$5,000 For A New Knee; $400,000 For Literally Nothing August 16, 2019August 15, 2019 Following up on Wednesday’s going abroad for medical care . . . this Mississippi woman got paid $5,000 to have her knee replaced. By a Mayo-trained Milwaukee surgeon. Both flown all expenses paid to Cancun because the hospital is so much cheaper there. Her employer saved more than half what it would have cost to do in the U.S. (Thanks, Brian!) This really sensible sounding woman — you will relate to her — lost $400,000 over a long period of time, fully knowing that she was gambling WITH NO CHANCE TO WIN, yet unable to stop. It’s quite a story and begins about 17:26 minutes into the podcast. Have a great weekend.
Bush 43’s Chief Speechwriter On Trump August 15, 2019August 16, 2019 Devastating: The Return Of America’s Cruelest Passion By Michael Gerson I had fully intended to ignore President Trump’s latest round of racially charged taunts against an African American elected official, and an African American activist, and an African American journalist and a whole city with a lot of African Americans in it. I had every intention of walking past Trump’s latest outrages and writing about the self-destructive squabbling of the Democratic presidential field, which has chosen to shame former vice president Joe Biden for the sin of being an electable, moderate liberal. But I made the mistake of pulling James Cone’s ‘The Cross and the Lynching Tree‘ off my shelf — a book designed to shatter convenient complacency. Cone recounts the case of a white mob in Valdosta, Ga., in 1918 that lynched an innocent man named Haynes Turner. Turner’s enraged wife, Mary, promised justice for the killers. The sheriff responded by arresting her and then turning her over to the mob, which included women and children. According to one source, Mary was ‘stripped, hung upside down by the ankles, soaked with gasoline, and roasted to death. In the midst of this torment, a white man opened her swollen belly with a hunting knife and her infant fell to the ground and was stomped to death.’ God help us. It is hard to write the words. This evil — the evil of white supremacy, resulting in dehumanization, inhumanity and murder — is the worst stain, the greatest crime, of U.S. history. It is the thing that nearly broke the nation. It is the thing that proved generations of Christians to be vicious hypocrites. It is the thing that turned normal people into moral monsters, capable of burning a grieving widow to death and killing her child. When the president of the United States plays with that fire or takes that beast out for a walk, it is not just another political event, not just a normal day in campaign 2020. It is a cause for shame. It is the violation of martyrs’ graves. It is obscene graffiti on the Lincoln Memorial. It is, in the eyes of history, the betrayal — the re-betrayal — of Haynes and Mary Turner and their child. And all of this is being done by an ignorant and arrogant narcissist reviving racist tropes for political gain, indifferent to the wreckage he is leaving, the wounds he is ripping open. Like, I suspect, many others, I am finding it hard to look at resurgent racism as just one in a series of presidential offenses or another in a series of Republican errors. Racism is not just another wrong. The Antietam battlefield is not just another plot of ground. The Edmund Pettus Bridge is not just another bridge. The balcony outside Room 306 at the Lorraine Motel is not just another balcony. As U.S. history hallows some causes, it magnifies some crimes. What does all this mean politically? It means that Trump’s divisiveness is getting worse, not better. He makes racist comments, appeals to racist sentiments and inflames racist passions. The rationalization that he is not, deep down in his heart, really a racist is meaningless. Trump’s continued offenses mean that a large portion of his political base is energized by racist tropes and the language of white grievance. And it means — whatever their intent — that those who play down, or excuse, or try to walk past these offenses are enablers. Some political choices are not just stupid or crude. They represent the return of our country’s cruelest, most dangerous passion. Such racism indicts Trump. Treating racism as a typical or minor matter indicts us. I sent this to a Trump-supporting friend — Princeton, class of long ago — who basically just sloughed it off. Consequential times. Help.
