Making of a President

One of the latest idiotic things that Mitt Romney is proposing is a requirement for all candidates for president to have at least 3 years of business experience so the people of the USA know they are getting an experienced business man at the helm to steer through the muddy waters of the business of this country. Probably, he is one of the few ex-CEOs that has ever run for president. Somehow, I think he has got this wrong. The business of the president involves business, yes, but so much more.
One business man who was president in my lifetime was Harry Truman. This haberdasher from Missouri  has several enormous accomplishments which certainly did not derive from his experience as a businessman. His business went bankrupt after a few years. Nice looking store though. The photo is from his museum in Independence, Mo.
The Marshall Plan to rebuild Europe after WW2 certainly was beyond the ken of his original business plan. It was a remarkable success. He also integrated the armed forces by executive order, a bold move in those times. And he approved the dropping of  two nuclear bombs on Japan when the war was about over? (What a business sense!)
Another business man was Jimmy Carter. He was a farmer from Georgia. He also did a lot of good things, most notably was getting some kind of peace agreement between Israel and Egypt, again a great bold accomplishment for those times, and one which has not been equaled in negotiations since by other presidents. Was this his business acumen at work in these negotiations? I wonder. He was also famous for wearing a sweater in the White House, and turning down the heat to save energy, and of course it was his fault for having the US embassy captured by Iranian radicals.
Two other businessman made it to the presidency, both named Bush. They were into oil, and that didn’t seem to help, other than to get us into two wars to preserve our oil interests in Iraq or Kuwait. I have difficulty understanding how a businessman, W., who ran a baseball team (Texas Rangers), who traded away Sammy Sosa to the Cubs after only a few games with the Rangers (averaged 42 homeruns per season through out 18 years in the majors and was MVP 9 times) , how does running this business qualify him to be president?
So that covers the businessmen who have been president since I was a kid. (For the record, Warren Harding and Herbert Hoover were very successful businessmen before they entered office, but they were before my time.) Of the others, 5 were (are) lawyers; there was a general, an actor, and a teacher.
FDR was probably the greatest and most influential. He brought the country out of depression and through WW2. He inspired people with his rhetoric and gave American and the world a hopeful message. Being a business man probably would have curtailed his vision and hampered his instincts to lead rather than follow the old paths.
Dwight Eisenhower was a general. He presided over 8 years of peace. He warned us about business- the military-industrial complex.
John Kennedy inspired everyone at that time with his rhetoric “What can you do for your country?”  and his plan to put a man on the moon. No businessman  would have thought of that.
Lyndon Johnson, the teacher, who eventually entangled us in the Vietnam War, did some good things with medicare and civil rights reform.
Even that “crook” (I am not a crook) Richard Nixon, an attorney, opened the doors to trade with China. I think he sent a ping-pong team over there to soften them up. (Or did he exchange pandas.) No businessman would have thought of these things.
And of course there was the actor Ronald Reagan who somehow managed to cut and raise taxes at the same time, and is a saint in some circles for the way he managed the government, and solved international problems (Tear down this wall).
And more recently, our two attorneys, Clinton and Obama, both getting in trouble- Clinton with personal issues and being impeached, and Obama with all sorts of lawsuits over the constitutionality of his  the ACA. But both of these men inspire Americans in some way by laying out a vision that is fair and just for all.
So, back to the proposal by Romney to require presidents to have 3 years of business experience. It’s a non starter. Give me inspiration, creative genius, compassion, complex reasoning, lifelong learners, and that will be my choice for president.

The Affordable Care Act

Try this link http://www.healthcare.gov/law/full/ to read the full health Affordable Care Act. I haven't read the whole thing. I have skimmed portions of it, and the reconciliation portion. I like the titles of the sections and the subsections. Generally they seem okay, positive, going in the right direction. I think in a law this big, there has got to be hundreds of objections to any part of it. It is an easy law to rag on, no matter what your political persuasion. For instance- there is a section in the reconciliation part (that's where the house version and the senate versions are reconciled into one act that both houses agree on) that deals with wellness to prevent health problems. It speaks of programs to diminish smoking, addictions, obesity, etc., and then out of nowhere:

‘‘(c) PROTECTION OF SECOND AMENDMENT GUN RIGHTS.—øAs
added by section 10101(e)(2)¿
‘‘(1) WELLNESS AND PREVENTION PROGRAMS.—A wellness
and health promotion activity implemented under subsection
(a)(1)(D) may not require the disclosure or collection of any information relating to—
‘‘(A) the presence or storage of a lawfully-possessed
firearm or ammunition in the residence or on the property
of an individual; or
‘‘(B) the lawful use, possession, or storage of a firearm
or ammunition by an individual. 

