The Writing is No Longer on the Wall

The slow-motion-corrosion of the Trump Organization, the Trump Administration, and Donald Trump himself has not garnered much satisfaction.  Both his opponents and those supporters who drank the Kool-Aid two or more years ago are tired of the speculation. What will the Mueller investigation reveal? How will the Republican Congressmen react?  How aggressive will the Democrats be? It engenders a National equivalent of The Rumble in the Jungle , only without a timeline.

Well, now I feel there is something that is emerging as predictable.

With the recent wrapping up of the Michael Cohen case, along with the immunity granted to AMI Inc and Trump Organization’s chief financial officer (Allen Weisselberg), there is no more doubt that Donald Trump, and possibly his three oldest children, are guilty of a crime: conspiring to and violating campaign finance laws.

Of the variety of speculative crimes that Trump might be guilty of, this paying of hush money to women with whom Trump had engaged in sexual relations while his wife was still nursing his youngest child is at the bottom of the pile.

Important Republicans, Senators and Congressmen alike (no Congresswomen I believe), are already on record with two conclusions: first, “…campaign finance violation? Big deal!” and second, “…why wouldn’t he want to suppress the comments of immoral women? What would any red-blooded billionaire do?” Amazingly these politicians, who so vigorously court the Religious Right, are just fine with the underlying behavior that motivated the crime. After all, it’s just Trump.

Republicans will claim the focus on Cohen needs to be his associated tax and financial violations.  However, the bell cannot be un-rung.  Campaign finance violations are part of Cohen’s conviction and he’s going to be doing three years in prison and paying a couple of million dollars in fines and restitution.  Further, Cohen accusations that Trump personally directed his crime are now backed up by AMI Inc., and it appears the money trail (which constitutes the conspiracy) is going to be revealed by Weisselberg. 

At least on this crime Trump is toast…no more speculation. You can erase those speculations off the wall.

Does that mean it’s full steam ahead to impeachment by the House and conviction by the Senate? Don’t hold your breath.  The new Democratic House may be so emboldened, but the Republican Senate would never convict on that alone. Mueller will have to come up with a lot more before that happens.

However, I believe we can confidently begin to see the light at the end of the tunnel, namely the end game for The Donald…and quickly.

I think it is likely we will soon see Republicans begin their quest to challenge Trump for the Republican nomination in 2020, even before we hear a discouraging word from Robert Mueller.  Flake, Kasich, perhaps Corker and who knows who else. I believe it’s going to happen and because the time frame for mounting a Presidential campaign is so long we should start to hear about it very soon, probably in January 2019.

The result of an insurrection in the Republican Party to de-throne Trump would eliminate him in the summer of 2020, cause him to quit under the threat of losing the nomination, or so split the Party as to make his candidacy, should he get the nomination, the least effective in the history of this Nation.

The thought of it being orange jump-suit time for Donald Trump doesn’t make my Christmas list.  However, the vision of the TRUMP name being removed from buildings around the world is the equivalent of sugar plums dancing in my head.

Merry Christmas

The Tax Republicans Love

The history and understanding of Taxation in America should be part of the American political debate, but it is not. Conservatives, Tea Partiers, Government conspiracy advocates, Republicans, and the mega-rich (to name a few) have successfully turned the words “Tax” or “Taxation” into dark verbs connoting strangulation in the infernal regions of Hades.

So successful have they been over the past 75 years that an intentional disconnect between Government taxes (revenues) and the benefits they provide has been amazingly achieved. To have, say, a miner in Pennsylvania, who pays little or no taxes yet receives many benefits, vigorously advocating the liquidation of the IRS is an extraordinary thing to behold.

The negative emotion attached to Taxation is, of course, not new. Your mid-Western John Deere salesman need only raise his Good Book to the heavens as validation of the evils associated with tax collectors. However Taxation 2000 years ago right up to the 20^th century bears little resemblance to what taxation is today.

Through most of human civilization taxes were assessed by those in power (Kings, Lords, Emperors, Clergy) almost exclusively to retain power. Military security and conquest were the big drains on their coffers, the aggrandizement of their lifestyle a close second. Taxes were primarily paid by those with assets that could be identified. More often than not surrendering of assets was the means of payment. Little or no benefit accrued to the payer, beyond some promises of security (perhaps from the payee himself).

Not much changed as nations developed. Central governments need for capital continued to be driven by military adventures or defense.  What changed were growing industrial economies, a greater dispersion of resources, and a new class of wealthy individuals where the focus was in expanding and securing assets. Not bearing the cost of Government was a prime goal, as most taxes continued to be levied on property.

It wasn’t until 1913 in the US, with the adoption of the 16^th Amendment, that taxes could be successfully assessed on all Americans through their income. Even then it proved less than practical until 1943 when laws (and accounting capabilities) began withholding on income, aka taxation at source. Then everyone was potentially in the game and the primary source of revenue reverted away from assets to income generated by the middle class. It has been an economic class struggle ever since and the middle class is losing.