Need A New Hip? A New Heart? Some Tomatoes? August 14, 2019August 15, 2019 This seven-minute PBS report will save you a fortune. And smart U.S. insurers should be giving its patients incentives for getting top quality care 90 minutes off-shore. Or look at THIS example (thanks, Brian): a Mississippi woman gets paid $5,000 to have her knee replaced by a highly trained Milwaukee orthopedic surgeon, both of whom are flown to Mexico because the hospital is so much cheaper there that her employer saved more than half what it would have cost in the U.S. And while we’re worried about your health — and the high cost of maintaining it — here’s more on the organic food controversy I stumbled into. First, Gloria explained why she doesn’t spend the extra money for organics. Then, a couple of days later, I posted a powerful two-minute video explaining why, well, maybe she should. But guess what? Turns out, Gloria may be right. The maker of that video is being sued for allegedly misleading the public. First off, the levels of pesticides exposed in the video are judged to pose no risk. And by the way? Here’s a list of pesticides used in organic farming. (Thanks, Matt Ball.) Doubtless, some organic food may be healthier than its non-organic alternative — and perhaps even vice versa. I don’t know. To me, a good tomato is a good tomato, and for now I’ll take my chances. The main thing is to eat more fruit and vegetables and nuts and seeds — and less meat. Better for your health, better for the cow, and, as noted yesterday, way, way, way better for the planet. (Remember the Tony Seba video I posted a few months ago, that starts asking folks if they can spot the one car in a sea of horse-drawn carriages in Times Square? And then shows the same scene ten years later and asks people if they can spot the one horse amongst all the cars and trucks? I like to think this is how it will be with four-legged meat.)
Loving My Burgers August 13, 2019August 12, 2019 You know what? Ten hungry guys recently did a taste test on our Webber grill, and the consensus was that Beyond Burgers and sausages taste as good as or better than the four-legged competition. This is a big, big deal. Because as Newsweek reports: . . . Global meat production causes more climate change than emissions from every single plane, train, and automobile in the world. The problem is that feeding crops to animals and then eating part of the animal is inherently inefficient. According to the World Resource Institute, it takes nine calories of crops to get one calorie of chicken meat. A review in the journal Nature found that per calorie of protein, poultry causes 40 times more global warming than legumes. . . . [Yet] per-capita meat consumption in the U.S. is currently as high as ever. Global per-capita meat consumption is also at an all-time high and expected to go up for as long as anyone can project. . . . Luckily, there is a solution that directly reduces impact without consumer coercion. We can produce the meat people want in resource-efficient ways: directly from plants or from cells. Producing meat directly from plants—as is being done by the wildly successful companies Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods—is inherently more efficient and thus vastly more sustainable. As a bonus, plant-based meat isn’t subject to fecal contamination or heavy-metal buildup. It also doesn’t drive antibiotic resistance. . . . By shifting meat production to these more efficient methods, we free up most of the land currently used to grow feed crops. Some of this land can be used for growing more food, along with a greater diversity of crops, for the world’s growing population. But much of this land can and should be allowed to return to carbon-storing forests. You still eat meat more than once a month, or on special occasions? I hope five years from now, almost none of us will. Meanwhile, it turns out that, while he has publicly denied “collusion” 400 times, when under oath Trump simply “can’t recall.” Putin is winning. Trump backers like Moscow Mitch don’t care.
Amy Klobuchar August 12, 2019August 9, 2019 And then there’s Amy Klobuchar. (“Are Democrats Overlooking Their Most Electable Candidate?”) We have so many solid, sane candidates, any one of whom could restore decency to the White House and lead the country to a better place. Will we one day elect a digital president? And even know she or he IS digital? Start with these Calvin Klein and KFC ads. To paraphrase Huxley, quoting Shakespeare: “O, brave new world that hath such possibly fake people in’t.” Updating last Thursday’s post . . . thanks to those of you who sent this clip from Sicko, wherein Michael Moore interviews a young British doctor. I hadn’t seen it before, but it makes the same powerful point: doctors do just fine under universal health care.
