I think that's going waaay overboard. The whole government is doing a fairly admirable job with the balancing act between safety and liberty.

While such things always bear watching out for, be careful of crying wolf too soon, especially if all you've seen is a labrador!

Towerfall has been compared to Pearl Harbor, and I have compared the search for Osama Ben Laden to the 3T campaign against Pancho Villa. This would resolve the 3T versus 4T debate-we are in the tail end of the Unraveling, but we have encountered a precursor (like Bleeding Kansas or the Spanish Civil War) of the 4T. One theme is clear-Muslim fundamentalists want us out of the Middle East-and this ties in with another theme I anticipate, a 4T oil shortage.

Mr. saari: Please don't shut up. we need you.
Now more than ever.

OK, all of you liberals out there keep making statements like "We cannot continue to..."

Things like: Use fossil fuels, Have such a division between poor and rich, Let companies like enron get away with this and that.

(By the way, I agree with most of this).

Now, can you take it to the next level: Can you specify a bullet-point list of action items that society/govt/etc should take to start the transformation. What things, specifically, do you propose?

Mr. Butler: At this point I must respond.

I don't believe that the ecological questions can be cataloged as secondary problems. I believe that they will come to the fore as the main issues in the future. Call it a boomer issue. But they are issues that are now out or our control. We will be forced to deal with them above all others because they will intrude upon all other issues.

takakscar2: Form a new paradym.

_________________
Buz Painter
Never for a long time have I been this
confused.

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: buzzard44 on 2002-02-09 14:51 ]</font>

Gotta have a gas guzzling SUV...
Gotta have a SUV...
Gotta have a SUV...
Gotta have a SUV...

Why?

On 2002-02-09 08:36, buzzard44 wrote:
Sorry to interrupt but I have a question for everyone. It is obvious that some of us in this discussion think that we have entered 4T while others believe that we remain in a 3T. My question is, whichever way you think how does that belief affect your daily life? If you believe that the crisis is upon us, what actions do you take? What habits must change? We make decisions daily which bear on this question.

Personally I believe that we have just entered the early stages of a 4T. So why am I only beginning to think about preparations for this 4? It is getting late. Conversely, if I believed that we were still in 3T, recent events should be a wakeup call for me to get on with my program- whatever that is.

How seriously do we feel these things? Is this something that pertains to us on a personal level? Or is this more of an academic exercise? I am interested to know. I go back and forth on this.

I believe we are also in the early stages of a 4T. I have a couple of concrete things I have done or will done:

• I moved a chunk of my retirement savings from a stock fund to a fund based on T bills in December 2000, in the belief that stocks had peaked and would head south. I am still investing in stocks though, along with T bills. I am putting 10 percent of my salary into retirement; the Government matches with 5 percent.
  
• I have stopped charging things except for on-line purchases and am paying off my credit card debt that I accummulated while getting my divorce last year.
  
• I will visit my sister who lives in Stockholm either this spring (during my daughter's spring break) or this summer. I know that in the last 4T, travel was still pretty free and easy for the first 10 years (1930 - first half of 1939) but you never know.

_________________
Why does it have to take a disaster to acknowledge the beauty of being alive? -- Maharaji

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Jenny Genser on 2002-02-09 15:11 ]</font>

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Jenny Genser on 2002-02-09 15:13 ]</font>

Jenny: Thank you. I have mave moved my numerous assets to silver. Why? Because I can't afford gold. In a 4T all paper will be devalued. But even more importantly, those of us who are poor must scuffle to do what we can. Gold is too expensive. Believe it or not, there are a great number of us out there who are poor and aware. We do what we can.

I also believe that the stock market will sting all are in my position. When I talk about a paradym shift, I am refering to these people. We tend to forget that the poor are not necesarily stupid. I cousel all who will listen to take care of themselves in any way that they can. Of course this is advice that could apply to anyone.

In a 4T the poor will rise up and bite us if we do not include them in any solution to the problems that face us. That is one reason that I asked the question," Is this an intellectual exercise or is it personal".

