Why I'm Waiting for Android

My friend on LinkedIn just asked me why I was so excited about Google's Android smart phone operating system coming to Verizon Wireless soon.

I wonder if he's sorry he asked? Here's what I said:

Geoffrey,

Android is an open source smart phone operating system from Google. A bunch of phone manufacturers are using it for their upcoming phones, including Motorola, Samsung, LG, HTC --- you name it.

Android is a game changer for these reasons. a) It will be a common operating system on multiple handsets. b) It has an application store where third parties can sell (or give away) applications. c) It is open source so it doesn't add to the cost of the phone and also as handset makers innovate with the platform, their contributions go back into the stack for everyone else's usage. d) It is tightly integrated with Google's applications (search, maps, documents, Gmail - which are all my preferred apps).

This may sound similar to Apple iPhone, and it is. The differences are 1) It exists on many handsets from many manufacturers. 2) Innovation is coming from every handset maker to every handset maker. 3) The Android app store is loosely controlled, whereas Apple's app store is tightly controlled. 4) It's available on multiple carriers (Sprint, T-Mobile, soon Verizon) not just one. 5) The open source nature of Android will help it adapt quickly to problems (viruses, malware, security holes) and opportunities (new hardware, new types of networks, new apps, corporate uses, etc.).

I can't help seeing the Apple Macintosh vs IBM PC war replaying itself. Apple has the innovative but closed platform, then another competitor comes along that is more open (the IBM PC was open to multiple vendor hardware components, sound cards, memory boards, even full clones from Compaq/Dell, etc.). The more-open competitor trounces the closed competitor.

You can see I'm excited about it. I don't know if you wanted to hear all this.

Hope this helps.

Daryl

Hey, Cell Phone Driver --- H.U.!!!

We've all seen them. People who are constantly driving while talking (or texting) on their cell phones. This shit has got to stop.

Talking on the cell phone while driving is equivalent to driving over the legal alcohol limit, while texting and driving increases your chances of an accident by twenty-three fold.

I have an idea. Maybe we can start a trend. Whenever I see a person talking on their cell phone, I'm going to beep my horn as follows:

**** **-

That is four short beeps, then a second, then two shorts, and one long. It is Morse Code for H-U --- Hang Up!!

Whaddya think? I think if everybody starts doing this, first of all, it is annoying for the cell phone driver, cuz people are beeping at them. Second, the person on the other end of the line hears it, so they know the person is cell phone driving.

I don't know. Could work.

If you do it, put a comment below to say how it worked.

How to Switch from Cable/Satellite TV to 100% Internet TV (with pictures)

Summary: When it came time to abandon our much loved satellite TV service (DirecTV) we made the big decision to go completely IPTV – all our television entertainment from Internet sources. It took some research and some fiddling with gadgets and TVs, but it was worth it. Now, almost a year later, we couldn't be happier. We went from paying $110/month with DirecTV down to only $17/month. Read to find out how you can do the same with just a normal broadband Internet connection. FAQ at the end of the article.



We Like TV

We were pretty happy. We had a good TV life. My wife, who is a seamstress, really likes to have the TV on while she does her cutting and sewing. Background noise, but also giving her the ability to look up and see the show whenever she wants.

I like to watch a movie almost every night, plus I love watching Jon Stewart's Daily Show. On the weekends, we usually watch one or two movies on Saturday night and something on Sunday night as well.

So we are not TV-o-phobes. We like our TV.

We have three main places where we watch TV in the house: my wife's cutting room (used to be a dining room), her sewing room (kind of a den) and the loft (living room).



The Trees, The Trees



What happened was our neighbor's trees grew too high and blocked our satellite reception. It also happened last year. At that time, we asked our neighbors if they would mind if we trimmed the tops of their trees, they said it was no problem. But this time, we realized it was going to keep happening every year, and we'd have to ask them to chop the trees down, which they wouldn't agree to. So we needed another solution.


From Satellite to Cable?

Should we go to cable? My wife and I had both used cable services before moving in together, and we hated them. Bad quality reception, bad customer service. No thanks. But what was the alternative?

Finally we decided to make the move to 100% Internet television. But this was going to take some research.

Our questions were:

• Could we get television in all the rooms we needed (cutting room, sewing room, loft)?
• Did the Internet have the particular TV shows that we liked?
• Was the bandwidth of our connection fast enough to provide full screen video?
• Was the equipment to get us set up going to cost too much for the savings per month?

The answers were Yes, Yes, Yes and No.



The Equipment

After looking on the Web for articles (one like this one would have been good!) on people's experiences (not vendor success stories), I decided to get the following equipment:




Eee PC (Linux)





Roku Player





A GigaWare PC-to-TV Converter (Radio Shack)


and a DVD player (no photo)




The Eee PC cost about $400 (then, now it's below $300). The Roku Player was $99. The DVD player was about $50. The GigaWare converter was around $100 once you got all the cables with it. It seems like GigaWare doesn't sell that box anymore, so maybe this would work instead.



$650 Invested in Equipment

Total investment = $650. Equal to about 6 months of DirecTV.


The purpose of the Eee PC is to act as a television for my wife's cutting room. It is super-portable, so she can carry it around if she wants to watch TV elsewhere, like our screened-in porch. She does that a lot after she finishes her work.





The Roku Player we set up in our loft / living room. It connects easily to a television with composite video connectors (there are a bunch of options). We have a 55” rear-projection TV (about 12 years old) and this combination works great.

By the way, we have wireless Internet all through our house. This is a NECESSITY for this plan. Roku depends on it, as does the Eee PC.

The reason for the GigaWare PC-to-TV converter is to be able to connect one of our laptops to a TV. To explain that a little more, we will have to get into the next topic: Content.



Can We Still Get the Movies, TV Series and Specials We Want (Need?)


We knew that we had a diverse set of content that we really wanted to get with our new setup. Here was a sampling of our regular watching (just to get this list took some analysis!):

• Movies, movies, movies – from the latest releases on DVD to foreign films to back catalog
• The Riches
• The Daily Show
• The Colbert Report
• South Park
• The Simpsons
• King of the Hill
• Nip/Tuck
• Weeds
• Sledge Hammer
• Married with Children
• Desperate Housewives
• Dancing with the Stars
• Family Guy
• American Dad

Neither of us watch a lick of sports, nor do we pay attention to the local or national newscasts. No soap operas, daytime talk shows or kids' programming (unless you count South Park).

This was our target list. As it turned out, we were able to use Hulu.com to get most of the TV shows (Riches, Daily Show, Colbert, Simpsons, King of the Hill, Nip/Tuck, Married). For others, we were able to use ABC.com (Desperate, Dancing). South Park actually has its own Website, where their content is available a few weeks after it airs on Comedy Central (SouthParkStudios.com). Cost so far? Nothing.

