Some iedas for the Obama Administration on what “Change” should mean.

What follows is a letter I sent to David Axelrod, Senior Advisor to President Obama with a series of ideas in the genre of the  ‘If I were king’, variety.  My hope was that, to some degree, some if not all of them might reignite the enthusiasm that propelled Barak Obama into the White House in the first place.  What they do offer, to some degree, are the kinds of programs that harken back to his call for ‘real’ change which has not been a  successful message to date.  The changes in the way we do things here will send a message to the American people that it is systemic change that is needed and being offered, not the window dressing applied over ‘business as usual’ that is the appearance to date and I believe is the chief cause of the decline in the popularity rating of the President. It is my hope that even the mere announcement of the ideas that follow, or some of them, will prevent the democratic party from losing its majorities in the House and Senate in the mid-term elections at a time when going back to the Bush theory of government will use the ignorance of the electorate to buy support for the Republican party and it’s ideologues at the cost of progress and the return to the regressive policies that created the mess the Obama administration was elected to repair.

Dwight Owen Schweitzer, Esq.

1000 Quayside Terrace Ste. 903

Miami, Florida 33138

                                                           August 8^th 2010

Mr. David Axelrod

Sr. Adviser to the President

The White House

1500 Pennsylvania Avenue

Washington, D.C.

Re: An agenda to reinvigorate the liberal and moderate electorate prior to the fall elections¹

Dear David,

Like most Democrats, I am concerned that the biannual elections will leave President Obama as a lame duck. I believe the cause of this is that the administration has failed to inspire the American people, who expect results in weeks that actually need years. I think what is needed is an agenda for Main Street, one that shows imagination, creativity, and are not long-term quests for results, but rather resonate quickly with the voters on a level that will reinvigorate the enthusiasm that came out of his choice for the Presidency.

What follows is a broad brush summary of ideas, and initiatives that I feel might offer real and systemic change that will benefit the middle class and those who were there but now, no longer are, and I will be happy to help fill in the details.

