US senate on health care reform

The Los Angeles Times reported the result of a vote by the US Senate with the headline

Key Senate panel votes down 'public option' for healthcare.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-healthcare30-2009sep30,0,2490541.story

The crux of the issue seems to be "Republicans, however, argue that the government program soon would turn from an option into a dominant force. As Grassley put it, "The government is not a competitor. It is a predator.""

I wonder who the prey is. I suspect the reference is made to an issue of predatory pricing, where the public purse is believed intrinsically incapable of avoiding unfair competition so would use predatory pricing to kill its competitors, the private insurance companies.

I'm not sure that it's fair to refer to any government agency as a predator, but it is possible that private insurers could not compete with a public insurer because they cannot be as effective.

What's the point of the human endeavour known as healthcare? It it to help people live longer, better, more productive lives with a more desirable quality of life? If that's the point, then that's the measure of effectiveness.

If the point is to make sure legitimate businesses remain viable and offer reward to their owners, employees and customers, then perhaps the public option is not so effective.

I think that's the issue to be decided. What do people in society want? What delivery mechanism is most effective at achieving that?

Sounds simple doesn't it? Asking what delivery mechanism is most effective at delivering that is where the trouble begins. Do we focus on the health of people in the immediate, one person at a time? Do we focus on the health of people beyond a person's lifetime, one society at a time?

I'm of the opinion that going beyond one person and one person's lifetime is irrelevant to human health.

I wish the Senators well. They have hard work ahead of them.

Mike

Importance of Civility

Thomas L. Friedman has a great op-ed piece in today's New York Times about a critically important issue, civility in public (and I suggest - private) discourse. It's titled :

Where Did ‘We’ Go?

and can be found at http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/30/opinion/30friedman.html?ref=opinion.

He speaks of deligimation of others with our language. I refer to this as dehumanization or just plain insulting. His word choice is exactly appropriate.

Worth reading and remembering in our daily affairs.

Mike

Words Can Be Electric - Are Ontarians paying attention?

We have the continuing saga of electrical utility deregulation surfacing in Alberta.

The headline in the Calgary Herald "TransCanada says power line would foster competition" alerts us to this.

We see words and phrases from the old days of deregulation return as TransCanada argues in favour of a major expansion of electrical grid capacity.

"What transmission does for a load is it gives access to competition, you can get your generation from many different sources,..."

I think I see at least two issues at play here.

There is a focus on the introduction of Bill 50 which allows the provincial government to use a hurry-up process to place transmission lines where the engineers think the lines will provide the most efficient transmission of electricity.

That has advantages for sure. However, the government sullied the process by doing silly things like hiring securities firms to spy on rural citizens asking the government to prove its case before going ahead with construction on their farms.

The government perhaps knew it shouldn't trust these rural folks simply because by and large it was rural folks responsible for electing this government. That level of distrust of rural folks can't help but generate an equal level of distrust directed at the government from these same rural folks.

However, I'm not sure that's the biggest issue. I think the biggest issue is more electrifying and that is cash.

When the electrical utility was deregulated, the argument was that the retail sale of electricity would be made by many unregulated sales people instead of a few regulated and vertically integrated power generators.

The argument was that this would give consumers choice over whom they bought their electricity from. With a limited supply of energy, some argued that this would only drive up prices as more retailers bid on an unregulated commodity in short supply. Albertans were assured that this was a good thing as those increased prices would attract generators to the market, creating a greater supply and work to hold down prices in the long run.

The trouble is there was a much greater return on investment by simply charging more for the available commodity than there might be for taking the risk of adding more supply and driving down prices. Consumers are more concerned about security of supply than high prices. Consumers could always put off discretionary purchases such as food, medicine and a new car in favour of making sure the house stayed warm and the lights stayed on.

While new generating capacity has been added since the beginning of deregulation, it has not caught up to rising demand, thus assuring Albertans they have the bragging rights to the highest or near highest electrical energy costs in North America.

On the other hand, there have been some interesting opportunities for electrical energy retailers.

Now, let's suppose Alberta builds its much-needed grid expansion.

If it's done without decentralizing electrical generation to have generation as close as possible to consumption, it will have assured itself of inefficiency by having to transmit large amounts of energy over long distances.

The massive cost will be justified by the current shortage situation and because security of supply can literally be a life or death situation, Albertans will be told they have no choice but to support this expansion.

