Sunday, December 21, 2008
Tuesday, December 9, 2008
History is old news, so why bother.
History isn’t just a grouping of words that tells us about past events; it is also a guide book to solving future problems. I am not saying that every contingency is covered by History, certainly not the ‘what do we do if the Large Hadron Collider generates micro Black Holes that gobble up chunks of Europe.’ Although, it might give us ideas from other world changing events like Krakatoa or Pompeii that we could use.
The Point is that History, is like a bag of tricks for a magician, or point 0 on a reference line, it gives you a place to start and ideas from similar situations, or even better it might tell you what not to do, thereby reducing the time to find the correct solution.
Perhaps it is time for the President to not only have a Scientific Advisor, but also a History Advisor. The important thing to remember about history though, is there is always more than one side, so whoever the person was, would have to not only know history, but love it enough to seek the whole picture, not just that written by the winners.
The Point is that History, is like a bag of tricks for a magician, or point 0 on a reference line, it gives you a place to start and ideas from similar situations, or even better it might tell you what not to do, thereby reducing the time to find the correct solution.
Perhaps it is time for the President to not only have a Scientific Advisor, but also a History Advisor. The important thing to remember about history though, is there is always more than one side, so whoever the person was, would have to not only know history, but love it enough to seek the whole picture, not just that written by the winners.
Saturday, December 6, 2008
You've sunk my Pirate Ship or Leave no Survivors
The Somali Pirates are turning into quite the Bugaboo, oh what, oh what are we to do? Come on, it isn’t Rocket Science. It isn’t a difficult question to answer and once again History provides an Answer. I am beginning to wonder what use it is to record History if nobody is going to pay attention to it.
The answer isn’t even that far in our past. It is called a Q Ship. A Q Ship is a trap; it is the poisoned cheese that kills the rat. In this case it is a nice, juicy boat that has hidden weapons. Take a Yacht, a small Tanker, a Cargo ship or anything else these people have attacked and you mount weapons on it that are disguised as deck hardware or that are on elevators and can be raised to the deck level or higher. I have a few ideas about the set up.
My perfect Q Ship would be a Yacht, with a 30mm GAU-8 Avenger in the Bow and Stern, on Elevator Turrets, capable of -10 degrees deflection to +30 degrees and able to rotate up to 120 degrees off center line. I would add in a couple Mk 19 40mm Grenade Launchers or Metal Storms Fire Storm in a 12 Barrel Configuration. Actually the Fire Storms would be perfect for a first strike type set up, in which they reside in an open well amid ships and can fire from the well. They don’t make much noise when they fire and there isn’t much smoke. This would allow you to lock on with radar, feed the Fire Storms the coordinates and select a fire pattern and the number of rounds. Press the initiate button and a second or few later you have any where from1 round to possible a couple hundred in an arcing trajectory about to blanket an area.
If they didn’t give me a GAU-8, I would be just as happy with a Quad Mounted set of M242 Bushmasters. They would give you a bit more range, but a lower rate of fire.
Last but not least, because you are bait, you need a steady crew that can handle small Arms. Since we are dealing with materials destruction, I would mix in some Barrett M98 .50 cal Rifles, some SCAR-H 7.62mm and for the up close and well not quite so close the AA12 Combat Shotgun with mixed Shot and for giggles a supply of FRAG 12 rounds.
The way a Q Ship works, is it picks a series of routes and it passes back and forth through the area. Eventually, it gets spotted and attacked. In this case the Pirates come into board, the Q Ship goes on alert, but doesn’t reveal until the pirates are well inside the kill zone. All weapons unmask and fire sequence begins. It does not stop until the boats are sunk and all the pirates are captured or eliminated.
For a boat that gets away, you have two choices either some kind of chase craft that is easily launched such as a couple of Wave Runners in 2 man configurations with XM307s on a swivel mount or a Combat UAV like the MQ-8B Fire Scout in an Hellfire configuration or the A160 in a combat configuration.
The important thing is never to leave a free survivor. Eventually they will run out of Pirates or they will learn to leave boats alone.
The answer isn’t even that far in our past. It is called a Q Ship. A Q Ship is a trap; it is the poisoned cheese that kills the rat. In this case it is a nice, juicy boat that has hidden weapons. Take a Yacht, a small Tanker, a Cargo ship or anything else these people have attacked and you mount weapons on it that are disguised as deck hardware or that are on elevators and can be raised to the deck level or higher. I have a few ideas about the set up.
My perfect Q Ship would be a Yacht, with a 30mm GAU-8 Avenger in the Bow and Stern, on Elevator Turrets, capable of -10 degrees deflection to +30 degrees and able to rotate up to 120 degrees off center line. I would add in a couple Mk 19 40mm Grenade Launchers or Metal Storms Fire Storm in a 12 Barrel Configuration. Actually the Fire Storms would be perfect for a first strike type set up, in which they reside in an open well amid ships and can fire from the well. They don’t make much noise when they fire and there isn’t much smoke. This would allow you to lock on with radar, feed the Fire Storms the coordinates and select a fire pattern and the number of rounds. Press the initiate button and a second or few later you have any where from1 round to possible a couple hundred in an arcing trajectory about to blanket an area.
