Time to put her to pasture

America has had a good run. Like a good horse, she has carried many heavy loads, charged into battle with great leaders, comforted the loss and forsaken, and brought greatness to its owner. Today she is Old and tired. She has been pushed beyond the breaking point on too many occasions. The people who once came to her for comfort now only have indifference and sow the seeds of malice towards her. Her coat once shined from the constant care had become dusty and unclean. The weight of burden is too much and no amount of coaxing will inspire her to win another race. There is hope she is blessed with child.

Like all great horses, breeders look for the best qualities to pass to offspring and continue the great line. No this is not royalty breeding, this is careful, intelligent and planned breeding. America was born with values and principles, bread into her from years of hardship, oppression, and tyranny. She grew strong early on by defending her values and principles, her first rider forgoing absolute ownership, instead choose the rule of law. As new rider took her reigns, she complied. Trusting her riders, one after the other. Even going so far as to allowing her to ware blinders as not to see the troubles on her left and right.

The new colt is to be born soon. This colt has the values and principles its mother has, all is lacking is a rider. A rider that remembers that the colt is not theirs it belongs to the owners. A rider that uses the reigns to guides the colt and not a tool of obedience. A rider that looks at the sunset and contemplates the pass with a focus on the sunrise. A rider who will serves the colt, brushing its coat daily, feeding it a proper diet, and allowing it to rest and recover. A rider who will promises never to allow blinders be put on the colt ever again.

My friends, I ask you to consider the challenges that face us now. There are only really two options as I fear they had in 1776, get more people to support them (elect people to positions of power) or as they did, cede from England. Are we at this point? Do we need to abolish our government and restore the Constitution and Republic? Even if we elect the right people will they be able to repeal the laws that have been created over the years that move us from a Republic to an Oligarchy (Socialism)? Can we come together as a nation of laws? Will the public understand the difference between a Democracy and a Republic?

What are your opinions? What if any are your answers? Please comment; discussion or debate is how we come to understand each other. I want to understand you.

Harry

“That government should be of laws rather than of men”

Jaycee Creed by C. William Brownfield ca. 1946

The point that Brownfield was trying to make was the United States of America needed to continue to be a Republic, limited government, not a Democracy, big government. “Wait a minute,” you say, “don’t we live in a Democracy?” the answer is a resounding no. We live in a Republic whose rule is law. A Democracy is rule by majority. A Democracy is a scary thing for example; a majority of the people says that they can take your money so they do; a majority of the people says that they can take your children so they do. This is not the form of Government we have, we have a Republic or a government of laws.

The following situation will illustrate the difference. A person is accused of raping and killing a seven-year-old child. A mob of people goes out to find this person. When they find the person, they vote to kill the person. In a Democracy they can, however, in a Republic the police show up and tell the mob that they cannot kill the person. That person has rights under the law, to due process, a speedy trial, and a trial of their peers. Not only that, the jury may only find the defendant guilty by consensus, not a majority. This is the benefit of a Republic, “That government should be of laws rather than of men.”

The Greeks were the first to recognize the benefits of a Republic, however, the Romans were the first to try it and it worked great. As time progressed, some Romans realized that they could elect representatives that make laws to benefit a few. Soon there were laws allowing the government to seize private property (eminent domain), farm subsidies, home subsidies, and welfare. Soon the government went broke and the people demanded more. Anarchy reigned and soon the end of the first Republic came. This however was not the end of Rome. Seeking order, stability, and financial control the citizens of Rome put their trust in a dictator, Caser.

This brief history lesson is about to repeat itself. We are moving away from our founding fathers ideals of a Republic. Laws are have been created to benefit a few while diminishing the liberties of others. Social programs and entitlements have bankrupted our Nation. Banking laws encourage a debt lifestyle bankrupting our fellow citizens. Corporate laws have granted the leaders of these companies huge pay at the expense of the stakeholder and the taxpayer. By executive order, laws are created to invade our privacy without due process. And now our government wants to do more, universal health care, nationalize banks, and tax an invisible unscientific problem.

America we don’t need any more government help. We are about to go beyond a Democracy (which really dose not exist) to become a Socialist Society. Government will control every aspect of our lives. Our freedoms will be gone. Voted out and replaced by social programs. Leaving our nation in the hands of the government and not in the hands of the people whom the laws were intended to protect.

Harry

Why Government Social Programs Don’t Work and the Solution to the Problem

I was once the treasure of a government and business program (keeping the name anonymous to protect the people I worked with). I was asked to attend a meeting to see presentations from the different areas of out reach so I would feel comfortable signing the budget. The first presenter was in charge of coordinating the local food banks. He presented a PowerPoint presentation and when he got to a slide showing the success they had achieved I raised my hand to point out a mistake with his graph.