Moral Clarity August 10, 2019August 9, 2019 Here is Lawrence O’Donnell Thursday night on Trump’s El Paso propaganda video and his actions in Mississippi that same day. Surely, the reign of this fascist sociopath will not be well regarded, years from now, by people who value honesty, dignity, empathy, and democracy. And at the end of the day — if not in the heat of the moment — doesn’t that include most Republicans and evangelicals? Watch Lawrence O’Donnell.
The New G.O.P. August 9, 2019August 8, 2019 This story of naked racist white power should be from the 1870s. That it’s from the current governor of Georgia shows how sick today’s G.O.P. leadership (not you, dear moderate Republican reader) has become. Executive summary, from Fair Fight: The story of the Quitman 10+2 seems almost a caricature in revealing America’s battle with deep structural racism, voter intimidation, the legacy of racial violence, abuses of power, and the myth of voter fraud. None of the details in this tragic narrative are exaggerated. In December 2010, twelve Black residents of Quitman, Georgia — eleven of them women — were arrested and charged with 120 separate felony counts of criminality involving election integrity. Among them were local candidates for school board, community organizers, campaign staff, and local leaders. Their alleged crime? Running an effective absentee ballot campaign to elect a black-majority school board. Situated near Georgia’s southern border, Quitman is the seat of Brooks County, named for South Carolina’s Congressman Preston Brooks who infamously assaulted Senator Charles Sumner on the U.S. Senate floor for his speech against slavery. In the century that followed the county’s founding, Brooks County saw more lynchings than all but two counties in the state. The investigation that led to these felony charges represented Governor Brian Kemp’s first major act of voter intimidation as Secretary of State, aimed at voters of color. Yet, Kemp’s assault on democracy was not limited to its targets. The investigation and subsequent criminal proceedings that dragged on for years offered further proof that efforts to suppress the vote were never meant to simply block voters from the ballot, but to create a culture of fear for voters of color — a culture in which exercising your right to vote could cost you your job or your freedom. Kemp’s intimidation and harassment in Quitman began a disturbing pattern of behavior: abusing the powers of his office to target Georgia groups who register, engage, and mobilize voters of color. In 2012, he raided the offices of the Asian American Legal Advocacy Center. In 2014, he subpoenaed the New Georgia Project. And just this year, Kemp’s ethics chief announced he would subpoena bank records of the Abrams for Governor campaign. But just as the Quitman 10+2 never gave up their fight for justice, we won’t be deterred. We need a Fair Fight in Georgia in 2020 and beyond. Please share this story with your network today. Read the whole story? Michael T. Martin: “In the recent Democrat debate, Buttigieg said Republicans would call Democrats ‘socialists’ regardless of what policies they advocated. It reminded me what the conservative pundit David Frum wrote in New York Magazine eight years ago (When Did the GOP Lose Touch With Reality?): ‘Some of the smartest and most sophisticated people I know—canny investors, erudite authors—sincerely and passionately believe that President Barack Obama has gone far beyond conventional American liberalism and is willfully and relentlessly driving the United States down the road to socialism. No counterevidence will dissuade them from this belief: not record-high corporate profits, not almost 500,000 job losses in the public sector, not the lowest tax rates since the Truman administration. It is not easy to fit this belief alongside the equally strongly held belief that the president is a pitiful, bumbling amateur, dazed and overwhelmed by a job too big for him—and yet that is done too.’ The reality of the Republican Party is that there is no reality and hasn’t been for years.” Have a great weekend.