If they didn’t give me a GAU-8, I would be just as happy with a Quad Mounted set of M242 Bushmasters. They would give you a bit more range, but a lower rate of fire.
Last but not least, because you are bait, you need a steady crew that can handle small Arms. Since we are dealing with materials destruction, I would mix in some Barrett M98 .50 cal Rifles, some SCAR-H 7.62mm and for the up close and well not quite so close the AA12 Combat Shotgun with mixed Shot and for giggles a supply of FRAG 12 rounds.
The way a Q Ship works, is it picks a series of routes and it passes back and forth through the area. Eventually, it gets spotted and attacked. In this case the Pirates come into board, the Q Ship goes on alert, but doesn’t reveal until the pirates are well inside the kill zone. All weapons unmask and fire sequence begins. It does not stop until the boats are sunk and all the pirates are captured or eliminated.
For a boat that gets away, you have two choices either some kind of chase craft that is easily launched such as a couple of Wave Runners in 2 man configurations with XM307s on a swivel mount or a Combat UAV like the MQ-8B Fire Scout in an Hellfire configuration or the A160 in a combat configuration.
The important thing is never to leave a free survivor. Eventually they will run out of Pirates or they will learn to leave boats alone.
Monday, December 1, 2008
Don't just complain, come up with an answer.
There has to be a better way to provide health care then the Obama plan. It is just not a viable solution to spend 11% to 15% of our G.D.P. (Total amount of money a country makes). There has to be better solutions that don’t directly involve our Government footing the bill totally, something that uses as much of the public as possible, after all this is a social issue, so make it a social answer.
The first thing you need to do is lower the cost of health care across the board. This in turn lowers the cost of insurance, making it more affordable for companies to give Health Insurance to their employees. The quickest way to do this is to lower the Doctors costs. Usually they have a fairly high cost just in Malpractice Insurance that they pass on to the consumer of their services. That would be you and me. To reduce the price of this alone what you would need would be a panel to decide if the lawsuit is justified. If it isn’t justified, it is sent back to the Lawyer with a Bill for the panel’s time. If it is justified the case carries forward, if a Doctor is getting hit with multiple suits, then he probably shouldn’t be a Doctor.
The next thing to do is look at Prescription drugs and to deal in as many generics as you can. Induce the companies to either sell the drugs at a reduced rate or to allow another company to produce a generic. Possibly through tax breaks.
Now you need to figure out insurance for the people without. We could create something I would call a Flex Card plan. This allows the person to use a special clinic or Hospital. The flex card is used to pay for the services. At the end of the year the person with the Flex card has their Tax return invested into the Flex Plan. This would work pretty much like standard insurance does now, where the younger and healthier people would probably be covering the older and those with poor health.
The next part is the Special Hospitals and Clinics. These would be staffed with a few Senior Doctors, but for the most part they would be staffed with 3rd and 4th year Medical Students and Nurses, as well as Nurses and Doctors that have just graduated. The new Doctors and Nurses would agree to work at the Hospitals and Clinics for a Period of time based on the amount of Loans they have. This would basically allow them to pay off their Loans in half the time, while making a decent wage.
The question then is, aren’t you still losing money from these new Doctors and Nurses not repaying their loans? Well the answer to that is yes, but are we losing it in the same quantities as what is proposed by Obama? With this you would be losing around 10 Billion Dollars per year (figured as 25,000 Doctors (outside large figure) times 300,000.00 Dollars (high outside figure) + cost of training Nurses). Half of this figure would be recompensed through the work residency program. Half would be forgiven, can’t have a stick without a Carrot. Double this amount because you still have to pay these Doctors and Nurses a decent wage, not what they will make once their debt is paid off and they are in Practice for themselves, but still decent. Add in another 21 Billion in building or opening new clinics, plus maintenance for current buildings. Add in 1 Billion is Utilities. Add in 30 Billion in Pharmaceutical spending based more upon a revamped system like Canada uses. Add this up and you have 72 Billion Dollars. Now we add in 25% more because I am sure I haven’t thought of everything and you come up with 90 Billion Dollars. Add in another 25% to cover the difference between the Tax Return income from the Flex Care members and the final total comes to 112,500,000,000.00 (One Hundred, Twelve Billion, Five Hundred Million Dollars)
The Obama plan calls for 4% of our Gross Domestic Product or mathematically 13,800,000,000,000.00 * .04 = 552,000,000,000.00 or Five Hundred Fifty Two Billion Dollars. I have seen the actual costs once it is all said and done that it will fall much closer to being between 11% to 15% of our GDP or 1,518,000,000,000.00 (One Trillion, Five Hundred Eighteen Billion Dollars) to 2,070,000,000,000.00 (2 Trillion, Seventy Billion Dollars)
I am sure I have forgotten something along the way and some true numbers would have to be crunched. The numbers I arrived at were derived from research I could locate on the Internet based on the year 2007. Where I couldn’t directly locate a number I pulled a number from something I figured would be close, for instance the cost to build and maintain new clinics I took from the amount spent by the Armed Services in New Construction and Maintenance. Knowing the way Military projects work, I would be willing to bet that Civilian Contracting could come in cheaper.
