Anyone who gives it just a few minutes of quiet and unemotional thought knows that we invaded Afghanistan for revenge and to prove that the United States can’t be pushed around. We certainly wanted to capture or kill any terrorists in Afghanistan who had anything to do with the attacks on 9/11 and to punish the government of Afghanistan (Taliban) who gave them safe refuge.
Well, we took the Taliban out of power and captured and killed all the terrorists we could find. Of course, all of that happened in the first few months after we invaded Afghanistan, so what have we been doing there for the 8 years since then?
To be honest, I’m not really sure. It seems as though we continue to fight to keep the Taliban out of power and to try and find the few terrorists that are left in Afghanistan. Of course the Taliban will continue to try and regain power for generations to come and at some point we will have to leave and the Afghans will have to deal with the Taliban on their own. It might as well be sooner rather than later as the result will be essentially the same.
Our leaders say that we are still there because we can’t allow Afghanistan to become a safe haven for terrorist plots against us, but that really doesn’t make any sense. After all, terrorist plots can be planned and executed from most any country in the world and events of the past 8 years have shown that to be true. We certainly won’t be sending an occupying army to England, France, or Germany and hopefully won’t be sending one to Yemen or Somalia.
Once again, with a few minutes of quiet and unemotional thought most people would realize that by having troops in Muslim countries and killing their people, that we are doing more harm than good in trying to stop terrorist attacks against us. Our leaders certainly know this, but they won’t simply end the war and leave Afghanistan.
Our leaders are intelligent individuals so you have to wonder why they haven’t taken the logical and appropriate step of stopping our involvement in Afghanistan immediately. I’m not really sure what the reason(s) is, but I figure it has to be one or more of the following: 1) War is a profitable business for certain corporations in our country; 2) No politician wants to appear weak and maybe lose an election; 3) War is a distraction from other problems in our country; 4) We can’t leave until we are victorious; 5) Any number of other reasons that don’t make sense.
By now we should have satisfied our desire for revenge. We have certainly killed more of them then they killed of us and have inflicted more damage on their country then they did on ours. What else do we need to be even?
If we don’t leave Afghanistan right now we are ensuring that there will be generations of people who hate us and are ready to give their lives in an act of terrorism to get even with us.
We are the so-called superpower and world leader. It’s about time that we acted like a world leader and unilaterally ended this war. We can deal with terrorist plots against our country in many different ways, none of which need to include a war in Afghanistan.
There is no good war if there isn’t a damn good reason for it. If there ever was a good reason for this war, it ceased to exist many years ago.
Wednesday, December 30, 2009
Sunday, December 13, 2009
Banks - Business Entities Not People
What can I say about the big banks in this country? If we were to believe all the talk of crisis just over a year ago you would think that it would be years before these banks recovered… let alone show a profit. Yet here we are one year after the bank bailout and the big players, you know the ones that got us in this mess, are showing record profits and getting ready to give out some of their biggest bonuses ever!
For the most part they have paid back the loans from the TARP program and are therefore technically no longer beholding to the government and taxpayer. Of course they still are propped up with hundreds of billions of “bailouts” from the Federal Reserve, but nobody outside the elite inner circle really know how much we all have given to them in cheap money, guarantees against losses on their bad investments and who knows what else.
Since they have paid back their TARP loans you would think then that the credit market would be back to normal and everything would be fine. Unfortunately, the only people where everything is now fine are the same people who were most responsible for the mess that we are all in.
Millions of people are unemployed and will probably be so for a long time to come. Lots of people continue to face the threat of foreclosure on their homes, no health insurance, and many other problems caused by this economic downturn.
So… what can be done about this? It’s clear that the Obama administration and Congress are not going to take any serious action. Sure… they will pass some reforms… but I doubt that they will have very many teeth in them. The reason for this is of course money and influence… both of which the banks have in great amounts. I was thinking the other day of the old saying “One person, one vote” which is a pillar of democracy that has actually crumbled to the ground.
Corporations like to talk about freedom of speech when anyone dares try to limit the amount of money they can contribute to politicians. Guess what… corporations don’t have the right of free speech under the Constitution… in fact they don’t have any rights that are contained in the Constitution because they aren’t people. Corporations are legal entities created by various statutes and the rights they have are the ones given to them by statute. At any point in time the laws concerning corporations could be changed and forbid them to contribute to politicians in anyway whatsoever.
Remember, they have no rights other than those given to them by the politicians that we elect. The laws that give the guidelines under which they can operate could be changed to say that corporations cannot be involved in the political process at all. That wouldn’t stop employees of those corporations from being involved, but it would stop the corporate entity from being able to pump huge amounts of money into the political process.
I have no doubt that the billions of dollars put into the political process by special interest groups have poisoned our democracy to the point where it is on life support. Public financing would be a tough sell in these difficult times, but would be a small price to pay for a government that would be more responsive to the interests of the citizens (people) of this country as opposed to the corporations.
Corporations simply care about making a profit for themselves and their shareholders. I am not criticizing them for this as this is what they are created to do. We all need to realize this and get them out of the political process once and for all.
