Health Policy – Page 19 – The Wrongologist

Veterans Day: 11/11/2015

In his latest book, The Last of the Presidents Men, Bob Woodward reveals a previously unreported memo from 1972 in which Nixon writes Kissinger, saying that a years-long bombing campaign in Vietnam had produced “zilch,” even as he pitched the exact opposite message to the American public. He wrote that the day after giving an interview to Dan Rather, declaring that the bombing of North Vietnam had been “very, very effective”. Nixon’s note said:

K. We have had 10 years of total control of the air in Laos and V.Nam. The result=Zilch. There is something wrong with the strategy or the Air Force.

Nixon then increased bombing, dropping some 1.1 million tons in 1972 alone — more than in any single year of LBJ’s presidency. From Woodward: (brackets by the Wrongologist)

[Nixon] Us[ed] Vietnam to enhance his re-election prospects…breaking perhaps the most sacred trust for a commander in chief.

All these years later, it is hard to believe that anything Nixon did could surprise us, yet there it is.

Since the 1970’s, a meme among conservatives is that the reason we lost in Vietnam was a lack of will, brought on by liberals and war protesters. But thinking that the primary reason we lost Vietnam was that liberals stabbed America in the back is ridiculous. You may remember that in 1968, Nixon said he had a “secret plan” to end the Vietnam War. He had no plan, and by 1972, when he sent the note to Kissinger, he knew he was losing the war.

In total, the war stretched on for 7 years after the announcement of Nixon’s “secret plan” to end it.

Today we hear that feckless leadership is causing us to “lose” in Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria. This comes from a few career military, and many, many Republican Chicken Hawks, who continue to raise the specter of Vietnam.

On Veterans Day, let’s remember that Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan are all places where our boys bled and died on foreign soil. All are places where our money was recycled to the war profiteers, and where we left behind zero ability to foster the “democratic” way of life that our politicians wanted to bring to those nations.

And what about the “sacred trust?” Politicians break the sacred trust to its citizens and soldiers all the time, if there is an opportunity to spread the gospel, secure the oil, or beat the “enemy”. War profiteering for private corporations, socialized losses for the people. US soldiers dead or maimed for life. Their families robbed of optimism, their memories an open wound.

THAT is the sacred trust in ruins. That is the legacy of Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan on this, and on all Veterans Days.

And do the Chicken Hawks take care of our veterans after the fact, once they come home? They do not. The CH’s “cut taxes” mantra means that more money for the oligarchs has to come from somewhere. So, they try to cut social programs, because war profiteers (including those in Congress) can’t make any money off government-run, not-for-profit social programs.

Veterans have been with us since before the founding of the Republic. To observe this Veterans Day, here is a reasonably obscure song by Bob Dylan, “’Cross the Green Mountain.” It appeared on the soundtrack of the film, “Gods and Generals,” a Civil War film that was entirely financed by Ted Turner as a pet project.

The song speaks to the horror faced by soldiers in the Civil War. Dylan’s Civil War tale could be about any war, as his worn-down singing captures the essence of a soldier pining for home while reflecting on what may be his last battle, his last moments in life. Below is the abbreviated version of the song that was used as the official music video:

Those who read the Wrongologist in email can view the video here.

That gives you a taste, but if you want the whole thing, the full 8 minute song was part of Dylan’s Bootleg Series #8: “Tell Tale Signs,” and you can view it here.

They Call It “Class Warfare” For a Reason

Many pundits have commented on research by Angus Deaton and Anne Case of Princeton (h/t: Naked Capitalism for an ungated copy of the report) showing that mortality rates for middle-aged white Americans have risen since 1999, in contrast to the patterns for every other racial group and for residents of virtually every other affluent country. Here is a comparison of mortality rates among developed countries, with the US middle-aged white population:

“USW” above stands for US non-Hispanic Whites, while “USH” is US Hispanics, both are census descriptions. Deaton and Case found that rising substance abuse, including alcohol-related disease and painkiller overdose, was the main cause of the disturbing trend:

“Poisonings” refers to drugs and opioids. White Americans are killing themselves directly or indirectly, in increasing numbers. Suicide is up, and so are deaths from drug poisoning and the chronic liver disease that excessive drinking causes. This has happened before, in Russia after the fall of Communism. But it’s a shock to see it in America.

