Unhealthy Politics

 

Last week we witnessed the horrific assassination of United Healthcare CEO, Brian Thompson. Regardless of how one might feel about health insurance providers, violence must be universally condemned. It’s not the answer.

 

But with that said, this tragic event has certainly elevated the conversation about the state of healthcare in America.  For years our politicians have vowed to fix the problem.  Progressives have their ideas and Conservatives have theirs.  They all shake their fists at Big Pharma, Big Insurance, Big Healthcare, Big Food and while they are casting stones; might as well thrown in Doctors and Lawyers just for good measure.

 

And while we the people root for one side or the other, nothing ever gets done. Why is that? One major factor, perhaps THE factor, is the vast amounts of special interest payoffs that go to the politicians themselves. The politicians and their families all have great insurance and healthcare. So, they don’t feel the physical, emotional and financial pain inflicted upon most of their constituents.  Moreover, our elected officials along with thousands of unelected bureaucrats reap the benefits, directly or indirectly, from the largesse of lobbyists and special interest groups.

 

In 2010, the Supreme Court ruled that the First Amendment prohibits the government from restricting independent expenditures for political campaigns by corporations including for-profit, non-profit organizations, labor unions and “other kinds of associations”.   And so, the floodgates were opened and most things have just gotten more expensive, especially Healthcare.  The Affordable Care Act added cost to the system most certainly.  Advances in medical technology and treatment tend to elevate costs as well. But when those with money are allowed to act without restraint in their own self-interest, someone must pay for it.  Welcome to American Healthcare 2024.

 

It is unlikely that politicians will pass any sort of legislation that reigns in special interest money or negatively impacts those who benefit the most from the status quo. What’s left on the table are two options that would change not only healthcare, but most things that are wrong in this country: TERM LIMITS and TRANSPARENCY.  You don’t kill the snake by cutting off its tail.  Take away the incentive for politicians to do whatever is necessary to stay in power and they might just be more inclined to make better decisions for “we the people”. 

 

Make no mistake, term limits alone will not solve the problem.  We would still have politicians begging for money while in office and seeking rewards when they leave office.   This is why transparency is necessary.  When shareholders, customers and competitors can “follow the money”, this puts market pressure on those who are providing the money as well as those who are accepting it.  As we’ve seen with consumer reaction to extreme DEI initiatives by corporations, when citizens choose not to buy what these companies are selling, the companies are forced to change. Term Limits and Transparency.  Until we get serious about these, the rest is just smoke and mirrors.

  

My Two Cents Worth…The Thanksgiving Edition

 

It’s been almost two months since my last “Two Cents Worth” ramble.  I’ve written posts related to health, hurricanes, the wisdom of Thomas Sowell and, of course, THE election…you know the one to end all elections.  But now it’s once again time for a little stream-of-consciousness.

 

_The economy was already improving, albeit slowly, before the election.  With the election over, it’s accelerated.  Some of it perhaps resulting from the outcome.  But as much or more from just being done with the whole mess; definitely something for which we should all be thankful.

 

_Add Wal-Mart to the growing list of corporations scaling back on DEI initiatives.  The move away from DEI was well underway before the election.  But the results of the election amplified the message to companies that many of us, perhaps most of us, are just interested in buying their products and services… without the far-left gift wrapping.  So, I am thankful that companies have come to their senses and are stepping back from identity politics.  But at the same time, I sincerely hope they will continue to offer meaningful job opportunities and career advancement without regard to race, ethnicity, gender, age or any of the stuff that does not nor should not matter.

 

_The Yellowstone saga has returned and frankly seems a bit worn and past its due date.  I’ll watch it, but with regret that it didn’t end sooner with the original cast still intact (spoiler alert).  On the other hand, Landman is a winner.  Billy Bob Thornton is great, but the real star of the show is Texas, more specifically West and North Texas.  I am thankful that I was born and raised here; and had the chance to see a little bit of it before it got paved over.  God Bless Texas.

 

_Our hot and dry Fall weather is predicted to continue through the Winter.  That being the case we are in for an ugly wildfire season which could well begin before the end of this year.  I am thankful that we got a little rain a couple of weeks ago and I am even more thankful that we have some pretty good firefighters around these parts.

