Gevelog

Many of us have had the opportunity to get or renew our driver’s licenses in person at the DMV. I had the privilege of having to renew my license in person recently. In case it has been a few years since you have had to do this, let me refresh your memory on how it plays out:

After planning to go to the DMV, you leave work early in order to get to the DMV before their 5:00PM closing. Parking is usually unavailable at the local DMV, so, upon arriving, you are forced to park along the street next to the DMV. The sidewalk to the entrance of the DMV is packed full of people who have their number and are waiting for their turn, or perhaps have nothing better to do than to hang out at the DMV. You push past people to get to the first line which you are required to wait through. As you enter the body-odor filled building, you are impressed that so many people could fit into such a small, neglected and outdated building. Being a good citizen, you dutifully wait in line to get a number. Time passes and you slowly inch closer to the evasive counter. Time slows as the lady and her daughter in front of you finally gets to talk to the woman giving out numbers. The lady appears to get upset as she finds out that she is missing one of the necessary documents required to get a driver’s license for her daughter.

Finally, your turn has arrived. You get to the counter and explain to the woman that you need to renew your driver’s license. She hands you some paperwork and then tells you that you need to fill these out and need to have the following documents in hand: your old driver’s license, proof of insurance, and your birth certificate or passport. As she mentions the last one you gasp, realizing that you didn’t think to bring your birth certificate. You explain this to her and she responds by saying that the wait is about an hour so there is probably time for you to get home and back with the necessary paperwork. Then she gives you your number, 87, in the event you get back in time.

Not wanting to deal with the mess again another day, and figuring that you would rather pass time by driving than by waiting in the smelly room, you decide to drive home to get your birth certificate. Since you only live 20 minutes away from the DMV, you figure you should be able to do it. It is now 3:30PM and the DMV closes at 5:00PM, so you figure you can make it even before the hour wait is up.

You start driving home but almost immediately are slowed down by the school zones where children are flocking across the roads in droves. Out of frustration you quietly mumble to yourself “I should have taken University…” Thinking the delay creates a good opportunity to do paperwork, you start filling out the forms the DMV woman gave you when you are stopped and waiting. After about 30 minutes of intermittent speeding mingled with lethargic school zones, you finally arrive home. Now where did I put my birth certificate? You begin digging through old files looking for your birth certificate. Suddenly you remember that you put it in the safe with other personal documents to keep safe. You pound out the combination and take your birth certificate as quickly as possible. 5 more minutes have passed, but you should be able to still make it before your number should come up, so you sprint back to your car and speed all the way back to the DMV. On your way back, you make a world record for getting through town: you did it in 15 minutes. You park along the street and sprint to the entrance of the DMV, pushing back through the crowd of people, at the same time finalizing the answers on the paperwork. As soon as you get through the door, you look at the display which shows the latest number to be called. “95″ it says. You missed your number.

Now the line to get a number is twice as long as it was previously because it is full of teenagers who just left school and are in to get their licenses for the first time. You decide to utilize the time to double check the paperwork that you were filling out while driving. Minutes pass by, and you inch closer to the DMV woman. The room has impressively filled up even more than it had before, and the stench of body odor fills every open space. You finally arrive to the DMV woman who asks you what you want. You explain again and she dutifully hands you another number. 128 is your new number. You realize that the DMV will be closing in just a few minutes and wonder what will happen — will you be ejected or will be attended even after the DMV closes? Pondering over these things becomes quite worrisome, as you don’t want to have to plan on missing work again for another trip to the DMV.

You brought a book to read during any wait you might have, so you sit down in a chair that was just vacated by someone whose number was called and begin to read. The second that five o’clock hits, and to your relief, the DMV woman locks the front door and then returns to give numbers to those in her line. People who arrive knock on the door in an attempt to get in, but the DMV woman pays them no attention. As soon as the DMV woman finishes giving out numbers, she calls every remaining person in order by number to stand in line. Reluctantly, you stand up and begin the rest of your long wait standing, relatively unable to read. Time passes, and eventually you get attended to.

Everyone hates waiting in lines like that, and yet the government is so effective at creating them. Remember your last visit to the post office? On top of the terribly long lines the post office is cutting back hours and days of operation in order to save money.

