Public Service Announcement before beginning this article:  Since many readers are currently being smothered in Medicare Advantage marketing materials, I should probably say a few things about the perils of these products.  But I won’t for two reasons.  First, I already have , and second, my friend and colleague Dr. Josh Freeman has recently provided an excellent update . 

The only thing I’d add is this:  if you sign up for an Advantage Plan, and later become seriously ill and want to switch back to Traditional Medicare, there is no guarantee that you will be able to purchase a private Supplement.  The decision, of course, is yours.  But I’d think about it long and hard before I signed on that dotted line.   

And now, back to our regularly scheduled program.

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“All that stuff I was taught about evolution and embryology and the big bang theory?  All that is lies straight from the pit of Hell!”—Dr. Paul Broun, physician and former Georgia Republican Congressman, graduate of the Medical College of Georgia who also has a Bachelor’s Degree in Chemistry.  To date, there is no word on whether Broun has demanded a tuition refund for being taught these “lies” which are actually considered fundamental principles of Medicine, Biology, Chemistry, and Physics.

“You’re entitled to your own opinion.  You’re not entitled to your own facts.”—Daniel Patrick Moynihan, former New York Democratic Senator.

Let me make a confession right off the bat.  Science and math weren’t my strongest subjects in school.  I was much better at history and English.  None of what I am about to say is written from the standpoint of a self-proclaimed scientific genius.

But I was able to acquire the necessary science skills to become a physician largely because of my High School science teachers, L.D. Young and T.J. Beach.  Mr. Young was also athletic, outgoing, and a championship basketball coach.  Mr. Beach, on the other hand, was short, decidedly non-athletic, and a unique blend of Midwest farmer-nerd.  He could throw a thousand hay bales as easily as he could explain the laws of thermodynamics.

He was also my uncle.

Uncle T.J. left the farm to fight in World War II, then came home and earned GI Bill-funded degrees in Agriculture and Biochemistry.  He worked in a research lab in Kansas City for a short while, then returned to run the farm when my Grandfather suffered a stroke.  He never left home again.

Several years later, our local school needed a chemistry teacher, and my uncle reluctantly agreed.  He taught until he retired 25 years later.

He was as devoted to science as he was to the soil.  He was also a devout Christian and a Truman-Democrat.  But he never let religion nor politics overrule scientific principles.

Man, would he be shocked at our country today.

For one political party, science seems to make the perfect scapegoat.  And apparently, scientists are the spawn of the Devil. 

For this party, belief trumps fact.  Faith trumps evidence.  And if facts and evidence conflict with religious dogma?  Kill the messenger and bury yourself in your religion.

If you’ve followed this Blog, you’ve already seen what I have to say about COVID denial, the denigration of educators, book banning, and especially the insane notions that the serious threats to America’s health—including pregnancy-related deaths, a declining life expectancy, worsening addiction, firearms mortality, out of control drug costs, and unaffordable health care—aren’t really problems at all.

All of these claims fly in the face of measurable evidence and outcomes.  Yet because they serve a political purpose, people still choose to believe them.

In 2009, the Pew Research Institute surveyed American scientists as to their political views.  55% identified as Democrat, 32% as Independent, and only 6% as Republican.  Given the sort of disinformation (OK, call it lies, if you’d like) that have been spread since 2009, I doubt that the Republican numbers have gotten much better.

It’s not that Science has excluded Republicans.  It’s that Republicans have excluded Science.

As I write this, the second mammoth hurricane in 2 weeks is bearing down on the Florida gulf coast.  It’s not like we haven’t seen this horror coming.

Scientists have issued warnings about the rapidly rising water temperatures in the Gulf of Mexico.  Models have clearly predicted more dangerous storm growth.  Both Helene and Milton exploded from Category 2 storms to Category 5 in a matter of hours.

Rational people would be looking for causes and recognizing that steps need to be taken to help mitigate disasters in the future.  But a look around.  What we’re seeing isn’t encouraging.

Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene, a confirmed climate-change denier and purveyor of the “Jewish Space Laser” myth, claims hurricanes are manufactured by Democrats.

Republican Ron DeSantis has mandated that all references to climate change be removed from Florida Schools.  Will anyone hold him accountable?

Ex-President Trump has called climate change a “Chinese hoax” and tried to alter the path of a previous hurricane with a Sharpie pen.  It didn’t work.

And yes, he also pushed unproven and irresponsible treatments for COVID, too.  They didn’t work either.  Remember, he wound up in the ICU despite taking hydroxychloroquine. 

Science isn’t glamourous, and it certainly isn’t political.  Science is a process.  Science is hard work.  It involves measurement, observation, thought, and perhaps most of all, critical thinking.

What’s critical thinking?  It’s the ability to take seemingly conflicting facts and sort them out.  It’s the ability to question beliefs in light of new evidence.  Most importantly, it’s the ability to accept the possibility that a deeply held belief or opinion might, in fact, be dead wrong.

Isn’t this the way kids should be taught to think and reason in school?  Apparently not, if you’re a Texas Republican.

In 2012, the Texas Republican Party added to its Platform a statement that opposes teaching critical thinking skills, since such skills could “challenge a student’s fixed beliefs and undermine parental authority.”

Such a claim serves neither science nor faith.

Those who prioritize conspiracy theories and faith-based belief over science need to take a hard look around.  The evidence of climate change is everywhere.  More emerging viruses are coming our way fast.  Internationally, we are locked in a race with potential adversaries to develop quantum-based computing and encryption, along with artificial intelligence. 

This is the world we confront.  In many ways, it’s even more challenging than the “space race” years of the 50’s and 60’s.

We won that race because we universally supported national efforts to expand science and teach the scientific method. 

Will we win this one?

As I said earlier, my Uncle was also a man of faith, who believed in a higher power.  He was also a tireless worker, who believed government should have a role in providing a path for others who were willing to work hard, too.  Just as his government did for him with the G.I. bill.

He found nothing inconsistent with science, faith, and a supportive social structure.  We need more like him if we are to survive this politicized, conspiracy-minded world of today.

Please keep this in mind when you vote.

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BONUS QUESTION:  For those who enjoy a bit of a challenge, here’s an actual question from one of my Uncle’s chemistry tests.  Feel free to take a stab at the answer in the comments below, if you’d like.  I’ll post the correct answer in the next 24 hours.  Full disclosure:  I missed it.  Maybe that’s why I’ve never forgotten it. 

And if you’re unfamiliar with “root cellars,” “Mason jars,” or “canning,” look it up.

Here’s the question:

“A FAMILY SPENDS THE FALL CANNING THEIR GARDEN VEGETABLES INTO MASON JARS.  THEY STORE THE JARS IN THEIR ROOT CELLAR.  IN THE MIDDLE OF THE WINTER, A SEVERE COLD NIGHT IS PREDICTED.  THE FAMILY IS CONCERNED THE TEMPERATURE WILL BE SO COLD THAT THE VEGETABLES WILL FREEZE AND THE GLASS JARS WILL SHATTER, DESPITE BEING UNDERGROUND.  SO THEY PLACE A LARGE SHALLOW PAN OF WATER IN THE CENTER OF THE CELLER, AND MOVE ALL OF THE JARS ONTO THE FLOOR OF THE CELLER, NEXT TO THE PAN, BUT NOT IN THE PAN.  SURE ENOUGH, THE NEXT MORNING THE WATER IN THE PAN HAS FROZEN SOLID.  DESPITE THIS, THE MASON JARS FULL OF VEGETABLES HAVE NOT FROZEN AND ARE UNDAMAGED.

EXPLAIN WHY THIS HAPPENED.”

