Sugoi & Yokunai

It's interesting how liberal fact-check sites debunk "myths" relating to SS.  They claim that there never was a SS Trust, and so it's silly to say that government is draining funds for SS by combining with the general funds for Congress to spend.  Yet they admit that in 1969 (under Democrat Pres. Johnson) that the SS Trust Fund was made to be included in the unified budget, which now can be spent.  To me, that's the same thing.  Also, blame is put on Ronald Reagan to make SS income taxable.  Reagan just commission the Greenspan Committee to look into addressing the SS money shortfall.  A bill to make SS income taxable was supported by Biden, and to break the 50-50 tie in the Senate, the tie-breaker was Al Gore, a Democrats.  Yes, Nixon was responsible for creating Social Security Income, but I bet he never dreamed that it would be made open to illegal immigrants, as well.  SS is even open to legal immigrants, who have not had to pay into the system.  It's been shown that these immigrants get a better deal than regular Americans who have had to have deductions taken from their paychecks for as long as they've worked.  Legal immigrants can just get the benefits. 

So these programs, unfair and fraught with threats to insolvency, are almost impossible to reverse.  Like so much in life: Easy to give - hard to take away. 

There's a saying: "If you think healthcare is expensive, just wait 'til it's free."  This is so true, but it is what many in Salem are proposing. I am certain that this will decrease the quality of care provided, and will result in even higher taxes.

The Oregon legislature is considering a bill that would ban therapists from trying to change a person's sexual orientation.  The sponsor of the bill is gay, and doesn't want therapists to discuss this issue.  I really think government should stay out of the medical profession when it comes to determining what a doctor should say or recommend.  It's a slippery slope to regulating a physician's ability to speak objectively in other matters. 

Thomas Sowell once said:

"Much of the social history of the Western world over the past three decades has involved replacing what worked with what sounded good. In area after area – crime, education, housing, race relations – the situation has gotten worse after the bright new theories were put into operation. The amazing thing is that this history of failure and disaster has neither discouraged the social engineers nor discredited them."

To this list, we should add the threat of single-payer healthcare.  A single-payer system, like ranked-choice voting, sounds like a good thing, but since money controls much in medicine, it basically makes the physician subservient to whatever some third-party decides is best.  Most people can't see this, and only predict that things will be less expensive.  Making care less expensive will come at a cost, but limiting your choices.  Fast food is cheaper, but it is not a dietary option for everyday eating.  It's been said that in healthcare, the three goals are quality, affordability, and accessibility.  But you can only choose two.  While this may be a simplification, it is not far from the reality.  Single-payer plans offer the affordability and accessibility, but quality requires that you have quality physicians, and the availability to receive care that is sometimes expensive.  It also means that you don't want to get bogged down with paperwork and administrative hassles that so often accompanies government-sponsored services.  But the most telling reason for wanting to avoid government-regulated single-payer care was revealed by SCOTUS when they ruled in favor of the vaccine mandate for healthcare providers, saying:

The court said that the vaccine mandate for health care workers was, unlike the OSHA regulation, justified as just the kind of detailed regulations that the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services has long imposed as a condition for health care providers getting federal funds.

How do we go from a world where helping people is cliché to a world where swaths of lawyers are fighting to defend those doing just the opposite? The people who write that they want to help people too much on their applications are the same people three years later working for firms actively fighting for those who have hurt people.

Seems like many people voted for Measure 110 without really knowing what it would do.  Typical of most voters, I guess.  So now we legalized addicting harmful drugs, and nothing to show for it.

The physician of the future - dumber and woker, and more likely to kill you.  That's just great.

Over three years since the beginning, Biden is finally willing to end COVID-19 emergency status.  Can't believe Biden is actually going to end it at last.  We'll finally go back to being a republic instead of an autocracy.  Oregon ended it on 4/01/2022, with executive order 2022-3.  But healthcare professional still have to get the jab to be able to work.  Even though the evidence suggests that the existing products have minimal efficacy against raising antibodies, and no proven efficacy in reducing transmission, death or hospitalization.  (Actually, it suggests the opposite.)  But now, we have a new state of emergency due to the homelessness crisis, which is a manmade problem, and solvable if there was a real willingness to do so.  But instead, we legalize harmful and mind-altering drugs, and are soft on crime.  Even the LA Times thinks Portland is awful.

Dr. Matt Might has some productivity suggestions for those in academic, who need some mental discipline.  It's great that he's taken the time to post these mind-hacks.

Deep fake scams are getting better, and now we won't be able to trust whether any video is authentic.  Given any technology, someone will cause problems just for the fun of it.