GREEN MANURES

Winter is here and the garden looks a little raunchy. Now is the time for gardeners to start dreaming about spring; more importantly, it is time for organic gardeners to start preparing for spring by planting a manure crop. There are two basic types of green manure plants: those that fix nitrogen to the soil and those that do not. Plants like mustard, ryegrass and buckwheat are sown in the fall and turned into the soil in the spring. The primary purpose of these cover crops is to enrich the soil by adding organic material to it. Cover crops are primarily used in large agricultural operations by farmers who have the tractors and plows necessary to manage crops of this type. For the home gardener, cover crops like ryegrass and buckwheat may be more trouble than they are worth, at least that has been my experience. The second type of green manure actually fixes nitrogen to the soil. These plants have bacteria that live in the tiny nodules of their roots that remove nitrogen from the air and add it to the soil. The nitrogen-fixers include alfalfa, red clover, lupin and fava beans. I consider alfalfa and clover to be weeds and would not plant them in my garden. On the other hand, I have found fava beans to be an ideal winter cover crop. Fava beans are easy to grow and, although not my favorite variety of bean, they are eatable. Plant the beans one inch deep and six inches apart in rows about 12 inches in width. Don't forget to soak the beans in water overnight before planting them. Be sure to turn the plants in, rather than pull them out, next spring since most of the nitrogen they add to the soil is attached to their roots. Finally, let a couple of rows mature and save the dried beans so that you do not have to buy them again next fall when you plant your next green manure crop. I also have a generous sprinkling of lupins throughout my organic garden; however, these plants are grown for their beauty rather than their nitrogen fixing capabilities and, in any case, are not a winter crop.

Curbing The Welfare State

At first glance, it would seem obvious that we should be taking measures to curb the ever expanding numbers of Americans who are unemployed and on some form of government dole. Indeed, politicians on both side of the isle give lip service to the goal of reducing the numbers of those on welfare by putting the unemployed back to work. However, many conservatives are skeptical about the liberals assertions that they are doing everything possible to support policies that would encourage employment in our stagnate economy. What is the basis for this skepticism? With the exceptions of a few very wealthy individuals in liberal hot-beds like the Silicon Valley and Hollywood, the democratic base consists primarily of people who are dependent of the government for their very survival. This dependency may take many forms including, but not limited to, extended unemployment benefits; relaxation of the requirements to qualify for permanent disability; medical care; school meals and head start programs; tax rebates for those that pay no taxes; and generous food stamp allotments for those who claim to be poor. In this respect, not everyone on food stamps is poor; in fact, the Inspector General claims that food stamp fraud costs the tax payers around $222,000,000 a year. The list of government giveaways and entitlements is literally endless! These government programs have one sinister goal, to increase the dependency of ever increasing numbers of Americans on the government for everything from toilet paper to flat screen TVs. This ever expanding group of, what I call dependency Americans, form the rock solid base of the democratic party and the career liberal politicians will do everything in their power to expand the numbers of people who are dependent on the government for their well being from the day they were born to the day they die. Admittedly, since the liberal political machine is dependent on the votes of those who are dependent on government handouts, it will be difficult or impossible to curb our present ever expanding welfare state. However, curbing it we must if we are to have the slightest chance of reversing America's inevitable decline into national obscurity. As will be discussed in the ensuing chapters we can do this by limiting the right of non-taxpayers to vote; stopping illegal immigration; reviving America's manufacturing base so that there are jobs for those who want to work; and, most importantly, reviving the work ethic in American culture. Please consider becoming a member of my blog. At times I feel like I am preaching to an empty room and your comments, good or bad, would be greatly appreciated. Thanks Doc.

