GM's HEALTH PROBLEM

GM has just confirmed that the cost of health care is a real crisis for them. Costs are expected to increase 7-8% to 5.6 BILLION. They just posted a HUGE loss for the quarter.

Excuse me if I don't cry but they did create this crisis with their eyes wide open and now they want help. GM and the unions want the federal government to step in and make the problem go away by instituting a national health plan - not so fast. That is a subject for another blog. Lets see what can be done.

The UAW said that they are unwilling to re-open their contract; as expected. GM has historically given the unions everything they desired just to keep them from striking. They are now paying for that corporate idiocy. I hope the hundreds of lawyers on the GM payroll are going over that contract with a fine-tooth comb to see if they can spot any holes in it.

1. Health coverage for retired GM workers needs to be brought into reality. Currently they are covered by Medicare as well as private insurance. They need to be switched to a "Medicare Plus" plan offered by local HMOs. In this plan, Medicare covers most of the costs with the "Plus" coverage kicking in to cover the rest. Drugs and office visits should have at least a $10 deductible.

2. Move UAW workers into the white-collar health plans. Currently, what UAW workers receive as health care coverage is downright obscene, wasteful and in no way realistic. Their plan is unsustainable in today's economy. UAW workers basically contribute 7% towards their health coverage; that is a joke. White-collar workers contribute 27%. Both groups of workers should be placed into the 30% contributing rate. Co-pays, deductibles and premium contributions should be instituted at once.

The above are not really sacrifices; they are a dose of reality the rest of us in the country are dealing with.

GM also needs to stop quarterly stock dividend payments. If this is a real crisis lets behave accordingly.

GM is responsible, first, to its stockholders (owners) and they must not forget that. The UAW needs to protect its members and their futures and therefore needs to work hand in hand with GM to guarantee the health of the corporation.

Asian companies are kicking our asses. They have the luxury of avoiding all the historical mistakes we have made in this auto industry but we are Americans and we need to show the world that we invented the modern auto industry and we can re-invent it if need be and the need is REAL.

Janusz

Janusz 

Kilpatrick - Worst Mayor!

Time Magazine has recently designated Kwami Kilpatrick, Detroit's Mayor, as one of the worst mayors in the country.

Kilpatrick was on the fast track. Young and hip-hop, family in politics, brash and arrogant, articulate and really, really full of himself. Mayor to Governor to Senator to President?

All Kwami had to do was handle this mayor gig and solidify his reputation as a can-do politician. Well, he blew it.

He appointed his cronies from the hood to important positions and was surprised when they turned out to be real hoods and quite incompetent.

He surrounded himself with an elaborate security force and fired anyone that suggested after hours improprieties.

He purchased a luxury vehicle for his wife with city money but denied it until he could not deny it any more. This at the time the city is laying people off because of lack of funds.

Our daily newspapers document the millions of dollars lost by the city because of plain ole' incompetence; forgetting to file something on time, forgetting to spend allocated money on time, etc.

The big picture reveals a city in shambles, no one really in charge and no real future. Another election will bring in new faces but will that save the city? I don't think so. The bureaucracy that has been embedded in the city since Coleman Young's days will not leave and politicians do not have any political balls to throw them out.

No, Detroit needs a dictator or at least be placed into receivership under the guidance of a professional.

This professional would outsource all city work to private contractors. All administrative posts would be filled by competent professionals not political cronies.

The City Council would be dissolved. A new advisory City Council would be elected on a "ward system" basis and not "at-large". It would not have any powers accept advisory. It would have a bare-bones budget.

The city budget would be balanced and remain so as a legal requirement.

In time, city dwellers would reap the rewards of such a drastic move; they would actually have dependable services and lower taxes.

In time, an elected official could be re-introduced into city government but with restrictions - you do not want to go back to the ole' days again.

Is this scenario realistic? NO. Our Governor doers not have the political balls to place the city into recievership even if it is the right thing to do and for the benefit of the people. Detroiters would call this a racist move trying to deprive them of their freedoms. So there is no hope?
Probably.

I was raised in Detroit and still say I am from Detroit when I travel BUT I am disgusted with the city and more and more look on it as a joke. If the citizens re-elect Kilpatrick, the joke gets sicker.

