My Injured Back and the Domestic Policy Agenda

So, I injured my back. Just one of those things where I woke up yesterday morning in a bit of pain. It's happened to everyone. I was hoping it would marginally improve during the day, and just slowly mend itself. Unfortunately, it started spasming, got a lot worse, and has left me in a borderline unbearable amount of pain. Couldn't really sleep, can't really lay down without being in pain (which I know doesn't make a ton of sense, but there you have it), etc. The pain's pretty localized, so I've probably just done a number on one of my back muscles. But, it's really painful, and increasingly incapacitating.

All "my injured back" and no "domestic policy agenda", huh? All right, let me see if I can square the circle and fulfill the promise of the post's title.

You see, regardless of my street-corner medical diagnosis, the wider issue here is that it also happens to be a bit scary. I've thought about scheduling an appointment with my doctor, but I don't have one. I could go to the emergency room, but that's likely an even more expensive option, not to mention a fairly inefficient use of emergency resources, as I probably don't fit the bill of having a truly emergent health situation.

Like nearly 1 in 5 adults in the United States I don't have medical insurance. I'm not highlighting my situation as an impetus for anyone to feel bad for me. Really. I'd just like to raise my hand in voting for how stupidly inefficient this situation is, and how many undesirable social consequences exist because my situation is not in any way unusual.

The point I'd like to highlight here is the cost-benefit analysis the uninsured engage in when deciding whether or not to seek medical treatment. The idiocy of trying to decide if your injury/medical condition, etc. is serious enough to seek medical treatment that you can't afford, when you have no actual medical expertise should be apparent to everyone, and yet (to quote Chuck Klosterman) this shit happens all the time.

Quick note: For those of you thinking, "This is stupid. Your health is too important to ever engage in some dumbass 'cost-benefit analysis'. Just go to the damned hospital/doctor." I admire your inability to empathize and the fact that you've never been uninsured. I really do. But, this post has nothing to offer you. Go read PW's post linking to that article about China. It's really good.

Sorry about that. Anyway...where was I? Oh, this shit happens all the time. Right. See, this shit happens all the time. And, I'm not highlighting it out of some, kum-ba-ya, we should all feel sorry for the great uninsured masses. I'm only illustrating that the social costs of such a stupid health care policy are legion. Continuing on with my own example. Assuming it is no big deal, and things get better, we're probably all better off. I didn't waste a doctor or emergency room's time, I didn't waste the pharmacist's time filling a script, or use any gas to get said prescription. But, if it really was a non-serious injury these costs were pretty small, the doctor wasn't going to spend more than his 15 scheduled minutes with me, nor was a hospital going to admit me. If I went during non-peak hours, the only ancillary detriment was me interrupting the on-call nurse's viewing of Letterman or Days of Our Lives.

Now, what if the injury's really serious? In this case my delaying or deciding against treatment could create a significantly larger social expenditure. I'd be out of work longer, I'd waste more taxpayer dollars (somebody's got to pay for it), I'd require more medical resources and medicine. I don't have kids, which is lucky, but I wouldn't be doing my girlfriend or her employer any favors as I peripherally sucked up their time and resources. Remember that small cost from the above paragraph? How many of those do you need to offset the negative social consequences from this one?

Perhaps I'm whining, but I have an enormously difficult time seeing who benefits from me sitting here in pain, hoping that my injury's not a serious one...from the standpoint of the wider domestic policy agenda of the United States, of course.

Update: I believe this was our 400th post. Yay for us. For those of you that have been around from the beginning, you may remember a wager I made with my friend Dome about whether the blog would survive for more than a single week. Well, it has. And that bastard still hasn't settled the bet.

You Sorta Have To See It Yourself

I quite like this article on China by Tom Grimmer, it's a decent summary and a better tone than is common in US press coverage.

My only issue is with his characterization of the China Investment Corporation, the government owned strategic investment fund, as, "This is a passive equity investor just looking for a place to park cash; it's not Dr. Evil. (So far, CIC has taken a bath on the likes of Morgan Stanley and Blackstone stock; they are not seers.)"

Well, sort of. It's a government directed investment company that strategically selects targets...er, companies...based on their ability to provide useful things to China. That's why people are so touchy about it acquiring significant holdings in computer companies or airlines, industries with strategic military applications. In fact, it's hard to think of any commodity that a state government could invest in using the amounts of capital China has available that wouldn't tend to raise questions about alternative agendas.

Still, on the whole, a good read.

Dead for Now

Down goes the bailout. My guess is that the White House comes through with cash, probably at the direct urging of Obama. Though my opinion on the auto-bailout is complicated (I was probably a bit more skeptical than the average progressive Dem), one has to wonder what things look like in the event of a GM collapse.

A Post-Cold War Military

So the NYT has the latest story in a debate stretching back to the Clinton administration about the desirability of continuing to fund the F-22. In brief, the argument goes something like this: the US armed forces are tasked with being able to fight anyone, anytime, anywhere, and they need constantly improving weapons systems to do that. No one disputes the that the F-22 is an engineering marvel, easily the most capable combat aircraft on the planet. It's also the most expensive, which segues nicely into the counterargument: the Soviet Union, the entity this aircraft was designed to defeat, no longer exists, and no force worthy of this sort of performance has emerged to take its place. In fact, setting aside the possibilities of future wars, the two existing ones we have require low-cost people skills and redevelopment work more than they require supersonic, radar-invisible fighter aircraft.

