Tom's Musings

Remember when Wisconsin was a laboratory for democracy, a beacon of progressive and good government. President Teddy Roosevelt praised the state as such during the heady days of the ‘Wisconsin Idea’ when the country looked to the Badger state for legislative ideas in support of working Americans and the less fortunate. A collaborative relationship between progressive Republicans and University academics spawned a generation of new ideas such as workers compensation, the progressive income tax, unemployment compensation, open primaries, the social security system and so much more. A strong Germanic-Scandinavian culture supported active government on behalf of the common man and woman … Milwaukee had a socialist mayor until 1960. It was widely presumed that if you wished to see good government in action, you should look to Wisconsin.

Nominally, the state is evenly split between the two major parties. Predidential elections and state-wide elections are hotly contested and decided by very small margins. Yet, hard right Republicans have enjoyed a growing policy stranglehold on the state where they control the State Senate, the Assembly, and the Supreme Court. On a personal note, my spouse was the Deputy Director of the Supreme Court (and unifi

SHIT … I was having trouble and apparently most was lost. Damn, it was a good one.

I suppose I was like most guys who grew up in my post WWII era, totally clueless and inept about the ‘other’ gender. Those of the female persuasion not only struck us losers as being from another planet, they seemed to come from another galaxy located on the other side of the cosmos. My interactions with this alien life form ranged from the mildly amusing to the outright pathetic.

I won’t bore you with the litany of disasters that beset my bumbling attempts to ‘get to second base‘ since ‘scoring‘ so to speak seemed beyond the known laws of probability in that era. Come to think on it, the odds never improved all that much after that but they did get marginally better. You would spend weeks trying to decipher the clues or ‘tells’ that you were told existed. What would happen if you asked her out or ‘made a move.‘ Great thought went into what might constitute interest in your object of desire that included discussions with the other hapless and clueless guys with whom you shared your ignorance.

It mattered not. When you screwed up your courage, the end was the same … “go out with you! I would rather eat crushed glass.’” The kinder ones might use the familiar dodge of the grandmother passing on (for the 8th time that month) or the dog needing to be washed that night (cleanest dog in town). I’m still scarred from these early memories!

In truth, I did marry a wonderful gal. We would have celebrated 50 years of marriage this past December had she not passed away last summer. It was a remarkably happy union. The fact that a shotgun was employed at the marriage ceremony should be ignored. She never discovered that the shotgun I used to envourage her to say ‘I do‘ was not real. Here we are just before I pulled out the shotgun.

But we are talking about my early ‘love’ life here … memories that rival my root canal work and my prostate biopsies for personal pain.

Let’s see. There was one real girlfriend in high school. I don’t know how I got her. My best guess is that I was her penance for imagined sins she had committed. All I know is that she committed NO SINS with me But we did laugh a lot. Okay, she laughed at me when I tried being romantic. Here we are on prom night. Maribeth eventually got a Doctorate in Literature but I lost track and never found out what she accomplished in life.

After my brief attempt at becoming a saint, I went to a college known as a den of ‘atheists and communists.’ Even better, there were few Catholic broads. I thought I would be in erotic heaven. But no, you can take the klutz out of his religious straightjacket but the retraints are still there.

Yet, I managed to stumble upon two serious female acquaintances. I cannot say lovers but we spent a great deal of time together.

This was Carol. She caught my attention because she wasn’t Catholic … being Jewish in fact. She had another point in her favor. She was already engaged to some schmuck who was in the military serving in Alaska. This was perfect for a commitment phobic guy like me. No threat of anything ‘serious.‘ But I liked her a lot. She was smart as a whip, ranked 1st in our class I believe. I thought if I hung around her my grades might improve by some form of osmosis. That didn’t work but we had deep and wonderful conversations. She went on to Harvard for her doctorate and later became a Dean at Rutgers.

Then there was the ‘love’ of my early life:

Here is Lee when she graduated from Clark. She was the one gal from those years with whom I experienced a ‘Hallmark’ moment … seeing her from across the crowded room and ‘falling in love.‘ I don’t recommend that for anyone. It still took me weeks to make my patented move which she rejectd but nicely (no threat to eat crushed glass). After being ‘shot down’ (which I should have been used to by then), I hid in a closet for weeks. For once in my pathetic life, though, I tried again (I must have been smitten). It worked, she just had to work through her guilt than involved a guy from back home who was pursuing her.

I won’t bore you with the tragic story. Neither of us were healthy enough to talk about our feelings. When the time came to put up or shut up, I wandered off to the other side of the world (India). Amazingly, I did raise the issue of marriage in letters but in rather oblique ways. She made the sensible decision of marrying a post doc while working at Harvard.

