2013 Schedule for Zoom-In Discussion Group

Held on Thursday, 9am to 10:30 in the Bain Senior Center Meeting Room behind the fireplace.

Zoom-In is a Howard County SPRING group open to all who come to the Bain Senior Center. Seniors get together to discuss a preselected topic of interest. Two consecutive sessions are devoted to each topic. In the Overview Session, group members raise questions and give options on various issues related to the topic. Issues of special interest are selected for the follow-up Zoom-In Session for more detailed discussion.

The following topics were suggested by the members and selected based on a survey.

Topic	Overview Session	Zoom-In Session
Obama-Care	Sept. 19	Sept. 26
Israel and Palestine	Oct. 3	Oct. 10
Income Inequality	Oct. 17	Oct. 24
High Medical Cost	Oct. 31	Nov. 7
Tax Reform	Nov. 14	Nov. 21
Drones and Robots	Dec. 5	Dec. 12

For more information send an email to mhirasuna@gmail.com.

Background for Israel-Palestine Discussion

Thursday, Oct. 3, 2013, 9am to 10:30 in the Meeting Room (behind the fireplace)

Dory will be leading the discussion on Israel-Palestine. You can share your thoughts and background material on this blog post. I found two interesting YouTube videos which take opposite sides of the issue. I'll let you guess which side is which.

Video 1,   Video 2

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From Dory:

    This article, which I wrote, was printed in the Frederick News-Post on February 26, 2011

Dory

 

 

Obstacles to peace:  Israel's Duplicity

    Apologists for Israel are frequently heard to complain that Israel is held to a different standard than other countries.  Well, this is certainly true, but not in the way they mean.

    Israel's violation of international laws is almost always totally overlooked, while focusing instead on comparing Israel favorably with "rogue" states.  Were Israel to be held to the same standards as we expect of most other countries, you would find that it falls far short of holding the high moral ground which it claims.  For example:

    1)  Zionists accepted with alacrity the portion of the Balfour Declaration of 1917 which "... viewed with favor the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people," but ignored the stipulation that "...nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities."

    2)  Israel, in its 1948 Declaration of Israel's Independence, agreed to "... uphold the full social and political equality of all its citizens, without distinction of race, creed, or sex."  Instead, Israel's currently announced goal of being a "Jewish" state, with its insistence on being recognized as such, would preclude recognition of the equality of all its citizens, which would in effect establish the fact that Israel is in fact an ethnocracy, not a democracy.  (This is a primary reason for Israel's failure to draft an internationally-accepted Constitution, as it promised to do by October 1948.) *

    Even though Israel appeared to support the borders as prescribed by the United Nations in 1948, in reality it has never accepted them, even though the partition gave proportionally a much greater area of the Palestine Mandate to Israel than to Palestinians.  In fact, to date, Israel has not defined its borders, but has persistently aggrandized the territory it controls.  Ironically, most of the expansion of Israeli-controlled territory has occurred during the various peace "processes" which have been convened over these many years.

    Israel agreed with the provision for Jerusalem to be a UN-controlled open city, with access for all.  Israel (Netanyahu) now claims that Israel will never give up Jerusalem as an undivided Jewish city.

    3)  Israel is a signatory to the Fourth Geneva Convention adopted in 1949 which specifies:

      a) "The Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies."  Ironically, this was done " ... to ensure that abuses practiced by the Axis powers could not be legally repeated." ** p.182.  This position has been supported  in principle by every U.S. president since then, but has been ignored by Israel.

         b) Israel is in violation of the prohibition against collective punishment, according to Amnesty International, Save the Children, B'tselem, and others.

        c) Israel is in violation of the prohibition against destroying real or personal property belonging individually or collectively to private persons.

    4)  Israel, in exchange for a seat at the United Nations, agreed to U.N. 194 as to the Right of Return of a people displaced by war, but has never abided by this agreement.

    5) Israel is in violation of U.N. 242, reinforced by U.N. 338, as to the prohibition against acquiring territory by war.

    6)  Israel is in violation of most of the 30 Articles of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights.  (www.hrusa.org)

 

    Israel has been cited for possible war crimes in its recent attack on Gaza.  The building of the "separation" wall which encroaches severely into Palestinian territory has been condemned by the International Court of Justice.  The apartheid system practiced by Israel has been condemned by Nelson Mandela and Bishop Desmond Tutu as being even more brutal than that of South Africa.***

 

        I think it is obvious that, were Israel to be held to the same international laws as is expected of other countries, that there would be no problem in arriving at a just solution to the Israeli/Palestinian conflict.

