Bear, I have waited to read this until I could read and reflect. How
well you have focused the issues, and how thoughtfully you have put
forth your ideas. I realize this is the type of thinking/clarity/call
to action that I had hoped to hear from the candidates! All that, and
you bring nursing to the forefront as well. As I watch my meager
retirement fund shrivel up, and my private health care plan "merge"
with medicare, I feel like I am one of millions of Americans who are
feeling like a shell game is being played with what we now depend on.
Are we experiencing the loss of the middle class along with our other
losses? Not liking the idea of feeling like a victim, I think of
Elizabeth's concept of power as knowing participation in change.
Awareness, which you set forth so eloquently, is one key element.
Knowing participation in change, however, seems to be weak!! Choices--
major ones in November; and Involvement in Creating Change--you have
issued a call to be awake and participate. Can you suggest what one
person can do, alone or in concert with others (you, for example, on
this list). I look forward to hearing more! Dottie

> Vidette, et al,
>
> I want to first acknowledge the distress you describe. Many good
> people are hurting and often through no fault other than believing
> that the people who run the country are good, honest, diligent people.
>
> That said, let me not mince words. While this may sound partisan and
> alarmist it is neither. What I am saying is, in my humble opinion, the
> same sort of things that Florence Nightingale would be saying if we
> were fortunate enough to have the benefit of her intellect, wisdom,
> insight, and dedication guiding our profession. The same people who
> have been asleep at the switch and who created the circumstances that
> led to the current mortgage mess weren't just de-constructing the
> mortgage sector. They were also taking the teeth out of pension
> regulation and oversight, health insurance regulation and oversight,
> healthcare regulation and oversight, defunding the social security
> system, and bankrupting Medicare, while ignoring the crying need for
> infrastructure repair and rebuilding. In nursing we have had too many
> leaders whose focus is on elevating professional identity and status
> rather than the needs of our patients. Most nursing care is being
> provided in nursing homes, assisted living facilities, adult family
> care homes, and a slew of other environments in which nursing
> leadership and presence is severely lacking.
>
> The same people who brought us where we are and who are now focused on
> money market accounts and banks, are not addressing the fact that our
> pension funds and the pension guaranty mechanisms, social security,
> medicare, and infrastructure repair are underfunded to the tune of
> many, many trillions of dollars. Our nursing leaders tend to be more
> concerned with issues such as a DSN or a PhD, while we abandon
> patients to care from certified nursing assistants and patient aides.
> We have thousands of highways, bridges, roads, electrical grids,
> communications systems, subways, commuter rail lines, and buildings
> that are crumbling because of decades of neglect. We face no problems
> from Al Qaeda that are more difficult than the problems we face from
> within.
>
> The thought that the executive branch has concocted a "plan" is
> perhaps the most frightening thing on the national scene. The same
> people who were asleep at the switch now have a plan to fix things. It
> simply reeks of "Brownie, you're doing a helluva job." We can,
> unfortunately, be sure that whatever problem their plan is designed to
> fix is nothing like the complex array of problems that need to be
> fixed. As T. Boone Pickens has said succinctly: "We cannot drill our
> way out of this mess".
>
> The fix is not a bailout of people who made risky investments which is
> the primary focus of the Executive Branch's "Plan", it is a dedication
> to what worked after the depression - rebuilding the country from the
> ground up, developing a hydrogen, solar, and wind based, not an oil or
> natural gas based, economy, and rewarding good business practices not
> short term gains resulting from manipulated financial statements. Lest
> it appear that this is a partisan view - let me assure you that the
> problem has been decades in developing. The fact that we wound up with
> the most incurious president in our nation's history is an effect, not
> a cause, of our collective drunken exuberance. As a nation, we clearly
> chose to believe that it didn't matter if we elected the village idiot
> as president in 2000 and 2004.
>
> That said, my personal assessment is that John McCain has not a clue
> about what is happening or how to correct it while Barack Obama has
> been talking about this from the start of his presidential campaign.
> Add in that Sarah Palin is the least qualified human being for
> national office that I have seen in my lifetime and it is clear, to me
> at least, that John McCain would be a disaster as a president. Like so
> many of his predecessors from both major political parties he seems to
> confuse winning an election through deception and distraction - the
> same problem with all those fudged financial reports - with winning
> because his policies and thinking processes are the most sound.
>
> I do not personally believe that Barack Obama is dramatically better
> qualified for the road ahead (my personal choice for that would be
> Ralph Nader but he couldn't put together a successful political
> campaign to save his life and because of that i think he lacks the
> basic skills to make a deal that will be critical as we move forward).
