Category: culture

The pundits who cry wolf

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We should all know what it means to “cry wolf” and while pundits across the political spectrum are prone to dong so, those on the liberal end of the spectrum should be kicking themselves right about now that because of the way they demonized a very decent Mitt Romney in 2012 (as well many other decent conservatives over many years) they have exhausted the limits of the English language to the point that they can’t effectively expose Donald Trump as being uniquely dangerous in his unfitness for the office that he is dangerously close to holding. (He was dangerously close as soon as the Iowa caucuses were over.)

Having inured the electorate with their constant invective against anyone or anything conservative, they have squandered any moral or intellectual capital they might have had and made it so that wide swaths of voters think that choosing between Clinton and Trump is a matter of choosing their favorite (or least un-favorite) shade of gray rather than a choice between dirt and radioactive waste. (You don’t want to set either one on your dinner table but while one might gross you out the other will eventually prove fatal even if you don’t actually ingest it.)

Pundits on the right are equally powerless because of their history of exaggerated rhetoric to effectively show qualitative differences between political disagreement and a 5 alarm dumpster fire of a candidate. If the Democrats were to nominate someone as toxic as Trump – which they undoubtedly have a few of within their ranks (lets hope they never stoop as low as the GOP did this year) – these talking heads would be left hoping that the electorate could recognize when it was being offered a dirty bomb rather than a conventional weapon.

I wrote the above on November 2nd. On November 6th I came across this video where Bill Maher makes the same “we cried wolf” statement: http://www.mrctv.org/videos/maher-panics-over-fascist-prez-trump-confesses-cried-wolf-bush

Tags Clinton, discourse, Donald Trump

culture National politics

A Time for Contrition

{Billy} Bush apologized for his language and behavior in the tape on Friday, saying he was “embarrassed and ashamed.” “It’s no excuse, but this happened eleven years ago — I was younger, less mature, and acted foolishly in playing along. I’m very sorry,” he added. (via USA Today)

“Embarrassed and ashamed” – that’s exactly what Billy Bush should be and saying so suggests the possibility that he has matured in the 11 years since this recording took place. It’s exactly what Mr. Trump should both feel and say. At (then) 59 he should have matured past that point long before the video happened but I can allow someone to be a late bloomer morally. Unfortunately for the nation, Mr. Trump seems incapable of maturing or feeling remorse. The best he can manage is to be “not proud of it.” (via Washington Post) In offering a perfunctory apology he simply dismisses it as “locker room talk.”

Of course it’s locker room talk – in all too many locker rooms* (and apparently buses) – but that doesn’t mean it should be accepted even in those venues. If an adult finds that the hormonal teenagers in their locker room are engaging in any talk like that the response should be to teach those youth to elevate themselves and become better – not to tell them it’s okay to say such things as long as they keep it within the locker room.

While he assures us (in response to the repeated inquiries by Anderson Cooper) that he has never engaged in the kinds of actions that he talked about, he failed to offer even a hint of recognition that such talk is degrading to the person speaking and to any person being spoken of, and that acceptance of such talk – even under the guise that it is limited to locker room situations – is degrading to our society as a whole.

This man who claims that he has never asked God for forgiveness has just given the nation further evidence that he was telling the truth on that score. Anyone who has ever engaged in such talk, not matter how young or hormonal they were, should be embarrassed, ashamed, and contrite whenever the subject is brought up and should, in unequivocal terms denounce their past behavior. Doing any less than that is to become guilty again – no matter if more than a decade has passed. To knowingly elevate such a man to the nations highest office is hardly better than trying to repeal the Nineteenth Amendment and openly relegate women to a second class status.

* In fairness to all those who regularly frequent locker rooms – especially professional and collegiate athletes – “too many locker rooms” should not be taken to mean “most locker rooms” and there have been many athletes stepping forward to point out that none of the locker rooms in their experience have included such vile talk.

Tags 2016, Donald Trump, national candidates

culture politics

Public vs Private Companies

Post author By David
Post date March 26, 2014
No Comments on Public vs Private Companies

Photo by Paul Riismandel

Coverage of the Hobby Lobby case seems to be consistent in saying that the U.S. Supreme Court is essentially deciding the question of whether not-specifically-religious corporations can exercise religious rights. The issue in this case is requiring insurance coverage for federally determined forms of contraception but if the decision is based on the ability of companies to exercise religious rights then it could also extend to whether companies can choose under what circumstances they will offer their services.

It struck me this morning that the question isn’t really whether corporations can exercise religious rights. The real question is: at what point in the pursuit of profit do individuals diminish or forego their right to religious expression? Those siding with the government in this case are afraid that companies will be able to use the guise of religious belief to get around the expense of some legal mandates. After all, if the Green family (Hobby Lobby) can claim religious belief avoid paying for some expensive forms of birth control for their employees why can’t the Walton family (Walmart) do the same?

