Unsightly Mental Blemishes

My Arts Editor favorites from our stroll around Lake Como a couple of days ago. I really have no idea what they might be.

I jumped all over Senator McCain a couple of days ago when he reprimanded the Senate for hyper-partisanship over the healthcare “reform” matter, and then failed to take the proper action by assenting to a procedural “begin the debate” move. By all reports, the current GOP healthcare push in the Senate was terminated by his Nay vote, as reported by NBC News:

Senate Republicans failed to pass a pared-down Obamacare repeal bill early Friday on a vote of 49-51 that saw three of their own dramatically break ranks.

Three Republican senators — John McCain, Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski — and all Democrats voted against the bill, dealing a stinging defeat to Republicans and President Donald Trump who made repeal of Obamacare a cornerstone their campaigns.

I don’t know what sort of tightrope Senator McCain is walking, or thinks he’s walking, but it was good of him to recognize the basic unacceptability of everything about the bill he rejected – the process by which it was written, its crudeness, and its reported cruelty to those least able to defend themselves. (In this I depend on the analysis of many others, as I don’t have the time or the expertise for it.)

I’m relieved he, as well as Senators Collins and Murkowski, finally stopped the farce. My heart-felt thanks, both for my own nerves as well as some relatives who depend on the ACA and would be forced to return to uninsured status without it. Has anyone thought of inviting the honored Senators to switch parties?

THAT said, I am fairly much appalled that all of the rebuffs of the various healthcare proposals which occurred in the last couple of days were so bloody close. What is wrong with a party that would cause it to deny a benefit to so many citizens who are otherwise unable to afford it, who benefit from it individually, and, just as importantly, benefits the Nation as a whole? Do they not realize that a Nation of healthy people is a productive, happy Nation? This is not a matter of, Well, I’d rather not be healthy this  year, there won’t be any long term consequences.

No, this is a matter of the random blows of Nature laying us low, temporarily or permanently, through little fault of our own. The point of society is mutual support, and healthcare, unlike consumer goods, is all about support so that we can productive in our chosen arenas. Sometimes fantastically so.

But rare is the person who can make a living out of being ill. Maybe Evel Knievel did.

So, what is it? Purely rhetorical, I know; I’ve speculated before that this is simply a party purple with envy. But I felt the urge to vent. Sorry about that.

Noted in an investment report:

Brendan Mathews owns shares of Markel. Karl Thiel owns shares of Markel. Steve Symington owns shares of Markel. Tom Gardner owns shares of Markel and Markel. The Motley Fool owns shares of Markel.

Tom’s evidently excitable.

No doubt computer generated. Still amuses me.

I was fascinated by this CNN article on former megachurch pastor Rob Bell, who was ousted for expressing doubt about the existence of Hell. CNN’s John Blake attended his presentation in Atlanta, the heart of the Bible Belt, where street preachers were threatening attendees standing in line with a visit to, well, Hell if they persisted. I wonder how many were discouraged and left. This particularly caught my attention:

He told the audience he doesn’t like those YouTube videos where Christians “destroy” atheists in debates. Respect people’s doubts, he said. You can’t lead them to where they don’t want to go. Doubt is part of the biblical narrative, he said, quoting Jesus’ cry on the cross: “My God, My God, why has thou forsaken me?”

“The Bible is as much about the absence of God than the presence of God,” he said.

That element of doubt is a necessary element of faith, as I noted in this missive. The lack of same that I find in so many fundamentalists really marks them as folks who have shut up their minds, who have made ruts higher than even those a late-middle-aged man walks in. It may function as a quick-read recognition marker for like minded people, but the many requirements of the intellectual landscape that results makes them peculiarly vulnerable to manipulation, to the con-man.

Like the one in the White House.

So seeing a formerly influential man attended with great interest in the Bible Belt makes me wonder if we’re seeing the first signs of a retreat from the ramparts of desperate fundamentalism. I should think those ramparts won’t collapse anytime soon, but, then again, no doubt most observers were saying the same thing about the Berlin Wall on the evening of 8 November 1989. So, speaking as an agnostic, anything which opens the minds of my religious co-citizens to more flexible attitudes, less attached to dogma which hurts more than it helps, is a good thing.

