Form 1

Have you wondered what it might *really* look like to have national health care?

In the Commonwealth of Massachusetts to file your state taxes you file "Form 1", Resident Income Tax Return. In addition is this note:
IMPORTANT: Schedule HC, Health Care Information, MUST be filed with Form 1. Failure to do so will result in a delay in the processing of your return.

Schedule HC is how you declare to the Commonwealth that you are a law abiding, health care buying citizen. Just like with income derived illegally, you must declare it, and failure to do so and pay any associated penalties, well you could end up like Al Capone. It was ultimately tax evasion that did him in, maybe gangsterism is harder to prove.

On Schedule HC you must state that you have MCC, Minimum Creditable Coverage. If your income is less than 150% of the Federal Poverty Level, you are exempt. That level is around $16K for an individual, or $33K for a family of four. There is a religious exemption too; I suppose this is for Christian Scientists and those that believe, truly believe under penalty of perjury, in faith healing.

Any exemption must be granted by the Commonwealth Health Insurance Connector Authority (really!) If you don't have a viable exemption, then did your employer offer you affordable health care that met the minimum creditable coverage requirement? If not, then I suppose they will go after the Walmarts of the world.

If so, and you didn't get it, Go To the Health Care Penalty Worksheet to calculate your penalty amount. It is a sliding scale, so not to worry. If you make more than $54K you are assumed to be able to afford health insurance. The premiums you are expected to afford are scaled based on age, e.g., age 21 - $156/month, age 52 - $338/month, age 63 - $445/month.

Your penalty, if this should befall you, is also scaled - see Table 6. It can range from $418 (21 year olds who try to scam the system) to $696 for seniors.

Enforced through the state tax code. Ratchet this to a national tax system. I am ok with that, and do believe our destiny as a nation is to have a national health insurance plan. It is inevitable, it will make us and our companies globally competitive, it is morally right, and All Those Things. Those that would oppose this destiny are what - out for scaling back all of what government offers? Like an onion? What is left when you scale back the layers of the onion - more onion. So what have you gained? Get with the program already. But I know, they are only doing it for political gain. As so much of what is done these days - under false premises.

The last day the Senate was in session was Thursday 3/24. A small business bill was up for reauthorization. Lots of interesting amendments which have nothing to do with the small business handout, er, "incentive funding" bill. One of them, offered by Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, would cause the health care reform effort to stop-in-its-tracks, until all the U.S. vs. State lawsuits are settled. Again, playing this for political gain.

Health care reform, just say yes. If not now, tomorrow; if not tomorrow, then it will be in a future that is coming to you. Unless of course you have some rare disease that is a pre-existing condition, you can't get coverage, and you kick the bucket first. But its coming to a street you live on, just a matter of when.

Reflection and Reality

Water reflected on tree bark on the banks of Mill Creek. Memories of events gone by, reflected for their meaning.

Reflections are a different substance than the real thing.. Water is wet, reflected water is moving, lit by the sun, but only an image.

The talking heads are concerned whether we're "in a war" or not in Libya, and what our "strategic interest" is. Congress, unhappy they were not consulted. Sorry, if you were competent to make decisions, you would have made them.

Our President, blasted for a lack of leadership. Hey! You can't be all places at the same time.

It takes time to move mountains. An international coalition. That the U.S. is a part of. That is engaging in a coalition effort to protect the Libyan people. That *is* a new way forward in the world.

Is it a war? This is the first time I've felt glad we have cruise missles at the ready. I would love to take the non-interventionist pacifist view like one of my heroes Dennis Kucinich.

But in reality, we have the military strength. We know there is a crazy dictator, Qaddafi, murdering his own population.

If we stand by and do nothing we are complicit. A call to action: yes. Is it war: yes.

Its not a reflection, its the real deal.

Inform, Inspire, Engage

Is this the evolution of twitter, now celebrating its 5th year of operation? Or is it how we got into Operation Odyssey Dawn in Libya?