On October 23, 2011, Oscar Ramiro Ortega-Hernandez piled into his car in Idaho Falls, Idaho, and set off on a cross-country trek to Washington, D.C.  He did so with a clear purpose.

He had to kill President Barrack Obama.

Ortega-Hernandez was convinced the Obama-led government was going to implant GPS monitoring chips inside the bodies of all Americans.  This evil plot had to be stopped.  And Ortega-Hernandez was just the person to do it.

Nineteen days later, he sprayed multiple rounds from a Romanian GP WASR-10 rifle at the White House, some hitting the second-floor presidential residence, before speeding away.  It would take stunned authorities three full days to identify him, track him down, and place him under arrest.

All of this barely made a splash in the media.  No one was killed or even hurt, and in a country awash with guns, don’t these things sometimes “just happen?”

Ortega-Hernandez wasn’t alone.  Over Obama’s eight-year term, the FBI foiled at least a dozen assassination plots against the President, including one by a high-ranking member of (wait for it) the Ku Klux Klan. 

And of course, there was Francisco M. Duran, who fired 29 rounds from a Russian SKS rifle at the White House in 1994.  His plea of temporary insanity somehow didn’t sell with the jury.

Assassinations and assassination attempts have long been the staple of third-world countries.  But among developed nations, the United States has no equal.

Whether it’s an attempt to change the course of history or act out some delusional fantasy, any American with a gun, an element of advanced planning, and a little bit of luck can get close enough to take a potshot at the President.

John Wilkes Booth shot Abraham Lincoln because Booth was outraged that Lincoln had the audacity to go to war to keep the United States together.  After firing his weapon into the back of the President’s head, Booth leapt from the balcony and shouted “thus always to tyrants!” before fleeing.  (Those weren’t his exact words, of course.  What he actually shouted was “Sic Semper Tyrannis!”  But it’s always more impressive when you can say it in Latin).

Over a hundred years later, John Hinkley, Jr. shot President Ronald Reagan in the chest as he stepped out of the Washington Hilton Hotel.

Hinkley‘s noble cause?  He thought it would impress the actress, Jodie Foster.

Perhaps Hinkley was only following what might be called the assassination-attempt fad of 1970’s America.  After all, within weeks of one another, two women in California had previously attempted to gun down President Gerald Ford.  Neither one could really explain why.

Which brings us to Thomas Crooks.  A quiet kid from Bethel Park, Pennsylvania, Crooks had no previous interactions with law enforcement nor history of mental illness.  But he spent days searching the internet for locations of political rallies for both Joe Biden and Donald Trump, respectively.  He settled on a Trump rally in nearby Butler, Pennsylvania. 

When he was finished, one person was dead, and a President escaped with nothing more than a grazed ear.  Crooks was quickly located and killed. Law enforcement searched on-line records and interviewed friends and family.  To date, no clear motive has been found.

The Trump assassination attempt was only the latest in a long line of such efforts.  Some have been close calls.  Some have been almost comical in their stupidity.  But all have had one thing in common.  In each instance, the potential assassin was able to access a firearm about as easily as most of us can place an Amazon order.

Before anybody gets their knickers in a twist, I’m not saying guns should be banned.  I’m not saying the government should confiscate your firearms.  I’ve written about this before.

I’m talking about common sense here.  An AR-15 assault rifle is not a thirty-aught-six deer rifle.  A semi-automatic attached to a bump stock isn’t the same as a bolt action .22, regardless of what Clarence Thomas says.

A firearms approach that interprets the second amendment to mean that anybody can carry any gun anywhere at any time for any reason is a formula for disaster, regardless of what Samuel Alito thinks.

The idea that the solution to public safety is for more people to carry more guns more places is nuts, regardless of what the NRA tells you.

The notion that the best way to protect schoolchildren is for teachers to walk around carrying weapons is downright crazy.  Plenty of school shootings have occurred even when armed and fully trained security guards were present.

In case your counting, 180 school shootings have occurred in this country since 1999.  Many more have taken place at festivals, nightclubs, concerts, and even churches. 

And last week, a duly elected Kentucky Sheriff assassinated a duly elected Kentucky Judge.  The Sheriff’s beef?  They’d had an argument.

So maybe we should consider this.  What if the framers of our constitution had foreseen where our current obsession with firearms has taken us?  What if they had seen mass shootings and road rage killings?  What if they had foreseen children going to school in terror?  What would they have thought?  What would they have done?

If you ask me, they would have probably torn up the second amendment and started over again.

If you wish to own firearms, fine. As I’ve said before, I grew up with guns in rural Missouri.  But use common sense, rather than thinking you’re some kind of patriot because you can fling a gun around everywhere you go.

If you choose to own a gun, take a long hard look at Switzerland.  No, not the myth of Swiss gun ownership.  The real Swiss story.

Because unless we can return to the kinds of common-sense gun laws that existed in this country for over 200 years before the Heller decision, we will continue to kill ourselves off.

So put the President and all presidential candidates behind plexiglass, if you’d like.  Keep them hundreds of feet from rally participants.  Use body doubles, as many dictators are known to do.  Keep them locked away from the public, for that matter.  It’s not going to make any difference.

Assassination attempts will continue, and some will succeed.  It’s now as American as apple pie.

Just like mass killings of children, church members, and concert-goers.

But it’s really OK.  It’s just the price we pay for our freedoms, right?

Or is it the price we pay for our stupidity?

POSTSCRIPT:  This post was originally written earlier this month in a cabin some 9000 feet in the Colorado Rockies, just south of the Wyoming border.  There was no internet access. 

Since coming back down to Nebraska, I’ve learned of yet another foiled assignation plot. Ryan Routh appears to have travelled from either Hawaii or North Carolina to Mar-a-Lago, Florida, secured a rifle, and hung out in the woods surrounding the Trump golf course for 12 hours, hoping to get a shot at the ex-president.  He was apprehended before he could do so.

At first, I thought about rewriting this post to include this event.  But what would be the point?  Nothing has changed.  Rather, this attempt simply confirms our country’s dire situation.

When it comes to issues of mental health, Americans are no more screwed up than citizens of any other developed country.  American kids are influenced by the same movies, internet sites, music, and videos that impact kids all over the world.  Just as many Europeans think they’re Jesus, or controlled by Martians, influenced by alien brain waves, or some other delusion, as we Americans.

The difference is, we wind up killing each other way more often than they do.

Fifty years ago, no one could have imagined that, despite billions of dollars of incredibly sophisticated security technology, presidential assassination attempts would become routine in America.  But fifty years ago, no one would have believed we would see mass shootings in schools, theaters, and churches becoming so common they would hardly raise an eyebrow.

Sadly, all of these tragedies will continue until we’ve decided we’ve had enough.

At what point will this happen?  Who knows?

But in the meantime, it’s becoming more and more obvious that our national fetish for firearms is not protecting our democracy, as many wish to believe.

Rather, coupled with rising extremism, it may well be our nation’s greatest threat.

“Socialism is a scare word they have hurled at every advance the people have made in the last 20 years.

Socialism is what they called public power. Socialism is what they called social Security.

Socialism is what they called farm price supports.

Socialism is what they called bank deposit insurance.

Socialism is what they called the growth of free and independent labor organizations.

Socialism is their name for almost anything that helps all the people.”

                                                                                –President Harry S. Truman, October 10, 1952

Let’s be honest—fear sells.  If I can convince you to be afraid of something, it’s a lot more powerful than convincing you to see the value in something.  Corporate America understands this very well.

And nowhere is this more evident than in politics.  Create a buzzword, loosely define it, make people afraid of it, then use it to smear anything the other side is doing.  It’s been going on for years.  And few fear-mongering words have carried more clout than the “S” word.

