Hybe 16

Hello, all. I finally made it back. We finished Mom's therapy sessions and she has been discharged. We all agreed that she had made as much progress as could be expected. She is 93 after all and has no ambitions to run marathons, or begin body building. Besides she REALLY did not like the exercise. She has recovered to just about the level she was at before her fall.

Those sessions really cut into our days and occupied the time when we were feeling most energetic. I skimmed most of the posts and news articles and didn't have much energy to form coherent thoughts and post. Now perhaps I can get back to my normal activities.

A number of items over the last few days reminded me of my response some 20 odd years ago when George W. Bush was proposing what he called an "ownership society." Listening to his ideas I quipped that it he really wanted a "your on your ownership society." I remembered that when I saw a headline which claimed the current administration wanted people to be "on their own." I didn't read the accompanying article. But over the weekend the Weather Channel had a segment on prepping for weather related disasters, especially hurricanes since it is hurricane season. Their advice was to make sure your homeowners insurance was up to date and paid up, you photographed all your belongings just in case, and had your plans made for either riding the event out at home or evacuating if ordered to do so. My first thought was wondering how available insurance is in various parts of the country. Many costal inhabitants can't get insurance against hurricanes and other storms. No one can get flood insurance unless they live in a designated flood zone and then only through the federal government. Many insurance companies have left the home insurance market in the west where fires are always a possibility. In some cases States have established insurance programs to replace the private companies but it is a major question whether those states are financially able to cover their obligations. Twice during the segment the expert urged people to prepare to do without any governmental assistance. For the last century people have learned to assume the if catastrophic events happen the Federal government will step in to make them whole. And both Republican and Democratic administrations encouraged that attitude and made broad promises to that effect. Well, over the last 30 or so years we have begun to find out how hollow those promises really are.

Ugo Bardi has an interesting post discussing how similar consumer societies and military societies really are. But a key point in the essay is how empires progress from a consumer society to a military society as they decline and increasing amounts of resources are shifted from the consumer economy to the military. A thought occurred to me from my reading of Roman history: as the resources the Empire required became constrained and the size of the military increased the fraud involved in the military economy also increased. Several authors noted the many of the legions that were listed in the government records were either non-existent or were drastically under manned but the costs of that military continued to rise and the demand for taxes also increased. Officers were noted for skimming a fair portion of the funds for themselves.