Obama the Communist?

I keep seeing people accusing Barack Obama of being a Communist. It mostly seems to come from southern conservatives. I knew the education system in the South lags behind most of the nation, but I never realized how backward they are. Don’t they teach the difference between Communism and Capitalism down there?

When the financial crash hit the country just as Obama was elected president, George W. Bush spent billions of government dollars to bail out the banks and financial institutions. Barack Obama kept the same financial advisors and continued the exact same policies. Rich bankers and brokers were donated all the money they wanted with no strings attached. Ben Bernanke kept his job at the Treasury, and Goldman Sachs people continued to make policy for the nation. There was no break in the capitalist policies from one administration to the next.

Any self respecting red-blooded Communist would have nationalized the banks, made the bankers involved kneel down beside a ditch somewhere and shot them in the back of the head.

When the auto companies were going under, Obama negotiated a deal where the company executives got bailout money to keep the companies afloat, most got to keep their position with all their salary, retirement and bonuses, not to mention their golden parachutes. Workers out on the assembly line were forced to take cuts in benefits and pay, at least those who weren’t laid off.

Under a Communist, those executives would have been sent out to Kansas to hoe weeds between the cornrows as reeducation. Anybody who objected would have been made to kneel beside a ditch and been shot in the head.

Millions of families lost their homes during the crisis in foreclosure and eviction. Obama did not make the banks renegotiate the mortgages or offer any relief to homeowners.

A real Communist would have made the lenders wear a sign around their neck saying “Enemy of the People” then stood them up against a wall somewhere and shot them. Then the government would have taken ownership of the houses and rented them back to the families. (Honest, under Communism there is no private property allowed.)

Some people think Obama’s Affordable Care Act is Communism. Not even close. Obamacare makes buying health insurance from privately owned, for-profit companies mandatory. The government has created a free marketplace where people can browse through a myriad of plans to buy insurance from Aetna, Blue Cross, Humana, and other private insurance companies.

A real live red-blooded Communist would have nationalized all hospitals and clinics, put the doctors, nurses and technicians on government salary and offered all citizens free healthcare. Anybody who complained would have been sent to the Northern Gulag in Outer Alaska to work in the mines for twenty years or so.

The only policy of Obama’s that could be considered communistic is the surveillance state that the government set up after 9/11/2001 as an anti terrorist program. But that same policy is a hallmark of Fascist countries also, not just Communist countries.

If Obama is anything, he is a front man for Wall Street banksters. They love him at the New York Stock Exchange and Dow Jones. Investors and speculators have never had it better, even as the middle class fades away and the ranks of the poverty stricken explode.

If you label Obama as Communist, you are displaying your ignorance or your duplicity, unless you can point to a specific action he has taken that is communistic.

Don Rogers
12/27/2013

Education in America

Education in America

I’ve been watching the national debate on our educational system for many years now. I have very mixed emotions on the whole subject. At different times I can cheer or I can cry.

Back in the 1970’s I volunteered to serve on the School Accountability Board in Western Montrose County, Colorado, which was trying to develop a common curriculum so students could move from one school to another with less difficulty. One evening we had a special guest from Denver who worked high up in the state school system and came to tell us what we needed to know.

We watched the ancient equivalent of a PowerPoint presentation only with a slide projector and a Kodak Carousel full of slides. About three slides in I noticed a spelling error, and I carefully noted it on my notepad--something like, “On the third slide, the rule is ‘i before e except after c....’” and planned on telling him quietly after the presentation, as I was sure he would want to know. Could have just been a typo, you know.

Well, I spotted another misspelling on slide five, and then more on seven and eight. Some of them were completely different words than the ones intended. Some slides had more than one word misspelled. By the time he got to slide thirty or so I had wadded up the paper and tossed it in the trash. Not only had he gotten his degrees and accreditation without learning to spell, he hadn’t even learned to check it with a dictionary open beside his writing. He may have been dyslexic--I don’t know. But he was also lazy and careless.

Needless to say, nobody referenced him again in our discussions.

Mr. Richard Jackson taught me several math classes at Lodi Academy in my last two years of high school. He was probably the best teacher I ever had. He was tall and lanky, much as Lincoln must have been. He was not handsome, and he was very SQUARE. Maybe that’s good for a math teacher! His habit of using his middle finger to point out numbers on the blackboard some times made it hard for a bunch of teenage boys to not laugh out loud, but he never seemed to notice.

His talent was making us think, not just memorize facts. He would basically follow the book, but expand on points we needed to understand. In Solid Geometry class we spent a whole period trying to prove that the big slide rule hanging on the wall at the front of the room either sagged in the middle or not. By the end of the period we all understood that by definition it most assuredly did, even though we could not measure it.

When a question arose during Trigonometry class as to what good knowing this was for anybody, he devised a plan to show us. 

Lodi Academy was a boarding school, with the girl’s dormitory on the south side and the boy’s dorm on the north side and the main administration and classroom building was right in the middle between them. Nobody in either dorm could see the other dorm, even with binoculars or telescope. I think it was planned that way!

The next day Mr. Jackson showed up with a transit and a 100 foot tape and told us to find the distance between the center of the girl’s dorm front door and the center of the boy’s dorm front door. He suggested we measure to a point by the flagpole in front of the admin building visible from both dorms.

He had notified the dean of girls, so she didn’t call the cops or freak out because a bunch of boys were stomping around on the front porch of the girl’s dorm. (This was in 1960--no girls ever took Trig back then.) We soon had a straight line measured from the girl’s dorm to a stake by the flagpole, and another straight line from there to the boy’s dorm. We set up the transit above the stake and determined the exact angle formed by the two lines.

