July 28, 2021--Let 'Em Die

It was 2008 and perennial presidential candidate Ron Paul was again running for the Republican nomination. What he was best known for was on full display during the first debate.

Paul, though a physician, as an orthodox conservative-Libertarian, was on record as being opposed to Medicare and Medicaid.

In his view, without government funding (and he was in favor of eliminating all federal subsidies) low-income people who did not have medical insurance were on their own when it came to paying for healthcare.

Incredulous, I think it was Chris Matthews, one of the moderators, pressed Paul about these radical views.

What would happen, Matthews asked, if someone without insurance was hit by a motorcycle and, though with life-threatening injuries, somehow managed to get to a hospital, seeking treatment, who would he pay for this?

Without missing a beat, Dr. Paul, said the injured person or his family and friends needed to come up with the cash to pay his bills.

What if he was about to die?

"I suppose he would die," Paul said, sounding sad. He is a doctor, after all, and pledged, as a physician, to follow the Hippocratic Oath.

"Let him die?" Matthews asked.

"Let 'em die." Paul responded.

This was a GOP debate and so there was a burst of applause from the hand-picked, well-heeled audience.

I was reminded of this yesterday when the New York Times reported--

"As coronavirus cases resurge across the country, many inoculated Americans are losing patience with vaccine holdouts who, they say, are neglecting a civic duty or clinging to conspiracy theories and misinformation even as new patients arrive in emergency rooms and the nation renews mask advisories."

Will there be confrontations between those who have been inoculated and those who have opted not to be?

To complicate matters I'm hearing from liberals when they look at the Unvacs--

"Let 'em die."

July 27, 2021--Too Many Toyotas

I posted something a couple of weeks ago about climate change, claiming, like Thomas Malthus, that unless we do something serious to reduce the earth's population there is no effective way to address the climate crisis. 

Too many people means we run out of resources in a hurry and along the way are destined to experience, as we are right now, a collapsing environment, pandemics, and mass deaths.

For a glimpse of how things are unfolding, I picked up Tom Friedman's slightly outdated The World Is Flat.

He is not my favorite reporter but occasionally gets things right. In this case what is happening in China as it urbanizes while the population continues to grow.

Here's something from Friedman that a makes things vivid. And, sorry, scary--

"Another enormously powerful threat to the flattening of the world is on the horizon.  It is not a human resources constraint or a disease, but a natural resources constraint.  If millions of people from India, China, Latin America, and the former Soviet Empire, who for years had been living largely outside the flat world, all start to walk into the flat-world platform--each with his or her own version of the American dream of owning a car, a house, a refrigerator, microwave, and a toaster-we are at best going to experience a serious energy shortage.  At worst, we are going to set off a global struggle for natural resources and junk-up, heat-up, garbage-up, smoke-up, and devour up our little planet faster than at any time in the history of the world.  Be afraid.  I certainly am.

"The resources consumed and the waste put out by each person varies greatly around the world, being highest in the first world and lowest in the third world.  On the average, each citizen of the U.S., Western Europe, and Japan consumes thirty-two times more resources, such as fossil fuels, and puts out thirty-two times more waste, then do inhabitants of the third world.  But low-impact people are becoming high-impact people.

"Indeed, the flattening of the world is making low-impact people into high-impact people faster, in greater numbers, and with greater impacts than at any other time in the history of the world.  

"I [Friedman] asked Michael Zhao, a young researcher in the New York Times's Beijing bureau to check on the increase in the number of motor vehicles in China.  Michael wrote back to me the following:  

"Hi Tom, I hope this email finds you well.  On your question about how many cars are added each day in Beijing, I did some research on the Internet and found that car sales in Beijing for April 2004 were 43,000--24.1% more than the same period the previous year.  So that is, 1,433 cars were added daily to Beijing.  New car sales this month were 30,000 or 1,000 cars each day added to the city.  The total car sales, new and used cars, from January to April 2004 were 165,000, that is about 1,375 cars added each day to Beijing over this period.  This data is from the Beijing Municipal Bureau of Commerce.  The city's bureau of statistics has it that the total car sales in 2003 were 407,649, or 1,117 cars added each day."

You get the point. We're in trouble and will make it worse if we do not do a better job of controlling population growth. 

I urge you to put it high on your list of global concerns.

July 8, 2021--Fake Weather

 The NY Times reported last weekend that Rupert Murdoch, owner of Fox and Sky News, the Wall Street Journal, and various tabloid rags, is moving in on weather forecasting.

Not as a public service but as a new way for him and his family to further enrich themselves.

They noticed that viewership of Fox News is in a precipitous decline and they are desperate to make up the loses elsewhere. 

There are 38 percent fewer Fox (and CNN) viewers this year tuning in to Murdoch's version of the news. And this means fewer sponsors and a weakening bottom line.

In the Fox empire about a billion dollars a year traditionally accrues to their U.S. news division, which has made Fox in America their worldwide profit leader.

They also noticed that while news reporting is shedding ratings, weather reporting is booming. Weather people from Amy Freeze on down (yes, that's her name) are bringing in big money. Perhaps as much as Sean Hannity.

As a result, weather reporting to attract additional viewers is set to become more and more entertaining and, likely, scarier because they are also discovering people will tune in in bigger numbers when a hurricane approaches (as now with Elsa) or, better for ratings, when cataclysmic tornadoes are in the area.

I confess to being one of those people watching weather news compulsively while barely catching what's on MSNBC. So I am part of that 38 percent and expect to see on Fox tornado warnings for Times Square.

July 5, 2021--Weaselburger

As much as we may be eager to see Him in handcuffs and an orange jumpsuit, excited by the implications of last week's indictments in the case of Donald J. Trump, be careful about letting your hopes soar because it will likely be many months, even years before justice will be served.

That's just the way our system works when it comes to prosecuting a wealthy person for white collar crimes who wants to delay, delay, delay things. Run out the clock, as the TV lawyers like to sum up things.

So we may have to satisfy ourselves with stories about Trump's CFO, Allen Weaselburger, left twisting in the wind while assorted DAs and attorneys general attempt to get him to flip, to become the key witness in the Trump prosecution. 

Worse, it may turn out that Weaselburger is the one person who will take a bullet for Trump and without live corroborating witnesses (as opposed to documentary evidence) these kinds of tax fraud cases have a tendency to go nowhere.

Without the father, Fred, and the son, Donald, Weaselburger would be working for H&R Block in a Long Island mall.

So he might take a fall especially since even if convicted he would be likely to be sentenced to a year or two of hardish time.