The Bush administration inherited this debate, and through a combination of deficit spending and policy neglect, never bothered to resolve it. The Bush Doctrine was entirely about foreign policy, not how we expect the military to implement it. While our troops in Iraq called out for armored vehicles and more personnel, we continued to spend billions on air superiority fighters, missile defense systems, and a new generation of nuclear weapons. I don't mean to suggest that these programs have no use. Our existing aircraft are three decades old and in need of replacement. New nuclear weapons tend to be smaller, which is at least something. But they do little to address the immediate needs of the troops actually fighting right now. Even if we do decide that, somehow, we can afford to build a military machine simultaneously geared toward to anti-insurgency work, and fighting a major land war in Europe, let's hope the Obama administration at least has the ability to articulate that vision. Or some other vision- anything. It is well past time to address the sense, creeping since 1991, that we are getting a military geared as much toward keeping production contracts in all the right congressional districts as it is toward implementing national security policy.

The Stupidest Story No One Will Quit Talking About

I'm tired of everyone freaking out over whether Rod Blagojevich will appoint someone to the U.S. Senate while he's out on bail. Sorry to ruin it for you, but he won't. There are so many reasons this won't happen that I won't waste the time it would take to go through all of them, but the most important one is:
1) No one he would appoint would serve if they were even semi-legitimate, they'd quickly decline the appointment. Anyone that accepted the seat would have no future in electoral politics (which is kind of a deterrent).

If this guy understands anything, it's how to act in his own best interest (ignoring the stupidity of doing it in such a blatantly illegal manner of course). He's got to be acutely aware that there is no possible benefit he could accrue by flippantly appointing someone. This guy might be an idiot, but he's pretty likely looking a lengthy prison term in the face, and something tells me he's not in a hurry to do the one thing most likely to make people think he's even more of a despicable criminal.

Not just some pretty lines

Considering the heavy lifting this blog has been undertaking in recent days, it almost seems out of place to post something so irreverent. Obviously, not enough to stop me.

The renowned Max Planck institute just released the latest edition of its academic journal, and focusing on China, wanted to adorn the cover with some dramatic, three-kingdoms type poetry. Instead, they printed an advertisement for a Macau brothel.

Could you make this up? Original story on Huffpo.

Apologies and International Flights

I’ve been rather infrequently checking TPBP this week, as I’ve had some entirely exciting and annoying problems develop in my real world life. I’ve been slowly (very, very slowly) working with the Peace Corps on a medical condition: I’ve got a nerve in my foot that’s under pressure and is causing my foot to hurt all the time. It makes walking and standing up all day difficult, which is awkward, since I do a lot of both. The upshot of that is, Thursday, the Peace Corps Medical Office in Washington, DC, has decided I will receive better treatment in the United States (and, apparently, taking care of it myself). Thursday they told me I was being medically separated. This being the Peace Corps, decisions like that proceed with a great rapidity (unlike, say, the treatment of my foot problem, which took over six months of slow useless and pointless treatments and four and a half hour bus rides). I’ll be flying home to Ohio on Saturday, my Bulgarian adventure finally at an end. I’ve always wanted to visit Washington, and I finally will: for about three hours, as I have a layover there. Not quite what I wanted, but what can you do?

It’s unbelievable how much stuff you can accumulate in a year and a half. I have mixed emotions about the whole situation. I wanted to finish my full service. My students were all upset that I was leaving (and you would be too, if you were losing the only teacher in town who let them play games). However, I know that I have completed my service (a medical separation is still a closing), and the more I think about getting back to my family, my friends and my special lady friend, I can’t help but be excited. You should see the teddy bear my eight graders got me as a going-away present.

What I’m not so excited back is moving to the US in the current economy. I’m sure I’ll have plenty of opportunity to see what it’s like when I get home, and perhaps it will provide some fodder for the blog – which I notice is going well, with strong posts from everybody but me, and even a brand new poster, although he sounds pretty suspicious. Posting will continue to be light since I still have to move. In the meantime, enjoy your holidays and I hope your foot feels better than mine.

Too Small to Save: Update

After getting some extremely positive feedback on this post (most of it private, save for an anonymous comment) I've decided to spend what's turned out to be a totally inordinate amount of time reworking it, and will probably be submitting it as an Op-Ed piece. I'll let you know how it turns out.

Extinct Blog of the Day

Today's blog belongs to Farah Anwarullah, who writes The Muslim Housewife blog, and likes "...working out, trying out new recipes, reading and of course Apple computers!". She started her blog to be a "place where limiting beliefs are lifted and the true definition of a Muslim housewife is brought to life and crowned!".

Though she used to be a semi-frequent poster, she appears to have trailed off a bit in the last couple of months. Her posts are interspersed with all kinds of Arabic sayings that make following it annoying and cool at the same time.

