Political Irony

I’ve talked about patents many times in this blog, but this hilarious video from Last Week Tonight will remind you that Congress is starting to reconsider patent reform again. I hope they do something about it this time. Patent trolls are already costing us trillions of dollars and putting a huge damper on our economy.

I’ve been watching the scandal about Rachel Dolezal, the (now former) head of the NAACP chapter in Spokane WA, who seems to be having a family feud in public. Dolezal has listed her race as black in various places, but her parents decided it was a good idea to publicly announce that she is not black (even slightly).

Many people seem to be upset that she is claiming to be something she isn’t, in order to gain personal advantage. Think about that for a minute. People are upset because she claims to to be black in order to gain personal advantage. You have to be fucking kidding me.

The NAACP doesn’t care if she is black or not. It is not part of her job requirements to be black (nor should it be). She did not benefit from any affirmative action programs. What benefit did she get?

You could question her honesty, but what is she lying about? Scientifically, there is no such thing as race. Even the UN says that the social construct of race is a myth. People have different color skin, and their features are different. Why do we have to place them in artificial categories? Would people be as upset if someone claimed to be blond on their driver’s license, but it turned out that they dyed their hair? Dolezal was raised alongside four adopted black siblings. Later, she married a black man. Somewhere along the way she somehow started identifying as black. If race is a myth, who says she can’t do that, as long as she didn’t do it for nefarious purposes?

I resisted posting about this, until now. What elevated this to the level of irony was an absolutely brilliant editorial by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar titled “Let Rachel Dolezal Be as Black as She Wants to Be“. Here’s a few quotes from the article, but you really should read the whole thing. It is hilarious and I’ve left out the funniest parts.

I sympathize with the dilemma of Rachel Dolezal, the head of the Spokane chapter of the NAACP whose parents maintain that she is not any part black, as she has claimed (#whiteisthenewblack). See, I too have been living a lie. For the past 50 years I’ve been keeping up this public charade, pretending to be something I’m not. Finally, in the wake of so many recent personal revelations by prominent people, I’ve decided to come out with the truth.

I am not tall (#shortstuff).

Although I’ve been claiming to be 7’2” for many decades, the truth is that I’m 5’8”. And that’s when I first get out of bed in the morning. Just goes to show, you tell a lie often enough and people believe you. I expect there will be some who will demand I give back the championship rings and titles that I accumulated during my college and professional basketball career because I was only able to win them by convincing other players that they had no chance against my superior height. How could these achievements have any lasting meaning if I’m not really as tall as Wikipedia says I am?

Despite all this, you can’t deny that Dolezal has proven herself a fierce and unrelenting champion for African-Americans politically and culturally. Perhaps some of this sensitivity comes from her adoptive black siblings. Whatever the reason, she has been fighting the fight for several years and seemingly doing a first-rate job. Not only has she led her local chapter of the NAACP, she teaches classes related to African-American culture at Eastern Washington University and is chairwoman of a police oversight committee monitoring fairness in police activities. Bottom line: The black community is better off because of her efforts.

At no time in history has the challenge of personal identity seemed more relevant. Olympic champion Bruce Jenner struggled for years with her gender identity and only at the age of 65, as Caitlyn Jenner, seems to have come to some peace with it.

Al Jolson, once considered the most popular entertainer in the world, rose to fame wearing blackface. He also used his considerable influence to help blacks. At one time, he was the only white man allowed into some of the nightclubs in Harlem. Ironically, Jolson admitted that when he performed the same songs without blackface he never felt he did as good a job. Some critics say it’s because while singing in blackface, he was singing for all downtrodden people, including his own Jewish people.

I believe in free markets, but to have a free market you have to have transparency in pricing and information about the product. Which brings us to the health industry, which has neither. Can you believe a market where the seller doesn’t tell you how much the product will cost or even what you are buying until after you have purchased it? Even when you receive the bill, it is often indecipherable. And then, if you can’t pay, they can bankrupt you (or worse).

How bad is it? According to a nation-wide study, hospitals (especially for-profit hospitals) charge far more than it costs them to provide care. One hospital in Florida routinely charged patients 12.6 times the actual cost of patient care (that’s compared to what Medicare says it should cost).

That hospital is not an outlier. The study found fifty hospitals that charged more than 10 times their cost. All but one of those fifty was a for-profit hospital. Twenty five of the price-gouging hospitals are operated by Community Health Systems. Another fourteen are operated by the Hospital Corporation of America.

Forty percent of the worst hospitals operate in Florida, presumably where they can take advantage of seniors.

How do they get away with it? According to a co-author of the study (a professor at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health):

They are price-gouging because they can. They are marking up the prices because no one is telling them they can’t. These are the hospitals that have the highest markup of all 5,000 hospitals in the United States. This means when it costs the hospital $100, they are going to charge you, on average, $1,000.

It is time for conservatives to stop claiming that the government should stay out of health care and let the free market take care of it. We tried that, and it doesn’t work. Even Obamacare doesn’t regulate how much hospitals can overcharge. Currently, only two states (Maryland and West Virginia) have laws that regulate hospital rates. It is time to do this on a national level.

This pretty much sums up the upcoming election and the inevitable media response:

© Brian McFadden

Except isn’t it a refreshing change to have Bernie Sanders in the race? Not because I agree with his views, but just because it is nice to have someone on the left as a counterpoint to all the nut jobs on the right running for president.

Everybody, including Republicans, like to tout small businesses as the strongest source of economic development. It is where most new jobs come from, not to mention new ideas.

Which is why people should shake their heads when Gov. (and likely presidential candidate) Scott Walker brags about his record in Wisconsin. A major study released this month shows that Wisconsin ranks dead last in new business start-up activity.

And this isn’t something that he can blame on his predecessor or on something else beyond his control. There is plenty of good reasons to blame Walker for the bad economic outlook for small businesses in the state.

For example, Walker (like other Republican governors) turned down federal money that Obamacare provided to expand Medicare and Medicaid. So if you depend on your regular job to provide health insurance, it is very difficult to quit it in order to start your own new business. It is just too risky.

Walker also turned down federal money to build a high-speed rail system, which would have provided thousands of jobs. In addition, his refusing the money caused a multinational manufacturing company to shut down their Wisconsin plant and sue the state for $65 million for breach of contract.

Perhaps most damning of all is that the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation removed Walker as the agency’s chair because of scandals.

And you can’t blame it on other economic factors in the area. Ironically, Walker famously traveled to next-door Illinois with the slogan “Wisconsin is open for business” and tried to lure companies to relocate from that state. But while Wisconsin is suffering, Illinois is one of the states at the top of the rankings for start-up activity. And the country as a whole enjoyed the largest year-over-year start-up growth in two decades.

John Oliver points out the lack of justice in one important aspect of our justice system – paying bail – which makes a mockery of “innocent until proven guilty”:

And not only is this putting quite a few innocent people in jail, it is costing taxpayers a ton of money.