Is CAFE RIO cooking Jeff’s pasta for $4 tonight? I have a party of 4 and 2 kids. Can they share the pasta?
Author: MontereyBayForum
Where is Aptos CAFE RIO? Are …
Psychologist in Aptos: Voters want SOME government services, NOT necessarily what politiicans offer. freedomOK.net/wordpress
Tom Honig erroneously writes: “the problem really comes down to an essential flaw in any democracy: voters want government services, but they don’t want to pay for them…” (Good Times, May 21, 2009)
No, Tom. Voters want SOME government services and they want to CHOOSE which ones they want to fund. When times are tough, voters are likely to be even more careful about their choices. We all have less money and it has to do more.
For example, grandparents with 1/3 less money for retirement because of the meltdown still care about the education and quality of life of their grand-kids. They still will spend money on their grand-kids. So how do they stretch what they have?
There are a lot of statistics that suggest that California school test scores are at the bottom of the pack. And that California teachers are paid at the top of the pack. So why should those grandparents – and other voters – throw more money to the teachers’ unions? The unions protect the worst teachers from being fired. The unions, so far as I know, do not support merit pay for the best teachers.
Maybe there has to be a “meldtown” to get our priorities straight? Perhaps the “worst of times” can become the “best of times”?
How about a way that registered voters sitting in their living room can click a button and let law makers know yea or nea. The technology already exists. Professors are using it in their classroom for instant feed back. Let’s use the technology to let voters CHOOSE.
By the way, Tom, this is going out as a TWITTER. Yes, I know per last week’s article that you think TWITTER is for the birds. I think TWITTER has interesting possibilities other than answering, “what are you doing”. Why not answer, “what are you thinking that matters?
Cameron Jackson www.freedomOK.net/wordpress 831 688-6002
Hungry in Aptos? Wish the local restaurants would “tweet” their special for the night on one TWITTER in APTOS? www.freedomOK.net/wordpress
From an Aptos psychologist: Think you want FREE federally run health care? www.freedomOK.net/wordpress
The Cost of Free Government Health Care
By David Gibberman, in the American Thinker
Proponents of government-run health care like to point out that countries with such a system spend a smaller percentage of their gross domestic product on health care than the United States. What they don’t like to mention is how those savings are achieved. For example:
Patients Lose the Right To Decide What Treatment They’ll Receive. Instead, patients receive whatever care politicians and bureaucratic number crunchers decide is “cost effective.”
Britain’s National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence usually won’t approve a medical procedure or medicine unless its cost, divided by the number of quality-adjusted life years that it will give a patient, is no more than what it values a year of life in great health – £30,000 (about $44,820). So if you want a medical procedure that is expected to extend your life by four years but it costs $40,000 and bureaucrats decide that it will improve the quality of your life by 0.2 (death is zero, 1.0 is best possible health, and negative values can be assigned), you’re out of luck because $40,000 divided by 0.8 (4 X 0.2) is $50,000.
There Are Long Waits for Care. One way governments reduce health care costs is to require patients to wait for treatment. Patients have to wait to see a general practitioner, then wait to see a specialist, then wait for any diagnostic tests, and then wait for treatment.
The United Kingdom’s National Health Service recently congratulated itself for reducing to 18 weeks the average time that a patient has to wait from referral to a specialist to treatment. Last year, Canadians had to wait an average of 17.3 weeks from referral to a specialist to treatment (Fraser Institute’s Waiting Your Turn). The median wait was 4.9 weeks for a CT scan, 9.7 weeks for an MRI, and 4.4 weeks for an ultrasound.
Delay in treatment is not merely an inconvenience. Think of the pain and suffering it costs patients. Or lost work time, decreased productivity, and sick pay. Worse, think of the number of deaths caused by delays in treatment.
Patients Are Denied the Latest Medical Technology and Medicines. To save money, countries with government-run health care deny or limit access to new technology and medicines. Those with a rare disease are often out of luck because medicines for their disease usually cost more than their quality-adjusted life years are deemed worth.
In a Commonwealth Fund/Harvard/Harris 2000 survey of physicians in the United States, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, and the United Kingdom, physicians in all countries except the United States reported major shortages of resources important in providing quality care; only U.S. physicians did not see shortages as a significant problem.
According to the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) Health Data (2008), there are 26.5 MRIs and 33.9 CT scanners per million people in the United States compared to 6.2 MRIs and 12 CT scanners in Canada and 5.6 MRIs and 7.6 CT scanners in the United Kingdom.
Breakthroughs in Life-Saving Treatments Are Discouraged. Countries with government-run health care save money by relying on the United States to pay the research and development costs for new medical technology and medications. If we adopt the cost-control policies that have limited innovation in other countries, everyone will suffer.
