Bear Pit: now the sole domicile of politics at LuLa

[JoeKitchen]

“When the Facts Change, I Change My Mind. What Do You Do, Sir?” John Maynard Keynes
And hence, the fake news post is now deleted.
The Trump pardons, not so much. 

First, there is no evidence what so ever that John Maynard Keynes ever actually changed his mind.  That man was always a spend thrift economist! 

Now say what you want about the Trump pardons, and all previous presidents' pardons, which were for specific crimes that were already known, the Biden pardon is a beast all its own.  Hunter has been pardoned for all crimes, whether known or not for almost an 11 year period. 

That is absurd, especially given the ample evidence of potential sex crimes on his laptop, crimes of which that have not even been brought up yet. 

The only thing approaching this is the pardon of Nixon, but that was to help the country move past Watergate. 

[digitaldog]

First, there is no evidence what so ever that John Maynard Keynes ever actually changed his mind.

There is no evidence that statement is correct. But there IS this:

Whether or not Keynes originated the quote, it makes sense because it fits his approach to the world. Keynes was never afraid to change his mind — sometimes to the intense annoyance of contemporaries, who recall him changing stance even mid conversation. Samuelson relates a joke that if the British Parliament asked six economists for an opinion on any subject, they always got seven answers — two from John Maynard Keynes.

https://ejb39.medium.com/john-maynard-keynes-and-the-importance-of-changing-your-mind-7b004cf4dd1b
But then the facts changed, and I changed my mind and did something about it. Your turn.

[JoeKitchen]

There is no evidence that statement is correct. But there IS this:
https://ejb39.medium.com/john-maynard-keynes-and-the-importance-of-changing-your-mind-7b004cf4dd1b
But then the facts changed, and I changed my mind and did something about it. Your turn.

They say sarcasm is rarely understood by those who are autistic or narcissistic.  Makes me wonder.   

[digitaldog]

They say sarcasm is rarely understood by those who are autistic or narcissistic.  Makes me wonder.   

The value of facts and evidence exists even when you decide to ignore them.

[Robert Roaldi]

Live and learn. I thought we already knew everything there was to know from Hunter's laptop. It has been out there long enough.

Having some kind of clemency makes sense to me. For example, if we suddenly decide that slavery is bad, for example, it doesn't make much moral sense to keep escaped slaves in prison. There needs to be mechanisms to do the right thing in circumstances like that. Another example I would be inclined to include is clemency for people caught up in the "3 strikes rule" when the third strike is a trivial misstep. It seems unduly cruel to apply the rule in those cases. I'd be comfortable with a standing committee (in some department somewhere) to oversee decisions about these pardons.

[Robert Roaldi]

So, have those foreigners stopped eating pet dogs in that town?

[Rob C]

So, the Syrians have ousted their dictator, propped up, lo these several years, by Russia. The new power is a volatile mixture of competing Islamist groups come together in the common cause of kicking out the erstwhile leader.

The pretence of supporting Asad, the ex-leader just removed, gave Russia the key to its sole armed Mediterranean presence (not that it doesn't already own large swathes of Spanish tourist territory in Marbella etc.). What next? Will it accept that its puppet has fled (to Russia), and that its presence in Syria has become redundant? Or, will it proclaim itself interim, present peacekeeper, pledge its support to seeing a new election fulfilled, then hang its muscle around the neck of the future winning group, thus using that newly focussed support as reason to hang onto its present bases? Or, more likely, will it become Russia's Vietnam? Russia, as the West, already has experience of the likely results of such strategies in Afghanistan...

Interesting, if explosive times ahead.

[kers]

...
Interesting, if explosive times ahead.

And the explosions come from Israel and the US that started bombing Iranian and Syrian wapen depots... to welcome the new powers in Syria...

(International law is fortunately not applicable to those nations...according to themselves )

[degrub]

I guess we have come full circle since WW I. Different players, same story.

[Jonathan Cross]

On a recent BBC TV programme, Question Time, the panel were discussing immigration.  This is an emotive subject as it is in America, though the language is not so blunt.  Last year there were just on 1 million immigrants to the UK, of which only 40,000 were illegal, mostly on boats across the Channel from Europe but originating from a variety of countries outside Europe.

