Remembering Bob M. Kulzer August 25, 1939 - May 2, 2023

 

Bob M. Kulzer Obituary

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Have Americans Lost the Art Of Independent Thinking Or Are We Misinformed?

                                                     Image:  Mission to Learn dot com

Americans have grown acclimated to viewing the world through media sound bites, opinionated, biased news financed by money driven politicians and lobbying firms that spend enormous amounts to influence our opinions.

As a result, we have very little trust because the product of this buzz portends negative, stagnated government, growing like a money- eating beast and putting generations in hock with unwarranted wars through a focus on big corporations and big business.

Has independent thinking by researching a personal perspective become a lost art in our day in age?

Are we just too busy to develop a credible opinion of our own due to the fast pace our social values demand?

 Or are we misinformed?

THE VALUE OF TRUST

Trust is hard to establish in the modern era. We see very little true statesmanship in the good people we send to Washington who promptly become ground up in the huge machine there in order to survive. 

Communications and expectations are two vital elements in measuring trust.

To an extraordinary extent, the age in which we live is requiring us to redefine trust and the degree to which communication and expectations contribute to it.

Consider simpler times a few years past (say 50). Trust was necessary in many venues as a means of survival on a day-to-day basis. We relied on others extensively for our well being from our local store to our banker, from the policeman to the politician. And we knew them all better, we could reach out and touch them and we were not viewing them in sound bites and web sites, nor were we being bombarded with multiple forms of input to digest about them.

THE CHALLENGE

Mass marketing and communications has created expectations beyond reality in venues from romance web sites to building wealth and the role of nations.  We must come down to earth and become much more sophisticated in the manner with which we view all this input and sift it in a meaningful way to have true trust. If we do not we run a high risk of tyranny and that fact is inescapable.

To a very large degree this is a personal responsibility. We must become involved, make prudent judgments and think for ourselves. 

THE ENVIRONMENT

Charles Lewis’ Book, published before the current administration, Looks at the “Lies Your President Told You and Other Mistruths”.  Perhaps he will update it to include our experiences in the last 2 years. 

 INTERVIEW WITH "THE PROJECT ON GOVERNMENT OVERSIGHT"

 

Author Charles Lewis

"The most disturbing discovery in my nine years of research and writing is this: leaders don't need to distort information and the truth. All they have to do now, in our fast-paced, short attention-span world, is just delay the truth, by years, months, and weeks. We still don't have key documents from the Iran-Contra scandal, the second biggest political scandal in the U.S. involving a White House since Watergate. That was a quarter century ago! Is that coincidental?  No." 

 Here’s the question you have to ask yourself before reading Charles Lewis’ new book, 

"935 Lies The Future of Truth and the Decline of America's Moral Integrity" 

Are we as a country so jaded that we’ve come to accept untruths and    
misinformation from our government as just the cost of living in a democracy?

Lewis, who teaches journalism at American University and who founded  the Center for Public Integrity (CPI), does his best to remind us that we can and should expect more from our leaders. 935 Lies expands upon a CPI project that tracked the number of false statements that the President George W. Bush administration told in the two-year build up to the war in Iraq. The lies were aimed at persuading Americans that Iraq posed a threat to our national security.

Deceit, however, is bipartisan, as Lewis shows.

POGO: What is the big-picture effect of the public being repeatedly lied to by our leaders?

Lewis: Over time—many years which have become decades—persistent prevarications by those in power leads to cynicism, distrust and citizen disengagement. Which, you may have noticed, we substantially have had now for decades. Distrust and disapproval of Congress, for example, is at unprecedented, historic levels. Voter participation in elections has been woeful for years. Etc.

POGO: You describe the problem of misinformation as endemic to our society-- why did you choose to focus on lies told during the Bush administration? Of course they’ve continued since then.

