www.theThoughtCzar.com

My friend Bill recently sent me this and I felt it was better than anything I could ever write.

From Bill’s mouth hisself:

I’ll try and tell you about my weight journey:

First, I had reached the point where my health was really suffering (high BP, type 2 diabetes, high cholesterol, high uric acid, high triglycerides, sleep apnea, night sweats, gout and probably several other things that I can’t remember).  I believe that had I not done something drastic that I would have been dead in five years or less and it would not have been a pleasant five years.

Secondly, I realized that I would not be able to do what needed to be done with will power alone.  I had failed too many times in the past and been up and down 100 lbs. probably 12-15 times during my life.

I considered hypnosis but as I have a very strong personality concluded that it would probably not work.

I began to consider surgical techniques and went on a 2 year research hunt to find out their efficacy and what type might be best for me.

I met a woman in Columbia who helped a lot as she had gastric sleeve surgery with Dr. Joya in Mexico and had lost 157 lbs. and was keeping it off.

I began to monitor their Yahoo users group and in 2 years and over 800 emails never heard one bad thing (except that the beds in the hotel were too hard).

There are 3 main WLS (Weight Loss Surgery) alternatives

1.       Lap band – My research on this indicated that persons with the lap band only lose about 40% of the needed weight and must have constant adjustments and Doc visits.  They also remain hungry all the time as they maintain their stomach pouch.  Indeed, I have met 30-40 people who have the lap band and only one person was moderately successful.  The balance regained all their weight.

2.       RNY – This is the most popular WLS and has been around for 35-40 years and the one that they have the most data on.  Data says that this technique causes people to lose about 80% of the needed weight loss.

3.       Gastric Sleeve – This technique has only been around for 8-9 years and has a track record of about an 80% needed weight loss.  It was originally used as a technique for super obese people to lose a couple hundred pounds then they would go back and do an RNY later.

Medicare would have paid for the RNY for me.  The sleeve cost $10K with Dr. Joya in Mexico plus another $2k in miscellaneous expenses.  The sleeve in Columbia would have cost me $27K.

I chose Dr. Joya (drjoya.com) in Mexico as he is the most experienced bariatric surgeon in North America.  He has done over 9,000 of these surgeries and only had one death and that was from a woman who had complications and would not stay in Mexico and let him treat her.  She took 3 days to get to a US hospital and died as a result of the time delay.  All his references check out and the local person that used him was very positive and had very positive results.

I chose the sleeve over the RNY for the following reasons:

1. RNY leaves a portion of the stomach pouch which can be stretched to the original size of your current pouch. The sleeve removes all the pouch and all the grehlins which make you hungry.

2. RNY removes 6′ of your small intestine which often times leads to absorption problems and the need for an expensive vitamin regimen.  The sleeve leaves your small intestine intact.

3. Data suggests that RNYers lose more weight, but I think that is due to the fact that the sleeve has only been around for 8-9 years.

3. RNYers can have “strictures” which is a restriction of the digestive track to the extent that it requires reopening.  The sleeve does NOT have this problem.

4. RNYers have more “dumping” that those with the sleeve.  Dumping is an extra sensitivity to sugar which you should avoid anyway.

5. The sleeve can be converted to an RNY in the future if you have a need. The RNY is your last stop surgically. If the RNY does not work for you, you cannot go back to the sleeve.

6. The sleeve costs less and has a shorter recovery time.

7. Both surgeries can be defeated by constant eating and eating too many carbs or sugar.

8. Both surgery types need the following follow-up items to be successful long term:

a. Begin working with a nutritionist so you learn how to eat for nutrition and not taste.

b. Begin a lifelong exercise program – minimum 30 minutes walking 3 days a week.

c. Read the book “How to Think Like a Thin Person” by Dr. Judith Beck and practice it.

d. Journal all your food everyday using  myfitnesspal.com It is free.

e. Dr. Weil’s books on inflammation and aging are interesting as well.

9. Personally, I have been very happy with the sleeve. 325-207 and I maintain 210 +- 2 lbs. I am 22 months post op.

When I eat now I have several “rules”:

1.       Nothing white (rice, white bread, white potatoes, sugar).

2.       Nothing fried.

3.       No beef.

4.       No fluids after eating for about an hour.

5.       Protein sources are turkey, chicken, low fat cheeses, eggs and fish.

6.       Peanut butter and whole grain breads.

7.       Kellogg’s Protein Plus cereal.

8.       Carb choices are beans (very good protein and carb sources)

9.       No desserts.

10.   Some popcorn.

11.   Snacks are usually apples or nuts.

12.   Plenty of vegetables and salads (no iceberg lettuce).

13.   Some nuts, olives, olive oil, avocadoes – good monounsaturated fats.

14.   Some fruits especially berries, pineapples.  Small amounts of bananas.

15.   Probably 4-5 glasses of wine a year.  No carbonated beverages – beer or soda.

16.   Supplements are:  Folic acid, Calcium with D, Magnesium, Fish Oil, Plant Sterol Esters, Turmeric, Green Tea, Senior Multi-Vitamin

I eat about 800 – 900 calories a day sometimes 1,000 – 1,200 perhaps once or twice a week.