Why this has happened with few noticing until now, is a great question. There have been warning signs of distress, such as the fact that US life expectancy has stopped rising, and that death rates among white women had risen (and over the same time period examined in the Deaton-Case study). USA Today reported in 2008 that the problem highlighted by Deaton and Case already was already flowering in the Deep South and Appalachia. Citing a study by the Harvard School of Public Health and the University of Washington, they found that:

4% of the male population and 19% of the female population experienced either declines or stagnation in their life expectancy in the ’80s and ’90s.

Krugman in Monday’s NYT called it “Despair, American Style“, but like others, did not offer a complte explanation of the phenomena. Deeper analysis is necessary. It would be helpful to see the data mapped. An educated guess is that it is correlated with states that made up the old Confederacy and the American rust belt, as the 2008 Harvard study found.

For example, a 2013 report by the Trust for America’s Health (TFAH) identified West Virginia as leading the nation in drug overdose deaths, with a rate of 28.9 per 100,000 residents. The state’s fatal overdose rate increased by 605% between 1999 and 2010, and has jumped 1,056% since 1979. The majority of these deaths are attributable to the abuse of addictive prescription painkillers.

Assuming that Krugman is correct and it is related to despair, maybe we should look at whether this cohort possesses the things necessary to make life worthwhile, including food security, and a decent place to live, a way to be a part of a larger community, a sense of self-worth. If you’ve lived long enough to see people break, and then try to figure out why they did, while others did not, a lot of it is whether they were part of a supportive community, or an indifferent/cruel environment.

Job and income insecurity causes stress, and stress is a killer. Over an extended period of time, the physical effects of stress can result in long term adverse effects to health, including contributing to chronic pain and depression. Some manage to find relief by opting to buy weed online, but others struggle to get a hold of these products due to local legislation and turn to their doctors for other methods. Some may even find themselves using cambodian mushrooms to help manage their anxiety and stress before turning to any doctor’s orders.

But our physicians are also at fault. Here is a CDC article that says that the amount of pain Americans report has not increased, while the prescribing of pain meds has quadrupled since 1999. Deaton and Case also point out that opioids are prescribed far more often here to treat maladies that include pain than in other countries.

This didn’t happen yesterday, and it won’t be cured by exhortations to “eat healthy,” or “do yoga,” or to follow the great American mantra: “study hard”. To end despair in the working class, we need a better program:

(a) Supportive communities that end stigmatizing of low income earners
(b) Universal health care
(c) A jobs guarantee, with a living minimum wage, so people have better options than the Dollar Store or fast food
(d) Free college, so parents believe that their kids have a shot at a better life

Job and income insecurity are insidious. When you spend a few years out of work, despair creeps in. Despair will push you to the fringes of society, and then, society will blame you for being there.

A redesign of our capitalism is the answer.

Does any presidential candidate support this?

The Republican “Free Stuff” Meme

At the last Republican presidential debate, Chris Christie (R-NJ) characterized the Democratic candidates’ debate as:

A parade of, ‘I’ll give you this for free; I’ll give you that for free’.

Senator Marco Rubio said: (brackets by the Wrongologist)

It [the first Democratic debate] was basically a…debate about who was going to give away the most free stuff: Free college education, free college education for people illegally in this country, free health care, free everything.

Jeb Bush says that black voters should back him, since his:

…message is one of hope and aspiration, not one of division and get in line and we’ll take care of you with free stuff…

For the record, Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, and unemployment have dedicated tax revenue streams. If we back out those funded benefits, all other elements of the so-called social safety net “free stuff” adds up to ~$405 billion, a fraction of the $1.2 trillion in “unfunded” Federal entitlements, and most of the rest goes to top income earners.

So, what do Republicans mean when they say “Free Stuff”? From Jared Bernstein:

There are at least three definitions of “free stuff.” The broadest would simply include all government benefits. A narrower version might apply only when people receive more in benefits than they pay in taxes. A third might refer to any net gain relative to the status quo.

