Dear John Letter #3. public vs private health care debate

Dear John

I’ll admit there are incredible inefficiencies in the current system.  Of course.  no denying it.  and you might be able to treat the inefficiencies you mention in your email with a single payer system.  Fine.   but you’ll get new inefficiencies when you implement your single payer system that will far outweigh the specific benefits from a single payer system you can identify right now.

It is also misleading to say the “private system” isn’t working.

We don’t have a private system. 

We have a  public / private system that is massively corrupted by public subsidies and further strained by a failing fully public system for old and underprivileged called medicare and Medicaid. 

John, you want to blame everything on a combination of demographics and greed.  You predict an “ageism” problem.  the problem isn’t ageism per se, it is a system that systematically shifts resources from the productive to the unproductive individuals that make up society.  That is a game the government plays. 

The GOVERNMENT creates such divisions as ageism by being in the game of choosing winners and losers.  Old people wouldn’t be in conflict with young if the government hadn’t designed the system to pit one group against the other.  

And old people would be a lot better off if we had a system where end payers paid health care costs directly and market pressures forced healthcare providers to keep prices low – FOR EVERYONE.

Obviously we would need an insurance component to the system, but the insurance would be for catastrophic needs only; not for day to day coverage and routine drug therapies.

The far right wing of GOP is responsible for end of life issues that keep old people alive when they are vegetables.    I think you’ve mentioned in past that something like 80% of healthcare costs are used up in last 3 months of people’s lives.  Let individuals decide when to pull the plug.  Crazy elements of religious right throw law suits at families who want to pull the plug.    Another example of GOP hypocrisy – if they want a free market for health care then let people make such decisions themselves.

Insurance companies are in the driver seat in current system not because insurance execs are greedy.    Insurance companies are in the driver seat because the system we have subsidizes medical insurance (via tax breaks for company sponsored insurance) and thus puts insurance companies in a position of maximum power in the system.    The government created the flawed system we have.    

The flawed system we have now isn’t a “market failure” or a failure of the private sector.    There is no such thing as a “private health care system” here in the US. 

I agree the current public/private system we have is screwed up, but it is not screwed up because of any inherent flaws in a private market for health care.  markets don’t “do” anything.  Markets are flawed in many ways, but government can’t fix these flaws without creating other worse flaws.  Any systemic flaws in the current system (i.e price inflation and fiscal unsustainability)is caused by government policy. 

You won’t fix the current system by getting rid of the private part of the current system.  You’ll fix the system if you get rid of the inefficiencies caused by public policy and crazy incentives injected in the system by public subsidies and Medicaid.

John, you want to give the government total control of the current system as if that will drive efficiency!!  Please explain exactly how a government monopoly will drive efficiency.  I know there are a laundry list of claimed efficiencies – like ending redundancies in payment system for all the diff insurance companies.  But, from a macro perspective, do you really believe that a public monopoly will be able to drive efficiencies over anything but the immediate short term??

Seriously john.  think about it.  do you really believe a public monopoly can sustain efficiency gains if it is not forced to be efficient based on competitive market pressures??   Forget it.  believing in public monopolies is a pie in the sky fantasy.

I know it sounds great to have one payer and you can envision all of these great “savings” but the problem with a one-payer system is the same as any utopian scheme.  It can’t work in the real world because any efficiency gains from one payer system will more than be offset by inefficiencies bred by an inherently corrupt government monopoly. 

Is that to say the market system will be perfect.  no of course not.  But first let’s disentangle the problems the market faces currently that are inherent flaws in the market and problems that are caused by public policy.  and then lets admit that the public sector isn’t going to be able to fix inherent market flaws with enlightened mandates and monopoly powers.  Anything the public sector does to fix one problem will trigger a train of unintended consequences that cause some other related set of problems … that will inevitably be blames on the so called market.

If one payer systems are so great, why don’t we have a one payer system for housing, finance, education, automobiles, etc, etc?  one payer systems ultimately prove unsustainable fiscally because there is no incentive in the system for continued efficiency gains in the system as a whole. 

All humans are greedy.   And businessmen are going to be greedy and maximize their rent seeking activities when they have a government facilitated “monopoly” like private insurance execs have;  John, what do you think will happen when we give the monopoly over to politicians???  All humans are greedy,  and bureaucrats will be just as corrupt as private insurance execs.  With a single payer system you will just exchange one set of corrupt execs for another set of corrupt bureaucrats.

