Alma Ripps of the US Parks Service has responded to my inquiry concerning the implications of Congressman Maurice Hinchey's HR 4003, which would begin a process of federalizing the Hudson Valley, as follows:
Mr. Langbert,
Thank you for your recent inquiry regarding legislation introduced by Representative Maurice Hinchey, H.R. 4003, which would authorize the Secretary of the Interior to conduct a study of resources in the Hudson River Valley in the State of New York. I apologize for the tardiness in responding to your inquiry. As you can imagine, it is sometimes difficult to reach people during the holiday season to provide information.
The bill does not propose to establish a park in the Hudson River Valley, rather, it would (if enacted) initiate a study to determine whether any resources in the region meet the criteria for potential congressional designation. Such studies determine whether resources are nationally significant, suitable for inclusion into the National Park System, feasible to administer, and require management by the National Park Service versus being able to be managed by others. At the conclusion of a study (which normally takes two or more years), if resources in the region are found to meet these criteria, separate legislation would need to be enacted by Congress to establish a unit of the National Park System.
The Department of the Interior does not take an official position on pending legislation until a hearing by a congressional committee is conducted. To date, no hearing has been scheduled on this bill.
Since a study of the Hudson River Valley has not even been authorized, much less concluded, it would be premature to offer any conjecture on what the implications of establishing a unit of the National Park System in the region might entail. The first question, of course, is whether one or more resources would meet the criteria indicated above. Even when a study does determine that resources qualify for congressional consideration for establishment of a unit (although most do not), alternatives to National Park Service management must be explored and detailed in the study report.
Today, there are various models of units of the National Park System ranging from the traditional model where the National Park Service owns and manages a resource to those where we have limited or no ownership interest and work with partners for the continued protection of natural or cultural resources and to promote public understanding of their importance to the nation through education and interpretation. An example of the latter model is the Boston Harbor Islands National Recreation Area where we partner with state and nonprofit organizations and provide financial, technical and interpretive assistance. We also have affiliated areas of the National Park System which we do not manage, but provide financial and technical
assistance to those organizations that protect the resource. A study permits us to tailor the appropriate model to the resource(s), assuming that the criteria for potential designation have first been met.
Should a study of the Hudson River Valley be authorized by Congress, an extensive public involvement process would accompany the study since public support for any potential designation is a key aspect of the feasibility analysis. A study must also provide an analysis of environmental, cultural and socio-economic impacts of a unit of the National Park System should one be determined eligible for establishment.
Since you mentioned the Catskills and the Adirondacks, we assume you understand that the regulatory policies affecting those two regions were enacted by the New York State Legislature and are administered by agencies of the State, not the federal government. Currently, we have a cooperative relationship with the Hudson River Valley National Heritage Area which was established by Congress in 1996. No unique federal regulations apply to this area because of that designation, although the National Park Service provides financial and technical assistance to the heritage area.
We hope the above information has been helpful and that you will understand that we are not in a position to provide detailed answers to your questions since we have not commenced a study of the region to determine if a unit of the National Park System could be established in the Hudson River Valley.
Thank you for your interest in the National Park Service. Please contact me if you have further questions.
Alma
Sunday, January 3, 2010
Rethinking the Congressional Honorific
Tradition dictates that in writing a letter to a Senator or Congressman we use the appellation "Honorable". About.com gives the standard method:
>"The Honorable (full name)
(Room #) (Name) House Office Building
United States House of Representatives
Washington, DC 20515
"Dear Representative:"
The reference to Congressmen as "honorable" has no legal standing. As HL Mencken wrote in his 1921 "American Language":
"...perhaps the greatest difference between English and American usage is presented by the Honorable. In the United States the title is applied loosely to all public officials of apparent respectability, from senators and ambassadors to the mayors of fifth-rate cities and the members of state legislatures, and with some show of official sanction to many of them, especially congressmen. But it is questionable whether this application has any actual legal standing...Congressmen themselves are not Honorables. True enough, the Congressional Record, in printing a set speech, calls it “Speech of Hon. John Jones” (without the the before the Hon.—a characteristic Americanism), but in reporting the ordinary remarks of a member it always calls him plain Mr. Nevertheless, a country congressman would be offended if his partisans, in announcing his appearance on the stump, did not prefix Hon. to his name. So would a state senator. So would a mayor or governor...."