Under any of these definitions, the Republican claims are misleading: they attack help for people who need it, while implicitly condoning tax subsidies for the wealthy. What the Republicans want us to focus on are public education, Medicaid, and direct cash assistance to the poor, but the government provides other subsidies, some of which the GOP seems perfectly happy to keep in place.

For example, Rubio and Bush want to cut capital gains taxes below the current level (Rubio would completely abolish them). But today’s reduced cap gains rate already provides a significant benefit to people who invest in assets (i.e., the wealthy). Then there are things like regressive housing tax breaks, about 70% of which go to those in the top 20%. In addition, 68% of the tax benefits for retirement savings and 64% of subsidies for individual retirement accounts (IRAs) accrue to the top 20%.

Can it be that government benefits for poor people are “free stuff”, while benefits for the wealthy are not?

Maybe Christie, Rubio, and Bush subscribe to the second definition described above: It’s “free stuff” if you receive more in benefits than you pay in taxes, but not if you pay more in taxes than you receive in benefits.

The third way to think about “free stuff” mirrors the most accepted concept of “free”. Bernstein asks:

Suppose, for example, that you opened your email today to find an unexpected $100 Amazon gift card. No matter how much money you had spent or planned to spend at Amazon, you would call this “free” money. Or imagine that you go out to dinner at a restaurant and a waiter decides to “comp” your dessert. Regardless of the overall price of your meal, you would likely consider that dessert item to be “free.”

Under this definition, “free stuff” from the government would be new benefits or reduced taxes relative to one’s current situation. Since the Christie, Rubio, and Bush tax plans all contain massive tax cuts, they would give away huge amounts of foregone tax revenue as “free stuff,” and unlike the “free stuff” proposed by the Democratic candidates – the GOP “free stuff” would go to their very wealthy patrons.

From the carried interest loophole, to drug patent law, to defense industry markups, to sweetheart deals for the oil industry, the total “free stuff” for the 1% dwarfs that available to the rest of us. Yet, the nattering nabobs of trickledown continue to target removing the scraps doled out to the 99%.

Social stability is the reason the rich should not begrudge the support given to those that are less fortunate in our society. The rich have the most to lose should the vast majority decide they have suffered enough, and we see an “off with their heads” moment.

Extra money in the hands of the 1% or the .01% just creates bidding wars for penthouse apartments that the 2% can no longer afford.

You Say You Want a Revolution

The Nation describes Bernie Sanders’s “Political Revolution”: (emphasis by the Wrongologist)

When Sanders speaks of that political revolution, he is asking Americans—especially younger Americans like the crowds of Iowans in their teens and twenties who packed the Sanders bleachers in Des Moines’ Hy-Vee Hall for the Jefferson-Jackson dinner—to believe that electoral politics might actually change something. Sanders knows that won’t happen unless people who are frustrated and disengaged and disenchanted see him as a candidate who is distinctly different from the rest.

For Sanders, “Political Revolution” means a protracted, grassroots effort to fix a broken political, economic and social system. He says it will take millions of people to get involved and then stay mobilized after the election to bring about a political revolution.

That’s what Bernie Sanders’s campaign is all about.

So, if you agree that our politics is broken, shouldn’t we actually be working to fix the underlying problems? Without something that looks like a “political revolution”, fixing these problems is difficult if not highly unlikely. Consider the following:

• Capitalism as an economic engine has created unheard of levels of wealth, but since the 1980s, that wealth only accrued to those at the very top.
• Democracy is in trouble, because Capitalism needs a plutocratic system of government to operate.
• Democracy gets in Capitalism’s way because the interests of the people are not congruent with the interests of the corporations. They are often in direct competition.
• In order for corporations to keep their preferred position in this conflict of ideas, the voice of the people must be weaker than the voice of the corporations. Hence, Shelby County vs. Holder, Citizens United and the soon-to-be decided Evenwel v. Abbott.

Democrats say “vote for us because we’re not as crazy as the Republicans” (even though they actually support the same corporate interests). The Dems will also offer you a few social policy crumbs that you should enjoy on your way to becoming the big losers in our latest Gilded Age. And those crumbs will expire when Republicans control all three branches of government.

