*Update* video of this talk (10min) is now up at http://www.vimeo.com/9584353

I’m writing this at San Diego State University, where I’m about to give the last talk at the BILPIL conference (an un-conference version of TEDMED, an event that celebrates conversations on innovative health and medicine). I’m officially the least qualified person here — and seemingly the only one not involved with healthcare, but one of the organizers recruited me to speak after reading my post from last month, “A plausible future of health care.”

I readily agreed, because the speakers are unreal talented (Joe Trippi, Aubrey De Grey, Dr. Ben Goertzel, Dr. Philip Steven Low, and Jen McCabe).  The schedule today opened with Dr. David Rosenman from the Mayo Clinic Center for Innovation and closed with me.  Yep, that’s how I like to roll.  :)

Lately, when it comes to healthcare, I’ve been thinking a lot about Dr. Jay Parkinson‘s focus on creating a market-based solution for better doctor-patient relationships without accepting the handcuffs of working with insurance companies. He seems to have given up on public reform — in face of the immensely bad odds public reform faces, I don’t blame him, but I have arrived to the conclusion that public reform is still necessary.  This presentation is my effort at exploring both of those tracks (private market solutions and public reform) and figure out how they work together.  I’m still learning this stuff, so please give me your feedback!

The sub-title to this piece is “Patient-Advocates as Harbringers of Hope in the Health Care System.”

Disclaimer: I am a Libertarian-Progressive. I generally trust markets more than I trust government, primarily because I think it’s easier to inspire real change and harder to make massive mistakes in the free market — however I think government must harness the power of markets and put bumper-rails in to protect the masses from greed overdoses. I supported Barack Obama in the 2008 election and continue to do so. In advance of his healthcare speech, and at the tail-end of a lengthy vacation where I discussed my views, I decided to pen the following missive.

This post is about 1250 words, if, like most, you are far too lazy to read something of that length, here’s a good summary:  

Today, doctors are manipulated by the fear of malpractice into recommending unnecessary procedures that individuals accept because of an information disadvantage. We have little compulsion to overcome this disadvantage because we are not the primary buyers of our own health care. The current position is untenable, and it’s in our interest to influence change with the free market. There are models we can build off, and in the future, it seems likely that patient-advocates will possess the medical knowledge and fiduciary responsibility to allow their clients to decrease their personal costs and increase their quality of life despite a broken system, beating the path down good health reform.  I’ve called this new industry “FutureHealth” in my own thinking, but I don’t like the way that sounds. Can you suggest a better name in the comments? 

OK, that wraps up the word sushi, on with the more gluttonous show…

I backed Obama for his strength in foreign policy and the economy, on those fronts he’s made careful and reasonable decision –curbing a massive economic decline while positioning the US well abroad (specifically regarding War in the Middle East and the Iran Election). He’s done us one better and placed his political chips on the table of the most pressing economic issue today: health care.

People often take issue with framing health care as an economic issue — at it’s core it deals with the life and well-being (or lack there-of) of human beings, so it’s clearly a social issue, and yet — 20% of total government spending is on medicaid/medicare and both government and personal health spending are rising at rapacious rates (2 to 3 percent faster than inflation). If we don’t fix health care, it will bankrupt well before it kills.

There have been a series of fascinating articles this summer exposing the perverse economics of health care — two stand out: Atul Gawande’s watershed piece in The New Yorker, “McAllen, Texas and the high cost of health care” and, more recently, David Goldhill’s piece in the Atlantic Monthly, “How American Health Care Killed My Father.” Both conclude the incentive structure of the medical system is broken. The Doctors, fearing malpractice suits, recommend unnecessary procedures. Patients, at a severe information disadvantage and with little skin in the game perceived when it comes to payment, accept this recommendation. Insurance foots the bill and in search of greater profits tries to shirk as many payouts as possible and, if faced with an inability to do so, raises rates (making it harder for individuals to maintain health insurance).

The heart of the health care problem therefore seems to be unnecessary procedures (estimated at 30% of annual medical costs) and lack of innovation in the patient experience.

To solve both issues, patients must become the central focus of the system. By creating strong financial incentives for patients to judiciously use health care you would create a health services industry that must curb costs and cater to the patient’s experience, improving care, along with an information industry that will eliminate the information disadvantage that allows patients to be easily manipulated today.

