A House Divided, A Loan Again, Naturally

It appears that the Americans have left Capitol Hill to groups incapable of working together towards a common goal. They call themselves “Democrats” and “Republicans,” but the labels are interesting predictors of how they will vote. Yes, the Democrats are divided, seemingly into two sub-parties: the Blue Dog fiscal conservatives and the traditional liberal factions. Republicans will predictably oppose most any major policy shift recommended by the President, because, it seems, they believe if they support such a program and it works, Obama and the Democrats will get the credit, and frankly they have the Democrats on the run and pinned against the wall.

“One day after the president upbraided Congress in his State of the Union address for excessive partisanship, Senate Republicans voted en masse against a plan to require that new spending not add to the deficit (it passed anyway as all 60 members of the Democratic caucus hung together). And some Republicans peremptorily dismissed Mr. Obama’s main job-creating proposal, expressing no interest in using $30 billion in bank bailout money for business tax credits [for new hires].” New York Times, January 29^th.

If corporate profits are at stake, unless conservative voters clearly say otherwise, Republicans seem to be uniformly in favor of letting companies act within a “market economy” that clearly failed the nation in the most horrific way in this recession. If there is a social program that can create a spending allocation that looks like it might solve a problem or please a union constituency, liberal Democrats will fall all over each other to find the votes. Blue Dogs appear to be wandering about with no clear direction at all. What’s missing here? Americans.

Yes, Mr. President, the Union is in a state. You want to prioritize economic, national security issues and education… and lower the expectations on healthcare. Your Democrats are deeply divided, and the Republicans want lower deficits, lower taxes and vastly fewer programs. Good luck. If you are on Wall Street, you can spend on political campaigns without restriction, the numbers are jolly and the recession is so over… we do not need those job stimulants you seek. Look at the way economists are looking at the numbers: “The U.S. economy grew at 5.7 percent annual rate in the fourth quarter, the highest rate of gross domestic product growth since 2003 and up from 2.2 percent in third quarter. The rise, which beats expectations, was driven by business inventories.” Washington Post, January 29^th. Forget about the unemployed and those who have lost or are losing their homes or the life savings that once was tied up in those homes.

Mr. President, you talked about crossing party lines to build new policies that will benefit the average Americans. But about half your legislators have already discovered that if they oppose such efforts, they become heroes to their constituents, so your efforts have fallen on deaf ears. It’s back to what’s best for “getting me reelected” even if that may be bad for America. Sorry, Democrats, you will have to live with the “horse-trade” that became the poster for all that’s wrong in Congress: Nebraska Democrat, Ben Nelson’s willingness to vote in favor of the Senate healthcare bill if his state could be treated differently from every other state in the union and avoid paying its fair share of Medicaid payment.

And an issue that has absolutely no business being partisan has become a political football… again. Education – with infrastructure – the only long-term investment that could even begin to hope to pay down the massive deficits we are incurring. And without dramatically improving our educational standards at every level, this country has nothing but a severe, dark downward spiral as its future. We will not be able to compete anymore. Young adults are being crushed by high tuition rates generating loans that they cannot possibly service. At every level, educational programs, both at public and private universities/colleges as well as primary and secondary schools, are being hacked to death, notwithstanding federal pledge of financial assistance.

As federal legislation aimed at making student loan repayments manageable stalls in the Senate, it seems pretty clear that Congress has given up on genuine long term goals that can only benefit the nation as a whole. The controversy is over whether the government should simply take over the student loans they have guaranteed, eliminating the banking sector as a middleman. Fiscal conservatives don’t want to take banks out of this profitable and low risk sector. They also say that making loans easier to pay back (by capping monthly repayment obligations to students) will take pressures off of universities and colleges to be cost-efficient… as if colleges and universities are spending in profligate ways in this current economic crisis. $80 billion is at stake, and eliminating a middleman definitely generates savings to the overall lending process.

And without infrastructure and education, exactly how do we generate enough future income to rise again? Think this is just hogwash? Look at the numbers. The Feb. 1^st New York Times analyzed the $3.8 trillion budget recommended by the administration… showing a deficit of 11% of the nation’s gross domestic product, a staggering number, but this is even worse: “By President Obama’s own optimistic projections, American deficits will not return to what are widely considered sustainable levels over the next 10 years. In fact, in 2019 and 2020 — years after Mr. Obama has left the political scene, even if he serves two terms — they start rising again sharply, to more than 5 percent of gross domestic product. His budget draws a picture of a nation that like many American homeowners simply cannot get above water.

“For Mr. Obama and his successors, the effect of those projections is clear: Unless miraculous growth, or miraculous political compromises, creates some unforeseen change over the next decade, there is virtually no room for new domestic initiatives for Mr. Obama or his successors. Beyond that lies the possibility that the United States could begin to suffer the same disease that has afflicted Japan over the past decade. As debt grew more rapidly than income, that country’s influence around the world eroded.” We need Republicans and Democrats to stop pushing their own selfish, ideologue-laden agendas without regard to what’s best for America; we’ve got some real problems that require a united and focused leadership.

In the end, if this bickering does not stop, how do we convince our Congressmen and women that they way they are acting seems to be hell-bent on destroying a democratic process necessary for the survival of this nation? This factionalism is one of the most significant hallmarks of a civilization in decline… a beginning of the end… accelerated by a deficit caused by an unregulated economy run wild… a bursting bubble that could take America with it. Frankly, I’m not ready to throw in that towel… it really cannot be “every man for himself” at the expense of the country. I think we need to take a very careful look at what it really means to be a patriotic American.

I’m Peter Dekom, and I love this country!

