Originally Posted by Tom Mazanec

Here's something that might give us a clue. Starting from after the Civil War Anomaly mucked things up, add the ages of the three leading generations (we don't know when the 4T children start being born for the Millennial Crisis), and do the same for 2001.
WW1+Prohibition
Progressives=65
Missionaries=48
Lost=25
Total=138
Great Depression+WW2
Missionaries=69
Lost=46
G.I.s=28
Total=143
American High
Lost=63
G.I.s=45
Silent=21
Total=129
Consciousness Revolution
G.I.s=63
Silent=39
Boomers=21
Total=123
Culture Wars
Silent=59
Boomers=41
13ers=23
Total=123
Millennial Crisis
Boomers=61?
13ers=43?
Millennials=22?
Total=117?
Like so much else concerning 9-11, you can make a case both ways with this. The totals are slowly dropping (the equivalent for the Protestant Reformation would be 174!) so maybe 117 would work. On the other hand, 2003 would give 123, and maybe the total would even go up a bit, as it did between the first two listed, so perhaps a couple years later still would work. But if I were looking at this in 2000, 2001 or 2002 would seem a better choice to me...9-11 was in late 2001.

Tom,

A month or two ago I did something similar.

Sean Love wrote:

The concept is the ?Catalyst Constellation Index? (though it may be screaming for new name).

This index is only relevant if one is in the orthodox, Strauss-n-Howian Saecularist school and believes (or at least strongly suspects) that generational interaction and alignment is the primary engine of saecular progression. More specifically, it comes from the assumption that when generations fully inhabit their respective life phase, society has become, for lack of a better word, ?ripe? for a new turning to begin. The old turning mood has become old and stale and the first waves of each generation are at least eyeing the next life phase/role, or are perhaps beginning to enter it already.

It is beginning at this point that society becomes most vulnerable to the sparks and trends of history in terms of those phenomena having the ability to affect a saecular mood change.

This concept assumes that the length of a phase of life is currently 21 years. However, in my conception of this index I believe this phase length used to be longer, affecting how to determine turning change ?ripeness?.

Lastly, I am assuming that Strauss & Howes? estimates for generational boundaries are correct (perhaps a big assumption, but more on that later).

Anyway, it goes like this. First, identify the age of the vanguard cohort of the generations that currently have their center of gravity in midlife, rising adulthood, and youth, respectively. Then line up those ages to the first three arithmetic permutations of 21 (i.e., 21, 42, 63). Then calculate how far off, up or down, each cohort is from these numbers. Add the differences. A result of zero indicates that, even though all the generations in question may not have passed or even hit the phase-transitioning age, the constellation as a whole indicates a fully ripe alignment. A positive number indicates a strong and rapidly growing probability of turning change, a low negative number indicates a weaker possibility, and a high negative number strongly indicates no immediate turning change likely.

Using this index, lets look at the last two turning transitions. Year X would be a hypothetical year with a ?perfect? constellational alignment. D is for delta, i.e., change.

Code:

    X       1964        D       1984         D 
    63       63         0        59         -4 
    42       39        -3        41         -1 
    21       21         0        23         +2 
   CCI                 -3                   -3

It seems that a Catalyst Constellation Index, or CCI, of ?3, at least based on the 21-year phase, is perfectly sufficient for a mood shift to begin.

Now lets view recent and future years.

Code:

'01     '02      '03      '04      '05     '06 
 58      59       60       61       62      63 
 40      41       42       43       44      45 
 19      20       21       22       23      24 
 -9      -6       -3        0       +3      +6

Based on the past two turning shifts one can see why the effects of 9/11/01 were so ambiguous. As I?ve stated in this thread, the Culture Wars third turning was mature in September 2001, but not yet ripe. I would guess that a CCI of ?9 still indicates a lot of yet-to-be expunged saecular immaturity. However, this year, 2003, corresponds perfectly to 1964 and 1984, and next year brings us to zero hour.

