Cheap gas – a misleading security?

I recently received an email that stated the following:

White House Wants to Keep Gas Prices High With the national average of gas prices hitting $3.65 a gallon, nearing $6 in some parts of the country, and poised to head even higher, America’s families are wondering when the bleeding at the pump will stop. But for Secretary of Energy Stephen Chu, those steep prices aren’t even a concern. In fact, he says his goal is not to get the price of gasoline to go down.

Chu delivered those stunning remarks in testimony before Congress yesterday. When Rep. Alan Nunnelee (R-Miss.) asked Chu whether it’s his “overall goal to get our price” of gasoline lower, Chu said, “No, the overall goal is to decrease our dependency on oil, to build and strengthen our economy.”

As shocking as his remarks are, they shouldn’t come as a surprise. Chu has a long record of advocating for higher gas prices. In 2008, he stated, “Somehow we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe.” (We ask: WHY? WHY should U.S. prices be level with Europe, unless they are pandering to oil companies to increase THEIR profits, and so the government brings in more tax money?!) Last March, he reiterated his point in an interview with Fox News’ Chris Wallace, noting that his focus is to ease the pain felt by his energy policies by forcing automakers to make more fuel-efficient automobiles. “What I’m doing since I became Secretary of Energy has been quite clear. What I have been doing is developing methods to take the pain out of high gas prices.”

The premise of this email is based on a failure to understand economics, and short sighted analysis that only looks at the sound bites on the surface of a complex issue. It is so short-sighted that it is completely wrong. Oil is already subsidized far more than any alternative… here is how it works.

Oil, is like junk food. Cheap, does its job, but not healthy. You could eat all your meals at McDonalds, and live on $10/day. Your blood pressure might go up, your energy down, and perhaps you would get a disease that would cost hundreds of thousands to treat. If you didn’t have health insurance, the American people would foot the bill for treatment – or let you die.

Much of the cost of junk food, like oil, are in the externalities. Factory farms use chemical farming that pollutes waterways that the collective WE need to clean up. The poor health of citizens resulting in loss of productivity in business, and higher medical costs, some of which ends up borne by US.  Right now, like big oil, corn, soy and other products are subsidized – so we are subsidizing and therefore lowering the cost of junk food – and oil.

If costs were allowed to follow the free market, and perhaps even taxed to reflect their actual cost including externalities (now we spread that cost around) then perhaps more healthful food would be the same price as junk food.

Apply that to oil (refined as gasoline). The refineries create air pollution that increase health costs and kills people. Fracking, now, all the vogue, may be causing earthquakes and poisoning ground water, again sickening and perhaps even killing people.  We, through the government, have spent trillions in the Middle east, over decades, keeping shipping channels open, supporting puppet regimes,   establishing military bases, and the sum of this (and other causes, I am sure) facilitated the radicalization of Muslims, mid-east wars and so on. We pay for all of these things in our taxes, and in the intangibles of fear and strife in our world that washes up on our shores. We also pay for subsidies to oil companies.

In exchange we get lower oil prices than the rest of the world.

The number one export from the US right now is… refined oil. More oil is being pulled from the ground right now per year than  than in the Bush years. It is as much a mistake to think that the price of gas in the US is based on how much oil we happen to refine on and offshore of our country as it is to think that our wages have nothing to do with economics in China. We do not own the oil and gas that that fracking project might be pulling up from the backyard of the property next to yours. But we live with the consequences.

It is speculation by billionaire hedge funds and the like and world markets that, in the end, control the price of oil.

To get back to the point, if gas prices were to rise to the level they should to cover their actual costs, we would directly see the cost of using petroleum products every time we filled up our tanks.  We would be chomping at the bit, as we should be, for the expansion of alternative energy sources to replace the overpriced oil that we currently underpay for.

Why nuns whack kids with rulers: The Science

Below is a just released abstract that essentially finds that if you:

1. Memorize something.
2. Wait 6 days and try to recall it. (could probably be more or less days)
3. While you are recalling it , put your hand in ice water. (other mild pain stimulation might work as well, like a cloths-pin clamped on the body part of your choice.)
4. When you try to recall it on the following day, you should remember it better than the day before.

Perhaps, however, just adding a little pain when you are first learning it would work as well.