Taip-ei Personality

Until the 19^th century, China did not recognize the concept of “ambassadors” from other nations. To do so would have been an acknowledgement that other nations had equal nation-state status, and that simply wasn’t in the Chinese view of the world. Representatives from other countries were viewed as “tribute ambassadors,” able to represent their countries at a level where they were paying homage to the “Middle Kingdom” – China really had no equivalent of “China”… they were simply the center of everything. In the 15^th century, the famous Ming Emperor Zhu Di, whose eunuch Admiral Zheng He roamed the world in massive fleets with water-tight compartments extracting tribute from every port of call, was asked why he never sent forces to the Middle East and points east (Europe), was reputed to have said, “They are barbarians; they have nothing to offer.” It was modern Western weapons, particularly cannon-laden ships, that tipped the balance toward recognition of nations that could possibly be China’s equal.

In the 17^th century, England discovered the joys of Chinese tea, long before that crop was transferred to the fields of India. By 1654, it was the most popular drink in Britain. The addiction to tea drinking, amazingly, tipped the balance of payments in silver and gold so heavily in favor of China – the Chinese found nothing manufactured in England worthy of massive trade – the British threatened military action unless the Chinese created a two-way trading street. Claiming medicinal benefits, the British slowly addicted as many Chinese as they could to opium… even as the Chinese government protested that creating addicts was contrary to her laws. In the middle of the 19^th century, superior Western firepower (Britain and her allies, including the U.S. until her ships were withdrawn to fight the Civil War) forced ports to open, concessions in Shanghai, Macao and Hong Kong. China was only nominally the “Middle Kingdom.” – the Opium Wars have always been a sore spot with the Chinese. Until the economic resurgence that began in the 1980s and continued into the power that is modern China, China slipped into an unnatural role as a second rate power, a nation dwarfed by Western power and technology.

Why is any of this remotely relevant to the modern world? Because China has languished as a second-rate power for hundreds of years, but she never ever let go of the notion of being the center of the earth. Chinese suffered a profound inferiority complex, particularly as Mao’s communist mandate still made the Chinese quality of life pale in comparison to the West. His solution? Seal off contact with the rest of the world and focus on nuclear weapons to make the earth shudder at China’s power.

In 1949, conservative Chang Kai-Shek led a breakaway faction to the island of Formosa to form the Republic of China, just as Mao Zhedong established the Peoples Republic of China, claiming that the new island nation on Formosa (Taiwan) was nothing more than are rebel province that belonged to the PRC. Chang Kai-Shek, known for heavy-handed corruption for those who really knew, managed successfully to court the United States through his charming wife and powerful, American-connected in-laws. The friction between the United States and China continued over the military protection umbrella that the U.S. has consistently given to the Taipei government (Taipei is the capital city of the Republic of China) into the present day. China (PRC) preached a formal absorption of the rebel Republic as the only possible outcome (the so-called “One China” policy). The U.S. has constantly opposed this notion as long as Taipei wanted to remain separate. Machinations over seating in the United Nations gave the PRC “face” against Taipei, but the sore spot has never healed. This battle continues despite the extreme business connectivity between Taipei and Beijing, inexorably linking their economies, which seems to operate without reference to the higher-level political disputes.

Of late, tensions between the U.S. and China have escalated. We are challenging their limitation on the import of film and television programming in the World Trade Organization. We have been pressing China to join the pact of nations forcing Iran to disarm in connection with potential nuclear weapons, but China actively buys a huge slice of Iran’s oil output. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced financial support for groups fighting China’s internal censorship rules, particularly regarding Internet access.

The January 31^st AmericanChronicle.com focuses on some of the most difficult aspects of our trade disputes with the PRC: “The recent flare-up with Google, in which the search giant threatened to leave China over censorship, may be the tip of the iceberg… More challenging, say software companies and makers of clean-energy products, is a new policy encouraging ‘indigenous innovation.’ That policy requires the intellectual property behind a host of technology products sold in China to be developed and owned by Chinese companies…‘The U.S. should fully expect to be battling Chinese policy to get into these sectors,’ said U.S. Rep. Rick Larsen, D-Lake Stevens, co-chairman of the bipartisan U.S.-China Working Group, which works to educate Congress about relations with China. Beijing's new measure takes the growing ‘tit-for-tat’ trade disputes over steel and poultry to a new level… ‘When it comes to protectionism, we're minor-league players when you look at what China is doing,’ Larsen said.”

China has also lambasted America’s profligate deficit spending and the attempt to devalue the dollar (and hence make Chinese goods more expensive in the U.S.) against the Chinese currency. And China has trillions of dollars in currency reserve as she bought deficit debt to stabilize the U.S. currency… leaving her has our largest creditor nation. And now China is reacting to American support of Taiwan with a roar.

We have always supplied weapons to the Taipei government; China has always protested when we do. And even though China had serious advanced notice of the latest deal, the reaction to a recent arms trade to Taipei was clearly one of the most negative and strident in recent history: “Calling in U.S. Ambassador Jon Huntsman on Saturday, Chinese Vice Foreign Minister He Yafei said the United States would be responsible for ‘serious repercussions’ if it did not reverse the decision to sell Taiwan $6.4 billion worth of helicopters, Patriot Advanced Capability-3 missiles, minesweepers and communications gear. The reaction came even though China has known for months about the planned deal, U.S. officials said.” January 31^st Washington Post.