The needs today are to UN-demonize and expand the definition of Taxation. Taxation is more simply put as a transfer of wealth. Taxes are not paid to support a King. They are paid to supply benefits to the population as a whole, whether it is military protection, emergency aid, road building and other infrastructure, protection from injury or crime, an independent Judiciary, education, health and well being, and so forth. However, they don’t necessarily have to happen on a paystub or form 1040.

The tax Republicans love most is the thousands of dollars you pay each year (or paid on your behalf) in medical expenses and medical insurance.  They want you to think that it is just a commodity you’re purchasing. They have fought, virtually for decades, to retain (what is now) a $4 trillion transfer of wealth from you to the medical industrial complex. This harkens back to pre-19^th century taxation when taxes went exclusively to the powerful.

If we use as a comparison the cost of per-capital healthcare in all advanced economies in the world who provide as-good or better healthcare, then fully a third of medical expenses in the US are either wasted or go into the pockets of a relatively few individuals.  That’s $1.3 trillion (with a T). If only 2% of that largess goes toward lobbying Republican lawmakers, then $27 billion flows up to Capitol Hill Republicans. No wonder they love it.

Many of you have been convinced that medical care paid with taxes would somehow be detrimental, even catastrophic.  Ask anyone on Medicare, Medicaid, or VA Health how catastrophic their healthcare is and how much better off they’d be if they didn’t have it.

It really doesn’t matter if healthcare is paid directly through taxes, as it is done in Britain and France, or through insurance entities, as done in Japan, Canada, and Switzerland.  The reality is that it must work for the entire population not primarily for a beneficial few. That can only happen when a for-profit system no longer controls those who make up the rules.

Those that believe in their guts that taxes are evil will vote against their own best interest. They unwittingly support the super wealthy (as with the 2017 Tax Bill). They are also the ones who support the Republicans who maintain the status quo in Healthcare with banners reading Nationalism, Free Enterprise, and Don’t Tread On Me.

After years of analysis a Columbia economics professor showed that a 2% Federal tax on assets (not income) would expand services and ultimately retire the National Debt.

Healthcare will continue to be middle class Americans biggest “tax” until we create a system which employs cost controls, regulates expenses, and includes everyone.

Politicians who follow the money will likely never support either.

Another Death in Vietnam (revisited)

The following post was published on this blog 20 months ago, less than 70 days after Trump inauguration. It was striking to me how so little has changed since then that I felt compelled to re-publish it:

My brother Bobby was killed in Vietnam. We didn’t know it at the time, for that matter neither did he. It took 43 years for the herbicide that entered his body at age 21 to end his life. The Agent Orange causing the particular lymphoma that killed him was just as reliable as the bullets, bombs, accidents, and illnesses that took the lives of the 58,220 Americans that were recorded as dead “in-country” during that military engagement.

There’s undoubtedly no accounting of what the real number of Americans lost was, any more than the incomprehensible number of non-Americans who died with them and since. There’s also no telling when it will end.

Lately I am weighted with pangs of responsibility in realizing I am of the last generation of Americans to remember firsthand what we as a nation were experiencing at that time, roughly between the years 1965-1972. What should I be sharing…what should I just forget?

The historical experience of World War II was quite different, as I was taught by my father’s generation and in countless stories and films.  There was near total engagement by the American population. Even with carnage that pales all military conflicts that have followed; the unification toward a common goal resulted in a remembrance that is mostly Romantic. The somewhat unique American post-war euphoria that resulted from that Romance is the “Great” in Donald Trump’s “Great Again”.

Vietnam was essentially its antithesis.  It was ill-conceived, non-transparent, over-weighted in politics, ultimately divisive, and too easy to discount and disregard.  If it weren’t for the existence of a draft carried over from WWII and Korea, the whole conflict might have been relegated to second page news and its opposition might have more resembled our recent fiasco in Iraq.

Thankfully the lessons it left are not clouded in Romance and their relevance has never been more important than they are today in Trump’s America.

What I remember from the Vietnam War era and how it relates to 21^st century America is not the foolish ideological tools that were used by equally foolish leaders to begin and sustain the conflict. What I’m recalling is how the nation reacted to that foolishness daily and why. Such was the national response to the War that lunacy became lucid and, therefore, insulated from reason.

The presentation of the Vietnam War to the American people was insidious.  It started slowly, utilizing the undercurrent of manufactured fear of Communism to justify deaths and injuries.  Long before the devastation of the Conflict reached its height, the bullshit of falling dominos to the “Red Peril” vanished. It simply became a “them vs. us”.

News reporting on the War basically folded into the routine of people’s lives.  There was little to report daily other than the number of dead and wounded, and where in that little country it occurred. In 1968, an average of 46 US soldiers were killed every day, with 6 to 8 times that many wounded or injured…every day. The Pentagon and the White House released whatever they could to make it sound acceptable. The most common was to list North Vietnamese (and Vietcong) killed and wounded in numbers so large the accounting was not believable. But few expressed skepticism and it was hardly questioned.