After making sure we all had the same measurements, the class was over. Our homework was to find the distance between the dorm doors with the two vectors and the included angle. We had a blast bisecting the triangle we had into two right triangles and using the Trigonometry tables to calculate all sides and summing up the distance we needed to know. We were all comparing notes and helping each other until we all had the same answer.

The next day in class we all compared our answers to the teacher’s diagram and answer on the blackboard. Of course, we all had the correct answer, but more importantly, we understood the need for trigonometry and the enjoyment of knowing something that most people never learn. It’s fun! I still love surveying, and I found other uses for trig in machine work and turbine diagnostics in my job later in power generation plants.

Later when I became a pilot, I learned spherical trigonometry so I could write a computer program to calculate and print out my flight plans. All because one teacher taught me to love trigonometry!

In the fall of 1971, I quit my job in Woodland, CA, where I made parts for everything from tractors to Rolls-Royce’s in a small machine shop. I found a job in Silver Springs, NV, creating an experimental engine from plans and raw steel. Great job--I couldn’t wait to get to work each day--but low pay and no benefits. I knew I wouldn’t be staying long.

The reason I mention this is that our daughter Darlene had to change from a California school to a school in Fernley, Nevada. About Christmas time my wife Carolyn got a message to talk to her teacher at school. She said, “Mrs. Rogers, do you know your daughter doesn’t know her multiplication tables? She should have learned them last year. We may have to hold her back.”

Thus began our first stint as home school teachers. We got flash cards and spent afternoons after school and she knew those tables backwards and forwards in a week! She went on to excel in math, and I had to study myself to learn the “New Math” so I could help her later.

This probably explains my interest in curriculum coordination years later in Colorado.

Our son Wes didn’t have too much trouble in school in Colorado up to the second grade, except he had one teacher who explained to us that he wasn’t getting all his work in because he was falling asleep in class. We asked why she didn’t wake him up, and she seemed to think that was our fault, somehow or other. But we could see he was reading well and learning  fast, so we didn’t worry much.

Then we moved to Winnemucca, Nevada. I still have trouble talking about the Winnemucca school system without breaking into tears or screaming.

Wesley started for the first time trying to find ways to avoid going to school. He had stomach aches. He had headaches. He felt sick. If we made him go, the teachers would call and berate us for sending a sick kid to school. If we kept him home, the teachers would call and berate us for keeping him from school. 

His grades began to plummet, even though he passed the annual tests several grades ahead of his actual grade.  In the fourth grade Wes was reading at the twelfth grade level. One day I came home with both Carolyn and Wes crying because his Social Studies teacher had given him an “F” grade on a workbook he had spent two weeks on. I drove to the school to confront the teacher, workbook in hand, but she was smart enough not to be there. I might still be in jail otherwise.

We found this teacher brags about flunking most of her students through the years. She knocks off a letter grade for every punctuation error, spacing error, spelling error, etc. with no chance for rework. I went back home and told Wes that he had to go back to class and learn whatever he could, but that he didn’t have to do any work for her ever again unless he wanted to. I told him it was a lot easier to get an “F” than doing all the work he did. I don’t know what kind of a sadistic b----- she is, but I can’t think of a better way to demoralize and demotivate students. With the pressure off, he actually finished the year with a “B” in her class.

Wes had another teacher who belittled him in class, and called him “Weird Wes” in front of the other students. Picking up the cue, other students would trip him or knock his books out of his arms going down the hall. How do you fix it when the teacher is the bully?

We became desperate to find a solution to the problem. At our own expense we took him to a pediatric neurologist in San Francisco for testing, looking for some kind of disability. After hours of testing, the doctor said his problem was his school, not him. He said if he could be put in a private school in Marin County, he would shine. 

That was out of the question financially for us. We went back to the Winnemucca school system and told them what we found, and they were offended and defensive, of course.

After another year worse than the one before, we sent Wes to a school in Ojai, CA, with a month long summer program for students who test high and grade low, again at our considerable expense. For admission he needed a recommendation from the Winnemucca school system, and they seemed reluctant to give it. The superintendent made a big show of looking up the word “integrity” in the dictionary to make sure Wes had enough of it. 

He loved the school at Ojai and made friends with some very rich kids, including the daughters of Kasey Kasem,of Top Forty fame.

When we returned to pick him up, the teachers could not believe that he would be having trouble in school. He was tops in the computer class, and near the top in all the other classes. One of his teachers said,”He is a teacher’s dream. Just give him the book and the next day he’s read it and can answer any question you ask.” 

We knew that if we went back and reported what we had found, the reaction would be the same as the year before. We asked the superintendent of the Ojai school to call the Winnemucca school and tell them what they found, and they promised to do so. 

They evidently did it well, because we found an attitude change immediately on returning. They had been threatening to hold Wes back for low grades, but now there was no more talk of that. They allowed him to start his Freshman year in high school.

Not long after school started, Wes started having stomach pains again. But these were not the same as before, and one evening we rushed him to the ER with pain so bad he was vomiting. Eventually, when a surgeon came in, they scanned him with a procedure that showed one kidney was greatly enlarged because of a blocked ureter. They immediately got him to Reno for major surgery which saved the kidney. 

He had to miss about a month of school recuperating, and the school was reluctant to let him continue in the same grade, even though he had kept up his schoolwork. They said the teacher didn’t have time to grade it all. They let him return provisionally, but then they harassed Wes and us constantly about him missing days when he was still not feeling well. Once again it was either us sending him to school sick or us keeping him home too much. We found out later the pressure was causing Wes to think about suicide or running away from home. We had enough!