And evidence that Bell is moving that way is implicit in this:

Do you belong to a church that says women cannot be priests or pastors?

Bad move, Bell said.

Any church that does so betrays the example of Jesus, who treated women as equals. Women in Jesus’ times couldn’t even testify as witnesses in court.

“Yet all the gospels have women as the first witnesses to Jesus’ resurrection,” he said.

Any group which rejects the genius of half its members is a group paralyzed by the fight for power – and a group crippled by its failure to utilize the most important resource available.

NewScientist (15 July 2017, paywall) has a fascinating interview with Françoise Sironi, a psychologist with a specialization that puts her in a field with few peers – assessment of those accused of war crimes and genocide. This may seem prosaic:

What kind of person becomes a perpetrator?

Many have grown up in a violent family, or experienced humiliation early in life. Then when they are recruited, their identity is often broken down in some way. This might involve a traumatic initiation process: children who are forced to become soldiers may be required to kill members of their family, for example. They can no longer return to their families or villages and they become dependent on the new group – their fellow child killers – and in particular, on the commander of that group.

This may help to explain one of the most troubling scenarios, which is medics who facilitate torture – advising interrogators when to turn the electricity off, for example, so that the victim’s heart doesn’t give out too soon. They no longer belong to a group whose identity is defined by doing no harm.

But this is a bit of a gut wrencher:

In 2008, you assessed Duch, the Khmer Rouge leader who tortured and killed thousands at the notorious S-21 prison. What did you conclude?

Duch is an example of what I call a man-system – someone who has relinquished their own identity and adopted that of the ideological system they grew up in. The same is true of Pascal Simbikangwa, who I also assessed and who is in prison for his role in the Rwandan genocide. They don’t fit any known psychiatric category. Their behaviour can only be understood in the geopolitical or historical context in which it arose.

What are the main characteristics of such individuals?

A strong sense of group belonging and duty, and an ability to compartmentalise. Duch was capable of talking normally about his family one minute and discussing his “work” at S-21 the next. It wasn’t easy for him to torture, he told us, yet he trained youngsters to do it. When he expressed regret, it was on behalf of the Khmer Rouge, not himself. At one point I asked, “What happened to your conscience?” He replied he didn’t understand the question.

That last statement’s implications set me back on my heels. Taken in isolation, without acknowledging his work, this devotion to group may be taken to be a high moral attainment.

And what was its use? Horrific torture.

It’s hard not to draw parallels between Duch and the Grand Inquisitor, Torquemada, as they inflicted agony & death on victims who did not conform to some group requirement. I suppose to an anthropologist, trained to abstractly examine human culture, this is no surprise, but for me it’s a startling descent into the amoral enterprise of group competition, where failure often means extinguishment.

And yet, the existence of such torture, and the inevitable public knowledge of same, must inevitably tear upon the nerves of the public. Because of the perception – false that it may be – of the high efficacy of torture, the knowledge that it may be turned on members of the group, rather than outsiders and apostates, its use is inevitable in intra-group situations. And why? While someone like Duch may have managed to submerge self & ego to the greater entity of the group, most others do not. Human ambition will exist, and the stronger it may be, the more likely it will use those tools that come to hand to achieve a superior position.

Thus, the group’s tool may rip that group apart.

Still, I find Duch’s statement unsettling.

Our current highest profile circus in Washington involves Anthony Scaramucci as Trump’s communications director, who is busy threatening to fire everyone AND stab them “in the front” if they dare to leak information to the press. From The New York Times:

The clash between Mr. Scaramucci and Mr. Priebus offers a case study in how the Trump White House operates, a conflict divorced from facts, untethered from the basics of how government works, enabled by the lack of any organizational structure and driven by ambition, fear, animosity and envy.

My Arts Editor shares my feelings on this specific circus:

I wonder what they’re trying to distract us from now.