The surgery is just a BIG club in your bag to fight the weight problem, without it I would not be successful.

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Six Temptations:

1.     A conscious desire for victory.

2.     A desire to resort to technical cunning.

3.   A desire to display one’s skill.

4.   A desire to over-awe the enemy.

5.   A desire to play the passive role.

6.   The desire to rid oneself of any of the above.

Remember:

Technique will not make you a master of Art;

You must immerse yourself in the existential aspects, and

Attain a state of no-mind, no-thought.

Only if you have a spirit,

Will skills will flow through your body,

Independent of your mind.

Expect metaphorical death daily,

So, when the time comes,

You can let go of tired and worn-out pursuits,

Only then can the old self die in peace.

Calamity, when it finally occurs,

Is not so dreadful as we feared.

Die every morning, and

You will not fear death.

Once you do not fear death, and

Have attained a state of mind of no-mindedness,

Only then, can one execute extra-ordinary deeds.

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I don’t know when the revelation came to me. Maybe between the advertisements for sex-enhancing drugs, a politician running for office, or my compulsive channel surfing through the vast wasteland of television. I now conclude that with few exceptions electronic media and much of the printed word is created for the sole purpose of entertainment. It is a constant, unrelenting and intrusive bombardment of our senses and consciousness.

So where does this lead? One possibility is letting large parts of the day and mind-space be consumed by social media. We already travel about the country with ear pods or our cell phone glued to our ear. Is there a connection with the increasing variety of emotional-behavioral neuroses in the mass population? We know we are already witnessing the devolution of our culture in that the most successful exploitation of the Internet is for the sale of pornography.

There might be hope, however,  if Marshall McLuhan is correct. McLuhan studied modern forms of media and he believed that we sit passively watching media content and we appear hypnotized. However, at some deeper subconscious level we are becoming bored and the stage is set for a rebellion of the mind. This leads to a revolution in tastes and standards and obsoletes most of that which is presently being consumed.

So what will replace the media of today? First, all forms of print media are about to be challenged by electronic media, particularly hypertext–(html) based pages on the Web. That is not to say that many forms of print media will not survive; they are the “high-touch” counter-effect to electronic media. But books which are pure narrative and bog down the left side of the brain, along with newspapers and magazines which lack depth and serve mainly their advertisers will have great difficulty holding the attention of readers once their mind-set flips.

On the Internet the focus could shift to web sites that inform us as much as entertain us. We will gravitate toward Web sites designed to educate and which try eliminating the asymmetries-in-understanding that allow certain classes of people to hold sway over the ill informed.

But, fundamentally, above all, we will seek authenticity and things of intrinsic worth. To be authentic and have intrinsic worth demands by definition that the idea or thing not be controlled by corporate or mercantile interests. And since government and financial intermediaries are almost typically loyal agents protecting corporate and personal wealth interests, it negates much of what they promote.

At present there is only one ‘thing’ which has any hope of being genuine. That is history. If accurately recounted it is real and from that we can determine its value. If we appreciate the American Civil War we will buy a uniform authentic to the period and participate in reenactments of famous battles. If Mountain Men are our thing we will attend rendezvous. Perhaps this is why we are overly sentimental about Victorian architecture, log homes or antiques that evoke nostalgia. But history is increasingly mytholized and used to sell trinkets. So, you can’t even count on it to be honest and genuine.

If we consider the past as being out only long stretch hope of approaching thenticity it leaves us in a untenable position because it demands a perverse form of mental disassociation from the present and denial of the future, both of which are forms of mental illness. It reminds me of my grandfather’s adage that most people have their left foot on a hot stove and their right  foot on a block of ice; they are only comfortable on the average.

I expect we as consumers will make our loyalties temporary and transient. Products and ideas alike will have short life cycles and be discarded as soon as they are found to be phony and contrived. We will move from fad to fad. Books will be printed in increasingly short runs and hit the discount shelf sooner. Today’s toys will be the stuff of tomorrow’s yard sales and E-Bay auctions. Homes will be stapled together and razed rather than remodeled. Cars will not be restored, but crushed and recycled. Today, even non-profit relief organizations would rather have money than the excess clothing and foodstuff from our closets.

