person’s access to healthcare coverage because they will have been dropped from their employer based health insurance plan.

Federal law requires that when a person leaves a job that the employer offer the employee eighteen months worth of healthcare coverage at the employee’s expense. It is unlikely that many people who lose their jobs due to a serious health condition can pay the premiums for the COBRA coverage, which is likely over $300 per month. If the person is too sick to work, then it is unlikely that they can afford such expensive healthcare insurance.

Ultimately, the person who needs healthcare insurance the most, a person with a serious health condition, is most at risk of losing his/her healthcare insurance because the person is too sick to work and therefore has no access to the insurance. If the person loses their healthcare insurance, then they will likely start being denied the quality healthcare that is necessary for them to get healthy. In the end they are more likely to die or stay sick for a longer period of time than necessary because this nation continues to adhere to the arcane employment based healthcare system.

The irony of the system is that those who need healthcare coverage the least are the people who have the easiest time getting the coverage. The people who are healthy enough to work full-time at a decent job which provides benefits gets the coverage. Many of these people do not utilize it often or at all. From an insurance companies perspective this may be beneficial because they are collecting premiums from people for whom they are not paying large amounts of money to. This translates into profits for the insurance companies.

Health insurance should not be provided only to the people who make the insurance companies the largest profit they can acquire. Most people are trying to do the right thing. They are working hard and providing a roof over their children’s head. They should not be denied access to medical health care when they need it the most, when they acquire a serious health condition.

Employment Based Healthcare Has To End

The United States continues to adhere to its arcane system of providing employer based healthcare. That is to say medical insurance is through a person’s employer opposed to the government or other source. It is too expensive for an individual to go out and purchase healthcare insurance on their own, so we continue to rely upon our employers to purchase the insurance for us and hope that we will only be required to pay a small portion of the total cost.

Many employees do not have the luxury of having an employer who provides health insurance for them. Many headlines have recently focused on the fact that the largest employer in the world, Wal-Mart, provides a minority of its employees with healthcare insurance. While on the other side of the spectrum, GM is arguably sinking into bankruptcy in part due to the total cost of its health insurance coverage for its current and former employees.

Regardless of whether someone believes that an employer should have the option of providing its employees healthcare insurance like Wal-Mart or whether one believes that GM’s financial hardships are due in large part to its health insurance cost is immaterial. What the nation needs to recognize is that employer based healthcare insurance is illogical and detrimental to all involved.

Employers struggle with how to pay for the high cost of health insurance. GM spends approximately one billion dollars per year to pay for its current employees health insurance costs. It could be paying up to four billion dollars to cover all of its retirees and current employees for healthcare costs alone. The fact that so much money is being removed from an employers bottom line and going to only healthcare costs does not make sense in a global economy when many of GM’s competitors are international companies and do not have such overhead costs. Thus, US companies are at a disadvantage in business because they have to spend so much money on healthcare opposed to spending the money on R&D or other required areas of their business.

Employers are also at a disadvantage due to employment based healthcare insurance because whenever employees come to the table to discuss their future employment, they ultimately start discussing who is going to pay for healthcare insurance for the coming year. Spring CWA members are currently striking in part due to the healthcare coverage cost. The grocery stores in California were striking a few years ago because of Wal-Mart moving in and reducing wages and healthcare coverage benefits. GM barely diverted a strike when it finally obtained a compromise with the UAW over medical healthcare coverage. Finally, the New York City MTA is concerned that its employees could start striking this week due to the healthcare coverage issue. Whenever one of these companies has a strike because a compromise over healthcare coverage occurs, these companies are losing a significant amount of money as a result of the strike and have lost a significant amount of money in legal fees leading up to the strike that it would not have had to pay had it not been an issue. Moreover, if the NYC MTA strikes, the amount of money lost due to the economic heartland for the nation, possibly the world, shuts down as a result of healthcare insurance. Billions of billions of dollars around the world could be lost because many Wall Street employees and others will not be able to get to and from work during the strike. This in itself should encourage the nation to start looking at other healthcare insurance systems.

There is no economic benefit to this nation to continue paying the high costs for healthcare insurance, and we are doing business a disservice by requiring that they flip the bill for healthcare insurance when their competitors are not concerned with such issues.