You see, as a Nation, we got used to it. Protesting was considered unpatriotic and didn’t really take hold among ordinary Americans until the 5^th year of the War. Nixon was elected in 1968 by the “silent majority”.  Like Iraq, if people didn’t have someone in the conflict the news of the War was just and only that. The current day's news made yesterday's vanish into desert air.

Donald Trump has not (yet) drawn us into an extended military conflict, thankfully. His “playful” attitude regarding nuclear weapons gives pause, but for now the lesson of Vietnam doesn’t actually relate to how we are reacting militarily.  It relates to how we as a nation are reacting to the fundamental functioning of government.

If Donald Trump feels he has a mandate it is based on an irrational concept that he was elected to dismantle whatever he can and by whatever means he is able.  He has no more ideological basis for his attack on the existing US Government than Johnson or Nixon had in perpetuating the Vietnam War.  He is freewheeling and his disabling narcissism has resulted in him being surrounded only by his family and those who were loyal when anyone with a half a brain viewed him as scary clown.

The truly serious problem is that the Nation and the media have gotten used to it. His and his administration’s bizarre actions have become habitual and routine. There have been so many instances of disinformation, distasteful antics, subversive behavior, incompetence, nepotism, pandering, lying, and psychosis over the course of the election and the first few weeks of Trump’s term no one is keeping count anymore. And those are just the public ones.

Nearly any one would have torpedoed a prior administration.

Just like another death in Vietnam, the next Trump shoe to drop hardly moves the meter, and even then only briefly.

The danger is that complacency to incompetence, indecency, corruption, and (most of all) dishonesty may take many years to undo. In nations that find difficultly in thriving, these factors seem often insurmountable, especially where public division is encouraged.

We should be raging against legislators who think they can personally benefit by supporting this dangerous new “normal” and to media moguls who are devoted first to ratings.  To want and expect something better from government we need a better government, not its elimination in favor of some kind of chaotic oligarchy.

Reject any legislator who supports Trump, restore the Fairness Doctrine (ended in 1987), and seek with an open mind to understand why overall health care in the United States (and ONLY in the United States throughout the developed world) is an abject fiscal failure.

We don’t want another Vietnam lingering around for another four decades or longer.

My Daughter Trulicity

I find it curious the creative nature at which new parents name their children these recent years (or even decades). Where do they come up with those names? Where can they find more? I have one thought:

 I came home the other night forgetting the slumber party my daughter had arranged for that evening. I walked in and was gleefully accosted by my daughter’s two best friends Cymbalta and Pamelor.  They were immediately joined by Lyrica, Latuda, and Humira all very anxious to introduce me to their new Latino friend Fetzima.  I went into the family room to meet her and first saw Eliqus (a bit mature for her age) lounging in front of the TV. Before I could say a word the doorbell rang. I went to answer it with my nervous looking daughter and there on the doorstep were three familiar boys Paxil, Lipitor, and Cialis, plus an Italian exchange student named Entresto. I said “not tonight fellas”, and asked my daughter, Trulicity, to close the door gently.

That’s right, in the endless quest to find names that distance themselves from such as Kathy, Susan, Jane, and Amy you need go no further than your flat screen TV. At almost any given time you will be subjected to long, drawn out prescription drug commercial that features a clever name that’s just perfect for your next born. Further, they’ll use the name repeatedly in the most comforting of situations; romantic fall colors, bubbling brooks, colorful kites, loving smiles, you name it. How could you go wrong? Besides, you’ve paid for this creativity…dearly.

In the 1980s, under the banner of deregulated free markets holding sway during the Reagan years, the FDA made no attempt to restrict pharmaceutical companies to advertise on television and radio. Today only one other nation in the world (New Zealand) allows such advertising. Since that time our Nation’s drug suppliers have spent hundreds of billions of dollars on “direct to consumer” (DTC) advertising of prescription drugs (Rx). 

There has been a bit of controversy to this practice surfacing from time to time, but mostly there has been a passive acceptance. The affect of advertising is normally positive in a free market, even necessary, but it is also potentially insidious. We view advertising submissively, rarely thinking about it.  Its very purpose is to create recall only at that the time of or decision to purchase.

The limited debate over DTC Rx advertising has mostly focused on the effect advertising has had on the decision making of the doctor: to what extent does the motivated patient sway the doctors decision making on which drug to use.  I believe that debate is useless and nearly irrelevant. It requires second guessing physicians and cannot be determined in any practical way even if we intuitively know it’s true.  The primary debate should be centered on the economics of DTC Rx advertising, what is really happening and what the obvious consequences are.

Advertising by definition is targeted toward a consumer who might be interested in purchasing the product advertised, or to the individual who might influence the purchaser (such as advertising to small children).  DTC Rx falls loosely into that second category.  The identity of the Rx consumer, however, is the first misnomer.