Tim Tiana Lowe on National Review has similar, if unconscious, sentiments:

If you think that Trump will be incensed by these distractions, then you clearly haven’t been keeping up with the Trumpians. This is a man whose idea of intimacy is Marla Maples boasting on the cover of the New York Post about his sexual prowess, and whose idea of leadership is a public execution (see: Lewandowski, Corey; the entire cast of the Apprentice). Trump grew weary of Sean Spicer’s attempt to stammer appropriate niceties to the Fake News MSM. Why please people when you can entertain them?

Much like his namesake, the scaramouch, the Mooch masquerades as a useful idiot and a sly schemer, performing both roles while never forgetting to enthrall the audience and, most important, the boss. Today, the spotlight is off the dumpster fire that is the Senate’s health-care negotiations, and instead the Beltway class is fanning itself over the impropriety of Scaramucci’s lewd humor and “front-stabbing.” And so, however this turns out, the Mooch wins. He has entertained, shamed his foe, and impressed the boss — just as Trump’s favorites did on The Apprentice. McKay Coppins at The Atlantic notes today that Trump favors surrounding himself with “mini-mes — hard-charging, bellicose big talkers who idolize their boss and labor to perfect their imitations of him.” One could take the point one step further. While Trump takes his steaks well-done with ketchup when not eating Big Macs and Filet-O-Fish, Scaramucci frequents Hunt & Fish Club for veal parmigiana, decked out in Loro Piana suits. In truth, he’s not really Trump in miniature. He’s a genuinely self-made Trump — a Freudian projection of the president’s deepest dreams.

And Steve Benen on Maddowblog comes to the obvious conclusion:

The spectacle of feuds is obviously interesting, but it’s not what’s important. Rather, what matters is the unsettling realization that the White House is being run by clownish amateurs who don’t seem to realize they’re in over their heads, led by an incompetent president who’s a bit too comfortable in the noxious culture he’s created.

It is not a recipe for governing success.

Sure. But let’s ask a simple question: does President Trump’s base realize this?

Think about it. That base has spent an enormous amount of time listening to Rush Limbaugh & other incendiary hosts who had little reason to portray Obama’s Washington in an honest manner. For them, it was disaster, scandal, and bullying 24 hours a day – never mind that the actual scandal count was on the closer order of zero, the bullying consisted of polite suggestions, and the disasters, compared to GOP President Bush, were non-existent^[1].

So to them, if they are watching their President closely, this may not seem all that unusual. Without the proper history, perhaps what they see seems like what they’d expect from a President Trump – a lot of drama and temper tantrums, and meanwhile things are getting done.

Of course, there’s a big difference between the small business world – or The Apprentice – and a government with nuclear weapons and multitudinous international responsibilities. But is this clear to his base?

Do they actually realize how unusual and dangerous Trump’s actions will be?

Or has the right-wing echo chamber so cut them off from reality that they think this is all normal?

¹In a note far too depressing to explore deeply, I must ask, Does conservatism now simply consist of dishonest messaging? Is that the full content of American conservatism?

Como LakeLake Como, Ramsey County, Minnesota, July 26, 2017.

Intromittent organ:

An intromittent organ is a general term for an external organ of a male organism that is specialized to deliver sperm during copulation. Intromittent organs are found most often in terrestrial species, as most aquatic species fertilize their eggs externally, although there are exceptions. For many species in the animal kingdom, characteristic of internal fertilization. [Wikipedia]

There might be a word missing there, although I’m not sure what it might be. I ran across this word/phrase on Greg Fallis’ blog:

To some Doctor Who fans, however, there is one immutable characteristic of the Doctor. One physical facet of the Doctor’s being than is indispensable, regardless of the regeneration process. One supreme, conclusive physical attribute that defines the Doctor. An extendable intromittent organ that acts as a sperm delivery system. To these fans, the Doctor’s physical body is apparently nothing more than an extension of the Doctor’s dick. Absent that organ, the Doctor is a sham.

