I have been in Tokyo 6 times that I can remember, 4 times just passing through and once for a day which was about as long as I cared to stay. I lived in the Far East for a year and didn't like it one bit. I called Seoul home during that period and Tokyo was only an hour away by air and that was the place to pick up electronic equipment from the manufacturer at ridiculously low prices. The yen at that time was something like 315 to the dollar so the buying power was huge. Just don't buy anything else but electronics. Everything else was astronomical in price.
One time, I was flying back from San Francisco with a stop in Honolulu, Tokyo, then into Kimpo International is Seoul. I was flying Northwest Orient, now defunct, which was the premier carrier for the Pacific rim countries. We landed in Tokyo a little late and would be unable to clear Japanese airspace by midnight so the airline put all 350 or so of us up at a 5 star hotel and gave us a 20 dollar certificate for breakfast at the hotel resturant before flying out at 9 the next morning. The hotel was in the heart of downtown and the first thing I noticed was that they stuck lightbulbs on everything. Vegas wasn't that well lit. Lights on buses..buildings..And the corporate headquarters..Panasonic put up a brightly illuminated sign and Pioneer had to have a bigger one..Sony had to make theirs bigger than the two..and on and on..
After checking in and exchanging a few dollars for yen, I went to the nightclub downstairs and listened to a Japanese group sing a song for the visiting Americans, "The Gleen Gleen Glass of Home", which I found to be cute because I had tried to learn Korean and I had much bigger problems than substituting "L"'s for "R"'s. The 1 drink I had (I asked for a whiskey sour..not sure what I got) was the equivalent of 6 bucks in 1972 dollars. One way to keep me sober.
The next morning was miserable. It was cold and rainy. But I would be able to use the 20 dollar chit to have a big breakfast. What 20 bucks got me was an egg and coffee. And bad coffee at that.
My final memory of Japan was landing in Yakota, to fuel our Flying Tigers stretch DC-8 for the 17 hour flight back home. We were all called off the plane and ushered to the tarmac where everybody's baggage was stacked in a pile. Somebody was bringing home contraband so we had to gather our luggage and go through customs to have our baggage checked. Sure enough, some Air Force guy stationed at the Air base had tried to smuggle some exotic plant out of the country. For a planeload of servicemembers wanting to go home, the guy was lucky we didn't kick him off at 40,000 feet.
To be sure, my experiences in Japan were few. The culture and mindset of the Japanese were completely foreign. Japan is still a relatively closed society and that brings us to the current situation in the country.
We all watched in horror as the earthquake and tsunami wiped away homes and people. And then the worldwide panic of what happens when a nuclear reactor melts down. The odds of that happening anywhere else in the world is minuscule but sadly, our best chance at clean energy may be stalled if not abandoned altogether. The final act of the play hasn't begun yet. Rebuilding will be a massive and expensive ordeal that will take years to finish. Haiti was a different situation. They had no infrastructure to begin with. It's doubtful that those who survived on the northeast coast will rebuild in the same spot. Even if the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant is fixed, the ground around it will be radioactive virtually forever. If the chart I'm reading is correct, U-238, the most common form of Uranium, has a half-life of over 4 BILLION years. U-234 is less-ONLY 250,000 years. There's a reason nobody lives near Chernobyl anymore.
But on the bright side, if any people on earth can rebuild from the devastation, it's the Japanese. They have the pride and strength as a people, and if at all possible, they will do it themselves, with as little outside help as possible. The cost will be somewhere between 300 billion to a half a trillion dollars. And that too they will pay with as little outside help as is needed. With Americans, especially those in California, if the San Andreas let loose, they'd say to hell with it and move to Kansas. I know I would.
Saturday, March 26, 2011
Sunday, March 13, 2011
Losing America
I loved my country enough to give her 11 years of my life, and would have given more if my choices hadn't been becoming more and more limited as I was climbing to the top as fast as my talents and abilities would allow. Notice I said I loved. Now it's only like. Something is happening to this great experiment called democracy that would have our founding fathers outraged.
