An Historical Oddity

 

                                 An Historical Oddity

05/04/2023

Note: This is really far afield from my usual political rant, but the current continuing dirge of right-wing drivel has left me numb this week. I wrote this wearing my history professor shirt, and I’m pretty sure this will take the reader’s mind far, far, away from our current political morass. And now:

There is an exclusively volcanic archipelago in the South Pacific east of New Guinea and southeast of the Solomon Islands. This island group as a whole, an independent Republic since 1980, is the nation of Vanuatu. One of those islands is Tanna, and several of its villages share an extremely unusual characteristic.

To understand what goes on, one first needs to understand the concept of the cargo cult. The myths of the cargo cult have their roots as far back as the very earliest myths that a European Christian, known as Prester John, actually ministered to people in South-East Asia. Some of the earliest accounts even allege that it was the apostle John. Of course, they never saw him, because the most reliable accounts have John spending his days on the Island of Patmos, with some having him living in Ephesus (Turkey) at the time of his death. The history of Prester John is the history of a man who never existed. Medieval legend recalled him into being when it was felt that his presence would be of help in the struggle between Christian Europe and the Islamic world.

        Over time, this morphed, in some indigenous and generally isolated groups, into the idea that there was this semi-divine individual named John who would, at some point in the future, come back and bring good things to these isolated communities. In later years, one of the names given to this “person” was John Frum. The “John Frum” of the people of Tanna may have been either a British or French or even American sailor who at some point came in contact with these people. He is sometimes even depicted as an American World War II serviceman who will bring wealth and prosperity to the people if they follow him. British Naturalist, David Attenborough reported an encounter with locals during which he was told, "'E look like you. 'E got white face. 'E tall man. 'E live 'long South America."

Either way the cargo cults, which still exist on a few other Pacific Islands, as well as among several tribes of New Guinea, believe that somebody, usually regarded as a semi-divinity, will come from the West, bringing technologically advanced goods to these people - hence the word “cargo.”

        What makes the two cargo cult villages on Tanna, (Yaohnanen and Yakel) unique is that they have actually identified a real person as that semi-divine individual. He has only been there once, and, being now deceased, never will be again.    According to ancient Yaohnanen tales, the son of a mountain spirit travelled over the volcanic mountains to them. He was sometimes said to be a brother to “John Frum”.

The people of the Yaohnanen and Takel area believe in the divinity of the recently deceased Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, the late Prince Consort to the late Queen Elizabeth II. The Yaohnanen tribe believed him to be the pale-skinned son of an ancient mountain spirit. They had seen the respect accorded to Queen Elizabeth II by the colonial officials and concluded that her husband, Prince Philip, must be the son referred to in their legends. The origins of this belief are not known or at least openly discussed by believers, but ancient tales tell of the mountain spirit’s son travelling to a distant land, marrying a powerful lady and, in time, returning.

It gained real time traction in the 1950s or 1960s and was further strengthened by the royal couple's official visit to Vanuatu in 1974, when a few villagers had the opportunity to actually see Prince Philip from a distance. At the time, Vanuatu was still a British dependency as part of the New Hebrides.  The prince was not then aware of the sect, but it was brought to his attention several years later by a British Resident Commissioner in the New Hebrides.

In April 2021, the sect mourned Prince Philip's death. The Village Chief said that he was "terribly, terribly sorry" that the prince died and the tribal leader sent his formal condolences to the Royal Family and the people of the UK. A formal mourning period was declared, and many tribespeople gathered in a ceremony to remember the duke, where men took turns to speak and pay tribute to him. For the next few weeks, villagers met periodically to conduct rites for him. Referring to the Queen, Chief Jack Malia said that though the Duke is dead, they still “Have a connection with the 'mother' of the royal family.” Many of the tribesmen believe that while his body lies at rest, the duke’s soul will return to "its spiritual home, the island of Tanna. There are those who believe (hope) that the Mountain Prince spirit will transfer to the duke’s son, Prince Charles”. (Don’t hold your breath.)

I have seen nothing related to how the death of Queen Elizabeth has affected these communities.

The Speech No One Wants To Give (update)

 

The Speech No One Wants to Give

 

“To attain any success, it is quite clear that the Federal government cannot avoid or escape responsibilities which the mass of the people firmly believe should be undertaken by it. The political processes of our country are such that if a rule of reason is not applied in this effort, we will lose everything — even to a possible and drastic change in the Constitution. This is what I mean by my constant insistence upon “moderation” in government.

        Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history. There is a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes you can do these things…. a few other Texas oil millionaires, and an occasional politician or businessman from other areas. Their number is negligible, and they are stupid.”

        Sound a bit like AOC speaking?  Perhaps a Socialist candidate? Hardly. This is an excerpt from a letter written by Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower, then POTUS, to his brother Edgar. The gap is where he named several names of those he considered “stupid.” The second paragraph reveals how far the modern Republican party has strayed from Ike’s precepts, having become markedly anti-union, and progressive labor legislation, and threatening Social Security. Of course, since many modern Republicans reap the windfall from farm subsidies, they have actually increased (read RED states).

        However, the title of this essay reflects my belief that we should consider and honor the scientific process, by which I mean mathematics, statistics, and demographics. One of the aspects of science which some political conservatives and an even greater percentage of conservative religionists deny, is that as conditions change (read climate change, here, as one example) so should our expectations and actions.

        One such Conservative objection to some change is the fear that doing the right thing isn’t the “right thing’ if it affects business’s bottom line. Another thread is voiced by those who are stuck with a creation “story” which is increasingly revealed as creation “myth” by science. The tragedy here is that as we are seeing as I write, the right salesman with the proper snake oil can, seemingly against all odds, unite these seemingly disparate forces.  

        First off we have the claims that Congress is “pilfering" the Social Security Trust Fund.  This has become the lie that won't die, simply because too many are willing accept it without doing the simple homework to verify its fallacy. 

    Social Security sometimes collects more money than what is paid out. Between 1937-2009 the Social Security Administration (SSA) received $13.8 trillion in income, but expended $11.3 trillion in benefits, according to the agency. However, for the past 11 years, the retirement program has taken in enough FICA taxes to pay current year benefits and that's where the Trust Fund, comes into play.

    Every year, excess money is held in the "Social Security Trust Fund" which gets invested into Treasury bonds and securities that make a lot of interest. In the Fiscal Year 2018 those investments racked up $3 billion alone, adding to a total of $2.895 trillion currently in the fund. So any money taken in from Social Security isn't being divvied up among Congress, that money is being invested in the most secure way--with U.S. bonds.

"No, [Congress] did not take any funds from SS," Dean Baker, senior economist at Center for Economic and Policy Research, said. "SS funds are credited to its trust fund. Unless Congress changes the law (and it hasn't), any money dedicated to the trust fund is in the trust fund.”