The graph depicted a ten-year trend of food collection; in year one they collected 100,000 pounds of food and now the collect five million pounds. Since the social program he works for was mandated to put people to work, I pointed out that his graph should be headed to zero pounds. Since I was the only non-public employee in the room, all eyes were on me. I explained that if our goal is to get people back to work, why are we collecting more food, increasing the budget, and hiring more employees? I went on to say that the goal should be to put this program out of business. That was too much common sense.
I am not a mean person; I care deeply for the less fortunate. I was once in my life very poor. My dad and I would pick up cans in a garbage dump to make money for our mortgage. I have walked in their shoes. I have gone without many comforts. I understand their struggles and make a point to help. I give to my Church’s soup kitchen and donated food to Church’s food bank for example. This is where social programs need to be, in the local community, run by volunteers, and supported by donations. The paradigm shift will benefit everyone. We will be able to due away with some government run social programs and allow volunteer efforts to expand. Here is how it works.

Instead of me paying tax to the government to support a social program, some that go against my values and principles, I get to choose who I give to. The benefits of doing this are significant. The government does not need to pay people to collect these taxes, prepare reports, print checks, and spend time discussing who gets what, etc. etc. etc. Communities get to choose which non-profit organizations they get to donate to, their money goes further due to fewer overheads, they don’t support programs that are not needed in their community, and the list goes on and on.

This is only one program run by the government that doesn’t make sense. I am sure there are many more. I don’t want to due away with social programs, I want the operations to be conducted by local organizations. I want to be able to choose where my money will go and not have the government decide. I am not helpless. I can decide. I can choose. I can make a difference. And I can do it better without government intervention.

Harry

Medical Record Keeping Plan

During the early 90’s, I operated a computer consulting business. One of my clients was a dentist. He was a man who loved technology and hired me to install a network of computers in is office. The goal was for him to be able to access patient records, x-rays, and other data from any terminal in his office. This was no ordinary task. Back then the top of the line computer had 486 processor, 1 megabyte of memory, and a 40-megabyte hard drive. A compact disk writer was brand new technology and most networked computers were in large companies not in a small business. The hardware was just half the battle. My biggest challenge would come when I would need to integrate, medical billing software, patient information, patient records, x-rays, and what ever else the doctor wanted stored. To make things even harder I had a limited budget.

The doctors reasoning for all this was to reduce his overhead. He was spending a large amount of money every month storing patient records. He could only see a few patients a day because an employee would sometimes need to drive a couple of miles and search though his storage area to find needed files to bring back to the office for review. Seeing how much money was spent doing this convinced him that there must be a better way. I agreed and started work on solving his problem. I wont go into details, suffice to say, most of his goals were meet. It would take technology a few more years to be able to complete his dream.

Lets jump a head to today. All of what my dentist client asked for can be done very simply today. Most doctors and dentist use some sort of electronic patient record storage system. What is needed now is a smart system that will streamline the filing of claims, ensure accurate and secure patient information, and allow patient record secure access anywhere.

This is my design for the all in one device. It will store all your medical records or be the key to access your records from a secure site. It will transmit and receive information and updates via RFID. It will display general information incase of an accident i.e. what medications you are taking, allergies, and who to contact. Once connected to the health care providers system, it will fill out the proper forms, if needed send prescriptions to the pharmacy, and since it is also your flexible spending account debit card, it will pay the bill and update your balance.

All of the technologies exist today to build this device or we could just write a Java based program that could do the same and be loaded into a cell phone or flash memory. The savings in time will reduce cost for doctors who must pay a lot for storage, employees to file claims, payment collection etc. The patient will benefit by always having important medical information with them, avoid medications that they are allergic to, and reduce the amount of time waiting for things to happen. When you are sick or dying speed is essential.

There needs to be standards that health care professionals must conform to such as digital note taking. Speech recognition or typing data in to a persons file will reduce the redundancy of note taking and transcription. They must decide on what each prognosis will be called. This will facilitate database accuracy. There are many more standard to workout, and since I am not a health care provider the rest should be left up to them.

This is just one piece of my health care plan. There are a few more to go. So to keep this as post short as possible, I will stop now.

The K-12 Plan and Solution

Education is an ever-growing problem in the United States. We keep pouring more and more money into it expecting better results only to be disappointed with the results. What is needed is for the teaching system to change. To start lets look at our students.

Everyone excels at a different skill. Some are better at math while others are better at singing. If they are to succeed we need to let them focus on the subjects they excel at and not worry about the ones that they perform poorly at. Of course they must be able to read, do basic math (add, subtract, multiply and divide), understand the Constitution, and understand financial responsibility. Above and beyond that, test scores will reveal the area the student excels at, so they either move to a trade school, apprenticeship, guild, military, college, etc. The reason is we don’t need average students we need expert students.

