Click the pic to see an amazing piece of video art.

Many thanks to my uber-cool friend Don Whittington for posting a link to this movie on Facebook. You can find information on video artist Marco Brambilla and his art at this link.

Be sure to strap your a$$ on pretty good, because you might laugh it off otherwise.

This is a very long post so settle in before you read it. If you are inclined to criticize me harshly for not agreeing with your point of view, it will make it much easier for you to target your criticism to what I actually say!

Health care reform is needed in this country at this time. We knew it was a problem long before Bill Clinton won the presidency campaigning on a platform that included national health care reform. Sweeping reform was defeated, the Republicans took control of the House of Representatives (otherwise known as Clown School), and minimal reform was passed. People gained the right to pay an outrageous premium for the same coverage they had at a much lower premium, as an employee, for up to eighteen months after leaving or losing a job. Big whoop.

Republicans controlled Clown School from 1995 until 2007 and did not pass meaningful health care reform to address people being denied coverage or going bankrupt due to an illness. The Senate (otherwise known as The Yacht Club) bounced back and forth from Republican to Democratic control during that time and neither party passed meaningful reform there.

1992 was eighteen years ago.

As a small business owner, I saw our premiums for our “pool” of less than two dozen people jump dramatically if one member had a significant medical expenditure – maybe a couple thousand dollars worth – in one year. The huge corporation down the road got the same policy for its employees for less than half the cost per person, and one person needing a couple thousand dollars worth of medical care in a year was a blip on the screen that didn’t affect their premiums.

That, folks, is a crazy system. If you work over there, fifteen co-workers share the burden for your health care and pay a lot more when you use a lot of services. Over at this other place, ten thousand share the burden and don’t feel a thing when you use a lot of services.

A friend of mine suggested a few years back that his denomination, with around twenty million members, should create a health insurance pool. It seemed like a brilliant idea. Make a bigger pool, spread the risk and costs around. But everyone is entrenched in the notion that businesses should provide health insurance to their employees instead of private individuals buying it as members of much larger pools.

Do we all understand where that idea came from? It goes back to wage controls from the last time the extreme progressives pushed through their programs, giving the federal government a say in things the Constitution was written to limit. Because companies couldn’t pay their employees more, by law, they added benefits to compete for talent. A job with medical insurance benefits became the aspiration of more and more people. When insurance was affordable, it was an easy thing for businesses to add.

This set in place the belief that individuals should not pay for their own health insurance, let alone pay for their own health care. Without questioning why – the typical way of the common man – people just came to accept that somebody else was responsible to pay for their health insurance.

Into the mix came men of grand character, like John Edwards, who in times distant would have been called “ambulance chasers,” but repackaged themselves as champions of the little man. Don’t get me wrong here. People whose lives were ruined by medical malpractice or incompetence deserve relief. But when attorneys saw how easy the money was, taking thirty percent or more of large awards, they dug deeper and deeper into the notion of liability, until physicians were made responsible for things they should not have been expected to foresee, in many instances because they were not real.

Silicon breast implants are the best example, though I know anecdotes do not make the final case. But class action ambulance chasers brought an onslaught of lawsuits against the manufacturers and surgeons, claiming the silicon leaked and caused ongoing vague and bizarre problems. Dow Corning was brought to its knees. Many years later, a sane review of the mountains of studies showed that silicon implants did not cause any of the illnesses claimed in the lawsuits. But the attorneys got rich and some malingerers were rewarded for their hypochondriasis.

Physicians have been found liable for not using the latest, state-of-the-art tests and procedures. They have followed the standard of practice for medicine, but since cutting edge clinics could be found with more costly and extensive interventions, physicians were found, legally, to be liable for not practicing to the standard of the innovators in the expensive clinic. Practicing to the standard of care for the profession was not enough to protect them from being legally liable.

When people sue and win because they didn’t get the highest, most expensive, elite level of care, health care costs rise.

There are standard protocols in place for physicians to follow so it’s not true that a large number of doctors are ordering unnecessary tests and procedures, either to cover themselves or to pad their pockets. It is illegal for doctors to order unnecessary tests and procedures. But the protocols now include quicker decisions to move to the next step and look more closely at a possible problem. Medical liability lawsuits have bequeathed this to us.