Tags Deseret News, religion, Supreme Court

culture politics State

Funding Education

Senator Pat Jones has an idea about how to bring in more money for our public education system in Utah. I appreciate what she is trying to accomplish and laud her efforts to make a difference but as someone who definitely qualifies as having a large family (this bill will hit me twice as hard as at least half the households in the state) – in other words as someone whom this bill targets for funding – I have to say that there are a few problems with the logic behind this effort.

Tags civic participation, Education, KSL, Utah

culture Local politics State

Thoughts on Caucus System Reform

Post author By David
Post date June 12, 2013
No Comments on Thoughts on Caucus System Reform

Curt Bentley has an excellent post in which he discusses the issue of reforming the caucus system. I really appreciate the methodical approach he has taken to examine the issue. I completely agree with each of his guiding principles and while I suspect I am more comfortable with the caucus system in its current form than he seems to be, I also want to see it strengthened through some reforms that will make it better at promoting voter participation and issue-centric campaigns. I agree with his assessment of what the caucus system does well and with his conclusion that dumping the caucus system entirely is not the way to go. As for his assessment of what the caucus system doesn’t do well, I have some thoughts I’d like to share and I sincerely hope that Curt and others will share their feedback on those thoughts.

Tags caucuses, civic participation, primaries

culture politics

Causes and Symptoms

Photo by Center for American Progress

In the practice of medicine we have come a long way from the days when doctors could do little more than treat the symptoms their patients were experiencing and hope that they were physically strong enough to recover from the underlying condition that was producing the symptoms. There are still times when doctors are limited to treating symptoms – such as when a condition has not been diagnosed yet or when it is so far advanced that it is beyond the reach of our available medical care – but generally in modern times our doctors seek to treat the underlying cause of a problem rather than the symptoms. We need to do more of that in the healthcare industry – especially as it relates to our most pressing chronic condition in the industry: uncontrolled costs.

The first step in treating an underlying problem is to correctly identify it. As is often the case with health problems, our healthcare industry is suffering from multiple underlying problems which interact with each other in ways that magnify their combined effects and often make an accurate diagnosis difficult to make. Thankfully we have had people interested enough in this issue for long enough to have made some headway in identifying at least some of the more pronounced underlying problems. These include the cost of new medicines and health care technologies, weakening of market influences in our health care decisions, misaligned incentives in the system, and inefficiencies in the practice of medicine (like misdiagnoses, inaccurate record keeping, reliance on emergency care by some patients, and problematic record sharing between parties).

I can’t claim to have solutions to all of these underlying problems, nor can I be sure that these represent a complete set of the real problems driving our symptom of skyrocketing costs. On the other hand, I am confident that the way we will solve the problems in our healthcare industry will follow the same pattern that people used to solve the problems that the practice of healthcare has become so adept at addressing. It will require many individuals and groups tackling the problems from a variaty of perspectives and experiementing with a variety of solutions. It won’t be done simply by turning the problem over to government and expecting them to insist on providers not charging outrageous amounts for the care we wish to receive (which is essaentially the premise behind the Affordable Care Act).

While I am anything but optomistic about the eventual benefits of the Affordable Care Act, I am encouraged at many other examples of private organizations taking steps to identify and address various of the systemic problems that afflict our health care system. Some of the initiatives I know of which give me hope is the innovative ways that some companies try to reduce health care costs without reducing employee benefits (Walmart, for example), the growing prevalence of individuals having high deductible insurance plans coupled with health savings accounts (which helps to introduce stronger market forces and healthier incentives into the health care system), efforts to bring more transparency to health care from groups like Pricing Healthcare, experiments in combining data-mining with hands-on care to reduce the costs associated with statistical outliers, and the rise of Direct Primary Care Practices and retail clinics.

We are nowhere near solving this problem and we need much more in the way of innovation and fresh perspectives but we have reason to hope that this problem will be cured in time.

Tags health care, innovation

culture politics

Restriction vs Empowerment

Post author By David
Post date January 25, 2013
No Comments on Restriction vs Empowerment

Photo by Tony Young

My 6-year-old son frequently wants to use sharp knives and it is not uncommon for him to get them out of a drawer unsupervised when he has a task that he believes would be served by using a sharp knife. He likes to use then for reasonable things but as far as I can figure out I have only two options to solve this: I can make the knives less and less accessible or I can teach him how to use them safely. In order to make the best decision on how to handle this I should consider the real issues surrounding the situation rather than simply reacting to the immediate danger.