The answer is competition.  Greed isn’t the problem.  the problem is government mandated monopolies that allow individuals to game the system without consequences.  If a company is filled with crooked employees, eventually it will go out of business.  If a government monopoly is filled with corrupt bureaucrats, which is will be eventually, because humans are greedy, then the system still stays in business and the tax payer gets screwed.    

That is what has happened with public education.  the unions (and Democratic party) hold the public education system hostage for their own selfish purposes.  tax payers get screwed.   The political elite and organized labor laugh all the way to the bank.

Dear John Letter #2: trickledown economics

PArt of my series of "Dear John" letters to my die-hard liberal friend...

Dear John,

I can agree with you that Republicans are often quite hypocritical for supporting so called “free markets.”   

Like I’ve said before, Republicans can’t talk credibly about free markets when they support a central bank dominated financial system that literally prints money to pay for a massive military industrial complex and military adventurism all over the world (and bails out politically connected financial institutions).

The Republicans do a disservice to markets when they promise that markets will work everything out or that there is such a thing as trickle down economics, when “we” have injected / infected the market system with easy money.  Markets can’t possibly work when they are distorted by unsound money.    The rich get richer and the poor get poorer in a system designed around a central bank.

When Republicans ask us to "trust" in the market, they set the market up to be the fall guy when things eventually come crashing down thanks to an inevitable easy money bubble fueled by the Federal Reserve, which is exactly what happened in 2006 - 2008.

Meantime, it is wrong for the GOP to use markets as a silver bullet solve-all for social problems.  Markets are inherently flawed.  We need to understand and articulate the inherent "micro" flaws in markets that paradoxically make them special and healthy and sustainable from a macro perspective.  Pollution, income inequality, and business cycles are just a few examples of what i would consider micro flaws / failures in markets that we can’t fix without undermining the underlying health of the larger economy.  

Try to get rid of income inequality or business cycles with enlightened public policy and I guarantee you will set the entire economy up for systemic failure.   There are no free lunches.  The macro sustainability of markets is in large part due to their inherent volatility and "unfairness."

all of this leads me to the Dems who are just as delusional -- if not more so -- when they promise government solutions to so called “market failures.”

The Dems never ever talk about trade offs.  They talk about market failures and win/win solutions provided by enlightened government policy interventions.  When anyone disagrees with a Democrat initiative, they’re assumed to be selfish or stupid.  Dems never talk about or acknowledge the unintended consequences or the unseen second order unpredictable results of their proposed win/win solutions.   

Very often in a complex system like a human economy, the result of an action is the exact opposite of the intended result!!!    for example, public schools are intended to help level the playing field in society, yet what they do is hold poor and middle class families hostage to a dysfunctional education system, which the rich (and politicians in Washington DC) can opt out of by sending their children to private schools, or by buying a house in a very wealthy neighborhood.

  

Trickle down economics is a straw-man.  Fine, let’s all agree that trickle down economics doesn’t work (especially when you have a system built on an easy money central bank).  But, what is the alternative?

Is there such a thing as trickle up economics?  the answer is NO.

Can you actually increase the welfare of a country or a household by providing direct cash aid?  What are the second order effects of that cash in the economy or to the household?  who gets the cash? What incentives or disincentives to work are created by the cash transfer?   Can you reduce income inequality with targeted public policy like highly graduated marginal tax rates?  Maybe … but, can you achieve your reduced income inequality goal without also causing harm to larger economy? the answer is no, you cannot have your cake and eat it too. 

You can’t raise marginal taxes on the rich without also setting in train a set of negative consequences that impairs the health of the overall economy.   the fastest way to income equality is total economic collapse like you see in North Korea or Soviet Union.  Dems would counter, well we don’t want perfect income equality, just more income equality or just less income inequality. 

Go ahead and try to reduce income inequality with high marginal tax rates.  The result will be lower growth and higher unemployment.   A good example of this is the US in the 1970s or modern France.    If you want to live with structural unemployment above 10%, then fine.  Lets at least admit the costs of using public policy to reduce income inequality.  While your at it, go ahead and raise the minimum wage. 

But be prepared to increase unemployment.  Economists can slice and dice the data to prove that raising the minimum wage doesn’t raise unemployment.  I don’t buy it. 