The patient is not the consumer when it comes to Rx, rather the purchaser is the physician. It is important to understand that the patient doesn’t buy Rx for himself, rather he/she buys it for the physician.  Prior to the development of retail drug distribution, doctors disseminated Rx when the patient was seen and the patient would pay or reimburse the doctor as part of the overall cost of treatment, just as it’s currently often done in hospitals.  As the number of Rx expanded it became impractical for doctors to maintain the drugs and so Drug Stores became a centralized point from which doctors could disperse medications. 

Therefore, DTC Rx advertising is directed toward individuals who can’t buy the product, any more than a three year old can buy that box of Cocoa Puffs she’s seen on TV.  The difference is, of course, the Rx purchaser is an adult who actually thinks they are the one buying the Rx. At least the 3 year old intuitively knows their Cocoa Puffs are coming from mommy. I believe it is this misunderstanding by adult patients which fundamentally impedes this debate from reaching the American people.  It is our profit driven health care system that suppresses the issue.

Cost of Healthcare and Prescription Drug Advertising:   The American health care consumer should constantly be reminded that the cost of health care for him/her is revenue for someone else.  There is a transfer of wealth in the US of over $4 trillion annually.  An estimated $30 billion of that amount goes to those involved with the marketing of Rx (advertisers, media, and the marketing overhead of the pharmaceutical companies).  It matters not what health care plan our current or prospective political leaders espouse, none will work unless the cost of healthcare in the US is reversed. The billions spent on DTC Rx advertising are perhaps the most wasteful dollars spent in our ongoing healthcare catastrophe as they do not directly benefit the healthcare recipient or the system generally. In fact, there is no benefit, direct or indirect, to the patient. The only purpose is to generate profits for the pharmaceutical companies.

Prescription Drug Advertising as a Disincentive for Drug Research: The argument frequently heard from drug companies is that the price of a drug is often very high due to the large investment that took place prior to the drug being released to the public. It is a good point as those costs must be recovered, as well as the costs of research on failed drugs that ultimately are not released.  However, once the drugs are released the revenues can be used for further research on new and improved Rx, but what happens?  The Pharmaceutical Companies continue to invest in these drugs, in the billions of dollars, through mass marketing. Not only are those billions not being used for further research, but they drive up the cost. Further, with the Pharmaceutical Companies continuing to invest billions in a drug to make it more profitable, there is a disincentive to develop a new and better drug that might replace the highly marketed drug. It is simple human nature (and therefore business nature) that they will continue to support these marketed drugs rather than new ones due to the continued investment from which they have calculated an expected financial return.  None of this equates to any benefit for the patient…past, present, or future.

Prescription Drug Advertising Adversely Impacting the Quality of Rx: As the Pharmaceutical Companies continue to invest in a prescription drug they become less likely to continue critical review of that drug, or maintain even a practical semblance of objectivity in any critical review. Again, why would they?  Not only have they invested in the development of the drug, but after its release they continue that investment and now have projected levels of profits to defend.  There is a further element, however:

With mass marketing the pharmaceutical companies have exposed themselves to more liability; both on a retail level which can affect shareholder equity, and on a tort level with possible injured parties.  This has already been made obvious by several highly public drug failures such as with Vioxx and several statin drugs. The heavily marketed drug increases public awareness, which is what mass marketing is supposed to do.  With that visibility, however, comes equally visible news worthiness should a drug fail. This becomes merely a cost of doing business and an indirect expense added to the retail cost of the drug.

There are other less critical reasons why Rx advertising should once again be banned from radio and television:

The information regarding the prescription drug that is supposed to be provided with the advertisements is laughable and completely ignored by the FCC.  It is the audible and visual equivalent of an 80 year old trying to read minuscule type on a label without glasses, she knows it’s there but it has no meaning. Warnings of death or diarrhea while people are dancing in flowered fields or hugging babies are pointless. In fact, it is a practical impossibility for such communication further strengthening the point that drugs are marketed to the wrong people.

We know the uninformed influence of the patient adversely affects the doctor’s best decision making, we only don’t know how much, and we never will. We also will never know to what extent mass DTC Rx advertising contributes to defensive medicine, although it surely does, putting both the patient at some additional risk and driving up cost.

Mass marketing of prescription drugs exists because, for the most part, it accomplishes what it seeks to do.  It gets the patient to influence the consumer (the doctor) to buy the Rx thus increasing sales and profit.  However, in a world where healthcare should be an available standard commodity to all people, like clean water, then prescription mass marketing takes us in the wrong direction.  It is far from an answer to the overall healthcare problem, but its elimination would take us one step further in the direction we need to go, and at $billions a year it would be no small step.

Think about it. How worse off would your life be if you never saw another prescription drug commercial again?  Call or write your Congressional representative.

The Brain of an American Anti-Semite

If aliens dropped in from outer space and absorb American and World history they would no doubt be astounded by the contributions to humanity by one relatively small group of people. No matter the discipline; e.g., social, arts, science, medicine, literature, education, entertainment, or philosophy, people of Jewish decent have had a greater positive impact on the human condition, pound for pound, than any other sub-set of modern Homo sapiens that have roamed this planet.