Socialism.

Full disclosure here—I’m from Missouri.  Harry Truman was a personal hero where I grew up.  He stood up for small business, farmers, and working people of all kinds.  He supported free enterprise and hard work.

But he also realized that government could help level the playing field so more people could succeed. It could create a backstop to keep the country on its feet during hard times.  And for this, the Far-Right labeled him a Socialist.

Strong public education, affordable and universally accessible health care—you could add those to the list of programs Truman supported.  In 1965, when his dream of universal health care was adopted for those 65 and older—what became known as Medicare—an 81- year-old Truman was the first to sign up.

But to the Far-Right, all of this was Socialism.

Of course, this didn’t really start with Truman.  Even in the 1920’s, Democratic presidential candidate Al Smith was branded a Socialist by his Republican opponent, who wound up winning in a landslide.

The opponent’s name was Herbert Hoover.  If you’ve studied history, you know what came next.

The Great Depression sent shockwaves across the U.S. economy.  One out of every four working Americans couldn’t find a job.  Out of desperation, millions began to flirt with the concepts of German/Italian Fascism, or Soviet Union-style Communism.  The free market, it seemed, was doomed.

But when Franklin Roosevelt entered the White House, he was determined to stabilize the economy and get the country back on its feet.  And he knew it would take more than thoughts and prayers, austerity budgets, and tax-cuts for the wealthy.  It would require a social infrastructure that would allow for security, job growth, and opportunity.  Food on the table, a roof over your head, and hope for the future.

Roosevelt’s “New Deal” contained many of the elements listed in the Truman quote at the top of the page.  It was a godsend.  I still remember my grandparents talking about the “blessing” of electricity brought in by the Rural Electrification Administration (REA), that provided something unthinkable—power even when their windmill wasn’t turning!

Workers built dams, roads, and parks.  The New Deal brought jobs.  Most of all, it brought hope.

It also brought scathing criticism.  Counting the number of times Roosevelt was derided as a Socialist, a Communist, or worse, might just blow up the average laptop.  But Roosevelt persevered.  Social Security helped keep the elderly from going broke, price supports helped farmers claw their way back from foreclosures, and a robust trade-union movement improved working conditions and wages.  

After the war, progress slowed.  When Truman tried to revive Teddy Roosevelt’s dream of universal access to health insurance, he was derided as a Socialist.  When he addressed Congress regarding his health care proposals, one Republican Congressman simply ignored him by reading the newspaper during the entire speech.

To many on the Far-Right, any government program that didn’t directly benefit big business was Socialism.  Many raged as the maximum U.S. income tax bracket went up to 90% (sorry about that Elon).  The very idea of a minimum wage was supposed to turn Washington into Moscow.  Yet during this time America enjoyed some of the most impressive overall economic growth in its history. 

Organized labor flourished.  President Dwight D. Eisenhower himself was a supporter, firmly stating: “Only a handful of reactionaries harbor the ugly thought of breaking unions and depriving working men and women of the right to join the union of their choice.  I have no use for those – regardless of their political party – who hold some vain and foolish dream of spinning the clock back to days when organized labor was huddled, almost as a hapless mass.  Only a fool would try to deprive working men and women of the right to join the union of their choice.”

Take that, Elon Musk.

By the 1960’s, health care for many of the elderly was becoming unobtainable.  Families were confronted with the real issue of “do we sell the farm to pay for Grandpa’s hospital stay, or do we try to hang on to it and just let Grandpa go?”  In addition, basic health care was beyond the reach of many of America’s poor.

Enter Lyndon Johnson.  He pared down Truman’s vision of universal health care and pushed for passage of the Medicare program for those over 65.  He supported the development of state-run Medicaid programs for the poor.  All of this, of course, got him labeled a Socialist.

And let’s not forget Civil Rights.  The very idea that the big, bad federal government would have the audacity to overrule the states, and open schools and voting booths to minorities was outrageous!  It was Socialism!

Of course, it didn’t stop there.  Even after Ronald Reagan recanted his initial virulent opposition to Medicare (and used Medicare benefits himself), the program was still called Socialism by the Far-Right.  An effort by Bill Clinton to expand private insurance to cover all Americans got him labeled a Socialist.

Even Barrack Obama’s Affordable Care Act (aka “Obamacare”) that provided health insurance for 25 million Americans who previously had none, and didn’t increase the overall cost of health care one bit, got him labeled a Socialist.

Let’s be blunt.  None of these programs turned America into a bunch of Socialists. (Editor’s note:  Many of the same Far-Right critics swore that Clinton, Obama, and Biden would “take away your guns,” too.  That was also B.S.).

And now comes the Far-Right’s effort to smear “Komrade Kamala” as a Socialist.  Any effort to lower prices, improve services, make prescription drugs less expensive?  All Socialism!

Really?  Is this Far-Right crap ever going to change? 

No, it just keeps going.  Now, it’s not enough to mislabel something simply as Socialism.  It’s much better to add other scare words such as “Wokeism,” “Critical Race Theory,” and “Marxism.”  After all, the more they make you afraid of, the better.

But shouldn’t somebody at least ask the simple question, “what is Socialism, anyway?”  Like all misused terms, it has an actual definition.  So let’s look at the Merriam Webster Dictionary:  “Socialism–a system or condition of society in which the means of production are owned and controlled by the state.”

Owned and controlled by the state? Think about that.  When I saw a Medicare patient, was I practicing “socialized” medicine? No. If a farmer avoids bankruptcy when price supports keep him afloat when the soybean market crashes, is he practicing “socialized” farming? No. 

A worker who benefits from her right to organize is no more a Socialist than a CEO whose funds are protected by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC).  Air traffic controllers who help land you safely in a crowded airport don’t turn you into a Socialist every time you fly.

None of these things are Socialism.  Except in the minds of the Far-Right.

Think about this in the coming weeks.  You’re sure to hear cries of “Socialism!”  “Marxism!”  and “Communism!” thrown around like confetti.  You’ll likely hear that a Tim Walz-led Minnesota is the biggest Communist threat this side of Beijing.

Nonsense.  The reality is, Social Security, Medicare, and worker’s unions have not turned America into a “Socialist” society, regardless of what the Far-Right says.

It’s about time we put an end to these phony claims. 

November 5^th might just be a good place to start.

“And what rough beast, its hour come round at last/Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?”

—William Butler Yeats, 1865-1939, from the “The Second Coming.”

Truth be told, I was about to sit down last night to write a politically incorrect piece on what I saw as a misguided effort to improve American health care by donating a small fortune to what is already one of the wealthiest medical schools in the country, Johns Hopkins University, when I got the news.  There had been an assassination attempt on one of the candidates for the U.S. Presidency.

Can you honestly say you were surprised?

The individual targeted is irrelevant.  Frankly, I thought it would most likely be Biden first.  But it doesn’t really matter.

Within hours, extremists on both sides began spinning their own version.  The Far Right insisted this was a government set-up to silence Trump.  Where was the security?   How did the shooter get through?  Biden was behind this! (As an aside, my personal favorite was the comment by Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, who blamed it on Critical Race Theory—despite the shooter being white).

On the Left it was different.  This is all fake!  Just grazed on the cheek?  And he jumps up pumping his fist?  Then T-shirts go on sale less than 12 hours later?  Give me a break.  It was all a trick to get sympathy.  The German Reichstag fire of 1933 all over again!

Believe whatever you want, but the facts are just beginning to come out.  A 20-year-old registered Republican took his father’s (wait for it—I know this will come as a shock) AR-15 and shot at the president.  Others in the crowd were hit.  At least one died. The shooter was also killed.