Janusz

Why Ratzinger?

I was surprised at the election of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger of Germany as the next Pope but I should not have been.

A key feeling among the Cardinals, I think, was to give the legacy of Pope John Paul II a chance to continue to work its magic without jumping into a young Pope eager to also make his mark on the world. I guess they wanted a rest period of sorts.

The new Benedict XVI is 78 and definitely a staunch conservative. He will not rock the boat and at 78, he probably will not reign for a very long time - they hope. He looks pretty fit to me and very mobile.

Pope John XXIII was 77 when he came to the Papacy and he instituted Vatican II in his short time in Office but Benedict XVI is not John XXIII and would prefer to leave things the way they are, in fact, maybe tighten the screws a little more.

Catholic liberals are disappointed as they should be but hey, when things start falling apart maybe even these aging conservatives will agree that things need to change.

Janusz

The Polish Pope is Dead.

As a Polish-American, I was very proud to hear that a Polish cardinal was named Pope; the first non-Italian in some 400 years.

The fact that he was fluent in many languages, athletic, good looking and willing to travel all over the world, made me even prouder.

To me, his crowning achievement was being instrumental in the eventual demise of Communism. He not only freed his own people but also the countless millions suffering under the control of the USSR regime.

His willingness to visit Catholics all over the world changed how people perceived the Pope and the Papacy. The Papacy was no longer just a "European" institution. He became known as a Pope of and for, the people, especially the young who treated him like a Rock Star.

Pope John Paul II reached out to other religions, especially Judaism. Coming from Poland, he knew, first hand, what happened to the Jews in Poland under the Nazis; he lived in the Auschwitz vicinity near Krakow. He was painfully aware of the prevailing view of Poles, Catholics, Christians - that the Jews were Christ Killers and therefore somehow deserved the holocaust.

During WWII under Pope Pius XII, the Papacy came under extreme criticism for appearing to side with the Nazis against the Jews by not condemning the wholesale slaughter of the Jews. Even the city of Rome, the actual Vatican sector, is accused of not providing shelter to the Jews living within its confines.

Pope John Paul II tried to repair the damage between the Catholics and the Jews. In his last will and testament, the Pope mentions only two men; one, his personal secretary and the other, the Rabbi of Rome who welcomed him into the Roman Synagogue, early into his Papacy.

Pope John Paul II (Karol Wojtyla) was no John XXIII; he was conservative to the core. He believed in tradition and felt his main job was to maintain that tradition. He believed that deviating from tradition, rocking the boat in any way, only weakened the Church. He appointed like-minded individuals to positions of power in the Church.

He had a long reign (26 years) and therefore had some impact on the Church, Catholics and on our society in general. His impact will be debated but definite positives and negatives are quickly emerging.

To me, one very large negative was his lackadaisical handling of the priestly sex scandal. The scandal was mostly an American problem but only in that the crimes of priests in other countries have not yet been exposed.

The Pope, at first seem to doubt the validity of the accusations. Later, when forced to address the problems, he mumbled something about the need to protect the children. He flat out dropped the ball on this one and as the leader of the Church, dropping the ball was not permissible. To me he was out of touch. Maybe too full of tradition and not enough of reality.

His second negative, according to me, was his refusal to address the realities of contraception. We are not talking about abortion, we are talking planned parenthood as opposed to having all the children God intended you to have until you finally die in childbirth or you and your children starve to death because you cannot support all the kids God is blessing you with.

He banned the use of condoms as means of contraception, helping to spread AIDS and ironically, increase the number of abortions performed in the world. A majority of American Catholics just smile at this official stance of the Church on contraception and do what they feel is only sensible and rational. I don't see how they can suffer the hypocrisy.

Not allowing priests to marry is again the result of his blind devotion to tradition even though priests did marry in the past according to Church history. Priestly marriage was banned to prevent leaving Church money and property to the priest's heirs. The Church could have simply banned the heirs from inheriting Church property. Other religions, including Christian Orthodox , have allowed priestly marriage from the beginning without any problems.