A member of the audience made a powerful point.  He mentioned  the difficulties in Germany in the 1930s.  The search was on to find who to blame and the feeling was that whoever it was should be removed.  We all know the answer, the Jews. He thought the language about removing Jews then is similar to that used sometimes about immigrants now.  Given what happened to the Jews in Germany and how the population was encouraged by some of the leaders then, the question was whether we are heading the same way now.

A sobering thought.

Jonathan
 

[degrub]

The US is going through one of its repeated cycles of hate/love of immigrants from Mexico and other Latin American countries. Been ever so since the Mexican American war that set the border between the two countries. Social conservatives want to kick them out while the rest of the country recognizes their contribution to society.

[Rob C]

A problem with immigrants is that, out of desperation, they can be induced to accept low wages, thus undercutting the folks who already have managed to establish reasonable levels of reward. But hey, you don’t need to be a “foreigner” to do that: just look at what went down with professional photography once the art schools began to churn out more students than there were vacancies to go round. Before those schools expanded their services to include photography, it was something you learned the hard way, by being an assistant. Unless you were rich, it was the only way in. Either way, the number of jobs and applicants roughly matched the amount of work available.

However, if the immigrants are highly educated with track records, then they truly can become contributors to the national wealth. At least, that was once the theory: today, there are many, many over-educated folks around who have to accept that the market there is probably saturated too. It’s even possible to remain unemployed because a would-be employer thinks you too qualified for the gig, even perhaps fearing you are more capable than he or that you are just applying until a better, more suited to your ability number comes your way, when you’ll jump ship and leave him short-handed again.

[Robert Roaldi]

The following is the transcript of a CBC Radio interview with a Colorado-based reporter who has written a lot about US health care, specifically the role of private insurers. They give some harrowing details about how claims are routinely turned down and also about the delays in the subsequent appeals process. You don't to have to be too cynical to appreciate how important delaying tactics are to health care insurance profits. You don't have to pay out as much once the patient is dead. The statistical levels of claim denials makes it seem silly to even bother buying insurance, I mean, why pay premiums if the insurer doesn't pay out when you need them to.

One of the shocking claims is despite the high percentage of Americans who are insured, there is still crippling medical debt in the US, which seems odd but maybe isn't.

https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/deny-delay-and-a-health-ceo-s-murder-transcript-1.7405266

This is a hot topic these days because of that assassination of a health care company CEO in the US. I think the guy they arrested should hire the lawyer that represented Kyle Rittenhouse. (Is that too cynical of me?) The prosecution is going to have be ultra careful about their jury picks because given the number of people out there who hate insurance companies, they might end up with a jury that can't wait to acquit the guy. But the bottom line is that he shot a rich white guy, a corporate CEO at that, and they have him dead to rights, good video too. I am not sure the shooter fits the mold of the mythical American anti-heroes like Jesse James or Billy the Kid. But they were acting against the corporate railroad titans of the day, or so the mythology tells us. I doubt the truth is that simple.

I can't wait for the insurance shooter's story to come out, especially his motivation. A few years ago when a couple of unarmed black kids were killed in the US, it didn't take for stories to come about how the kids were not saints, complete with some unflattering photos. As I remember things, it was not made clear what the kids' past had to do with the incidents in question. So it will interesting to see what stories emerge about the insurance shooter.

One note that I find interesting and that was alluded to the transcript above and that I have read about in the media elsewhere, is that some insurers have made changes to their policies recently. Are they trying to remove the targets on their back?

I will not make any moral judgements except to say that this is just another in a long line-up of shit shows. We keep making the same mistake. We act as if society is a support system for commerce, whereas it's actually the other way round.

[Rob C]

We get a lot of things wrong in Britain and Europe, but one thing we get right is the principle of public health care. (I write principle, note.)

There is a tendency to equate its users as cheapskates who should be ashamed of themselves for not having private health insurance. The cheapskate notion derives from the mistaken concept that the public health service comes free. Of course it doesn't, nothing does. Its users are, if working, paying towards it every time they collect their salary. They have nothing about which to feel guilty.