One of the reasons I made such a big deal first off about the assumptions I have made is that you can come up with different assumptions and/or tweaks on all but one of them and still find this index useful. Only the Mike Alexander-led Materialist Cause school cannot be reconciled to this (as far as I can see). [BTW, for the record, I do not want to dismiss this group. Though I strongly suspect a primarily generational engine at work, I am very open to Mike?s very impressive work. I wouldn?t be surprised if his work strongly interrelates with Strauss & Howe?s assumptions. I am just not sure how at this point.]

But debate over the other assumptions could make this index even more interesting. What if, for example, Strauss and Howe are dead wrong about the Boom/Xer boundary, as some contend? What if 1963 is the Xer vanguard (please, I am only musing, I am not intending to insult ?61ers and ?62ers!!!). Then the above chart changes significantly. And so on.

The tweak that most interests me, on a number of levels, is the need to change the 21-year phase in order to get the CCI to work on turning shifts prior to the 1T/2T change of 1964. This is fascinating because: One, it brings us head on into the generational compaction debate; and Two, if we can ascertain the proper ?ideal? alignment(s) for cycles prior to this Millenial Cycle we can better understand how far off of a CCI of zero a turning change is likely to come.

I apologize if it seems like I am making a big deal out of this. I realize that this index would only be a very rough gauge. It?s just that several cups of coffee and a good run through the neighborhood can get one all "exercised" over an idea.

"A month or two ago I did something similar. "

I think that likely is what gave my subconscious the idea...

Originally Posted by Tom Mazanec

"A month or two ago I did something similar. "

I think that likely is what gave my subconscious the idea...

But your approach also demonstrates that we are statistically ready for a turning change and underscores the compaction of the cycle.

Dixiecrat's Love Child


Who knew that Mr. Thurmond was such a Progressive on matters of marriage and inter-racial bonding? A GI with Awakening values...I think he should get an honorary Boomerhood! :arrow: :arrow: :arrow:

Actually, Virgil, the whole thing has an incredibly 18th-century flavor. He acted like an aristocrat. .. what's fascinating is how everyone in SC must have protected him. He hardly kept it much of a secret.

David K '47

More incredibly 18th-century flavored aristocracy, fascinating in that liberals, like David Kaiser, could care less...

JFK used audits to silence critics
Book describes covert effort to discredit 'right-wing' groups

September 5, 2003
By John Berlau
News World Communications Inc.

• "The soaring arc of Kennedy's truncated life combined success achieved by discipline, and sexual recklessness -- 70 calls through the White House switchboard to a mistress he shared with a Mafia don; said another woman, Marilyn Monroe, "I think I made his back feel better" -- that risked everything." -- George F. Will, November 20, 2003

It didn't seem to bother admirers of John F. Kennedy when a new book reported in May that he had an affair with a White House intern only just out of prep school. Robert Dallek, the sympathetic biographer who revealed this detail in his "An Unfinished Life," even was blessed with an invitation to speak at the Kennedy Presidential Library by Boston harbor. For many liberals, it seemed a way to put the Clinton affairs in perspective.

But there is another revelation in a new book that hasn't been given so much attention by the press and other Kennedy enthusiasts. This is the case even though the book was offered by a respected publisher and written by a distinguished historian and political liberal.

Citing a wealth of freshly uncovered documents, the new book charges that the Kennedy administration used the IRS to go after its perceived enemies on a scale perhaps even beyond that charged against Richard M. Nixon.

In "Power to Destroy: The Political Uses of the IRS from Kennedy to Nixon," author John A. Andrew III presents new evidence for what he calls "the utilization of the Internal Revenue Service in what became a covert effort to discredit the right and undercut its sources of support" as part of "a broad assault on the right wing by the Kennedy administration."



Posted for discussion purposes only.