> But at least Barack Obama has some measure of curiosity, consults
> experts before engaging mouth, and while no less an ideologue than
> McCain, he has at least a smidgen of curiosity that might moderate his
> ideological biases while McCain and Palin appear to have none.
> McCain's entire legislative career has been an anti-government agenda.
> I have a simple axiom for this:
>
> "People who do not believe in government ought not run for
> governmental office".
>
> Sarah Palin, physically attractive as she clearly is, has all the
> intellectual depth of a wisp of smoke, and the notion that mismanaging
> the governments of Wasilla and Alaska qualifies her for anything more
> than dog catcher in a small town offends my delicate sensibilities to
> their core. She reminds me all too much of another, equally inadequate
> vice-presidential choice - Dan Quayle.
>
> What most people don't seem to realize is that buying shares of stock
> in existing companies is not investment - people who buy and sell
> shares in this way are not investing in anything nor are they creating
> anything at all - they are simply engaging in the same sort of
> investment policies as the people who inflated ENRON - a company that
> never produced anything of value.
>
> Investment, to be useful, needs to create new and useful industries,
> products and services, and spawn new jobs that have inherent value -
> it has been a long time since true investment has occurred in our
> country with the possible exception of the personal computer and the
> sad reality is that this industry was moved offshore immediately. We
> don't produce personal computers at all - the motherboards, hard
> drives, cases, power supplies, peripherals, and software are primarily
> produced in third world countries.
>
> As I have suggested with increasing confidence the last few years,
> even our health care system is going to move offshore - just go back
> to my piece on nursing in 2050... The problem with moving all the
> productivity out of the country is that we have what we have now - we
> continue to borrow to sustain our consumption while contributing very
> little. The RV manufacturing industry is a great example - we produce
> tens of thousands of RVs a year for leisure life styles we
> increasingly cannot afford.
>
> We have rewarded executives and investors who have created nothing at
> all for decades while those who have diligently built solid companies
> have been ignored because their quarterly reports have had sustainable
> returns on investment of 3 - 10%/year while companies like ENRON have
> reported unsustainable annual returns in the range of 100 - 1000% per
> year.
>
> The problems we face, and nursing and caring are hanging in the
> balance, are orders of magnitude greater than the problems that will
> be addressed by Congress and the Executive branch in the next weeks
> and months.
>
> That said - I am profoundly optimistic that a hydrogen based economy
> continues to offer us a way to improve the standard of living around
> the world that we have failed to achieve since Norbert Wiener's (1950)
> prescient book "The Human Use of Human Beings: Cybernetics and
> Society" Da Capo Press. While we are all looking at that we might also
> reflect on the core of John Nash's work which was beautifully
> summarized in a single scene from the movie - that cooperation, not
> competition, is the way forward - not Adam Smith's formulation of
> narrow self-interest. Individual winning does not produce optimal
> outcomes - sharing of success does.
>
> Much as we have all enjoyed reading the book and watching the movie -
> even Nash's winning of the Nobel Prize has not resulted in a
> fundamental change in the way we formulate economic theory and most
> certainly has not changed the way economics has been taught in the
> decades since his work.
>
> But if we want a caring profession and a caring society we need to
> wake up and see what is really going on and address it - not live in a
> fantasy land. Florence Nightingale would never have remained silent in
> the last three decades as the health care system was being
> systematically destroyed by the same sort of short-sighted greed that
> brought us the mortgage meltdown, the pension system inadequacies, and
> the most abysmal running of government since the crimean war.
>
> just one bear's views of course and i am sure there will be many who
> disagree with me and I heartily encourage them to speak their minds
> and address how all of this runs parallel to and integrative with
> nursing, our much beloved caring profession. This is not the time for
> thoughtful, intelligent, and caring people to be unduly polite. We
> need to exchange thoughtful perspectives not have abject idiots
> running for political office dispense pollyannaish quips engineered to
> succeed in the sound bite markets... Our profession and country need
> our informed dialogue now more than ever...
>
> For those who will, no doubt, feel that this is not the forum for such
> exchanges - I can only say that I respectfully and profoundly
> disagree.
>
> bear
>
> --- In Martha_E_Rogers@yahoogroups.com, "Vidette Todaro-Franceschi,
> RN, PhD" <vtodaro@...> wrote:
> >
> > It is very sad; my hubby would have jumped out the window this week
> if we didn't live in a ranch house and he is already in rehab for an
> ACL injury....
> > Peace, Love, & Light,
> >
> > Vidette Todaro-Franceschi RN, PhD.
> > Associate Professor & Specialization Coordinator
> > Adult Health Advanced Practice Graduate Program
> > Hunter-Bellevue School of Nursing
> > Hunter College, City University of New York
> > 425 E 25th St
> > New York, NY 10010
> > vtodaro@...
> >
>
>
>



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