In closing based strictly upon my research of something like what we will call the Flex Plan versus the Obama Plan, we come up with the Flex plan being approximately 439,000,000,000.00 Dollars cheaper than his estimate or 1,405,000,000,000.00 cheaper than the lowest true cost estimation. One thing that would need to be looked into is how you keep companies from tossing their health plans over to let the Government shoulder the full burden, but that is a topic for another time.
The first thing you need to do is lower the cost of health care across the board. This in turn lowers the cost of insurance, making it more affordable for companies to give Health Insurance to their employees. The quickest way to do this is to lower the Doctors costs. Usually they have a fairly high cost just in Malpractice Insurance that they pass on to the consumer of their services. That would be you and me. To reduce the price of this alone what you would need would be a panel to decide if the lawsuit is justified. If it isn’t justified, it is sent back to the Lawyer with a Bill for the panel’s time. If it is justified the case carries forward, if a Doctor is getting hit with multiple suits, then he probably shouldn’t be a Doctor.
The next thing to do is look at Prescription drugs and to deal in as many generics as you can. Induce the companies to either sell the drugs at a reduced rate or to allow another company to produce a generic. Possibly through tax breaks.
Now you need to figure out insurance for the people without. We could create something I would call a Flex Card plan. This allows the person to use a special clinic or Hospital. The flex card is used to pay for the services. At the end of the year the person with the Flex card has their Tax return invested into the Flex Plan. This would work pretty much like standard insurance does now, where the younger and healthier people would probably be covering the older and those with poor health.
The next part is the Special Hospitals and Clinics. These would be staffed with a few Senior Doctors, but for the most part they would be staffed with 3rd and 4th year Medical Students and Nurses, as well as Nurses and Doctors that have just graduated. The new Doctors and Nurses would agree to work at the Hospitals and Clinics for a Period of time based on the amount of Loans they have. This would basically allow them to pay off their Loans in half the time, while making a decent wage.
The question then is, aren’t you still losing money from these new Doctors and Nurses not repaying their loans? Well the answer to that is yes, but are we losing it in the same quantities as what is proposed by Obama? With this you would be losing around 10 Billion Dollars per year (figured as 25,000 Doctors (outside large figure) times 300,000.00 Dollars (high outside figure) + cost of training Nurses). Half of this figure would be recompensed through the work residency program. Half would be forgiven, can’t have a stick without a Carrot. Double this amount because you still have to pay these Doctors and Nurses a decent wage, not what they will make once their debt is paid off and they are in Practice for themselves, but still decent. Add in another 21 Billion in building or opening new clinics, plus maintenance for current buildings. Add in 1 Billion is Utilities. Add in 30 Billion in Pharmaceutical spending based more upon a revamped system like Canada uses. Add this up and you have 72 Billion Dollars. Now we add in 25% more because I am sure I haven’t thought of everything and you come up with 90 Billion Dollars. Add in another 25% to cover the difference between the Tax Return income from the Flex Care members and the final total comes to 112,500,000,000.00 (One Hundred, Twelve Billion, Five Hundred Million Dollars)
The Obama plan calls for 4% of our Gross Domestic Product or mathematically 13,800,000,000,000.00 * .04 = 552,000,000,000.00 or Five Hundred Fifty Two Billion Dollars. I have seen the actual costs once it is all said and done that it will fall much closer to being between 11% to 15% of our GDP or 1,518,000,000,000.00 (One Trillion, Five Hundred Eighteen Billion Dollars) to 2,070,000,000,000.00 (2 Trillion, Seventy Billion Dollars)
I am sure I have forgotten something along the way and some true numbers would have to be crunched. The numbers I arrived at were derived from research I could locate on the Internet based on the year 2007. Where I couldn’t directly locate a number I pulled a number from something I figured would be close, for instance the cost to build and maintain new clinics I took from the amount spent by the Armed Services in New Construction and Maintenance. Knowing the way Military projects work, I would be willing to bet that Civilian Contracting could come in cheaper.
In closing based strictly upon my research of something like what we will call the Flex Plan versus the Obama Plan, we come up with the Flex plan being approximately 439,000,000,000.00 Dollars cheaper than his estimate or 1,405,000,000,000.00 cheaper than the lowest true cost estimation. One thing that would need to be looked into is how you keep companies from tossing their health plans over to let the Government shoulder the full burden, but that is a topic for another time.
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