It appears that Romney doesn't have a solid understanding of how the country got into this current budget situation, and that his solution just won't work.
Dana Milbank: Romney's terrible choice » The Commercial Appeal:
Friday, July 27, 2012
Monday, July 9, 2012
The Founding Fathers, Unzipped
In July 2011, Newsweek had a very good article that described how our founding fathers were not all so great from a morality standpoint: http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2011/06/26/the-founding-fathers-were-flawed.html
This guy, David Mixner commented on them: DavidMixner.com - Live From Hell's Kitchen:
This guy, David Mixner commented on them: DavidMixner.com - Live From Hell's Kitchen:
Baby boomers are ill-prepared to pay for long-term care - Los Angeles Times
A few people are now recognizing the problem when the boomer generation begins to need long term care.
Baby boomers are ill-prepared to pay for long-term care - Los Angeles Times:
Again, I believe the US needs to make arrangements with the third world countries to facilitate exporting our senior population to desirable locations with US Government-approved medical support. I believe countries such as Mexico and the Philippines would be perfect locations for lower cost long-term care. With the use of large screen high bandwidth communications, the seniors will not be "far" from their families.
Baby boomers are ill-prepared to pay for long-term care - Los Angeles Times:
Again, I believe the US needs to make arrangements with the third world countries to facilitate exporting our senior population to desirable locations with US Government-approved medical support. I believe countries such as Mexico and the Philippines would be perfect locations for lower cost long-term care. With the use of large screen high bandwidth communications, the seniors will not be "far" from their families.
John C. Goodman: Three Simple Ways Medicare Can Save Money - WSJ.com
This editorial in WSJ in August 2011 had some very good ideas on how the Government could save money on Medicare. In effect there are many forms of price-fixing going on in the medical community that distorts the free market in very perverse ways. It even discourages doctors from working in fields where we badly need them to be working. John C Goodman is the president and CEO of the National Center for Policy Analysis --
John C. Goodman: Three Simple Ways Medicare Can Save Money - WSJ.com:
He recommends allowing Medicare patients to use free-standing emergency care clinics with posted prices, allow them to use commercial telephone and email services (Teledoc), and participate in "concierge doctors" where patients pay a flat fee each year for all types of services. All of these recommendations sound good as a "sound bite" and may result in some immediate savings -- but I'm not sure that they will save much money in the long haul.
I think these are good starts -- but the "devil's in the details" --Each of these types of medical service could also contribute to additional cost increases, misuse, and fraud, waste and abuse. For example, if a patient misused the emergency care clinics too frequently, it would bypass the current trips to the emergency rooms of major hospitals, and then cause the hospitals to have fewer patients to spread their fixed costs over. If patients used the Teledoc-type services, the same thing could happen, and scam teledoc providers could start up and begin billing medicare for phony services. The concierge services sound good, and doctors will be more than willing to take on the healthy patients, however those with pre-exiting conditions or who encounter a serious injury or disease will be dropped and passed on to the existing system. Therefore those concierge services will "skim off" the easy money and probably increase the costs for everyone else.
John C. Goodman: Three Simple Ways Medicare Can Save Money - WSJ.com:
He recommends allowing Medicare patients to use free-standing emergency care clinics with posted prices, allow them to use commercial telephone and email services (Teledoc), and participate in "concierge doctors" where patients pay a flat fee each year for all types of services. All of these recommendations sound good as a "sound bite" and may result in some immediate savings -- but I'm not sure that they will save much money in the long haul.
I think these are good starts -- but the "devil's in the details" --Each of these types of medical service could also contribute to additional cost increases, misuse, and fraud, waste and abuse. For example, if a patient misused the emergency care clinics too frequently, it would bypass the current trips to the emergency rooms of major hospitals, and then cause the hospitals to have fewer patients to spread their fixed costs over. If patients used the Teledoc-type services, the same thing could happen, and scam teledoc providers could start up and begin billing medicare for phony services. The concierge services sound good, and doctors will be more than willing to take on the healthy patients, however those with pre-exiting conditions or who encounter a serious injury or disease will be dropped and passed on to the existing system. Therefore those concierge services will "skim off" the easy money and probably increase the costs for everyone else.
Sunday, July 1, 2012
Drones at home raise fear of surveillance society
I believe we need a serious set of laws for use, licensing, operation and sales of drones. The laws are needed to help control the spread of the technology, and to protect our citizens against incursions on our privacy and freedoms.
Drones of all sorts are a wonderful technology for so many applications by companies, military, and police. They are inexpensive, and can be a "force multiplier" for small military or police forces to allow them to do so much more. However they are a two edged sword, that can end up hurting us. If these same drones were in the hands of terrorists, they could spread diseases, plan attacks against civilian targets, or actually deliver bombs to targets. If our government agencies use the devices to track citizens, it can help them catch "bad guys" but it could also be misused by them to blackmail, "fish" for reasons to arrest political opponents, or simply violate the privacy of citizens. How can we control them?
This Associated Press article was in North County Times this week: Drones at home raise fear of surveillance society: It states that thousands of drones will be patrolling the US skies by the end of the decade. I think this is very conservative -- I would say 10s or 100s of thousands of drones may be patrolling by that time, if there are no other controls. How will we know that the use of drones will be controlled. Are we to assume that we are always under surveillance? Will we be made aware of drones? Will we be permitted to have "anti-drone" technology, such as jammers, dazzlers, or drone warning devices? Or will they be made illegal? For example, when radar speed detection devices were given to the police, many states and cities tried to make radar detection devices illegal. I'm not sure that making them illegal is constitutional, but I don't think it was ever truly tested in the courts. Just like the "watchers" feel they have a right to watch, I believe citizens have the right to "watch back" and to be permitted to use technology to detect when they are being "watched."