That should be the end of that but it wasn’t quite the end. After some 4 decades of no contact, I stumbled across her on Facebook and reached out. We were able to have all the conversation through cyberspace that we never had in person while in school. She went through two marriages and was happy in the second, which pleased me greatly. She also earned a doctorate, in some hard science subject like micro-virology or something I do not understand.

The far more important thing is that it turned out she did love me. She had kept evrything I had sent her from India in fact, or given her in college. But she was Greek Orthodox (who unfortunately are very much like Catholics) and therefore had been as neurotic back then as I was. All this mattered not since she was soon to pass away from cancer. But I found the knowledge that we shared an unexpressed love in the early days very comforting for some reason. I hadn’t been rejected, not really.

Hmmm! Perhaps I wasn’t as loathesome as I had feared for all these years. We just may have been two ships destined to pass one another in the fog of youth.

There was something similar about all four women. They were whip smart, witty, independent, and (most important of all) had no standards when it came to men. I would like to think that, were I to do it all over again, that I would do things differently. But that is BS! I’d still be hapless, no doubt about it.

Below is the ill-starred Don Juan in those days. If interested, I explore my early years at length in A CLUELESS REBEL.

It will be difficult for anyone who knows me now to accept the fact that I was a good kid in my youth. I never ran afoul of the law and I even studied my lessons (sometimes), not that it did me much good looking at my grades. In any case, after high school I entered a Catholic Seminary to become a missionary priest. That ill-starred effort only lasted about a year and a half but it signified my intention, or ambition at least, to lead a decent life.

I wonder what happened to that good and pious young man? Oh well!

Nevertheless, while I have led a conventionally debauched and selfich and irresponsible adult life, I yet have this instinct to tell others how THEY ought to live. And unlike those disgusting tele-evangelists, I do it for free since that is just about what it is worth.

Yes, this is me posing in some borrowed clerical gear. I did look the part, like a competitor to Bing Crosby (who played the kindly and wise priest in those 1940’s movies) though my favorite was Gregory Peck in Keys of the Kingdom.

And here I am on the right with my two seminary roomates. They were still there when I left as I recall but I doubt they lasted. Vocations collapsed after my ill informed try. I wonder if I was somehow responsible. The college level Maryknoll Seminary located just outside Chicago was bursting at the seams when I entered in 1962. It was out of business when I brought my wife for a visit a decade later.

But to my spiritual lesson:

These two memes capture what it was all about for me. It was never about a personal deity which I never believed in, not really. It was never about any religious institution or tradition which generally were perverted to conform with their leader’s preferences.

No, it all came down to the message found in many spiritual lessons. Love. Be kind. Be understanding. Be compassionate. Be accepting.

That’s it, the rest is noise or non essential ritual. I went into the seminary because of the core message. I left because I realized a belief in a personal god wasn’t necessary to live that message. Unfortunately, the message is the first thing lost to most of us, especially those who proclaim their religious convictions the loudest.

Rather we should find grace in those who perform quiet and unnoticed good acts. If you are looking for Providence, that’s where you will find Him or Her.

Father Tom

It is snowing in Madison on April 1 (not an April fools joke), so I’m already in a bad mood. It took me virtually no time to stumble across a news article that deepened my despair. It seldom does.

A school principal in Jacksonville Florida recently prohibited his student’s from viewing a 1495 painting titled ‘The Madonna and Child with St. John the Baptist and St. Mary Magdalene.’ He felt this masterpiece by the great Renaissance painter Bartolomeo was ‘an assault on family values’ and showed a ‘lack of enthusiasm for motherhood’ and (horrors) was ‘a partisan attack on the pro-life movement.’ Yeah, right! As if a 15th century Italian artist put brush to canvas while thinking, “how can I advance the woke liberal agenda in the 21st century.’ On cue, the genius heading Florida’s state government, Ron Desantis, appluaded the school prinicpal’s alertness and courage. Real education must be stamped out.

This is just the latest in a long line of valiant efforts by conservative stalwarts to protect our young from becoming literate and educated. For example, we have the case in Pinellas County (Florida) where the showing of a documentary of Ruby Bridges (the 6 year old black girl who first desegregated Lousianna’a schools) was suspended. This had been shown during Black History month for years but was yanked after a couple of parents complained pending firther review. Then there was the Wisconsin case of a song by Dolly Parton and Cyrus Miley being banned from a school performance presumably because it fostered acceptance of others. Heaven forbid that a song reflect the core teachings of Jesus. And we have the instance where students were not permitted to view Michelangelo’s classic sculpture of David, a Biblical hero, since it displayed his marble penis. Right, as if science (and our kids) had yet to discover that males have genitals. Just shoot me.

