Visit from Governor David Paterson

photo credit: http://www.pajamadeen.com/tag/david-paterson

On June 20th, 2013, the PATH Foundation had a visit from our friend and political advisor, Governor David Paterson.  During his tenure as governor, Paterson became New York's first African American governor and the second legally blind governor of any U.S. state.  Our leading researcher, Eric R. Braverman, MD, sat down with Governor Paterson to discuss some of the obstacles that Governor Paterson has overcome throughout his career.  Check out the interview below:

Eric R. Braverman, MD: Governor, tell us a little about what you had to overcome when you lost your vision.

Governor Paterson: Well, I never lost my vision.  I was diagnosed with optic atrophy, which is scar tissue that lies between the retina and the optic nerve.  It presented itself when I was about six or seven months old.  There’s this theory that I got a fever or something and it burned my eye tissues.  They keep writing about this in my bio, but it’s not true.  In terms of conscious memory, my vision has always been about the same.  I was one of the first blind students mainstreamed in the public education at the insistence of my mother.  I went to public school during a time in which most blind students went to special schools.  Inevitably, in that environment, most of them are dependent people.  If my mother had not forced the school system to take me and force my father to move to a neighborhood where the school system was, I don’t think I’d be sitting here.

Eric R. Braverman, MD: When did you start realizing, as we did at PATH Medical, that you had extraordinary memory capacity?

Governor Paterson: I’m not sure but I know there was evidence of it because when I was a kid, I was a sports fan.  I could remember all the names of the players and I could also remember their statistics.  I know my father was shocked and he thought he had a really good memory.  I guess around high school, they really started to notice it.

Eric R. Braverman, MD: When did you first memorize an hour-long speech?

Governor Paterson: I only did it once.  I could speak for an hour, but a lot of people can speak for an hour because they know a lot and there’s material that they will draw on.  However, all of this is done extemporaneously.  In 2009, I had to memorize 63 minutes of the State of the State address.  No one knows of any governor doing that for any longer.  In 1988, Governor Mario Cuomo memorized his State of the State address, but it was 18 minutes.  The interesting thing is, while it’s a great accomplishment, when people look upon it, it’s in a sense a shame that I had to do that.  There’s this anti-Braille literacy wave in this country that has said: “We’re going to take the blind and not really make them look so blind.  We’re not going to have them use Braille anymore; we’re just going to have them listen, so it doesn’t offend us as a society.”  For that reason, my parents never had me learn Braille.  If I knew Braille, I could’ve read the speech like anyone else did.  I took me tremendous amount of time, which was probably shorter for me than other people, to memorize that speech.  But still, the pressure that I was under to make that speech caused me to make mistakes in the appointment of United States Senator.  Those mistakes were the beginning of my downfall as a governor.

Eric R. Braverman, MD: You had the same problem Franklin Roosevelt had, in that no one ever wanted to show him on crutches.  He was never shown with braces on television; he was always shown at a podium.

Governor Paterson: They definitely faked it. He’s given credit now for being a disabled governor, but he never really wanted to be seen.  There was not much television those days, so the public didn’t actually see him that much.

Eric R. Braverman, MD: Even the newspapers never published him “looking” disabled.

Governor Paterson: That was almost an agreement that they had, with the media outlets.

Eric R. Braverman, MD:  Don’t you think it’s fitting though, a paralyzed president saved a paralyzed country by getting it back moving again. In your case, maybe we’re a nation that is blind to the vision of the United States. You are a visionary and a person who can see even if you can’t see what we call in medicine the “small sliver of the electromagnetic spectrum.”  The small line of things we can see on the electromagnetic spectrum is trivial and turns out actually to be a form of spam, meaning that it interferes with some individuals actually having vision.  In your case, I find you to be a visionary.  Unfortunately, your vision for the future of the state was too difficult for those in present power.

Governor Paterson:  That happens a lot when people get used to having things and they are told that they can’t have them.  I would say, what did surprise me, is that in public service my blindness was something that people marveled at.  People were shocked that I was able to overcome these obstacles.  However, when I was no longer a deputy leader or lieutenant governor and became in charge, I noticed that the publicity shifted to mocking me.  One time I was holding something up and apparently it was upside, which the media kept showing over and over again.  There was a double and triple focus on my blindness. One day in a speech I said “make no mistake, we will build the World Trade Center.”  Well, we had started building already at that time, but my point was that we will have a finished project.  So they wrote an article saying someone should take me down to the World Trade Center and have me touch some of the buildings that are starting to go up.  Another time the Chief of Staff, who is known as the Governor’s Secretary, had to resign.  They wrote in the paper that this normally wouldn’t be a problem but because I’m blind and this Chief of Staff was known to read to me, there’s no one to read to me now.  Well, he was known to read to me in an office with seven people, he never read to me when I was Governor.  I also don’t know if the newspapers were aware of it, but there were 200,000 state employees who know how to read.  It wasn’t like I had any problem getting someone to read to me.  However, that article got written and all of that culminated with the depiction of me by Fred Armisen on Saturday Night Live.  I’ve grown to become a friend of Fred Armisen’s and I can take a joke, but what continually bothered me about that skit was the premise that someone who is blind is stupid or ridiculous or keeps bumping into things.

Eric R. Braverman, MD: You had the unfortunate Jackie Robinson experience.  You broke not just the disability barrier, but the color barrier too.

Governor Paterson: Well I had something that Jackie didn’t, which was that the state police traveled with me, so if I really got tired of someone, then I could get them removed.

Eric R. Braverman, MD: You have the best sense of humor out of any politician.

Governor Paterson:  Somebody once told me that a good ethical decision will eventually be a good political decision.  The problem with public servants is that they don’t want to wait.  They don’t want to live in that space where they are being criticized or cajoled.  When I go back to Albany or even if I walk down the street, you wouldn’t believe how wonderfully many people treat me.  If I stop in the street for any reason, someone comes up to me and says “What’s the matter Governor, where are you going, can I help you?”  I think that I feel the redemption person by person, but whether I felt it or not, if I went back to Albany, I wouldn’t change very much.  I probably wouldn’t have gone to the Yankee game, but I certainly would’ve followed the same policies that I did. 

Eric R. Braverman, MD: You had great policies and I love what you did on obesity.  You took a big interest in obesity and now Governor Cuomo has followed.  You’re the first person to recognize that childhood obesity was the biggest problem in the state and that childhood obesity would kill the future of the state.  Now the first thing that the Health Commissioner did when he was appointed was that he published on the failure of BMI measurements and the need for the institution of leptin blood tests.  Tell us about the love of your alternative medicine; tell us about your mission on getting children healthy and your excitement of making the brain the focus of medicine.

Governor Paterson: I’ve always had an interest in alternative medicine; I don’t even know where it came from.  I used to listen to Dr. Braverman and Gary Knull on WEBD years ago before I met either one of them.  I realized a lot of things that we take for granted like our diet.  What school nutritionists would advocate for were not concluded by research or recommendations by scientists and doctors, but were legislated in 1950’s from government.  In other words, white bread, eggs, white sugar, milk, meat three times a day, things that people would never do, were prescribed to us when I was growing up.  I realized that this is an essential issue that we have to address.  Freedom over medical choices was even a discussion during the writing of the Declaration of Independence.  At this time some people thought that every time someone got sick, you should just quarantine them and keep them away from everybody else.  Yet, some people wanted to try treatments.  Not in the Declaration itself, but in the dicta, they first talked about the freedom of speech but the second freedom they mentioned was the freedom of medical choices. 

Eric R. Braverman, MD: So you weren’t a fan of the OPMC and its desire to shut down alternatives.  You would’ve thought that they learned their lesson after mercury; they decided that the doctors that were doing mercury levels were crazy.  Then ten years later, they send out a letter to every citizen that has a high mercury level.

Governor Paterson: It’s all about making money.  I remember back in the ‘90’s the Food and Drug Administration reviewed whether or not melatonin could be sold.  When the pharmaceutical companies came out with the product Melatonix, then all of a sudden everything was fine because it was a drug and not a natural hormone.  These are the types of things that I did not get a chance to work on in my public service career to the extent that I wanted to.  I was very critical of how AZT and ddC were the original treatments for the HIV virus, and yet, even though they didn’t work, the industries were blocking any other type of research on the subject.  These products didn’t work; they were nothing but preservatives at the time.  It’s just interesting how the public has reacted to it and the public has gone to look for other care.  You can’t call the public quacks because the public is supporting them.  The more information the public gets, the more the public will respond.  In the end, a very good political consultant, Dick Morris, says, “you have to regard the public as geniuses.”  Sometimes when the public hasn’t moved in a direction, it’s because they haven’t heard the right message.  Dr. Martin Luther King’s real genius was not his speaking, but he knew how to move the public.  For instance, Rosa Parks, who is known for refusing to sit on the back of the bus, in Montgomery, Alabama in 1955, was the third women who had gotten arrested for that.  King would not take up the cause of the other two women.  The first women who got off the bus punched the police officer, so that wouldn’t be a good person to test case.  The second one was an unwed mother.  King realized, although he didn’t have anything against unwed mothers, the fact that she was unwed would be an issue in the South and he knew the religious blacks wouldn’t get behind her.  But Rosa Parks was a civic minded person who spoke well, was a member of her own NACP, could stand up for herself and wouldn’t get intimidated.  When he saw her not sit in the back of the bus, he knew that was the person to build the movement around.  Those little differences made such a huge difference, which is probably why the Occupy Wall Street movement didn’t work because they decided they were going to treat all the people who had mental disability in the city and the people with the disabilities were the ones causing the problems that Occupy Wall Street people had to pay for.  No matter what you think about their point of view, it was their method that didn’t work. 

Eric R. Braverman, MD: What are your favorite alternative medicines that you use right now?

Governor Paterson: Co-enzyme Q10, vitamin B-12, DHEA, and grape seed extract for cancer prevention.

Eric R. Braverman, MD: Any thoughts on male menopause - does it exist?

Governor Paterson: I think it does.

Eric R. Braverman, MD: You know it’s now called male low-T syndrome. 

Governor Paterson: It’s interesting that there’s an emotional reaction that men go through that no one ever acknowledges.  Whether it’s pregnancy, monthly cycle or menopause, women are always characterized as being overly emotional.  Yet, anyone who has ever watched a hockey game has seen how emotional men can get.  

Sharply Dressed for Sharper Minds

Thank you to all who were able to join us for our event in March! It was a beautiful night for PATH Foundation friends and family to get to know each other a bit better. We auctioned off some fantastic items from Tincati Menswear, Kusmi Teas, and LoveNatureNYC.

Grammy Award winner, Miri Ben-Ari gave an amazing performance for our intimate audience. If you don't know who she is already, check her out! She really exemplifies health and beauty, inside and out, and we were very excited to have her with us. We look forward to seeing more of her (hint, hint...keep watch for another opportunity to see her perform for PATH Foundation NY in the Fall).

All in all, it was a great night sharing about the Foundation's recent publications and upcoming plans. If you weren't able to make it, we missed you! We hope to see you at the next PATH Foundation event, but until then please consider making a donation to keep our work alive. Our contributions to medical science are made possible by the generosity of individuals and organizations that share our vision of hope for the future, for a healthy country.

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PATH Foundation NY on Bronxnet TV

In our efforts to get the conversation going about the importance of brain health, 

Eric R. Braverman, MD sat down with Daren Jaime at OPEN to discuss our latest publication. A large part of our organization's mission is to get our community thinking about taking care of their brain at least as much as they do the rest of their organs.  

Do you visit your primary care physician for a check-up every year? Every couple of years?

They check your lungs with a stethoscope, your heart with blood pressure/cholesterol/weight, your liver with an enzyme test, your ears, nose, and throat with an ophthalmoscope. 

Do you get your teeth checked with a dentist twice a year?

Do you visit your eye doctor every couple years? 

When is the last time your had your brain checked?

Your memory? Your processing speed?

The brain is the most vital organ we have and it deserves much more attention. 

Serving as the control center for our entire body, our brain has enormous responsibility. 

Whether it is processing incoming information from our 5 senses, sending messages to control your movement, or handling your emotions, this organ is busy. Luckily, our president Obama and the NIH have recognized the lack of focus on our brain in healthcare and has launched the BRAIN initiative. We look forward to the breakthroughs this project will bring. 

Extra! Extra! Read all about it!

In less than 24 hours we will be, once again, published in the international, peer-reviewed, open-access journal PLOS ONE! Our latest study urges the need for brain-health checkups in primary care practice.

Our research found that the BEAM (Brain Electrical Activity Mapping) combined with a handful of other neuropsychological tests (Test of Variables of Attention) can be used to validate the findings of low PET brain metabolism. Basically, this simple and cost-effective BEAM and TOVA can be used to track brain processing speed, making brain health much easier to follow as well as note changes. 

Diagnosis of the early stages of dementia, including Alzheimer's disease in primary care settings has been, up to this point, unreliable. Evidence presented in our study emphasizes the importance of slow brain speed (P300) and the delay of attention or action (TOVA). 

We have a solid opening gambit to get our country going in the right direction. Prevention is key.

Please watch as Eric R. Braverman, MD explains the importance of brain processing speed and the tools we have found to be crucial in diagnosing early signs of dementia and Mild Cognitive Impairment. 

The paper will be available at 5:00pm Eastern Standard time at this location:
http://dx.plos.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0055398

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Liberty and Justice for All...I think health falls in there somewhere.

We were incredibly happy to hear Dr. Ben Carson speak at the National Prayer Breakfast this year. He speaks the truth and has an incredibly solid understanding of why our country is struggling on several issues. Our goal is to be just as honest. We have severe problems with our healthcare system and unless the facts are brought to the table and sternly addressed, we have no hope. 

Please watch this wonderful speech if you haven't already. He is an inspiration to us all and we are proud to be beside him fighting the good fight. 

If you don't have time to watch the video, or if you like to read rather than listen. We have transcribed the speech for you: 

National Prayer Breakfast 2013,

Ben Carson, MD 

Thank you so much, Mr. President, Mr. Vice President, Mrs. Obama, distinguished guests – which included everybody. Thank you so much for this wonderful honor to be at this stage again. I was here 16 years ago, and the fact that they invited me back means that I didn’t offend too many people, so that was great.

I want to start by reading four texts which will put into I want to start by reading four texts which will put into context what I’m going to say.

Proverbs 11:9, With his mouth the Godless destroys his neighbor, but through knowledge the righteous escapes.

Proverbs 11:12, A man who lacks judgment derides his neighbor, but a man of understanding holds his tongue

Proverbs 11:25, A generous man will prosper. He who refreshes others will himself, be refreshed.

2nd Chronicles 7:14, If my people who are called by my name will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sins and heal their land.

You know, I have an opportunity to speak in a lot of venues. This is my fourth speech this week. and I have an opportunity to talk to a lot of people. And I’ve been asking people what concerns you? What are you most concerned about in terms of the spirituality and the direction of our nation and our world? And I’ve talked to very prominent democrats, very prominent republicans. And I was surprised by the uniformity of their answers. And those have informed my comments this morning. now, it’s not my intention to offend anyone. I have discovered, however, in recent years that it’s very difficult to speak to a large group of people these days and not offend someone.

And people walk away with their feelings on their shoulders waiting for you to say something, ah, did you hear that? The pc police are out in force at all times. I remember once I was talking about the difference between a human brain and a dog’s grain, and a man — and a dog’s brain, and a man got offended. You can’t talk about dogs like that. [laughter] People focus in on that, completely miss the point of what you’re saying. [laughter] And we’ve reached reach the point where people are afraid to actually talk about what they want to say because somebody might be offended. People are afraid to say Merry Christmas at Christmas time. Doesn’t matter whether the person you’re talking to is Jewish or, you know, whether they’re any religion. That’s a salutation, a greeting of goodwill. We’ve got to get over this sensitivity. You know, and it keeps people from saying what they really believe.

You know, I’m reminded of a very successful young businessman, and he loved to buy his mother these exotic gifts for mother’s day. And he ran out of ideas, and then he ran across these birds. These birds were cool, you know? They cost $5,000 apiece. They could dance, they could sing, they could talk. He was so excited, he bought two of them. Sent them to his mother, couldn’t wait to call her up on mother’s day, mother, mother, what’d you think of those birds? And she said, they was good. [laughter] He said, no, no, no! Mother, you didn’t eat those birds? Those birds cost $5,000 apiece! They could dance, they could sing, they could talk! And she said, well, they should have said something. [laughter] And, you know, that’s where we end up, too, if we don’t speak up for what we believe. [laughter] And, you know, what we need to do — [applause] what we need to do in this pc world is forget about unanimity of speech and unanimity of thought, and we need to concentrate on being respectful to those people with whom we disagree.

And that’s when I believe we begin to make progress. and one last thing about political correctness, which I think is a horrible thing, by the way. I’m very, very come — compassionate, and I’m not never out to offend anyone. But pc is dangerous. Because, you see, this country one of the founding principles was freedom of thought and freedom of expression. and it muffles people. It puts a muzzle on them. And at the same time, keeps people from discussing important issues while the fabric of this society is being changed. And we cannot fall for that trick. And what we need to do is start talking about things, talking about things that are important.

Things that were important in the development of our nation. one of those things was education. I’m very passionate about education because it’s made such a big difference in my life. But here we are at a time in the world, the information age, the age of technology, and yet 30% of people who enter high school in this country do not graduate. 44% of people who start a four-year college program do not finish it in four years. What is that about? Think back to a darker time in this our history. Two hundred years ago when slavery was going on it was illegal to educate a slave, particularly to teach them to read. Why do you think that was? Because when you educate a man, you liberate a man. And there I was as a youngster placing myself in the same situation that a horrible institution did because I wasn’t taking advantage of the education. I was a horrible student. Most of my classmates thought I was the stupidest person in the world. They called me dummy. I was the butt of all the jokes. Now, admittedly, it was a bad environment. single-parent home, you know, my mother and father had gotten divorced early on.

My mother got married when she was 13. She was one of 24 children. Had a horrible life. Discovered that her husband was a bigamist, had another family. And she only had a third grade education. She had to take care of us. Dire poverty. I had a horrible temper, poor self-esteem. All the things that you think would preclude success. But I had something very important, I had a mother who believed in me, and I had a mother who would never allow herself to be a victim no matter what happened. Never made excuses, and she never accepted an excuse from us. And if we ever came up with an excuse, she always said do you have a brain? And if the answer was, yes, then she said then you could have thought your way out of it. It doesn’t matter what John or Susan or Mary or anybody else did or said. And it was the most important thing she did for my brother and myself. Because if you don’t accept excuses, pretty soon people stop giving them, and they start looking for solutions. And that is a critical issue when it comes to success.

Well, you know, we did live in dire poverty, and one of the things that I hated was poverty. you know, some people hate spiders, some people hate snakes, I hated poverty. I couldn’t stand it. [laughter] But, you know, my mother couldn’t stand the fact that we were doing poorly in school, and she prayed and asked god to give her wisdom, what could she do to make her sons understand the importance of wisdom? God gave her wisdom. At least in her opinion. It was to turn off the TV, let us watch only two or three programs during the week, and read two books apiece and submit to her written book reports, which she couldn’t read, but we didn’t know that. [laughter] She put check marks and highlights and stuff — [laughter] But, you know, I just hated this. And my friends were out having a good time. her friends would criticize her. they would say you can’t make boys stay in the house reading books, they’ll grow up and hate you. And I would overhear them and say, you know, mother, they’re right. But she didn’t care.

You know, after a while, I actually began to enjoy reading those books because we were very poor, but between the covers of those books I could go anywhere, I could be anybody, I could do anything. I began to read about people of great accomplishment, and as I read those stories, I began to see a connecting thread. I began to see that the person who has the most to do with you and what happens to you in life is you. You make decisions. You decide how much energy you want to put behind that decision. And I came to understand that I had control of my own destiny. And at that point I didn’t hate poverty anymore, because I knew it was only temporary. I knew I could change that. It was incredibly liberating for me, made all the difference.

To continue on that theme of education, in 1831 Alexis de Tocqueville came to study America. The Europeans were fascinated. How could a fledgling Nation, barely 50 years old already be competing with them on virtually every level? This was impossible. De Tocqueville was going to sort it out and he looked at our government and he was duly impressed by the three branches of government – four now because now we have special interest groups, but it was only three back in those days. He said, “Wow, This is really something”, but then he said, “but let me look at their educational system” and he was blown away. See, anybody who had finished the second grade was completely literate. He could find a mountain man on the outskirts of society who could read the newspaper and have a political discussion, could tell him how the government worked.

If you really want to be impressed, take a look at the chapter on education in my latest book, America the Beautiful, which I wrote with my wife – it came out last year, and in that education chapter you will see questions extracted from a sixth grade exit exam from the 1800′s - a test you had to pass to get your sixth grade certificate. I doubt most college graduates today could pass that test. We have dumbed things down to that level and the reason that is so dangerous is because the people who founded this Nation said that our system of government was designed for a well-informed and educated populace, and when they become less informed, they become vulnerable. Think about that. That is why education is so vitally important.

Now some people say, ahhh, you’re over blowing it, things aren’t that bad, and you’re a doctor, a neurosurgeon. Why are you concerned about these things? Got news for you. FIVE doctors signed the Declaration of Independence. Doctors were involved in the framing of the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, in a whole bunch of things. It’s only been since recent decades that we’ve extracted ourselves, which I think is a big mistake.

We need doctors, we needs scientists, engineers. We need all those people involved in government, not just lawyers…I don’t have anything against lawyers, but you know, here’s the thing about lawyers…I’m sorry, but I got to be truthful…got to be truthful – what do lawyers learn in law school? To win, by hook or by crook. You gotta win, so you got all these Democrat lawyers, and you got all these Republican lawyers and their sides want to win. We need to get rid of that. What we need to start thinking about is, how do we solve problems?

Now, before I get shot, let me finish. I don’t like to bring up problems without coming up with solutions. My wife and I started the Carson Scholars Fund 16 years ago after we heard about an international survey looking at the ability of eight graders in 22 countries to solve math and science problems, and we came out No. 21 out of 22. We only barely beat out Number 22 – very concerning.

We'd go to these schools and we’d see all these trophies: State Basketball, State Wrestling, this, that and the other. The Quarterback was the Big Man on Campus. What about the intellectual Superstar? What did they get? A National Honor Society pin? A pat on the head, there, there little Nerd? Nobody cared about them. And is it any wonder that sometimes the smart kids try to hide? They don’t want anybody to know they are smart? This is not helping us or our Nation, so we started giving out scholarships from all backgrounds for superior academic performance and demonstration of humanitarian qualities. Unless you cared about other people, it didn’t matter how smart you were. We’ve got plenty of people like that. We don’t need smart people who don’t care about other people.

We would give them money. The money would go into a Trust. They would get interest on it. When they would go to college they would get the money, but also the school gets a trophy, every bit as impressive as a sports trophy – right out there with the others. They get a medal. They get to go t a banquet. We try to put them on a pedestal as impressive as we do the All-State athletes. I have nothing against athletics or entertainment. I’m from Baltimore. The Ravens won. This is great – okay. But, but – what will maintain our position in the world? The ability to shoot a 25-foot jump shot or the ability to solve a quadratic equation? We need to put the things into proper perspective.

Many teachers have told us that when we put a Carson Scholar in their classroom, the GPA of the whole classroom goes up over the next year. It’s been very gratifying. We started 16 years ago with 25 scholarships in Maryland, now we’ve given out more than 5,000 and we are in all 50 states, but we’ve also put in Reading Rooms. These are fascinating places that no little kid could possibly pass up. And uh, they get points for the amount of time they spend reading, and the number of books they read. They can trade the points for prizes. In the beginning they do it for the prizes, but it doesn’t take long before their academic performance begins to improve.

And we particularly target Title One schools where the kids come from homes with no books and they go to schools with no libraries. Those are the ones who drop out. We need to truncate that process early on because we can’t afford to waste any of those young people. You know, for every one of those people we keep from going down that path – that path of self-destruction and mediocrity, that’s one less person you have to protect yourself and your family from. One less person you have to pay for in the penal or welfare system. One more taxpaying productive member of society who may invent a new energy source or come up with a cure for cancer. They are all important to us and we need every single one of them it makes a difference.  And when you go home tonight read about it, Carson scholars, carsonscholars.org

Why is it so important that we educate our people? Because we don’t want to go down the pathway as so many pinnacle nations that have preceded us. I think particularly about ancient Rome. Very powerful. Nobody could even challenge them militarily, but what happened to them? They destroyed themselves from within. Moral decay, fiscal irresponsibility. They destroyed themselves. If you don’t think that can happen to America, you get out your books and you start reading, but you know, we can fix it.

Why can we fix it because we’re smart. We have some of the most intellectually gifted people leading our Nation. All we need to do is remember what our real responsibilities are so that we can solve the problems. I think about these problems all the time, and my role, you know, model was Jesus. He used parables to help people understand things. And one of our big problems right now, and like I said, I’m not politically correct, so I’m sorry, but you know – our deficit is a big problem. Think about it. And our National Debt – $16.5 Trillion dollars – you think that’s not a lot of money? I’ll tell you what! Count one number per second, which you can’t even do because once you get to a thousand it will take you longer than a second, but…one number per second. You know how long it would take you to count to 16 Trillion? 507,000 years – more than a half a million years to get there. We have to deal with this.

Here’s a parable: A family falls on hard times. Dad loses his job or is demoted to part time work. He has 5 children. He comes to the 5 children, he says we’re going to have to reduce your allowance. Well, they’re not happy about it but – he says, except for John and Susan. They’re, they’re special. They get to keep their allowance. In fact, we’ll give them more. How do you think that’s going to go down? Not too well. Same thing happens. Enough said.

What about our taxation system? So complex there is no one who can possibly comply with every jot and tittle of our tax system. If I wanted to get you, I could get you on a tax issue. That doesn’t make any sense. What we need to do is come up with something that is simple.

When I pick up my Bible, you know what I see? I see the fairest individual in the Universe, God, and he’s given us a system. It’s called tithe. Now we don’t necessarily have to do it 10% but it’s principle. He didn’t say, if your crops fail, don’t give me any tithes. He didn’t say, if you have a bumper crop, give me triple tithes. So there must be something inherently fair about proportionality. You make $10 Billion dollars you put in a Billion. You make $10 you put in $1 – of course, you gotta get rid of the loopholes, but now some people say, that’s not fair because it doesn’t hurt the guy who made $10 Billion dollars as much as the guy who made $10. Where does it say you have to hurt the guy. He’s just put in a billion in the pot. We don’t need to hurt him.

It’s that kind of thinking – it’s that kind of thinking that has resulted in 602 banks in the Cayman Islands. That money needs to be back here, building our infrastructure and creating jobs – and we’re smart enough – we’re smart enough to figure out how to do that.

We’ve already started down the path to solving one of the other big problems, health care. We need to have good health care for everybody. It’s the most important thing that a person can have. Money means nothing, titles mean nothing when you don’t have your health, but we’ve got to figure out efficient ways to do it. We spend a lot of money on health care, twice as much per capita as anybody in else in the world, and yet not very efficient. What can we do?

Here’s my solution. When a person is born, give him a birth certificate, an electronic medical record and a health savings account [HSA], to which money can be contributed, pre-tax from the time you are born, to the time you die. When you die, you can pass it on to your family members so that when you’re 85 years old and you’ve got 6 diseases, you’re not trying to spend up everything. You’re happy to pass it on and nobody is talking about death panels. That’s number one. Also – For the people who are indigent, who don’t have any money, we can make contributions to their HSA each month because we already have this huge pot of money instead of sending it to bureaucracy – let’s put it into HSAs. Now they have some control over their own health care and what do you think they’re going to do? They’re going to learn very quickly how to be responsible. When Mr. Jones gets that diabetic foot ulcer, he’s not going to the Emergency Room and blowing a big chunk of it. He’s going to go to the Clinic. He learns that very quickly – gets the same treatment. In the Emergency Room they send him out. In the Clinic they say, now let’s get your diabetes under control so that you’re not back here in three weeks with another problem. That’s how we begin to solve these kinds of problems. It’s much more complex than that, and I don’t have time to go into it all, but we can do all these things because we are smart people.

And let me begin to close here – another parable: Sea Captain, and he’s out on the sea near the area where the Titanic went down. And they look ahead and there’s a bright light right there – another ship he figures. He tells his signaler to signal that ship: deviate 10 degrees to the South. Back comes the message, no you deviate 10 degrees to the North. Well, he’s a little bit in sensed, you know. He says, send a message, this is Captain Johnson, deviate 10 degrees to the South. Back comes the message, this is Ensign 4th Class Reilly. Deviate 10 degrees to the North. Now Captain Johnson is really upset. He says send him a message, this is a Naval Destroyer. Back comes the message, this is a Lighthouse. Enough said.

Now, what about the symbol of our Nation? The Eagle. The Bald Eagle. It’s an interesting story how we chose that but a lot of people think we call it the bald eagle because it looks like it has a bald head. That’s not the reason it comes from the Old English word Piebald, which means crowned with white. And we just shortened it to bald. Now, use that the next time you see somebody who thinks they know everything. You’ll get ‘me on that one.

But, why is that eagle able to fly, high, forward? Because it has two wings: a left wing and a right wing. Enough said.

And I want to close with this story: two hundred years ago this Nation was involved in a war, the war of 1812. The British, who are now our good friends, thought that we were young whippersnappers. It was time for us to become a colony again. They were winning that war and marching up the Eastern Seaboard, destroying city after city, destroying Washington D.C., burned down the White House. Next stop Baltimore. As they came into the Chesapeake Bay, there were armadas of war ships as far as the eye could see. It was looking grim. Fort. McHenry standing right there. General Armistead, who was in charge of Fort? McHenry had a large American flag commissioned to fly in front of the Fort. The Admiral in charge of the British Fleet was offended, said take that flag down. You have until dusk to take that Flag down. If you don’t take it down, we will reduce you to ashes.

There was a young amateur poet on board by the name of Francis Scott Key, sent by President Madison to try to obtain the release of an American physician who was being held captive. He overheard the British plans. They were not going to let him off the ship. He mourned. As dusk approached he mourned for his fledgling young Nation, and as the sun fell, the bombardment started. Bombs bursting in air. missiles, so much debris. He strained, trying to see, was the flag still there? Couldn’t see a thing. All night long it continued. At the crack of dawn he ran out to the bannister. He looked straining his eyes all he could only see dust and debris.

Then there was a clearing and he beheld the most beautiful sight he had ever seen – the torn and tattered Stars and Stripes still waving. And many historians say that was the turning point in the war of 1812. We went on to win that war and to retain our freedom and if you had gone onto the grounds of Fort. McHenry that day, you would have seen at the base of that flag, the bodies of soldiers who took turns. Propping up that flag, they would not let that flag go down because they believed in what that flag symbolized. And what did it symbolize? One Nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you. God Bless.