We went to the school board and told them we were taking him out of school, and we would be home schooling him with correspondence courses from American School out of Chicago. We met all the state’s legal requirements, so they had to let us take him out. This was years before the evangelical Christians got the laws changed to make it easier to home school.

After they gave their approval, I stood and addressed the school administrators, telling them they had failed Wes, but that they had failed him for the last time. Then we left.

It was like the sun came out after a dark storm for all of us

Wes thrived with home schooling. He could do the work in the morning before lunch and be free all afternoon. He had no problem passing the annual testing at school. His only regret was they would not let him continue in the band playing his French horn. (The law has since been changed to require the school to allow home schooled kids to play in the band and go out for athletics.)

The correspondence courses were dull reading, of course, so we supplemented them with lots of travel and hands on experiments when we could. In my spare time at work I made a series of nearly perfect one inch square cubes from iron, copper, aluminum, lead, and other materials I found around the shop. Using a 12” wooden ruler balanced across a pencil, we found we could calculate the specific gravity of each metal by noting the ratio on the ruler when we balanced them against each other. 

Incidentally, he also learned the properties of different metals, and the principles of ratios, arms, moments and mass.

After we had nearly worn them out, I loaned them to friends who were home schooling their children and they never did come back. I hope they gave many parents as much use as they gave us.

Later Wes chose to take the GED, which he passed easily, and went to Elko Community College with a full scholarship, graduating with an Associate Degree in Nursing, with honors. He later went to the University of Oregon in Corvallis, OR, where he got his Bachelor’s Degree and this year, his Masters in Public Health. 

Wes’ first wife came with a daughter, just as mine did, and he raised her as his own, as did I. Long after they had gotten a divorce, we continued to treat her as our own granddaughter, and she stayed with both Wes and us on summers and vacations. She was going to Arizona public schools, and by the third grade it was obvious she was having trouble. She could not read at all, and was afraid to even look at a book because she had been shamed and ridiculed at school for not being smart enough to read. By gently questioning her, we found that she did not understand the relationship between sounds and letters.

Carolyn and I invested in a set of “Hooked on Phonics” books and teaching materials, and we also asked teachers we knew if there was a way to get around her fear of books. Wilma Wright, Carolyn’s sister-in-law, suggested making a game of learning the sounds, so we used just the flash cards at first, one at a time, to teach the sounds of the letters. Very soon she could see the sounds in short words, and as she learned more sounds, she was soon reading us the words on billboards as we drove down the road. When she realized she could read after all, she began to pick up the books and read them too. Soon she was teaching herself, which of course is the whole idea of reading.

In one short summer she went from last in the class and maybe being held back a grade to being at the top of her class and helping the teacher with other kids having trouble with reading. When she wanted to visit with us one Christmas vacation for an extra week, the school in Arizona was pleased to grant her the extra time when they found out she was staying with the grandparents who taught her to read.

One summer at the power plant where I worked a new engineer was hired on. As the machinist usually works closely with the engineer I went to his office and introduced myself and we began talking. One of his concerns was his young son and how the schools were in Winnemucca. I started to tell him but I soon broke down sobbing. I was embarrassed and he was shocked. I swear I suffered from PTSD for awhile after we got Wes out of the Winnemucca schools.

When I regained my composure, I recommended he move to a house somewhere out in Grass Valley southwest of town, where there was a brand new school with a lot of new teachers who were still enthusiastic about teaching kids and not burned out, cynical, or sadistic as too many in the Winnemucca school system are. I have heard good things about the Grass Valley School for years now. The new engineer thanked me several times for the information. His son did well and loved the school.

How can I sum up what I think of the educational system in America? I have many relatives and friends who are teachers and administrators in the public schools. I know some who think the whole system stinks, and can get on a real rant about teaching to the test, No Child Left Behind, and other quick fixes for what everyone knows is a failed system. It is teaching too many kids to hate school, losing too many kids to suicide or just dropping out, and graduating kids who can’t read or write.

I can make a few observations based on my personal experience. Years of classroom experience and degrees on the wall don’t mean as much to me as real enthusiasm and a zeal for teaching children--inspiring them to love learning all their lives. Checking off the boxes and having the kids do the problems on page 24 is no substitute for having a passion for the children. Sometimes you have to put the book down, go outside and find out how far apart the dormitory doors are!

I cringe when I hear a teacher try to tell me how much more he knows about teaching than I do.  He may be right, but I’m still picking up his failures and making them successful child by child. A modicum of humility presents a much better picture than self-important boasting. I hate the belief that the only way a person can learn is to sit in a classroom and listen to a teacher talk. If a person can and will read, there are books that will teach you everything you can learn in a classroom. You just don’t get paper proof.

My wife and I surprised ourselves once by comparing what we would do if we won the lottery, and we both found out we wanted to create a free school in Winnemucca for all the kids who are failing in the local public schools. We want the kids who don’t fit in, the ones the teachers think are stupid, the ones who need a different way of teaching to find their unique skills and abilities.

We want to hire teachers with a passion for teaching a kid to love learning. My son sent his daughter to a Montessori school, and there are some great ideas there, too. Art and music appreciation, as well as STEM subjects, are vital for creating people who love living and learning. 

Maybe we should buy a lottery ticket someday! It might improve our chance of winning a little bit.

Don Rogers 10/13/2013

Blame the Beggars

Blame the Beggars

There I sat in a dentist’s chair in Sparks, Nevada, my mouth filled with a rubber block on the left side, an aspirator, water nozzle, mirror and dental drill all in there, and my dentist (let’s call him Tony) starts to tell me a story. I had to apologize later for not holding up my side of the conversation.