The last political revolution began when Ronald Reagan was elected in 1980. That revolution has continued through two Democratic and two Republican administrations, for more than 35 years.

• It resulted in higher taxes for the middle classes which paid for lower taxes on the wealthy.
• It reversed progress toward voting rights, racial equality and equal rights for women, progress that was made in the 1960s and 1970s
• It has prevented universal health insurance.
• It led to increased terrorism and endless war.

So, it’s been a wild success! And it’s still going strong under its second Democratic president.

Bernie’s “political revolution” is to attempt to turn Democrats back to being the party of the people, to give Capitalism a conscience. The theory goes, if Democrats embraced Bernie’s point of view, people will vote in large numbers. If they vote in large numbers, change will come.

This is the fight Bernie is leading.

But Bernie has no real chance at the nomination, and if he got it, there is a high probability he’d lose the general election in a blow-out. And since he’s not doing the things he needs to build a constituency in Congress, or it other down-ticket races, his populism is unlikely to translate into a movement. America has to hit rock bottom for that to happen, and we’re not there yet.

OTOH, Hillary doesn’t seem to have a plan to win the House or Senate in 2016 either.

But the fact that it is unlikely that he can win doesn’t mean that Bernie and his supporters shouldn’t fight for his policies. He has already forced Hillary to recant a few illiberal positions. And his pursuit of right-leaning white working class voters could help forge a new populist coalition down the road. Poor white folks have been clinging to the GOP for the past forty-odd years, and they are still poor, and getting poorer.

They might be willing to embrace his populist economic message even while they hold their noses when they hear his social justice views.

So, when you hear about Sanders’ political revolution, it doesn’t sound so much like a revolution as a return to policies that had been in place for much of the 20th century, those policies that began during the FDR era.

What Sanders describes is a political restoration, not a revolution.

Little that he proposes is radical from the point of view of where the country was in the 1970s.

Back before the Regan revolution began.

Hillary?

An important survey by Pew released this week says that Republicans are looking for “New Ideas”: (emphasis by the Wrongologist)

Since March, the share of all registered voters who say it is more important for a presidential candidate to have “new ideas and a different approach” has surged – with virtually all of the increase coming among Republican and Republican-leaning voters. Today, by more than two-to-one (65% to 29%), Republican and Republican-leaning registered voters say it is more important that a candidate have new ideas than “experience and a proven record.”

(The survey was conducted on Sept. 22-27 among 1,502 adults, including 1,136 registered voters.)

Pew reports that Democrats have less interest in new ideas: 50% say it is more important for a candidate to have experience and a proven record, while 42% view new ideas and a different approach as more important. This is little changed from March (46% experience, 49% new ideas).

And Pew reports that Hillary has a bigger lead over Sanders than other polls show. Their poll includes Biden:

This is a very different result from other polls which tend to show Sanders just a few points behind Clinton, (at least in New Hampshire) and which say that Biden hurts Clinton enough to open a path to the nomination for Sanders, should Biden enter the race.

But despite the Pew results, many Democrats think 2016 looks grim. Here is the Denver Post reporting that Colorado’s Democratic Governor John Hickenlooper used those exact words:

Gov. John Hickenlooper on Thursday became the latest Hillary Clinton supporter to express doubt about her candidacy for president, telling a Denver audience that the 2016 election is ‘kind of grim, to be blunt’.

The Denver Post also quoted former Democratic Gov. Dick Lamm, who (speaking about the email issue) said he believes:

There’s a one in three chance that if something worse does happen, that will cost her the nomination.

From 30,000 feet, the presidential race includes Hillary, a person many people don’t trust, who seems to lack the vision thing, and Bernie Sanders, who self-describes as a democratic socialist when he’s merely an FDR Democrat.

It just shows how ingrained the memes of the right are in our society, when a New Deal Democrat honestly believes that he is a Democratic Socialist.