Really, can you say you were surprised?  The hate, fearmongering, finger-pointing, and scapegoating of this election season are without precedent.  Both parties have received horrific messages.  Election workers (whether Democrat, Republican, or Independent) have been threatened.  The messages stated the workers would be murdered, their spouses raped, and their children tortured.

Are you really surprised that someone followed through?

America has a long track record of assassination and assassination attempts.  We’re also the most violence-prone of any developed country (sorry, if you want to compare us to Venezuela, Iraq, and Zimbabwe, you’re in the apples and oranges category).  We’re number one in the world in firearms ownership.  We’re killing ourselves off daily.  You already know what I think about this stuff.  I wrote about it here: 1, 2, and 3 .

Can you actually be surprised when it just happens to be someone who’s running for President?

Are we finally going to take this stuff seriously?  It shouldn’t go unnoticed that many in Washington who are screaming the loudest about this are the same people who openly laughed and mocked when the husband of the Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives was attacked and nearly had his skull crushed. 

The FBI has long warned that the greatest threat to America comes not from foreign terrorists, but from Americans.  We’re now seeing that play out as predicted.

Sorry, but if you mix extreme hatred and loathing, refer to others as scum and vermin who are poisoning our nation, then drop it all into a witch’s brew of powerful firearms, this is exactly what you get.

The shooting of former President Trump was a tragedy.  But no more or less so than Sandy Hook Elementary, Stoneman Douglas High School, Uvalde Elementary, the Orlando night club, or the Emanuel AME Church shootings.  Of course, I could go on and on and on.

Shortly after the assassination attempt, 13 people, including a child, were shot in Birmingham, Alabama.  Put that in the context of a grazed cheek and ear.

Pundits will view all of this in the context of election calculus.  Will it garner sympathy?  Will it get Trump elected?  Will it be like Brazil in 2019, when Jair Bolsonaro, an anti-immigrant, anti-gay, anti-woman candidate who was behind in the polls, was critically stabbed?  He eventually wound up getting elected, much to that country’s eventual dismay.

Within hours of last night’s shooting, some Trump supporters were citing “Divine intervention” as the reason Trump escaped death.  Even Trump himself claimed God had protected him.

Really?  How about those who were killed or seriously hurt?  Didn’t God want to look out for them?

For those who would view Trump’s survival as an indication of God’s favor, remember this:  Adolf Hitler survived 6 assassination attempts.  Was God favoring him, too?

Donald Trump is still the same candidate today that he was at 6 PM yesterday, no better, no worse.  Whether you vote for him or President Biden should be based on policy and track-record, not sympathy and photos. 

I have no idea what motivations the shooter had.  But I know who’s to blame.

You are.  I am.  We all are.  All of us who tolerate, accept, and abet the hatred and violence that is becoming the norm, not just in American politics, but in American society as a whole.

We all own this.  And the next time the trigger is pulled?  Who do we blame then?

“They think modern medical care and hospitals are fine—but only for people who can afford them.”—President Harry S. Truman, from a speech describing his view of the Republican Party, October 13, 1948.

I used to read the Wall Street Journal.  It’s been one of the oldest and most respected newspapers in the country (especially back in the days when people actually read newspapers).  The Journal has vigorously covered world events and featured a broad range of information.

Yes, they always had a passionately conservative bent, such as the time back in 1914 when they suggested Henry Ford was guilty of treason when he raised his workers’ wages.  But on balance, their coverage was for the most part reasonable.

Then along came Rupert Murdoch.

One of the world’s wealthiest men, Murdoch got his start publishing tabloids that often sold like hotcakes by featuring topless women.  He kept expanding his approach of sensationalism into mainstream news, with SKY news in the United Kingdom, FOX news in the U.S., and more recently, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ).

That’s when things began to change at the paper.  And from my perspective, and that of many others, it’s now gone completely off the rails. 

I’ve previously commented on a WSJ piece that claimed that Congress had no right to question the pharmaceutical industry about sky-high drug prices in the U.S.  But now, in an editorial that goes even further, the WSJ claims that any effort to shield one’s credit score from being pounded by medical debt is tantamount to “forgiving” that debt.

For those of you who’d like to read it and can manage to get past the firewall, here’s a link to the piece’s publication as it was reprinted in our local paper, the Omaha World Herald.  For the rest of you, here’s a quick rundown.

The Consumer Financial Protection Board (CFBP) has proposed excluding medical debt from consumer credit scores.  To me, that seems reasonable.  If you get in over your head buying a Cadillac when you can only afford a Chevy, that’s your choice, and your credit rating should reflect that.

But health care’s a different story.  Nobody “chooses” to get sick.  No one “chooses” to have surgery.

According the WSJ piece, though, somehow not including medical debt in a credit report is no different from “forgiving” debt.  This isn’t just false, it’s egregiously false.  Regardless of the credit report, you’re still stuck with the debt.

The WSJ goes even further.  It claims that if you have health insurance you are “protected” from debt.  Again, this simply is false.  Over half of all Americans who become bankrupt because of medical debt  had insurance when their medical problems began. 

Later in the piece, the WSJ claims that removing debt from credit reports will discourage people from buying insurance in the first place.  I’m not going to say this is the most asinine statement I’ve ever heard, it’s just that I’m not quite sure what else might be.

But the WSJ is just getting started. “A credit-report blemish,” they claim, “is the only tool health care providers have to encourage payment.”

Sorry, but that’s also nonsense.  Ask anyone who’s struggling to pay off medical bills and getting nonstop calls from collection agencies.

Further in the piece, the WSJ argues that medical debt is really no big deal to begin with, since “only” 15 million Americans have to deal with it, and the debt “only” averages $3,100 per person.

Maybe that’s not much to the editors of the Wall Street Journal, but for many of the patients I cared for, it was a hell of a lot of money.  Perhaps the folks at the WSJ should try living in the real world for a while.

There’s plenty more.  The WSJ tries to make the looping argument that since reducing a credit score is the same as forgiving debt, that it will therefore create more debt, that people will stop buying insurance (because they only care about their credit scores, right?), which will in turn drive up costs, which will in turn cause hospitals to charge more, which will in turn cause more uninsured.

I’ll describe this sort of thinking in two words.  Pure Fantasy.

Don’t take my word for it.  Instead, ask yourself this question.  If your child desperately needed an operation, or needed an expensive medication, would you really stop and say, “But wait, will this affect my credit score?” And then forgo the treatment?

Would you really?  Would the editors of the WSJ?  I doubt it.

So let’s get back to the real world.  Not being forced to include medical debt on your credit report is not the same as “forgiving” debt.  People don’t say, “Woopie!  Now I won’t buy insurance if my credit score’s OK!”  any more than they would say “Sorry, kid, no insulin for you this week because I don’t want to screw up my credit score.”

This brings up an interesting question.  Just who is the Wall Street Journal trying to protect with this sort of bizarre logic?  Lending institutions?  Private equity?  Who knows?  But it’s certainly not the American people.

Because as the WSJ well knows, we’re already hammered by the highest medical costs—as well as the highest levels of medical debt—in the world.

And if the Wall Street Journal doesn’t have an issue with that, then it’s clearly out of touch with reality.

Human beings have a strange relationship with rules.  Basically, we hate them.  Try to tell someone what they should do, and they’ll most likely insist on doing the opposite, even if it means jumping off a cliff.

Parents know this.  Want your kid to go to bed at 9?  Tell them they can’t go to bed at 9.  They’ll do it just to show you they can.

In the legal system, these rules are called laws.  Societies need them to function, thrive, and basically ensure that we don’t kill each other off.