Will a government directed health care system for everyone work? We shouldn’t forget that our government created Medicaid and Medicare, knowing for decades they would bring in more revenue in targeted taxes than the programs would spend, and then reversing and spending more than they brought in with population shifts. That didn’t stop our representatives – and therefore us – from spending that money on other things instead of saving it up for the coming shortfall. We blew through the cash like rock stars’ kids, so the bill for those programs is about to skyrocket and we have nothing saved up to cover it. That bodes ill for government being in charge of health insurance.

The insurance companies have behaved, if not worst of all, then at least the most obviously wrong. They regularly raise rates on premiums and cut coverage. They carve out things they won’t pay and squeeze clinics and hospitals to accept lower reimbursements rates. They refuse to insure people for any reason, every reason, and no reason. They accept premiums for years and then drop someone because of a diagnosis.

That is completely vile and unethical. They took the risk in return for the profit, and their profits have never been a problem. They understand “pooled risk” better than any other person or organization. They willingly jump in for the potential gain to them, but they run from the risk when it’s time to pay out.

Pooled risk is a huge point. It’s the key to health care reform. Not everyone will experience a catastrophic medical event in his or her lifetime, but for those who do the cost can be hundreds of thousands of dollars. Some of the risk is related to behavior, especially around some kinds of cancer and cardiovascular disease, but a whole lot of the risk is genetic.

The question becomes: Do we as a society want to look at the person who needs a quadruple bypass, mostly for genetic reasons and a little for dietary reasons, and just say, “Thank God it’s not me!” Do we simply shake our heads in mawkish concern and then think Tough break, or do we share the burden?

Do we think it’s okay that someone can go broke because she gets cancer; loses her job because surgery and treatment take so much time and weaken her so much she can’t work; and then loses her medical insurance because she doesn’t have a job and can’t find, much less afford, a private policy in the middle of treatment for cancer?

It seems absolutely, totally, and completely unacceptable that anyone should hit financial destitution in the middle of a health crisis, when she needs all the material and emotional and spiritual resources she can muster to fight – to win – to survive.

But… Is a government program the answer? Some never-before-conceived government program might be part of the answer, but what we have now is not working. Medicaid and Medicare are about to go broke, because, as I mentioned before, payments going out are about to exceed tax revenues, and we already spent the surplus that was coming in for decades.

Another problem with our current programs: more and more physicians are refusing to accept Medicaid and even Medicare clients (Medicare reimbursement rates are higher than Medicaid by a bit). Why is that? Because they’re greedy, preferring to make a ton of money instead of a little less money? No, it’s because they aren’t willing to work for free, and they cannot give away their work and subsidize patients on the government programs. I don’t have the exact numbers from the example I heard, but these are close. A few years ago, Medicare was paying around twenty dollars for administration of a flu shot. The cost of the vial of vaccination to a clinic was twenty-four dollars.

That means every time they gave a shot to a Medicare patient, they lost four dollars, plus the value of the nurse’s time and the hypodermic needle and the tiny share of rent and utilities for the time the room was used. What a business model! Give out thirty flu shots to Medicare patients in one day and you bring in six hundred dollars. You pay out seven hundred twenty for the vaccine, you pay a nurse for a few hours of time, and you pay overhead on the space and the staff checking people in and processing payments.

Those greedy doctors!

I have to disclose that my wife is a doctor, a family practice physician. I see the incredibly long hours she works every single week. Primary care physicians are seeing more and more patients, working harder, and getting squeezed on reimbursements. The shortage of primary care physicians is getting to be a big problem, as most newly graduating M.D.’s choose to go into higher paying specialties. Average primary care physician pay is in the low six-figure range. Internet marketing experts brag about earning six figure per month and finding ways to go from seven-figure to eight-figure annual incomes. Professional athletes… I won’t even go there. The point is clear.

So is it the responsibility of primary care doctors to take care of people who cannot, or will not, pay for health care? Should they be compelled to give away their services, or even take the money they earn serving one group of patients and use part of it to subsidize another group, essentially paying money to work instead of earning money for their work?

This is what happens. I don’t know names but I know some stories, and many sound strikingly similar. A woman who committed to being a mother and housewife has great medical insurance for years. Her husband has a mid-life crisis and leaves her and the kids. She’s now working for low wages, trying to keep the children fed, and has no insurance. She comes to the doctor she’s known for years. The doctor charges nothing for the visit and pulls together enough samples of medication to cover the number of days of the prescription the woman needs to cure her illness.