It therefore begs the question of why many non-Jews are often manipulated to believe Jews should be contained, restricted, and (in historically extreme cases) eradicated.

Jews and those of Jewish decent are no different than any other sub-set of people in that they face the same trials all individuals face. There is no objective or mystical power that isolates them, negatively or positively, from the rest of humanity. Their individual numbers spread across the same spectrum of success and failure, happiness and misery as everyone else.

Why they have had such a genuinely constructive impact on our culture could be due to a number of things; history, education, family structure, values, social support among others, but that is not the point of this discussion.  I want to look at why in today’s American culture they are still used as a threat for those who want to attain or retain power, and what kind of brain is so susceptible to that threat.

By the end of the 1940s the World was emerging from its cultural car wreck and beginning to ask the question, “what the hell just happened?” The term Holocaust really has meaning that goes beyond the horror and tragedy inflicted on Jews. Although prejudice has always been part of the human condition, extreme anti-Semitism, as well has other prejudices, had spread world-wide like an infectious disease.  History is clear that Nationalism, relatively new in a worldwide context, was the vehicle used by influential individuals to drive the world into catastrophic conflict. Targeting vulnerable minorities was their fuel.

America today is not 1932 Europe generally or 1932 Germany specifically.  It is not even 1932 America when it comes to anti-Semitism.  Yet many of the same elements now exist and are getting stronger in this period of Trump and the reactionary effect he elicits.

Overt anti-Semitism, Racism, and bigotry in America today is primarily a product of irrational conspiracy mania created by those who skillfully use fear in order to secure support. The fear generated by those who profit from it does far more than motivate (what I call) the lunatic fringe, e.g., white supremacists, Dylann Roof, or Robert Bowers. It impacts a significant portion of adults in America, some you might call friends. Some, perhaps, attracted to Trump Rallies without a lot of understanding of why.

It appears (and it is logical) that Robert Bowers was just as hostile toward (in Trump’s words) the invasion of immigrants as he was toward Jews. The same would be true of the torch bearing Nazi-types in Charlottesville, although their malice was more focused on Jews and African Americans than Latinos.  As tragic as their actions are toward innocent victims and the emotions they generate among survivors, they are not a threat to the United States or any race or religion contained therein. They are part of the disease that can be seen and treated.  

It is the passive racist or anti-Semite who bears no grudge against any individual, but who harbors fears of an amorphous and dangerous adversary; the Deep State, the “Government”, the “Liberals”, the “fake” press (aka: enemy of the people), welfare, Socialism, taxation, or immigrants are all examples. Each poised to rob you of your property and well being. You could throw space aliens into that mix without missing a beat.

It is not a huge step to surreptitiously link such paranoia to Blacks, Jews, and Latinos. The goal is to retain power. The fruits of that power are another discussion entirely.

Since the removal of the Fairness Doctrine in 1987 (an FCC doctrine created in 1948 out of the rubble of WWII to neutralize propaganda) the brains of these Americans have acted like sponges, sopping up the sewage that has been pumped out of talk radio, Fox News, and Sinclair Broadcasting for nearly 30 years. Out of this you not only get a Donald Trump, but you also get an entire Political Party that is willing to compromise almost any degree of decency, anti-corruption, international responsibility, or fiscal conservatism in order to keep their individual jobs.

Please keep in mind that almost all those manipulated brains are in the heads of decent people, but this fear-driven misinformation is all they watch or listen to. That reality gives Trump’s “enemy of the people” effort enhanced meaning. Trump and the Republican leadership don’t want them to listen to anything else. It is the life's blood of authoritarianism.

The election and re-election of Barack Obama did much to unleash the fear among many Conservatives.  “How could a Black man become President of the United State” was a small echo in the back of the anti-Semitic brain (no different than the racist brain).  When it came to public consumption they simply pasted “extreme Liberal” over the words “Black man”.

The answer to that question was tendered through talk radio and Fox News with conspiratorial rhetoric. By the time Trump came on the scene Republicans were scrambling to distance themselves from the “conspiracy” known as the Federal Government, or in Trump speak: the Swamp. It should be no surprise that Republicans made the Faustian bargain of aligning with Trump to avoid primary challenges.

Is Trump an anti-Semite or a racist? Not likely, and certainly not in any ideological sense. His Narcissistic Personality Disorder doesn’t allow for objective labels. Does he trade in anti-Semitism and racism? Absolutely. Is he also responsible for the resurgence in America today of anti-Semitism, racism, and bigotry in general? Of course he is.

That he refers repeatedly to the asylum seekers from Honduras as an “invasion” (calling out for a military response) or warns of Liberal “mobs” or labels the main stream news media as “the enemy of the people” is simply him ringing the dinner bell.

The brain of today’s American anti-Semite or racist wants serenity, like everybody else’s brain. However, it is so stoked with fears that are fed by conspiratorial language that it will often act against its own best interest (such as supporting last year's inequitable tax bill). Pushed far enough it becomes unstable, especially on the fringes. Yet I hope that fear for personal safety does not become the driving focus in the attempt to counterbalance. That would be futile, indeed. Confidence is the element that needs to be embraced, confident that leaders who represent the truth will emerge because the alternative is not sustainable. The first step is to understand that your vote will make a difference.