Tony said he had been getting gas in Winnemucca at a Chevron station and noticed a family getting out of a minivan in the parking lot of the Mexican restaurant next door. There was a father, mother, a young teenage girl and a younger boy. They all put on old, ragged clothing, picked up hand lettered signs and went out to the street to beg. 

He was outraged at the behavior of these folks, and I’m sure I was not the first person to whom he had told this story. 

Tony seemed surprised that such a thing could happen in the USA, but to my mind he seemed oblivious to the fact that this isn’t the USA we all knew thirty or more years ago. Because of the adulation of Wall Street values, and the denigration of ordinary working people, many people are living in a Third World environment right here, right now.

I remember paging through National Geographic magazines as a child, feeling sorry for all those poor people in the less advanced countries, wearing torn and worn clothing, with tattoos covering their bodies, and multiple rings and pins piercing their ears and faces.  I no longer need to look at pictures in a magazine. I guess proving you can accept pain is in vogue now. 

The invisible hand of the free market has worked it’s magic. As a nation we have taken away help for welfare mothers (Clinton), closed factories and shipped millions of jobs to India and China with free trade agreements (Clinton), attacked unions and stifled good wages (Reagan, both Bushes and Obama), removed limits and regulations on banks and lending institutions, enabling usury and predatory business practices (Clinton and both Bushes), dispossessed millions of homeowners through foreclosure and eviction (Bush 2 and Obama), worked at eliminating defined benefit pensions by replacing them with 401Ks, and then robbing them blind in the crash of 2008 (Bush 2).

Speaking of the crash of 2008, both Republicans and Democrats colluded in rushing billions of dollars to save totally corrupt and criminal organizations (banks) from going under. Those same institutions are now back at it, stealing from working people in every nefarious way they can devise. There is no prison time for robbing poor people.

How is it that people who have spent their lives hammering nails, turning bolts, twisting screwdrivers and literally making, building, creating things have become the “takers”--the infamous forty seven percent? And the parasites who sit there talking people out of their money on the phone, gambling that money in risky schemes in the money markets, swindling poor people out of their pitiful life savings - they are the “makers?” Where is the outrage?

Our government stands on the sidelines, observing the decline of civilization, if not assisting in its destruction. Thirty years of Reaganomics - ”Government is not the solution to our problems, government IS the problem!” - have worked their devastating toll. And yet the blind ideology of Ayn Rand still has its adherents. “Cutting taxes and reducing the size of government has worked so well these last thirty years, let’s do it some more!”    

We have one political party openly and actively advocating the reduction or repeal of Social Security and Medicare. President Obama has offered to help them do it in order to get a “grand bargain.” Sure, in the spirit of bipartisanship, let’s impoverish old people! They aren’t poor enough yet!

Some people who can’t afford medical care anymore are hoping that the new “Obamacare” plan works out, even though the other party has been trying to find a way to repeal it and deny them affordable medical care just as before. Who would have believed a political party could campaign on keeping poor people sick and unable to see a doctor?

We can expect to see more beggars, not fewer, in the future. Our educational system is being swiftly dismantled, axed into two systems, one private system for the rich, and one substandard public system for the rest of us beggars. College is becoming out of reach for all but the most wealthy. 

When those millions of uneducated people go out to look for a job they will find few jobs that pay a living wage to unskilled labor. The minimum wage is unlivable - not even covering the rent of a cheap shack to live in, let alone food for the kids. Twenty two veterans a day kill themselves because there are no jobs and no help for the next two years from the underfunded and understaffed VA.

Begging is not easy. You must rip away your pride and stand out in the weather asking people to donate. Some, in an attempt to give back something, squeegee your windshield or offer God’s blessing on you. In some places (as far as I know not here yet) children have hands chopped off or eyes put out to elicit more sympathy and more money given.

But if begging brings in more money than a job (which you couldn’t find anyway) then the market rules. You do what you can to best feed and clothe your wife and children. Or yourself.

I remember the past, when government was big enough to take care of its people in a civilized way. I can see the future, when government finally gets drowned in the bathtub, and all hope fades for civilization.

It will not be Utopia. It will be Somalia.

Don Rogers

Sept. 4, 2013

The Truth about Obamacare

The Truth about Obamacare.

Well, I can see it’s going to be a bad six weeks. I just heard a paid TV advertisement for people to call their Congressman and urge him to oppose funding Obamacare, because the President is exempt. I expect to see a lot more of these misleading ads, and if past is any indication there won’t be much response from Democrats. They are not nearly as loud and insistent as Republicans and I’ve never understood why.

Is the President exempt? I guess so, depending on how you define exempt. Anybody who already has medical insurance is exempt. I’m with Aetna, so I’m exempt. If you are over 65 and are on Medicare, you are exempt. If you are in the military, you are exempt. If you are a veteran with VA coverage, you’re exempt. If you are a member of a Native American tribe, you are exempt.

The President, Vice President, Cabinet Secretaries and all Executive branch employees are covered by the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program. They can stay on that plan, just like anyone can who is already covered. 

Interestingly, Congress and their staff will have to leave the FEHBP and sign up for coverage under the Affordable Care Act. That amendment was added to the bill by Sen. Chuck Grassley, Republican from Iowa, probably as a “poison pill” amendment to make it harder for some members to vote for it. (That’s just my opinion, by the way.) Congress swallowed the pill. Some of the vehement opposition from Congress now is because they will lose their present top of the line coverage and be covered by the lower quality “MedicAid Plus” plan of the Obamacare exchanges 

However, some changes will affect everybody. If your medical insurance had a lifetime limit, it’s gone. If your plan had an exclusion for pre-existing conditions, that’s gone. If you have a child under 26 they can stay on your plan. Plus, all plans now must include preventive screenings, such as mammograms, and routine medical checkups at least once a year.