There are techniques to detect if a camera is being pointed at you. Those devices are used in movie theaters to detect people who may be trying to video record a movie. Could citizens use those devices to detect drones overhead? Or would they be made illegal? If someone used one of those devices they could inhibit an important criminal surveillance activity. It could also damage the delicate imaging sensor on the drone. If a citizen tried to jam
Ryan Calb wrote an article in March 2012 Wired "Drones, Dogs and the Future of Privacy" which pointed out that the FAA is allowing more drones and requiring licenses, but is resisting attempts to release the names and organizations who are licensed to use Drones in the US. The Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Electronic Privacy Information Center have tried to sue the FAA to get the list of users under the freedom of information act. However they have been unsuccessful so far. So the Government already is trying to "hide" the use of drones, and are restricting the use by civilians. I suspect that this trend will continue, don't you? Of course the government doesn't want the "bad guys" to know that they are under surveillance, that could cancel out a lot of the benefits from using them. However it could also protect the rest of the citizens from mis-uses of the technology.
This article in the LA Timse today Drone makers urge U.S. to let them sell more overseas points out the difficulty of containing the technology. US manufacturers have restrictions on sale, but China and Israel are selling them to anyone. So if some day Israel is attacked by drones, I don't think they will be able to complain, since they are undercutting our restrictions on sales of these weapon systems to other countries.
It appears that almost anyone can build their own pretty sophisticated airborne drone, let alone water or land vehicles. There was a recent excellent article in Wired Magazine ("How I Accidentally Kickstarted the Domestic Drone Boom" ), by the editor, Chris Anderson, who runs this web site: http://diydrones.com/ -- It is clearly a wonderful hobby to build and use these devices, and they are being used more and more for all sorts of purposes. The sophistication of the drones has grown along with the sophistication of hand held smart phones -- They have inertial navigation, gps, cameras, and all sorts of other wonderful features.
Drones of all sorts are a wonderful technology for so many applications by companies, military, and police. They are inexpensive, and can be a "force multiplier" for small military or police forces to allow them to do so much more. However they are a two edged sword, that can end up hurting us. If these same drones were in the hands of terrorists, they could spread diseases, plan attacks against civilian targets, or actually deliver bombs to targets. If our government agencies use the devices to track citizens, it can help them catch "bad guys" but it could also be misused by them to blackmail, "fish" for reasons to arrest political opponents, or simply violate the privacy of citizens. How can we control them?
This Associated Press article was in North County Times this week: Drones at home raise fear of surveillance society: It states that thousands of drones will be patrolling the US skies by the end of the decade. I think this is very conservative -- I would say 10s or 100s of thousands of drones may be patrolling by that time, if there are no other controls. How will we know that the use of drones will be controlled. Are we to assume that we are always under surveillance? Will we be made aware of drones? Will we be permitted to have "anti-drone" technology, such as jammers, dazzlers, or drone warning devices? Or will they be made illegal? For example, when radar speed detection devices were given to the police, many states and cities tried to make radar detection devices illegal. I'm not sure that making them illegal is constitutional, but I don't think it was ever truly tested in the courts. Just like the "watchers" feel they have a right to watch, I believe citizens have the right to "watch back" and to be permitted to use technology to detect when they are being "watched."
There are techniques to detect if a camera is being pointed at you. Those devices are used in movie theaters to detect people who may be trying to video record a movie. Could citizens use those devices to detect drones overhead? Or would they be made illegal? If someone used one of those devices they could inhibit an important criminal surveillance activity. It could also damage the delicate imaging sensor on the drone. If a citizen tried to jam
Ryan Calb wrote an article in March 2012 Wired "Drones, Dogs and the Future of Privacy" which pointed out that the FAA is allowing more drones and requiring licenses, but is resisting attempts to release the names and organizations who are licensed to use Drones in the US. The Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Electronic Privacy Information Center have tried to sue the FAA to get the list of users under the freedom of information act. However they have been unsuccessful so far. So the Government already is trying to "hide" the use of drones, and are restricting the use by civilians. I suspect that this trend will continue, don't you? Of course the government doesn't want the "bad guys" to know that they are under surveillance, that could cancel out a lot of the benefits from using them. However it could also protect the rest of the citizens from mis-uses of the technology.
This article in the LA Timse today Drone makers urge U.S. to let them sell more overseas points out the difficulty of containing the technology. US manufacturers have restrictions on sale, but China and Israel are selling them to anyone. So if some day Israel is attacked by drones, I don't think they will be able to complain, since they are undercutting our restrictions on sales of these weapon systems to other countries.
It appears that almost anyone can build their own pretty sophisticated airborne drone, let alone water or land vehicles. There was a recent excellent article in Wired Magazine ("How I Accidentally Kickstarted the Domestic Drone Boom" ), by the editor, Chris Anderson, who runs this web site: http://diydrones.com/ -- It is clearly a wonderful hobby to build and use these devices, and they are being used more and more for all sorts of purposes. The sophistication of the drones has grown along with the sophistication of hand held smart phones -- They have inertial navigation, gps, cameras, and all sorts of other wonderful features.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)