Or could it be both. Lets see..

twitter.
Phase 1 - using it to send links to other stories, or just broadcasting the state of something, like the sky above you when its hailing (inform)
Phase 2 - using it to motivate others, and convey the inspiration that keeps you going at 4am, like the Mayor of Newark sending snippets of Bruce Springsteen songs (inspire)
Phase 3 - using it to create revolution, communicating with other activists to stage rallies and organize overthrows of a corrupt government, as in Egypt (engage)

Libya.
Phase 1 - let Qaddafi and his "troops" know the NATO alliance is deadly serious and is not going to take him oppressing his population (inform, courtesy 124 Tomahawk cruise missles)
Phase 2 - keep the European nations committed to the fight, encourage them to take the lead since we are already broke (inspire, time for leadership guys)
Phase 3 - mano a mano, it will eventually come down to it, to take Qaddafi o-u-t (engage, as in military engagement)

Inform, Inspire, Engage

Storage

How is it we have 112 cruise missles at the ready? And Arab nations don't?

Stored energy.
Like all those barbells and weights at the gym. Like endless rows of storage facilities for rent. Like stored carbon in the old trees at the end of the road. Next to a wetland so not going to be developed.

If it helps us take out someone like Qaddafi who lies to hold onto power, and murders his own country's citizens, can we honestly say 35% of the federal budget is too much for the military?

Certainly every penny should be accounted for. That's why the U.S. military needs the world's best accountants!

And yet, this is "phase 1". Well - how many phases are there going to be?! Libya has nothing when it comes to participating in the world economy. Oh, they have oil! If Qaddafi doesn't torch the oil wells on his way down..

While it needs to happen, we need to take action, a part of me wonders where it will end.

Cruise missles are only the beginning.

"The war machine springs to life" -- Nena, '99 Red Balloons'

A Rational Universe

Everyone wants this.

What stands in the way, three things:

* Bureaucracy
* Political gamesmanship
* Change

Three people I talked with today, each frustrated by one of these.

Change is hopeful.
Bureaucracy can be overcome.
Political gamesmanship. I'm lost on that one, unless you decide you just don't care.

But there are those who speak with a steady true voice: take Senator Sherrod Brown, today on the Senate floor. Advocating an unbundling of free trade agreements from extending Trade Act benefits for dislocated workers.

Is he really from the same state as Representative Boehner, Republican Speaker of the House? It would seem Ohio has the best and the worse, or, the most liberal and most conservative. Maybe that's like Oregon.

If he continues to speak with a true and honest voice, it will inspire hope. Maybe it can overcome bureaucracy. Maybe it can even overcome political gamesmanship by cutting through it all.

Living Week by Week

I was going to write about my outrage at Congressional committees using their new power to politicize absolutely everything. I swear I saw the links at the top of the House Committee on Judiciary had the usual headings 'Home', 'About Us', 'Legislation', 'Publications', and also 'The Failed Stimulus'.

But now I cannot find it. Maybe it was hacked. Maybe there are right-wing hackers out there as well as any other kind.

Well what about the next continuing resolution, and its 3-week timeframe (funding the federal government after 3/18, when the current 2-week one expires, and all the way out to 4/8). Is that progress? If they gain a new week each time, we can go to 4 weeks next time, then 5, and only 16 more iterations later we will have gotten through the entire fiscal year (to 9/30).

Actually only 5 more iterations will be needed, please don't try this math at home, it is only for policy professionals. Your blog warranty will expire if you try this, so be forewarned.

Maybe this is the way a revenue-starved government behaves. I didn't understand that before, but people who live day to day, without a steady job, really can't plan ahead. One of my managers used to work at DHS, social service agency. There was a job training program that allowed recipients to save for their education. Most of the 'saved' money in their accounts went unused. They just didn't get the concept.

So, since our federal government is broke, how shall we deal with this? Shall we all offer to help, 1000 points of light style, to offer to fix the potholes in our own neighborhood? Maybe hold a bakesale to build a bomber (just where *is* my t-shirt collection anyhow!). Have town hall meetings, New England style, to decide whether to invest in a new fire engine, or hand out welfare checks?

Is this a chance for community engagement? Or just living day to day. While the bureaucrats in Washington come up with master policy plans, as long as they can slice and dice them to fund them several weeks at a time.

Sweet Home Alabama

Jobs are outsourced, that is a fact. Manufacturing jobs sure, but also service jobs.

Like people who read x-rays, like call center customer service operators, like the people that keep your IT servers humming.