The reference to a Congressman as honorable is evidence of faith in the character and integrity of the United States government. Election to the Congress of a great nation is honorable. But do we retain belief in the integrity of the United States government?
Congress has abused its trust by gerrymandering districts, reducing its legitimacy and representativeness. As well, it has failed to maintain proportional representation. In 1787 there was one Congressman for every 3,000 Americans. Today there is one Congressman for every 500,000 Americans. In 1776 the nation's 26 senators represented on average 115,000 Americans. Today, with over 300 million Americans, the 100 Senators represent three million each. The failure to retain proportionality of representation has been accompanied with escalation of corruption, especially in the post World War II period. The corruption associated with the Robber Barons of the late nineteenth century was miniscule in comparison with the magnitude of campaign contributions, donations to libraries, speakers' fees and the like today. Membership in Congress has become not an honor, but a form of legalized criminality.
Congress has manipulated the mass media to reflect its own and its clients' interests. It has permitted the subsidization of privileged sectors of the economy at the expense of productive sectors, damaging the nation's economic prospects. It has permitted but refused to take responsibility for wars, harming the nation's interests once it has approved the wars. Congress has failed to oversee the federal government's budget, insisting on renewing hundreds of failed government programs. It has lied to the public with respect to government operations, military operations, the operation of the Federal Reserve Bank, the productivity of government offices and virtually every endeavor in which it has engaged.
Congress has abused its trust by ignoring, violating and damning the Constitution of the United States. It has extended federal power in ways that warranted reassessment through Constitutional Amendment, but knowing that such amendment was impossible, violated its Constitutional mandate. It has effected one failed program after the next, and it puts the interests of the clients of those programs over the interests of the public.
Congress has become a racketeering scheme. Mencken's sarcasm was appropriate in his day. Today, in connection with this year's Congress, the title "honorable" has become offensive.
I call on all Americans to desist from using the appellation "Honorable" when referring to Congessmen.
>"The Honorable (full name)
(Room #) (Name) House Office Building
United States House of Representatives
Washington, DC 20515
"Dear Representative:"
The reference to Congressmen as "honorable" has no legal standing. As HL Mencken wrote in his 1921 "American Language":
"...perhaps the greatest difference between English and American usage is presented by the Honorable. In the United States the title is applied loosely to all public officials of apparent respectability, from senators and ambassadors to the mayors of fifth-rate cities and the members of state legislatures, and with some show of official sanction to many of them, especially congressmen. But it is questionable whether this application has any actual legal standing...Congressmen themselves are not Honorables. True enough, the Congressional Record, in printing a set speech, calls it “Speech of Hon. John Jones” (without the the before the Hon.—a characteristic Americanism), but in reporting the ordinary remarks of a member it always calls him plain Mr. Nevertheless, a country congressman would be offended if his partisans, in announcing his appearance on the stump, did not prefix Hon. to his name. So would a state senator. So would a mayor or governor...."
The reference to a Congressman as honorable is evidence of faith in the character and integrity of the United States government. Election to the Congress of a great nation is honorable. But do we retain belief in the integrity of the United States government?
Congress has abused its trust by gerrymandering districts, reducing its legitimacy and representativeness. As well, it has failed to maintain proportional representation. In 1787 there was one Congressman for every 3,000 Americans. Today there is one Congressman for every 500,000 Americans. In 1776 the nation's 26 senators represented on average 115,000 Americans. Today, with over 300 million Americans, the 100 Senators represent three million each. The failure to retain proportionality of representation has been accompanied with escalation of corruption, especially in the post World War II period. The corruption associated with the Robber Barons of the late nineteenth century was miniscule in comparison with the magnitude of campaign contributions, donations to libraries, speakers' fees and the like today. Membership in Congress has become not an honor, but a form of legalized criminality.
