LeeAnnRubsam.com

I was wrong in yesterday’s post about Pittsburghians not knowing that it is good manners to say “hi” to strangers when passing.  It is not Pittsburghians who are ignorant on this point; it is just the ones on the part of the Montour Trail that runs behind Susan’s house.

Today I took the trail where it continues on the other side of the highway, and almost all the folks walking and biking it said hello to me before I had a chance.  I will not have to try to elevate their culture after all.  They were a different group: not so focused on building their muscles and seeing how much wheezing they could handle before cardiac arrest set in.  They were the mom-and-dad type with little kids, or the I-am-just-out-for-a-stroll-to-enjoy-the-weather-and-I-don’t-care-if-I-elevate-my-heartbeat-to-its-maximum-potential-or-not type.

I simply cannot get used to all these houses built into the sides of the mountains.  We’ve got some of the same in Door County and the east side of Lake Winnebago in Wisconsin, but most of our state is mildly hilly or fairly flat.  I also cannot get used to how some houses’ front doors open almost directly onto the highway — or else have a goodly flight of stairs up to the door.  I would be a lean muscle machine if I lived here permanently.  If the up-and-down-hill walking did not do it for me, running from the copperheads in the summertime would.

I am developing a theory: even driving the hairpin turns and up-and-down slopes burns calories.  It would be possible to be quite athletically fit in Pittsburgh even without consciously exercising — if it weren’t for Chick -fil-A to ruin it all at the end of the day.

Susan has always been mystified by part of the local culture.  Although their home is only fifteen minutes from the heart of Pittsburgh, many people from their area –even very youngish people — have never been to the City.  Even more of them have not ever been to the other side of it.  They just live and die in their own small corner of the suburbs (suburghs?).

If Susan had wanted to know the answer, all she would have had to do is ask.  One of the natives explained it to me.  They all get lost if they travel outside of a certain small radius.  You see, because everything is in the mountains, there is no such thing as square city blocks.  All the roads wind this way and that, without any organization, rhyme, or reason.  Finding your way around — especially around the city to the other side of it — is nigh-on to impossible.  So they all just stay in their township and the couple of townships nearby.  It is completely a safety issue.  There now.  That makes sense to me!

You might ask, “But what about one of those little GPS gizmos?  Wouldn’t that take care of the problem?”  We tried the GPS gadget to get us to Pittsburgh from Wisconsin.  It’s not all it’s cracked up to be.  It tried to tell us Susan’s address did not exist.  After awhile, it decided the existence was a distinct possibility, but the directions given were not sensible.  If we had listened, we would have ended up on the wrong side of the city, lost forever, never to find Susan or Wisconsin again.

So, I understand.  I would behave myself and stay in my suburb too.

Keeping Fit in Pitt (Part 1)

LeeAnnRubsam.com

There is a myth that Boquete has gotten “too expensive” which needs to be debunked. Yes, prices have gone up. Panama uses the US dollar as its currency and imports a lot of items, so as the US dollar has devalued prices have gone up. Like everyone else in the world, Panama is dependant on oil. As the price of oil has risen so has the cost of fuel, essential in an agricultural area like Chiriqui. Since Boquete has been “discovered” as the paradise that it is, land prices have gone up as well.

Expats like us have moved in and build foolishly large houses: who needs 4,500 sq ft for two people? OK, like a lot of people we got carried away building our dream home. But for a lot of perhaps more sensible folks, 4,500 sq feet of house to maintain and 4.5 acres of land to cultivate isn’t their dream of a relaxing retirement! There are nice, North American-style homes available on the market in Boquete ranging in price from $250,000 to several million dollars. But what if you can’t afford that? What if you don’t need, or that?

Take the house we’ve almost finished renovating for my brother. It was a simple house we originally built for our farm worker – block, tin roof, Panamanian-style windows [no glass, decorative concrete block]. We needed to have my brother close at hand to deal with some of his physical challenges, so we renovated it. He has a really cute house, about 1,100 square feet, very nicely done . . . and almost finished. We have some final painting touch up to do inside and out, but he has two bedrooms, a living room, a small kitchen with dining nook, walk-in closet, bathroom with washer and dryer. He has a nice yard . . . and our total cost $32,000.

Here’s how that breaks down:

If we had to buy 1000 sq meter lot at today’s price of $15/meter in Palmira $15,000
Original cost of the worker casita $8,000
Cost to renovate to “gringo” standard (i.e., hot water, washer, dryer, microwave, stove, refrigerator, nice windows, grills, metal doors, new electric, tile floor, hung ceiling) $9,000

$32,000 for a really cut little house in Palmira . . . 10 minutes from “downtown” Boquete.

You can buy a nice, small, buildable lot in the outskirts of Boquete for anywhere from $15 to $25 a square meter, if you look around. Many of these small, buildable parcels already have community water supply, electric, and public road access. [Buying a lot without electricity can cost you a small fortune to get connected!]

One expat gal in our community, facing a major change of life after divorce, and with virtually no money, you’ll meet a gal who created a whimsical “hobbit” home out of a dilapidated old worker’s shack. With a lot of creativity, and virtually no money, she created a unique, interesting, a fun little house!

Two other gals bought an old run-down Panamanian house beside the river, invested about $25,000 and have a cute little house . . . unfortunately it is right next to the river, which may not be such a good idea.

Another guy took two 40 foot shipping containers and made a unique dwelling. 40 foot containers run around $3,000 each delivered.

Today I received this . . . I’m not necessarily trying to sell this guy’s house . . . but just to show you what $59,000 will buy if you get a little outside Boquete proper . . .

Now I know it’s hard to read since I just had to work with what the guy posted. But you can click on the above images for a little better view . . . or email these guys at ctgage@shaw.ca or call them (in Canada) 250-423-3582. They can give you all the details.

The gal who cuts my hair has a nice home in Alto Boquete for sale for under $50K. These homes are around, you just have to look for them. That means coming to Panama, spending some time, if you don’t speak Spanish finding a local who can help you, and searching. Understand a real estate agent would naturally rather work with people who are buying $400,000 homes since they work on commission, but, if you said to someone . . . this is what I want. Find it and I’ll pay you $5,000 or $8,000 . . . they’d find it . . . and if they wouldn’t a dozen other people would.

The National Debt is a plague on our society and a sin being perpetrated against the next generation.  I often refer to this debt as generational stealing.  It goes like this.  In order for us Baby-boomers to maintain our over-extended lifestyles we ask the government to “borrow” money from the next generation.  However, the use of the word “borrow” is disingenuous since we have not the means or the intention to pay it back.

I have read many papers on the subject of the National Debt and the potential consequences of it to come in the future.  However, being written by those “dismal science” majors, economists, they are often a bit hard to cut to the chase.  Leave it to my good friend Lee to share a story from Texas that puts this into perspective.  Sometimes the simple examples are the most meaningful!

A Slow Day in Texas

It’s a slow day in a little Texas town.  The sun is beating and the streets are deserted.  Times are tough; everybody is in debt and lives on credit.