And there are several more sections about this. I said "What the...?" The second amendment is all over the place. I wonder what it really costs in health care. Probably not that much in the scheme of things. I would imagine, most of the activity in hospitals relating to that amendment is in the ER, and after that in the morgues. So that probably is small compared to the effects of smoking, drugs, and obesity. But why, of all the wonderful provisions in our Constitution that safeguard us, is it necessary to put a special protection in this law for gun owners. You can bet that if there was a violation of that right, the Supreme Court would definitely overturn the ACA. So if that right is safeguarded in the health care act, it should sail through the Court with the backing of all the judges. Our lawmakers really had it right this time.

A Billion, From Concept to Reality

The Avengers took in $1B; JPMorgan/Chase lost $2B; Mark Zuckerberg is about to raise $100B in an IPO; President Obama has set his sights on raising $1B for his re-election campaign; the Los Angeles Dodgers coming out of bankruptcy, sold for $2B. Billion is a real number, attainable in days by some. But I went to ask.com to see how long it would take to count to a billion. The answer from one point of view:

It would depend on how fast you counted.
Let's suppose, for the sake of the argument, that you could count one number every second on average. (Since most numbers in that range are something like "five hundred million, seventeen thousand, two hundred and fifty," this is being very optimistic.) In that case, it would take you a billion seconds.
Dividing that by 60 (and leaving the remainder in second form), we find that it would take 16,666,666 minutes and 40 seconds. Dividing the minutes by 60, we find it would take 277,777 hours, 46 minutes, and 40 seconds. Dividing the hours by 24, we get a new total of 11,574 days, 1 hour, 46 minutes, and 40 seconds. Finally, dividing by 365.25 (the extra quarter-day is for leap years), we end up with an approximate total of 31 years, 251 days, 7 hours, 46 minutes, and 40 seconds.
In short, if you want to count to a billion, you'd better start now.
—The Editors"Counting to a Billion — Infoplease.com." Ask the Editors. Infoplease. © 2000–2007 Pearson Education, publishing as Infoplease.15 May. 2012 .    

There was a time when a million was a lot. Millionaires dominated the 20th century. Most of us thought $20 was a lot of money, Now it is pocket change that goes into that big jug at the top of the stairs, getting dusty with all those useless coins. A billion was a concept that was difficult to get to; a million of anything was plenty.

Hedge fund operators make a couple billion or so a year, and they think they are underpaid
Check out other billion dollar ideas at http://www.sustainabilityinstitute.org/dhm_archive/index.php?display_article=vn167billioned

So I wonder, who will be or is the first athlete to sign a contract for that magic number? I know many make a billion in their lifetimes, but when will the first contract be signed for the pitcher or home run king; the best triple double WNBA star; the highest ranked quarterback; etc. And when that happens, what will the minimum wage be for the people of New York State...$8.50. (I wonder how many ball games those workers will get to see in person.) And all this will probably happen before I get past 1000 as I steadily count to a billion. Of course if I do make it to a billion by counting, I will be close to my aim of reaching 105 years of age. I will just count a little slower.

A Formative Experience

I was about 8 or 9 years old when probably one of the most formative experiences of my life occurred. It happened when my brother, sister and I had our tonsils out, and I am sure they are saying, "Not that story again!"  (If you want that story, go to http://philpalladino.com/Health%20Care%201940s.html . It is a good one.) But the formative effect of the story is really important.

A night nurse or aide, exasperated by repeated requests for water from my brother who occupied the bed on the other side of a wall in the ward (she fulfilled all those requests), refused to make one more trip to get water for me who was dying of thirst, barely able to utter the word "Water!" The words, "He'll just have to wait until morning!" hurt so deeply, but also helped me be the kind of person I am today, and in retrospect, I am thankful for the negative learning.

I got over the thirst the next morning. Lots of ice cream and ginger ale soothed the hurt in my throat, and my voice came back. I didn't die, although that night, I thought it was over.The physical part was easy to heal. I was able to joke about the experience forever, and get good laughs as I perfected the story.