        Having said that, it must be noted that one consistent bugaboo, addressed with varying amounts of arm waving and hot air, to some degree by both parties, has been the continually burgeoning federal budget cost share of social welfare programs, especially Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security programs. Much has been written, some of it mine, regarding health care costs and the responsibility for their escalation borne (or which should be borne) by outlandish and extortionary drug pricing by Major Pharma corporations. This isn’t a “fix”, but it would be a hell of a start if Congress had the guts to put lobbyist influence aside and repeal Medicare part D’s prohibition on negotiating drug prices like every private health insurer can and does. That simple action would reduce government drug spending by about $133 billion annually! For comparison, that savings would defray about 30% of the 2020 interest on the national debt. (prior to whatever effects we see from Covid-19)

        On the other hand, and more directly related to my topic is a set of demographics which requires nothing more than literacy and common sense to interpret. The implications are plain and the “fix” apparent, if unpopular.

Obviously, we live longer, and not just a little longer, but almost 15 years longer. Actually, in 1935 when Social Security was incepted, the average life span was 60.7 years of age. This meant that as the creators of the concept enacted it, the odds were that the average worker wouldn’t live to collect a dime!

        Looking at the table yields some fairly simple conclusions, but the “big” one is harder to see.  First: in 1940, Ida May Fuller, became Social Security's first beneficiary. She was exceptional because she had lived longer than the average of her peers.  By 1945, at full wartime productivity, for each SS beneficiary, there were 41.9 workers paying into the system (actually building for a while, an excess, the illusory “trust fund”.) Today’s workers, on the other hand are paying today’s recipients. Yes, they are.

         By 1975, because of the increase in recipients and a 7-year increase in longevity, the “workers to recipients” ratio was down to less than 1/3 of the 1945 figure. Meanwhile, the birth rate in the USA had decreased by about a third. The number of retirees reaching eligibility age was still increasing, primarily due to longer life expectancy. As seen in the table, the Social security share of the federal budget was blossoming as well. At this point, another factor came into play, that being the numbers of persons receiving disability or survivor’s benefits from the same pot of cash. Surviving spouse of children coverage was part of the 1935 law, but disability wasn’t covered until 1956. This may seem cynical, but it seems to me that the availability of disability has in many cases created a cottage industry for lawyers willing to arrange it for a slight fee.

        The monster lurking under the bed, however, was the post war “Baby Boom”. From 1945 to 1961, the birth rate in the USA was higher than ever before or since, creating a “bubble” in the progression of population growth. The effects of this bubble have been felt by every industry in America from home building to children’s clothing to insurance to health care, and the list is practically endless. Take a child born to Mr. and Mrs. Howard Cunningham in 1948, after Howard returned from his army duties and they settled down. Their son, call him Richie, born in 1948, hit Social Security full retirement age of 67 in 2015, and he’ll draw Social security, assuming he’s got good genes, for at least another 11 or 12 years. 

        Because the baby boom continued into the early 1960s, and because the birth rate dropped to about half of that of the boom’s peak years, there are now even fewer workers contributing to the payments made to the steadily increasing numbers of boomer retirees planning, like me, to live a lot longer than average.  I’m barely a “pre-boomer, born in 1942. The boomer class of 1955 -1960, when the birth rate per 100 thousand was still over 20, is yet to come. The ‘55s hit in 2022.

        So, what? The first observation, admittedly in hindsight, is that this issue was completely predictable and avoidable. It was obvious by the numbers between 1945 and 1955. Disability compounded the issue, accounting. now, for about 20% of the Social Security payout. What to do?  Let’s first reflect on what could have been done. This trend was obvious at least 70 years ago (1950) and at that time, considering the increased lifespan, a forward thinking Congress (yeah, I’m aware that’s an oxymoron) might have passed legislation raising the full retirement eligibility age by a year each of the following three or four decades. At most, that would now have full retirement at age 69. An accompanying increase for the early retirement age would have also been appropriate. Passing this legislation in 1950 to go into effect in 1960 would have “grandfathered” every worker within ten years of retirement. Had this been done, recognizing that the changes occurring were predictable and irreversible, Social Security would be well and good. As it stands, more than a third of retirees take early Social Security benefits, in many cases because they have prepared for retirement in other ways. In other words, foresight could have “fixed” the problem by 1990. Unfortunately, only a smattering of that philosophy was applied, and that was too late.

         What might be done now? (and this is the part that no politician wishes to address, because any real fix will be unpopular in some place.

        First, recognize that any change that doesn’t grandfather persons with current retirement plans is blatantly unfair, so: pick a time certain, say, at least 5 years from enacting of legislation, which raises the full eligibility age to 68. Also, raise the early retirement age to 63 in, perhaps, just three or 4 years. Additionally, decrease the initial amount of early retirement to encourage individuals to wait. In another five years plan for another bump to age 69 for full retirement, while leaving early retirement at 63. Increase the reward for waiting. In a worst-case scenario, employers to include disability insurance equivalent to Social Security disability as a perk. Also enact realistic legislation defining “disability” in meaningful terms. I’m reminded of the Louisiana mother of four sons, all supposedly mentally unable to hold jobs, yet all of whom had cars, but when their disability status was questioned, her rationale was that “Every young man needs a car.” The literature is rife with well documented claims of disability fraud as well as simple benefit fraud, such as cashing checks of long dead parents.

        Explain, in simple English, that by probably 2035 the problem will moderate on its own, as the “Bulge” of the baby boomers pass through the system and on to whatever waits for them. The birthrate began to decrease after a plateau at 1955-57. The class of 1957 would be 81 by that time and total numbers of beneficiaries would be decreasing steadily.

         Do not, however, like former Congressman Paul Ryan, himself the beneficiary of Social Security survivor’s benefits, address this issue as it the people who depend on it are the ones at fault. Too often this one- dimensional approach, usually including the use of the word “entitlement” somewhere, seems to blame eligible recipients rather than address the issue of Congressional unwillingness to tackle unpopular issues squarely.      

A Mental Disorder

 

                                                   A Mental Disorder

05/22/2023 

Some time ago, there were two separate letters in the local paper which, distilled of all the faux outrage and pseudo patriotism, essentially chastised persons of color as embodied in the personages of many NFL players. At the core of these complaints was “taking a knee” to protest racial inequities and injustices. The gist of both was that Black Americans should just "get over it" because slavery wasn't "all that bad" and besides it was a long time ago. (No really, you can’t make this stuff up!)  Incredibly one such slavery apologist is former Trump cabinet member and current imbecile, Dr Ben Carson, who actually said: “That's what America is about. A land of dreams and opportunity. There were other immigrants who came here in the bottom of slave ships, worked even longer, even harder for less.” Immigrants come voluntarily, slaves certainly did not. This level of ignorance makes my head hurt.