Unfortunately, a quick, sweeping change (legislative or otherwise), requiring individuals to foot more medical bills is unlikely (at best) to happen when one of the largest industries is involved, people’s pocketbooks are at stake and there’s no existing use to defend that this system will be preferable in the long-run. Our brains are bad at evaluating risk-reward when the status quo is an option (for however briefly) and the risk involves our health and our savings account.

This means the change must happen gradually, and likely (at least initially) through market forces rather than legislation.

Luckily, there is already a subset of early adopters that care aggressively about health and patient experience and have been spurring innovation on both fronts: the wealthy.

The wealthy have developed a tool that helps them navigate the complexities of health care, enjoy a better patient experience, and obtain the information and access required for better preventive care: concierge doctors. Concierge (also known as “boutique”) doctors require extra cost from a more limited subset of patients who receive expiriential perks like same-day appointments and higher levels of access to their doctor. These can range from the expensive MD2 (24K/year for a family) to the relatively inexpensive (I pay $150/yr to a concierge practice in San Francisco), but access and benefit tends to flow linearly across that range (at the end of the day you’re buying time from highly skilled, valuable people).

Boutique medicine puts the patient in the buyer’s seat and creates an opportunity for the patient to take much more control of their health and utilize preventive care to decrease health needs. Once the patients health costs are more predictable (and probably far below the average), the concierge relationship helps the patient gain information advantage to increase confidence in making alternative purchasing decisions, perhaps self- or co-operative insuring.

So, there’s a clear path to improving health care, and the first hurdle in our way is visible and defined. A company that can accomplish the same (or similar) effect as boutique doctors for the rest of us will create the passage point to the future of health care.

At the highest level, this new class of doctors need not be doctors at all, but rather “patient-advocates” that maintain enough medical knowledge to ensure proper care and are capable of supporting and helping patients through both simple and complex medical situations. At the lowest levels, this function may be a game or service that encourages more healthful activity (think DailyMile, tweetwhatyoueat, FourSquare, or others).

There are many people in this FutureHealth industry, but one seems particularly well-placed to bring about the next step in the industry’s evolution, a small company called HelloHealth (disclaimer: Jay Parkinson, CEO of HelloHealth, is a friend). They are creating a platform where doctors can interact with patients in a more traditional primary-care role: hands-on, preventive care administered in a personal fashion. To the extent that HelloHealth can create technical tools that help their doctors save time (like automated paperwork, electronic patient interactions, and more), they can lower the cost of access for patients into a realm affordable for the average joe (they seem to have already gotten into the high-end of this range).

Finally, I’ve dubbed this new industry “FutureHealth” in my head, but I don’t like the way that sounds. Can you suggest a better name in the comments? 

Edit Notification: I published the first draft of this on my blackberry without review; I have sense gone back and fixed any typos and lack of links I could find. I have sent this to a few knowledgeable friends for feedback. I may edit again for clarity based on their suggestions.

Clive Crook wrote a brief piece for The Atlantic, entitled “The Long Road to Healthcare.”

It ends with paraphrasing Tom Daschle that the main problem with the Clinton health reform proposal (“HillaryCare” circa 1993) was the partisan and exclusive way it was built.

There are many similarities between Hillary’s, Obama’s and Daschle’s plans but the difference is that Hillary and her team “devised a 1,342-page law that nailed down every last detail of the system” without involving any of their oppoents. Because opposing groups weren’t involved in the process they were a lot less invested in the plan, much more likely to attack the plan, and they had every possible detail to fuel their arguments without having to ever propose any alternative solution.

The exciting thing about the promise behind Obama’s presidency is the focus on transparency and inclusion. It sounds like both the president-elect and Dachle want to be open, with both supporters and opposing groups, in the creation of a new healthcare plan.

I do fear that Obama won’t have enough resources to see everything through and live up to our extremely high expectations — but I’m way more excited that an administration is finally taking transparency seriously. We live in good times.

Every year I write a long email update to my friends, which you can sign up for on the far right hand side of this site. This year I’m also posting it on this blog as an experiment. The following is the full, unedited text of that email.

Happy New Years!  You are receiving this email from me because I want to keep you updated on what I’m up to. I send out between 1 and 4 emails like this a year (but always one on New Years Day) and focus on big updates and “best-of” tidbits to share.