On this particular day a rich tourist from back east is driving through.  He stops at the motel and lays a $100 bill on the desk and says he wants to inspect the rooms upstairs in order to pick one for the night.

As soon as the man walks upstairs, the owner grabs the bill and runs next door to pay his debt to the butcher.

The butcher then takes the $100 and runs down the street to retire his debt to the pig farmer.

The pig farmer takes the $100 and heads off to pay his bill at the supplier of feed and fuel.

The guy at the Farmer’s Co-op takes the $100 and runs to pay his debt to the local Lady-of-the-Evening, who has also been facing hard times and has had to offer “services” on credit.

The Lady rushes to the hotel and pays off her room bill.

The hotel proprietor then places the $100 back on the counter so the rich traveler will not suspect anything.  At that moment the traveler comes down the stairs, picks up the $100 bill and says that the rooms are not satisfactory, pockets the money and leaves town.

No one produced anything.  No one earned anything.  However, the whole town is now out of debt and now looks to the future with more optimism.  ….  And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how the United States Government is conducting business today.

LeeAnnRubsam.com

As I explained yesterday, we have been visiting in the rural outskirts of Pittsburgh. 

I have been doing quite a bit of walking, partly out of desire to see some scenery, partly to find temporary solitude.  There is a hiking path about one-half mile from Susan’s house.  Getting there is semi-dangerous, as there is only a narrow shoulder along a sharply curving highway to walk on, and traffic is clipping.  I take consolation in not seeing many wildlife corpses on the road, which probably means that if I keep my eyes open, I will not end up as roadkill either.  I instruct the family before leaving that if I am not back in two hours, it is time to mount up a posse and come looking for me.

The hiking trail is an old railroad line, with a long tunnel cut through a hillside for added interest.  Woods adorn both sides, and Susan’s house is up on a bluff overlooking a creek which cuts between the trail and the residential area.

It seems that Pittsburghians do not behave quite like Wisconsinites.  The folks out on the trail are mostly intense types.  They jog, they stride energetically with arms flailing wildly, they are pulled along by unruly pitbulls, but they do not acknowledge each other’s existence as they meet.  My mother taught me as a small child that when we pass someone on the street, we smile pleasantly and say “hi.”  Pittsburghians appear to be very serious about whatever they do, including conscientiously obeying their mothers’ instructions never to speak to strangers.  I perversely insist on accosting them with a ”hi,”  although I quickly discovered this is not kosher. The typical response is a surprised stare, as if they have discovered an intriguing new species of insect and are not quite certain whether to squash it or let it entertain them.  I keep trying, in hopes of improving their standard of civilized behavior, and I sometimes even get a response, but it is difficult to change a culture in a mere week’s time.

The trail is not heavily traveled in November, so I feel a little nervous about encountering lone men when no one else is in sight, especially in the dimly lit tunnel.  I am alert to my surroundings at all times, and listen carefully to assess the danger factor.  If the guy is breathing heavily as he approaches, that is probably good.  Loud snorting, wheezing, asthmatic gasping, and pre-cardiac arrest noises are even better.  All of these mean I can run faster than them, and that predator tactics are the last thing on their mind.

One of Susan’s friends informed me that in the summertime, the men are not the main alarm factor on the trail.  When it is warm, the copperheads enjoy sunning themselves smack dab in the middle of the road.  When they get too warm, they cool off in the tunnel — and no doubt lie in wait for silly Wisconsin women who never once imagined that a ten-foot-wide gravelled road would be a snake resort. 

I passed a pleasant elderly couple along the trail one afternoon.  (They said “hi” back and smiled — probably natives of Wisconsin, not Pittsburgh.)  I suppose they were in their seventies.  She was round and he was very lean — like Jack Sprat and wife.

As I approached  the tunnel on my return leg of the hike, I encountered Mrs. Sprat peering intently around the edge of it.  Jack was on the other end, poking around in some weeds.  Shortly after I entered, what I thought was a teenager tore past me in the fastest sprint I’d ever seen outside of the Olympics.  But it wasn’t a teenager.  As he got nearer, I realized it was Jack.  Seventy … spry as a youngster … faster than a speeding bullet … no red cape  or other super hero props though.

“How’d I do?”  Jack asked, lightly puffing.

“Thirty-one seconds,”  Mrs. Sprat replied.

But the light puffing didn’t subside or even continue evenly.  “EEH-HUH! EEH-HUH! EEH-HUH! EEH-HUH!” Jack commenced gasping in high-pitched apparent distress.  I wished I had remembered to bring the cell phone.  Obviously Jack was going to need an ambulance, and no telling how long it would take one to get there and whether the driver would know that he could disregard the hiking trail rule, “no motorized vehicles allowed.”

I turned to gaze in horror.  Mrs Sprat giggled.  Jack didn’t giggle.  He just kept on with the “EEH-HUH! EEH-HUH! EEH-HUH! EEH-HUH!”  At that point I figured that either she was rather looking forward to an early widowhood, or else Jack and the Mrs. just hang out at the tunnel on a regular basis, waiting to show off their stuff for whatever unsuspecting Wisconsinite comes along, hoping to scare the daylights out of their victim.

I headed on down the trail, and I noticed when I got to the end that the Sprats, with no “EEH-HUH! EEH-HUH! EEH-HUH! EEH-HUHs” in earshot, were not far behind. 

Keeping Fit in Pitt (Part 2)

LeeAnnRubsam.com

by Ellen Brandt, Ph.D.

Many of those in my now-loyal audience first became acquainted with my work by supporting me in the Community Marketing site’s Great Blog-Off contest a few months ago. A number of people have asked me to write a little case study about my (overwhelming) win in that test, which illustrates some basic principles everyone who writes for the Internet should keep in mind: Hook ‘Em With Headlines. Keep ‘Em There With Links. And Remember You’re Only As Strong As Your Fan Base.

I’ve been a heavy-volume print journalist most of my working life. But after a several-year sabbatical from the field, I returned to find the world of magazines in disarray, Big Media under fire from Little Media, and the Internet emerging as the place where a busy and educated audience of professionals tended to go for both news and features.

I was also dismayed to find that the current dominance of a few major search engines tends to exclude from Internet visibility anything written prior to 18 months ago or so. Magazines are particularly poorly represented. So the more than 3,000 print magazine articles I’d published over a 30-year period were virtually inaccessible, in Internet terms. I was suddenly a journalistic ghost, while Buffy the Siamese Cat, with 14,000 Twitter “publications,” was now a media superstar.

What to do? Well, with the help of my cousin the Internet guru, I first scanned in a selection of about 50 of my magazine articles and placed them in a little virtual portfolio on the Web. Then I wrote a couple of articles for Internet “aggregators,” but soon decided they were pretty much pimps, and I was a lady, not a Lady of the Night.

So I decided to create a Web presence of my own by publishing and administering my own blogsites and developing an audience in the Brave New Blogosphere. While this idea was germinating, I heard about the Great Blog-Off contest at a website called Community Marketing.