Update: It was reported today (12/13/05) that if the MTA goes on strike, which is illegal but has happened before, it would cost the City approximately $200 million per day due to private companies' employees not being able to get to work and people not being able to travel through the City easily. The last time the MTA went on strike it lasted eight days. In other words, an MTA strike over healthcare insurance could cost New York City companies $1.6 billion. It is a substantial cost to the private businesses for not supporting universal healthcare.

The Cost Of Oil

Oil costs just over $57 per barrel. This seems like a significant drop in price compared to the $65 per barrel that was being paid in August. Considering just two years ago, OPEC sought to maintain the cost of oil at $20 - $25 per barrel because this promoted stability regarding the commodity, the drop in the current oil cost is not significant at all since we are still nearly three times more than OPEC’s preferred price.

The cost of a gallon of gas and heating oil do not reflect the actual cost of oil on the open market. When the cost of oil was only $20 per barrel the cost of a gallon of gas was just over $1.50. For the past couple of years, the costs have slowly increased, but when it hit $65 per barrel we suddenly saw gas costs at over $3 per gallon. Now that the cost of oil has come down a mere $8 per barrel we are again seeing the cost of gas back around $2 per gallon. In fact, the cost at the pump, right before hurricane Katrina, went up three time faster than the cost of crude.* These swings in price do not seem proportionate with one another.

The oil companies have recently announced that they have made record profits. The major oil companies in the US announced that they have made tens of billions of dollars in profits for the first nine months of the year: Exxon-Mobile $25 Billion (the most profitable corporation in the world); Royal Dutch Shell $21 Billion; British Petroleum $15 Billion; Conoco Phillips $10 Billion; and Chevron-Texaco $10 Billion. The high costs of gas coupled with record profits shows that these companies are using their monopoly on the commodity to improperly jack up prices and unjustly reward themselves with unseemly profits.

There are only five major oil companies in the United States today. Since the cost of oil and the cost of gasoline are not moving in proportion to one another, and all of the oil companies have gasoline prices within a few cents of one another, it would appear that there is a coordinated effort to increase the prices collectively. In other words, the oil companies appear to be colluding to increase prices and generate these profits. Such actions, if true, are a violation of the anti-trust laws.

If oil companies are jointly manipulating the cost of gas and home heating oil to improperly maintain artificially high costs and profits, then they are in violation of the law. Anti-trust laws were created to prevent just such a scenario. While we know the US Attorney General, who is an employee of an administration in the pockets of big oil will not go after these trust violators as the federal government did when Teddy Roosevelt was President, we must wonder where the state attorney generals such as Elliot Spitzer are as this price gouging continues.

* As reported by the Energy Information Administration

We Don't Torture?

The Senate recently voted on an amendment to an appropriations bill which would prohibit all United States entities such as the military and CIA from torturing any enemy combatants or prisoners of war. The amendment sponsored by Senator John McCain (R-AZ) passed overwhelmingly (90-9). The White House, however, was opposed to the amendment. The President has said that the United States is following the law, and it is not torturing any of the prisoners or detainees it is holding. For this reason, the White House opposed the amendment and has even threatened to veto the bill in the event the amendment remains apart of the bill. (It should first be noted that this President has not vetoed any legislation to date, so the threat of a veto seems empty at best.) The White House opposed the amendment to the point that it made a point of having VP Cheney go to the Hill to try and whip votes.

It is disingenuous for a White House to say that it is following the law, not torturing anyone, (although it was caught red handed when it tortured prisoners in Abu Gharib), and being opposed to an amendment which requires the administration to continue to do exactly what the administration says it is doing. In other words, the administration says it is complying with the proposed bill. If it is complying with the proposed law, why would the administration be concerned with it becoming law? If what the administration is telling the public is truthful, then the administration is opposed to a law requiring it to continue operating in the exact fashion that it is currently acting.