Similarly, we are, almost daily confronted with statements and bullying legislative efforts by our Florida Governor to extend those same hateful sentiments to almost every social or racial concept of which he disapproves. It truly makes one question his mental stability and rationality. 

        As a historian I am staggered by the ignorance represented in these statements and/or sentiments. Space limits how much one can say, but in (too) short:

Other historic forms of slavery were almost universally situational, that is the social situation of the enslaved person made them inferior in the context of their society. In Africa, that could mean a conquered enemy or an orphan for example. These people were frequently adopted into families or eventually freed. They were not born slaves, and not destined at birth to be or die as such.  The same was true of Greek and Roman slaves. In fact, the Romans called central European captives "Slavs" which is the root of the English word "slave."

Black trans-Atlantic slavery was significantly different in one critical aspect which is still with us today in the rants of DeSantis, Trump, Bannon, and their associated scum. That was, the assumption on the part of the slave holder that those he held in bondage were not just inferior as their social situation dictated but were inferior as human beings.  This assumption was not unique to Black Africans.  The English and their American castoffs turned allies, the Americans of New England, considered the Irish as inferior humans, actually classifying them at one time as "non-white."  Native Americans were considered in much the same fashion.

Relatively few Americans, even racists such as Bannon and Trump would have little trouble grasping why the Irish in Ireland still have "issues" with the English. From the slaughters of mid-17th century (see: "Drogheda massacre") until the violent events of mid-late 20th, The Irish were the bastard red haired stepchildren of the British Isles. Once in America, having been encouraged to leave by English landlords, they met much the same treatment in Boston and elsewhere in the Northeast, So what? So as Caucasians, the Irish were able to assimilate into society without the constant reminder to others that they had once been social outcasts. Without the constant reminder of dark skin, the stigma was impermanent. You could lose the brogue, educate yourself and blend. Later the Italians would walk that same path.

Knowing the history of Native American /US relations, one can easily grasp why many Indians still resent many white Americans. If you have difficulty understanding this, read Dee Brown's remarkable "Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee."  Skin color and adherence to centuries old native "paganism" relegated Indians, in the minds of many, to the same "lower life form" status reserved for Black slaves by white Southerners. To the great disappointment of many whites, Indians were poor slave material, being susceptible to diseases to which most Whites had some acquired immunity. Andrew Jackson had little difficulty convincing many Southerners of their racial and social inferiority and of the necessity of simply moving many of them to a land (Oklahoma) which bore little resemblance to their native mountains of the Southeast and the Gulf Coast. 

The English, so quick to condemn slavery and the slave trade in the early 1800s, had made a fortune in the human trafficking business for most of the previous 200 years. Descriptions of Barbadian society are mind boggling in their inhumanity. This, from a monograph by Barbadian Historian and Chancellor of the University of the West Indies, Sir Hilary Beckles, April 2017 is instructive:

"The enslavement of Africans on the sugar plantations of São Tomé by the 1530s undoubtedly represented the first great stride towards the creation of the Barbados black slave society. The Spanish took the chattel enslavement of Africans to Cuba, in the northern Caribbean, in the 1540s. Inexorably, it spread to the eastern Caribbean and found its most fertile environment in the plantation complex of Barbados exactly a century later. Upon this small rock, England gained its first economic success by building the first complete large-scale black slave society. By 1650, it was universally recognized for its economic prosperity, physical brutality and social inhumanity towards Africans. English managers of the model were not to be deterred, however; they pressed on and redefined for the long term the primary character of Europe’s and the Americas’ relationship with Africans.”

It was, tragically, the beginning of a new era in global economic development and race relations. With the black slave society, England’s entrepreneurship forged and realigned the world economic order. Investors and imperial administrators seized the moment and abandoned traditional labor values and relations. Slavery in the Caribbean was a comfortable ocean’s breadth away. Men who defined themselves as “Planters” lived large in London, while their factors drove their human chattel to their deaths thousands of  miles away. Sugar plantations, stocked with thousands of easily replaceable enslaved Africans, produced super-profits. The entire island was quickly stripped of meaningful internal boundaries or frontiers and transformed into endless fields of sugar cultivation. Record levels of white-owned wealth and black deaths defined the slave plantation as a “best practice” in the new business culture.

        When White Americans as some current letter writers did, simply say, "Well, it's over now, you're equal, so what's the fuss" they demonstrate zero sense of history. When the UK outlawed the slave trade in 1807 and slavery itself in 1833, most British Caribbean islands were vast majority Black. One effect of this was that there was really not a white majority to impose, and more significantly, to enforce "Jim Crow" practices on the former slave populations. In the USA, however, Whites represented armed, educated and politically powerful numerical majorities in all but the most cotton-driven Southern states.

 So when a White American points to the 13th Amendment and says "So, what's the problem," they're looking past (or through) more than 90 years of Jim Crow politics, Black Codes, White Citizens councils, White supremacists openly threatening and in many cases killing innocents, and the general continued oppression of Black Americans, for whom the word "Citizen," stripped as it was of civil rights, had a hollow ring.

Jump ahead to World War One when, as White soldiers mobilized, Blacks, formerly turned away from decent jobs, and barred from military opportunities in the main, came North to work, encouraged to do so by those who had shunned them as social and human inferiors since Emancipation. Blacks went to work, thriving in heavy industry, once closed and now open. World War One ended and demobilized whites came home to find a willing labor pool of Blacks, some already employed in former "Whites only" positions. 

    In St Louis, this took the form of Labor Unions deciding to strike for higher wages and to keep the best jobs for whites. During the ensuing riots, Police and National Guard largely stood idly by as somewhere between 65 and 150 blacks were killed by striking white workers. Samuel Gompers, white former cigar maker and then Labor leader, vainly attempted to minimize labor's role in the matter. In a mass meeting in Carnegie Hall, Gompers, then president of the American Federation of Labor, attempted to diminish the role that trade unions played in the massacre by persisting that an investigation was needed in order to place blame, "Why don't you accuse after an investigation?" To which the former president of the United States, Theodore Roosevelt, responded by saying, "Mr. Gompers, why don't I accuse afterwards? I'll answer now, when murder is to be answered." 

The list of continuing discriminatory practice based only on race in America continues today. It is, in too many cases, more subtle but not always.  Does violence beget violence? Sometimes it does, but by any reasonable standard, Americans should, if they be religious, thank their God for Martin Luther King Junior's influence in the 1960s.