Should we compel these physicians to see government program patients? They’re already working for free with patients like these as part of the system of caring for the uninsured.

I see the need and believe our society should do something, together, to solve these problems. What I believe is: everybody pays, everybody benefits. Even someone earning minimum wage, around fourteen thousand dollars per year, can pay something for medical care. If you can pay for a cell phone or movie rentals, you can pay twenty or thirty dollars a month of your medical insurance. What I don’t believe is one group should get all the benefits and pay nothing, while another group pays all the cost and gets no benefit.

What I believe is, if you strongly advocate health care for everyone, you should strongly advocate paying your fair share. Compelling one group of your fellow citizens to pay for a program for another group of your fellow citizens is not compassion. It’s tyranny. Borrowing and leaving the debt for my children to pay so you can give a program to a group of fellow citizens and proclaim yourself to be caring is not compassion. It’s absurdity. It’s a kind of young adolescent self-centeredness and lack of responsibility that overvalues one’s own wishes and fails to understand the drain those wishes put on other people.

I believe we can improve health care delivery through social programs, but not this way. Not with this bill passed in this way. We cannot trample the Constitution to make some people’s lives better. Once we trample the Constitution, quality of life is at stake in much larger ways than health care.

The Constitution is written to define and limit the powers of the federal government. In principle, the federal government can only do what the Constitution says it can do, in the areas of power granted to it. In practice, statists have fought against the Constitution for years to grasp more and more power over people’s lives. Many of the programs of FDR’s administration were challenged as being unconstitutional usurpations of power, and a lot were eventually overturned. Unfortunately, some rulings allowed an enormous expansion of the powers of the federal government to intrude into commerce and even activities, like growing wheat on a farm for personal consumption, that aren’t commerce at all.

The United States I learned about as a child in school, founded by people who demanded limited government because they saw that centralized national governments with broad powers are ultimately corrupt and tyrannical, was fading long before I was even born. It was weakened before my parents were born.

Our founders knew that the European pattern wouldn’t insure personal liberty. As long as the government was large and powerful, liberty would depend on the whim of the ruler. One ruler could usurp another, or one group could displace a ruler and replace him for a time, but as long as that immense power existed in one focused place it could be taken by one or a few who could then exploit and enslave many.

Our founders didn’t want a powerful centralized government because they didn’t want to have to rely on the character of the people in power for their freedom. They wouldn’t see the centralized socialist governments of Europe as models for what they were designing, in spite of the role elections play in those governments. They would see them as the evolution of oppressive powerful central governments from hereditary nobility to elected nobility, appeasing the masses with the right to vote on some things, but with personal liberty at constant risk under the whim of the rulers.

Compelling people to purchase health insurance tramples personal liberty, the most sacred founding principle of our nation. If we give up personal liberty and give up the idea of a limited government that has only the powers We the People agree to give it, America is gone. The experiment is over.

The majority of citizens opposed the Senate bill the House voted on. In heavily Democratic Massachusetts, a Republican won the seat of the Champion of Socialized Medicine because they did not want what the Democrats had voted for. The ruling party said, “We don’t care.” They passed a bill by manipulating and strong-arming their members, in open defiance of the will of the people. The knew the clock was ticking and they decided to push through a victory over… over us; over the America people.

“That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the consent of the governed…”

Consent of the governed. Sound familiar? It’s from The Declaration of Independence. Remember how that turned out?

“…That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it…”

Can’t we have a program that doesn’t violate personal liberty? Can’t we only have social programs we are willing to pay for? And by “willing to pay for” I mean all of us paying, not just the top ten percent of income earners, and not our children and grandchildren paying tomorrow for what we do today.

I know he’s far left, but documentary director Michael Moore is an entertaining filmmaker and a fairly accomplished propagandist so I generally enjoy watching his movies, even the parts where I argue with him (don’t worry – he doesn’t argue back). I was compelled enough by things he presented in his movie Sicko to do a little bit of reading.

I learned there are a lot of limitations and problems with the national health service in Great Britain, enough to say I don’t want a similar program in the United States. It’s really hard to find consistent numbers on the cost to the average taxpayer, but the British generally like their system and are willing to share the cost. Everybody pays, everybody benefits. Shouldn’t we be willing to have a new payroll tax if we really want a health care program for everyone? And by want I mean desire and value it enough to put effort into it and make sacrifices. I do not mean whining about fairness and then compelling one small group to pay for said fairness for everyone else.