Why this might work:

Memories come out of storage when recalled, and need to be remembered again (reconsolidated, the technical term) or they will be lost. Stress enhances the chemical environment in the brain that fosters learning, so there is a better chance that what is encountered during pain will be learned, and learned immediately.
Makes sense too. If you meet someone new and she shakes your hand there is a lot less of a chance you will remember them the next week (or the next year for that matter) then if she slapped your face instead.

…robust memory performance was shown at testing when the CPS administration was concurrent with the retrieved-labile memory state. Results from the present study reveal that a naturalistic mild stressor can enhance reconsolidation, improving the long-term expression of this declarative memory.

Neuroscience. 2011 Apr 20. [Epub ahead of print] The enhancement of reconsolidation with a naturalistic mild stressor improves the expression of a declarative memory in humans. Coccoz V, Maldonado H, Delorenzi A. Source Laboratorio de Neurobiología de la Memoria, Departamento de Fisiología y Biología Molecular y Celular, FCEyN, Universidad de Buenos Aires, IFIBYNE-CONICET, Argentina. Abstract The reconsolidation hypothesis proposes that a previously consolidated memory recalled by a reminder enters an unstable state (memory labilization) during which it is transiently sensitive to disruption. Although this process has been shown in very diverse species and types of memories, including human declarative memory, elucidating the role of this process is still an open challenge. The hypothesis that reconsolidation allows the incorporation of new information has recently been demonstrated in humans. However, the findings show that, during the reconsolidation phase, memory retention can be increased by pharmacological modulation or real live events in animals have not been found in humans yet. In order to evaluate this, we used a paradigm of human declarative memory whose reminder structure allows us to differentiate between a retrieved labile memory state and a retrieved but non-labile state. Volunteers learned an association between five cue-syllables and their respective response-syllables. 6 days later, the paired-associate memory was reactivated by exposing the subjects to the reminder, and then they received a mild stressor, cold pressor stress (CPS). Poor memory performance was found at both the time of memory reactivation (day 6 after training) and at testing of all groups that were designed as controls (day 7). Conversely, robust memory performance was shown at testing when the CPS administration was concurrent with the retrieved-labile memory state. Results from the present study reveal that a naturalistic mild stressor can enhance reconsolidation, improving the long-term expression of this declarative memory. This finding might have significant implications for the comprehension of memory persistence and memory expression, and add new evidence in order to understand the adaptive meaning of the reconsolidation process. Copyright © 2011. Published by Elsevier Ltd.

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Supression information about danger of vaccines

Recently, the Lancet pulled a decade plus old paper that showed a connection between vaccination and autism by Dr. Andrew Wakefield, claiming inaccuracy, quite falsely, it appears. In addition to his hotly contested MMR study, published in the journal Lancet in 1998, he has published about 130-140 peer-reviewed papers looking at the mechanism and cause of inflammatory bowel disease, and has extensively investigated the brain-bowel connection in the context of children with developmental disorders such as autism.

This interview with Dr. Andrew Wakefield is worth listening to. If you have ever had reason to doubt the depth of dishonesty in the interlocking medical/pharmaceutical/government establishment, and the depths that they will sink to, blatantly disregarding not only science, but also health and even life, this interview will disabuse you of any notion of impartiality, regarding vaccination at least.

It is a bit long – 90 minutes, but was quite interesting to me at least, it was the clearest example of something that is generally a matter of rumor or second-hand reporting.

Forward this to anyone you know who has children, wants children, or who ever was a child.
you can get it here: http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2010/04/10/wakefield-interview.aspx

A faith healer healed my…. car?

A while back my car got sick.
I took it to a faith healer.
It recovered in 10 minutes.
After a trip to the mountains, my car seemed to have lost its pep, so I brought it to Bill, a neighborhood mechanic. Bill replaced the spark plugs, the fuel filter and oxygen sensor and did several other things, all to no avail. He shrugs his shoulders and says to me that it must have always been like this and hands me the bill for all the work.
So I go to another mechanic, Frank. I tell him what the problem is. He opens the hood, and disconnects the battery cable, and walks away. In 10 minutes Frank comes back, reattaches the cable, and says “try it now”. I get in, drive around the block, and it runs perfectly.  A miracle has occurred! (Or is that just what we call it when we don’t understand how something good happened.)
When I went to the mountains, Frank explained, the computer adapted the fuel/air mix for the thinner air at high altitude, but it failed to reset when I came back to a lower altitude. Disconnecting the battery rebooted the computer, and the correct function which was never lost, simply resumed.
The problem therefore, was informational.  The ‘brain’ of the car learned new settings for the higher altitude, but failed to unlearn them when they were not needed.  The engine was functioning correctly, just for the wrong situation.
Why is it an example of faith healing? Frank, knowing the basic function of the car, knew that when the maladaptive program was eliminated, the underlying correct function would re-emerge.  He knew nothing needed to be added or replaced anything in the car to restore correct function. He simply had faith that the true nature (factory-installed settings) of the car would reassert themselves.
Faith is not blind, nor is it ignorant. It is based on knowledge. If you throw a ball in the air, you have ultimate faith it will come down – but you first must throw it in the air.
As an analogy to the body, this story underlines a law of life and healing that is central to NeurOntogenics: the intelligence that created the body is the real source of all healing.  This intelligence organizes and integrates the billions of things that must go right each moment to perpetuate life – greater by an order of millions than the number of things that go wrong even in the most serious illness.