If you’ve never received an update from me before, it means you signed up on my website for an update or that I added you to the list — you probably did something that was awesome enough for me to say, “Hey I should keep in touch with them.”  If you thought I was less awesome, or don’t want to receive these updates from me in the future, please accept my apology and unsubscribe (or reply to this message and let me know — I’ll unsubscribe you by hand).

I hope to summarize my year for you and then proffer a few lessons I’ve learned. Finally I’ll include a few links I feel are worth sharing. This is the longest message I’ve ever written, if you’ve only got the inclination to read one part, please skip to the end and read the segment titled Reflection and Projection – it’s the part I feel is most important and that I’m most proud of.

 

This message is broken into several parts and should take about 9 minutes to read all the way through. Each section can be read independently of the other sections and includes a title and estimated reading time at the beginning.

 

Summary of 2008  (estimated reading time: 3.5 Minutes)

I’ve always found the act of waiting for a specific day to look back and project forward a year a little ritualistic and weird, but it does create an interesting phenomenon — my friends seem to be singularly focused on reflection and projection and that makes it easier to see what friends, mentors and idols are doing. This is good because applying the lessons they’ve learned is a great way to improve.  And with tools like Twitter, Tumblr, Blogs, and Facebook, sharing those lessons is easier than ever – making massive emails like this valuable. I think in the next 5 years or so, I’ll be able to send yearly updates via a service that makes email less valuable.  I’ve started doing that already by posting this note on my blog (link)

2008 was a heck of a year, I struggle with picking the parts to summarize. I turned 22 this year, and, largely speaking, 2008 has been one dedicated to making Involver succeed.  For those of you that don’t know my company, we help marketers distribute and track video campaigns on social networks, like Facebook. The company is young, and it’s been a wild and fun ride watching it succeed.

With regards to that work, Involver has truly had a breakout year. At this time last year we were subleasing a small office in Palo Alto and were yet another unheard of startup, toiling in a popular and crowded industry.  In the first quarter of the New Year we established some great success with the Help Vinay campaign (which registered 26,000 South Asians for the bone marrow registry in 6 weeks) moved to a new office in the financial district of San Francisco and changed our name to Involver. Following that we launched our Pilot Program and started creating commercial campaigns. Now, brands that have used Involver’s platform include Puma, Chiquita Banana, Maker’s Mark, Reader’s Digest, Serena Software and Kiva.org. Not only that but our first commercial campaign won an OMMA, the industry leading award for Online Marketing, and our campaign for Kiva.org resulted in $300,000 for loans to entrepreneurs in the developing world.   This generated some amazing press for the company — we’ve been featured by countless bloggers and appeared in Inc., Wired and PBS — and Inc. Magazine named our co-founders two of the “Top 30 Entrepreneurs under 30 Years Old”.  And we moved, again, to bigger offices; we’re now in the SOMA district of San Francisco.  Just imagine what we’ll be able to do with a year of experience under our belts and you’ll see why I’m so excited about next year.  J

I’ve taken my work close to heart this year, but I still was able to take some time to have a personal life. In 2008, I moved apartments twice in an effort to experience more of this city and continually vary my experience (being open to randomness is a very effective way to grow quickly). I’m now in a beautiful place and have really enjoyed the live music, better access to transportation, and ample eateries in my new neighborhood.

I also launched a new personal website — http://www.tylerwillis.net — which chronicles my life and aggregates a lot of information about me. If you’re interested in more frequent updates on who I am and what I’m up to, that’s a great resource, and if you want the up to the minute updates, I post often to two services that allow for frequent but short updates, you can always visit my profiles on twitter or tumblr for that. 

I spent much of my remaining free time this year supporting Barack Obama by writing articles, donating, and hosting an event — my birthday party featured live music and raised several hundred dollars for the campaign — I believe he represents an amazing opportunity for American politics and I’m ecstatic that he’s our leader.  There is a movement growing in America, which is making politics attractive again to the best and brightest. Our political system will benefit from the economic collapse and a generational changing of the guard, and there is great opportunity to improve the system. I’ll be participating on a more local level in 2009 and implore you to do the same.