Censorship is becoming big business and book banning remains the favored flavor of this exercise in contemporary Fascism. Between July 2021 and June 2022, some 1,648 titles by 1,261 authors were banned or restricted somewhere in the U.S. A Texas Republican legislator has proffered a list of some 850 books to be ‘investigated,’ primarily on suspicion that they teach Critical Race Theory or what the rest of us call American history. Besides our children being driven further into ‘the New Illiteracy’ as Harvey Graff calls it, many household names in literature have come under attack over time …. Mark Twain, Harriet Beecher Stowe, William Shakespeare, and God. These and more have seen their clasiscs attacked as vile and pernicious (though in truth the Bible was written by at least 40 ancient authors presumably under God’s direction). Over the past half century plus, J. D, Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye; Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird; Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye and Beloved; Ashley Hope Perez’s Out of Darkness have been banned. The classic most often removed from our shelves is George Orwell’s masterpiece 1984, a work that influences us even today.

Book burning is not new of course. In 212 BCE, Chinese Emperor Shih Huang Ti burned all the books in his land and had some 460 Confucius Scholars murdered. At least our Republicans have yet to institute a death penalty for those perusing classic literature or art, not yet at least. Literary purges, of course, have been evidenced thoughout time with the years of the Counter Reformation being a particularly active period as Protestants and Catholics vied for the control of minds and hearts. Not just religious books were suspect. King James the 1st banned Sir Walter Raleigh’s History of the World in 1614. Perhaps even then, it was realized that those who write history control the future. The Victorian Age was famous for exercising control over the public’s tastes while the U.S. postal service was vigilant in the first half of the 20th century while searching for prurient literature like Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer published in 1934. Banished in Boston became a shorthand expression for government’s zeal in shaping public morality.

Today’s Republican orthodoxy, however, brings censorship back to the front burner in a frightening way. It is not just that public officials are taking advantage of our slide toward authoritarianism and totalitarianism for political advancement. They are being aided by gullible citizens and parents who routinely attack teachers, librarians, and all others who labor to educate the next generation. These are underpaid and ill respected professionals. I recently conversed with several former teachers of my acquaintance (one of whom I found out via a phone call passed away as I was writing this). They either retired early or stated they never would enter that profession these days because the environment is so hostile and crippling. The image of Nazi’s throwing books on to huge conflagrations is recent enough to be be recalled by many of us. We know where that led, an ending that should NEVER be repeated.

In all this doom and gloom I can find one ray of hope. I came of age during the 1950s. I had McCarthyism, Catholic orthodoxy including the ‘Legion of Decency’ telling me which movies I could watch, sitcoms where words like pregnancy were not used and married couples could only be shown sleeping in twin beds with a night table separating them, and the list goes on. And yet, I grew into a debauched adult who marched against the Vietnam war and spent his life endorsing secular and progressive ideals. When I taught policy courses at the University level, I tried very hard not to tell stdents what to believe, and the few conservatives in my courses went out of there way to thank me for that. I thought my mission was to provide an environment within which they could learn how to think critically, though that did not always work of course. I think it did often enough to make it all worthwhile.

Those who seek to control others will fail in the end. That is my fervent wish, at least. I just hope it turns out to be true.

This didn’t work 😕.

I could write about Donald Trump being indicted but everyone will be all over that. My big fear with the Donald news is that it will overshadow the release of my next book “Refractive Reflections” which is due out in a week or so. People have such weird priorities. Obviously, anything I do us more important than news about that clown. But there you have it.

No, I don’t have much time this morning so perhaps a brief jog down memory lane. I was glancing through the pics I’ve stored on my laptop and several jumped out at me. I skipped over the early ones, the girlfriends who dumped me and the athletic triumphs that only occurred in my feverish imagination. No, I focused on some colleagues whose friendship (and intellectual partnerships) I’ve enjoyed over the years. They capture good times that are now fading away since I’ve begun to lose them … one by one.

I did teach policy courses in the School of Social Work but my real home in academia was the Insititute for Research on Poverty (IRP), a federally sponsored research entity and think tank founded in 1966 and which survives to this day despite several close calls when its future was endangered for one reason or another. I have many grey hairs from a few of those close calls but we survived where others (Northwestern, Chicago, Michigan, Stanford, Washington etc. ) came and went.

Personally, I loved the Institute. It was an interdisciplinary entity where scholars from around the country (world even) would gather and focus on a topic of great interest to me (social and economic opportunity or the lack thereof). I often said it was like a sheltered workshop where the very bright (but essentially useless) might congregate and think about things while doing little real harm. At the same time, the name was known widely in many circles and opened up all kinds of doors for me. People in government, the philanthropic world, think tanks and evaluation firms, and select other academics from around the world would conclude that I was smart simply because I was part of this respected Institute … a great scam indeed.