Lewis: The "935 lies" mentioned in the Prologue of my book, regarding the false and erroneous statements by President  George W. Bush and either other top administration officials between 9/11/01 and 9/11/03, were compiled in a 380,000-word database and  published by the Center for Public Integrity in Iraq: The War Card in January 2008, near the five-year anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

That prompted me to examine the extent to which this had occurred before, over time, since approximately 1950 to today. And of course, the Johnson administration misrepresentations about the Gulf of Tonkin and the U.S. involvement in Vietnam more broadly, pre-dated the Bush/Iraq war by 40 years.

It also demonstrates the extent of what J. William Fulbright called "the arrogance of power" and the fact that lying by those in power is bipartisan. My book also examines untruths in the Obama administration and others, and "mortally consequential" lies by corporations dating back to the 1940s.

POGO: What should a leader’s punishment be for intentionally lying to the public? Should he lose his job—or worse?

Lewis: A leader's accountability should be directly related to the seriousness of what he/she has lied about. In real life, whether a leader should lose his job depends on the circumstances of the moment, and obviously, the political will of the people.

Unfortunately, we generally don't punish our politicians for lying, as we seem to have  a bifurcated, bipartisan perception of "truth" in the United States, to the extent that in one poll, four years after George W. Bush's second term had ended, more than 60 percent of Republicans still believed there were weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in Iraq.

We, as a society, have become increasingly confused, unable to discern the difference between truth and falsehood. And as Hannah Arendt  and others have noted, that is a dangerous state of affairs, when we no longer can ascertain what is factual and what is not, who to believe  and who NOT to believe.

We live in a society that doesn't have "real-time truth" about those in power. How can a democracy predicated upon an informed citizenry and  self-government exist successfully if the people don't know the facts about those in power?

As some point, I hope the public decides to get angry and demand more truth, but getting there from here is an enormous specter to imagine.  First of all, there is no longer a "general public" but instead numerous  carefully studied, dissected electorally and commercially micro-publics  throughout the United States.

Marketing, advertising and high-tech wizardry by those in politics have rendered the concept of "the public"  less meaningful and media political advertising has become a huge source    of revenue for that industry and fanned the fires of fractious, vituperative partisanship during and between election cycles.

We are the only advanced democracy in the world without free air time for politicians during election time.

The only way the McCain-Feingold  campaign finance law could be passed by Congress years ago was when McCain and Feingold agreed to take out the "free air time for    politicians" section of their bill—then the National Association of Broadcasters and others backed off their opposition to the legislation and it passed, among other concessions made. The broadcasters now make a billion dollars per election cycle from political ads...

It is a grim situation which has been deteriorating in many ways for decades. And it will take years, decades, to ameliorate."

Charles Lewis’ New Book Looks at the Lies Your President Told You and Other Mistruths

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A Thank You And 4 Gifts from Ken Larson At "Smalltofeds"

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Approaching two decades in volunteer small business consulting, I appreciate the many individuals who have contacted me for advice. You have come from several venues – through the Micro Mentor and SCORE Foundations, LinkedIn and other social media sites.  It has been a pleasure serving small business. 

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My work with you has kept me active in retirement, in touch with my profession and engaged in a continuous learning mode.

Please feel free to download any of the 4 free books pictured here, as well as other useful information at the BOX in the right margin of https://www.smalltofeds.com . You may also download the books free of charge from: https://smalltofeds.academia.edu/KenLarson

Although originally written some time ago, the small business contracting books contain live links in the Adobe text to updates for any given topic at the “Small To Feds” Blog. The books have been written at the request of my volunteer clients to cover topics in the order small business generally encounters them in government contracting.

My best wishes for success to you in your small business enterprises.  

 

Ken Larson

Despite Failures So Far, VA Inks New Oracle Cerner Health Records Deal

 

“MILITARY TIMES” By Leo Shane III  

“Veterans Affairs officials on announced an extension of their contract with Oracle Cerner to continue their embattled electronic health records overhaul, promising that new safeguards in the agreement will improve the existing software system’s performance.