The Healthcare Debate

As we are all aware, congress is now debating, and Chairman Obama is now pushing, for a public healthcare system. Because they know the people of the United States do not yet want government controlled hospitals and employed doctors, they are trying to get their foot in the door by creating a “government insurance” company. Voters are a little less reluctant to accept such a plan. Unfortunately, many do not realize the power that will be conferring on the government; The government will be able to dictate pay rates to the hospitals and doctors. This is currently done by competing insurance companies, and doctors and hospitals get to choose which rates they are willing to do the work for. If the government is in control, however, chances are that the hospitals and doctors will be forced to accept government health insurance.

How much further of a step would it be to make doctors and hospitals immune to law suits for malpractice under the theory of governmental immunity? As soon as doctors become governmental employees, they would likely become immune to law suits.

I digress. There are many, many grave issues with a public healthcare system, and the conservative media catches many of them. I wish to make a few points regarding my story with the DMV.

The DMV vs Public Healthcare

Imagine breaking your arm and going to the emergency room. Because healthcare is now public, everyone with any type of ailment or nothing better to do would likely be hanging out at the local hospital. As you push your way through the hospital, you reach a line to get a number. Writhing in pain, you finally reach the desk of the lady who gives you a number and asks if you have the correct paperwork. Oh crap! I forgot to grab my birth certificate after I broke my arm! So, figuring you have to wait still, you drive home to get your paperwork, all the way cringing in pain with every acceleration. Imagine the pain as you attempt to work through your file to find your birth certificate, or the frustration when you get back only to find that your number was passed over and have to wait through the line yet again.

Imagine when the government, in an effort to save money, cuts back on hospital hours or on sicknesses that can be treated. Imagine the type of care you will receive when a doctor gets paid a flat rate per patient they see.

Brazil’s Public HealthCare System

Many of the above concerns are not just speculative. They are actually occurring in the world today in many countries with socialized medicine. I lived in Brazil for 2 years between 2002 and 2004. I was injured several times during that experience and spent much too long in public hospitals. I remember watching a stray dog wander through the halls of the hospital. I remember learning that many doctors are paid $3 per patient that they see. I remember the lines and waiting involved with every single visit. I remember seeing many talented doctors leave the country to practice in another country that paid better. One experience, however, stands out in my mind as our government decides what to do with healthcare:

It was a morning, and as was custom, I went to clap my hands (the Brazilian equivalent of knocking on a door) in front of a house I was attempting to visit. As I neared the house, a massive rottweiler on a chain bounded around and snapped at my hand. A sharp pain went up my wrist and through my arm. Lucky for me, the chain kept him from getting any more than a small section from the side of one finger. I quickly backed away and looked at my hand. As I tried to piece together what had happened, fresh blood began dripping to the ground. I fuddled around in my backpack with my other hand and grabbed some additional cloth I had to stifle the bleeding. Without much hesitation I decided to start walking the two miles to the local hospital. When I arrived there was a long line of people inside, many of whom were moaning or were hunched over, clutching their stomachs. Upon seeing their condition, I suddenly felt like my finger wasn’t so bad after all and that waiting in line would not be such a bad fate for me. I gave my name to the nurse and explained what had happened. She told me the wait was approximately 6 (six) hours. I nodded and asked if I could return in a few hours and keep my place in line. She said I could, so I walked out and went home to try and do what I could with my primitive first aid knowledge and tools at home. Several hours later, having been unable to do much and worried about tetanus and rabies, I returned to the hospital and was informed that my turn had passed, but that I would be given preferential entry because I had come earlier. I sat down and waited for another hour for my name to be called.

When I was finally called, I got up and worked my way through the back rooms to where the doctor was. He looked at me and pulled back my shoddy bandaging to look at the wound, which was caked in blood. He sent me away to have a nurse clean the wound so he could look at it better and then he called in another patient. I dutifully went to the other room where the nurse was working, and she glanced at my finger and began scrubbing. Although I had managed to stop much of the bleeding, when she began scrubbing, the bleeding started anew. When she finished she sent me back to see the doctor by putting me in a smaller line with three other people. Needless to say, by the time I got back to see the doctor my finger was covered in blood yet again. When I entered the doctor’s room he quickly stated “I am sorry to inform you, but we are out of rabies shots. You should call around to all of the other hospitals to see if any of them have any left. Also, you will want to go get a tetanus shot at a pharmacy. Come back if you start having other symptoms of rabies [and then he told me a couple to look out for].” He quickly glanced at the blood-covered-finger and then told me to go and have the nurse to dress the wound. I did so, and then went home for what was left of the evening.