I joined the Institute in 1975 and essentially never left. Though I fell into it by accident (my whole professional career was an accident) it was perfect. As I said at my semi-retirement gig (a rather nice party which was thrown for me so I wouldn’t change my mind) I told the assembled throng that I had the perfect job … I flew around the country working with the smartest people on the most intransigent problems without any direct responsibility. And I got to pick the problems I wanted to work on. Best of all, they paid me to do this …. as long as I raised enough money for my cockamamie projects which was surprisingly easy. I’m a persuasive cuss.

Enough about the place … a few comments on some of the people:

From left to right, there is me, then Irv Garfinkel, Bob Haveman, and Irv Piliavin at the wedding of Bob’s daughter in New York. I worked so closely with them over the years and now two are gone … only Garfinkel is yet with us. They combined intelligence and caring in ways that I miss so much. And they were giants in the poverty research world.

Obviously, I am grabbing pics from where I can. This was from a party Mary Rider and I threw at our place many decades ago. The tall guy in the middle is karl Scholz, then an assistant professor of economics and now University Provost at Wisconsin and soon to be President at the University of Oregon. The guy at the right is Gary Sandefur, a sociologist and Native American who became Dean of L&S at Wisconsin before returning to his native Oklahoma to become Provost at Oklahoma State University. The other gentelman is Bill Prosser who was on a 1 year leave at the University from the federal government. Bill, unfortunately, is no longer with us. I cannot imagine a finer group of colleagues. I remember when, in turn, Karl and Gary became the Dean of L&S at Wisconsin. I told each, “I don’t care what jkoind of power you know have, I’m going to treat you like shit … as i always have.” Good times indeed.

Now we have Jennifer Noyes, an interesting story. I met her when she worked closely with then Governor Tommy Thompson (later Secretary of HHS under Bush the Son). At the time, we were on the outs with Thompson and the state after years of a close working relationship. But Jennifer was more interested in good govenment than petty politics. She and I worked to repair the relationship and started a good friendship. Eventually, after a stint with a consulting firm, I helped convince her to join us at the University and at IRP, where she also served as Associate Director before rising now to become Assistant to the Chancellor. Despite our sometimes politcal squabbles, we worked on many joint projects. Great fun indeed.

Time for one more memory.

The guy on the right is Sherwood Zink. He was not an academic but an Attorney who worked for the State of Wisconsin. At the finish of a state mandated legislative welfare study, Irv Garfinkel and I began working with Sherwood and others on reforming the state’s child support system. In truth, people did listen to us academics on occasion. Sherwood did. We didn’t get everything we wanted but enough to transform that part of the policy world. He will have to represent the may state and local government officials with whom I worked with around the country. I did work with the best and the brightest. He also is lost to me but remains in my heart.

I have suffered from the imposter complex all of my life. I’m a working class kid who somehow stumbled into this career as an academic and policy wonk. When I was in meetings and conferences, in state capitols, in the Old Executive Office Building in D.C., or at top research Universities, I always expected the adults to come in and throw me out. It never happened and, to this day, I cannot figure out why. What really frightened me is that people would listen to me. Now that gave me nightmares.

That paranoia aside, I had a great professional life, the best available given that Hugh Hefner had the job I really wanted.

IF YOU WANT TO READ ABOUT MY EXCITING POLICY LIFE, GET A COPY OF “A WAYWARD ACADEMIC: Reflections from the Policy trenches.” A witty and insightful tour of the welfare and poverty policy wars when it was a top domestic issue.

You heard it here first, the dominance of homo sapiens is coming to an end. Well, perhaps not the dominance, but rather the utlility of the species. It has been a good, if violent, run. I’m not talking about exterminating ourselves via nuclear holocaust or our stubborn refusal to respond with a scintilla of intelligence to anthropomorphic climate change. No, I’m talking about the end to our usefulness in the world as we are replaced in that respect by our own ingenuity and inventions.

We all have witnessed technologies replacing humans in the performance of mundane tasks, from telephone operators to file clerks to typists. We can easily see higher-level tasks supplanting ornery humans in somewhat more demanding areas … computer driven robots replacing skilled laborers on the factory floor, driverless transport trucks dispensing with their human operators, and robotic arms performing at least lower-level medical and surgical procedures. But humans will always be needed for creative pursuits. Right? Our vanity must preserve one arena in which we will prevail.

I doubt that. Artificial Intelligence (AI) innovations are now dominating the headlines. Creations with ominous sounding acronyms such as ChatGPT are capturing the imaginations of innovators and academics. A Wharton School Management Professor recently tried to assess the limits of what these new technologies could do. With ChatGPT, and related programs, he went about developing a business plan for a game he invented. The tasks normally would demand sophisticated skills in several areas of expertise.