Back in 1988, Bill Moyers asked Barbara Truchman, the famous American Revolutionary historian, what our forefathers would think of modern life. She said they would be appalled and probably revolt. When Moyers asked why we do not take these steps, she replied that people cope with the pervasive and never-ending onslaught to their senses by acting as if they do not care. If they demonstrated their feelings they would be so distraught as to not be able to function. But, deep down they do care. This is the stuff of revolutions and it is why the aristocrats are always taken by surprise. About the time they think the peasant in the field has accepted his fate, is when the uprising occurs and the Bastille gets stormed.

Today, consumerism is 70% of our economic life and it runs on consumer psychology.  Perturbations such as 9/11 can put the system in a tail spin. The positive aspect of all this is that consumers have the ultimate power and they vote every time they make a purchase. They could decide tomorrow to change their buying habits and a bloodless revolution would occur.

The one thing the mass media has done is make us all more aware. We are no longer insulated from the separate realities that others live. But, with the exception of blogs and a few letters to the editor the communication has been one way. It is used to be downward from intellectual elites and mercantilists descending upon us like Mongol hordes. The Internet, social media, in particular, promises to change all that. But the communication will not be from the commoner back up to the publisher. People in upper social, political, or economic stratas have no interest in the opinions of the commoner except as it relates to selling their product or getting a vote.

The communication will be between the readers, not with the editor. Blogs and email all serve to allow us to communicate with our peers and to bring new followers into our group. It is in that dialogue that collective thinking breaks down hierarchies into an amorphous state as a first step to forming a new crystalline structure. And that new structure never has the geometry of the old hierarchy it destroyed.. And when new ideas take shape along new lines, a renewed collective will is soon follow.

It is a great time to be alive for those willing to embrace new ideas and be a part of change. It is a frightening time for those defending old ideologies, traditions, institutions and ways of living.

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Your precious independence! Your white plume! What would you have me do?

Sleep for the patronage of some great man, And, like a creeping vine on a pole tree, Crawl up where I cannot stand alone?

No, Thank You!

Be a buffoon; With the vile hope of teasing out a smile on some cold face?

No, Thank You!

Eat a toad for breakfast every morning; make my knees callous; cultivate a supple spine? Wear out my belly groveling in the dust?

No, Thank You!

With my left hand, scratch the back of any swine that roots up gold for me,

While my right, too proud to know my partner’s business, takes in the fee?

No, Thank You!

Shall I use the “fire” God gave me to burn incense all day long?

No, Thank You!

Struggle to insinuate my name into the columns of the Gazette? Calculate, scheme, be afraid? Love more to make a visit than a poem? Seek introductions, favors, influences?

No, Thank You! No, I Thank You, and again, I Thank You, No!

But, to sing! To laugh!  To dream!

To walk in my own way, with an eye,  to see things as they are,

A voice that means manhood,

To cut my heft where I choose! Not a word, a “Yes” or a “No”!

To fight or right!

But never to make a line, I have never heard in my own heart.

To travel any road under the sun, under the stars,

Nor care if fame or fortune lie beyond the dawn;

Yet, with all modesty, to say

“My soul, be satisfied with flowers, with weeds! With thorns even!”

But, go then in the one garden you call your own.

In a word, “I’m Too Proud To Be a Parasite“!

In my needs to light the germ, that grows towering to heaven like the mountain pine–I stand not high, but alone!

Why go about making enemies?

Watching other people making friends, everywhere, as a dog makes friends,

I mark the manner of these canine courtesies, and think:

Here comes, thank heaven, another enemy!—from Cyrano de Bergerac

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Let me weigh in regarding Jeremy Dehn’s assertion that taxpayer support for higher ed is too low. His op-ed was titled “Higher ed support shameful”.

The central issue is what SHOULD it cost to educate the typical student? High schools have recently discovered that you don’t need a masters degree to teach K-12. I would maintain the university is stuffed to the gills with too many research Phd’s parading as teachers.  If CU could get someone like Dehn for five years for $32, 000 and no benefits, as he mentioned just think how many six-digit professors and administrators we could jettison.

But, since Dehn has a designer  degree in “Communications” it’s hard to extrapolate his hyper-reality.  Let’s be gracious and staff the college with $100,000 a year economics, finance, math and science  professors , give them a maid to wash their chalk board and two graduate students to grade the papers.  Have them teach 20 students and hold four 1-hour classes a day for a year. That’s half time for the average roofer or landscaper who has to really sweat when he works.

I maintain that zero-base budgeting the university system would prove you could get 80% of the job done with 20% of the staff. The plain and simple fact is that CU has turned itself into a high cost producer because of its research and administrative complex. It runs like a fixed-cost railroad. Not only do the students pay through the nose with high tuition but the rest of us foot the bill for the remainder. That’s the real shame.