There is No Freedom in the "Freedom" Caucus

As a member of the Congressional House Freedom Caucus, Dave Brat has opted to apply his influence as an ideologue. He and the other members of his caucus believe that by banding together they could promote a pro-Libertarian ideology that has its modern roots with social philosophers such as Ayn Rand (yes, Rand Paul’s namesake) and contemporary advocates such as the Koch brothers.

This ideology promotes small government, but idealizes the concept of no government. It promotes the reduction of regulations, but swoons over the idea of no regulations.  It views the concept of Democracy as an Achilles Heel and (oddly for Conservatives) is vehemently anti-religion.  In fact, Capitalism is elevated to the status of a religion for today’s Libertarian (despite their public protests to the contrary).

It is a concept that glorifies only the individual in society and demonizes any efforts for people to act collectively. It views itself as the antithesis of something like Communism. However, very much like Communism, Dave Brat and the Koch Brother’s chosen politics are not workable in the real world and always gravitate toward self-interest, greed, and exploitation.

There is no issue in this year’s election that illustrates this better than Health Care.

 If you listen to Brat or read his campaign pronouncements he claims that all problems with Health Care in the United States can be solved with “free market solutions”.  I would not claim for a second that Dave Brat is a stupid man. Given his Libertarian bent I suspect he wants to believe his claims more than he actually believes them. The reason is that there are no “free market solutions” to health care. The people of the United States have paid a dear price with both money and pain to prove it.

That Dave Brat considers himself an “economist” only adds irony to his shameful and disingenuous advocacy.

The rest of the world has figured out that freedom can only exist where there is an absence of fear. Who hasn’t encountered a young person, a parent perhaps, afraid of changing jobs or of being fired because they might lose their health insurance? Who hasn’t heard individuals afraid of losing all they have because they or a family member got sick? I have watched individuals struggle over choices on allocating limited funds to insurance premiums and/or prescription drugs, afraid of the consequences in making the wrong choice. There is no “freedom” in any of it. Freedom, in this sense, only exists for those who have accumulated enough wealth to purchase it in the “free market”.

The reality is that Health Care in the real world, like many services that are necessary in a society, does not fit the Libertarian models. Demand does not drop when prices go up. Further, the purchasers of health care services (us) have no clear idea of cost and are at the mercy of a system that is intentionally opaque. As a result Americans have paid the happy Libertarians multiples more for health care than anywhere else on the planet.

The ACA (Obamacare) took us an important step away from that insanity. Dave Brat wants to take us back.

Abigail Spanberger, to her credit, has recognized that the ACA is not a complete answer to our Nation’s health care. She has advocated the integration of private and public insurance (expanding our current system; private plus Medicare, Medicaid, and VA) as has been successfully done in countries like Japan and Switzerland.  In doing so she knows that a Public Option would not only provide universal access, but also enable control of costs by empowering the large pool of Americans to negotiate or set costs, something the “free market” cannot do.

If Dave Brat was honest he would be advocating billboards and television commercials offering 20% off sales on hernia repairs and coronary bypass surgery.  Instead he regurgitates nonsensical statements echoed from talk radio like “32 trillion dollar takeover of health care” while in reality a $3.2 trillion annual cost for health care presented by Senator Sanders (which Spanberger is not a supporting).

Mr. Brat, health care in America is currently (and unfortunately) about a $5 trillion industry, of which a nauseating proportion goes into the pockets of your corporate supporters.  When you go back to teaching Economics next year, I suggest you enroll in some continuing education courses and take a better look at the definition of “Freedom”.

Kavanaugh, Reality TV

In the Kavanaugh hearing yesterday (9/27/18) the most important question was the very last one of the day, asked by Kamala Harris. It probably should have been the first asked of Judge Kavanaugh. Question to Brett Kavanaugh: “Did you watch Dr. Ford’s testimony”, answer: “No”. 

It immediately begs the question of why did the Senate Majority refuse to allow Dr. Ford to testify after Kavanaugh, as she had requested. The (understandable) reason given was that a person should have the right to hear an accusation in order to respond to it. That obviously was not necessary. 

The eyes of the Press had shown that Kavanaugh spent 9 hours in the White House preparing for this testimony.  Regretfully no Democrat asked him what that preparation was for. How many ways can you say no I didn’t do it? 

In hindsight the obvious strategy had nothing to do with the accusation.  Brett Kavanaugh, Senate Republicans, and Trump did not care what Dr. Ford had to say. Frankly, I think she could have provided photographs and it wouldn’t have made a difference. The strategy devised during those nine hours was out of Trump’s favorite playbook; be loud, be angry, attack, be the victim, and (apparently) be unhinged. 