Though an infrequent poster, she's got at least a moderate following, as damn near every post has quite a few comments. This seems to be an emerging theme here with the Extinct Blog of the Day. I highlight all these abandoned blogs that still manage to have more traffic than mine. I'm sure it doesn't mean anything.

Being an agnostic, Farah and I probably don't have much in common (though we both apparently enjoy cooking...and reading, so perhaps I shouldn't be so quick to judge). Regardless, I salute you Farah -- owner of our Extinct Blog of the Day.

A Lengthening Chain

The recent attacks in Mumbai are already fading into the collective memory here in the United States, joining the list of organized terror attacks in places like Madrid and Bali. Much has become clear in the days since my first post on this matter: the attackers effected a seaborne insertion, seized locally available vehicles, and proceeded to conduct themselves with a professionalism approximating a special operations force. Maintaining radio silence, they split in to teams and executed a series of diversionary attacks to confuse first responders, and then moved into their target hotels and office buildings. They carried secure communications gear, were familiar with the floor plans, directed their movements with hand signals.

As Newsweek points out, at this point it is a fairly open secret that the Pakistani military had something to do with training these individuals. The article also does an excellent job of detailing the limitations of Pakistan's civilian government's efforts to confront a military establishment which has traditionally kept its own council with regard to suppressing Islamic extremists. Oh, and efforts to protest innocence by Jamaat-ud-Dawa, the Pakistani "charity" which seems to have been somehow involved, are undermined by this Times article, written by a reporter who interviewed one of their members the week before the attacks. I don't personally know anything about the organization, but the guy in this interview appears to have an agenda rather beyond clothing the poor and helping the needy.

None of this will strike any student of contemporary Southeast Asia as particularly surprising. India has shown admirable restraint with regard to Pakistan after the attacks, which is reassuring considering the weapons technology available to both parties. The solution, which would be for Pakistan to actually work to suppress violent extremist groups, may well prove beyond the reach of many of those in Pakistan who would like to see it happen. Which is truly unfortunate, in part because it means that Mumbai really is just another link in what will prove to be a lengthening chain of tragedies perpetrated by extremists, and in part because India is a democracy, and it's only a matter of time before people there start to demand a more aggressive foreign policy with regard to Pakistan. If they do, it will be hard to blame them. No doubt, this was in part precisely what those gunmen wanted when they came ashore in Mumbai, and I hate to see brutality rewarded.

How about that 2008?

Hi everybody. I've been asked to contribute some music reviews here and would very much like to thank DP for the invitation. 2008 may have been one of the most disappointing years in music I can remember. Hopefully, I can point out the handful of bright spots I managed to find this year among the rubble.

the Everybodyfields-Nothing is Okay (Ramseur 2007)
Okay, okay, so it came out in 2007. Since discovering this gem in early 2008, it hasn't left my cd player for more than a week at a time. You could lump this in the alt-country pile but it is so much more than that. A loosely based concept record chronicling singers Jill Andrews and Sam Quinn's breakup, this is all melancholy emotions and gorgeous harmonies. Quinn has an attentive eye and a deft hand at description, particularly in highlights Be Miner and opener Aeroplane. Definitely my album of the year.

Deerhunter-Microcastles/Weird Era Continued (Kranky 2008)
Deerhunter's previous album, Cryptograms, had such promise on paper- damaged, noise soaked art rock- and honestly, I tried repeatedly. It sounded like two separate bands playing at the same time without listening to each other. Microcastles rectifies this mistake, joining 60's Motown pop songs as played by punks raised on a diet of Sonic Youth with delicious squalls of noise to deliver another contender for album of the year. There is a undercurrent of warmth in these hazy, narcotic lullabies that is missing from virtually all of their peer's music. Pop music for a new generation, this album exceeded my expectations regardless of the massive hype leading up to its release. Highlights for me include Agoraphobia, Never Stops and Nothing Ever Happens.

James Blackshaw-Celeste/Sunshrine reissues (Tompkins Square 2008)
Blackshaw is hands down the winner amongst the current crop of Fahey disciples, winning me over long ago with his debut, O True Believers. Unlike his peers, Blackshaw is not content to merely ape the Fahey style. Blackshaw creates his own 12 string worlds, creating contemplative, spiraling ragas that turn inward on themselves and transcend the label of folk guitar. These reissues show his mastery of form and technique were present very early on, stunning in their scope and beauty. However, you can't go wrong with anything he's done so far.

Okay. I've probably exceeded my Word allowance. Hopefully this was helpful and you'll all go out and buy these from a real record store. Support independant music!!!

A New Addition

The Pseudo Body Politic is happy to announce the newest contributor to our proud community. Starting tomorrow, 'manfish' will be providing our loyal reader(s) with a music review column. A degenerate in most ways, manfish nevertheless manages to be as knowledgeable about music as anyone I've ever met and an intermittently clever chap to boot. A longtime musician and recent music store owner, I have no doubt he'll give our reader(s) an excellent idea of what to check out and what to avoid in the world of music. On behalf of PW and Aaron I'd like to welcome manfish aboard TPBP.