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The shocking news that Thomas Kinkade, a well-known artist, died at 54 should give us pause. Kinkade infused the appearance of light into his paintings and each prominently featured a lamp post. I bring this up in the context of the transition of Douglas County newspapers to new ownership.

If you look at an aerial photograph of Parker from the 1970s when I moved to the Pinery you will see dirt roads and a few ramshackle buildings. The only real town back then was Castle Rock and the combined Douglas/Elbert County phone book listed 4,800 telephones. It was over grazed horse pasture that only had value to sod farmers. The area had one really great intrinsic value and that was cheap land adjacent to a fast-growing major metropolitan area. The result is what you see: a patch-work of suburban enclaves glued together by big box retailers. The local merchants are long gone as the cities and counties optimize their sales tax revenue by playing host to high volume merchants.

Thomas Kinkade’s paintings promoted a attitude of serenity and a mythological view of reality. The behind the scene’s reality of his personal life was that he was an alcoholic, separated from his family and on a path of personal destruction. No one dared talk of that until his life ended.

So, the question is whether the new owners of the Douglas County papers will strive to insert a lamp-post into their content? Will they take the Etch-A-Sketch and shake it and start anew? Or will they continue to promote a feel-good view?

Almost every communications media has devolved into a faux device to sell stuff. Whether we are the Library or the Newspaper we dare not disturb the reader lest she lose her desire to shop. Really serious debate never takes place. Problems never get confronted or solved. The only metric is the number of eyes exposed to ads.

In this I am not suggesting that you eliminate the pictures of children enjoying their sweet life here in Douglas County. But, the fact that nearly 40 kids are committing suicide every year in DC high schools is contrary to the serene vision being painted. According to the lastest Census data, Douglas County is no longer a high growth county. Nearly half the homeowners are upside-down on their homes and the high household income is tied to health care employment soon to be reformed. The County lacks an economic engine of its own and it is largely a body without a brain. You would think that the Chamber of Commerce, which comprises the private sector, would get their arms around the problem. Instead they promote more home building and a creative district to support an Arts Center that should never have been built.Both sides lack leadership or vision.

Perhaps Thomas Kinkade’s art should now be replaced by the works of M.C. Escher. The real picture is far less functional than our denial allows. What is needed is for all the major institutions in the area to stop promoting an addictive chimera and, instead, pivot, and engage in a spirited conversation that leads to deep and permanent change. I suggest that the County’s long range plan and Chamber economic development plans eventually come to speak to a “new-normal”. After all, we are in the 21st Century whether we want to admit it or not.

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George Carlin on who controls the world

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It is fitting that I returned from my sabbatical coincident with the Supreme Court hearings on Obamacare. Since December 26, I have been preparing a 500 page loan application to the federal government for the launching of a health care cooperative. Those who know me are aware this is a project near and dear to my heart.

In 1988, I was president of the Colroado Business Coalition for Health. The Board was fishing for a strategy to reform the health care market from the private sector side. I had done a tour of duty at Deloitte Touche computerizing the hedging department and trading floor of the old Farmers Union grain cooperative (GTA) on the Minneapolis Grain Exchange. I saw co-ops as a useful analogy for organizing health care consumers. We created the Alliance and were off to the races. I was caught by surprise when the hospitals and insurance companies became allies and marched down to the Colorado Legislature and got us legislated out of existence. The Board soon soured on the idea of putting up their corporate funds to start an organization that would benefit small business and they increasingly became passive-aggressive. In the end the Alliance dissolved and I went back to consulting.

Leaving an organization under duress has never set well with me. So, on my way out the door, I incorporated the Colorado Employers and Consumers Health Care Cooperative, Inc as a final act of defiance. I also registered Health Smart as a trademark. Both sat like a seed lying fallow in the desert for twenty years waiting for rain.

Over the years, the conservative movement had strived to get Association Health Plans (AHAs) passed to allow small businesses and individual to create their own health plans under federal law. The original MEWA (multiple employer welfare association) provisions under ERISA enacted in 1974 had been pushed down to be regulated by the State insurance commmissioners and they had let the insurance lobby create barriers. The U.S. House of Representatives passed legislation 11 times to create AHPs but it never made it through the Senate. In fact, Colorado’s Senator Ken Salazar had been the last one to put the knife in using procedural rules.

This opposition is central to why the insurers and hospitals fought MEWAs/AHPs and why they embraced Obamacare. If you go back to the original passage of Medicare you would have found a market where insurance companies, dominated by Blue Cross used underwriting to cull out and cherry pick the most profitable clients. The hospitals were being paid on a cost-plus basis and life was good in Lake Wobegon. Medicare and then Medicaid turbo-charged the system with federal and state monies. Hospitals and specialist doctors in particular benefited immensely but it helped cover their fixed costs and they could then price services to the insurance companies at the marginal cost. One need only look at old hospital bills to see how cheap hospital services were.