In France they don’t have a national health care system. They have a national health insurance system. I would love to understand it better but get bogged down in some of the information I find. I do know everyone is covered, the government program covers around seventy percent of care and private supplemental insurance covers around thirty percent, physicians aren’t government employees, full coverage kicks in with a catastrophic diagnosis, and nobody goes bankrupt because of health care expenses. And I know they pay around twenty-one percent of income in payroll taxes for health care. Now that’s really wanting it.

The main thing that jumps out at me about Great Britain and France, and throw in Canada because that system is featured in the movie as well, is that the people in those countries wanted a national system and were willing to pay for it. They all pay and they all benefit. There’s a sense of community – of “co-unity” – in that attitude that is completely lacking in the debate, in the proposals, in the fight over health care, and in the bill that just became law.

For anyone who wants to vilify or demonize me, to dismiss my humanity or demean my compassion or intelligence, based on my beliefs about health care reform, I will make it easy. I will state where I stand. I ask that you tailor your vicious criticism of me to my stated positions.

• Medical crises hit a minority of our population, and they hit a very small percentage the hardest. This means, by random fate, a few people are devastated and others untouched. Compassion cries out that we share the financial burden of devastation because it’s too much for most people… and because we can. We need to make some kind of health insurance available to everyone.

• People have more of a right to water, food, shelter, and clothing – pretty much in that order – than they do to health care. And in all but the most extreme circumstances we expect people to buy these other things for themselves. Everyone should pay their fair share for health insurance. Access to health care may be a civil right. Having it paid for by your neighbors is not.

• No one should have their insurance cancelled once they become sick. People with pre-existing conditions should be able to get health insurance, and the broad population should share the cost of their care instead of sticking those people with very high premiums. We should all be in the same huge risk pool.

• It wasn’t a quirky philosophy of the 1980’s to say government is not the solution; it was a quirky philosophy of the 1700’s in the founding principles of our nation. The powers of the federal government are enumerated and limited for a reason, which is to protect personal liberty from tyranny. Government programs that infringe on personal liberty are immoral and unconstitutional.

• The belief in delineated powers and a limited federal government was partially lost in the fight against the evil of slavery. States were to have a more powerful role governing the lives of citizens than the federal government, but the power of the federal government had to be allowed to expand to defeat slavery.

• The belief in delineated powers was dying by the end of the nineteenth century. American progressives such as Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, and Franklin Roosevelt believed the Constitution was outdated even then because it restricted the federal government from becoming a centralized controlling force in the lives of citizens. By bringing in large programs and constantly pushing against the Constitution, early twentieth century progressives weakened the clear limits against a large, powerful federal government intended by our founders.

• The Constitution was not written as a “living, breathing” document. It is a document deeply rooted in clear principles. It has a clear mechanism for amendments. That means the founders knew we would need to make changes and planned a way to do it. The Constitution was not meant to shift like sands in the wind, but to be a solid foundation that could be modified when necessary. But by removing comprehensive education on the founding principles of America from public schools, progressives have been able to convince many people the Constitution is whatever they want it to be – like a Rorschach inkblot.

• If the individual mandate stands, personal liberty will be over. The Constitution will be impotent. Statists will have won by playing to the apathy, ignorance, and selfishness they have promoted for decades. Those who believe in the American ideals and those who believe in a strong central government taking care of people will be drawn into an increasingly volatile conflict, and it will get pretty ugly.

• If our society does not make sure basic health care is affordable and no one goes bankrupt from a catastrophic medical event, class warfare will be fueled, leading to increasingly volatile conflict that will also get pretty ugly.

• I’m willing to pay taxes for a system of public clinics and hospitals, providing a minimal level of care, as long as everyone pays their fair share and those who choose to spend money on supplemental insurance have the option of going to a better facility and getting health care in a more attentive and comfortable environment.

• We cannot require top income earners (six figures or better) to pay for the health care costs of all Americans. Everybody should pay their fair share, meaning very few should get supplements or rebates.

• We cannot provide state-of-the-art care to everyone unless we all pay a large payroll tax or national sales tax to pay for it. Even providing basic care to everyone will require that we all pay additional taxes. We can’t do this by “taxing the rich” or borrowing against our children’s future.

