CONSIGNED AND CONFINED TO KILLING COCKROACHES?

What I have dedicated my life to doing is creating a world in which incidents of man’s inhumanity to man are the exception and not the rule as they are today.
I have found the means to accomplish this miracle but have, thus far, been incapable of communicating its inestimable value to any other human being.
The problem is, like every facet and particle of existence, telling the truth and doing the right thing has been commandeered to the perpetuation of the status quo, instead of creating the clear, logical, rational minds needed to overcome the social problems which human beings must inevitably confront in their day to day existences; we have been conditioned to believe that telling the truth and doing the right thing is critical to our religious and spiritual development and so its function value is obscured.
What my thus far impossible task has become is to convince a bare majority of human beings in every social system that whether or not living a moral life will punch your ticket to heaven, whether or not it will cause you to inherit eternal life in a land of milk and honey - here on earth morality is the bridge between fact and function.
My modus operandi in the past has been to prove the efficiency of this world view by predicting the future, combined with creating the accurate descriptions that is necessary prerequisite to formulating viable solutions to social problems.
Most recently in my career as a prophet of doom and gloom I said again that the revitalization of the economy and avoidance of the social and political calamity this economic emergency presages depends on the absolute prohibition of deficit financing of the national budget.
Lo and behold within a few day, there was a bill before the Congress requiring that the principle of pay as you go be applied to creating the national budget, which would require that new spending would not increase the monumental budget deficit that now confronts us; but with six pages, mark you six pages of exceptions, makes this legislation well nigh meaningless and toothless as a watchdog guarding against excessive fiscal profligacy.
What budgetary provision would not fit into, in some way, in one of those six pages of exceptions, it has created the form not the substance of fiscal restraint, a sop when what is needed is the iron discipline of fiscal austerity to bring about economic recovery, a discipline more rigorously imposed than that applied by British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher who earned for her efforts, the sobriquet the Iron Maiden.
Almost simultaneously, Newt Genrich came out with his own prediction, that of some generic, unspecified terrorist attack which he claims the policies of the Obama Administration makes likely.
I wish to make abundantly clear to all the political hacks whose minds are lamed by neurosis, who slavish worship at the altar of the notion that ‘beliefs are opportune they conceal interests’ that it is not my intent in the slightest to engage in any kind of polemic or competition with anyone with regards to influencing public opinion, my intent is, and has always been the one I stated, creating a real world, a social reality in which incidents of man’s inhumanity to his fellow man become rare occurrences rather than everyday occurrences.
It is the farthest thought from my mind to become involved in any way in the depraved and venal race for political power or to provide grist for the mill of political polarization and competition in this society.
My contention is that humanity lives in a ‘state of nature’ which is predicated on the notion that ‘might is right,’ a milieu whose ethos is competition, whose dominant roles are territorial predator and their prey.
I suggest that humanity embraced and became thus far immutably habituated to this paradigm during the one hundred thousand years after the emergence of Homo sapiens that members of this species engaged in hunting and gathering, a period that lasted until the domestication of grasses created the humble beginnings of agriculture.
It was during this period that human culture was determined, when I talk about change I am talking about breaking habits that have been successfully practiced for One Hundred Thousand years, habits moreover that were learned in the crucible that was the ‘state of nature,’ habits which were powerfully reinforced during the period when Absolutist Regimes were the most popular forms of government, a span of history during which chattel slavery and feudalism were powerfully institutionalized in human affairs.
Let me be abundantly clear with regards to my personal opinion of President Obama, Newt Genrich, Sarah Palin, Secretary of State Clinton, Jesse Jackson et al, and just about every other living human being, I consider you to be agents of coercion determined culture, in effect savages with access to weapons of mass destruction.
I am certain you have not changed, you continue to be agents of coercion determined culture, steeped in the notion that might is right, unalterably committed to playing the roles of territorial predator and their hapless prey, completely insulated from reality and totally unaware of the implications of your actions.
The fundamental component of this design for human existence is a neurosis created by the conflict between a basis for social interaction that attempts to reduce human beings to absolute terms, that requires that they must do what is required of them; which is opposed to the most powerful aspiration of human beings for freedom and independence.