Bernie should call himself an FDR Democrat, since he has to deal with corporate media in order to win. The Democratic Socialist label easily morphs into socialist, and then on to Marxist by our media elite. This means that intellectually lazy voters will misunderstand what Sanders is really about. Better for him to conflate his candidacy with a period of American economic recovery than for him to get twisted by the media echo chamber into a second coming of Lenin, or a Jewish Fidel.

And right now, Pew says that the Republican voters are more engaged in the process:

This shows that Dems are about as engaged as they were when Barak Obama was running against Hillary for the nomination, but Republican engagement has increased steadily since 2007.

Considering that the Democratic base seems mostly on auto pilot, it could be a lot worse, particularly since the Democratic National Committee is headed by Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who gave us a Republican House and Senate.

The key question is which candidate can keep the Obama coalition together. Today, it seems to be Hillary:

• If Bernie is the candidate, money is going to be a huge problem and not just for him. How does the DNC raise money? How do other Democratic candidates raise money with Bernie running against the big money donors? It’s all well and good to rail against the campaign financing laws, but Senate and Congressional candidates have to raise money too.
• Can the Dems win the White House AND the Senate on $30 individual donations?

If Hillary is the candidate, the issue will be Hillary making the case that she won’t preside over a third Obama term. Or, the central issue in Hillary’s candidacy could be her husband Bill, and a third Clinton term.

The assumption by Democrats in the primary contests should be that Republicans will still control the House. Even with a Democratic win, neither Hillary nor Sanders would be able to get much of a domestic agenda passed.

Either way, 2016 will be a repeat, more or less, of 2012, with the significant addition of Iran, Russia, and ISIS on the foreign policy front. That may make 2016 more of a balanced issue election.

All Dems can reasonably expect from a presidential win in 2016 is Supreme Court nominations, holding on to the Obama gains, and pushing the country to return towards more economic equality than in the years since 2008.

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – October 4, 2015

Quite the week. Another mass shooting, Kim Davis said she met the Pope, Russia drops bombs in Syria, and we dodge another government shut-down.

The shooting in Oregon was a huge tragedy, but the Right says the shooter was a member of a “well-regulated militia”, so there is nothing we can do:

When He heard about the Kim Davis meeting, God tweeted:

Despite the hype by Ms. Davis’ camp, the Vatican said:

The pope did not enter into the details of the situation of Mrs. Davis, and his meeting with her should not be considered a form of support of her position in all of its particular and complex aspects…

We avoided the shut-down, but expect to see it again in December:

Can cooler heads prevail in the GOP? That’s a no-Boehner:

The foreign policy conversation in the US remains fixed on the idea that we can dictate terms to whomever we want, where ever we want, on whatever timetable we want. And we love, love the idea of regime change:

With the Planned Parenthood hearings, the GOP made its real position clear:

More GOP Dickitude

Dickitude was on display at the House Oversight Committee hearing into Planned Parenthood (PP). Committee Chair, Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) repeatedly interrupted PP President Cecile Richards as she tried to answer his questions Tuesday. Richards’ testimony was part of an investigation into PP’s business practices after sting videos were released that allegedly showed company executives discussing the sale of fetal tissue. Chaffetz took the time to note Richards’ salary.

Your compensation in 2009 was $353,000. Is that correct? he asked. ‘I don’t have the figures with me, but —‘Richards said. ‘It was,’ Chaffetz replied, ‘Congratulations.’

That had to be the first time in the recorded history that a Republican has criticized a CEO for making money. But, Richards provided the best moment of the day when Chaffetz was caught in a Fiorina-like lie after he pontificated on a projected slide:

CHAFFETZ: You’re going to deny that…
RICHARDS: I’m going to deny this slide that you just showed me that no one has ever provided us before! We’ve provided you all the information about everything — all the services that Planned Parenthood provides. And it doesn’t feel like we’re trying to get to the truth here. You just showed me this.
CHAFFETZ: I pulled those numbers directly out of your corporate reports!
RICHARDS: [legal team tells her something] Excuse me. My lawyers have informed me that the source of this is Americans United for Life, which is an anti-abortion group. So I would check your source.
CHAFFETZ: [looking caught off-guard, stammering] then we will get to the bottom of the truth of that.