Now in my advanced middle age, I think back and realize the full effect of that experience. I find that I can never refuse a request for assistance from someone in need. I can not say "You have to wait." I may say, just a minute. I might ask for forbearance for  a short time. But I do not refuse to render a service to someone in need.

As I care for those I love, I think of that terrible response from that unknown caregiver, when my heart sunk into despair facing hours of thirst. And somewhere along the line, I decided that is not the way to treat people, and I resolved that I could and would do better. And maybe I do.

Too Much Information

No one will believe me if I said that my motto (one of them) is “The less said the better”, especially after reading my musings on anything under the sun in my blog posts. I believe in the right of a free press, and every other article of our constitution. I believe also that we as citizens have a right to be informed. But there is always a delicate balance between freedom and servitude, between information and dangerous detail, between intelligence and stupidity.

For years, it has been said that a foreign country does not need covert operation to spy on America, but only needs to read TIME magazine, or watch TV, or just Google something to be informed about what America has up its sleeve.

I think a case in point is the recent exposure of the Al Qaeda plot to destroy an American passenger plane. I was stunned to hear on Hardball tonight details of the CIA intelligence that caused the plot to unravel . I may have missed some of it, but it seemed that one of the guests was saying too much about the operation, the Saudi operative who volunteered to carry out the bomb, the infiltration of Al Qaeda, the type of bomb, the precautions being worked on to assure that such a bomb will be detected in the future, and so on. I then wanted to refresh my memory of what I had heard, so I pressed the Google news button on this blog (over there on the right under links), and there it was again.

We can be certain that Al Qaeda heard or read the same thing on Al Jazeera. I would bet that there is some kind of purge going on right now to destroy other operatives of the CIA. I would also bet, that they would look at any one who is too interested in carrying out a suicide bombing, and figure out that they may be TOO interested and look for a known quantity to deliver the goods. The odds are also that the Al Qaeda brain trust is looking at ways to improve the bomb that was intercepted in order to avoid detection on the next attempt.

I don’t want to belabor my point here, lest I too give out too much information. I know it takes years to build up a network that is trusted to safeguard truth and freedom in the American way. While information gathering, and speaking about it is an important freedom, I think it is important for those who have intelligence to speak less about it, rather than offer a conduit to those who would undo our way of life in a most violent manner.

Influence is Confluence

With access to almost any printed news on the web, it is easy to overlook the traditional papers and magazines to which I subscribe. TIME magazine comes weekly, but it took me a couple of weeks to pick up that ultra-large issue which portrays the top 100 most influential people in the world. I thought I was pretty knowledgeable about almost a lot of things and I recognized 9 of the 15 listed on the cover. Some of the little pictures I also recognized: Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Andrew Cuomo and a few others.

I think the list of real influentials could have been narrowed down a lot to maybe 10. Leave off most of the movie stars, singers, sports phenoms. Leave in one or two world leaders who actually run a country or effect policy, and definitely leave in Steven Colbert (he is influential- ask him.)

But then examine the issue further, and notice the real influential “persons” that dominate the pages of magazines, TV, and the world wide web. Use the Supreme Court to get your definition of a person, and then notice the influences. Louis Vuitton, Korean Air, Citi, Hilton,IBM, Progressive (Flo), GlaxoSmithKline, BOSE( I like this product), Fidelity, Geico, Dow (“Solutionism is the new optimism”- say what?), Verizon, and so on. I did notice that Delta has a page, but it is Delta faucets, not the airline.

There is a connection between the actual list of 100 influential people and the influential persons that dominate the in-between pages, and that is billions of dollars. And you have to wonder what would happen if these people and persons really used those billions to be influential in a positive way. I know this is painting with a broad brush, and many of these people and persons do a lot of good.  I know if I took time to read all the encomium heaped upon them by their peers (who authored the short pieces about each of them)  their influence would truly shine forth. It would be great to muster it all together, confluence… what a brilliant light it would be! (Oh! That’s what TIME was trying to do!)

As I continue to look over the list, I see more to it. Confluence is more appropriate. It represents a hagiography of people across cultural lines. They are people to whom we should open up our hearts and minds. If we view the list as the movers and shakers from around the world, those who can do the most good in their respective countries, who can help change the dynamic of living for millions of people, maybe lift up a few of us along the way, then we have read it correctly. The top 100 people of confluence!