Obamacare, or the Affordable Care Act, is for people who don’t have or cannot afford medical insurance. Up until now, when an uninsured person got sick, their only option in most areas of the country was to go to the emergency room, where the hospital was required to treat them. That is a very expensive way to provide medical care. Many hospitals were going under because conditions that would have been easy and cheap to treat or prevent early became expensive later on, and hospitals, even with help from the taxpayers, couldn’t make ends meet.

Healthcare costs in the USA were double the costs in every other country, and some method had to be found to cut the cost of heath care, as well as provide coverage to those who had no insurance coverage. The cost of medical insurance was skyrocketing, and we were reaching the point where almost nobody would have been able to afford coverage. 

So the object of a national health care plan was threefold:

1. To cut the cost of health care by providing more competition between insurance providers.
2. To cut the cost of health care by encouraging more preventive care, and enabling visits to the doctor rather than the hospital emergency room.
3. To increase the number of people covered by insurance to include as many as possible, especially young families and children.

Several different options were available to achieve these goals. The first would have been Socialized Medicine. This was never even considered by the administration. Under socialized health care, the government would take over all hospitals and clinics. All doctors and nurses would get a salary from the government. There would be no charge for the patients. No one would be allowed to make a profit from anybody’s pain or injury. I had this coverage in the US Army when I was on active duty back in 1965. All the military and VA hospital coverage was socialized then. As I understand it now, any active duty service member on Tri-Care Prime and getting health care at a Military Treatment Facility is still receiving socialized medicine. Anyone who contends that Obamacare is socialism is displaying his ignorance or his duplicity.

Another option would have been a Single Payer plan. The hospitals remain private, for profit  institutions and the doctors are independent, for profit providers. But all insurance would be handled by the government on a non profit basis. Medicare is such a plan. Premium payments come out of payroll taxes, and the patient chooses among doctors and hospitals who accept the insurance coverage. President Obama never even brought it to the table, probably because he saw the insurance company lobbyists loading for bear. Some Liberals and Progressives felt betrayed, because Barack Obama spoke of this as he campaigned for the presidency.

A third plan was called the Public Option. This would involve for profit hospitals, doctors, and insurance companies, but would include a federal government run non profit insurance option competing with the insurance companies to force their premiums lower. Bill Clinton proposed a similar plan in 1993, but due to a concerted effort by insurance companies and conservative organizations, he and Hillary could not get it through Congress. This idea didn’t last very long during the negotiations for the Affordable Care Act, either.

So the Affordable Care Act became a collage of compromises to get all the health care actors on board so they would call off their lobbyists. Insurance companies don’t have to compete with a federal insurance plan, because Obamacare agreed to just subsidize the states to increase their state run Medicaid programs with expanded coverage for poor people. 

Insurance companies agreed to provide coverage nationwide instead of statewide as long as the law made coverage mandatory, so they get more customers. Most states will get more companies competing for their business, so prices should come down. 

Big Pharmaceutical companies agreed to go along if the law prohibited the government from negotiating for lower drug prices. So we still have to go to Canada or Mexico if we want drugs for 1/10th the cost. But the gap in Medicare Part D coverage for drugs (The Donut Hole) will be reduced each year until it disappears in 2020.

Doctors got changes to their billing practices, including being paid by the patient rather than the procedure. That’s supposed to reduce the number of unnecessary and redundant procedures and save costs. Eventually they are supposed to go to standardized medical records on computer, for easier access, reduction of errors and lower costs.

Since Obamacare is expected to greatly increase the number of people receiving health care, hospitals immediately got money to expand and renovate. If your local hospital has a new wing or even a new facility in the last few years, it’s probably funded by Obamacare.

By co-opting every group who had opposed universal health care in the past, Democrats were barely able to get the bill passed by one vote. By not having all the changes happen in the first year, they gave themselves time to get it implemented. And as snags have come up they have made revisions and postponed some of the deadlines.

This is a big and complicated bill, to deal with a big and complicated problem. The writers knew it would not be perfect, and so there is flexibility written into it to allow for fixing problems as they arise. 

Here in Nevada, the health care exchange goes by the name of Nevada Health Link. There are actually two exchanges in Nevada, one for Individuals and one for Employers. The one for employers is called the Small business Health Options Program, or SHOP. (Don’t you just love acronyms?) The Exchange Board set up by Governor Sandoval adopted a ”Free Market Facilitator” model to ensure “the maximum participation by insurers and the widest choice for consumers.” No mistaking this for Socialism. 

The Nevada Exchange Board has signed a Tribal consultation agreement with the Indian Health Board of Nevada to include a zero cost sharing plan for Native Americans from every insurance carrier in the exchange.

Each carrier must offer one Gold level Qualified Health Plan and one Silver level QHP in either or both the Individual and SHOP exchanges, up to a maximum of five plans in each. They also must offer the afore mentioned Native American plan, as well as coverage for child only plans at coverage levels comparable to other plans in the exchange. Catastrophic plans may be offered only to individuals under thirty or individuals with a hardship exemption in the Individual Exchange only 

Already some people are noticing the elimination of their lifetime limits and their pre-existing condition clauses going away. Some have been able to keep their kids on the policy longer, which is a lot cheaper than having to buy a second policy. Some people have gotten rebate checks back. because insurance companies are now required to give money back if 80% of the premiums are not spent on health care, but on overhead or salaries.