1. A plan that replaces current Medical mal-practice insurance, and the need to sue, with a system similar to workers compensation, one that is not based on fault but on result, is quick, predictable, with the same approach to a schedule of benefits that presently exist in workers compensation statutes, and based on the cost of living geographically, but otherwise uniform throughout the country. There would also be a bi-partisan panel that would be empowered to also award punitive damages under well-defined standards and real, but not exorbitant caps.
2. An announcement that the entire contents of the Library of Congress will be on the internet with free access over the next 5 years.
3. A plan to redirect federal education funds to balance student computer access in every school district in the country by 2012 based upon the ‘grand list’ of each school district so the money to buy them will be fairly apportioned based on the ability of the particular school district to provide computers to all its students out of its own revenue base.
4. The creation of a commission to study the abolition of the income tax and replace it with a graduated federal excise tax on everything sold, and paid by the seller collected from the buyer at the point of sale. (the most basic needs within the economy would have a negative tax), the greater the lack of ‘necessity’ of the item will result in a higher rate of tax, (this would tax consumption, offer a faster and better method to control the economy by allowing rapid up or down adjustments in product focused tax rates, would force everyone to pay taxes (40% do not pay income taxes now), would lower credit demand and increase savings rates. The only remaining vestige of the income tax would be on passive income over $200,000.00 yr. Place an excise tax on stock purchases in lieu of the present capital gains tax on sales of investments (taxing the buyer instead of the seller) Re-sales outside of normal business channels (yard sales and the like) would require that a tax be paid by the buyer and a % of that tax would be a credit back to the buyer on a form given by the seller to the buyer (the tax paid as shown on the form could then be applied by the buyer toward the tax due on other purchases) to keep resales from being under the radar.  This process would also allow for a much easier way to increase Federal revenues simply by adjusting the tax rates on certain goods and services up or down individually which would not need Congressional approval, could better control inflation by balancing supply to demand through tax rates’ specifically directed to those areas in the economy where there is an imbalance between supply and demand. The potential benefits of this approach are significant and would be calculated to cover the present and projected costs of social security and medical access. 
5. People hate the IRS, the honest payers cover the amount needed due to the cheaters, productivity is lost due to the time dedicated to record keeping and to prepare the returns, the present system encourages consumption and incorporated obsolescence. A value added tax should be considered as a part of this package, and a vast decrease in the federal work force by dismantling the IRS bureaucracy  would also be a publicly approved response to the growth in the size of government and the ‘cost’ of the IRS is huge.
6. The creation, working with the Banking industry, of a “National Credit Repair Act” which would lay out a menu which, if followed, will guarantee the restoration of a persons credit rating in stages and over time. The problem now is that credit ratings, once lost, are very difficult to regain, the steps necessary to do so are vague, the time required is unknown, and yet we are a society that depends on credit to buy most goods and services. Having lost access to credit the 35 million consumers the recession has made no longer credit worthy, and who therefore cannot buy the things they would otherwise have purchased, result, in impeding our economic recovery. Some form of government guarantee of a % of the credit granted would help in expediting credit access by rewarding those who have complied with the statute, thereby getting access to crediteasier and therefore faster. 
7. A federal law that would require that anyone killed on an interstate highway who has recoverable organs, is over the age of 25, has had a drivers license for at least 5 years and who has not opted out of the system given notice of their right to do so for each of the past 3 years. Their names would then appear on the records of their MV dept and in a national registry and shall thereafter be presumed to have given consent to harvest those organs for transplant as needed anywhere in the United States. Thousands of potential donors are lost every year and it will make the US the destination of choice for those needing transplants from all over the world. (It could have a positive effect on our balance of payments as well)
8. The creation of a ‘Peoples Advocacy Division’ within the Justice Department and the FBI to handle complaints of governmental abuse of power by federal or state governmental employees and would have the ability to bring suit on the injured parties behalf, under USCA §42-1983 expanded to include federal employees acting under color of federal law, in the name of the person or persons with valid complaints against any government official to be sued in the Federal Court within the jurisdiction where that offense allegedly occurred. To make this process work, The countrie’s Law Schools should be invited on a voluntary basis to create  screening and review panels made up of 3^rd year Law students to initially review complaints originating in their defined region and then pass them (all) on to the Justice Department with their findings and the legal support for their recommendations.
9. The creation of an “Infrastructure Assessment Commission” under the Interstate Commerce Commission which has the responsibility of cataloging in descending order of necessity, the infrastructure projects that most need to be repaired or replaced on a non-partisan basis so the allocation of the funds already authorized will not give the American People the sense (which they presently have) that it was just another example of wasteful pork barrel spending making the increase in the national debt harder to justify. (if my math is correct the debt that came out of WW II vs revenues and as a % of GNP was significantly higher than where we are now or will be over term; if so somebody ought to remind ‘my fellow Americans’ of that fact.) The simple truth is that governments like businesses run on the basis that it ‘takes money to make money’. For example, when a person buys a home their debt to income ratio is much more disparate than the debt to income ratio of the Federal Government; it is all a matter of growth oriented spending. That case needs to be made and the President needs to have fireside chats educating the country on the issues where it is obvious that the man in the street has no idea why our policies are what they are.
10. The creation of a Commission to study the effects of lobbying on the process that resulted in the recent healthcare legislation. You and I both know that the failure of the ‘Public Option’ to become part of that legislation will result in higher costs, lower access than hoped for and the public needs to know why they did not get the most important part of that quest to bring the USA in line with most of the other developed nations of the world. (Frankly I would have simply offered Medicare as the only bill with age as the criteria to phase in access, starting with age 10 and below and 60 and above and then add 10 years at each end as the economy could afford to absorb the cost until the gap ended and all Americans were covered.

I realize that these proposals present tremendous challenges given the way we do business in Washington but I am also aware that they are just the kind of initiatives that cut the rug out from under the Tea Party “all Democrats do is spend” mantra, that is and has been, gaining ground. As a result the decline in the popularity of the President and the Democratic partiy was inevitable precisely because no one is able to compare with any degree of credibility, what has been done, with where we would be, but for him and the actions taken by his administration.

I believe that these proposals are not simply pie in the sky, but are the kind of ideas that will show that the President’s call for “Change” during his campaign meant systemic change. They also offer a win win in the sense that if the Republicans take control of the legislative branch in November none of these ideas will go anywhere but they are just the kind of ideas and programs that will inspire both present and former middle class voters, and those independent voters, that real change on their behalf is being offered by the administration, and having supported him originally they will come back seeing in a tangible way the kind of proposals they hoped to see when they voted for him.

If you can find a spare moment, I gave a lecture after President Obama’s election but before his inauguration that can be found under my full name on YOUTube, entitled “Obama’s America, Reflections on the Past, A Vision for the Future:” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G7vDrA34Hxs.

