Category: Politics

Coronavirus in N.Y.C.: Why Closing Public Schools Is a ‘Last Resort’ – The New York Times

New York City has the largest public school system in the United States, a vast district with about 750,000 children who are poor, including around 114,000 who are homeless. For such students, school may be the only place they can get three hot meals a day and medical care, and even wash their dirty laundry.

Source: Coronavirus in N.Y.C.: Why Closing Public Schools Is a ‘Last Resort’ – The New York Times

So, in addition to all the roads, the electricity, the water and sewer, the welfare, the Social Security, the Medicare/Medicaid, the farm subsidies, Fannie/Freddie/FHA — and, apparently, now, homeless shelters running on top of the public education system — tell me again how nationalizing health care would be some sudden, unimaginable lurch into communism.

The best answer is to deregulate the industry and let the market truly sort it out, but the Anthems and the Uniteds and the Aetnas of the country are not going to let that happen, so the system will eventually fall over on itself, and the government will be forced to nationalize the system. This is what they’re waiting for: all those companies will become part of the government, and their C-levels are going to get some sort of huge payout/off.

An American who was quarantined to check for signs of coronavirus says he’s facing more than $2,600 in bills from his government-mandated hospital stay

Frank Wucinski and his 3-year-old daughter Annabel evacuated Wuhan, China, in February and were then quarantined at Marine Corps Station Miramar, near San Diego, for two weeks.

Source: An American who was quarantined to check for signs of coronavirus says he’s facing more than $2,600 in bills from his government-mandated hospital stay

Forced quarantine for coronavirus? Check. Uncovered medical bills from multiple providers? Check. For ridiculous amounts? Check. GoFundMe? Check. Yep! It’s health care in America!
 
I’m not really worried about this thing being as bad as everyone says, but IF it is, the half of the country who live paycheck-to-paycheck and who are underinsured — thanks to wage stagnation in a booming economy, and an out-of-control medical insurance industry — will make for a lot of personal catastrophes.
 
People may not like the idea of socializing medicine, but when folks have to declare bankruptcy due to medical bills, we’re already socializing that cost, and it happens all the time. Don’t tell me that companies just eat those bills. They raise rates to keep their profits looking good, and pass those costs on to insurance companies, who then charge higher premiums.
 
This feedback loop avoids the righteous, self-correcting “market” that capitalism is supposed to provide, because only companies are involved in making the decisions about health care now (almost), and thanks to monopoly trends, they have almost no more choice in the matter. The “market” is broken.
 
If we could get an honest-to-God market in health care insurance, I think the problem could actually sort itself out in a generation. But the people in charge — the Anthem’s, Aetna’s, United’s, etc. of the industry — surely won’t let Congress let that happen. So we’re going to go on squeezing the middle class over health insurance until the system collapses, and we’re forced into nationalized health care.

Barbra Streisand on Why Trump Must Be Defeated in 2020 (Column) – Variety

Every morning I wake up, holding my breath while I turn on my phone to see the latest news. I think to myself, “It can’t be worse than yesterday.” But when the news loads, I think, “Ohhhhh, yes, it is worse”…

Source: Barbra Streisand on Why Trump Must Be Defeated in 2020 (Column) – Variety

Me too, Babs, but my definition of what’s wrong in this world is much, much more fundamental than complaining about any one politician’s capricious actions, even if they are the President, or the Speaker of the House.

No wonder doctors report that more people than ever are anxious and depressed. Since 2016, we’ve been dragged down into the mud of Trump’s swamp.

Right, because that trend started in 2016, with the election of the current President.

Now we’re facing another kind of war, against the coronavirus. Trump got rid of our pandemic specialist two years ago and has defunded the Centers for Disease Control because he continues to ignore science.

He didn’t “defund” the CDC, he trimmed it. When questioned about this specific situation, he said, “Hey, we can staff it back up if we need to, and it looks like we need to.” It sounded like a perfectly-legitimate, business-based rationale to me.

Trump can never live up to Obama’s legacy, so he’s trying to erase it. He inherited a growing economy and now claims credit for it, saying it’s the best in history … but that’s another lie.

This is amusing to me, because I watched people on the Right castigate Clinton for taking credit for Reagan/Bush’s economy during his entire 8 years. I’ll tell you this for free: No one on the opposite side hears this argument. It’s a so-called dog whistle to your own side.

In this upcoming election, we must bring back dignity and grace.

I don’t see much “dignity” or “grace” in the Democratic candidates who are left (as of this Super Tuesday). In fact, the only person I see at the top of the political food chain, who I would consider dignified or graceful, is Mike Pence, and the Left haaates him. They vilify and mock him at every opportunity, specifically because of his Christian-based dignity and grace. So please save us your sanctimonious and hypocritical calls for dignity and grace.