But whose laws?  Some laws are Federal and passed by the U.S. Congress.  Many more exist at the state level and are enacted by individual State Legislatures.  And that’s where the rub comes in.

Many states chafe at the idea of Federal oversight.  They prefer their own laws, and want nothing to do with the (as they view it) Evil Federal Government—unless, of course, the issue is Federal Aid coming in from another state’s tax dollars.  They insist that decision-making is best done at the local level, and that State Legislatures are better attuned to local needs.  Keep the Feds out of our laws!

Yet in the next instant, these same State Legislatures and Governors who insist that the Federal Government shouldn’t mandate what the state should do, turn around and tell local cities and counties what they can and can’t do. 

Don’t tell me what to do, Washington!  But I can sure tell Blair (if we’re talking about politicians in Lincoln, Nebraska) or Weston (if we’re talking about politicians in Jefferson City, Missouri) what to do.

To say this smacks of hypocrisy would be an understatement.  In state after state, local laws regarding everything from guns to masks to books have been struck down by the same State officials who would throw a fit if Washington were to say the same thing to them.

No question, the U.S. Congress has passed some dumb laws.  Many states, however, have passed laws that are even dumber.  Here’s a quick rundown.

In Florida (of course we have to start with Florida), lab grown meat is now outlawed.  There’s no evidence it’s bad for you in any way, but that doesn’t matter.  Florida still says you can’t have it.

So much for consumer choice.

And there’s more.  This is the same state that once passed a law that would lock up any Doctor who asked parents if they kept a gun in their house.  Something about the First Amendment got that overturned.  We don’t need to go into the “don’t-say-gay” laws, “which-bathroom-you-can-use” laws, “what-you-can’t-teach” laws, and “don’t-see-drag-shows” laws.  In each instance, what an individual Florida city might want for its citizens is irrelevant.  It’s only the State that can decide.

But if you need a C-section, Florida says it’s now perfectly legal to have one performed outside of a hospital.  Sound incredible?  It seems a venture capital group in Great Britain that invests heavily in American outpatient services has more influence in Florida than doctors.  Maybe political contributions play a role.  Regardless, such an asinine law would never pass in the U.K. itself.  So much for the superiority of Florida health care.

What about other states?  Tennessee has a law on the books outlawing “chem-trails”—mind-altering gases released from jets flying over the state.

The problem is, chem-trails don’t exist.  When you see a jet with a white line trailing behind, it’s called a contrail—essentially a linear cloud trailing behind a hot engine speeding along at high-altitude.  It’s nothing new, and has nothing to do with jets.  World War II pilots could spot them trailing behind propellor driven planes, too.

What other nonexistent things could Tennessee ban?  Cell phone calls with extraterrestrials?  Dinner dates with Big Foot?

Don’t try wearing a mask on the streets of North Carolina.  It’s illegal now, health consequences be damned.

Louisiana is considering legislation that would prohibit the state’s motor pool from having more than 3% of its vehicles run by electricity.  What if an EV becomes cheaper, more efficient, and less costly to the taxpayers?  Apparently, that wouldn’t matter.

Wyoming tried to go one better.  There, the Legislature nearly passed a bill outlawing the sale of Electric Vehicles entirely.

In Texas, the Legislature thinks it should tell the state’s Universities what they can and can’t teach when it comes to race relations.  Is quantum physics next?

In Nebraska, a city used to be able to ban weapons in its public spaces.  But no more.  Only the sages in Lincoln can make such decisions.

Oh, and then there’s Iowa.  For over 100 years, Iowa refused to pass a law legalizing the sale of raw (that is, unpasteurized) milk.  The rationale was simple.  Pasteurization kills germs.  Around the world, the process has been credited with helping stamp out tuberculosis and other diseases.

But once the Centers for Disease Control (the dreaded CDC) warned of the dangers of spreading H5N1 Bird Flu in raw milk, the Iowa legislature promptly passed a law legalizing it.  After all, giving a middle finger to Washington is far more important than protecting the lives of Iowans.

I could go on and on.  In state after state, the same legislators who decry being told what do by Washington have no qualms about telling cities and localities what they can do.  Whether it’s restricting voting rights or health care, states suddenly feel empowered to go far beyond the Federal government in telling you how to run your life.

And sometimes, even when the people of the state clearly oppose a law, the Legislature still insists on cramming it down their throats.  Exhibit A is again Nebraska, where the Legislature passed a law allowing tax credits to help fund private schools, even those with clear religious biases.

The people stood up and mounted a massive petition drive to overturn it.

What did the Legislature do when it became obvious that the effort to nullify the law would succeed?  They revoked the law, and immediately passed a slightly altered version of the law that the petition drive hadn’t addressed.

So much for listening to the will of the people. 

As I asked in my last post just who are we in America?  Where are we headed?  A stronger UNITED STATES?  Or a weaker set of STATES who are (sort of) UNITED? I don’t’ know, but perhaps Texas is going to be the trendsetter.  Earlier this year, the Texas Republican party approved a Legislative platform that included Plank 203, which states: “The Texas Legislature should pass a bill in its next session requiring a referendum in the next General Election for the people of Texas to determine whether or not the State of Texas should reassert its status as an independent nation. “

Could this really happen?  Déjà vu Fort Sumpter, 1861?  Who knows?  It would certainly put a smile on the face of every dictator from Budapest to Pyongyang.

But Texas might just be in for a surprise itself.  Despite all its current wealth, ego, and self-righteousness, how long would it be before the Nation of Texas realized that New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Louisianna were building walls at their borders? 

And for those just now reading this post–my apologies. I missed one other important dumb state law, that I’ll add to this post now. In 1993, Alabama banned Yoga from being taught as a part of physical education in K-12 Schools. Recently though, they had second thoughts, and decided maybe Yoga was OK after all.

But not to worry. You’re still not allowed to utter the traditional Yoga greeting “Namaste” in class. Gotta keep those kids from thinking, right?

“My biggest problem with the two major political parties is that every four years they seem to go on some kind of national scavenger hunt to see who can come up with the biggest goober to run for President.”—Dave Barry, circa 1990

It’s 1786, and America is pretty much a mess.  Just 10 years after declaring independence, and 3 years after a victory over the powerful British military, the 13 colonies-turned-states don’t seem capable of doing much of anything.  The central government is a joke.

Each of the states is primarily concerned with looking out for themselves.  Individual states can print their own money, sign treaties and trade agreements with foreign countries, and raise whatever taxes they choose.  Basically, it’s every state for themselves.

It’s likely that every other western nation is licking their chops, waiting for America to fail.

What passes for a federal government is only a quasi-legislative body modeled after a shaky Continental Congress.  There’s no President.  No judicial branch.  The government has no means to raise money, nor means to support legislation.

Not that it really matters.  Each state gets only one vote in the legislature.  And nine votes are needed to pass anything.  Not surprisingly, little moves forward.  The process makes our current-day constipated Congress look free-flowing by comparison.

All of this was set in motion when a loose set of guidelines called “The Articles of Confederation” was enacted in 1776. It called for forming a nation of sorts, with almost all power in the individual states.

America limped along for a while, but in in 1786 disaster struck.  An armed uprising in western Massachusetts threatened the state.  It was the first rebellion against the new country.  People were shocked.

There were no federal troops to restore order.  Instead, a group of wealthy businessmen paid for a private militia to put down the uprising.

George Washington and James Madison, among others, saw this as a harbinger of what might come next, and decided they’d had enough.  They concluded that, independent of any state, the federal government needed a stronger set of rules to replace the Articles of Confederation.