In the bucket that qualifies as both personal and work life, I made some strides as well. Early in the year I hosted a massively successful event, called Weekend Apps, which launched 11 new companies and brought together 100+ entrepreneurs to work together in new ways — around the same time, I shut down the consultancy I’d founded. Willis Media Group had a good roster of clients, but at the end of the day, I simply couldn’t get it to profitability. I learned a lot about struggle and the difficulties of service businesses, and even more about the value of limited liability — but life has trotted on nicely despite that failure.

Finally, I was also blessed with the opportunity to travel around the country a bit, in 2008 I visited New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Denver, Kansas City, Salt Lake City, Black Rock City, and Vancouver. I took two road trips through the West and Pacific Northwest and was able to reflect on the joys of travel and it’s importance to maintaining a healthy mind. On these trips, I took up a copy of Jack Kerouac’s “On the Road” and yet again found inspiration there for my traveler’s soul.

I closed out the year in the most fantastic fashion, by doing an 18,000 foot skydive in Monterey Bay with very good friends who are all as excited about the future as I am. I was happy to be surrounded by them and their optimism, the same way I’m happy to be surrounded by you and your experience, intelligence and friendship heading into 2009.

 

Looking Ahead   (estimated reading time: 1.5 minutes)

2009 is poised to be a great year for Involver. The horrible financial crisis seems to be affecting almost every vertical in the industry except the ones we’ve focused on. I’ve heard that recessions don’t slow trends, they speed them up – and that would seem to be true. With advertising budgets dropping across the world, most agencies and companies are reporting increases in video and social media spend. We’re hiring and I think we’re well positioned to grow by helping more marketers run more effective and successful campaigns. The trends are on our side — and we’ve got more money and experience than we did at this time last year — I’m very excited for 2009!  I’ll also be hosting some events, the largest so far planned being SF Startup Weekend 2 in the spring.

2008 has also really excited me for the future on a larger scale than just work. Specifically when it comes to the possibilities of space.  Watching the Mars Phoenix mission (link) filled me with a sense of wonder and awe, and was a moment I felt truly engaged with what was unfolding. I was lucky enough to meet Peter Diamandis shortly afterwards and in a span of about 15 minutes, he convinced me that there was a tangible way to funnel that excitement into compelling action.

So, this year I joined the International Association of Space Entrepreneurs and started supporting the X Prize Foundation. In the next 12 months I plan on attending several space related conferences and events, read and write more about industry successes and failures, and explore ways to volunteer some time or resources to help groups at the cutting edge of commercializing space access. I can’t think of a more exciting way to spend my free time than supporting this burgeoning industry.

I’m also planning several trips.  In addition to work travel, I’d like to make it to either Dubai or India for a vacation and I will be returning to Black Rock City for the Burning Man festival in late 2009.

Reflection and Projection  (estimated reading time: 2 minutes)

It’s plain to see that I’m an optimist, sometimes more than is socially comfortable. The ease with which I dismiss the disastrous economic decline above serves as one example of that. I wrote that the recession will benefit our political system, and, before I cut this line, as having “rewarded our company for methodical execution and ruthless efficiency by removing competitors from the landscape.”  I make no mention of the disastrous effects on millions of people, and the great uncertainty that grips any well-briefed mind, because it truly doesn’t stand in the foreground of my mind (despite suffering personal loss of wealth).

Our species is running towards a precipice with looming dangers like economic decline, political unrest, climate crisis, and more threatening to grip us as we jump off the edge, but my optimism is stronger now than ever before. On the other side of that looming gap are extraordinary breakthroughs in healthcare, communications technology, access to space, human productivity, artistic creation and literally hundreds of fields. With the right execution and a little bit of luck we’ll all live to see these breakthroughs — and members of my generation will live to see dramatically lengthened life-spans, exploration and colonization of space, and more opportunity than ever to work for passion instead of simply working for pay.

Instead of taking this space to regale you with the many personal and focused changes I intend to make in 2009, let me rather encourage you to spend time this year thinking, as I’m going to, more about what we can do in 2009 to positively affect the future our culture will face in 2020, 2050, 3000 and beyond.

Support stabilization efforts in governmental structures, by joining the change congress movement or forming, researching, refining and voicing your opinions at Change.gov, the new open government system Obama’s administration is attempting to create. Volunteer for an organization that you think is going past triage, and actually doing something to solve a major problem systemically — do the triage also, but let’s work a little harder and make some headway on these problems.