Marketing is not my area of expertise, although I’ve done a few stories on it over the years. (I’ve probably done a few stories on everything over the years.) But this contest was not designed for marketing writers only. It welcomed all bloggers who professed to be “thought leaders” on any kind of subject matter. I had been contemplating starting my Baby Boomers-The Angriest Generation series, which most of you now know about. (See the latest Index at http://wp.me/pxD3J-2a )

I signed up for the contest, describing myself as a “thought leader” on the subject of Baby Boomers. The owner of the site asked contestants – there were a couple of dozen originally, although some turned out to be not very active – to come up with punchy little descriptions of themselves, a few words that would make us memorable. I offered the following:

Dr. Ellen Brandt – “Sophisticated Rabble-Rouser”

About my professional background: I’m an Ivy League-educated Ph.D. cultural historian and the author of over 3,000 magazine articles. I’m now a professional in the senior services industry – the fastest-growing sector of this economy for the next 100 years or so – while also resuming my career as a heavy-volume journalist.

When I’m not working: I’m a mezzo soprano trained at Juilliard Prep when it was at 123rd and Claremont. I like lighthouses, carousels, and botanical gardens. And my Dog-Nephew Garcia, named after Jerry Garcia, was – honestly! – the inspiration for the Obamas getting a Portuguese water dog.

My Pre-Blog-Off Blogsite

Said punchy blurb was accompanied by a photo and the notation that I would be the contestant representing Boomers among a field of mostly Gen-Xers and Millennials.

The punchy blurbs were posted about ten days before the contest proper was to begin, at which time I contemplated what kind of strategy might set me apart from the field, help win me a loyal audience, and address the essential differences between a static print environment and this dynamic sphere which calls itself the Internet.

I decided to establish a “pre-Blog-Off blog” at WordPress, where I now house the blogs I publish. The site was called “Preparing for the Blog-Off” with the subhead “Seeing What Works.”

It basically consisted of the same page repeated ten times with different headlines. More about the headlines in a second. The main purpose of the page was to introduce readers to the Blog-Off, with an easy link to the contest embedded in the text.

I also said a little bit about my background and stated that I would be the contestant representing Content and Experience, as befitted a Baby Boomer. On the blogsite’s About page, I offered further links to my Linked In profile, about 50 examples of my print magazine articles, and a wide-ranging interview about my career. (See Why This Blog at http://wp.me/sycK6-about )

This adds up to a whole lot of links! Which illustrates one of those three principles successful website owners should keep in mind: Don’t keep your Readers on one static page, in which case they might as well be sitting at their kitchen table reading a newspaper. Keep your audience moving swiftly from link to link, offering them choices of what to read about next. Make your site a textual Treasure Hunt, with riches galore opening before their eyes.

Now For Those Headlines . . .

All I needed now was an interesting topic for the site, broad enough to warrant several blog entries over the two-week period of the contest, and compelling enough to attract a brand-new audience previously unfamiliar with my work.

The Blog-Off winner would be the contestant who attracted both the most comments and the most clicks – or page views – on the Community Marketing site. So I conceived the idea of a series of stories about attracting both page views and comments via the strength of one’s article headlines.

The series would be called “Thank You For Clicking!” and would be based on the experience early in my career within the world of those Headline Hotshots, the tabloid newspapers. (See “In An Economy and World Gone Haywire” http://wp.me/pycK6-v )

No one does headlines better than the tabloids. Their titles may amuse you, intrigue you, infuriate you, or have you scratching your head – but they are superb at drawing you in and getting you to read the accompanying stories.

Looking at this exercise as informative, as well as fun, I decided to use ten Faux Tabloid Headlines representing different kinds of typical tabloid stories, which I categorized as The Big Story, Plausible-But-Off, Purely Ridiculous, and What-the-Heck-Is-That-About? You can read about these tabloid story categories – and I certainly hope you will – in the four-part series of blogs which made up my composite entry in the Blog-Off.

Here are the ten Faux Tabloid Headlines:

Corpse Found in Internet Guru’s Gym Locker

Pet Hamsters May Spread Swine Flu

Each of these headlines was placed on a separate page at the “Preparing For the Blog-Off” site at Word Press, with the exact same text accompanying each one. In other words, the only element that differed page-to-page was the headline itself. A reader’s clicking on any particular page instead of another would demonstrate that the headline on that page attracted that reader in some way. I also encouraged readers to comment on why they clicked on that particular headline.

Please click on this link to see what the “Preparing For the Blog-Off” page looked like: http://wp.me/pycK6-2h I have used “7 Out of 10 Blog in the Nude” as an example.

Finding Your Fan Base

At this point I needed an audience to read my Blog-Off entries. Several of the younger entrants in the contest publically stated they’d be concentrating on their Twitter networks as potential bases of fans. But I wasn’t on Twitter yet, nor was I active on Face Book.

So I decided to focus my efforts on my Linked In network – considerably smaller then than it is now – and my 50 Linked In Groups.

Starting about two weeks before the Blog-Off’s official commencement, I began to post each of the ten Faux Tabloid Headlines in turn, with a link to the appropriate “Preparing” site page, first in the News sections, then in the Discussion sections, of my various Linked In Groups. I made sure each of the ten Faux Headlines appeared in News and Discussion threads an equal number of times, meaning that an approximately equal number of site visitors would have the opportunity to click – or not click – on each distinctive headline.

Readers who did choose to click were encouraged to make comments about why they chose the headline they did. Many got into the spirit of this exercise and made comments which were sophisticated, insightful, and often quite funny.

It was also soon very clear who my own “fan base” tended to be: over-35; equally divided between female and male; well-educated; and with professional, managerial, or creative careers.

I’m quite happy with that audience. And, in fact, many of those who first “found” me and my work via the Blog-Off are now friends and members of my network.

A quick note about my Baby Boomers series: I intended to introduce the first of my Baby Boomers-The Angriest Generation articles towards the end of the Blog-Off contest. But I collected so much material from the Faux Tabloid Headlines exercise – most of which turned out to be genuinely interesting, as well as humorous – I decided to stick with that “mini-series,” consisting of four separate “Thank You For Clicking!” results stories, as my composite Blog-Off entry.

Here are links to the four stories in the series:

Thank You For Clicking! Part One: Corpse Found In Internet Guru’s Gym Locker http://wp.me/pycK6-2i

Thank You For Clicking! Part Four: New Reality Show To Feature Laid-Off Bankers, Lawyers http://wp.me/pycK6-2o

I urge you to read these stories in sequence, after looking at the Introductory page from the “Preparing For the Blog-Off” site, linked above.

This sequence of four Thank You For Clicking! results articles made up my Blog-Off entry. They were posted on the Community Marketing site at about three-day intervals over the two-week course of the contest. Other active competitors also posted about four stories on average, with three to five blogs being the typical range per contestant.

When the results were tallied, my articles garnered about twice as many page views on the Community Marketing site as my nearest competitor. But the number of page views on the “Preparing for the Blog-Off” site itself was over double that amount, meaning my total views overall, counting both sites, was between six and seven times as great as the next-nearest contestant.