Shouldn’t they call the anti-abortion groups that created the fake chart (and the fake videos) to testify?

But, Dickitude doesn’t require a dick. We know that Carly Fiorina did not start the PP fire, but fanned the flames by her vivid comments during the 2nd Republican debate on Sept. 16th. Then, no one could find the section of the video that Carly said she saw.

Things seemed to go from bad to worse when a new video entitled “Carly Fiorina was right”, issued by The Center for Bio-Ethical Reform, and purporting to show a PP abortion showed up this week. It quickly got traction in the media, but then things went from bad to worse: Dr. Jennifer Gunter, a board-certified OB/GYN took to her blog after viewing it. Dr. Gunter’s conclusion is that it was a premature delivery. She disputed Greg Cunningham, curator of the video, and the founder of the Center for Bio-Ethical Reform’s finding, who told Time Magazine that it had to be an abortion:

Owing to the lack of medical treatment offered to the fetus.

Dr. Gunter says that Cunningham was wrong, since the fetus is 17-18 weeks and thus, previable, and that no doctor would render care in that circumstance. She goes on to say:

A neonatologist who attempts to resuscitate a 17 week delivery would be considered unethical.

Her final point was that there is no proof this video is in a PP clinic much less in the US. And hours after the publication of the video, several medical experts contacted by Time Magazine raised questions about whether the video showed an abortion.

These attempts to defund PP are a form of pandering to the anti-abortion wing of the Republican base. The base doesn’t care about literal truth when all them little angel babies are being massacred by the socialists.

Fiorina’s description of video evidence of PP performing a horrible procedure looks to be untrue, particularly since the footage:

• Didn’t come from the videos Fiorina was discussing
• There’s no evidence that the footage comes from PP
• There’s very good evidence that it doesn’t involve an abortion

Even if we grant that Fiorina was confused on the night of Sept. 16th when she made her statement about the video, the only way to explain her continued insistence that what she saw is real is to say she’s too stupid, too stubborn to admit she’s wrong, and/or that she’s a liar.

None of these are good qualities to have in a president.

Yet, the Right sees it exactly the other way: They think these are great qualities to have in a president. It’s a perfect projection of themselves onto an extremely powerful person, one who doesn’t give two fucks about reality, facts and evidence, and will lead from the gut.

That’s how we ended up in Iraq.

Monday Wake-Up Call – September 14, 2015

Gov. Bobby Jindal, a Republican contender for the presidency, moved to cut off $730,000 in Medicaid reimbursements to the state’s two Planned Parenthood clinics in late August. The question then arose, where would Louisiana women get these services in the event the funding was cancelled? From MoJo:

The task seems straightforward: Make a list of health care providers that would fill the void if Louisiana succeeded in defunding Planned Parenthood. But the state, which is fighting a court battle to strip the group of hundreds of thousands of dollars in Medicaid funds, is struggling to figure out who would provide poor women with family planning care if not Planned Parenthood.

So the state’s attorneys did some research. They said in a court declaration that there are 2,000 family planning providers ready to accommodate new female patients. John deGravelles, a federal judge who reviewed the list in a September 2nd court hearing, found hundreds of entries for specialists such as ophthalmologists; nursing home caregivers; dentists; ear, nose, and throat doctors; and even cosmetic surgeons. From Judge deGravelles:

It strikes me as extremely odd that you have a dermatologist, an audiologist, a dentist who are billing for family planning services…But that is what you’re representing to the court? You’re telling me that they can provide family planning and related services?

Dentists? Don’t dentists who do “Pap smears” wind up losing their licenses?

Anyway, the judge’s disbelief sent the state back to the drawing board. They came forward with a new list that did not include dentists, dermatologists, ophthalmologists and others. You will be shocked to learn the state was lying: Their new filing listed just 29 health care providers.

But even with this pared down list, it only got worse. MoJo reports that in Baton Rouge, the site of one of two Louisiana Planned Parenthood clinics, the state lists five alternate providers. But according to the state’s own filing, only three of those offer contraception, and two of those have wait times ranging from two to seven weeks. One of the Baton Rouge clinics the state suggested is not accepting any new patients for STI, breast cancer, or cervical cancer screenings.