When I was in high school I was completely board. I was smarter than some of my teachers and a lot smarter than most of the students. I excelled in math, science, and social studies, but I was most interested in science and technology. If I were in my proposed program, I could have spent more time in the lab exploring interesting experiments, developing my programming skills, and electronic skills. The problem was I had to take classes that hand no meaning to me then.

English Lit during my freshman year took up most of my study time. The worst part is I never got it. While other students understood the satire, irony, and social problems presented in the stories, they were only stories to me. Fortunately I have read the books now that I am older and can understand the stories, however they did not help me move forward in my education. The same went for a few other classes during my high school years. I lived in a rural area so I did not have a choice of schools to pick from. This is why we also need vouchers.

If the Federal Government will continue to fund public education, they need to offer vouchers to all students. This will allow students to attend schools that offer the best fit for them. This will also make public schools pseudo private. Meaning that the best schools get funded while poor schools fade away. Why because this is how capitalism works, if you have a product or service people want they will buy it. This also enables parents who want their children to attend private schools the ability to use their tax dollars to pay for it. Everyone wins. Students get to attend schools they want to go to, excel at subjects they are interested in, bad schools get closed, and good teachers get rewarded.

How do good teachers get rewarded? By paying them a commission of course. What? Since parents and students can choose the school they go to, teacher’s salaries will grow by the number of students they teach. If they are excellent teachers more students will attend their class, if they are poor teachers, students should be able to request their money back. Remember parents and students are customers who want the best. No more pay raises’ for everyone, performance in the only deciding factor and parents and students will make the decisions.

Everything up to now has been the hard part, now the easy stream lining the bureaucracy. Superintendent is responsible for school principals, public relations, reporting to the local and state government, and employee policy setting. Principals are responsible for teacher and student safety, facility maintenance, school budget, human resources, community involvement, and discipline. All other commissions, committees, boards, etc. no longer have a role in siphoning off money.

That’s it in a nutshell.

Harry

My Plan for President Obama's Energy and Green Jobs

Global warming is not a fact it is a theory. The theories main claim is man is producing more CO2 than nature can handle thus resulting in the warming of the planet. The problem is, recent data suggest that the planet is cooling. There are even scientist whom believe we are entering into the start of the ice age cycle. Scientist in Antarctica looking at CO2 levels found that the planet has had higher CO2 levels in the past.

Reliable science must be done so we can have a better understanding of climate. Non-scientist like Al Gore getting a Nobel Prize for his documentary that includes poor unreliable data, only scares the public. The real problem is that modeling climate is not possible. The amount of variables exceeds the processing power any computer or super computers can handle. To truly discover the changes require anticipating the breath exhaled by a baby, as well as the flapping of butterfly’s wings. The problem is as scientists say non-trivial. To give and an example of the complexity, it is more likely that we will build a highway to Hawaii from California before we are able to accurately predict next weeks weather.

What we need to address, and soon is our reliance on imported fuels. We need to stop buying them and start using our own. We are the most advanced civilization on the planet and yet we still see the need to transfer our wealth to other countries to supply our energy needs. So here is my plan, it is simple, it creates private industry jobs, and we can do it. The only thing missing is the blessing from the minority of people who believe no matter what we do we will destroy the planet. For you guys remain calm and read on.

To start we need to start drilling for oil in areas that we know it is and supplement the US with oil reserves we have. Only companies, employees, materials, and equipment from the US may be used. We have very smart and creative people in the US that will be able to design and build rigs that limit the impact on the environment. They may even invent new ways to extract oil never though of because this project needs to be profitable, pay for itself, be built on time, on budget and offer consumers a better price than foreign crude without government subsidies.

We need the oil to hold us over till we can build enough alternative energy sources to turn us into a country that runs on electric motors and not combustion engines.

Next we need to build large-scale solar power plants like the one suggested in the Mohave Dessert. It could be build so large that it could provide power for the entire nation. I know we will be destroying a lot of dessert, however, the power is needed till we can develop better methods of power production. The net result is very inexpensive power that companies need to manufacture products. Cheap energy means cheap products. Wow we might be able to sell our products overseas because it is cheaper to produce them here than abroad. Wait a minute, when we sell more we hire more people. I think I just put a lot of people back to work.

At the same time that we are building the solar array, we need to look into plasma engines. What you say, aren’t they only for space travel and can’t be use on Earth? You are correct if you want to use the plasma engine in a car or plane it wont work, however, it will be excellent for boiling water. Steam turbines can be powered by plasma engines, which generate clean intense hot exhaust. Just ask NASA.

Now you are saying, okay smarty-pants you are going to ruin the environment with all of the batteries needed to store all of this energy right? Wrong, we can store all the energy we need in flywheels. What? Yes Flywheels. A company called US Flywheels at one time was developing flywheel electricity storage that could store lots of energy. The flywheel was held in place by a magnetic field and placed in a vacuum. This process allowed the energy to be stored for long periods of time with little power loss. This is the technology used in many satellites to store electricity incase the solar panel fails or the satellite is not in direct sunlight.