The next day I went to the pharmacy to get a tetanus shot and called around to all of the local hospitals. I found out that every single hospital was out of rabies shots.

What happened to me in Brazil could easily happen here in the United States if the government enters the healthcare business. It happens all over the world where governments are in charge of healthcare. While it is true that the wealthy in this country get the best healthcare, in socialized medicine it shifts simply to the well-connected. No longer is it about who has money, it is about who has power and friends.

Everyone likes something that is free or paid for by someone else. When it comes to healthcare, however, an old adage applies: “You get what you pay for”. If we get healthcare that is “almost-free,” our experience with healthcare will be equivalent in quality.

If we do not keep the politicians from taking our freedom of choice in healthcare away from us, we will regret it. We must not acquiesce.

I challenge you to think of one effective and efficient system or program that the government has created. Any governmental healthcare system will probably have the same long lines and bad service that most governmental businesses have today.

Filed under: Modern History by admin
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How does western history view the generation of Germans during the second world war? Are they typically viewed as evil, by allowing the holocaust to happen, or simply as ignorant or tolerant of what was happening around them?

Sweeping generalizations are made about entire generations of people based largely on what they put up with from their leaders. How will our great-grandchildren judge us and what we tolerate from our leaders?

The Great Leap Forward

Karl Marx had a theory upon which many of the world’s leaders have based their decisions. His theory was basically that a feudalistic-type government/economy inevitably led to a capitalist system of government/economy, which inevitably led to a socialist one, which inevitably led to a communist one (which, according to Marx, was also the purest form of government).

In the late 1950s, Chairman Mao Zedong – the leader of China, decided that China had been following in the shadow of modern countries for too long, and that it was their turn again to be the great world power. In order to do this, he proposed that the entire country take a “Great Leap Forward”, bypassing capitalism entirely in the natural evolution of governments/economies, and skipping straight to Socialism. By doing this, China would be one step ahead of most of the world powers, including the United States and Japan.

Policies were enacted by Chairman Mao, and everyone was expected (or required) to participate in taking China directly to Socialism. Old views and learned people (like doctors) were shunned and even removed from their posts. Nobody was better than anybody else, and everyone was expected to contribute. Teenagers, following the cult of personality Mao Zedong had created, were placed in high positions (remember the doctors who were no longer at the hospital – they were frequently replaced by students).

Agriculture became a major focus, and Chairman Mao called for a meeting of the town and province leaders. In the meeting, goals were set on what percentage their crops would increase due to the national shift to Socialism. If you’ve never been in one of these goal setting meetings, I will explain basically how they go. The first person responds with a reasonable increase, say 10%. The next person to answer, obviously has to do better than the first (or he is a sad, “faithless” person, and shouldn’t be a leader), so he says they will have a 17% increase. The third person to respond has now caught on and responds that they will have a 25% increase. Every time someone responds, the increase becomes more ridiculous, and yet the other leaders in the room applaud the ambition. This is essentially how the meeting went with Chairman Mao and the local leaders.

Well, after a time, everyone came back to report on their progress, due to the new Socialist system. The first people to report, the ones with moderate increase estimates, reported increases in productivity that were actually greater than they had predicted. This excited everyone there, and as the leaders continued to report the increases in productivity, the numbers got extravagantly high. Some may have even reported hundreds of percent increases simply due to the shift to Socialism. Loud applause and excitement accompanied the reports.

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Filed under: Modern History, New Views on Old History by admin
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When talking about the bailout, the word “trillion” rolls off the tongue very easily. Does anyone actually realize just how much the bailout is per person in the United States?

According to the census population clock, there are currently about 306 Million people in the United States.

If we just take what the government “has spent” through April 01, 2009 on bailouts, New York Times estimates $2.5 Trillion, this equates to $8,169.93 per person in the United States. In other words, the government has spent in the last few months $8,169.93 for you, your spouse, and each of your children.