The Best and Brightest Are Discouraged from Becoming Doctors. Countries with government-run health care save money by paying doctors less. According to a Commonwealth Fund analysis, U.S. doctors earn more than twice as much as doctors in Canada and Germany, more than three times as much as doctors in France, and four times as much as doctors in Finland, Norway, and Sweden. The best and brightest will be encouraged to go into professions where they can earn more money and have more autonomy.
Is Government-Run Health Care Better? Proponents of government-run health care argue that Americans will receive better care despite the foregoing. Their main argument has been that despite paying more for health care the United States trails other countries in infant mortality and average life expectancy.
However, neither is a good measure of the quality of a country’s health care system. Each depends more on genetic makeup, personal lifestyle (including diet and physical activity), education, and environment than available health care. For example, in their book The Business of Health, Robert L. Ohsfeldt and John E. Schneider found that if it weren’t for our high rate of deaths from homicides and car accidents Americans would have the highest life expectancy.
Infant mortality statistics are difficult to compare because other countries don’t count as live births infants below a certain weight or gestational age. June E. O’Neill and Dave M. O’Neill found that Canada’s infant mortality would be higher than ours if Canadians had as many low-weight births (the U.S. has almost three times as many teen mothers, who tend to give birth to lower-weight infants).
A better measure of a country’s health care is how well it actually treats patients. The CONCORD study published in 2008 found that the five-year survival rate for cancer (adjusted for other causes of death) is much higher in the United States than in Europe (e.g., 91.9% vs. 57.1% for prostate cancer, 83.9% vs. 73% for breast cancer, 60.1% vs. 46.8% for men with colon cancer, and 60.1 vs. 48.4% for women with colon cancer). The United Kingdom, which has had government-run health care since 1948, has survival rates lower than those for Europe as a whole.
Proponents of government-run health care argue that more preventive care will be provided. However, a 2007 Commonwealth Fund report comparing the U.S., Australia, Canada, Germany, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom found that the U.S. was #1 in preventive care. Eighty-five percent of U.S. women age 25-64 reported that they had a Pap test in the past two years (compared to 58% in the United Kingdom); 84% of U.S. women age 50-64 reported that they had a mammogram in the past two years (compared to 63% in the United Kingdom).
The United Kingdom’s National Health Service has been around for more than 60 years but still hasn’t worked out its kinks. In March, Britain’s Healthcare Commission (since renamed the Care Quality Commission) reported that as many as 1,200 patients may have died needlessly at Stafford Hospital and Cannock Chase Hospital over a three-year period. The Commission described filthy conditions, unhygienic practices, doctors and nurses too few in number and poorly trained, nurses not knowing how to use the insufficient number of working cardiac monitors, and patients left without food, drink, or medication for as many as four days.
Does Government-Run Health Care Provide Everyone Access to Equal Care? Proponents tout government-run health care as giving everyone access to the same health care, regardless of race, nationality, or wealth. But that’s not true. The British press refers to the National Health Service as a “postcode lotter” because a person’s care varies depending on the neighborhood (“postcode”) in which he or she lives. EUROCARE-4 found large difference in cancer survival rates between the rich and poor in Europe. The Fraser Institute’s Waiting Your Turn concludes that famous and politically connected Canadians are moved to the front of queues, suburban and rural residents have less access to care than their urban counterparts, and lower income Canadians have less access to care than their higher income neighbors.
Ironically, as we’re moving toward having our government completely control health care, countries with government-run health care are moving in the opposite direction. Almost every European country has introduced market reforms to reduce health costs and increase the availability and quality of care. The United Kingdom has proposed a pilot program giving patients money to purchase health care. Why is this being done? According to Alan Johnson, Secretary for Health, personal health budgets “will give more power to patients and drive up the quality of care” (The Guardian, 1/17/09). It’s a lesson we all should learn before considering how to improve our health care system.
For other articles from the American ThinkerAmerican Thinker
Aptos food: Try the Cafe Rio on the beach. Fresh fish delivered daily. Cooked the way you like. www.freedomOK.net/wordpress
Aptos psychologist: What allows people to work and love as they grow old? Employ “mature” defenses (altruism, humor etc.), a stable marriage, education, some exercise, not smoke, healthy weight and not abuse alcohol. www.freedomOK.net/wordpress
The following is from The Atlantic article on happiness. Citation at bottom.
“What allows people to work, and love, as they grow old? By the time the Grant Study men had entered retirement, Vaillant, who had then been following them for a quarter century, had identified seven major factors that predict healthy aging, both physically and psychologically.