This conflict is internal to every human being, denies them the possibility of happiness and lames their intellects and makes it impossible for them to perceive the existing social reality.
I, accidentally and tragically, have by chance become an agent of a different culture, I am committed to using positive reinforcements in my relations with all organisms, to the notion that ‘right is might,’ to enlisting the cooperation of other human beings. Sadly and irrevocably I have told the truth until it has made me free and I now exist parallel to but increasingly out of sync with the human concourse.
But I am capable of creating the accurate descriptions of social reality that is the necessary prerequisite to creating viable solutions to social problems.
Let me apply that talent to the health care issue to dispel the gloom of fallacies, inaccuracies and misapprehensions that has come to surround what was a rational commercial development.
In the past the healthcare industry was composed of independent operators, doctors, hospitals and clinics that competed with each other to provide health services at a profit. Originally this a profession dedicated to care for the sick.
Into this industry was interjected healthcare middlemen and margin gatherers, organizations like Blue Cross who organized the healthcare providers in an area into cartels and eventually grew so powerful that they could establish the price charged for health services and used this power to change what had been a service industry driven by the Hippocratic Oath into one that was galvanized by the profit motive, an industry dedicated to maximizing the profits of those middlemen, those margin gatherers.
How was this feat of legerdemain accomplished - fundamentally these middlemen used the leverage created by the actuarial computation, in a group of one hundred subscribers to a health plan only a percentage are sick at any moment in time, which made it possible for these middlemen to pay health care providers a higher fee than any individual could afford – thus creating the means to change the basis for calculating the price and eventually the capability to establish any price they desired no matter how exorbitant.
Formerly, the price for a doctor’s visit was the cost of providing that service as determined by the physician plus a percentage of profit that was also decided by that individual.
Currently, the cost of health services is that amount that will satisfy the greed of these middlemen, these margin gatherers, and maximize their profits; causing the cost of health services to be prohibitive – except to those who subscribe to the plans operated by these margin gatherers, for example, Blue Cross and Blue Shield.
This development did not occur overnight but over a period of time, and having middlemen companies did offer distinct advantages both for consumers and for the service providers, for example, patients could see the doctor whenever they were ill or injured and did not have to wait until they accumulated the necessary funds to afford the cost of a lengthy hospital stay or other costly medical procedures; health providers were relieved of the chore of collecting monies from patients but were paid relatively quickly and most of all surely, by the health insurance company; and, were paid significantly higher fees than the individual patient could afford.
So more and more health providers and more and more individuals came to be covered by health insurance plans, favorably changing that actuarial computation so that the margin gathered by these insurance companies increased as did the fees paid to health providers and it became more and more difficult for an individual not covered by health insurance plan to get an appointment with any health provider or afford health services.
One segment of the industry, the drug companies, had virtual monopolies in the market for their products and the creation of these cartels exacerbated the tendency for drug prices to skyrocket and for these to produce super profits.
As more and more health providers saw the light that their organization into cartels was very profitable for them; as the profit motive began to dominate the industry and holdouts decreased there was less and less competition to these organizations and it became more and more difficult for any individual who did not have health insurance to afford to be sick.
For a brief period I worked in a project for Precision Response Corporation who provided a locator service for Blue Cross/ Blue Shield, suppose a subscriber was travelling out of state and need a healthcare provider who was covered under their plan they would call us and based on their location a software program provided the address and telephone number of providers nearest them; however, and this was the rub, we could not assume liability, we could not state categorically that they would be covered.
As the grip of these cartels tightened, as fewer and fewer healthcare providers were outside this system, as competition decreased to the point where any individual who did not have health insurance found it more and more difficult to afford or find anyone to provide desperately needed medical services it became more and more clear that the profit motive cannot be applied across the board without extremely detrimental consequences.
As the profit motive has had a serious detrimental effect on the quality of college education, to the point where college degrees not worth the paper they are printed on are available in increasingly compressed time periods, the provision of health services came to more and more damaging to those who needed these services.
A Blue Cross subscriber would call in with a seriously ill child in the car uncertain which hospital they should go to, a really serious issue, because if they received service from a hospital that was not covered under their plan, it could mean that they incur debts which would have the consequence of damaging their credit so that they could never qualify for the mortgage they needed to buy a home.