Didn't Bill and Hillary get caught with a computer full of FBI files in the White House, too? I bet that stuff served them quite well with a bunch of senators during the impeachment saga. 8)

I wonder if Mr. Rushlimbaugh's glands of procreation were in a lockbox of governmental manufacture? Does Mr. Rove have a key? The S.W.O.T.E.? Her husband?


:?: :?: :?:

Originally Posted by yo

More incredibly 18th-century flavored aristocracy, fascinating in that liberals, like David Kaiser, could care less...

JFK used audits to silence critics
Book describes covert effort to discredit 'right-wing' groups

September 5, 2003
By John Berlau
News World Communications Inc.

• "The soaring arc of Kennedy's truncated life combined success achieved by discipline, and sexual recklessness -- 70 calls through the White House switchboard to a mistress he shared with a Mafia don; said another woman, Marilyn Monroe, "I think I made his back feel better" -- that risked everything." -- George F. Will, November 20, 2003

It didn't seem to bother admirers of John F. Kennedy when a new book reported in May that he had an affair with a White House intern only just out of prep school. Robert Dallek, the sympathetic biographer who revealed this detail in his "An Unfinished Life," even was blessed with an invitation to speak at the Kennedy Presidential Library by Boston harbor. For many liberals, it seemed a way to put the Clinton affairs in perspective.

But there is another revelation in a new book that hasn't been given so much attention by the press and other Kennedy enthusiasts. This is the case even though the book was offered by a respected publisher and written by a distinguished historian and political liberal.

Citing a wealth of freshly uncovered documents, the new book charges that the Kennedy administration used the IRS to go after its perceived enemies on a scale perhaps even beyond that charged against Richard M. Nixon.

In "Power to Destroy: The Political Uses of the IRS from Kennedy to Nixon," author John A. Andrew III presents new evidence for what he calls "the utilization of the Internal Revenue Service in what became a covert effort to discredit the right and undercut its sources of support" as part of "a broad assault on the right wing by the Kennedy administration."



Posted for discussion purposes only.

The early 2T was a time when the center-Left consensus thought they had All The Answers. It was the G.I. over-confident expression of the ideals of the victorious Missionary faction. The unpleasant side-effect of that (well, one of them) was the belief that they didn't have to consider any contrary views, just somehow neutralize them before they could do any 'harm'.

Originally Posted by KaiserD2

Actually, Virgil, the whole thing has an incredibly 18th-century flavor. He acted like an aristocrat. .. what's fascinating is how everyone in SC must have protected him. He hardly kept it much of a secret. David K '47

Today, in the New York Times, Nickolas D. Kristof speaks of another aristocrat:

• "Dean grew up on Park Ave. in an old aristocratic family, and after getting his medical deferment from the draft, he moved to Aspen to ski."

I wonder if that matters to the Bush haters?

Naw. 8)

Dick Thornburgh (former Pennsylvania governor and US Attorney General, a Silent) was on BookTV today. (It was taped from almost three months ago.) One of the questioners asked about the Patriot Act, and Thornburgh did his best to defend it - he said the Administration's rhetoric was part of the problem.

He also said that it is traditional at times (and all the other examples he gave were in 4Ts) for the government to push the envelope with security, and leave it to the courts to draw an appropriate line later.

Originally Posted by yo

Originally Posted by KaiserD2

Actually, Virgil, the whole thing has an incredibly 18th-century flavor. He acted like an aristocrat. .. what's fascinating is how everyone in SC must have protected him. He hardly kept it much of a secret. David K '47

Today, in the New York Times, Nickolas D. Kristof speaks of another aristocrat:

• "Dean grew up on Park Ave. in an old aristocratic family, and after getting his medical deferment from the draft, he moved to Aspen to ski."

I wonder if that matters to the Bush haters?

Naw. 8)

I had to listen to a health care lobbyist tell me about the 'big' houses the DNC meets in out in Aspen.
"God, you could fit two or three of my houses inside of one of those things.'

All the rich people like to go skiing out there. Why does that surprise you?