Congress has manipulated the mass media to reflect its own and its clients' interests. It has permitted the subsidization of privileged sectors of the economy at the expense of productive sectors, damaging the nation's economic prospects. It has permitted but refused to take responsibility for wars, harming the nation's interests once it has approved the wars. Congress has failed to oversee the federal government's budget, insisting on renewing hundreds of failed government programs. It has lied to the public with respect to government operations, military operations, the operation of the Federal Reserve Bank, the productivity of government offices and virtually every endeavor in which it has engaged.
Congress has abused its trust by ignoring, violating and damning the Constitution of the United States. It has extended federal power in ways that warranted reassessment through Constitutional Amendment, but knowing that such amendment was impossible, violated its Constitutional mandate. It has effected one failed program after the next, and it puts the interests of the clients of those programs over the interests of the public.
Congress has become a racketeering scheme. Mencken's sarcasm was appropriate in his day. Today, in connection with this year's Congress, the title "honorable" has become offensive.
I call on all Americans to desist from using the appellation "Honorable" when referring to Congessmen.
Friday, January 1, 2010
Letter to the Olive Press
Dear Editor:
One of my neighbors took some offense at my recent characterization of Democrats as thieves in the pages of the Olive Press. My neighbor is not a thief, and that is probably true of a majority of the 36% of Americans who are registered Democrats. Nevertheless, I stand by my letter. For there are two kinds of Democrats: (a) thieves and (b) those fooled by (a). Category (b) Democrats might blame 2,500 years of propaganda. In Open Society and Its Enemies Karl Popper argues that Plato was the first to propagandize for collectivism by identifying collectivism with altruism. But collectivism has almost always helped the rich at the expense of the poor, not the reverse. Thus, "limousine liberals" advocate a class- and self-interested view.
The (a) category goes back to the days of Boss Tweed and "Plunkitt of Tammany Hall". In 1932 Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR) extended the federal edifice that the Progressive Republicans led by Theodore Roosevelt (TR) had established. The crux of the New Deal was FDR's abolition of the gold standard, which permitted the Federal Reserve Bank unlimited power to create ("print") money. The chief function of the Federal Reserve Bank has been and still is to expand the money supply by printing new reserves and then depositing them in money center banks who have the power to print a multiple of the money, as much as six times, of which they lend a disproportionate share to Wall Street. If you doubt that a disproportionate share goes to Wall Street, check out Roger Lowenstein's When Genius Failed about Long Term Capital Management (LTCM). The banking system had lent this early hedge fund 100 billion dollars when it collapsed. One hundred billion that time was more than one percent of the entire economy but LTCM employed only about 200 people. This kind of thing has accelerated during the Bush-Obama administration, with Obama donating untold trillions to his supervisors on Wall Street.
On the local level, the corruption of the Democrats never disappeared, even with the diminution of Tammany Hall in the 1930s under the Mayor Fiorello Laguardia (R-NY). Today, government employees, school teachers, and businesses who receive contracts, that is, category (a) Democrats, unabashedly steal from their neighbors. Category (b) Democrats, confusing collectivism with altruism, confuse the schoolteachers', government employees' and contractors' greed with altruism.
At the level of federal government operations, the edifice that TR and FDR created opened the door to special interest politics. No one knows how much of the federal government's operations budget actually performs any valid "service". Newspapers avoid questions like this, preferring to cheer for the bailout and Obama. My guess is less than 20% goes to any public interest purpose. 80% of your federal taxes are squandered.
Today we are facing a health reform bill, that category (b) Democrats have been told will help the poor. It will not. If you compare the performance of health industry stocks over the past two years with the stock market in general, the fall in the health stocks has been two thirds smaller than in the stock market generally, 8% versus 23%, since January 2008. The stock market thinks that the health reform bill will be a boon to the health industry. This will not be the case for the general economy. New regulations will increase costs; health benefits will be reduced; and the uncovered poor will be forced to buy coverage. It makes category (a) liberals happy to know that people making $50,000 per year will have to pay $6,000 for coverage. For these will be forced to sell their homes and live in city projects while category (a) limousine liberals can buy their houses as investments as they congratulate themselves about their liberal consciences.