 

Notes:

*Declaration of Israel's Independence 1948

**"The Passionate Attachment, America's Involvement With Israel, 1947 to Present," by George S. Ball and Douglas B. Ball, W.S. Norton, 1992.

        UN 181 reference. p.38-39, and others - Ball

        UN 194, p.39, p. 231 - Ball

        Geneva Convention, p.182, - Ball

        Other U.N. resolutions - Ball, p.308

Universal Declaration of Human Rights 1948

 "The Other Side of Israel," by Susan Nathan, Doubleday 2005.

"The Problem with Israel." by Jeff Halper, Israeli activist against demolition of Palestinian homes

"The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine," by Ilan Pappe, Oneworld Publications, 2006

"The Catastrophe (Al Nakba): How Palestine Became Israel," IfAmericansKnew.org

"Palestine Peace Not Apartheid," Jimmy Carter, 2007  "[T]he plight of the Palestinian people represents one of the most abhorrent cases of human rights oppression on Earth.  Forced from their homes and land and surrounded by walls, they live under a system of mandatory segregation, with passes required to reach their jobs, schools, pastures and fields.  A unique system of military justice deprives them of any legal ability to alleviate their suffering."

***"I am a black South African. If I were to changes the names, a description of what is happening in the Gaza Strip and West Bank could describe events in [apartheid] South Africa."  Archbishop Desmond Tutu

Many other books and articles

 

 

Zoom-In Topic Survey

Please indicate your interest by placing an H, M or L in front of each topic

  H - for high interest
  M - for medium interest
  L or leave blank - for low interest


Also indicate if you would like to lead any of these topics or a new topic not listed.
The topic leader is not expected to be an expert, just to raise interesting questions.
If you volunteer, remember that each topic is given two weeks.
Topics with volunteer leaders will be given preference in scheduling.



1) Health Topics

    __ Increasing longevity, good or bad?
    __ High medical cost
    __ Amazing new medical technology


2) Foreign Policy Topics

    __ End of Arab Spring, Egypt and Syria
    __ Yemen and al-Qaida
    __ Rise of China


3) Security Topics

    __ NSA surveillance and Internet privacy
    __ Cyber Security
    __ Use of drones


4) Political Topics

    __ Tax reform
    __ Guns in America
    __ Voting rights


5) Education Topics

    __ More respect for the teaching profession
    __ Public education, funding and student discipline
    __ High education cost, Internet alternatives


6) Economy Topics

    __ Causes and effects of income inequality
    __ Short term business incentives
    __ Taxes, subsidies and laws which favor the rich


7) Social Conscience Topics

    __ Criminal justice, prison population, mandatory sentencing
    __ Social conscience in hard times
    __ How society can shape an individual's conscience

Zoom-In on ObamaCare

Thursday, Sept. 26, 2013, 9am to 10:30 at the Meeting Room (behind the fireplace)

Three topics were selected from the 9/19 meeting for more discussion.

1) Free preventive care, a good thing or just more opportunity for over-diagnosis

Here is a TED Talk which explains the problem of over-diagnosis.

Excerpts from Overdiagnosed : making people sick in the pursuit of health:

More diagnosis may make healthy people feel more vulnerable—and, ironically, less healthy. In other words, excessive diagnosis can literally make you feel sick. And more diagnosis leads to excessive treatment—treatment for problems that either aren’t that bothersome or aren’t bothersome at all. Excessive treatment, of course, can really hurt you. Excessive diagnosis may lead to treatment that is worse than the disease.
…
overdiagnosis can occur only when a doctor makes a diagnosis in a person who has no symptoms referable to the condition. While this can happen when a doctor stumbles onto unexpected diagnoses in the course of an evaluation of unrelated conditions, generally it happens because doctors seek early diagnoses—either as part of an organized screening effort or during routine exams. Thus, overdiagnosis is a consequence of the enthusiasm for early diagnosis.
…
As we expand treatment to people with progressively milder abnormalities, their potential to benefit from treatment becomes progressively smaller.

