Notes from around the Human Experience…
HERE WE GO AGAIN: Regular readers of this crap know that we have never been fans of the Affordable Care Act (ACA). The main reason is it is not the province of government to mandate we buy anything, be it radishes or health insurance. Sure, more people have health insurance because of the ACA, but they purchased it through government mandated and government-subsidized markets, something else it is not the province of the government of a nation conceived in liberty.
Dry, Technical Matter: But what President Trump is doing to it is bad. Unable to get anything passed through his own GOP-controlled Congress that would dismantle the ACA, he issued an executive order Friday that would stop federal payments to the insurance markets the government was subsidizing. The potential for unrest this could cause both insurers and the insured is enormous.
The president’s big-picture point about there being no reason for the government to subsidize health insurers is valid, but his executive order is as spiteful as Congress’ repeated and failed attempts to overturn the ACA.
Oh Yeah: It also magnifies the point that Trump has nothing to offer in replacement, nothing to offer the country except displaying his only real talent, drawing attention to himself.
Gaylon For Congress…Vote Early, Vote Often: If we had a health insurance industry free of government interference and regulation, a health insurance industry based on competition and innovation, it would provide quality and affordable health care plans left and right because if they didn’t companies would go out of business. It’s the way the free market is built. Companies that provide what consumers want at a price they want to pay thrive, those that do not fail. It’s the way the free market is built.
Once More, With Feeling: We cannot say this enough:
As long as the health insurance and healthcare industries continue to be run and regulated by the government, the health insurance industry will always be a fiasco.
The Bottom Line: We deserve better, of course. We deserve better than a government that is the partisan, fractured and bickering mess we currently tolerate. But we are not going to get better government until we start demanding it at the ballot box.
ON THIS DATE! ON THIS DATE!: Mary, Queen of Scots goes on trial for conspiracy to murder her cousin Queen Elizabeth I of England on this date in 1586. Letters she had written that turned out not to be private showed she presented no violent objection to this, and she was convicted on October 25.
Elizabeth, somewhat reticent to kill a fellow monarch, didn’t sign the death warrant immediately and Mary, Queen of Scots wasn’t executed until the following February.
More Don’t Try To Kill The Big Guy/Gal: German Field Marshall Erwin Rommel, implicated in a plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler, committed suicide on this date 1944. Rommel was given the opportunity by the Nazis, who also offered him the opportunity to be tried, found guilty and executed, a process that would also result in his staff’s trials and execution and disgrace for his family.
Presented with these options, Rommel said goodbye to his wife and children and went for a drive with a Nazi general, where he took the provided cyanide capsule. The German people were told Rommel died from complications from injuries suffered when his car had been strafed in Africa the previous July and Rommel was given a state funeral.
Great Moments On The Brink Of Nuclear War: The Cuban Missile Crisis begins on this date in 1962 when US spy planes photographed Soviet nuclear missiles being installed in western Cuba. President Kennedy would be notified the following day and the world would teeter on the brink of nuclear war for almost two weeks.
Get Out Your Record Book: Jim Hines of the United States becomes the first runner to break the 10-second barrier under automatic timing at the Mexico City Olympics on this date in 1968. Hines won the gold medal in 9.95 seconds and his world record would stand for 15 years.
FunFact: Hines broke the record of 10.02 that fellow American Charlie Green had set the day before in the semifinals. Over the summer, Hines had run a manually timed 9.9 100 meters at a meet in Sacramento.
FunFact II: Hines had his medals from Mexico City – he had also won gold in the 4×100 relay – stolen from his Houston apartment shortly after the Games. They were later returned. Hines is now 71.
Quotebook: What is modesty but hypocritical humility…by means of which, in a world swelling with envy, a man seeks to obtain pardon for excellences and merits from those who have none?…No doubt when modesty was made a virtue it was a very advantageous thing for the fools; for everybody is expected to speak of himself as if he were one. – Schopenhauer
Answer To The Last Trivia Question: Alec Baldwin has hosted the most Saturday Night Live episodes, 17.
Today’s Stumper: Who broke Jim Hines’ world record in the 100 meters? – Answer next time!