• The medical community sets standards of care and has treatment protocols for just about anything any physician will encounter. Our laws on medical liability should say any physician who follows the standard of care has practiced with due diligence and is not required to look for the newest test or try the latest procedure. The standard of care should be the standard of care.

• Putting control of any enterprise into the hands of the government gives us less control over it as citizens. In general, private businesses have to listen to the market and respond to customers or lose them. Our representatives don’t have to respond swiftly because their accountability is only as near as the next election, and an election is rarely about one single thing. We won’t get to vote individually on how they are managing health care. We will have to vote on how they are doing overall. That gives them cover to ignore us and mistreat us around heath care, as long as they throw enough people enough bones on other issues.

• When Scott Brown won the Senate race in Massachusetts, some Democrats thought they should respond to the will of the people and slow down the massive overhaul and focus instead on passing the reform items broadly supported by a majority of people. But in the end they decided not to respect the will of the people. They decided to do it their way, against the will of the people, before they lose their majority. That is not government by the people, for the people. It is government against the people.

• We should debate this vigorously, around the ideas and ideals and our underlying principles. We should not call people racist or evil or accuse them of wanting children to die if they oppose the bill because they oppose the growth of federal power and federal mandates.

I look forward to any discussions that expand understanding, add new perspectives, and come up with new solutions. I plan to ignore personal attacks and extremist attacks.

Will you join the discussion?

It shows an elaborate Rube Goldberg machine, one of those things where a single action sets in motion the next action and so on, and they involve levers and rolling balls and often dominoes. This one is spectacularly choreographed so it’s a blast as a piece of staging, as an artistic composition, and as a little piece of film.

Demonstrates how massive projects can be broken down to one step at a time, because that’s how the machine progresses. Shows the focus of purpose and intention and the creative power of playfulness. Enjoy!

I have to admit – I was lulled in by that simpleton “Joe the Plumber” early on. Turns out his name wasn’t really Joe, or he wasn’t really a plumber, or something, but the point is when the media pointed out some little quirk in his personal story I should have followed them in reviling “Joe.”

I couldn’t see then how putting an ordinary citizen under the microscope to shut down his message had anything to do with the quality or accuracy of his message. In fact, I thought it was unfair. Kind of reminded me of the propaganda tactics I learned about when we studied Triumph of the Will and Birth of a Nation in that introductory film class in college.

But I gave up my concern for fairness, for logic, for honesty, and for intellectual consistency as soon as I realized what was at stake: the 95/5 rule.

You see, then-candidate Obama had just said he wouldn’t raise taxes on families making less than $250,000 per year. He also said 95% of taxpayers would receive a tax cut, while 5% would have their taxes go up. I got lost in the math of taxes, leading to my obsession over fairness, which caused me to miss the greater point.

Roughly half of income earners pay no income taxes. Okay, to be fair, the whole group together pay less than 3%, but it’s close to none. That means about half pay all the income taxes. Somewhere around 25% of income earners pay over 80% of all income taxes – which sounds suspiciously like the old 80/20 rule, which is nowhere near as good as the new 95/5 rule, which you will soon see.

But to continue with the confusing math (Who likes math anyway? Just the nerdy brother on that TV show Numb3rs), around 10% of income earns pay 70% of income taxes. That’s more than two-thirds.

That means one out of ten pays for seven out of ten.

5% of income earners pay over 60% of all income tax.

And the top 1% of income earns pay over 40% of all income tax.

Now, you might just assume that the top 1% of income earners EARN over 40% of all income. But it doesn’t work that way.

Our income tax is progressive. That means the more you make, the higher your rate is. The less you make, the lower your rate is. So, for example, imagine Alice and Emma. Alice earns $40,000 per year. Emma earns $60,000 per year. Emma earns 50% more, or one and a half times what Alice earns. If we just had to use elementary math we would say Emma pays 50% more in taxes. So if Alice paid $4,000 in taxes, Emma would pay $6,000. They would both be paying one-tenth of their income in taxes.

But progressive taxes say the more you make, the higher your rate. So they both pay 10% tax – $4,000 – on the first $40,000. Emma pays 15% on the rest of her income – another $3,000 in taxes. Alice pays $4,000 in taxes and Emma pays $7,000. Emma makes 50% more than Alice but pays 75% more than Alice pays in taxes. That’s progress!