Chinese’s Olympic ceremonies were a loud statement to themselves and the world that the old Chinese mega-superpower was back. Anyone witnessing this magnificent presentation had to be impressed. This new strident tone appears to be a clear indication that China feels superior enough to the rest of the world – she was not remotely impacted by the overleveraging that decimated Western economies in the big recession – to stand up and make an old point in a new and powerful way… a sign that China expects that her economic and military power are enough the challenge U.S. supremacy on a world stage. The Post: “Analysts say a combination of hubris and insecurity appears to be driving China's mood. On one hand, Beijing thinks that the relative ease with which it skated over the global financial crisis underscores the superiority of its system and that China is not only rising but has arrived on the global stage -- much faster than anyone could have predicted. On the other, recent uprisings in the western regions of Tibet and Xinjiang have fed Chinese leaders' insecurity about their one-party state. As such, any perceived threat to their power is met with a backlash.”

While I believe that some of this balance is in this powerful reaction and that China will back off the rhetoric soon, I also believe that we, as Americans, need to pay close attention to China’s own renewed perception of herself as the true “Middle Kingdom” once again and realize that life is never going to be the same. China actually can push hard, and there is little that we are able to do about it, given our weak economy, heavy deficit and total internal fractionalization between Republican and Democrats. It’s time to stop fighting among ourselves, a habit that is weakening our power throughout the world. It’s time to get on the same page and become Americans again.

I’m Peter Dekom, and sometimes it’s worth looking at the lessons of history.

This Recession is Hard to Swallow

Meat isn’t the only thing that’s tough in the restaurant business, an industry that reflects societal confidence – we can afford to splurge a little bit, because we are relatively certain about tomorrow. When restaurants suffer, it’s more than a business sector that is experiencing a downturn or a small local entrepreneur losing a livelihood; it’s a statement to ourselves that reflects a loss of hope. Yeah, folks can say “recovery” all day long and point to the recent “growth” statistics, but reality for most Americans is very different.

When our futures look bleak, and cutbacks are the rule; perhaps we can still indulge the gentle pleasure of an inexpensive treat, a pint of Häagen Dazs, but we look for patterns where costs drop fast… luxury clothing, a distant vacation or a once routine trip to a nice, not even super-expensive, eatery. A cold beer can ease the pain and not cost an arm or a leg, and a chomp on a candy bar may be a poor substitute for the neighborhood cheesecake special, but it is a substitute. For the struggling small business-owners, bereft of credit and light on customers, it is a slow agonizing death of a thousand cuts. A waiter’s tips drop by a third, and his or her expenditure trickle into belt-tightening in the swath of other small businesses than he or she can no longer afford.

By my own culinary estimates, Los Angeles is one of the best restaurant cities on earth. Deep in ethnic diversity (we are the second largest Korean city on earth!), we have thousands of inexpensive but wonderful places to eat. From the $7 meal-in-a-bowl of Vietnamese Phở (pronounced “fuh”) to $12 all-you-can-eat dim sum extravaganzas in one of three Chinatowns or crispy tacos or melt-in-your mouth burritos from East LA, we’re lucky to have such choice. The upscale restaurants, movie-star laden bistros and chi chi “hot spots,” well… the whole sector isn’t doing so well. The story travels across American, from Seattle to Chicago, from Cleveland to Atlanta, from Boston to New York. It’s easier to get a reservation at all but the most exclusive restaurants, but restaurant owners and their employees are not having a good time.

‘Twas the season to be going to office parties, bashes at the best, parties at the posh and dining at the decadent… except not this past Christmas. The Los Angeles Times and consumer-tracking company, NPD Group, took a closer look at the restaurant scene, all reflected in an article in the November 23^rd edition of the Times. Local restaurants are offered loyalty discounts, special packages, overall discounts and major price reductions for larger groups. Still, business is really down, all across the country. “‘It is not a pretty picture,’ said Bonnie Riggs, a restaurant industry analyst with NPD in Chicago. ‘Consumers have pulled back so much.’ In 33 years of tracking restaurant traffic, NPD ‘has never seen this type of a weakness for this long of a period,’ Riggs said. ‘The industry really has its work cut out for it.’” The number of people going to restaurants has dropped for four consecutive quarters.

The entire spectrum of genuine, sit-down restaurants is hurting: “It isn't only mid-priced family restaurants that people are avoiding. Upscale chains such as McCormick & Schmick's, the seafood house, and Morton's, the steak purveyor, saw same-store sales, or sales at restaurants open at least a year, fall 18.8% and 16.8%, respectively, in the third quarter compared with a year earlier, according to Bellwether Food Group, a food industry consulting firm… Bellwether doesn't project an industry rebound to pre- recession levels until 2012. The recession has taught consumers to eat out less often and to order less -- skipping alcoholic beverages, appetizers and desserts -- when they do, Bellwether said…”

“Christmas-season spending at bars and restaurants this year [was] about $7.8 billion, according to IbisWorld Inc., a market analysis firm in Santa Monica. That's one of the rosier industry estimates -- up almost 6% from [2008], but that's only because last Christmas was so lousy, the company said. It is still down 11% from the pre-recession level of $8.8 billion in 2007… ‘I think it will only get tougher. People are still losing their jobs, credit is still tight, and we could see another wave of foreclosures,’ said Erik Oberholtzer, co-owner of Tender Greens, a group of three restaurants based in Culver City[, California] that emphasizes locally grown food.”

Lots of restaurants have gone, you should pardon the expression, belly up, but the once-too-proud-to-market chi chi eateries are giving way to pragmatic marketing efforts. The notion of getting customers in the door, at an affordable price, was the idea behind “restaurant week” in many major cities. It’s even being done in the home city of the Wall Street piglets: “‘Restaurants definitely didn’t like participating in Restaurant Week in the past. But in the recession we need it,’ said Eric Hara, executive chef at the Oak Room at the Plaza Hotel. ‘Before, no one did it for dinner. We would never even consider doing it for dinner. But as the recession came into play, dinner came into play.’” January 20^th DNAinfo.com.

