Whether one likes the new health care law – or wants it repealed, knowing the following ten “things that are so” could help bridge this misinformation gap:

1. Hundreds of thousands of Americans go bankrupt every year because of medical bills. That does not happen in any other developed country.
2. The U. S. insurance industry has the highest administrative costs—paper work, reviewing claims, profits—of any health care payer in the world.
3. The U.S. spends 18% of GDP on health care while the rest of the world spends 9% and the U S. has fewer doctors and nurses. The cost of health care is rising, threatening to produce funding deficits for Medicare, etc.
4. The cost for health care premiums in the U.S. has doubled in the last eight years at a rate 3.7 times faster than wages have increased.
5. Fifty-one million Americans do not have health insurance coverage.
6. The annual cost of health care waste—fraud, abuse, clinical and operational services for which the costs outweighs the benefits, the cost of malpractice insurance, admin, etc—in the U.S. may be as high as $800 billion a year.
7. The American health care system is strongly resistant to change. The vested interests that do well in this industry have blocked significant restructuring. One of most effective strategies is to label change as “socialized medicine.”
8. Many developed countries committed to free enterprise have determined that everyone has a right to health care and provide it. The core belief/value driving this policy in these countries is: Every person shall have access to a doctor when needed.
9. For all their problems, other industrialized countries tend to do better than the U.S, on basic measures of health care system performance, which are coverage, cost control, choice, infant mortality and life expectancy.
10. Most of the health care systems in developed countries are not “socialized”, but rely on private-sector mechanisms to provide and pay for health care.

If you’re interested in learning more about the pros and cons of health care systems around the world and the pros and cons of “The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act,” I would suggest reading T. R. Reid’s The Healing of America – A Global Quest for Better, Cheaper, and Fairer Health Care.

There’s nothing wrong with being rich. Most Americans dream of being rich someday. We admire the “rich and famous.” Some of us dedicate our lives to achieving great wealth. Mitt Romney makes absolutely no apologies for his net worth of hundreds of millions of dollars.

America is very tolerant of rich people. We often hold them up for special honors and awards for no other reason than that they are rich. Mitt Romney and his family fall into that category. Romney is not a war hero, a doctor, an educator, a movie star, or famous author. Yes, he was a somewhat successful governor in Massachusetts for one term and helped organize the 2002 Winter Olympics, but now he’s just a really rich fellow. That fact, and that fact only, automatically gives him some level of fame.

Romney’s immense wealth came to him partly from his late father (George Romney) and generous family inheritance. He’s earned many huge paydays from his ownership and high management position at Bain Capital.  Much of his current wealth comes from investments in the stock and bond markets.

Even though Romney’s wealth is not ill-gotten, it is causing him some problems from a political standpoint. Whenever he mentions his wealth, he often seems to be bragging about it. He acts like he has so much money that it means nothing to him. When he mentioned that he earned “only $374,000″ one year for making a few speeches and that “wasn’t very much at all,” many in the crowd recognized that type of money as a small fortune – maybe more than they and their families had made in their entire lifetimes.

In another speech he mentioned that he is “not concerned about the very poor” because “they have a safety net.” When he made an off-the-cuff comment that his wife Ann “drives a couple of Cadillacs,” he made it sound like no big deal. “A couple of Cadillacs” are a big deal for the working poor who are trying to keep their old (and often uninsured) Volkswagens and Plymouths running for another year.

To Romney’s credit, he also stated that he also wasn’t worried about the very rich. “They are doing very well,” he revealed – a gross understatement.

Romney has created an image of himself as someone who simply doesn’t care about money because he has so much of it. He is rich enough that he’ll never have to worry about where his next meal will come from, whether he can afford a tank of gas for each of his wife’s two Cadillac cars, or if he can pay for an extended stay in the hospital. He’s created a damaging stereotype for himself as a very rich man who simply does not have a care in the world – except for his desire to become the most powerful human in the universe.

Romney’s blunders and gaffes reinforce a traditional Republican weakness – the impression that they don’t care about the poor, the sick, immigrants, or the under-educated. Romney makes it clear that above all others he supports people like himself – the “very rich” who lack for nothing except political power.

Primary voting trends seem to show that Romney’s lack of concern for working-class voters is driving them toward supporting President Obama. Throughout the primaries, Romney held a clear lead among college-educated whites while under performing among all other voter categories. On the other hand, Obama has made gains among most working-class voters, except for those who are hard-line Tea Party supporters in the south and Midwest.

Romney’s  jokes about his being currently “unemployed,” or of being worried a couple of times that he might “get a pink slip” fell flat and only damaged his standing among those really out of work. For many Americans, a pink slip means not paying the rent, buying food, or going to the doctor. Romney will always be able to buy or pay for anything he wants – even if he’s not drawing a paycheck. Romney’s patronizing empathy is offensive to everyone except those like him, the very rich.

In order to have any chance of winning the presidency, Romney will need to direct his attention to the needs of poor and middle class Americans. He’ll have to look at the overall health of the economy, not just more tax breaks for the wealthy or less regulation for huge financial firms and energy companies. Romney will have to say something about improving education, making college more affordable, and expanding the workforce. He has to make it clear that the real goal of most Americans is to have a regular job that promises some level of promotional opportunity. They don’t necessarily expect to ever be as rich as he is, but they would like to know that they can buy food, put a roof over their heads, and have medical care available when needed. They would also like to take a vacation every so often, even if it’s only the Grand Canyon or Mount Rushmore – rather than the Champs d’ Elysee.

Romney needs to clearly show his commitment to spread the wealth outside of his own group of “one percenters” by moving away from the Paul Ryan economic plan. Until he proves that he understands that the wealthiest among us, including him and his family, must share some of their wealth with the rest of Americans who need a helping hand, he will never meet his one last goal. No matter how rich he is or will be, he’ll never become the “most powerful human in the universe.”

Maybe Romney is just “too rich” to be elected president in 2012. He’s likely to be beaten by a man with only “moderate wealth.” His great wealth may just end up being spent by his heirs or given to charity. Because he can’t relate to the average American, Romney will likely end up being just another very rich old “former presidential candidate” like Barry Goldwater, John McCain, Robert Dole, Thomas Dewey, Ross Perot, Al Gore, and John Kerry.

His advice might apply more to the Republican Party in some ways more than it ever did to me. The most prominent members of the GOP still seem to want to promote the eight years of the Bush Administration as taking the country in the “right direction” while it actually lead us over the steep falls of war, economic failure, and a near destruction of our Constitutional rights.

I would like to think that all is not lost for the Republican Party and that last November’s [2008] disastrous election will not really mark the end of their influence. This country needs all the checks and balances available to it, especially in Congress, but unless the GOP changes course it is likely to find itself irrelevant for years to come.

For Republicans changing course will require a complete autopsy on their election losses and in some cases giving up long held positions that have been both divisive and destructive to the progress of the country. In some cases this will mean moving away from the direction that they have taken in the past and becoming a more centered party – even taking positions that they would have considered “left leaning” or “socialist” in the past.