In other words — no dick, no Doctor.

In Washingtonian Elaina Plott covers the post-political career of former House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R), who was unexpectedly beaten by a primary challenger who alleged that Cantor was soft on the ACA – typical RINO-speak. How has Cantor, now in the private sector, changed since then?

It’s far easier to cop to political gamesmanship when out of office. But Cantor says if he could do it over again, he wouldn’t have bought into this “expectation . . . that says if it’s not everything, then it can’t be conservative.” He pauses. “That’s a perspective I’ve gained.”

***

Yet here’s the other shocker: despite all that, Cantor’s read of how party leadership is navigating the current landscape is nothing short of sanguine.

While he won’t go so far as to say Trump’s presidency has been a “disaster,” as Boehner recently put it, Cantor admits he’s less than charmed by the state of the West Wing: “The lack of humility right now in the system is striking to me. I’m worried about Trump’s rhetoric. . . . If things keep going like they are now without any real progress, it’s a problem for electoral victories for our party.”

But strikingly, he won’t criticize House speaker Paul Ryan or others for not demanding a new course. Cantor does say that, were he speaker, he would “answer the questions I’m asked,” a subtle dig at Ryan’s penchant for evading Trump-related questions from the podium. But that’s as pointed as he’ll get.

Why not demand more from leadership? For one thing, Cantor is convinced that the party’s current state—the fury roiling the base and the White House alike—is an aberration. He calls the moment an “anger detour,” which sounds less like a label for a larger GOP identity crisis and more like an inconvenient square in Candy Land.

His position, however, reflects that of many in the establishment—that a pro-immigration, pro-market strain of conservatism, the one Cantor championed at the end of his tenure, is still the future of the party. It’s why he helped raise funds for Jeb Bush’s presidential campaign even after his own primary defeat was seen by many to be the first sign of a populist wave to come. It’s why Cantor continues to believe that President Trump, his policies, and the discontent that wrought them are mere hiccups and that at some point they’ll all cycle out.

“It’s very captivating to a lot of people right now because of the extremes of the language, of the Twitter, of the activity, and it’s just . . . it’s really a lot about showmanship,” he says. “It could end up to all be a lot of steam that, in the end, the implementation will be a lot more consistent with what I think the party’s about.”

I find it striking that his primary worry is not about where his party is going, demographically and philosophically, but about electoral victories, and, implicitly, that’s how to measure the success of  your party. I would call that the necessary but not sufficient part of the political equation – are you winning, AND …. where it’s a big AND.

On the other side of that AND is the more important part of the equation, in my opinion – are your goals for which you strive for victory good or bad for the country. Properly aligned, the party and the country should prosper together.

And, honestly, every time the GOP has been in control, we’ve seen economic disaster. I’m simply hoping that the incompetency at the top, and the basic stasis in Congress, will result in only minimal damage. Unfortunately, the judiciary may be burdened with incompetent ideologues for decades to come.

This is the price we pay for “change in Washington.”

Look deep into my eyes!

The title may be a mystery, but the movie’s goals aren’t. In Boston Blackie And The Law (1946), the goals are the good-natured ribbing of the boys in blue, keeping the police at bay long enough to remove the cloud of suspicion that has inevitably formed over the heads of Blackie and his trusty sidekick, The Runt, and to solve the sordid murder which happens midway through the story.

This is an above average example of this 14 movie series. If there are any troubling plot holes, they escaped my attention, and Blackie impersonating a magician makes for some unusual scenes. Not that this is a sparkling movie, of course. The pacing could have been peppier, the dialog is mostly highly mundane, with few if any lines that raise the eyebrows, and the cops as latter-day Keystone Kops are a trifle tiresome. How either of the lead cops don’t end up in the welfare office is an eternal mystery.

But the guns roar, the bodies fall, the clever ploy wins the day, and in the end we’re exposed to the great lesson of America, honored almost entirely in the breach, that the lust for money will lead to a bad end.