[takakscar2:] Now, can you take it to the next level: Can you specify a bullet-point list of action items that society/govt/etc should take to start the transformation. What things, specifically, do you propose?

Here are some ideas:

1. Put a tariff on oil from the Middle East that amounts to about 25 cents per gallon of refined gasoline beginning in the year 2003. Increase it by about 25 cents every year for the next ten years.

objective: will produce a gradually rising price of gasoline over the next decade *and* reduce dependence on risky Mideast supply. The *certainty* of a rising price trend will allow rational investment in alternatives The technology is there we simply don't have a decent investment environment for alternate energy as long as the government follows a deliberate cheap oil policy.

2. Apply the Social Security/Medicare flat tax to *all* income, not just earned income, and remove the caps. Increase the retirement age gradually to 70 over the next four decades. This will solve the "Social Security problem"

3. Increase the earned income credit for married couple with children (folks shacking up don't get it). Add an additional bonus to married heads of household, who live with their spouse and children and whose spouse does not work.

Research shows the most powerful means to escape poverty is for couple to marry and face life together. Let's give them an incentive. Even more lets' encourage unskilled women who have little earning power to stay home with their kids by giving a bonus earned income credit to the their working spouse. In this way a poor young man who gets a minimum wage job at a burger joint can offer his pregnant girl friend a real future. If they marry and she stays home with the kids (and maybe does day care for relatives with better paying jobs to make a little extra cash) they can make it. This encourages kids with no hope to get married and "play by the rules". We can afford to help poor young folks to start out right and do the right thing by their kids.

4. Offer government support to qualified students for medical training just as we currently do for students in science and engineering. In exchange for their free training they are required to do X years *after* their residency of work at public hospitals that cater to the uninsured. Change residency to that it requires normal 12 hour shifts, none of this macho 36 hour crap. The goal would be to flood the market with skilled physicians. Guarantee jobs to physicians meeting minimal requirements at government-sanctioned hospitals as GS12-17 levels of pay, so that they can always find a job should the private market be unfriendly.

The government would create a pool of inexpensive physicians (large during recessions, smaller during times of prosperity). It can make these available to non-profit hospitals that serve the uninsured. The government can encourage these hospitals to join together to negotiate lower cost *bulk* purchases of drugs, medical equipment and instrumentation. Instead of each member hospital negotiating the price of their own MRI, the group would negotiate an order for 100 MRI units as a time, using their sheer buying power to secure good deals.

The purpose of these innovations is to reduce the cost of basic medical care without restricting the growth of private medial care. Since medicine is one the "leading sectors" of the next new economy, we want its cost to grow over time, just as transportation cost grew from 1890 (from zero-people walked) to many hundreds of dollars per household per month as cars came into use. We want innovation new treatments to be produced by the private health care sector (which will be staffed by the most competent and highly paid physicians and use the latest and most expensive equipment). Most physicians will never be able to get one of these coveted jobs and will work as a public hospital, using standardized equipment to deliver standardized care to folks too poor (i.e. most of us) to afford the stuff going on at the private hospitals. As new discoveries (in both government labs and at private concerns) become established they will become standardized and so available to everyone.

What I am saying is rather than instituting a government payer system, I say how about a government supplier (of physicians) system? I know this can work since the government has been doing it with science and technology since WW II. I have a Ph. D. in chemical engineering. Only an economic idiot would get one today since you can make the same money with a B.S. But suppose you are wacky like me and Jon Carson, and you like to do this research B.S. (look at all the effort I spend at this saeculum as a hobby for cryin out loud). Doesn't it make sense to encourage guys like Jon and I to spend their lives working for a paycheck creating the knowledge that will produce future wealth? Of course it does, not *everything* the government does is dumb. Why not do the same for doctors?

After all scientists and engineers no longer function like small businessmen like Edison, most of us earn paychecks, so why should doctors use the small businessman model (which most are horribly bad at)?

There are lots of other things we could do. The point of this rather lengthy post is that most problems are not *technically* difficult to solve. But any potential solution creates winners and losers and so will involve politics, which as Bismarck said is the art of the possible. And political change is most likely in favorable environment, like a new turning.