At the moment, this change of philosophy and direction doesn’t look like something the Republicans still in power are willing to do. They not only choose to ignore the clear voice of the electorate, they also want to ignore the failings of their party leaders and the criminal acts of so many of their members.

Republican pundits and supporters seem to feel it is OK to punish a woman and her doctor for performing an abortion, but see nothing wrong with their own members of Congress who have been charged or convicted of criminal acts while in office – running for reelection (Ted Stevens, Randy Cunningham, Larry Craig).

Republican politicians and pundits are still promoting their position that the United States is actually a “center-right” nation that distrusts so-called “progressive” policies.

The real problem, according to them, is that President Bush and his administration abandoned the GOP’s philosophy of “limited government” and began to act like “big spending, pork barrelling Democrats.”

Let’s face it: If America was truly “center-right” in its preferred politics, then the candidacy of “center-right” Senator John McCain should have been more competitive – and possibly even successful.

Center-right: that’s what John McCain is, or has claimed to be. In his attempt to win the Republican presidential nomination, he was forced to swerve toward and embrace the Right that he disliked and that disliked him. As soon as he began to accept the support and created an uneasy alliance with the southern evangelical far-right – and especially after selecting Sarah Palin as his vice-presidential running mate – there was no way McCain could wrap the wide cloak of the “center” around his candidacy.

Many Republican conservatives feel their future superstars will be Sarah Palin and Jeb Bush. Unless Palin matures and gives up her mid-western vaudeville act and evangelical dogma, she will never be taken seriously as a leader by either the general public or Republican power-brokers. Former Florida Governor Jeb could eventually become the GOP party leader because of his great skills and experience – but he will forever be haunted and held back because of his being perceived as “another Bush.”

At the moment our electorate seems to be following its 200-year historical pattern of leaning between center-right and center-left. Since 2004 it has been clearly moving more to the left in response to Bush’s policy failures and Republican intransigence on some issues.

If President Obama and the Democratic controlled Congress is active and even somewhat successful in stimulating the economy by rebuilding our infrastructure, returning responsible regulation to Wall Street, ending the Iraq war, restoring Constitutional rights, and increasing our national energy resources using “green technologies,” the electorate will continue to abandon the Republican Party and continue to identify with progressive Democrats and centrist Independents.

My fear is the Bush era spendthrift and pork-barrel loving Republicans in Congress will suddenly remember that they are supposed to be supporting spending cuts and smaller government – throwing up their opposition to budgets and massive spending programs that will be needed to prevent our current recession from turning into another historic depression.

If they do – and the odds are high that they will try to stop Obama and Democrats at almost any cost – they are likely to find themselves out of a job or a part of a shrinking minority with little or no representation outside of southern intra-state politics. The Grand Old Party of Lincoln will continue to become disreputable and irrelevant unless and until it finds a new voice and new leaders with fresh ideas and a changed outlook.

The Republican party leadership seems to support a platform is so far out of touch with the rest of country on many of the major issues. Their stand on three issues, aside from the economy and the war in Iraq, seem to put them at odds with a vast majority of Americans: abortion rights, stem-cell research, and universal medical care.

The GOP has a few rising African-American office holders, but very few. Local Republican party organizations take pains to avoid supporting black or Hispanic candidates, so very few ever make it to the national stage. Those in the party that do have some skill and enjoy a small level of success are treated as “tokens” by the national leadership. By their own actions, Republicans have virtually written off two of the fastest growing voter populations for the foreseeable future.

I’ve voted for Republicans for most of my life, including George Bush in 2000. But Bush and the current crop of GOP party leaders and supporters have ruined it for me. I doubt, with the few years I have left, that they will ever get another vote from me – or a lot of other Americans.

I voted for you in November, 2008. I don’t apologize for being a big fan of your style, intelligence, and your dedication to being a good President. A lot of people, including some in my own family, think I’ve lost my mind or gone over to the “Dark Side” because I support you most of the time.

You have a particular talent as a public speaker. I won’t offer any advice to you on how you might improve your delivery, pronunciation, enunciation, or other presentational skills. I personally think that you are the best public speaker to live in the White House since President Ronald Reagan. Reagan had some professional training as an actor and TV host. I think your skill comes from the heart.

Let’s face the facts. If you had managed your presidential campaign like you have the Office of the President, you’d still be a junior Senator from Illinois. Hillary Clinton would probably be president this term – or, heaven forbid, John McCain. We’d all have remembered you only as “that good-looking young African-American fellow from Chicago that ran for President, but lost the primaries to John Edwards.”

Where is the fire in your belly? What happened to your insistence on sticking to the facts? Why won’t you immediately counter-punch whenever someone goes on Fox News and tells a bald-faced lie? When Representative Stupak comes out and says that the new Senate version of the healthcare bill “allows federal money to pay for abortions” – make him prove it.

Don’t just make a sissified statement like, “I’m sure that the Congressman is sincere in his beliefs, but we don’t want to hold up healthcare for the majority of Americans.” Make Stupak quote the chapter and verse in the Senate bill that supports his statement. Don’t avoid the issue to keep from hurting his feelings, attack the falsehood! Make him prove the facts of his statements!

It’s already been proven numerous times by several TV, radio, and newspaper commentators, House Leader Nancy Pelosi, and other prominent House and Senate leaders that the new bill specifically does not include any allowance for payments for abortions using federal money. However, a fair majority of American voters DO BELIEVE what Stupak is asserting. Why? It’s because you’ve avoided calling him out on the issue. You’ve lost the battle before it started because you refuse to shoot back or defuse the bomb that Stupak has dropped on healthcare reform.

All this does is to make voters like me, who have continued to support you all this time, wonder if your hands are also in the pockets of the big insurance cartel. If not, why won’t you speak up – loud and clear?

Instead of appealing for the support of the vast majority of people who voted for you and supported your plans to reform government, provide universal healthcare, and bring the war in Iraq to a close — you’ve been in Washington negotiating with special interest groups and wasting your time trying to appease the Republicans in Congress. They have made no secret that they despise you and have vowed to oppose you at every turn. Your choosing to ignore them has put the brakes on all the momentum you had when you were elected our President. By trying to be “Mr. Nice Guy” you’re barely treading water at this stage of your first term.

Well-funded opponents of health reform continue to gain ground by convincing the American middle-class that your plan is a false choice: Keep the healthcare plans they have now, or gamble on “Obama’s government takeover of healthcare with his socialist ideals and lose everything.”

You’re losing the battle because you’re still wasting your time trying to appeal to members of the Republican Party who hate you. Quit trying to be friends with the enemy. The truth is that they will not play your game and they don’t play fair. They don’t give a damn about America’s middle or low-income classes, only the insurance companies and their lobbyists who are financing their next election. You must take control and directly confront their cynicism and deceptions. Don’t be afraid to call them out on their lies and ties to the insurance industry, Mr. President.