As with so much that is wrong with American politics, the Clintons rewrote the rules and changed the game. There was nothing dignified or graceful about Bill’s #metoo crimes and indiscretions, nor in their coverup, nor in Hillary’s endless victim-blaming media tour. And we are still living in their post-dignity-and-grace political world. For now.

I look forward to more insightful deconstructions of this pablum than I can provide.

Democratic Primary Election = The Bachelor

It occurs to me that the selection of the Democratic presidential nominee bears a striking resemblance to the reality TV show, The Bachelor. Both efforts are supposedly about choosing a winner by intangible, arbitrary, and constantly-moving standards, run by a cadre of people who we never see, with a goal of creating as much drama as possible. Ostensibly, the objective is to find the perfect candidate to fill the slot, and produce a happy relationship, but anyone who wants to win either contest should be considered suspiciously ill-inentioned, at best, or mentally ill, at worst. Just a thought. I’m working through the similarities during shower time.

Colorado is the first state to cap skyrocketing insulin co-pays – CNN

Colorado Gov. Jared Polis signed a bill into law Wednesday that places a $100 per month cap on insulin co-pays, regardless of how much insulin a patient uses. Insurance companies will pay anything more than the $100 co-pay, according to the new law.

Source: Colorado is the first state to cap skyrocketing insulin co-pays – CNN

Today, in Medicare-For-All-is-being-slightly-delayed news… Big win. Hopefully, this will sweep the rest of the states. This is something that could be handled by the Congress – DIRECTLY under their statutory powers of governing INTRA-STATE commerce – if they just got their collective heads out of… the sand, and quit wasting time with a sham of an impeachment that they knew would never succeed.

Statements: Office of the Provost & Executive Vice President: Indiana University Bloomington

Professor Eric Rasmusen has, for many years, used his private social media accounts to disseminate his racist, sexist, and homophobic views. When I label his views in this way, let me note that the labels are not a close call, nor do his posts require careful parsing to reach these conclusions.

Source: Statements: Office of the Provost & Executive Vice President: Indiana University Bloomington

Indiana University has a professor who is apparently so self-documentingly racist and sexist that they feel they have to address it publicly. In this admission, they promise to make accommodations for students who do not want to take classes from him, and declare that he will be subject to double-blind grading procedures so that his views can’t affect grades.

Here’s a crazy thought: FIRE HIM!

This is what you get with the equally-archaic-as-racism-and-sexism system that is academic tenure. How ridiculous is it that universities have the audacity to foist this unmeritorious system on students and parents, as they purport to be the gatekeepers of justice, equity, and wisdom, all while they continue their downward spiral of value and relevance on a young person’s future?

Truly, this is a case of dying by the same sword you lived by. What other job in the entirety of our capitalistic society has a mechanism whereby one can be immune from the repercussions of being a misanthrope, and still be guaranteed a job for life? This is just one example, but, for many reasons, I think it’s time to get rid of this system, and not just in post-secondary schools, but at all levels.

Treatment of Others Policy: Strictly Confidential

Just before the holiday break, I got 3 company-wide email missives. I didn’t know any of the people referenced, nor the people who had sent them, nor the people who they were sent on behalf of. Nothing they addressed affected me in any meaningful way, and I have literally no influence on anything they were referring to. I surmise that the vast majority of people who got those emails were in precisely the same situation as I was. I’ve already forgotten everything about them.

It occurs to me that these things might be important for a couple handfuls of people, and it would be better handled in their staff meetings. The company-wide email, talking about the moves of people you’ve never heard of, responsible for ineffable things, mired in our 5-dimensional cross-functional reporting matrix, just seems to me to be a way for senior execs at a big company to flex their muscles, and remind everyone just how terribly, terribly important they are.

At the same time, I got a notice that I had not completed some mandatory training, which was due before the end of the year. One of the modules was about The Company’s classification system, where the classification level determines who can view what documents. It’s very stringent. It reads like a governmental classification system, and I’m sure it was cribbed from one. Because it’s so formal and strict, I have a hard time taking it seriously. Oh, look, our internal memos are classified as confidential. But, really, who cares if a competitor gets one of our planning PowerPoints from the meeting last week. They’re going to be even more bored and unhelped by it than the people who were at the meeting.

As I’m working through the remaining modules, I notice that The Company’s policy on Treatment of Others is marked “Confidential,” and limited to people with a need to know, and who are under a non-disclosure agreement.

Hold the phone.

