The Country Is Anxious, Pessismistic, Ashamed, Helpless, and Defensive.

The title words today were printed in the May 6, 2011 issue of The Week magazine and were attributed to David Brooks, a New York Times columnist. His entire quote was the following:

Over the past months, we've seen a fascinating phenomenon. The public mood has detached form the economic cycle. In normal times, economic recoveries produce psychological recoveries. At least at the moment, that seems not to be happening. There are structural problems in the economy as growth slows and middle-class incomes stagnate. There are structural problems in the welfare state as baby boomers spend lavishly on themselves and impose horrendous costs on future generations. As these problems have gone unaddressed, Americans have lost faith in the credibility of their political system. This loss of faith has contributed to a complex but dark national mood. The country is anxious, pessimistic, ashamed, helpless, and defensive.

Great writing but a very scary conclusion. If any organization or human endeavor loses faith, then getting out of the gutter becomes an almost impossible task. Faith feeds hope and hope feeds hard work and innovation since there is a belief that there can be a better way, regardless of what human endeavor we are discussing. A current example here in the Tampa Bay area is our NHL team, the Lightning.

The Lightning have been less than stellar over the past few years, playing mostly drab, uninspired hockey. However, last night, they just won their second playoff series of this hockey season, sweeping the Washington Capitals, four games to none. The Capitals were the number one seed coming into the series while the Lightning was the fifth seed. The Capitals had been in the playoffs the past several seasons while the Lightning had not. The Capitals have one of the most elite players in the Game while the Lightning have only very good players.

Nonetheless, with faith that they could overcome the higher seeded, more star studded team, that faith led to hope which led to hard work and innovation which led to a series sweep. Without faith in themselves and their leaders, this does not happen.

Unfortunately, but probably accurately, Mr. Brooks is not finding a lot of faith around the country today. Why not? Consider just some random things that are currently going on:

- The first time unemployment claims jumped significantly today, an unexpected event. Every week, we still have over 400,000 Americans who have lost their jobs and have to apply for unemployment benefits. Tough to have faith when you do not have a job.

- The nation's Federal government debt situation is currently out of control. The Federal government, and by proxy, all Americans, are now well over $14 TRILLION in debt. It was announced today that Joe Biden had the first meeting of his deficit reduction effort today.

This is about six months after the President's year long Debt reduction Commission published their extensive findings which were immediately ignored by Obama, Reid, and Pelosi. Now all of a sudden, we are expecting six people in Washington, meeting for the first time today and led by someone who slept through part of the President's recent speech on the debt problem, to fix a problem in a few weeks that has been decades in the making. Tough to have faith in this chaotic and simplistic approach to problem solving.

- An April 27, 2011 article from the Associated Press talked about how there are more than 100 levees across the country that the Federal government has classified as unfit for use. These levees, while most were originally constructed to protect farmland, over time now protect towns and communities. For example, one such dangerous levee in Missouri protects the town of Poplar Bluff,  home to 17,000 people.

If the government is right, than there are over a hundred communities and areas that are in a dangerous predicament, existing below substandard levees holding back tons of water. Makes you wonder: given the trillions of dollars we have paid to all levels of government over the years, wouldn't you think that some of that tax money could have been used to fix about 100 levees? Tough to have faith when you have a leaky levee over your head.

- An Associated Press article from March 17, 2011 discussed how many states  are facing such dire economic conditions that they are thinking of canceling political primary elections in the future. Now, I applaud state government for trying to be efficient with limited tax dollars and looking to run an efficient budget. However, it is a little disheartening when the political class and the various levels of government that the politicians run cannot execute a traditional and vital part of democracy, primary elections. Tough to have faith when your voting right is possibly endangered by budget cuts.

- Even when an event happens far away, it adds to the lost of faith. Consider Detroit, a metro area that used to be the nation's fourth largest city. A metro area that at one point in time was the home of over two million people. A metro area whose population has plunged to only about 700,000 people, the same amount of people that lived there in 1910 or so, a time when there were for fewer people in the country as a whole. A metro area that is now smaller than the cities of Columbus, Ohio and Indianapolis, Indiana. A metro area that has such widespread desolation that some are talking about turning it back into a farming community.