For the most part they have paid back the loans from the TARP program and are therefore technically no longer beholding to the government and taxpayer. Of course they still are propped up with hundreds of billions of “bailouts” from the Federal Reserve, but nobody outside the elite inner circle really know how much we all have given to them in cheap money, guarantees against losses on their bad investments and who knows what else.
Since they have paid back their TARP loans you would think then that the credit market would be back to normal and everything would be fine. Unfortunately, the only people where everything is now fine are the same people who were most responsible for the mess that we are all in.
Millions of people are unemployed and will probably be so for a long time to come. Lots of people continue to face the threat of foreclosure on their homes, no health insurance, and many other problems caused by this economic downturn.
So… what can be done about this? It’s clear that the Obama administration and Congress are not going to take any serious action. Sure… they will pass some reforms… but I doubt that they will have very many teeth in them. The reason for this is of course money and influence… both of which the banks have in great amounts. I was thinking the other day of the old saying “One person, one vote” which is a pillar of democracy that has actually crumbled to the ground.
Corporations like to talk about freedom of speech when anyone dares try to limit the amount of money they can contribute to politicians. Guess what… corporations don’t have the right of free speech under the Constitution… in fact they don’t have any rights that are contained in the Constitution because they aren’t people. Corporations are legal entities created by various statutes and the rights they have are the ones given to them by statute. At any point in time the laws concerning corporations could be changed and forbid them to contribute to politicians in anyway whatsoever.
Remember, they have no rights other than those given to them by the politicians that we elect. The laws that give the guidelines under which they can operate could be changed to say that corporations cannot be involved in the political process at all. That wouldn’t stop employees of those corporations from being involved, but it would stop the corporate entity from being able to pump huge amounts of money into the political process.
I have no doubt that the billions of dollars put into the political process by special interest groups have poisoned our democracy to the point where it is on life support. Public financing would be a tough sell in these difficult times, but would be a small price to pay for a government that would be more responsive to the interests of the citizens (people) of this country as opposed to the corporations.
Corporations simply care about making a profit for themselves and their shareholders. I am not criticizing them for this as this is what they are created to do. We all need to realize this and get them out of the political process once and for all.
Friday, December 4, 2009
Saving Lives – A Cost Benefit Analysis
The US Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) recently came out with recommendations about routine mammograms. A summary of the recommendation on their website states:
“The USPSTF recommends against routine screening mammography in women aged 40 to 49 years. The decision to start regular, biennial screening mammography before the age of 50 years should be an individual one and take patient context into account, including the patient's values regarding specific benefits and harms.”
In their report the USPTF acknowledges that routine screenings for women in this age group saves the lives of 1 out of 1,904. It’s clear that one of the reasons for the recommendation was the relative cost of saving those lives.
I wanted to do my own analysis to see what the cost of each saved life would be if those women continued to have mammograms as they do now.
From the Census Bureau website I found an estimate of 22,327,592 for the number of women age 40-49 in 2008. The CDC reported that 63.5% of women in that age group (14,178,021) had a mammogram every 2 years which averages to 7,089,010 mammograms each year. Using the USPSTF number that 1 out of 1,904 mortalities are prevented by the use of mammograms for this age group then 3,723 deaths would be prevented with this number of mammograms each year.
At an average cost of $125, this number of mammograms would cost $886,126,308. I found a statistic that about 8% of mammograms result in an ultrasound follow-up and with an estimated cost of $500; these 567,121 ultrasounds would cost $283,560,418. It was difficult to find a statistic as to how many breast biopsies are performed as a result of a mammogram. For the purpose of this exercise I estimated 2% which would result in 141,780 biopsies performed at an average cost of $3,000 for a total cost of $425,340,628.
The total projected cost of these three screening procedures is $1,595,027,354 which results in a cost of $428,400 for each of the 3,723 deaths that would be prevented. That may sound like a lot of money to the general public, but I would suggest that it does not to the person whose life is saved and their families.
Let’s compare that cost per life saved to the costs of the war in Afghanistan. A Congressional Research Service report dated September 2009 states that the cost of the Afghan war for the period 10/2001 – 9/2010 (includes 2010 appropriation levels) will be $300B. This is before the recent decision to add additional troops.
If you look at the above cost of $428,400 per live saved by breast cancer screening tests, then from the perspective of a cost benefit analysis the $300B needs to have saved 700,280 lives over a 9 year period or about 77,809 lives each year. Keep in mind that this does not include costs for the Iraq war and all of the other activities our country does to “keep us safe” from terrorists.
Can anyone really make the argument that by denying terrorists’ safe haven in Afghanistan (or any country for that matter) that we would save that many American lives each year from terrorist attacks? That doesn’t even account for the fact that the war is actually killing people each year, let alone saving them. It also doesn’t account for the fact that we are maiming thousands of our soldiers and innocent civilians both physically and emotionally. It certainly doesn’t count the costs of caring for so many of our veterans for the rest of their lives.
This cost analysis is not perfect, but it is close enough to ask the question of why we don’t do a cost benefit analysis of our war policy. It should certainly cause us to ask the question as to where our priorities are as a country.
Mark
“The USPSTF recommends against routine screening mammography in women aged 40 to 49 years. The decision to start regular, biennial screening mammography before the age of 50 years should be an individual one and take patient context into account, including the patient's values regarding specific benefits and harms.”
In their report the USPTF acknowledges that routine screenings for women in this age group saves the lives of 1 out of 1,904. It’s clear that one of the reasons for the recommendation was the relative cost of saving those lives.
I wanted to do my own analysis to see what the cost of each saved life would be if those women continued to have mammograms as they do now.
From the Census Bureau website I found an estimate of 22,327,592 for the number of women age 40-49 in 2008. The CDC reported that 63.5% of women in that age group (14,178,021) had a mammogram every 2 years which averages to 7,089,010 mammograms each year. Using the USPSTF number that 1 out of 1,904 mortalities are prevented by the use of mammograms for this age group then 3,723 deaths would be prevented with this number of mammograms each year.
At an average cost of $125, this number of mammograms would cost $886,126,308. I found a statistic that about 8% of mammograms result in an ultrasound follow-up and with an estimated cost of $500; these 567,121 ultrasounds would cost $283,560,418. It was difficult to find a statistic as to how many breast biopsies are performed as a result of a mammogram. For the purpose of this exercise I estimated 2% which would result in 141,780 biopsies performed at an average cost of $3,000 for a total cost of $425,340,628.
The total projected cost of these three screening procedures is $1,595,027,354 which results in a cost of $428,400 for each of the 3,723 deaths that would be prevented. That may sound like a lot of money to the general public, but I would suggest that it does not to the person whose life is saved and their families.
Let’s compare that cost per life saved to the costs of the war in Afghanistan. A Congressional Research Service report dated September 2009 states that the cost of the Afghan war for the period 10/2001 – 9/2010 (includes 2010 appropriation levels) will be $300B. This is before the recent decision to add additional troops.
If you look at the above cost of $428,400 per live saved by breast cancer screening tests, then from the perspective of a cost benefit analysis the $300B needs to have saved 700,280 lives over a 9 year period or about 77,809 lives each year. Keep in mind that this does not include costs for the Iraq war and all of the other activities our country does to “keep us safe” from terrorists.
Can anyone really make the argument that by denying terrorists’ safe haven in Afghanistan (or any country for that matter) that we would save that many American lives each year from terrorist attacks? That doesn’t even account for the fact that the war is actually killing people each year, let alone saving them. It also doesn’t account for the fact that we are maiming thousands of our soldiers and innocent civilians both physically and emotionally. It certainly doesn’t count the costs of caring for so many of our veterans for the rest of their lives.
This cost analysis is not perfect, but it is close enough to ask the question of why we don’t do a cost benefit analysis of our war policy. It should certainly cause us to ask the question as to where our priorities are as a country.
Mark
Thursday, November 19, 2009
Insider Trading - Washington DC Style
I bet you didn't you know that the Securities Exchange Commission has no authority to stop members of Congress, their staff and federal employees from using non-public information to make insider trades on the stock market. Quite a nice loophole that our federal officials have made for themselves. Maybe the Congress should pass some legislation to close that unfortunate loophole.
Public Citizen has information on this issue and is calling on Congress to eliminate this accountability loophole. Read their letter in support of a bill to ban it and find other information on the “Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge” Act.
Mark
Public Citizen has information on this issue and is calling on Congress to eliminate this accountability loophole. Read their letter in support of a bill to ban it and find other information on the “Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge” Act.
Mark
America's House is Divided
The title of this post comes from an article I read in the Cleveland Plain Dealer while visiting my parents last month. I think that the writer nails what is going on in our country right now. I am trying very hard to not dismiss people on "the other side" although they sure can make it hard sometime. The truth is that demonizing any group is not productive in making things better since neither "side" can really do that without help and assistance from each other.
This is how the article starts:
Raising her voice above the jeers and catcalls, the woman at the microphone tries to stay calm, telling the crowd that the co-pay for her medication is now $389 every two weeks.
"I live in fear every day," she says, "that I will lose my home."
The heckling -- a mix of boos, shouts and mock-pity "awwws" -- reaches a crescendo, like maybe the crowd at this New Jersey town hall meeting can't see through the haze of rage to realize that she is about to cry, this woman in a wheelchair.
Welcome to political discourse 2009.
Take a look at the rest of this article if you'd like.
Mark
This is how the article starts:
Raising her voice above the jeers and catcalls, the woman at the microphone tries to stay calm, telling the crowd that the co-pay for her medication is now $389 every two weeks.
"I live in fear every day," she says, "that I will lose my home."
The heckling -- a mix of boos, shouts and mock-pity "awwws" -- reaches a crescendo, like maybe the crowd at this New Jersey town hall meeting can't see through the haze of rage to realize that she is about to cry, this woman in a wheelchair.
Welcome to political discourse 2009.
Take a look at the rest of this article if you'd like.
Mark
Saturday, November 7, 2009
Just Getting Started
I wanted to give blogging a try and see what it's like to put my thoughts and ideas out there for people to see. We'll see how it goes!
Mark
Mark
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