Man I want to move to Stockholm (yes Dirk is also Justin)

Looks like our resident paranoiac from paranoia has managed some headlines for himself.

<FONT SIZE="+2"><center>Patten lays into Bush's America</FONT></center>



What say ye, Mr. Patton? I think we've found for you a suitable new home. :lol:

Buzzard comments... I don't believe that the ecological questions can be cataloged as secondary problems. I believe that they will come to the fore as the main issues in the future. Call it a boomer issue. But they are issues that are now out or our control. We will be forced to deal with them above all others because they will intrude upon all other issues.

I?m with you. To solve the security issues, you have to look at the sources of the religious / ethnic / racial / border problems. To tune these issues down, all factions have to have a reasonable go at economic stability. We haven?t the ecological resources to give everyone economic security at the current level of western expectations, but will jealousy and hate end without closing the wealth gap? Meanwhile, those with economic, military and political power don?t want to change the system that gave them economic, military and political power, and will resist change using all available economic, military and political power.

In short, to address any of our major problems, we?ve got to systematically address all of our major problems. (Sorry if I left out a few issues, but hopefully you get the idea.) Thus, I get a bit impatient with debates on which problem is most important. I also get impatient with people who won?t leave a perspective and world view centered around one set of problems. (Definition 53 of liberal, based on the all important national budgetary consideration, is much more correct than the right to choose Definition 22 of liberal. Therefore it is indeed proper to use the L word while flaming at Contributor X!)

I?m not grouching at you in particular, rather at the world in general. What you said above is just right. Alas, in order to get issues under control, in order to focus and act on things that need to change, it will have to become abundantly in-everyone?s-face clear that the way things have been cannot endure. This will not happen while we can convince ourselves that ?The War on Terror? is the central and only issue, The War is winnable, and The War is being won. So long as such a belief is possible, we are not cleanly over the 3T / 4T border.

No consensus on action seems likely until another catalyst or three rumbles through. It seems improper to hope for more and stronger catalysts. It would be nice if I could hope the unraveling could continue forever. The Great Dream of the nation seems to be eternal unraveling. I can?t believe in it.

On 2002-02-09 20:30, Marc S. Lamb wrote:

Looks like our resident paranoiac from paranoia has managed some headlines for himself.

<FONT SIZE="+2"><center>Patten lays into Bush's America</font></center>

What say ye, Mr. Patton? I think we've found for you a suitable new home. :lol:

Paranoia is an irrational fear of things that have never happened before. The things I fear have happened before, Mr. Lamb, and thus they are not irrational. I am merely heeding Santayana's warning as all students of history are obliged to do. Few ever do though, do they? That is why we have cycles and turnings.

Note that I am not saying that the tragedies of the Third Reich are destined to repeat here beyond a shadow of a doubt...far from it. What I am saying is that the possibility cannot be ruled out, particularly given the current administration's contempt for the constitutional limitations on its power.

The Founding Fathers gave us a glorious Constitution designed specifically to preclude the possibility of a Third Reich experience on our soil. We ignore the current administration's transgressions and usurpations and consolidation of power at our peril, consistent with Santayana's warning. All we need do is force the current government back into its constitutional cage and the danger would be eliminated. But nobody listens to Santayana. People love to quote him but nobody listens to him. Nobody has in the past and nobody does now.

Call me any name you like, Mr. Lamb. It does not bother me one bit...honestly. I would gladly accept your title if it would guarantee that the worst does not happen in the near term. After all, if there should be some sort of "crackdown" or "round up" or "purge" to remove political opposition -- as there have been so many times before in human history -- those sharing my beliefs (those of the Founding Fathers) would logically be at the head of the list. Unfortunately, such an exchange between us cannot be made and our future remains uncertain.

So I will continue to honor the Founding Fathers and my forefathers by doing my duty as a citizen loyal to the Constitution which our government still cynically upholds as the supreme Law of the Land. You may continue to denounce me and those like me; that is your right and I bear you no ill will. God bless you and God bless this nation. And may the flawed mortal men in this administration not abuse the grotesque power at their disposal which they were never ever intended to possess in the first place, either by God or man.