No one wants to see something like that happen anywhere in the country for fear that it could happen to their community. Tough to have faith in the face of such despair and when a mayor of another major metro area, NYC Mayor M. Bloomberg has the hairbrained scheme of forcing immigrants to live and work their as a solution to the population loss.

- An article in the May, 2011 issue of the AARP magazine profiled the town of Vallejo, California. Vallejo has the distinction of being the largest city in the state of California to file for bankruptcy, indicating that the Detroit situation is not contained in Detroit.  Vallejo was the first state capital, is only 25 miles from San Francisco, and for 150 years was the location for one of the Navy's most important shipyards.

However, now, it has had to reduce city employees including police and fire, and many city services as the multiple factors of ever increasing pension and health care costs (unfunded liabilities of $195 million) collide with the decreasing property and sales tax revenue (down over 20% since 2008). Tough to have faith when an established, once thriving community such as Vallejo is driven into the ground as a result of the political class not being able to plan, manage and execute a budget process.

- Many years sooner than expected, the Social Security has run a cash deficit this year, sending out more money than it collected in payroll taxes. Tough to have faith when a large portion of your retirement revenue is running short of funds.

- While we have all applauded and been thrilled by the Bin Laden situation, I was struck by the President's words that night when he addressed the nation for the first time after the operation was successfully completed. Within a six sentence sequence in his speech, the President stated the following phrases:

• "I directed."
• "I was briefed."
• "I met repeatedly."
• "I determined"
• "At my direction."

There is an old wise saying that goes something like: "True leaders give credit and take blame." Tough to have faith when the leading political figure in the country does not abide by this simple leadership credo, putting his own personal and political needs ahead of others.

Random events and circumstances, all contributing to the the feeling of pessimism, helplessness, and lack of faith that Mr. Brooks talks about. Defective infrastructure, lack of leadership, faulty budgeting, too much debt, the coming insolvency of government programs such as Social Security, etc., the list of unaddressed problems is wide and diverse.

However, all is not lost, if you use the Lightning as a ray of hope. The Lightning this season had a new owner, a new general manager, and a new coach. In other words, they changed out their leadership structure for a new set of leaders that re-instilled those faith, hope, hard work, and innovation traits back into the team. They could not change out the players so they changed out the leaders.

The same cleaning process needs to happen within our political processes. As laid out in "Love My Country, Loathe My Government," such steps as instituting term limits, holding Congressional committee members accountable for their committees' responsibilities, instituting various ethics steps to ensure high leadership standards, and removing the cancer of campaign donations from the election process would allow us to change out our sitting politicians.

We can not change out our citizens (the players), although I would bet some politicians would like to, so let's change out our leaders like the Lightning did. If we have lost faith in our current management team, what do we have to lose by changing the processes that put them into their seats originally. Time to stop feeling anxious, pessimistic, anxious, helpless, and defensive, time to have faith and hope.






Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at http://www.loathemygovernment.com/. It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect
freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.

Please visit the following sites for freedom:
http://www.cato.org/
http://www.robertringer.com/
http://realpolichick.blogspot.com/
http://www.flipcongress2010.com/
http://www.reason.com/
http://www.repealamendment.com/

Mobile Borders and Immobile Government

Seems there has been a lot of talk about U.S. borders in the news recently, both our southern border with Mexico and our northern border with Canada. Unfortunately, much of the talk and news further illustrates a concept that New York Times columnist David Brooks introduced in a 2010 column, namely the concept of immobile government.

He accurately defined the current state of government in this country today: it is has gotten so large and so unwieldy and is run so inefficiently by the American political class that no issue or problem is ever addressed and solved, it is immobile. However, despite this nonperformance, the immobile government continues to use up and waste vast sums of wealth from American taxpayers who get virtually nothing in return.