But it gets better. For those who don’t pay attention – and most citizens fit this category, because half pay little or no taxes so rates don’t matter – every time Congress cuts tax rates, they tend to exempt more and more people from paying income taxes. In fact, the share of income tax paid by the bottom half of income earners has dropped from 7.5% to just under 3% in the past 30 years! That means fewer and fewer people are paying taxes.

So a tax change comes along and Congress says you don’t have to pay taxes on the first $10,000 you earn. Both Emma and Alice get a $1,000 tax break! Alice pays $3,000 in taxes and Emma pays $6,000 – which is now double.

Over time, with a steady income and more exemptions for the bottom 50% of earners, Alice might see her taxes nearly disappear. One day she pays only about $1,500 per year in taxes. A woman named Melissa earns five times as much, $200,000 per year, and pays maybe $30,000 in income taxes. She earns fives times as much. She pays twenty times as much in taxes. More progress!

Then those sneaky fiscal “conservatives” suggest a cut in tax rates. Melissa will get a $3,000 tax cut. Alice will only get a $500 tax cut. That’s what progressive taxers call “tax cuts for the wealthy on the backs of the working people.”

Alice’s tax cut is one-third of her tax bill, but since her tax bill is so low one-third doesn’t look like very much. Melissa’s tax cut is only one-tenth of her tax bill, but since her tax bill is so high it looks like a lot.

And now Melissa pays $27,000 in taxes and Alice pays $1,000. Melissa pays twenty-seven times as much as Alice pays, although she earns only five times as much. That didn’t seem fair before I got the 95/5 rule.

Before the 95/5 rule, I had a different understanding of the statistics. My view was too simple. To me it was like ten friends going out to dinner, all having similar food, and winding up with a total bill of $100 – just for the sake of the math, even though that’s a really low number. At the end one of the meal one is given a bill for $70, two get a bill for $10 each, and two get a bill for $5 each. Five pay nothing.

That would be perfectly fair if the people offered to pay for the group in advance, but in this very imperfect analogy the people at the table have the power to vote and force others to pay while they eat for free. That seemed unfair, until I got the 95/5 rule.

The 95/5 rule says we can all have whatever we want, and by the power of our votes, enforced by the hand of the government, we can make 5% of the country pay for it. That’s like 19 people going out to dinner at a restaurant we would never pay to go to on our own, and sending the bill to a guy who doesn’t get to join us.

This idea is amazing. It’s radical. Heck, it’s even revolutionary!

Opponents of this very straightforward progressive idea suggest that rich person – Mr. or Ms. 5% – will run off somewhere so they won’t have to pay for us. But, really, where would they go? The rest of the Western world already has pretty high tax rates for those high-income earners, and they won’t have all the conveniences in a developing country, so they’re stuck.

I think the Democrats in Congress took the wrong focus with the 95/5 rule and that may have cost us all. Not everyone wants health insurance. Charitable organizations all over the nation run non-profit hospitals and clinics and have historically provided care for people who can’t afford it. Emergency rooms are mandated by law to care for people who walk in, and insurance companies are required to pay a portion of the cost to hospitals for providing indigent care. On top of that, millions who are eligible for insurance and can afford it don’t bother. It’s a crapshoot, and many are willing to gamble.

Only the sick or the injured care that much about health insurance.

But everyone drinks water. Everyone likes electricity. Lots of people use natural gas or heating oil to stay warm. That’s where they should have started.

Imagine if, instead of universal health care, the government had promised us universal water service. If we don’t expect people to pay for their own health care, why in the hell do we require them to pay for their own water? Water is fundamental. We can die of dehydration in a short time. Personal hygiene prevents the spread of many infections. And we think people should pay for their own water? Why?

This program would have been nearly universal from the beginning. No worrying about how to provide care to tens of millions of newly insured people. Only those in rural areas without the infrastructure would miss out on national water care. All the rest of us would have the option of keeping our current service at the current rate or signing up for the federal government’s public option. Water for everyone! Paid for by one family out of twenty. Who wouldn’t want free water? And, really, who can afford to pay for water?

Imagine trying to survive without electricity. Why weren’t we offered an electric utility public option? Sign up and have your electricity paid by one family out of twenty! And, really, who can afford to pay for electricity?

