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Health Care

Saturday, July 18, 2009

For reasons I can’t fathom, one of my reader’s comments are being blocked. I certainly didn’t do it, and I can’t figure out how to stop it. He emailed the comment to me after it was blocked, so I’m reproducing it below. If anyone else has had this problem I would appreciate it if they could email direct to me. If I have to disable the spam blocker, I’ll do that.

Here’s the comment, which is on the health care debate.

One element of the debate is, rarely, if ever, mentioned in specific terms is our current inventory of skills and hospitals. Do we have a sufficient supply of Doctors and if more are needed, where would they come from and where would they go? As a model, I think the local Pequot clinic is ideal in conjunction with larger hospitals. Is this model suitable for other parts of the country? If we could suggest some details, the debate would have more meaning.


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Friday Night Music-Double Header

Friday, July 17, 2009

My younger son is visiting this weekend, and I asked him to recommend some music for tonight. These videos don’t quite qualify under my usual guidelines, as neither are live performances, but rules are for breaking, or at least bending.

Rather than choose between his suggestions, I’m posting both.

Yo La Tengo:

And Pearl Jam


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Joe Courtney on the “Ed Show”

Friday, July 17, 2009


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The argument in a nutshell

Friday, July 17, 2009

Stephen Colbert and/or his staff of writers is brilliant. Here he precisely summarizes the anti-Sotomayor argument from the right.


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Lost Rivers

Friday, July 17, 2009

Today’s Times reports that there’s a world wide movement to liberate the rivers that flow through many of the world’s cities. Over the course of the last century many were covered with concrete.

When I was a kid there were sections of the Park (or Hog, depending on your taste) River that were still running free in Hartford. By the time I graduated from High School, the river was gone. Mark Twain built his house to evoke a riverboat, with one section resembling the pilot house facing the river, which flowed by his home. The house survives, but the river is gone, except in memories.

There was a brook that flowed near our house on Bulkely Avenue in Hartford, which is also now completely covered. It’s hard to understand the mindset that led to the burying of all those rivers. No doubt it’s part of our compulsion to try to control by brute force.

Wouldn’t it be nice if Hartford recaptured its rivers and streams, or at least some of them. When we made the city more livable for the automobile, we made it less livable for people. In Hartford, the burial of the rivers was only a small part of the overall plan to drive people out of the city. The river that used to split the city was covered with concrete, and at the same time the city was split anew, with dire results, by the interstates that cut the city off from the Connecticut River and split the city in two from the east to the west. If there had been a conscious plot to destroy the city, it wouldn’t have had to change the Hartford Redevelopment plan a bit.


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Do not get a Blackberry

Wednesday, July 15, 2009

A product review. This is by way of venting, so feel free to ignore.

Last month I mentioned that I got a Blackberry, through my place of employment and “free” to me. Having had the device for a month I think I have enough experience to ask this question: What is wrong with all those Blackberry fans? Can they really be addicted to using this piece of crap?

I actually have a theory about that, which I will explore briefly at the end of this post.

First, some background information for anyone who doesn’t know what a Blackberry is.

A Blackberry can do anything an Iphone can do, only worse. It can synchronize with your office email and calendar, if your IT person can figure out the settings to make it function. Otherwise, like us, you will find that you can’t enter an appointment on the Blackberry with any confidence that it will show up on your computer. My wife’s Iphone, by contrast, synchronizes perfectly through Apple’s MobileMe service.

There are scores of third party apps for the Blackberry, which you can find at Blackberry’s impossible to use app store. Downloading is an absolute pleasure. All you have to do is choose to download the program of your choice and then answer a series of questions querying whether you really want to grant the new app permission to access various functions on the Blackberry. Naturally, the consequences of any given answer are not explained, and the function names are indecipherable. Of course you always answer yes, so the point of the exercise is lost on any sane mind, except, no doubt, that of a corporate lawyer.

You can play music on a Blackberry, if you don’t mind the fact that it can’t seem to manage to keep track of the music you’ve put on it. Tracks disappear from the media player for no reason. Periodically, I’ve noticed it refreshing itself, and the tracks re-appear, only to disappear again shortly thereafter. The music is there, but you can’t find it to play it.