Health Insurance August 8, 2019August 9, 2019 But first, updating Tuesday’s post, two powerful minutes on why Gloria should perhaps NOT boycott organic food. She could eliminate synthetic chemical pesticides from her system. (Not known, she would argue: the effect of natural chemical pesticides used to replace them.) [UPDATE: Turns out, Gloria’s right: It’s not so simple. The maker of that video is being sued for allegedly misleading the public — the levels of pesticides detected in the video are judged to pose no risk. And here’s a list of pesticides used in organic farming.] And now . . . One of my rightwing readers: “Contemplate why we are the only first-world country on earth with 4 of the 10 best hospitals in the world. Maybe it’s because we don’t have universal health care. Did anyone in the debate mention that?” → Nope. Nobody. But two of the other countries with hospitals on the list, Singapore and Israel, have a combined population of 15 million people. With health care spending less than 3% of ours, they have 2 of the world’s top 10. Could it be because they do have universal health care? (No, actually; but one inane question deserves another.) America has fantastic health care for those who can afford it. But it’s not because we have a huge health insurance bureaucracy. That’s not what makes the best of our care so good. Nor is it because Republicans fought so hard against Medicare, and against Obamacare, and even now reject federal Medicaid expansion funds. That’s not what has made the best of our health care so good, either. Denying universal coverage — as Republicans have long been committed to doing, making us the only developed country in the world without it — is not the secret of the Mayo Clinic’s excellence. Joel M: “I have a few questions for you and all the Democrats running for President: 1-Do you know there are trustees of the Social Security and Medicare systems? 2-Do you know they produce annual reports? 3-Have you ever read any of these reports? I’ll save you the trouble. Here are the two most recent: Social Security. Medicare. The good news is that Social Security goes bankrupt in 2035. Why is that the good news? Medicare Part A goes bankrupt in 2026.” → Thanks. Yes, aware. Social Security is an easy fix. Medicare, not — which is why we need to pull huge costs out of the system. Maybe we should cut back on nurses and operating rooms; but I’d rather cut back on health insurance employees and insurance company office buildings. And negotiate prescription drug prices. And promote the many other incentives and best practices the Affordable Care Act launched. And make medical school free, so we’d have terrific young people choosing this field not expecting to make half a million dollars a year to someday pay off their debt and get rich . . . but a really nice living doing something wonderful, like the mostly-happy doctors in most of the rest of the first world. Did you see Michael Moore’s Where To Invade Next? I can’t find the clip, but I still remember his interviewing French doctors who seemed really happy. (Speaking of France, might there even be a thing or two for us to envy? To emulate?) And here, in Sicko, he interviews a young British doc who is more than content. Jim Burt: “Republicans like things the way they are, or even better from their perspective, the way they were in 2009, with 25 million fewer people covered. They talk about their ‘plan’ to cover everyone more fully at lower cost, but FDR told us how to evaluate claims like that. “The various plans discussed by the many candidates for the Democratic nomination are just so many targets for the Republicans, and none of them is likely to get through Congress. The way the Democratic candidates can best talk about their plans is along these lines: ‘Americans are spending about $3.8 trillion a year on medical care and prescriptions of all kinds. Under the current system, hundreds of billions of that are wasted on insurance company profits and efforts to deny medical care rather than provide it. Any plan being offered by me or my fellow candidates will reduce that waste and cover more people, but it will only happen if you elect Democrats to the Presidency and the Senate.” In the meantime, while we struggle to improve our health care system: eat right, eat less, sleep, walk, and help.