Limiting Voting Rights

This country was founded as a republic which guaranteed its citizens specific inalienable rights that could not be taken away by a majority of the voters; however, our government has evolved into something that more closely resembles a pure democracy than the republic envisioned by the founders. As a result, we now have majority rule, with little or no regard for the interests of minorities unless, of course, they are ethnic minorities. The most blatant example of the trampled rights of minorities rights (yes, productive members of society are now a minority in the good old USA) is our present confiscatory system of taxation which basically takes monies from successful members of society and redistributes it those who have been, for whatever reason, less successful in life. In this respect, our corrupt politicians now give cash payments, in the form of tax credits, to low income families on April 15 of each year, the same day that many of our citizens are struggling to come up with enough money to pay their federal and state income taxes. As discussed in chapter 3, because of the scarcity of jobs available to the uneducated members of our society, there will have to be some redistribution of the nation's wealth during the time it takes to revitalize the countries manufacturing base. However, these redistributive of wealth schemes should be of limited duration and viewed as a necessary evil rather than an acceptable way of life. So, what can be done to stop career politicians from taxing the successful members of society and using that money to buy the votes of the underclass? As with most of the solutions suggested in this book, the answer to the confiscatory taxation policies of the liberals are straight forward and simple but, admittedly, difficult or impossible to implement. My belief is that, with only a few exceptions, only those who contribute to society should be allowed to vote. In other words, a chronically unemployed person sitting on his or her living room couch swigging beer and watching TV should not be allowed to vote for a politician that will increase the time he or she can receive unemployment insurance or the size of his or her welfare check. Rather, only those that pay federal income taxes should be allowed to vote in federal elections. Similarly, only those who pay state taxes should be eligible to vote in state elections and only those who pay local taxes should be allowed to vote in local elections. In other words if you cannot, or will not, contribute to society you will not be granted the privilege of voting. The liberals will fight this common sense proposal to their last dying breath insisting that a change in policy such as this would take away one of the most cherished of America's rights, the right to vote. Well, yes it would, but pure democracies have never worked throughout history and ours is no different from those of the past. Limiting the voting rights of the unproductive members of society will be a major step in the right direction with respect to raining in the democracy that is destroying our country. The bleeding heart liberals also will insist that any attempt eliminate the voting rights of the underclass will result in increasing poverty and even the mass starvation of large numbers of our citizens. This prediction flies in the face of historical fact. We have always looked after the poor and under-trodden in this country, always have and always will! However, we have no moral obligation whatsoever to pay the unemployed more in welfare benefits, housing aids and medical care than we pay those that are working two jobs to support their families. By the way, as you know, every relative study related to charitable giving has shown that conservatives give far more of their money to organizations like the Red Cross and Salvation Army than do liberals. What are the chances that we can stop this democracy in its tracts by limiting the right to vote to those who pay taxes? The answer, unfortunately, is slim to none!

Increasing America's Mean IQ.

As detailed in Part 1, the mean IQ of those living in the western world has dropped about 18 points since the Victorian era. In the United States the average IQ of its citizens is decreasing about 1-2 points each generation. Changes of this size may seem, at first glance small and inconsequential but, unfortunately, this is not the case. As emphasized by Richard J. Herrnstein and Charles Murray on page 364 of their book The Bell Curve, "When the mean of an IQ distribution shifts a little the size of the distribution's tails change a lot." For example, if the mean IQ of the American population were to fall three points, from 100 to 97, the numbers of its citizens with IQs above 120 would fall by 31 percent and the percent of the population with IQs above 135 would fall by 42 percent. More importantly perhaps, if the nations mean IQ fell 3 points, the percentages of the population with IQs below 80 would increase by 41 percent and those with IQs below 65 (currently the bottom 1 percent) would rise by 68 percent. What are the consequences to American society for such shifts in the cognitive ability of its citizens? If the mean IQ of our population decreased 3 points, as it has in the past one and a half generations, the overall poverty rate would increase by 11 percent; the proportion of children living in poverty would rise by 11 percent; the number of men in jail would increase by 13 percent; the numbers of women on welfare would increase by 14 percent; and the high school dropout rate would increase by 15 percent. I would argue that this is exactly what we have witnessed in the United states over the past 60 years and that our nations woes are, in no small part, a result of the deteriorating American IQ. In any case, it should be readily apparent to anyone who is willing to address the issue from a scientific