These don’t have to be big efforts, but they should be continual and properly focused.  A group of us, doing small actions continually, will inspire larger groups and result in larger change.  There’s a trend of human’s banding together to build a better future that we can align with and help propel.  Remember Margaret Mead, “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.”

I’m excited for 2009, and I look forward to sharing it with you.  I hope to build more frequency into this email list, and as such would love to hear about what you’d like to hear from me.  Please don’t hesitate to ever email me at tyler@tylerwillis.net

Happy New Year!

Tyler Harrison Willis

Things Worth Sharing           

·      http://bit.ly/KIrF  My friend Ramit is giving away $2500 to a young person with a concrete idea for social innovation. Deadline is Jan. 15th

·      http://bit.ly/2qXWUp  Malcolm Gladwell gave a great talk at The Moth, it’s a tall tale about his experience getting into Journalism.

·      http://bit.ly/ovOx   Explaining the political awakening of Generation X in the form of an apology to politically active Boomers for taking so long.

·      http://bit.ly/m1NC  A 4-minute-long video about wearable computers. Something I think will change personal interaction in the next 10-15 years.

·      http://bit.ly/17Rvn  The evolution of wearable, non-intrusive displays. Extremely important to improving the move towards wearable computing.

·      http://bit.ly/M0pD  A good mini video bio of my favorite modern poet, Rives, watch it, then watch this: http://bit.ly/2OiC8g

·      http://bit.ly/w24M  An elegant short story about the subject of death.

·      http://bit.ly/kCpq  Several very good remixes of Silversun Pickups songs.

·      http://bit.ly/11ML1  How to create the bullet-time effect from the matrix cost effectively.

My Birthday Party is this Saturday (the 18th of October) at MR and is in celebration of Barack Obama.

Come listen to music (Dave Lowensohn of Speechwriters LLC is playing live and we’ll be closing the evening with a listen to DJ Z-Trip’s pro-Obama mixtape) and party down.

The party will go from 7pm-11pm and Dave will play around 8. MR is at 650 Sacramento St. The event is free, but please donate to Barack!

Email tyler@tylerwillis.net with an questions.

Disclaimer: I’m writing this on my cell phone because the fabulous folks of www.baracknroll.com agreed to plug the event for me. I will add event and donation links as soon as I get back to a computer!

Update: The event is on Facebook, and here’s a link to donate!

I, for all intensive purposes, am a Libertarian. The Libertarian Party is running Bob Barr as a candidate for President. Living in California, I also happen to believe that my single vote has very little influence in most presidential elections (and I’m probably right, as long as you ignore any social influence). Therefore, I believe in voting for the person I think is the absolute best choice for the presidency, not the best two party guy who can win it.  With all of that said, it would appear possible that I’d be voting for Bob Barr. I’m not. Barring (eh? eh?) some crazy, unforeseeable event, I will be voting for Barack Obama in November. This is my attempt at explaining why.

Disclosure: I will make an attempt to lay this out in a rationale, organized manner, I may fail. Writing concisely about issues I’m passionate about is something I’m working to become better at.

The issues that matter most to me are the economy (Stances:Ob, Mc, Barr) and foreign policy (Stances:Ob, Mc, Barr), and I also value the ability to be an effective leader. The first two are relatively easy to research, but the latter is a bit less concrete, more intuitive. It’s my belief that in these 3 issues, Barack Obama is the best choice for our country, and I’d like to offer my reasons why. In the interest of reading time and space, I’m going to address just the economy in this post, more to come later. Thanks for caring enough to read -Tyler

Economy:

Barack Obama has a clear economic plan that he has presented in speeches and online. It involves tax cuts for the middle class that are specifically aimed at jump starting the economy. In our current economic situation, something like this is needed. The middle class will spend money much more freely than people with larger incomes, which will affect the economy in a quicker fashion.

I do have some fear that Obama’s plan would stifle small business growth and the rate of entrepreneurship, he has helped address these fears with his $500 tax credit to help 1099 contractors offset the extra payroll tax they shoulder. As an independent contractor who made relatively normal (read: way less than 250k) salaries for 15 months out of the last 24, I can attest that a measure like this would have helped me. I’m not sure this break will be enough to encourage small business growth, and I think more can be done on this front.