On Lawfare Nicholas Weaver discusses the recent closure of the currency exchange site BTC-e, its effect on the ransomware market, and how the technology of Bitcoin may be a bit tricky for criminals to handle. The US prosecution requires that criminal activity took place on US territory, and Tradehill, which was used by the owner of BTC-e for alleged money-laundering, is in California:

At the White House Press Briefing of July 24th, wherein the ban on transgender Americans serving in the military was allegedly explained, this was pointed out (I don’t typically read these things myself) by Steve Bannon:

Q    But do you say to the transgender community that he is still committed to fight for them?  And how is this not not fighting for them?

MS. SANDERS:  I think the President has made very clear he’s committed to fighting for all Americans.

One of the most effective corrective actions in our arsenal of non-violent weapons – particularly among ourselves – is laughter. Ridicule.

And this would have been the moment where the entire press corp could have simply burst out in a chorus of laughter. Maybe a bit of pointing at the press secretary. But make it clear that they recognize White House absurdities, and will write about them as absurdities

And let that go out on the airwaves.

Cameras become cheaper and we record the happenings on Earth in more and more detail. This has been happening for years, of course, and has revealed that there can be a distinct lack of eyes to actually evaluate all that video – for example, England has been recording certain cities in great deal as a crime detection & prevention measure and then discovered they didn’t have the personnel to watch all the movies.

But that’s all mundane. We also have the starry eyed crazies who watch the skies, both in person and – lucky us – on video. Spaceweather.com references the Gemini Observatory and its Cloud Camera All Night Video, which keeps an eye on the weather near Mauna Kea and its complement of expensive observatories. And what did they see?

On July 24, a rare lightning phenomenon called a Gigantic Jet. The general collection of movies is provided at the link, above, but the movie containing the specific link is here:

I managed to catch the lightning at the 5 second mark, scraped the screen, and present my lazy, unprocessed effort below. Here’s Spaceweather.com on the phenomenon:

Sometimes called “space lightning,” Gigantic Jets and their cousins the sprites are true space weather phenomena. They inhabit the upper atmosphere alongside auroras, meteors and noctilucent clouds. Some researchers believe they are linked to cosmic rays: subatomic particles from deep space striking the top of Earth’s atmosphere produce secondary electrons that could, in turn, provide the spark for these upward bolts.

The link to cosmic rays is particularly interesting at this time. For the past two years, space weather balloons have observed a steady increase in deep space radiation penetrating our atmosphere. This increase is largely due to the decline in the solar cycle. Flagging solar wind pressure and weakening sunspot magnetic fields allow more cosmic rays into the inner solar system–a trend which is expected to continue for for years to come. These changes could add up to more Gigantic Jets in the future. Stay tuned!

More pictures, more discussion at the link above!

Jejune:

1 Naive, simplistic, and superficial.
‘their entirely predictable and usually jejune opinions’

2 (of ideas or writings) dry and uninteresting. [Oxford Dictionaries]

I used it in this post.

Chaos Theory is my overblown reference to the idea that a small change in one part of a system can have unpredictably large effects in another. I had that reaction while reading Stuart Vyse’s article in Skeptical Inquirer on an academic analysis on one of the causes of the Great Recession of a few years back:

In the 1990s, personal bankruptcies were rising sharply, and the banking industry began a lobbying campaign to stiffen the bankruptcy requirements—a move that was expected to increase the profits of credit card companies. Attempts to pass a bill failed until President George W. Bush was reelected in 2004. Finally, after big banks spent $40 million in campaign contributions and millions more in lobbying efforts, the bill went into effect in late 2005 (Labaton 2005). It had a number of provisions, but most importantly it increased the up-front costs of filing for bankruptcy and made the process more onerous.

This is known as the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005 (BAPCPA). So what of it?