The stock market may be up (well, higher than it was after the crash), companies have jacked up their earnings by obliterating costs (by cutting lots of jobs, thus reducing America’s buying power proportionately), and with the dollar falling, folks are stuffing their mattresses with stocks, but they sure aren’t stuffing their faces at the neighborhood dinner. When restaurant business returns to “normal” in America, then, and only then, will anyone convince me that the “recovery” we have all been promised will really have taken hold.

I’m Peter Dekom, and I’ve gotten to be a whole lot better cook of late. Oooops, gotta go out to the movies tonight. Wonder what NetFlix choice my wife made this week?

Crazy in Peshawar

Post-traumatic stress disorder is a common response in soldiers who have battled in combat zones, particularly arenas when enemy strikes are constantly imminent. We’ve seen movies about returning soldiers, wrapped in this theme, for just about every modern war our nation has fought. Vietnam and Iraq are the most recent examples, but less focus is addressed to the impact on the civilians whose lives are defined by turmoil, death, destruction and explosive violence. And even less attention has been paid to those cross-border Pakistani regions where our soldiers have not often crossed, but where drones and internal strife take as many casualties as in the active combat zones in present-day Afghanistan.

In Pakistan’s Northwest Frontier Province (NWFP), where Peshawar is the main city, men walk the streets carrying machine guns or rifles with straps of bullets across their chest. Peshawar has become the city of lost souls. “Thousands of men, women and children [who minds have been destroyed by incessant violence] wander Peshawar's anarchic streets. They are the forgotten victims of the war between Pakistan's army and Islamic militants. The city is where the mad come for solace, pouring in from war-torn regions of the Pakistani frontier and even farther afield in search of a disturbingly scarce resource: psychiatric aid… Most find little relief in Peshawar, where the streets are lined with barbed wire and punctuated by checkpoints, and where bomb blasts are an almost weekly occurrence.” Sphere.com (January 10^th)

A doctor at the Shafique Psychiatric Clinic, a local specialized hospital, estimates that as many as 70% of the population of NWFP suffer mental illness by reason of the violence. Depression, anxiety, agoraphobia are everywhere. It is a land where might makes right, where religious zeal creates emotional calluses that allows vicious attacks with little concern for any semblance of innocents and non-combatants; everyone is expendable for the “cause.” Bad things happen to good people every day.

Sphere.com: “Incessant violence is the reason. In the NWFP alone, more than 400 people have been killed in terrorist attacks since October 2009, nearly matching the total number of civilian deaths in the province for all of 2004. A truck bomb killed nearly 100 people at a New Year's Day volleyball tournament in Lakki Marwat near the South Waziristan tribal agency, where an ongoing military operation has prompted the Pakistani Taliban to unleash a wave of attacks across the country…. Yet as violence escalates in Pakistan, there has not been any effort to confront the psychological effects of it. According to [a local doctor], there are fewer than 30 qualified psychiatrists in the NWFP and a mere 250 psychiatric beds available for a population of more than 25 million. ‘But that's just the NWFP,’ he adds. ‘We're also dealing with patients coming over from the border in Afghanistan. There are no facilities there for them, so they come here to Peshawar.’”

Imagine a 12-year-old child being told by a Taliban operative that if he fails to plant a bomb, his family will be slaughtered. Or children so terrified by not having any means to retaliate that they join one faction or another just to get a gun in their hands and soldiers at their back. “Children are some of the worst affected by the violence in NWFP, says Dr. Sayed Mohammad Sultan, head of the psychiatry department at the Khyber Teaching Hospital in Peshawar. ‘We are seeing a lot of children suffering from phobic anxiety disorders. They are in a constant state of fear – of Taliban attacks and from seeing dead bodies hanging in trees.’ The long-term effects could be devastating, he warns.”

A war without end… America caught in the middle, taking its share of innocents with each attack. Militants without conscience, believing that God has sanctified their killing and maiming, raining terror down on their own people. This is the daily lot of millions… trapped in the only homeland they have ever known. It is a part of war that none of us should ever forget.

I’m Peter Dekom, and I wonder how human beings can do this to each other in the name of God.

The Ultimate Afghan Strategy

President Obama wants to save money, cutting programs that contribute neither to national security nor the economic recovery. Okay, that’s a fairly obvious path given recent voter reactions. Healthcare? Fareed Zakaria, writing for the January 25^th Washington Post, reminds us that 85% of Americans are concerned with rising medical costs and only 15% prioritized extending coverage to those currently without insurance. But the healthcare “reform” on the table succumbed to pressures from Big Insurance and Big Pharma, preserving their profit structures pretty much intact while making sure there was not the slightest hint of cost-reducing competition. What a surprise? The voters didn’t like what they saw.

But, Mr. President, if you really want to cut the budget, take a real good look at that war we are waging in Afghanistan, the one where we are sending even more American sons and daughters – 30,000 additional soldiers to be exact – to fight and perhaps to die. Look at the government we are supporting, long known to be corrupt and ineffective. The administration put pressure on the Hamid Karzai government to change its evil ways. Doesn’t look like that happened or will happen any time soon. Most of Karzai’s post-questionable-reelection cabinet appointments were so completely below grade that they weren’t able to pass the legislative confirmation that was mandatory before they could assume office.

