Insanity as Policy

Welcome to One and All

This is not my only Internet project by a long shot, and Internet producing is not my only activity by a long shot. Although Unity-Progress may very well be theoretically my most important project, resources are limited for it at this time. I have the resources to produce about 5,000 words a month for Unity-Progress. To put this in perspective, 5,000 words are about 250 tweets, 20 very short "blog entries", ten longer blog entires, five short articles, two long articles, or 1/20 of a longer book. I do guarantee these 5,000 words will be produced and that they will be as informative and perfectly accurate as possible.

Unfortunately though, there will be wide variability from month to month. It is possible that nothing at all will be posted in a month, but at the other extreme, there will be a month now and then where about 10,000 words are produced. Another thing leading to variability is that there is no production template as of yet, meaning that postings will vary radically from very, very short to quite long. At this time it appears this variability will continue indefinitely.

Aside from the postings, there are numerous very important features that go along with this project to be found on numerous pages. Look for links to them; see especially the links just under the banner and the ones in the right sidebar near the top.

Finally, please know that you absolutely have to bookmark this site if you ever ever want to come back because it is not easy to find this Site or any other Sites of its kind on Google Search. In fact, most of the characteristics of this Site are precisely the ones that get the short shrift by the Google Search Engine formulas.

Wednesday, June 17, 2009

Insanity as Policy

As the article states, mandates have always failed.

And there could not possibly be a worse time than right now to start one. Generally speaking, the people without health insurance are under more financial pressure right now than anytime in decades, so millions and millions are going to hide out and if necessary pay penalties rather than buy the way overpriced insurance. The poor are poorer than ever.

Meanwhile, the US Government is racking up massive deficits due primarily to funding war, existing health care, and ransom payments to bankers and the like. (The bankers have been holding the economy hostage, in case you forgot.) The wealthy are all too used to ultra low taxes. So just how will the US Government foot the bill to pay for the tens of millions who can not reasonably pay for health insurance?

The current "those who get sick go to the emergency department and then file bankruptcy" system, as insane as it is, is far cheaper than actually, truly insuring everyone at present prices would be.

This twisted scheme to delay the ultimately necessary single payer system seems to be nothing more than something from Obama Fantasy Land, quite honestly. I wouldn't be surprised if nothing at all passes. But nor would I be surprised if it does pass, because insanity as policy has become more and more common in recent years.

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OIL GUSHER COVERAGE

BARRELS VERSUS GALLONS
1 barrel = 42 gallons
1 thousand barrels = 42 thousand gallons
1 million barrels = 42 million gallons

GUSHER ESTIMATE
-70 thousand barrels a day = 2,940,000 gallons per day
-70 thousand barrels per day for 60 days April 21 through June 19 = 4,200,000 barrels = 176,400,000 gallons (176.4 million gallons)
-70 thousand barrels per day for 120 days April 21 through August 18 = 8,400,000 barrels = 352,800,000 gallons (352.8 million gallons)

A BILLION GALLONS OF OIL?
At 70,000 barrels a day a billion gallons of oil would be reached on March 27, 2011.

PRODUCTION METRICS
UNITY PROGRESS
AS OF JANUARY 1 2011

SINCE THE SITE BEGAN >>>
--Age of Site in months: 24
--Total number of Reports: 255

--Approx. total number of words: 109,956
--Words produced per day since site began: about 151
--Words produced per month since site began: about 4,582

--Number of original books on this site if the content was contained in books instead of on the Net, assuming books of 400 pages / 100,000 words each: 1.10 books
--Total number of book pages if the content was in books: about 440
--Book pages equivalence produced per month since site began: about 18

--Total number of Internet projects created / managed by Quest Internet: 7 consisting of more than 100 substantial Internet home pages and more than 2 million words

MORE THAN 10 YEARS AND COUNTING WITH NO JOBS--NADA, ZIP, GOOSE EGG...

The above shows you the huge amount of time that has passed since the total number of US jobs was the highest it ever was. In other words, this is the time during which not a single job has been added to the total number of US jobs.

Version one shows the time seven different ways using seven different units of measure. Version two shows the same amount of time in a remainder format. The time is shown in top down fashion, in order from the largest unit (years) to the smallest unit (seconds).

How can you get a job if no jobs are being added, while the population and the number of people needing jobs is going up? You can't, unless you have direct assistance from a "high level" person who has direct or indirect hiring authority, or unless you have a very large amount of luck, or unless you have a relatively rare but in demand skill.

READING LISTS: INDEXES OF THE ABSOLUTELY MOST CRUCIAL ARTICLES BY THE MOST QUALIFIED WRITERS
Overwhelmed by the zillions of websites with quadzillions of articles on them? Join the club. But as an Internet fiend, I have developed a reasonably good 6th sense of which articles are most crucial for gaining an understanding about just exactly what is going on in today's world. I will from time to time list them here, so visitors to Unity-Progress can take advantage of my fiendishness.

My favorite Common Dreams articles are NOT indexed here, because they are indexed at the bottom of the posts of this Site, most of which are writings in response to those articles. So this section will index crucial articles on sites other than Common Dreams.