This massive cost will also justify building new large grid capacity for export out of Alberta, especially to the energy hungry southwestern United States. There may be transmission costs incurred to service those folks, to be sure.

However, ask any farmer or rancher or petroleum producer how that works. If that farmer, rancher or petroleum producer has to incur added costs to meet his or her particular situation, can he or she expect to recoup those added costs in international and inter-provincial fee market competition?

Has that ever happened yet? What are the chances it will happen now?

Grid expansion must be planned very carefully or Albertans could find themselves paying for that expansion in order to enable foreign consumers to compete with Albertans for access to electrical energy generated by Albertans to meet Albertan's needs.

The original quote: "What transmission does for a load is it gives access to competition, you can get your generation from many different sources,..."

So let's look at that quote again.

"What transmission does for a load is it gives access to competition, " Can't argue with that. Consumers have greater access to competing generation and retail sales because of increased grid capacity. But, which consumers ... Albertans or Albertans AND people in other provinces and other North Americans as well? Does that kind of competition help to hold prices at an affordable level?

"... you can get your generation from many different sources, ..." Is there really a better profit opportunity in building new generation versus charging more for existing generation? Is that profit opportunity further enhanced by having access to more demand or to having the same generating capacity spread more equitably around the existing demand?

What is there about this policy that really works for all Albertans? How is the implementation going to make sure that benefit comes to all Albertans?

I urge Ontarians to watch this unfold in Alberta as their deregulation is unfolding in Ontario. There may be things to learn.

Mike

Who's what?

A fellow from Ontario wrote the other day. He was commenting on the comparative credibility of Mr. Ignatieff and Mr. Harper. He supports Mr. Ignatieff but was concerned that he didn't seem to have the credibility he felt Mr. Igantieff deserved. He was wondering what Mr. Ignatieff could do about it.

Interesting thought.

As I thought about it, I wondered if he should not have included Mr. Layton as well. I'm guessing that because Mr. Layton's party holds few seats in parliament and is a leader of a party given little change of gaining government, his credibility, along with Ms. May's, is taken to be sort of irrelevant.

Interestingly, as I see it, Mr. Duceppe's credibility is not premised on his ability to form government, but his ability to lead a separatist party into the Commons. He is credible among voters. He is immediately identifiable among political leaders.

There is a real problem here. I wonder if it is not related to the strident apathy gaining ground among electors.

I think we focus too much on the so-called right-left split. I think a much more telling measure is relevance.

It occurred to me that most of us Canadians, Albertans, perhaps most residents of every province, possibly except for Quebec, would have a difficult time coming up with a single sentence or phrase that defined each party or each leader for us individually.

Try it. Imagine some media personality, Rick Mercer perhaps, coming to your door with a camera crew in tow and asking you to define each party and each leader in turn with a single sentence or phrase. That's who each party and leader are for you.

I think it's more difficult than we think it might be.

I think that is partly a result of political "machines" being too careful to avoid alienating any voter, or heaven help us!, group of voters. So they present bland personalities with no personality. When someone has no personality, how far can that person be from having no character, not a bad character, just no character.

Now imagine these non-personalities asking us to have them act as the trustees of our political power. It's hard to trust someone we don't know. When we don't know them, why are they asking for something from us? Am I going to pick a trustee from a group of total strangers with no knowable personality?

Perhaps I'll stay home and watch the Riders. I may be frustrated from time to time, but I trust I will be engaged and entertained.

So, prior to an election, we have people telling us only part of their story. We have to wait until after the election to learn what the winners' personalities and characters are like by watching their actions.

That's too late!

The way I see it, a democratically elected government is there to advocate the interests and aspirations of each person in that society. The idea is to protect that which is going well and to change that which is not going well. How do elected officials know what's going well?

They ask the people.

The people are the same no matter who has been elected. Their interests and aspirations are the same. The difference in the candidates and parties should be our expectation of how each candidate will respond to protect what's good and improve what's not. What strategies will they employ to exercise our political power on our behalf?

What vision will they try to move us to? Will that vision complement and support ours? Do they understand that in human affairs, the process of achievement is far more important than the achievement itself? In fact, since living is a process, do they realize that the process of governing is the only important thing government can do?

Ask people what should be improved and protected. Pay attention to the process of governing and the engagement of the people in governing. Make sure people know who the candidates and elected officials are and how they think and how they see the world.