Within a few decades the health service in the USA had become a minefield threatening the hopes and aspirations of ordinary men and women as it became strewn with the spirit of unbridled capitalism and insensate commercialism.
Not only had the price of health service become totally exorbitant but each health provider had the unilateral, arbitrary, unquestionable power to ruin the credit of any ordinary man or woman for whom they provided service whatever the real value of such services.
A family with an injured child had to be exceedingly wary, the hospital might be covered under their plan but the specialist whom saw the child might not be; and, it was the a hospital functionary who engaged that specialist potentially resulting in a bill that might destroy the credit of that family – who were simply trying to save the life of their child.
I myself was billed by Broward General Hospital in Fort Lauderdale, Florida for their attempt to relieve me of my gall bladder which they claimed to be infected and would kill me within a week but which has never given me any trouble since.
This has been the Hobson’s choice confronting citizens of this nation for years, now the politicians whose corruption and profligacy produced those choices for citizens face similar exceedingly difficult choices.
It is either President Obama will follow in my not very illustrious footsteps and renounce and reject in precept being an agent of coercion determined culture, or, as I have stated before within a period that could be as short as a year, his popularity ratings will fall below thirty per cent, never recover, and he will be a one term President.
For the duration of his campaign he spoke often invoking the wolf of change, now that wolf is at his door.
He seems to be incapable of avoiding espousing lost causes; one such was the Stimulus Package which will be albatross number one around his neck.
For five decades national governments in the USA have received more revenue than any other government on Planet Earth; yet these monies have had little positive effect on the quality of life of citizens.
Other nations might claim that they lack resources, that for centuries they were colonized or that their economies was dedicated to the production of a single agricultural crop for the mother country and so did not follow a rational development path; they might claim that they had not developed the economic sinews necessary to produce an industrial revolution; the United States of America can make no such excuses it is clear the that the current bankruptcy in every phase of economic and social existence is a the consequence of a totally inept and corrupt government; and, a body politic that failed to be the required check and balance for the excesses of that government.
Yet President Obama believes that the Eight Hundred Billion Dollars that constitutes the Stimulus Package will be spent to better effect by the governmental bureaucracy than the revenues of the past fifty years, he is living in the dream world created by his popularity, a surrealistic construct that will too soon become a nightmare for the citizens of this nation.
The situation is tantamount to a husband who has wasted the resources earned by his family on fast women and slow horses who decides to bet the mortgage payments that would have saved the family dwelling from foreclosure on a sure thing provided by a tout, the outcome is certain except to him.
I feel constrained to make President Obama aware that the governmental bureaucracy when combined with the existing political culture is patently incapable of bringing about the redemption of the health service, it can only make things worse because as a totality it is too corrupt and politicized.
I feel constrained to provide an example to what I mean by politicized.
Three years ago I arrived in Memphis, Tennessee and observed a program for senior citizens returning to the workforce that allowed them to work for a variety of employers for a period of three months at minimum wage.
This program allowed these returnees to again become accustomed to the rigors and demands of the workplace; and, if they were lucky they might impress that employer and be made permanent.
Two years later I returned to that city and enquired about that program and learned that it had been politicized and no longer was capable of achieving its original objective of reacclimatizing senior citizens to the workplace because certain individuals had become permanently employed in this program.
If the governmental bureaucracy becomes involved in providing health service, the cost of providing that service will increase astronomically not decrease; and the quality of service will be subject to the secular decline that now is being experienced in the education product.
If pupils now run the Public Schools, if the Government cannot ensure that illegal drugs are not distributed in these schools, how can they be expected to create an efficient health service?
This initiative is certain to fail and the consequences of that failure are likely to with us for centuries.
What is required is an organization that will competently and efficiently provide health services for those who have no health insurance currently; and, in the long term provide competition for the health insurance companies whom are certain to be hoist on the petard of their own greed.
A facility staffed by care givers who are interested in practicing medicine as it was traditionally practiced, not as a get rich quick scheme.
A facility funded by the community, by voluntary donations of members of the community it serves who would also oversee its operations.
As I indicated at the beginning of this piece I have dedicated my life to creating a world in which incidents of man’s inhumanity to his fellow man were the exception rather than the rule.