Alas, the good times never seem to last. When Congress passed ERISA in 1974 they allowed labor unions and large corporations to go their own way. The healthiest of the groups immediately began to self insure using reinsurance and they pulled out of the state regulated health plans. This movement became a trend and to this day, almost all employers larger than 100 lives seriously consider self insuring. The employer banks the cost savings and has the freedom to do what he wishes. The loss of these healthy groups began an adverse selection spiral that has plagued the insurance industry ever since 1974. From that point on, health insurance in the state regulated markets began to inflate at higher than the underlying medical costs trends.

With insurance premiums inflating the insurance companies were faced with a three-tiered situation. If they did not offer competitive rates to larger groups they would lose them to self insurance. State regulations allowed use of underwriting and discrimination towards individuals and small groups and these groups started getting hit with premium increases. As premiums inflated, young healthy individuals began to bail out of buying health insurance like rats jumping off a sinking ship.

All of this has been accompanied by mega trends in the employer market. There has been an increasing shift towards small business and individuals creating most new jobs.  There was a merger and acquisition frenzy in the 1990s which caused large employers to shrink in size and consolidate. As of 2011, Colorado had 153,000 employers, 90% of whom had less than 50 employees. 70% have less than 5 employees. And, there are 400,000 sole proprietorships with no employees. The increased trend toward 1099 contracting and part time employees has also affected things. Nearly 25% of employees who are offered health insurance by their employer do not enroll because of the cost.

Its as though we are squeezing a tube of tooth paste in the middle. Out of the top of the tube, self insured employers squirt out and abandon the system. This leaves relatively sick people in the risk pool and health insurance premiums increase at an accelerating rate. This causes individuals and very small groups to further bail out of the system because of hyper-inflating costs.

When I started my involvement in health care reform in the mid-1980s, health care costs were 8% of GDP and about 8% of the population was uninsured. Now that health care is over 17% of GDP, the uninsured in Colorado are 17%, over 800,000 people. Soon health care will be 25% of GDP and I predict the uninsured population will mirror it percentage-wise. We are on a path leading over a cliff.

When I wrote the book Health Care 2050: The 13th Strategy in 2008, I predicted we would arrive at the current observation for health care. I laid out a set of strategies, one of which was using cooperatives. It was coincidental that health care cooperatives were funded as a provision of Obamacare. Unlike most people, I have read the bill. I have mixed feelings about it all. The law tinkers with the health care system at the margins and does not strategically address the central problem of hyper-inflation. Regardless, most of the provisions are pretty benign and it is not a takeover of the system by government. If anything it is an attempt to stop a hemorrage using a band-aid instead of a tourniquet. The “mandate” is obviously the rub and has been seized upon by ideologues. But, I am also not too keen on solving an “adverse-selection-spiral” by forcing young, healthy people to join a risk pool and pay higher premiums so they can subsidize the insurance costs of older, sicker people.Its a covert tax and intergenerational transfer. The young already pay the freight on health care costs for Medicare, Medicaid and government employees. It is cruel irony that a sizeable percentage of their take-home pay goes to pay for others and they cannot afford insurance for their own families because of inflationary sources.

In the end, all economic markets are akin to forces of nature. Nature always wins whether it takes an earthquake, drought, fire, hurricane or other event to shake the etch-a-sketch and bring things back to square one. We deregulated airlines, trucking, telecom and other industries, not because the oligarchs who controlled them wished it to be so, but because the laws of nature eventually demanded it.

We are approaching the point in time when health care will be changed. If the Supreme Court overturns the entire Obamacare law, it will take a long time to get something through Congress, but it will happen eventually. If the Court just overturns the mandate, it is possible the insurance reforms will stand and the insurance industry will be thrown into turmoil. If the insurance reforms are overturned along with the mandate, then the adverse selection spiral will only accelerate. Regardless you will live to see the market disintegrate. Groups will increasingly self insure and individuals will increasingly bail out. Health premiums for those remaining in the state regulated risk pool will experience hyper-inflation in their premiums creating a law of lemons economic effect.

All of this activity is occuring in the private market while Medicare and Medicaid approach the edge of a financial chasm. In the end, I predict the social and political engineers, who use pubic policy as a blunt force club to induce trauma, will have to admit defeat. Their ill-conceived plans will be a shambles as the edifice they erected collapses even as the builder adds more bricks to the top floor. So, where does that leave my little co-op project? In the shadows, I hope.