Same for natural gas and heating oil. These would have been a much better place to start. And, really, who can afford to pay for natural gas or heating oil?

Heck, it would have made more sense to have the public option for universal car insurance instead of universal health insurance. Everyone with a car has to have insurance to get it registered, right? And, really, who can afford to pay for auto insurance?

I was just starting to see the beauty of this plan and all the potential for an easier life. I was seeing government-run utilities, government-run auto insurance, a government-run public option for cable, a government-run public option for cell phone service, and maybe – finally – a government-run public option to make the iPhone affordable. It still costs way more than I want to pay, but I’ve been jonesin’ for one for months now.

Any of you rich fat cats willing to buy nineteen of us iPhones? I bet you’ll get a great group discount. I mean, really, who can afford to pay for an iPhone?

Everything was lining up for my life to get better. I was just starting to understand what the woman in the famous clip below is talking about when she said of Obama during the election, “I won’t have to worry about putting gas in my car, I won’t have to worry about paying my mortgage… If I help Him, He’s gonna’ help me.” [capitalization believed to be in the original]

But those Massachusettsites blew it. That wasn’t a tea party. It was a Kool-Aid party. Stupid Kool-Aid drinkers.

Now we’re all going to have to pay our own way.

“Meantime, he cuts a far different image, forgoing the type of choir robe Kennedy wore during services…”

Dr. Kennedy wore a traditional pastoral robe in the pulpit, like those worn every Sunday by many, perhaps even most, Protestant pastors, and nearly all priests. It is a symbol of the position, the office of pastor. Pastor means shepherd, like the Good Shepherd in the parable, like Christ was as he cared for and led the church while on earth. The robe is a reminder to the congregation and to the pastor that his role is in service to people and submission to God.

Perhaps Mr. Sedensky is only familiar with church through movies like Sister Act?

In the Time.com article What Berlusconi’s Obama ‘Jokes’ Say About Italy, Jeff Israely writes:

“In supposedly polite company, one can still hear the word negro, (pronounced neh-grow) which essentially translates to the N word.”

If you don’t get the full impact of Mr. Israely’s comments, check out an Italian-English dictionary on-line like this one. You will see that the Italian word “negro” means black. Sit down, take a deep breath, and prepare yourself. This is shocking.

Simply replace “negro” with “black” and you’ll feel the outrage:

“In supposedly polite company, one can still hear the word black, which essentially translates to the N word.”

And I thought we were making progress, albeit incremental, on racial understanding in this world.

Do you know a middle school or high school student who has had a group project assigned, been told their individual grade is based on the group’s performance, and then been stuck in a group with the unavailable slacker who won’t do his part? If you’re a parent you know exactly what I mean. Your A or A/B student got her summary paragraphs done and e-mailed some photos to the person who was supposed to print things out for the presentation, or put together the PowerPoint. A night or two before the presentation, your child and the other two productive group members are scrambling to create the visual part of the project because the slacker can’t cowboy up.

The group project gets an 88 and the teacher says she’s being generous. Your child goes to talk to her and she says you have to learn to be part of a team in the real world so you have to learn to deal with team members who don’t perform. The grade stands.

I have friends who are teachers, but come on! What teacher works in the “real world?” Everything teachers do is micromanaged, including how long they spend in the restroom. They have no clue! In the “real world,” a slacker on a group project is removed quickly when the group speaks up together and tells the person who assigned the project which member isn’t performing. The group uses the authority and the concern of the person who assigned the project.

It would go something like this. “Hi, Karen. We’re 3 days out from needing to put finishing touches on that presentation you want for a week from Monday. Graphics hasn’t even returned first proofs that were due over 2 weeks ago. We’ve called, I’ve e-mailed, Joe’s gone down there, and we’ve tried everything that company policy allows. What do you suggest?”

Let’s see. In the “real world,” the project assigner needs it done so has a vested interest in the outcome. So…what does she say? a) “That’s your problem. You have to learn how to be part of a team. If that project’s not done right, it’ll be written up on all your records!” or b) “I’ll make a call right now. I’ll have them send you a schedule of when you will receive each stage of proofs. Let me know if it’s not in your inbox by 3:00.”

Social psychology has shown us that authority and accountability go hand-in-hand. If you give someone accountability for a task or responsibility for another person without the authority to take action, you create psychological stress. Over many years, you have a person who is repeatedly blamed and criticized for things that are out of his control. In the extreme, it can produce depression and even a psychotic break from reality.