The latest examples of immobile government, unfortunately, have to do with our porous borders and the ever growing threat of drug cartel violence in Mexico. Many times in this blog we have listed examples of the violence, to which we can add the latest examples:

- The Associated Press reported on January 24, 2011 that Mexican gunmen firing automatic weapons killed seven people in a park in the border city of Ciudad Juarez. The ironic thing about the massacre was that the park had been built as an anti-violence measure. There were 180 bullet casings found after the shooting, casings from the same type of assault weapons typically used by the Mexican drug cartel gangs. Two of the dead were playing soccer at the time of the shootings. 3,000 people were killed in the same city in all of 2010.

- The same article also reported that in a separate incident, seven drug gang suspects were killed in a shootout with Mexican authorities in Monterrey.

- On February 4, 2011, the Associated Press reported that U.S. government officials had warned U.S. citizens not to drive at night in parts of a Mexican city and also warned that armed robberies  had increased against foreigners in another Mexican city. The U.S. government said on its website that it would not allow its own personnel to drive to the airport at night and recommended that other Americans take the same precaution. It also provided defensive driving tips including "do not hesitate to run over any median or similar obstacle to make an emergency U-turn to get out of harm's way."

- On February 3, 2011, the Associated Press reported that drug cartel gang members likely killed a retired Mexican general who took over as police chief in a Mexican border city a month ago along with two of his bodyguards.

- If these AP stories are not enough to get your attention, consider some facts and observations from Columnist Carl Hiaasen of the Miami Herald from one of his recent columns:

• More than 20,000 Mexicans have been killed in the drug cartel battles since 2006 including over 2,000 law enforcement officers.
• During a recent 24 hour period in Acapulco, 27 people were killed including 14 whose decapitated bodies were dumped in a shopping center.
• Mexican drug cartel shootings have been reported in Arizona, Texas, California, and Alabama.
• It is believed that Mexican drug smuggling organizations have criminal networks in 230 U.S. cities, ranging from Miami to Billings, Montana. These estimates come from Federal authorities, according to Mr. Hiaasen.
• Although the Mexican cartels traffic in all types of drugs, their main activity is marijuana, which has made many of the drug cartel leaders billionaires.
• Illegal immigration is likely to increase as more and more Mexicans flee the violence, corruption, and hopelessness of living in a country that is devolving into a narco state.

Very serous stuff. Violence, increased illegal immigration, illegal drug cartel induced anarchy, and corruption, not only south of our borders but also throughout the entire country. And what is our immobile government and the political class doing to stop it? Not much, if you observed how high ranking government officials are addressing the issues. First, consider some words from a recent AP report covering Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano's view of the drug cartels:

• Napolitano reported that U.S. communities on the border with Mexico are safer than most American believe.
• Drug cartels will be met with "overwhelming force" if they should move north.
• U.S. authorities deported 779,000 illegal immigrants in 2009 and 2010. On average this comes out to about 389,000 a year.
• Last year, about 195,000 of the deportees were convicted criminals. Thus, half of who we are finding and shipping back to Mexico are convicts.

Seems like the Secretary has a little disconnect from reality. Of course our border cities are safer than most Americans believe, the cartels are not interested in just the U.S. border cities but are interested in the entire nation, as Mr. Hiaasen described, from Miami to Billings. The border cities are just the gateway, they are not the final destination of the illegal drugs, the illegal immigrants, or the violence.

You cannot say the borders are secure if you are shipping back more than 1,000 illegals a day on average, half of whom are known criminals. Finally, you cannot claim that you will meet the drug cartels with "overwhelming force" IF they move north. They already have moved north into over 200 U.S. cities, as reported by the same government who is still looking for the drug cartels to make a move north. So, why Napolitano sits immobile on the southern border looking for the cartels to make their move, their mobility has enabled them to already embed themselves everywhere north of that border.

The bigger government immobility example? According to an article in the June 11, 2010 issue of The Week magazine, in 1986 Congress ordered the Pentagon to seal the border with Mexico within 45 days. Seems like that order has been rather immobile for the past 25 years or so since millions of illegal immigrants, probably thousands and thousand of tons of illegal drugs, and cartel violence has spilled over since that ineffective, immobile Congressional decree.