Clearly launching a small insurance company using the cooperative form of organization structure admist all this chaos seems like a fool’s errand. How could any small, weak actor hope to prevail against the large, oligarchy of incumbents who presently dominate the health care field. What “force-multiplier” could an insurgent hope to conjure up to survive, much less succeed? Traditionally, insurance companies, many of whom have been in business for 50 years or more, have had plenty of capital. Reserve and solvency requirements have discouraged new upstarts. (Self-insured companies need not have reserves and they can buy reinsurance as a substitute). A captive insurance company needs $500,000 in reserves but that is a pittance compared to the millions needed by a fully insured company selling products in the market at large. But, health insurance is immensely profitable and raising capital is not impossible. There are over 400 insurance companies selling health insurance in the Colorado market, but even then, only 10 of them have become big. I would maintain that raising the capital is difficult but not impossible. Is is technology that means the difference?

I have been involved in high tech for most of my life. I believe technology is a force-multiplier in the technology market but not the business market-at-large. When Apple invented the iPod, iPhone or iPad, superior technolgy was a force multiplier that benefited them relatively to their competitors. But, anyone with $500 bucks could buy an iPhone or wait a few months and get it even cheaper. Most large insurance companies have immense amounts of money to buy whatever technology they want and they can always outrun any upstart with a personal computer. It is rare that an upstart would have both the technological skill and the business moxy to use technology as a force multiplier in a significantly superior way against a large insurance company. So, it is not the strategic use of technology that has hope of success.

Large organizations can always use competitive pricing to compete and they can always bid up the prices of labor so as to hire the best people. A sober person would quickly conclude that incumbents should almost always prevail against under-capitalized, understaffed, even technologically equal upstarts. If so why is it that the history of the past 50 years has been repleat with the bodies of dinosaurs lying rotting in the swamps as upstarts prevailed. Microsoft and Apple humbled IBM. Huge companies like RCA, GE, Univac, Burroughs and NCR all had billions of dollars of capital and they wasted it competing with upstarts. All of them are now gone.

The answer to this question is complex and I would not tell you even if I had answers because I hestitate to give away my strategy. But, whether the dinosaurs were effected by an asteroid or by some other cataclysmic event we still do not know. What we do know is that the fossilized remains of the dinosaurs, wolly mammoth and thousands other species lie near the surface of the earth. We are pretty certain that birds are the down-sized version of the dinosaur. And today’s buffaloes, elephants and even beavers have distant cousins who were once much larger.

The horse originated in North America, went extinct and then resurfaced when the Spanish blessed Native Americans with their visits. IBM has been downsized to half its former size, but has given up hardware manufacturing and is now a consulting firm. RCA was the most successful company in the World in 1976 and bankrupt five years later. Nothing is forever and discontinuous change is almost guaranteed in the 21st century.

As they say in the Hunger Games, may the odds be in your favor.

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Now that the lawyers have had their say, we are all expected to wait with baited-breath until sometime this summer when the Supreme Court renders its decision on Obamacare. The hope of course is that their opinion will become feedstock for the Presidential election in the fall. I personally believe this whole thing is absurd theatre. It reminds me of the old Heritage Square Opera House in Golden when, back in the 1970s, Bill Oakley played the villan in melodramas and the audience drank beer and threw peanut shells on the floor.

Let us not forget that we waited with anticipation back during the Ritter governship when the 208 Blue Ribbon Commission rendered its findings on what to do with Colorado health care. There was absolutely no follow-through. And, lest us not forget that improving access to 40 million people by forcing them to buy an insurance product that costs over $14,000 a year for a typical family would add another $1.8 trillion dollars to the national debt. That’s the problem.

What should have happened is that there should have been a mock trial to determine, not whether Obamacare’s provisions were constitutional, but whether the law made any sense economically. Since 1965 we have been passing laws to help the aged, poor and uninsured gain access and all it has done is create hyper-inflation in the health care system.. Now that health care is 17% of the GDP, does anyone notice that the number of uninsured represent 17% of the population. What will it be like when health care is 25% of the GDP?

What the health care problem brings front and center is the fundamental problem facing our society. First, the economics we inherited from our fathers no longer works. Everything from Adam Smith’s invisible hand to Keynesian economics to monetary policy with the Federal Reserve were artifacts and creations of the Industrial Revolution of the past 300 years. Now that we are moving into the 21st century, we keep using hand tools when we should be inventing new devices to solve problems. We all know that the workout and turnaround started by President Bush and Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson and continued by President Obama, Secretary Geitner and Chairman Berananke is simply not working. Is not insanity defined by continuing to dig a deeper hole? Do we not know that injecting more money into the health care system will only fuel more inflation?

Most of the institutions that have grown up in the public sector over the past 100 years have been excused from the disciplining forces of the market. We seem to do a good job designing iPads and then having the Chinese build them with child labor. But, health care and higher education appear appear representative of high quality but are astoundingly inefficient. Everything from the military to highways to taking care of the forests is either poorly done or inefficient. None of it is sustainable.