Whether Kavanaugh might have chosen that tact on his own we’ll never know. Lindsey Graham shamefully (and with equally prepared theatrics) only made this farce more palpable. Graham pointed at Kavanaugh and yelled "YOU HAVE NOTHING TO APOLOGIZE FOR, NOTHING TO APOLOGIZE FOR". It should be noted that an apology never came close to passing Kavanaugh's lips.

They screamed political foul from the first words leaving Kavanaugh’s mouth. 

Republicans and Kavanaugh claimed Democrats conspired to manipulate the timing on a process that HAS NO DEADLINES.  Kavanaugh implied Left-Wing conspiracies headed by the Clintons!! It could have been a Rush Limbaugh broadcast.

This was Reality TV in every respect …except one; the testimony of Dr. Ford. 

Dr. Ford was beyond reproach and totally believable. I believe her and would be at a loss why anyone wouldn’t.  I might have considered that Judge Kavanaugh does not remember the incident, if he had suggested that possibility, but now such is irrelevant. 

His pattern of behavior as a younger man was flagrant, obvious, and consistent with Dr. Ford’s testimony. However, for him to shout thunderously that exposure of this behavior in his youth (which he claims did not happen) has “destroyed me and family…permanently” is absurd on its face. Even with this personal history he has risen to second highest level in the American judiciary, a position of immense power held by few. If he should feel so destroyed it is clearly subjective, possibly from guilt or regret.

Kavanaugh and Senate Republicans either did not realize or did not care that every attack they leveled at Democrats or the accusations was an attack on the only truly neutral party at that hearing…Dr. Ford. Democrats on the Committee had obviously caucused and decided to hone in on the refusal by the Majority and Trump to have the FBI investigate. As a result they appeared to barely listened to Kavanaugh’s testimony or observe his bizarre behavior. For the TV audience, they seem to cower before Graham’s tirade. 

In the end there were two take-a-ways from the hearing. One was the testimony of an honest woman who had done her best, at great personal cost, to do the right thing for her Country. The other was the testimony of a man who demonstrated the absolute opposite of what we should expect in a Supreme Court Judge; emotional, erratic, political, and (sadly to say) unstable. 

If I were a Senator and knew virtually nothing of this nomination other than hearing Brett Kavanaugh’s testimony yesterday, I wouldn’t let him get within a stone’s throw of the Supreme Court.   

Women: Pay Attention to History

As a white American male and a member of a privileged class (with 200+ years of history behind it), it is instructive to imagine how I would feel if suddenly the powers of business and government were continually manipulated to act against my best interest…because I was a white male.  I would feel defensive, and I hope I would have the courage to react furiously and definitively.

Women have faced this discrimination for centuries. Yet somehow too many men in power today think women have arrived, the prejudice is over, and everything is just fine the way it is.

The Republican effort to coronate Brett Kavanaugh to SCOTUS demonstrates just such an attitude. It caps hundreds of years of suppression that have been baked into this culture. If you’re a woman reading this I don’t care if you’re Conservative, if you’re a Republican, if you love guns, if you are repelled by abortion, if you love your man, or any homespun consideration, you should be angrily opposing this nomination.

If you have a daughter or care about young American girls at all you should be livid.

This next Supreme Court Justice will be the Nation’s 114^th. Out of that 114 only 4 have been women and half of them confirmed only in the past 9 years.  Women comprise an absurdly small percentage of the Federal Judiciary, about 20%.  However, that still says that there are about 500 Federal female judges out there.  Are we supposed to believe there isn’t one qualified, moderately Conservative woman in that pool that Republican’s couldn’t find?

They couldn’t find one because they weren’t looking. The token inclusion of Amy Barrett to Trump’s “short list” was simply his version of reality TV applied to reality…meaningless.

Obama appointed 268 judges to the Bench out of which about 40% were women. If you add minority men the percentage approaches 60%. To date, of Trump’s appointments 72% have been white men. It would be too easy just to blame Trump. He is an intellectually challenged and clueless President who takes his lead from those who pay him homage. This is simply the old boy network in action, and I’m sure that suits Trump just fine. They had been feeling a bit neutered with Obama’s Presidency.

Brett Kavanaugh is just another boy in the network. Did he, as a 17 year old Prep School student, attack a 15 year old girl at a party where underage drinking was extensive?  Of course he did. For an accomplished woman with extensive degrees and a professional career to risk it all, including her request for a FBI interview in which lying would be a felony, makes no conceivable sense unless it occurred. Her courage dwarfs those of her adversaries, included Kavanaugh and the Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Ultimately, the implied defense by Kavanaugh, Trump, and Senate Republicans will be simply that Dr. Ford is a woman. It worked for Clarence Thomas.

Just the fact that Kavanaugh’s response was to deny it outright instead of arguing the circumstance shows an elevated sense of white male superiority. Add to that his rulings, notably of the 17 year old immigrant girl seeking an abortion last year where he used his power to manipulate the system against her, his attitude toward women is as baked in as it is in our culture.

Please, women of America…pay attention.  Too many of you are not. It makes no difference if he truly loves his wife and daughters or coaches a girl’s soccer team. It makes no difference!!