point of view, that a relative small shift in mean IQ of a population can produce important social and economic outcomes. But, for a moment, let's consider the oppose side of the coin. What if we could shift our nation's mean IQ in the positive direction by as few as 3 points? If our nations mean IQ could be raised from 100 to 103 points the statistics show that the present poverty rate would be reduced by 25 percent and there would be 25 percent fewer men in jail. Similarly, welfare recipiency would fall by 18 percent and there would be 20 percent fewer children living in poverty. I believe, without a shadow of a doubt, that the dumping down of the average America citizen has played a major role in the countries decline from its former supper state status to the debtor nation we have become; fortunately, we can reverse out slide into mediocrity, and this is how it can be done. As with most of the concepts on this book, the steps which must be taken to improve the nation's cognitive ability are relatively simple and straight forward; unfortunately, there may not be the will to implement the political changes we must take to improve the intellectual status of the nation, but it can be done if we have the will to do it. First, and possibly most importantly, we must stop illegal immigration in its tracts! We simply cannot close our collective eyes to the hordes of low IQ peoples of Mexican descent who are crossing our southern border and diluting our nation's gene pool with every passing day. As disused in the next chapter, we do this by denying illegal's the right to work in our country and by curtailing significantly the welfare they receive while they are here. Second, we must stop paying low IQ single females from having babies, the policies of Lyndon Johnson and this great society have been a unmitigated disaster in this respect and the sooner we take steps to curtail the rate of illegitimacy in the United States the better. At present we pay low IQ single mothers to have illegitimate cognitive deficient children. In fact, the more children they have, the higher is their government stipend. Illegitimacy is an extremely important factor because 65 percent of illegitimate children are born to dull to very dull women. This is an important statistic because low IQ mothers beget low IQ children. In this respect, less than two percent of high IQ women produce very low IQ children while 30 percent of low IQ women produce children with low or very low IQs. In short, unwed mothers usually are stupider than their married counterparts and they produced stupider children than do married women. No matter how much money is spend programs like aid to dependent children and head start, nothing will change this genetic reality. We must stop paying single low IQ mothers for having children out of wedlock and start paying then not to have illegitimate children. Fortunately, modern medicine has provided a solution to this problem, it is called Norplant. One Norplant injection will render a female sterile for five years, thereafter her fertility returns to normal. The attractive thing about a Norplant injection is that, unlike permanent sterilization procedures, its effects wear off in a relatively short period of time; thus, a women who has a Norplant injection is nor burning any long tern bridges when she elects to have this form of birth control. We could begin this national IQ enrichment program by paying single females on welfare $5000 to have a Norplant injection that would prevent them from becoming pregnant for five years. During this five year period all the financial support they receive from the federal and state governmental agencies would continue. After five years we would give these women another $5000 if they agreed to have a second Norplant injection. The five year payment program would continue until they reached the age of forty at which point their chances of becoming pregnant decrease significantly. The advantages of a pay them not to have babies program would be twofold. First, and most importantly, it would reverse the present trend where in high IQ mothers are having fewer babies than their cognitive deficient counterparts. The discrepancy in the birth rates of high IQ and low IQ mothers must be reversed if we are to have any chance of improving the overall IQ of the nation. Paying low IQ mothers not to have children is one way to accomplish this goal. When one considers the staggering social and financial costs the nation pays for tolerating illegitimacy, I believe a program that pays low IQ single mothers not to have children would also be cost effective. To test my theory, let's begin by paying the nation's 13.7 million single moms not to have additional children. All of the monies provided to them by the government to support their families would be continued, but we will give them an additional $5000 if they agree to have a Norplant injection and, if they agree to continue in the program, we would pay them an additional $5000 when they had their second Norplant injection five years later. This voluntary birth control program would be continued for a total of 20 years at a cost of $20,000 per recipient, thus assuring that the vast majority of single mothers who participated in the study would not conceive again during their child bearing years. (I should get the Nobel Prize for economics for this idea!) In any case, the total cost of the program, assuming full participation by all single mothers in the country, would be about $27.5 billion. Admittedly, this is a lot of money to spend on a trial balloon. But maybe cheap, at twice the price, if you consider the alternative, which, of course, is to continue the status quo. Consider this statistic. Benjamin Scafidi PhD, a Georgia State University Economist, has shown that single mothers cost the tax payers a whopping $112 billion a year. These expenditures