One of the more troublesome conundrums caused by this long-lived institutionalized racism could have been seen in many a Boston bar in the 50s and 60s where Irish Americans scorned Blacks, even as pro athletes, for some years after most other teams in the NBA and MLB had integrated. If asked, they might well have responded, as the letter writers have with, "Get over it."  These same 1960-80s Bostonians in the same bar might also have contributed to the "tip Jar" on the bar which, with a wink and a nudge, was understood to be a collection to help arm and finance the Irish Republican Army. Try telling those same yahoos to "Get over" that. 

    Racism destroys logic, bludgeons the human spirit, and poisons children's minds. I honestly believe it to be a mental illness, since it embodies characteristics of illogic similar in some ways to other diseases. It causes spontaneous emotional outbursts similar to bipolar disorder. It makes its victims react to imaginary threats a la paranoia. It causes otherwise outwardly sane people to have total disregard and lack of empathy for an entire group of people personally unknown to them. We call that Sociopathic personality disorder. And finally, it imparts to the sufferer an unjustified feeling of superiority as a human being. Even worse than all these is the sad fact that many of the most vile, rabid and vocal sufferers of "Racism disorder" actually believe that their beliefs, actions and attitudes are in some mysterious way sanctioned by a magical spirit in the sky. Now THAT'S sick!                                 

Poor Pharma

 

Poor Pharma

05/18 2023

This was written in 2018, but with the debt ceiling crisis looming, we all should recognize this fact: The best immediate way to lower the deficit significantly is to amend Medicare Part D to allow Medicare and Medicaid to negotiate drug prices, vice being constrained by law to pay the manufacturer’s usurious “list” price, which no other health insurance plan in the world pays. This essay deals with this and other issues related to the stranglehold Big Pharma has on the nation’s pocketbook, collectively and individually.

          The other flaw in the system is that, while many drug companies issue reduced price coupons, Medicare recipients can’t (by law) use them to reduce their copays. One quick updated example: Rinvoq, the new hot drug for psoriasis, psoriatic arthritis and several other ailments will cost (retail)  $7352 monthly.  With a free coupon) at your local CVs it’s “only” $6291 monthly! If commercially insured, and with a card issued by the manufacturer, that can be reduced to as a little as $5 per month (not available to all US residents and no reduced price coupon is applicable to Medicare/Medicaid patients.) This means in effect, that the Social Security client just has to “bend over and take it,” paying the significant co-pay of part D.

OK, here goes:       

 

"Speaker Pelosi's drug pricing plan would siphon $1 trillion or more from biopharmaceutical innovators over the next 10 years. CBO's preliminary estimate found this bill ‘would result in lower spending on research and development and thus reduce the introduction of new drugs.’"

— Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America on Wednesday, November 27th, 2019, in an ad in the “Politico Playbook PM” newsletter.

        The above statement was issued of course, by the drug companies’ lobbying arm and awarded a “Mostly False” rating by PolitiFact, the closest to a neutral observer I’ve found. The PolitiFact article dealt with, to a large extent, the uncertainties related to estimating the real numbers of potentially undeveloped drugs as well as the $1 trillion estimated ten year cost of doing the most common sense thing imaginable, currently prohibited by Medicare part D plan, which has been flawed from inception.

         What, you ask, is this drug cost panacea? It’s actually elegant in its simplicity. Allow Medicare to bargain drug prices. What? You mean like every other single health care provider in the nation?  Yep. That’s all. Just allow Medicare to compete with every other insurer and negotiate drug pricing. Banning this was a Bush 43 concession to Big Pharma which was lobbying against any Drug plan. I’ve written numerous times on this topic, so in a very brief synopsis: While private insurers and even the VA dicker with drug manufacturers for lower than “sticker” price on drugs, Medicare is prohibited from doing so.

        One quick and relatively current example: Epi-Pen. Mylan Pharmaceuticals jacked the price by about 100% right after acquiring the patent several years ago. An Epi-pen “list” price for a two-injector package is about $700 today. If an individual on Medicare with part D drug coverage is prescribed Epi-Pen (a lifesaving remedy for some), between the plan and the copay, Mylan will make $700. If the patient sees a coupon (many of which are issued by Mylan, whose actual cost per injector is well under $15) they cannot use it. Medicare must be paid full price. On the other hand, the veteran’s Administration pays well under $200 per 2 pack. Meanwhile at CVS, with a free coupon (not available to Medicare users!) on the GOOD Rx website, I can get the same Epi-pen 2 pack for $141! Even without a coupon, Mylan also sells a generic epi-pen for a mere $400 per two pack. But wait, as they say, there is another brand, just as effective, Adrenaclick, whose manufacturer makes a generic version which sells at CVS for $110 per 2 pack. Of course, most doctors prescribe Epi-pen and so Medicare pays the full price minus co-pay, which the Medicare “beneficiary” must cover.

        Understand this: In just this one instance for the Epi-pen generic which now combined with its name brand partner, has 80% of the auto injectable epinephrine market, The Government pays well over 100% more than most non-Medicare patients pay!  

        Another example is the common anti-inflammatory, Celebrex. While there is fairly reasonable generic now, the actual on-patent drug will cost the Medicare patient between part D and co-pay, as a low figure, about $233 for a 60-day supply. The non-Medicare patient with a printable coupon can buy brand name Celebrex at Walmart for $25.90. Same meds, same amount, 89% cheaper.      

        How does this relate to total US drug expenditures?  With 15% of Americans on Medicare, Medicare drug spending is grossly disproportional to the population share. Part of this is, of course, related to the older population segment in question, but here’s the rest of the story. More than 155 million American industrial workers currently avail themselves of employer provided health care plans. They (in conjunction with their insurers, who strenuously bargain drug costs!) pay 40% of all US Drug spending (2016 data). With about 50 million currently enrolled on Medicare, Medicare paid 39% of that same spending. Understand this: about 44 million Americans, those under Medicare’s bargaining restrictions, paid the same total amount for drugs as 155 million Industrial workers under employer insurance.

        The above is significantly impactful in several other areas as well: Those opposing “Medicare for all” (I prefer National Health Care) cite the current overall cost as a major deterrent, However, they fail to consider the effects of a 50% reduction in drug spending which eliminating part D restriction would accomplish.  In 2016, Medicare drug spending was $128 billion. Reducing that cost by half would generate, over ten years, $648 billion, or 2/3 of the trillion cited in the Big Pharma sponsored article. That figure is not unrealistic, and perhaps even a bit low, considering how much lower insurers bargain prices.