He employed his hi-tech servants to do things like market research, create a positioning document, develop an email campaign, set up a web site, generate a logo and ‘hero shot’ graphic, make a social media campaign for multiple platforms, and script and create a video. All was accomplished. What amazed him … it was all completed in the time it would take him to eat his lunch and at a high level, which he termed ‘superhuman.’ Some estimate that 300 million jobs could be eliminated by AI at the next stage of this revolution, many being high paying positions. Bill Gates has suggested that AI technologies would permit each of us to have a personal white collar assistant. Alex, the low-level assistant that turns on our lights, could move out of the picture.

All this has not gone unnoticed. A large number of movers and shakers, including the aformentioned Gates and Elon Musk, have asked for a moratorium on further AI advancements for a while. Humanity surely needs to breathe and think through what this revolution will mean and how we should respond. Miracle of miracles, politicians on both sides of the aisle are talking with each other about the implications of AI. Who knows, this might be an apocalyptic threat that brings us together though I highly doubt it.

The real test of whether this is a tempest in a teapot or a threat to humanity is whether AI will replace university professors. OMG! I always loved the fact that there were places for people like me in the world … where those who have absolutely practical skills can go and do something that retains the illusion of utility, something like disgorging tons of words to be read by a handful of their peers and inaccessible to the world. As I labored in academia, I always imagined I was a conremporary version of the scribe or priest writing volumes on what a great guy the Pharoah or Prince was. Rather useless but having considerable respect attached to the exercise. Might this societal role, and last hiding place for the inept be approaching its end?

Our fear of technology might well have started with the creation of Frankenstein and his monster by author Mary Shelley. It picked up considerable pace during the 1950s, after the emergeance of nuclear power unleashed our deeper fears. We saw all kinds of monsters in our nightmares. I mean, who recalls Godzilla devouring Tokyo … again. Update our imagined horror to Stanley Kubrick’s classic … 2001. HAL, the onboard computer of the spaceship, realizes he is smarter than the human idiots nominally in charge and takes command of the craft. I still shiver at the memory of those scenes.

Our future monsters might not look anything like Frankenstein’s creatio or Godzilla. It might be the tiniest of binary signals operating at speeds which humans could never compete. It would be an unseen monster, but the deadliest of all.

Sleep tight!

There used to be an old joke about the new tax law that had just passed and was designed to simplify the tax code. It went something like: (1) How much money do you have? (2) Send it to us now!

Cute for sure. But the reality is that Americans are not taxed that severely when compared to others even though we spend disporoportionately more on things like military adventures, national security, and incarcerating our own citizens (we have one-quarter of all incarcerations with only 5 to 6 percent of the world’s population). Such expenditures are less advantageous to national prosperity than investments in things like education, infrastructure, and health, but there you have it.

Doing comparative assessments of tax burdens is a tricky business and I am no expert. But a quick survey of several listings puts the U.S. around the 40th position or so (of countries listed) and below our peer nations. For example, Finland has a 56% income tax burden on average, a 24% sales tax, and a 20% corporate tax, all national). The U.S., by contrast, has a 37% federal income tax burden, a 0% sales tax (though some states impose this), and a 21% corporate tax. These numbers are approximations since many fees or local taxes, for example, are not uncluded while actual taxes may vary from nominal rates pais after the attorneys and accountants do their magic. Wouldn’t it be great to have a flat tax.

I chose Finland as a comparison because they are ranked 2nd on most lists, right after the Ivory Coast … the latter not being a desirable retirment spot. And yet, according to several recent hedonic national studies (basically how happy the citizens of a country are), the Fins are the happiest SOBs in the world. How can that be? They live right next to the freaking Russians who threatened them over history, have aall this cold and snow, get about 6 minutes of sunlight during winter, and give most of their money to the government. By American standards, and according to our prevailing attitudes, they should be totally miserable.

There is one big difference between them and us. For the most part Fins believe in the common good. Unlike whiny Americans, they appear to be willing to invest in those things that bring security and opportunity to all. They are not walking around obsessing about a medical event bamkrupting them or a job loss resulting in personal catastrophe. Unlike us, they have an adequate safety net. Moreover, these public investments lead to a general sense of opportunity. The Fins routinely rank number 1 (or close to it) in cross-country educational outcomes. This basic investment is paid for by the national government, not distorted by local variations in wealth. More to the point, teachers are respected as much as doctors and lawyers and paid commensurate to their status. American educational outcomes, like our health outcomes, routinely are average at best, well off the results found in top nations. As the old saying goes, you get what you pay for.