As more and more people start to experience the benefits of having affordable health care, they may begin to understand and appreciate what they have received. For the first time they do not have to live in fear and dread of a medical condition devastating their lifetime savings.

Republicans know this and some have said as much. They are desperate to find some way--any way--to stop the Affordable Care Act from being fully funded and implemented. They fear that voters will remember who helped them when they needed help, much as people remembered for two generations which party got them Social Security, and which party fought it tooth and nail.

Some states with Republican governors and legislatures have decided to refuse the federal funds intended to set up the insurance exchanges and expand their Medicaid coverage, hoping to somehow stymie Obamacare. It will be interesting to see when they figure out that they are handing control over to the federal government to set up the exchanges and provide low cost federal insurance instead of locally controlled Medicaid programs. They are enabling the public option some of us preferred in the first place.

After decades of people losing their savings and their houses, being forced into bankruptcy when struck by cancer or some other medical disaster, finally we are catching up to the rest of the civilized world!

And today I just heard a TV ad for Obamacare with a number to call for information and application forms! Maybe they are going to start selling this thing after all! 

Don Rogers

August 18, 2013

Some Men Think...

Some men think they have the right to force themselves into a woman and make her accept their sperm. We call them rapists when they get convicted, which isn’t very often. Usually the woman is called a whore or a slut, and she is deemed to have asked for it because she was wearing the wrong clothes or walking in the wrong place.

Some men think they have the right to ban birth control to all women and force them to get pregnant. We call them Catholics or fundamentalist Christians. They believe a woman should be forced to carry their progeny against her will. This is the second stage of rape.

Some men think they have the right to use the power of government to prevent any woman from having an abortion. We call them Conservative Republicans. They believe all women should be required to carry an embryo or fetus to term and give birth to the man’s child, whether she wants that or not. 

Some men think they have the right to legalize physical rape with a medical ultrasonic probe to display the fetus to a woman and thereby shame her into giving birth to the child the man wants.

Some men think they have the right to mentally, verbally and physically abuse a woman because the Bible says the woman must be subservient to the man.

However, I think:

No man has the right to force a woman to submit to sexual intercourse, to force a woman to become pregnant, or to force her to give birth.

A woman will never be truly liberated until no man has the right to make her personal decisions for her, ever.

The Story of Jim McQueen

The Story of Jim McQueen

In just three more years this story will be fifty years old. Most of the principle characters have left this life and won’t mind if I use their names. Those who still live aren’t going to read this anyway, probably.

By the time I was drafted into the US Army in 1965, I was already experienced in auto mechanics, especially carburetors, since (thanks to my cousin Jim Russell) I had worked for months on a carburetor rebuild assembly line near San Jose, California. 

As soon as I finished Basic Training, I was assigned to the 185th Engineer Company HM as a Fuel and Electrical Specialist (MOS 63 Golf). Military types will know what I’m talking about--the rest of you will have to pick it up on your own. There isn’t enough space here to explain all the military abbreviations.

This Engineer unit was set up to overhaul vehicles for the Army. Jeeps, trucks, tanks, etc including engines, transmissions, and accessories. In our shop in Granite City, Illinois, we had separate assembly lines for teardown, cleaning, repairing, assembling, and testing. I was immediately assigned to a Clayton 250 dynamometer when the shop officer found out I had run one before. He had three dynos and only one person qualified to run one. I was a buck Private, and I was given a Specialist 4th Class for my assistant. 

The Spec 4 wasn’t too happy being assigned to a Private as an assistant, but I pointed out that there was one more dyno needing an operator, and if he stuck with me for a while, I could get him qualified for his own machine, which is how it worked out in a few weeks.

We tested mostly six cylinder 82 HP Dodge engines for 3/4 ton weapons carriers, but sometimes we would do a tank engine just to see if we could. The dynos were rated for 250 HP and an M-60 tank engine (air-cooled V12 cylinder diesels) put out around 1200 HP. So we could test them at partial throttle only. Basically we just made sure they had oil pressure and didn’t make any unusual noises.

I was at Granite City Army Depot from June of 1965 to September of that year. Across the Mississippi River in St. Louis they were building the stainless steel arch. They were working up from both sides with a bridge connecting the two pillars until they met at the top. But we never got to stay for the finish.

We got orders in September that the whole company was being shipped overseas. The destination was a secret, but we all knew that President Johnson was sending many thousands of Marines, soldiers and sailors to Vietnam as he prepared to widen the war effort there. Our company, with all of our equipment, was loaded onto a special train in downtown St. Louis to travel across country to Oakland, California, to board a troop ship headed west across the Pacific ocean.

When I realized that I was on the Santa Fe tracks, I wrote a note to my mother and another to my girlfriend, taped them to a brand new can of shaving cream, and threw it across the road into my mother’s yard at 1430 E. Santa Fe Dr. in Merced, CA, at about 10:00 PM as the train flew by.

Before we go to sea, though, let me introduce you to my friend, Jim McQueen. I met him on a lazy Sunday afternoon as he had just been assigned to the company. He was about 6’ 8” tall, wore size 14 boots, he was very black, and had been a star wrestler in High School. After introductions, we found out he had joined for the training in mechanics school and had just finished training in Fuel and Electric Repairman. I welcomed him and told him we would be working together in the shop.