        How to save, for the poor pharma industry? Here’s an idea. As of this year, only one other nation, New Zealand, allows prescription drugs to be advertised DTC (Direct to Consumer). US Pharmaceutical companies spend $6 billion annually doing so, even though 79% of senior US medical doctors call it “Not helpful.”   Eliminating this “not useful” advertising would save $60 billion over ten years, which gets us to $700 billion plus. As a point of interest, the two leading single expenditures per drug are Cialis and Viagra.  But the $6 billion DTC dollars is peanuts compared to Pharma’s “treats” to the medical community. Overall Big Pharma, between cute drug reps and freebies of all sorts including drug samples, spends another $20 billion annually. This is another $200 billion over ten years. We’re close to the dreaded $1 trillion mark and haven’t even dealt with what may be the most mendacious of this whole series of Pharma misstatements.

         The worst is the sin of omission, which is that, while they are fond of citing R & D expenditures, they omit the fact that most new drugs are actually developed by university researchers with NIH grants. (yep, our money!)  In many cases the pharma company buys the patent from the school or the researcher depending on various criteria, and them simply markets it after secondary testing and FDA approval. Gilead’s Harvoni ($84,000 if Medicare pays for it, much less, but still pricey, with good private insurance) is a case in point.

         The developer at Emory University, who worked with an NIH grant, was paid $4 million for his share of the efforts by Gilead. “We the People” should own that patent. After the NIH funded a total $62.4 million for the basic science behind the breakthrough drug sofosbuvir (“brand named” Harvoni after secondary trials and granted 20 years’ patent protection), it was purchased by the firm Gilead for $11 billion. Gilead then turned around and priced it at up to six-figures, even though a 12-week treatment course of 12 pills costs less than $100 to produce. For the mathematically inclined, that’s 8,400% profit! Meanwhile, the generic of Harvoni (sofosbuvir) sells at $127 for the same cure in India! All in all, taxpayers — not Big Pharma — have funded the research behind every new drug since 2010! Read it again, no misprint.

        Another Pharma money saver? Stop leading the nation in Congressional lobbying giveaways. It isn’t close for second place either. Or, realize that a 25-30% net profit (the companies at the top make that) at the expense of the rest of us is abusive. It is, in effect, corporate loansharking. As it currently stands, Big Pharma is fleecing the nation via Medicare drug pricing and a host of lesser but significant evils. Medicare’s full price “pay up and shut up” via part D has been Pharma’s Golden Goose since 2006. Now they’re whining for their right to keep collecting the eggs indefinitely.

        Since Medicare drug plan user have significant co-pays, repealing the Part D “full price” requirement would have  a significantly beneficial effect on family budgets as well as the federal budget deficit.

Peeing on Our Shoes Update

 

Peeing on Our Shoes Redux

05/11/2023

    This is a 2017 post, updated in response to the loathsome Star Parker's op-ed in today's paper.  She leads with "Joe Biden doesn't care about the deficit." The typically delusional Ms. Parker slights Biden's unwillingness to cut certain "people programs" and ignores the huge portion of the deficit stemming from burgeoning Medicare drug costs. Why? Because Pharma lobbies the hell out of Congress to make damned sure Medicare Part D continues paying $600 for epi-pens which cost Mylan Pharma less than $30 to make.

     Following that canard, and even more significantly, which is why I repost this essay, she then tosses out a remarkably uncharacteristic (for her) comment that spending money we don't have, without raising taxes, is foolish. Well no shite, Sherlock!  In truth, the last century from 1970 on has been a lab experiment in proving that cutting taxes does not, contrary to GOP claims, increase federal revenue, but actually reduces it. The essay addresses several presidents, their tax cutting, and the results. In two cases (Reagan and Bush 43) tax cuts for the wealthy were a campaign centerpiece and both of them then spent as if the cuts worked (they didn't).

     In Reagan's case, it was greatly ramped up defense spending following the insane tax cuts because Reagan, apparently alone in the opinion, ignored Laffer's guidance that said Supply Side only works for marginal rates above 50%. (Reagan cut it to 28% and then ramped up massive debt with "Star Wars."           

    Bush 43 also cut taxes on the wealthy and then went to war with Iraq and Afghanistan, spending all the while. The deficit followed the spending.

    Obama reduced taxes slightly on the middle and lower class earners during the Great Recession, but increased marginal rates on the top 1%.

    Enter Donald Trump. His cuts on the lower earning sector expire soon, but the top tier cuts don't. Meanwhile for the 4th consecutive GOP President, tax cuts have resulted in reduced federal income vice more as promised.    

Note: This is about the fallacy of the “trickle down” theory of economics and the falsehoods “spun” from it and put into bad fiscal policy. 

        A major early entry in the bottomless pit of Trump administration "don't piss on my shoes and tell me it's just raining" absurdities was revealed as simply a tax cut on the wealthy, redux.

        It is tragic that a man who apparently, especially after the additional feces flinging economic fiasco of his tariff games, had zero understanding of economics ever had any shred of control of the nation's financial welfare. Don't give me that "He's a financial genius" bullshit, show me his taxes and recall his 6 bankruptcies along the way.  George Santayana (not to be confused with guitar legend Carlos Santana) once wisely said, “Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

 There was another, man, also Republican, also ignorant in the field of economics, who entered office with claims of economic guru status. He knew all about how tax cuts on the wealthy would make us all happy and financially well off. That man doubled the national debt, and Trump’s record deficit is a harbinger of worse.  That man, of course, was Ronald Reagan,

        Nationally known economist and advisor to both Kennedy and Johnson, Pierre Renfret was asked by Reagan's handlers to counsel Reagan, as in talk some sense into the man regarding Supply side economics, which even his eventual VP, George H.W. Bush (Bush 41), called "voo-doo economics."  Renfret soon gave up, stating that Reagan staked the entire economy on his "feeling" that "I just know that it works."  Taking office during an economic period when growth was stagnant, but by no means in recession, such as when Bush 43 left, he doubled the national debt, because he continued to spend ("Star Wars?") as if supply side economics worked, when it clearly didn't.

        In high school, those of us who stayed awake during the mandatory semester of economics learned this as "The Trickle-Down theory." It is based on the following supposition: That every dollar cut in taxes will be "multiplied" through the economy and stimulate growth, ergo everybody's happy. A corollary to this canard is the insistence that deregulation of business is in everyone's best interest, when in fact, while that would probably hold true for the immediate fortunes of the top 1% of the body politic, it is blatantly phony when applied to the rest of us, for reasons I'll explain directly.  One wag has described “Trickle Down”, as “the Rich pissing on the rest of us!”   