The fact is, any well intended public policy has a trade off component embedded in it.  sometimes the trade off is worth the cost.  I just don’t buy the win/win rhetoric of the Dems who promise free lunches and then when they don’t deliver, they blame the GOP for blocking them.

The problem with measuring the costs of public policy is that the second order effects are often hard to link to the initial policy.  So we implement one policy to fix one thing; the result is problems somewhere else, and we find ourselves in a never ending cycle of fixing problems caused by some previous policy measure.  Politicians point the finger at their political opponent or the market, and the finger rarely if ever gets pointed back at the politicians themselves.

You want universal health care?  then at least admit the tradeoffs.  There are always tradeoffs.  It is true that the US spends a greater share of GDP on health care for worse results than France or Canada.  But, that doesn’t mean if the government takes over in the US we can “save” money.  There are unique institutional reasons why we spend so much for health care in the US.  putting the government in charge will NOT magically reduce the percentage of GDP we spend on health care.    There are always tradeoffs.   

With Obamacare I can guarantee we will get some combination of low quality, doctor and service shortages, fiscal deficits and in the end we will get forced rationing.    The rich will always be able to opt out of the public system, and the poor will be stuck in a dysfunctional system.  Look at public education.  once the state takes over, the system is unionized and the unions (and politicians) game the system for their own selfish benefits.  That is reality.  The same will happen with obamacare. 

The text book solutions will never happen for government managed health care reform because politics intervene and neutralize the spending cuts while encouraging spending increases.  That’s exactly what we saw with Obamacare.

Like I’ve said, I can agree the GOP are often a bunch of power hungry hypocrites or well intended free market advocates who don’t understand how markets work or don’t want to admit that they can’t have their cake and eat it too (big defense spending and free markets). 

But the Dems are just as crazy when they claim their own version of promising the public we can all have our cake and eat it too; Dems promise to be able to fix this problem and that problem with public policy for a win/win for society.   I mean what fantasy land do we live in?  if the government could solve complex economic and social problems, then why are things so screwed up every where you look where government is in charge? 

That is not to say “markets” are perfect.  markets are inherently unfair and uneven and cyclical and unpredictable and will always result in structural income inequality.  There will be pollution and there will be oil spills and other problems. 

Markets aren’t perfect.  We need to get our arms around that simple fact.  The government can’t fix market failures because there is no such thing as market failure per se.  Markets have negative features just like any complex system.  

The earth system has what we call natural disasters.  These aren’t system failures.  An earthquake isn't an “earth system failure.”  Earthquakes are features of the dynamic complex system that play an essential role in the otherwise “healthy” functioning of the larger earth system.  Markets also have negative features that also play a crucial role in the otherwise healthy functioning of the larger economy and financial sector.  For example, human economies have cyclical booms and busts.   The busts weed out the weak firms and lay the foundation for the establishment of new ones. 

Let’s learn to adapt to the cycles rather than try to “fix” them with a central bank.

If you try to fix what you claim are market failures, you are trying to play God.  it is like trying to eliminate earthquakes or hurricanes.  Impossible. 

That is why all of this talk of fixing global warming is nonsense.  If global warming is a problem, the ultimate solution will be more market, not more top down directed human intervention, which will just trigger more cycles of negative unintended consequences.  More market means getting rid of central banks and governments encouraging easy money fueled growth at any cost, like we see all over the world.

Liberty Defined

Copied below are the first few paragraphs of a book review by Lew Rockwell on Ron Paul's new book "Liberty Defined."  The point Lew makes in these introductory remarks echoes a fundamental theme of this blog:  i.e. that the political left and right in America have become two sides of the same "big government" coin.   In very simple terms, this mean the left argues for more "butter" and the right argues for more "guns" -- and we get too much of both funded by an accomodative central bank.  Liberty suffers.   When liberty suffers, so too does the dynamism and energy underpinning a free and prosperous society.

Following is a great quote from the Amazon book review of "Liberty Defined" that encapsulates Ron Paul's liberty-centric world view:  "Dr. Paul writes that to believe in liberty is not to believe in any particular social and economic outcome. It is to trust in the spontaneous order that emerges when the state does not intervene in human volition and human cooperation. It permits people to work out their problems for themselves, build lives for themselves, take risks and accept responsibility for the results, and make their own decisions. It is the seed of America."