Very truly yours,

Dwight Owen Schweitzer

JedcoCEO@aol.com

1For references I am originally from CT, a friend of Chris Dodd, Peter Kelly, Jay Rockefeller among others. I was a senior adviser to John Glenn (I ran his Connecticut Campaign) during his run for the White house and helped President Clinton get on the primary ballot in the Connecticut Primary and was his guest at his inauguration. I served an aide to The Finance Chair of the DNC at two Democratic National conventions, among other political and related activities.
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The Soft Underbelly of Patriotism©

By Dwight Owen Schweitzer, July 18^th 2010

On it’s face it seems like such a simple concept to wrap one’s mind around, just ask anybody within earshot to define patriotism and they will tell you; love of country, pride in its accomplishments, the benefits offered by it’s way of life, the high points of it’s history, the sacrifices of it’s soldiers in worthy causes, all legitimate, all proper, and all contain the seeds of a nations decline.  In order to understand the dangers inherent in patriotic fervor one only need look at how and when the call to patriotism is heard, who is extolling it’s virtues and the causes that impel them to do so.

More often than not, from a historical perspective, patriotism has rarely if ever been the impetus to the kind of critical self-examination that strengthens the best of a societies crowning characteristics. The quintessential example of the power of patriotism to move a population to embrace negative change is found in the rise of National Socialism in Germany.  The appeal of Adolf Hitler was largely his oratorical ability to move his people by a blatant appeal to their patriotism.  Similarly, it was the use of patriotism that offered Joseph Stalin the ability to move his people to ignore the fact that he was a butcher of over twenty-five millions of his own people, and in the process made Ivan the Terrible look benevolent by comparison. Stalin, whose paranoia and the consequences of the compendium of his decisions not only led up to World War II, but through his non-aggression pact with Germany actually enabled Nazi Germany to go to war. Despite all this, he was able to use patriotism as the glue to galvanize his people, admittedly aided by Nazi brutality, to see him, even in the dark days of the first year of war, as a national hero.  It was not an accident of nomenclature that in Russia, World War II is known as “The Great Patriotic War” to this very day.

What are the lessons we can learn from these admittedly extreme examples of the perversion of patriotism? To find the most recent period in our history, a time when our society had reached a high level of social instability and unrest one need only look at the closing days of the Vietnam War.  One particular event comes to mind from the Nixon-Agnew years, an unprecedented period when both the Vice President and later the President of our country were ultimately removed from office before the end of their elected terms as a result of their separate, and unconnected, illegal conduct.

This particular lesson centers on the attempt of that administration, in the name of patriotism, to outlaw the protest burning of the American flag, an increasingly common protest to the Vietnam War. [1]  I was in Europe at the time and I remember being so offended by the proposed legislation that I actually wrote an op-ed piece about it that was later published in the International Edition of the Herald Tribune.  The thought expressed was that we are not a nation that elevates symbols, however vaunted, over the freedom of expression, a point of view that was ultimately adopted by the Supreme Court of the United States when the question ultimately came before them.  One wonders how the present Court would respond to the question were it to come before them for the first time today, but that is a subject for another piece at another time.

On the 4^th of July we celebrate a burst of patriotic fervor that usually centers on the good things in our history, the winning of our independence, our victories in WW II, and in some parts of the country, the winning of the Civil War although it is worth noting that there are towns in the former Confederacy that did not celebrate the 4^th of July from the end of the Civil War until well into the 20^th century.

What is missing in our compendium of national holidays and is as important if not more so than ‘Independence Day’, is a day that calls to our national consciousness, the atrocities of our history of which there are many, slavery being the most notorious but by no means the only egregious example of our past and present failures to live up to what the documents we revere on Independence day promise us but did not, and in innumerable instances even today, do not, deliver.

Patriotic fervor does not make us want to critically examine let alone improve our society, rather it makes us luxuriate in being what we were and by inference what we now are.  The challenges that face our nation today on every level both at home and abroad need a commitment to, and a degree of, change at almost every level of our society.  The list is too long to repeat here but it includes how we educate our children, shrinking access to and confidence in our legal system, what are our national priorities in how we use our wealth, grow our economy, instill confidence in our electoral process and our elected officials.  The growing gap intellectually as well as economically, between rich and poor, the increasing power and influence of lobbyists and special interests, the break down in our sense of cohesion as a people, the decline in ethical standards of conduct at almost every level of our society which can only be described as an ethic of selfishness, at least until a huge catastrophe reminds us of the better angels of our nature, at least for a time.  Make no mistake, as our society declines we will see a resurgence in patriotism, placed in the service as it has been in the past by those who reap the benefits of the status quo.  I suggest that a society that luxuriates in its past is one that has lost faith in its future.

