Hi Dottie, et al,

First, I have been busy - brand new and deeply flawed website

http://drtcbear.servebbs.net:81/~PCIR/

If you visit you will need to refresh your browser on each visit
because all the pages are being changed as I develop the site and, as
usual for a bear, do so in a bass-ackward way. I apologize in advance
for the enormous deficiencies in appearance and content.

I don't have everything there that I want but I'd rather invite people
to start grasping what is happening than wait 18 months for a journal
publishing cycles. You are correct - we do not have time for business
as usual. I am sure I have ticked off a lot of people by being as
blunt as I have been - but I am really scared by the fact that this
election isn't a "slam-dunk".

I understand your pain. At this writing the recalcitrant Democrats and
Republicans, who clearly have no grasp of economic theory, have
defeated the Wall Street Bailout. Shame on them because the impact of
their ignorance today alone was a $1,000,000,000,000 decline in the
value of Wall Street holdings. When banks and insurance companies lose
99% of their value in a matter of days or weeks and are then bought at
bargain basement prices the stockholders - all of us through mutual
funds, stock portfolios, IRAs, retirement programs, etc, are hurt.

Our economy has been running on empty for years. Unfortunately,
despite the assumptions of laissez-faire economists, markets do not
adjust painlessly over either time or space - how Rogerian! Companies
that go out of business leave distressed communities that often do not
recover for decades. Retirees lifelong savings, once lost, do not
miraculously reappear the next day by dint of an "Invisible hand" -
they are gone forever. Workers who have been diligent for decades
don't get new jobs in a day or two when their factories and offices
are shut down to generate a bonus for an executive - many workers have
seen their skills and their jobs transferred to other states or
countries, never to return.

The really dangerous situation we face is that once the economy grinds
to a halt, as the recalcitrant legislators seem to prefer, it will
take years, maybe decades for some areas to recover. In the final
analysis - our standard of living was based on hope and faith - not
the inherent value of the products and services we produce.

Are there things that can be done - yes, and I have been busy the last
few days doing what little I can do. I have been working on a
Professional Caregiver Insurance Risk website. Obviously I have a
vested interest in all of this (I love being right).

I am, over the course of the next few weeks, going to put as much
material as I can so people can begin to understand what has been
happening and what is about to happen in the health care industry and
I encourage people to use the materials that will be there in class
and in their own domains of expertise. Probably the quickest ways to
grasp this stuff will be to check out my Poster presentations since I
was forced to focus to produce them. Much better than most of my other
efforts.

We all need to realize that it isn't just Wall Street investment banks
and AIG that are losing value. Our annuities, retirement plans, life
health, and long term care insurance policies are all held by
insurance companies that have been regulated no better than Wall
Street and a lot of their assets are invested where - in the stock
market, in mortgage derivatives, and other declining instruments. This
is the clearest example of the interconnectedness and dependence of
every person on the planet. Those who want to let the market correct
itself simply have no idea what the correction is going to be like.
when they are selling pencils on a corner they might "get it".

The corporations that run all our hospitals, nursing homes, assisted
living facilities, are also heavily invested in the stock market and
other risky investments. We are on the precipice of a really scary
time. As inflation rises dramatically we can expect the costs of
providing care in hospitals and nursing homes to quickly exceed the
reimbursements provided by Medicare and Medicaid - I won't even bother
to discuss the declining state property tax and income tax revenues
that will come with a stalled economy and the States finance a good
deal of the care for Medicaid patients. So where do you suppose the
companies that run our health care system are going to go when their
risk laden operations need to be bailed out? The public trough. Just
as with Wall Street the truth is they will have a great argument -
fail to come through and they will simply shut down their facilities.

{I am listening to Lou Dobbs as I write this - My god what an idiot.
He is gleeful at the loss of a trillion dollars of stockholder equity
today. He describes himself as an independent but he is ever more
strident in his support of the flawed economic principles that have
led us to our current morass}

We do not, unfortunately, have sufficient time to bring the lamest
legislators up to speed. We certainly do not have the time to educate
John McCain and Sarah Palin on basic economics. Frankly, I wish there
was a viable third party candidate but there isn't.

bear





--- In Martha_E_Rogers@yahoogroups.com, Dorothy Woods Smith
<dwsmith@...> wrote:
>
> 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@
> > >
> >
> >
> >
>
>
>
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
>