Month: April 2021

Remember Fram Oil Filters?

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The bill for deferred action has come due. During the forty years since Reagan famously announced that government was the problem, we have adhered to a philosophy of minimalism in government as an ensurer of social well-being.  According to the adherents of this philosophy, the free market is capable of providing aid in a much superior fashion. Thus we have seen a world where we all raced to the bottom, requiring competition globally for manufacturing wages. People have blamed politicians for abandoning the manufacturing class, with its guarantee of decent wages, but it was the corporations who kept looking for cheaper and cheaper products that drove the conversion. Suddenly you look around and see the only jobs available for folks without specialized skills are in food services, and in big box retailers. Neither of these options provide wages capable of sustaining families in many areas of this country.

We have become addicted to the siren call of the cheap. We didn’t like paying for the higher prices at local stores, so we flocked to Walmart for everyday low prices. Then we got tired of Walmart’s high prices, so we flocked to Amazon for the ability to purchase things for $0.10 cheaper than at Walmart. Now we see a retail environment bereft of local involvement, save for the drivers of the UPS and FedEx trucks hauling purchases to their last mile destinations.

Likewise, we were convinced of the necessity of paying low taxes everywhere. Taxation is viewed as legalized thievery, because all those who had made it in the world were sure it was solely due to their merit they had accumulated so much. And who was it that said we needed to pay for schools? Bah, humbug, to quote Ebenezer Scrooge.

I’ve been railing against the true villains of the age. Four years ago I wrote posts excoriating both Grover Norquist and Arthur Laffer. Their vision of the US has come to flower and bloomed during the pandemic. Unfortunate, the bloom was that of the corpse flower, offending all who were unfortunate enough to inhale its pungent aroma. We now have seen the effect of requiring people to work regardless of their health status due to lack of paid medical leave. Many people became involuntary Typhoid Mary’s as they spread virus particles to co-workers and customers. Likewise, we saw the futility of trying to mandate remote learning among our children, when many were unable to access adequate broadband service, and often were forced to attempt this with inadequate hardware. The virus has damaged many more than those who caught the actual disease, by disrupting education. Meanwhile, we had the science denier-in-chief thinking that he alone could defeat this disease by the power of positive thinking, and thus kept providing contradictory information to the population of the US. You hear the echoes of his proclamations still ringing out among those who were indoctrinated by his media enablers. “This virus is nothing to fear, you can use anti-malarial drugs to fight it, we’re going to develop a new means of interior lighting to zap it inside of the body.” So many have swallowed the lies and denials that we now are in danger of continuing the duration of this disease because folks will not accept the one proven remedy of vaccination.

So now we have a President who is willing and eager to address the deferred bill for those parts of the economy neglected over the past 40 years. Unfortunately, the cost of deferred maintenance is much greater than if proper attention were paid over the generations. But that would have required us to forgo our tax cuts! Well, there was once a commercial for oil filters that brought out the point of “You can pay me now, or pay me later.” It is definitely later. The question I have is whether it is indeed too late to fix the problems. And again, will we try to get by on the cheap for fixes that don’t address the real problem, like we’ve tried for too many decades?

Vaccine, Vaccine, Vaccine, Vaccine!

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So we now in the US have more doses of vaccines available than we have people wanting to take said vaccines. In some states, available vaccination appointment times are being wasted as we run up against the recalcitrants who believe one or all of the following:

  • The virus is not a real threat, and is nothing to be concerned about
  • The vaccine was developed too quickly and horrible side effects will emerge over time
  • The vaccine contains tracking devices from Bill Gates equivalent to the Mark of the Beast
  • The Chinese are just waiting for enough vaccinations to occur before they unleash part 2 of this pandemic, resulting in depopulation. Only vaccine virgins will remain.
  • Doctors and hospitals are overstating the coronavirus toll since they have a financial incentive to call as many deaths as Covid-related as possible.

I have seen these mentioned on the internet as reasons for not taking the vaccine. It is amazing this degree of stupidity is prevalent but given the electoral history in the US in 2016, stupidity is capable of leading this nation.

Many of the issues I have seen involve the rapidity of vaccine development. Those who refuse inoculation do not understand that we have built the scientific understanding of mRNA, and we can now control its construction so it can be used instead of a killed virus particle aimed at generating immune system response. Instead of having to rely upon a vaccine that can sometimes actually cause the disease, they are scared of the latest advances in science where only the target system on the virus is attacked. People have expressed concerns about use of fetal derived cells in the culturing of the vaccine. Well, the mRNA vaccines do not use any living material at all so this cultural concern is now moot. But if folks really want a more conventional vaccine, the Johnson and Johnson version, and the Astra-Zeneca versions have a killed virus at their core. Just not the COVID virus. I’m not as familiar with the Russian and Chinese vaccines, so I cannot speak about them.