ObamaCare mostly ignores the warnings of this book, but has tried to curtail two of the most egregious examples of over-diagnosis, mammograms for women under 50 and prostate PSA screening for men. Both have met resistance, but the women were more successful then the men in reversing these recommendations.

Here is a list of current free preventative services based on recommendations from the US Preventive Service Task Force and the Institute of Medicine. The USPSTF gives grades, A to D, on the effectiveness on preventative services. Services with a grade of A or B are free under ObamaCare. Mammograms for under 50 was given a C, while PSA screening was given a D. Under political pressure, free Mammograms were extended to women of age 40. PSA screenings are still disallowed. Eight additional services for women, in the IOM report but not recommended by the USPSTF, were also given free status. This includes the infamous free contraceptions.

2) The 30 million Uninsured, do we need Single Payer?

The Kaiser video that we saw in our last meeting brought attention to the 30 million left uninsured even when ObamaCare is fully implemented. We thought that these were undocumented immigrants, but we were wrong. From a Kaiser Foundation report on the uninsured:

The majority of uninsured people (80%) are native or naturalized U.S. citizens. Although non-citizens (legal and undocumented) are about three times more likely to be uninsured than citizens, they account for less than 20% of the uninsured population. Non-citizens have poor access to employer coverage because they likely have low-wage jobs and work for firms that do not offer coverage. Further, until recently, states were precluded from using federal dollars to provide Medicaid or CHIP coverage to legal immigrants who have been in the U.S. less than five years. In 2009, states were given the option of extending Medicaid coverage to children and pregnant women who previously would have been subject to the five-year ban. By January 1, 2012, 24 states had adopted the option to eliminate the waiting period for lawfully-residing immigrant children, and 18 states had adopted the option for lawfully-residing pregnant women.18 Undocumented immigrants will remain ineligible for federally funded health coverage under the health reform law.

Regardless, of who the uninsured are, the group expressed a support for Single Payer, presumably because it would give universal coverage. But this is not necessarily the case as explained in this report on Single Payer:

Importantly, the term “single payer” is different from “socialized medicine” and “universal health care.” Socialized medicine refers to a system like the National Health Service of the U.K., in which the mechanisms of delivery of health care are owned by the government.
…
The term “universal health care”, in a general sense, refers to providing every citizen of a country with health insurance. Although universal health care connotes a national public insurance program to some people, there are in reality a variety of ways of achieving universal health care, some of which are predominantly public, and others of which use a mixture of public and private elements. Single payer is one way of achieving universal health care, but other ways include the multi-payer systems of Germany and Japan.

We already have Single Payer without universal coverage; it is called Medicare. The few politicians that have backed Single Payer use US business competitiveness as justification. Our politics is such that Universal Health Care for humanitarian reasons is a harder sell. If universal coverage is the true goal, it might be easier politically to give insurance companies a role in a multi-player system.

3) ObamaCare politics

So why are the Republicans so willing to tank the economy to end ObamaCare? Paul Krugman says that the Republicans has become the Crazy Party because it lost control of its base. But then why is the base acting crazy. Here are my guesses, you can add your own:

• They are really just crazy
• They are not crazy, but act crazy to win a game of Chicken
• They want to create financial panic to recover the loss in their gold investments

Determining topics for future meetings

After last week it became obvious that we needed a better way to select our future topics. Norm, Ron and I were joined by Vince and Tim after today's meeting and came up with this approach.


1) Each topic will be given two weeks. It seems that the first discussion is just a warm-up. We would not really dig into the topic unless we had a follow-up week. We could vote to continue a topic for a second week, but the voting process is problematic. Since all of our topics are broad, it was decided that it would be easier just to give each topic two weeks, an Overview Week and a Zoom-In Week.

We just finished the Overview for ObamaCare. We had several discussion points that we could have reserved for the Zoom-In. I picked three which seemed to resonate with the group. So here is the plan for next week:

Topic for 9/26 Zoom-In Meeting
Zoom-In on ObamaCare with focus on:
1) Free preventive care, a good thing or just more opportunity for over-diagnosis
2) The 30 million Uninsured, do we need Single Payer?
3) ObamaCare politics

Just as in the first meeting, other ObamaCare related topics or general health topics are on standby if we need more material. But it seems that should not be a problem for our group.


2) Future topics will be selected by the facilitator from a candidate list The decision will be based on a survey. Here is our draft list of candidate topics. You can suggest changes to the list by commenting on the blog or by sending me an email. The list will be final on the day before the meeting and be printed as the survey sheet. At the next meeting, members can indicate their preference by ranking the topics that they care about.