The modern World in which we live that allows us all to have a hot tub, drive around burning cheap gas and having the schools be our day-care facility have been made possible by large scale institutions that benefited from the printing of money and easy credit that made prosperity seem real. Now that the bubble has been burst and we see the emperor has no clothes we are understandably anxious. Being mere individuals who lack the inventive skills of a Henry Ford, Thomas Edison or Steve Jobs, we turn the task of putting Humpty Dumpty back together over to our government. My God, pass a law, do something about it, stop that man, solve that problem! But, the loyal agents in the legislative, executive and judicial branches of government are the product of the same industrial revolution that produced us. They, along with the corporate do-dahs we turn to to produce our iPads sat in the same classroom in elementary school with us. They are Us!.

It is astounding to listen to the difference in reasoning between liberal Justices like Kagan and Ginsburg and the more conservative justices like Scalia. How can such highly educated people see the world so differently? The fault line between Republican and Democrats, liberal and conservative is a chasm that seemingly cannot be crossed by any amount of civil discussion These people are the victims of a culture and society that educated them along narrow lines. None of them has ever had much education in the way of economics and they succeeded in their careers by becoming specialized. Not to worry because they are not sitting on that elevated bench to decide whether Obamacare solved the economic problem of rising health care costs. Their job is to determine whether Obamacare measures up to a document written in 1776 well before the Industrial Revolution even occurred. Like the Bible, many believe in divine revelation and literal interpretation to get at the truth. Forget that most of what we know about health care, education, economics, the brain and almost everything else we have learned in the past 25 years. Most scholars won’t even read a science book that has a publication date older than three years.

Irrespective if the law fails on its constitutionality, its greatest sin is not that it was a power-grab by government. It should be indicted and convicted of failing to solve an important societal problem with deep root causes. It’s as if you have metasticized cancer and the doctor wants to prescribe Viagra.

We all know that our society is in an unstainable phase. Its as though we are on a runaway train and none of the levers we pull have an effect. And, the dials keep reporting both steam and speed are building. Meanwhile back in the dining car our senators, judges and executives are playing cards, laughing and drinking. As individuals we feel powerless to affect the outcome of the events which affect us all daily. So, we either act like we do not care or we spend every waking hour watching CSpan with hopeful anticipation the next decision will put us on the road to solving the problem.

Let me make a prediction. The Court will render an opinion. We will read it and half of us will agree with it and half of us will disagree with it. Then we will have an election and half of us will vote one way and the other half will vote the other way. Someone will win by the slimmest of margins and immediately declare he has a mandate to change our World. Once the new group is seated they will form new committees to study the matter. And, the beat goes on.

Meanwhile the forests keep burning. Health care costs and the number of uninsured continue to increase. The Board of Regents will continue to raise tuition and student debt will continue to increase. All of this I can predict with 100% certainty. What I cannot predict is when we will reach a tipping point and the barbarians will appear on the horizon to reorder our world. You and I know there are consequences for irrational and illogical behavior. Even Forrest Gump knew stupid is as stupid does. The Supreme Court decision is simply answering the wrong question and so it simply does not matter.

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It is dangerous to write the annual Christmas letter following any intense experience, particularly one having to do with plumbing. Fran just finished several days digging down six feet through the permafrost to my main water line to allow a plumber to fix a break. It broke in the same place last year, to the day. The guys who gouged us then( be afraid of any company with the name Emergency in their name) said the next time it broke it would have to be replaced and would cost $8,000. Like Chevy Chase, Fran took things into his own hands and dug it by hand. Note to anyone who tries this; water can emerge several feet away from the actual leak as it winds its way to the surface following the giant tree roots that caused the break. The details of this sorry, pitiful story will be on www.thethoughtczar.com for those who like to watch This Old House.

That is a perfect way to segue into  discussing Fran’s blog www.thethoughtczar.com. We have now reached the observation point in our lives where we can see both back and down to the base camp where this soon to be 35 year marriage started and forwards and up to the the summit where the sun shines perpetually. Being married to a psychologist, the blog is Fran’s therapeutic way of putting the day’s twisted, tortured and warped events into a philosophical framework. It is the equivalent of using a meat cleaver on round steak.  It is a great success although Kathleen has yet to read it. Fran even had embroidered hats produced so as to start a little buzz, but all it produced was Psst!. We echo Arthur Conan Doyle’s sermon to bloggers: “Genius instantly recognizes genius; mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself”

Life here at 5342 Saratoga Road, Parker, CO,USA, on Planet Earth, in the Milky Way is about the same as last year. Fran did finish enclosing the deck he started ten years ago. He decided to go the extra mile and turn it into a personal space(aka, man cave). As with most household projects Kathleen only looks at the bills for materials and whether the project appears done from the outside. Since Fran used scrap lumber from Home Depot, he has been able to work under the radar screen. This summer we’ll get the interior tricked out with a fridge and big screen. Very rustic, but functional. Fran is still looking for one of those calendars like they used to have in auto garages.