Sincerely,
Mitchell Langbert
One of my neighbors took some offense at my recent characterization of Democrats as thieves in the pages of the Olive Press. My neighbor is not a thief, and that is probably true of a majority of the 36% of Americans who are registered Democrats. Nevertheless, I stand by my letter. For there are two kinds of Democrats: (a) thieves and (b) those fooled by (a). Category (b) Democrats might blame 2,500 years of propaganda. In Open Society and Its Enemies Karl Popper argues that Plato was the first to propagandize for collectivism by identifying collectivism with altruism. But collectivism has almost always helped the rich at the expense of the poor, not the reverse. Thus, "limousine liberals" advocate a class- and self-interested view.
The (a) category goes back to the days of Boss Tweed and "Plunkitt of Tammany Hall". In 1932 Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR) extended the federal edifice that the Progressive Republicans led by Theodore Roosevelt (TR) had established. The crux of the New Deal was FDR's abolition of the gold standard, which permitted the Federal Reserve Bank unlimited power to create ("print") money. The chief function of the Federal Reserve Bank has been and still is to expand the money supply by printing new reserves and then depositing them in money center banks who have the power to print a multiple of the money, as much as six times, of which they lend a disproportionate share to Wall Street. If you doubt that a disproportionate share goes to Wall Street, check out Roger Lowenstein's When Genius Failed about Long Term Capital Management (LTCM). The banking system had lent this early hedge fund 100 billion dollars when it collapsed. One hundred billion that time was more than one percent of the entire economy but LTCM employed only about 200 people. This kind of thing has accelerated during the Bush-Obama administration, with Obama donating untold trillions to his supervisors on Wall Street.
On the local level, the corruption of the Democrats never disappeared, even with the diminution of Tammany Hall in the 1930s under the Mayor Fiorello Laguardia (R-NY). Today, government employees, school teachers, and businesses who receive contracts, that is, category (a) Democrats, unabashedly steal from their neighbors. Category (b) Democrats, confusing collectivism with altruism, confuse the schoolteachers', government employees' and contractors' greed with altruism.
At the level of federal government operations, the edifice that TR and FDR created opened the door to special interest politics. No one knows how much of the federal government's operations budget actually performs any valid "service". Newspapers avoid questions like this, preferring to cheer for the bailout and Obama. My guess is less than 20% goes to any public interest purpose. 80% of your federal taxes are squandered.
Today we are facing a health reform bill, that category (b) Democrats have been told will help the poor. It will not. If you compare the performance of health industry stocks over the past two years with the stock market in general, the fall in the health stocks has been two thirds smaller than in the stock market generally, 8% versus 23%, since January 2008. The stock market thinks that the health reform bill will be a boon to the health industry. This will not be the case for the general economy. New regulations will increase costs; health benefits will be reduced; and the uncovered poor will be forced to buy coverage. It makes category (a) liberals happy to know that people making $50,000 per year will have to pay $6,000 for coverage. For these will be forced to sell their homes and live in city projects while category (a) limousine liberals can buy their houses as investments as they congratulate themselves about their liberal consciences.
Sincerely,
Mitchell Langbert
Mayo Clinic Rejecting Medicare Payments
Jim Crum just sent me an excerpt from a Bloomberg article indicating that the Mayo Clinic, one of the nation's leading research hospitals, has decided to refuse Medicare payments. This portends ill for national health policy, which has depended on cost shifting. The advocates of national health plans are confronted with basic economics, and so might consider that the health insurance bill might increase demand, hence costs. This would accord with ordinary economics, under which additional supply requires higher prices and demand would need to be reduced to restrain costs. But health reform advocates assert that the problem has an additional wrinkle and that health care costs can be reduced with increased demand.
They claim that uncovered-until-emergency and unpaid-for care has a greater long term cost than covering an additional ten or fifteen percent of the population. But this may not be so because hospitals frequently provide unpaid-for-care, the premise that the reduced-cost argument makes. Because the dynamics of supply and demand are unknown, the best we can say is that there will be a cost shifting composed of four elements: taxpayers, the covered, the uncovered and the health care industry. Given that increasing numbers of people will be covered by mandated care, Medicare will need to provide at least as adequate coverage as mandated care, or the hospitals will refuse it, forcing a redistribution of cost from the hospitals and those in private plans to Medicare recipients now forced to acquire private insurance.