Sources: U.S. Courts and Mortgage Bankers Association. via Stuart Vyse

Although it took a few years to figure it out, several economic studies now conclude that the BAPCPA was a precipitating factor in the ensuing debacle of 2008 (Albanesi and Nosal 2016; Li et al. 2011; Morgan et al. 2012). According to these investigations, once the new bankruptcy requirements went into effect, many people who were struggling with debt found bankruptcy was no longer an option. Ironically, they could no longer afford to declare bankruptcy. But what remained an option was not paying the bills, and beginning in 2007, a little over a year after BAPCPA went into effect, an increasing number of homeowners chose to stop paying the biggest bill of all—the mortgage. The switch from bankruptcies to foreclosures can be seen in Figure 1.

The rest is history. Many of those mortgages had been bundled together and sold to investors, and when the value of those mortgage-backed securities started to tank, so did the stock market, the employment rate, and the economy in general. Obviously there are many other factors that went into the Great Recession. BAPCPA was not the only cause. But the crash of 2008 started when the real estate bubble finally burst in 2007, and the bursting of the bubble gained steam when thousands of homeowners stopped paying their mortgages. Had bankruptcy still been an option, some of those people might have been in a position to keep paying the mortgage.

The beauty of bankruptcy as a form of financial failure is that most of the effects are restricted to the individual filers and the banks. Foreclosure is a different matter entirely. When your neighbor forecloses, your house loses value, and the real estate market and the economy in general are affected.

It’s a lovely causal link chain. And the illustration of how a relatively minor change to the bankruptcy code causes the jello to squeeze out of the mold in an unexpected area is a reminder of the lessons of chaos theory.

But – skipping the debate about bank greed and how that leads to corruption^[1] – I’d like to return to my hobby horse^[2] by observing closely the responsibilities we can expect the various entities to assume. The bankers who pushed for BAPCPA feel they have a responsibility to increase their profits, and in this depraved age of chasing the dollar, rather than caring for the community which ultimately generates those profits for you in the first place, they do not have the expertise to make judgments concerning the rules which govern them. Indeed, in this extremely complex world of international banking, it may be asking too much of a company, complex in its own right, with rivals which conceal their own internal states, to make exceedingly wise rules concerning their own conduct; and given the rules of engagement for the private sector, leaving a chink in the armor merely invites competitors to take advantage.

Which leads to the responsibilities of government, primarily that of regulation. In this age of Trumpian-anti-regulation, it may seem jejune or even retro, but the propaganda of the right needs to be beaten back before we risk another Great Recession, because proper regulation enhances business. For the doubter, merely consider, following the repudiation of Glass-Steagall, the final fates of Lehman Brothers, Wachovia, or Merrill Lynch. In this instance, the government failed, under the guidance of the party of business, to properly decide not to pass this bill, and the subsequent fallout was quite damaging to both Main Street and Wall Street.

Government not only has this responsibility as part of our cultural remit, but because it’s the natural assignment – government should not be prone to the same pressures as that of business, it has the resources to take the long view, to conduct the deep research needed to make these decisions properly. To keep society safe.

If I may extend this, business cannot make these decisions because they cannot reliably think beyond their own individual boundaries. A single business conducting its business in an unethical manner may cause little systemic damage, but when all the businesses in a niche – such as banking – are conducting business in the same destructive manner, we begin to see damage at our very foundations. This multi-fold effect, invisible to business, must be visible to some regulatory entity, or the so-called free enterprise system is a failure. Fortunately, it is visible, if with some difficulty, so we are left with only the requirement to have the bravery to pursue the proper regulation.

And not fall victim to the amateur’s claim of the evil of regulation.

¹It’s a worthy debate, but without proper framing & understanding it just collapses into insults.

²You’d think it would be dead by now, wouldn’t you?

Steve Benen on Maddowblog notes President Trump continues to negatively tweet about Attorney General Sessions:

But in the larger context, the president whining about the acting FBI director isn’t about McCabe; it’s about Attorney General Jeff Sessions, whom Trump apparently believes he can force out of office through rude tweets. Indeed, this morning’s missives were ostensibly about McCabe – a popular target in conservative media of late – but not that the president started by asking rhetorically why Sessions didn’t replace McCabe.

I assume tweets like these will continue indefinitely until Sessions quits?