---

[1]It is worthy of note that the proper way of destroying a damaged American flag has always been to burn it

The Decline and Fall of the American Legal System

 

The Decline and Fall of the American Legal System

By Dwight Owen Schweitzer

June 30, 2010

Many years ago, as a young lawyer full of idealism in the belief that one person can make a difference, I loved the law and saw it as the quintessential instrument of that process. I still recall a professor of mine who lectured my entering class at Vanderbilt Law School, telling us ‘the law is the grease on the wheels of civilization’. If so, civilization is in trouble because the state of our legal system is in trouble and it is a process that has gone on for a long time.

 In the late 1970’s the Connecticut Bar Association conducted their annual poll of members of the Connecticut Bar, asking them to rate the judges they had appeared before at least 6 times in the preceding two years on such qualities as judicial competence, demeanor, intellectual integrity and the appearance of bias. For the first time (and as it turned out the only time) they published the results. The reaction of the Judiciary prompted me to write an editorial in the Hartford Courant, the newspaper of record in the State of Connecticut. The thoughts I expressed then I think are worth repeating now, viewed in the context of the current perception of both lawyers and judges from both inside and outside of the profession.

        Judging the Judges: A Needed Move

                       By Dwight Owen Schweitzer January 27, 1977

It is a significant milestone that the results of the Connecticut Bar Association survey of our judiciary should at last be made public. It is after all the public who are served well or ill by how justice is administered, and only through public awareness will there be accountability and constructive change. The veiled secrecy in which the Judicial Branch has heretofore been swathed has done little to promote competence, diligence and intellectual integrity.

As a practical matter judges have been virtually unaccountable for a broad range of abuses, mostly of a technical nature which are known only to lawyers. Judges however, exert tremendous influence over the lawyers who must appear before them because a part of what a lawyer does requires the cooperation of the judiciary. That cooperation, if not forthcoming, can cost a lawyer and eventually his client, substantial amounts of time and money as a consequence. Openly criticizing a judge can be devastating to a lawyers career and his ability to represent his clients in matters coming before the courts.

Unfortunately the quality of our judiciary varies widely. In most jobs there are influences exerted to curb excesses; the boss, the customers, the clients—that broad class of people who have to be pleased with one’s work. This principle does not apply to judges. The Judiciary committee of our legislature has never removed or refused to reappoint a judge, though many have been known to be incompetent. The committee holds it’s hearings in secret and requires witnesses to submit their testimony in writing and in advance. Common sense dictates that no lawyer would appear to testify under those circumstances yet, by and large, only lawyers know which judges abuse the power and trust vested in the office they hold.

The problem is further complicated by the fact that the system for selection of judges rates political connection and service above capability and merit. Cronyism is rampant in the judicial selection process where people of influence exert tremendous power in proffering the names of judicial nominees. As a consequence good judges (and there are many) are as often as much an accident of the system as are their incompetent counterparts.

An independent judiciary, crucial to the development of our legal institutions, should never mean independence from criticism, especially from the only body that has the requisite expertise to criticize. The proliferation of law has resulted in more and more people coming into contact with our legal system, and especially the courts to resolve their differences. There must be viable checks and balances to the power exercised by the judiciary. Without this survey realistically none exists.

Judge Saden’s reported suggestion that the lawyers identify themselves curiously illustrates my point. Why does he want to know? If I had to sigh my name to that evaluation it certainly would not have colored my thinking but it would undoubtedly curbed my candor (unless of course I had simultaneously decided to go to medical school). Equally absurd is the suggestion that judges rate lawyers. The majority of a lawyers work does not cause the lawyer to come in contact with judges, whereas lawyers participate totally in what judges do and how they exercise their power.

Furthermore, to dismiss the results of that survey as coming from a group of soreheads or poor losers is just nonsense. The survey required a lawyer to have appeared before each judge he rated at least six times within the preceding two years. It is highly unlikely that any lawyer ‘lost’ all six encounters especially as much of court decision making includes compromise.

This is not to say that the survey results were completely accurate and it is doubtful that any lawyer would agree with all of its conclusions. It is necessary, however, to the development of the institutions of a democratic society that there be no sacred cows, and no source of power hidden from public awareness and scrutiny.