Pursuant to this transcendent objective I have attempted to tell the truth and do the right thing as much as I could; and, lost most jobs in Jamaica and the USA I have been employed in as a consequence of attempting to practice this moral discipline.
I had an exemplary career as a Trade Union Officer in Jamaica until Roy Thompson, the then Island Supervisor of the National Workers Union decided to conspire with tanker drivers to break the strike of Oil Refinery workers who were also dues paying members of that union.
I resigned in protest of that action as did all the Refinery workers, this led to five year period of unemployment which culminated in my losing everything of psychological, social or economic value in my life, it ended with my receiving a green card and my migration to the USA on August 22, 1984.
The first time I received a letter of termination in the USA was a consequence of my reporting what I considered to be an unsafe working condition while working for an office equipment warehouse in the State of New Jersey.
The second occasion that I lost a job because I refused to do something I believed to be wrong was while working for American Transtech, a subsidiary of AT&T in Fort Lauderdale, Florida when I refused to follow an instruction to code customers as callbacks to preserve my conversion rate even though they had made plain that they had no desire to switchback to AT&T.
Over the succeeding years I was to find that there was few honest jobs available to me, neither could I improve my lot by belatedly going back to school because I discovered while attending what was then Fort Lauderdale College and laterally Broward County Community College that education was a scam and any degree I got was unlikely to be worth the paper it was written on; and, would have constituted the thin edge of the wedge of immorality that would have made it impossible for me to achieve success in what had become my magnificent obsession.
Latterly, I became a Realtimer for the Terminix Company in Memphis Tennessee and was fired for circulating an electronic mail in which I lamented the fact that my supervisor was the major obstacle to my performing my job efficiently. I was responsible for making sure there were telephone representatives available to answer customer calls and she, over an extended period, had done in her power to convince me to neglect to do my job in respect of certain individuals.
I grew weary of swimming against the tide of incompetence and corruption in the American economy that was wearing me down; and afraid that I might compromise my principles I was offered and took early retirement and now exist on the sad combination of food stamps and social security benefits.
In the past few months as this nation has experienced its most serious depression in decades I have been attempting to write a book connecting this economic and social malaise with the moral lack in this nation.
My penury forced me to live in a welfare hotel which during the past two months experienced an infestation of small cockroaches, filthy insects which ignited animus in me because years ago I crawled into my ear while I was asleep.
The next day this insect made its presence felt by biting the soft flesh inside my ear causing me excruciating pain, causing me to see a doctor as soon as I could get an appointment, who eased my pain by removing this unwelcome visitor.
As a consequence I cannot abide these vermin and spent the last month and half killing them until I could bear this situation no longer; they were all over, in my bed, in my food, everywhere and resumed my nomadic existence.
The uncompromising, scrupulous honesty which has lost me jobs in Jamaica and the US, that caused me to be unable to accept a college degree here, is what I believe is needed to revitalize the American economy.
That conclusion has been reinforced as I travelled West, through Arkansas, Oklahoma, Texas, Nevada and finally into California; this great country has the productive capacity, the personnel and resources to create the wealth that would produce an adequate quality of life for all its citizens what is lacking is morality.
The message I have been trying to communicate for more than a decade is that with morality anything and everything is possible, without morality soon or late any nation must be reduced to the situation that now exists in this country.
Every adult American should be thoroughly and totally ashamed to the condition this nation has been reduced to, the Founding Fathers of this nation would turn over in their graves if they became aware of the near defeat and virtual bankruptcy that has been the consequence of the 911 attack.
How could a single incident so prostrate and debilitate a great nation?
This situation has exposed the moral inadequacies of this nation, how can it be that no honest work has been available in the quarter century that I have sought it in this nation? Does it not speak volumes about the American economy that there is no place in it for someone who speaks the truth and does the right thing?
Would it not be wonderful if the scrupulous, uncompromising honesty that has ignited such animus and made me everywhere I was employed a square peg in a round hole, if this sparked the moral revival which is the necessary prerequisite to economic revival?
It is indeed time for a change, not the pretend change that wins elections, but the real cultural change required for creating a true government of the people, by the people, for the people; that can create a democracy that can satisfy the needs and aspirations of the majority.

William E. Virtue
Redding, CA

954-850-9326