The official Church position against priestly marriage is that the priest has to devote his entire being to the service of God, Church and his flock; there is no room for a family because that would detract him from his mission. I am afraid that argument does not hold any water; the Church already allows married priests with families (converts from other religions) so it can not be a critical factor.

Allowing priests to marry may have helped keep the Catholic Church from being a favorite destination of pedophiles. Some may scoff at this rationale but statistics do not lie and please remember we are only hitting the tip of the iceberg and what about the centuries we will never know anything about.

Women as priests? This was true in the early history of the Church. In fact, women bishops were very important to the growth of the early Church. It did not take long for men to get the upper hand and put women in their place.

The fact that Jesus had twelve male apostles means absolutely nothing in the tradition of having priests be only of the male gender. The male dominated Church made the rules and created the traditions. Who was present when Jesus died on the cross - only his female followers. Who did the resurrected Jesus appear to first - not to no stinkin males.

Most Biblical scholars agree that Paul's letters Timothy 1&2 as well as Titus were not written by Paul but by some later author of one of the churches. The author used Paul's name to grant "authority" to his own views about Church organization. The author insisted that women be silenced and brought under control.

Tradition yes but with modern scholarship debunking that tradition, change could be scripturally justified. Yet the Pope chose to keep the false pretense alive and he was reported to be quite a Biblical scholar himself.

Let us see what the new Pope will bring to the table. He needs to bring something because the Church is running out of priests and it is running out of credibility.

Janusz

Goodbye Terri Shiavo

I was relieved to hear that Terri Shiavo finally died. I felt sorry and embarrassed for her, her husband and her family. I also felt sorry and embarrassed for the United States.

I don't think any of us know the whole story behind this case. We certainly do not know all that went on between the husband and Terri's family during the last 15 years. I am pretty confident that their contact with each other grew more and more acrimonious as time went on and eventually ended in deep, deep resentment and hatred towards each other.

One good result from this regrettable case is that Americans learned that they need to think about their eventual aging and death now - even if they are young. Terri was 26 when she had her accident, an age when people do not have death, accidents or debilitating diseases on their minds. People need to have a "Living Will" giving "Power of Attorney" to a selected individual to handle their medical affairs when and if they become incapable of handling them. I don't think any of us would want to end up like Terri.

Terri did not leave a written will or statement about her wishes if she should become incapacitated. Her husband remembered a conversation with her when she mentioned to him that she would not want to be kept artificially alive. We have to take his word on this but he supposedly has witnesses that can verify the conversation took place and what was said.

United States law appears to side with the husband in cases like this. I am both a husband and a father and I can empathize with both sides BUT if both sides really care and love the person in question and want what is best for that person, there really should not be any sides.

Terri has been in her vegetative state for 15 years. Initially, the husband made every effort to help her even taking her to California for some experimental treatments. He eventually became convinced there was no hope left for her based on medical evidence. I think all can agree that after 15 years there was no hope of any meaningful recovery. Obviously, Terri's parents did not agree.

Were the parents deluding themselves about her chances of recovery? Were they irrational? Did they doubt the medical evidence? Did the fact that she could breath on her own and open her eyes, give them false hope? Did their hatred for her husband make them oppose anything he wanted to do?

Did the husband's hatred for the family induce him to make decisions that would hurt them? His decision to bar the family from Terri's room in her last moments and his decision to bury her ashes in a secret spot so the family could not visit them, was it just plain revenge for the trouble they have caused him?

One thing is certain, the politicians, especially the Republicans, behaved reprehensibly. They knew full well what our laws state and yet they tried to override them instead of amending them through due process. They threatened judges that did not agree with them with voting them out of office. They made inflammatory speeches accusing the Democrats of murdering Terri.

In a special meeting of Tom DeLay and other conservatives in Congress, his real intentions were caught on tape. DeLay thanked God for sending Terri to the Republicans so they could use her to damage the Democrats. They saw Terri as a political football to be used in this great political opportunity. So much for the sincerity of their intentions.

Many good people have disagreed with what happened to Terri. They did agree that life and death decisions should only be made by the people closest to Terri.

Maybe once a person turns 21 they should be legally bound to produce a living will. You can always change it as your life situation changes but at least you would not become a Terri Shiavo.