Tell Me What You Think

The series of Thank You For Clicking! stories also did extremely well in terms of reader commentary, which I believe is one of the essential components of successful Internet-based publishing.

Internet gurus tell us that a comment-to-click ratio of 1-2 percent is the average among publishers across the Web. Adding together the approximately 200 comments the Thank You! series received at the Community Marketing site, my Linked In Groups, and the “Preparing For the Blog-Off” site, these articles had a comment-to-click ratio of almost 4 percent, considered an excellent showing.

The comment-to-page view ratio on the “Preparing” site alone, where I – and not other managers – had complete control of the blog and its content was similar, with close to 100 comments from readers, out of 2700 page views in a three-week period.

I am including a selection of original Reader comments from the Community Marketing site and the “Preparing” blogsite as an appendix to this case study. To see them, please click here: http://wp.me/pycK6-2q and http://wp.me/pycK6-2r

The superb reader response demonstrates how enthusiastic – and witty – an audience I was fortunate enough to make an acquaintance with during the course of the Blog-Off contest.

There were a few detractors. If you’ve read my serious humor piece about Malice on the Web, you’ll remember a small cadre of loonies at a couple of Linked In media groups – including a PR man! – who thought anything whatsoever to do with tabloids was just too undignified for Internet discourse. (See “Vultures and Stiletto Heels” http://wp.me/pycK6-5 )

But most readers loved the premise of the Faux Tabloid Headline experiment and understood that it was not only entertaining, but also told us some interesting things about which kinds of headlines readers respond to viscerally and why.

Even coming from a heavy-volume print background, it was essential for me – as it is for every writer and publisher – to discover just who my Internet “fan base” might be and how I could best appeal to them in future Web publications.

My gratifying win in the Blog-Off contest allowed me to do that.

Soon afterwards, I launched my Baby Boomers-The Angriest Generation series. (See http://wp.me/pxD3J-2V ) And “Tell Me What You Think,” a catch phrase I used throughout the Blog-Off, became the subtitle of my EllenInteractive site, a cornucopia of diverse stories designed to elicit above-average reader response. (For instance, see “The World is Divided,” a key question story which received well over 100 comments: http://wp.me/pycK6-n )

I’m now moving on to additional Internet publishing projects:

Media Revolution, a subseries of EllenInteractive, talks about how the entire media sector is undergoing a sea change of enormous proportions and how we must prepare for it. (See “Is Big Brother Here-And Is He An Algorithm?” http://wp.me/pycK6-1Y )

Romance After Fifty is a series on dating and relationships I’m developing with a Baby Boomer matchmaker. (See “A Chance for Romance” http://wp.me/pxD3J-R )

A Little Knowledge will look at Internet security and cloud computing from the perspective of an audience which is well-educated and has used computers for years, but which lacks information on some of the serious recent developments that are changing the Web as we speak.

And The Rest of US - pun intended – is a new blogsite I’m launching about and for political Centrists.

So there have been many interesting developments built upon the foundation of my Blog-Off win.

I invite my brilliant, sophisticated, and in-every-way-perfect audience to join with me in these new projects and others to come.

Any success I have is due to you!

Yesterday, I heard a great hour of radio on the nursing shortage produced by WBUR in Boston. It’s called Nursing a Shortage , part of their Inside Out series. There are two structural problems on the supply side of nursing-one is baby boomer nurses retiring at the same time as their peers. I knew that part, but what I didn’t know about was the second one-the serious shortage of nursing educators.

America ’s nursing shortage has been compared to a perfect storm gathering in intensity. In just over a decade nearly 80 million baby boomers will be in or reaching retirement, their medical needs placing an immense strain on our health care system. Nurses themselves, whose average age now is 47, will be leaving the profession and a younger generation of nurses will not be trained in enough numbers to fill the growing needs of hospitals and patients.

Who will take care of patients? Apparently all it will take is about a billion dollars to increase the student slots in nursing schools and hire additional educators to educate the needed students. Is there a national plan for that?

A billion dollars is beginning to sound very small.

]]> http://straightarrow.wordpress.com/2009/11/27/the-goldman-sachs-disease-is-spreading-15-signs-of-metastasization/ Fri, 27 Nov 2009 14:03:23 +0000 straightarrow http://straightarrow.wordpress.com/2009/11/27/the-goldman-sachs-disease-is-spreading-15-signs-of-metastasization/

Goldman’s secret moral pathology

Today, his “Happy Conspiracy” of Wall Street plus co-conspirators in Washington and Corporate America are spreading a contagious “pathological mutation of capitalism” driven by the new “invisible hands” of this new “mutant capitalism,” serving their selfish agenda in a war to totally control America’s democracy and capitalism.

The “Goldman Conspiracy” is the perfect B-school case study of Wall Street’s secret contagious pathology, with insiders like Lloyd Blankfein, Henry Paulson and others pocketing billions more of the firm’s profits than shareholders, evidence the new “mutant capitalism” has replaced Adam Smith’s 1776 version which historically endowed the soul of American democracy as well as our capitalistic system.

Sadly for America Goldman’s disease is rapidly becoming a pandemic spreading beyond Wall Street’s too-greedy-to-fail banks, infecting our economy, markets and government as it metastasizes globally.

What are the symptoms of this growing “soul sickness,” this “pathological mutation of capitalism” Bogle fears? Recently we reviewed the consequences of this “soul sickness.”

Today we’ll paraphrase news reports about 15 symptoms spreading “soul sickness” beyond the boundaries of this Goldman case study: These are the 15 signs of a moral pathology undermining not just banking but American democracy and capitalism.

1. Gross denial of any moral damage caused by their rampant greed

Seeking Alpha: “Goldman is America’s most hated corporation.” We cheer as Rolling Stone’s Matt Taibbi calls Goldman “a giant vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity.” Banks triggered a global crisis. Main Street suffers. Greedy bank CEOs raid the Treasury then stuff $30 billion in their bonus pockets, up 60% from last year. They are our 21st century General Motors, convinced “What’s good for Goldman is good for America.” We saw how that arrogance ended. Wall Street has similar suicidal symptoms.

2. Narcissistic egomaniacs with secret ‘God complexes’

London Times’ John Arlidge interviewed Goldman CEO Blankfein: “He paid himself $68 million in 2007, now worth more than $500 million, yet insists he’s a blue-collar guy. He says banking has a ’social purpose,’ just a banker ‘doing God’s work.’” When I was at Morgan Stanley in the 1970s the firm ran an ad: “If God Wanted To Do a Financing, He Would Call Morgan Stanley.”

Today, all of Wall Street is dual diagnosed: They’re morally blind money addicts who believe they’re “God’s chosen.” AA would say: They haven’t “bottomed,” won’t recover from their disease till a disaster hits, with another market meltdown and the “Great Depression 2.” Then maybe they’ll “quit playing God.”

3. Paranoid obsessives about secrecy, guilt and non-disclosure

Bloomberg: “New York Fed’s Secret Deal: Taxpayers paid $13 billion more than necessary when government officials, acting in secret, made deals with banks on AIG, buying $62 billion of credit-default swaps from AIG.” The government would eventually cover about $180 billion in AIG swaps backing toxic CDOs when Paulson and Ben Bernanke double-teamed to bailout Goldman, saving them from bankruptcy.