It is incredible how fast our knowledge has grown about genetics and manipulation of genetic components. Just 20 years ago I hung a poster up in my office showing the human genome. It’s only been 20 years ago since the human genome was sequenced, and that effort took over a year to complete. Now, the sequence for this virus was done and sent out to the world in a few days. This enabled scientists to design the genetic response attacking the virus, which resulted in an effective vaccine being developed in record time. The rest of the time was taken up with the clinical trials, which are a necessary step in the release of a vaccine. And indeed, the trials were held, although we do not know essential things like how long does the immune system stay protected. That’s because this virus only came about in the last year, and we’ve not had time to get long-term data on immunity.

There are those who proclaim their belief in God is all they need to protect themselves from germs. These folks would have fared well back in the middle ages with the bubonic plagues. I’d wager most of the folks who succumbed to the plague in bygone days were religious, and that did not save them at all. I just wish these folks would understand that we as humans were given the ability to understand nature, and it is a gift from God to have the knowledge to design new treatments for disease. It is not a refutation of your religious beliefs to accept this wondrous new gift enabled by our abilities provided by God. But then, I cannot comprehend how many believers in this nation were taken in by a charlatan who laughed at their religious devotion.

As I’ve said before, we have an opportunity to see evolution in action. Especially now, since it is the younger people who still can spread their genes to the world who are preferentially refusing to take the vaccines. If those who refuse to take the vaccine end up dying in larger numbers, then fewer of the next generation will have science denial as part of their genetic and cultural inheritance. It is a shame that we must take part in this experiment, because the fewer people who get immunity through vaccines, the more likely it is new variants will develop requiring a tweak to the vaccine, and subsequent booster shots. If we cannot convince folks to get a basic inoculation, then I expect much poorer compliance with subsequent boosters. But maybe it is part of the evolution of the human species causing preferential survival by those who believe in science, and those who are willing to accept the gifts coming from scientific progress.

Push Polling

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Back in December I wrote a blog piece on polling (evenabrokenclock.blog/2020/12/02/poll-dancing/). That piece discussed the mathematical nature of polling, and the uncertainty that goes into a scientifically-designed poll. It mentioned 3 criteria that are required for a poll to provide valid estimates of the sampled population. Those criteria were:

  • Those polled are a representative sample of the population
  • Those who respond to polls are honest in their answers
  • The technology used to reach those who are sampled matches the technology used by those who are sampled.

And then, there was the poll I responded to last week. Since I am a resident of West Virginia, and apparently we have the nation’s most powerful Senator from our state, we’ve been subjected to a great deal of political advertising even in this, a non-election year. This polling is an extension of the advertising, in that it is overtly trying to influence the population being polled.

I was asked about the filibuster. I was asked whether I favored the majority of the Senate being able to ram their opinions over those of the minority by a simple majority. Just the way the question was phrased made me positive that I was being pushed into answering negatively, so of course I switched from an honest response into the mode where I was going to be opposed to the position being pushed upon me.

Next came the questions on support for HR1. There the premise was that by supporting that bill, I would automatically favor the enfranchisement of murderers and rapists, and of “illegal aliens”. No subtlety in this poll, that’s for sure. Where the question on murderers and rapists had to do with ensuring that felons who have completed their sentences have the right to vote restored, the nature of the question led me to believe that this act would allow those in prison presently to access the ballot. Likewise, the mandating of opt-in for voter registration as part of such governmental interactions as drivers licensing is being portrayed as the way for mass registration of ineligible voters who would then vote for Democrats en masse. In my state of West Virginia, the opt-in approach was approved in 2016. It has yet to be implemented, and this year legislation was approved to go back to having the default option being opt-out. Amazing how this works, if you ignore the law for long enough, it disintegrates and blows away in the wind.

I can only hope that the “results” of this poll are buried deeply within the bowels of whatever dark money entity commissioned the poll. For these are the real intentions of this type of polling. They wish to keep the ability to hide the origins of their financing from the public they are trying to hoodwink. The prohibitions against dark money staying buried under the rocks of financial entanglement are dear to the heart of the conservative industrial complex. Likewise, the requirement to take the power to draw their districts away from Legislators and give it over to a non-partisan group will remove the ability of legislators to take a 50/50 split in votes and turn it into a 2/1 majority through creative drawing of district boundaries.