When I was growing up, honor, patriotism, and sacrifice were the cornerstones of this experiment called democracy. We were given a birthright in blood by the 418,000 Americans who made the ultimate sacrifice in World War Two, and the 683,000 who were wounded and the 130,000 who are still listed as missing in action. I was proud to wear the same uniform and I never had a day that I considered it a sacrifice. Nor did I see myself as a hero just because I heard my country's call as a whisper, not a shout. It was a time of war, as it is now, but nobody called us heroes. There was a draft but I was deferred so I went completely of my own choosing. I was lucky in that I had a profession that allowed me to have a more civilian mindset than most. I wasn't worthy to even walk behind those who stormed the beaches of Normandy which saw over 2,500 die in the first 24 hours. That number could be as high as 7,000, as many are still listed as MIA. Or those who fought tiny island by tiny island in the Pacific.
Flash forward to today. We have sold that birthright to China and anybody else who will buy our Treasury Bonds. We are paying about 22 percent of every tax dollar to pay INTEREST on the debt. Like when you take out a mortgage, very little in the first 4 years goes toward principal. But in the case of China, they are more than happy to loan us money because every dollar you spend on something that says "Made in China" goes to the government and they, in turn, can loan us our own money.
Right now, every taxpayer is on the hook for 181,000 dollars. That's your share of the national debt. I remember when the debt hit 4 trillion dollars and the outcry to cut spending. At that time I was only on the hook for 36,000 dollars. There were cries for fiscal reform when the deficit hit 400 billion. But instead of cutting, they expanded. The new cry is for high speed rail and green energy. The federal government can't get Amtrak in the black, so how is high speed rail supposed to help. Thousands of miles of new track will have to be laid to handle speeds of over 100 miles per hour, but they'll have to push 150 to get people away from air travel. And green energy is decades away. Incandescent bulbs are being outlawed but the new CFL bulbs, although they save energy, contain dangerous amounts of mercury. God forbid your kid breaks one and releases mercury vapor into the room. If out read disposal instructions, you all but need a HAZMAT suit.
Then there's the entitled. I watched the worst come out of America in Wisconsin, the home of the 159,000 a year bus driver. Collective bargaining doesn't belong in the public sector. They hamstring government's ability to conduct the people's business. And now the day of reckoning has arrived. We must now pay for the sins of the past. The salaries of state workers are paid by taxpayers who don't have family medical plans for a pittance, or retirement before 65 with no contribution. And most of those who pay for those salaries and benefits are struggling to provide those same "rights" for their own families. Bad teachers are destroying their student's futures with no fear of repercussion. School districts would rather keep them on knowing they don't deserve to be in the classroom because it takes too long and costs too much to fire them.
Assuming the court's let "Obamacare" stand, the ramifications to the future of medicine will be profound. First, where are the doctors who will treat the 35 million or so uninsured who will suddenly swell the rolls of insured. And, as with any new benefit, they will overtax the system getting health care they didn't have before. Many doctors are quitting their practice due to malpractice insurance costs. Med schools will have to start accepting marginal applicants, new med schools will spring up like "The Famous Artists School". Now it will be the "Famous Doctor's School". Send us 200,000 dollars and we'll make you a doctor at home. Maybe there'll be online courses. Now I'm being sarcastic, but nobody knows what the impact to health care it will be or the cost once it's implemented.
I remember when the price of a gallon of gas was 30 cents. And I remember the gas wars that would break out that would see the price as low as 19 cents. We didn't have OPEC or how and where the gas came from. We just knew it was there. How times have changed. I remember not so long ago when gas spiked at over 3 dollars a gallon. To listen to Democrats, it was because President Bush was making his rich oil buddies richer. This time, those same people are deathly silent as we watch the price of everything that has to be trucked in or is made from petroleum products skyrocket. The only upside on that one is there may be an increase in the cost of living so Social Security recipients may get a cost of living increase for the first time in 3 years. But then again, if they do, (or even if they don't) Medicare increases will wipe that out.
People are starting to compare America to the fall of Greece, Rome, The British Empire, and other great civilizations that fell because of greed and excess. I don't know where this road leads, but for now, it looks like it's over a cliff. I hope I'm wrong. Too many people have given too much to give us something nobody else has..the once great country called the UNITED states.