And now there are these two communications from the U.S. Ambassador to Kabul – Karl W. Eikenberry – sent to his bosses in Washington (as reported in the January 25^th New York Times) that have surfaced: “The United States ambassador in Kabul warned his superiors … in November [of 2009] that President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan… ‘is not an adequate strategic partner. The proposed counterinsurgency strategy assumes an Afghan political leadership that is both able to take responsibility and to exert sovereignty in the furtherance of our goal — a secure, peaceful, minimally self-sufficient Afghanistan hardened against transnational terrorist groups…. Yet Karzai continues to shun responsibility for any sovereign burden, whether defense, governance or development. He and much of his circle do not want the U.S. to leave and are only too happy to see us invest further,’ Mr. Eikenberry wrote. ‘They assume we covet their territory for a never-ending ‘war on terror’ and for military bases to use against surrounding powers’…

“The cables — one four pages, the other three — also represent a detailed rebuttal to the counterinsurgency strategy offered by Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the top American and NATO commander in Afghanistan, who had argued that a rapid infusion of fresh troops was essential to avoid failure in the country…. They show that Mr. Eikenberry, a retired Army lieutenant general who once was the top American commander in Afghanistan, repeatedly cautioned that deploying sizable American reinforcements would result in ‘astronomical costs’ — tens of billions of dollars — and would only deepen the dependence of the Afghan government on the United States.”

The collapse of our Afghan strategy of passing responsibility to the Karzai government is particularly hopeless given Defense Secretary Robert Gates’ rebuff earlier in January from the Pakistani military in connection with his attempt to get Pakistan to take seriously Taliban/al Qaeda infiltration from Pakistan into Afghanistan and back again – effectively making the Pakistani border region a military sieve and a safe haven for our enemies. Eikenberry’s assessment of this shortfall? Writing in November: “Pakistan will remain the single greatest source of Afghan instability so long as the border sanctuaries remain… Until this sanctuary problem is fully addressed, the gains from sending additional forces may be fleeting.” Well, Mr. Eikenberry, Pakistan has rejected any reasonable solution to that problem.

Many suggest that the administration’s escalation in its combat role in Afghanistan is only a prelude to deal, as uncomfortable at this may be, with the Taliban from a position of greater strength. Think this is far-fetched? Look at this report in the January 29^th New York Times: “Kai Eide, the United Nations’ special representative in Afghanistan, met with a group of Taliban leaders in the days leading to [a recent] international conference in London, where President Hamid Karzai invited the Taliban to enter peace talks… ‘He wanted to test for himself the mindset of some of the Taliban leaders,’ said Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, who was briefed by Mr. Eide on the talks. The discussions were confirmed by a United Nations official in Kabul.”Just think of the lovely choices we face: support a corrupt government that clearly does not work, make peace with our tormentors (an untrustworthy and brutal group, who harbored Osama bin Laden), just leave or stay in Afghanistan… for a very, very long time.

We are not protecting the United States by remaining in Afghanistan. We are not even in a battle where winning is one of the alternatives, and expecting a corrupt and ineffective government to pick up the slack has already been proven to be a failed policy. We had our chance in Afghanistan early, after the 9/11/2001 attacks, but we chose to deploy to Iraq instead. The opportunity is long lost; it’s time to allow pragmatism to “redeploy” our scare tax dollars – literally hundreds of billions per year – out of a wasteful military expedition with virtually no chance of success and into domestic programs that are woefully underfunded. Should militants choose to use Afghanistan to launch another strike against the United States, we most certainly will retain the right and the power to retaliate in strength… but this slow sapping of our national spirit and flushing of billions of deficit tax dollars down a Central Asian drain has simply got to stop!

I’m Peter Dekom, and this war failed war strategy is getting old and worn.

The Little Stories that Can Kill You

In everyone’s life, while horror, terror and threats of the apocalypse dominate the headlines, it is your predicament, your environment, your family and your local government and economy that concern you most. Those rescue workers in Haiti have selflessly redirected their personal efforts toward this incredibly needful humanitarian effort, hoping that the world won’t soon forget the ongoing and long-term needs of this decimated island nation. But they are in competition with almost 7 billion agendas that are struggling with the “me first” (and “me only”) calamities that surround each of us.

I took at glance at some of those “other stories” drifting about the press these days, and thought of how many more individuals are struggling with personal difficulties every day. Here are some of those “little” stories, not always on page one of your local paper (if you have one anymore): Osama bin Laden, taking credit for the Christmas day crotch-bomber, is threatening the United States with many more attacks. Or this one from the Korean peninsula: “North Korea threatened South Korea with war [January 24^th] after Seoul warned it would launch a pre-emptive strike if the North was preparing a nuclear attack - the latest salvo in a battle of rhetoric despite signs of improved cooperation across the militarized frontier.” Washington Post, January 24^th.

Lest we think that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has gone away, there is this little tidbit in the January 24^th New York Times: “The Israeli military is completing a rebuttal to a United Nations report accusing it of grave violations of international and humanitarian law in its Gaza invasion a year ago. Its central aim is to dispel the report’s harsh conclusion — that the death of noncombatants and destruction of civilian infrastructure were part of an official plan to terrorize the Palestinian population.” But wait, there’s more….

Pakistan, thought to be providing safe harbor to the militants who are attacking U.S. forces in neighboring Afghanistan and may even be sheltering terrorists like Osama bin Laden himself, is rebuffing U.S. efforts to align American interests with a Pakistani struggle with Taliban militants of their own. Defense Secretary Robert Gates just traveled to Islamabad to ask for increased Pakistani cooperation in this anti-terrorist/militant effort. It was clear that ” Pakistanis, who are angry about the Central Intelligence Agency’s surge in missile strikes from drone aircraft on militants in Pakistan’s tribal areas, among other grievances, and showed no signs of feeling any love… At the same time, the Pakistani Army’s chief spokesman told American reporters at the army headquarters in Rawalpindi on Thursday that the military had no immediate plans to launch an offensive against extremists in the tribal region of North Waziristan, as American officials have repeatedly urged… And the spokesman, Maj. Gen Athar Abbas, rejected Mr. Gates’s assertion that Al Qaeda had links to militant groups on Pakistan’s border. Asked why the United States would have such a view, the spokesman, General Abbas, curtly replied, ‘Ask the United States.’” Gates has obviously struck out… with a nation that hold an estimated 60-70 nuclear weapo ns and the missile delivery system to make them work.