I’m not sure how many of the 20-some million small businesses will be affected by a marginal income tax increase proposed by Obama; my understanding is the company would have to have more than 250k/year in revenue to be affected, I’m assuming that a large percentage of these small businesses are one-man shops and fall under this rate. If you have more than 250k/year in revenue I would assume you’re incorporating and playing the corporate tax game, and not filing under the individual system. I’d love to see some #’s on this though, it could make a huge difference in the health of this plan.

Note: Obama has also suggested eliminating the capital gains taxes for startups and small companies, but I must admit that I’m relatively ignorant on how this might affect the average small business — I will need to learn more about this and may expand on this point at a later date.

Compare this to Bob Barr: I like that Barr is against the bailout, as I am (although Buffett’s arguments in favor of it may eventually sway me), but I can’t seem to get any specifics out of his campaign. Barr’s website has little information on specific suggestions. I agree with the standard speaking points of the Libertarian Party: less taxes, free markets, cut spending, etc. But it’s hard for me to back a candidate that doesn’t put forth a plan, even if it’s just tactics on withdrawal. The same way you should put together a “get out of Iraq” plan, you should put forth a “get out of mucking around with the economy” plan.

The Libertarian Party as a whole generally has a problem with this. They are one of the largest third parties in US politics (4% of voters, according to Rasmussen which is slightly less biased than the 13% reported by CATO). The party is very broad, tying together an incredible amount of diverse opinons (most elections see Libertarian swing voters splitting between Democrats and Republicans 60/40 or closer) — putting forth specific plans would drive many party members away. So instead they stay vague and promote intellectuals working on these problems from many different approaches. Great for a think tank, shitty for a presidency.

McCain fares OK here. His small business plan makes some suggestions that will encourage growth in that sector, like lowering corporate taxes. His individual taxcuts look less interesting. McCain and Obama both talk about re-energizing the middle class, and it’s clear McCain’s plan doesn’t trump Obama’s on that front (verification from TPC). If McCain wanted to argue that Obama’s plan couldn’t be passed, or if he wanted to push for some form of trickle down economics, I’d listen — but they’ve both picked the same battleground and Obama has verifiably won it.

On top of all this, I’m very suspicious about where the money will come from. John McCain will not be able to decrease the size of government, and he supports an expensive war, yet he doesn’t seem to be securing new money to cover these massive cuts. That scares me.

His Gas and Energy platforms are nothing more than meaningless talking points that are essentially non-sensical (read them here, top of the page and middle of the page below this picture).

McCain’s HOME loan program seems misguided, and the suggestions on his website (strict requirements including a proof of due dilligence on all investments for bailouts on a firm by firm basis “only to prevent systemic risk” (Paraphrased from here) don’t seem to match his actions over the past 10 days.

I’ll confess an ignorance to some of the macro-economic issues at debate here. I’m not well versed enough to know, with relative confidence, which of these policies will fare the best. In situations where this is true, I find I need to take 3 actions.

1. I have to write out what I know, discover what I don’t know, and try to learn that through research or talking with semi-experts (people that may not be qualified to set policy but that keep up with historical and current thoughts on the topic and are accessible to me).
2. I have to look at the professionals, the people who are the real experts in the field, and see what their public thoughts are on the matter.
3. I have to make a rational assesment of the information as I know it today, and try to get close to the right answer. As Warren Buffett has said, “I’d rather be approximately right than perfectly wrong.”

In this process, I have found the information out there on economist blogs to be in favor of Obama, based mainly on the criteria of who he’s getting his advice from. In terms of the pros, Obama has recruited amazing advisors and supporters (Paul Volcker, Warren Buffet, Robert Rupin, Laura Tyson, and a slew of others). McCain hasn’t fared poorly on recruiting pros either; he’s got a revolving list of people with economics degrees who support him on his site, Peter Wallison has done some pretty amazing work at AEI (including foreseeing the current crisis 9 years ago) and Gary Becker is nothing to shake a stick at (and writes half of a fantastic blog). They’re both impressive teams, but on the issue of where are the intellectuals I personally respect more are leaning–they seem to be leaning towards Obama; I think Buffett and especially Volcker lend better insight than Wallison or Becker — this is arguable, but Volcker/Buffett certainly have much more credibility within the finance world than anyone on McCain’s side.