As I am finding out, I start a post with one thing in mind and then drift off in another direction. Now to get back on track. AMERICANS MOAN AND GROAN INCESSANTLY ABOUT TAXES EVEN THOUGH THEY PAY LES THAN MOST OF THEIR PEERS IN OTHER PLACES. It might be that other nations see benefits from their taxes like educated children (affordable even through college), accessible and affordable health care, cheap or free child care, well-maintained infrastructures including high speed trains, and low poverty rates. Americans get one advantage … job opportunities in our many prisons and fly overs at football games by the best military aircraft in the world.

But that is not my real rant for today. No! Paying taxes doesn’t bother me that much at all. In fact, I could pay more. And I know that those at the top of the economic pyamid could pay way more without batting an eye. Would they really miss that 7th villa in Tuscany or the 8th Lamborghini?

Economists know that after an inflection point somewhere around (but not far above) the median income level, the utlility (perceived benefit) of additional dollars becomes less. Other than a psycholological gratification of beating out their competitors in the race for richest schmuck, they don’t even notice the most recent $ billion (or $ million) bucks added to their vast nest egg. It is all a game at that point.

No, what drives me to distraction are the incessant hits I get from those trying to separate me from what remains of my very modest fortune. Forget about all the ads on TV telling me to ask my doctor to prescribe the little purple pill for some ailment I don’t even have or recognize. I’ll focus rather on my two most disturbing groups: Politicians and these damn firms trying to make me a literary luninary. I mentioned these in my last post before getting distracted.

POLITICAL HITS: The number of political requests for money is endless. During the last campaign (not even a presidential year), I counted the number of ‘hits’ during a 24 hour period … by email and texts and snail mail and calls. I stopped counting at over 200, and I didn’t listen to all the phone calls so there might have been more. I thought this would end after the votes were counted. No way! Yes, the volume is less but I get many (not 200 Plus) but a lot every single day. I loathe the thought ofthe next real election.

Volume is one thing. The desperation is another. Every psychological trick is employed, entreaties to vanity, desperate pleading, threats, appeals to one’s most vile instincts (like hatred for the other side) and so forth. Really, I’m not going to make the Speaker of the House cry if I send $35 bucks to the Democrats. And disenguousness from the Republicans in mind boggling. They continue to assert that I’m a top donor, that I’m $50 dollars away from platinum status as a supporter, that they want to send me an award as Fascist Of The Year (my label, not theirs) if only I could send in another $100. Truth is, I don’t give them a dime but that doesn’t even slow them up. There is one Dem pitch that particularly rankles me. They imply that Biden authorized this year’s Social Security increase and I should demonstrate my appreciation with another contribution or something like that. The increase is a good thing but Biden had nothing to do with it. The SS COLA was passed into law back in the 1950s. Biden was still in elementary school back then.

THE PRIVATE SECTOR: One example here though there are many. I have published academic books through traditional publishers and (recently) non-academic books through self-publishing. I’m not sure what others experience but I’m relentlessly pursued by fims promising to make me a literary star. Their pitches vary but most say that their ‘book scouts’ have discovered an earlier gem of mine. They then say they can sell me to traditional publishers where I can get $80,000 advances on my next book, or get my book into shops across the country and in other nations, or sell my book to Hollywood. The variations on the theme are endless, and all I need is to send some money in to cover some unavoidable expenses. Since there are so many of these outfits, I can only conclude that there are a lot of folk out there suffering brain damage after falling off the turnip truck. They call, text, email, and invade my drams at night. And they are persistent. I see the same phone numbers cropping up day after day. They don’t take no for an asnswer.

Perhaps there is a legitimate offer or two within the forest of contacts but I will never know. Every once in a while I will answer a call, mostly I’m bored that day. Too often their ‘tells’ are obvious. The caller has a heavy accent (calling from the Phillipines, Malasia, a Nigerian Prince?). You can also hear noise in the background, which I assume are other ‘Literary Vice Presidents of Acquisitions’ making cold calls on commission. Since they almost invariably reference my older masterpieces published by XLibris early on (and which I no longer promote), my guess is that XLibris sold lists of gullible authors to others (or created shell companies). In turn, these scam outfits put desperate folk on commission to try and bilk self published authors to the end of time. They play upon vanity of people like me. You know, I am so close to becoming the next James Joyce or William Faulkner. The private sector (and Republican politicians) know one thing about us … there really is a sucker born every minute.

Bottom line … conservatives rant on about government being too intrusive and taking our freedoms. Really? Sure, government imposes rules like red lights at intersections or required vaccines to save your life or laws against pouring poisons into our foods or into our rivers and lakes. I can live with those. Some might seem a nuisance (like when I stop at a red light at 2 AM and no one is around) but I don’t mind those things, not too much at least.