                                            Epilogue

 Since that time, lawyers are allowed to advertise, Judges are often elected and not appointed and other superficial changes have altered the appearance of our legal system without any real systemic change and certainly not for the better, lawyers are held in less esteem than used car salesmen and the quality of the judiciary has deteriorated in varying degrees from one end of the country to the other.

Most lawyers who have practiced more than 10 years would rather be doing something else and the public’s perception of justice is that it is more a commodity to be bought and sold or a luxury for the rich who can afford lawyers when most cannot, and not a basic right of being a citizen of the United States.

In Florida, if a litigant wants an official transcript made of anything argued before a judge, other than a trial, they have to bring their own stenographer at their own expense, which offers the judiciary the ability to be as arbitrary and dismissive of the law as they wish with no record of what was before them. Often cases are dismissed without opinion to explain the legal basis for the decision and the Circuit Court of Appeals almost universally affirms that dismissal also without opinion giving the unsuccessful litigant no further right of appeal and no reason to understand why the door to the courthouse was closed in their face.

I think it is fair to suggest that the cohesiveness of our society is breaking down exponentially, that the gulf between the haves and the have not’s is widening, that the respect for law is equally disregarded by the enforcers of the law as it is by those who break it, and when taken as a whole, it is a process that, if left to continue will be cause for the wheels of civilization to  ultimately come grinding to a halt.

The ‘China Syndrome’ and The G 20

The ‘China Syndrome’ and The G 20

By Dwight Owen Schweitzer June 26^th 2010

I suppose it all started with the Marshall Plan to save capitalism in Western Europe at the end of WW II. Since nothing breeds success like success, from that not altogether modest beginning, the use of capitalism as an element of our foreign policy, has been a, if not the, cornerstone of US foreign policy. We withheld it from South Africa to bring an end to apartheid, embargoed Cuba with less success but all in all it has been the zeitgeist of how we deal with friends and foes who we want to help or punish but don’t want to go to war with while still getting a message to.

When the Cultural Revolution in China proved an abysmal failure in invigorating the Chinese economy wiser heads began to prevail there, and in the post Maoist era, economic growth was viewed in more international terms by the Tiananmen Square leadership who saw no relationship between economic systems and political ones. They realized early on however, that they needed admission into the family of trading nations who had been given by each other what is known as ‘most favored nation’ trading status, a concept that means simply that any trade barriers a country has cannot be made worse when it comes to you. In order for China to expand its ability to trade with the rest of the developed world, they needed entrée into what is now known as the G-20, who are presently meeting in Toronto to manage the ever evolving crises that effect world trade and finance, and all of whom enjoy that coveted position of having most favored nation status with each other.

When we go back to those thrilling days of yesteryear when China an international menace, isolated and insulated, it took Richard Nixon, a sufficiently credentialed anti-communist, to begin the trend that has made China the economic super power it is today. While there are those who sigh with some level of relief that they are looking and acting more and more, like us, what is missed in the gloss of the warm and fuzzy relationship we seem to share for the most part, is that China and the United States are in a state of war. It is not a shooting war it is an economic war, and but for a few of the more backward spots in the world where real war is waged as we think wars ‘ought to be waged’ this is a very different kind of war. It is a 21^st century kind of war, a war over wealth and wealth is power in a world where GNP is the mark of status and the goal to be improved by those in power.

By that standard, China lamenting that its’ economic growth will fall to just under 8% as a result of the world economic crisis is the political equivalent of laughing all the way to the bank. The United States by comparison, and comparisons are much more complex than is implied here, is happy to see a modest 2.9% growth in GNP in the last quarter. More importantly, China is the largest creditor of the United States, a situation that is going to get worse long before it gets better if it ever does.

How they were able to carry this out in such a relatively short time, one might ask, and here the answer really is simple, so simple that the degree of stupidity that allowed it has to be called into question. Remember that the Chinese wanted ‘in’ to that select group of nations that had most favored nation status with each other for the most logical of reasons, foreign trade meant hard currency when the Yuan was not worth the paper in was printed on in foreign exchange little more than a generation ago. Here is where we get back to the marriage of foreign policy and international monetary policy and the overriding idea that fostering the growth of capitalism is the mid-wife of democracy. To give the devil it’s due, no one thought that a central government could run a capitalist based economy with any degree of success and so they were willing to take the chance that by promoting capitalism in China they would not only come to look like us, they would come to be like us.