I’m not certain I am in full agreement with all of the provisions of HR1. But I am certain that continuation of the status quo will be ruinous towards the continuation of this experiment in representative democracy. When one side uses their power to stack the deck in their favor, it eventually causes those on the outs to view the process as being illegitimate. Do this enough times, and you will be surprised by the response of those who view themselves as being occupied by an opposing force that refuses to accept their worth as humans.

The Chickens Have Come Home To Roost

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The true Laugher Curve

Pity the poor Republicans. For forty years, they have followed the mantras spouted by their soothsayers, Art Laffer and Grover Norquist. “Lower tax rates bring in more money. Prosperity will trickle down. I want a government so small I can drown it in the bathtub.” For forty years, we’ve been subjected to an experiment aimed at fulfillment of the Republican dream. Then, with the ascendance of a so-called “businessman” to the Presidency, they had their wish totally fulfilled. Tax rates for corporations were slashed, incremental personal tax rates were cut further, and the estate tax now only affects a truly small segment of the population. We should have seen wild growth in our economy! Everyone truly happy and sharing in the national prosperity.

Except. Except we were not sharing equally in the prosperity this nation generated. Many, many folks were caught in the grinding wheel of trying to survive inside of a high cost society. Some lived in fly-over land, where it took a little less to survive, but still, it was nearly impossible to survive on a single income earning anywhere near the minimum wage. If they fell behind, then there were the predatory lenders, the auto title lords, the pay-day lenders, who would take advantage of those who had the least and withdraw funds feeding those who already had made it.

Now the Republicans are facing an opponent that doesn’t buy into the Ayn Randian philosophy permeating the Republican party. And those same Republicans, forced to compete on the field of ideas and policy, are retreating to their well-worn phrases against socialism, and attempting to incite culture wars in order to keep their base energized and engaged. It seems as though the first cracks are appearing in the Republican monolith aimed at enshrining Trumpism into the political hall of fame. Erstwhile supporter of Donald Trump, Matt Gaetz, now finds himself at the focal point of the magnifying glass of the Federal investigating agencies, while the bright light of the press shining through that same magnifying glass has caused the first smoldering of combustion to appear.

There now is someone in charge who believes we’ve had a decades long dearth in the investment provided through the Federal government. The bill has come due in the amount of spending required to repair the neglected arteries of our commerce. Perhaps the global commerce cardiac infarction from the Suez Canal blockage will show folks what can happen if something we depend upon within the US is suddenly taken out of service. Were we to suddenly lose train routes from New Jersey to Manhattan, or lose I-95 due to a bridge failure, we would see how vulnerable we are to this type of incident.

But its more. We now have a society where access to the internet is taken for granted in most population centers. Unfortunately, it is not a given in much of the lower population density regions that extends across the nation. As someone who lives in one of these lower population states, non-existent or extremely poor internet service is the norm anywhere outside of what passes for a population center in the state. Private industry has not found it profitable to serve much of the area in the country, since there is so little population there to amortize their investment. One of the real reasons for population declines in my state is due to the inability to compete because of poor internet connectivity. This really was apparent during the pandemic, where there were attempts to conduct remote learning through the internet. Whole swaths of this state were unable to do this due to the lack of internet service. The internet has become a necessary utility, like electric, phone, and water. Now it appears we are addressing those regions where it is not available, and that is good.

So now we hear the wails from the Republicans about the extreme leftists who have taken over the opposition party. Nowhere do we hear about the extremism we’ve endured on behalf of the ideology of “I’ve got mine, now go screw yourself” party we’ve seen for over a generation. Like it or not, no one is a raging success on their own. If we’ve been successful, it’s because of education systems put in place a long time ago. When people began abandoning the public school system, mainly due to the integration of that public system, then their engagement with that system has atrophied. Many no longer believe they have a role to play in the success of the whole. Instead, they decry forced taxation as legalized theft. They don’t care if the poor can’t get ahead, they’ll just hole up in their gated community and enjoy the fruits of their supposed labor.

Well, better historians than me have traced the decline of societies to the times when a significant underclass no longer feels they are able to share in the wealth of the society. That’s when desperation leads to true socialistic movements that will overwhelm any gates the rich can put up to isolate themselves. We can begin to address the obscene inequities present in our current system, or we can pretend that we can escape the world’s ills by flying to Cancun while everyone at home freezes in the dark.