It is clear that the bill shifts costs from those in plans and the health care industry to taxpayers and those who are uncovered because now the uncovered will need to purchase subsidized coverage that had previously been provided at the expense of the covered and the health care industry. The same may be true of Medicare recipients because Medicare shifted costs to the covered and the industry. The Mayo clinic may be anticipating a new reality whereby costs will increasingly be borne by individuals and/or by private plans. Thus, unless Medicare taxes are increased, the health care industry will not find it worthwhile to accept Medicare since refusing Medicare will force Medicare recipients to purchase mandated insurance.
As the government increases health care demand, one of four things must happen: (1) elimination of the cost of delayed care for the uncovered results in cost decreases that exceed the cost of additional coverage; (2) demand for mandated care comes at the expense of some current demand so that treatment of people in private plans is reduced; (3) prices for health care escalate as demand increases across the board; and/or (4) taxpayers additionally subsidize Medicare and mandated plans. With respect to (2), there is likely a considerable amount of care that is currently unnecessary, but it is impossible for government to determine which care is needed and which care is not. Hence, a portion of the population, and how large is unknowable but it won't be insignificant, will be be deprived of care.
It is likely that some who need care now but don't get it will receive care. But that additional care will cost the amount that the health care bill mandates be spent. It will not be free. It is likely that a percentage of those who do not choose to get health insurance now so choose because they are healthy enough to expect few claims. The least healthy who are uncovered received treatment anyway, currently at the cost of those who are covered and the industry. Thus, it is unknowable whether the cost of additional coverage will exceed its value.
One indication of the effects on the health care industry is the performance of health care stocks. These would suggest a net gain to the industry, presumably because more people will pay. In January 2008 the Ishares New York Stock Exchange Index fund closed at $86.35 and on December 28, 2009 it closed at $65.83, a decline of 23.8%. In contrast, the Ishares Health Index fell about 8% during the same period. Part of this much smaller decline may be due to population dynamics, but part may be due to the evolving characteristics of health reform, which seem to increasingly aim at shifting costs onto the uncovered poor.
Thus, we see a health reform movement that claims to help the uncovered and instead transfers wealth from the uncovered to the more affluent people in private plans and the health care industry.
>Dec. 31 (Bloomberg) -- The Mayo Clinic, praised by President Barack Obama as a national model for efficient health care, will stop accepting Medicare patients as of tomorrow at one of its primary-care clinics in Arizona, saying the U.S. government pays too little.
More than 3,000 patients eligible for Medicare, the government’s largest health-insurance program, will be forced to pay cash if they want to continue seeing their doctors at a Mayo family clinic in Glendale, northwest of Phoenix, said Michael Yardley, a Mayo spokesman. The decision, which Yardley called a two-year pilot project, won’t affect other Mayo facilities in Arizona, Florida and Minnesota.
Obama in June cited the nonprofit Rochester, Minnesota-based Mayo Clinic and the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio for offering “the highest quality care at costs well below the national norm.” Mayo’s move to drop Medicare patients may be copied by family doctors, some of whom have stopped accepting new patients from the program, said Lori Heim, president of the American Academy of Family Physicians, in a telephone interview yesterday.
“Many physicians have said, ‘I simply cannot afford to keep taking care of Medicare patients,’” said Heim, a family doctor who practices in Laurinburg, North Carolina. “If you truly know your business costs and you are losing money, it doesn’t make sense to do more of it.”
Medicare Loss
The Mayo organization had 3,700 staff physicians and scientists and treated 526,000 patients in 2008. It lost $840 million last year on Medicare, the government’s health program for the disabled and those 65 and older, Mayo spokeswoman Lynn Closway said.
Mayo’s hospital and four clinics in Arizona, including the Glendale facility, lost $120 million on Medicare patients last year, Yardley said. The program’s payments cover about 50 percent of the cost of treating elderly primary-care patients at the Glendale clinic, he said.
They claim that uncovered-until-emergency and unpaid-for care has a greater long term cost than covering an additional ten or fifteen percent of the population. But this may not be so because hospitals frequently provide unpaid-for-care, the premise that the reduced-cost argument makes. Because the dynamics of supply and demand are unknown, the best we can say is that there will be a cost shifting composed of four elements: taxpayers, the covered, the uncovered and the health care industry. Given that increasing numbers of people will be covered by mandated care, Medicare will need to provide at least as adequate coverage as mandated care, or the hospitals will refuse it, forcing a redistribution of cost from the hospitals and those in private plans to Medicare recipients now forced to acquire private insurance.