Finally, as I mentioned in a previous post, application memory is limited to 128 mb, despite the fact that my Blackberry comes with 1 GB of on-board memory and an 8GB mini-SD card. I’ve added three apps, which I use rarely. For whatever reason, and my web wanderings lead me to believe this is a common problem, application memory fills up simply with use of the product. Yesterday I couldn’t make a phone call because the application memory was full. I verified that fact in the “Options” program. I rebooted the device, and checked again. I now had 26 mb of free application memory. That’s not a memory leak; it’s a memory gusher. And how did I manage to re-boot? Is there a reset button or a key combination that does the trick? Of course not. The only way to re-boot is to remove the battery, replace it, and wait an interminable length of time for the device to come back to life. How can something so elementary as a reset process be left out? I’ve had Palm Pilots and Ipods; my wife has an Iphone. They all have simple reset methods.

When PCs first came out, IBM machines took a commanding lead among the corporate crowd because IBM was a safe choice. It’s machines were rarely as good as those of its competitors, but no one was going to get fired for buying IBM. The Blackberry is a corporate favorite, and I’m now convinced it’s for similar reasons. It was the first device down the pike, and it’s considered the safe and right choice for corporate America.

As I said, my wife has an Iphone. Downloading apps is simple. It plays music. The web browser works well. She has never experienced memory leaks. She could load a thousand programs on it, if she was so inclined. She’s never had to wait to make a phone call while she watches a little clock face circle endlessly while the device desperately tries to find available memory that’s been filled with God knows what. And, if something does go wrong, she can re-boot it with an easy key combination, and in a few seconds, she’s back in business. My guess is that the Pre, from Palm, works just as well.

So, you are probably asking: Okay, John, tell us what you really think. Would you recommend a Blackberry to a friend?

No, but I might give it to an enemy.


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Art on Groton Bank Saturday

Wednesday, July 15, 2009

Just a reminder. Once again Art on Groton Bank will hold an event in the shadow of the Groton Monument, right next to the Bill Library at 240 Monument Street.

If you’re in the market for some good original art at reasonable prices, stop on by. Even if you are not interested in buying, it’s fun to look.


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Heads Simmons Wins, Tails Dodd Loses

Tuesday, July 14, 2009

Numerous bloggers on the left have remarked about the fact that the media’s propensity to find that any development, no matter how superficially negative for the Republicans, is actually good news for them. It’s mainly a national media phenomenon, but it does tend to infect local media as well. Consider this from this morning’s Day, an excerpt from an article about Chris Dodd’s stellar fundraising quarter:

But the [Dodd] campaign also showed an eye for some of the public relations missteps that have dogged Dodd over a difficult year. The senator’s press release boasted that the campaign “received more individual donations from Connecticut than any other state.”

Just three months earlier, Dodd’s first quarter report showed robust fundraising, but, the Connecticut Post reported, only four contributions from individuals who reside in Connecticut.

Simmons, meanwhile, is in a position to highlight the geographic breadth of his support, as he attempts to tap into a national wave of criticism to topple Connecticut’s suddenly vulnerable senior senator. The challenger’s campaign has received contributions, a Simmons campaign release said, from 49 of the 50 states.

Three months ago it was a negative that Dodd’s money came from out of state. Simmons, on the other hand, is now blessed because he is able to brag that so much of his money comes from out of state. Am I missing something, or is there something inconsistent here?

Speaking of the Senatorial campaign, Merrick Alpert has announced his fund raising numbers, and they ain’t pretty. Via Connecticut Bob:

New London, Connecticut – Merrick Alpert’s US Senate campaign reported today $44,315 in donations for the 43 days since Merrick Alpert announced his candidacy.

Merrick does some wild spinning, but these numbers are dismal. This is not a credible candidate. To put it in a little perspective: if Merrick doubled his take every quarter he wouldn’t get into credible candidate territory until the quarter ending June 30, 2010, and wouldn’t have a quarter as good as Chris just had until the quarter ending September 30, 2010. Money is still the name of the game in politics and with that kind of fundraising, Alpert will be lucky to keep current on the rent for his New London HQ. Here’s hoping that someone will do a little looking at who the donors are, particularly the on-line donors. How many were steered his way by Fox and Friends (i.e., how many are historically Republican donors)?