If roles were reversed and the Republicans were still in power, do you think they would be playing nice with a minority of Democrats? Well? Did they play nice during the Bush Administration? How many bills did they pass using “Reconciliation” in the Senate?

Mr. President – you must explain clearly and forthrightly that a financially secure future for middle-class families, and for the entire nation, depends on reforming the entire health care industry and finding ways to control its runaway costs before it bankrupts the country and each and every individual.

It’s ironic that middle-class families have the most to lose if healthcare reform fails to pass. The problem is that most of them have yet to realize that fact. You’ve got to impress upon them what personal and financial pain they have to look forward to if you fail in your quest for universal, low-cost healthcare.

Without reform, it has been estimated that in ten years premiums for the average family’s health insurance coverage will cost nearly $25,000 per annum, and that’s based on current low inflationary rates. According to the nonpartisan Commonwealth Fund, rates could reach as high as $30,000, pricing all but the wealthiest families completely out of the health insurance market. With costs that high, most medium and small businesses will be unable to afford to contribute anything toward subsidized health insurance plans for their employees.

The very rich can afford the best available health care with or without private or public insurance. Unfortunately, the American middle class, even those who are comfortable with their present insurance coverage, could soon find themselves under-insured or unable to get any affordable insurance coverage.

Your Republican and Fox News opponents are buying hundreds of daily sound bites accusing your program of being “socialized medicine” and allowing a “government takeover” of the “best healthcare system in the world!” They accuse you of wanting to set up “death panels” and using government bureaucrats to deny quality healthcare to the elderly and the sickest among us. They present this as a future probability under your plan, while at this very moment insurance companies are doing this every day in every state to every class of patient. Insurance companies are already making decisions about patients’ health care with only one objective: increasing insurance company profits.

I hate to admit it, but the Republican Party and Fox News’ decision to promote lies and half-truths are working – and continue to destroy your standing with American voters in all parts of the country. Why? Because so far you’ve refused to take a stand for truth and justice for middle-class and average working families. So far you have done far too little to effectively counter those charges. I sometimes wonder if you really care. Is your heart really in the fight?

Mr. President – now is the time to speak out forcefully against the liars and propagandists in and out of the political arena. Make it clear that simply because they wrap an American flag around their shoulders and carry a King James Bible in their hands, that does not make everything your opponents say “The Truth.” They have to realize that it’s not just for the maintenance of your political reputation that you should come out and force the truth to be told. After all, healthcare reform is for the benefit of those very same Bible-thumping, flag-waving, tea-bagging Republicans – and for the rest of us who depend on affordable access to doctors, clinics, and hospitals when the need arises.

If your healthcare reform programs fail, it will be the middle-class and low-income families, the very people who tend to believe most of the Republican Party’s lies, who will ultimately pay the highest price for the least amount of healthcare.

Help them. Help us all. Fight for us, Mr. President!

Both political parties share responsibility for the flapdoodle, with the roots of the problem appearing well before the bill passed. Among them were the lack of objective debate; ambiguous wording of the voluminous 1,017-page bill; wide disagreement between Democrats on how to implement universal health care; Washington making side deals to purchase passage of the law; and the President’s inability to frame objectives for reform in easy-to-understand language.

To add insult to injury, we are bombarded with misinformation about the Law. If Mark Twain were alive today, he might have diagnosed our problem as: “What gets most Americans into trouble in this health care debate is not that they know so little, but that they know so many things that ain’t so.”

Giving credibility to borrowing Twain’s assertion are polls showing an alarmingly disproportionate number of Americans believe these things that ain’t so, including fabrications such as the new health care law covers illegal immigrants; Americans have no choice in the health benefits they receive; death panels will decide who lives; the government will set doctors’ wages; and no chemo treatment for older Medicare patients.

Per PolitiFact, the number one that ain’t so for 2010, because virtually every Republican leader told it repeatedly to the American public, was: the health care reform law is a “government takeover of health care.”

The facts show that the 2010 Health Care Reform Law does not allow the government to operate the health care system. Unlike Canada, England and numerous European countries, public-sector or private-sector insurance companies are responsible for operations. The truth is: the current health care reform law provides (95%) universal coverage through regulated private markets.

So what do we do? Accept the Law as currently written? Tweak it to improve it? Repeal it? And if so, what do we replace it with? If the “individual mandate,” requiring everyone to have health insurance by 2014, is deemed unconstitutional, is it possible to have universal coverage? And who pays for the medical costs of the uninsured? What happens to the one in seven Americans who did not have or could not afford health insurance before the 2010 Law? Is it still possible to have universal health care by dramatically lowering the age of Medicare?

Whatever answers we eventually embrace as a country, it’s important for well-informed citizens to honestly debate health care reform. But, before axing the Law—if that’s our country’s choice—or trying to answer the aforementioned questions, we need to objectively identify its pros and cons. Branding or demonizing it as “Obamacare” or “the work of liberals” does not make for constructive dialogue.

If a person wants unbiased information, several organizations not beholden to a political party or private interest group can provide help. A few of them are The Kaiser Family Foundation, Families USA, AARP, and Docs for America.

While I would like to see an amenable resolution to the health care issue, my motivation for writing this article incubated during the 2010 elections in southern Arizona. One candidate trying to unseat Gabrielle Giffords besieged the Tucson landscape with billboards reading, “Giffords forced Obamacare on You!” Many voters accepted this that ain’t so with little or no knowledge of the health care law and, they weren’t embarrassed by the lack of civil, constructive debate. After the assassination attempt on Gifford’ life, I vowed to do what I could to convince people that we need to have rules for civil debate if our democracy is going to work.

Postscript: As I prepared this article for a press release, I was pleased to see Bill Frist, a medical doctor and former Senate Majority Leader (R-Tenn.), telling his constituents that instead of mounting an effort to repeal the Health Reform Law, Republicans should use it as a “platform” for improvements. He further stated that the law has elements that Republicans should be able to get behind, particularly its “federalism” approach to providing health care. “(The Law) has many strong elements, and those elements, whatever happens, need to be preserved, need to be cuddled, need to be snuggled, need to be promoted and need to be implemented.”

How come we don’t have a church of our own? The government could put one in every neighborhood and support it with our taxes. Maybe now is the time to set one up and make sure that everyone in our country sings from the same hymn book!

Since she joined the Republican Presidential ticket, Sarah Palin has become the darling of the evangelical Christian wing of the Republican Party.  It has been predicted by some pundits that her nomination as Republican Vice Presidential candidate will eventually put John McCain’s campaign ahead of Barak Obama’s quest and will result in McCain becoming our 44th President.  They feel that Sarah Palin’s popularity with the evangelicals, religiously conservative Republicans, religious independents, and Reagan Democrats will give McCain enough votes in the Midwest and critical Southern states to swing the vote to McCain.

