A Fate Worse Than Death

I don't understand why a Christian like Sarah Palin, or for that matter anyone who says they are a Christian, thinks a death panel would be evil. I mean, I thought Christians believed in eternal life. (Not to mention the fact that God, or whatever Immanence created this world, evidently meant death to be the end of every organism.)

So if Christians really believe that, then talking about how best to manage and experience life's end is just the doorway to eternal life. And no one, be he medical, political, or spiritual, can preempt another's personal right to decide when one's time has come. Living too long can be a fate worse than death.

And similarly, after a new life is sparked, sometimes omens are not favorable. While Life itself is robust like weeds in the concrete, some seeds fall on the compost and some on the asphalt. Some Christians think every fertilized seed must be nurtured, but then they want other people to take all the risks and do all the work. They don't understand that to garden properly, you must prune.

Especially when you keep cheating death on the other end, with all kinds of fancy gizmos that aren't in the Bible.

Breathless in Sacramento

The nattering nabobs of negativism are predictably upset by Matsui's plan for a telephone town hall. Maybe they're worried their message won't get through if they have to play 'telephone' and talk to staff or other voters. At least Barney is Frank enough to tell them the government is not their mom and they should show some leadership.

I think she just wants to save a lot of taxpayers money that would be needed to pay for security to protect sensible people who want to have a constructive conversation from the adrenaline-addicted kindergarten dropouts we have all seen way too much of on TV.

More hyperventilating was also reported between the mayor and the city attorney, more time and energy wasted on this strong-mayor restructuring distraction. Joe Serna showed us you don't need to change the rules to be a strong mayor. You just need to know how to do grassroots community organizing.

Last night's workshop about putting motor vehicles back on K Street raised more questions than it answered, which is not a bad thing at this stage of the process. But the idea of spending $2 million and up on rearranging the furniture can't be the most cost-effective way to spend the money. K Street will never be like it was, because back then there were no malls in the valley. And there also wasn't so much stuff already so available in thrift stores and garage sales. We are swimming in stuff, so more retail is not a good candidate for economic redevelopment.

Converting some storefronts to residential would put more eyes on the street, and 24/7, not just a few minutes here and there. Stop expecting state workers to spend their money on K Street; even post-furlough they won't stop being a cautious bunch, self-selected for a safe working life.

How about opening a hospitality storefront in one of the empty buildings the city owns and doesn't know what to do with? Instead of acting like people who are homeless or ride Greyhound are no longer members of the human race, how about providing some kind of community center, staffed by volunteers, where everyone from tourists to kids can get the information and networking that responds to their needs and desires.

We have plenty of stuff, plenty of square footage that's fallow. Instead of tilling again and again, let's plant some seeds and water them. It's the relationships between people that make a community; the buildings are just a place to get out of the rain and put your stuff.

Smart And Sustainable Growth?

Today's paper discusses the outlook for smart growth and renewable energy in Sacramento. But more compact housing in and of itself overlooks the important detail of - where's the food coming from? Smaller dwellings closer together is only smart when surrounded by sub/urban farms and local distributed energy generation.

If we were really smart, there would be housing for ALL income levels, including the hapless homeless who must always keep moving. Makes it hard to dress for success, let alone get an actual job-and-apartment, or is it apartment-and-job? Hard to tell which comes first, especially when a homeless person needs both of them to cross the freeway to get to the other side and to economic equilibrium.

And we would also be using local renewable energy rather than building new transmission capacity (and probably using fossil fuels in construction) and bringing in renewable energy in a nonrenewable way.

Entrepreneurs Who Reduce, Re-Use & Recycle

Business is rough these days. Layoffs, defaults and bankruptcies of all kinds sprout like weeds. Repo men work overtime selling crammed-down houses, and all the stuff left behind by the dispossessed gets trashed.

We all know there's a better way. It can't be more economical to just trash everything at the dump rather than reclaiming what's useful and offering it to Goodwill. We can no longer afford such wasteful attitudes, especially when we can kill two birds with one stone.

There are plenty of entrepreneurs in Sacramento who could help us maximize our collective wealth, by sorting all the orphaned stuff thrown off by our consumerism. Are we too foolish to ask them?

Reform For Sustainable Health Care

There are at least two big elephants that too few of us are talking about in the rooms nationwide where the political discussion about health care reform are going on. One is named triage. The other one is for-profit.

Triage is the kind of prioritization required in effective emergency rooms. You treat the asthma attacks before the broken bones. Then you treat the broken bones before the poor person who has no other form of health care. And few would not admit that our health care system belongs in the emergency room. Reform is urgently needed.

For-profit is the kind of health care we can’t afford if we are serious about reform. Making money the ultimate purpose of any endeavor means you will get more money out of it, more than any official purpose of the endeavor. But money greases the skids in legislatures across the nation, as well as in the families of health industry employees. And since so many other jobs have already been off-shored, health care is one of the few domestic industries left that pension funds can invest in.

So far, the discussion I have heard about has been rather polarized. Too many people are talking past each other, rather than really listening to each other’s underlying needs. But to be sustainable, we have to live within our planetary means, and we have to share. Universal health care will also allow us to reduce the work week and create more jobs to do the same total amount of work. We can work to live, rather than living to work.