After much rancor, the U.S. Constitution was written and adopted.  It was not zapped down from on high.  Much arguing, gnashing of teeth, anger, and fatigue (and probably a fair amount of drinking) had to occur before the compromise document was adopted.  Parts of it are clear, and parts of it are clearly ambiguous.

But one question was always at the forefront of the wrangling—how much power should be in the hands of the federal government, and how much in the hands of the individual states?  Not surprisingly, big states with lots of power wanted to keep it, and smaller states with fewer resources were more willing to share.  70 years later, the question of state power versus federal power nearly tore the country apart.

Just like it threatens to do today.

Even the basic question of who gets to elect the President was angrily debated.  Some delegates wanted each state to have a vote, others said it should be the American people—with each person having one vote, no matter where they lived.  Count up the votes, and you’ll have your President.

No, the first group countered.  The average American doesn’t have the smarts to make such a decision.

A compromise was reached.  Instead of voting for President, the individual voters would select Electors—people they knew and trusted—to choose the next head of state.

But how many Electors should each state get?  Most felt that population should be a consideration; that is, unlike under the old Articles of Confederation where each state got one vote, the number of Electors allocated to each state would be determined by the state’s population.  This would mean states with larger populations would have more say in the government.

Then came the rub.  What counts as “the population?”  34% of those living in southern states were slaves (in Virginia and South Carolina, it was over 40%).  Even though slaves were denied the right to vote themselves, southern states still said they should be counted in the overall population, thus increasing the state’s number of Electors.

Northern states (especially Massachusetts and Vermont, which had outlawed slavery by this time) were furious. How can you use people who can’t even vote to increase your share of the electoral pie?

Once again, it was settled by compromise.  Slaves would be counted as 3/5’s of an actual person for purposes of determining electors.  No, I’m not making that up.  Southern states would thus have more electors than if slaves were not counted, but not as many as they wanted.

Any accurate portrayal of the early days of the Electoral College system in the U.S. must acknowledge that it was a triangulation of states’ rights, individual rights, and slavery. It set in motion a squirrely system that persists to this day.   

And it continues to leave us with a basic question—who should elect the President?  The people?  Or the states?

Most of the founding fathers had a low opinion of the concept of political “parties.”  They envisioned a future where individuals would run for President on their own, and there would be multiple candidates.

But in short order, that vision fell apart.  Political parties rose in power and influence, and for nearly two hundred years we’ve had only two basic parties to choose from.  Both have ruthlessly promoted their own interests, and determined their own candidates.  The American people, much to their dismay, have only two basic choices when a Presidential election occurs.

The focus of the electoral college likewise mutated.  Individual Electors became a perfunctory issue. Instead, States (with the exception of Nebraska and Maine) allocated all of their Electoral votes to whichever candidate won the vote in that state.  Win a state by a million votes, and you’ll get all of their Electoral votes.  Win a state by one vote, and you’ll get all of their Electoral votes.

The President is elected by the states, regardless of how the overall American people vote.

I first learned about this when I was in grade school.  I thought it sounded pretty dumb.

So I asked my teacher to explain it.  She really couldn’t, at least not to the satisfaction of a 6^th grader.  (Hint to all non-parents:  When kids don’t understand something a grown-up says, they’ll repeatedly ask “why?” or “how come?” until they either get a reasonable answer or the adult goes nuts).  So I persisted.

She did her best to explain, telling me about the importance of regional interests and state representation.  It still didn’t make any sense.

“But that’s not how we do student council elections,” I said.  “We just count up the votes.  We don’t let the first row count their votes, and they get one vote, and the second row counts all of theirs and gets two votes because they have more desks in the second row.  Why do we do it for President?”

My exasperated teacher hemmed and hawed for awhile and finally said, “Donnie, it doesn’t make any difference these days, because whoever wins the popular vote is going to when the Electoral vote anyway.  Winning one and not the other is all in the past.  It just doesn’t happen anymore.”

Some 40 years later, I found out how wrong she really was.

The Electoral College is just one more reason why government is becoming farther removed and further disconnected from the people it serves.  Are you a Republican who lives in Connecticut?  Sorry, you vote really won’t count.  The Democratic candidate is going to win the state and get all of the Electoral votes.  The same is true if you’re a Democrat and live in Wyoming.  The Republican will win, regardless.

For more and more people, the feeling is why bother to vote at all?  American voter turnout is one of the worst in the world.  It’s time we consider whether the Electoral College may be a part of the problem.

In every election, the focus is on “swing states,” states that could possibly go either way.  Those are the only places candidates focus their time, and the only ones that seem to matter.

And here’s yet another absurdity of the electoral system.  The vote of the “Electors” must be formally certified by the Vice-President.  In the past, this was no big deal.  But in 2020, a mob of insurrectionists, egged on by the President, descended on the Capitol and threatened to hang the Vice-President if he didn’t refuse to certify the election.  It didn’t work.

But what if it had?  What if the will of the people—as well as the will of the states—had been gutted?  Would we even have a democracy today?

When I was in grade school, I thought those things only happened in banana republics.  Is that where we are today in America?  

For the record, a state-by-state pushback against the Electoral College has emerged.  The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact (NPVIC) consists of 17 states who’ve had enough of this nonsense.  They’ve pledged to give all of their Electoral votes to the candidate who wins the popular vote, regardless of whether that candidate wins the state’s vote are not.  This move away from a slave-state-protecting, elitist Electoral voting process that favors states over individuals is long overdue.

Hopefully, this idea will take hold, but who knows?  In the meantime, vote.  Vote as if your life, your country, and your democracy depends on it.  Because it does.

I’ll be back next time with more thoughts on whether we are truly a unified nation, or just a collection of self-interested individual states.  In the meantime, feel free to comment.

Without getting into details, I’ve had to deal with some health issues this past month.  I haven’t written a damn thing.

Any Midwesterner can tell you that once you’ve lived through a drought, those first drops of rain that hit your face feel so good they almost make you dizzy.  So it is with writing, I guess.  I don’t know when I’ll write again.  But right now, it feels pretty good.

My home state of Missouri has produced an array of authors. Langston Hughes, T.S. Eliot, Tennessee Williams, Dick Gregory, and of course, Chuck Berry.  Most came from the more cultured Eastern side of the Show-Me State.  My own Northwestern corner, in contrast, is better known for Harry Truman, Walter Cronkite, and everyone’s favorite outlaws, the James boys.

But of all the Missourians who ever touched their pen to a page, none could really hold a candle to Samuel Clemens, aka Mark Twain. 

Volumes have been written about Twain.  They sit alongside the volumes he himself wrote.  There’s no need to recapitulate his life here.  Suffice it to say he ranged from Hannibal, Missouri to Nevada to California to Connecticut to New York and eventually throughout the world.  From the time he could walk, he soaked up everything he saw.  And in his work, he spilled it all out like a flood.

He wrote compulsively, page after page.  Editing carefully, he never minced words, but never strung them out either.  In language as plain as worn denim and manure-stained boots, he threw the world at his readers.  The joy and the pain.  The humor and the tragedy.  The humane and the inhumane.  The racism and the kindness.  The people who were beaten down and the people who were incredibly wealthy for no other reason than just being lucky as hell. 

Yes, he made damn good money doing it.  Much of it he blew.  But in the end, he was someone who simply had to write.

And all of it in longhand, thousands of words each day.  As he aged, his dominant right arm became so arthritic he could barely use it.  So he forced himself to learn to write with his left.

Faulkner called him the Father of American Literature.  Hemmingway went further. “All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn,” he declared. “It’s the best book we’ve had. All American writing comes from that. There was nothing before. There has been nothing as good since.”