Yes. If Trump fires Sessions, then it’s an admission that he made a mistake. The Presidential Ego cannot tolerate the idea that he may make major errors.

It’s also an admission that someone who looks the part can’t play the part, which is apparently important to Trump.

Finally, it’s an admission that someone of an ideology compatible with Trump is an incompetent, and while that’s hardly damning of an entire movement – incompetents abound regardless of ideology, something which ideologues and voters should remember regardless of position – it’s still a problem when Trump thinks he’s picked the best and Sessions turns out to be useless to Trump’s needs. And may end up being one of the least distinguished AG’s in American history.

Gotta wonder what Trump’s like on the golf course. Probably blames his clubs for everything.

Not of use anymore? Just lay there on your face.

Near Traverse City, Michigan.

Ineluctable:

not to be avoided, changed, or resisted :  inevitable : an ineluctable fate [Merriam-Webster]

Noted in an interview in NewScientist (15 July 2017, paywall) with Françoise Sironi:

Helping both torturers and their victims didn’t strike you as incompatible?

Not at all. By then I had realised that to understand one, you have to understand the other. For example, a torturer inflicting sexual abuse might say, “You’ll never be a man again.” To treat the person those words were directed at, you need an insight into the torturer’s intentions. But often the victim is too ashamed to repeat this. I was ineluctably drawn to become interested in torturers.

I will have a bit more on this interview later.

Kevin Drum read Elisabeth Rosenthal’s An American Sickness and has this summary. EmCare is a company that will run your Emergency Room for you – and isn’t in-network with anyone’s insurance plan, apparently. Over to you, Kevin:

Hospitals know perfectly well that patients expect doctors at in-network hospitals to also be in-network. That’s why hospitals negotiate with insurers in the first place: to get a place in the insurer’s network so they can attract the insurer’s customers.

Likewise, if they contract with a third-party firm to run a part of their hospital, they know perfectly well what will happen if the third-party hasn’t negotiated with the same set of insurers: their patients will get outrageous out-of-network bills.

Unlike patients, hospitals are sophisticated actors. They know enough to ask whether or not EmCare’s doctors belong to their networks. Obviously they did ask, and just as obviously the answer was no. But they signed up with EmCare anyway.

But when you need an ER, do you have the time & inclination to check whether the local ER is in-network? Are you smart enough to ask that specific question?

I know I’m not.

Here’s the thing – I doubt whoever is running EmCare will consider themselves immoral or unethical. To them, this is simply finding a lovely loophole through which to make money, and since they’re businessmen, they’re completely moral. Much like the for-profit prison companies who lobby for longer prison sentences in order to fill their prisons, it’s not the role of companies to look to the greater good. They provide services and make a profit – and if that profit can be increased, their morality is improved just as much.

Now, I’m not yammering for government to step in just yet. It’s not yet clear to me that the interests & skills of government would be appropriate to this situation – especially the Federal Government just at the moment. I might be more interested in a Board of Medical Business Ethics that has a realistic view of the situation and makes rules based on a just understanding. That’s just a rough idea, though, and might not work.

But my point is that the intrusion of private sector sensibilities into the health sector has led to what sounds like a really awful situation. Just called me Broken Record Hue.

And all this based on my reading of a review of a book. I suppose I should read it.

I see Senator McCain had a failure of nerve today. The balance of power lay with any of the 50 GOP Senators who voted for the GOP’s ACA replacement. Simply vote against the ACA, and you could be Justice Kennedy, the arbiter of power. All 50 of them failed, but it was McCain who tried to reprimand his colleagues for their unprofessional approach to this issue:

“I hope we can again rely on humility, on our need to cooperate, on our dependence on each other to learn how to trust each other again and by so doing better serve the people who elected us. Stop listening to the bombastic loudmouths on the radio and television and the Internet. To hell with them. They don’t want anything done for the public good. Our incapacity is their livelihood.