On the survey, you can also indicate if you are willing to be the topic leader. If you volunteer to be the topic leader, your topic will be given preference. As the topic leader you can do what I did, which was just create as list of talking points to stimulate discussion, or you can define your own format. Those not able to attend the meeting can indicate their preference and willingness to be topic leader by sending an email.

Four topics will be chosen to cover the following eight weeks. This will allow us to publish a schedule. If this process is satisfactory, we can repeat it every eight weeks.

ObamaCare and Other Health Topics

Thursday, Sept. 19, 2013, 9am to 10:30 at the Meeting Room (behind the fireplace)

ObamaCare Topics

The Patient’s Bill of Rights:

• Provides Coverage to Americans with Pre-existing Conditions: You may be eligible for health coverage under the Pre-Existing Condition Insurance Plan.
• Protects Your Choice of Doctors: Choose the primary care doctor you want from your plan’s network.
• Keeps Young Adults Covered: If you are under 26, you may be eligible to be covered under your parent’s health plan.
• Ends Lifetime Limits on Coverage: Lifetime limits on most benefits are banned for all new health insurance plans.
• Ends Pre-Existing Condition Exclusions for Children: Health plans can no longer limit or deny benefits to children under 19 due to a pre-existing condition.
• Ends Arbitrary Withdrawals of Insurance Coverage: Insurers can no longer cancel your coverage just because you made an honest mistake.
• Reviews Premium Increases: Insurance companies must now publicly justify any unreasonable rate hikes.
• Helps You Get the Most from Your Premium Dollars: Your premium dollars must be spent primarily on health care – not administrative costs.
• Restricts Annual Dollar Limits on Coverage: Annual limits on your health benefits will be phased out by 2014.
• Removes Insurance Company Barriers to Emergency Services: You can seek emergency care at a hospital outside of your health plan’s network.

ObamaCare Issues of Interest

• Changes to Medicare
• 30 million still uninsured
• Tax increases on some
• Individual mandate
• Employer mandate, delayed to 2015
• Medicaid expansion blocked in some states
• ObamaCare in Maryland and Howard County
• Needed fixes
• Politics of ObamaCare in 2014
• Free preventative care, good or bad?
• End of life care reform avoided

Background Information

1) A quick explanation of ObamaCare. This video was from the Kaiser Family Foundation website which is devoted to explaining healthcare reform.

2) The long explanation, Bill Clinton explains ObamaCare

3) How ObamaCare affects Medicare

4) There was some concern about the Oct 1 date. It seems that this date pertains to the opening of the Healthcare Exchanges, which probably does not pertain to us. But here are the websites setup for enrollment, Maryland Website, Federal Website.

5) Health Reform information on the White House website.

6) How many are uninsured

7) ObamaCare politics (from Ken)

8) NPR answers ObamaCare questions from listeners (from Ken)

9) FPL for 2013 (Federal Poverty Level)

10) MAGI, income to determine ObamaCare tax credits (Modified Adjusted Gross Income)

11) ObamaCare subsidy calculator

Future Topics List, Draft

1. Health
1. ObamaCare, Scheduled for 9/19/13
2. Increasing longevity, good or bad?
3. High medical cost
2. Foreign Policy
1. End of Arab Spring, Egypt and Syria
2. Israeli-Palestinian conflict
3. Yemen and al-Qaida
3. Security
1. NSA surveillance and Internet privacy 
2. Cyber Security
3. Use of drones
4. Politics
1. Tax reform
2. Guns in America
3. Voting rights
5. Education
1. More respect for the teaching profession
2. Public education, funding and student discipline
3. High education cost, Internet alternatives
6. Economy
1. Causes and effects of income inequality
2. Short term business incentives
3. Taxes, subsidies and laws which favor the rich
7. Social Conscience
1. Criminal justice, prison population, mandatory sentencing
2. Social conscience in hard times
3. How society can shape an individual's conscience

First Meeting Followup

Thank you all for participating in the organizational meeting. Here are the main points.


1) The group decided that next week's discussion will be on Health, particularly ObamaCare. Here is the blog page for Health that was setup to share any background information. You can also suggest related heath topics which we can discuss if we run out of things to say about ObamaCare or be saved for another meeting.