Since both teams are impressive it’s important to note that, Obama seems to actually be listening to his advisors more. His statements on the economy are measured and well thought out — he doesn’t often have to change his stance or re-word things in light of new developments (which McCain has had to often). Obama’s certainly being rewarded in the polls, to quote the Financial Times, “…his instinct to reflect before opening his mouth and his impeccable taste in advisers are both working to his advantage.”

On the economic front, I think Obama wins.  *UPDATE* The Economist has realized an article that I think backs up my point pretty solidly, see this chart:

FYI: This (and all political posts) will be reposted on my.barackobama.com blog

PS: I highly recommed a recent interview with Warren Buffet (60 mins), his take on the crisis is very interesting.

PPS: If you want to donate to Obama’s campaign, please do: My Obama Page

You know I’ve heard this story a few times, 2 days after The Great Chicago Fire there was an article in the paper that made sure everyone knew that “CHICAGO SHALL RISE AGAIN.” I didn’t see this same reaction with New Orleans, while there was a lot of initial press and social help that has sense died down (including my own effort Project: NOLA, which officially closed doors Dec 31st, 2006), but even right after Katrina I don’t remember hearing the nation shouting “New Orleans is Coming Back,” I do remember an instant debate about the cost-effectiveness of rebuilding.

I’m sick of the disrespect New Orleans has to endure. It’s one of America’s great cities, it’s going to be rebuilt, let’s rebuild it right!

—

BTW: If you’re thinking about New Orleans, or want to see a new social change method at work, check out the UNOP — one of my favorite groups on the scene.

Well I woke up this morning (ok really late in the morning) and flipped on the TV. Quite the hubbub was going on re: the speech that called for “immediate redeployment of troops in Iraq.” I bit; I hung around for 15 minutes until John Murtha (D-Penn) came on and delivered a mediocre speech calling for immediate withdrawal from Iraq of all but a [mobile strike force] that could quickly deploy against necessary threats. World orator awards aside, I have some really significant problems with this speech.

Should we be in Iraq? I’m not sure, I wasn’t politically active enough to know whether we were right or wrong, but I supported it at the time. Here’s what it boils down to, we’re there. Hindsight’s 20/20, so please stop assaulting me with wishy-washy crap. I supported the war, and I support finishing it in a manner that makes up for the complete incompetence we have carried ourselves with so far. I have lots of respect for those who have been against this since day 1 and still want us out of it. Politicians who hop on the bandwagon depending on public opinion garner no respect from me. Murtha was a longtime Marine, and seems to be an honorable man. I believe he is being truthful in his request to withdraw from Iraq, but I don’t think he would have the guts to give that speech if public opinion weren’t in his favor. He said the American public is light years ahead of the government, but he forgot to add “and I’m going to be the first to capitalize off it.”

John Murtha, if you are going to blindly follow Public Opinion and not offer creative ideas, get a public-speaking coach and a better speech writer.

Now with my knee-jerk anger out, let me address the “plan” offered by Murtha. It’s not great, but it did give me an idea on how exactly to approach the situation. He mentioned massive majority amounts of Iraqi’s not supporting our presence there. So here’s the deal, if Iraqi’s don’t support our troops we aren’t going to do anything of merit, and having Lt. John Murphy walking around M16 in hand probably isn’t going to inspire him to our cause. We can win bodies easily, but we need to win hearts and minds. Why don’t we prove our commitment to Democracy? Put an issue on the Ballet. “Do you want American forces to remain in the country to help deter those against the peace process?” Give local leaders 8 months to campaign and change minds. Vote on the issue. If we lose, pack up and leave. Come back once every year for 5 years, and ask the people if they would like us to return or if they feel they are getting along fine without us. We can write in exceptions for a small force, or intelligence centers, or whatever we “need” but we should leave if a majority of Iraqi’s ask us to, make it 2/3 majority required if your worried about corruption, or other issues that could skew the vote. According to Murtha, 80% of Iraqi’s want us out anyway. We can’t institute democracy if 2/3 of the people don’t want us, we are wasting everyone’s time, money, and lives.

So let’s put our faith in Democracy, we shouldn’t be there to support our own selfish interests, we should support what Iraqi’s want and try our best to help them achieve a good result for their people. I think we owe them that after what we’ve put them through. Why don’t we stop thinking about ourselves for 10 minutes and do what’s best for the Iraqi people.
Update: Here is the text of the speech.