in tax, or more correctly increases in the national debt, does not begin to reflect the burden of single motherhood on society, because you can't measure the pain and suffering of crime victims who have been raped, robbed and murdered by the low IQ children of unwed mothers in dollars and cents. It is hard to believe that society would not be better off if these criminals had never been born. Now you may be thinking, after all these years, we should have learned our lesson, why not just stop paying single women to have babies, sure as hell would be a lot cheaper! Well, sure it would, but you are never going to be able to sell such a change in social policy to our gimme-gimme society, not in a thousand years you won't, especially since the democrats depend on the votes of the underclass to stay in power! However, for the most part, we are dealing with a group of unintelligent and illiterate women here and I'll bet my last dollar that if you pay them enough they will end up doing the right thing, despite their natural tendency to reproduce like rabbits. Yes, Mable, not having kids out of wedlock is a goal worth fighting for, no matter what the liberal intelligentsia tell you, and we can achieve that goal for far less than we are spending now to support the offspring of the dependent class! I will leave it to the economists to sort out the details of a Norplant program that would increase the mean IQ of the nation by decreasing the birth rate of unwed mothers. However, I believe it could be accomplished for far less than we are now paying for the failed social programs that caused the problem of illegitimacy in the first place. In this respect, the moneys that would be saved by reducing the numbers of children entering our failed head start programs each year alone would go a long way towards financing such a project. Finally, addition steps that can be taken to reduce the birth rate of cognitive challenged women include: oral contraceptives, the morning after pill and, yes, abortion on demand! All of these medications and abortion services should be made available at no charge to financially strapped cognitively challenged women of all races. Women of means, of course, can pay for their own contraceptives and abortions. However, one way or the other, educated working women are not the problem; rather, it is their low IQ uneducated sisters that society must come to grips with. The primary emphasis, of course, should be on the prevention of unwanted pregnancies, especially those of low IQ single mothers on welfare. However, no matter how much one detests abortion, it is difficult, if not impossible, to argue that the nation's mean IQ would not be much lower than it now is if abortions were not readily available to single mothers. For example, in the black community alone, over 684,000 black babies are aborted each year. Seventy-two percent of these abortions were performed on single black mothers. I know that abortion, especially late term abortion, is a bitter pill for most conservatives to swallow; however, for all practical purposes, a women's right to choose is here to stay. At this point in time, our goal should be to limit the procedure to the first trimester of pregnancy. As an aside, the liberals find themselves in a box when it comes to the issue of abortion. On the one hand, they must support abortion on demand or face the wrath of the feminists, the largest liberal voting bloc. On the other hand, by supporting liberal abortion statutes the democratic party have significantly decreased the size of their black voting base. In this respect, since 1973 16 million black women have had an abortion. Without these abortions the potential black democratic base would be 16 million larger than it now is. In summary, we can increase the mean IQ of Americans by curtailing illegal immigration; decreasing the rate of illegitimacy; and by encouraging all forms of birth control including first trimester abortion on demand.

Career Politicians

It is highly unlikely that the founder's of our nation ever considered the possibility that our elected public officials would spend their entire working lives in one of our state capitals or Washington DC. If they had, our constitution undoubtedly would have included a clause or amendment pertaining to term limits. However, in 1776, such a law would have been unnecessary because we were an agrarian nation of farm and plantation owners whose livelihood depended on the crops they could produce, not on the paltry stipends they would receive while serving in a government office. In this respect, from 1789 to 1815 congressmen received $6.00 a day and they were paid only if they showed up. Thus, it was an imposition for them to leave their land to serve in a public office. They made this sacrifice because they loved their country and, as good citizens, felt compelled to serve. But, with rare exception this compulsion did not oblige them to serve more than one or two terms. At that point they either ran for higher office or, most often, when home. As we moved from an agrarian society to an industrial nation things began to change and not necessarily for the better. At some point in time, probably around the beginning of the twentieth century, politicians tumbled to the fact that they could make more money in government than they could in the private sector. Public service became a pretty good racket with many, not so well hidden, perks. For example, if you were a congressman or a senator you did not have ask the boss for a raise. Nope, you could just vote yourself a raise and, as long as the legislation authorizing the raise included something for the president, he was likely to sign it. But the real money to be made in public service is unrelated to salaries, medical care or lucrative retirement packages. No, the real money comes from the use and sale of the power inherent in any public