Now for movies. Hulu definitely has some movies, but not much. Especially when we were doing this experiment (early 2008). We needed a bigger variety. So we decided to get started with NetFlix. We knew that NetFlix had a dual service, where you could get DVDs in the mail and also have simultaneous access to another set of movies through an Internet download service. This sounded like the ticket. The price was nice: $17/month for three DVDs at a time. (Now it's gone up a bit - $17/month for only 2 at a time, including access to Blu-Ray).

And NetFlix had another advantage. Now we had access to the HBO and Showtime series we were missing on Hulu and elsewhere. We have always liked watching the pay-TV series throughout the years, like The Sopranos, Six Feet Under, Weeds, Huff – you name it. Now, through NetFlix, we had access to these series either through instant download or as a mailed DVD.

Now we had it! For $17/month, we had as much content available to us as before, but most of it was on-demand - even better!! We could pick from a few hundred movies on Hulu.com or over 10,000 on NetFlix download. On mailed DVD, we had over 120,000 to choose from. And for TV series and specials, it was all there.



Frequently Asked Questions

In this section, I'll try to ask some of the questions I've heard from friends as I've described our set-up (my friends are bored hearing about this already).

Q. Isn't the picture jerky on movie downloads?

A. Depends. Hulu had lots of problems with jerky pictures early on, but they seem to have fixed this. All you have to do is bring up the show initially, let it cache for a minute or two, and you can proceed with no jerkiness. NetFlix download through Roku is never, NEVER, I mean NEVER jerky. I don't know how they do it.



Q. How is the picture quality?

A. On Hulu, the picture quality is excellent. They even have some of the shows available in HD. On NetFlix download, the picture is okay to good, depending on the day. No complaints, unless you are a very picky TV watcher.



Q. Do you have to have Windows for this all to work?

A. We do not allow the Windows operating system in our house. Everything runs either Mac OSX or Linux. Hulu runs everywhere, even Linux on the Eee PC. It just requires Flash or an open-source Flash player equivalent. The NetFlix player works on the Roku, but you can also watch any download on your computer. The NetFlix player is very picky. It works on Windows, of course, as well as Mac OSX (Intel only). It does not work on Linux nor on the older Mac PowerPC boxes (we have a Mac Mini like that). Has something to do with DRM (digital rights management).



Q. Why didn't you go with Apple TV or Cinema Now?

A. I've heard the Apple TV is very nice. Easy to use, fast to set up, lots of content choices. The reason we didn't go that route is that my wife is a penny pincher. If we sign up for a monthly “all you can watch” system, she will watch shows freely. But if we had a per-download cost (like on Apple TV or Cinema Now) she would penny pinch and end up postponing watching her TV show for days and days to save money. So, to save us both that headache, we stuck with everything being all-you-can-watch.



Q. Why still use the NetFlix mailed DVDs if you have so much online?

A. I can't give a logical answer to that logical question. The only logical reason could be that there is a much larger library on DVD than from NetFlix download. The real reason is an emotional thing. We like the excitement of getting a DVD in the mail. Even though I know what it's going to be. I can't explain it.



Q. What about other basic cable channels like Discovery, SciFi, Food Network, HGTV, PBS, etc.?

A. At the time last year, most of these networks were not online yet. But now they are. You can find at least some content for all these networks these days. Just check their “full episode” line up to make sure they have your favorites online.



Q. Don't these Websites force you to identify yourself as a cable or satellite subscriber? How can they give this away for free?

A. None of this content is truly free. On Hulu.com, ABC.com and SouthParkStudios.com, all shows are supported by commercials. And you cannot really skip the commercials (without some additional effort and hacking). The good thing, though, is that the commercial breaks are very short. Usually only one 30 second ad per break – that's it. I'm sure that will change. With NetFlix, the downloads are part of your paid service, so no commercials there. As a result, we tend to watch NetFlix downloads a lot more than Hulu (except when it's my wife by herself, then Hulu is usually her choice). We are certainly concerned that the cable companies will see all this revenue escaping from them and put demands on services like Hulu to make sure that every Hulu viewer is also a subscriber of a cable TV service. But so far, that has not happened. (Please, please, don't let it happen!)



Q. What about sports?

A. Sorry, I don't have a clue. Do some research on ESPN, etc. maybe they have some options. I think the NHL has an online viewing package for all the local games.



Q. How long do you have to wait before a show begins on download?

A. On NetFlix, it is usually about one minute. Then it starts, and never skips, jerks or has to reload. Hardly ever. With Hulu, you put it on pause at the beginning, wait for about two minutes to let it load, and away you go.



Q. Does this work on slow DSL connections?

A. Yep. That's what we have. We probably have the slowest broadband you can get. (If you still have dial-up, stop reading now.) However, if you have the slowest cable connection, you might have trouble. I think most cable Internet providers have higher bandwidth choices, so definitely factor that additional cost into your calculations before switching.



Q. Do you watch other content besides the professionally produced TV content?

A. Oh yes. We watch video podcasts and other TV series that are only available on the Web, like the excellent “Something To Be Desired” (now in its sixth season). Most YouTube videos we watch are on our computers, not through the TVs. It's funny to find old, dead networks like The WB on the Web as well. This was their opportunity to recycle all that old content, some of it is pretty good. You can also use directories BlinkX.com to find new independent video.



Q. What do you do about high-definition (HD) content?


A. It costs $3/month extra at NetFlix to get Blu-Ray DVDs, which we gladly pay. We have an HD projector and a Blu-Ray DVD player, so we use these on special occasions (most weekends) to play some big epic movie or whatever. It projects out to about a 6 ft by 5 ft image – really impressive. It's so nice to have a big white wall. NetFlix has HD downloads on some movies (very few) and the Roku can easily connect to our HD projector. Hulu also has HD content, for that we connect our Eee PC or other laptop to the HD projector. I would say we watch less than 10% of our content on HD. Even the HD movies seem to download in a reasonable amount of time and do not have jerkiness thereafter. Amazing - I don't know how that's possible with just a normal DSL connection.




Q. Is the Eee PC powerful enough to watch full-screen video?

A. We've never had a problem. The only problem is with the bandwidth coming in, and that is solved by pausing the show for a minute or two to let the content cache, then it's fine.



Q. What about when you travel?

A. I'm a computer consultant, so I travel a lot. No problem. My NetFlix downloads and Hulu come with me on my laptop. Hotel Internet connections are always too slow, however, so I always use my wireless modem from Verizon Wireless.



Q. How does this work for people outside the U.S.?

A. Not worth a crap. Sorry.



Q. Do you use Boxee, Square Connect or another service as an content directory?

A. We don't. I just set up a Web page for my wife and we left it at that. These services are very intriguing, and once they have Hulu and the NetFlix content all integrated into one service, we will probably switch.



Q. Are you happy with Internet TV?

A. Yes, extremely. It's been almost a year post-satellite and we don't miss it one bit. It is scary to think if our Internet connection would ever go down, we'd have no e-mail, Web surfing or TV. But, luckily, that hasn't happened yet.

Systems Thinking on the Credit Crisis

This diagram is from a white paper written on the current financial crisis. The R's mean reinforcing feedback, the B's are balancing feedback, the S's (same) are where more of one thing lead to more of another, and the O's (opposite) are where more of one thing lead to less of another.

The most interesting effects occur when you have a delay in a loop, where you initially don't know if the link does anything or not, you have to wait.

The Dreamer - A Graphic Novel about the American Revolutionary War

I visited the S.P.A.C.E. graphic novel and comic book convention in Columbus, Ohio today. What a treat!

One of the most unique finds there was "The Dreamer" series of graphic novels, done by a young woman named Lora Innes. The artwork is exquisite and the story is very fun. Lora remarked that she has accumulated a very well-informed fan base which includes "Thomas Jefferson fan-girls, Alexander Hamilton fan-girls the fights between them!" Lora started out with a short graphic novel including some vague historical references, but the further she got into it, the more she found she had to improve her own knowledge of America's history. Soon, she (and her fans) were delving into the battles, lives and loves of many of the heroes and heroines of 1776 and the surrounding era.

I was truly impressed with Lora's work. You can view her The Dreamer series online here. If you like her work, donate here.

Luis Gutierrez is Outed as a Payday Loan Patsy

Fox News Is Making Stuff Up

Fox News has been reporting that the Dow Jones Average went down during a speech by the President when the stock average actually went UP. Hey, Fox-holes - it's one thing to show the "other side of the story," but you can't just make stuff up to suit your purposes!

Wake up, Fox! We can tell when you're lying!

All this after showing a six-month old clip of Joe Biden and pretending that it was current (shows at the end of the clip).

The Beautiful Truth - Movie Review

This is a good movie to see for anyone even slightly open to
alternative medicine / holistic health. It was interesting to hear the
success stories of people who were saved by Gerson Therapy, which I
don't doubt a bit (I know people who have survived cancer using similar
means). However, I wish the film hadn't given the impression that
--everyone-- gets better with Gerson, which of course isn't truth for
any therapy.

It surprises me that some people are still so hostile to the fact that
changes in diet can change a diagnosis like cancer. If you think about
how you got cancer in the first place (just coincidence??? just
genetics??? C'mon...) then it is easier to think about diet as cause,
complication and/or cure. I guess it will just take time for more
people to come around.

The movie was pretty well done. Very heavily biased towards the
positive side of Gerson, very little airing of people dissenting
against it, just a few seconds of those interviews, and unfortunately,
focusing on guys like Stephen Barrett, who have been completely
discredited in the medical field. I wish they would have had some good
back-and-forth discussion on the pros and cons of Gerson without just
throwing up a straw man like Barrett who is so easy to disparage.
Unfortunately, stuff like Gerson Therapy tends to be a very emotional
topic for Western medical specialists, so it must have been hard to
find a person who could talk intelligently and somewhat calmly about
it.

The movie tries to make this a personal journey for this young man, as
he discovers what is going on with Gerson Therapy and food as medicine.
I think the movie was paced nicely and it wasn't too preachy. Overall,
quite good.

8 stars out of 10

Snorgtees.com Return Policy Stinks

I ordered two shirts from Snorgtees.com a few weeks ago.  The shirts arrived but the two shirts for my wife fit much, much smaller than expected, probably 3 sizes too small.  Not normal. We decided to return both of them and get our money back.  

Oops!  No returns from Snorg!!  Well, that sucks.  So then we decided to just get the men's sizes instead, which we could judge from the shirt I ordered (which did fit).  But then we found out that Snorg wants the customer to pay for shipping for returns BOTH WAYS!!

These were some expensive shirts by the time we were done.  Nice stuff, the shirts are from American Apparel, but that return/exchanges policy really sucks.  Next time we're going to use somebody else (although I still think the Snorg girl above is superhot).

These guys are big advertisers on Digg.com, which is where I saw them.  Too bad their policies are too customer-hostile.

An Eee PC in Every Room? Twenty Uses for Netbooks in Your Home

These Linux Eee PCs are so cool.  They are getting cheap enough that you could practically have one in every room of your house.  If you could, what would you do with them all?

Here's what I'd do (most of these things require you to disable the Eee PC's screensaver, which you can do quite easily):

1. Watch TV.  The main purpose of our Eee PC right now is to use it as a very portable television.  We watch Hulu mostly, as well as South Park when a new episode comes out. We originally bought the Eee PC because we lost our DirecTV (neighbor's trees in the way) and we didn't want to have to run a cable to the far room, so we just set up the Eee PC in that room and streamed content from Hulu.  We love it.  But you need a set of cheap speakers plugged into the Eee PC to really get sound.  Otherwise it works great. My wife isn't a very confident computer user so I built her an easy menu of the sources of entertainment. (Yes, Flash for Hulu and YouTube runs fine on the Eee PC out-of-the-box.) Plus, the Eee PC has a port to connect to a larger monitor or TV (VGA).
2. Listen to streaming music. Pandora works on the Eee PC. If you haven't used Pandora, you should really give it a try. It is a free streaming music service where you can construct your own radio station of cool songs. You can pick a number of your favorite artists and then it will play music that is similar to those artists (as well as the artists themselves). It can go for hours with enjoyable tunes, and if you don't like something, you can vote it down and it will jump to the next song.
3. Listen to the radio.  If you have a favorite radio station locally (or around the world), the Eee PC has a function built-in that will take you straight to the MediaU Website.
4. Tape recorder.  My wife has a lot of cool ideas throughout the day and she likes to have a tape recorder to record them on the spot before she forgets.  The Eee PC has a great microphone and simple sound recorder application built-in that works nicely.
5. Play video games.  Okay, you're limited to games that work on Linux, but still.  The Eee PC has a cute little penguin bodysurfing game that is quite fun.
6. Alarm clock. When traveling, you don't have to pack an alarm clock, just use your Eee PC. Here are instructions (look further down on the page after the business about the potato).
7. Digital picture frame. This works pretty well.  Go into Flickr and use the slideshow feature.  If you want just certain files to repeat over and over (like a standalone picture frame) you can use OpenOffice Impress (called Presentations on Eee PC) which works similarly to PowerPoint.
8. E-mail station.  Like to look at your e-mail while you're eating breakfast?  Why lug your laptop from your home office to the dining table?  Just use your Eee PC (dining room edition)!  Eee PC uses Thunderbird, plus has desktop links to Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo and AOL.  Of course, you can get to any POP server through Thunderbird and any Web-based e-mail through the browser (Firefox).
9. Listen to podcasts and music.  The Eee PC does not have a podcast catcher built-in, but you can download a Linux-compatible application like Songbird (sorry no iTunes on Linux but Songbird is really nice). Installation is a bit tricky, follow the instructions in this thread. Most Eee PCs do not have much storage space, so once you've listened to a podcast, delete it immediately.  You won't be able to store your whole music collection on the Eee PC drive either, but you could use a flash drive (Eee PC has a USB port).
10. Watch tutorials.  There are so many awesome video tutorials on technology tools (like this set on GIMP) but who has time to sit still and watch them?  Take your Eee PC with you from room to room and have the tutorials playing while you make dinner or cut your toenails.
11. Read your own personalized newspaper (RSS). Google Reader is an incredible time-saving (time-wasting) tool.  I've used it to create a personalized newspaper for myself.  I don't care about 90% of the stories in my local newspaper, I care about other stuff, like stories about Agile development, business travel, Canadian news, systems thinking, holistic health, open source software, renewable energy, software productivity tools, Web 2.0, etc. So I was able to construct a constant stream of these types of stories using an RSS Reader like Google Reader. The only trouble with doing this on the Eee PC is that the screen is a bit small to see enough of the stories, but you can fix that. Hit F11 on the Eee PC and then click on the border in the middle and you should have lots of reading room.
12. Read your recipes.  There are so many good recipe sites on the Web, but AllRecipes is my favorite.  Use your Eee PC as a recipe station, eliminating the need to print them out.
13. Read PDFs easily.  The Eee PC cannot be called an e-book reader, but it does a good job of reading PDF files.  With my job (computer consulting), I often have to get through a massive PDF file and I don't like sitting in my office reading it on the screen.  It is sometimes nicer to use the Eee PC to pull it up and read it anywhere, even in my La-Z-Boy chair in the loft. The Eee PC comes loaded with Adobe Acrobat Reader.
14. Mirror.  Umm, you can use the built-in Webcam on the Eee PC as a mirror to see if you have something in your teeth. (Gettin' lame, I know.)
15. Social network status.  If you are totally into a particular social network (Facebook, Twitter, Friendfeed, Ping.fm, etc.) you can keep that page loaded on your Eee PC and see what's going on realtime with your friends.
16. Encyclopedia.  Nice to have an on-demand encyclopedia in every room, eh?  Wikipedia is the obvious choice here.
17. IM station.  The Eee PC comes with an instant messaging client, but you'd have to have it running only in one room, otherwise you get logged out elsewhere. Still, nice to be able to IM anybody anywhere in your house (maybe??).
18. Phone.  Skype is loaded on the Eee PC, you can use your Eee PC as a phone, but you will definitely need the speakers (as mentioned previously). Although it has a Webcam, you have to go through some additional steps to get video Skype working. Maybe the newer Eee PC don't require this, I don't know.
19. To do list.  Nice to have your favorite to do list right in the room with you.  My favorite is Remember the Milk, but any Web-based system or Linux-compatible download will work.
20. Real-time information feeds.  Things like weather or election results can be nice to have on-demand in the room you're in.

My Letter to President Obama

Okay, we elected you, Mr. President-Elect. We're really happy that you made it to the White House, but now it's payback time, big guy.

I'm going to give you my Top Ten Issues to work on. How you do it is your business. But these are the issues that are most important to me.

1. Revoke all harmful environment deregulation from the Bush era.  I need you to take back all those horrible laws and policies like the "Clear Skies Act" and "Healthy Forests."  We know what they really were - giveaways to the corporations who wanted to do logging in our national parks and pollute our drinking water and air.
2. Stop all the wars. I know you've said you will create a plan to bring our troops home from Iraq. To tell you the truth, fighting a war in Afghanistan isn't going to help find bin Laden either.  This is a matter of cooperation with those governments, not a policy of war.
3. Restore America's luster abroad.  This is so important. I would like you to meet with foreign leaders worldwide and tell them that we want to be their friends again. Start with the top twenty most important countries, and don't forget the former Eastern Bloc countries like Poland and the Ukraine.
4. Use the Internet to involve the citizens.  Help us redefine what it means to be a citizen of America. Help us think of ourselves in terms of being citizens instead of consumers.
5. Move our healthcare system toward cheaper, safer, more effective holistic healthcare and away from drugs and surgery.  You haven't mentioned this in your campaign, but I think it is definitely one of my Top Tens.
6. Make it cool to work for the government. You said you could do this in a Rolling Stone interview. Public service should be a badge of honor.  I know you see it that way.  Now help the rest of us to see it that way also.  Teachers and government workers of all walks of life should feel so proud to be serving their country.  I believe you can help us make that happen.
7. Put your renewable energy plan into effect.  From everything I can tell, you have followed the Apollo Alliance plan pretty closely.  Solar panels, wind turbines, hybrid plug-in cars, getting utilities off coal (including "clean" coal), a mixture of decentralized and centralized power generation, etc.  I couldn't be happier about that.  Now put it into place, as an absolute top priority.
8. Rebuild our country's infrastructure.  We need new bridges, roads, public transit.  I know that these things need to happen largely within states and communities, but you can help with funding tweaks and using the bully pulpit of the presidency.
9. Put a strong focus on civil rights and women's rights.  I trust you very much to do this, Mr. President-Elect. Give us Supreme Court justices who will uphold Roe v. Wade and let's continue our helpful policies towards minorities and women in the community and the workplace.  I don't think quotas and most affirmative action are that helpful, however, but you've mentioned a number of ideas in your books and on your Website that make more sense for all of us than those older ideas of civil rights.
10. Put a sharp focus on Internet policies.  Revise outdated laws like copyright and patent to reflect the Internet age, and please make net-neutrality a reality.

My Photos from Obama Rally in Downtown Columbus Today

Here are my photos on Facebook from the Obama Rally that I went to today in Columbus, Ohio.

Photos

Why You Should Vote for Barack Obama

Here's why you should vote for Barack Obama. We so seldom get a chance to put someone in office who is simultaneously a) smart, b) has good morals and c) is hard working. This is our chance to do that by voting for Barack Obama.

Oh - and you get a chance to tell your grandchildren that you gave American racism a good, hard kick in the teeth when you made history by putting a black man into the White House.

Review of The Predator State

Here is my review on "The Predator State: How Conservatives Abandoned the Free Market and Why Liberals Should Too" by James K. Galbraith.

What an interesting book. The American Economy was in a much different state when I began reading this book than when I finished it (last night). I think what I learned from this book has helped me think about possible solutions for our economic meltdown.

Here are some points from Galbraith's (yes, Kenneth's son) book. I'll give indication of my opinions on his ideas as well.

I had no idea how long this post was going to be (even though my notes while reading the book were copious.) Maybe I should summarize my summary as well. Here goes:

Galbraith says that liberals who are for the following things should reverse their thinking: balanced budgets, free trade, open markets / monetary policy, tax cuts and the importance of savings.

He attacks each idea with an obvious depth of economic prowess and an even more obvious bias towards big government thinking.

His argument against balanced federal government budgets is perhaps his most compelling. He provides a simple equation that shows that the U.S. federal government (unlike all other countries) is positively incapable of balancing its budget and should not even try. To do so results in pain for consumers and business in the U.S. Galbraith actually won me over on this point. (See below for details.)

Galbraith isn't exactly against free trade itself, but against the unfettered access we seem to have as a goal where environmental and labor regulations aren't part of our agreements. He seems to have a fairly typical liberal view on this point, and I agree as well. He aggressively debunks the notion that the free trade agreements are remotely linked to job loss in the U.S. Instead, he blames deregulation and union-busting for the job losses.

Galbraith deftly points out the failures of the "open market" and, in many ways, foreshadows what happened in the weeks and months after his book was published in August 2008. He was right on almost every account on this point. Just this past week we saw Alan Greenspan admitting to the "flaw" in his own thinking about markets and monetary policy. Galbraith must have had a giggle about that. He points out that the countries where open markets were most vigorously applied were dramatic failures (Argentina, Brazil, Chile). He says that Milton Friedman's motto of "freedom to choose" is actually just "freedom to shop." He shows how the big industrial companies lost their brain trusts in finance and technology to Wall Street and Silicon Valley respectively, and the damage this has caused. He shows how extravagant CEO pay has been a destructive force in the economy. He says that government "planning" is needed because "markets cannot think ahead."

I didn't take many notes about tax cuts. He saw the George W. Bush tax cuts as irresponsible and, in general, the trickle-down economics as a joke. I think most people would agree, including me. On financial inequality in general, he says that we must use government controls to close the gap between the rich and the poor, and if we do so, we will experience a better and better economy. He uses Denmark as an example of high equality and low unemployment.

With the importance of savings, I think Galbraith is of two minds. It seems that he is opposed to supply-side economics, which emphasizes the importance of savings, but he also, later in the book, says that he is in favor of the government having some control or influence over how/when people save money, so I ended up a little confused on this point. I, personally, am a crazy saver and I think Americans need to have more of a saving/investment mindset than we currently do.

When I first picked up this book, I did so because the title and sub-title was threatening and abusive to my own thinking. I had to find out what an accomplished economist knew that I didn't know about my deeply held beliefs about capitalism and economics.

I found out a lot of things. Perhaps only a handful of books I've read in my life have forced a bigger shift in my thinking than this book. I cannot say that I am a far-left liberal like Galbraith himself, even after reading this book. However, I can say that I've shifted left-ward knowing what I know now, and I'm sure my opinions have also been drastically impacted by the lurchings of the American economy this fall of 2008.

With that said, here now are my detailed notes on Galbraith's book.

• Galbraith says that this book is for the liberal who today says they are for a) balanced budgets, b) free trade, c) open markets and monetary policy, d) tax cuts and e) the importance of savings. (Hey, that's me.)
• It all started with Ronald Reagan and Paul Volcker.
• Together, they gave the American economy a type of "shock therapy" when the Fed raised the interest rates extremely high in the early 1980s. They thought that this would encourage savings (supply-side economics) and all the market to work most efficiently. It failed. America fell into a recession immediately and they abandoned the supply-side theory very quickly thereafter.
• He says that the combination of open, perfectly efficient markets and supply-side economics is incompatible. If we need to encourage savings, the markets must not be perfectly efficient. (This seems very academic to me, kind of objecting to it based on purely theoretical terms. The question for me is if they work together in reality or not).
• He says there are no economic conservative academics left, and certainly none in the Bush administration.
• One of the problems is that the only people who benefit from encouragement to save are the very rich. Tools for encouraging savings are things like IRAs and 401(k)'s. (I don't really see how these things only benefit the super rich.)
• A good point that he brings up is that the countries who followed the Washington Consensus, like Argentina, Chile and some African countries, failed economically, while the countries who followed other paths, like China, did much better.
• As a result, no countries trust the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to work with them anymore.
• Liberals need to create their post-Reagan economic policy (this is so true. In fact, it needs to be neither socialistic nor Reaganistic, but something really different.)
• Hurricane Katrina was to conservative government what Chernobyl was to communism
• Milton Freidman's "freedom to choose" is nothing more than just "freedom to shop"
• What is a free market anyway? It is a negation. "Not" government.
• The only beneficiaries of a free market are the largest corporations (as a former small business owner, I can say this is very true).
• To the free market proponent, there is simply something offensive about the redistribution of wealth from a moral point of view, since it robs a person of property to which the market has assigned a natural claim.
• Supply-side causes companies to move capital out of their retaining earnings and into executive salaries. As a result, society gets mansions and yachts instead of factories and office buildings.
• Galbraith actually advocates wage and price controls. (Yecch.)
  
• He says that "deficit spending works." (More on this later. It isn't as ridiculous as it sounds.)
• Macroeconomic principle --- A country's internal deficit - public deficit plus private deficit - equals its international deficit. (This was a big realization for me.)
• Very interesting how, in the 1990s, consumer and business deficit (credit cards, loans, mortgages) drove economic growth even as the federal government cut their deficit to zero.
• The surplus of the late 1990s did what government surpluses always do: a government running a surplus necessarily subtracts in taxes from private spending more than it injects in payments to private incomes. This forced the private economy to finance the expansion with a buildup of debt. (My comments: 1) This makes sense except, b) why doesn't he mention the cost of maintaining a debt (public or private), c) why does he advocate consistently using deficits, never surpluses, and therefore going into a neverending abyss of red ink for the U.S.?)
• The budget deficit no longer depends on the federal budget policy decisions, but rather on international trade and the financial position of the private sector. So long as American foreign trade remains in a permanent state of deficit (an overall trade deficit with all countries), which the U.S. has to do, actually, so long as a growing and unstable world economy requires U.S. dollar reserves, then the federal budget deficit is basically permanent!! (This is huge. We have to run a federal budget deficit otherwise we force consumers and businesses to run up their debt. The non-U.S. countries use U.S. dollars as their reserves, and those dollars have to come from somewhere - that's us.)
• Eventually, we may change the global financial system to alleviate this. This would be a very dangerous change, however, because the reason everyone uses the U.S. dollar for its reserves is because everyone else is using the U.S. dollar as their reserves.
• (This is my own thought.) It is possible to look at George W. Bush's presidency as a resounding success. Remember when he claimed he would be the first CEO President? Well, if you look at what corporations do, they try to get value from a market in whatever way possible, and give value back to their shareholders. If you look at Bush's campaign as the corporation, as America as the marketplace, and at his contributors as the shareholders, he did everything he should have. He took money from the market (America) into his corporation (his campaign) and gave it to the shareholders (his contributors in energy, pharmaceuticals, insurance industries, etc.).
• Back to Galbraith's ideas, NAFTA did nothing as far as job loss or gain. It simply made permanent the maquiladora system in place since 1965.
• China's success has to do with their lack of mature capital markets. When a Chinese company does not turn a profit, their management is not automatically fired. (I don't get this. I guess he is saying that managers aren't worried about the super-short term like here in the U.S., but to me you would want some type of accountability and not just losses year after year, which is what he's implying.)
• Labor markets do affect people's paychecks, but income inequity is only partly due to differences in pay. Other factors, such as capital gains, interest, dividends and proprietor's income have a large effect as well. So it is somewhat incorrect to say that the market forces of the labor market are solely the cause of income inequity. And further, to say that we will cause massive disruption in the labor market if we institute minimum wage increases or wage controls doesn't make sense. (It is a good point when he says that differences in pay are just part of the picture. But I do think that raising the minimum wage causes disruption, the question is just whether we are willing to live with the disruption.)
• When California and New Jersey increased their minimum wages, unemployment dropped. (Yeah, okay, but what about other states?) The U.S. tends to have increasing pay inequality during bad times and decreasing pay inequality during good times. (That's an interesting statistic if true.) And, of course, unemployment rises during bad times and drops during good times.
• In Denmark, there is high equality and low unemployment. (And what are their productivity numbers??)
  
• Inequality means a few "good" jobs and a lot of "bad" jobs by definition. So a lot of people queue up for the good jobs, causing inefficiency, unemployment and market disruption.
• It seems like Galbraith is against people donating to their alma maters and using it as a tax deduction. (I really don't get this.)
• He sees universities most important contribution as a way to keep young people busy and diverted while they are at their least employable. (What???) Keeping young people occupied and away from the streets is more important than the skills they gain while in class. (What???) Schools provide a similar function in society to prisons and the military, all three of which keep our young people from causing disruption. (I guess I can see a glimmer of logic here, but I do think that universities - the good ones anyway - provide skills that help us when we go into the workforce, as well as business connections and social skills on top of the technical skills we may learn. This point is a bit crazy, I think, or maybe just overstated for effect.)
• He says that when you add up the heavily government-influenced sectors of the economy - military, schools, universities, social security, healthcare (Medicare, Medicaid), and housing (HUD I guess?) - it makes up more than half the economy. And it has been a stabilizing force which has kept us from falling into another Great Depression. (I am willing to acknowledge this point, although he is very loose in defining what is "government-influenced. But I will agree that the private sector is not as large and as independent of government-influence as we might think it is.)
• It was not our social institutions that had been damaged during the Republican presidencies in the 1980s and 2000s. It is the corporation that has been decimated (This is super interesting. Read on...)
• The best financial people used to work inside the large corporations (Ford, GE, Sears, AT&T, etc.). But in the 1980s, 90s, and 00s, they all left the large companies and went to work for Wall Street. (Interesting point - I had never considered this.)
  
• The best technical people used to work inside the large corporations. But they, too, left to join Silicon Valley startups like Microsoft, Cisco and now, of course, Google. (I would also say consulting companies too, because it is often noticeable that consulting staff seem to be more technically advanced than the staff of the client companies they serve. Maybe that's just my bias as a consultant!)
  
• As a result of losing all this talent, the big corporations switched from being producers to consumers of financial knowledge and technical knowledge. They had to acquire the expertise of how to run their business financially from Wall Street and consulting firms, and they had to rely on technology solutions from custom software and packaged software from outside entities like Microsoft or IBM. (So they've had their heart and lungs removed and are on a kind of life support to these outside service providers.)
  
• The big industrial companies have to rely heavily on Wall Street for their finances and therefore Wall Street is able to dictate how a corporation should perform without ANY ACTUAL UNDERSTANDING of how the corporation works. This causes the "short termism" we can all see in the stock market that is killing the long-term viability of all public companies.
• The crooked goings-on at Enron, Tyco and WorldCom were not only not understood by Wall Street firms, but actually encouraged. The dual inability of Wall Street to understand the various industries (energy trading, telecom, etc.) and their singular focus on "the numbers helped to destroy these firms. (Remember that Galbraith is writing all this months before the economic meltdown of late 2008.)
• CEOs, instead of being specialists in a particular industry, have become specialists in cutting costs and raising stock prices for Wall Street's approval. This new breed of CEOs often not have the slightest clue to the long-term implications of their decisions. And the capital markets, not understanding business needs for investment, do things like overinvestment in fiber optics installations by sixty-fold that happened in the late 1990s.
• Galbraith explains the sub-prime mortgage crisis (this had already begun in early 2008 when he was still writing this book). Interest rates were set extremely low, which made T-bills unattractive. Big investment banks bought packages of home mortgages from traditional mortgage lenders as investments. These mortgages were on ultra-low teaser rates set up during the low interest period after 9/11. Once these teaser rates expired, homeowners could not pay the adjusted mortgage payments, as they had often been poorly qualified by the mortgage lenders, and the investment banks (Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, etc.) were left holding the bag.
• The Reagan, Bush I and Bush II administrations have not actually destroyed the public institutions of social security, Medicare, etc. What they have destroyed is the modern corporation. By pulling back on all types of regulation, they have encouraged the Enrons, WorldComs, Tycos, Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers of the world. They've allowed transient, unaccountable CEOs to deplete the corporate coffers for their own personal gain. And by giving control of government to a subset of industry - the worst polluters, the flagrant monopolists, the technological footdraggers - they've made life worse for the businesses that have played by the rules. (I have to agree.)
  
• Galbraith says that job training doesn't help! (He doesn't mention how many firms are searching for qualified people during times of high unemployment, but my own experience is that this is constantly happening. Employers cannot find the qualified people they need and simultaneously we have millions of unqualified or wrongly qualified people out of work.)
• Galbraith quotes Keynes as saying "A supply curve for labor doesn't exist." (I don't understand this. All my experience says that there is definitely a supply-and-demand relationship with labor like anything else. Galbraith does a very poor job of explaining this point.)
• He states that preschool isn't a help to anyone. (Really?)
• He says, overall, he isn't advocating "abandoning the free market." He is really saying that "government planning" shouldn't be considered an evil thing and some relic of communism, but instead should be combined with the free market and used as a counterbalance to the problems of the free market.
• He advocates planning a number of things: a) how much to save/invest, b) directions for new technology, c) how to deal with environmental issues, d) scientific knowledge, e) and culture.
• Government planning is needed because markets cannot think ahead. (I have to agree here.)
  
• Markets have two big flaws. Markets convey their signals only in proportion to the purchasing power of the individual, so the rich guy gets a thousand times more votes in the marketplace than the middle class guy. (Yeah, but there are a thousand times more middle class guys though. He doesn't mention this fact.)
• The second flaw is that markets don't have a way to represent the next generation, the not-yet-born. (Very true.)
• Galbraith argues in favor of certain wage regulations. In Norway, you are free to import, export and outsource as you like. But you are not free to cut your employees' wages. You can't go after cut-rate workers, whether native or immigrant. You cannot undercut the union rate. The effect of this on business discipline is quite wonderful. Businesses must find ways to compete that do not involve running down the wage standards of their workforces.
  
• The middle class in America was built by unions, regulations and wage standards and it will be rebuilt the same way. (You know, this is kind of a good argument.)
  
• Galbraith actually aggressively debunks the notion that free trade (NAFTA, CAFTA, etc.) has caused a loss of jobs. Instead, he blames deregulation for those issues in America.

Benjamin Barber - How Markets Corrupt Children, Infantilize Adults, and Swallow Citizens Whole

I heard Benjamin Barber's speech on the great, great podcast Big Ideas. This guy is worth listening to. I mourn my free market idealism as it fades thanks to this guy, Naomi Klein, James Galbraith and the damn American economy these days...

Fuel Cells Powered by Sewage?

The ever fascinating blog EcoGeek gives us a story today about how sewage has been found to be a very cheap way to do hydrogen electrolysis by some researchers.  Read on here.

Colin Powell Endorses Obama

Obama's Energy Plan

I hear people say that they aren't exactly sure what Obama's position is on this issue or that one, so I thought I would blog about his positions.  How do I know?  It's on his friggin' Website, detailed in minute detail.  But who's got time to read his Website?  (I guess)

Here are the high points of Obama's energy plan (infested with my opinions on each point):

Short Term Fixes

• Emergency gasoline rebate ($500/individual, $1000/family) to consumers paid for with a windfall profit tax on energy companies  (I'm not crazy about this, it is politically expediency, but hey, it'll get him some votes)
• Crack down on energy speculation a-la Enron-style by (this is important) closing loopholes and increasing transparency (this isn't our biggest issue in energy but the loophole-closing aspect of it is good)
• Swap light and heavy crude, release oil from Strategic Petroleum Reserve (again, a short-term fix [as they note on the site] but might help bring prices down a bit)

Longer Term Strategies

• Cap-and-trade system for greenhouse gas emissions - goal - 80% below 1990 levels by 2050 (I would prefer a commons trust approach, but cap-and-trade is a great start)
• Work through the U.N. to make the U.S. a leader on climate change (smart)
• Accelerate commercialization of plug-in hybrid cars, encourage energy efficiency, invest in low-emission coal plants, advance next generation biofuels, build digital electricity grid (this is cool stuff, except for the stupid, stupid, stupid clean coal stuff, but it is there to grab votes, so okay)
• Create a "Green Vet Initiative."  Job placement for vets of Afghanistan and Iraq to gain skills in renewable energy jobs (love this soooo much - why isn't it talked about more on the campaign trail???)
• Invest $1B per year into switching manufacturing areas over to renewable energy (how many birds did you just kill with that one stone???  Love this)
• Increase fuel economy standards 4% a year (great)
• Put 1 million plug-in hybrids on the road by 2015.  How can a government do that??  Well, guess how big the government's fleet of vehicles is?  Obama is going to switch the entire White House fleet to plug-in hybrids in one year, then half of the entire government fleet by 2012. $7,000 tax credit for people buying plug-in hybrid cars!!  (great idea)
• A focus on "next generation biofuels" read: cellulosic, not corn.  (smart)
• Better prioritization of current drilling efforts for oil and gas (this is good, although not that exciting)
• Require 10% of all electricity produced to come from renewable sources (that ain't "clean coal")
• Safe and secure nuclear energy (I personally am in favor of this, although I know a lot of liberals aren't - it is part of the entire energy self-sufficiency picture)
• Big focus on energy efficiency (biggest, fastest payback)
• A new building code, all buildings carbon-neutral by 2030 (great)
• Reduce federal energy consumption.  The U.S. Federal Government is the largest energy consumer in the world.  Why not start there?????  (can you see why I love this guy??)
• Build more livable, sustainable communities (super long-term, but what is wrong with thinking super-long term??)

I really have to apologize for my cheerleading on each point, but, Jeez, I can't help it.  This is one great energy policy.  Half the points are things I've been wishing to see from candidates for years and years, and there are a lot of points that I hadn't even considered until I read them in the PDF.

By the way, I'm hoping my short post here encourages you to read the original PDF on Obama's Website.  This was put together by some really smart people.

photo credit:  Felix Francis on Flickr (creative commons)

Watch John McCain's Role in the Savings and Loan Crisis of the Early 1990s

The Singularity is Not Going to Come

Kevin Kelly's excellent blog "The Technium" featured a post this past week about Ray Kurzweil's idea of "the Singularity" when artificial intelligence will become so great that basically all of our problems will be solved.

In this post, Kelly shows how the Singularity may come and go, but it won't be the event that Kurzweil is hoping. In general, Kelly's blog is a must read. Although Kelly doesn't mention Gödel's incompleteness theorems actually mathematically disproved everything that Kurzweil is claiming could happen with artificial intelligence, now or ever.

Flickr photo thanks to GTM.

Electoral Vote

I find the Website Electoral-Vote.com to be sooooo useful. I refer to it everyday. It shows a map of red and blue states as compiled with the latest polls of the day. It changes every single day and shows which presidential candidate is leading based on the electoral vote count (which is the only thing that matters). My impression is that too many of the news outlets are focusing on popular vote counts and ignoring the electoral vote count, especially now that Tim Russert is gone. He was very good at giving us run-downs of how things could play out with this-or-that state going red or blue. We miss ya Tim!!

(By the way, Barack has been ahead on electoral votes counts almost the entire time, with a very short Palin-bounce for McCain after the convention. The badge at the top of my post is accurate for the day you are reading this.)

The site also has great information on the close congressional races as well, although it does not focus on the individual polls for those.

And, if you're trying to figure out who should get your vote in November, go to GlassBooth.org. It looks at the various issues-of-the-day and tries to match your views to Barack Obama or John McCain. This was especially fun when the primaries were going on. A lot of people I know found out that their views closely matched Dennis Kucinich, and boy, were they surprised!!

The Hemp Revolution

We just watched a sort-of documentary called "The Hemp Revolution." It looks like it was produced in the 1980s but it is really informative on the many, many, many uses of hemp. A source of Omega-3 oils, of protein, the best fiber for making clothing (from silkier-than-silk to jeans) and a great way to produce cellulosic ethanol. And it is illegal to grow hemp in the U.S. ... why??? 

(No, it isn't good to smoke. Hemp is different from marijuana.)

You've gotta see this movie.

NOTE:  I say "sort-of-documentary" because it is really slanted toward the good side of hemp and doesn't give any information on the (there's gotta be) downsides of the crop.

Cutting the Cable

Okay, we are trying something new. We stopped out DirecTV satellite TV service this month and we're going without. We are going to use the Internet and NetFlix as our only entertainment sources.

Wish us luck! I'll update this blog as we progress.

(photo by afred on Flickr)

Darwin Awards - One of the Best Movies

My wife and I just watched one of the best movies we've seen in a long time. The Darwin Awards with Joseph Fiennes and Winona Ryder is billed as a "dark comedy" and, while a lot of people do die, it is truly funny and insightful. Fiennes is hilarious (don't miss the shower scene) and Ryder is lovely and a great kick.

I can't recommend this movie highly enough. Why didn't I hear about it in 2006 when it came out?? And why does it only get 5.8 / 10 on IMDB.com??

T. Boone Pickens Has An Energy Plan, Dammit!

T. Boone Pickens, recalcitrant oilman, has a plan to reduce our dependence on foreign oil.  It involves wind power and natural gas.  Click below to hear him tell it plain-like.

My Review

Originally submitted at More Mailboxes

Beautiful Mailbox Post

By Daryl Kulak from Westerville Ohio on 8/9/2008

 

5out of 5

Pros: High Quality, Good Value, Durable

This mailbox post is so beautiful. We installed it with the Hummingbird Curbside Mailbox and the two go together great. We're so happy with the results. Our neighbors are jealous.

(legalese)

My Review of Hummingbird Curbside Mailbox

Originally submitted at More Mailboxes

Special Lite mailboxes have quality you can see. The striking Hummingbird details on both sides of this piece make it stand out far more than the average mailbox. The deeply embossed designs show your love of nature and will last through a lifetime of weathering. It is also available ...

Hummingbird Curbside Mailbox

Best mailbox in the neighborhood

By Daryl Kulak from Westerville Ohio on 8/9/2008

 

5out of 5

Pros: Attractive Design, Sturdy

Describe Yourself: Novice

This is such a great mailbox. Our mailman even said that he likes it because it has an extra lip over top of the door so the water won't leak into the box on rainy days. We love it. The design and color is so beautiful and the box is very sturdy and well designed.

No complaints! We've installed it already with the Albion Mailbox Post and Floral Bracket. The two go nicely together.

(legalese)

Barack Obama Comments on How the Internet Will Assist His Government

These comments, taken from an article just published in Rolling Stone (available online) show that Obama is taking the role of the Internet very seriously in terms of shaping policy, getting feedback, increasing accountability.

A few times in the past few years there have been "anonymous holds" on bills going through the Senate. How slimy is that? Some senators want to keep a bill from getting voted on but they don't want to do it publicly, for shame of what they're doing. Hopefully we can stop this type of behavior.

Here are a few lines from Obama's interview with Rolling Stone:

How are you going to connect your support among young people to the governing process?
This is where the Internet is so powerful. One of the things that surprised me in this campaign is how well we were able to use technology to organize people. There's enormous promise — but we've just scratched the surface of what's possible when it comes to making government work for people. Virtual town-hall meetings, increasing transparency, accountability on legislation. You think about all the inefficiencies in government. We basically have a New Deal government in a 21st-century economy. We've got to upgrade it.

So you're consciously aware that this will have to be part of how you govern?
Yes, absolutely. The Internet gives young people a tool to be informed continuously. It gives them an opportunity to speak to each other and mobilize themselves. It gives them the opportunity to hold me accountable when I'm not following through on promises that I've made. It gives me a powerful ally if Congress is resistant to measures that need to be taken.

Rethinking Health Insurance

Health insurers have certainly been beat up in the past few months by the political candidates. In some cases, I think it's right, when insurers are withholding payments for legitimate operations that might save a life. But in other cases, I don't think health insurers are the only ones to blame.

Here is an article written by Dr. Pam Popper, nutritionist, naturopath and President of the Wellness Forum in Columbus, Ohio.

I think she is right on with some views on how insurance companies could easily become the real innovators in our move to a better healthcare scenario.

There is so much wrong with health care that it is almost impossible to fix the existing system. And, in my opinion, we are focusing on the wrong things and blaming the wrong organizations for some of our problems.

For example, health care reform often involves criticizing insurance companies for not paying for certain types of treatments. For the record, I'll state that insurance companies are guilty of many things and do their part to contribute to the poor state of health care today. But forcing these companies to pay for any treatment offered by drug companies and desired by patients may be causing our problems to worsen, not get better.

For example, I have written before about Avastin, originally approved for colorectal and lung cancers, and recently granted "accelerated approval" by the FDA for metastatic breast cancer. It's actually almost worthless for all cancers. Avastin extends life by a few months for colorectal and lung cancer patients, and about 5.5 months for metastatic breast cancer patients. The side effects, according to an article in The New York Times, include death. Offered by Genentech, the drug costs $92,000 per year. Genentech acknowledged in an editorial that it "does not claim that the drug is cost-effective for advanced breast cancer but believes it will be clearly worth the cost if shown effective in earlier stages of breast cancer."

In spite of this, Avastin has already been prescribed off-label to over 11,000 cancer patients with advanced breast cancer, and the recent FDA approval would increase the number of patients who qualify for it to 43,000. Genentech acknowledges that the drug only extends life for only a few months. Using half of the $92,000 annual cost of the drug (since patients are almost always dead within a few months), the revenues to Genentech for this drug have grown to a potential of close to $2 billion dollars per year. Where does the money to pay for this drug come from? Insurance companies and Medicare/Medicaid. And if some of our political candidates get their way, we will add universal health care coverage, meaning more taxpayer-financed reimbursement, to the pool of available funds.

This is not the only example. Billions of dollars are spent annually on unnecessary back surgeries and other procedures, mammography and other useless diagnostics, as well as drug treatments that are completely ineffective, and often hurt people. Can you blame the insurance companies for refusing to pay for this?

Unfortunately, the insurance companies also deny reimbursement for treatments that do work, such as dietary intervention. They've thrown the baby out with the bath water, attempting to deny coverage for anything different or progressive.

Insurance companies are in a great position to be innovators in the health care field if they decide t do so. They could develop policies for people who choose to practice dietary excellence and optimal habits, and reimburse these people for the counseling and other support needed to learn how to do so. There is evidence that this will work, and can save enormous amounts of money. The average patient who gets bypass surgery spends $86,364 over a 5-year period; the average patient who has angioplasty spends $63,897 during a comparable period of time. A consultation with Dr. Esselstyn (who has an excellent track record reversing cardiovascular disease through dietary intervention) costs $500; a membership to The Wellness Forum, complete with books, CD's and DVD's costs only $221. Reimbursing for these types of services and refusing to pay for bypass surgery and angioplasty unless the need is clearly demonstrated (it rarely is) would result in huge savings for both private carriers and Medicare.

I'm not upset with the insurance companies for saying enough is enough as it pertains to reimbursement for medical services that do not work. And I do not think universal health care, which will result in all of us as taxpayers shouldering more of the burden for useless diagnostics and treatment is the answer either. The answer is to continue to educate people to make different choices, and to target the purveyors of misinformation as the real culprits - our government, national health organizations, medical schools, unenlightened doctors and others who continue to promote ineffective and harmful treatment.