Isn’t this topic, like, one of the things they work most hard at, and are most proud of? What about it could be considered sensitive at all? Isn’t the point to brag about just how open and welcoming we are? Why would the policy on sensitivity be considered sensitive? Further, why would it be classified as most-sensitive, AND need-to-know, AND under NDA? I would expect them to put it on their public web portal, and point everyone in the world at it.

Is it just me, or does this situation make absolutely no sense whatsoever?

I suspect that The Policies have been created under the direction of The Managers who read some white papers, hired a consulting firm, and were told that they were supposed to do X, Y, and Z with regards to corporate policies. However, they were subsequently written with no critical thought given to the precedence, applicability, or consistency of X, Y, or Z. Nor were any of the procedures or policies tied in any way to actual benefits or protections specific to our company or its businesses. But these managers are very important people, and the decisions were made, and the policies are now Controlled Documents. And now, if I were to reprint the company’s corporate policy on the treatment of others — no matter how much they talk about it to the investing public — I could be subject to immediate dismissal, and possible criminal penalties.

And that’s just Human Resources. Don’t even get me started on the IT policies.

So, I hope people responsible for this forgive me for having a really hard time taking any of their classification seriously. It just seems to me that if you’re going to go to the expense and hassle of making a comprehensive set of policies, you could at least make some people read the stupid things, and make sure that they’re consistent, helpful, and appropriate.

This is a long-standing gripe with me. I’ve seen this in another Fortune 250 before. I complained about it to the right person, and managed to kickstart an effort to fix some of the conflicts, and relax some of the rules that were counterproductive. Unfortunately, the institutionalization runs deeper at my current place, and I’m not in a position to do anything about it this time.

California Wanted to Protect Uber Drivers. Now It May Hurt Freelancers. – The New York Times

Steve Smith, a spokesman for the California Labor Federation, which advised lawmakers on A.B. 5, conceded that the law was somewhat ambiguous in this area and that the State Legislature should clarify issues like this in the coming years. “There are going to be unintended consequences with a law like this,” he said. “We want to do everything we can to make sure we’re addressing the right problems and not having any adverse effects on workers.”

Source: California Wanted to Protect Uber Drivers. Now It May Hurt Freelancers. – The New York Times

It seems to me that there should be a probationary period for new policies like this. These kinds of big-shift laws need to have a statement of the actual, boots-on-the-ground effect the change is intended to have, and a timeframe for when we should be able to judge whether or not it is succeeding by that measure. At the end of this period, there should be an automatic default: either the law becomes permanent, or it gets scrapped, depending. If it’s succeeding, and not burdened by excessive unintended consequences, then let it stand. But if it’s hurting more people than it’s helping, then let it automatically lapse, and allow things go back to the way they were. This just seems sensible to me. Why is this not a thing?

Biden on Programming

So apparently throwing coal in a furnace is the same thing as actually mining coal, and the only difference between this and programming is a little bit of training. Biden has been in Congress for FORTY-SIX years, since before the Atari 2600 was created, and the home-computer revolution started. The last computer he was familiar with was probably a mainframe sitting alone in a big, cold room. This is the kind of policy thinking we get when we elect people to federal office for so long that they become institutionalized by the system, isolated in the Beltway bubble, completely losing touch with reality, except for what their handlers tell them.

Congress Spends More Time Dialing for Dollars Than on Legislative Work – U.S. Term Limits

Congress spends more time on re-election fundraising than on the legislative duties they were hired to do. Party bosses expect as many as 6 hours daily.

“This problem cannot be fixed by voting incumbents out,” he continues. “This proves, what we have been saying all along. Incumbents have an overwhelming political advantage because we pay them to raise money for their re-elections. Challengers don’t stand a chance.”

Source: Congress Spends More Time Dialing for Dollars Than on Legislative Work – U.S. Term Limits

If Trump is impeachable for a “quid pro quo” regarding help in an election, then what are we supposed to do about the 538 people in Congress who spend over half of their time on the phone with donors, selling their votes on various bills for campaign contributions? I suppose you can tell me it’s because it involved a foreign country, but I’m absolutely certain that many of the prominent members in Congress have similar dealings with foreign countries as well. I’m still gobsmacked at the hypocrisy of the whole thing. “Quid pro quo” is literally how anything gets done in politics, or business in general, for that matter. Does anyone think that the US has handed over billions in aid to a foreign country for all these years, for absolutely no consideration in return, until Trump came along, and asked for some inside information on a political rival?! I’m not saying anything specific to Trump here. This whole complaint wouldn’t make sense to me, even if Bill Clinton did it. (And I’m sure he did.) It just doesn’t seem to me to rise to the level of “high crimes,” or even misdemeanors. This IS politics.