4. Power-hungry need to control government using Trojan Horses

Wall Street Journal: “For a year Goldman said it wouldn’t have suffered damage if AIG collapsed. But a new report kills that claim. TARP inspector general found that then New York Fed Chair Tim Geithner gave away the farm. If AIG had collapsed, Goldman would have had to cover the losses itself. They couldn’t collect on the protection of AIG swaps.” Yes, Goldman was bankrupt. But friends in high places always save them.

5. Borderline personalities who regularly ignore conflicts of interest

New York Times: “Before becoming Treasury secretary in 2006, Hank Paulson agreed to hold himself to a higher ethical standard than his predecessors. He specifically said he’d avoid his old buddies at Goldman where he was CEO. Later Congress saw many conflicts of interest, not just meetings but favorable treatment for his buddies at Goldman.”

6. Pathological liars incapable of honesty even with own investors

McClatchy News: “Goldman secretly bet on the U.S. housing crash after peddling more than $40 billion of securities backed by 200,000 risky home mortgages. But they never told their investors they were also secretly betting that a drop in housing prices could wipe out the value of those securities.” Paulson knew, stayed silent. “Only later did their investors discover Goldman’s triple-A investments were junk. Did Goldman’s failure to disclose its bets on an imminent housing crash violate securities laws?” Boston University Prof. Laurence Kotlikoff says: “This is fraud, should be prosecuted.” But it won’t be in the new “mutant capitalism.”

Members of AA say you know when an alcoholic is lying: Their lips are moving. Same with Wall Street: Think liar’s poker. It’s in their DNA. They’re compulsive liars trapped in a culture of secrecy. They lie, the lies cascade, memory slips, more lies are necessary, they cannot stop lying. Goldman sure can’t … look, their lips are moving again.

7. Sole fiduciary duty to insiders, not investors, never the public

New York Examiner: “Goldman was at the heart of the subprime market, selling subprime junk as no-risk AAA bonds, then gambling, hedging, shorting their investors. Goldman traded like Enron. That set up the meltdown. The Fed and Goldman’s ex-CEO at Treasury saved Goldman. Taxpayers got stuck with the bill. Bailout overseer Elizabeth Warren called this reckless gambling. Trend forecaster Gerald Celente calls it mafia-style looting.

8. Moral issues are PR glitches, violations of ‘don’t get caught’ rule

USA Today says “Goldman Sachs should be celebrating. Yet, the mood at the investment bank seems to be one of crisis about the public backlash over employees’ bonuses.” So Goldman’s on a PR blitz in a bid to undo the damage. They canceled their Christmas party. Also launched a $500 million program for small businesses. Get it? They can’t see their moral failings, only a PR problem, so they hire PR agents and crisis managers first.

9. Charitable donations are tax and PR opportunities, not moral issues

New York Times: Examined Goldman charitable foundation’s tax filing: Thick as a phone book with more than 200 pages of trades. “Never seen anything like it,” said Verne Sedlacek, president of Commonfund, a $25 billion fund for universities and nonprofits. The money to Goldman’s foundation is dwarfed by insiders’ bonuses. The foundation got $400 million, gave away $22 million. Bonuses were 20 times more. Even the New York Post said “Goldman’s Born Again Image is Laughable.” They’re sleaze-ball cheapskates.

10. When exposed in a massive fraud, feign humility, fake an apology

CBS MoneyWatch: “Blankfein now says he’s ’sorry for the role Goldman played in the housing crisis: We participated in things that were clearly wrong.’” Wrong? Sounds more like he’s admitting to something “clearly criminal.” Reread: Isn’t he admitting guilt to a fraud; cheating millions of homeowners, shareholders, taxpayers? Then laughs at us with phony “restitution,” a fund of $100 million annually for five years to small-business owners. Financial Times says “$100 million is the profits from one good trading day. In 3Q ‘09 they had 36 days better than that.” Unfortunately, these crooks will get away with it.

11. When bankruptcy threatens, bribe friends in ‘Happy Conspiracy’

Barron’s: While Geithner was “showcasing what a great investment Washington made in Goldman, the 23% return on the $5 billion of the taxpayers money, Warren Buffett’s deal made him a fabulous 120% return. Goldman’s stock ran up to $180 from $115, a gain of $2.8 billion. Add 8% discount on warrants, another $3.2 billion to him.”

12. Engage co-conspirators to cover up, distract, do your dirty work

Reuters: “Former Merrill Lynch CEO John Thain was fired after a scandal over the billions in Merrill bonuses. He says big insider bonuses don’t cause excessive risk-taking nor the financial crisis.” He blames “poor risk management, excessive leverage and too much liquidity for too long. But even if they tie bonuses to long-term performance, that won’t prevent the next collapse.” Why? They’ll find new ways to break the moral code.

13. As money-hungry vultures they will prey on vulnerable Americans

McClatchy News: “An obscure Goldman subsidiary spent years buying hundreds of thousands of subprime mortgages, many from the more unsavory lenders. They repackaged them as high-yield bonds. The bottom fell out. Now, after years of refusing to disclose they owned the mortgages, the secret is out and Goldman has become one of America’s biggest, greediest foreclosers.” Yes, the vampire squid wants pounds of flesh.

14. Treat everyone not in the ‘Happy Conspiracy’ with tough love

HuffPost’s Leo Leopold warns: “Each day reveals how we’ve traded away our sense of decency and the common good in exchange for pure greed. Unemployment means hunger. The Agriculture Department reports 49 million Americans don’t have enough food, up 13 million over the last year, highest number ever.” Wall Street treats anyone not in the “Happy Conspiracy” as morally defective capitalists in need of “tough love.”

15. Addicts consumed by money: ‘Jesus would throw them out …’

New York Times’ Maureen Dowd: “Goldman’s trickle-down catechism isn’t working. We have two economies. In the past decade Wall Street’s shared little with society. Their culture is totally money-obsessed. There’s always room for a bigger house, bigger boat. If not, you’re falling behind. It’s an addiction. And Washington’s done little to quell it. Geithner coddles wanton bankers. Obama’s absent. ‘Saturday Night Live’ was tougher. And as far as doing God’s work: The bankers who took taxpayer money, pocketing obscene bonuses: They’re the same greedy types Jesus threw out of the temple.”

Warning: Washington, Main Street, none of us has “clean hands.” We’re all in bed with the “Happy Conspiracy,” touched by greed, turning a blind eye to Wall Street’s rapidly metastasizing moral and spiritual pathology: So ask yourself, do you believe America’s widespread “lack of a moral compass” will eventually trigger another, bigger market and economic meltdown, pushing America into the next “Great Depression II?”