It is the politicians and the sharks in the private sector who lie and manipulate and endlessly harrass you in pursuit of the American dream which, in case you missed it, comes down to separating you from whatever money you have left.

End of rant for today! Please enjoy the rest of your day.

Today is a relatively busy day for a retired fart like me. I was going to write a short piece on the world’s ongoing and relentless efforts to separate me from my remaining money. Such ceaseless endeavors come from two main groups … firms promising to make me a literary luminary (if I just send them some money) and politicians (who insist that my small contribution of $50 bucks or so) is all that stands between us and Armageddon. I’ll go back to that at a later date.

I also should mention that I’ve received a number of emails from my few followers asking me to continue. I will for the time being but you may want to spread the word. I also noticed an uptick in visits, mostly from China. Perhaps the title of my last post about American Exceptionalism caught their attention.

Today, I cannot ignore the latest school shooting, this time in Nashville. THREE chidren and THREE adults were slain. We’ve become deadened to such tragedies. It is the 15th such horror since Columbine in 1999, the death toll is now up to 175 innocent children and youth slain. The Republican response will be predictable and utterly sad. They will suggest we turn schools into armed camps, require teachers to carry weapons, or even turn elementary school students into junior Rambos sporting their own deadly hardware.

It goes without saying that this is another example of American exceptionalism. School shootings are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to losing our young ones. Our surfeit of weapons provides so many tragic opportunities for death and destruction, both accidental and inyentional. No other advanced county comes close to our carnage that takes the lives of our young:

Surely, this is a record of which we can be so proud. At the least, it should raise some doubt on the claim that guns promote safety. I would love to see one scintilla of evidence in support of that proposition.

Some three decades ago, I believe, Australia had a horrific school shooting. They were outraged and responded by drastically reducing the number of automatic weapons floating about their streets. It has not been repeated. We, on the other hand, have way more firearms on our streets than citizens. Moreover, we permit almost anyone to secure dangerous weapons meant for warfare. There are an estimated 16 million AR-15s out there … a military grade semi-automatic weapon that is not essential for hunting deer, fowl, or squirrals. It does a great job, however, of mowing down children and teachers.

I need not go on about this example of American exceptionalism, or should I say our American shame. Those that hide behind the 2nd Amendment are, in my opinion, dead wrong. Read the language. Souunds to me as if the founding fathers, fearing too much centralized power would lead to the reestablishment of a monarchy of sorts, wished local governments to maintain ‘well-regulated’ militias. Their fascination with checks and balances led them to promote decentralized military power. That is far, far from Republican arguments that everyone, adults and children, run around sporting the latest killing machines.

Think about this. The westerns we see on TV present a false picture of things back then. Gun violence was greater in many Eastern cities than in places like Dodge City, Kansas. Why? Because local ordinanced banned guns within city limits. The gunfight at the OK corral happened because the Mclaren’s and other cowboys refused to obey this law being enforced by the Earps, though a simmering feud contributed to things.

Still, a lesson might be drawn from this history. We were more civilized back then than we are now. How freaking sad is that!

First, let me say that I did get several responses suggesting that I keep this blog going. Perhaps I do have an audience greater than one, though writing for myself might justify this effort in and of itself. After all, the best conversations I have occur within the six inches or so between my ears. So, onwards … at least for the time being.

Second, I keep thinking that my next post will be light and frothy. Apparently, however, I have a lot of venting to do but the wit will not be far behind. I promise.

It is easy to be fuming these days. It remains shocking to me, and anyone with a minimal moral compass, that a major American political party has been cowed by a narcissistic sociopath who would leave the country in flames rather than face the consequences of his own actions. This reminds me of the McCarthyism of the 1950s though the country rather quickly came to its senses back then and censured that sick political pretender though much irreperable harm was done in the meantime. But I will leave Trump for another day or several days.

Today we take a peek at the topis of American Exceptionalism, the tendency for many people, and almost all Republican politicians, to claim that we are the best. We are the shining City on the Hill that stands as an exemplary beacon of hope for the world. I certainly believed that as a child growing up in the post WWII period. That youthful illusion is long gone. To be fair, let us take a look at one area where many claim that the U.S. is superior and see how we are doing.

This graph looks messy but is quite illuminating. It lays out three variables or dimensions … time (from around 1970 to just before the Covid pandemic), expected life expectancy (from less than 70 years of age to the mid 80s), and per-capita expenditures on health care adjusted for inflation and cross-country price differences (ranging from less than a thousand dollars to more than $10,000).