New ideas for healthcare

New healthcare idea brings best of all worlds
The healthcare plan with a little for everyone.
This plan separates out and treats differently, categories that we know, but tend to be confused. It resembles Health Savings Accounts (HSA) that we are familiar with. This writeup just describes one possible way of undertaking the plan. The details – financial limits, exclusions, who gets what and who pays what – may vary, but the principles, I believe, are solid. Any specific numbers are only a starting place. I leave it to actuaries and economists to come up with firm numbers that work.
,  separates out disease care and long term care

• Healthcare, in this definition is everything up to the point you have a disease that threatens life or permanent disability. It includes everything from the flu to back pain, broken legs to psychotherapy, diabetes care to preventive care, routine checkups to care of routine injuries, and is the purview of medical doctors, chiropractors, psychotherapists, acupuncturists , herbalists, nutritionists, dietitians, public health educators, massage therapists, physical therapists… sorry if I left anyone out. Healthcare is performed outside of the hospital – outpatient care.
• Disease care is the care needed when permanent disability or death is outcome of lack of treatment. Disease care will more often require hospitalization, expensive drugs, home nursing, and expensive testing. It is generally the purview of medical doctors, or others trained in critical care.
• Long-term care is just what it sounds like.

How medical bills are paid

Healthcare costs
- The Personal Care and Retirement Security Fund –Pcares Fund -When most people speak of wanting to choose their doctor, and keeping bureaucrats out of healthcare, it is this level of care that they are speaking of. As in HSA plans, individuals fund their own healthcare, up to, say, $5,000 (inflation adjusted each year) by pre-funding an account for that amount. This account belongs to the individual, and unused funds can accrue value year to year. (I bow to economists here as to how it is to be safely invested or grow, who holds it, etc.) It can only be used for healthcare.

• - At age 55 remaining funds can be drawn out at 3% per year, or possibly in larger lump sums, but $5,000 per year needs to be assured to be available through age 85. It can be filled by federal funds at the beginning of the year, and paid back by individuals on a monthly basis.
• - Those who can’t afford the monthly amount pay what they can, based on income formulas. They still get to keep 50 to 100%, to carry over, based on the amount they are able to contribute, of the amount for future healthcare use or retirement.
• - People use their Pcares Fund to pay for whatever routine care they need. They choose their own doctor, types of therapies, herbs and nutritional supplements, pharmaceuticals.
• - Those that wish to preserve their retirement funds can purchase additional insurance, or use other funds to pay for healthcare.

- Benefits of Pcares

• Self responsibility for health is rewarded, as people see their retirement funds building up.
• Price competition among providers is encouraged
• People get true, day to day freedom of choice regarding their healthcare.
• There is no overhead – Medicare, for instance, presently has about 7% overhead, and insurance companies over 30%.
• Indiscriminate use of healthcare is discouraged.

Other aspects of the Healthcare portion

• Community run clinics could save more money for those who wanted to use them
• People may, if they elect to do so, use their Pcares money to purchase healthcare insurance – possibly like an HMO – to reduce costs
• Community testing facilities could reduce the cost of expensive tests.
• Federal or community health education could be offered for free, to deal with things addressable in groups, like support groups for obesity, smoking, addictions.

• A national subsidy for malpractice insurance premiums could bring down costs for care.

If the yearly bill goes over $5000, the Disease/longterm care plan kicks in.

Diseasecare insurance (D-ins) works like our present insurance, with a public option.

• - In this plan, insurance fulfils what insurance is supposed to cover – the risk of devastating financial catastrophe from illness.