office whether it be dog catcher, state or federal legislator or head of state. Occasionally a member of the ruling class gets caught with his pants down (so far the females have escaped scot free) and is forced to spend a little time in a federal prison. This is particularly likely to happen in Illinois where their mentally challenged politicians are exceptionally brazen in their self-serving illegal abuses of power and, thus, more apt to be caught. But governmental abuses of power are not limited to crooked politicians from Illinois. No, dirty self-serving career politicians are a dime a dozen and come from every region of our nation. Here are two well known examples of political corruption that should make you grit your teeth and spit nails. Lyndon Baines Johnson began his working life as a near penny-less high school teacher. Thereafter, before being forced into retirement because of the Vietnam debacle in 1969, he spent his entire working life as a public servant in Washington DC. This consummate career politician died a multimillionaire. Most of his fortune was made in his wife's name but, as Robert A. Caro explains in The Years on Lyndon Johnson: means of ascent, Johnson was very adept at using his political clout behind the scenes to grease the skids for his wife's various business deals which made her, and him, a fortune. Possibly the most outrageous example of the abuse of power by a career politician is the shenanigans of California's liberal Senator Dianne Feinstein. The Feinstein's are worth an estimated 45 million dollars. As was the case with LBJ, whose money was made in the name of his wife Lady Bird, the Feinstein's money has been accumulated in the name of her investor banker husband Richard C. Blum. However, it is highly unlikely that Blum could have been this successful in his business dealing with the government if his wife had not been a powerful US senator who worked behind the scenes steer government contracts his way. The most notorious of the deals senator Feinstein cooked up to feather her own nest occurred in 2009 when she introduced legislation that provided $25 billion in tax payer money to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. This agency then awarded her husband's real estate firm a lucrative contract to sell millions of dollars worth of foreclosed properties at rates higher than industry norms. The most recent example of the Dianne Feinstein's nepotism involves the contemplated sale of 56 US post offices throughout the United States. These properties are worth billions of dollars and the firm brokering the deal will make millions of dollars in commissions. It should come as no surprise to anyone to learn that Richard C. Blum's real estate firm will be handling these transactions. Meanwhile, senator Feinstein fly's around in her 55 million dollar Gulfstream jet claiming that she is an innocent bystander and knows nothing. Well, she knows how to make money, lots of it, that's for sure. The net worth's of our public servants in Washington DC tells the whole rotten story. In 2011 the average US congressman was worth $6,594,859 and the average U.S. senator was worth a whopping $14,013,596! Now it's true that some of these people were wealthy before they ran for public office and some, like John Kerry, married into their money while in office. But most of the newcomers to Washington DC are not all that wealthy when they get there. In fact, the net worth of the 94 new senators and representatives in 2011 was only 1.07 million, much higher than the $66,740 of the average American, but substantially less than that of their more senior colleagues. No, in the days of our founders men went to Washington DC to serve their country. Today, with rare exception, the career politician goes to our nation's capital to make money, it's really as simple as that! Unfortunately, they are ruining the country in the process.

Achieving Immigration Reform

As discussed in chapter 3 of Part1, illegal immigration has had a devastating effect on the social structure of our country and has contributed greatly to our present economic woes. Obviously, it is the height of folly to continue policies that encourage further immigration of low IQ uneducated people of Mexican descent who take the jobs of American citizens; disrupt our educational system; organize gangs in our major cities; and contribute disproportionally to the increasing rate of criminality in inner our cities. We, as a society, are paying too high a price for the menial jobs they perform in the United States. Fortunately, of all the problems facing America today, illegal immigration is, perhaps, the easiest to solve. Whether or not we have the will to do so, of course, is an entirely different story. All that must be done, to stop illegal immigration in its tracks is to introduce laws that prevent illegal's without green cards from working in the United States. Most, if not all, of these laws are already on the books but, for the political reasons discussed above are not being enforced. At this point in time to seems clear that we will have pass additional laws and regulations which will make it difficult or impossible for employers like Tyson and Foster Farms to hire illegal's. Here are three simple steps we can take to stop illegal immigration in its tracks. First, we must have a national identification card (NIC) which clearly states that a person is a citizen of the United States and includes a picture of the card holder and their social security. Without a NIC a person could not work and could not vote. Employers who hire illegal's without an NIC should face large fines, in proportion to the size of their business enterprises, and repeat offenders should be sent to prison. Anyone carrying a counterfeit NIC should be charged with a felony and counterfeiter's of such cards would be severely punished. Second, persons without a