Wow I seem to be creating new jobs and saving Americans money all the while reducing our dependency on foreign oil and creating a smaller carbon footprint. So what is the cost of all this? I don’t know. What I do know is for this all to work we need to have the focus we had when we were heading to the moon. That’s right I believe that within a decade we can make this happen. What we need now is a leader who will push for private industries to do this as well as open up areas for drilling. We can do this America. President Obama has no plan but to tax and spend us to death. He said where is your plan? Well President Obama here is my plan. It is sound, it is cost effective, it creates private sector jobs, stimulates scientific research, it reduces American’s energy bills, it removes our dependency on foreign oil, it reduces our carbon footprint, and most important it does not put us in debt.

I will, in the next few days, offer my plans to fix education, health care, the budget and any thing else the President has no plan for or has a poor plan. I hope he reads this message and realize that there are smart people in the United States that are willing to help. Bill Gates the riches man in the country surrounds himself with smart people, maybe President Obama should take a page out of his play book.

Harry

The Fed Chair Geithner wants what?

I keep watching the news hoping that our government officials would change their ways. It is not happening. Today Fed Chair Geithner asked congress for more power to take over private businesses. The Press Secretary came out and told reporters that it just makes things easier, don't worry. We need to worry!

First sign of the craziness that is called the US Government came in the form of a bill that was passed that no one read. Next congress wanting to take away bonuses from AIG Executives. Lets break contracts, and lets not forget Chris Dodd lying about the language that kept the bonuses in the legislation. Next my favorite congressman Barney Frank, the very person who destroyed the housing industry and AIG, was threatening AIG CEO Liddy to get the names of executives. Then congressmen and women calling for extreme taxes on the bonuses. What is next?

I want to do something. I want to be a voice of reason. I want to express the need for values and principles. I want to meet people who have the same ideas, values and principles. I want to form a group that meet regularly to discuss the issues, come up with solutions and implement them. Please join me.

Harry

Taxes and Fees

My wife asked me to check out two bills, HB 2436 and HB 2461.

HB 2436 is an Oregon bill designed to provide housing needs for the poor by increasing the fees collected by county and state clerk offices by $15.00. They expect to raise 19.6 million dollars over the next two years. According to the Marion County Clerk, Bill Burgess, in all 36 counties during FY 07-08, there were only 972,723 taxable transactions. Lets do simple math 15 x 972,723 - 19,600,000 = -5,009,155, where are they going to get the rest? Mr. Burgess also says there has been a 20% decline in Oregonians using this service. Lets do more math. 15 x (972,723 x .80) - 19,600,000 = -7,927,324. I wish a legislator could do simple math. The other question is who will be responsible for the low income rentals. Are we now going to let the government operate rental units or are they going to set prices at privately owned apartments? Either is unacceptable in a free society.


HB 2461 Beer tax. The premise is to use the tax money to pay for prevention and treatment of drug and alcohol abuse. What about the wine and spirits producers, don't they need a tax increase too? What about the drug makers and dealers? Should they not also contribute? The funniest thing to me is that we are taxing some of the people that need the help. Hey I forgot a group, the home brewers, we need to tax them also. How you ask? Impose taxes on hops, yeast and other products needed to make beer. In a time of economic downturn this is not what we need. Drug and alcohol problems are not are biggest concern at the moment. While we debate the need to raise taxes, more and more Oregonians are losing their jobs only to feel the government taking more money away from them.

These two bills will just grow government, tax the middle and lower class, and reduce liberties for Oregonians. Some legislators think this is good for Oregon. Let's examine some other revenue streams that harm all Oregonians. Tobacco tax, who smokes more the rich, the middle class, or the poor? Poor. And the lottery, who purchases most of the lottery tickets? Again, the poor. Gas tax, who drives the most? You get the picture. The very people that need most or all of the help that these tax streams provide are paid for by the people who have the least amount of income to spend.

Harry

E-mail to Senator Morse

Dear Senator Morse,

Please do not draft any legislation that imposes a tax on anyone in Oregon. I believe that one of the core values of the Republican Party is to limit taxation. Yes, there is a shortfall in the budget, and yes, the economy is bad. Consider what your values are! Republicans know that in times of economic downturn that the only course of action is to lower taxes to get the economy moving. Consider cutting the budget. I do not want Oregon Legislators to follow the Federal lead of tax and spend and spend and tax and spend some more. Enough with deficit spending. Work within the budget. I know it's not easy to follow a budget, I have to follow one every month, I just don't ever spend more than I have. Please work with the money you do have. Our future depends on men and women, like you, having the strength to seek a way to balance the budget.

Harry