The Day Toni Morrison Dropped By August 7, 2019August 7, 2019 Seven years ago, Toni Morrison — who died Monday night — sat on my couch. Being incorrigible, I turned it into a fundraising email. It’s interesting to see what’s changed since 2012 — and what hasn’t. (The only thing I’ve changed are the links to our fund-raising page, in case you are of a mind to save the world.) From: Andrew Tobias Date: Wed, Oct 10, 2012 at 2:13 PM Subject: regaining the momentum The first thing to say is that — with your help — we’re going to win. (I’ll get to that.) And the second thing to say is that we HAVE TO win. But since you already know that, I want to tell you a story. It’s not every day that a Nobel Prize winner, a Pulitzer Prize winner, and a Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient walk into a bar – or in this case an apartment – but she did, into mine, Monday night: Toni Morrison. It was a fundraiser for seven-term Congressman Rush Holt. He is arguably the only scientist in Congress, depending on how you define scientist (I’ll get to that, too). He helped run Princeton’s Plasma Physics Laboratory before winning his seat in 1998. His constituents sport “My Congressman IS a Rocket Scientist” bumper stickers. Having been asked by the organizers to open the program with a few remarks on the “national political scene,” I welcomed everyone (especially the astonishing Ms. Morrison from whom we were about to hear), thanked them for supporting Rush, and then suggested the following: That in terms of the “national political scene,” the choice we face November 6 is really all ABOUT Rush. Rush HOLT, the modest, thoughtful, logical, rocket scientist Congressman, and HIS party . . . . . . versus Rush LIMBAUGH, the blowhard leader, in many ways, of the Republican Party. Rush Limbaugh whose face gets red with passion as he enumerates what he calls the “four pillars of deceit.” Do you know what those four pillars of deceit are, I asked the assembled? (It was a rhetorical question, but I actually got a couple folks shouting back – “tell us!” It was thrilling.) They are: “GOVERNMENT” (I pointed to the Congressman) . . . “THE MEDIA” (not including Fox or Rush Limbaugh himself, one presumes) . . . “ACADEMIA” (I pointed to the former President of Harvard who had come with his wife to support Rush) . . . “and SCIENCE” (I pointed to the Congressman again.) Science . . . a pillar of deceit. When it was the candidate’s turn to speak, all he would say of my claim that he is the only scientist in Congress is that if we are lucky, we are about to get another – the rather astonishing Bill Foster (a Democrat, of course, and a member of the team that discovered the top quark) – and that, well, “it depends on how you define scientist.” Which was the gentlest of jabs, I assume, at Representative Paul Broun (a Republican, of course, who styles himself a scientist and whom you can watch here saying that evolution and the big bang are “lies straight from the pit of hell”). November 6 is a choice between the party that “believes in” science and the party whose chair of the House committee charged with dealing with climate change is himself a climate change denier, who quotes from the Bible in debunking the scientific consensus. Okay? So Rush Holt is going to win reelection for his eighth term (and if we’re lucky, the number of scientists in Congress will double to two, with the election of Bill Foster) – but will Rush have a gavel? And will he have a President who wants to increase investment in research and education and alternative energy? Or a President who has vowed to cut all that to make room to lower taxes on the wealthy (who may not pay a lesser SHARE of taxes, but will pay billions less in tax DOLLARS) and to add $2 trillion in unrequested military spending (which would seem to me to be the ultimate wasteful government spending – not just $600 on a hammer, but $2 trillion on hammers the Pentagon hasn’t even asked for). Rush spoke modestly, and sensibly, but mainly about what an honor it was to have Toni Morrison there to support him. And then Ms. Morrison said . . . << I am extremely pleased to accept Congressman Rush Holt’s invitation because it gives me an opportunity to describe what I believe is classic, although endangered, democratic representation. When I was young we used to be called citizens—American citizens. Some of us were called ‘second class’ citizens, yet the term, the category, the aspiration was citizenship. Some time after the end of World War II another definition of Americans arose—’consumers.’ Every narrative, advertisement, political promise was to, for and about the powerful, courted and always obeyed American Consumer. So we did—consume. Happily, extravagantly, mindlessly—until the credit card, the mortgaged home or homes, the college tuition loans came due. Now the category has changed again. We are now simply taxpayers or not-taxpayers. Think of the difference, the cognitive and emotional difference between thinking of oneself as a citizen and regarding oneself as merely a taxpayer. If I am simply an American taxpayer, I am alarmed about where my money goes; I may even resent the recipient, wonder whether he or she or it (the institution) is worthy of my money. On the other hand, if I am principally an American citizen, I have to wonder about what’s best for my country, my state, my neighbors, the young, the