The policy makers in China however, knew better, they would just invite us in to ‘capitalize’ their economy while making sure that no foreign company allowed ‘in’ was controlled by the foreign interests that brought it. OK, that was not too hard to take, given that a billion potential consumers were worth some sacrifices, and after all we wanted to help them become just like us as quickly as we could because we knew that the old methods there resulted in things like the massacre at Tiananmen Square, and those sort of things are less likely to happen when we have trade sanctions as an added weapon to keep them in line.

But there was just one more problem to solve; they needed to buy lots of stuff to get their new economic engine started, not to mention up and running and we wanted to be sure this introduction into the world economic trading fraternity was a success and they had only one modest request. In order for their currency to be respected in the markets they needed to get to, it would be really helpful if they could peg its’ value to the dollar. Well, if they were buying more than they were selling that was just fine and who thought that would change anytime soon. However if they were selling more than they were buying…..but who ever thought that would happen and if so, trade deficits come and go. China was a poor country at the time, third world by most standards, with a billion mouths to feed, not much of an infrastructure, and so we let loose a unique economic engine upon an unsuspecting world, a regulated capitalistic economy.

The magnitude of that mistake, while no longer in its infancy, will, at current and projected rates of growth make the Chinese economy the largest in the world in less than 15 years. It is interesting to remember that not so long ago the Chinese questioned whether the dollar should be the standard by which other currencies are measured. No one took them seriously at the time but that trial balloon is the harbinger of the day when it is the Yuan.

In parting, it is worth noting two interesting statistics; the Chinese have more honors students than we have students and in ten years they will be the number one English-speaking country in the world.   ‘…..For the times they are a changin….’ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NY27PbQ4Ig4

‘Economics 101’ and the Economic Effect of 35 Million Lower Credit Scores ©

By Dwight Owen Schweitzer     June 17^th , 2010

In its most basic terms the relative health of the American economy is measured simply by how fast a dollar changes hands; sounds too easy an explanation to be true but it is. It is all about spending and in our economy much of that spending is with money obtained on credit. In fact, in every period of our economic expansion there was a common denominator; spending, especially consumer spending increased while interest rates remained relatively stable and much of that spending was with money obtained on credit. Whether it be for housing or cars or household appliances, the list is as long as the items one can think of but that dollar needed to keep moving. A buys from B who now has the money to buy from C and so it goes. Conversely if A worries about buying from B and doesn’t, B doesn’t have the money to buy from C so C has no incentive to produce more goods to be sure that B can buy what he wants and in virtually all of those cases that money comes from the ability to borrow most if not all of it.

The best lesson of the power of credit (for good or ill) is the housing boom that was initially driven by banks no longer having to hold the mortgages they offered but were able to sell them to investors replenishing their capital enabling them to make another mortgage loan and so on. It is not a perfect system as we have learned to our regret in recent years when the excessive availability of credit drove up prices requiring higher levels of borrowing until, once again, as has happened often in our economic history, the bubble burst and recession teetered on depression. Stated differently money moved slower and, to attract it prices fell and the economy contracted.

The difference between the present recession and past recessions since the great depression of the 1930s is threefold and highly significant. First it is deeper than those in the past, second it affects consumers more directly because the ‘bust’ was in the housing sector, which acted as a stabilizing effect on the vicissitudes in the rest of the economy and thirdly and most importantly, it has had the effect of removing millions of people from being credit worthy. The seriousness of this cannot be over emphasized because an economy based on credit that has suddenly made millions who were credit worthy before this recession not credit worthy now. They cannot buy homes or cars, or home appliances or any of the myriad of things that need a credit score they no longer have. In effect the buying population of the country has declined due to the methods of credit scoring which are a mystery to the most educated of us and which will likely keep them from the pool of borrowers for a considerable time. That is the real cost of this economic downturn, the removal of consumers who, as confidence improves, could come back into the market place and turn things around but can’t due to the credit score they now carry with them.

What is needed is not the ‘credit repair’ scams that are so prevalent or the good faith efforts of agencies both public and private that offer credit counseling. The entire credit scoring system keeps those whose scores have fallen significantly (and tens of millions have) from ever seeing a return in the absence of strict fiscal discipline which the recession has made a goal out of reach as families try to struggle from day-to-day with late credit card payments and defaulted bills.  Ironically, the scores presently  necessary to get credit have actually gone higher as the average credit score of the American borrower has declined. Therefore the smaller the number of credit worthy borrowers, the greater they will have to spend to keep that dollar accelerating through the economy while those who cannot help fuel the economy due to lack of access to credit have the opposite effect of draining consumer confidence thereby prolonging the recession.