But lets not just look at our southern border. Border security with Canada was in the news recently. President Obama met with his Canadian counterpart, Prime Minister Stephen Harper, last Friday and they agreed to improve border security. This improvement would come about through better screening, use of new technologies, sharing information among law enforcement agencies, and identifying potential threats early. One would have thought that as two friendly, economically intertwined nations that all of this was already going on but what do I know, maybe the political class is just getting around to doing the basics of border security.

However, this is not the case. According to a 2004 Congressional Research Service report, the "United States and Canada are striving to balance adequate security and other issues such as the facilitation of legitimate cross-border travel and commerce, and protecting civil liberties. Congress has taken action to improve border facility infrastructure, increasing the number of border patrol agents and immigration inspectors at the northern border, and provide these officials with additional technologically upgraded equipment. Congress has also taken action to track the entry and exit of foreign visitors by mandating an automated entry/exit system... These initiatives are outlined in a 30-point plan, which was signed by officials from both countries in December, 2001."

So, talk about immobile government. An agreement is signed more than  nine years ago, three years after that, the political class and the government that it runs are still "striving" to fulfill the agreement, and last week, the President Obama says we are going to move forward on the same initiatives that were agreed to years and years ago. How more immobile can you get, nine years and counting. It is a wonder and a miracle nothing bad has happening due to the political class immobility on this issue.

And talk about irony, consider another recent news report, this one from the Miami Herald on February 1, 2011 in an article written by Rob Hotakainen. According to Mr. Hotakainen and a recently released government report:

• Less than 1% of our northern, 4,000 mile border with Canada is adequately protected.
• This 1% is about 32 miles which has reached "an acceptable level of security" and Federal authorities had the ability to detect illegal border crossings along only 1,007 miles of the border.
• In 2010, the Federal government spent $3 billion to crack down on illegal activity along the northern border, making about 6,000 arrests and intercepting nearly 40,000 pounds of illegal drugs.The government report suggested greater Federal oversight  to reduce "potential exploitation by terrorists, alien smuggling, trafficking of illicit drugs, and other contraband and criminal activity. Great thought, but wasn't the same thoughts and intentions formalized back in December, 2001 as reported by the Congressional Research Service?

The irony comes in when the article quotes members of the political class, all or most of whom, were in office and in charge back when the December, 2001 agreement and intent was signed regarding our northern border:

• Senator Joe Lieberman: "To me, this is absolutely alarming. Is it not too much to ask that our government be able to at least detect all illegal entries along the border, so we can get this information into the hands of law enforcement agencies that can then make the arrests." Gee, Senator, aren't you a part of that government that you criticize or am I missing something?
• Senator Carl Levin: "Any failure to coordinate efforts between agencies that weakens security on the northern border is totally unacceptable." So, Senator, what are you going to do about it if it is so unacceptable?
• Senator Susan Collins: "It is very clear from this report that the United States remains vulnerable. It is shocking that we have total control of 32 miles of a 4,000 mile border... There is a great deal of work to be done." So, Senator, when are you and your Senate counterparts going to get started? It is obvious you and them have done nothing for the past nine years or so.

Out of touch, clueless, and immobile, the trifecta. Unbelievable.

So in summary, the Mexican drug cartels and illegal immigration have already gone around Naplitano's immobile border Maginot Line, into hundreds of U.S. cities,  much like the Germans bypassed the immobile, dug in French in World War II. While being critical of Arizona for at least doing something as it relates to illegal immigration, the administration sends over 1,000 illegals back to Mexico every day. Senators are astounded by the lack of progress in mobilizing forces to secure our northern border but fail to take the blame for not doing anything for nine years. Thus, the undeniable conclusion: people and contraband are quite mobile when it comes to breaching our borders while the political class is totally immobile when it comes to stopping them.