NIC would be ineligible for any form of welfare including food stamps, housing aids, non emergency medical care and federal educational grants. Third, and finally, the law which grants citizenship to babies born to illegal mothers while in the United States must be repealed. This will require an amendment to the constitution, but such an amendment could be easily passed if there was a national will to do so. There is absolutely no reason in today's America to give citizenship to the so called anchor babies. It is long past time to repeal the law that makes babies of illegal aliens legal, just because they were born in the United States. These babies are just as illegal as their mothers and should be sent back, along with mothers, to the nations from which they came. If these three simple steps were taken our illegal immigration problems would be solved once and for all without hiring an additional border agent or building a single foot of new fence. Obviously, if illegal's are not allowed to work and are prevented from going on welfare they will not come. More importantly, many, if not most, of those now here will pack up and go home! We will still need border agents to curtail drug traffickers and potential theorists from crossing our boarders but these unsavory characters will be much easier to detect if they are not allowed to mix in with the multitudes of illegal's who are now streaming across our southern border. There will be three predictable objections to the implementation of these relatively simple steps which, if implemented, would solve the illegal immigration problem once and for all! Liberals will scream bloody murder while claiming that it would be discriminatory, and a violation of the equal rights amendment, to require blacks, especially those who are poor, illiterate and elderly, to obtain and show an NIC before they vote. Have no doubt about it, we are talking about the facilitation of voting fraud by the liberals here, nothing more nothing less. In any case, this is a specious argument at best in twenty-first century America and brings to mind a encounter I witnessed recently at our local Sears store in Concord California. I was in the checkout line behind an elderly black man who was in the process of purchasing a small item which cost around $15.00. This gentleman wanted to pay with his credit card and the clerk said that he would have to see an identification card before he could complete the transaction. Without the slightest hesitation the customer pulled out his wallet and showed the clerk his driver's license which had his picture on it. This took me somewhat by surprise because it appeared that this elderly person would have been too old to drive. Nonetheless, he had a drivers license with his picture on it. Now I ask you, if a person has to show a pictured identification card to make a $15.00 purchase at Sears, is it unreasonable to ask him, or her, to do the same before they are allowed to vote? No, the lame arguments made by the liberals against a NIC is simply another of their endless attempts to encourage illegal immigration and enable voting fraud by minority voters. The second argument will be made against the elimination of all forms of welfare, with the exception of emergency medical care, to illegal immigrants. Liberals and like minded companionate conservatives will claim that it will be inhumane to curtail, in any significant way, the billions of dollars we spend each year to support the Latino underclass. Well, maybe so, but this is the price we will have to pay if we are to have any hope of taking our country back. When all is said and done, we have no moral obligation whatsoever to spend the taxpayers hard earned money to support people who were born in Latin America and broke our laws while coming here. With respect to the fourteenth amendment there is absolutely no reason not to repeal it, none at all! There simply is no logical reason that the babies of illegal mothers should automatically become citizens of the United States just because he or she was born here. A person would have to be blind and deaf and dumb all over to think otherwise. So, what is to be done with the tens of millions of illegal's that are already residing in the United States? What about the children of the Illegal's? If we deport their parents, what will happen to these innocent young people, many of whom are, under our antiquated laws, legal citizens? As stated above, if we prevent the illegal's from working in America and eliminate the welfare we provide them, many, if not most, of those illegally here will go home on their own volition. Thus, the problem of what to do with the illegal's that are already here will not be as great as it now seems. Having said that, there will still be millions of illegal's who remain and we as a society will have to deal with them. Possibly we can give illegal's who were brought here as children and adults who have worked and lived here for a number of years (five to 10 seems reasonable) a type of green card that lets them stay in our country indefinitely as long as they abide by our laws, pay taxes and stay out of trouble. A path to citizenship also would be appropriate for many of these people. However, under no circumstances should any of these amnesty-light measures be considered until the proposed laws that would curtail future illegal immigration are implemented. We must not fall into the same trap Ronald Reagan did when he signed the Immigration Reform and Control Act in 1986. This foolish piece of legislation granted citizenship to millions of illegal's supposedly in exchange for strict boarder control measures that would have prevented future illegal's from entering the country. As we know, the illegal's were made citizens but the borders remained as porous as ever. The old adage fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me comes to mind!

