The Dwindling Colorado River

When one of my buddies announced plans to move to Arizona after retirement, the first thought that occurred to me was that I'd read a lot of articles about water shortages in the Southwest in general, and Arizona in particular.   He told me that "everyone" he'd spoken to in Arizona said water was not a problem, despite the fact that much of the population growth was in what had previously been desert.

Map from USGS.gov

Turns out that the water supply in the Southwest is getting scarcer, and so far, the place that's suffering as a result is Mexico.  The Colorado River begins in Northern Colorado and winds through Utah, Arizona, and California before entering the Mexican State of Sonora and the Gulf of California.   Only these days, not much water is left in the river by the time it arrives in Sonora and that's primarily because of the diversion of the water in the above-mentioned States.  Some of it irrigates the crop growing areas of California and some of it provides water for the growing populations in Las Vegas and Phoenix, as well as other areas in the parched Southwest.  The lack of water that reaches Mexico has caused farm failures in that country which some say has fed the migration of Mexicans into the U.S. in search of jobs.

Marketplace.org ran a story ("Downstream, Death of the Mighty Colorado") on July 23 about a photo essay of the Colorado River, documenting the deterioration of the river's flow and the impact on people.   It's worth reading (or listen to the podcast) to see what part of the cost of the huge increase in population of the Southwest has been.  The story consists of an interview with a photo-journalist who has published a book about the river.  His concluding observation is chilling:

Yeah, this thing has a lot to do with money... the majority of this water is siphoned off before it gets to our southern neighbor, and it's siphoned off in order to help feed places like Las Vegas and Los Angeles. Without this water source and without the power and agriculture it provides, these economies would not be booming the way that they are. That many people should not live there. There is no way that area can ecologically support that population. Unfortunately, that might mean that this problem isn't going to go anywhere.

For Profit Colleges-Big Money Being Made

If you, or someone you know, is thinking of enrolling at a for-profit college, make sure you, or they, read/listen to this Marketplace.org story.  Can you say "misleading advertising?"  

As usual, follow the money...  These schools are making huge profits at the expense of many students and, ultimately, the U.S. taxpayer (we foot the bill for those college loans these schools depend on).

Talk, Talk, Talk

Ever wonder why our Congress gets so little done?   One of the reasons is the misuse and overuse of the filibuster (more here) by Senate Republicans, The Party of No (PON).

It seems that for the PON, there is no issue too small for a filibuster.  I think I may have to  start maintaining a list of filibusters that make the news, because every day it seems there's another legislative measure that the PON seeks to block by never-ending "debate."   So the government that is supposed to be operated by majority vote (51 in the Senate) seems to almost always require 60 votes.  The PON filibusters mean that the Senate is unable to end debate and conduct votes on the merits of the legislation.  So much for majority rule. 

Here's the latest: As a result of the infamous Supreme Court decision in January 2010 that confers personhood on corporations, political contributions by companies are now practically limitless.   As a result, we can expect to be absolutely buried by political ads this Fall by anonymous corporate special interests.  The Congress has a bill to place limits on this corporate political spending which the PON has filibustered to prevent a vote.   The Senate attempt to end debate failed 57-41 on this week.

Earlier in July, another filibuster from the PON prevented the American Workers, State, and Business Relief Act of 2010 from reaching a vote.  An effort to end the filibuster failed 58-38 in early July 2010.  Previous attempts to invoke cloture failed 57-41 and 56-40 June.  This bill included provisions to extend unemployment compensation.   Cloture was finally invoked and the bill passed later in July after a new Senator from West Virginia was sworn in to replace the late Sen. Byrd, providing a 60 member majority.

Even Senate efforts to reform filibuster rules and lower the votes needed to end debate on legislation from 60 to (perhaps) 55 can't get past the PON filibuster.

One of the most galling aspects of Senate "modern" filibusters is that the filibustering Senators don't even have to actually stand up and speak the entire time the Senate has a quorum.  They don't have to actually break a sweat to prevent the Senate from acting on a bill.  Under Senate rules, the Senate Majority Leader (Senator Reid) has the ability to require an actual "traditional filibuster," but Reid doesn't seem to want to do anything to make the PON really, really angry.  How could they be any less cooperative?

What's a democracy to do when it's held hostage by the minority party?

One Fastfood Is (Not) Like Any Other

Open Letter to McDonald's Corporation:

Based on personal experience, you have nothing to fear from Subway's foray into serving breakfast foods.  Their menu sounds decent enough, but the execution is, well, not very impressive.  The crew didn't seem to know how to assemble the breakfast and the components tasted like they had been sitting around for a couple hours.  Which they probably had been.  I was asked if I wanted "white or yellow" (egg) and my choice was "yellow" (if I was that health conscious I wouldn't be getting breakfast at a fastfood restaurant).  I got both.  The five (count 'em) hash brown "patties" were hard by the time I got home.  And "Seattle's Best" coffee?  Not so best.