They go out there, take some saunas, bang some interns. It's a swell time.
Very Roman, although few true Romans are invited. Maybe Nancy Pelosi.

Dean certainly is one of those rich guys, and skiing is a very enjoyable (and legal) activity, unlike using cocaine an driving while intoxicated 8)

However, Dean remains, however angry, a good vibes president, while Bush is a bad vibes president - filled with brooding Biblical anger, paranoia, fear, aggression.
He tries to speak of peace through those lips of his, but all I read is perversion and death.
I couldn't sign 150 death warrants.
Could you?

Republicans are the fear and repression party.
They are the bad vibes party. Always have been. Always will be.

It seems to me that one characteristic of a 4T, like a real long-term military campaign, is that the media and population finally learn not to give into the momentary emotion of the moment and truly put things in some long-term perspective. Given today's press coverage we are failing that test.
While the capture of Saddam is a blow for justice, it will do nothing to change the long-term problems in Iraq--and yet the New York Times, no less, has a front page story on how this may take a campaign issue away from Howard Dean! Can you imagine a headline on June 7, 1944: "Republican prospects plunge as allies land in Normany!" I can't.
What the capture might well do is to provide Bush and co. an excuse to bail out this summer and declare victory. I will be curious to see. In any case, we face a huge choice sometime over the next 18 months: either to let much of Iraq fall into hostile hands, or to escalate our presence, which probably means a draft

David K '47

Originally Posted by Dr. Peter Venkman

Republicans are the fear and repression party.
They are the bad vibes party. Always have been. Always will be.

Yep, that whole Emancipation Proclamation thing was a ?bad vibe!?

Originally Posted by KaiserD2

It seems to me that one characteristic of a 4T, like a real long-term military campaign, is that the media and population finally learn not to give into the momentary emotion of the moment and truly put things in some long-term perspective. Given today's press coverage we are failing that test.
While the capture of Saddam is a blow for justice, it will do nothing to change the long-term problems in Iraq--and yet the New York Times, no less, has a front page story on how this may take a campaign issue away from Howard Dean! Can you imagine a headline on June 7, 1944: "Republican prospects plunge as allies land in Normany!" I can't.

In your opinion, who is at fault here for such pronouncements; the loyal opposition or the administration? Or is this just one of those things that the S&H theory maintains must run its course until we are well and truly 4T?

What the capture might well do is to provide Bush and co. an excuse to bail out this summer and declare victory. I will be curious to see. In any case, we face a huge choice sometime over the next 18 months: either to let much of Iraq fall into hostile hands, or to escalate our presence, which probably means a draft

Why, did someone rewrite Title 10 U.S.C., sections 12301, etc., etc. when I wasn't looking? You know the war college curricula across the services might need some retooling to provide the planners of tomorrow with some basic education in what constitutes Full Mobilization in the modern context. There is a ways to do before your prediction is realized.

David K '47

Originally Posted by David Kaiser

Can you imagine a headline on June 7, 1944: "Republican prospects plunge as allies land in Normany!" I can't.

Here's part of a story written recently by Robert Novak:

• MOYNIHAN'S smoking gun was an October 18, 1949, memorandum from FBI agent Howard Fletcher to Hoover assistant D. Milton (Mickey) Ladd describing a conversation with Brig. Gen. Carter Clarke, chief of the code-breaking Army Security Agency (ASA). Clarke was a career officer who worked behind the scenes in communications intelligence for almost his entire career. He was no ordinary staff officer. As a colonel in 1944, he was entrusted by Gen. George C. Marshall, Army chief of staff, to put on a civilian suit in wartime to visit New York governor Thomas E. Dewey, the Republican nominee for president, in a Tulsa, Oklahoma, hotel room on a confidential mission. Dewey had learned that decrypted Japanese communications should have alerted President Franklin D. Roosevelt to the Pearl Harbor attack and was about to make this a campaign issue. Clarke pleaded that the disclosure would reveal to the Japanese U.S. code-breaking progress. Dewey reluctantly agreed to keep silent, and FDR was elected to a fourth term.