Speaking of nuclear radiation… If these stories are too distant and abstract to send shivers down your spine, how about this excerpt from a Times article examining the damage from the overuse and misuse of radiation in both medical diagnoses and treatments: “As Scott Jerome-Parks lay dying, he clung to this wish: that his fatal radiation overdose — which left him deaf, struggling to see, unable to swallow, burned, with his teeth falling out, with ulcers in his mouth and throat, nauseated, in severe pain and finally unable to breathe — be studied and talked about publicly so that others might not have to live his nightmare… A New York City hospital treating him for tongue cancer had failed to detect a computer error that directed a linear accelerator to blast his brain stem and neck with errant beams of radiation. Not once, but on three consecutive days.” Apparently, according to the Times, damage from radiation overdoses, being exceptionally difficult to detect, are growing by the thousands.

In the end, we are all human beings – at any given moment, one group is clearly having a lot better luck than another somewhere else. Throw in a 9/11 attack on the United States or a destructive California quake or a Louisiana hurricane, and the mass of personal tragedy swings back to our shores. For those who have lost their homes and their jobs, particularly older Americans with little hope to reclaim their future, they have their own personal headlines. But at our core, perhaps it is this infinite litany of personal tragedy that links us together on a planet that would self-destruct without efforts to try, at least, to help each other. Perhaps we would be living in a vastly worse place if we were unable to generate both empathy and sympathy for the losses of those “others” who share their time on earth together. “Me first” may be acceptable in many circumstances, but “me only” or “my way or the highway” can only make life worse for everyone body else.

I’m Peter Dekom, and I wonder how we really can help each other along the way.

Bad Medicine for a Sick Country

The current healthcare plans being considered by the House, and as referred by the Senate, have eschewed the right of members of the American public to buy their prescription drugs from legitimate European or Canadian sellers. The big drug companies cried “importing drugs eliminate the ability of the government to protect its citizens from bad or impure drugs.” Obviously, Canadians and Europeans must have healthcare systems that delight in exposing their people to sub-par prescription drugs if not downright poisonous substitutes. The Canadian and European governments were delighted at the failure of the U.S. to recognized their pharmacies as being “good enough”… since in no way do they want Americans creating greater demand, which might increase their local prices.

The American pharma industry (a $315 billion/year business sector) has pledged to the President to implement serious cutbacks in the cost of prescription drugs in order to help institute overall healthcare reform… $80 billion worth over a decade. However, if you raise prices enough and then cut them, you look like you are making a big concession… but you’re not! Want some serious evidence of this nasty tendency? How about this from DailyFinance.com (January 14^th): “Given that pharmaceutical companies have been accused of hiking drug prices ahead of the passage of health care reform, perhaps nobody will be surprised to learn that the industry has a history of passing big price bumps on to their customers. Even so, the magnitude will no doubt raise an eyebrow or two: The Government Accountability Office has found that between 2000 and 2008, the prices for 321 different brand-name drugs soared from 100% to more than 2,000%.

“The GAO found that from 2000 to 2008, 416 drug products (which in some cases include multiple dosages of a single drug) had such extraordinary price increases. Most often, these extraordinary price increases ranged from 100% to 499%, but in a few cases, prices were raised by 1,000% or more and in nine cases, the prices soared by over 2,000%. The number of extraordinary price increases each year jumped from 28 in 2000 to 71 in 2008.”

In addition, the GAO cited a number of basic reasons for the above increases (from DailyFinance.com):

1. Lack of competition. In many cases, “there was a lack of therapeutically equivalent drugs on the market -- both generics and other brand-name drugs used to treat the same condition -- due to patent protections for new drugs. Similarly, by extending patents for existing drugs that have been modified, and receiving market exclusivity rights, drug manufacturers have been able to limit competition.”
2. Particularly for very narrowly focused treatments, “the size of the market for a given drug can reduce competition.”
3. “[T]he transfer of the rights to a drug and corporate consolidations among drug companies may result in fewer drug options and contribute to extraordinary price increases.”
4. “[M]ore than half of all extraordinary price increases were for repackaged brand-name drug products, meaning third parties firms, which purchased drugs from manufacturers or wholesalers and resold them in smaller packages to health care providers, were the cause of the price hikes.” Sneaky, huh?
5. “[U]nusual events -- such as disruptions in production due to shortages of raw materials -- and other factors may also contribute to some extraordinary price increases.”

Sure the U.S. dollar is falling, and that is also going to continue to drive up costs, notwithstanding that our general cost of living has dropped generally in this country. But in the end, we probably need some serious explanations from this out-of-control industry which charges Americans the highest prices on earth for prescription drugs. They seem to have purchased the right politicians to guarantee that we Americans are still number one in at least one major category!

I’m Peter Dekom, and I approve this message.

Where Private Contributions Can Change the World

We all know of the extraordinary generosity of some of America’s wealthiest citizens. Warren Buffet. Bill and Melinda Gates. But what we might not know, and what is worthy of reporting, are the contributions of some of the world’s most powerful pharmaceutical companies, seldom known for their altruism. Indeed, I have blogged against many of the policies embraced by these behemoths – and my passions continue to be equally committed to those efforts to create accountability and competition in the world of American prescription drugs – but at some point, even I have to present moments when drug companies have shined brightly. And in the world of open-source solutions to some of this planet’s complex medical issues, two particular examples of game-changing contributions from this pharma world come to mind.

Merk: Some problems are so massive and obviously impossible to solve that they invite a massive collaboration effort, often spurred on by the government. So was the case of the DNA-focused Human Genome Project, begun in 1990 led by James Watson at the U.S. National Institutes of Health, with the goal of identifying all of the individual genes that make up the human species. Battles over the right to patent such discoveries by individual contributors increased the complexity of the task, even though a completed research project was essential to enable the future of medical research.

By the mid-1990s, about 20% of gene research was covered by private patents. In 1995, one holder of many of these patents, Merck Pharmaceuticals, realized the magnitude of the blockage that such private research meant for the entire process and released 15,000 human gene sequences to the general public through its Merck Gene Index. In 1999, a non-profit consortium of eleven pharmaceutical companies opened up collaboration to create “a public biological blueprint for all human life.” By 2003, the basics of the entire genome had been identified, and in 2006, the significance of the Human Genome Project reached a new plateau as the sequence for the last unmapped human chromosome was published. With this profoundly complex body of knowledge, the pharmaceutical and academic worlds were empowered to develop an entirely new body of medical solutions for the benefit of all of us.

GlaxoSmithKline: Malaria has been the scourge of impoverished nations for as long as history has been recorded. Sapping the strength – even the very life – out of impoverished people in poor and underdeveloped nations, malaria has stood in the way of progress and general improvements in the quality of life long before the HIV epidemic took its toll. In Africa alone, mosquito-borne malaria kills a million people a year; 300 million a year are afflicted all over the earth.

The January 20^th Sphere.com notes: “GlaxoSmithKline will allow free access to 13,500 molecules that represent potential malaria treatments and pour millions of dollars into an ‘Open Lab’ for independent research teams to investigate other tropical diseases… The London-based Glaxo, the world's third-largest drug company, is testing its malaria vaccine on 16,000 people and will post its information to scientific journals. It will also cooperate with other companies in Europe and the United States, as well as disease research centers. It hopes to have the vaccine ready for approval by 2012…‘This is the furthest anybody's gone,’ Glaxo's chief executive, Andrew Witty, said in an interview with Bloomberg News. ‘Nobody has put in the public domain the product of a two-million screen’ of small molecules, he said… These are essentially the building blocks from which all of our drugs eventually come.’” They could have opted for the billions of additional dollars in global revenues that such a vaccine could represent. Instead, they have invited the open collaboration to this entire industry to create a solution that does not rest on one company’s making massive profits from preventing his horrific disease.

Sometimes, I fight against these big companies. Sometimes, I don’t.

I’m Peter Dekom, and fairness is important to me.

House Calls

Not many Americans are old enough – or rich enough – to remember when a physician routinely made house calls to visit sick patients. We see the phenomenon in old black and white movies running at odd hours on often obscure networks, but the memory of those days gone by barely triggers the slightest nostalgic moment; almost every American alive today only knows being dragged to a doctor’s office or to an emergency room where pain and contagion loom large. Of folks in Europe, their national health care still provides this basic service on a fairly routine basis. With so many Americans living without healthcare or having limited means of transportation – particularly when there are down and very out – there is clearly a need to reach out into grassroots communities simply to identify exactly what health needs remain unfulfilled.

Then there is this little experiment in Mississippi, a state where health problems per capita seem to rise well above the American norm. The January 24^th Los Angeles Times writes about a courageous Delta doctor with an even more courageous desire to go down a road that would make most Americans wince: “Dr. Aaron Shirley has devoted his career to serving the rural poor in the Mississippi Delta [he was Mississippi’s first black pediatrician, back in 1965], but now the 77-year-old pediatrician believes the key to reducing the nation's highest infant mortality rates lies in a surprising place: The Islamic Republic of Iran.”

According to a piece in the November-December, 2009 National Institutes of Health Global Health Matters: “After decades of frustration and millions of dollars invested with dismal results, Mississippi health care pioneer Dr. Aaron Shirley knew he needed a fresh approach. In some parts of his state, the infant death rate for nonwhites is on a par with Libya and Thailand. Mississippi's health consistently ranks dead last among states in annual tallies produced by the United Health Foundation. It has the highest rates of obesity, hypertension and teen pregnancy in the country, with about 20 percent of its population lacking health insurance…. Together with James Miller of the Oxford International Development Group, Shirley reached out to Iranian health care experts for advice. He knew WHO and World Bank evaluations indicate positive outcomes from Iran's novel health house concept and thought it might provide the solution for his own population…. He discovered his Iranian counterparts are dealing with many of the same issues he faces: lack of funding and trained personnel. And yet they are having stunning successes, reducing child mortality rates by about 70 percent since 1980 and increasing contraception rates to 90 percent, even in rural areas.”

It seems he heard of neighborhood “health houses” (Iran has 17,000 of them) of healthcare professionals in Iran whose job it is to keep tabs on the status of health in local communities. These weren’t doctors, but nurse and even nurses aids who go door-to-door to take blood tests, check blood pressure, advise on sanitary conditions and just make general observations about what they see. They make necessary referrals when they note a more complex problem. With special dispensation from both Washington and Tehran, “[i]n May, Shirley and two colleagues flew to Iran for 10 days to study a low-cost rural healthcare delivery system that, according to the World Health Organization, has helped cut infant deaths by 70% over the last three decades.” The LA Times. Later that fall, Iranian medical personnel reciprocated and visited the Mississippi Delta, again with blessing from the warring factions in Washington and Tehran. These Iranian doctors were shocked at scenes of brutal rural poverty and wide-spread unemployment, completely unexpected visions of America – blighted communities with run-down housing, weed-filled lots and battered old roads overflowing with mud.