Now, if you got all that, here is the basic story. All the other countries depicted here spend much less per person on health than we do and yet all, every one, has a longer life expectancy … by several years. Many spend half of what we do for much better outcomes. Only Switzerland approaches us in outlays yet still spend about 70 percent as much as us. Yet, there is little outrage at this shocking performance.

Stunningly, Republicans often praise us as having the best health care system in the world. For example, we can see any doctor we would like without waiting times like they have uo in Canada with their socialist approach to care. They note that people fly in from other countries to avail themselves of our superior care. They somehow neglect to mention those that die or go without care because of costs. Very convenient.

They also don’t mention that these medical travelers often fly in from oil rich countries with bags full of money and to whom cost is not a factor. They seldom mention the migration of Americans to other countries seeking quality medical services at a fraction of the cost. And let’s look at those wait times in every other country that provides socialist care. Well, I never heard a Canadien complain nor express any freaking desire to become part of our system. Just the opposite, they manipulate their stays in the U.S. to maintain access to their own health care system. Besides, I live in Madison Wisconsin, which has great doctors and health facilities. There seems to be one such facility on every other block. And yet, try to get a non emergency appointment (e.g. a colonoscopy). My internist ordered one for me last fall and I won’t get in until the May (and I have great insurance).

I recall Paul Ryan, former Republican Speaker of the House and VP candidate who represented the district just south of me. He once proclaimed that our system was superior precisely because it was based on free market principles unlike all the other countries in the world which publicly guaranteed access and controlled prices. I guess he never looked at the data, or paid attention to the yearly 40,000 plus amenable deaths that occured when he made this claim, or the fact that two out of three U.S. bankruptcies are caused by exorbitant medical bills, the biggest reason for economic disaster by far.

Think about it for a moment. Paul enjoyed a Cadillac health insurance program as a Congessman. More to the point, buying health care is not like buying a car. It is not as easy to comparison shop. Who knows enough to sort through competing claims even if they have a decent concept of the specifics of their ailment. Nor do peope have a choice in many cases, not everyone can think about alternate providers when they have a heart attack. I recall terrible stories of my Florida neighbors whose spouses were carted off to the nearest (and profit based) cardiac care facility because that is what the emergency people do. Never, and I mean never, leave a loved one in the care of a facility whose motive is profit and not the well-being of the patient.

Despite Paul’s claim that our free markey approach leads to quality care, we have a semi-socialist system where the elderly, veterans, and the poor have publicly provided care, at least in part. It is not great coverage and Republicans would love to cut these programs back. Just imagine the suffering and dying, plus the economic hardship, that would result is they succeed. And don’t forget their franntic efforts to undo Obamacare despite public approval and the good the program did. There is one principle that dominates Republican thinking … if it doesn’t benefit the very rich, it is not a good thing.

Much more might be said but let me end with one more point … the fact that we do not view health care as a public good. Among other things, we give the markets considerable (though not always total) freedom to set prices. Guess what, they set them as high as they can get away with.

This is an easy chart to interpret. U.S. prices for drugs is much higher than in that damn Socialist country to our north. Moreover, the drugs are just as effective. Other countries offer even better prices. No wonder, so many go on drug holidays, and I don’t mean to buy a supply of weed. Many Americans must decide between food or medicine. Sometimes it is a matter of life and death.

I still laugh at the Republican claims that Obomacare would introduce death panels into our health care system. There have always been death panels and there there have always been well-paid people who act in ways that are criminally negligent with respect to human life. They are found running insurance companies, in the corporate offices of parmaceutical companies, and in the board rooms of some major medical facilities. Rick Scott, former Florida Governor and now Senator, ran a for-profit health company before entering poilitics. When he was in charge, his company was hit with the largest fines ever (to that point) for fraudulent billing of the federal government. I guess there is truth in the old British aphorism … steal a loaf of bread and go to prison, steal a railroad and go to Parliament.

There are a growing number of stories about people going to Europe for hip replacements and other more elective surgeries. Even with travel and other expenses, it is cheaper to go abroad if they don’t have great insurance. Even those with some coverage find the OOP (out of pocket) expenses in the U.S. exorbitant. This sad state of affairs will never change as long as health care is viewed as a profit center. If people have to die to sustain the bottom line so be it. Just the cost of doing business. That is an unacceptable cost to me. I am shocked that the public is not up-in-arms.

When Republicans state that it would be too expensive to provide health to all, ask them this … how does every other advanced country in the world provide health care as a public good?

American exceptionalism! You bet. We are just about the worst in the advanced world.

NOTE: Some argue that a ‘medicare for all’ approach would save money in the end fora variety of reasons including all the resources wasted on advertising and cost avoidance activities that do nothing to improve outcomes.