        Supply siders begin their justification for their position with a palpable lie. They insist that If taxes are cut on top earners including (especially) corporations, the money not spent on taxes will be plowed back into the economy in terms of expansion, increased salaries and infrastructure. The only actual statistical analysis study done to test this theory (by the National Bureau of Economic Research) reveals that, counter to the promises of the supply siders, the promised results simply never materialize. The results show that for every dollar reduction in income tax, a mere 17 cents per dollar in revenue materializes. For corporate tax reductions, a better, but still woefully short of the pie in the sky promise, 50 cents per dollar revenue results. Read this again: Corporate tax cuts cost twice as much in reduced tax revenue as they produce in actual economic stimulus! This math has been validated through both the Reagan and Bush 43 administrations. It is also being validated by analysis of the Trump tax cuts. In fact, all three were leading "cutters" of tax on the top earners and lead the league in percentage debt increases. "What?" more than Obama?  In terms of percentage increases in the national debt, absolutely.

        Analyzing the probable immediate results of reducing personal income taxes paints a stark picture. Under what we can discern re: the effects of Trump's Tax reform, proposal (it wasn’t  really his, he was and remains incapable of such formulation) the lower 60% of Americans would see essentially no change, but the top .01% would see a monumental reduction in tax obligation. While current budget reconciliation rules dictate that no law shall increase the deficit after 10 years by a single dollar, the recent tax change proposal could increase the deficit after 10 years by $10 trillion in the following decade. This amounts to 50% of the present national debt! 

        So, what did Reagan and his Republican Congress do? In other word, where’s the lesson for those who can appreciate it? The Economic Recovery Tax Act of 1981 also known as the ERTA or "Kemp-Roth Tax Cut", was signed on August 13, 1981, by President Ronald Reagan at Rancho del Cielo, his California ranch, (You know, like Mar a Lago West?) in 1981. Its stated goal was "to amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1954 to encourage economic growth through reductions in individual income tax rates, the expensing of depreciable property, incentives for small businesses, and incentives for savings, and for other purposes".  Included in the act was an across-the-board decrease in the marginal personal income tax rates in the United States by 23% over three years, with the top rate reduced from 70% (that figure should resonate, as it’s what AOC mentioned and took a shit storm of abuse for) to 50% and the bottom rate from 14% to 11%.

        In the following year the deficit ballooned, which in turn, drove interest rates from around 12% to over 20%, which, in turn, drove the economy into the second dip of the 1978-82 "double dip recession". The Dow Jones average, which had been over 1000 before enactment of ERTA, fell to 770 by September 1982.

                Without the decency of so much as a simple acknowledgement that they had been grossly incorrect in their belief in supply side theory, much of the 1981 ERTA was reversed   out in September 1982 by the Tax Equity and Fiscal Responsibility Act of 1982 (TEFRA), sometimes called the largest tax increase of the post-war period.₁ Sadly, the only way to make supply side theory work is to spend less. In truth, it still doesn't work, but as in our daily lives, spending less saves money. Of course, we all know who the targets of these spending cuts would be, and it isn't the fat cats of Exxon, Morgan Stanley et al, is it?

        So, you ask, where does the money “saved” by big corporations go, if not reinvested and used to grow the economy? A lot if it goes to foreign bank accounts such as those of the recently failed Credit Suisse (CS), which was sheltering millions in untaxed US dollars for US CEOs and other high earners. Although they were required by Swiss law to ascertain that all relevant taxes had been paid before accepting foreign deposits, CS simply didn’t. Even some of the money from the Bush 43 “too big to fail” $700 billion dollar bailout of Wall Street investment banks hurt in the housing bubble collapse of 2008, paid instead as bonuses (yes you read that right) to top execs, ended up, untaxed, in CS accounts. Trump himself had accounts in several foreign banks, including China and the UK.   

        Obviously, this is, or should be, ample recent precedent for anyone willing to dispassionately evaluate it. Even so, Trump, who is far more an economic dullard than Reagan, Kemp/Roth and their ilk ever were, was also seduced to trickle down by what one must assume are several issues. First, it helped his own business interests, which needed more help than even he could give them, by reducing his tax obligations, and he even was candid enough to admit that he was not distanced to any real extent from his business interests. Additionally, it curried favor with those of his social stratum (I originally typed "class" for "stratum", but my computer almost crashed when I used the word "class" in a monograph on Trump. Finally, and saddest to consider he was, and remains, simply too ignorant to learn from recent history and too lazy to educate himself. Hopefully, he will have time in custody to consider these flaws but, narcissist that he is, he will remain simply unable to own them.

         In the final analysis, as tax cuts on the top and tariffs on manufacturers continued to induce suffering at the bottom, Trump and his rubber stamp Senate tacitly echoed the line from Mel Brooks' "History of the World, Part I", where, when a Roman Senator asks, "But what about the poor?" the rest of the Senators respond as one, "Fuck the poor!"  That sums up Trump’s non-existent social conscience and yet, far too many of those whom he loathes still support him.

₁   The consequences of the Reagan Tax cut fiasco and its sub- sequent reversal a year later should have been enough of a real time example of the “Tax Cuts spur the economy” fiction to deter future similar folly. Enter Donald Trump, whose tax cuts have generated zero growth in federal income.     

On the Green New Deal and Energy

 

             On the Green New Deal and Energy

 02/14/2021

        I’m laying a lot on your cognitive plates with this one. My initial essay on the subject some time ago was part two of a general critique of the Green New Deal. I wrote it in response to one individual’s opinion that “75% of the Green New Deal is good stuff." Since a large part of my objection to it is the total disavowing of the advantages of nuclear power, by those who know relatively little about it, I opted to instill a little factual information into the conversation, as someone who does know a bit about it (26 years’ experience with naval reactor plants).

       When you preface something with "Green" one is led (intentionally in this case) to believe it's primarily about environmental issues most progressives, including myself, support. First off, 75% of the GND has nothing to do with "Green" except money and the redistribution of it. Second, and to me even more telling, is the parroting of anti-nuclear rhetoric which is even more flawed than anti-vaxx propaganda.

         The environmental spin involved here is, like the first four bars of "Satisfaction," the “hook.” A Green New Deal should be about what it suggests itself to be - climate change/carbon reduction, environmental cleanup, and EPA strengthening, such as reinstituting all Obama ecology related executive orders and enacting them into law (missing from the GND). Period. That's "green". My issue is with citing what is actually nanny state economic social engineering on a scale outstripping even Sweden or Norway as "Green."  It isn't. No, it isn't. No. Not that some of the concepts aren't great concepts, like Universal single payer Health Care, childcare and Social Security. Much of the rest is simply idealistic and unpracticable, and is what conservatives latch on to ridicule the entire program. The GND isn’t “75%” good, but a fair part of it is. It could, however, have the effect when the total impossibilities of the more outré propositions become obvious, that the real “babies” of fighting climate change and non-carbon dependence as well as universal single payer healthcare get tossed out with the bathwater. And that would be a crime.