Can you imagine, today, a Democrat presidential candidate doing what Dewey did during FDR's "f--king war," in 1944?

I can't. :wink:

Originally Posted by yo

Originally Posted by David Kaiser

Can you imagine a headline on June 7, 1944: "Republican prospects plunge as allies land in Normany!" I can't.

Here's part of a story written recently by Robert Novak:

• MOYNIHAN'S smoking gun was an October 18, 1949, memorandum from FBI agent Howard Fletcher to Hoover assistant D. Milton (Mickey) Ladd describing a conversation with Brig. Gen. Carter Clarke, chief of the code-breaking Army Security Agency (ASA). Clarke was a career officer who worked behind the scenes in communications intelligence for almost his entire career. He was no ordinary staff officer. As a colonel in 1944, he was entrusted by Gen. George C. Marshall, Army chief of staff, to put on a civilian suit in wartime to visit New York governor Thomas E. Dewey, the Republican nominee for president, in a Tulsa, Oklahoma, hotel room on a confidential mission. Dewey had learned that decrypted Japanese communications should have alerted President Franklin D. Roosevelt to the Pearl Harbor attack and was about to make this a campaign issue. Clarke pleaded that the disclosure would reveal to the Japanese U.S. code-breaking progress. Dewey reluctantly agreed to keep silent, and FDR was elected to a fourth term.

Can you imagine, today, a Democrat presidential candidate doing what Dewey did during FDR's "f--king war," in 1944?

I can't. :wink:

Personally, I strongly suspect that if a modern (Liberal) Democrat candidate could use such a thing as a campaign issue against Bush, then so what if doing so also has the effect of rendering aid and assistance to a wartime enemy's efforts to defeat us? Such a coincidence as that would be icing on the cake! :evil:

The Dewey story is old. There's a huge problem with it. There's no evidence, despite the numerous books arguing it, that we had any intercepts indicating an attack on Pearl Harbor. Ample evidence did indicate war with Japan was imminent--indeed, any newspaper reader should have known that. Washington had so warned the Hawaiaan commanders. But there was no Japanese message to intercept that would have shown an attack on Pearl Harbor.
I was referring to something else--the idea that just because we have had a tactical success in this war, the Dean campaign would suffer. Actually this is very short-sighted. Saddam's capture is not going to have any significant effect on the insurgency.

David K '47

Originally Posted by KaiserD2

The Dewey story is old. There's a huge problem with it. There's no evidence, despite the numerous books arguing it, that we had any intercepts indicating an attack on Pearl Harbor. But there was no Japanese message to intercept that would have shown an attack on Pearl Harbor.
I was referring to something else--the idea that just because we have had a tactical success in this war, the Dean campaign would suffer. Actually this is very short-sighted. Saddam's capture is not going to have any significant effect on the insurgency.

Marshall actually saved Dewey from making a huge ass of himself, in 1944. I've talked to several GIs who say that they suspected, at the time, FDR was playing a dangerous luring game with the Japs and the Nazis. And they smile wryly when they say it. They were committed to winning and that's all there was to it.

However, the leading Democrat candidate, unlike Dewey, seems hellbent on making an ass of himself this time around. And I personally delight in the fact that he is doing so.

On the final point, I dare say that scarce is the serious historian who would not credit Sherman's taking of Atlanta, in 1864, with contributing bigtime to Lincoln's reelection later that year. That said, I don't think Bush actually needs this Saddam boost. It's gonna be a bloodbath for the Democratic Party next November.

Bob Butler wrote:

All these systems reveal truths, but in not examining or integrating the other systems, none of them is adequate as a description of the human condition as a whole.

I share your view that there is truth in a variety of social science theories. My point is that, particularly in the US, class analysis is missing.