2) I apologize for not asking if anyone wants to volunteer to lead the discussion on ObamaCare. So here is your opportunity to be the first and show us how its done. Otherwise, it defaults to me.

3) Here are the things I promised to post that will be forthcoming
  a) A more detailed description of the roles
  b) A list of suggested links on how to find out stuff on the Internet
  c) The additional subtopics that were suggested

4) It was suggested that we start the meeting by addressing unfinished business. So, please let me know if something needs to be covered at the start of the next meeting.

5) It was also suggested that we encourage participation by polling everyone after unfinished business. So we don't unduly pressure anyone, we would state that it is okay to pass. We can try it at the next meeting to see if people like it.

6) For those that came in late, this TED video about starting movements was shown. For those that saw the video, do you like to see more videos in future meetings? It was suggested that we have a time filler at the beginning of the meeting to allow for late arrivals, since we start a 9am. Perhaps the video could fill that role. What do you think?

7) Our procedures are flexible. What we did this morning was just to get started, but can be changed. Please feel free to make suggestion on how we can improve our process.

Organizational Meeting

Thursday, Sept. 12, 2013, 9am to 10:30 

Meeting Room (behind the fireplace)

Agenda

1. Goals
1. Discuss topics with the opportunity of preparation, continuation and focus
2. Group will determine topics and procedures
3. Improve information gathering capabilities, please bring your suggestions
1. Internet sources
2. Traditional sources
3. Mobile apps
4. Other goals, suggestions welcome
2. Procedures
1. Possible Roles
1. Conductor
2. Secretary
3. Topic Leader 
4. Fact Checker
2. Use of blog
1. Setup topic page to gather comments and background material
2. Allow absentee participation
3. Agenda for next meeting
3. How to determine concensus
3. Candidate Topics
1. Social Conscience
1. Inter-generational conversation
2. Ethical issues - medical, social, business, political, etc
3. Racism
4. Criminal justice, prison population, mandatory sentencing
5. How society can shape an individual's conscience
6. Idealism
7. Social conscience is harder is difficult times
2. Economy
1. Globalization
2. Income inequity, shrinking middle class and social resentment
3. Problems caused by short term business incentives
4. Capitalism v. Socialism
3. Politics
1. Immigration
2. Abortion
3. Voting rights and the New Jim Crow
4. Guns in America
4. Foreign Policy
1. Ways to reduce terrorism
2. Israeli-Palestinian conflict
3. Yemen and al-Qaida
5. Education
1. More respect for the teaching profession
2. Selection of majors, how the match or influence personality
6. Security
1. Loss of privacy
2. Use of drones
3. Wars, how they start, how to stop
7. Health
1. Increasing longevity, good or bad?
8. Other Suggested Topics
4. Determine topic for next meeting, on 9/19/2013

Health

ObamaCare, Scheduled for 8/19/13



Related Health topics:

1) High Medical Cost

2) Longevity

Lowell thought that this article on increasing longevity would make a good discussion topic. The article was concern about the social consequences of life extension due to medical advances.  Here is a TED Talk about "Blue Zones" in the world where longevity was a natural occurance.

Security

Background material for Security topics

1) NSA surveillance and Internet privacy

2) Cyber Security

     Cyber Arms Race, from Ken

3) Use of Drones

Education

Wayne made an excellent case for Education as a topic of discussion,

One of the very much discussed and in the news at present is the status of our educational system.  I believe that it has been discussed and commented on by president Obama.  It is very interesting to read some of the accounts of the teachers that volunteered for the Teach For America program.  I don’t want to get into the details now, but anyone who has had some teaching experience certainly knows that it has been a thankless job as far as compensation goes.  Of course, there can be other rewards besides money that may come from the teaching profession.  One of them is keeping up with latest topics and also the feeling that you have helped someone acquire the skills and attitudes for a fulfilled lifetime in their trek through this life experience as it is surely going to be quite a challenge (coping with global climate change, food resources for an expanding world population).

Skye had an interesting variation,

Why do some people major in/work in the liberal arts, the social sciences, the hard sciences? I have found some scientists who also are talented in music or something like that but not as many musicians, etc., who have a science as an avocation (other than astronomy or birdwatching). Does a certain major change one? 

Here is a TED Talk about how teachers motivate their students. We might also reflect on how a teacher help us choose our own majors.