 

_I think, I hope, that Trump’s tariff threats are just deal-making moves.  I expect he will impose some tariffs just to make a point, or where the trade being conducted is clearly unfair and not in our best interest.  But he realizes that the tariff actions he took during his first term had a negative impact on our economy.  And right now, with low unemployment and inflation still a concern, the last thing we need are tariffs that would increase consumer prices. We’re simply not in position to meet consumer demand with domestic production.  Rebuilding our manufacturing base will take years.  In the meantime, we need global supply to meet U.S. demand.  And we should all be thankful that Malcolm McLean invented modern intermodal containerized shipping back in the day.

 

_Most important, I am thankful for God’s grace and forgiveness… and sacrifice.  In this Thanksgiving season I will leave you with this from the Apostle Paul’s letter to the church in Thessalonica:

 

“Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, in everything give thanks; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.” 1 Thessalonians 5: 16-18

The Election Is Over… (stop spiking the ball and pointing fingers)

 

I am so glad the election is over.  Now if the Republicans, Democrats and their talking heads would just shut up and move on.  Alright already, we get it.  MAGA won and the map is painted red.  This is a pivotal moment in human history.  Hurray for God and Country and Freedom.  In your face CNN, MSNBC and The View.  The New York Times can suck it.  Joe Rogan rules.  Elon Musk for Man of the Year.  Yes, we said man, not person. Fight, Fight, Fight.

 

Or there is the other side.  How could “they” elect a “convicted felon”? Trump is a threat to democracy.  The red state people are misogynistic, homophobic, transphobic, racist, climate change denying Neanderthals.  If only Biden had dropped out long before the primaries.  This is a sad day for America.  How could Black men and Hispanics betray us like this.  Why would any woman vote for Trump?  And no matter what the red state people and Fox News say, we aren’t “woke”.  That is so last decade.

 

Am I exaggerating? I think not.  A plea to my fellow Americans:  It’s time for the winning team to stop spiking the ball and taunting their opponent; and the side that lost needs to accept the outcome, quit making excuses and do better next time.  Both sides, meaning all of us, would do well to show some class.  If only we only had some. 

 

(And I should probably take my own advice and just post pics of dogs, mountains and sunsets….I’ll think about it.)

Wrong Again....Thank God

A week before the election I went on the record predicting that Harris would win.  I sighted six reasons for that prediction:

_1. The polls were undercounting younger voters who were likely to vote Democrat.  So, Trump wasn’t as close to Harris as the polls predicted.

_2. The abortion issue would be a major factor in this election and the majority of women voters were against Trump.

_3. The mainstream media’s constant assault on Trump and championing Harris was tilting the scales in the Democrats’ favor.

_4. On balance Democrats have performed somewhat better in Presidential elections than Republicans since 1992.  In a close race against a polarizing candidate like Trump, the Democrats would likely win.

_5. The Red Wave that was predicted in 2022 did not happen, largely due to a rejection of Trump-backed candidates.

_6. The Democrats know how to get out their voters in the places where it matters the most.  The Republicans just didn’t have as good of a “ground game” as the Democrats.

Thankfully, I was wrong; and it wasn’t even close.  So, what happened?

_More young people voted for Trump than expected. The majority still went for Harris, but not to the degree expected.  In particular, a lot of younger men voted for Trump.

_The abortion issue was not a match for the economy and immigration issues.  Harris still got a lot of votes from women and in particular Pro-Choice women voters.  But it was not enough to offset the voters who considered the economy (mostly inflation) and immigration as the critical issues.

_The mainstream media’s attacks on Trump backfired.  The same can be said for the “lawfare” used against Trump.  These efforts may have resonated with the Progressive Democrat core, but moderates, independents, working class and first-time voters didn’t buy it.

_The Democrats ran a terrible campaign with a terrible ticket.  As a result there was no advantage based on their historical performance in Presidential elections, the mid-term Red Wave that wasn’t or their traditional turnout the votes “ground game”.  In fact, the Republicans beat them at their own game when it came to turning out the votes.