Further, without that insight, I don't think a full understanding of the present global dynamic is possible.

You also wrote:

While I agree that globalism, environmentalism, economic inequities and other issues relevant to the creation of a global Third Wave culture are going to be addressed during this crisis, it will be hard to step into a Third Wave pattern while the First Wave / Second Wave issues are still being actively contested.

Of course, it will be hard to step into a Third Wave pattern while these issues are still being actively contested, but that is precisely why a revolutionary solution portends.

While I share S&H' view that the subjective factor in social change follows the four-fold cycle (High, Awakening, Unraveling and Crisis), I don't share the implicit assumption that the subjective factor is alone, or even primarily, responsible for the process of change.

Rather, the larger process of change is driven by other factors (resources, production systems and population growth) that are larger than the lives of individuals and, usually, societies. Every eighty years or so, human consciousness (the subjective factor) turns to crisis mode and allows qualitative leaps in human reaction to the situation presented by the other developing factors (leaps that are not possible due to the kind of subjective factor operating during the other phases).

However, even when society enters the crisis phase, it cannot change the development of the other factors except along the lines dictated by their own nature. That's why, at these key junctures, society finds and follows leaders (and leadership groups) that appreciate (for whatever reason -- could be instinct, own experience, scientific insight, luck) the actual motion and possibility of the time.

I doubt that the first and second wave systems are going to somehow work out the problems they haven't been able to work out for the last 500 years before we move on to our future. Indeed, if that has to be resolved first, then the imperial energy industry (the most fundamental second wave power, now represented by the Bush Administration) and the Islamic Jihad (representing the radical wing of the oppressed first wavers) will first drag us into a disasterous global version of the Sharon-Arafat Holy Land stalemate.

No, I think a new way will be found -- something different than the politics and warfare (politics by other means) of the passing era (not that we can avoid enduring the catastrophic endgame of that era, already unfolding before us).

And, on this, social science can give us some insight. The new resolution must transcend nation-states (though they need not disappear from all use), providing direction and decorum to the global market (ie, addressing global development and global justice). And it is the rising service-providing class that stands to gain through this (though, as is first the case in all revolutionary transformations, the rising class articulates and advances the interests of all oppressed people). Thus, it is its interests that must and will shape the content of the transformation.

As you indicate, it is early in the process, but we can suggest some of what this content might entail. As president of the Global Citizen Center, I've put some thought into this and come up with this tentative listing:

• 1. Preempting nationalism and parochialism with globalism and holism; promoting the global human spirit; and pursuing global problem-solving as the avenue of development for our Global Consciousness Movement (Promoting Globalism)
  
  2. Empowering individuals everywhere to control our own destiny in peaceful cooperation with each other; promoting human rights in every society, including the right of open migration for everyone to anywhere (Individual Empowerment)
  
  3. Empowering women throughout our culture in everything from mate selection to social management and decision-making, particularly in global political affairs (Women's Empowerment)
  
  4. Ensuring health care for everyone, worldwide, including clean water and air; reducing the overall human population; nurturing and restoring nature (Health, Population & Nature)
  
  5. Establishing a global endowment to back a line of credit for every individual and to provide rewards to women who postpone and limit childbirth (Global Endowment)
  
  6. Ensuring access for everyone to the global economy on the basis of affordable electricity and universal bi-literacy (native language and English) (Access)
  
  7. Suppressing the trade in arms; maintaining peace; promoting peaceful resolution of national and ethnic disputes and the transparent administration of justice in the global market (Conflict Resolution & Peace)
  
  8. Promoting research and development in science, technology and social relations; preserving and protecting our diverse heritages (Past & Future)
  
  9. Creating a system of democratic, participatory global political decision-making to allocate the resources of the digital tax to solve our common problems (Global Consciousness Movement, Global Financing)

I'd like to make one last point. In past Crises, the youthful civic generation made its sacrifice by becoming the cannon fodder of war. I suggest that in the emerging Crisis the sacrifice of youth will be the curtailing of human births and participation in some kind of global service corps that will be a key institution of the next High.