John McCain has always been in trouble with the religious right wing of the Republican Party because he has never really espoused many of their more controversial positions.  By adding Palin to his ticket he has managed to strengthen his position with the evangelicals and Southern Baptists that have tried to take over the party since 1976.  She has clearly verbalized her positions on abortion, women’s rights, the makeup of the Supreme Court, and America’s self-annointed position as God’s most favored country.  To her the war in Iraq is a “mission from God” and it’s purpose is “to do God’s will.” While McCain seems somewhat reluctant to wear any particular religious mantle, Sarah Palin seems to have absolutely no problem mixing her religious beliefs with her secular duties.

Palin seems to forget that separation of Church and State was one of the major components and primary doctrines of the U.S. Constitution as written and approved by the founding fathers.  Prior to the Revolution, they were subjects of the King of England, the titular and secular head of the Church of England – and were therefore also subject to the religous rules of that Church.  Many of our early patriots were Catholic, or held agnostic views that were in direct opposition to “the King’s Most Holy Church.” That is why many of the colonies separated from the English governmental rules and created new states that conformed to their own versions of religious freedom that ignored the authority of the English Church (Rhode Island).

Since the formation of the United States, freedom of religion has been a constitutionally guaranteed right provided specific clauses of the First Amendment. Freedom of religion was closely associated with “separation of church and state,” a concept which was espoused by many of the early patriots such as Thomas Paine and Benjamin Franklin and clearly outlined in the writings of Thomas Jefferson. The modern legal concept of religious freedom as the union of freedom of belief and freedom of worship with the absence of any state-sponsored religion, originated in the United States of America.

Over the past seventy years many hard-won battles have been fought in the courts to secure and guarantee that church and state will remain separate and that minority views would be protected.  However, other battles continue to rage, led by Evangelical and Conservative Protestant religious leaders, many who are televangelists with huge followings, to promote the teaching of creationism, sexual abstinence, the subordination of women, anti-gay and anti-abortion positions.  They want prayer to be a part of daily school activities and the concept of a “Christian America” to be taught in all schools, public and private.

Sarah Palin has made her position clear on these issues and John McCain has also begun to be more forthcoming in his support of these right-wing Christian positions.  If they are elected to the highest offices in the land and manage to pack the Supreme Court with like-minded justices, then here is what we have to look forward to over the next 20 to 25 years:

• A reversal of Roe vs. Wade, eliminating a woman’s choice over her own body and the use of elective abortion.
• Reduction and probable elimination of all government funded embryonic stem cell research.
• Elimination of all “right-to-die” laws where enacted by certain states, forcing many terminally ill persons to live out their lives in discomfort and pain.
• Reinstitution of daily prayers in public schools and for other publicly sponsored functions.
• Establishment of a national ethic and laws based on Christian Biblical guidelines as defined by the Protestant religious leaders.
• The reversal of all or most “gay rights,” including domestic relationship and marriage rights.
• The required teaching of “Intelligent Design” (really Creationism) in public schools as a counterpoint to teaching the scientifically supported theory of evolution.
• The required teaching of sexual abstinence and the elimination of required “sex education” courses in public schools.
• The banning of public displays promoting gay and lesbian rights, including the ability for any homosexuals to adopt children.
• The complete reestablishment of all Christian religious holiday observances in public schools and government buildings.
• Tighter censorship of movies, cable and network TV, and printed publications – eliminating nudity, sexual references, or any words or phrases that the censors consider to be obscene.
• The promotion of American national interests over those of other countries, especially when those countries are Islamic or non-Christian.  The exception, of course, would be Israel.

This is actually an abbreviated list.  Many other issues, especially involving the medical use of marijuana or other non-pharmaceutical drugs along with many other personal choice concepts would be considered un-American and would be subject to new laws.

More importantly, with the Executive Branch and the Supreme Court either reversing or failing to enforce laws protecting freedom of thought and non-Christian religious practices, we could find ourselves forced backward in time to the 1940s and 1950s in living styles and personal choices.

I lived during those times.  Although I do consider them “the good old days” in many ways, personal freedoms were very different then and very restrictive.  I can assure you that no one, not even the Christan radical right, will really want to live like that again.

Give Sarah Palin and John McCain the vote, and we may find ourselves “back to the future” and “stuck in the Fifties again.” But maybe, just maybe, we’ll end up with a church of our own.

There wasn’t a single Republican standing beside him, even though the Senate bill was so heavily laced with Republican amendments and alterations that you would have thought that they wrote most of the bill themselves. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi sat off to the side and frowned through most of Baucus presentation.

As Baucus read his statement you could practically hear the air escaping from the Health Care Reform movement so earnestly promoted and supported by President Obama and progressive Democrats.

Baucus stood before the American people and presented his committee’s bill as true “reform.” However, the plan as presented was a complete sell-out to the health insurance industry.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4gce7dwgDNg

The plan, still considered too radical for conservatives and far too weak for progressives who are insisting on federal government managed optional plans, supposedly meets some of President Obama’s stated aims.

According to Senate insiders, this bill offers the best opportunity for Democrats to redesign and improve the nation’s $2.5 trillion health care market.

The House has not yet voted on its own bill until they could see what the Senate bill included. Initial feedback indicates that House Democrats will likely reject the Senate bill in its entirety and force the Senate to start over from scratch. Nancy Pelosi pointed out that the current Senate bill, a ten-year $856 billion plan, delivers millions of new customers to the major insurance companies while providing no new competition in the form of any type of federal government supervised plan. All the Senate bill offers is the future establishment of non-competitive nonprofit local “cooperatives.”

White House press secretary Robert Gibbs delivered a weak endorsement of the Baucus bill late Wednesday, only referring to it as a “building block…I don’t think this is a mirror of what the president has talked about.”

Baucus claimed that his efforts to bring Republicans onboard would be successful. Instead, his comments drew immediate criticism from Iowa Republican Senator Charles Grassley, who in spite of being a major participant in the committee’s negotiations, is under intense pressure from the Republican leadership in both the Senate and House to hold party ranks and to refuse to support the bill.

The Senate’s Folly

Many American’s who watched Baucus’ speech on Wednesday must have wondered what the hell he was thinking. Did he not hear President Obama’s speeches over the past couple of weeks?

Anyone, especially progressive Democrats, who heard Baucus describe the key elements in this version of the Senate bill, would likely hope that the bill would fail to make it out of committee and not even come up for a vote. There were clearly far too many trade-offs made just to satisfy the Republicans on the committee, even though they have as a group vowed to vote against the bill.

To hold down the cost of the bill, subsidies to individuals who must purchase insurance will be drastically reduced.

That mandate would force people who don’t usually want to buy insurance policies because they think they don’t need or can’t afford medical insurance.

Baucus presented the idea of local, private medical insurance co-ops as an alternative to either a government run option or single payer plan. That idea failed to appease the conservatives, who said it would lead to “government controlled health care.” There is clearly no support for such a co-op plan among liberals.

Democrats are in control of both houses of Congress. They will bear the blame for the loss of a public option. The Republican minority will have proven that the Democrats, even with a popular president and the support of a huge majority of American voters, are weak, disorganized and ineffectual. In the end, it will be the American public that will lose and pay the price, while the hugely profitable insurance corporations will once again be the big winners.

Early Responses from the Public

Several interest groups and industry leaders offered varied responses supporting some elements of the bill while denouncing others.

One public interest group slammed the bill for leaving an estimated 17 million Americans, not including illegal immigrants, uninsured over the next ten years because they won’t or can’t afford to buy insurance.

In a report issued by the Kaiser Family Foundation, studies showed that insurance premiums would cost the average family $13,375, a 5% increase over the past year – in spite of a general reduction in national purchasing power of 1.5 to 3%.

Major Details of the Senate Plan

The plan would cost $856 billion over a 10 years period. It would not add to the deficit because the plan includes tax increases and some major spending cuts.

The plan requires individuals by law to buy insurance. Insurance companies would be banned from denying coverage for pre-existing conditions or dropping customers when they became ill or injured.

The bill offers $463 billion in credits to help lower-income people to pay for their insurance coverage. Small businesses would get $24 billion in tax-credits to encourage them to offer insurance to their employees.

Nonprofit insurance co-ops would offer other choices in addition to current corporate provided private insurance. This plan uses cooperatives to replace the federal open public option plan that is a major part of the House bill.

Large employers would be required to offer insurance to all of their employees and would pay penalties if they refuse.

Insurance “exchanges” would offer standardized policies and allow purchasing across state lines. Access to similar exchanges would be open to owners of small businesses in exchange for subsidies for covering employees.

Medicaid expansion would allow everyone earning up to 133% of the federal poverty level ($30,000 a year for a family of four and $14,400 for individuals) access to the federal program. A new Medicare commission, appointed by the president, would recommend changes to Medicare during years when costs grow out of control.

There would be increased taxes to raise revenue by imposing a 35% excise tax on so-called “Cadillac” insurance plans costing more than $8,000 a year per person, or $21,000 a year per family.

Additional spending cuts of $500 billion would come from reducing payments to Medicare health maintenance organizations (HMOs) paid more than traditional fee-for-service plans.

The Bottom Line

Let’s face it. This plan will have absolutely no Republican support in either the Senate or the House. The lack of any real public option plan will pretty much limit its support by either media pundits or progressive Democrats.

Max Baucus tried really hard to put together a bi-partisan bill that would satisfy the three Republicans on the Finance Committee (Enzi, Snowe and Grassley), but his efforts were an exercise in futility since not one of them has expressed any indications of supporting the bill they helped put together. Senator Olympia Snowe said the bill doesn’t have her support, while Senators Charles Grassley of Iowa and Mike Enzi of Wyoming, the two other Republicans on the Finance Committee, have expressed their disappointment with the current bill and say they won’t support it.

The Democrats Only Choice

From the beginning it should have been clear that there was no way to get any Republican support for a medical insurance reform bill – absolutely none. In spite of that obvious fact, Senator Max Baucus attempted to put together a bill that rewards the medical insurance industry with millions of new customers, who would be forced to buy insurance or face having to pay penalties for failure to have insurance, whether they can afford it or not, and without any type of effective and affordable public option.

This bill offers the public no real savings or protection from continued misbehavior on the part of insurance companies. The plan even allows the insurance companies to require waiting periods and higher premiums for many pre-existing conditions. So what has really changed?

Essentially the process in the Senate over the last four months has been a complete boondoggle, a tragic and total waste of time – all in the name of “bi-partisanship.”

So what can progressive Senate Democrats do to pass a meaningful medical insurance reform bill that fits with President Obama’s plan for the future?

First of all, Democrats should follow the example of the Bush Administration. What’s good for Republicans should also be good for Democrats too – right?

When President George W. Bush pushed for tax cuts for the wealthy at a cost of $1 trillion, how did the Republicans manage to pass it in the Senate? Very simply: They used Budget Reconciliation.

Note that now that this option is available to the Democratic majority in the Senate, Republicans are already crying foul!

Senate Republicans are such hypocrites. They object to the procedure when the Democrats threaten to use it, but they mastered its use during the eight years of the Bush Administration. Republicans used Budget Reconciliation to pass the following Bush backed bills:

• The 2001 Bush Tax Cut
• The 2003 Bush Tax Cuts
• Tax Increase Prevention and Reconciliation Act of 2005
• The Deficit Reduction Act of 2005
• Republicans used the Reconciliation Act to allow domestic drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in 2005.

Congress used budget reconciliation during the administrations of other presidents, including Clinton and Reagan, and when either party had a majority.

The Republicans also used Budget Reconciliation to pass through the major provisions of their “Contract with America” (heavily promoted by House Leader Newt Gingrich) during Bill Clinton’s Administration. Now Gingrich is implying that should the Democrats try to push medical insurance reform through the Senate by using budget reconciliation, that it would be “unfair” and “possibly unconstitutional.”

Time for the Democrats to Act

The Democrats should give up on any idea of trying to make medical insurance reform a bi-partisan act. If they don’t pass this reform bill now they will suffer dearly at the polls in 2010. They need to remember who voted them into office – and why – in 2006 and 2008.

The Democrats need to rewrite or create a new bill and present it for a vote in the Senate under the rules of Budget Reconciliation. They need to remember that if there is no public option in the bill, both President Obama and the American public will consider the bill a failure and a waste of time. They might just as well do it right or not do it at all.

Whatever the Democrats do, whether they revise, rewrite, or start over from scratch, they need to realize that they will receive absolutely no Republican support. They need to remember that all they need is 51 votes and they can pass the bill that their president and their constituents want and need without Republican consent.

The Democrats need to stop being intimidated by the Republicans. Can we really let a minority party that panders to mostly southern white evangelical regressive neo-Confederates take over Congress and stop the changes that our President (and most Democrats) promised to deliver during his first term?

My guess is that if the Democrats simply ignore the Republicans and just get on with the nation’s business, that the Republicans will do nothing but sit and sulk and whine on Fox News and continue to call the President nasty names and accuse the Democrats of being unfair.

I’d rather see forty Republican Senators have their feelings hurt than the American public have to continue to suffer under the tyranny of the medical insurance oligarchy. Let them go back and explain to the voters why they would not support a comprehensive medical reform bill that would benefit everyone in their state.

The voters can give us the answer as to whether the Congress made the right decision, whatever it might eventually be, in November, 2010.

I’m sure they will – in spades…

Click on the link below if to read the Senate Finance Committee’s “Markup” copy of the Health Care Bill. You’ll find 223 pages of technical and legal text that really “hides” the facts and critical details of the plan. You’ll probably know less about the plan after you read it than by simply looking online for a brief synopsis.