And Twain did it all with no formal training in the art of writing.  No classes in literature.  No creative writing courses.  He was forced to drop out of school in the fifth grade to support his family.  All he could do was devour every book he could get his hands on.

He’s often remembered for a sarcastic wit that could to make you fall out of your chair.  But beneath it all, was the pain of someone who’d seen tragedy after tragedy after tragedy.

“The source of all humor,” he wrote, “is not laughter, but sorrow.”

He hated racists, colonialists, and imperialists.  He raged against the Spanish-American War.  He insisted Teddy Roosevelt was a bag of hot air, who didn’t do nearly enough to reign in turn-of-the-century Wall Street financiers. 

His words could cut down the high and mighty like a scythe through ripe wheat.  “What if I were an idiot?” he once asked.  “And what if I were a member of Congress?  But I repeat myself.”

Later it was “First God made idiots.  Then he made School Boards.”

Wouldn’t he have a field day with those two institutions today.

The human ego was likewise his target, as was religious pomposity.  “I believe the only reason God created man was because he was disappointed with the monkey,” he quipped.

He travelled to Hawaii, and couldn’t understand why Christian missionaries couldn’t just leave the Islanders alone.  In Australia, India, and South Africa, he was outraged at how Europeans treated native peoples.  “Man is the only animal that loves his neighbor as himself, and then cuts his throat if his theology isn’t straight,” he grumbled.

In what many consider the greatest novel ever written, a young boy named Huckleberry Finn rafts down the Mississippi River with a runaway slave named Jim.  Over time, they bond, and Huckleberry learns the reason Jim has run away–he learned that he was about to be sold down river, and possibly separated forever from his wife and daughter. 

Jim misses his wife and daughter terribly and worries about their future. The pain is so powerful Jim sometimes cries himself to sleep at night. He’s determined to somehow gain his freedom, find a job, and save enough money to buy his family out of bondage.

But Huckleberry is terrified by what his religious upbringing has taught him.  Preachers in Missouri insisted that slavery was ordained by the Almighty, and to assist a runaway slave was sure to bring about the wrath of God.  Hell and damnation would be waiting.

This makes Huck tremble.  An eternity in hell?  He’s torn as to what to do.  Finally, while Jim is sleeping, Huck writes out a letter to give to the authorities explaining that Jim is a runaway.

But after the most intense soul-searching a young boy can do, Huck makes his decision.  He tears up the letter, and refuses to betray Jim.  In what may be the most profound seven words ever written, Huck says simply, “All right, then, I’ll go to hell.”

In an era of hypocrisy, extreme nationalism, and wild-eyed religiosity, how many today would have the courage and insight of that scruffy kid from Missouri?

Since his death, Twain has been both praised and scorned, his books sometimes promoted and too often banned.  He’s been called a saint, a sage, and a genius by some and a scoundrel, a blasphemer, and a hypocrite by others.

But through it all, his words still stand.  Plain, often unsophisticated, sometimes vulgar, and frequently uncomfortable.  Just like he was.

We could only wish that another like him would emerge at time when this world needs them most. 

And if any of you would like to respond, and have your own favorite quote(s) by Twain to add, feel free to do so.  

WHY ARE WE OVERPAYING FOR OUR MEDICATIONS?

Our local newspaper, The Omaha World-Herald, sometimes runs editorial pieces from other publications.  These pretty much run the gamut from liberal to conservative, and each one usually gives someone something to disagree with.

Recently, the paper published an opinion piece that had appeared in The Wall Street Journal, essentially mocking an effort by a U.S. Senate committee to investigate drug prices in the U.S.  It was my turn to disagree.

Most Americans have become so accustomed to hearing about how expensive our medications are compared to the rest of the developed world, that such information just goes in one ear and out the other.  But these costs are a real hardship for many Americans.

So here’s the original editorial Bernie Sanders Wants a Pharma CEO Show Trial , as well as my response below, published today in the Midland’s Voices column of the World-Herald.  I use an analogy that previously appeared in an earlier post Guns, Drugs, Geezers, and Money but it’s still relevant.  You might keep it in mind the next time you pick up your prescriptions.

Oh, and I did add an editorial comment here on the singer Jelly Roll that didn’t appear in the paper.  Feel free to disagree if you’d like.  It’s not meant to take away anything from his testimony about the dangers of Fentanyl, but his appearance isn’t exactly a textbook promotion of sobriety. . .

And no apologies for the Ron DeSantis comment, either.  Anyway, the extended version is below, and you can see the original newspaper piece here: https://omaha.com/opinion/column/midlands-voices-americans-deserve-to-know-why-their-drugs-are-so-expensive/article_a81f4576-ccfb-11ee-855b-eb6f1532d92e.html

AMERICANS DESERVE TO KNOW WHY THEIR DRUGS ARE SO EXPENSIVE

Donald R. Frey, M.D.

The author is Professor Emeritus of Family Medicine at the Creighton University School of Medicine.  His comments do not necessarily reflect the views of Creighton University.

Let’s say you need to pick up a few things at your local grocery store.  You grab the items, toss them into your cart, and head to the check-out line.  A couple of your neighbors are in line ahead of you, and you notice they have exactly the same things in their carts, too.

The cashier rings up their individual purchases, and charges them each $49.  But when your items get rung up, your bill is $108.

You’re stunned.  You’ve just been charged over twice as much for precisely the same things your neighbors bought.  You’re confused, hurt, and angry.  Don’t you at least deserve some answers?

Apparently not, if you believe the recent Wall Street Journal (WSJ) piece, carried by the World-Herald on January 25, 2024.

As has been well documented by multiple sources, Americans pay over twice as much for prescription drugs as citizens of comparable countries.  We’re talking about the same drugs, manufactured in the same way, by the same companies, and used to treat the same diseases.

Over twice as much.  Why?

That’s the question the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee is seeking to ask pharmaceutical CEOs on behalf of the American people.  But according to the WSJ, this is somehow all just a “socialist show trial.”

Really?  At a time when we’ve seen a parade of Congressional witnesses ranging from university presidents to UFO buffs, public health officials to a guy who changed his name to “Jelly Roll” (who looks to have about a half-gallon of ink sitting under his skin, and enough metal on his teeth to build a lawnmower engine), asking those responsible for high drug prices to explain their actions hardly seems unreasonable.

What kind of money are we talking about?  According to research by the Peterson Institute and the Kaiser Family Foundation, Americans pay $1,126 per year for prescriptions.  Other developed countries average $552—for exactly the same drugs.

All of this has real life consequences.  The same Peterson research also revealed that one out of every three American adults has forgone taking prescribed medication due to costs.

Most other countries use their collective purchasing power to manage drug costs.  By negotiating directly with the manufacturer, these countries can drive a harder bargain and bring down prices for their citizens.

And it works.  Europeans, Canadians, and Australians all buy the same drugs for half as much.  And it doesn’t hurt the drug companies one bit.  They still reap gross profit margins more than twice those of S&P 500 companies.

Research and development (R&D) costs are often used as an excuse for high drug prices.  But this argument doesn’t hold water.  All major companies have R&D costs, regardless of their industry.  And if pharmaceutical research really is so expensive, why is it that only Americans are being asked to pay the price?

The good news is that our government is just beginning to conduct direct price negotiations with some pharmaceutical companies.  These carry the real possibility of reducing prescription costs for hard working Americans.

Yet, this is precisely what the WSJ derides as “sham negotiations behind closed doors.”

Whether these negotiations, along with the Senate hearings, produce results remains to be seen.  But political ideology should not be an excuse to shut them down.

After all, if the Ron Desantis-led state of Florida is resorting to importing drugs from Canada, the reality of this problem should be obvious to all of us.