Somebody challenged him to a wrestling match, so some blankets were tossed on the floor, and he was soon winning against all comers. I sat back and watched, realizing that he was using his strength to overcome his opponents and not technical skills. He was tiring visibly, so after several others had lost, I got in line to try my chances. It was actually a close match, and nobody was gaining until finally Jim ran out of wind and I was able to pin him with one arm held down by my legs and the other stretched out by my arms. His arm span wasn’t much less than my total height. We became good friends after that. I promised him a rematch someday when he was fresh, but we never got around to it.

The train pulled up next to the troopship on the dock at Oakland Army Terminal, and we marched off the train, across the dock, and onto the USS Gen. J. C. Breckenridge. The ship had been used in the First World War, the Second World War, the Korean War, and now had been taken out of mothballs for the Vietnam War. The ship belonged to the US Army, but was operated by a US Navy crew of about 27 sailors. As we went under the Golden Gate Bridge at dawn there were about 5000 soldiers and Marines onboard the 600 ft. ship. Every square inch was occupied, including the brig, and we were told that anybody causing trouble would be thrown overboard. I think they meant it!

The cruise took two weeks, most of it pure boredom, except for a storm near Midway where we were all put below decks, with the propellers coming out of the water on the swells and rattling the whole ship. 

Also somewhere halfway across, all our orders were opened, and we found out we were headed for Okinawa--at least the 185th Engr. Co. On the ship as a whole, 3000 got orders to Vietnam, and 2000 to Okinawa or the Philippines. Those going into combat areas got their white socks and skivvies changed to OD, and their gold brass and insignia changed to black.

The ship docked at Naha harbor and we marched off the ship, across the Navy Base and near the front gate we were loaded onto buses. We were unloaded right in front of our barracks at Machinato, an airfield for the Japanese in WWII, but converted into a maintenance base. It had been unused since the Korean War, but we got to cut off the locks and seals and open it back up. 

We soon had our equipment moved into the large hangers, and were rebuilding and testing engines again. I was taken off dynos and put on a carburetor test engine, to check and adjust the carburetors as they were rebuilt. We had two engines for test beds--one a large Chrome-Moly GM truck engine for big carburetors, and a smaller six cylinder engine for little carburetors. The officers were talking about getting separate engines for every type of carburetor and when I overheard the conversation, I asked why we don’t use adapter manifolds for the engines we have.

They said they didn’t have any and didn’t know where to get any, so I offered to draw up plans that the machine shop could use to make some for us. I drew up three different manifold plans--one four barrel to two barrel, one two barrel to single barrel, and one with a 90° bend for the side draft M-151 Jeep carburetors. My one year of Mechanical Engineering at Walla Walla College finally got put to use!

The machine shop cut and welded these adapters together, and we could test any carburetor the Army had on just our two engines. They gave me a Zero Defect award for the idea. I still have the Zero Defect Certificate with my middle initial wrong! Oh, well, that’s the Army way!

Our shop was a cozy little family for about a year, with a lot of respect for each other and our various skills. Then came COSTAR.

Some time in 1966, someone in the Army had the bright idea of having the shops become the company unit. One the surface it seems like it might work, but it was a morale killer. Instead of being the 185th Engineer Company, we became the 555th Maintenance Company. Our shop officer was from a Signal unit (radios and electronics), some of our NCOs were from Ordinance units (guns and bombs?), and I ended up being one of the few Engineers in the shop, along with Jim McQueen and another good buddy, Al Williams.

Our Officer in Charge was CWO4 Gregory, who was from Georgia. He was very competent in mechanical knowhow, with auto mechanic experience prior to his Army service, but we soon started having personality clashes. I never did knuckle under to strict military discipline, expecting some respect for my knowledge and skills, as well as my rank. CWO4 Gregory went strictly by the book. So I went to the library and studied the book.

Orders came down from the Base Commander that soldiers were not looking military enough coming back to their barracks after work, so henceforth all personnel would march back to their barracks in company formation. The first day after work a Signal Captain ordered me to fall into his Signal unit and march back with his men. I complied with the order, but when I was dismissed at my barracks, I went directly to my First Sergeant and told him I had been forced to march with a Signal unit. I knew that was against regulations, and it was sweet to hear the First Sergeant call up the officer and chew him out for messing with his Engineer soldier.

It was good to learn that a sergeant can give an officer hell when he’s done something wrong. The next day I marched back behind the Signal unit, one file wide and one rank deep. Called myself to attention, commanded myself to forward march, and looked damned military doing it. The officer would not look at me.

As the war intensified, our schedule changed to 10 hours a day, six days a week, and then soon to 12 hours a day, seven days a week. Soon everyone was suffering from sleep deprivation and fatigue.

I found an Army regulation that required commanders to release the troops for one hour each Sunday for worship services if requested. So even though my dogtag listed my religion as agnostic, I requested an hour off each Sunday, and spread the word. The next Sunday we all showed up at the chapel to hear a sermon by the Chaplain. Some of us took advantage to nap a little, but we tried to pay attention, and I’m sure he was gratified at the sudden interest in his services.

Even with that, I got caught by the Shop Officer dozing off between carburetors, and he kicked my foot and told me to not let him catch me asleep again. Two soldiers climbed up the fire escape onto the roof and were caught sleeping by a passing helicopter, who called back to the base to report them. Morale was getting pretty bad.

One evening after work Jim McQueen asked me to come into the Platoon Sergeant’s room. Sgt. Stroman was a big black man, my Squad Leader, and a friend.  They told me that CWO4 Gregory had filed court martial charges against McQueen for inefficiency! Inefficiency! It was obvious that Mr Gregory’s southern background was coming out. Jim McQueen was the only black in the shop, and Mr. Gregory* intended to make his shop lily white.