Perhaps corporations might be advised to stick with what they know instead of trying to fill every niche.  Maybe I won't be using the rest of those coupons.  

Quantity or Quality?

During the national health care debate (and I hesitate calling what we had an actual debate, as opposed to shouting epithets at each other), one of the topics that briefly surfaced was end of life counseling.   There was a short-lived attempt to allocate Medicare funds to provide for comprehensive counseling on end of life issues, such as whether to continue treatments.  This devolved into the shouting over "death committees," among other untruths.  

Some health policy groups say cancer patients, as well as people with failing hearts or terminal dementia, should get better end-of-life counseling. Last year, a plan that would have let Medicare pay for doctors to talk about things like living wills was labeled "death panels" and was dropped.

This Associated Press article is an interesting report on the state of affairs with end of life treatment in the U.S.  What it says is that despite our "rational" desires to accept a terminal illness with some measure of grace, the facts show that we are not entering hospice care until way too late, and in many cases, desperately choosing very expensive experimental treatments to prolong "life."   The result can be a few more weeks, but at a horrible cost in quality of life.  A couple of sad facts:

—The average time spent in hospice and palliative care, which stresses comfort and quality of life once an illness is incurable, is falling because people are starting it too late. In 2008, one-third of people who received hospice care had it for a week or less, says the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization.
—Hospitalizations during the last six months of life are rising: from 1,302 per 1,000 Medicare recipients in 1996 to 1,441 in 2005, Dartmouth reports. Treating chronic illness in the last two years of life gobbles up nearly one-third of all Medicare dollars.

The denial that Americans seem to undergo (although you might choose to call it "hope") is a good part of the reason that "health care costs" are continuing to skyrocket.  If you don't have insurance, you probably don't have the opportunity to consume multiple, experimental chemotherapy treatments for terminal cancer.   If you do have insurance, you might be able to get those $10,000 treatments, but the rest of us are paying for it.

What this comes down to is a tug of war between acceptance of the inevitable versus the good old American "never give up" reliance on "hope."  It's difficult to pick one side in this debate.  Even simply leaving it up to the individual and his/her family isn't a clear solution; if they opt to continue treatments indefinitely, the individual isn't the one footing the bill, we are.

We should really try to have a rational, calm discussion in this country about quality vs. quantity when it comes to end of life treatment.  Before we truly do go bankrupt.

Groceries and Politics - and Euthanasia?

A strange thing happened to me a couple months ago while I was grocery shopping.   This was before the Federal health insurance bill was passed.  I was approached by a elderly man (elderly meaning older than me) who commented on my Iowa T-shirt.   The commenting wasn't the strange part.  The discussion that ensued was, at least to me, the strange part.  It started benignly, with "How are things in Iowa?"   I responded that things were pretty good in Iowa (where I used to live), especially as compared with the political chaos in Illinois (where I've lived for the past 22+ years).   

In case you haven't heard, Illinois is drowning under a $13 billion (maybe more) deficit and politicians who don't have the courage to raise taxes to pay for the services the public has come to expect.   So we're laying off teachers because the State owes money to local school districts for last school year.   But I digress.  

I made some remark about Illinois government, and the man launched into a passionate dissertation on how the Federal government wants to ration health care to the elderly.   I was startled initially, but tried to say something about how health care costs are out of control and too many people have no insurance.  His response was that the government wants to set up "death panels" to save money.   I was flabbergasted that this guy was actually convinced that his country wants him dead.

As I listened to this man, who was convinced that any effort to reduce health care costs would be tantamount to executing the elderly, I realized that he wasn't really interested in discussion, but simply wanted to convince me that his view was correct.  I don't feel like I know all the answers to lots of topics, but I wasn't about to buy into this conspiracy theory.  It seemed advisable to extricate myself from the "chat" and finish my grocery shopping, which I did.   But the encounter bothered me a lot.

I had suggested to the man that our current for-profit health insurance system is designed to make profits for the corporations, and that lots of people are denied coverage for various treatments by the insurance companies.  He told me his fate was more secure in the hands of corporate interests rather than government, another consequence of Ronald Reagen's anti-government philosophy.  

I find such a belief truly incredible, given how badly many large corporations treat employees, the environment, and anything else that doesn't directly pad their profits.  

And I'd also suggest that when it comes to something as overtly nefarious as euthanasia, our government is the last place to look for efficient implementation.

No, I don't believe anyone in the current Administration was promoting "death panels" or euthanasia in order to curb health care costs.   I also believe that we Americans expect miracle cures for everything, from "ED" to sleeplessness to terminal cancer.  And we simply can't afford to consider unlimited expensive cures (paid for by someone else) to delay the inevitable.   As usual, there has to be a middle ground and we have to find some way to discuss what that might be.