“Employing mature adaptations was one. The others were education, stable marriage, not smoking, not abusing alcohol, some exercise, and healthy weight. Of the 106 Harvard men who had five or six of these factors in their favor at age 50, half ended up at 80 as what Vaillant called “happy-well†and only 7.5 percent as “sad-sick.†Meanwhile, of the men who had three or fewer of the health factors at age 50, none ended up “happy-well†at 80. Even if they had been in adequate physical shape at 50, the men who had three or fewer protective factors were three times as likely to be dead at 80 as those with four or more factors.
What factors don’t matter? Vaillant identified some surprises. Cholesterol levels at age 50 have nothing to do with health in old age. While social ease correlates highly with good psychosocial adjustment in college and early adulthood, its significance diminishes over time. The predictive importance of childhood temperament also diminishes over time: shy, anxious kids tend to do poorly in young adulthood, but by age 70, are just as likely as the outgoing kids to be “happy-well.†Vaillant sums up: “If you follow lives long enough, the risk factors for healthy life adjustment change. There is an age to watch your cholesterol and an age to ignore it.â€
The study has yielded some additional subtle surprises. Regular exercise in college predicted late-life mental health better than it did physical health. And depression turned out to be a major drain on physical health: of the men who were diagnosed with depression by age 50, more than 70 percent had died or were chronically ill by 63. More broadly, pessimists seemed to suffer physically in comparison with optimists, perhaps because they’re less likely to connect with others or care for themselves.
For more information about “mature defenses” and what allows people to work and love when old, go to
Aptos psychologist: it’s how you choose to respond to life’s events – not the events themselves – that matters & shapes your life. What makes for happiness? www.freedomOK.net/wordpress
This story is from the famous study of Harvard men selected from the classes of 1942, 1943 and 1944. Half of the men are still alive today. They are now in their late 80’s. One Harvard selectee was President Kennedy. Their lives were followed and are still followed.
It appears to me that what matters is how we respond to what life puts on our plate. We don’t get to pick what is on our plate. We can affect how we respond. What say you to the following story?
“Vaillant … tells the story of a father who on Christmas Eve puts into one son’s stocking a fine gold watch, and into another son’s, a pile of horse manure. The next morning, the first boy comes to his father and says glumly, “Dad, I just don’t know what I’ll do with this watch. It’s so fragile. It could break.†The other boy runs to him and says, “Daddy! Daddy! Santa left me a pony, if only I can just find it!â€
For the complete article, go to The Atlantic
Far from Aptos: showdown over affirmative action policies in Ricci v. Destefano. Should reverse discrimination continue? www.freedomOK.net/wordpress
The Case for Colorblind Justice
By: John Perazzo
FrontPageMagazine.com | Monday, May 18, 2009
“Frank Ricci is a man on a mission. The white firefighter from New Haven, Connecticut, is currently involved in a Supreme Court case that will soon determine whether his city government unjustly denied him a job promotion because of his skin color. More broadly, the case of Ricci v. DeStefano is shaping up as the biggest showdown over affirmative action policies in recent history.
“Mr. Ricci’s saga started in 2003. At the time, he was one of more than 100 firemen who took a written and oral exam that the New Haven Fire Department (NHFD) administered in order to determine whom it would promote to fill 15 openings for lieutenant and captain positions. In preparation for the test, Ricci, a dyslexic who struggles with reading and retaining information, simply outworked most of his competition. He spent more than $1,000 to purchase books that the city had recommended as useful study guides, and he studied for 8 to 13 hours each day. When the test scores were ultimately tabulated, Ricci’s name was near the top of the list. The promotion should have been his.
“It didn’t happen that way. It soon emerged that New Haven’s black firefighters, on average, had performed quite poorly on the same test that Ricci had aced. In fact, not a single African American had scored high enough to qualify for a promotion. When word of this got around, a number of local black leaders with political influence thundered that the exam itself was to blame, arguing alternately that it was racially biased on the one hand, and a poor predictor of an applicant’s potential to fulfill the duties of a leadership position on the other.
“Especially vocal was Rev. Boise Kimber, a key vote-getter for New Haven’s Democratic mayor John DeStefano. Kimber held that “diversity†ought to be one of the chief considerations guiding the promotion process. By extension, he and his fellow activists demanded that if the department was not going to promote at least a few blacks, then it should not promote anyone at all. Moreover, they warned that if the city’s civil service board were to certify the exam results, significant “political ramifications†would result.
Sufficiently intimidated, New Haven concurred that the exam apparently was flawed and thus elected not to certify the results, just as Kimber and his fellow agitators had demanded. The National Law Journal reported that the city “defended its decision not to certify the results of [the] exams … because it feared Title VII liability if minorities were not promoted into the upper ranks of the department.â€
“The reference is to Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, a federal law that “prohibits employment discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.†Unfortunately, activist judges have become increasingly inclined to view any differences in the test scores of separate demographic groups as prima facie evidence that the tests in question are invalid because they have a racially “discriminatory effect.†That’s precisely what happened in New Haven.