Several steps from "Love My Country, Loathe My Government"  have to be implemented to get rid of this paralyzed government we suffer from today:

1. Step 34 would remove politicians from their Congressional committee posts for failure to execute their oversight duties. For example, anyone sitting on the Congressional committees responsible for overseeing the security of our northern border would be removed from those committee posts since after nine years, it is likely they are incapable of executing the committee duties of securing our borders.
2. Step 39 would impose term limits on politicians. We need some new thinking and new ideas. We need people in office that are just basically more aware of life and reality then what we are stuck with today. For Lieberman, Levin, and Collins to act so surprised and not even half aware that our northern border is still not secured, is just plain scary.
3. Step 26 and Step 29 would take a ground up look at both our current, failed war on drugs policy and immigration policies since both are so intertwined. Since the war on drugs began over 40 years ago and has brought us to the violence we now are facing from the cartels, it is obvious we have been standing still from a government perspective as the drug problem has marched along unimpeded. If you are shipping back over 1,000 illegal aliens a day, lord knows how many you are not catching. Thus, we need a new approach with new ways of thinking to get out of the rut we are now in with these two issues.

David Brooks was so right. We can expect nothing to change unless we find a way to break the monopoly of immobility that the political class has imposed on the country and the government that it should be supporting. Viewed another way, we are currently ruled by about 500 versions of Jabba The Hutt, a large, formless, immobile creature that consumes resources without making life any better for those around them. Whatever definition works for you is fine, both are accurate.




Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at www.loathemygovernment.com. It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.


Please visit the following sites for freedom:

http://www.cato.org/
http://www.robertringer.com
http://realpolichick.blogspot.com
http://www.flipcongress2010.com/
http://www.reason.com/
http://www.repealamendment

If You Thought The Federal Government's Finances Were In Bad Shape...

Many times in this blog we have talked about how dangerously high the Federal government's debts and spending are and how that debt and spending threaten the very solvency of the country. Just in the last three fiscal years during which the Democrats controlled Congress,  including the first two years of the Obama Presidency, the national debt will have gone up about $4 TRILLION or about $35,000 per U.S. household. It is on a trajectory to go up another $8 TRILLION in the next decade and that is probably a best case scenario. This comes out to over $100,000 per household. All of the standard measures of sound fiscal policy, e.g. annual deficit as a percentage of GDP, total national debt as a percentage of GDP, etc. are raising red flags of how dire our nation's Federal government finances are.


But, wait! There's more. If you thought the Federal government was in bad financial shape, consider some statistics for some local and state governments that appeared in a recent New York Times article by David Brooks:

• In New Jersey, employment benefit packages for state employees are 41% higher than similar benefit packages for those working for the average Fortune 500 company.
• New York City schools are in bad shape, possibly because the city has allowed over 10,000 former policemen and police women to retire before the age of 50.
• In California, a state very, very close to bankruptcy, in-state police officers receive 90% of their salaries when they retire at age 50.
• An average California corrections officer can earn over $100,000 when overtime is taken into account. The article points out that California spends more money on its prison system than its school systems.
• Unfunded state government pension obligations total about $2 TRILLION. According to a source quoted in the article, a political scientist at the City College of New York, government employees at all levels of government earn, on average, make $14 more per hour in wages and benefits than their private sector equivalents.
• Buffalo, New York has 50% fewer citizens than it had in 1950 but the same number of local government employees.

Want some more torture? Consider the following facts from the November, 2010 issue of Reason magazine and the article that provided a blueprint for financially saving the country:

• During the Great Recession, the private sector of the economy shed almost 8.5 million jobs but all levels of government actually added government employees during the recession to the tune of 100,000. Thus, there were fewer and fewer private sector jobs and their taxes to support more government employees, putting tremendous strains on the government budgets below the Federal level.
• In a July report, the national conference of State Legislators estimated that the states face a total budget gap of $84 billion for the next fiscal year, with almost half of all states thinking that their deficits will be more than 10% of their total budgets.
• In a June analysis, the National Governors Association estimated that the cumulative budget shortfalls for state governments over the next three years will be almost $300 billion. Despite their own estimates, the same Governors are recommending budgets that are actual 3.6% HIGHER for fiscal 2011.Talk about insanity. Fewer private sector jobs are available but state and local governments expand. Governors know they will have less money in the coming years but recommend that state government budgets be increased. Population bases shrink substantially but the governments supporting substantially fewer citizens does not. It's crazy.