If you give someone authority over a task or other people without any accountability—well, we all know where that leads. “Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.” When a person is free to do whatever he wants, it creates a sense of entitlement and superiority, known as narcissism.

For good outcome with tasks or leadership of people, the two have to be in balance. A person cannot direct a task or lead other people without authority. A person cannot produce consistently good results in a task or leadership of a group without accountability.

The clearest example I have of authority without accountability is soccer referees. My older son plays club soccer, which means we pay a large fee to have a professional coach who receives a salary for training and coaching the team. We also pay dues to the league that are very high, partly for fields, and partly for— the highest quality referees!

But here’s how the soccer organizations empower referees. The center ref, that’s the guy in the middle of the field, is a god. The guys with the flags on the sideline get to address the god, point their flag, and suggest calls, but the god can ignore them. Whatever he rules stands. If player A shoves player B from behind and player B hits the ground, then player A stumbles over the guy he shoved to the ground, the god can call a foul on the guy who was knocked down. The little fellow with the flag on the sideline can suggest to the god that it’s not a foul, but the god can ignore him. He can even eject the player from the game by giving him a red card.

Here’s the accountability system. (You can probably tell I’ve seen lots of times when accountability would have been useful.) First: a league will NEVER overrule a referee’s call on the field. Even if the line ref, who can be god (AKA center ref) in a different game, saw it clearly and is sure it was not a card, the player ejected has to sit out the rest of the current game and all of the next game. The referee who made the bad call? Well, the league will make a little note of the complaint on a form somewhere, and if they get lots of complaints they say they will probably not schedule him again. What they mean is they’ll try to make sure not to schedule him with the same team again for a while, but they’ll let him work plenty of other games.

The association that certifies refs only has to evaluate a person ONCE to qualify him or her to work at most levels. Once they’re certified, the leagues might evaluate them once a year or so, meaning an evaluator watches part (maybe one half of one half) of a game the ref is working and then gives him provocative questions and suggestions: “When that blue jersey kid ran over and slammed into the red jersey kid, you called a foul on the red jersey kid. What was it that you saw?” Then, of course, “the next time you see a player pulling someone’s jersey so hard the other player spins around, you might think about calling a foul.”

The leagues and the news media blame frustrated parents when they’re yelling at referees. But we have no legitimate place to take our concern. There is no venue for justice. There is no “right to assemble” and demand a better performance by referees, because the leagues’ default answer is ALWAYS the same: parents are biased and don’t know the game as well, so their complaints are invalid. Even when I’ve been watching the game before or after my son’s, with no emotional connection to the outcome, and have reported an atrocious call, I’ve heard that same excuse.

I once told a league official at a tournament that the out-of-state ref crews they brought in were very bad in all the games I saw, including many my son wasn’t playing in, and it affected the outcome of the tournament. He very sarcastically sneered and asked, “Are you trying to say referees can REALLY change the outcome of a game?” I looked at him with What kind of flake are you? written all over my face and said, “Of course they can!” He demanded that I go away and leave him alone.

I think people of weak character wear their authority like a protection from criticism to hide the fact that they are over their heads. I think there are so many instances where people in authority flaunt their power and use it to attack critics that many people are afraid that being in a position of authority will make them inherently evil. They avoid accepting leadership roles or try to overcompensate and lead by consensus, which is no leadership at all and is doomed to failure. They never really have the courage to take charge because they don’t see many role models of authority used well. I think the answer is to balance accountability and authority.

It’s a millennium-old idea from the first appearance of the legend of King Arthur. Civilization shifted its moral thinking from “Might is right” to “Might FOR right.” Power should only be wielded to enforce fair and just rules and to protect the weak, and power should only be given to those who will use it in that way, fully accountable to and in service to those they lead. Even on soccer fields.

Responsibility is the acceptance that my actions have consequences and my daily life uses up resources. It is the somber awareness that most of my actions affect other people, and that my actions within my family, my friendships, and my work will affect people who are interdependent on me. I am accountable to others who depend on me. My goal is to complete my assigned tasks fully, well, and on time so those counting on me are not let down. With those under my authority and care, I intend to be fair, compassionate, helpful, and approachable. There is a nobler word, DUTY, which evokes the importance of this responsibility to one another within a community or a society.