A federal program called "Trade Adjustment Assistance", or simply "Trade Act", follows in the footsteps of Nafta. Only it provides real benefits to people who have been dislocated from their life's work (call them dislocated workers) due to their job going offshore.

Yes this was my fate, once upon a time (2001), the widget manufacturing plant where I worked yanked all our production from a nice Oregon site to someplace in China. All about price. I did qualify for Trade Act benefits, which enabled me to go back and "re-train" myself for another profession. Which I did, and here I am, state employee.

The Stimulus Act passed by President Obama in February 2009, the $787 million infusion of money into the U.S. economy touched the Trade Act. Expanded it so service workers whose jobs were offshored were eligible for retraining benefits.

This is real and people need this, many professions are going by the wayside. Hard to know what a sustainable profession is these days. I thought government work was safe and secure but public employees are coming under attack, so I fear there will be less of us one day.

So the expanded Trade Act went through February 12, and then expired - poof! The constant iterations of continuing resolutions to fund the federal government has pulled energy away from trying to expand this program again, so its back to its old regulations. Meaning service workers are not eligible anymore.

Not that the trasition of these jobs to foreign locales has stopped - it hasn't. Your x-rays may be read overnight by a tech in Pakistan. The call center operator helping you diagnose issues on your laptop is probably in India someplace (they are very polite).

And why hasn't this legislation been expanded?? It is tied to a long list of "Generalized System of Preference", hey I just heard Hillary talk about this today! It is a long list of products and what kind of import tariffs we have on them. Did you think we had free trade - think again.

Each and every chemical, raw manufactured good, pharmaceutical input, etc. may have an import tariff (tax) on it. Taxing these things makes U.S. manufactured goods more expensive. I think if I traced every item on the list I would know a lot about the state of U.S. production.

To garner enough votes, 2 Democratic Senators tried to add a sweetener to get a Republican vote from Sen Sessions of Alabama. Apparently in his state a U.S. manufacturer of sleeping bags, Exxel, could not make sleeping bags cheap enough due to foreign imports of sleeping bags. So to get his vote, they carved out an exemption to the import-free sleeping bags from Bangladesh (and impose a 9% import tariff). If Sen Sessions gets his way, the entire list will have enough votes to pass. The 'Omnibus Trade Act'.

So it all comes down to one person, one vote. But not in the typical democratic sense.

p.s. Which version of Home Sweet Alabama do you prefer: Lynyrd Skynard, or Kid Rock?

Sister City Lending Library

How does someone who has lived in a repressive society their whole life carve a new society?

I was thinking of a Sister City Lending Library.
Not like sister cities that seem to be bureucracies for precious few, and boondoggle trips for elected officials. But a people:people type exchange.

What foundational books would be helpful to people in Egypt or some other Arab country that has to create an market-based economy, a free democratic society, a civil society, and a place in world? I am interested in ideas, maybe your 5 top books.

Here are some I thought of:

* Democracy in America - deToqueville. A Frenchman's view, back in the early 1800's, of civil society in America. Associations, groups, non-profits, all these organizations Americans join to make a difference in their world.

* Three Cups of Tea - Greg Mortensen & David Oliver Relin. How one man took as his mission in life to build schools in Pakistan for girls. The thought being, girls become mothers and if you teach them to read and write, they will pass it on to their children. Over generations society becomes more literate and changes. The three cups of tea part is that you can't impose your western ways (let's build a bridge today!) on other cultures, till you have first shared 3 cups of tea with them and gotten to know them, and they you.

* One-hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Well, its a classic. Generations of one family in Columbia, who worked on a banana plantation. Politics, corporate power, magic realism style.

* Shalimar the Clown - Salmon Rushdie. Maybe because another of his book's was banned (Satanic Verses), this one wasn't. The tale of a tightrope walker from Kashmir, living in LA, who goes back to Kashmir. Amazing detail on the political circumstances and history of Kashmir who goes back there. Truly amazing, and he has got to be one of the world's best authors.

* Second Treatise of Government - John Locke. A foundational work about what civil society is about, the natural rights to freedom of all people. Written in 1690 and influential in the founding of American Democratic principles. Thank you to "Philosophy Talk" on OPB for putting this in my head recently.