Why are we in this situation. Two possible causes:

• Mr. Brooks suggests that it all comes down to the political class looking to spend taxpayer dollars to buy votes for the perpetual re-election. Take care of the public employee unions with high salary raises during economic boom times and promised future pension increases in lean times, essentially kicking the financial time bomb of pensions down the road to future generations, and you will most assuredly get most of the union votes and a good chance of re-election, fiscal sanity and prudence need not apply.
• The Reason article debunks the claims by state and local politicians that the economic downturn caused their budget problems. The article calculates that between 2000 and 2008, i.e. good economic times before the full impact of the recession took hold, the national population grew 8% and the CPI inflation indicator grew 25%. Thus, a rough estimate of how much state and local government should have grown to take into account more people and inflation ( Buffalo, follow closely) would be about 33%. However, during the good times and before the Great Recession, overall state government spending actually increased about 60%, almost twice as much as it logically should have. Thus, the political class has no one to blame but themselves. They increased their power and statue at the expense of their taxpaying constituents well before they can blame the economic downturn. Thus, ego, not recession, got most of the states into the budget mess they are in today.

The sad part of the whole situation is that the state and local governments are now so hamstrung by these outrageous commitments to unions and pensions, they have very little money left for helping out their citizens. By overpaying police and corrections officers, both active and retired, the state of California neglects its school systems. The New Jersey Governor recently suspended work on a new tunnel into New York City from New Jersey because it was getting too expensive and also because the state has such high commitments to its public sector unions that there is little money left over for such projects, even though the long term financial benefit of the tunnel is high. Buffalo's city government is 50% less efficient than it was 60 years ago simply because it has the same number of public employees serving  half as many people, despite productivity and efficiency enhancements in the way we live and work, e.g. computers, communications, etc.

Mr. Brooks really nails the underlying problem with the following thoughts:

"Many of us would be happy to live with a bigger version of 1950s government: one that ran surpluses and was dexterous enough to tackle long-term problems as they arose. But we don't have that government. We have an immobile government that is desperately overcommittted in all the wrong ways.... Someday there will be a political movement that is willing to make choices, that is willing to say 'this but not that.'"

"Immobile government," what a wonderful vision that also applies to the Federal government and the political class running it. Politicians seem to spend most of their time in office running for their next re-election, never willing to say no to any group or organization in order to scrounge up as many votes as possible, logic and fiscal sanity be damned. We never run surpluses and we never see them tackle long term problems. Problems like the War On  Drugs, the energy crisis, failing public education, illegal immigration, impending fiscal insolvency of Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid, etc. are never solved. Seems like the same paralysis is also happening at the local and state level. Be scared, be very scared.




Our new book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at www.loathemygovernment.com. It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.


Please visit the following sites for freedom:



http://www.cato.org/

http://www.robertringer.com/

http://www.realpolichick.blogspot.com/

http://www.flipcongress2010.com/

http://www.reason.com/

A Process To Solve The Health Care Cost Crisis

If you have followed the debate on Obama's health care reform efforts, you realize that the whole process, or lack or a process, has bogged down into partisan bickering, misinformation, exposure of politicians for what they are (i.e. not any brighter than you and me, if that) in town meetings, name calling, and a tremendous behind-the-scenes lobbying effort to make sure special interests get another advantage from the political class. There really has not been a process in place for solving this problem. As mentioned at least once in previous posts, what is the root cause(s) of escalating health care costs in this country:

• Doctors make too much money?
• Insurance companies make too much money?
• Drug companies make too much money?
• There is too much government interference in the market?
• There is too much fraud and criminal activity in the market?
• Other causes

Until you can answer the root cause question, you cannot solve the problem regardless of how many town meetings you have, how many Obama speeches you have, how many lobbyists get involved, and how many times Palin talks about "death panels." Love My Country, Loathe My Government" recognized this problem solving need via Step 28 on Page 107:

Step 28 - Convene an expert panel to undertake an in-depth national economic study to determine the real root causes of spiraling health costs and recommend appropriate actions to eliminate them. Voters, not Congress, will approve these recommendations."