Americas Healthy Future Act (Senate Finance Committee – 09/16/2009)

Our teacher, Mr. Robert Phillips, a man whom I admired greatly then and remember fondly now, stood before our class and made a statement that I still recall quite well. After he was finished, everyone in the class sat quietly in their seats. All of us there that day were either confused, scared, or just plain angry when he finished his little speech to us. He did not ask for comments and did not entertain any questions. He simply went back to supervising the production of the next issue of our school newspaper, the “Poly Spotlight.”

Because of its particular timing and its warning of trouble ahead for America, I think what Mr. Phillips said to us that day might be instructive and of interest to the readers of Just One Opinion.

Please realize that it’s been nearly fifty years since I heard Mr. Phillips give this speech. I have trouble remembering what someone said to me yesterday – so trying to recall exactly what was said in my high school classroom forty-nine years ago will not be the easiest thing for me to do. But I’m going to try my best to present his words as accurately as I can, while preserving his message and intent. It’s true, I can’t remember exactly every word he said, but I sure remember his message. Here it is paraphrased to the best of my ability:

Mr. Robert Phillips addressing the students of his Journalism class, Riverside (CA) Poly High School, November 9, 1960 (reconstructed from memory):

“You know me – I don’t usually bring up politics in this class except as part of your training on how to present a subject when you write a news article. You know that I believe in being fair and impartial as a reporter, and that I tend to grade you harshly whenever I see your personal bias or opinion sneaking into one of your assignments.

“But this is a sad day for me because I think that it is a sad day for America. As you know, John F. Kennedy was elected to be our next President last night. I have nothing against Catholics and I know that many of you belong to that faith, as are many of my own friends and some of my relations. That’s not the point.

“My point is that Democrat John Kennedy is young and immature and comes from a very dedicated Roman Catholic family from liberal Massachusetts. As our President, I can not see how he can serve both his religion and his country at the same time.

“What choice will he have if the Pope tells him to take a particular stand or orders him to do something that would favor the Catholic Church over other religions in this country? How can he possibly say ‘no’ to the head of his church?

“We’ve always had Protestant presidents in this country and there is a reason for that. Protestants don’t answer to one man in the Vatican. John Kennedy will have no choice but to do what he is told by the Pope or face excommunication from the Catholic Church.

“Yes, he’s young and good looking – he’s very bright and has written a best seller (Profiles in Courage), but he hasn’t faced the real test of leadership in America. Do we want America to become a Catholic country like France, Spain or Italy? Do we want the Inquisition to be instituted in this country like it was in Europe for over 300 years? Do we want the Catholic Church to become our national religion like it is in Mexico?

“That, my students, is what we face in the next four years. Maybe not – he may play it safe his first four years and then allow Rome to take over and dictate our future during his second term. I don’t know how it will happen – but I know that our country is in deep trouble and we have only seen the very tip of the iceberg.

“Richard Nixon had more votes than John Kennedy. By all rights he should be our next President. But Kennedy manipulated the system so that he only had to win the Electoral College votes, not the vote of the people. Richard Nixon could be the greatest president in this country’s history if he ever gets the chance. He is honest, a good Quaker from California who believes in religious freedom, and an active anti-Communist who loves America. He served under President Eisenhower, so he has been trained by the very best President to serve in your lifetime.

“Kennedy is a good looking man with a pretty wife and cute little girl. He could become very popular among those who like movie stars but don’t really care about what happens to America. My guess is that after four years, if he doesn’t set up a Roman Catholic dictatorship in America during his first term, that he will be voted out of office and the Pope will find someone else to try and take over America.  If good Americans stand up for what is right, John Kennedy will not be reelected and instead will become just a footnote in our history as the first – and hopefully the last – Catholic to be elected president in our country.”

Looking back at history, Mr. Phillips, in his soft-spoken but deeply felt rhetoric, got one thing absolutely right:

No other Catholic has been elected President since John Kennedy. Surprisingly, Joseph Biden is the first Catholic ever to be elected to the office of Vice-President.

But Mr. Phillips also misread the course of both John Kennedy’s presidency and the next fifty years of our country’s history:

John Kennedy did not take any action to give the Catholic Church an advantage within United States politics or culture.

The first Pope to make an official visit to the United States was Pius VI in October, 1965 during the term of President Lyndon Johnson (Disciples of Christ).

Pope John Paul II was was invited six times to visit the United States: the term of Jimmy Carter (Baptist); Ronald Reagan (Presbyterian) – three times; and Bill Clinton (Baptist) – twice.

President Kennedy’s administration was noted for effective management of the federal government, for taking on both the Mafia and the corrupt Teamsters Union, and his intelligent dealings with European and South American countries. His general popularity among all groups, except for extreme southern state right-wing Republicans, continued to rise until his assassination in 1963.

Richard Nixon, despite landslide victories in 1968 and 1972, mishandled the economy by freezing wages and increasing taxes, allowed the Viet Nam War to continue for another five years, and abolished the gold standard. His popularity evaporated quickly after his second election among all voter categories. He completely destroyed his reputation and presidency by lying and trying to cover-up the scandal of the Watergate break-in. He only avoided sure impeachment by resigning during the second year of his second term. Even his hand-picked Vice President, Spiro Agnew, was forced to resign in disgrace to face criminal charges in his home state of Maryland. In spite of some impressive diplomatic gains with Europe and especially China, Richard Nixon’s presidency is generally considered to have been scandalous and badly mismanaged.

After I graduated from high school in 1961, I only saw Mr. Phillips one more time when I happened to see him several years later while shopping in a hardware store. He was still as friendly and soft-spoken as I remembered him and he seemed truly happy to see me again. It never occurred to me to ask him if he ever changed his mind about John Kennedy.

I don’t know if Mr. Phillips is still alive, but if he somehow happens to read this, I hope that he understands that I was pretty much a conservative Republican for many years because of what he said that day. I also want him to know that I understood that his words were supposed to help us to understand his view of our country’s direction at that particular moment in time and that he did not mean any disrespect to the office of the president.

History seems to repeat itself, no matter our good intentions. Some of the same attitudes that Mr. Phillips expressed about John Kennedy are now being directed toward President Obama.

It is clear that the far right in the United States is doing everything it can to paint Obama with the same broad brush of slanderous lies and rumors. They say that he is trying to overthrow constitutional American government, steal our freedoms away from us, and that he is really a Muslim in disguise. They assert that he is trying to turn our government into a communist or socialist state – some even claiming that he is a “Manchurian Candidate” born in Kenya, trained in Indonesia, and put into power by New Age, One World Government, Priory of Sion internationalists who want to make slaves out of “freedom loving true Americans.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_K1iYEobR6I

The sad thing is that so many patriotic, god-fearing Americans – and others like Mr. Phillips in 1960 – sincerely believe these lies and false rumors to be true and are afraid of what might be in their future. Fear makes people take shameful and self-destructive actions that would not normally be a part of their daily lives. The far right-wing element in this country is doing everything they can to fan those flames of fear – just as they did during John Kennedy’s campaign and presidency.