“Let’s trust each other. Let’s return to regular order. We’ve been spinning our wheels on too many important issues because we keep trying to find a way to win without help from across the aisle. That’s an approach that’s been employed by both sides, mandating legislation from the top down, without any support from the other side, with all the parliamentary maneuvers that requires.

“We’re getting nothing done. All we’ve really done this year is confirm Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court. Our healthcare insurance system is a mess. We all know it, those who support Obamacare and those who oppose it. Something has to be done. We Republicans have looked for a way to end it and replace it with something else without paying a terrible political price. We haven’t found it yet, and I’m not sure we will. All we’ve managed to do is make more popular a policy that wasn’t very popular when we started trying to get rid of it. …

“We’ve tried to do this by coming up with a proposal behind closed doors in consultation with the administration, then springing it on skeptical members, trying to convince them it’s better than nothing, asking us to swallow our doubts and force it past a unified opposition. I don’t think that is going to work in the end. And it probably shouldn’t.” [CNN]

Nice words, but the fact of the matter, Senator McCain, is that you had a chance to reprimand your colleagues effectively, and you failed to do so. As you know, actions speak louder than words, and you failed to take action when the chance came. You’re no longer the maverick, you’re just another GOP Senator, following orders, no matter how much you squawk.

Kudos to Senators Collins and Murkowski for being willing to reproach their colleagues.

Readers & friends, I started this blog for no better reason than to stop muttering to my wife every time I saw something that seemed intriguing or idiotic. As a blogger, I typically want to present a new way to look at events in order to spark new solutions to problems, so at this juncture I will issue an apology to you folks for the following, because there’s nothing new here.

Just me being mad.
Consider this an open letter.

Senator Burr (R-NC), if this is indeed true,

From Steve Benen on Maddowblog:

The rules of the Boy Scouts appear to discourage participation in partisan political events, but Trump — the honorary president of the organization for over a century — just couldn’t seem to help himself.

Trump’s been in charge of the Boy Scouts for how long? That brings to mind scenes from Dante. Heh.

Ah, I see Steve has fixed it. Pity, that.

Viceroy:

a person appointed to rule a country or province as the deputy of the sovereign … [Dictionary.com]

Heard on MPR this morning in reference to the continuing US presence in Afghanistan. Given the definition and the tendencies of our current President, I should consider this word choice a trifle dangerous. Back in June, Common Dreams commented on the suggestion:

Displaying what one commentator called “sheer 19th century bloodlust and thirst for empire,” Erik Prince, founder of the private mercenary firm Blackwater, argued in The Wall Street Journal this week that the United States should deploy an “East India Company approach” in Afghanistan.

The country, he wrote, should be run by “an American viceroy who would lead all U.S. government and coalition efforts—including command, budget, policy, promotion, and contracting—and report directly to the president.”

Prince continued:

In Afghanistan, the viceroy approach would reduce rampant fraud by focusing spending on initiatives that further the central strategy, rather than handing cash to every outstretched hand from a U.S. system bereft of institutional memory.

Prince insists that these are “cheaper private solutions,” but such privatization would also be a boon for military contractors.

As one critic noted, it is hardly surprising that a “war profiteer sees profit opportunity in war.” Blackwater, the private military company Prince founded in 1997—which now operates under the name Academi—made a fortune off the invasion of Iraq. In 2007, a New York Times editorial noted that Blackwater had “received more than $1 billion” in no-bid contracts from the Bush administration; that same year, Blackwater contractors shot and killed more than a dozen civilians in what came to be known as the Nisour Square massacre.

Given the obvious misalignment of objectives between the private and public sectors, as we’ve discussed before, the larger proposal sounds like a non-starter to me – if, of course, this article hasn’t mis-represented it. In the radio proposal, the speaker (was it Mr. Prince?) suggested that the viceroy approach would require a person with several years commitment to the job, thus ensuring continuity in methods and goals.

Of course, ensuring is a strong word; it does, however, increase the probability of achieving that continuity. But, honestly, viceroy is a colonialist’s word, as the article also notes, and I would be highly dubious of not only the word, but the motivations behind someone who would use it.