The Deterioration Of Medical care in the USA

When I entered UC Berkeley in 1955 where was no major called pre-med; however, there were about 300 of us who had our hearts set on going to medical school and we all took the same classes. The majority of these classes were those that were prerequisites for medical school and had to be taken in proper sequence to make sure that the student would have completed them all by the end of their third year in college. As such all premed students took chemistry 1A in the fall of the first semester. Most chemistry majors deferred chemistry 1A until the spring semester. They did so to avoid having to compete with the premed students who were considered to be some of the brightest in the school. To make a long story short, it was very difficult to get into medical school in those days and, for the most part, only the brightest made the grade. However, despite the rigorous competition to get into a medical school in the 1950's and the intensive effort made by the medical schools to weed out those who were not qualified, two students in my 1963 class of sixty-four at the University of Southern California did not have the intelligence to be there. The point being, that even in the days before affirmative action, some students who did not have the intellect to become good doctors slipped through the cracks and became physicians despite the best efforts by admission committees to keep them out. The situation is much worse today because, with rare exception, the best and the brightest are not going into medicine. Rather, students who used to go into medicine are now becoming engineers and technology wizards. Why? Because the government run medicine of the twenty-first century is too controlling and doesn't pay enough. As I pointed out in my book So, You Want To Become a Medical Doctor it makes little sense to spend half of one's life while becoming hundreds of thousands of dollars debt to enter a low paying government run profession like medicine if you have the smarts to become wealthy in half the time by working for a company like Google, Macintosh or Apple to name only three of today's technological giants. Not only are the best and the brightest not going into medicine today but the medical schools, through their affirmative action programs, are encouraging those with marginal intelligence to become physicians. Napoleon Bonaparte once said that a picture is worth a thousand words. This may be, but the true story I'm about to relate will go a long ways towards explaining the adverse effects affirmative action programs have had in the doctors being graduated from today's medical schools. I first published this article on my blog The Conservative Pulpit in June of 1912. I tilted it: Low Pass: affirmative action at its worst and the end of medicine as I knew it! When I moved back to California in 1973, after 7 dreadful years in Minnesota (the weather not the people), I was on the Urology faculty in the Surgery Department at the University of California Davis. As a member of the surgery department, I participated in the oral examinations given to UCD’s third year medical students after completion of their surgery rotation. To put what I am going to relate to you in perspective, before the days of affirmative action, the weeding out of people who wanted to become doctors but were not qualified, occurred before they got into medical school. In other words, it was tough to get in, but once in you were accepted to medical school you almost sure to graduate and to pass the licensure examinations thereafter. This is not to say that the training and testing of medical students was anything but rigorous, to say the least. It was just that if you could get into medical school, you were able to handle most anything that the faculty could throw at you. This, as you may know, is the opposite of what happens in Law schools where almost anyone who can come up with the tuition can get into a law school somewhere and the weeding out process occurs during the first year and later at the bar examinations. Anyway, getting back to the event that I am about to relate, there were around 15 pairs of professors who were charged with examining the third year medical students at UCD; in my case, I was paired with a general surgeon, and we gave oral exams to about 6 to 8 individual students who were taking their oral examinations that morning. Each examination lasted about 15 minutes and each student was examined by 4 different pairs of examiners. Each of the students also had completed a multiple choice type of written test, although we did not know, by design, until later how they had faired on the written examination. To make a long story short, all of the students that my partner and I quizzed did reasonably well and we were not able to stump several of the them no matter how difficult we made the questions. That is all but one, a black female who didn’t seem to have a clue about anything we asked her. I recall specifically that she had no idea as to the significance of red blood cells in the urine and was clueless with respect to the difference between a direct and indirect inguinal hernia. We, of course, had no option but to flunk her. When the oral examinations were concluded and we all convened to determine the grades the students would receive, the other three pairs of faculty members who had examined this black medical student also came to the same conclusion we had. One examiner commented that he couldn’t believe that she had actually taken the surgery course, "Seemed impossible" were his exact words. Considering her lack of knowledge, it was no great surprise to learn that she had also failed the written examination. When it came time for the final vote, every single one of the 30 or so examiners, with little discussion, voted to flunk her. As it turned out, this was her second try at passing the surgery course. She had flunked the first time around and flunking again meant that she was out of medical school, which should have been a blessing for everyone concerned and especially for her future patients. What happened next took me completely by surprise. Understand that we did not have affirmative action in the University of Minnesota at that time and I, as a new member of the faculty at UCD, was unaware of the school liberal bent and totally unprepared for what was to happen next. In any case, the chief of surgery, Earl Wolfman (may he spend eternity roasting in the hottest part of hell), who had not said a word during the grading session up to this point, cleared his throat and said the two magic words that all low achievers want to hear, "Low pass". At that point, I knew that medicine, as I knew it, was a thing of the past. Those