CWO4 Gregory had sat at his desk all one day watching Jim McQueen and noting time and duration for every time he talked to his buddy next to him, got up to go to the bathroom, got a drink of water, or stopped twisting his screwdriver as he tore down carburetors and rebuilt them. Then he filed the charges for court martial.

After a lot of discussion, we decided to file counter charges, stating that all of us in the shop would be inefficient if subjected to the same scrutiny, and his real motive was to remove the last black man in his shop. After we composed the letter, Sgt. Stroman typed them up and we all signed them. Sgt. Stroman filed the paper with the court the next day.

As I remember, the trial was set for a week later. A couple of days later Sgt. Scoggins, who I just barely knew (he worked in the office with the Shop Officer) came over to me at work and asked if I could check the power steering out on his Ford. He said he had gotten permission for me to take the car off base that after noon and drive it around to see if I could find the trouble. That seemed a little strange, but hey, an afternoon off work driving around town wasn’t something to pass up, so after lunch I drove off base and toured the island.

The only trouble I found was it was a little low on fluid, and I readjusted the belt a little tighter, but there really wasn’t a thing wrong with it. When I took the car back that evening and explained that it seemed good to me, he said something noncommittal like “I thought so” and thanked me.

The next morning my buddy Al Williams told me that while I was gone, they had held a shop meeting and CWO4 Gregory explained the charges he had filed on McQueen. Spec 5 Williams warned me that CWO4 Gregory would probably try to get me to pull my counter charges. About ten o’clock that morning he came out and said he wanted to talk to me. 

There were several rows of engines crated in steel boxes nearby, and he led me in between the rows so nobody could see or hear us. He told me that his charges were true and that he wanted me to rescind my papers. I said no, that I knew his charges were true, but they were true for all of us, and I thought Jim had been singled out for his color.

He denied the racism charge, and pointed out that he had awakened me when I fell asleep, implicitly threatening me. I told him he just made my point, and that to be fair he should charge me too, as well as all of us who worked in his shop. We were all inefficient, because nobody could work those hours and not be inefficient some of the time. He excused me to return to work, and turned on his heels and left for his office.

When I returned to work my buddy Al Williams asked how it went, so I told him I had asked for a court martial myself and refused to retract my papers. He quietly spread the word around the shop, and we waited to see what would happen.

After work, when I returned to the barracks, I was met by Spec 4 McQueen, Sgt. Stroman, and another black friend of theirs from another company. They were in high spirits as they informed me that all charges against Jim had been withdrawn, and there would be no court martial. They proposed that we all go out on the town and celebrate.

We all piled into a skoshi* cab and rode to Koza, Okinawa, a town just behind Kadena Air Force Base which pretty much consisted of bars and brothels. They took me to B C Street, which was lined with bars on both sides. Interestingly, there was an unspoken understanding that the bars on the left side were for whites and the bars on the right side were for blacks. 

I became nervous when they got out on the right side, paid the cab driver, and towed me into the Kentucky Club. Inside the dark interior I could see scores of eyes following me to my seat. My black friends went from table to table telling the story of why we were there, and soon there were lots of smiles and handshakes for me, and I had a lot of drinks that night but didn’t have to buy even one for myself.

In spite of all the whiskey I drank, I still remember that night vividly. I was surprised to see a couple of Native American soldiers in the bar and I realized that they shared bars with the black soldiers. That had never occurred to me before, but it made sense. Most surprising, though, was the uneasy feeling I got being the minority person for one of the few times in my life. Even though I knew I was among friends, and we were having a great time, there still was a feeling of being out of place, of not really being part of the group. 

I make it a point now of being the first to welcome the new guy into any group I’m in, especially if he is in a minority group. I was nervous being in a minority temporarily--how much harder to always be the different guy, always on the outside. 

To his credit, CWO4 Gregory never mentioned it again to me, and no reprisals or other persecution came my way. A week or so later somebody put some spark plug cleaner abrasive in his gas tank, but he spotted some around the opening, drained and cleaned the tank, and no harm was done. I was under suspicion at first, but I had no axe to grind anymore, having won the battle, and since he lived off base, I really had no opportunity if I had wanted to. Which I didn’t.

After I got out of the Army in 1967 I lost track of all of my buddies. Al Williams briefly met me in Southern California on his way back to Steubenville, OH, his home town. We haven’t seen each other since.

Shortly afterward, the US Army Records center in St. Louis burned down and many of my official records were lost. Luckily I kept copies of most of them in a folder and was able to prove my service later to get a Veterans loan on a house.

The 185th Engineer Company HM* never returned from duty on Okinawa. The unit was disbanded, and I can’t find any records that it ever existed now.

At the time, I was sure I hated the Army for interrupting my life, but later I came to realize that I was changed by my service, mostly for the better. For sure I went in a boy and came out a man, with far more self assurance and confidence. Most importantly, I developed a healthy disrespect for authority. If you want my respect now, be prepared to earn it!

• Warrant Officers are technical ranks between Non Commissioned Officers (Sergeants) and Commissioned Officers (Lieutenants and up) There are four levels, and all are addressed as Mister rather than Sir.

• Skoshi cabs were small taxis, mostly Toyota Coronas, which were ubiquitous on the island of Okinawa. The word comes from the Japanese word sukoshi, meaning “little”. I developed a real appreciation for how tough these Toyotas were, and bought several after I returned to the states.

• HM for Heavy Maintenance, as opposed to Combat Engineers.  The unit was part of the 2nd Logistical Command, a third echelon support group based on Okinawa.

June 2, 2013

Don Rogers