The baby boomers are born between 1946 and 1964.
–

‘Sonic’ baby boomers – San Diego Union Tribune

'Sonic' baby boomers San Diego Union Tribune Make that rare, noble and completely inaccurate, since Kiss' 2000 farewell trek has been followed by tour after tour – and, just last month, by “Sonic Boom … and more »

New online network available for baby boomers – Maui Weekly

New online network available for baby boomers Maui Weekly Are you between the ages of 40 and 60 and find uncomfortable within the fanatical Facebook frenzy, yet still want to connect online socially and …

Baby boomers may face high disability rates – Los Angeles Times

Visit Bulgaria

Baby boomers may face high disability rates Los Angeles Times The shift in health fortunes comes as a surprise and predicts future high disability rates for the baby boomers as well. The study is the first to foretell … Today's baby boomers face more disabilitiesBaltimore Sun Baby Boomers May Prove More Disabled Than Their EldersU.S. News & World Report Baby boomers feeling consequences of obesity as they ageFood Consumer abc7.com -Ivanhoe -Investor’s Business Daily all 59 news articles »

Fred Branfman on ‘The Making of an Elder Culture’ – Truthdig

Fred Branfman on 'The Making of an Elder Culture' Truthdig He hopes that baby boomers, who in their youth created the civil rights, anti-war, environmental, sexual liberation and feminist movements, will as seniors …

I’ve just caught up with reading Dame Joan Bakewell’s first Annual Report as the Voice of Older People. I like Joan and from what I read in the report it’s clear she’s putting a lot of effort into doing the best she can on a range of issues flagged up to her by, and relating to, “older people”.

However, as I initially suspected, these involve in the main, the concerns of the elderly – caring provision, health standards, sheltered housing, public loos. There is little in there representing the concerns of today’s average 50 to 70 year olds (apart from a section on retirement age). Yes, younger “older” people may have raised some of these issues but in relation to their parents or other “old” people, not themselves.

Dame Joan herself is aware of this anomaly and deals with it in the introduction to her report by stating “The term ‘older people’ is self defining. I believe that if you consider yourself to be ‘older’ then you are. It might be in your early fifties, it certainly applies to the over eighties.”  That’s a bit of an unhelpful explanation really. Of course if you’re in your early fifties you will see yourself as “older” than someone in their thirties or forties even though you may have similar interests and attitudes and not really look that much different. But do you consider yourself “older” in the same way as an eighty plus year old? I doubt it.

I have no issue with the good work that Joan is doing. I just wish she would adopt a more accurate title.

http://www.equalities.gov.uk/news/voice_of_older_people-_annual.aspx

LeeAnnRubsam.com

We are visiting Susan and family in Pittsburgh for a few days.  They do not really live in Pittsburgh, just in one of the rural, wooded suburbs that surround the city.

I am in the midst of being a very cool grandma.  As everyone knows, cool grandmas come in a wide array of colors and shapes, but they are only really cool if they get artsy-craftsy with the little ones.  I have about three things in my artsy-craftsy arsenal, so it’s good that I am a long-distance grandma and can spread those three things out over my entire career.

Hence, I came prepared with a bucket of seashells and a huge jar of popsicle sticks.  We made treasure boxes by gluing the sticks together in dizzyingly-high layers until we reached the attention span limit.  The seashells became lid decorations.  The small fry will remember my visit fondly forever.  Now you know how to be a very cool grandma, if you didn’t possess that information before.   Isn’t the Internet wonderful?

Jason Upton sings, “Do you really want to know … where the wild things are?”  I know.  They live in suburban Pittsburgh — both inside and outside the house.  We arrived to find Susan and her husband in a massive battle with squatters — an army of mice.  These are brazen rodents: they do not wait until we are all snuggled in bed with the lights out to reconnoiter.   They watch us from corners, waiting for the very moment we leave the room, whereupon they scramble from their bunkers in search of plunder.  The killer beagle is not concerned.  He should face a long stint in the brig for dereliction of duty. 

Francis Scott Key described the battle he witnessed as “the rockets’ red glare, the bombs bursting in air.”  Here it is more like snap, crackle, and POP — sounds of mice rummaging through the cupboards and their eventual demise in the cleverly positioned booby traps.

I commented darkly that we should consider mouse croquettes for dinner some evening.  I’m not sure that  is any more of a gross idea than escargot or frog legs, but it was merely a conversation starter, not an idea to be seriously entertained.

The house has a history of wildlife intrusions.  Last summer Susan found a baby snake coiled among the children’s toys.  Her heroic husband strode to the rescue, scooped the viper up in a box, and hurled him down the hill to the creek.  I’m not sure it was a real viper.  Chris said you can tell whether they are poisonous or not by how slanted the eyes are — but he didn’t examine the eyeballs intently enough to find out.  He’s a very just-get-the-job-done kind of guy.

Incidents of this sort must be why Susan once announced that she would much prefer to live in an apartment with concrete all the way up to the foundations and not a blade of grass or a tree in sight. 

Some months ago I received from a colleague on the MSc, a piece from Harvard Business by Umair Haque entitled ‘The Generation M Manifesto’.  It begins ” Dear old people who run the world, my generation would like to break up with you……” – it was a rant about how he feels we, the Boomers, have screwed up the world, the economy, society etc – and I think he has a point!  (You might enjoy reading the whole piece at http://blogs.harvardbusiness.org/haque/2009/07/today_in_capitalism_20_1.html)  Then today I came across another similar,  piece by an American journalist called Benjamin Cossel (found at http://blogcritics.org/music/article/eve-of-destruction/) which reads as follows……..

Eve of destruction  (You remember Barry McGuire don’t you?)

“Yeah, my blood’s so mad feels like coagulatin’/I’m sitting here just contemplatin’/I can’t twist the truth, it knows no regulation./Handful of senators don’t pass legislation/And marches alone can’t bring integration./When human respect is disintegratin’/This whole crazy world is just too frustratin’”
Eve of Destruction – Barry McGuire

Dear former hippies, love children, so-called baby boomers and others currently in charge of the country,

What the hell happened?!

I am so utterly friggin confused here. I so don’t get it. You guys were the Summer of Love people – hanging out at Woodstock, doing all the drugs, and free love for everyone. Y’all were going to take over the world and now Dennis Hopper is hawking you mutual funds. Dennis Hopper, for pity’s sake! Wasn’t he the fringe-coated, cowboy hat-wearing rider in Easy Rider and the whacked out, drug-addled photographer of Apocalypse Now? Not to mention your protest music and songs of love now being used as the soundtrack for BMW commercials.

I mean seriously – how in the hell did this happen?!  At what point did you guys go from being the ones to save the world and “Damn the Man!” to being the man?

Have you looked around lately, have you taken stock of your peers? They’re the ones who screwed this whole deal up!  Share and share alike and communal living became being the world’s greediest banker. Make love, not war became bombs away. How did you get from that place to where we are today?!

Maybe everything I have ever been told about that time period was just a lie, maybe it was a make-believe world made better and better with each retelling of the glory days, because Lord knows somewhere along the way you guys not only abandoned your beliefs, you pulled them behind a dark alley and stabbed them repeatedly and if that wasn’t enough, you pulled out your semi-automatic weapons and pumped ‘em full of lead just to make sure they were good and properly dead.