But they also found a spirit in these Americans they had not expected. “‘We played black gospel and blues for those Iranians,’ recalled Sylvester Hoover, 52, owner of Baptist Town's only business, a one-room grocery, laundromat and barbecue grill. ‘They were just hugging us they were so excited. They loved it.’” LA Times. Funny how this little political bridge succeeded when so many overtures at higher levels have collapsed and burned so many times. “Tensions between the United States and Iran dominate daily headlines, but both governments have given quiet support to the little-known initiative in the Delta… In Tehran, the Foreign and Health ministries approved a memorandum of agreement to authorize collaboration between Shiraz University of Medical Sciences and Shirley's team, which includes Jackson State University.”

As Shirley and his colleagues apply for $30 million of federal funding for a three-year pilot program for many Delta communities, it is clear that he is trying a very different approach from the traditional American treatment paradigm. The NIH report cited above: “In Iran, preventive care is a priority and special attention is paid to high-risk groups such as mothers and children. Health care workers are chosen and trained within each community. Preventive and curative programs are integrated seamlessly. The system is decentralized, which encourages regional facilities to become self-sufficient and empowers local communities… In contrast, Mississippi has a fragmented ad-hoc system of hospitals, health clinics and individual medical practices, says Miller. ‘Our public health programs and services aren't integrated and are anything but user friendly. Our health research is often too narrowly focused on specific risk factors and, like the rest of the U.S., we place the emphasis on curing existing conditions rather than preventing them in the first place.’”

Kind of funny the kinds of issues that tear us apart, resulting in military threats and profound exchanges of bludgeoning insults… Then there are those wonderful moments when we see how people are just human beings, facing the same problems, maybe in differing ways. Thank goodness for these terrific little connections.

I’m Peter Dekom, and there is hope out there… sometimes from where you least expect it.

Haiti – An American Colony Again?

Balance the complete collapse of government and infrastructure, a reign of chaos and lawlessness, the inability to reach survivors or rescue victims without massive manpower, and the efficiency of using disciplined military troops to make up for these deficiencies against a morbid fear of another American occupation. Why would we ever occupy Haiti? We’ve done it before, from 1915 to 1934, resulting in a serious depletion of Haitian banks in favor of moving that money to U.S. financial institutions, and as recently as 1994, US forces entered Haiti under orders from President Bill Clinton to restore a president following a coup (we failed).

We are drawing international criticism and fear from local Haitian leaders – the locals already fear that their political destiny is determined in Washington, D.C. anyway – that this represents another potential American take-over of this impoverished and dysfunctional island nation. Tell that to the people who are receiving help from the troops.

Despite France’s horrible history of brutally occupying Haiti in times past, France's international cooperation minister, Alain Joyandet, recently accused Washington of trying to ‘occupy’ Haiti; he implored the the United Nations to investigate. The January 21^st Sphere.com: “Joyandet complained after a French aid flight carrying a field hospital was turned back from Port-au-Prince's overtaxed airport last week. The angry minister reportedly got into a physical confrontation with the U.S. official in charge of air traffic control. The French plane landed safely the next day… French President Nicolas Sarkozy intervened quickly, praising Washington's ‘exceptional mobilization’ and ‘essential role ... on the ground’ in Haiti. But the whole row was embarrassing, especially with so many Haitians still suffering.”

There are 12,000 American troops in Haiti (with lots of ships off-shore), and from their command posts all over the capital city (and beyond), they are in charge of just about everything from police activities, routing relief supplies to air traffic control. They have taken over the National Palace in Port-au-Prince as their central earthquake aid depot, and as the stench of death and disease make the vast concentrations of impoverished humanity increasingly vulnerable to greater jeopardy, US forces have elected to big to move 400,000 human beings out of a very dangerous Port-au-Prince area to safer temporary shelters.

The toll of death and destruction are staggering, even as the Haitian government is ending the search for survivors. On January 23^rd, the government estimated that 150,000 bodies have been buried to date, 250,000 are known to be homeless, 200,000 have left the capital city, most of which remains in unusable ruin and aftershocks continue to inflict additional damage. Exactly what would those remaining do without the power of a massive organized relief effort, supported with the organization of an experienced military force? And exactly what would the U.S. government do with a land that has been depleted beyond words, whose limited infrastructure has been impaled by the quake, where buildings and structures literally need to be razed and rebuilt and where an uneducated and horribly impoverished people can only take with virtually nothing to give?

While “the usual suspects” – like Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez – speak of America’s “hidden occupation” and there are indeed bureaucratic mix-ups that may inconvenience foreigners in Haiti, the hard reality remains that only a significant military force can achieve that kind of organization necessary to bring the fastest relief to these poor people. We didn’t and still don’t have time for UN votes and then to gather and send in the blue helmets in a few weeks. If the UN wants to make a huge commitment and join US forces (and there are UN forces there as well right now), so be it, but right now, Haitians need massive help… and fast. America may have had a checkered past with Haiti, but it is time for us to make good on helping them make it through… and I believe that we most certainly have no serious intentions of colonizing Haiti or even “occupying” it in any meaningful sense of the word. We can be a very generous people, if given the chance. This time, we’re doing it right.

I’m Peter Dekom, and I too have trouble looking at those photographs of Haiti.