Here, in Spain, it is common practice for those who can afford it, to buy a private policy and also use the public service, depending on the circumstances. That was the position my wife and I were in at one time, because when we settled here, we were not entitled to use of the public service, and so we took out private insurance. Later on, partly because we became official full-time residents, we became entitled to use of the Spanish health services. We enjoyed good health and bothered neither service. Then, I had my first heart attack. The ambulance took me to the closest hospìtal, which was private, and ditto the next time. Later when my wife discovered she had cancer, that was also treated privately. One day, she fell and she broke her hip and was rushed to the local public hospital. Whilst there, they discovered cancer had returned. Within ten days she had a new hip and the cancer op, too. She walked out of that hospital without a limp, without a stick. The treatment was so good that she wondered why on Earth we were paying so much for private insurance, so we cancelled it.

Times changed. The treatment at the same public hospital is still excellent - however, the demands on the services have grown out of all proportion, and whilst I can still see the local doctor within a couple of days, at the longest, the hospitals have become another story: I am currently waiting for three different appointments there, and have been doing so for months.

Why the changes? I don't know. I imagine that it's because as a society, we are more health-conscious, and on top of that, we have simply reproduced too much. Also, from some perspectives, good medical treatment means we live too long, creating a queue of old folks like me who would once have just died and left space for the younger. Add migration to the mix, and it's not surprising demand overpowers ability to supply.

Solution? Again, I don't know. I can imagine that we will all have to pay a more realistic taxation, that the state will have to be more discerning about whom it will decide to support. In the end, I expect that the cost of the public service will mean that many belts will have to be tightened, but at least we'll know that it's going towards the public good, not the lifestyle of those mega-wealthy members of the 1%, for whom enough is never enough.

[Robert Roaldi]

We get a lot of things wrong in Britain and Europe, but one thing we get right is the principle of public health care. (I write principle, note.)

There is a tendency to equate its users as cheapskates who should be ashamed of themselves for not having private health insurance. The cheapskate notion derives from the mistaken concept that the public health service comes free. Of course it doesn't, nothing does. Its users are, if working, paying towards it every time they collect their salary. They have nothing about which to feel guilty.

Here, in Spain, it is common practice for those who can afford it, to buy a private policy and also use the public service, depending on the circumstances. That was the position my wife and I were in at one time, because when we settled here, we were not entitled to use of the public service, and so we took out private insurance. Later on, partly because we became official full-time residents, we became entitled to use of the Spanish health services. We enjoyed good health and bothered neither service. Then, I had my first heart attack. The ambulance took me to the closest hospìtal, which was private, and ditto the next time. Later when my wife discovered she had cancer, that was also treated privately. One day, she fell and she broke her hip and was rushed to the local public hospital. Whilst there, they discovered cancer had returned. Within ten days she had a new hip and the cancer op, too. She walked out of that hospital without a limp, without a stick. The treatment was so good that she wondered why on Earth we were paying so much for private insurance, so we cancelled it.

Times changed. The treatment at the same public hospital is still excellent - however, the demands on the services have grown out of all proportion, and whilst I can still see the local doctor within a couple of days, at the longest, the hospitals have become another story: I am currently waiting for three different appointments there, and have been doing so for months.

Why the changes? I don't know. I imagine that it's because as a society, we are more health-conscious, and on top of that, we have simply reproduced too much. Also, from some perspectives, good medical treatment means we live too long, creating a queue of old folks like me who would once have just died and left space for the younger. Add migration to the mix, and it's not surprising demand overpowers ability to supply.

Solution? Again, I don't know. I can imagine that we will all have to pay a more realistic taxation, that the state will have to be more discerning about whom it will decide to support. In the end, I expect that the cost of the public service will mean that many belts will have to be tightened, but at least we'll know that it's going towards the public good, not the lifestyle of those mega-wealthy members of the 1%, for whom enough is never enough.

