The World According to Opa

Texas Governor, Rick Perry, may not be ashamed. But, as a citizen of this state, I sure am.

April 17, 2013 — I think it’s an interesting coincidence that Texas Governor, Rick Perry, announced his intention this week to travel to Illinois in an attempt to convince the leadership of corporations headquartered there that they should move to Texas — this in the same week that the Texas Legislative Study Group updated its Texas On The Brink report, a periodic collation of state rankings on public policy issues. The report makes Texas look so bad this year that it should probably be renamed, Texas Going Down the Tubes.

After reading this report you might wonder why anyone would want to come to Texas to live. Unless they are a high-placed corporate executive, someone firmly-established in the upper to upper middle class with a guaranteed source of income, or a professional with qualifications that are in high demand, it beats the hell outta me why anyone would. The blue bonnets in Springtime and relatively mild winters here in Texas are just about the best the state has to offer for everyone else.

I am continuing this post borrowing heavily from Janes Moore’s article in Huffington Post, Texas vs. America, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jim-moore/texas-versus-america_b_3088725.html, and other sources as noted.

If you do decide to come to Texas, don’t consider failing. There is no safety net here unless you have family able and willing to pick you up when you fall. If you remember nothing else from this year’s update of the Texas on the Brink report http://www.austinchronicle.com/blogs/news/2013-04-15/texas-on-the-brink/, take with you these two simple facts about the state’s generosity to the less unfortunate: First, the average monthly benefit per person, for Women, Infant, and Children (WIC) recipients in Texas is $29.30. That’s the WORST in the nation — not even enough for tuna and crackers from a governor who spends millions on his traveling security entourage. Second, the maximum Temporary Assistance for Needy Families grant for a single-parent family of three is just $263 per month. So, if you don’t mind eating Ramen noodles for dinner every night and living in a shack, Texas has you covered.

Texas “firsts” and “worsts” that have occurred during the 13 years of the Rick Perry administration in Texas are even more astonishing than Perry’s lack of concern about the poor in this state. In his last legislative session, the Texas governor led a reduction of $5.5 billion in public school funding even though the state ranks dead last in the percentage of population that graduates from high school. According to the Texas on the Brink report, Texas also leads the nation in the percent of the population uninsured as well as the percent of non-elderly that are uninsured.

Here are some highlights from the new Texas On The Brink report:

Education –
• Elementary and Secondary Public School Enrollment — 2nd
• Average Salary of Public School Teachers — 31st
• Percentage of Population Graduated from High School — 50th

State of the Child –
• Percent of Uninsured Children — 2nd
• Percent of Children Living in Poverty — 7th (tied)
• Percent of Children (19-35 months), Fully immunized — 23rd (tied)

Health Care –
• Percent of Population Uninsured — 1st
• Percent of Non-Elderly Uninsured — 1st
• Percent of Low Income Population Covered by Medicaid — 48th

Environment –
• Amount of Carbon Dioxide Emissions — 1st
• Total Amount of Toxic Releases into Water — 4th
• Amount of Carcinogens Released into Air — 4th
• Amount of Hazardous Waste Generated — 1st
• Industrial Toxic Air Pollution — 10th

Democracy –
• Percent of Voting-Age Population Registered to Vote — 47th
• Percent of Voting-Age Population that Votes — 51st

You may download the entire report at http://www.austinchronicle.com/documents/Texas%20On%20The%20Brink%202013.pdf.

Rick Perry may not be ashamed. But, as a citizen of this state, I sure am.

To many, it is a mystery why Texans continue to vote for a governor and a legislature that care so little for the majority of its citizens. Psychologists, however, tell us that it’s human nature. The reason they cite is something called cognitive dissonance http://www.simplypsychology.org/cognitive-dissonance.html. This is the distressing mental state that people feel when we find ourselves doing things that don’t fit with what we know or believe. We all experience it to varying degrees; we all want our expectations to meet reality, creating a sense of equilibrium. Accordingly, we will avoid situations or information sources that give rise to feelings of uneasiness, or dissonance. In other words, we’d rather be stupid than wrong.

Please feel free to leave a comment whether you agree with my reasoning or not.

Under Obamacare, when it is finally fully implemented, every child will be covered regardless of paternity issues — PERIOD.

July 5, 2012 — Following up on my last post, I realize now that I failed to respond to all of my good friend’s recent comments and “implied” questions about the Affordable Care Act. In her email (see Right vs. Left ~ Responding to Republicans’ Fears this Election Year) she said that she thought the federal government should get out of the business of providing individual care – that states could do a better job.

Hmmm… I guess that would be the end of Medicare, at least as we know it. So, I have written to her the following.