The whole conundrum reminds me of the issue of gun violence in our society. If we want to make a decision that will actually make a positive impact on the situation we have to understand what is really happening in context.

Tags 2nd Amendment, media, perspective, safety, violence

culture National politics

Saving Social Security

Photo by 401(K) 2013

A comment by Doug Wright on his show this morning got me thinking. Doug talked about how incensed he was by a comment made by someone running against Harry Reid that her father never cashed a social security check because he refused to take a handout. (I’m assuming he was referring to Sharron Angle but I’m too lazy to confirm that because the identity of the person he was quoting has no bearing on my subject.) Doug was incensed because of the characterization of Social Security as a handout considering that “we have all paid into it.”

The thought that struck me was that perhaps Social Security should be charity – as opposed to an expectation. The way the system is currently set up, everybody who pays into Social Security expects to receive checks from Social Security when they retire. That’s not entirely true of my generation, many of whom are highly skeptical that Social Security will still be around when we arrive at retirement age, but it is historically true. How much of our Social Security solvency problem would evaporate if we were to add means testing to the social security calculations such that those receiving payments would receive reduced payments or no payments depending on the amount of wealth they had available (regardless of whether they were tapping into that wealth).

Tags Doug Wright, entitlements, KSL, social security

culture

The Scary Flu Monster

Photo By UIC Pharmacy

It always frustrates me when politics and fear drive institutional decisions rather than making decisions based on facts. One of my biggest pet peeves in this area is the hype surrounding the flu vaccine. I was reminded of this today when I heard about the new study casting doubt on the effectiveness of the vaccine.

To be clear, I am not at all opposed to people choosing to get vaccinated, nor am I opposed to organizations providing incentives such as free access to the vaccine in hopes of helping more people to choose to get vaccinated. My problem comes when organizations mandate that people get vaccinated – which is becoming more and more popular in health care organizations regardless of whether any employee or class of employees has any significant likelihood of having any patient contact. I also have a problem with all the public disinformation campaigns where the flu vaccine is heavily pushed by giving the impression that they are more effective than they really are.

The study that I heard about today indicates that the flu vaccine is effective in just over half of those adults who receive it. This is fully 1/3 less effective than has previously been claimed.

Along with that I was disappointed with the way the story was presented by KSL. They talked about the study and how disappointing it was to have this finding coming at the beginning of the flu season. That is in line with their reports last week that the flu was reaching epidemic proportions already early in the flu season. That statement would not bother me except that it’s hard to call this the beginning of the flu season when they were reporting 5 months ago that flu season was right around the corner. That made me question how long flu season is. As is often the case – Wikipedia provided the answer:

In the United States, the flu season is considered October through May. It usually peaks in February.

In other words, this is halfway through the flu season and approaching the peak. I guess they could argue that we are at the beginning of the peak of flu season but that is misleading at best when they have been promoting the flu shot for 5 months already.

Secondly, since I was at Wikipedia I wanted to get some information about the effectiveness of the vaccine that was not tied to this shocking new study. What I found there was even more disappointing to me. All my life I have been taught that the flu vaccine was most important for the physically weaker members of society like elderly and young children. Imagine my surprise when Wikipedia informs me that:

The group most vulnerable to non-pandemic flu, the elderly, is also the least to benefit from the vaccine.

So now I can see that the vaccine is less effective than previously claimed and that those who have been most encouraged to receive it are least likely to benefit from it. In a final blow to the hype surrounding this vaccine I also learned that, although we are strongly encouraged to get vaccinated each year:

protection without revaccination persists for at least three years for children and young adults.

This leads to one of two conclusions. Either vaccination every year is excessive or else we are fighting a losing battle against a disease that mutates every year so that we must be perpetually subjected to a vaccine that is barely 50% effective.

I don’t know about other people but that tells me that mandating that people receive the vaccine is based on an agenda that goes well beyond the facts – and I hate the very idea of such fear mongering.

Tags choices, disinformation, health care, vaccines

culture National politics State

Political Sacred Cows

It is a political reality that in Utah if you wish to become Governor, Senator, or representative of House District 1 you must pledge allegiance to Hill Air Force Base (HAFB). (If you want to be a representative of districts 2, 3, or 4 it doesn’t hurt to pledge allegiance to HAFB either.)

This point was made clear again yesterday as the topic emerged for the democratic candidate for Governor and both his comments regarding HAFB and the comments of other political figures in the state were aired. This tweet by my state senator started a conversation that got me thinking about our sacred cows:

“If there is another #BRAC, #Utah needs seasoned Congressmen like Rob Bishop and Orrin Hatch to protect #HAFB–not a freshman Governor #utpol” –Todd Weiler