My research into the science of spontaneous order suggests that Ron Paul is exactly right. 

The further the state involves itself in determining political, economic and social outcomes, the less room there is for liberty / spontaneous order -- and everyone suffers, most of all the "little guy" who is ostensibly supposed to have the most to gain from government interventions of various shapes and sizes. 

It's Time to Rethink Everything

Mises Daily: Wednesday, April 06, 2011 by Llewellyn H. Rockwell Jr.

The worst effect of the state is intellectual. It puts our brains in a prison, simply by defining the terms in which we are permitted to think and speak. The one nonnegotiable point becomes the state itself. You are permitted to argue about what the state's priorities ought to be (bombs or butter), but not to question the fundamental model of a state-dominated society.

Believers in human liberty have played along with this game for too long. They've done this for decades. Sometimes they tack right and sometimes they tack left. What they should be doing is upending the game board itself. They need boldly to make that fundamental claim of the old liberal tradition, that society orders itself without the state. Liberty is the answer in every area of life.

This is precisely what Ron Paul does in his amazing book to be released April 19: Liberty Defined: 50 Essential Issues That Affect Our Freedompolicy." It is not a piece of legislation. It does not emerge from the political process. Precisely the opposite: liberty is the absence of all these things. It is what results in the absence of state interference. Liberty's only fundamental requirement is that the state let society alone to develop, grow, and prosper.

This point of view is hardly heard at all in the political debate today, which is otherwise hamstrung by partisan wrangling of what the state should be doing. By the time you finish the introduction to Ron Paul's book, you realize that you are going to be treated to a completely new and radical form of thinking about politics, one that reimagines the current world in the same way that Jefferson reimagined his world — and became the real father of this country.

for the full article go to this link:
http://mises.org/daily/5186/Its-Time-to-Rethink-Everything

Dear John Letter #1 -- Why the oscars snubbed "Superman"

Dear John,

how do you square your praise for “Waiting for Superman” movie and the moves by Wisconsin governor to challenge unions with your blank check support for Democratic party?   

(here is quote from earlier email exchanges about the move "Waiting for Superman"--

Sam --I am sure you have seen it, but "Waiting for Superman" basically bolsters everything I think we all agree on with regard to Teacher's Unions. The situation in DC was unbelievable, when she offered the teachers $123K a year instead of $62K a year if they de-certed the union and had some accountability,and the union immediately shot it down. The other debacle was rteh NYC set up where they spend $100M a year on teachers who they can't fire to sit in a room and play cards. What a joke. J )

and here is quote from John on unions--

I am all for breaking unions and think Dems need to realize this.) 

Teacher unions in particular and unions in general are the heart and soul of Democratic party.  the Dems support the unions and the unions finance and support the Dems in one big self reinforcing funding cycle -- all at the expense of tax paying public. 

if you see the problem with unions, you have to see the inherent hypocrisy built into the DNA of Democratic party.  I’m not saying the GOP isn’t hypocritical.  It is.  The GOP loves the Federal reserve and subsidies for everything and then claims it is for the free market and low taxes and low regulation.

you can’t be for markets and also for a money printing machine which finances a massive industrial military complex.  Once you put the money printing machine into the mix, you better be for regulation because the markets won’t work any more.

that is the hypocrisy at the heart of the GOP.  I agree with you John that the Republican “free market” rhetoric is a bunch of crap.  Its crap because the GOP isn’t for free markets.  its for big government subsidies and big military.

What I am just suggesting, like I’ve done before, is that we are held hostage by a two party system that pretends to be for the protection of the little guy (either through welfare state or military protection) but really is for more power for the power elites in both parties that take turns at the public trough.   

Obama talked a good game about being a post partisan President, but he can’t walk the walk really because teacher unions and unions in general hold the Dem party hostage as we saw in Obamacare when the unions blocked higher tax on Cadillac health insurance plans – which union bosses enjoyed!!!

Now the unions are blocking education reform.

Any fantasy land system that you want to implement that puts government in charge of fixing important parts of US economy / society will be stuck with the same fundamental contradictions / constraints.  Your buddy Paul in his blog article bitches about what a wimp Obama is about not following through with all of his big idea promises.  It isn’t that Obama is a wimp.  It is that the ideas themselves are impossible to implement because there is some entrenched interest that the Dem Party is beholden to  -- whether trial lawyers or teacher unions or big pharma or big finance.   big finance is the latest addition to the Dem Party list.  Geithner bailed out all of the big banks, and investment banks. 