“…. I thought you’d be interested in knowing that our grand- daughter applied for CHIPS over a month ago for her daughter. CHIPS, as you know, is administered by states under Medicaid, and, given our granddaughter’s income, our precious little great granddaughter would normally be eligible. However, the appli- cation is being held up “by the state” because neither Texas nor Louisiana, her daughter’s father’s home of record, has been able to find the man since he was released from prison. Our grand- daughter is being told that he must be served with a child support court order before they will process the application.

Now, how does that make any sense? Under Obamacare, when it is finally fully implemented, every child will be covered regardless of paternity issues — PERIOD.

Also, addressing your concern about the federal government taking money out of the economy, please understand that the government spends every red cent that it collects. That money goes back into the economy and everything spent eventually becomes somebody else’s income. That income, in turn after taxes, gets spent again, over and over, which creates demand for goods and services. Either this, or else it is saved. Spending and “some” investments stimulate the economy. But saving does nothing to help it (never confuse saving with investing). And wealthier folks save a whole lot more than we poor to middle class folks do.  This propensity for more saving by the wealthy is one the most important reasons why we have a progressive income tax system.

This spending cycle, described above, creates what is called the spending “Multiplier Effect.” For your reading enjoyment/ homework assignment, here is an economic letter by the Federal Reserve explaining in more detail what I have just explained: http://www.frbsf.org/publications/economics/letter/2012/el2012-04.html

Sorry if this sounds like a lecture on basic economic concepts. But I guess that’s what it is. Every economics text book from which I have studied or taught contains this same information on how things work. Despite what you might have heard from conserv- ative talk show hosts or read on-line from conservative think tanks like CADO or the Heritage Foundation, this is understood and taught by most schools of economic thought.

If you’re interested and have the time to find out how Obamacare will help small businesses here in Texas, check this out: http://www.healthreform.gov/reports/statehealthreform/texas.html.”

Please don’t hesitate to post a comment, whether you agree with me or not.

Greed, which drives capitalism, must be constrained at some point. But market competition these days, given the demise of organized labor and the growth of oligopolies, is totally disinclined to do so.

July 2, 2012 — According to a recent Wall Street Journal/NBC poll, the president’s reelection chances are looking up slightly, especially in battleground states where he leads Romney 50 to 43 percent among respondents. The recent Supreme Court’s decision on the constitutionality of the Affordable Health Care Act, welcome news among liberals, could, however, work against him considering how it might serve to galvanize the law’s detractors behind his presumptive rival, Mitt Romney. Nevertheless, republicans are nervous given that it’s still a close race just four months prior to the election and that four more years for Obama could mean two moderate to liberal justices to replace aging conservatives. This could mean a liberal court for at least a decade. His reelection would most definitely mean the survival of his health care law and the full implementation of its provisions. Yes, the stakes are high.

I recently received an e-mail question from a lady who, although a staunch republican, remains one of my dearest friends, this notwithstanding our conflicting political views. She said, speaking of the Affordable Health Care Act, “Curious to know how you can justify this burden to small businesses in America.”

To her message she added a quote by a Texas Congressman, Kenny Marchant, which was made following the Supreme Court’s surprise ruling last week.

“The decision doesn’t change the fact that millions of small businesses are going to be deluged with new taxes and job-killing regulations imposed by Obamacare. It also doesn’t change the fact that Obamacare is bad public policy that imposes new taxes on all Americans. Because of the Court’s decision, the quality of health care for millions of Americans will be greatly diminished, employers will be forced to drop health care insurance for their employees, and small businesses will need an army of compliance officers to navigate the Obamacare bureaucracy. Obamacare is unsound policy and disastrous for our nation’s fiscal solvency.”

She concluded her message with, “I believe the federal government keeps getting bigger and bigger which only drains more $$. The feds need out of the taking care of individuals business. I am not ready for a socialistic society. I believe the states can do a much better job.”

Here’s how I responded: “… every republican politician and conservative talking head is saying these same things, over and over, almost as if from the same script. But saying them over and over doesn’t make them so. I am equally convinced that that this is not only the right thing for the American people, it will eventually prove to be what it was intended to be — the “Affordable” Health Care Act. This will not be a burden to small business. It will be a boon. Now people will be better able to pursue their entrepreneurial ambitions, free from the fear of losing their employer-provided insurance coverage. Small businesses will be more willing to hire young college graduates because they won’t have to offer them health insurance initially and, for businesses of fifty and fewer employees, these are exempt from the requirement to provide insurance. Further, there will be more competition between insurance providers and this will eventually bring premiums down.