In response to New Haven’s decision, Frank Ricci and 17 fellow firefighters (16 whites and 1 Hispanic) filed a federal civil-rights lawsuit in 2004 contending that they had been wrongfully denied promotions they deserved by Mayor DeStefano and the city. But U.S. District Judge Janet Arterton dismissed the case, citing her concern that if the high-scoring whites were to be promoted, the low-scoring blacks might indeed file a discrimination lawsuit charging that Title VII had been violated.
“Next, Ricci et al. took their case to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, where they presented their arguments to a three-judge panel that included Sonia Sotomayor, a Bill Clinton appointee who is considered Barack Obama’s likely nominee to replace outgoing David Souter on the Supreme Court. The panel sided against Ricci and upheld New Haven’s decision to dismiss the test results.
‘Four years later, all 13 members of the same Appeals Court presided over a retrial of the Ricci case. They again agreed, this time by a 7-6 margin, that the fire department’s test was invalid. Six of the seven judges who ruled with the majority were, like Sotomayor, Bill Clinton appointees. Echoing Judge Arterton, five of the seven judges in the majority agreed that the city could be “faced with a prima facie case of disparate impact liability under Title VII†if it were to certify the test results.
Notably, it was a moderate Clinton appointee, Judge Jose Cabranes, who, in his dissent from the majority opinion, said that the Ricci case involved “an unconstitutional racial quota or set-aside.†“At its core,†Cabranes wrote, “this case presents a straightforward question: May a municipal employer disregard the results of a qualifying examination, which was carefully constructed to ensure race-neutrality, on the ground that the results of that examination yielded too many qualified applicants of one race and not enough of another?â€
“The question goes to the heart of a trend toward “reverse†discrimination that long predates Ricci v. DeStefano. The trend originally grew out of a simple premise: If the racist barriers preventing talented blacks from getting ahead were eliminated, then they could reasonably be expected to succeed at rates similar to those of whites—without the aid of preferential treatment or lowered standards. However, that ideal has since devolved into a racial spoils system that merely substitutes present-day discrimination against whites for past discrimination against blacks. Over the past four decades, the logical result of that perspective has been played out countless times in American courts.
“Consider, for instance, a 1982 case involving the San Francisco Fire Department (SFFD), which had a longstanding tradition of periodically testing large groups of applicants and hiring those who scored best. The test had two parts—one physical and one written—with the latter accounting for 60 percent of each applicant’s score. In 1982 a court determined that there were not enough minorities in the department and ordered that more be hired to “correct†this shortage—even though there was no evidence that the existing racial imbalance was due to any past discrimination.
“In response to the court order, the SFFD aggressively recruited and pre-registered minorities for the test. But because only 20 percent of them actually followed through and took the exam, the number of minorities who received passing grades fell far short of the court’s prescription. Thus the fire department, desperate to hire as many nonwhites as possible, lowered its cutoff score for the written test by 14 percent. When this lowered standard still yielded too few minorities with passing grades, the results of the written test were disregarded altogether. The department simply hired equal numbers of whites, blacks, and Hispanics, even though many of the nonwhites who were hired in this manner scored substantially lower than whites who were rejected.
“Following the discovery of the SFFD’s overall racial imbalance, it was also found that whites in the department historically had been promoted in significantly greater numbers than blacks—not because of discrimination, but simply because the former tended to outscore the latter on tests used to determine promotions. Yet even though no intentional discrimination could be proven, a court now mandated that the SFFD promote more blacks—so as to “rectify†the existing imbalance. Thus a special grading system was devised, allowing blacks to be promoted even over whites who scored much higher. Moreover, blacks who had failed the old, “discriminatory†test were now given jobs and back pay—based on the logic that they “should†have passed the first time.
“Nearly thirty years later, Ricci v. DeStefano has become the latest front in the fight against reverse discrimination. At issue is the impact that such “affirmative action†policies have on the American workforce. What effect do they have on white employees’ perceptions of, and suspicions about, the minorities who work alongside them? Moreover, do such programs really benefit minority employees? Above all, it is a question of basic fairness and equality: What kind of society are we creating when we accept an arrangement by which marginally qualified people are hired over those more qualified, simply because of their skin color or ethnic background?
“In its ruling in Ricci v. DeStefano, the Supreme Court will determine more than Frank Ricci’s future. It will also decide how far – or how little – the country has progressed in recent decades.
John Perazzo is the Managing Editor of DiscoverTheNetworks and is the author of The Myths That Divide Us: How Lies Have Poisoned American Race Relations. For more information on his book, click here. E-mail him at WorldStudiesBooks@gmail.com