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Afraid of empathy

Monday, July 13, 2009

Charles Grassley, who has somehow been elected a United States Senator,quakes in fear at the prospect of a judge who is able to feel empathy:

President Obama said that he would nominate judges based on their ability to “empathize” in general and with certain groups in particular. This “empathy” standard is troubling to me. In fact, I’m concerned that judging based on ’empathy” is really just legislating from the bench.

The Constitution requires that judges be free from personal politics, feelings and preferences. President Obama’s “empathy” standard appears to encourage judges to make use of their personal politics, feelings and preferences. This is contrary to what most of us understand to be the role of the judiciary.

It should be noted here that Obama did not say he would nominate judges based on their ability to empathize “with certain groups in particular”, unless by certain groups Grassley refers to ordinary people. But let that pass.

Of course Grassley is just grandstanding, mindlessly repeating a meme that has so far failed to spread, and will most likely not spread. But let’s for the sake of discussion, examine the point.

First let’s examine the meaning of the word, and I know this is tiresome for Republicans, who, like Humpty Dumpty, like to make words mean whatever they say. But if we insist on letting the word mean what it actually means, it means this:

Identification with and understanding of another’s situation, feelings, and motives.

In a nutshell, a person able to empathize is one who is able to walk in another’s shoes. I would argue that it is impossible to be a good judge without being able to empathize. It’s certainly impossible to be a good lawyer, or at least a good litigator. The job requires an ability to see both sides (or all sides) of an argument-to put yourself in the place of another and try to see things from their point of view. It’s necessary for a lot of practical reasons. If you can’t do it, you can’t anticipate the other guy’s arguments. If you can’t empathize, you can’t advocate well for a client, who might have problems and life experiences totally foreign to your own. And if you can’t empathize, and you’re a privileged white male such as John Roberts, you can’t understand the perspective of the individual as opposed to the corporations which are the sole entities with which you can relate.

Grassley seems to believe that there really is such a thing as the “law”, which can be applied mechanistically. If that were the case, we could replace judges with computers. Justice Holmes wrote that “The life of the law has not been logic ; it has been experience.” That experience should include other’s experiences, which we cannot appreciate without empathy. Judges are called judges for a reason; they are supposed to exercise good judgment, and that requires empathy.

Of course, in reality, Grassley has no objection to empathy. He has no problem with a judge that can empathize, it’s just that he has a problem with the people with whom he’s afraid Sotomayor will empathize.


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How much would you pay?

Sunday, July 12, 2009

Editor and Publisher reports that the New York Times is doing a survey to determine how much its readers would pay for access to its website. As one who is still paying for three print newspapers and several magazines, I think I can make a credible claim that I am not reluctant to pay for the news.

But I would be reluctant to have to pay for access to individual newspaper websites. The great thing about the web is the fact that one can follow a chain of links to wherever one wants to go. It would be frustrating in the extreme if one ran into subscription roadblocks at every website one attempted to reach.

On the other hand I fully agree that we can’t expect to get the news if we don’t expect to pay for it, and that it’s very likely that advertising alone won’t produce the revenue that’s needed.

I have a modest proposal. I recognize that this may run into anti-trust issues, but if necessary Congress should step in and clear the way.

I would be happy to pay a monthly fee for access to all newspapers on the web. The revenue from that fee could be distributed to the various papers based on a reasonable formula, considering number of hits, etc. Local newspapers might get a larger share of the fees from people residing within their geographical areas. My point is that we should provide for a stream of revenue while maximizing the convenience to the consumer. I am willing to pay so that I can access, let’s say, the Miami Herald, should a link take me there. I’m not willing to open an account with the Herald to enable infrequent access. I also think that there should be some sort of provision for a family plan for this sort of thing. We buy the physical Times every day. My wife and I both read it, and there’s no extra charge. Same with cable, as many as you like can watch without any extra charge. The same should apply to news subscriptions.

A little imaginative thinking is needed to resolve this issue. We are approaching a crisis. I love bashing the media as much as the next guy, but the fact is we need it, particularly the print media. We would need to assure that new entrants to the field would not be barred or that artificial roadblocks were not built into the system. I don’t think any of those problems are insurmountable. In the end, I think people would pay a monthly fee for access to news, just like they pay for cable, etc.

In my own case, I would probably save money under such a plan, assuming I dropped the print subscriptions. But that shouldn’t matter much to the publishers, since the cost of web distribution is so much less than the cost of physical distribution.


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