Opposition to something that would require no change should make people suspect that what the administration is telling the public is not truthful. On this topic specifically, the administration’s credibility is already low. When the War in Afghanistan started and Camp X-ray in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba was first set up, the Administration argued that the detainees were not covered by the Geneva Convention because they did not belong to a national army. Rather, the Administration argued that it was in its own discretion what to do with the detainees. This argument seems to have been, for the most part, died away as the Administration received a significant amount of political pressure from home and abroad. Nonetheless, we know that there were memos circulated within the White House which redefined torture to be only that activity which would cause organ failure or death. It is clear that there is a great deal more that could constitute torture than just these activities. Is this the definition of torture the President uses when he says we don’t torture?

Considering the Administration was opposed to following the mandates of the Geneva Convention from the outset of the military actions, and it has given such an expansive definition to what is permissible, it is unlikely that the Administration is following the Convention regarding torture. It is unlikely that the Senate Amendment would impose any new obligations on the Administration that the Geneva Convention does not already impose. Thus, opposing the amendment is akin to opposing the Geneva Convention, again.

The Washington Post recently reported that there are black-op prisons in various parts of the world including Eastern Europe. The prisoners who are being held there are likely not documented such that the Red Cross can visit them and confirm their health and treatment. (Another requirement of the Geneva Convention). These "ghost detainees" are especially susceptible to being tortured and there is no recourse for them since no one knows of their existence.

It is a disgrace that the Administration opposes following the Geneva Convention and the proposed law. Such opposition establishes the strong inference that a great deal of torture is going on and if this country was appalled by Abu Grahib, then we should prepare ourselves for when the truth comes out about what has been occurring in Gitmo and other detention centers.

Universal Healthcare Is Good For Business and the Economy

As a general rule, Republicans oppose the idea of universal healthcare. They point to anecdotes of Canadians traveling to the United States for medical treatments like transplant surgery. It is claimed that the reason the Canadians have to travel to the United States is because the list for the surgery is too long in Canada due to the universal health coverage. It is unlikely that the reason the people are not receiving kidney transplants is due to the health care system. It is more likely that a population of approximately 30 million people does not have the necessary number of transplantable organs available to accommodate all of the people who are in need of them. In contrast the United States, with approximately ten time the population, is more likely to have organs that match the patient’s criteria.

What the GOP does not point out, and the Democrats do not seem to be doing any better in showing, is that universal healthcare would be good for the economy and benefit businesses. This benefit is a reason that should be put front and center in the argument for universal healthcare.

General Motors recently settled a labor contract with the United Auto Workers. One of the sticking points for the agreement was the amount of money that the employees were going to pay for their healthcare coverage. The UAW agreed to begin paying toward their own healthcare coverage. This is the first time the UAW workers have had to pay anything toward their healthcare insurance. However, GM is still at a severe disadvantage compared to its competition. GM pays approximately $4 billion per year in medical health insurance for its employees. This is a significant amount of money that its competitors, such as Toyota, are not paying. The result is that Toyota is able to spend the money it is saving on research and development and on other areas which make it more competitive and the dominant car company.

Companies like GM should be in the forefront of lobbing for universal health care. Their taxes would go up, but they would shed the burden of paying healthcare costs. They would stop having to extend labor negotiations due to differences in how much the employer and the employee are each going to contribute to healthcare costs. The bottom line is it will save money by having the country go to universal healthcare and those savings can go to becoming more competitive against their international competitors.

Some companies have already determined that healthcare costs are so high that they cannot remain competitive if they pay the high cost. Wal-Mart is famous for avoiding having to pay healthcare costs for its employees. Among the ways it does this is keeping employees’ hours lower than is required for eligibility for healthcare coverage. Wal-Mart also provides its employees information as to how to get onto public assistance for healthcare coverage, which raises the cost to the government for having Wal-Mart continue to grow and place its box stores in communities. Wal-Mart engages in a number of other cost cutting methodologies, but not paying healthcare costs is one major one which saves it a substantial amount of money.

To avoid making our companies uncompetitive to international competition or having companies circumvent providing healthcare coverage all together, the United States needs to implement a universal healthcare system. The cost will fall onto the shoulders of everyone: Corporations and individuals. The tax increase will likely be more than offset by the savings gained from ceasing to pay for healthcare coverage.

The political party that claims it is pro-business should be the party that is out front on this issue. The country will not be competitive in the world marketplace until universal healthcare is instituted and failure to be competitive is bad for the economy.