Read this which contains pros and cons attributed to the new law: http://useconomy.about.com/od/healthcarereform/f/What-Is-Obama-Care.htm. The pros are according the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO). The cons are from the conservative think tank, the Heritage Foundation. You can believe the claims made by whomever you choose. I chose to believe the non-partisan source.”

Now she’s telling me that this didn’t answer her question – “Just more one side against the other.” Her concern, she clarifies, is not just about Obamacare, it’s about everything – that the government keeps getting bigger and bigger draining more and more money from the economy. So, “Okay,” I answered,” define your terms. I want to be sure I answer your “actual” question. How do you measure the size of government?”

Thinking about how I might respond after she answers, I am anticipating that she might say government growth is measured by the amount of money it spends. Alternatively, she might answer that it is measured by the number of new government employees, or the number of new regulatory agencies, or the number of new regulations imposed on the private sector, and/or their cost burden. I don’t know how she might answer, so I’m researching each measure.

As to the first measure, the amount of money being spent: The Romney campaign would have us believe that government spending under Obama has accelerated at a pace without precedent in recent history. The truth is, according to PolitiFact, is that the rate of government spending growth has been lower under Obama than under any recent president http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2012/may/23/facebook-posts/viral-facebook-post-says-barack-obama-has-lowest-s/. It is true that spending, as a percent of our GDP is up, but let’s be fair. Revenues collected, because of the recession, the Bush tax cuts, and the president’s own tax cuts for the middle class to combat the recession, has been way down.

Now to the growth in the number of federal government employees. At the end of 2010, according to the U.S. Office of Personal Management http://www.opm.gov/feddata/HistoricalTables/TotalGovernmentSince1962.asp, there were 35,000 fewer non-military federal government employees than there were under the Reagan administration. Yes, the total has increased slightly since 2010. But there are still more than two million fewer federal employees than there were at the highest point in recent history. It has been during Republican administrations, not Democrat ones, that the size of government, by this measure, has increased the most.

Okay, now to the number of new regulatory agencies, the number of new regulations, and the economic burden they impose. According to the Heritage Foundation (a conservative think tank), citing Government Accountability Office statistics, there were 75 major regulations adopted in Obama’s first two years in office. This compares to 120 during Bush’s entire first term. Yes, fiscal 2010 saw a record 43 new rules adopted. But, were these new rules needed? Given what has happened on Wall Street in recent years, what happened in the Gulf of Mexico with the BP oil spill, the growing problems with air quality over major cities like Dallas, water pollution from drilling/fracking operations, and how insurance companies have been denying coverage and dropping that of policy holders when they most need it, I believe that they were needed.

Our current health care system, which costs us eighteen percent of our GDP, has been growing in cost by sixteen percent per year and is rated, according to the World Health Organization as only the 37^th best in the world. It is inhumane and it’s well past time for us to change it. That’s my stand on the matter.

Greed, which drives capitalism, must be constrained at some point. But market competition these days, given the demise of organized labor and the growth of oligopolies, is totally disinclined to do so.

I agree that regulatory activity is likely to pick up in coming years as agencies start implementing two of Obama’s major initiatives — the Affordable Care Act and the Dodd-Frank financial reform law. There will be economic costs associated with these initiatives. But there will be economic benefits as well. The “net benefit” — savings plus other factors, such as the economic value of lives saved – cannot be accurately calculated.  But they can be anticipated. It’s not just whether and to what extent needed regulations impact corporate profits. What’s also important to look at, according to the White House’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Watch, is how these regulations improve peoples’ lives.

Please feel free to post a comment, whether you agree or disagree.

As corporations cash in on lucrative contracts, they encroach on the political process, driving up military spending and influencing military and foreign policy.

August 31, 2011 — When I received my draft notice for service in the Vietnam War, I had the best job of my life up to that time. I was a cameraman for a local television station in my hometown. I had worked my way up to the position after having been in the properties /art department for a year, and I loved it. I always came to work early and I usually stayed late. I volunteered for weekend work videotaping the following week’s worth of afternoon children’s programming: Fireman Frank, Cap’n Scotty, Captain Bernie and Friends. I did so not so much for the overtime as for the sheer joy of the work. When the station needed volunteers to go out on remote recording jobs, athletic competition events, church services, civic and seasonal events, mine was always the first name on the list.

When I told my department head about my draft notice, he advised me to get all the training I could from Uncle Sam. He also assured me that my job would be waiting for me when I got back. Of course, that was the law back then; employers had to rehire draftees after they completed their two years of service obligation. So, that became my plan. I would get some education in communications equipment repair, avoid combat if I could, and come back to this great job.

