Category Archives: government

On Corruption

Lord Acton’s famous line about the relationship of power and corruption needs no more than its first phrase. The two are conjoined twins. Under the right circumstances all of us are likely to succumb to the corrosive effect of authority. Some occupations have it as part of their job descriptions. While corruption is ineluctably part…


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COVID-19 Six Months In

It’s just about half a year since we recognized that the coronavirus had taken residence in the US and just about everywhere else. We took a while to realize that the bug was going to stay longer than The Man Who Came to Dinner. Though epidemics have been a feature of human existence ever since…


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Back to Work by March 30: A Coronavirus Imperative

America has no choice if it is to avoid total disaster. China and Russia are open for business and working at close to capacity, as America shutters most all business and industry in states such as Pennsylvania, New York, California, New Jersey, and Connecticut. In many cases only select manufacturing companies are allowed to operate,…


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Cats Can’t Count and Only Centenarians Should Vote

Cats, like many other species, can’t count. Our feline acquaintances have come up with an interesting work-around to deal with their deficient numeracy. When a mother cat decides, for whatever reason, to move her kittens she takes one by the scruff of the neck to its new location. Since she can’t count she doesn’t know…


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Some Things Speak for Themselves

Medicare to go broke three years earlier than expected, trustees say. Bernie Sanders Unveils ‘Medicare for All’ Bill.


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Not in Our Stars

…history;which is indeed little more than the register of the crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind. Edward Gibbon In a vein similar to Gibbon, Mark Twain allowed that the worst that could be said about anyone was that he was human. Prior to Twain, but after Gibbon, James Madison declared that no laws would be…


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Britain’s National Health Service Continues to Struggle

The UK’s NHS is experiencing another major problem. Patients ‘dying in hospital corridors’ is the headline of a BBC article describing “intolerable conditions” in the country’s government run hospitals. The system’s current problem is blamed on the flu and, of course, government underfunding. That the taxpayers’ funding of the NHS is at an all time…


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Medical Rationing in the UK

A sizable, but likely still a minority, of the population seems to think that the federal government should have sole responsibility for the funding and delivery of medical care in the US – ie, a single payer system. Many, if not, most people make up their minds about the provision of both medical care and…


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Don’t Look Back

The most poorly managed institution in modern western society is the hospital. I say this after half a century of steady exposure to hospitals of all sorts. I was a student, resident, fellow, staff member, section chief, department chair, chief of staff, and even a patient. Inertia at all levels was unconquerable. Newton’s first law…


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The Charlie Gard Case

By now almost everyone has heard of the the Charlie Gard case. The issue at its core is much simpler than any of the accounts that I have read of the plight of this child and his family. Medically the case is straightforward. The child suffers from a rare metabolic defect that has destroyed all…


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