When I was growing up, honor, patriotism, and sacrifice were the cornerstones of this experiment called democracy. We were given a birthright in blood by the 418,000 Americans who made the ultimate sacrifice in World War Two, and the 683,000 who were wounded and the 130,000 who are still listed as missing in action. I was proud to wear the same uniform and I never had a day that I considered it a sacrifice. Nor did I see myself as a hero just because I heard my country's call as a whisper, not a shout. It was a time of war, as it is now, but nobody called us heroes. There was a draft but I was deferred so I went completely of my own choosing. I was lucky in that I had a profession that allowed me to have a more civilian mindset than most. I wasn't worthy to even walk behind those who stormed the beaches of Normandy which saw over 2,500 die in the first 24 hours. That number could be as high as 7,000, as many are still listed as MIA. Or those who fought tiny island by tiny island in the Pacific.
Flash forward to today. We have sold that birthright to China and anybody else who will buy our Treasury Bonds. We are paying about 22 percent of every tax dollar to pay INTEREST on the debt. Like when you take out a mortgage, very little in the first 4 years goes toward principal. But in the case of China, they are more than happy to loan us money because every dollar you spend on something that says "Made in China" goes to the government and they, in turn, can loan us our own money.
Right now, every taxpayer is on the hook for 181,000 dollars. That's your share of the national debt. I remember when the debt hit 4 trillion dollars and the outcry to cut spending. At that time I was only on the hook for 36,000 dollars. There were cries for fiscal reform when the deficit hit 400 billion. But instead of cutting, they expanded. The new cry is for high speed rail and green energy. The federal government can't get Amtrak in the black, so how is high speed rail supposed to help. Thousands of miles of new track will have to be laid to handle speeds of over 100 miles per hour, but they'll have to push 150 to get people away from air travel. And green energy is decades away. Incandescent bulbs are being outlawed but the new CFL bulbs, although they save energy, contain dangerous amounts of mercury. God forbid your kid breaks one and releases mercury vapor into the room. If out read disposal instructions, you all but need a HAZMAT suit.
Then there's the entitled. I watched the worst come out of America in Wisconsin, the home of the 159,000 a year bus driver. Collective bargaining doesn't belong in the public sector. They hamstring government's ability to conduct the people's business. And now the day of reckoning has arrived. We must now pay for the sins of the past. The salaries of state workers are paid by taxpayers who don't have family medical plans for a pittance, or retirement before 65 with no contribution. And most of those who pay for those salaries and benefits are struggling to provide those same "rights" for their own families. Bad teachers are destroying their student's futures with no fear of repercussion. School districts would rather keep them on knowing they don't deserve to be in the classroom because it takes too long and costs too much to fire them.
Assuming the court's let "Obamacare" stand, the ramifications to the future of medicine will be profound. First, where are the doctors who will treat the 35 million or so uninsured who will suddenly swell the rolls of insured. And, as with any new benefit, they will overtax the system getting health care they didn't have before. Many doctors are quitting their practice due to malpractice insurance costs. Med schools will have to start accepting marginal applicants, new med schools will spring up like "The Famous Artists School". Now it will be the "Famous Doctor's School". Send us 200,000 dollars and we'll make you a doctor at home. Maybe there'll be online courses. Now I'm being sarcastic, but nobody knows what the impact to health care it will be or the cost once it's implemented.
I remember when the price of a gallon of gas was 30 cents. And I remember the gas wars that would break out that would see the price as low as 19 cents. We didn't have OPEC or how and where the gas came from. We just knew it was there. How times have changed. I remember not so long ago when gas spiked at over 3 dollars a gallon. To listen to Democrats, it was because President Bush was making his rich oil buddies richer. This time, those same people are deathly silent as we watch the price of everything that has to be trucked in or is made from petroleum products skyrocket. The only upside on that one is there may be an increase in the cost of living so Social Security recipients may get a cost of living increase for the first time in 3 years. But then again, if they do, (or even if they don't) Medicare increases will wipe that out.
People are starting to compare America to the fall of Greece, Rome, The British Empire, and other great civilizations that fell because of greed and excess. I don't know where this road leads, but for now, it looks like it's over a cliff. I hope I'm wrong. Too many people have given too much to give us something nobody else has..the once great country called the UNITED states.
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