THE LAST TIME JOBS INCREASED BY STATE (AS OF SEPT. 2009)

The following times are, as of December 2009, the last time each state had the same number of jobs as that state had in September 2009. In other words, this tells you how long it has been since one or more jobs have been created (net of job losses) in each state. The greater the amount of time since jobs increased, the worse the depression or recession is in that state. States where the month shown is September 1999 or earlier have failed to create a net job for more than 10 years.

Alabama: September 1998
Alaska: June 2006
Arizona: October 2004
Arkansas: September 2005
California: November 1999
Colorado: November 2000
Connecticut: October 1997
Delaware: May 1999
District of Columbia: June 2008
Florida: November 2003
Georgia: May 1999
Hawaii: October 2004
Idaho: September 2005
Illinois: December 1995
Indiana: September 1995
Iowa: May 1999
Kansas: November 1998
Kentucky: September 1998
Louisiana: October 1999
Maine: October 1999
Maryland: June 2004
Massachussetts: June 1998
Michigan: September 1988
Minnesota: October 1999
Mississippi: May 1997
Missouri: December 1998
Montana: June 2006
Nebraska: May 2006
Nevada: October 2004
New Hampshire: December 2000
New Jersey: June 1999
New Mexico: December 2005
New York: October 1999
North Carolina: June 2000
North Dakota: October 2008
Ohio: September 1994
Oklahoma: November 2006
Oregon: June 2000
Pennsylvania: October 1999
Puerto Rico: December 1995
Rhode Island: June 1998
South Carolina: November 1999
South Dakota: June 2006
Tennessee: September 1998
Texas: April 2007
Utah: June 2006
Vermont: October 1999
Virginia: December 2004
Washington: May 2006
West Virginia: May 2000
Wisconsin: June 1998
Wyoming: June 2007

WELCOME

*****This is a site, finally begun in January of 2009, that with 20/20 hindsight should have been and would have been started at least three years ago, providing crucial facts and high level commentary about the Right Wing Wilderness the USA has become.

*****The primary topics will be the ongoing disasters and in some cases catastrophes associated with the US health care system and the US labor market.

***** Quest produces a full range of economics and political news and commentary sites. See the complete menu in the right-hand column.

MISSION STATEMENT OF UNITY-PROGRESS

NON-RIGHT WING INDIVIDUALS IN THE USA NEED A NEW BEGINNING
Americans: you MUST form a party similar to the NDP-Canada party or you will continue to decline into poverty and homelessness due to lower incomes and lack of enough jobs. BOTH mainstream US parties are right-wing parties. If you are not a right winger and yet you give money or time to the Democratic party in the US, you are actually working against your own interests.

All existing non-right wing parties in the US should be unifed. Even the NDP-Canada party, as relatively successful as it is, suffers from lack of unity with the Greens in Canada. For example, the NDP would be in charge in British Columbia right now were it not for the Greens siphoning off a substantial number of what would otherwise be NDP votes. The NDP and the Greens, assuming they can't unify into one party, should at least promise that they will join forces to form governments whenever that is possible.

In the USA, progressives face a dual challenge. First, they have to get a viable non-right wing party established in the first place, and secondly, progressives have to unify into that newly formulated party. There are numerous reasons why a new party is absolutely necessary. For example, you have the current atomization caused by the existence of numerous parties that are completely disunified, due to the staleness and long histories of futility of the current, obscure non-right-wing parties, and due to negative caricatures that have been cemented in consciousness over many years. Specifically, the new US party should avoid self-defeating terminology such as use of the word "socialist".

The Green party is stigmatized in both the US and Canada as a one issue party that is not generally qualified to govern. US Greens should agree to fold themselves into NDP-US, which will in turn espouse very strong pro-environment policies.

Americans, if they were smart, could simply formulate a NDP-US Party, which would be a fresh start for non-right wing interests in the country. Although NDP-Canada might not officially or formally help in the establishment of NDP-USA, it certainly would not stand in the way when individual members of NDP-Canada assisted in the formation of NDP-USA. Eventually, there would be a synergistic feedback loop going both ways between the NDP-Canada Party and the NDP-USA party. Each party would be strengthened by the other one.

YES, I SOMETIMES MESS UP A LITTLE....

As to the overall progress of this site, I am doing about the best I can, but I do have other writing and other work that I do. But I love all my readers and I will continue to post my political commentary, post details you can't really find anywhere else, share my research (which I know I am good at by the way) and in those and other ways give you any assistance and advice I can possibly give you.

Historically I have a bad habit of posting something on another site and not immediately cross posting it on my own site as I intend to do. This is a nasty habit that I have mostly but not completely eliminated. I will continue to work until this habit is completely eliminated.

TRAFFIC METRICS

The traffic of this site is quite low. The site is not advertised anywhere nor will it ever be. The site has virtually no potential for becoming a high traffic site, due mostly to the lock on traffic that sites started from the early internet days until about 2000 have under the Google system, which very strongly acts to maintain the traffic status quo and an increasingly stale internet for those who heavily rely on Google Search.

This site is produced simply because the author wants to contribute some of his high level knowledge and skills to massive society problems, especially in the jobs and health markets. Traffic would be nice but quite honestly we can not and therefore do not care whether we get it or not.