So, I am glad that I was wrong.  I am not a Trump fan, always voted for someone else in the primaries.  But I am a “right-leaning” moderate which puts me a long way from the Democrats who have embraced so many far-left policies. Therefore, I vote Republican.  Call it self-interest or self-defense.

I am hopeful that we are seeing a fundamental shift away from woke-ism, identity politics and radical ideologies. The Republicans may not Make America Great Again, but it’s certain Democrats have proven they can make it worse.

The Vision of the Anointed

 

What follows is a review of Thomas Sowell’s masterpiece “The Vision of The Anointed”.  The review was written in 1995 by Dr. Robert P. George who at that time was an associate professor of politics at Princeton University. 

WHY do liberals and conservatives assess the same social facts so differently? The answer, Thomas Sowell suggests, is that liberals and conservatives differ in their perception of the facts. The difference, in other words, is one of vision.

"The crucial role of vision," Sowell argues, "is that it enables a vast range of beliefs to be regarded as presumptively true until definitively disproved by unchallengeable evidence." Liberals --or, to use Sowell's disparaging label, "the anointed" -- view the world as "a very tidy place," where "prescient politicians can 'invest' tax dollars in 'the industries of the future,' where criminals can be 'rehabilitated,' irresponsible mothers taught 'parenting skills,' and where all sorts of other social problems can be 'solved."' All this is possible, as liberals see things, because human nature, as a "social construct," is far more malleable than most people imagine. Thus, in the vision of the anointed, "there is obviously a very expansive role for government and for the anointed in prescribing what government should do."

Sowell contrasts the vision of the anointed with "the tragic vision" of conservatives. What is "tragic" about this vision is that it assumes that problems such as crime, poverty, and irresponsibility cannot finally be "solved." Conservatives, recognizing that "there are no solutions, only trade-offs," do not go in for grand schemes to put an end to poverty, for example, or make health care a fundamental right, or pursue what Sowell derisively calls "cosmic justice." It is not that conservatives are happy that some people are poor, or without health insurance, or whatever. Nor, for that matter, are they complacent about it. Rather, they realize that liberal schemes to eradicate these evils a) never work, and b) inevitably impose huge social costs of their own.

Thus, conservatives are skeptical of large-scale government programs and bureaucracies and are inclined to rely instead on institutions of civil society, such as families, churches, and neighborhood associations, to accomplish what can be accomplished in the areas of health, education, and welfare. Conservatives are hostile to big government not only because it fails to accomplish its utopian goals, but also because it compromises or displaces religious and other subsidiary institutions which have at least some hope of helping people to escape from poverty, rehabilitate themselves from a life of crime, or improve themselves in other ways. Those, like Sowell, with the tragic vision fault those with the vision of the anointed for making the unattainable ideal "the enemy of the good."

Sowell understands the contest of visions to be a longstanding one in Western culture. Godwin, Condorcet, and Mill all shared the vision of the anointed. Burke and the American Founders possessed the tragic vision. Sowell notes that in our own day "most of the leading contemporary opponents of the prevailing vision were themselves formerly within its orbit." He begins the list with Milton Friedman, F. A. von Hayek, Karl Popper, Edward Banfield, Irving Kristol, and Norman Podhoretz. One notable difference between those with the vision of the anointed and those with the tragic vision is that it tends to be the latter who recognize the role of vision in the first place. "To the anointed, their vision and reality are one and the same. Yet the world inside their mind has few of the harsh constraints of the world inhabited by millions of other human beings."

Sowell's account of vision and its role in political life and the creation of social policy helps to explain the tendency of contemporary elites to shift power from the people and their elected representatives to electorally unaccountable bureaucrats and judges. In the vision of the anointed, most people, in as much as they fail to share that vision, are more or less benighted. As such, they simply cannot be trusted to exercise political power justly or, for that matter, to judge accurately their own interests.

Fast Forwarding

 

Patience has never been one of my virtues.  I continue to work on it and have gotten better with age.  But I still don’t do well standing in long-lines or being stuck in a traffic jam or waiting for some dawdling gate attendant to move the ramp up to the plane so I can move on to the baggage claim area and wait some more. I also have no patience for boring speeches.  If you have something important to say, get to the point.  And if it’s not important, don’t waste my time.

 

I have come to believe that my lack of patience and overall sense of urgency are the result of being an only child as well as genetics.  An only child tends to march to the beat of their own drum. And if left alone and given enough personal freedom, they often grow up to have little patience when things don’t go their way.  Mea Culpa.

 

At one point back in the day, I pretty much gave up on watching television. The commercials were just too much of an interruption and waste of time.  If it was a really good 30-minute sit-com, I might suffer through the commercials.  Other shows might get recorded and played back later.  I could watch sports if it was an important game or my favorite team was playing.  But most of my television time was spent watching movie rentals from Blockbuster. 

 

And then came digital recording and streaming services.  It’s just too easy to record a football game and then watch it in less than an hour by fast forwarding through the commercials and half time. And if one is willing to fast forward between plays, rewinding if something big happens, one can watch a game in less than 30 minutes.  It’s even better with the sound off so one isn’t forced to listen to the play-by-play and those annoying comments by some former player or coach. With Prime, Netflix and Apple TV, I have even more choices.  I can watch what I want, when I want and how I want.  I don’t even have to fast forward through it.  And then there is You Tube which has something for everyone and it all moves along at a good pace.  If not, you can just fast forward through it or switch to something else. 

 

Now I find myself spending too much time watching television or on the internet. These days I seldom read a book until bedtime. Then I get sleepy.  So, it can take a month or more for me to get through a book. I have started listening to audiobooks while walking the dog, but it’s not the same as reading. I miss reading books.  Maybe I’ll try fast forward reading.  Read the first and last sentence of a paragraph. If it doesn’t seem to be consequential to the story, just move on to the next paragraph. I’m sure the author would not appreciate someone skipping over their thoughtful, well-crafted words.  But they will just have to settle for the fact that I did buy their book.

 

One of these days perhaps I will stop fast forwarding.  Maybe I will come to realize that I’m just rushing to the end and so much of what I’ve seen and done since the beginning didn’t really matter all that much.

Gone, Gone the Damage Done

The financial costs of hurricanes Helene and Milton will exceed anything we’ve experienced in a single hurricane season.  The loss of lives is also significant and still counting. For many survivors, their world has been turned upside down and may never recover.  This would certainly be the case in many mountain communities in Western North Carolina.  The devastation there is almost unimaginable.  Parts of the Florida Gulf Coast have been transformed.  Some residents have had enough and will move inland or out of the state.  Hurricanes are a reality for Florida and there will be more.

 

The politics of hurricanes and hurricane relief are in full swing.  The Right is pointing fingers at what they claim is a poor response.  That poor response being the result of federal agency incompetence along with too much money spent on immigrants and other nations.  The Left’s response is they are doing a good job and those who claim otherwise are misinformed or worse, spreading that misinformation.  The Left is also seizing on these disasters to once again make their case that human caused global warming, largely caused by fossil fuel, is the real problem.

 

At the risk of being labeled a “climate change denier”, it’s worth pointing to the data. This is a link to some very interesting data from the NOAA National Hurricane Center U.S. Hurricane Strikes by Decade (noaa.gov).  You can read it for yourself and reach your own conclusions, but I would draw your attention to the note just below the data records.

There are two sides to the hurricane story.  The mainstream version claims that even IF we are not having more hurricanes, we are having more major hurricanes. Again, the data to support that claim is questionable at best.  One thing is certain. Hurricanes are doing more damage now than in the past.  The same can be said of tornadoes and hailstorms and wildfires. Today there are simply more people and more structures in places where hurricanes (and tornadoes and hailstorms and wildfires) are most likely to hit.

The questions we must answer:

_1 How much has human activity contributed to climate change?

_2 How much can humans do now to change the climate to something more favorable?

_3 Should we spend more money trying to change the earth’s climate or spend more money preparing to live with the earth’s climate?

_4 And of course the most pressing question: What can we do for the folks who lost so much to Helene and Milton?

                                                             Galveston, Texas 1900