It isn’t that Obama is a wimp, it is that big labor and big business interests have blocked the truly big reforms that progressives want to pursue. 

John, you want the government to build high speed trains.  Wait until unions and special interest get a hold of that system.  You’ll get high speed trains in places that have the most powerful member of congress.  the system won’t make economic sense.    The same thing happened with the Federal highway system, which was doled out according to power interests in congress!  LBJ was master mind behind allocation of Fed funds for highway system to push his liberal social agenda.  You might like the social agenda, but then you have to hold your nose about how much waste went into the highway system – one reason the system is failing now.  lots of roads which weren’t needed were built that require fixing, thus draining resources from other roads which are needed. 

The way I see it, we’ll only get real education reform if/when our political elites cannot opt out of the public school system.  And we’ll only get real economic reform when elites aren’t held hostage by all of the special interests that they’ve given goodies to over the years.  as soon as the government gets in the game of choosing where high speed rails go, the system will be hijacked by political power interests.  Who is going to be in charge of making sure the system doesn’t’ get hijacked, John?  your system can’t work because it requires there be a mechanism that works above the democratic process.  that is a very slippery slope to benevolent dictatorship.

Every government program has a built in constituency.  You may say, lets get rid of the waste.  But it is very hard to determine what really is wasteful.  What you call waste, someone else calls a necessary program.

The only real solution to government waste is to limit government involvement in the first place.

John, if you really do appreciate Waiting for Superman you also have to see why the public school system holds the disadvantaged hostage in a government monopoly.  Liberals are against monopolies except when the government is in charge.

We are supposed to believe that since government isn’t going for profits it can deliver for the public good.  that is a load of rubbish.  Once we hand over a job to public sector, like managing public education, we all become hostage to the system that is hijacked by special interests.  The profit motive isn’t the problem.  the government is the problem.

Oh well forget all of this blather … get in line my fellow sheep!  The man knows best…

Why Oscar snubbed 'Superman'
Orange County Register
By: K. Lloyd Billingsley
2.25.2011

"Waiting for Superman," though hailed as "powerful" by President Barack Obama, popular with audiences and a winner at the Sundance Film Festival, failed to gain an Academy Award nomination. That should come as no surprise.

The problem is not, as some contend, the filmmaking craft of director Davis Guggenheim or the accuracy of "Waiting for Superman." Rather, Guggenheim broke ranks on liberal orthodoxy, and in the dream factories there can be no pardon for that.

"Waiting for Superman" tracks students who are trying to escape America's government monopoly education system, what supporters call "public education." Though a well-documented failure, as the groundbreaking study "A Nation at Risk" noted in 1983, that system is a stronghold of liberalism and, as former Secretary of Education William Bennett put it, the heart and soul of the Democratic Party.

As a voting Academy member recently told me, liberal Democrats dominate the ranks of those who hand out Academy Awards. They are not likely to reward movies that reveal government monopoly education as a bust. The same is true for teacher unions.

As the late Nobel laureate economist Milton Friedman noted, teacher unions actually run the government monopoly education system. "Waiting for Superman" interviews people who, for good reason, are somewhat less than worshipful of teacher unions, whose ranks include desk sleepers and other opponents of reform. Liberal critics cried foul, but "Waiting for Superman" could have been much harder on teacher unions.

For example, it could have shown them applauding when President Obama and Secretary of Education Arne Duncan quashed DC Opportunity Scholarships, a popular and successful school- choice program. Those enrolled in the program were mostly poor African-American children, but in the unions' scale of values, politics and money come before the interests of students and parents.

"Waiting for Superman" could have tabulated how many union teachers, administrators and politicians, while interning students in failed, dangerous government schools, send their own children to private schools. That is a trend across the country.

Guggenheim, meanwhile, can boast impeccable liberal credentials. He directed Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth," the Oscar-winning documentary for 2006. He also directed a biographical film for Barack Obama. Even with those credentials, in the Hollywood ethos, it is not permissible to doubt liberal orthodoxies, much less attack them. Guggenheim is certainly guilty of that, but he should not let the Oscar snub bother him.