When these are being done, we can expect the disaffected to become engaged in the electoral and other participatory processes. We can expect people to make real choices because real choices are possible.

We might yet evolve into the democratic society we can all live every day!

Mike

G20 Summit in Pittsburgh - Irony in Steeltown

On Thursday, September 24th, the New York Times reported on the preparations anti-globalization protesters in Pittsburgh were making to ensure their protestations were as effective as possible.

http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/24/getting-out-the-anti-globalization-message/?nl=us&emc=politicsemailema4

Pittsburgh became famous as a steel town. Its National Football League team is the Pittsburgh Steelers. It has more recently become a capital in the United States Rust Belt as the iron industries have fallen on hard times, notwithstanding the firms making steel from iron ore were global giants.

Ironically, the protesters have marshalled the resources provided by other global giants in information and communications technology to make sure their efforts were carefully coordinated and their message was instantly communicated around the globe. Does that make the protesters themselves globalizers?

Don't get me wrong, the protesters have great points to make. The world is steadily becoming a culturally poorer place because of the globalization being protested. An example of this is the great number of indigenous languages that promise to become extinct within a few generations.

Languages are not commodities. Languages present the world in unique perspectives. Many facets of our global reality are better understood because because different peoples talk to each other about what they see and learn.

Of course, globalization has exposed us to others' cultures and points of view. The dictates of efficiency in commerce within corporate bodies tend to argue in favour of sameness however.

Interestingly, people supposedly speaking the same first language use the same words and phrases differently, to the point of not being able to communicate with each other effectively at all.

I see the protesters focussing on corporate power as the dangerous levelling device destroying cultures around the globe. I suspect I am in the majority. I suspect that most of us see the protest being about corporate power.

What I don't see is a meaningful explanation as to what that means to you and me in our daily lives. What's the impact of the insidious or blatant exercise of this power?

Without those explanations and in the context of the setting of a much reduced Pittsburgh with a nearly extinct corporate wealth creator, job creator and carbon polluter, corporate power doesn't seem so permanent and therefore not so frightening.

It seems to me that irony makes selling of an ideal difficult as another idea than the one intended may be the one learned. Accidental irony, as in this case, I think has a high likelihood of disabling the protesters educational process completely.

Calgary Glenmore By-election

Gosh, a lot of trees have been chewed by pundits working over the outcome of this little by-election in Calgary.

Interestingly, most pundits have recognized that electors of this quiet part of Calgary sended the Premier a message.

Well, I don't know what message that is exactly.

Mr. Hinman is a capable guy, I'm sure. He was the leader of the new Wild Rose Alliance Party. He is now their one opposition member of the Alberta legislative assembly.

No reflection on Mr. Hinman, but Progressive Conservative voters really did not want to scare the government too much. Electing the Liberal would be electing a credible cabinet member in waiting. Electing a single Wild Rose MLA was a bit like sending a eunuch into the harem. Mr. Stelmach agreed that with Mr. Hinman elected, nothing new will arise by way of government policy. Albertans elected a conservative after all. Mr. Stelmach opined that the government simply did not get its message out well enough. That's not promising a new message, simply communicating the old one better.

Pundits have been going on about how Mr. Stelmach is not really a very acceptable leader, especially in the rarified air of the towers of downtown Calgary. Small "c" conservative ideas are fine. The Progressive Conservative Party of Alberta might be acceptable, after all it has been elected for thirty eight years.

What's Mr. Stelmach to do?

The Alberta Liberal candidate, a very credible candidate, came in a close second.

I have heard it said by pundits and others that the Liberal brand is a tough sell in Calgary. I've even heard Liberals, mostly left wing Alberta Liberals to be sure, suggest that the Alberta Liberals could be electorally successful if only they ceased being Liberals.

Or at least changed the party name.

Then it hit me! It's so darned obvious!

What Mr. Stelmach needs to do is change his name. Just the first name? Just the surname? Oh what the heck, go for it. Change both of them. What an opportunity for public engagement. Mr. Stelmach could ask the people of Alberta to suggest names. He could then hold a referendum, or series of referenda, to choose the name most acceptable to Albertans.

Voila! Problem solved! Mr. Stelmach will then be a popular guy!

The pro-name choice Alberta Liberals will then have been proven correct. Name calling works!

Until the people have chosen, Liberals may have to run with an interim name, something like the Alberta Blanks, or Fill In The Blanks, but most certainly not the Alberta Blankety Blanks.

Mike