The government has made commitments of $12.1 Trillion, which equates to $39,542.48 PER PERSON in the U.S. According to the census, the median household income is $48k per year. If the average household is only 2 people, this means that the government has committed or spent almost two years income for every household in the U.S. Again, this is per person — that means if you have a spouse and just one child, the government has committed $118,000 of your family’s money.

And then they try to appease us by giving us up to $800 per family…

The above amounts are how much debt the government is creating on behalf YOU and YOUR CHILDREN, and this amount of debt has been created for you by the government in less than a year.

So, what can we do about it? Sadly, not a whole lot. This is what we CAN do, though:

1. Write your congressmen and senators, telling them how much they’re spending for you and how angry you are. If they don’t listen to you, don’t vote for them ever again.
2. Whatever you do, DO NOT VOTE FOR ANYONE WHO VOTED YES TO THE BAILOUT. This may mean you need to vote for the opposite party, or maybe even a third party if you don’t like the opposing party. If we keep re-electing the same politicians, how can we expect to have different results? Perhaps it is time to move away from our 2 party system. Learn who your congressmen and senators are, and find out if they voted Yes to the bailout. Here is a list of congressmen who voted yes and no to the bailout. Here is a list of senators who voted yes and no to the bailout.
3. If you don’t like the opposing party, do some research into alternative political parties. They may not have much power yet, but at the rate we are going, and with how fed up everyone is with both republicans and democrats, they will be gaining power over the coming years. A couple that have been gaining momentum and may be worth looking in to are the Libertarian Party and the Constitution Party. There are many others, of course. Do some research and find an alternative party that believes what you believe.
4. Protest. Writing congressmen and senators is usually not enough. The Tax Day Tea Parties were impressive, and both the media and the government were watching. Find other similar protests, or even start a protest of your own.
5. Realize that the money the government is spending is coming from you in one way or another. If the government makes the “wealthy class” (aka your employer) pay for the bailout, who do you think they will be forced to take the money from? It will come from your paycheck or benefits, or from an increase in their prices (and the prices of everyone else), which will effectively make your paycheck worth less.
6. Spread the word. Your vote can make a difference, but the votes of you and your friends and family can make a big difference.

We don’t have to lose our nation to debt. We can save it, but we need to act now.

- Greg Wilder II -

Concerned Patriot

Filed under: Modern History by admin
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The Cold War is one of the best documented parts of the world’s recent history. The amount of primary source material available on all sides of the Cold War is astronomical, and historians deal with the unique problem of having to dig through too much primary information for most topics, rather than too little. Many of the weekly staff meetings, phone calls, memos, travel reports, letters, and every other type of document imaginable have been recorded and are widely available to the general public. Even many of the previously classified documents in the United States have become declassified. Because of the amount of information available on the Cold War, many obscure, but important, documents are overlooked in preference for the more popular or cited ones. Luckily, with the invention of searchable databases that now contain literally thousands of documents, the searches of historians can be limited to only documents containing certain phrases or words instead of to the thousands of volumes in a library. Because of this, new documents over the period of a few months or years are able to be found and topics analyzed more effectively. When looked at closely, some of these documents bring out an interesting but hidden plot that occurred between the two major superpowers of the world near the end of the Cold War during 1966 and 1967 when analyzed together and placed side by side.

The standoff of these two superpowers in the world during the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union, has captured the minds of historians. Because of the vast amount of primary information available most of the writings on the time have been focused on comparatively few aspects of the war. The creation of nuclear weapons in the 1940s and the eventual policy of MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction) have become favored topics of the cold war. In addition, the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 and what led up to the Vietnam War has also received a significant amount of attention. It is widely unknown, however, that after the beginning of the Vietnam War in the mid 1960s that the leaders of the Soviet Union and the United States did not see each other as the main threat. Instead, the main threat to these two major superpowers became the “Paper Tiger” also known as the People’s Republic of China. In addition, this new major threat caused discussions of an alliance between the United States and the Soviet Union, two powers who, over the last twenty years, had built up thousands of nuclear weapons which they were ready to fire at each other if the need ever arose.