Since Reagan, Republicans have been able to say whatever stupid or completely false thing they want. They keep doing it because their supporters don’t mind, and they almost never get called on it by the media. It’s been “regarding shape of the earth, opinions differ” for decades.

This tendency to make shit up or say ridiculous things is particularly pronounced whenever the subject is abortion, birth control, or any other aspect of female sexuality. Sadly, the notion that patients could turn elsewhere remains a key rationale when Republicans attempt to strip Planned Parenthood of $528 million in federal funding as part of this month’s budget talks.

So what Jindal’s minions are attempting is more of the same. But, perhaps you remember Mr. Jindal saying in 2013 that the GOP had to “stop being the stupid party”? He didn’t mean that. The GOP reserves the right to be as anti-abortion, anti-women, and anti-science as they want to be.

Let’s make an effort to wake up Mr. Jindal and his fellow GOP’ers, even if it may be futile. Here is Bon Jovi with “We Weren’t Born to Follow”, a top 10 hit for them in 2009:

For those who read the Wrongologist in email, you can view the video here.

Sample Lyrics:
We weren’t born to follow
Come on and get up off your knees
When life is a bitter pill to swallow
You gotta hold on to what you believe
Believe that the sun will shine tomorrow
And that your saints and sinners bleed
We weren’t born to follow
You gotta stand up for what you believe

Monday Wake Up Call – July 27, 2015

The Connecticut Democratic Party has decided to change the name of its “Jefferson-Jackson Dinner”. Apparently prompted by the national controversy over the Confederate flag, the state’s Democratic Party last week voted unanimously to change the name of its annual fundraising dinner and remove the names of two slave-owning American presidents.

The clear implication is that there’s something wrong with Thomas Jefferson which puts him in the same category as the Confederate Flag. The Hartford Courant reported this quote from the state Democrats’ resolution:

As members of the Democratic Party, we are proud of our history as the party of inclusion. Democrats have led the way on civil rights, LGBT equality and equal rights for women…It is only fitting that the name of the party’s most visible annual event reflects our dedication to diversity and forward-looking vision.

Wrongo doesn’t care if the Democratic Party stops naming their fundraisers after Jefferson and Jackson.

What is bothersome is the implication that Jefferson is a pariah. Andrew Jackson is another matter, despite the fact that the symbol of the party is the donkey, or jackass. “Jackass,” stood for Andrew Jackson. It came from an 1837 political cartoon referring to Jackson as a “Jack-ass.” Jackson thought it was funny, and used it to his advantage. Democrats embraced the symbol, and it has stuck for nearly 180 years.

What message does the CT Dems public disowning of Jefferson send? Do CT Dems understand history? We owe a debt to Jefferson. It’s easy to say that Jefferson did things that were wrong, but he wrote the Declaration of Independence, managed our relationships with France during the Revolutionary War, and was a highly successful president. It is a huge mistake to invalidate his accomplishments because of his personal foibles. He was a man of his time, and did what he did. But, without him, our revolution would have been different.

Making perfection the enemy of great is wrong-headed. It places the CT Dems in a similar intellectual place as Donald Trump, who says McCain isn’t a war hero because he was captured, or that John Kerry wasn’t a good negotiator because he fell off his bike.

Maybe we could all be adults? The effort at political correctness by the modern Democratic Party is fine, but we should remember that Martin Luther King, Jr. was not a perfect man. African-Americans know that, but Dr. King is still revered by almost all Americans.

And the fact that today’s GOP embraces Abraham Lincoln does not make the modern GOP a racism-free party, regardless of how often the GOP invokes Lincoln’s name to claim credit for his greatness. Judging our founders, or our heroes by today’s standards, would condemn almost everyone past and present. Maybe, Democrats in Washington, CT, named after George, will want to change its name, since George Washington owned slaves.

Yes, there are egalitarian threads in both the Jeffersonian and Jacksonian traditions that resonate with Democrats today—but both men based the equality of some men upon the subordination of others.