Lets talk EVOLUTION

There are ever increasing efforts in this country to somehow prohibit, minimalize, discredit or counter the teaching of human evolution to our young in science class. Evolution being the study of how humans began and evolved from the earliest possible time to the present.

The impetus behind these efforts is of course religious, more specifically Christian. These Christians somehow view the teaching of the evolutionary process as a threat to their belief system, more specifically the creation story in the Christian Bible.

The problem here is that there are Christians that do not take the Bible literally and there are Christians that do. Both groups are devout Christians, they just have their own form of Christian belief. In fact, there have always been many "Christianities" throughout history and that is true even today.

I will not get into whether the stories in the Bible are factual or not, that will be a subject for a later blog but for now we will concentrate on those fundamentalist Christians in the U.S. that absolutely oppose the teaching of evolution to their young and for that matter, our young, since it appears, they have the clout to impose their views on all of us.

Their argument is that Darwin's Theory of Evolution is just that; a theory. Actually, this is true. Darwin published "On the Origin of Species by Natural Selection" in 1859 as his theory. Let me make this perfectly clear; the theory part of his work is in the "Natural Selection" and not on evolution.

Darwin postulated that species evolved by the natural selection of the fittest which meant that the species most adapted to their environment would survive and the species not adapted to their environment would perish and become extinct.

A crude example would be, lets say, between two small animals of the same species living on the plains. Some animals had short legs and could run only slowly while other animals had long legs and were very swift of foot. These animals were the favorite food of a larger animal

According to Darwin's theory, the slower animals would perish because they could not outrun the predator while the faster animals would survive because they could. Therefore future generations of the small animal would tend to have long legs because they were the product of a male and female with long legs. I hope this makes sense to you.

What makes this a theory is that it has not been proven that natural selection or survival of the fittest is what controls the evolution of species. Some in the field today have proposed a "chaos" theory saying that it is all random chance as to which species survives and which does not.

Evolution itself, the fact that we and other inhabitants of this earth, did evolve from previous versions, is not a theory, that is a FACT. How do we know this? We have proof. We have bones, we have eggs, we have imprints, etc. We can date them with the carbon dating process. We now have a lot more scientific equipment and methods to help us in dating our finds.

So I hope I have made it clear that "evolution" is not a theory but Darwin's natural selection mode of evolution is a unproven theory.

In the United States, a majority of the population believes that God created us in our present form. This belief negates the evolutionary process and stipulates that we are direct descendants of Adam and Eve who looked just like us.

A smaller percentage of the population believes in the evolutionary process BUT believes the process was guided by God.

Only a small percentage of the population believes in the evolutionary process without any involvement of God.

Getting back to the topic at hand; teaching evolution. I feel the subject of evolution MUST be taught in our schools as a valid and documented scientific process otherwise we are keeping the FACTS away from our children and therefore, willfully misguiding them. How that evolution developed and is developing can be taught as a theory; all current theories should be taught.

Creationism is not a science but a religious belief. No one knows exactly how the world began, how the world was formed and how life started. Here, injecting God and creationism would not be out of the question but that should be left to the churches and is not a subject for science class; it cannot be proven, ever. It most definitely should come up in a class on world religions.

A new effort to inject some form of creationism into the evolution discussion is called "Intelligent Design". This theory basically states that living creatures are just TOO COMPLICATED AND INTRICATE to have arisen through simple evolution; there had to have been an intelligent designer to have created all of this.

This argument allows evolution to be viewed as fact but injects God as the designer of this evolutionary process. In a nut shell, this Intelligent Design theory can be countered with existing, totally unintelligent design in nature. I will give you male nipples as an example - I have many, many more examples of gross imperfections in nature.

This also could be a plausible idea except I would question the "intelligent" part but definitely, God could have designed the evolutionary process - but again, it could never be proven.

I do not wish to denigrate anyone's religious beliefs and as I have mentioned above, it is not out of the question that God could have played a role in evolution. What I object to is the determined efforts of a small group of fanatics that is making regular, intelligent Christians look bad by denying obvious reality; evolution cannot be denied.