How will those sincere, but deluded Americans feel about Obama after he leaves office in eight years? All I can say is that I hope to live long enough to be able to answer that question.

[Read a followup article about Mr. Robert Phillips. Click here...]

Lately, Governor Sarah Palin and Senator Ted Stevens have become the primary culprits in this new era of awareness and not always for reasons that are flattering to the state.

Just One Opinion is a national website; I’ve written two pieces here about Alaska since last December. In my defense, both pieces were about subjects with national implications: Sarah Palin and oil exploration in ANWR. I hadn’t intended to do another Alaska story right away, but this latest bit of news is just too good to pass up and it’s a national story with surprising Alaska connections.

You Just Can’t Make This Stuff Up

Springtime in cold weather country is a time of discovery. During this time of the year Alaskans are spring cleaning – and there are always some things you can count on that will pop up when the snow melts.

Like the four bodies that were discovered in various places around Anchorage in recent weeks as residents clean up local parks and creeks in preparation for summer. The citizens of the city are not shocked because they know that this is a normal rite of spring in Alaska.

Another item of national interest with an Alaska connection has also popped up in the last couple of weeks and it is just too bizarre to ignore.

Two weeks ago, a relatively unknown gelding named “Mine That Bird” won the Kentucky Derby. It was an unbelievable, feel-good story: A 50-1 horse that few people had ever heard about is motored from New Mexico to Churchill Downs by an unknown trainer with a broken right leg in a plastic cast. Chip Wooley, the trainer and a former rodeo rider, drove the entire distance with his good left leg, making the 1500-mile cross-country journey to win the race and secure for himself a surprising place in the history of the most elite event in horse racing.

Mine That Bird wins at the 2009 Kentucky Derby

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hv8x9x5A49s

It all could have ended there, but with the Preakness coming up two weeks later, the fun was just beginning. Shortly after the Kentucky Derby, as more information about Mine That Bird began to surface, this story took more turns than Lombard Street.

For part of the time that Chip Woolley was pulling the trailer with Mine That Bird in it toward fame and fortune, he was being followed by motorcycles ridden by a fifty-six year old cowboy and his cousin. The cowboy, Marc Allen, is described as someone who walks with a cowboy’s gait, wears a black hat, and sports a scruffy gray beard – an “Easy Rider wannabe” on a cross-country adventure. Marc Allen, as it turns out, is also the co-owner of Mine That Bird along with Leonard Blach, a Roswell, New Mexico veterinarian.

So far this sounds like this is just going to be a warm, fuzzy tale about mavericks making good – but the real story is just beginning.

It also turns out that Marc Allen is the son of Bill Allen, the owner of Veco Corporation in Alaska. Bill Allen pleaded guilty to bribing Alaskan politicians and currying financial favors to Senator Ted Stevens. (Stevens was recently absolved of guilt in court.)

During the discovery of evidence against Bill Allen and Veco Corporation, information surfaced that indicated that his son, Marc Allen, had bribed a state legislator while working for Veco. As part of his eventual plea agreement, Bill Allen negotiated immunity for his son in exchange for his pleading guilty and providing information against an assortment of Alaska politicians.

In other words, if his father had not made a plea deal with the government, the co-owner of the Kentucky Derby winner could have been facing jail time rather than basking in the glow of being the owner of a now famous horse.

Our story continues…

Because of his love of horses, and using some of the proceeds from his approximately $30 Million share from the sale of Veco Corporation to CH2M Hill, Marc Allen paid for his half of the purchase price of $400,000 for Mine That Bird.

This cowpoke, who rode his Harley as he followed the trainer he’d met in a New Mexico bar fight twenty-five years earlier and the horse he’d bought with money that came from the sale of the infamous Veco Corporation in Alaska, was about to set the members of the horse racing world on their collective butts. With their surprising win at the Kentucky Derby under their belts, the Mine That Bird team was preparing to go to the Preakness.

Now we focus on the wily jockey who braved the rail to ride Mine That Bird to his unlikely Kentucky Derby win. Jockey Calvin Borel was now a two-time winner, having won the Kentucky Derby in 2007. Borel had a previous agreement to ride “Rachel Alexandra,” a filly, in the Preakness. Unlike Mine That Bird, Rachel Alexandra is a known winner and a horse that had recently been sold for $10 Million. Racing writers have referred to these two horses as “Lady and The Tramp,” and the experienced Borel knew that the filly had too much horse power for the new mutt. He wanted to ride Rachel Alexandra in the Preakness. What happened next was sort of…”Veco-like.”

Allegedly Marc Allen conspired with another horse owner to get two unworthy horses to fill empty slots in the Preakness so there wouldn’t be any room for the one horse that hadn’t signed up yet – Rachel Alexandra. Supposedly Marc wanted to make sure that jockey Borel was available to ride Mine That Bird. Some published stories suggested that Marc’s real interest was to keep Rachel Alexandra, a horse that would have been a strong favorite, out of the race – giving Mine That Bird a better chance of winning.

Another Alaskan connection appears…

John Hendrickson is a former long-time Alaskan and aide to Wally Hickel, a previous governor of Alaska and a former Secretary of the Interior under President Nixon. Hendrickson was married to wealthy socialite Marylou Whitney, a horse woman supreme. Marylou’s horse, Luv Guv (named after disgraced Governor of New York, Elliot Spitzer), was signed up to run in the Preakness. With the discovery of attempts to keep Rachel Alexandra out of the Preakness, John Hendrickson announced that he would withdraw Luv Guv, if necessary, so that Rachel Alexandra would be able to compete in the Preakness.

When the dust settled, Rachel ran – and won. Mine That Bird came in second, validating the Allen team’s claim that he is a legitimate racehorse.

The obvious postscript is that the two horses will run against each other again in the Belmont Stakes. Television executives have to be loving that event after seeing the impact of the race of the sexes at the Preakness. [Update: These two horses did not compete against each other in the Belmont Stakes. Mine That Bird, again ridden by jockey Calvin Borel, finished in third place. Rachel Alexander was not entered in the race.]

However, what is not so obvious is that Mine That Bird’s sire is Birdstone – owned by Marylou Whitney. Every time Mine That Bird wins a big race, Birdstone becomes more valuable as a stud.

Marylou Whitney is a friend of Wally Hickel and Ted Stevens (who are also friends). Even though Mine That Bird’s loss at the Preakness hurts Birdstone’s stud value, it also hurt the son of the man who tried to bring Ted down.

Is all of this confusing and conflicted? To say the least. But life is never dull in the spring in Alaska. And you probably thought that all the big-time, sexy high-jinks only happened in places like New York and California.

The only one who has managed to stay out of this story is Sarah Palin – so far!