Plenty of good documentaries and dramatic films alike fail to gain Academy Awards, or even nominations. Guggenheim doubtless will try again but he has already succeeded on several fronts. He showed courage in tackling this subject in the first place. Echoing the title of another highly regarded film about public education, he stood and delivered.

In fine style, he exposed a failed government education establishment. Best of all, he inspired parents and students to buck that reactionary establishment, whatever the odds, and seek better schools. So in their eyes the film is a winner.

The lesson of "Waiting for Superman" is that parents and students everywhere need more choice in education. Legislators and policy makers across the country should give it to them by establishing full choice in K-12 education, as a matter of basic civil rights.

Dear John Letters -- Introduction

I will upon occasion sprinkle in "Dear John letters" on this blog.

John is my long time college buddy.  He is one of the funniest guys alive and smart as a whip.  I love him.  but he also drive me crazy sometimes and I'm sure I do the same to him.

That is because John is a died in the wool liberal / progressive.  and a very outspoken one at that.  For that reason John provides me with the perfect foil for the ideas I am promoting in this blog.

Dear John letters will be a standard part of the blog -- until and as long as John continues to engage in political dialogue.  At some point he might just say no mas.... we'll see...

John sees problems in the world and he wants to fix them.  I say wait a minute.  Before you solve the problem, you better figure out or at least try to figure out whether there is an underlying cause of the problem.  John doesn't want to look for underlying causes of economic or social problems.

i believe john epitomises the hubris embedded in the progressive world view that assumes every problem is fixable as long as we put our minds to it and come to some logical conclusion about the way to fix it.

the way i see it the "modern" world is obsessed with technological quick fixes, whether it be in medicine or public policy.  we generally don't think in terms of underlying causes of bad health; that would be too difficult.  we look to treat symptoms so we can avoid painful trade offs that life throws our way.  high cholesterol -- take a pill.  over weight.  take another pill.  pills, surgery, public policy.  fix the symptoms. 

John wants to fix problems now.  And in almost every argument we have he proposes a solution that requires a Federal government program. 

I argue that many of the problems he wants to fix were caused in the first place by a previous well intended Federal government fix. Or I argue that the problem has no fix and we must learn to deal with it rather than use the government to fix it given the fact that the government fix will lead to cycle of unintended consequences and worse results than problem the policy was aimed at fixing in the first place. 

One perfect example of this way of thinking is epitomized by the Federal Reserve.  it was established to prevent business cycles, protect the poor from boom/ bust. what happened?  we didn't have a Great Depression until AFTER the Fed was established in 1913!  we got rid of business cycles for almost 20 years leading up to 1929; in fact the Fed engineered an unprecedented economic boom in the roaring 1920s, but this was followed by an unprecedented bust.  That is the law of unintended consequences at work.  We solve one problem with a government solution only to cause a bigger one.

John is incredibly well read and informed about the finer points of policy issues whether it be about health care reform or green energy or high speed trains.  you name it, John has all of the lingo down and he has a plan that sounds reasonable.  I say to John, you can't just going around trying to fix problems without first identifying the underlying cause of the problem (which is either a problem that can't be fixed by government in the first place e.g. income inequality or pollution) or is a problem caused  by some previous government fix the symptom intervention.

John consistently ignores what he considers my theoretical musings.  he wants to debate the fine points of the problem and the proposed solutions.  i claim that it is a waste of time to get bogged down in the fine points of policy that ignores not only the underlying causes of the problem that he wants to fix with government interventions, but also ignores the unintended consequences of proposed solutions that must be implemented by a benevolent government.  

i say the road to hell is paved with good intentions.  John systematically avoids engaging in debates about whether the road to hell really is paved with good intentions or not.  he always brings the argument back to the details of each individual debate we have about specific policy. 

i say to john:  you and your fellow progressives fundamentally and systematically miss the forest for the trees.  you fix symptoms and miss underlying disease.  you are stuck in a mode where more technology is always the answer. 

and so we go round and round.  i try to bring the debate up to the level of a debate about fundamental implications about our competing world views, and John brings the debate back to the details of each issue.

John epitomises the progressive world view; for that i am thankful because he forces me to think and to test my ideas.  as long as he is willing to engage with me in debate, i will continue to post Dear John letters on this blog.