Nor is there a self-correcting mechanism in the system; that is to say that no one knows what they have to do to become ‘credit worthy’, how long it will take, what things they need to be aware of, or careful not to do, or to do and so on. The plethora of opportunities to buy your credit score from one program or another to ‘monitor’ it offers little help in showing how to improve it other than paying everything on time all the time, keeping your debt to equity ratios in the right balance whatever that is, and living within your now diminished means for some unknown time. Sounds pretty easy until you get to the reality that few people are able to do that especially when the loss of their credit worthiness is not their fault and the years of score decline generally need years of score increase, a goal that will be out of reach for millions of Americans for the foreseeable future if ever. More significantly, the absence of the availability of credit requires such a major change in lifestyle that once access to credit is lost, few have the incentive, let alone the ability to regain it.

What the government needs to do is to get together with the banks and the credit scoring agencies and begin a nationally sponsored credit repair program with some government guarantees to incentivize lending so the government shares a part of the risk of loss but also provides guidelines for lenders and borrowers alike of how to truly rehabilitate themselves. This approach alone will have the effect of adding people to the roles of the credit worthy, albeit slowly but at least the average borrower who was ravaged by this economy not only knows that there is a light at the end of the tunnel but also how to get there. The program I envision would be a plus and minus menu that would have a 3 or 4 year ‘life’ and show people exactly what they need to do month by month to reinstate themselves into the capitalist system and in the process help grow the nations economy.

Appropriate Tort Reform Must Be A Part of Universal Healthcare©

By Dwight Owen Schweitzer
Former syndicated columnist of the Knight Ridder-Tribune News Service

For those familiar with my work and depending on your point of view, I have been either blessed or cursed with seeing things that never were, writing about them and then seeing them come to pass. Of course all the while knowing with some degree of certainty that the result had noting to do with me.

I hope this piece is different because what I have to say is, in my opinion, a crucial element to achieving a viable, affordable, and comprehensive plan for universal health care coverage while remaining consistent with the goals the President has outlined for the legislation he would support.

Virtually everyone agrees that one of the fatal flaws in our health care delivery system is the fear, cost, and related medical procedures dictated by malpractice, the insurance health care providers buy and the litigation they face.  In order to set the stage for my views, the cost of mal-practice insurance is both extremely expensive (in some specialties almost prohibitive) and has two concurrent effects, both of which are antithetical to containing health care costs. One is to cause Doctors to order more tests and procedures than reasonably necessary just to avoid potential claims; the other is to raise the fees charged patients to cover the ever increasing cost to the Doctor of his coverage.

There are some ancillary consequences as well.  Many patients who have legitimate cases cannot afford the costs to litigate them or find lawyers willing to front those costs which often require the hiring of experts at considerable expense. As a result the health care system is often required to treat these patients either as Medicaid recipients or non paying consumers of health care they now cannot afford, passing the costs on to the rest of us. Totally outside of the ‘fault’ system and compensation are the accidental effects of procedures that could not have been anticipated but result nonetheless.

In addition, when a case is brought there are many instances where sympathetic juries award truly excessive judgments which in turn become the bench mark for insurance companies to raise premiums across the board further impacting the upward spiral in the cost of care. There is only one viable solution:

We must end the entire medical malpractice system as we know it.

At the beginning of the 20th century if a worker was injured in the course of his employment his (or her) only redress was to sue the employer for negligence assuming the employee could afford it, had a legitimate, provable case and could find a lawyer to take it.  As you might imagine, vast numbers of people who deserved redress were denied access to it for all the reasons you might imagine given the hurdles needed to be overcome to get it.

As a result of the vast compendium of injustices which were the legacy of that system of redress it was replaced by a system of what is now known as Workers Compensation became the law of the land.  It was a system that exchanged a finding of fault by the employer for a schedule of benefits, both medical and monetary based upon the injury sustained, benefits that were both predictable and to some degree at least, fair.

No longer did the successful litigant get compensated while the non litigants, however legitimate their claims, were left to suffer without redress.  No longer did it matter whether the employer was negligent or not, whether there was fault or not; with limited exceptions, the simple nexus between the injury and that it came about in the course of their employment was all that was necessary to come under the umbrella of services and compensation offered by Workers Compensation legislation and the Commissions set up to administer its’ benefits.

