Yesterday Chile suffered a massive earthquake. While the magnitude 8.8 puts it at roughly 500 times more powerful than the 7.3 earthquake that struck Haiti just last month, the devastation according to most sources will be considerably less. My understanding is the strong economy and solid governmental institutions provide Chile with both a better infrastructure to tolerate the seismic activity and respond quickly and adequately to the destruction. As a Californian these episodes have me wondering how soon our turn is coming. Meanwhile, half a world away the coalition forces have driven the Taliban from Marjah in Helmond province in the south of Afghanistan. One question on my mind like it probably is on yours is whether the Afghan forces will be able to maintain control of the town once the coalition forces leave. Strong political and diplomatic support will be needed to help the young Afghan forces avoid being overtaken or corrupted by the nefarious efforts of the Taliban to reassert the poppy trade. Not too far away across the Mediterranean the European Union appears to be putting together a plan to help bail out Greece. Hopefully, they can learn from the failure and successes of bailouts over the past couple years in the U.S. and elsewhere. Amazingly, in Washington something occurred this week, which hadn’t happened in quite some time. A vote on a jobs bill received bipartisan support. That means some members of Congress decided not to vote along party lines, but actually join together with members of the opposite party to get something done for the American people. Scott Brown, the newly elected senator from Massachusetts, surprised me, and I gather many Americans, when he voted for this jobs bill. This takes guts. He conceded the bill wasn’t everything he would have liked to have seen, but would serve to grow jobs and stimulate the economy. Today the president received a clean bill of health from his doctor, but was told to do better at resisting cigarettes. Similar results appear to be cropping up around the issue of health care legislation. At the end of December bills passed in both houses. When Mr. Brown was elected last month conventional wisdom said health care was dead on arrival. On Thursday, when the president held a summit on health care there seemed to be a lot of posturing by both parties with neither wanting to stipulate to the positive attributes of the differing ideas. Everyone knows doctors are practicing defensive medicine in a time when they should be on the offensive using whatever means possible to help patients prevent injury and disease from curtailing their lives. We know it’s wrong for companies to ask for 39% increases when they profited by $2.9 billion the previous quarter, and that’s in a down economy. To say the increase is due to healthy people dropping their insurance, and to fight against a bill that would require everyone to have insurance has me scratching my head. If these insurance companies are good at what they do competition from an inept government agency should not be a stumbling block. These ideas are not Republican and Democratic. They are American. Let’s bring back bipartisan legislation. Fix the system and let’s go watch some hockey. Who’s winning Canada or the U.S.? As usual, comments are appreciated.
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