Since CT Democrats are determined to replace Jefferson and Jackson as patrons of these events, and are holding a meeting to decide the new name of the event in September, without question, FDR-JFK could serve pretty well, despite each man’s foibles. Or maybe, Joe Lieberman?

Are you the one American without personal foibles?

So, wake up Connecticut Democrats. To help with their wake-up, here is #4 in our songs of summer series, “Summertime Blues”, the great Eddie Cochran tune done here by Brian Setzer on MTV, recorded live for the ‘La Bamba’ concert. It reminds that there was a time when MTV was watchable:

For those who read the Wrongologist in email, you can see the video here.

Monday’s Hot Links:
Foreign Policy reports that back in 2000, the NSA intercepted a call to Bin Laden’s operations center in Yemen from a 9/11 hijacker in San Diego. They failed to follow-up, which should set off warning bells. Now 16 years later, the NSA denies they knew where the calls originated. That’s bullshit two ways: In 2000, the telephone network’s technology automatically provided a digital equivalent of caller ID to every phone switch, including NSA’s. And former NSA people like Tom Drake and William Binney say there’s no way the NSA wouldn’t have tapped this line.

Dark matter is the stuff that cosmologists think makes up some 85% of all the matter in the universe. A new theory says dark matter might be a known particle. If true, that would open up a window onto an invisible, dark matter version of physics.

Turkey launches war on Islamic State’s worst enemies – The Kurds. This blog site, Moon of Alabama, can be decidedly anti-American, but this is a must read article.

Gun deaths will surpass automobile deaths in the US this year, says The Atlantic. Car crashes killed 33,561 people in 2012, the most recent year for which data are available, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Firearms killed 32,251 people in the US in 2011, the most recent year for which the CDC has data. The young are most at risk: CDC data show guns will kill more Americans under 25 than cars in 2015. Surely, a small price to pay for our Second Amendment freedoms?

Marilyn Tavenner, who served as the chief administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicare Services from 2013 until February, is now in charge of an insurance industry lobby. This tells us all we need to know about where insurance companies see their next pot of gold. It is the Medicare Advantage program, which over the past several years, has become an increasingly important revenue stream for the country’s insurers. Revolving door much?

Obamacare: A Success?

Gallup and Healthways 2015 Q2 survey shows that the uninsured rate among US adults aged 18 and older was 11.4% in the second quarter of 2015, down from 11.9% in the first quarter. The uninsured rate has dropped nearly six percentage points since the fourth quarter of 2013, just before the requirement for Americans to carry health insurance took effect. The latest quarterly uninsured rate is the lowest Gallup and Healthways have recorded since daily tracking of this metric began in 2008. The recent Supreme Court ruling in King v. Burwell affirmed the legality of subsidies provided to those obtaining insurance through the Affordable Care Act via a federal or state exchange. Here are Gallup’s findings:

So, a byzantine insurance scheme originally designed by the Heritage Foundation as a way to keep the insurance cartel from suffering too much, now looks like a success, if reducing the numbers of the uninsured was the goal. But, once it went into effect, it became collectivism to Republicans, with the label “Obamacare” as if it had sprung fully formed from the mind of a Kenyan Socialist.

Here is a second data point, the use of subsidies by ACA insured by state:

Why Bloomberg thinks Massachusetts is a red state is unexplainable, despite the fact that it has a Republican governor. But, it does serve to lower the red state average a bit. Poor states use more subsidies. Not exactly a surprise:

• These are the states where workers regularly vote against unions, even when it means job losses as in the case of Volkswagen in Tennessee.
• Where else but in a red state could the US manager of the new Mercedes plant be arrested at a traffic stop as a potential illegal immigrant?
• Where else would they fly a rebel flag 150 years after surrender? Many of these same states also get large federal agricultural subsidies, but that is acceptable, because the subsidies mainly go to wealthy individuals and corporations.

But, almost half of Americans still oppose Obamacare. Failure was inevitable, success inconceivable, and therefore failure must have happened.

Now there is an agreement in principle to the Greek debt crisis after all. Here, as explained in terms of Grease the musical, is your cliff notes version of the situation. You will not be disappointed if you watch: