Looking Ahead

LOOKING AHEAD by Wally Dobelis Tired of politics, writing of healthcare and hydrofracking Like everyone else, I too am both overwhelmed and disgusted by politics We have had the Republican primary contests for six months and more, fed daily by the media, with the participants blackening each others’ reputations, until one, the richest, promoted by a few dozen even more rich tax-hating magnates, has become the Republican candidate, with a nearly even chance of being elected. Shame on the Constitution defenders wing of the Supreme Court, who betrayed their own principles, facilitating the election of the president of the greatest country in the world by a handful of greedy tycoons… unless the people wake up. The relentless right-wing domestic propaganda has been strengthened by external problems, such as American drones causing collateral deaths in Pakistan and Yemen, and the Iran and Syria crises, with resolutions moving slowly. What gives good hope are the recent findings of the Gallup Poll, that the great majority of educated people and professionals – MDs, teachers, attorneys, engineers, and the main stream of government and private clerical forces, are overwhelmingly pro-Obama, as are the unions (50 vs.35%) . As for farmers and fishermen, 90% will vote Mitt Romney, presumably to protest the oil prices and taxes. In this context, it has been a pleasure to hear from readers... Re my June 14 chase after an MRI to cure my painful torn rotator cuff, old friend Clara Reiss, longtime member and chair of CB#6, offered her experience of very effective therapy by a Dr Loren Fishman, based on yoga practices. She learned about it from a Jane E, Brody article in the NYTimes. Google the two names and you will find the story. To quote Brody, the doctor is considered a miracle worker by his patients, curing various orthopedic disorders without drugs, surgery and endless months of physical therapy. Thank you, Clara, I am still waiting in line for my appointment at the Hospital for Special Surgery, later this week. Reader Kathleen a Reynolds, gently chides me for my inadequately strong protest in my Hydrofracking, incomplete story article (May 10.) Hydrofracking destroys the non-renewable water supply on this planet, our scarcest resource, and neither President Barak Obama nor Governor Andrew Cuomo have used their powers to protect it. I tried to formulate my objections by stating questions that lead to discourse and a compromise in resolving the problem.. You do not need a compromise in Midtown NYC, where everyone you touch is a believer in global warming and the evils of hydrofracking, but in the Midwest America the deniers of both problems walk away from the discussion, citing the few admitted exaggerations committed by eager environmentalists as reason for proclaiming the entire set of environmentalist concepts a lie . We need agreements and compromises in environmentalism as well as in national economics, to cure the nation, As a footnote, I first warned against hydrofracking in an August 11, 2011 T&V article, and expressed concern about earthquakes in NYS in even earlier columns. As for myself, I want to explore the points of thought regarding the recovery of personal health lost by sitting at a desk for 60 years, even before the computer and the e-mail era, through yet another NYTimes resource. There is a wise person, Phys Ed columnist for the Paper of Record, Gretchen Reynolds, who says that sitting for hours on end is the body’s worst enemy. The muscles slacken, fat seeps into the blood, liver and ventricles of the heart, debilitating the system. But there is recovery; if the person gets up and walks around, even stands , for at least two minutes every 20 minutes, to make the body stop the debilitating process Fortunately, even most of us office drudges have such interruptions, meetings, visiting the neighboring cubicle, getting files, hitting the water cooler. Gretchen has studies from University of Massachusetts and the National Cancer Institute and others to prove it. Those who work at home have to invent the standup breaks – Gretchen, for instance, makes herself get up to make and answer phone calls, Television, with shows rolling one into the other, is a terrible enemy. Per an Australian study, an hour of TV a day costs 22 minutes in a man’s lifespan (1.8 years lost for men, 1.5 for women). Once again, that’s continuous time. Another Australian study shows that blood sugar spiked and insulin levels were out of whack, when a test team sat for seven hour stretches and no motion, and were straightened out, when the test was changed to provide two minutes of walking breaks every 20 minutes. Curiously, jogging during the breaks did not improve blood sugar content any more than simple walking. Walking is the best and most natural exercise, for body as well as the mind. Per Gretchen, 15, 20 minutes a day help. And 30 minutes add 20% to one’s lifetime. Curiously, increasing the walk to 90 min. adds only another 4%, per an English study. Running helps health and also adds endurance (aerobic), but 70% of runners have some injury annually (wow). Stretching, i.e. holding a pose, scares the brain into tensing the muscles, anticipating danger (a most wonderful facility, it saved me, once), but it is bad for warm-up, a gentler method, e.g. jogging is advocated. By the way body flexibility level is inborn, not acquired. More anon, and thanks to Mss Jane Brody, Gretchen Reynolds, The NY Times and NPR’s Fresh Air.

LOOKING AHEAD by Wally Dobelis Solving the debt ceiling shortage, rationally You may have noted over the years that this column is a bit ambivalent, dealing with both inner city and upstate NY problems, interests that do not always coincide, even within the same party. This writer is ambivalent himself, as explained in the words of Ogden Nash, who once confessed to be a Buddhist in the winter and a nudist in the summer. It is all regional, or dependent on location, location, as the realtors proclaim. Right now our extended weekend stay in the family’s cabin, deep in the woods 40 miles south of Albany, affects my attitudes. Today, shopping at the local IGA, equivalent of the Metro supermarket on Third Avenue near 17th, I was struck by the 4th of July vacation week specials, big on eight piece packaged frankfurters, reduced to 99 cents, while nearby orange juice half-gallons retailed at $3.50 , half a buck above the city price. And that was not the only higher priced necessity. I had some back and forth about this with a bakery salesman, stocking shelves, who helped me choose a loaf of Freihofers's multi-grain bred. He spoke of manufacturers' greed, describing how in a recession when people tighten their belts, the makers raise prices on necessities, to maintain their profit margins. This drifted into lost government jobs in New York State, 300 plus last month and another 400 coming. This is not the way to build employment - President Obama claims to have added 50,000 private industry jobs in June, but meanwhile budget -balancing state governments have discontinued 32,000 municipal and state positions, leaving a measly 18,000 gain. The stock market reacted immediately. This puny gain of jobs did send some right wing observers into more talk of the Obama recession, conveniently forgetting that their budget balancing act, cutting expenses by eliminating. government jobs, counteracts all efforts to increase employment. All sound economists, even the Chinese in their 2008 setbacks, increase their Keynesian money outlays, such as unemployment benefits and infrastructure jobs, to increase the multiplier driven consumption and help slowly raise production and employment. Subsidies, road, bridges and other capital structure jobs help, while cutting taxes for the rich takes money out of circulation. The necessary raising of the federal debt ceiling above the $14.3 trillion by August 2, 2011, the date by which the Treasury Department will gradually exhaust its ability to borrow money, is by now recognized by the Republican leadership, notably Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and Speaker of the House John A. Boehner. Without the increase of the ceiling , US government gradually will cease paying salaries, military pay, Social Security and other benefits, and more importantly, renege on paying its debt, both interest and principal . The world 's economic system, which fully depends on the stability of the US currency, (now that the potential rival, euro, is badly wounded), with loss of the dollar's value the international economy will go into rapid high inflation. While the Republican leaders have learned to appreciate the damage potential, with the aid of their banker friends, the anger- driven anti government and anti-tax Tea Party masses do not want to accept the facts. Fear of losing the support of their fidgety Tea Party friends accounts for the Republican leadership's inability to convince the troops to accept the principle of the compromise discussions started in the Sunday July 10 bipartisan meeting. It is quite evident that Boehner accepted the idea of an increase in tax revenue, but not one in the tax rates affecting the rich. The new congressmen - and some of the old - are afraid of offending their sugar daddies that pay for their campaigns. In light of the debt ceiling struggles the Congress should consider a tax reform as a tax income enhancer. President Reagan's budget director David Stockman, veteran of the 1986 tax reform , notes that hardly any corporation pays the high corporate tax of 35%, and that the tax code, ten times the size of the Bible, provides little solace, since it is stocked chock-full with exemptions. Corporate accountants manage to convert much ordinary income into 15% capital gains, and reforming that will buy much of the necessary budget relief. One general change would be most effective and much easier than cutting corporate exemptions, item by item. This is just one patriotic suggestions from the partisan Right, and there are more coming, from Senators Jon Kyl and McCain (R, AZ) and John Cornyn (R, TX) and more. Reflecting upon the supermarket discussion above, it is important to note that there still are , among both the blue collar and white collar workers, many of us who approach the economics of our country and the world with knowledge and concern, rather than erupting in general anger against the government and politicians. Good people of Washington, DC, please be worthy of our trust.