that make policy relating to medicine in the United States have been extremely successful in their efforts to conceal the changes that have been made medical care over the past 50 years. Where we live, in central Contra Costa county, recent renovations in the Walnut creek and Concord campuses of the John Muir hospital syste are expected to cost the John Muir Medical Foundation an estimated $800 million dollars. But, just how good is the medical care provided in these shinny new medical facilities? My wife was recently hospitalized in the new wing of the John Muir hospital in Concord. This was an eye opening experience for both of us and showed how much medicine has changed since I retired 13 years ago. My wife's surgeon was an extremely qualified laparoscopic surgeon of Asian descent who had gone to medical school in the orient before doing his surgery residency in a well known medical center on the East coast. To my amassment, her preoperative evaluation and post operative care was provided by physicians called hospitalists. Not a single one of these young doctors had gone to medical school in the United States, the majority of them were Indian females who had gone to medical school in India and had received most of their training there before immigrating to the United States. The hospitalists are hired by the John Muir Medical Foundation and have replaced the private practitioners who, in my day, were responsible for a patient's care when they were hospitalized. The question, of course, is just how well trained are these so-called hospitalists? Based on our experience, not too well. After spending about six hours in the emergency room, my wife was admitted to a surgical ward in a glittering new wing of the hospital. She was placed in a single bed room with a beautiful view of distant Mount Diablo. The hospital bed alone must have cost $20,000 the thing had every gadget imaginable and probably could do anything short of flying. My wife's Indian hospitalist ordered a battery of the usual blood and urine tests, an EKG and, most importantly, a flat plate of the abdomen. I knew that the x-ray of the abdomen would most likely confirm that she was experiencing another episode of intermittent bowel obstruction. This diagnosis seemed most likely since she had developed intermittent attacks of bowel obstruction on three occasions since undergoing an hysterectomy some 20 years before. The tests and flat plate (x-ray) of the abdomen were performed and the hospitalist returned to give us the results. To my surprise, she informed us that the x-ray of the abdomen was negative. Based on that finding she had concluded that my wife was suffering from some form of intestinal flu and that she was being transferred to a medical ward where her condition would be investigated further and treated appropriately. I was unprepared for such a diagnosis and was, momentarily, left speechless. When I finally came to my senses, I queried my wife about the abdominal x-ray, how was it performed? Apparently she had been wheeled into the room; transferred to the x-ray table lying on he back; and told to hold her breath while the x-ray was taken. I was stunned to learn how the x-ray was taken. Why, because the whole point of taking the flat plate of the abdomen was to determine if there were air-fluid levels in the intestines and one cannot detect air-fluid levels unless the patient is standing or lying on their side when the film is taken. At that point the mystery was solved and I knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that my tentiyive diagnosis of a small bowel obstruction had not been ruled out. I was about to leave the room and track down the hospitalist when a nurse entered the room to check on my wife's vital signs. I informed her about what had transpired and demanded that the abdominal flat plate be repeated, this time with my wife standing or on her side. To make a long story somewhat shorter than it actually was, we never saw the hospitalist again, she was replaced with another female hospitalist, again of Indian descent. Several hours later my wife underwent laparoscopic surgery to relieve a partial bowel obstruction brought on by adhesions that had formed after her hysterectomy twenty years before. Obviously, one cannot make a federal case on the basis one experience like this. However, it is impossible for me to believe that any third-year medical student attending an American medical school in the 1960's, or before, would not have known that a patent must be standing, or positioned on their side, when an abdominal x-ray is taken to rule out bowel obstruction. None of my classmates would have been so ignorant. So, how did it come about that Americans with serious medical conditions are being cared for in our major medical centers by doctors trained in faraway places like India? I think the answer to that question is obvious. Because of financial considerations, the best and the brightest American young people are not going into medicine today as they were in the days before the government took control of the medical profession. At this point in time, physicians, with a few notable exceptions such as neurosurgeons, invasive cardiologists and laparoscopic surgeons, are poorly paid servants of the bureaucracies that now control every aspect of medicine in this country. In former times doctors ran hospitals now administrators with no medical background what so ever determine every aspect of the medical care a person receives when he or she enters a hospital. Most persons untrained in the medical arts do not understand the significance of the changes that have occurred in medicine over the past century in the United States. When the average citizen enters a hospital today he leaves his personal physician behind and equates the palatial surroundings of the hospital with good medical care. In reality, the medical care they receive is provided, most often, by foreign trained females who hover over them like mothers and give the impression that they know what they are doing, while in reality, often times they do not have a clue. I have spent a fair amount of time on this subject because medical care related entities comprises one sixth of the American economy. As such, the passage and implementation of Obamacare was a gigantic blow to capitalism and the American way of life. I will not suggest a remedy for the situation in which we now find ourselves, in part 11, because I do not believe, at this point in time, there is one. Like it or not, we now have socialized medicine in this country and we are only one small step away from a one payer system similar to those of Canada, Great Britain and all of the other European socialized democracies. God help us!