        Certainly, supporting wind options is important, and where applicable and practicable (West TX, northern Plains, etc.) will reduce carbon admissions. Of course, you must be willing to ignore the piles of dead birds below the turbine pylons, not to mention the maintenance costs. Solar is also attractive in those areas, especially in western regions and, generally, the lower flatter coastal regions of the South, where there are lots of days with longer light. Unfortunately, the farther north we go, the shorter the daylight hours and in winter, when we need power the most for "green" heating, they are shortest. Battery technology is, and will be, far from adequate in the near future to support metropolitan areas with solar, if ever. (Can you say Seattle?)

         Meanwhile Nuclear is sustainable, safe, and yet the US is lagging in the development and application of even safer and almost infinitely refuellable liquid salt cooled (LSC) reactor plants, whereas India and China are pioneering such work. We (the US Atomic Energy Commission) actually built an operating high power, small profile LSC reactor at Oak Ridge in the '60s. After more than 6000 effective full power hours and proof of the technology, the military wanted more “weapons grade” Plutonium, which LSC reactors don’t and can’t produce, so it was scrapped in favor of fast breeders - less safety, scarcer fuel.

Even the Union of Concerned Scientists, once critics of nuclear power, have now acknowledged the long-term benefits of this zero-carbon production along with their acknowledgement of the safety record of the industry.

     And, from the MAGA side, I am sick unto nausea of seeing Pam Bondi lookalikes exhorting me to vote "for energy," followed by a multi-ethnic panel of paid actors who parrot the same party line. What is saddening is that this is presented as if it was just a common sense, non-partisan, effort sponsored by the largesse of the energy industry. Make no mistake - we are held captive by these people to a degree. Don’t think so? Go to a gas station! The fossil fuel purveyors are the money behind these ads. Dig deep enough into the background of this commercial (for that's what it is, in truth), and the Koch Brothers, Chevron, frackers too numerous to mention, and the coal industry are lurking there.

        Sadly, we, as a nation of sheep, were frightened away from nuclear power by an accident which has had zero measurable effects on the general population or the environment over the subsequent 37 years other than the higher cost of electricity as the utility recouped their self-inflicted monetary loss. The site was called Three Mile Island, for those with short memories or too few years to remember. That site has been decommissioned and according to current Pennsylvania energy policies, nuclear power is not categorized as clean energy. Meanwhile shale development, which uses the extremely productive technique of hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” has driven down market prices for electricity over the past decade. Thus, nuclear power is forced to economically compete with the historically low prices of natural gas and state-subsidized renewable energy sources wind & solar) that are protected from market volatility.

I worked in a nuclear industry, the Submarine Navy, for 26 years as an educator and operator/supervisor. Our hundreds of thousands (more likely millions, by now) of nuclear accident-free operating hours under conditions far more challenging than stationary power generation (but with better food!), are testimony to the safety of the types of reactors used in US nuclear facilities. That said, the LSC reactor design previously mentioned is even safer! U.S. Nuclear Powered Warships (NPWs) have safely operated for more than 50 years without experiencing any reactor accident or any release of radioactivity that hurt human health or had an adverse effect on marine life. Naval reactors have an outstanding record of over 134 million miles safely steamed on nuclear power, and they have amassed over 5700 reactor-years of safe operation!

 The Chernobyl tragedy, another “scare” moment was largely due to the type of reactor involved, which could never have been licensed in the US, and the lack of both judgement and training of those who initiated the event, not the nature of the use of nuclear power. Even the more recent Fukushima catastrophe in Japan was caused by inadequate backup provision for power, and would not have been licensed in the US, (nor would a US plant have been at risk of a once in a lifetime tsunami.) What passed unnoticed, is that no one died because of nuclear issues of any sort, but several were killed by the initial event (earthquake/tsunami) itself. In the sixty plus year history of commercial nuclear power production in the US, there have been three fatalities, all due to accidental electrocution, not nuclear power.

        Since its inception in 1948, the U.S. Navy nuclear program has developed twenty-seven different plant designs, installed them in 210 nuclear-powered ships, taken five hundred reactor cores into operation, and accumulated over 5,400 reactor years of operation and 128,000,000 miles safely steamed. For some perspective that's over 550 trips to the moon! Additionally, ninety-eight nuclear submarines and six nuclear cruisers have been recycled. The U.S. Navy has never experienced a reactor accident. By comparison, there have been more than one hundred fatalities in the US involving Liquid natural Gas (LNG), one of the "safe" fossil fuels hyped by the Energy Lobby. Between petroleum, LNG and Coal industry accidents, thousands have died, including the flattening of one square mile of Cleveland and 132 dead by an LNG explosion in 1944, and 362 in one West Virginia coal mine explosion. This of course ignores the litany of cancers caused by carbon fuel off gassing, especially from earlier coal fired plants.

        Both solar and wind power are attractive, especially to those who profit by making wind turbines and solar panels. Once manufactured, both are “no carbon,” options, but at great carbon and monetary cost for the initial installation. And for wind power, as the Danes are finding out, there is a lifetime intense maintenance commitment in the current state of wind technology. Solar ...well, it only works when the sun is up, and current technology options for energy storage for later use are in their infancy. It will also almost assuredly be shown that while initial solar installations are less costly than wind energy, adequate storage will be far more so, if even achievable.

 Hydro is, of course, fuel free but requires significant altering of the natural course of rivers and the accompanying loss of various habitats, while having the obvious downside of needing high volume flows to maintain output.  Hydro is also subject to the effects of changing weather patterns on the amount of water available. Global warming and associated decreases in rain in the lower western states has made this an increasingly critical concern.

Record low levels in Lake Mead (Hoover Dam) and Lake Powell (Glen Canyon Dam) are exemplary. Glen Canyon/Lake Powell generates power for about 5.8 million households and businesses in Arizona, Colorado, Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming. Hoover Dam/Lake Mead can provide a yearly average generation of 4.5 billion kilowatt hours and serves the annual electrical needs of nearly eight million people in Arizona, southern California, and southern Nevada. In 1999, Lake Mead and Lake Powell, the two largest reservoirs in the country, held 47.6 million acre-feet of water. That has fallen to about 13.1 million acre-feet, or 26 percent of their capacity. Both sources, especially Glen Canyon, are, at present, threatened by steadily decreasing lake levels. In the meantime, safe nuclear energy offers a far better alternative than coal (no carcinogens) and fracking (fewer drill induced earthquakes). While Hydro is clean, nuclear power plants would be unaffected by these water level concerns.