LOOKING AHEAD by Wally Dobelis Adventures in chasing after MRI and Medicare ; Bloomsday Once a Midtown Eastside Manhattanite reaches a certain age, bus trips north, along First and Third Avenue , the Bedpan Alley routes, become natural destinations, and such news as those of merger of the NYU Langone Medical Center with the Beth Israel /St. Luke’s/Roosevelt, aka Continuum Health Partners Inc. facilities cause concerns about coverages and prices. I have also transportation concerns – one cannot connect by M103 bus on 3rd Ave and a M59 crosstown bus to the 59th Street and York Ave East River MRI Center; there is no such crosstown bus, eastbound traffic is choked off at 2nd Ave, for the Ed Koch (formerly Queensboro) Bridge and construction traffic , and we are back to slogging eastward by foot. If you are less mobile, take the M15 northbound on 1st Avenue, and cut the walk to half a city block. I became involved through my quest for an MRI for a painful right shoulder. By sheer luck I had a good encounter on the M103 bus, with a retired MD, who has the same problem on his left, and who gave me a quick evaluation, guessing at a ripped rotator cuff, and advising me to avoid surgery, which takes a six month recovery, and is doubtful, and to swim and exercise, to use acupuncture for pain relief, and to take glucosamine, which produces results in three months. He also felt that the new MTA low level buses with no stepup were ok, that the high stepup taxi cabs should be outlawed and subways should have a lot more escalators, and we both agreed that walking NYC sidewalks idemands full attention, and never to put hands in our pockets while strolling. At 59th street, it took me about eight inquiries to find a local person to give me the walking directions – 59 th Street is tricky, the nortth sidewalk becomes the bridge , with a T.J.Maxx store and a Food Emporium built right under it. . The MRI Center is in an apartment building, with steps that my doctor friend would have hated. Magnetic Resonance Imaging first involves signing off that you do not have a pacemaker, defibrillator, brain or aneurysm metal clips, implanted coils, catheters, prostheses, joint replacements, limbs, magnetic dental implants , certain false eyelashes and similar metal gadgets in your innards and in blood. Reading this, one almost begins to see bionic people as a reality. Then, dressed in a hospital gown, one slips into a shallow tray, ear plugs in place, knees raised and head secured against injuries, and glides into the big white sound barrel for 25 minutes, in my case. The resonance test, involving banging the barrel, is initially mild, like a hast heartbeat, soon overlaid by high-speed electric drill noise, with further additions that feel like the Doppler effect of a train rushing towards you. After this first series , a more regular long hammering sequence begins, finally followed by a set that feels like getting a strong shower while lying in a tin washtub, with someone drumming against the tub’s sides. These sequences were repeated several times, each after my body had been moved an inch or two forward. This is the normal way an MRI recording proceeds. In my case, after two shifts of the body, the right shoulder started aching, to the point that I moaned and groaned and apparently interfered with the process. The technician rolled me out of the drum, to inquire, commiserated with me, but the process had to go on, no pain killers were available. Luckily, shifting the body this time produced relief, and we finished the MRI with technically acceptable results. I was ready to take the 2nd Ave M15 back home, with relative peace of mind, prepared to visit the shoulder specialist surgeon, in 20 days. In 20 days? Yes, our family doctor, aka Primary Care Physician, after viewing a current xray of the shoulder, had given me a prescription for that MRI and told me to see a shoulder specialist. He had two names to offer. In these days, with specialists opting out of Medicare patient treatment because of low pay scales, the PCP’s connections become important. The one MD of the two who accepts Medicare has a long waiting list, and I will probably have to pay a somewhat larger than the government rate, then wait for Medicaid payment, to me, and their referral of the balance of payment, the 20 percent deduction, to my secondary insurer. It is up to Medicare to forward the Explanation of Benefoits, aka EOB, to the private issuer of the Medicare Supplemental Insurance. Tricky world, but we hope for good doctoring results and easy paperwork. Meanwhile, do not forget that James Joyce in Ulysses described how Dubliners spent their time on June 16, 1904. Bloomsday enthusiasts will read the entire book out loud, in and appx. 29 hrs strretch. If so moved, you should be able to find a place to participate.

LOKING AHEAD by Wally Dobelis Bad campaigns and search for power Our telephones seem to have become open targets for unsolicited phone calls, selling credit card services, cheap Con Ed charges and ocean cruises, the latter low cost and even free (beware). It is not just the robocalls, it is those poor untrained voices that cannot pronounce names, spell out the services offered and supply any details. It is as though the phone were the last refuge for the poor, unemployed and unlettered, a cheap way to earn a commission that is unlikely to materialize, with work that must be totally depressive in processing the responses, at best hang-ups and at worst curses. Whatever happened to the "no unsolicited calls accepted" system? One has to feel sorry for the callers. One also has to feel sorry for us, should we fall in the hands of Governor Mitt Romney, who pays only 15% tax on his multi-million annual income, the son of the highly respected high-earning president of America Motors, who paid full 37% on his income, which at under $1million annually was very high for the latter half of the 1900s. Those were the days when executives earned high positions by faithful service to the corporation, stockholders and employees, and did not push for high bonuses and huge bailout pay. Corporations thrived, and, if not, were merged or refinanced without the Bain Capital type dynamics. Now we find that Romney Son has been keeping many of his fast earned millions in offshore bank accounts, potentially the first US president to do so. He revealed his Swiss bank account in his 2010 income tax disclosure, but further holdings in the Cayman Islands and Bermuda offshore bank shelters were reported in Vanity Fair, early in July. These accounts were apparently maintained for investment holdings, used for complex partnership income which Mr. Romney received after leaving the private investment firm he founded. By disclosing this information , President Obama's people were careful not to question the general practice of corporations and executives to diminish their tax rates by any means that are legal. The Romney camp defined his tax payments, totally legitimate, to be no more and no less than what is allowed by law. The Obama campaign wants to make sure that its effort has nothing to do with demonizing wealth, as some commentators suggest. Nevertheless, this and other measures taken by the tea party/right wing advocates clearly indicate that the red state representatives want America to be pure, not immigrant tainted and not- oriented toward the have-less.That includes us, the constantly eroding middle-class, work to success oriented masses, faithful to the shared responsibilities of the social contract (I don't want to quote Hume and Locke and the Constitution of the United States, maybe later.) In Pennsylvania, the legislature has enacted a voter identification plan with complex procedures that will take the voting rights away from 18% of Philadelphians, mostly the poor, under the pretense of eliminating vote. This despite the evidence that only one or two instances of fake voters occur per decade. Similar stuff is in effect in Florida. The objective of eliminating the impact of the less than wealthy and the immigrants on the vote is unmistakable. The ghost of Emma Lazarus must be reeling, as the golden gate shuts down, and the prospects of new Henry Fords and Thomas Alva Edisons and Ben Franklins recede. (I cannot believe I wrote this without the benefit of shiraz and mournful music. But my computer did shut down in protest, honestly.) Further, the growing success of right-wing Presidential election propaganda is not only due to the impact of unlimited contributions to political PACs as a result of the Citizens United decision. While these are non tax deductible. it has been discovered by such groups as Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington that giant corporations have given huge tax-deductible sums under the 501(c)4 section of the Internal Revenue code to such thinly veiled social benefit organizations as the US Chamber of Commerce (Prudential Insurance, Dow Chemical, Chevron Oil, Merck Drugs) for thinly veiled commercials , advocating limited government . Aetna the insurance giant gave $3million to the American Action Network to attack lawmakers who support the ACA bill (also $4.5million to the US Chamber, despite their outward stance of neutrality and a pledge to the public oriented Mercy Management Company to disclose political actions.) American Electric Power gave $1million to the Founding Fund, and so it goes on, a lot of one and half-million dollar corporate tax-free concealed political gifts. This does not count the Citizens United driven $25 million advertising campaign by Karl Rove via the Crossroads Grassroots Political Strategies, and the $400 million allegedly to be spent by the Koch Brothers to stop Obama by whatever means. Let it be understood that unions have also given, thus the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees gave $100,000 to Advancing Wisconsin, and Obama now accepts Citizens United type campaign contributions. I am getting close to quoting Gresham’s Law but not quite to offering you Lord Acton’s threatening dictum. Thank you NYTimes and Internet sources and City College.