History should be a continual alarm that keeps going off for women (in the US and around the world). It should keep going off no matter how many times women hit the snooze button.  Women comprise at least half the population. They comprise a majority of college graduates. Their labors underpin economic stability equally with men. Yet they are still treated as a support class by too many men of power.

I am in my 60s and I only have to go back to my mother’s generation to find a time when women in America had no right to vote. The myriad of rules and outright laws that have restricted and underrepresented women in this Country, some confirmed by our Judicial System, have been whittled away over relatively recent years, but only that…whittled.  Status quo should not be an option.

Women of America, hold onto your values be they Conservative, Liberal, or in-between. But rage against a history that has categorized you and your daughters as something less than what you are.

Who Are the Real "Pros"?

With abortion and Roe v Wade surfacing as a political issue again for this coming mid-term election, and the decision regarding Amy Coney Barrett's confirmation, I thought my November 2015 essay was worth reposting:

"Christian, right-to-life Conservatives promote abortions." Wouldn’t that be an interesting concept to see addressed in a serious yet proactive way? That it seems contradictory only adds irony to reality.

Regrettably, abortion has become the biggest social issue political candidates exploit, even though the issue is simply not political, nor should it be. I know good people who will support politicians and vote on this one issue alone, their rationality virtually disabled by emotion and manipulative rhetoric.

The subject of abortion as a significant political issue is nearly unique to the United States among developed countries, regardless that the personal conclusions about abortion exist everywhere.  A primary reason is that those who influence the Conservative electorate in the US have successfully linked the right to choose an abortion as a desire to have an abortion.

 You will rarely if ever hear an activist, "right-to-life" Conservative refer to someone as supporting a “right to choose”.  Instead you will hear the term pro-abortion.  They have even been successful in having the media divide the debate between “anti-” and “pro-”.

The great irony is that, in fact, it is your Christian Conservative who is unwittingly pro-abortion and your right-to-choose liberal who seeks a path toward reducing abortions.  Why?

It is a fact that abortion has been an active human endeavor at least throughout recorded history, if not before.  Look it up.

The world’s historical record shows that from ancient times through the 19^th century when and where abortion was occasionally made illegal was not due to some ethical valuation of life. It reflected the desire of those in power to manipulate the transfer of wealth or to increase the population of the laboring class. 

In other words, those in power who opposed legal abortion did so in their own self interest.  Not much has changed.  Efforts to make abortion illegal today (or impossible to obtain) affect only the poor or disadvantaged. Even your most diehard Christian-Conservative can’t deny that the wealthy will always have the resources to obtain the procedure in a clean, safe environment. So what really are the anti-abortion group's motives?

No one argues that the emotion which right-to-life activists convey is not real. It is clearly born of the ethics they find compelling given their religious faith.  The question, however, is what this outcry of emotion accomplishing?  It is presented as a love of life (I guess not to be confused with life as it relates to warfare, guns, or capital punishment). 

Yet, wouldn’t it make more sense that their efforts be directed at reducing abortions rather than attempting to purify humanity by making women and doctor’s criminals? But the right-to-life movement is not really interested in reducing abortions or the related potential harm to pregnant women.

Nothing short of a social law on the books will do. They overtly or unconsciously want to promote and satisfy their own personal self-righteousness at the cost of women's lives and increased abortions. They will vote for any politician, no matter how corrupt or unethical, as long as he vows to support their goal.

There are no women who desire an abortion or find it a positive experience.  They don’t get pregnant for the purpose of having an abortion. How refreshing would it be for all participants in this debate to take this fact and mutually find ways of reducing unwanted pregnancies, not even taking into consideration the societal gains from less burdened single women or families. Most of what Planned Parenthood does is just that.

Unfortunately, unwanted pregnancies cannot be reduced without sex education and contraception, two factors Christian-Conservatives often don’t want to address or oppose outright. 

For example; they’ll rile about abortions by African-American women in New York City exceeding live births by the same minority, but never mention the soaring teen pregnancies within that group.  How mindless to think making abortion a crime will stop these girls from getting pregnant.

Just who benefits from tying abortions to acts of sin and criminality?  It is certainly not the unborn in the US, where abortion rates are higher than other western nations with greater abortion availability and acceptance.  Nor is it the disadvantaged pregnant women who are subjected to a system that wrenches from them their self-esteem as they deal with emotional and physical distress.

The great beneficiaries are the Republican politicians who manipulate the issue as a means of garnishing votes for elective office, or at least in the primary process if not general elections. 

An omniscient Christian God could have designed women to lay eggs instead of live births, where wealthy white men could oversee their gestation…but he didn’t.  By design, women have the difficult burden to decide what happens within their own bodies, not Republican politicians or religious zealots.

Perhaps Republicans can kindle Huxley’s Brave New World concept of human hatcheries. The necessary technology isn’t all that far away.  Now there’s a great job for “limited government”. Until that nightmare, Republicans and Christian-Conservatives can continue to facilitate the killing of unplanned and unwanted fetuses which their own self-interest forces to take place.