• - Individuals would be mandated to purchase D-ins, though they could pay for public option, either at federal or community level.
• - Those that cannot afford the premium, would be subsidized into the public option.
• - Insurance companies that want to offer that insurance would need to abide by rules like disregarding preexisting conditions and allowing transfers from other insurance – no turndowns!
• - Community hospitals, and long term care facilities, possibly federally subsidized, could be made available.

There are plenty of holes in this model. I did not, for instance, address how to cover children.
The costs of covering the poor, putting together a public plan, and other things still remain to be seen. But it does bring some new ideas to the table.

The scary bills coming out of Washington

There is something seriously wrong with the food ‘safety’ bills that are coming up recently, and HR 2749 seems no different. This one is like the Patriot Act, where the terrorists are the farmers who will knowingly drop e-coli bombs on the population. There is no need to engage in overblown tactics to regulate farmers whose livelihood is dependent on NOT selling contaminated food in the first place.
According to the Health Freedom Alliance, a group I trust to keep watch on my freedom to get free access to food and nutrition that I want and need, It mandates farming practices, perhaps even to the extent of outlawing or making prohibitive organic farming practices in favor of “good farming practices”, a code phrase for mandated drugs, chemical fertilizers and genetically modified food sources.
HR 2749 would give FDA the power to order a quarantine of a geographic area, including “prohibiting or restricting the movement of food or of any vehicle being used or that has been used to transport or hold such food within the geographic area.” The phrase- “that has been used to transport or hold such food” – would mean all cars that have ever brought groceries home or any pickup someone has eaten take-out in, so this means ALL TRANSPORTATION can be shut down under this.
This seems a little too much power for an unelected FDA administrator to hold, particularly given the cozy relationship between the FDA and those corporate giants it is supposed to oversee.
If anything, we should seriously be questioning the use of pesticides, petroleum- based fertilizers, irradiation and genetic modification of our foods.

The myth that health care reform will break the bank

Today I received an email from my Senator, Michael Bennet, who was concerned that health care reform not “break the bank” Here is my reply.
Senator,
The question of ‘breaking the bank’, in my opinion, is a fabrication, the result of two straw men put up by Republicans and insurance companies through their Republican AND Democratic cronies.

Here are several reasons why I don’t buy the breaking the bank argument.

1. Straw man #1: We can probably insure EVERYONE for the 30-40% we save by dropping the overpriced insurance we presently have, and putting that money into a public option. We call it a government program, but what is the government in this case other than all of us getting together and saying to our neighbors, “I’ve got your back”? A single payer system can be thought of as shifting the cost. If everyone paid what they pay right now to a single payer, it would at least go a long way, if not all the way towards giving everyone good coverage.

2. Straw man #2: From the 1930′s to the 1970′s, in Republican and Democratic administrations, the marginal tax rate was 50-90%, and the corporate taxes were in the 30% range. During that time we had a high GNP, and no destructive bubbles, while accumulating a broad middle class with unparalleled opportunity and great national wealth. Now, the discredited Republicans shout “socialism” about simply reversing the Bush tax cuts, going back to 39%. The trickle-down/government is the enemy/regulation is bad – policies and economics of Reagan have been thoroughly discredited by now, yet the Democrats, for whom I worked hard and gave money in the last election, refuse to stand up for what I had thought were the ideals of the Democratic party. Bottom line – there is a huge untapped source of revenue waiting to be tapped.

3. The US has the most expensive healthcare in the world, per capita, while being at or near the bottom, when compared to European countries, in infant mortality, life expectancy, and satisfaction with healthcare, among other things.

4. Efficient universal care will save money in many ways, including improved prevention, fewer workdays lost, more efficient utilization of healthcare resources, bulk purchases of certain aspects of care (ie prescription drugs)

5. Universal healthcare will prevent bankruptcies, an estimated 62% of the 1.5 MILLION bankruptcies per year. I can’t compute the money this saves across the economy, but whatever it is will be more than a drop in the bucket, not to mention the suffering it will save.

6. Single payer health care will free businesses health insurance and workers compensation

In summary, I will suggest that a single payer will save money, not break the bank.

This time could be remembered as a new New Deal, a time that can set us up for another 50 years of growth, or it could be seen as the time when our representatives lacked the courage to do what was needed.

DEMOCRATS HAVE THE MAJORITY – USE IT WITHOUT SHAME!

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