elderly and the unfortunate. That shift in national identity informs so much of the discourse and the political choices of our representatives. Obviously, I prefer the label ‘citizen,’ which is precisely why I admire Rush Holt. To me his works, his advocacy, his personal and political philosophy stem from the concept of citizenship and what it demands of us. From education to healthcare, to women’s rights, civil rights, support for artists — his concerns and labor are those of a citizen for citizens. And that commitment is rare these days. If you help him, support him, with your resources and your own enthusiastic commitment, you will be a champion for that ancient and blessed definition: Citizen. Thank you. >> Needless to say, Ms. Morrison is not only for Rush Holt, she is for Barack Obama. OUR candidate has an amazing record of accomplishments, all the more amazing given the hugely difficult circumstances under which they were accomplished. THEIR candidate left Massachusetts with a 34% approval rating (in good economic times) – about the same as George W. Bush’s approval rating when HE left office (with the economy in free fall). You know all that . . . . . . which is why you share my frustration that their side can simply lie – in 2000, candidate Bush SCOFFED at charges he planned huge tax cuts for the rich, with the same language Mitt Romney now uses to tell the same multi-trillion-dollar lie – and you share my frustration that, thanks to Citizens United, their side can amplify those lies with virtually unlimited funds. . . . and which is why, yes, if you can dig deep one last time, we need you to do it, here, now. There is zero risk that we’ll overshoot on the fundraising and win by “too much,” for three reasons: first, funding a huge turnout will help us win by enough for it to “stick,” no matter what they try; second, it will help us hold the Senate and win back the House; third, it will send a message America (and the world) need to hear. Thank you for all you’ve done . . . thanks to you, we have 120 field offices open in Ohio alone, to their 30 . . . and for whatever more you might be able to do today. Andy A lot has changed for the better since many of you helped reelect Barack Obama — and for the catastrophically worse since we fell 78,000 votes short of defeating Trump and Putin. But “the world only spins forward,” to quote Angels in America, and now we are called on to step up once again. I’m betting that we will.
Why Gloria Boycotts Organic Food August 6, 2019August 6, 2019 But first she expounds on food waste (as previously touched on here and here). She’s against it: Not to beat the issue to death, but here’s a Food Network program where they explored the issue of food waste — five 2- and 3-minute videos, all worth watching. [Don’t miss the first one: the “freegan” dumpster diver! — A.T.] The one about salvaging produce is near and dear to my heart, because once upon a time I was a Plant Science major. I quickly learned that there is a whole bunch of pests and diseases that get treated not because they have a yield impact on the crop, not because they change the nutritional or flavor aspects of it, but because of AESTHETICS. When we walk into the grocery store to buy apples, peaches, potatoes, we inspect every single one before we put it in the bag. They have to be picture perfect, but nature doesn’t work that way. Anyone who has ever had a fruit tree in the backyard or has grown a vegetable garden should know that. Nature is a constant battleground. Bugs, molds and anything alive have the biological mandate to reproduce, and in order to do that they need to feed. They are going to be on the lookout for tender leaves, sweet fruits and yummy roots. Growers cannot afford not being able to sell their crops due to looks. We consumers place an incredible burden on them, who in many cases will be forced to treat crops solely to preserve their appearance. Meanwhile, because we’re contradictory beings, we demand pesticide-free foods (by the way, many people believe organic means pesticide-free, which is a mistake). Come again? Organic doesn’t mean pesticide-free? Yes, indeed! There are such things as organic pesticides. Sulfur, copper, pyrethroids, are all organic pesticides because they are not manufactured, but obtained directly from nature. As such, they are authorized for use in organic farming. But they can still poison you if not used correctly, just as a synthetic pesticide would. The confusion and misunderstanding around organic food is HUGE, and many many companies take advantage of this confusion. We hear that organic food is better for you, but we’re not told exactly why. It’s like the fine print fell off. I found this article that can clarify things a bit for you. As a matter of general principle, I refuse to buy anything organic. Until I see definite scientific proof that organic is better than conventional, I am saving my pennies. We’re constantly bombarded with sound bytes regarding food that are absolutely meaningless, and this is why you see apples labeled “Gluten-free” or sugar labeled “A fat-free product” (I’m not making any of this up). UPDATE: For a powerful two minutes on why, selfishly, we SHOULD eat organic, click here. (Thanks, Michael Chelnov!) I was all set to toss four really sketchy bananas when I realized — yes! Smoothies! So good. Waste not, want not. Get your Moscow Mitch t-shirt here!