Kathleen’s psychology practice is undergoing massive change. At first we thought there had been a spontaneous improvement in mental health in the population when her numbers dipped. It took awhile to figure out that her client base, which heretofore was all self pay, was now feeling a negative wealth effect and impoverishment from being upside down in their houses. Being denied personal ATM machines caused many to revert to using their insurance so she is in the first wave hitting Obama(Omaha) Beach during the Great Health War to end all maladies. So, we have been signing up for an electronic clearing house, installing billing software, finding a collection agency, all for the privilege of her discounting her services 50% and waiting three months to get paid. But, we think the perversity of the newly reformed health care system will generate mass traumatic brain injury and once again stimulate demand for mental health services.

Kathleen is also laying down the railroad track(just a metaphor) for some kind of a school or private academy to be launched in the future. She has come to the revelation that the public school system does not do a very good job and there are several niche market segments (the percentages of which add up to over 100%) who need remediation. In particular is a new group called 2e children. These are twice-exceptional kids, who are both gifted and talented but also who have learning disabilities(ADHD, dyslexia, mediocre parents,etc) Fortunately, most parents consider their kids gifted and most teachers feel the kid has disabilities, so, again, its a sure fire bet from a market standpoint. There’s a potential for infinite demand as the Baby Boomers turn over their estates to the next generation.

We are just waiting for vouchers to be adopted in Douglas County. We are forced to do so because our market surveys suggested very few parents will actually spend money on their kid’s emotional development. There is a cruel irony in that parents are terrified their kids will become more emotionally adjusted than they themselves. So, better to spend the money at Target and get the kid a toy to deal with the ADHD. Parents can normally get around the label of being average to mediocre by taking their kid to Disney Land or buying them one of those red-hatted travel gnomes at the Travelocity Store.

Our cats want to send a special greeting this year. We’re down to only four, which is still a pretty nice collection. Benjii the feral cat is pretty tame now and comes in at night. Sarah is just as sweet as ever, being the only girl cat. Wigge is bona fide narcissistic and Midde is chief of the clan. They took great delight when Fran got arrested this summer for feeding the deer. They warned him that only cats should be fed and that deer and, particularly, racoons do not qualify. The Division of Wildlife reacted swiftly by suspending Fran’s hunting license and registering him as a wildlife offender.

One thing we have noticed as we get older is the differences between us and our neighbors seem ever sharper. For example, we go all out for Halloween. We put up decorations, have unlimited candy, hide in the bushes to scare the kids and all that. The neighbors do nothing but send their kids over to our house. What’s with that?

And, then there’s Christmas lights. We consider Christmas a sacred holiday and wait until after Thanksgiving to put up the lights. We had a break in the weather this year so  onward Dasher. But, none of our neighbors put up lights. And, the big McMansion’s across the green belt are also darkened. So, down to the Ace Hardware store I went. Although sales of LED lights are reported to be way up, the lights aren’t being put up. What’s with that? Turns out that so many houses are upside down that the lights fall off after they are installed. I’m sure the owners will find them in the spring when the snow melts.

We sure enjoyed Hawaii this year. Fran’s mother went with us to the Big Island. We no longer go to timeshare meetings for the $100 deal. And, we have abandoned going on Captain Bean’s dinner cruise. Turned out is was a booze cruise that always ended in a Conga line dance. Fran doesn’t like ball-room dancing, particularly on a cruise ship listing in the water. Something about his years in the Navy. So, we are content to do the Fairwinds snorkel cruise.

Most of our friends are gliding into retirement and indulging their grandkids. Perhaps because we enjoyed other people’s kids so much and Kathleen’s practice with teenagers has been so fulfilling, it is different for us. We have noticed that young people seeking advice really want validation. So, whenever possible we are comitted to verifying young people’s perceptions about adults and we are encouraging them to emancipate as late as possible. Our motto is, “If You Want to Occupy, Live with Your Parents!” We just knew you would appreciate our concern and involvment.

All-in-all its been a good year, the plumbing project not-with-standing. Next year is 2012, which, according to the Mayans, on December 12,  the World will end. Kind of a 121212 thing. So, we will endeavor to get next year’s Christmas card to you before that day so you will have reading material for the journey to the great beyond. And, if string theory turns out wrong and there are no alternative realities, then you can hand it to St Peter and tell him it is a note from your mother.

Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, The Sandal-Miller-Sandals

Screen Credits:
Kathleen Sandal-Miller
Francis Miller-Sandal

The Kats playing Cats:

MidNight at the Oasis
Wigge down on the Farm
Sarah, Queen
Benjii, Feral to the End

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