Why do I willfully submit myself to your bullshit daily?
Am I really that starved for English speaking contact?

This is pretty pitiful if you ask me.

This list of likely scenarios submitted by sclark is interesting. I noticed that (s)he joined this forum on the exact day of the terrorist attacks. It has also been suggested that one of the resolutions could be the harnessing of the extreme power that has been granted to the multinational corporations, which, through acquistion and merger, have become so dominant in almost every aspect of the marketplace, from Wal-Mart to McDonald's to Jiffy Lube, that more and more independent businesses have been all but wiped out. When are we going to wake up to this one?

I am posting the following link for two reasons. First, the story, from the Washington Post, describes how the Republicans have been running the Congress, a story that is, as I have argued, without precedent in American history.

Secondly I want to test the historical knowledge of the people on this site. I am known in my trade as a very fact-based guy. (That's probably one of the reasons my career hasn't gone further than it has, actually.) This article contains what is in my opinion a dreadful, inexcusable historical mistake. This is a relatively well educated group and I wonder how many people would be able to identify it.

Thanks.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...r=emailarticle

David K '47

Originally Posted by KaiserD2

I am posting the following link for two reasons. First, the story, from the Washington Post, describes how the Republicans have been running the Congress, a story that is, as I have argued, without precedent in American history.

I haven't been able to locate the quote, but I am reminded of the anecdote that the term "totalitarian" (actually "totalitario") was first used as a wisecrack about how Mussolini governed, as in 'not just a majoritarian government, but a totalitarian government'. Mussolini liked the term so much that he claimed it as his own. I don't think the Republican leadership would have as sanguine a reaction to such a remark today.

Secondly I want to test the historical knowledge of the people on this site. I am known in my trade as a very fact-based guy. (That's probably one of the reasons my career hasn't gone further than it has, actually.)

As a scientist, I can say that this is one of the things that makes me glad that history is my hobby, not my profession. It seems that people in the Arts and Humanities are more interested in meaning than in fact. Can you say C. P. Snow's "Two Cultures"?

This article contains what is in my opinion a dreadful, inexcusable historical mistake. This is a relatively well educated group and I wonder how many people would be able to identify it.

Thanks.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...r=emailarticle
David K '47

Here's my candidate from the article you cited: "the original Medicare bill in 1965". That may have been the bill that passed and became what we call Medicare, but it was neither the original piece of Medicare legislation proposed by LBJ as part of his Great Society (that came in 1964 as part of a bill to increase Social Security benefits; the bill passed, but the Medicare provisions were killed in committee) nor even the first national health insurance legislation (that was a legacy of Truman, in 1948).

Here's my source, a guest article by Joseph Califano in the Washington Post:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp...&notFound=true

Seems that the reporters for the Washington Post don't even read their own paper thoroughly!

Nearly half the electorate -- people who chose Democrats to represent them in Congress -- are, to an increasing degree, disenfranchised. Their representatives aren't simply outvoted on the House and Senate floors, they're not even present when key legislation is discussed and refined.


Oh, Boo-hoo! Politics is being practiced by politicians. I have been disenfranchised by these standards for my entire voting life as I live in an area that is close to a one party congressional district. Now even more of the nation is getting the chance to live in non-competitive congressional districts. Welcome to the club! :arrow: :arrow: :arrow:

slash-and-burn pork? In my world the pig doesn't get larger and larger as it does in the Halls of the Capitol. The Farm Bill and the Energy Bill and the Medicare Bill are not slash-and-burn politics but terrines of pork and pork fat and a bit of canola oil and butter and palm oil and duck grease and every other sort of lubricant.

This action makes the production of fois gras seem anorexic by comparison. This lubrication is needed as the taxpayer is going to be asked to bend over someday in the future.