LOOKING AHEAD by Wally Dobelis Global warming revisited; also, an election of national significance This article was written upstate, in picturesque Hudson Valley, hiding from the powerful sunshine, and completed during a brief heavy-duty downpour, little late to help my plants. So be it. Anyway, this summer has been disastrous, climate-wise. We East Midtown cityites were minimally bothered by the heat, being able to escape it behind air-conditioned walls, but up here in the North Hudson Valley the country garden produce, local and commercial, ripened early and badly, and ran out fast. Mowing lawns was easy if you did not mind brown foliage; the grass turned color and did not grow.. Agricultural America was in trouble, 27 mid-country states, the breadbasket, suffered the plagues of destroyed crops, cattle died for lack of fodder and water, and prices for food essentials grew alarmingly, Republicans could not blame it on President Obama, along the recession and 42 months of eight percent joblessness, since denial of climate changes as human handiwork has been a basic element of the GOP and tea party philosophy. However, finally, an impotant reversal of scientific opinion, Professor of Physics at UCAL Berkeley, Richard A Muller, who discovered and made public three years ago some climate change findings misstated by overanxious savants in Britain that threw doubt on climate change and gave impetus to the deniers' outbursts, reverted a year ago.. Growing doubtful of the magnitude of the errors, he and a dozen other scientists in 2011 reviewed the data and found that the conclusions if the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the UN project, were correct. This project in 2007 reported that much of the warming in the past 50 years was attributable to human activities, with earlier years' damage shared by humans and nature. Prof Muller now founded a Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature Project, and thoroughly reviewed all prior research and more , and found that facts substantially fault human activity The Muller group finds that the 3 1/2 degree F temperature increase in past 250 years is due to human emission of greenhouse gases, with2 ½ degrees due in the next fifty years. There is a July 30 summary on the op-ed page of the NYTimes, that you should read for details, if you are still doubtful. It is getting to be serious, deniers of the greenhouse effect should listen up. Apart from the horrible impact on this year's agriculture product growth throughout the world, the political ethicists must address such questions as the long term impact on mankind, China's 10 percent annual economic growth , which may accelerate the expected global heating from a 50 year slot to 20 years. Also, also the question of how the people of the Appalachia’s four key states will earn a livelihood without coal. , listen up. Getting away from the global, I have a personal climate-related ethics problem , that of insect proliferation. During the heat, household flies and stinging insects literally swarm into the house, despite thick screens. Flypaper and similar mechanics do not help, and a flyswatter has to be carried from room to room. Having to swat flying insects by the dozen is not only esthetically unpleasant , it also raises an ethical problem. The Buddhists addressed it by shushing the creatures away, accepting the discomfort and praying Om Mani Padme Hum whenever some creatures got squashed. It maay be claimed that nature did provide non-lethal remedies for horses and cows, giving them ample tails to swat the creatures off their skins, probably muttering ample imprecations in cow-ese. Seriously though, there is a religious general ethics problem of protecting the lesser species. Has the Almighty declared humanity a superior entity, allowed to kill all lesser entities at will, for food, comfort , or pleasure.? Are only such sentient entities as human sperm, ova and embryos to be protected by strict law, and the others only selectively – from salmon and whales to songbirds? If memory serves, the social contract philosophers, such as Hume, Locke and Rousseau had words to say about mutual responsibility , though Hume saw morality as sympathy- weighted, and later philosophers – A.J.Ayers and C.L. Stevenson in 1930s – ho-hummed about consistent morality as non scientific, because it is non-measurable, and therefore iffy. On the religious side, one might think that the All-knowing is protective of other sentient creatures, since Noah was ordered to take two of each variety to preserve the species, although Job got huffy with the Creator because God had condemned both men and guiltless domestic animals. This said for climate change and morality, we want to turn to a really significant upstate political campaign, that of Democrat Julian Schreibman for Congress, in the much re-divided 20th CD, a skinny strip from north of Westchester County to Canada, encompassing hunks of 10 counties, touching four states. It was ayt times, part of the 17th, 18th, 22nd, 24th, or 19th CD , then represented by Fusion’s Fiorello LaGuardia , ALP’s (near-Communist) Vito Marcantonio, and liberal Bella Abzug; more recently by current Senator Kirsten Gillibrand. Since 2010 it has been held by a Tea Party representative, Col. Chris Gibson (R, 20 year military vet and West Poin’s Professor of American Politics) supporter of the Paul Ryan budget (now he’s recanted, sees the military chunk too high), also supporting the turning of Medicare into a coupon program and for reducing Social Security, for weakening Fresh Air Act, for defunding Planned Parenthood, for cutting Broadband budget for rural areas by $21M and for providing $2B tax break for big oil companies. Julian Schreibman, Yale grad (two degrees, paid from scholarships and summer jobs) protects Med and SS coverages, defends environmental legislation (is anti oil fracking), is for job creation ( broadband is a necessity), and for women’s health . He was an Assistant General Counsel at the CIA, (prosecuted terrorists who in 1998 bombed US embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam), then fought crime as an ADA for Ulster County, and a federal prosecutor, Schreibman, from conversations, shows a deep fund of cross discipline knowledge and understanding of prblems, here and abroad. What makes this 20th ED election special is the fact that it is one of eight, that Dems Central expect to win it back. What can New York cityites do? Well, my intuition based research says our splendid rainbow of East Midtown citizens points to many apple knocker transplants who have ipstate roots and interests. . One comment re good jobs from broadband accxes. I have heard of a developer who refused fed funds, because that carried with then union rates, and he would have to raise his current employees, well compensated by local standards. It is ugly but here it is. GM unions had to accept rate differentials. Should Obama compromise for this ugliness, in the interest of jobs? Look, the golden age of US supremacy of everything is over, we have to live on less to compete in the world. Europe is getting a beating, and we are close behind. More anon from upstate, about how politics undermine basic principles of behavior we learned in kindergarten.