The only question is whether we have the collective national courage to address it.

THE LONG SHADOW OF NUREMBERG

“The thing we learn from history is that no one ever learns from history.”—Otto Von Bismark, German Chancellor, 1815-1898.

“Where one burns books, one will soon burn people.”—Heinrich Hein, German poet, 1797-1856.

It is impossible to visit the city of Nuremberg, Germany and not come away shaken.

At the eastern edge of the city, you can walk around the Nazi Congress Hall, a huge semi-circular structure that, once completed, was intended to look like a Roman Coliseum and seat over 50,000 people.  Once you’ve huffed and puffed your way around the half-finished stadium, you realize you’ve only scratched the surface of what once stood here.  The rally grounds, the Zeppelin Field, the crumbling reviewing stand, are all yet to be seen.  Over six square miles in all.  It would take you a half day to walk around all of it.

Hitler himself gave some of his most terrifying speeches here, to crowds of over 300,000.

300,000 cheering admirers.  A regular Nazi Woodstock.

It was here that the German Reichstag put into place the Nuremberg Laws, officially known as the “Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honour,” which forbade relations between Germans and Jews, Blacks, and Roma (“the Gypsies,” to some people), as well as the “Reich Citizenship Law” which outlawed citizenship for anyone other than ethnic Germans or those of “German blood.”

It was here (as in 34 other cities) that Nazi adherents marched with torches and burned books that were deemed “decadent,” “immoral,” and “anti-German.”  This included texts describing homosexuality and transgender issues—along with the works of such nitwits as Albert Einstein.

If some of this makes you feel a little uncomfortable in light of current events—good.

Nuremberg was neither the headquarters of the Nazi Party (that was in Munich, Hitler’s old stomping grounds) nor the seat of German government (centered squarely in Berlin).  However, it was a city known as a hot bed of antisemitism and German ultranationalism.

How did Germany wind up with the Nazis?  It’s a complex question, and one that we ignore to our own peril today.  It begins with World War I.

The First World War, the conflict that was supposed to end all wars, took place between 1914 and 1918.  Four long, tortured years.

Most of the fighting took place in trenches in France and Belgium.  Hundreds of thousands of young men would charge out of the trenches, incurring enormous casualties.  They’d gain a few yards of ground, only to be driven back days later by the opposing side, who’d suffer an equal amount of carnage.

Incredibly, no fighting occurred in Germany.  No bombs fell on German homes.  No enemy was at the gate.  Other than food shortages, Germans had absolutely no way of knowing first hand their nation was losing.

When it was over, 9 million soldiers had been killed, 23 million others wounded for life, and over 5 million civilians were dead.  It was a war of attrition, and Germany gave up first. But to many, their nation’s surrender came as an absolute shock.

One of these shocked German was a non-descript army corporal (and failed street artist) who was recovering from a Mustard Gas attack.  He would later claim he was so dumbstruck by the surrender that he went temporarily blind.

In his view, there was no way the German army could have been defeated.  They had to have been sold out by traitors, foreigners, and corrupt officials.  He would later come to personify this group with an age-old scapegoat.

Jews.  They had screwed Germany.  And he was going to by-God do something about it.

Historians still argue about when Hitler’s antisemitism evolved into mass murder (it had been a Jewish German officer, after all, who’d earlier recommended the corporal for military promotion).  But there’s no question that it was Germany’s surrender—and its humiliating aftermath—that further incited his rage for Jews, Roma, Communists, Socialists, immigrants, and anyone not of German stock.

That is, anyone who wasn’t a “real” German.  No way were those outsiders going to “replace” real Germans.

The aftermath of World War I was a gut-punch to the German people.  Besides losing all of their worldwide colonies, much of their European territory, and most of their self-esteem, they were forced to pay off both their own war debt, and that of the France and Great Britain.  The economy began to crumble.

Germany had no choice but borrow money.  Lots of it.  And through a series of missteps, the nation entered one of the worst episodes of hyperinflation in history.

How bad was it?  At the end of the war, it would take 8 German Marks to buy one U.S. dollar.  By 1923, it took 4.2 trillion.  Go to work in the morning, labor all day, and get paid in money that was essentially worthless.

Slowly, the economy stabilized.  But in 1929, the Great Depression hit.  A hungry, humiliated nation was desperate for new leadership.  Most of the poor and working class supported far-left groups, such as the Communists.  This horrified the business community.  They coalesced around a small group of right-wing radicals called the National Socialist German Workers Party, and poured money into its political machine.

The Party also went by another name.  The Nazis.

Perhaps they greatest error we can make in trying to understand the Nazis is to believe they were somehow unanimously elected on a platform of “Let’s go out and kill all the Jews and take over the world!”  Instead, it was much more basic.  Something that hit home to an angry and demoralized nation.

The world is trying to destroy our German values, the Nazis warned.  We are the true guardians of western civilization, and the world is trying to water down our traditions with decadence and vulgarity.  Non-Germans are poisoning our blood and threatening to replace us.  Jews, communists, homosexuals, Poles, Slavs, and (of all people) Jehovah’s Witnesses are vermin, and a threat to our nation.  We’ve been bullied, laughed at, and disrespected long enough.  It ends now.

We’re going to Make Germany Great Again. 

And once they were in power?  The Nazis devolved into utter madness.

Nuremberg learned this, too.  On January 3^rd, 1945, over 500 British Lancaster bombers reduced most of the city to rubble.  Five months later the war was over.  The gigantic Swastika atop the Nazi reviewing stands was blown to pieces  

Of course, Nuremberg’s story doesn’t end here.  One of its few major public buildings to survive the bombing was the Palace of Justice.  The Allies selected it to house one of the most famous trials in history.

Over the next three years, a parade of Nazi defendants were brought to trial in Nuremburg.  Many were found guilty.  Some were executed.

For the first time, a new legal term was introduced to the world.  Crimes Against Humanity.  Crimes so heinous they were described as “deliberate acts, typically as part of a systematic campaign, that causes human suffering or death on a large scale.”  If you have not seen the award winning 1961 film Judgement at Nuremburg, it is well worth your time.

The judges and witnesses at Nuremberg hoped this would be the last the world would see of such crimes.  Of course, they were wrong.  The long shadow of Nuremberg still touches humanity today.

The year 2023 has seen its share of Crimes Against Humanity, and its perpetrators should be brought to justice.  Mohammed Deif, military commander of Hamas, and the terrorists who murdered and mutilated innocents in Israel should be tried as war criminals. 

So too should Benjamin Netanyahu and the Israeli commanders who have murdered innocents in Gaza and the West Bank by indiscriminately bombing homes, refugee camps, and schools, and even blocking food shipments while malnutrition worsens. 

Don’t forget Vladimir Putin, whose cruel war against Ukrainian homes and hospitals has left thousands dead, wounded, and freezing.

Will these criminals ever be brought to justice?  Who knows.

But let’s look closer to home.  The shadow of Nuremburg reaches our own country, as well.  When presidential candidates describe fellow humans as “vermin” who are “poisoning the blood of our country” it should send a chill through our hearts. 

When you hear immigrants and political opponents derided as “replacing real Americans” you should know what’s coming next.  Governors of Texas and Florida are already rounding up immigrants, shipping them to northern cities, and dumping them on the streets like so much garbage.

This is America 2023.  Not Germany 1935.

Or is it? 

Think about that when you cast your vote.

If one day you have the opportunity to visit Nuremburg, I hope you take it.  The city’s lessons will stay with you forever.

And just for the record, their beer and sausages are pretty good, too.

Happy New Year, everyone.  Here’s hoping 2024 will be a step forward for all of us.