This approach has been vindicated by two recent sources I have come across. First, in the St. Petersburg Times today, David Brooks' column, "Tinkering isn't change", pointed out two recent publications that approaches the health care cost problem like I proposed in Step 28. Mr. Brooks points to David Goldhill's essay, "How American Health Care Killed My Father" and a recent Brookings Institute report, "Bending the Curve - Effective Steps To Address Long-Term Health Care Spending Growth" as two instances where someone did a root cause analysis of the problem. In fact, according to Mr. Brooks, the Brookings Institute report was "written by a bipartisan groups of battle tested-tested experts." Sounds like Step 28, doesn't it? The other interesting word he uses is "experts", a word that I have not seen used a lot in the current mish mash of health care reform bickering.

The second source that has come to my attention is the fact that the state of Texas instituted significant medical law suit/tort reform several years ago. Most of the sources I came across on the Internet gave glowing reports of the beneficial aspects of reducing medical malpractice suits in Texas. According to the American Tort Reform Association's website, the following benefits flowed from the tort reform in Texas:

- The American Medical Association dropped Texas from its list of states in medical liability crisis (Houston Chronicle, 5/17/05).
- Malpractice claims are down and physician recruitment and retention are up, particularly in high risk specialties (Houston Chronicle, 5/17/05).
- The five largest Texas insurers cut rates, which will save doctors about $50 million, according to the AMA (Houston Chronicle, 5/17/05).
- Malpractice lawsuits in Harris County have dropped to about half of what they were in 2001 and 2002. There were 204 cases filed in 2004, compared with 441 in 2001 and 550 in 2002. There were 1,154 lawsuits filed in 2003, attributed to attorneys trying to file before the new law took effect (Houston Chronicle, 5/17/05).
- Harris County has seen a net gain of 689 physicians, an 8.4 percent increase, according to the - State Board of Medical Examiners (Houston Chronicle, 5/17/05).
- Texas Medical Liability Trust, the state's largest liability carrier, reduced its premiums by 17 percent (Houston Chronicle, 5/17/05).
- Fifteen new insurance companies have entered the Texas market (Associated Press, 2/16/05).
- Health Care Indemnity, the state's largest carrier for hospitals, cut rates by 15 percent in 2004 (Associated Press, 2/16/05).
- American Physicians Insurance Exchange and The Doctor's Company also reduced premiums (Associated Press, 2/16/05).
- The American Physicians Insurance Exchange saw a $3.5 million reduction in premiums for Texas physicians in 2005. In addition, beginning May 1, 2005, 2,2000 of the 3,500 physicians insured by the company would see an average drop of 5 percent in their premiums (The Heartland Institute, 5/1/05).

Obviously, it looks like Texas did a little problem solving and 1) realized that a root cause of their high health care costs was the need for tort reform and 2) configured their legislation to address the need for tort reform. Now, that wasn't hard, was it? Too bad this simple process is not being done in Washington.

Now, for complete disclosure, while almost all of the Internet search results supported the dramatic impacts on costs listed above, I did find one source that felt the effect of Texas tort reform was negligible. The source lays out their case in a very logical, well written form but I found it curious that all of the experts they cited were somehow related to the legal profession, either as a lawyer or a law school professor, hardly unbiased sources to talk about tort reform that reduces their profession's ability to bring frivolous malpractice suits. Given that almost all of the politicians in Washington are lawyers and the ABA is one of the strongest lobby groups anywhere, is it any surprise that the Obama reform issue does not address tort reform? It worked in Texas, there is probably a good chance that tort reform is a national root cause that so far, has not been addressed.