But I think there is a win-win solution, based on a two-tier concept. We should have a basic tier that covers things like tooth decay, broken bones, acute infections like pneumonia, asthma attacks, eye exams and glasses, diagnosis, and prenatal and pediatric care. All the really cost-effective procedures belong in this category, and should be covered by a single-payer system similar to (but not exactly like) Medicare.

Then in tier two, we call on the insurance companies to cover ailments that are expensive, elective, or the result of unhealthy lifestyle choices. And we regulate them to make sure they live up to their actuarial promises; if the for-profit corporations take your premiums they can’t cancel you in a crisis.

Also, there several topics that seem so far to have been missing in action. One is the role of complementary and alternative medicine, aka CAM. Another is the sliding scale. There is absolutely no reason for someone like my financially secure mother to be getting subsidized health care from Medicare. Any premiums or co-payments for a basic Tier One must be means-tested. We have to share. Sharing is not socialism, it’s Christianity. And it’s also good for us.

As for alternative medicine, we need to integrate those aspects which are effective and inexpensive into both tiers. Some herbal remedies work as well or better than some modern pharmaceuticals. Acupuncture can help in some situations. Healing touch like massage can easily replace drugs in certain cases; and, like healthy food and exercise, it helps maintain really good health, rather than merely fixing the symptoms of bad habits or misfortune.

Alternative medicine also calls on people to become their own doctors, as much as possible. We need to take responsibility for our own bodies, for getting acquainted with them, and taking care of them. One cost-cutting measure would be to make each adult responsible for their own medical record and file. If a doctor’s handwriting is illegible, write down what they say and ask them to initial it. This would be a lot cheaper than a nationwide computer system, although it would not make anyone much money.

Lastly, the public health perspective has apparently also been MIA. Some kinds of medical treatment are reasonably close to being a public good, the kind of investment or activity that benefits everyone. Timely treatment of infectious diseases like TB, syphilis, and malaria are examples of public medicine that protects the rest of us. Let’s consider expanding this existing function into some functions of a Tier One.

And of course, living a sustainable lifestyle would improve public health dramatically. If we used no fossil fuels, we would get plenty of exercise. And we would have to eat local food fresh from the garden, because we couldn’t afford to ship it across the planet or use a lot of energy to store it in a giant American fridge until it turns into a science experiment that you can't eat anyway.

Two Reasons Why Bagged Salad Is Bad For You

Even if it's organic, that doesn't mean it's natural. Yesterday, Carolyn Lochhead reported on how food safety concerns are leading to anti-organic over-reactions.

And just because packaged produce may legally be labeled organic, that doesn't mean it's raised on anything resembling a family farm. Organic agri-biz is still agri-biz, and that's bad for workers and bad for farm communities.

So the next time someone offers you some plastic salad or other produce, just say no. Say no for the birds, bees, ants, mice, and all the other critters who God may have asked us to care for. Hold out for food that is alive and healthy enough to entice birds and bees to want some too. Only dead food has a long shelf life, like all store-bought California almonds, now that growers can only sell raw ones at farmers' markets.

Fortunately, there are plenty of farmers' markets nowadays, so we don't have to buy the products of corporate pushers, even 'organic' ones.

Sustainable Marriage & Family Rights

There's a certain irony in the gay marriage movement for feminists like my younger self who viewed marriage as a suspicious patriarchal trap. And truthfully, I wonder if the GMM has fallen into a trap - the nuclear family ideology.

Let's step back and ask ourselves: What is marriage for? Is it a romantic ideal or an economic institution? In fact, both functions are inevitable and desirable, though tricky to reconcile, as we see on Jerry Springer. (And those who doth protest too much the sanctity of marriage really ought to just take a deep breath; dictionary definitions have long since included partners which were nonhuman, even inanimate.)

So let's make it easier on ourselves by pulling them apart and creating two institutions. Let the couple institution carry the romance and let the family institution carry the household welfare. Both forms should be legal institutions, each with its proper rights and responsibilities.

The rights and responsibilities of the family would be focused on the welfare of its members, particularly children. A couple who conceive a child would have the responsibility of designating a family that would raise the child, either by the couple entering into a family contract or by selecting an existing and mutually agreeable family.

Thus, a family could contain any number of singles and couples, which would address the problem that the nuclear family is just too small (unless you're rich) to do everything everyone (especially the religious right) wants it to do. And both romantic couples and family members would have the same rights of hospital visitation, inheritance, and so forth.

Another reason for restructuring family in this way is for better consumption efficiency. Currently, big corporations' only criteria is production efficiency, and their size and organization enables them to attain legal and financial powers that now overwhelm nuclear families. But families of up to a dozen adults could get a far better consumption capacity factor by buying fewer appliances and other domestic capital investments, as opposed to one per person or two living apart.

As for sex, we should really just take Miss Manner's advice and not presume to inquire into and pass judgement on the private affairs of others. After all, very few adults wish to conduct their affairs in public. And I know of no one who would benefit more by examining the speck in his neighbor's eye rather than the beam in his own.

Expecting straight sex to provide a strong foundation for all of society is a red herring that distracts us from actually constructing such a foundation. Is that an abomination or what?