Alaska is a land of mystery, and a state that is the subject of as many misconceptions as there are people who have not spent a considerable amount of time there. Now people know something about Alaska’s governor, and a little about the oil industry in Alaska, because of the current focus on the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, better known as ANWR.

In the last few years, I’ve spent several months of every year outside of Alaska. The things I hear from people I’ve encountered convince me that very few of them know the truth about either its governor or ANWR. Whether you are interested or not, both issues are, or may be, of national significance.

This is not a story about Alaska’s governor – I’ve already done that. This is a story about drilling for oil in Alaska. I worked in the oil industry in Alaska for thirty years. I went from the drill floor to the boardroom, and I did it during the dramatic growth of the oil industry in “The Last Frontier.”

Don’t expect this to be an article that preaches to you about supporting drilling in ANWR. This is a presentation of the truth as I know it. I simply would like for people to hear something other than blatantly distorted anti-development dogma. I worked in the oil industry, but I am an Alaskan who cares about responsible development of our natural resources.

Early on, I want to state that very few people in the world have any idea of how much oil there is in ANWR. Most estimates are generally in the neighborhood of 10 billion barrels, making it one of the last and biggest “elephant” oil fields (100 million barrels or more) left in the U.S.

With special permission from Congress, Chevron was permitted to drill the “KIC No. 1″ well south of the village of Kaktovik on land owned by a Native corporation in the winters of 1985 and 1986. It is the only well that has ever been drilled in ANWR and the results of that well are still a closely guarded secret. Because Chevron, in partnership with BP, owns the only leased acreage inside the 1002 Area of ANWR, and they have zealously (and legally) protected that information for over twenty years, oil insiders assume it is an elephant -a very big elephant.

In a light-hearted bar conversation, I once asked Tom Cook, Chevron’s longtime Alaska Exploration Manager, how much he had been offered for what he knows about ANWR over the years. He politely batted my question aside, and I quickly realized what a serious subject that would be to anyone in his position.

Have you bought a case of bottled water lately? The case I just bought had twenty-four sixteen ounce bottles of water in it (three gallons), and it cost me four dollars. That equates to fifty-six dollars per oilfield barrel for water – for water! An oilfield barrel equals forty-two gallons, and right now oil is trading for around fifty dollars per barrel.

From a barrel of oil, we get gasoline, diesel fuel, fuel oil, liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), naphtha, kerosene, jet fuel, asphalt, engine oil, other lubricants, plastics, synthetic fibers, synthetic rubbers, detergents, fertilizer, perfumes, insecticides, and up to four thousand other byproducts. From a bottle of water we get “water.” Okay, I agree that comparison is not exactly “apples to apples,” but it may mean something to you after you read what follows.

My first trip to Prudhoe Bay was on January 6th, 1975. When I arrived it was around fifty degrees below zero. I was a “worm,” an oilfield term for somebody brand new on a drilling location. The plane was unloaded using a Cat 980 front-end loader, and the pallets with our bags on them were set on the ground outside the terminal. The small space inside the terminal was crowded with serious looking men who were bundled up in heavy parkas and insulated coveralls. All of them were wearing bunny boots and insulated hats with ear flaps. It was a surreal scene to a nervous “worm” – and I knew I looked like one.

Not knowing any better, while waiting for someone to pick me up, I was there long enough that everything in my bag was frozen solid – even my toothpaste.

It takes big men and big iron to drill wells in a hostile environment like the one that exists on the Arctic North Slope of Alaska – and lots of money. It’s a fascinating industry, driven by extreme competition and extreme diversity. The possibilities for huge financial losses are every bit as real as are the possibilities for huge financial gains.

Beginning in 1975, I worked as a mud engineer on drilling rigs on the North Slope and all over Alaska – but that is another story for another time. By the time I retired, I was the manager of one of the largest oilfield service companies in Alaska, giving me a very broad look at the oil industry in Alaska.

I know we have to develop alternative sources of energy, and the quicker we do that the better. I also know that we will need oil for the foreseeable future, and we need to use it responsibly during the considerable length of time it will take to fully develop viable new sources of energy. I can’t visualize jet airplanes flying on something other than jet fuel for many years to come. It should concern everyone that we are doing tremendous damage to our economy by sending hundreds of billions of dollars to foreign countries for oil. Many of those countries are actively using our money to try to undermine our success and our way of life. We are also forcing U.S. oil companies to drill ultra-expensive deepwater wells while we neglect easily available onshore prospects like ANWR.

I know about drilling in the Arctic environment and I know about ANWR. Well funded environmentalists and anti-development activists have done a masterful job of portraying ANWR as a pristine place with beautiful mountains and trees and wild animals cavorting everywhere. There is a part of ANWR that actually looks like that, but it is a long way from the coastal plain, and 8 million acres of it have already been designated as a Wilderness Area.

The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge covers 19 million acres on the northern edge of Alaska. The area on the 1.5 million acre coastal plain where the oil companies want to drill is as flat and barren as a tabletop. There will never be vacationers visiting this part of ANWR. In the summer it is so mosquito infested that you can barely breathe, and in the winter the temperatures (during the fifty-six straight days of darkness) can often reach over 100 degrees below zero with the wind chill factor. There is nothing that a tourist would want to see, and there never will be.

Because of advanced technology in horizontal drilling, the oil industry is only interested in using four thousand surface acres on the coastal plain of the 19 million acre Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. That is like looking at a tiny dot on a sheet of letter-size paper. A very short pipeline could tie ANWR production into the Trans Alaska Pipeline easily.

Developing ANWR should be a no-brainer in today’s economy, but stubborn, anti-development factions often have their positions presented by famous people who have never visited ANWR. They are convincing the American public and politicians, including our new President, that developing ANWR is the wrong thing to do.

Some common arguments against developing ANWR are:

• “Drilling in ANWR cannot produce enough oil.”  The idea that ANWR, or any other oil find in the U.S., is going to satisfy all of our energy requirements is ridiculous. On the other hand, potentially adding 1.5 million barrels a day to U.S. oil production speaks for itself.
• “It would harm the environment.”  All resource developments impact the environment. The modern oil industry is probably the safest, most environmentally responsible, and most regulated industry in America. The impact of development on four thousand acres of the most remote, most barren land in America would be minimal.

The National Audubon Society has earned over $20 million by allowing the oil industry to safely drill wells in the Rainey Wildlife Sanctuary in Louisiana using many of the technologies that were developed on the North Slope of Alaska.

The population of the Central Arctic caribou herd near the Prudhoe Bay oilfield has increased sevenfold since development began in the mid-1970s.

• “It would not result in lower oil prices.”  This is probably a valid argument because the price of oil is controlled by world supply and demand. Gaining a little more independence from foreign suppliers is the salient factor.
• “There are other places to drill.”  With the exception of the recently discovered oilfield in North Dakota, other places to develop in and around the U.S., particularly deep-water locations, continue to become more challenging and more expensive to drill.

And when compared to the price of the water I bought. . . Just something for you to think about.