Regardless of the public appearance that China was doing very little in the Vietnam War during 1966 and 1967, the president of the United States, Lyndon B. Johnson, along with other international policy makers in the United States, Taiwan and the Soviet Union clearly saw China as the greatest threat to both the United States and the Soviet Union. It was this rising danger to the two world powers which caused preparations and discussions of an uneasy alliance between the United States and the Soviet Union against China.

Throughout the 1960s, the threat that Communist China posed to both the Soviet Union and the United States increased. It was because of China that the United States never invaded North Vietnam. It was their new nuclear abilities that put China on equal footing with the Soviet Union. The Chinese clearly understood their position, and used it effectively against both the United States and the Soviet Union. Even though China initially saw the United States as the major threat, they eventually shifted their focus more on the Soviet Union. On the other hand, U.S. policy makers had it pointed out to them frequently by the Taiwanese and the Vietnamese that the real enemy of the United States in Vietnam was China, not the Soviet Union. Eventually the U.S. policy makers came to the same understanding. In the Soviet Union, the immediate threat of the Chinese and the old border disputes in Manchuria caused the leaders of the Soviet Union to consider an alliance with their greatest enemy up until that time, the United States. Although discussions of the alliance did occur, the alliance was never actually formed, but an increase in détente did occur.

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Filed under: New Views on Old History by admin
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It is easy for many Americans to understand the foreign policy of “Domino Theory” that existed during the cold war. We easily recognize that communist agents were trained and sent out all over the world to spread Communism, and were especially focused on their home front in East Asia.[1] When looking at a map it is easy to see the spread of communism and how it appeared to flow in the way dominos fall, one domino hitting the next and causing it to fall, an example being how Chinese communism caused most of Southeast Asia to fall to Communism. The expansion of communism is very easy to perceive for westerners; however, it is often hard, but important for us to understand that the sentiments contained in the domino theory were felt equally by both sides, as communist nations, and specifically China, fought to keep the expanding capitalism, and specifically the “American Imperialists” at bay. In addition, As the Chinese felt pressure to keep a buffer zone between themselves and American territory they were effectively able to deter the invasion of North Vietnam by U.S. troops.

After the Second World War, two competing forces sought for power in China, the Guomindang (GMD) and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The U.S. gave substantial support to Chiang Kai-shek and the GMD in an attempt to keep communism from expanding to China from Russia, but refused to become directly involved in the conflict (ironically, later this would become the Chinese policy in the Vietnam War against the U.S. where the Chinese refused to become directly involved in the Vietnamese conflict against the U.S.). Mao Zedong, leader of the CCP, was able to win the favor of the people and eventually force the GMD out of the country and into Taiwan. China fell to communism, and the U.S. felt the growing threat of expanding communism. Communism was no longer a Russian system of government, but had taken another large world power.

The Chinese had seen imperialist nations set up colonies many times, and had even fought imperialist presence in China for an extended period of time nineteenth and twentieth centuries. They were no stranger to the idea of colonialism and saw that capitalist imperialist nations wanted to increase their colonial holdings.

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Filed under: New Views on Old History by admin
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In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the United States was gaining influence in the world but was still very young. The country that would soon be seen as the greatest world power had begun its ascent among imperialist European nations almost one hundred years earlier. The Louisiana Purchase and then the concept of Manifest Destiny drove the westward expansion of the United States to the pacific. In the late eighteenth century, after the borders of the United States had expanded from Maine to California the idea of Manifest Destiny also expanded to include increasing the borders of the United States to outside of North America.

When looking at Manifest Destiny and the expanding United States it is easy to see the evils that came with expansion: natives were pushed from their homes and eventually were forced to live on reservations, beloved monarchs were taken from power, and entire cultures were suppressed. It is easy to see the benefits that the United States received from its expansion: natural resources became more widely available, the influence of the United States in the world increased, and the overall profit of the country increased. It is easy, therefore, to conclude that the expansion was solely negative for the territories and positive for the mainland and that the reasons for expansion were American greed and lust for power.

However, even with all of the corruption that existed and all of the negative effects of expansion, the motives of many who were part of expansion were not solely selfish but also included the desire to help the native populations. It is clear that horrible things were done during the expansion of the United States, yet the positive intentions of the expanders and are often overlooked. Their motives, while often riddled with self serving actions, were often pure and benevolent, and the expansions of the American Empire were almost always justified morally.

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