Seriously, what the hell happened?

I know idealism gives way to reality as we grow up, but a wholesale abandonment of everything you once held dear and true? Are you kidding me? Look, I wasn’t even a glimmer in my daddy’s eye when the sixties happened, so obviously I wasn’t there, but as a relatively young, thinking person, I’m straight-up blown away thinking about how your generation went from point A to point B and in the process made a glorious mess of it all.

Seriously, how in the hell did this happen?

Signed,

A very, very confused Gen-Xer

There are, then, younger people out there who are pretty upset with our generation &, with two 30 something sons myself, both battling to make sense of life ( but far too polite to tell us that we blew it for their generation!), I tend to sympathise.  We have created & participated in a totally selfish and unsustainable life style – albeit, in large part unwittingly or unconsciously.  But maybe, just maybe, it’s not too late to turn things around.  What do you think?

I am thinking about all my family and  friends in the States who are celebrating the US Thanksgiving today . . . while I am celebrating a day of thanks-living slurping up pasta with my daughter Rebecca in Rome.   We have a few days to enjoy Rome before boarding the ROYAL PRINCESS the day after tomorrow.  Becky has travelled all over and done exotic adventures like identifying whale sharks in Western Australia, counting male elephants in Tanzania, and trail building around Lake Baikal in Siberia, but somehow she had never managed to get to Rome.  So it is fun to show her around, and fun to be here off-season when you don’t have to wait in a Disney-type 3 hour line to see things.  But from me, from Panama, it was a challenge to find close to wear in Italy in November/December!

Anyway, the turkey, stuffing, cranberry sauce, etc., will have to wait until we get on the ship.  But I am thankful . . . for my life, this time to be with my daughter, my wife, my daughter Noelle and her husband George and our grandson Rian, my friends and special “sons” in Ventura, the Dean brothers, my life and friends in Palmira, and the ability to see the world on beautiful ships.   It’s a good life and I’m grateful.

I’ve always thought Thanksgiving in the US should be more about giving thanks to God, and less about football and food.  I resent people calling it “Turkey Day” . . . can you imagine shutting down a nation to do homage to a bird, and a turkey at that?  I know Benjamin Franklin wanted the turkey to be our national bird . . . thankfully, we as a people dodged that bullet.   But since there is a lot of navel gazing and focus on eating and . . . damn it . . . that bird, I thought I’d pass on some things  my sister-in-law, Dorita, sent me.  This is one of those Internet forwards, so I have no idea what the copyright issues are . . . and if it’s yours, and you have a problem, let me know and I will shoot it.

Happy Thanksgiving to those of you in the US, belatedly to those of you in Canada, and to the rest of the world as well.

It’s officially holiday season! The turkey was pardoned, and today is
“pre-thanksgiving- manic-rush-tostartcookcookcooking-wash-freshsheets-dusting-blowoff porch-and pretenditalwayslooksthisclean” day. Even though we are going to my nephews for turkey day, there will still be hungry hordes here looking for food all weekend.
Last night I fished as is usual, with the cast of usual suspects, both male and female herons flew over. The male left, the female stays with me and got rewarded with 2 fish. They have not made a nest in their usual tree, or I have not noticed any activity up there in days. instead they came from the north east, wonder where they are nesting?  (male)
female –  The turtles were obnoxious as usual.  There are three big soft shells and numerous small cooter types.  The night was cloudy – they said we would have a good rain today and we have had some nice showers. The water meter yesterday was
at  2.98 and falling fast, a foot below the summer peak of 4.17. Will read it tomorrow am to see if the rain gave it a boost. we have to have more before winter makes it fall much more.
The sky was full of clouds and crows flying off. The fishing was not great, but it’s always fun to absorb that quiet time.  The cranes had been by and were grooming as usual.  and I tried my hand at macro photography which takes a lot of patience, no wind, good light, a tripod and knowledge of aperture which I am learning
I tried frankie and Ringo  Ringo did not cooperate.  Then I tried flowers and tiny spiders  

.
This morning is totally gray and rainy, had to make pancakes for Adam, I have found that Hungry Jack wholewheat blueberry complete is AMAZING, you only need water, but I cheated and added Sugar cookie eggnog, (mybad!)   and of course, top it off with light whipping cream to counter act the egg nog.  I had to top off the whipping cream after eating my pancake -  YUM!
So better get cooking, have things to get done…now go, get outta here, quit reading, that’s it….
Ringo dreams he is a B. Kliban cat   http://www.eatmousies.com/

Lisa and I got hooked on the Muppets when our kids were little.  We would be watching Sesame Street with them and then we look around and the kids had gone off to play and Lisa and i were still watching.

We love to have fun!

Here I am approaching age 60.  I fall into this broad group – the baby boomers.   The Baby boomers were born between 1946 and 1964.  We are from age 64 to 46, eighteen years, just one generation. There are about 76,000 of us and we are the largest age group to ever exist on the planet. 

We know who is the Gen X, Yuppies and Gen Y population, but who are we? 
 
I find I have more in common with people in their 70’s rather than in their 40’s.  Our family is a good example, my eldest sister was born in 1950 and our youngest brother born in 1964.  I was 13 when he joined our family and off to college when he was just 5.  So even as youth we did not spend a lot of time together.  As our family reminisces, we are remember running home from school and fighting who got to hold him first.  Image it was like having a live doll to play with.  He is raising a young family, still moving up the ranks in his career, attending martial arts performances and soccer games often, and building a college funds for three.  

We are past those obligations.  We are FREE.  Well as we know, due to the current economic climate, maybe not as free as we thought even 5 years ago.  

Follow along each week as we research and take advantage of our new found freedoms and opportunities.  This group I like to call Gen E.  Stay tuned.

Living in a different city or state — miles from aging parents — can be very difficult. Keeping in touch by telephone and making long trips to help parents or aging relatives with their needs can be time consuming and not nearly as effective as being available full time in person.

Mark Sessions spent two years juggling his restaurant business with multiple daily phone calls to his elderly parents, checking on their needs and answering their questions. Family vacations were spent traveling the 500 miles to his parent’s home to personally take care of home maintenance and provide health care visits to their doctor. During his last visit, Mark noticed his father had difficulty walking and his mother was confused as to which medications she was to take and at what time. This alarming change in his parent’s condition concerned Mark that his parents’ care needs required more than frequent phone calls and vacation visits. Running his business and handling his parent’s long distance care was now becoming very challenging.

According to a report by the Alzheimer’s Association of Los Angeles & Riverside, California, there are approximately 3.3 million long distance caregivers in this country with an average distance of 480 miles from the people they care for. The report also states that 15 million days are missed from work each year because of long distance care giving. Seven million Americans provide 80% of the care to ailing family members and the number of long distance caregivers will DOUBLE over the next 15 years.
Long Distance Caregiver Project – Alzheimer’s Association LA & Riverside, Los Angeles, CA (May 15, 2002, National Web Seminar by Judith Delaney, MFT, Clinical Coordinator)

The long distance caregiver is a new role that is thrust upon children and younger family members. Families used to live closer together, with children residing and working near their parents. But nowadays family members are more distant from each other. Society, today, is recognizing this. Some caregiver services have tweaked their programs to work as liaisons between long distance caregivers, senior loved ones and local medical professionals.