Public health care is an insurance policy that the country buys itself. The characterizations of it being "free" and taken advantage of by freeloaders is well-documented disinformation propagated by the private health industry. But the propaganda was well done in the US, so much so that even when data showing the near-criminal ineffectiveness of private health care, people still vote against a public system.

i have no idea what the situation is in UK/Spain, but here in Canada, successive conservative provincial governments have de-funded public health care under the guise of tax reduction. The Ontario government has simultaneously passed enabling legislation to make the creation of for-profit medical services easier to set up. It takes a special kind of blinkered political gullibility to NOT understand that the money you save on taxes is the SAME money that you will have to spend on private health care. The back room lobbying from the private health industry must be pretty strong though, because more and more politicians fall under its spell. People here scream about long emergency room waits and the difficulty in finding family doctors but bemoan paying taxes to fund those services. But somehow they find the money to buy $80,000 pick-up trucks. Wait till they get insurance company invoices followed later by denial of claims precisely when they are at their most vulnerable. It's a mystery to me why anyone would willingly want to give up what we have in favour of the US model.

The thing is that the political class is increasingly made up of wealthy people and they see the world differently than you or me.

[marvpelkey]

As Canada has been raised as a health care example, I will add a couple points.

My sister works in one of the regional health care systems here in BC. She was previously an office manager for many years at a doctors office (I think about 6-7 doctors and support staff). A few years back that office closed and as a result, she found a position within the regional system, and is now part of a union (her prior employment was non-union).

Her previous employer shut down due to aging doctors but more due to the high cost of the business. They sold out to a medical conglomerate and apparently many of the new doctors don't want to shoulder the cost/responsibilty of a business and find it easier to work for a large entity at their drop-in clinics. This appears to be the way of the future and fewer people will have the luxury of a family physician. The associated problem with that is a disjointed process where no one physician actually oversees a patients care.

She is constantly telling me tales a gross mismanagement and waste and the rampant lack of employee responsibility. Because everyone is part of a strong union, they realize they are almost impervious to penalty and routinely just don't show up for work or call in sick when they want a "day off". They are always understaffed and the managers don't seem to care or be able to deal with this problem. Patient care and cost to the public suffers significantly as a result. A quick example occurred a while back when the government purchased a bunch of high cost CPR dolls for some specific training.

I would suggest cost management in a public facility is nowhere near optimum and that falls on the shoulders of the taxpayers.

[Robert Roaldi]

As Canada has been raised as a health care example, I will add a couple points.

My sister works in one of the regional health care systems here in BC. She was previously an office manager for many years at a doctors office (I think about 6-7 doctors and support staff). A few years back that office closed and as a result, she found a position within the regional system, and is now part of a union (her prior employment was non-union).

Her previous employer shut down due to aging doctors but more due to the high cost of the business. They sold out to a medical conglomerate and apparently many of the new doctors don't want to shoulder the cost/responsibilty of a business and find it easier to work for a large entity at their drop-in clinics. This appears to be the way of the future and fewer people will have the luxury of a family physician. The associated problem with that is a disjointed process where no one physician actually oversees a patients care.

She is constantly telling me tales a gross mismanagement and waste and the rampant lack of employee responsibility. Because everyone is part of a strong union, they realize they are almost impervious to penalty and routinely just don't show up for work or call in sick when they want a "day off". They are always understaffed and the managers don't seem to care or be able to deal with this problem. Patient care and cost to the public suffers significantly as a result. A quick example occurred a while back when the government purchased a bunch of high cost CPR dolls for some specific training.

I would suggest cost management in a public facility is nowhere near optimum and that falls on the shoulders of the taxpayers.

I hate to be too cynical but that describes almost every business out there.

My wife and I are lucky to be patients at a family health clinic here in Ottawa. We have a nominal family doctor, but the practice is large with many part-time doctors, nurses, nurse practitioners, and others. Best primary health care we've ever received. We rarely see our own family doctor who is only there 2 days per week, but we've never not been able to see someone who has access to all our patient info. We most often see our nurse practitioner. Ontario has recently certified pharmacists to be primary care givers for certain procedures and there is a list of those on some web site. It's a bit odd because it implies that you have to self-diagnose first to determine whether you have one of the conditions that pharmacists can treat. If you don't have a family doctor, good luck to you.

When we've both been referred to more specialist care, not often thankfully, the care we received from them was outstanding. This is more or less what I hear from others.