It is clear that the bill shifts costs from those in plans and the health care industry to taxpayers and those who are uncovered because now the uncovered will need to purchase subsidized coverage that had previously been provided at the expense of the covered and the health care industry. The same may be true of Medicare recipients because Medicare shifted costs to the covered and the industry. The Mayo clinic may be anticipating a new reality whereby costs will increasingly be borne by individuals and/or by private plans. Thus, unless Medicare taxes are increased, the health care industry will not find it worthwhile to accept Medicare since refusing Medicare will force Medicare recipients to purchase mandated insurance.
As the government increases health care demand, one of four things must happen: (1) elimination of the cost of delayed care for the uncovered results in cost decreases that exceed the cost of additional coverage; (2) demand for mandated care comes at the expense of some current demand so that treatment of people in private plans is reduced; (3) prices for health care escalate as demand increases across the board; and/or (4) taxpayers additionally subsidize Medicare and mandated plans. With respect to (2), there is likely a considerable amount of care that is currently unnecessary, but it is impossible for government to determine which care is needed and which care is not. Hence, a portion of the population, and how large is unknowable but it won't be insignificant, will be be deprived of care.
It is likely that some who need care now but don't get it will receive care. But that additional care will cost the amount that the health care bill mandates be spent. It will not be free. It is likely that a percentage of those who do not choose to get health insurance now so choose because they are healthy enough to expect few claims. The least healthy who are uncovered received treatment anyway, currently at the cost of those who are covered and the industry. Thus, it is unknowable whether the cost of additional coverage will exceed its value.
One indication of the effects on the health care industry is the performance of health care stocks. These would suggest a net gain to the industry, presumably because more people will pay. In January 2008 the Ishares New York Stock Exchange Index fund closed at $86.35 and on December 28, 2009 it closed at $65.83, a decline of 23.8%. In contrast, the Ishares Health Index fell about 8% during the same period. Part of this much smaller decline may be due to population dynamics, but part may be due to the evolving characteristics of health reform, which seem to increasingly aim at shifting costs onto the uncovered poor.
Thus, we see a health reform movement that claims to help the uncovered and instead transfers wealth from the uncovered to the more affluent people in private plans and the health care industry.
>Dec. 31 (Bloomberg) -- The Mayo Clinic, praised by President Barack Obama as a national model for efficient health care, will stop accepting Medicare patients as of tomorrow at one of its primary-care clinics in Arizona, saying the U.S. government pays too little.
More than 3,000 patients eligible for Medicare, the government’s largest health-insurance program, will be forced to pay cash if they want to continue seeing their doctors at a Mayo family clinic in Glendale, northwest of Phoenix, said Michael Yardley, a Mayo spokesman. The decision, which Yardley called a two-year pilot project, won’t affect other Mayo facilities in Arizona, Florida and Minnesota.
Obama in June cited the nonprofit Rochester, Minnesota-based Mayo Clinic and the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio for offering “the highest quality care at costs well below the national norm.” Mayo’s move to drop Medicare patients may be copied by family doctors, some of whom have stopped accepting new patients from the program, said Lori Heim, president of the American Academy of Family Physicians, in a telephone interview yesterday.
“Many physicians have said, ‘I simply cannot afford to keep taking care of Medicare patients,’” said Heim, a family doctor who practices in Laurinburg, North Carolina. “If you truly know your business costs and you are losing money, it doesn’t make sense to do more of it.”
Medicare Loss
The Mayo organization had 3,700 staff physicians and scientists and treated 526,000 patients in 2008. It lost $840 million last year on Medicare, the government’s health program for the disabled and those 65 and older, Mayo spokeswoman Lynn Closway said.
Mayo’s hospital and four clinics in Arizona, including the Glendale facility, lost $120 million on Medicare patients last year, Yardley said. The program’s payments cover about 50 percent of the cost of treating elderly primary-care patients at the Glendale clinic, he said.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)