        As for “renewable” the US has, with its geographical boundaries, about one thousand years’ worth of Thorium which is a far more abundant and intrinsically safer reactor fuel. Thorium-based reactors are safer because the reaction can easily be stopped and because the operation does not have to take place under extreme pressures. Thorium is not radioactive in and of itself. The physics is too difficult to describe here, so if interested, here's a link to an article from Forbes: 

https://www.forbes.com/sites/energysource/2012/02/16/the-thing-about-thorium-why-the-better-nuclear-fuel-may-not-get-a-chance/?sh=2af7f74b1d80

Compared to uranium reactors, thorium reactors produce far less waste and the waste that is generated is much less radioactive and much shorter-lived. So, why don’t we use it now? Because, like the Liquid Salt Reactors, Thorium can’t be weaponized as Plutonium and Uranium can be. The US abandoned liquid salt cooled plants for fast breeders which can make weapons grade fissionable material and has largely ignored Thorium as a fuel for the same reason. Both China and India are building Liquid Salt cooled and Thorium fueled reactors to support their burgeoning power demands while we sit on our hands.

        A clean and economical solution is out there, and needless worry and Energy Corporation propaganda are stifling it. "Be an energy voter" is partisan to the max while pretending not to be. Don't be suckered.

      

Odd stuff Which Didn't Make the News

 

            Odd Stuff That Didn’t Quite Make the  News

05/14/2023

        So, these two rural bumpkins, somewhere in Eastern Kentucky (cue banjoes) were not only very drunk, but also running on fumes, almost out of gas, somewhere in the back of beyond. Fortunately, (or so they thought) they came upon a shack and saw a full five gallon container by the side of the structure. They stopped a short way past it and snuck back, stealthily took the can, and poured its contents into the car’s gas tank.

        They started the car, but to their chagrin, it shut down about half a mile on down the road, refusing further attempts to restart.   At some point, they were arrested by the county constabulary and (this is the weird part for several reasons) charged with the theft of the five gallons of hydrogen peroxide. This where the story ends, but I have unanswered questions:

        How does one fail to detect a significant difference between the odors of gasoline and H₂ O₂ ???  Furthermore, why wouldn’t any lucid individual check before pouring it into the gas tank?

        Additionally, although I’m no chemist, I know that H₂ O₂, especially in five gallon quantities, has another usage, far more likely to be plied in the sticks of Eastern Kentucky, which begs the question – did the police then go back and bust the meth lab from which it was stolen? Inquiring minds want to know. On second thought, maybe it’s a good thing the sheriff got to them before the “Breaking Bad” crew did.

 

        As proof that weird shit happens to all classes of folks….

        A New York couple purchased their dream vacay home in West Palm Beach, here in sunny FLA, and found it uninhabitable when they came to use it. Roaches? gators? snakes? storm damage???  Actually, none of the above. They found the house besieged by vultures. Say Whaaat?? Yes, according to the owner, vultures had broken through the screen enclosure in the pool and barbecue area and then decided it was a good place to bring such carrion as they found. The odor was described as “smelling like a thousand rotting corpses.”

        A nearby neighbor was equally distraught because in May more vultures broke through her lanai screen and were unable to figure how to get out, she describes it thus: “Imagine 20 vultures trapped, biting each other and they can bite through bones. It was a vile, vicious and traumatic event.”

        Now here’s the “stupid human tricks” part of the story. As has been seen elsewhere, there is human element which drives many if not most of such human/animal confrontations.  Complicating this (the vulture issue) is the fact that a neighbor has been, and still is, feeding the vultures and other local wildlife (racoons, et al), attracting critters which otherwise might not bother the homes. Warnings have availed little, since the vultures are migratory and “protected” and the woman doing the feeding is “intractable”. (aka a flaming arsehole).

        The whole feeding wildlife thingy may be only vultures in West Palm, but here in Central Florida, it has claws, teeth and can weigh as weigh in at 600 pounds. A Black Bear won’t wait until you or your dog are dead, like a vulture will. Over the past 20 years, human/bear interactions have escalated due to both bear populations soaring and by foolish human actions, as well.   

        Florida law states that it is illegal to place food or garbage or allow the placement of them or offer them in a way that attracts black bears, foxes and raccoons and creates a public nuisance. In previous years, in Orlando exurbs, such as Longwood, and Wekiva, in spite of authorities’ cautions, garbage was frequently left in bags at the curb, creating a bear deli counter. There are anecdotal tales of 1970s and 80s residents actually putting dog kibble out because the bears were “so cute.”  The “cute” vanishes when the food is gone, since bears don’t get “It’s all gone, there is no more.”  Bears being bears have resulted in serious injuries to residents over the past 20 years.

        Here in the Villages, we occasionally see a “seasonal renter” (aka “Touron” (a combination of tourist and moron) who thinks that if a alligator climbs onto the course and lays near the sand trap it’s because he craves closer interaction with them and their cell phone. We have seen golf course ambassadors have to station themselves nearby in such circumstances to protect those golfers too damned stupid to protect themselves. Over a distance of 15 yards even a large gator can run at 25 to 30 mph. Reflect on that while you’re 10 feet away, snapping a selfie! I have seen a 12-footer, perhaps 10 yards out in the water, make a move on a playing partner looking near the water’s edge for his ball. I doubt he’ll ever do it again. (the golfer, not the gator)

        Finally, for this section of the piece, I reminisce about the small herd of American Bison which once grazed, years ago, in a fenced semi-central location here in The Villages. Beautiful, and massive, they were, in their large pasture, docile and, for want of a better adjective, really cool. They’d even approach observers right up at the sturdy three rail fence, apparently as curious about us as we about them. That is, right up until the “Touron” thought it’d be really neat to place his young son the back of one near the fence for a photo op. The lad was unhurt, but, sadly, this incident led to the removal of the big bovines. 

    Wild animals are….. (wait for it)….wild.

 

        As proof that it isn’t only Floridians who do stupid stuff with wild creatures, we go to Sturbridge Mass., where Dave Schmida had a problem. Noting a large hornet’s nest high up on the second-story eaves of his parent’s home and, being ever the dutiful son, he told them he’d take care of it. He tried the usual spray insecticide, which, if it reaches, works like a charm but, the large nest being on the second story and up under the eaves, it wouldn’t quite reach.

        At this point the prudent exterminator might think “ladder!”  Not, however, our hero, who came up with an alternative approach rarely used by extermination specialists. Lighting a Roman candle left over from July 4^th , he aimed it at the nest and voila, the nest, paper like in texture and highly flammable, burst into flame. It was, to his amazement and dismay followed almost immediately by ignition of the shingles and the wood of the eaves.  Schmida then was forced to use a fire extinguisher from an upstairs floor window to put out the flames. He reported the damage was “Minimal”, with “Only a few boards left slightly burned.”  Of course, if he could reach the nest from the window with the fire extinguisher, why not with the hornet spray? Yeah, I know, not as much “fun.”

 This is so much less stressful than discussing Trump’s latest Legal ploy!

                                          TTFN,

                                                 Mikey