The deal means five more years of partnership between the department and the digital information firm, both of which have come under scrutiny for work so far on the $16 billion project.”

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“Veterans Affairs officials on Tuesday announced an extension of their contract with Oracle Cerner to continue their embattled electronic health records overhaul, promising that new safeguards in the agreement will improve the existing software system’s performance.

The deal means five more years of partnership between the department and the digital information firm, both of which have come under scrutiny for work so far on the $16 billion project. Only a few sites are using the new records system, despite five years of effort so far, and future rollouts have been postponed indefinitely until key improvements are made.

Glitches in the system have produced more than 150 cases of veterans suffering harm from medical record mistakes and shortfalls. Administrators reported last fall that the system failed to deliver more than 11,000 orders for specialty care, lab work and other services, all without alerting health care providers the orders had been lost.

Neil Evans, acting program executive director of VA’s health records project, acknowledged in a statement that “the system has not delivered for veterans or VA clinicians to date, but we are stopping at nothing to get this right.”

The contract announcement does not change the full halt on new deployments announced by the department last month. VA officials have said that they will not schedule any more system deployments “until VA is confident that the new [record system] is highly functioning at current sites and ready to deliver for veterans and VA clinicians.”

Getting military and veterans health records onto the same system has been a goal of federal administrators for decades. The Pentagon had some issues implementing the Oracle Cerner software but not as many setbacks as the VA.

The new agreement — five one-year contracts, to allow annual performance reviews of Oracle Cerner’s work — includes new accountability measures such as financial penalties for system down time and regular reporting of software shortfalls.

In a joint statement, House Veterans’ Affairs Committee Chairman Mike Bost, R-Ill., and Rep. Matt Rosendale, R-Mont., who leads the committee’s technology panel, said they remain skeptical that the new agreement will produce better results.

“The main questions we have about what will be different going forward remain unanswered,” they said. “This shorter-term contract is an encouraging first step, but veterans and taxpayers need more than a wink and a nod that the project will improve.”

Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee Chairman Jon Tester was more optimistic following the news but added that “this is just the start of what’s needed to get this program working in a way deserving of our veterans and taxpayers.”

Oracle Cerner officials told House lawmakers during a May 9 hearing that they support the pause in rollouts and are committed to fixing the system problems in coming years. With the contract negotiations complete, that work will begin again at the five sites currently using the new records system.”

VA Records System Gamble

About Leo Shane III

Leo covers Congress, Veterans Affairs and the White House for Military Times. He has covered Washington, D.C. since 2004, focusing on military personnel and veterans policies. His work has earned numerous honors, including a 2009 Polk award, a 2010 National Headliner Award, the IAVA Leadership in Journalism award and the VFW News Media award.

A Resident Veteran Comments – St. Paul Pioneer Press Investigative Article On Minnesota Veterans Home Hastings

 The Minnesota Veterans Home in Hastings on Friday, Mar. 3, 2023. (John Autey / Pioneer Press)

On March 5, 2023 and subsequent articles, the St. Paul Pioneer Press has covered the investigation ongoing into the Minnesota Veterans Home Hastings (MVH).

I was somewhat shocked at the article and its lack of understanding of the root causes behind the symptoms they perceive to be observing. Having lived at this facility for over a decade I believe I can offer them some enlightenment.

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I am a 76 year old resident who has resided at the Hastings Veterans Home (MVH) for 16 years. I arrived after serving two combat tours in Vietnam and 36 years with defense companies building weapons being used by our country today. I was treated for PTSD and Depression at the VA Hospital in Minneapolis and referred to the MVH for continued care.

During my stay at MVH I have volunteered to small business and to veterans of all ages. I work today with veterans returning from the Middle East.

Ken Larson

I have met and admired the vast majority of administration and staff at MVH during my stay. They work under difficult conditions. Many citizens make the mistake of thinking the state veterans homes are a part of the larger Veterans Administration. State veterans homes are not part of the VA.