<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Stonewall Patton on 2002-02-09 22:17 ]</font>

Heil Bush, und passieren mir die Apfelstrudel, bitte!

Nein. Sie haben ein Fehler gemachen. Die Meinung soll sagen, "F?hren Sie mir den Apfelstrudel, bitte." Die meisten Frankfurteren bevorzugen tacos irgendwie. W?hrend ich absch?tze ihr Bestrebung, pr?fen Sie mit ein deutsches Grammatikbuch bitte. Begreifen Sie da? sie weitermachen eine Steretype da? ist komisch nicht.



<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Chris Loyd '82 on 2002-02-09 22:17 ]</font>

On 2002-02-09 22:12, Chris Loyd '82 wrote:

Heil Bush, und passieren mir die Apfelstrudel, bitte!

Nein. Sie haben ein Fehler gemachen. Die Meinung soll sagen, "F?hren Sie mir den Apfelstrudel, bitte."

Jawohl! Das ist richtig. Danke.

W?hrend ich absch?tze ihr Bestrebung, pr?fen Sie mit ein deutsches Grammatikbuch bitte.

Es gibt viele Jahre. Ich vergesse zu viel. Ich kann nicht mein Buch finden. Sie m?ssen pr?fen fur mich, bitte. Sprechen Sie Franz?sisch?

Begreifen Sie da? sie weitermachen eine Steretype da? ist komisch nicht.

Der Apfelstrudel oder das dritte Reich? Mit der Bush Regierung, der Schuh sitzt.

On 2002-02-09 22:43, Stonewall Patton wrote:



Es gibt viele Jahre. Ich vergesse zu viel. Ich kann nicht mein Buch finden. Sie m?ssen pr?fen fur mich, bitte.

Die Verbesserunge (pl?):

Ich kanne mein Buch finden nicht.

Sprechen Sie Franz?sisch?

Nein.

Der Apfelstrudel oder das dritte Reich? Mit der Bush Regierung, der Schuh sitzt.

Mit dem Bush Regierung, der Schuh passt.

Nebenbei, Ich sehe ihre Stelle.

Well done, Chris! I wish I had bothered to retain some fluency through these years (and I hope you will do so). In the future, I may consult with you privately for instruction.

??????. ?????????, ???????? ?? ???? ?????????? ??????????, ????? ??? ???? ???????.

Thank you. You asked if I spoke French, and I don't, but if you do, that is commendable.

Mr Carson, what language is that? I think I need to set my font to correctly see what you posted.

On 2002-02-10 11:35, jcarson71 wrote:
??????. ?????????, ???????? ?? ???? ?????????? ??????????, ????? ??? ???? ???????.

??????. ?? ????? ???? ???? ?? ?? ????? ?? ?????????, ????? ???? ????????.

Jon and Justin:

What the hell is that? I feel like I am trying to read the writing on a rupee.

On 2002-02-10 22:33, Stonewall Patton wrote:
Jon and Justin:

What the hell is that? I feel like I am trying to read the writing on a rupee.

Turn on yer Cyrillic, boyo..

On 2002-02-10 11:35, jcarson71 wrote:
??????. ?????????, ???????? ?? ???? ?????????? ??????????, ????? ??? ???? ???????.

"Old MacDonald had a farm, e-i-e-i-o!"

What's up, Jonathon? Letting Jaco the Cat wander around the keyboard map and type out any extended ASCII character his paws come across? :wink:

On 2002-02-07 22:48, HopefulCynic68 wrote:

I'd wait a year or so, before I declare him, dead, Kiff. With every day that passes, this looks more and more like 3T to me. The Millennials are still mostly in grade and high school, and it may be a while yet befor they had much large-scale impact.

Rush Limbaugh is still is not in the past tense. I read in the newspaper back in November that Limbaugh's ratings have kept up despite his hearing loss and September 11. To his usual fanbase, he has just as much staying power now as ever.