One of the mysteries to me about health care in Canada is that I have never heard of a place that did NOT have a doctor shortage. Where are they all? Now and then I'll read about some town/city that is implementing a process to attract doctors but I never really hear about the outcomes. I have heard that Elliot Lake, a northern Ontario town that re-invented itself as a retirement community after uranium mining left town, has done a good job of medical recruitment. I guess it's a priority for a place full of retirees.

I've occasionally read about private equity firms taking over medical practices. Now that's scary.

[Rob C]

One of my granddaughters is a doctor (in Britain). After she got her degree she went to work in a variety of hospìtals. The load and the hours were both terrible; the staff was very thinly spread, and frequently they were working shifts that would have seen any industrial operation closed down by strikes. One of her fellow doctors was killed driving home from work one morning - they think she just fell asleep at the wheel. Yes, I sometimes worked overnight too, as a photographer, but that was an occasional event: for the hospital docs it's sometimes the norm.

She and her doctor husband did two working forays to Australia, where the pay was much better but the hours not all that much. They both returned to Britain, partly because of family ties, but also because the cost of living in Oz was very high. Where they will settle eventually, I don't know, but my granddaughter has had further training and is now in GP land instead of hospitals. She finds that much better, and can actually live a domestic life. She told me that without foreign doctors coming to work in the UK, the system would simply have to close.

When I watched the video of her graduation ceremony from university/medical school, it was noticeable that perhaps a majority of the people getting capped and with special qualifications were from the Far East. She told me that that was primarily because the students were totally dedicated, aware of the financial cost to their parents, and determined not to lose face.

Regarding the ubiquitous high costs - there is this to consider: insurance for doctors is very, very high. We have become such a litigious society, looking for money at every opportunity. In a sense, we are our own worst enemies.

[degrub]

We also want to blame others for our misfortune. Sometimes it is deserved. Other times, not so much, and just a way to save our face.

[Robert Roaldi]

Ex-FBI informant Alexander Smirnov admits to lying in Biden's impeachment inquiry https://www.huffpost.com/entry/bc-us-hunter-biden-informant-charges_n_675b80e3e4b04193d182470a?utm_campaign=share_email&ncid=other_email_o63gt2jcad4. I wonder if Trump will pardon him. Hearing about Biden's numerous pardons, it seems to be the season for it.

I saw a news item the other day about Trump's new FBI guy wanting to prosecute the media, which I took to mean the part of the media that is viewed by Trumpistan to have been anti-Trump. It did not say what charges he would be bringing but those kinds of accusations always seem to short on specifics. My guess is those announcements are designed to operate as equivalents to libel chill, that is, scare the media into shutting up and not as real policy. It would be interesting to examine this from the point of view of free speech or 1st amendment rights more generally, but substantive matters like that have no place in banana republic wannabes. Aren't radio stations and newspapers the traditional places that get shut down after a "revolution"? Free speech nowadays seems to mean that Alex Jones can accuse the parents of murdered children of being fakes, and that doxing them is ok. Oh yeah, I forgot, Alex was punished.

Some info has emerged about the healthcare CEO shooter Luigi Mangione. His cousin is a Republican Congressman. Further, Luigi has a couple of degrees in Computer Science. As a former software developer, I can tell you that knowing something about computers is almost as big a red flag as being a photographer. I'd search his apartment for a DLSR. If it's an enthusiast grade full-frame model, I'd throw away the key.

It cynically occurred to me that if there are any CEO copycat shootings in the future, the new "right-wing" powers that be might start making noises about gun control. For one thing, they might not like it that "their own" are being shot, and two, wannabe authoritarians might not like an armed citizenry so much. How to construct the propaganda campaign to sell the "new gun control" might make for a fascinating film plot. I think of movies like "Wag the Dog" or "Charlie Wilson's War", which reminds me that I'd like to rewatch that latter movie, if for no other reason than to see Philip Seymour Hoffman in action. If I were in charge, I'd start with statistics showing that "liberals" have been buying too many guns and go from there. Needless to say, whether it's true or not is irrelevant.

Another week, another mindf**k. Have a nice weekend folks.