Budgets are always tight at the State level because the state budget must be balanced by law. State budgets are NOT like the federal government which is now approaching a $32 Trillion National Debt.

A state domiciliary is subject to state policy makers. They are also overseen by the Federal VA because the VA provides a great deal of the funding necessary for operations. State funding contributes a solid share as well, and residents like me contribute the bulk of our social security and/or disability payments to run the facility.

Contributing to the oversight function, are the federal and state health departments, OSHA, HIPPA and other regulatory functionaries. Therein lies a major cause of much of what you see in the way of management issues reported by the Pioneer Press, both today and below in 2010:

Pioneer Press March 2023

Pionieer Press November 2010

Management and staff fear their government regulators, and as human beings, they yield to that fear in the way they treat each other in setting policy and managing their staffs. As in so many other functions involving government in our country, bureaucracy reigns supreme.

I have not found the care wanting here at MVH. I admire the front line administration, maintenance, housekeeping and food services staffs, the social workers and nurses who have sacrificed a great deal before and during COVID and those who will continue to do so.

Management and staff turnover under difficult health care issues in this country is to be expected. In my view the real issues are above the level of the facilities like the MVH domicile facility and at the pinnacle where “‘Policy Wonks Meet Bureaucracy”. This dynamic duo then follows the money trail to Hastings, and metes out their regulatory functions at a facility that is over a hundred years old, operating under lean budgets and staffing.

That facility and the other one like it in Minneapolis just happens to be GOLDEN to many veterans who are struggling to move on.

I suggest our Senators and Congressional Representatives, consider simplifying practices and focus on the human elements that cause stress resulting from regulatory pressures on people that simply wish to do their jobs.

The Pioneer Press article reports on symptoms, not real causes. Simplify and clarify policy and regulation, focus on the care of the worker and service to the veteran with clear, non-threatening and effective practices.

Above all. be aware of what stacks of regulation and power brokers can do to lower level participants.

Ken Larson on Hastings Veteran's Home

I have lived at the Hastings Veteran's Home for 19 years. This blog was formed by other veteran's at the home and myself in 2006 and has carried certain issues with regard to veteran's care and world events. 

I live across the road from the main building these days in a smaller unit along the river. I get my medications twice a month and take that myself. My meals, glasses, dental care and annual physicals, flu shots and the like are all part of the maintenance fee I pay from my pension. The clothing room and similar furnishings are available when I need them.  The fee I pay contributes over 90% of my social security to the operation of the facility. What remains of my monthly check is adequate for me because my needs are very simple these days.

As I got well, I realized part of my recovery required getting as far away from bureaucratic settings and authority as possible. I found over the years in the war zone and in 35 years of corporations and dealing with Washington DC that my tolerance level for it was 0 at age 60.

When Clark Dyrud was Veteran's Commissioner he and I had lunch and exchanged emails over the years since he assisted me out of Washington, but by mutual agreement we never discussed work; only family and friends from high school and our experiences in Vietnam, since he and I went through some of the same trauma during the war. I have never been seen in public with Clark on facility grounds. Now that he is retired I am sure he is relieved. He was a good services officer for over 30 years.

I meet with staff for care team reviews. They know what I do and respect me for it. I have received facility volunteer awards for my work in the community each of the years I have been here. All staff I have encountered have been professional at what they do, sincere in their motives and helpful. They have a difficult job. The population here is of vastly varying backgrounds and ages. Many are 20 years younger than I and have a lot of life ahead of them but fell on hard times, addiction, depression and other maladies veterans are particularly vulnerable to.

I have supported both Tony Rose and Louie Klemek with advice, government insights into agencies, correspondence and getting legal help. I got Tony's paperwork released from Homeland Security under the Freedom of Information Act because I know how to do it having worked government agencies in my career. I wrote a letter that resulted in Louie getting some wood working privileges back that had been taken away and a visit from a State Representative. I have done all this behind the scenes and on a personal basis with these men. I also arranged for Tony's Washington D.C. pro-bono legal help, and set up a blog for him and his cause:

http://rosecoveredglasses.blogspot.com/2008/11/navy-veteran-has-waited-2-years-for.html

I helped both men because I felt the system, from the federal level to the state level, was letting them down. They have appreciated my assistance and have told me so.

This facility to me is a room with a beautiful view of the Vermilion River, a great little small town I enjoy, fishing, photography, writing, and intellectually stimulating non-profit volunteer work in an office supplied by the county at no cost so I can help small business.

I have served over 7,000 clients through the non-profit organizations SCORE and Micro Mentor and many local businesses and small enterprises in every state in the union and its territories, receiving the SCORE National Achievement Award shown in the right margin of this site in 2010 for mentoring over 500 clients in the SCORE on-line counseling program. I have small business clients in several foreign countries. Roughly 30 % of my client base is veterans. My government contracting web site has received over 1,200,000 visits.

http://www.smalltofeds.com 

In short, the Minnesota Veteran's Home is an ingredient in Ken, reinvented in retirement and I am enjoying it very much.

10 Reasons To Avoid The Next World War

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Conflicting parties must recognize the following facts:

1. The pace of technology, communication and weapons has now outpaced the necessity for war as a means of advancing progress. The threat is too great for mutually assured destruction.

2. We are on new ground, never experienced before in terms of being "Wired" as a world - economically, socially, environmentally and scientifically

3. Recent events involving US war "Interventions" and the incredibly out of control nature of the Military Industrial Complex have demonstrated their danger, their folly and their contribution to the largest national debt ever to grace the face of the earth.

4. Alternatives to war in terms of scientific advancement not only are required, but are in progress.

5. The war makers are operating on world credit subject to world approval.

6. The environment is screaming for protection and we will get on with it.

7. Conflicting ideas, if managed constructively, can yield a hybrid solution to a challenge that is a better product or service than either side of the initial equation.

8. The key to managing international relations constructively is fostering an environment respectful of all points of view but led by individuals who are driving to fulfilling peaceful, progressive objectives as a first priority and who blend differences of opinion decisively.

9. Winning and losing are being redefined by the above.

10. We can no longer as a world community continue the present course of wars.

We must intuitively arrive at the conclusion that war is a waste and avoid it for reasons that are becoming more obvious everyday around the globe and are addressed in each of these 10 points. 

If we do not intuitively arrive at this conclusion, war will continue and it will destroy us.

The Deeper Lasting Costs Of War

Marine John Thomas Doody, (Chris O’Meara/AP)

   

CLICK IMAGES TO VIEW OR ENLARGE  - Video and Chart Brown University “Costs of War”

“MILITARY TIMES“

“A new collection of studies reveals at the often unseen effects of those wars both at home and abroad ranging from fractured families, strained caregivers, increased cancer rates to mistrust of health workers, demolished infrastructure and military suicides.“

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“Impact from the past two decades of U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan can be seen in dollars spent, lives shattered by injury or trauma and dead service members carried home.

“War and Health” is a collection of ethnographies covering a range of people affected from the wars beginnings, current day and likely long-term future ripples.

In it researchers have found correlations between areas in Afghanistan and Pakistan with higher number of drone strikes are also less likely to accept polio vaccinations and other medical assistance due to mistrust of government aid.

They’ve seen increased rates of behavior incidents and low school performance among children of frequently-deployed military parents.

The reports show waves of Iraqis seeking medical care in Beirut, Lebanon with late-stage cancers because they couldn’t get early screening in Iraq, which previously boasted the leading medical care in the region.

Researchers found military suicides, increased family violence and higher numbers of substance abuse and DUIs even among non-combat service members correlated with faster-paced deployment schedules and training.

While half of all caregivers for veterans are spouses, parents or immediate family, a full one-third of caregivers are friends or neighbors who don’t qualify to receive financial compensation created in recent years to ease the burden that caregivers for vets can face.

Catherine Lutz and Andrea Mazzarino edited the collection as part of their work with the “Costs of War Project,” out of Brown University.

The project collects information on war dead, military and civilian casualties, budget figures and other measures of the costs of the conflicts in the Global War on Terror. The project began in 2011 and recently kicked off a new effort to update past reports and develop new measures by 2021, the 20th anniversary of the start of the wars.

The same project recently released and updated notice on the fiscal costs of the Global War on Terror. The release noted that an estimated $6.4 trillion had been spent between late 2001 and today, a large portion of which has been financed through deficit spending.

But, those numbers can be difficult to nail down, as noted in the report, which quotes Christopher Mann of the Congressional Research Service.

“No government-wide reporting consistently accounts for both DOD and non-DOD war costs,” he said.

Part of the Costs of War Project’s work is to pull together disparate sources to find the tally of the wars.

Their research has found that that a growing cost will be medical care.

One example included 10-year costs estimates for post-9/11 veterans with traumatic brain injuries is expected to cost $2.4 billion from 2020 to 2029.

Mazzarino spoke with Military Times about the nature of the project and what she and its contributors hope it will accomplish.

She and others have participated in media interviews and, through the Costs of War Project, have been in touch with Sen. Bernie Sanders, D-VT and hope to testify before Congress on their findings.

“The whole point of the project is to move beyond the academy to influencing advocacy and public policy,” Mazzarino said.

That’s not an easy task. Data-driven studies such as past reports on increasing servicemember suicides and strains on military families garnered political and public attention, but that took years and resulted in some changes in programs.

What Mazzarino and her colleagues are working with is less black-and-white and more focused on the second- and third-order effects of having a military at war on a daily basis for decades.

But, it may be that what they’re finding will have as much a long-term impact as other major war-related concerns.

“People who were serving when the war started, they’re entering old age soon,” Mazzarino said. “That’s going to come with all kinds of financial burdens to the U.S. government, especially with care for those veterans.”

And overseas, the imprint of decades of combat leave their own kind of toll.

“There are subtle and unexpected ways that the destruction of infrastructure has affected public health,” she said.

The Costs of War Project website has compiled estimates that a many as 480,000 people have died in direct war violence. They estimate far more have died due to “indirect” war violence such as when access to food, water and medical care was restricted or unavailable due to combat.

Their research estimates that more than 244,000 civilians have been killed in connection to the wars and as many as 21 million have been displaced and many are now war refugees, with substandard living conditions away from their native lands.

One harder to measure item is how the estimated $5.9 trillion spent on the wars could have been spent, the report notes. What healthcare, infrastructure or education projects were curtailed, limited or ended as a result in budget priorities to fight the wars instead?

Mazzarino has seen firsthand some of the effects of the wartime military. Her husband serves as a submariner in the Navy. That’s meant more frequent and unexpected deployments that his predecessors faced.

And she’s seen that strain on fellow military families, members and commanders.

Some similar experiences were reflected in a section titled, “It’s Not Okay: War’s Toll on Health Brought Home to Communities and Environments.”

One vignette profiled Dolores, the young wife of an infantry sergeant whose unit had seen a number of murders committed by soldiers back home and increases in domestic violence.

Those experiences had weighed heavily on her husband who returned and completed another Iraq deployment, this time being injured and later diagnosed with traumatic brain injury, and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

Six years after he had returned from theater, she had become his main caregiver and had to quit her job to do that work and to advocate for his care.

The section’s authors, Jean Scandlyn and Sarah Hautzinger, wrote that many of the veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan they interviewed still saw themselves as deeply entangled in what had happened during their deployments.

“Assessing war’s toll on health requires that we consider the ways we all become entangled in wars seemingly distant, and how war particularly erodes wellness in domestic military communities,” they wrote.”

https://www.militarytimes.com/news/your-military/2019/11/14/why-the-deeper-lasting-costs-of-war-is-not-reflected-just-in-dollars-and-body-counts/