Of course, things don’t always turn out like we plan. After taking the Army’s battery of tests at the beginning of my Basic Training, I found out that I would have to reenlist in the Regular Army and be in for four years rather than two to get the training and MOS (military occupational specialty) I wanted. Otherwise, the odds were high that I’d be given a combat MOS like Infantry, Armor or Artillery. Reluctantly, knowing that I would be nullifying my draftee civilian job guarantee, I signed up for it. Later, caving into the siren song of OCS (Officers’ Candidate School) and subsequent training as an aviator, I never got the training in electronics. Somebody else did though.

In today’s all-volunteer military, many of the MOSs and inherent training opportunities our young people used to have are no more. Tasks in technical fields are now performed by civilian contract employees so that force structures could be reduced and more military personnel could be released for combat MOSs. In fact, over the past 30 years or so, this country has undergone a total transformation in the way it prepares for, conducts, and mops up after war. The Pentagon has overseen a large-scale effort to outsource all aspects of its operations to private corporations. But despite the claims of privatization proponents, there’s scant evidence that private firms perform better or at lower cost than public-sector agencies. More troubling, as corporations cash in on lucrative contracts, they encroach on the political process, driving up military spending and influencing military and foreign policy. Sadly, this contributes to the high unemployment rate for veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan. Who has work state-side for an Infantry grunt?

It gets worse http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Panel-Widespread-waste-and-apf-350120231.html?x=0&.v=1. According to the Commission on Wartime Contracting which was established by Congress in 2008, as much as $60 billion in U.S. tax dollars has been lost to waste and fraud in Iraq and Afghanistan over the past decade. This waste, the commission’s report says, is due to lax oversight of contractors, poor planning and corruption. In its final report to Congress, publicly released today, the commission said the waste could grow as U.S. support for reconstruction projects and programs wanes, leaving Iraq and Afghanistan to bear the long-term costs of sustaining the schools, medical clinics, barracks, roads and power plants already built with American money.

Didn’t President Eisenhower warn us about the Defense Industrial Complex?

Gee, $60 billion – that would go a long way toward resolving pay inequities for our nation’s teachers.

Despite the popular image of defense contracts being for the building weapons systems like aircraft, missiles, or tanks, contracts for services are actually more typical. I know, I was in the business for ten years after retirement from active duty. Service workers, not production workers, accounted for nearly three out of four contract-created jobs in 1996, up more than 50% since 1984 — this according to a Dollars and Sense magazine article in 2004 http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/National_Security/PriviteNationalSecurity.html. Growing legions of contracted employees install, maintain, trouble-shoot, operate, and integrate military hardware. Similarly, research and development work is increasingly farmed out. (Navy technical centers outsourced 50% of research, development, test, and evaluation work by 1996. This was up from 30% in 1970.) Other, lower-skill, service contract firms perform a vast number of other functions from base maintenance and catering and support, to security detail and military training. Most of these jobs are being performed by locals.

Overall, the Commission on Wartime Contracting said, spending on contracts and grants to support U.S. operations in Iraq and Afghanistan is expected to exceed $206 billion by the end of the 2011 budget year. Based on its investigation, the commission said contracting waste in Afghanistan ranged from 10 percent to 20 percent of the $206 billion total. Fraud during the same period ran between 5 percent and 9 percent of the total.

The commission’s report includes recommendations for Congress. Among them are: government agencies should overhaul the way they award and manage contracts in war zones so they don’t repeat the mistakes made in Iraq and Afghanistan. The commission also recommends the creation of an inspector general to monitor contracting and the appointment of a senior government official to improve planning and coordination.

This sounds good to me. However, some in Congress will undoubtedly say that this so-called, suspected waste is just the cost of doing business. It’s to be expected. They will further complain that establishing a new inspector general’s post with inherent staff and administrative costs will just be more “creep of scope” by the federal government. Accordingly, our currently “dysfunctional” Congress will likely be unable to make any decision at all, and the commission will have wasted its time and efforts to expose some of the unintended consequences of the privatization of our national security.

Since Congress is not likely to do anything about this waste, fraud and abuse of taxpayers’ money anyway, I have a more challenging suggestion. Let’s go back to the good old days before the privatization of our nation’s security began. Let’s put more of our young men and women to work gaining technical knowledge and skills in the military that can help them transition to civilian employment after their enlistments.

Generals and Admirals of our armed forces wouldn’t like it, and the captains of defense industry corporations wouldn’t either. They would undoubtedly lobby Congress with millions of dollars in campaign contributions — most of it going to Republicans. But wouldn’t the rest of us be better off?

Please don’t hesitate to post a comment below to express your own opinion.