The inevitable question arises whether a similar system could be applied to replace the current system of redress for medical malpractice which is based on both the provable finding of fault and in most cases the need to resort to litigation to achieve it, even where liability is not at issue. I well remember when I was a student at Vanderbilt Law School and came upon a book entitled “The Coca Cola Cases” from which I learned a valuable lesson; that Coca Cola never settled a case regardless of its’ merits.  Their theory was a simple one; to limit claims and to frustrate both litigants and lawyers from suing Coca Cola, knowing in advance the hurdles that had to be overcome. That lesson has not been lost on the Insurance industry in America, resulting in medical mal practice insurance being one of the most profitable products they offer. Make no mistake, the occasional huge judgment not only notwithstanding, is actually looked upon as a wonderful excuse to raise premiums disproportionate to the real exposure suggested by the verdict which at the same time is touted as evidencing the need for tort reform.

Of the compendium of benefits that accrue from replacing a litigation based ‘fault’ system with a workers compensation type of ‘no fault’ system is the rapidity of redress, the relative predictability of result, the coverage being extended to all those who have suffered a medically related injury, not only from negligence but from unique circumstances such as an unknown allergy to a medication or an unanticipated result from an otherwise appropriate procedure.

The effect on the health care delivery system cannot be over estimated.  Premiums for this type of coverage would be dramatically less than under the present system and Doctors could now practice medicine solely for the benefit of the patient without the added consideration of self protection with its’ related costs.  While it could be argued that this would be a license for shoddy or reckless care, the system should also require a board of medical and legal advisors to review appropriate cases and the particular protocol used, with the power to administer appropriate sanctions if a practitioner has not met the standard of care the particular patient was entitled to receive.

If we are to have meaningful universal healthcare we cannot leave the one aspect that has been primarily responsible for the escalation in costs and excessive, often unnecessary treatment to exert it’s upward pressure on costs when costs are the very issue we seek to control.

https://dwightowenschweitzer.wordpress.com/

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Table of Contents:

The ‘Biology’ of Civilization….

Tiptoeing Into the World of Theoretical Physics

The Lesson of Bangladesh

An Open Letter to Howard Dean on how to remedy the Florida-Michigan Delegate Fiasco

Some thoughts on Elliot Spitzer’s fall from grace

Some Thoughts on the Subject of Immigration

If You Don’t Stand for Something…You’ll Fall for Anything:Some advice to Howard Dean and the Democratic Party in Anticipation of the 2008 Elections©

A Modest Proposal for How to Avoid a Civil War in Iraq

An Open Letter to Honest Reporting.com

Quality Education in America is Becoming an Oxymoron

The Promised Land

I Accuse

. . . . . . . . . . . .
My forthcoming book:

“Of thee I sing”…. a Vision For Americas Future

Preface

Chapter 1 “Our Fathers’ who art in Philadelphia”
. . . . . . . . . . . .
Other work 2001-2007:

“Gay Marriage” is not about marriage or being gay; it is a matter of the right to the equal protection of the law

Op Ed piece at Rosh Hashanah on the use of recovered Holocaust funds.

The Jewish World”

. . . . . . . . .

Some of my poetry:

“A Jews Vision of Christmas”

“Songs”

From the ‘loves labor lost’ poems:

“Through the darkness”

“She was Artemis on the Web”

“Ilusions”….Shaunas’ Poem

‘Of you and me’

“Why is it?”

Other writings:

“My Country ‘Tis of Thee……”

“My Fathers Song”

An Open Letter to Bill Gates

The Bombings and the Aftermath

…..“I Should Like to be Able to Love My Country”

“End the occupation”, now!

“Pax Americana”: The Proposed First Strike Doctrine of President Bush…

Right of Return? Thanks Mr. Kadaffi for setting the agenda

Understanding the Building Blocks of Antisemitism

“With Malice Toward None…”
&
The Conundrum of Democracy: Is a One State Solution Possible for Israel?

“I’m Mad As Hell and I’m Not Going To Take It Anymore”

Understanding the Dimensions of the Holocaust

Should Israel Distrust the UN? Absolutely!

Where are the missing Biblical Jews?

Six Candles: The Children’s Memorial at Yad Vashem

Peace May be a Greater Threat than War to Israel

The Circle of Missed Opportunities

Some Thoughts on the Passing of Abba Eban

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