* The Body Snatchers - Jack Finney (or, the movie version, "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" - original from 1956, but other versions too). Maybe the I-Ching of all movies, yet how is it foundational? Like the Stepford Wives, the message is that you cannot conform for the benefit of a smooth and polite society. Democracy is messy, everyone has different ideas, there are power struggles, the constant pull and tug of humanity. This is ok - you do not want to be snatched by a seed pod in the middle of the night so that society can be compliant.

* Small is Beautiful - Economics as if People Mattered - E.F. Schumacher. A classic from the 1970s. Maybe the key to a new economy is to encourage small enterprise.

* Banker to the Poor - Muhammad Yunus. Have not read this, but he pioneered the idea of microfinance (small loans to individuals to start small enterprises, maybe even as little as $50 to get started). He won a Nobel Prize for his economic ideas.

Say No to Class Warfare, Part 1

"Who gets paid more, private sector workers, public sector workers - ?"

Can you really compare a high tech engineer, producing a product, with a public sector worker administering the wage and hour laws of the state??

Lets compare some general working conditions:

* Are they fairly compensated?
Both sides - yes mostly. Averages can be skewed by those Wall Street pre-Bernie Madoff types. But an average engineer may make $80K. An average public sector worker may make $55K. But lets not stop there.

* Do they both feel the pain when times are lean?
Both sides - yes mostly. Widget factories have layoffs. Ask the engineers at Honeywell who was notorious for laying people off when no contracts were forthcoming, or hiring like mad when they got government contracts.

It is tough on older workers now, who may only have the skills related to a sloooowwwing industry. But I hear C programming is still alive and well. Still older tech workers do face age and wage discrimination.

Public sector workers have to endure years with no pay increase. Nice if your expenses don't go up, but most people have rent or house payments, food, fuel. And of course smart phone cell bills, and those expensive kiddos. Expenses go up. Layoff happen, and I've seen really good people go from temp government job to temp government job without getting a fair chance at a stable living.

* Is it fair across the board for both sectors - ?
Ha. If this were a fair universe, well, no one would go hungry. No one would be escaping with the clothes on their back from the only country they had ever known, to escape being shot in their hospital bed (as is happening in Libya, according to some Red Cross reports).

I've seen people in private firms be way underpaid (1/2 of others' salaries) - all you need to do, Nghia, is negotiate for a higher salary. Yes, that worked. Walter was more bold - give me a 25% salary or I walk, he demanded (and got it too).

Harder to negotiate a public sector salary. We get nice little perks like working at home on occasion (nice, but then once you get into that, as we have discovered, we work more hours..)

And there are both sweatshop firms where people are underpaid, not to mention the really egregious cases of trafficked labor and unsafe working conditions, if only OSHA knew. There are public agencies where people are yelled at daily, so I've heard. So lack of respect and abuse can exist on either side.

* How to pay people - ?
In the private sector, you can sell your widget for what the market will bear. Price against your competition, and you know its global competition. If you can't compete, you can lay people off and develop that lean mean workforce. Innovate and be creative. Create value with your marketing campaign. Industrial design. Or, just ship production to Indonesia or someplace cheap. And if the quality is there, ok. Because you can't compete on price alone. And someday if its widgets your making, the cost of fuel is a factor. Not so with xrays read in Bangladesh or call centers in the Phillipines.

What if we took this approach with public sector pay? What the market will bear. Hey - if you don't want to pay $17/month for trash service, then fine - take your own trash to dump. If you don't want repaired roads, then fine - get a new transmission every other year from the potholes.

Education always comes up - what should we pay teachers? How about what the market will bear? I used to be against charter schools, thinking they would gut public schools that we know and love. But, why not competition.

Why not pay for performance?!
Here is Oregon's savior, and I don't mean the new Gov. Based on a 30 minute interview back about 6 years ago as a lowly intern, I am placing my faith in Mr. Michael Jordan, the new Chief Operating Officer of the State of Oregon. (no relation to basketball players from Chicago).

I was writing my paper on pay for performance, and low and behold, this is what he had implemented on the "enterprise" side of Metro, the regional government. Hey - a government organization, paying people based on performance. An idea that could stick... Michael Jordan are you listening?