Professional care managers — a lso known as Geriatric Care Managers, Elder Care Managers or Aging Care Managers — represent a growing trend to help full time, employed family caregivers provide care for loved ones. Care managers are expert in assisting caregivers, friends or family members find government-paid and private resources to help with long term care decisions.

They are professionals — trained to evaluate and recommend care for the aged. A care manager might be a nurse, social worker, psychologist, or gerontologist who specializes in assessing the abilities and needs of the elderly. Care manger professionals are also becoming extremely popular as the caretaker liaison between long distant family members and their aging elder loved ones.

Jacqueline Marcell — author of “Elder Rage, or Take My Father…Please! How to Survive Caring for Aging Parents” (Impressive, 2000) — says,

“The most important thing to do is to find a geriatric care manager in the area where your loved one lives. She will have knowledge of all the services in the area and can be your eyes.”

Below is a partial list of what a care manager or Professional Geriatric Care Manager might do:

• Assess the level and type of care needed and develop a care plan.
• Take steps to start the care plan and keep it functioning.
• Make sure care is in a safe and disability friendly environment.
• Resolve family conflicts and other issues with long term care.
• Become an advocate for the care recipient and the caregiver.
• Manage care for a loved one for out-of-town families .
• Conduct ongoing assessments to implement changes in care.
• Oversee and direct care provided at home.
• Coordinate the efforts of key support systems.
• Provide personal counseling.
• Help with Medicaid qualification and application.
• Arrange for services of legal and financial advisors.
• Provide placement in assisted living facilities or nursing homes.
• Monitor the care received in a nursing home or in assisted living.
• Assist with the monitoring of medications.
• Find appropriate solutions to avoid a crisis.
• Coordinate medical appointments and medical information.
• Provide transportation to medical appointments
• Assist families in positive decision making
• Develop care plans for older loved ones not now needing care
  “The 4 Steps of Long Term Care Planning,” National Care Planning Council

Services offered will depend on the educational and professional background of the care manager, but most are qualified to cover items in the list above or can recommend a professional who can. Fees may vary. There is often an initial consultation fee that is followed by hourly fees for services. Health insurance does not generally cover these fees but long-term care insurance might.

In 2002, the AARP published a survey from geriatric care mangers about their fees:

“Respondents were asked how much they charged for their services, which might include: an initial consultation; fees on an hourly or per visit basis; fees for development of a care plan; and fees on a fixed-price contract basis. Hourly fees averaged $74 an hour. GCMs charged an average $168 to develop a care plan. Initial consultations averaged $175. Seven of ten current GCMs responded in the affirmative when asked if they had a statement that listed their fees. ” Written by Robyn Stone, DrPH, Principal Investigator; Susan Reinhard, RN, PhD, Co-Principal Investigator; Jean Machemer, MSG, Research Associate; and Danylle Rudin, MSW, Research Associate of The Institute for the Future of Aging Services, Washington, D.C.Barbara Coleman, Project Manager, AARP Public Policy Institute November 2002

When you take into account the time absent from work and time to find the right care resources for your loved ones, along with the cost of travel expenses to monitor their care, you will probably concur that using a caregiver is money well spent. Add on to this the stress of handling your own life circumstances combined with being a caregiver and you will probably wonder how you could have ever done without the care manager.

A professional or geriatric care manager can be an important asset to all families in elder care situations. Here is an example of how a care manager can help.

Mary is taking care of her aging husband at home. He has diabetes and is overweight. Because of the diabetes, her husband has severe neuropathy in his legs and feet and it is difficult for him to walk. He also has diabetic retinopathy and, therefore, cannot see very well. She has to be careful that he does not injure his feet, since the last time that happened he was in the hospital for four weeks with a severe infection. She is having difficulty helping him out of bed and with dressing and using the bathroom. She relies heavily on her son, who lives nearby, to help her manage her husband’s care.

On the advice of a friend, Mary is told about a professional care manager, Sharon Brown. The cost of an initial assessment and care plan from the care manager is $175.00. Mary thinks she has the situation under control and $175.00 for someone from the outside to come in and tell her how to deal with her situation seems ridiculous.

One day Mary is trying to lift her husband and injures her back severely. She is bedridden and cannot care for her husband. Her son, who works fulltime, now has two parents to care for. On the advice of the same friend, he decides to bring in Sharon Brown and pay her fee himself.

Sharon does a thorough assessment of the family’s needs. She arranges for Mary’s doctor to order Medicare home care during Mary’s recovery. Therapists come in and help Mary with exercises and advice on lifting. Sharon advertises for and finds a private individual who is willing to live in the home for a period of time to help Mary with her recovery and watch over her husband. Sharon makes sure the new caregiver is reliable and honest and that taxes are paid for the employment. Sharon enlists the support of the local area agency on aging and makes sure all services available are provided for the family.

Sharon also calls a meeting with Mary’s family and explains to them the care needs and how they need to commit to help with those needs. Sharon makes arrangements to rent or purchase medical equipment for lifting, moving and easier use of the bathroom facilities. Medicare will pay much of this cost. Sharon also works closely with an elder law attorney and a financial planner who specializes in the elderly. The attorney prepares documents for the family including powers of attorney, a living will and advice on preserving Mary’s remaining assets. The financial planner recommends a reverse mortgage specialist to help Mary and her husband tap unused assets in their home’s equity. Some reverse mortgage proceeds are used to pay off debt. The remaining proceeds are converted into income with a single premium immediate income annuity in order to provide Mary adequate income when her husband is gone and she looses one of the Social Security payments.

With the help of the care manager, Mary’s life and future have been significantly improved. Her husband as well, if he adheres to the care plan, may end up having a better quality of life for his remaining years.
“The 4 Steps of Long Term Care Planning,” National Care Planning Council

The National Care Planning Council promotes and supports professional and geriatric care managers on its website http://www.longtermcarelink.net/.

“You know, the only people that are grateful when someone’s dead is the recipient of life insurance, man.”

-Phillip Morrow, Pan America Insurance, Salesman of the year

Okay, this cracked me up, but it also made me think.  “My name is Marc and I am a Dead Head who believes in the power of life insurance!”  Hi Marc!  I know many people both inside and outside of the Grateful Dead community who like to live in the moment and not think too much (or at all) about the future.  Don’t get me wrong,  it is completely alright to live in the moment.  Ram Dass put  it like this:  “Remember, Be here Now.”  While it is critical for everbody’s mental health to do a decent amount of living in the moment, it is equally important to take some mental trips into the future and to make some plans for that future.  It’s like doing future you a favor- you dig? I have seen the power of a good, properly placed life insurance policy.  The next time your taking a mental trip to the future- think about what life insurance could do for you and your family.  After all according to Mr. Morrow, after you purchase a life insurance policy “Your going to be so free man…You’re going to be like flying.”